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Speaker 1: up now at Patreon dot dot NetRocks dot com. Hey
Speaker 1: guess what. It's dot net rocks all over again. I'm
Speaker 1: Carl Franklin and I'm Richard Campbell. We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: to our friend Richard Rukima. But first, hey, mister Campbell,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: Yes, friend, I'm good. Somehow it's February, you know, time
Speaker 2: shifting wise?
Speaker 1: Yeah, somehow?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is publishing on February thirteenth, which means
Speaker 2: my thirtieth anniversary just happened.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, Are you gonna go out to this store
Speaker 1: and buy an eight dollars head of lettuce? Just wondering?
Speaker 2: Is that the is the thirtieth Lettuce anniversary? Is that it? No?
Speaker 1: No, I just think it's when.
Speaker 2: The tariffski get.
Speaker 1: It's not even funny, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's I don't all right, of course we're speculating
Speaker 2: as to what's actually going to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 2: We don't know, we don't we don't know.
Speaker 1: It makes a good joke, might even doesn't It.
Speaker 3: Might even be in US dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have the Canadian US saying I guess I'm
Speaker 2: going to come up to America. Yeah, the Gulf of Canada.
Speaker 1: This is bad. I have two Canadians that are ganging
Speaker 1: up on the American here trouble. All right, let's kick
Speaker 1: it off with better no framework, roll the crazy music.
Speaker 2: All right, man, what do you got?
Speaker 1: Okay? Well, I went looking for, you know, GitHub repos
Speaker 1: that are trending right now, and like the top five
Speaker 1: are all AI things.
Speaker 2: Oh geez, no, you.
Speaker 1: Know it's no surprise, right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, it's all it's getting a lot of
Speaker 2: energy and it's down two ways about it.
Speaker 1: The number one was coge kho j. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you pronounce it. It's one of those made up
Speaker 1: names that nobody knows how to pronounce, Codge, coge whatever.
Speaker 1: But here's the about your AI second brain, self hostable,
Speaker 1: get answers from the web or your docs, build custom agents,
Speaker 1: schedule automations, do deep research, turn any online or local
Speaker 1: LM into your personal autonomous AI supports GPT, Claude, Gemini,
Speaker 1: Lama Quen, is it Gwen or Quinn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the local LM and.
Speaker 1: Mistral and get started for free. That's all I know
Speaker 1: about it. But they have some videos and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and like I said, it's trending and it's
Speaker 1: in that AI category. It's all built in Python by
Speaker 1: the way, so you know, but they have documentation and
Speaker 1: they have source and all that stuff. So if you're
Speaker 1: into it and you want another, you know, another Python
Speaker 1: project to look after, go for it. That's what I got,
Speaker 1: all right. He was talking to us today.
Speaker 2: Richard Grady comment, I went the way back machine on
Speaker 2: this one, okay, because I know we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about data privacy and the like. And back in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: on show nine sixty five, so almost a thousand shows ago,
Speaker 2: we did a show with Hugh Jones talking about EU
Speaker 2: data protection losses. This when of the GDPR was just
Speaker 2: coming into play, right, and so it was good to
Speaker 2: have a conversation about, you know, what does this look like,
Speaker 2: what should we do? And so ten years ago Charles
Speaker 2: wrote this comment and I'm going to summarize because it's
Speaker 2: quite a long comedy talking a little about terrorism and
Speaker 2: things like this, but I want to specifically get into
Speaker 2: the sort of rational some of these things about, you know,
Speaker 2: don't I don't want to prepare, prepare over cynical, But
Speaker 2: people seem to react irrationally to terrorism, and most governments
Speaker 2: are exploiting that. It's easy to justify anything when pretending
Speaker 2: it will save the life of a child. This is
Speaker 2: twenty fourteenth, just to you know. And the reality is
Speaker 2: that we should, but we must stay irrational. Doctors irrational
Speaker 2: when they consider applying a vaccine to an entire population.
Speaker 2: They are certain they will kill a number of people
Speaker 2: because of side effects, but it will save a far
Speaker 2: larger number. Kind of on the point, isn't it. And
Speaker 2: of course he goes on to talk about the role
Speaker 2: of nine to eleven in extending the surveillance state massively,
Speaker 2: and he does not believe that the NSSA and are
Speaker 2: it's European equivalent, So are using new powers only against terrorism.
Speaker 2: It's a lot to do with political and business intelligence.
Speaker 2: So I'm not shocked at NSA spies on some European leaders.
Speaker 2: It's their job. But I am a bit shocked that
Speaker 2: they spy on everyone. This is right after the snow
Speaker 2: did reveal right again, I think what surprised me most
Speaker 2: about the snowed and affair is not so much to
Speaker 2: scale the NSA spine, but the lack of reaction from
Speaker 2: everyone else, and probably the lack of understanding of the
Speaker 2: implications of what is going on there. Making a list
Speaker 2: of what data is collected on us would be an
Speaker 2: interesting geek out. Show your mobile collects and uploads all
Speaker 2: the places you've been in a day, and a nice
Speaker 2: little phone app with buttons to link your web browsing
Speaker 2: if your identity as well. Your web mail provider can
Speaker 2: get us your religion, political opinion, sexual orientation without having
Speaker 2: to ask. They even figure out if you're pregnant or not.
Speaker 2: And if they don't do it now, there's nothing that
Speaker 2: will print them from doing it someday in the future.
Speaker 2: The inner things will only make this worse. We should
Speaker 2: be keeping this in mind as we look at one
Speaker 2: of the most fundamental laws of nature that what can
Speaker 2: go wrong will eventually go wrong someday. So now, there
Speaker 2: was Charles talking about the surveillance state back in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen when the whole snowedent thing had blown up, and
Speaker 2: we were all talking about at least the fact that
Speaker 2: governments were doing it, but just a recognition that social
Speaker 2: media was doing it as well. So thanks Charles. I
Speaker 2: read your comment on the show, and a copy of
Speaker 2: music to Koba is on its way to UNI. If
Speaker 2: you'd like a copy of music Gooba. I write a
Speaker 2: comment on the website at dot net rocks dot comma
Speaker 2: on the facebooks. We publish every show there, and if
Speaker 2: you comment there and are reading the show, we'll send
Speaker 2: you copy music Koba.
Speaker 1: And you could follow us on the other social media's
Speaker 1: We've been on ex Twitter forever. We're also on Macedon
Speaker 1: in Blue Sky is the current hotness where there seems
Speaker 1: to be a lot of engagement there, so some variation
Speaker 1: of at Carl Franklin, at Rich Campbell, We'll get you there,
Speaker 1: you'll find us, you'll find us. Let's talk about the year, right,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, eighteen thirty seven. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: pick a few. You know. The thing is, I can't
Speaker 1: even get through March, yeah, because there's so many things
Speaker 1: that happen. January first, Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestriansyay.
Speaker 1: January twelfth, first woman elected to the US Senate. Hattie
Speaker 1: Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas made history by becoming the first
Speaker 1: woman elected to the US Senate. January nineteenth, Howard Hughes
Speaker 1: remember that crazy guy sets transcontinental air speed record. Very good.
Speaker 1: January thirtieth, Hitler's ominous Reichstag speech. In a significant diplomatic
Speaker 1: and rhetorical moment, Hitler addresses the Reichstag warning that the
Speaker 1: outbreak of war would result in the complete destruction of Germany.
Speaker 1: And he was right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty seven saw a massive destruction in massacres in
Speaker 1: Ethiopia at the hands of the Italian forces were very bad. Also,
Speaker 1: many events in the Spanish Civil War, too many to mention.
Speaker 1: March third, Emelia Earhart's mysterious disappearance and you got anything, Richard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This nineteen thirty seven is the year that Hindenberg
Speaker 2: went down that famous video clip. You've seen it and
Speaker 2: the oh the humanity.
Speaker 1: That's oh the humanity. Ay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also the year that the first jet eng were
Speaker 2: being tested be into development for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: but both Ohan and Whittell did their ground testing of
Speaker 2: turbine engines. So yeah, even before the war started, the
Speaker 2: engines were already in development, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of military technology going on.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on. It was a spendee time.
Speaker 1: It was a spending time. Yeah, all right, so let
Speaker 1: us bring in for the second time on dot net
Speaker 1: Rocks the third time? Is it second or third?
Speaker 3: Second? We've met three times?
Speaker 1: Okay? Well. Richard Rukmu's expertise is in creating or integrating
Speaker 1: software into a business value proposition. He's performed in many
Speaker 1: roles throughout his career, but remains focused on delivering an
Speaker 1: efficient and effective business process, blending the characteristics of a
Speaker 1: deep technical resource, an entrepreneur mindset, and a business analyst.
Speaker 1: Richard always begins his work by understanding the business context
Speaker 1: for his service. There's more about that, but he really
Speaker 1: wants to talk about his experience in Italian vineyards, right. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: The pairing of coding in a castle and wine go
Speaker 3: very well together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they certainly do. So, welcome back, Richard.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Appreciate appreciate being on the show.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and you have a lot to talk about today.
Speaker 1: You send us a whole bunch of topic ideas well,
Speaker 1: one big topic idea. But I'm just gonna let you
Speaker 1: take it.
Speaker 3: Well, I've been working in this space for a while,
Speaker 3: and I thought I had some time off, and I thought,
Speaker 3: what can I do with my time off? And I thought,
Speaker 3: I know what I'll do. I'll write a book. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: And the book's called The book is called The Empowered
Speaker 3: Customer dot Com. Yeah, and it takes the perspective of
Speaker 3: a customer's viewpoint of their data and how it's used
Speaker 3: in marketing, and how I can control and use that data.
Speaker 3: And I document how I create what is called a
Speaker 3: data cooperative, in which everybody owns their data into the cooperative,
Speaker 3: but the aggregation of the data becomes more valuable and
Speaker 3: the revenue from that data is then shared with those
Speaker 3: that contribute.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of this I'm trying to find.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I think about data, I think about
Speaker 1: data being you know, usage, data being stolen from people's
Speaker 1: phones and they're never seeing a dime for that data.
Speaker 2: But stolen's too strong a term. Right now, Natalie, give
Speaker 2: it away.
Speaker 1: You agrieved for them to you let them steal it. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about that?
Speaker 3: So one of my one of my posts that I've
Speaker 3: put up often is what if Google was a cooperative right,
Speaker 3: would may be worth billions? It's worth billions if not
Speaker 3: more right every time, wouldn't be you know? Said m hmm, yeah,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't. Well, the data is worth billions that are
Speaker 3: providing it, right, But the the how does Google get
Speaker 3: their data that they can sell and make that valuation?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: How do they get their data? And it's very simple
Speaker 3: in that they it's the breadcrumb of information that you
Speaker 3: use for search terms in their search bar. So if
Speaker 3: you say ski Calgary, that reveals a lot about you
Speaker 3: and that gets tagged to your profile and Google immediately
Speaker 3: then says, hey, I got a customer that wants to
Speaker 3: go skiing and he lives in Calgary. Who wants to
Speaker 3: know about this guy? And they sell that targeted advertising
Speaker 3: based on just those two terms. But it's just not
Speaker 3: those two terms, it's your entire history of search with Google,
Speaker 3: regardless of your persona or anything else. That those tags
Speaker 3: are a way to generate a profile of you that
Speaker 3: they sell.
Speaker 1: And everything that you search for goes into that profile
Speaker 1: and then can be put together to form a more
Speaker 1: complete picture of you. Correct.
Speaker 3: Correct, And now AI agents are even taking that further
Speaker 3: with contextual information about a discussion or anything that you have.
Speaker 3: And that's the same model being introduced where data is
Speaker 3: extracted from our activity involving with this information, and they
Speaker 3: make the money on information that we gleefully give them
Speaker 3: for free. And what I want to try to do
Speaker 3: is set up a cooperative that is owned by people
Speaker 3: that we willingly provide that same data but to the cooperative.
Speaker 1: And what kind of commie talk is that, Richard Rukma,
Speaker 1: that's crazy talk.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, gonna send me a check, Richard.
Speaker 3: I'll bow to your memory of what a cooperative is
Speaker 3: because it started in the thirties where people it was
Speaker 3: a weaving shop and they all helped each other build
Speaker 3: sure and do weaves and then sold the product. And
Speaker 3: then and then that was in the Saskatchewan. It started
Speaker 3: off as for power consumption, where a bunch of people
Speaker 3: wanted power and no corporation was going to do it,
Speaker 3: so they all got together and built themselves a power plant.
Speaker 1: And we have food co ops all over the place
Speaker 1: in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think, I really think it starts with
Speaker 2: the farmers with consolidating cereal crops that you need to
Speaker 2: be there best stored en mass and defended on mass
Speaker 2: and packaged in consistent formats and sold as scale. And
Speaker 2: no farmer can do all of that themselves. So you
Speaker 2: put together these the wheat pools, right, the cooperative pools
Speaker 2: to do the selling part to the point where they
Speaker 2: That's how you end up with the markets that can
Speaker 2: literally tell the farmer, hey, I can get this much
Speaker 2: for your wheat for next season.
Speaker 3: So I parallel that example exactly with everybody else, because
Speaker 3: we're actually the farmers of our own words that we create,
Speaker 3: and we contribute that into a cooperative which then aggregate.
Speaker 3: Through aggregation, becomes extremely valuable. And we've seen, like they
Speaker 3: think of all the social media platforms that leverage this model, Google,
Speaker 3: Pinterest X or ex Twitter as you call it, next Twitter,
Speaker 3: I mean blue Sky, I mean they all, all of them,
Speaker 3: all of them rely on this business model. And all
Speaker 3: I'm suggesting is that the data feed for this model
Speaker 3: is suggested in the book, is for your shopping patterns
Speaker 3: in physical retail locations or your local merchant. So if
Speaker 3: you're going to if you want to support your local merchant,
Speaker 3: you would engage with that local merchant using the technology
Speaker 3: that I've outlined in the book, which is not passively collected.
Speaker 3: It's actively collected from the customer to the merchant and
Speaker 3: is held in this data repository, which I call the
Speaker 3: snapching iq business model. And that snapching it business model
Speaker 3: is if you contribute, you get paid for it when
Speaker 3: there's money and revenue generated from your data.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking about this. I have a local grocery store.
Speaker 1: I go to check out and I scan everything, so
Speaker 1: there's the list of items that I bought, and then
Speaker 1: I pay with my credit cards. So there's my identity.
Speaker 1: What don't they already have?
Speaker 2: Well, the credit card is not your identity.
Speaker 3: In fact, the merchant has no identity from the credit
Speaker 3: card at whatsoever, and that's protected by what we call
Speaker 3: the bank Act. Okay, the only thing that will allow
Speaker 3: you to see the basket which is which is what
Speaker 3: you're talking about, the basket of at the checkout is
Speaker 3: a loyalty card.
Speaker 1: A loyalty card, of course, that's what they're for. That's
Speaker 1: how they do it.
Speaker 3: And the loyalty card is not for loyalty, it's for
Speaker 3: accumulation of data that's associated with the customer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, and you get a pitily little discount
Speaker 1: to make you think you thank you, you're getting some
Speaker 1: benefit from it.
Speaker 3: So I've been at this a while, and there's we
Speaker 3: have this what they call a coalition program. The coalition
Speaker 3: program that that is in Canada is called air Miles.
Speaker 2: I think you guys have it too in the States.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So in air Miles, they had to stop giving loyalty
Speaker 3: to gas stations. Do you know why why people were
Speaker 3: pouring gas on the ground so that they would get
Speaker 3: their next point Because they had to spend X number
Speaker 3: of dollars to get their loyalty points.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they fill up their tanks, but they hadn't
Speaker 2: gotten gone quite far enough to get their next set
Speaker 2: of points, right, So they'll just hump all the x
Speaker 2: dice gas.
Speaker 3: They poured it on the ground, like, oh, I'll just
Speaker 3: pour thirty cents on the ground make sure I get
Speaker 3: my next my next loyalty point.
Speaker 1: That's outrageous.
Speaker 3: And then what people didn't understand. What people didn't understand
Speaker 3: is that for every point in the air Miles program,
Speaker 3: it was worth a penny, and air Miles sold that
Speaker 3: data worth about twenty bucks. So you know they were
Speaker 3: giving away a penny but earning twenty.
Speaker 2: And doing it by dropping a couple of bucks with
Speaker 2: a gas on the ground in the process.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, because you know they It's just crazy. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: What the.
Speaker 3: Calculation of loyalty points is not done because it's money.
Speaker 3: It's because nobody can do it in their head and
Speaker 3: understand how many points are worth.
Speaker 1: All right, So back to this whole co op thing.
Speaker 1: Are you suggesting that these existing companies that collect data
Speaker 1: turn into co ops or are you suggesting that we create
Speaker 1: new services and new institutions that adopt the co op model.
Speaker 3: I think there's a great article I read by Simon Schneck.
Speaker 2: I think is es. I don't know if I say
Speaker 2: it's spelt it right.
Speaker 3: He's a business leader, and he says the capitalism of
Speaker 3: today is changed dramatically from the capitalism that we have
Speaker 3: in the thirties. The capitalism we had in the thirties
Speaker 3: was the benefit of the company to the people, was
Speaker 3: the primary concern of the corporation. The capitalism we have
Speaker 3: today is how much does the shareholders get? What is
Speaker 3: the revenue potential for the shareholders? And if we have
Speaker 3: to cut eighty percent of the staff. We'll do that
Speaker 3: just to make sure we keep the shareholder value up
Speaker 3: and forget about the customer. I'm just advocating for that
Speaker 3: now that we as customers, if we empower ourselves, we
Speaker 3: can make a change by cooperative what I call cooperative consumerism,
Speaker 3: where we if we cooperate in our consumersm of products,
Speaker 3: we can direct market forces to be in our favor.
Speaker 1: But how can we do that and keep our existing institutions?
Speaker 1: So how do we do it?
Speaker 3: The one example I often cite is gas stations in Canada. Everybody,
Speaker 3: if there's collusion at the gas stations, I'd like they
Speaker 3: say there isn't. They They've done studies it isn't. But
Speaker 3: when somebody goes up a penny, everybody goes up penny
Speaker 3: at the same time.
Speaker 2: Is it collusion? It's collusion. If they all got on
Speaker 2: the phone say I'm going to raise my price a penny,
Speaker 2: it's not collusion. If one of them raises the price
Speaker 2: of penny and the rest of them see that and
Speaker 2: then follow, that's true.
Speaker 3: True, But market market forces say that that shouldn't happen.
Speaker 3: They should.
Speaker 2: Right Like this is Adam Smith's sort of fictional idea
Speaker 2: that this had drive that down. You mean, the corollary
Speaker 2: should be true. If one of them reduces by a penny,
Speaker 2: the rest of them should all reduce because their sales
Speaker 2: would dry up.
Speaker 3: That that's true, and it does happen. That does happen.
Speaker 3: But what happens is if you raise your price a
Speaker 3: penny and everybody follows to raise the price of penny,
Speaker 3: the consumer still has no choice when when somebody who
Speaker 3: raises the price a penny should have less demand because
Speaker 3: there's other demands. There's other suppliers that will have a
Speaker 3: reduced price. Right, But if you collude to with each other,
Speaker 3: and I'm using that word clude that, oh his price
Speaker 3: went on, I'm going to take mine up. There is
Speaker 3: no choice in the market as to wear to buy
Speaker 3: gas because it's all the same price. So this cooperative
Speaker 3: consumerism is let's all buy gas by company X and
Speaker 3: exclude and exclude all the other ones, or just don't
Speaker 3: buy from one of the gas stations forget it.
Speaker 2: Just stop it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's their sales go down for the week.
Speaker 1: But that's not always a choice that every consumer can make, right, true.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I live in an inner city and
Speaker 1: my market is right downstairs from my apartment, and somebody says, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, to be a good CISZ and we're not
Speaker 1: going to buy from this marketing. We're going to buy
Speaker 1: from that market, which is, you know, ten minute walk away.
Speaker 1: My lazy ass isn't walking ten minutes just to satisfy
Speaker 1: some data sharing algorithm. Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very hard to convince consumers to change
Speaker 1: their behavior.
Speaker 3: I hear you. I mean if we look at clothing
Speaker 3: and we buy, and we have two T shirts in
Speaker 3: front of us, one's a fifteen dollars shirt and the
Speaker 3: other one's a five dollars shirt, Yeah, which one is
Speaker 3: the consumer going to buy? We are so as consumers
Speaker 3: centric on the right that we are causing demand like
Speaker 3: even in North America and the United States especially nowadays,
Speaker 3: or buy go, buy American, but you can't. You can't
Speaker 3: buy American because all the pieces of the supply chain
Speaker 3: are outside of America, right right, So we as this
Speaker 3: whole movement is understanding that in the old days, when
Speaker 3: you had a general store and a butcher, and a
Speaker 3: plumber and electrician, they all helped each other to make
Speaker 3: it sure. Yeah, sure, right, So it was only at
Speaker 3: the advent of a conglomerate like a huge store that
Speaker 3: we all start with C. I don't know if I
Speaker 3: can say it, just because I don't want to get
Speaker 3: any kind of going. Well, there's a lot of deflamminationary.
Speaker 3: But you know, we're fixated on the price, but we
Speaker 3: don't understand revenue diversification. So now these companies are leveraging
Speaker 3: us away from these models by saying, okay, our prices
Speaker 3: are three four five percent above operating, but we'll make
Speaker 3: our profit elsewhere. And that's on membership.
Speaker 1: All right. Let's take a town. Let's just start small here.
Speaker 1: Take a small town, maybe population twenty thousand, right, very
Speaker 1: small town, and there's a whole bunch of local shops.
Speaker 1: You know that everyone who lives in that town would
Speaker 1: prefer to buy local. They would prefer to visit the
Speaker 1: local coffee shop rather than go to Starbucks. They would
Speaker 1: prefer to, you know, go to their local restaurants rather
Speaker 1: than go to chain restaurants. And so you know, there's
Speaker 1: an opportunity to do something. I see because you've already
Speaker 1: got this sort of infrastructure in place. But if but
Speaker 1: if by another token, you live in a big city
Speaker 1: and you live where there's only big box stores and
Speaker 1: there's only chains and all of these things, and you're
Speaker 1: buying most of your stuff from Amazon. Anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: how how does that change?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I think the onus. I'm just proposing
Speaker 3: that we.
Speaker 2: Look upon ourselves to change.
Speaker 3: Okay, Like we can't if we don't blame if we
Speaker 3: blame the government from doing something wrong, that's a pointless argument.
Speaker 3: You got to look at yourself and who you voted for.
Speaker 1: You Well, there you go, right, Like good, point right.
Speaker 3: So your dollars are your voting mechanism for businesses that
Speaker 3: surround in your community and well, and governments are trailing indicators.
Speaker 3: It's not just who you voted for, it's what you
Speaker 3: told them you wanted in the process. You know, they're
Speaker 3: supposed to be. It's a representative government. So it's up
Speaker 3: to us to represent the ideas that we want to them,
Speaker 3: hopefully to get manifest in some way.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: But this, you know, the cooperative model banking is a
Speaker 2: great example of that, because we do have cooperative banks
Speaker 2: we call them credit union might and they try to
Speaker 2: be more regional and deliver services specifically to their communities
Speaker 2: and products so forth. They're still you know, regulated to
Speaker 2: a degree, so they there's limits on what they can do,
Speaker 2: But it's just a question of do you get as
Speaker 2: much value from that? You know, the upside of the
Speaker 2: larger cocommerate often is more bying powersore prices tend to
Speaker 2: be lower, and larger diversity of product offering, whether you're
Speaker 2: talking about banking or grocer.
Speaker 3: So the only thing I'm trying to arrange is the net.
Speaker 3: So if that's the thought of having a data cooperative
Speaker 3: and we clumulate data, the question then becomes, and I
Speaker 3: think you pointed out, Carls, how do we gather this data?
Speaker 2: How do we get this data?
Speaker 3: Because if you start a war against Google, you're going
Speaker 3: to lose. Sure, you start a war against Microsoft, you're
Speaker 3: going to lose, right right, So where is the source
Speaker 3: of data that we can have that streams in for
Speaker 3: this cooperative? And I'm proposing that we do it with
Speaker 3: QR codes that consumers can scan either at the door
Speaker 3: of the merchant or within the context of whatever that
Speaker 3: QR code represents. And now it's it's an opt in process.
Speaker 3: I'm not watching your WiFi, I'm not taking your bluetooth.
Speaker 3: I'm not scanning, but I'm scanning a QR code that
Speaker 3: this merchant is part of the customer ecosystem or the
Speaker 3: snapching iq business system.
Speaker 1: What is the benefit to the merchant to enroll in
Speaker 1: a co op where they have to pay out for
Speaker 1: data rather than just take it the way they are
Speaker 1: doing now?
Speaker 3: Participation? If I have a merchant that drives a loyalty
Speaker 3: program and I ask for everybody's email address, I'm going
Speaker 3: to get about three three to four percent participation in
Speaker 3: the loyalty program.
Speaker 1: But what if you give out cards though, loyalty cards?
Speaker 3: No, but that's the loyalty card has an identity to
Speaker 3: it that identifies you to that merchant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but everybody has them. I mean, it's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So if all their shoppers have identity cards loyalty cards,
Speaker 1: what is the benefit for them to move over to
Speaker 1: a model where they actually have to pay for that
Speaker 1: to the consumer.
Speaker 3: A larger broader audience of customers. So if I not
Speaker 3: everybody gets a loyalty card, yeah, and not everybody gets
Speaker 3: a wealthy card too, But think about just the data.
Speaker 3: If I take a loyalty card with Starbucks, I know
Speaker 3: how many times I go visit Starbucks, but I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many times I went to the
Speaker 3: luck to the that my profile doesn't at Starbucks doesn't
Speaker 3: show that I like bread, So it's an incomplete profile
Speaker 3: of the customer.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, I just have these questions. Getting back
Speaker 1: to the grocery store. You scan your loyalty card, you
Speaker 1: scan your food. They know you like bread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true, but whose benefit is that? Is it
Speaker 3: to the customer that they like bread or is it
Speaker 3: to the merchant?
Speaker 1: That definitely, it's definitely a merchant, and they reward you
Speaker 1: by giving you discounts. That's how they reward you. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody did the math to say how much
Speaker 1: do we have to give them so they keep using
Speaker 1: the card? Right, So that's an economic measurement.
Speaker 3: There's one thing here that you have to understand. Okay,
Speaker 3: when you scan the QR code, the data doesn't go
Speaker 3: to the merchant. It goes to the snapching iq business model.
Speaker 3: So now if everybody that participates in the snapchain iq
Speaker 3: business model, all that data streaming in from all the
Speaker 3: QR codes goes to the centralized repository of the data
Speaker 3: mart that represents that activity across all kinds of merchants,
Speaker 3: and that value that data becomes as valuable as Google's
Speaker 3: databases now okay, right, And because it's a cooperative, when
Speaker 3: that data is sold and used, you get a cutback
Speaker 3: for that data.
Speaker 1: So instead of you know, shopright getting selling their data
Speaker 1: as a global company or whatever, just the data that
Speaker 1: they have about you and your you know, your your
Speaker 1: bread choices, now they would become part of a bigger
Speaker 1: co op that has to do with you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of cars you buy and the kind of tires
Speaker 1: that you get, and where you go get your lunches
Speaker 1: and dinners and and all the all of the things. Right,
Speaker 1: So the data sets more valuable.
Speaker 3: And it's a much more complete. The data set's extremely
Speaker 3: valuable because not only is it not fake, because you
Speaker 3: can't fake going shopping at your local merchants, right, you
Speaker 3: can't let hire a click team in India to actually
Speaker 3: do that for you anymore, right, But the activity of
Speaker 3: a customer in that environment is shared with all the
Speaker 3: other customers in that environment to make the value. But
Speaker 3: what's more interesting about this is that if the interface
Speaker 3: of the snapching iq business model says I'm a concustomer
Speaker 3: and I want to start looking for TV. What if
Speaker 3: I just raise the flag that I'm looking for a
Speaker 3: TV so that all the merchants can see that I'm
Speaker 3: looking for a TV. And now we've got targeted advertising
Speaker 3: on intent as opposed to reaction like activity.
Speaker 1: Right right right, instead of getting ads for things that
Speaker 1: you just bought, which is my favorite thing in the world.
Speaker 1: So let's stay with the supermarket thing. So you're basically
Speaker 1: saying to shop, right, Hey, give up this your your
Speaker 1: own little world of you know, QR code or barcode
Speaker 1: scanning thing for your own data set tap into this
Speaker 1: bigger co op. You can still you know, just replace
Speaker 1: the barcode, right, you can still offer people a discount,
Speaker 1: you know, on their groceries or whatever the gas points
Speaker 1: they do it stop and shop here in New England.
Speaker 1: But then would they get money from the data that's
Speaker 1: sold to I mean if you're if is everybody that's
Speaker 1: part of the co op getting a check?
Speaker 3: So I outlined one other party in the data model,
Speaker 3: and that's called influencers. Right, I'm going to touch on influencers,
Speaker 3: but I want to go back to your barcode. We
Speaker 3: wouldn't replace the barcode because the barcode's tied into their
Speaker 3: pos and that's already very in pricing and everything else,
Speaker 3: so you can't. You're not going to displace that. But
Speaker 3: I'll get give you an example of what some markets
Speaker 3: did in Spain that caused a tremendous amount of traffic
Speaker 3: to grocery stores in Spain.
Speaker 2: Okay, are you familiar with this story?
Speaker 1: No, but I can't wait to hear it. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm smiling.
Speaker 3: So somebody thought, you know what if you're single and
Speaker 3: you want a date, go shop groceries on Thursday night
Speaker 3: at Spain. Wow, and everybody was single that went out
Speaker 3: and they shopped groceries. They went and bought groceries in
Speaker 3: Spain on Thursday night. They showed pictures of these grocery
Speaker 3: stores so jam packed with guys and girls running their
Speaker 3: carts into each other. Oh, that's great as introductions to.
Speaker 2: Do it, that's great, But.
Speaker 3: That wasn't because the market thought it was a great
Speaker 3: idea to do. That's because consumers came up and said,
Speaker 3: you know, we're not having this virtualized stuff. We want
Speaker 3: to have real face to face visits and through the
Speaker 3: cooperation of the of all the customers.
Speaker 2: They did that.
Speaker 3: So that's interesting in this model, we are joining a
Speaker 3: cooperative group. And why does the merchant want to do that? Well,
Speaker 3: it increases participation because people want to scan those barcodes
Speaker 3: because it represents pennies on the dollar for their activity.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: I mean the part I don't think you've emphasized here
Speaker 2: is participating in that cooperative for one store means that
Speaker 2: they also get access to the customers of all the
Speaker 2: other stores.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now so yeah, yeah, you know the customer that signed
Speaker 2: up in that got into the cooperative because they went
Speaker 2: and got tires, now also is in the cooperative for grocery.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the important charact that is that there's no
Speaker 3: outbound activity for marketing out of Snapchin. It's always inbound.
Speaker 3: So in snapchain, there's an inbox.
Speaker 1: Now, snapchain is something that you've mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: times without really defining it. What is that?
Speaker 3: So in the book I talk about the snapchaing IQ,
Speaker 3: which is the business model, and then I did an
Speaker 3: MVP of the model in a product called Snapching. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: And you can go to snapchin dot com and there's
Speaker 3: it's a full site where merchants can enroll, generate QR
Speaker 3: codes and hang.
Speaker 2: Them up in their merchant locations.
Speaker 3: Okay, right, as part of the See this is how
Speaker 3: it would work in terms of one hundred percent privacy compliant,
Speaker 3: ethical data management of customer data. Because merchants can participate
Speaker 3: in this and get huge participation in the program. Merchants,
Speaker 3: the customers enjoy it because they're actually getting benefit from
Speaker 3: participating in the model. And I talk about how we're
Speaker 3: going to build this so that it's a worldwide movement,
Speaker 3: and it's like, you know, think big, but build small.
Speaker 3: So I live in Kolona, BC, So why not just
Speaker 3: have five or six merchants in COLONABC that are participating
Speaker 3: in the model and see it grow. Calgary, Evans and Vancouver.
Speaker 3: Those are all regional areas that we can see this
Speaker 3: kind of movement grow. But all the data goes in. Now, remember,
Speaker 3: no merchant sees personal identifying information.
Speaker 2: They don't get that.
Speaker 3: They only get statistical information. If they say, hey, I
Speaker 3: want to do an ad for cauliflower, we can use
Speaker 3: that definition against the database to see who's interest in cauliflower,
Speaker 3: So they would know how many emails they're going to
Speaker 3: send now I say emails, but it's actual really a
Speaker 3: message to a consumer that wants cauliflower through the app
Speaker 3: in the app, but that's charged to the merchant. So
Speaker 3: therefore the efficiency of the marketing in the in the
Speaker 3: whole business model is dramatically improved. So instead of saying
Speaker 3: hundreds of million dollars are marketing that fails, merchants can
Speaker 3: now pay exactly for how much that message is going
Speaker 3: to return to them.
Speaker 1: So, by signing up and sharing your data, you mentioned
Speaker 1: you know, ethics and privacy and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: The data is obviously scrubbed, but you also said that
Speaker 1: the data would be sold, and the sale of that
Speaker 1: data would precipitate payments to the people that participate in
Speaker 1: the co op. So in order to in order to
Speaker 1: join this, you really have to sign the agreement. Read
Speaker 1: it really closely that you are going to be sharing
Speaker 1: your data. Big surprise, you're already doing it, but at
Speaker 1: least you have a say in it.
Speaker 3: Remember that the data that's being shared with the merchant
Speaker 3: is statistical and aggregated information. It's not personal. They don't
Speaker 3: get email editors, so they don't get phone number.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Because the model, the business model sits in between and
Speaker 3: protects the customer from all the forces that want to
Speaker 3: understand that information.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. All right, let's take a little break. We'll
Speaker 1: come right back with Richard Rukima. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: dot net rocks and stay tuned. Did you know you
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Speaker 1: slash Modernize. All right, we're back. It's dotting at rocks.
Speaker 1: I'm Carl Franklin, that's Richard Campbell, hey, and that's Richard Rukman.
Speaker 1: We're having a really interesting conversation that sort of borders
Speaker 1: marketing and big data and and these economic forces. It's
Speaker 1: I love.
Speaker 3: These ethical data management, ethical data manage.
Speaker 1: Ethical data management. Yeah, it's really cool. So my next
Speaker 1: question is how can you know when we come up
Speaker 1: with these great ideas. Sometimes we don't think, oh, I
Speaker 1: forgot people are evil? How are they going to take
Speaker 1: advantage of this system? So how do you see the
Speaker 1: protections in place, and what are the places that somebody
Speaker 1: could gain the system.
Speaker 3: Well, we're already seeing it in some areas where the
Speaker 3: QR codes are being like are being other QR codes
Speaker 3: are being stuck on top of the QR codes and
Speaker 3: then you don't see the scanning and where that takes you. Right,
Speaker 3: The important difference in the technology of snapchain the business
Speaker 3: model is that when you scan a QR code, it
Speaker 3: doesn't take you anywhere because it generates a text message.
Speaker 3: That text message is a one eight hundred number that
Speaker 3: you can see clear as day that Okay, I'm sending
Speaker 3: a text message to the service from my phone to
Speaker 3: this number to be able to get the understanding of
Speaker 3: what the benefit is behind the QR code, and I
Speaker 3: think it's a two step, two factor method authentication. It's
Speaker 3: just not a UR code that you're getting brought sent to.
Speaker 3: You are asked to scan the code, take a look
Speaker 3: at what it's there on your phone from a message,
Speaker 3: and then pressent And that's the opt in process to
Speaker 3: make this absolutely hundred percent privacy compliant. Because you are
Speaker 3: the one that's activating the requiry.
Speaker 1: You have MFA jeez, can somebody set up a phone
Speaker 1: farm and you know, create hundreds of thousands of accounts
Speaker 1: to to get money, to steal money out of the
Speaker 1: out of the co op. I mean, are there other
Speaker 1: potential pitfalls there? Well?
Speaker 3: Never, there's there's I don't know who set up, but
Speaker 3: somebody said, never underestimate the creativity of a criminal mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, But remember the activity of a bot as opposed
Speaker 3: to activity of a human is vastly different.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: If you're in two different shops within ten seconds and
Speaker 3: the shops are five klomters apart, yeah, somber. I. I
Speaker 3: chose local merchants for a reason because I want to
Speaker 3: support my local merchant in the business that they do.
Speaker 3: Because ninety five percent of all employment is local merchants,
Speaker 3: it's hard.
Speaker 1: To argue against it, against buying local, right.
Speaker 3: It's it's hard because we all have to support each other, right, right.
Speaker 3: But the whole model of this was I didn't want
Speaker 3: a mobile application. I didn't want to have a registration process.
Speaker 3: I just wanted somebody to see a QR code and
Speaker 3: think that's a good idea. I've heard about this snapchin
Speaker 3: business model. I want to participate. All you got to
Speaker 3: do is scan the QR code with your camera, it
Speaker 3: generates the text message and you're registered. You're in the program.
Speaker 3: I don't know your name and I don't really address,
Speaker 3: but I have your phone number.
Speaker 1: Oh, so it's all through Smster. There's no apps.
Speaker 3: There's no app as of this right now, there's no app,
Speaker 3: and I don't want there to be an app because
Speaker 3: I don't want the friction of saying, oh, to participate,
Speaker 3: you got to download this application and register.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, you know, if you're going to be on iOS,
Speaker 1: which is probably where you want to be, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to you know, share revenue with Apple and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Nobody wants to do that.
Speaker 3: Well, but it makes sense to me not to have
Speaker 3: the app because it's more of a friction to register.
Speaker 3: Anybody today that sees a snapchain QR code can scan
Speaker 3: the code and immediately be very participating in the model.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: You need a particular kind of customer for this, right
Speaker 2: that this is someone who cares about how their data
Speaker 2: is uses. Because the non trivial number of people who
Speaker 2: just don't care, right, it's an overwhelming problem people talk
Speaker 2: about all the time. Lots of will say, yeah, I
Speaker 2: care about my privacy, but won't lift a finger to
Speaker 2: actually do anything about it. I totally agree.
Speaker 3: The only difference here that I think is different, and
Speaker 3: it really talks to the millennials and even anybody under forty,
Speaker 3: is the fact that if you participate, you're going to
Speaker 3: get paid.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how much of an incentive
Speaker 2: that really is not going to be that much money.
Speaker 2: I'm more con I think most people would be interested
Speaker 2: in just my data not being abused.
Speaker 3: Well, that's fair. There's a new model out called customer
Speaker 3: Data platforms, and we're seeing everybody gather this data in
Speaker 3: the customer data platforms. There is another company that I
Speaker 3: just found, in fact, I saw it yesterday. It's called Rupt,
Speaker 3: who does this thing called pods, which allows companies to
Speaker 3: store their data, your personal data into a repository called
Speaker 3: a pod.
Speaker 2: You know this is this is tim Berner's Lee's solid technology.
Speaker 3: You're guid that into that Internet that introduced internet, right,
Speaker 3: that created the Internet.
Speaker 2: That made the world Wide Web world.
Speaker 3: The The problem that I see about that, though, is
Speaker 3: your identity is still attached to the data in the pod.
Speaker 3: So therefore it becomes an incentive to break into the
Speaker 3: pod because once you break into the pod, you gather
Speaker 3: all kinds of information about a person with identity.
Speaker 2: That's not how Solid works. Solid they would have a
Speaker 2: token to the data, which they may or may not
Speaker 2: have rights to, like it's not actually in the pod,
Speaker 2: just the token identifier. The whole point of Solid is
Speaker 2: your data stays with you, and you only assigned tokens
Speaker 2: out for utilization.
Speaker 3: Well, like I said, I found it yesterday, and my
Speaker 3: interterpretation of that was different where because I looked for
Speaker 3: that specifically and they said the identity and the data
Speaker 3: were stored and that in snapchain, I want to use
Speaker 3: distributed identity and verifiable credentials to separate identity from the data.
Speaker 3: So the data that's in the database doesn't have identity
Speaker 3: right in Snapchain's model to eliminate that. To have a
Speaker 3: take on but yeah.
Speaker 2: You're only you only want to deal with the aggregates
Speaker 2: where I mean Solid's real mission there and on include
Speaker 2: a link to the Solid project was about how do
Speaker 2: I say, how do I give a company my information
Speaker 2: to deliver a product to me but not have them
Speaker 2: be on their mainly list for forever. So it's literally
Speaker 2: like for the duration of this transaction, you have my
Speaker 2: address at the end of that transaction, you don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in that regard, snapchain is identical because the
Speaker 3: customer is in charge of how much information they allow
Speaker 3: the merchant to find them.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would argue just realistically, like giving the
Speaker 2: customer a sense of what their data is being used
Speaker 2: for would be a hell of an improvement. But I
Speaker 2: got one other angle for you, Richard to consider, which
Speaker 2: is that personality that kind of customer is also the
Speaker 2: one who just wants to remain hilt. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: going to block their don't block their cookies, use VPN
Speaker 2: like disguise themselves. That people that the active members in
Speaker 2: this problem space, their primary goal seems to be just
Speaker 2: leave me out.
Speaker 1: You know, both of you guys are assuming that people
Speaker 1: are a lot more intelligent than they actually are.
Speaker 2: Now, the whole preamble of this, Carl, was that the
Speaker 2: customer here is a small segment of folks. Most people
Speaker 2: don't care.
Speaker 1: Most people don't care. Yeah, yeah, you're right, okay.
Speaker 3: And most people don't care about their data. Absolutely I
Speaker 3: agree with it, because there's no value to them all.
Speaker 3: The value for them to putching my terms into Google
Speaker 3: is I get the Google product for free.
Speaker 1: All right? So what is the elevator pitch to your
Speaker 1: brother in law who you want to sign up and
Speaker 1: scan the QR code? What are you going to tell them?
Speaker 1: The benefit to them.
Speaker 3: Is save your money, protect your data is the tagline.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's not enough? How much? Well, how much am
Speaker 1: I going to get back?
Speaker 3: It all depends on all the various revenue streams that
Speaker 3: can be dred from the.
Speaker 1: Dam you lost me. I want to I want a
Speaker 1: dollar amount, right, I'm an American consumer over here, and
Speaker 1: I want a dollar amount.
Speaker 3: One million as I stick my thinking and I know
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm just not that small.
Speaker 1: You're right.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a theoretical exercise. People got all
Speaker 3: as communism, but it's you know, your fire department is
Speaker 3: a socialist movement.
Speaker 1: Well that was a department, all right.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I know it's a joke, but
Speaker 3: it's true. But people will take this down because it's
Speaker 3: like I'll never work. Okay, I'll never work, but what
Speaker 3: a job?
Speaker 1: Say? Once?
Speaker 3: You know it takes the crazy people to change to
Speaker 3: make crazy happen.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea. I just think that
Speaker 1: in order to get you know, cousin Joe to to
Speaker 1: to to enlist or whatever, you have to give him
Speaker 1: a hard benefit.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, so let's do let's take this one angle.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the influencers.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: I wrote a whole book on this about influencers, right,
Speaker 3: and how do influencers monetize their audience? And right now
Speaker 3: they do it with advertising and branding, which is what
Speaker 3: I call a negative feedback loop. But if I am,
Speaker 3: and I'm particularly interested in your guys product your perspective,
Speaker 3: because you guys are both influencers. Right, So if you
Speaker 3: say product X is the greatest product I know of,
Speaker 3: go get it. But while you're shopping and picking it
Speaker 3: up at the local merchant, like somebody like your bars
Speaker 3: and new kid like, how many people do you drive
Speaker 3: to your your your gigs?
Speaker 2: Carl do?
Speaker 1: How many people do I drive? Oh?
Speaker 2: You're driving people to I know what you mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you're driving traffic to that company.
Speaker 1: So if you're advertising to drive people to the gigs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So this is called outcome fees.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So if I stuck a QR code on your stage
Speaker 3: and people came up and scanned it to say, this
Speaker 3: is for the benefit of Carl. Now the merchant understands
Speaker 3: what Carl's activity was and how how much influence you
Speaker 3: had to drive customers into activity.
Speaker 1: Right, But what's the benefit to them? Right?
Speaker 3: The benefit to them is they have got a customer
Speaker 3: in their store. They got a customer in the bar.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about somebody who I'm talking about, somebody who
Speaker 1: comes up and is at one of my gigs. Incentive
Speaker 1: to scan the QR code can't just be because it
Speaker 1: will benefit Carl.
Speaker 3: Sure it will. They love you, Yeah, but they'd rather
Speaker 3: daily to go see you.
Speaker 1: They'd rather take out a ten dollars bill and throw
Speaker 1: out my guitar case.
Speaker 3: Well, that may be true, just easier what.
Speaker 1: A q QR code. I don't even know what that does,
Speaker 1: onlygo are you gonna send me some virus something?
Speaker 3: That may be true.
Speaker 2: This is the idea.
Speaker 3: If they go to that bar continuously after your shoal
Speaker 3: and they see Carl's QR code and they scan it
Speaker 3: every time, they're contributing to your influence because it's your
Speaker 3: influence that got them to go to that merchant location.
Speaker 3: Yeah okay, And it's a way to track influence without
Speaker 3: taking advertising or branding dollars.
Speaker 1: As long as you can give them something in return, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, a CD, a free MP three file,
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't know.
Speaker 3: And they say like that, when you scan a QR code,
Speaker 3: there has to be some value to the customer.
Speaker 1: Yeah for scanning, scan the QR code and we'll send
Speaker 1: you links to all of our music. That kind of stuff. Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I just talk about influencers for a while, because
Speaker 1: Richard and I lived through the golden age of podcasting
Speaker 1: and maybe some people would argue that it's happening now,
Speaker 1: but no, I don't think so, at least for us.
Speaker 1: We were literally one of the first podcasts ever and
Speaker 1: certainly the longest monetized podcast and when there was no competition,
Speaker 1: life was really good advertising wise, and then you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of just dwindled down, and now it's I mean,
Speaker 1: we barely make enough. I don't mind saying this. We
Speaker 1: barely make enough to pay the editor, right, I mean
Speaker 1: we don't. We're not really making money here. We do
Speaker 1: this because we love to do it. Furthermore, we're we're
Speaker 1: not pushing products that we don't believe in in our ads.
Speaker 1: Uh Okay, I can't say that we're not We're not
Speaker 1: doing that. I can say that, but we also have
Speaker 1: been on a platform that requires us to put ads in.
Speaker 1: If you probably heard the show later, you've heard those.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is, you know, we don't do
Speaker 1: the show so that we can make ad revenue, you know,
Speaker 1: to line our pockets and make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Like and I think that as I see celebrities now,
Speaker 1: you know, aging into more infomercial roles and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to push products and stuff like that, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of sad.
Speaker 2: You know, well, you missed the best influencer revenue generator
Speaker 2: them all. Scam coins. Okay, educate me exactly what you
Speaker 2: think it is. You create a crypto coin that you
Speaker 2: pump up with hypes that everybody buys in, and then
Speaker 2: you sell all the ords before it dumps. Yes, it's
Speaker 2: a classic pump and dump. Its multi level marketing, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you tell two friends, and you tell two friends in
Speaker 2: the first place, I think.
Speaker 1: At the top end of the of the scale, like
Speaker 1: the people who have you know, YouTube shows that are
Speaker 1: have you know, bazillions of views and they sell a lot.
Speaker 1: They get a lot of advertising revenue from YouTube typically
Speaker 1: they're like into shock value. Then you know they're they're
Speaker 1: they're saying outrageous things, they're doing outrageous things, and it's
Speaker 1: not at all beneficial to humanity, not at all. It's
Speaker 1: not even beneficial to the social good. It's beneficial to
Speaker 1: them and the people watch it because they slow down
Speaker 1: in an accident for the same reason. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally get it.
Speaker 1: But and it's really freaking sad.
Speaker 2: And it is.
Speaker 3: Sad, which is why I want to do something about it.
Speaker 3: I want to do something.
Speaker 1: Waves with this stuff so you can't find the really
Speaker 1: good stuff when you go looking for it.
Speaker 3: I want to be able to form people into communities
Speaker 3: that benefit from each other. Yeah, not just some person
Speaker 3: that's you know, screaming at their houses on fire and
Speaker 3: whaling because her ten million dollar house. Can she's suddenly
Speaker 3: lost her ten million house, which I feel for sure great,
Speaker 3: like anybody you lose any house, it's bad. But put
Speaker 3: her on social media and like, it's sad, it's sad
Speaker 3: that we have to pay attention to this without and
Speaker 3: they contribute. They get so much from that that endeavor,
Speaker 3: Like any influencer will they get addicted to that, right.
Speaker 1: Did you read the book Influencer? And I don't remember
Speaker 1: who wrote it, but I read it twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: It was actually Eileen Crane who sent it to us
Speaker 1: Richard as regional directors back in the day. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was stories of people who made a difference. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't that they had economic success making a difference,
Speaker 1: but they were really influential and changed the world. And
Speaker 1: believe it or not, one of them was Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 1: And you probably heard if you've been watching the news
Speaker 1: and the funeral and people doing speeches, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: about what he did with guinea worm, which was a
Speaker 1: disease that was caused by people, mostly in Africa, going
Speaker 1: and getting water from a pond which had these guinea
Speaker 1: worm larvae in it and then either drinking it or
Speaker 1: bathing in it or putting it on wounds or whatever.
Speaker 1: And it was perpetuating this guinea worm. And he basically
Speaker 1: taught them, you know, he takes some pantyhose and strain
Speaker 1: the water through it and then you can drink it
Speaker 1: and then you can do what you want with it.
Speaker 1: But guinea worm tunnels itself out through your skin and
Speaker 1: it's absolutely horrible and painful. And what people would do
Speaker 1: is they would have these outbreaks and then they would
Speaker 1: go to the pond and then they would you know,
Speaker 1: cool it off with the water, thus adding more guinea
Speaker 1: worm larvae to the water and perpetuating the cycle. And
Speaker 1: he basically saw this and just started an education campaign
Speaker 1: and he eradicated guinea worm. He did. Wow, Jimmy Carter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the next time you, you know, you think about
Speaker 1: having to you know, stay in line and every other
Speaker 1: day in the gas line in the seventies, Yeah, that sucked.
Speaker 1: And not sure what he could have done about it,
Speaker 1: but maybe he could have. But but he did a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like he was a true influencer in
Speaker 1: the very biggest sense of the word. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: the lofty goals of your of your endeavor here, Richard.
Speaker 1: I just I want to know how you know you
Speaker 1: can you can get it through the veil of selfishness
Speaker 1: that the American consumer has wrapped themselves in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. I am an idealistic person and I
Speaker 3: think I try to think out of the box. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I do know that today it's not working. It
Speaker 3: doesn't work for anybody except for the corporate giants and
Speaker 3: the tech giants. You know, they take our data and
Speaker 3: they use it and they do whatever they want to
Speaker 3: do with it.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: And we have to have more quality in terms of
Speaker 3: that revenue generation, I agree, in our society or we're
Speaker 3: gonna you know, we're gonna the feudal lords of medieval
Speaker 3: times died because the pitchworks came out. And there's somebody
Speaker 3: that talks about the pitch When the pitchforks come out, yep,
Speaker 3: you know, we're all going to be in trouble. And
Speaker 3: trust me that pitchforks are coming right.
Speaker 1: By the way they have come out.
Speaker 2: They have literally Hey, before we wrap up to I
Speaker 2: want to d d besmirched pooral Jimmy Carter because he
Speaker 2: wasn't president ntil nineteen seventy seven and the oil embargo
Speaker 2: was nineteen seventy three. That was Nixon and then Ford. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like most presidents, they they take the blame for
Speaker 1: what happened before they took office. Yeah, yeah, too bad.
Speaker 1: It's too bad.
Speaker 3: Well, I really appreciate you guys taking on the show.
Speaker 3: It's not quite a technical shot. I was going for
Speaker 3: the more ethical data management.
Speaker 2: It's definitely but there's definitely a technology here in a
Speaker 2: data privacy issue here, Like these are all topics on
Speaker 2: the show, absolutely, and you are trying to you know,
Speaker 2: we've got a problem with the way data is being
Speaker 2: you know, this all really started because we wouldn't pay
Speaker 2: for stuff on the internet the first place, right, And
Speaker 2: so they came, they came up with strategy. They they
Speaker 2: eventually discovered the strategy, Hey, your telemetry, your digital effluent
Speaker 2: is valuable. So yeah, what if we never did charge
Speaker 2: for you for this product, so you'll just keep using it? Right,
Speaker 2: Like there was a time when they wanted you to
Speaker 2: pay for search, just people wouldn't pay for search.
Speaker 1: And we have a phrase that we always say, which is, hey,
Speaker 1: if the product's free, you are the product product.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is my little attempt to kind of
Speaker 3: flip the tables on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great and say, you know.
Speaker 3: We we can do it together, right, We can and
Speaker 3: certainly can take the customer perspective on capitalism, not the
Speaker 3: merchant's perspective. And we're here to help the customer get
Speaker 3: a better experience, not the shareholders, which is the alumni ILLUMINII.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Of where the pitchworks are aimed.
Speaker 1: Right well, and it also in the end helps the
Speaker 1: merchants too, so.
Speaker 3: It does it you know that revenue is diversified across
Speaker 3: a whole wide range of merchants, each providing a service
Speaker 3: that is local to your environment, near your community.
Speaker 1: Very good, well, I wish you good luck with that.
Speaker 1: And what's the website again?
Speaker 3: The Empowered Customer dot Com is the landing page and
Speaker 3: from there that you can go all kinds of links.
Speaker 3: There's a whole bunch of social media posts on there.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to I'm trying to be the most social influencer,
Speaker 3: right kad alick guy, So you know I'm doing my best.
Speaker 1: Good And I still haven't heard from Larry Lestig if
Speaker 1: we're going to do a code in the castle next year,
Speaker 1: but if we do have any suggestions, go back to
Speaker 1: the same place or the same castle, or you have
Speaker 1: any other where he was thinking about the South of France.
Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, I would say the South of France is
Speaker 3: a great place. But I would also say that he
Speaker 3: can reduce the pricing of the of the experience by
Speaker 3: driving traffic to those merchants that we attended to in Italy, right,
Speaker 3: like it wasn't just us going to the Colden Castle.
Speaker 3: It was us as a group of consumers driving to
Speaker 3: all those different merchants. And my advice to his model is,
Speaker 3: and I've talked to him about this, get these merchants
Speaker 3: involved so that they can see how much traffic you're
Speaker 3: generating to them, because it's just not coding the castle.
Speaker 3: If people who hear it on Colden Castle tell their friends,
Speaker 3: and they tell to friends, then all those people are
Speaker 3: going to be going to those merchants.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, very good. And we know that those those
Speaker 1: customers have money because they can afford to go to
Speaker 1: code in the.
Speaker 2: Castle, had mondy had Bundy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had money. Right, they're going to spend some
Speaker 1: ching in your wine store.
Speaker 2: Well that's where the then actually that's one last point.
Speaker 3: Snapchin came from the snap of a camera and the
Speaker 3: ching of a cash register. Oh, snap ching, snapching.
Speaker 1: Very good, Richard. It's been a pleasure talking to you,
Speaker 1: and I hope to see as soon.
Speaker 3: Ye Take care, guys, appreciate your time, all right, and.
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Speaker 3: Then my Texas a lie Reddit b