RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Kelly Vaughn [00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.
I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.
Promo: Hey everyone. We want to invite you to join us at All Things Open. All Things Open is the largest open source tech web conference on the US East Coast. It’s hosted annually in the heart of Research Triangle Park in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Target audiences include developers, engineers. Decision makers and open source [00:01:00] community members and anyone else involved with open source software. 4,000 to 5,000 people from all over the world are expected in October. We’re gonna be there. More information can be found online at 2024.allthingsopen.org. I really hope I don’t have to spell that for you.
Robbie Wagner: What’s up everybody? Welcome to our live Whiskey Web and Whatnot on location at Chuck’s house, as you can see
Chuck Carpenter: That’s right. Yeah. I’m just back in a different room. Yes. Everybody came over and we have to just go into three different rooms because that’s, you know, we need to stream it. Can’t, can’t just record it locally.
Kelly Vaughn: limit how much time we actually spend in the same room, so
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah. You know, we don’t get along that well. Um, it’s
Kelly Vaughn: I’ve never done this before. I don’t even know you guys.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Well, we’re the creepy guys on the internet that get your home address so we can mail you stuff.
Hopefully it works
Kelly Vaughn: But hey, when it ends up being whiskey, I’m not gonna complain.
Chuck Carpenter: Right? Right. It’s a roll of the dice. Yeah. [00:02:00] You ended up getting a free bottle of whiskey once too. Well, they’re all free to you,
Kelly Vaughn: yeah,
Chuck Carpenter: you got an extra, yeah. Oopsie bottle Bardstown.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, actually the whole reason we started a podcast was to collect a bunch of, uh, important tech people’s home addresses, so we can then sell those later. So
Kelly Vaughn: I mean, it’s working. Right.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I, I need to, but I have not sent a bag of dicks to anyone that I can recall that I really want to, I keep threatening. Yeah. He would probably be the first, but not till after I go to his house. ‘cause I’ve also been invited over for like a nice meal. So I don’t wanna send him a bag of Dicks first and then be like.
Here. Here I am. Please don’t spit in my food.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Speaking of Dick’s, would you like to
Kelly Vaughn: Wow. That’s a great segue.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah, exactly. That was a pretty good one. But I, I know she’s been on before. I know she’s been on before. Save it. Save the rest.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I, I guess we should, we should let you intro yourself in case people have not heard your [00:03:00] previous episodes.
Kelly Vaughn: Yes. Hello. I am Kelly. I am director of engineering at a video intelligence startup called Spot ai. Uh, been in engineering for many, many years, engineering leadership for many years, but not as many as I’ve been coding. I live in Atlanta and I. Like Chuck Drive the same vehicle, except mine is not the wagon and that is the best way to explain it.
That’s me.
Chuck Carpenter: snagging wagon. That’s you.
Robbie Wagner: I was hoping that sentence was gonna stop with just, I like Chuck.
Kelly Vaughn: That’s it.
Chuck Carpenter: that’d be a good one.
Kelly Vaughn: Not sure who this other guy is.
Chuck Carpenter: and yeah, I don’t know. Does she ever text you, Robbie? Probably not. So,
Kelly Vaughn: Do we even have your number? I don’t even know. I said we. I am one person,
Robbie Wagner: Chuck. Chuck does have my number, but
Chuck Carpenter: I have it.
Kelly Vaughn: I would hope so.
Chuck Carpenter: be weird. Yeah, if I didn’t have that at least. Yeah, well, you know, if you can just say offline if you’re interested, I’ll send you his contact. If not, I totally understand.
You know,
Kelly Vaughn: If [00:04:00] not, we’ll pretend this conversation never happened.
Robbie Wagner: yeah, yeah,
Chuck Carpenter: we’ll cut it. No, I’m just kidding. We can’t, uh, it’s
Kelly Vaughn: life.
Chuck Carpenter: Alrighty,
Robbie Wagner: could cut it later, but if you re-watch the live footage, you’ll, but anyway, continue. Sorry.
Chuck Carpenter: oh, did you wanna finish your dick joke?
Robbie Wagner: Speaking of Dick’s, Chuck, can you,
Kelly Vaughn: this.
Robbie Wagner: can you tell us about the whiskey today?
Chuck Carpenter: All righty, fine. Fair enough. Okay. Today we’ll be enjoying chicken cock rye. I’m a child. It is 90 proof, uh, age two years with a mash bill of 95% rye and just 5% malted rye. The cool thing about this, aside from the bottle, so the bottle is really neat ‘cause it has this like chicken wire honeycomb texture to it, and apparently chicken cock.
Is America’s oldest whiskey brand or one of it used to say? Yeah, so 1856 in, in pairs Kentucky, seven decades later, it [00:05:00] was a staple of prohibition, error speakeasies. Okay. So a lot of illegal work there. Now it’s back. The cock is back.
Kelly Vaughn: I love that if you stop reading at the second line, it’s just established in 1856 in Paris.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And then they’re like, let’s kind of go with
Kelly Vaughn: bourbon.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: It’s not even bourbon, it’s rye.
Chuck Carpenter: Well, so the funny connection though is that you’ve had their bourbon. We were recording at render a couple of years ago. Chicken Cock Bourbon became a little fun party, whatever. I can’t remember who was on the episode where we actually tried it, but then you came by, were hanging out Chicken cock.
Kelly Vaughn: You
Robbie Wagner: think we did it for a couple.
Kelly Vaughn: of me saying Chicken cock. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, we have that
Robbie Wagner: Now we have it
Chuck Carpenter: a SD card. Yeah. Wait, what? What kind is it?
Kelly Vaughn: I should just say it differently every time. This is
Chuck Carpenter: Please? Uh, say it in French since it’s a French, uh, French brand. Alrightyy? Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: French,
Chuck Carpenter: Uh, P [00:06:00] ole I think is, uh, ole is chicken. And
Kelly Vaughn: That’s the best I
Chuck Carpenter: the word for cock, believe it or not. And I learned French as a kid. You’d think cock would be on the list of things I’d find out.
Yeah. Okay. So on that note, I. Ooh, okay. This has a, it’s almost like a cherry syrup or something smell to me.
Robbie Wagner: I’m smelling lime.
Chuck Carpenter: It’s got a what? A lime for you
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I smell lime.
Chuck Carpenter: puts the lime in the coconut. That’s a song. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. Puts the lime in the coconut. Yeah, it’s a little weird. I think it’s like some old seventies song puts the lime in the coke and No, never heard
Kelly Vaughn: That’s actually the lyrics there in the,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s as far as I got, as far as memorizing them.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. It’s by that guy that did that song.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guy who did song well chat. Who did the song? Nobody
Robbie Wagner: is anyone in the chat? My computer is far away and I can’t see.
Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah, that’s true. I don’t think so.
Kelly Vaughn: look at, there’s a chat.
Chuck Carpenter: There is, there’s like, yeah, so there’s livestream chat. Oh, [00:07:00] Cyrus, if you know, wow, Kelly, that’s what Cyrus says. It’s not Billy Ray.
Don’t worry about it. It’s totally fine. So, okay, let’s get back to the whiskey. But yes, it has a sweeter, almost like cola. It’s almost like cola syrup a little bit. To me, the more I smell it now I’m gonna taste it. See what happens here. Yeah, still a little bit of that. Like if I was to have like a very syrupy like Cherry Pepsi, a little bit of that in the beginning.
Yeah, but it’s like a flat cherry Pepsi in the beginning and they get a little bit of like bitterness, citrusy bitterness.
Robbie Wagner: it’s kinda like Pepsi mixed with seven up, like you made a suicide and then like shook it all up to where it wasn’t fizzy and like didn’t taste good and just had like not that much soda flavor, I guess like
Chuck Carpenter: okay.
Kelly Vaughn: You are going to give this a very high rating. I can tell.
Chuck Carpenter: He’s very much enjoying
Robbie Wagner: is okay. I,
Chuck Carpenter: think it’s interesting.
Robbie Wagner: taste good tasting soda, I didn’t necessarily mean this was bad.
Chuck Carpenter: Hmm. So that’s a multi-generational term too. I didn’t realize. I remember as [00:08:00] like a grade school kid or whatever, we’d go to roller skating parties and that was the fun thing to get like a soda cup and make a suicide, which was just basically everything that was there, all mixed together.
Kelly Vaughn: Oh.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I don’t know if, uh, dear listener, if you’d ever heard that term before. I didn’t know if it was a Midwest in the early eighties kind of thing, or.
Kelly Vaughn: what I, I don’t know about that, but I do know that, you know, living in Atlanta, we have Coca-Cola headquartered here, and at the world of Coke, there’s a whole room that has every single Coke product from around the world.
Chuck Carpenter: Oh wow.
Kelly Vaughn: And there are people who actually try to taste every single thing and most often end up sick at the end because,
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Yeah. That tracks.
Kelly Vaughn: from Italy, I believe it’s called the Beverly, and everyone talks about how bad it is because it’s so bitter.
But I only ever had it as a kid. And now I’m [00:09:00] wondering. If I were to try it now as an adult, like how close is it to like Campari or you know, something that is already like a bitter laur. That could be
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I, I like
Kelly Vaughn: wrong. Like I didn’t, I should have tried it while I was in Italy and I didn not even think about it.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and I also, I was there like a month.
Kelly Vaughn: You were, yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah, I didn’t do a lot of soda, but I like Campari and Ammas in general, so I like that bitterness. So I’m thinking like I will even sometimes just have a little bit of Campari with like a splash of soda in it, and just that is actually pretty tasty.
Kelly Vaughn: They had like a Campari soda, like in a can
Chuck Carpenter: Oh, yes, yes. And the little bottles. Yes. They’re so good.
Kelly Vaughn: little bottles. You’re right, man. I. Good times in Italy minus, you know, totally eating it and having to withdraw from the Chicago marathon. But outside of that,
Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: know, if I [00:10:00] ignored the ankle pain we’re good.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Well, you could take some of those Campari sodas and take the edge off of
Kelly Vaughn: Oh, the edge was taken off.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Plenty of
Kelly Vaughn: of injured myself halfway through vacation and so I had, I walked on a very sprained ankle. For a week.
Chuck Carpenter: M Well, on the road to recovery as, uh, you post frequently and some of those posts being post runs,
Kelly Vaughn: Yes, I’m running again. That is good. I had a really tough physical therapy session on Friday and so my ankle is not feeling great still, which is the longest it’s ever hurt for a while. But I did go on a four mile run yesterday because I was in Michigan and it was 55 degrees outside. I’m like, I have to run outside in that kind of weather, like it’s beautiful.
Um, it was worth it. It was worth a little bit of pain at the end.
Robbie Wagner: sounds like about the same temperature as where a truck is right now.
Chuck Carpenter: Um, like in this room, it might be 55 degrees in this room. Like [00:11:00] we have a thing in Arizona, and when it goes above a hundred degrees, that means the, all the inside should be like 60 degrees. So it doesn’t make any sense. I have this sweatshirt sitting right here next to me because half the time I’m in here freezing.
Kelly Vaughn: that women’s winter because like when it gets really hot outside and they dial down the temperature inside buildings, I always, always bring another layer.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, because you can guarantee it’s just gonna be freezing all over the place no matter where you go. And if you’re spending more than 15 minutes in any of those spaces, it’s like, hell no. Women’s winter. Not heard that before. Well,
Kelly Vaughn: learning things.
Chuck Carpenter: we are learning things. This is, this is good. I like where this is going.
Let’s learn what you think of this whiskey. Okay, so a reminder for everyone, the highly technical scale of zero to eight tentacles, zero being terrible. You spit this out, which I didn’t happen to notice, but maybe four. Middle of the road, not bad. Eight. Amazing. Clear the shelves. [00:12:00] You’re an expert. Kelly in this particular, this is like at least your third time rating, something, so you know what’s up.
Let’s see if Robbie has an opinion. I think he’s gonna like this one, but.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. In, in terms of Chicken Cox, this is maybe not the best one I’ve had, but um, in terms of general rise.
Kelly Vaughn: Please take that one little bit. That’s a perfect,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. In terms of Chicken Cox,
Kelly Vaughn: it’s not the best one I’ve had.
Chuck Carpenter: no.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s okay. Anyway. I think in terms of Rise, it’s not terrible. It’s not great. It’s like it’s kind of middle of the road for me. I don’t really have anything like super negative to say about it, but I’m not like, I don’t love it and I don’t have like super opinionated reasons why, but so for that reason, I’m just gonna give it a five.
Chuck Carpenter: Hmm. Five is more generous than I thought you would go.
Kelly Vaughn: I was gonna go with a five and a half
Chuck Carpenter: okay.
Kelly Vaughn: we have a half tentacle in here today. I don’t think I can give it a six, but my brain went right to five and a half on the scale of zero to eight. [00:13:00] So
Chuck Carpenter: In. Interesting.
Robbie Wagner: All
Kelly Vaughn: obviously, you could see I definitely have not had this much of it today.
Chuck Carpenter: Are you sure?
Kelly Vaughn: I’ve already been drinking
Chuck Carpenter: this is the most Monday of Wednesdays.
Kelly Vaughn: Oh, it’s such a, that’s such a Monday for so many reasons that I’m not going to talk about on here. That’s for afterward we stop recording.
Chuck Carpenter: Okay. All
Kelly Vaughn: I have a great story, but it’s not getting
Chuck Carpenter: It’s not for everyone. Okay. That’s fair enough. See, I feel like I’m leaning to more towards middle of the road, and I want this to be better because the branding is obviously funny and I’m a child. The bottles are nice, like with this nice like texture on it. I really like that. I like the.
Ideology behind the brand, and it’s been a little while. It’s funny that I haven’t tried any other ones, but, so I really liked the bourbon that we had before. And I know they have a few different expressions. I should kind of dig into it more, but I already have a drinking problem, and so it’s just like, do you need to [00:14:00] just a new one every week, probably just go with that.
But I, yeah, I feel like it’s a four, maybe four and a half at most for me, for a rye. This really just doesn’t have the qualities that you’re looking for in awry. Like honestly, if I blindly had this, I’d be like. I don’t know, it’s a less sweet bourbon in a way. And it’s just like, it’s kind of one note in a way.
Like I’m getting that like little bit of flat cola, little bit of citrus and then it kind of goes away. I, I think that’s what I’m not loving about it. So it’s like, I’d probably try this in a cocktail. Like it might make an interesting rack where you get some more other notes in there and still leave it somewhat naked.
But, uh, eh, four and a I’ll be nice four and a half, just ‘cause I like what else they’ve done so far.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean, not every whiskey can perform every time, so
Chuck Carpenter: just like many. Oh my gosh. And the irony is that it’s both whiskey and I’ll leave it at
Robbie Wagner: I’m gonna, I’m gonna stop now,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, you’re being, you’re actually being a little rude.[00:15:00]
Robbie Wagner: Okay. All right.
Chuck Carpenter: anyway, we’re gonna do some hot takes, but they are adjusted from what we normally would do for you, Kelly, because A, you don’t give a shit about React.
Here’s a nice spicy one for a race car. I. Miata or Boxter.
Kelly Vaughn: I am going to say Miata,
Chuck Carpenter: It’s the wrong answer.
Kelly Vaughn: why is because I can, I don’t race. My husband does the racing It’s way. More friendly on my budget because after taking the Cayman out on the track, so many times you just blow through tires. You blow through brakes, and it gets expensive. But Miata, it’s way cheaper.
Now, I’m not gonna say no to boxer, actually. I just want to buy a boxer as like a second daily. But I think I don’t have room for another car right now. So.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You need those, like low lift things or whatever. The double lo. Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: my garage is too small for [00:16:00] those, and so we’re gonna have to buy a new house first. So
Chuck Carpenter: How’s, how’s more cars? I like this thinking though. This is good. Yeah. I support this decision.
Kelly Vaughn: yes. Or as Cyrus says, put the car in the living room.
Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s like those apartments where you would like, you could drive it into the elevator and like it goes up with you
Chuck Carpenter: Mm-Hmm.
Robbie Wagner: like get in the car and go down. Sounds kind of cool.
Kelly Vaughn: I actually currently have a 2024 Macon outside, ‘cause I have my Tycon in for, I just hit 20 K miles, so I just did my 20 K mile service and then I’m taking care of some recalls so.
Chuck Carpenter: Nice.
Kelly Vaughn: I’ve been driving a base level Macon with an upgraded, it’s a premium package in the upgraded surround sound system. So I mean, it’s,
Chuck Carpenter: It’s
Kelly Vaughn: decent.
It’s, I mean, you could tell that it’s the base Macon, and after renting a CX five for 24 hours in Detroit, I take the Macon Cony day, but that’s probably [00:17:00] obvious.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I’d rather have a basement on than a fully loaded Acura or something, you know?
Kelly Vaughn: Exactly. Yeah. Like after, when you drive a tycon all the time, you drive an electric vehicle all the time. You are just used to the torque, like it’s always there.
You’re just gonna go. And where I’m like, you know, that meme with the stick poking? And I’m like, do something. That’s how I feel when I’m driving the, the CX five and I, I owned two Mazda threes loved them also. Those were like my last manual vehicles again, because it’s fine. But I love my car. I wanna eventually buy a 19 99 11, a 9 6 4.
It’s gonna be amazing.
Chuck Carpenter: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Vaughn: compliment to a Tycon.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I think so. You need some, some more explosions still, you know,
Kelly Vaughn: Yes,
Chuck Carpenter: they’re in the back, so it’s fairly safe.
Kelly Vaughn: it’s
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s true.
Kelly Vaughn: There are, there are other years that I could get.
Chuck Carpenter: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Vaughn: I think we discussed, you know, I [00:18:00] value my life and I do want to live.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: we’re going with a 9 6 4.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. And eighties, like nine 30 is like, they call them the widow, widow
Kelly Vaughn: Exactly. There’s a reason why it’s called the Widow Maker.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: Have they all exploded A lot.
Chuck Carpenter: No, no, it’s just that they’re super light and a lot of power and like you have to work your way up into Yeah. They’re just basically easy to crash. So,
Kelly Vaughn: I like these new versions of Hot Takes, by the way.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Well, we gotta mix it up, you know, it can be like, get pushed or, you know, no get pushed, get pulled, whatever.
Kelly Vaughn: get
Chuck Carpenter: Uh,
Robbie Wagner: Neither, neither of those rebates or me was what it was. But anyway.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. No, I know what it was, but it’s funnier. See, don’t
Robbie Wagner: push or get pull. Yeah. Well, one. Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: like I, I
Chuck Carpenter: Uh, all, all I know is you’re just supposed to go get push dash f
Kelly Vaughn: Chef every time.
Chuck Carpenter: one every time. Just
Robbie Wagner: yeah. Especially if you’re on the wrong branch and you don’t realize it, that’s when you
Chuck Carpenter: doesn’t matter. Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: [00:19:00] Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Get push Maine because we’re politically correct.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I’ve had a problem recently where I like. I always click the pull button. I use tower at work, like the Get client, and I press that every time to make sure I’m up to date. But if you haven’t pushed your branch yet, its default is to take the main branch and merge it into yours when you do
Chuck Carpenter: Hmm.
Robbie Wagner: And I’m like, I never ever want that to happen, what it’s going on,
Chuck Carpenter: Kent, what is the setting here?
Robbie Wagner: yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, just choice to use that,
Robbie Wagner: Well,
Chuck Carpenter: at all. But, uh.
Kelly Vaughn: Chuck’s
Robbie Wagner: I mean, I.
Kelly Vaughn: get purist like seal I or
Chuck Carpenter: I, uh, I have PTSD from like learning get from senior engineers that were like neck beards eating funions, like yelling at me and throwing like their used or their old Mountain Dew, two liters at my face. So I, it
Robbie Wagner: I am gonna say they probably did not throw their two liters at your face,
Chuck Carpenter: They were empty.
Robbie Wagner: but did they throw it at your
Chuck Carpenter: Do you think any of that [00:20:00] was literally what happened, Robbie? Like are there parts that you’d like to dig into it? Inspector Gadget or,
Kelly Vaughn: What I wanna take away from that is I have not eaten a funion in a very long time.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
Robbie Wagner: I think Funions are underrated.
Kelly Vaughn: I completely
Chuck Carpenter: think you’re right. I agree. I think Bunions were delicious. I think they still exist. I have no
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. They have flaming hot ones now, which I
Kelly Vaughn: flaming hot funions.
Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm.
Kelly Vaughn: No, that’s a party.
Robbie Wagner: Yep.
Chuck Carpenter: That’s, that’s a solo party possibly.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Oh, man. Alright. Well get to your hot take, Robert.
Robbie Wagner: Oh, okay. We are in football season now, so if you had to pick Georgia or Michigan. Oh, it was easier than I thought. Okay.
Kelly Vaughn: I have had to explain. My upbringing and my college affiliation to so many people at this point that yes, I am a fan of both Michigan and Georgia. I grew up in Michigan. My earliest memories are [00:21:00] tailgating from Michigan Games. I’m a big U of M fan. I also have three degrees from the University of Georgia, which means I, by the amount of money I have paid, the University of Georgia am also a Georgia fan.
Chuck Carpenter: Right. Yeah. They’re a fan of you.
Kelly Vaughn: They’re very, yes. I
Chuck Carpenter: association is. How about keep it coming?
Kelly Vaughn: three weeks into grad school and I went straight from undergrad to grad school. I was maybe three weeks in the alumni, like they started calling me, asking me to donate. I’m like, do you want me to pull up my latest tuition bill because I’m still here?
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: I’m still giving you plenty of money,
Chuck Carpenter: We’re gonna be okay.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, they’re ruthless about that.
Kelly Vaughn: this is going to be an interesting football season, though I’m not.
Sure with the reorganization of divisions, like of conferences and then the extended number of playoff teams. I’m just very interested in seeing how it’ll go. The four team model. I understand why that needed to change. Like it’s always SEC or [00:22:00] Michigan.
Robbie Wagner: When you have the same four teams like 10 years in a row, it’s probably not the best model.
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah. But it’s also fun watching Florida just like cry a little. It’s also fun watching Alabama be like, well, we don’t have Nick Saban, and we lost a bunch of people, and we have a different coach from where we had last year, and so we’re gonna see how things go. I would love to see them fail.
Unfortunately, this is recorded, but think Ohio State is gonna do well this year.
Robbie Wagner: Oh no. Okay. That’s all the time we have, I think.
Kelly Vaughn: I am not rooting for them. Trust
Chuck Carpenter: are drinking. I mean, you can wash away.
Kelly Vaughn: like less than Alabama is Ohio State.
Chuck Carpenter: Hmm.
Robbie Wagner: Ohio State is like, the way I think about it is like Alabama is a dynasty. Like they are supposed to be good and fine. Okay. If you want to be like, Hey, we’re good. Yes, you are good. Ohio State is trash and thinks they’re good recruits. A couple people, they’re the like, I think we might’ve even said this [00:23:00] the last time we talked to you, that they’re the react of.
Football teams, it’s this fulfill self-fulfilling prophecy of like people use it because other people use it. So it’s like they were ranked and good, which made them get recruits. So they faked being good to then be good, which like, I guess, props to them for doing that. But like, I just, I don’t like them and I don’t like their philosophy.
Kelly Vaughn: I would probably say that Alabama is more the React. I feel like they’re like the staple team that a lot of people support. If you’re like in the Southeast and not in, you know, a Georgia fan, basically Ohio State is, I’m trying to think about which ones the, which is like the really annoying one that’s just like occasionally being like, oh, LA, who you’re so much better than React, and then everyone forgets about him.
Oh, look what you know, we’re so much better than react. You should move to this. And then everyone forgets about them.
Robbie Wagner: Hmm,
Kelly Vaughn: They’re the
Chuck Carpenter: Uh.
Robbie Wagner: so many of those.
Chuck Carpenter: View or N or whatever kind of has had a D. I feel like they’ve all had a little dalliance with that where they release something and people [00:24:00] are like, oh, there’s something to that,
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: but I get paid to do this, so I’m gonna
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: And that’s why we are all learning React.
Chuck Carpenter: Except for Robbie.
Kelly Vaughn: think most people in the chat are not into football or college football.
Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. College football, very
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Chuck has got them all on European football. He does, doesn’t play this egg ball game stuff, so.
Chuck Carpenter: I don’t, yeah, and where I grew up, like football really wasn’t that big of a deal. Like, well, we have had, I don’t live there, but whatever the Bengals and like that was a fun thing I might do once a year to like go hang out and live sporting events, super fun. I don’t care. I’ll go to like pretty much anything but didn’t follow at all.
Basketball’s very big in the Cincinnati area. We have the University of Kentucky, university of Louisville. Cincinnati where I went. Yeah. I mean, Ohio State was even pretty decent for a while. All of those. So it’s like basketball was kind of it, and then people played soccer and I just kind of stuck with that.
It’s just all about my long going European dreams.
Kelly Vaughn: never got into [00:25:00] basketball. Mostly because my first exposure to basketball, I went, I went to a lot of Michigan basketball games because my grandparents worked for U of M. And so we just like, honestly, I never really appreciated it because we would just like walk right onto the floor because my grandparents worked there and I just like never really know.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You didn’t know your privilege at the time.
Kelly Vaughn: And then. Pro. Growing up in Michigan, I didn’t have much going for me with the pistons.
Chuck Carpenter: right? Yeah. Like it predates you, you know where Yeah. Uh, what were they called? The bad boys or something like that.
Kelly Vaughn: good before I was born.
Chuck Carpenter: Right. Yeah. Big Isaiah Thomas fan. He showed up to your birth. It was great. Would you ever live in Michigan again?
Kelly Vaughn: No,
Chuck Carpenter: Would you consider living No. A little summer house in Traverse City.
Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
Kelly Vaughn: love visiting again. Like even when I go up in September or I go up in the spring or summertime, like basically anything except like from December, like after [00:26:00] Christmas until May, that’s just Michigan’s dead to me.
Chuck Carpenter: Fair enough.
Kelly Vaughn: dead to everybody or
Chuck Carpenter: fair weather fan. Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: I mean, I enjoy when springtime hits in March and then I’m watching my family be like, yeah, we’re about to get a blizzard again.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: Cincinnati like,
Chuck Carpenter: Similar. Yeah. We used to say, uh, if you don’t like the weather, just wait till tomorrow. Oh,
Kelly Vaughn: I’ve come to learn that everybody says that
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Turns out, I don’t know who started it, but it spread like wildfire.
Kelly Vaughn: it did. Same thing as like the year, 11 seasons of the year. We just, you know, a couple weeks ago we had fake fall,
Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm.
Kelly Vaughn: a
Robbie Wagner: Oh, I loved that. It was great.
Kelly Vaughn: Nice. And then immediately back to nineties and I’m just like, Nope. Bring it back. Bring it back, and that is how fake fall works. Gets you excited and then just like rips off a
Chuck Carpenter: And you, you like pull out some of your sweaters or a jacket for nighttime or something? Yeah, yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: unfortunately for [00:27:00] me, fake fall coincided with the release of the pumpkin drinks, the fall drinks at Starbucks. And so I was all ready with my pumpkin spice turtleneck and my cold brew and. It was like 70 degrees outside and I’m like, yeah, let’s do this. And then immediately just like rolled up the sleeves.
Chuck Carpenter: I am. Right. Yeah. ‘cause you’re like, 70 isn’t quite 50.
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah. But again, I went inside a building and I was like, okay, sleeves back down.
Chuck Carpenter: That’s why they can serve you those pumpkin spice lattes or whatever. ‘cause they’re like, come on in, it’s cold in here.
Kelly Vaughn: Exactly.
Chuck Carpenter: it feels a little bit like how, you know, Walgreens or whatever, they’ll put their, I feel like we’ve had the Halloween decorations out for like a month already. And you’re like,
Robbie Wagner: They got Christmas stuff out like months ago,
Chuck Carpenter: oh my
Kelly Vaughn: I saw some Christmas stuff at Home Depot recently.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
Robbie Wagner: never too early. Like I think we’re getting this stuff for like Christmas 2025 out now as well.
Chuck Carpenter: [00:28:00] right. Yeah. We better get that out because, you know, the, the trends are changing. There’s like, white trees are coming back for 2025. Not this year, don’t buy it ahead of time, but, you know.
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah, if you buy it this year, it’s too soon.
Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm.
CTA: This just in! Whiskey.fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and T-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the prompter, man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast. It really does help us reach more people and keeps the show growing. All right, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Chuck Carpenter: So I’m gonna say I added a couple of drops of water and it, I don’t know, it helped, it gave it a little bit of diversity, like a little bit of spice in the finish. I don’t know, it’s not amazing, but did help some. I,
Robbie Wagner: more I drink it, the better it[00:29:00]
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah. That’s
Chuck Carpenter: it turns out a
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: work out that way. My body is like, is it Wednesday?
Is it Monday? I don’t know. You do this all the
Robbie Wagner: Hey, I’m at the beach, so
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah, go ahead Robin, in a little bit more.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I thought that was a fake background behind you, but I guess it’s
Robbie Wagner: no, no. Yeah, that’s,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah, that’s right Outside. Wait, that’s right. Outside my back balcony.
Kelly Vaughn: Exactly.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. You forgot. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. But I remember it’s the drinking, you know, I’m trying to catch up to Kelly because, you know, I haven’t had as much as
Kelly Vaughn: You’re, you’re doing good. Like
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, we’re, we’re getting there. We’re getting
Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah, we’re getting there.
I’m trying to play catch up, so, so, oh, Robbie’s on it and whatever else. Alright.
Robbie Wagner: of places we’re getting to, let’s talk about Raleigh and all things Open.
Kelly Vaughn: Yes.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. We have not been before. Have you been before?
Kelly Vaughn: have not, because it’s almost always the week of my birthday and this year it is the week before my birthday.
Chuck Carpenter: Oh, excellent. Happy.
Kelly Vaughn: to enjoy it and then still get back in time for my birthday [00:30:00] weekend.
Chuck Carpenter: Do other things? Yes. That sounds like
Kelly Vaughn: can still celebrate my birthday, like that’s totally
Chuck Carpenter: While there, you’re okay with this. Okay.
Kelly Vaughn: I, I will, I will give you permission to celebrate my birthday.
Thank you.
Chuck Carpenter: There might be alcohol involved. I don’t know. You know, it’s kind of on brand. Yeah. Not that I want to drink, but I just, you know, have to, I’ve got this image to keep and so,
Kelly Vaughn: will also be actively half marathon training, so that’ll be fun. Nice little mix of alcohol and running in the morning at 5:00 AM It’s
Chuck Carpenter: Ooh. Yeah. No, totally fine.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I won’t, I’ll be skipping that running part.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I was gonna say, I would love to join you. I think I am gonna be injured
Kelly Vaughn: Gonna schedule an injury.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: I definitely have an upcoming injury scheduled for that week, otherwise I totally would. I’ll also run,
Kelly Vaughn: You know, I, I get it. It happens sometimes. I’ll be like, yeah, my ankle’s just hurting too much this morning. I better not work out.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Or go down and do kind of a recumbent bike and then you have the [00:31:00] screens on there and you know, you.
Find something mediocre to watch. Yeah, that’s, that’s a good way to do it.
Kelly Vaughn: Since Peloton introduced the Kindle app in the entertainment section on the bike and on the tread, I have worked out more in the past week and a half than I have in quite some time because I love reading. And also like if I get on the bike, I will just stay there and next thing I know, like an hour has gone by.
I am finally going to get off of here and realize that I have definitely not had enough to eat for as much as I am cycling right now, but that’s the best part.
Robbie Wagner: Nice. Yeah, I am curious how many people use that though. I feel like having not tried it and not really being a reader myself, it sounds incredibly hard to bike and read, but maybe it’s
Kelly Vaughn: It’s really not. No, it’s not that big of a deal. Like, ‘cause I mean, you’re staying pretty steady. I mean, you should be staying pretty steady, otherwise you’re moving way too much as you’re on this bike and it’s not like you’re like actively getting up and down [00:32:00] and moving around and everything. Like you’re changing the resistance and like, that’s it.
You might adjust your cadence, but you, your upper body should be pretty still the entire time now. Running. On the other hand, I would not try running and reading at the same time. I walking. Yeah, walking and reading is probably enough for me and I’ll just like hit the treadmill to like 10% incline, three miles per hour and just like walk.
It’s
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: I do think they should. What they should do is have all the Peloton people read us books. So like, I want some Alex Toussant reading me something
Kelly Vaughn: night, moon.
Chuck Carpenter: I mean, just take a nap. Yeah. I
Kelly Vaughn: both a, a, a workout class and meditation. That’s
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it’s kind of a win-win. I, I do like the Peloton rowing workouts. I don’t have a Peloton rower, but I have a rower. And you have the full collection. You can’t, can you read and row?
Kelly Vaughn: No, the, I don’t think it’s on
Chuck Carpenter: so.
Kelly Vaughn: Because you have to flip the pages yourself, and so you know your
Chuck Carpenter: And there’s no way you [00:33:00] can be like, hold on here. But uh, yeah, there’s Matt, whatever his name is the rowing instructor.
I really like that guy. He’s got some cool, yeah, maybe.
Kelly Vaughn: He’s a Georgia boy too.
Chuck Carpenter: Uh oh, I see. Well then that’s clearly why we get along. He doesn’t know me, but we’re
Kelly Vaughn: I mean, same, my friend’s husband went to high school with him and that’s the weird connection that the levels removed.
Chuck Carpenter: and he was like a college rower and all this stuff, and he, he puts together some good mixes. I’m like, yeah, okay. We’re aligned on this. The most I’ve ever done is I have watched some shows while rowing. Like if I know, I’m just gonna like, okay, I’m gonna just bust out a 2K or something. Let’s watch some thing while this is happening.
I can do that.
Kelly Vaughn: may have talked about this last time we did this and that. I’ll turn on all too well, 10 minute version.
Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm. Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: after you’re done listening, 10 minutes have gone by. It’s. Easy math.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
Robbie Wagner: I
Kelly Vaughn: wanna do a 30 minute workout? Listen to it three times.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.[00:34:00]
Robbie Wagner: I have a new potential Taylor Swift connection that is not actually a connection, but I can dream. So the Kelsey Brothers podcast. Is signed a deal with Wondery and I work for Art 19, which is where Wandery hosts all their stuff. So like Taylor Swift could theoretically walk by and see a website I made at some point.
Like,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: a website I
Chuck Carpenter: that’s not the flex you think it is? I, I don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: hey, hey, what do you got, Chuck?
Chuck Carpenter: Um. Yeah, that just reminds me of a funny thing. I don’t know if you watched friends or not or whatever. You remember how Ross and Rachel, if you did, you may remember Ross and Rachel had their list of celebrities that they were allowed to have like a pass for, and there’s this like Ross is really.
You know, he’s painstaking over it and whether, what was her name? There was a, an actress that it was like whether she would be on or off and she didn’t make the final list and he laminated it and then he ended up meeting her then [00:35:00] stupidly tells her the story. But anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah. We used to make the jokes that we, we also have a list of celebrities that would be permissible.
And there was a couple of different times in life where I would like have six degrees of separation, like worked with someone at National Geographic who. Grew up in the same neighborhood as Rachel McAdams and then like, we’re like kind of family friends. And I was like, that’s a few degrees separation.
Okay. Um, she’s on the list. Yeah. Stuff funny stuff like that. Had a couple of those. That was it.
Kelly Vaughn: degrees of separation to Taylor is, you know, her album lover, the photography for that album. Yes, I know that album, the photography for that album was done by, okay. The coworking space that I used to work at for five years. One of the baristas there, her best friend did the photo shoot for it, and so she helped with the photo shoot as well.
And so that’s a pretty close connection.
Chuck Carpenter: a pretty close [00:36:00] connection. Yeah. And you should have been on tour. That’s what I, at the end of that should have been. You were invited on tour and there we go. And that was a great year of your life.
Kelly Vaughn: Oh man, that would’ve been great. But no, I’m not that special. That’s my early retirement plan is to just like, just follow Taylor Swift’s tour. It’s fine.
Chuck Carpenter: Nice.
Kelly Vaughn: money, hopefully, or I’ll just spend all my money that year because by the time she tours again, it’s gonna be like $10,000 for a ticket.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: gosh. Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: so little?
Kelly Vaughn: Why so little?
Chuck Carpenter: And still sell out in 35
Kelly Vaughn: 100%. Yeah, we’ll absolutely always sell out. We are going to our company offsite next week, and there’s gonna be an opportunity for others to kind of give talks. I was joking that I’m going to give a stack ranking of every single Taylor Swift song that has ever come out, and I’m going to need three hours.
It’s gonna take me some time.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, to like work through each one and your
Robbie Wagner: would be extensive.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. That’s pretty serious.
Robbie Wagner: So I do wanna [00:37:00] steer us back for just a second. This is great, whatnot. We did not really say a lot about all things open. I do wanna say, we’ll, we’ll all be there. We’ll be drinking and podcasting there. You’ll be speaking there. Can you give us any kind of preview into what you’d be talking about?
Kelly Vaughn: yes. I’m pretty sure. Submitted my talk. We did this a long time ago. The talk I’m giving right now is probably the talk that I’m giving there, so we’re gonna go with it. It’s called Influence without Authority. So the idea of this talk is no matter where you are in your career, you can have influence within your organization.
So a lot of people believe, like you have to have the manager title in order to have any impact on your org and and be able to make a change. And this talk is really. Kinda breaking that idea down, saying actually, here are all the ways that you can build influence within your organization. Like very tactical ways of like building relationships and asking for and providing feedback, asking why more often, helping to kind of.
[00:38:00] Justify something or present something. Talking about managing up, like proposing your ideas and how to get those to be heard and understood and like accepted. You know, not everything you say is gonna be accepted, as we all know, but you know, a lot of people are afraid of, they either are afraid of giving their suggestions altogether, or they’re so bad at it that they just don’t get their point across.
And I think that’s one of the biggest. Issues that a lot of individual contributors have earlier on in their career even. You don’t have to be early on in your career. I think it just, this is one of the skills that a lot of people don’t have, where basically they go into their reasoning for something before they’ve even talked about what their goal is like.
They’re trying to set the stage for what they’re gonna talk about. And when you’re managing up, it’s the opposite. You need to tell me what is it that you want. Why do you want it and what happens if you don’t get it? And that’s a good way of like a very truncated version of that section because I think that alone is a skill that everybody can build and [00:39:00] everybody should build.
Whether it is a professional relationship, it is a, like a friendship, like a, a personal relationship in any form, like dealing with kids, dealing with parents, whatever it happens to be. Like that is a very good rule to follow if they want more details. They’ll ask for more details, but don’t assume everybody wants the owner bridged version.
They want the very, very like, gimme the table of contents, gimme the tldr.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s true. I feel like I’ve fallen into that trap with like a few documents I’ve written and stuff that like, I’m used to, like, I don’t write a lot of documents necessarily, and like, you know, in school they want you to use like flowery language and like, you know, all this like extra detail and it’s like just cut out like 90% of your sentences and just talk about like.
What do you want to do? And it’s like, oh, okay. That’s way different than I thought it should be. But that kind of makes sense.
Kelly Vaughn: Exactly. I find when I’m doing document writing, start with a goal, like here’s the goal of this document in the first place. Then I’m gonna create the table of [00:40:00] contents before I’ve written anything else. And then I’m gonna look at that table of contents and be like, what is actually important here? I’m gonna write those sections first, and then I’m gonna go back and be like, all right, do I need these other sections?
They’re gonna add them as an appendix, and then I’ll just like move them down.
Robbie Wagner: Nice. Nice. That’s a good strategy.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. When you help Robbie get a promotion, he’s gonna send you a nice
Robbie Wagner: Oh, I don’t, I don’t know if there’s enough help in the world for that at this point, but, um,
Chuck Carpenter: Start your professional therapy. Well, you know, there is a program called The Friend Zone.
Kelly Vaughn: Yes.
Chuck Carpenter: I mean, if you wanna sell some shit, Kelly, go ahead.
Kelly Vaughn: Yes. So I recently started a new community with my friend Taylor Deon called The Friend Zone. And basically the whole goal of this is to help you get a job and to network with others who are also job hunting right now. And to give you that opportunity to, to figure out how you can. Really position yourself to get that interview to nail that interview.
There’s a lot of competition out there right now. Obviously, people are still [00:41:00] getting laid off. Uh, it’s taking people a long time to get their job after getting laid off. You know, I’m reviewing some resumes right now that they’ve been unemployed for 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 months, and they’ve been looking for a role this entire time.
I’m obviously not faulting them for that, but it’s tough. It’s really tough when you just, you need some kind of support. So we have a free option where you can join the community. It’s on Discord, and you can chat with other job seekers. We post jobs in there, just little tips here and there. But we do have three paid tiers as well.
The first tier is gonna get you access to a monthly call with us where we review LinkedIn profiles and resumes. You get additional channels, you get extra access to jobs where like Taylor and I have connections. Taylor has been in the recruiting space for a long time. I’m a hiring manager, which is why we know this stuff front and back.
We interview a lot of people. And then as you add onto this. Two other tiers that we have. So with three tiers total, you get additional perks. With that, you can look at our [00:42:00] website to actually break it down. All of it. I’m not going to give you the entire breakdown on here, but it’s the friend zone dot lool.
It’s a great,
Chuck Carpenter: The LLL was pretty great. Yeah. Which tier do you get? The NFTs.
Kelly Vaughn: Uh, that’s in tier four.
Chuck Carpenter: Okay, perfect.
Kelly Vaughn: I saw something on thread yesterday. Basically somebody was like, yeah, we should put everybody front and center, who bought an NFT and who was like advocating for NFTs at the time. And I was like, man, go ahead and permanently affix my non fungible olive garden NFT that I bought to my profile because that was the
Robbie Wagner: Olive Garden had what?
Kelly Vaughn: No, it was not, and that’s why it got shut down because I owned an olive garden in Kentucky. It was basically it. It was priced $29, I think it was because it was the same price as unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Which is the, by the way, the best thing on the menu. I will, I It is a hundred percent what you should get. Yeah. Yeah. Soup, salad, and breadsticks. The
Kelly Vaughn: I’m really [00:43:00] hungry right now.
Chuck Carpenter: Ooh,
Kelly Vaughn: This is a challenging conversation.
Robbie Wagner: I am about to have 10 pounds of crab legs here in a little bit, so let’s go.
Chuck Carpenter: Nice. Yeah. It’s probably not gonna go quite like that for me, but I would, I would tear up some breadsticks and salad and everything.
It’s, it’s definitely by far the best thing. And I will go back there just to get that.
Kelly Vaughn: Oh, it’s so
Robbie Wagner: yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: And
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, the pasta is kind of mid, to be honest, but the salad is fire. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. The past. Good. There’s a zana is the potato one, I think
Kelly Vaughn: I used to make zana all the time, like that’s soup. It’s so good
Chuck Carpenter: It is.
Kelly Vaughn: I’m just too lazy.
Chuck Carpenter: I’m glad it still hits though. Like I had it in this past year. We’re on some kind of road trip and you know, you’re looking at the options and we’re like, yeah, let’s, let’s just do that.
We’ll, let’s go with it. And it still worked. The, the wine was like piss, but everything else was great.
Kelly Vaughn: Olive Garden was peak middle class fancy for me.
Chuck Carpenter: [00:44:00] Yeah, for sure.
Kelly Vaughn: Like I, it was such a privilege to go to Olive Garden. I grew up in a small town, so we didn’t have much, we had to drive, you know, at least 20, 25 minutes to get to the local Olive Garden. So I was very excited whenever I had an opportunity to eat Olive Garden.
And now I cannot remember the last time I went to Olive Garden. I’m spoiled for choice in Atlanta though, so.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, all things equal, it’s like, not that, it’s definitely like not a thing you’re gonna seek out very often. I can’t, yeah. I don’t go to many chain restaurants in general.
Robbie Wagner: when was the last time you went to a Waffle House though?
Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know, but I want to go now after you posted this morning.
Kelly Vaughn: went very recently, like a couple weeks ago, and it’d been the first time I’d been to Waffle House in years. And I don’t need to go into the super deep details, but I was with somebody who, they had a procedure and so I was taking care of them and I had to drive them. ‘cause obviously they’re going under for that.
And apparently when they woke up, the first thing they said was Waffle House.
Chuck Carpenter: Wow. [00:45:00] Smothered and covered, I mean, smothered and covered all day long. For
Kelly Vaughn: Exactly scattered, smothered, and covered. They have chicken sausage now.
Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Okay. I’m
Kelly Vaughn: tasty, so my go-to order because I have a Go-to order at Waffle House, even though I don’t go all the time. I used to, when I lived in Athens, when I was at UGA, I used to have to walk through downtown to get to where I worked at the other side of downtown.
And so I’d always stop a waffle house on the way and I’d order an egg and cheese sandwich on raisin toast.
Robbie Wagner: That sounds interesting.
Chuck Carpenter: like OG McGriddle in a way, right? Like with a little sweet on the outside and Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: You gotta try it. It’s very good.
Chuck Carpenter: try it. I’m open to that.
Kelly Vaughn: I, I was so afraid like that I was gonna order it and it was just not gonna be good anymore. ‘cause I’m like holding this in my heart. That is always going to be good.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: And it’s exactly the same, so I’m very happy.
Chuck Carpenter: I’m gonna guess that’s not what Robbie got. He has a
Robbie Wagner: No, there’s not enough calories in that for me, so I get the all star with all the things I get. [00:46:00] Ham, or actually, so my wife doesn’t eat meat, so like she gets the, uh, yes. I don’t, she gets the, the bacon and I get the ham. So I get both. And then,
Kelly Vaughn: a good relationship.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: And then I get eggs, hash brown, smothered, covered, chunked and capped and blueberry waffle.
And I don’t eat the toast ‘cause I’m, I’m watching my weight,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, why have the empty calories for nothing?
Kelly Vaughn: When I was in high school, I used to split the Allstar meal with a friend of mine. That’s, we always did. When we went there together, we’d always split the Allstar meal, so I get it. It’s a good one.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it’s a
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. And it’s all cheaper than like. Coffee and pastry from Starbucks, which doesn’t
Kelly Vaughn: Yes, it was. I mean, in high school it was like 5 99. I don’t know what it is now.
Robbie Wagner: like $10, but still it’s cheaper than, yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah, it’ll get you.
Kelly Vaughn: It was great being able to feed myself and a friend for, you know, $3 each on our lowly high school budgets.
Chuck Carpenter: Wait, before we get [00:47:00] too far off, any advice in starting a newsletter? So as media moguls that Robbie and I are, we’re looking at different ways to expand the empire and we think starting a newsletter might be a good way to do that.
Kelly Vaughn: I’m a big fan of newsletters. I have two of them. So you know, I’m having fun. Newsletters only grow so much as you actually market them, so that’s the first thing. And honestly, it’s something I’ve not been very good at. Lately, my newsletter yesterday that I published on burnout is probably the most promotion that I’ve gotten out of a newsletter in a very long time.
But what I would recommend doing is what used to work before where you can be like, oh, here’s a referral program, and referral your friends and they’re going to sign up, doesn’t work anymore. Nobody wants to do that. You’re gonna have more luck. If you want to get people to sign up is offer something for free to them.
That could be a download, that could be whatever makes sense for you. A discount for, that’s usually for marketing for like [00:48:00] e-Commerce, for example.
Robbie Wagner: We got some free NFTs.
Kelly Vaughn: Free NFTs. There we go. You can listen to this live podcast that has been before recorded in the past. Really,
Chuck Carpenter: It was live, and it’s not a total lie. It
Kelly Vaughn: I am going to, yes, Cyrus says small free PDF for free.
It’s actually gonna be just like a blank PDF, like you didn’t ask for any
Chuck Carpenter: It just says
Kelly Vaughn: it’s A PDF. Here’s a picture of A PDF.
Chuck Carpenter: it’s just the PDF icon.
Kelly Vaughn: That’s it.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Or it’s a picture of Robbie going like this.
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah, exactly.
Chuck Carpenter: a gif, which, you know, Siri says GIF correctly, just so you know. gif. Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: GIF is the right way to say it. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. GIF is for
Robbie Wagner: Well, I’m wrong then.
Chuck Carpenter: yes. Robbie’s wrong in so many ways though. You know, like
Robbie Wagner: Yeah,
Kelly Vaughn: we’ll add it to the list. It’s
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: just like.
Kelly Vaughn: Yeah. The other thing I’ll say about newsletters is be consistent. Pick a cadence and stick with it, [00:49:00] and don’t try to overdo it. Or else you will lose track of where you’re at and you’ll fall off.
And I was, I started weekly on mine, and then I was like, I can’t keep up with this. And so I switched to biweekly and then I was like, that can’t keep off with this. And so I stopped publishing altogether, and now I’m back twice weekly. Actually, my Tuesday newsletter is free. And then my Friday newsletter is for premium subscribers only.
I tease it.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
Kelly Vaughn: free people, but then the paid subscribers get to read the entire thing and it’s like a, a longer version of Tuesday’s newsletter basically. So given that I just wrote about burnout and it was a really good topic, Fridays is also very good.
Chuck Carpenter: So if you choose to subscribe, now is a good time.
Kelly Vaughn: That’s right.
Chuck Carpenter: I’m a leach until your content, I sign up for all the free shit. For sure.
Kelly Vaughn: I appreciate that. Modern Leader is, is the, is that one? The other newsletter I have is called Tiny Triumphs. I’m really big on very small productivity tips. I read [00:50:00] Atomic Habits every single year. It’s like, that’s how I roll. So basically I created a newsletter of every weekday morning, 7:00 AM you get a.
A tip, very small tip in your
Chuck Carpenter: Just the
Kelly Vaughn: Just just a tip. Keeping it, keeping it on, on, you know, we’re, we’re good. We’re good. Yeah. I love that one. It’s easy and I definitely like load up on the content and I have all my content ready through end of September
Chuck Carpenter: Nice. Very good. Yeah. I do love the small tips email. I find it very useful. I only had a, that joke was top of mind for me because I watched the Vince Ball and Hot Ones the other day. He was talking
Robbie Wagner: it has a new show or movie or
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, a bad monkey or something like that on Apple tv, you’ll never hear about it because they don’t market anything but.
Robbie Wagner: I’ll still watch it if it’s
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and he’s, he’s very funny and obviously in like the hot ones just off the cuff, but the question was like, what do fans like run up to you quoting and whatever else? And what are like, what are some deeper [00:51:00] quotables that you don’t hear that much that you really like or something like that. So just the tip was one of the easy ones that he hears all the time.
Your money, baby, you know, stuff like that. But anyway, that’s where that came from. Just, you know, a little tangent, a little back and forth. Letting you know that I’m not just a disgusting pervert, but in fact
Robbie Wagner: that would be a really good TikTok channel. Just the tip. And you could, you aren’t allowed to explain. You just give the tip and that’s it. You’re not allowed to explain why. That’s like the thing you should do. It’s just like, here’s a tip. All right. Done.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Just a tip. Just that tip’s.
Kelly Vaughn: I like
Chuck Carpenter: Not terrible.
Kelly Vaughn: I’m
Chuck Carpenter: do something with that.
Kelly Vaughn: just like throw my head into the screen, just like, and then give the
Robbie Wagner: Do this.
Kelly Vaughn: just like slide down.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: I do like that. I wanna see you be like as non-serious and non-professional as possible. Like what? But then something useful is given and then you’re just like,
Kelly Vaughn: with me?
Chuck Carpenter: uh, I have considered it and it’s an [00:52:00] activity that I try to participate in as much as, you know, our spouses are comfortable with. So.
Kelly Vaughn: I mean, I invite my husband along every time, so
Chuck Carpenter: He’s around
Kelly Vaughn: he appreciates a,
Chuck Carpenter: guy again. Seriously? Are you sure? He’s not even funny. And that’s what Daniel
Robbie Wagner: Speaking of, of Daniel’s comfort, has he left the recliner yet?
Kelly Vaughn: We returned it.
Robbie Wagner: Oh, did you? I didn’t
Kelly Vaughn: so heartbreaking. I actually tweeted about this recently, not describing it specifically, but in response to somebody else, so. The recliner arrived and we’re like, oh yeah, this is great. He’s never leaving this. And then he’s like, I want you to sit in this seat and tell me if something feels off.
No description beyond that. And I’m like, Ooh, this sounds fun. And I, I sit down, I’m like, I feel like my spine is crooked. Like I feel like I’m just kind of like leaning a little this way. He’s like, what side? And I said, the right side is sticking out. He’s like, exactly. So either we both have crooked spines [00:53:00] or something was wrong with the lumbar support in the chair, so we returned it.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And they, they didn’t try to be like, we can give you a different one. You’re just,
Kelly Vaughn: So that same chair is on stop order right now for a different issue. So they’re like, Nope. We can’t, but we did order another one that should be arriving hopefully in the next couple of weeks. So we’ll try it again. Different different store. Apparently Laz Boy’s quality has gone downhill, so we’re not ordering from La-Z-Boy anymore.
Chuck Carpenter: I am sure there’s some funny, ridiculous, quasi political comment to be made about the global economy, and we just don’t pay those kids overseas enough. That’s the problem. They’ll make better quality once a, yeah, I don’t know.
Kelly Vaughn: If somebody’s gonna read that very wrong, it’s fine.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: you can just ignore everything that Charles William Carpenter III says. We don’t know who he is.
Chuck Carpenter: Well, you know, I thought we, uh, yeah, I’m having a real, like, reexamine of me and what’s going on. I’m, I’m a guy with big bags under his [00:54:00] eyes, but a backwards hat. ‘cause I think that I’m a teenager. You know? It’s a journey. It’s a
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: That’s what I would say. No, I think I lost it. I had a thing and then Robbie interrupted me, but,
Robbie Wagner: Unfortunately, we’re gonna have to wrap things up here because my wife just texted me and needs me to come carry all of this crab up. So, uh,
Kelly Vaughn: your job.
Robbie Wagner: yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Careful, careful with the crabs.
Robbie Wagner: yes, yes, you do have to be careful with crabs. Before we end, anything else you want to plug or mention Kelly early.
Kelly Vaughn: Follow me on Twitter, K-V-L-L-Y. Follow me or connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow me because I have like 1400 responded, two connections on LinkedIn, but it’s my first name and my last name. Yeah,
Chuck Carpenter: It is hard being popular, isn’t it?
Kelly Vaughn: that you have a, you’re hiring for a, a front end or full stack engineering job and whew, that’s the way to grow your LinkedIn following.
That’s the secret.
Chuck Carpenter: just lie. Just lie. I’m hiring.
Kelly Vaughn: people love that. Like just lead them on and then be like, oh, now you’re here. [00:55:00] So here’s what I’m pedaling. It’s great.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. We need a tasters for whiskey web and whatnot.
Kelly Vaughn: I mean maybe. Yeah, I think you should do it. Anything else I should plug? Yeah, I talked about Mono Leader is Tiny Triumphs is Tiny Triumph xyz. I’m collecting different TLDs for domains. My personal website is kv y.com and the friend zone is the friend zone, dot lo, LOL.
Chuck Carpenter: What country is LOL? Because if TLDs, a lot of times are attached to
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, who
Kelly Vaughn: remember
Chuck Carpenter: is it just the two character ones? It got a little weird lately.
Robbie Wagner: I feel like LO L’s not a country, but I don’t know. Don’t they also have like WTF or like, I don’t know, a bunch of weird
Kelly Vaughn: They do. Yeah. This one name cheap says, buy a LOL domain name for your fan club. Comedy scripts or collection of funny videos. Give the world something funny to watch or talk about.
Chuck Carpenter: Nice.
Robbie Wagner: So we need whiskey, lol.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I
Kelly Vaughn: Yes,
Chuck Carpenter: Don’t buy it. Listen. Cyrus, don’t buy it. Also, thank you for the [00:56:00] compliments. I have a deep voice when I say tip, but it’s just this nice microphone. I’m gonna be honest with
Robbie Wagner: Oh my
Chuck Carpenter: and, uh,
Robbie Wagner: All right, on that note, I gotta go get these crabs, so thanks for listening. I haven’t read any of the chat, so thanks for anyone who’s hanging out, and we’ll catch you next time.
Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got it.