Episode 172
Hype or Real? How to Get Honest Financial News - EP. 172
In this new two-part conversation, Travis welcomes Matt Brassard of Ground News to discuss the current state of news and the challenges of finding trustworthy information. Matt opens up about the role of Ground News as a news aggregation tool.
Together, they explore the hyper-political media landscape, the importance of local news, and the impact of media bias on public perception. Matt shares insights from his journey in the news industry and the evolution of Ground News, emphasizing the need for transparency and understanding in news consumption.
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About Your Host:
Travis Maus has been in financial services for over fifteen years. He is a Senior Wealth Manager and Chief Executive Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Travis also hosts the Unleashing Leadership Podcast, where he dissects some of his favorite books on leadership and how you can apply it to your business or life.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome to Ditch the Suits podcast where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about.
Speaker B:We're here to help you get the most from your money in life.
Speaker B:So buckle up and welcome to Ditch the Suits.
Speaker C:Does it seem like the more you pay attention, the more you're told that the world is burning?
Speaker C:The politics seem to dominate every issue is everything really is cut and dry as there being a group of good guys trying to save the world and another group of people for some reason trying to destroy it.
Speaker C:If you're tired of the stress, the anxiety, the fear, or just the emotional overdrive that you're getting from the news these days, I think these next two episodes are for you.
Speaker C:One of the biggest questions that we get almost on a daily basis is how do I know what is important news that's going to affect me financially?
Speaker C:And how do I find a news source that I can actually trust?
Speaker C:So before you make your next big financial decision, I want you to think, if you're seeing something on tv, on the Internet, or even if you're just hearing it from a friend, what is the source?
Speaker C:Where does it actually come from?
Speaker C:And what's the angle of it?
Speaker C:I know it's a loaded question.
Speaker C:It's a question that's hard to answer.
Speaker C:It's something that we work through every single day with clients.
Speaker C:So we've asked Matt Broussard, who is the head of growth at Ground News, to come join us today and actually for the next two episodes to discuss how Ground News can help you solve this problem.
Speaker C:So before that, we'll get to our intros and then we'll introduce Matt.
Speaker C:This is Ditch the Suits.
Speaker C:I'm Travis Musk, CEO of Seed Planning Group.
Speaker C:Seed Planning Group is a fee only wealth management firm and this show is all about sharing our professional knowledge and experience with you so that you can hopefully get more out of your money in life.
Speaker B:Do you want more of Ditch the Suits?
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Speaker B:So visit patreon.com, search ditch the Suits or head to our show Notes where we got links to our channel.
Speaker C:So with that, Matt, welcome.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Happy to be here.
Speaker C:All right, so I want to dive right in because I am so excited about this episode because I can't tell you how many actual meetings I've had with clients where they're very upset about something that's going on.
Speaker C:And we go, okay, well, let's just take a step back.
Speaker C:Where's this excitement coming from?
Speaker C:And how does that actually relate to your finances?
Speaker C:So we have people really struggling with this issue, and they've been asking, okay, well, where can I get trusted information?
Speaker C:And we happened to stumble across Ground News on listening to some other podcasts.
Speaker C:We have some guys that work with us that had mentioned it.
Speaker C:I had seen it on some other podcasts that I was on.
Speaker C:And I said, I thought, okay, that's very interesting.
Speaker C:This is popping up all the time.
Speaker C:I went to the website to check it out, was really impressed.
Speaker C:And so I think that this is a great solution.
Speaker C:But I want to set you up a little bit.
Speaker C:Why should our listeners, you know, really be listening to you on this?
Speaker C:And then we'll get into kind of Ground News and the news and how everything works and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:So I guess floor is open to you.
Speaker C:Who is Matt?
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm Matt.
Speaker A: been at Ground News now since: Speaker A:So halfway through the first Trump administration and still here in the second one.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I've been here most of my career.
Speaker A:The deep personal interest in news.
Speaker A:Despite being Canadian, I kind of grew up super online and trying to get involved in politics and read all I can.
Speaker A:But kind of as I.
Speaker A:As I grew up in this political sphere, I saw like, how much of a story I wasn't seeing.
Speaker A:Which eventually led me to kind of question, oh, like, why am I seeing the stories I'm seeing?
Speaker A:Why am I seeing the stories that I'm not seeing?
Speaker A:And then in my.
Speaker A:In college, I came across Ground News.
Speaker A:They wanted to hire an intern, so I started there.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's good a years ago, seven years ago.
Speaker A:I've kind of been here since.
Speaker C:I think that's amazing.
Speaker C:So you start as an intern, you've worked your way up to the head of growth.
Speaker C:That sounds like a pretty good title.
Speaker C:How long has Ground News been around?
Speaker C:Because it's Internet based, right?
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:There's no.
Speaker C:It's not a physical paper or anything.
Speaker C:It's Internet based.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it's all.
Speaker A: and it has been around since: Speaker A:I was actually there on the day that we launched.
Speaker A:I remember texting my friends, aunts, relatives, co workers, being like, hey, you know, like, try this thing.
Speaker A:We just launched it and it's.
Speaker A:It's still around six years after that.
Speaker C:So you've been there from the beginning and probably one of your friends or your grandparents or somebody is subscriber number one, right?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker A:I'm pretty sure that was my aunt.
Speaker C:That's pretty cool.
Speaker C:That's pretty cool.
Speaker C:Okay, so you've been with Ground News.
Speaker C:You're the head of growth.
Speaker C:What does the head of growth mean?
Speaker A:So it means that I kind of a guide strategy on a lot of marketing stuff.
Speaker A:So I guide strategy on unpaid ads, on our content, on socials.
Speaker A:We have a pretty big following on socials, especially Instagram.
Speaker A:I think last month we reached around 45 million accounts.
Speaker A:So we're pretty big on there.
Speaker A:I also curate our newsletters and lend a hand for stuff like newsletters and conference appearances.
Speaker A:I do a lot of interviews with the company.
Speaker A:So mostly if it has to do with growth and marketing, I have my hand in it.
Speaker C:Gotcha.
Speaker C:So you're the guy to talk about, you know, what, what this is really all about and what it means to people because you help kind of shape that message.
Speaker C:I will say, and this is one of the things I want our listeners to understand is we're not getting, you guys are not paying us to have you on our show.
Speaker C:We came out and found you and said, hey, Matt, would or actually Ground News.
Speaker C:Would somebody come on here and explain this thing to our, our listeners and our clientele for us because we think that they need this help.
Speaker C:But the socials.
Speaker C:I've Jones joined some of the socials.
Speaker C:I'm, I, I, I'm, I'm very not good on the Facebook or Instagram, but I follow Ground News on Instagram and Facebook, I think.
Speaker C:And, and I get the, it seems like a more than a daily news drop where it helps me.
Speaker C:I, I saw one post the other day where it was the same story, but it gave three different headlines on the same story depending on where you were kind of picking it up.
Speaker C:I had the left center and right kind of headline and it was really great because right there in one post I could be like, okay, I get it, I see what's happening here.
Speaker C:So it was really just shout out to you guys and for people who, as we get there, we're going to talk about how people can connect with Ground News.
Speaker C:But the social media part is really fun because you basically deliver the news right to my phone.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really fast way to kind of digest kind of the core of what we do.
Speaker A:And for a lot of people who, who do just read news on social media, which you shouldn't do, but some people do that.
Speaker A:It's kind of a good way to like, kind of get a quick glance of what's happening.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So let's talk about the core of what you do, because I'm teasing a little bit here, kind of where this is going, but.
Speaker C:So Ground News is.
Speaker C:Is not actually a news reporting agency.
Speaker C:So it's not like the New York Times or anything like that.
Speaker C:So do you want to explain what Ground News actually does?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So we don't have any journalists on staff.
Speaker A:We don't create any original reporting.
Speaker A:We're more of a tool platform.
Speaker A:So we call ourselves a news comparison platform.
Speaker A:So the idea is, if any event happens, let's say there's a story today about, like the election in Canada.
Speaker A:So you could go onto the app and see, okay, the story is being covered by 200 sources.
Speaker A:So we get all reporting on that one story in one place.
Speaker A:So you can compare headlines from multiple sources.
Speaker A:Even those who mainly like left or right or more centrist news sources that are based in Canada, based in the US Based in the uk, China, Australia, pretty much every country on Earth, we have all these sources on ground news.
Speaker A:I think we have around 60,000 sources on ground news, which actually makes us the biggest news platform in terms of sources in the world, bigger than Apple and Google News, who have market caps in the, in the trillions of dollars.
Speaker A:So we are quite a large platform in terms of.
Speaker A:In terms of content, kind of.
Speaker A:The idea is for any store, you can see how sources frame it.
Speaker A:Facts, they omit, facts, they emphasize.
Speaker A:So it gives you a fuller view of these more pressing stories that are often politicized.
Speaker C:All right, so I want to talk about that.
Speaker C:We're going to get to that.
Speaker C:But first, you have 60,000 sources.
Speaker C:So do you have somebody in the back office that goes through the sources?
Speaker C:Is it AI, what's parsing the data to categorize it and kind of put everything together for you?
Speaker A:Yeah, a fair amount of it was manual at first to, like, added sources in get there, because a lot of resources have like, public RSS feeds.
Speaker A:Like, I think the first few months we were like, all day is like copy pasting RSS feeds into.
Speaker C:That's the job of the intern.
Speaker A:It was actually a job of one of the lead designers at first.
Speaker A:So we were so small.
Speaker A:So we have a lot through that.
Speaker A:And then we have tools that pick up content from just like the Internet and these platforms or platforms like Reddit and Twitter, we get content from there that takes articles and puts them on our platform.
Speaker A:So it's a combination of automatically curating these links from across the Internet and also a lot of manual inputting of RSS feed to set up this content on the app.
Speaker C:Okay, so one of the big things that's happening is that the news is coming in and you're not taking the news and making your own news stories about the news.
Speaker C:You're just taking the news and grouping it together.
Speaker C:And I will talk about some of the filters and things that you put on it to help people understand kind of the slant on things.
Speaker C:But it's not like when you go to CNN or go to Fox and you know you're going to get a left leaning view or right leaning view.
Speaker C:Your ground news is not tainting anything.
Speaker C:They're just taking the news as it's being presented, grouping it together.
Speaker C:And like we, like I said, we're going to talk about kind of what it does after that.
Speaker C:But it's, it's helping to paint the picture of is it credible, where's it coming from, you know, what's the angle?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, we completely keep our hands off of internalizing any content.
Speaker A:So it's like the news comes in as you see it on the original site.
Speaker A:Whether if it's like Reuters or CNN or Fox, it's where our hands are completely off of it.
Speaker A:And we're, we're happy to keep it that way.
Speaker C:One of the biggest challenges that we have, like I talk to clients all the time because they say, well, where, where can I get the rest of this story?
Speaker C:Because they'll come in and they're worried about some kind of economic news tariffs, you know, whoever's in power, whatever, whatever's going on, they're just, they're freaking out about it.
Speaker C:And that's, and it's, and even when there's not, when it's not political strife, it's the debt and interest rates and the housing market, there's always something catastrophic that the news is kind of pushing.
Speaker C:And one of the things I always tell people is, well, go back to the original source.
Speaker C:So don't allow somebody to take a cut of something and, and package it and put it in front of you and say, hey, you know, I've got these anonymous sources and I'm not going to tell you who they are.
Speaker C:And here's something and they take it kind of out of context and they put it in front of you.
Speaker C:Go back to the source, go to YouTube or go someplace and watch the whole thing.
Speaker C:And you might have to invest hour or two hours into something like that, but it gives you more kind of background as to what you're, you're, you're going to be seeing.
Speaker C:But that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of commitment and it brings up a lot of the challenges I think that are regarding the news industry.
Speaker C:And I just wanted your perspective because you've been somebody who's really interested since, you know, coming out of school and getting into ground news.
Speaker C:What's your, what's been your experience?
Speaker C:Because you, you see news from all over the world now, right?
Speaker C:From every, I gotta imagine from every extreme possible.
Speaker C:What's kind of your take on the news industry in general?
Speaker A:Yeah, it's, it's definitely going under a lot of changes in the past 10 years.
Speaker A:A lot of the news, you know, a lot of the news about the news as of late isn't, isn't that good.
Speaker A:But it's not all bad.
Speaker A:But for example, the, the US has lost more than one third of, of its local papers since 05.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:We're still using about nearly two and a half papers a week.
Speaker A:So it's, it's still on the decline.
Speaker A:There's also a growing theme of what's called a news desert, which is a local community without a local source of news.
Speaker A:Local news is very important because, you know, they actually report stuff that like impacts you, like localize zoning, local issues.
Speaker C:Like that, paving the roads, whatever.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's often more impactful than federal or state level.
Speaker A:So without people in those, in those papers to hold the power to account, then you kind of see like, you know, more corruption and there's a lot of onset effects of that.
Speaker A:So there is a growing sphere of news, of news desert has people who usually support local news turn to online sources and people who usually age into supporting local news artists, getting the news online or not reading news at all.
Speaker A:So that's kind of been a trend that we're seeing that hasn't really stopped.
Speaker A:The good news is there, there is, there is a rise in news online.
Speaker A:So I think last year there was I believe like 81 new outlets that opened online, which is the biggest increase in like I think five, five or six years.
Speaker A:So we are seeing some, some increases there.
Speaker A:And then kind of the mixed bag news is there's also a lot more consolidation in the space.
Speaker A:So private equity firms, hedge funds, a lot more mergers in the space, which is good because it can keep a Paper alive that would normally go into bankruptcy.
Speaker A:But then there's also the question, we're like, okay, does this know corporate hedge fund owner have a vested interest in the reporting and how it's done?
Speaker A:So that can be seen as good or bad based off of if the reporting of the outlet is affected by the new owners.
Speaker A:So that's kind of the US space in the past, the past 10 years, the decline of local increasing in digital and then more.
Speaker A:And then more consolidation in the.
Speaker A:In the space.
Speaker C:So it's getting essentially harder and harder to get variety of news, let's say, because.
Speaker C:And you see it too, the national ones tend to also parrot each other.
Speaker C:It's like if you turn on one news channel and go to the next one, they're not necessarily reporting on different news.
Speaker C:They're a lot of times responding to each other, reporting on each other's news.
Speaker C:So it's like one issue can dominate the entire news because it's pretty much just get the information out there so you can get the clicks or you can get the attention for whatever your base is.
Speaker C:I did interview somebody for a project that we were working with in the community about what this person thought we could do better for the community or what the community needs to do well.
Speaker C:And she actually said a local newspaper that talks about local news, not world news or national news, just simply have a local paper that talks about the local community, that people.
Speaker C:Even if they can only read it once a week, but it needs to be paper format, which I thought was very interesting.
Speaker C:It's kind of like a generational kind of battle there between do I want to read it on my phone or do I want to read it in my hand?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And then also the, you know, higher costs of the paper distribution.
Speaker A:So it's a lot to kind of like business do.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:You have to figure out a way to actually produce something instead of just put it on the Internet and hit the go button, which, you know, different, different type of business models, I guess.
Speaker C:I guess there needs to be an innovation there.
Speaker C:But anyway, so we've got, we've got the consolidation of the news industry.
Speaker C:We've got the.
Speaker C:I think maybe there's a trend too.
Speaker C:To my opinion is.
Speaker C:Is when I read the news, I'm seeing a trend to grab or tie everything into politics.
Speaker C:It's always somebody's fault who's in power.
Speaker C:I don't.
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker C:I remember going back now all the way to the second George Bush, which is when I probably just first started Paying attention where an issue is not tied to, you know, a political party and, and all the failures of the current and the future is blamed on that one type of party.
Speaker C:And I think both parties do it.
Speaker C:And then the other thing that I've seen in a trend is even when one side kind of gets what they want, it's.
Speaker C:We're so used to like, the, like the doomsday spiral and the hype of everything.
Speaker C:It's like, well, we can't trust it.
Speaker C:We still need to be level 10.
Speaker C:It's kind of like weather reporting with a hurricane.
Speaker C:We really need you to check the news every 15 minutes because we're selling a lot of ads.
Speaker C:So this is going to be the worst hurricane in the world.
Speaker C:And I'm, I'm, I, I just, that's a trend that I noticed.
Speaker C:I don't know if, if you being kind of from a personal perspective notice any of that.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's, there's definitely trends where, like, if you're a news outlet, especially in cable, you usually do sell more ad slots.
Speaker A:You get more viewership time when the opposing party is empowered.
Speaker A:To you, that kind of pull, where it's like worry and fear is a stronger emotion than, like, you know, glee and joy.
Speaker A:So, like Elliot's airport, you know, can you report more towards the left point of view?
Speaker A:They did quite well during the first Trump term, but then they struggled during the Biden term because there was less to, you know, attack on, and vice versa, I think.
Speaker A:I think Fox News is a bit more study, but they are seeing some declines in views since Trump's been power because there's, like, less.
Speaker A:There is less of a poll to, like, watch if you aren't worried about something.
Speaker C:Gotcha.
Speaker C:So I don't need to tune into the news to see that the world's burning.
Speaker C:My guy's in power.
Speaker C:He's going to fix it.
Speaker C:I'm just going to kind of ignore that.
Speaker C:Or if you were Biden, you know, a Biden supporter in last four years, you know, you probably.
Speaker C:Well, they did a, I think a good job drumming up anxiety over the pending elections.
Speaker C:But, but certainly, yeah, you can see how either side could, okay, we kind of get what we wanted.
Speaker C:We're going to fall asleep for the next couple of years.
Speaker C:And that's what you're saying is viewership kind of slides.
Speaker C:So it's almost like you become less informed when your party of choice is in power, and then you try to, like, catch up when they're not in power because you're Afraid of change or whatever they might do.
Speaker C:So now all of a sudden you're going to try to get caught up.
Speaker C:And I think one of the things that that does to a, to a person, just because I've noticed it with people that I work with, is you don't realize the cyclical nature of this and how it's like the drum beat just keeps beating on and it's.
Speaker C:We're just going to find something to be upset about.
Speaker C:The only difference is if you've been paying attention through the, through every cycle or if you just kind of like tune out in the off season for your, for your party.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's like how often do your clients call you when the market's doing well versus how often they call you when, when it's down?
Speaker A:It's like it's.
Speaker A:Yeah, it is a lot easier to feel, to feel like you want to get engaged when things are going poorly.
Speaker A:Like even when the market's doing well, you still want to pay attention to news.
Speaker A:You want to see why it's doing well.
Speaker A:So I think that kind of shift in politics would be beneficial where like you don't say, you kind of the two extremes where it's a complete addiction and drive when your preferred party isn't a power and then kind of like the wheel when your party is in power, kind of a balance of that of like mild engagement.
Speaker A:I think is is best to get to stay informed and to not be too thrown into every news cycle.
Speaker C:I think that that's one of the biggest complaints too.
Speaker C:I think that each side has about the other side when we're talking about this, if we're agreeing that news is kind of hyper political right now, so every issue is going to like somebody's causing doom and gloom if you tune out.
Speaker C:If you tend to pay less attention when you're a party of choices in power, then you're not going to be as informed.
Speaker C:And so when somebody says, well, I don't like what's going on and you say, well, that's not how it is.
Speaker C:But you're not informed, you can't necessarily answer it even if that other person is wrong.
Speaker C:You didn't have kind of the body of knowledge to be able to say, but let's have an intelligent conversation about why there's a misinterpretation here or something.
Speaker C:And it just becomes this kind of yelling back and forth at each other.
Speaker C:And I think that that's perpetuated again in that news cycle where it's like, okay, the more I Can get you yelling at each other.
Speaker C:The more that you're going to tune in for whoever's telling you that you're the righteous one for doing the yelling.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Kind of the idea where it's like, it's like two, you know, one movie, two screens, so you can see the same thing as someone else, but they'll see it in totally split ways.
Speaker C:Gotcha.
Speaker C:So let me, let me ask this then.
Speaker C:And kind of setting up our next episode too, but we've got this hyper political media.
Speaker C:And I always tell people what they're doing is they're tying social and economic issues into politics.
Speaker C:And so we're making.
Speaker C:People are trying to make financial decisions based on what they're reading on the news.
Speaker C:You know, are we going to have a Great Depression?
Speaker C:Are we going to have a great Recession?
Speaker C:You know, are high interest rates a good thing or a bad thing or low?
Speaker C:It seems like interest rates go up.
Speaker C:We're like, that's a bad thing.
Speaker C:Then interest rates go down.
Speaker C:We say, oh, that's a bad thing.
Speaker C:So it's, you know, what is it?
Speaker C:And it's all hyper political.
Speaker C:So we have to somehow address hyper political media.
Speaker C:And like I said, we have to say, okay, who's telling me this and what's the angle?
Speaker C:It doesn't mean you can't watch it.
Speaker C:It doesn't mean you can't consume it, but it means that somehow you've got to have some kind of filter to say, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker C:It's got me thinking, but how do I build some context around this so that maybe I don't jump off the bridge thinking the end of the world is coming next week.
Speaker C:So how does ground news address without.
Speaker C:Without giving us too much detail about how all the pieces work?
Speaker C:Because that's going to be the point of the next episode.
Speaker C:But how does ground news address the big challenges of hyper political media?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker A:It's like we like to say, like, ground news isn't better news, but we're a better rate, but we are a better way to read it.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:Which means, like, you know, faced with the pal with the problem of biased news fear, I think a lot of people have an instinct to create, like, oh, well, we'll just make like an unbiased news source or we'll make an unbiased TV station.
Speaker A:I don't think unbiased news exists.
Speaker A:I think it's a myth.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:I'm a human.
Speaker A:I have experiences my 27 years of life I have biases from how I was raised, where I live, my friends, my job.
Speaker A:Pretty much everything that happens to me causes some sort of bias in me.
Speaker A:So I don't think it's possible for humans to create stuff that's truly, truly unbiased, which is fine.
Speaker A:Biased news is okay.
Speaker A:News that's strongly conservative or liberal.
Speaker A:I think it's fine.
Speaker A:If you start a news site and you're like, I want to argue for the conservative point of view for the news, I want to carry the coverage in a way that it appeals to conservatives, that's fine.
Speaker A:And there's hundreds if not thousands of sources that do that.
Speaker A:But I think where the issue lies is when you try to say that you are an unbiased news source.
Speaker A:We're actually coming at it from a very biased point of view.
Speaker A:Some people who aren't that well versed in media may think, okay, this is a middle of the road attempt at news, but it's really actually more targeted to one political sphere.
Speaker A:So it's kind of the problem we saw.
Speaker A:We're like, okay, like we're not going to make a new a new company.
Speaker A:Like, we also aren't.
Speaker A:Our background isn't really in news.
Speaker A:We have a few people on our staff who work before in journalism and have education that and work as in the space.
Speaker A:But we're mostly a group of tech nerds who wanted to try to solve this problem with tech.
Speaker A:So that's kind of the way that we approach it.
Speaker A:We're like, we aren't with our news source, but we give you the tools to understand and parse through the news better.
Speaker A:So that's more so our approach to this hyper political news sphere that we're.
Speaker C:In currently, which really matches up and this is I think why I wanted to have you on here when you know, we talk to our listeners and our clients about parsing through the so called financial advisor and the people who are out there to kind of rip them off financially, whether they're doing it on purpose or whether that's just the way that they learned how the industry works, whatever it might be, you really want to work with somebody who's unbiased or as close to unbiased as possible, or at least who's very transparent.
Speaker C:In a recent episode, we talked about the insurance agent that I, I used to get along with where I would sit down.
Speaker C:I said, look, I love the fact that you, the first thing you tell people is I'm an insurance agent.
Speaker C:You don't call yourself a financial advisor.
Speaker C:You don't try to pretend you're what you're not.
Speaker C:So I know how to deal with you.
Speaker C:And the second you stop doing that, it will be the second I stop dealing with you.
Speaker C:And then he tried to pull it, you know, shortly thereafter, and it was like, okay, now we're done.
Speaker C:Because it matters if I can trust you, right?
Speaker C:It matters if you are who you say you are and you're consistent with who you say you are so that we're not all sitting here being hypocrites.
Speaker C:And that's one of the biggest things right there, is it's okay to have a bias.
Speaker C:Everybody has a bi, There is no, anybody who says I have no bias is silly.
Speaker C:I, you know what?
Speaker C:I don't think people should pay commissions for anything.
Speaker C:Not if you have enough money.
Speaker C:You don't have to pay commissions.
Speaker C:I obviously have a bias though, because I don't do anything with commissions right now.
Speaker C:I can make very good logical arguments and we can argue till the cows come home, but at the same point, I do have a built in bias because I have already committed myself to saying that that's not the way that somebody should do business.
Speaker C:So from a media standpoint, it's not a bad thing as long as they're honest about the bias.
Speaker C:And if they're, and like you said, the common person though, if the media doesn't come right out and say, hey, you know what, 99% of the time we're going to take the Republican sign on something and you just, you grow up with that.
Speaker C:You just think that that's the way the news is.
Speaker C:You have no idea that you're essentially receiving biased information, which doesn't mean it's wrong, but it means that you might have to steal one of your terms, a blind spot to the other side of the argument.
Speaker C:And you should be curious about, well, you know, again, to take it back to our industry, I was told that the fee only side of the industry, and I know I'm getting off your topic a little bit, but there's a, a fee only site to the industry and then a commission and they call it fee based, which is where you can do commissions and fees.
Speaker C:They, they, when you're in the commission side of it, they tell you that that fee only side doesn't exist.
Speaker C:And, and if it does, those are a bunch of scoundrels.
Speaker C:Because can you believe they're charging you for advice?
Speaker C:And, and then once you kind of get out of the ecosystem of the commission only or the, the more captive environment, you Realize, oh, there's this whole world out there, and they really do great work.
Speaker C:And it's all about giving advice.
Speaker C:And you could charge by the hour or you could charge by the job.
Speaker C:You don't have to sell people ins.
Speaker C:Work with people.
Speaker C:You go, wait a second, why'd they tell me that?
Speaker C:Well, they were trying to protect their territory.
Speaker C:They were basically saying, you're an asset of us.
Speaker C:You sell our products.
Speaker C:We don't want you thinking that there's greener pasture out there.
Speaker C:So we're going to not only tell you that the greener pasture out there is horrible, but we're going to emphasize it so much to the point where you would think that they're criminal for what they do over there.
Speaker C:Because we don't want to lose you to that side of the business.
Speaker C:Rather than saying, okay, if there's a chance that we could lose you to that side of the business, we have to come up with a better argument and give you better benefits and talk about what we can do to maybe change our business models and be more attractive so that people would want to stay on our side of the aisle.
Speaker C:We're just going to vilify the other side and almost pretend it doesn't exist or that there's a small minority of people and they're kind of on the fringe.
Speaker C:You see that exact same.
Speaker C:You see it in business and you see it in politics, and it's matriculated kind of into the news.
Speaker C:And like you said, if we could just be honest with it and say, look, this is my bias.
Speaker C:This is how I see the world.
Speaker C:At least you know how to counterweight that, I guess.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And as a consumer, you kind of want to be fully informed.
Speaker A:The biases of both, you know, both advisors or both news sources.
Speaker A:So I think as a consumer and an advisor, you.
Speaker A:You kind of want more transparency for all of it.
Speaker A:So I think that that system helps everyone out.
Speaker C:So our next episode, I'm going to get into the features of Ground News.
Speaker C:So Ground News is a website you go to, you subscribe to it, you can follow them on social media, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:So there's some stuff that I think you guys do for free for viewers, but then there's some stuff that you can subscribe to and you get some extra features.
Speaker C:And I want to get into those features and why people would want to use them and how they work before we do.
Speaker C:I do want to give listeners one more, kind of a little bit more insight into kind of your experience in the news.
Speaker C:Industry.
Speaker C:You started as an intern at the ground floor at the beginning of Ground News.
Speaker C:Seed Planning Group was a startup not too long before that.
Speaker C: So, you know, we started in: Speaker C: little bit past that, back to: Speaker C:So as an entrepreneur, I understand all the changes and like, the way that you see the world now is probably quite different than the way that you saw the world coming out of school, jumping into that endeavor.
Speaker C:And now kind of, even though you're not the CEO of Ground News or the the original founder there, you still are part of that entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker C:So I'd be really interested in understanding the big challenge, like the.
Speaker C:Anything interesting or surprising you've had from the big challenge of Here we go, mom and dad, will you sign up and to who you are now, Is there any big revelations or anything fun and interesting that you've.
Speaker C:You've learned along the way?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think there's a few.
Speaker A:A few things with the product and like my journey, one big change is like, I guess, like, you know, change is constant, but it's getting a lot faster.
Speaker A: And when we launched in: Speaker A:So that was a term that was very big then.
Speaker A:You really hear it that much anymore.
Speaker A:But at the time, it was one of the key things that he pushed and it was much in the public psyche.
Speaker A:So actually at first the idea for Ground News was a lot different.
Speaker A:So we thought, okay, here's this problem about fake news that isn't true.
Speaker A:How can we solve it?
Speaker A:Okay, so at first it was about, oh, like if you are in the location of an event.
Speaker A:So let's say there is a protest currently in downtown Toronto, where I am now, in this version of Ground News.
Speaker A:You could be pinged by someone else and they would ask, is this, you know, is the protest turning violent?
Speaker A:Is it peaceful?
Speaker A:And then I could either verify or debunk that claim.
Speaker A:So that was the adverse kind of.
Speaker C:Like fact checking kind of.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was a lot more like citizen journalism fact checking.
Speaker A:So we're like, okay, this is going to solve the fake news crisis.
Speaker A:We were so happy about it.
Speaker A:And then it launched and it did well.
Speaker A:Like, you got a lot of users, like, very quickly.
Speaker A:It was like people just like voted to debunk or verify something based off of their politics.
Speaker C:So yes.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that was invalidated very quickly.
Speaker A:So I think, I think that was like our first learning where it was like, okay, like I think in an ideal world fact checking is, would be a great kind of core pillar of like the online experience.
Speaker A:But it hasn't happened and it's probably never going to happen.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I think learning that like, okay, this isn't the right way to engage with people with news, that was a huge pivot to what made us to what we are today.
Speaker A:So that was a huge learning.
Speaker A:And also just like as a Canadian, really trying to immerse herself in the psyche of American news readers was.
Speaker A:I don't know why you want to.
Speaker C:Go there, but good luck.
Speaker A:Well, you see I had some.
Speaker C:You do?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I was talking to like a ton of people because like I grew up on Reddit.
Speaker A:On Reddit by definition is like very, it's a good site, but by definition it's literally epic chambers.
Speaker A:Like each sub edit is its own epic chamber of one thought and idea and there's moderation in Logan to like repress other thought.
Speaker A:So if you, if you, yeah.
Speaker C:You're not allowed to, you're not allowed to be contrary in that or you get kicked out of the group.
Speaker A:Right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker A:So I was raised on Reddit as a kid.
Speaker A:I think I started reading like 13, way too young.
Speaker A:Don't do that.
Speaker A:If any of you have kids, don't let em go to meta that, that, that early because I went, I went on it and I was huge.
Speaker A:I was like, oh, you know, like you aren't gonna vote for Bernie Sanders.
Speaker A:Like who are you?
Speaker A:What are you?
Speaker A:And I was like also like 15 years old in Canada.
Speaker A:So I had no business, you know, like caring about that stuff.
Speaker A:So that's kind of how I was, how I was raised online and Reddit and how I saw the news in the world.
Speaker A:Because like much Reddit is a liberal echo chamber.
Speaker A:So I think over time I became like working here, even reading ground news, you have your views challenged consistently.
Speaker A:So I, I, you know, you read news from the point of view, from more of a Trump style conservative or more the old fashioned Bush style conservatives.
Speaker A: 't enough because sometime in: Speaker A:So I went to a rally, a Trump rally in Atlanta.
Speaker A:And as a Canadian, that was pretty crazy to me just to kind of talk to people in that sphere and it was actually very fascinating.
Speaker A:Like I I learned a ton kind of got to see the more human angle of the way they engage with news in the world.
Speaker A:I've done since I've gone to conferences for various political spheres, I tried to talk a lot to users people in the space.
Speaker A:So I think that also kind of really jumping headfirst into the American political sphere, it was fascinating and I think made me a lot better at my job.
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