Claudio Santori: Startups and viral learning

Season 2, episode 4, Claudio Santori, startups and viral learning. This is the actual fluency podcast, helping you become a better language learner by providing motivating weekly inspiration, as well as top tips and tricks from expert guests. And now, your host, Chris Broholm.

I'm great, Chris. I'm great. Thank you for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to talk with you, always a pleasure to be in your podcast. Even if I didn't make it to the season one. Only on the video version.

You kind of made it. It was uh it was a little a tidbit and people if people are interested in seeing my talk with Claudio from last year's Polyglot Gathering, you can find on the actual fluency YouTube page where we talk a little bit about the experience of being at the gathering and also a short introduction to Blue Blue.

Yeah. So Blue Blue, it's sort of my solution for a big problem I had. I cannot find content in Lithuanian that would be interesting and also my level. When I was in class, like I could understand the teacher and then I went into the real life on the street and everybody seems to use words I didn't know and the paper I was reading, they were too difficult.

Fantastic. And and maybe we should just a step back and uh and and say how how did you end up in Lithuania, you know, coming from Italy?

So I'm Italian. I was living in Rome and uh before Lithuania, I ended up in Finland. So I kind of uh I'm an explorer. I like to explore new things, I like to travel and I was very fascinated about Finland. It was a country that was in Europe, but very different. So I moved there. And I spent six years in Finland.

Mm.

Then in Finland, I discovered Lindy Hop. I discovered first how hard it is to learn languages with the traditional way because I went to all the courses available in Finnish and I could not learn it. And uh and then I discovered Lindy Hop, I started to dance and in Sweden, in a dance festival, I met a Lithuanian girl.

Ah.

And that's the reason why I moved to Lithuania.

A classic story.

Now, the girl is gone. She's actually not my girlfriend anymore and she lives in Italy now. So that's interesting. We exchanged. I have uh another girlfriend and um I'm uh I'm here. I love it. Lithuania is a beautiful country.

Glad to hear it. And Blue Blue was kind of a you'd call it a startup in and these days, wouldn't you where you

Yeah, Blue Blue was my I had this problem and I wanted to solve it. I wanted to make this software. I thought this software could help millions of other people. So I convinced an investor to give me like first we started with 100,000 euro and uh from there we get I raised more money, I got a team. And uh and now we have if you think about it, I mean, we have 105 languages on Blue Blue.

Wow.

So some of them they they don't work perfectly as we would like to, but it's cool that we don't know them. I mean, we have Russian for a very long time and we have people paying for Russian, at least using it and uh we don't really know anything. But we are able to teach it, let's say, to other people. So that's the power of Blue Blue also.

Right. And and what at what stages would do you think they would be Do you have from, you know, the when you've learned the first page in the grammar book or or all the way up until advanced. Is there some kind of level where it's a a better idea to be at Blue Blue than, you know, say other methods?

So now I would say if you want to start Russian on Blue Blue, you better first use uh at least read the first three chapters of a grammar book.

Right, right.

So you need to we didn't teach any grammar. So as it is now, Italian, it's very beginner-friendly. I'm making it my the content myself. Now, we don't only take stuff from the internet, we also based on the experience we have, we're making engaging videos now or we write short dialogues just to teach the basic concept. And uh but if you want to try, for example, for Arabic or Russian or uh you need to be able to read and maybe know just the base the first 50, 100 words.

Oh that's not that. I mean, that's uh

That's it. That's not much. No.

That's not much is it?

Because also the cool thing of Blue Blue is that we already know which words are similar. Let's say Russian, okay? Problema. You have this uh businessman. Uh and so on and so on. These are thousands and thousands of words that Blue Blue knows already that if you know English, there you go. You can understand them right away.

Yeah.

So by default, if you're a beginner, it finds content when these words are more used. So it makes it easy to learn how to read, for example, because if you have to read and you already know that this is problema, internet and so on and so on. It it it's just it's so fast and so rewarding because you feel like you can read Russian.

Right.

And why you learn how to read this it's not just the words. It's going to be a phrase. So it will tell you, for example, it will Google and will find a phrase that says, the businessman had a problem with the internet and uh the computer didn't work. So now, only work maybe you don't understand, but you can figure it out. There's a translation in line and everything.

A crocodile.

Okay. And what animal is paukščiukė?

No idea.

There you go. So, why will you teach me first birds that is paukščiukė when it's so hard. There's it's so complicated. Teach me krokodilas. So, it's easy to remember.

Mm.

And by doing this, you train yourself to pronounce any other Italian word. So it becomes so easier because the words at the end, they all end with the same ending, you know, uh in Italian, information in Italian, it's informazione. So your brain starts to catch up with this like tione ending and uh other kind of ending.

Right. That's a quite a brilliant idea, I find because you know, this uh idea of cognates is obviously not new, but systematizing it in a way where you can really leverage them because if you if your algorithm sort of spots the cognates early and then gives you a text where eight out of ten of the words are literally cognates like English,

Yep.

Then it's so easy for you to figure out the context through context what the last two words mean.

That's it. That's it. And then you have new words now and combined with the at the beginning you're going to 90% cognates, 10% new words and then of course, there's a limited amount of cognates, but they're they're so many. I mean, they're they're so many.

Yeah, and people might not realize this but even for a language like Russian, it's full of cognates. Like any word ending in Tion in English or Eon, just becomes uh ia. I see informacia, for instance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And uh every single word about IT or any kind of, you know, um probably most democratic words as well. They're usually just like English. So it doesn't have to be only the romance languages where you can find these. It's also in all the other even the um like the Russians.

Yeah, yeah, Russian. I mean, when I was studying Russian, I was surprised. I didn't know there were so many. So now the computer makes it like easier plus now we're building tools for tutors.

So the computer gives you when you're doing the content, it says to you, consider using this word or instead of that?

I I can see immediately after I uh write a text, I can uh preview and I can see how this is for only for us as admin now, tutors. I can see immediately how a beginner will see this text. So I will see the words in red, the metaphor we have on Blue Blue. Red means that you don't know it and green it's like you know it. So I can see immediately how much red there is in this text. If it's too much, it's not really beginner-friendly.

I see. Well, that's very exciting. That's a possible um develop in the development in the future for Blue Blue then going forward.

Yeah, and then I think now with like machine learning. The computer are intelligent machines. So they learn. Now you say that, for example, businessman is a friend. We decided it's a friend. But then we realized that actually when people learn Russian, they always say that this is a difficult word. For example. So now we learned that this businessman, it's not so connected or maybe it was informacia, you know, maybe it's better. Businessman is quite strong connection. Informacia. So, information informacia, it's not so strong.

Right.

So it's the the computer will become very intelligent at understanding like, okay, these are the first 20 words that you know from zero. Then after 20 minutes, you have 100 more. After 20 minutes, you got 500 more. And this is the expansion and it keeps it very gentle. So you keep discovering new words and you never feel the pain. Oh, what is this? It's more like, oh, wow, what is this? I like it.

Right. That's incredibly fascinating. Like I said in our last uh talk, I was like bringing in some kind of artificial intelligence in a way to make it better, more efficient what sort of words to learn because one of the biggest challenges I find when doing any kind of learning is that you are it's such a lot of work to distill what is, first of all, useful. So like you say, it's more useful to learn how to say, I'm hungry than it is to say, I have three birds or, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah. But it's such a lot of work to to distill that but also trying to distill what you can do compared to what you can't. So for instance, for me Russian, I'm trying to read a Russian short story. And the guy who wrote the short story obviously didn't intend it to be, you know, a beginner resource where you after a certain amount of Russian studying could pick it up. It was conceived written for native speakers.

Unless you're like Robin now and I need to exchange the favor you mentioned Blue Blue that he was uh he likes words, you know, and he just write them down and uh check on the dictionary and uh so, but this is uh for example, as an Italian, when I was young, I was always passionate to use the vocabulary in Italian, the monolingual vocabulary, you know, I I didn't know a word when I was a teenager and my father always encouraged me. So I have this tendency even in my own language.

No.

That's so that's why also you shouldn't read in my period at least. Like, we think it's easier but because we don't do this normally, like, we shouldn't do this in Russian because it's the extra thing and the pain will come and you will not take it. I mean, you will not be able to take it and you will give up. So instead, I will really try to do what do you do normally in Danish and in English and try to find a substitution in Russian. That's what what I think. I try to read children's book but I don't read children's book in English or Italian.

Right.

So I have a book right here. This is like Lithuanian like stories, Lietuvių Pasakos, and this is I have read half of it because I cannot care less about the princess, you know, and the frog.

Right. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Um it's I find it a very very interesting. I mean, if I wanted to learn how to read in Russian, it's definitely a like a tool like Blue Blue is definitely super helpful because it can kind of ease the process. And hope and maybe I'll even like it at some point, you know.

Especially if we plug it with resources that you like.

Right.

For example, we start to show you articles in Russian on how to make a good podcast.

Right.

Now, you like you already have a good podcast and that's even a fantastic one, but reading about a topic you're interested in anyway and you master this topic, it makes it easier to grasp even more content and and now you're able to talk about something you do in Russian. So you could talk with somebody on iTalki or people you know, Russian people about your podcast in Russian.

Absolutely, yeah.

So that's I don't need to talk about fairy tales, you know, and uh that's why yeah, short stories, I see the value but I also see the limitations and uh and the frustration.

Yeah, for sure. But but let's move on a little bit. Um you know, we talked about language learning a little bit in the uh YouTube video. So if people are interested in in your philosophy on that, you can they can go back.

I have. There is uh I give a lot of talk uh presentation now in university and I talk about this. So there is a there is we are biased. So if you have a good idea and you come to me and you tell me like, Claudio, I have this beautiful idea. I want to make the Facebook for languages. Would you buy it? Would you pay 99 cents for it?

Right.

And then you ask people, please come in. And then they come in and they tell you like, wow, this is amazing. What about if you painted blue? But before they need to put 1 euro into the basket. Because people they have so many feature, you know, put the chat. You need to put books here. You need to have this. And you get crazy of building more features when still you haven't got any money.

Oh.

So, not that we didn't know but we had a solution, you know, one foot all in the beginning and But still, this guy, he paid 10 euro a month for a product that it was honestly, ugly, broken, but the vision was there. It was already showing what can we do if. And this guy got it.

Of course.

Like, the Blue Blue I'm building now there is like 20% of compromise that I don't really maybe agree with it, but I understand it's needed to bring me to where I want to go.

It's what the people want in other words.

Because a lot of time people do this mistake. Let's say you raise money on Indiegogo to make an app. 70,000 euro. Now you build this app and then you put it into the market and nobody buys it. Because you haven't tested.

Fantastic.

And when and when they pay, man, when they pay they're telling you that that that they like it.

That's the real um validation, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, in in in in your case, in your podcast, like people can promise that they're going to listen your episodes, but do they listen them? If you see the stats and people are listening, that's the thing. You're doing a good job. So that's all you need because people promise that in the future the future doesn't really tell anything. It's easy commitment. It's very risky. So.

Right. The real commitment is when when they pull out the wallet or they actually go to click, actually do the listening, like you say.

Yeah, I mean, I can promise you I'm going to listen your season two, but then if I it's just a promise. So you really need to look at the numbers and the real fact. There's a beautiful book I read about sales. It's called the Mom Test.

M O M?

See, yeah, like the mother. The Mom Test. And it's uh if you want to sell something to your mom, you cannot go to your mom and tell, Mom, would you buy for 99 cents this app that makes cool recipes very easy to make? She will tell you yes, just because she doesn't want to hurt you.

Right.

You have told too many things in there and it's easy commit. You didn't ask for one euro now. It's uh would you buy? You need to ask your mom like, Mom, do you use application for your recipe? No. That's it. You know that your mom is not a client. You you at least you know that she's not good for you, so you need to look somewhere else for this information.

Right.

But I could talk about this forever.

Yeah, I'm I know that and I

This is this is uh and in the in the beginning, I tell you always this. When you have an idea in the beginning, you definitely need to pitch you don't have a product. So you need to pitch a vision. When I had Blue Blue, I had one slide. I pitched, this is what I want to build. And the first investor is the crazy guy that comes in and goes like, okay, like here is 50,000 euro, 100, 15,000, whatever it is. Just because they believe you and the vision.

Right.

For example, with your podcast, you can do an entire season now in a week. Or you could have an episode, roll it out, get feedback from people and then every other episode you embed a little bit of feedback. So, this is going to grow like uh episode by episode.

Exactly.

So this is uh building lean and uh applying the lean methodology. That's it.

Sure. Well, I'm I'm really glad you you took the time to uh go into some of that because I know that a lot of people sitting out there might have that, you know, next big software idea. And I would hate for for them to not at least pursue the idea of validating it because they're scared of the of having to finish it first or any other problems.

Yeah, there is a pain, yeah, there is a pain that it's not been completely solved. The language learning, you cannot make another flash card app, you know, like we need.

Right. It's like, why do you want to I can see if you came, I mean, I we can't expect everything. But in my opinion, don't try to make at least any kind of app that has anything to do with flash cards. Because we have two giants and in my opinion, they're very exhaustive companies, you know, both Anki and Memrise, those two alternatives will have you covered one way or the other. They have all the features you would ever need or that I can imagine anyway.

No, no, no, yeah, yeah, completely, completely.

So spend your time on trying to find on something else.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I told my team like, I I don't I think we could one day have flash cards on Blue Blue, but it would be crazy to start with flash cards because we we we're doing a better job if we send people to Memrise and Anki because, well, this this is like beautifully done. If people like flash cards, let's them do the flash cards somewhere else.

Yeah.

And maybe let's do them in the future. I mean, we don't have to this is the other problem that you want to build everything from day one, but you don't have to. You really have to be niche. In the beginning, you need to address a specific niche. But I want to go back to I want to add two things. There's one rule. If you're not ashamed when you release your app, it means that you release too late.

Oh.

So this is a big rule in the startup world. When you launch your service, you need to be ashamed and one out of two email needs to be what the uh is this service? Like uh so they need to be complaining people. One out of every two email. And the second email should be like, oh my god, I've never seen anything so fantastic. So if you hit this beautiful spot, you're doing something great because you cannot please everybody. If you're waiting to please everybody, you will just you will build something that nobody uses.

Mm.

And the second tip that kills me is that I've seen so I've been to thousands now, honestly, thousands of startups event and like, well hundreds, maybe not thousand, but I've been like three years in business and almost every week I go to an event, so it makes like around like uh 200 events, I think I've been and I've been coaching people. There's people with so beautiful ideas. Even at the polyglot gathering and uh the polyglot uh conference. People with beautiful ideas and their presentation it's horrible.

Right.

And it takes 10 minutes to learn how to make a good presentation. But people they're so afraid that they don't even want to learn that and then they uh they present. It's you know, for me it's the same when people say, I don't look good in picture. And every time you take a picture of them, they have this weird face that is the face I don't look good in picture. So, and people they go and present believing that they're not good presenters and the presentation is just terrible and you need to dig deeper to get the ideas and so, definitely you need to learn how to present your ideas and not to be a shame of uh showing me something that it's half done.

Right. Because half of the battle is getting people on board, whether it's investors or actual users. You know, if you can't convince or if you can't explain what the purpose of your product is, then how are you going to sell it to anyone?

Yes.

So I I think that these are are great tips for people looking to uh get into the world and I really hope that people try to limit a little bit the copycatting and, you know, like I say, I get so many emails about apps and people like, try my app, try my app. I'm like I look at it one for 10 seconds and I'm like, oh, this is just like the other app and

This is the other problem when you ask people come I also have this kind of uh, you know, apps and I ask them like, so what's your competitors? And they tell me nobody. So they don't really know the market.

Right.

Language learning, it's this uh unfortunately, it's this everybody is an opinion in language learning. Uh for example, everybody used to love live mocha, live mocha or and now it's Duolingo. These are more fashions, I would say than just I'm not say Duolingo. I really like uh Duolingo and if you're a beginner, I've used it. It's uh I think it just gets a little bit boring when you're more intermediate in that language. But for the first steps, I really I think they've done a majestic job and give me give me fine the what you can get in a class, in a beginner class. This is just very well done.

Yeah, and sad to say, lots of these apps, you know, fail horribly and uh that's how uh that's the ruthlessness of the business, you know. You have to make something good that people use and has to be fun and useful because if it's not any of those two, then people are just going to stop using it. They might use it for a week for the novelty but then they just quit because it's not fun, it doesn't engage them in the long term and it doesn't teach them languages. They don't feel the progress.

Yeah, this is still it's a business. If you do like, let's not name like big names in the language learning like uh American companies that they sell you this program for three, four hundred dollars. And even if you don't uh open the carton box, you know, you have paid it already. So, they don't so this is one strategy, but in the software world that you need to offer something for free and engage people, this doesn't work.

Yeah, and there's so many free options as well. So in in whereas maybe 20 years ago, you had to spend a lot of money learning a language or get access to any kind of resources. Today you can just do it for free on the web in your pajamas, you know.

I need to read you this like somebody uh deleted their account on Blue Blue saying uh uh because at some point we ask them to, you know, to subscribe. You can use it for free but there's a limitation. So he wrote something about like uh you uh pig uh like what was it like money business people. Education should be for free. I deleted my account. So, I mean, yeah, education should be for as free as possible but at the end of the day, you know, this company cost 10,000 euro a month. And uh we love the education for free, but you need to make it a business otherwise it's just not uh

Yeah, it's not a charity, you know.

It's not a charity. So that's

I don't think anyone's pretending that. I mean, Memrise has been free for a long time now and they don't pretend to be a charity either. You know, they're a startup just like Blue Blue and they just launched their premium program, which gives you more features, but if you just enjoy the basic features, it'll be free forever.

Yeah, yeah, I mean freemium it's a beautiful model. Like Spotify, like we all freemium.

It's a great freemium model.

It's very easy to understand and uh there's this concept. You need to move the free line. Before there was no free line. You had to buy the service to to try it.

Right.

Now, user got more, you know, like there's internet, you can read reviews. So now you move the free line, so you need to give a lot of free amazing content before people actually buy your service.

And I like it.

And I like it. I I love it.

I agree and and also an example of of freemium why that sometimes gives more money is that, you know, I I play some video games. I've been doing it for a long time and one of the games I play is completely free to play. Anyone can download it and play it. But in the game, you can make sort of certain purchases and this is quite common for games nowadays. They call it they might call it like DLC, which is like add-on packs.

It's called in app purchase, I think.

In app purchase, exactly. That's a that's also popular in the app world. But the thing is what I've discovered is that I spend a lot more on the game than if I had if I had just spent, you know, 60 euros buying the game from new. Like games used to cost and some games still cost that, but the point is I spend a lot more money on a free game than I would on a paid game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you

So don't, you know, don't dismiss the freemium model as being less profitable if some people out there with

No, no, no, no, no.

Totally.

But you need to give it tons of value. That's the thing.

Of course.

So, it's uh now it's uh reversed in a way. You need really need to prove that it's a good product and uh and then you can screw up after they pay, but before they pay you can No, it's uh it I love the freemium. It's Blue Blue is freemium. We always say we keep it freemium and that's uh

Exactly. And then the people who enjoy it will, you know, they can get to support it instead of everyone supporting it and then somebody hating it.

Yeah, and the freemium I think the conversion is below 10% of freemium and uh free users. Usually.

But still, you know, it's

But it's still, you know, it's a it's a viable model, so.

Some of the people who are not paying might still recommend it to people who then become paying members, so it's.

Yeah, so don't ever this is the evangelist people and

Yeah, exactly. Don't dismiss anything. Um but yeah, that was a a really nice uh side side track into uh you know, language learning apps, softwares and and development.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll tell you like uh tell us the story. So, Lithuania, it's people think it's a complicated language. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. I don't think there are complicated language. I mean, grammar might be more difficult but at the end, like languages are languages.

Right.

So what we did now, we make it look cool. We with my friend, is from Sweden and uh we started to speak Lithuanian. First we wanted to try find a way to how do we get the native to talk with us? And we couldn't. So we started to speak Lithuanian to each other. Broken Lithuanian. An Italian speaking to a Swede in Lithuanian. And it was fun. We talked about work, about our girlfriends, about food. We just talked about what we talked in English, you know, with simple words, but we just organized lunch and work, everything in Lithuanian.

That's crazy.

Like, we finally got into like free language learning. An entire nation was at our service. We had this interview with the journalist for two hours in Lithuanian. And then people will call me and speak Lithuanian. And now they didn't they always ask me like, in in in Lithuanian, should we speak Lithuanian or English? There's a huge difference if you ask in Lithuanian or English.

Right.

Like, if I tell you like parliamo Italiano o inglese? Or if I tell you like, do we speak Italian or English? If I start with English, it's very hard to switch into Italian or Lithuanian or Finnish or whatever. The brain for some reason has a tough time switching to more pain. But if you start with Lithuanian, then it's smooth.

Right. That's incredible. I mean, you must obviously you must have been surprised at this level of attention.

Well, I I we were not expecting. We at least not from the first video, you know. We had this cool plan. I were we're going to make all these videos. We will like uh engage people. But the first video, I think, like this is a nation of uh like a few millions of people and 200 and more people saw it. We got invited like next month to the 10X Vilnius. We're going to speak there. So, it really went like uh very well for us. Now there is the local uh well, the national operator Teo, it's like a mobile company, mobile phone companies. They want us to be in their advertise.

Really?

So it's quite interesting like

That's crazy.

And yeah, this was um an expected.

But why why why do you think that how how can you explain that reaction in sort of, you know, in in plain terms because you can't be the first people in Lithuania to have expressed the desire to learn Lithuanian and and practice it, right?

No, I think it was uh first it was uh there's different elements. First we were two guys. It was fun. We were smiling and we were speaking Lithuanian. So it was quite good with some mistakes, but quite good. So it sounded like good enough. It wasn't like, uh, please, uh, talk, uh, me, uh, English, uh, want to learn. This is, uh, a bit turning off. But if somebody says, for example, please, I will really like, uh, you speaking in me English. There's mistakes, but it still sound like, uh, they we could have a conversation. So the video sounded like we were a level that you could have a conversation with us. First thing.

Right.

And then Lithuanians, they're so convinced themselves that this is an impossible language to learn. They when you speak it to them, they will go like, wow, maybe I was wrong, you know. Maybe you can actually learn it. Plus in Lithuania, there is a political thing. They have a lot of Russian people that they've been living here for 20 years or 30 or 40 and they don't speak Lithuanian. So Lithuanians are a bit mad at them because, you know, they would like everybody to speak Lithuanian. But again, the problem is that Lithuanians speak very well well Russian. So if you speak Russian, you will never learn Lithuanian because people will talk to you in Russian.

Right.

This is uh we switched the it's a native fault to me. If you go to Italy, there's no chances you will not learn Italian because my mom will talk to you in Italian, no matter if you understand, if you listen, she will talk to you in Italian. In Finland, they don't talk generally. And when they talk, they talk to me in English.

Right.

How am I going to learn finish? So in Lithuania, we made sure that the nation knew that we wanted to and now you can tell people really, really recognize that on the street. When I'm together with my friend, they just come and talk with us. That's the it it it's really on this crazy level.

It must be. It must be a fantastic feeling to because in a way you're doing the Lithuanian language sort of an honor by saying, you know, we'd really like to learn this. We'd really like to be better at it. And I guess the people kind of recognize that service that sort of goodwill that you set forth.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And that's that's what like uh what we want to tell now. We want to really uh expand this to other people. Like, we want to give the recipe. How do you how can you invest this 30 seconds to make this video that could totally change your language learning experience.

Right.

Because this video what that's to the brain of the people, it's amazing. And it's uh just it's so easy to make. It's very, very easy to make.

And you personally, I don't think it would work in Denmark. And you said you'd be on like to work in Italy and on on Finland.

No, in Italy it works without the video. I mean, people like.

All right.

But I'm sure I want to test it. I'm sure it will work in it will work in Denmark. I I think I will convince people to talk to me in Danish. Like,

Interesting. Well, I'd love to see I'd love to see you try it. That's all I can say. Um because first of all, you know, Danish people aren't that we're not that proud of Danish actually. You know, we we just see it as a that's the language we use to communicate with, but in our in most people's minds in Denmark, we might as well just speak English or even German in some areas. And um that's why I think it's interesting because we're not as nostalgic about our language. And of course we have this reputation for whenever people look just a little bit foreign, we just switch to English immediately.

Yeah, I I've also we've wrote a lot of blog posts about this that in when you live abroad, you like to look as a foreigners because you get attention. But unfortunately, this looking foreigners it makes people switch automatically.

Yeah.

So you also want to dress like a local when you practice languages just because you make sure that people will not even think. You might be simply in my case, a Lithuanian that has some kind of weird origin, but still a Lithuanian.

Right.

But if I look too much Italian now, I'm Italian and people will look at me and actually I realize this in the shop. If I ask sometimes, do you have this wine? Maybe I ask in Lithuanian. People tend to say no, just because they understand I'm a foreigner and maybe they're not comfortable with their English. And they prefer not to continue the conversation.

Right.

So you miss a lot of this extra thing. And it's good to be perceived as a local because you can get a better service and better deeper conversation then.

Yeah, can I just add another tip from our good friend uh Robin McPherson? Um you know, Just say hi Robin.

Just say hi Robin. Hi Robin. I'm sure you're listening.

Um because in the in the last time I spoke to him, I think it's episode 45. He gave a tip that I I thought was quite unique. I haven't heard it before. But basically what he did was he he went to a cafe and sat down with, you know, Assimil or whatever book he had for learning that language of the country he was in.

Oh, this is beautiful. This works. I can tell you what I did with before Blue Blue, I was in my class, there was a beautiful Russian girl. Anastasia, hi Anastasia. She was in my class. She was also the most talented person in the class. So I told her like, look, after the class, we go to a cafe and we practice together. So we went to the cafe and we were training each other like, I'm a man, you're a woman. I'm a woman, you're a man. I'm divorced, I'm married. I'm tall, I'm short. Just are you tall? No, I'm short. So this kind of very simple thing. When we didn't know something, I would tap on the shoulder, the next person and we will ask.

Mm.

So we got a lot of people that really like they were laughing at us, but we became a sort of like a entertainment in this cafe. And at some point we're practicing and I cannot forget this. She pronounced really loud like, I have diarrhea.

Oh.

But she didn't know what it was, you know. And everybody were laughing and I was like, oh my god. So, this is a quite funny embarrassing thing. But that's definitely I love the step and um it works. It really works.

But then you need to be the kind of person that does this.

Right.

You need to be extroverted, I think.

Because Anastasia would have never done it. And Robin, I met him, you know, like he's a very social person and he would do this in English.

Right.

So, there are people that wouldn't even not even do this in their own language.

Right.

So, imagine doing this in a foreign language. How tricky this is and uh I would struggle with it.

I would struggle with it.

It's it's it's a tip for I would say people who are outgoing and extroverted. If you're introverted and a little bit shy like me, then it is hard, but I'm sure the rewards are also greater in that sense.

Rewards are great. Too often though, you end up in the classical thing that they will ask you in English, why do you live here? And then it starts to become an English conversation explaining, at least in my case. I'm sure Robin does a better job of this. We start to talk in English and then that's it.

Right.

But it it works. It definitely works. I mean and uh in my case, I remember, there was old people. When you tap on the shoulder of old people, you get into trouble because they start to talk and you cannot stop them. And uh even if you don't understand them, now you have to listen to them because they've been kind to help you and uh so you end up wasting 15 minutes and uh you don't really but it it's it's still kind and nice. But.

Yeah.

Yeah, I understand. Anyway, uh it's it's uh I'm really happy for your success with the Lithuanian because I it really gives some kind of focus on the good that the language learning community is doing as well. You know, we're bridging communities, you know, we're bringing the world closer together in a sense. And I I really enjoyed following that and if people, you know, haven't seen it, I'm sure they can find your interviews and your uh you know, your radio and TV interviews if they search for your name.

Well, there's uh on Blue Blue, we have uh one we're really good at helping people understanding the language. So you acquire a lot of vocabulary. You're able, after you use Blue Blue for a couple of weeks, you turn on the TV. The TV became suddenly easier. You read the newspaper, the newspaper became easier. Just because we make exposure really powerful. So by we don't really teach you how to speak the language. So we don't have any speaking tools or feature yet.

Hm. Fantastic. And we also, you know, just to give the listeners of the podcast a little bit extra, I just wanted to say that if you go to actualfluency.com/blueblue and that's B L I U B L I U you can uh find all the challenges that are currently running. And if you decide to join one, I'll um give you three months of um actual fluency VIP membership. Why not?

Yes. What do we get there? We give them if they come from you, we give them one hour of private coaching.

Wow.

Hopefully not millions of people come. How many How many listeners you have? Like, did I ruin myself forever? No, I think we can do this. We give them like one hour of private coaching. If they join one of our challenge, we give them like one hour of private coaching if they want.

That's really cool. Thank you for doing that. And yeah, I'll put all the links on actualfluency.com/blueblue b l i u b l i u so people can see what languages are running at that time and also get some more information about the general Blue Blue program. Because I understand that if you join the challenge, you also get some.

You get the premium uh like uh basically it's an extra. It's free because the premium it's like 60 euro and the challenge is now are the same price. We don't know if we're going to keep it like this. But now when you join a challenge, you also get one year premium Blue Blue.

Right.

Included. So.

Nice. So the the challenge would be free if you compare that.

Yes. So if you buy the premium, you get the challenge for free.

Super cool, man. I'm I'm really excited to uh to see where Blue Blue is going in the future, you know, with the tutoring and improving of the algorithm and getting more content. I'm I'm really excited about getting to use it myself a little bit more. I've been

Now for me it was really understanding as we talk about software developing. It was it was this is my first software that I'm developing and I'm just I'm on the business side. So it was really understanding how to communicate with developers, what do you need to drop and what do you need to work on. So now I think I'm on top of the game now and I'm learning.

Fantastic. And of course I'm going to see you in uh Berlin, I hope for the polyglot gathering.

You're going to see me, are you talking in Berlin?

I'll talk a lot. But I don't know if I'll be doing an organized talk. What what do you think I should talk about?

Use the I think we spoke that you you anyway. No, I don't know. If you didn't mention you this, maybe now you, well, you can still do an open one.

Yeah, yeah, this is

I don't know. You could talk about how to make a podcast from zero. Like, I would be very interested. What kind of equipment?

Actually that's a good idea because I was thinking that the I I think the market for general language learning podcasts is is not that big. I think the really interesting thing could be if people wanted to make like Spanish for French learners or, you know, or

Yeah, anything. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people. I'm interested. I want to make a podcast about uh like other stuff and I'm always like I don't really know what kind of uh, you know. So you could show like the equipment. How do you book? It was really beautiful. I you booked this. I'm sure you had a lot of pain before you got into this.

Takes about 50, 50 something episodes to.

Yeah. Yeah, you make a lot of mistakes and then you find a better way. That's the thing.

Well, thank you for the advice. I might just uh pick up on that. And what do you what will you talk about?

I will have two talks this here. One is about building language learning habits.

Okay.

So, time, uh like uh time management and psychology. I will build in a lot of like, I will talk in general about habits. How to build very strong habits. Like the fact that me and you, we both wake up in the we could talk you already talked with Alberto about this. Waking up early in the morning.

Right.

Yeah. I wake up like a 20 minutes before you 4:26 and you were like 4:44. So, this is a very good habit. So I will talk about habit and language learning. And the other talk it's about creating and finding good content. We touch today a little bit about this. So I will discuss what does make a content a good content, where to find good content in the language you're learning and uh how to craft good content if you are a native and you want to make content for people learning. So these are my two talk.

Exciting. I'll look forward to it. And uh in the meantime, you can find Claudio at Blue Blue. And you can also look out for his uh TEDx talk. uh which is going to come up uh really soon where you

This is my second TEDx talk. So.

Oh.

So right.

You put we're going to see uh about Lithuanian, right?

This is going to be TEDx Vilnius and we're going to talk about uh the other one wasn't about languages. This is going to be about languages, language learning and psychology, pain and so on and so on. So this is going to be interesting.

That's going to be really cool. And obviously it's going to go on the internet after the fact. But uh Claudio, thank you so much for coming on the show today and and and, you know, talking about the passions that you have for the language and I I can't wait to uh to get to talk again in uh in Berlin.

Yes. Almost a month. A month we made. It's going to be fun. Thank you, Chris. Loved it. Loved it as usual.

I'm sure we're going to have tons of fun in Berlin.

Yeah.

Thank you for listening to the actual fluency podcast. If you would like to get more out of the podcast, check out the VIP club by going to actualfluency.com/vip.