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ChickenBones: A Journal
for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes
Jazz is an extension of the black man, freed, who found himself still shackled to the
same chain, all shinned up, when he unwittingly ventured out into their free world of
opportunity and wealth, only to be assaulted, whipped, murdered, and raped some more
Books by Floyd W. Hayes, III
A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies / Forty Acres and a Mule: The Rape of Colored Americans
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Jazz Moves: Studying Black Progressive Music
Paper delivered by Floyd W. Hayes, III
African American Jazz Caucus/ Jazz Research Institute Conference
North Carolina Central University April 17, 2008
Thank you, Dr. Ridley, for your kind introduction. I also want to thank you for inviting me to be this mornings guest speaker.
I am pleased to return to North Carolina Central University in this capacity. I have been an Eagle for more than 40 years, graduating in the class of 1967. In October, 2007, we celebrated our 40th reunion. From a class of approximately 250, about 100 of us returned to NCCU for Homecoming last year. Collectively, we made a class gift of approximately $75,000 to NCCU.
It is significant that we come together in this second annual conference of the Jazz Research Institute here at North Carolina Central University. As you know, NCCU has taken the lead as the first of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities to establish this kind of institute, which is designed to preserve our musical and cultural heritage and its impact on the world. The collaboration between Dr. Ira Wiggins, Director of Jazz Studies at NCCU, and Dr. Larry Ridley, Executive Director of the African American Jazz Caucus, in establishing the Jazz Research Institute is monumental. Therefore, please join me in congratulating them for their outstanding achievement. We also need to do everything possible in order to support this important endeavor, now and well into the future.
I want to talk briefly about the forces that encouraged me to develop a course I presently offer at Johns Hopkins University: Bebop, Modernism and Change. While I know that the Jazz Research Institute here will and should emphasize performance, music theory, and production, I trust that the institute will have space for courses like this one that focus on the intersections among jazz or black progressive music and literature, history, philosophy, sociology, politics, and economics. For me, jazz also is an intellectual projectit is a way of looking at the worldthat expresses the tragicomic life experiences of black people in an anti-black world. Jazz, as black progressive music, is both performance and discourse. We need to pay attention to all aspects of jazz in order to preserve our musical and cultural heritage.
In the early 1950s, my parents introduced me to jazz. I remember listening to those old 78 rpm records, featuring Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Lionel Hampton, and Erroll Garner. My father was especially captivated by Garner, who hummed as he played the piano. I also had an uncle, who was a jazz saxophonist. He played in a number of night clubs in Los Angeles. One night, I went along with him to a gig in a Hermosa Beach night club.
From those early years, I retained an interest in Black progressive music that has lasted to this day. Initially, I was a listener, but I soon became a student of our music. It was in the 1960s that I began to understand jazz as a dimension of our complex and complicated historical experience in the Americas. In those days, I read liner notes on albums, seeking to learn as much as I could about jazz musicians and their music.
As a Black Power adherent and graduate student in African Studies at UCLA in the late 1960s, I was captivated by the possibilities of revolutionary nationalism. The first book I read on the subject of black progressive music was Frank Kofskys radical 1970 study, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. By the 1980s and 1990s, I was reading such magazines as Downbeat and then Jazz Times. What caught my attention was the paucity of Black jazz critics. Black jazz artists always were shown on the magazine covers, featured in interviews, and written about in cover stories. Records reviews appeared in every issue. But the writers were mainly, almost always, white.
In this model, black musicians only were portrayed as performers. I began to wonder how jazz artists interpreted their musicwhat the music meant to them. How did they look at the world, and how did their music reflect and express their world view? Clearly, the music spoke to the life experiences of black people. Here was the substance of the blues-jazz aesthetic; musicians and their music always articulated a message. Examples are legion: Louis Armstrongs Cant Give You Anything But Love, Billie Holidays Strange Fruit, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Salt Peanuts, Coltranes Alabama, Nina Simones Mississippi God Damn, or Miles Davis classic album, Kind of Blue.
By the time that I joined the Department of Political Science and the African American Studies and Center at Purdue in 1991, I had begun to think about developing a course on some aspect of jazz, but I wasnt quite sure about its focus. I became close friends with Antonio Zamora, jazz saxophonist and Director of the Black Cultural Center at the university. When he and his Indianapolis ensemblethis aggregation usually consisted of guitarist Steve Wheatley, drummer Lawrence Clark, and organist Al Waltonperformed at Knickerbockers, a local pub in Lafayette, Indiana, I often would help Tony set up. He stored the groups equipment in a location around the corner from Knickerbockers. It was a major task moving the heavy organ, which was Big Als thrown. On one occasion, Tony even took me along to a gig in Ohio.
These experiences, along with discussions with Tony and the members of his ensemble about black progressive music, led me to begin serious research for a course that focused on jazz. Significantly, Tony became my friend, mentor, and brother. He helped me to understand the importance of struggling to interpret the meanings of jazz and the intent of jazz artists. Our relationship continues, as Tony and I talk at least twice a week.
As we all know, Black music is the history of Americas blues people. Beginning in the history of American enslavement, captured African slaves and their American descendants created work songs, spirituals, gospels, ragtime, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, and contemporary rap and hip-hop culture. Even the different forms of jazz (Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Avant-garde, Free Jazz, and contemporary Smooth Jazz) represent Blacks peoples struggle to hammer out a narrative about their tragicomic existence in the world. With a genealogy in both sacred and secular consciousness, Black progressive music is a way of looking at the world, a strategy of theorizing the Black existential situation in the world, and a means of engaging the worldin the face of white supremacy and anti-Black racism. And like Black life, jazz movesit is creative, innovative, and improvisational.
Years ago, I came across the following statement about jazz by the late great percussionist, composer, educator, and activist Max Roach. In a 1962 essay, entitled Jazz, he wrote:
Jazz is an extenuation of the African chants and songs. It is an extenuation of the pain and suffering of those long, and too often, destinationless trips across the Atlantic Ocean, deep in the holes of those dark, damp, filthy, human slave ships, endured by chained, innocent, black men and children. Jazz is an extenuation of the humiliations suffered by these same human beings while being sold as cattle or produce. It is an extenuation of the pain of the whip, the assaulter, the procurer, the driva man, the patrol wagons, the kidnapper, the sunup to sundown slave field and plantation. It is the extension of many, many lynchings, castrations, and other improvisations of genocide on these same black men, women and children. Jazz is an extension of the black man, freed, who found himself still shackled to the same chain, all shinned up, when he unwittingly ventured out into their free world of opportunity and wealth, only to be assaulted, whipped, murdered, and raped some more. The Spiritual, Race Music, Rhythm and Blues, Dixieland, Jazz, (and never, yet, any of the music named by its creators, but by the disdainful, master observer). Jazz is an extension of the black artist being relegated to practice his or her craft, even today, under these intolerable, too similar, conditions.
Max Roach
Reading Roachs was the final motivation I needed to begin to formulate my ideas for a course on Black progressive music that fitted with my own education, outlook, and sense of jazz as a narrative of the life experiences of Blacks in the African Diaspora.
Since joining the Department of Political Science and the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 2004, I have been teaching Bebop, Modernism and Change. Although jazz had emerged out of the lived experiences of African-descended Americans during the early decades of the twentieth century, many white American musicians and entrepreneurs had appropriated swing jazz by the 1930s. Reflecting the structure of Jim Crow segregation across the landscape of America, large swing jazz bands often excluded black musicians, denying them the means to maintain economic self-sufficiency. Hence, as always in America, white supremacy, cultural appropriation, and capitalist exploitation were dynamic elements of a social structure of domination.
By the 1940s, a cadre of young black American musiciansthe stellar list includes Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monkset in motion a paradigm shift that challenged American cultures social and musical inequality. The bebop musical revolution was characterized by innovative and improvisational moves as black American and Afro-Cuban creative artists produced a new, intense, and rebellious sound that reverberated throughout American society. The seminar explores the social and political content, meanings, and intent of jazz music, in general, and bebop music, in particular. While the major historical focus is from the 1940s to the 1960s, the seminar also examines the broader history of black progressive music (jazz) and its impact on the social transformation of modern America. The ascendancy of bebop, as an intellectual and musical system, embodied and reflected the political and social conditions of the turbulent 1940sthe frustrations, aspirations, subversive sensibilities, and protests of a progressive group of black American musicians.
As World War II ended, black Americans once again began to challenge the national and global structures of white supremacy, economic exploitation, and cultural imperialism. Demanding to experience the democracy they had fought for during the war, black Americans called for the end of segregation in America and the termination of colonialism in Africa. It was during these moments of agitation and protest that black creative artists began to express a new musical sensibility that embodied, reflected, and accompanied the new social movement for black liberation.
For numerous historical reasons, particularly since the advent of modernity and the rise of the Enlightenment in Western Europe during the 18th century, the production of Africana cultural and literary discourse has been a political act. In particular, black American cultureand black culture in Latin America and the Caribbeanemerged within the context of Western cultural dominationthe Atlantic Slave Trade, chattel slavery, imperialism, colonialism, segregation, white supremacy, and anti-black hatred and violence. These structures and processes of domination also served as the cultural milieu in which Western Europeans and Euro-Americans came to define and represent their African captives and their American descendants as negative and inferior, often sub-human. Hence, the life experiences of native black Americans have been characterized by intense political, social, and cultural struggle.
Black American creative artists have themselves engaged in various forms of resistance in the historic and monumental battle for black liberation, human rights, and self-determination. In many ways, reflecting black peoples experiences with the underside of modern American culture, beboppers and their complex and improvisational music might be considered counter-modernists, as they both embraced and challenged modernist American culture. In the broadest sense, black American music tells the story of the black experience in America; it also exposes the illusions of American democracy. In denying freedom, justice, equality, the consent of the governed, and the pursuit of happiness to blacks, white Americans historically devalued the nations highest political values.
How is it that the musical and cultural production of a people so despised, oppressed, and exploited could become so important to America? How did this music become Americas music, actually long before Representative John Conyers led the passage in 1987 of the House Resolution declaring Jazz as a valuable national American treasure? Jazz performers and their music also have had profound effects on American culture. One only needs to examine the literary movement of the 1940s and 1950s, which came to be known as the Beat generation. Here was a movement in which poets, essayists, and novelists employed a jazz cadence in their writing. Today, jazz has audiences and adherents around the world.
In a world in chaos and on the verge of international anarchy, how can we understand and value black American progressive music? Through an historical examination of this musical tradition, seminar members have the opportunity to reflect upon the complex meanings, intent, and content of bebop music. The seminar stresses an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge (literary, historical, political, cultural, and philosophical), allowing for a reconsideration of the meaning of bebop music and the significance of its black American creators with respect to the changing character of American society.
As Julie Thompson Klein asserts in her book, Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities: [A]n interdisciplinarity rooted in critical thought reinvents scholarly and public discourse by regenerating method and epistemology. When intellectuality is premised on rediscovery and rethinking, resocialization and reintellectualization, interdisciplinarity becomes not just a way of doing things but a new way of knowing. Thus, interdisciplinarity recognizes the inter-connectedness that propels our increasingly complex society and its cultural production and understands that the measure of competence for its members will reflect their ability to grasp this characteristic. In the final analysis, the seminar is designed to equip students with a method of inquiry that will be useful in understanding the complex interconnections of bebop music and social change in America from the 1940s to the 1960s and beyond.
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Required Texts:
Anderson, Iain. 2007. This is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Jones, LeRoi (Baraka, Amiri). 1963/2002. Blues People: Negro Music in White America. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
OMeally, Robert G. 1998. Ed. The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Porter, Eric. 2002. What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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To access the web version of this course, use the following link: http://webhost5.nts.jhu.edu/africana/jazz/jazz/
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The new Jazz Research Institute at NCCU has the potential for providing a site that fosters a variety opportunities, which might include the following:
Seminars, lectures, workshops, performances given by professional jazz musicians/educators. Retired musicians need to be invited, for students and young musicians can learn so much of value from the life experiences and perspectives of older and retired jazz artists. Importantly, we need to celebrate master musicians while they are alive;
Research on all aspects of black progressive music by visiting scholars;
Seminars on the historical, political, economic, sociological, literary, and philosophical dimensions of black progressive music, in which scholars can interact with jazz educators, jazz performers, and young and jazz students;
The specific development of black jazz critics, especially those who pay particular attention to black jazz musicians as artists, intellectuals, activists, and critics;
The celebration of black progressive music in black communities in Durham and Raleigh. Jazz is for the people; it is the peoples music; it speaks to life experiences of Americas blues people.
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The Beat Generation: Silencing Blackness
December 2, 2004
Ms. Cynthia Requardt Curator "On the Road: The Beat Writers of New York and San Francisco" MSE Library Johns Hopkins University Dear Ms. Requardt: Each time I visit the MSE Library and observe the exhibit, entitled "On the Road: The Beat Writers of New York and San Francisco," I have become increasingly disturbed by a display of Beat Generation figures and their work that ignores the central influence of black expressive culture on that movement. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, how is it that Johns Hopkins University, one of the world's major institutions of advanced learning, could mount an exhibit of an important American cultural movement and choose to overlook what Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison refers to as America's "Africanist presence"? Therefore, I am compelled to offer this brief comment. The casual observer could walk past the exhibit's portrait of Bob Kaufman without realizing his black American (mixed-race) heritage. I know of other pictures of him that are less ambiguous. In neither the exhibit nor the exhibit's brochure is there a comment about Kaufman's racial identity. Absent is any mention of the extent to which he employed the black expressive culture of jazz innovation and improvisational art in his work. To all those who understand the significance and meaning of the Beat movement, black American art forms were central to that project and to the making of modern (and even postmodern) American culture. Hence, Bob Kaufman's racial and cultural identity is important and should have been acknowledged in the exhibit. Significantly, other key black American figures, such as Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) and Gloria Trapp, also should have been included in the exhibit. Black artists were not footnotes or appendages to white Beatnik histories of people like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Rather, black cultural workers and their innovative and improvisational styles were central. In his new book, Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation, Aldon Neilsen writes:
The tale of the Beats has too often been half a tale, albeit full of sound and fury, and the stories of such innovative black artists as Stephen Jonas, Bob Kaufman, Harold Carrington, Gloria Trapp, even Baraka himself have yet to get adequately told. The major biographies of Ginsberg give only scant space to Baraka, who was a crucial colleague. Critics such as Moss and Turco would have us believe that half of the tale of American poetry and culture, casually and inaccurately rendered, is the whole story. Allen Ginsberg knew better (2004: 117-118).
As an artistic movement, the Beat expression was inconceivable without the influence and example of black expressive culture. I am aware that no single exhibit can be totally inclusive, but we need to discontinue the long nightmare of whites' narcissistic self-regard that, too easily, excludes and forgets the central importance of blackness to modern and postmodern American intellectual and cultural life. Sincerely, Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D. Coordinator of Programs and Undergraduate Studies Center for Africana Studies Senior Lecturer Department of Political Science Johns Hopkins University 107 Greenhouse 3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218 Phone: 410-516-7659 FAX: firstname.lastname@example.com
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Are there a significant number of jazz programs at HBCUs?Rudy
Rudy, There may be jazz studies programs within departments of music, as is the case at NCCU. But NCCU is the first HBCU to establish a Jazz Research Institute. Jazz studies programs are designed to train jazz performers. A jazz research institute has a broader mission. I tried to speak to my own vision of that project. I am not a musician, but I love the music; and I approach my course with an attempt to get at the history and politics of jazz, especially the bebop revolt. As always, Floyd
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AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books
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A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family thats about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrinas inexorable winds is the voice of Wards narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her familys raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brothers blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt. Her fathers hands are like gravel, while her own hand slides through his grip like a wet fish, and a handsome boys muscles jabbered like chickens. Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isnt usually just metaphor for metaphors sake. She conveys something fundamental about Eschs fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, whats salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.
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Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today… than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarcerationbut her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that.Publishers Weekly
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The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
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Browse all issues
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson / Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 — The Founding of Haiti
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posted 26 April 2008
Related files: Letter to Bob Kaufman Bob Kaufman Bio


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I just wanted to thank you for all your help. I was a basket case last night, and you really made the process a lot easier for me. Thanks to you, I am at work today and getting a lot done. So, thank you for being such a gentleman and being so nice to me last night, and for helping me to get my truck back. It was wonderful to wake up and see it in my driveway. Thanks again!
Janine Haines – Via telephone


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National disgrace. A commentary on the destructive national Riots
It's been a tough few years for Britain and we have faced hard times among the job cuts, high unemployment, and the banking fiasco's. It is no wonder that as a nation we feel angry and that many feel that… Continue Reading


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Chief Flynn Excuses Failure of Law to Hold Criminals Accountable by Lowering Bar for Citizen Disarmament
"Wisconsin Police Chief dismantles gun lobby-backed law that lets criminals carry concealed guns," #ResistTheGunLobby claims. "In a new video, Now This highlights Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn's struggle to protect his community as a result of a gun lobby-backed law that lets criminals with multiple misdemeanors carry loaded, concealed guns in public."
Before we get into this further, let's look at how twisted up these people get everything just as a matter of course. Corroborating the truism that for "progressives," every day is Opposite Day, it should come as no surprise that the #Resist hashtag is invariably used by those advocating for a state monopoly of violence. What they're resisting is the true egalitarian power sharing that can only be achieved through an armed citizenry. You know, freedom.
And that's not surprising, because #ResistTheGunLobby is a subsidiary effort of Mark Kelly's and Gabby Giffords' Opposite Day-named Americans for Responsible Solutions. Seeing that citizen disarmament is neither American nor responsible, it figures an Astroturf operation would disparage populist efforts by citizens banding together to petition for redress of grievances. As Jeff Knox of The Firearms Coalition reminds the elitist press:
"Let me make something perfectly clear: The NRA is not the Gun Lobby. Neither is the NSSF, nor the GOA, nor even The Firearms Coalition, nor the hundreds of grassroots and activist organizations or the thousands of local gun clubs. I am the Gun Lobby. Whenever you talk about the Gun Lobby, you are talking about me."
That's who Mark and Gun-Grabby Gabby are really resisting. So it's no surprise they would pick an oath-breaking political appointee as their voice of experience. Economist and author Thomas Sowell wrote a perceptive comparison between Chief Flynn and Milwaukee Country Sheriff David Clarke, noting:
"Chief Flynn puts less emphasis on aggressive police action and more on community outreach and gun control. Sheriff David Clarke represents an opposite tradition, in which the job of the police is to enforce the law, as forcefully as necessary, not to make excuses for law-breaking or to ease up on enforcing the law, in hopes that this will mollify rioters. Sheriff Clarke would also like to see law-abiding blacks be armed."
Flynn's emphasis is evident in the video ARS features, in which he almost sounds like he knows what he's talking about to those who don't know how to read between the lines. He starts out by talking about rights for "the law-abiding." That's meant to sound "reasonable" and "common sense," and make a mainstream audience receptive to what he says next, which is anything but:
"Now in Milwaukee, the overwhelming majority of our arrested felons plead guilty to misdemeanors – they get a plea bargain," Flynn admits. "And I get it, the system's overwhelmed with arrests. But the problem is, when they passed the law in Wisconsin, they only said convicted felons can't qualify for a gun permit, so I've got armed career criminals with concealed permits guarding drug dealers – we call them 'human holsters.' They're sitting in their car with three felons and they're carrying three guns. Okay? That's a crazy law … It's an irresponsible law passed by irresponsible legislatures who are more interested in ideological points and I'd sure as hell like some more community outrage about that because that's what's driving the violence in this city and too many public officials are silent on it."
In other words, because Milwaukee won't hold criminals accountable for their actions, the solution is to lower the bar for what it takes to disarm citizens. And attack those who disagree as crazy and irresponsible. Standard gun-grabber M.O…
"Flynn's reply was completely inaccurate — and, by all accounts, borderline insane," United States Concealed Carry Association Founder Tim Schmidt observed (as documented on M14Forum.com). "As it turns out, I'm not the only one who found Chief Flynn's statement so far off base as to be almost unbelievable. Mike Crivello, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, retorted:
'I have never had a conversation with you, Chief, relative to you displaying that we are arresting an overwhelming amount of people, or even one person, who's committed a crime while carrying a CCW (permit).'"
Leave it to people whose whole existence depends on disinformation and distortion to brag that such a delusional fabrication "dismantles" the "gun lobby." Or to have as their great example of "resistance" and virtue a uniformed enforcer and a man who wouldn't keep his vows. It's small wonder his oath is treated with similar "fidelity."
[ot-video type="youtube" url="https://youtu.be/PNXXiHl9dWE"]
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After failing to quell a succession of crises, European Union leaders will gather in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, on Friday to seek a unified response to Britain's decision to leave the bloc.
The leaders are also expected to discuss upgrading their defense cooperation and cracking down on clandestine migration. But the meeting is described as "informal," and major breakthroughs appear beyond grasp at this point.
Three months after the vote for "Brexit," as Britain's decision to leave the bloc is known, the European Union has done almost nothing to respond to the sentiment behind that vote — and it has shown few signs that it can take effective measures to address public concerns.
Still, the summit meeting will be rich in symbolism: Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain will be excluded, a signal that the survival of the European Union will require the other 27 member states to make a fresh start.
What's at stake?
A priority for many European leaders is halting the growth of populist movements that threaten mainstream parties before important elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands next year.
The leaders are mindful that the European Union is widely regarded in some member states as an elite project that diminishes national sovereignty, and of the extent to which that has lifted the popularity of far-right parties that once appealed only to the fringe.
The rise of Donald J. Trump in the United States and the British referendum in June on European Union membership have made those concerns even more acute.
Yet there are powerful players like Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, who continue to encourage joint European action in a wide range of areas, despite the discord.
"Never before have I seen so much fragmentation, and so little commonality in our union," Mr. Juncker said on Wednesday in an annual State of the European Union speech. But, "only together are we, and will we, remain a force to be reckoned with."
Mr. Juncker also used his speech to voice support for the greater use of common military forces, the expansion of a joint investment fund that would amount to €630 billion, or about $700 billion, by early next decade, and the creation of a European version of the Peace Corps, a volunteer program run by the American government.
Divisions over migrants
Germany's decision to open its doors last year to more than one million asylum seekers has left it somewhat diplomatically isolated, even among its allies. Eastern European countries, in particular, are increasingly going their own way.
The host of the meeting on Friday, Slovakia, is suing the European Union authorities over a quota system that requires it to accept Muslim refugees from Greece and Italy, where many asylum seekers first arrive in the bloc.
Hungary will hold a referendum next month on whether to accept the mandatory quotas. In a sign of the growing acrimony, Luxembourg's foreign minister suggested this week that Hungary should be thrown out of the European Union, in part over its policy toward refugees.
Divisions over the economy
The generally wealthier countries of northern Europe remain at odds with the poorer and more debt-ridden south over economic policy in general and austerity in particular. The bloc may soon need to decide how to prevent problems in the Italian banking sector from reaching a crisis point that would destabilize the euro.
Europe will also need to decide soon on whether to pursue, while President Obama is still in office, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States, aimed at creating the world's largest trading zone, at a time of strong popular opposition to the initiative in Austria, Germany and elsewhere.
Divisions over 'Brexit'
As the bloc tries to define its future relationship with Britain, there is little scope for headway on Friday.
Germany and several other countries, including the Netherlands, prefer a pragmatic approach that would offer Britain different options to preserve economic ties with Europe.
Others, notably France, favor a tougher approach, to discourage other member states from leaving the bloc.
What might be accomplished?
The European leaders will press for something that would almost certainly not be on the agenda if Britain were still at the table: joint military headquarters. Leaders will also discuss expanding readily deployable European Union forces and increasing joint cooperation on military procurement.
Britain had long impeded steps that might have led to a joint European Union military, preferring to maintain the primacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But such moves are favored by other influential countries, including France and Germany, which support closer military coordination on the Continent as a way to combat terrorism and to secure the bloc's borders. Such plans could be formally endorsed in December.
Leaders are also expected on Friday to endorse allocating more police officers and equipment to help Bulgaria guard its southeastern border with Turkey and to help prevent another wave of mass migration.
The meeting will also include a discussion of plans to increase joint spending on infrastructure projects to help stimulate growth at a time when interest rates are already at record lows and many economists are calling for Europe to ease up on its austerity policies.
Why Slovakia?
In early July, as his nation took over the revolving presidency of the bloc, Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia said that hosting European Union leaders in his country would send a signal that smaller member states could take a bigger voice in the bloc's affairs.
There is growing disquiet in Central and Eastern Europe that policy making in Brussels has been dominated by larger countries like France and Germany — particularly in the area of migration.
Whither Europe?
The looming question is how much the meeting in Bratislava can contribute to addressing Europe's biggest challenge: reversing the notion that pro-European leaders and the Brussels bureaucracy are promulgating a vision of Europe that is increasingly out of step with the political sentiment in much of the bloc.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, the body that organizes the bloc's summit meetings, warned this week that moves toward centralization were increasingly unrealistic. The European Union "is often treated as a necessary evil," he said, "not a common good."


text:
Jesse and Rich interview internet startup entrepreneur and discuss his trademark punch and the beads on his social profiles. Andrew advises new entrepreneurs to pick up the phone and talk to customers. Or text, chat. Say thanks and ask why they bought. Learn what they need to improve your business.
Show notes
- ManyChat.com
- BotAcademy.com — learning how to do chatbots
- Chatblender.com — Do it for me service
Jesse: What's going on, Richie?
Richard: What's happening, Jesse?
Jesse: A broadcast day.
Richard: I'm excited. I'm sorry. I'm jumping the gun here.
Jesse: Yeah, we're definitely excited today.
Richard: I'm always excited. We're normally helping merchants grow their business and then sometimes we're bringing on developers or dev or other software that helps them grow their business. But we're gonna get to do a couple of things today. We're going to talk to a fan of our own fellow podcasters.
Jesse: Side benefit of doing podcast.
Richard: Which is build your Rolodex or whatever. We don't know if he'll call us back or not we'll see. (laughing) But we know this person is of the same mindset of us. He loves helping other people and it's very obvious in everything he's done. And just I'm super excited.
Jesse: Yeah, absolutely. The reason we do this podcast is we want to help the Ecwid community, want to help other people. Beyond that, we want to help people get started and get over the hump. So with that let's bring in our guests. This is an internet startup entrepreneur and host of the awesome podcast Mixergy, Andrew Warner.
Andrew: Hey, thanks for having me on.
Jesse: Yeah, absolutely.
Richard: Thanks for coming. If anything, we're going to have to take your knowledge and bring it back a few notches here because although these people could have built big businesses in brick and mortar, most people that are using Ecwid are mostly ma and pa maybe up to teams of five. A lot of solopreneurs though, you want to keep it simple, so I want to keep it as simple as possible. And mostly as we stated earlier, we're super fans of your podcast. You've interviewed — not just been successful yourself — but you interview amazing proven entrepreneurs. We're not only gonna get your insight but we're gonna get your insight via all those interviews of other entrepreneurs as well. At the very highest level, from a mindset perspective if we were starting there and then we'll get into some more tactical stuff. What do you think an entrepreneur who's just getting started and maybe they're still a wantrepreneur and they're not even really necessarily made any money yet. What's the mindset that they should be thinking about?
Andrew: Let me ask you this before we start. Why didn't you guys come to a scotch night that I organized? You knew scotch was in your area.
Richard: We didn't find out. What you specifically alluded to is social media marketing world, we're down there. You invited everyone to come to have a scotch with you. And we really wanted to and I probably could have more than Jesse, so I'm throwing my own self under the bus. He lives far away and he would've had to Uber along the way. I had plans and damn it I'm making sure I don't have plans next year. (laughing)
Andrew: I got to tell you I got this incredible suite. It was giant. It was just fantastic and I had meetings there and I just enjoyed sleeping there because I like a good experience. And I said: You know what, it's great space. I'm going to invite people out to come to scotch. I don't mean to call you guys out on it. I want to actually use that as an opportunity to show people the way that I think about entrepreneurship and business in general. What I did was I said to people who were at the event: If you want to come to my room for a scotch night, here's my room number and here's a chatbot that you can subscribe to, that will update you and let you come into the room. And people did come in. I specifically had instructions cause these suites when you get to a certain floor, they don't just let anyone come up you have to have a key. I told the people downstairs: Anyone who mentions my name, I want you to give them a key and make sure that they have a comfortable time coming upstairs. Which is kind of a weird thing? Nobody does that. They were shocked. But there's a reason behind it. Yes, I like Scotch. Yes, I like people and I'll do that anytime. What I was trying to do is understand people's problems. I was trying to get in their heads on an emotional level, in a way that you couldn't get if you had people fill out a survey. I want to understand since I was talking about chatbots and we could talk a little bit about that here. Did they even understand what chatbots were? Do they even understand who I am? Did they come to that conference with a specific goal that I could then — if I come back and speak the next year — feed off? And that's the way that I think about business. We want to understand people's problems in as creative a way as possible. Most people try to put the creativity into what to make, what to sell. I think creativity needs to go into how do we get into the hearts of the people that we want to sell to, to understand the real problems that they have. Because if we do, then we can start to sell them something that they want and that they could be happy with. And since this is me talking about myself and people don't really know me yet, I'll tell you and tie it into other entrepreneurs that I've interviewed. I'll actually tell you about a pair of entrepreneurs, the founders of Airbnb. When they started out they were listening to Mixergy interviews. They emailed me and they pitched me on being on and at first, I said: No, I'm not sure you guys are ready. But they came back and they pitch me and they said: Yes, I do want to be on Mixergy, we're ready. Here's what we've got. And one of the things that they told me when they got on and I'm glad that I had them on, obviously. They said that no one was using Airbnb except for a few people in New York. So they flew out to people in New York. They asked to stay at their homes and as they stayed at their homes, what they were looking for was why people were using it. What's the problem they were solving. Barry Manilow was drummer, was one of the people who they met with, whose home they stayed in. The person said: It's OK to have somebody rent my room, which is what everybody was doing — letting people rent rooms at the time. The drummer said: Look, I'm on tour for weeks at a time, this place is empty. It's weird when somebody is here while I'm here. But it's not so weird if I'm not here and this place is staying empty. I just don't like that I'm paying rent on an empty spot. If you guys could solve that for me, that would be a big help. And so they obviously did and Airbnb now does more business renting, whole spaces, apartments, homes than they do renting a corner of a person's home or a bedroom. They found lots of things like that. A lot of people didn't like the small images that they had on Airbnb's web page. It was too tough to get a sense of where they were staying when they saw small images. They understood the pain and they improved the images by not just taking bigger pictures or asking for bigger pictures but going out with their cameras and taking bigger pictures of the location. So what does this mean for an
Richard: It's funny, you actually stay consistent because if I remember right I was looking at your Twitter profile and your location. It says Your heart. That's actually where you're headed to get it. So staying consistent all the way through. I love it.
Andrew: I got to say part of that is that my wife loves to travel and so do I. And it's really hard to pin this down. And so especially when I wrote that down, we were traveling a whole lot. And one of my goals this year is to run a marathon on every continent. And as I go to meet entrepreneurs on every continent. Seven marathons on my own largely, seven continents in one year. And so yeah, it's really hard to say I'm in San Francisco where I live.
Richard: Be updating it all the time. Sticking with the Twitter profile for a second, what's the punch all about?
Andrew: Oh, the punch. Yeah. On my photo, there's a punch and if you look a little carefully on the punch, you'll see that there's a bead that I'm putting, there's like a bracelet with beads on it. What I noticed is that there are a lot of people listening to my interviews and getting things out of it. They were actually learning. I told you about the Airbnb, there are so many other people. The founder of Tuft & Needle too, I think a hundred seventy million dollars a year now selling mattresses online, who was a pioneer of a bootstrapped company. He's listening to Mixergy interviews, an early customer of mine and he learned a lot. But there are a lot of people who are learning and not doing anything and I'm sure you found that with your podcast. People who are listening, who may be a week, a year or whatever from now will say: I didn't really get much, I don't know that these guys are actually that helpful. The truth is that it's often not what you're learning. It's often not what other people are putting out there. It's the hesitation that we all have internally. I call it the counter mind. Everything that I want to do, there's a part of my head because what if it fails, what if it's going to be too much trouble. What if it doesn't work out, what if you embarrass yourself. And so an easy example is I'm going to run a marathon on every continent. Before I told people that was my goal, there was a little voice in my head that said: Maybe you won't finish it if you won't be able to do it. Maybe this isn't the year for you. And so that counter mind is what stops entrepreneurs. Now if you had a job, if this was you working for a boss, you'd have no room for counter mind. You'd say: Well, maybe I shouldn't actually post this new thing. Maybe I shouldn't tweet out, maybe I shouldn't Instagram this photo of what I'm selling and show people what I'm selling. And the boss would say: You have to do it. And you go: All right, I have to do it. It's on him, it's now her issue. It's their problem. It's not me. But in reality when you're an entrepreneur that voice is there and that's what crushes you. And so the punch is to punch that inner critic what I call the counter mind. Punch it, punch it in the face and when I say that to some people they go: Oh, punch it? because they see it as such a real thing, they almost humanize it. I'm obviously telling you to punch a concept, there's no violence happening here but I do want you to punch that inner critic to understand that counter mind is just there to counter you. And the beads on the end of it are what I've discovered is that that little voice that is actually supportive that tells me: Yeah, you do want to do this. Yeah, you're ready to fail and who cares if people see your Instagram photo of the thing that you're selling. They don't want to buy or if people see that you're selling this thing, you're promoting it to your friends that you've got this store and they don't want to go on and buy. The little voice that says: Who cares? I like to experiment. I'm the type of person who wants to try and do things that doesn't get much action. I call that the true mind. That's the part of you that knows what is truly useful and wanted in your life. And we don't give it enough a voice. And what I want to do is use the beads to find one true mind thought. Something like I am willing to take risks and make sure that I use my beads to stay focused on. I'll say I am willing to take risks and I move a bead on my bracelet. People don't see it but I'll say it. I am willing to take a risk and move it and remind myself: I am the type of person who's willing to take risks. And I think for anyone
Richard: I wouldn't be surprised if you thought about that during your scotch night thing too. There probably were people who were sitting there going: I can't go up there and talk to him, I don't even have a beer. Is he going to tear me apart, is he going to laugh at me because I don't have a business yet?
Andrew: I'm sure that happened. I didn't think of it but you're absolutely right. I know it happened because it used to happen to me. I would be too embarrassed to go to an event. I used to be.
Jesse: Yeah, that's really good. Good advice on getting over that hump. I know there's a lot of people that…"wantrepreneur" is a word for that reason, people want to be an entrepreneur. Really. They don't really want it because if you really wanted it, you would get over that hump, you'd move the beads, get your true self out there. So that's awesome.
Richard: What about a lower level feet on the ground daily tactical? There are so many things, there are so many opportunities. You've built businesses in multiple categories. How does someone focus and what should someone be focusing on these days? Because obviously, we have a lot of different kinds of entrepreneurs. But the universal thing they all have in common is they're at least at some point in time selling something online.
Andrew: I think we need to think about online a little bit less and talk to people a little bit more. Especially, when you're starting to understand at some point the company gets so big that it's hard to talk to customers. But you know what, when you're getting started, pick up the phone, call every single customer who buys just to say: Hi, I'm Andrew. You just bought from me. I want to thank you for buying. By the way, why did you buy what? How are you using this? Get that little bit of insight. Even if it doesn't teach you anything about them. it'll make them feel more connected to your business. Now I say this is somebody who… I have to say I worked out of doing it when people first bought from me on Mixergy. I was such a wuss that I didn't contact them at all, I was embarrassed. What if they didn't like the product? I remember this incredible venture capitalist heard that I was selling something for five hundred dollars. He bought it. And in my head, I thought: Well, he's gonna be embarrassed that he got that, he paid five hundred dollars to me. I'm a little embarrassed because the thing isn't right. It's not great yet. I didn't contact him, I never thanked him even when he sent me a note saying I didn't know you had this, I was glad to buy it. I didn't hit reply and say that. I understand that that inner critic at that counter mind is that dangerous. But I have to tell you the times and I overcome it, it's worth it. It's absolutely powerful. I just did a few minutes ago before you and I got started, there were two customers and I wanted to talk to the first, just bought after I know she was on the fence. I wanted to thank her and find out why she was on the fence and how she wanted to use it. I couldn't reach her. She was in the UK but she saw that I called and left a message. She emailed me right away to say: I cannot believe that you would do this for me. And the second one was someone who bought something from me and hadn't used it because he is dealing with his own internal issues. I believe this is just made me say it, he hadn't said it out loud. So what I said to him was I noticed that you're talking about working on this using what I'm telling you about chatbots with a new client. What's your next step? And he told me it's easy to tell someone. I said go do it. I'll talk to you in 45 minutes. The reason I couldn't start doing a mike check with you before this started was that he and I were scheduled to do a
Jesse: Yeah, I think that helps. I'm a PPC guy at heart so sometimes I jump ahead to what's the perfect ad to get people to buy my stuff. But if I don't understand what they really want or what they're really trying to achieve, it's really hard for me to write those perfect ads to get people to buy. That's good.
Richard: We've mentioned a little bit about growing, not starting with, worrying about things being perfect all the time, really listening to your customer. What did you learn about people when you had those conversations that scotch night? Just a little bit of insight because I want to get into. I know chatbots is one of the things that you're really into and we highly believe that could be a way to help these solopreneurs get that same insight. Maybe might not be the best use of the word but we'll to say at scale but then they can make it be an individual conversation too. What did you learn and kind of segway into the world of chatbots and what you're doing there?
Andrew: I'll tell you one thing that I learned. I learned a bunch but I'll give you one thing that took me a long time to learn but I kept hearing it over and over again. I think I said that the first guy to buy for me the five dollar product. He said: I wanted to support you and I was a little embarrassed. I got my stuff so bad that he's just doing it because he wants to support me. I had to talk to a lot of customers to understand that in many ways what they're doing is making a decision to support a creator with their money. And to me, that used to be an insult. They must not like my product enough that they just want to support me if my product was good, they wouldn't feel sorry for me and want to support me. And then I realized something. Make those decisions all the time, all the time. There is a grocery store in Novi Valley that charges more than Amazon delivery for grocery. I do it because I just feel good supporting them. And there's a part of my head that goes: Oh come on Andrew, what kind of a wuss are you that you can't just deal with this like it's a business transaction. Stop being it's just a little bit extra and it's worth it. And the support is actually really useful that one time when we got locked out of our house and I had a baby, a
Richard: Yet the fact that you're bringing that up I don't have the hard stats on it because I didn't know we were going to go this direction. But Kickstarter is built on that right. This is just like these creators that are trying to get something done and the ones that actually got it done, it wasn't that product actually got delivered I'd imagine. Maybe it's better now but in the early days, there's a lot of those products that actually didn't even really get delivered. But they believed in the person now granted we hope they deliver the product.
Andrew: I'll take it even one step, no, a lot of steps higher. The New York Times if you listen to the daily podcast, it's one of the most popular podcasts in the App Store. What they do is they just break down a news story for the day. 30 minutes or so. They've got ads, they're a big business but if you see when they sell a subscription to The New York Times, they don't say: We've got more news. They don't say: We have this number of bureaus around the world. They don't say if you subscribe to the newspaper, you're gonna get 20 new articles every year. They don't do any of that. They don't say: You're gonna be smart or anything. What they say is We're the people who make the news. Hi, my name is Theo Belkin or whoever. Who knew that they were the creators behind the New York Times anything, they are introducing themselves by name. They're saying what they do they say: Here's how hard I work to create that piece that you heard a few weeks ago. And the reason I'm able to do it is because The New York Times subscribers are buying the subscription. If you want to support our work, if you want to support me what you do is you buy, you subscribe to the newspaper. If they're doing it on that level we have to take that to heart. And I think it helps to go onto our websites and say: Look here's what I'm doing, here's how I'm putting my product together. Here's how I screwed up. I actually think people connect more with
Jesse: Yeah, people that are listening. If you're a store owner listening, how can you apply that? It's not about your products, of course, they're buying your products. But look at here About us section. Look at it. Do you have a picture of yourself? Do you tell people why you're selling this stuff? It's not just because I drop this stuff from China and I hope to make it make a buck. I hope that's not your story, that's going to be a good one. But I tell the reason why you're selling stuff or make a video post a video. It's not that hard to do. I love that.
Andrew: Put it out there and as soon as you say it, people's counter minds are going off and saying: I don't know, people see me that, maybe my family members will know, maybe my
Richard: So what got you into bots?
Andrew: Here's what happened. I'm glad you asked about chatbots. What happened to me was I couldn't get my email open rates any higher or my click rates on email any higher. There was a period there where email was huge. I actually built a 35+ million dollar business. Nothing but email marketing people would subscribe to my email newsletters. I'd send them the regular messages, there'd be ads in there, occasionally I'd sell something directly. It was huge, was great, was phenomenal. I'm not
Richard: I'm hearing this underlying theme of… you really want to get to know people that you love. It sounds like micro experiments that you want to work and you want them to grow into big success but you're willing to take these small micro experiments. And it makes me think of… I want to say it was Reid Hoffman with the LinkedIn guy where he says if you're not embarrassed with your first release you waited too long. I believe it was him, at least someone in that PayPal mafia. (laughing)
Andrew: It was absolutely him. Wait, no, it's… Let me confirm it actually because… Yeah, it is Reid Hoffman. Yes, absolutely.
Richard: It definitely reminds me of what you're talking about and this is the beauty of these merchants for a low cost. They can start, don't complain you don't have a thousand customers right now. Like I jokingly say sometimes. Back to a few good men. A thousand customers, you couldn't handle a thousand guys. Start out with your first one and get to know them like scotch night and feel their pain, know what they're really looking at. You moved into chatbots because you saw that's the way one you could solve a problem you had with open rates, but in addition to it, the deeper element of it, that I'm here in there. When you made the comment about your relegating them to a second class citizen, I also see like Oh no, the people you love. This is the way you communicate. Once again a lot of these people are just getting started. I know you had bot academy going and then you have another project going. What's a way you recommend for these people who go Wow, this is great. I'm going to make those phone calls and I'm going to get on, I'm going to try this out, I'm going to get to learn more about my customers and I like the idea boards. Where should they get started?
Andrew: If they're into calling their customers, the first thing they should do is get a cut when an order comes in. Just call the number and frankly text them too. If you don't get people to pick up and they don't, just send them a text message. Hey, I'm a store owner that you just bought from. I wanted to say thank you personally. Can I give you a ring right now? or not can, I'm going to call you right now. Feel free to send the voicemail if you don't want to talk to me. Just a quick message like that and people love it. As for chat messages, I think we should… I think the store owners we're listening to should recognize that they too are using chat with the people they love too or using chat with the people they work with. They should consider that that could be the way that they communicate with their customers. You can imagine something like somebody comes over to their store, they go to an Ecwid store that sells… What's an example of something that people sell? Can we say fountain pens or specialty… you know what, specialty mechanical pencils. I don't know why I'm a little obsessed with really good mechanical pens. Look how elegant this looks, beautiful, right? I don't know why I care about heavy technology. And then these pencils, they had a mechanical pencil store. Imagine if I got in, they're not ready right now to buy a mechanical pencil, I may just be gawking at it. What if there was an alert that said: Hey, can I send you a 15 percent discount via Facebook Messenger? There's no place for me to type in my phone number, my name or anything, just a simple button as soon as I press it. The message is great. I just sent it over to you. Next time you buy you have 15 percent off. So I open up my Facebook messenger because my phone will vibrate and we'll make sure that I open up the message just like it does when I get a text message from my wife. I open it up. I see 15 percent discount say: By the way, can we tell you tomorrow about how to look for the right mechanical pencil? The differences in tips will make a difference in how you write. Yeah, of course, the next day it comes in with a little tip about what I should look for in a mechanical pencil. Now a guy who really geeks out on them like me will enjoy that. And the next day if they say there's a history of mechanical pencils. Can I show you one of the oldest mechanical pencils that we know about? I thought this was something that's kind of new. But let's see it and I get to see it and be involved in the world. They're not selling me. They're just teaching me a little bit. I'll tell you what, when it's time for me to buy a mechanical pencil, now these people have taught me something. The attacks didn't get buried in my email inbox with thousands of other messages. People who taught me, the Facebook Messenger who I keep going in reading. Another tip about the history of pencils or the things I should look for in the next mechanical pencil that I'm looking for. Next time I want to buy one, I'm more likely to go buy from them, especially since I have a 15 percent discount. Or imagine if they forwarded me before Father's Day, it's about to be Father's Day, or before Christmas is about to be Christmas a message. It says: Hey, Andrew why don't you ask the people in your life to send you a mechanical pencil that you love instead of a random present that you don't care about. And they make that easy. And it all happens at Facebook Messenger. All I'd have to do is press one button to give them permission and now they keep that going. So you mentioned I do have two different businesses involved in this. Absolutely. At Bot Academy I've been training people to do this for two almost three years now, teaching, teaching, teaching. What I've found is that many people like it. And if you like to learn, you can go see at BotAcademy.com. But there are some people say: I want to do it myself. Can you just do it for me? And so I teamed up with a couple of people, including one person who you've interviewed here, Nick Julia. We created Chat Blender and we said: Yeah, we'll do it for you, tell us what you need. We will absolutely do it for you. You imagine it, we will do it. And so if anyone wants that, they can go to ChatBlender.com. And again, that comes from me talking to people who are signing up to learn from me, who want to find out how to build a bot by going at Bot Academy. And as I talk to them, they're saying: Well, I'm running a business. I don't have time to learn this. I have other things on my mind. Do it for me. Yeah. I'll do it.
Richard: When we went there, I loved it. I wanted to wait till after the show to do it just because I wanted to be organic. But I loved how the only way you can actually communicate with you via going into the chat. I'm right that anytime I hovered over anything it was like No you're pretty much if you want to move forward with this. You've been sold on and already you're gonna have to test it out. Do you know what my partners in the business Nick Julia who you know and Steven Brady?
They also wanted to manage the whole client relationship within the chapel. They said look people shouldn't have to use new software. What if they just message us and Facebook Messenger and say hey I need this built on my site. And we take over and do it. Just message it. We want them, like you said, to fully experience what a chat experience is like.
Jesse: Yeah, I love it. It's owning chat basically. There is no extra flow. You're trying to set up a chatbot, chat with me, figure it out.
Richard: I think this is where you were going next. But like do you actually, so say someone wants to do this, there's an Ecwid user that says: Wow, I'm into it, let's do it. And they go, do they actually have to know about? How like the questions to even ask you? Do you take them through a flow that helps them decide that?
Andrew: We show it to them. They feel it immediately and if they feel it and they say, this is what I want for my business, we created for them, we let them feel it first. And by feeling it, I mean if like you said, they go to a chatbot or the only interaction is press this, try the chatbot. Do you want this for your site? Great. Contact us. We'll build it for you.
Jesse: Hmm. Great. That was something that was a thought I had when I was looking at this like, okay, great. I have a side hustle that I wanted really do chatbots for. I've tried a little bit, but I don't really know what I want to do. I just want chatbots to work for me. If I have to give you guys every step, I probably could've done that myself, but I liked the idea of you just tell me yes, I want to do it and we'll walk you through that process. So love it.
Andrew: By the way, this is kind of a new name. What do you think of the name Chat Blender? It feels good to me, but we created the name, it's Chat Blender. Does it make sense to you? Does it work?
Richard: Cool. I like it. Especially it fits in with what you're trying to do. It sounds like you're trying to help individuals, you're trying to help engine agencies and you're blending conversations. I think it's great.
Jesse: I'm liking it more. I will say I had to say it a couple of times a day because I know of a couple of other companies that start with chat. I'm like
Andrew: That makes a lot of sense, actually. We were trying to use a name that felt clear enough that you'd know what it was, but it is such an overused name. But boy, finding the right domain took forever. That included the name Chad. I'm glad that you guys approved.
Richard: One of the things we want to make sure we do too, we obviously talked about BotAcademy.com and ChatBlender.com. If people are interested in that, anything else, any new initiatives other than that you want people to look, things you want people to pay attention to?
Andrew: I'd love to hear back from people who said, I've heard Andrew say, call my customer. I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to call my customer as soon as they come in. When I get that order, I'm going to find out their number and I'm going to text them and say, I'm calling you, thanks for buying. And then call them or just call them out of the blue and say thank you. I'd love to hear from people who do that and I'm going to tell you my email address. Guys, if you're listening to me, you can just contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Just say, Andrew, I called, here's what happened. Even if it's, I called and they didn't pick up. Even if I, I tried to call, I hit the button, I canceled because I got a little bit scared of it or felt like there wasn't enough time. I want to hear from you. I'd like to see you do this. We can go over tips for improving your store all day long. I could give you tips for us. Frankly. Who am I going to give you tips for SEO? Jesse could do a better job of giving you tips for SEO, but these tips are out there. I wanted to give you just a small step that will feel really weird at first and phenomenal as you keep practicing it. Call up your customers. Start with the first one, not email, call them up, see how it works, let me know. And I think you're going to find that you'll understand people a lot better. And by the way, full disclosure, my interest is doing it, is I want to get to know the people who take action. I want to get in their heads. It's worth it for me to get to know their challenges that I know with what's working, what's not. It's worth it for me to get to know them because anyone who's willing to take that next step and call the one customer is somebody that I want to get to know. And that relationship will be valuable in the future. So absolutely, I'd love to see them do that. And there are lots of other ways to talk to customers, but let's start with that.
Jesse: That's perfect. I love the challenge for our listeners out there, let's take action. Got the beads. We got the punch. Get over that home. I love it. I love it. Richie, any last questions here?
Richard: Nope. I just want to say thank you. Staying true to form. We ask something he could promote and he wanted to help people, so appreciate you, Andrew.
Andrew: Thank you.
Richard: True to form. As we always experience, every time we listened to you and now we get to chat with you and we're actually going to be signing up a whole another story, but we're going to be checking it out.
Jesse: Because we feel pity. (laughing)
Richard: We just want you to call us and ask me. (laughing)
Andrew: I will see you on Chat Blender then. Thanks, guys, for having me.
Richard: Yeah, good stuff. Thanks for everything. Appreciate it.
Jesse: Thanks, Andrew.


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Bielenda Professional Microbiome Balancing & Protecting Face Treatment Set
Bielenda Professional Microbiome Pro Care Balancing and Protecting Face Treatment with Synbiotic Complex and B-glutan is intended for problematic, dysfunctional, sensitive and weakened skin.
Treatments products:
• Silky smooth Face Massage Powder( 5x3g)
• Multiactive Balancing and Protecting Face Concentrate( 5x5ml)
• Balancing and Protecting Cream Sheet Face Mask (5x35 g)
Microbiome Pro Care Balancing and Face Protecting Treatment
• dry, dehydrated skin
• sensitive skin
• skin weakened by anti-acne treatments, aggressive cosmetic treatments
• lack of balance of skin microbiota resulting from such factors as stress, environmental pollution (including suspended dusts), medicines taken, UV radiation
• soothes and moisturizes the skin
• strengthens the natural barrier functions of the skin
• regenerates skin after aggressive cosmetic treatments
• protects the skin against harmful external factors
• restores healthy and radiant look to the skin
Proposed schema of the treatment
1. Remove make-up thoroughly from the skin on which the treatment will be performed with Bielenda Professional preparations tailored to the type of client's skin. We especially recommend products from the Microbiome Pro Care line. Apply the Delicate Micellar Gel Makeup Remover to the dry skin of the face and neck and massage gently with circular movements. Rinse it with moist treatment tissues or cotton pads. After cleansing the skin, apply the Delicate Face Toner with a cotton pad.
2. Next, exfoliate dead skin cells with the Delicate Enzymatic Face Foam Peeling. We apply a dose of the preparation on the skin (avoiding the eye area) and leave for approx. 10 minutes. Then rinse the preparation thoroughly with moist treatment tissues or cotton pads, and then tone the skin.
3. Apply the Silky Smooth Face Massage Powder onto cleansed skin and perform a delicate dry massage. Remove the remnants of the preparation from the face using moist cotton pads, and then tone the skin.
4. Apply the Multiactive Balancing and Protecting Face Concentrate. Massage it gently into the skin. To strengthen the effect of the preparation, use ultrasounds or needle-free mesotherapy.
5. Apply the Balancing and Protecting Sheet Face Mask onto the face and neck in such a way that it adheres perfectly to the whole skin surface. Leave it for 15-20 minutes, then remove the mask, and massage the residue of the essence contained in the mask into the skin.
6. At the end of the treatment, apply the Balancing and Moisturising Face Cream onto the face and neck.
7. In order to strengthen and prolong the effects of the treatment, we recommend the Multiactive Balancing and Protecting Face Serum from the MICROBIOME Pro Care line for home care.
|Bielenda Professional
- This Item: Bielenda Professional Microbiome Balancing & Protecting Face Treatment Set £35.99
- Bielenda Professional Microbiome Pro Care Balancing and Moisturising Face Cream 50ml £11.25
- Bielenda Make-Up Academie Fixer Mist 75ml £2.99
- Total price


text: Hi everyone! Time for a super quick catch-up, what do you think? It's got to be quick because it's been soooooo hot here for the past couple of days and even lounging away in our pool (don't get too excited, it's only an inflatable one - although it is actually huge) couldn't cool me down.… Continue reading Sticky and icky


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iVoomi, the China-based mobile manufacturer has launched an entry-level smartphone that is dubbed as the iVooMi i1s. This new smartphone will directly compete with Xiaomi's Redmi 5A. In fact, at the same price point, this offering from iVooMi has some unique features to offer that the Redmi 5A doesn't. Can this smartphone manage to defeat Xiaomi's offering? Let's find out.
Design and Display
In terms of design, the iVoomi 1s is built of plastic with an overall glossy finish giving it a sturdy look and feel. On the front, the smartphone features a 5.45-inch HD display. To add to this, the phone sports a bezel-less display having an aspect ratio of 18:9. With this, the iVooMi i1s becomes the cheapest bezel-less device currently available!
Performance and Storage
Underneath its hood, the iVooMi i1s is powered by the quad-core MediaTek MT6737 processor clocked at 1.3GHz. The phone ships in two RAM variants viz. 2GB and 3GB which come with 16GB and 32GB of internal storage respectively. This can also be expanded externally up to 128GB through a microSD card.
Camera and Software
In the optics department, the phone features a dual-rear camera setup on the back. This setup comprises of a 12-megapixel sensor and a secondary 2-megapixel sensor. This is also accompanied by a dual-tone LED flash for capturing images in low-light. On the front, the phone rocks a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for capturing selfies and video calling purposes. On the software front, the phone runs on Android Nougat out of the box.
Connectivity and Battery
As far as connectivity is concerned, the iVooMi i1s offers all the conventional solutions including support for up to 4G with VoLTE though its dual-SIM port, Bluetooth, GPS and dual-band WiFi. On the bottom, the phone also features a micro USB 2.0 port for charging and data transferring purposes. Speaking of charging, the phone is equipped with a 3,000mAh battery that runs the show.
The Chinese brand is here to disrupt the entry-level smartphone by offering these phones at a price of Rs. 5,999 for the 2GB RAM variant and Rs. 6,999 for the 3GB variant. The phone will be available exclusively through Flipkart starting today at 12 noon. At this price point, these phones go head to head with the Redmi 5A but offer a dual-camera setup and a bezel-less display that Redmi doesn't. What are your views?


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"The Secret" by Arpita Sukhwani
"The Secret" by Arpita Sukhwani
Poem "My Best Friend" by Pratik Agrawal
Things weren't that good before I met you
Life was going slow paced is all that I knew,
I was busy coping up with my new school
People there treated me like I was some fool,
But then I saw you and life changed
Listening to their insults and taunts no more pained,
You were the reason I came to school
Now I started pretending to be cool,
I have had a few crushes before
But you were the best among the four,
To me, you smelled so exotic
Chemistry lectures were no more hectic,
You knew I felt for you
But we will be best friends no one ever knew,
The way you dressed and carried that smile
I was able to differentiate you from a mile,
Time took toll and we became best friends
We did things quite awkwardly, going out of the trends,
You were so nice and so blissful
That I had no chance but to be truthful,
I feared that you would leave
Your memories would be the only thing that I would keep,
My heart was so restless to tell you
My lips wanted those magical words to spell through,
You were the best-taking care of me so selflessly
You were the best, loving me so unconditionally,
Our love was something off the beat
It was so pure and had that heat,
I knew you were never going to cheat.
Chromologue "The Droplets" by Nandini Sharma & Ishant
*The droplets rested on the petals with so much trust
Faith that only a mother could give
The petals cared for drops,
Protection only a father could give
Drops and petals shared a serenity
Tranquility only a brother could give.*
Chromologue "The Two Worlds" by Drisha Sehgal & Shivani Singh Bairwa
*As he looked at two different worlds, one beneath the other, he wondered how both of them could be so ignorant of each other.*
"Find Someone" by Nitya Bahl
"The Umbrella" by Sudhakar Tiwari Sud


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Samsung HMX-H205 Review
Samsung HMX-H205
Samsung HMX-H205
The H205 sits at the top of Samsung's mid-range HD camcorder lineup for 2010. It's the exact same camera as its little brothers, the H200 and H204, just with more internal memory--32GB, in this case. The current spec sheet indicates that it's only capable of recording 1080i at 60fps; we'd really like to see 1080p at 30 or even 24fps, though Samsung's website indicates that specs are subject to change before launch. Also of note is an HD time lapse mode in 720p, which we'd like to know more about. As it stands now, there are better deals available among last year's models than the H205.


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Come and join us to the Park View Room for a friendly game of Scrabble.
Novices and experts are equally welcome.
Activities and Services Included:
- Scrabble board game
- Morning Tea
Service operating times
Friday 9.45am – 12.00pm every fortnight
**Bookings essential**
|Description / Eligibility
|Participation – per session
Areas Serviced
|Lane Cove Area
|Contact the Events Coordinator on 02 9427 6425 or email firstname.lastname@example.com
|View all social activities


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Place 4 ice cubes in a glass, add Sunsweet Amaz!n Prune Juice, cold brew coffee, and plant milk. Stir and enjoy!To make cold brew coffee:
Stir together 1/3 cup medium/coarse ground coffee and 16 ounces of cold water in a large jar or container. Cover and refrigerate overnight (about 12 hours). Strain coffee into a pitcher through a coffee filter or a fine-mesh strainer. Refrigerate for up to 1 week.


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Kolkata: After the three days of Nagerbazar explosion, the kingpin is still absconded. Investigators are interrogating several people in these incidents.
According to sources, CID now has started interrogation to the hotels of DumDum area. Already they interrogated some hotel managers and hotel staffs in connection with this incident. They basically asked to know who has been renting rooms in this hotel in the last few days.
Sources reveal that CID have asked CCTV footage and guests' list of the the hotels. CID officials have already revealed that the attackers wanted to use the explosive for any sabotage. However, this explosion busts accidentally. Officials are trying to find out who was involved in the incident. But no CCTV in nagerbazar explosion site made CID officials haphazard.
CID officials are trying to know where assailants had stayed in the area. On the other hand, CID officials interrogated the injured Ajit and Sita Ghosh on Friday. Not only that, their statements recorded. Now lets see can hotel give a missing link in this case?


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Thank You to All Frontline Healthcare Professionals
CeraVe remains committed to the medical community.
As a brand developed with dermatologists, the medical community has been at the heart of our DNA since the beginning. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the nurses, doctors, hospital staff and healthcare workers risking their lives on the frontlines. Thank you for your tireless dedication to keeping our communities safe during this unprecedented time.
We're proud to care for the hands that help care for us all.
Every day, medical professionals hold the health of others in their dependable hands. Their dedication to supporting, protecting and caring for patients makes a daily difference...and also takes a daily toll. To show our support, we will be donating over 250,000 CeraVe products to hospitals and medical centers to offer skincare as a small comfort, knowing how selflessly the medical community is working to ease the discomfort of others.
Healthy Nurse, Healthy?Nation?
CeraVe is a proud sponsor of the American Nurses Foundation and the Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation? initiative, which works to support this selfless community and helps connect and engage nurses nationwide.
Alleviating hand sanitizer shortages
We have reallocated resources in our production facilities to produce an alcohol antiseptic hand sanitizer, which will be exclusively provided to nurses and hospitals in an effort to help combat the nationwide hand sanitizer shortage.


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Searching For School Funding Solutions
Two state lawmakers say they have the fix to a problem that they and their colleagues have been struggling with for decades – school funding.But what will that formula mean to districts, all of which have lawmakers who work to get the most they can for them? And will it be enough to help the state's poorest kids raise their test scores and overcome a poverty achievement gap that's dogged the state for decades.
John Patterson
Bob Cupp


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text: Private Sector IR35 reform (Contractor Survey) The results from this survey will form part of an article that we will produce to assess the current understanding of the IR35 changes into the Private Sector. Your responses will be anonymised. Thank you. OK Question Title * 1. We would love to send you a copy of the results so please leave your contact details below and we will send this over to you. If you do not wish to receive the results please ensure you still click 'Done' at the bottom of the page to submit your answers. Thank you. Name Email Address Name of Client you are providing services to currently Any other comments OK Question Title * 2. Are you aware of IR35 and the Off Payroll Legislation? Yes No OK Question Title * 3. Do you understand what IR35 is and how it impacts contractors providing services via a Limited Company? Yes No OK Question Title * 4. Are you aware that there is an online tool provided by HMRC which can determine your IR35 status? (Known as the Check Employment Status for Tax tool or CEST) Yes No OK Question Title * 5. Have your current clients or agencies talked to you about the reforms and how it will impact the way you provide services? Yes No OK Question Title * 6. What type of Contract opportunities are you open to? (Please select all that are relevant) Opportunities determined as Outside IR35 Opportunities determined as Inside IR35 I provide my Services via an Umbrella Company therefore it's not relevant Alternative engagements, such as through a Consultancy or on a Statement of Work (SOW) Other (please specify) OK Question Title * 7. If an End Client gives an Inside IR35 determination on an assignment, would you increase your Daily or Hourly rates? Yes No I would not take the opportunity if the Assignment was determined Inside IR35 Other (please specify) OK Question Title * 8. With the Off Payroll Legislation being extended into the Private Sector, what do you think you will do? Consider moving into a Permanent or Fixed Term opportunity Seek opportunities outside the UK Look for assignments that are deemed to be outside IR35 only Increase rates if a role is deemed to be Inside IR35 Close LTD Company, continue contracting but operate via an Umbrella Look to engage with customers via different engagement models, such as Statement of Work (SOW) Other (please specify) OK Question Title * 9. Are there any specific areas of support or education you would look for from an agency on the lead up to the Private Sector IR35 reform? OK DONE


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I've seen it. That's a really nice kit, I'd recommend itTamaDude":1tmrt115 said:Birch shells have amazing low end for rock... look for Starclassic Performer kits on eBay, and they're very affordable as well.
Dunno what your budget is, but I know Dales Drum Shop in PA has a Birch/bubinga kit in Lava Glass Glitter for around $1200.
I would say that is correct because when getting to the superstar series there alot nicer looking and to play if you compare it to the pearl export seriesis the rockstar series = pearl's export series?
Rockstars are MUCH better than Exports. You can usually find great deals on them on Ebay and CL.Assback":3rcfqplz said:i'd say the rockstars are better tham the emports. just my opinion tho but rockstars sound wayy better than exports to me and they look better too
Get a good quality used kit, save yourself 30-50%, then buy good cases and be careful with it. New kits scratch just as easily as used kits.jp3515":2dg9x0ni said:the thing is tho, i want to get it new due to travel, it needs to hold up good and sound nice too.


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Pope Francis has clearly gone out of his way to project an image of the Church as a merciful, reconciling community. On a grand level he initiated in 2015 a Jubilee Year with the Papal bull, Misericordiae Vultus and the Face of Mercy. On a practical level, he has celebrated Mass in prisons, washed the feet of the homeless and has regularly mixed with crowds where he was recently bitten by a baby! The Pontiff's universal regard for migrants is regularly featured by the media along with his interest in the earth's climate. The Holy Father's concern to address marital irregularities is thought by some to be too merciful. And Pope Francis' mention of abortion in the same breath as other modern abuses is again thought by some to be not harsh enough of a judgment on this major evil.
The Holy Father's most recent apostolic exhortation Gaudete Et Exsultate (Rejoice and be Glad) on the call to holiness in today's world is in total accord with his earlier efforts to promote the Catholic Church as a considerate, understanding and sympathetic community. In fact, His Holiness frankly acknowledges that this latest writing is more about the effects of holiness rather than the path to holiness: "What follows is not meant to be a treatise on holiness, containing definitions and distinctions helpful for understanding this important subject, or a discussion of the various means of sanctification. My modest goal is to reassess the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities." Pope Francis accordingly selects two familiar passages from St. Matthew's Gospel account, the Beatitudes and the Last Judgment, as guides on how holiness might be expressed in the modern age.
The Pope understands the eight Beatitudes from Christ's Sermon on the Mount to be "a Christian's identity card." In the Beatitudes is found "a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives." Poverty of spirit in the Pope's mind is "a radiant interior freedom," which St. Ignatius knew as a "holy indifference," freeing the soul from material excesses so "the Lord can enter with his perennial newness." Meekness is another form in interior poverty where the human tendency "to dominate others" is renounced in favor of "tenderness" toward a neighbor's faults.
Those who mourn will forego the "entertainment, pleasure, diversion and escape" that the world prefers and face honestly and helpfully the "sickness or sorrow" that plagues much of society. A hunger for "righteousness" or justice means first of all that Christians themselves "are just in their decisions," especially toward the most vulnerable. "Seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow," the Pope quotes Isaiah.
Pope Francis would like the Church to understand itself as "an army of the forgiven," so that such merciful believers can then extend the mercy they have received from God toward their neighbor. Purity of heart is a temperament that is free of all falsehood, all deceit, all foolish thoughts. This is why the "pure in heart" will "see God." They have no distractions. The "peacemakers" are blessed because they build "friendship in society," not only on a grand political scale but also, maybe especially, on a neighborhood level. The Pope actually cites gossip as a foe of peace. The "persecuted" are blessed because they "take seriously their commitment to God and to others," even when their steadfastness is not valued. Persecution sadly still manifests itself in the shedding of blood but also in "the form of gibes that try to caricature our faith and make us seem ridiculous."
Pope Francis grasps the Final Judgment scene in Matthew 25 as a specification of how the Beatitudes play out in daily life: "I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink..." The Pontiff expresses it best himself: "If I encounter a person sleeping outdoors on a cold night, I can view him or her as an annoyance, an idler, an obstacle in my path, a troubling sight, a problem for politicians to sort out, or even a piece of refuse cluttering a public space. Or I can respond with faith and charity, and see in this person a human being with a dignity identical to my own, a creature infinitely loved by the Father, an image of God, a brother or sister redeemed by Jesus Christ. That is what it is to be a Christian! Can holiness somehow be understood apart from this lively recognition of the dignity of each human being?"
As panhandlers increasingly beg at Rhode Island's intersections, these are tough words to embrace. But the Pope does not back down: "We may think that we give glory to God only by our worship and prayer, or simply by following certain ethical norms. It is true that the primacy belongs to our relationship with God, but we cannot forget that the ultimate criterion on which our lives will be judged is what we have done for others."
Pope Francis' own practical charisma, hands-on mercy, is often found picturesquely in the media but now it is revealed more pointedly in his own writings.


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"Maribe Saved Me While We Were In High School" Size 8 Shares
Gospel singer Size 8 has recently opened up about her experience with news anchor Jackie Maribe when they were much younger. The two went to the same high school at State House girls and were very good friends. Even though she is very rich now, Size 8 came from a very humble background and couldn't afford some of the basic necessities back then. She revealed that Maribe used to be very generous and shared half of her shopping with her.
During the interview with Chipukeezy, she said:
"In high school, Jacque Maribe was really there for me, yeye ndiye alikuwa ananibuyia sanitary towels"
"She used to come with shopping and split into two, she would give me and even pads. So when I see my face on the packet of pads as the brand ambassador of Softcare pads, I testify because my life is evidence that it doesn't matter who you are or what you do. God can do exceedingly and abundantly above all you can ever ask, think or imagine."


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After finding out about Sinead and Tony's affair, Diane stands at the altar faced with a life-changing decision. Will she go through with the wedding?
Jason is manically doing press ups when Rick comes into his room to give him some food. Jason pours the food into a zip lock freezer bag and continues to train. Holly finds Jason at the garage practising for his boxing match and is heartbroken that he lied about being ill. Rick tells her they're going to donate some of the ticket money from Jason's fight to Cindy's hospital. Holly is delighted – but Jason is dreading going into the ring…
Elsewhere, Kim asks Lindsey whether Freddie is capable of murder. Knowing about Fraser, Lindsey hesitates and Kim realises she has to make sure he gets what he deserves, so Kim decides to retract her alibi.
Also, Cameron's friend Shane arrives at the Lomaxes as a potential buyer for the house. Suspecting Shane is not what he seems, the girls try to put him off – but he's not scared away easily.