Podcasts about aahh

Hell Rains Down.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels. Would you choose ephemeral beauty, or rugged determination? Brief Segway :Senator Susan Collins of Maine, JIKIT's Congressional mentor, at our urging had proposed an amendment to the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 which would allow 'Turkey' to purchase six 'Oliver Perry class frigates for $10 million each. The same act already proposed four such vessels to be sold to Taiwan for the same amount as well as giving two to Thailand (and two to Mexico) free of charge.Things had immediately bogged down in the 113th US Congress. It was too easy for Democrats in both Houses to take the President's position that any additional weapons into the South China Sea area would further destabilize the region. The pro-PRC lobby was equally opposed to the bill. Under normal conditions, that would have been good enough to send the measure off to the procedural graveyard.Except in the current contrary nature of the US's chief legislative body, this meant Republicans found themselves drawn to the anything the White House opposed. They could claim they found the anti-Communist, anti-Islamic Extremists stance of the Khanate to be attractive to them though none of them felt the need to actually talk to anyone in the Khanate to find out what they were really all about.We were happy with that policy because true congressional oversight was the last thing we needed. They might start asking uncomfortable questions like...'Who gave you the authority to do any of the crap you pulled?'(No one. We lied like big dogs, purloined resources and cloaked ourselves in 'National Security'. Plus we let our elite personnel have a crack at doing what they had so dedicatedly trained to do, wreck things.)'Wasn't that, that, and that an act of war against the People's Republic of China?'('No comment'. If that didn't work, we would try 'they will never find out'.)'Why are 90% of all the names on these documents redacted? We are the freaking Congress! You work for us.'(Work for them? Not to our way of thinking. We earned our paychecks without any slavish devotion to corporate campaign contributions. We were working so that the lives of Americans and Brits abroad would be that much safer, the world more orderly and for the US and UK to have an ally they could really rely on. We couldn't tell them that. They'd throw us in jail. We'd redacted the records because the names were for people that did not officially exist, or existed in a capacity that didn't imply they were elite warriors, spies and assassins.)Besides,('Those are private citizens not in the employ of this group, or any other government agency we are aware of'.)'We don't care if they are private citizens. We want to know.'('You don't want to know' followed by some major gobbledygook with the term 'deniable assets' interspersed relatively often.)'What do you mean ~ you don't want to know? We asked you a question.'(We meant you people leak information like a sieve and the people we are protecting aren't going to be afraid of getting revealed. They are going to murder people to ensure they are not ~ basically you don't know what is going on and we don't want to tell you, for both our safety's sake.)So,('Trust us. There are factors we are taking into account that you are unaware of because you don't know what's going on'.)'Of course we don't know what's going on. That's why we are asking you.'('You really don't want to know.' We are your highly trained and underpaid experts on this, we aren't raging assholes and we are telling you that bad shit will happen if you force this, thus 'you really don't want to know'.)'What do you mean ~ you really don't want to know?? Yes, we do. We are warning you,'(Okay. Execute Plan B. 'Excuse us for a moment, {create a plausible lie.}'.){Pregnant pause,}Congressman-type: 'It is rather odd that they all had to go into another room to take that phone call.'{Minutes pass}'Go see what is taking them so long.''What do you mean they are all gone? Find them!''What do you mean they seem have left the building? Find them!''Who do I call about this? The FBI, Homeland Security, or the CIA?And finally,'What do you mean they appear to have fled the country? Find them, damn it!'(Hey, I worked with some real shady characters.)Then would come the international manhunts, the flight to avoid prosecution and then resurrecting my life under a different ID in another country which hopefully had a dim view of handing me over to the FBI, or the Navy SEALs.Now back to our regularly scheduled diversion :'It has to do with giving something to the Khanate if you expect them to do anything for you.'Tony: 'You can't appreciate how that is going to look. Besides, that is a political decision, way above your pay-grade.'(Not a good time to remind him that he didn't pay me.)'What precisely do you want us to do? Please be specific.'Tony: 'How is the Khanate going to react to an intervention on the part of the United States?''They will ignore you.'Tony: 'What if the President makes public statement.''What is he going to say?'Tony: 'That the US is dedicated to a peaceful resolution of the unrest in Thailand.''They won't care. They truly believe that actions speak louder than words. If Thailand requested our intervention, or was a client state,'Tony: 'A what?''Client state, a country beholding to the US, or UK for their external security.'Tony: 'I know what client state is. That is 20th Century Imperialist thinking. No one does stuff like that anymore. Besides, the UN is responsible for the external security of its member states, which Thailand is.''The Khanate doesn't see it that way. We won't let them into the UN, so they see no reason to play by the UN's rules. The President can evoke the UN Charter all he wants. Unless he makes UN acceptance dependent on their cooperation, they will see no reason to cooperate.'Tony: 'That's not going to happen.''What part of that won't happen?'Tony: 'The President is not going on international television and endorsing the Khanate as a prospective UN member. What happens if we imply through back channels that the President will support such an action at a later date?''You want us to lie to them? Do you have any idea how badly that will compromise our working relationship with the Khanate?'Tony: 'We will deal with that later. Would they accept such a bargain?''So you are going to lie to them, Mr. Blinken, they will never forgive this act of treachery.'Tony: 'No, you are going to lie to them.'Addison: 'I will resign. I suspect that the rest of the team will quit as well.'Tony: 'What is wrong with your team, Ms. Stuart (Addison)? Can't anyone over there do their damn jobs?''We are doing our damn jobs, Mr. Blinken. We are telling you this is a diplomatically fatal move that will not only reduce this taskforce to uselessness, it will have long term consequences for all future Khanate-American relations.'Tony: 'That is a ridiculous assessment.''That is our experienced assessment. They believe treachery is only forgiven by death. They do believe in loyalty and keeping one's word. In our country, perjury is an unfortunate side effect of the judicial progress. To the Great Khan, it is reason enough to cut your head off.'Tony: 'Fine. I am ordering you to open back-channel talks with the Khanate concerning their admittance to the UN contingent on them taking a reasonable course of action.''Even if we were to do such a moronic thing, the Great Khan will ask Cáel directly to verify this. It is that important to him and his state.'Tony: 'Okay.''Perhaps you could suggest to me what form of coercion I should employ to make Cáel to commit such a blasphemous act?'Tony: 'Tell him to do it. That is what we pay him for.''Mr. Blinken, Mr. Nyilas is an unpaid consultant. At the job he is on sabbatical from, he makes more money than I do. He has an Irish diplomatic passport, been nominated to be the Prince of Albania, Georgia and Armenia, been proclaimed a warrior-prince of Transylvania and is a hero in both Hungary and Romania. He has no brothers, or sisters. His parents are both dead. His only surviving kin are people he is not particularly close to. Since economic and social blackmail are off the table, I am asking you if you are ordering me to use enhanced interrogation techniques to exacting his cooperation in this foolhardy endeavor.'Tony: 'You mean torture him?''I would never go on the record using that word. I don't advise you to use it either.'Tony: 'What kind of people are you?''The kind you engage to take on a mission of this delicate nature. You honestly don't want to know what we've done in the name of our constituent national bodies. You employ us so that you don't have to know. As you said, we 'get it done'. Until now, you have never asked us 'how' we got things done. You wanted the intelligence so we got it for you.'Tony: 'No member of this administration ever asked you to violate US, or International Law.''Which is precisely why the government employs me, so that you can keep your hands clean while mine are steeped in blood. Nothing our team has done will ever blow back on you, so don't worry about that. Why don't we get back to our current dilemma?'(I think until that moment Tony had convinced himself that Addison was another civil servant drone and people like her only existed in the 'black bag' fantasies of conspiracy theorists, hackneyed movie scripts and questionable 'true' spy novels. People like Addison and Lady Fathom weren't standard issue intelligence officers by any stretch of the imagination. They were almost unique in that they did what they did for the very beliefs they had sworn an oath to uphold, to serve their countries.There were no personal vendettas going on. No slush funds were vanishing into Cayman Island accounts. Neither had a God Complex. There was no desire for personal power, career advancement, or fame. I was beginning to think that was why Temujin used them, and me, because we could be counted on to do the right thing when required and only when required. Addison and Fathom had damned themselves forever because someone had to pay the price and get the job done. I imagined they really felt blessed for the opportunity. I worked with maniacs.)Tony: 'Thailand, yes. What if we put troops on the ground in Thailand?''How many?'Tony hummed and hawed so we had to guess.'A Marine Expeditionary Unit? If that is all, they better have an exit plan. Sir, if you want to impress the Khanate with the White House's resolve, you need to start landing troops from the Rapid Deployment Force starting tomorrow. Base aircraft out of Thai air bases. Threaten to ram any Indian Naval vessels that get in your way.'Tony: 'Is that what it would take?'('Yes. It would take the US to growing some balls, damn it!' was not the diplomatic reply though it desperately needed to be said. Hey, I could be a bit of a jingoist when I feel the lives of my loved ones are in danger.)'That is our current assessment of the situation. The Khanate has no reason to take any American threat of force seriously. They won't see anything short of a full-court press as nothing more than posturing for the home audience and what allies we have left.'Tony: 'What does that mean?''It means you are taking the cooperation of Taiwan and Philippines for granted. Our people tell us they see American influence in the region waning and we have been letting the Chinese push them around. Now the Khanate appears and knocks the Chinese back three decades on the World Stage. The Khanate is trying to create a ring of allies around the PRC and a few of them are curious why the US is dragging its heel about such a critical regional issue.'Tony: 'You don't dictate US foreign policy.'(No, we simply enacted foreign policy without your knowledge.)There were probably a large number of Special Forces operators who would be shaking their heads in bewilderment when they found out the US was trying to face down the Khanate over, of all places, Thailand. Hadn't they just busted their humps trying to make the Great Khan see their nations (the US and UK) as potential worthy allies?Working with the Khanate had been 'interesting'. If you asked them for anything, they got it for you, danger and consequences be damned. They'd try anything for the men they considered 'brothers in the struggle'. If you were pinned down by fire from a hillside and asked for fire support, they would napalm the whole damn mountain if that was what it took. The man/woman on the other end of that radio cared for your life, not the human rights of the scumbag shooting at you, or any of the people they might be hiding behind.You also know if they couldn't get it done, it was only because the resources didn't exist. The Khanate Special Forces hadn't acted like co-belligerents, or allies. They treated you like their own kin. They would and had died to make sure some of them got home to their families. If ordered to, they would definitely take the fight to the Khanate. I believed many of them would be asking what had it all been for.'We wouldn't dream of it,' Addison lied.'Good. You have your marching orders. Now get to it,' and Tony hung up on us. Everyone in the room was looking around. What exactly were our marching orders? Had I'd missed that part of our conversation?"Well," Fathom sighed, "there is only one thing we can do." I seriously prayed she would ask me to lie to Temujin."Understood," Mehmet nodded. "Somehow we get the Khanate to launch their offensive into Thailand in three days.""Can they do that?" I blurted out."They do it, or everyone in this room is in a shitload of trouble when they get around to it next week," Addison grinned. "The Khanate high command isn't going to back down just because we ask them to. I wouldn't if I were them.""What happens if they can't make the three day window?" I asked."Then you call up your blood-brother and ask him to fuck over his nation to save us from lengthy prison sentences, or outright assassination," Fathom smirked."If he says 'no'," I looked into her eyes."That's the real tragedy in all this, he won't," she gave me a comforting look. "He isn't going to leave you hanging in the wind. He'll call off his attack dogs because he isn't the kind of man to fuck you over because it is politically expedient. I'm staking all our lives on that. I always have."The Black Lotus? We'd explain to them the ugly reality that neither of us could afford to be painted into a corner over this Thailand issue. We were doing our best, but our political masters were dead set on making a colossal error and we had to follow through with those directives. The Khanate would do everything in their extensive power to support the Black Lotus and if they could invade in three days with some nebulous chance at success, they would go.The Black Lotus, the entire 9 Clans knew JIKIT had no power except what we finagled from the US and the UK. We had borrowed their resources to accomplish what we'd done. The Black Lotus had profited from some of those operations and both the Khanate and JIKIT would owe them big, but we were good for it. That truism was why they worked with us.My personal problem was that I knew the Great Khan would not forgive, or forget this interference by the US. It wasn't in his nature. Worse, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington would see this as a victory and an expression that the US remained the globe's premier super power. Too few would remember the price of this sense of superiority would be born on the back of Thailand's masses. The revolution would fail after a short, brutal civil war. The tyrant would remain in power and the voice of the Thai people would be stilled.The end result of that late night phone call? We weren't told.What follows is pure conjecture on my part, fueled by intelligence information provided by other JIKIT resources and knowledge about how much the political landscape of Southeast Asia had been transformed by the PCR being driven back to their own coastline, leaving a power vacuum India, Vietnam and the Khanate were eager to fill.The Republic of China/Taiwan --'Aren't you the same people who said only a week ago that sending more weapons into the region would only escalate tensions? And now you want to use our airbases against our latest ally in the region? Do you understand how much internal political turmoil this will cause? Half of us are jumping for joy that someone big and fierce embraces our independence. The other half think it is time to retake China.Yes, we mean the territory currently under the oppressive yoke of the People's Republic of China. Yes, the China the Khanate just kicked the crap out of. The nation that might not be able to protect say, Zhusanjiao. That would be the Pearl River Delta to you Westerners, that huge area on the mainland adjacent to Hong Kong. Hainan is looking pretty ripe for conquest as well. That would be that big island off the coast of, yes, we have indeed suspected you could read a map.At the moment we are expecting the permission of the Khanate to use Woody Island as a forward staging area and logistic base to help us do just that. Take Hainan, yes, that large island currently, and temporarily, under the illegal occupation by those illegitimate bastards in Beijing.What do you mean 'don't declare war on them'? We've been at war with the People's Republic since 1945. No, we are pretty sure we would recall signing a Peace Treaty with them. No, we can't 'get over it' either. Why are you even asking us that? Don't you know our history?Anyway, if we help you, can we expect the same level of cooperation from you as we are getting from the Khanate? In case things go sour, Yes, a shooting war would qualify. See, your people at JIKIT have been helping the Khanate and us, your people, at JIKIT, we are pretty sure it is made up of Americans and British personnel. Why would we think that? Are you serious? Because that's what your governments told us, that's why. Besides, why are you asking us what your people have been doing? Don't they work for you?Speaking of the US government helping us out, what progress is there on the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 ? We sure could use those vessels. While we are at it, how about sharing some of the technology used in the F-35. We'll build our own, or a model vaguely similar to it. We value your friendship and know you will help us out in a pinch.Right?'The Philippines --'Sigh. If you really think this will help. By the way, aren't your fighters going to need some in-air refueling? What are you going to do if the Khanate engages them over Philippine airspace? What are you going to do if you get into a shooting war with the Khanate? Will you defend us from their ballistic missile threat? We have a long history as your allies, but the Khanate is totally ruthless, and they scare us. Can you hold our hand, say for the next twenty years?'(The Philippines rolls out their Wish List)Maybe you could give us some advanced fighters?We are a poor country and can't afford to buy any before 2018.We are not greedy, 72 F-16s will do and you are upgrading to the F-35 anyway so we know you have some lying around. Could you also help us with the maintenance cost? We are a poor country, but very large.Some of your decommissioned naval vessels would go a long way in showing us some love. One of those Tarawa-class amphibious assault ships would be really nice and you've got the USS Peleliu decommissioned and about to be scrapped. We have hundreds of islands in our Republic so moving stuff around is pretty tough. Can you help us out?If you could toss in the ship's complement of 20 AV-8B Harrier 2 and 12 V-22 Ospreys with a fifteen year maintenance package that would be even better!We are a poor country. We could never afford to buy any of that stuff.Maybe a frigate, or three? You have a dozen Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates sitting around. We can finally retire some of our World War 2 relics and make one our new flagship.We know you aren't going to give us one of those powerful nuclear submarines, but maybe you could secure a few loans so we could buy some of those nifty German-made, diesel-powered Type 214's. We hear they are pretty cool, very silent and practically a steal at $330 million per boat! We love you guys! And, we are poor.Oh, and some helicopters!We were going to refurbish some Vietnam-era Iroquois, but since your Marine Corp is retiring the far superior Bell AH-1 SuperCobra, can we have a dozen of those instead?We were going to fix up some of our aging Sikorsky S-76s as air ambulances. Getting new ones would be far superior, don't you think?You also have those cool Blackhawks. You have so many. Could you spare us, say twenty? You're the best!And some guns. And artillery. And some APC's.Did we mention we are a poor country going through an expensive force modernization program?Got any amphibious vehicles lying around? We could use a few of more of those small unit riverine craft (SURC)'s we bought from you recently. They are excellent counter-insurgency tools. You want us doing well fighting the War on Terror, don't you?Did we mention that we are a poor country? And we love you guys!The Federation of Malaysia --We like this idea. Give us say a week to ten days and we can jump right in.You want to go in four days? With what precisely? Compared to the force projections you have been providing us, Who? JIKIT, of course. Who else would you send us to when we requested intelligence on Khanate activities from you? Did we believe them? Why wouldn't we? They are your people,When do you think Thailand will let us intervene? We've asked the Prime Minister if he needs our assistance and he politely declined. Apparently he thinks he's got things well in hand. He does retain command of over 200,000 troops and the opposition is much smaller. I hope you have better luck than we did in convincing him he's in serious trouble.Also, what do you plan to do about the Indian Navy's South China Sea taskforce? It is pretty big, not something we can tackle on our own.Yes, we kind of need to know what you are doing before we decide what we are doing. You do realize that the Gulf of Thailand is currently under the complete domination of the Indian/Khanate/Vietnamese Axis, right?48 combat aircraft? What gave you that idea? The Vietnamese have been refurbishing their Mig-21's like crazy, using Khanate stockpiles, plus there are nearly a 150 Su-22's. Sure, they are both older than manned flights to the Moon, but they can drop bombs, fire rockets and launch ground attack missiles with the best of them. They are still jet aircraft.Worried? You are aware that those antiquated pieces of crap can bomb the northern part of my country, aren't you? So 'yes', we are worried about those 300 flying deathtraps being more than a 'manageable' nuisance.What about our air force? I imagine it will be doing what we trained it to do, defend Federation air space because I doubt those relics will be coming at us unescorted. We can already tell you that the Mig-29's and Su-30's the Khanate and Vietnamese will be flying are excellent aircraft. We fly them too, just not as many.Of course you can base your F-22's out of Sultan Ismail Petra Airport as long as you supply the logistical support. How many? A lot? Could you please be more specific? Two squadrons? My, that's going to get pretty dicey. I believe you when you say the F-22 is a highly advanced stealthy fighter. I also believe that they are a lot less stealthy when they are sitting on the ground re-arming and refueling.Do we think they will really threaten us? They are threatening us, over our Spratly Island claims, are you sure you know what you are getting into? By the way, when this blows over, do you think you can pressure the Khanate into giving us their Spratly island airbase? It is rapidly approaching completion and is over 3000 meters long.How did they do that? They are dredging the ocean floor, it is a man-made island. Didn't your government protest the environmental damage they were causing?No, not the Khanate, the Chinese.Yes, the Khanate currently controls it. They stole it from the PRC hours before the ceasefire. So, can we have it?Yes, we know it belonged to the People's Republic, but it doesn't anymore. Besides, we both opposed it when the Chinese were dredging it up the island from the sea floor, so giving it to us isn't all that egregious, or unexpected, action. It would also go a long way in supporting our just and worthy claims to the Spratly Islands. We really don't want those greedy Chinese, yes, both the People's Republic and the 'Republic of', or, those incompetent Filipinos to steal them from us.Both of us knocking the Vietnamese back on their heels will be going a long way to getting those Communist knuckle draggers to back off as well. Hey, if they do get antsy, can we also take the Vietnamese base in the Spratly's? It isn't as big as the one the Khanate stole, but it is finished, and closer to us. We are sure that if we help you out, you will do the right thing when the time comes. Right?The President of the United States --'They want what? Have they lost their fucking minds?The Philippines is talking about a billion dollar aid package and guaranteed loans we doubt they can ever repay. We only want to use their air bases for a month, maybe two, not deflower their teenage daughters. It isn't as if we are really going to go to war with the Khanate over Thailand. Besides, the last time we 'got involved' like that, George Bush ran up a trillion dollar deficit, and his party was thrown out of office. Doesn't anyone care we are facing a difficult mid-term election in November?So, the Taiwanese think this is the appropriate moment to invade mainland China? And they want our help? Do they know how expensive that can get? Do they understand how much that will unbalance the already shake state of Asian affairs? It is another land war in Asia for the love of God!'And, the Malaysians are going to help us, but not actually help us and they want tens of billions square miles of ocean for the measly concessions they are making? What do they expect us to do with all the Filipinos, Chinese and Vietnamese who already live there?What do you mean none of those islands are actually inhabited? They are just military bases, some of them nothing more than rusting iron hulks on submerged reefs? OH, God damn it! Why don't we take the God damn Spratly Islands for ourselves if they are that fucking important? We have a Marine Corp. Aren't they good at taking islands? I read about it somewhere.No, I'm not changing the damn mission. I'm venting because the world seems to be inhabited with greedy assholes who can't appreciate peaceful discourse without trying to lift my wallet.Okay, okay, I've got this. We are going to form a new international commission to resolve this Spratly Island's nightmare. Have the French chair it. They love that kind of stuff. Makes sure the Germans are on the commission too. They need to look less like money-grubbing douchebags after that fiasco over the Greek economic collapse. Then invite Russia, India and Pakistan. That will pretty much guarantee nothing gets accomplished.That will allow us to keep our promises to those three leeches without having to deliver anything and, when it fails, it won't be seen as my fault. (Groan) What we really need is new videos of Khanate soldiers bayoneting babies, another ISIS atrocity, or more indisputable evidence the Russian Army's involvement in the Ukraine. The Great Khan really screwed us over Tibet (you know, by allowing them to become a free and democratic society), Putin is an evil cuck (who most likely laughs at me behind my back) and another round of Islamophobia-bashing to remind everyone how this is all Bush's fault.No wonder George spent so much time at Crawford Ranch. Navigating international relations is totally thankless and no matter how rosy we paint the latest economic numbers, someone still finds a way to make me look bad. Oh well, if this blows up in my face, I only have two more years in this shooting gallery. Maybe then I might change my mind and decided I really was born in Kenya, or Indonesia. I really wish Hawaii was an independent country. I'd like to retire there if there weren't so many of those damn contentious Americans.The US President wanted to run this operation on a shoestring, not engage in 'nation-building', much less backing an invasion of anybody. In fact, he was trying to stop an invasion.The Philippines was a poor country. So what? It wasn't his fault. He had poor people in the US too and they cast votes.Taiwan suddenly thought it could take on China? They were insane. Of course he would be ignoring a major stated political goal of the ROC for the past 65 years ~ reunification on their terms. Any high-level technological transfer wasn't going to happen because if the Republic ran off the reservation, the President would bloody well be sure no one could trace that decision back to anything he'd done.At least Malaysia was on board, sorta/kinda. They wouldn't actually be able to help until day ten, or fourteen and, unlike the Republic of China, they had a small air force that might not be able to protect forwardly deployed troops. If he ended getting of those National Guard yahoos killed his party would be murdered in November.For a split second, he wondered if he should attempt to make a personal call to the Great Khan, potentate to potentate, except he had this sinking feeling that a winning smile and a handshake would be worse than useless. The man would look him straight in his eyes and start making demands. He would demand action and when the Leader of the Free World prevaricated, he knew the Khanate would call his bluff.And they would fight. The alternative was a grand spectacle of public humiliation and that he could not accept. The US military machine would fight and they would win. They would win because he needed them to win, fast and clean and home for Christmas. Maybe he would authorize the mobilization of those California airmen. Just in case.In the end, Secretary Kerry gave POTUS what he asked for.The Philippines would let them use their country's bases for logistics and strategic assets (aka bombers).The ROC would extend their air umbrella out 200 km to the east, south and west, acting like a shield between the Khanate and US Pacific assets moving through the tight Formosan Straits.Malaysia gave them an airbase from which they could strike into Thailand, or Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The US Air Force would have the opportunity to be lethally effective.Had they known the sum total of the US commitment, they would have been appalled. The Khanate did not fuck around.One Carrier Strike Group,Forty (maybe sixty) Air Force fighters,Lumbering B-52's flying half way around the globe,Hadn't they been watching the dogfights over China for the past month? Maybe they would like to dive down and examine the wreckage of the PLAN carrier Liaoning and see just how it met its grisly fate?Apparently not.(I live, love and have loved)"What are you doing here?" she got the preliminary nonsense out of the way. With the way she was dressed, I was an expected visitor. She was expecting some make-up sex. I was thinking 'paying for my past mistakes' sex because I was already seeing way too many women who required me to do things outside the bedroom, non-sexual things. I had my dress jacket swung over my shoulder. It would only get in the way later."I brought you motorcycle over. You left it parked by my place," I kept any appearance of lust, or glee off my face."It is one o'clock in the morning," she glowered."I was called into work. I'm on call 24/7.""Let me guess, you can't talk about it.""You wouldn't believe me if I did, so suffice it to say I was doing things I didn't want to do instead of coming over here, waking you up from a sound sleep.""I wasn't asleep. I was angry," I pointed out."I apologize. Maybe I should have waited until morning." She didn't think I should have waited as long as I had. Keeping her waiting until morning would have left her volcanic."I wasn't asleep.""Your bike is in the parking lot across the street," I handed her the lot ticket."How did you find it?""There are only two places in my neighborhood that allows parking and the second one is poorly lit," I replied."And the attendant let you steal it?" she frowned."He knows me. I do a ton of business with him and it wasn't as if I was dressed like your average carjacker.""How did you start it?""Chaz showed me how to spoof the lock. He's got this spiffy lock-pick set on him.""That he carries with him for such contingencies?""Hey, he's the spycraft professional. I'm the amateur who tags along because karma is a bitch," I grinned."Did you ruin the ignition?""No. He's got this skeleton key thingy. I need to get me one of those," I added. See, I was drifting down the path to becoming a hardened criminal and she had to save me. Girls love saving bad boys from themselves. There is an entire literary genre devoted to the topic."Get in here," Anais barked. She emphasized that command by grabbing my tie and dragging me into her room. Now I could ogle her in her bra, panties and dress shirt left open. As I said moments ago, she was expecting me. Anais had thick, light-brown, just-past-the-shoulders hair with blonde highlights. Her dusky skin tone suggested some ancestral link to the South of France while her deep green eyes suggested Celtic ties.She was definitely someone I would describe as possessing an hourglass figure. She worked out just enough to stay fit, practiced judo (in and outside of the bedroom) and ate right. Her ass was the correct mix of firm and fleshy, her breasts were pleasant without too much bounce and she sported broad, but short, nipples that liked to get bitten.With her bare foot, she kicked the door shut, spun me around by my tie until I slammed, back first, into the wall in the short hallway that led to her bedroom."I repeat, what are you doing here?""I never actually apologized for how things ended up," I sodomized the truth. "Anais, I am truly sorry for how badly I fucked up our affair. I acted without a thought for the possible consequences, or thinking about how betrayed you would feel. Can you accept my apology?""You came here to have sex," she declared. She stepped up tightly against my body, her eyes boring into mine. I had around six inches on her so she had to tilt up her chin to do so."That too," I shrugged."I ought to throw you out the window," she growled. We were on the seventh floor. The window didn't open and the safety glass looked alright."I'll go then," I nodded. Now to make her beg for/demand sex."You are not going anywhere," she snarled. Then she kissed me, a tongue-grapple ensued and she finished things by biting my lower lip so much I tasted blood afterwards. I dropped my jacket. I was about to need both my hands."I think us having sex would be a mistake," I pushed her buttons. I wasn't some wimp acquiescing to her demands. I was a free-willed being; a strong man who needed to be wrestled down and forced to perform.She pulled me down into a second kiss. This was an 'I will leave you incapable of thinking about anything but me' kiss. Yes, I had names for kisses too. They were similar to naming the ingredients of a choice meal. I propelled her back until we slammed into the opposite wall. Anais was a tough chick and a bit of banging around was par for the course.I cupped each ass cheek and pulled her up. She responded by wrapping her legs around my hips. We were still kissing. Anais slipped her hands along my sides before linking them up at the small of my back. She pulled me hard against her while she ground her crotch against mine."Clothes," she rumbled from deep within. As in 'why was I still dressed?'"Been a while," I taunted her. Since she was glommed on to me, I used my freed up hands to rip off my tie."Yes. I bet it hasn't 'been a while' for you," she sizzled."Long as in 5:30 this morning," I teased back. At this point in the foreplay that revelation was akin to throwing gasoline on a fire. I was being an unrepentant dog and she was taking me to confessional, between her thighs."Bastard," she condemned me as well as the entire male side of the species."It doesn't mean I haven't missed you, this, us," I riposted. She retaliated by turning her humping motion into to more of a grind. Bad kitty. Bad kitty wanted to be spanked. Woot!"You are never going to change," she dug her fingernails into my flesh. I yanked my shirt off."If I hadn't changed, you wouldn't be here," I reminded her while nipping at her nose and lips."You are still an egocentric bastard," she growled."Hey, I always took care of your needs," I countered. I had. She knew I had and since she currently wanted me to take her to that higher erotic plane, she wasn't going to contest that fact. Instead, she began working her shirt off and in doing so, squishing her boobs against my chest.Holding her tight, my left hand under her right buttock and my right hand on her mid-back, pressing her torso into mine. We dance through two slow circles before crashing, side by side, on the bed. Anais rolled us over so that she was on top. I didn't let her get in a totally dominant pose, oh no. I had a kitty to take care off. I grabbed her firm ass and propelled her up until I was face first with her gusset.I might not remember to check my bank balance, or the atomic number of Technetium (I once had a girlfriend who would rate my performance on the periodic table in the midst of our fucking, I never made it higher than Copernicium before she passed out), but I can recall the precise taste, texture and topography of every cunt I've had face to face contact with. I knew right where to tongue-fuck Anais to twist her up inside.Control-orgasm, control-orgasm, Anais was pig-headed and wanted to keep dictating our reunion. She also wanted to return to the level of sexual bliss we had shared so often before. Her compromise was to hump my face; really grind it in. Black silk underwear is an excellent medium for transferring force and wetness between partners.She rubbed her love-nub against my upper lip/teeth while I did tongue-ups into her cunt. She was wetter than Bangladesh in the rainy season. That was an indicator of some serious masturbatory sessions stopping just short of orgasm before I arrived. I had some aching sensations to play with and I wasn't cruel. I maneuvered a hand between her thighs, underneath the band of her underwear and exposed her vaginal opening to my fingers and tongue while keeping that silky feel for her clitoris."Rurr," she began growling from the depths of her diaphragm. That was how she always was, thundering like a female grizzly bear in heat. It was an expression with deep subharmonic components that caused the heart to flutter and her flesh to shimmer with the vibrations mixed with her bodily sweat."Come on, Baby," I urged her on.That pissed her off. She was trying to hold off her orgasm for a few more seconds. My 'baby' crack shifted her resolve into anger allowing her climax to overwhelm her."Rah," she howled. It didn't sound like a female coming to fruition. It was more akin to the sound European soccer hooligans made when their team scored a goal. The muscles in Anais' thighs were strumming along like the cords of a piano, her belly was undulating in and out, and her head had rolled back so that she was screaming to the ceiling.The countdown was on. The people next door/across the hall/above or below us would be waking up, think that someone had unleashed a wild animal in the hotel, figure out they were not immediately on the menu, then call the front desk, stating their fears as justifiable fact. Anais and I had been down that road before.I gave Anais' flank a light smack to get her attention. Sure she looked back at me with simmering anger, yet she also knew the score. That had been round #1 in a nightlong bout of sexual conquest, rebellion and re-conquest. She drew her knees to her chest so she could pull off her damp panties in one swift motion. I worked off my shoes, pants, socks and underwear. While she soaked up my naked flesh (muscles, scars and all), she retrieved the phone from the side table and placed it beside her. She wouldn't want to break up our rhythm when the phone rang.No romantic small talk interrupted our shared lust. She wanted that cock and I wanted to give it to her. I moved between her inviting thighs while she examined me, her upper body uplifted by her arms resting on her elbows. Bite-kissing-biting resumed. I slowly pushed her head to the bed with the force of my kisses and strength of my upper body pushing down on her. Somewhere along the way, I slipped into her.Condom? Crap. I was slipping. I would have to pull out, because stopping to put a condom on would earn me some serious ferocity on her part. I plunged in. Anais placed her hands on my hips, claws beneath my kidneys, guiding my pace and power. I may have been on top, but she wasn't giving up on one ounce of control."Damn you," she hissed."Yes?" I leered."Fuck you.""I'm working on it. Is there anything," I teased."Bastard," she looked away, "You remember how I like it.""Whatever made you think I would forget?" I kept at it."Don't look so smug.""I'm working on it," I looked smug. Anais dug her fingernails in. I had to be punished, just ask her."When do you have to go back to work?" she huffed."Six a.m. When do you have to go back?""I have two days off.""Good to know," I stole a kiss from her lips painlessly. Good to know.(Painful dreams)I edged back into consciousness realizing that I was not alone. The muffled sense of my surroundings informed me that I wasn't really awake. She sat on my side of the bed, feet on the floor, side to me."Good evening, Dot," I yawned."Good morning, Cáel," the Goddess Ishara let her melodic voice float over me."Hold on," I interrupted her. I weaved as I leaned over, pawed at my pants (still trapped in the real world) and finally drew forth my offering."A fortune cookie," she chuckled. "I admire your dedication.""It is a simple enough request and I aim to please." I hesitated. "We don't have much time, do we?""You are dreaming, not concussed, so we will be alright if we tread carefully," she told me. "This time, I have no cryptic warnings, or specious pieces of information. I am giving you a gift. Take my hand."I did, not that I had much choice. We 'went', where to, I wasn't sure yet I suspected we were skirting the Weave itself where concepts like Time and Distance had little meaning.The Goddess released my hand and I stepped out of the fog brought about by the abrupt nature of our progress to see a woman sitting beside a pool, no, a sunken bath. She looked up at our approach. Oh shit, it was,"Cáel? You are Cáel, aren't you," she smiled. She stared at me with her blind eyes while waiting for my response with deaf ears."Yes, Tad fi, I'm Cáel. How did you know?""I bear our shared life inside me," she graced me with her serene presence."Ah, I was warned," I stopped myself. I was going to add 'this might happen'. That would be unfair as she appeared pleased with this alteration of her life path. "I was warned by the Goddess that she had something to show me. How are you feeling? Is there anything I can do for you?"She put her hand over her lower abdomen and rubbed the spot with her palm."Seeing you and giving you the news in person is enough," she glowed with happiness."Have you picked out a name yet?" seemed weak."I will leave that up to you.""Oh, come on," I relaxed slightly. "This is something we are doing together.""No, it is not, kind Cáel.""Just because she will most likely end up an Isharan doesn't,""No, Cáel. This birth will cost me my life. I am not destined to ever see my daughter draw her first breath," she confided in me."No!" I recoiled. "That's unfair." What else could I say? 'I take it back. I shouldn't have listened to my Goddess and screwed you out of what little life you had left.'"I am content with my fate, Cáel Nyilas Wakko Ishara. Our daughter will be the first female of the Isharan line in nearly 1600 years. Rejoice that we have been confronted by Destiny and triumphed. The light of the Peacemakers will shine once more among our sisters.""It is not worth the cost of your life," I responded bitterly. This was colossally unfair to all three of us."That you grieve for the short time I have left gives me strength, knowing our daughter will grow up with a strong, caring father. I,"I could sense Ishara close by my side."You must go, my Cáel. We will next see each other in the Halls of our Ancestors. Take our daughter and raise her well. I have faith in you," she sighed pleasantly, as if I had sheltered her from the rainstorm with my umbrella."We must go," Ishara whispered in my ear and then we left. I was back in the hotel room, looking down at the tears on my sleeping face and it hurt so much."You gave me that command knowing what it would cost her," I sounded so hollow, chin on my chest, eyes closed instead of looking at my feet."We are not an easy people to love, Cáel. We are harsh. Endless centuries of suffering, pain and mistrust have made us this way. Please understand that what you see as one life passing is really one life coming into being. It is a life Fate would have denied the line of Ishara. I took you to meet Tad fi because I wanted you to greet your daughter with understanding, not sorrow. I owed you.""Steal my anger why don't you?" I chuckled bitterly. "Can I even blame myself for this tragedy? It isn't like you made me do anything. I did it because I wanted to and never gave much thought to the frail health Tad fi was hanging on to. This is so wrong and I don't know what to do.""Wake up. Keep living. If this news turns your heart, or fills your mind with doubt, then both of us have failed you. Tad fi didn't have to tell you. I didn't have to bring you to her. I believed you were owed the chance to say good-bye.""I didn't say that," I exhaled sadly."You openly grieved and let her comfort you. That is more of a 'goodbye' than most people are able to convey. She knows your heart. You were honest in your sorrow. She saw that and that eased her suffering knowing that you are a person who is free with their heart. For a woman who expected nothing but wickedness from men for so long, that was the ultimate gift. You did help her. You truly did.""I," I woke up. Anais was looking down at me, concerned."You've been crying," she noted by touching my cheek with a finger then showing me the dampness."Do you believe a person's soul can fracture?" I murmured. That sort of talk was unlike the 'me' she once knew."Do you believe that another can help you put your soul back together if that happens?" I continued."You are not talking about us, are you?" she studied me."No. I'm thinking about being a parent, not just a father. Can I fuck that up as much as I've screwed up so many of the other women I've cared for, am I going to be worthy of being a Dad?""Oh, I don't know. You are not the man I knew two years ago. I think you have changed for the better. You are still far from perfect yet, you seem to be trying so much harder than previously.""You think I'm going to screw things up, don't you?""Yes. Yes, I do, but I also think you will only make the same mistake once. That is better than most men can hope for," she let her gaze soften."This is us breaking up,""Yes. I think if I stayed, you would break my heart; and I am starting to believe neither one of us wants that," she nodded. "One more time?""I'd love to," I smiled at her. I still hurt. I was using sex to bandage my pain. Anais knew that and was giving me this unlooked for piece of kindness. It was the best break up I'd ever had, or could ever hope for.{5:45 am, Saturday, August 30th ~ 9 Days to go}"You look like someone strangled your kitten," Pamela told me as I exited Anais' hotel room. She was leaning against the wall across the hall. I had the feeling she had been there a while. Of course I hadn't been allowed to wander off alone; most likely, Chaz had kept an eye on me until Pamela relieved him."I, I got Tadifi killed," I unloaded on her.Pamela immediately dropped her casual fa

In this episode of iCantCU, I recount my journey to Washington, D.C., for the annual National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Washington Seminar. I share insights into the event's purpose—advocating for policies that support blind Americans—and my meetings with congressional representatives and senators. I detail the structured meetings, including conversations with Senator McCormack and staff from Senator Fetterman's office, emphasizing the importance of protecting hard-won rights under laws like the ADA. I also reflect on travel challenges, from navigating train stations to nearly getting on the wrong train to trouble with taxis. Despite not feeling my best, I make the most of the experience, participating in legislative discussions and a reception in the historic Kennedy Caucus Room—where Titanic hearings were once held. I also dive into personal highlights, like my long-awaited trip to Oohh's & Aahh's for mac and cheese, only to find my taste buds uncooperative due to illness. Wrapping up, I reflect on the importance of advocacy. Join me for a firsthand look at what it's like to be part of the fight for accessibility and inclusion. Show notes at https://www.iCantCU.com/281  Links Mentioned (product links are affiliate links so that I may earn a commission.) Ziggy's favorite birthday present: https://amzn.to/3ZpuLTO I edit the show with Descript and love it!: https://www.iCantCU.com/descript/ Ginger shot to alleviate cold symptoms: https://amzn.to/3D1raTO Washington Seminar Info: https://nfbofpa.org/washington-seminar-2025/ Be My Eyes app (free): https://www.bemyeyes.com/  Seeing AI app (free): https://www.seeingai.com/  Catch me on ep 172 of That Real Blind Tech Show: https://thatrealblindtechshow.libsyn.com/episode-172-nfb-washington-seminar-you-got-til-the-end-of-this-hot-dog-to-convince-me Index of That Real Blind Tech Show episodes: https://www.icantcu.com/trbts/  Watch iCantCU episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@iCantCU Support iCantCU When shopping at Amazon, I would appreciate it if you clicked on this link to make your purchases: https://www.iCantCU.com/amazon. I participate in the Amazon Associate Program and earn commissions on qualifying purchases. The best part is, you don't pay extra for doing this! White Canes Connect Podcast Episode 124 In Episode 124  of White Canes Connect, Lisa Bryant and I sit down with Patti Cox, President of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International (CCLVI), and Glenda Such, head of Low Vision Now! The discussion, which takes place during Low Vision Awareness Month, highlights the challenges, advocacy, and support systems available for individuals with low vision. Find the podcast on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/white-canes-connect/id1592248709  Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1YDQSJqpoteGb1UMPwRSuI YouTube Https://www.youtube.com/@pablindpodcast White Canes Connect On Twitter Https://www.twitter.com/PABlindPodcast My Podcast Gear Here is all my gear and links to it on Amazon. I participate in the Amazon Associates Program and earn a commission on qualifying purchases. Zoom Podtrak P4: https://amzn.to/33Ymjkt Zoom ZDM Mic & Headphone Pack: https://amzn.to/33vLn2s Zoom H1n Recorder: https://amzn.to/3zBxJ9O  Gator Frameworks Desk Mounted Boom Arm: https://amzn.to/3AjJuBK Shure SM58 S Mic: https://amzn.to/3JOzofg  Sony ZV-E10 camera : https://amzn.to/4fFBSxM  Sennheiser Headset (1st 162 episodes): https://amzn.to/3fM0Hu0  Follow iCantCU on your favorite podcast directory! Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/icantcu-podcast/id1445801370/  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3nck2D5HgD9ckSaUQaWwW2  Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/iCantCU-Podcast-Podcast/B08JJM26BT  IHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-icantcu-podcast-31157111/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/davidbenj  Reach out on social media Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/davidbenj Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidbenj Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidbenj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbenj Are You or Do You Know A Blind Boss? If you or someone you know is crushing it in their field and is also blind, I want to hear from you! Call me at (646) 926-6350 and leave a message. Please include your name and town, and tell me who the Blind Boss is and why I need to have them on an upcoming episode. You can also email the show at iCantCUPodcast@gmail.com.

If you were on the patreon you could WATCH this episode as a video OR listen to it AD-FREE! AAHH!! patreon.com/bigsofttittyGooncave, sealed, sleeping, smelling.... we remember you, r/gooncave. We remember the nasty places that dwelt within you and the nasty things that dwelt within them. Should we? Don't worry about It!We also cover our ideas for wrestlers, Tom feels bad about how much he knows about wrestling and we cover r/namenerds again. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Hot Girl Meg, Hot Girl Coach, Tina Snow….shall I go on. Tune In w/ ya girl Chakra-Kan on today's Bonus Episode!!!! Aahh

In today's episode you will listen a dialogue between two friends about what the weather like in New York, Greece and Chicago. Ε: {phone rings} ‘Ελα αγάπη! / Hey love! D: Έλαααα, τι κάνεις; / Heeeyyy, how are you? E: Όλα καλά, εσύ; / All good, you? D: Και εγώ μια χαρά. / Me as well. E: Τι καιρό κάνει εκεί στο Σικάγο; / What's the weather like in Chicago? D: Άσε, έχει λίγο κρύο αλλά την επόμενη εβδομάδα θα έχει ήλιο. / It's a bit cold but next week it will be sunny  E: Αχ, τι ωραία. Επιτέλους ήλιο. / Ah, that's great. Finally some sun! D: Εκεί στην Νέα Υόρκη τι καιρό κάνει; / What's the weather like there in New York? E: Εδώ έβρεχε πολύ το Σάββατο. Αλλά γενικά το πρωί ξεκινάει με κρύο και μετά έχει καλύτερη θερμοκρασία. / It rained a lot here on Saturday. But generally the morning starts cold and then the temperature rises. D: Και εδώ τα ίδια. / Same here. E: Τώρα βλέπω τον καιρό στην Ελλάδα. / Now I see the weather in Greece. D: Α ναι; τι καιρό κάνει τώρα στην Θεσσαλονίκη; / Oh yeah? What's the weather like in Thessaloniki. Ε: Έχει καταιγίδα τώρα και φυσάει πολύ. / It's stormy now and very windy. D: Μου έλεγε η μαμα μου οτι θα χαλάσει ο καιρός εκεί. / My mom told me the other day that the weather would turn bad there. E: Εντάξει ευτυχώς που δεν χιονίζει. / Luckily it's not snowing. D: Ε βέβαια, Απρίλιος είναι. / Of course, it's April. E: Περιμένω τον Μάιο που θα έχει καλό καιρό και θα βγαίνουμε βόλτες. / I am waiting for May when the weather will be good and we will go for walks. D: Αχχχ, και εγώ. / Aahh, me too. E: Λοιπόν, πρέπει να σ' αφήσω γιατί είμαι στην δουλειά. / Well, I have to leave you because I'm at work. D: Εντάξει αγάπη, φιλιά πολλά! / Okay love, lots of kisses.  E: Φιλάκια, τα λέμε. / Kisses, see ya.

La souffrance animale, ce sont les pratiquants qui en parlent le mieux.

At around the 10 year mark of my police career, I was lost. I resigned from K9 for family reasons and reassigned as a SRO at a school where there were TEENAGERS! AAHH!  LOL! But on a serious note, an encounter happened between me and another student that started something I never expected.    ***Get your Police guidebooks: https://amzn.to/3P9Lhjl ***Want to work with me 1 on 1 for coaching? Click here for Law Enforcement, Personal Development, and/or Resiliency Coaching: https://axon-coaching.com/ld/scott-medlin/ (Must be in law enforcement, and contact Axon if your department does not already have an account with them for coaches.) ***The internet stole your private information and it's time to take it back! Protect yourself and your family from being doxed! I have used OfficerPrivacy and it has brought me peace of mind. Click the referral link to reclaim your privacy! https://OfficerPrivacy.referralrock.com/l/SCOTTMEDLI18/ Disclaimer: The creator is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. The views or opinions belong solely to the Creator. Information by the Creator is for Educational Purposes Certain Content herein is subject to the Doctrine of “Fair Use” Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

This week Tundra has talked Song into playing 7 days to die a survival zombie game ( Song does not like zombies). *WARNING SCREAMING* Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you remember this place? Yeah...woah...yeah…! I remember this! This was one of my first raves ever! Whoooooaaaa! How did you—? How did we— She pauses, looking around. Lamarus has disappeared. Lamarus? She walks forward, taking in the memory. (To herself) ...How did I get here?! Then, she sees the shadow of her former self, in the distance—she is enamoured by seeing herself. Dubstep plays, as ravers dance and play in the warehouse. —Wait…is this…it can't be… Her former self heads outside—she follows her. Her former self looks around hesitantly, nervously scanning the grounds in search of something, or someone—she looks lost. Oh *yeah*... Her former self sits on a tree stump, slumped with her head propped up over her knees, squeezing her round face as she sort of pouts. She sighs, then—a boy smacks her shoulder, as he runs up from behind. Bryce! Doooood—*there* you are! Oh my God, Bryce…! Here I am! He grabs her hands, swinging her up, as they swing into a circle, spinning and gaining speed—until they both fall, laughing—her glassing fling off of her face, as she hits the ground, leaves crunching under her. I was so *fat*... As she lay on the ground, staring up at the stars, the world spinning—a bass drop shakes the warehouse, even rustling through the trees outside— Are you okay? She chuckles. Yeah. He helps her up. Thanks. More bass—inside, the party has gotten even more wild—familiar music plays—back outside, she and Bryce walk along the back of the building, as she produces a pack of Marlboro Smooth 100s from her jacket Can I have one? Uh—it's my lucky… Oh—nevermind. No, no—we can share it. You sure? Yeah, dude. Sweet, thanks. Oh—here. He produces a lighter, from the pocket of his skinny jeans, lighting the cigarette for her as she shields the flame from the wind. Thanks. They lean against the slde of the building, then slide down to sit, in sync. She blows out a puff of smoke, takes another drag, holding it in briefly, then passes the cigarette to Bryce. What time do you have to be home? He takes a drag, then blows it back out, answering her. 11:30. She looks at her phone (an old school phone with slide out keyboard), as she illuminates the screen, the digital clock turns from 1:10 to 1:11. She tilts the screen his way, they both begin to laugh. From a distance, she lurks in the bushes, watching herself and Bryce. Lamarus reappears, startling her. Oh, my God— Yes—oh my God. —what the—how are you doing this? What are we doing here? —you don't remember this? Yes—of course I remember it, I just never really think about it, it was so long ago—are we in my memory? We're in *a* memory, yes—but it's not just yours. Each and every being here has their own memory of that night—including my Master. —your master—what the? *WHO* is your master, anyway? And—why would he be in my memory? —*A* memory. —*my* memory. I've been reliving it since you disappeared. —I didn't disappear, I can't. I've been here the entire time—I was *always* here. Literally. But— —And it's not just *your* memory—this is in *my* memory, and in my Master's— That's impossible! I don't know your master, I've never seen you in my *life* before today, and this...this is clearly *my* memory, because there I am, right over there— Right over where? She looks through the bushes—but Bryce and herself are gone. What the— She stands up, standing above the bush, looking on in disbelief, then looking back behind her. Lamarus has disappeared. FUCK! She heads towards the warehouse. The rave has grown into quite the wild party. She moves through the dancing crowd, steps over circles of people playing games, making out, reading palms, playing Ouija boards; making her way through the smoky, room, as strobes flash wildly to the music, which is familiar but distant in her memory. Then, as she approaches the center of the dance floor, a familiar song begins to play, it is “My Name Is Skrillex”, with an elongated intro, as we see her literally discover herself. ...No way… She squints through the smoky haze to try to see the DJ booth, where the silhouette of a young Skrillex graces the decks, puffing on a cigarette. ...No fucking *way*...is *that*...is *this*...? Lamarus reappears, popping out of nowhere. AAHH. ((Real Monsters)) See?! See—*what?!* You still don't remember? ...Remember…? The first portal. This is the night we met. You, and my Master. Portal, what portal? We've never met—I don't know your Master, and this is getting strange—because, if I remember correctly— If *I* remember correctly— This was the first time I heard... He holds out his arms, waiting to receive it. She squints at him, realizing herself. No. What? Just no. What? This isn't happening. What? It already happened. No. Can't be undone. Stop following me. I can't, I am bound to you. Bind yourself to someone else. I am. Oh yeah—who? My master. Oh, for fuck's sake. No, for goodness' sake. He needs you. I told you, dude—I don't know who *he* is. I don't know who *you* are, I *don't* know who your “master” is...and at this point, I don't even know if I know who *I* am. You are S Ū P A C R E E. I'm not super *anything* right now, except fucking *pissed* and sort of nauseous—I wanna go home. You are home. No. I want to go back. Take me back. I did—look—*listen*— No, you listen to *me*—I've been listening to you for...for...for—- An entire decade. Tssshh. I've barely known you ten minutes, let alone ten fuckibg years. 10 years is the amount of time you've been listening to me—I've known you nearly my entire existence... Right. I *am* right. You know me me I know nothing. Leave you? I can't— You can. Promise. Promises. You can— Eat shit and Fucking Die? I wish you'd stop. *Stop* Really though, knock it the fuck off. Psh...you really don't remember me... do you? No. She sits by the edge of the pond, looking at the moonlight in the reflection, letting out a sigh. His voice changes, as he morphs behind her into another being, which she doesn't seem to notice. Well...what if I sounded like this? His voice is familiar, but she doesn't know how. She remains distant, looking up at the night sky, then back down at the water, as a slight reflection appears in the pond. Look at me. She turns around, to see SONNY/SKRILLEX standing behind her. It startles and shocks her into a breathless silence—she falls backwards into the water. . She looks up at the surface, sinking down in slow motion—her eyes wide in disbelief, air escaping from her nose and mouth. One of Lamarus's long tentacles reaches into the water, wrapping around her to retrieve her, pulling her toward the surface—as she gasps, a million memories flash forward and backwards, tearing through time and flashing through the voids and corridors of space. *gasp* “ARE YOU OKAY?” ((echos)) _______________________ So you can just...change into whatever you want—whenever you want? Whatever I *need*, sure. And, not just whenever...only when I have to, really. ...does it hurt? No. Just takes a lot. Yeah. Seems like it. That's...that's a cool power to have, though. I wish I could do something like that. Psh. Are you serious? Um like—I was, at first—but now I'm just trying to uhh...focus on the positives— You're far more powerful than I'll ever be. I have a hard time believing that. You have a hard time believing anything, seems like—especially yourself. I don't have powers. But you do. You just don't use them. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Koolaid Man. That's… ...what? That's...why they sent me—to help unlock your true potential. A flash, as the world begins again, and we fade to white. How long has it been? Forever, Cree. Literally forever. How can that be? This is infinite. Infinite—what, exactly? Everything. Everything—Everything? Everything. Everything. Yes. So… what am I supposed to do, now? Anything. Anything? I can't do anything. You can. I...can? How? Just do it. Do—what, anything? Whatever you want to do. ...I want to do music. Then, do it. Might be a little too late for that. It's never too late—if anything, I'd say you're Right On Time. Oh, come on. Really. You can do anything you put your mind to—music, especially. You think? It doesn't matter what I think—what do you think? I think I think too much. No such thing. —Overthinker, INZO— I love music. Well then—Try It Out. O...Kay. Imma try it out. Ok. ((Try it out, SupaCree Mixx))

Do you remember this place? Yeah...woah...yeah…! I remember this! This was one of my first raves ever! Whoooooaaaa! How did you—? How did we— She pauses, looking around. Lamarus has disappeared. Lamarus? She walks forward, taking in the memory. (To herself) ...How did I get here?! Then, she sees the shadow of her former self, in the distance—she is enamoured by seeing herself. Dubstep plays, as ravers dance and play in the warehouse. —Wait…is this…it can't be… Her former self heads outside—she follows her. Her former self looks around hesitantly, nervously scanning the grounds in search of something, or someone—she looks lost. Oh *yeah*... Her former self sits on a tree stump, slumped with her head propped up over her knees, squeezing her round face as she sort of pouts. She sighs, then—a boy smacks her shoulder, as he runs up from behind. Bryce! Doooood—*there* you are! Oh my God, Bryce…! Here I am! He grabs her hands, swinging her up, as they swing into a circle, spinning and gaining speed—until they both fall, laughing—her glassing fling off of her face, as she hits the ground, leaves crunching under her. I was so *fat*... As she lay on the ground, staring up at the stars, the world spinning—a bass drop shakes the warehouse, even rustling through the trees outside— Are you okay? She chuckles. Yeah. He helps her up. Thanks. More bass—inside, the party has gotten even more wild—familiar music plays—back outside, she and Bryce walk along the back of the building, as she produces a pack of Marlboro Smooth 100s from her jacket Can I have one? Uh—it's my lucky… Oh—nevermind. No, no—we can share it. You sure? Yeah, dude. Sweet, thanks. Oh—here. He produces a lighter, from the pocket of his skinny jeans, lighting the cigarette for her as she shields the flame from the wind. Thanks. They lean against the slde of the building, then slide down to sit, in sync. She blows out a puff of smoke, takes another drag, holding it in briefly, then passes the cigarette to Bryce. What time do you have to be home? He takes a drag, then blows it back out, answering her. 11:30. She looks at her phone (an old school phone with slide out keyboard), as she illuminates the screen, the digital clock turns from 1:10 to 1:11. She tilts the screen his way, they both begin to laugh. From a distance, she lurks in the bushes, watching herself and Bryce. Lamarus reappears, startling her. Oh, my God— Yes—oh my God. —what the—how are you doing this? What are we doing here? —you don't remember this? Yes—of course I remember it, I just never really think about it, it was so long ago—are we in my memory? We're in *a* memory, yes—but it's not just yours. Each and every being here has their own memory of that night—including my Master. —your master—what the? *WHO* is your master, anyway? And—why would he be in my memory? —*A* memory. —*my* memory. I've been reliving it since you disappeared. —I didn't disappear, I can't. I've been here the entire time—I was *always* here. Literally. But— —And it's not just *your* memory—this is in *my* memory, and in my Master's— That's impossible! I don't know your master, I've never seen you in my *life* before today, and this...this is clearly *my* memory, because there I am, right over there— Right over where? She looks through the bushes—but Bryce and herself are gone. What the— She stands up, standing above the bush, looking on in disbelief, then looking back behind her. Lamarus has disappeared. FUCK! She heads towards the warehouse. The rave has grown into quite the wild party. She moves through the dancing crowd, steps over circles of people playing games, making out, reading palms, playing Ouija boards; making her way through the smoky, room, as strobes flash wildly to the music, which is familiar but distant in her memory. Then, as she approaches the center of the dance floor, a familiar song begins to play, it is “My Name Is Skrillex”, with an elongated intro, as we see her literally discover herself. ...No way… She squints through the smoky haze to try to see the DJ booth, where the silhouette of a young Skrillex graces the decks, puffing on a cigarette. ...No fucking *way*...is *that*...is *this*...? Lamarus reappears, popping out of nowhere. AAHH. ((Real Monsters)) See?! See—*what?!* You still don't remember? ...Remember…? The first portal. This is the night we met. You, and my Master. Portal, what portal? We've never met—I don't know your Master, and this is getting strange—because, if I remember correctly— If *I* remember correctly— This was the first time I heard... He holds out his arms, waiting to receive it. She squints at him, realizing herself. No. What? Just no. What? This isn't happening. What? It already happened. No. Can't be undone. Stop following me. I can't, I am bound to you. Bind yourself to someone else. I am. Oh yeah—who? My master. Oh, for fuck's sake. No, for goodness' sake. He needs you. I told you, dude—I don't know who *he* is. I don't know who *you* are, I *don't* know who your “master” is...and at this point, I don't even know if I know who *I* am. You are S Ū P A C R E E. I'm not super *anything* right now, except fucking *pissed* and sort of nauseous—I wanna go home. You are home. No. I want to go back. Take me back. I did—look—*listen*— No, you listen to *me*—I've been listening to you for...for...for—- An entire decade. Tssshh. I've barely known you ten minutes, let alone ten fuckibg years. 10 years is the amount of time you've been listening to me—I've known you nearly my entire existence... Right. I *am* right. You know me me I know nothing. Leave you? I can't— You can. Promise. Promises. You can— Eat shit and Fucking Die? I wish you'd stop. *Stop* Really though, knock it the fuck off. Psh...you really don't remember me... do you? No. She sits by the edge of the pond, looking at the moonlight in the reflection, letting out a sigh. His voice changes, as he morphs behind her into another being, which she doesn't seem to notice. Well...what if I sounded like this? His voice is familiar, but she doesn't know how. She remains distant, looking up at the night sky, then back down at the water, as a slight reflection appears in the pond. Look at me. She turns around, to see SONNY/SKRILLEX standing behind her. It startles and shocks her into a breathless silence—she falls backwards into the water. . She looks up at the surface, sinking down in slow motion—her eyes wide in disbelief, air escaping from her nose and mouth. One of Lamarus's long tentacles reaches into the water, wrapping around her to retrieve her, pulling her toward the surface—as she gasps, a million memories flash forward and backwards, tearing through time and flashing through the voids and corridors of space. *gasp* “ARE YOU OKAY?” ((echos)) _______________________ So you can just...change into whatever you want—whenever you want? Whatever I *need*, sure. And, not just whenever...only when I have to, really. ...does it hurt? No. Just takes a lot. Yeah. Seems like it. That's...that's a cool power to have, though. I wish I could do something like that. Psh. Are you serious? Um like—I was, at first—but now I'm just trying to uhh...focus on the positives— You're far more powerful than I'll ever be. I have a hard time believing that. You have a hard time believing anything, seems like—especially yourself. I don't have powers. But you do. You just don't use them. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Koolaid Man. That's… ...what? That's...why they sent me—to help unlock your true potential. A flash, as the world begins again, and we fade to white. How long has it been? Forever, Cree. Literally forever. How can that be? This is infinite. Infinite—what, exactly? Everything. Everything—Everything? Everything. Everything. Yes. So… what am I supposed to do, now? Anything. Anything? I can't do anything. You can. I...can? How? Just do it. Do—what, anything? Whatever you want to do. ...I want to do music. Then, do it. Might be a little too late for that. It's never too late—if anything, I'd say you're Right On Time. Oh, come on. Really. You can do anything you put your mind to—music, especially. You think? It doesn't matter what I think—what do you think? I think I think too much. No such thing. —Overthinker, INZO— I love music. Well then—Try It Out. O...Kay. Imma try it out. Ok. ((Try it out, SupaCree Mixx))

Eu quero que você saiba de uma coisa Você sabe como é: Se eu olhar para a lua cristalina Para o galho avermelhado do lento outono pela minha janela Se eu tocar, próximo ao fogo a intocável cinza ou o enrugado corpo da lenha Tudo me leva a você Como se tudo o que existe: perfumes, luz, metais Fossem pequenos barcos que navegam rumo às tuas ilhas que esperam por mim. Bem, agora, Se pouco a pouco você deixar de me amar Eu deixarei de te amar, pouco a pouco. Se, de repente, você me esquecer, Não me procure Porque eu já terei te esquecido Se você pensa que é longo e furioso o vento que passa pelas velas da minha vida e decidir me deixar na praia do coração onde tenho raízes Lembre-se: Que nesse dia, nesta hora, eu levantarei meus braços E minhas raízes partirão para buscar outra terra. Mas, se a cada dia, a cada hora Você sentir que é destinada a mim Com implacável doçura, Se a cada dia uma flor escalar os seus lábios à minha procura, Aahh meu amor, aahh meu próprio eu, Em mim todo aquele fogo reacenderá Em mim nada é extinto ou esquecido Meu amor se alimenta do seu amor, amada. E enquanto você viver, estará você em seus braços, Sem deixar os meus. ‘'Pablo Neruda''

Aahh it feels so good to be finally getting this conversation with Kelly out into the world! Kelly is a Reiki Practitioner, Earth Intimacy Facilitator, & Content Creator who supports people in understanding their true nature, following their intuition, & embodying their unique blend of magic.I loved talking to Kelly as a fellow nature lover and earth sign, and I'm sure that you'll feel her grounding energy as you listen. This episode is ideal for anyone looking to deepen their connection to nature and themselves.She shares:Connecting to yourself through natureWorking with the cyclesLearning to trust yourself and strengthen your intuitionReclaiming the term ‘witch'Healing our ‘doing' mindsetSimple nature-based practices for you to tryAnd SOOO much more!AS MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:Veda Austin InstagramFOLLOW KELLY HERE:Wildly Embodied InstagramJoin her Wild Soul Words newsletterWebsiteCONNECT WITH ME:I love to hear from you all and would love to get to know you, so do send me a voice note covering who you are, where you're from, what you'd like to see, and, really, anything you feel called to share:Send me a voice noteFor my written ramblings on all things self-connection, healing, nature and spirituality:Join The Missing Peace newsletterFollow me on Instagram This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit missingpeace.substack.com/subscribe

Frank Jakobs denkt an herrlich analoge Zeiten zurück und darf der Plattenspieler und Papas Vinylsammlung natürlich nicht fehlen. "Platten hören" Moment maal. (Platte auflegen knistern) Hört ji dat? Dat is en Schallplaat. De Vörgänger van de CD. Ik hebb ok noch en Plattenspöler, daarmit ik de olle Hannes Flesner CDs ... ähh ... Platten van mien Ollen hören kann. Is so en ollen Rööf nix besünners. In mien Schooltied weren Platten weer full anseggt. Kweem dör de Hip-Hop-Musik. Daar hebben de DJs mit de Platten Beats un Cuts maakt un Scrahahhatscht. Daar daar geev dat echte Wettstrieden, Weltmeisterschuppen. Yeah. Un ok vandaag kopen sük Lüü weer Plattenspölers. Um de oll CDs … ähh … Platten to hören, de se noch up Böhn funnen hebben. Is ja ok wat besünners. Du hörst de Musik anners. Du musst de Plaat uplegen, de Tonarm richtig draperen, fein vörsichtig, un denn kannst du daarbi tokieken, wo de Arm sük immer wieder na de Midden van de Plaat bewegt un daarbi Musik ruutkummt. Un dat Knistern. Herrlich. En wunnerbaren Technik. Wehe, wenn daar een to rugg mit umgeiht. Oh, da sitzt ein Fussel an der Nadel. Ik mach den eben weg. (Finger slicken) Was? Nee, meine Finger sind sauber, hab nur ein paar Chips gegessen. Aahh. Banausen. Oh, der Riemen ist abgegangen, war ich wohl zu ungeschickt. Un denn mit de sülvige Fettfingers bi de filigran Technik bi. Oh, ich krieg‘s irgendwie nicht hin. Ach wat. Eenigen hebben daar even keen Sinn för. (Platte zu Ende) Wat nu? Ach so, is Schluss. Passt ok nich vööl drup up so en Plaat. Naja, un för unnerwegens is dat ok nix. Hannes Flesner gifft doch seker ok all digital as mp3 of wat. Ah ja, hier. (singen) Wenn ik Musik hör, krieg ik trillen Blixen lalalla …. Passt ok better in Büxentaske. Lalallaa. Hier gibt es mehr Plattdeutsch: Podcast: Die plattdeutsche Morgenplauderei "Hör mal 'n beten to" als als kostenloses Audio-Abo für Ihren PC: https://www.ndr.de/wellenord/podcast3096.html Die Welt snackt Platt: Alles rund um das Thema Plattdeutsch: https://www.ndr.de/plattdeutsch

Support our Show! https://supporter.acast.com/footballlandSign up to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheFootballlandGreetings Footballland Earholders! And a special welcome to our new Patreon Thomas Stirewalt, who is the proud sponsor of our new car park (The Thomas Spirewalt Car Park, suitable for both cars and motorcycles and nocturnal nesting place of Pepe, should he so wish). Thanks, Thomas!This is an apt point to remind you that you can pitch a ride to us if you're a Patreon and we will discuss it on the show. Patreon pitches thus far have included Lee Cattermole's Petting Zoo, The Cristiano Ronaldo Hall of Mirrors, Gary Mabbutt's Queen's Nose and A Cup Of Carabao. Thanks indeed to those of you who have sent stuff our way - Footballland is shaping up nicely because of it. So, what's on the agenda this week? The Glenn Hoddle School Of EnglishLord Sir Chief Ride Engineer Mark Davison has unveiled plans to build a multi-million pound language school at Footballland, focusing on Glenn Hoddle's unique usage of the English Language. The Glennglish Centre expects to welcome many students from November. The Matty Cash Point Footballland will be a cashless theme park. However, if you're desperate to visit the corner shop down the road and need a fiver for a bottle of Highland Spring, we will be giving Matty Cash £10,000 every day, making him the world's first human ATM. But be quick - Matt gets to keep all the money left over at the end of each night, so you'll have to work hard for your dosh! Ooh Aah Canada! Ryan really fought to have his ride included without the addition of a 107 year old Jermain Defoe with trains for eyes, but Anthony and Mark convinced him in the end! As a result, Oh Canada will be the world's only theme park ride featuring a 107 year old Jermain Defoe with trains for eyes. You're welcome, Ryan! Best regards,Anthony Richardson (CEO of Footballland)Mark Davison (Lord Sir Chief Ride Engineer) Ryan Baxter (Intern) Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/footballland. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"Like looking for you broth- AAHH! AHH! Sorry, These are The Games of Our Lives"Episode 22 of the future award-winning podcast from Bill and Tony!In this episode, the boys discuss:Luigi's MansionNintendo GamecubeElden RingPokemon Presents PredictionsStreet Fighter 6Kirby and the Forgotten Land Preorder Bonus at WalmartHorizon Forbidden WestPokemon Legends Arceus Shiny HuntingConker's Bad Fur DayPokemon Shining PearlMario Party SuperstarsMario Kart Double DashThe benefits of FiberThank you for listening!

Happy New year from the BE IT pod team! As you make your goals for the year - join Brad and LL in chatting about the impact of coaching, finding gaps in your industry, and the various forms of self care (which may just include taking a break). If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co . And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.In this episode you will learn about:Coaching for life endeavors Listening to the gaps in your industry Entrepreneurial resilienceRedefine self care for you Staying curious Episode References/Links:Agency Mini  OPC Flashcards:OPC Flashcards are on AmazonOPC Flashcards are on our site  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.  ResourcesWatch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!Lesley Logan websiteBe It Till You See It PodcastOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley LoganOnline Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTubeProfitable Pilates Social MediaInstagramFacebookTik TokLinkedIn Episode Transcript:Lesley Logan 0:01  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guests will bring Bold, Executable, Intrinsic and Targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice not, a perfect. Let's get started.Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap where my co host in life, Brad and I are going to dig into the layered convo I had with Megan Linney, (Brad: Oh, yeah) in our last episode. If you haven't yet listened to that interview, feel free to pause this now, go back and listen to that one, and then come back and join us. Y'all, it was a good one. By the way, Happy New Year!Brad Crowell 1:01  Happy New Year.Lesley Logan 1:03  What? I'm so... I'm, you know, it's really funny to be thinking about the new year and be recording this in the old year. But I feel like it's gonna be a great frickin' year. So, I'm stoked about it. (Lesley laughs)Brad Crowell 1:16  Yeah, it's definitely feeling more prepared (Lesley: Yeah) this, but you know, at the end of this year, then I don't, I don't remember ...Lesley Logan 1:27  We never we're organize within the year. (Lesley laughs)Brad Crowell 1:28  Yeah. I don't, I always remember things being like, absolute crazy town at our, you know, running around, trying to get things done before we go on our trip or we, whatever it's gonna be. In this year definitely has a different vibe.Lesley Logan 1:43  You know, when people like running to the airport in home alone, and they're like running, it's like, (Lesley sings) that's how it felt every frickin' December and we stopped flying and it still didn't make it (Lesley laughs) get less. SoBrad Crowell 1:58  No, I think 2020, we still had a bunch of travel at the beginning of the year. And you know, it sets you (Lesley: Yeah) down a different path. And this year was I think, since I was, you know, 18, I think this might be the first solid year of sitting in one place and being on on the goal. I mean, we (Lesley: Yeah) did, we did do a little bit of travel, but not like, not like international trips and prepping for workshops.Lesley Logan 2:26  I mean, we did do (Brad: huge trips) two international trips. However, they were ...Brad Crowell 2:29  No, (Lesley: Yeah) no, it wasn't, it wasn't like we had to plan a retreat and host 20 people (Lesley: No) and like something that will take you like planning those things takes me off of my focus for weeks at a time.Lesley Logan 2:41  Yeah, ... the the but you don't see behind the doors, behind the scenes of putting a retreat together is like it is, it is not even just the amount of time it is to be on the retreat is, some of it. Couple of things are years on the making. And (Brad: Sure) things are months in the making. And then there's like a lot of hurry up and wait. (Brad: Yeah) And it's true, like ... In 2021, yes, we did do a couple trips, but we were invited as guests. (Lesley: Yeah) Or we're just showing up to participate. (Lesley: Yeah) It wasn't like we were running the show.I gotta be honest, I feel very spoiled. (Lesley laughs) (Brad: Right. Yeah) So, you know, we are definitely, well, time will tell but I think we're gonna have a balance of things. And I think I'm excited for us to announce and explore what we're doing more in the, in the travel arena. (Brad: Yeah) But ...Oh man, I cannot wait to go back to Cambodia (Lesley: We're ...) and host another retreat, they're ... (Lesley: We're really close, y'all on that. We ...) itching, itching to go.We definitely just have one little thing we have to figure out so we can actually put something in the books. And so but that is not the amount that I was excited about. (Brad: No) (Brad laugsh) So let me just say, (Brad: Happy New Year) January is a big month. It's my birthday month. (Brad: Oh yeah) Aahh, you can tell me "Happy birthday", every frickin' day, it will not bother me. I do love my birthday. It is so fun. But also this month, we have our sixth Agency Mini so we do it the end of January. And you can sign up for that at profitablepilates.com/mini. It is our seven day coaching program for fitness and professionals. That means Pilates instructors you and your yoga friends and trainers too. And also we are finally going to be able to release our scheduling tool.Brad Crowell 4:20  This is like, I'm very excited about this.Lesley Logan 4:22  Brad is so excited about this. And so it is ...Brad Crowell 4:24  Y'all, y'all, we've been working behind the scenes with another company. (Lesley: Yeah) A software company (Lesley: Mm-hmm) who are working with us to make a custom build (Lesley: Yeah) of their app. (Lesley: Yeah) And we get to you know doctored it up with a whole bunch of coaching stuff, fitness (Lesley: Yeah) business coaching stuff, which obviously that's what we do. (Lesley: Mm-hmm) And ...Lesley Logan 4:46  And like legal stuff, it's gonna be frickin' awesome. I can't wait for it to be out there for you to see and get your hands on but ...Brad Crowell 4:53  But if you if you're running a business of any kind, you could be literally walking a dog or you could be you know, running a Pilates studio with a full team and 50 clients. This is a tool, this is a scheduling software, invoicing software, client management software that you can use, where we are also able to provide coaching and then some legal contract templates for you as well. (Lesley: Yeah) So very exciting. (Lesley: Yes ...) Coming up in just a few weeks.Lesley Logan 5:19  Yeah, you can get on the waitlist for that at (Brad: Oh) profitablepilates.com/scheduling. (Brad: Yeah, scheduling) (Lesley laughs) The notes are not in front of me. So that was that, but I'm really excited about that.It's a profitablepilates.com/scheduling.Yeah. Okay, so we had an audience question. Um, this came from last week's episode, we actually announced that the Mini-doors were open.Brad Crowell 5:44  Right. Yeah, the question was from a new teacher, and said, "Hey, I'm brand new. Is it too early for me to be jumping into Mini or into Agency?"Lesley Logan 5:55  Yeah. Well, I think it's, I mean, as long as you've done your training, or you're finishing up, we definitely have a lot of people who have joined us who are still in their training. It's never too early to have really awesome coaching and direction on growing your business. Because let me just tell you, why would you want to like (Lesley laughs) wander around throwing things on the wall, when you could actually have someone going? Is that what you want to do? I know that sounds really good. But remember, when you said you want to do this, just so (Brad: Yeah) you know, those two things don't actually stay in the same room. But that's also okay. And we don't tell, like as coaches, we will never tell you that's wrong or not going to work. But we definitely are going to be honest with you. And so I would, that's why I wrote my book was so that people would actually hear the coaching advice, before they went out and did stuff, before they went six months up the wrong road and doing what everyone else is doing. Because they thought that's what they should be doing, or (Brad: Yeah) charging rates based on the going rate in the neighborhood. No, I, it's never too early, as long as you are already in your training, that's a great start. If you're about to start your training, you know, it might feel a lot more overwhelming because you're in the middle of a training and you're doing coaching advice. I'm going to say like finishing up a training is, it's you have the light end of the tunnel is a great time to start or if you just finished, that's really great. And we absolutely can coach you, plus you're gonna see so much inspiration of like what could be I mean, we have people that we coach who've been doing this for 20 years, and (Brad: Yeah) what they're able to do now in their business because of our coaching is, is an, is absolutely inspirational, it shows you possibility. So, I would love to see you in there.It's the next layer of their business.Layer. We're just layering it in here. (Brad laughs) Oh, my gosh.Brad Crowell 7:39  So, I couldn't agree with you more, there's it's never too soon to get coaching. In fact, I would, I would say not only should you go get coaching, but forever, for the rest of your career, you should have some kind of a coach or mentor, (Lesley: Yeah) or some kind of a person that you are willing to share the, you know your path with and, and kick the ideas around, you know, whether that, whether the and you know the the successes and the failures, and to reflect on them, there is so much value in taking a look at what we're specifically doing right now and what we're planning to do, and then getting another opinion on it. Whether that solidifies your own, or you actually get some great advice from them. It helps you form that opinion, even more (Lesley: Yeah) and more solidly, like help you execute it better. It's there's so much value in it.Lesley Logan 8:36  Well, and like just so you all know, like Brad and I have had coaches for years we've, (Brad: Yeah) since 2017, I started doing working with coaches on different things. And in 2020 to combined, we had three coaches, we just leveled up with another coach, I'm really friggin' excited about. And what's so great about that is because we are investing in our coaching, we and our coaches, none of the coaches we've hired have no coach, they all have their own coaches who are like the next level up, you're getting, you're you're getting a lot. It's not just like the old stuff that we pulled out of a hat from five years ago. It's new stuff, it's what's working now in other company, we know (Brad: Sure) things that behind the scenes stuff. And so, (Brad: Yeah) you know, if you're wanting people to invest in you and your fitness business, you have to be investing in your fitness business.Brad Crowell 9:25  I think the only time that I didn't have coaching was when I was an employee only. (Lesley: Right, because ...) When I was not running, you know, or trying to run a project or run a business that that you know ...Lesley Logan 9:39  Right and that makes total sense because you like you're in in theory, you're getting paid to do someone else's goal. So if they they should be coaching you. (Lesley laughs)Right. But you know coaching can also take the shape of counseling or (Lesley: Yeah) therapy.Yeah, yes, (Brad: you know, so) yes, yes. All those things as we know. (Brad: Yeah) Therapy is like laundry, do it often. (Brad laughs)Brad Crowell 10:02  You just got to keep doing it. (Lesley: gotta keep doing it) (Brad and Lesley laughs) Oh, sorry (Lesley: Okay) that's not what I meant. (Lesley laughs) It is, it is but... Okay, okay. Now let's talk about Megan Linney. Through finding the gaps in the beauty and wellness industry, Megan Linney is a licensed Esthetician, Massage Therapist and Spa Executive who created The Layer Lounge. She spends her days making friends and creating a community of people comfortable to trust her with their self care. And she's pulling from years of working in the the spa world. And she made a whole career out of that, she was running high end spas, she was opening spas, she was managing spas all around the (Lesley: Yeah) country. And and she realized at the end of her last employed experience that, "This is probably the last time that I'm going to work for someone else. It's time for me to go do my own thing." (Lesley: Yeah) And then I loved that the conversation kind of took this turn of like, "I had done my own thing before, I just kind forgot about, you know (Lesley laughs) the life of being entrepreneur."Lesley Logan 11:12  Because it, because the audience is mostly women, and I'm sure a few great men. I even think those two great men have women in their lives. It is amazing how many women forget about the pain of pregnancy. And I would never have equated entrepreneurship to (Lesley laughs) that in anyway. But I loved how she brought that up. And she's like, "It's like women, they forget pain. And it's a special thing and then they just have they have six kids because they forgot." (Brad: Yeah) But it freakin' sucks. (Lesley laughs) And I think it's true. Like, as someone we've, I've been working for myself, since 2009. But like, especially in 2016, when I fully went for myself. You know, as we make changes, I, it's like you forget, you only it's almost like I only remember the good stuff of a launch. I don't always remember all the bad things that happened. Like, we obviously, we make changes and we try not to make those mistakes again. (Brad: Yeah) But like, we never go up, we have to launch again. Here we go. (Brad: Done) (Lesley laughs) Because we, we like, block out the amount of hours and weeks and days of prep to it. Brad Crowell 12:14  Oh, well, I do laugh about how intense Mini is for us, like the amount of effort that we're putting in. (Lesley: Yeah) But I never remember that. I'm like, "Oh, cool. We get to do this again." (Lesley: I know) And then it comes up and I'm like, "Oh, right. Like I gotta spend like six hours a day in a Facebook group." Right, right. (Lesley: Yeah) Okay, okay. Here we go. Here we go.Lesley Logan 12:32  Yeah, yeah. So anyways, um, okay, so out of the things that I that she taught... that she brought up that I loved was listening to the concerns and gaps in your industry to create something new. So we talked a little about this with, with even Taylor Smith, it's like, what are the questions you keep asking? Like, that's probably our next thing. But you know, what Megan did? What we've done in our, in all of our companies is like, what, where is the whole? Like, where are people falling through, because there's these amazing opportunities out there. There's amazing products, there's amazing spas out there. But there are people who don't have access to that. And she, or that the the way that they exist is not exactly going to solve the problem of the needs of the people. And so that's even how we created OPC it's like, there's a ton of people out there who would like the convenience of an on demand platform, but they really love some things, but in person, and how can we do that? And so I just think that if you are out there trying to figure out something new, it's, it's the...Brad Crowell 13:35  Well, look, I think, also take a step back and look at your industry as if you weren't in your industry. (Lesley: Yeah) right? Because what she said is, in a spa world, you walk into a spa, someone steps out of the room, and then you get naked. And then you lay on a table and that's not normal. (Lesley: Right) But in a spa world, that's what they do. So like, you don't think anything about it. And she said, "What if they didn't have to do that? Would that allow some other people to access this? And feel more comfortable about participating in it?" Right? So it's funny, we we go, we just like get in the world of this. And we just, you know, like, this is just the way it is in our thing. (Lesley: Well...) And she's like, "Well, what if it doesn't have to be?" So that's another way to look at, you know, the gap.Lesley Logan 14:27  And also, like, I think a lot of people think I have to create something that's never been done before. But the reality is, is actually where all the money is, and like we have a lot of friends who are entrepreneurs to get to see this. Creating something unique within a market that already exist is going to be 10, like it's act there's a reason why there's a million frickin' beers out there. So, Lori Harder, (Brad: Right) Lori and Chris harder were coaches of ours years ago, and I got to be in the same room as she was coming up with this idea, this drink that you want to make, and she is making a beverage as a sparkling Rosé and then there's also a non alcoholic one, because she's like, "I want to hang out with my girlfriends. And sometimes I don't want something heavy, and I don't want something high calorie." And she's like, "I feel like there's no drink beverage out there that is making it easy for women who want to have some fun with their girlfriends, but don't want to wake up the next day regretting that fun, or for the women who don't drink, but they want to feel like they're having the same beverage, they can be at the same environment, the same things." And so,Brad Crowell 15:26  Yeah, (Lesley: so) so she's not reinventing the wheel of (Lesley: No) making a drink? (Lesley: No) But she's making a variation or a differentiator on that drink. (Lesley: Yeah) By identifying like, "Well, when I'm doing this thing, this is my struggle. This is my, this is where I'm missing. You know, I wish there was X."Lesley Logan 15:44  Yeah. So, I think that like it is it... you might be going around going, "I have to create something so different." No. Like Brad said, like, take a look outside and like ask questions that someone who doesn't understand what ask and then what are the questions you keep getting asked or one of the frustrations you keep hearing, and then create that. And it's really cool. I got to be honest, it's scary. When we were making our thing, I definitely was worried like who's gonna buy this? And of course, I got the questions about people wanting "the thing" that we weren't offering and I had to be okay with being like, "I'm not offering the thing that you want. And that's okay." Right. (Brad: Right) And for Megan, like, if you do want the three hour spa experience with the champagne and the robes and the whole thing, those places do exist. And you can you can go there. (Brad Yeah) You're also very welcome at The Layer Lounge. Okay. (Brad: Yeah) What did you love that she said?So I kind of already hinted at it, but entrepreneurial resilience. She, she was like, wow, I didn't remember, you know, (Thank you Gaia, I love you, too.) I didn't remember all of the, you know, the trials and the long hours and all the things, you know, of running your own business, like she had experienced before until she was back in it. And then she was like, "Oh, right. Yeah, I don't really get to take weekends off." (Lesley: I don't get to get paid) You know, until (Lesley laughs) I don't even get to get paid until it's like actually moving forward, you know, when you can replace yourself in that kind of thing. And I, I think that one of the one of having having now started, you know, dozens of companies over the past, you know, almost 20 years, the, one of the hardest thing to deal with, as an entrepreneur is when you missed the mark. (Lesley: Yeah) And, you know, whatever that might be, whether you didn't open the doors on the same, in the day that you had planned, you know, or whether you had created a product that didn't, didn't sell, or, you know, or whatever, you made a mistake, I mean, any any of those kinds of things. When you are in a, an employment scenario, presumably you have someone holding you accountable to this kind of stuff. And like, you know, there's some kind of ramification and whatever that might be for, that will keep you accountable. When you're an entrepreneur, it's you, (Lesley: Yeah) right, or maybe you have a partner, you know, but you know, to when you are going through this kind of, like, hopefully you have a manager or a boss, if you're an employee who will sit down and have a tough conversation with you, and then show you where you went wrong, or what you could be doing better or whatever, and encouraging you and helping you then go and do this again, and get you through to become better at what it is you're doing. When you're an entrepreneur, you don't necessarily have that unless you get coaching, by the way. (Lesley: Yeah) You know, but you don't necessarily have that all the time. And it's, it's hard to go, like, "Wow, that sucked. How can we do it better? Or how can we move forward?" And, and, and whatever the thing might be to make it better? (Lesley: Yeah) It's hard to have that objective perspective and that (Lesley: Well, that's where the resilience comes in) is that entrepreneurial resilience, (Lesley: And I ...) exactly.I think you, I think we have gotten better at going, "Okay, that didn't go to plan." And not taking it personally, which is like another thing, but I ...Brad Crowell 19:21  Yeah, that's a huge part of it.Lesley Logan 19:23  ... especially (Brad: huge part of it) when it's especially because for us, like all of these businesses have my frickin' face on them. (Lesley laughs) And it's like, it's hard not to take it personally. And people are like, "No, I don't want that." It's like, "Oh, (Brad: oh, sure.) Oh, sure but it's not me." It's you don't want that business and that's okay. But like you have to whatever you're doing, even if it's a personal brand or a product brand, it is important that you have that entrepreneurial resilience and that you you can't take it personally because it's not personal. It's not personal. It could be that they don't trust themselves to do the thing that you're offering. And so it's not personal at all, they're just saying, "That's not going to work for me." And that's because they they know themselves enough to know, "I don't follow through with those kinds of things." And that's okay. (Lesley laughs)Brad Crowell 20:10  This circles back to Megan, with the gap in the industry that she's filling where it's, it's a spa experience that you can come in on your lunch break. And, you know, and enjoy. And that might not be for everyone. (Lesley: Right) Right? So, but that's her innovative idea. And she has created a really fun space to be in. And the experience that you get is a spa experience for your face. But maybe not the experience of like, you know, like Lesley mentioned the champagne and like, you know, all that kind of stuff. And if someone rejects that saying, "No, I want that big thing." Like Megan's not going to take that personally, because she knows who she's for, (Lesely: Yeah) you know, and so she can say, "Okay, it's fine. This is not for you and that's okay." (Lesley: Yeah) Right. And that's, you know, but but you're totally right, taking it personally, you know, beating yourself up to, you know, that, that resilience, moving moving the ball forward, without, you know, hanging yourself out the dry.Lesley Logan 21:14  I think it's a rep scheme, you know, like it like, it would be, I think it'd be very, very rare human that in the beginning of your business, then you have any debt you didn't take personally, like, it's gonna be hard like, or at least on a bad day. So it's okay, if you've taken some things personally, I want you to know that where what happens is, the more you put yourself out there, the more you market your business, the more you do that. The more you realize, Brad has a course on this called 200 No's, like, the more you realize it's a numbers game. Like Megan (Brad: Totally) said, "It's a numbers game." And so, really, like, you're gonna get rejected way more often than people are gonna say "yes" to you. And for most businesses, that's actually okay. If every single when I was teaching Pilates in my studio if every single person I ever came across said "yes" to me. I probably (Lesley laughs) would've gone crazy. And I probably had a lot of clients I didn't like so it's actually okay, that I only had the 15 clients for years that loved me. (Brad: Yeah) Loved me. And also because they love me, they weren't luke warm. They told everybody about me, and not everybody that they told wanted to come, but the ones that did were freaking awesome. (Brad: Yeah) So anyways,Yeah, that's super true.All right, well, good luck on that resilience. Keep trying. (Lesley laughs)Brad Crowell 22:29  Alright, finally, let's talk about the BE IT action items. What bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your convo with Megan Linney? So she said something very, I was gonna say, layered, but it's not layered. It's just profound. She said, "Self care is the cure." (Lesley: Yeah) And she's she, you know, obviously, she believes it so much that she's worked in the self care industry for a long time, and open her own business in that world. But self care doesn't always I...100% think that self care can include a spa or you know, a haircut, or your nails or a facial or whatever. But it's also like that self care is, you know, taking a break, (Lesley: Mm-hmm) you know, getting up from your computer, walking around the block, you know, getting some vitamin D from the sun. And, and it's when I think that there's this weird misconception, (Thank you Gaia for participating.) there's this weird misconception that, you know, going out and, you know, treating yourself (Lesley: Yeah) is somehow frivolous or (Lesley: Yeah) you know, like, oh, that's money that you could have save.Lesley Logan 23:51  It has to be a reward of some kind, like ...Right. Or has to be or we associated with like, you know, you scored a goal in your game now we're gonna go you know, I don't know, get (Lesley: Yeah) go to the park, something ...But like, it's like, as an adult, it's like, oh, okay, well, you went to the gym every day. You said you were now you can go to the spa. No, like you can you get to self care should absolutely be like drinking water, and sleep, and all the things that we do for ourselves, brushing your teeth. That's what and if we think about how, like, they have shown that stress is like the cause of 99% of illnesses. Well, then the opposite of that is self care, you know?Brad Crowell 24:27  Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I didn't actually know that.Lesley Logan 24:32  Oh, yeah. It's a whole thing. (Brad: 99%). Yeah, they there's a whole thing that's like 99% of all illnesses and diseases are caused by stress, because stress raises your cortisol levels, which I mean, I've seen the infomercials that also increases belly fat. (Lesley laughs) But it's it keeps you from. So here's how it happens. So stress causes your stomach to not do digestion, which causes bloating and increased and discomfort when you don't go through di... digestive cycle, you are also starting to affect your sleep cycle. And if you're not sleeping, then you also then don't digest and it becomes this vicious cycle. So if you're not digesting, then you're not absorbing nutrients. If you're not absorbing nutrients, you don't have the things that you need to walk around on this earth with the a bit like the same abilities as anybody else does. And when you're not having that nutrition, you're constantly not getting those things, then of course, other things can happen and it just becomes this like vicious spiral. Ah downward spiral. So yeah ...Brad Crowell 25:32  Yeah. Okay, well ... (Lesley laughs)Lesley Logan 25:35  Anyways, we can dive into that another. I'll have a doctor on, well, I've already had one, we've had Dr. Bender, but (Brad: Yeah) we'll be back to talk about stress. (Lesley laughs)Brad Crowell 25:42  Yeah, yeah. So you know what, with self care, Megan really believes that it is the cure of all the things you know, and and I know, that's something that I personally am not very good at (Lesley: Yeah) is self care. You know, like, like I was talking about before, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." (Lesley: Yeah) That's terrible mentality.Lesley Logan 26:05  I don't think, I don't think most, I don't know maybe this is a Western thing. But I don't think most people are actually really good at self care. Because we have been told, like, push harder, no pain, no gain, keep going. Like, you'll sleep when you're dead.Brad Crowell 26:16  The harder you work, the better you'll be, you know.Lesley Logan 26:18  There was this whole, like, reward or like, what is it like getting bonus points for like, "I only slept four hours last (Brad: Yeah) night or whatever." And like, the reality is, is that ..."I'm so busy. Oh, me too." Like, that's like a badge of honor somehow.Yes, exa... and I, what I can say is, I'm healthier today, because of all the self care that I do. And most of the issues that I was having with my that caused my stomach issues back in 2013 was how much I was overworking because I couldn't actually afford the move I made to LA and so I had to like double down and I was not taking care of myself anymore. Like I had before then and so anyways, I do agree be it till you see it - "Self care, self care is the cure" was such a great I mean re li... Y'all re listen to that will ... of that because it was like chills, and like such a great reminder. You might need to like replay it for yourself when you're like debating whether or not you should do this other thing or take care of yourself first.Yeah, well, yes, agreed, 100%. What did what was your BE IT action item, taken away from the convo with Megan?Well, she also mentioned "Stay curious" and I think that can be really hard if you like to know the answers to things (Lesley laughs) you know, like ah, but that curiosity she mentioned because I was like, I was like, "Oh yeah, curiosity killed the cats like and satisfaction brought it back" and I was like, "I've never heard that before." And I just, I think it's just really you know, we've had other guests mention some version of curiosity in their BE IT action items. And it seems to be this like overarching theme. And I do think that it's not easy to be curious because again, we're used to we're told to find an answer that's what we're like trained to do in school. But if you can, if you can play a curiosity game if you could, if you could do like some things that I think for curiosity sake and you're like, "Wouldn't it be cool if or stupid idea time?" Or you know, like, just like having fun, you know, children like find joy and wonder and the weirdest thing is like, try that if curiosity is difficult for you, but I really did love it and I had I'm so grateful now. I know, I now know that satisfaction brought it back. (Lesley laughs)Brad Crowell 28:39  Yeah, that was I also didn't, I didn't I'd never heard that before either. (Lesley: Yeah) And, and I think that's great. And you know, that satisfaction brought it back makes me think about my obsession with Wikipedia. (Brad laughs) Because whatever I'm like, "I don't know that word or I don't know that thing. Or what is this thing?" I just like ... ... and I get the satisfaction of getting a response. Lesley Logan 29:03  Oh my gosh, okay, can we just take a moment for curiosity? I'll only have a moment. But, so Brad and I listen to these podcasts and on it's from a whole media and on several different podcasts are bringing up Machine Gun Kelly and Megan ... (Brad laughs) What's her name? (Brad: Fox) Fox. And you know, like, I, I'm some, I don't know how but I like somehow, through osmosis, I keep up on some popular trends ...And I've seen Transformers so I know who Megan Fox (Lesley: Yeah) is, but I don't have a clue who Machine Gun Kelly is.And also like, when I listening to the podcast, we don't listen together. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, Brad's not going to understand this. Maybe I should tell him who these people are." Right? So anyways, I'm sitting in the office, I'm working and Brad goes, "Okay, I had to frickin' look up who Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox is." And he literally starts reading out loud the story of how they got together. Who Megan Fox was married to before. Her love life, what we now know of it, and then he goes, "Okay, I'm satisfied." (Lesley laughs) So curiosity does not have to be in business. (Brad laughs) It doesn't have to be physically like health related, it can 100% ... (Brad: I closed the loop.) Yeah, it can just be about closing the loop. (Brad: Yeah) So if you hear something on a podcast and it makes you curious, go look it up. You know, like, the worst case scenario is you last five minutes to Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox's love life. (Brad laughs) But that like now, it's kind of like, what was that tiger show? Tiger King? (Brad: Oh, yeah) it's like, we now know who Carol is? Right? So we get the things (Brad: Oh, yeah) sometimes just have to go, "What is people talking about?" Anyways, I friggin' love Megan. I'm so grateful that we know her. I'm grateful that she took time out of her busy life to do this podcast and, and I really enjoyed the whole conversation. I hope y'all did too.Brad Crowell 30:52  Yeah. Awesome.Lesley Logan 30:53  I'm Lesley Logan.Brad Crowell 30:54  And, I'm Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 30:55  Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so grateful you're here. Happy New Year. May this be just so much fun for you. I'm in a very curious year, a layered year. How are you going to use these tips in your life? Let us know by sending us a DM to the pod on Instagram and tag @thelayerlounge. Tag @be_it_pod and we'll catch you on the next episode.Brad Crowell 31:14  Looking forward to it. Bye.Lesley Logan 31:18  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review. And follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the @be_it_pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others BE IT TILL YOU SEE IT. Have an awesome day!'Be It Till You See It' is a production of 'As The Crows Fly Media'.Brad Crowell 31:51  It's written produced, filmed and recorded by your host Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell. Our Associate Producer is Amanda Frattarelli.Lesley Logan 32:02  Kevin Perez at Disenyo handles all of our audio editing.Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music. And our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Special thanks to our designer Jaira Mandal for creating all of our visuals (which you can't see because this is a podcast) and our digital producer, Jay Pedroso for editing all video each week so you can.Brad Crowell 32:27  And to Angelina Herico for transcribing each of our episodes, so you can find them on our website. And, finally to Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.Transcribed by https://otter.aiSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Parece até que a Elsa (Frozen) decidiu passar as férias aqui no Brasil, não é mesmo?! Deu a louca no clima do nosso país, esse ano já tivemos ondas de um calor tão quente, como nunca antes visto, frio tão intenso que chegou a cair flocos de neve em algumas cidades do nosso país, e ainda estamos em setembro, heim. Mas vem cá, quem nunca sonhou em brincar na neve, fazer um anjinho de neve no quintal de casa ?? Pois é, o que antes parecia sonho, esse ano virou realidade para alguns brasileiros. E isso não é Fake News, não!! (Não sabe o que é Fake News? Poxxaaa, temos um episódio pronto pra ser ouvido por você explicando sobre esse termo, vem ouvir!!) Afinal, nevar não é algo comum na nossa "Zona Climática Intertropical" ... Aahh, então você ainda não estudou isso em geografia ou não se lembra dessa aula?? Não se preocupe não, nós do UmDiaPod pensamos em vocês e, com esse episódio, você vai entender melhor o que acontece com o clima do nosso país. Ouça até o fim, a Jaque e o Renan reservaram um tempinho para nos explicar o que é essa tal Zona Climática Intertropical e o que isso tem a ver com essa loucura de clima que temos vivido nos últimos meses. Aahh e me conta que eu quero saber, vocês são os "Sortudos" que a Jaque falou no fim do episódio?? Ou, infelizmente, você é desses que precisa estar com a bolsa / mochila sempre cheia?? Porque, olha, eu não tive essa sorte não hahaha Não esquece de nos seguir: @umdiapod Estamos em outras redes sociais também (Instagram / Facebook / TikTok)

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Aahh, la buona e vecchia pausa pranzo. Oggi descriviamo con ironia alcune tra le specie di clienti più diffuse che durante la giornata popolano l'ecosistema-bar.

Eps kali ini ngobrolin di vaksin pertama kali bareng temen gua @yulidocaine. Dari vaksin sampe clubhouse, aldi taher. Aahh dengerin aja udah. Semoga lu semua terhibur. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/billynoure/message

0:34 Early show talk 14:06 Boondocks reboot 20:00 Gucci Mane vs Jeezy, Parties in a COVID world 48:07 Blake's Android, This Christmas, Ether 01:04:37 Obama's comments about Rap music, 01:35:00 Jackson 5, Whats Love Got to Do With It 01:46:40 Why do we still care about the Grammys? 01:56:50 Fat Albert, McRib, Bodyodyyodyyody 02:33:43 All Eyez on me, ODB 02:43:50 CN gets woke

Rabbit's been busy doing things for his family. Aahh the things we do for love. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

super special double feature we get into the legend of bloody mary and about chemtrails!! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, Stephen and Anthony discuss their progress, social issues, Chadwick Boseman, and, of course, they talk about another vampire movie. There is a short section of this episode that is heavily visual, as Stephen is showing his sketches, so prepare for some "Ooh"s and "Aahh"s without much context for about a minute or so. The video will be released soon! We Love you all and thank you for listening! Intro theme by Made of Monsters https://madeofmonsters.bandcamp.com/album/made-of-monsters

In this episode, Stephen and Anthony discuss their progress, social issues, Chadwick Boseman, and, of course, they talk about another vampire movie. There is a short section of this episode that is heavily visual, as Stephen is showing his sketches, so prepare for some "Ooh"s and "Aahh"s without much context for about a minute or so. The video will be released soon! We Love you all and thank you for listening! Intro theme by Made of Monsters https://madeofmonsters.bandcamp.com/album/made-of-monsters

Eduarda Furtado aborda o aspecto energético do que nós mulheres vivenciamos na TPM e como aproveitar essa fase para descobrir aspectos importantes em nós.

Something a little different this week -we’re going back to an interview that was recorded just before the COVID crisis hit us. In this episode, Rachel is joined by Ebonie Allard, an award-winning life and business coach, author of Misfit to Maven: The Story of AARCH to AAHH and host of the popular podcast ‘Adulting with Ebonie’We chat about how to live lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside which includes taking just the right amount of responsibility for yourself and for others. We discuss the control problems that people in high stakes, high stress jobs often have – either taking too much control or not enough control and think about the core values that will help us to filter all our decisions and determine what our success is in life. Once you know what your core values are, it becomes much easier to decide what to say ‘yes’ and what to say ‘no’ to. Ebonie’s three top pieces of advice are:Become curious about stuff in your life – without judgementGet clear on what you actually want. What are your needs? What are your desires?Know your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). What’s your next best option if Plan A doesn’t look like it’s going to work…?We are sending out a weekly email with new resources, tips and useful content especially for doctors and healthcare professionals throughout the COVID-19 crisis. If you’d like to receive this and other resources about thriving at work then please sign up hereYou can watch this podcast episode on YouTube herePodcast linksGet the COVID Team Wellbeing Toolkit which includes instructions on how to run a team check in chat hereListen to Rachel’s interview on ‘Adulting with Ebonie’ here https://adultingwithebonie.com/the-one-about-fight-or-flight/Here’s Ebonie’s podcast https://adultingwithebonie.com Find out about Ebonie’s work here https://ebonieallard.com Follow Ebonie on twitter Misfit to Maven: The story of AAGH to AAHH book View our recent Shapes Webinars on how to support your teams through the COVID crisis and sign up for the forthcoming webinar here https://www.shapestoolkit.com/support-your-team-webinar 24 hour support for NHS staff: Call 0300 131 7000 between 7am and 11pm or text FRONTLINE to 85258 24/7. BMA Wellbeing Service - https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/work-life-support/your-wellbeingThe NHS Practitioner Health Programme - https://www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/ Sign up for downloadable CPD reflection forms plus more tools and resources - https://www.shapestoolkit.com/podcast-CPD-formsFor more episodes of You are not a fSupport the show (https://shapesfordoctors.com/)

"Espera, Manga a fruta? Aahh entendi!! Mangá, tipo Naruto?". Isso, só que não. O Caranguejo Atômico Spin off da vez trouxe Guilherme Gomes, Daniel Isola e Danillo Magalhães para um desafio: aproximar nossos ouvintes que já navegam no universo geek, sejam nos livros, no cinema, nas séries e nos games, mas nunca sentiu que a arte nipônica dos quadrinhos era pra você! É através de uma breve linha do tempo que a gente vai abordar as diversas nuances entre as tendências que foram surgindo ao longo das décadas. Alguma delas vai te capturar! Vocês podem nos ouvir pelo Spotify, Deezer, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast e no site www.caranguejoatomico.com Siga no Instagram @caranguejoatomicopodcast Twitter: @CaranguejoAT Royalty Free Music by http://incompetech.co Reformat by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4269-reformat License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Overriding Concern by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4187-overriding-concern License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I was driving to grocery store and I seen him. Aahh uuugg. I'm glad he's doing good.

Hut, Hut, Hike Weirdos!!  WELCOME TO SEASON FOUR!!! This is the premiere of our fourth season and not only are we so excited to be back, we're also excited to be chatting about something we n e v e r thought we'd be talking about on Keep It Weird.  But Season Fours are all about having fun and trying new things, right?  At least that's what they say. Today, Ashley and Lauren are joined by one of the first friends they made in Los Angeles; actor and comedian CARL TART!  You've seen him on Drunk History, Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Good Place, Transparent, & Comedy Bang Bang.  You can catch him at UCB several times a week performing with groups like White Women and Asssscat.  AND you can check out his own podcast The Flagrant Ones on patreon! This week Lauren is going to be bringing us some very wild & lesser known sports themed TRUE CRIME stories and Carl is going to be talking about his home team, the New Orleans Saints, and the evil CURSE that haunts them... Join us next week when Ashley brings you some very scary sports-y paranormal and supernatural stories and you'll get to hear from a long lost friend.

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais !  O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

Kia ora muchachada! Aahh, ven?! Los saludé en Maori! Eso es porque hoy les vengo a hablar de cómo son los 3 idiomas oficiales del país, qué cosas NO tienen que hacer y experiencias personales que he vivido relacionadas a ésto! Si quieren relajar con paseos y cómo es la vida por acá, pasen por el canal: https://youtu.be/Rr3XwKByA5g

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

Heyo everyone! I'm unlocking something the Patreon peeps have had for a while for funsies and am bringing you three announcements! Some cool stuff is happening tonight, as well as next week! Aahh! Also if you wanna join in on the cool vibes live stream I'm doing tonight, here's the Discord link: https://discord.gg/wZxDhx

A quick update, time is getting so short!  Tempers are flaring, the garage is full of crap and the bus floor is covered in sawdust!  AAHH!!

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

IF IT SCARES YOU, IT'S A SIGN ✨THAT YOU NEED TO DO IT! Aahh, vandaag weer een aanmelding voor het POWER GROEP PROGRAMMA met precies de instelling die ik zoek! "Het is heel erg buiten mijn comfort zone maar ik wil graag mee doen" BAM

The power of our tongues. What are you speaking over your life?

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Manda uma cartinha pra gente!

An episode all about anxiety—from panicky thought-spirals to private self-soothing techniques. Featuring Aparna Nancherla, Jenny Odell, Sarah Wilson, our extremely anxious colleague Ruth Spencer, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

Ajude a Vakinha: https://www.vakinha.com.br/vaquinha/606522 AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

I säsongens sista avsnitt fokuserar vi på temat sommar och semester. Aahh, denna sköna, lediga, avkopplande tid - eller? Hur är sommaren egentligen för barn som mår bra av struktur? Hur mycket är det egentligen accepterat att dricka på sommaren - och hur OK är det att avstå alkohol? Och vad händer med jämställdheten ute i stugorna på sommaren? Vi grottar ner oss i sommarens olika normer och förväntningar. Enjoy! --Lina och Erika  

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

OLÁ, AMORES! ESTAMOS MUITO ENTUSIASMADOS! AAHH! Happy middle of the week, lindos. Esta semana temos um StrEAM oF CoNSciOUSness, um update às nossas vidas ultimamente E MAIS INFORMAÇÕES SOBRE O LIVE SHOW! Whaaaat?!? O Live Show vai acontecer dia 6 de Julho, no Mesa 325! O bilhete custa 5€ e os lugares são muito limitados. Para comprarem bilhete basta enviarem-nos um e-mail para ofredeaines@gmail.com com: - Número de bilhetes desejados - Nome das pessoas - Algum nº de identificação das pessoas Depois iremos responder com os dados para a transferência and that's it! Simple as that! WE ARE SO EXCITED! Venham amassar-nos, por favor! Vamos ter convidados especiais, lançamento do novo merch e ainda o lançamento de um novo projecto bem EXCITING também. Histeriquem connosco até lá: . Instagram: @ofredeaines, @fredaagomes, @inesmafonso. . Facebook: www.facebook.com/ofredeaines . E também por aqui: ofredeaines@gmail.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ofredeaines/message

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

Kamu bucin gak? Pernah bucin gak? Aahh...pernah deh pasti...

AAhh.... Depois do trabalho é sempre bom dar uma relaxada e ter um papinho gostoso com os amigos, né? A gente também acha isso, e não é só porque nossos episódios estavam ficando grandes demais ! O Hora Extra é um programa sem cortes, só papo jogado fora, que compartilhamos notícias da semana e uma recomendação espertíssima com nossos ouvintes em pílulas episódicas, num formatinho mais despojado pra você que só quer descansar. Quer participar gravando com a gente ou mandando sua cartinha? Fale com a gente pelo e-mail ou pelas nossas redes sociais. JustaCausaPodcast@gmail.com twitter.com/justacausacast instagram.com/justacausacast facebook.com/justacausacast

Email us at defaultpodcasting@gmail.com to ask burninq questions, ridicule Josh, or stroke Sterling's ego. The podcast that starts when no other podcast will. The timestamps are screaming. Can't you hear them? Listen - - - - - - - - . . . ...aaaaAAAAAHHHHHHHH Follow Sterling -- IG: @sterlinggrinnell | YT: Sterling Grinnell | Website: sterlinggrinnell.com Follow Josh -- IG: @joshuargallegos | YT: Super CLS Deluxe | Twitter: @joshuargallegos Website: joshuargallegos.com Opening music: "Noir - S Strong & Boogie Belgique," courtesy of Audio Library - Free Music on YouTube. Link here: www.youtube.com/channel/UCHae4C99XJORB7Iog62wqvw Closing music: "Sophomore Makeout - Silent Partner (No Copyright Music)," courtesy of Audio Library - Music for Content Creators. Link here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2HzEvU1roY

Jumping straight into ClickFunnels after having an idea is actually the wrong order to go... Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC Funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up everyone? Hey, I wanted to ... This is a bit of a special episode, I did a Facebook live recently, it was crazy within like a few hours there was like over 600 views on it and it got shared and tons of comments. Anyway, what I was doing is I wanted people to understand more about the order that I go through to launch my funnels, and this is important for you to understand because I feel like people do it backwards like crazy and it drives me nuts and this is one of those areas where I recently have had a lot of clarity and really has helped me to know when to suggest to people that they're ready to start the funnel building stage, okay. Because I feel like one of the major errors people make is that the first thing they do is they jump into Click Funnels and start building something, but they don't even know what they're building and then when they build it they don't have the sales and so I'm trying to ... What I want you to do is ... I would take notes on this. It's really just three steps, three phases that you'll be able to see clearly in this or here. So, what I did is, I did a Facebook live kind of deep diving into it, it's only like 10 minutes long or whatever. But, I feel like it's gonna help bring some clarity on when to build the funnel, and when to not build the funnel, when you're not ready to go to that stage yet. If you wanna know how, "Stephen, how did you build so many funnels so fast?" Well, it's because ... Building a funnel was really step three every time, step ones and twos were already done and so I could just do step three build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build, Right, does that make sense? Anyway, so, I hope that you will be able to enjoy this. Let me queue it over here right now and I hope that you enjoy more of ... I just hope that it helps you understand more of the order that I funnel build in. I know I've already said that but this will be powerful because the first time I every did this it did not go well on my own and it's because I did not understand these core pieces and elements of funnel building itself. This is the order that I get my funnels off the ground, okay? The first time I ever built a funnel that actually went really well, it was probably like my fifth funnel. And I went through and ... This was like four, five years ago and I went and I was building these funnels right? And I was putting this stuff out there and I originally was doing it in WordPress. Terrible, right? Terrible experience, it was awful. I was building it all in WordPress and I was building funnels for ... Actually, I built this funnel for this artist and it actually went really, really well. It was technically an eCom site but the way we were trying to sell it was a little bit funnel-ish. It was before Click Funnels ever existed. And then I went through and I was building funnels for people with Get Response, their landing page software, okay? It was ... It's rough, oh my gosh, like actually using Get Response landing page software in a funnel scenario. It was like, "Oh my gosh, it was nuts." So, when I saw Click Funnels like a few months after it came out, I was like, "This is freaking awesome, are you kidding me I've been trying to do all this stuff by hand and these other scenarios are super, super hard." I was like, "This is crazy." So, we went out and my buddy and I Coulton, who's now my assistant, high-ticket salesperson. We're trying to come up with all the crazy names, part-time sushi chef, snake enchanter. I don't know. He's one of my best friends and he's in this game with me now, which is funny, full-circle it's been this way. But like years ago we built this funnel using Click Funnels, right? And we didn't have money to get something like Click Funnels. $97 a month felt like this insurmountable amount of money and we're like, "Oh my gosh that's, are you kidding? $97? I see the value. I see, but I don't have $97 a month." You know? And I was like, "How do I do this?" And so what we did was we decided that we would, and I was like, "Grrr." I was reading a lot of Robert Kiyosaki at the time and I was like, "Robert Kiyosaki always says that poor people say, 'I can't afford it', and rich people say, 'how can I afford it?'" And I was like, "I'm gonna try and practice this." Right? This was five years ago and I was like, we were super poor. We were living paycheck to paycheck mostly on student loans. You know what I mean? I was just trying to figure the game out. I was hustling as hard as I could. I'd get all my homework done in a few hours and then I'd go hide in these box office seats in the basketball stadium and I'd wait for the security guards to not look at me and I would throw my bag through the front window of the box office, or sorry the box seats and then I would wait for the security guards to look away again then I would jump through the front window. And I did that for a year and a half and up there was it was quiet, the internet was fast, I could stay and hide up there, way past building closed and I did that every day for a solid year and a half. What we did was, when Click Funnels came out, right? We were like, "We gotta have this tool. I want to build this funnel." This was the first real successful funnel that I'd built. We decided, it was really two funnels we built. The first one was we were like, "Okay, what we're gonna do is plan out the whole business. Let's plan out the entire thing. Let's plan it all out and then we'll press go on our trial and when we press go on the trial we have two weeks to build the funnel, bring customers in and get them paying for Click Funnels so that we can have it and our customers would pay for it." And that's totally what we did. And it worked. We both said goodbye to our wives for like two weeks, and we planned out the business and we pressed go. Boom and we just ran. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to like ... I didn't even know how to change colors of a column, like I was so new in Click Funnels that I quickly became 'that guy' to the support people, because I asked at least two questions a day, every day for like a year. I was like, question, question, question, question, question, question, question, and I was like, "Crap, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, hook this up, here the, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I was like trying to go as fast as I could because the timer was going, right? That kind of good pressure is fantastic for the soul and for your progression. And so I .... But you gotta be willing to experience it, know what I mean. You gotta say yes to it. And that's what we did. And I'll tell you that we built the funnel, we got it out there, and it was for this insurance, smart phone insurance funnel. And we didn't make money but we didn't really lose money either. We both kind of broke even. And it paid for Click Funnels, it paid for our stuff and that's really what got us going. And it's really what got me the tool. Now that I have the tool, I was like, "What do I want to go build?" And what I did was I went through and I launched out and I created this funnel for the MLM space, right. A lot of you guys know that. A lot of you guys know the story. But I was like, "Oh my gosh. I got this idea for this sweet product no one's ever pulled off before, it's going to be freaking awesome. Aahh!" And so I build this product and I'm spending ... because I was in the army ... I was in school. We had a kid. You know what I mean? Life was busy. It took me about eight months to build the actual info-product, okay, and put it together. And write the scripts and Funnel Hack the crap out of people, you know what I mean, put all the pieces together. And then what I did is I went through and I launched it and then put it out there. Nobody bought it. I was like, "What's wrong with you guys? This product is freaking incredible! Are you serious?" I just spent tons of time making the funnel. Lots of time putting the product together and then when it was all said and done, after eight months. No one was buying it. I said, "What's wrong with this?" This was now four years ago. That's the amount of time that's gone ... And I was like, "Oh my gosh, are you serious? What's going on with this thing?" One of the issues that I learned over the last few years, I've now coached over 700 people through the 2 Comma Club coaching program. I've coached a whole bunch of people through my own and the pattern is always this. Is that people will start by jumping in and they're like, "What funnel should I build?" Right? And then when they get in, they get into to create funnels they're like, "This is freaking awesome. Oh my gosh", right? What funnel am I going to build? And then they build this funnel of what they think it should look like, because they've seen other peoples, and that's great. They're funnel hacking. But then, they're like, "Crap! What should I sell?" And they get like, oh man you know what, maybe on this page we'll sell this. Maybe on this page we'll sell this. How 'bout this page we'll sell that. Right? And then they're like, "Crap! Now the products are in there, how do we even make this thing sell?" Now I know I have a funnel. I've got the products. How does it sell? And I will tell you, that's exactly what I did and it took another solid 3-4 months for the thing to actually even sell well. When I finally figured out that last piece it was $1,000 a week, no ad spend, for a year. About 50 grand then. Right, crazy cool. But looking back on how that whole thing went, it's exactly the opposite of what you should. It's unfortunately the natural tendency of everybody that comes into the funnel world. They start over here at the funnel side. Then they figure out what they should sell. Then they figure out how to sell it. Wrong order entirely. Start the other way. So when I launched, and one of the reasons why I felt like I could leave my job, which I was super sad to do but I realized I needed to. You gotta go the other direction. And this is one of the reasons why I knew I could leave the security of a 9-5. My very cushy, plush, amazing job next to the Russell Brunson, you know what I mean? I just love the guy like a brother. It hurt me personally to leave, I didn't want to leave. But I felt like my own personal progression I needed to, so I did. But this is why I felt like I could, one of the reasons why. There's a few things that I was looking at that I knew was going to be the reason I would be okay. Because I left with no product, no funnel, no script, there was nothing. I had nothing created. And within four days, I had already cash-flowed $3,700 and then within another three weeks we were at $6,000. But the product wasn't even made.... And this is what I did first. This is what we're going to go through with all of you students as well, super excited to have you guys. We're going to dive through. I think we have eight of you today, eight, nine of you today. Something like that. Number one you've gotta start instead with the message. The sales message. What gets people off of their butt and they're wallet is like flying through the air. Whoosh! Take my money! Right? That's all you should care about. What is the sales message that breaks and rebuilds the beliefs, and gets them to you and saying, "Yes, I am willing to buy. Take my cash." The issue is that people, instead they'll start over on the funnel side. And when you start on the funnel side, you end up creating an offer tethered by the funnel that you created. Does that make sense? And then you come over here to offering, you're like, "Cool. I made this sweet thing. I made this cool product. This awesome offer." And then you end up creating a sales message tethered by the offer that you put together. You immediately are going into an improvement based offer when you do it that way. Instead you do it the other direction. Figure out, and actually figure out the sales message and actually be collecting cash. And when you are actually collecting cash, then you create the offer that fulfills whatever promise your sales message made. Does that make sense? When you do it in that direction, oh my gosh, it's so much easier. Your customer is creating the offer with you. The book, Innovators Dilemma. Innovators Dilemma talks about that. Since you're creating a new niche, the problem with markets that don't exist is that since they don't exist they can't be analyzed. And since they can't be analyzed, right, you're not going to be able to go ... You're going to make it based off of your own precepts. The issue with that is you are immediately going into an approved base offered. So let's fix, the fix, the way to fix all of it is to sell. Figure out what message sells. What message gets people off their butt, because people are inherently lazy, and money in your hand. Then you create the offer with them. You create the product with them. So that they are helping you discover at the same time, in tandem, it has to happen at the same time. They're helping you create this new niche, together. It's not made off of your own precepts. It's not made off the precepts of just a single customer. You're doing it with the people that you've been selling. And when you do that, oh my gosh, it's so much easier. Number one, because you're not going to over shoot the bounds of what they need to feel fulfilled. Number two there, you're going to be able to go in and they will literally help figure out ... You're going to get cash in your pocket before you ever start doing it. And when I did they said ... I didn't get out there and say like, "Hey, here's a bait and switch on you. Oh, gotcha it's not made yet." No. I was very clear and open. Look, it's not done yet. Because of that, I'm going to give you early bird pricing. Ezra Firestone just talked about this in an interview with Ryan Moran. He does the exact same thing. He goes out and he sells a little bit cheaper to his beta group. I didn't. And then they help him create the product. Then when you know what offer sells and fulfills the message that you promised in your sales message, then you're going back and you're doing all the ninja crazy stuff with the funnel. My funnel right now is limping along. I know it is so broken. I know it is. I don't care. For the first three months of me doing this, I have not cared. I don't even have a consumption, I don't have all the ... I don't have the bells and whistles in my funnel, because I know it is not what makes the sale. The sales message makes the sale. Your product never is good enough to sell it by itself. So stop caring about it. It's not what puts cash in your pocket. Figure out what the sales message is. Then go out and then fulfill whatever that promise was in the sales message, fulfill that with the customer. Help them, have them help you make it. And then you go out and then you start doing all the funnel stuff. I'm finally at a spot now where I just proved after the funnel works and now I'm going back, I'm circling back to the actual sales message itself. I'm fixing my script. A lot of stuff's wrong with my script. It's still the original script that I wrote, pretty much, three months ago. A lot of stuff I'm going to fix there. Then I'll go back to the offer, sexify that out, make that even more attractive. Really, really cool. Then I'll go back to the funnel. Add more cool stuff, more ninja stuff and I'll go back to the script, back to the offer, back to the funnel, back to the script, back to the offer ... does that make sense? That's how I do that and that's the way you do it where you're not waiting like over a year to get paid like I had done the first time. Anyways, I am ... We're going to drive through some sweet peoples' funnels today. Make sure you got a solid plan and then help you implement that and then we're going to ... Then we're going to go ahead and help you get a plan. So month one for you guys, just so you know, is all about getting that thing off the ground. Month number two, and you can do it faster but this is generally how I focus on it, month number two's all about traffic. And reacting based on what the market is telling you. The reaction area. Like I said before, this game's about you becoming a good detective rather than this brilliant innovator. That's not true. That's not how that works at all. People stress out like, "I'm going to be this big creative", no you don't. You gotta funnel hack first and then create something new and you do them in tandem. Funnel hack and be creative second, not first. I was taught very wrongly in college about that. That I gotta make something that's brand new, something totally prolific, oh my gosh it's gotta be something amazing, something nobody's ever seen before. Are you kidding me? That's the most risky crap on the planet and you will lose cash. Anyways, do it this way it works out. I don't care if you're selling eCom, info products, retail, B2B, doesn't matter. That's the model that I use that I go through it. First sales message, what actually gets cash flowing. What are you going to do to fulfill on the promise that your message made? And then you obsess over the funnel and then I repeat it several times until it's amazing and then, then I feel like I can automate it, walk away and be like, "Sweet! Boom! Done. This is awesome. That's epic." Anyways, that was a rant. I should've podcasted that, maybe I'll rip it out and toss it in a ... Alright guys, super excited for this. Thanks so much and let's dive into you students. Boom. Hey, thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, "Steve, will you look at my funnel?" Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some hand holding and guidance during your funnel build, or simply review the one you have; head over to coachmesteve.com and book your session now.

Do you need a publicist? What performer doesn't like the idea of someone whose sole job is it so talk them up to the media? My guest is Katie Barker, Vice President of Publicity for CBS and she is a wealth of information kids, so listen up! I asked her when actors need a publicist and when they don't and the answer might surprise you. Katie works with some of the biggest names in television today like LL Cool J, Michael Weatherly, and Scott Bakula. That's because she represents the entire "NCIS" franchise, as well as the new Joel McHale show coming out this fall called "The Great Indoors" on CBS. She explains the difference between a network publicist, a studio publicist and personal publicist. She also talks about the challenges of working the red carpet and trying to get press coverage for a client because the media isn't interested in talking to everyone who walks the carpet. Who knew? Side note: I'm terrified one day I'll be walking down the carpet, all dressed up, and no one will want to talk to me. Just like prom! I also love that Katie is a mom of 2 adorable little girls and her husband Sean is a voice over artist and actor. It's impressive that she has the energy to talk up her actors and shows all day and still manage to find time for family. She says one trick she's learned is to plan meals ahead. That's helped her on those days she's running late from work, or everyone's tired. It helps to have a plan in place for dinner. She also tells very mom moment story about having to pump breast milk in the bathroom at the Grammy's while Adele was performing on stage. The things we sacrifice for our kids! There is so much good stuff in this episode. If you're an actor, or know an actor you have to give it a listen. For example, did you know that for larger roles, a publicist might be searching for your social media imprint to see what you're all about? They also have some input on casting so you better get your social media in order folks! This ain't your grandma's Hollywood!   I had to ask her who some of her favorite pr-friendly actors were. She was quick to name Michael Weatherly who has a new show called Bull coming out this fall on CBS. And she says LL Cool J inspires people within the first few minutes of meeting them. Aahh!! Now I want to meet him! I can't thank Katie enough for taking the time to share her unique perspective for actors so that we can learn and grow in our field. Also we are very excited for our dear friends Heather and Mark who just got engaged. We may be taking over their wedding planning LOL You can follow Katie Barker on Twitter @KatieBarkerPR Instagram @KatieBarkerPR  

Episode 49:  THE Leadership Japan Series: How to Work on Your Business Not Just in Your Business Intro:  Greg:  Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 49 of THE Leadership Japan podcast.  I'm your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and much more importantly you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the best in your business field.  If you would like your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course  information plus much more, then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.  Today we are going to hear a presentation on how to work on your business, not just in your business.  Greg:  My name is Greg Story. I'm the president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and I'll be presenting on how to work on your business, not just in your business, today.  I'm very impressed that so many of you will come so early in the morning to hear about this.  But it tells me that like me, we find that we are not getting enough of the quality work done that we need to get done.  We tend to find our days are being taken up by rather detail oriented work.  And if we can get more of that high quality work done, we'll have a much more productive business.  I'll start and talk a little bit about Dale Carnegie. The book on the left there was the original book which was published in 1937 and then a Japanese version in 1938, which they re-released for the hundredth anniversary.  We have got some copies of that.  The book on the right is an updated version of Dale Carnegie's original book which has become one of the icon books of business.  People in Japan say to me, for management theory - Peter Drucker.  For human relations and people skills - Dale Carnegie.  The Japanese version has just been released too, “Hito wo Ugokasu II” just came out and that sold incredibly 9 million copies in Japan.  That's a really large number and consistently comes up in the top ten of business books being sold, non-fiction business books being sold.  And that's because I think the ideas that Dale Carnegie came up with a long time ago are rather universal and they are timeless.  We constantly need to know these things.  Ninety percent of the Fortune 500 companies are our clients.  And in the Fortune 500 there are around about 64 Japanese companies listed, of which I discovered half of them are our direct clients.  So we are doing very well on both scales.  We now cover 91 countries around the world.  This is a very big help to clients who have multi-country businesses.  They can develop something in one country and take it to the whole world.  At the moment we are doing a project for a Danish company that's in 34 countries around the world.  We are doing tranche number threenow.  For Japanese companies too, we are taking them into the world with their foreign entities and training the people there as well.  Which has proven very effective.  We teach in over 30 languages and we see that we celebrate our 50th year here in Japan, this year.  Which again is, most people know the name of Dale Carnegie but they don't realize that we've been here since 1963.  I asked headquarters, back in New York.  I said, you know we constantly do these surveys after the training, and what people think and we send them off to America, and they get checked.  The standard in training must be kept very high.  I said, I always see very high scores.  I wonder what the aggregate, the total of five years of all training would be if I looked for satisfaction rates? So I said ok, give me five years, everything.  All trainers, all courses, all modules, the works. Put it all in a big bucket and tell me what the satisfaction rate is.  And this is what came back, 97.7%.  So that tells me that the quality that we try to maintain and the standards we have, we're ISO9001 certified, we're the only international training company to have that.  We're the oldest training company in the world.  Because we keep refreshing ourselves, the standard continues and clients are very happy with it.  So we're very proud to see that number.  Today our topic is how to work on your business not just in your business.  As I said earlier, for me it's a constant struggle to make sure I am working on my business.  To find the time to work on my business as opposed to just doing the daily work that takes up so much.  So one of the objectives today, I mentioned in the letters, is to try to produce ten hours of me time.  Time that I can have to myself to work on the highest priority items that I want to work on as opposed to everyone else's agenda.  And also, the mindset to overcome the obstacles we find through time management.  I've got some tools for you.  Those little booklets you've got in front of you, there's a little tool set there.  And then how to leverage time.  We don't want to be working harder, we need to be working smarter because we don't want to be spending all of our life at the office working.  We actually want to spend time with our friends, with our family, pursuing hobbies, developing ourselves as a total person.  So how do we do that?  Well, putting in more hours is not the answer.  The reality today is we are getting flatter, organizations, particularly in the West, than we had in the past.  So that means we are doing a lot more and we are doing it higher quality.  We've got to produce a lot faster because we're 24/7 now with the technology that we have, carrying around little computers in our hands, called phones, which do just about everything.  You cannot escape from work anymore.  So speed.  People expect things to be fast, particularly in Japan.  I find that if I am to get something to someone and it doesn't happen very very fast, they ring me up.  Where is it?  I am originally from Australia and I probably wouldn't get that same pressure of speed turn around that you get in Japan. And we've got to do it with less.  We have less resources, less people to do it with.  It is a very tricky combination for us.  We're in constant pressure of time versus quality.  Obviously the longer time we have the higher quality but if time is under pressure, maybe quality suffers.  Or if you diminish the quality, then that starts to affect your brand.  Or you might find that quality and cost relationship starts to impact the wrong way.  So trying to balance those things is a constant pressure.  But one of the key things here is our time.  Because our time impacts on the quality of the whole organization, as a leader.   Our section, as a leader.  Also that relates to cost.  The more productive we are then the more beneficial it is for the company and we can reduce cost or we can have greater revenues.  Is this you?  This is an expression in English, “I got lost in my job”.  It means that one of those days where you're so into a task or a project or something that the day just flew by.  Suddenly it's six o'clock!  It's time to go home.  That type of idea that you are so much enjoying what you are doing, you are so into it, you are not interrupted, you can focus.  That idea that the day just whizzes by.  Is that you?  Or is this you?  You look at the end of the day.  Aahh, I had all these projects.  I got nothing done.  Where did the whole day go?  I feel very frustrated about that.  I had things I wanted to do but none of them were happening.  So this is where we have to start thinking. One of the key questions we've got to keep asking ourselves is why?  Why am I doing this particular task right now?  Why am I doing that right now?  And why am I working?  Why am I working for this company?  Why am I trying to do the things I am trying to do?  And if you have a little look in your books here, on page five, you'll see a list of questions there.  I want you to write these down.  You're not going to share this with each other necessarily.  But just to start thinking about some things for yourself around the why.  What are your greatest moments of happiness and fulfillment?  What makes you feel very happy?  What makes you feel very satisfied?  What are the activities that are of most worth in your professional life?  What are the activities of most worth in my personal life?  Because we very much believe in Dale Carnegie, in the balance between work time and non-work time. Particularly think about your personal life.  Can't neglect that.  And then what are the talents and capacities I have?  Am I using them?  Am I really focusing on them?  Am I using a really magnificent, highly trained machine to do something very mundane, very mediocre?  Am I wasting my energy and my talent on stuff that someone else should be doing, not me.  And then finally, how can I best contribute to the world?  And that may be through your company.  It may be through a non-profit.  It may be through just influencing other people.  So just take a few moments and have a think about answering all or some of those questions, to focus on you and why, why you are here.  Why you are doing what you're doing.  Why you are trying to move forward in your career.  So please take a few moments.  It's a very interesting exercise to reflect on yourself.  Why are you doing things?  Often we are too busy concentrating on what we need to do and how we need to do it. And we need to step back and ask ourselves why are we doing this?  Particularly around using our talents. And this is a really, really critical question. This is a question we must be asking ourselves all through the day.  Is what I am doing now the most productive use of my time?  The problem is we get into tasks, and we start doing them because it's a routine, it's a habit, and we don't ask that question.  But having looked at your aspirations there, looked at your talents and capabilities, when you think about that, you might think, you know what, I should not be doing this task.  I should be getting someone else to do this task. Or, I should be doing less of this task.  So it's a great question to keep asking yourself all through the day. Because once you ask that question and you decide that what you are doing is not what you should be doing, then you can move onto the things that you need to be doing.  Coming back to that why.  “Time is money” is an expression in English. Time is money.  And your time is expensive.  If we take your salary and divide it by the number of hours and we took your hourly cost, how are you spending that money?  Now the other thing is, in investing, the rule is you don't invest what's left over at the end of the month.  You set a goal.  You say I am going to save X per month and you save that first.  We say in English, you “pay yourself first”. You give yourself the money first by banking it or investing it, and you live off what's left over.  It's a very similar idea for time.  Think about time as money.  Pay yourself first with your time usage on the key things that are the highest quality for you to be the best in your work.  Leave everything else to fit into the rest of the time.  Often we do it the other way around.  Like we would do with investing, we get to the end of the month and we've got a little bit leftover and we'll invest that.  Well, we flip it around.  Think of it like investing money, investing time.  Same sort of idea.  There are some things that rob our time. These are external - they could be meetings or telephone calls.  Something interrupts us.  There are mistakes.  Someone else's boss has got a deadline.  Lack of communication.  All of these things come up to rob, to steal our time.  They come up.  They are the external ones.  Then there's the ones we force on ourselves.  We're not well organized. We put things off.  We try to do too much.  We have unrealistic time estimates to do a job.  We think this will take half an hour.  Takes an hour.  We don't listen because we are too busy. This is a very famous diagram by Charles Hummel, developed a long time ago.  It'll apply forever.  This will be one of these permanent quadrant diagrams that will last for millions of years because it will never change.  And what he said was “the tyranny of the urgent - things that are urgent kill our ability to manage our time”.  And he's saying that it's things like that, things that are important and they're urgent, like crisis, deadlines, meetings that type of thing, we have to deal with those. But this one in number two here it's not urgent but it's important.  This is where the value lies for us.  We're aligning our mission and vision with what we are doing every day.  The most productive use of your time is to execute on the vision mission of the business, of your section.  It's planning.  Getting things to happen in the right sequence.  Making sure that everything is accounted for.  Clarifying values.  Making sure that you'retalking to your team, that what your company stands for is what you are actually doing as a leader.  Working on relationships; building relationships with your colleagues, your peers, with your subordinates, with your superiors, with your clients, with your customers.  Also process improvement.  Japan is extremely famous - I mean the word kaizen, which usually gets pronounce kaizan, right by English speakers.  Doesn't matter, they know what they mean. And what they mean is the Japanese idea of continuous improvement.  It has now become a world standard.  It's become a global word for that whole idea.  They're the things that we need to be working on.  But we get into things that are urgent but not important. The phone rings, someone comes to see you, email comes in.  There's a voice mail.  There's a report that lands on your desk.  Someone just drops by your desk.  Or we have this one which it they are not urgent and they're not important so it's you scrolling around the internet and you get lost on the internet for a while.  Or you're looking at Facebook or you're getting just stuff that makes you busy.  This number two section here, this segment by far is the most important.  In your booklets again, what you basically have here is my own time management system.  This is actually an editable PDF file which you will find on our site, which you can download.  I've just printed out the hardcopy, but you can actually edit it.  You can put in content and edit it.  And the first one you see on the first page is mission statement.  This is not the company mission statement.  This is your own mission statement.  This is my personal mission statement.  I wrote my own mission statement up there.  This is not to tell you how to write a mission statement, it's just to show you an example of how I see my mission statement for myself.  The things that I aspire to.  I break all the rules of presenting by having more than six lines on one slide, but I am putting it up there not so much for you to read it and get the detail, but to show you some of the things that are helping me to direct myself going forward.  And this is coming back to the why.  So in that PDF you'll see that there is a whole section, what is your mission statement.  What is your why?  Get some focus around what you are trying to do.  The second one you'll see is my values.  You'll see it listed up here, it says your values.  You can have all different ways of looking at values, but I write up my own values again to give me some more of that why.  Some more direction around what I am trying to achieve in my life.  And as you read this, it's not all work.  It's me as a total person in work outside of work.  So having this as a guide, and I read these every day, I have it in an organizer.  I go through what's my mission statement, reminding myself of what's my why.  I am reminding myself of the things that I value.  And so I get those down.  And then it reminds me for example, I should be self-disciplined.  I should stick with my time management system.  I should be looking after my financial independence.  I should be making sure that those things that I need to do as an investor or my tax return is going to be done on time. Or I am not going to sacrifice a low level task at work for something that's a high value task in my personal life.  But I have to keep reminding myself of that balance, because my work will just take all the time if I let it.  On page six it talks about your roles.  Now this idea is a very clever idea.  Not my idea.  It's a clever idea, someone else's idea which I have followed is to see yourself in total.  Not just as a company worker, whatever your role might be.  In my case I have a number of roles.  I am a husband, I am a son, I am a father.  That is one critical role for me.  I am also the president of the company.  That's a different role.  I am the chief salesman for my company doing what in Japan you call top sales.  I am doing that.  I am a speaker.  I am a professional speaker.  I represent Dale Carnegie.  I give training, I give lectures.  I am a friend.  I have friends that I need to keep in contact with.  I am a professional.  I have to keep leaning, I have to keep developing myself.  And I am an investor because I need to look after my family in the future.  So in my case, there are the roles.  There's no limit but generally speaking I find that seven roles is more than enough.  You might have a lot but you'll probably set them into about seven.  So please take a moment on page six there and write down what would be some roles for yourself.  And I'll explain why that is important in a moment.  So please take a moment and write down what are your key roles in your life.  The reason this is important is that it allows us to focus on all of the things that help us have a high quality productive life.  And we should not neglect certain key roles for the sake of others.  And I know in Japan, when I studied Japanese politics and history when I was in university in Australia we were taught Japanese men go to the company, work 25 hours a day, never see their kids, never see their wife.  Spend the weekend sleeping on the golf course.  Have no life at all outside of work, right?  That's what we studied.  Oh that's how Japan works, right? Participant:  It's changed. Greg:  That's right, it's changed.  And it's a good change.  And you yourself have to be careful, though in that do faster and better with less that you don't find yourself working 50, 60, 70 hours a week.  So having done that, pick one of them.  You'll see on the next page it talks about each role.  It goes through all seven roles.  You can pick anyone of the roles you've got there, but think about some priorities.  Now this has already got them sorted into priority order.  That assumes that you've actually gone through the process of lifting out what some goals might be for that role and got them into priority order.  It doesn't matter at this moment that you have a priority determined.  But what it asks you though is to think about each of those roles.  I'm just saying pick one.  It could be any one of the ones you noted there.  What, what is the goal for that role?  Then very importantly why is that important? And then how are you going to achieve that goal?  So please just take a moment.  Pick one of those roles, doesn't matter which one.  Think of a goal.  Write it down-this is the goal.  What I want to do.  Why?  Critical question.   Why is that important?  And then how?  And so with each of those roles, as I said before, if you go through all of those roles, each of them will have different priorities.  And I try to get the priorities into order. As you see here, A1, A2, A3- so they're prioritized.  Here are the goals, they are prioritized.  Here's the what of the goal.  Here's the why of the goal.  Here's the how of the goal.  So I have great clarity around what I am trying to do.  And again, I've got this for all seven of my goals there.  And I update them every year.  And they change as things get done and new things come on.  But every day before I start work, I go back.  What's my mission statement?  What are my values?  What are my key roles in my life? And what are my goals?  This is what I am doing before I set the goals for the day.  Because if I didn't do this, I might just set the goals for the day around work and it may be not the highest quality work goals, either.  And often I'll be going through this process and I'll remember, oh yeah, there's something I needed to do for my mother.  Or there is something I need to do to prepare for that speaking engagement, that's not current.  Might be three or four months out.  I've got to get that in my diary.  Or there is something that I need to read to improve my professional ability or yeah, I was talking on getting on that course.  I should get on that course.  It reminds me, it prompts me that yeah these are the things I am trying to achieve.  This is the why of who I am and how I am going to get there with my goals.  So just go through that exercise.  You'll get the PDF, you can download the PDF, and then you can go through that.  But I've put a lot of things in this book around that.  You could fill it out if you wish at any time.  Because I've got this myself in my own organizer and I find that this system works extremely well.  So just try the what of it, the why and the how, just as an exercise and then we'll keep going.  Now I have to warn you that doing this every morning are the hardest decisions I make in the day.  Trying to decide what I will prioritize.  These are the hardest decisions that I have to make in the day.  Well it's actually the second hardest decision.  The hardest decision is whether I get out of bed at 5 a.m. or not.  That's actually the hardest decision.  The second hardest decision is choosing between priorities.  Where will I invest my time today?  Because some of these are very tough and when you go through this process, choosing priorities within each of those roles is very hard.  But once you do it, it's done.  But I warn you now it is not an easy exercise.  You have to really think.  That's a bit tough in the morning, usually.  But it's very very insightful when you do it.  And it's very powerful as a tool.  One other thing we've got to be careful of is, do we have a to-be list?  Not just a to-do list.  Everyone can have a to-do list.  But don't forget the to-be list.  What do you want to become?  What your aspirations are?  Where you are going with your career? With your personal life?  So we need to always be conscious that we must create a to-be list, not just a daily do list. Now, email.  Who has a lot of emails?  Everybody put your hand up.  There is nobody in this room who doesn't have too many emails.  All of us, right?  At your tables just have a brief discussion about what are the issues you find dealing with email?  What are the things that drives you nuts about email?  What do you find difficult about dealing with email.  We don't have a lot of time for this, but I am sure you can get out some of the problems pretty quickly because we all face them.  Let's take a couple of minutes and discuss.  Share your frustrations and problems with email.  Go ahead. (Discussion) Well, it sounds like you are having a good discussion there.  Can I get some feedback from the tables on some of the things you talked about?  What did you talk about on this table? Participant:  We had pretty much the same idea - excessive CC'ing. Greg:  Excessive CC'ing.  That's a big issue isn't it?  You don't need to see it, but everyone copies you.  Wow, what else? Participant:  Long email. Greg:  Long emails.  Yes.  How about this table?  What are some of the things that you talked about on this table? Participant:  We talked about alerts.  It doesn't really seem like much but it makes you feel like you have to react to it, but really often you don't have to do anything. Greg:  So often you get something that looks urgent, you read it and you go, I just wasted my time opening that. But my time is now gone, right? Participant:  Right. The thing about that was that a lot of emails it's pretty tough to read the intention or the emotion that is attached to it.  Is the sender mad or is the sender just doing business?  Or depending on that we have to respond accordingly and then we tend to get frustrated.  Should we treat it very carefully or can we just deal with it normally. Greg:   Sometimes people don't write very well.  Sometimes a bit ambiguous about what they write. And sometimes you don't know whether they're angry or attacking us or we can misunderstand. How about on this table? Participant:  We talk about drowning because of too many emails.  Then you know, some important ones you might forget. Greg:  Yes.  So you've got this huge filing list called e-mail with a whole bunch of important stuff in there which just keeps getting added to all day long.  Yes, exactly. That's the point, isn't it? If you think back, if we went back, say before the internet, go back into the 1980's.  If you had a big in-basket of paper and you dealt with that in-basket of paper from the top, what landed there last and just worked your way through the day going through that in-basket, your boss would fire you.  Your boss would come in and say, you are a terrible time manager.  You've got no prioritization in this filing list.  It's only chronological of what's arrived most recently.  You need to get that into some priority order and deal with the most important things first.  That's what would have happened if it was all physical paper in the pre-internet days.  We are getting exactly the same thing now, it's just coming digitally.  And we are dealing in the same chronological fashion.  So we've got to think about a few things to do with that.  One of them is the Pareto principle - the 80/20 rule.  20% of things are vital and 80% are not, basically.  Pareto's study of Italy showed 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth.  20% of the salespeople produce 80% of the sales.  20% of the products make up 80% of the revenue.  All those sorts of things.   And 20% of your staff provide 80% of your problems.  I added something to that.  I call it the 80/20/80 rule.  And this is the logical extension of how you apply your time usage to 80/20.  We need to be spending, concentrating 80% of our time on the 20% of things that produce 80% of the results.  However what can often happen to us though, is we find we are spending 80% of our time on the 80% of things that produce 20% of the results.  Can you hear that?  80% of our time is going on too many things which actually don't lead to much.  This is coming back to the why.  If you've got your mission statement, you've got your values, roles and goals laid out, you know where you are going.  You know why you are doing this.  You know where to put your time.  You know where to put your concentration.  So that allows you to say, right, I'm going to really focus on the 20% of the things that are going to lead to 80% of my results.  Now, this is the problem - which activities create 80% of your results?  This is what we have to think about.  Is what I am doing now the most productive use of my time?  Is what I am doing now the most productive use of my time which will create 80% of the results?  Is what I am doing now where I should be spending my energy?  That's this 80/20 rule.  So email-you look at that and you say like you were saying before, I'm not going to look at this email CC'd to me because that's just a copy to me. I'm going to differentiate, prioritize here within email.  What do I need to concentrate on?  I'll look at the other stuff later.  You can sort it out into folders.  You can have them go directly.  You can do things, all manner of things to try and get around that.  Another important idea is we can't do everything.  On my to-do list I normally have about 25-30 items every day.  Some days I get zero done.  Zero.  Not a good day, that one.  Other days I get one.  Or I might get nine.  I never get 30.  I never get 25.  We just can't do everything.  However, this is the critical part, you can do in every day the single most important thing you should be doing.  You can do that.  Even if you miss everything else, but only can achieve the most important think on that day, you'll be very successful because you are getting the most important thing done, every day.  But we get confused about what's the most important thing and we are doing everything.  Well stop trying to do everything.  Work out what is the most important thing you need to do every day with a priority list and start with that one.  And don't do something else.  This is the critical decision you have to make.  There are some power tools for you.  The first one is this acronym T.R.A.F.  Which stands for trash or toss.  You pick up a paper or you look at an email on the screen and you decide I don't need that.  Delete it or toss it in the bin.  Straight away.  Toss it out.  The second one is R for refer.  Oh, I am not the person who should be doing this.  So I forward it to someone and say please do this, or I physically pass it on to someone and delegate it.  Please do this.  So I refer it to somebody else who should be doing that, not me.  A is action.  It requires me to take some action so I will action it.  Now you may action it on the spot.  If you can do it in two minutes, do it.  If it is going to take longer than two minutes put it in your diary. Time control somewhere to prioritize it and do it later.  Must get done though.  But if you can do it in two minutes, just knock it off.  If it is going to take longer than two minutes prioritize it.  And the last one is file.  Now I am coming from a family where my mother has got everything she ever had.  Never threw anything out.  I go home and see my mother and there's piles of stuff everywhere.  She never throws anything out, and I inherited that gene I think. I am a bit of a hoarder.  So I want to file everything.  And six months later you go through your file and you realize most of it's rubbish.  You don't need it and you throw it out anyway.  But somehow it feels better.  Oh I should really keep that.  Keep it, file it.  But have a good filing system.  This is how you apply to big emails, you can file them or physical paper.  Now this is very critical.  In your diary, if you want to get stuff done that's really critical, you've got an appointment calendar.  You may have appointments with people in the company or clients or whatever.  So you block out time for people.  Pay yourself first.  Block out time for yourself first.  Make an appointment in your diary for yourself.  For one hour or one hour and a half.  There's an appointment with Greg Story.  There it is. It's in the diary.  It's blocked.  Pay yourself first.  Make an appointment with yourself, not just with everybody else.  You'll be surprised at how easy it is to make time.  This is also important.  Have a weekly review.  Friday afternoon is a good time.  Go back through all the paper that is in your in-basket and start tossing it out, filing it, referring it, or whatever you have to do.  Just clean it out.  Because as it builds up, it becomes frustrating and you feel guilty.  Friday-in, out, in, out. Clean it up.  Same thing with your email.  These I am going to put in this basket to look at it next week.  These I'm going to delete.  These I am going to file.  Just spend a couple of hours.  Get rid of it because it builds up.  As it builds up around you, your feeling goes downhill very rapidly.  So a weekly review works very well.  And the other thing is time logs.  This is tracking your time.  Now you've probably got diaries.  Try and make them a little bit more detailed.  Maybe every half an hour.  Maybe every 15 minutes.  What you are actually doing.  Lawyers who get paid basically by every 15 minute block are required to do it so they can bill us for their legal services.  It's not a bad model.  The beauty of time logs is you can look at what you are actually doing.  What you'll find is there's lots of opportunity there for you to slim things down and save time.  It's like finding nuggets of gold.  Little gold rocks on the road.  They're there but we are not seeing them.  When you do the time log you realize yeah, I can cut that down there and I can take that out of there.  And I don't need to do that.  I don't really need to go to that meeting.  That meeting is too long.  You'd be surprised at how much time you can save when you actually start to put it down. Because you are too busy to keep checking what you are doing, once you check, you realize actually there is a lot of space there for me to do stuff that is more high value to me.  This is block time.  Make an appointment with yourself, and don't let people interrupt you.  Tell everyone, for the next hour and a half, unless there is a major earthquake and the building is on fire and we have to evacuate, nobody interrupt me.  I am not taking any phone calls, I'm not looking at the monitor for email.  I'm not going to be interrupted.  If you can go to a space that's outside your own workspace, because often with open space work environments it's very hard to do that, but if you tell everybody for that period of time I'm booked with me, concentrated block time.  That's the most effective use of working on your business, for planning, for strategizing, doing certain projects that only you can do.  And then batching tasks is trying to put things that are rather similar together.  So the learning curve stays at the same level.  It's not going up and down all the time.  Trying to get the learning curve to here and just keep going with it.  It's very efficient.  Now, to do, priority lists, I believe are very very important. And I'm astonished, constantly astonished at how many people do not have a to-do list that's prioritized in their day.  I'm not going to ask you in your case, but I know from experience when I ask this question, a lot of people do not have anything like that.  I notice myself, the days that I have it and the days that I don't have it are so different.  So when you start you go through your mission, your values, your roles, all the things you know you've got to do, write them down.  Then put them into a prioritized list.  And I talk about the ABC's.  Attach say A1 to A10 to the most urgent, highest value, most important items.  B1-10, average value. C1 to 10 not so high value.  D1 to 10 very low value.  So you actually attach a quality and a number to each of those to do list items.  Once you arrive at the most high priority items, that critically is where you must begin.  Do not go to B4 and start there.  You start with A1.  You can't do everything.  But you can do the most important thing.  That's where you start.  And then delegation.  We are going to deal with delegation in a moment.  Get it off your desk and delegate it properly to other people so you feel comfortable about that.  This is also very important.  We have a lot of projects zooming around in our heads.  Write them down.  Spend some time and write down all the projects that you are working on.  All of them.  And start to get them into some list of priority.  What are my higher priority items that I need to be working on?  Because we've got things floating around.  We are doing a bit here and a bit there.  We've not got them ordered, we've not got them prioritized.  I say round up your projects.  In Australia, where I come from, they let the cattle run free.  But a couple of times a year they bring them all together again, they go and catch them, bring them together.  They run wild and then you bring them together.  It's a bit like our projects.  Our projects run wild-we need to bring them together.  Stop free-ranging and bring them together.  So we can start saying, that is a high priority project.  I am going to get that into my diary. That's a low priority project, I am not going to work on that now.  So with projects or problem solving or developing items here are four steps to help you work on that.  First of all, get them prioritized and start with the highest priority item.  That might be a project you are working on, there might be a problem you need to solve, might be some developing issue you need to work on.  And then step two, ask the question, why is the highest priority item important to our results and keep reflecting on the why.  Not just the what and the how.  And then what is my vision of how it would work?  If you see the problem being solved or the project being done, in your mind how would that look?  Get a vision, a clear picture of success.  So you know what you are looking for and how to get there.  You've got a lot of things occupying your mind.  Clarify that one.  Then is there going to be any rework required or is there duplication with something we are already doing?  You've got to make sure that that is very clear.  Which part of the existing process accounts for most of the problems?  You are looking for that.  Probably 20% of things is 80% of the difficulty.  What are they?  Really concentrate on those.  In step three, who are the internal and external customers or users of this process?  Who might be involved?  It might be clients.  It might be colleagues.  We try and identify who they are and then what are they expecting from this process?  What are they expecting from you?  What of their expectations are they not currently finding results for that you need to supply?  And then finally step four, brainstorm together with the team, colleagues.  Write down the action steps.  Action steps have priority items and then you just do it.  This is a great four-step process of dealing with projects and development items and problem solving.  I am going to talk a little about delegation now.  You can't delegate unless you've established trust in your team.  That is clear.  You just will not get the cooperation.  So how do we develop trust?  Identify common ground-things you share.  Aspirations for the company.  What's motivating that person?  Find out what is driving them. What are they interested in?  How can you help them?  Give them the power to make decisions instead of you being a micro-manager.  And give them opportunity to provide input.  You want their ideas into the project.  So we support a world we help create.  We need to let them help create that world.  And then once you make a commitment, follow through on it.  Creating a common sense of direction.  In your team, how do we think about market conditions.  We've got certain budget constraints.  What are they doing for us?  What are individuals wanting to do?  What are the customers driving us to do?  What is management driving us to do?  What are the organizational challenges?  Consider all of these things and then you as a team are confronting all of these things together.  So you are very much focused on, this is what we are trying to achieve as a team, as a group.  Senior management wants this.  This is what we have to do.  Now the customer wants this.  This is what we have to do.  And we have time and budget.  Remember that triangle of time, money and quality?  We have these directing how we are going to do it.  So you start to get people to realize we together have of this issue or these issues to face, to solve.  And then with most delegation, it fails because the way people do it.  And the way they do it, they don't delegate-they keep doing it.  So no one can get a chance to receive the delegation.  Or they dump it.  They just come and say,“get this report done by Wednesday”.  Boom.  And that's the end of it. That is highly ineffective.  Because what will happen there is the person themself feels, you know what I am already busy.  I don't need your work.  I've got my own work.  I can't even do that.  I don't even know how to do this so it's not a high priority for them.  You think it's being worked on, but then you find out the day beforehand nothing has been done.  Then it's panic-urgent and important.  Quadrant one-straight there.  So the point here is, we need to be distributing the work to the team; matching the person and the work.  That's the ideal.  And then we get into delegation, they do the work and then finally deputizing. You're not even there.  You go on holidays, you go on a business trip. It gets done in your absence.  I'll talk in a little more depth there.    The eight steps of delegation.  The first thing is stop doing it yourself.  Who has said,“it's faster if I do it myself”?  Put your hands up.  You've all said it.  Come on put your hands up – “it's faster if I do it myself”.  We all say that.  Because we don't trust the people we are delegating to. We think, well I'll have train them.  It takes time to train them.  It's faster if I do it myself.  You'll be doing everything forever.  Train them.  Then you can let it go.  So stop doing it.  First one.  Now instead of looking around and seeing who doesn't look like they are on the phone and deciding, great, you're going to be the delegate, pick the person that's right for the project.  Think about right person, right project.  Select the person.  Now sell the delegation.  What's in it for them?  Explain how this is going to help their career.  How it is going to make them more professional, more valuable.  It's not you dumping your work on them.  It's helping them to grow in their career.  Show them how to do it.  Give them instruction on what needs to happen so they're not thrashing around wondering what should I do next.  Then watch what they are doing.  Don't abandon them.  Don't micro-manage them but just watch and then coach.  Because it happens often.  I want this to go this way.  And then about five seconds before it's due, I found out they went that way instead.  Who would have thought to go that way?  But that's what happened.  So you don't want that to occur so you check. We are going in the same direction as I needed to go on the way through.  Then let it loose.  Don't micromanage it.  Let it loose.  It's not like pulling a plant out of the ground to see that it's growing all the time, right?  Leave it in there.  Let it grow.  Then give them some feedback. Follow-up on how the steps are going and then reward and celebrate.  Good work.  Hold people accountable.  Be careful about buying it back. Oh look give it back to me, I'll do it.  Because they may not do it very well.  Oh look at this. You've gone the wrong way.  Give it to me I'll do it.  No.  Instruct them in what they need to do.  Don't buy it back.  Don't bring it back onto your back.  Or they come back to you - I need a decision on something.  Now it's blocked because you are busy and you don't want to think about that decision.  So you are stopping them.  You've got to make sure.  Make that decision.  Hand it back to them.  Because otherwise it gets lost, it gets blocked and it goes nowhere.  And then accountability.  When does it need to be done by?  What is it the quality that needs to be done?  And then for follow-up very clearly define the results.  What do you expect it to look like at the end?  Communicate the standards at the beginning.  How will you know the standards of performance are being met?  Make those very clear.  Things change so you have to be flexible.  If some new information comes in you might have to re-gear.  That's ok.  Be flexible about it.  And look for the win-win situation with the team. So I talked about saving ten hours a week for me time.  Here's how you could possibly do that.  Every day for one hour you have in your diary, schedule me time.  Appointment with yourself-don't interrupt me.  If you can make it an hour and a half a day then you get seven and half hours a week, right there out of the ten.  Come to work 12 minutes earlier and that will give you an extra hour in the week.  If you come 30 minutes earlier, that will give you an extra two and a half hours.  For some people with long commutes, that may not be possible.  Shorten your lunch by twelve minutes.  And that is going to give you an extra hour a week.  If you shorten your lunch by 30 minutes, which is basically I find about how long it takes me to eat lunch.  To get an order and get it eaten and get back to the office usually takes about 30 minutes, you are gaining an extra two and a half hours per week.  Or slightly shorten each and every meeting.  If you just chop five minutes off here, three minutes off there, you can get up to 30 minutes a day, which is two and a half hours a week of extra time.  For you.  And most meetings are way too long. And often you shouldn't even be at that meeting.  If you can delete the meeting even better.  And then if you can actually get out 60 minutes a day from all those meetings that you are in, might be six meetings a day, you take 10 minutes off each, make them shorter by ten minutes, you just picked up an extra five hours a week.  So there are some ideas on how to find time for you. And you have your manuals there.  You'll see in the back of your manuals there is an article we published - probably in the American Chamber journal in the next couple of months, on how to work on your business and not in your business.  Let me take any questions you might have in the remaining time we have.   About anything we've covered or anything else we have not covered.  So who has the first question?  Yes please. Participant:  Let's say you have a mission statement and your values.  Do you ever change those in your life? Greg:  The question is that with values or mission statement, how regularly do we change those? Yes, I update mine.  I find though with the mission statement, it tends to stick.  Over the last 20 years I've been refining it.  I finally got it to a point where it basically covers.  The values too, they generally tend to be consistent.  Slight changes over time.  It's probably around the goals in my different roles that have changed because the goals get done.  Or the goal drops out because the situation has changed.  Or I've got a more pressing goal that I need to work on.  I bring that in.  So that's where I find the variation is more in the goals and roles-the what, why and how part changes for me.  Who has the next question?  Participant:  What would be the tips from you to keep reminding myself to do the most urgent and important thing? Greg:  So the question is, what is a tip on how to remind myself to make sure that I am doing the most productive thing every moment with my time?  I think the tip I would give you is before you start it, before you get into it, like the email comes and oh I've got to answer it, before you go to that point say, is answering this email the most productive use of my time?  You might think, I can probably do that later, and you skip it.  Go back to your priority list for that day and look and see if there's a higher priority that I need to get done first?  If that email is a priority then you can probably add it to the list.  Or it can go on the next day's list.  So I think it's, before you actually get started, because once we get into the item, the time is gone.  You've already started. It's too late then.  So before you start, is what I am about to do the most productive use of my time at this moment?  Is this part of my list of priorities for today that I need to achieve?  If it is important, capture it and then maybe assign a lower priority to it that day or a higher priority the next day.   Because it may not be something that you have to do on that day.  And for my to-do list I am constantly transferring things across.  So if they don't get done on this day I pick them up on the next day.  And then I just write them down again, add the new priorities and I re-prioritize the whole thing.  Because a priority say on a Wednesday may change.  There may be a more urgent priority on the Thursday.  So it will still be there.  It doesn't get lost-that's the key.  But the priority issuance will change.  Who has the next question?  Participant:  You talked about making a to-do list every day and you try to update your goals every day.  How many minutes or how many hours are you putting in a day just for the priority list? Greg:  The question is how many minutes a day do I spend working on or going through the mission, the values and working up the priority list?  I would probably spend ten to fifteen minutes a day on that.  Because I try to read through everything.  Remind myself of my why.  Get down all my priorities. Transfer the priorities from the previous day that didn't get completed into today's priority list.  Add the new things.  I'll scan e-mail and if anything comes up, I'll put that down.  But don't do it.  Sometimes with time difference, because we have our headquarters in New York, I might have to do something straight away because there's the time difference. If there is a zone where I overlap, I'll say well I'm going to make that the priority.  If I can get it done in two minutes-boom.  Get it done.  So basically about ten to fifteen minutes. But its uninterrupted time.  And I find, oh it's sad, it's really sad.  The difference between the days when I prioritize and the days I don't prioritize.  It's sad.  The difference is so huge.  I am so much less effective on those days where the prioritization didn't get done.  And it happens sometimes.  Something happens like today.  I haven't done it today.  I have to go back to my desk and do it.  But I might get sucked into a whole bunch of things and not do it.  And today will be a disaster compared to if I did do it.  I am telling you now, that simple act, it's very tough to make a choice.  Is this one of a higher priority than that one?  Don't fret over that too much.  Get the most important things done.  You'll be doing very very well.  Participant:  I wanted to ask you about the to-do and to-be list.  Sometimes the to-do list could be going on and on from A10 to C10.  You don't get to cover everything a day and still you go back every morning and go through your to-do list to use.  How do you re-shuffle, re-prioritize the leftover priority? Greg:  The question is about the to-be list and the to-do list, and with the to-do list how do you re-shuffle the priorities?  The to-be list is a long-term thing.  In the back of that little success focus book, you've got long-term goals.  Your to-be list is usually long-term goals.  The reshuffling is, as I transfer them and add to them, I just go through the list and I decide that was a higher priority yesterday but something's happened in the day that trumps that and just overtakes that.  By time urgency or value and I just re-write it because I am always writing in pencil and I often have to readjust the numbers to say that that was an A7 is now going to become an A3 because something's happened.  Although really I don't actually bother doing that I just move it up mentally and then just keep going.  But I must come back to A4.  I shouldn't go to B5.  The trick is the highest priority items must get my time.  Last question over here. Participant:  To me, to put away ten hours for me time is quite long.  So just wondering, me time?  What is the clear definition of me time?  Is that something not only professional, maybe personal?  Just thinking about me? Greg:  The question is about me time and thinking that ten hours a week seems a lot for me time.  The me time that I am talking about there is professional.  It is in your job, working on your business.  That means planning, direction, thinking about the critical items of your business rather than just doing the routine daily work of your business.  And so what we are asking you to do here is step back.  Look at the tasks and say, which ones will advance the business more than others and I should concentrate my time there as opposed to I'm doing routine work or I am doing detailed work or I am doing something that takes time but doesn't help me directionally.  That's why I said before the key question is why.  Why are you doing this?  Why are you working in this section of the business?  Why are you trying to achieve these things?  If you are refreshing those in your mind then you will make the me time.  The me time could be a project you are working on and you say I am going to give an hour every day to that particular project or projects.  And I am just going to concentrate on that one thing.  Or I've got a particular report.  I'm going to spend an hour every day putting that report together.  I'm not going to be interrupted by anything else because this is a very high priority for me.  That's what me time means.  It's not me time in that I am going to go to Starbucks and have a cup of coffee for an hour.  That's not what I am talking about. I'm talking about work related, it's specific, it's high-value.  It is something usually only you should be doing.  Because if someone else can do it, delegate it.  It's something only you can do that's really going to make a difference to the direction of the business.  We are at time, so let me say thank you very much for coming out this morning.  I hope you enjoyed that.  I hope to see you again.  Thank you very much and I hope you enjoyed today.  Thank you very much.  (Applause)   Close:   Thank you for joining THE Leadership Japan podcast.  Remember, to access your Dale Carnegie training, free white-papers, guidebooks, training videos, blogs, course information, plus much much more then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.

Today I discuss a number one on the top 25 in the app store: Mr.Aahh!!

Do you ever have aches and pains? Do your muscles ever get sore? Do you get headaches? My husband used to until a couple of years ago. He would come home from work with tight shoulders, or a headache, or a knot in his back, near his shoulder blades. Tension was the problem, caused by stress from work, and sitting too long in front of the computer. I tried to help by massaging his back, but it wasn't very effective. Then he went to a chiropractor for an adjustment. You know the routine: you lie on a bed and get pulled in different directions until your tight back cracks loudly. It's a scary situation; you really have to trust the chiropractor. You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your spine. It is usually very effective and gives relief quickly, but, it didn't do the trick for my husband. So, he tried Yoga. What an excellent choice. It's good for relieving stress, and for the body. I think, if he had done it properly, it could have worked, but it wasn't enough to get rid of his headaches. He really had to find a solution to his problem, because, as you know, headaches can wreck your day; they get in the way of everything. Finally, we went to Seattle to look at some massaging chairs that he had heard about. We spent the whole day trying out different kinds, until he chose one, and we brought it home. It replicates Shiatsu massage, so, when you sit in it and lie back, the rotating, metal balls inside the chair actually push up on specific parts of your back, neck, and legs.  For the first few days, I had to put up with his exclamations of relief, "Ooohhh!" and "Aahh!" and "Did you hear my back just crack? This chair is amazing!" I'm glad to say it worked, and has done ever since. It has been a life saver; he is now free of headaches. For him, it has been like magic.Grammar notes.Common expressions: to put up with, as you know, to do the trick.1. When we stayed with my dear, deaf aunt, we had to put up with her dog barking all night.2. The weather is getting worse, as you know, so we will not take the boat out until it is safe.3. I fixed the squeaky door; a spot of oil did the trick.

In this episode, Stephen and Anthony discuss their progress, social issues, Chadwick Boseman, and, of course, they talk about another vampire movie. There is a short section of this episode that is heavily visual, as Stephen is showing his sketches, so prepare for some "Ooh"s and "Aahh"s without much context for about a minute or so. The video will be released soon! We Love you all and thank you for listening! Intro theme by Made of Monsters https://madeofmonsters.bandcamp.com/album/made-of-monsters