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Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Maddie Kirby is currently the Senior Social Media Manager for the video journal app, 1 Second Everyday. Maddie started her social media marketing career at Ozwest. Ozwest is an exclusive distributor of Zing branded toy products and the Ozwest toy line in the USA and Canada.While working at Ozwest, Maddie started growing her personal social media presence. Maddie has almost 400k followers on TikTok. Since joining 1 Second Everyday in 2019, Maddie has been instrumental in leveraging TikTok to organically drive millions of downloads.Maddie has a bachelor's degree in advertising from the University of Oregon, and has also worked for companies such as Bytedance, Inc., Egg Strategy, Transition Productions, and Atomicus Films.In this episode, you'll learn: How to promote your app with user-created content Clever tricks to get your app noticed Why TikTok is a great place to market your app A great strategy for growing your app's follower count Links & Resources Maddie and David's App Promotion Summit USA panel discussion Cesar Kuriyama's Twitter Cesar Kuriyama's TED Talk David Smith on The Sub Club Podcast Widgetsmith app Maddie Kirby's Links Maddie Kirby's TikTok Maddie Kirby's LinkedIn 1 Second Everyday's website 1 Second Everyday is on Twitter 1 Second Everyday's Instagram Zing Toys website Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode TranscriptMadison: 00:00:00I like to think of them as content buckets or pillars. You pick three and stick with those for a little bit. Try a few ideas in each bucket. See what's working, what's not. Scrolling through the app is the best way to kind of keep on top of things. And then you have to be able to think really fast and post really fast because these trends come and go. Jacob: 00:00:39Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. Our guest today is Maddie Kirby, Senior Social Media Manager at 1 Second Everyday. She began her career in social media marketing at toy company, Ozwest.While working there she also started growing her personal social media presence, accumulating almost 400,000 followers on TikTok.In 2019, Maddie joined 1 Second Everyday where she has been instrumental in leveraging TikTok to organically drive millions of downloads.Maddie, welcome to the podcast.Madison: 00:01:08Thank you. I'm excited to be here.Jacob: 00:01:10I'm also here with David, my guest, which I forgot to introduce in our freaky Friday intro swap.David: 00:01:16I usually do the introductions, but that was great. Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:19Hey, you know what? I'm very, very, very versed at...David: 00:01:21You gotta mix things up. Jacob: 00:01:23I'll pass back to David because he's the one who preps all the questions. David: 00:01:29Nice. Maddie and I were on a panel together earlier this month, at App Promotion Summit, which is a great thing to watch. We can link it in the show notes.It was four of us on the panel and it went really quick, but she shared a lot of really interesting stuff about what she's working on in social media marketing, and working with 1 Second Everyday on their TikTok presence.So, I wanted to bring her on the podcast to actually give her time to talk a little more about it in the context of promoting apps, because she's been on a couple of other podcasts where they're talking more specifically about social media.I'm super excited to have you, Maddie.I do want to dive in. We typically do have more developer focused guests, you know, people that are doing the coding or focused on user acquisition, spending 50K a month on Facebook. And so that's another reason I was excited to have you on the podcast is to just get a really different perspective.I think that there's a lot of potential in social media marketing. But not a lot of people talking about it in the app space and then...Jacob: 00:02:40Or just knowing how to do it, right?How do you even start, especially if you're a developer-turned-promoter. I think a lot of app creators tend to do the things you were talking about. David does technical channels about buying ads on Facebook or whatever, where's a lot of leverage in social media stuff. If you can do it. David: 00:03:02Yeah, absolutely. So, I did want to start with, you got your start in social media marketing, not with an app, which is another thing. It's like you came to the app marketing with such a different perspective, which I think is is really good. There's too many people who are just so narrowly focused in the kind of existing playbook for marketing apps.So, are there any lessons from your time at of all the places a toy company? Any particular lessons from being at a toy company that you think helped you grow and learn this form of marketing and specifically that apply to subscription apps?Madison: 00:03:41Yeah. I don't know if it's necessarily a lesson or lessons that I've learned. But I think coming from the toy industry, which is also an industry where people don't leave it. They have a lot of people that started in the industry and then just stayed there forever. You have a lot of people that aren't really thinking beyond just what they are normally, what they're used to, I guess, is what I would say. Jacob: 00:04:05Is what they're used to, like ads on Nickelodeon.Madison: 00:04:08Yeah, it's definitely commercials. Like when they were still talking about TV and trying to transition out of that, that's really funny that you brought that up, but that's kind of what we were talking about at the time. So I got really lucky and I had a great manager who really wanted me to push people outside of their boxes.And I feel like I wouldn't have found TikTok unless I was at a toy company, because we were so focused on trying to connect to Gen Z and young people. And I heard some kids talking on our public transportation about TikTok, which was musically then. And I was like, oh, and I just had like my feelers out about it because I was just so focused on kids at the time, and like trying to find this like cool new way that we can connect to them. And I downloaded it and I was a content creator, too. So I thought it was super cool. Getting onto TikTok at that time and super early, I feel like wouldn't have happened without being in the toy industry. Also then I was able to take that into 1 Second Everyday and already had experience, which I feel like a lot of people don't really have TikTok experience coming into a company.David: 00:05:16Yeah, that's really cool. and so then what, what was the leap like? what, what, yeah, how'd you land the gate hit 1 Second Everyday and decide to jump into that the app. Madison: 00:05:24I was using 1 Second Everyday already, before even looking for a job. so i had already, and i had known about the company the company is amazing and they have a lot of great benefits and they care so much about the people. in the company itself and it's small and, remote. so i was already hoping that they would have a job opening.Right. And I, so I didn't necessarily have my sights set on an app. really. it was just, i was interested in 1 Second Everyday, cause i use it. and i also like it because it's content creation and i have a background in that. so i feel like i was able to kind of have this weird experience coming into it. David: 00:06:04Yeah, i do want to pause real quick and maybe talk a little bit about the app. and i should have researched, i should have read up on this before the podcast, but it'd be fun to just ask. 1 Second Everyday has been around like 10 years, right? like this is the, like, i think i bought this as a paid app in, in 2009 or 10 or something.So tell us a little bit about the history of the app itself. and what the app does.Madison: 00:06:30Yeah. so our founder has been recording his life for 10 years now, which is a really long time. and they started on kickstarter actually. and he did a ted talk and that's how a lot of people initially found us was through his TikTok, where he had left the ad. for a year he left his job to go record his life, his 30th birthday.And yeah. it's, it was amazing and people really connected to it. and it's like a very simple idea. and then he did his ted talk about it and then that's how he launched the app. and now it's just kind of built slowly up, through that. really just being able to have him connect with people. caesar's an amazing person and a really great storyteller and people were able to connect to him first.And then that's kind of how he built a team around him to slowly.Jacob: 00:07:22I love the, i mean, i think, you know, when you talk about. user acquisition or, or, you know, ultimately that's, you know, what marketing or whatever is, right? you want to get people into your business, your app or whatever. it always feels so much easier when you start with the story, right? when you start with like the narrative, the story, then you add in the business or the product later, right?Because now you have a foundation. i was, i was on the 1 Second Everyday reading the timeline, right? it's all very clean narrative, right? like this person has this story whenever, and then everybody can join in. humans are very narrative driven. right? so we'd like to be part of something that like that like makes sense, right.That like has an arc to it. so i think it's, i, and i think that downstream that's going to help will help makes apps like once every day be successful is they have this like something that makes sense. and they don't have to just go out and like, oh, you need 50,000 users spend $50,000. right. you actually have a little bit of like organic story there.David: 00:08:21Yeah. and speaking of. no worries. so while you were still at the toy company, you started building your own social media presence. so you had, your own personal TikTok account, but then also built up several others. what was it like again, this, as you said earlier, this was a musically at the time before it even became TikTok before he even blew up.So you're really early to this really cool platform. how did, how did you build these, accounts.Madison: 00:08:49I started off at, on vine and then of course, vinyl. yeah, i know i had started it and then i had a harambe bay vine blow up. and then a week later they announced that the app was shutting down and i was devastated because i was like, here's my shot. i got it. and then, so i was looking for my next place to go cause i was a youtube kid growing up.So i've always wanted to make videos and i, and i love it just naturally. and i had some friends invite me over to this app called flipagram, which is actually kind of funny because that was a. competitor to 1 Second Everyday at the time. and i didn't even know about 1 Second Everyday yet. and so i was a paid content creator over there to be using their app, and then got on to TikTok and started just posting random, funny videos.And at the time things were the algorithm wasn't really developed, then it was more you post and then whoever likes your stuff is really important. so if you have somebody really cool and like, that likes your video, your video is going to blow up. and i just had two popular twin girls had liked my video and i had all these people coming over and said that these girls had liked my video and they saw it on their platform or their account.And then that's how it started. it just started like going up and getting followers. and now, i have, an account where i play guitar. i decided to take up learning electric guitar. and so i built. an audience of 11 k on there in two and a half months. so i'm really like addicted, i guess. Jacob: 00:10:28So, yeah, so, so, and do you, do you, you know, i dunno this is more about like personal, just like brand and like building these, these properties. i mean, i do think it's, it's, it's the skill, like, you know, we're talking about developers building their own social media properties. it's like, okay, you got to have a shtick.Right. i don't know what you'd call it. right. like could learn guitar. so do, do you carry them over from your other properties? you try to like bootstrap them or you're just like, nope, totally greenfield. i'm just going to like, be a guitar person now and like make it a thing. is that, is that more how it goes or.Madison: 00:10:57I mean on my other account, my comedy account, i guess it's always been a really hard thing to kind of stick with one thing that you're into. and some people are really good at that. yeah. definitely not the best when it comes to my own stuff that i, like, i just want to do whatever and kind of see if that works, but that's kind of morphed over time.And then with guitar, i was just like, i'm just going to record myself, playing guitar and see what happens. and it did well.Jacob: 00:11:24Oh, so you don't, you don't, you don't like plan out like, oh, i'm going to do a funny heran bay guitar thing. it'sMadison: 00:11:29No, i just do it. it's a lot of it's like improv and going for it and just seeing. i think that being on the platform for so long, i kind of know what's going to do well, and yeah. and sometimes you'll put, you know, five seconds of effort into something and it does really well. and then other times you put, you know, an hour of work into something and it doesn't do well.Jacob: 00:11:50This is me and my twitter game. So you need to give me some advice because like i can, i still can, 11 years in, i, sir, out 13 years in on twitter, i still can't predict what's going to do well.Madison: 00:11:59Yeah, exactly. David: 00:12:01So you've kind of been talking about your, your personal accounts. but these things that you're saying, i would assume also apply to company accounts. okay. i would assume growing a company account, you just need to have a similar amount of exploration. so how how have you taken those lessons from your own personal accounts and then systematize them to, to grow a company account and then even pushing back on, on not overly systematizing because you have to keep experimenting.Madison: 00:12:37Yeah, that's a really good question. i think how i tackle it now, since i've been on so many accounts, because i grew one, back at the toy company too, for the stop motion animation toy, and that's kind of my first dipping into that. and we grew really fast. like it's like at a half a million now for followers—t but, i think hat's kind of when i was realizing that there's buckets to these things.And like, i like to think of them as like content buckets or like pillars and you like pick three, like i'm going to do behind the scenes videos. i'm going to do, some kind of. app walkthrough maybe for 1 Second Everyday purposes and then fun trends and stick with those for a little bit, try a few ideas in each bucket.See what's working, what's not. and then kind of maybe if the behind the scenes stuff is not working as well, then we won't make as many of that stuff. and then just scrolling through the app is the best way to kind of keep on top of things and make sure that you're experimenting with new stuff, because people are always thinking of really creative ways to make new videos and have these like wild ideas that you don't think could ever relate to 1 Second Everyday but they can, and then you have to like, be able to think really fast and post really fast because these trends come and go. so that's kind of like my system, i guess. Jacob: 00:14:01How do, you avoid the. what did that steve buscemi meme that's like, hello, fellow kids. how did, how do you, because that's always my fear too, is like, especially as i get older, it's like, if i'm trying to be hip on twitter or whatever, like, it feels like there's this uncanny valley that brands can really easily get in to and you see it with like bad social media.Right. is there is, there is a solution just hire people who are actually good at social media or like, or is there like a framework for not becoming the steve buscemi meme?Madison: 00:14:30I think the biggest thing is don't try to make anything that you don't understand already. like don't try to guess. i think i learned that. Jacob: 00:14:39I canceled this, the, the, the sea shanties revenue, cat, collab, because yeah, i still don't understand it.Madison: 00:14:47Yeah, it's i think i learned that on my personal account. specifically just as i age and everything. and you get like these young kids on there that are like, wait you're, you're a millennial. that's really old. and then they just kinda like it pierces your heart a little bit. and you're like, oh god, that hurt really bad, but okay, thanks for reminding me.And it's okay if they do that, it's actually kind of funny and you can lean into it. but don't try to be gen z i think is the big thing when you're trying to relate just as i wouldn't try to be boomers either. Like you wouldn't try to be somebody else. so it's being yourself, knowing what you know, and like, not trying to guess at it, and you can talk to that generation, but they might just tell you, like, stop, get off the platform or something. i don't know. but there's always people that you can find within the platform that will relate to you too. that's a big thing David: 00:15:41How much of this do you think is kind of product social media platform fit? i guess. so my question is like, can you shoehorn a product that wouldn't necessarily work on social media, into social media marketing. so revenue cap being a good example. you know, we are, you know, sharing some videos on twitter and stuff like that, but it doesn't feel like TikTok would be a good platform for us to invest in marketing wise, as opposed to. Jacob: 00:16:18Cause because we're an infrastructure tool. David: 00:16:22As opposed to, you know, it sounds like even at the toy company, the stop motion animation product was what really hit on social media. did you try other, products within the toy company that didn't hit? or do you have any kind of thoughts on that kind of product platform fit? Madison: 00:16:41That's a good question. we specifically got on to TikTok because of the stop-motion toy. and i think it definitely makes it easier when you have a content creation tool, because we had an app that went with that toy too. and, and really it's all about entertaining people at the end of the day on TikTok and if you can't make entertaining content with your product, then it gets harder. i don't think we tried with other products. we did do a cross-promotion where we would have like a stop-motion toy playing with our other toys that we had kind of thing. and that was a fun way to do it, but we had different strategies for other toys, like influencer marketing or unboxing videos as well.But i think that anybody can be on TikTok but i also like to ask people, why do you think that you can't be on TikTok and people will say, well it's because kids are on there, it's a kid's platform. and it's really not at all. it used to be, it used to be people just lip sinking. and that's what i had started out doing.And i was terrible at it. i'm like this sucks. i am not, this is not a good platform for me. and it's really just transformed into a place where anybody can kind of find their, their audience and, and maybe with revenuecat it might be a thing of just trying to explain what you do in a really fun way and unique way to make people excited about it.Jacob: 00:18:03There are other developer brands that find success on there. right? there's like a certain language or that, that works. it's just like, hey, you know, for us. and so it's, and i think for any, any, you know, as an app, i think to going back to your point, david, about products, network fit, right. apps in general.Sit. well, i was thinking about 1 Second Everyday and TikTok, right. you're pointing a camera at your face at something. right. so like you're already, like, they were very like products in some ways. so it's like very smooth transition. but for most apps, it is right. you're there, you're on your phone.You're doing stuff you're probably bored like here. like, let me tell you about some other application you can use. it's a smooth transition. but then like i still. yeah. thinking about, i mean, we have this problem now that'd be the podcast we do. it's one thing. but then like, you know, for, for blog content and other things, it's really hard to come up with stuff that matters.Right. that like, like you were saying, maddie, like, so that, that, that, that, that's funny, like you care about, right. that that's what you want do. cause like, at the end of the day, if you're just trying to like chase the meme, it's gonna come off as hokey. right. it's going to come off as like an ungenuine. so. but i think app developers. yeah. i mean, i, i, it feels like we've heard like this whole tick talk as an app distribution mechanism really has kind of something that surprised me too. like it, it blinds, i mean, it's like we, and not just the first order of like we're selling ads on TikTok, this like second order user generated content stuff, which i think is just fast.Madison: 00:19:35Yeah. and i, i think that again, it's, you just have to figure out how you can be on the platform if you want to. and there's really nothing to lose with it too, because it doesn't cost money to be on there and try things like you can have a podcast format on there and you can take clips of a podcast and put them on there.And people have a lot of success doing that, or just having their, reply with the video feature. there's a lot of different kind of structures that people it's not just. making skits or trying to use popular. Sounds popular. sounds do well, but maybe that's not for you. i think it's, brainstorming, trying things, seeing what sticks and if it doesn't stick, then try something different.And if that doesn't, then you can focus your energy somewhere else and realize that, you know, you gave it your best shot and maybe there's a different kind of opportunity that, comes up later or a new feature that's introduced later that works.David: 00:20:29On the, on the trend chasing, what are some examples of that with 1 Second Everyday that you feel like came off? well, and, and kind of, how do you, how do you attach yourself to a trend without that? hokiness cause it sounds like you've succeeded at that, but i imagine that it is a hard thing to do.So any tips on how to do that? well, Madison: 00:20:50We kind of get lucky sometimes. and i, that is kind of like how TikTok works is luck. and i hate saying that. David: 00:20:58Favors the prepared though. Madison: 00:20:59Yeah. i mean, it's good that we were onto it. it definitely helps, to be able to, to see what's going on out in the world, but we just had, a wall street journal article that was about this too, about TikTok in 1 Second Everyday.And how there's this trend going on on, tech talk, where people are making 1 Second Everyday type video. and there's a lot of trends out there that show it's like the 27 video challenge where you have 27 videos and you set them to a song. that's very, we say that's one. when i see vibes, when we ever like share it inside of our slack channel Jacob: 00:21:34I mean, the thing is, is like bad posts. nobody sees, right? like, Madison: 00:21:39Yeah, it's kind of, it's like such a tiny thing and that goes back to the luck part of it. and i think being able to, jump on a trend, it's like, you could have a great video and people think it's awesome and you show it to your friend and they think it's great. and it just doesn't do well at the time.And you could post it two months later and it'll do that. Maybe not for a trend it's randomness and kind of like just how the algorithm works with wanting to reward you sometimes. but i think where we've done well with, jumping on a trend too, is we had a, a video that took off with, one of my coworkers made, she, she helped me make it.She was just standing there with her phone and was having somebody else zoom in on her that said i recorded 1 Second Everyday of my life for the last year. and then it just rotated through like really, really fast imagery of the year. and that was the trend of people showing it, but it was like this, we just kind of twisted it a little bit to make it about 1 Second Everyday, but don't ever make it like an ad.It shouldn't be, it shouldn't feel like 1 Second Everyday is posting it. and that's really cool. we were getting a lot of positive feedback on the posts because people were like, okay, what's the app that you use.Jacob: 00:22:56Yeah. Madison: 00:22:56And, and that's not a bad thing. people think that's a bad thing to have people ask that, but it's actually not.It just means that they think that some random girl posted a video, not a brand.And I prefer Jacob: 00:23:07On your brand account though Madison: 00:23:08On our brand account. we get that all the time. Jacob: 00:23:11I mean, that's a good sign of success, right? Madison: 00:23:13Yeah. people don't really read the, they don't read the captions. maybe i'm not sure what it is, but they don't Jacob: 00:23:21Yeah. it's really understated on TikTok, Madison: 00:23:24Yeah. Jacob: 00:23:24Kinda like floating in the Madison: 00:23:26Yeah. i feel like it's a great thing. when people have no idea that it's coming from a brand, even when it's posted on a brand account and that's, i would say with trends, it should feel like that it shouldn't feel like, like i'm trying to think of an example. like if oreo cookies made a thing, it shouldn't feel like they are just trying to sell you cookies.It needs to be entertaining. it needs to tell a story. you can't just find an easy way to do it and hope that it works.Jacob: 00:23:55So how, how so you've had success with first party content? i have you used like user generated stuff as well. have you tried to, i've seen it a lot of apps do this where they'll, i, we know if we've had it on the podcast, people before who have had like TikTok influencers make videos and then use those as ads.Have you experimented with any of that?Madison: 00:24:13We haven't used any as ads—something that's kind of weird about 1 second, everyday too. I mean, it also just has to do with us being a small team, with not a lot of money to spend on ads. so we really lean into organic because organic has also done really well for us. so why would we spend a bunch of money? Jacob: 00:24:31It's too usually Madison: 00:24:32But my, yeah my manager who used to be the social media manager when she started at 1 Second Everyday started a thing, where they added a feature actually to get more spikes monthly. and that was to make it so that people could mash their month and share their month on social. and then they had a giveaway that went with it and we still have that giveaway.And that gets hundreds of people to enter by sharing their, their, their month essentially, of 1 Second Everyday and that just keeps that going and just feeds into it. and then the more people that post about us. the more people that download and then the more people that can then post about us again.So it's just keeping that stream.Jacob: 00:25:15Did you have, it does again, post to tech talk as well as like other platforms or is it like specifically. on TikTok.Madison: 00:25:21Uh that's for instagram, actually Jacob: 00:25:25Oh, really? cause like take that, sorry. i'm th this is i'm totally like a tick tock idiot, but like you can't actually like post videos into TikTok, right? or,Madison: 00:25:34No. You definitely can. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. and we, we share user-generated content all the time on instagram, and we're trying to do that on TikTok as well, but it's, it's not the same because you can't really just share a one second everyday video from a random person. that doesn't mean as much as trying to kind of make it more of that TikTok format or putting a little bit of context behind it so that people understand. David: 00:25:58So, and, on the, on the panel we were on, you talked about, how well it's done for y'all at 1 Second Everyday. can you, rehash what you already said, but on here, tell us more specifically about a couple of the posts that went viral and then being able to see the direct results on, in downloads.Madison: 00:26:22Yeah. So we started arctic talk, in december because we wanted to be able to launch it before the new year, which is our biggest time of the year, because that's usually when people don't. and then, because it's the start of the year, that's a great time to just start a thing for your life and then they'll wait a year to post it.And so usually we see like this massive spike because everybody wants to post their year. but this time, what was different is that i think it was the day before the new year a girl, i was just randomly scrolling through TikTok and a girl had made a video that was like, hey, i have an idea. what if we just recorded 1 Second Everyday of our life, and then we would have a life movie, and then i went, oh, that's our app.And it hadn't even been, i don't think it was even at 1 million views yet. and so i was like, i got to do a duet right now. and so i filmed a duet where i just was walking through the app. as she's explaining this idea and people even thought that we made the app because of her idea, like how did you guys do that?So fast. so then people thought it was like this new cool app. and, it started this like microtrends, through ticks hawk and her video. i think it reached a lot of millions of views. i think it was like 13 million or something crazy. and then ours got, like a million views and then everything after that for a couple of days, it's like a million on our own account because then everybody started translating her video into their own country languages.And so you had hundreds of people copying her video and just ending up on everybody's feed. and then everybody that had already downloaded 1 Second Everyday and knew about it was commenting inside of those videos saying, hey, download 1 Second Everyday. so they were doing our job for us really. Jacob: 00:28:11You know, and that's a sign of a great product, right? Madison: 00:28:14Yeah, it is. it's like we, we talk about it cause we go and it's again, kind of a lucky circumstance of having this girl think of this idea. that's really similar to our app, but also we were able to capitalize on, on it even more because we do edit with it. and then we were able to grow an audience that to like now we're at, i don't even know what we're at 20 k or something on a TikTok, but we grew really fast within that time.And then. kind of going back to being able to see download spikes is we got a number one in the app store that day for the first time ever had never had that happen. and it just, i mean, it blew the other numbers just away dramatically. and then, now we're able to see these little spikes every month when a TikTok is posted from somebody.We had one in france and you'll see all the downloads that happened in france. just. and then we had one in argentina and that spiked and uk. so being able to like, see that and also just learn from them, like what kind of videos are they posting? super simple them just saying I've been recording my life for this long people just think that's cool. cause they're like, you did what you recorded your life for four years. what, how do i do that? and then you tell them how they do it. and then they just, they're all like talking in the comments. it's really cool. and, but we haven't seen them. at all on the other years, it's only this time that we've seen these like massive monthly spikes too.David: 00:29:46Didn't, y'all hit number one again in may or something. Madison: 00:29:49We did for a different country. And i think that was argentina, which we had never done before. David: 00:29:55Nice. Madison: 00:29:56Country, but you could connect it back to one second.David: 00:29:59Wow. Jacob: 00:30:00We've seen, i mean, we had david smith on the podcasts a couple of weeks ago. and his app, would just meth, like exploded because of that. and like, he, it was just, somebody made a video, right? david, that was a story for his, like, it wasn't, it was the same thing. it was like not, they didn't pay for it, somebody to just like, show how to do a cool thing with this guy's app.Well, i mean, from our perspective, we talked about it on the podcast at the time, but from our perspective, we, we provide his infrastructure for purchases and we were like, what the hell is happening? like, it's, it's, it's amazing. i mean, i don't know it was like computer brain guy, but like what this like interconnected, like we've really like shortened the loop for like the, just like minimal.Energy to like move around. right? like people can like spike this stuff. and it's yeah, it's, it's it's mind blowing the capex cause we've seen it also, not just, we've just been, we've seen other apps too. like, you know, it's hard to move the needle for our infrastructure because we're thousands of hours.But in TikTok and like some of these, and to a lesser extent, instagram can still like drive events that show up on our graphs, like what the hell is happening? we had one, it was a paid one car, like a kardashian driven one that obviously it's different because you're paying an influencer. but, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible.And maybe back to your point about it being organic, right. versus, or like earned, you could call it too. right. it's earned as organic. watching it and being there, you know, for, for us, the first party, like to, to take advantage of that, i think is as important as trying to be like, you know, creating your own content.Right. it'sMadison: 00:31:39Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't have gone as well if we didn't have, a presence on the platform too. and i think that just goes to show that you should just be on the platforms and have a voice on the platforms for that moment. you shouldn't be just jumping on. i think there's probably like examples of that with other brands, like, the cranberry juice, like ocean spray stuff that happened.I don't think they had a presence on TikTok, but then they caught on real fast. but just imagine if they already did have a presence and then people would want to be posting about them more. but i think, yeah, just having a presence on there too, when that's all happening Jacob: 00:32:17Oh, i was trying to place the meeting. that was the guy with the skateboard,Madison: 00:32:19Yeah, that's the skateboard.Sorry. yeah, yeah. no, it's, it was really cool to see that all happen and, and be able to show numbers because everybody, i mean, on the team, has everybody in general has opinions on TikTok. and when you're able to actually just correlate these things with numbers, some people, the people that are number of people were just like mind blown.They love it. feel like this is great. Jacob: 00:32:47It sounds like the algorithm is very capricious though. it sounds like it's very kind of, even, even you even suggested that there's like intentional randomness, like progressive randomness.Madison: 00:32:57There's yeah, there is. but then there's also, i've made a video like the four years that i had captured kind of video where you have something playing in the back, like the app i have in the background and me just sharing my story. i've done that three times, i think. and every time it's done. So you, it, it also rewards you for doing the same thing over and over, which isn't a good thing and that's how you can get trapped, but it is a nice thing to lean on when you're like, we need a spike.Let's do this kind of video. David: 00:33:27Did you follow the, the widget smith and homescreen customization thing that blew up in the fall.Madison: 00:33:34Hm.David: 00:33:35Okay. i was just going to get your thoughts on that, but, yeah, i mean like, like jacob said, he blew up on TikTok inMadison: 00:33:43I know, i know what you're talking aboutDavid: 00:33:44Okay.Madison: 00:33:45I, yeah, yeah, yeah. when everybody was customizing their screens to make it like a theme and everything. David: 00:33:50Yep. yeah. and so that's what jacob was talking about a minute ago was that widget smith was, was kind of the center of all of that and, and, they use revenue, cat. and so it just blew up. But but that was kind of, just this crazy viral wave where, what i thought was so cool about how that happened. and, we talked about on the podcast, i want to go super into it, but, she basically gave it to tutorial of how to use the app, which is like the best onboarding you could ever hope for. you know, it's like, it is a complex thing to like go set up a widget. and, configure all these, this stuff to get the widgets, to show up correctly.And it it's all a hassle that you would typically, as a developer have to think, oh man, i need to onboard the user. i need to convince them that it's worth all of this hassle to get some reward out of it. and then she goes and like, i forget it was like 45 second video, maybe even 32nd video. it was like, here's how you do it.Damn like, or actually i think she said like, she showed that like homescreen at how cool and aesthetic it was. and then, then she showed how to do it. and then she, it was like, she, it was like this perfectly scripted marketing. onboarding thing of telling you how to do it, telling you the result, telling you it's worth doing, telling you, you know, it's worth the hassle of going through these steps and then showing you the steps.It was just amazing how it wasn't an ad. it was totally user generated, just ended up being the absolute perfect ad because it was user generated. and because it was user-generated she felt like she needed to explain it all and like tell that story. so yeah, it was just a, it was just a really fascinating little blur lip.And then, and then, you know, a lot of apps have been going viral because of TikTok. since then, i forget there was another, another one recently that was like super random, like some kind of calculator or something that got into the top 100 in the app store. Madison: 00:35:50Oh, that's cool. David: 00:35:51Yeah, so it's just crazy. Jacob: 00:35:53Have, you all, thought about product changes to try to incent that behavior, to like try and encourage folks to make video as a aside from you mentioned the like sharing thing, but there seems like there could be other ways to kind of. plant some more of those viral spikesMadison: 00:36:07Yeah. something that we're working on. i don't know if i'm actually probably allowed to say what it is because it's not yeah. even secret. We have things planned where we're thinking about it. yes, we do. we think about ways that we can incorporate it in the app. and we want to think about more ways. i mean, we've had.TikTokers that have influenced product changes to just even the ability to flip, like mirror their video. i don't know if you know what that trend is, but there was this, effect they had on tech talk that would mirror your face and it makes it look bizarre when you flip it for some reason it's a psychological thing.And so then everybody was telling us that we need to have a mirror button so they can flip it back the correct way. and we made that change when people were really happy. so we definitely listened to everybody on social about stuff. and yes, we do think about product changes and are trying to think about more for the future to encourage people to post, but definitely making sure that there's no, paywall with that too.Jacob: 00:37:12You know, if you want to make hay off of like organic or viral or something like that, it has to be, i've worked on several like viral, organic or viral cheri features like stuff like this, the only ones i've ever had be successful are the ones that are like core to the product, which means like, you have to think about it early.Right? you have to think about. early on. i mean, you can add stuff later, but like, unless it's like consequential or like it's easy or interesting, like it's not actually gonna get to that viral coefficient. that makes enough of a difference. but, but doing the product work in some ways, it's going to be higher leverage than like trying to make your end video.Right. Madison: 00:37:50Yeah. Jacob: 00:37:50Making the product more shareable. uh Madison: 00:37:52Yeah. We have those conversations and people try to loop in the marketing team to, and pick our brains about, hey, we heard about this product request and we want to know on a scale of one to 10, how important is this for the success of the app? and like, how much is it going to affect it? and we'll talk about it and be like, well, that filter is not really that important.You can hold off for like next summer or something. it's, it's having those conversations. they're really important. i think everybody on the team talks together about the features. David: 00:38:24What do you think are, are some other ways, and specifically going back to the algorithm that, that helps you stand out. yeah. like so aside from trend chasing, i know the like popular songs is one thing, right? because if you use the background audio from a video that was trending, the kind of audio trends separate from the video, right.Or separate from topics and things like that. are there any other kind of tips and tricks to, to help your video stand out? even if you're not, you know, doing specific kind of trenches.Madison: 00:39:03That's a difficult one. cause that kinda comes down to like you and your personality and what makes you different as well. and that's a really hard one that can take a long time to kind of flesh out. but if you're not trend chasing, it's kind of playing around with features in the app and kind of seeing new ways that you can play with it.I know i had a video on my own personal account that was using their voiceover effect that they have, where the text is read out by a woman. and i would misspell the names of like popular celebrities on purpose. and i found out that i could actually drag the misspelling out of the video. you couldn't see it, but it would still do.It and then i could put the actual person's name so i could make it seem like this voice is just completely butchering these names in the worst way. and it went viral. just like thinking of these like random ways that you can use these features or like tricks is really important and it's super fun.And people love it so i think, yeah, just diving into using the app itself. there's so many features that go on and new ways that you can use them. and that's how you stand out just kind of making like a little bit of a tweak to something Jacob: 00:40:15So i'll, you know, just to look into the future because if it, you know, having seen, having seen myspace and then now, then facebook become cool and not cool. and twitter, i think twitter is not cool anymore.Probably i don't know. now i'm on there. so now it's my social media of choice and i take talks.The rising. cool. like, do you have any, like, i mean, imagine you're in a multi-decade career of doing something along those lines, do you, do you think about, or imagine like what, what might be next? or like what the kids, what the kid on the bus might be talking about in, in, in five or 10 years?Madison: 00:40:50All the time. yeah, but they're, i mean, i have been on new platforms all the time too, and they just flop sometimes you'll think it's a great thing. but it's often because people think they're putting out something different and they're really not. it's just the same thing, but looks a little different, different colors maybe, or you can't force people to use an app.You can only get people to like naturally kind of come over there. and a lot of companies will pay people to come and use their app. Yeah. to try to get people to come over there and generate fake viewers or a fake users really. and that doesn't work either. so i do think about it a lot. i haven't quite seen that yet for what the new thing is.I think TikTok has stayed around a lot longer than i thought, because i remember talking about it with people at vidcon a couple of years ago, where we went, when do you think vidcon is going to go? just because we were all scared because of. vine when that i mean, dropped it affected so many people and it impacted them in a positive way too, because some people had already set their sights on, youtube or doing TikTok it's either you chose short form content or long form. so just being ready, don't have all your eggs in one basket. it's kind of like the big thing and be looking and just be aware of what's out there. it doesn't mean that the thing will be the next big thing. it just means you should be aware of it in case it does become a thing Jacob: 00:42:17Yeah, i would say like taking your company brand onto very unproven platforms is probably not a great use of time. right? like you want to wait until there's something there.Madison: 00:42:26Yeah, i think it's with, smaller teams. it's definitely us trying to think is an hour going to really be worth it, or is it really more well-spent if it's an hour of me making some tech talks in my apartment, probably the tech docs right now,David: 00:42:42Yeah,Madison: 00:42:42Of a random thing, but it's. David: 00:42:44But but how do you approach it set then? because there is value in the experimentation. i like seeing what's next. so do you kind of think okay, i'm going to waste. two hours this week, checking out new. i mean, you probably don't timebox it like that, but there is some value in that experimentation. how much are you time?Are you spending on that experimentation? it sounds like that's, i mean, that's kind of been a theme of this whole conversation is try this, try that, see what sticks, see what happens. so, and there's value in that. so how, how much, how do you kind of view that time? that you're. throwing stuff against the wall.Okay. Madison: 00:43:25It can really range and not just depends on what apps are out. there are a ceo caesar's awesome at being in the loop with the tech world and kind of seeing what platforms are being talked about on twitter. so twitter still is a relevant thing for people talking. yeah, it is. Jacob: 00:43:42Early millennials, Madison: 00:43:44Yeah, Jacob: 00:43:45Out of anything relevant, Madison: 00:43:46Exactly. like, he sent us apps that were like, whoa, this is really cool. and even if it's not something that blows up, it can still help us with our app too. and like internally. yeah. we're like, that's a really cool onboarding video. i've never seen anything like that. that's super helpful.And that, that's just the team being curious about stuff. and i think that's so important. also, if you're in social media, you should just be, i mean, on social media and i am definitely on social media way too much, but that's what i do with my own time too. i'm not like making an account for 1 Second Everyday on every new platform that exists and like trying it out.I'm trying it out on my own own time sometimes like on my own account. and that's the best way is just to see how you like it and how it's working for you and your friends to you. i can't remember what the app was called. it's like paparazzi. i think maybe that's what it's called. Yeah. Jacob: 00:44:42Now went viral for four days or Madison: 00:44:44Right. went viral for four days or whatever. and it was great. and we were like, well, this is so cool. that's like one of the onboarding videos that were like, this is awesome. it's got like the, the phone was vibrating and stuff while you were like going through this onboarding experience. so it was so cool.We didn't stick with it, but that's also because we're like, we don't have as many friends as like a bunch of kids do. so maybe that's a different experience in their world. maybe they're all talking about it more. yeah, i think just getting on it and seeing it can be a valuable thing and using it for your own time and actually creating content on the platform is important.Jacob: 00:45:20It's not too dissimilar from how developers use new, like coding tools. right? like you try it for side projects. i mean, it's one channel for revenue. cat's talking about our own growth is like, we want to make sure. selling into bigger older companies. it's a little, sometimes it's taken longer route. we'll do it now, but like it's much easier to win.Like yeah. they'll like inconsequential or less consequential side project. and then, you know, ramp that into something bigger later, right.Madison: 00:45:45Yeah.Jacob: 00:45:46That is sometimes a better place for that experimentation. David: 00:45:49It's funny. i would say here. an app developers perspective. so we have the tools guy, the social media person at me and me is the app, focus. So exactly what you were saying is, is how you want to prove out your own app. like i've had apps where i send out a beta and people stop using it like a couple of days later.And so, you know, when you go onto this social media platform and you're trying it and your own personal use just drops off. then it's clear, it's not a sticky where most people would get on TikTok. it's like they're hooked and they're going. Jacob: 00:46:22Will not open the damn thing.Is to get, like, i got twitter enough in my life through ruining it. like i don't David: 00:46:29Yeah. Jacob: 00:46:30Other one. yeah. David: 00:46:31But for, but for the developers out there, you know, when you send out a beta, you know, your beta people might not be your exact target market, but you should have some level of like stickiness. in, in the app signs of product market fit. but anyways, i do want to talk a little bit and we need, we're getting short on time, but, you're launching a new community, feature with a community manager. or tell me about that. because i actually don't know all the detailsMadison: 00:47:01Yeah. I think you mean brand ambassador program, is that correct? that's what you're talking about. cause i kind of, i, yeah i had announced that on the panel that day that we were launching that and we. had over to just like 200 applications for people to join our brand ambassador team. and we have a marketing team of three people to manage that team.So we had to narrow it down a lot, unfortunately, but we had, you know, over 200 people submitting videos of why they wanted to be on this team. and this team is for us to be able to connect with people in the community, to kind of just start a brand ambassador program, because we've always wanted to do that.It's been talked about forever, so we just made the leap and we narrowed it down to, 26 people and announced them last week. and so we're getting them all onboarded and ready to go. and we've got like people from all over the world that are ready make some content about 1 Second Everyday but that's kind of the thing is they get, you know, connections with us and can have impacts within the app as well as like free merch and things like that, that are really fun.And then. we get some content from them in exchange, which is kind of like user-generated and hopefully we'll be successful and we'll see some like, really cool things from them. we're just excited to see what they create. David: 00:48:24So, so the, so the, goal is, is to be more directly connected with some of the people who are already creating content in the space. and then, and it's not a paid gig. it's, it's a, they, like you said, they get paid in, in, in merge, and, but i imagine that that's not. Jacob: 00:48:46March. you can't put a dollar value onMadison: 00:48:48Right? yes. Yes. exclusive. David: 00:48:50What, what, i mean, what was the pitch to them specifically?Madison: 00:48:54Yeah. The pitch to people, in general, was to be a part of the community to identify as a 1 Second Everyday fan, which we've got a lot of big super fans out there, who've been using the app for eight years to, you know, a year and they just love it. And they just want to be a part of that and really kind of make their own with it.If they're a writer, they can submit a blog post if they want. If they really like social media, they can focus on TikToks to make for us to post and kind of help give them shout outs. They just really want to have experience some of these kids are, some of them are like kids that want marketing experience.Some people are older that are just like, I love this app so much. And I promise I will make the coolest videos for you. And here's like what I do. And they're just so jazzed about it. And they're going to get like the younger people that are newer to the app, really excited, guided. So we're just excited to see them interact and everything.And then get content and like new ideas because I'm just a one person making stuff for social media. And I want to see kind of what people naturally make. We're not trying to force them to make anything. We're not telling them that they have to make this kind of video. It's just whatever they want to do.And then they can discuss within the community. Jacob: 00:50:11So, I'd like to take this opportunity to announce the RevenueCat brand ambassador program.David, figure out the details.David: 00:50:18Oh, thanks. Jacob: 00:50:19I don't know what this is just the sort it out for me.David: 00:50:22No, this is blowing my mind though. I mean, and again, the whole reason I wanted to have you on the podcast is you just are thinking so differently. I know brand ambassador is it, I just I've seen brand ambassadors. I know the general idea, you know, but I just never would have thought it could work for an app.So it's so cool that y'all are just trying this new thing and having users help with your marketing.Madison: 00:50:46Yeah. David: 00:50:47Then being so like thrilled to do it. That's just incredible. Jacob: 00:50:49So much better too, than like a bunch of like stale Facebook ads degenerated on Fiverr, right?Madison: 00:50:59Yeah. That's mostly how people find out about our app is through word of mouth and people posting about us. So it only made sense. And we knew it was the right time because we had all these people asking if we had a brand investor profile. And that's kind of like how we sold it to the team too, is being like, hey, people are asking, people are interested. This is the time to do it. And just try it. There's nothing to lose. Let's go for it. See what happens. And then hopefully from there, we'll be able to just keep growing it.David: 00:51:30Yeah. Madison: 00:51:31Like awesome connection with our user base.David: 00:51:34And what's been so cool about doing this podcast and talking to so many folks is that different things just click for different people. So, if you're listening to this podcast and you have an app that isn't content heavy, you know, maybe social media is not the perfect fit for you. And maybe you're not going to be able to have brand amabassadors and things like that.But the point is you don't just have to buy ads on Facebook. There are so many different avenues to explore, and this is one really cool way to do something different, and to very cost-effectively grow without just dumping money into ads. So it's so cool. And we do need to wrap up. Is there anything else you wanted to share?We're going to put links to your TikTok and 1 Second Everyday. But anything else you wanted to share as we wrap up?Madison: 00:52:23No, I think that's it. Thanks so much for having me. I had a really fun time talking about all this with you guys. This is my passion, so it's great to chat.David: 00:52:33Well, thanks so much for your time. This is super insightful.Jacob: 00:52:36Yeah, thank you. Madison: 00:52:37Thank you.

Show Notes:- Join our Slack Workspace! https://join.slack.com/t/firesideswift/shared_invite/zt-nik3miom-qJ_53_yND4OwV2ZG3Xo4R- Joe Cab's Handy Dandy Spreadsheet: http://joecab.link/fireside-episodes- Chris' Blog Post: https://chrishefferman.squarespace.com/blog/career-change- Ducky: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ducky-model-editor/id1525505933- Figma: https://www.figma.com- Postman: http://postman.com- JSON Editor Online: http://jsoneditoronline.org- Sketch: http://sketch.com- Bakery (@jordibruin): https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/bakery-simple-icon-creator/id1575220747?mt=12You can reach us on Twitter!All of us: @Fireside_SwiftSteve: @SWBerardBen: @MrMcSwiftfaceChris: @HeffertronJordan: @JordanNoHandleFireside Swift Theme song by Mike “Golden Pipes” DillinghamBlind Love Dub by Jeris (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/VJ_Memes/55416 Ft: Kara Square (mindmapthat)

 Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order Marie's course, Notion Mastery: https://notionmastery.com/ Marie's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariepoulin Marie's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvnOhqTeEgdNt1aJB5mVng Marie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariepoulin/  Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Approximated. If you need to connect custom user domains to your app, Approximated can help. It can route any domain or subdomain to any application, all easily managed with a simple API or web dashboard. You can have unlimited connected domains automatically secured with SSL certificates for one flat rate. Website builders, communities and marketplaces all happily use Approximated every day to manage thousands of custom domains for their users. And it was built by an indie founder just like you, so every support request is handled by a developer who will personally help you out. Head over to Approximated.app today and mention Software Social when you sign up to get an extra month for free.  Michele Hansen Hey, welcome back to Software Social. We have another guest with us this week. I am so excited to have my friend, Marie Poulin, here today. She is the creator of Notion Mastery, which is this amazing Notion course that has over 1200 students, averaging $45,000 MRR. Pretty amazing business that she has built up. Welcome to Software Social, Marie. Marie Poulin  01:18Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat.  Michele Hansen  01:21So um, people listening may know you from all of your YouTube videos and courses with Notion, which have been crazy successful, and only, only, since October 2019, since you launched it, but I actually want to talk about something else. So you had another business, a course business called Doki, and actually, the last time I spoke, like, like, like, actually spoke with you like, internet friend is so funny. Like, I feel like I talk to you all the time, but actually, like talk to you, talk to you, was you and your husband, Ben, were thinking about what to do with Doki and whether you should sell it or shut it down. Marie Poulin  02:15Yes, and you very kindly reached out with some suggestions on how we might handle that. And it, it sort of wasn't, I don't want to say it wasn't our passion anymore, but yeah, you know, Ben got offered a full time gig. So for anybody listening, my husband and I teamed up back in 2014 to, to run our company together. We built a software and we ran it for I mean, five-ish years or so, and I think neither one of us was, it was definitely our first software project. And it was that build a giant software project that does all of the things and, you know, kind of wishing that we had done something smaller when we learned about the whole software building all of the different pieces. And so when we first went to MicroCon, that was, it was just so eye opening how many things we had done wrong, and it was it was a really wonderful learning experience. But I think it kind of showed us that there were parts of that, that just, I don't know that either of us was super excited to go 100% all in on it. I liked the working with people side of online courses and actually shipping and working on their websites, and just all of, all the other pieces of it other than the software. And so the burden was really on Ben to build all the features and do customer support, and, you know, he was pretty much like the solo founder handling all of those parts of the software, and I was handling more of the consulting side of it. And it was a huge burden on him. It was huge. And so when he got offered a full time job, it was a chance for him to step into more of a leadership role, be challenged, be working with other people, and it just, he really flourished. And I think it was something he was missing. Like, when you're a solo founder, you're just, you know, you're wearing every single hat. You're making all the decisions. And if you're bumping up against stuff you've never seen, it's pretty tough. It's a tough life to be, to be solo founder. So I was really encouraging him to, to kind of explore this new venture, but it sort of meant that Doki got left in the dust a little bit. And so we kind of took our foot off the gas, and just in this year in January 2021 we decided what if we just kind of shut down signups and, and just kind of let it do its thing and just kind of keep supporting the clients that were still using it, more like our consulting clients and not really market at widely. And so we did and I was like, how do you feel about this? And he's like, oh, I feel I feel so relieved. And I think that was really important that it didn't feel sad. It didn't feel like oh no, we're shutting this thing down. Like he felt like no, this is a chapter of my life that was great. And now it's over. So it's been a journey. Michele Hansen  04:54So, I mean on, you know, on this podcast, you know, we talk a lot about like, getting a SaaS off of the ground, or I guess, in my case now, like, getting an info product off the ground, and then also running those companies. But there's this other phase of it, which is exiting, and sometimes exiting means selling a company, or, you know, being acquihired by someone, or it means shutting it down. And I'm wondering if you can kind of talk through that a little bit about how you guys decided to sunset it, rather than sell it. Marie Poulin  05:37Yeah, because we had gone through this conversation back and forth. And we even had, you know, several people who had made offers to buy, and it felt actually pretty close, like, that was something we were really seriously considering. And again, you're, it was just really, really valuable to get your, your insights on that, and to have somebody that, you know, not attached to it just kind of as an outsider giving us perspective on that. And so we, we had some meetings, and we definitely considered it, and I think the burden of what would have needed to happen to be able to make that handoff happen in a way, such that it could actually be successful for those who are taking it over, felt too big for Ben. I think it was, again, given that his attention was elsewhere, it there was just such a cognitive load associated with all of that cleanup work, and just, just kind of the whole process of that transition. And it's possible that it may not have actually been that much work. It's kind of hard to know, in hindsight, but I think the anticipation of that, and just, you know, when Ben does something, he wants to do it properly, and he wouldn't have felt good, I think to just kind of pass it off as is knowing how much legacy work needed to be rebuilt. And he, he just didn't feel comfortable with it. And I was like, you know, I don't know this stuff as well as you do. And if you feel really confident and happy to just kind of say, you know, what, we're totally cool to just, like, the, the amount just kind of doesn't match up with, with what it would be worth to do that work, and how much extra time it would have taken him outside of his full time job. It just, it didn't feel like it was quite worth it to do that investment of the work. So that was a decision I sort of felt it was kind of up to them to make as a burden was really on him, and I think he felt a huge relief, honestly, even just like taking the signup off of the site. And just realizing, like, our business has gone in such a different direction, and it's okay to say goodbye to this chapter, and so it felt good. And I think that was really important is can we stand behind this decision? Does it feel good? Does it release a certain, you know, energetic burden, and it really did, and so that we felt good at the end of the day, for us that, that was the right decision. Michele Hansen  07:44I'm struck by how much respect I hear in that. You know, there's the respect that you have for Ben, that this was something that he knew really well and what like, had, you know, that, that, that transition work would have been on on him and your respect for that. And then his and also sort of both of your respect for your emotions, and recognizing those as valid and worth prioritizing, and, because I think some people say, oh, well, I'll, you know, get a lot of money from this. So you know, screw my feelings, like, you know, just have to suck it up, suck it up and do it. Like, I mean, the the market for even small SaaS companies like Doki, like, like, just for content, like, how much was Doki, like, making when you decided to shut it down? I mean, Ben would certainly have a better sense of the numbers at that point that we made the decision. I mean, certainly the pandemic did have a big impact. And we'd already kind of stopped doing any new feature development, even maybe the year before the pandemic hit. So I would say, you know, at its height, maybe $50,000 in a year. So we had some months that were like 4k, maybe 5k, and so by the time we shut it down, it was like 2500 to 2000. Like, nothing to sneeze at in terms of it was very low maintenance and, you know, covers our mortgage and expensive, like, that's awesome. But there is that mental load that's required there that you're kind of always thinking about that uptime, or you're thinking about how long, how long can we go not adding any features and not doing anything to really kind of improve or support or even do any marketing. So in some ways, it sort of felt like there was a time limit on how long we could get away with just, just letting it kind of simmer in the, in the background and not give it its full attention, and so it didn't feel good in that way that it it did have this sort of energetic burdensome feeling, and so respect is is absolutely huge. Like, you know, both Ben and I are incredibly autonomous. Like, we have always kind of worked almost like two separate founders under the same brand umbrella. So even when we partnered up, we still very much had our own projects, our own clients, and there's a lot of trust there with like, Ben and I are very different people, very different types of projects, very different things that light us up. And so, you know, Ben has higher anxiety than I do, and when we first launched Doki, I know the feeling of always being on and having to answer those customer support questions, and I think it takes a bigger toll on him than, than it might other people. And so that has to be factored in, like, what's the point of building these, like, software and these businesses that support our lives when it's just adding to our daily stress? Like, that's, that's not the point, right? So I think for both of us, it does really matter. Like, what kind of life are we building for ourselves? And if, are we building something that just feels like another job, but we just kind of built our own jail? Like, that's, that's not really fun. So I think we have a lot of understanding and respect for, yeah, what kind of life are we building, and ideally reducing stress and not adding to it so that, that was really important to me that he felt really good about that enclosure and didn't feel like oh, this was a failure, or, you know, it didn't go the way we wanted. For me, I'm like, holy crap, we learned an epic crap ton. You know, we just, it was just absolute, you know, entrepreneurship school on steroids. Like, you know, you just learned so many different parts from your customer research and the technical capacity and all the decisions that once you've done it once, and then it's almost too late, like, the wheels are in motion, and you've already, there's already, like, technical debt as soon as you started. It's a wonderful learning opportunity, and part of us wishes we'd tried it on something small, but my gosh, the learning has been incredible. So I don't, I don't regret any of it, and I don't think he does, either. It's the reason he has the job that he does now. It, he's, he's just like, both of us, I think are just highly skilled people that are going to adapt whatever happens like okay, cool. That was an awesome chapter. Next. What's next, you know.  You guys are incredibly emotionally intelligent and atuned, and, I mean, yeah, I mean, that you take that kind of focus is really, I think, remarkable and really commendable. And, you know, so after we had we had talked last fall, I guess, you guys were still kind of, you were unclear on whether you were going to shut it down or you were going to sell it, and I just tweeted out if anybody was interested in buying a SaaS, I think I said it had like 2.4k MRR. And I got so many messages after that, but I actually just got another one last week, and I got one, like, three months ago, like, the market for really, like really tiny SaaS companies is just, just bonkers. And I think it's so amazing that you prioritized how, like, not just the money, but how you felt about it. Now, of course that the notion courses making 45,000 a month and Ben has a full time job, like, that sort of makes it a little bit easier to make decisions that are not just guided by the financials, I imagine. Marie Poulin  13:16Definitely. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure that, that was a part of it was just, okay, we're not we don't have to make a purely financial decision right now, so what's going to feel, yeah, what's gonna feel the best? And I guess, yeah, I guess they didn't realize that maybe not everybody is as driven that way, but I'm definitely a very feelings driven person, and I know, we've talked about this a little bit with, with the sort of, you know, likely being an ADD or ADHD founder, and just, I didn't realize before, I think, how much of my decision making around how I've shaped my business has been, like, I've talked about it in terms of alignment and, you know, values-driven and that sort of thing. But I think part of it is I cannot muster up the energy to do stuff I'm not super freakin' stoked about. So I do kind of factor that into all my decisions. Like, I'm never going to design services that I'm going to be resentful of as soon as I'm designing them. It's like, if I already know I'm going to be resentful doing all these calls, like, I just cannot make that, that service available. So I do think I've gotten pretty tuned into like, alright, what's the stuff that lights me up, and how do I craft my offers so that I can be totally shining and excited about them? Because that, that's just, I guess, how I move through the world. Michele Hansen  14:34It seems like you combine this incredible self-awareness about what energizes you and prioritizing what energizes you with this huge sense of responsibility for the users of what you have created. Marie Poulin  14:54Yeah, I'd like, I'd like to think so. I mean, you know, one of the things that happened when we first launched Doki, was that people were signing up for it, and then they weren't shipping. Right? It's like anything now, like the time that it takes to actually launch a course, and I know you've had, you know, episodes with Colleen about this of just what it really takes to really grow an online course and actually make it a sustainable living. And so people would, would sign up thinking the tech was gonna solve that for them, and they're all, like, ready to go, and they they pick the technology well before they have their content created. And it didn't feel good that there were people paying us a monthly thing and they had never shipped a course yet. So, the first thing I did was like, well, we need to get people shipping faster, how do I do this? And I ended up creating a course that was run your learning launch that was trying to get people to like, get the shitty first draft of your course out as soon as possible, right. Like, co-create it with people. I'm a huge, huge believer, in co-creating products with your people. They are going to tell you what they want, they tell you what they need, and then the words that they use in those sessions, in those live calls that you're doing with people, that's exactly what shapes your, your sales pages and stuff. So I, I'm just a big fan of working with people on this stuff, and not just, you know, working in secret for six months building a thing, and then you know, putting it out into the world. Like, we know that it just it just doesn't work that way. So yeah, I think I do carry a huge, huge respect for, for the users that are signing up for my thing. It is a responsibility I do not take lightly. And so even right now with, with the course, I've been working for six months on the new curriculum. It's like, where can I look at all the places that people are stumbling, and maybe we overwhelm new, new people that are coming in like going, oh, my gosh, this course is so big, and then they get scared, and they run away and then they don't complete the course. Like, it does matter to me not just that they complete it, but they actually do experience some kind of transformation through that process. So like, how can I improve the learning outcomes? How can I design this better? I can't help myself, like maybe that's partly a bit of perfectionism. But it's like, I want this to be a really epic experience for them and be really memorable. And, in a way, that's my marketing, right? It's like other people sharing with other people, their experience of the course. To me that feels way better, and way easier than like, chucking a bunch of money into ads and just like getting it in front of people. It's like, no, I want the users to be so excited about it, that they are shouting it from the rooftops and getting people in the door. So yeah, that matters for sure. Michele Hansen  17:20It's so interesting, you're talking about like, building collaboratively with people, and, you know, I like I'm a huge advocate of talking to people and talking to customers, but I never really built in public, so to speak, until a couple of months ago, when I was writing my book. And you know, to what you said about, you know, getting early feedback from people and building it with them, that, that has been an incredibly, like, a transformative experience. And it's, it's really remarkable when you combine that combination of, as you said, something that you are super stoked about with other people who are stoked about it, like, you know, like to kind of, you know, talk a little bit about being like, you know, ADHD founder. So like, for so for, just to give us sort of a little bit of context. So like, I was diagnosed with ADD at 11, which I guess they don't diagnose people with anymore, because apparently, like, they were only diagnosing girls with it, or something. So now everything is all under ADHD. And you sort of are recently exploring, like, whether you're ADHD, and so but like, on this, this combination of, you know, working on something you're really passionate about, and then in the course of working on it in public, finding other people who are really passionate about it, who help you improve it, like, I feel like that puts my hyper focus in this insane overdrive. Marie Poulin  18:54Yeah. How do you how do you control that? I'm so, I'm so curious kind of what your, Michele Hansen  18:58I don't. I, yesterday, I was so annoyed that I had to stop working and make dinner. I was like, can't I just work for like, 48 hours straight, like, and, which is, like, not, like, I, like, my work life balance is a lot better than it used to be like, but I just like it's so, it's, like, painful when I'm really interested in something because it's like, yesterday, I was like, working on the book, like and it was just I was so, like, so fired up about what I was working on. And then I was like, okay, actually, like, we need to, we need to eat. Like, and I have you know, we have a family and like, my husband was mowing the lawn and like, you know, so I was like, okay, I need to like go to the grocery store like, I need to shift gears, but like, the whole time I was there like, you know, yes, I bought like lettuce and yogurt and whatever else we needed, but like, my brain was still like, writing.  Marie Poulin  19:48Somewhere else.  Michele Hansen  19:49Like, my brain like, was writing and I think, you know, to what you said about how you and Ben work very like, autonomously, like, Mathias and I work together for the most part, and I think this gets frustrating sometimes when I'm still thinking about something else, but I don't give any, like, outward signals of that. I'm just like, a little bit quiet. And like, he like, talks to me and like, I just don't know,  Marie Poulin  20:12You're nodding and say you're listening, but you're writing in your head. Yeah. Michele Hansen  20:14Yeah. Like, I don't even acknowledge it or, like, I seem like I'm listening. And then he asked me 10 minutes later, like about what he had told me about, and I'm like, what, like, this is new, and he's like, seriously. Like, the hyper focus can be amazing, but also kind of detrimental at the same time because if I have to do anything else, I'm just cranky. Marie Poulin  20:40I definitely, I definitely relate to this, and I think this was, this was one of the the signs like, I, I thought, well, I couldn't possibly have ADHD because like, I've been self-employed for 12 years, and I have a successful business and I get things done, and, you know, I sort of had a lot of misconceptions around what it meant to be or have ADHD because my sister has ADHD, too. And she is like, the poster child of what what you think of when you think of ADHD, and very hyperactive, super distracted, extremely extroverted, just like, a million thoughts, like, interrupting other thoughts. And, and I was like, okay, that's what ADHD looks like. It was very distinct. And so because I get things done, I sort of thought, I just had a different perception of it, and I realized that the hyper focus binges that I go on that were like, oh, that explains why like, it can be really hard to tear myself away from, from the screen, and it almost becomes borderline obsessive, and it can be really difficult to manage. So that is one of the signs I started to be like, oh. It always happens in these super inconsistent bursts, right? Very, very wildly inconsistent. And I always, yeah, like, frick, if you just have a dial, you could, you could, you could turn that on when you needed to, but oh my gosh, so I can relate to that. Just, it's inconvenient, and yeah, it's also the thing that helps us kind of push forward and get things done, and it's a wonderful thing when it's there, but it can happen at the detriment of other parts of our lives. So that's definitely something that I struggle with, for sure. Michele Hansen  22:13You know, I, like, I relate so hard to that, because I can't possibly, you know, have ADHD because you get so much done. Like, when I was in college, I think there was like, a running joke about how many jobs and side projects I had at any given time. Like, I think it was like, I had, it was like, six. Like, I had a part time job, I had an internship, I had like, volunteering, I had, like, all of these like, side projects with my own going on, like, um, and, but when I, so when I was diagnosed as a kid, like it was very much presented as I had this deficit of focus. And then I had to overcome that deficit of focus, and then like, that was it. And like, I, so I was never like, really in therapy or any sort of treatment. Like I was taught how to manage that, like calendars, and like, planners became a huge part of my life. But when I was, this was when I was in elementary school. So when I was in middle school, I was supposed to have like, you know, a tutor, and like somebody who like worked with me on it, and like, a plan, they call it a 504 plan in the US, but I never actually had it because my grades were too high. And,  Marie Poulin  23:21People always think you need the support, right?  Michele Hansen  23:22Right. Because it was like, oh, like if you you know, if you have those, like if you have this deficiency, like, she's overcome the deficiency if she's getting A's and B's, so there's no problem here. And I didn't, really for me, it wasn't only until the last like six months or a year that I started understanding all of these other facets of it that, like, it's not just that sometimes I have trouble focusing on tasks I don't want to do. Like, there's all of these other things like, you, you know, that, there's the hyper focus you mentioned, there's the like, the perfectionism that you touched on earlier, you know, there are those kind of, you know, everyone's experience of it is different. But like, I, there's just so many things that like, I thought were me things that were just kidn of weird about me. And then it turns out, there's all these other people who are weird, like me, and, Marie Poulin  24:16To read other people's descriptions, and you go, are you kidding me? Like, that's a, that's a thing? I'm not alone? Or like, I thought it was just a family quirk, and then you're like, oh, or is it that actually a good chunk of my family also, you know, like sister's diagnosed and when you look at the behaviors, you're like, oh, yeah, like, it would explain why our family kind of operates this way. And, you know, the more you start to meet people, you're like, oh, okay, there's, there's maybe a reason, too, that, and I don't know if you if you feel this too, but that for example, people with ADHD seem drawn to my work or drawn to my, my style, right? Because I think in some ways you get attracted to different people's communication styles, and I realized, like, in certain calls that I would I have with people that were very energizing, I didn't realize this at the time, it's almost like, you know, when you like, once you see it, you start to see it everywhere, of all the people that I connect with that had ADHD that I didn't know, I was like, oh my gosh, that explains why when we get on a call, neurons are firing, and we're all over the map, and we're just like changing gears, like, constantly, and it just feels like this creative spark is just like, going and going and it's incredible. It's a very different experience with someone whose brain doesn't work that way, and I, I started to clue in, I'm like, oh, maybe there's a reason. And then when you start to look at the behaviors, I'm like, okay, like, it would explain a lot. You know, and you start to kind of look backwards and be like, oh, yeah, all those behaviors start to kind of click into place. And you see, actually, things with a new lens. And when I look at past behaviors, and maybe ways I've really, really judged myself, and I was like, oh my gosh, like, I just, I didn't realize, you know, and I think for me, a big part of that is workaholism, in a way. Like I thought, I really judged myself for being like, oh, I'm like a workaholic, a workaholic. And I thought, yes, and like, it's not so black and white like that. I am very driven by the work that I do because I've so carefully crafted work that I don't hate, and so I've designed work that I love. I'm getting to connect with people and ideas get to form, and I'm always doing new things every day. So of course, like it's feeding that dopamine, I'm like, yeah, it's like, I love this. And so, it is really difficult to shut off work. And so I think I carried a lot of guilt that I work on weekends, but also take really long breaks in the middle of the day and go gardening. And so like, I have found my own ebb and flow, and I think I was really harsh on myself with some of that stuff. And then I was like, well, what if it's actually okay, that my brain is a little more activated than the average person or, or it just kind of feeds off information differently, and maybe I want to consume more courses at a time than the average person. And so it's just brought up a lot of interesting reflection that I'm seeing behaviors and maybe a different light, and that I actually find I'm being a little more compassionate with myself to be like, hey, is that Maria's personality is that ADHD? Is that me coping? Like, it's still very much learning for me. So I'm still kind of just keeping an open mind and just really trying to reflect and notice those behaviors now. Michele Hansen  27:20You know, the, we are, you know, what's called sort of neurodivergent people living in a neurotypical world. And I think, from, you touched on sort of that, that guilt about not having sort of, quote, unquote, like, normal patterns for things and ways of thinking about things. And I think unpacking that shame that we don't fit the neurotypical box is so important, because, I think in, you know, education and kind of maybe, and like, when you're not working for yourself, like neurotypical is the standard, and people who don't meet that are kind of just outside of that. And so, like, there's like this, like, we blame ourselves for that. But if instead, you know, we can, like find ways to work on the things that we are passionate about, and that do energize us, then these, like, amazing things can be unlocked. And I think, like, I have noticed that I tend to find a lot of neurodivergent people in the kind of, like, indie SaaS courses like, internet biz world, and I wonder if that's because a lot of us have just felt like we didn't, yeah, like, we didn't really belong and like, but like, the way to, like really bring out like, what we are capable of, like, like, I remember when I worked, you know, in bigger companies, like I always, I would describe myself, like a pin and a pinball machine. Like, I just always felt like I was just like, bouncing around constantly trying to show like, what I was capable of, and like, what I was good at, and like, what I could do and what I could contribute, and that was always, like, way more and different than whatever the role I was in was supposed to be doing. And it was so frustrating. Like, it was like, deeply frustrating, you know, versus now, like, you know, I can focus on the things that, you know, sort of with, I guess, with a little bit of business knowledge, right? Because you can't just focus on things that don't lead to an income. Um, you know, like, yeah, the things that really energize, and like you've said, how this, like, managing your own brain in a way, it's kind of like, maybe what attracted you to notion in the first place, and then kind of prompted you to go on this path of making this amazingly, like, I'm so amazed by all the things you build with Notion, like this tool that, like, helps you not only steer your brain, but like express it in the way that it wants to be expressed that maybe is not really reflected and other tools. Marie Poulin  29:53Yeah, it's a, it's a weird and wonderful thing, but it does feel like this bizarre culmination of all of my weird interests and strengths, and like even the fact that it's kind of like a No Code builder of sorts, right? It's like I have a web design background, and so I think naturally I'm inclined to build information architecture, but do it beautifully. Like, that's what I did for clients. And so, and then even like my design thinking background, and how I've studied systems, or how I've had to find these productivity systems for myself that worked. And the way certain tools, you know, are very opinionated, and they, they sort of force you into, like, like Asana, for example, everything is a task, like, it sort of forces you into one way of thinking, which is great, it's a great task manager. But I'm like, my strategic planning doesn't really fit in there, and how do I connect that to, to, and everything just kind of felt messy. And, you know, as someone with ADHD that already, already feels like I'm everywhere all the time, for me, Notion was this place where like, suddenly I could see everything that was on my plate in one place in a really easy way. So this ability to like, zoom out, zoom in very, very quickly and have it all integrated was just like, ah, everything like has come into place. And it just kind of clicked, and I think I was just so passionate, so excited about it, it felt like you know, I said life was a shit show before Notion. Like I had tried to get to, like you said, lean on calendars, we like find the systems to kind of lean on like a bit of a crutch. But there were still some systems pieces missing that Notion, in a way, forced me to build my own in a way that really worked for my brain. And I don't think it's a coincidence that just so many of the people that have joined the course or that seem really excited about it and get a lot out of it have also mentioned their own ADHD. Like, I literally just saw a message pop up in the forum, like 20 minutes ago that said how they think notion is just an ADHD friendly tool. I'm like, What an interesting thing that, again, it wasn't even on my radar a year ago or two years ago. I didn't even really think about it. I didn't, I certainly didn't even remotely suspect that I would have had it. And yet, now that I'm aware of it, and I'm seeing more conversations around neurodiversity, really just seeing how Notion gives neurodiverse folks a place to be themselves, as kind of cheesy as it sounds, like, the fact that you can just make it what you want it to be. It can be a personal growth engine, it can be a place where you organize your files, you know, daily journaling, like, you name it, whatever you want it to be, it can be a place that inspires you. And so I just, I love to show people like, well, here's how I'm using it for my garden tracking, I just love there's just endless possibilities with it. And I think if you only look at it as a productivity tool, you know, people kind of poopoo it or they're like, oh, procrastinate, procrastinating on building their setups, and let you know, people have all sorts of opinions about it. But I actually think it is, it's a tool for managing your emotions just as much it is as a tool for managing your information. So I find it quite fascinating from a tool for making you more mindful about how you work and what you need, and just noticing your energy. And I didn't, I didn't know all that stuff wasn't stuff that other people did. It's not till showing it to people, and they're like, holy crap, this is the most organized thing I've ever seen in my life. And I'm like, me, are you kidding me? Because like, I see the baseline the scenes, right? It's like, it's, it's funny to me the things that it's only once, you know, to bring it back to your conversation about sharing in public, working in public. When you make your thinking visible, and you share what you're doing out there, that's where I think you start to see what are those spiky points of view that you have? Or what are the interesting ways that you approach stuff that people are like, whoa, I didn't even think of it that way. So yeah, I'm curious, too, in you sharing your stuff publicly, and doing the writing publicly, like, has anything surprised you that you put out there and you're like, oh, wow, I didn't expect that to really land for people or, you know, what did you notice in your process of sharing your stuff publicly? Michele Hansen  33:53Yeah, I mean, so something that actually has surprised me in the last, I've had two people in the last week, tell me how the introduction of my book made them completely rethink how they approach other people. And,  Marie Poulin  34:11Wow Michele Hansen  34:12How they like, didn't even like, they didn't realize like, the extent of empathy and what it was and how they could use it and how it can help them be a better you know, coworker or person and, like, not just someone who's better at making landing pages or making product decisions. And I started out, like, I, so I, the the introduction, I actually originally didn't really have a very good introduction of the book. Like, I didn't define empathy very much or anything. And then one of my early readers was like, I think, I think you need to introduce this a little more. And so I did, and then like, it basically sounds like people are, some people like reading the first 10 pages and then being like, whoa, and then like, going on this other path. And then like, and then they're like, okay, well when I actually like, need to build something I'll come back here for the scripts. But like, having this, and, you know, like we've talked, like we've talked a lot about, like emotional intelligence here, and like, I've had my own journey with there and like, talking about, you know, workaholism, like, is that is that a trait? Or is that a trauma response? Like, it's kind of both, like, and like, so that has been a really important journey for me. By the way, if that resonates with anyone that's called the flight response, just Google that. And, and so that like, like, I have this kind of like, this, like, little dream that like, you know, like, people, nobody puts like, be more empathetic on their to daily to do list, maybe some, maybe you do. But like, nobody really doesn't. But they put like, you know, get more sales, like, write a new landing page, like, figure out which features I should build. Like, those are the things that come up on people's to do lists. And so I have this, like, kind of dream that like, in the process of helping people do those things they already want to do that they will become more empathetic in general and learn that this is a skill that they can apply not just to business, but to the rest of their life, because it's been such an important journey for me, because it's something that I really didn't really learn until my 20s. And, and, yeah, I mean, that's, I don't know. Yeah, it's been very, like, it's been very soul-nourishing for me.  Marie Poulin  36:31The process of writing and sharing?  Michele Hansen  36:34Yeah, I think like, in a very unexpected way, and, you know, kind of talking about ADHD, and so it sounds like what you're doing, like, you sound very much like a systems thinker. And you have built this sort of digital system that reflects your mental system, and in the process of doing so, you're helping people realize that, you know, they could build off of that to build something that reflects their mental system. And it's like, and you're helping them really like, blossom into, into expressing their thinking. And what I'm doing, like, I have, I have had feedback from people who have said, they are ADHD, or autistic, and they have said that, like, this is very, very different for them, for, I mean, for those two groups for very different reasons. But like, I've had people tell me, like, I don't think I'm capable of doing this because, you know, as you said, there's a kind of that stereotype of people who are ADHD that they, like, you know, talk over the people, like, can't stay on a topic, like, you know, just all of that, which, like, I mean, I think if we weren't doing a podcast right now, like, we would be excitedly talking over each other right now, like.  Marie Poulin  37:53I was wondering.  Michele Hansen  37:54I, like, am really holding back. Marie Poulin  37:57Which is exhausting, right? It's like, it takes a lot of energy to, like, tone it down, be normal, like,   Michele Hansen  38:04Oh, I'm gonna go jump on the trampoline after this. But, like, for me, it's like this weird thing, because, because I didn't learn, like, this either wasn't built into me, or I didn't learn it as a kid, like, I've had to really focus on learning how to like, listen to people. Marie Poulin  38:23You're so good at it. Michele Hansen  38:25It became a hyper focus thing for me, like, so I feel like when I'm listening to people, like learning, like, I have to like, I think it's why people are like, oh, this made me realize these things about empathy I didn't even realize, because I had to, like learn empathy and listening at a level that most people don't have to. Like, I had to really understand it. Like, I had to really dive deep into it. Because I just didn't have that, like, I didn't, I was not born with that feature built in. So, and then, but like, I think it kind of became this thing that, like, I hyper focus on. And so like, when I'm talking to someone, like, I'm just like, I'm like, completely submerging myself into them, and like exploring their brain, and I think, you know, talking about like, systems thinkers, like, that's something I love is like, getting to understand the system of somebody else's head and like getting to, like, poke around and all the little corners and be like, oh, why is, what's going on here? Like, we're like, what do we got going on here? Like,  Marie Poulin  39:29I compare it to like, looking at their underwear drawer. You're just like, you get to see like, it's very personal, right? And people are often like embarrassed or they feel a lot of shame because, like, their their space is really messy. But I love that, right.  Michele Hansen  39:42I love mess.  Marie Poulin  39:42It's so beautiful. It's, and I will say, like, in the call that we had with you like, I was so struck by how intently it felt like you were listening. I was like, I, it was like almost disarming. Like when I got off, I was like, I can't think of the last time that someone actually was just there to listen. Like, there was no agenda there. Like, you were you were really just there to be a helpful ear, and it was just quite impressive, I have to say, I was just like, holy crap, Michele is an incredible listener. I was really blown away. And so I love that you got nerdy about listening. So nerdy. I love it. Michele Hansen  40:23I mean, I grew up being, I think the thing, the number one thing I heard growing up was Michele, you never listened, like, you're not listening, you don't listen. Like and like, I have found complex, that I have found that the things that I'm really bad at, like, if I get over that, and then, like, I will, like intensely research it, and it will become a huge focus for me, like, I would like, so like in college, I studied international affairs and economics, and I remember in one of my first classes, one of the professors asked who knew what, like, Bretton Woods was, and, you know, I'm from New England, and I was like, I know, that's a ski resort, but like, I don't know anything else. And like, you know, it's it's the, the post-war monetary system that was set up after the war, basically, to prevent another war, economically. But I didn't like, know that, and I felt like really embarrassed. And I ended up like, really diving into the topic to the point where it was not only my thesis topic, but for like, two years, I wrote papers about related things in other classes, even when I wasn't required to. And now I have this, like, just all of this knowledge about, like, monetary relations in Europe, specifically focused on the US and Germany, like, between, like 1958, and like 1973, really intensely on the 71 to 73 period. And, like, I it's not particularly, like, for what I do, it's not really useful information, but like, kind of like, I feel like that's very similar to how I got into doing listening and interviews because, because I was so bad at it, because I didn't know what I was doing, because I was like, I felt embarrassed that I didn't know what was going on, or like, people had made me feel like I was deficient in that. Like, I think this is where that, like, that hyper focus comes in. It's like, once you like latch on to a topic, like, you can't get your teeth out of it, even if you, like, wanted to.  Marie Poulin  42:28Painfully relateable. I love that you brought this up to you because I think I've done this throughout my my career to where it's like, oh my gosh, like public speaking this is like, I'm terrible at this, I'm so afraid of it, it's like, must hire three different coaches and take five courses and like, read every book, you know. Like, just go down these crazy rabbit holes to go to such an extreme to work on a skill that you know, I was maybe like, not, not that great at it wasn't terrible, but just didn't feel like a strength. And I think I've often felt self conscious of is it a waste of time, when I should be like focusing on my real strengths. And so, I just think it's so funny. There's, there's obviously a trigger there around feeling incompetent, or like, I hate that feeling stupid or feeling like something I'm really bad at is preventing me from succeeding in business. And I, you know, I've shared before a little bit about, like, fear of being on video and fear of being on stage. And so these are all things I've obsessively worked on. And you know, I'll share like a super vulnerable moment from not, not that long ago, but there was ,there was someone who shared with me, they spoke with someone who had taken the course, and it was an older woman. I don't know when she took the course, but maybe she took it like, early on in the course building journey. It's definitely gone through a number of iterations. But she she was like, angry. She was like, oh my gosh, she goes so fast. She's all over the place. She needs to read about adult learning. Like, she's a terrible facilitator. And like, if I showed you my Notion goals page, it's like being a masterful facilitator is literally on my, my big visionary goals. And I was like, oh my God, am I, is this just like a skill I am, I am bad at? Like, it knocked me on my ass and I questioned everything. I was like, oh my god, what's going on? And in the same week, I literally had someone say that my sessions were the thing that they look forward to every week. And it was so weird to get this, like, the most negative criticism I've ever gotten, and the most positive, and it was in that same week that I had actually discovered, that I started to realize I probably had ADHD and I realized that my presentation style and my exploratory show you the possibilities, it's, it's quite different than say someone who might be a little more neurotypical, a little more instructional in style. I know that my vibe, it doesn't jive for everyone, but it really works well for people that have ADHD, and so that's where I was like, oh, crap. So, hiring a course coach, a curriculum designer, a learning advocate, like, I went all deep, and I was like, I'm going to learn about facilitation, I'm going to learn about teaching, I'm going to learn about learning design, like, how can I make this experience so good that, like, nobody could ever say anything like that? You know? And like, fair enough, if someone, like, it doesn't resonate with them, I totally get that. But it just, it just felt holy crap, like, is this is this like, a giant blind spot that I'm not seeing? And, you know, after talking to a number of students, a number of people, it was like, no, like, you know, this is someone who's not very comfortable with computers. This is someone that, like, it doesn't make sense for this type of person to be using Notion. Like, I don't think Notion is the right tool for everyone, and I don't think my instructional style is is for everyone, and I'm okay with that. I've made peace with that. And there's room to to improve that. So I definitely feel you on like, ooh, rabbit hole, here we go. Let's work on this scale. Because like, no one can criticize this again, like I would go all in, just watch me. Michele Hansen  46:04Have you come across the term rejection sensitive dysphoria?  Marie Poulin  46:08I have.  Michele Hansen  46:11So it's this term for how, I don't, I don't have a good way of explaining it. But like, it's for how painful, like, that kind of criticism can be, and how it can either, like, prevent people from wanting something in the first place, or when you get that criticism, it i,  Marie Poulin  46:30Highly motivating.  Michele Hansen  46:32Yeah, but like, it's all-encompassing.  Marie Poulin  46:35Yeah.  Michele Hansen  46:37Like, it's, and then you said that somebody else that same week said how much they loved your course, yet, you're,  You keep ruminating on the bad, right? Ruminating and obsess over and then hyper focus on that, and then go into this mode of, like, wanting to make sure that never ever happens again. And it's like this kind of extreme version of loss aversion, where, you know, we're so afraid of losing something, like, of losing that, in this case, like, that person's, you know, like, their positive feedback on the course or their, their positive experience with it, rather than focusing on the people who already had a positive experience and making it better for the people who is, because like, it's like, do you actively, like, frame your course, or some of your courses as being for ADHD people, or, like, neurodiverse people? Marie Poulin  47:33I don't, again, part of this is I'm not officially diagnosed. And, and, you know, again, I'm still learning about this stuff. And so I partly feel like a little bit of imposter complex around this whole topic to know I want to be very careful, you know, like, just, just being mindful about how I talk about it. And, and, Michele Hansen  47:53Everyone's experience is different of it, like, yeah. Marie Poulin  47:56Totally, totally. And so I just want to be very careful about it, and it is something I've considered of like, maybe it would actually, like, the number of people that have watched the, I have a YouTube video where I'm teaching my sister who has ADHD how to use Notion, and the positive feedback, and the people being like, oh, my gosh, it was so nice to see normal people, like, normal people like me, you know, other people with ADHD, just, just going through this experience. And it did make me wonder like, well, hey, knowing that this is the case, and knowing that it seems to attract these people, should I go in that direction? So it's been on my mind to some, something to maybe mention, and even kind of tease out a little bit, like, in my welcome sequence. When I'm introducing myself, I'm starting to, like, try out using some of the language. And I will say, I've gotten an incredible response. Anytime I've talked about it, it's been really, really positive. So, I don't mention it, but it is something I'm like, maybe like, and should I get a diagnosis to be? Does it matter? I don't really know. I'm not really sure what the, what the protocol is there. But yeah. Michele Hansen  49:01I mean, like, I have a diagnosis, but like, I, I feel like I don't really understand it very well, like, because I just kind of accepted it as this thing that was just wrong with me that I had to control. And then like, that was kind of it. Um, and I like so in my book, actually, in the original newsletters, like I talked about having ADHD and how, you know, focusing on people and listening and like, all that, like, were really difficult for me because of that, and I got so much positive feedback on it, but then I got it into the book, and I, like, one of my reviewers was like, you know, your experience of ADHD is not a universal one. And there's like, and they were saying there's kind of a difference between like writing it in a newsletter, where people know you and they start from a point of kind of the sort of familiarity, like, that they they trust that you come from a good place, but like writing it in a book, people won't know me people won't know like and even if I say this is only my experience of it, like, someone who has had a different experience of the diagnosis or, or like, doesn't, like, that they have the diagnosis doesn't let you know they have made been made to feel less than because of it, or worse. I think both of us kind of tend to view it as this, like, this thing that we could steer and bring out, like, bring out our true selves, so to speak. Like, so I ended up taking it out, but it also feels so relevant, like it, like it feels like this piece of information that people need to know that it's like, Yes, I was known for not being able to listen to anything, so then I focused on it to the point of it being like, this obsessive skill. Almost necessary base information.  Marie Poulin  50:46Part of the story.  Michele Hansen  50:47Yes. And the same way that like, and so I found a way to like, kind of tell that story that I had to listen, like learn how to do this, but like without using the diagnosis, but like, part of me, really. So like, maybe it's like something I can do in a talk or something like that, right? Like, there's not every, like, there's different forums for things.  Marie Poulin  51:04Not every medium needs to, yeah. Michele Hansen  51:05And also where I can kind of explain, and if someone has like a question of like, well, that's not my experience of it, then we can talk about it afterwards. And they can know that I'm coming from a good, I don't, I don't know, I also feel conflicted, because I don't want to, like, I can only speak from my own experience. Like, I am, and again, maybe again this is maybe an ADHD thing, or it's like, I haven't hyper-focused on ADHD itself, so therefore I cannot speak about it.  Marie Poulin  51:29Totally. Oh, my gosh, the hyper-focusing of watching all the videos about ADHD and like, it's just, it's it's so funny looking at all the memes. I was so dismissive of ADHD, because I was like, oh, well, come on. That's all of us for every single meme. And at some point, I was like, wait a second, like, is that all of us? And yeah, it took some digging, and I was like, wait a second here. Michele Hansen  51:52There's some tweets about this that I find myself referencing, and it was either people with ADHD need to stop being so relatable, or I need to go to the doctor. Marie Poulin  52:06Exactly. Michele Hansen  52:07I think, you know, my, so this is super fun talking and relating to you and like, realizing, you know, that we're both not weird. We're weird together. But my, the reason I really wanted to talk to you about this here is because I think people who are neurodivergent, who don't fit the box, like, tend to feel like we're not as capable of things as other people, or we have been made to feel that we're not as capable. And I hear from people that are like, I don't know if I could run a business, like, I can't, you know, like, if I can't focus on one set thing, like, and I'm all over the place, like, I can't possibly run a business. And I think what I like to show and, like, what you show, amazingly, is that not only can you run a business if you have ADHD or any other like, because I noticed all these, like, people in the indie community, like, they're people, like people who just don't fit the box. Like they have, they have disabilities, they have chronic health conditions, they are autistic, like, whatever those things are, like, they have been able to find a home in this place, and like, you can run a business if you're ADHD like, you, like, like, I present myself as evidence and I feel like you are evidence of that, too. Marie Poulin  53:35Absolutely. I think a big part of it comes down to you have to know yourself really well. Like, you have to know your triggers. You have to know how you're incentivized, how you best operate, so that you can either get the support that you need, or again, you can design your products and services in a way that, even though, for example, I've been a generalist for a decade, and it's really only in the last year and a half, two years, that I was like, I'm going all in on Notion. Like, I see an opportunity here, like, let's, let's just try this, I'm going to see, like, what's the worst that could happen? I make, I make some money for for this chapter and I get known as the Notion person and then I can, like, flip the chapter and do the next thing. I've been in general so long, I was like, whatever, let's just give it a try. And what again, what I love about it is my days can be so freakin different. Like, I am not doing the same thing every day even though I'm doing one thing and so you know, it's about finding traction with that one thing but if you can design your business in such a way that you're still getting, you know that dopamine hit or whatever it is that you need, you got to know yourself well enough to know, hey, I really thrive with routine or I really thrive with days that look very different, and then getting someone to support you on your team, like, maybe you have a small team. For me hiring my direct my you know started with a virtual assistant, who is now my, mou know, Director of Operations and having her is no doubt a humongous part of why I've been able to do the kind of growth that I've done. Like, I would have been scrambling wearing all these different hats. So to have someone whose focus is entirely operations and all the nitty gritty, like, export of CSVs, any of the detail work, I'm like, let's just be honest, Marie is not the details person. I've accepted this. And now we have someone who is a details person who frickin loves that stuff. And the stuff that makes me cringe is the stuff that makes her day, and like, what better? Like, that's all you can ask for, I think. So, even if you're just getting support in a really, really tiny way, you know, again, there's just so many opportunities, I think, to get creative with the way you design your business, that it is supporting you. But you do have to, to know yourself really well, I think to know how to do that. Michele Hansen  55:51And what I, you know, ADHD, the first two words of it, or attention deficit, and I find that you show is that it's not a, like, it doesn't have to be this thing that's deficient about you.  Marie Poulin  56:06It's just a little inconsistent, that's all. Michele Hansen  56:08Like, it can be, if you sort of steer it and give it support, like, it can be this amazing thing that you bring to the world. Like, it's not a deficiency. Like, I feel like that's just kind of like, the message I can give to like 11 year old me, like, it's not a deficiency, like you just have to help it come out. Marie Poulin  56:28Well, hyperactivity like that, like you've said before, like the phrase, it just, it doesn't carry a whole lot of positive connotations. And so,  Michele Hansen  56:36No, the whole thing sounds very negative.  Marie Poulin  56:38It does, yeah, we're we're off. Like, there's something broken with us, versus hunter gatherer brain, like different types of brains, I think evolved for different purposes. And, you know, we all, we have our own incredible use cases, like I know, you mentioned in other episodes, the ability to form connections between really disparate stuff very, very quickly. Oh, my gosh, in companies to have that kind of strategic person who can really see those connections, there's no doubt that each of us kind of can plug in somewhere and we can really shine in different ways. But it's, it's tricky, like you said, if we are neurodivergent, in a neurotypical world, it might mean that we might have to take the initiative on that and, and take charge in different ways and kind of carve our own path. Michele Hansen  57:25But then when we do, like, other people seeing like, hey, like, it's not just me, like, you know, you mentioned the, like the Dani Donovan's ADHD comics. I don't know if you've seen those, like, I'm so appreciative that she's so open about it.  Marie Poulin  57:37Yeah.  Michele Hansen  57:39It just, I think, because we have been made to feel deficient or different, like we, you know, I know I tended to like hold this in, and I realized that even like, most of my best friends didn't know I had been diagnosed as a kid until a couple of years ago, because I just never talked about it. I just, like, accepted it, this thing that was wrong with me, and like, whatever, like, we don't need to talk about it. But then we talk about it, and it doesn't actually, yeah, it doesn't have to be. Like, it can really bring whatever our uniquenesses into the world. Marie Poulin  58:08Yeah, I'm hoping it's sort of becoming a little bit more destigmatized, and on Twitter, and it just feels like I'm hearing more about it, and people maybe are getting a little more comfortable talking about it. And even it seems like things that therapists maybe wouldn't recognize before, like, it's starting to become a little bit more known. And so yeah, I'm hoping that, you know, by sharing some of my own honest insights that that it does help destigmatize it. I think the more people, you know, like you and I talking about it, I do think it just kind of opens up the doors a little bit. So, if we can be part of that then you know, yay. If it helps one other person even just kind of embrace their their inner weirdness a little bit, then we've done our, our duty. Michele Hansen  58:52Yes. Exactly. Or embrace the weirdness of, you know, their loved ones, too.  Marie Poulin  58:58Find your weirdos. Yeah. Michele Hansen  58:59Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's probably a good note to end on today. It has been so fun talking to you, Marie. I feel like we've, we've gone on quite well, like, we normally run half an hour and we're quite over that, but I'm okay with it. I, this is so fun. I'm so grateful that you came on. And so, if people are curious about your courses, or about you, where can they find out more? Marie Poulin  59:26You can check out my website is MariePoulin.com. You'll be able to find the course on there, too. That's NotionMastery.com, pretty active on Twitter. That's that's probably where do most of my chitchat about business and founder life and ADHD and all that sort of thing. So @MariePoulin on Twitter, and if you're curious about more of the, more personal behind the scenes stuff, and plants and gardening, you can check me out on Instagram, too, so. Michele Hansen  59:51Awesome. Thank you so much, Marie.  Marie Poulin  59:54Yeah, thanks for having me. Really fun.

Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Fathom Analytics. Fathom is trusted by thousands of businesses to power their privacy-first website analytics like GitHub, FastMail, Buffer, Tailwind, and so many amazing small businesses, too. For the longest time, website analytics offer was seriously bad.  It was hard to understand, time consuming to use, and worse, and exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. Fathom is website analytics without compromise, easy to use, respectful of digital privacy, and fully compliant with GDPR. Plus, Fathom's script loads faster than Google Analytics, meaning it's better for SEO. With Fathom, you can see all of your visitors, not just half, because they've pioneered the method to bypass ad blockers without invading privacy. Fathom also doesn't chase venture capital or need investors. Like my company, Geocodio, they are customer-funded, and customers are the only folks they answer to. Try a free seven day trial or check out Fathom at UseFathom.com/ssp.  Michele HansenSo, the other day, I totaled up how much I have made from my book so far, and all the expenses.  Colleen Schnettler  01:19Okay.  Michele Hansen  01:20So, as of that point, $1363 in presales, which is just, like, the number of copies times 29. That's not my actual payouts. It's just, like, the gross revenue.  Colleen Schnettler  01:34Okay.  Michele Hansen  01:34And then, so the expenses. So, first one, for the formatting, I have to use the software called Vellum, which is $250. I had to buy ISBNs, like, the little, like, numbers on the back of the book that identify it.  Colleen Schnettler  01:49Yeah. Michele Hansen  01:50So, and I had to, you can either buy one, or like 10, and since I'm going to do an audio book, you need an ISBN for that, and like, a hardcover needs zone ISBN. And so anyway, that was $295. A barcode is $25. Proofreading $800, which is a lot of money, but I feel like that's the price of like, not being embarrassed that it's full of typos and you know, I feel like if I want to, like, have a book that, like, a manager could buy for their team, or like, people would recommend to their clients, like, it has to be professional.  And so having, like, professional proofreading is the cost of that. Colleen Schnettler  02:24Yeah.  I didn't know that was something. I didn't know that was a thing. Michele Hansen  02:30Yeah. Yeah, I spent, I think last week I mentioned how I was fighting with Grammarly a lot, and,  Colleen Schnettler  02:35Yeah.  Michele Hansen  02:36I just, I was like, I have spent like, two days fighting with Grammarly, just trying to get it to work, and like, and I was like, this is just, my time is more expensive than this. Colleen Schnettler  02:47Yeah. Michele Hansen  02:47So, I'm just gonna hire a proofreader.  Colleen Schnettler  02:50Good choice. Michele Hansen  02:50And then, of course, you know, don't include hundreds of hours of my time over the last couple of months. But, so, the total for expenses so far is $1370. Colleen Schnettler  03:01That's wonderful. Michele Hansen  03:02So, when you deduct $1363 minus $1370.  Colleen Schnettler  03:11Oh. Michele Hansen  03:12You get negative seven. Colleen Schnettler  03:16Yeah, I see. I misunderstood what you were saying. Got it. So you're in the hole seven bucks and hundreds of hours of your time. Michele Hansen  03:25Yes. Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  03:26Alright. Well, good thing it;s a labor of love. Michele Hansen  03:28So, I looked at that number, though, and I just had this moment where I was like, holy, forking shirtballs, like, I need to market this thing.  Colleen Schnettler  03:39Yeah.  Michele Hansen  03:40Umm, and actually, so like, I sold another two since then. So now, I am actually at positive $51.  Colleen Schnettler  03:51Whoo.  Michele Hansen  03:52Yeah, whoo. Umm, and of course, you know, we're only like, only in presale, and like, a ton of people have today said they want the hardcover or they want the audio book. So they haven't, they haven't purchased it yet, or they just simply want the finished version. Umm, But yeah, that was kind of a wake up call for me that, like, I've been, you know, we talked about with Sean like, I, like marketing a info product feels very different for me than marketing a SaaS.  Colleen Schnettler  04:19Yes. Michele Hansen  04:19And also requires a lot more self-promotion, which I'm not comfortable with. Like, it makes me like, deeply uncomfortable to like, reach out to people and be like, hey, like, would you consider, like, you know, reviewing my book like, or, you know, can I be on your podcast and, like, talk, like, it makes me super uncomfortable. Umm so, so but I got to do it because like, negative $7, man, for like, four months worth of work is, you know, basically half of my time the last four months, certainly, last two months, has been on this book. And so I feel like I owe it to myself just for that, like, time to like, sell the gosh darn thing. Colleen Schnettler  05:07Definitely. Michele Hansen  05:09Yeah. So I like spent, you know, this week I was kind of working on, you know, like, I went through all of the newsletter issues and I, like, put in a link at the top to, like, buy the book because I've noticed that people are sharing the scripts around. Like, I can see the analytics that they're getting shared in people's Slack channels, or, you know, Trello, or Asana, which is a good sign that those maybe have some staying power. So, and just kind of thinking through a little bit more, a little bit more of the marketing and trying to arrange, you know, yeah, podcasts and stuff, but I gotta, I gotta market this thing. Colleen Schnettler  05:52Yeah, didn't Alex, who promoted his book on our podcast, didn't he do, like, 20 or 30 podcasts? Michele Hansen  06:00Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  06:01And how many have you done? Michele Hansen  06:04Um, I, well,  Colleen Schnettler  06:07I already know the answer. Michele Hansen  06:09Well, I mean this one. I mean, I was on a couple recently where I talked about the newsletter. Like, I was on, I, yeah. Like, I was on the Get the Audience podcast, and I was on the Learn Neto podcast as well. But like, the book wasn't out yet. So those weren't really, Colleen Schnettler  06:37Right, you didn't have anything to sell at that time.  Michele Hansen  06:39Yeah, it was just the newsletter. Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  06:40A good goal for you would be to try to book 15, you know, and get yourself as a guest on 15 to 20 podcasts to promote your book, because you can sell it now. Right? Even though it's not completely done. Michele Hansen  06:52Yeah. Yeah, I guess I guess. Yeah. I'm like scheduling one for the middle of July, like, so I'm currently, my goal is to publish it on July 2, but I like, I really hope that happens. But there may be like, you know, some people may need more time to, like, write reviews, and, like, making a cover and everything. So, it should be out by early July. Colleen Schnettler  07:20You're, when you say, I don't know. You mean the book?  Michele Hansen  07:22Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  07:22I am little confused about what you're saying. Michele Hansen  07:23 Yeah. So like, upload it to Amazon, and people can buy a physical copy. Colleen Schnettler  07:28Yes. Michele Hansen  07:29So I don't think I'm quite there yet. Like, exactly like, and I think there's some things that I'm just saying aren't going to happen for, like, this first version, like, a friend of mine, who is a UX research expert was reading it, and there's a couple places she's like, this would be a really great table. This would be great as a graphic. And I'm like, yes, it would be but I have zero faculty for visual communication, and that is not going to happen right now. Like, that can like happen when my brain has the space to like, think that through, but it is, it is not happening right now. But yeah, I guess I guess I should say, I guess that, I don't even know where to start. Colleen Schnettler  08:13No no, Let's go like straight Nike style here.  Michele Hansen  08:15Nike style? Colleen Schnettler  08:16What is it, just do it? Just do it. That's my challenge for you. I'm not going to talk to you for a couple weeks because I'm about to embark on my epic road trip. So, my challenge for you is to reach out to, find and reach out to 25 podcast hosts that you think, Michele Hansen  08:34Good Lord. Colleen Schnettler  08:34And they're not all going to say yes, which is like, hey, man. I know. Michele Hansen  08:37I'm sitting here being like, Colleen, and I really struggle with self promotion. And even, you know, one person was hard for me and you're like, go do it 25 more times.  Colleen Schnettler  08:4525 times. I love that idea. Michele Hansen  08:46Coach Colleen says 25 more reps. So not fair. Colleen Schnettler  08:50Yes. So, that's what my challenge for you is, is to reach out, Michele Hansen  08:54 How about five?  Colleen Schnettler  08:57Really? I'm not impressed with your five. Michele Hansen  09:00I feel like everybody, I feel like everybody like, needs this person standing on their shoulder that's like, I will write one landing page this month. And you're just there. They're like, really?  Colleen Schnettler  09:11Really? That's the best you can do? Michele Hansen  09:13That's, like, that's it, you know? Wait, like, why are you here?  Colleen Schnettler  09:18You should try and, I don't know, just ask, ask one of our prominent friends who is a book author, Alex comes to mind again, how many podcasts he went on?  Michele Hansen  09:27Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  09:28And try to hit that number. I mean, it's game time girl. Like, you wrote the book. You did the hard work,nd now it's a whole new set of hard work that you have to do because you're right, like, this is a brilliant book. You don't want it to languish because, no one's ever heard of it. Michele Hansen  09:43I didn't say it was brilliant. You said it was brilliant. Colleen Schnettler  09:46Well, here you go. It's brilliant. it's needed. It's gonna be amazing. So, I think you need to like, get in gear. Michele Hansen  09:54Yeah, I, yeah. Okay. I guess, I have to go, well, if you are listening and you want to promote me, then help me. Colleen Schnettler  10:06Maybe what we can do is we can, I have an idea. Okay, plan. So, just put a tweet out and ask everyone for their favorite business podcast. I bet you'll get a list of at least 30. And then you can just, Michele Hansen  10:17Yeah, I guess, yeah, like, but like it has to be for SaaS, for example, because like, Planet Money isn't gonna have me on. Colleen Schnettler  10:25Right, right. I meant yeah, SaaS podcast. I mean, there's enough of them that do podcasts similar to ours.  Michele Hansen  10:31Make the internet do my research for me.  Colleen Schnettler  10:34Yes, there we go. Harness the power of the internet. Michele Hansen  10:41So if you see a tweet from the Software Social Account soon about your favorite business SaaS podcast, now you know why.  Colleen Schnettler  10:50The secret's out. Michele Hansen  10:52Yeah, the secret is out. Okay. Well, I will, I will try to book myself on some, some podcasts. I guess, I guess there's other ways I could promote it, too. Like, I could go on, like, Tiktok or, Colleen Schnettler  11:12No.  Michele Hansen  11:14No, we will not do that. For those listening at home, I think Colleen just spit out her coffee. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have some marketing to do. Colleen Schnettler  11:34Yes. Michele Hansen  11:36Yeah. I think I have like, I've literally sent I think one email, maybe two. No, yeah, one email that mentioned that the presale was live, which basically goes against every best practice, like, some like, someone sent me some advice the other day, and they're like, send at least three emails a day on your like, launch days. I was like, okay, I've sent like, one in the last two weeks, and I sent out my newsletter the other day, and I actually forgot to include a link to the presale. So, I need to, like, Colleen Schnettler  12:06You know what, suggestion.  Michele Hansen  12:07Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  12:07This is really cool. So do you know the Wes Bos is?  He's, like, a famous JavaScript instructor. I bought like, all of his courses. But what he does is, he does, when he has a new product to launch, he does send a lot of emails, but he actually segments his emails. And to be fair, his list is probably like 30,000 people. But he segments his email, so you can unsubscribe just from the product launch emails, which I love, because I'm like, oh, I don't care about this product launch, or I already bought that, and then I can still continue to get all the normal newsletter emails. I mean, don't stress yourself out.  Michele Hansen  12:10Yeah. Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  12:14But it's an idea. It's an idea. Michele Hansen  12:20Yeah, I'm only using review at this point for, so, I don't, like, I don't even have like, ConvertKit or anything.  Colleen Schnettler  12:50Okay, set up. Michele Hansen  12:51Set up, so I, I don't, I probably should do that, but I haven't really,  Colleen Schnettler  13:00Okay, so I think podcast.  I'm still in editing, like, get it out the door mode, because there's still other like, launch stuff. Like, I have to like register the ISBN and like, I need to go through the whole process with Amazon of like, making sure all that's like, setup.  Michele Hansen  13:19So, that feels like a July task. Colleen Schnettler  13:24July task. That's fine. It's halfway to July. It's almost July. So, Michele Hansen  13:30Yeah, so I, maybe I should, like, make a spreadsheet of all the different things and, like, have a goal for those. Colleen Schnettler  13:39I'm, I'm a big fan of measurable goals, right? Like, so, so I'm team, you know, write it down, keep a spreadsheet, keep track of it. Not that I've executed so well on my goals, right? It's easy for me to sit here and tell you what to do. It's way harder when it's you telling me what to do. So, you know,  Michele Hansen  13:57Well isn't there, there's some business axiom about like, it's not like, like, like, achieving the exact goal is not important. It's the fact that you create one and then work towards it that matters. Like, there's somebody who has said something to that effect much more articulately than just said, but you know, it's like just you set the goal and then you go off on a journey to get there and you may end up somewhere else, but like, you have, you're at least doing something. Colleen Schnettler  14:23Right? You're making forward progress. Michele Hansen  14:25Yeah, and I should probably have a revenue goal, too. Like,  Colleen Schnettler  14:29So, okay. Michele Hansen  14:29Even though I don't want one, I should, I guess. Colleen Schnettler  14:32Okay, I'm gonna get off topic, and I don't want to get too far off topic. But, so I'm a really big fan of, like, famous sports coaches, like,  Michele Hansen  14:42Okay. Colleen Schnettler  14:43Like, this is, like, a thing. Like, I love reading biographies of like John Wooden and all these other really successful sports coaches. And one of my favorite takeaways from all of this information that I've osmosed is you cannot control the outcome, right? You can only control your effort and your attitude, which is why revenue goals are not very actionable. Because a revenue goal, like, you actually can't control that. What you can control is your attitude, right? How you approach the problem, and your effort, and how hard you work, and by aligning all of these steps in terms of effort and attitude, the revenue will come. But to set a goal, like, like, in the, you know, the basketball metaphors, like when the NCAA championships, you can't actually control that. You can just control how prepared you are, and your mindset when you attack the problem. Michele Hansen  15:40Oh, that makes sense. Colleen Schnettler  15:43I know that's, like, totally off topic, but I just read about it. And I'm like, Michele Hansen  15:48Yeah, so it's, so to what you were saying, like your goal of 25 podcast episodes. And, and rather than having a goal of say, you know, I don't know, like, $5,000, for example. Instead having it be like, be on 25 podcasts over the next six months to a year, about it, not including this one, because if we include all the episodes of this show then I'm like, totally hitting that, but I assume we're not. Um, and, you know, so like, being on a specific number of podcasts, or something else. I don't know, guest talks or something. Um, yeah, like picking like, specific actions that I can do that's like your equivalent. Like, it's like, write a landing page, right? Like, like, all these, like, things that are actions that I know are accretive towards,  Colleen Schnettler  16:51Right. That's the idea. Michele Hansen  16:52Good outcomes, but like, I fundamentally don't have that much control over how much I actually sell. Like, I can keep my ears out for things that might sell like, you know, for example, I'm gonna sell templates, too, for $19 that are like, Notion templates of all the scripts and it occurred to me earlier, like the, the How to Talk So People Will Talk section like, people seem to really love that. And I was like, that could maybe be its own, like, mini book for like, $10. It's like, just like, so you want, like, you know, you, you want to get information out of people, and you want them to think you're like, trustworthy and you want to, you know, learn how to, like listen actively, then, a mini book or something, like there's other stuff I could do. Colleen Schnettler  17:36Right, I guess all of my points, all of that that you just described, that's effort, right? Those are things you do. You ultimately can't control your revenue, but it'll get there if you put the effort in. That's the idea. Michele Hansen  17:46But like, I if I set the goal of like, be the, I don't know, New York Times number one bestseller or whatever, like, I have zero control over that. It's also not realistic. And it's not it, in some ways it's like, de-motivating there have a goal that is not clearly achievable.  Colleen Schnettler  18:07Exactly. Michele Hansen  18:07But being on 25 podcast is not like, like, that's like, those are very nebulous goals, because it's unclear what will lead to that.  Colleen Schnettler  18:17Yeah. Exactly. Michele Hansen  18:17But being on 20 Live podcast in six months is concrete. And I ostensibly have control over that. Colleen Schnettler  18:26Yes. Nice. Michele Hansen  18:28Wow. So, it sounds like you are doing like a lot of like, business reading lately. Colleen Schnettler  18:38Yeah, um, not a ton. So I do have a couple audio books queued up for my drive that I'm excited about, business ebooks, Obviously Awesome is one that I've been wanting to listen to and I have purchased but I have not yet. This one I just really liked. This one was about, like I said, some of the famous coaches. First of all, I'm a sucker for sports movies, but, but I really liked that idea that ultimately you, you can't control, like, if you're going to win, but you can control all of the aspects of your journey, like how much time you put in, how much effort you put in, like, what your mindset is, you could, those are all things that you know, you can control. And as you know, for like, it feels like for a couple months now I've been struggling to move the product forward. Like, the product is doing well. I hit $1300 MRR.  Michele Hansen  19:28Nice. Colleen Schnettler  19:28Which is, yeah, I mean, it's great.  Michele Hansen  19:30Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  19:30I'm really happy with it. But it, I feel a little bit stuck. I feel, and I don't know if it's, I feel stuck because I haven't had the time, or if I feel stuck because I'm actually stuck. Like, I can't figure out if I feel stuck because if I, if I, let's say I gave myself a week and I just worked every day on it if I would get myself out of that kind of rut, or if there's really no rut to get out of and this is just the nature of the product. That it's just a slow burn, which is fine. I mean, it's going well, like I'm not complaining, I know some people can't, you know, haven't hit this milestone, especially not as quickly as I did. But, um, so there's that. So, I think what I want to do is I want to make a bigger push on content. Because I really haven't, I really don't have any content out there. So that's something I'm going to try and spend some time on, and like, there's just some things about the product that I want to keep iterating on, and I want to make better. Michele Hansen  20:36I mean, we were just talking about goals and the, sort of how difficult it is to have a monetary goal because you don't have control over it. And it's, it's awesome, first of all that, I mean, to have $1300 MRR means that, I mean, a month or two ago, we're talking about how you're hitting 1000. That means that like, that's, the thing, the thing about revenue for a subscription business is that revenue happens every month, like, this revenue that I have from the book, that happened once, and that's not going to happen again. But yours, people are paying you. So it's not just that you have made $1300 like, you, that is compounding and adding on top of each other. But I am sort of curious, like, there has to be some number or range in your head where you're like, I can stop consulting now. Or I can, you know, somebody offers me a full time job and I can just like, turn it down without even thinking about. Like, there has to be some number for you. Colleen Schnettler  21:38Absolutely. And I think like, and, and, absolutely. And I mean, I'm in this for the money. Like, just to be clear, that makes some people really uncomfortable. I don't know if they're not used to women saying that or what, but like, when I tell people that they get a little uncomfortable. Michele Hansen  21:53It's like, your job, like, Colleen Schnettler  21:55Yeah, like, I want to make more money.  Michele Hansen  21:56Like, of course everybody is in their job for the money. Like, yes, I'm doing this book as like, a passion project and like, which leads me to make all sorts of decisions that are confusing to people who prioritize money, like, but like you, understandably, are prioritizing money, because this is your job. And if this doesn't work out, then you know, Colleen Schnettler  22:17I gotta go get a real one. Michele Hansen  22:18I mean tons more consulting, or like, getting, getting a paycheck job is what you have to do. Like, this is not, Colleen Schnettler  22:25Yeah, so.  Michele Hansen  22:27Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  22:28I mean, the thing I love about owning your own business is the possibilities are infinite, right? Like, I mean, I, from a personal perspective, you know, if I could get to 10k, that would be like, Oh, my gosh, I cannot, that would be, I'd be over the moon, right?  Michele Hansen  22:45So that's the number. Colleen Schnettler  22:47The number would be 10k. But, you know, why can't I have a couple million dollars a year in revenue? Like, I want a business. Michele Hansen  22:53 Why can't you have a million dollars?  Colleen Schnettler  22:56I mean, I want a business. Like, if I hit 10k and stay there forever, like, I probably would be a little frustrated. Like, to me, the whole point of having your own business is the possibilities are, in, you know, infinite. And like, one of the things I've been able to do with my modest income, is I've been able to hire two people to help write content for me. And yeah, hired someone else.  Michele Hansen  23:23Oh, you're, wait.  Colleen Schnettler  23:25And, yeah, man, I'm crazy over here. I'm just, dollar bills.  Michele Hansen  23:28Dude, and I'm like, 7 years into this and I like, just hired, like, a part time VA, like, three months ago. Colleen Schnettler  23:34Yeah, yeah. I feel like you're doing it wrong. But that's a different issue. Michele Hansen  23:37Probably. I'm doing it my way, okay.  Colleen Schnettler  23:40That's right. So, and the thing I love about that is, I, with, with the people that I'm paying, I've been able to, you know, people who are kind of writing anyway, now I can pay them to write, it seems like such a win-win. Like, I feel like I'm, it's good for them and it's good for me. And it's something I really love. So like, ultimately, I would love to build this into, like, you know, a really successful business and hire a person and, and, and be able to have created this environment where I can work with who I want and buy my beach house and all that. I mean, I'm big on the beach house if I haven't mentioned that a few times already. Michele Hansen  24:25So the first, like, the first big goal, which I think it'll be fun to reevaluate this a year from now, is like 10k basically. Colleen Schnettler  24:36Yeah. I mean, Michele Hansen  24:36To get you to 10k revenue and then to like, the big, big goal is buy Colleen a beach house. Colleen Schnettler  24:43Buy Colleen a beach house. Yeah. But to me 10k, and I don't know if I have, and I'm still, I feel like I'm in that messy middle phase. Like, I hit 1k, which makes it feel like it's a real thing. Like it's, it's legit, but I don't know if I'm in, I feel like there's a, going from zero to 1k is different than going from 1k to 10k. Right? It's a factor of 10 more. Like it's a big, you feel like going from zero to 1k is one milestone and one to 10 is your next milestone. But one to 10 is way more than zero to one, right? So, I honestly don't know if I'm positioned correctly with this product to get there. Michele Hansen  25:26Which is why you're reading Obviously Awesome. Colleen Schnettler  25:28Which is why I'm reading Obviously, Obviously Awesome. I just, I just don't know, if I'm in the right space, there's so much opportunity. I was talking to a founder recently and he talked about how he pivoted his company and moved into a totally different space, and they started growing, like they were kind of stagnant for a while, and then they kind of made this pivot, moved into a new space and their growth exploded. So, I definitely think there's a spot for me, I just don't know what it is, and I just don't know, it feels like a lot. Like the other thing that, that I wanted to just kind of bring up is when people talk about how to grow in your business. They talk about, like, building the product, as if it's this static thing that takes you like two weeks, and like writing good software is hard. And, it's a constantly evolving process. So it's something that constantly needs my you know, my attention, and that's not bad. I just feel like, you know, it's hard to balance, as most people who listen to this who are working and building a product know, it's just hard to balance all of those competing desires. So I just don't know if I have a, I guess the truth is, I don't know if I have a product that's going to get me to 10k. Like, I don't know, I don't know where it is right now. It's that product. Michele Hansen  26:52I mean, thinking back to where we were like I don't, I don't have our numbers in front of me, so I don't remember them exactly. But like, the thing that really made our revenue jump was not adding any one particular feature or one particular marketing thing. It was a pricing change, because we like, so we started out, I think we were like $31 our first month. And then I don't know, like, maybe maybe $100 the next month, and then like $400 the next month, and then in May of 2014, we had someone who needed, like, a crazy volume of usage every single day. And the only way we could make that work was basically to give them their own server. And we looked around and see what, you know, big companies were charging for these sort of really high volume, like, plans and we're, and I think we we figured out like, the cheapest one was like 10,000 a year, for, that was still like rate limited, I think to 100,000 a day, but we're like, okay, we can do like basically Unlimited, up to like 5 million a day for you for $750 a month, which worked out to 9000 a year. And adding that plan, which was like, slightly different feature-wise, but like it wasn't it wasn't like adding a feature to the API, but it was like a pricing feature, and a new plan, adding that one plan and then, like, we didn't think anyone else would ever take it, and then people started taking it. Like, that is what caused our revenue to really grow. And so I wonder if there's some space for like, you know, pricing evolution here. And like maybe there's some other way of packaging your products with the existing features in a way that's at a higher price point. But I don't like, I don't know why that is. Colleen Schnettler  28:44So I do. Michele Hansen  28:44 It's your business, like, so.  Colleen Schnettler  28:46Yeah. Michele Hansen  28:46But like, I think it's worth thinking about, like, the pricing aspects of, of this. Colleen Schnettler  28:50Yeah, well, and one of the things I do is my app has a lot more power that I'm exposing at the moment. So, I think the answer for example, like, I think I limit your file size to 50MBs, there's no reason I have to do that, like I don't, you know, there's there's a couple things someone reached out to me and told me that his company has a setup now where their customers upload files, like up to a gig(GB) through Upload Care, and then they, but they move them off the Upload Care servers, because it's so expensive, or it's a whole thing. I'm talking to him, I'm gonna, you know, have I have an interview scheduled with him to better understand Michele Hansen  29:26Whoo. Colleen Schnettler  29:26I know. Michele Hansen  29:27Music to my ears.  Colleen Schnettler  29:30But I, you know, so my point is, there's the two things that I'm not doing, I think I've might have mentioned this last week, is multiple file uploads, which I can do. I'm doing it for one client, special, and large files. So it might just be that I'm not quite positioned properly yet.  Michele Hansen  29:46Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  29:46In terms of I've really kept, I've kept a lot of that functionality close to the chest for no particular reason, just because I didn't want to like, release all the features at once and overwhelm everyone like, oh my goodness, but since I can't do those things, it seems like re, kind of revisiting, revisiting some of those options would probably be a good move for me.  Michele Hansen  30:09Yeah, I think it's really smart that you're, like you're doing a big road trip. So you're, and you're going to be listening to this book in the car, right? Colleen Schnettler  30:19Yes, ma'am. Michele Hansen  30:20Like, I find that we do our best like, business thinking on road trips, like, I, maybe it's because, you know, you like, you, you can't be doing anything else, like, you are literally stuck there. Colleen Schnettler  30:34Right. You're stuck. Michele Hansen  30:34And like, and I can't be looking at my phone in the car, otherwise, I'm going to get carsick. And, of course, it's the two of us and like, like, our go to for road trips is like, how I built this. So we end up like, really like, coming up with stuff on on, like, you know, I have, like, emailed myself of, like, conversations we've had on road trips. And so of course, it'll only be you. But, you know, those times when, like, the kids are sleeping in the back or whatever, and you can't have the audio book on and thinking all these things through, like, I think it'll be really good thinking time for yourself. And but remember to like, take notes every day on what it is that you think about. Colleen Schnettler  31:17Oh. That's a good point. I should bring a notebook. That's a really good point. Michele Hansen  31:20Like, a notebook or even just like, record a voice memo for yourself or whatever, if that's easier, just like, something so you don't, like, because there are times when when we've had like, an amazing conversation on a road trip, and then I didn't write it down. And then like, you know, a week later, we're back and we're like, oh, my God, like, what was that like, an amazing thing. And like I had this whole, like, like pre COVID, we were on a road trip. And I had this whole idea of like, our content strategy built around, like really unique address data. Like, for example, in South Carolina, there's three, there's like four towns called Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, all right next to each other, like, I was gonna, like, write about all of these, like, odd location, address things, and I came up with this great name for it on the road trip, and then I like, I still cannot remember what that name was, so take notes. Colleen Schnettler  32:09Yeah, I totally, I totally hear you. I know exactly what you're saying. I think that's a great idea. I think I have a lot of thinking to do. You know, I kind of feel like it was really exciting in the beginning when I was trying to launch the product. And then it's really exciting. And then everything is very, very exciting. And then you hit your first milestone, and then it's kind of like, oh, but now there's another milestone, okay, so I never really win.  Michele Hansen  32:32Right. The goalpost just moves. Colleen Schnettler  32:34The goalpost continuously moves. So it's interesting to me, I mean, I have a lot to think about is like, is this a product that can get me to 10k? How do I, and how do I get there? Right? Like, what is what do I need to do to get there? As I just said, when I was giving you my little pep talk, like it's putting in the work, I mean, you know, it's not going to sell itself. So yeah, I'm ready to really, really give it some time to think about it on my epic journey. Michele Hansen  33:01Alright, well, on, on that note, I guess we should just sort of make a quick programming note that Colleen will be away for the next two weeks. And so we will, we will be leading on that social side of Software Social and have some guests coming up that I'm super excited about. And then I will be away the following week, so Colleen is gonna have a guest on, and then we will both be like, basically a month from now. Colleen Schnettler  33:34Oh my gosh. I won't talk to you for a month. Michele Hansen  33:35Wow. That feels so weird.  Colleen Schnettler  33:37Oh, gracious. That's sad. Michele Hansen  33:45I mean, you'll text me roadtrip updates. Colleen Schnettler  33:45Obviously. Michele Hansen  33:46Yeah.  Colleen Schnettler  33:46Obviously, I'm so excited to see, like, cactuses, by the way.  Michele Hansen  33:52Yeah? Colleen Schnettler  33:52In Arizona. Yeah. I'm so excited to see the great American West. Michele Hansen  33:55I've heard Arizona is, like, gorgeous. Colleen Schnettler  33:57Yeah, I'm super pumped to see a big cactus. Anyway. Michele Hansen  34:00Oh, I've been there. I was okay, whatever. We're gonna stop here for today. Colleen Schnettler  34:07Wrap it up. Michele Hansen  34:11I'll talk to you next week.

In 2013 a new word was added to the Oxford English dictionary. It was the word selfie. Most of us have posted them all over social media. This word is so familiar and entrenched in our day to day life that we have trouble remembering what life was like before social media. Think about what a selfie really is: a picture, perfectly crafted to present the very best image of ourselves. We control the lighting and our expression. We can delete the image if the smile is wrong, hold the camera a little higher to make our eyes appear larger or add a filter to cover our imperfections. These pictures are way more than a self-portrait. They are a declaration of how we want others to see us and the ultimate publicity campaign for ourselves. When posted on social media, selfies translate into “likes” and “comments” and provide instant confirmation that we are accepted.I recently read about Dr. Levi Harrison, a San Francisco based physician is warning people about taking too many selfies. He is diagnosing patients with what he calls, “selfie-wrist”, a form of carpal tunnel syndrome. It's a tingling, sharp pain which comes from flexing your wrist inward or by holding your phone too long.A 2018 study discovered that in the past six years there have been 259 deaths associated with taking a selfie. In front of a train, on a cliff, near a wild animal, even in front of a tornado.We live in a selfie culture. It's estimated that 1,000 selfies are posted on Instagram every second.  One definition said, “A selfie is an unrealistic depiction of ourself, a planned representation of what we want to look like. It's a polished image. There's nothing wrong with taking a selfie, and I'm not here today to tell us all to stop posting them I have something much more important to talk about. I believe our obsession with selfies can be linked to a spiritual problem. The struggle for our identity. It is the tension of who we are and who we want to be.Our world is facing an identity crisis. The deep cry of this generation is “Who am I?”  This longing and this confusion over identity fuels the need to be noticed which produces many of the selfies posted today.For the Christian, identity shouldn't be an issue. The Bible makes it very clear. We have been created in the image of God. Jesus paid for my sins on the cross, verifying my worth to God. The Bible says I have been called, chosen, accepted, forgiven, and redeemed. I am a child of God and my name is written in Heaven.“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)So, why do we struggle so much with identity? We struggle because:Identity gives us a sense of securityWe crave the approval and affirmation of other people…so we pretendWe are afraid of rejection so we attempt to meet social expectationsWe allow others to define us.So, if you are a follower of Christ, let me tell you what God's Word says about your true identity.You are a child of God - John 1:12You are a new creation in Christ - 2 Corinthians 5:17You are God's workmanship - Ephesians 2:10You are a friend of God - John 15:15You are a citizen of Heaven - Philippians 3:20You are a member of Christ's body - 1 Corinthians 12:27You are more than a conqueror - Romans 8:32Today's Challenge: Let's reject the labels our culture attempts to put on us. Let's rest in the security of knowing who we are in Christ. Let's find contentment in the love of God and believe he has accepted us as his children.

Hebrews 5:11-14 (NLT)There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. 12You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. 13For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. 14Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/yourdailybible)

Be sure to catch the Conscious Spirit Fest October 18 2020 Arizona Bell is the co-founder and CEO of Spirit Guides Media—a growing media network that's dedicated to truth and driven by Spirit—and the host of the podcast A Matter of Life and Death with Arizona Bell. A grief coach and afterlife expert, Arizona is an inspirational speaker with the message that examining death and what happens to us after death is the absolute best way to live our richest, most meaningful lives here on Earth. A rising voice in the spiritual community, she appeared as a panelist on George Noory’s afterlife expert panel at the Afterlife Research and Education Institute Symposium in 2018 and speaks regularly at various conferences and events. Arizona’s book “Soul Magic: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Mystics” is available now. Arizona stopped by on Spiritual Dope as we covered all types of things: What exactly is it about examing death that can inspire you to live your best life? How do you transition from writing for medical journals to spirituality? Different ways to pray & what exactly is OG meditation? Make sure you check out everything Arizona has going on! Catch up with Arizona on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CDblWL1H2IZ/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B-rjRW5oCOi/ brandon handley00:014321 Hey there, Spiritual Dope. This is Brandon Handley on with another outstanding guest Arizona bell, and she is the co founder and CEO of Spirit Guides Media 00:15A growing media network that's dedicated to truth and driven by spirit and the host of the podcast, a matter of life and death with Arizona bell 00:23A grief coach and afterlife expert Arizona is an inspirational speaker with the message that examine that. And what happened was, after death is the absolute best way to live our richest, most meaningful lives here on her. 00:35Arising voice in a spiritual community, she appeared as a panelist on great George Norris afterlife expert panel at the afterlife. Research Institute education Institute's symposium in 2018 00:47And speaks regularly at various conferences and events Arizona's book sold magic ancient wisdom from the modern mystics is available now or is. Oh, thank you so much for popping out today, how are you Spirit Guides00:59Hey, thanks for having me. Brandon, I'm doing really well, actually, uh, you know, you never know in 2020 with ups and downs of of everything. But today I'm doing great. I'm feeling good. How about you. brandon handley01:09I love it. Right, like 2020 if ever there was a a year where you seize the day right you take it for all that you can get out of it because you don't know what's around the corner right Spirit Guides01:20And absolutely, if you're not. If not now, when right brandon handley01:26I love 2024 for what is actually kind of brought brought to us right arm. I think there's opportunity to 01:32Do what you and I are doing on really kind of dig deep and live our authentic lives because you don't know what's around the corner. Really presented itself in 2020 that's my honest opinion. Spirit Guides01:43Absolutely. And just, I'll just riff here for a minute, in my personal life. That's how it worked out. 01:48You know i i hit rock bottom and hit a period of grief in my life. And next thing you know, I'm like, Okay. Life's too short. And it really put the fire under my butt. And I got to step in and live in my purpose. And I think on a collective level that's what's happening with 2020 brandon handley02:03Is what it looks like right a lot. There's a lot of raw files on 02:06A lot bombs and and not to laugh, but it's again just giving us the opportunity to bounce back. And so our spiritual resilience and what that but that kind of shine. 02:15But they kind of shy so I like to start these off with, like, you know, the idea is that the creator speaks through us right and 02:25Universe energies, energy, whatever speaking through us today and it's delivering a message to one of our listeners that can only come through this instance right so what is that message that you would deliver to that person today. Spirit Guides02:40This is man, this is interesting because right before this, I got on. And I do this typically 02:45Every once in a while. I forget, but it's kind of my routine to get to 02:48Get into meditated mode. Before I go on, either my podcast or somebody else's and say, 02:54Let's let the message come through that needs to be heard the most that helps the most amount of people 02:59You know, it's interesting. I've never been asked to to pick what that message is. So you put me on the spot, but um you know i i think that maybe the messages. What you kind of 03:12You said spiritual resilience. I think that that's the message of this year. And that's the message, maybe of this podcast, because that's where we started going right away. And I think just 03:24The fact of the idea that human hearts are so resilient were built in Phoenix's were born to burn and we're born to rise. And I think that it's really 03:33Really important to remember that right now, when everything is burning down metaphorically or literally, you know. So I think it's really important that we remember how resilient. We actually are. brandon handley03:46Built in Phoenix is built on Phoenix's and Spirit Guides03:49I don't know where that came from. That was 03:52That was like our archangel brandon handley03:54Was it right that's it 100% you open yourself up to it and just allowed to kind of kind of come through. 04:02And that's exactly what it is. So, whoever's out there. Just know that you have this built in Phoenix, whatever is kind of sparking you right now. You can kind of fan that and rise up out of the ashes into something more boys than you ever were before. Right. 04:18Totally. Um, so let's let them give some background, right, who is Arizona bell 04:26Yeah, are you 04:27Doing here. Um, you know, give us the lowdown Spirit Guides04:30That's literally what I've been asking myself all year. Who am I, why am I here. No, you know, I 04:37I would have said, you know, for most of my life. Arizona bell is a writer, like, that was my identity that's that's who I showed up as and then a little, little bit over five years ago, about five and a half years ago. 04:50My mother passed away. She was my best friend. 04:53She was 59 when she passed away. I was 30 so that's pretty young, relatively speaking for both of us. And we were very, very close in it. It ripped my world apart. And that was my burned down moment and 05:05And eventually became my Phoenix moment, and it gave me, like I said, the fire under my butt to really step into my full 05:14Purpose and alignment, whereas before I was just sort of dabbling, you know, I was like dabbling one foot into my spiritual purpose and the other into really messing around, and not really committing to anything and 05:27You know, just that kind of stuff. And so, you know, after my mom passed. I did the grieving thing for her, you know, I'm still doing the grieving thing, but I did that pretty hardcore. And then I woke up one day and I said okay like 05:39I'm going to do this, I'm going to do what Spirit wants me to do. So I basically surrendered to that to spirit to source to God to divine energy, whatever you want to call it. I said, All right, listen. 05:52I get that I'm here for a reason. Show me what that reason is. Bring it to me every day and I'll do it. So you know I stepped into service mode. Basically, which I wasn't able to do before I hit rock bottom. And with that. 06:05Came the starting of my company, which originally. Like I said, my background. 06:09Background was in writing. So I started a little digital magazine called spirit guides magazine, because I 06:15I was young, relatively young in the spiritual world and I saw that there was a huge void of spirituality being targeted to younger generations and therefore there's a huge disconnect because 06:26People my age millennials and younger weren't really connecting with 06:31The kinds of websites and graphics and conferences and kind of that that were sort of felt a little bit outdated, but we were hungering for spiritual knowledge so that was kind of the reason I started it. 06:42And that little Instagram magazine has now evolved to a media company we're called spirit guides media and within it. We have podcasts. We're starting a radio station books. 06:54Everything courses and thrown a festival with my good friend from conscious living PR Mona. So we just got everything going on. So that's kind of a hope I answered the question. I don't, I don't know how to fully say who I am or why I'm here. But that's a star, I guess. brandon handley07:09Sure how that that it's a lot for us to work with. Right. So, that is how you and I connected we connected through Mona, Lauren, who was one of the first guest on this podcast. 07:20And you know so super glad that we were able to get connected through her 07:25Checked out spirit. Guys, you've got a lot going on there. Looks like it's kind of a community right of built up around spirituality and. Is that what the intention is just kind of a community for, like, you know, will say for a younger generation. Is that what you're saying. Spirit Guides07:43You know, absolutely. The intention was to build a spiritual community. And even though we are gearing towards gearing it more towards 07:52Visually towards younger people. I mean, spirituality is for everybody. So I have people across the board, you know, but we did. We did kind of dominate that you know 08:0318 to 34 demographic. I mean, that's, that is what our demographic is. And of course there's outliers and the young at heart, and all that. But we did want to make it fresh and hip, you know, and that that was an intention and definitely 08:17The spiritual community aspect of because for me. My personal story is, I was the lone wolf on the spiritual path. I didn't have, you know, I wasn't raised religious I didn't have a spiritual community, as in the spiritual closet, to be frank, so 08:30I did this year I did the spirituality thing by myself. And so I really did want to create a community. 08:37For those that might be feeling the same way. And luckily, with the world that we're living in with technology. It's easier to do that, you know, like we're doing this on zoom right now and and so I'm able to hold courses and 08:49workshops and the festival, even now online and as membership community, so it's it's all able to be done online and it's it's absolutely to have a spiritual community in such a weird time brandon handley09:03And there's no no better time for us so funny you mentioned your demographics, because you're pulling off is right where I started on my demographics. Right. 09:12Right on. And that's and that's simply because I speak to my generation, right. So you're speaking to your generation, you know the language you know on the spiritual connection. 09:21From that perspective. Right. And that's not to say, like you said, there's gonna be there's gonna be people. There's going to be the outliers that you attract but like you're able really well able to speak to that specific group. Spirit Guides09:33Right but but it ends there because I don't do Tick tock. So I don't know. 09:37I don't know how much younger. I can get that brandon handley09:40Tick tock. Tick tock. Some is Spirit Guides09:43For sure. brandon handley09:44Somebody platforms right I'm and I'm doing I'm doing what I do. 09:49Exactly. 09:50So, so I get it, I get it. 09:53When you know I want to give also this kind of premise of what you were into before you got into the spiritual realm, who and what type of content. Were you writing before you got in the conscious 10:08Conscious right Spirit Guides10:09Sure. You know, I think, well, I was doing a couple things. There was what I was doing for work. I was very fortunate to get paid to be a writer. I know a lot of people in the writing world. 10:21seek that out. And what that I was writing for what pays. I was writing for medical journals and medical magazines and medical medical medical I was writing for universities, things like that. 10:34But the big bucks were in the medical field. I was the editorial director at a magazine for physicians and an assistant assistant editor at a magazine an international magazine for doctors and dentists so 10:49And, you know, with my mom passing away, she had cancer. So I was all up in the medical industry going through it with her and I just found myself writing things that I didn't agree with. And so, it hit me. 11:01For a while, I mean, I don't want to get to the specifics, but 11:06Yeah, just 11:09Just the sick, I would call the sickness industry of the of the medical industry and just a lot of things that there were ignoring about actually keeping people healthy and I had to start to believe that maybe there was a an ulterior motive to keep people sick. 11:26So I and I was publishing stuff like that, you know, and that's all up for a matter of opinion, but from what I saw firsthand. 11:35In the medical world with my mom and the unfairness. I will call it of that world I it wasn't jiving for me on a soul level to be writing those things anymore. So there was a there was a pick on my soul that was like, ding, ding, ding, like, hey, you can't 11:49This doesn't feel right and you care about integrity. Don't forget that you care about integrity. Now, on, on the flip side, in my own personal selves. I was always drawn towards I guess soul centered content. 12:03I called it love I called it like I was thinking more romantic love than spiritual, but I, I was always wanting to write about love and like 12:11That kind of stuff. And like relationships and things like that, but um I so I was doing that on the side as well. I was writing for literary magazines and things like that. brandon handley12:21That's fun. That's fun. But I'll tell you what I can. I know what you're talking about with that little prick in the soul resonates with me real hard. I was in the insurance industry. 12:32For a little bit. Right. And I was like, well, you know, you would you do demographics and you would do. 12:40Do a risk assessment on the group as a whole. Right. And there's a sick person or two in there. 12:45You're rich got jacked up with this doesn't make much sense you know these people need the insurance. We're going to raise the rates on them because they need it because they are sick because they are going to use it. 12:53Or industry codes right same thing happens with industry codes. If they're in of, you know, riskier business type 13:00Their insurance rates are going to go up because they've got the they're going to get the most well this person's gone in here. So we're gonna have to race, the race to cover that. So, um, I left, I left. 13:10For very same thing. I was like, for a couple reasons. Actually, one was because of that soul prick right to was because and nothing wrong with people getting off on work every day you know into an office, but I couldn't stand it. I was in my 20s and watching people that were zombies. 13:27Right. What are these these these a tweet covered offices, you know, walk right. I was like, I was like, if this is gonna be my toys. Spirit Guides13:35Yep. Oh, I completely relate to that. Yeah. I mean, look at me, I'm like, 13:40There's no way I can sit in an office. I mean, 13:42I gave it my go you know I gave it my best go but somehow every job i got i ended up 13:48And again, I told you this before. My mom was German. So I was raised with good work ethic. I know how to work hard and so I'd like work hard, prove myself, and then I'd be like, Listen, I gotta start working from home like this isn't working for me. 13:59You know, and somehow I always talk them into it. I guess that's a skill I have but 14:04But yeah, I wasn't meant for that either. I totally hear what you're saying and you know that that unfairness. As I said in that you as you just so eloquently described in the insurance industry. It goes, it goes in every, you know, it's like in the banking industry like brandon handley14:17Somebody who Spirit Guides14:17More like living paycheck to paycheck has to pay the fee to like have a bank account and then you know somebody who has loads of money doesn't have to pay a fee doesn't make sense that brandon handley14:28You know, you know it does. In the end, right, like, but you know we're not going to get into it. Right. 14:34But it's like, Come on, man. Um, so, so you're writing for like medical journals and all this other stuff. You have this kind of bent 14:45You go through this and they jump into the spirituality, his face. I want to want to share with kind of 14:51Peoples. And what was it like for you to begin to lead with spirituality. After what you've been doing your entire life and the Jeff overcoming fears deal with anybody was like, What are you thinking that type of thing. Spirit Guides15:05Oh, big time. Yeah. As far as overcoming fears. So I'll just say a couple things I had the idea for spirit guides 15:14In my head tagline AND EVERYTHING FOR YEARS. YEARS. YEARS. YEARS BEFORE. My mom passed away years I knew I wanted to do it and not even that I wanted to. It was like it was just implanted in my mind my spirits like you're gonna you're going to need to do this. 15:28And I started to get worried when the because i'm a i'm an idea person. So I get lots of ideas. I was starting to get worried when the idea didn't go away because 15:35It doesn't go away. Dang, it's meant for you, you know, brandon handley15:38So, Spirit Guides15:39But I was too scared I was making pretty good money to be creative, you know, who am I to do this. And also, like I mentioned, I'm in the spiritual closet. Okay, I'm a party girl. 15:50On one on one hand, and then I'm a spiritual girl when I go home like it. I did not have spiritual friends. You know what I'm saying. 15:58So there's a lot of fears to overcome. But again, when I got that asked my ass kicked by grief and loss and seeing death firsthand. It was like, all right, you got to live your life and you got to do this. So I basically like 16:13I just kind of like came out of the closet and like didn't like I didn't even make a thing of it like I just was like one day I owned a spiritual media company. 16:22And, you know, some people were like, what are you getting up to these days, you know, but it was it was a leap that I took private privately and probably shocked. Some people when I did it, but I didn't want to go around having to explain myself to a bunch of people so brandon handley16:37That makes a lot of sense. Um, and you're a lot of different types of coaching business Christians question spiritual around to like you know don't have to go share your ideas with others. I'm just go do it right again. Good. 16:51And that was Spirit Guides16:51That was what I chose to do in that moment, because it honestly it made the most sense. brandon handley16:56Of it and then so 16:59You start, you know, I don't know how somebody just goes to earning a 17:04media company, right. So what was that process like did you have to get investors or she is fired off like 17:10On to the Instagram bit or did you find some people to back you, that type of thing. Spirit Guides17:15Now it was completely driven by spirit. And again, I was in surrender mode by that point. So I was like, 17:22I had an arrangement with spirit is like if you want me to do it. You got to bring it to me because I'm not going to go around. 17:28Chasing after all this stuff. So I'm very fortunate that my brother and business partner is a tech developer. So I had that 17:37And I basically called up one of my friends who was a another co founder who became another co founder with us, who I knew was into spirituality and could handle you know some of the things like social media all this stuff. And we just got together as a trio and and literally it was 17:54You know, like guerrilla style startup and 17:58And now the third party left, and it's just me and my brother and we're still we're still running it in that way. And I like that way. I mean, I wish I could sit here and tell you that I had some 18:08Big plan, you know, I, my German mom would have wanted me to have a better laid out plan. But I went with it. You know, I just, we just started on Instagram and started hyping it up because that's where all the kids were and we were trying to, you know, 18:24That's where the kids Billy says where they used to hang out with. So that's where we were talking to, at that time, and 18:30We started to get a following. And then we just launched and and honestly all all I had in mind was to launch a digital magazine. 18:39And because I was a writer. That's all I wanted. You know, and I eventually wanted to write books and stuff. But from that is like all this stuff because I made that arrangement with spirit. 18:48Now I'm like podcast Aston radio station and festival. All these things were like, not my ideas are now they've overrun the thing. So now it's like it's got a mind of its own. brandon handley19:00Reminds me of the Michael singer. Yeah, sort of experiment right um 19:07So talk about what is surrender. Spirit Guides19:11What is surrender mode. Well, I think there's two kinds of surrender mode. There's a surrender mode where we think we're surrendering 19:19Where we say we're surrendering which was me a lot. I mean, I was 19:23I've always been drawn towards spiritual and esoteric stuff so I knew I was writing before my mom that I was writing you know happiness is surrender. That's where you find happiness, but I wasn't doing it. 19:34I wasn't doing it fully. And I only realized that when I did it fully in that was when I had to when I had to fall to my knees. 19:43Because there was nothing else there and, you know, Marianne Williamson, I'm probably going to butcher the, quote, but she says something along the lines of 19:51There's a certain desperation that's required before you're ready to face God and something like that. And that's how I felt. And so to me, that is surrender mode where it's 20:02I am here to serve. 20:05Your like basically I'm using my free will to serve your will spirit. 20:12So it's 20:13To me, that's true. Surrender mode, not just like, Oh, it's okay. Let it go. That bad thing, you know, but actually surrendering to a will, that's greater than your own that's greater than your own ego as well and showing up for it every day reliably brandon handley20:29How do you show up for every day, right, like so. I get it. I love this. I love that. I love the idea of 20:36You know surrender. And it's really kind of how we started the podcast right now less fear talk through you to the listener. Right. And then that Phoenix between now and then there's a. It's kind of like the let go and let God right 20:50Right. brandon handley20:51But to actually, you know, to say it's one thing Spirit Guides20:54How to do it. brandon handley20:55How to do it without freaking out, man. Right, without freaking out because Spirit Guides21:00I never said I didn't freak out. brandon handley21:03I love it. So, um, Spirit Guides21:04But I will say this, I will say this. I mean I I wake up every morning and I meditate and I pray, basically I do that combo and and part of my prayer in my meditation is to say 21:19You know, use me how you want to use me today. 21:22And so that's a way for me that's like a action point for me every morning to state my intention which matters a lot that I'm here to be used for spirits will basically. And so whatever shows up for me that day. 21:38I'm going to do it. brandon handley21:40Yeah assessments. Nice. Right. Um, and then the other part two is 21:50Just the idea that these things keep opening up for you. And I mentioned kind of the surrender experiment from 21:56Michael singer. And the reason I mention it because once you kind of open yourself up to it to be used to be used in service through this universal power. 22:05And I love how you said you know I'm not going for it. It's going to have to come to me right 22:11You said you know what you want. This is what I want. But you know what, I surrender for you to show me the way type of thing, you know, talk a little bit about that because I think that that's 22:21That's very important. Right. I'm a big fan of the idea is like its first of all, most people won't like you said, you know what you want it right you know what you want to do you want to be a writer. 22:31You wanted to start this media company and dig into it, but you didn't know how, but now you got it. Is it fair to say Spirit Guides22:39Yeah, definitely. brandon handley22:40And so this is the point that I'm trying to drive home is that you don't have to know how, but you do have to make the decision that that's what you want a life and that's what I feel like you've done Spirit Guides22:51Right. But I agree with you. You don't have to know how I am living proof of that. You do have to know what what I will say is that asked 23:00For what, when I sit in prayer and meditation every day. I mean, I feel like that's a crucial point 23:07Because we're 23:09I had to. I had to. I didn't know that I always wanted to be a writer because I have that God given skill. 23:16You know, so that's a, that's a natural way for me to go but 23:22I didn't know. I didn't even know what necessarily either. I had to listen in meditation, like I didn't know that I was going to start a media company. 23:30Or a you know that I was gonna, I didn't even know was going to do a podcast. I didn't know the podcast was going to turn into a an internet radio station. I've got those downloads and meditation and prayer. You know what I'm saying. 23:42So, but, and I will, I will circle back to the one thing that I did know is I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that starting this digital magazine basically 23:53would grant, grant me a following. And I knew that in the publishing world today because I had been told this by writers by published writers that you have to have a following to even get looked at basically 24:04Well, and the magic numbers like 10,000, you know. So what we hit 10,000 and then it just kept expanding and expanding and expanding and I was so damn busy. Next thing you know, we're at 50,000 followers and I'm saying to spirit, listen. 24:20I still haven't written the book actually haven't even written 24:23So I'm not going to go around chasing a book deal if you want me to write a book you bring it to me. Now that sounds absurd. 24:29But three months later I had an email in my inbox, saying, hey, we have this book. It's already sold to this major publisher and we think you're great to write it, do you, what do you think brandon handley24:40So they have the concept of the book. 24:42Yeah works on a writer and they needed a writer. 24:45And you read it. Yeah. Spirit Guides24:47And that's the thing these days, they already sell the concept of books, but you know now that sets me up to write the book that I want to write to write the books that I really want to write, you know what I'm saying. So 24:56It's a pause for a second, though, because you know brandon handley25:00There's also the again. 25:04There's, there's the idea of, you know, feeling a little bit of a law of attraction space, making the demand was fear, right, or like the idea of you asking it is given and just let it come to you. 25:17Right right hand to me right if I'm coming from a law of attraction space. I'm like, Hey, I'm here, how to end up here. You're living example of this right and or of 25:28Trusting the universe is another right as like your benefactor, you're like hey universe. This is what I like. You can just go ahead and have that show up. I'm not going to go chasing it 25:40But then it shows up, and you're like, Well, what's next. Spirit Guides25:43Right. And that, that means that means it's for you because you you can go out there and say hey universe. This is what I want. 25:52I'm not going to chase it bring it to me and you're not, you might not get it. 25:57Because it's not meant for you. brandon handley25:58And that's great too. Right. Like I make the lines of, you know, if I would have had a lot of money. When I was younger, or like an open like have liked it. Like, I felt like I wanted, I probably would have died. 26:11Like, I mean, right, it would have been a bad. So the universe is like no 26:16No, no bad idea, right, you're not ready for that. Sorry. 26:20Yeah, and or we don't want you right now, right, you've got more things to do. And that's, that's another thing that I kind of look at this as like if you made it this far in your life and like you're 26:28Still kind of wandering around. I like you know for the for the person that is 26:33So meaningful life, you know, perhaps there is and you know you guys start figuring that out because there's no reason for you still be here. 26:40One 400 what a trillion to be born and make it through like not get hit by a car or a bus eaten all that crazy crappy thing that G and just in some of whatever we know what you're doing out there. Right. But you've lived 26:52And and and and so you've got a purpose and to live it. So one of the purposes that you found is by going through, you know, kind of hitting this rock bottom right, I want to just 27:03dive off dependency the grief coach and afterlife expert aspect of it because we haven't yet. Um, let's talk about how you ends up even there. Spirit Guides27:12Sure. I mean, it's kind of a wild story, um, 27:17Because I, I didn't want to end up there that wasn't I joke. I never thought in my life. I want to be a grief and afterlife expert. 27:26Can can promise you that. But, you know, after my mom passed away. And after I did the really hardcore grieving for for a while. 27:36I just, I think, you know, I had already started spirit guides and I was like, you know, 27:41Like, I want to go train to be a grief coach and it just kind of came to me and I was like, all right, I'll start looking into programs and I did and I found one. And I went and I liked it and i and i just got trained. You know, I just did it, but 27:55But, and I wasn't even 27:57I didn't even know what I was going to do with it. I just felt intuitively intuitively nudge there. So I did it. And then shortly very shortly after I had a medium ship reading 28:09And the medium. Then in the middle, in the middle of it. She's like, and she's a very, very, I had to wait a year to get a meeting with her. She's a very, very popular medium and 28:23In the middle of that she's like, What are you doing, I need to 28:27And she's like, I'm so I'm not gonna take up your time of your reading. But after this. I need to talk to you what you're doing. Like my spirit guides are telling me I need to talk to you. 28:34So we end up having a chat and she's like, Oh, I told her about spirit guides, like I've been trying to reach younger people, and she's like you and then a week later I got an email from her. And she said, I want to invite you to be to speak at this afterlife conference. 28:49And I was like, 28:51I'm not 28:54Know that, like, I'm not qualified to be here and she wrote back, I'll never forget it. And she's like, Arizona, my dear, I have been told that you are going to be a very profound afterlife researcher and you need to be at this event. And I was like, what 29:07So I went to this event to and I sat on a panel talking about spirituality, like in younger generations and my mind blew way open because I didn't know much about the afterlife, other than 29:21My mom had died. I hope she was still alive and I went to a medium to find out, you know, 29:26So I guess the, the, that's the long answer. The short answer is, like, Spirit just drove me there and And ever since that first conference, it was just so obvious that that's what I was going to be doing that I had a place in that world for whatever reason. brandon handley29:43So along with being a CEO media company you're also doing like this grief coach. Is that right, Spirit Guides29:51Yeah, you know, and you know, I hadn't dove into the coaching part as much as I wanted to. Originally, just because I have been so busy now with 30:03And and people grieving everything because grief, you know, grief, there's a misconception. That's grief, just for 30:11a loved one who's passed away grief is for any change dramatic change in your world, which we are collectively experiencing like all of the changes right now, so I am 30:24Drawing more back into that coaching aspect and I'm starting to get some things lined up in that way because I think it's so important and and I've been basically advised by all of my spiritual advisors that that's something that I need to get going on right now too, so brandon handley30:40I love it. Right. So just a little bit about what it means right to 30:45Examine death and use this kind of as a catalyst to live our riches, the most meaningful lives. Spirit Guides30:53Sure. So what people don't know is that there's so much afterlife research out there. 30:59It's not mainstream so we don't hear about it or you know it's not it's doesn't get MAJOR FUNDING so we don't hear about it, but there's so much independent afterlife research outfit out there and there's so much documentation that to me proves that consciousness exists beyond 31:18beyond physical death right i totally spaced out your question, though. I'm gonna go go off on a tangent 31:24Oh, Spirit Guides31:27I get into my afterlife brain. And I'm like, Okay. brandon handley31:30So before I let you go into the next piece of what would it so somebody wants to go buy some information for themselves in the afterlife research. Where's the first place that you would direct them. Spirit Guides31:43So there's an. There's an organization called the afterlife. Research and Education Institute AR e AI and they are great starting off point. 31:53I feel bad because I didn't fully answer your last question, but my mind. brandon handley31:56Told me Spirit Guides31:58But, uh, anyway. So that's a great place to start off at 32:02And they, you know, they are doing research, their funding researchers, all kinds of stuff and and they're just signing up on their newsletter. There's also 32:11There's a newsletter that is run by a couple in Australia. That's really famous. It's called the Friday afterlife report and every Friday, they send out a newsletter of all this afterlife research that's either 32:23From the past or that's come up in the past week there's tons of it out there. So those are the two places I would start the afterlife report. It's with Victor and Wendy's dammit, and then AR e AI afterlife. Research and Education Institute or brandon handley32:38So the question we had was, um, how's examining death. And what happened was the absolute best way to move on. Spirit Guides32:48So, yes, yes, yes, yes. See, now that's a very important question. That's why I was having a hard time letting it go. Um, it's so important because of all the research that's out there, which is what I was getting into. 33:02It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind, from what I've seen. And what I've learned and what I've experienced and what I've researched that 33:10our physical bodies dies die, but our souls. Do not that we continue to live in the afterlife. Okay, so with that being said, the information that our loved ones that spirit guides 33:23That Spirit Guides33:25That arc angels, all of these beings and entities that are in on the other side, the information that can be channeled through them is so vital. 33:37To how we live our best lives. So it's, it's an interesting paradox because we don't tend to think about death or the afterlife until we're faced with it because we're so busy thinking about life and 33:47How we can live our best lives, but from what I've learned is that we can learn a lot about living our best lives from that wisdom that comes through the other side. 34:00And it's a shame that people I feel it's a shame that people my age don't get to do that very often because I'm the youngest one at these events. Okay, like 34:09I still don't know many people that have lost their primary you know parent or something like that, that in my age group, and my peer group so they feel like they are 34:19getting robbed of that wisdom because they're not going to go looking into the death or the afterlife. So I do kind of feel like 34:26It's my job to sort of bridge that gap because there's so much knowledge about how we can best live our lives that comes from looking at those more taboo topics. brandon handley34:37You know what's funny to me is just this morning I was listening to a song, ya know which one I listened to so many um I got a Swami the chain. I'm the 34:49But the idea is that, like, there's one in 1000 that's capable of kind of taking this information right that the what you got. Right, so 35:00You're kind of the light is lighting all those around you, as it were, with what you do. So I think that that's kind of the challenge, no matter what age group is 35:09Right when you when you kind of stumble across this you know it's like you're saying you're like everybody needs to know that you can live this magnificent way. Let's follow me. We're gonna sneak in and and 35:20Rightfully nobody's like I was like, no. 35:23Um, but what I want to hit on though is that, you know, when you experienced this grief when you experienced though your mother's passing 35:36I guess like ripping the veil right between you and the spirit world and 35:42Would you, would you explain it like that. Would you describe it like that. And would you 35:47Would you describe your experience with trying to share this information with other people is being challenging and not being able to accept it. Spirit Guides35:56Um, 35:59Yeah there it was totally an unveiling will say brought me so much closer. I mean, it was even the night, my mom passed away I her apparition came to me and I was awake, like, and she came and hugged me so the veil yeah it thinned an immensely immediately. 36:20Has the information been hard for me to get out and for people to accept. 36:27I want the answer to be that it's been really difficult. Like for dramatic effect, but it hasn't it hasn't. And I think that's because 36:37I'm attracting the people that want it. I'm not, I'm not trying to go out there and be a missionary or 36:44Or an evangelical about anything, you know, and I have zero religious ties or affiliation, which is interesting with afterlife. I mean, every, every 36:53Every serious spiritual or I'm sorry, every spirit serious religion has believed in the afterlife and has after life. 37:01Philosophy and I think that, you know, obviously, a lot of people thrown out religion in their lives. And I think that was kind of like we threw the baby out with the bathwater, kind of thing. 37:10So I'm not, I'm not attached to any religion or anything like that. So I don't think that I come off as missionary. I just think I, I tried to share my authentic experience and people who are looking for. 37:23Some answers to their own grief. They find me and it's so far the. The result has been one of comforting for them, rather than 37:34You know, combative or I don't believe what you're saying. So I maybe I'm fortunate in that but you know it hasn't it hasn't been too difficult. It's actually been very rewarding. I think brandon handley37:44I can see that, especially online. What about a person Spirit Guides37:48Well in person. It's like I'm 37:49Preaching the choir, you know, I'm going to 37:52But I will say this, I will say, even in my because I told you about my history as a, you know, being in the spiritual closet and everything, even the people in my life who like my family who's known me forever and 38:02You know weren't into these things at all. They just by osmosis have 38:07By coming to my events by hearing my podcast, things like that. And now they're there, you know, exploring their own stuff and their own afterlife. And now they've 38:16Had certain people passed away and they're reaching out to mediums and investigating like oh yeah I remember Arizona said this, so let me invest it on my own. So it's kind of like planting the seeds, you know, brandon handley38:27Not 100% i think that what you've done is, is by your by leading by example you've given them permission. Right. 38:33Yeah, showing them that you can step into the space without going on claims. 38:39Right, right. That is a good that it can be a good thing. Um, I like that you kind of touched on, you know, kind of these religions and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and 38:51As far as I can tell right religions are kind of like this. 38:56Again, just like one of the thousands going to kind of understand this information right and then my kind of wants to do this just the whole 39:03You know, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear right and then does you like Panda hated that lines real 39:11Quick. Um, but the thing. And I think that's the attraction of some of the Eastern philosophies right because they've been so the console like 39:19Christianity bad, you know, the pope did this and you know those priests did that and all these things so that like they just won't accept it, even though, like the exact same thing as being in 99% of the same 39:30thing over here and like these Eastern religions and they're all if you got a contract is out, man. Look what I found, like 39:36You know, so I think that it really gives us people the opportunity to framework right for for their space. 39:43And for everybody else is kind of rejected if there's people like yourself, and I don't like, well, there's this other space. We can hang out into what's been said and all these other places, but you just want to have this different same conversation. Let's do it. 39:54Right, right, right. Um, 39:56Let's talk about 39:57The fest coming up. So this is podcast, I'm probably you know this weekend, which will I know the dates are like 928 or something like that. 40:09But you know what's the festival. Let's talk about what you got a Spirit Guides40:12Spiritual brandon handley40:13On 2020 Spirit Guides40:14Cool. Yeah. So it's the conscious spirit fest. It's a collaboration between myself. 40:20And my company spirit guides media and Mona Loring and her company conscious living PR and so it's conscious spirit fest. It's on October 10 or no, it's not. It's on October 18 I was thinking 10 for October is on October 18 2020 40:36It's a Sunday, and it's basically it's an all day online virtual festival, because that's what we're doing now virtual all day long and 40:45We're so excited about it. We basically curated the event that we wanted to have right now. 40:51You know we are lonely and isolated and we do need spiritual community, one way or another right now. And so we wanted to build something for people to 41:02Unite and people who who are want to focus on Unity right now in this crazy polarized role. And so we've. We have everything from yoga in the morning to guided meditations to sound healing to breath work. And then we have amazing speakers that are talking about everything from 41:21How to deal with this pandemic burnout to energy protection for light workers, we're going to have a medium come and do live medium ship readings and we our keynote speaker is column Adele, who's an astrologer, and he's going to be talking about 41:38You know the astrology coming up, you know, for 20 2021 and all that. And in astrology in these uncertain times and what what what we might have to look forward to, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly or whatever. 41:51So, so, yeah. It's basically a day for everybody to come together and do all things mystical and create a spiritual community and 41:58And hang out together. So we're really, really excited about it. brandon handley42:02Now this sounds exciting. Like I said, you know, I think I saw Mona's paying off on Instagram. I saw start following it, and it seems like you know 42:10I love what you guys are putting together their talk to me a little bit about the astrologer, I think he's got like a little bit of a baton. What's his What's his Spirit Guides42:17So called Collins handle on Instagram is queer cosmos. And so he has he's he's and he is 42:24He's an amazing gay man and he started doing astrology for the queer community and which is was novel at the time, you know, and but more than that. I mean, he is 42:35He's one of my favorite guests have on my podcast. I'll say that right now. He's so enjoyable. He's brilliant. I mean IQ off the charts and he's he's so fun. So anytime that he's around. It's a good time. And I definitely recommend following him on Instagram at clear cosmos. He's great. brandon handley42:55So yeah, I remember that you're seeing them and chocolate. 42:59Yeah. brandon handley43:00Funny Guy when I grew up. I grew up, like in the gay community, you know, was out in San Francisco, San Francisco in the 80s right and and the one thing that happened out there was like my mom was an altercation with 43:16Her significant other, at the time, and he ended up by children and stuff. And so I ran across it, you know, the neighborhood and got these guys on the bed and they came. I can't rescue my mom so 43:28Oh wow, for the rest of my life, you know, gay guys have a 43:30Have a soft spot in my heart. Right. And it's just been in that community. It's, it's fun, right. Like, I mean, Spirit Guides43:36Oh, there's no doubt about that. brandon handley43:37So it's always a good time. 43:39See on 43:40Where, you know, should I send people to come check out more actually know what before I do that, 43:45I've done this for a minute, just because you know so the idea to have spiritual though. 43:48Is that you get this kind of you for high thru spirituality. Right. And that's like on the on the take us a spiritual dope is about that and then like 43:58You know, what's your spiritual hit right like and it talks about meditation, but when you when you're connected to source where, what does that look like Spirit Guides44:08Whoo. Yeah, there's, there's two for me. So definitely meditation. I'm a avid meditation or 44:15But their original Oh gee, writing, man. That's my space. That's my timelessness, that's the 44:20One place where I don't care if I haven't eaten and that's saying a lot. I love to eat. You know what I'm saying. Like that's that's the time where time flies and I just 44:30I'm in so much joy and I'm so inspired. I'm in spirit. You know that's that's where it is for me is when I'm writing. And so this man I'm preaching to myself right now. I got to clear it more time in my schedule to do it. 44:43But yeah, that's my spiritual dope for sure is is being in that creative zone. 44:50I love that question. brandon handley44:52Thank you. So the idea that too is like i mean i would i would i would say that 45:00You know, create you are creators right 45:03Yeah. And then when you surrender to that creativity. That's 45:08within you, right, that is source flowing through you. Is that fair to say Spirit Guides45:13Oh yeah 100%. I mean, we would we call God the Creator. And if you look at metaphysical principles as above, so below. We are here to create 45:26You know, and that's why that nine to five working somebody else's dream and fluorescent lit room didn't work for me because I felt that called to be creative. I felt, what am I doing here, if I'm not creating brandon handley45:37Something Spirit Guides45:38And now you can be creative, creative doesn't mean writing or painting all the time, creative can mean coming up with a scientific cure for cancer or whatever, you know, using your creative brain. You're in passionate about it. And so I absolutely agree with you. brandon handley45:52I love that you hit on life because 45:55People don't always recognize that they feel like creativity has to be writing painting singing, dancing. Spirit Guides46:02Brain, the arts. brandon handley46:03The classical arts 46:05Yeah, right. But 46:08And I know as somebody one day. 46:11You just got it. What is it that you'd like to create and I'm like, Well, I'm not very creative like 46:14You know you're raising kids are doing this that the other than your training things right, you're making moments, you're creating moments I mean creativity is more than, you know, put a pretty picture right so I love that you hit on that. Thanks for hanging on that. 46:29Yeah, what type of meditation do you do it, you Spirit Guides46:34Got just you didn't do not asked me that question. 46:37I am I am not. 46:39Trained in meditation at all. I'm self taught and 46:44For whatever reason, I'm pretty good at it. I just I lay down you can see my bed back there. I lay down horizontally. I don't sit in lotus position or anything I lay down on my bed. 46:54I play some Native American flute music and I go in 46:57Los brandon handley46:59That's great to write in terms of meditation or a feeling it's got to be done a certain way or like, yeah, I did a really shitty meditation this morning. Spirit Guides47:09I i think 47:11I think I you know it's the keep it simple, stupid like that's that's been my philosophy for 47:17My spiritual path and it's what's worked out for me. Like I and I you know in my company I've seen it all. I promote people that do it all. I'm talking like all the all the modalities and the 47:29Divination tactics and all this stuff and I'm Oh gee prayer and meditation and you know we all just got to do what works for us. brandon handley47:38To so they 47:40Just show us what your prayer. Looks like I always say this because I think of this Norman Vincent feel kind of skip 47:49It's not as good. It's like when he's doing his own in power positive thinking thing. 47:53And talks about this lady testing because you when you pray you don't like out there like a beggar. 47:59You know, you're like oh please give me all these things would you like you demand you know much very somewhere, come what you're talking about, like, 48:07I'm not going after it. It's got to come to me like these are things I want you know. So what's your, what's your prayer look like. Just out of curiosity, Spirit Guides48:13Yeah, I mean it's it. That is a good point it start, the only it starts always with gratitude. 48:20Always with gratitude and and then I do go into my demands. I do feeling that I've, I've had the shift from beggar to 48:30You know, this is, this is what I this is what is going to be brought to me and I, and I've learned that over time through spiritual mentors, saying, you know, you 48:38This is yours for the taking. You can you demand that so I start with gratitude and and I pray for you know what I need. In most of the time that's to take away my 48:50Worries and stresses and concerns because that's the only thing in my way. So I do pray for that to be taken and I pray for the people that I love and I pray that 49:02You know that love walks before me wherever I go. And then I pray to be used, how spirit needs me. And then I say, thank you. 49:11Yeah. brandon handley49:12Um, this will be like my last question. 49:17So when you. I like the idea of writing when you write 49:24With a pen in hand right or doesn't have to be. But I feel like that's what I'm most connected. I like to call it cosmic record player. This is my cosmic needle right 49:36You know, do you have a preference of writing by hand or typing. Spirit Guides49:41I'm 49:43I'm right differently. I write, I write both ways. And I write for different reasons I I write. I typically write 49:52Pen in Hand in my journal when I'm writing for myself and nobody else if that makes sense. And for my own clarity and my own as you say connection. 50:03But it's all about the computer for everything else. 50:07My hand hurts too much. brandon handley50:10Out of out of curiosity, right, like yourself. Once Spirit Guides50:13I do agree with you though there's there's different 50:16A whole different vibe. When you got the pen in your hand. Right, right. brandon handley50:20Now, and look, I mean, it takes a lot to to write Tom by paper. 50:27Pretty fast, man. Spirit Guides50:28Yeah, exactly. brandon handley50:31Okay, so where we're gonna need to go a couple places or warm place. So we're gonna go to find you and the spirit fast. Spirit Guides50:39Sure, I'm okay. Ultimately, you can go to spirit guides media.com for everything that I do. And on top of the navigation. 50:48At spirit guides media com you will see a link that says festival and that is where you can learn more about it. You can see the lineup. The full lineup. I didn't touch on everything. 50:58And also purchase tickets and we are offering a sliding scale pay what you can because times are tough and that is 51:05I feel the responsible thing to do. So we have that offered and other than that, you can find me on instagram at spirit guides media or my personal one is at underscore Arizona bell. I think that covers everything brandon handley51:20No. 51:22Um, well, this event view digitally after the past Spirit Guides51:28Great question. Can't believe I forgot to say that. Absolutely. So if you are able to catch none of it live or half of it live or all of it live and want to watch it again. We will send out a replay of the entire day video. So you'll get to see it all. brandon handley51:43Awesome, Arizona. Thank you so much for stopping by. Spirit Guides51:45Thanks, Brandon. It's been a joy and a pleasure.

In this episode we discuss...our five points on the rural pastor and social media!CAVEAT: social media can be a blessing to disseminate a biblical, God glorifying message. We obviously use different platforms for the podcast, but we caution why, how, and when they are used.Social Media can be a CESSPOOL.1 Thessalonians 3:11-13It seems as if we have enough trouble working on personal holiness and living blameless lives in the real world! Why launch yourself blindly into a world with far more opportunities for sin and far fewer natural and logical consequences. Social Media can be a PEEP SHOW.1 Thessalonians 4:3-8Not only for highly charged sexual immorality.It seems like everybody has an agenda and is highly trained at getting clicks. Why do you want to dive into someplace where so many people are rewarded specifically for getting you to react?Social Media can be more of a CAGE MATCH.1 Thessalonians 4:9-10It provides horrible context for brotherly love.Social media can be worse than the sin the CROUCHES AT YOUR DOOR.1 Thessalonians 4:11It’s in your pocket! It can be a great temptation against living quietly and minding our own affairs.Social media can be a MAGNIFYING GLASS.1 Thessalonians 4:12You better watch every step if you are going to walk properly before outsiders, because they are watching you! Stuff Rural Pastors Can Use Review:Need some new music? Listen to these Christian Hip-Hop artistsShai Linne's Lyrical Theology pt. I & IITimothy Brindle's The UnfoldingChrys Jones' Whose Lives Matter?Beautiful Eulogy's WorthyOur Quote of the Day:“Our preaching is not the reason the Word works, the Word is the reason our preaching works!” H.B. CharlesCONTACT (give us feedback, topic ideas, or just say hey)Call and leave a message at (570) 724-3741Email: ruralpastorstalk@gmail.comWebsite: http://ruralpastorstalk.buzzsprout.com/SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: http://facebook.com/ruralpastorstalkTwitter: @ruralpastorsLISTENItunesSpotifyStitcherGoogle Play

Episode 104 – Grapes in the Desert Pt 4: Trusting Godi.fb-icon-element.fontawesome-icon.fb-icon-element-78{ color: #515151;}i.fb-icon-element.fontawesome-icon.fb-icon-element-78:hover { color: #e00400;}i.fontawesome-icon.fb-icon-element-78.icon-hover-animation-pulsate:after {-webkit-box-shadow:0 0 0 2px rgba(255,255,255,0.1), 0 0 10px 10px #101018, 0 0 0 10px rgba(255,255,255,0.5);-moz-box-shadow:0 0 0 2px rgba(255,255,255,0.1), 0 0 10px 10px #101018, 0 0 0 10px rgba(255,255,255,0.5);box-shadow: 0 0 0 2px rgba(255,255,255,0.1), 0 0 10px 10px #101018, 0 0 0 10px rgba(255,255,255,0.5);}Key Passage(s): Exodus 13:21; Exodus 14:10-12You’re not where you were, and you’re not where you’re going to be. You’re in between. Welcome to the wilderness. It’s in these ambiguous spaces where we either become who God is inviting us to be or we shrink into the smaller, more manageable stories we write for ourselves. Because it’s easier to be a slave in Egypt than to trust God in the desert. But no one aspires to be the person who shrinks. We want to learn to trust well and become all God intended for us to be. This teaching will give you practical ways to grow your trust in God in hard times. Discussion Questions What was your biggest takeaway from the teaching? How do you feel about the statement, “It’s easier to be a slave in Egypt than to trust God in the desert?” In what ways have you experienced that to be true in your life? What are one or two moments from your life where you felt like you really trusted God? What made your trust level so high in those moments? What are some of the small, daily ways you choose to trust in yourself instead of in God? What sliding door moments are before you now? How will you engage them? How will you begin living out the truths of this teaching this week? For Further Study The Bible and the Land by Gary M. Burge – Chapter 3 is on the desert  The Land Between by Jeff Manion – Outstanding book on navigating the deserts of our lives 

Some of the survivors have just gotten out of a car wreck, and are now surrounded by zombies and other half-turned monsters. Those in the water and power building look on helplessly. Meanwhile, other survivors find themselves in a parking garage where they make an unexpected discovery.This is a narrative of a campaign from Outbreak Undead, the role playing game about the zombie apocalypse.If you'd like to see a visualization of this episode, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlEgEqOoyd8&list=PLE27g8yycE_GB_AAXAoH3Rr0od6S-IPjC&index=12You can learn more about Outbreak Undead here: https://www.huntersentertainment.com/outbreakundeadYou can visit our website here: https://bandwagongames.com/

Sheppton Pennsylvania like many small towns in Pennsylvania used to live, breath and eat coal. It was a coal-mining town, just like so many others. However, on August 13, 1963, three men would enter a defunct mine at Oneida Slope number 2. Hank Thorne, Dave Fellin, and Lois Bova went down into the darkness at 7:30 AM; two of them wouldn't see daylight for 14 days. One would never see daylight again.WikiPedia article about Sheppton, PennsylvaniaWikiPedia article about Blackdampwww.eastuniontownship.com/thrones-account-of-the-sheppton-mine-disaster/Sheppton: The Myth, Miracle & Music, Maxim W. Furek. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1st edition (December 31, 2015). www.amazon.com/gp/product/1519145985/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1stuofdoom.com/main/?p=3097Almost a year before the Sheppton incident a very different mining disaster took place. In 1963 in the little town of Centralia PA a coal fire would start and still burns to this day. Coal mining started in the area around Centralia in the 1850’s. The mining became a boom and Centralia would grow into a community of 2,761 at its peak in the 1890’s. Coal would be the lifeblood of the little town but it would also be it’s undoing.YouTube video (IFZqWRtYvpM)www.centraliapa.orgWikiPedia article about Centralia, PennsylvaniaWikiPedia article about Centralia mine firewww.theverge.com/2019/4/2/18290774/centralia-pennsylvania-ghost-town-underground-fire-bacteria-microbes-microbiology-sciencewww.businessinsider.com/photos-of-centralia-pennsylvania-burning-coal-town-2011-11#some-residents-spent-the-next-few-decades-fighting-to-keep-their-homes-even-though-they-had-officially-been-seized-by-authorities-12You can follow the show on Twitter or Facebook @stscast, or on Instagram@stscast.gramThis week's featured podcast is Wasting Time PodcastAnd be sure to check out Big Heads Media for more great pods!Also hit up Dirty Knees Soap Co. for some fantastic soap and other products! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

​​Documentary starts at 18:12You no longer have to watch things alone! With Docu-Commentary, you can watch documentaries while listening to Travis and Chase provide colorful and hilarious commentary. Sounds so good right? Well thank you, you're very welcome. You're very polite and we're happy to have you as a listener.This episode we watched the hit Documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on Netflix. People have been going crazy over this one and for good reas [...]

Managing your finances, as well as your life is for some people a real challenge, in this episode, Irvin talks about how your life evolves as he speaks with Alan Krantz, who is a full-time musician and teacher. He also talks about his investment philosophy and how to reinvest dividends.   Highlights: Alan's background - 0:45Alan tells us who he is - 3:50You have to spend less than you make - 4:00How to think about investing - 4:45Saving money before you pay your bills - 6:52When he started guitar lessons - 7:53No matter what, you have to start saving money - 8:54Alan tells us what he decided when he retired - 11:30Why long term investment is the key - 15:19Alan recommends to not lose money - 15:54A blessing that he learned from his father - 21:12You can be what you want to be - 29:05   Reinvent Rich Community: Subscribe with Apple Podcasts Follow on Spotify Listen on Stitcher

Get ready for another new episode of Whose Line, with special guest Cornelius Smith Jr. And from his performance on duet, to unusual love songs on Scenes from a hat, this is a really good episode of Whose Line that you do not want to miss!! And remember to follow me on Twitter @postmasterradio and feel free to tweet to me your favourite moments from the episode!Catch up on last week's episode via the previous Whose Line podcast, which you can check out here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10204202/whose-line-is-it-anyway-season-14-episod_12You can also follow me on Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10204202

Welcome to Shenantics with Skxnky and mcul where they discuss life on the Internet. New episodes are released on Monday morning. On today's episode:mp3 players - iriver - other old mp3 players - mcul's fat iPod nanomcul bought shelves 14:50Knowing all the Chicago streamers 17:00Skxnky blend tea 19:47mcul isn't allowed to go to REI 21:20mcul's bad day 23:02NY Trip follow up 30:12You should buy this 32:29New York Times online redesign 35:29 - Lionel Richie's sheets articlemcul walks face-first into an Overwatch trap 38:34Food finish and band names: Frozen pizza 51:14Atrocious trombone 57:21Remember to rate and review Shenantics! Also follow us on Twitter at @shenanticspod. If you have any feedback, followup, or questions you can email us at shenanticspodcast@gmail.com.You can check out their Twitch streams throughout the week at:twitch.tv/skxnkytwitch.tv/mcul_And follow them on Twitter at:@iSkanky@mcul_Join the discussion over on Discord (Skxnky and mcul)Intro song credit: https://soundcloud.com/kubbi/up-in-my-jam-all-of-a-sudden

Laclede Community Church - Your mountain community church in Laclede, Idaho. An Exposition of I Thess. 2:10-12You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers; just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy […] The post I Thess. 2:10-12 | Super Dad appeared first on Laclede Community Church.

Activating God's Favor - 05.22.16 Favor is “preferential treatment” shown to someone. Favor denotes someone’s acceptance, approval and pleasure. In order to activate favor, you must first have favor. The way to activate God’s favor in your life is to recognize where you already have it. 1 Peter 2:9, 10 NASB But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY. Greek word for favor: CHARIS In the New Testament, this word is translated “grace.” Grace (and favor) is essentially a gift. FAVOR IS A+ THINKING. Your belief about your favored status is one of the most important beliefs you have. Satan HATES it. HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR FAVOR? The Story Of Joseph’s Favor - Genesis 39 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the bodyguard, bought him from the Ishmaelites, who had taken him down there. 2And the LORD was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. 3Now his master saw that the LORD was with him and how the LORD caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. 4So Joseph found favor in his sight. (Turtle On Fencepost Picture) What have I done with the favor (preferential treatment) I already have? What Fencepost Have You Already Been Placed On? Proverbs 18:16 NASB77 A man’s gift makes room for him, And brings him before great men. “Go where you are Celebrated - Not Tolerated!” Who Tolerates You? Who Celebrates You? Psalm 85:11 GOD'S WORD Translation The LORD God is a sun and shield. The LORD grants favor and honor. He does not hold back any blessing from those who live innocently. Psalm 5:11-12 GOD'S WORD Translation But let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them sing with joy forever. Protect them, and let those who love your name triumph in you. 12You bless righteous people, O LORD. Like a large shield, you surround them with your favor. Jesus Is Baptized - Luke 3:21, 22 Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, 22and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

4:9-12 9You have captured my heart, my treasure, my bride. You hold it hostage with one glance of your eyes, with a single jewel of your necklace. 10Your love delights me, my treasure, my bride. Your love is better than wine, your perfume more fragrant than spices. 11Your lips are as sweet as nectar, my bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue. Your clothes are scented like the cedars of Lebanon. 12You are my private garden, my treasure, my bride, a secluded spring, a hidden fountain. 5:9-16, Her Words... 10My lover is dark and dazzling, better than ten thousand others! 11His head is finest gold, his wavy hair is black as a raven. 12His eyes sparkle like doves beside springs of water; they are set like jewels washed in milk. 13His cheeks are like gardens of spices giving off fragrance. His lips are like lilies, perfumed with myrrh. 14His arms are like rounded bars of gold, set with beryl. His body is like bright ivory, glowing with lapis lazuli. 15His legs are like marble pillars set in sockets of finest gold. His posture is stately, like the noble cedars of Lebanon. 16His mouth is sweetness itself; he is desirable in every way. Such, O women of Jerusalem, is my lover, my friend. 6:4-10, His Words... 4You are beautiful, my darling, like the lovely city of Tirzah. Yes, as beautiful as Jerusalem, as majestic as an army with billowing banners. 5Turn your eyes away, for they overpower me. Your hair falls in waves, like a flock of goats winding down the slopes of Gilead. 6Your teeth are as white as sheep that are freshly washed. Your smile is flawless, each tooth matched with its twin. 7Your cheeks are like rosy pomegranates behind your veil. 8Even among sixty queens and eighty concubines and countless young women, 9I would still choose my dove, my perfect one—the favorite of her mother, dearly loved by the one who bore her. The young women see her and praise her; even queens and royal concubines sing her praises: 10“Who is this, arising like the dawn, as fair as the moon, as bright as the sun, as majestic as an army with billowing banners?” 7:6,7 6Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealous as enduring as the grave. Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame. 7Many waters cannot quench love, nor can rivers drown it. If a man tried to buy love with all his wealth, his offer would be utterly scorned. Focus & Fight (slide...for each line all the way through message.) Focus…on what excites you! (slide) Fight…for your relationship! (slide) Invest & Ignore Invest…time, energy, and money to feed the flame! Ignore…the little things that drive you apart! Remember & Release Remember…the story of how God brought you together! Release…hurts that build walls around your heart! Enjoy & Embrace Enjoy…marital pleasure early and often! Embrace…marital passion as a way of life!

On our New years show, our 1st guest companions of 2015 are our friends & 'Sarah Jane Smiths' Mike and Andy from AM Audio Media and joining us for the first time, their sound man Joshua Hemming. We catch up on the upcoming series 2 of their Doctor Who audio adventure Dark Journey, their thoughts on 'Last Christmas' and all our resolutions for 2015.Warning, this one has some strong language and contains some alleged talk about Bill Cosby, some may find offensive.Gallifrey Stands is sponsored by DottiesCharms.co.uk & @DottiesCharms on twitterOur GeekStick lip balm is still available @ https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/209093664/gallifrey-stands-geek-stix-inspired-by?ref=shop_home_active_12You can find Doctor Who Dark Journey at AMaudioMedia.com & @AMaudioMedia