Podcasts about 43but

GOSPEL POWER l SEPTEMBER 1, 2021 l WEDNESDAY 22nd Week in Ordinary Time Gospel: Lk 4:38-44 38After leaving the synagogue Jesus entered Simon's house. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. 39Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them. 40As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them. 41Demons also came out of many, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Messiah. 42At daybreak he departed and went into a deserted place. And the crowds were looking for him; and when they reached him, they wanted to prevent him from leaving them. 43But he said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.” 44So he continued proclaiming the message in the synagogues of Judea. In this account of a typical day in the ministry of Jesus, we get a glimpse of what occupies the prime place in his life. “At daybreak” — the very first hour of the day, Jesus seeks to be in communion with his Father. The “deserted place” is a space-ofintimacy from where Jesus draws strength for his demanding mission. Spending time in the deserted place keeps him anchored in his Father's will and clear about the purpose of his coming. Success and his growing popularity in a locality cannot persuade him to prolong his stay. The Father's will is the compass that orients his every move. With this, he reveals the secret for living a full and purposive life. Lord Jesus, amidst the bustle of our everyday life, beckon us to that deserted place where you await us to renew our strength to continue the journey. Amen

Michele Hansen  00:00Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I'm passionate about customer service and listening to customers. A few months ago, we noticed something wasn't working on the Oh Dear dashboard. We reported it to them, and they fixed it almost immediately. Everybody has bugs occasionally, but not every company is so responsive to their customers, and we really appreciate that. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. Colleen Schnettler  00:35So Michele, I'd love to hear about how things are going with the book.  Michele Hansen  00:40They're going. Um, so after our episode with Sean last week, I realized that I kind of, I have to launch this thing eventually, right?  Colleen Schnettler  00:54Yes.  Michele Hansen  00:55And, you know, for, you know, I mean, for months I've been hearing that advice of, you know, do a, do a presale and like, start selling it beforehand, And, and I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, I, that's the best practice. That makes sense. And then just kind of be like, but that doesn't apply to me, right? Like, I couldn't make, um. It's, you know, it's funny, because it's almost, I feel like the way people feel about when they hear about customer interviewing, they're like, that sounds really valuable and like the right thing to do, and I'm just gonna act like that doesn't apply to me.  Colleen Schnettler  01:29Yep.  Michele Hansen  01:30So that's kind of how I was, and talking to Sean really kind of got me to be like, okay, okay, fine. I should actually sit down and do this. So I got a very simple website together, and then I actually did end up launching the presale.  Colleen Schnettler  01:46Oh, congratulations.  Michele Hansen  01:48Yeah, that was super scary. Like, because the book  Colleen Schnettler  01:50I bet. Michele Hansen  01:53And, like, random places where it says like, insert graphic here. Colleen Schnettler  02:01So tell us how many books have you sold?  Michele Hansen  02:03Okay, yeah, so I guess I get to do, like, a numbers update for the first time. This is fun. Um, so I have sold 34 copies.  Colleen Schnettler  02:15Wow.  Michele Hansen  02:16Presale. Colleen Schnettler  02:17That's a lot.  Michele Hansen  02:18So, and that's not including for like, you know, platform fees and whatever. Just like, you know, $29 times 34, basically. $986.  Colleen Schnettler  02:32That's amazing. Congratulations!  Michele Hansen  02:35So close to that, like, 1000 mark, which, I was talking about this with Mathias earlier, and he's kind of like, I feel like that's like a, you know, that's like, the legit threshold, is 1000. Like, and I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, it's like that feels like, that feels like the, the, like, the first big hurdle.  Colleen Schnettler  02:55I totally agree. That's wonderful news. Congratulations.  Michele Hansen  03:00You know, I expected to feel excited, or relieved, or something positive after releasing it, or the presale, at least. And I gotta tell you, like, I just feel pressure. Like, I'm really glad I didn't do this sooner.  Colleen Schnettler  03:25Really?  Michele Hansen  03:27Yeah. Because now I have, you know, at least 34 people I can't disappoint. Colleen Schnettler  03:32Right.  Michele Hansen  03:32And I feel like, just like, the pressure to make something that is a quality product, like, I already had that pressure on myself to put something out there that I'm proud of.  Colleen Schnettler  03:44Yeah. Michele Hansen  03:46Now I have all these other people who are expecting that, and not that anyone has emailed me and said anything to that effect, but that's how I feel. And I was thinking about this earlier. And I was like, man, like, writing and selling this book has like, brought out all of these, like, vulnerabilities and, and self-doubt and everything, like all of this stuff that I like, thought I had dealt with and then it's, like, sort of like bursting out of the cabinet, being like, hey, I'm still here. So it's, you know, I mean, I have tools to, like, deal with that, but it's been like, oh my gosh, like, I thought I had dealt with, like, I never feel this way about anything about Geocodio, like, so.  Colleen Schnettler  04:33So, this is interesting, because I, when I was feeling a similar way, many months ago, I don't actually know if I talked about it on the podcast, but I had a very high value client that I had a great relationship with that needed a file uploader, and mine wasn't quite done, and I had this moment of terror, panic, I don't know, where I was like, I shouldn't use mine because, because if I put it on my client's site, like, it has to work, right? There's no get out of jail free card, Kind of like, you've now sold this book. Like, you have to finish it.  Michele Hansen  05:07Right. It's not just like, throwing it in a PDF and then like.  Colleen Schnettler  05:09Yeah.  Michele Hansen  05:10Oh, whatever, nobody paid for it. Like, it's not a big deal. Like, it's like, no, this is, like, this is serious now.  Colleen Schnettler  05:17Yeah. And I think something that, that I'm thinking of as you're talking about this, I remember at the time, Alex Hillman had a really great tweet thread about you're not scared of failure, maybe you're secretly scared of success.  Michele Hansen  05:32Mm hmm.  Colleen Schnettler  05:33It was really interesting. Like, just when you think about, like, the psychology and all of these new insecurities coming to light for you, like, maybe you're scared of success.  Michele Hansen  05:42You know, and it's so I feel like we should have them on the podcast more, because I feel like they are, like, Amy and Alex in some way are like characters on this podcast, they're just not actually on the podcast. But like, the amount we talk about, you know, 30x500 and everything. She had, I think, I think it was her, or maybe, no, or maybe it was Dani Donovan, the woman who does the ADHD comics. But I think it was Amy, had a thread, like, couple months ago that was like, you know, people with, or maybe, I don't know if she has ADHD, so I don't know if this was her. Okay. Somebody had a thread that was like, you know, people with ADHD, like, you don't ever feel accomplished when you finish something. It's just over. And then you're on to the next thing. And it was like, yes, like, I expected to feel something when I finally got that out there, and now it instead feels like, oh, now I have to put in the graphics. Now I have to do the cover art. Like now I have to like, like, it just, it didn't, there was never this, like, moment of, like, feeling accomplished or anything like that. It just, it just rolled into the next thing. Colleen Schnettler  06:58Interesting. I don't, I don't have that problem. Like, that doesn't happen to me. I mean, but it's interesting, I find that interesting because one of the things, for me, is when I accomplish something, even if, I feel like if I'd been in your position and I got the presales out there, I do feel that, like, internal satisfaction of hitting that goal, and that's what keeps me motivated. So, if you don't get that same kind of dopamine hit, doesn't that make the whole process kind of painful? It doesn't sound fun.  Michele Hansen  07:28Well, what I do get that from is people, like, you know, positive reinforcement from other people. Like, so I've been asking people for testimonials to put at the front of the book. And on the one hand, that terrifies me, and, and then on the other hand, when they do come in, and people are talking about how the, the book and also sort of newsletter and like, like, all this, all this stuff is all sort of meshing together, has helped them, and what it has helped them do, and how they wish they'd had it sooner and everything. Like, that makes me feel good. That makes me feel like I am delivering the, like, a product that is worth somebody paying for, and that I can be proud of seeing how it's impacted other people. But I like I, I don't really get satisfaction out of achieving things, which is really ironic, because I think about younger versions of myself and I've like, you know, I describe me in high school as an achievement robot, like. Colleen Schnettler  08:39An achievement robot.  Michele Hansen  08:41Yeah, you know, you're, like, just taking as many AP's as you can and your life is over if you don't get in a top college. You know, that whole, that whole song and dance that turned out to be a lie, because now I work for myself. Not at all bitter about that. Anyway, um, yeah, it's but, this, so that is really, like, keeping me going or like, people tweeting out you like, hey, like, what is the book coming out? And part of me is like, oh, my God, am I gonna get them by then? But like, I've been getting a lot of really good reinforcement from people, and that, and I think that's, for me, that's been one of the really big benefits of building in public is not, not necessarily knowing that, exactly that people are going to pay for it and how much they're going to pay and having that money up front, but knowing that I'm creating something that is useful for people. Like, that is what keeps me going. Colleen Schnettler  09:31That sounds great, too.  Michele Hansen  09:33But now I got to finish the damn thing, so.  Colleen Schnettler  09:35Yeah. Now you gotta finish it.  Michele Hansen  09:37I was saying that the release date would be June 24. I actually just had to push that back to July 2, because I just, I don't think I have enough time.  Colleen Schnettler  09:44Yeah. Michele Hansen  09:45I do have an idea for the cover. Like, I want it to be like a terminal printout that's like, basically like installing, like, you know, like installing like empathy and like, loading scripts. Colleen Schnettler  10:00That'll be cute.  Michele Hansen  10:01Like, sort of corny. Developers aren't the only audience for it. But I also want them to know that this is a resource that is, like, accessible to them.  Colleen Schnettler  10:14Yeah. Michele Hansen  10:15I don't know. I have zero artistic abilities, like, I can't even, like, think visually, like, so I have so many people who are reviewing the draft right now, which is pretty amazing. Some of them are, like, super close friends of mine who are harsh editors, and I'm super grateful for that. And others are, like, people I have never even met who are so, I guess, so taken with, with the idea of the book that they're, like, helping me edit it, and I have never met them before, which is just so moving. But anyway, so someone has been giving me a lot of feedback on like, oh, like, this should be a graphic and like, this should be a graphic. And I'm like, I'm so glad you're saying that because it would have never occurred to me that that could be a graphic because I communicate in speech, and in text, and there's -  Colleen Schnettler  11:01Yeah. Michele Hansen  11:01Not a whole lot of pictures going on.  Colleen Schnettler  11:03Yeah. Michele Hansen  11:04So, so, yeah, I gotta kind of get all of, all that together in the next couple weeks. And like, hopefully release the, like, the print-on-demand version at the same time, but it's unclear. And then after that, I get to do the audio book, which, honestly, I'm really looking forward to, because then I just have to read the book out loud and as a podcaster, I'm like, I got that. Like, this does not involve any pictures. Like, I am good. Colleen Schnettler  11:32No pictures required.  Michele Hansen  11:33No art skills required. Colleen Schnettler  11:36Are you gonna hire someone to do the graphics? Have you figured that out yet?  Michele Hansen  11:39No, I've been making them in PowerPoint.  Colleen Schnettler  11:42Okay. I'm just saying there's - Michele Hansen  11:45Really simple. Like, there's not going to be like, pictures-pictures, like. Colleen Schnettler  11:47Okay. Michele Hansen  11:48If it turns out this book is a huge hit and I need to do a version that actually has pictures and like, somebody doing, like, professionally doing the layout then like, yeah, I'll, I'll do that, but.  Colleen Schnettler  11:59Yeah, so. Michele Hansen  11:59I mean, so like, more like flowcharts if anything, or like, putting something in a box so that it's, like, called out like even that kind of stuff. My brain is like, doesn't.  Colleen Schnettler  12:09Have you ever seen, there's a couple of people I've met at conferences that are developers, but they're also visual thinkers. And so they'll like, make sketch notes of someone's conference talk. Have you ever seen these? I'm going to send you some after the podcast. They're so cool. I mean, for your, for, you know, especially to hit, like, the developer audience, that would be, and that might be like version two of the book, but like, like sketch notes, or something would be super cool. Like, I could see a lot of cool opportunities here.  Michele Hansen  12:37Yeah, I tried to use something called Excalidraw, and I think my problem is like, I just don't think visually.  Colleen Schnettler  12:47Yeah. Michele Hansen  12:47Like, I never graduated beyond stick figures. My, my efforts that were beyond stick figures are hilarious. Like actually, like, yeah. Um, so I probably should, like, should bring that in, you know. But again, I mean, the book has only made, you know, just under $1,000. So I'm not, I'm not, I don't really want to, like, go out and hire an artist for a couple $1,000 for it. Like, I don't feel like that's a reasonable- Colleen Schnettler  13:21Not yet. Not yet. Right. I mean, that might be in the future. Yeah. I feel like that's not yet. I totally get that.  Michele Hansen  13:27Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's-  Colleen Schnettler  13:34It's exciting. I'm glad we gave you that push. I mean, I kind of felt like I gave you that push when I was basically like, you're gonna have this up by the time we launch this podcast, right. I'm happy. I hope it wasn't too stressful. But I'm happy you got there.  Michele Hansen  13:49I think I needed the external deadline because- Colleen Schnettler  13:52Yeah.  Michele Hansen  13:52And again, this is kind of one of those, for me, ADHD things. Like, I need an external deadline because if it's a deadline I've come up with then it's not happening. But like, the reason why the book was, is gonna be out by July 2 is because, like, our, well, it was gonna be June 23 because our daughter finishes school for the year on June 25. So I was like, it has to be out before she gets out of school. But then I remember that she has a week of summer camp. So I'm like, okay, I have another week.  Colleen Schnettler  14:16You have one more week. Michele Hansen  14:18No, it has to be done before she gets out of camp because otherwise then I, you know, I won't have as much time, so.  Colleen Schnettler  14:25Yeah. Michele Hansen  14:25External deadline. Super helpful. Yeah. How's, how's stuff in Simple File Upload world? Colleen Schnettler  14:33So, things are good. I, you know, signups have still been consistent, but because I lost that big customer, I'm just below 1k MRR. So I haven't really seen that reflected in-  Michele Hansen  14:48Is the big customer the one that, like, wasn't using it and you couldn't get in touch with them?  Colleen Schnettler  14:53No, that person's still there, but like, I lost one person that was, like, a tier below that, which is, because I have three tiers. And so things are fine. I mean, I'm not seeing a big increase, or really any movement on the revenue because of the churn at that level, at that more expensive level. But I'm pretty excited about some of the things I'm going to be trying to do in the next couple months. My summer is crazy. So I had at first resigned myself to just not really working on Simple File Upload for a couple months. I was like, I'm just gonna let it sit. It's doing great. It requires almost no customer support. But then,  Michele Hansen  15:32I mean, a thousand dollars a month, and then it recurs is like.  Colleen Schnettler  15:35Right! It's like, I mean, okay, can we talk about how awesome this is? By the way, this is awesome. Like, after fees and stuff, after I pay my hosting fees, and my storage fees and my Heroku fees, I clear like 606, 650. Like, that's like, pretty cool.  Michele Hansen  15:52Yeah. Colleen Schnettler  15:53It's like, I'm not so much. So I wasn't upset about this. But like, I just needed to see kind of where my life was and what I was doing. And I was like, I might just have to sit on this for a couple months because I don't have the time. But then I got an idea. So I am going to take, really what happened is I was really inspired talking to Sean last week about 30x500. I have never taken that course. But I read, like, everything Amy Hoy writes on the internet, and so I kind of feel like I get the idea behind Sales Safari, the idea being find where your customers hang out and find out what their problems are. Conceptually, it seems easy. I just haven't had time to do that. And him, he said last week that he spent 80 hours. Think about that. So he was trolling Reddit forums for 80 hours. That is a lot.  Michele Hansen  16:45I mean, I probably already do that, and there's no business purpose behind it. Colleen Schnettler  16:49It's just no focus to it, right? So, so that's, so I really think I'm at this inflection point where what I have is working. It's doing great. I don't need to build new, more features until I know what features people need. And as we talked about, I think two weeks ago, different audiences want different features. As a solo founder, I do, with a job, I don't have the bandwidth to build all the features for everybody. Like, I'm not trying to take on CloudFlare, right. I really want to niche down and find my people and build for my people. I can't do that until I know who my people are, and I still don't really know. So, I am going to hire someone to do some of the Sales Safari research for me since I don't have time.  Michele Hansen  17:42Oh. Colleen Schnettler  17:43Yeah. So I'm kind of pumped. And by someone I mean, my sister. She, yeah, so it's like, you talk about how, like, you love having a business with Mathias.  I would love to have a business with my sister. Like, I would love for her to be able to work for me, for this to become a real company, and, you know, for us to do this together. So she is just coming off her maternity leave. She has decided not to go back to her job. So she has only a little bit of time because she doesn't have a lot of childcare, so she has, like, one day a week that she's going to work for me doing marketing research and Sales Safari, and I was to kind of trying to teach her, like, what I think is useful. We're both kind of learning as we go, neither of us really knows we're just making it up. And we're gonna do that for the summer and kind of see where it takes us.  Michele Hansen  17:55Yeah. Wow, wait, so what is her background in?  Colleen Schnettler  18:35She's an environmental consultant. Michele Hansen  18:37Oh. Colleen Schnettler  18:40So she actually, it's in no way relevant. But she's, so really the deal is she's a writer. So in her job as a consultant, what they do is they, they have to write these, like, epic report. So her background is really in writing. So originally, she was gonna write content for me, and she wrote me a couple pieces, but it's really hard to come in, since she doesn't have the technical background, it's, I, and my, my audience is developers, like, I need really technical content. So I don't think she's going to fit as a technical writer. But she's going to do, she's taking a class in SEO. So she's going to do, like, keyword research, and she's going to jump into the forums and Reddit and try and like, find out what people's pain points are surrounding file uploads. Michele Hansen  19:24You know, it sounds like you guys have a good working relationship together. Colleen Schnettler  19:31Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, all problems, this stuff that I was thinking about. All problems are people problems, right? So, if you want to control your business, and I'm just hypothesizing here, the number one most important people, but the number one most important thing is the people you work with, and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather work with. So, I think she'll figure it out, or she'll hate it and if she hates it, then she won't do it anymore. I'll find someone else. But that's kind of our plan. I'm pretty excited.  Michele Hansen  20:02Like, yeah, you, if you have someone that you work well with, and you believe that they're capable of learning what you would need them to learn, then, you know, like, you trust them.  Colleen Schnettler  20:17Yes. Michele Hansen  20:17And that matters.  Colleen Schnettler  20:18Yes. Yes. So yeah. So this summer, for me, is really for, for Simple File Upload, I think, is really going to be a focus on figuring out what niche to serve. I was talking to another friend, and he just got a new job, and he works for a big event management company. And he pointed out, you know, he was, he actually mentioned you, because he listened to the podcast, and he was like, these huge companies, they don't care about the little guys who are making a million dollars a year. And his point was, they don't care. So he's like, if you can carve out a niche in one of these huge industries, like, you can be incredibly successful, and like, these big guys, they don't care.  Michele Hansen  20:58No. And you know, on your sister, it might be really interesting to have her do interviews with people because she will be completely coming in with a beginner's mindset. Like, I find this is something that is difficult for people to adjust to like, like, we've talked about when, when someone says like, oh, like, could I do this? And you start thinking through, like, whether they could and how you would implement it, or you know-  Colleen Schnettler  21:23Right.  Michele Hansen  21:24Talk about what they wanted to do, and you just like, oh, of course, you wanted to do this because of this, and like, you don't even question it. But she, but she would be like, well, why do you want to upload a file in the first place? Like, Colleen Schnettler  21:33Right.  Michele Hansen  21:33Well, how is that, how does that work? Because she's genuinely beginner. Like, I feel like, in some ways, the fact that I don't have a geography background has been an advantage for- Colleen Schnettler  21:45Yeah. Michele Hansen  21:46You know, for this because like, I don't come in, you know, with it, with all of these preconceived notions about why someone would want to do this.  Colleen Schnettler  21:56Yeah. Michele Hansen  21:56So I think that can be really interesting when she gets her feet wet, and kind of a sense of what's going on, to try to talk to the customers.  Colleen Schnettler  22:05I think that's a great idea. I hope we can grow into that. I definitely think there's opportunity there. I think of her as like you, and I'm like Mathias in the power couple building of a company. So we'll see. I mean, she wants to get into mark, we kind of are going down this route, because I don't have enough time. I want to do it, I need to do it, and she wants to, really she wants to transition into a remote career that's flexible, like most parents, and she's really interested in SEO and marketing. So, I think it's gonna be a fun little adventure. I'm excited to see what she finds out. Part of this was also, I think we've talked a lot about, I have an interest in no-code. So I had a call with the Jetboost IO founder, Chris. Michele Hansen  22:51Yeah, Chris. Colleen Schnettler  22:52Who, I believe, you know, as well, because you're a mentor and he- Michele Hansen  22:55Yeah, I mentor him through Earnest Capital. I literally just had a call with him the other day. Colleen Schnettler  23:02So I had a call with him, independent of your call with him.  Michele Hansen  23:06Which we didn't know about. Colleen Schnettler  23:07Which we did not plan, to talk about opportunities in the webflow space. And, so I think one of the first things I'm going to have my sister, well, not the first, but one of the things my sister is going to try and do this month is really see if there's a need in Webflow. The thing about Webflow is, in 2018, Webflow introduced their own file uploader. So before that, there was a huge need for it. Now, they have their own file uploader. So it might be that what I provide is no longer, you know, something people need or want. So before I go and build an integration with Webflow, I'm going to have her do some Sales Safari research. They have really active forums to kind of see what people are looking forward to see if there's opportunity there.  Michele Hansen  23:54Yeah, Chris was telling me that they have a, like, feature upload, like a feature up vote thing where people go in and request features.  It's exciting. Colleen Schnettler  24:03Yeah, I think it's gonna be great. I think, I think it'll be fun. It'll be good to have someone actually dedicated to reading Reddit and Webflow forums and Heroku forums and whatever, to try to identify, you know, the need there and in the file uploading space. And then with the SEO research, you know, I can then either write the content myself or hire someone to write technical content, depending on my time commitments, my time, you know, what I can do, so. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. I think, you know, the interesting thing about file uploading and Webflow is they have a maximum size of 10 megs, and I, you can't do multiple file uploads at the same time. So the question is, how many people really care? Like, who really, did, are there enough people that are uploading large files, or want to do maximum, or, I'm sorry, want to do multiple file uploads at a time that it would be worth it for me to make an integration into that space. So, so, you know, she's going to kind of dive into that and see what we can find out and like, this is just gonna be a fun marketing learning time because I built this thing because I wanted to build something, as you know, and I'm really happy that I built something to scratch my own need because it's worked out really well. But I still haven't really honed in on who I can serve best, and there's lots of opportunities out there, so. Michele Hansen  25:42There's a lot to be, I think, sort of learned and discovered here, and, and also that SEO work you can do, that, like, that can also inform the kind of feature development that you do, too, like, because there, I mean, this just happened to us the other day, like there was something that I noticed we had a couple of customers ask us how to do, and so I wrote up an article about how to do it, and then, but like, to basically do it manually. And then I just saw this morning that it's, like, our top performing growing piece of content and has like a 400% increase in clicks, and-  Wow. And looking into like, oh, how might we add that? And it's like, okay, maybe we should like there's, you know, SEO isn't just for bringing in customers, but also for figuring out what, what people might want as well.  Colleen Schnettler  26:38Yeah, and you've said before, I think that SEO is your number one channel? Activation channel? Michele Hansen  26:44Yeah. We, we don't run paid ads. We don't do any outbound sales. Like, we occasionally sponsor conferences, but that's mostly because, like, our friends run them, and it's just like, kind of-  Colleen Schnettler  27:00Yeah. Michele Hansen  27:00To support our friends, like we're a sponsor of Longhorn PHP, the Texas PHP conference. But like, that's just because our friend runs it.  Colleen Schnettler  27:12Okay.  Michele Hansen  27:13It's not very, like, organized or intentional. It's just like, sure, like, we'll help you out.  Colleen Schnettler  27:18Now, when you do SEO, do you do, like, now you just said, like, you were talking to a customer and then you got this idea of a good page, but do you do traditional keyword research as well? Michele Hansen  27:34Maybe? Like, we use Ahrefs.  Colleen Schnettler  27:36Yeah, I don't, okay. Michele Hansen  27:39I don't know, I still don't know how to pronounce the name of that company.  Colleen Schnettler  27:42I know, yeah, I don't either.  Michele Hansen  27:43But yeah, Ahrefs, we use that. We used Google Search Console for a long time, which is honestly a really good tool, and it's free, because Ahrefs is, is pretty expensive. But yeah, you can do keyword research and rankings and referrers and all that kind of stuff. I don't keep a super close eye on it. Um, but yeah, whenever we're, you know, we, every so often, like every couple weeks or so we go in and look at what content is performing and what else we might need and whatnot. Colleen Schnettler  28:19Cool. Yeah, I don't know. I really haven't done, I've done absolutely zero keyword research. So I think it's probably worth our time to put a little bit of effort into that to see what people are searching for to get a better idea of how to use those tools. Michele Hansen  28:36Yeah, I mean, our approach is, you know, find those keywords and then write stuff that people might be searching for and show them how to do it with Geocodio, and I think I like that because I, and I think we talked about this is kind of something that I have struggled with with the book, is, like, I struggle with sounding salesy, like and writing, like conversion copy, like, it's just really something that I feel like I sound way too infomercial-y when I tried to write it. Like, you know, there are people who are really good at writing conversion copy and sounding like a natural human being when they write it, like, I mean, you know, Amy Hoy is one of those people. But I, you know, I might as well you know, be like, hocking something on the Home Shopping Network when I try to write it. So, so like writing be like, oh, you're searching for geocoding? Hello, we do geocoding. Here is how you can do it in like, like, all of these different ways you can do it and rephrasing all of those different things. And then here's where you can try it. And then here's where you can do it. And it's very, like, straightforward. That's like, maybe you need it. Maybe you don't. All of those options are fine. Not, like, buy this now or you will die. Colleen Schnettler  29:56Yeah, I'm hoping with our keyword research and kind of, like, since I haven't done this at all, you know, with what, the marketing research she does, as you've talked about, I think a lot of that is going to inform my content and building out future landing pages. So, that's really going to be a focus for me is like, trying to get content and you know, pages out there that appeal to people. Michele Hansen  30:24Well, I'm going to be spending the next week working on the book and you're going to be onboarding your sister and getting this research going. Sounds like we got our work cut out for us.  Colleen Schnettler  30:34It's gonna be a good week.  Michele Hansen  30:37All right. Well, I guess that'll wrap us up for now. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

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.

Come on in and check out this interview with the Clicks and Mortar Queen Donnalynn Riley. Donna tells an amazing story of how she went from being the CEO of a retail chain to becoming a Spiritual Coach who is helping entrepreneurs bring ALL of who they are to their businesses. Connect with Donnalynn here at her site: https://www.donnalynnriley.com/ Also, Donnalynn has a 5 Day Masterclass you can sign up for in order: Get Out Of Your Head, Embrace Your Imperfections & Get On Track With Your Business! https://www.donnalynnriley.com/5dc-reg brandon handley00:02All right, 54321 Hey there, spiritual dope. I'm on today with Donna Lynn Riley, who is a licensed spiritual health coach who helps people develop evolve and grow. 00:17The answers they find that their journey, bring them to a new level clarity and emotional adjustment to help them develop their expertise in business systems management and marketing. 00:25And addition to her 12 years as a licensed coach her background is the CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation. 00:31informs her ability to help her clients navigate the inner workings of business systems Operations Management and Marketing so they can successfully put it all together themselves. 00:42I'm going to cut it down because that, that's great. And I'm so excited because, as we're going back and forth a little bit here earlier. This is exactly what this podcast is about. So thank you for joining me today. Donnalynn Riley00:53Oh, it's my pleasure. It's great what you're doing. It's great that you're talking about this. It's really good. brandon handley00:58Thank you. Thank you. So you mentioned that you'd call it a couple of podcasts. So what I always like to say is you know you're here today. We're using this podcast as a vehicle to send somebody out there a message, what is it that they need to hear this coming through you today. Donnalynn Riley01:17Well, I always think people need to know that life can be a lot easier than we're making it. I think that that's a place where 01:29Almost invariably people don't believe that. Right. They just go like, nah, couldn't be that I got to work harder. I gotta do more. I gotta you know think more 01:43I have to put out more effort. It's got a cost more. There's got to be a big, you know, emotional or financial cost to the things that I want in life and really 01:54Life can be so much easier than we make it. And I think that that's the benefit of of this approach of a spiritual practice that supports. 02:06Business life and certainly family life, when I know lots of coaches who do that as well. And, you know, really kind of make it better, just make your life better. brandon handley02:16Yeah, no, absolutely. So the idea is that life doesn't have to be so hard. Donnalynn Riley02:21Really doesn't brandon handley02:23And and also throw out there. I think in the first person that I know that's worked on Broadway. Right. And this is this is a story that you tell 02:30In one of your one of your videos right and helping once you tell people use that story real quick here right now. I love that story about just what you said there. 02:41Do you remember so so I'll take it away. So you were around 19 your brothers like 10 years old or new 02:47Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah 02:50Yeah yeah Donnalynn Riley02:50Okay, okay. I gotcha. Sorry about that. 02:54I was like I was there a long time. I don't know. brandon handley02:58Just getting into it right and 02:59How easy how easy sometimes 03:01For you. Donnalynn Riley03:01Yeah. So what I love about that is that, um, so. Okay, so let me let me kind of lay it out here so I'm like 19 years old I 03:11You know, I'm just out the gate. Right. But I'm 10 foot tall and bulletproof because so was everybody when you're 19 brandon handley03:18Right. Yeah, absolutely. Donnalynn Riley03:19And so when you're not very dinged up 03:22You know, you just think like everything's okay and it's going to work out for me and I kind of lived my life like that really clearly I wanted, and I got things I wanted them and they lined up. 03:35So, um, I found myself on on Broadway, which I totally expected right because I wanted it. So, and I didn't know any better, and 03:46And my brother who's 10 years older than I am. He, he knew better. And he is a he is still actually a scenic artist. And so I was a sound designer. He was a scenic artist and 04:01He was working down the block. So I was working on Angels in America, and he was working on City of Angels, which I love that. But there were all these angel references. That's kind of brandon handley04:14Sure, yeah. Donnalynn Riley04:15And. And he said, Oh, let's, um, he was like down the block. And I hadn't seen him in months. It wasn't like, you know, we were spending Sunday night dinners together or something. 04:24And he said, Let's go for lunch. And I was like, yeah, this is great. Yeah, owning the town, you know, in my, in my own head, right. 04:32Sure. And he said, you, you. He's walking me to the to the place to get something to eat and 04:40He said, You just don't have any idea what it costs to get here. You don't have any idea what these people around you have had to do to get where they want to go and in typical sort of 19 year old fashion. I thought, nope. brandon handley04:59Right. Donnalynn Riley04:59I don't care. 05:00Sure, you know, really, for me, I realized that it is a story that's centered around entitlement. Right, so it's not very popular this moment, but 05:10Being able to see yourself. 05:13In the position that you want to be to be able to know that these are things that can happen for you as well as somebody else because 05:24You put the work in and you are talented and you did you know you met the right people and you were in the right place and you took the all the steps to get there. brandon handley05:32Right. Donnalynn Riley05:33There by choice. You don't get to be on Broadway. If you suck. 05:37You do not need. All right. 05:39All right, but they send you home. brandon handley05:42Well, you know, I think. 05:43I think that um I love how you're hitting on entitlement in this insane and in this way because why should it not 05:53Backup people like people bash millennials for kind of having like that kind of entitlement thing. Right. Well, what I admire about that, you know, I think that they would say you got Moxie kid right like kinda back in, but 06:07You know what you want and you're not settling for something that you don't. So is that entitlement, or is that knowing your worth. Donnalynn Riley06:17Right. It's really tricky. It's really tricky and it is a lot about alignment and I've been fortunate to hear you talk about alignment on the podcast previously and 06:28It's a really crucial step in that process. So, 06:34Of course, if we want to get kind of 06:37Cultural about it, then we can we can sort of back it up a little and say, Well, some people have a lot of things that support the belief already in their lives when they're born, and when they're, you know, one and two and three and so it, it becomes 06:55There becomes a divide, but it's a divide in belief. brandon handley07:00100% Donnalynn Riley07:00You know, so it's a it is a really tricky thing. And the important thing for me in the work that I do with people. 07:09Is to whether you've ever experienced that belief or not before is to help you to find that belief because without it is very, very, very difficult to get where you want to go. I, I know people who have done it. It's like they kind of stumbled into their success and that's okay. brandon handley07:25That's true, but it's not very reliable. Donnalynn Riley07:29And so, you know, doing the inner work to create a system of belief for yourself so that 07:36It doesn't sound crazy that you're going to have a successful business or that you're going to get a client that you want to or that you're going to get employees that work out well for you and things like that. I'm doing that inner work makes 07:51All the outer stuff kind of 07:52Line up real quick, like the story I just told where I went from two years or three years I spent in sound design, we're learning from the best in the business. I was already learning from the people who were there, right. 08:06And and and and so I was able to do that very quickly, where a lot of my classmates in college got there 1015 years later, and they worked a lot harder for something because they didn't believe 08:23They didn't know 08:23They thought, oh, I have to go out and do something else first brandon handley08:27Right. We listen, even me today, right now with this podcast. I love it so much. I want to put this, I want to put this 08:36Nice polish on, I want to make it feel so good. I want it to be inviting you know 08:40That, you know, and this isn't wrong to hire somebody in marketing, but I like I really want these pieces I wanted to look so I want it to be so accepted because it's so 08:48meaningful to me right so I'm putting these blocks in 08:53For myself, right. I'm just putting these. Oh, I gotta do this like nothing can happen until this happens and all these other things and and literally that is in my own mind, nobody else's. I mean, nobody nobody else cares. That's just me. Right. 09:07Right. So when you're out there. 09:11And your clientele and and you're working I do they seek you out for one or the other, do you introduce like you know 09:20To the business pressure, like, well, if you just loop in some spirituality, then this might be better for you, like, tell me a little bit how this process of working with you, looks Donnalynn Riley09:30Yeah, so I kind of stand between that space right I stand between entrepreneurs and small business people who are 09:40That's what they do. That's what they've learned. They have a strong background or they have a strong desire but they don't necessarily have any spiritual practice at all. 09:49And I sort of stand between that and the people who are very spiritually open but can't figure out how to turn the computer on right 09:59And rent like can't figure out the details of, like, how do I charge people. And why would they pay me and 10:06These kinds of like nuanced things that, of course, they have a lot of talent and they have a lot of 10:13Value in the world, but so I do kind of stand in between those two spaces, I would say that for the most part, most of the people that I work with are 10:26Are on the business side but are open. brandon handley10:30Okay. 10:31Because okay you can Donnalynn Riley10:32Sort of insert and this is not you know there are a lot of really involved spiritual practices. 10:39And they have value that is beyond what I'm about to express right so this is not to disparage any spiritual practices. I think they all have a lot of value and 10:51But you can in a very short period of time with with not a ton of work right. You don't have to go and study with the monks for 18 years right with with putting a practice into your life. You can attain a lot of result and a lot of ease in your life. 11:12A lot less frustration, a lot of movement forward right so you can start to assess your situation better and access yourself in moments that are stressful better and all of these things lead to better businesses. 11:30But aren't always they're not really taught too often. brandon handley11:35I mean, if you have the capability to kind of calm yourself down in the moment, or just realize what you're about to say or 11:43If you're feeling tense right so what I'm hearing you say is like you're giving them some of these tools to to really kind of ease into themselves and what they're about. Donnalynn Riley11:51Yeah, there's bigger work that we do in order to make lasting change. And that really happens inside one on one trainings that I do or or inside group work that I do with people, but 12:08There are so many little what we would call hacks right there, little, like, oh, if I do this, I feel a little better. 12:16Right. And those are emergency hacks, you know, and they're really useful. They're a great way to get started. I think because 12:26Getting a little relief reminds you that you're probably going to get more relief. If you keep going in that direction. And I think that's a great place to start, particularly for people who are 12:41Who don't have a strong spiritual background but know that like there's something going on in my mind set or those kinds of words are being used a lot recently. Right. brandon handley12:51Right I yeah for sure. For sure. Right. Well, I mean, it's funny because, you know, I think I started off in the mindset space right but now in this 13:01Next level space right where you do this practice, like you said, For doesn't have to be 18 years but you do it repeatedly and you start with like the mindset. You start with the small pieces and 13:13You keep just kind of growing into these other spaces and these other practices that are available to and sooner or later you like I guess they were all right. Donnalynn Riley13:26I love that. Right. brandon handley13:30Right. 13:31Right. So, I mean, I guess you know there's something in those things and what they're saying and what they're doing. 13:37But, you know, so what what led you into this pace yourself. Donnalynn Riley13:43Well, 13:45You know, that's a good question. I, when I look back at my life. I see all these moments like the one that I just described when I'm like very young. 13:54That fit into this kind of way of thinking and this way of being. But I was really pretty unaware of myself and my spirituality until actually my husband got a life threatening disease. 14:15And or problem he got a tumor in his brain cavity. 14:20And he when he was very young. He spent a lot of time in hospitals. And so we went to the first doctor and it was a big emergency and he said, I'm getting a second opinion. And then we went to the next doctor who you know we we finagle their way into the good doctors and all of that and 14:43We went and he described it. And he said, Oh yeah, you have a little time because I'm very good at this. But, you know, you got to get in here in the next month or something. So it was no longer like a huge emergency we have little time. 14:56Sure, and 14:59We were driving home. It was in New York City. We live in Massachusetts. It was a long drive home. We were driving home and my husband said to me. 15:06Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not doing that I'm not doing that. I don't know what we're going to do, but I think you should find me another solution because I don't, I'm not going to do that. 15:17And that being that you just that just have him for you have been for me. I was like, oh, 15:23Wow, okay. That should be my job. 15:25Okay. Donnalynn Riley15:29No question. 15:31In fairness, I'm sure he was very overwhelmed in that moment. brandon handley15:35Right out Donnalynn Riley15:36Here and and so that was the beginning. That was the kickoff for me to really 15:45Take a look at what is possible. So, and be completely outside the box. Yeah. So once I sort of had to be completely outside the box. Then the possibilities became very, very different. 16:00So it kicked off a series of involvements with people who could help his health and who could do it in very untraditional ways 16:11And also, who required of both of us that we change drastically that we, the concept that we had gotten ourselves into this mess, and that we were going to get ourselves out of this mess was not one that I heard in the doctor's office. 16:31Was and it was really clear and so 16:34And within 16:37A few months, we were both licensed spiritual health coaches, we probably took, I don't know, six months, nine months, something like that for that process and we said, Okay, this is this, we're leaning in because we are not going where that other train was going 16:59Okay, so. So that's really the beginning of when I became a much, much more aware of myself of my thoughts of my 17:09Relationship to the world of my discomfort that I had become just completely accepting of right I had just said, Oh, well that's the way life is, you know and and really be in that awareness, I found new answers. brandon handley17:28So, um, you know what, I guess the one thing is right when you're we're 19 and your earlier years before you 17:37had developed an awareness, you would be, what would we call you know 17:43Was it 17:45Unconscious competence, right, like you and I were you, you were already aligning yourself and you weren't aware that you were doing it. And then once you kind of develop this newfound awareness. 17:56You were able to do this with intention and purpose. Donnalynn Riley18:00That's exactly right. brandon handley18:02Now, so, and also throw out like when you know so I was raised by a hippie mom grew up you know out San Francisco and she was always kicking the word awareness around right when I was growing up, I was like, I'm aware. You see me run into 18:15I've ever run into a thing. 18:18Right, I use it everything outside of me right everything outside of me. I was I was completely aware of. I didn't miss a beat. Yeah didn't miss a beat. But the awareness that I think that you're talking about today is the awareness inside. Is that fair Donnalynn Riley18:32That's exactly right. 18:33That is exactly right and very hard to articulate. You did that quite well that 18:39People, most of the time, feel like they are aware when they start working with me, they're like, Yeah, yeah, I got that part, I need the accurate assessment. Come on, let's get to the good stuff here. 18:49And and that awareness that inner awareness and that ability to kind of be with yourself for periods of time in order to deepen that awareness is very important to the next steps. And so you're absolutely right that people are like, I'm aware. Let's fix my landing page. brandon handley19:16It's all 19:17It's all marketing has nothing to do with what's happening. 19:19Right, right. 19:21Nothing internal happening fixed that. Donnalynn Riley19:23I just had that targeting right we would 19:25All set. So, what what is what is like when when somebody first brandon handley19:29Starts off what's uh what's like one tool that you like to start them off with to 19:35Begin to develop that inner awareness. Donnalynn Riley19:39One of my favorite 19:42Sort of 19:47Let me go back a second here in my thinking. One of my tools that is the easiest for me to sort of give in this kind of a space. 19:59Is actually 20:00A little bit of mirror work. Now some people will know mirror work from different varieties of, you know, mindset work and spiritual work. 20:10The mirror work that that I find is the fastest path to to becoming present 20:22Which is really that first goal is just start being in your body. 20:29Is a piece where you literally just sit with the mirror and look in the mirror in your eyes and say I am here. 20:42Over and over and over. You're sort of calling to yourself. Right. So there's a lot of work that we do after that that involves breath and 20:53Other types of awareness that we can 20:55We can bring in 20:57But 20:59But that's really the the space that I find people kind of are able to bring themselves into the room a little bit and say, oh, OK. I am actually here. Let me give this a shot. I'll be president now. brandon handley21:12Well, I mean, cuz it's, there's still the physical aspect of it right, they're still doing a physical activity, but then they're also acknowledging that it's them right right there in front of them and pulling themselves kind of gather right there. 21:27Right, so I love that. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley21:29And it's deliberate. It's deliberate. So even though a lot of times when people start that process, they don't know. It's deliberate 21:37They, they go like, well, I said the words and then I felt different. I don't know what happened. Right. But in fact it there. There is a deliberateness to it. That is really important that you are impacting you 21:53In that moment. brandon handley21:57Well, that, you know, being deliberate again, you know, intentional, knowing that you're making this choice. I know that I kind of 22:04laughed a little bit about it earlier, but you know, you get to wherever you are today. And I think this is what the spiritual coaches were probably telling you before you guys set the course that 22:13You guys made the decisions to be in that situation right as as a collective even and you you guys when you first heard that you were just like what that's done, nobody's ever said that, you know, kind of that way right to us before 22:29So, I mean, I'm assuming your husband still alive. Donnalynn Riley22:32Oh, yeah. brandon handley22:35Like I hope the story has a good idea. 22:37Because, you know, so 22:39What happens right i mean you go in and he jumped into all this stuff, how, you know, how does it clear up on it never gets checked out again and somehow he still is what happened. Donnalynn Riley22:48No, no. So what happens on that story is that we do the work we do the inner work and we do the emergency inner work and it is kind of emergency at that 23:02Maybe for a year or so as you still feel like what's happening. 23:07And we he gets checked out again. And it's shrinking. 23:12Okay, and we have do have, I will say a spectacular doctor who's actually a doctor. brandon handley23:20Sure, sure. And 23:22It's always handy to have one on standby. Donnalynn Riley23:25WELL KNOW WHO DOES THIS WORK. Oh. brandon handley23:27Okay, that sounds even better yet, Donnalynn Riley23:29He's a trained Western doctor but functions in an Eastern paradigm brandon handley23:35Love it. Donnalynn Riley23:36And so he his toolkit is very, very large. And he honestly I've seen. I've never seen a problem he hasn't been able to impact positively and I have seen him deal with a lot of stuff now. 23:53So, so we had the guidance we had long distance guidance, because he's not right here in our backyard and 24:01We had long distance guidance and we did the work. And that I think is the, the key to that is to sort of have somebody who's ahead of you who can say, yeah, no, no, no. You're going in a direction. You'll be all right. 24:14Sure, sure. And so eventually that tumor went away. brandon handley24:17That's amazing. I love it. And so 24:20You would attribute that almost all to the air work was there like a dietary change. Donnalynn Riley24:26There were other changes. Yeah, absolutely. There were dietary changes, and we think there was 24:35Well, in his particular case, it had a great deal to do with a inability to deal properly with pesticides and with wheat. brandon handley24:46In the Donnalynn Riley24:46On the dietary front. So there was that and 24:54I think there was juicing and there was a lot of things. brandon handley24:57Which are look at 24:59Things. Right. 25:00Body. Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. So, and I think that's, that's interesting. The two right you know so change a die with this practice. I'm the things that are inside of you are the things that are outside of you know that this 25:15Miracle doesn't kind of happen on its own. You gotta, you gotta put it together and you got to maintain it and you know the things that do happen to it. Your body's a miracle. Right. It's amazing. 25:28And it's something like that's happening in this story right you have the ability to change that without getting i don't know i'm guessing he was getting a laser to the back of the head or something right was Donnalynn Riley25:39Wasn't. No, no, they wanted to do full 25:41On surgery. 25:43can address and take goop out 25:47And put goop in from other part. brandon handley25:52Was Donnalynn Riley25:53Unbelievably scary. brandon handley25:55Sure, sure. So, but, I mean, the what's amazing too and your story is that a lot of people would have just gone ahead and gone that route. Right. Donnalynn Riley26:03And they would have tried to talk to your spouse into it. It's their spouse said no. And that I think is something that is I, I have been very fortunate to be able to have that reciprocal relationship with my husband, where if one of us says, No, no, this is how I really feel about the thing 26:20Yeah, even if the other one thinks like, ah, you're just scarred, we should get you over that. 26:26But there is enough space. And this is an important concept in in business in the way we live our lives in general. Right. 26:35Is that there is enough space for us to be scarred and still have full and wonderful lives. It's kind of I think of it a lot about 26:45How you know how certain trees grow and they get these scars in them. And then we cut them up and we make them into coffee tables and we call them beautiful world would 26:54Say. Isn't that spectacular right 26:57Well, that's what we're making yeah in ourselves, we have experienced life and things haven't gone right and we have changed the way that we deal with things F, day after day after day and tried new approaches and had new experiences. 27:14And all of those things are brought into this present moment. And if you allow them then finding a new answer that. That doesn't mean you have to like check out your whole personality becomes somebody else right brandon handley27:32Right, right. Donnalynn Riley27:32No, no, it's okay. You can go spend time in the hospital. 27:36Right show. You don't have to be someone else. You can be you and you can be successful. brandon handley27:41Right. Well, yeah. And in regards to write the 27:46Merging all this together. Right. 27:48But I'll say it. I love Maplewood like the birds. I'm April, right, that's kind of one of the one of the times, you're talking about right and it does become so beautiful. Right. I'm like, I'm over you're sitting right now we're turning ourselves into beautiful maple tables but 28:02I love, I love the story that you're telling about that. I think that that's great. 28:09So let's just I want is, what if some of that wasn't working at any point would didn't feel like, you know, because I don't want to get the impression that 28:19You shouldn't keep a doctor nearby. Right. I mean, because you guys kept the doctor nearby that right live as he was a Western medicine doctor that yes also specialize in this space. Donnalynn Riley28:29I think that the the message that should not be taken from my experience is, go do something extreme like I did right and that the message that should be taken, I hope people take from my experience is be true to yourself and find your own answers. 28:54Because they are there, but they're only there if you calm down long enough to allow them to sort of become revealed. They weren't there in the doctor's office right only the first step, which was no I know what I don't want brandon handley29:10To Donnalynn Riley29:11But there wasn't the step of, like, I know what I do want. Right. Yeah. 29:16Yeah. And in fact, I think that something very important happened there because it was life threatening. Right, it's not 29:23It's not the same as in business where things can go right or wrong and we can find our own alignment. Right. But in this scenario. I think one of the most 29:35impactful things that happened was that my husband had someone to turn to and say, You figure it out because he then could go about the business of lining up with becoming well 29:51He didn't know how, but he had faith. 29:53Yeah, leaf. He said, This person loves me and they're relatively smart. They'll figure it out. brandon handley30:02Well, I think you bring the other one up to which I always love you don't have to know how you don't have to know how you just have to know that that's what you want. That's right. Right. And us where they can just 30:16Move forward in that direction. You know, as if it's not Nestle like I i get i get a little caught up in between, like Law of Attraction with like, you know, 30:28Spirituality space, right. I don't think that they're one the same. I think they're very close, but I don't I don't I don't like to make a sandwich out of, I guess. 30:37Um, Donnalynn Riley30:38But so many ways to look at life you know 30:41It would be a shame to sort of collapse it into only one way 30:46Hundred percent I think that's one of the reasons that the concept of spirituality so appealing to me is that it's big. brandon handley30:53Right, it's yours. Donnalynn Riley30:54I can be a part of this energy and I can be a part of that energy and I don't have to really understand it intellectually. I just have to decide that I'm willing to be a part of that. brandon handley31:05Right. No, I see ideas. Do you even know how you're here. Right. I mean, we don't even understand how we're here to begin with, I mean. So where does that leave us so 31:19Let's talk a little bit more about the outside of the story. Thanks for sharing that. That was Donnalynn Riley31:22My pleasure. Thanks for bringing it up. I, I had 31:26Was I was gonna tell it. brandon handley31:27Yes. I mean you know that, but that's that's kind of how you got into this space. And then, you know, I'm guessing that you kind of incorporated. Now some of this spiritual practice modality. And you were seeing the benefits that it was having in the business space. 31:41So at Donnalynn Riley31:42That time 31:43I was actually the CEO of a corporation. 31:46Okay, so 31:49This was what my life was like, like my every day was going to work as the CEO of a corporation. 31:56Right, so, you know, to, to become to to shift perspective in this massive way and then go back to work the next day and be like, 32:08Oh yeah, I'm gonna do it, just the way I used to do it. 32:11Let them work out. 32:13Right, so there had to be for me a re assessing a real understanding of the business world so that and the end the specifics of my business involvement with people so that I could find peace with the 32:36The 32:38Pathway that we were on brandon handley32:40Okay. Donnalynn Riley32:40So I had many years to do that. I didn't leave that world until 32:452014 and I that the story I told. And when I got my licensure was well 32:55The story I told started in 2007 32:58Okay, so it was putting a time in their 33:02Right to Try concepts out to go to work and to feel differently about things and then see what happens. And now have to take action right away. 33:12To decide that your solution to this relationship problem with an employee with the board of directors with it. Whoever whoever you're dealing with with with the clients themselves. 33:27That you are going to shift that but not by going in and saying something different or doing something different and being like, I am different. Now, now you behave differently, right, which is how people love to approach it. 33:38Sure does not work doesn't work, just 33:42But to really be able to take the time to say okay I am willing to to try everything that I have learned out on myself and to teach it to my staff and to pass it along to people who come and ask for it. 34:02There was a lot of opportunity right now. I'm seeing a lot of people in a day. And there's a lot of opportunity and people will ask you the wildest things 34:10Sure. And so 34:14Yeah, so I had that I had that. And so that was a way for me to really shift the way that I saw business. And what I knew for a fact would work in business. 34:27I had a lot of knowing what didn't work. And some of what did work. I had attained a position and, you know, was filling that position. Well, and all of that. But I really was able to sort of AMP that all up by 34:40By being able to try these things and not know 34:45If they were going to work. 34:47And do them anyway. brandon handley34:49What would be an example of that. Donnalynn Riley34:55Well, there was at one point there was a time when the board of directors was not happy with me. 35:04Man I know, it doesn't mean it doesn't even make sense. 35:06No, it doesn't. It kind of in this world. 35:09And and was not happy with anyone in my 35:15In my purview at all like not like there was no one. And so there was one particular board member who would come in and 35:24Kind of create difficulty. Right. It was a time of change. And I was directing the, the company in a direction that was scary and different and new 35:36And that was not really okay for that board and so that member would come in and and sort of undermine what was happening or stand in the way of what was happening. 35:49And I don't think that was the intention, but I think that it was really to look out for the company and to like really well founded. But really bad idea. And so this went on for 36:05Several weeks several weeks and different members of my staff kept coming to me and saying, what are we going to do this can't go on and I would have a chat and, you know, it still went on and that was the way it was. And I had tried a lot of business solutions for this. 36:23But one day I decided that I was going to just focus on the inner work and I spent all of my off time 36:34Doing that inner work and it was a process it. A lot of times people like me to sort of distill it down into one thing that I did. And certainly, I could name some things that you can do in that scenario but 36:48Really, the important thing was that I was no longer tied to the outcome based on yesterday. 36:56So that we had been through it right. This has been going on for weeks, we had tried everything we know what didn't work. We know. No, no. Right. But we didn't really we didn't because today is a new day. 37:09And this is a new moment. 37:11Right. And so once that happened once there was a disassociation with the past, then 37:19The process of becoming holy present and allowing the other people to become wholly present other this person in particular. 37:29Then the, the issues that are around, it can be dealt with and the attitude can shift. And there can no longer be. It doesn't have to be an aggressive situation, which is what had developed 37:41Right. But once that all dissipates. Then you can have the real conversations about the work that really should be being done in those in that scenario. 37:52Right, I should be held accountable for that in my position and that person should be able to say what they have to say. But there was no space for 38:00Any of that. 38:02And to east and east and east and about two weeks later, one of the gentlemen that work for me came to me and said, What did you do 38:13What did you do 38:14Well you fixed it for you, but you didn't fix it for me. 38:19And I said, Well, I could teach you what it was like, why can't you just fix it. brandon handley38:26That's funny. That's funny. So one of the things that you kind of, you start out there to with the is not having to take action right away, right, because we feel that 38:36We need to take this action immediately to for some type of corrective measure like 38:42Where the like where the savior of whatever is happening, they're like, well, there's no we got to fix this. Right. But you're saying though, you just kind of step back. Yeah. But some of the things just play out on their own and right Donnalynn Riley38:55Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. There's actually a three step process that I teach that 39:02Is a called the triple a method of transformation and that three step process is really important. Some people get one step. 39:12Some people get two steps, but rarely do we hear people talk about the third, the middle step right 39:18Right. So the first step in that is awareness and we've talked a lot about that today, which is 39:23Wonderful. And the third step in that is the action stage right the adaptation. What are you going to do, usually people kind of jump from one to the other and they go, they go like, yes, I'm aware there's a problem. Now I have a solution. 39:38And it's the middle step that is the most important and that really isn't an accurate assessment, you can't make an accurate assessment, unless you're in a receiving mode you're in a 39:58Listening period. A watching period a learning period right it's you can't assess something. If you think you know everything about it already. 40:09So you have to do the exploration that is that middle stage that's between Awareness. Awareness of yourself awareness of your situation and then 40:21Learning so that you can be accurate in your assessment. And that's, I think, really where most of the time it all falls apart is that the assessment is not accurate. 40:33Hmm. And so that's how you jump from the one step to the other step is that you go like now I got this move on. 40:43But you don't know yet. But there's like a guy behind the curtain run and my thing. You know what I mean. 40:48Sure. 40:49So that's brandon handley40:51That's more than you know awareness of your thought process awareness of the, you know, conscious choices awareness of doing these things. 41:00With purpose and intention, but also, you know, I like how you bring up this you know accurate assessment piece because it was just yesterday as matter of fact I sat down with a transformational coach and 41:14It was what you're saying here is you can assess, but kind of like a and I feel like this is what I had done right I assess the situation quickly. 41:24And felt that was good enough. Right. And then he goes, Well, I think, actually, you need to go one more layer deeper. Yeah. And he took me one more layer deeper. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, Donnalynn Riley41:35Totally different answer to. Right. brandon handley41:37Well, totally different answer. Totally different feeling totally different space in place and you know 41:44Therefore, ergo my assessment initially was not accurate. Yeah, that's right. Right. 41:53And you know we're here. We keep learning and this, this is even has to do with just, you know, if you're working with a client, they feel like they know who they are. All right. And you've got it you what you're doing is you're helping them to slow down and 42:07Truly learn who they really are. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley42:09That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I think that was true for me. So I think that one of the things that makes it easier for me to 42:18To talk to people is that I've stood someplace. Very, very similar to where they're standing and so that feeling like I know especially having some early success. 42:30Right, sure. No, I do. No. 42:33No, I did it. I know how to do it. No, no, actually you don't 42:39Because you did it, but you didn't know how you did it. 42:41Yeah, you did it, but you can't repeat it, and 42:46Source, all of that. brandon handley42:48Sure, yeah. 42:50But it's looking those steps and and and i think that we've been fortunate, right, like a laughed at the beginning how there's, you know, 43:00There's pathways for us to take you know that the plenty of people have done this before us. We're not the first people to show up like I got this. 43:08Follow me like there's no whole whole society is built on this and 43:13We're lucky that we've got that available to us right that framework, the possibility to kind of 43:18Go to even you right or you know your spiritual coaches to run them in the first time, like there's a whole nother way. 43:25And it fits into this and, oh, I can get the same results by but but by doing it this way instead of this other brash like I'm going to take the bull by the horns and crush everybody mentality. Right. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley43:40Yeah, I, I, actually, when I first kind of got that there was another way and that it was actually more effective I so I had been into herbs, my whole life where I felt like I i liked spices in my food, and I 43:54I knew some of the properties of things. And I would you know give myself cold medicine by eating the garlic or whatever it was. Right, sure, and and 44:03I got that there was, I knew about herbs and spices that there were in different parts of the world, they would do the same things, but be totally different plans. 44:13And I was like, 44:14Oh, I don't really get why that's true, that you can take turmeric from India and you can take, you know, yarrow from North America and you're going to get a similar thing and happening for you. 44:29And I, I knew that it was possible, but I couldn't make any sense of it until we got to this concept, this concept of being present and being aware 44:44And showing up in a new way and then taking action. Then I got, oh, there are just so many ways, right. I could have said 10 different things in that moment. 44:57And gotten a really similar response to that, or maybe my relationship problem, like I've, I've worked with people a lot with 45:07business relationships where they're particularly with employees, where they're not getting the results they want with the employees and they feel like it's the employees problem. 45:18And that works. The first or second or third employee, but it does not work after that. 45:23To face a few things. 45:26And you can try all the techniques you want, right, there's a lot of management techniques and those i'm sure can be effective in under certain circumstances. 45:37But really when you're willing to do that work inside you and the technique, doesn't matter anymore because 45:45The result can happen regardless of the technique that you're using, sort of like that plant it's planted in a, you know, different sides of the earth, but it's helping your body because the world is meant to support us for sure that's what that's what is here for brandon handley46:01At least from our perspective. Hundred percent hundred percent Donnalynn Riley46:05Plant feels like it's there for them. brandon handley46:08But what I just I just saw like you know I think somebody talk. I think I was listening to Wayne Dyer right and he's talking about like if you lift the seeds or whatever and you plant them that they take in that your DNA, and they grow to to you. 46:21Yeah, so 46:22So I'll always always something interesting. 46:26Always something interesting. Geez, you said something there that I wanted to hit on but uh what you know. 46:34So what are some. What are some that's what's gonna say, so you're, you know, the techniques become 46:42More like a again a vehicle for what's inside of you, right, and that's your focal point, you're like, All right, you know, 46:49It's the techniques, not working. It's because I look I take to jujitsu right and oftentimes the, the deal is, I'm using a technique, but I'm also trying to put all this force power behind like 47:04Running grown in 47:06But it's when I relax and just simply apply the technique. 47:11That it works. I'm like, why, what this doesn't make any sense. Right. So again, it sounds like you know if you do the inner work and you figure out kind of what's in you just you just kind of let that out, Masha, but you focus it gently on the technique, it works. Donnalynn Riley47:23Yeah, we're back where we were when we started right life can be a lot easier than we make it brandon handley47:30And and so you know what what are 47:34What are some of the other things that you're finding with your clients right. How are they, what's their reception been to their new selves. Donnalynn Riley47:44Reception to their new cells. Fantastic question. 47:48Wow. I like I'm pretty good. brandon handley47:54Sure. Donnalynn Riley47:55You know, it feels a lot better to be not frustrated and not irritated and have a new way to accept your imperfections and to say I can be whole and I can show up and I can shift my life in these ways where I get the result that I want and still be may brandon handley48:18Not have to Donnalynn Riley48:19Turn into somebody else. I mean, I think these are the kinds of things that a lot of times people really feel like, all right, I want to go there. So I'll just be someone else for a while. 48:33They 48:34Got themselves off from themselves, right. brandon handley48:36So, Donnalynn Riley48:37And this is how people end up to be older and more bitter. 48:43And then eventually at some point they say I'm not doing that anymore. And sometimes that's at retirement age sometimes that's a lot earlier. 48:52You're really lucky if you don't have a lot of patience for that kind of thing in your life. brandon handley48:57Well, you know, you know, recently, my wife, she she hit that point right she just said this is enough. This is too much and and she's now you know we come from two different types of backgrounds. Right. 49:08Where she came from, you know, the you work hard, you get a job you keep that job for as long as you can, it's safe. It's good. They watch out for you. 49:16But at what cost, right, I think you'd mentioned that to like what costs like you're the costs. 49:22Is you your life, your, your whole, you know, they call it grind it out for a reason. You're losing each day to the grind. So I don't want to keep you too long, but this has been, I've had a lot of fun with this conversation. 49:35A lot of fun with this conversation. 49:37Where, where should and we did talk about you do have something coming up. I want to make sure people know that you've got this, you've got this challenge come out to us talk on that. Donnalynn Riley49:45You. I do. I have a five day 49:49Workshop, or I'm 49:53Just loving the words just scramble away from you. brandon handley49:56Absolutely, it says all day every day. 49:59To Donnalynn Riley49:59Day challenge coming up and it, it is called get out of your head. Embrace your imperfections and get on track with your business. 50:10And so that's what we're going to do for five days, we're going to go through the process and we're going to really delve into that process. We talked a little bit more 50:19Earlier about the AAA method of transformation and get to apply some of that and really see what kind of 50:29changes we can make in such a short period of time for lots and lots of people to to quiet the noise to to find that space that we've been talking about and to still be wholly yourself to really embrace that you're okay, as Your imperfections and then apply that process. 50:51It's a very interesting process, I think. 50:53It will be really great to see how everybody does. brandon handley50:56That's awesome. So what type of people should be attending this event. Donnalynn Riley51:00Anyone who's interested in business. 51:05Who is open. Yeah. 51:07Yeah, so this is this work is not easy. It's not like, you know, kind of, you were talking about this with talking about your wife's background and a lot of people come from a background where it's kind of supposed to be hard. And when life is not fun. They say, what is it they say they say brandon handley51:27Oh my lemonade. 51:31Life's not supposed to be fair, I don't know. Donnalynn Riley51:33Yeah, all that brandon handley51:34All that stuff. Donnalynn Riley51:35So what, like, I get that. And there are people who need that kind of structure in their life, and they're not ready to let go of that that's okay with me. brandon handley51:43Yeah. Donnalynn Riley51:43Don't come to mind. 51:47But anyone everyone. I hope Pro has a business involvement writing particularly I work for the most part with entrepreneurs. 51:57So you're the driver of your business boat, it makes it much easier. And who wants to work on something and knows that the answer is somewhere in them might they're willing to do some work for it. That is personal. That is development personal development work. 52:20And and really you show up with willingness and I'd be happy to guide you all the way through the process that would be great. brandon handley52:30Awesome and listen. 52:32You know, you've had you been a successful CEO, you started off successful businesses you sold businesses. 52:41And, you know, for anybody, which website. Again, Donald in Donnalynn Riley52:46Donnellan Riley calm. brandon handley52:48Down. So head over to the site shine house or for videos yourself, you will be able to see 52:53That she knows what she's talking about. So I think that that's really exciting. And, you know, we didn't dig too deep into the business aspects of today. We just had a really great. I felt like conversation. 53:03But you clearly know you know what it is that you're doing. You've done the work you contains to do the work. And you know what you're putting out. I think there's no top notch really really quality stuff. Donnalynn Riley53:13Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure to be here and to get to talk about this topic in such depth. So that's really nice. It's great that you're talking about this in a in a really deep way this sort of spirituality and business and in that space. brandon handley53:28You know what, you got to be able to like you keep saying, and that's what it means to bring all of who you are right, they're not two separate things. If you keep your spiritual self over here and your material or reality over here, you're missing out on the one, two punch you know 53:44You really you've really got the opportunity to kind of blend you're you're working at 50% of capacity. Yeah, right. So he can 53:51You know blend those two which which I know you can teach how to do what you get to bring to your workplace or wherever you decide to show up after you learn about who you are. It's just, it's that much more powerful. Yeah. Donnalynn Riley54:04It really is. brandon handley54:05Yeah. Hundred percent. Thanks again. Donnalynn Riley00:59:18Thank you.

Acts 27:1-28:10 Paul Sails for Rome And when it was decidedthatwe should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the AugustanCohort named Julius.2And embarking ina ship of Adramyttium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied byAristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica.3The next day we put in at Sidon. AndJuliustreated Paul kindly andgave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for.4And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us.5And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra in Lycia.6There the centurion founda ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board.7We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Cnidus, and as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of Crete off Salmone.8Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea. 9Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because eventhe Fastwas already over, Paul advised them,10saying, Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be withinjury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.11But the centurion paid more attention tothe pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said.12And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there, on the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there. The Storm at Sea 13Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that theyhad obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore.14But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster,struck down from the land.15And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.16Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda,we managed with difficulty to secure the ships boat.17Afterhoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing that they wouldrun aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the gear,and thus they were driven along.18Since we were violently storm-tossed, they began the next dayto jettison the cargo.19And on the third day they threw the ships tackle overboard with their own hands.20When neither sun nor stars appeared for manydays, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. 21Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, Men,you shouldhave listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred thisinjury and loss.22Yet now I urge you totake heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.23For this very nighttherestood before mean angel of the God to whom I belong andwhom I worship,24and he said, Do not be afraid, Paul;you must stand before Caesar. And behold,God has granted you all those who sail with you.25So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.26Butwe mustrun aground on some island. 27When the fourteenth night had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land.28So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms.A little farther on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms.29And fearing that we mightrun on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come.30And asthe sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had loweredthe ships boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow,31Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.32Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ships boat and let it go. 33As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing.34Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength,fornot ahair is to perish from the head of any of you.35And when he had said these things, he took bread, andgiving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat.36Then they allwere encouraged and ate some food themselves.37(We were in all 276persons in the ship.)38And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. The Shipwreck 39Now when it was day,they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach, on which they planned if possible to run the ship ashore.40So they cast off the anchors and left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the ropes that tied the rudders. Then hoisting the foresail to the wind they made for the beach.41But striking a reef,they ran the vessel aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf.42The soldiers plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any should swim away and escape.43But the centurion,wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land,44and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship.And so it was thatall were brought safely to land. Paul on Malta 28After we were brought safely through,we then learned thatthe island was called Malta.2The native peopleshowed us unusualkindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all, because it had begun to rain and was cold.3When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand.4Whenthe native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another,No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea,Justicehas not allowed him to live.5He,however,shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.6They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him,they changed their minds andsaid that he was a god. 7Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island, named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days.8It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him andprayed, andputting his hands on him, healed him.9And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.10They also honored us greatly,and when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed.

In this episode of Beneath the Subsurface we turn back time with Daniel Orange, our ONE Partner for multibeam technology and seafloor mapping - and incredible storyteller - and Duncan Bate, our Director of Project Development in the Gulf of Mexico and Geosciences. Dan takes Duncan and Erica on an expansive journey through time to meet a special variety of archea that dwell in the impossible oases surrounding sea bottom vents. We also explore the relatively recent discoveries in geoscience leading to seafloor mapping and how seep hunting offshore can enrich the exploration process today. TABLE OF CONTENTS00:00 - Intro03:35 - What is a seep?09:06 - The impossible oasis11:45 - Chemotrophic life24:15 - Finding seeps26:51 - The invention of multibeam technology30:11 - Seep hunting with multibeam32:48 - Seismic vs. multibeam34:43 - Acquiring multibeam surveys44:32 - The importance of navigation46:20 - Water column anomalies49:12 - Seeps sampling and exploration56:23 - Multibeam targets59:12 - Multibeam strategy1:03:11 - Reservoir content1:06:44 - A piece of the puzzle1:10:21 - ConclusionEXPLORE MORE FROM THE EPISODELearn more about TGS in the Gulf of MexicoOtos MultibeamEPISODE TRANSCRIPTErica Conedera:00:00:12Hello and welcome to Beneath the Subsurface a podcast that explores the intersection of Geoscience and technology. From the Software Development Department here at TGS. I'm your host, Erica Conedera. For our fourth episode, we'll welcome a very special guest speaker who offers a uniquely broad perspective on the topic of sea floor mapping. We'll learn about the technology of multibeam surveys, why underwater oil seeps are the basis of life as we know it and how the answer to the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg is the Sun. I'm here today with Duncan Bate, our director of projects for the US and Gulf of Mexico. Do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself Duncan?Duncan Bate:00:00:56Sure, yeah, thanks. I basically look after the development of all new projects for TGS in the, in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm here today because a few years ago we worked on a multi beam seep hunting project in the Gulf of Mexico. So I can share some of my experiences and - having worked on that project.Erica:00:01:15Awesome. And then we have our special guest star, Dan Orange. He is a geologist and geophysicist with Oro Negro exploration. Hi Dan.Dan Orange:00:01:24Good morning.Erica:00:01:25Would you like to introduce yourself briefly for us?Dan:00:01:28Sure. Let's see, I grew up in New England, Texas, so I went to junior high school, just a few miles from where we're recording this. But I did go to MIT where I got my bachelor's and master's degree in geology, then went out to UC Santa Cruz to do my PhD and my PhD had field work both onshore and offshore and involved seeps. So we'll come back to that. And also theoretical work as well. I had a short gig at Stanford and taught at Cal State Monterey Bay and spent five years at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Again, pursuing seeps. I left MBARI and started working with the oil patch in 1997 and it was early days in the oil industry pushing off the shelf and heading toward deep water and seeps were both a bug and a feature. So we started applying seep science to the oil industry and have been doing that for oh, now 21-22 years.Dan:00:02:32The entire time that I was at Embargin, and working with the oil patch. And in fact, ongoing, I do research for the US Navy through the Office of Naval Research. It started out involving seeps and canyon formation and it's evolved into multibeam seafloor mapping and acoustics. And that continues. So in the oil patch I was with AOA geophysics, we formed a company AGO to commercialize controlled source EM sold that to Schlumberger. And then we formed an oil company, Black Gold Energy, that would use seeps as a way to, go into oil exploration. And we sold that to NYKO, since leaving Black Gold with Oro Negro. We've been teaming with TGS since 2014 so now going on five years mapping the sea floor, I think we just passed one and a quarter million square kilometers, mapping with TGS as we mapped the sea floor and sample seeps, pretty much around the world for exploration.Erica:00:03:35Awesome. So let's begin our discussion today with what is a seep, if you can elucidate that for us.Dan:00:03:41So a seep is just what it sounds like. It's, it's a place on the earth's surface where something leaks out from beneath. And in our case it's oil and gas. Now seeps have been around since the dawn of humanity. The seeps are referenced in the Bible and in multiple locations seeps were used by the ancient Phoenicians to do repairs on ships they use as medicines and such. And in oil exploration seeps have been used to figure out where to look for oil since the beginning of the oil age. In fact that, you know, there seeps in, in Pennsylvania near Titusville where colonel Drake drilled his first well, where Exxon, had a group of, of people that they call the rover boys that went around the world after World War II looking for places on the Earth's surface that had big structures and oil seeps.Dan:00:04:39Because when you have a seep at the sea floor with or on the Earth's surface with oil and gas, you know that you had organic matter that's been cooked the right amount and it's formed hydrocarbons and it's migrating and all those things are important to findings, you know, economic quantities of oil and gas. So seeps have been used on land since the beginning of oil and gas exploration. But it wasn't until the 1990s that seeps began to affect how we explore offshore. So that's seeps go back to since the dawn of humanity, they were used in oil exploration from the earliest days, the 1870's and 80's onward. But they've been used offshore now since the mid 1990s. So that's, that's kind of, that seeps in context.Duncan:00:05:31But it's actually the, I, the way I like to think about it, it's the bit missing from the, "What is Geology 101" that every, everyone in the oil and gas industry has to know. They always show a source rock and a migration to a trap and a seal. But that actually misses part of the story. Almost every basin in the world has leakage from that trap, either, either directly from the source rock or from the trap. It either fills to the spill point or it just misses the trap. Those hydrocarbons typically make their way to the surface at some point-Dan:00:06:04at some point and somewhere. The trick is finding them.Duncan:00:06:08Yeah, that's the seep. And thus what we're interested in finding.Erica:00:06:12As Jed Clampett from the Beverly hillbillies discovered.Erica:00:06:15Exactly.Dan:00:06:15I was going to include that!Erica:00:06:19Yes.Dan:00:06:19Jed was out hunting for some food and up from the ground came a bubbling crude. That's it.Erica:00:06:27Oil that is.Dan:00:06:29Black gold.Erica:00:06:29Texas tea.Dan:00:06:30That's right. So that's that seep science. So today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about seep communities offshore because what I hope to be able to, you know, kind of convince you of is if oil and gas leak out of the sea floor, a seep community can form. Okay. Then we're going to talk about this thing called multibeam, which is a technique for mapping the sea floor because where you get a seep community, it affects the acoustic properties of the sea floor. And if we change the acoustic properties of sea floor or the shape of the sea floor with this mapping tool, we can identify a potential seep community and then we can go sample that.Dan:00:07:14And if we can sample it, we can analyze the geochemistry and the geochemistry will tell us whether or not we had oil or gas or both. And we can use it in all sorts of other ways. But that's where we're going to go to today. So that's kind of, that's kind of a map of our discussion today. Okay. So as Duncan said, most of the world, he Duncan talked about how in- if we have, an oil basin or gas basin with charge, there's going to be some leakage somewhere. And so the trick is to find that, okay. And so, we could, we could look at any basin in the world and we can look at where wells have been drilled and we can, we can look at where seeps leak out of the surface naturally. And there's a correlation, like for example, LA is a prolific hydrocarbon basin. Okay. And it has Labrea tar pits, one of the most charismatic seeps on earth cause you got saber tooth tigers bubbling outDuncan:00:08:18It's literally a tourist attraction.Dan:00:08:20Right there on Wilshire Boulevard. Okay. And it's a hundred meters long by 50 meters wide. So a hundred yards long, 50 yards wide. And it, that is an oil seep on, on the earth surface in LA okay.Duncan:00:08:32Now, it's important to mention that they're not all as big as that.Dan:00:08:34No, no. Sometimes they're smaller. It could just literally be a patch of oil staining in the sand.Erica:00:08:41Really, that's little.Duncan:00:08:41Oh yeah. I mean, or just an area where there's a cliff face with something draining out of it or it, you know, it could be really, really small, which is easy to find onshore. You know, you send the rover boys out there like you mentioned, and you know, geologists working on the ground, they're going to find these things eventually. But the challenge, which we've been working on with, with the guys from One for the last few years, and now is finding these things offshore.Dan:00:09:06So let's, let's turn the clock back to 1977. Alvin, a submarine, a submersible with three people in it went down on a Mid-ocean Ridge near the Galapagos Islands. And what they found, they were geologists going down to map where the oceanic crust is created. But what they found was this crazy community, this incredible, oasis of life with tube worms and these giant columns with what looked like black smoke spewing into the, into the ocean. And so what they found are what we now call black smokers or hot vents, and what was so shocking is the bottom of the ocean is it's a desert. There's no light, there's very little oxygen, there's not a lot of primary food energy. So what was this incredible, oasis of life doing thousands of meters down on, near the Galapagos Island? Well, it turns out that the base of the food chain for those hot vents are sulfide rich fluids, which come spewing out of the earth and they fuel a chemically based, community that thrives there and is an oasis as there because there's so much energy concentrated in those hot sulfide rich fluids that it can support these chemically based life forms.Dan:00:10:34So that's 1977 in 1985 in the same summer, chemically based life forms, but based on ambient temperature, water, not hot water were found in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Oregon that same summer, 1985 in the Gulf of Mexico, the base of the food chain, what was fueling this chemical energy was hydrocarbons, oil and gas, and off the coast of Oregon, what was fueling it was hydrogen sulfide. So this is 1985, the year I graduated college. And so I started graduate school in 1986 and part of my research was working with the group that was trying to figure out the plumbing that was bringing these chemically rich fluids up to the earth's surface that were feeding this brand new community of life. You know, what we now call cold seeps. So, we, you know, depending on what you had for breakfast today, you know, eggs or pancakes or had your coffee, all the energy that we've got coursing through our veins right now is based upon photosynthesis.Dan:00:11:45We're either eating plants that got their energy from sunlight or we're eating eggs that came from chickens that eat the plants that can, where the came from, sunlight. Everything in our world up here is based upon photosynthesis. So, but the seep communities, the hot vents and the black smokers and the cold seeps, the base of the food pyramid is chemical energy. So they're called chemosynthetic communities or chemoautotrophic because the bacteria get their trophic energy, the energy that they need to live from chemicals. And so the bacteria utilize the chemicals and organisms have evolved to host these bacteria inside their bodies. And the bacteria metabolize the chemical energy to produce the enzymes that these larger organisms need to live. So these larger organisms can include clams, tube worms, the actual bacteria themselves. But, so the kind of how does this work is- let's get, because if we understand how seeps work and we know that seeps can be based upon oil and gas seepage, then you'll understand why we're using these seeps to go out and impact, oil and gas exploration.Dan:00:13:09So the- at the bottom of the ocean, we have a little bit of oxygen, but as we go down into the sediments, below the surface, we, we consume all that oxygen and we get to what's called the redox boundary to where we go from sulfate above it to hydrogen sulfide below it. And so below this redox boundary, we can have methane, we can have oil, but above that redox boundary, the methane will oxidize and the oil will be biodegraded and eaten by critters and whatnot. Now, living at that boundary, are bacteria who metabolize these compounds, and that's where they get the energy they need to live. These bac- Okay, now kind of turned the clock even farther back before the earth had an oxygen atmosphere, the only way that organisms got energy to live was from chemicals. Okay? So before we had algae and we created this oxygen atmosphere that we breathe billions of years ago, the organisms that lived on earth were chemosynthetic.Dan:00:14:13So these bacteria survive today and they live everywhere where we cross this redox boundary. Okay? So there they're actually archaea, which are some of the most primitive forms of bacteria, and I'm not a biologist, so I can't tell you how many billions of years ago they formed, but they're ancient and they're living down there.Erica:00:14:33So they haven't changed since then. They're basically the same?Dan:00:14:36Nope.Erica:00:14:36Wow.Dan:00:14:36They figured out a way to get energy to survive. It works.Erica:00:14:40Why change it?Dan:00:14:41If you're an Archea, right? So they're living down there at that redox boundary. Now, if we have seepage-seepage, is the flow of liquids. You actually lift that redox boundary. And if you have enough seepage, you can lift that boundary right to the sediment water interface. If you step in a pond and you smell that, sulfide, that rotten egg smell, your foot has gone through the redox boundary.Dan:00:15:08Okay? And you've disturbed some archaea down there and they'll get nudged aside. They'll go find someplace else. Okay? So with seepage, we lift the redox boundary to the sediment water interface and, and the bacteria are there and they're ready to utilize the reduced fluids as their source of energy. And so you can see them, we have pictures. You can do an internet search and say, you know, bacteria chemosynthetic bacteria and images and look at and look at photos of them. They it, they look like, okay, when you put the Guacamole in the back of the fridge and you forget it for three weeks and you open it up, that's what they look like. It's that fuzzy. It's this fuzzy mat of bacteria. And those are the bacteria. They're out there. They're metabolizing these fluids. Okay. Now in the process of metabolizing these fluids, they produce the bacteria, produce enzymes like ATP.Dan:00:16:01And I wish my partner John Decker, was here because he would correct me. I think it's adinase triphosphate and it's an enzyme that your body produces and sends out to basically transmit chemical energy. Okay. Now at some point in geologic time, and I'll, I'll actually put a number on this in a second. The larger fauna like clams and tube worms, evolve to take advantage of the fact that the bacteria are producing energy. And so they then evolve to use the bacteria within themselves to create the energy that they need to live. Okay? So, what happens is these seep fauna produce larva, the larva go into, you know, kind of a dormant stage and they're flowing around the ocean. And if they sense a seep, okay. They settle down and they start to grow and as, and then they, they, they, the bacteria become part of them.Dan:00:16:56They're the, the clams. You open a clam in the bacteria live in the gills. Okay. And so they'd grow and, and so these clams and tube worms start to grow and they form a community. Okay. So that a clam, what a clam does these clams, they stick their foot into the, into the sediment and they absorb the reduced fluids into their circulation system. They bring that, that circulating fluid to their gills where the bacteria then metabolize these reduced fluids and send the enzymes out to the tissues of the clam so it can grow. So this clam does not filter feed like every other clam on the planet. The tube worms that host these bacteria in them don't filter feed. So the base of the food chain is chemosynthetic. But the megafauna themselves, don't get their energy directly from methane or hydrogen sulfide. They get their energy from the bacteria, which in the bacteria, you know, the bacteria happy, they'll live anywhere.Dan:00:17:59But sitting here in a clam, they get the reduced fluids they need to live and they grow. Now it's what's cool for us as, as seep hunters is different species have evolved to kind of reflect different types of fluids. So if you know a little bit about seep biology, when you pick up like a batheum Modiolus mussel, you go, Huh? There could be oil here. Okay. Because that particular mussel is found in association with, with oil seeps. Okay. So that we won't go too far down that path, but there are different organisms. The important thing is that these communities, form again an oasis of life, a high concentration of life where we have a seep. Now, the oldest seep community that I'm aware of is Devonian. So that's between 420 and 360 million years. It's found in the high atlas mountains of Morocco.Dan:00:18:58And that seep community, a fossil seep community includes the same types of clams in tube worms that we find today. Okay. But they're also found with authigenic carbonate. Okay. Which is like limestone. And so, and that limestone in cases, this fossil seep community and has preserved it for hundreds of millions of years. So where does limestone come from? So remember we've got methane, CH4 in our, in some of our seep fluids. Well, if that's oxidized by bacteria, cause they're going to get energy from the methane they produced bicarbonate, which is HCO3 as a negative charge on it. And that bicarbonate, if it sees calcium, they like each other. And so they'll form calcium carbonate, limestone. And since sea water is everywhere saturated with calcium, if we have a natural gas seep, the bacteria will oxidize in natural gas and the bicarbonate will grab the calcium to form this cement.Dan:00:20:04Now deep enough in the ocean, it actually is acidic enough that that cement will start to dissolve. So we just have this, we have a factory of of bacteria. It might be dissolving some places, but most of the places we look, the carbonate doesn't dissolve. So we've got clams, tube worms, we've got the limestone authigenic carbonate, and if the pressure and temperature are in the right field, that methane can also form this really cool substance called gas hydrate and gas hydrate is a clathrate the, it's a combination of water and methane where the water forms an ice-like cage and the methane sits in that cage. And so you can light this on fire in your hand and the gas will burn. Nice yellow flame will go up from your hand and the cage will melt. The ice melts. So you get cold water on your hand with flames going up. It, it's cool stuff.Erica:00:21:03Did you bring one of these to show us today?Dan:00:21:06The pressure and temperature in this room are not, methane's not an equilibrium. You need hot, you need high pressure, moderately high pressure and you need very low temperatures. So, if we had-Duncan:00:21:20Neither are common in Houston, (Laughter)Dan:00:21:22No, and we wouldn't be terribly comfortable if that was what it was like here in this room. But the, the important thing for us now as we think about seep science and, and seep hunting is that this, this limestone cement, the authigenic carbonate, the gas hydrate, the shells of a clam, okay. Are All harder. Okay? Harder, I will knock on the table. They're harder than mud. So the sea floor, most of the most of the world's ocean is gray-green mud and ooze from all sorts of sediment and diatoms and plankton raining down onto the ocean floor. So most of the world's oceans is kind of just muddy sandy some places, but sediment, it's where you get these seep communities that now we've, we've formed a spot that some that's harder and rougher than the area around it. And that's our target when we, deploy technologies to go out and, and look at seeps.Dan:00:22:26So, so hot smokers, hot vents were discovered in 1977. Cold seeps were discovered in 1985 and were found to be associated, in the Gulf of Mexico with oil and gas seepage. That's 1985. Those were discovered with human beings in a sub in submersibles. Later, we deployed robotic submersibles to go look at seeps, ROV's and even later we developed tools to go sample seeps without needing to have eyes on the bottom and we'll come and talk and we'll come back and talk about that later.Dan:00:22:57But for kind of recap, a seep is a place where something is leaking out of the earth surface. When we talk about seeps, we're talking about offshore seepage of oil and gas that supports this profusion of chemically-based life forms as well as these precipitants, the authigenic carbonate limestone and gas hydrate. And the important thing is they change the acoustic properties of the sea floor.Duncan:00:23:28Yeah. Then the key thing is that you've gone from having, seeps onshore, which are relatively easy to walk up to and see, but hard to find, to seeps offshore, which are impossible to walk up to or very difficult. You need a submersible to do it. But because of this, chemosynthetic communities that build up around it and our knowledge of that and now gives us something to look for geophysically. So we can apply some geophysics, which we'll get on to talk about next in terms of the multibeam, to actually hunt for these things in a very cost effective way and a very fast manner. So we can cover, as Dan said, right at the start, hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, even over a million now, in a cost effective, timely manner and identify these seeps from the sea surface.Dan:00:24:15Now fishermen, know where seeps are because all of this limestone provides places for fish to leave their larva where they might live, they call them refugia. It's a, it's a place where, you know, lots of little fish and where you have lots of little fish, you have lots of big fish. And since we're also increasing this primary productivity, you get, you get profusions of fish around seep communities. So we've found authigenic carbonate in the front yards of fishermen in areas where that we've gone to study seeps. And if you chip a little bit off it, you can go and analyze it in the lab or if you can get somebody who fishes for a living to tell you their spots. And that involves convincing them that you're not going to steal their spots and you're not gonna tell everybody where their spots are. But if you go into a frontier area, if you can get somebody who fishes for a living to talk to you, you might have some ideas of where to go look for them.Dan:00:25:14So it kind of, one other point that I wanted to make here about seeps is, remember I talked about how seep organism creates kind of a larva, which is dormant and it's kind of flowing through the world's ocean, looking for a seep community, doing some back of the envelope calculations. If, if a larva can survive for about a month. Okay. And you have a one knot current that larva can move about 1300 kilometers in a month, which is about the length of the island of Java. And it might be about the length of the state of California. So if you think now, so if you think about that, then all you need is a seep community somewhere to be sending out larva. Most of which of course never gonna survive. And then if we get a seep somewhere else, the odds are that there's going to be a larva bouncing along the sea floor that is going to see that and start growing.Dan:00:26:08So for us as explorationists as the, the important thing is if there's a seep, there's a pretty good chance that, that a seep community will start to form, if the seepage lasts long enough, it will form a community depending, you know, might be large, might be medium size, but it changes the acoustic properties of the sea floor. Okay, so that, remember we're going to talk about seeps what they, what, what's a seep and that is how it's related to hydrocarbon seepage out of the or natural gas oil, you know, reduced fluids. What we were going to talk about, and now we're going to talk about how offshore we use this technology called multibeam to go and find them. Okay.Dan:00:26:51So back in, back in the Cold War, the air force came up with a tool to map the former Soviet Union called synthetic aperture radar. And when the navy saw the air forces maps, they said, we want a map of the sea floor. And at the time, you know, if you remember your World War II movies, the submarine sends out a Ping, somebody listening on, their, on their headphones and and the ping comes back and the amount of time that it took for the ping to go out and the ping come back is how deep the water is. If you know the speed of sound in water. But that's, that's just one point directly beneath you, that's not good enough to get a detailed map of the sea floor. So, driven by these cold war needs, the navy contracted a company called general instruments to develop a tool to map the sea floor and they develop what's called SASS, the sonar array sounding system, which we now call multibeam.Dan:00:27:49In the 1960s, it was unveiled to the world during a set of, submersible dives to the mid Ocean Ridge, I believe in 1975 as part of the famous project. And the geoscientist looked at that map and it was a contour map of the mid ocean region. They said, holy smokes, what's that? Where'd that come from? And the navy said, well, we kind of developed a new technology and it was first commercialized in 1977 the same year hot smokers were discovered on the world's oceans. And it has been continuously developed since then. And in about the 1990s, it got resolute enough for, for us to take this, this kind of seeps, seep hunting science and take it offshore. So until then, 1980s, we were deploying submersibles. We were going down and looking at them. We had very crude maps. We had some side scan shows, a little bit about, the acoustic properties of the sea floor.Dan:00:28:46But it wasn't until the mid 1990s that we realized that with these tools, these sea floor mapping tools that had acoustic, analyzing techniques that we could identify areas that were harder and rougher and had a different shape, that allowed us to start, instead of just driving around and, and, we're finding one by, by luck or chance actually saying, Huh, there's a, there's an interesting acoustic signature over there. Let's go take a look at it. And deploying submersibles and ROVs and realizing that yes, we had tools that could, be used to, to map the sea floor and identify seeps and driven by their own interests. The Navy, the US navy was very interested in these and, was, was a early, early funder of seep science and they've continued with it as well as academic institutions around the world that got very interested in seep communities.Dan:00:29:45And in fact, NASA, NASA is really interested in seep communities because they're chemically based life forms in what are basically extreme environments. And so if NASA wants to figure out what life is going to look like on a different planet, or a different moon on it, or surrounding a different planet that doesn't have an oxygen atmosphere, here's a, a laboratory on earth that, that they can use. So NASA has been funding seep science as well.Dan:00:30:11So multibeam what is it and how does it apply to, to, to hunting seeps. So multibeam, which is this technology that was developed by and funded by the navy in the 1960s and commercialized in the 70s uses two acoustic arrays of transducers. one array is mounted parallel to the length of a ship. And when you fire off all those transducers, it sends out a ping. And the longer the array is, the narrower that beam is. That's how antennas work. So that that long array sends out a ping, which is narrow along track and a shape, kind of like a saucer. So if you can imagine two dinner plates put together, that's what this, ping of energy looks like. And that's what we call the transmit beam. So then if you listen to the sea floor with an array that's perpendicular to the transmitter ray, we are now listening to an area that's, that's narrow across track. Okay. And it's long elongate a long track. So we've got this narrow transmit beam in one direction that's, that's now perpendicular to the ship. And we've got a narrow receive beam that's parallel to the ship and where those two intersect is what we call a beam. And so with, with lots of different, transducers mounted, perpendicular to the ship, we can listen from all the way out to the port about 65 degrees down below the ship and all the way over to starboard, again, about 65 degrees. And we have lots of beams.Dan:00:31:51So right now the system that we're using, on our project has 455 beams across track. So every time we send out a ping, we ensonify the sea floor on, on these 455 beams. And as we go along, we send out another ping and another ping. And we're basically, we're painting the sea floor. It's, it's like mowing the lawn with a big lawn mower or using a Zamboni to drive around an ice rink. You can just think of it as as a ship goes along. We are ensonifying and listening to a wide patch of sea floor and we typically map, about a five kilometer, about a three mile, a wide swath, and we send out a ping every six or 10 seconds. Depends how, you know, depends on the water depth. And so we're able to map 1000 or 2000 square kilometers a day with this technique. This multibeam technique.Duncan:00:32:48Since a lot of our podcast listeners might be familiar with seismic is that's probably the biggest percentage of the, the geophysical industry. This is not too different. It's an acoustic based technique. I guess the main difference is are we live working in a different, frequency bandwidth. And also that we have both the receiver and the transmitter both mounted on the same boat. So we're not dealing with a streamer out the back of a boat. we have transmitter and receiver are both whole mounted. But after that it's all pretty similar to seismic. We go backwards and forwards, either in 2D lines or in a, in a 3D grid and we build up a picture. Now because of the frequencies we're working with, we don't penetrate very deep into the sea floor. but as, as we mentioned, we're interested in seeing those seep communities on the sea floor. So that's why we this, this is the perfect technology for, for that application.Erica:00:33:40Oh, can you talk a little bit about the post-processing that's involved with multibeam?Dan:00:33:44Well, let me- Erica, Great question. Let me, come back to that later cause I want to pay, I want to pick up on what Duncan talked about in and add one very important wrinkle. So first of all, absolutely correct, the frequencies are different. In seismic, we're down in the hertz to tens of Hertz and in Multibeam we're in the tens of kilohertz and in very shallow water, maybe even over higher than a hundred kilohertz. In seismic, we have air guns that send that radiate out energy. And we, we designed the arrays so that we get most of the energy in the direction that we're looking with multi beam. We have a narrow, remember it's one degree wide in here. If you got kids, see if anybody still has a protractor anymore, grab a protractor and look at how wide one degree is. It's very narrow.Duncan:00:34:39There's probably an iPhone app for that. (Laughter) see what one used to look like.Dan:00:34:43But with, with seismic, the air guns sends out energy and we listened to the reflected energy out on the streamer back behind the ship or on a node somewhere else. It's reflected energy. With multibeam, the energy goes out and it interacts with the sea floor and the shallow subsurface. Most of it gets reflected away and we don't, we don't, hear that it, but some of it actually comes back in the same direction that the sound went out and we call that backscatter. So backscatter energy comes back to you and it's that backscatter that, can increase when we have hard and rough material either on the sea floor or buried below the sea floor. So the way that we process it is since we know the time of length, the time of path on how long it took to get out, hit the sea floor and come back, or you can correct for path lengths, energy radiates outward and spherical patterns. So we correct for spherical spreading. we know the angle that it hit the sea floor, so we correct for angle of ensonification. And then the next and most important things are where was the ship, when the pulse went out? And where is the ship when the pulse comes back, including what's the orientation of the ship? So we need to know the location, the position of the ship in X, Y, and Z to centimeters. And we need to know the orientation of the ship to tenths of a degree or better on both the transmit and the receive. But the key thing is, if we know that path length in the spherical spreading and we correct for all of that and we get a response that's much greater than we expected, we get higher backscatter energy and it's, it's those clams and tube worms authigenic carbonate gas hydrate that can increase the hardness and the roughness of the sea floor that kicked back the backscatter energy.Dan:00:36:46Okay. Now what happens if the oil and gas, or the reduced fluids if they shut off? Well, I'm sorry to say for the clams and the tube worms that they will eventually die. The bacteria will still live at that redox boundary as it settles back below the sediment. And then when we pile some sediment on top of that dead seep community, it's still there. The shells are there, the carbonate's still there. So with the, with multibeam that the frequencies, we use 12 and 30 kilohertz penetrate between two, three 10 meters or so into the sediment. So if you shut off the seepage and bury that seep community, they're still there. And if we can sample that below that redox boundary at that location, chances are we're going to get a oil or gas in, in our sample. And in fact, we encounter live seep communities very, very, very, very rarely, you know, kind of one in a thousand.Dan:00:37:50But, we, we encounter seep fauna down in our sample cores, which we'll talk about later, much more frequently. And, and we, we find hydrocarbons, we are very successful at finding hydrocarbons. And the key thing is we're using seep science to go look in, in basins or extend outward from basins in areas where there may be no known oil or gas production. And that's why the seeps are useful. So multibeam unlike a seismic, we got to collect the data, then we got it and you to do all sorts of processing and it takes a while to, to crank the computers and whatnot. Multibeam we can, we can look at it as it comes in and we can see the backscatter strength. We can see what the swath that it's mapping every ping, every six seconds. And it takes about, it takes less than a day to process a days worth of multibeam.Dan:00:38:47So when our ships are out there working every morning, when we get the daily report from the ship, we see another thousand or 2000 square kilometers of data that were mapped just the previous day. So it's for, those who can't wait, it's really satisfying. But for those of us who are trying to accelerate projects, it's great because when the data come off the ship, they're already processed. We can start picking targets and we can be out there, you know, in weeks sampling. So that's so multibeam it's, it's bathymetry, it's backscatter, but we're also imaging the water column. So if there's, a gas plume, coming out of the sea floor, naturally we can see that gas plume and, so that we can see the water column. We can see the sea floor or the bathymetry, and the backscatter. Erica, you asked, you know, about the processing and I talked about how we have to know the position and the orientation, of the ship, that means that we have to survey in using a laser theodolight.Dan:00:39:54We have to survey in every component of the system on the ship to, you know, fractions of a millimeter. And we drive the surveyors nuts because we are, we are more demanding than the, the BMW plant in South Carolina. And they point that out to us every time. Yes, we're more demanding. But if they have a problem with, with a robot in the BMW plant, they can go out and survey it again, once we put this ship in the water, I can't go survey the array that's now welded to the bottom of the ship. It's there. And so that's why we make them do three replicate surveys and do loop ties and convince us that we've got incredibly accurate and precise system. So that's when we survey the ship. We use, well we go back and we go and we check their math and we make sure all the numbers are entered into the system correctly.Dan:00:40:46We, measure the water column every day so that we have the best velocity data that we use to correct the, that position. We measure the salinity in the water column because it affects how energy is absorbed. It's called the absorption coefficient. We measure the acoustic properties of the ship. So we understand maybe we need to turn off the starboard side pump in order to get better multibeam data. And we evaluate every component of the ship. Something. Sometimes they'll have, you know, the, the waste unit was, was mounted onto the, onto the deck of the ship and nobody thought about putting a rubber bushing between that unit and the hall to isolate the sound. And it just so happens it's at 12 kilohertz. So it swamps your acoustic energy or degrades our data quality because it's all about data quality so that we can find these small, interesting high backscatter targets. We polish the hull. We send divers down every eight weeks or 12 weeks or 16 weeks because you get biofouling you get, you get these barnacles growing in a barnacle in between your acoustic array in the sea floor is going to affect the data. So we send divers down to go scrape the hull and scraped the prop.Duncan:00:42:05So it's probably worth mentioning that this is the same type of multibeam or multibeam data is the same data that is used in other parts of the oil and gas industry as well. So I mean, any pipeline that's ever been laid in the last few decades has had a multibeam survey before it. Any bit of marine infrastructure that an oil and gas company wants to put in the Gulf of Mexico. Certainly you have to have a multibeam survey ahead of time. what's different here is that we're, we're trying to cover big areas and we're trying to get a very specific resolution. So maybe it's worth talking a bit about that. Dan what we're actually trying to achieve in terms of the resolution to actually find seeps.Dan:00:42:42You got it. So we, we can, we can control the resolution because we can control how wide a swath we go and how fast we go. So, if you're really interested in, if you want to do a site survey and you want to get incredibly detailed data of a three kilometer by three kilometer square, you could deploy an autonomous underwater vehicle or an ROV and get very, very, very resolute, like smaller than half a meter of bin size. for what we do, where our goal is exploration, the trade off is between, do I want more resolute data or do I want more data and it that that is a tradeoff and it's something that we struggle with. And we think that the sweet spot is mapping that five kilometers swath and three miles wide, swath at about oh eight to 10 knots. So let's say about 16 kilometers an hour.Dan:00:43:40That gets us a thousand to 2000 square kilometers a day. And by acquiring data in that manner, we get a 15 meter bathymetric bin independent of water depth and our backscatter since we subsample that bathymetric bin for the backscatter, we can get a five meter backscatter pixel. So now if I have four, if I have four adjacent pixels, you know, shaped like a square, that's a 10 meter by 10 meter spot on the sea floor, it's slightly larger than this room. We could, you could see that now you might need a couple of more to be larger than that. So to have a target actually stand out, and that's about how accurate our sampling is with the core barrel. So, the long answer to your question is about a 15 meter bathymetric bin and a five meter backscatter pixel is what we're currently doing for our exploration work.Dan:00:44:32Now we pay attention to what's going on in the navigation and the positioning world because it affects our data quality. So the higher the quality of, of our navigation, the higher the quality of our data on the sea floor. So about a decade ago, the world's airlines asked if they could fly their airplanes closer together and the FAA responded and said, not unless you improve GPS and so sponsored by the world's airlines. They set up ground stations all in, in the, in the most heavily traveled parts of the world that improve the GPS signal by having an independent orbital corrections. What that means is for us working off shore, we take advantage of it. It's called wide area augmentation. And, using this system, which is now it's a, it's add on for a GPS receiver, we're able to get six centimeter accuracy of a ship that's out there in the ocean that surveying.Dan:00:45:27So that's six centimeters. What's that? About two and a half inches. And for those of us who grew up with low ran and very, you know, where you were lucky if you knew where you were to within, you know, a quarter of a mile. it's, it's just astonishing to me that this box can produce data of that quality, but that flows through to the quality of the data that we get on our surveys, which flows through to our ability to find targets. So I think, I told you about sub sampling, the bathymetry for backscatter and I've told, I told you about the water column and we've talked about the resolution. I think we've, we've pretty much hit what multibeam is. It's, it's a real time near real time acquisition, high frequency narrow beam. We image the sea floor and the shallow subsurface. Okay and we use that to find anomalous backscatter targets.Duncan:00:46:20Well, let's talk about the water column a little bit more done because I know we've published some pictures and images from our surveys. Showing the water column anomalies. The backscatter data, in the water column itself can actually help us find seeps. The right mixture of oil and gas coming out of this, an active seep and migrating up through the water column can actually be picked up on these multibeam data also. So that's, a real direct hit that you've got to see and that it's actually still producing oil today,Dan:00:46:53Right, so when, when gas and oil leak out of the sea floor, the gas bubble begins to expand as it comes up, just like a would in a, in a carbonated beverage because there's less pressure. So that gap, that bubble is expanding. If there's oil present, the oil coats the outside of the bubble and actually protects it from dissolving into the water column. And so the presence of gas with a little bit of oil leaking out of the sea floor creates these bubbles that, are big enough to see with these 12 and 30 kilohertz systems. And so when we see a plume coming out of the sea floor, that's natural, a seepage of gas, possibly with a little bit of oil and it provides a great target for us to go and hit. Now those seeps are flowing into the water column and the water column has currents and the currents aren't the same from one day to the next and one week to the next.Dan:00:47:47So if we image a seep a couple of different times, one day it will be flowing in one direction and the next time we see it flowing in a different direction. The area in common between the two is pointing us toward the origin point on the sea floor. And that's what we're going to target. And if you, if you hunt around, look for NOAA studies of, of the US Gulf of Mexico, over Mississippi Canyon near where the deep water horizon, went down because there are, the, NOAA has published, images of the gas seeps in that area where there are natural oil and gas seeps leaking, leaking other, the sea floor. And these natural seeps occur all over the world. Okay? And they're bringing oil and gas into the water column. But remember, nature has basically provided, the cleanup tool, which is the bacteria. So where oil and gas settle onto the sea floor, there are bacteria that will consume it. You don't want a lot of it in one place, cause then then you've got, you know, a real environmental disaster. But natural oil and gas seepage goes hand in hand with natural seep consuming organisms that metabolize these fluids. So a multi beam seeps backscatter okay. That I think we've, we've talked about what the target looks like. Let's talk about how we go in and sample it.Duncan:00:49:12Yeah, no, I think that's the real key thing. Particularly here in the Gulf of Mexico. I mean we talked at the start about how I'm using seeps can tell you whether a basin has hydrocarbons in it or not. Clearly we're decades past the point of knowing whether there's oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico. So even in the deep water gulf of Mexico, especially here in the US side, we know that there's oil and gas, so that information is long gone. We don't, we don't need an update on that anymore. What we need to know is information about the type of oil, the age of the oil, the deep positional environment that the oil is deposited in. And if we can actually get a sample from these seeps, then that's the sort of information that modern geochemistry can start to pull out for us.Dan:00:49:57we've sat in the same meetings where the, the potential client companies have said, why are you, why are you gonna map the deepest part of the Gulf of Mexico? There's no oil out there. And lo and behold, we found anomalous backscatter targets on a diapirs, which are areas, mounds out in the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico. And lo and behold, if you, if you look at the data, know that that statement was incorrect. There is oil and gas out there in other parts of the world. We've had companies say, oh, this part's all oil and this part's gas. Well, how do you know that? Well, because we've drilled for oil out here and we don't think there's any oil. Once you get out there and you don't know, you don't know what you don't know until you go map it and sample it and then you come back, you put the data on their desk and they go, huh, hey, we were wrong man. I guess there's oil out there. And, and in other parts of the world where you know, we've done all our exploration close to land or in shallow water, we go out into the deepest part and nobody's ever drilled a well out there. So, you use the seep science to go to basically fill that in.Dan:00:51:09So in order to make money exploring for oil, you had to have organic matter. Originally it had to be, it had to be buried and cooked. Okay. So you needed temperature and pressure. You need time takes time to do that, then it needs to migrate. Okay. With the exception of unconventionals, we're not gonna talk about unconventional today with the exception of unconventionals, the hydrocarbons have to migrate, so they're concentrated so that you can go drill them and recover them. And they need to be in a reservoir.Dan:00:51:41And it has to be sealed. And so when we find a seep and all of that goes into what we talk about in oil exploration as the risk equation, like what's the probability of success? If you don't know whether you have a migration, you have maximum uncertainty and that flows through into your, into your risk. Well, if we find a seep, remember we've proven that there was organic matter. We've proven that it was buried and cooked for the right amount of time to create oil and gas and that it's migrated. We can't tell you anything about reservoir or seal or timing, but we can, we can materially impact the risk equation by finding a seep. Okay. So right before you drill a well, wouldn't you like to know whether or not there's oil or gas in the neighborhood? Cause a well can be a can be $100 million risk.Dan:00:52:34Okay. Usually you wouldn't, wouldn't you like to know? So remember when we started looking at seeps, 1977 for the hot vents 85 for the cold vents, we used human beings in a submersible. Later we shifted to using robotic submersibles where a human being sit on a ship in a control room, operate the ROV with joysticks, and you watch the videos come through. Well, those are great, but they're really expensive and you can't look at much sea floor on any given day because you're limited to how fast you can move across the sea floor and how much you can look at. So if we surveyed 2000 square kilometers in a day, we want to be able to evaluate that in less than 20 years. We want to be able to evaluate that in, you know, in a similar length of time, a day or two. So what we've done is we've shifted toward using what we, what's called a piston core, which, which is a six meter long, 20 foot long tube with about a thousand kilos on a 2,000 pounds.Dan:00:53:37And we lower it through the sea floor, operating it with a winch from a ship. And by putting a navigation beacon on that core, we can track it through the water column in real time. And if we have this high backscatter target on the sea floor, we can lower it to the water column. Once we're about fit and we're within 50 meters, 150 feet of the sea floor, we can see whether we're on target and then we let it go. When the pist- when the, it has a trigger weight on it, you can look this up, how to, how do piston cores work, that the core, lets go and it free falls that last little bit and it penetrates the sea floor. You haul it back to the surface. Now if it had gas hydrate in it, if it has oil in it, if it has gas in it, you can see it right away. when you pull the clear liner out of the core, and there it is, you know, whether or not you've got success, for most cores, there's no visual evidence of hydrocarbons that we sample that core tube, three different samples. One of them, we take a sample into what we call a gas can and seal that. And then we put a couple of hockey puck size chunks of sediment into Ziploc bags and everything goes into the freezer. And you ship that back, from the next port call. And about a month later you get a spreadsheet in your email, that says, oh, guess what you found methane, ethane, propane, butane, and Pentane. And look at this, you've got enough fluorescents that this is a guaranteed oil hit. So, again, you think about the time we map a couple thousand square kilometers a day.Dan:00:55:18We mapped for a month, we'll look the data for a month. We go out and core for a couple of weeks and a month later the Geochemistry starts flowing in. So real quick, multibeam as we've, as we've discussed as a way to get a detailed map of the sea floor, both the shape of it and the hardest roughness, acoustic properties. So any company laying a fiber optic cable across the world's oceans is acquiring multibeam data. Any, municipality that's worried about how deep their ports are and whether there's enough space for the ships to come in, is acquiring multibeam data. The corps of engineers who pays companies to dredge sand in the Mississippi River has to have a before and after multibeam a map, when MH370 went down and needed to be hunted for before they deployed the real high resolution tools. They needed a map of the sea floor and that was a part of the ocean that has never been mapped in detail before.Dan:00:56:23So most of the world's oceans have net have never been mapped in the detail that we're mapping them. We're using the tool to go hunt seeps. But there are all sorts of other uses of, of that multi beam technology. So, what are we looking for when we, when we, when we're looking for seeps, you know, what have, where have people found oil and gas leaking out of the sea floor? What does it look like? Or what are the targets? Well, if the gas burps out of the sea floor, it creates a pockmark. And those are targets, in many parts of the world, the Apennines of Italy, Azerbaijan, there are what we call mud volcanoes, where over pressured mud from deep down in the earth is kind of spewing out gently, slowly and continuously at the earth's surface. And lo and behold, it's bringing up oil and gas along with it. So mud volcanoes are known, oil and gas seeps onshore. Of course we're going to use them, offshore. Any place where we have a fault, you can create fracture permeability that might let oil and gas up. Faults can also seal, but a fault would be a good target, an anticline, a big fold that has a, can have seeps coming out of the crest of, it's similar to the seeps that were discovered early in late 18 hundreds. And in, in the USA, we can have areas where we have oil and gas leaking out of the sea floor, but it's not enough to change the shape of the sea floor. So we get high backscatter but no relief. Those, those are targets. So when we go out and we sample potential seep targets, we don't focus on only one type of target because that might only tell you one thing.Dan:00:58:04So we spread our, our targets around on different target types and we'll spread our targets around an area. Even if we, if we have more targets in one area than another area, we will spread our targets all the way around. Because the one thing that we've learned in decades of seep hunting is we're not as smart as we think we are. Nature always throws a curve ball. And you should, you should not think that you knew, know everything before you go into an area to analyze it because you might, you probably will find something that's, that startles you. And you know, as someone who's been looking at seeps since 1986, I continue to find things that we've never seen before. like our recent projects in the Gulf of Mexico, we found two target types that we've never seen before. The nearest analog on earth, on the surface is called a Pingo, which is when ice forms these really weird mountains up in the Arctic. And the one thing I can guarantee you that's not on the bottom of the world's ocean is an ice mound similar to what's forming the Arctic. But, but it had that shape. So we went and analyzed it and lo and behold, it told us something about the hydrocarbon system.Dan:00:59:12So those are all different types of target types so that the core comes back, we send it to the lab, we get first the very, what call the screening geochemistry, which is a light gases, methane through Pentane. We look at how fluorescent it is, cause that'll tell you whether or not you, you have a chance of of having a big oil hit. And we also look at what's called the chromatogram, which is a gas chromatography. And that tells us between about C15 and C36 C being the carbon length. So the, all your alkanes. And by looking at a Chromatogram, a trained professional will look that and say, oh, that's biodegraded oil. Or, oh, that's really fresh oil cause really fresh oil. All the, alkane peaks get smaller as they get bigger. So it has a very, very distinctive shape. Or they can look at it and they can tell you, you can, you can figure out the depositional environment. You can figure out whether the organic matter came from a lake, lacustrine, or maybe it's marine algal. We can say something about the age of it because flowering plants didn't evolve on earth till about the end of the age of dinosaurs. So at the end of the cretaceous, we got flowering plants. And so flowering plants create a molecule called oleanane. And so if there's no oleanane in the oil, that oil is older than cretaceous. So now we're telling something about a depositional environment.Dan:01:00:39We're saying something about the age, we can say the, the geochemist can say something about the maturity of the oil by looking at the geochemistry data. So all of this information, is now expanding what we know about what's in the subsurface and everything we know about seepage is that it is episodic in time. And it is distributed on earth's surface, not in kind of a random scattered, fashion. You get seepage above above a mud mud volcano, but for the surrounding hundred square kilometers around this mud volcano, we don't find any seep targets. Okay. So, our philosophy is that in order to find, in order to analyze the seats, we have to go find where we've got the highest probability of seepage and leakage. And that's where we target. So if you went out and just dropped a random grid over an area, you have a very, very low chance of hitting a concentrated site of seepage. And so, our hit rate, our success rate is, is high because we're using these biological and chemical indicators of seepage to help us guide where we sample. We have very precisely located sampling instruments this core with this acoustic beacon on it. And so we have, we have a very, very high success rates. And when we get hydrocarbons, we get enough hydrocarbons that we can do all of this advanced geochemistry on it.Duncan:01:02:13That's a good point Dan, even with- even without just doing a random grid of coring, piston coring has been done in the the US Gulf of Mexico for a long time now. And using seismic information, to target it. So like you say, looking for the faults and the anticlines and those type of features and very shallow anomalies on the seismic data. Even even guiding it with that information, typically a, a 5% hit rate might be expected. So you take two or 300 cores you know, you're going to get maybe 5%-10% hit rate, where you can actually look at the oils, and the geochemistry from the samples that you get. Using the multibeam, we were more like a 50 to 60% hit rate. And that's even with like Dan said, we're targeting some features where we know we're not going to find oil. so we could probably do even better than that if we, if we really focused in on finding oil. But obviously we're trying to assemble all the different types of seeps.Dan:01:03:11One of the things that we're asked and that we've heard from managers since we started working in the oil industry is what is this sea floor seep tell me about what's in my reservoir. And there's only, there have been very few, what we, what we call the holy grail studies published where a company has published the geochemistry at the reservoir level and the geochemistry on a seep that they can tie to that reservoir in the Gulf of Mexico. We collected dozens of seeps that can be tied to the same basin where there is known production. So in that Gulf of Mexico Dataset, a company that purchased that data and who had access to the reservoir oils could finally have a sufficient number of correlations that they could answer that question. What is the sea floor seep? Tell me about the reservoir. Because once you're comfortable in the Gulf of Mexico, that that seep is really telling you what's down in your reservoir.Dan:01:04:08Now you go into other parts of the world where you don't know what's in the reservoir before you drill and you find a good, a fresh seep with fresh oil right at the sea floor. Now you're confident that when you go down into the reservoir that you're going to find something, something similar. So let me talk a little bit about other things that you can do with these cores. And I'll start by kind of looking at these mud volcanoes. So this mud volcano, it had over pressured mud at depth. It came up to the surface of the earth and as it came up, it grabbed wall rock on its way up. So by analyzing a mud volcano, if we then go look at, say the microfossils, in all the class in a mud volcano, we can tell you about the age of the rocks that mud volcano came through without ever drilling a well.Dan:01:04:54So you can look at, at the, at the vitrinite reflectance, you can look at the maturity of the, of these wall rocks that are brought to you on the surface. You can look at heavy minerals. And when we go out and we do field geology, you know, you remember you're a geologist has a rock pick they and they go, the geologist goes up to the cliff and, and she or he chips a rock out and they take it back to lab and take a look at it. And that's how they tell something about what's in the outcrop. Well, it's hard to do field geology on the bottom of the ocean using a multibeam map and - acoustically guided core. We can now go and do field work on the, on the ocean floor and expand our knowledge of what's going on in a field area.Duncan:01:05:42So maybe it's worth talking a bit Dan about how we're jointly using these technologies or this group of technologies, at TGS, to put together projects. So the, I think generally the approach has been to look at, basin wide study areas. So we're not just carving off little blocks and doing, one of these, one of these projects over, over a particular block. We'll take on the whole Gulf of Mexico. So we, we broke it up into two. We looked at the Mexico side and the US side. But in total, I think it was nearly a million square kilometers that we covered and, about 1500 cores that I think we took, so we were putting these packages together in different basins all over the world, whether they're in mature basins like the Gulf of Mexico or frontier areas like places we're working in West Africa at the moment. But I think we're, we're looking to put more and more of these projects together. I think the technology applies to lots of different parts of the world. Both this side of the Atlantic and the eastern side of the Atlantic as well.Dan:01:06:44So since 2014, five years, we've mapped, we as in One and TGS have mapped, I believe over 1,250,000 square kilometers. We've acquired over 2000 cores. Oh. We also measure heat flow. We can use - is how the earth is shedding heat. And it's concentrated in some areas in, and you want to know heat flow if you're looking for oil, cause you got to know how much your organic matter has been cooked. So we've, we've collected thousands of cores, at dramatic success rates and we've used them. We've used these projects in areas of known hydrocarbon production, like the shallow water Gulf of Mexico, but we've, we've extended out into areas of completely unknown hydrocarbon production, the deep water Gulf of Mexico, the east coast of Mexico over in the Caribbean. We're looking at northwest Africa, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and the area, that's a jointly operated AGC. And we're looking at other frontier areas where we can apply this to this technology in concert with traditional tools, multichannel, seismic, gravity and magnetics to help, our clients get a better feel for the hydrocarbon prospectivity. You've got to have the seismic cause you've got to see what the subsurface looks like. But the, the multibeam which leads to seep targets, which leads ultimately to the geochemistry is what then affects the risk going forward into a basin.Duncan:01:08:20That's a good point, Dan. We don't see this as a technology that replaces seismic or gravity or magnetics or anything else, but it's another piece in the puzzle. And it's a very complimentary piece as well.Dan:01:08:31It is. And any areas you could argue that probably the best places to go look are where, your colleagues and other companies have said, oh, there's no oil there. Well, how do you know? Well, we don't think there's oil because we don't think there was a organic matter or we don't think that it was cooked enough. Well, you don't know until you go there and you find, so if you found one seep in that field area that had live oil and gas in it, you would know that that premise was incorrect. And now you have a competitive edge, you have knowledge that others don't and that can, that can affect your exploration, strategy in your portfolio. we haven't talked about cost. Multi beam is arguably one of the least expensive tools per square kilometer in the geophysical toolkit. Just because we don't need chase boats. We're not towing the streamer, we're going 10 knots. We're covering a couple of thousand square kilometers a day. So it's, it's, it's a tool that's useful in frontier exploration. It is complimentary to seismic, and it's a tool that, that you can use to guide where you want to spend money and how much money if you, if we survey a huge area and let's say half of it has no evidence of oil and gas and half of it has excellent hydrocarbon seeps, both oil and gas. I would argue that as a company you might want to spend less money on the first and more money on the second. You migh

Ministry and Ministering Thoughts for the New Year i) What such words mean. (Parenthesis: Life of Moses) ii) What we have. iii) What we can bring. Mark 10 42But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. 43But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister 44and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. 45For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. A Lesson from Moses’ Life: II Corinthians 10 4For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds, 5Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; ii) What we have. Hebrews 2:18 For in that He himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour (help) them that are tempted. Matthew 11 28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. iii) What we can bring. II Corinthians 1 3Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 4Who comfortethi us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. MARANATHA For 2019:“The Lord bless thee, and keep thee, the Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” Numbers 6:24-26

Find us online at: AdventNYC.orgEmail us at: Podcast@AdventNYC.orgTalk with us at: Advent Sermons & Conversations on FacebookCome to a service Sunday morning 9am and 11am in English and 12:30pm in Spanish at 93rd and Broadway.Reading for this Week:First Reading2 Kings 4:42-4442A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to [Elisha,] the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.” 43But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’ ” 44He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.PsalmPsalm 145:10-1810All your works shall praise | you, O Lord,  and your faithful | ones shall bless you. 11They shall tell of the glory | of your kingdom  and speak | of your power, 12that all people may know | of your power  and the glorious splendor | of your kingdom. 13Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; your dominion endures through- | out all ages.  You, Lord, are faithful in all your words, and loving in | all your works. R 14The Lord upholds all | those who fall  and lifts up those who | are bowed down. 15The eyes of all wait upon | you, O Lord,  and you give them their food | in due season. 16You open | wide your hand  and satisfy the desire of every | living thing. 17You are righteous in | all your ways  and loving in | all your works. 18You are near to all who | call upon you,  to all who call up- | on you faithfully. RSecond ReadingEphesians 3:14-2114For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.GospelJohn 6:1-211Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”  15When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.  16When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

http://versebyversebibleteaching.com/wp-content/uploads/matthew%20244051.mp3 [audio: http://versebyversebibleteaching.com/wp-content/uploads/matthew%20244051.mp3] 40Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 41Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 42Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43But know this, that if the goodman […]