This week on the show, we're hearing from listeners about their experiences. First up, we have Nate Brown, a CX professional who leads the CX Accelerator and also runs a wedding photography passion project with his spouse on the side. His customer recently reached out to say how wonderful a job they did—without even having seen the pictures yet—because they provided such a great experience.
The experience is the product, that is actually what they're paying for.
The customer experience begins way before the product or service is delivered.
When you are in a service business that caters to major life events like weddings or birthdays, remember that it's all about the customer.
Don't be afraid to share your successes—consumers value ratings and reviews highly when they make purchasing decisions.
If you remember episode 25, we talked about Dan's friend, Chris Strub, who wrote 50 States, 100 Days. Recently, he's been using video to chronicle his customer experiences and had a standout time at a Banana Republic. We look at how a retail worker went above and beyond to help him find an inexpensive pair of pants and made Chris a brand ambassador.
We live in a world where your customers have the opportunity to broadcast to thousands of their friends and followers immediately after a customer experience.
It only takes one great employee to make a customer's experience remarkable.
You never know who your customer is, so treat everyone like they can be a brand ambassador.
When customers sing your praises on social media, always respond and show your appreciation.
We were pointed to an article by Grant Martin for Forbes called "Airline Smart Luggage Ban Goes Into Effect," which served as a springboard for friend-of-the-podcast Lauren Fast to share her experience with Away Luggage. Their solution to the sudden problem created for their customers left her impressed, and she explains why.
Away Luggage proactively alerted their customers that changes were coming.
Sometimes industry or government regulations are going to throw a wrench in your plans, so get creative, and don't let that destroy your business.
Technology is so advanced today that it can solve almost any problem. Away used that to help customers with the airline ban.
Treat your customers well, and they can become brand ambassadors—and so much more.
56% of buyers feel there is a gap between traditional B2B buying experiences and their evolving needs. We talk about the opportunities for improvement that exist in the business-to-business buying market.
56% of buyers feel there is a gap between traditional B2B buying experiences and their evolving needs.
Customers want more flexibility, better digitization, and timely delivery across regions in the B2B market.
Joey Coleman: Experience This survey, that you can find at bitly.com/experiencethissurvey. That's B-I-T-L-Y.com/experiencethissurvey. It's a quick survey. You can tell us what you loved about the show, what you can't stand about the show. And for the first 10 people that fill out the survey, we are going to send you signed autographed copies of our books and some other fun bonuses as well, so take a few minutes and cruise over to bitly.com/experiencethissurvey and tell us what you think.
You can also find this link in the show notes if you're listening while you're driving or working out and didn't have a chance to write that URL down. Just come to experiencethisshow.com and you will be able to find the link to the special survey for season two.
Dan Gingiss: And we're also going to ask this in the survey. But as always, we love when you send you examples of things that you have experienced in your life, positive, negative, or otherwise remarkable that you'd like us to cover on future episodes. You can always do that besides from the survey. You can always do that on our SpeakPipe widget, which is available on every episode page at experiencethisshow.com. You can go to either of our websites, joeycoleman.com or dangingiss.com and leave us a message there. Or you can visit us on Twitter @dgingiss or @TheJoeyColeman. Make sure it's @TheJoeyColeman because that other Joey Coleman dude, not nearly as cool as our Joey Coleman. And you can send us a tweet or a DM and let us know what you're reading about, what you're experiencing, and what brands you look up to.
One other request, if you would like to subscribe to us on iTunes, or wherever you're listening to podcasts, you will be reminded when our show is back in the fall. And while you're there, if you wouldn't mind, please, please, leaving us a review. It really, really helps as people are looking for new podcasts to listen to. They want to hear what you have to say. Thank you very much. And here is episode 40, the last season one episode.
Dan Gingiss: Get ready for a special edition episode of the Experience This Show.
Joey Coleman: Join us as we have our listeners share their customer experience stories, including a wedding photographer who got rave reviews even before the photos were delivered, a clothing retailer that went above and beyond to help a customer find an inexpensive item, and a luggage company that had to quickly adapt to changes in airline regulations.
Dan Gingiss: Pictures, pants, and batteries, oh my.
Sometimes a remarkable experience deserves deeper investigation. We dive into the nitty-gritty of customer interactions and dissect how and why they happen. Join us, while we're dissecting the experience.
Joey Coleman: In case you haven't guessed, this entire episode is going to feature stories submitted to us from listeners just like you. And we're going to kick it off with a good friend of mine, Nate Brown, who is a CX practitioner, that's customer experience, who also leads something called the CX Accelerator. I encourage all of you to check this out. It's at cxaccelerator.com. It is a community of customer experience professionals just like us, it has a Slack group, a blog, et cetera. And Nate shared this story about the fact that in his spare time, he runs a wedding photography business. And that's all I'm going to tell you because you have to hear the story from him.
Nate Brown: Hello. Nate Brown here, from CX Accelerator, and big fan of the Experience This Podcast. Excited to share a story that happened to me and my wife this weekend. We have a small photography business that we run, totally a passion project. But it's been a ton of fun for us. Photography is just a cool combination of technology and art and science. But it's been neat having both of our customer experience backgrounds apply in this little service business.
And I'll give you the example. We've had multiple stories lately where people are telling us that the photographer shows up to the wedding and is so rude and is so grumpy and is just ultra-concerned about their pictures. It almost feels like it's their pictures, and it actually puts a damper on the wedding, which is so sad and ironic, that the photographer becomes so results-oriented that they forget about what actually creates a great customer experience, which is having those positive perceptions of the service that's being offered. And I mean, that's applicable in just about any type of CX design where we have a tendency to become so results oriented and forget that it's actually managing the perceptions of the people that are involved.
The funny part about that is that we're the wedding photographers and they haven't even seen the pictures. They're out repping us on social and getting this great feedback out of it, and they haven't even seen the result yet. So, I mean, it goes to show to me, it was a helpful reminder. And it's about the way that people feel about the service versus the service itself. So, thanks, Dan. Have a good day.
Joey Coleman: I love it. I particularly love the line where Nate says, "We're the wedding photographers, and they haven't even seen the pictures yet," and talking about how excited the customer was. Folks, the experience is the product. The experience that you give to people, the way you make them feel, their experience of interacting with you, that is actually what they're paying for. Yes, the photos in this particular example are a nice little add-on, but what they're trying for is a fantastic wedding day. They're hoping that things will go smoothly. They'll have the photos that will capture the moment.
But if you talk to most people on their wedding day, it's having the day go smoothly and having the day be wonderful and having it be memorable. That's actually even more important, I think, most times than the memories that they get after the fact. Hearing Nate's story reminded me of the great experience we had with our wedding photographer, a good friend of mine and an incredible visual artist, Josh Kogan, and how he made us feel.
In fact, we're in the process of packing for a move, and I was packing up some of the photos from the wedding and remembering how he got smiles out of us, and kind of captured these actual moments of the wedding day. And the experience of interacting with our guests is something that our guests still talk about. So again, it's the experience that's created is often so much more important than the product.
Dan Gingiss: Yeah. I think in this case, to be honest, because a wedding is such an important moment, I think you have to do both really well. If you have a photographer who takes amazing pictures but is a total jerk to be around, it's not going to be a good experience. If you have a photographer that's your best friend and a super nice guy and can't use a camera, and you have crappy pictures, that's also going to be a bad result. And so in this particular case, kind of like a restaurant, and we've talked about this before, that the food has to be good and the service has to be good. You don't get to choose one or the other. The customer expects both.
And to me, in this case, the product, it has to be good enough, certainly. But people are looking for nice pictures on their wedding. But when you can also have amazing service and remarkable experiences like the ones that Nate talked about, that's when you get people talking about you and telling your friends, and you get referral business. And I loved that line too that the guy hasn't even gotten around to showing them the pictures yet, and they're already bragging about him online and social media, talking about how great he is. That means he did something, certainly, very right.
So we have three takeaways from Nate's story. Number one, the customer experience begins way before the product or service is delivered. And in this particular case, Nate was so awesome at this wedding that his customers were writing him a glowing review just based on his professionalism at the wedding before they even saw the pictures. Number two is, when you are in a service business that caters to major life events like weddings, birthdays, graduations, remember that it is all about the customer. This is where delivering outstanding service is going to make you memorable, because as Joey said, what you're really worried about on that day is things not going well. And so if you are a service provider and you're focused on the customer only, not yourself. You're not the star of the program. It's the customer. Then you're going to make a memorable experience for them.
And the third is don't be afraid to share your successes. We've talked about how consumers value ratings and reviews highly when they make purchase decisions. So when you do have a customer who's willing to speak highly of you let them do it and then tell everyone. Nate was not bragging but sharing with the CX Accelerator community about this wedding story. And that's where I picked it up and said hey we should talk about this on our show. And I love that he was willing to tell people, "Hey, I created a great experience for someone and look what they did for me. They said really nice things." So don't be afraid to shout from the rooftops when you have customers that are singing your praises.
Joey Coleman: We love telling stories and sharing the insights you can implement, or avoid, based on our experience. Can you believe that this just happened?
Back in Episode 25, we featured a book by one of my very best friends, Chris Strub. The book is called 50 States, 100 Days, and it tells a tale of Chris visiting all 50 of these United States and spending a day volunteering in every one of them while chronicling his story via video as he traveled. Well, Chris is one of the best storytellers around, and recently he has begun chronicling some of his customer experiences with brands, which of course makes me very happy. And he posted a video recently about an experience at a clothing retailer that you may have heard of called Banana Republic.
Let me set the scene here because you're going to be hearing the audio only, although we will post the video in the show notes. Chris is standing outside of a Banana Republic talking, and he's walking around a little bit. But for the entire video, you see the Banana Republic logo behind him. So, as you are now envisioning him speaking to you in front of a Banana Republic store, let's listen to Chris's experience.
Chris Strub: Okay, Banana Republic social team. Here's what has happened in this Banana Republic. Don't worry, this is a good thing. So, walked in just to see if … like I wasn't looking for any in particular. Walked in, and found some of these, the boat socks. That was cool.
"No, I wish you had more pairs of pants." He goes, "Hold on a sec. Hold on one moment." So he goes over, he checks on his phone, he's looking to see if there's any more in the back. No, there's nothing more in the back. "Okay, that's fine they're on clearance, you're trying to get rid of them." He goes, "Hang on one more minute. Makes a phone call, calls around to the other stores around, and he found a store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that had that exact pair of pants that I needed, in my size 34 by 30. Got the guy on the phone. Gave him my credit card information, because I'm a banana republic deluxe card holder since 2013, they said they'll ship me the pants for free. Five to seven business days. $16 for a pair of pants that was once a hundred dollars. Now they're on the clearance rack, here at Banana Republic [inaudible 00:13:35] shops in Huntington, and Joel, the manager was able to get me a pair in my size shipped to my house for free by the end of next week, for 16 bucks.
That is awesome. That was really, really cool and I am super grateful, I'm super glad to be a Banana Republic card holder. Super appreciative of the great service that I just had here at the store. Thank you, Joel. Thank you, Banana Republic. You got a loyal customer in me. I really appreciate it.
Dan Gingiss: So Joey, would you agree that this video is essentially a two minute commercial for Banana Republic?
Joey Coleman: I would, because not only, as you mentioned earlier does Chris do an incredible job of framing the shot, so to speak, while making sure the Banana Republic logo is in the video, but he's basically singing Banana Republic's praises the entire time. And what I love is how this really enforces that power of word-of-mouth marketing. Chris came out of the store, and he immediately shot a video that he shared on social media shared with his friends he shared with his followers about this great experience, calling out the specific store, calling out the individual in the store that helped him.
This is the world we live in today, folks. A world where your customers have the opportunity to broadcast to hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of their fans and followers, immediately after having an interaction with your brand. What I also love about Chris's story is how he details the individual manager at that Banana Republic going above and beyond to check other stores, that he didn't have to do that. This was a sale item, this was an inexpensive purchase, but the fact that the manager did go above and beyond and really created an experience of caring for Chris as a customer, I think, is probably part of the reason, if not the main motivating reason, why Chris took the time to shoot a video.
Dan Gingiss: Yeah. And the reason I called this a two-minute commercial. This is what all brands are dying for, they want people talking about them, they're looking for word of mouth marketing. The problem is they're often going about it the wrong way. They're calling up their creative agency and saying, "Well, can you create a viral video for us?" No, you can't create a viral video, because nobody knows what's going to go viral.
Joey Coleman: If I have to be in one more meeting, and I was in a meeting not long ago where somebody said, "We want you to create some videos, and hopefully at least one of them will go viral", and I was like oh my gosh, stop, just stop. That's not the way this works folks. It's not the way it works.
Dan Gingiss: Right, and so by providing a remarkable experience to Chris, Banana Republic got a video for free. It got one of their customers singing its praises and talking about how great of a brand it is and notice it has slipped in things like that he's a credit card holder, that he's been a customer for a long time, et cetera, et cetera.
And the other thing that stood out to me was the idea that this was an inexpensive item, and it reminded me of when we talked about Chewy, and how Chewy made a great experience for my friend Mike when his cat died, even though it was possible that that was Mike's last purchase with Chewy, and P.S., I've heard since that Mike is still a happy Chewy customer with his other cat, but very similarly here, Chris could have been completely ignored simply because he was focused on an inexpensive item, but instead they treated him like he was buying the most expensive item in the store.
So, let's look at the takeaways from Chris's story. Number one, it only takes one great employee to make a customer's experience remarkable. Joey talked about this with an associate at Bed Bath and Beyond just in episode 35, and Chris had a similar experience here where a single employee went out of his way to be helpful.
Number two, you never know who your customer is, whether they're an influencer, whether they host a podcast, whether they write a blog or film all of their experiences outside of your store. So treat every customer like they can be your next great ambassador.
And then, number three is, when customers post such things on social media especially when they're singing your praises. Please, please, please always respond and show your appreciation. It only takes a minute. Many, many brands that are focused on responding in social media are focused on the complaints first, which is a good thing to do, but don't ignore the people that are taking time out of your day to compliment your brand. A simple like a re-Tweet, or a "thank you, we love you, too" goes a long way to telling customers that you appreciate them.
Joey Coleman: There are so many great customer experience articles to read. But who has the time? We summarize them and offer clear takeaways you can implement starting tomorrow. Enjoy this segment of CX Press, where we read the articles, so you don't need to.
Dan Gingiss: A great friend of the podcast, Lauren Fast, had an experience with a company called Away Luggage. Now, this started by her posting an article, she didn't write it at somebody else on forums named Grant Martin wrote it. It was called "Airline Smart Luggage Ban Goes Into Effect", and it talked about, essentially that airlines unilaterally instituted this ban on what is called Smart Luggage that has these lithium-ion batteries in them, because they could potentially explode underneath the plane. And for some reason, they don't potentially explode while they're in the passenger area of the plane. Somewhat worrying to me, but okay.
And so what airlines basically said is you cannot check this luggage, however, you can bring it on, and or you can remove the battery from your luggage. So this obviously was a potentially fatal blow to the Smart Luggage industry, but one particular brand, Away Luggage, developed this very clever solution, and it was the first to create a removable battery that slides right out of the bag so that the passenger can carry just the battery on the plane with them and still check their bag.
So, Lauren pointed out this article and then she also shared a personal experience with this same brand, so let's take a listen to her Away Luggage experience.
And without hesitation, my answer was the luggage company, Away. Away has a beautiful presence on Twitter, with gorgeous images, wonderful stories, awesome blog posts, and suggestions of places to travel where you can, indeed, use their amazing luggage. And when airline policies for smart baggage began to change, they prepared their clients for the airline changes and gave us the confidence and the courage to walk up to the gate with a piece of Smart Luggage and be able to show the airline employees how easy it was to remove the battery.
This helped me to avoid an extremely embarrassing situation. Days after the policy change goes into effect, airline employees were hyper-vigilant for all pieces of Smart Luggage. They just knew to stop individuals with their Smart Luggage, accost them at the gate, and make sure that they could remove the battery from the luggage and put it into their pocket instead of taking it onboard with them.
Because away had such amazing Twitter updates, I was actually able to show the airline employees how this luggage differentiated from other pieces of Smart baggage. The model that I own is the one where you simply press down on the cell battery and it pops up quickly. Easy to grab. Put it into your backpack, your handbag, your pocket, and go on board.
"Oh," they said, "Well that one's really easy. You don't even need a screwdriver." No, I sure don't. But for those that owned the previous model of Away luggage, they did need a screwdriver. And here's how the company handled that. Also, through Twitter, which I thought was amazing. If they owned a previous model of the Away Luggage that did require the screwdriver to remove the battery, which was inconvenient under the new airline policies, they offered to upgrade those pieces of luggage on them. One just needed to sign up and register, have their piece of luggage switched to be in the more modern version. And it was taken care of.
And then avid travelers frequent travelers and smart travelers could continue to use their smart luggage with ease, and without embarrassing situations which I think really enriched the customer experience. And of course, the overall traveling customer journey.
Dan Gingiss: Pretty amazing, right, Joey?
Joey Coleman: Amazing, indeed. I absolutely love this, especially as somebody who spends a lot of time on airplanes and has witnessed kind of the … I was actually flying when this ban came out and listening to the number of grumbling passengers that weren't allowed to use their bags, and where this, folks, if you don't fly a lot, where you this may show up that you might not otherwise realize is when you're taking your carry-on to get on the plane and suddenly they decide they don't have room for your bags anymore, then they have to take your bag and check it.
Well, if your bag is a smart bag, then that creates a problem because they're now checking something with the luggage. That turns into a big problem, and for those of you that may not be familiar, Smart bags are basically these new luggage items that have tracking devices in them, they have chargers in them. It's basically creating a suitcase that has functions beyond carrying your clothing and your toiletries from one destination to the other. It allows you to get onto an app and see where your bag is. It allows you to potentially plug in your phone or your laptop and charge. So, they're kind of an interesting technology.
What is fascinating about what Away Luggage is doing and what's going on the entire industry is, this is a brand new industry. Smart bags are new, and most of the companies that are playing in this space are really at the cutting edge. The problem with being at the cutting edge is they are playing in a world, IE. airline travel, where they don't have a lot of control. And the airlines, as Dan mentioned, unilaterally decided no more Smart Luggage, and companies need to make adjustments quickly when faced by these challenges.
What I love about Lauren's story, though, is not only how quickly Away Luggage responded to this, but how quickly they started to teach their customers how to avoid these snags and challenges. If you create a product or you have a service that is going to cause issues for your customer if they're using your product as designed and as described, you need to be on top of letting them know that this might be a problem. She specifically mentioned the screwdriver problem, right? No one wants to carry a screwdriver on a plane. Not to mention that carrying a screwdriver on most flights would be an illegal activity. TSA would not be happy with you.
So the fact that they came up with the solution for this by giving you a free upgrade not only solved the immediate problem of their customers not having the right bag, but it took it one step further by creating customers that loved this surprise and delight opportunity for them to be able to say hey we will do you a solid and give you an upgraded bag for free.
Dan Gingiss: Yeah, I also really liked the fact that Away Luggage proactively alerted their customers that this was happening. They did it on Twitter. I believe they also emailed customers. And you shouldn't stop there, you should call them, you should send them direct mail you should send them smoke signals if that's what it takes. But if there's something big that is going to affect their purchase, it is critical that you get out ahead of it, and when you do customers understand this stuff and they're willing to forgive when things happen. So, make sure that they know.
Let's go to our takeaways, and the first is sometimes industry or government regulations are going to throw a wrench into your plans. You cannot let them destroy your business. And this is an opportunity for you to get creative like Away Luggage did.
Number two, technology is so advanced today that it can solve almost any problem, and Away's clever removable battery pack is a perfect solution to the problem instituted by the airline ban.
Number three, treat your customers well and they will be loyal for life. Imagine if Away simply told their customers, "Sorry, you can't use our luggage anymore." Instead, they sent free replacements and created brand evangelists like our friend, Lauren Fast. Listen from Away Luggage. Listen to what they did and see how you can replicate it with your own company.
Dan Gingiss: Okay, Joey. Our final season one Check Out This Number… number is 56%. What do you think it means?
Joey Coleman: All Righty. So, I'm guessing that most of the people listening to this who have children, your kids will be out of school by now because it's the summer season. I'm going to say that 56% of you are already counting the days to when school starts again.
Dan Gingiss: Really, you think it's that low, huh?
Joey Coleman: Well I know you have school age kids, Dan, so I figured I'd throw that one out to you.
Dan Gingiss: Well, actually what I was referring to is that 56% of buyers feel that there is a gap between traditional B2B, that's business to business buying experiences and their evolving means. Now, this comes to us from the next generation of B2B purchasing, Millennials, Marketplaces and Digital Buying Preferences, which is a new research report published by our dear friends and sponsors at Oracle.
Joey Coleman: This one actually surprised me a little bit, because I would have guessed that the number was even higher. And the reason I would have said that is because in most B2B buying experiences there is a huge opportunity for improvement, especially in the area of digitization. We need better e-commerce experiences. There's a huge lack of flexibility, in terms of minimum purchase orders. You know your customers don't want to have to jump through your hoops for minimum purchase orders if they want to only buy a few you should try to figure out a way to let them buy a few.
Additionally, things like timely delivery across regions is a big problem for companies operating nationally. You know they don't understand why one segment of their stores and offices are able to get access to the things they buy from you faster than others. So, I think there's just huge opportunities here to improve the B2B purchasing world.
Dan Gingiss: So, for the full report and more great content, and when I say great I mean, some recent articles by Joey Coleman and Dan Gingiss, some great summaries of certain experience this show, episodes, and also tons of original content from the great and very smart folks at Oracle CX. Go to smarterCX.com/experiencethis and check out the website. I guarantee you're going to want to book market and come back often.
I also want to take a moment to specifically thank our sponsor for season one, which is Oracle CX cloud. We've really, really appreciated your support and for taking a leap of faith with us. Two guys who have never been podcast partners before but who knew a thing or two hopefully about CX. We really appreciate you coming on board and sponsoring the show, and specifically Samantha Haussler, who has been a terrific representative for Oracle and we really appreciate everything that you've done for us.
Joey Coleman: Yes, thank you, Sam, you've been the best.
Also, thank you to our production team, the folks at Convince and Convert, as well is Don't Panic Management, specifically Jay Baer, our mutual friend who brought us together, and we were standing at a happy hour sponsored by Jay, and he said, "Hey I think would be fun if you two did a podcast together" and then helped figure out how to make it happen. The incomparable Kelly Santina, who keeps Jay and Dan and I are behaving and doing our jobs properly.
The production team, including Jess Ostroff, Jennifer Hinds, and Dan Rogers the other Dan of the Experience This Show, who were kind enough to stitch everything together and make the episodes sound good for you, our listeners, as well as my law school roommate, Devin Seaman, who was kind enough to compose all of our intro and outro music and put together the voiceovers and everything that we did. It's always great when you can call on a friend from law school to do music help for your customer experience podcast.
That's how we roll, folks, it's crazy over here.
Dan Gingiss: And, last but not least, we want to thank you, our listeners. We very, very much appreciate you tuning in every week, and sharing with us your thoughts and your experiences, as well. We couldn't do this without you, so please, go out. Have a great summer, and we will see you back in the fall, for Season Two of the Experience This Show.


Happiness is when the mind dances, the heart breathes and the eyes love. Our daughter Justine said this sentence.
For us it is a feeling, to be able to run a restaurant according to our ideas, have one team and nice guests, who share and live this with us.


text:
Taking STEPS to empower students of color
Ayesha Sen and Clio Rao
Despite America's historic and pervasive racist, classist, and sexist legacy, a mentoring program that brings together high school and middle school students of color proves that when students of color are given space to be their full self, they can ultimately thrive in, rather than simply survive, school, said MD History teacher and STEPS co-Director Ronald Taylor.
The Students Together Empowering People of Color Successfully (STEPS) program "shows students of color at HM that they deserve to be here, they are equipped to be here, and they have no business limiting or truncating their shine to make other people feel comfortable," Taylor said.
In STEPS, supportive and collaborative relationships are fostered even beyond those who directly participate in the program, STEPS co-Director Kimberly Joyce-Bernard, of wrote in an email to The Record. "This program is multifaceted as students, faculty, staff, and families collaborate in order to cultivate the social, emotional, and academic capacities that middle division students of color need in order to thrive in this predominately and historically white institution."
Jaden Richards (11) said he had a rough time fitting in in middle school. "I don't exactly fit into the mold of a typical Horace Mann student," he said. When Richards came to the school in the seventh grade, he was one of about 10 other black kids in the grade, he said. Richard said that his experiences, opinions, values, and tastes felt completely different from those of his peers, so he always felt out of place. "My family is by no means wealthy. Nor was I raised in an 'American household.'" Richards also thought if racial slurs and jokes demeaning families of lower social classes were normalized, then maybe he did not belong, he said.
Before Richards applied to become a STEPS mentor towards the end of his freshman year, he did not even know that the program existed, he said. "My history teacher, Dr. Milkes, sent me an email telling me that she thought I would be a good fit for the program," he said. "As I was reading about [STEPS], I realized that I would definitely enjoy it, so I applied."
"Now that I've got my footing, however, I'm in the place where I can help other students get their footing as well and help develop a safe space for a lot of students of color."
Though her friend gave glowing reviews about the program,Christine Tao (8) said she was initially skeptical, but soon came to understand their perspective. "What makes the program so nice is the safe area that it gives its students," she said. "We really can converse about any of our issues without facing judgement."
Brooke Huff (6) joined the program this year as a new student to the school after hearing positive feedback from her older sister, she said. "I am hoping to get out friendships, extra support, and a great experience at my new school that I just joined this year."
Richards said that one of his favorite memories involved two girls divulging troubles in their Spanish class. He explained that they were talking about how they could barely speak Spanish, but the way they were describing the scenario was really funny, he said. "By the end [of the session], everyone was laughing."
In 2017, Deveraux Mackey '19 worked with the school to develop the program after proposing it as an Alexander Capelluto Grant during her junior year. The Capelluto grant awards up to $2,500 to a sophomore or junior who best develops an idea to make the world a better place. At Taylor's previous school, he said he ran a program similar to STEPS. He missed supporting students in that way, so he agreed to join as an advisor. STEPS is the reason that Taylor continues to work at the school, and it is what motivates him to wake up every morning, he said.
The program has helped advisors, mentors, and mentees alike, Taylor said. "STEPS offers mentors life skills training on how to speak truth to power; a skill set that the 21st-century workplace will need as colleges and industries become more diverse. "
Taylor said STEPS has helped him mature as well. "Deveraux showed me that despite coming from teaching in high needs and inner city settings and not being a product of NY elite independent schools, I could still have an impact in these spaces by serving as a conduit for students to speak truth to power," Taylor said.
Despite the COVID-19 crisis, program leaders have found ways to continue the program, by conducting weekly Zoom check-in meetings with mentor and mentee, and inviting families to check-ins every two weeks, Taylor said. During family meetings, the leaders have curated specific programming to support students and families with the socio-emotional challenges that COVID-19 has highlighted, he said.
"I hope that the program will return to a more unstructured format," Tao said. "That would make sessions easier and more productive, since we can just talk to each other."
For Taylor, the most important thing for the future of STEPS is for it to become an endowed HM program. "As the program grows to being a full N-12 model, it needs to sustain so that students and families at all aspects of our pipeline can see that students of color belong at HM and make it a vibrant community," he said.
Since its development, STEPS has served as a model by showing that a student's voice, when listened to, can ignite changes across an entire community, Taylor said. "STEPS has shown the HM community that we need to continually make space for students to feel and operate as their true selves—that is education."
MD incorporates Unity Week into classes
Post-Covid MD technology policy prohibits personal devices
Behind the scenes of MD musical James and the Giant Peach
Rasiwala (8) makes history as first female football player on MD team
MD celebrates International Food Festival
Art classroom opens in Pforzheimer
MD students create, attend new clubs
CCVA's Watts joins MD as Service Learning Coordinator
Alvarez takes over for Norma Rodriguez as MD Advisory Coordinator

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


All professional economists around the world are aware of the fact that it is absolutely necessary to reduce the tax burden on business in times of crisis, because otherwise small and medium-sized businesses may not cope with the problems they face while the loss of income in the form of taxes from this economic sector due to bankruptcy can cause much more trouble for the country and lead to further aggravation of the crisis. The so-called tax optimization offered by the country at the peak of the crisis only increases demands and tightens control and pressure on business since the aim of the government is to fill the budget. Under such circumstances, the reduction of taxes is hardly possible.
Therefore, the question of how to reduce the tax burden on business in times of crisis remains relevant and highly important. We are going to discuss legal methods of tax reduction – after all the evasion from tax payment is a criminal offense. Therefore, we will consider the possibility of legal costs reduction through tax optimization. Tax optimization implies the opportunity for businesses to get more profit after paying all taxes and fees. It should be noted that switching to other tax rates may require additional fees or even penalties, which may even block the positive effect of switching to another tax rate.
The tax legislation of the UAE does not restrict economic entities in terms of forms and conditions of contracts and transactions; therefore, in times of crisis, taxes can be optimized in such a way as to minimize the rate. Thus, a professional consultation with a tax specialist in the UAE will legitimately save your profits. With this approach, it is important for the transaction not to have obvious signs of fictitiousness, since in this case the transaction itself can be recognized as invalid.
Another way to reduce taxes in times of crisis is the partition of economic relations. In this case, one legal entity may delegate part of its operations to another entity with certain benefits, for example, if a part of the company is transferred to another region, or even to another country with more favorable tax conditions. In this respect, the UAE has many opportunities, because there are more than 40 free trade zones in the country – each of these zones has its own tax preferences in specific business areas.
No matter what approach you use, it is very important to have qualified help and be professional, because certain actions aimed at tax optimization can have negative consequences.


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Q: Does the coin multiplier affect money pickups or money drops? If I have a 2× coin multiplier, does it double the coins dropped by slain monsters or the coins I collect?

A: The multiplier aplies to the number of coins dropped, when the moster dies.
For example, if you

*

*have multiplier 1

*kill a green slime (raising the multiplier to 2)

*kill another green slime

*let a beat go, dropping your multiplier back to 1

you'll find that you still get 1 coin from the first drop and 2 coins from the second.
The multiplier has no further effect on the coins, either dropped or found.
Based on practical test, first tested on 0.375 alpha and leater tested on the newest release version, 1.09.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The 4x2, 6x4 and 8x4 Trakkers mount disc brakes on the front axle (or axles) and drum brakes on the rear axles with final drives in the hubs. The forward drive axle of the 4x4, 6x6 and 8x8 versions are fitted with drum brakes. As of now, there is no technical solution that allows epicyclic final drives and brake discs to coexist, granting easy access to the latter for maintenance. Braking effort is corrected to match the load on the rear axle assembly by the ABS sensors on the wheels, which measures any tendency to jam when braking, and modulate the pressure delivered to the brake cylinders. This system, known as Electronic Braking Limitation (EBL) is an enormous step forward compared to mechanical correctors which depend on the suspension deflection, particularly with suspension systems that have little flexibility.
The compressed air of the braking system is controlled at the compressor output by the APU (Air Processing Unit), which comprises a heated air drier, a pressure regulator, a four-way distributor and two external sockets: one provides the compressed air necessary to inflate the tyres, for example, the other is used to supply the vehicle system from an external source.
All the Cursor engines are fitted with an ITB vacuum brake (Iveco Turbo Brake, described in the chapter dedicated to the Cursor engines) as standard, and its effectiveness is reinforced by the action of the variable geometry turbocompressor of the 440 and 480 Hp Cursor 8 and Cursor 13 engines.
The ZF hydraulic retarder is available on request with the Ecosplit gearboxes, and its control unit is coupled with that of the ITB. In fact the retarders are activated using the lever on the right, under the steering wheel (the first two notches control the engine retarder alone), and releasing the accelerator completely. Depressing the accelerator again de-activates the retarders, and the telltale on the dashboard will go out. There are two advantages to this system: it prevents the engine from counteracting the retarder should the driver forget to de-activate it, in spite of the telltale on the dashboard, and it allows the retarder to be engaged and disengaged simply by pressing the accelerator pedal, without letting go of the wheel. There is also another automatic function: when the speed governor is activated and the vehicle starts to go downhill, the retarders are engaged to maintain the set speed.


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Rome Prisma Film Awards
Prisma is live, every two months at Cinema Farnese, one of the oldest and most prestigious cinemas in Campo de' Fiori, Rome! Next screening on Jan 31st!
Join the most popular IMD-b qualifying Monthly Festival in Europe!
+700 five stars reviews, thousands of submissions from 150+ countries in the world. Now with monthly Italian press coverage!
$105.000 WORTH OF PRIZES IN SERVICES EVERY YEAR
In the monthly film festivals panorama, many events are unethical and non-transparent, providing minimal value and grabbing money from filmmakers without committing to promote and showcase their work the best they can. We are working on Rome Prisma Film Awards to change this system for the better, creating an always improving stage-by-stage monthly festival that revolves around live screenings in Rome and around the creation of a community of filmmakers from all over the world, with submission costs within reach of everyone. Your film can participate with other independent movies and with world-class talents in a fair competition where everybody starts on the same line.
WE LOOK FOR MEANING, WE LOOK FOR UNITY, WE LOOK FOR BALANCE
Rome Prisma Film Awards were founded by Stefano Perletta in 2018. Hosted by Cinema Azzurro Scipioni, in its first year it saw Silvano Agosti as the president of the jury, a legendary italian director that has worked alongside the greatest italian professionals like Storaro, Morricone, Piovani and many others. Over the course of its second year it moved to Cinema dei Piccoli, one of the oldest movie theaters of Rome in the heart of Villa Borghese park since 1934.
Our winning films have gone all the way to A-tier festivals like "May Day", 1st annual awards winner and Oscar-shortlisted film, "Alien" by Yeon Je-Wang and "Inanimate" by Lucia Bulgheroni that got into Cannes Cinefondation, "Pierdete entre los muertos" by Ruben Gutierrez that was showcased into the feature films at Rotterdam Film Festival and many others.
Since 2020 the artistic director Marcello Di Trocchio stepped in, creating a series of very popular online screenings on Twitch during the pandemic. In 2021, the festival came back live at Cinema Farnese, one of the oldest and most prestigious cinema in Rome.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES WITH OTHER MONTHLY FESTIVALS
▪ Our festival has a stage-to-stage competition that revolves around live screenings every two months.
▪ We have adopted an Ethics and Transpacency policy you will find at https://www.romeprismafilmawards.com/ethics/.
▪ We won't ask for multiple submissions in different categories. One submission is valid for all the 24 awards. We won't charge a hundred dollars for your submission.
▪ We will watch your movie with care and respect.
▪ All submissions get more than $40 in discounts in our partner festivals during the next months. So it is practically free!
▪ The most winning films, filmmakers and screenwriter stay in our Hall of Fame © forever.
HOW OUR STAGE-TO-STAGE COMPETITION WORKS
Our festival goes through different stages. For a complete and clear recap head on to: https://www.romeprismafilmawards.com/awards/
We give you the possibility, at a very low fee - one of the lowest around - for your film to be reviewed by our film critic. Filmmakers that have already asked for a review have expressed their heartfelt thanks for the quality of our service. You can find the reviews here: www.romeprismafilmawards.com/category/reviews
LOW FEE
We really believe that everybody from all around the world needs a chance to compete against filmmakers of all levels. That's why we decided to apply a 50% discount to all our submissions bringing them from $33.80 to $16.90.
www.romeprismafilmawards.com
Fiction Documentary Animation Fantastic Terror Experimental Music Video


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DC flies flags with 51 stars ahead of statehood parade
by Jessica Campisi - 09/14/19 2:25 PM ET
Dozens of American flags with 51 stars were hung in downtown Washington, D.C., on Friday ahead of a statehood hearing next week.
About 140 of these flags were seen on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, WTOP reported.
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC lined with 51 star flags ahead of next week's #DCStatehood Congressional hearing. As a DC resident, I like the idea. pic.twitter.com/PVUiIiWOdo
— C on the scene (@Conthescene) September 14, 2019
The flags were put up days before the House Oversight and Reform Committee will hold a hearing next Thursday on a bill to make the District of Columbia the U.S.'s 51st state. It's the first House hearing on D.C. statehood since 1993, WTOP noted.{mosads}
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) will testify at the hearing.
The bill was introduced in January by D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and has 219 co-sponsors. Its companion Senate bill has more than 30 co-sponsors.
The flags were also installed ahead of a downtown parade on Monday morning called the 51 Star Flag Salute to D.C. Statehood. The parade, which will take place along Pennsylvania Avenue, moves to urge Congress to give voting rights and representation to the District's nearly 700,000 residents.
Tags American flag DC statehood District of Columbia Eleanor Holmes Norton Muriel Bowser Parade
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