Just Ask

Using this one skill in everyday life may get you further than you ever thought possible. Let's talk about it this time on Whis's Thoughts. It's time for a virtual campfire sit down with Terry Weiss. Will come to Weiss's Thoughts. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Welcome back to the virtual camphoire sit down I lovingly call Weiss's Thoughts, and that's where we get together here usually once a week at least, and talk about what's on my mind. And I am so grateful you decided to spend some of your valuable time today. I know you can listen to anybody and anything, but I'm happy it's me I am. And hey, if you get something out of it, if you enjoy it, won't you do me a favor? Just leave a positive rating and review and share us with your friends? All right? Get more episodes of Voice Thoughts, just go to Weiss's Thoughts. Just make sure you spill my name right wy ceu Weis's Thoughts dot com. There you can listen to each and every episode of this podcast. You can also find us on Purplepitstudios dot com and you can listen to our podcast here. My podcast and many others. That's all over at Purplepitstudios dot com. And also there you can check out the blog called Weiss's Life. And if you want to find me on YouTube, just look for Wis's Thoughts on YouTube. I'm all over there, and uh, I know I actually uh the production company Weiss Productions, if you need any voice overwork done, audiobook narration, all that kind of stuff I learning, I do. I do basically everything. I even do characters if you like. But anyway, all right, stop being Sillitarry I know, mister producer extraordinaire. You can find that at Weiss's Productions. Wysee Weis's production and uh, I started an Instagram account under Weiss Productions on Instagram. I for everybody said, are you on Instagram? I know, I'm on we got Facebook for Wis's Thoughts, and uh, I'm over on LinkedIn and on X at Terry Weiss on X and then the YouTube channel Wis Thoughts and they're like, why ain't cha on Instagram? Why ain't you you know that? And TikTok and snap chat and you know Martha's Vineyard News Gazette. Well the last one. I don't know if there is such a thing. Anyway, So I broke down and I started with Instagram here in the past few days, just starting that channel up. And you can look for me on Instagram at Weiss Productions on Instagram. That's me doing some stuff there for you. Okay, So anyhow, Oh by the way, if you want to email me, it's Terry at Weiss's thoughts dot com. If you got questions, comments, suggestions, or if you'd like to be a guest on the program, I can, we can ring up and we can do zoom. We can do over the phone. If you got something interesting to talk about, bring to the conversation, to the virtual campfire sit down. Why not write? All right? So, anyway, before we get into this episode's topic of discussion. It's that time again. It's time for the wordsmith word the episode. That's right, impress your friends with your big brain and your word knowledge. It's time for the wordsmith word of the episode and oh Ai generated female voice. This week's wordsmith word is super irrigation. It's what super irrigation supe irrigation spelled s u p e r e er og a t i o n and it means the performance of more work than duty. Requires. All right, computer voice, let's use it in a few sentences. We'll put in several hours of super arrogation. Due to staff vacations, Sydney's grades were bumped up substantially with all of her super arrogation. Super Irrigation is strongly encouraged in startup companies. All right, that's this week's wordsmith word of the episode. The performance of more work than duty requires some of you need to practices super rogation super irrigation spelled s U P E R E R O G A T I O N. And now you're informed, and now you can impress your friends with all your big vocabulary knowledge that's floating in your brain. And you can just go look at me. I'm smart. So that's our wordsmith word of the episode. Spots by the fine folks at Purple Pits Studios. So let's delve in. Shall wait to the topic at hand for this episode of the Wife Thoughts Podcast. I gave you a little teaserround the intro and I said, by learning this one's skill, and I've got a story to go along with it, But by learning this one skill, it could really profoundly change your life. And I know you said, Terry. Just what is it? What's the one skill? My friend? Two words? Are you ready? Here? They are by using this one skill? Just ask what? Just ask? Oh? Can't be that simple, Terry? It is? Just ask. Now you're saying, oh, Terry, my cosmic journeyman on the effortless mission of life. Whatever do you mean? Just ask? How could such two little words, Terry change my life profoundly? How? I don't get it. I'm going to tell you there's a lot of fear in today's society, and I get it. I understand where you're coming from, my friend. I know there's a lot of fear out there. The media keeps you fearful your friends and family, while while well meaning keep you fearful, our own minds can keep us fearful. But if we would think about this and quote into practice these two words, just ask. Just ask for that promotion, Just ask that significant other out on a date. Just ask for more time in making a decision. Just ask what's going on with your life? Just ask? Can I assist you? Just ask? Can you help me? Please? Just ask? Can you clarify that for me? Just ask, what is it exactly you want me to do? Two words? I mean rate this there. I give you so many examples of using two words using a strategy. And I came up with this all by myself, all by my lonesome. I was thinking on it. And here's the reason why we're talking about it on this episode of the White Thoughts podcast. This time. Got my cable bill the other day and while perusing perusing is look up the word perusing scanning, looking at ingesting my cable bill for me and the missus, I noticed that it had gone up yet again for the next billing cycle. Now, instead of doing a lot of people do out there and getting totally pissed off and going on a ramsay spin around and saying bad words, which, believe me, I can say the bad words with the I can even make up some new ones. I'm trying to work on the language. But you know, there's a study that says, if you use profanity a lot, it proves you're really have a superior intelligence. I don't know who did that study, but I've seen a lot of buzz around on the internet. Could it be fake news? Yeah? Probably. Anyway, let's get back to the topic, shall we. Let's get back to our program. The idea of just losing my shit over the cable bill because it jumped from like around one hundred and sixty bucks a month up to almost two hundred in this next building cycle. I'm like, that's no, it's just not acceptable. I'm not going to do that. We aren't going to do that. So then this, you know, this statement my wife made said, you know, well, can't we get can't we get see if I can get it any cheaper? Why don't you just ask? So I'll credit the mist is missus w for that. Just ask why don't you call him and just ask? And I'm like it was like it was weird because it was like, oh, the Heaven's parted, you know, And I was like, wow, yeah, demmy, right right, okay, thank you. I'm like, why had Why didn't I think of that earlier? Just just ask I Yeah, I'm like, all right, you know, duh, it's it's it's just such it's such a simplistic idea, damn it. It just might work. So I got on the horn or the telephone for those of you who don't know what the horn means. That's an old reference to the telephone. For those of us that are more mature, I got on the phone and called the cable company. And you know, again, like I've talked about on past episodes of Voice SOTS, I didn't get all bitchy with the person on the other end of the line. They work there. They work there, that's their job. They work there. Okay. So I identified who I was, went through the verification process and said, hey, this bill is this, this and this, and it's gone up in the past ninety days. It's gone up, you know, almost forty dollars. What's up? What's up with that? And you know, we went through a couple of the bills and we were coming out of some promotions, and you know, that's how that's how they get you. And I said, you know, with all due respect, I understand you know you just worked there. I said, I know every business you call nowadays they say this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes, which means they're just recording a call. So if you threaten somebody or if they're employed as something stupid, that they ah, we got you on, we got you recorded. So anyhow, I said, I know these calls are being recorded, so maybe you know this can be played at air date for upper level management or whoever's doing operations of the organization. But can you make these bills a little easier to follow and these promotions instead of you know, coming off them and installments, can we just have them all in on one date, you know, instead of this shock to the system that you know, because and I said, eh, I kind of reeks of bad form as the British would say, that's bad form GOV. That's bad form GOV. Right, because they get you, you know, five dollars comes off and then a couple months later, maybe another five dollars or ten dollars comes off, next thing, you know. And if you've got something set up on auto pay, well you're you're not going to know next thing, you know, you're going to get that surprising Holy crap, I've been paying fifty dollars, sixty dollars or more a month for the past six months. What the heck? You know? And after you come off of that shock to your system. But anyway, I digress. So we talked about it, and I said, well, listen, you know, we've got the homephones with the cable company, which honestly, folks, do you really use your home phone anymore? I don't. I got a cell phone. The missus as a cell phone. My kids have cell phones, My grandkids even have cell phones. You know, I'm surprised our cat doesn't have a cell phone. They got them for everybody else. But that's our main form of communication. If you need to talk, text or otherwise engage with me other than in person, you know, or email, it's a cell phone. And quite honestly, we've had the cell phone for the past year and if if we've gotten twelve calls on it, that's a lot. And it went up to like twenty five bucks a month, and I'm like, I mean, if the internet goes out anyway, or your cable goes out and your internet goes out, your phone's out anyway, So you know why bother right, So back to the conversation, I said, can we at least can we take the phone off? And they're like, sure, sure, yeah, you know, I have to get you over to the retentions team. They're the ones who do that. I'm like, oh, very well, well, thank you for your assistance, and you're you know, your assistance and understanding the bill and what have you. So they transferred me. I waited a couple of minutes and I spoke to a nice gentleman over there, and you know, reintroduced myself. I mean, you know, just following the procedures of the organization, and we've proceeded to have a talk. And he says, you know what I told him? I said, listen, my friend, I'll leave his name out of it, thank you know. Listen, sir mister so and so here. You know, we watched TV. We got these packets for the TV. We got the cloud DVR thing there. We don't even have a cable box in our house. The high speed internet is a necessity. It is a necessity for the home because the wife works from home. I do a lot of work from home things that we need this speed up and down. That's that's kind of like a it's like having all electricity now in your house, or heat or water. It's kind of in this day, in modern day and age, it's something you have to have. The phone is not necessary. I said, but you know what can you do just by asking? He said, yeah, I see you're coming off this tier and you're going to come off that tier and you're going to He says, here's what we're going to do. And you know, we were talking while he was doing it, he's here's what we're gonna do for you. He got the bill down by thirty eight dollars a month. The only thing we took off was the home phone provided by the cable company. Got it down over thirty eight thirty eight almost thirty nine dollars thirty eight dollars in change, which is back to where we were before the three month cycle of it going up crazy. And he says, this is all good for one year. And he says, just call us back, you know, at the beginning of the month, beginning of March next year. Call us back that first week and we'll see what promotions we have, you know, just give it a couple of weeks in. I'm like, wow, okay, great, and all that happened, my friends, because I just ask, just ask, what's the worst they're gonna what's the worst. They're gonna tell you, go pound Salitarry, we ain't doing jack shit for you. We want your money or not that anybody business would say that, and so in certain terms, but just ask. I asked, and I was given just using that technique. Not only I'll give you another perfect example, I use Adobe Audition. I've been using it now for a number of years, and I got a promotional rate when I started, but then after the year it went, it went up, and it went up by forty some dollars. I was paying almost three hundred dollars. And this is I'm not knocking Adobe Audition or Adobe products. Some like to come out and beat up on competitors. I try not to do that unless they do something really egregious. However, it was up to like with tax for the years subscription over three hundred dollars. Now, for those of you that are sitting there shaking your head saying what the hell is Adobe Audition. For those of us that work in audio and worked at radio stations and do promotional work, commercial work, voiceover work, anything to do with audio production, produce podcasts, what have you, studio production like that, and even some video production, Adobe Audition is like considered the gold standard I would say in audio production professionally. You can do so much with it. It has so many tools, it is very intuitive and it's deadpan easy to use. I mean, there's some certain things, but once you get the core bones of it, it's deadpan easy to use, and it's very powerful, and they update it throughout the year. They do update it with increments and you know, bug fixes and features and what certain little tweaks to features. It is, like I said, the gold standard in audio production. No hands down, no argument. There's no argument for spoken word audio production, making promos for radio stations, commercials, all that kind of stuff. This is it, you know for those of you other there. What about pro tools, Well, yeah, you can do stuff in pro Tools, and you can do stuff in you know, different things in Reaper, you know DAWs. You can do stuff in what's the new one by Universal Audio. They have their dog. I forgot what the heck it's called now because I'm having a brain fart. Also Apple Product Logic Pro. Yeah, those are all professional products absolutely, But if you are just doing short form commercials, voiceover work, e learning audio books things like that, my humble opinion for them or features to usability and learning Curve, Adobe Audition is the king, and a lot of people seem to hold that opinion. I formed it on my own, you know. Anyway, long and the short get back into get on point here, Terry. I was paying upwards of just over three hundred almost three hundred dollars a month a month. Three hundred dollars a month. Oh my god, my wife would hit me in the face with a shovel. Three hundred dollars a year for this, you know, still less than a dollar a day, but still kind of expensive. You know, figure it using that in three years, that's almost one thousand dollars. I don't know what you can do with a thousand dollars, but I've got some ideas what I can do with it. So I was investigating alternatives to it a couple other platforms, and I do use Reaper a lot of times to uncertain things. And Reaper's great. I mean, it's relatively inexpensive. If you're making less than twenty thousand dollars a year or using it for personal use, it's like sixty or sixty five dollars, depending on the tax rate where you're at. And that's good for twofold versions of it. And Reaper is very powerful, very powerful, more probably has one of the most customizable interfaces and feature sets out there, next to Adobe Audition. But there is a steep learning curve to Reaper. It is not as front facing there, I say, as some other pieces of software. So that being said, and I have logic Pro as well, that I got years ago when I got my studio mac in that I've got logic Pro paid. You know. The nice thing about logic Pro from Apple is it's pay one price and you get the updates for life. That's I mean, of course, they're a two trillion dollar or whatever trillion dollar company. I think they can afford that. But anyway, thank you Apple for not going to a subscription model. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But so and so, long story short, getting back on track here. I was set to let my subscription this time around that was going to expire sometime I think May or June, to Adobe Audition expire. I figure, you know what, I'm just going to dive into Reaper more. I'm going to dive into logic and I'll do some of the other things I got in there, even though it's going to be a little bit more intense, you know, for me to try and do the things I want to do. They can still probably be done, but you know, I'm going to just do that. So I had set it up to cancel, but then I thought, you know what I really like Adobe Audition and how it does things and batch processing and you know it's spectral analyzing, and how precise I can get with that editing. I'm like, you know what, just just for the hell of it, I'm going to call them up and just ask if there's anything they can do for the next year. So I did. I called up the Adobe Audition, the Adobe Customer Sport Team. I got the a young lady on the line, and I said, hey, you know, I'm here's I think I've got it set to expire here in mayor June. Whenever it was expiring. I've kind of canceled it, I said. She says, would you like the software? I said, absolutely, I love it. I'd love it even more if it was a pay one price and then I can upgrade a couple three years down the road if I wanted to. I said, but quite frankly, three hundred bucks a year is still three hundred dollars a year. And you know, I don't see any coupons ever coming up for it, or any emails from coupons or hey, thanks for being a loyal customer coupons, and but I'm wondering, you know, is there anything you can do? I mean, I would like to remain using your product. Can you save me, you know, any kind of money, anything would be greatly appreciated. So she verified my information and she says, well, let me yeah, let me see what I can do for you. I'm like, I would appreciate it. So we verify all the info. When she goes, yeah, I see you've been using a product, you know, Adobe Audition, you know, exclusively with us here for X amount of years. We appreciate it. She goes, here's what I can do for you. And they knocked off one hundred and twenty dollars off the yearly subscription, one hundred and twenty dollars. They knocked off my friends one hundred and twenty dollars off. Would that be okay for that? And we'll give you this promotion for this year and then you just call in, you know, just call in a couple weeks before it expires and see what promotions we may have because we'd like to keep your business. We appreciate your business. And I'm like, wow, okay, I appreciate that statement acknowledging me as a customer. And I said, she goes, is this acceptable? Would you like to do this? I'm like absolutely, And to put a little bit of icing on the cake. They actually pro rated me a refund for the unused portion of the remaining month or months that I had left until my current price that I had paid last year. They just gave me that back in a credit. So it was like wow, And it ended up being like sixty some odd dollars or something. But still so if you factor that in plus one hundred and twenty I saved, that's one hundred and eighty dollars I just saved on another year of Adobe audition, one hundred and almost half more than half off. Are you happy? You bet your ass? I am. One hundred and eighty bucks is one hundred and eighty bucks. That's money I can put into the business in other wayser forms. But again, just ask. If I had asked, I wouldn't have received now if I would have asked and they said, well, I'm sorry, there's really nothing we can do. Okay, But that's the whole principle of just ask, Just ask why not? Right? You never know? You never you just you just never know? Do you and do this with anything in life? That's I guess the whole point of this episode of Voice Thoughts. Just ask, you know, would you stop saying things in this tone of voice, because it really it offends me. Just ask. You know, I've worked here X amount of years I've put in the overtime, I've believed my performance has been, if not definitely standard, above standard in most cases. I was wondering, you know, what are the promotion opportunities and the merit increase opportunity? Just ask, what are they gonna say screw you? Okay, well then you know it's time to find another job. Right. You got a question. You're working with clients and they send over a contract and you're reading something, you're shaking your head. Just ask, can I have clarification on this? Just ask? The just ask principle can work in your personal life, your professional life, all the way around. You never know unless you just ask. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I really appreciate each and every one of you out there. And remember to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss, stop by the website Weis's thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right, wys Wiys's thoughts dot com, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about White's Thoughts, and I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care at