Ladies and gentlemen, moving forward before we do that, I'd like to request all of you once again to not forget to tweet to us using the hashtag techmunch and give us your key highlights from the session so far. And as we are moving forward to our next keynote session for the day, which will be discussing and talking upon driving true partnerships between marketers and technologists for business growth by Mr. David Kagnoski. Now David is responsible for the overall technology agenda at WaveMaker, including the technology investments by the agency and leading the WaveMaker Technology Consulting Unit. He has also held positions at Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse Coopers, spanning a broad range of consulting services, but always with the focus on leveraging technology to deliver value and manage risk. So ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together, even the virtual ones for Mr. David Kagnoski, Global Chief Technology Officer WaveMaker. Very warm welcome to you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm going to share my slides and I guess I will say first and foremost thank you for inviting me and for having me at this event. It's very exciting to me on a personal level. I'm a big fan of India and I love coming to India and I wish I was there with you in person. In fact, my very last trip on an airplane was February 28th, 2020, coming back from a week in Mumbai. So hopefully my first trip internationally will be back to visit your lovely country. I also want to note that I know that on an individual basis, as a country, I hope everyone's in good health and continues to battle this terrible pandemic and hopefully we'll all be on the other side of it very soon. So yes, let's talk about a technology and the technology landscape and hopefully my slides are visible. Yes, David. Wonderful. I think we've heard it, we've heard it many, many times. In fact, I'm really actually quite pleased that I'm following Rahul's presentation or speech because he talked about the complexity of technology, the technology ecosystem that is in front of us. You know, how we identify customers, how we target consumers is changing. What's happening in the browser, what's happening in the app world, it's transformational. We're in the midst of that transformation right now. We talk about the last milers like Instacart or NookBasket. They're changing the way that delivery is done and even how consumers are looking for product. I just read the other day that Instacart is expecting a $1 billion business in 2021 just out of their retail media side, meaning showing advertisements to consumers as they search their application. So it's really just an amazing thing that's happening. And of course, on the tech front alone, how many of you have DMPs, may have invested in a DMP and are now probably thinking about a CDP and are thinking about artificial intelligence and are thinking about automation. Needless to say, marketers are not bored with everything that is happening right now. And that's really what Rahul had talked about quite extensively and really brought it to life from his perspective. So let me tell you a little bit about how some of these things probably come together from a consumer perspective. As I was inspired in a conversation with one of my children the other day, my daughter Naomi, who's 16 years old, and we talked about how the ecosystem in which she operates and the physical, the virtual, the social, how they all come together in her world and all of that is powered by technology. We know it's powered by technology, but then the question is going to be, well, how do we take advantage of this? And I definitely will hit on those points as we get through this conversation. Imagine Naomi and her friends going to an amazing mall and as they enter the mall in her social feed, because the mall is geofenced, she receives a notification and an invitation to download the augmented reality app that one of her brands has created. And of course, she takes the opportunity, she downloads this and as she is walking through the mall, this AR app, this augmented reality application actually creates a world in which it guides her towards a store where her brand, the brand's merchandise is sold. Perhaps prodding her along the way, perhaps games, perhaps even offering for her try on in a virtual way, try on some of their product or somehow experience their product in that virtual world, not just on her own but with her companions with her friends in a social way. As she arrives at the store, Naomi of course receives a coupon as a reward for actually arriving at that store and maybe even an offer to increase the value of that coupon simply by using a particular hashtag. This AR has brought her to the store and it's done so not just because they're giving her some generic content, but because they're able to provide content that is meaningful and interesting to Naomi because they have some ethically collected privacy compliant data, first party data about her, about who she is as an individual, as a human being, not just demographic information. And she gets to the store, she tries on the outfits, she's in the dressing rooms, they're taking pictures together, they're posting them on social media and of course she ends up making a purchase using the coupon. But not only is she making a purchase, but one of her friends who's not in the store sees the social posts, they also make a purchase and now we're able to share that experience together. And how cool is something like that? I think it's really cool in fact because it is a human level interaction. It is not technology driving the human, it's the human leveraging technology in a very natural way, in a way that feels natural to everybody who is engaged. And by the way, this isn't fantasy of course we all know, this is all real, all of the stuff can happen today, it's just a question of creating those experiences. We see that we've got a number of different platforms at play, we've got augmented reality to guide her into that physical location to let her interact with content and to interact with the brand's products. We've got that rich set of first party data to help engage Naomi on that personal level. And because we use headless commerce, we can support that purchasing experience regardless of whether it's done in the store, in a physical location, online, on a social app, anywhere where that experience occurs. Maybe let's dig a little bit deeper into each one of these. So augmented reality is that intersection between the physical and the virtual world. It gives us the ability to see and interact in new ways, more than just with our eyes. And of course, this is different.  Augmented reality is more akin to adding yet another dimension to your physical world. It allows you to enhance your world through digital means and through your senses. You can do it visually, you can do it through audio, you can do it through haptic feedback, the different haptics that occur within the device, even smell. And the only one I don't think that we've seen tackled yet is taste, but I'm assuming that somebody's working on that right now. And it actually comes to life in something that I was able to experience earlier this year. I know that TikTok is not necessarily available for you in India, but earlier this year, they released a really interesting augmented reality filter that took advantage of some of my phone's capabilities. Essentially, it was a rising New Year's Eve ball for Switch from 2020 to 2021. And as that virtual ball would rise, it would explode upon reaching the end of the contact, a countdown. As the explosion happens, the virtual confetti falls all over the viewing area on people, on surfaces everywhere. But what makes it really interesting is that all of that confetti, and there's a lot of pieces of confetti, all of it is able to interact with that physical world. Meaning, if I would brush the confetti off my shoulder, it actually would fall off in a very natural way. If I would bend a little bit, that confetti would fall off just like it would be in a natural way. And in this case, it was all leveraging LiDAR, which is capability in an iPhone 12. Now, I imagine Naomi, in my example, in my little mall example, she would be using the same augmented reality capability to try on a piece of clothing when she's with her friends. Now, this isn't just putting a two-dimensional piece of clothing on top of a human being, but actually allowing her to wear it. And for the fabrics to move as she moves, for the fabrics to flow as she does, and for it to really become a very real experience about what that piece of clothing would look like on her, not just in a static way, but as she's active, as she interacts with it. That's possible today. And the fact of the matter is that augmented reality capability is coming into all mobile phones. And I'm going to venture to say that within five years, all of it's going to be available. We have to start planning for that today. In fact, while we don't have critical mass in mobile devices around the world with this capability, I don't think we can wait for critical mass. We've got to start getting ready for that, and which means starting the technology planning in order to get to the point where our capabilities are ready and can ready to interact with the consumer. We'll talk about a plan more than once today. Now, first-party data, hopefully you're hearing this word over and over and over again. It's becoming one of those critical topics in our industry. We know that data helps a brand understand the consumer and truly connect with them on a human level, not just in terms of what their demographics are, but actually to get to know the consumer in a holistic way in a 360-degree way based on who they are, based on where they are, purchase data, certainly some demographic data, and then really a fusion with any other data that's available, whether it's panel or syndicated data, because you see, I don't think we need to necessarily know everything. It isn't about hoovering up a tremendous collection of data, but it's about collecting enough and having enough that you can make smart inferences into the types of behavior and the types of experiences that the consumer will be receptive to. Of course, I want to keep saying this and keep emphasizing it. It's important that we do so in a privacy-compliant way, in a way that doesn't turn off consumers, but actually demonstrates to them the value of that data exchange for the experiences, for the content, and for the capabilities that they would like to be able to see. Of course, it all begins with starting to build that first-party data collection. Build it, build it, build it. If you don't have an initiative around that, it really has to be core and critical. Finally, it's this idea of headless commerce. As I mentioned, you want to be able to have a purchasing experience that is consistent across all of the different places in which a purchase can occur, as I said, in a physical store, virtually within a social network, and all of those have to be seamless and have to be integrated. Headless commerce is really this idea.  That way, you can provide the experience that is seamless in the place in which the consumer actually exists. You see, a traditional website, it can give you some content, and you can move some content around within the framing. However, you're still going to be limited to the parameters and to the templates that you have set up. In a headless world, you're truly optimizing to the platform in which the individual consumer is operating in. I think one of the best benefits of that is that you don't necessarily then have to conform to those existing templates, that you can really create an optimized experience for the consumer. That brings us back to then what I really love, which is technology, and how technology enables all of this stuff. You see, it's no longer, you can no longer be in a world in which we simply buy or acquire bits of technology. We've got to come up with a plan, a plan that is not only comprehensive, but a plan that is constantly evolving. Many, many years ago, I did some expert witness work for a lawsuit, which is why you see Legos on the screen in front of you. I did some expert witness work where a very large enterprise software company was being sued by a very unsatisfied customer. These were big, big companies. The lawsuit was something around $750 million, and a lot of money was on the line. Essentially, the customer was unhappy that the software company referred to their product as being out of the box. Instead, the software company ended up taking them on what they described as a long and unsuccessful implementation process. To defend the software company, we came up with a simple, but I think a fairly clever analogy, which is that software is like buying a box of Legos. You get the pieces, but you still have to put it together properly if you want to see that thing that's on the front of the box, whether it's a pirate ship or a castle, whatever it is that's on the front, you still have to put those pieces together, and configuration of software is that putting pieces together, and customizations when you start actually cutting those pieces and super gluing them together, and that's a very different thing. Out of the box doesn't mean ready. It means it's ready for you to do the hard work behind it, the planning and the execution behind how you put those pieces together. That's a very important thing to consider when it's out of the box. I don't think it's not enough. It's no longer appropriate to simply buy tech when the need arises or when a hot new thing appears. It may not be a very nice thing for me to say, or maybe it's a little bit critical, but I've seen a lot of decisions on technology purchases made by marketers based on what's hot, what's a trend, but also lacking a real understanding of the context within which that technology will sit. That comes from the perspective not just of the tech itself, but the integrations that are going to be needed, the business case, the long-term costs, even when they're told that that product that they're buying is out of the box. You've got to start considering what that tech that you're buying, what is it, and how does it sit within that broader context? How does it sit within the context of people, process, and the technology itself? You'll hear me say those three words, people process and technology a few more times. It was only recently that I saw a lot of DMP purchases, for example, occur without a plan. Unfortunately, it's unfortunate for me to say this, but a lot of money was wasted buying tech that ultimately did not fulfill the promise or certainly didn't return the investment. There was no ROI on that investment because the technology was purchased without that context. Of course, it's not uncommon for a project to not deliver when this sort of thing occurs. I actually saw a study recently by the Project Management Institute that said that 14% of IT projects fail. At first, I thought, well, that's not so bad. I thought the number would be higher, but then when you scratch away at it, you realize that that number only represents the total and complete failures. Of the projects that don't fail, you still have 31% that didn't meet their goals, 43% that exceeded their initial budget, and 49% that were late. These are IT projects, meaning these are projects by people who have been part of an industry that for 50, 60 years has been deploying technology. If you're a marketer, really, you've got some challenge ahead and you've got to be able to identify how are you going to avoid failure as much as possible, even though we know that it's just going to be a part of what you're going to do. What I propose and what I think is so simple and it's so obvious, but it's hard for me to believe that it's just not done university. That is to have a plan. When you consider your retirement, when you think about where you're going to go post retirement, you've got to think about, well, how much money am I going to need? Where am I going to live? How many weddings am I going to have to pay for? You've got to think about all these questions and as part of that, you create your understanding of your destination. That's your financial plan. Of course, that plan exists not just to be static but to change because as your situation changes, as your income goes up, maybe the income goes down, in each of those cases, you can then adjust your plan for that new situation. The same thing happens with technology. You've got to have a plan that considers the capabilities that you need to achieve and how you will achieve them from the perspective of people, process, and technology. So there we are. We know that we've got a complex world. We know that we have an opportunity to create a unique valuable experiences for consumers. We know that we need the right mix of technology, people, and process. So what tactics should you consider? I'd like to propose two different tactics for consideration and for implementation within your organizations. The first one, and by the way, they all seem so simple when you say it, but they don't happen often enough. That's why I bring them up. And the first one is to build relationships with tech partners. A long time ago, I was actually a consultant at PWC, as was mentioned in my introduction, and actually for about seven years, I only had one client, which is GE. General Electric was, at that point, absolutely at the top of the corporate world. It was a half a trillion-dollar company in so many different businesses. It was really just an amazing organization for me to work with. But what they realized at that time is that they had a real gap between how IT and finance executives communicated. And as a result, they asked me to write a course called IT for Finance, which not only did I write, but I got a chance to deliver to over 400 professionals, 400 of their finance executives. And we didn't cover, you know, this is a laptop, and this is a server, and this is a PBX. That wasn't the point of the class. The point of the class was to help finance executives understand their role in the success of the technology agenda, their role in the success of software development, in process architecture, in security, and in go live planning. It helped bridge a gap in the language spoken by IT and finance so that those CFOs could be more effective at partnering with IT to bring about success. And today, I think in our world, I see the same gap between the CMO and the CIO, where there's a gap in communications. And I would say in some ways, maybe the gap between the CIO and CMO is even larger than with the CFO, because those lines between digital, IT, tech, you know, all those lines are blurred, and everyone's a little bit in, you know, in those same worlds. But I really believe that the partnering with those internal IT technology professionals, those counterparts is absolutely critical. It's, these are productive partnerships. And I sometimes I see some resistance to them. And I think that the resistance typically comes from an experience where perhaps there's a perception that IT may not move as fast. But I think that's largely because IT is designed processes in order to manage risk in order to manage risk, but also enable delivery and enable delivery to be as fast as possible while you manage that risk. And I think that these partners, these internal partners have to be taken advantage of. Look, and I also think that you've got to take advantage of your external partners. I think your media agencies, for example, and of course I say this coming from a media agency, I think the media agencies sit at that crossroads of advertising, and they can be quite good partners. You've already established good relationships with them where you can, where it's possible, turn to those partners, those external partners for advice, for assistance and utilize them because they're already committed and should be committed to your long-term success. I think that those relationships will really help you evaluate, understand how to build your plan, how to change that plan as needed, and to make sure that you're looking over the horizon, not just in the world in front of you. The second tactic that I would propose is developing a reference architecture, and let me explain what that means if the term is not familiar to you. We talked about, again, people, process, and technology. And what we did at WaveMaker is we developed a framework for making decisions around where are we from a tech perspective and where do we need to go. And that's what we call our reference architecture. But there's no magic in creating that. Everyone can have one, and everyone should have one because what this does, unlike a Lumascape, unlike a Lumascape, which does show you the complexity of the vendor world, of the technology world in front of you, a reference architecture identifies, it gives you the categories, the placeholders of what are the possible things, the stuff that you may need to have in order to be able to achieve your goals. And that then allows you to audit yourself to say, what do we have today? And again, not only what stuff do we have or capabilities we have, where are we making investments, how good are those capabilities, how good are those investments? It gives you a common language, a common language that can use across the entire organization for identifying what you have. But even more important than that, it allows you to evaluate that current state against a future state. So you can paint that picture of where am I today? Where do I need to be? And how am I going to get there? And how are you going to get there is just a series of projects. And you do that on a rolling basis. I would recommend constantly having a plan of projects that is probably 18 to 24 months in length, I think any more than that, then it becomes highly strategic directional, but probably unlikely to be realistic. But having that roadmap built on the basis of a reference architecture of a common language, a Rosetta Stone for the entire organization to use, allows you to have that communication in a very, very consistent way across your organization. So that brings us to the conclusion, which is we've talked about how complex of this world is. I think it's very exciting. I think it's exciting. As I talked to my daughter Naomi about this scenario, she agreed, this is the world she lives in and this is the world she wants to live in. My recommendation is make decisions rationally and with consultations, find your partners. I recommend you build a framework for decision making and that you always have a frame of reference. That's a very critical grounding that to have. And after you've finished all of that, after all of that is done, then you can worry about other things like how do we ethically use data and AI. But maybe that's a topic I can cover on my next keynote. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, David. It was really insightful the entire session. I do have a couple of questions for you. If you can please address that for our audience. Absolutely. So we have a question which says, has technology made marketing complex in any way? Would you say so? I would change the, I would not answer the question directly. I would say that it has enabled so much richness in marketing that we have to take advantage of. And so complexity comes is a good thing, right? The human body is complex. And as a result, we have this wonderful physical existence. And so as long as you manage that complexity, then I think it can go a long way. Brilliant. Next question here from the audiences. What would be your suggestion to marketers to become more tech savvy? Read. Read, read, read. You don't have to be an engineer to become tech savvy. What you have to be is aware of the possibilities. Earlier today on the panel discussion, the question was asked about what books would be recommended. So I did the same thing. I looked it over at my library right here and I said, well, good, gosh, which book would I recommend? I read one a few years ago. It's a little bit dated, but it's called the big nine. And it talks about the big nine tech companies and what's happening in the AI space and how they are, how they're really progressing artificial intelligence. I think you find those kinds of topics, read as much as you can, read every day and you can be educated. When I talked about that IT for finance concept in my talk, it's creating that dialogue and make sure you talk to your colleagues that are tech savvy in order to understand what do they care about and where do they focus their energy? Right. So it just reminds me of this quote by Mr. Goldsmith who was here at one of our events. He mentioned that you don't have to be a technologist. You have to understand how technology influences the world and people around you. So I'm guessing that's exactly what you are also pointing here. 100%. It's a brilliant comment. Thank you. Thank you so much, David. It was a wonderful session. Thank you for your time and sharing your insights here with us, with all of you as thank you, everyone. Have a good one. Thank you. Bye-bye.


From around the globe, it's theCUBE, presenting Cube on Cloud, brought to you by SiliconANGLE. Okay, we're now going to explore the vision of the future of cloud computing from the perspective of one of the leaders in the field. J.G. Chirapyarath is the Vice President of Azure Data AI and Edge at Microsoft. J.G., welcome to theCUBE on Cloud. Thanks so much for participating. Well, thank you, Dave, and it's a real pleasure to be here with you and just want to welcome the audience as well. Well, J.G., judging from your title, we have a lot of ground to cover and our audience is definitely interested in all the topics that are implied there, so let's get right into it. You know, we've said many times on theCUBE that the new innovation cocktail comprises machine intelligence or AI applied to troves of data with the scale of the cloud. It's no longer, you know, we're driven by Moore's law. It's really those three factors and those ingredients are going to power the next wave of value creation in the economy. So first, you know, do you buy into that premise? Yes, absolutely. We do buy into it. And I think, you know, one of the reasons why we put data analytics and AI together is because all of that really begins with the collection of data and managing it and governing it, unlocking analytics in it. And we tend to see things like AI, the value creation that comes from AI as being on that continuum of having started off with really things like analytics and proceeding to, you know, machine learning and the use of data in interesting ways. Yeah, so I'd like to get some more thoughts around data and how you see the future data and the role of cloud and maybe how Microsoft's strategy fits in there. I mean, your portfolio, you got SQL server, Azure SQL, you got ARC, which is kind of Azure everywhere for the people that aren't familiar with that. You got Synapse, which of course does all the integration and data warehouse and gets things ready for BI and consumption by the business and the whole data pipeline. And then a lot of other services, Azure Databricks, you got Cosmos in there, you got Blockchain, you got open source services like Postgres and MySQL. So lots of choices there. And I'm wondering, you know, how do you think about the future of cloud data platforms? It looks like your strategy is right tool for the right job, is that fair? It is fair, but it's also just to step back and look at it. It's fundamentally what we see in this market today is that customers, they seek really a comprehensive proposition. And when I say a comprehensive proposition, it is sometimes not just about saying that, hey, listen, we know you're a SQL server company. We absolutely trust that you have the best Azure SQL database in the cloud. But tell us more, we've got data that is sitting in Hadoop systems, we've got data that is sitting in Postgres in things like MongoDB, right? So that open source proposition today in data and data management and database management has become front and center. So our real sort of push there is when it comes to migration management modernization of data to present the broadest possible choice to our customers so we can meet them where they are. However, when it comes to analytics, one of the things they ask for is give us a lot more convergence. Use, it really isn't about having 50 different services. It's really about having that one comprehensive service that is converged. That's where things like Synapse fits in, where you can just land any kind of data in the lake and then use any computer engine on top of it to derive insights from it. So fundamentally, it is that flexibility that we really sort of focus on to meet our customers where they are and really not pushing our dogma and our beliefs on it, but to meet our customers according to the way they've deployed stuff like this. So that's great. I want to stick on this for a minute because when I have guests on like yourself they never want to talk about the competition but that's all we ever talk about and that's all your customers ever talk about because the counter to that right tool for the right job and that I would say is really kind of Amazon's approach is that you got the single unified data platform, the mega database that does it all and that's kind of Oracle's approach.  So you got the right tool with the right job approach but you've got an integration layer that allows you to have that converged database. I wonder if you could add color to that and confirm or deny what I just said. No, that's a very fair observation but I'd say there's a nuance in what I sort of described. When it comes to data management, when it comes to apps, we have to learn customers with the broadest choice. Even in that perspective, we also offer convergence. So case in point, when you think about Cosmos DB under that one sort of service, you get multiple engines, but with the same properties, global distribution, the five nines availability, it gives customers the ability to basically choose when they have to build that new cloud native app to adopt Cosmos DB and adopt it in a way that is and choose an engine that is most flexible to them. However, when it comes to say, writing a SQL server, for example, modernizing it, you want sometimes you just want to lift and shift it into things like IaaS. In other cases, you want to completely rewrite it. So you need to have the flexibility or choice there that is presented by a legacy of what sits on premises. When you move into things like analytics, we absolutely believe in convergence, right? So we don't believe that, look, you need to have a relational data warehouse that is separate from a Hadoop system that is separate from say a BI system that is just, you know, it's a bolt-on. For us, we love the proposition of really building things that are so integrated that once you land data, once you prep it inside the lake, you can use it for analytics, you can use it for BI, you can use it for machine learning. So I think, you know, our sort of differentiated approach speaks for itself there. Well, that's interesting because essentially, again, you're not saying it's an either or and you're seeing a lot of that in the marketplace. You've got some companies that say, no, it's the data lake and others say, no, no, put it in the data warehouse. And that causes confusion and complexity around the data pipeline. And I'd love to get your thoughts on this. A lot of customers struggle to get value out of data and specifically data product builders are frustrated and it takes them too long to go from, you know, this idea of, hey, I have an idea for a data service and it can drive monetization, but to get there, you got to go through this complex data lifecycle and pipeline and big people to add new data sources. And do you feel like we have to rethink the way that we approach data architecture? Look, I think we do in the cloud and I think what's happening today and I think the place where I see the most amount of rethink and the most amount of push from our customers to really rethink is in the area of analytics and AI. It's almost as if what worked in the past will not work going forward, right? So when you think about analytics in the enterprise today, you have relational systems, you have Purdue systems, you've got data mats, you've got data warehouses, you've got enterprise data warehouses, you know, those large honking databases that you use to close your books with, right? But when you start to modernize it, what people are saying is that we don't want to simply take all of that complexity that we've built over, say, you know, three, four decades and simply migrate it on mass exactly as they are into the cloud. What they really want is a completely different way of looking at things. And I think this is where services like Synapse completely provide a differentiated proposition to our customers. What we say there is land the data in any way you see shape or form inside the lake. Once you land it inside the lake, you can essentially use a Synapse Studio to prep it in the way that you like, use any compute engine of your choice and operate on this data in any way that you see fit. So case in point, if you want to hydrate a relational data warehouse, you can do so. If you want to do ad hoc analytics using something like Spark, you can do so. If you want to invoke Power BI on that data or BI on that data, you can do so. If you want to bring in a machine learning model on this prep data, you can do so. So inherently, so when customers buy into this proposition, what it solves for them and what it gives them is complete simplicity, right? One way to land the data, multiple ways to use it and it's all integrated. So should we think of Synapse as an abstraction layer that abstracts away the complexity of the underlying technology? Is that a fair way to think about it? Yeah, you can think of it that way. It abstracts away Dave a couple of things. It takes away the type of data, sort of the complexities related to the type of data. It takes away the complexity related to the size of data. It takes away the complexity related to creating pipelines around all these different types of data and fundamentally puts it in a place where it can be now consumed by any sort of entity inside the Azure proposition. And by that token, even data bricks, you can in fact use data bricks in sort of an integrated way with Azure Synapse. Right, well, so that leads me to this notion of, and I wonder if you buy into it. So my inference is that a data warehouse or a data lake could just be a node inside of a global data mesh and then that Synapse is sort of managing that technology on top. Do you buy into that global data mesh concept? We do and we actually do see our customers using Synapse and the value proposition that it brings together in that way. Now, it's not where they start. Oftentimes what a customer comes and says is, look, I've got an enterprise data warehouse. I want to migrate it or I have a Hadoop system. I want to migrate it. But from there, the evolution is absolutely interesting to see. I'll give you an example. One of the customers that we're very proud of is FedEx. And what FedEx is doing is it's completely reimagining its logistics system that basically the system that delivers what is it, the three million packages a day. And they're doing so in this COVID times with the view of basically delivering our COVID vaccines. One of the ways they're doing it is basically using Synapse. Synapse is essentially that analytic hub where they can get complete view into their logistic processes, where things are moving, understand things like delays, and really put all of that together in a way that they can essentially get our packages and these vaccines delivered as quickly as possible. Another example is one of my favorite. We see once customers buy into it, they essentially can do other things with it. So an example of this is really my favorite story is Peace Park's initiative. It is the premier white rhino conservancy in the world. They essentially are using data that is landed in Azure, images in particular, to basically use drones over the vast area that they patrol and use machine learning on this data to really figure out where is an issue and where there isn't an issue. So that this park with about 200 rangers can scramble surgically versus having to range across the vast area that they cover. So what you see here is the importance is really getting your data in order, landed consistently, whatever the kind of data it is, build the right pipelines, and then the possibilities of transformation are just endless. Yeah, that's very nice how you worked in some of the customer examples and I appreciate that. I wanna ask you though that some people might say that putting in that layer while it clearly adds simplification and is I think a great thing, that there begins over time to be a gap, if you will, between the ability of that layer to integrate all the primitives and all the peace parts and that you lose some of that fine grain control and it slows you down. What would you say to that? Look, I think that's what we excel at and that's what we completely sort of buy into and it's our job to basically provide that level of integration and that granularity in the way that, so it's an art, absolutely admit it's an art. There are areas where people crave simplicity and not a lot of sort of knobs and dials and things like that, but there are areas where customers want flexibility. Right, so I think just to give you an example of both of them, in landing the data, in consistency in building pipelines, they want simplicity, they don't want complexity, they don't want 50 different places to do this, there's one way to do it. When it comes to computing and reducing this data, analyzing this data, they want flexibility. This is one of the reasons why we say, hey listen, you want to use data breaks if you're buying into that proposition and you're absolutely happy with them, you can plug it into it. You want to use BI and essentially do a small data model, you can use BI. If you say that, look, I've landed in the lake, I really only want to use ML, bring in your ML models and party on. So that's where the flexibility comes in. So that's sort of the way we sort of think about it. Well, I like the strategy because, one of our guests, Jamak Degani, I think one of the foremost thinkers on this notion of the data mesh in her premise is that, that data builders, data product and service builders are frustrated because the big data system is generic to context. There's no context in there, but by having context in the big data architecture and system, you can get products to market much, much, much faster. So, and that seems to be your philosophy, but I'm going to jump ahead to my ecosystem question. You've mentioned data breaks a couple of times. There's another partner that you have which is Snowflake. They're kind of trying to build out their own data cloud, if you will, and global mesh. And on one hand, they're a partner, on the other hand, they're a competitor. How do you sort of balance and square that circle? Look, when I see Snowflake, I actually see a partner. You know, when we see, essentially, you know, we are, when you think about Azure, now this is where I sort of step back and look at Azure as a whole. And in Azure as a whole, companies like Snowflake are vital in our ecosystem, right? I mean, there are places we compete, but effectively, by helping them build the best Snowflake service on Azure, we essentially are able to differentiate and offer a differentiated value proposition compared to say a Google or an AWS. In fact, that's been our approach with data breaks as well, where they are effectively on multiple cloud and our opportunity with data breaks is to essentially integrate them in a way where we offer the best experience, the best integrations on Azure, partner. That's always been our focus. That's hard to argue with the strategy our data, with our data partner, ETR shows Microsoft is both pervasive and impressively having a lot of momentum spending velocity within the budget cycles. I want to come back to AI a little bit. It's obviously one of the fastest growing areas in our survey data. As I said, clearly Microsoft is a leader in this space. What's your vision of the future of machine intelligence and how Microsoft will participate in that opportunity? Yeah, so fundamentally, we've built on decades of research around essentially vision, speech and language. That's been the three core building blocks. And for a really focused period of time, we focused on essentially ensuring human parity. So if you ever wonder what the keys to the kingdom are, it's the more we've built in ensuring the research posture that we've taken there. What we've then done is essentially a couple of things. We focused on essentially looking at the spectrum that is AI, both from saying that, hey listen, it's got to work for data analysts who are looking to basically use machine learning techniques to developers who are essentially coding and building machine learning models from scratch. So that proposition manifests to us as really AI focused on all skill levels. The other core thing we've done is that we've also said, look, it'll only work as long as people trust their data and they can trust their AI models. So there's a tremendous body of work and research we do in things like responsible AI. So if you ask me where we sort of push on is fundamentally to make sure that we never lose sight of the fact that the spectrum of AI can sort of come together for any skill level and we keep that responsible AI proposition absolutely strong. Now against that canvas, Dave, I'll also tell you that as edge devices get way more capable, right? Where they can infer on the edge, say a camera or a mic or something like that, you will see us pushing a lot more of that capability onto the edge as well. But to me that's sort of a modality but the core really is all skill levels and that responsibility in AI. Yeah, so that brings me to this notion of I want to bring an edge and hybrid cloud, understand how you're thinking about hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, obviously one of your competitors, Amazon won't even say the word multi-cloud, you guys have a different approach there but what's the strategy with regard to hybrid? Do you see the cloud bringing Azure to the edge? Maybe you could talk about that and talk about how you're different from the competition. Yeah, I think in the edge, from an edge, I'll be the first one to say that the word edge itself is conflated, okay? But I will tell you just focusing on hybrid. This is one of the places where, I would say the 2020, if I were to look back from a COVID perspective in particular, it has been the most informative because we absolutely saw customers digitizing, moving to the cloud and we really saw hybrid in action. 2020 was the year that hybrid sort of really became real from a cloud computing perspective and an example of this is we understood it's not all or nothing. So sometimes customers want Azure consistency in their data centers. This is where things like Azure Stack comes in. Sometimes they basically come to us and say, we want the flexibility of adopting flexible pattern, platforms like say containers, orchestrate Kubernetes so that we can essentially deploy it wherever we want. And so when we designed things like Arc, it was built for that flexibility in mind. So here is the beauty of what something like Arc can do for you. If you have a Kubernetes endpoint anywhere, we can deploy an Azure service onto it. That is the promise, which means if for some reason the customer says that, hey, I've got this Kubernetes endpoint in AWS and I love Azure SQL, you will be able to run Azure SQL inside AWS. There's nothing that stops you from doing it. So inherently, remember our first principle is always to meet our customers where they are. So from that perspective, multi-cloud is here to stay. You know, we are never going to be the people that says, I'm sorry, we will never say the word multi-cloud, but it is a reality for our customers. So I wonder if we could close, thank you for that by looking back and then ahead. And I want to put forth maybe it's a criticism, but maybe not, maybe it's an art of Microsoft. But first, you know, you've got Microsoft on an incredible job of transitioning its business. Azure is omnipresent, as we said, our data shows that. So two-part question. First, Microsoft got there by investing in the cloud, really changing its mindset, I think, and leveraging its huge software estate and customer base to put Azure at the center of its strategy. And many have said, me included, that you got there by creating products that are good enough. You know, we do a one-dotto, it's not that great than a two-dotto, and maybe not the best, but acceptable for your customers. And that's allowed you to grow very rapidly, expand your market. How do you respond to that? Is that a fair comment? Are you more than good enough? I wonder if you could share your thoughts. Dave, you heard my feelings with that question. Don't hate me, JG. We're getting it out there, right? Well, first of all, thank you for asking me that. You know, I am absolutely the biggest cheerleader you'll find at Microsoft. I absolutely believe that, you know, I represent the work of almost 9,000 engineers, and we wake up every day worrying about our customer and worrying about the customer condition, and to absolutely make sure we deliver the best in the first attempt that we do. So when you take the plethora of products we delivered in Azure, be it Azure SQL, be it Azure Cosmos DB, Synapse, Azure Databricks, which we did in partnership with Databricks, Azure Machine Learning, and recently, when we sort of offered the world's first comprehensive data governance solution in Azure Purview, I would humbly submit to you that we are leading the way, and we are essentially showing how the future of data, AI, and the edge should work in the cloud. Yeah, I'd be disappointed if you had, if you capitulated in any way, JG. So thank you for that. And the kind of last question is looking forward, and how you're thinking about the future of cloud last decade, a lot about cloud migration, simplifying infrastructure, management and deployment, sassifying my enterprise, a lot of simplification and cost savings, and of course redeployment of resources toward digital transformation, other valuable activities. How do you think this coming decade will be defined? Will it be sort of more of the same, or is there something else out there? I think that the coming decade will be one where customers start to unlock outside's value out of this. You know, what happened in the last decade where people laid the foundation, and people essentially looked at the world and said, look, we've got to make the move. You know, they're largely hybrid, but we're going to start making steps to basically digitize and modernize our platforms. I would tell you that with the amount of data that people are moving to the cloud, just as an example, you're going to see use of analytics, AI, for business outcomes, explode. You're also going to see a huge sort of focus on things like governance. You know, people need to know where the data is, what the data catalog continues, how to govern it, how to trust this data, and given all of the privacy and compliance regulations out there, essentially, they're compliance posture. So I think the unlocking of outcomes versus simply, hey, I've saved money. Second, really putting this comprehensive sort of, you know, governance regime in place. And then finally, security and trust. It's going to be more paramount than ever before. Yeah, nobody's going to use the data if they don't trust it. I'm glad you brought up security. It's a topic that's number one on the CIO list. J.G., great conversation. Obviously, the strategy is working. And thanks so much for participating in Cuba on cloud. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. And I appreciate it. And thank you to everybody who's tuning in today. All right. And keep it right there. I'll be back with our next guest right after this short break.


Andrew Mokot-Mlangini's Biography Latest News Andrew Mokot-Mlangini was born on June 6, 1925 on a farm in the Bethlehem, Orange Free State, now Free State Province, District, as one of a twin, he has a sister. He grew up in Soweto, Johannesburg, Transvaal, now Goten. He was the ninth child in a family of 14. Although Mlangini started schooling at the age of 10, financial problems drove him to seek work at the age of 12 to assist his mother in maintaining the family, as his father had passed away. After school he worked as a caddy at the Johannesburg Golf Course. In 1942 his elder brother who was staying in Pimbley Soweto, assisted in paying his school fees. At that time he was a student at St. Peter's Secondary School, where he obtained his junior certificate in 1946. After 1946, owing to financial difficulties, he was unable to continue with his studies. As a result, he began working as a bus driver for Pudco, a bus company, where he was active in the strike for better working conditions and a living wage. In 1951 he joined the African National Congress Youth League, Ancel, and later in 1954 he joined the African National Congress, ANC. During the Congress of the People he was a branch delegate at Cliptown. Mlangini became a journalist on the newspaper New Age when Ruth First was editor. In 1961 he was among the first, along with nun Naidu, Raymond Maitlava, Job Kaby, and Patrick Mtham Vue, to be sent for military training outside the country to China. After an initial induction as a group, Mlangini and Naidu were taken to Shenyang, Mutin, to be taught radio technology and communication. Following a police raid on Lily's leaf farm at Rivaunia, almost all the Yom Konto we size we, MK, High Command were arrested on July 11, 1963. Although not in the High Command, Andrew Mlangini would be charged alongside the others with sabotage and conspiracy, for which the maximum penalty was debt by hanging. Patrick Mtham Vue was listed to give evidence for the state. Eight of the Rivaunia Trialists were sentenced to life imprisonment on June 12, 1964, including Andrew Mlangini who had not been in the leadership. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on Raven Island. Before the court passed judgment on him, Mlangini told the court that, though leaders of many countries throughout the world have tried to persuade the government to abandon its apartheid policy, and although resolutions have been passed in the United Nations against South Africa, this has met with no result. All that the government has done is to reply to the people's demands by putting their political leaders in jail, and breaking up families. At time of his sentencing Mlangini was married to Johanna Juni with whom he had 10 children. His wife died in 2001. He spent 27 years in prison on Raven Island. After his release in 1989 and South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Mlangini served as a member of a democratically elected parliament from 1994 to 2004 and in the National Assembly from 2009 until 2014, when he retired. In 1992, Mlangini was awarded the Isithwailand Wisi Barangqui, the highest honor from the ANC for those who have made an outstanding contribution to the liberation struggle. He received the Presidential Order for Meritorious Service, Class 1, Gold from former President Nelson Mandela in 1999. Andrew Mokit Mlangini who turned 95 on June 6, 2020, was admitted to one military hospital in Shwane on Tuesday after an abdominal complaint.


Oh, that's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, another video here for me. I know it's been a bit, I apologize. It's been very busy. I've gone back to film work and I've also still in the middle of my wedding season, but I actually did have a series that I blasted through. Not so much in terms of what normal binge watching is. I watched it probably over a week was the Sandman. Now, I was a little bit hesitant about this because just with Netflix's track record, but the thing that kept me going was the fact that Neil Gaiman was a part of it. And this is his baby. This is one of his major stories and he had some association with American Gods. And while I wasn't a big fan of the show, it went there with its like out there-ness and it did not hold back. So that's like a lot of what Neil's storytelling is. I do know the Sandman on part. I have read some of the comics, but I really got introduced to it when Audible did that, that audio story with James McAvoy and Tanner Edgerton and a bunch of different characters. And a lot of those stories from the first volume are in this one, particularly him being trapped in a prison for a hundred years and then having to regain his tools, his crafts from different means of the earth, including the devil and also a very, very crazy dude and a tiner. And then also getting to have some very interesting conversations, like one person being a guy who has been given kind of infinite life as a test to see whether he can, you know, handle every hundred years. And there's a very good episode with death and how that is just very noncited, very just matter of factly. And yeah, I'd actually have to say that this show did a really good job. The guy who plays Dream is dead on. He is exactly what I was imagining James McAvoy's voice to be as the Sandman. And even going into the comics, he looks pretty similar. Sure, his hair is a little bit of aged of, I don't know, something you'd find at an early 2000s, my chemical romance concert. But it still works. It still fits into the character and just how he comes across people, entities, everything is exactly who I thought dream to be. So it was really cool to see that come across on the screen and the stories. Neil Gaiman's story with the Sandman. It's not really a connective story. If anything, they actually kind of made that more so towards the end of the season, but a lot of it is based on the short stories that the first volume, at least from what I saw from the audible is based on. There's a lot of kind of like tiny little stories that have the infinitesimally small connection to them. At least the first four stories are kind of all connected to each other because they are all about him regaining freedom and having to rebuild his dream world by regaining his tools, his sand, his mask, and his ruby. And I have to say some of my favorite stories in this were portrayed incredibly well. The diner was great. Now, if there's only one thing I can maybe slightly complain about is seeing Professor Lupin be the crazy dude in this one. He's not as crazy as I kind of interpreted. He was a little bit, I don't know, subdued, I guess you'd say.   But that was the light complaint. And then now I know that a lot of people were really new gaming being welcome, blah, blah, blah. I didn't care. I thought that all the casting was really well done. I thought everything was great, except for one. I didn't understand why he changed John Constantine to Joanna. I just, I was looking for a reason. I was looking for some kind of explanation as to why like I was looking for that story, the one that does associate with him, with her and this former love interest.  But they didn't really change anything about it. They just kind of threw in a different story. And I felt that was a little bit presumptuous of him because John Constantine isn't his character as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong and I apologize if I am. But John's a John been John for a long time. So I, like I said, I didn't get that change. I thought that was just, you know, whatever, just trying to something different. But that's my only kind of casting complaint is just, it just didn't make any sense to me. But other than that, I really liked all of the casting from everyone else. I liked what's her name from Game of Thrones who played Lucifer. I'll admit it was different to see, because Martin Sheen does the audio book, but her just being as tall as she is. And then the fight with the words, the battle of metaphors and literal versions coming to life was really cool to see. I enjoyed that. Now though, the big thing that's been kind of a complaint with some people is that this is not non-Sanman friendly.  And that statement is kind of true. It is much more heavy handed towards fans, which, hey, you know what?  So I'm not going to complain about Sandman not really catering towards people who don't know the series. It's made for fans of the books in mind. And yeah, I'm not going to complain about that. For those of you who are like, yeah, I guess that kind of sucks, but it wasn't made for you. Gaiman has said that. Gaiman was so attached to this project. I'll say that I was kind of a bit worried when I saw that David S. Goyer was originally the show creator for it.  And that was years ago. That was when they were still talking about this becoming a movie. And then it turned into a television series. And in the end, I'd have to say that I think that the show did a lot better than I thought it was going to do. I was pleasantly surprised. I liked the Corinthian character, which now if I'm wrong, I don't remember him popping up in the first volume of the Audible series. Again, I have not read as much of the comics as I should, but I really actually liked what his character became and his association with the story at the end. I thought that was really cool. I did like how they used the vortex character as a much more impactful. It's already a pretty impactful story in terms of the realm between reality and dreams, but it was much more cohesive to the narrative just with how they kind of you know, tie it in the last four episodes. Yeah, I would say that Sandman is definitely made for fans in mind. It is a very cool interpretation of the stories. I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. And I actually am quite excited to see the second season. I do admit, like I said, it is not a cohesive story. You kind of watch a few things once, and then maybe watch a few little stories. And you could watch this thing out of order, almost. And you wouldn't be any more out of like, except for the last four episodes and maybe a little bit of the first two or three, you wouldn't really be out to lunch in terms of Sandman fans. So in the end, I'm going to give the Sandman A5 out of seven. I actually would almost give it a six as a fan of the story, but I'm not going to be that generous. It does have a little bit of faults here and there in terms of its pacing for the first few episodes. There are a few times where it gets a little slow, but otherwise I feel that it's still a really cool story. I think that you guys should give it a chance. And especially if you're audible readers or listeners get the first volume, I'm meaning to get the second one. I'm waiting for my free credit to appear. But yeah, anyways, guys, that's all for me. I hope you enjoyed the review. Sorry, again, for the complete absence for the last little while. But I hope you enjoyed it. In the end, yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed and I hope you guys are doing well. Did you guys watch the show yet? Have you seen it? Tell me what you thought in the comments below and let me know. Otherwise, guys, that's all for me. Hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you guys next time.


G'day mate, 40 here. So I just wrote a very crowded bus and it made me think how everything's easier when you don't hate and loathe people on the bus. So I got on a bus, every seat was taken, like every square foot was taken, people were standing and the bus was absolutely jammed and it was okay and it was cool because we didn't have any super predators on the bus. I mean in Los Angeles, you don't want to stand within three feet of a super predator. If you accidentally bump a super predator or some gangbanger, they're very likely to feel disrespected and get violent with you. It was easier to ride a bus, absolutely jammed, standing room only. It was so jammed an attractive young woman was forced to sit next to me. That's how jammed it was and it's so much easier to be in physically uncomfortable spaces with people you like than in comfortable spaces with people you don't like. So when people talk to me about how beautiful Sydney is or how beautiful Los Angeles is or San Francisco is or Philadelphia or Rio de Janeiro, to me it all comes down to the quality of your connections with people. Like I got a lot of mates in Sydney, so that makes Sydney beautiful to me. I'd rather be in a cold place, an un-senic place filled with my friends than in the most beautiful place in the world where I don't have any connections. Like everything comes down to the quality of the people. Like Sydney, Sydney's eastern suburbs in particular have good quality people, like everybody's nice. I'm asking for directions. I didn't have one unpleasant experience with anyone when I was in Australia for two months last year. So I've been in Australia for four days this time. No unpleasant experiences. I ask people for help. I get an absolutely jammed bus and everybody seems stressed, right? Stressed. I remember in America everyone's talked about how they're stressed. Didn't see anyone looking stressed on a jammed bus. Like no one seemed terribly uncomfortable, distressed, anxious. I mean I have a lot of tendencies to anxiety, right? And navigating myself my way around the city, particularly as I'm tired. I've walked about 12 miles today so I was getting tired and trying to find the bus and just asking for help and didn't realize I needed to take a train and then get on the bus. But actually everyone's perfectly civil, perfectly nice and there aren't any predators around of which I'm aware. Like I'm not seeing trash. I'm not seeing graffiti. It's easy to be on a bus. It's absolutely jammed if people are decent and nice. I was on a plane. Every seat was taken. It was absolutely jammed, right? But in my row was this wonderful couple from Colorado who are incredibly nice and polite and thoughtful and considerate and kind and good. It's just a wonderful experience, right? I'd rather be jammed on a plane with people I like than have abundant leg room. Well, okay, I think I need to amend that. I've never flown first class. I think maybe I was, yeah, I don't think I've ever flown. So maybe I would like to fly first class and just experience that abundant leg room, just be able to tip the seat back and rest. So if I take the train up to Brisbane, I might splurge the extra $30 for the first class reclining, ticket reclining seat. So it's $70 economy, $100 for one way train from Sydney to Brisbane. It's about a 12 hour ride through rural Australia, little towns in Australia, all up the coast. I hear it's not particularly scenic, but at least you're not going to be on board with super predators. So is web access costlier in Australia? To the best of my knowledge, nothing is costlier in Australia because 64 American cents make for one Australian dollar. So everything seems to be 20% cheaper in Australia. I'm getting so much bang for my buck. I ride the bus, a $4 bus ticket is like 250 American. I bought enough groceries for two weeks, cost me 184 Australian, turns into 121 American. And with my Chase Amazon credit card, they're not adding any surcharge for my foreign transactions. So most credit cards I've have, they ding you for foreign transactions, like they add like a 10% surcharge. That doesn't happen with my Chase card. So is web access costlier in Australia? No. I did get an Australian SIM card, like 80 gigs of data for 40 bucks. And I can make international calls. I can just go to town. So by contrast, with my T-Mobile plan, I pay $50 for up to 30 days of 15 gigs, right? So domestic plan, 80 gigs of data for a month, 40 bucks. T-Mobile, 15 gigs of data for 50 bucks, 30 days. Livy and Newton John died, did Australian meltdown? No, she's not a big deal. So Australian tastes in popular music are, they're more ACDC than a Livy and Newton John. So Americans like softer, more mellow pop music than Australians do. So Air Supply, Livy and Newton John, but these aren't big deals in Australia. Okay, let's have a look here. What else is in the comment section? I want to hide that light behind me. Does this give me like a saintly glow? Two cents says great, talking about contradictions in individuals.  Good people are just good in certain situations. They're horrible in other situations. They're cowardly in other situations. They're nasty and dishonest in other situations. So talking about contradictions in individuals, our different impulses, seeing things from one day to the next reminds me of the actor Michael McKean who played Saul Goodman's brother, talking about this saying people aren't just one thing. Yeah, people are very different in different situations. Yeah, Kanye West is shockingly discovering that being anti-Semitic is bad for business. Yeah, being publicly anti-black, anti-Mexican, anti-Chinese, well, I don't know about anti-Christian. I don't think that's true. So John Smith says Australia's only 57.2% European. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I think it's much higher than that. So let's get a Wikipedia. Let's get some entries, answers here. Boy, yeah, a little tired after 12 miles of hiking. Let's see. Okay, Australia has basically 3,000 square miles. What are the demographics? So come on, where are the demographics here, right? Ancestry and immigration. Okay, demographics. Okay, in the 2021 census, 33% of the population is from England, 9% from Scotland, 4% from Germany, 2% Greek, 1% Vietnamese, 1% Lebanese, 2% Filipino, 2% Dutch, 3% Aboriginal, that's greatly inflated. Like, people are incentivized to claim to be Aboriginal even if they're only 1 16th Aboriginal. 4% Italian, 5% Chinese, Australian, 30%, Irish, 10%. So yeah, it essentially breaks down to about 85% European. So Wikipedia entry says 57% European and 33.8% Oceanian, meaning Australians, right? So it combined 57 and 33, you get 90%. So the population is about 17% Asian. So Australia is more than 80% European. But it's just so profound. You get on a bus, right? Jam bus. And it's not stress. It's not anger. It's not antisocial behavior. It's not lashing out. There's not violence. It's not the threat of violence. It's not fair skipping. Much better to be on a jammed bus with good people than in a bus with abundant leg room, abundant space, but dangerous people. Bye bye.


It was very overwhelming. I was working a ton of hours. I was getting paid per session, sometimes having to track down money that the parents hadn't paid me yet. And so it was just draining and it just became a hassle. So I got a full-time job during the day. So that's kind of why my business was at a standstill, but ultimately this is what I love to do. I'd seek out Ben. And now that I've been working with Ben, my business actually feels like a business. I'm very organized. I have my finances laid out. It's a membership type of environment now rather than a paper session. Everyone pays monthly. And that just takes a lot of stress off of me because now I don't have to worry about the money. I can show up, train, do what I love to do, help these kids and not have to focus on that. And that just takes a lot of pressure off. One of the biggest reasons why coaches fail in this industry is because what they say does not align with their actions. And I'm going to show you how I earned five clients in one day because one of my competitors did not live up to what he was telling his clients. And I have a lot of satisfaction telling the story. I see though that a lot of coaches, they say things and then they don't back it up. So they might tell their clients, hey, we'll have our session number five and then they'll show up like a little bit late or they'll show up maybe a little bit early and then they have to go back to their car and get something or they forgot something, they had to go home or they're just not mentally prepared to run the session. And back in 2015, 2015, 2016, I don't know if we get this. I was out running a clinic and back then I would run clinics like, I mean, pretty much almost every weekend. I would run clinics and I'd have other coaches that were working for me, they would run clinics. We were running clinics all over the place. And I was running the clinic and I remember like right when we started, I looked over to the other side of the park and I saw there were like, there was like around five kids with their parents and they were like just like, it looked like they were waiting for someone. And I remember just thinking, well, normally out on Saturdays, normally there was like nobody there at the park. And I was always out there doing my thing and I would never see any other trainers out there. So I was thinking, well, maybe they're gonna meet up with someone. And like we run our first half hour of the clinic and I remember it was funny. I remember looking over and just, the parents were just like staring at what we were doing because what we were doing, I mean, the kids were working really, really hard and they could tell how professional the session was. And I remember just thinking like, why are they still sitting there? Like they've been sitting there for like half an hour and their kids weren't doing anything. And we were taking a water break and one of the parents like ran over, started talking to me and I was like, hey, I'm running this clinic right now. I can't talk to you for 10 seconds, but let me have your phone number and let me give you a call later today and I'll see how I can help. And that was it. So I got one parent's phone number and he went back and I went back to finish my session and I did exactly what I told him I was gonna do. I gave him a call later that day and what he told me was that was the fourth time in a row that they went out to the park where the trainer that they were supposed to work with did not show up. Like he flat out did not show up four times in a row. And I asked him who the guy was and this guy was actually a competitor of mine, a really busy guy. And I was thinking about it and I was like, man, you know, I'm on a call with his clients right now. And the only reason why I want to call his clients he didn't do his job. He didn't deliver on what he said he was gonna do. And here's the thing that's pretty crazy. And I'm thinking in two terms here financially like what happened after that for my business. And then I also think of how different it is for the customer once they join my program. And one of the things that I was selling to the parent over the initial call is like, yeah, like, you know, I'm sorry that if he's too busy she's not making it to the sessions. Like you guys won't get the help that you need, right? He was like, yes. I was like, well, come to our next clinic. And let me give you a registration link and do you want to share the link with the other four parents? He was like, I'd be happy to. I said, great. So the clinics that I ran were they were 50 bucks, right? So I knew that if they all came to the clinic based on how I operate my clinic, I was like, well, if they're going from waiting for an hour, four weeks in a row for a trainer to doing what we're doing is going to be it's going to feel completely different. Right, there's zero comparison there. And though you take five times 50, that's $250 and earn the income because this trainer did not show up, right? And so when they came, they all loved the session and then I got on individual calls with those five parents and I sold them my program. I put them on a group, right? Now I had them sign up for a 12 month program, right? And I'm going to run the numbers here with you so you can see this, right? There were five kids and back then I was charging those 250. I looked at their subscription, it was 250 per month. So if you take 250 times 12, that's $3,000. All right, so if I had to take 250, all right, that's how much one parent's paying. Times 12, that's 3K, all right, $3,000. One client that's paying, they're on a subscription, right? Now we take 3,000 times five clients as 15 grand, all right? We put that there for you so you can see it. All right, so because that one guy was late, all right, that earned my business the following year, 15 grand. Now that wasn't even included the amount of money that they also spent on the additional camps and clinics that I run that year. So 15 grand is on the low end, all right? And again, because one person screwed up, he did not deliver on his word, I was rewarded because I was doing things the correct way. And here's how this relates to you. If you have a bad first impression with a prospect or a client, they are not going to stay with you. If you are doing a good job and you have high expectations and you're just like, you literally follow through with the things that you say, you're going to do very well in this business, all right? Now it was a $15,000 per year mistake from that coach that he just gifted over to me, all right? Now, those kids stayed in my program for four years, all right, so let me show you some. All right, that right there, 60 grand is the minimum that I earn, because those kids came to so many camps and clinics and they also, those families referred so many new families in our program over that period of time. So they became a loyal customer of mine because of someone else's mistake. So this is why I am very blunt about this.  And this is why I feel like it's really easy to succeed if you're just different, if you just do think better, right, and following through with your word is what separates you oftentimes from other coaches that are in your area that do a bad job, right? And that's where you can really capitalize, right? You did not hear me in this video say I stole this guy's clients. No, like they came with me, they ran over to me in the middle of my clinic, right? That was their doing, right? I was smart, I just got a phone number and I said I'd call them and I did, right? And that resulted in a lot of income in my business from somebody else's mistake. So why am I telling this? Well, it's because I don't want you to make the same mistake that that guy did because if you do, you're gonna lose clients that could be committed to your program for multiple years, right? And if you're the guy who's kind of like me where it's like you're just trying to do a good job and you have a good service and you deliver on what you say, then you'll always pick up those types of clients that are being screwed over by coaches that suck. Okay, that's just how it is, right? I hope this video helps you and I have to go deep into the story to clarify how committed these clients were to me once they linked up in my program. And again, it was easy. It was like I just had them come to a clinic, they liked it, and then I sold them more things that were beneficial to their kids. And guess what? When they signed up for our program, they missed one session with them. Always there early. That was something that they wanted. They did not have that from the other coach. All right, so I just had to do the opposite. So I hope this helps. If these types of videos are helping you right now, it would be really good if you take the like 10 seconds and just send me a text message at this number and say, hey Ben, I really like the content you're putting out. Or ask me any questions, there would be a text. And you can also message me on Instagram. I'm pretty active on Instagram. At this point, we post stories all the time from coaches that we work with. I'm posting results, I'm posting content, I'm posting tips. There's a lot that we do on Instagram. And you can see my handle, I'll pop it up here on the screen. Feel free, follow me there, connect with me there. And if you wanna connect with me personally, just shoot me a text, all right? That's it, hope this video helped you. And let's keep growing your business. I'll tell you from then until now, it's just night and day of how it's run and how I feel doing what I'm doing. And it's just opened a whole new window of opportunity of what I can see growth for my company. And I'm just really excited to continue. And I thank Ben for all that he's done. And I hope you guys find the same help that I've had. Thank you.


Income tax 2021, 2022, a cruel method. Get ready to get refunds to the max, diving into income tax 2021, 2022. Most of this information can be found in Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business 2021, looking at the income tax formula, the top line, the income line, noting that we would have a sub-leisure which would have the income and expenses, the expenses basically being deductions to net, then flowing into the top line of the income tax formula and the tax return page one of the 1040. In the 1040, we would typically have the schedule C, then flowing in to the schedule one and then flowing to line eight here on page one of the form 1040. This is the schedule C, profit or loss from business, basically an income statement. So now we're looking at the accrual method. Remember when we're looking at the methods, usually we're thinking cash method versus a cruel method but we could also have a hybrid method or a special method which might have extended contracts for revenue recognition principle and that kind of stuff but mainly people think of a cash method or a cruel method usually thinking about the cash method as an easier method but have to use a cruel method in some instances, those instances often driven by, if you're a small business, they're gonna be driven by the industry that you are in and that would include things like, are you invoicing people? Do you have to then track the accounts receivable? That's an accrual account typically. Do you have inventory? Then if you're tracking inventory, then that's usually kind of an accrual component as well. So the accrual method is usually thought to be more, it's really thought to be more accurate of a method from an accounting standpoint but possibly a little bit more difficult than a cash method because you can't just record all of your books in essence by basically transactions from the bank account which you can kind of do if you're a small business and completely on a cash basis method and also just remember that a lot of times people will be on a hybrid kind of method because they're gonna do what works best for them and whatever industry they're in, they might be doing some accrual kind of components because that's what works best in that industry for them but then doing some cash components because that's kind of what works best for them. For taxes, we gotta make sure that we say what method we're gonna use from the start, from the first year so that we can be consistent in the reporting later on. You typically of course want to have the same method for taxes as you do with the bookkeeping because that's the general rule for the tax code, number one and number two, you don't really want to be changing methods after having made the financial statements on what other method you're using as you record your transactions. So the accrual method and just by the way, this isn't like a tax law thing of they have some other accrual method. It's not a cruel method like a mean method.  Normal accounting method, this is the standard accounting method, the accrual method. So under an accrual method of accounting, you generally report income in the year earned and deduct or capitalize expenses in the year incurred. What's the difference between that and the cash method? Notice we didn't say anything about cash here. We just said when incurred and when earned as opposed to when cash is either coming in or going out. The purpose of an accrual method of accounting is to match income and expenses in the correct year. So it's usually thought to be a better matching principle, matching the income and the expenses, the expenses to the same period in which they were used in order to earn the income. And again, the cash method can be a little bit more manipulative where you end up with differences between when something was earned and when you've received the cash. I think of the cash, the cash is kind of like the smoke that points to the fire, but the smoke can be kind of further away from the fire, right, because if you were to do work for somebody, then you have revenue that you had earned and then the cash might not happen for like a month later until you actually get paid or something like that. So it's an indication of the revenue that had been earned, but it's not really at the direct location in time of it, same on the expense side of things. So income, the general rule on the income side. So under an accrual method, you generally include an amount in your gross income for tax year in which all events that fix your right to receive the income have occurred and you can determine the amount with reasonable accuracy. Now normally in accounting software, that's kind of like when you invoice someone, if you think about it just from a bookkeeping standpoint. So when you did the work, if you're a law firm or an accounting firm and you invoice them for the work you did, that means that you've done all the work and you have earned the revenue at that point in time generally. So that's usually when the revenue is recorded, when the work was done. You can see exceptions to this or like problems with this when you have like extended problems, like if you're in a construction industry and the work's not going to be done for 10 years or something because you got some long project, that's when you got some funny recognition principles on the revenue side. But for most part, you do the work and then you bill someone or invoice them, whatever you want to call it and you record the revenue at the point of invoicing because that's the point when the work was done as opposed to when you get the money, which is going to happen at some later point, which is what you would do on a cash basis. So for a taxpayer with an applicable financial statement or other financial statement, as the secretary may specify, the all events test for an item of gross income is considered met no later than when taken into account in an applicable financial statement or such other financial statement. So an example, you are a calendar year accrual method taxpayer, imagine.  You sold a computer on December 28th, 2021. You billed the customer in the first week of January, 2022, but you did not receive payment until February, 2022. You must include the amount received for the computer in your 2021 income. So you can see the cutoff date kind of comparison here. Let's do it one more time. You sold a computer on December 28th, 2021. So that's before the cutoff in 2021. You billed the customer, you sent out an invoice and the first week of January, 2022. So in this case, they're getting even a little bit more tricky here because you did the work in 2021. And if you think about the software, you didn't actually send out, you sent send out the invoice to the customer until 2022. So usually the invoice is close to the point in time that you did the work. So that's when it's recorded on the software, but that's not a perfect method still because you can imagine situations like in a job cost system for like a law firm, for example, where they don't enter the information into the accounting software until after they record all the hours, which could have been in the prior week. So technically it should be when the work was done, in this case, December 31st, not even when the invoice was sent out and you didn't receive it until February. So that would be in 2022. You still have to record it or should record it in 2021. Now you can imagine situations when you make a mistake on this because the software would record it, for example, when the invoice was put in place in January 22. So, and that might be not as big an issue as intentionally or fraudulently distorting the cutoff dates in order to evade taxes. So the special rule, the following are special rules that apply to advanced payments, estimated income and changing a payment schedule for services. So we got the estimated income. If you include a reasonable estimate amount in gross income and later determine exact amount is different, take the difference into account in the tax year in which you make the determination. So you might have to basically make an estimate. So do you need to go back and change the estimate in the prior year? If it changed in the following year, no, usually you're gonna go forward and change it in the following year. Change in payment schedule for services. If you perform services for a basic rate specified in a contract, you must accrue the income at the basic rate. Even if you agree to receive payments at a lower rate until you complete the services and then receive the difference. So you can imagine a situation where you're recording the income at a basic rate and then you're gonna kind of have maybe a balloon payment at the end or something like that which can kind of distort the payments but you should be recording the revenue. Again, as you earn the revenue, so the amount that you expect to be receiving as you earn it is what you should be recording as income. Advanced payment. Generally you receive an advanced payment as income in the year you receive the payment. However, so generally you report an advanced payment as income in the year you receive the payment. Now notice that's kind of a deviation from an accrual method because you would think if it was an advanced payment, someone gave you money before you did the work for them then you wouldn't record it as income even though you got the cash under an accrual method because but the iris wants you to record it in that case. So that is kind of a deviation to some degree. So if you get an advanced payment you gotta be a little bit more careful on there might be a difference because they're deviating from an accrual method to do the tax code method and reporting income in the area they want. Now that might not be as big a problem for a lot of people because you might not get advanced payments in most industries but some industries like you might always get like advanced payments like if you're an industry of a magazine distribution or something like that they pay you the annual and a lot of the software stuff is formatted in that way. So generally you report an advanced payment as income in the year you receive the payment. However, if you receive an advanced payment you can elect to postpone including the advanced payment in income until the next year you cannot postpone including any payment beyond that year for more information see publication 538 and section 451. So you can postpone it there and that would be more in alignment with like normal accrual accounting and then but then obviously if you postpone it more than a year that's when the that's when they're gonna be skeptical of these kind of advanced payments they're gonna want their money the IRS wants to report it as income sooner so they can get a piece of it sooner. So expenses under an accrual method of accounting you generally deduct or capitalize a business expense when both the following apply one the all events test has been met the test has been met when a all events have occurred that fix the fact of a liability. So on the expense side of things you got like the expense recognition kind of principle matching principle in other words so you all the events basically happened to incur to incur the liability and be the liability can be determined with reasonable accuracy. So that means notice that even if cash didn't go out like you didn't pay for the expenses then you're gonna record them basically when you incurred them. So when the work in essence was done by the other person if it was a service or if you receive the goods in general you would think then you'd record the expense even if hadn't been paid yet at that point in time. So two economic performance has occurred. Economic performance what is it? You generally cannot deduct or capitalize a business expense until economic performance has occurred. If your expense is for property or services provided to you or for use of property economic performance occurs as the property or services are provided or as property is used. So obviously if they're giving you some physical inventory when you get the inventory you have control over it. The economic performance has taken place and you should be recording it in income whether cash has exchanged hands at that point in time or will be doing so at some future point or possibly never if it was some kind of barter transaction. So if your expense is for property or services you provide to others economic performance occurs as you provide the property or services. An exception allows certain recurring items to be treated as incurred during a tax year even though economic performance has not occurred for more information on economic performance. So if you're in that gray area then you could see economic performance under a cruel method in publication 538. Usually it's fairly straightforward but if it's not then in your unusual situation publication 538 example.  You buy office supplies in December 2021. You receive the supplies and the bill in December but you pay the bill in January 2022. So you see the cutoff kind of situation.  We're on an accrual method here, not a cash method people. You can deduct the expense in 2021. Notice the terminology. So if you're in that gray area in 2021, notice the terminology. You can deduct the expense in 2021.  Usually you want to deduct them earlier for taxes. They're bad normally, but they're good for taxes. So we get to deduct it in 2021 thanks IRS because all events that fixed the fact of liability have occurred. The amount of the liability could be reasonably determined and economic performance occurred in that year. So your office supplies may qualify as a reoccurring expense. In that case, you can deduct them in 2021 even if the supplies are not delivered until 2022 because it's a reoccurring type of thing. That's that funny exception. Keeping inventories. When the production purchase or sale of merchandise is an income producing factor in your business you must generally take inventories into account at the beginning and end of your tax year unless you are a small business taxpayer. If you must account for an inventory you must generally use an accrual method of accounting for your purchase and sale for more information. You can see inventories. So if you're tracking inventories then oftentimes there might be an exception but usually when you're picking methods you want to go to an accrual method because you're gonna be tracking inventory and inventory is an accrual account because when you purchase inventory even if you pay cash for it you don't expense it which is what you would do under a cash method but rather put it on the books as an asset and then you expense it when you use it in order to generate revenue in the form of cost of goods sold. So if you have inventory then it's a little bit more complicated on the tax return because it's more complicated in bookkeeping in general you might have a cost of goods sold calculation with the beginning inventory plus purchases minus the ending inventory given you the cost of the goods that are sold. So special rule for related persons so you cannot deduct business expenses and interest owed to a related person who uses the cash method of accounting until you make the payment and the corresponding amount is included in the related person's gross income. Why? Because you can imagine people trying to manipulate the system if you've got one business set up on an accrual method and the other system kind of set up on a cash method so you cannot deduct an expense and interest owed to a related person who uses the cash method because if it was an accrual method you might deduct the expense and the current year and the other person doesn't record it as income because you didn't yet give them the cash, right? So nothing actually happened with that actual cash but you're saying the thing but that something took place in terms of the exchange so under an accrual method you get the benefit of the deduction and the other person doesn't have to record the bad thing which is the recourse of the income on their side which looks suspicious if you're related to the person looks like you're trying to do something funny so the IRS says we don't like that so anytime you got those related person transactions you gotta be more careful because the IRS will of course be skeptical of them as they should be because people do funny transactions when they're related possibly try to avoid taxes on it so determine the relationship for this rule as of the end of the tax year for which the expense or interest would otherwise be deductible if a deduction is not allowed under this rule the rule will continue to apply even if your relationship with the person ends before the expense or interest is included in gross income of that person related persons include members of your immediate family including brothers and sisters either whole or half or spouse, ancestors and lineal descendants for a list of the related persons you can see section 267 of the internal revenue code aren't we all related in some way it all goes back to the okay no says the IRS it's in the code it's right there if you wanna know who's related to who qualifies as related check it out