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Every entrepreneur wants their business to succeed; that's just a given. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares with us the nine key ingredients for business success. These he discovered in the process of running his own businesses for a decade. Stay tuned! Okay. You want your business to succeed. -Yeah. -Right? And there are 9 ingredients or requirements that if you're missing one of these, it's likely your business will fail. -Okay. -So, we're going to cover all 9 and hopefully you're taking notes and checking these things off to make sure. Otherwise your business is likely to fail. -9 things. I'm curious what they are. Is that, is it like a specific order thing? -Not necessarily specific order. This first one should be obvious. I'm going to say you need to have a really good idea. -Okay. -Right? Because there's a lot of businesses that will fail just because their idea really isn't thought all the way through. So, how do you quantify that? I don't know how to tell if your idea is good or not. Everyone thinks that their own idea is good. -Yeah, yeah. -So, that's all I'll say about that. That's number 1. You have to have a good idea. -Great. -To succeed in business, you've got to be disciplined. Because you're not just filling one role but now you're the boss. And you're the security guard, or you're the accountant. You're the marketing team. -Yeah. -And you control your own schedule. And you get to work where you want. -And it's the best part. -And you get-- you get full control of the budget. You get to spend the money how you want. -Which could be the worst part. -And so, I think that's the biggest reason why a lot of people don't go into entrepreneurship. -Okay. So, we're talking about discipline. Like, what do you mean by discipline? -Really, the ability to focus, to prioritize, and to make sure that you're working enough. You know, I mean, that 8 to 5 schedule is common but that was just arbitrary. -Right. -Divide the day in 3. You sleep, you work 8, you play 8. -Yeah. -But if you're going to work for 8 hours, what are you going to do? -I could especially see that being you have to discipline yourself with those 8 hours, right? Because if you're working from home, we're pretty easy... -There's an office just around the corner and it's a big video game console set up in there. -That's a pretty idea. -Maybe they're gamer. I don't know. And that brings me the third requirement here is tenacity. -Okay. -And what I mean by that is... Because I had 8 and a half years of a financial rollercoaster. -Okay. -Like for real. -Yeah. -Like some of the lows, one time I was in the Walmart parking lot in tears because I couldn't afford to buy diapers. -Oh. -Right? That's legit. -Yeah. -It's a hard time. Why didn't I get a job, right? Okay, then another time, this is not too long ago like 4 years ago if I were to guess. Maybe 5. Asking my mom if I could borrow money or not necessarily borrow. "Can I... can I have some money?" -Mm-hmm. -And my mom asking me, "Nate, why don't you go get a job?" -And you have to have that conversation. -Yeah. -Yeah. -And I still stuck with it. -Yeah. -And now, my mom and dad will say, "Wow, we're sure proud of you, Nate." Well, what about a few years ago? I was doing the same thing then. -Yeah. -So, even just a few days ago, somebody emailed me and asked me about that tenacity. Like, how do you stick it with it? And it's really... I have something that I really believe in. It's like, I believe that what I'm creating and I believe that entrepreneurship is noble. And, like, quitting on that is like failure at life for me. -Yeah. -That's what it feels like. -Yeah. -To go back and get a job, I just feel like that would be a failure. And yeah that's just my mindset. I'm not saying that employees, or anything like that, that they're failures. I'm just saying that's for my purpose and whatnot. And so, I'm putting tenacity as a requirement because I think I took longer than some. I mean 8 and a half years before I finally... -Yeah. That's a good long time. -But yeah. I mean, I would still... You know, I'm 10 years in. 10 years in now. I'd still be going even if I were still in the financial roller coaster. -Yeah. That's a great one. I think that's... And that's inspiring for myself as a writer and actor. It's very easy sometimes. Or actually, I won't even say myself. "Are you someone that more people know?" Chris Hemsworth. The guy who plays Thor. He talks a lot about how he and his wife for a long time were like, "Can we keep doing this?" Because he was a freelancer and it's the same thing where he's totally an entrepreneur, right? And and they talked for a long time like, "Why don't I just go get a job?" And they decided that they were going to stick with it. And I totally agree. I think it's like.. It has nothing to do with going and getting a job being a bad thing. But it's if you've put your mind to doing something and you don't have the strength to keep doing it, then it's not going to work. And that's a failure on you. For, like, for yourself personally. And I feel that all the time. I'm like, if I give up on this, that's me. That's not anyone else. And so, I have to keep going, right? I love that tenacity, it's a great one. -Okay. So, those are attributes. Talking about the business. I put one category as a brand. -Okay. -Like a business really needs a brand. And what I mean my brand is not necessarily a logo. That's a cool thing to have. But like in my case, I've had different logos. I've had different brands. But until my brand really had a track record behind it. So, that's what I mean. Like a brand that actually means something that... -Yeah. -And you can do things to really ruin your brand or whatnot. So, that's what I mean, is it's important to have a good brand in order to have a successful business. -That makes sense. Brand kind of being like, "What's the feeling? What's the vibe I want people to feel?" Right. So, what's next? What do you... What comes after that? -So, then you've got to create a system. -Okay. -And that's going to sound really official perhaps. But think about the most successful hamburger chain on the planet. The most successful chain -- period -- in businesses is McDonald's. -Yeah. Yeah. -They really have a system that they sell. They don't have the best burger necessarily, the best fries, or yeah it's shake. But they-- they have a system and they have a brand. -Right. -Their system is that they can hire a high school student. And they'll just run the system. And so for me, when I hire a new editor, we have a process that we go through and we just train them. They bring their skill set. But we train them to follow our system. It's like a checklist or whatnot. So, there's a difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. Somebody who's... A business owner will actually create systems and those systems either run automatically through software or they hire somebody to run that system. So, a business owner can take a step back and look at how's the business running. "Ooh, here's something that's broken. Let's fix that. Let's create a system that will make that work better." -So, if someone feels like maybe that's kind of intimidating. Someone feels like, "I've got a really good idea. I know what my brand would be and I want to get there. But a system? That's kind of intimidating", right? -Actually, I'm going to recommend a book. -Okay. So, it's called E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. "E" stands for entrepreneur. -Awesome. -So, find the book the E-myth and it will really just like open your... It will cause a paradigm shift. You'll see the world of business in a whole different way and understand the value of systems. Yeah, my company would be chaos and non-existent without systems. I'm going to talk about another one. -It's another kind of big word that might be intimidating. And I'm going to talk about what leverage. Leverage is required for profit. It's like, if I can create a service that's valued at this high but it only costs me this much, that's that's where profit comes from. And I found a great opportunity and hiring people in the Philippines. Because I can hire people in the Philippines for $3 per hour that are college-educated and that's a dream job for them. So, that's cool. Because that's a huge blessing to me. And so, what that allows me to do in talking about leverage is I can assign them tasks that normally I'd have to pay people here 20 or 30 dollars per hour to be able to do. -Right. -And so, I can create services and sell them at a cost that's extremely competitive and yet still be having lots of profit. I guess going back to systems, leverage can be applied to that too, is it's you're making things so efficient that I don't know how to explain without using the word leverage. But you're just really leveraging things like a lever allows it to lift something heavy. -Right, right. -With small effort. And so if you create systems or tools or resources or leverage people or money or time to create more work. Than you have something of value that people will buy. -So, we've talked about some like good mindset, right? You to have your good idea, you need to have discipline and you have tenacity. Right? And then outside of that, we're like, "Now, how do you have a brand and making systems and then turning all that into leverage so that you can make a profit?" Right? And that's how you're going to get going with your business. So now, it's like, "Okay. Now, how do we see that in action?" -Well, let's break it down. There's going to be 3 different areas of your business. Okay? You need to have traffic or some source of customers or lead generation. So, let's call that what traffic. -Okay. -I use YouTube for a lot of traffic. And I can I can link to a video right there my my leaf strategy video, okay? So, where are your customers going come from? Do you have a storefront in Times Square? -Right. -Or do you advertise on TV or radio? Do you have banner ads online? Do you  have a YouTube channel? Where's your traffic coming from? -Yeah. Then you need to have the ability to sell. -Okay. -Alright? So, how do you take a lead and turn them into a customer. -Okay. -So, you've got to have a some type of sales system in place. -Right. -And then you've got a fulfill. You've got to have some way of delivering that whether you're manufacturing and delivering a physical product or you've got a service that you're providing. -Right. -And whatever it is, you've got to provide good fulfillment that... Like good customer service that you get good reviews that's not going to hurt your reputation. That's going to have happy customers that's not going to have lots of returns. That your products aren't breaking. So, if you have a good source of traffic, you can turn that traffic into leads and sales. And you can keep your customers happy because they're getting what they expected. Those were the 9 requirement ingredients to have a successful business. -Okay. -Okay. Now, with that foundation, the next video that I highly recommend that you watch is my leaf strategy video. I mentioned traffic and I mentioned YouTube. My strategy really, really works and it's so much so that on one of my channels, we brought in 7 figures last month just from one channel. And this is the strategy. So, click this video up here. It's my leaf strategy video so you can learn how to get lots of traffic from YouTube.

Alright – So. You’re listening to this podcast because the title intrigues you, of course. And, maybe right now you are thinking of someone at your company who is not engaged in his or her job. Or worse, maybe even several people.If so, you are not alone.Because according to a recent Gallup poll, 67 percent of employees are disengaged to some degree in the workplace. And, according to a recent article in FORBES, a disengaged employee will cost on average, 34% of his or her annual salary. However, the good news is that the percentage of disengaged employees is actually shrinking because more and more companies are recognizing the value and importance of creating corporate cultures grounded on a central purpose, and a vision which thereby deepens engagement. In recent years, there have been countless books, articles and elements of research that demonstrate and prove that maintaining a healthy corporate culture makes a very positive impact on the overall success of any organization. So, if you have low employee engagement issues and you’re not focused on your company’s culture, that could very well be a large part of the problem. Now, some employees disengage for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with their employer or work environment. The most common reasons are illness, injuries or going through a major life event such as losing a loved one, going through a divorce, caring for an ailing parent or dealing with any kind of trauma. These events are distracting enough to prevent anyone from doing their job well.I refer to this as involuntary disengagement – and let’s face it - it’s inevitable and it will affect everyone at one time or another. Even you!For these employees, empathy, support and some added flexibility are the three elixirs employers can offer to help them work through these types of stresses. And, in some cases, employees even admit that they need the distractions of staying busy at work to help cope with their hardships. So, let’s set that aside because I’m talking about a completely different kind of disengagement.I’m referring to disengagement based on internal factors at a company such as being forced to work in a dysfunctional culture, being frustrated in the workplace, and crappy leadership. Any one of these factors can be debilitating, thereby hindering performance and productivity. Under these circumstances, disengaged employees are not simply low-productivity team members who waste time on Facebook or take two-hour lunches.One single disengaged employee can hurt their employers in six ways.One. Costing the company infinite amounts of money due to negligence and making careless mistakes. Because when an employee no longer cares, he or she is less likely to pay attention to details, which is where the devil resides. And as you know, failing to pay attention to even the smallest of details can have dire consequences.Two. Angering customers into the welcoming arms of a competitor. The last thing you need is to have a disengaged employee interact with a customer – especially when the customer has an issue that needs to be resolved. Because if customers aren’t feeling the love from that one employee, they may become more open and agreeable to going on a first date with a competitor, you know, just to keep their “options” open.Three. Recruiting others to start a movement – or, in other words, an internal resistance to the leadership team. Disengaged employees don’t always keep quiet and operate alone. They always have something to complain about and confide in others the displeasure, disappointment or resentment they have toward the company or its

How did Steve Sheinkopf and the team at Yale Appliance use blogging to grow the company's website traffic from 30,000 visits a month to one million visits a month while increasing revenues by 350%? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Yale Appliance and Lighting CEO Steve Sheinkopf shares his company's journey from a small Boston-based lighting and appliance store that relied heavily on advertising for business, to the world's most trafficked appliance website and a business in the process of adding its third store. Central to Yale's success was Steve himself, who blogged five times a week in the early day's of the company's content marketing efforts and continues to create key blog posts to this day. Highlights from my conversation with Steve include: Yale Appliance is the most trafficked appliance website in the world Steve started blogging in 2007 and at the time, Yale Appliance was spending around three quarters of a million dollars on radio ads. From 2007 to 2011, Steve blogged five times a week, but despite the volume of content he was publishing he wasn't seeing any results.  In 2011, Yale was getting 30,000 visitors a month to its website and today, it gets close to a million a month - all due to the shift that Steve and his team made in the way they undertake content marketing. Yale doesn't talk about itself on its blog - it talks about statistics and facts relating to its products, and that is what makes readers trust them. Steve says blogging is all about building domain authority and to that requires a sustained and consistent effort when it comes to content creation. Steve sees blogging as a core competency of his business at Yale and as such believes strongly that it shouldn't be outsourced. Steve still writes blogs for Yale, but today, the company's sales people blog as well. The company tracks the ROI of its content marketing efforts and can show, using data from HubSpot, that views of its blog and buyers guide have driven millions of dollars in business. Steve writes all of the posts relating to reliability, "best of" lists, and articles detailing problems that frequently occur with certain brands. One of the biggest benefits of Yale's content marketing efforts is that the leads it generates are very high intent. His team can see the content they've consumed on the website and it shows exactly what they are interested in. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained probably 15 to 20% in revenue. We've, increased our revenue probably 350% in the same time. 37 about 122 million in a 10 year period. So that certainly plays a part of that in terms of stores. We've gone from one store to we're adding our third in November which will be our biggest store. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained approximately 15 to 20% in revenue. In that time, Yale has increased its revenue by 350%, from 37 to about 122 million in a 10 year period. They have also gone from one store to adding their third in November which will be the company's biggest store. Resources from this episode: Visit the Yale Appliance and Lighting Website Follow Steve on Twitter Connect with Steve on LinkedIn Email Steve at steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com  Listen to the podcast to get learn how Steve Sheinkopf and the team at Yale Appliance and Lighting used content to drive traffic, leads and sales. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week my guest is Steve Sheinkopf who is the CEO of Yale Appliance and Lighting. Welcome, Steve. Steve Sheinkopf (Guest): Good to be here Kathleen. How are you? Steve and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm great. I am excited to have you on and I can't wait to dig into our topic. But, not everybody who's listening may know who you are, so can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and your business? About Steve Sheinkopf and Yale Appliance and Lighting Steve: Sure. We're a 97 year old appliance company located in Boston Massachusetts. We sell appliances, lights, we do a lot of service work, and our company's powered by really content marketing and not advertising. That's pretty much what we do. We sell all brands of different appliances, from Sub-Zero down to Samsung and we compete against pretty much 60 Brick and mortar competitors in a 20 mile area plus Online plus Amazon, Wayfair and all the people, Home Depot, that sort of thing. Kathleen: You're being very humble and so I'm going to toot your horn for you because this is like a David and Goliath story. You guys do compete against 800 pound gorillas with huge budgets. If I understand correctly you also in some respects, at least for content and search engine share, you compete against the manufacturers of the appliances that you sell. So on paper this story shouldn't be possible which is what I love about it. But you guys have one of the most trafficked, if not the most traffic to appliance websites in the world. Correct? Steve: Yeah. I think so. Kathleen: It's amazing. So all right, for people who are listening, I have been bugging Steve and his team to try and get one of them on this podcast for about two years now because I first started hearing this story of Yale Appliance a couple of years back. It was before I joined IMPACT I had heard about it from Marcus Sheridan, who plays a role in the story. And then I had the opportunity to get to know these guys better through IMPACT and all along I've just been so impressed. The reason, and it is a classic content marketing story, and I say classic because it's the things we're all told to do. Only you guys actually went and did them which is the big differentiator. But the reason I was so excited to have you particularly on is that most of my guests are marketers and they're already drinking the Kool-Aid. The biggest challenge they tend to have, is getting the C-suite not only to buy-in, but my gosh for them The Holy Grail is to actually participate in the process. And you've been doing this all along. So that's really what I want to talk about. But let's kind of rewind the clock if you would and start back from when you first began. I've heard the story a couple of times but I'm sure everybody hasn't. So maybe you could just tell the tale of how did you guys first travel down this path? Because you're a 90 year old company and you were not always the most trafficked website for appliances in the world. How Yale Appliance discovered content marketing Steve: Oh, clearly not, clearly not. It's a long story but really it starts in 2004. I went to this thing called The In-Planet and it was absolute genius. There's a bunch of it was I think Boston visors or the Bain or McKinsey guys, they were talking about the future of marketing and they were talking about how digital one day overtake outbound and to prepare for it, it wasn't happening yet. And they said. "The least you can do is get on the whole review side, that reviews are going to play a big part of how people are going to purchase from your company." So that's the first thing we did is we got on with all the yelpers and instead of berating them for giving you bad views, we looked inside ourselves to say. " Maybe we're really disappointing people organically." So we started in 2007 blogging. And at the same time it was doubling down on radio. We did a lot of radio at that time I think it was the final number was somewhere around three quarters of a million dollars. And we doubled down during the recession and the more we advertise it was like diminishing returns. I used to ask the phone people anybody called them radio ads. When we started doing it in 2000 it was popular by 2010 no one really seemed interested. So we started blogging in 2007. It was 2011 when I met Marcus Sheridan and I thought it was going to teach Marcus something. The first conversation we have, everybody loves Marcus. He's like a folksy guy and back if we rewind the clock in 2011, at that time I was blogging every day but I wasn't blogging by keyword. I wasn't- Why the CEO of Yale Appliance dedicated himself to blogging Kathleen: Now you yourself were blogging? Steve: Yeah, I was. Kathleen: I just want to clarify that. Steve: I did that five days a week. Kathleen: That's amazing. Did you publish, was it five blogs or was it? Steve: Five posts a week. Kathleen: That's great. Steve: Well it's great when it's good stuff, not so great. And it was well-meaning, but it wasn't... Even when it answered the question I never titled it right, I didn't met a tag it. So our first conversation was just absolute beat down. It was pretty bad, but he was right. At that time we have 30,000 people a month going into our site, which on paper doesn't seem bad but we started blogging strategically and now we expect a million visitors a month, we were busy and somewhere out six, 700,000, we're not. And with that comes certainly more leads, more traffic, more business and that's what this is about. And I can't believe that, I can't believe. But if you were to say to a CEO, look we're going to start this program that's not going to be effective in six months, then you probably not going get much buy-in on the C-suite. But if you say to somebody, I'm going to reduce ad spend to zero and increase revenues disproportionately to your market share - I mean, what does the bottom line look like? And it's a great learning tool and it creates trust and it creates distrust for your competitors that aren't doing this. They're selling products that maybe they shouldn't be. That's a pretty compelling case so if you structure like that, I think people get more buy-in from the people that need to buy in to say this is a revenue expense game and it's what, how people really want to consume stuff. Because nobody really wants to listen to me say how great I am. In fact, we never talk about ourselves. We talk about statistics and facts and helping people make purchases because you go to all these content marketing seminars they talk about trust and that's how you really trying to do. If they trust you and your pricing is good and your execution which is the back half of what I really work on is are we executing to, what our value proposition is? Because blogging without execution is just bad. Work on execution first then blog. So that's the whole story. Kathleen: You raise a really interesting point and I've been in this inbound or content marketing game a long time. I had an agency for 11 years. Something that you said really struck me because you talked about if you say to a CEO, we're going to create blogs and you're not going to see any results for six months, that is what I would say the disproportionate percentage of people in this space say it when somebody says, how long will it take for me to get results? Which everybody wants to know, right? Because that's what it's all about is the results people will always answer with, well it takes time. Six months to a year you'll start to see something. And while there are aspects of content marketing that that is true for, there are also aspects of it that that is absolutely not true. Where you can see some sorts of results right away. And I think you're right when you set that expectation that's going take a while. That's not exactly the best way to sell it. Steve: Well, I mean, blogging is about domain authority. Strictly we use words to cover up what we really mean and you don't become an authority figure with one or two posts. You need to show over a long period of time that you know what you're doing, whether it's getting a client, business, life, whatever it is. You don't become an authority with one good post. That said, if you write about something that's brand new that nobody else's, you could probably rank high pretty quickly. Kathleen: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I've always said that the best moments in my content marketing career have been when I googled a question and didn't find an answer for it and I was like, ha ha, I'm right that answer. So what I'm curious about is you actually were convinced even before you met Marcus, that just that blogging in and of itself had value now obviously there was a better way to do it. Why you should insource content creation Kathleen: But what I'm really interested in understanding from you is when you first had this realization that hey, we might need to blog as part of our corporate strategy. What was it that convinced you personally to write? Because I think most of the CEOs I know who have that Aha moment and realized blogging is important. Their first thought is, I'm going to assign that to somebody or we're going to outsource it. Very few think I'm going to do it. Steve: Well, it's like anything else. You want to outsource things that either you're not good at or someone can do cheaper. If you want something to be a core competency you have to do it yourself, right? You can't be good at something, outsource it and then hope it gets better. Right? If you want it to be a core competency where every year, like every month, every week, every, if you're part of it and you're interested in it and intrigues you and it touches the customer it's important. That's something you don't outsource. So it's a matter of I think people that are outsourcing, the losing the whole kind of how do we get better? How do we read, what are customers asking and how are we better solve the problem? Goes into merchandising, it goes into everything we do, what lines we sell, what lines we don't sell. Because we have the finger on the pulse of what we think the customer reacts to. But you're never going to get good at it... Let's forget about if we call it something else, like social media or writing or customer outreach. If you're outsourcing it as a methodology, nobody's going to know your business better than you do. And it doesn't matter which content conference we go to whether it's Impact or Inbound or HubSpot or whatever those. Anybody that's outsourcing with writers from whatever, what Fiverr from Indiana they're just not getting the results they could if they did it themselves and treat it like a crucial pillar of our business of ,your business which it could be, which it should be. Who creates content at Yale Appliance Kathleen: Now in the beginning you were writing five articles a week. What does that look like today? Are you still actively writing or are there other folks in the company that are primarily doing it? Steve: Well, it really depends, but the sales people. Sales people write blogs to varying degrees. I still edit most of them and I still write the important ones. And again, some of the ones I've written have, there are two that are over 2 million, 20 million views. But forget about the views, we have a report that shows people that go into our buyers guide from blogs and how much money we derive from that on a monthly, yearly basis. It's certainly well worth doing financially to do that, be part of it. And again my time spent at the CEO and culture and metrics and enforcing standards, after that really social outreach which I can reach a whole market of people by writing a blog. It's just so worth my time I think. Kathleen: And you mentioned that you write the important posts and that there are certain posts that really take off. What are the topics that you feel like best come from you? Steve: Well, the ones that resonate are the ones that are reliability posts that we were ranked manufacturers based on a service in the first year. I think some industry problem ones, are best from me, I think some of the comparisons other people can do. Again, when you look at blogging, if you want to figure out if your sales people know what they're talking about, you read their blogs. And if they can't tell you what the five best gas range tops are and in a blog they probably won't be able to sell if the customer comes into the store. So is a good learning tool for new people to just read Wiskott-Aldrich. So the time to get a new person up is much quicker. But I write reliability, best and problems ones. Kathleen: Were you always just really comfortable with writing? Is that a format that you gravitate to? Steve: Not initially, I realized the value of it but if you look at what I wrote back in 2007 versus what we write now, it's much better, much different. And that's true of anything. Everyone always says. "I'm an awful writer." Everybody is awful. This saying that every expert starts as a beginner. If you stick with it and you write three articles a week every week, if you're new, by the time one year rolls around, you've written 152 articles. That's enough for authority, but you're going to be much better after a year than you are in the beginning. Everything you do that you practice you work hard on you're going to get better at. Whether it's blogging or anything else in business. Kathleen: Now, do you find that you've gotten faster also? Steve: Yes. I think in blogs now. I've been doing it for since 2007 .I think in blog posts like comparisons and invest because I've been doing it for that long. Kathleen: How long does it take you to produce a blog? Steve: Me? Kathleen: Yeah. Steve: I can produce a blog in probably a couple of hours. The ROI of Yale's content marketing efforts Kathleen: That's great. I think it's interesting because a lot of CEOs would hear a couple of hours and think there's no way. My time is too valuable for that. So you mentioned that you guys have systems put in place to track how he is this content turns into revenue. Can you give me a sense of what that looks like and what that's produced? I don't even know if you can get it down to like what is a blog worth? I'm sure each of them is worth a different amount, but I'd love to understand better what kind of ROI you're seeing. Steve: Well, let's forget the fact that basically the path to purchase goes to the Internet. It has since probably 2005. Alright? So but the way we do, we use a very crude metric. I have Google analytics where I can... that our time on site jumps when you talk about a blog posts really, time on site pages views equal to consumers. But we can talk about store visits, but in terms of share revenue the number that we look at over a 12 month period is anybody that's downloaded a buyer's guide. So let's say you download a buyer's Guide and get 20th. If you come into the store buy with that same email address, we track them and let's just say your friend, partners, significant other, spouse buys under theirs, that's not tracked. So just from the people that download buyers guide, they buy it comes out to be about a million or a million and half per month in revenue. Yeah, that's just that not including... What we tried to do when you look at when anybody looks at Google analytics, typically Marcus said for his pool company, once they hit pages 30, his conversion goes up. For us I think it's seven minutes or 10 and a half pages and blogs play a big part of that. You want to get trust and then you want to execute. And that's kind of how businesses and the blogging is in marketing is half that or say a third of it, the sales and execution, delivery, install, all that stuff has to be in order for this to work. Certainly the articles have to be good, but the delivery experience, the installation experience and the service experience of what we do, which is our differentiating factors have to be as good if not better. Kathleen: So this has had a major implication for your overall business. Obviously it's not just revenue, clearly you're getting a lot of traffic and that's turning into business for you. But can you talk a little bit about some of the new directions that you're thinking of heading in as a result of this? What Yale's success with content marketing has meant for its business Steve: What we've been able to do certainly on the revenue side. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained probably 15 to 20% in revenue. We've, increased our revenue probably 350% in the same time. 37 about 122 million in a 10 year period. So that certainly plays a part of that in terms of stores. We've gone from one store to we're adding our third in November which will be our biggest store. But really what we've done is we've taken that 2% that we normally two or 3%, we normally take in marketing and we put it in customer touchpoints and really the customer touchpoints, are systems and people. We've been able to keep good people because instead of blowing it on $3 million worth of say, Glow Buds or radio spots or something, we have a better medical, we have 401k matching. To me that's... You market to your people first and those people market to your customers. So we've been able to take that wasted spend and put it into areas that people really appreciate. And that's people, systems, displays, warehousing, all that stuff, that's the other half of it. Is to take that money you would have spent and put it where people really want it. The first thing during the recession when we change management, first thing I said is we're going to answer the phone, right? We're going to answer the phone and we're going to be good on the execution side. And we put our money towards that rather than putting money on marketing. And it wouldn't take off if we didn't have some kind of social profile, which that whole blogging is a part of really, if blogging is a core competence that helps people come into the stores and then it's the execution side. It's two parts to this it's not just blogging that drives the revenue. It's the execution that keeps the revenue. Kathleen: It's funny because there's lots of buzz that I hear at least that we could be due for another recession sometime in the next couple of years. When you think about the evolution of the company and how you've done marketing and consider that there is this prospect that we may get hit again with another recession. How do you think the company will fare given your new marketing approach? Because it's very different than what you did the last time around. Steve: I think we'll do a lot better again because one of the things is we're not wasting money. We all know that outbound marketing is a negative ROI deal. I think as long as you understand who your customer is and you're straight and transparent with them, I think you have a leg up over people who do not do that. And that's pretty much everybody in our space. There's some people that are doing it, some people that are doing well, but they don't understand the whole execution side. Kathleen: Now the other thing that I think is interesting is historically you've been a local business. You're in the Boston area and well that's a big local market. It's still a local market and now you're getting all this traffic. I have to imagine a considerable amount of that traffic is not from the Boston area. Some people might hear that and think, well that's great that you have more traffic, but it's not really, that's not valuable traffic because they're not going to be able to walk in the door and buy from you. How do you look at that? Steve: Oh that's very true. 88% of our traffic we cannot sell to. Because delivering an appliance it's not like delivering Sharmane tissues.Especially in Boston because we got brownstones and walk-ups you need very specialized delivery people. That's why we pay the delivery people well because we're not spending it on marketing. But the worst thing you can do is ruin your reputation by not execute. It's a fair question a lot of this traffic is not really valid traffic. Let's take a million people say that we got last month on the blog or 800,000 or whatever it was, say it's 800,000 we'll minimize that means 12% of 800,000 in your market. How many people... We write to a specific audience. So how many people? 12% of a million or 800,000 it's still a lot of people that's still you're writing to 70,000 people. They're not reading your blog because they want to get to something else. It's still a significant amount of people in the market. There's no way to hit, it's like the old days they talked about radio ads. It's like they sold it to you. There's 100,000 home owners but only 2% of them are in the market and only 2% of those will listen to ad. The people that are clicking on a blog posts are showing intent, right? So those are 70,000 people showing you intent because they're clicking on something. It's not like the old radio or TV metrics. So that's still a lot of people looking to buy from you. Kathleen: Do you ever foresee that there might be an opportunity for you to somehow monetize that other 80%? Steve: No, unless we're directly involved in the actual fulfillment of the order. I don't want to be involved. If we look at... There's a lot of really good online appliance stores that have really good interfaces. They put their money on the front end, but if you look at the reviews on Yelp or Google, they're so bad and over time that'll catch up to you. Right? Because really, the one thing that I always tell the people in the marketing department is don't forget that your consumer and the path to purchase is okay, you'll read a blog everyone talks about what's the one thing, it's all about attribution. You'll read a blog post, you'll go online and you're mobile, you'll sit on your tablet, but somewhere down the line you're going to read reviews before you decide to purchase from that company or not. And you don't want everybody loves Impact because you guys do good work. But if you had a two star reputation on like Yelp or Google, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Right. So, I'm willing to... First of all, there's enough business in a local market. I want more, it's cheaper in, and easier and better to be in the Boston market. Than being partly in Boston, in somewhere in L.A. which is actually our biggest market for the blog, New York. I think it's better logistically to stay where you are. Kathleen: I was going to say maybe someday you'll have... You have three stores now maybe you'll someday have 30. Steve: The way it works from a business standpoint, this goes a little bit back to blogging is you have a warehouse. You want to maximize that warehouse, then in a third store you need a bigger warehouse and you want to maximize that warehouse and then you run stores up that warehouse, that's where it becomes the most efficient to do business. Going to L.A and having logistics there and hiring and hiring service people in a whole new network is much more difficult. Steve's advice to other CEOs Kathleen: It's a good problem to have too much traffic and more than you can sell to. I want to go back to this issue of most CEOs don't necessarily see the justification for being personally involved in this. If somebody is listening and they are a Content Manager or the Head of Marketing and they're passionate about creating content for the company and they want the CEO to be involved, As a CEO yourself, do you have any advice for the best way for that person to approach the CEO and get them excited about taking part in this process? Steve: It's like we said in the beginning, there aren't too many opportunities to increase your brand in the profile of that brand. There's not too many ways to create trust and there's not too many ways to raise revenue and reduce expenses at the same time. What is your bottom line look like by raising revenue and reducing expenses? And that's really my job is to... We used to be happy if we reduced expenses by 30, 50, 60,000. Well now we're talking about reducing expenses at our level 700, a million, $2 million in increasing the top line revenues by since we'll be doing it anywhere from eight to 15% a year in a highly competitive market. There aren't too many opportunities to do that. In fact, there aren't any opportunities to do that. And if you're a CEO and your other face of the brand of the company and it comes from you and you're answering people's questions and handling people's problems, that goes a long way in building your brand there. If it isn't that, what else would you be doing? I could sit there and run the warehouse, but there are people that run the warehouse better than me. I could sit on Ops, the people that run operations better than me. It's important for a CEO to understand the metrics of success in the company, but terms of really the overall of really the fundamentals of a P&L we have revenues, we have expenses. If you raise one and lower the other one, that's what we're paid to do. And this is a unique opportunity to do it. Now, do you have to do it to my extreme? No, clearly not. I got involved 12 years ago but if you were to do a post or two a week and maybe handle a couple of dicey problems and show that you have kind of deep seated knowledge of the industry. Especially if you're selling services, which many people do and you show that you handled that problem, a person with that problem is probably going to give you due consideration. Right. That's the way it works. Kathleen: It's very interesting that you brought up the thing about personal brand because that's something that I've been giving a lot of thought to lately. There are so many companies creating content now. You were fortunate or had the incredible foresight to start doing this very early when this wasn't as ubiquitous. I just went to HubSpot's Inbound event there were 26,000 people there who are all drinking the Kool-Aid of content marketing. And you look at crowds like that and you think, wow, all these people are bought in. It's getting harder to stand out and I really believe that one very effective way to stand out is through personal branding. Because anybody can kind of copy generic content, but you can't copy a personal brand that is inherently individual. So I'm curious in your experience for you personally, aside from the business results, what have you experienced as you've put your personal brand behind the content? Like has that resulted in anything for you? Steve: First of all let's not give me so much credit. I ran out of money. I didn't have a choice. Most good content marketers will tell you during the recession, we all ran out at doe. That's why- Kathleen: I owned a business in the recession. And I can definitely second that. That's why I started blogging too. I was like, I have all this time and no money. I'll write. Steve: Exactly. I could've just as easily destroyed a 90 year old company, which I was very close to doing. That's it I'm not really interested in my own personal brand. Really having gone through the recession as both of us have, it's more important for the company to have a strong balance sheet than it is for me to build a personal brand. And personal branding is, brands are like sponges. They can't they get everything, they keep everything that's good and bad about the brand. And the fact that my personal brand, your personal brand impact Yale, we don't know own the brands anyway. It's what's being said out there that really shapes what the brand is. Kathleen: Don't they say that your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room? Steve: Your brand is what other people say. We've lost control of our brand when the Internet became popular. So, really personal branding... I think people appreciate I still answer most of the questions on the blog and I think people appreciate the fact that it's not me I'm not building my personal brand. I think a lot of people need help they're not getting in other places. And what I do is just, I give them the what to do and how to do it. And it's not about building a personal brand at all. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: So interesting. I love your story and it's unbelievable what you guys have done. We don't have too much more time, so I want to make sure before we wrap up that I asked you the two questions I ask all of my guests. The first one being we're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you know, who you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? Steve: Obviously great adversary Marcus Sheridan his killing it. I think back to our first conversation, there were two thoughts and went through my head as A. I need to do this B. I want him to eat his words. And you know the funny thing is it's like I want it to be better than him. But it never worked out that way because he was on other things it's almost like you go into the battlefield and you get a note from guys saying. "Hey, the land is yours and by the way I love what you're doing and all the rest of it, but I'm busy taking over France or whatever." His journey into his personal brand of videos is really compelling and I think his role with the pool company. I think they do a great job. The person that I liked the most in this space is a Crystal Cornea and what she did at Block Imaging I thought was fantastic. She made buying refurbs cool. She made people in that company feel cool writing about it. For me, I tell people it's good to do because it's good for your personal brand that I shouldn't control your brand. But she made it cool to do that. I've kind of lost touch with Block and what they've done since but I know she's left and she works as a consultant for other people, but I really love the way she goes about it. She's very inclusive and she did a great job with Block. Kathleen: Yeah, she's really impressive and you know, Marcus is, you're right. I interviewed him I think he was my first episode of this year. And the thing that I love about Marcus and you totally hit the nail on the head. He's constantly evolving. And the reason to me is that he's such a student of human nature, which is what makes him great at content marketing. He is not a marketer. He is a student of human nature. And so that is what led him to realize that, hey, we just have to answer people's questions. Right. This isn't super scientific it's almost once you tell somebody they sh they're like, Duh. But it took somebody who wasn't a marketer to figure it out. And somebody who's a keen observer of people. And that's the same thing that he's doing with video. He's a very keen observer of people and how they interact and communicate and so it makes them incredibly successful. Steve: Oh yeah. I think I the fundamentals to content marketing is the same fundamentals of everything else is. A. Do know what you're doing? B. Can you communicate it? And that'll come if you know what you're doing and C. And this is the really important part, this is like the C-level stuff is, are you executed once you've said that? And those three, if you put those three together, you have some special. Kathleen: And I always say also, can you get out of your own way? Because often marketers are their own worst enemies and they take their human hat off and put their marketing hat on and they write like robots and it's just, it's interesting. Steve: So they write and a lot more people are starting to write for search engines and that's troubling too. And they can't basically answer the question. There's so many people that... Everyone talks about tips, hacks, it's got to be 2000 words now or whatever it is. But the person that answers the question that best will get ranked because Google's not stupid they'll give the best experience wins. And if you can answer the question on a 1,000 words and is more compelling than the person writing 2000 words and you'll win. Kathleen: Right. The only correct answer to how long does an article need to be is as long as is required to answer the question. Second question is, the world of digital marketing is changing really quickly. And obviously your a CEO, you're not wearing the marketing hat in the company, but you're somebody who is keenly aware of marketing. How do you stay up to date and make sure that you're not falling behind the times with marketing? Steve: That's a great question now that I'm in Boston now I've commuted to stores. I actually have a commute. So I podcast a lot and there's some good marketing podcast. Patel has a very good one, Tony Robbins has a good one, some of the paid search guys have good ones. There's five or six, I'll listen to I'll read blog post and then I'll go to some conferences. Impact has become important over the last couple of years.Certainly HubSpot, we've been going to HubSpot they used to have it at the, at the Hilton hotel and [Copley 00:37:51] two rooms. When I was there initially I think it was 400 people in two tracks. And RF, which is the Retail Foundation in January they put a good one in New York, such marketing conferences and other one I'll go to like four or five conferences a year. If there's a good class I'll do that, Linkedin learning is apart, Social Media Examiner, they have to get some good stuff too. So it's a constant because everything changes and you want to be on top of that certainly. Kathleen: It Can be very tough to keep up with but I do think it's a matter of picking your five or six sources that you really love and just sticking with those and you've got anything else on top of it. That's gravy. Steve: The one thing is it's you can only be especially if you're a small team and I think this is geared more to a small business maybe, but you've got a small team or if you're a single person, like me and Pat were initially. You can only be very good in it one or two aspects. You can't be great at blogging, great at Instagram, great at Pinterest, great at Google ads. You can't be great at like there are 10 things that you can be really great in marketing that can move the needle, but pick one or two. That A. Figured out where customers are and you learned Google analytics for that. And two figure out what your passions are. If your passions with photography, like I'm not, Instagram would be a good one for you, Pinterest would be a good one for you. Wherever you think you can really dominate a certain aspect, rather be just mediocre at everything. You do not need to everything you needed to one or two things really, really well. Kathleen: Right. That's the old Jack of all trades, master of none problem. Right? Steve: Very true. How to connect with Steve Kathleen: This has been so great if somebody wants to learn more about Yale Appliance or connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Steve: I don't really know. Kathleen: Visit your website I would assume, right? Steve: Yeah. I'm on Twitter I guess like everybody else. I've got 3000 followers. I have no idea who they are. Certainly LinkedIn, my email address, you can certainly give steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com. This community it's been really good to me and I'm happy to really answer any questions that anybody has. About marketing or inbound marketing or anything else. So email, Linkedin. My name is Steve Sheinkopf obviously, Twitter that type of stuff. I'll get back to you eventually. Kathleen: Great. Well, I will put the links to all those things in the short notes. And of course you already said that you answer all the questions on the blog. So I would think that people could go there and if they have questions about appliances, they know who to ask. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you learnt something new, or you liked what you heard, of course, please leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's how we get funds. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks Steve. Steve: Alright. Thank you Kathleen.

Boom, what's going on, everyone? Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio.   I am excited for this episode. Well, to be honest, I'm actually freaked out. This is my 2019 goal.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five 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, so every single year I do this, and it's the scariest thing I do every single year. This is my fifth year in a row of doing this.   If you wanna see the past goals I've made year by year, you actually can find them on the youtube channel. You go to salesfunnelradio.tv,  and it'll take you to the actual youtube channel. If you want to check it out there - you can see the playlist of my previous years' goals.   Well, every single year I do this. And I remember the first time I ever did this. I was in this place of desperation. I was going into the army. In fact, you can see I have a shaved head. There's almost no fat on my body for some of those videos in there.   I remember sitting back and just thinking, “I'm tired.” guys. I'm tired of not having what I wanna have. I need to start doing things that are more drastic. And that's kind of what I was going through in my head at that time.   So I grabbed my computer, and I literally had traded funnels for the computer I was using. Actually no, not at that time. I don't even know that I really knew what a funnel was when I made that first video.   When I think back about it. I was taking a lot of traffic courses. Yeah, okay, that's what it was! Wait a second, so at the time what was going on, I was probably at business try, let's see, that was around number eight or nine, maybe ten.   I was a traffic driver for Paul Mitchell.  I’d had my first thousand dollar day, and it blew my mind. I was like "Holy Crap!" I was working with another guy at the time, we split the check, but still, $500 in a single day for me, I had never done that. And I was super blown away, guys. That was nuts. Absolutely insane for me.   We were living on a grand a month, basically, I believe. Something like that, anyways. It was hardly any money. And I was tired of it.   We’d been married for three years by that time and I was sick of being poor.   You can actually hear me in the very first thing say that: "I'm tired of being poor. "I'm tired of not having the things I'd like to have. "I'm tired of not having a lifestyle."   And honestly the biggest internal reason? I was tired of feeling like I couldn't provide for my family. I was sick of all of it.   I was like, I need to start doing bigger things. I need to start doing big, drastic things in my life that are the big disruptive activities that literally catapult me to new levels.   So the new goal that I made, the huge big goal that I made that very first video, five years ago, again you can see it, and you can see the progression year by year, which is crazy. I never thought I was starting a thing by doing this. But you can see, the big goal, I wanted to just do an extra thousand dollars a month.   I was like, “If I could just do,” and I didn't know how. I was like , “If I could just do a thousand dollars a month that would radically transform our lives.”   ...I mean, we would eat a little bit better. We would eat more. We could actually eat in general. I was just sick of it. I gotta be honest with you guys.   Looking back on what's happened in the last five years, first of all, is ridiculous. I didn't really figure out the game for the first two years doing these videos.   Then two years ago I was like, “Oh snap, the pattern's everywhere”... and then this last year, I decided to actually test the pattern, and I left my job. Scary, scary, scary stuff.   But when I think about it and the things that have propelled me, I actually wrote this on my window. It says Play Angry. I'm not an angry guy, but when I remember back to what life was like before I started doing this stuff…   I worked my face off, guys. I worked so freaking hard. I know the reason why stuff has happened really well in the last, especially two years. It's 'cause I worked really freakin' hard.   I only took two days for Christmas, and that's not necessarily a badge of honor. I actually wanna change that, and that's part of what I want to talk about for my goal for this upcoming year, but I work hard. I work really hard. I just get after it.   Nine times out of ten, I have no idea what the plan totally is. I'm just taking action. I'm just doing stuff.   So as I look back at the things that have really kept me moving forward, like, “Yes, there's this strategy, that strategy... Remember to do this before that...” That's great, and it's helpful.   But 80% of it is just me remembering the crap that I was going through and what life was like without having known or doing the things that I'm doing now - which sucked. I mean, “Oh my gosh, life was hard.”   ...So I'm excited for this. I'm not gonna lie, I'm actually nervous about this. I hate posting these videos. It's one of the reasons I do it: I hate it. It freaks me out. I don't want to tell you all my goal.   I don't wanna account for every previous year every single January. I hate New Year's resolutions, I think they're stupid. Why am I gonna do that once a year?   At the end of every single month I think through the goal, what I'm doing next month, I make sure that all the things and activities I'm doing are heading me to that target more closely. I'm not doing that once a year, that's stupid. So, anyway, I guess an effort for me to accept a little more of that resolution thing is to do this.   If you guys have never seen me do one of these episodes, or declare my goal publicly - what I do is I account for the last year.   It's not to throw mud in anyone's face. It literally is so you can go back and watch:   Year #1: Here’s Stephen when he had no money and was completely broke.   Year #2:  Still broke. He still hasn’t figured it out.   Year #3: Still broke, but it’s a lot more breakeven.   Year #4: Wow, lotta cash coming. Oh, my gosh.   Year #5: Stephen left his job... Holy smokes, why? What did he learn?   I'm trying to be super freakishly transparent in a way that’s not that popular anymore. It's not me saying, "Woe is me. Look how weak and vulnerable I am." No, no, no, no. Not at all. That’s NOT the point.   I'm trying to do is document everything I'm doing on the way so that you can see my journey.   Being broke was one of the most painful things I've ever been through in my life. And it almost had nothing to do with the money. It had everything to do with my feelings of inability. It wrecked my brain, guys.   It sucked, I don't want to feel like that. That's something that I'm really afraid of. I'm open to talk about that...   So I worked my face off, and after applying a few of these patterns, things really started to work. And then things really started working.   Anyway, so at the beginning of this I always go through and account for last year, and then tell you what my goal is going to be this next year, fiscally.   There's really only two, maybe three goals that I ever set. EVER. Anyway, so I'm gonna go through the fiscal goal for this upcoming year, and then my plan to get it. Which I'm really pumped about.   There's something that I, this episode is a little bit different than the previous ones that I've done where I just kind of say the goal. I want to tell you what I'm trying to do and... there's a gap, guys. There's a hole…   Literally two days ago, I realized that it was starting to appear in me. And I think I know how to fix it, but I'm freaked out about this one area, and I'm gonna solve it. It's just been really challenging.   So anyways, I'm excited about this though…   'Kay, so here it is, okay?   # January 1st, 2018, I left my job. And just to be clear, I had NO team. I had NO additional revenue at all. I had absolutely zero. I didn't have a product. I wasn't running any funnels, I didn't have a script.   Guys, I left with nothing.   I'm actually shocked how much hate mail I got by leaving ClickFunnels. Which is stupid, by the way. That's my choice, no one else's.   But when I left ClickFunnels, the reason I did it was because I had been coaching so many people in the Two Comma Club coaching program at ClickFunnels, that I started seeing these patterns of what was making somebody successful and what wasn't.   There were these holes and these gaps. And I was learning how to do is fill in those holes. Regardless of the product, the price point, or the industry that anyone was in, I was able to go through and figure out, "oh my gosh, this is how you fix it!"   I’d create my own framework and drop it in front of them, and BOOM!   I helped create a lot of millionaires in that program. Literally. A lot of hundred-thousandaires, which is still really good, and tons of people made money for the first time in their life on the internet.   I started getting better and better, and better, and better, better.   I'd already been doing the Two Comma Club coaching program for over a year at least, probably almost a year and a half by the time I left ClickFunnels.   So there were two reasons why I left ClickFunnels:   Number one:  I just knew in my bones I'm an entrepreneur. I just know that, and I'm trying to be more true to myself. I'm trying to find me. And I know that I'm an entrepreneur.   So the longer I stayed at ClickFunnels, regardless of how amazing it is over there and regardless of how dumb it looked for me to leave, and how cushy and amazing and plush and secure that job was... it wasn't me. So I left.   I had to grow some balls and just do it.   So number one, I had to get out of there.   That was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life. Okay, literally. And it still hurts. It’s hard that I only live like three miles away from ClickFunnels, 'Cause I just wanna go in sometimes, and be like "What's up? You all are awesome! Hey, can I just hang out for a bit?"   I tried really hard not to be that kid that just won't leave. You know what I mean?   So I just didn't show up for the first three months. 'Cause I didn't want to be like "What's up guys, how you doing? Hey, remember I said I left, but I'm not leaving. How are ya?  So I left... and really made sure I left.   Number Two: The second reason was that I’d become very confident in the frameworks I was producing. When I was coaching, I knew that if people just did it, they would make money - eventually.   There might be some in-between things that they need to fix, which usually had to do with their personality and NOT my framework. But eventually, it would work.   A lot of good marketers do this, guys. You gotta think about this, right? I started asking myself the question…   I remember this was June 2017, and I started asking myself the question: “What is something huge, like really big, like the biggest thing I can think to have to go through to prove that I know this stuff?”   Straight up, I don't know, what's the word, prowess.  I was trying to, not as a "look at me," but it was to prove to myself and others that I wasn't just building funnels in the corner.   I knew there was more. I knew there was more. And I knew that my frameworks worked. So I started asking myself the question: “What's something that's so big that it would be hard for people to not notice me?” You know what I mean?   Again, it's not like an out of a "look at me!" mentality. But it represented so much - because of all the crap I had gone through. And all the stuff that had gone on in my life up until that point.   I was like, “I need a crucible.”There needs to be this big event. What's the craziest thing I could fathom going through to prove to myself that I could do it? Almost like going full circle and healing parts of me that weren't healed about what I had gone through. You know what I mean?   ...And then especially, “How can I prove to myself that what I am teaching?” I know it works!   If I go to the gym and I'm like "Hey, I wanna lose weight," I will never hire someone who's overweight, right? I don't want to be a hypocrite and be the guy who's teaching stuff that he hasn't done…   And that really got in my head, and it started giving me a complex. I knew that what I was teaching worked because I was seeing other people do it. But I hadn't done it. And to me that's freaking blasphemy. It's like, it's so stupid.   I'm never gonna hire somebody who's broke to teach me how to make money...   I follow the principle of the guy who has the biggest cheese. Sausage number one man. Right, who's the guy, who's the lady, who's the person out there who has done it so much, right, and they can teach it so well because they are speaking from experience?   I wanted to be that kind of person. I wanted to prove that my frameworks work.   So I thought to myself, "Self, what if you left your job with no assets, no income, no funnel?”  Like, this is freaking extreme! I know it is. And I'm not recommending that anybody do that.   For me, and where I was, that was the right answer.  I was like "That's insane." And I went back and forth for a few months like, "Are you kidding? That's stupid, dude! Why would you do that? You're gonna leave?" And like, “Yeah, but it's the ultimate, it does work."   How do I know?   Because I jumped out of a moving airplane with no parachute and built it on the way down.   Again, scary, risky, risky like crazy. That's risky.   And so anyways, I'm super proud. I obviously wish I had made more this year. Who doesn't wish that? But I'm really proud that it worked. And that I knew the frameworks and the models and the formulas to make the game work so well that I could do that.   And again, not like a beat on the chest, “Look how great I am!” But you see what I'm saying?   It was really important for me to prove to myself that I could do that, and for whatever reason, me and my personal development and growth needed that.   So anyways, what I'm gonna do really fast is I wanna walk through what happened last year,  what I'm gonna do next year, and how I'm gonna do it.   ...And then there's something that's kind of freaking me out a little bit and I'm trying to figure out how to solve it. And I think I have the answer but I'm not quite sure.   Anyways, let me pull in my whiteboard here. My trusty whiteboard. Okay, check this out. Here it is. Let me just make sure there's no glare. Let me look over here at the camera. Alright…   So last year from January 1st to December 29th at 9pm mountain time... (I held off a little bit to record this episode 'cause I was trying to flet December end out)... I did $850,000. Well, $850,353, and 87 cents - which is cool.   Last year, if you watched the video for 2018's goal, I was like "I'm gonna go make a million bucks." And like, I saw that and I was like, “Crap!” You know. I was like, “Yeah! No!” Like, “Yes! No!” Superbad. I was like, “NO!” … because of THAT.   So I'm super stoked, I did 850 grand out of the gate:   No team No funnel No product No system   The only thing I had been doing was publishing = big lesson in that.   I had done 100 episodes of Sales Funnel Radio at the exact date that I left ClickFunnels, I believe. The show hadn't even done 100,000 downloads when I left ClickFunnels; we're now at 250,000 downloads of Sales Funnel Radio. Last I checked, but it's growing by almost 2,000 a day now. Which is awesome. So that's cool, right? That's me accounting, being totally open and really vulnerable.   When I left ClickFunnels, I followed my own formula and made 200 grand really fast out of the gate. And then, I got freaked out, guys.   January and February what happened was, there was a lot of cash that came in. And I’d built funnels for revenue, but I hadn't built systems for a business. So I was the business. And it was hell, I'm not gonna lie, guys. It was so nuts.   March came around, which was Funnel Hacking Live, and I turned off pretty much every revenue stream because I was like, "Shut it down, shut it down! I need to go set up this stuff.  I gotta go put these things together.”   So I started putting together all these systems and all this stuff like, support. And then Coulton moved down. And I started putting all these people together because I couldn't handle the speed that the revenue was coming in.   I couldn't fulfill fast enough which is scary because the people were like "Oh, it's a scam!" And “It's not a scam, I just can't keep up.”   Trey Lewellen went through a similar thing when he sold that many flashlights. You know what I mean? Crazy, crazy, crazy.   So I slowed everything down…  and a lot of March and April was a lot of more biz building which was exciting, but it freaked me out, guys. I was trying to keep it cool but man, I was so scared because there wasn't a lot of revenue coming in.   At the beginning where it was like 40, 50, 60 grand a month, somewhere like that, it was like like 10, 15 grand, and I was like "We're gonna die in a gutter. Maybe this was a stupid mistake!" You know, "What have I done?"   So, I was so scared, but I knew the process and I just kept true to it and kept blocking out the noise. And when I turned everything back on, we were back up to 50 grand, 70 grand, and then, five months in a row of hundred, hundred, hundred.  I was like, “Holy Crap!”   Last month in December we didn't hit the hundred. It's funny man, people go on holidays and everything just kind of shut down. It was totally a slow season, I didn't know that. But I'm so stoked though.   And then what also happened, is we were pulling in so much money there that again, I had to stop things and slow things down.   A lot of December for me has been business building and systems building. So I've been building these things that’ll make it so that I can move faster in 2019.   So here's the sting, guys. Here's the sting…   I did 850 grand, collected. Check this out. Man, I was so pissed off when I saw this.   I was just quickly running through my accounts receivable,and we're getting another big chunk of cash again either today or tomorrow. Okay.   Check this out:   Collected = $850,000. To Collect, (meaning the business is there, we're just collecting it still) = $156,000   Man, that's a million dollars!   That's six grand over a million bucks. No, no, no no no!   I was so mad when I saw that. I ran downstairs to my wife and I was like "Look,  that + that  = that’s over a million! What! Like why didn’t I set up more systems?”   Anyway, it was super cool, BUT like, a massive slap in the face.   When I tell you guys the market will always tell you what to do - it just did! I was like "No!" The market's saying: “Stephen, you don't have the systems in place yet to collect enough of the money upfront in some areas of things that you provide.”   There's some really high-end stuff that I go and I do. I just get so excited about doing the thing I didn't have everything set up  - which is stupid.   ...but how would I have known unless I looked. Unless I listened to the market. Unless I was willing to fail... you know what I mean?   So was it a failure? “No, but Yeah.”   By the numbers, yeah. Was it really? No.   Did I do something really risky? Yeah. Did it work? Barely. You know what I mean?   So I'm excited guys, I can't describe to you the feeling of accomplishment that I have with this.   If you guys have been following me at all, I mean there's been many, many moments where, I'm not gonna lie, a little man-tear happened, okay. It flexed on the way out so it's still manly, it's cool.   ...But there was a little bit of a tear there and I was like "Man, you're crazy, Stephen. In fact, you killed Stephen. You're Steve now." A lot of you guys are asking me what you can call me; you can call me, whatever....   But anyway, this journey, this year has been of insane growth in many areas. I've learned:   What did work   What didn't work   Where I should tweak stuff   Where I need to go next   I know what to go build next.   ...And I know, because of pain. I couldn't have foreseen some of the things that I need to go fix, which is why I needed to leave ClickFunnels. You see what I'm saying?   I would NOT have known, "Hey look, when you move into this area watch out for this and this and that."   I wanna be the ultimate litmus test for what I'm teaching people.   So, risky? Totally. oh my gosh, yeah, yeah. Not that risky though, because of what I do and what I did. Don't compare yourself to me if you're like "I'm NOT willing to leave my job."  Yeah, then don't. I'm not telling you to, okay? But what I'm so stoked about was, “That would've been a million dollars. No! Dang it!”   ...Because I, technically, have two businesses, I didn't get a Two Comma Club award this year for my stuff, but both of them, we got the stuff to make 'em work really well, you know? It's freaking close.   Anyway, so I'm being open with you guys about what happened, and what didn't.   I’m trying to be the ultimate guinea pig on a lot of the stuff and test guru's material out.   And Russell Brunson's is the closest material that I've ever found where it's like ready out of the box, you know? It's not that way for other guru's stuff.   I want to be long-term. I want to have the reputation like that for my material. Not like, "Yeah, when you go to that person's stuff, it's great and it's really helpful, but you still need X, Y, and Z to actually use it."   I don't want that. I don't want that. That's why I made OfferMind and I made that event because it was me going through and showing the framework.   I have a very framework, systems-focused brain. And I love going in and pulling those things out and showing:   Look, this is how I did it   This is when it worked   This is when it didn't work.   ...and being that kind of person.   So anyways, going forward, my goal for next year - which is scaring the crap out of me. Which solves half my problem I'm gonna get to in just a moment here. My goal for next year, though?   If you watch the pattern, a lot of what I've done for these goals is the first year was $1,000 a month. Then it was $3,000 a month. Then I think is was $5,000 and then $10,000.   This last year was a million bucks - which is $82,000 a month.   This year, though…   Man, I'm telling you guys, I don't totally know all of the path on how to get there, but I see enough of it that I think it's gonna work. It’s scaring me to death. Ready? Here we go. You can see that, right? Yeah, okay. Four million dollars.   I've tripled the goal almost every time.   And that's where I've gone from one to three, you know. Then this to that. Four million, though, that's the goal! Gosh dang it, that's really freaky to say to you guys.   I know the systems that are gonna be in place. I gotta have more of them. A lot of what I need to set up in order to actually make that happen.   I gotta have a better phone sales system. I'm noticing that that's a big issue of mine. I don't have that many closers. And there's not much of a system and a script set up for that stuff.   This year for me has been a lot about the methodology I use and I teach that you need to enter into and design a new ocean with a single product.   Once the idea has been proven then you go and you can develop all the things inside of the value ladder to go explode it and expand it and actually plant your stake there.   Okay, so for this year…   I’ve  accidentally kind of become the category king in two different categories. One of them was purposeful; the other was completely accidental.   The business I lead with, my major, major passion, is Offer Creation. Just since OfferMind, collectively, those who attended, they've made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. A lot of money.   I know this stuff works.   It's NOT one person is just killing it, that's a lot of people. And a lot of people who have never made money ever.   I continually get a lot of people that are like, "Man, I made my first 10 grand ever. 10, 30, 30, 30!" And I'm like, "Yeah! What's up?”   Pretty sure you guys made more money collectively than I did - which is awesome and I've very proud about that, actually.   I made more money doing the thing than teaching the thing. That's also very important to me as well. I focused on that a lot of this year.   So what I'm pumped about, you guys, is that I have gone in and I've developed these two businesses.   I have a front end business and I have a back end business:   #1: I teach offers, and I help people create their offers. I build off a lot of 'em, and a lot of people are in need for that. That's one of the major missing loops I was seeing in what I was coaching in the Two Comma Club coaching program.   And so I was like, “I'm gonna go be the offer guy.” And because of Russell Brunson and Myron Golden and Alex Charfen, and a lot of guys that I was being super vulnerable and open with…   They were like "Stephen, dude, you geek out about offers more than anybody we've ever seen in our entire life; go be that guy. There isn't a guy for that. Go be that guy."  I was like, sweet. So I'm the offer guy.   I've proved out the idea into that market.   How did I do that? By OfferMind.   Now that I've got that, I have a product up here. There's actually gonna be a second one up at the top. And then there's a whole bunch of cool front ends.   So on top of all these, proving the idea in front of the market, that's a lot of what this year was about. It's not so much about cashing out. It was about me proving out the systems and the things that I was teaching -  that they work.   If you look at Alex Hormozi, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin. If you look at, a lot of those people that blew up and made 10 million really quick, it's because the year prior, they actually went in and proved out their systems. And then scaled hard with a sales closer team and a phone team, which is what I'm gonna do.   A lot more sales positions, a lot more money up front scenarios, so I don't have this happen again.   The very one at the bottom says: An Assistant. I don't even have an assistant. It's literally two of us that are full time. I have two content teams  and now, we're building an internal funnel-building team. Which is really exciting.   For me to increase my speed, I cannot be the only one building my funnels anymore.   So anyways, guys whatwhat I'm trying to say when I'm teaching you guys right here is like, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that fail at this part of it. This is where they die.   They will remain the solopreneur; they cannot build the team.   They don't know how to scale, they don't know how to put the systems in place. I am excited to crack that code. I will will win at it, and I'm really, really pumped about that.   Now the thing that's freaking me out, just so you guys know: major growth in my life has come from scenarios that I don't know how to solve but walk forward anyway.   I didn't know how to build a funnel the first time I told someone I'd build one. Was it lying? No, because I knew it was possible, and I knew I'd figure it out. So I youtubed like crazy, you guys.   I remember the first time I asked ClickFunnel support how to change background color inside the editor. Okay, seriously, you guys are way further ahead than I was when I started, okay?   I got to the Funnel Hacking Live event the first time with no money. I had to bootstrap my way there. That's a crazy move. That's a big bold move.   I created the original Two Comma Coaching Program and ran the FHAT Event, which is crazy. A lot of successful people came from that event. For me to say yes to that was a scary thing.   I had to replace Russell Brunson on stage for three straight days, That freaked the crap out of me. Yeah, I was excited but I was scared to be totally honest with you.   Leaving my job! WHAT? Okay, that's nuts.   And so what I've noticed is that I suck at willingly manifesting personal growth. I'm not good at it. Almost no one really is. 'Cause when we start feeling pain the natural inclination and all of our justifications say "Back off, Stephen, why you gonna feel that pain?"   What propels me forward, and what I've been trying to figure out is what the next absolutely freaky goal is? What’s the experience?   I have a hard time willing those kind of experiences into my life, anyone does.   Like, basic training. Man, I couldn't get out of that. Right, I couldn't get out of, and I did those things for that reason.   I did door to door sales because it scared the crap out of me, and I knew I'd learn like crazy in the middle of that environment.   I'm trying to find the next environment. You see what I'm saying?   My  goal is four million dollars. I know I'm gonna hit that. It's a goal, it's scary 'cause I've never hit it, but I know I'm going to. I know that this next year I'll probably have at least three Two Comma Club Awards.   ...cause I got a lot of products that are in the hopper and they're all gonna tie together and reference each other, it's gonna be awesome.   BUT the thing that I'm trying to figure out is: How can I architect freaky big things and environments I can't get out of? And I don't know how else to do that except for a big goal that feels freaky to me that I've never done before.   And is it bigger than other people's? No. Some peoples are bigger than mine, I totally get that. But I'm on a journey and a comparison of me versus me. And to me, that scares the crap out of me.   I gotta build crap I've never built. I gotta build stuff I've never done. And I gotta push forward that way.   Anyways, what I'm saying is, the thing that I'm trying to figure out... Guys, this sounds so opposite. Completely opposite than what a rational individual would do.   I did not have an option when I left ClickFunnels, other than to make money work through funnels - because my back was against the wall, and I knew that. And that's one of the reasons I was doing it.   I could learn at a really slow pace by studying others, which is good to do for a while. I could learn at a really slow pace by consuming tons of content, which is really good to do for a while, until you're trying to figure out what you want to do   BUT, then, I don't know another way except burning the boats.I voluntarily try to find ways to put my back against the wall and cut all options out.   For the last five, six years there's been a lot of scenarios like that. Bam, bam, bam.   I'm 30 years old, I don't want there to be too much comfort in what I do. My goal could freak me out, but I know I'm gonna hit it. I know I'm gonna hit it. So, what can I orchestrate in my life to make it where I don't have an option but to move forward?   ...And that's the thing I've been trying to solve and it's really been freaking me out. I don't know how to solve that right yet. Because I don't wanna get comfy.   I'm not saying I'm not gonna go experience and have fun times doing a few things, you know what I mean? I'm gonna enjoy life, and I am a happy guy, but when it comes to personal growth and business and moving forward, frankly, I want to be big. And I know that…   Hopefully you guys know what you want? Don't be apologetic about it.   ...But how can I orchestrate the next ridiculous scenario in my life where I don't have an option? Where I will figure it out, out of desperation.   Which sounds crazy. Almost a masochist, I promise I'm not. But you see what I'm saying?   I have never learned more about myself than in those scenarios. I've never learned to love me more than in those scenarios. I've never learned to fill in the blanks faster, with more aggression, applied aggression, good aggression, right, than in those scenarios.   So like, man, I left the job, right? And everyone talks about that, and okay, done.   I'm trying to figure out what the next freaky thing is? And I can't.   I think there's a combination of some physical aspect, so I've been saying like, “Man, sometime I'm gonna try and choke out Russell Brunson in jiu jitsu.” Which is freaking scary 'cause that dude's like, all-American killer. That's cool, but my back's not against the wall.   There's no scenario yet where my back's against the wall. My back's not against the wall yet for this years goal, which freaks me out.   Most entrepreneurs just glide into the night when they hit some kind of a phase like this and I don't wanna be that way.   That's the real thing. That actually freaks me out more than the four million. I know how to hit that. I know the processes and the systems. I know exactly what I'm building. I'm almost done with my high-ticket thing that I've been building and putting together, and it's so awesome and there's nothing like it, and it comes from this perspective that has been very unique for me - because not many people do the stupid move I did by leaving my job.   Which is ultimately awesome, but you know what I mean?   Anyway, I'm really pumped about it, but I know I'm gonna hit that goal. I know exactly what my products are gonna be in my value ladder. I've got people building that stuff for me now.   My internal funnel-building team that I dream-lined out; I've already approached them, and they already said yes. Now I'm just gonna run through the process of it.   I'm gonna treat it just like I do my content team, so I'm gonna babysit it the first few funnel-builds to really document the system, and then keep moving forward. You know what I mean?   But like besides that, where's my next level of:  "Oh crap Stephen, can you do this” coming from? And that, my friends, has been one of the greatest accellerents to anything that I've done ever.   So I'm really pumped about it, but also scared to death 'cause I don't actually know the answers yet. I'll figure it out, and I'm gonna keep looking for it. It's exciting, exciting stuff. So anyways guys, that's my goal. I collected $850,000   I still have $156,000 too collect   I'm gonna do four million this next year.   Honestly ,I feel like I'll do four million this next year running at the pace that I am, but anyway. I know I think at least we'll do three; four is the stretch. Which again, freaks me out, but I see where to go for it. I'm pumped about it.   Watch how I'm launching my stuff moving forward to watch how I'm doing that. It's a balance between what I'm doing publicly and behind the scenes in my actual company. It's this next piece, though: How can I orchestrate a little bit more fear for me personally?   To be freaked out for the sake of: let's put your back against the wall and see what you're made of, Larsen? You know what I mean?   Anyway, so I'm psyched about this, guys. Thanks so much for sticking with me. It's a little bit of a longer episode, but I just want you to know that's my goal.   I challenge each one of you guys to post your goal publicly.   It’ll freak you out; it usually scares people. And a lot of the audience that is following you, that you might not even know about, even if you don't feel like you have a following, someone's watching you, they'll follow up with you. A lot of you guys did with me. They were like, "Stephen, you gotta hit the goal, man!" I'm like "I know, and I think I'm going to!" And I thought I was, and then I didn't freaking collect on some of it - “Dang it. Dang it man! Gosh!”   Anyway, whatever…   Thanks for following the journey. Appreciate it.   Again:   I challenge all of you guys to go in and post your goal, whether on the comments of this post or somewhere, but get open and real with what you want. Get unapologetic about it, and move forward. Because no one wants what you want more than you do. Stop waiting for permission.   Alright guys, see you later, bye!   Aw, yeah!  Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't even get anyone to opt in, right?   So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins; when they work, when they don't work. If you want access to that members area where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free members account now.  

Why Dave Decided to talk to Julie: Julie Stoian is a digital marketing consultant and tech coach, making her mark on the internet through her popular brand Create Your Laptop Life®. Julie has inspired and equipped thousands of up and coming business owners with the skills and strategies they need to create, build, and grow profitable online businesses. Julie started her journey to entrepreneurship as a blogger and writer, garnering the attention of media outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post with her no-holds-barred approach to social media. After a rocky divorce and unexpected pregnancy in 2014 that left her needing to build a profitable business quickly, Julie transformed her passion and love for internet marketing into the 7-figure business she has today. She's been a head coach and funnelbuilder working with Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels for the last year, and is getting ready to take the role as VP of Marketing and official Clickfunnels partner. Julie has been featured on media outlets like Anderson LIVE, BBC World Have Your Say, and Rachel Ray, as well as numerous business and marketing podcasts and blogs such as Content Academy, Boss Moms, GoDaddy Garage Blog, and Funnel Hacker Radio. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: (4:54) Keeping Your Chief Executive Officer From Becoming Your Chief of Everything Officer (9:20) Freelancers Belong in the Clickfunnels Fleet (12:52) Project Management: Making Time and Money (15:32) THE WAFFLE (20:06) Coaching Your Clients without Strictly Criticizing Them and Their Work (23:15) Your Employees and Their Drive (26:07) Help Your Contractors (30:21) Julie Stoian’s Travel Log Over These Next Few Months Quotable Moments: (8:08) “For me it was more important to be on the team that was going to make the most impact than it was for me to be the captain of my own ship.” (19:02) “That’s the thing with this whole agency thing is you have to think about how to break through as much bottlenecks as you can.” (22:34) “Realize, as the entrepreneur, you may not be hiring people who may not be as  motivated by the same types of things that you are and may not be as driven as you are.” Other Tidbits: Your agency can be as large as small as your scaling allows Get your employees to the point where they identify their work as a CALLING Important Episode Links: Createyourlaptoplife.comJulieStoian.com/podcast FunnelHackingLive.comFunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00         Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward Speaker 2:     00:17         [inaudible]. Everybody. Welcome back to funnel hacker radio. This is going to be one of my funnest podcasts. Uh, you know, my guests, you had the upgrade of hearing from her quite a few different times, but she has a new role and I can't wait to talk all about that. So first and foremost, Julie [inaudible] and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I am so excited to. I, I have coined a new term. Would wired in excitement, excitement level at the Dave Woodward level. Oh, you're too kind too. Kind of honestly. Then that would be the type of excitement I have right now for the opportunity. I want to introduce our newest partner to click funnels, Ms Dot Julie. Yes. I, um, I, I had been waiting for this day, I feel like for my whole life. Speaker 2:     01:06         So I want to make sure people understand what that means is a little background here. When we started clickfunnels four and a half years ago, uh, there was two cofounders, Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson. We then brought on a third co founder, uh, Dylan Jones, who we later bought out. He was helping us primarily on the Ui side. And so todd and Russell Todd being the, uh, the whole tech guy behind the scenes who I don't know how he does what he does. I'm literally fascinated every single day. Anytime we're together, I'm like, todd, I don't get it. And I'm so glad I don't understand your magic because I would screw everything up. Russell, you guys already know because Russell is the marketing genius behind click funnels and a ton of other things. We then have four of the partners myself. I run all the business development opportunities, the top line revenue type of stuff. Speaker 2:     01:52         Uh, our CTO is Ryan Montgomery, helps todd managed a lot of things on his side. We then have a Brinko Peters who works on our side with all of our operations and things, and John Parks. You guys know who runs all of our traffic behind the scenes for the little Julie, has it been a year now? It seems like it's been about a year, a year, and Julie's been behind the scenes literally working magic that you guys can't even. I have still totally spellbound by how you pull off what you pull off. No one gets more done in a day than Julie. I don't know how in the world she gets it done. She's actually helping Russell right now in writing a track two secrets book. She has literally been the brains behind what we're going to roll out here. Actually you guys on this call is as our new waffle and how that's all coming together as far as our internal agency, what that means to you guys and more importantly, how you can actually start doing this kind of stuff in your own business and that Julie has her own multimillion dollar business, which basically are buying to bring her over to click funnels. Speaker 2:     02:53         And we'll talk a little bit about how that's all coming together. In addition to that, uh, Julie is probably the person you will ever meet. In fact, I was just with my family, seen Mary poppins and continue to think of Julie because that's what she's like in our craziness that we have over here. So she's the one who makes all the magic happen and I just wanted to make sure everyone, you guys were listening, understand our gratitude, our appreciation for one of the major things that she's done is allowed Russell to kind of step away from doing all the stuff that is great to get us to where we're at, but won't get us to where we're going. And without Julie, none of this would happen. So Julie, my gratitude to you, my appreciation for you and so excited for 2019. So with all that said, welcome again and I'm so glad that that's all we're going to cover. Speaker 2:     03:41         That's the start. That's the start. You know, it was so funny though, you know, watching, as you know, during the year when we were talking about kind of the org chart of clickfunnels and how Russell was in Russell at this point. Like you should be like seoing, not seoing and cmos and funnel building and copywriting, writing your own emails. It was crazy. It has been crazy. And again, if it wasn't for you stepping in, we'd still be in that same situation. Uh, so actually a little step back to last year about this time is when Steven went to go do his own thing. So Steven Larson was Russell's funnel builder and he and Russell were kind of tag teaming up, doing a lot of the stuff that really kind of got us to where we were for about two years. Russell and Steve were kind of tag teaming that. Speaker 2:     04:32         And as Steven left, it was one of those, it was kind of a, a weird mixed blessing. I love Stephen to death. He's become a dear friend and he's helped us grow, got us to where we were, but it was time for him to go spread his wings to grow his business and what he wanted to do. And so as he left it was then a matter of saying, oh my gosh, what in the world are we going to do? How are we going to prevent Russell from doing all this stuff that steven was doing and bringing in a team that would allow us to scale and we were struggling so much as far as trying to find the right fit you have to understand to. It's to be able to get into Russell's brain is, I don't know, it's more than just a padlock. It's kind of like one of those. Speaker 2:     05:16         It's kind of like the whole Laura Croft tomb raider type of thing where she's changing this little egg thing and it changes a million if it's shaped and there's four different keys and Julie's been able to do that and so Julie's dad had this magical key that's been able to basically work with Russell at a level that is allowed Russell to focus more on helping us grow the business and really taking her genius, which again, Julie's. I take a look at all the magic you've done in your own business. One of the things I was most impressed with was your ability to literally be able to replace yourself and so Julie had her own, again, create your laptop. Lifestyle is one of her create your laptop. Life is one of the businesses that she was doing. Again, a seven figure, two Comma Club, award winning business, crushing it, but she said, you know what guys, I really want to be involved with you guys. Speaker 2:     06:07         I want to find a way of helping you guys get to the next level which was beyond. I mean, again, Julie, I can't thank you enough for that because it was great for us to see how you came in and without expecting anything, just said, let me help and I think that's a huge. One of the main attributes that you carry is this ability of having such just massive passion and caring for other people. Most people just don't have that. Especially when they're running their own multi, multi seven figure business. It's easier to say, you know what? I got this. I'll do my own deal. You were able to say, you know, I'm going to put this on the back burner. I'm actually going to hire other people to replace me. Which really is what, how all this started with Russell because it was at that point where thought, all right, if Julie can do that, her business, how could she help Russell do that in our business? I want to kind of dive in. I've done enough talking. So how do you do all you that you do? Speaker 3:     07:00         Well, you know, it's so funny. As I was getting ready to like talk about this transition. I know a lot of people when I first came onto click funnels, you know, they weren't quite sure why I was doing that because it was like, well you have your own business over here. Like this is obviously not like a monetary monetary thing. And of course you know, there was part of that, but I honestly, I had this analogy of like ships that are like all going in the same direction and headed for the same promise land. And it was the SS click funnels which was like this huge ship, right? And then my little ship was like behind in its wake and we were serving the same customer base and we were both going in the same direction. And I, and my business was really flourishing in the wake of click funnels and I know Russell has talked about how cool that is when a business can like create other businesses. Speaker 3:     07:46         But for me it was like I recognized how much the success of clickfunnels was really. There was so much of that attributed to the success of my business too. And so it was like, it was a no brainer. It was like, of course I want to get on the SS click funnels and help that business succeed because a rising tide lifts all the boats. Right. And so for me, um, it was more important for me to be on the team that was going to make the most impact than it was for me to just be like the captain of my own ship. Do you know what I mean? And so for me, I'd much rather be, you know, like on the team first mate, then captain of my own little Shit, you know, Speaker 2:     08:26         oh the great thing is your little ship was growing at a very fast pace. So it's not like it was this tiny little thing. And that's really for us, when we were able to bring that in and acquire that. So some of the things that you're going to see rolling out is this whole idea as far as create your laptop life and with that there are so many things you guys are going to see happen in 2019. I wish I could go into all of them. One of them is going to be associated with this whole concept of freelancers. Now we just rolled out a funnel Rolodex and we've got a bunch of changes were making to that between now and funnel hacking live, but that's just a small little, tiny team of what freelancers can do. Julie, you've had this magic ability to really help build agencies and to obviously you have your own agency. You've now, I've taught other people how to build their agencies and you've. You've really given the keys to the kingdom to a lot of these freelancers to truly provide them a create your own laptop life. So you don't mind. Could you spend just a few minutes kind of talking about what is a freelancer, how to. How can freelancers fit into the ecosystem of click funnels and what is, why would someone want to do that? Speaker 3:     09:33         Well, so I, I will. I will die on my sword when I say that. If you want to get started in online business, the easiest way to really start is to offer done for you services to start because you don't need a huge following and you're essentially selling time. Right? And so like you don't have to have anything created and so I have helped a lot of more women than men, but men to jump into the online space through the done for you services and you know you could get started with copy with social media or with funnel building and funnel building could actually pay a lot more than some of the other online done for you services. And so it was such an easy a marriage to put those two things together because not only could you make money quickly, not only did you not need a product, but you were helping other business owners make money through funnels and on top of it, you could also get affiliate commissions as you fold. Speaker 3:     10:28         Click funnels and the process, and so as I saw these, you know, a lot of moms would start coming to me, I want to make three to $5,000 a month. I was like, this is how you got to do it. And so that's where I started and then as I grew my agency, I started to teach people how to grow their agency as well, how to hire, how to project manage when you're building funnels and running ads for people as well. And even if you decide someday to not fully scale your agency and you want to go into coaching, consulting course, creation, any other business, you will now have the skillset as that you needed as an agency owner to build any kind of business you want. So it's like at this one, two punch, make money, build the skills at build the foundation for whatever your legacy is going to be. And so that's essentially what create your laptop life is all about, is like build that foundation that no one can take away from you no matter what you decide to do. Speaker 2:     11:21         To me, that's the part I am so excited about because a lot of people are trying to do, again, this is probably gonna be posting the first week or so of, of 2019 and there's so many people out there right now her saying, you know what? I want 2019 to be a unique year for me. I want this to be like the best year ever. And you know, we hear a lot about affiliate marketing and I'm obviously we run a large affiliate program over here, but I think the cool part is this whole idea as far as creature, laptop, life, and the ability to then really control your destiny without having to have a product which so many times people spend literally years building a product that never gets launched. And that's one of the things I was so excited about is this. So first of all, if you guys go check out, create your laptop life.com, uh, Julie's face of that. Speaker 2:     12:09         She's done an amazing job building it. In addition to that, she's a, has an amazing team and I want to kind of talk right now, Julie, if you don't mind about this whole idea as far as project managing, it's been one, again, one of your many, many talents is I don't know how you do all that. You do, especially when it comes to project management. You're managing not only our internal agency, which we'll talk about a few minutes, but also you're managing a Russell's books. Uh, our two Comma Club coaching program. You're one of our coaches. You're managing that, uh, and providing massive content. So if you don't mind, could you help people understand when we start talking about project management, what does that really mean and what is the financial opportunity available to someone who wants to get involved in something like that? Speaker 3:     12:52         Yeah. Well, so project management, it is a, when you can find a good project manager, man, don't let them go. Like it's a unique, it's a unique skill set and there's project management as a service. Like I know people whose entire business, that's all they do is they go in and they do project management and pr and really, you know, I remember when Brandon and pool and came to click funnels and they were doing the CEO slop it stuff really at scale. When we talk about scaling and we talk about like how to, how to make your, you know, double your revenue in 10 x your revenue. We're really talking about managing people because any business, I don't care what kind of business it is, the way to scale is through people and the only way to scale with people is to have project management in place where you can manage the teams that people so that you're all moving in the same direction. Like you know, like the choreographed dances you see at the mall. What are those things called where people all of a sudden bust out into like choreography mobs. Yes. Thank you. Flash mobs. Right? It's like at its very core scaling your business is about learning how to manage people and projects. Right? Like that's it. And I know I know it, you know, that doesn't sound quite as sexy as like 10 x your revenue, but like that's really what it is. And I remember brandon saying I aspirin and I was like, Speaker 3:     14:10         what do you do all day? And he's like, well really what I do is I'm thinking about project initiatives and the people and the project managers that we're going to need a place like because I have to keep building out the team. And I was like, it's so interesting that that's really at scale with what businesses are doing and that's exactly what Russell is doing and that's why I've kind of taken on that marketing role so he can really start to cast that vision and start to create those initiatives, those people, teams that then I can manage to help bring all the initiatives to fruition. Speaker 2:     14:41         I love it. And I've talked a lot about who, not how. I know Russell's done podcast on, I believe you've done a podcast on who, not how. And so there's a lot of resources out there, but if you don't mind, because one of the things we were talking about in our, one of our meetings we have just recently was this whole idea as far as this waffle and there was a ton of fomo associated with the waffle. We were actually at waffle me up a hector owns the company, gave us all these necklaces that had a waffle on it. We then reflect with Ryan with regard to some of the things that he was doing from a Dev standpoint and creating a teams. And I want it, if you don't mind, let's kind of segue from, as a project manager, what does this whole waffle, how does it work in an internal agency and what are the pieces that a person would need a, if they're going to look at project management, what are the pieces they need to add to that waffle? Speaker 3:     15:29         Yeah. Okay. So, um, the idea of the waffles, like it's a square. And so, um, basically if you imagine a square and you think of a funnel building agency, right? We have the people that you would have would be like a funnel builder, a designer, a copywriter, um, maybe a video person and a content person, right? So imagine those five people down that first column. Speaker 3:     15:52         Okay. And those are your core team. Now, as you start to expand out, you need to create a second team and the third team and a fourth team. So you can, as you imagine that waffle, you are essentially creating a second column, a third, a fourth, and you're hiring another funnel builder, copywriter, designer, video content versus the idea is once you have that waffle all filled out at the very top, the very top row is project managers. So whenever a team is working and they need to know what to do, they're going to look up right and they're going to report to their project manager. But in any kind of agency, especially a funnel building one where there is like a skill level involved, they also need to understand how to do it. They need to have someone to report to as to how to design well or how to copy well. Speaker 3:     16:40         And so if you look left on the waffle, right, you go over and you're able to basically ask the head funnel builder, the head designer, the head copywriter, how to make the coffee better. And so instead of an org chart, which is very flat and two dimensional, where there's just one person reporting the reality is that as a project, as a project manager in the agency, let's say Jake who is a designer, he's going to report to me for the, what of the design, but he may report to a head a head designer, he's actually our head designer. But if there were another one, he would report to that person asking about how his design is working and it just creates this three dimensional reality, which is real life, right? Because, um, that's just how agencies work. Speaker 2:     17:25         I love it. So if you could take back, take a step back to last year. As Julie came in, she basically acted as not only a project manager, she was also a content creator. She was also part acting partly in as our funnel building side of things as well. And so as you guys were first starting your business, realize you're going to find yourself, if you were to look at this tic Tac, toe board waffle type of thing, you're going to, your name may be in a whole bunch of different places all over. It was a Julie Board for them for a while there, but the the object now is to start replacing yourself. And so we brought in, Julie brought her in as a part of her click funnels now and one of her main responsibilities here is to replace Russell from the marketing standpoint. So she's now our vp of marketing. Speaker 2:     18:09         She's heading up all of our marketing. We've created our own internal agency, so she's hired a. We now have a yourself who basically is our chief project manager soon we'll replace that as well, but she thought I was going to be training all the other project managers that we bring them in in internal agency. It was all that really was brought in primarily just to build out our own funnels. We really didn't start this with the intention of bringing others on. Now we're actually, and we'll talk about some other stuff we're gonna be doing later, but realized that first column was you were heading up the project management. We had nick, who is our chief funnel builder. Jake is our chief designer. Karen's or chief copywriter. I'm, who am I missing here? Dan is our chief, a videographer, and then Russell and I were sharing the role of chief content creators. Speaker 2:     18:55         He and I were doing that together. Um, in the content creation side. We both became the bottlenecks and that's one of the things when you're looking at this whole agency model to realize you, you've got to try to break through bottlenecks as much as you can. And as we were looking at the scale of this, especially as you start one of the, you run across two different types of bottlenecks. One is what to do and that's as Julie mentioned, again, that's where you would be looking to your project manager. The other thing is how to do it and what if you don't know exactly how and really it's not just how it's at the way in which the owner wants it done. And I know that was probably one of the biggest things and there's a lot of people who can write copy. There's a lot of people who can do design or funnel building, but it has to be done the way that the owner or the project manager wants for that system. Speaker 2:     19:48         And I think that's what you've just done such a great job over the course of this last year, is helping communicate that in a way that, um, how do I say this in a nice. In a way that was kind of your, the kind one of the group here. Uh, I, I definitely am not, that's not one of my skillsets. I'm much more direct, but a, Julia, we were able to do this in a nurturing way. And I think it's real important when you start looking at scaling a business and scaling your company to realize that you've got to, as you're one of the main role is you as a ceo or whatever role you want to put yourself in. Anytime you're managing people, you're also a coach. And Julie, you've done such an amazing job because you have your own coaching program as well and I think because you were used to doing that type of coaching as you came into our team, you nurtured and coach people through that in a way that we go to a very fast paced as do you, but you were able to nurture in a way that brought a lot of congruency as well as a just more of a family friendly type of environment. Speaker 2:     20:54         And again, I think it's an important thing if you don't mind, if you could spend just a few minutes far as teaching people, how do you actually coach someone and help them develop the skill set while still holding people's feet to the fire to get stuff done? Speaker 3:     21:07         Yeah, it's a fine. It's a fine line because I think, you know, I always am. I always remind myself it was something I think, you know, probably I learned in kindergarten this idea of like the compliment sandwich and it's not necessarily like a platitude compliment, but it's like whenever you're about to go disseminate, don't forget to like express your gratitude, your encouragement, whatever it happens to be. So like say something that like shows that you recognize that they're working hard, right? Then provide whatever constructive feedback you need to provide and then wrap up with some sort of encouragement. So be like, Hey, you know, I saw that you were working on this funnel. I know you've been working hard. Thank you for putting in the extra hours. Here are the changes that really needs to be made. Right? And then you could go through and then at the end you can say, you know, thanks. Speaker 3:     21:55         Um, I know that this has been a big project and I really appreciate you acting so quickly or whatever. It's just like validating all as much as you possibly can where you see people attempting to do a good job because people like crave that. And then that way the constructive feedback is always so much easier to handle because they know that you're seeing them. So to me that's like, I mean, it's just like they call it a compliment sandwich was not really a compliment. It's more out of that. It's just, that's always the way I try to coach people whenever possible. Speaker 2:     22:28         I love that analogy and I think it's important for those you guys who are listening realize as the entrepreneur, the people you're hiring, they may not be motivated by the same type of things that you are and they're not going to be as driven as you are. And I know that, uh, in my earlier career it was one of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking I was bringing on a whole bunch of entrepreneurs who are going to be as excited as I was. They were going to stay as late as I was. They were all invested and understand that when you start looking at careers, there's typically three different steps to that. Jobs or positions. And typically a person when they first started working there literally are just looking for a job. It's a paycheck. That's all it is. And your responsibility as the business owner is if you can help paint a picture for a career you're going to find all of a sudden, once, once a person goes from job to career, their mindset changes a ton. Speaker 2:     23:19         And we're starting to see that already as we look at, um, those people who are our head designers, copywriters, all that kind stuff. When they start seeing themselves as a career where they're building out other people, you will see their whole attitude towards their work changes a ton. And then when you can see when a person can go from a career to a calling, life changes completely and understand a calling doesn't need to be a person that they're the CEO or anything else. The janitor can have a calling where they understand that what they do matters. And we just, uh, gave out to all of our click funnels, employees, sweatshirts and sweatpants. And on the back of the sweatshirt bay says what we do matters. Because it really, really does. And I hoping that as you start whoever, as you're listening to this and you're looking to build out a company, you're gonna find, typically you go from a a product to a business and from a business to a company, and as you start really building out a company, you start to having to lay out a career path for those people who you're working with and if you can get from career to calling it, lily is the biggest game changer you're ever going to see in your business. Speaker 2:     24:24         Because now people are connected. They feel vested. You can tie this to culture. You can tie it to a whole bunch of different things, but realize, as Julian mentioned there, that complimentary sandwich type of approach is so critical to people because there's a lot of people who the dollar isn't as important as validation and knowing that the work matters and knowing. So as an entrepreneur, typically you, you're going to be a high d, You're going to have a high monetary drive, but that may not be and most likely isn't gonna be the type of people you're hiring. So you have to realize that you're not going to motivate them the same way as you yourself might be motivated. Speaker 3:     25:01         And I got the understanding, the more that the CEO or, or even even the c suite level, whoever's up at the top can recognize that the ship is moving because of the work these people are doing is just. I mean like Jake. So funny put a meme about facebook of like a designer and it was so funny because you know, Jake, nick, Karen, I know and you know, maybe it comes from the fact that I used to do those roles as well. They work harder than. I mean like they just work so dang hard. It is unbelievable. And they are like actually the ones like birthing whatever asset. Right. And so like recognizing how much skill that takes just I don't know, wherever you can and whether you have an in house team or whether you have contractors, just recognizing their talent and their skill goes such a long way. Such a long way. Speaker 2:     25:58         No, I appreciate you're mentioned as far as recognizing contractors. I think too often that isn't appreciated. I'm sure you've had in your experience, if you don't mind, to kind of talk about when a contractor doesn't feel appreciated, what typically happens and how can you actually show gratitude to a contractor? Speaker 3:     26:17         Yeah. Well it was a big mistake that can happen for contractors. Freelancers is that they can, um, they can be treated like the monkey who just implements and this is partly the fault of the contractor if they haven't positioned themselves as like, Hey, I'm going to strategically help you and I'm not just the implementation montcalm also like the artists trying to help you figure this out. Um, but then from the, from the employer side, understanding that when you bring a contractor, they're not an employee. They are, you are bringing them on in a, in a, in essence to consult and to be the boss of whatever project it is. Right? And so, like sometimes like employers will treat contractors like employees and it just, it just hurts the relationship when recognizing if you're going to go hire a funnel builder, you're essentially saying, you're better at this than I am. I want you to come in and I want you to actually lead the charge on this. Um, you'll find that contractors will perform better if you do, you know, if you, if you, if you see it that way rather than just like the monkey who's just gonna like do the dirty jobs that you don't want to do. Speaker 2:     27:22         No, I love that. So how do you, how do you work best with a contractor in that role and help them feel connected and have some ownership to what they're doing without having to give them actual ownership of the project they're working on? Speaker 3:     27:35         Yeah. Well, I think the very first question you have to ask yourself is, is this really a contractor job or am I trying to fill a contractor, an employee position with a contractor? Because I will, I will gander a guess that a lot of people who are scaling their business need to start building an in house agency like clickfunnels does. Um, and they really need people who are on the team. If that's not you, if you're not in that place. And it really is a, you know, a sectioned off projects that a contractor would do. I would just say that the more you can bang out the scope of the better and just remember contractors feed on testimonials so you can do an amazing thing about making the contractor's work better by being willing to offer a testimonial and a case study because for a lot of them that's going to be like, hey, if this goes well, like I will shout it from the rooftops, I'll tell everyone I know that will help them perform better. It will also give them a nonmonetary when that they will need it to make their business grow. Speaker 2:     28:36         Awesome. So kind of a loaded question here and that is, can contractors become good employees? Speaker 3:     28:42         Um, I think in some cases, yes, I think it all boils down to what they're motivated by. If you meet a contractor who is, has a high economic drive, right? Who has a high drive for freedom, they're not going to be a good employee, they just won't. I will tell you that the two employees that I have now originally were contractors. Um, and both of them actually are gonna be coming and working with click funnels as well. They both were not just driven by monetary, they were freelancing because they wanted a laptop life, but they really, really enjoyed, again, being a part of a team, being part of a bigger mission. Certainty matters to both of them. And if you have someone who likes certainty are gonna, like the steady paycheck, they're going to like not having the hustle. Um, and so, so in that case, when I brought them on as employees, they didn't see it as like, they were like, yes, we're ready to be like on your team like that. Um, and so in some cases it works out, but they had both been working for me for about two years before we, before we did that. So we kind of, you know, the honeymoon was over, right? Like we all knew what we were getting into. Speaker 2:     29:54         I, it take off here in a few minutes. I want to kind of wrap up with a couple of things, most importantly, how people can get ahold of you and some of the things that are coming over with youtube click funnels. So you had mentioned as far as we, we have the opportunity of having two amazing people being brought over to the team as we're so great. Your laptop life.com is one of the things. So if you don't mind, tell people what that is and why, why somebody would want to go there and what they're going to get. Speaker 3:     30:20         Yeah. Alright. So, so much is changing but it's going to be amazing. It's going to be so, so create your laptop. Life is basically a membership community for people who want to start service based businesses. So um, I would probably say about 60 to 70 percent of the membership. It's not a thousand people right now. Our funnel building agencies, digital marketer. So if you are interested, that is a great, great community to get hooked in. There's some great content. I go live once a week. I answer your questions and that has been running for three years and it is amazing community, so that is coming over. That will be, I don't know how it's all going to like unfold that I know that it's only going to get better hooked up to the SS click funnels, so that's remaining, um, the second thing that I do, which is going to become an official partner brand click funnels stamp his funnel, gorgeous, which is our premium more feminine, but we also have some funnel handsome in there to a design for heart centered female entrepreneurs who want something that's gorgeous and beautiful. So that's exciting. Um, and then most of my other contact is really going to get worked into the fabric of click funnels. So if you're interested in the two Comma Club x coaching program, um, any of the content that's going to be coming in 2019 is going to be all, all pushed through there. So I will be found in the funnel hacker community. I'm at clickfunnels. That's where the bulk of my content will be going. Speaker 2:     31:50         Starting January first. Awesome. And she'll be speaking at funnel hacking live so you can go on stage. They're also to get a lot more. Julie, I highly recommend you check out her podcast. So let's talk a little about your podcast. So right now we have this podcast. You guys are listening to funnel hacker radio. We have a marketing secrets, which is just russell talking about his own thing. So obviously for those of you listening to this one, I typically bring other people on like a bread Giuliani multiple times a will bring other people into fight outside feedback and content. I do send my own, uh, thoughts and things here. But do we have to help people understand what your podcast is, why they should go there and how they actually get more of your podcast as well? Speaker 3:     32:32         Yeah. So create your laptop life.com when you go to that website. If you just go to forward slash podcast, you'll see my podcast, the, your laptop life podcast is literally about laptop life living. And what that means is when you are working on from home on your laptop, most of the time I'm talking about people who are in the freelance market, um, but people who are building a life and building a business that is the nontraditional business. So I talk a ton about marketing online business. I talked about productivity and some balance stuff because you know, when you're not in a traditional office, there's a lot of things that happen when you're trying to balance that work life balance. So all of that stuff. And a huge dose of funnels and marketing are over overact career, laptop, lifestyle. Speaker 2:     33:19         Alright? So take checkout, create your laptop life.com. Check out her podcast. Uh, you'll see our funnel hacking live. If you don't have your ticket, by all means. I don't know why you haven't bought it yet or not. I can live.com please. Last thing I want is for us to sell out like we always do. And then people are saying, I didn't get my ticket yet to go get your ticket. You don't want to Miss Julie speaking from stage. He's going to be crushing it as always. Uh, Julie, anything else before we wrap things up here? No. You gotta hit out pretty quick. Speaker 3:     33:43         Yeah. No, I'm just, I'm just so excited for this new chapter. I'm excited for what together we can. We can do. I mean the one funnel away challenge was probably the best example I could see of what happens when you put heads together and you put all those skillsets together. You have russell with the strategic marketing genius that he is, um, my skill set which is really systematic teaching I would say. Um, and taking that strategy and then steven who is just totally the funnel preacher is what I call him because he's just going to like kick your butt and when you put those three things together, we saw the power of what happened. And so I'm just excited to be able to do more and more of that and to, to not have to duplicate my efforts in two different ships and to just like bring more value to the funnel Hartford community Speaker 2:     34:37         now. Well, we are so excited to have you as a partner. We're super excited to bring your content, your businesses over to click funnels to really help out, especially those people are getting started in wanting to build an agency, wanting to be a freelancer, a, we're going to tie this into a whole bunch of other things. We've already bought some domains around that. June, we'll be launching all that stuff as well, but 2019 is going to be a crazy, crazy year and we're so excited to started off by announcing a Julie as one of our newest partners and more importantly, as the person behind the scenes making everything happen. So Julie, I can't thank you enough. I'm so excited for 2019 and appreciate all that you always have done and continue to do. Thank you. Speaker 4:     35:15         Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me. We're trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'm more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if the people you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.  

Boom! What's goin' on everyone? It's Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio.   Today I'm gonna teach you guys how I was able to pull off OfferMind so grandly as my very first event.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five 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?   Hey, I'm excited for this episode. I'm excited for today, I'll be honest. So, just know that what I wanted to do, is I had OfferMind happen just very recently. OfferMind was my event that signified me moving into the offer creation category.   No one has become the category king of offer creation. I am trying to make my stand there as being the best and the first in that area as the solution provider for that area. You know what I'm talking about?   So anyways, I'm really really excited about it and all of it. OfferMind has signified a lot.   What this episode right here is not about is the content about OfferMind. What I wanted to do is take a kind of an objective look at how I pulled off OfferMind so grandly as my very first event. Anyways, it'll be fun. It'll be really really cool.   I love events. Events are very special. If you guys think about it, there are seven phases of a funnel - we learned that from the book, Dot Com Secrets.  The seventh phase of a funnel is to change somebody's environment. That's why events are so powerful.   If somebody is agreeing to come to an event - they've gone through the first six phases of a funnel. I'm not gonna go through all those right now, but you can look them up in Dot Com Secrets. The seventh phase of a funnel, the last phase of the funnel, is to change somebody's actual physical environment, and that's why it's so awesome when they show up... but it's also why it's so hard to get them to the event.   So if you're about to throw an event, and you're like, "It is super hard to get people to an event."  Yeah, I totally get it. I completely understand.   I was at this Inner Circle meeting a little while ago. It was probably like six month ago, I think... I dunno, my timetable is totally messed up now...   It was a while ago, and I was at this inner circle meeting, and I learned from some people, that what they've been doing is in some of their products, is giving away a free ticket to their event.   So when you buy the book or the program or whatever, included in that is a ticket to the event. That's clever. Now let me ask you a question though...   Do you think the person who shows up with a free ticket has the same mentality as the person who shows up with a paid ticket? No! Totally different.   In fact, if you give away a thousand free tickets, I would guess maybe 200 would actually show up. That much of a drop-off, okay? Huge drop-off. And a very different mentality; you will attract a broke room, a poor room if you're going to be selling something. Not to offend anybody, just being honest okay.   If you pay to get to an event, what do you think the attendance rate is gonna be? A lot higher.   It's pretty standard inside of events that have a 10% drop-off rate. A 10% no-show rate. They just don't show up. Baffles me. Blows my mind. I have no idea why it's that way, but it is. Even with the high ticket events, paid ticket events, whatever.   When I was running a lot of FHAT events, or Funnel-Hack-Athon Events... Guys, that was a 15000 to 25000 dollar event for people to show up. That is how much they paid, and still, we'd have people who would not show up after paying that much money. Yes, I'm serious. It's like, "Holy crap are you serious?" Yeah, I am. And that's what's interesting about this.   There's always a no-show rate.   There is gonna be a different mentality of person that shows up when you gave away free tickets versus the mentality of a person who showed up with paid tickets.   So I was like, "Well, I need validation to even move forward on this idea. How can I validate throwing my own event?"   I mean I've always wanted to throw my own event. And so what happened was, about four months ago when I knew that Russell was gonna be doing the, (wait, it's November isn't it? November/December by the time you see this episode it will be December? Okay, but right now, recording this, 'cause I match my content, practice what I preach here, right.)   ...It was back in February when Russell first started talking about doing this book. The 30 Day book. When he first started talking about that, and he started reaching out to all the people for it, I was like, "Sweet, this is gonna be so cool." And I went in, and I got to write my chapter - it was really exciting and awesome.   What was cool, is when he wrote this book, when the idea came out for this book, I thought to myself, "That's it. That is how I can fill a room. That's the vehicle that I can give a free ticket away with when I sell it." So that was super exciting.   I knew that OfferMind was gonna be comin' up some time in the future. I didn't know when, but I knew it was there. Most people will stop because they don't see all the details yet. Don't stop... if you've got a sweet idea, just know that clarity will happen as you move, not before you move. Little nugget there, just threw it out.   ...So when I saw Russell go out and say, "You know what, we're gonna give away, for everyone who promotes the book, we're gonna give 100% commissions." He's like, "I'm not gonna take any commissions on that book." I was like, "You're kidding. Oh my gosh, this is actually really really big. Okay, okay, dude, can I interview you on my podcast?"(Russell was on the podcast a little while ago.) "Dude, can I get this, can I do that." Alright?   And I started structuring a campaign around this book. Knowing that when I drop out a free ticket with the book, I'm gonna get more sales because the perceived value of my offer is gonna go through the roof.   I also knew that people were gonna be like, "Oh my gosh," and it was gonna be more talkable.   I sold 375 books, and I was like, "I bet a third of those people will actually show up." And that's about what happened. About 120 RSVP'd, but I think about 100 showed up - which is pretty standard for a free ticket. You know what I mean? There's not as much fear of loss if you don't show up for a free event that you didn't pay for, right?   So what I did, was I piggy-backed the event on Russell's event for the 30 Day book launch. That's how I filled it up so much. I purposefully did it that way.   Now, I also knew that a lot of people were not gonna be able to, or didn't hear about, or just were like, "Hey, I already bought the book through somebody else," I didn't wanna leave out all those other people. So what I did was I built an event funnel.   It was a very fast funnel to go in and sell people who wanted to actually dive on in and join the event. So that's what I did. And it worked really really well. I started selling different areas around it.   I sold a VIP upgrade. A one-on-one session with me afterwards on the third day. But the biggest mistake that people make with throwing events is, they try to make money on the event tickets. I don't take any profit on people just getting to the event.   There's not as much story in this episode, I just want to hit several things right here. I ran a little ask campaign inside the group, The Science of Selling Online, and I asked: "Hey, what question to do you guys have about how I ran OfferMind?" And so I'm answering a lot of your questions here so you guys can see how I did it:     >The event room in the hotel was $7500 I believe. And I was like, "I don't wanna pay for that." I was like, "Holy crap, are you serious?" I was like, "Well, what if I just did a really long one-on-one session with somebody on the third day."   So the event was two days, but there was actually a third day where I left it open for people if they wanted to do one-on-one sessions with me. That's exactly what happened. Somebody came in, and they paid, and I charged almost the exact amount as the room was. "Sweet, alright, somebody else paid for the room."   Please, no one get offended by this. I'm just telling you guys what's going through my head.   I knew it was going to be around $20000 for the AV team to come in. It was significantly more though. It was $35000 for the AV team to come on in. It's why it looked so pro and so amazing.   I was like, "Man, I don't wanna pay for that." And so I was like, "Okay, what if I just push a little bit harder on this book?” And I did, and we sold 375 books, that's the equivalent of $37500. "Well, sweet, okay, that paid for the AV." We have some sessions that paid for the room.   Now, how I pay for swag and to make it awesome, get a photographer there and get someone just filming B roll? All of those things together was probably another 10,000. Alright? So what I did. Uh, it was more than that...   . Anyway, what I did, was I sold a VIP upgrade. Through that VIP upgrade, I think there was like 14,000 dollars that came in through the VIP upgrade. I was like, "Sweet."   You guys get how I did this?   ...I mean, out of pocket, there was a few other expenses, things around that I'm just not remembering off the top of my head, but you have to understand and get resourceful. It doesn't matter what level you're at.   I've watched Russell do this when he's been planning Funnel Hacking live; there will be these big people like Tony Robbins... or "Let's get in this person or that person." He's like, "Crap, seriously, that's how much money they want?" Or, "It costs that much money to do that?" Or, "The event room is this amount of money?" Or, "The swag, holy crap!"   Rather than go, "Well maybe we won't," he says, "How can do that?"   Multiple times I've watched him go through and structure a way to liquidate his cost on that. That's exactly 100% how I pulled off OfferMind. Structurally I'm talking about, how I actually pulled it all together and pulled all those pieces together.   So in total,  I think it was around $65000 to pull it off? Is that about how much it was? $65000 for OfferMind?   - Yeah.   - I was just checking with Colton, my alter ego now.   $65000 to pull off OfferMind. I think, out of my pocket, to actually pull off the event, (about 37000 dollars for selling the book, another $7000 for plus the 15 ish plus the 20), I think I shelled out maybe personally about, maybe like six or seven grand, which guys, in hindsight, really awesome. I wanted sweet swag. I wanted an amazing visually impressive experience.   If step seven of a funnel is a new environment, I cannot just have you walk into a normal room, I must put you in an environment. Does that make sense? You have got to enter a different sphere, a different place. I'm willing to go into the hole over that. You understand? And so I did. Sort of like, structurally, that's how I pulled off the event.   Three days before OfferMind happened, I asked one of the AV guys, which they're freaking amazing by the way...   Valiant was the name of the AV team. They're the same ones that do Funnel Hacking Live. They're the same AV team that does all the Two Comma Club X events - they do everything for Russell. They set up the stage, it's a brilliant, brilliant room, all that stuff. That's why it looked so great.   ... they came to me, and they had this cool pitch. They were like, "We love your light bulb logo. We're thinking, what if we dangle light bulbs upside down from the ceiling in this cool way with your logo floating in the back?" I was like, "That's amazing, yes! Sounds good."   So as far as structurally pulling off the event logistically, that's how it happened. I'm looking for ways to liquidate costs on the cool things rather than sacrifice experience, I ask "How I can afford, how can I create an experience?" So the event was pretty much completely liquidated. Almost. Almost, I did go into the hole a little bit with it. But that was, you know, whatever.   I mean, you guys that came. I mean, if you didn't come, there's no way you did not see someone posting about OfferMind, right? Social proof was all over the place.   I know the psychology of sharing a post on social media. The reason we share is because we think it's funny, or it evokes a lot of emotion, it makes somebody laugh, or it makes somebody feel important.   When I share something funny, I'm doing it because I'm saying I'm funny. When I share something that makes me angry, I'm sharing it because I'm saying it makes me angry. Does that make sense?   We share stuff to say who we are. It actually is a reflection of the essence of the individual sharing. It has less to do with what you're sharing and more about how the share-er feels.   And so knowing that those are the motivations; knowing and understanding that piece of it... What I was trying to do is give people content to share. That's why the room needed to be amazing. That's why all the stuff in there needed to be visually so impressive. You understand?   It was not just about me teaching. It was not just about me practicing stuff about my book that is coming out about it, right? Your Core Offer is gonna be the book and the content itself  from the event, was on a higher level, the stuff that is coming out of the book and I needed to test it in one final phase. I've been testing it for months and months, eight, nine months. And I needed to go in and do that.   But you have to understand, that was what the event was for content-wise. But I needed it to be so visually impressive. It needed to be an experience. When you walked in, I needed those doors to close. You're not allowed inside the event. No one is allowed in there. No one is leaking pictures. (I know a few people did, and I wish they hadn't.) Because what I'm doing is I'm creating anticipation.   Event throwing is what a marketer does, whether online or offline. Part of the event is anticipation for the event. Can you imagine, wow? And I needed to invoke that emotion:   Imagine what it would be like, imagine what the feeling is gonna be, what is gonna be like when I sit there, and I have this major epiphany on why I've not made it work yet. What's it gonna be like. And that game in the person's head is what I'm trying to cause. So that when they're behind closed doors, and the registration table is on the outside of the event, and the doors are closed, but they hear the music...   They hear the music and the feel the ground rumble, and they're seeing some streaming lights coming through, but they can't quite see what's going on. And for the first time, those doors open. There's literally new doors in their life opening. You understand? It's a symbol, okay? It is a symbol.   Event throwing is an art. There is a science behind it, but there is an art piece to it as well.   I am not just having people show up in a room and have me speak at them. In my mind, no matter the content, what I would say, huge, huge, huge opportunity, failure if that was the case. That is not why I threw the event. I threw the event, yes, for the content pieces, I'm gonna be using that in other places in as well; book, other cool stuff that's comin'. But I needed, it's more about the experience of the individual showing up. Is it a symbol of new opportunity in the individual's life.   I am breaking and rebuilding so many beliefs inside the person's head that they are literally doing things that they never thought they could do? They have new capacities for own life that they never thought were possible. That's what I'm trying to do. That's why the event is such a big deal.   All the stuff laid out in perfect matching order on the tables, the swag, the way they walk up, why the doors are closed, the way they open up, the music that's playing; music you guys hear me play on my live funnel builds. There is so much freaking psychology behind it.   It's important that I'm not in the room when you actually open the door. I should not be in the room. I should have somebody else introduce me. And their whole role is to raise the energy level of the room: "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" And then, "Welcome, Mister Stephen Larsen." I need that. It elevates. As I walk up to the stage and the person who is MCing, (which is James Freel, who I'm very thankful for), he got them riled up.   There were some cool videos played. Marley, my amazing video person, made this incredible walk-up video. Lots of credibility stuff. Stuff that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with. You know what I mean? I don't want ever to be like, “Me, Me, Me,” but that's important for the psychology of the event.   When I walk up, I need to make contact with the MC physically -  that's the transfer of authority and power on stage; it's visual in front of the people.   This is important, and I'm not making this up you guys. Go watched 10X Secrets training, he's gonna talk about this. That psychology is massive.   So when I walk up, my role is not to raise the energy of the room. My role is to come in with an already high-level energy room and then I can do my thing - otherwise, I gotta raise the energy of the room. I don't wanna do that role.   There's a lot to throwing the event. There's a lot of psychology behind it. You think I'm joking? Go watch people who actually do this professionally all the time. I've been exposed to a lot of that. That's why I know a lot of this, and I've been doing it - that's why we pulled it off well.   There's orchestration behind your actual event; how it runs, the way it happens.   I know that as the event goes up, I need to build pressure and excitement, and then release it. And then build pressure and excitement higher than last time and then release it. And then build pressure and excitement higher than the other two times and then release it. And then build pressure, and then sail. That's exactly what I did.   So I'm like "Boom, cool nugget drop," release it, let's take a break.   I can tell when people were exhausted mentally or physically. I put caffeine on the tables - Pruvit, that's the emblem I'm in, and you guys all know that -, and a lot of you guys ask me about it. I drink Pruvit every single day, and a lot of you guys know that. You know that about the orange bottle, right? This is the orange bottle. There's always orange juice in there. A lot of you guys comment about that.   What did I do? I need you mentally checked in, I'm gonna drop some stuff that no one ever taught before. So because of that, we made sure to get literally $2000 worth of Pruvit it on the tables, and keep it on the tables. It wasn't so much about me. I'm not trying to sell it; I need their brains checked: “Boosh, are they with me?”   Because I'm gonna go long and I'm gonna go hard and  I'm gonna go late into the evening. I'm gonna over-deliver day one. Over-deliver to the hilt. Blow people's brains. Boosh, brains on the wall, right!   The reason is that I'm doing everything that I can, everything that I can, to orchestrate an experience, not just drop cool content:   >They got caffeine. >I'm givin' them notebooks so they can take notes.   I'm not gonna expect them to come with a pen and a notepad, but I need them to take notes. Mentally, they're checking in when they do that. When they open up that notebook and they start taking notes, they are with me.   When they take a little bit of caffeine, (still one of the best nootropics that's out there), they are with me. They can go further and longer than they normally can physically on their own. More discipline, more focus, more attention than they would ever do on at their own homes. Very fascinating by the way.   Then they go to sleep, or they're spending time with each other in the evening, they're like, "Holy crap, that was freakin' nuts, jeez."   Then the next day, what did you learn, what did you learn, what did you learn? And part of what I'm doing is, as I'm taking breaks, there were those catch box mics, and I'm like, "If you have questions throughout, ask me. I need us to be interactive." It's not just for questions, it's to keep you engaged.   Me throwing around the catch box all over the place, (the microphone that you can throw), it's so that I know what the coolest piece was, and I'm hearing where people's "Wow!" is.  I'm like, "Oh, for me the 'Wow’ was over here. You thought the 'Wow' was over there... okay, cool." And you guys were guiding me more than you realize when I was on stage.   I was extremely prepared, but I'm making sure that I'm spot checking based on your feedback. And when breaks are over, keep that energy high by throwing around the catch box: "What did you learn?"   If I'm just standing on stage in the one spot? Bad. Dumb. Failure. You guys know the photographer that was there, she's like, "You move more than anybody that I've ever seen on stage," and I'm like, "Yeah, it's because I am trying to keep you with me." You should be freakin' exhausted after one 90 minute presentation.   Russell taught me once, he said, one 90 minute presentation is the equivalent of an eight hour work day in energy expenditure. 90 minutes - I don't even know how long I went? I went from 9AM to 9PM. I think I went 12 hours.   There was a one and a half hour lunch break. We took a hour at dinner, I think? Did we take an hour at dinner? Something like that? So I went for eight hours? I was freakin' exhausted you guys. Don't plan on sleeping when you do this kind of stuff. And you should be exhausted. I'm running around the room. I am responsible for the energy tone that is set in the room. I am responsible, not the audience.   When people stand up, and they beg for comments, it's the presenter that's losing, not the audience. I know that. And when I was doing these super high-level FHAT events, stuff like that, they're deep, complex concepts sometimes right? It's not up to them. It's up to me. So I run around like an animal. My feet were freakin' on fire after day one.   A lot of people say, “Stephen how do you do what do?” It hurts! That's the answer man. It hurts.   I was laying down in the hotel room even though I live here - way easier to just stay in the mind-prep zone and stay in state while I'm staying in a room at the hotel that it's happening at - so I can just go right to the room, right back up.   Lunches, go detox, drop the pressure and noise, as Alex Charfen talks about:   Relax for a second, listen to some meditation music, chill the freak out and then go back into state. Whew, bam, right. The break is for me is just as much as it is for the people. Boom. Boom.   There were multiple times when someone would walk up and be like "Can I ask you a question?" and I'd be like, "Sorry, no, because I need to make sure I protect my break. I need to make sure I protect my time.”   So, guys, I wanna walk through how I actually structured my first six-figure day, 'cause that's what happened there, but not on this episode though. I wanna do that on the next one. I just want you know how I threw the event and what was all involved with it.   And we're gettin' swag, and we're getting net 30 terms so I can make sure I can get the actual affiliate cash coming in so it pays for that: "Let's get it over here, so it pays for that. Let's get it over here, so it pays for that." And guys, that's how you throw a sweet amazing event.   You don't have all those things in places. Not usually, most of us, not usually. You don't have all of that stuff in place. Instead it's all about building the pressure just like you would a product. Build the pressure. "Tickets, go, go, go, go, go. We're gonna close, we're gonna close, we're gonna close. Who can pay for what? Who is gonna do what? Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam..."  It has a lot to do with anticipation, energy output, expectations, and experience, and environment. That's how you throw a good event.   I could of stood up and said things that were not actually that prolific, and it would still have been a great event because of the experience that we provided. Does that make sense? It's that big of a deal.   Now, I understand that the content was epic and it'd never been taught anywhere - I've never had a platform to teach all that. It was really really cool.   I've talked about the content that came from the event, and how I write the book slowly, and why the event was thrown and stuff like that... But I'm not talking about the content, I'm talking about the event itself and throwing it.   What I'd like to do in a few episodes from now as well is walk through how I was able to structure a six-figure day. My first one ever. It was almost multi-six, which is really cool. I want to teach you guys how I was able to go do that, and pull that apart as well.   These episodes are a little more in depth, a little more intense than I normally would make them, but a lot of you guys ask, so I thought it would be a cool place to do that.   Somebody asked, "What was the biggest takeaway you had from your first live event?"Thank you, Pat Phelps, appreciate it. What's the first biggest take-away? They are challenging, but Colton and I were even talking, and they're not as challenging as people said that it would be - and I know it's because we had great help. there was a full out team.   There's no way you can do that on your own, by the way. You need people. People were all over the place helping. I so appreciate that. I clearly understand and realize that it's not me, me, me land.   Biggest take-away? Yeah, definitely it was in liquidating costs through other things.   How much did all the AV stuff cost using all the other crew? $35000 for the crew. They are completely worth it. Hire them, they're amazing.   For the total event, 65 grand.   And as far as roles and positions, it was actually Dave Woodward who taught me that one person on your team should be dedicated to you solely for the entire event.   There's a lot of pressure going into your head, so you need to have somebody with you all the time: "I need this. I need water, do you have a protein bar or something like that?" Back and forth.   And understand guys, it was just Colton and me pulling this stuff off - it was so crazy.   A lot of people helped, swooped on in, and I'm just so appreciative. It really really means a lot. As far as setting it up, getting stuff on the table, really, I mean, it was just so so helpful. Colton's wife came in for a bit, Tara, she came in and did a lot. Ryan Jones, Scott, Taylor, you came in. Anyways, I'm trying to give kudos and thanks to where it's deserved. A lot of people involved in the pieces to set-up, stuff like that.   As far as roles though? Anyway.   The biggest thing I learned? You know what, I'm not gonna answer that one now. The biggest thing I learned, I want to talk about it on the way I structured the six-figure day, which will be really really cool.   Anyways, appreciate it guys. Thank you so much. Very excited about this. Hopefully you guys learned more about throwing events. I'm not saying it's gotta be that massive scale all the time.   You're like, "Crap Stephen, I don't have 65 grand to go throw an event." Okay, whatever, fine, but just know, it's more about providing an experience and changing the environment. It is the final phase in the funnel. And because of that, you're gonna lose a lot of people, the six steps on the way to the seventh.   Think about it. Russell's got a freakin' giant list. A lot of people that show up to Funnel Hacking Live are not using ClickFunnels yet. They want to, but still, his event is only 4000 people when there's 70000 active monthly users.   There's 4000 people coming to this next event, 4500, alright. Think about the numbers of that. He has such a huge list. Some people are like, "Stephen, I'm gonna go throw a massive event it'll be real easy."  Events are like the hardest things to fill ever. Way harder than a webinar. Way harder than anything else because they gotta go set-up:   >Who's the babysitter? >What are my flights? >What are my hotels? >Can I get off time for work? >Can I get off time for this?   ...blah blah blah... there is so much stuff.   Events like that appeal to hot audiences -  when you have a very hot audience who are in the seventh phase of the funnel, so it's a small group. A very small group.   I'm excited for the next OfferMind - there certainly will be one. Probably, it's gonna be a yearly event.   Next year I'm actually already bringing in some really cool speakers as well. I can't tell you who, but... So anyways, If you guys want a ticket though, we do have discounted tickets for a little while. The price is definitely going up because it's a sick event. I got some cool people coming to you guys as well.   For this first event, I needed the content to be more about the content. The next event though, I'm actually gonna bring in some more people about, "Here's how you create offers around that industry, that industry, that industry, that industry, and here's the expert on the person that did it, that did it, that did it, that did it." So really cool people comin' on in about specifically offer creation - it'll be really really cool.   So you guys can go to OfferMind.com and go get your ticket. It's exciting. I'm really really pumped for you - really excited for all this stuff, it'll be really cool. So go to OfferMind.com to grab tickets.   If it's off, just put your name on the waiting list. If it's up, then the tickets are there and you can actually dive on in and grab a ticket at the price that it was at now. We're gonna have to raise it a little bit, but anyway, excited. Screaming success, a lot of people involved, and definitely, a Hail Mary. Just tons of fun... but it took Colton and me, I think, a solid three days just to recover physically. Probably a solid week to recover mentally. I was wrecked. You were wrecked, Couton? We were wrecked, man!   I've thrown a lot of events, but there was only one other time in my life I've been that tired, and it was during basic training. Seriously. That was insane man.   But anyways, cool stuff guys. Appreciate it. You're all awesome. I appreciate you guys comin'. I know a lot of you guys wanted to come and there will definitely be others. We'd love to have you at the future ones. See you guys later. Bye.   If you're just starting out, you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies also. That's also good. But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them. Right?   That's also what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.   So I created a special mastermind called an OfferMind to keep you on track with the right offer and more importantly, the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.   Want to come? There's small groups on purpose so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com. Again, that's OfferMind.com.

Alright… So that game was fun, right? Welcome back to Rock M Radio’s Zoukeepers with Pete Scantlebury and David Morrison. They talk about everything we saw Saturday night against Purdue, what they liked, did not like, and a whole lot more. Pete and David also take a brief look ahead at what’s to come with Georgia coming to Columbia on Saturday! Here we go. Episode Breakdown: :15 – 4:53: Intro and what was the main takeaway from Saturday night? 4:54 – 7:30: Tyler Baddie, Larry Rountree, and what to make of this team? 7:31 – 14:10: Is the defense actually what we saw last night? 14:11 – 20:21: Did we learn anything new about Drew Lock last night? 20:22 – 25:17: Is DeMarkus Acy actually the most important person on the Mizzou Defense? AND should the first play from scrimmage for Purdue have been reviewed/The announcers? 25:18 – END: A brief look/preview of Georgia! You can follow the members of Today’s show on Twitter @PeteScantlebury & @DavidCMorrison. Do you like Rock M Radio? Drop us a Review and be sure to subscribe to Rock M Radio on your preferred podcasting platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Erectile Dysfunction and Nutrition, WHAT! Hello, everyone! It’s Michael, Nutritional chef at Doctoronamission. How’s it going today? Yup, as usual, I am taking you out for a walk.So today, this is a PG message today, because we’re going to talk about Erectile Dysfunction and Nutrition. WHAT? I know, I know… What’s that going to do with anything. Guys, if you’re listening, pay attention. Ladies, if you’re listening, pay attention and pass it on to your guy. Okay? But take the kids out of the room, alright? 18 and over type thing here, alright? But like I said PG, no worse than that. This is going to be informative.Let’s talk about Erectile Dysfunction and Nutrition. Recently, I was attending a summit, a world summit on food and health. One of the top subjects was about men’s health and particularly erectile dysfunction. Did you know, which I didn’t know, that Viagra was originally by the company Pfizer started as a pill, a drug for heart disease and high blood pressure? Isn’t that interesting? It wasn’t actually for erectile dysfunction. So they started for high blood pressure and heart disease, why? Because they found out that the properties in it open up the arteries, allow the blood flow and all that kind of great stuff through a drug. So then, they realized, “Well, we can get the blood flow and then the blood pumping. We can get the penis to do what it needs to do for those who are having troubles.” Well, here’s the thing. Understand the fact that through nutrition, if you’re eating a minimum of 80-90% per day of plant-based diet—leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, beans… If you’re eating that stuff over your day and putting in some good fat like coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, avocado, all those good fats, then you’re actually having natural Viagra, natural Cialis, all that pill stuff. Why? Because that is allowing your body, the properties in those foods, those natural foods, is going to allow your body to stay clean and flow. I mean, your body can do that. So, here’s the amazing thing. You know, instead of having the little blue pill, actually, you should have blueberries, red cabbage, things like that. That’s going to actually do what those drugs do, because you know what happens? You’ve got a choice.If you take the drugs, well okay, it opens things up for a little while but understand that that’s not solving the problem because if there’s an erectile dysfunction—and I’m not going to say this is in every case because there’s always exceptions—but if there’s a problem with erectile dysfunction and a guy not being able to make it happen, well that could be an early sign of a heart attack or stroke, or clogged arteries or high blood pressure, something going on because that means the blood for some reason is not pumping down there and that means something else could be going on up here (Heart). Alright? So it’s really something that needs to be looked at. It could be an early sign for something else. Here’s the thing with that. We need to understand what’s going on, there’s basically blood’s not being pumped. Now like I said, not every time but the majority of time the blood is not happening. You’re not getting pumped to the penis where it needs to be. So through nutrition, we can clean that up and that’s what we need to do. Instead of the blue pill, look for the blueberries, look for the red cabbage, look for the red beets, look for the rainbow of colors and get yourself a minimum of 80% of your daily intake on up to 90% of your daily intake is that those clean foods I talked about—nuts, seeds, beans, leafy green vegetables, broccolis, kales, rocket, spinach, cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, all of those great things. That’s going to allow yourself to naturally get your Viagra. Here’s another thing, boys and girls, men and ladies... So if let’s say you are having an anniversary, special occasion, Valentine’s Day, maybe you are on your honeymoon, what I highly suggest if you’ve got a romantic moment coming up, then don’t have a burger and cheesy fries. Don’t have a big steak and a baked potato, and a couple of beers because you know what? That stuff is going to shut down the system, it’s going to clog up the arteries, you’re going to make everything work harder and guess what? That blood flow you need, that time for the romantic encounter, it’s going to be hard for that to happen. Well, actually I shouldn’t say it– it’s hard not going to happen. You know what I’m saying, I know you know what I’m saying.You know, there’s a tip for you ladies and men. If there’s something going on romantically, eat clean food because it’s going to help you out. You’re going to be able to do what you need to do a lot better. So, hey I got to go. I’m out for a walk. We’ll share some more but I just wanted to bring that up about nutrition, erectile dysfunction. If that is happening make sure you check that out. It could be something else going on but do it naturally. Eat well, eat healthy, eat clean, keep your system clean. Alright, This is Michael, nutritional chef at Doctoronamission. We’ll catch up again …Okay, thanks. Bye for now! See you! Thanks for the walk! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Debbie’s Tips, and I’m going to answer a question that just came in today. And it’s not a unique question. I do get asked this question a lot: If I’m not a team, if I do not have a team, I’m a good veteran agent and I’m out there competing against a big team, how do I do that? How do I sell against them? Well, it reminded me of a book Barbara Corcoran has. You can find it, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and the title of the book was, If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons In Your Pigtails. The subtitle was: Use What You’ve Got. Alright? So, let’s think about it. If you have a team, certainly there are some advantages you bring to the table. If you don’t have a team, though, there are some advantages you also bring to the table, and that is that most likely, that seller is going to have your full attention. That when they list the home with you, and they call in tomorrow for something that they need, they’re going to get you. They’re not going to get passed around through a pipeline of team members that don’t know their name. Now, I’m not saying, if you have a team that you shouldn’t, or that your team is bad. Not at all. But, remember, use what you’ve got. So, if I’m selling against a team, first of all, I may know who the team is and I’m not going to trash that team. I’m not going to trash any agent because I don’t think it’s appropriate, and also, it just makes me look bad, and it will make the seller defend whoever they’re interviewing. So, it totally backfires. But I could say something like this. So, let’s say I know that you’re interviewing a team, top team in the area, and I’m not a top team. So, I come in and I’m at that interview, and I say, “You know, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, I know that you mentioned that you were interviewing a team, and that may be the way you choose to go. And I am not a team, and yet, if I may share with you, I do have a team behind me. I have my leadership team at my company, I have the powerful tools, resources, and team members behind me at the brand that I’m affiliated with, and then, I have my powerhouse team of lender, of title, of other support services that will be working with us to close our transaction. So, you see, I do have a powerful team, and yet, when you list with me, you will be working with me as an individual agent. So, you will know that you have my attention. You will always be able to get to me. So, it’s a little bit like the boutique owner who meets you at the door and takes care of you personally. So, while I’m not a team in the traditional sense, I do have a powerful group behind me, and I will give you the white glove attention and five-star service that you deserve.” So, I haven’t trashed the other team, I just pointed out the benefits of that personal and customized attention. And you know what, guys? They get it. In fact, some of our best teams, some of our top teams in the nation, the team leader does not go out on appointments and talk much about the team. And the reason for that is, they are afraid that the seller might feel that they will not get that personal attention. So, just a thought, right? So, use what you’ve got. It’s a great book. You may want to check it out, and good luck out there. And I’ll talk to you soon on the next Debbie’s Tips. Have a good day.

Highlights - Healers of WW1 March Preview - Roundtable with Dr. Edward Lengel, Katherine Akey & Theo mayer | @02:15 Spoils of War from Russia - Mike Shuster | @13:10 Medicine in WW1 - Charles Van Way, George Thompson & Sanders Marble | @18:30 New VSO WW1 support site @ ww1cc.org/veteran | @26:00 African American nurses in WW1 - Dr. Marjorie DesRosier | @27:35 100C/100M project from Raymond WA - Gordon Aleshire | @33:25 Women Physicians in WW1 - Eliza Chin, Keri Kukral & Mollie Marr | @36:50 Speaking WW1 - “Archie” | @43:10 WW1 War Tech - The Browning Machine Gun | @45:05 WWrite Blog on Brest-Litovsk Treaty | @47:10 American War Artist and his curator - Katherine Akey | @48:10----more---- Opening Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - episode #61 - It’s about WW1 THEN - what was happening 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. Today is March 2nd, 2018 and our guests for this week include: Dr. Edward Lengel, Joining Katherine Akey and I in a March preview roundtable. Mike Shuster, from the great war project blog with an update on the fallout from the Russian defeat on the Eastern Front Charles Van Way, George Thompson, and Sanders Marble on Medicine in WW1 and their new website at the Commission Dr. Marjorie DesRosier on the struggle of African American Nurses in WW1 Gordon Aleshire, telling us about the 100 Cities/100 Memorials project in Raymond, Washington Eliza Chin, Keri Kukral and Mollie Marr telling us about the short documentary At Home and Over There: American Women Physicians in World War I Katherine Akey, with a special report on an amazing French WWI photography curator A great lineup -- today -- on WW1 Centennial News -- a weekly podcast brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library and the Starr foundation. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. Welcome to the show. [MUSIC] Preface Last month we did an experiment. Dr. Edward Lengel, Katherine and I sat down together - as we often do in our editorial meetings - and talked about the upcoming month of February. We got great feedback from you so we are going to do it again, here at the top of March! I put a sidecar on our centennial Time Machine so we’d all fit as we roll back 100 years to the war that changed the world! World War One THEN 100 Year Ago This Week [MUSIC TRANSITION] Overview Chat with Ed, Katherine and Theo Ed, Katherine - welcome to early March 1918. [Ed & Katherine make some comment] So guys - I understand that this is our last chance to take a breather - Starting this month, the action gets pretty hot and heavy with the Germans getting ready for their big Spring offensive. [Katherine - you use the term Kaiser Schlagt or Emperor’s Strike. Is that the same thing as the “spring offensive?”] [Ed - this is going to go on for months going forward - can you give us an overview and what the German’s have in mind?] [Quick change of subject - As we get into the military action we keep throwing around all these names of military formation like division, corps, regiment, brigade -  and I’ll wager 80% of our audience has no idea of what all that means - so let’s do an overview - We sent over a Field Army - that’s the big one - the American forces] [Ed - can you break it down for us - sort of big to small and tell us about how many soldiers are in these various formations?] [Force building in Europe - March - April - May - June etc…] [Now that we have a clear idea that there are ARMIES on the ground - As the German offensive starts - Our US General Pershing needs to integrate with the French and the British commands - How does all that lay out?] [Flu begins] That was Dr. Edward Lengel and Katherine Akey as we talked about an overview for the upcoming month of March, 1918 and even looking forward a bit more than that. Next week we will be back to our regular 100-years-ago this week format including our regular feature ‘America Emerges - Military Stories from WWI” [SOUND EFFECT] Great War Project Now on to the Great War project with Mike Shuster - former NPR correspondent and curator for the Great War project Blog…. Mike’s recent   posts have told us of the devastating suffering of the German people in the fatherland, But…. the Kaiser and his Generals are feeling hot and empowered by the total defeat of the Russians on the Eastern front. They think they are going to win this thing! The spoils-of-war from that campaign include vast territorial gains, massive stashes of captured arms, repatriation of huge numbers of soldier all now available to put the big wallop on the French and Brits -  hopefully before the Americans can really join in the fight. So Mike the details of the Russian collapse are really monumental, aren’t they!? [MIKE POST] Mike Shuster from the Great War Project blog. LINK: http://greatwarproject.org/2018/02/25/german-attack-in-west-is-imminent/ [SOUND EFFECT] The Great War Channel The Great War Channel on Youtube is hosted by Indy Neidel. Here is Indy. [Hello WW1 Centennial News Listeners - I’m Indy Neidell, host of the Great War Channel on Youtube. American troops are about to experience their first major battle of the war-- the Kaiserschlacht. Join us every Thursday for a new episode to follow this massive German offensive as it unfolds. Find us on Youtube and follow us on Facebook.] This week’s new videos from the Great War Channel include:   Operation Faustschlag - Germany advances in the east again Amphibious Landing Craft The Czechoslovak Legion’s Odyssey through Russia To see their videos by searching for “the great war” on youtube or following the link in the podcast notes! Link:https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar World War One NOW OK… time to  fast forward into the present with WW1 Centennial News NOW - [SOUND EFFECT] In this section we explore what is happening NOW to commemorate the centennial of the War that changed the world! Commission News Medicine in WW1 Website We have a lot to unpack here so let’s get going with Medicine in WWI! We have three guests with us today who not only know a whole lot about the subject - but they have also bundles that know-how into an amazing new website on the Commission’s server at WW1CC.org/medicine - all lower case. Charles Van Way, a retired Army Colonel, Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri–Kansas City George Thompson, Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and Sanders Marble, the senior historian with the Army Medical Department Center of History and Heritage. These are the three men responsible for this website. And they did a masterful job. It may be one of the most authoritative, in-depth, well illustrated and concise subject sections on our site. Welcome, gentlemen! [greetings] [Gentlemen: At the very top of your website you put a statement.. It reads: A century ago, American Medicine went to war! I love that - it’s very illustrative.] [How did the three of you come together to undertake making with wonderful resource?] [What was the biggest impact of the war on American Medicine? Charles, let’s start with you.] [OK - a round table question - with a one phrase answer - what was the single most important innovation in medicine coming out of this war - ] [Sanders --- George --- Charles----] (talk about how they agree and disagree) [We just had a question come in from a member of our live audience: When influenza cases started to appear on the in-transit troop ships - what kind of isolation units were set up on these overcrowded transports to lower the contagion rate? ] [Quickly about the website - It is really comprehensive - You could do a semester course with it. Charles, could you give us a high level overview of what all is there? Gentlemen - thank you for introducing us to the subject of Medicine in WWI - but most of all - thank you for the huge effort you put into building the scholarly, in-depth and well thought web site at ww1cc.org/medicine! [they respond] [goodbyes] Charles Van Way, George Thompson, and Sanders Marble are the curators of Medicine in WW1, the amazing new resource at ww1cc.org/medicine. Link: www.ww1cc.org/medicine Remembering Veterans New Veterans Landing page To kick off our Remembering Veterans Section this week, let’s talk about VSOs - that stands for Veteran Service Organizations. Organizations like  the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars or VFW, The Daughters of the American Revolution or DAR and a whole lot of others. These organizations are very important partners for the commission with closely aligned goals and missions. Many of you listening today are in fact members of a VSO, but if you are not, let me give you an overview of who they are. First of all - they are amazing - and amazingly dedicated organizations focused on the men and women who served and sacrificed for our nation. And although they have national organizations, for the most part - they are very grassroots by nature with thousands of local posts or chapters all around the country that do all the real hands stuff. For example - When my dad, who was a Marine Corps Pilot in WWII passed away, a local American Legion post provided an honor guard for his funeral - because he served his nation! And they won’t forget one of their own. And I’ll never forget how they honored him - even though he was not a member of their post. VSO’s have been deeply involved in many of our commemoration programs including 100 Cities / 100 Memorials, centennial commemorations with States, and they have been key financial contributors to the national WWI Memorial project in Washington DC. But as I said - it is all about the local level - so for the local posts and chapters -  we just published a special landing page on our website just for them - it’s a landing page with a series of “subject and activity tiles” that make it easy to see how to get involved with the centennial commemoration of the war that changed the world. It’s actually not a bad resource for anyone - at ww1cc.org/veteran all lower case and of course you can always follow the link in the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org/veteran African American Nurses Staying with veterans, wrapping up African American History Month and leading us into Women’s History month, this segment is about the experiences of African American Nurses. Joining us again is Dr. Marjorie DesRosier (de-roh-zuhr), who was on a few weeks ago. Dr. DesRosier is an international nurse historian and independent scholar. She, herself is also a Registered Nurse and former clinical professor from the University of Washington School of Nursing, in Seattle. Welcome back, Dr. DesRosier! [greetings] [The story of African American Nurses in WWI is fascinating - To start, could you tell us about how an African American woman would go about becoming a Nurse in that era? ] [What kinds of resistance did these women encounter?] [How did these women respond? Especially to the Surgeon General’s policies?] [Did it work?] [Where can people learn more about this?] We’ve posted some links in the podcast notes for our listeners - Dr. DesRosier - thank you for coming back on the show to bring us this story. [goodbyes] Dr. DesRosier is an international nurse historian, independent scholar and registered nurse  - Follow the link in the podcast notes to learn more about African American Nurses in WW1 and Dr. DesRosier’s work. link:http://desrosierhistory.com/ http://history.amedd.army.mil/ancwebsite/articles/blackhistory.html http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/african-american/african-americans-in-the-great-war/ http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/4046-honoring-african-american-women-who-served-in-the-army-nurse-corps-in-wwi.html 100 Cities 100 Memorials Moving on to our 100 Cities / 100 Memorials segment about the $200,000 matching grant challenge to rescue and focus on our local WWI memorials. This is a perfect tie-in to the VSO story we told you about earlier -  because this project is being done by --- Veterans of Foreign Wars post 968 in Raymond, Washington. With us tell us about their city and the project is Gordon Aleshire, Adjutant of VFW Post 968. Welcome Gordon! [greetings] [Gordon - you live in a beautiful - and pretty remote part of the country - tells us about Raymond, Pacific County and the areas roll in WWI?] [I have seen the before and “in process” pictures of your memorial. It really needed help. Tell us about how the post decided to take this on.] [Did the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project come along for you before or after you took on the challenge?] [What are your rededication plans?] Gordon - Thank you and post 968 for the great work you are doing in remember our WW1 doughboys! [goodbyes] Link: www.ww1cc.org/100cities Project support link:  https://www.gofundme.com/ww-i-memorial-restoration Gordon Aleshire, is Adjutant of VFW Post 968 in beautiful Raymond Washington Spotlight in the Media As we mentioned - March is Women’s History month - So This week for our Spotlight in the Media -- We’re joined by Eliza Chin, Keri Kukral and Mollie Marr. They are the team that researched and produced a documentary called: At Home and Over There: American Women Physicians in World War I. [greetings] Welcome to you! [Eliza: You are the executive Director of the American Medical Women’s Association - Briefly - what is that? What does the organization represent?] [Keri: You are the founder and CEO of Raw Science TV - again briefly what is that?] [Mollie: you know this was coming - I know you are a student at the Oregon Health & Science University - but you’re also the Executive Chair of the American Medical Women's Association branch at the school - how does that work at a university?] [Alright - So the three of you came together to create this wonderful documentary - AND I have to add - impressive companion online web exhibit - How did this come together? Eliza can you tell us? [Keri-- the film has a 3D component to it. Tell us about that - What was the intent?] [Mollie would you please tell us how you researched the subject - anything particularly surprize you?] [Eliza -- If someone would like to book the film for a local screening or WWI event -- how do they do that?] Thank you all for joining us today and telling us about this great project! [goodbyes] Eliza Chin is Executive Director of the American Medical Women's Association -- Keri Kukral is the CEO of Raw Science TV -- and Mollie Marr is an MD/PhD student at Oregon Health and Science University. You can learn more about their project: At Home and Over There: American Women Physicians in World War I and how to access the documentary for your WWI event by following the links in the podcast notes. link:https://www.amwa-doc.org/ https://www.amwa-doc.org/wwi-exhibition/ https://www.amwa-doc.org/wwi-film/ [SOUND EFFECT] Speaking WW1 And now for our feature “Speaking World War 1” - Where we explore the words & phrases that are rooted in the war  --- During WWI as planes flew over the front - little puffs of smoke appeared in the sky… Well - actually each one of those puffs was a deadly expanding ball of shrapnel designed to mangle planes and pilots! True to British humor this deadly deterrent for fliers got a silly nickname - which is our Speaking WWI word for this week. “Archie” -- was the British nickname for anti-aircraft fire-- and it has two contested origins. Origin #1:  A pilot in the Royal Air Force, Vice-Marshall Borton, who, upon encountering enemy anti-aircraft fire, apparently quoted a lyric from a popular music hall song of time: “Archibald certainly not!” - a popular contemporary cultural exclamation of defiance. [*play song*] Origin #2: The training grounds for RAF pilots back in England at --- Brooklands in Surrey -  neighbored a “sewage farm” -- The Archibald sewage farm. Apparently the farm, which processed sewage to irrigate and fertilize the land, had notoriously difficult air currents above it, creating a wafting turbulence the pilots found quite similar to that of the anti-aircraft weapons. Either way, Archie! an humorous and very English term for the explosives that trailed and tormented pilots as they flew over the front in WWI. -- See the podcast notes to learn more! link: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/301554/why-is-german-anti-aircraft-fire-called-archibald http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/11156904/The-slang-words-that-defined-the-First-World-War.html http://mentalfloss.com/article/58233/21-slang-terms-world-war-i Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZkyKLZghUc https://languagesandthefirstworldwar.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/archibald-certainly-not/ [SOUND EFFECT] WW1 War Tech Browning Machine Gun For WW1 War Tech -- this week, we’re taking a look at  The Browning Machine Gun. It got a lot of press this week 100 years ago because apparently on February 27, 1918, in the vicinity of Congress Heights in Southeastern Washington D.C, it sounded like the War in Europe had suddenly spread to America. This is because they were test firings of the new Browning at the U.S. Government’s shooting range. The guns, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and the Browning M1917, were being demonstrated to a crowd of American politicians, foreign army officers, and the press. The firearms were being touted as “the finest gun in the world”. The machine guns were the brainchild of John Moses Browning, a man known as “the father of modern firearms” whose weapons designs, including the pump-action shotgun. When the Army sent out a request to all American inventors asking for new firearms designs in 1917, Browning personally traveled to the capital to present his new prototypes. The Ordinance Department demanded these weapons be put to the test by shooting 20,000 rounds of ammunition. When the test was performed at the Government Proving Grounds in May 1917, Browning’s gun fired the 20,000 rounds with no complications, then fired another 20,000 only breaking a single part. Besides reliability, another impressive feature was a design so simplistic,  the officers who demonstrated the weapon could take it apart and put it back together while blindfolded. This made such an impression on the War Department that the “blindfold test” soon became an essential part of military training. Mass production began soon thereafter, with the first Browning guns arriving in France on June 29, 1918. Though only 1,168 Brownings saw combat, the general design proved so useful the Browning M1917 was an essential part of the American arsenal all the way until the Korean War. Read more about the Browning at the links in the podcast notes. Links: http://www.sadefensejournal.com/wp/?p=358 https://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.asp?smallarms_id=785 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gun-designer-john-browning-is-born http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/mgun_bar.htm http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/mgun_browning.htm https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/02/27/103191974.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/02/28/109328811.pdf http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/educate/places/official-bulletin/3329-ww1-official-bulletin-volume-2-issue-244-febuary-27-1918.html Articles and Posts WWrite Blog This week for the WWrite Blog, which explores WWI’s Influence on contemporary writing and scholarship, the post reads: “Brest-Litovsk: Eastern Europe’s Forgotten Father” The post was  written by Adrian Bonenberger In his lifetime, the world-famous Polish dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, might have also claimed Russian, German, or Ukrainian nationality. The future of Nijinsky's Europe–and his identity–was decided on March 3, 1918. Veteran author, Adrian Bonenberger, calls the event "the moment" when "the old world falls apart, and creates space for the new to arise." In this week's WWrite post, Bonenberger gives us a rich overview of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and its implications for the former Soviet bloc countries! Read the story at the Wwrite Blog. Ww1cc.org/w w r i t e or follow the link in the podcast notes. Link: http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/4094-brest-litovsk-eastern-europe-s-forgotten-father-2.html Waldo Peirce Changing formats a little - Katherine Akey is going to close out this week with a story about an article we posted on our website at ww1cc.org/news about American painter and ambulance driver - Waldo Pierce - but her report is equally about the Corine Reis - the author of the article and a dedicated French curator of WWI stories and images. [Katherine - you were the one who came across Corine that led to the article maybe we should start with her - her curated images are truly  AMAZING!!!] Hey Theo -- yeah, the project Corine has been working on is something else. Published on our website, and included in our weekly email dispatch, is an interview with Corine. She’s a French citizen historian -- and the great-niece of American painter and ambulance driver Waldo Peirce. He was one of the many students voluntarily leaving their lives at home-- for him, his studies at Harvard-- to aid the French years before America joined the war. Corine meticulously, and with a great sense of storytelling, curates and shares his photographs, artwork and writings on her Tumblr and Facebook pages, chronicling his experience throughout the war. Her interest and personal connection to Waldo grew over time, expanding to include the American Volunteers of WW1 at large. In the interview, Corine discusses her passion, the incredible archive left behind by her great-uncle Waldo, and her plans for documenting the lives of volunteers during WW2 as well. Additionally to reading the interview, I’d really, really encourage you to take the time to scroll through her Tumblr, which can be found embedded in the interview at WW1cc.org. To say that Corine is a dedicated storyteller is a understatement of the highest order. Through this project, she has gathered photographs and excerpts from collections all across the world, creating a single body of stories that is unlike most we encounter when researching World War One. I first came across her Tumblr during my weekly search for photographic content for the Commission, and was really surprised at how few of the images were familiar to me. So much of what she has rediscovered and shared with the world is quiet, quotidian, and somehow spectacular: An image of a woman ambulance driver holding a kitten and casually wearing the Croix de Guerre; an over-the-shoulder shot of a young British officer staring longingly at a photo of a woman tucked inside his hat; an image of a man sitting in the midst of a dense, unspoiled French forest as sunbeams glance through the trees; a crowd gathering around a deep, shearing hole in the Parisian street, the result of a recent German air raid. The collection Corine has assembled -- and continues to assemble-- is exceptional. The hours of work -- as well as her very artful eye and deep passion for the subject-- are evident in every post. We’ve included links in the podcast notes to the interview we did with her, as well as to her Facebook and Tumblr pages. Links: http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/4082-waldo-peirce-goes-to-war-is-a-remarkable-new-wwi-tumblr-blog.html https://waldopeircegoestowar.tumblr.com/ https://www.facebook.com/waldo.peirce Thank you Katherine - Outro Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of WW1 Centennial News. We also want to thank our guests... Dr. Edward Lengel, Military historian and author Mike Shuster, Curator for the great war project blog Charles Van Way, George Thompson, and Sanders Marble, the curators of the new Medicine in WW1 website Dr. Marjorie DesRosier, nurse, author and historian Gordon Aleshire, Adjutant of VFW Post 968 Eliza Chin, Keri Kukral and Mollie Marr, the production team behind the documentary At Home and Over There: American Women Physicians in World War I Katherine Akey, the commission’s social media director and line producer for the podcast Thanks also to our intern John Morreale for his great research assistance. And I am Theo Mayer - your host. [MUSIC] CLOSING The US World War One Centennial Commission was created by Congress to honor, commemorate and educate about WW1. Our programs are to-- inspire a national conversation and awareness about WW1; this podcast is a part of that…. Thank you! We are bringing the lessons of the 100 years ago into today's classrooms; We are helping to restore WW1 memorials in communities of all sizes across our country; and of course we are building America’s National WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. We want to thank commission’s founding sponsor the Pritzker Military Museum and Library as well as the Starr foundation for their support. The podcast can be found on our website at ww1cc.org/cn   on  iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn, Podbean, new this week on Stitcher - Radio on Demand --- as well as the other places you get your podcast --  even on your smart speaker.. Just say “Play W W One Centennial News Podcast.” Our twitter and instagram handles are both @ww1cc and we are on facebook @ww1centennial. Thank you for joining us. And don’t forget to share the stories you are hearing here today about the war that changed the world! [MUSIC] Archie, Veronica and Jughead - Three types of deadly munitions from WWI - Not true…. Just kidding… So long! So long!

Are you scared of fully diminished voicings? Never fear, Peter Martin is here to give you some tips.====================================================What's going on everybody? Peter Martin here for Two-Minute Jazz.We're gonna talk about fully diminished chords today. I want to give you a little bit of ideas for your voicings. So we're gonna take"Embraceable You." E flat major. Then the second chord: G flat fully diminished. So we've got the root, minor third, minor fifth, diminished seventh. but I've always thought that was kind of a basic sound. So, the easiest alteration you can make is: shift that diminished seventh up to a major seventh. Okay so we know we still got that diminished triad but with the major seventh, which kind of leads nicely to where we're going. And so this to me it always kind of implied that D7#9 kind of a sound. Right? But the root's going up to G flat. And in terms of like implementing this in some two-handed voicing, we've got E flat major and what about this? What do we have here? We've got the G flat - the root, the diminished fifth, we've still got the diminished seventh and up here we have the major seventh. This is the minor third and like this, I really think about, this is that D mino triad and if we put the D down - the root,Then we go half hold diminished. Thinking about it off of the D. Okay? You can kind of move this around chromatically. Have some fun with it there. And it leads real nice to where we're going in F minor. Okay? So we don't need to be scared of the fullydiminished. I know sometimes it feels like we're locked in and it's so basic. But you know there's some nice symmetry here too and I always love these voicings where you've got the tritone separating the hands. I don't know why. It's always been like a cool thing to me there.Works off of either root. And when you take, you know, when you have this voicing in your arsenal, a nice thing too is you can go basic. Root position first and then kind of jump up here and combine it. It'll give it a little bit of a modern sound. Alright?So don't be afraid of the diminished, and have fun with the diminished.Happy Practicing.====================================================For more full length lessons with Peter Martin, head over to Open Studio! www.openstudionetwork.com/piano See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's episode 84... and we have ten minutes until the ectoplasmic sh*t hits the fan. Thir13en Ghosts (2001) tells the story of Arthur, a widower who moves himself, his children and their nanny into a haunted house left to them in a wealthy uncle's will. Before long, the family is trapped in the house, and have to fight against the other residents: twelve ghosts who have been captured and locked in the basement. We talk about the benefits of coating your clothing in protective spells; the importance of not laboriously explaining your evil plan to your victim before it can take place; and the risks involved in showing up in public after you've faked your death. All of which leads to one big question:  How would you survive? Whatever happens, one thing's for sure...  If you hadn't noticed, I'M A LITTLE BIT OF A FREAK! I come within ten feet of anything dead I go into seizures. I touch somebody, and a whole life full of shit flashes in front of my eyes! Alright? So yeah, I'm depraved. But Cyrus was my friend and he accepted me, so... Another classic film solved by the best movie podcast in the world.