4, 3, 2, 1. Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you are joining us from. Hi, my name is Abhijit Baduri and I'm delighted to be your host today. In this season 3 of Dreamers and Neurocons, we come across a whole lot of people in this season 3. We are really trying to focus on well-being and which is of course, you know, a really relevant topic from the point of view of what we see around today. And I just thought that we should, you know, get somebody who is not from the corporate world and is from the corporate world. Yes and no, but this person's real claim to fame is that she's a behavioral scientist and somebody who really looks at the scenario from a behavior point of view. Now, I'm going to just confess and tell you that I'm going to, that's one of the first questions I'm going to ask her that what exactly do you have to do to become a behavioral scientist? But before that, you've got to hear this one particular piece and let me just once again welcome you and please feel free to add your questions, which I'm going to, especially if they are tough ones, I'm going to ask the questions to my guests. So without any further ado, let's get... Hey Harini, welcome. So you are, when we complete season 3, you're going to find yourself as one of those styles, you know, in the next collage where you will discover yourself. So, but thank you so much for being there today. So I just thought I'm going to upfront ask you this whole question. How does one become a design thinker and how does one become a behavioral scientist? Are they the same thing? They different? What did you study? How did you become one? They're not really the same thing, but they are the same thing, just like I am from the corporate world, but I'm not. So a lot of things about me are in the grade. So behavioral science is something that intrigued me since I was a child because I always wondered, why do we make decisions the way we make decisions? What is it that really influences when we make decisions? So there's something interesting about how the human brain works. So I got interested in that and when I started observing people that are on me, I got a feeling that the brain is constantly making its own stories. So when I'm talking to you, I'm looking at the library behind you and I'm making stories in my mind that Abhijith is a best-selling author, Abhijith is a well-read person. Now you haven't told me any of these things, but my brain is constantly making those stories. I'm hoping that you will draw that conclusion. That's why I put the bookshelves behind me. And I chose this background for a change today because I would love your brain to make a story that I'm a Rajasthani princess. So I put this right here. You want? I'm neither Rajasthani nor a princess. So the human brain is constantly making stories. So when I was a student, I had to deal with a lot of perceptions, biases, beliefs, bullying and all sorts of things. And the best way for me to come out of those was to let my brain build its own stories. And I kept building those stories and those stories helped me to come out of those situations. Then I thought this is an interesting space to look at, to experiment in the corporate world. So when I started my corporate career as a pharmacist in the research and development space, I was one of those good girls who studied science, who went on to become a pharmacist, decided that I will create nanomolecules for non-invasive surgery, did that, have a few patents below my belt, it did all of that and then I realized that... You have patents? What? Yeah. You actually do have patents? Yes, a couple of them. Very impressive. So 24 research papers published, 80 plus citations in journals of repute, medicine and chemistry, fantastic, all of that. But yet in the corporate world, in the research and development space which I loved and I was so passionate about, I wasn't happy, I was missing something. So the stories that my brain was actually building at that time was, what is it about... I'm passionate about the job, I love what I'm doing, yet I'm not happy and I was super stressed. So what is it that's... So my brain was actually getting confused. There were a lot of conflicting, contradicting stories all over it. So that's how my journey to behavioral sciences started. Design thinking is not exactly the same, but design thinking is something which keeps the end user at the center of things when you design something. So there's a myth that it is meant for products, but I have noticed that end user can be either for a product or a service or for anything.  When you're telling me something, I'm the end user. So if you're able to keep the end user in mind and if you're able to make quick iterations of the message that you're giving across or the product or service that you're putting across, you have a win-win because you're giving to the user what he or she wants. So this is design thinking and I think a lot of us, people in the fraternity have jargonized to design thinking and made it a program that sells, but I think design thinking is a way of thinking. It has been there since time immemorial and all those things which have really outlived time and remained relevant, they're all products of design thinking. I put the two together to carry out my experiments in the corporate world. When I was doing a corporate role, when I was CHRO, I used design thinking as my way of thinking. I used behavioral sciences as my way to gauge what my audience wants and I saw that these two things beautifully blend together. So that's where I call myself as a behavioral scientist and a design thinker. Wow. And you're a consulting partner with Semco Style, the organization. And how do you use these skills in the organization? Give me an example of some project where you brought these two things together. And I'm going to assume that as a result of that, you are approaching the same set of problems in a very different way. So what would that be? So Semco Style as a philosophy is something that's something that my conviction matches with it absolutely. So the Semco Style philosophy talks about keeping people at the center of things. It's pretty similar to what design thinking does. And typically in a Semco Style intervention, my role is that of a behavioral scientist. So if there's an intervention which requires inner transformation, right? We need people to introspect. We need people to reflect on the way they work, the way they behave. If there is an inner transformation that needs to be done in order to have an enhanced business outcome, then I play a role. I create a design, a human lab. I put my participants through the human lab. It's not as scary as it sounds, but participants going through the human lab have an experience. There are simulations. There are sometimes we go to an extreme of emotions actually coming out in the open. But typically in a human lab, I help them actually drop the guards, unmask themselves in front of the others, verify the elephants in the room that each one of them has been hiding, and break and unleash themselves from that wanting to feel good, look good in front of others. So what happens at the end of it is there are a lot of opened up wounds. So human lab is dangerous if it's not wrapped up properly. So my role is to ensure that the human labs are done in the right manner. The wounds are opened up only with the intent of healing them. And then they are healed by helping people leverage on each other's strengths. So at the end of the lab, people walk out understanding how to leverage on each other's strengths and how they have to build to help each other overcome their weaknesses. So it's a complete process that people are taking through. My role is to conduct these interventions, design them, implement them, and then follow it up with the coaching because you're talking about sustaining human behavior. So I cannot leave wounded people unattended. So it's followed up with the coaching. Apart from that, there's a lot of other stuff that I do in terms of intent creation because all of SEMCOSA's interventions are pretty much dealing with people, dealing with behaviors, but being measured with business outcomes. So if you're able to understand behaviors and you're able to not just cooperate behaviors and measure it through the business outcomes, then you're actually taking your organization for the next level of excellence. I do most of it and a lot of my time I also spend in coaching new consultants globally. So it's a pretty much round the clock kind of a role for all of SEMCOSA. Mostly dealing with people and behaviors. So do you enjoy it? Absolutely. 21 hours of working every single day right off late. It has been seven days a week. My energy level would be the same. I enjoyed much more than the six hours a day, five days a week of schooling that I had. So that's how much I enjoyed. Because one of the things is sometimes one is forced to take up a job or a subject to study in school or college, which you didn't really sign up for. I mean you had to do it for some compulsion. Sometimes people have to do it because they need the salary or they have some compulsion. In that case, how does one still stay happy in that situation? I definitely know that your story is much more interesting than mine in this, Abhijeet. But I can give you an example. Personal example is that... I know you're thinking about how I suffered through doing commerce in school. Yes, that's a terrible chapter of my life. But you don't even know how to talk about that. Yeah, because in school if you did well, you did science. If you didn't want to do science, I mean you had to be pushed into commerce because my school didn't offer humanities. So then I was stuck for two years doing a subject which I had no interest in. It was just a horrendous experience. Absolutely. I still don't understand what is debit and credit. Absolutely I can empathize with you. Yeah, so I've gone through a similar experience and I was pushed into a lot of things that I never wanted to do. One of the things I remember is my Bharatnatiam classes. Being a South Indian and in those days Bharatnatiam was... As long as it is taught in your neighborhood, you're supposed to learn. So I could never get it right. And I was enrolled into that class and I never understood why do I have to do it. My mother's answer was very simple. She said, it's good to be aware of this subject. So just learn. I'm not expecting you to become a dancer at all, but it's good to be aware of it. And I went through it only because she said, okay, I don't expect anything from you. Just learn it. So that was how it was. It was easy. But my pharma experience is what it is. I love that subject. I still love that subject. I can go back to a laboratory. Even now, when I pick up my thesis, when I flip through the pages, the nostalgia is... It just brings tears to my eyes. I love it. But why wasn't I happy there is I was not doing what I wanted to do. Work is one thing. The subject is I loved it and I was doing a great job. But what I wanted to do was beyond that. And when I quit the pharma world after five so-called successful years to the outside world, I quit a very unhappy person. Two years of introspection told me what I was missing there and why I was stressed. I was stressed to the extent of getting into depression. Now, why I was stressed there is what I wanted to do was to make a positive difference in people's lives. That was my purpose. It took me introspective months to figure that out. And I felt in pharma, I thought I'm going to be making medicines to improve quality of life. But if you look at the entire lifecycle of medicines that I'm manufacturing, by the time it goes to all the clinical trials, by the time it passes all the FDA approvals and by the time it reaches the patient, I don't even know what's happening to that medicine. So I am not able to see the impact that I'm making in people's lives and that was causing me a lot of stress. Another thing that was causing me a lot of stress is I am not used to working in boundaries.  It's difficult for me to work. I'm not stressed because I'm not just about the volume of work. I'm stressed about the controls. So there have been situations like this where stress has been induced by external factors and not the work itself. So that's what made me think, what is it that I need to do to overcome that stress? And then I thought, okay, I should get into a space where I can be the change that I want to see and that's how my entire Maverick journey has actually been. So I would therefore ask this question that if you are a Maverick and this is a very loose definition in the sense that wherever you feel you are not fitting in and you don't have the psychological safety to be able to articulate it, which happens to a lot of people for multiple reasons. And today, of course, organizations have their diversity and inclusion, the initiatives. But I believe that one of the pieces that is the hardest challenge to crack is the notion of psychological safety.  All of them are very important pieces. So I think when you look at that, I believe psychological safety is a very essential element of well-being, whether in the workplace or otherwise. I mean, in a relationship, if you are not able to articulate it, you're still unhappy. So I think when you think about this, have you worked in the area of psychological safety and what's been your experience of that? Yeah, in fact, very well said, psychological safety is not just about letting your leadership team, your manager is telling you that, yeah, it's safe if you come and talk to us, we're approachable, but it's about how are they demonstrating that and have been in that space. I remember one manager who used to be very well known for her approachable nature. Everybody said that she's wonderful to work with. I did a lot of reference check and all of that, but I noticed that there was something that when it came to me, she wasn't very transparent about information. She wasn't very transparent with information. She wouldn't share a lot of information. She would share it in bits and pieces. So over a period of time, I started getting a feeling that I have limited information which is going to hamper my decision-making ability. So I started, you know, there was a lot of judgment about myself that I cannot take decisions in this place and I ended up making mistakes in those decisions and that was where she said, look, I'm sharing information with you, but you're not able to take decisions. So it put me into a space of self-doubt. So although she was known to be approachable, although she was sharing information with me, she wasn't sharing all the information with me, which put me into self-doubt and I started making mistakes and self-doubt again made me make more mistakes. So psychological safety by managers is not only about saying I'm approachable, come and talk. Psychological safety has to have synchronization of thoughts, words and actions. So when I'm saying that you are absolutely free to come and approach me and talk to me, I have to demonstrate by my words and actions that you should not have any fear of consequence. I think the biggest problem in the corporate world is everything somehow gets connected with performance appraisals. So if I open my mouth now, I'll make a point. I know you're very passionate about this subject and you always are bang on when you make statements about it. Yeah, we talk a lot and people are afraid to open up and speak because they said appraisal season of the air recency effect. So it means psychological safety doesn't exist. And if I want to experiment a new idea, if I want to try out something new, if my manager is going to tell me, yeah, you can try out, feel free to try out. But if it doesn't work, I'm not responsible. Then the fear of failure in me is not eliminated. So I think psychological safety is about removing these two fears, the fear of consequence when it comes to expressing ideas, speaking about opinions and point of view, and removing fear of failure from experimentation. So one of my mentors, his standard statement used to be that success is yours, failure is mine. The moment he would say success is yours, failure is mine. I felt psychologically safe to carry out anything because if it's successful, he's going to give me the credit. If it's a failure, he's going to take ownership of it. And there's this famous Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam story also where he demonstrates this, how his manager did that at that time. So demonstration of an action of those words builds psychological safety. And this particular mentor of mine, he was also my immediate boss at that time. He used to open up conversations to say that, you know, it's okay for you to ask me a silly question.  And to this date, these are two things that I have picked up from him and I say that every time to my students as well is no question is a trivial question and every question deserves an answer. And I'm actually announcing psychological safety there. I'm telling them that I'm okay, absolutely fine to take a silly question from you and every question shall be answered. So removing fear of consequence or judgment and removing fear of failure, these two things, but unless it's demonstrated in words and actions, just having those thoughts will be merely lip service or maybe words on the wall. So managers who can show that in action, I think they are the other ones who create the best psychologically safe work spaces. I also think that, you know, when you look at managers when they are, and I'm sort of going back on my experiences in the initial years, my early years at work where, you know, I made like, you know, several mistakes every day, but I was lucky to work in an organization where somebody would actually come back and say, don't worry about that. But it's so nice that you're trying out different things. Now, obviously at one level, I felt that also created a big burden that I should really do something worthwhile because they are so forgiving about all of that. But I also think it gave me an enormous opportunity to try out new ideas and sort of, you know, whether it was in my role, there was nothing which said that I could try out making a film, but I did. And, you know, just trying out those kind of things just really made a big deal of a difference to my confidence.  But what it does is it gives you the confidence that, you know, you may not have seen this before, but you can handle it. So when I look at what that did to me, that it just made it so easy for me to really think about trying out different things, whether it was a solo or a train journey. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, experimentation is something that you're well known for. And I think that's what it is. Experimentation is what that gives you the confidence to go ahead and, you know, because when you're experimenting, you know there's a 50% chance of failure. Probability is 50-50. So one of the things that I always felt while experimenting and which I've been telling my mentees also is that if you fail, it doesn't matter because you never did it before. So it's absolutely all right to fail, but there's a 50% chance that you will succeed in your experiment. And when you're succeeding in something which you've never done before, taste of that success is phenomenal. So experimentation is a good thing.  And believe me, I was a very, very, very, very timid person in school. My mother was a teacher in the same school where I was studying and I always used to feel that I have to be perfect so that... That must be very hard. So experimentation was unimaginable for me because I was afraid of failure. Not that she controlled me. She never did. My parents have been very, very broad minded. They encouraged a lot of experimentation, but I had this feeling in myself that it would be terrible if I experiment and fail. So eventually, when I came out of school and when I moved out in the world, I realized that, oh my God, if I don't experiment, I'm not going to be able to create a space for myself. So instead of getting lost in the crowd, experiment and even if you fail, you still notice for that failure. And there are some hilarious stories that have happened as well on this experimentation business, yeah, you're right. That is what has made me a confident person now. Yeah, I also think that, you know, there is a sort of comfort. I wrote a LinkedIn post sometime back where I said, wobbling is your superpower. You know, if you really think about it, what that is is when you start learning to cycle and it was really drawn from that experience of mine. I've always been, you know, one of the distinctions I have is I'm equally, equally terrible at any sport. Just really singularly. Amazing talent I have. I think I should sort of challenge you to a match or something because it would be hard to find somebody worse than me. Gosh. Absolutely. In everything else, I seem to have no difficulty trying out. And what happens is, you know, there's an initial phase when you're learning something, is that you wobble. You know, it's like that you're learning how to cycle and you wobble. In that stage, you know, somebody who provides the psychological safety is like those training wheels which are there. At some stage you can take them off, but in that initial stage when you are wobbling, you know that you'll never fall because you have the safety of that.  I have had incredibly supportive managers. Most of them have been really wonderful. And there have been a couple who have been on the other end of the fence. Also, I must confess that, but most of them. And I think that's really so precious. How does one build that in others? You know, if you really try to do that with, let's say, somebody who's making a lot of mistakes, what should you as a manager do to build that psychological safety? Yeah, psychological safety is not something that can be built overnight. It requires a lot of investment and it is something that has to be used and exercised with caution.  I'm heading for failure. Then I am designed for disaster. In order to build psychological safety and to ensure that disasters don't happen, I think I need to play the role of a facilitator or a coach. I need to first show them what the desired outcome is. I need to be very clear and outline what are the quality criteria of the desired outcome. I need to tell them very clearly what are the resources that are available, what's the direction you have to go to find those resources. And I also need to tell them what are mandatory. Mandatory in the sense these are non-compromisable things. When I define these rules, which we call as boundary conditions, and then tell them that within this definition, you have all these equipment with you. You have these boundaries. Within this definition, arrive at the desired outcome in the best possible way. And there, if you fail, you have a problem with any of these boundaries. I'm around to help. So it all starts with enabling and equipping them with all the right information and also with the safety net of saying that if you're stuck somewhere, I'm there. Now, I actually compare this with parenting. Very simply put, when a child is an infant, a toddler crawling around, the boundaries are probably just that room and under the watchful eyes of the mother or the father. As a child learns to understand consequences of banging against something, getting hurt and how to deal with it, the parent moves around, lets the child explore within the house, just keeps an ear on what's happening. That's it. As a child learns more and understands consequences, the parent lets the child what at some point the child is out on his or her own making decisions. I think it's very similar how you build that psychological safety in your team where you equip them, tell them that these are your conditions and conditions are not giving them boundaries of expenditure up to this much amount you can do, rest of it come to me. The boundaries are actually for decision making. It's not only about saying that this is a budget up to which you can approve beyond that, come to the manager. It's about how are you making those decisions within that budget. That is what builds psychological safety because you're actually allowing them to make decisions. You're allowing them to taste the consequences but within a space which is still safe because you're there as a safety net to jump in when they are falling. I have this another very interesting analogy which I created and I was imagining and like I said, my brain is always making stories. For me, if the manager is like a seat belt, snugly fitting and allowing me to move, allowing me to stretch my hand, reach out to the rear seats, move a little here and there, I'm comfortable with that manager because I know that the seat belt is here for safety if I'm heading for a crash, the seat belt is going to protect me. But if my manager is like a leash around the neck, the entire control of my movement is in my manager's hands and that gives psychological safety. Although I'm moving around, I'm moving around with the leash actually pulling me or controlling my movements whereas a seat belt doesn't pull or control my movements unless I'm in danger. So I think enabling, equipping, defining what is the outcome and letting people know that I'm there when you fail is how managers need to build psychological safety. I've tried that with my teams and just now there's a party going on in my house with me talking to you Avijit and my entire team is here. I can hear everybody laughing at the back. That's psychological safety. That's psychological safety for you. They know that I'm talking to a celebrity and there's a party out there. One of the things that struck me when you were talking about this is psychological safety has a precondition which is you need to be able to have a certain degree of skill before somebody can just expand the boundary so to say. So I love that analogy when you talked about the kid having, initially you are in the crash or in the cradle and then you sort of become a little more skillful, you can navigate around the room or the house and then there comes a point of time you can sort of go up. And I think with each threshold that you cross, each transition I think it makes it possible for us to build our own confidence and comfort level with our own selves and also you transfer that comfort to your relationships. So I think that little basic level of skill is an important starting point because without that you just let the person lose it's going to be a disaster.  Dogs laughing, jokes you see as a smiling dog you should go to my Instagram page but when you look at that what happens is when these dogs are brought into that space they can open the leash and they are free to run around they interact with other dogs and all that but when you are walking outside in the same complex you can be taken on that leash so the dog may be fine but there are others who are afraid and so you build in this kind of an entire sort of environment around you I am always intrigued when you think about design thinkers do you need to be very creative to be a design thinker or just a new one can become Not at all because a design thinker designs the ultimate product or service and that's the beauty about design thinking a design thinker needs to understand empathy that's all, practice empathy a design thinker has to start with saying I don't know, tell me more a creative person would say this is what I imagine it as and you are a doodler par excellence talking about creativity to you is like I don't know who I am talking to but a creative person would be his or her creative best when he is led to do what he or she feels right but a design thinker is not designing anything for himself or herself a design thinker is actually designing something for an end user which is not himself or herself so my creativity may not appeal to that end user when I am designing something a design thinker needs to only needs to understand what is the need of the end user look at the problem statement from the perspective of the end user and build a design so that that purpose is achieved so creativity is not required for a design thinker because design thinking is the way of thinking it's a mindset, it's a way of thinking it's a way of processing information so the designer team could have to bring in their aesthetic sense and putting the appropriate pieces and making it look good but from a utility perspective a design thinker needs to understand what the user needs does not or rather should not come up with a solution of his or her own however creative it might be draw a lot of essence from what the user needs and then design something which serves that purpose ultimately the solution that the design thinker creates would appear very creative but if you ask the end user who was part of the entire empathy exercise would say that these were exactly my ideas and it's there in the design so I love this product or service so it's taking insights from the user and building a design around those insights so I think more than creativity it's empathy for me one of the best summaries of the process of designing is what Steve Jobs said that design is not the way it looks but is the way that it works so eventually when you have a deep sense of empathy with the user you're able to design something which really works for the end user so when you think about building empathy what are your tips to our listeners how do you build empathy how do you become more empathetic I just want to first clarify what empathy really means in the context of design thinking empathy is simply put is looking at the problem statement from the shoes of not just the end user but all the stakeholders so in design thinking when we carry out an empathy-mapped conversation we identify those different personas and for each persona how does that persona actually look at the problem statement what is it that they think about it what is it that they see what is it that they hear and what is it that they feel so we actually plot by having conversations with our absolutely non-judgmental so capture as they say and not get judgmental about what they're saying is right or wrong because they are saying it from their perspective so it requires some amount of practice to stop thinking tell your brain don't make those stories just capture what the person is saying because it is that person's point of view at the end of the empathy conversation when you write a point of view statement of that persona it might be for all you know way too different from your point of view which simply brings to light the fact that after you've had an empathy conversation with the end user your understanding of the problem statement is now different which means had you designed something upfront with your own assumptions you know the answer I would be giving something to the end user which is not useful for them at all but when I do an empathy conversation I'm looking at the problem statement from their point of view so the point of view statement says if I were able to do this and then when I create something around it I'm actually giving them what they wanted to see so if you look at any of when I reflect back on my HR career which has been a pretty long one those policies, frameworks that have outlived me I probably have used design thinking there where I put myself in the shoes of an end user and employee management whoever and I came up with them wherever I jumped into quick solutioning those were not the successful ones so being non-judgmental listener not jumping into solutioning having those conversations where you're drawing insights from the user I think these are very critical for having empathy conversations it's and it requires a lot of control because as humans and humans we are the intelligent race the species so when somebody comes to us saying I have a problem statement we roll up our sleeves and he said yes let me solve it for you it comes to us naturally so I think that has to be restrained a lot you have to stop solving the problem because the moment you start solving the problem you're not looking at it from their perspective so stop getting into a solution mode become a non-judgmental listener start with I don't know tell me more and draw those insights that's how an empathy conversation happens especially in design thank you very much Harini you know the way I would just like to summarize our conversation today is you know in storytelling one of the pieces that people talk about in terms of a storytelling skill it is that in storytelling one of the principles is that how do you sort of get over this whole disbelief you know you have to suspend disbelief so if you're telling me a story about something that has happened in your life as long as I keep thinking oh that may be true for you but won't be true for me etc it's all of that as long as the storyteller is talking to the listener you can never really tell a great story so the phenomenal storytellers at least all the ones that I have grown up reading and admiring they're all the people where at some point of time you forget that you are reading a story and that this is happening you have moved and stood side by side with that storyteller and you're looking at the thing in exactly the same way yeah so I think the ability to stand shoulder to shoulder rather than you know looking at that person and sort of doing something is just the most perfect way and all the people who I have so deeply admired and learned from are all the people who say that you know look at it like this then in which case you are not designing something because you like it, you are designing something which maybe the other person wants so I think that's what it is yeah and then business storytelling I've also noticed that you know the best way to get anything across is when your listeners, decision makers start imagining themselves as characters in your story they are part of the story decisions come out in a most productive and most non-controversial manner and there's a flip side to it that's something which amused me as well so when you're doing storytelling and suddenly you decide to kill a character and by the time if somebody has already identified himself with that character it becomes dangerous that's not good yeah because and which is why you know think about it when you watch a movie that really moves you you are experiencing all those emotions which this character is experiencing you know you are afraid that this person is going to get hurt you are afraid and you say oh my god what a silly thing to do and you know you are also crying and you are sort of doing that I think that's a sign of very powerful storytelling and I'm always fascinated by people who are able to do that a lot of people tell stories very few get it into you know stand with you there was one Lincoln Coast of mind where I said telling stories is different from storytelling use storytelling as a tool as a method to get a message across but telling stories could be dangerous great point thank you, thank you so very much and you know I just really think that our conversation could have just gone on and on because we share a number of different common points of interest and I must tell our listeners that you know it was just the other day that Harini was on the other side of the mic and you know asking me questions for a podcast that she did which I so totally enjoyed and if you ever get a chance that you know maybe Harini when people if you are there up to it you put a link to that we she's just as good in asking questions as and answering them so what a rare skill to have and thank you so much for joining yesterday and thank you for all the tips that you shared about psychological safety such an important element of well-being and I hope people will take away a lot of ideas from you, thank you so much


Welcome to Access to Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, giving everybody a welcome to another edition of the access to Trader.com nightly wrap up show. Hope everybody is doing well. I'm very relaxed. I traded half a day today. I went to Longbrand, New Jersey for you guys in Tri-State area, had a great time in the shore, got some swimming in some beach. It was like, it was a fish basically that needed water and I finally got my water and I was the fish. Really aggressive day. Yesterday we talked about how, you know, in my opinion, I wasn't expecting yesterday's rally. It just kind of, for me, it just came out of nowhere. I just again, I didn't believe that there was going to be that much aggression that they could take out three, four days worth of supply. And I joked around last night on Twitter that I said I'm narrowing down my watch list for today to about 837 stocks. And if you traded today, and I traded to about lunchtime today, if you traded today, you literally, I think I literally traded 800 of them or at least five within the first 45 minutes. Okay, that's how aggressive the market was. But again, we had a very, very specific game plan today. I put a lot of beta names on the pivot feed. Okay, which they never got there. But the most amazing part was we actually had a secondary plan. And I was looking at names that didn't quite participate in yesterday's rally making those really, really aggressive moves. I was looking at the names that were the second tier moves, right? The stocks that were coming out of the channels, whether they took out a high in recent weeks and they were just kind of consolidating, or they had a measure potential run. And every single stock that I traded today, DraftKings, Roku, Space, beyond, what else did I freaking trade today? Oh, Facebook. I traded Facebook also. I had a 70 cent loss. That's the only loss I had today in Facebook. But every single pivot that we had today that really, what really had aggressively had a common denominator had really, really aggressive call buying, you know, short term expiration, weekly call buyers coming in. And those stocks really, really exploded. And what I like about the action today was we identified where the value was. We weren't looking at Amazon gapping up 50 points. We weren't looking at Tesla, you know, gapping up another 50 points. We were concentrating on the names that I think weren't as sexy as those names, but they weren't names that were in the FOMO crowd, okay, that they were trying to play catch up. They were names that were former runners. They had the option flow aggressive near term expiration. And usually when option flow near term meets daily confirmation or sneaky channel that I like to call confirmation, usually good things are going to happen. And with this type of environment, again, it doesn't take a lot to get momentum. It really doesn't. All it starts taking some out of the money calls, a channel gets confirmed, the fuse is lit and you get really, really aggressive things. And the most amazing part is, you know, again, people always get random questions like, damn, what do you think the market's going to be three weeks from now? You know, again, I'm in the position right now that I'm really at peace with myself that I don't need to make predictions. I don't have to know. Okay, I'm literally taking this tape day by day. That's all I'm doing. And I've been saying this now since the start of COVID. Again, I'm not smart enough to predict or have a crystal ball to try to figure out where this market's going to be in June 2026. I don't know. Nobody knows. Okay, we're literally one headline away, whether it's good or bad and being next level of sentiment. So again, the idea that somebody can turn around and really have conviction of what you think is going to happen next is silly, right? It's silly. It just doesn't, it doesn't pay to guess. Okay, we can have an idea, right? The market is still very, very strong. You could turn around and say tomorrow, well, you know, the NASA composite was up 260 points yesterday. It was down 80 points today. It was an inside day. The market's strong. We're going to go higher. At least that's an educated opinion. Again, the idea that you could turn around and say, this market is going, the queues are going to 270 tomorrow. Maybe they will, maybe they don't. We don't know that. But I think it's safer and more prudent just to take it day by day, just to take it literally trade by trade. And that's exactly what we did. Again, if you look at the scoreboard today, I'm not going to really paint a picture.  Dow Jones Industrial is up 150 points. It really didn't paint a picture. Again, what is staying kind of pat is kind of where this upward bias is, the upward trend. And I have to assume now just because where we are, unless we have some really aggressive, you know, really aggressive news come out, you know, some sort of negative news. So we're just going to kind of drift higher. You know, of course, we're going to have some polls along the way to the downside, but we're going to continue to drift higher. And, you know, the more things start getting back to normal, like for example, sports. I'm a big huge sports fan. The idea that we haven't had sports since March, for me at least, and I can speak for a lot of people watching this broadcast, it's a big deal to us. So the idea that, you know, baseball is starting on Thursday. The NBA is starting next week. Hopefully the NFL starts on time. This is a big deal to us. For me, this is what normal is. Again, I work from home. I trade from home. The idea that I'm stuck at home. Yeah, it kind of sucks, but I'm not really stuck at home anymore.  We went to the beach today.  So slowly but surely my life is getting back to normal. And the more normalcy that we're starting to get just in everyday life. And again, I'm just using sports as kind of, you know, kind of a side note. The more and more the market is going to start embracing COVID even more. Now, obviously, the next question is schools, right? Everybody has their opinion about schools.   But again, that's just, that's definitely a conversation that's not here nor there. I respect everybody's decision. If you want to send your kids to school, that's so great. If you want to keep your kids from home, that's great as well. But again, the market will kind of take everything intact as we get there. So tomorrow, you know, you know, I want to give the bulls the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, I believe Tesla reports tomorrow. Obviously, all eyes on Tesla stock closed. Those are actually a pretty good pivot. I didn't put this on the Twitter feed for all you guys in the live webinar. That was a really good pivot at 1602 that we talked about right before we left. So hopefully, I didn't speak to anybody yet in the webinar, but hopefully you guys took advantage of that. But again, all eyes on Tesla. I mean, what are you going to say? The stock has, you know, gone from 350 from January February from March. Okay, it's gone from $350 to 1900. Your guess is as good as mine. What's going to happen tomorrow into earnings. But again, this is again, this is incredible, incredible stuff. I didn't trade Tesla today. There was no reason to trade Tesla today. The value was in other places, but now we're slowly, we're surely getting into the meat and potatoes of earnings season, especially into beta high flying beta names. So we'll definitely get some more clarity going into August. So let's talk about it, right? Obviously, again, I want to give the bulls the benefit of the doubt. Rotation is definitely the name of the game. I'm trading more and more names that have nothing to do with beta. Okay, like I traded DraftKings today. I had a pretty decent scalp there. I had a really good trade in space and there were a couple of really good beta names. Roku exploded. And again, slowly, but surely Roku is starting to remind me of where Netflix was. I don't want to compare Roku to Tesla. Okay, but Roku is starting to remind me of where Netflix was two, three years ago. We're getting a rare breed and there was only one or two stocks except for, excuse me, one name except for Netflix. And that was Tesla, the combination of speed and power, which basically means the aggressive nation, nature of liquidity with the average to range. That's where Roku is. And Roku is becoming a phenomenal trader, especially when there is aggressive option order flow and usually good things are going to happen. So let's talk about today's pivots. Very, very aggressive session. Okay, incredibly aggressive session here. So Microsoft, I was watching, never got to this 215 level. It got upgraded today. I started putting the names on the list that I felt that could get to 52 week highs, but it never did. Microsoft got upgraded, never did, never came close to the 215 area. I was watching Facebook. I actually took Facebook on a dip and I wound up losing about 70 cents on the dip when everything got pulled.  So that was my only loss of the day, which was good because the rest of the day was really, really aggressive. Zoom never got to this 273 level, but this is where the day really started getting aggressive for me. I got along Roku. Roku exploded, man. We'll talk about, again, order flow, man. They were coming for, so here is the pivot here, this 50, here, here's the pivot here, this whole 54 area, right? The stock went to 159, just an absolute explosion. They were coming for the 160, 165, and the 170 weekly calls. When you get that money, excuse me, when you get that flow with a confirmation channel, usually aggressive things are going to happen. Let's see, Netflix never got to the 505 area. It traded 508 pre-market and then opened well below that 505 area. Huya was pretty good also. They were also coming, again, another example of order flow. They were coming for the 27 weeklies. Repeat call buyers coming in on the repeat. So 2550 needs to build. Huya had a nice little move here. So here is Huya, got above the 2550, right? 2550 and went to almost 2650, so a dollar move there. Obviously everything got pulled. This was definitely the move of the day. 131, I said it could get to 135. This was a phenomenal trade. What was great about Beyond, we watched it. I was watching this thing for five days for short. It kept on talking about, it held this level several times, one, two, three, four times. So as soon as it held all it now, I was starting to look back to the upside, and this 131 level was the key. And you can see here at 135, 136 was supplied. This is a really, really great move. 131 needs to build. Put up a five dollar move, really good move there. WHKS never came close. Actually, excuse me, went to 1710, never got to the 1720. Apple never got to the 39750. And here was space, really good trade on space. So I get long 24, 2481, 2482. Space had really, really aggressive water flow. And this is the highest close in space in this whole channel. If you watched the water flow today on space, you saw the 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 weekly calls. I still want to watch it for tomorrow. Trade is as high as 2632. Really, really great move. Congratulations for all you guys who caught that as well. Again, beautiful move there. Even Boeing gave a trade. 8120, 8150 needs to build. Not a big trade, but again, it definitely gave a trade here. So here is the 8120, right? 8120 went to 8265. And again, then it got pulled and then it kind of woke back up. But again, not every single trade needs to be $12. We want those trades, but unfortunately we don't get those trades every single time. So Boeing, nice move there. Space, really good move there. I mean, gorgeous move. Great, great move on Roku. So that was that. Monster, monster, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tesla just in case it woke up. ITCI is still like, this is the first close for all you guys who are swinging ITCI. This is the first close below that $22 level. ITCI, it didn't put in a big move yet, right? A close below 81, but this thing, you know, this thing has room. This thing maybe gets down to 2120s. Any close below 2120s, this thing is going to test this $20 level. So if you are trading, if you are in ITCI, you could get a good multiple day run. So that one is fine as well. Shell, I still like below this 21 area. Huiya New Highs, weekly call buyer, blah, blah, blah. And that's it. And that's it. I think that's it. And that's it. So again, I only traded until about lunchtime. Tomorrow, again, we'll get a good, we will get a good game plan for tomorrow's session. Please arrive at Morning Strategy at 9am Eastern Time. And with God's help, I'll see you all there. Take care guys. Have a great night. Congratulations for putting in the time to take control of your trading. You're one step closer to owning your future and achieving the success you desire. Want daily trade ideas directly from Dan? Straight off his personal watch list? Unlock our free PS60 Vault where you'll get nightly updates on pivot opportunities we're watching for the next day's session. Click the link in the description to get started today.


Hey everybody, how's it going? My name is Mike Preston and today I'm gonna walk you through just how easy it is to deploy Rubrik's cloud data management software into your AWS environment through the AWS Marketplace. So with that, let's just dive right in.  To do that, let's go back in time and take a look at legacy data management. If you look at the backup and recovery space, not much has changed in the last 20 to 30 years. You have large levels of complexity across multiple components from backup software to server infrastructure. We have infrastructure providing backup services, replication services, indexing, cataloging, archiving. When we look at digital transformation, there's really three main imperatives that come up in conversations with our customers. The ability to leverage cloud, the ability to automate, and the ability to secure this data no matter where it lives. Unfortunately, all this legacy technology acts as a blocker to these initiatives. It was built 20 years ago and centered around proprietary old school storage. As you migrate to the cloud, this architecture breaks down. So what we do is we take everything you see and converge it into a single software fabric that's built for cloud. It's easy to use, easy to scale, easy to automate, and secure by design. As a result, we help our customers save on costs with increased productivity and reduced downtime and native integrations with AWS for very efficient operations. So how do we do it? Well, number one, everything about Rubrik is centered around ease of use and simplicity at enterprise scale. You can get started in under 20 minutes.  Set up your policies and leave it to Rubrik to do the rest. We also provide instant recoverability through an easy search interface. This allows you to rapidly locate specific items you'd like to recover and to restore within minutes for near zero recovery times. Second, we're built for the cloud. In fact, our very first version of the product was natively integrated with AWS for hybrid cloud protection. We've built a ton of innovations in the cloud with archival, instantiation, and protection. And we've built in automation into every aspect of our solution. Not only can you automate the SLA policy creation, we have robust APIs and SDKs that allow you to integrate Rubrik into your other tools and workflows. Lastly, everything on Rubrik is encrypted and secure. With Rubrik, once data is written, it can never be changed. This makes the data secure and immutable to ransomware attacks. So speaking about cloud, our customers use Rubrik to fast track cloud usage and to facilitate their cloud journey at their own pace. We have three ways we provide this. The first is cloud out. We typically see our customers utilizing Rubrik's feature called cloud out to apply a cloud first strategy in terms of long term data retention. They send and store data cost effectively in the cloud with the ability to search data on premises. The second is cloud on. Once that data is in the cloud, customers can utilize that to instantiate a cloud environment through the automated conversion of VMDKs into AMIs. And lastly, once you're up and running in AWS, we provide native protection as a service for AWS. For hybrid cloud enterprises, Rubrik abstracts away the complexity of managing data protection for on-prem and cloud environments through setup ease, the use of only one console, and a high performance system for backup and recovery operations. We've designed our solutions so that data is owned and always under your control. So speaking of cloud native protection, this is provided by a SaaS offering from us called Rubrik Polaris. No additional infrastructure is needed. Customers simply sign up for a Polaris account, add their AWS accounts, and they can begin orchestrating and replicating snapshots of their EC2 and RBS instances. So if Polaris is SaaS, why do we even need to deploy a cloud cluster in AWS? Well, for native EC2 and RBS protection, you don't. However, there's many reasons we see our customers choose to deploy and run Rubrik software directly from within their AWS environments. First, it supports native backups for those databases that you may be running within AWS like SQL, Oracle, or SAP HANA. Secondly, cloud cluster enables backups of native cloud NAS services such as EFS. And if you're running VMC on AWS, then cloud cluster is the recommended best practice to protect those VMs. Cloud cluster can also act as a replication target for another Rubrik cluster that may be located elsewhere. Also, cloud cluster together with the Rubrik backup service can enable a more granular level of backup of your EC2 instances, say only a subset of files need to be processed. And finally, cloud cluster can act as another disaster recovery point located within AWS for your organization. So with that, let's jump into a demo of how to actually deploy a Rubrik cloud cluster. All right, so here we are on the AWS marketplace. So let's just go ahead and perform a quick search for Rubrik. As we can see, we have a couple of options. One being our bring your own license model if you already have entitlements to Rubrik. As well, we have the option to purchase a completely new Rubrik cluster. I already have entitlements. So I'm going to go ahead and choose this bring your own license option. So we get a brief overview here of what the Rubrik cloud cluster is, what it can do for you, and things like customer reviews. Let's go ahead and keep the ball rolling and I'll click continue to subscribe. After taking a look at the terms and conditions, we can kick off the deployment process by selecting continue to configuration. Okay, so now we need to make a couple of decisions. First, there's only one delivery method. So we're good with the AMI deployment selected. Then we need to select what version of Rubrik CDM we want. As you can select anywhere from the 5.2.2 version right up to the latest release. I want all those new bells and whistles. So I'll select the latest 5.3.1 release listed here. We then need to specify what region we want this cluster deployed into. Let's go ahead and leave this at US East 1 and we'll click continue to launch. Now we get a few more options here. We could launch one node directly from the marketplace website here. And this is great for doing things like scaling up existing cloud clusters when the time comes. But for our initial deployment, we're going to need a minimum of four nodes. So in this case, let me just select to launch through EC2 as I know I can specify the number of desired nodes during that config. So on the EC2 launch config here, the first thing we need to do is specify our instance type. Currently Rubrik supports the M5x large, which we refer to as standard, and the M5 for X large, which we refer to as a dense configuration. For reference, our standard config, the M5 XL supports between two to 24 raw terabyte clusters, whereas the dense config, the M5 for XL supports 24 to 96 terabytes of raw capacity. In this case, I'll just leave it at the M5x large and move on. Now since this is our initial cloud cluster deployment, we'll want to get our cluster up to the minimum of four nodes. So let's first change the number of instances to four. And then we can go ahead and select our desired VPC, and it's associated subnet that we want to deploy into. Everything else here, we can simply just leave at the default configuration for the time being. So as far as storage goes, there's a number of requirements based upon the different types of deployments that we have. Now this is all covered within the user guide, but let me dive in quickly here. The number of data disks that are needed and their associated size will really be determined by the raw capacity that's being allocated for the cloud cluster. If standard nodes are being deployed using the M5x large instance type, the capacity per node can be between 1.5 terabytes and 6 terabytes. If we're using dense nodes, then the capacity per node can be between 6 and 24 terabytes. A minimum of three disks per node are required, with a maximum of up to six disks. The individual capacities can be 512 gigabytes, 1 terabyte, 2 terabytes, or 4 terabytes. For all cluster configurations, the ST1 disk type is used. Except when we're going with the dense node deployments with 24 terabytes of disks, those nodes can use either the ST1 disks or the SC1 volume type. It's also recommended to enable encryption for both the data disk and the cloud cluster root disk in order to ensure that encryption at rest is applied holistically. Today we are deploying the dense configuration, so let's just add a few disks here. Let's say three 1 terabyte disks, and I'll go ahead and I'll set these to be throughput optimized. Now we'll go ahead and we'll select to have these disks removed upon termination as well. That way, if we ever do get rid of this Rubik cloud cluster, we won't have those EBS volumes laying around. And we'll specify what KMS key that we want to utilize for our AWS native encryption. Next, if we wanted to tag these instances so they adhere to any AWS tagging policies that we may have established, we can do so. I'm okay here, so I'll just move on. Now we need to either create or use an existing security group. I already have one created here that I know will work. So I'll just go ahead and select that. And then finally, we do a quick review and select launch. Lastly, we select our key pair here that we can use in order to gain SSH access into our newly deployed Rubik nodes. And we'll simply select to launch our instances. So through the magic of video, you can see that we're all up and running with our newly deployed for Rubik instances. The next step, which I've already done in this case, is to bootstrap the cluster. This involves establishing a connection into one of the deployed nodes and running the cluster bootstrap command. There, you'll simply provide things like the default administrator password, DNS and NTP settings, as well as the IP information for the four nodes you wish to have participating in that cluster. Rubik will then go through a process to get that initial cluster up and running, ensuring the services on each node are running and that communication between the nodes is established. Since this is already done, we can go ahead and connect to our cluster. This is done by opening up a browser window to any one of the node's IP addresses. So I'll grab one here and let's connect. All right, we'll open up a new tab here, accept the certificate, and then we can simply log in as admin. And we'll use that default administrator password that we set during that bootstrap process. Once we're in, we simply need to accept the EULA. And then we need to ensure that our cluster is registered. This is as easy as entering in our Rubik support credentials and clicking register. And there we have it, Rubik software running within AWS, fully registered and ready to go. Thanks for watching and remember, don't back up, go forward.