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Transcription of this week’s Episode 4 – This Is Yu – Failure Failure Failure a little farther down this page.
Carole and I get busy on the following things:
Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Lebron James Locker Teddy Roosevelt Quote Bob Iger Disney CEO
Housekeeping! Apologize for Stealing The Magic – moment from Ep 3 MasterChef Jr.
Relationship fails.
M0851
Fail Forward
Seal Team – keep moving forward.
Brother Guy and Instagram. Facetime call.
Instagram affecting business – paid ads vs organic subs
Shout out www.TheUrbanReptile.com
Instagram @the_urban_reptile
Mom Dad Sister – dying, not proving anything to anyone anymore. Did that tour. Carole her parents – no energy surrounds that for me.
Intuition / God / The Great etc causing you to fail at something in order to move toward what your heart wants you to do.
Health failure
Talking about Star Wars energy The Force and creating my world. Hard part is knowing what you want. Specifics acting class – difference between good and great in the details.
Worth The Spend
Rodecaster Pro www.Rode.com
Podmic
Fab Filter Plugins
Pro MB ( multiband compressor ) per voice channel and Pro L2 ( Limiter ) on Master
Master Class www.MasterClass.com – Dominique Ansel – Carole
Our home base www.ThisIsYu.com
If your in the neighborhood come by and say hi on Instagram @ThisIsYuOffical
Thanks to our special guest Craig Stewart
Next Episode Couples Working Together
EP#4 TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE
Carole
Hello, This is Carole Yu
Scott
and Scott Stewart.
Carole
Welcome to This Is Yu. Episode number four where we’re going to talk about failure, failure, failure. Scott you have something you want to say?
Scott
I do. Carole. I have a quote from the lovely and talented Teddy Roosevelt.
Carole
How do you know he’s talented?
Scott
I read it in his memoir.
Carole
That’ll be in yours too lovely and talented.
Scott
That’s what I’m aiming for. His quote goes Far better is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. And that quote hangs in LeBron James locker. Also, Bob Iger, who’s the current CEO of Disney for the past 15 years upon his arrival at Disney, gave that quote to his V P’s.
Carole
It’s interesting because I’ve never been a person that has been into quotes, but I think it’s really good when you have someone that you can look up to, and I like that you found that for us this time Today we are going to talk about failure and adversity So you know, failure could be either seen as positive or negative. You can go through life feeling sorry for yourself or you can accept the failures are your next step to moving you closer to your dream? So you learn from every experience and you can take what you’ve learned forward. If you’re that kind of a person, so remember, you can be a negative person and look at yourself as a failure. Or you can look at the positive site and look adversity and failure as an opportunity.
Scott
That’s a great point. Which segways us into this week’s housekeeping. Carole, I would like to apologize to you what they
Carole
never do, that you don’t apologize.
Scott
Hell has frozen over and pigs can fly.
Carole
Woohoo
Scott
Last week in episode number three, we were talking about Master Chef Jr. And that was our second part of a two parter Master Chef Junior show, Right. What I’m gonna call this is stealing the magic. I went on a little bit of a tirade about what I called stealing the magic, and what was happening was I was explaining that we were up on top of the catwalk in the finale episode and looking down at Dara and Alexander, right and over to our right. A little farther down, there was a bunch of people that we didn’t know, and Carole went down that path of sort of exposing behind the scenes. And I went on this tirade about breaking into this magic moment and sort of destroying it for everyone. But due to some listeners, Thanks Craig and Lori, I have reconsidered my position on that and realize that I was actually wrong. And people do want to hear about that. And it was not my place to, ah, stand on Carole’s toes. So here comes the kiss. Are you ready?
Carole
Thank you. I really appreciate that because I think a lot of the things that people don’t see on the TV shows they don’t know what’s happening, and they they want to know. So anyway, I really appreciate your apologizing for that because my toes can expand now!
Scott
Get off my heavy feet standing on your toes. The next thing in this whole cavalcade of fails is relationships, and I wanted to talk a little bit about my early relationships. My concept of this failure idea is that you have great failures And then from there you move on one of the issues for me early on in my life. I want to say in my late teens, was, girlfriends and relationships and the relationship I had with my mother at the time, which was not very good. It was. I mean, for all intents and purposes on the surface is it was fine. But there wasn’t a lot of deep understanding and communication basically went out on my own and looked around for replacement replacements for my mom. Exactly. And I found them. I mean, there were a lot of girls that were exactly my mom
Carole
with false teeth,
Scott
everything but the false teeth. They had wooden teeth. Actually, they couldn’t eat anything hot. Yeah, they catch fire. I found these girls. I was a people pleaser because I was trying to please my mom basically fell into the same situation with these girls. Many, many relationships, actually. All of them, obviously,
Carole
even now. Yeah, I like that about you.
Scott
Oh, thanks, honey. At that time, I was a people pleaser. I would be putting myself way out there. Not being who I was at the time. Made it difficult for me to be myself in these relationships, and they just crumbled after a time. And it was like relationship after relationship. Some of them were maybe two years. Some of them were six months. The point being is that they were failures.
Carole
Why? Let me ask you a question. Why? If you were trying to please these people, why would it fail? Why would your relationships fail? Because I would think that those people would want to be coddled or taking care of. So what would What was it that made them fail?
Scott
That was only one element of many that caused it to fail. I’m just addressing that one specific element because of the through line with my mother. I see. Okay. So anyway, they failed. And from the failure of these relationships, I was in great pain. There was times were it was darkness and sadness. And I filled up a lot of poetry books. At that time.
Carole
I want to see those.
Scott
Yay I have a lot of those. I have just drawers and drawers full of poetry books from that. It caused me to look inside myself, understand myself better. I read a ton. I also took courses and seminars and would go meet with people and try and understand more about myself. Talk to friends. Just get out there.
Carole
Were you ever into crystals?
Scott
Yes, I was.
Carole
Really?
Scott
Oh, yeah. Crystals, crystals and me right on. I was doing a lot of searching in that. The point being is that without that pain from the failure of the relationship, it wouldn’t have driven me to find out more about who I am as a person and caused me to seek out new and better ways to move myself through the world.
Carole
Yeah, I mean, that was one thing that I noticed when we started dating, I had not, met someone that would push me that way. To try to learn more about myself was just a different upbringing. But it’s interesting because you weren’t raised that way, but because you were actually not in the house, you actually found that on your own. Okay, now let’s talk about job failure. I have had over 10 jobs in my adult life since I graduated from college. I went to school for engineering. Many people would say that that’s a failure of focus. When I was looking for my last job Where the job I have now I had one interview where the person said, Well, you’ve had so many jobs. Why couldn’t you find out what you really wanted to do? And I was looking at it as though those 10 different jobs gave me lots and lots of skills. So let me tell you about one job failure and how propelled me closer to my dream. So as I said, I have an engineering degree. And even though I’m Asian, I got C’s You’re what? Yeah. Didn’t you know that you couldn’t realize it? Oh, purple hair
Scott
And the makeup.
Carole
Okay. So even though I got C’s for grades, I’m not model minority here, huh? So after college, I came back to the U. S. Actually, I went to China for a year, and I talked technical writing, too. Masters students at Qinghua University in Beijing. I then came back to the United States, and I worked for IBM as a marketing representative in Boston. I even made the 100% club twice.
Scott
Wow, nice, I have no idea what that is, but it sounds really important. And you did it 100%
Carole
Twice so 200%. Yeah. So the thing that I got actually, as an award for that is they sent all of us to a hotel and we got to see Donna Summer live on stage. ( Scott sings – I love, love, love, love, baby. ) That’s a re living off my 1992 100% club. But then, in 1993 IBM was downsizing. And then there were five of us who were then working as a business partner, marketing rep. All of us got our jobs condensed to one person. So I was laid off. I felt like such a failure. But at that time I was lucky because I had actually been going to school at nights for fashion design, which is what I really wanted to do in the first place. I never wanted a study engineering, and on weekends I worked for a designer.
Scott
That’s some real side hustle there. Good job.
Carole
I did a lot. That was before I had kids. I, um, had been going to school at night for fashion and when and also I was lucky because my IBM territory was the fashion district in downtown Los Angeles. So when I got laid off. I called up one of my fashion customers and I got a job as a design assistant and I became in charge of a sample room. I supervised five sample makers. I was doing cad drawings of designs. I was making pattern cards. I really loved that job, even though I was working six days a week and I had a real asshole of a boss. But because I felt like I failed at IBM, I actually then got one step closer to becoming the creative side of me.
Scott
The next thing we’re gonna talk about is M0851 which is a retail store that Carole and I both had on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, California.
Carole
So it was a store that I had seen in Canada, and I decided that I would like to bring it to Los Angeles. So Scott was great at helping me decide what to do. Actually, at that time, I guess I kind of strong armed him into it. But he was so instrumental and supportive in building out the store, and he actually did a lot of the work himself. He subcontracted it. He was in charge of building it all out, and we had a store that on the outside looked really successful. In fact, for two years, 2016 and 2017 we were most love business on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica.
Scott
Well, on the outside, as Carole was saying, it was a successful business. It was a beautiful store. Everyone that came into it ooo I love the store. Celebrities would come into the store ooo your product is beautiful. That was how it was perceived. But on the inside, which is Carole and I, every single month we lost money. It was not a success at all. There was an amount of money that we started off with the store hundreds of thousands of dollars and it just whittled away every month and we couldn’t get on top of it. We worked long hours. We worked hard. We tried to restructure things. One of the issues was at one point in this journey, the head office in Montreal. They went bankrupt, which meant for us it was difficult to get some of the items into the store. When you look back on it, it is a very difficult thing to do because you’re juggling so many different things in the store, then you have to have a relationship with the supplier. We had one supplier, so a lot of stores have multiple suppliers, which makes it very difficult for us. Because if there’s an issue with our supplier, then there’s an issue with us. And the way that would manifest itself would be is that we could not get certain bags into the store. People would see them online and they go, Oh, it’s okay. I’ll just go buy it online because for all intents and purposes, people saw our store as the online store, so they didn’t understand that they came into our store, tried stuff on and then went and bought it online, which was hugely detrimental to us before we open the store. It was very difficult for us to understand all these concepts that were going to hurt us in the future and perhaps maybe just say no, don’t open this store
Carole
Two years later, after we’ve closed. Looking back, we have that vision now. But at the time I was just so excited and it was something I was really wanting to do. And as the time went on, and I knew that we weren’t making money. And Scott and I would have these meetings and we’d come up with plans. And I just couldn’t find it in me to follow through with all those plans because I always would find something else to do. And the money just kept on leaking. And so after three and 1/2 years, we had to close. And what did that feel like to you, Scott?
Scott
What was a huge failure? Like, I mean, all this energy, you know, we didn’t speak of it to anyone, so I felt kind of false in my day today operation of it, cause people come in the store and, oh, I love your store and when you get the new bags and we’d have to have that excitement there, but we knew that we had to close the store at some point really soon. So when we actually did close it, there was a huge sense of relief for me just because it was this grind for years and years and years,
Carole
We’d work seven days a week for four years, basically taking off maybe four days a year. It was really a grind.
Scott
It caused a toll on our relationship. It caused a physical toll on us. We’re just trying to show all the different aspects of how it was a failure. There was a failure in our relationship. It was a failure with money. It was a failure with the business. It was a failure on so many different levels, and at that point we were just exhausted like it was just Yeah, let’s close this up and get on with things. So it was a huge shakeup in our life because it was it was the cornerstone of her life for four years. That’s all we knew. That’s all we did.
Carole
I had a ton of self doubt after that. It felt like such a failure. That’s something I was so dedicated to, and something that I had made. Scott and I, you know, both sink our teeth into and then have it fail. It just felt like it was such, you know, horrendous adversity. And it caused a ton of stress on us as a couple.
Scott
So we’ve seen all the failure that we enjoyed from the store. But what is it that we learned from that experience? Because in a way. You look at it as an education, and that’s how we’ve come to look at it. That’s because there was so much pain surrounding this failure that we had to come to terms with it. We’ve loaded up the podcast with the failure of the store and all the pain and struggle and strife that that caused us at the time. What I want to do is turn it around into the positive, which Carole spoke of in the beginning. We could’ve just wallowed in that, but we decided to go for a long walk on the beach. During that walk, there was a sense of freedom and openness and opportunity that came to us because we had had to let the store go physically and emotionally over a period of time. It just ate away at us. We saw this. We were able to now that the store was closed. Stand back from that and there were some life lessons in it. Yes, it cost us a lot of money, but university costs a lot of money too . We learned a lot of things about life and business from that store. One of the craziest things when you stand back and look at it. We opened a leather store in Santa Monica, about a mile from the beach. Let me ask you a question. How easy do you think it is to sell a $1200 leather jacket to someone in a tank top who sweating while they’re walking to the beach? I’ll answer that question extremely difficulty, right? It was almost set up to fail before we actually open it. Just the concept alone when we look back on it was weird. Then also with the weirdness was how Amazon is everywhere now. People shop on Amazon stores on Montana, closed all the time. So we learned. Unless you’re opening a retail store that has the word Amazon across the front of it, you might want to think twice about opening a retail store.
Carole
Yeah, I mean, I guess the other thing, too, though nowadays I do feel because I am still in retail. There are some areas that people may be still want to have a personal touch, but I would suggest that if you do decide, or you want to open a retail store, really take a look and do a full on business plan and really have an idea of where your money is going to go and how you’re going to spend it because you’re and and make contingencies. Because really, the money is going to go fast. And if you want to stay in business, you have to have more than just what Amazon has, which is fast delivery. You need to have great customer service. You have to understand, Can you put up with all of the stress is that a retail business has? And I think that taught me a lesson that, yeah, I thought, because I have an engineering degree because I’m well educated and because Scott works his ass off and he’s works really hard that we would be able to make it happen. Maybe by looking at what our skills were better, um, in relationship to what we love doing. It was something that I wanted to do, but maybe my skills were not so suited to do that specific thing.
Scott
Seal Team, CBS SEAL Team. This is one of my favorite TV shows because their whole motto as a seal team is moving forward. So that’s how I’m tying that back into our store It was a huge failure. But seal team in the back of my head tells me every week keep moving forward. Let’s get down range. And that’s exactly what Carol and I have done through rain, through struggle, through bad communication, through therapy, through everything we keep moving forward, because what the hell else do you have to do? I also like the term fail forward. So if you’re gonna fail, fail big and fail forward, so keep moving it forward. That’s the main thing that you gotta focus on if you’re feeling. If you’re not feeling that vibe, just do it anyway.
Carole
How do you deal with the thought that Oh, gosh, people are looking at me and seeing me fail? Does that bother you?
Scott
It does. I mean, there’s shame associated with it. It was huge shame with the store failing. As an adult, you have to learn what makes you tick and get over that stuff. Just keep moving forward.
Carole
So now I want to talk about communication failure. After the store closed, Scott and I had a lot of issues with our communication actually started during the time that we were trying to struggle to get the store to work. Our relationship has a lot of issues. Still, because of the way our families raised us, we ended up going to therapy. We were out of money, but fortunately, we found the help of a great therapist at a group in Santa Monica that provided therapy for people who needed a sliding scale. So what did you get out of that group? Scott.
Scott
Well, I still have nightmares, Carole. I just want to let you know. Yeah,
Carole
he was on my side,
Scott
Michael. He was our therapist, was it was a relationship therapy. I spent a lot of my time trying to convince him that I was right and Carole was wrong. And the funny thing is, he seemed to agree with me. I mean, that’s how it seemed in my head. Anyway, the point being is that we went to relationship counseling. He taught us a lot of valuable skills that we still use to this day, and one of them is that at night, when all is said and done, usually around nine o’clock 10 o’clock, we take Mo, probably about a mile walk. So however long Mo spends a lot of time sniffing on stuff, but we’re not allowed to look at our follow our phones, and we’re not allowed to talk about business. So we just go around and we take different walks in the neighborhood, and that has changed us both dramatically that we’re able to communicate, listen and understand each other better.
Carole
Yeah, the problem is listening for me. So I’m
Scott
sorry. What did you say
Carole
When, uh, listening. So the problem for me, I’ve learned through that therapy is listening, really? Being able to focus on the person that is speaking and really trying to understand where they’re coming from. And that’s what the therapy has taught me and helped us in our relationship. At least I think that has helped. Has it? Yeah, absolutely. So sometimes it takes the clearness of vision to know when you need help. So if you can find someone that can help you If you’re having some kind of adversity, we’d really love to have you reach out to your friends, your family or find someone. If you’re embarrassed to talk to your friends and family about it, find someone that can help you with whatever you need help in.
Scott
Yeah, And there are a lot of therapists that charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars. But then there’s also these community groups that have sliding scales and they can work with you if you’re unemployed. They also get grants from large corporations that augment the therapy session. So just go reach out to someone and they probably can help you. Just even the fact of sitting there and talking to someone about your issues, that person being paid to look interested in what’s going on with you and pay attention is a nice feeling. I must say.
Carole
Well, we’re gonna be talking more about couples working together Anyway, in the next podcast episode
Scott
Right now, I would like to talk about my mom, my dad and my sister and they died all within three years of each other. It was like, Boom, boom, boom. It comes in threes, people. It comes in threes. So hard for you. It was a very, very difficult time. I was really close with my sister, my mom and dad, you know, obviously were my mom and dad, but I really had a strong relationship with my sister. It was very difficult, so I felt that it was a huge failure that these people were leaving me. They failed our relationship. I had a relationship with them and they left.
Carole
You’re saying that they failed you, But did you feel you failed them, too? Is that is that where the failure comes from? That you feel
Scott
There’s some elements of that with my sister? Because towards the end, my sister and I, we didn’t get along too well just because of the situation that it progressed to. I do feel like, you know, because there’s there’s that thing in the back, your head where I should have tried to do more or even though in my head at the time I was doing stuff and I was physically talking to her and I was getting her to do things. But there’s always in the back your head. You feel like I could have done more, so it makes you feel like I failed at this. There is shame for me surrounding that, but from that I’ve discovered something that’s really interesting, and I don’t suggest that you go out and kill your parents. You’re just gonna have to wait till they pass on. What I noticed is you don’t really give a shit about as much as you did when your parents were alive and let let me digress. Here. What I’m talking about is the system we learn as we’re growing up as Children is to please our parents. The concept in our society is the Children. Please, the parents, the parents feed the Children and the Children grow up. What I noticed is now that my parents are both gone, that I don’t have anyone to worry about. I don’t have to please anybody because my parents are now gone. And I did have that element with my sister because she was such a part of my life. So when I was talking about my acting or my comedy, I always wanted to please my sister with it. But now that all three of them have gone, I don’t have that in my life anymore. And I’ll give you example. I mean, I did that tour. So now when Carole is involved with situations with her parents, I don’t have any energy surrounding that and I can see her. It’s whirling around in her head, But I’m just like those air your parents you have to deal with them. I already did my tour with my parents. I’m just trying to show you guys the upside of your parents passing away, always looking at the good side of things. My glass is always half full here, people half full.
Carole
Well, I have some issues also regarding to health and failure. There’ve been two times that I’ve had real adversity, and I felt that I was a failure in regards to my health. The 1st one was actually when my late husband was sick, so he had cancer. It was a rare form of non smoker’s cancer, and I was his caregiver for three years when he was supposed to only live 6 to 12 months. So I fought daily for his care. I found Doctor’s reports that were wrong. I took him to the doctors like every week. Sometimes we’d be in the hospital in at the doctor’s office, like five days in a row. I made him food. I, um, you know, solely focused on his living for as long as possible. I did all kinds of research, and then after nine treatments, he lived three years, and but he died and I felt like I’d failed I had worked so hard for three years. I was not only mentally tired. I was so physically drained. It took me two years to feel physically back to 100% and healthy. But during the time after that was when I met Scott and he was a great boost. As he said before, he
Scott
I’m like vitamin C Carole
Carole
and vitamin D make me strong
Scott
and vitamin B 12.
Carole
Yeah, you were able to because he was a people pleaser and that’s what I needed. During that time, I needed someone to help me get through this time. Fortunately, I was able to get through that time of being weak and being able to build physically and mentally back to who I am now.
Scott
I just also wanted interject is that you have two lovely daughters that you had to keep moving forward for like with the pain and the shame and the failure. And you did an amazing job.
Carole
Well, thank you. You know, that’s something that I also sometimes feel is a failure because as a parent, you maybe not everyone, but I think a lot of people have feelings that maybe they failed as a parent. I don’t feel that I’ve totally failed because my kids are really amazing. They’re very outstanding. But there are times where you think, Oh, I should have done this I should it on that They’ve turned out good.
Scott
Carole has a little bit of a tendency to maybe focus on the 4% out of the 100% rather than the 96%. So what I’m seeing there is she’ll focus on the couple things that our kids are not quite doing right or they’re trying to discover themselves rather than the 96% of the amazing things that they do. So that’s why I’m here, Mr Vitamin, to remind you of those situations. Day in, day out, see what I have to go through people day in, day out.
Carole
My second failure of health was in the past two years after we closed our store, I was driving for a company called Hop Skip Drive, and that’s like an Uber for kids. So I was driving 8 to 10 hours a day sitting in my car, driving foster kids to school, to their homes and to their after school activities. I enjoyed driving those kids, but I felt like a failure because I had all these job skills and I wasn’t using them. It also affected my health because I felt bad about myself and I was snacking in the car all day long, stopping at Starbucks for coffee and chai and muffins and eggs sous vide and I would stop it, Starbuck, sometimes twice a day. And I gained about 20lbs in the 18 months that I was driving, along with the 20lbs I gained because of the stress from the store. Since that time, I’ve actually realized that a lot of the issues I had with gaining weight my health was because I wasn’t happy. In the meantime, since then, we’ve re joined the gym, right? You like going the gym? Love that I go several times a week and make sure I go to a stretch class once a week, and that gives me some centeredness, an ability to connect to my body and by being more aware of what I’m eating and how my body feels every day, wear and feeling stress. Do I need to have a massage? Do I need to go to the spa? I really have been able to step back and take a look at my body and help with my health overall.
Scott
Also. Sorry. Just let me interject on this note. I’ve also noticed Carole’s acting skills have greatly improved because she has this ability to say, Oh, Scott, my neck is oh so sore. I just if he could only massage Academy Award performance is each and every time!
Carole
That’s because you’re so good at massage?
Scott
Oh, that’s what it is.
Carole
Okay, Gotcha. Anyway, what else do you have, Scott?
Scott
Well, Carole, let me talk about my health issue. Fails. The first thing I wanted to talk about is Sibo. Anyone know what that is?
Carole
It sounds like something having to do with Seal Team.
Scott
Not quite anyone. Anyone. Bueller. Bueller, anyway. What? Ferris Bueller’s Day off. That’s the reference I’m going with right there.
Carole
Just did he have Sibo
Scott
Sibo? Small intestine, Bacterial overgrowth.
Carole
What is that? That sounds horrible.
Scott
It is because I’ve had it for about five months. All of a sudden, out of the blue, my stomach starts getting sore like my lower intestines kind of get sore. And within like, two days, I’m line in bed, sleeping all day and I can hardly move.
Carole
Scott’s not like that. Scott is the one that he’ll get up at 5 30 in the morning, every day for four months, building out a voice over booth in our house or doing something like that. He’s got a ton of energy. So I knew something was wrong.
Scott
It literally just took me right off my feet over a period of five months and going to Kaiser multiple multiple times them doing X rays on me. Doing CAT Scan’s going into the emergency and having the emergency doctor trying to convince Carole that it was all up in my brain. I finally did my own research online and found out that it could be this thing called Sibo. I called up. The internist said, Hey, I’d like to get a test done for this Sibo and she’s like, Okay, I’ll get you right in so two months later, because they have a huge waiting list. I go in and get this test done. And guess what? Everyone in the doctor world I’ve got Sibo. There is a regiment of antibiotics, which I’m on right now. It takes two weeks to clear it up now. The reason I’m talking about this is it’s a huge problem, like day in, day out. Like for me. I could only certain things. I’ve lost a ton of weight, which is awesome. It’s on the great side. So if you guys were looking to lose a large amount of weight in a short period of time, might I suggest Sibo? The thing that I focused on my head is no matter how bad I felt, if I didn’t want to get up, I didn’t want to do anything. I would do one thing a day, and that one thing was to exercise. I chose to do four different things. One day I would go for a walk, a hike for an hour. One day I would go for a 15 mile bike ride. One day I would go for a swim at the pool at the Y M. C A in Santa Monica. The fourth thing I would do is
Carole
goto the gym?.
Scott
Good call Carole, go to the gym. I do that every single day. If I don’t feel well, I do it. And now that I’m on that regiment and I got it figured out, things were moving forward. I’m feeling better about it. And the sun comes up each and every day.
Carole
Yeah, plus, you’ve lost, like I don’t know. It looks like you’ve lost 20lbs Your skinny
Scott
I’m not saying I’m becoming a male model. But who knows?
Carole
Star Wars (Carole singing ) Star Wars Star Wars.
Scott
We’re going to talk about Star Wars now. Not so much from a failure point of view, but yeah, maybe. Whenever I go to Star Wars, I have this weird thing I’ve been telling Carol about. I know it’s a little woowoo, so if you guys want to check out right now, it’s too much woowoo for you. Please get up, get something to drink, go have a shower. I’ll still be talking when you come back. In Star Wars, there’s the whole concept of the force. And every time they talk about that, I get this weird sensation inside myself and I well, up ( Carole – it;s called Sibo ) and I well, up with emotion so much so I’m like, tearing up in my eyes and I don’t know what it is started thinking about that cause we went up to San Francisco over the Christmas holidays and we went to see Star Wars it happened again. But as I’m becoming older, I find that it happened stronger and stronger. Then I started thinking about it. I had this intuition. It’s about creating the force in Star Wars they use for creation, whether it’s to ward off enemies or to push ships back or change people speaking patterns. Whatever it is, it’s a creative force. And that’s how I started thinking about it. So I said to myself, What if I start using this feeling inside to create my universe, My world? What exactly would transpire if I spent a bunch of focus time working on creating my world? Every day I get up in the morning and I meditate on that. I say things out loud, what I want in my life, and I feel in a connected that energy force and myself. I visualize it, how I want it to be in my life, and the hard part is actually knowing it’s not the creating. It’s the knowing what you want to create. Now I’m going to digress into my acting class because in my acting class, my acting teacher, Ivana, would always say the difference between good and great is in the details. With the creation. I don’t just see general blanket statements anymore. I get really specific. What does my house look like? How do I feel when I’m in the house? Who’s with me? I’m inviting my friends and family into the house that has a certain feeling. I make things very specific. The lighting is beautiful. What color is the car that I want? What Ferrari model do I want so much? So I go on the Ferrari website and put a package together. So I know exactly what I can create. The difference between good and great is in the details. Carole.
Scott
(Facetime call ringing sound ) And here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, my brother Craig. ( Fairy wand sound effect ) So, Guy, let me ask you a question. Do you wear the tutu all day long? Or do you just wear it for the show?
Craig
Just for the show? Simply for the show.
Scott
Okay, guys, we are doing a segment we like to call Instagram with Brother Guy. This is my brother Craig. We call each other Guy because when we were younger, Ah, friend of Craig’s asked what my name was. I said it was Scott, and for some reason, he thought he heard Guy So ever since that day, it’s been, I don’t know, 30 years just like that, since we call each other Guy. Is that not right, brother Guy.
Craig
It is Guy Senior Guy Junior.
Scott
Exactly. We’ve got him on the show today because he has a company. It’s W W W The Urban Reptile dot Com, and he’s gonna give us some insights specifically to his company and share with us his insights about his instagram social media experience with his company.
Craig
Are we gonna do bloopers and stuff?
Scott
It depends how funny they are. ( Laughter ) So Guy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your company?
Craig
Will? Do! So the company, as you mentioned, is The Urban Reptile. We are a reptile breeding facility, not open to the public. We have a facility where we breed reptiles captively, and we sell them all over the world. We specialize in extreme rare reptiles are sales platform initially going into it when we started the company back in 2001 was all web based on we still have our website and everything right. But as time grew and social media became more and more of a presence in everybody’s day to day lives. We started to see that sales were starting to transition not so much in our business platform, but in other businesses. So we thought there’d be a great opportunity to take advantage of that.
Scott
So obviously you guys branched out into Facebook and Instagram.
Craig
Yeah, we did. And the reason we focused primarily on those two platforms is because both platforms cater to picture posting, which is imperative for our business. Reason for that. When we sell our reptiles, we photographed the individual reptiles and post them right on either Instagram or Facebook, right? Right. All right. It was important to us that that that they cater to that
Scott
right? And then you and I’d spoken previously. About when you’re doing paid ads versus organic ads. Can you touch on that a little bit?
Craig
Yeah, I think what happened with us? I mean, we did do paid advertising. I don’t know how many of you’re familiar with that, but when you do paid advertising, you can actually set up your target audience being a hack amateur at the whole social media thing. In the beginning, I wasn’t that great at targeting and still to this day. Don’t fully understand that the benefit of that right? And the reason I say that is because when we did paid advertising, yeah, we got all kinds of followers, but they would be what I call unqualified followers. I had people from corners of the world. We didn’t even feel well,
Scott
right? Right
Craig
When you would follow up on these people, it would be like a picture of somebody and no post. So, yeah, I don’t know how that happened, but our experience with paid advertising was not a good one. And I’m not saying that’s the case for everybody. I can only speak of our experience, right? What we did is kind of counter that what we really are after are what I would call organic followers. So people that in our case love reptiles, have a I have a passion for them, have an interest for them. Obviously we want a target audience and not to our audience is. And we were not getting that through paid advertising, I think with the big difference for us, obviously in how we posted in terms of how we’re capturing pictures, how we were shooting videos. We found that made a very, very big difference in the response you would get to the people you were targeting. Second to that, the other key element was hash tagging, hash tagging is imperative is far as I’m concerned. At least in our experience, it was.
Scott
Do you have, like a Instagram regiment like system on how you post you like to post videos or photos? Or How do you work that?
Craig
Yeah, that’s a great question. We actually do, it’s more in the style of the photo. If you go to our page. Our page is, How would I describe it? I wouldn’t say it’s eclectic because it does have a theme to it. But that’s really what we’re trying to get because I found so many different pages were very uniform looking at the pictures looked the same. The people spoke the same it was just I didn’t see a lot of differentiation between different posting and everything. When we first started that that was very important to us.
Scott
You’re just trying to set yourself apart from the rest of the crowd on Instagram.
Craig
Yeah, exactly. Or even more so our competitors, right? You know, when I looked at my competitors, I looked at what they were doing. Quite frankly, it was boring. We wanted to kind of spice it up. How we do that, just to give an example of that. So I might take an image and and do the photograph almost as a studio shot where it’s impeccable, the ladies perfect. Everything’s absolutely perfect. And then the next post idea will be a very wrong picture. Where the lighting looks a little off, it might look a little grainy. I do that. There’s a reason I do that. I find, at least in our business, people like to see things raw as much as they like to see a polished law,
Scott
You and I, we’ve done some sales videos that are really polished. I think this is what you’re alluding to. No, I don’t think it’s got the feedback that we were expecting because it looked really cool and it had music and everything. And what you’re talking about is just taking your iPhone, putting it in front of the gecko, just letting it run or move around. People really appreciate that because it gives them a real sense of behind the scenes and being part of your community.
Craig
Right, I think the most important take away from what I’m about to say is it’s not so much specific on I do raw films versus polished films. It’s more. The message is that you really have to follow your statistics, right? As you said Scott, you and I did that. We did a video. It was professional level commercial. It’s not very little traction, right? But yet then I would take my iPhone, for example, and shoot a raw video which almost kind of gave up behind the scenes element to it. Right? And that shot off the roof. I’ll give you an example. So, like statistically, the video you and I did, I think it got, like, 5000 views or something, something that nature. I did a raw video that got over 70,000.
Scott
Wow, that’s amazing. Plus, it makes me feel better knowing that all our hard work went for naught exactly a little hard on the ego. We spent hours and hours doing that.
Craig
Look, I just tell it like it is key. I just tell it like it is, baby. I guess what my point is Obviously, when you see something that different, you gotta stop and go hang. Hang on a second. What just happened here? Then? We started kind of thinking. Do you think it’s people really like to see things raw? They like to see it behind the scenes. And I think with Facebook and Instagram and I have no statistics or anything going off of this. This is my gut feeling It’s very much a voyeuristic experience. You’re kind of peeking into everybody’s world, right? And I think, because that seems to be the nature of it and what what drives many of us almost the rawer and more realistic it is, the better response it,
Scott
right, right.
Craig
At least that’s in our experience. And I’m not saying, you know, I’ve done studio photos that look amazing. They’ve done fantastic, too. But that was certainly a trend that we had to address and look at, and we did. So we balance between the both now.
Carole
Do you get more traction off of Instagram or Facebook? Has that changed over time?
Craig
When I’m looking at statistics? Look, there’s certain statistics you have, and obviously, when people like photos or whatever, you obviously are getting a reaction from them on Instagram. It’s very simple for somebody to react. So if they’re leafing through their feed dat dat daa the they like something tapped their thumb twice. Boom, boom done on Facebook although the like button is further down in the bottom left corner, I honestly believe that makes a big difference.
Scott
Going to people’s general nature of being lazy.
Carole
Yeah, it does. Oh my gosh.
Craig
If I run a video on Instagram versus Facebook, I get very similar views. But the likes are way there 10 times more on instagram.
Scott
Your finding there’s more engagement on Instagram posts.
Craig
100%. Absolutely. I think it is just feel it’s more interactive than Facebook.
Scott
No, absolutely. And that’s why we’re asking you on here, because it’s a real world situation that you experience each and every day, and you have to generate sales and you have sales through this process that you’re doing each and every day.
Craig
I was just going to say, and the other thing for us that is absolutely mandatory. You have to post regularly, okay? You past the constantly be posting. I’ve seen times when I’ve, you know, I’ve been really busy and let’s have been posted for a few days. You see in your profile visits will drop off my profile Visits were dropping off almost 75%. Wow, once I’m posting regularly again, it shoots right back.
Carole
When you say regularly, Does that mean once a day? Three times five? Cause I’ve seen sometimes people are doing these experiments where they’ll post three times a day, five times seven times. It seems to be that, like, I don’t know five times a day is is maybe the most efficient, but that’s a hell of a lot of work. So how often do you post?
Craig
I can only post as my time will allow. So currently I’m able to post daily obviously my feeling on posting is you almost cannot post too much. So if you have the time you post because I will tell you from our experience, our social media platform has converted into sales. We get a ton of sales through both Facebook and Instagram a ton. They would be our biggest sales generators right now, more so than our website.
Scott
That’s awesome, Guy. We really appreciate your time here coming on and sharing with the listeners your real world insights, which is always great. So easy to read something on the Internet. You don’t really have an idea if it’s real world, but we really appreciate you being on here. Once again. I’m going to give some information out. His website is www.TheUrbanReptile.com. And if you guys are on Instagram, go visit him @The_ Urban_Reptile. Any last words for us, Guy?
Craig
No, thanks very much for having me on Guys. I enjoyed this.
Scott
Great to have you on here, Guy. We’ll talk later.
Craig
Take care, guys. Ciao!
Carole
And now we’re going to do our segment Worth The Spend.
Scott
Worth The Spend.
Carole
Is it worth it? Scott, you’re Worth The Spend today.
Scott
Ah, Carole. Thank you. And you’re Worth The Spend, too. Not exactly what we had in mind, but I’ll take it what this section is. We talk about things that help you guys produce your content and your media or just things in general. Like was that restaurant worth the spend and then we give you a little bit of a review on it. The first thing we’re going to deal with is what we’re using. This week. It is a Rode, it’s a company in Australia and they’re called Rode, and you guys can find them at www.Rode.com. They produce a lot of different components to recording. This item that I’m talking about is called the Roadcastor Pro. We were recording to a two channel Zoom H5, and we’ve since replaced it with this Rodecastor Pro because it’s awesome. It’s got four different input channels. You can plug in microphones. You’ve also got a USB. You can connect your computer. You’ve also got a cell phone you can connect and Bluetooth. We want to start doing calls to have guests on the show. We needed something, a device to do that. Did a bunch of research have come up with this Rodecaster Pro. I’ll do a review on it later. I’ll get more in depth and show you guys why it’s such a great item. But right now I’m just trying to give you a sense of it and how much we really enjoy it. And it is definitely Worth The Spend ( Cash register sound effect ). The other thing we’re gonna talk about just quickly are these awesome mics. They’re called Rode Pod mics. They go hand in hand with the Rodecastor Pro. There’s some settings in the Rodecaster Pro there an inexpensive, dynamic mic. There are $100 each. They are definitely Worth The Spend the Pod mic. ( Cash register sound effect ). Next thing I want to talk about are the plug ins that I use on our show. There’s a company called Fab Filter Plug Ins, and they are at www. FabFilter.com and I use two of their plug ins. I use Reaper, and you can download and evaluate that for free. And I use that program. So I just put Carole’s voice on a separate track. My voice in a separate track. I use their Pro M B, which is a multi band compressor on each of our voice channels play around with the settings, but I have a setting that I like, and I save it as a preset. And then on the master bus, I put their Pro L2, which is a limiter, and what those things do is they allow the recording to be as loud as possible. So when we put it out to the world. It sounds like a podcast, and it sounds loud, like other podcast that are on a high production level, and it is definitely Worth The Spend. ( Cash register sound effect ).
Carole
That’s amazing. Scott and I. What I really love is that you take the time to really research and learn about all of these different products, and then you can really help us learn if it’s Worth The Spend. I’m gonna talk about Master Class. So for Christmas this year, Scott gave me Master Class, which you can get at www.MasterClass.com. There are all types of people have classes on their
Scott
Their world class, like they’re the best in the world at what they do.
Carole
Give me some of the different kinds of people.
Scott
I just watched a really great one from Judd Apatow. There’s photography on there. There’s a really interesting one I think I’m gonna watch next is with an FBI negotiator.
Carole
What do you learn on that?
Scott
Basically, how to manipulate my wife better.
Carole
Oh, my goodness. I’m gonna block it from you if I can. I’ve been watching Dominique Ansel. We are familiar with Dominique because actually, after Dara was on Master Chef. As we spoke about in the last two episodes of our podcast, she went to work for Dominique in New York. She staged for him, which means she worked for a few days for him in New York at spring and summer break for a couple years. Then, when he came to open a restaurant and bakery in Los Angeles, he asked her to be on the opening team, so I knew a little bit about him. I was very excited to watch him on Master Class. I learned first off a little bit about his background, where he came from in France, who he worked for, how he got to the United States. And then he’s taught classes that started with basic French pastries. He taught how to make madeleines. He taught how to a fruit tart, and he taught how to make a chocolate cake bon bons. Croissants. And then they showed a overview of his current bakery in New York, where he invented the cronut.
Scott
There’s actually a disclaimer in Master Class that you’ll put on up to 2lbs just watching his class. Be careful.
Carole
It is. It’s really tempting. I actually know a lot of people that love Master Class, if not just for actually learning the process. There’s some women at work that watch it because they just like to watch videos and learn from the best. And as I had mentioned previously in another podcast, I want to know how the best people do everything, how they get motivated, where that comes from. What what is it in their background that moves them forward, which is what we’re talking about today. I have really enjoyed watching Dominique Ansel. Next. I think I’m going to go look at Gordon Ramsay’s. Since we know him in person, we’ve met him. That’s my Worth. The Spend is definitely. If you have the opportunity, go on Master Class. You’ll definitely learn from the best! ( Cash register sound effect ).
Scott
Well, guys, that brings us to the end of the podcast.
Carole
Number four.
Scott
Number four it is. That’s actually my favorite number. Carole just wanted to let you know that our home bases at www.ThisIsYu.com Yu is spelled Y U.
Carole
Like my last name. Be sure to subscribe on apple podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else you’re listening to us on podcast as a new podcast. We want to spread the word. If you have in any way connected to what we’ve talked about today, please tell your family and your friends can always get a transcript on www.ThisIsYu.com Under the blogged tab, we’d love to hear your comments and start a conversation and community. We are here for you.
Scott
And if you’re in the neighborhood, come by and say hi on Instagram we’re @ThisIsYuOfficial Once again YU is spelled YU. We both want to thank our special guests this week. Craig Stewart.
Carole
Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Craig. Our next episode couples working together and not killing each other.
Scott
Well, we’ve made it this far, but who knows? I do want you to sign the insurance policy after the show.
Carole
What are you planning on?
Scott
You’ll see. Thanks for listening, guys.
Carole
Bye.
