Good Day Google+ - March Madness

Hey everyone, it's Good Day Google+ and I'm Chef Dennis. Thank you so much for being here today. We've got a great lineup for you. As always, no controversy here, just grab a beverage, grab your lunch, grab a friend and sit down and watch and get to meet some of my friends from Google+ and get to know them as real people rather than just what they portray on TV. They're not real doctors, they just act that way. I'm just going to start off on the side and I'll start with someone that everybody knows It's Craig Fifield from Craig's Army.

Hi, Craig.

What's going on?

Good to have you today.

Thanks for having me. It's been a while. Nice to see you again.

Yeah, good to see you. We're going to come back and talk to you about CircleScope and some other things.

Cool.

And my friend David Lead. I have not seen you in so long. It's so nice to get in contact with you again and see you on Google+. I missed you.

Well, you too, Dennis. I have been long gone from Google+, but it's glad to be back. I'm glad to be back. Good.

We will talk to you and see what you're doing. And Heather, coming to us from Montana, Montana, Montana. Yeah, I hate to say that my one thought about Montana is Frank Zappa's "I think I'm moving to Montana, wanna lay some dental floss." I know, you're not the first person to say that.

And let me tell you, I know, just looking at the smiles around here, maybe some dental floss might not be the best investment. I'm just saying.

Oh, and then we're going over to the UK, and we have Phil Aston. Thanks so much for joining us today, Phil. How you doing, buddy?

Alright, thank you, thank you for having me on your show. I'm really pleased to be here.

Oh, me too, and it's always nice to have someone with that lovely British accent. Everyone says we have accents over there, and I don't understand it, but you know, okay. So we're here on Good Day Google+, and as always, our friends are in the house watching. I can just see Larry Fournier's here, Elizabeth is here, oh, so many people. Laura Sebastiani from Italy. We've got a good representation as people start coming in to say hello. If you see anybody you want to shout out—

Kim Boltman.

Very easy, just click on the eyeball button. And here we've got Larry saying, "Hello all from Larry." And click on that and unclick it and it'll appear on your— and that's over in the comment tracker. And if you just want to shout anybody out, please feel free. So what we do today is we talk about what we do on and off the Plus. And if you guys have any questions for any of our guests, please put them in the comment bar and we will do our best to get to them. Alright, I'm just gonna hand it over to Craig and let him start the day off since he's on the far right. And Craig, you know, we haven't seen you in a while, but I know you're working on Circlescope with Christine de Graaff and some other people. You could tell us about where is that heading or anything else that you're doing that you'd like to talk about, please do.

Sure, so we're still plugging away on bugs on Circlescope. I'm trying to make it as nice as it can be. It's just taking a little while longer than we'd hoped, but it's getting there. I'm pretty excited about that. I do have another super secret thing going on that I can't tell anyone about yet, but I'm super excited about that.

It's secret, but you can't talk about it.

Yeah, I really can't. I'm dying to, though. It just happened this week, but I'm hoping we'll be able to reveal that in a few weeks. What else?

Don't you hate when people do that?

Yeah, but I've been just dying to say something and I can't say anything, so it's bad having to have the secret.

Yes, it is. I can't keep secrets, so I usually don't even go there if I can't—

In other words, do not tell Chef is what he just said. Don't tell Chef Craig.

Well, I can keep other people's secrets. I can't keep mine. Yeah, I'm okay with that. So anything new on the WordPress front? Have you developed any plugins or anything fun or Not really.

I was on— I did give some great tips on David Oldenburg's show, on the Online Money Show, so people should check that out. I think that was last Friday. A lot of tips on how to optimize your blog post and how to come up with blog post ideas. So that was a lot of fun.

Excellent, excellent. Yeah.

And since I last talked to you, I had a plus— I had a post on Google Authorship that got 2,000 +1s, which was pretty incredible.

Have you seen any changes in authorship? Anything that you—

No, not really. There's nothing. It's pretty much the same as it's been.

The agent rank, did that mean anything? I saw Joshua Berg posted something on agent rank.

I haven't seen anything new on that.

I know we keep waiting to hear what they're going to share with us, and they're still so tight-lipped at the Google headquarters. Matt Cutts every now and then throws us a bone and tells us something. Well, Craig is frozen, so while he's frozen, we're going to move right across the panel and get to my friend David.

David, it's been—

like I said, it's been a while since I've seen you. I know Leets Culinaria had an anniversary just recently, didn't they?

We did. We did 15 years. Actually, we were one of the very first sites on the internet that did food. We were there with Epicurious and fatguy.com, which then he went on to create egullet.com. 15 years was celebrated and that was a lot of fun. I just got back from— not just, just got back, about 3 weeks ago got back from a very long vacation in Argentina, Buenos Aires and also Uruguay. A lot of photographs are posted on my page which was terrific. I'm working on a video, I'm trying to get it up on YouTube about all the things that we did there but I'm not exactly what you call a good video editor so that may come up next year. It might be the first anniversary of our trip to Argentina. I think the big exciting news for me is I'm actually working on another book proposal. It's not a cookbook this time, it's a narrative book, and it will just have about 18, maybe 20 recipes, but it's going to be a narrative book, which is what a lot of my readers keep on saying. When are you going to put out a narrative book? When are you going to put a collection of your writings together? So I thought, you know, I always said no until one person said Well, you know, that's so sad because basically I can't give the gift of you and nobody really wants a bunch of URLs for Christmas. And when she said that, I thought, damn it, that's a really good answer. So I thought, okay, I'm writing the book and so we'll see what happens. I'm writing the proposal right now.

I think that's a great idea because you have so many stories to tell and so many things to share besides recipes.

Right, exactly.

Any more, it's like I said, we just want a recipe, we can search for it. But to give someone a gift like that of yourself and your giving more of yourself in it, it makes it more interesting. The recipes mean more, I think, too, at that point, because the person can relate things to them.

So that's the big news in my life. Very good.

And the trip to Argentina, what was your favorite food there that you had?

You know, I have to say, I was searching for this whole thing with the parrillas, which is where they have the grilled meats, and because of course Argentine beef is fantastic, and Argentine meat, and it is, but It wasn't— you know, we have incredible, incredible grilled beef here and grilled meats here, especially in the New York area. So it wasn't as if I was like going from 0 to 60 with the flavors there. But I did find this restaurant, and actually it was through social media. I put a call out for people saying, hey, any good ideas for a restaurant in Buenos Aires? And people started giving me their ideas. But this one restaurant called Y Latina wrote me and said, hey, if you're in the city stop by, and I'm thinking, oh God, this is like some PR thing, I'm not going to do this. So it's kind of like an online dating thing, you know, where I'd say something and they'd say something, and I'd say something and they'd say something. I'd say a little bit more and they'd say a little bit more. So I decided to go, and I have to say it was the best meal I had in Argentina. It was mostly Colombian food, but it was a beautiful little space, and it was a private door that you had to ring a bell to get in, and they only serve 38 or 40 people at night, so it's very calm, and the food was exquisite. So I like that. The second thing I love, I was on this empanada hunt looking for the best empanadas, and there were tons and tons of places that I ate empanadas at, and so that was excellent. And there's one restaurant in Uruguay called La Huella, which is right on the water, like 45 feet from the ocean, and the most exquisite seafood I've ever had. Excellent.

Did you see much Portuguese influence there?

Not where I was. There is some Portuguese influence, but not where— not exactly where I was. So I was looking actually more for the Italian influence. I was looking for some of the other influences because I kind of thought, you know, the Portuguese thing I have covered being Portuguese. So I was looking for some of the other influences. And, you know, there was some really good food.

So there's kind of a nice cross-blend of foods there. Is it more— do you feel it's like more European?

Yes, Buenos Aires is incredibly European. There's parts that you think, gosh, this is like Paris, or gosh, this is like London, or gosh, this is like Milan. And so it's architecturally, it's a beautiful city, it's very diverse. The people are incredibly friendly and incredibly beautiful. And so it was really, it was a very interesting trip. I really enjoyed it.

That's great. I look forward to seeing more of those pictures from you. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeah.

And Heather, tell us about what you're doing. I know you're crafting it up there every day and getting really crafty on us. We're hoping to see more from you on YouTube and on some shows on Hangout.

Yeah, I do a twice-weekly live crafting show, and the tagline says it all: we have a lot of fun, but mistakes, they're bound to happen. So I try to really bring the How was it— it was termed recently that I have perfected the imperfect crafting show because that's my goal is to make sure that we just have a good time and if mistakes happen, they happen because that's really what happens in real life so I try to be as real life as possible.

And it's live TV so you know you just have to think along those lines.

Yeah, and more importantly it's free TV so if you don't like it there's a little red X up at the top you can push and I don't have to hear about it anymore.

That's awesome.

I know, I'm always amazed at how people take the time to leave these in detail bad comments. Like, really? That's all you got going for you today?

Yeah, I was told recently, you know you've made it when you get a really, like, a 3-paragraph-long hate mail. I'm like, woo, I guess I made it.

I had a friend send me a message yesterday, and it was her first really nasty comment on something that had nothing to do with what she wrote. She said, how do you handle it? I said, well, Sometimes I leave it up just to let everybody see just how stupid some people are. And depending on my mood though, if I look at their profile and I just don't want to be bothered anymore, it's just block them and move on.

I've actually learned to not look them up. That's what I've learned to do. So it's just, oh well. And like I said, there's a big red X up there. If you don't like what you're seeing, just click it. I'm not gonna make you stay. There are no guns, no guns, even though I'm in Montana, there are no guns pointed at you at this moment, I promise.

Montana. Very funny.

Speaking of guns, is Montana a big pro-gun state? I mean, I guess they are.

Are you kidding? We have 4 to 1. 4 to 1. That's 4 wildlife to 1 human being. So yeah, we have— we are hunters, we are gatherers. That's what we do.

So yeah, no drive-by buffalo shootings.

No, no, we don't have much of that. I don't think anybody actually owns any kind of like Well, I shouldn't say it that way, but, you know, it's not about assault rifles and whatnot. It's just about going out and killing some food. We like our food.

Well, that's sound reasoning, you know. Florida, I think they just have a license to pack down here. I keep saying that.

I think it's 4 to 1 blue hair people to anyone else, right? So I mean, what would you be shooting there?

Well, we got gators.

Oh, you got gators. Yeah, that's true. But that's what you have the swamp people for, so don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

They got your back.

Or people who don't know how to properly do a chit when they're voting for president.

Yeah, we don't talk about hanging chads, do we?

No, exactly. We don't talk about that. That's another show.

I haven't been here for an election yet, so I am registered finally. I'm telling you, getting a license here was a whole other thing. They ask you more information.

Oh yeah.

It was like stand in line for 4 hours.

Especially if you came from somewhere else. And since 9/11, so many things have changed as far as our identities are concerned. It's— that's actually a hot topic for me, so I won't bring the show down with that one, but it's kind of a weird way. I think that if I was a little bit more dishonest, I would definitely be able to get my kids their identification cards and whatnot, it would be a lot easier. But because I'm not, I have to follow the rules. My kids don't exist. It's kind of weird. It's kind of weird. But that's a whole other show.

That's a whole other show. All right, well, we can talk about that sometime. All right, and Phil, what's going on in the UK tonight? It is early evening for you, I would guess, is it?

Yeah, it's coming up to quarter past 5. Where I am in the UK is a place called Cornwall, a small village called Gold Sydney. We're about a 10-minute walk from the coast. We're surrounded by some nice little restaurants and pubs that we have— we're spoiled for food where we live. In fact, me and Sue had a nice meal about 3 hours ago, and we have lots of food here. And the reason why I'm involved in the tourism business is because we're surrounded by hotels and restaurants, and I have a passion for that kind of stuff, so it's good to kind of dovetail my interests into where I can find my clients. So a lot of what I do is digital marketing. I do a lot of photography, which I share on Google+. I seem to have found myself being at the front end of doing Hangouts On Air from the UK. I sort of dived in about, oh, no more than probably 6, 7 weeks ago. A lot of things have gone wrong since then, but tell me, just keep going. And I'm also producing a music show for Sue Aston, my wife. We've got another one going out on Sunday., and that was a tremendous technical challenge compared with just having a Snowball and a C920 webcam, but we're getting there, so it's good. So we're having a good time, and it's great to meet so many— as you were saying, I tried to get lots of people to come over from other social media platforms to meet me here on Google+, and nobody did. So I've ended up meeting lots of new people, which has been fantastic.

Yeah, that's what Heather says. Just dump them all.

Yeah, that's what I said in the green room. That's exactly what I said in the green room. You know what, forget them. I'm over here making new friends.

That's pretty much what I did too.

You know, it's a great way to get, you know, especially with us as bloggers and stuff, you're gaining more followers. No one's telling you to leave any social media that you have. You know, you can stay on Facebook and you can stay on Twitter and still have those people, but boy, you're meeting a whole new variety of people here that are only going to help you. And the good thing about Google+ is that all this stuff is help building your authority, which in turn helps get you more searches, hits on the search engine. So it's kind of more of a win-win here than the other ones still have their purpose and their use and your friends are there.

And they're different. They're different too. I think that's something that people don't seem to realize is that it's not a one or the other. One has its purpose and this one has every purpose.

That's a good way to put it.

Yeah, you just have to sip that Kool-Aid a little bit.

Oh, and I have drunk it down.

Me too.

I think the level of collaboration on Google+ though is just beyond all the others. It's like going to the far side of the moon on a pushbike. You just get so much interaction so quickly. Everyone so far has been so helpful to me and my projects. It's just been fantastic. It really has.

I know when you talk about collaboration, my first thought is Google+. There is no other place where I've experienced anything like this. The way that people who get paid to do this stuff, I mean, that's their job like Craig does. He offers so much of what he— his expertise and everything. He just offers so much of that. It's almost, um, it's— I always have to pinch myself a little bit, like, is this really happening?

I know I do that for fun though, like, oh yeah, love to pinch myself. But, uh, no, I know what you're saying. It's, it's so nice to find people that are willing to engage with you and connect with you on this level. And the fact that we can do this face-to-face like this is, I think, what makes it Well, and it's cool between us within the panel.

This part's awesome, but then when you can do something like this and you can bring in a comment from the outside—

I was gonna hit that because I want to know if that's the answer, Phil.

I know, me too. That's why I hit it.

In fact, most of today I've been building a new WordPress website for a Cornish pasty company that's been going for nearly 200 years, and they're going on to the online world to send their pasties around the globe. So yes, we are the home of the Cornish pasty.

Well, you must send me their information because that's fabulous, because I love Cornish pasties.

I certainly will.

You would be very interested to know that where I live is a mining town called Butte, and pasty is the city's all-time record meal. If you don't have a pasty when you're in Butte, you've missed out.

Lovely.

So what is a pasty? I've never heard of it.

Well, it's like a self-contained meal covered in pastry, usually with steak, onion, swede, a bit of salt and pepper. It's a traditional meal that the kind of Cornish miners took down the mines with them, and it's become like a staple diet now for people in Cornwall when people come here on holiday. There are many variations. It hasn't stayed in its traditional sense. We've got all sorts now. We've got wild boar and apple flavor, we've got lamb and mint, we've got everything you can think of. We've even got curry, curry-flavored pasties. Anything you can think you can stick in there, it's in there now.

It's like a big empanada.

Yeah, without the sweet. But yeah, it's crazy because the miners here, they, you know, they came over from there, so they brought their traditions with them. And now you can't have a wedding in this town without little cocktail versions of pasties. It's a requirement.

Absolutely, yeah, fantastic.

Excellent.

So what other foods do we have to talk about today? David, you were talking about the stuff in Argentina.

Argentina, and I just got this book, if I can see it here, Charcutería, which is by Jeffrey Weiss, and I was looking at it, I just got it 2 days ago, and I I tweeted about it and I Facebooked about it and I think I G+ed about it. It looks fantastic. It's all about making the sausages and the meats and the patés that are really very big in Spain. I'm just getting so into this. I got my smoker getting ready. I'm actually working on a recipe for maple espresso cured bacon.

Really?

Yes, yes.

That sounds delicious.

Yeah.

So, so what's—

how big is the smoker? I mean, does that take a lot of room?

It's a Bradley smoker, so it's the size of a small refrigerator. So it's not that big. It's about maybe like 3 inch— 3 feet high by about 2 feet wide. So I have that plus I have my grill. So I also use my grill as a smoker too. So I'm making Portuguese sausage, the chouriço, which my family— I grew up on it. My dad grew up on it. You know, they would slaughter the pig and they would hang the pig in the house because they had like dirt floors and everything and take all the different pieces out and make sausage, and they would make all this confit. I mean, things that I never knew. I would hear about this as a kid, and I didn't care about that stuff. And then now it's like, oh God, none of that generation is doing it anymore. So I'm like, please, before you die, please show me. Just once, show me how to do this so I can carry on the tradition. So my aunt is showing me how to do the sausage, so I'm really excited by that.

Yeah, that's one of the things. In Florida, we can't seem to find any really good Italian sausage, so I've been toying with the idea of making it, but I've never made sausage.

Dennis, I'll tell you, when you start doing it, it blows your mind. Either you're one of those people— it's like Google+. You're either addicted or you just run the other way. But if you're addicted—

I'm going to make my husband watch this afterwards, not to watch me, but to watch what you just said about smoking and sausage.

It's incredible. It's like a religion. Truly, it's like a religion.

We have one of our traditional dishes in the UK is is called the full English.

Yes.

And that has to have sausage.

Absolutely.

Isn't it?

It is, but a lot of restaurants serve all-day full English because it's so popular.

Well, why don't you explain to us what a full English is since most of the people—

Well, I have to also say it should carry a health warning.

I love it already.

Yeah, that's my kind of food.

Well, usually the size of the waitress is your health warning.

Good to note, good to note.

So you have 2 organic sausages, sometimes 3, 2 or 3 rashers of bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, fried eggs, could be fried bread, fried or grilled tomatoes, toast, marmalade, big mug of tea. All these things are essential ingredients for it. Yeah, wow.

Yeah, it is. The only thing I don't get is the tomato. I don't know, I don't get the tomato there.

Yeah, it's the bit that I think they They put that on as a bit of like the healthy bit.

Oh, that's it, okay.

I think that's—

So you feel good for half a bite. You feel good about what you're eating for half a bite, the rest of it is just guilty pleasure.

Yeah, and from years of research of working with hotels, it always seems to be the tomato that gets left on the plate.

Of course, that's exactly what it is, right? The inverted pyramid, it's the one little bit that's good for you.

They threw the tomato in so they can say it's heart healthy.

That's why.

Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Oh, Lord. Meat. I keep thinking of an old Simpsons where Homer was looking at the good morning breakfast sandwich, and it had an egg, ham, burger, cheese, and then butter. Fresh creamery butter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gotta get all that protein.

I don't know if anyone else is into this. I know Jenny Field is watching this, so maybe she's doing this. I make my own butter now. I make my own I make my own ketchup now, of course, my own mayonnaise, my own bacon, my own sausage. I mean, it's so— and my own bread. You know how cool it is to have an egg sandwich with ham and bacon and bread that you've made everything except the eggs? Lord knows I'll probably get chickens too soon. It's pretty awesome to do all of that.

That sounds pretty good.

That's really cool, yeah.

How are you making butter?

I make it in the food processor. You take the cream, very, very cold cream. Well, actually, I let it sit out for a long time, so it starts to do a little bit of culturing, but not too much. Then I put it back in the fridge so it gets real cold, and I put it in the food processor. You can make it there, but I do it in the stand mixer. You just let it go and go and go, and nothing's really happening. Then it starts to whip a little bit. You know when you're whipping whipped cream, then it starts to get those little tiny bits? That's the butter forming. It starts to clump more and more. Then it gets really sloshy., and then it starts to stick to the whisk, and then all that sort of like grayish-white liquid is the whey, and then you have the butter, and you just squeeze it out. I mean, not the whey, the buttermilk, forgive me, is all that gray liquid, and you squeeze it under cold, cold, cold, cold water, which kills your hands like frostbite, and then if you want salt, you put salt in, you fold it in, and then you put it into a container, and I'll tell you, it's fantastic. It's fantastic.

Jaw on the floor.

I missed that, Heather. What did you say?

I just said my jaw is on the floor.

I know. I remember your ketchup post that you did. That was the first time I ever thought of making my own ketchup. Mayonnaise is like something you think about all the time, but ketchup just kind of gets by.

It takes a little longer, but I'll tell you, man, I still have some that I Candid, it's fantastic. I just used it last night, fantastic.

Gotta love it. We have a couple questions up here. Let me post one from Adrian Urban. It's a question about establishing authority here on G+. I continue to wonder about interacting and sharing things outside—

where are we at here?

I lost that.

Outside of my expertise. Thank you. I love the authority but it doesn't— but Doesn't it hurt my authority to share DIY crafts and unhealthy treats when my expertise is healthy living, gluten-free, and sugar-free?

That's a good question, Adrian. Things change as, as we go along, and, you know, from my perspective of it is I don't think it hurts you because Google is looking at you as a whole person.

Exactly.

It's the whole person philosophy that makes you more interesting to others expands your reach, it gets you reach into other areas that you may not normally have been in. And all these people do eat, whether, you know, they're eating gluten-free or healthy or something. So a lot of it will still come back to you, and it's adding your authority. Craig, do you have any input on that?

Or—

yeah, I love that you said it's— you're a whole person, and that couldn't be— that, that, that's a perfect way to say it. Your business is just a tiny bit of you. It's not all of you. The social network itself is a social network. We forget that. It's a social network, not a business network. We can do business on it, but you need to be a person.

That's it.

It's not really going to hurt your authority, and in many cases it will help. You just do want to have— if you are an expert in something or you want to build your authority in a specific area, you want to be sharing that stuff consistently.. But don't worry at all about sharing your personal stuff.

Yeah, I think that's where a lot of bloggers were— we were taught one thing by the other social medias when they started, and then Google has come and they've changed the whole game. So it's very difficult for them to transition from being so focused on themselves and what they've done in that specific niche to, to go out of their comfort zone. And why so many are rushing to do brand pages instead of just sticking with their personal profile where they're really going to show more growth and it's really going to end up helping them come back.

Right, and that's an important bit too. If you're just being the business and you're just sharing mostly business content, even if it's from your personal page, which is the best place to share from, people are still, even though they find it helpful and they like it and engage with it, they're more likely to engage with the other stuff, the photo of your lunch or the photo of the cupcakes. I just shared some cupcakes I made. Which has nothing to do with my business. That's when you make the real connections, the connections that will last, is the people that connect with that stuff.

Yeah, it cracks— oh, I'm sorry, Shawn.

Go ahead, go ahead.

I was just going to say it cracks me up if I ever go back and look at like the analytics of any of my posts, which I don't do very often because that's all way over my head. I need to hire Craig to do it. But when I look at that stuff, I kind of get a little I'm a little surprised at what is the most popularly plussed or shared or commented on. There's one selfie that I did of myself. It was just to be random and to just basically show who I am and what I'm doing. I had been staring at the computer doing all the stuff I dislike, like photo editing and blog writing. I know I shouldn't say that on a blog show, but I don't like to blog write. That's not me. I like to do stuff like this.

#shame.

#shame.

#shame for sure. I go back and I look at this picture that I took of myself where I'm doing this little duck face and cross-eyed and everything, and that is so popular. Of course, it was just me being a goof. It allowed me to open up too because then I was able to say, "You know what? If this is who I am and people are okay with it, then I'm just going to stick with that." Again, that whole person, you are a whole person here on Google, and that I think is the best part of being here. That's why I love it.

Can I ask you a question?

Sure.

Can you just, for people maybe who don't know, and also myself, I'm a little bit sort of lagging behind, talk a bit about how kind of the holistic idea of sharing. I think people think of it as, I'm going to put a link to my post, or I'm going to like something, or I'm going to take one of Dennis Littley's posts and I'm going to share it again. Can you talk more about the holistic aspect of it?

Well, I think it's like we're saying, you just want to let you shine through. So whatever is interesting to you, you should share. So like I just had, I never cook, so I'm the opposite of you guys. The only reason I go into the kitchen is because that's where the beer is.

Or to cut the cheese, I saw that video.

Right, right, right, right. So I happened to help frost some cupcakes., and I posted that. And that's really not my personality or anything, but it was something unique and it made for a nice photo. So I immediately thought, oh, I should share this on Google+ because it will connect me with some other people. You know, it will show a different side of me. And I think it got like 100-something pluses and a whole ton of comments. And that's where the real connection starts to come from, is just sharing whatever pops into your head, whatever you feel like. You do want to have your consistent business stuff coming out as well, but you don't want to overwhelm your stream or overwhelm your shares with that. The bulk of your shares should be either personal or other people's stuff. So that's pretty much it. Another good example was even, I think, the first time Heather and I talked, or the first time I noticed Heather for real, was she had posted some pictures of her workshop being built. And to me, I'm kind of into the construction side of things, and it was like, cool. So I said something. But otherwise, I'm not a big craft person, so we might have never met. And, you know, we're connected now forever just because she decided to post. Yeah, but all because she realized, oh, you know, this is kind of probably interesting to someone that I'm putting my workshop together. And it was.

Oh my gosh, I'm so posting so many more things now. If it got Craig Fifield all over there forever.

You know what I've been dying to ask you since you're so into crafts?

Okay, ready?

Did you marry your husband for the last name or what?

I just recently answered this in a wonderful interview that Jill Andrews did about me. So if you really want to know the answer about that little— where is it— last name right there, you got to go read that article.

I won't spill the beans. I know, but I won't say anything.

My last name means milk in Portuguese, so I got a food connection there at least.

And you didn't fake it, right?

I didn't fake it. My last name means milk in Portuguese. So I'm the milkman's son.

I love it. I put up a comment because it just went right along with what Craig was saying, and you know, Is this the comment that I put up? They're both saying the same thing, so I've got two of them. I've got one from Kim and from Jim Whitley. Basically they're saying the same thing.

I think one of them just like—

Yeah, they did it at the same time, I think.

You know, another good way that I refer to this about sharing is we all know those people, certain people, that all they do is talk about their business and their work. And we, none of us like that person. So that's exactly how you should share stuff as well. If all you're doing is talking about your business, you know, people lose interest.

I think what a lot of people—

I'm guilty of that.

Yeah, and I think what a lot of people don't realize is that if you just approach everything the way that you want it to be, I want my stream to be filled with fun things, good interesting people, and real life stuff. So I want to do the same thing for your stream if you have me circled. So hopefully that's that's what you're getting when you circle me, you're going to be a little bit surprised sometimes because I just might even post a picture of food maybe. I probably didn't cook it for the sake of those in my home. As far as, like Craig said, I took a picture of what my husband happened to be doing when he built me this wonderful craft room. Yeah, he's right. I thought maybe somebody's interested in this stuff and it turns out even Craig Fifield was. So for sure, you just have to be real. If you're not real, it comes out pretty quick that you're not.

Authenticity, bottom line.

Yeah, absolutely. I think for the UK, I think because we haven't quite been as quick off the mark in getting involved in Google+, and I think it's because the way a lot of people have been sold the platform is you must get your business page up on Google+, you must have your business on Google+ for the SEO and all the rest of the advantages, etc. So people come across as a business. They put their logo in place, and they put all their blurb in place, and they post links from their corporate pages, etc. And the thing that a lot of people don't get at first is this whole aspect of relationship marketing, that you're marketing yourself as you. And a lot of the— I think that the social media kind of training we have over here is geared on how you should represent yourself this is what you should do, these are the 10 best ways of interacting with people. And this whole idea of just being yourself can either be incredibly liberating or incredibly scary.

Oh, it's incredibly scary, absolutely. Because if they don't like you or if they uncircle you or if they de-tweet you or however it is, you know, in the world of social media, if they do that to you, it's personal. It's personal, right? Because you're being personal and then they get rid of you. What you have to do is grow a little bit of a thick skin, I think. That's part of it. It's so counterintuitive to what we've been taught up until the last couple of years that this is the way you're supposed to do it. You are separate. I made the mistake of falling into that in the very first part of Google+ when I first signed on. Okay, there's me and then there's that business. I kind of wish I could turn back the clock a little bit knowing what I know and remove my business page because it confines me in a different way than I didn't want to be now that I understand the platform.

It's important to realize too that you don't need to worry about being unfollowed. All that you're really doing there is thinning the herd. You're getting to your true followers when that happens.

Wait, I'm writing that down.

So for me, I post a lot of— I drink a lot of beer, so I post like beer o'clock GIFs and I I talk about partying and I swear all the time. And if people don't like that, that's fine. There's plenty more. You know, when you end up polarizing people from being who you are, you're losing some people that aren't quite like you, but you're gaining more real connections with people that are interested in you and like your type of person.

Wow, we can end the show right here just because I am so floored by that statement. Thinning the herd. Thank you, Craig.

You're welcome.

I think I like this filter.

Go ahead, David.

When I wrote my first article for Bon Appétit magazine, right after that I went to a conference with my editor, and I remember there were some editors there, big ham fists banging the table, saying, "You should never write first person! You should never write first person!" I was sitting in the back row with my editor, and I'm like, "What the hell? Why shouldn't you write first person?" And she said the thing that has kept me through my entire career, she said, "David, the problem is most people aren't something enough. They're not bitchy enough, funny enough, nice enough, mean enough, drunk enough, beery head enough. They're not something enough, so they're boring." And if you are something enough, which what we're talking about is authenticity, being truly who you are, it will shine through. And that's always kept me in good stead, because when I see some writers when I had students and they're just being really sort of like this mundane middle, I'm like, if you're not something enough, I don't want to read you. I think it's very much like this.

Yep, that's brilliant. Yeah, that's fantastic. If you're not something enough, I'll take that away from this. Brilliant.

Yeah, I just actually read a post, I forget who it was by, but they made the point that there's not a single great leader that didn't take a stance. And, and that's what you're getting at, is once you take a stance, you know, people are either gonna love you or hate you, but the people that love you are really gonna love you.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah, I agree with you. And the big thing is that people worry about when you're getting unfollowed or worrying about being themselves is you have to realize how big the audience is. I think we still have this mindset of we're in the small town, or, you know, we're just— maybe we're just within New York, and in that, in a small community like that Maybe you do have to worry about appearances and you need to make sure you don't lose too many friends, but we're, we're, you know, nationwide, worldwide, there's always more people.

Those are excellent points because one of the things that we just did this past week is over in a community that I belong to called User to User Live, we actually help other users of Google+ work together and learn this stuff. And one of the things that we did was a gentleman named Terry Lee Britton showed us how to use Pixlr. But we used an HOA platform to all hang out together. We shared our screens and he told us, you know, clicked on our screen and then showed us what to do. So he's like, go over there to the right, click on that, this is how you add a layer. Okay, I want to do this to it. Alright, here's how you do that. And he did— I think there were 8 of us in the film strip just following along. It was so much fun. Fun and we got to be real. I mean, it wasn't even— I forgot that the live thing was even recording it because it was so fun. And it's a lot like this show where you're just kind of hanging out chatting with friends and oh yeah, there's people watching. I forgot about that.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Here's another comment here from Adrian. You're so right, Heather Craft, about it being personal. It's silly that it feels bad if someone uncircles, etc. Well, I'm heading to you and circling you now.

That's so sweet of you. I completely understand that early on when I had like— I don't have very many followers. I'm not a huge numbers person. However many I've got at the moment, I don't know what that is. I remember there was a time early on when I maybe had a couple hundred at the very earliest. I think I saw that somebody had left. I paid attention to that number the day before. And now today there was like 2 or 3 gone. And all I stressed all day about, what did I do to piss those 2 people off? And it was so stupid. It was just so stupid. So since then, it's like, um, I don't even notice what the numbers are anymore. I don't look at that stuff, which— sorry, CircleScope guy over there, I know that's important, but I don't pay any attention to it because mentally I can't. I'll freak out. I'll be all worried about that one, that one person who decided, I guess you're not for me, and Again, it goes back to that big red X up there. If you don't like it, just click it. I'm okay with that now.

I just looked at some of my numbers the other day and it was like 10 or 15 people. Usually it's always just going up, but on one day in January, like 10 or 15 people left all at once. I was like, huh, that's weird. I went back and looked, and on that day apparently I was in a good mood because I shared a bunch of goofy GIFs. It was just like, It was like, well, whatever. If you don't understand that I'm just having fun, you know, move on. Fine. See you later.

I'm going to have to go look.

I had a picture of a canelé, which is a little French dessert made in a mold that is lined with wax. And I had it in Chicago. It was very nice. It was very good, actually, surprisingly. And I put it on Instagram. And I put in a bunch of hashtags, some of the more popular ones. I have my list of things that I do, and some have puppy and some have cat and some have flower, because I do things with puppy, cats, and flowers. Well, I left them in with the candlelight, and this woman said, "I'm unfollowing you. Puppies, cats, flowers, really? You've lost a true follower." I'm like, well, you're not a true follower if I'm leaving you.

Right, not at all.

Get the hell out of here. I don't need you.

Well, I love your philosophy on Instagram, and that's actually what I follow. I had never used it. And when I saw your page and it said A Day in the Life of, I thought that is such a good way to approach Instagram. I mean, there's so many bloggers out there that put their finished products up all the time, and that's okay.

Oh my God, no, no, that's not the mistake.

It's not Instagram.

The mistake our industry, the food industry makes, is that we're always showing these like porn shots, you know, of how great food is. Food porn, food porn, I was waiting for the food porn moment. Exactly, and I, you know, I'm sorry, but you know, if I ever do a cookbook, I want to have pictures of burnt food because I think that's how people sometimes cook. I screw up on a regular basis.

I am proud— I gotta find this comment, keep going.

I'm just proud to say that I screw up on a regular basis and I even screw up on my own stuff from my own cookbook. If I haven't made it for like a year and I cook, I'm like, what the— what was I thinking when I did that? What am I saying? What? And I mess it up and then, you know, it eventually comes together. You know, it's not perfect, and the more— I just think it's like that whole idea we show very young, thin women, and all these young girls get this idea that they have to be thin and beautiful or they're nothing. I think we do that with food. If our food doesn't look beautiful, we think that we're horrible cooks, and we're not.

That's happening in the UK as well. I do a lot of food photography for hotels and local restaurants, and the food is becoming more and more elaborate, more and more like a piece of art as it comes out. And the chef puts it out in front of me, I've got to take those photographs really quickly in case the tower just keels over or something melts.

I love to process shots and I love to show things that are messed up and I've photographed vegetable scraps and stuff.

Exactly, and I started off by saying I've perfected the imperfect The Imperfect Craft Show and that's when Jenny Fields said this comment, "The same is true in cooking and baking, Heather Crafter. It isn't always perfect but it should always be fun." That's exactly what you're saying by taking shots of the burnt food because I want to know that even David makes a mistake. I want to know that. I want to know that you took a recipe and it didn't quite work. I want to know that. I'm going to have to start watching you a lot more, David, if that's the case.

I wrote a blog post of how I almost set my house on fire the day before Thanksgiving.

I love it, I love it. I'm going to go find that one. I love it.

Was that the new kitchen too?

That was the old kitchen. The blog post is called Burning Down Da House.

Da House.

No, it's the old kitchen, thank God. The new kitchen, nothing's that— well, actually, the new kitchen I've screwed up a couple times where the alarm goes off and they call me and I can't remember the code again, and it's like we go through this whole damn thing. But yeah, you know, and I did this thing where I interviewed a lot of cookbook, like, famous, famous big people that, you know, have such followings and are stars. And I say, what do you like right before a meal? And I remember Rick Rogers saying to me, I'm in my underwear in the kitchen screaming to my husband, I will never do this again, I will never do this again, I will never do this again. Rick has written over 40 cookbooks, and he freaks out before guests come. It's normal, you know, it's just normal. And I just hate that idea. I'm sorry, this is like one of— I'm getting on a soapbox. Somebody just burn it.

I completely agree with you. I think that's a big problem that we're seeing, and I think we're seeing more and more of it turn away now. But I think some shows you turn into— some of the HOA shows that you turn into, you see this perfectly groomed person who's sitting there in a straight up back. I'm all hunched over leaning into you guys because I want to hear every word you're saying. You see them with their perfect backgrounds. You're not going to find that here. Just different things like that that are okay for some situations. I understand that there's a need to present, etc., etc., but I really am not interested. I'm not interested. I'd much rather watch the real you shine.

Yeah, well, you know, there's a notion of aspirational. Everything in our industry is aspirational. The food must be aspirational, the cookbooks must be aspirational, magazines like Martha Stewart must be aspirational. But what they miss is the relational. They're not relational. So how can you relate to something? That's a good thing. Relational is much better and more important than aspirational, right?

Well, when you're, when you're perfect or Strive for perfection, that people have a very difficult time relating to perfect. Yeah, you know, it's, it's all the mistakes and the flaws that people— that's where people go, oh, well, maybe I could make that food, or oh, maybe I could do that on my blog.

Well, I'll tell you the reason why I got started with the HOAs that I do, the live crafting shows. The whole reason is because I watched craft show after craft show after craft show that was a short, well-edited Perfect picture. It was awesome. It was great until I went to go do what they did and I got pissed. I'm like, this did not work the way that they said. I rewatched the video. What did I do wrong? Every time it was, what did I do wrong? What I realized was I don't have great editing skills, so I was unable to actually edit out all my mistakes. And in life, I don't— there's no editor in life. I mean, what we're seeing now, we can eventually fix it, but it's on right now.

But do you think as part of relationship marketing and being yourself, being authentic, etc., the whole aspect of a Hangout On Air is that it does have things in the background like a bookcase or a cat running across your lap or whatever. If it becomes TV, if it becomes polished and scripted, I think you'll lose that.

Yeah, that's when that big red X comes into play.

Yeah, I'm not watching.

Exactly, you become more distant. And the whole aspect of HOAs is to become closer and more connected.

Absolutely.

I have a question. Mia Voss, you're asking, you wanted to hear me talk about being in my underwear. Is that—

she walked in at the right moment when you're screaming, I'm in my underwear.

Oh, you were talking about somebody else.

Yeah, exactly.

Or I— it could be, yes. But I also— a funny thing about Google Hangouts, I was testing it for this IACP thing that I was doing, and it was a very slow internet connection, so I was lying in bed, very nude, trying to get this damn thing to work, knowing that I was private, I had it completely private, and I'm clicking these damn buttons trying to like, why is this not working because of the slow connection? So then I knew it would go to Google+ private and I deleted it. No one told me it was going to go to Twitter, and 25-30 minutes later, there I am on Twitter in all my naked glory screaming at the computer.

Okay, okay, I will admit to one thing here. Yesterday we talked about this on our show, on the Craft It Live show, where we talked about putting a little Post-it note over our camera.

Yes, I do that now.

And I'm sorry, but that is exactly the reason why, David.

Exactly, exactly. So it gave me something very funny to talk about because actually I have my little Post-it note here and I just kind of COVID but I didn't do it on my laptop because I was trying to see if I could make it work. I am so red right now.

That's funny. That's awesome.

Talk about food porn.

Well, let me tell you.

Food and porn have just now crossed over in a way Dennis Littley never intended. Way to go, chef.

Way to go.

Is this still a family show, is it, over here?

Are we still live? Is this thing on?

That's a family show.

That's all right.

Here we go. Jim, you don't wear pants? Elena, who's the daughter? Jim Whitley, I'm sorry. I lost it here for a minute.

I know, the comments are going crazy.

They are.

All I can think of is Jim Kirk. Jim, damn it, Jim, I'm just like— you know, he's not wearing pants. OK, now Jim Whitley in that case.

Timing is absolutely everything, as Mia says.

Absolutely.

Can I do a shout out? There are a couple people in the audience that are watching. Obviously Mia, happy birthday, it's coming. And then Michael Daniels, one of my best, dearest friends. He has helped me tremendously. I'm just so grateful that you're here, Michael. And I think you might even be playing hooky from a thing you're supposed to be involved in right now. Cool. And then there's one more out there. There's one more out there. Yvonne, thank you, honey.

Oh, that's so sweet.

Yeah, we're very grateful for you guys to stop by and watch us.

And if I missed anybody else, it's just because I've been so involved in all the conversation. I have not been looking at comments too closely.

So here's a good one for Craig. Ronaldo Miguel, cleaning out the herd. Well said. By the way, more beer.

Yes, more beer.

That's right.

I love it. I love it. Michael Daniels is a big cooking fan. He's actually the reason why I know Chef Dennis. I know that Dennis, we're part of that Hangout Mastery group, but I really did not pay any attention to you until this guy named Michael told me, you like, if you want to know anything about cooking and blogging, you got to watch that Chef Dennis show. So that's the whole reason why I even started watching you in the first place. So again, thank you, Michael.

You, Michael. Very cool.

You're reminding me I should say thank you to Chef, because Chef is the one that had me on first, and that led to me being on Mia's show, which led to me, well, meeting Mia, which is awesome, and then led to me meeting Christine. And Christine's now partners with me in Circlescope.

I know, it's amazing how all of this kind of comes together, because it's the same way with Phil. Phil's over in the Hangout Mastery group too, which I just adore that community, and Community has become my biggest love as of late. I just absolutely adore what's going on with communities all the time. Being able to be a part of something like the Hangout Mastery, for example, or the User to User where people are helping each other learn things, or even my own, which is Crafters Community where crafters come together. I have more people in that group that are there to see the community aspect of it than they are to see me craft. Community is huge. I love community.

That's the same for me. It's been a real springboard, the Mastery Group, really. I mean, it was because I had a problem one day with the comment tracker. It was Chef Dennis Littley who invited me onto an earlier show and showed me how to do that and kept me on the show when he went live. And then from that, I met other people, and then I sort of expanded the amount of HOAs I was doing and then did one with Mia where we looked at the UK experience with again with Chef Dennis and some UK business people, and it's all from meeting people from the Mastery Group, really. It's been fantastic.

Yeah, it's all about broadening our network, and I always tell people that's my favorite part of the show, is bringing people on and introducing them to each other and letting these other HOA hosts— that we know we all work together, so we're always taking people from each other, you know, we don't mind. There's now a circuit, you know, of shows that you can be on and really gain a lot more notice out there and you pick up a lot of new friends and a lot of new followers and your network just keeps getting bigger and bigger. People say it's a ghost town. Well, not for those of us that engage.

That's true. What's really funny is that I've been kind of afraid to go on any of these shows to be honest with you because I didn't think that I was anything worth— I'm just a crafter. I was even told that I'm just a crafter but it occurred to me that creativity Creativity is one of those things that we all do. My platform now is that I'm standing on my soapbox, if you don't mind, is that be creative in what you do. From the stay-at-home mom who's trying to figure out how to feed 4 to 5 kids and the neighbors that just showed up on hardly any food at all, she's got to be creative. Then there's of course the executive up in his big office who's trying to figure out how to make his project work with the budget that's only this big. There's creativity there. Bloggers, chefs, we've got every aspect of being creative. So my hope and my wish, my desire, everything is to just spread that creativity and whatever it is that you're creative in. So I hope that that message comes across, and that's one of the reasons why I agreed to be on the show with Chef here today. And I told Mia, because Mia has asked me to be on the show a couple times, I'm like, I don't think so, I don't have anything to offer. She says, I get on the show just before— on her show just before I came in here. Haha, I did it first.

So that's, that's a lot of my friends will say. And I keep asking bloggers to be honest as well. I don't have anything to contribute or say. Oh my God, you have a lot to say, you know. And it's just friends sitting around here, have a cup of coffee and talk, you know, and get each other a little bit better and you get to know more people. I'm telling you, things come out of that. I've gotten more meetings with people because they saw the show or a friend of theirs was on the show and they met me because of that. We're not doing it specifically for business reasons, but think about how we do business and how we like to do business. We do business with people we like.

Yep.

There's more people out there that probably are more talented that might make you more money that you could do business with or save you more money, but if you don't know them and you don't have that relationship if you're not as easily led in that direction. You know, we get to pick who we do business with, and that's the same thing with being friends. And it's a lot easier to do business with someone that you have a relationship with and you know and you can talk to like this. I love jumping on with people, like being able to jump on with Phil in the UK. Nazim Beltran in Milan will ping me all the time. He's in the train station showing me the train station at Genova, you know, and I'm like, oh my God, I love this stuff, you know. Is wild. You have a good time doing it. Well, we are coming to the end of our show. We've had a lot of great talk here, and so I'm gonna run through the panel one last time. If you have any parting thoughts for us or things you'd like to mention, things that are coming up in your life, just let us know now. And I'll leave links in the comments if you have anything you'd like to share. So, Craig, anything you'd like to leave with us today?

No, no, well, just check out Circlescope.com. As we have the new version coming out soon, and you can get on the mailing list over there. That would be the big thing for me.

Sounds good. And you know, with Circuloscope, the one thing I liked more with the free version was that it was a lot easier to find inactives on that. Are we doing anything to streamline that process on the new one, or—

Yeah, right now it's a little bit slow on the inactives. We're trying to figure that out, but yeah, there's a whole new feature set for inactives.

Great. Great.

And David, your new cookbook— your, well, your new narrative book. Narrative book.

It's being— it's proposal stage. It's not even been accepted yet, but I'm looking at a year or so, a year to year and a half. But I'm really excited. I would love people to go to the site and tell me which of the blog posts under the David blog that they love the most. That would make me very happy to know which ones really resonate with people so I can get a sense of of where people would like the book to go. Because I think some of these things, I'm— in the proposal, I'm telling my potential editors and publishers, the book is going to be very crowdsourced. It's going to be very much them telling me what they want to read. You know, I think that's important.

And for those of you that have never been to David's blog, you don't know what you're missing. The whole site, Leeds Culinary, is phenomenal, but David's blog is my favorite part of it. Go over and check it out. The recipes are always spot on. If they're not, the second time you make them, like David might forget something, it's okay. They're real recipes, though, that real people can use.

Yeah, we have 150 recipe testers.

That's pretty darn good. Heather, anything last you'd like to leave us with, things you're doing or coming up or HOAs?

You know what, I just would like anybody who's interested in a sense of community, if they're if they're a creative person in some way or another to join the Krafters Community. Of course, that's spelled correctly with a K. You want to look up Krafters Community. I even spell community the correct way. I don't know what all the rest of you are doing with that C, but spelling it with a K is proper. I actually did a show a couple of weeks ago where I misspelled my own show's name. It was hilarious. I didn't even know it until the last minute of the show.. So if you, if you like to laugh, if you like to have a good time, we're doing stuff over there. Even if you're not interested in crafting per se, it is still entertaining because there are people there who have no interest in a craft show whatsoever and they are participating and they're enjoying the show. So I'd love to see ya.

That might be something to bring, even bring an alcoholic beverage to, and it's just really—

oh yeah, oh yeah, it makes it even more enjoyable actually if you're drunk.

And Phil, anything new? I know you have your, your wife's show coming up too.

And yeah, we've got the Sue Aston Show on Sunday, which is going out at 1 o'clock your time and 6 o'clock in the UK. And another side of my personality will be my What's in Your Music Collection show, which goes out on Sunday, where I got a guy called Gary Garbett who's based in Virginia in the US, and we basically talk about vinyl records and things we've uncovered during the last month. And of course we've got the Genius Loci Business and Media Show on April 2nd where you, Chef Dennis, are on that with various other people from both sides of the Atlantic. So quite a lot going on, but thank you so much for having me.

Oh, my pleasure.

It's been fantastic.

Your music show, your vinyl show, sounds interesting. Now is it just looking for old vinyl or is it—

No, it's basically, the format at the moment is me and Gary choose 3 albums without telling each other what they are and then we take turns in talking about them. And it could be things that mean something to us when we were growing up, or it could be because it was a super duper deluxe edition with all bells and whistles. And we'll kind of just show, you know, show the audience what we found or what's coming out soon. So it's gaining ground, but it's just a little niche, very much a niche HOA at the moment.

Sounds like fun. I could get Shannon Hernandez in on that. He's a great music aficionado.

Yeah, I was thinking you should hook up with Christine DeGraaff because she runs My Music Hangout, which is a very large music community.

Yeah, I'm connected to that already, and I have to say Christine's been so supportive and helpful with especially Sue Aston's music show, so she's been fantastic.

Great, excellent. I do have Sue scheduled for later, I think next month too.

Yeah, brilliant.

We'll get her on, so have fun. Well everyone, thank you so much, and like I always say, it's always a a good day on Google+, especially when you get to spend it with your friends. Thanks for stopping by. We're always happy to see you. Have a great weekend and we'll see you soon. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.