Creating a Digital Marketing Machine with Gordon Tredgold

This episode is a treasure trove of practical insights on building a strong online presence.

 Join us in an enlightening conversation with Gordon Tredgold, a distinguished leadership thought expert who shares his inspiring journey from being a Senior VP in IT to becoming a leadership luminary. 

We uncover the moment Gordon realized the power of a robust online presence and how it propelled him to create transformative leadership content. Listen as he recounts a remarkable project where he saved his company a staggering $350 million and enhanced service quality by up to 500%, only to face inexplicable professional challenges that ignited his quest to establish himself as a thought leader.

Gordon's journey is a testament to resilience and strategic self-marketing. He opens up about overcoming harsh criticism from a German company and how he focused on giving advice to his younger self. Through targeted blogging and leveraging social media, he wrote the successful book "Leadership: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint." Discover how an unexpected surge of followers from Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab Spring led Gordon to shift his focus to regions with organic interest, further propelling his online influence.

 Gordon shares his strategies for creating over 2,500 engaging blog posts, growing followers across major social media platforms, and the importance of effective marketing techniques. Learn how to craft compelling titles, structure your content for maximum impact, and repurpose articles to reach different audience segments. With such a wealth of information, we promise a follow-up episode to continue this captivating conversation with Gordon Tredgold. Don't miss this chance to learn from a true leader in the field.

Want more? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpz3MJtB5wkuzoESfGd9xVw

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'd worked for a company for five years and one of the jobs I had to do was to run a program to save them $210 million for a 5% drop in service quality. So 5% drop in service quality, but we get $210 million Seems like a fair trade. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. I saved them $350 million, not $210 million. $350 million and we didn't have a 5% drop in performance. We had a 50% to 500% improvement.

Speaker 2: 0:35

My goodness. You are listening to the Marketer a podcast for modern day marketing professionals. Gordon, thanks for joining me on the show today. I really appreciate having you on. I'm excited because you and I have known each other for a while now. You've been a great friend. We've actually done some podcasting together.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 0:55

And today is my opportunity to get to share all of your insight that you have with the world that I know is extensive.

Speaker 2: 1:05

So one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show- is you know, this is a podcast for people that are interested in marketing marketing professionals that want real, actionable strategies and things that work right. And while you're not a marketing director or really in the field of marketing, you are one of the most prolific marketers I've ever met and I just want to have a conversation around how you go about doing this and share with people basically your strategies, because you are one of the top 10 leadership thought experts. If you would in the world, I mean, you're recognized that If you Google Gordon, you're going to find that out for yourself.

Speaker 1: 2:05

I'm the only Gordon Treadgold in the world.

Speaker 2: 2:08

That's right, but you're going to see all the lists that Gordon shows up on and everything else. Now, that didn't just happen, that was intentional and that was directed, so I know that you are putting out content on a bunch of different platforms. You and I have had conversations so much in the past about your approach to content and what its purpose is how you go about doing it.

Speaker 2: 2:39

So let's take a step back. Could you just kind of walk through when you decided you were going to start down this journey of becoming a thought leader and leadership which there are so many players in it, and the direction and the approach that you took and why content was so important for you.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So do you want the truth or do you want the glossy answer that sounds really good, like it was intentional, yes.

Speaker 1: 3:13

So about 12 years ago I was sick of the job I was doing. My boss was driving me batshit crazy I think that's probably an accurate phrase and I thought, you know, I'm going to look for another job. And somebody said to me you know, they'll google you to find out who you are. And I was like, really I've never done that. So I googled myself and I found I was the only golden trade gold in the world. And it was just tumbleweed and I thought, man, I can't even pretend. Oh yeah, that was me. Yeah, yeah, I was the starting centre for the Boston Celtics. I was the bassist in the Grateful Dead. If they're called Gordon Treadgold, I'm going to claim it. There was nobody I could even pretend to be. So I thought you know what I need to fill this with stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:14

And at the time, you know, I'd always had this desire, like a lot of people, to write a book on leadership and I thought that would be good for me. You know, because I was a senior vice president in it and, you know, got to have good leadership. So if I wrote leadership articles and people googled me and they found that that might, you know, that might help. So that was one of the reasons why I started doing it and then why leadership, and that was because I worked for a company for five years and one of the jobs I had to do was to run a program to save them 210 million for a five percent drop in service quality. So five percent drop in service quality, but we get 210 million dollars seems like. Seems like a fair trade. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. I saved them 350 million, not 210, 350 million, and we didn't have a five percent drop in performance.

Speaker 1: 5:15

We had a 50 to 500 percent improvement my goodness and I had eight peers, all at the same level as me. We had a 350 million dollar budget. I earned 300 million of it. We had 1200 staff. I managed a thousand of them and my boss, for three years in a row, ranked me out of the eight people eighth. How does that work? Tell me how that works. You know, 210 to 350 million. You know, I mean, just break it down for me. And this was a german company and they said it's, it's your leadership, your leadership just sucks seriously so how did I get the results?

Speaker 1: 6:06

I got and they went. You know what? We have no clue. And then and I said, ah well, they said to me okay, hold on, hold on, don't say it's your leadership.

Speaker 2: 6:18

And you said how did I get the results? And I got them. And they said we have no clue, that's right.

Speaker 1: 6:23

They said your leadership sucks. I said how do I get the results? They said we don't know. And I said it's my leadership. And he went no, it's not. And I came out of that meeting thinking, fuck you, I don't know if we could swear on the podcast, if not just bleep that out.

Speaker 1: 6:39

You just did so we're yeah but that was, that was my answer to it. And I came out and I thought, right, I'm leaving after google. And I thought you know what? I'm gonna be coming with the top leadership experts in the world I'm gonna show you. So I had those two things. I wanted a job, I needed to replace the tumbleweed on google around the only golden tread gold there was.

Speaker 1: 7:03

And I went down that path of uh, you know, wanting to be a leadership expert. And you know, everybody said to me no chance, highly competitive. Nobody, nobody, nobody has heard of you. You won't even make a dent in that space at all. And you know, I listened to that advice and I refer you to my previous answer and I tell people and I'm gonna give it a shot. So what I did was I thought what is it like? What is it? You know, you know, stand, and I've never done marketing, but I'm you know, I'm fairly smart when it comes to some of the stuff that we do. And I thought who's my target audience? Who's my target audience, who's my you know, what's my um avatar of my ideal target audience person? And you know, the reason why I knew this was bs about my leadership is because I had 150 testimonials on linkedin people saying gordon's the best leader I've worked for. Gordon's helped develop me. So you know I was a good leader and I thought I lead a little bit differently and I thought I want to share how I've got to be a senior vice president, through which was through leadership, and I thought you know my. My target avatar is I'm I'm 53. I want to talk to my 30 year old self. What would I tell my 30 year old self that I know now that I wished I'd known at 30, and can I explain it in a way that my 30-year-old self would understand it? So I can't be using big words, lots of jargon, so explain leadership to my 30-year-old self in a way that I could understand it. And I did that with just a who am I writing to to get the tone of what I was doing. I didn't necessarily think of it as a target market, but just who I was writing to, so I could be consistent. And what was interesting was there's a lot of people in that 30 to 35 range who want to be better leaders. So there was a ready-made market for people who wanted this content and I just started writing.

Speaker 1: 9:33

I wanted to write a book, didn't know how to write a book, and I thought, okay, how can I do that? You know what I'll do. I'll what would be the chapters that I'd like to put in a book, and what I'll do is I'll write a blog on each of the chapters to just get me started. And when I've written 30 blogs, I'll pick the 20 best and think right, does that? Does that give me a structure for a book? And then can I just extend each of those? And by the time I got down to 30, I hadn't covered enough topics to really pull a book out of it. I thought, okay, I'll push to 50. When I wrote my 50th blog, I had the stuff. So I thought, okay, right now I can.

Speaker 1: 10:25

And I was training myself to run a marathon and what I realized was I was the things I was doing to run a marathon. I was doing, you know, was all about leadership, and I thought can I pair the two together? So I wrote a book leadership, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I went with the Imperial system 26 miles, so it's got 26 chapters, didn't go with the metric system and ended up with 42 chapters Smart, and I was able to write articles on, you know, setting a goal.

Speaker 1: 11:01

How would you do that in leadership Development, training, recognition, planning, preparation, celebrating success? How would you do that in leadership development, training, recognition, planning, preparation, celebrating success? And it gave me a structure for a book. So I started doing all of that and then I thought who's going to read this stuff? Because I'm I'm just posting on the internet and I don't. You know, I'm waiting for the audience to come to me. And at the same time my son had just gone to university to study music, to be a musician, and I said you know, we need to build a following for you. And he's like Dad, just young man's game, step out. And I thought I'm going to do it anyway so that when he needs my help, your kids never need your help.

Speaker 1: 11:54

No, fiscal, except for financial, yeah, and I'm gonna figure that out. So when he asked me, he can do it, so I started. I started building a following on Facebook and what was interesting was I was boosting Portos, I was boosting towards the US, but this was during the Arab Spring and I was getting all of these followers in Tunisia, egypt, and I thought, you know what I'm not going to focus on America because because it was hard to break that you know what are the plants that are growing? What are the plants that are growing? Because if you want to build a reputation, if you've got 10 000 followers, nobody says, ah, but where are they from? You know, you might if you want to sell them something.

Speaker 1: 12:42

So I started doing that, and, and, and. Then I thought I've got this content, I've got the followers. Why don't I start pitching to the content, to the followers? So I started, you know, posting the blogs on facebook. And then I started building a following on twitter. And I was posting the blogs on twitter and I just created and I started using a tool, my favorite tools a social jukebox. I took all of the blogs, I put them in and then, boom, I started banging those blogs out to that audience and, because I'm putting it in front of people, I started getting views. The views started to elevate my um reputation. I'm, you know, for me there's a um. It's about, uh, authority, and the first part of authority is author. So that's the stuff I'm writing. And it's about visibility and if you've got, if you've got, authority and visibility, that's what's going to build your, your brand and um. I started doing that and by the end of the first year I was in the top 50 leadership blogs by the end of the first year end of the first year.

Speaker 1: 13:59

In fact, I think it might have been six months and I didn't know, that somebody.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Somebody came to me and said oh, by the way, you're on top 50 leadership blogs to follow. You're in at number 50. And the guy just wrote he doesn't have the following. He's not your standard John Maxwell, ken Blanchard, robin I forget what his name is now leadership but I really like his content. It's really useful and if you want to learn about leadership, start to follow him. And then I just started growing from there and I was writing a blog a day and you know I came up with this formula for blogs.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Okay, I want to stop you there because I have to go back to a couple of things that you've said, because I think it's so primarily important. I think a lot of people are listening to this and they're going to be like what the heck? How? Top 10, you know, how does the 10,000 followers in a year? How does this happen? Because so many people can't have.

Speaker 1: 15:18

I was at 150,000 followers at the end of the first year. 150,000? On Facebook.

Speaker 2: 15:28

On Facebook. Okay, so the end of the first year, 150 on facebook.

Speaker 1: 15:31

Facebook on facebook. Okay, so all right. So we got 50 000 on twitter.

Speaker 2: 15:33

Okay, so we've got to dig into this a little bit, um, because I know people are going to be like oh, that's all bot driven, you had to pay for it. Well, and I know it wasn't.

Speaker 1: 15:43

So number one I think I did boost some articles to to put it in front of people. Well, sure, yeah, yeah. But if you and if you, if you get that visibility and people like it, then they're going to say I'm going to, I want to read more of this. So you know, my, my market, my, my content met my market's need.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Well, exactly, and that's where I was going to start. I think that for me, what I heard one of the most important things you said right out of the gate was my approach was, when you're thinking about your target market, who is this going to be? You started with yourself and you said I want to speak to my 30-year-old self, and how would my 30-year-old self receive the teaching that I'm going to give them? I've got to simplify it. I've got to make it digestible. I've got to make it something that my 30-year-old self would.

Speaker 1: 16:40

I'm going to make it short, yes, and would want.

Speaker 2: 16:43

So then you went from that. I think that's brilliant number one, because that means you're creating content that most people will want to read and I've defined my voice now yes, yes, exactly um number two you told what I heard in there as well was you were extremely consistent and probably prolific in the amount of content that you were writing every day, every single day Monday through Sunday yeah, I've written, I've written, I wrote.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I think I'm at I think I'm at two and a half thousand blogs now and I don't write as much as I used to In fact, I can't remember the last time and once you've written 2,500, you don't need to be creating more content. You've got enough content swirling around there and there's always another 30-year-old that can read that article. I don't need to read a new article, I just need to find a new 30-year-old that can read that article. I don't need to read a new article, I just need to find a new 30-year-old.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Yes, exactly so. You wrote 2,000-some-odd articles, over 2,000 articles. You wrote daily. How long are we talking about? Are we talking about like 200-word?

Speaker 1: 18:01

articles 2,000 days 2,000-word articles. No, sorry. No, my articles were 400 to 800 words, Probably averaged 600, but it could be anything from 400 to 800 words. Okay, I figured I've got two to four minutes, so you're going to go and read it. And I made a lot of the titles. The thing about clickbait is that the content doesn't deliver on the title's promise. But if you've got a good title and then the because the good title will get people to open it.

Speaker 1: 18:48

I don't know I totally agree free sex, I'll be able to go. Oh, I'll click on that. It's uh, how to? How to program the iphone 15. This is not what I wanted, but yeah. So the title gets people to open it.

Speaker 2: 19:05

The content is what gets people to share it now, you're totally right, but I and I know you've got a formula for this that I'm dying to hear. But before I get into it, how did you get all those followers? What was?

Speaker 1: 19:21

your approach so on.

Speaker 1: 19:24

On facebook, um, I would boost some posts. I would just say, yeah, put that in front of more people. And at that time, uh and I was managing a global team, so I had a lot of uh people that worked for me and they liked what I did. Yeah, the people that worked for me thought I was a great leader. My boss thought I was a terrible leader because he didn't want to lead like I did. Yeah, he, he liked the command and control because it's easy to do. I just said do it. And magically it gets done. Yeah, in your dreams it's a lot. There's more to it than that, but my teams liked it. I had a big team in Egypt, about 26 people, and Tunisia so during the Arab Spring, when leadership and they were sharing the content like crazy. And I had a team in India of 300.

Speaker 1: 20:23

So, I was sowing seeds on fertile ground.

Speaker 2: 20:27

Yes.

Speaker 1: 20:29

And then when I got up to 150,000 followers. I mean, I had 90,000 followers in Egypt alone at one point and I got up to about 270,000, 275,000. And then that's when I went on Twitter. And then with Twitter, it was just that I used some tools to do it. I don't think that tool's available now Managed Flitter it used to be called and what you could say is like Ken Blanchard, he's got a million followers on Twitter. Why don't you do me a favor? Follow the people that follow him, because if they like ken blanchard, they're gonna like me. So I honed in and I and identified the people who are in my target market and I and I said I follow you, and I got about a 55%, 60% follow back. Now, does that hold?

Speaker 2: 21:29

true on other platforms like LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 21:34

It was well. Linkedin I LinkedIn's. There's an expression flattery gets you nowhere. But it's not true. Flattery will get you into a lot of places.

Speaker 1: 21:49

So, on linkedin, I started, I started showing the content and I used a tool called linked helper, which allowed me back in that day to reach out to 100 people. And again, it would be targeted. I would target heads of hr um, you know the who I thought would be my target clients and who would be interested in leadership. And then I would reach out and I would just say hey, given that we're both passionate about leadership development, I'd love to add you to my network. And then what would happen is that I would get a 60 feedback and that's how I went from 5 000 up to 30 000. I mean, I think I'm currently at 29 994 84 because I had a new contact request come in and I just checked the number.

Speaker 1: 22:49

But I was also writing on LinkedIn and some of the things I was doing on LinkedIn to create the visibility is I joined things like some of the groups like Harvard Business Review. Why would you do that, gordon? Because there's 2 million members and I could post in that group. That's now a potential 2 million eyeballs. Hrcom, that's got a million people in my target audience. Boom. I'll join that and I'll post articles in that. I'll add comments onto a few others CEO groups, cxo, coo. So I targeted all of the people that I thought would be interesting and I was just putting the putting the content out. So some of it was organic, some of it was me reaching out and people feeding, connecting back. But I think within within two years I had half a million followers.

Speaker 2: 23:48

Wow and then that's across all the platforms right across linkedin, twitter and facebook.

Speaker 1: 23:55

I've got about 25 000 on instagram, but I I just can't keep up with instagram. I you know yeah, it's, yeah, it's great, it's great, but it's not where my target market is, and you know, with Twitter more so, but with Twitter at that point as well, I was using this tool, social Jukebox, and because I've written now 50 articles, I could put the articles in. I was mixing and matching content leadership quotes. It was really funny. I was collecting leadership quotes and I thought why don't you just write your own?

Speaker 2: 24:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:33

I started writing down what I thought and you know I wouldn't put it into the mix and at the end of that second year I was going to, it was actually it was just before the World Cup, the Soccer World Cup in Brazil and my speaking coach called me and he said you'll never guess what's happened. I was like I don't know what he said. You've been selected for the England football team in Brazil and I said, no, but this is probably harder to get into. You're in the ink magazine top 100 leadership experts in the world wow, I was number 90. Bill gates was 87 wow. And what was also good was on that list there was a lot of dead people. So people like um andrew carnegie sorry, dale. People like Andrew Carnegie sorry, dale Carnegie, deemed a leadership expert because of how to win friends and influence people yeah, he's dead. So of the living leadership experts, I'm now up to 89. And Stephen Covey yep, I'm now up to 88. But that put me into some and people come to me and say that can't be true and I was like Check Ink Magazine. Yeah, this is not. You know, I didn't even know. Somebody came and told me about that and then, with all of that the blog you know.

Speaker 1: 26:03

So I created this and I started being on more top 50 blogs to watch top 10 leadership blogs. I started getting more of these things and then I would share that as part of the content, because then people would see that and think, oh, maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about. I'll go and read his stuff. And I was telling you I've got a formula for writing content, because once you get to about 50 blogs now it gets to be a little bit of a head-scratcher and I came up with it. So as a mathematician, one of my strong points is pattern recognition, so I'm always looking at stuff and how I can break it down. And I came up with this formula for blogs which is medium concept, context, and basically what that means is for the medium video, audio, written. So if you record a video you could say exactly the same content. You write it, you record it, you video it Same thing. That's three pieces of content and different people want to listen, read and watch. So now you know my 50 is at 150.

Speaker 1: 27:18

And then the context concept. It's basically about the idea, the principle you want to share and the example, and there's a limited number of principles and everybody tries to write a new principle. Good luck with that, good luck with that. Whereas, with the examples and you know the context of what you're writing if you can explain that principle using an example, there's probably an unlimited number of examples you can find, so don't be looking. You know, understand what your concepts, the ideas, the principles. You want to share what they are, and then just keep finding different um examples of how to share it. So I'll give you a great example of this and it allows you to create unique content.

Speaker 1: 28:14

Uh, to some extent, and that is um, I read an article about marilyn munro I always tell this story, but an article about marilyn munro who was good friends with um ella fitzgerald, and ella fitzgerald couldn't break into the biggest clubs. She was kind of like second tier, division II performer and Marilyn Monroe. You know I don't believe this, and what she did was she called the biggest club in LA and she said look, I want you to book Marilyn Monroe, so I want you to book Ella Fitzgerald for an entire week. If you do that, I will come and sit on the front row every night and I'll make sure the press is there to boost your club. They did that. Ella Fitzgerald never, never looked back. She only ever played. You know big clubs or the smaller ones where she wanted to play.

Speaker 1: 29:12

And the leadership article I wrote was three leadership lessons from Marilyn Monroe. Number one nurture the talent that you see. So she saw Ella Fitzgerald was great. I'm going to nurture and help her grow. Leverage your network. She knew the owner of the club. She called him up, created the opportunity. And the third was make a commitment, meet a commitment. She went every night and brought the press with her. So now I've written three leadership lessons from marilyn monroe, who's writing that yeah, people are yes we're gonna go.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Oh, I'll have a look at that and you know we think about where we are right now. I could write five leadership lessons from pete carroll, five leadership lessons from nick saban, five leadership lessons from bill belichick yeah and not only. Not only could I probably write the exact same leadership lessons.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Maybe tweak it a little bit, it's gonna be trending yeah, totally so I'm not creating a trend, I'm riding the wave exactly that's brilliant so I started and once I got to that level and then I started reaching out, so I thought I can continue to grow my platform, my audience, which you know. I clearly shown capability and I thought why don't I just use other people's audience? And I thought, okay, uh, what can I write for? And I had a good friend and he said why don't you write for huffington post? I said how would I do that? And he said I bet you any money. Ariana.

Speaker 2: 30:59

Huffington's email is ariana at huffingtonpostcom why don't you write to her and I was like, okay, how would I pitch it?

Speaker 1: 31:16

and he said look, flattery gets you everywhere, so why don't you find an article that she's written? And there's, she'd written an article about, uh, dogs and I'm a cat person dogs, take them or leave them. But she wrote this article on dogs and he said write to her and say I just read your article on dogs. Oh, my god, that resonated with me so much. I really love the way blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. I've always been a fan and admirer of you, but this article really took it to the next level and I'd really like to write for huffington post.

Speaker 1: 31:57

It's an article I've written. What do you think? I mean, it's a little bit like asking her to marry you on the first date, which you know maybe don't do that.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Yeah, some people do Some people do.

Speaker 1: 32:13

Some people get to regret it for the rest of their married lives. So I did that and if you remember the day I did it, it was December 25th. I was off work and I thought you, you know, I'll do it. It was christmas yesterday. I'm bored, there isn't a good movie on. My team are out of the, you know, out of the playoffs, don't need to watch that.

Speaker 1: 32:37

So I wrote the article on december 25th. December 29 she wrote back and said I really appreciate your words. I loved your article. I'd love to, I'd love for you to write for huffington post. And the other thing I did was you know, I'd love to write for your huffington post. Here's an article and here are some of the other places I've written and I'm a top 10 leadership expert.

Speaker 1: 32:59

So I was leveraging some of the credibility I've got and I wrote my first article in huffington Post. I think it was like January 5th, something like that and then they gave me backdoor access because I started sending articles and they went. You know you're writing one a week now and why don't you just use the door, go in in, write them and post them yourself? I mean, that was you know talk about uh license to print money in terms of building a brand. So I started, I started doing that, but but you were, you were restricted. Anything you wrote on there you couldn't post anywhere else for five days. So now I would write it and then five days later that would be my blog. So now I'm repurposing the same blog on two different platforms.

Speaker 1: 33:58

And then when I'd written for huffington post for a while, I thought, okay, you know, I'd like to write for ink magazine. And I said I a friend who was doing this, and how do I do it? And he said why don't you write to contributors at contributors at ink magazine and see what that says? So I did that and I got an email back saying this is the approach send us this, this, this and this, uh. And then I wrote to Inc Magazine, obviously writing and, by the way, I'm in the Inc Magazine top 100 leadership experts and speakers. You know who I am and I'd like to write for you. So they actually had an interview with them and I was signed to a contract with them. And I was signed to a contract with them and they said you've got to write a minimum of I think it was four blogs a month. They're not interested in somebody who's going to write one. You know they can find it's too much effort. You know you've got to write a minimum of four a month.

Speaker 1: 35:08

And again, I worked with an editor for the first 12, and they taught me about things like you know titles, structure. You know, write a blog about the one thing you need to know about marketing, because that will get people in. And then the one thing people forget about marketing. Do you want that? One thing people forget is that one thing you needed to know? So it's now the same blog, but with a different title. One thing if I could only tell marketers one thing, this is what I tell them. It's the same article. It's the same article. It's the same principle.

Speaker 2: 35:54

Oh, man, I love it.

Speaker 1: 35:56

The one thing that makes marketers successful. It's the same thing, but, yeah, it's a different blog. The examples you use, the structure, the message you portray, the overall. You need to know this. People forget this Top. People do that so that taught me a lot.

Speaker 2: 36:22

I'm going to put a pin in this and I'm going to bring you back again, because I know that for those who have been hanging and listening to this long listening this long you understand what a genius Gordon truly is. So much so it's worth another episode, right. So if you are game. I want to bring you back again and I'm going to make this a two-part series. How about that Cool?