Podcasts about matt do

Today’s episode is one for the history books. After Béla Hajdu’s departure from hosting the show last month, the Out of the Box team are excited to introduce our new co-host: Matt DO! You might be familiar with the sound of his voice, holding down the fort from 12-2pm every Sunday since 2023. As a broadcaster, Matt has contributed so much to the station already - both on and off air. His music and guest selections are so considered and a reflection of his impeccable taste and the experiences that have brought him to where he is today. This episode is a chance for you to get to know Matt if you haven’t tuned in to Sunday lunch before, and to understand more of his love for music, arts, and culture. This episode was hosted by Kate Saap and Matt Do. Produced and edited by Zaity Salman. LINKS Matt's Instagram Kate's Instagram Movies Matt Mentioned: Fox and His Friends (1975 writ. &dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Lady Vengeance (2005, writ. Jeong Seo-kyeong & Park Chan-wook, dir. Park Chan Wook), My Neighbour Totoro (1988, writ. & dir. Hayao Mizaki), The Hole (1998, writ. & dir. Tsai Ming-liang)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unraveling the origins—this episode speaks volumes!Here's what's to come in today's episode: * In this episode, our hosts delve into the Takiwātanga meme—a popular social media trend often showcasing stunning Polynesian women and claiming that Takiwātanga is the Māori word for autism, meaning "in their own time and space."* Our hosts trace the origins of this meme, revealing that while the term's creator is neurotypical, his intentions were genuinely positive. Kari O'Pai, a Māori linguist, developed the term Takiwātanga as part of a project aimed at depathologizing mental health terminology in the Māori language.* O'Pai's glossary was designed to curate terms for mental health, disability, and addiction that avoid pathologization, with the goal of fostering a positive and empowering indigenous Māori worldview.* Our hosts explore how well-meaning neurotypicals often attempt to romanticize or exoticize autism by introducing alternative terms—while many autistics simply prefer to use the actual word to describe themselves.* Matt and Angela discuss labels, how we relate to them, and why person-first language can be harmful to autistics.* We also explore how colonizer language inevitably pathologizes everyone—except white people.* In this episode, we also discuss support needs and how even neurotypicals require support at times. After all, we are all inextricably human. However, it's the society we live in, with its hyper-independent culture, that demonizes those with support needs.* In this episode, we also discuss support needs and how even neurotypicals require support at times. After all, we are all inextricably human. However, it's the society we live in, with its hyper-independent culture, that demonizes those with support needs.* We dive into candid discussions about global perspectives on disability, cultural appropriation, identity labels, and how colonialism is inherently b******t.“I don't like the idea of any allistic telling me what I have to do, ever. I may have PDA, but I have *especially* selective PDA about allistics telling me how to be autistic. Cause yeah, I will make eye contact if I want to. You can't make me not make eye contact.” - Matt“Do we have a fancy word for cancer or broken leg? It's just f*****g autism. No, it's just cancer. It's just broken leg. It's just autism.” - Angela “Did you know that even neurotypicals need some support once in awhile? Fancy that, cuz humans. But that's the thing. We live in such a colonialistic, bastardized society that says ‘lift yourself up by your bootstraps, be hyper-independent all the time, forever, always. And it frowns upon support needs of any kind.” - MattDid you notice how the Takiwātanga meme has sparked conversations about autism and language? In today's episode, we explore its origins, cultural significance, and the impact of alternative terms for autism. Thanks for tuning in! Share your thoughts on the discussion in the comments, and use #AutisticCultureCatch to connect with fellow listeners on social media. What insights or perspectives resonated with you the most?Resources:https://www.altogetherautism.org.nz/a-time-and-space-for-takiwatanga/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40493398https://www.reddit.com/r/ReoMaori/comments/y84278/is_the_term_takiwatanga_real/https://www.tereohapai.nz/https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/autism-perceived-different-cultures/https://www.facebook.com/groups/tmyndwtmynd/posts/831990382463880/https://takiwatanga.org.nz/the-story-of-takiwatanga/Related Episodes:Labels are AutisticCareers are AutisticReady for a paradigm shift that empowers Autistics? Help spread the news!Follow us on InstagramFind us on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyLearn more about Matt at Matt Lowry, LPPJoin Matt's Autistic Connections Facebook GroupLearn more about Angela at AngelaKingdon.com Angela's social media: Twitter and TikTokOur Autism-affirming merch shop This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.autisticculturepodcast.com/subscribe

Patrick answers questions about why some verses are omitted from different versions of the bible, why not to take Catholic communion if you are not a Catholic, how do we know if someone is possessed by a demon, and is it okay to forgive without forgetting? Christina - What is your understanding of some Scripture verses being omitted from the book of Matthew? Bill - Why did some of the Old Testament laws get taken away with Jesus (such as stoning someone for adultery)? Matt - Do you know anyone who could help me with parental rights? My ex has had me in court and is saying I'm a religious fanatic and because of this and it is making it difficult for me to raise my kids in the faith. Normand - We didn't take communion at a Catholic service because we are protestant, even though we were raised Catholic. How can I best explain Church policy about taking or not taking communion? Denise - How many books were removed from the Catholic Bible during the reformation? Does the Protestant bible match the Catholic New Testament? Patrick recommends “Where We Got The Bible” and “Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger” Trip - I just became a Catholic on Saturday. Patrick, you were helpful to my journey. Aida - Mother of 3 killed her children. Does that tie into Demonic Possession? Joshua - Is it okay to forgive but not forget? Alicia - Am I allowed to attend a Shenyun Chinese dance performance?

Roe v. Wade: Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn abortion rights leaked Tom - I think there are options for spending for good organizations that align with your morals but it is a lot of work. Debra - What should I do about a mother who wants to have God Parents for her child who aren't practicing Catholics? Matt - Do you know of any studies that correlate abortion with the decline in the work force? ALSO I read an article that discussed the lower birthrate with the decline in work force. Lisa - Is it true that all firstborns have more blessings than other siblings? David - Do you know of anyone who has come to the catholic faith who was a Jehovah Witness who wrote a book?

Matt Faircloth is the co-founder and president of the DeRosa Group, a real estate investment company that specializes in buying and renovating residential and commercial properties. Matt and his wife, Liz, started investing in real estate in 2004 with a $30,000 loan. They founded DeRosa Group in 2005 and have since grown the company to managing more than 370 units throughout the east coast. DeRosa has completed more than $30M in real estate transactions involving private capital—including fix-and-flips, single-family home rentals, mixed-use buildings, apartment buildings, office buildings, and tax lien investments. He is the author of Raising Private Capital, has been featured on the BiggerPockets Podcast, and regularly contributes to BiggerPockets' educational webinars. In this episode, Matt shares his background in real estate investing, and a roadmap for investors looking to raise more private capital to close more deals. Additionally, he talks about the reality of running a real estate business.   Episode Links: https://derosagroup.com/ https://www.instagram.com/themattfaircloth/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdfaircloth/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/contributors/mattfaircloth --- Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me I have Matt Faircloth, author, podcast speaker, co-founder, president, investor, syndicator. He does a lot and we're gonna hear a ton from Matt about what he's been doing in the real estate space, and what he's currently putting together and actually closing on today. So let's get into it.   Matt Faircloth, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate you taking the time to hang out with me.   Matt: Michael, I appreciate your time and having me on your show, man. Thank you.   Michael: Absolutely, absolutely. So I know a little bit about you but I would love if you could share with our listeners who maybe have never heard of you. They've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, who you are, where you come from, and what you're doing in real estate?   Matt: Where did you come from…   Um, it's cool that my company's called the DeRosa group and I just love saying this, that we're a company dedicated to transforming lads real estate through real estate transforming lives to real estate. We can get into that in the show if you like. I… where I came from, let's see, I grew up Baltimore, bopped around the East Coast for a minute. Before I landed in Philly, met the woman of my dreams because she put Rich Dad Poor Dad in my hand, and we were still dating, that got me to read that. And that that gave got me to drink the entrepreneur Kool Aid, which I guzzled and quit my job in 2005 to start a real estate company, bumped into a lot of walls, you know, did a lot of it, made a lot of mistakes, made some money and then and then just built it and grew over time and just learned how to run an effective real estate company through the school of hard knocks. And now I've been doing it for 16 years and just apply what I've learned over the years, you know, attracted more and more the right people who work with me and build what I think to be a phenomenal brand now.   Michael: Oh, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. You said that once or twice before I can tell it just rolled off your tongue there so nicely.     Matt: You know, this is not my first podcast. Sometimes people ask me, let's just get real, screw it, man. Let's get real right now…   Michael: Let's do it.   Matt: What I get I go on a lot of podcasts and when you go on a lot of podcasts, people tend to ask the same questions, Michael, right and so when they do, it's almost like I'm that guy, I'm the DJ sing in a DJ booth and then in the in the DJ booth of Matt's brain. And then people ask like, Hey, Matt, tell me about your first deal and I'm like, okay, let's get the first deal track pull the first track.   Michael: Go, pull the file.   Matt: You know, yeah, go pull the file, first deal, right. Tell us about the first time that you raise money, tell us about a mistake you made. Okay, let's go ahead skip, let's go pull up mistake file eight. Okay, let's write that file out, right. So it's more fun to go curveball. You know, like…   Michael: Totally   Matt: Yeah, that was a good curveball in the first five seconds of the show that you and I went down right and you into it, you can't help it you end up just going to a script a lot of times you know talking about things on podcast over and over and over again and I was it that a want to be plastic like that, but you end up like, if I've told that story six times the seventh time it starts to come off the same way over and over again, right.   Michael: I totally get it, and I hope that today is not one of those repetitive podcasts.   Matt: You're getting not to be that show already man, you are curve balling, I love it. Keep it up!   Michael: Well as a follow up Matt, what's your favorite mammal, man?   Matt: It's good one, I am, okay, growing up, I have an eight year old, right, so my eight year old is always: Daddy who would win… I wish he was here because you and me, we would have a ball right now… Daddy who would win when a colossal squid or a great white shark? And I'm like Simon, first of all like, but he'll even be like a gorilla or a colossal squid and like girl is gonna drown buddy battle…   Give me more data, that would depth are we talking about the ocean? Are we talking about like 3000 gorillas... To you question, I probably go a gorilla, if I had to pick or, or maybe I don't know why, but growing up I loved Black Panthers.   Michael: Mm hmm. Okay, pretty majestic animals.   Matt: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, the majestic, they are majestic animals. Yeah, so that would be my favorite, those are my two favorite man…   Michael: I love it, well so real real quick change because we're already on this rabbit hole. You know that there was a show put on by I think NatGeo or discovery that answered your son's questions they would pit these two animals together in a simulation… like that exists…   Matt: You can google and they would show cuz he would be like, daddy who would win a saltwater… It's just you can google saltwater crocodile versus great white shark…   Michael: Great white shark, I saw that episode…   Matt: It's good, it's good, right. Good job displaying well you see the saltwater croc would try and take the deathroll on this or do that...   Oh, he was my son's itch was scratched with that, you know. I don't know, why he is up to the Komodo dragons. Komodo dragon versus anything you can name, that's what you want to talk about…   Michael: That's a battle royale this century… Oh my god. I love it.   Matt: Well, dragons are badasses man, these are like, there they are… Would you know that?   Michael: Yeah, that's the kiss of death, yeah… Matt: It is! Not only the monstrous lizards like little dinosaurs, but they also the venomous bite, you know…   Michael: It's such a ridiculous concept like, oh, let's take two of like humans worst fears, like, long tailed long tongue lizards, and then give it venom, sounds awesome.   Matt: Right! Give it nasty teeth. Yeah, like a really weird awful roar and give them venom, too…   Michael: Oh my god, so good.   Matt: They're nasty creatures, man. Good thing that'll make them in North America.   Michael: I know, I'm stoked, I'm stoked. All right, well, if we bring it slightly back towards the real estate, you know.   Do you want me to do a whole podcast on mammals like komodo dragons… So you started a company, your real estate company in 2005 and when people hear that, I think it might be ominous to some people, you know, what is a real estate company mean? And so what was the transition, like, I mean, like, what is the DeRosa group do first and foremost and then what was that transition, like going from just owning stuff on your own to now I have a business focusing on it?   Matt: That's interesting, you know, that man, um, interesting concept, because a lot of people out there are running real estate investing, like it's a gig, you know, like, or it's like driving Uber, you know, you could just decide to not do it at some point, you know, I mean, it's not a gig, it's a real estate investing is a business because it's a marathon, unless you're wholesaling or just doing a deal here and there something like that. Not for nothing. This business… the business of real estate investing is a business and you should treat it as such. And we didn't always do that the first couple years, I treated it like a hobby and I bumped into walls and did a bunch of different things but like once I really got my legs underneath me, as a real estate investor and really found the calling found the purpose and got and got and got focused on real estate investing. I got clear that it's a business that is like a living animal it's a it's a living thing…   Michael: It's a living Komodo dragon?...   Matt: Real estate investing is like a Komodo dragon, right, it needs food, you know… It can have a venom's bite and can be nasty and shit and can get the fuck out of you. And a lot of people are scared of it, you know, right… Yeah. People read articles about it only exists in certain places we can keep going. But it is something that needs, you know, if you want to grow real estate investing business and sustain yourself in this, in this industry, and not just make it a hobby, you have to have a company that's got you know, clean books and has a purpose and has a mission and has roles and responsibilities and job descriptions and stuff like that, because there's sucky things in real estate you have to do and it's like, well, you know, and you could look on Instagram. And if you look on Instagram for real estate investing, people think that it either means you close deals every day, because it's the people every time people close stuff, they put it on Instagram, or they go to it's like, Instagram thinks that for real estate investors, all you do is close deals, go to conferences and go on vacation That's what you see people doing on Instagram, the real estate investing, right? But there's actually like, this sucky part of real estate investing, which is sitting on your desk and answering emails and you know, just corresponding and looking for deals and swinging and missing and dealing with knucklehead tenants and stuff like that that want to, you know, recently Michael, we had a tenant, had his girlfriend come in and he must have done something bad because she went, put all his clothes on his bed, dumped gasoline on the bed, lit it on fire, walked out.   Michael: Mike dropped…   Matt: This is what happens, that's real stuff, you know… That did not make on Instagram unfortunately, you know…   Michael: No, that wasn't the highlight reel.   Matt: Living my best life, look it's amazing…   Michael: Well, so you bring up a really great point that and that it should be treated like a business and I, I wholeheartedly agree. But so what about all the people out there that are just getting started that could never see themselves as a business owner as an entrepreneur but hear about real estate investing as a great side gig like you mentioned that what about what about all those folks? Where are they left?   Matt: Okay, they need to decide if they want to do it full time or not, right…And there are people out there that have a day job that they love and it's, it's probably something that's very fulfilling to them, or maybe they went to school for a long time, like a doctor or an MD or whatever. I mean, Jesus, those folks go to school, God bless them for like another 12 years after they get out of college, right? So why would they change careers, right? They want, there are people that really in their heart of hearts probably ought to go passive for real estate investing, as a side gig and as a way to build wealth. And there are people that that are doing it because they want to build up the passive income and become a business owner out of it. So you got to choose if you want to be an investor or be, let's remember Robert Kiyosaki Cashflow Quadrant book, right. Yes, ESBI, remember that thing?   Michael: Mm hmm.   Matt: Do you want to be a B or an I, B= business owner, I= investor. And if you're willing to put in your time and and you know, quit your day job eventually become a business owner and that's what you need to do. But unfortunately, people, a lot of people misunderstood Kiyosaki, to think that to be a real estate investor, you have to be an active operator, you have to do it full time. You can make the passive income all you want as an I-quadrate investor and just passively invest in things. And I think that that's, I think it's probably the most misunderstood function in a lot of his books, people that quit their job that really should have never done that they should have just passively invested their way to financial freedom.   Michael: Yeah, okay. And let's talk about that for a minute because you wrote a book about raising capital and I think capital is so often the biggest obstacle for people, the biggest hurdle people overcome. So do you see the kind of this roadmap for people? Where if passivity, is it really time is the goal, right? That's what everybody is after and we get there by either usually being a B or an I, by being at B that sounds terrible, don't be a B. So if people are capital is their obstacle, using real estate as a active vehicle to then take a backseat and invest passively?   Matt: Yeah, well, that's I mean, my book talks about that and then it goes back to like, let's just keep walking to the B and I road, right. So if you're a B quadrant business owner, we're rising D quadrant business owner for real estate, and you either want to do it full time, you already are doing it full time, then at some point, unless you win the lottery, or unless, like, you know, you just got a silver spoon in your mouth, and you got billions of dollars waiting on the sidelines, from your friends from your family or something like that. You're going to need capital, right? You're gonna run out man you are. And so on the other side of it, you've got I quadrate investors, and they have either retirement accounts, real estate equity, cash, any of those things that they want to put to work and not have to put in the time to make that money, you make that money, do what it's supposed to do, you know, then they can those two can marry up the B quadrant business owner of real estate versus the quadrate investor that wants to make a return on their money without trading money for time. Those two can have a really happy partnership. My book talks about all those things, how those two things can get structured together and how the why in my book are called the cash provider, as SI quadrant investor.   Robert Kiyosaki is a good guy, but he probably sue the hell out of me if I use his terms of my books. I didn't use that, I did, I did the the deal provider and the cache provider. The deal provider is the D Quadra business owner, the cache provider is the I quadric investor.   Michael: Okay, awesome and what is your book called?   Matt: Raising private capital. So funny Michael you asked that it happens to be right here behind… They can get it on Amazon or they can get it on biggerpockets.com.   Michael: I was just gonna ask. Alright, so it's called raising private capital and without giving the book away. What can people expect to find in it?   Matt: Along with a lot of my personal story on on you know how I got from guy that quit his job in oh five to you know, running a company that runs that owns, you know, multi 1000 doors of multifamily real estate. It's got that journey in there. And and that but also it's it's got a lot of tools and lessons, it's a how to really on how do you look in your own personal network as an investor, I'm sorry, as a B quadrant designer, it's how to look in your personal network to find the money, you need to do deals because you don't have to go to private lender, or you don't have to go to hard money lenders, you know, if you go and go more corporate level, or sell your soul to get the money you need for the deal that you're trying to do. You can look in your own network to find that money and raising private capital talks about how to find the money you need for deals in your own personal network.   Michael: Okay, all right, Matt can we do something kind of a silly exercise?   Matt: Please.   Michael: Can you because, I think a lot of people are really nervous to have that conversation and I think they feel slimy or gross. Can you pitch me on a deal that you're putting together as someone that would be in your your kind of sphere of influence? Let's let's see. Let's see what that sounds like and feels like.   Matt: Well, it depends if you're accredited, or not, Michael, because if you're not accredited, we have substantial relationship. But if you're accredited, I can talk to you, I can do a Facebook ad that you notice, right? All joking aside, let's pretend you and I are friends. We already know each other you already like and trust me, because I'm me, right and my book recommends that those are your first targets. You know, and that so hey, Michael, how you doing today?   Michael: I'm doing pretty good, what about you, man?   Matt: I'm awesome, man. Hey, listen, I happen to remember you saying that you were working over a company XYZ. You did a great job, didn't you. It's good. But you better get an opportunity to come up with ABC Company. And I'm really grateful for that you were able to move over to that did take on that new job. How's it going?   Michael: It's going really well. XYZ was terrible, ABC is infinitely better. Thank you so much for man, remembering you've got a killer memory.   Matt: No, it's great, I swear to you… I also barely remember going further, Michael, is that XYZ day as much as you hated what they did, and you know, and I'm so grateful you got out of there. But XYZ had a great comp package they did as I remember, you told me they paid you a really great 401k program.   Michael: Yes, yeah, it was pretty.   Matt: Those markets been taken off lately, right. So no, it's maybe maybe hit a top here and is starting to get a little squirrely and everything like that. So I want to tell you that we did you happen to know, Michael, you can take your retirement account and invested in things not Wall Street, you know, in that retirement account you have with XYZ company because you don't work there anymore that retirement account could be put to work in real estate. Did you know that?   Michael: I had heard that. But I didn't really know that I could do anything about it…   Matt: Well, you can now that you've left XYZ company, right, you can take that retirement account that they have, and they probably were paying you and lots of company stock, take the chips, man, take the chips off the table cash in, sell that company stock and roll that and roll that retirement account, which is now by the way was a 401k. Now it was an IRA. And you can roll that IRA over to a third party IRA custodian and you can do all kinds of cool stuff you can buy, you know, shares of companies, you can buy your own your own real estate investments, you can lend that money out and you can also invest it in deals like we have, I, we are right now Michael buying 670 units in two states, five apartment buildings in two states. That's the deal, we're in the middle of right now, produces phenomenal returns, produces, we're going to fix these buildings up and we're going to refinance them over time and as we refinance them, we're going to give some of that money back to you to your retirement account. So you can then take it and parlayed invest in another stuff. It's a great return.   I know a lot of people that we work with are really happy with work that we've done as a company. So you and I should talk further as a matter of fact, I have some Ira custodians that can handle this whole thing for you, if you'd like, I'd like to introduce you to a few of them that I love. You know, and then they we do a lot of work with them. So they give us white glove treatment. Can I introduce you to them for you?   Michael: Yeah, that'd be great, man, thanks so much for doing that. I appreciate it.   Matt: Yeah, and I'm going to mail you the offering. And if you don't, if you're not happy with my, if you don't like the returns, and you're you're nervous, whatever, it's okay, I get other things I can send you over to, I really want to help you build your wealth while I build my business. Because we're building a great real estate company and we're, our mission is to transform lives through real estate, I want you to help me do that. By me helping you earn money with your retirement account. Well, we do the work. So we can do that for you. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. I have plenty of other friends for this awesome network called biggerpockets.com, you should check out and you can look on BiggerPockets to and find other things to invest in, like private loans and other cool things that can show you that are not real, like that real estate that I mentioned, even though that's a great deal. There's other things you can do to and I'll hold your hand the whole way. What do you think?   Michael: Oh, sign me up, man, I'll be looking for your email.   Matt: Cool, no problem.   Michael: Man, that was awesome. That was so so so good.   Matt: Thank you, thank you…   Michael: So firstly, for first and first and foremost, you've now got to send me that email because I'm sold. But secondly, what I love about what you did is the conversation felt very much, let me help you, let me put provide value for you educate me around what I could do with my retirement funds, which I might have not even been aware of, and then to tell me how you're able to help me, before even the you being helped in the process, being able to your own deals be my financing was even mentioned.   Matt: Yeah, well, so is a few facts, right, um, of the $10 trillion, that's currently in IRAs, right now, not 401k, it's just IRAs of the $10 trillion, it's out there. 4% of us invested in anything else outside of Wall Street and so if you're looking to get your capital game going, the easiest low hanging fruit, and the thing that everybody has is a retirement account that has if they've got a job, and they used to work at one company, and they now work at another company, their retirement account, they had the first company is now eligible to get rolled over to an IRA. And with the big run up the stock markets had it that's what you should be talking to people about, is like, hey, you used to work over here. Now you work here, don't you are you got laid off, you quit whatever it is, they don't have you there them a job. Now they just have to use to have a job. It's such an easy, low hanging fruit conversation and it speaks to their needs too. Because everybody's get a little squirrely and where Wall Street's going, it's just been a great run. You know, it's had a great run over the last 12 years. But now it might be time to pull a few chips back. So I think that that's something that's probably the most underutilized conversation out there. For those looking to raise money, is to talk to anybody that's got a job about investing their retirement account with them with their real estate company.   Michael: That's so good. I think so many people when when thinking about having that conversation, think, well, I don't know anyone who has money, because they might not be in cash assets or liquid assets on the you know, in a taxable account, but the retirement side of things brings into focus a whole another option.   Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can and there's other ways you can go about it, too. You can kind of sniff out, my book talks about like how to sniff out people that are in your network that likely have a lot of cash. What does what are the signs that a lot of cash leaves, you know, my book talks about that, my book talks about, there's another vehicle that they can they can invest with you and as those are people with free and clear real estate.   Last time I looked, Michael 30% of America owns their home, their primary residence free clear 30%. You know, but they don't. It's not it's not to get paid to ask a different color when it's paid off. It's hard to tell. Like all the purple houses in America are free and clear. Yeah, no, I don't know. So, but my book talks about the signs to look for free and clear real estate. And I also can tell you, here's the free clear real estate conversation. Here's the those with cash conversation and here's the retirement account conversation to have. I just pulled that into my playbook because it seemed like the most obvious one to go for is retirement account is probably the most, it's the most underutilized one. But I think it's the one that's most unnecessary right now, in today's world.   Michael: That makes so much sense, that makes so much sense. Matt, you mentioned before we hit record here that you are actually in the midst of closing the biggest deal that you've ever done to date today. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that looks like?   Matt: That was a by the way, Michael that was it bullshit. That was a real deal. I was pitching you on for your retirement account when you were working for XYZ comm your XYZ IRA could be invested in the deal that we're closing part of right now. Yeah, it's 670 units. It's in it's in two states. It is a five apartment buildings and we're closing two of those today. The other three close in a couple of weeks.   Michael: Amazing, okay, and what attracted you to this deal?   Matt: Um, that okay, so two of the buildings are in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and that is a company that is city we're already heavily invested in and it's a city that's showing phenomenal growth, 14% rent growth last year, RD on pace to do at least 12 this year percent rent growth and this owner hasn't increases rents in the last two. So he hasn't seen any of the rental upside that's been happening, the rent growth has been happening in that market has not been realized on those properties. So great opportunity, we already have property management in that town lined up and Lexington we own six other apartment buildings. So we are a niche down company. We're not going to just invest anywhere that is a good deal. We invest in super specific markets, so those are there were three markets Lexington, Kentucky, the Piedmont triad in North Carolina, and in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, of all places. Those are the three markets that we're in. That's it   Michael: If it works, it works…   Matt: So…I like about it. I also like that it's diverse meaning like it's it's different geographies, different management strategies, even different property conditions. I like all those things about it that it brings a lot of things to the table, that make it more of a stable asset.   Michael: Okay, okay..   Matt: But it's stable investment, like stable here, but poised to go up.   Michael: Okay and we've had a lot of folks on the show recently talking about passive investments. And you know how you're really evaluating the operator more so than the deal itself. But can you give folks listening some tips about how to evaluate maybe the deal? I mean, what, what details of the deal itself should people be looking at to feel comfortable?   Matt: Yeah, um, you should look at…, I'll tell you why I'll tell you, what people will do to make their deal look better than earlier is, you have to look at what their exit criteria is. That meaning like, they might be saying, okay, we're going to buy the property for this number, and then we're going to invest this and then we're going to sell it for this, like that nine times you paid for it, then you investors aren't going to make any money till we sell it, or you're not going to make very much money until we sell it, if the majority of investor returns are projected to come through the sale and the end, the syndicator is assuming that the markets gonna stay very stagnant, that cap rates are gonna stay down and streets gonna stay down, yada, yada, then they're kind of making a lot of assumptions that may or may not come true. So that's one thing to be concerned over. So make sure that they're conservative that their crystal ball is is, you know, that they're looking into has some conservatism's as it in it, because that's one thing. That's one thing, as indeed a syndicator can do is they can predict that the markets going to be super favorable at some point in the future when they go to sell and that makes the deal look really good right now.   Michael: Right, right…   Matt: Yeah, make sure there's a lot of there's some experience on the team that have been it's okay to have new new and to work with new people, because we're all new at some point. But make sure somewhere on their team, there's some deep, there's a deep bench of experience.   Michael: That's great, that's great. Yeah, no, I love those points, I love those points. I think I've seen that too and a bunch of syndication deals like oh yeah, we're gonna buy it at a six cap and we're gonna exit at a three cap and it's like, really look.   Matt: Phenomenal… 22% IRR man, what's the cash flow? Oh, it's only gonna pay like 3% cash on cash. But you know, magic fairy dust, get sprinkled on the deal, and it's gonna get sold and you're gonna make you're gonna triple your money. You know, three right now when I sell it, and that's how it's gonna go, right… When the crypto rises, you know…   Michael: No, that's a great point, those are great points, Matt. And I'm curious to know what do you you know, in your book, I'm sure talks about this but for anyone listening, that's thinking about starting to raise money but doesn't really have experience. They've you know, they've got the hustle, but they don't have the experience and they don't have the capital. You know, what should those people be doing right now?   Matt: Okay, I'm getting smudge get as much exposure as you can. Some folks do that through investing some some people that I know, that are very successful, syndicators now got started investing in other people's deals to learn the ropes, right. And that's it, do that get some exposure, we know why you can to other people's deals, you know, network, do what I did. But to start small, like we're on our 50 we're closing, this is our 15th syndication that we've done. But our first syndication was a guy my wife went to college with put in 50k into it into one into a deal that we did, we bought two single family homes with his 50k, right, that was our first syndication. So you can start small, find the one person that has some capital to work with in your in your network, and do a deal and then expand it out, do another deal, expand it out, do another deal, expand that out, do another deal. So for those that are looking to get started, it's okay to start small. It's not sexy to start small, but it's also okay and there's a lot further there's there's a lot smaller distance to fall and a lot easier to course correct on a small deal than it would be to correct on a behemoth issue first. Michael: Yep, I think that's such a good point, I think that's such a good point. I know I've spoken to people and I thought, well, my first deal would be a 10 year multifamily, because multifamily is the best everyone's talking about it. It's like yeah, okay, well, have you done a single family deal? Well, no…   Matt: I'm telling you, I hear people like, oh, I'm gonna do 100 unit multifamily deal. You know, like, that's my first deal I want to do, I've never done a deal before my life. But I want to close 100 units is my first deal. I get it and I want that, too for you, you know. But you might have to bang your head against the wall a lot. Where you could just go and syndicate a duplex right or syndicate like get your Mama to go give you a couple give me a couple of dollars and you and your Mama would go buy a duplex right, you know…   Michael: But then I can't post it on Instagram. No one wants to see me my mom and me doing deals…   Matt: I can't fake it till I make it that right, you know, or pose next to the Lamborghini that I just bought because I've been, I've been investing in real estate for the last few months.   Michael: So good. The last question I have for you before I let you out of here is, you were talking at the beginning of the show about how you did all these things and kind of rally different directions and then you really niche down and you got really focused. How did you do that? I mean, how did you, what did it take for you to get hyper focused? Because I think so many of us as they get started real estate like, oh, I could do long term buy and hold or I could do flipping or I could do wholesaling or I could do burr investing. And there's so many different ways to go. How do you know when you found the right one?   Matt: Well, first of all, Michael, I just got I just get tired to get my ass kicked, you know…   I'd like to wholesale deals going on at for fix and flips going, I was buying a bunch of rentals and everything like that, and it wasn't sleeping awake, you know and I was doing everything media doing a mediocre level, any of those three things that I was doing, I was involved in some other stuff, too. Any of those three things that I was doing could have gotten to me to my financial goals. But the mistake that I made with all this tribe was doing a bunch of things, mediocre lee versus doing one thing really well, right. And so I found that I was, you know, good at being a landlord, because with the landlord properties that we had raised very well. And it's also good at raising money and explaining what I do land lording in a very simple fashion to people and so I was like, okay, well, I'm awesome at those two things. Let me just focus on those. And the more I focused on those, guess what, Michael, the more money I made, like, money's good. I like making money. I do enjoy my family. You know, that's good. So how about anymore, though? Yeah, I'm not good at managing contractors, some too nice that I believe them when they tell me that their car broke down. And that's why they couldn't show up on the job site, but they still need me to give them 10 grand, you know, and I believe them. Okay, here you go. And that, so I just knew I didn't have people in my network to outsource that to at the time and so it made sense. I had tried partners to run that fix and flip division, my company didn't work out. So I needed to abandon the things that weren't working, and focus on the things that were and for those that are looking to niche down and focus. It doesn't have to it doesn't have to be apartment buildings, believe me, don't listen to Instagram does not have to be apartment buildings. It can be other things, I promise.   But figure out what you were calling your core genius, right? Your God given talents, what are you gonna call it, figure that find out those and how you can best bring those to the real estate table and even better, how they are benefiting your business today. And then just easy, Michael, do more of that. How about that, there's two more of those things, if it's working, you do more of it, and less of the things that aren't, you know, it could be that simple and that's kind of how we grow in and I found people that were able to sit in the seats that I needed for me to focus more on raising money and more on the land lording , and I'd filled in those seats and I got it, you know, tight and I expand that up and I was like okay, land lording is amazing, but I could probably scale faster if I outsource that and hire third party management companies. So we did that I could focus on raising money and I could focus on building the team and enrolling and inspiring and being the leader of my team. Now that's really all I do is I lead my team and I raise money and I talk to you…   Michael: I love it, I love it. That, this has been so much fun Matt, if people have questions for you want to reach out to you are interested in investing in some of your deals, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?   Matt: There's a ton of stuff on my LinkedIn bio. My LinkedIn is the Matt Faircloth, I'm sure there's plenty of other Matt Faircloth in the world but my Instagram handle…   Michael: You stake your claim…   Matt: I've claimed it, there also the Instagram I'm the only Matt Faircloth, @themattfaircloth and there's a there's a link in my bio on Instagram and there's a ton of stuff there you can go and invest in my and you can hear about investing in deals with us if you're an accredited investor you can join our mailing list because you do a non-accredited deal sometimes for those that are that we have a preexisting relationship with so you can join that list or you know hear more about that. You can buy a copy of my book there you can you know join all kinds of different cool things we have going on and Masterminds webinars, all that jazz is on the link in my bio on Instagram.       Michael: Sweet, well Matt thank you again, man, from Komodo dragons to passive investing, this has been a blast. I'm sure we'll be chatting soon.   Matt: My family and I play a game at dinner called: True two truths and a lie and I'm going to slay it right in two true and a lie there that I was on an interview and me and this guy talked about Komodo dragons. Nobody's gonna believe that. But I totally got my family, totally gonna crush them at true two truths and a lie tonight…   Michael: I love it, I love it. Well, I am glad I could be a part of it.   Matt: Thank you.   Michael: Awesome, take care man.   Alright everyone, that was our episode. A big thank you to Matt for coming on. It was super fun from Komodo dragons to real estate syndication. I didn't think we'd be able to get there but we kept it on the rails. As always, if you liked the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy investing!

Moon Tea Links: Email us: moonteapodcast@gmail.com Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3iZ4EAqK6TM4olrpjAeVq1?si=xO-AlKidSUiGIWtoTxQHIQ&dl_branch=1 Google Podcasts: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy82NTlkMTJlMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== Anchor: https://anchor.fm/moon-tea - 00:35 Hugh introduces Matt - 2:33 Matt introduces himself - 6:13 Jon: Do you still live in New York City? - 8:26 Jon: How long has Matt been recording his podcast? He's recording his 18th episode! - 9:20 Matt: What's the journey of Moon Tea Podcast been like? - 10:20 Matt: Do we have a specific person we curate Moon Tea Podcast for? - 11:30 If you want a Lunchclub invite, email us at MoonTeaPodcast@gmail.com! - 12:40 Matt: Have you ever done any networking groups before? - 14:20 Matt: Is this podcast G-rated? - 16:00 Matt: Is Lunchclub really AI driven? - 16:30 Matt: What's the difference between Machine Learning and AI? - 18:40 Matt shows his incredible telescope, astrophotography setup - 21:30 Matt shows a photo he took of the Orion Nebula - 21:50 Jon: Is this one of those projects where you buy small then keep buying bigger and bigger camera gear? - 22:45 Matt shows the Veil Nebula → it's an exploded star!! - 25:10 Jon: How did you get started in the astro photography world? - 26:00 Matt breaks down his thought process on how he learns quickly in new topics - example: his Archery rabbit-hole story - 28:50 Jon: So you're into bio-hacking and nootropics? - 30:00 Jon: What are the supplements you've found to have the most benefit? How did you approach this? - 31:15 Matt has run an Ironman! - 38:26 Jon: What changes have you noticed since you've started on this supplement journey? - 41:00 Matt: Red light therapy - 42:50 Matt: White light spectrum therapy for jet lag - 44:45 Jon: What's your travel stack? - 50:00 Matt: For the meditative Muse headband, did you see a corollary between the birds chirping and a meditative state? - 53:30 Matt: The best question is what can you get that gets you to use x more. Not, what's the best? - 57:20 Matt: Why does Dr. Mike swear by the Aura ring? - 59:55 Jon: Hugh mentioned you bought a domain name called, Headshop? - 1:01:50 Jon: Is your web / mobile design company an agency? - 1:02:30 Jon: Which side of the business is more interesting to you? - 1:05:40 Matt: Is it worth poisoning the world by selling an $8 battery instead of selling a rechargeable one? - 1:06:30 Jon: If you have any generic words of wisdom what would you say? - Matt: Ask seven (7) questions, it will change you life! - 1:10:20 Hugh thinks the seven question is better than the five whys - 1:11:20 Hugh: What's your podcast called? What's your astro portfolio called? - Matt: Irreverant health (will be released at the 20th episode recording). No photo portfolio yet, but will open source someday. - 1:12:23 Thanks for listening! Tune in next time, see ya!

WordPress news is hard. I mean, it's hard to turn it into a real business. I get away with covering WordPress here on the Matt Report because our guests share lessons on how they built their business or spend time telling us how they navigated the community, until they found their way. But news? Well, that's why The WP Tavern has been the only name in town for a while, loaded with two critical components: A dedicated staff and they are funded. If you want to make it, you do things differently, you do things like Rae Morey‘s The Repository newsletter. Today we'll chat about building her WordPress news newsletter, background as a journalist, and explore what it really takes to make all of this work. Thanks goes out to Malcare today for sponsoring a month of Matt Report and The WP Minute. You can help us by visiting buymeacoffee.com/mattrpeort Episode transcript [00:00:00] Rae: It's a completely not in the WordPress world at all. So our processes is, as you said, an experiential design and creative technology company, and we develop experiences for cultural and tourism organizations. [00:00:14] So, you might go into a gallery or museum and experience an audio tour and we create immersive experiences where you can. Wander around a space and he audio that that's designed, especially for that space. It moves with you around, around the gallery or exhibition. We do precinct technology, virtual queuing, augmented reality experiences, and we do exhibition design in. [00:00:40] A lot of different spaces, for example we're doing a a brand new exhibition smack bang in the middle of Montana at the moment for there for first street project there. We do we do the audio guide for the Getty in Los Angeles. So that's an example of the kind of thing I do for my, my day job. [00:00:58] There is communications manager. So I look after Publicity marketing anything to do with words, I guess, on the website? Yeah. That's, that's kind of what I do for a day.  [00:01:09] Matt: Does anybody ever give you like a side eye when maybe a customer comes in and they're like, we have a WordPress website that they look at you and be like, Hey, we think we know somebody who kind of knows this to implement whatever project we might have. [00:01:23] Rae: I don't know. I, I, to be honest, I kind of played down what to do with WordPress, because I don't want to be that person that people kind of like go to asking for, help me with my website. Yeah. [00:01:33] Oh, I I hate to say, but our website and our process is actually uses Drupal. So I've had to learn that this year not, not my decision, but yeah, it's been interesting seeing what the competitions.  [00:01:44] Matt: Yeah, that was the, the second, most serious application I used to build websites was Drupal before or slightly after a front page. [00:01:51] Well, I guess throw Dreamweaver in there too, but we went front page Dreamweaver and then Drupal and then WordPress triples, fantastic platform. I think I wouldn't use it today, but I th I still think it's a very powerful  [00:02:04] Rae: platform using it compared to WordPress at the moment. Very different platforms. [00:02:10] Matt: How do you find time to to do the repository and works by birds and you have a family? How do you, how do you structure your day with all of this stuff?  [00:02:20] Rae: The honest answer is I have no idea. [00:02:21] I, I think over the past couple of years I don't know if you're aware, but Melbourne where I live here in Australia has been the most locked down city in the world. We've had the most restrictions lockdowns out of everywhere. It's just the circumstances I guess, here, but it's given me a lot of time to look at. [00:02:36] To spend on side projects, I guess. So when so the, the repository I started that with came guest star from male poet back in November, 2019. And that was just before the pandemic. And so I guess the repository in a way became a bit of a handy pandemic passion project that I was working on while in locked down and has continued through to now. [00:02:59] And. [00:03:00] Yeah, I was, I was also on maternity leave from my day job throughout 2020. So that gave me a lot of time and focus on building up the newsletter and yeah, since returning to my day job part-time I've, I've just I guess structure my week so that, Part time work and also have the repository for a Dane half a week. [00:03:21] So just try to split up the weight to fit everything in. And also I'm very fortunate to have a partner who. Who I cope? Well, shouldn't say co-parent with where to very much together, but we split our parenting duties 40, 50, 50, which is we're very modern family in that respect. So yeah, we both prioritize our careers, but also our son. [00:03:44] So, yeah. So there, there is a way for moms with a lot of things on to, to do all the things that they are passionate.  [00:03:53] Matt: Do you have a certain structure and I can, I can share mine as well for, for the WP minute, but you have a certain structure that you would, you wouldn't mind sharing on how you keep track of all of the news. [00:04:05] And this obviously is happening throughout the week. Are you jotting things down and the to-do lists in a notion document. And then at the end you go to write up the email and you just sit down with all of those notes in front of you. How does this all come curated?  [00:04:18] Rae: Yeah, look, there's no pulling back the curtain. [00:04:21] There's no special, fancy way that I do it. My background is, is in journalism. I studied journalism at uni and so I naturally just do a lot of note-taking all the time because I'm just every time I see something, I think, oh, that's really cool. And I use apple notes on my my medical kit or my iPhone, I'm an apple person and everything sinks. [00:04:44] And so I'm constantly taking notes. And I guess with the repository I use feedly.com to track something like 70 or 80 different websites and blogs. And so I go through that periodically throughout the week just to track what what's happening and keep on top of everybody's latest updates. I'm also checking Twitter all the time on my phone. [00:05:06] And it's a bit harder to save tweets, so I have to yeah. Finding a way to do that really well, but I'm always checking Twitter, whether I'm No throughout the day or in the evening while I'm watching TV, having having a scroll. And that's mostly, I guess my research for the pository just between those two, just seeing what's going on. [00:05:27] And I guess also just catching up with people throughout the week in the WordPress community, whether it's just aiming on on Twitter or chats over emails and Coles. Those are the kinds of ways that I keep in touch with what's going.  [00:05:42] Matt: Sure the the newsletter there's. So there's a, you just said that there, you're probably tracking 70 to 80 sources of, of news or at least new news that you can throw into an RSS feed and put into. [00:05:53] Feedly probably 20% of them. I would reckon are [00:06:00] our newsletters or have a newsletter component to them. Your newsletter is unique to, to me, by the way, or listen, let me take a step. I'm honored for you to be here. I'm not a journalist, I'm not a great writer. I struggled with words, in fact and I look at your piece as something that is it's fantastic. [00:06:19] It's unique. It's creative. I look at it as a conversation that, that ends up in my inbox. Before I knew who you were. I had some other voice in my head, but then I realized that then I found out who you were. And I was like, oh, now it's your voice. Every time I read the newsletter, like I'm hearing it with this Australian accent. [00:06:37] And it's fantastic. But it's, it's much more of to me anyway, like a S a conversation, maybe a story. Was that on purpose? Is that a strategy? I don't want to slap strategy on art, but is that a strategy of yours to make it different than.  [00:06:53] Rae: When when Kim and I originally started the repository, or at least before, actually before we started the repository and we were talking about ideas because Kim and I are both journalists in previous life. [00:07:05] And we wanted to bring something to the WordPress community. Then I guess, in a way there was an ulterior motive of showing off male poet platform, but also. Well, as, as former journalists, we just wanted to put something together that brought the WordPress news in a way that was, I guess, a lot of new stories in WordPress tend to include a lot of opinion, but we wanted to bring other people's opinions to the fore as well. [00:07:27] We wanted to increase the diversity in the news, but not just by having lots of different new sources, but bringing people's opinions that you might. You might not otherwise see. So the, the format that we came up with and, we still have to this day was looking for looking at a particular issue from a lot of different perspectives. [00:07:52] So we, like a story recently, like I know the word, it's not just the actual state of the word video, but lots of different blog posts in opinions, from different people and what they make. Of the state of the word. So you can kind of, read about read about a new story, but also get the context of where that story fits within the WordPress world and then varying opinions on what people thought about that. [00:08:15] So, you can get that kind of more nuanced viewpoint from, from different people and, and have that way of understanding any issue. From different viewpoints because not everybody looks at things the same way. It's nice to kind of read something, but then understand where, where it fits in the ecosystem. [00:08:31] And that's, that's the approach that we were going for.  [00:08:34] Matt: This is a huge question and I'll let you dissect it and define it and pull pieces out of it as you see fit.  [00:08:41] WordPress news, like what is somebody with a journalistic background? What does that really mean? Or what should it really mean? And maybe even before you answer that, can you help clarify, like what at journalists [00:09:00] produces versus let's say an opinion piece or a commentator might produce, because to be honest with you I didn't discover this recently, but for many years I was just like, oh, I don't know the difference. [00:09:12] I didn't know that you, that a journalist doesn't really put opinion into their, into their piece. And there are certain guidelines that one should approach journalism with versus, I would say like somebody like a Kara Swisher, who's what I would say is maybe a celebrity journalist, but no longer a journalist I think is much more on the commentator side. [00:09:33] For probably many different reasons, but anyway, could you help us define what journalists means to you should mean in the WordPress space?  [00:09:41] Rae: Yeah, it's interesting because there's definitely. Of everything in the WordPress community. I worked in, in newspaper journalism, and so it was very, and I guess the newspaper I worked for, it was very straight in that it was, new stories to get one report on one side of the debate and the other side. [00:09:58] Of the debate. You make sure you have balanced views on a topic and you present that and that's purely without any kind of opinion. And you try to be as objective as possible in the way that you present it. So that's, I guess, very traditional old fashioned old school journalism. That's kind of where my background is, I guess, in that, in the WordPress community. [00:10:22] I don't really have anything, I guess the closest to that would probably be Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern. And even then some of her pieces can have some opinion inserted here and there for, for her context. She's, she's been in the community for a really long time. So her opinions, I, I find it fairly valid, but but yeah, that's not really, I guess, old school journalism as, as a lot of people would say it And then you get. [00:10:47] Yeah, I think blog, blog posts and things like that, where people offering an opinion that's I wouldn't really class that as news, so much as it's opinion and people adding their perspectives to the debate. It's, it's an interesting one in the WordPress community. We don't have a lot of new sources. [00:11:03] A lot of people have tried to start WordPress news over the years. Haven't been, haven't been that successful because it's. It's not a business that is profitable as we've seen more broadly in, in the news industry with the rise of the internet and, the fighting for advertising and paywalls and, and all of, all of that kind of thing. [00:11:23] In in WordPress, we could, we could definitely use more new sources, that the greater diversity you have with news the more accountability businesses have to have to operate in this environment. The more and more scrutiny, the better, I think, in terms of, businesses operating and, and making sure that they're operating above board It would certainly be nice to have more new sources. [00:11:45] It's, it's certainly great that there are a lot of people who, who blog and share their opinion. But yeah, I think there's definitely room for, for more harder news in the WordPress community, particularly, over the past year, how we've had so many [00:12:00] acquisitions, right. And we were going from an ecosystem full of, I guess, small to medium businesses to, we've got big corporates and multinationals, I guess, like Google that are operating in, in our in our ecosystem. [00:12:12] And, we want to keep those businesses to. No, around what they're doing. And I, I'm not saying way to, to scare them, that they shouldn't be in our ecosystem, but, just to, people want to know what's what's going on and, and, and make sure that they're operating in a, in a fair. [00:12:27] Matt: Let's say news article or piece or research even if you went to an acquisition that happened a year, two years ago we might be checking in on, let's say something like an eye themes was probably the one that I can think of at least off the top of my head, that dates pretty far back, big company getting picked up by a hosting company. [00:12:46] And now Corey who started that company now runs both status. One might say. Let's take a look at what happened with these acquisitions in terms of employment. Are the people still there? Is the products. What it was when they acquired it. What is the price point look like? Have these, big hosting companies, which catch a lot of heat because they are big hosting companies. [00:13:08] Did they just roll it into their mega solution? And the once artismal piece of themes is just gone and it's just another toggle, it's just another toggle on the dashboard, right? Is that a fair assessment to say that's the kind of news that we were journalism that we would want to see in the space, or at least maybe you would want to see in the space, not trying to put words in your mouth, but  [00:13:30] Rae: yeah, I think that kind of journalism would be good. [00:13:32] I guess, It's interesting because we work in a space with some really big companies and there are lots of acquisitions going on. It's it's it's, that would be interesting to say, the, the, the the quality and the end product that's offered to, to users is that being maintained, as I know there's been a bit of angst with also motive of buying out people plugin, Sandhills development it'd be interesting to go back in, as you say, in 12 months time. [00:13:56] And from looking at that story as a journalist, you'd probably want to Find long-term users and get their perspectives, whether that's on the record or as background for a story and maybe speak to stuff. If they're happy to speak, even anonymously, get their, their views on how they think the. [00:14:16] Transition has been yeah, those are the kinds of interesting stories that we're not really seeing so much, we're saying the, the, the acquisition and the sale, but we're not really seeing the I guess the journey of how acquisitions are tracking. We're not seeing what's happening to, particularly with automatic buying out so many distances, what are happening to those businesses? [00:14:36] They bought quite a few in the, in the past year and the past few years have been interesting to say, what's, what's happened to the end product house has been absorbed into it, automatic and wordpress.com and, and it has it, has it been for, I guess, the greater good in supporting those employees and, and the businesses, but also providing a a more polished product for the end user. [00:14:57] If that, if that was the purpose of the, of the equity.[00:15:00]  [00:15:01] Matt: I think another, another topic would be something like a core, core contributors, which companies are funding core contribution to the WordPress core. I think in Matt's state of the word, which I do have the slides on the WP minute. [00:15:15] So I'll try to link up in the show notes. I think he showed a graphic of automatic somewhere in the seventies. Person, mark a Yoast coming in again, this is just off the top of my head. I think second place with maybe 14 people. And then it's like GoDaddy who just acquired Pagely who's a multi-billion dollar publicly public. [00:15:36] Are they publicly traded? I better not see, this is what, this is what makes a real journalist. They don't just say things like, I think they're a publicly traded company. If they're not, they're really big. And they've got billions and billions of dollars, but I think only four or five people. Actually contributes to core and word press is a massive part of their business. [00:15:53] Why aren't they doing? Why aren't they doing more for, for WordPress what's, what's the reason. And how much are they really benefiting off of open source? I think a lot of people give Matt an automatic, a lot of heat around the fact that, well, this is an open source product and, and this is just all funneling to the top of wordpress.com to make wordpress.com more money, but it's oh, by the way, There are billion dollar hosting companies leveraging this to who are not giving back. [00:16:20] Yeah. And don't  [00:16:21] Rae: forget Google as well. They're, they're pretty massive company. And, and I'm not sure exactly how many people they've contributed to the, how are they contributing to WordPress 5.9. But. Yeah, it'd be interesting, but you also mentioned Yost in there and I wonder if they'll increase their contributed the numbers now that new fold digital has acquired them. [00:16:39] It'd be interesting to say, how that contribution space changes and, and also in the state of the word Matt shared how he liked to see that landscape of contribution change in the coming years. So, Yeah, it would be, it would be great to see those big businesses putting back more in as far as five for the five, five for the future goes it's great to see so many smaller individuals and businesses contributing. [00:17:04] But also another interesting story I think is over the, over the past year, there's been a drop in, in volunteers and contributors to the project. And an automatic is picked up the lion's share of that work, which, you can't fault automatic for, stepping in and, and supporting the project in that way. [00:17:22] It would be great to say. Nice. Some of the bigger businesses stepping in and putting out resources for that too. I was really pleased to say XW pays as has, has put up contributors for the performance team and it'd be great to see more businesses like that who have that kind of expertise to be able to, to. [00:17:39] Could contribute their people to different parts of the project. Would that help? Because it's not really just about developers. It's also about marketing and design and mobile. There, there are a lot of different end-to-end education. There are a lot of different spaces that need country. [00:17:54] Matt: And what we've I've hoped we've just done is illustrate how important WordPress news [00:18:00] is and could be if there was more funding in the space. So how do we make money doing this? Ray, I wanna, I wanna pivot and talk about that a little bit because you, you, you have. The, what I'm going to say, the only vehicle for content you put out for WordPress is the newsletter, the repository. [00:18:17] You're just sending out email. You're not doing a blog, you're not doing a YouTube channel. You're not doing a podcast yet. And you monetize that through through sponsorship. It's. Well, I'll let you, I'm not, you don't have to say any numbers. It's not a full-time job for you. In other words, it's not supporting you. [00:18:34] Full-time compared to your day job. Maybe one day will like, what do you think it's going to take to make the repository of full-time job? Is there another. Of an audience in the WordPress news space to build a true air quotes, air quotes business, or should it be selling NFTs to support this  [00:18:55] Rae: maybe, but who knows how long that's going to be around for? [00:18:58] To be honest, I don't see their positories a full full-time job for me. I started it as a bit of a side gig. I thought that would take four, maybe four hours a week. And, and how it's more like a donor. So it does take a bit of time to put together because it's, it's solo single stories, reading everything. [00:19:16] And in making sure that, I don't want to just pick any, tweets to include in the newsletter. I want to make sure that I'm trying to find as many views as possible. And the ones that I'm including in the newsletter, a representative of, of the, of the views that you know, are in the community as well as any of that. [00:19:32] It might be a bit unusual. The, I think that it's an interesting one funding. I'm very lucky to have GoDaddy in element or sponsor sponsoring the newsletter this year. They'd been fantastic sponsors. One thing I do is when I enter into an agreement with a sponsor, I make it clear that. [00:19:52] If that, I want to retain editorial independence. So if there are any stories that involve them good or bad, I'm going to include them in the newsletter. Even earlier in the year when automatic mail poll was sponsoring the newsletter for the all of last year and, and And that was fantastic. [00:20:10] It allowed the newsletter to really great. But then when automatic bought out male poet automatic began took over sponsorship of the newsletter for the first quarter of 2021. And that was part of the agreement as well. I made sure that any stories involving automatic rules, you were going to report on those. [00:20:28] I think it's really important. If any publications have sponsorship agreements of that type, that it is very clear that editorial independence is important and, and that's separate from sponsorship. There are lots of other different models as we've discussed before as well, of the podcast. [00:20:48] There are lots of different models for, for funding use. It's, it's a bit of experimentation, I think there's philanthropy as we've seen that philanthropic or philanthropic funding [00:21:00] model. There are a crowdsourced kind of funding models. It's, it's an interesting one because at the end of the day, P everybody wants news, but not everybody's willing to pay for it. [00:21:10] And that's, that's the struggle is real there. It's really hard to overcome that because for a long time, these is. Well, my speed. Well, it's been free on the internet. It's easy to find sources. A lot of people think that they can find it themselves, but the convenience of having a newsletter letter, like the repository brings it all together and makes it more accessible. [00:21:30] Yeah.  [00:21:31] Matt: How do we encourage, ah, I'll I'll fall on this grenade. You don't have to agree with me. Okay. I'll be, I'll be the guy who says it out loud, but. How do we encourage better content? To be made. And I say content specifically, because I know not every, not everyone doesn't want to cover the inside baseball of, of WordPress. [00:21:58] They don't want to dive deep into stories. I get it because it's a very small audience. And maybe we'll talk about that in a moment. Like it's kind of a small audience who really cares about this stuff versus like, how do I build this element or site to make a thousand dollars a month? That's a much larger audience who cares. [00:22:16] Again, air quotes cares about WordPress. How do we encourage others to create better content? Or do you have any, any words of wisdom on how to create better content so that we all the content creators in WordPress, whether it's a journalist, a, an opinion piece, or maybe even a tutorial. That businesses take us a little bit brands that sponsor us or donate to us. [00:22:39] Take us a little bit more serious because I've overseen. I've. What I've seen is the over-saturation of asking for like donor donations and sponsorships, and then the content never gets made. And what I feel like is that kind of hurts us. Maybe not, I don't know, but it kind of hurts us where we knock on that, that brand's door. [00:23:02] And we say, Hey, we got this great thing. We're pouring so much effort into it. And they go, yeah, that other person burned me for $5,000. And they didn't really, they didn't do the ad read. Right. Or they didn't create the amount of content that we thought, or, the content didn't bring us that much traction. [00:23:18] So, you have this, I'm giving you 5,000. I want 5,000 in one. Any words of wisdom for elevating the quality of content or is it just like survival of the fittest?  [00:23:29] Rae: Yeah, that's a really interesting topic. In the good question. The only way I guess I can answer that is, is from my own experience. [00:23:36] When. I started the ripples of trails or, really fortunate that I guess I was the writer for the project. It was a collaboration between myself and Kim. So I was writing, Kim was basically bankrolling. He didn't, he was, running his own company, didn't have the time. So, there was a collaboration between the two of us. [00:23:53] We talked, discussed the news and, and made the website and we kicked it off with, I think, seven subscribers. I [00:24:00] can't remember in the first issue, not many And we got, got up to about a hundred subscribers and it kind of just plateaued for a while, but we kept on going and slowly and it snowballed, but it took probably a good year of, of the newsletter to really get into. [00:24:21] To really start growing our subscribers. I think by that stage, we might've had two or 300 subscribers by the end of the first year, we were a bit deflated. We thought we'd have more subscribers. And we were trying to try to, become more well known and, and get more people reading. But it's a, it's a pretty hard thing. [00:24:39] And so. When it, when it came time for came to step away when male Paul was acquired and then automatic finished sponsoring after they acquired male poet. I was kind of in a spot where I didn't know where I was going to go next with sponsorship. And it was that, that good year of very slow growth and just focusing on writing something quality that attracted GoDaddy to, to sponsor they would, at their hour, they were our first sponsor who really saw what we were, what we were aiming for with the newsletter or by that stage. [00:25:14] No. I was really luckily. So, Laura Nelson, who works at a male poet in their marketing, she's now at world commerce. She was absolutely critical in helping develop that relationship. She's a fantastic member in the WordPress community, so she helped introduce us and yet he's still a sponsor and it's, it's there. [00:25:34] Adam and Courtney and their belief in the newsletter and, and, and wanting to, they also have a sponsor section in the newsletter that allows them to share events and, and, and other pieces with the community. That's, that's been critical in the, the ongoing. Publishing of the newsletter. [00:25:51] Yeah, these kinds of projects can't really can't happen without money family to support. So it's, it's an interesting one in terms of, how do we keep these kinds of things afloat? And as far as going back to your question about quality content, I think I think a lot of people want to make money really quickly. [00:26:10] And yeah, of course, who doesn't, everyone wants to make money, but sometimes it does take a slow burn and working on something with the aim of producing something high quality. Is going to make some money in the end. And I'm happy to say the, and happy to share that. Then the repository is profitable for me. [00:26:27] It's not going to be a full-time job, but for what it, what it is at the moment. And I don't have plans for, major expansion, but it is not well, I, I don't have big plans to have a podcast or a big website and do lots of reporting. People subscribe the same, pretty happy with what it is at the moment. [00:26:48] And, and I am happy to share that in, in the new year, Allie Emmons is coming on board to help with community outreach and in increasing the number of voices that are in the newsletter. That's really important for me to make sure we not just, rinse [00:27:00] and repeating the same voices over and over again, the newsletter. [00:27:03] We want to make sure that people. Who are doing awesome things and they might not be as vocal. We want to make sure that they're included as well. And, and I want the newsletter to be a source of, of amazing work that's happening across the community, not just the same things over and over again as can happen in, in some spaces. [00:27:22] Yeah. Other than  [00:27:25] Matt: one of the things that I think is a challenge is, is that I think. What we want is we want the, maybe not even average WordPress user, but maybe above average WordPress user to want to turn into the news, like turn excuse me, tune into the news. Right? Because Hey, maybe the above average WordPress user is an it professional and she manages a hundred multi-sites for a university. [00:27:53] And. Not in the WordPress community, but my God, wouldn't you like to know when awesome motive buys those, the suite of plugins that you use, and suddenly you're like who the heck is awesome motive. And if I was tuning into a news coverage, maybe somebody doing a piece on who automotive is and the background and the history, et cetera, et cetera Yeah. [00:28:13] I don't know if you've thought about this. I don't know if this is something that maybe you even plan to go into with the newsletter is like, how do we, how do we dip into that segment of the reader of the demographic? I think of a local newspaper, all of a sudden. We're doing fashion week and it's I know what's going on here. [00:28:32] Right? One, you have advertisement that to hope. You're, you're hoping that you're doing fashion week and you're getting some new eyeballs on the, the, the baseline publication, maybe at that it raises more readers in the long run. Is there something like that that we can do without, selling ourselves to affiliate links  [00:28:49] Rae: in? [00:28:50] That's a tough question. How do you, how do you broaden your own. It's a hard one because we're pressing uses so smaller niche and how you reach that kind of other level of, of, users is a, is a tough one. I don't know if I have any answers today. I'd be interested to hear from other people who might've done it successfully, because I can't think of how it, it just feels like there's a, almost like a Seton barrier between. [00:29:18] The people who, who read S I guess, serious WordPress knees that, core contributors and developers and small business owners and people who are very involved in the community. And then everybody else, it just seems like a big step. And Yeah, I don't know. I just don't feel that they're that necessarily interested in, in how WordPress comes together or if people who you use a platform like that, every will be. [00:29:47] That's a, that's a really interesting area to explore.  [00:29:50] Matt: I'm going to say, I'm going to say something in hopes that Sarah Gooding is listening to this and she, and she uses this in the, in the headline. But I think that the cap on the audience [00:30:00] and you could probably. Again, you don't have to reveal anything from your side, but I think the cap on the audience of people who really care about the inside WordPress news is probably right around 3000 human beings on the face of this earth is the number that I would say of people who actually care about. [00:30:21] What Matt says in the state of the word and how it impacts WordPress, for, for, for years, I was gonna say most months, years to come or really care about, themes getting acquired. I think my number is about 3000, maybe on a good day, 3,500, but I'd say 3000 is the global reach of WordPress news. [00:30:41] Yeah, I can use that, Sarah, if you want.  [00:30:45] Rae: Well, I'll tell ya. I don't have that many subscribers to the newsletter. It's it's, it's an interesting one. Like how, how many people are really interested in WordPress news because I've spoken to. People who work at automatic and some other WordPress businesses who work with the community, but aren't necessarily interested in the community or kind of want to be kind of that stick away because they don't want to be too involved in it. [00:31:12] So it, it, it is an interesting number, but also, we've got the English speaking people who are involved in the community, and then we've got the non-English speaking people who have communities in other parts of the world. So who knows, if I assume that number, you're thinking probably English speakers. [00:31:29] So if we think about the people who are non-English speakers and are very involved in WordPress, like you can see all the amazing work that Mary job is doing in Africa. And, The amazing word camp that was held would would camp Spain recently, and the community's just so passionate over there that they even produce a live late night a late night show pre recorded. [00:31:52] But. There, there are people really passionate about WordPress and the community. Oh WordPress the recent word camp in in Portugal, Portugal recently. Yeah, looking at just their their daily schedule of, of, of. Throughout the the two days it was all very community-based and the events I had on day two, where, where everybody getting together and doing things in person together the whole cop that, that whole event was around community and nurturing, connections with people. [00:32:22] And, and so there. You, it could be 3003 and a half thousand people who are really just in WordPress and, and know knowing more about WordPress news. But I would say that number would be. A lot bigger. Once we start thinking about non-English speakers. And I think that's an interesting area to explore that. [00:32:42] How do we kind of bring the, those communities together, the English non-English speakers? How do we bring those people? As just, people who interested in WordPress regardless of language, and that'd be an interesting one to explore the next year or two, as we get closer to exploring when, [00:33:00] when language and translation becomes the, the dominant focus of the program. [00:33:06] Matt: Piggyback off of this conversation of how many max amount of audience I might have the WB minute who has only been around for about six ish months. The biggest piece that it saw was big story that it, so I was Paul Lacey story about Gutenberg and how that Gutenberg has impacted himself, but also his, his opinion on how it impacted. [00:33:25] The community at one saw about 2200 2300 views to the, to the article and about almost 400 downloads to the podcast episode. And of course, anything that you bring up around Gutenberg and. It's impact on whatever mean Gutenberg's impact on whatever the community, the software performance is always going to get a look or view. [00:33:51] Are there any other hard hitting topics you think that might be that we haven't explored yet? By the time this episode goes out, it will be 20, 22 something this year you think, which is kind of interesting that folks should be paying attention to, or the next time.  [00:34:07] Rae: Oh, yeah. I'm interested to see how the acquisition train goes next year in terms of more acquisitions in the space. [00:34:16] And also you can't really get away from Gutenberg. That's going to be a big focus of next year. It really jumped out at me during the state of the word. When Matt was saying, we only have a handful of, of block themes and you'd like to see 3000 by the end of next year. So, interesting to see, I, I guess one of the interesting stories will be how, how blockchains become more commercialized as well. [00:34:39] Are we going to see. More, same authors once w 5.9 comes out are they going to feel ready to really explore that space? We're going to see a lot more of those themes on, on ThemeForest and other kinds of Marketplaces like that. Be interesting to say how that rolls out next year, because after that Matt was talking about, venturing into collaboration as the focus of the next phase of the roadmap for, for WordPress. [00:35:03] So are we going to see blocks wrap up next year or continue, kind of fall into the, into the following year? Yeah. And I, I think the, the other thing is also probably most seriously thinking about volunteers and contributors to WordPress, that was a big focus of the state of the word. [00:35:18] And, and with the lack of volunteers, thanks to you, the pandemic, that'd be an interesting thing to watch next year. Where are we? It's, it's mostly sponsored people who are contributing to WordPress. We, we see a lot, a lot of that. I was going to say, more of a drive to have more sponsored people working on the project, or, we're trying to recruit more people who, who aren't sponsored. [00:35:40] That'd be interesting thing to watch next year, as far as contributions go and how that increases or potentially decreases, I guess.  [00:35:49] Matt: Gutenberg everywhere blocks. Give me all the blocks. Ray, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really can't. Thank you enough. I could go on for another hour, but I'm sure you're sick and sick and tired of hearing me. [00:35:59] Where can folks [00:36:00] go to sign up to the newsletter and say, thanks online.  [00:36:03] Rae: Well, if you interested in joining the repository, it's it comes out every Friday, go to the repository.email to sign up. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Matt. I've been listening for years and yeah, it's, it's really an honor to, to  [00:36:18] Matt: be feeding. [00:36:19] No, I, I, I, it's a pleasure and an honor having you here as well. I also love the repository. Go sign up the show. The links will be in the show notes. Hey, if you want to support independent WordPress news or content number one, sign up for the repository. And if you are a big business and you've got some bucks, make sure you knock on raised door to say, Hey, I'd love to sponsor the news. [00:36:44] And then when you're done with her, she will send you my way to spend $79 to join the WP minute membership. Get your hand in the weekly WordPress news in our private discord interact with folks like Ray and others who produce the show@buymeacoffee.com slash Matt report. We'll see you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

I typically open up my monologue with setting some tension or to attempt to provoke how a grand idea might come together in the upcoming audio. I don't have that today. What I have is a young entrepreneur that impressed me with his story, branding, and how he's approaching the business of…college movers. I know you normally tune in for the SaaS powered wins or the WordPress unicorns, but trust me when I tell you, Sam Chason, founder of Storage Scholars, is bringing the heat. I'll admit, his story was so good, that I almost didn't believe him. I fully expected to decline the interview headed into our pre-interview. Luckily that wasn't the case, and now I'll be rooting for him from the sidelines hoping he can turn this business into a massive success. By the way, we do talk WordPress/WooCommerce and the platforms he's tried in the past — we're still getting our hands dirty here. If you enjoy the episode and want to buy me a virtual coffee in support, go to buymeacofee.com/mattreport and show your support for the show. Episode transcript [00:00:00] Sam: Storage scholars is a door to door, white glove service for college students. So basically the way that the service works it's generally for out-of-state or international studies.[00:00:09] I was from New York. I went to a school called wake forest, North Carolina, and I had two international hallmates, one from China, one from Ethiopia, and I would stereotypically see them bring over two large suitcases overseas. They'd bought the rest of the stuff that they needed at target bed bath and beyond, et cetera.[00:00:24] And there was just no way they were going to ship back their bedding or school supplies back to China. Right. So I thought, had to be a better way type deal. So the way the service works now is students receive boxes and packing supplies that we prefer finalists. They packed up their stuff. They snap a couple photos of the items.[00:00:39] They're looking at store add any extra insurance, lock up their room and go home. And then we generally have contracts with these universities. We get key access from the dorms. We use students on those campuses to do a contact us, move out about a 24 to 72 hours after campus closes, store it for the summer, however long they need to store it for and then have it ready and waiting in their new room pre delivered when they arrived back on campus.[00:01:01] So that's some storage scholars in a nutshell.[00:01:03] Matt: Yeah. When I first, before. You and I chatted. I was like, okay, moving. Like I say, moving company. And in my, in my head, I'm like, big industry makes sense. But then when we chatted and you're like, yeah, but people don't need to bring all their stuff back.[00:01:17] They're gone for whatever a month, 45 days, a half semester or whatever the thing is. Ship, all this stuff back. And I was like, wow, this is really interesting. You mentioned that there were some competitors out there kind of doing this same thing, but just kind of half asking it. Right. It was just a little bit of, one thing, a little bit of the other, not the full, the full compliment.[00:01:38] What are you doing better than the[00:01:39] Sam: current. Well, yeah, definitely shout out Nick hubris, sweaty start up. He was one of the first people I met doing this up at Cornell and that's kinda how I ended up on Twitter and probably my view as well. He, he sold a similar business up in the Northeast, so we were more so in the Southeast, we actually just recently signed a contract with a school in Pennsylvania a couple of days ago.[00:01:56] So making an expansion there watch out during removers, but a lot of it has to do with not only the university partnerships. So we're doing everything by the school's books. There's some others kind of, Companies out there that will just farm emails blast to a school and just figure they can get 30, 40, 50 customers per school and say that they operate at 80 a hundred institutions across the country.[00:02:16] We're more about building deep in Beth's in-depth relationships with those schools. And not only with the administration, but then also. Really fostering entrepreneurship on these campuses and kind of in two to three students, generally sophomores, they have some long longevity and bring these kids on board.[00:02:31] Having them shadow us, they can learn really important, like marketing operations, entrepreneurial type skills in school and ideally pay the wafers their way through college, kind of the same way that I[00:02:40] Matt: did. Yeah. So it's like, it's I don't, these are my words. You tell me paid internship. Is that how it.[00:02:47] Sam: That's funny. You say that that's actually quote unquote what I just put on our handshake profile. Some of these schools, cause it was not getting accepted before as more of like a high paying job. I figured not only is that what's more appealing to a college student nowadays. They want something for their resume, but also something they can make money on it, but it's also kind of the way we were able to get it out of these universities and getting on those job boards in the shop postings.[00:03:07] But, but it's very valid to,[00:03:08] Matt: so to my dedicated audience, so. Of what Sam just said is probably clicking to you. Why? Sam is here generally, I'm interviewing somebody who has a digital product, a digital service and agency software as a service. We're going to get to that in a moment, but I really love the, because again, people who listen to this know that I'm a huge proponent of entrepreneurship, but learning the nuts and bolts of it, rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.[00:03:33] It's a fantastic model. So I applaud you for like having this platform for people to. Really figure things out. I don't want to say the hard way, but like, you're getting them a job. They're learning all of this stuff. Have you been able to measure that? I know it's kind of early days for you, but how have you measured the success of people actually learning the business side of things, even if they're not sticking with you, for years as their end, is there anything like that, that you have a feedback loop?[00:03:59] Sam: Yeah. I mean myself. I The reason why I started this business was to pay my way through school. I did it more out of necessity. But my business partner, actually, he was a year younger than me. He's across the room over here. He's probably got his headphones in, but he was a biochemistry major coming to school, like 4.0 student, like probably could have gone to Stanford med.[00:04:16] But really got the itch, got the bug working with. And decided about halfway through his junior year to tell his whole family, Hey, I'm putting my medical career on hold. I really want to actually make, not necessarily to make a difference, be able to actually do things with my, with do things with my time, like immediately, as opposed to going to medical school residency and not be able to actually have a career until 10, 12 years after school.[00:04:36] So he was probably like the first one. And then. As we went out and started hiring these co-founders, I'm going to had kids that were sophomores, juniors, seniors, and they graduated and they all wanted to had three of them wanted to then work full-time afterwards. We ended up doing that. He ended up running like a residential, commercial moving company that we had for a little while.[00:04:52] Other ones have then worked for a little bit and then gone out and worked for companies like at JP Morgan. And truly, I think the biggest thing about this is a lot of times people will have things on the resume. And, but they don't necessarily have the ability to talk about it. Like, Hey, I worked at, I intern at UI Parthenon.[00:05:07] That's been amazing, but like, what did you actually do at Eli Parthenon? Right. And when they work at storage scholars, they have such a breadth of actually what they did. They went from they're calling the customers. They're actually meeting the customers. They're executing tons of marketing strategies are actually learning sales experience directly from us.[00:05:25] Full-scale entrepreneurship and we're taking all the tools that we've had found successful on campuses in the past, give them that playbook, but then also giving them pretty much unlimited budget to then do whatever they feel is best on their campus. And they feel really empowered. That's really where we found most of our success.[00:05:40] Matt: That's awesome stuff. A listener. You might hear some noise in the background. Sam is sitting in his common area of his apartment building, but I'm happy to report if you're watching the show on, on YouTube, YouTube, youtube.com/uh, the Matt report. Sam has a professional microphone in front of him. Thanks to thanks to me, urging him to get one, because he'll be doing a round of podcasts and you'll realize how good it is for his business and the marketing side.[00:06:02] In our pre-interview you mentioned Excel. I want to talk about the software side of it, and then we'll talk about more of like that marketing and branding stuff. Cause I think your, your branding's on point and I want to learn a little bit more. How you got to that point, why you realize that's important, but in our pre-interview you mentioned that your brother helped build some of the software.[00:06:21] Of the business. A lot of my listeners are into that and to the software side, how they're making things click. Is there a certain tech stack that you can talk about that you're using to build the inner inner workings of the business or even the public facing one? Are you using WordPress for the website?[00:06:38] Sam: Stuff like that? I guess I'll start with the part that I'm more knowledgeable, but the front end was at one point it was WooCommerce when it first, first. Went to Squarespace. And then actually I'm probably about 80% done with migrating over to a web flow. Sorry, escaped my mind for a second. So the,[00:06:58] Matt: that you for leaving woo commerce.[00:07:00] And then, then now you're kind of, okay, he's going back to Webflow. So at least it's something that's.[00:07:04] Sam: Yeah, so more so from the aesthetic design aspect, we go into web flow mean not, we were kind of reaching our capabilities a lot more of like block tacks and block images on Squarespace. And I just wasn't able to kind of take it where I want it to go in terms of the branding.[00:07:17] But then the backend is, has gone through. A ton of different iterations. A lot of it had to do with, we had one business model and then you get key access from the universities. You go to a different business model, then you have COVID and you have to start doing like shipping packages. And my five brothers listened to this.[00:07:33] He definitely was a little frustrated. His, his, his answer was always, yes. Yes, we could do that, but w I don't think we really understood exactly what yes, Matt and all the work that went into that. And we have, I think 287 custom fields for each associated account for different like yes-no formulas and stuff like that, too.[00:07:50] But it's, it's basically built mostly on PHP angler a and my SQL eight in terms of the, kind of the front end of the database, and then AWS as well. So we're actually, he's stepping in. He's coming more of like a CTO role. And we're bringing in kind of like a development team. So we have two full-time developers, as well as somebody who's kind of managing them as well.[00:08:10] And they should be coming on board in the next couple of weeks. It will be the real test of all the feedback we've gotten is that he has really clean code. And I really hope that to be true, but[00:08:18] Matt: if not, why not? Brother's not getting anything for Christmas. Coming[00:08:21] Sam: now. He's, he's, he's an incredible mind.[00:08:23] So I would assume all of that stuff is.[00:08:25] Matt: I, I want to talk about this software segment for a little bit here. When you left WooCommerce, what were your reasons? You're not in an uncommon, a lot of people listening to this too. There's a segment who are agency owners, freelancers. They talked a lot of folks who hop through different CMSs.[00:08:40] They hear a bunch of different things. You're not in an uncommon seat to be making these jokes. But what was it for you to leave WooCommerce to begin with?[00:08:47] Sam: Yeah, you have to appreciate that. I was 18 and I was better than my first ever website. And I just had my brother at the time because he was the only like technical person.[00:08:54] I knew, Hey, like what should we build the website on? He kind of helped me build the WooCommerce website to begin with. And then I had a friend that was working for kind of a different startup. It was more, it was a food and Bev startups with a little more of a prettier interface. He's like, you gotta use Squarespace.[00:09:07] You gotta start using canvas. This is mind blowing to me like, oh, I can actually just drag and drop and make this as opposed to relying on my brother to actually go in and design something where he was extremely technically sound. But aesthetically is probably is more of a secondary. So that was more so just the ability for me to do it myself.[00:09:23] But I'm sure now, five, six years later will commerce would, it would have been more of a drag and drop. It just was a little more intimidating at the time. Yeah, for[00:09:30] Matt: sure. For sure. Is the software side without revealing the secret sauce. Is that a secret sauce for you over your competition?[00:09:39] Like what technologies or how do you simplify this experience for your customers through the avenue of.[00:09:47] Sam: A hundred percent. It's definitely, there's no reason to fully reinvent the wheel. Storage and moving companies existed obviously for decades, what we do. It's, you can't buy some off the shelf software.[00:09:58] That's actually going to work for exactly what you're looking for. So we've definitely, scoured the competition. We've built our own software and then we've also kind of taken probably some of the 10, five, 10% from these other. Worked for them. And put it into our platform. Of course they can kind of like a, a Frank and business of, of storage scholars for the college Jordan's game.[00:10:17] But I think a couple of the things are you market to the college students, but the real customers are kind of the parents. So that was the biggest lesson we learned in terms of making accounts that can give both parent and student access where the student come on, they can make the account, the parent that doesn't have to like contact the student to find out their log.[00:10:34] The parent can pay. The student can edit the pick-up drop-off information. It's a whole open flow of information that in the past it would be that scenario would be that Jane Smith is a divorced mom and she made an account for her son Johnny Maxwell and. The account would say Jane Smith, but it's actually for the sun and it's like, what is going on?[00:10:54] Right. So being able to really be flawless in the flow of information and then that way we actually know exactly who we're communicating to, and we can also communicate both to the students and parents and keep everybody in the loop is it's probably the biggest differentiator.[00:11:05] Matt: Is this all website on the website or is there a mobile.[00:11:08] That everybody has instant access to.[00:11:11] Sam: Yeah, it's a mobily optimized website right now. That's actually where we're stepping into as well as making an app. I think the initial instinct was why do we need an app who wants to download a storage app and have it on their phone at all times? But at the same time, there is definitely limitations with websites and being able to upload images quickly.[00:11:27] And just more so the speed of the site is what's holding us back right now from not necessarily a customer standpoint, that's a lot simpler, but more of a managerial standpoint because customer they're uploading. Five images, total where the managers are going in, potentially looking at 600 orders in a one or two day period and just the load speed and the page speed needs to be increased.[00:11:44] So making a oh an app first for the managers where they can also integrate all the software, use it right now, like off the shelf in terms of time tracking payroll and also integrating our actual software altogether to have one harmonious unit.[00:11:58] Matt: What challenges are you finding? Kind of like you're almost in that marketplace.[00:12:04] Conundrum where you need to kind of serve two different crowds, right? So in a, in a marketplace standpoint, you need the customers to show up and you need the inventory to sell them in your case, you need the customers to show up, but you also you're like, so you're building a software for these customers to snap the photos of the stuff.[00:12:21] People need to pack up and move for them. But then you're also trying to build software for your team to use, efficiently and effectively. How is that process? Like, you get customers that give you feedback. Hey, this experience was great. This experience sucked. And then you get the same feedback from your, from your employees.[00:12:35] Or like, I can't find the stuff fast enough, or I can't see all the orders coming in. Has that been a challenge at all or fairly smooth sailing so[00:12:43] Sam: far? Yeah, definitely. Always been customer first. I think the customer experience has not been sacrificed by any means, but it's been the iterations of the business.[00:12:53] So like right now, About 80% or sorry to say it's about 50, 50, I would say at this point, because we keep changing of our business is key access schools, kids leave their stuff in their room. They go home. We do big mass move-outs in 24, 48 hours. That has, Boriso been put on the back burner because we have a little more time and autonomy.[00:13:13] We're not dealing directly with the students. Face-to-face where we can kind of sit back and wait for the website to load or just kind of go on your computer. Make that work, but then you have an entirely different way. We built it where it's like a by appointment where you meet the customers at the door, they pick up time, they're on a alive queue and then there's worklist associated with that.[00:13:30] So the by appointment has been perfected, but then now that we continue to evolve and make the business model better, it's like actually having them make two different work lists, one for like a one day, move out and one for like a 10 day move out. And with, with all the things that have obviously happened in the last 12 months, we had to.[00:13:46] Make some other things become priority, but I think, I don't think, this year is exactly what we're doing. We're actually going to make that. So they're both working and you can have a work list. You can download that. You can search by it. You can filter by dorm. You can filter by floor of the dorm, and then you're just going through and just crushing dorm by dorm, as opposed to like looking at specific dates or people are signing up for their move-outs.[00:14:05] I want to[00:14:05] Matt: move on to talk about the challenges of running the business. Aside from the software and talk about these logistic things, part of the advantage. I remember you telling me and you, I think you mentioned it before in the pre-interview is that you do go into the room, right? They, you get access to the room to grab the.[00:14:21] And your competition doesn't do that, right?[00:14:25] Sam: Yeah. So, some. Some of these schools have access to the dorms. But the thing is, is that a lot of them are, are basically more so high level marketing companies. And then they're farming out the actual, moving to local moving companies and with what's going on with COVID and stuff as well, in terms of like having, being coming vaccinated, that's one big barrier to entry at like, well, how are you going to trust us outside moving company to walk into your dorms, but who can you trust?[00:14:49] The students on your campus because they've been vaccinated. So that was kind of one way for us to get a backdoor approach to that. And then on top of that too, if you're an 18 year old girl and your father is sending you to school, does your father really want you to have, 40 old man walking into your room stereotypically, right.[00:15:03] And walking into that dorm and picking up your stuff and moving it out when you could have a kid that was in your calculus class. And we definitely do struggle with the kind of balancing that image of peer to peer, but also. Kind of perfection and, level of quality because some people are like, this is awesome.[00:15:18] You're my, your. Current, classmate at the same time, my mom doesn't mind if I can trust you with my stuff. So that's another reason kind of behind the branding and trying to make us see them a more of like the Uber black premier service. We're not a discount service, we're charging a premium price and, our level of service should be reflected in that just because we're using students, that doesn't necessarily decrease the quality.[00:15:37] It's just increasing the personalization. Yeah.[00:15:40] Matt: And, but the particular challenge getting to was is you have to make these, not only do you have to make that I guess, sale or relationship to the customer, but you also have to make it with the school because it's not like the school is just going to let you do all this stuff without, I'm assume without them knowing who the heck you are and like what's going on.[00:15:56] They start seeing all these black t-shirts rolling in the nice logos on it. Like what's happening here. I'm sure you have to try. Again, like a couple sides of the fence that the end user customer, and then the place that has the inventory, which is the school and in it, you have to build up those relationships on both sides.[00:16:14] The, and then the next challenge, which popped into my head when we were chatting earlier is just the, student, what I'll say is a paid internship. These student body employees, if you will, across the country how are you managing. Scaling that like, do you have to start having regional managers, people, once they do graduate school, they become an actual full season employee with you.[00:16:38] And now they're managers of that school. How does that ramp[00:16:41] Sam: up? Yeah. So we call those internships. We call them campus co-founders because we truly believe that they are kind of co-founding in some ways like franchising their campus, and they can either get an inflated hourly upwards, 15 to $20 an hour at a base, or they can essentially get like a percentage of revenue.[00:16:57] And then of course, they're going to see that increase the more years that they're actually operating. So when you have, like, for example, you had a kid who, a soft. Junior senior. By the time he was senior year, he made $20,000 in a single move out based on that revenue schedule. And then he wanted to continue working full time.[00:17:14] So I think you have the people that are naturally interested. But the challenge with that of course is when we were kind of under a million dollars in sales or a couple years ago, it was all right. Well, we want to bring these people on, but the beauty of this business is seasonal. And as a full-time student, it was.[00:17:28] But like now that we're graduating we're no longer in school. We have all this extra time and like, to what you alluded to, we're spending a lot more of that time actually selling universities and kind of university sales, as opposed to just, building up this marketing and then trying to do the move out and then do the move in and.[00:17:42] Taking a rest because we actually have school to do it. It's finding a job to do the rest of the year. So as we've been able to grow, I think the beauty of this is that the more people that have actually wanted to work full-time we've been able to give them full-time opportunities. So we heard a gift from Milan.[00:17:55] We hired a kid actually just from college of Charleston a couple of weeks ago. He came on full time and then we have two more in the pipeline, one from Richmond and one from Washington and Lee university that are currently seniors in. There if express interests and, and working post-graduation I think for the first time, I'm really excited that we actually will be able to give them full-time opportunities as just like you said, as regional managers and one region managing their region physically, but then also helping to then manage remote.[00:18:20] No another five or 10 that are schools under their domain.[00:18:23] Matt: Do you look at certain areas? So I'm south of Boston, there's a billion schools here. Like, do you look at areas that you want to go into that maybe you haven't found any organic interest from? Is that a thing? Or is it like, Hey, I'm just like this natural growth just works and it's way easier to manage or do you look at territories that you want to get into and, and how does.[00:18:44] Sam: A hundred percent. So I went to school in North Carolina, so natural expansion was Virginia, South Carolina. Saw a competitor that had a school in Texas at SMU. So that's how we went down to Texas rice and that's to me this past year, I just moved down to Texas to expand that. Texas and Florida. But I'm from New York, my business partners from Boston too.[00:19:01] So we definitely have our sights set on the Northeast. There's just actually a little more competition up there. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Mean being a fast follower is definitely a lot easier than trying to educate not only the school, but the customer on what a valet storage service is.[00:19:16] So I'd rather just go in where they've had a previous, service provider that's just bad. And then we can just go in and take over. But where are we? Found kind of those pockets is actually we started going to housing conferences. So conferences that have the residency, I, the operations people.[00:19:31] And that's actually where he met this one person from Pennsylvania, where by no means were we meaning to expand there. But we developed a great rapport. She loved what she heard and she was like, yeah, I'd love to sign an exclusive contract with y'all. That'll happen in the last couple of weeks, but now it's like, oh, well now that puts some eyes in Pennsylvania.[00:19:47] Maybe we need to expand there a little quicker and. Pennsylvania's got probably 20 schools that we could expand to. And once you have that kind of density, there's no reason not. Yeah.[00:19:55] Matt: I'd imagine and correct me if I'm wrong. Like I, I would imagine when you go into expand into a new territory, your biggest or potentially your biggest spend is going to be marketing and advertising.[00:20:05] Just to get the word out there. It's not like you're having to ship a bunch of product or these amazing boxes that we're going to talk about in a second. But is there any kind of like thing you have to ship in? And store your own storage stuff, something really meta, like, is there a thing you have to ship out there?[00:20:20] A box of stuff and people just have to.[00:20:23] Sam: Yeah. So yeah, I'll ship a box or two of our storage scholars boxes to the co-founders tell them to go out and buy a table, give them their corporate credit card to go do that. And that's going to have shirts, cups, stickers, banners, film backs, kind of that, that kind of marketing material.[00:20:37] But the beauty too, is that on any first year campus, whether we're talking about marketing materials or whether we're talking about. Storing kids' actual things is that, there's a really nice thing called self storage. That's usually five minutes from campus. So when we're not necessarily sure about a market, the numbers can look great, but it doesn't assign me.[00:20:54] People are going to use the service. So we'll use self storage almost exclusively for the first year. And then once you have that market proven, then you're going to go out and you're going to find an industrial warehouse lease. But that being said, it's also another challenge of the business because we might have.[00:21:06] 10 15,000 square feet from the four months of made August. But then all these kids move back in. You might have a couple of students that store longer. You might have some marketing materials, some extra boxes, but that's going to come down to a maximum, thousand square feet. Right. So then you're kind of downsizing either to self storage or coming up with a really creative lease with the landlord.[00:21:22] But that's a, that's definitely a, a tough aspect of the business too. It's finding that space.[00:21:27] Matt: Oh, when you raise a billion dollars, I hope it's not one of those. We work stories where you set out to be a coworking space, but you ended up being a real estate company. And then why the hell do you own all this property?[00:21:36] And you're like, oh, we're really a moving company. And then sheets are all imbalanced. Let's talk about, let's talk about marketing for a second. Toward the end of the show, a great marketing. I think I know the answer, but why did you focus on, how did you feel? How did you know that, that marketing's really going to work for something like this or branding and your logo and stuff is really going to work for something like this?[00:21:57] A competitive market.[00:21:59] Sam: Yeah, the way the business was started, as I printed out some flyers that I'd probably throw up out. If I looked at today, I'm there pretty embarrassing, but I went door to door. I saw all my freshmen, hallmates and freshman classmates, and they knock on the door and they say, come in.[00:22:13] I'm like, no, that's, I would knock on the door again to come in. And I'm like, no, I'm not who you think I am, but sure. I'll come in. So I, I definitely had some tough conversations at the beginning and got some raw feedback on what was what they were looking for and what they weren't looking for. But I think initially too, in terms of like a branding aspect after kind of doing that customer discovery was.[00:22:31] The best advice that I got from one of my entrepreneurship professors is there was a competitor on campus and I was like, oh, they're charging $14 a box. I'm going to charge 13. Oh, he's like, do not be the discount service, like always charge more and, but provide more too. Right. So I from, I wouldn't say day one, but from day two, it's like, okay.[00:22:49] Yes, we need to be out there. Be the premium service and service, the top level customer and give them the service that they, that they desire. And the whole black and white was really trying to be the. Premium futuristic, Uber black type experience, luxury experiences, as opposed to being, I don't know, like a green eco-friendly moving company.[00:23:07] We are. Absolutely. You can find that. I don't mean to say it like that, but I think sometimes there's, there's definitely certain colors that elicit certain emotions and I, I want it to be more of a sleek elite luxury brand.[00:23:17] Matt: Yeah. The do do when every time you're moving students, You always rocking the branded boxes or is it like one branded box on top and the rest of them are[00:23:26] Sam: brown?[00:23:27] No, absolutely. So not only does that give you the brand awareness, but actually, so we used to use obviously brown boxes, right. And we would buy these stickers and they put the sticker on top of the box. It also put the sticker on there, out of box item, their TV, their refrigerator, whatever. But in terms of like an inventory perspective, if you imagine you have a box and then you'd stack another box on top, And you have a sticker on the top.[00:23:49] Well, you can't see it. Right? So those boxes were also designed because you have their writing, their name, the order number, the item number on the top of the box. They're also writing it massively on the side of the box, actually in the storage facilities. They're lined up. Yeah. I see all their names very, very clearly.[00:24:04] So from just like an identification standpoint, that was the purpose of it. And then of course, yet when you walk around with black storage, collar shirts, white shirts, white shorts, and these big black boxes, and then you see them in the, in the dumpsters for two weeks after, and the recycling bins, after everyone leaves and comes back, it's like, it's great branding.[00:24:19] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. People wonder what the heck's going on. I want that, like, that looks easy. Speaking of looks easy. I'm looking at the. Archive a web archive.org site. And I'm looking back to August, 2018. Your tagline for the site back then was easy, effortless and economical live the scholars. How did you change that from a marketing perspective?[00:24:40] You started talking to customers, you chatted with them. They were like, no, we'll pay you a little bit more money. And you got rid of the word economical. How did that all play out? Changing that.[00:24:48] Sam: Yeah. I thought alliteration was more powerful than value at the time. So that's probably why I went with that.[00:24:53] But yeah, I it was, like I said, I, I want it to beat out the competition because also at the same time, I didn't, I wasn't confident. Like I knew it was confident in myself, but I'd never, I didn't want to over promise and under deliver. So to say, Hey, we're the best service we're better than the competition.[00:25:06] I'd never even moved to box before. It's like, that was kind of tough. So that was year one. And then once we, server. 64 students at wake forest university. I was like, all right, well, this went well. We made it happen. I touched every single box. I know exactly how this works. I shook probably half the kids hands and the parents hands that use this service.[00:25:22] All right. Now I'm confident we can go out there and start to spread what we're doing and do it in a, in a much better way and be able to charge that premium price tag, Sam,[00:25:30] Matt: this doesn't sound like it's your first rodeo. Who do you have? Have you ran a business before somebody, your dad, your parents, a great mentors.[00:25:38] You're just born with it. What is it?[00:25:40] Sam: So my parents are both public high school teachers in New York. I'm the youngest of three. My brother is a web developer, my sister's a and in fashion. So I, I didn't necessarily get it from them fully, but definitely the fiscal responsibility absolutely came from my parents, actually my grandfather mostly, and from, at a young age.[00:26:00] Kind of the quintessential story would be, and maybe two of them was that at five. I was like, Hey mom, dad, like, I want to have a lemonade stand. So great. Okay. So you're going to go out. You're going to buy the paper, the markers, the plastic cups and the, lemonade powder. And w we'll we'll lend you the money in the beginning, but you got to pass that back.[00:26:17] And to like be, $18 in debt at five years old, it's like, shit. Like I gotta make this happen. Right. So I'm standing out in the street and I'm flagging people down. And, and from that point on, even at age nine, I'm like, oh mom, like Frankie wants an Xbox for Christmas. Okay. Well, how are you going to get that for him?[00:26:33] Right. Well, it's like, I wasn't poor, but it just kind of given him. The fiscal responsibility at such a young age, what kind of drove me to, to start develop these skills very early on and start flipping ATVs cars and stuff like that in high school and selling candy out of my locker and middle school. I was always kind of hustling.[00:26:49] Matt: Are you, have you raised money? I don't think we, as we talked about this in the pre-interview raising money, organic bootstrap, I should say, or do you plan on raising money? What are the cards hold.[00:26:58] Sam: Yeah. Currently exclusively bootstrapped. Like I said, too excited for aside from a little PPP, but it, the, the business motto is structured such as, and the reason why I started this business was, Hey, I need to make money.[00:27:10] Like today. I need to pay for my school today. So how can I do that? And so kids would pay a $50 deposit, which they still do now. And that for me covered the initial cost of the boxes, the tape, the storage units, the trucks, and that's, what's been able to catapult. As far, I don't think we could grow to 150 schools next year without raising money, but that's not really the purpose or really the path right now.[00:27:33] Like I said, building deep in-depth relationships with the universities and the life cycle of a, of a university sales cycle is, is pretty it's pretty. Oh, it's more of a relationship driven business. So trying to figure that out along the way, and at this point where we've been able to bootstrap it and keep it going that way.[00:27:49] Matt: Sam chase and storage scholars, storage, scholars.com, Sam, anywhere else you want folks to go?[00:27:56] Sam: Yeah, definitely follow us on socials on on Instagram, on Facebook, LinkedIn, we are definitely trying to be a young company. So give us some rod feedback. If, if you're in that age, demographic 18 to 21, let us know what we're doing.[00:28:10] Right. Let's know what we're doing wrong. Love to hear from you, ★ Support this podcast ★

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy part two of this special 4 part episode series. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. So I have got to ask you, what did you think about episode number one of the World Changers Roundtable? Hopefully, you loved it. There were so many things covered in that 42 minutes. Anyway, we are moving on to the next part of this interview. As you know, this is going to be broken down into four parts because they kept me there, handcuffed to a table, until 3:00 AM. I'm just joking. They didn't really. But, the question was so intriguing, we were having so much fun, we just kept going and going until finally I was like, "I have to fly out in three hours. I need to get back to my hotel." But now we're going to go dive into the second part. This next episode is probably another 30 to 40, 45 minutes or so as well. So these are some things we'll be covering in this one, which is really fun. We talk about, number one, why my business partner, Todd Dickerson, is so amazing, and hopefully give you ideas about if you're pursuing opportunities and trying to land your dream job or partnership or whatever. Number two, we talked about personality profiling, how we actually are hiring here at ClickFunnels. We talked about where my love for learning came from. We talked about transition for me, going from an athlete to a business person and a marketer. We talked about some of the lessons I learned from Lindsey Stirling, things I was not expecting to hear from her that totally changed everything for me. We talked about people who intrigue me, my interest in health and bio hacking. We talked about is there anything that happens inside of this business that gets me as excited as what I felt in wrestling. We talked about what thing is close, but nothing actually has ever hit it. We talked about the first Two Comma Club Awards. We talked about how to upgrade your identity as you grow. We talked about the fact that you have to cycle and fail and rebuild in your businesses. We talked about the launch of ClickFunnels and how it wasn't just the fact that I was a genius, because I wasn't. There are so many things. Talking about the grace of God and how it tied into the launch of ClickFunnels. We talked about some of my early products, like Zip Brander and Forum Fortunes. We talked about my Christmas Grinch sale, which was the very first big sale, big launch I ever did, to my little tiny list that made enough money to cover Christmas for my wife and I when we were first getting started. We talked about becoming worthy. We talked about list building, how it's better than buying ads, and a whole bunch of other things. It's amazing, this could be 40 courses all wrapped into one super podcast episode. So if you liked the last episode, I think you're going to love this one as well. And I've got two more after this, coming back, going deeper into this conversation with the Roundtable of World Changers. So, that said, we're going to cue the theme song. When we come back, we'll dive right into the second section here of the interview. Matt Maddix: Dave and Todd, I mean, just wow. Those dudes are like... But what about those guys? Russell: So here's Todd's story. So the real long story short, I bought some software, it was coding Ruby on Rails, didn't know that. Bought this company with the last... I didn't have the money. So I borrowed money, bought this company, coded on some platform we didn't know, and I was like, "Screw it," right? And I tried to hire people to fix it, nobody could fix this platform until finally I was leaving the office one day. I literally emailed the people saying, "Turn off the servers." We lost all of our money to this company. They shut it down. And I'm walking out of the office and I had this impression of like, "There could be someone on your email list who knows Ruby on Rails." I was like, "That's weird. I had a bunch of internet marketing nerds. There's no one that's like, 'Ruby on Rails...'" Anyway. It was starting with the impression from God, I stopped, turned back around, set the computer to open back up, sent an email to my list. "If you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner. I bought a software company and it's not working. Please send me a message." Send. Matt: And that's all you said? Russell: Yeah. And lo and behold, three years earlier, Todd bought some random thing from me, happened to be on my email list. He built the website three or four years earlier that was making six figures a year on autopilot. Hadn't worked in four years. Just hanging out relaxing with his wife and his daughter. And an email comes in and it says, "If you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner." He's like, "I know Ruby on Rails. I can be Russell's partner." Emails me back. And at first I see him and his beautiful wife and I'm like, "There's no way he's a programmer. There's no way." That was literally my thought. But he was the only person that responded back so I was like, "Okay, well, here's the login to the site. Fix it. I don't know what to do. I'm not a coder." I went to bed, woke up the next morning. He's like, "Cool, I fixed the site. Plus I found this, this, and this. And I changed this. And I moved these things,", and all of this stuff. He's like, "It's working now. Do you have anything else you want to do together?" I'm like, "Huh." And so I give him another project, another project. And for an entire year Todd and I worked together, and never once did he ever ask me for money, ever. Matt: Wow. Russell: Not a penny. And I remember he started finding Boise to work on a project together ... Matt: You're telling me he worked for you for an entire year? Russell: For free. More than a year. Caleb Maddix: Why was that? Russell: I don't know. I found out later. He'd gone to Robert Kiyosaki at this event and he said, "Find someone who's doing what you want to do and work for them for free." So he told me that years later. I didn't know that. Matt: Todd, if you're watching dude. I love you man. You're legit. Russell: And so he kept coming and he started coming to Boise and we started becoming friends. The smartest developer I've ever met. Literally the smartest person I've ever met. I'll go that far. Just genius. And he'd come out to Boise and we'd work on projects and ideas. We tried to launch a couple of things. None of them really worked. And we were just trying stuff. He was just always there, always serving, always doing stuff. And one day were in Boise and I was looking over his shoulder cause we're looking at stuff and I saw his email. And there's all these emails from some recruiting site or something. I was like, "What's that?" He's like, "Oh, it's people recruiting me for a Ruby job." And I was like, "Do you get a lot of those?" And he's like, "I get three or for a day." I'm like, "Really? Are they good offers?" He's like, "I don't know. Let's check it out." He opened it up and the first one was like $400,000 a year starting salary. I'm like, "What?" The next one is $350,000. The next was 5 ... Insane things. I'm like, "Why don't you do that?" He's like, "I don't want to work for them. I want to be your partner man." I'm like, "What?" And then I all of a sudden had this realization that I hadn't paid him in a year. We didn't have much money at the time, we're still at the backside of a business failure when we met. I'm like, "I can pay you maybe $50,000 a year. Can I pay you that?" He's like, "Whatever." So I told our little bookkeeper, "Pay Todd $50,000 a year." And they're like, "Okay." So he did that and next year we're paying $50,000 a year. We're doing stuff and we have more things. Started to get a little success here and there. Making more money. Back in Boise again. And I'm like, "Can I pay you some more?" And he's like, "Whatever." Matt: So he wasn't ever just asking? Russell: Never in his life has he asked me for money. Ever. So we bumped it up to $100,000 a year because that's what we got, the year before that, after a year or two working together. And then, it was crazy, the day Leadpages got the first round of funding for $5,000,000, the same day Todd was flying to Boise. And he gets the email. It's east coast so he's two hours ahead. He's awake and on the plane, he sees the email, forwards it to me, and then jumps in the plane. He's flying for four hours. I wake up. I see the email and I was like, "Leadpages? Got 5 ..." I was like, we built landing page software in the past. I was perplexed and angry. And then Todd lands. And Todd, he's a little guy, he comes into the office all angry. He's like, "Leadpages got 5 million!" He's like, "I can build Leadpages tonight. Do you want to build lead pages?" I'm like, "Yeah. Let's compete with Leadpages." He's like, "All right." Matt: No way. Dude. I love this. Russell: This is like angry Todd. I love angry Todd. I like all Todds, but angry Todd is the best Todd. Matt: Is it? Okay. Russell: He's just pissed because he's like, "I can build this tonight. Everything thing they got we can have done tonight." So we're getting all ready. What should we call it and everything. And then he's like, "Wait, we're building this. You want to add anything else to it?" And I was like, "Oh. Yeah. What if it did this? And what if it did this?" And we spent a week in front of a white board saying, "What if it did?", and we mapped out ClickFunnels. Matt: So you're talking about a week where you guys just locked in and you were just having fun. Just doodling and whatever. Russell: Yeah. He's like, "Oh, I can do that. We can do that." We're brainstorming all sorts of stuff so we map the whole thing out. Matt: Did you know at that moment you were onto something big? At that moment right there, when you guys were like ... Or was it just still like ... Russell: All lot of people have tried something like that. I tried before other people tried. No one had done it. So I was kind of skeptical but Todd's like, "I can do this. This is easy." I'm like, "Okay because I tried it ..." He's like, "No dude, I can do it. This is easy." So I was, excuse me, optimistically hopeful because he's a genius but I was also nervous. But anyways, we map it out and then we bought Clickpros.com. I wanted to call it ClickFusion because I own ClickFusion, but we'd had three failed businesses called ClickFusion. All of them failed and Todd was like, "No. It's bad karma. We can't." I'm like, "But the logo is so cool dude." Matt: I love it. You love the logo. Russell: And he's like, "No, we can't." He's like, "It's got a jinx on it or something. We can't do that. You have to come up with a different name." I was like, "But ClickFusion is the coolest name ever." So we're trying things. Click everything and then ClickFunnels. We're like, "Ah." That was the thing. We're so excited Matt: Who first said it? Do you remember? The words ClickFunnels. Caleb: It's almost like God saying, "Let there be light." Russell: I would assume it was me but I'm not positive. I'll have to ask Todd on that one. Caleb: Well, when you said it, was it instant? Like fire? Russell: It was insane, it was available. Matt: Oh, you know that feeling, right? Checking domains. You're like… chills. Russell: How has no one thought of this before? And so we got it and I remember I was driving him to the airport at the end of the week to take him back home. And we got to the airport. Boise airport, It's a small airport. So we pull up to the thing to get out and you can tell he's probably nervous waiting. And before we get out of the car he's like, "I really want to do this man. I'm excited." I'm like, "Me too. Me too." He's like, "I don't want to do this like your employee though. I want to do it as your partner." And in that moment, I was just like all the fear of ... I'd tried partners in the past. It hadn't worked. All this stuff and all the everything. And it was just this weird thing of just all the emotions were hitting me as he sat in the car, about to get out the car. I have 15, 20 seconds before he's going to to go. I was just thinking about him. I was like, he's never asked me for money. He's never done anything. He's served. He's given everything. I was just looking at him. I was like, "All right let's do it." He's like, "Cool." And he got out of the car and he's gone. Matt: Wait a minute. So at that moment? Is was that quick? Russell: That was it. Matt: It was a gut feeling that you just knew. That he was ... Russell: It was him. Yeah. And I was literally... I said this on stage at Funnel hacking live, outside of marrying my wife, it was the greatest decision I ever made. Matt: Yeah. I remember you saying that with tears. Russell: Yeah. Matt: Why though? I'm curious because it's not just ClickFunnels. Russell: He's amazing. If you look at our personality profiles, it's fascinating. We have the same personality profiles. The Myers-Briggs. Except for one letter's different. Where I'm a feeler he's a thinker. And it's been magical as a partnership because we both have so much respect for each other that we don't try to fight each other. And it's very much like if I wanted to do something, I'm like, "This is what I want to do. This what I'm feeling. What do you think?" And he'll come back and be like, "Well, I think this." And so I come up from feeling instead of thinking and it's really cool. So sometimes his thinking will trump my feeling. And I'm like, "You're actually right. Let's not do that." Or vice versa. Where he's like, "I'm thinking this." And I'm like, "I don't know why but I feel this." And he'll be like, "Okay." He respects that. We just have such mutual respect that we've never been in a fight. We've never argued. We've never had problems. It's been amazing. Matt: Wow. Russell: And he's similar to like we talk about with Dan. He went back home after us white boarding that, sat in his basement for five or six months and built ClickFunnels by himself. Caleb: Really just by himself? Russell: 100% by himself. Caleb: No other team. No other dev? Russell: It was just him. And the right before we launched, we brought in another partner, Dylan, who built the front-end editor and did a lot of the UI. And so then it was those two as we got closer and closer to the launch. And then for the next year it was just those two that did everything. And then after a year, we started bringing in other developers. But it was 100% Todd. Matt: Wow. Russell: He's amazing. In all aspects. You know you have friends you think they know everything about everything. That's like Todd except he actually knows everything about everything. You ask him anything and he's just like ... I don't know how he does it. And I'll always fact check him, like, "Oh my gosh. He's right again." He's brilliant. It's amazing. Matt: So for those of us who have partners or are maybe going into partnership, what's your best advice? And what do you feel like he does right that other partners don't do? Russell: I think the hardest thing with partners is typically we want to partner with someone who is just like us. We did a podcast most recently. Dean, Tony and I, right? We've done two partnerships. Both partnerships made it through the launch and they stopped. Made it through the launch and stopped. The podcast was like, "Why?" I love Dean. I love Tony. They're amazing. The problem is that me and Dean had the exact same skill set. Matt: Oh. Russell: And so the problem is that both of us are right. We both understand it right, but we do it differently. And so it's like You have two people, and so typically you want to partner with those people who are like you. You're like, "Oh, we think the same. We should be partners." But that's not necessarily the right thing because then you've got two alphas with the same skillset, and someone has to win and someone has to lose. And it's hard. Whereas me and Todd, we have different skill sets. There is never a winner or a loser. We can both win because different skill sets, both the same mission. It's really easy. So I think the biggest thing is you're trying to find the yin yang. You're not trying to find someone who thinks like you or acts like you. In fact, this is true in most hiring processes as well. I used to have people like, "Send me a video if you want this job." Right? So I get these videos, and the people that I wanted to hire were the people like me. I'm like, "This person's awesome. They think like me. They're a genius. They're amazing." You'll hire them, and within a week I'm like, "I hate this person." It's horrible. So we started shifting the way we do our hiring based on personality profiling instead. DISC profile drives most of my own personal hiring so I know that I'm a high D, high I, high S. No C at all. Right? And so the people I need to hire around me are high S, high C. The problem is the people I who I watched their videos and I'm pumped, they're high D, high I. So I'm like, "Yeah. These people are awesome. They're charismatic. I'm going to love them. They're drivers, they're awesome. Worst employees ever. Matt: Right. Russell: Right? So when people send us this profile, first I find the right profile and then from there I do interviews. Because if I interview ahead of time I get sold by the people who sell and then they're horrible employees. And so I make sure they're high S high C, because I know that if I talk to high S high C, I'm going to be kind of bummed out. Like, "Oh, I don't know if this is the kind of person that I'm going to jive with." But they're the best people to surround myself with because I'm such a high D high S. I'm a creator. I'm throwing things up in the air and I need people who are S and C, who are faithful finishers, who are going to take the things, capture them, and make sure that it's amazing. Matt: Do you feel like businesses and entrepreneurs are making a mistake by not having their employees and their team take these tests? Russell: 100%. I have a new company we're launching all about personality profiling because I'm such a big believer in it. Matt: Really? Tell me why. Top three reasons. Russell: It's in all things in life. If you're going to be a partner. If you're going to date someone. Understanding who they are is such a big part of it. Right? Because we think everyone sees the world the same way we see it and it is not true at all. The way you see it, the way we all see is so different and so if we don't understand that at a deep level, then I get upset by what you do and at what everyone's doing because it's like, "Don't you see what I see?" And the reality is no they don't. So if you start understanding people better ... In fact, the software can be called Understand About Me. It's a place you go and you take all the personality profiling and it gives you a page that can show somebody this is me. So in five seconds I can understand you perfectly they're like, "Oh, now I know how to work with you." Because I understand what you are, what your beliefs are, what your values, all the things I need to know about you, I can find it really quickly. Where normally you're going to go years with somebody before you understand them. I can look at a thing and get pretty dang close in a minute. Matt: Wow. Russell: Now I know hot interact with you and spend time with you and work with you. Things like that. Caleb: Question. Where does your love to learn come from? Because one of the things I noticed from being around you, it's always like yeah, so I had this moment where I geeked on this and I geeked out on this. It was health and suppliments, and marketing and personality types. There's all these different things you geek out on. Have you always been that way? Is it like you geek out on marketing, you saw the rewards from it, and you're like, "Wow, what if this goes into other areas?" Where does that come from? Russell: Yeah, I didn't always have my life. In fact, I had a fascinating conversation with Tom Bilyeu about this, because when I was growing up in high school I always thought I was a dumb kid. I thought I was an athlete, so I focused there. I thought I was an athlete, so I was a wrestler, that was my identity, that was where I focused at. I thought I was dumb. Because of that, straight C student high school and college, my cumulative GPA graduating from college was 2.3. Straight C's and one B maybe somewhere in there, right? Because I was a dumb kid. When I got done I ended my wrestling career, so I stopped being an athlete, and I was like, "Oh crap." I started to learn this business stuff and I don't like to read. I'm a dumb kid. What do I do? It was fascinating. Tom told me, because I had this epiphany, I'm not actually dumb. He's like, "Actually, the reality is you probably really were dumb. But then you changed, right?" So for me it was like I shifted. It was fascinating. Do you remember the Funnel Hacking Live where we had Lindsay Stirling perform? One of my favorite parts of that, she did a whole performance. If you guys don't know, Lindsay does violin dancing stuff, and afterwards I had a Q and A with her afterwards. I had this question I was so pumped to ask. I was waiting for her just to like, the question is, she was on America's Got Talent, and I think she took 7th place. When she got kicked off, Pierce Bronson or whatever said, "You've got no talent. You're no good." Whatever, right? So I was like, do you remember that time when he said that? What I thought she was going to say was, "Yeah, I proved him wrong. Yeah." I was like, "What did you feel after that?" She's like, "Yeah, I got home and I realized he was right. I wasn't very good. So I went back and I started practicing and I started working harder and eventually I became good enough." It was like, oh my gosh. I got chills when I was saying it again. Matt: Yeah. Russell: I remember when Tom said it to me, he was like, "You probably were dumb." I was like, "I was." Because I wasn't reading things. So with marketing that was the first thing for some reason that caught my attention, that got me excited, right? And then if you look at my DISC profile, ROI is my highest value. I have to see ROI in something or I don't want to do it. So when I saw an ROI on this reading, I was like, "Oh my gosh. I read a book, I got one little sentence, changed a color, made more money. Oh my gosh." That is where it started, 100%. I started learning that and I started getting obsessed with those things. As this business grew for me I started being more, I always joke that crazy people got attracted to me, right? The best health people, the best fitness people, the best in every market kind of came into our world somehow. So I started getting to meet all these people. When you're around someone who's the best in the world at the thing, and they start talking about the thing, you can't help but be like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." Right? You zone in on that. So whenever I meet someone that's amazing and I have a chance to talk to them like this I just geek out. Like when I met your dad the first time with you guys. That's when I bought your parenting course and everything. I was just like, I saw you and I saw him and I was like, "I want that." So I started going down that rabbit hole, right? I met Anthony DiClementi, I was like, "I love this guy. I have respect for him, I love him." Every time he talks about anything, he fascinates me, when he talks about something it fascinates me. I have to look down those things, right? When people fascinate me, the things that fascinate them start fascinating me and that's when I kind of go down those rabbit holes. This person is so intriguing and fascinating. What makes them that way? What are they doing. It's interesting. I'm not a good question asker. You guys are so good at question askers. I've never been good at asking questions, but I'm really good at watching what people do and then seeing it and trying to go down the rabbit hole. What are they doing, why are they doing it, that kind of thing. Caleb: He's a true master in it. You can just tell. What are some things you want to take the time to geek out on? I'm sure you see something and you're like I want to get on that but it's not a priority, I've got to do this. What are some things, if I had a week or two? Russell: Just free time with nothing else involved? Caleb: What's the next thing you're going to geek out on? Russell: Oh. I would say every probably three years I get re-excited about SEO, for some reason. I start going down that path again, because I love it. There's times in my business when that was the focused. It's not now at all, but I went through a couple ... Brian Dean's a real cool SEO guy, couple guys… I started dabbing my toe in again and I'm like, I just want to get back into it so bad. Right now SEO is actually our number 11 lead source as of today in ClickFunnels, which is amazing. So we handed SEO the first four or five years, now we're focused on it again. It's doing really well for us. I want to go deep there because I like that. Anyway, I haven't had a chance to do that. Any of the health stuff really, really fascinates me. Matt: Why? I'm curious. Why are you drawn to that so much? The health stuff. Russell: Because I've seen with myself ... My history is I got in wrestling, at the PAC 10 tournament was my last actual wrestling match. My wife was giving herself fertility shots in the stomach during PAC 10 so the next month se was pregnant. So I got done wrestling, got done competing, got done running, got done lifting. All my athletic career ended, and then my wife got pregnant. She's eating for three kids, and I'm pumped because I don't have to work out right now, she's hungry, I'm hungry, we're eating. We just kept eating and eating. So over the next seven to eight months my wife gained like 60 pounds, I gained like 60 pounds. We were doing it together so who cared, it was amazing. Then one day she has two babies and she loses like 45 pounds and I'm like, oh crap. I'm stuck here. Where did you go? This for me? Matt: Yeah. Russell: Thank you. Then at that time the business was starting and I was stressed out trying to figure it out and I didn't get healthy again. I just was in that state of being 65 pounds heavier for years. But I didn't know the difference, I didn't know that I felt differently, because I'd never been in a spot where I spent eight hours sitting behind a computer, so I didn't know what good felt like or bad felt like. I knew if I tried to wrestle I'd puke, so I was like I don't feel like I'm an athlete. I just felt normal, I thought. Eight years in I was like, I don't know, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, "Oh, what happened to you?" You know what I mean? I'm sure hopefully everybody's had a chance. I was like, huh. It was hard because in my head I knew how to work out, I knew how to train, I knew these things. Finally I was like, "I need to get a trainer." So I got a trainer for the first time. I'd never really done that before. Started going, and got me from I don't even know, 27, 28% body fat down to 12% in a matter of seven or eight months. I looked better, I felt better, but what's crazy is I could work twice as hard and twice as long. I wasn't tired. I was like, "I can keep going. My brain's on fire. This is amazing." Matt: Wow. Just from the ... Russell: I had no idea until I lost all the weight. All of a sudden it was just like, I can do so much more. I think, when I first met Anthony DiClementi the first time I was like, this is my problem right now. I am at work all day slaying dragons, doing all these things, I have this energy. I get home at night and my two little twin boys are there, and my little daughter, and I'm spent and I have no energy. How do I still be a present dad and how do I have these things? The next tier was the bio hacking stuff. How do you do these things? How do you increase energy? There's so many ways to do that, from light therapy to supplements to sleeping to sound to breath, all these crazy things that seem stupid. The first time Anthony's like, "We're going to do breath work." I'm like, "We're going to breathe? That's your bio hack? We're going to breathe together?" He's like, "Yeah, it's going to be amazing." I'm like super annoyed. What's the ROI on this, I've got to get back to work. So he sat me down in our gym. You've been in our wrestling room. He sat me down and he's like, "You have to sit because if you're standing you'll hit your head and you'll die." I'm like, what are you talking about? He sits me down and we do these breathing exercises where he's yelling at us and screaming. All this stuff is happening. If anyone's ever done deep breath work it's nuts. We're doing this thing where we're supposed to do this heavy, heavy breath work until he's like, what's going to happen is the world is going to ... Has anybody done jiu-jitsu here? Been tapped out before? Matt: Yeah. Russell: So you get choked out. What will happen, the carotid artery gets choked and the world starts shrinking like this. If you take pressure off it, it comes back to life. If you don't, it goes darker and darker until it disappears and you're gone, right? If you've never been choked out, that's what happens. It's a really fun experience. But you have the minute when you see it shrinking around you and then it's gone, right? He told me that's what's going to happen. You're going to breathe so much that the world around you is going to start shrinking. If you don't stop you're going to pass out. So we go all the way to where it starts shrinking, stops, and then when you hit that point you let me know and then you hold your breath for as long as you can. He's like, "How long can you hold your breath for?" I'm like, "Maybe a minute." He's like, "You'll do it for at least five." I was like, there's no way. So he says sit down, we're doing this breath thing, we're going like crazy and sure enough the walls start doing weird stuff. I feel like I'm on drugs. I'm sweating like crazy. We keep doing it. He's yelling at me. All of a sudden the world starts closing around me, I'm like, "What is happening?" And then he stops and is like, "Hold your breath." He starts the clock. I'm sitting here holding my breath forever, looking around. We had three or four of us guys all doing it at the same time. I'm freaking out. And then it starts getting quieter, things are slowing down, we're sitting there and then he's like let some of the pressure out but don't breathe in. Let pressure out, pressure out, pressure out, keep doing that, and it gets done and the stop clock is over five minutes. I'm just like, I just held my breath for five minutes. Matt: And you didn't even know it. Russell: Insane. And then the rest of the day we were on fire. It was just like, whoa. Right? We brought a cryo-sauna at our house and we go freeze in the cryo-sauna and the rest of the day you just feel ... That's the thing I love now, these little weird things. Light therapy, breathing, weird things that just seem stupid. You do it and you can go longer, you can think better, you can do stuff. All those things just get me so excited. Anthony's fun because he randomly will just ship me weird stuff in the mail. Just the weirdest things. It makes my wife so mad. It just shows up. There's a big old box. She's like, what's this from? I'm like, I'm hoping it's from Anthony, it's going to be amazing. Just weird things. Tons of stuff. I love that kind of stuff because the ROI on it is crazy. They're always these weird things. I have this headband someone sent me. You put this headband on, you put an app on and you start working and it just makes you not tired, makes you focused. These weird things. How does this work? I don't know. And they're like oh, it works because the waves over here sync your brain and change your brain waves and the creative state and all these things. I mean, I don't know how it works but I just wrote two chapters. Caleb: Do you do breath work every day? Russell: No, because it's so intense. If I had a coach who could walk me through it. I have a recording of Anthony doing it and I almost dread it because I know how hard it is. By the time you're done you're sweating. Caleb: I've got to get that recording. Russell: I'll get it to you. By the time you're sweating, you're like what just happened? I just breathed for five minutes. It's weird. Anyway, I would love to understand it on a deeper level but I don't understand a lot of the things now. Some of them I've gone deep on, but a lot of them I do without knowing why. I hate it because my wife will be like, "What's this do?" And I'm like, I don't know. Matt: Just love it. Russell: One of my buddies, Preston Eli, he wrote this blog post, he called it the Warriornaire Workout. In there he explains part of his morning workout. He's like, why do I do it? He's like, because Tony Robins does, and I obey all giants who fly helicopters and have stage presence. That quote goes to my head all the time. People ask me, why do you do that? I'm like, because I obey all giants who fly helicopters and have stage presence, that's it. I'm like, I don't know the reason why, Tony says so, therefore I will do it. I would like to understand it at a deeper level so I have a better response than I obey all giants with helicopters and stage presence. But that's a pretty good reason. Anyway. Matt: Real quick, does anybody else want to throw in a question for Russell? Anybody else here live with us? Caleb: Let me ask one more real fast. Because I want to. I want to ask this. We were just having sushi, I was asking you, what are some of the favorite periods of your life? One of them you said was wrestling, which I found funny because by far one of my favorite periods is baseball, which people wouldn't expect because obviously I've been on stage and all this other stuff and that should take the cake. But those moments when you're just on the field, you're in the zone, there's nothing better. Where, with what you get to do now, whether it's being live on a webinar or being on stage or whatever it is, where do you get the same feeling of wrestling? Do you know what I mean? You know, the feeling in your chest? Russell: Today while we were in line at the grocery store I talked to your dad about this. I said that the best feelings I ever had in my life were from wrestling. The feeling of winning a hard match that I wasn't supposed to win and getting your hand raised, I never felt something like that, that felt as good as that, ever. I've been searching in business to find that, and I've never found it. Speaker 3: Do you feel like sports is like business in any sense? Matt: Good question. Russell: For sure, yeah. There's a lot, for sure. What I was going to say is the closest I've ever gotten to feeling that is when you serve at an event and you see a table rush and you see not only people where they get the a-ha, but enough of an a-ha where it gets them to get up and to move. That's the closest I've ever felt to that. It's not as good, but it's the closest I've ever felt to that. Which is why I love doing the big things. I get a glimpse of that. Caleb: How close? Scale of one to 10. Wrestling's a 10. Where does that rank? Russell: If wrestling's a 10, I'd say it's about an eight. In fact it's interesting because when I first started in business I was racing for that, trying to find it, trying to find it, trying to find it. It took me years before I was like ... Matt: Is it disappointing? Russell: For sure, yeah. We launch today and make a million dollars and it's like, huh. That sucked. What else have we got. Give me something else. Matt: Exactly. Russell: The money goal is always what I thought was going to be the thing, and those always were just like, huh. In fact, literally one of the main reasons I did the Two Comma Club Awards, for me I need, maybe it's just from a decade of my life someone grabbing my hand and raising it. I was like, entrepreneurs need that. No one raises our hands. Two Comma Club Awards, for me, is me lifting their hands like you did it. I needed that, they need that. That's one of the main reasons I did that, because that's the equivalent of that. Anyway. Matt: How many millionaires have you created? Russell: This year we passed 1,000 people that won the two comma club award. We're over 120. Matt: How does it feel to say that? To say it? You know how sometimes it's like so many people that have passion or goals or huge dreams and visions, rarely do they really celebrate what's happening on the journey. Do you find yourself ever getting where your vision is so big and your passion is so deep that even saying things like there's 1,000 millionaires. Dude, that's huge. Man, 1,000 people that are millionaires because of you. Russell: I think the first time I really got that, probably the most impactful time, was the very first Funnel Hacking live that we gave away Two Comma Club Awards. It was the third Funnel Hacking live. It was a couple of months before that we had the idea of a Two Comma Club and an award, talking about that. I legitimately didn't know. I wonder if anyone in ClickFunnels has actually made a million dollars. I don't even know. So Dave went back and the database guys went through everything and I remember he came back and was like, there's 79 people right now that made a million dollars. I was just like, are you serious? Matt: Was it a boost of confidence? What did it do for you? Russell: It was one of those things, looking back on me doing these events where two people showed up and nobody showed up, hardly anybody, where I was so excited about this? I was like, how come nobody cares? To now it was like, this is actually, I've talked about this long enough people are believing it and now they're doing it. You start seeing it, and there's the fruits of it. In my mind I was like a million bucks, even then, ClickFunnel was new, I was like a million dollars is hard. Most of my friends I knew were like made somewhere near a million dollars. There were people who have been in this business for a long time. A million bucks is a big deal. That was most people's goal still. The fact that 79 people had done it, that was just weird to me. I think that was the biggest one, the realization that just like, oh my gosh. It's not just a theory and I think it works, it's working. It's working at a scale that was unfathomable to me at the time. 79 people. To go to 200 and then 500 and then 1,000 is crazy. Matt: What was your question, buddy? Speaker 4: You're talking about how at each level of success you hit, some of your mentors hit that ceiling, right? Because of the posturing, right? So ultimately I feel like when you get to a new level of success it requires you to upgrade your identity, your self image. What have you found is the number one routine, what's your process for upgrading the identity, upgrading your self image? Because I think that's so important because it can either hold you back and have you self sabotage and not take action and go after what you want, or it's going to be the thing that keeps you at that level and continues to propel you forward. What's kept you ... Russell: That's good. It's weaved through everything, right? The one that's the most obvious external, especially in our world, because you see marketers, most people when they first start selling whatever it is they're selling they're bragging about themselves. Here's my ad, here's my name. It's all about them, that's the first tier of it. And then the second tier, when they start having the realization, I feel like is when they stop talking about themselves and start talking about the people they've helped. Speaker 4: Mm. Russell: You see externally. You don't hear me talking about how much money I make. I'm not like, oh, check out what I got. I talk about all the other people. It's like, that's next year, is that. And then for me the third tier now, which has been really cool, is talking about Lady Boss, right? The success story isn't Kailin, it's Kailin's customers, right? So it's like that next tier. What you're talking about is like the external version of that. There's a lot of internal things that you've got to deal with, but you'll notice it shifting in people when you look at just their messaging and what they're saying. From the way they podcast, they video, they market, their ads and everything, it's the shift of it's not about me, it's about them. It's not even about them, that's the external version of it. Internally I think it's really, it's what we talked about, I can't remember why, but we brought up yesterday or today I had this really successful guy I met one time who the first time we met he was like tell me your story. So I was telling him the wrestle posturing story about how great I was. He was like, no. Tell me about the time you failed. So I was like, well, I'm in the middle of one right now. So I told him let me tell you. I told this whole thing. I remember afterwards I was so embarrassed. He's going to think I'm an idiot. You know, that fear? He was like, good, you cycled. I was like, what? He was like, I will not work with entrepreneurs who haven't cycled at least once. Because if they haven't then they still believe their own bio, right? I think that's the biggest thing, the internal version is that. The first time around, before you cycle, you think it's all you. I know for me it was. I remember doing this the first time, I'm like, I am a genius. I'm the smartest guy in the world. And then when it collapsed I was like, oh, there's a lot of things outside my control. This is not me. There is a team, there's God, there's all these other things that are making this possible. There's a scripture, I can't remember where it's at, it's the Bible, Book of Mormon, but it says you can either be humble or God will humble ... Ah, I'm misquoting it by far. But it's like God will humble people. You can be humble or he will humble you. So it's like, looking at that, I'm like round two I'm going to be a humble person because I don't want to be humbled again, right? Matt: I still feel it. Russell: This is not me. I understand, I look around now and it's 100% like there's no way I would be where I am right now if Dan Usher didn't make videos the way he does. There's no way I'd be here right now if Todd Dickerson could not code software the way he does. There's no way, all these things are so many people. Matt: You're so right. Russell: Then there's so many success stories that inside of it there's just so many people. And then there's the grace of God. I just look at the timeline of when ClickFunnels came into the market. I've now got funnels for a decade, nobody cared. Then all these things were happening, we started having the idea for ClickFunnels, started building it, we're creating it, and then literally we go to traffic and conversion, Todd's halfway done building ClickFunnels, and Ryan Deiss stands on stage in the biggest event at the time and he spends the entire four days talking about funnels. Talking about how funnels are the greatest thing. Everybody's like, what's a funnel? They're all taking notes. Me and Todd are like, does he know we're building? He's talking about funnels. He's talking about funnels like crazy. And then the next day everyone gets home from traffic and conversion and everybody that day, the next day 8,000 funnel consultants pop up. Everybody's a funnel consultant. Everyone is on Facebook talking about funnel consultants and teaching funnels and all this stuff. We're like, oh my gosh. Todd, get this software done, everybody's talking about funnels right now. So he's coding like crazy, all this stuff is coming around, all of a sudden everyone's like, millions of funnel consultants, everyone's doing it, and all of a sudden we're like, hey, we created this thing called ClickFunnels, here it is. All of a sudden all of the consultants and all the people and everyone came and we were the only platform. I look at that, as smart as I think I am, there is so much grace and timing. If I'd launched a year earlier, a year later, it would not have hit the way it did. 100% it was the timing of all these things that have to happen. If it wasn't for that ... I can act like I'm smart, I'm a genius, but man, there's so much divinity that came into all the things. There's no way it could happen without that. Anyway, just understanding those things. Matt: What did you learn when you were cycling? Russell: So many lessons. Russell, you are not that good looking. Or cool. Or anything. Matt: It's basically not about you, right? Yeah, I feel that. So what was hardest? What were the tough lessons? Caleb: How many times did you cycle? Russell: Two big ones for sure. Matt: Really? Do you mind sharing? Russell: Yeah, the first time was after I was trying to figure this thing out. I remember one of my buddies was like, you're making money online? I'm like, yeah. He's like, that's cool. I'm like, do you want a job? He's like, what? I'm like, you're the first person I know who's interested. I'll pay you to come hang out with me. He's like, all right. So I hired my friend. He's like, I have some friends too. I'm like, okay. So I start hiring all these people because I want someone to talk to. Anyway, it was really bad. I ended up having a whole bunch of employees nobody knew how to do anything. I didn't know how to train anybody. I was hiding in the room trying to make money to pay payroll while they're standing outside like, do you want us to do anything? I'm like, don't talk to me, I've got to make money to pay your payroll. They're like, we can help. I'm like, I don't have time to explain anything to you. It was horrible. I built it up to the point where it was just like, I was launching a new thing as fast as we could just to pay payroll. As an entrepreneur, you kill something you get to eat, right? It's like the greatest thing in the world. Employees, they want to get paid every two weeks whether they killed anything or not. I did not realize that until they were like we need money and I'm like, but we haven't made any money. They're like you have to pay me. I'm like, what? I'm so confused. Like, okay. Anyway, it had grown and we didn't have a model, sustainable. Speaker 3: You just launched stuff to see if it works? Russell: Yeah. When I was by myself it was like, I had an idea today, let's try it. You launch it, it makes some money, sweet. And then it was like, I made 20, 30 grand. It was my wife and I, so it was like, that lasts nine months. You know? Caleb: What did you sell? Obviously I know the potato gun backstory. You said I talked about funnels for like a decade before that. What were you selling during that decade leading up to ClickFunnels? I know it's an inordinate amount of stuff. Is there anything not even close to funnels, like something ... Russell: Yeah. The very first, pre-potato guns, my very first big idea was ... Back then what everyone was doing, you know who Yanik Silver is. Yanik would write a book and then he would sell the resale rights to the books. Someone else would buy it and they could sell it. I remember I got online, I saw these books, I bought a book from Yanik and I'm like, I can sell this. I bought a book from somebody else. I was buying all these eBooks I could sell. But then inside the books they would have links back to all their sites. I'd sell the book and I was like, I made 10 bucks selling the book. And then inside the book Yanik is selling his thousand dollar course and seminars and things. They make all this money. I'm like, I got 10 bucks. He made like $1,000 off of me selling his book. I remember being mad. I was like I wish there was a way I could brand this ebook so that before somebody opens it and sees his ad they'd see my ad. That was the first idea I ever had, ever. So my first product was called Zip Brander, it was this little thing that would take an ebook and it would brand it. You open it up and it popped up an ad. You see the ad and you click a button and it would take you inside the ebook. It was my first thing. We launched that and I sold 20 or 30 copies of it. But that was the first money I ever made, it was amazing. I had a customer list, I was like this is amazing. And then the way I was selling those, I was going to forums. This is pre-Facebook, so all you little kids, before Facebook, before MySpace, before Friendster, we used to go to these things called forums. They were these things where people would talk all day. So we'd go to these forums. One of the rules in the forums is you could comment all you wanted but you could have a signature file. At the end you could have like, Russel Brunson, check out my new software Zip Brander. I'd go to these forums and I would just spend eight hours a day answering questions and asking questions and everything. People see my ad on every little thing. My footer was on everything. That's how I was selling Zip Brander initially. I was in 50 forums posting like crazy but I couldn't keep up with it. I was like, man, if I could create a software that would manage this whole thing, that would be amazing. So my second product is called Forum Fortunes. It was this little software that would manage your posting on every single forum. You post and you could see if someone responded back on Forum 49 it would pop up and you're like, oh, you can go find it and go back and comment and keep the discussion. I made it for myself and then we started selling that. We sold more of those because I now had a little customer base here and went bigger. After that it was the next. It was always what's the next thing. That's kind of how it started back in the days, little tools and things like that. Speaker 3: How do you know when you're shooting all these bullets, how do you know when you shoot a cannonball? Matt: Good question. Russell: The thing about it initially, I had been married, I was making zero dollars a year as a wrestler, so for me to make $600 in a month, that was a cannonball. That was insane. I thought I was the coolest kid in the world. $600 was insane. So I did four or five little things. I remember it was Christmastime and I remember my wife wanted to buy a couch and it was a $2,000 couch. I was just like, oh, I can't afford that. I don't have a job. I'm getting sick to my stomach. I had this idea, what if I do a sell and just sell a whole bunch of crap that we had. I had a bunch of eBooks I bought rights to, a couple of things I had created, so we made this Grinch sale. I remember I wrote the copy, it was like, it was the Grinch Before Christmas or something. It had a picture of the Grinch and his heart growing three sizes, I don't know. I wrote this copy. My wife and I had been married a year, she really wants a couch, I can't afford a couch, so if you guys buy this, if I sell 32 of these things, I can buy her a couch and put it under the Christmas tree. It will be amazing. Caleb: You said that in the copy? Russell: In the copy, yeah. It was the reason why. I still have the page, I can show it to you. I know exactly where it's at, I can show it to you. So I had the whole page and then only an email list of like a couple hundred people at the time. I still had an affiliate program, so at the top it had an affiliate link. So I sent an email to my list and went to bed that night. Someone on my list was a guy named Carl Galletti, I haven't heard about Carl in a long time. He was a big famous copy writer at the time. Carl went and saw the thing, bought it, and started affiliating. So he joined the affiliate program, he was like this is awesome. He took that email, sent it to his entire list of this huge thing. So I go to bed. I wake up the next morning, we're at $10,000 in sales. Matt: How much before you went to bed? Russell: Oh, like $30, $40 or something. I was like, what just happened. Did I rob someone? I didn't know what happened. I looked at my email and there's all these people who were like, hey, I bought two of them, I hope you can get your wife that couch. Oh, I sent it to my friend. All these people. Because Carl promoted it, all these other people who follow Carl saw it. Carl is like it's converting like crazy. Tons of people are buying it. I'm freaking out. I'm going to wrestling practice trying to answer customer support. I'm late for practice, I ran into wrestling practice, I get back out I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I made like $600 in sales." I'm freaking out. Anyway, the whole thing goes through and over that, I think it was a seven day sale or something like that, we made $35,000. Which is more money than I'd seen in all my lifetime combined times 100, right? I paid probably 10 grand in affiliates. We made, I don't know, $25,000 that we got to keep. I was like, "Oh my gosh." I told Colette, and Colette's like, my wife. I love her. She doesn't understand the business part of things at all. I was like, "We made $25,000." She was like, "Is it illegal?" First thing. "Are you going to go to jail? Is it illegal?" I'm like, "No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure." The first thing I did is I went and bought the couch for her, for Christmas. We got it back, I got a picture of her, sent it out to the list saying thank you so much, you got the Christmas gift, the couch. They all celebrated together, all the people. I was like oh my gosh, this is the greatest game of all time. This is so much fun. I was like, what's the next idea, what's the next thing. It was like that, these little things. After that one was done now I had way more customers, all these people that had bought my product knew who I was now so the next thing was easier so it incrementally kept growing and getting bigger. Somewhere along the line I launched the potato gun thing. Upsales of things. We didn't call them funnels back then. We called them sales flows or sales processes. Talk about your sales flow, what's your sales flow. Caleb: Sales flow. Russell: I remember Dylan Jones was our partner at ClickFunnels. Before Todd we tried to build something like ClickFunnels, we called it Click.com.com, which is a horrible name. But Dylan's, I still have all the UI images, and in there we had a whole section for sales flows and all these things. It's like, this was the first ClickFunnels. Because Dylan was on the UI eventually on ClickFunnels anyway, but we literally designed something like this five or six years earlier. Just crazy. Matt: Do you think that all those little failures and all the trying and that kind of energy is what brought you here today? Russell: For sure. It's the key. I wish I could grab everybody because everybody's like, okay, I'm waiting for my ClickFunnels, or I'm waiting for my thing. They're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting. I was like, the reason why I got this thing was because I didn't wait. If someone were to give me ClickFunnels initially it would have been bankrupt in 15 minutes, right? You have to become worthy of the thing eventually. You don't become worthy by waiting, you become worthy by trying. And trying and trying and trying. Eventually, if you keep doing that, over time, then God's like, all right, he's going to do it. He's built 150 funnels, now I'll give him the idea. Matt: Wow, that's powerful. Speaker 3: How much more did you feel that all your other friends are in the same game? Matt: I hope you guys take there's more that's caught than Todd. That's some gold in what he just shared right there, what you were just sharing. But go ahead. What was the question? Speaker 3: I was just saying how much more would you fail if all your other friends were playing the same game? Russell: All my friends were like why are you launching more stuff? Why do you keep doing things? They do like one product launch a year. They got so annoyed. They were like, dude, stop doing stuff. I'm like, why would I stop doing this? This is so much fun. It was just confusing to me. Why don't you guys do more? Everyone, they make money they'd just be done. Caleb: Why would you keep doing more? Was it genuinely like one funnel away? Like this next funnel's the one. Were you just like you sold yourself on it, this is it, so you keep going? Or did you just really enjoy it? Russell: Well each one I thought was. Each one, every time I was so surprised, like this is amazing. That was the one. The next one's bigger. Oh my gosh, that was even better, who knew? And then I just kept going from there, you know what I mean? So I wasn't waiting for ClickFunnels or anything like that. I was just enjoying the journey every time. It was so exciting. Eventually it was like, oh crap, who knew that that was going to do what it did. Caleb: Was it all emails? Was there any ads or was there anything to scale the traffic? Russell: First 10 years was 100% emails, partnerships. There wasn't ads back then. I mean, there was Google ads, but the first initial Google slap happened about the time I was getting started. Prior to that a lot of guys I knew built their email list off of Google ads and then the slap happened. A lot of them had lists. I started getting to know those guys, going to events, meeting them, so that's how it started initially was tons of that. And then there was this big gap for years where paid ads weren't a thing. Some people did banner ads, but it wasn't consistent. It wasn't like it is nowadays. It was harder. You worked harder and all the stuff wasn't there. Mostly we focused on ... If you didn't have an email list, you weren't playing the game. It's like, who's got lists, how can you build lists, what can you do? Matt: You still think that's true to a degree? Russell: 100%. That's why the traffic seekers book was so important for me to write, I feel like, because most of the people in the game today have been blessed with Zuckerberg's simple Facebook ads that make the game easy. Matt: Wow. Russell: They've never focused on building lists. I was like, you guys, just so you know, Zuckerberg is going to screw us all. It's going to happen. Matt: Yeah. Caleb: It will happen. Russell: It's like, if you don't have a list you're all screwed. I've been through this for 18 years now, I've been through five or six cycles. I've seen people who made millions of dollars who now are not online. The people who have waded the storm the whole time are all the list builders. They're the ones who survived. Everyone else who's good at ads, they come and they go and they come and they go.

Ian and Matt Do their first ever non topic episode, with no topic the conversation knows no bounds. Instagram: @BrothersWhimm Twitter: @BrothersWhimm Email: brotherswhimm@gmail.com

The fall semester is in full swing at our nation's universities, but many have cut in-person classes. This has meant less demand for student housing, which can be a problem if that's your business. Matt Do explains how Public Private Partnerships at Universities can be structured successfully. James Cook is the director of retail research in the Americas for JLL.  Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts Listen on the web:  BuildingPlaces.show Leave a message on the podcast hotline. We may use it on an upcoming show. Call (602) 633-4061  Read more real estate research here.  

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Kat: You know I was reading the other day that maybe video games might not be so bad for children. What do you think about that?Matt: I think it depends on what you're talking about is so bad for children, I think if you're talking about supposedly educational video games such as Sesame Street video games, etc, I don't think that those help children in any way whatsoever. Sports games, I don't think that those are going to help kids learn how to play sports either. Violent video games, I think that's kind of a fine line, is it going to make children more violent or less violent?Kat: What the article was actually about was that video games, especially violent video games, actually decrease crime instead of increasing it.Matt: How come? That doesn't seem to make much sense?Kat: At first I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either but it was saying that children that play a lot of video games stay inside and they get some of their aggression out actually playing these games.Matt: Do you think that the reason the crime goes down is because they get their aggression out or do you think it's because they're just staying indoors more often? Or did the article say either way or another?Kat: Actually the actual article was saying that kids stay inside more, so they don't really have time to commit crimes.Matt: In that sense then it doesn't matter if it's educational, it doesn't actually matter if they are playing violent video games or not I would think. It would just be any type of video game keeps them inside.Kat: That's true.Matt: I don't know. I think that I was always growing up playing video games and my mom would always try to kick me out of the house to go outside and play and sure it's good that video games keep kids from doing violent things on the streets but I don't think that video games should be the center of their life and keep them indoors all the time.Kat: What do you think should be the maximum amount of hours that kids should be allowed to play?Matt: More than an hour or two a day, I think the part the study doesn't look at is the long term effects that make kids stay indoors all day and they become less social, so because they're less social they're going to end up having more pent up[被压抑的，被抑制的] frustration in the long term when they become thirty and forty and they are not able to connect with other people.Kat: I think that's a good point. Children should definitely not play more than one or two hours a day and they should not neglect their friends for it.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Kat: You know I was reading the other day that maybe video games might not be so bad for children. What do you think about that?Matt: I think it depends on what you're talking about is so bad for children, I think if you're talking about supposedly educational video games such as Sesame Street video games, etc, I don't think that those help children in any way whatsoever. Sports games, I don't think that those are going to help kids learn how to play sports either. Violent video games, I think that's kind of a fine line, is it going to make children more violent or less violent?Kat: What the article was actually about was that video games, especially violent video games, actually decrease crime instead of increasing it.Matt: How come? That doesn't seem to make much sense?Kat: At first I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either but it was saying that children that play a lot of video games stay inside and they get some of their aggression out actually playing these games.Matt: Do you think that the reason the crime goes down is because they get their aggression out or do you think it's because they're just staying indoors more often? Or did the article say either way or another?Kat: Actually the actual article was saying that kids stay inside more, so they don't really have time to commit crimes.Matt: In that sense then it doesn't matter if it's educational, it doesn't actually matter if they are playing violent video games or not I would think. It would just be any type of video game keeps them inside.Kat: That's true.Matt: I don't know. I think that I was always growing up playing video games and my mom would always try to kick me out of the house to go outside and play and sure it's good that video games keep kids from doing violent things on the streets but I don't think that video games should be the center of their life and keep them indoors all the time.Kat: What do you think should be the maximum amount of hours that kids should be allowed to play?Matt: More than an hour or two a day, I think the part the study doesn't look at is the long term effects that make kids stay indoors all day and they become less social, so because they're less social they're going to end up having more pent up[被压抑的，被抑制的] frustration in the long term when they become thirty and forty and they are not able to connect with other people.Kat: I think that's a good point. Children should definitely not play more than one or two hours a day and they should not neglect their friends for it.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Kat: You know I was reading the other day that maybe video games might not be so bad for children. What do you think about that?Matt: I think it depends on what you're talking about is so bad for children, I think if you're talking about supposedly educational video games such as Sesame Street video games, etc, I don't think that those help children in any way whatsoever. Sports games, I don't think that those are going to help kids learn how to play sports either. Violent video games, I think that's kind of a fine line, is it going to make children more violent or less violent?Kat: What the article was actually about was that video games, especially violent video games, actually decrease crime instead of increasing it.Matt: How come? That doesn't seem to make much sense?Kat: At first I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either but it was saying that children that play a lot of video games stay inside and they get some of their aggression out actually playing these games.Matt: Do you think that the reason the crime goes down is because they get their aggression out or do you think it's because they're just staying indoors more often? Or did the article say either way or another?Kat: Actually the actual article was saying that kids stay inside more, so they don't really have time to commit crimes.Matt: In that sense then it doesn't matter if it's educational, it doesn't actually matter if they are playing violent video games or not I would think. It would just be any type of video game keeps them inside.Kat: That's true.Matt: I don't know. I think that I was always growing up playing video games and my mom would always try to kick me out of the house to go outside and play and sure it's good that video games keep kids from doing violent things on the streets but I don't think that video games should be the center of their life and keep them indoors all the time.Kat: What do you think should be the maximum amount of hours that kids should be allowed to play?Matt: More than an hour or two a day, I think the part the study doesn't look at is the long term effects that make kids stay indoors all day and they become less social, so because they're less social they're going to end up having more pent up[被压抑的，被抑制的] frustration in the long term when they become thirty and forty and they are not able to connect with other people.Kat: I think that's a good point. Children should definitely not play more than one or two hours a day and they should not neglect their friends for it.

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We had a good discussion about the upcoming Nevada Caucus and if they will experience some of the same issues as in Iowa. We also discussed the cybercriminal phishing emails being sent out with the warnings about the Coronavirus that if clicked on will infect your machine and network and also why you should delete apps that you do not use to protect your privacy. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig saying, Wow, cool new technology is going to be great. Hey, I have a buddy that worked for Hillary Clinton and ran this, and he's got this company, and he's got this voting software. That's what tends to happen. And they're looking for the latest the greatest the coolest the neatest and yeah, we can brag about how wonderful this all is. When in reality, it ain't there. Craig Hi everybody Craig Peterson here, of course, and I got into this thing. I don't know, and maybe it was too much this morning about technology. I was comparing what's been happening with some of the technology for voting to laserdiscs and Betamax, etc. But we went this morning with canon Matt talked about that couple of other things, including the Coronavirus. So here we go. Ken Back again 738 on the WGAN morning news with Ken and Matt. It's time now, ladies and gentlemen, to talk to Craig Peterson. Craig Is your phone working now? Ken Did that last-minute somebody was a tech expert series tell me how to fix his phone of a manufacturer.?We have a tech guru, and I would like to ask about that. But I am going to ask you a quick question. You know, we've had some primaries and the Nevada primaries coming up or the caucus, and it's looking like it's going to go smoothly, but there may be some security flaws. Can you tell us as a tech guru, what the hell is going on? Craig Well, you know, this whole thing with the voting and technology and what to do you know, we talked last week about you know, where the governor here in Maine and of course Secretary of State and John Richardson was on and on, I had said, you know, the, I think the smartest thing I think it was brilliant. Stick with an unhackable felt tip pen, Right? I still say that. I also get concerned when the government gets involved with consumer technology, and when they get involved with almost anything. But indeed what technology because the government ends up trying to pick winners or losers, right? And when I'm talking about tech, what's the best tech? And so the government gets involved and says, Oh, this is the best tech, or that's the best tech, and then you dig into it. And you find out that Hillary Clinton's former staffers are the people who founded and we're running the company that came up with a software that just thoroughly discredited the Iowa caucuses. This coming Saturday, as Matt was kind of jumping in there, looks like it's going to be a mess as well. How do we secure our elections because it's not like we can have the normal process of the best technology wins? Well, maybe that's not always the case because I'm sure Ken, you must have bought a Betamax video recorders Ken Betamax? Craig I don't know why anybody would buy a VHS Betamax was so superior to VHS. Ken I have had here this brand new mike 700 Matt Am I correct? Betamax was better technology. There's no question, are we talking about the LaserDisc while we're at it? Oh yeah, that was even better. That was amazing that the laserdiscs amazing size CD that I had, you know, I had to put like seven of them just to watch a movie. Don't touch the surface. I remember for some reason, even though the school was crumbling, and a cockroach once fell from the ceiling and landed on my book. Okay, even with all that, they somehow found a way to buy a LaserDisc player, and I remember the occasional like, you know, Friday, you know, day, where you weren't, going to do anything. Where they would play a movie in class or whatever. They had to, like, take that thing out, and then put a new disk in like five times before the movie was over because it didn't have any sort of capacity to put a film on it. But I'm glad we spent all that money. It was worth it. Craig That's my point. Why did they buy the LaserDisc player? Because it was cool? Yeah, exactly. So now here we are looking at our Super Tuesday coming up. We're looking at all of these other elections that are happening. All of these people, these people, what do you mean, these people are out there saying, Wow, cool. New technology is going to be great. Hey, I have a buddy that worked for Hillary Clinton and ran this. And he's got this company, and he's got this voting software. That's what tends to happen. And they're looking for the latest, the greatest, the coolest, the neatest. And yeah, we can brag about how wonderful this all is. When in reality it ain't there. And now we're looking at another mobile voting app yet another one. It is being used in four different states this year, including West Virginia. What could possibly go wrong here? And this new voting mobile app, it's called Votez V-O-T-E-z. Isn't that cute? And it is just full of some of the most basic flaws ever. But you know what, guys? It's using blockchain technology, which is going to solve all of the world's security problems. This is sloppy. We need to stick with the standard. We need to have a government and a voting system people are confident in. The people say, yeah, our votes were counted. If there was a question about the tabulation or the ballots properly-being cast, you pull the silly things out of a closet, and you have a look at them. Let's not run headfirst. Over the cliff into some cool technology, and then with a whole bunch of Betamax tapes in our closet. Matt Do you know how many beta tapes I have in my closet? Ken I would say probably 500. Craig Yeah, yeah. And you know what those the quality of those is not quite DVD quality. It's still good, but you just can't find anything that well. Ken The other thing I don't have, I don't know where my Betamax is. Anymore. By the way, I don't want you to know I did not. I will bet every FBI instruction. I did not steal any movies. I just want you to know. Craig You know, you've got those things sitting there, Ken, and it was great technology for today, but it's gotten so much easier nowadays. Anyhow, that's my stance on voting. Stick with a piece of paper and unhackable pencil or felt tip pen. Keep the silly things after people have voted those wonderful little cards, keep those for at least a couple of years. Do spot audits, a lot of these states are their secretaries of state are not doing spot audits. I think that they have to do those just again to keep confidence in the system. And Matt, you're probably there with me. I am probably there with you, sir. We're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us every once a while. Usually, Wednesdays, to talk about what's happening in the world of technology. Speaking of security, I have a lot of Chrome extensions on Chrome, and clearly, I am now surrendering all of my information to everyone. Tell me why. Craig Okay, my here's my general advice to everybody. I gave this out a little earlier in the week as well. The primary recommendation is not to have too many apps on your phones and other devices. Over the last couple of years, we have found that a lot of those apps are leaking data. And last weekend on my show, I talked about how the Department of Homeland Security is buying that data to track people say, Okay, so now we can find out where you are where you have been. It was about six, eight weeks ago, that the New York Times was able to track President Trump's whereabouts as he was moving around, because they were able to follow one of the phones of Secret Service personnel, according to the article that they wrote. This is a real problem. Now we've found that there are more than 500 browser extensions that have been secretly uploading our personal and private data to websites that are then selling it. The number one most evil thing to put onto your browser is one of those browser extensions, and it's a tab type thing. That gives you quicker searches and tells you there's a deal on this page on this site right now. A lot of people have installed those things. Well, if you have and I have seen so many people with this, get rid of them now. Delete your browser extensions, these Chrome extensions that you're not using, or that you don't need. Now, I've got some tutorials coming out in a couple of weeks about three Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, browser extensions that I absolutely love, that are not stealing your data. I've got some training on how to know what's what. You know if that if you guys have one of these Chrome browsers, it is just overloaded with extensions. You got to delete these things, because some of them are evil. Some of them are even mining Bitcoin for bad guys in Eastern Europe, and you don't even know it. You know, here we are talking about having the privatization. I shouldn't say, of the two major electric companies in Maine, to save Maine taxpayers are ratepayers, in this case, some money, which is always great to save money. Still, we got to have an in-depth look at some of these things. And we have some of the highest electric rates in the country. Analyze things up. Why do we want to allow the browser extensions that will show us a cute little cat video every day? What do we want to have that browser extension burning our electricity to make Bitcoin money for somebody else? We've got to stop doing this sort of thing. Just delete any apps you're using. Remove the browser extensions you don't absolutely need and be a little safer online. Matt We are talking to our tech guru Craig joins us every Wednesday at 730 dot com. Get the information firsthand or to listen to him on w ga and in the afternoon on Saturday at one o'clock. Before we let you go, Craig, I don't know if you've heard about the Coronavirus, and please do not play the Mexican hat dance. Craig Whatever I do, I will not play the Mexican hat dance. Ken I was the last thing I will do. I will not play it. I don't want to trigger. Any technological issues for Mr. Peterson Craig One of my sons is a teetotaler. There was a joke going around about something about lime and salt being the cure. But anyway. Yeah, be very, very careful, everybody. I'm glad you brought this up. Ken, we're out of time. So really, really quickly. The bad guys always Take advantage of things in the news. And one of the big things in the news now, and I'll be talking about this more on my show on Saturday at one, is the Coronavirus, Of course, you know it is called now called covid-19. Don't open emails saying hey, here's a tracker for the Coronavirus. Don't do any of this stuff. There are so many fake emails and now fake text messages coming out from these people. It helped us to get overwhelmed. That's a really really bad thing. Don't do it. People the bad guys are saying Coronaviruses that trying to get your open stuff. If you want to g, the Coronavirus goes online to cdc.gov simple site to remember cdc.gov, not CDC dash org.gov. There are so many fake sites out there, just cdc.gov right at the top they've got stuff on covid-19 this respiratory disease, and they have trackers. Still, you know what right now you're more likely to die from the flu, and we are at the height of regular flu season, and they're even tracking that@cdc.gov so there you can keep an eye on everybody. Ken All right, that's Greg Peterson ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate it as always, Craig, and we will talk to you again very soon. Craig Take care, guys. Bye. Thanks, all right. Why don't we take a quick break quick Craig 13:27 A Shout out to all of you guys out there listening to me, of course, every week it kind of goes up, which is terrific, and it's so so appreciated. I had contact by the way from one of our listeners, a longtime listener, and a bit of a friend frankly always enjoy chatting with him. He's a little bit older kind of like me, and he has been out there freaking out about what to do now with his career. He went to a small school that taught cybersecurity stuff for a few months and put some money into that. Now he's out looking for a job. Is anybody else in that kind of a boat, because I think this might make a fascinating series or segment or segments or however it turns out for the listeners here, what if you are a little bit older in life? You are looking to change careers, maybe, perhaps you've always been interested in the whole security side of things. And you want to get involved with that. Let me know just send an email to me at Craig peterson.com. And we'll kind of go from there and see where this takes us. But I find this fascinating I I want to help you guys and gals out there with, you know, making your life a little bit better and helping you to make other people's lives a little bit better too because I suspect you're a lot like me, frankly. And that's why you're such great and regular listeners. Anyhow, take care and everybody. We're getting closer and closer to having some of those tutorials ready. I got another one edited yesterday, he says making a sigh, Oh my gosh this has been so painful I've had to learn a different video editor because I when I was using just can't handle the type of content that I'm generating here for these tutorials. It is on some of the best things you can do for cybersecurity for your family, for your business all free, even the tools tutoring alone are free. So this is going to be a huge one I think for pretty much everybody anyways, me at Greg Peterson calm or sign up for my mailing list just at Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. Take care, everybody. We'll be back with a weekend show again this week. Bye-bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We had a good discussion about Privacy and Monitoring then we got into Kids and Smartphones and a study that says the issues are not as bad as we have been led to believe. Then it was onto the FBI and AG Barr vs Apple Encryption. So here we go with Ken and Matt. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig If you have a company phone, monitoring of it is likely because the company doesn't want it to be lost, and if it is, they want to be able to recover it. They want to keep their data safe, all reasonable things. But many companies are now tracking you when you are going outsourcing go to the coffee shop. Hello, everybody. Great Dieter song here. Glad you joined me. A lot of news in tech this week. You got to make sure you catch my show this weekend. We're going to get into smishing a lot more. We're going to be talking about some new research out there about this company that just came out of real secrecy that is ending our privacy. We're going to be talking about a significant change over in Marriott where they're trying to compete like so many brick and mortar businesses with the online world. So what is Marriott doing to compete? I don't think you'd get much more brick and mortar than when it comes to hotels and resorts that they own all over the world. All of that will be coming up this weekend. Make sure you subscribe to my podcast so that you get all of this and more. And let's get off to this morning's conversation with Ken and Matt up in Maine. Ken Welcome to the program, sir. As usual. Yeah. Cold weather. Well, we do live in New England. So you know, it's going to warm up before the snowstorm on Saturday. Craig I lived halfway out in Canada halfway up to the Arctic Circle, and more than halfway actually. And I remember days when the air temperature high was 2030 below zero. And so this isn't so bad. But you know, as you get older, you just don't tolerate it as well, I think. Ken So. You know, I'm looking at your website, which is collectivism.com. You have some exciting topics today, for example, chat. Let me see which ones do we care about? How about somebody named Chet, what do we care about Chet when we're mad and Ken? Matt That's true. It kind of sounds like an older man. Chet was a name from a long time ago. It's true. Craig 2:10 Yeah. A long time ago. I love this article from the Wall Street Journal. They've got a very, very cool illustration on it, where Chet wakes up in the morning, and he goes in and gets his coffee and does things throughout the day. And what the Wall Street Journal is showing is this fictional worker named Chet, as he's going through the day, his employer is tracking his activities. So for instance, when you get up in the morning, most people the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing they do at night is to check their email. Well, if you're checking your email, the business knows Hey, Chet, just checked his email at 635 in the morning, and then if you have a company phone, that phone is probably tracked as a company doesn't want it to be lost. I want to be able to recover it. They want to keep their data safe, all reasonable things. But many companies are now tracking you when you are going out. So say go to the coffee shop. And the local coffee shop has free Wi-Fi. And your phone connects to that free Wi-Fi network. While the business probably has a setup, so it makes a VPN call into them. They've got the GPS coordinates of your location. As you're walking around the office, your phone has Bluetooth on it, and it has Wi-Fi on it. And all of that can be tracked. The big-box retailers are pretty much all tracking us by our cell phones because we connect to their Wi-Fi networks. It is a warning to everybody from the Wall Street Journal, and the stuff we talk about almost every week, about our activities, travels, and the tracking they are doing. And when we're talking about the business side, Chet's phone conversations on his work desk phone, and potentially the cell phone can be recorded, transcribed, and monitored. They know who is calling, but it isn't necessarily looking for bad things from Chet but potentially looking to see to whom he speaks. Is he somebody that's a mover and shaker in the organization? Is he someone who's inspiring other people, helping other people, tutoring mentoring other people. So there is a lot that's going on in just our regular day to day lives. That I think frankly, Ken, a lot of people aren't paying enough attention to this monitoring. We've got to keep an eye on our privacy. I'm going to be talking more about that as well on my show. Matt We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening to excuse me, in the world of technology. A great one that caught my eye here was the discussion Kids phones, my 12-year-old who was about to be 13 got a phone this year against my wishes, but whatever, that's a different conversation. Anyway, he got one. A lot of parents, including myself, have a lot of apprehensions about their kids getting phones and the effect that it has on them and sort of whether or not it leads to, you know, obviously, either anti-social behavior or like depression and whatnot. And then, of course, there's the cyberbullying stuff and all the things that go along with that. So far, I've been rather pleasantly surprised by his level of maturity with the phone and how it has not dominated his life. So now, there's certainly more time for him to disappoint me, but he's done an excellent job with it so far. Nonetheless, the reason I'm bringing it up is you have something to talk about as it relates to research and what it has recently shown and found about sort of kids and cell phone usage. What do you think is essential to communicate about that now? Craig 5:52 Well, I think you're doing some of the right things because cyberbullying is a very, very big deal. I was bullied pretty heavily in As a kid, but back then, it was people you know, their kids using two by fours hit me up the side of the head and pull knives on me, you know, really, really nice school. Um, but nowadays, it's different because back then, yeah, kids usually get away from the bullies, I may be able to see them from a distance, and you know, I can getaway. But nowadays that cell phone goes into your home, and the kids just can't get away from it. Some of the comments that other kids might say can be very, very mean and nasty. So you're right to be worried about that. Another thing people have been worried about, I think legitimately, is, you know, when Ken and I were kids, we got in and got sat in front of the boob tube. And that was kind of our babysitter for part of the day. I know, and they were worried about whether or not it was going to cause problems with our brains. And in some cases, it's pretty apparent that it has right, Ken. Ken I use a TV all the time to babysit my six and a half-year-old twin grandchildren. It is a great babysitter. They have good shows like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse now. Craig Is DisneyPlus subscription? Yes, Ken Yes, all of that and all the Star Wars to my grandkids love Star Wars. Craig Do they? The generation Z's aren't into Star Wars. So what else doesn't work? Well, there was a study published last Friday here, Matt, by two psychology professors and, and they look through some other studies, they come through about 40 different studies, and this is according to the New York Times. They're looking at social media use depression and anxiety amongst adolescents. Is it tied is it related? And these two from one from the University of California, Irvine, who was the lead author published it in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry says, quote, there doesn't seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues. So, from what they're saying, there is a right to be concerned here about kid's phones and some adverse effects from the social side. Social media and smartphones with the kids there, they still stand out there questions about their brain development, what by the time they're adolescents, it's nowhere near as big a deal with causing brain development issues as when they're under five years old. But the other thing to really worry about is is what Danny and I were talking about. And he, of course, he's got the smartphones. You guys both have that everybody has a smartphone. There are smishing campaigns. Matt What's Smishing? Craig Smishing is, you know what phishing is, right? Of course. Matt Of course. We have had to take not less than 650,000 online training here at the WGAN morning news about said phishing ploys and whatnot. So, yes, we know that well. Craig 9:12 You do understand the difference between using an ax to cut through the ice to do your fishing in the winter, and when to those screws, instead, Right? Oh, Nevermind. So with smishing, it is another version of phishing, and it's using SMS or text messages. There is a big smishing campaign going on right now. Danny has seen some of these things come through as a lot of people have. I've got an article about it up on my site this week. What's happening is they're pretending they're us. They're pretending they're Apple or pretending they're a lot of other people. So adults know that you don't respond to phishing campaigns. You don't answer these numbers that you don't recognize. You get a text message from Apple. Hey, Does Apple send you texts like this? And expect you to call back, so we don't call back, which is the right thing to do, by the way, all the time. Don't call numbers that you don't recognize and don't answer the phone. But man, how about your 12 or 13-year-old or have you trained him well enough. Do you think Matt Do you think he has run through the full rocky training montage yet? No. Ken Okay, so that's the other thing I'd be worried about. We are talking to Craig Peterson. He is our tech guru. He joins us every Wednesday at 738. You can also hear him on WGAN on Saturdays at one o'clock, and he has a website Craig Peterson dot com. Quickly why does the FBI need Apple to hack into my iPhone? Craig Oh, what a great question. Fantastic question, mate. Hold on, let's just give people, you do understand? Yeah. Matt Well, every once-in-a-while, you know, we leave no clock. Craig The FBI wants to hack into your phone because you've got an iPhone 11 right, Ken Yes. Ken No, no I kept the iPhone 10 because I don't need the 11 Craig  Exactly and that's excellent advice. I think the job, okay. Nicely done. Toys Craig My advice right now is if you're going to get a new phone get an iPhone 10 the XR right now I mean I the XR is that the regulars. Ken I'm going to have a big size. Craig   Okay. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's one of the big moments. So, don't upgrade until the 12 comes out or maybe the 13 until 2021. Maybe 22 because that's when 5g is going to stabilize. Okay, but back to it. Your iPhone 10 probably not the FBI cannot hack into your phone. But some of these other iPhones, the older ones, like the ones that were just used recently in Pensacola. He shot his phone, and phones of that age, they don't need Apple's help to crack into it. But even as probably the FBI is asking for help, perhaps because the phone was so severely damaged, it was shot, right, right in the face. But Apple is excellent about trying to make sure these phones are secure. And the big question here and it's been for a long time, should the FBI or other government agencies be able to break any encryption basically at will or with a court order? And I am torn on this subject. I think they should not be able to because I look at it as our private papers. And we do have a right to privacy in those papers in those records. And nowadays, we're talking about our iPhones, frankly. Matt All right, well, Craig Peterson tech guru extraordinaire, joins us at this time and every Wednesday to go over the world of technology, this being no exception to that. I appreciate you joining us, as always, Greg, and we'll talk to you again next week. Craig  Hey, gentlemen, thanks. Take care. Bye. Bye. You bet. Matt All right, we are going to take a break. Craig  All right, everybody, again, I usually release the Saturday morning. So keep an eye on your email, you're going to want to follow them along. And we're going to be having a unique series of a little podcast but also emails because I want you to have this stuff written so you can share with your friends and family. I know not everybody listens to podcasts, right. And I'm going to be starting to send those out over the next couple of weeks about some specific security things. Some things you can do, using the tools you already have, to make yourself your, your friends, your family's computers, smartphones, etc. more secure, so we'll be going over that, so keep an eye out. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. Please subscribe to the podcast I'd appreciate it if you think it's worthwhile. I love it because those are the numbers that I see. My email list is just Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and I send every week an email, and in that, if you scroll down a little bit, you'll see links to each one of my podcasts for the weeks, including my appearances on various shows. And so with that information, you can just click right on the link and listen to that specific podcast. So I appreciate it. Craig peterson.com slash subscribe. Take care, everybody. We'll be back on Saturday. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Matt Do, you can’t just say the first name without the last. Welcome him to the next episode where we get to know each other better since I’ve known him for a few months. Matt is a skilled Creative Director in more than just photography but also some dope ass visuals. On this episode we discuss some of the shows/projects he worked on this year, his move from Nashville to Atlanta and his dating game. Also peep his laugh.. really want to know whose laugh is better. Enjoy the next episode! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/whatsthegroove/message

Craig is in the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. This morning,  we touched on a whole bunch of topics in the news. We discussed whether we should trust Google.  We talked about Autonomous vehicles and the societal implications and I talked about two-factor authentication and how you can protect yourself from sim-jacking. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: You Need Two-Factor Authentication Even If Google Screwed It Up?   Autonomous Cars — Are they ready for Prime Time? Why Are We Still Trusting Google?    --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 06/12/2019 Can You Trust Google?, Security Summer, Autonomous Cars, Two-Factor Authentication --- Craig Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I heard "Big Papi" took his first steps in the hospital today. So, that's good. It brings back thoughts of everyone that has family and friends in the hospital that aren't celebrities and people that are injured. My thoughts and prayers go out to everybody every day. It's just a reminder of how fragile things can be in this life. This morning I was on with our friends Ken and Matt up at WGAN. And as usual, we spoke about a few different things. We had quite a little conversation about trusting Google, should you trust them? Can you trust them? There was a surprising revelation that came out, in fact, just last week about them, and what they've been doing, during the previous 14 years, a significant security problem. We had a chat about two-factor authentication, and I gave them workaround, a way to make it safe, even if you have to use text messages SMS for two-factor authentication because that's not secure. But there is a reliable way to do it. We talked about a little bit more of course about autonomous cars which are all in the news again, and what's the safety factor there? How far away are we? I took a couple of different angles than I made with Jim Polito on that discussion today, as well. So here we go. Also, don't forget, we've got our security summer, starting up in July, I will start sending out some emails next week, things have been crazy around here. As you can imagine, with all of the companies now getting hacked, and the losing money coming to me, and you know, everyone in the security business, which, of course, is way understaffed. And shout out to those of you who are trying to get into security, I got another email this last week from someone that was starting into a security career, and he's in his 50s. So there's something to be learned there, I want to encourage everybody. Remember the adage, "You can teach an old dog new tricks." It's a terrible saying. But you can learn a lot of this stuff, you really can. And there's a lot of people out there who have been trying to convince you that you can't do that, really all you need is their little bit of anti-virus software, or whatever it is, you know, they're selling that to you. Because that's all, they have. That's all they know. Well, they're not doing you any favors. They are trying to mess with you. You can learn this stuff. That's what the security summer going to be about this year, and I'm going to be teaching this some free classes. You know, I get paid for doing this too. And if you want more in depth, then you're probably going to want to sign up for one of my courses. But I want to get this information to everybody. Because if you know me well enough, you know, I got hacked. That was 30 years ago, about now, a long time ago. And it scared the daylights out of me. And I started to learn about this and trying to figure it out. It's taken me years, decades, to get to the point where I'm at now. And I am excited to share a lot of this with you. Just watch for my security summer. If you want to find out more, email me at Craig Peterson dot com, ask any questions that you might have. And I'll make sure you know, when I'm starting this whole little program up, because I want you to be aware of all of the major points here, right, I'm not trying to turn into security experts, that takes quite a bit of work. However, I do want you to be familiar with all of the problems. All the talk about hacks that have happened, how it happened, what should have been done by those companies give you an idea, but as well as what you can do to protect yourself a few tips on how to protect yourself, it's going to be kind of a busy summer. And if you sign up, and you'll be able to get a notification as to when these little courses are going to happen. And I'm going to leave them up for about a week or so you know because it does get stale. And I do need to revisit them. I don't want want to put them up blankly for the world to see forever. So keep an eye out. Email me at Craig Peterson dot com, and now we'll go to Ken and Matt. I want to encourage you guys, and you can learn this. There are the people that just been messing with you. You know the bottom line. Ken Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us at 738 every Wednesday, and this is 738 on a Wednesday, which means you're talking to Craig Peterson. Craig. Welcome to the program, sir. Craig Hey, good morning. It is a Wednesday but is it every Wednesday? Today? Ken That's a good point. And you know what it is a lie in and of itself because I believe we did not talk to you last Wednesday. So it's most Wednesdays. Craig That's true. Yeah, I took a bit of vacation. I'm a motorcycle guy. And I have a motorcycle that is 32 years old. It's a 1987 BMW with 143,000 miles on it now. The only thing I had to do is replace the rear wheel on that bike. It's just been a phenomenal bike. So, I went up to like George in New York, and we rode around with some buddies for a week. And it was just fantastic. Ken Well, good. But that doesn't mean tech news stops. I hopped on your website, Craig Peterson dot com. To see what kind of top stories you had there and you have one topic here. Why are we still trusting Google? Can you answer that? Matt Great question. Well, they did say early in Google's history that they that their whole operating philosophy was Don't be evil, right. Are they evil? Now? Did you notice they took that off of their website? Right? Craig Yeah, exactly. I don't know why we're still trusting some of these different companies out there. They are selling all kinds of information about us. And, you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing when you get right down to it. Because, frankly, do you want to see car commercials all the time? Or would you rather see a car commercial when you are looking to buy a car, right? And, again, goes back, Matt, to what you've said many times, and that is if you're not paying for something, you might want to consider that you're the product and not the customer. And they have been doing all kinds of things. We're selling our data. But the other big problem that came out very recently, within the last couple of weeks is that in fact, Google has been storing our usernames and passwords for people that were using, basically their G Suite services. But it's been out there for 14 years in the clear. They're pretty good about security, although Android itself isn't the best out there. But now their G Suite customers are a little upset because of what's been out there. I was talking just yesterday with an employee who had been working at a company that was collecting personal information. They were collecting home addresses, phone numbers, and they were taking donations and were selling them. It was a great little company doing just all kinds of super things to raise funds for some good charitable organizations. It turns out they were using Google Forms to collect all this personal information about donors. You know, come on, guys, we cannot trust Google, we're using more and more of these online websites, software as a service. Think about Google Sheets, for instance, as well as Google Forms. And we're putting data in there that may end up getting exposed. We should not be doing that. Think twice about it. In our profession, we refer to this as shadow IT or shadow information technology. Historically, we had these big rooms, these big glass rooms with all of the computers in them. And we had true professionals that were running them, and making sure data was being kept safe, and information was not being stolen and leaked out. Now we've got the marketing department going out and creating contracts with companies that have online services, we have the same thing happening with sales and manufacturing and distribution and our purchasing managers are our data is not safe, and it's never been less secure. So be careful what you're putting out there, what you're given to Google what you're given to these other companies because frankly, it's a real problem. Matt Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joins us, most Wednesdays at this time to talk about the world of technology. And today is one of those days, Craig, while you're talking, I'm looking at a story on CBS This Morning about Uber's secret self-driving test facility for their self-driving autonomous cars. I know you had a story also about whether or not autonomous vehicles are ready for prime time. And I think it does beg the question, how prepared for prime time are these things? I know, it's a conversation I've had several times, and it seems like the older the person I'm talking to the more it freaks them out that there's no driver behind the wheel. I think it freaks everybody out. It just freaks out, you know, people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s a lot more than it does everybody else. But statistics, you know, are being what they are, you know, often they can be safer, then human behind the wheel. So what do you think? I mean, are they close to ready to take over the roads? Craig Well, I really like I mentioned this yesterday. I liked this story that came out in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. And it said that autonomous vehicles, these self-driving cars are 90% ready and all we have left is 90% to go. In other words, yeah, there's a lot of things that look like we're ready to go and it might be just a few more years, and we'll have autonomous vehicles. In reality, it's probably going to be quite a while yet. And you talk about you know, older guys like Ken and myself who are over 30. And we're looking at some of these things. And we're concerned because we've seen failures before. Do you remember Cadillac v 864? Matt Back then, I wasn't much of a car person. Ken I did have a Mustang in 1960. Matt Do you remember the Corvair? Unsafe at any speed? Craig I do, and you know, Ralph Nader thing, we still have Nader dots on our tires. But that was an example back in the early 80s of Cadillac trying to make cars more efficient, the engines more efficient, and they had a V-8 engine. And what would happen is if you got onto the highway and you started driving, of course, at highway speeds, you're going down the road, you don't need as much horsepower to keep a vehicle going at a pace as you need to get the car starting at that speed. So they said okay, well, we're going to have the system that automatically shut down cylinders. So you'd be a V-8, and you'd be just roaring up and you getting on the highway and you're often running. Then it would cut back to six cylinders, even four cylinders. The concept was wonderful. But what ended up happening is that engine would say, as you're at a stop sign, oh my I need more horsepower, counteract the braking. Of course, They were not thinking about the brakes very well at the time. And then the car would lunge into the intersection so that you could get t-boned. Fast forward not very many years, and we had the Toyota with a sudden acceleration problem. That turned out to be a software error, where much the same thing was happening. A car would jump into the intersection. We're not going to get into all of the details behind it all. But I think with age comes from experience. And we've had some horrible experiences over the years with vehicles and some of this newer technology. So Matt, to answer your question, a lot is going on the autonomous vehicle space. In some cases, the cars are much, much safer, you look at millions of miles driven, compare human drivers to these autonomous vehicles, and the autonomous vehicles almost always win. But we also now have prejudices against the self-driving cars, social warriors are, you know, get on your horses here. Because there are people who when there's an autonomous vehicle on the road, or they think it's a ton of mess, they behave differently. Now they've been tested have been run, I don't know if you've seen any of these pictures with autonomous vehicles, where they took the driver's seat, and they made it quite a bit deeper, think of thicker padding on that seat. And they hid a driver inside the driver's position. You could not see them unless you looked exceptionally close. You could not see that there was a driver in the vehicle. Then the driver just drove around, caught down and of course, the cameras everywhere so they could see what the people's reactions were. People were going out of their way to mess with the car. They pedestrians were jumping in front of it. Vehicles were cutting it off, slamming on their brakes, doing everything they could to make it so that autonomous vehicle would get involved in an accident. I don't know. Maybe they're just trying to see what it would do. Of course, it wasn't an autonomous vehicle. There's a human driver in there. We, as a society, as people, are not ready for these yet. And frankly, I think the Wall Street Journal's right - We're 90% of the way there. And honestly, we have 90% of the way to go. Because there are so many things, we haven't even considered yet. Ken When he joins us, most Wednesdays at 738, to fill us in on tech news. We at the radio station. I don't want to be critical of our radio station. However, they started this two-factor authentication. So every time I get some on my email, they have to send me a text message with a code. I think this is a royal pain in the butt. I want you to tell me they shouldn't do that. Craig Okay, can they not do that. Ken Thanks so much. Thank you for joining us today. Craig I will leave it at that. Yeah, here's what's going to, first of all, there's a big problem with the way they're doing it. That is that there is something called SIMjacking or hijacking of your SIM card. So if they're sending you a text, that is very dangerous. What's been happening is that if you are a target, now they're not doing this in a broad fishing attempt. If you can are a target, and the criminals know they want to go after you, they can now take over your cell phone, and they will get the text. So it doesn't do a whole lot of good from that aspect. We use something called DUO. D-U-O, which is fantastic. For two factor authentication, we use something called Yubi keys, which are very good as well. If your company's requiring you to us a text message for authentication, there is a relatively safe way of doing it. And that is you can use something like Google Voice, assuming your Google account has not been hacked, right. But Google Voice, where there is no SIM card, there is no cell phone that SIM card to hijack. If you use this and it is what I do for places that have to have a text message sent for two-factor authentication. So if they have to send you a text message, it goes to Google Voice. I have my own little phone company, and I use that as well. That way the text message will come in via an app to your phone, you can check the app, and now you're reasonably safe. But yeah, in this day and age, you know two-factor authentication is something that that does make sense. We do have to draw a line, and that one does it make the most sense. I'd like it to authenticate you at most every four hours or once a day, particularly for emails, if you have to do it every time. It gets a little bit old, pretty darn fast. But you know it's the reality of today's world. Matt Craig Peterson, our tech guru, he joins us at this time every Wednesday to find out exactly what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, we only have a couple of minutes left. So lastly, I will ask you whether or not you judge everyone on social media? Are you part of the mob that rules everyone? Craig Oh man. I am not. I don't jump on anybody's back. I just had that happen to me with a significant hacking group. As you know, I run the national webinars for the FBI Infragard program. I'm pretty visible out there in the security world, right. I do lots of radio interviews and TV and stuff. I posted an article on my website and got jumped on by a small mob out there. We've got to be careful remember it's so easy to say something negative online. Our kids are getting bullied every day. Bullying seems to be quite a habit nowadays. I don't know what happened to free speech. We have these militant people out there these fascist like the Antifas. Total fascist don't want to hear what you have to say. And these internet mobs have become a real thing and a very negative thing. From my viewpoint. Anyways. Ken Good news as our tech guru joins us most Wednesdays at 738. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. We will talk to you next Wednesday. Craig Take care. Matt All right. Thanks a lot, Craig. We appreciate it.   --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553  

   Episode #1 Description   Welcome to “What the Lyric?!?” In this episode, we bring our favorite bad lyrics from Pop Music (c. 2016-2019). One song from an artist who desperately wants to fix her “Reputation” with some cringe-y spoken-word lyrics. And another from a Brit whose time would best be spent learning to “let go” of the booze.   Transcript of Episode #1   Becky: Welcome to What the Lyric?!? -- the podcast that confirms...yeah, that actually made it to radio.   Matt: Is it recording?   Becky: Oh now we’re recording. Oh fun!   Matt: Oh yay!   Becky: Hello everybody and welcome to What the Lyric?!? where we talk about how much we love awful, awful lyrics. A little bit about me: I’m Becky. I will listen to anything once, and over and over again if it’s really bad. And then there’s Matthew over here, my partner in crime…   Matt: You know, honestly, if you had to summarize my musical tastes, the best way to look at it would be to say that my go-to karaoke song is “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland.   Becky: So you know we have good taste. That goes without saying. How this whole podcast is going to work is...We have one song each that {...} we get to pick off the theme of the episode. Today’s theme is Pop Music from 2016 to 2019. We get to do a dramatic reading, and after the dramatic reading, we talk about why the lyrics are SO bad and why we had to call it out. All right, so starting first is...Matthew.   Matt: Okay.   Becky: Get ready.   Matt: Definitely get ready for this. So I chose a song...just to give you a little context for this: it comes from, I believe, August of 2017. So put yourself in that state of mind. It’s a year after the election; things are terrible...still.   Becky: I was probably high.   Matt: I mean, weren’t we all?   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: It is Seattle.   Becky: You’d have to be.   Matt: And so this person has decided to reshape their image and, you know, I’ll just let the lyrics speak for themselves:   “I don’t like your little games Don’t like your tilted stage The role you made me play Of the fool, no, I don’t like you I don’t like your perfect crime How you laugh when you lie You said the gun was mine Isn’t cool, no, I don’t like you (oh!)”   Matt: And that’s the first stanza.   Becky: Okay, so I’m guessing… Who’d be packing heat in 2017, you said? August?   Matt: Uh huh. Changing the image!   Becky: Could be… Oh! Changing the image? Only because of the changing image thing, that would be Taylor Swift?   Matt: Correct.   Becky: Oh the Swifties.   Matt: But do you...do you know the song?   Becky: Oh Jesus! Is it that...It’s the one where she then breaks it down and says, “Oh, Taylor Swift isn’t here right now. Because she’s dead!” Something along those lines? *Laughs*   Matt: This would be “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift.   Becky: Oh yes. *Repeats the phrase “Look What You Made Me Do” twice.* Or however the rest goes.   Matt: Exactly. And really, my choice for all of the songs in this podcast are based on what I like to call “Cringecore.”   Becky: I love that. We are going to copyright that.   Matt: *Laughs* Really any songs that have lyrics that [make you go] “Oh!” You’ve heard of cringe comedy; that’s kind of how I view these lyrics.   Becky: I like it.   Matt: And specifically the -- what makes this so cringey is what you already mentioned, the, let’s find it…”I’m sorry the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now” set to the background music of, “Ooh, look what you made me do.” “Why?” “Oh ‘cause she’s dead! Becky: The old Taylor is, like, what? 23? 24? I mean, she’s not old.   Matt: She’s got a guitar. I mean, her…   Becky: She’s country. Country Taylor.   Matt: She’s Country-Pop.   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: Don’t you remember when it was just a love song, baby?   Becky: Oh man. Oh God. Ohh...Getting a little gag reflex going.   Matt: And don’t forget the “I knew you were trouble.”   Becky: Oh is that the one with the turtle sex noise meme?  *Laughs*   Matt: *Laughs* That is exactly what that is. *Laughs*   Becky: My favorite ever!   Matt: So really Taylor...I had a lot of options, just based on Taylor, but I have to admit, the lyrics are just...a mess. Let’s keep it going. I mean, we’ve already heard the first stanza.   Becky: Oh yeah.   Matt: But then she continues to say she doesn’t like being the fool, but “[she] got smarter, [she] got harder in the nick of time.”   Becky: How does one get harder when they’re carrying their cat around everywhere? I see a lot of photos of her with her cat. Don’t get me wrong, [I’m a] crazy cat lady, but I’m not taking Kink with me...My cat’s name is Kinky Disco. I’m not taking Kink with me to the grocery store, to the gym...Okay, I don’t go to the gym, but like, I’m not taking her out on a night on the town.   Matt: Unlike Taylor Swift, which I will also say I find it interesting that for a woman whose last name is Swift, she didn’t choose “faster” for the lyric. Like, that would have made AS much sense… “But I got smarter, I got faster in the nick of time.” Okay! I’ll still take that!   Becky: She got badder? I’ve never heard her swear! I’ve never seen her not smile.   Matt: She doesn’t swear in this song either. The real question, and we can answer this question at the end of the analysis, but what, what, WHAT did we make her do? I’m just very curious.   Becky: Maybe make her carry a cat around all the time. *Laughs*   Matt: *Laughs* We did this to ourselves.   Becky: Maybe she has to date all these DJs. Maybe we forced that on her with our expectations of her music and turtle sex noises.   Matt: And her Starbucks lovers!   Becky: Oh God, that’s right.   Matt: “But honey, I rose up from the dead. I do it all the time.” Necromancer, interesting. “I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined. I check it once, then I check it twice. Oh.”   Becky: Wait, what does that mean? What are you doing? You checked it. Yup, still there.   Matt: Based on the lyrics alone, we have realized that she has gotten harder in the nick of time and also, presumably, become an elf of the Santa variety. She’s making lists; she’s checking them twice. Don’t know why she’s using a red pen.   Becky: Well it is festive. Red -- Christmas-y. Becky: See I can’t get past the “hard” part. She’s not like, all of a sudden, turned to Nicki Minaj-hard. Or like, back in the day, Lil Kim hard.   Matt: She’s not going to be Beyonce carrying around a baseball bat, breaking windows.   Becky: No, but she did bust out the band, the marching band.   Matt: Oh we can always get into that!   Becky: I saw that! I saw that!   Matt: But if that’s the case, then she still did not get harder in the nick of time because she’s still following Beyonce.   Becky: Yeah. And pink isn’t really a “hard” color for me. Like, it’s not a color I go, “Oh! I see Notorious B.I.G. is wearing pink. He’s hard.” That isn’t why I would have classified him as hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen B.I.G. [in pink.] Maybe he did? I don’t know; I’d have to go back and look now.   Matt: *Laughs*   Becky: I feel like I’d have to look that up. *Laughs*   Matt: And then really, the rest is chorus, which in case you haven’t realized it, is just: “Ooh, look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me...OOH, Look what…” Okay, I think we’ve got the idea.   Becky: I feel like someone got lazy. I feel like that happens a lot in lyrics. And that’s lazy.   Matt: Which part?   Becky: The just repeating the same line over and over and over again.   Matt: Yeah, it’s not a good look. And worse, is the next stanza:   “I don’t like your kingdom keys” Kingdom keys.   Becky: Keys? As in house keys? Car keys?   Matt: Yeah, apparently someone’s got a kingdom.   “They once belonged to me.”   Becky: Okay.   Matt: Uhhh, questions?   “You ask me for a place to sleep Locked me out and threw a feast”   And the best part of this is at the very end of the line is, “What?!” So even Taylor looked at these lyrics, “Locked me out and threw a feast...WHAT?!” And they just included it.   Becky: Yeah, they said fuck it. It’s Taylor Swift; it’s going to be huge. That’s exactly how it happened.   Matt: And ultimately, it was.   Becky: I know!   Matt: “The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma And then the world moves on, but one thing’s for sure (sure) Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours.”   Becky: All of a sudden we’ve gone from one person to all?   Matt: Oh yeah. So whoever took her kingdom keys apparently stole her keys, stole her kingdom and was like, “No bitch, you don’t live here anymore.”   Becky: Could kingdom keys *laughs* be a metaphor for virginity, here?   Matt: But then which one? Which one of the Starbucks lovers is guilty of that.   Becky: *Laughs* I wish I had kids so that I could be like, “Kids, keep your kingdom keys as long as you can. Just lock them away.”   Matt: “Your chastity belts won’t rust. Don’t worry.”   Becky: “Just keep those kingdom keys to yourself and be sure to give them to the right person.”   Matt: Abstinence-only education.   Becky: “And if you are going to give them away, just keep them protected.”   Matt: Just keep them on a carabiner. Becky: *Laughs* Those Schneider keys that had the chain you could just pull and snap back.   Matt: Exactly!   Becky: Keep them safe. You’ve got to know where they are at all times.   Matt: Taylor did not follow that advice. She is thinking about karma apparently. She’s not going to do anything about how angry she is, which again really contradicts the meaning of the song.   Becky: The “Look what you made me do”!   Matt: Exactly. She’s like, “Oh karma will take care of it. I won’t do anything about it except sulk.”   Becky: I’m going to sit and just bitch about it.   Matt: Yeah. And honestly, the rest of the song. A) It goes back to, “I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time.” Return to that and then another amazing chorus of “Look what you made me do.” And the final, original set of lyrics is:   “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me. I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams. I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me. I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams.”   And it just repeats until it transitions flawlessly into “Ooh, look what you made me do.”   Becky: Taylor. Taylor, I get that you’re young, probably started partying, started drinking a little bit and that’s where this came from, maybe. I don’t know.   Matt: Girl’s nearly in her 30s.   Becky: Yeah, I don’t get it.   Matt: Britney had a weird stage; I’ll allow Taylor one, but this was a…   Becky: Britney had a good one because she shaved her head.   Matt: *Laughs* She put on a show!   Becky: *Laughs* She is a showman through and through. Like, she shaved her head, tried to attack somebody with an umbrella…   Matt: I don’t remember the umbrella… Becky: Oh yeah, that was after she shaved her head. I think she went for somebody’s car window because they were taking photos of her in the car, so she went for that. Yeah. That’s a good photo to look up. It’s priceless.   Matt: That’s the next segment.   Becky: Yeah, that’s the second podcast. Photos of people going crazy.   Matt: That’s the first one!   Becky: Okay, so I think, universally, this song is incredibly awful. I think we can both agree.   Matt: Do we have a rating for this?   Becky: I would say she’s mild. Like, on a scale of 1 to 5 -- like, 5-star spicy crappy lyrics -- she’s probably right in the middle there.   Matt: I am inclined to agree.   Becky: It’s like a 3-4.   Matt: Right. It depends on your own taste buds, your ethnicity. Certainly when it comes to this song.   Becky: Oh god, yeah.   Matt: Honestly, on a scale of 1 to 5 yikes, I’m inclined to give it a 3. What nudges it toward 4 is the spoken lyrics...   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now.” “Why?” “‘Cause she’s dead.” And then I just hear the teenager in me slam the door and yell, “You’re not my real mom and you never will be!”   Becky: *Laughs* I will say, also, [those lyrics are] my favorite part of the song.   Matt: It’s only the original part of the song!   Becky: It really is! It really is. That’s like her acting out. And you’re like, “Oh. Ohh. Taylor got edge.”   Matt: To be honest, what would have kept it at a 3, if they would have just deleted the spoken word portion. This would have been a goth “Call Me Maybe.”   Becky: Yeah. Ooh, yes! I like that. I agree with you on that one. So we’re going a solid 3 to 4 yikes on the awful lyrics scale.   Matt: I am inclined to agree. It’s not the worst. It’s certainly not the best lyrics.   Becky: It’s definitely not. *Noise of a truck* Sorry for the trucks in the background, people! This is what happens when you record in an old building. Alright, so mine...Honestly, I don’t know when it came out. This song is the reason this podcast is existing because my coworker heard me bashing these lyrics and said, “Oh my god, please record this.” So Ellen, here you go!   Oh God, how do I do this? Okay:   “I met you in the dark, you lit me up You made me feel as though I was enough We danced the night away, we drank too much I held your hair back when You were throwing up   Then you smiled over your shoulder For a minute, I was stone-cold sober I pulled you closer to my chest And you asked me to stay over I said, I already told ya I think that you should get some rest”   Becky: And then it goes into the chorus. Go ahead, see if you can guess this one. Yeah.   Matt: I’m going to need some more lyrics.   Becky: I’m going to go into the chorus right now:   “I knew I loved you then But you'd never know 'Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go I know I needed you But I never showed But I wanna…”   Becky: I can’t even get to this part without laughing.   “But I wanna stay with you until we're grey and old Just say you won't let go Just say you won't let go”   Becky: ...Which is the name of the song.   Matt: Ohhhh my God.   Becky: That is James Arthur’s “Say You Won’t Let Go.” Now James Arthur, if I remember correctly won, like, X Factor, which is a British TV show like…   Matt: America’s Got Talent?   Becky: Yeah! I think it’s something similar.   Matt: Are there buttons?   Becky: There are people who are guest judges or whatnot. I think it might just be music, so it’d be like an American Idol situation. And [this song] is one of the more popular wedding songs, which I find offensive.   Matt: Oh no.   Becky: Yes! Yes, this is played at weddings. People pick this as their wedding song. So I’m going to go ahead and we’re just going to start again. So he starts with:   “I met you in the dark, you lit me up You made me feel as though I was enough”   Sweet enough sentiment. Right?   Matt: I will say it sounds like they’re both getting high at a party, which I’m just like, “Oh okay.”   Becky: They’re young. They can do that. I mean, I don’t remember the last time we’d dance the night away. Here’s where I start to have some issues with this being at all a good song and even a wedding song, where he says:   “I held your hair back when You were throwing up”   Now, there’s so many things here for me. You just met her and now you’re holding her hair back. While she’s puking.   Matt: Wow.   Becky: Do you want to be with a girl who can’t handle her booze is my number one question. *Laughs* Like, is that a thing?   Matt: I mean, I have to hand it to him. I can definitely see a couple of things wrong with the dating culture. Number one -- women who look at this song and think, “You know what? I’m just looking for a man who’s going to hold my hair back 30 minutes after I’ve met him.”   Becky: She’s gotten to that point. It’s like in Singles where she’s like, I was looking for all these things, and now I’m just looking for a man who says “God bless you” instead of “Gesundheit” when they sneeze. That’s where she’s at.   Matt: I mean, it’s a pretty low threshold.   Becky: Yeah.   Matt: But I also think it’s very much a critique on straight men who are like -- there’s no such thing as a red flag to me. She’s vomiting in a toilet? I bet I could get laid tonight!   Becky: She is so beyond her means; if anything, we’re going in for the kill. Okay, so now it says:   “You smiled over your shoulder”   Becky: All I can picture at this point is puke-face, which is puke stuck in the teeth, her make-up is now down around her cheeks, she’s got raccoon-face. She is that girl at the end of the night who is missing a shoe. And is holding the other one in somebody else’s shoe in her hand. Her purse is open; shit spilling out all over the place. That’s the girl I’m picturing, and you’re like…”Yeah.”   Matt: Say you won’t let go!   Becky: *Laughs* This is the girl for me. Forever. No. No, I can’t...And a wedding song! I’m going to keep saying this. This is a wedding song. People pick this for their freaking wedding.   Matt: See, what I love about that is that it explicitly gives the couple permission to drink too much, to dance the night away. And THEN, as she’s puking, he’s going to be like, “It’s like the first night we met!” *Laughs*   Becky: Open bar at this wedding! Very clearly. We’re not going to have food, just booze because we’re going to relive our first night. I can’t. And then he says:   “For a minute, I was stone-cold sober”   Becky: Now, when you sobered up for that second, did you go, “What the fuck am I doing?” Because that’s [when] I would have gone, “What am I doing? Why? This girl is puking and I’m holding her hair back and that’s the girl I think…”   But then he went, “Nope! We’re good. I don’t know what that was about. I’m pushing that to the back. Pushing it to the back. That is not a red flag in any way.” I don’t get it. And clearly, puke-face is a turn-on for this guy because then he pulls her close.   Matt: He’s got a thing.   Becky: *Gagging noises* It’s giving me the gag reflex thinking about it. Then he says:   “And you asked me to stay over I said, I already told ya”   Classy. He’s good.   Matt: Wow.   Becky: Yeah:   “I said, I already told ya I think that you should get some rest”   Becky: Now I’m not sure if he’s just being nice because she just lost the contents of her entire stomach in front of him and he doesn’t want to embarrass her any more or he’s like, “I’m going to go in for the kill even though I said ‘Let’s just get some rest.’”   Matt: He’s closing the deal. Honestly, if he cared, he’d be like, “We’re going to get you some water and medical attention.”   Becky: This is a “Me Too” movement issue.   Matt: Yeah, a #MeToo moment.   Becky: And then he goes on: “I knew I loved you then.” Got to be a fetish. Like, puke-face fetish. I don’t know. Not anything I go for. “But you’d never know.” Yeah because she’s black-out drunk. Who remembers during black-out drunk-ness? And then he says: 'Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go.” Yeah because she could die of alcohol poisoning. *Laughs* There could possibly be a death that your fingerprints are on the body now.   Matt: He’s scared of letting go and yet, at no point does he think, “You know, there are medical professionals who are paid to take care of this.” Becky: Yeah, maybe urgent care. That’s all I’m saying.   Matt: She deserves better at this point.   Becky: Yeah, and then he goes into, “I know I needed you.” More like she needed you rather than the other way around?   Matt: Yeah, she needed you in the same sense that she needed to be hydrated.   Becky: Yeah, maybe needed to be told, “Maybe not that last drink.”   Matt: Exactly. And this is going to be a bad decision.   Becky: Stop spinning while you’re dancing. Doing that little spinny-dance. That hippie dance thing. I don’t know. I don’t dance. I have no idea what the kids do these days. So then we go into the he wants to stay with her when she’s gray and old.   When you’re gray and old and you’re still puking into a toilet, holding her hair back. That’s old.   Matt: My brain went the opposite direction. Of course he’s excited for her to get gray and old because then all sorts of bodily functions go haywire. He definitely has a kink for this.   Becky: He’s waiting for the diaper stage.   Matt: Yep. 100%.   Becky: So then we get to the next bit:   “I'll wake you up with some breakfast in bed I'll bring you coffee with a kiss on your head”   This is an intervention. She’s daydrinking; she’s hungover. That’s what this has to be.   Matt: Too many damn mimosas.   Becky: “And I'll take the kids to school.” ...Because Mom’s had too much Mom-juice? What is happening here? Now we’ve established there’s a cycle. There’s a problem. “Wave them goodbye.” Because Mommy’s going to rehab and you’re not going to see her for a little while is what I’m getting. I could be wrong. “And I'll thank my lucky stars for that night.” The puke night? You’re thanking your stars because now you are having to take over care -- ALL the care of your kids -- because your wife can’t get out of bed because she’s been day-drinking and going on the Mom-juice.   Matt: Alright, two things. Well, actually, two kinks really come out of this. Number one, he definitely has a thing for girls who are messes. Like, full-on messes. Number two, the dude was playing long-game. If I can get with an alcoholic woman, enable it…   Becky: There will be diapers sooner [rather] than later!   Matt: Exactly. *Laughs* And I cannot wait to get custody of the kids who don’t exist yet. So...interesting, James Arthur.   Becky: Maybe that’s all he wanted was kids. And he just needed some drunk, crazy lady that would believe anything he said to her just to get those kids.   Matt: I hate to say it, but I know a fair number of straight women who, if a dude held their hair back, they’d be like, “Aw, he’s got a caring, tender soul.”   Becky: Yeah, I probably would have said that in my twenties. I’m also 45 now, so I’m like, “There’s something wrong with this guy.”   Matt: That’s because it’s amazing when you get out of your twenties...the clarity through which you can see the world!   Becky: Oh my God, yeah. Okay, so then we go back into the whole, “When you looked over your shoulder. For a minute, I forget that I'm older.” And here’s where I become an asshole for picking this song because the next line is, “Because you’ve been too busy hiding her alcoholism from the family.” The song’s about alcoholism! People are playing this for weddings! Again, top wedding song -- alcoholism is mentioned in the lyrics.   Matt: Wait, repeat that exact lyric.   Becky: “Because you’ve been too busy hiding her alcoholism from the family.”   Matt: Wait, who is? He is?   Becky: He is. His whole little stanza is:   “When you looked over your shoulder For a minute, I forgot that I'm older Too busy hiding her alcoholism from the family.”   Matt: This took a turn…   Becky: I know! I’ve never gotten past the first stanza where he’s holding her hair and she’s puking. No idea that they would all of a sudden mention alcoholism. THEY MENTION ALCOHOLISM. How is this a wedding song? You people have got to listen past the first stanza. And then it goes into, “I wanna dance with you right now.” I’m assuming now because shouldn’t she be in rehab? And then, “Oh, and you look as beautiful as ever. And I swear that everyday'll get better.” Everyday’ll. That’s everyday, apostrophe, L, L. Get better. “You make me feel this way somehow.” I don’t know. What would that way be? Afraid of drinking?   “I'm so in love with you And I hope you know Darling your love is more than worth its weight in gold.”   Now we’ve just completely gone past the alcoholism. That was just a little blip. Just a little mention.   Matt: Just going to drop that in as a reminder.   Becky: Yeah. Then this one gets me, “I wanna live with you/Even when we're ghosts.” Really?   Matt: That’s eternity.   Becky: That’s really...no.   Matt: I have yet to meet a single person in my living life who I would want to spend an actual eternity with.   Becky: I don’t want to spend that much time with my cat.   Matt: Ah! But see, that is the precise lyric that made that a wedding song.   Becky: Yeah. OR “I'm gonna love you till/My lungs give out.” Till my lungs give out?   Matt: But then he just literally contradicts what he’s just saying. He’s like, “I’m going to…” What?   Becky: Be with you even when we’re ghosts. But now it’s just till my lungs give out. He backed it up a bit. He was like, “Ooh…”   Matt: There was a rug that he pulled out from underneath her, which is that he doesn’t believe in ghosts.   Becky: OR he’s thinking he’s got a better shot in the afterlife of hooking up with, like, Anna Nicole Smith or something.   Matt: I’m guessing. But no one says what Anna Nicole Smith looks like after she died. What form of Anna Nicole? Becky: He’s thinking ahead. FAR ahead since he cut it back down to just till my lungs give out. “I promise till death we part like in our vows”?   Matt: Yikes. That’s just poor sentence construction.   Becky: Well, again, this song is about alcoholism and it’s a top 10 wedding song.   Matt: That’s a winner.   Becky: I think it’s a top 10 wedding song mainly because he’s British and the Brits do love their booze. *Laughs* So I’m sure it hits home with a lot of Brits.   Matt: I’m going to give you the win on this one. It was never a competition. I’m giving you the win. That is a clusterfuck of a song.   Becky: That TOP hit...I don’t even know what it topped at, but it’s up there. Not only that...WEDDING SONG.   Matt: First of all, he didn’t just have a thing for ladies who were messes, he then also proceeds to move forward with it to be like, “You know what I really love about you? How you hide your debilitating substance use from your family. That’s a major turn-on for me.”   Becky: See? He gave us a little hint in the beginning, and we’re all like, “This guy’s just an idiot. They’re just young.” And then it’s, “Oh shit. They’re alcoholics.”   Matt: She’s got a problem! And then it should have just been, “I’ll love you until we’re ghosts, which will be soon because your liver won’t last much longer.”   Becky: Because cirrhosis is bad. I say this is right up there. I say this is a 4.5 on the yikes scale for me.   Matt: I was precisely thinking somewhere between 4 to 4.5, but I will give it credit. There’s no way it’s going to be a 5, only because there was an emotional journey there.   Becky: There was. He took you on a little bit of a ride, albeit a crazy rollercoaster of alcoholism clusterfucks.   Matt: I don’t think I would have ever..No, no no. AMENDMENT: I would have never guessed there was an actual major pop song that had the word alcoholism in it.   Becky: Now I feel like I’ve got to look it up, but he was up there. I can’t remember where it was, but it played a lot, and I was like, did anyone actually listen to these lyrics before it went anywhere outside of the recording studio?   Matt: I think they saw it and thought to themselves, “Oh my God -- the UK -- this is going to be relatable.”   Becky: *Laughs* These people drink like fish and they are going to love this song. Alright, let’s see if I can find it...where did this damn song hit. I can’t believe this song about alcoholism made the charts. Let’s see, Brit Awards...Video of the Year and Single of the Year in 2017. Also, Oh thank God, it wasn’t for Teen Choice Awards. Thank goodness!  He also won American New Artist of the Year that year!   Matt: No. This is #MeToo moment. First of all it was a #MeToo moment and then, following that, was alcoholism and neglect?   Becky: Peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. In May 2018, it was reported that The Script, also another classic band, had launched legal proceedings against him due to alleged copyright infringement in regards to this song.   Matt & Becky: OHH!   Becky: It just got ugly.   Matt: Although now I’m intrigued at the title because...does the title, “Say You Won’t Let Go” refer to…   Becky: The booze?   Matt: ...a Jameson bottle? Or James Arthur?   Becky: I’d go with the bottle of booze. *Laughs*   Matt: I think she’s certainly loving that!   Becky: THAT is good when you’re a ghost.   Matt: You know what pairs best with cirrhosis? Jameson. Informal plug.   Becky: Jameson if you would like to sponsor us…   Matt: Please let us know!   Becky: Please!   Matt: Please get us out of this studio.   Becky: This studio is hot and there’s guns a-blazin’ probably somewhere in Seattle right now. Okay everybody, thanks so much for listening. Please join us next time when we take a peak at the riveting lyrics of songs from the ‘90s. That’s right. I’m Becky.   Matt: I’m Matt.   Becky: And this was…   Becky & Matt: WHAT THE LYRIC?!?

Join the Marriage After God movement and grab a copy of our new book today. https://marriageaftergod.com In this episode, we interview Matt & Lisa Jacobson From http://FaithfulMan.com and http://Club31Women.com & Faithful Family podcast. Here is a quote from our book Marriage After God “Your marriage is the message you are preaching to others. The way you and your spouse interact with each other reveals the gospel you believe.” Dear Lord, Thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the Spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain a deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry and the impact we have in each other’s lives and in this world, just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order or if we are not unified please help us to change course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point others to you and may you be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith of Marriage after God. [Lisa] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're in part five of the Marriage after God series, and we're gonna be talking with Matt and Lisa Jacobsen about marriage being your first ministry. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage after God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is marriage after God. [Aaron] Hey, thanks for joining us on week five of this series that we're doing. I hope you're enjoying it. You're definitely going to enjoy today's guests. But before we move on, as always, we want to invite you to leave a review. Those reviews help the podcast get seen by new audiences. So, if you've been enjoying the content, we'd love a star rating, which is the easiest way to do it, all you gotta do is tap a star in the app. And if you really, really want to and have time, leaving us a text review would be awesome. We read every single one of 'em, and we love them, so thank you for that. [Jennifer] Another way you can support this podcast-- [Aaron] So today on this episode, we're gonna be talking about content from chapter five of our book, Marriage after God. And the chapter's titled, "Your First Ministry." and we thought, what better way to talk about this chapter than to talk with our pastors and ask them who inspired us and showed us what it looked like to recognize our marriage as ministry. And now we actually reference them and talk about them in this chapter, and so today we have Matt and Lisa Jacobson with us, welcome. [Lisa] Hey, nice to be here. [Matt] Awesome to be here, you bet. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're in our garage, sitting on our couches. And today we're gonna be talking about this topic. But before we talk about that, why don't you introduce to the audience, just in case they don't know you guys, who you are, children, marriage, all that. [Matt] Okay, well, Matt Jacobsen, and this is my lovely woman. [Lisa] Hey, hello. [Matt] Lisa, and so we've been married for 26 years. We have eight kids between the ages of 12 and about 25. [Lisa] Yup. [Matt] Right, and there are four of them are out of the house and moved on. And so, what keeps us busy when we're not just hanging out and kissing in a dark corner somewhere. [Lisa] That's right. We also, we do homeschool and we do a lot of work with our kids. Our kids help us out with what we do at home and also in our ministry. [Matt] And so, speaking of ministries. So, my website is Faithfulman.com. [Lisa] And I'm Lisa with Club31women.com. [Matt] And so that is a writing ministry that speaks to marriage, parenting, church, and culture. Biblical perspective on those things. And so, that comprises a lot of what takes up our time in a given week. And then, of course, we're the pastors of a small local fellowship as well. [Aaron] Yeah, it's our fellowship. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] You're our pastors. And we love you guys. And by the way, if everyone listening didn't hear what those were, that's faithfulman.com and club31women.com. You guys should definitely check them out. And why don't you tell them about your newest podcast that you guys just launched? [Matt] Awesome, okay. Well, the name of that podcast is Faithful Life. And it's essentially a podcast that is pursuing the and exploring the topic of what does it mean to live as a biblical Christian. There are a lot of people in the world, lot of Christians, people who identify as Christians, who are living a life that is really separate or tangential to the Bible. And really, if you're going to be a biblical Christian, you've gotta know what the Bible says about these various aspects of life: marriage, parenting, how we're to live within church community and then how we're to interact with the culture. And so, that's the focus of the podcast, faithful-- [Lisa] With a lot of emphasis on practical ways to do that, sometimes we kinda know in our heads what the right thing to do is, or what we believe the Bible says, but then how does that look in our day-to-day life, and that's something that matt and I really have a passion for is just connecting those two things. [Matt] And a little bit of experience. It's only been, what, 26 years you've been married and walking with the Lord and learning through all of the eight children. [Aaron] So we just want everyone to check out their podcast; it's called Faithful Life. And you're gonna love it. Just search for it wherever you listen to podcasts. So, let's get into the icebreaker question. And this is how we start all the episodes. It's just a fun question. How does your spouse like their coffee and what does that say about them? [Lisa] Okay, I get to go first on this one. Because everybody that knows Matt Jacobson well knows that he likes his coffee black, but, even more importantly, he likes it burning hot so that it burns a hole in your tongue, so he, if-- [Matt] And you better not put it in a cold cup. [Lisa] Right, the best way to show love to Matt Jacobson is to heat up the cup first and then pour his coffee into it. [Matt] Wow, that's one of the ways over the years you've shown love to me. But right, so anyway-- [Lisa] In the coffee-- [Matt] No, that's right in the coffee, in the realm of coffee. And Lisa takes her coffee with a teaspoon of sugar and cream and-- [Lisa] That's right, I like it a little sweet. [Matt] She likes it a little sweet, that's right. [Aaron] And it's just like her character too. Little sweet. [Matt] And I love making coffee for her; I do. In the morning, I love making coffee. I love bringing her a cup of coffee in the morning. [Jennifer] And you guys do coffee as a family a lot, so can you just share a little bit about that 'cause I just love that. [Matt] Okay, so, why don't you tell how we've corrupted our young children? [Lisa] Well, we started off in our marriage. We started each day with having coffee. Matt would make a coffee tray for him and I, and we would sit and have coffee together. And then as each child came along, we then slowly incorporated them into this special time until it became something our whole family just loves and so even our older kids when they come home for the holidays or different vacations, they'll come and that's the thing they look forward to most is having our time together over a pot of coffee. And we just talk about what we're thinking about, what's going on in our world, and it's just a really close family time. [Matt] And you know, oh, sorry. That whole process of incorporating the kids into it. It's kind of funny because it's really a metaphor, or an example, if you will, of what happens in your family. Over time, we're very strict with the older kids. I don't even remember when we began allowing them to have coffee. Including them. I don't even remember, do you remember how old they were? [Lisa] No. [Matt] But, as time went on, the younger kids just get to start earlier and earlier. And I think we started, did Hawkin have his first? [Lisa] He was about seven or eight maybe-- [Aaron] It was a bottle right? [Lisa] When he had his first cup of coffee. [Matt] That's right. [Lisa] A very, very tiny cup of coffee, mostly milk. [Jennifer] Mostly milk, yeah. [Matt] Yeah, right, and so now we're going, okay, so. [Lisa] Almost because their dad's kind of soft on the issue. [Matt] I am; I am. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, I follow Lisa on Instagram, and I love watching your stories because you'll post about it every once in a while of just your guys' family time around that, and it's beautiful and you can just tell, just from that short glimpse that you give the rest of us that it's a really beautiful time that you're cultivating in your family. [Matt] And in some senses, like you see the snapshot, and it is awesome, it really is. But, it's just so normal, a part of life, and a wonderful life is built on a lot of normal moments that you just string together over time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, it's true, yeah, it's good. [Matt] And so, yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, there's the big one-offs that are memorable, but then there's the, it's the everyday things that shape who we are, it's all those habits that we have and those routines. I love that. Why don't you share the quote from the chapter? And then we'll just start asking questions. [Jennifer] Okay, so this is from chapter five of Marriage after God. "Your marriage is the message you are preaching to other, "the way you and your spouse interact with each other "reveals the gospel you believe." [Aaron] Matt and Lisa, how would you that that is true in what you guys have experienced, because it's something that you've definitely not only shown us through your own marriage, but also directly have shown us in ours in saying hey, you can't expect to have this ministry over here if your home doesn't match. So could you give me some insight on how this quote plays out in real life? [Matt] Well, one of the things that you just naturally see in life is you see people in ministry and what's the big joke in America, at least it used to be, I don't know if it still is, who are the worst kids in church? The PKs, the preacher's kids, right? And so, that is so antithetical to how we're called to live in the word of God because we are called ambassadors. That means that we are representatives of the kingdom of God on earth. We bear the name of Christ, and we're his representatives. And how is it possible that you have this ministry or you have this public presence, and then it's not true in your own personal life. You wanna tell somebody about the wonderful truths of Scripture. And you wanna tell somebody the gospel and explain to them how they can have a wonderful relationship with the Lord. And then you don't have, you're not living those wonderful relationships in your family. I know that we had seen a lot of this early on. And we were even involved in a particular church, years and years ago, they were lovely people but focused just on evangelism and kinda lost the relationships with their kids over time. We just saw-- [Lisa] And in their marriage. [Matt] This family's disintegrating. And the marriage is. Then we though, you know what, the life that we're called to as believers is much more holistic than that. And the truths of the gospel are supposed to be manifest in our lives. And if I could just say one more thing. I know you've got a lot to say, too. You see in the instructions for church leadership in the book of 1 Timothy, one of the principal requirements of anybody in ministry and this is serving as an elder or a deacon within the church. [Aaron] Yes, specific position. [Matt] One of the principal requirements is that you've demonstrated that your children have yielded hearts to you. You're governing your family well. You're leading your family well. There's a sense of order and peace in your home. So God wants it to be true at home before we go out to represent him to the world. [Aaron] And what does Paul tell Timothy, he says how can you presume to manage the household of God if you can't manage your own home, which is how he, after all that teaching, he says that it doesn't make sense. [Matt] Yeah. [Lisa] And I think that Matt's kind of big picture guy. And I'm more of what does that look like in my day kind of person. And one thing I had noticed that in Scripture, when it talks about how we are to be towards one another, how we're to be, to be loving, patient, kind. And we apply all of those things to out there. So, just an example: I go to the grocery store, and the cashier's taking forever to get me through the line. And she apologizes, but I've read the Bible, so I'm going to be, oh it's fine, I'll wait. I understand you're trying your hardest, and we'll get through here because I'm being patient, and I'm being kind. And then I go home, and I have a different response when it takes Matt forever to come out and help me bring in the groceries in the house. Or, because I'll be snippin' at him-- [Matt] Has that ever happened, like even one time in our marriage? [Lisa] Like I wait for you? Do you really wanna bring that up? [Aaron] Everyone listening was like that was just today. [Lisa] So, but it really struck home to me that all those things that we think apply to out there to strangers or maybe to friends. It somehow, or maybe there's a disconnect, to actually sometimes the hardest person, sometimes, is actually the person your married to. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, thinking about our own marriage. I used to do this thing where I would always be upbeat and positive and smiley with everyone. And then I'd come home and immediately my countenance would change, and Aaron-- [Aaron] I finally called you out on it, I was like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 'cause Aaron would be like-- [Aaron] Why do they get the smiles and then I get this? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] What is this? [Jennifer] And then I remember specifically him saying, I want your best. And I had to figure it out. I had to figure out why I was doing that and check my flesh on it really. [Aaron] Well, I think there's a default position of, well, I have you, therefore you should deal with who I actually wanna be today, and everyone else has to, I want them to see the best part of me. It's almost like it's just totally backwards. And it's actually lying. [Matt] Well, the harsh reality of the circumstance is who you actually are in terms of your personal character is who you are when the doors are shut and you're letting your hair down, so to speak, and you're just being your natural self with the people where the consequences might not be as immediate or severe as they might be if you do this in public. And so, that's the reality of who we are. And so, it's important to take stock on those things. How am I with the people that I'm closest to because those are the people that we tend to take for granted and those are the circumstances that we tend to be a little less guarded. [Aaron] Now that you're saying that, I'm thinking, it's actually probably infinitely less damaging to be that kind of person in public, when people they may be offended for the moment, but they're gonna forget your face in like eight seconds 'cause they don't live with you than the person that we literally spend hours and hours a day and our lifetime with: our children, our spouse. We sacrifice the main thing for the non-main thing. [Matt] Totally, and that's of course humanly speaking, in terms of the cost, over the long-term. [Aaron] Yeah, publicly. [Matt] But relative to the Lord's perspective on these relations, he wants it to be the same everywhere. [Aaron] Yeah. [Matt] He wants us to be loving and in the spirit everywhere with the people, especially close to us, but also with everybody else that we're interacting with. [Aaron] Or repentant if we're not. [Jennifer] Yeah, yeah, there is grace Right? [Aaron] Which changes us. [Matt] Well, you know what, you brought up the R word: repentance. And that is such an important word and such an abused word in our Christian religious world because repentance has a specific meaning. It's a word that has a definition. And we cut ourselves so much slack and we dip back into the same sins over and, how about this, just this sin we're talking about here where we're not being kind to our spouse, but we've got it for everybody else. And, oh, I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that. Please forgive me. And Lord, I was unkind to my wife, please forgive me. I should have been more kind. And then we go on our day, and then I do it again. And then I do it again. Have I repented if I just keep walking in that same sin? [Aaron] No, you've apologized. [Matt] I've apologized, right? [Aaron] You're sorry for being-- [Matt] Because to repent means I used to do that, and now I'm doing this. It means to turn from, that's the definition of the word. And it's such a good word for Christians, all of us, to really wrestle with, and say, you know what, have I really repented and forsaken that sin? Because that's what it means to walk as God would have us as a couple and not to just keep going back, over and over and over again. [Aaron] I think of this quote. I'm not gonna say who said it, but someone in our family used to say, "If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it." That's kind of the idea; we say sorry over and over and over again. But in reality, our heart hasn't changed. We're just allowing something, whether we're intentionally doing something. We're not intentionally walking in the spirit, so therefore, we're defaulting to walking in the flesh, and we haven't repented of anything. This is something that I had to recognize in my life with certain sin in my life was I was sorry, but usually I was sorry for the shame or the regret or being caught or the remorse I see in your face or the pain I've caused you, Jennifer, but I'd never had been sorry for my sin which is what leads to repentance, and then I change and walk in that. So thanks for bringing that clarity. [Matt] Yeah, absolutely. And so to come full circle on your question, what does it mean to have a marriage that is reflecting the gospel? Well, if you have a marriage that is the kind of marriage that someone else is interested in, then you're not creating this incredible disconnect in the mind of the person that you're sharing the gospel with because what are you inviting them to? If the gospel hasn't affected and hasn't made your marriage beautiful, what are you inviting them to? Here we are married, and we have a bad, bickering, difficult, challenging marriage, and I'm out there telling somebody that Jesus loves them and died for them. It's so critical 'cause as we, and I know you guys have talked about on your podcast and certainly in your book, that your marriage is the gospel you're preaching, that is the gospel you're preaching. And the power of your message will not be one iota stronger or more influential than is the meaning and the love and the strength of your marriage relationship. [Jennifer] That's so good. I hope everyone hits rewind and just listens to that a few times. [Aaron] Yeah, and let's take marriage out of the picture, just in the Christian individual's life. If the gospel's not true in our life, so for me, when I was walking in my addiction to pornography, and I wasn't repentant of it, I thought I was, I was sorry for it; I was sorry for what it did to me, but I wasn't truly repentant of it. I could never tell someone that Christ came to bring freedom, which is what the Bible teaches us, that's the fruit of the gospel. [Matt] There you go. [Aaron] Because I couldn't walk in freedom. Like you said, I'm literally showing them, like, hey, here's God, he's awesome-- [Jennifer] He's powerless. [Aaron] He's powerless. [Jennifer] In my life. [Matt]right. [Aaron] He can't, and this isn't about just all of the sudden everything being healed and perfect and great, but this is definitely the truth of freedom from sin and death, which is what the Bible teaches, which is what Christ came to destroy. He took the power away from it. [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] But he doesn't have that in my life. Therefore, you should love God and believe in Jesus, but he can't actually do anything for the core of who you are. He can't change your physical situation or your spiritual situation, but, you know what, he's the thing you should believe in. It just doesn't make any sense. [Matt] No, it doesn't. We just need to remember that even if we're not saying anything, even if we're not on the street corner, preaching the gospel. We're preaching a sermon every time we walk out the door together. We're preaching a sermon. We're literally saying, this is what it means to be a Christian man and a Christian woman. Whether you mean to or not, you're preaching a sermon. The question is, what's the message that you're giving other people? [Jennifer] And how, can you explain, just for those people listening, how are they giving that message to other people? [Matt] It tends to be if you're living in a town and you've got your immediate circle and then you've got your circle of influence, the people you interact with, the people at the bank, the people at the gas station, the people at the grocery store, they know, over the course of time, they know whether you're a Christian or not. It just becomes evident that that is who you are. People probably don't realize it, but as somebody who identifies as a Christian, people watch you a little closer. They tend to want to just scrutinize you a little bit, or when we're at a restaurant. [Lisa] I was gonna say, what I was thinking about was how many times we've been in an airplane, traveling together, in a restaurant together, we have been stopped so many times by people we didn't even realize were watching us, someone who's serving us or the flight attendant, and said, you know, you two are just such a loving couple. And they could just see the way we were just interacting. And so people do notice that. And often times, especially at a restaurant, they'll see that we've prayed, so they also know that we're believers. And we've had a lot of opportunities to share the gospel with those people just even based on their observation of us. [Aaron] Well, it's uncommon. It's uncommon; it's normal to have cold relationships and being on the phones. It's uncommon to see engagement and true infatuation and adoration or-- [Lisa] Yeah, like the last time we were on a flight, we had a flight attendant come to us at the end of the flight, it was a long flight. And she said, "You know, the other flight attendants and I "were all talking about you two." Really? We're not that interesting. [Matt] Well, we were kissing, I mean. We were getting along kissing. [Lisa] That's right; that's right. And they were just observing how we were with each other, and how cute it was and thought we were maybe somewhat newly married. And I'm like, "Oh, no, we've been married 26 years, "and we have eight kids." Like, no way, yeah, really. [Aaron] And you're still in love? [Lisa] Yeah, yeah, it was really astonishing. [Matt] And you mentioned something about praying in a restaurant. And I know a lot of people listening probably do. It's probably less common these days than it has been in the past, but a lot of people still bow their heads and pray in a restaurant. Personally, I love doing that. I love just the witness: I'm a Christian, and I'm gonna give God thanks for this food. So I like doing that. But if you're somebody out there who does that, can I just encourage you to leave a fat, hog tip? Okay, because-- [Lisa] It's like a bonus. [Aaron] It is a bonus. [Matt] Because you've literally hoisted your flag at the table, I'm a Christian, and so, leave a great taste in your waiter's or server's mouth. [Aaron] It's a little sacrifice. [Matt] It's so small, yeah, so small. So small, but it's a good testimony, too. Just to say, you know what, love the Lord, and oh, by the way, God bless you. [Aaron] Going back to the, I think that's a great little bit of advice of how to spread the love of God. Like, hey, we love God and we just wanted to bless you, thank you-- [Matt] And certainly if it's a place that you go back more than once. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's true. [Aaron] Oh yeah! [Matt] You have struck up, well you've created an opportunity to strike up a conversation with the person because they're, well, first of all, they're business people, right? They wanna make money. So they wanna serve you well, and it's just an opportunity, that's all. Just an opportunity, if you're going to pray, then by all means, please don't complain about the food. [Aaron] I was gonna say that actually. There's certain Christiany things that we do, maybe we were raised that way, and we just pray. We're Christians, we love God, we pray. But then, let's say we're bickering at the table, or we are being super rude to the waiters, or our kids are throwing food on the floor and silverware. That is a part of our witness. [Lisa] It is. [Aaron] How we are. And they're like, you did the thing that I thought you were gonna do. They're looking for us to fail. [Jennifer] To fail, right. [Aaron] Doesn't mean we're not gonna fail, but the majority of the time, our hearts should be aware of how we're being, which goes back to that marriage being your ministry. You guys had this awesome, oh, people noticed us, and they stopped us and said thank you. We've had the other side of it. And no one's actually confronted us and saw us fighting, but we've had people message us after the fact. We've mentioned this a few times. And like, "Hey, we saw you in the store. "I didn't stop and say hi, but just wanted to say hi." And they'd message us on Instagram. And then we were like, "Oh my gosh, I think we were, were we fighting?" [Jennifer] This was a long time ago; we've gotten better since then. This was a long time ago. [Aaron] It made us aware, man, like, well, A, we have a social media presence, but it doesn't matter if you do. Like if you're a Christian, there's people that know you. You have friends, you have neighbors, you have, and people that may not know you personally, they're gonna see you regularly in your small town, or big town, I guess, because you frequent the same places. What kind of fragrance as a couple and as Christians do we give in this world where we say one thing and act a different way? That's literally what hypocrisy is. We talk about this, actually, in this chapter. We talk about, we're gonna ask you a question in a second, another question, but it doesn't make any sense if we're trying to minister in other ways, and then in the home, there is no real ministry happening. And so, question for you guys is are marriages being a ministry, and being our first ministry, because it's our first one another, our closest neighbor, we always like to say is our spouse and then our kids and everyone else. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Well, this husband, he's a minister, and he doesn't actually have time to be focused on his family. Or a wife that's doing this thing over here for God, and she doesn't have time to serve her home and children. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Why or why not? [Lisa] I don't know that there are exemptions in that sense although Matt might want to address that, but what that's come to mind, I do have many women write me who are in a marriage situation where the spouse is not a believer or at least not walking with God. And I know that that's a greater challenge, and I wouldn't want to put undue burden on that couple, especially the one that's trying to be faithful, and the other is not walking that way. There has to be grace for that, and the one person has to, you know, scripture tells us to keep quiet and just keep shining the light of Christ in their home. But I also wouldn't want to feel like, oh, I can't minister to others now because my spouse is not walking in truth right now. [Matt] And the way I would look at that is the Bible teaches us what is normal and how we are to walk as normal Christians in this world. And when it comes to marriage, what's normal is the way Jesus loves the church, his bride. That's how we're supposed to love our bride. That's normal. And that instruction, love your wife as Christ loved the church, that's not a special instruction for somebody who happens to be in the public eye. That is an instruction for absolutely every Christian man, every man who stands up and says, I follow Lord; I have committed my life to Christ. I have repented of my sin, and I'm a Christian. Every man who has said that should have a wife who says, I'm the most cherished woman I know. And no man is exempt from that. And so, here's the thing, if a church lays claim to being full of godly men, then there's one thing you know for sure, it's full of cherished wives. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot be a godly man and not cherish your wife. And so in that sense, I would say nobody's exempt from this, but, of course, we live in a broken world with lots of relationships and circumstances, and people have struggled. And God has grace for those things. But in those circumstances, the person, whatever they are, wherever they fall on the spectrum, difficult and virtually sad and very challenging to not that bad, wherever they are in the spectrum, their job is to draw near to God and walk as closely to God as he wants them, as he desires them to, and to seek them in those circumstances. But I appreciate you bringing that up because there are lot of people, lots of wives, lots of husbands, a husband called us recently. His wife left, he's got, I think they've got five kids. One of the kids has Down's Syndrome, and the wife's just like, "I'm done." And she left, and he didn't want her to leave, he tried to love her right up through, for several years, up to point where she left. He himself has remained faithful and has a ministry even though she's left, so it's true, it's not that you don't have a ministry. It's just that God provides his standards and principles and requirements for Christian men, for Christian wives, and for marriage. And then sin comes in and everything else is an exception to the rule, but the rule is every man is to cherish his wife in the way Jesus Christ loves the church. [Aaron] So, I do appreciate Lisa that you brought that up, too, because I'm sure that we have people that listen, and one of the spouses is not walking, is not a believer, and we get, praise God, he gives provision for this in his word, in 1 Peter, he shows, it's funny because it's to the wife, it's almost like he knew that men were gonna be more prone to this, not being faithful, which is sad, but it's true. But even then I think, you're right, that it doesn't mean they can't have ministry outside of the home because their marriage isn't in order correctly faith wise, but that doesn't mean that their first ministry still isn't their spouse. Like you said, they still have a call, the wife or the husband, to serve and love their spouse the way the Bible has called them to, faithfully, whether they receive it or not, of course. And that's also, I don't wanna say qualifies, I don't know if that's the right word, but, it still prepares them to do ministry outside their home because it's in order. Instead of, I'm not going to love my husband or my wife like this because they're treating me this way, but I am gonna go love over here, that's not gonna produce the kind of fruit that God's looking for. But I did appreciate that. I think it's totally relevant to recognize that there are these non-ideal marriages. [Matt] You know, and one of the things that might be important to mention here is wherever you are on the spectrum: you have a spectacular marriage all the way to it's terrible. We tend to fall into this wrong thought process that goes something like this: you're walking in sin; therefore, I can't help being the way I am. [Lisa] Oh, now, that's a good point. [Matt] And the fact of the matter is is the way you act has nothing to do with my capacity as a believer to walk in holiness. [Lisa] Right, no that's-- [Matt] And we kinda cut ourselves a little slack there, don't we? 'Cause if you're a certain way, well then that gives me license to be another way in response-- [Aaron] Yeah, if you only respected me, I would treat you or love you as Christ loves the church. [Matt] That's right, and every one of us has the capacity according to the word of God to walk in holiness, irrespective of how our spouse is walking. Now we certainly make it easier, right? If we're walking in holiness for the other person. But, we can't blame our distance from God on how someone else has chosen to act. [Aaron] Amen. [Jennifer] Taking a look into your guys' marriage. You know, you've been married quite a while. So go back to the beginning. Was there a learning curve in your guys' relationship on how to love and respect each other and cherish each other in that? [Matt] OH, absolutely. I was the most loving husband in the world. The only problem-- [Aaron] That's a real laugh, by the way. [Matt] The only-- [Lisa] Revisionist history, I think that's what it's-- [Matt] The only problem with it is I was loving Lisa in the way that said love to me. [Lisa] Oh, that's true. [Matt] We'd like to tell the story, in fact, we tell it on our own podcast. We just have this crazy story where I literally am superman husband, okay? I am helping out with everything. [Lisa] It's our first year of marriage. [Matt] First year of marriage. I am helping out with everything. I am helping with, not the laundry, you wouldn't let me touch the laundry 'cause she said, nope, that's mine; I will do the laundry. Everything else, the vacuuming, folding the laundry. [Lisa] Cleaning the bathrooms. [Matt] Cleaning the bathrooms, everything else, the dishes, everything, I'm helping, I'm helping. I'm doing it all, and I'm thinking-- [Lisa] And I'm getting madder and madder and-- [Matt] And she's over in the kitchen. And there's the flames, you know, the ones coming out of her eyes, are visible from across the room, and I-- [Aaron] Although I have never seen Lisa angry before, so I couldn't-- [Lisa] Oh, I'm capable. [Matt] And I thought, what is wrong with this woman? You can't find five guys in the entire state of Oregon that do the things that I do with a willing heart, and I'm trying to bless you, you're just, there's nothing that will make you happy. You can't be blessed; I don't know what your problem is. And so, she just takes the towel, and she almost busts a dish on me as she sets the plate down on the counter. And then she takes the towel and throws it on the counter. [Lisa] Thank you. [Matt] And I'm going, what in the world. She turns to me, and she goes, "I just don't know why you don't love me." [Lisa] True story. [Aaron] What's happening? [Matt] And I'm going, okay, am I losing my mind here? And I'm going, you've gotta be kid, you've literally got to be kidding me. [Lisa] So my thinking is I can vacuum, I can clean the bathrooms, anybody can do that. But there's only one guy in my life that can take me out and spend some time with me and listen to my thoughts. [Aaron] Look in my eyes-- [Lisa] Yes! [Aaron] And talk to me. [Lisa] And so he could just feel my frustration over time. So, the more frustrated he would feel-- [Matt] I would try harder. [Lisa] The more he'd vacuum. [Matt] I'd do more! [Lisa] And I'm just like, put the stupid vacuum down. I just want to spend time with yo. [Matt] So I'm going, wow, that's easy. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who knew love was that easy? So in our case, it was just me taking the initiative to say, okay, we're gonna go out at such-and-such a day, and it didn't matter what it was. We'd go for a walk; we could go have a cup of coffee. And I mean, at any time you as a husband tell your wife, "Hey, I just wanna spend some time with you." You can turn one cup of coffee into an awesome date. You really can. [Lisa] It doesn't take much. [Matt] It doesn't take much. You talk about learning curve, absolutely we had to learn each other and what was important to you and what was important to me and this is so true in absolutely every area of marriage. For instance, we've given you the for instance in terms of the learning curve, but in terms of discovering what it is your spouse is interested in, what they like, what's important to them. There's a very, very interesting way of finding out. [Aaron] You ask. [Matt] You ask a question! Yeah, yeah, and it's such a great thing to do because you know what happens when I turn to you and I ask you a question about you. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who doesn't like talking about themselves? Who doesn't like being known and explored and discovered. Who doesn't like someone being interested in them. So that's what we do when we turn to our spouse and say, okay, I wanna ask you a question. I wanna ask you what are three things that I can do that would make you feel loved? So that's just the normal stuff of marriage. But you know what? And you can even take it right into the subject of sex. And you can say, what are things that you enjoy when we come together physically? What are some of those things? Because, you know what, we tend to love the other person with the things that we want. [Lisa] I think that sometimes people boil this down to love languages, which is interesting and helpful. But what we're talking about is so much more than a love language, for one thing, those things change over time. It depends when the season when we had four kids, five and under, the vacuum really helped a lot, and I had a, not that I still didn't want to go out, [Aaron] Right, in that season, that was much more loving. [Lisa] Yeah, it was loving; it did mean a lot. [Matt] And physical touch when we had five kids. What would the age's spread have been with our five kids? [Lisa] Yeah, six and under. [Matt] Five kids six and under. Physical touch was less important to her in those years. [Lisa] Imagine that. [Matt] You know? She's got kids. You got enough of that. [Jennifer] Her tank is full. [Matt] Yeah, I'm touching 24/7, exactly. Right, so it does change over time. [Lisa] So instead of thinking of it as big subjects of love language, think of it as who you are as a person and where are you at today, where are you at in this season, where are you at in your life right now. And that involves that continual seeking and pursuing and asking. [Jennifer] So continual even after 26 years. Like you guys are still asking? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You have gotten there yet? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You haven't gotten to the-- [Matt] No, we're seeking each other all the time. And you know what? [Jennifer] And it's fun, right? [Lisa] It is. [Matt] It is fun, absolutely fun. And the thing is, if you love the other person, it's not a burden to do it. You actually want to know where they're at. You wanna know where their heart is at. [Lisa] And I think it can even be in somewhat negative things like say, I notice something triggers Matt into a bad mood or just like a dark, you know. And it used to be, when we were younger, that would just like, oh, fine, if you're gonna be in a bad mood, then I'll just stay away from you. I'm not saying those things, but that was my basic attitude. And I feel like over the years, now, let's say something like that happens, which it does, then I can say, I noticed, like something happened, you know, we had a good start today, and then something kind of went sideways. You wanna tell me about that? Did something happen or did I say something? Not in a defensive way, but just really, we've had some really good conversations about that. He'd go, "You know, I wasn't aware of that." Sometimes even going back to your childhood. As a child, my mom treated me a certain way, so now whenever I hear this phrase, it takes me back to a time when I didn't feel cared for. [Aaron] Yeah. [Lisa] And you're thinking, oh, well, I didn't mean to [Aaron] I know how it feels. [Lisa] communicate that I didn't care for you. But I can see that that would translate to that. And now I know, and I can be more mindful of that. [Aaron] And lovingly. Just the loving hey, is everything okay? Not because you're bothered by it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] But because you're concerned for it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] Which then, I'm sure, Matt, you would experience. There's been times that I don't even know why I'm brooding. It just takes a moment to be checked on it. And then I'm like, oh, I actually don't know why I'm brooding right now; I actually do feel irritated. I don't know why. Which it totally could be a hormonal thing, it could be a something I ate, and maybe there's something spiritual going on that we need to be praying through, but that approach of not taking it personally because we do that. Why are you doing this around me? I was in a great mood, now you just brought me down. But rather, helper, but for each, an actual concern. Hey, is everything alright? That was a really good bit of advice. I think everyone listening is gonna be loving these tips because this is 26 years of you guys learning this. We're only 12 in, what is that? We're not even half. [Matt] It'll go quick; it'll go quick. [Aaron] We are halfway to the kids, though. [Matt] Oh, that's right. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] And you got started earlier than we did. [Aaron] We got started earlier, so we might bypass you So you guys'll [Matt] Outpace us, yeah, that's right. But then there's adoption, we can stay ahead of 'em. [Aaron] It's true, that's true. So I'm loving these tips. And it all plays back into this. Right now, you're talking about how you guys minister to each other. Loving each other, cultivating intimacy, the communication, the strong bond which allows us, then, it frees us to be more able to minister outside the home. Not that it can't happen, but when you guys are so connected, so close, there's more freedom, and less internal turmoil. [Matt] I might even say it a little differently. I would say what it does is it authenticates the message. [Aaron] That's perfect. [Matt] And you know, we see this principle, well not just principle, we see this exact teaching in the high priestly prayer that Jesus prays in John 17 where he's saying, their unity, let them be one as we are one, Jesus is praying. Let them, his followers, those who come to Christ, who come to a repentance and become the children of God. Let them be one as we are one that the world might believe that you have sent me. The unity that we have, the oneness that we have is the authentication of the message of Christ that he came from the Father. And so, that's so true in the church as a whole, and it's absolutely true in marriage. When we're walking in love, when we're walking in unity, when we're exuding that, where we go through life, it authenticates the message when we do speak the truth of the gospel to someone. [Lisa] And not just out there, but in our own homes, to our kids. [Matt] Oh, that's just so true. [Lisa] When your kids are little, you can kinda get away with it, or at least you think you are. [Aaron] We think we think we are. [Lisa] Believe me, as they get older, they'll tell the world what it's really like at home. They'll tell their friends. [Matt] They do. [Lisa] I'm just saying because it's reality. And the opposite is true, too, that if you are loving each other, it's a witness to them, it's an encouragement to them. Our kids all want to get married. They want to have that kind of marriage. And that's a huge blessing. One of the things that we recently asked one of our older daughters, who's in her twenties. I think it was a Father's Day thing. What do you like most about your dad? She said that, "He loves Mom so well." And it was such a beautiful testimony that yeah, they're watching, they know whether you have loved each other in those quiet moments. [Aaron] Well, when you think about it, almost everyone probably listening, when they look back and they think about their home and how they were raised, I'm sure a lot of them, being raised in Christian homes or not, maybe heard the Bible, but did they see it? Did they see the Bible; did they see the gospel? They don't remember what they ate. They don't remember all the places they've been. But they definitely remember how Mom and Dad were together. They definitely remember how Mom and Dad treated them. And that's where the ministry in our home comes in. 'Cause I've told Jennifer this. I said, Jennifer, all of these things that we have, Unveiled Wife, Husband Revolution, our podcast. I said all of that means absolutely nothing if my kids don't know the Lord. And so, not just our ministry to each other that we have a healthy marriage and that we're godly, and that we love each other and respect each other and honor each other and cherish each other and serve each other, but that my kids see it. And that they recognize what we're doing and why we're doing it, and that at the end of the day, they look back and they say thank you to us, not because of us alone, but because we were obedient. I want my kids to say that. I want my kids to say, "Mom and Dad loved each other. "I just know it; they loved me, and they showed me "who God was and they lived it every day. "They didn't just use their words." As James says, don't just be hearers only, but doers of the word. Are we just listening and not doing? Are we just telling and doing the opposite? The do what I say, not what I do? [Lisa] Right, right. [Matt] Do what I say, not what I do. It works every time, just not the way the parent thought it was going to work. [Aaron] Exactly and so I just, going back to that, that's what I want everyone listening to understand. The main purpose of this chapter in the book, is, and it's early on in the book, it's chapter five, and it's setting this idea of we could want to do lots of things for God, but God wants us to do what he's told us to do. And if we can't be faithful with the little thing, and the little thing is our children, our spouse, our home, this is a little picture of the world. If I can't minister to my wife and love her as Christ loves the church, I have no right going and loving a stranger like that. I could. [Matt] I think what we do is we tend to think like, I know what you're saying, as this is the little thing, so to do the big thing. I actually think that reality is kind of on its head. [Aaron] Okay. [Matt] I think the big thing we're doing is we're being faithful with our spouses, we're being faithful in discipling our children. And it's a great, big deal, and see-- [Aaron] Man, I heard that, yeah. [Matt] If the church had been teaching and focusing on that these past, what, I dunno, however many years. [Aaron] 60 or 70 years. [Matt] Would the church be in the state that it's in today with disintegrating families and churches filled with unfulfilled marriages and disappointments and divorce and all of those things. It's a great big deal. And if we're faithful here, God can entrust with ministry elsewhere. [Jennifer] In chapter 14 of the book, we talk about how what God sees as extraordinary is so different than what the world deems extraordinary. When we look at our own lives, it is that day-to-day, all those little choices of discipling our children, being faithful to one another, that is extraordinary because that is where God is working. [Aaron] Especially today, it's normal, you brought up the word normal, it's common, that's what it is, it's common in the world for there to be divorce and unfaithfulness and children who are rebellious and hate their parents. It is extraordinary and remarkable now even though it should be normal for a marriage to have love in it. [Matt] Well, that's just it. [Aaron] The gospel. [Matt] It is normal, biblical marriage to have a loving, close, wonderful, fulfilling, enjoyable, beautiful oneness in marriage. That is normal Christianity; that's normal marriage. The problem is, is we see what's common around us in the world, and we get used to what's common, and start thinking that that's normal, but it's not. If you have a biblical perspective, if you walk God's way, and your marriage reflects God's priorities and principles, then you're gonna have an awesome, wonderful, beautiful, loving, enjoyable marriage because that's what a normal Christian marriage really is. [Jennifer] And the power of God's testimony in your life is actually powerful. [Matt] Absolutely, right, exactly. [Aaron] Well, people can't argue with it. I mean, they can argue with anything. We were just talking about this. When you're around people that are walking a certain way, makes it easier to believe that you can too. That goes both ways. So when you see someone, and you're like man they're, like the stewardesses looking at you. They don't your whole story, but they know the story they just saw. You're not faking it when you're sitting in the aisle, whatever row you're in and like, oh we want everyone to see that we're perfect. We have this smile on because you can't fake it. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] Everyone fakes it, and no one falls for it. Like, oh-- [Jennifer] Maybe for a short flight, but not long one like you said. [Aaron] Yeah, the short flight's, but yeah. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] And again, we keep going back to this. God's not interested in just us having a happy marriage and a healthy marriage. [Matt] No. [Aaron] For the sake of happy and healthy marriage. That's not an end game. [Matt] That's exactly right. [Aaron] It's the means to the end, like you said. It's what, what was the word you used? It verifies, no-- [Matt] Authenticates. [Aaron] It authenticates. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] What's sad and still is very powerful to realize is when we're not it doesn't make God the liar. It makes us the liar. [Matt] It reminds me or brings to mind that phrase. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power. 'Cause you look at it from a galloping horse at 100 yards, and it looks like Christianity. It looks like something that's related to God and related to the Bible. But then you get close and you see, well, no, actually. It's not real; it's not true, and that's when we see the disintegration in the next generation when the kids are like, I don't want any part of that. Again, you just can't hide that. And especially, you mentioned, Lisa, you said, yeah, you can't hide it, your kids will absolutely tell the story and we know of a family. The snapshot looks amazing, and nobody would know this, but their kids told us recently, oh yeah, our parents yell all the time. And you'd never know it, but the kids know it. And the kids are now talking; they're all older now. And now they're saying, oh, no, no, no, no. Parents yell all the time. So that's why it's gotta be true there because if you're out witnessing, if you're that parents, and it could be yelling or bickering or fighting or cheating on your taxes or any number of things, but if you're that parent, and in the gas stations, you're telling a guy, oh, hey, the Lord Jesus Christ died for you, and God loves you, and he wants you to have a relationship. The kid is sitting there going, "Are you kidding me?" it's so important that for the things that we say to be true about how we live. It's called not being a hypocrite, and your kids can figure it out at a very early age. [Aaron] All of this was so good. I'm encouraged; it makes me think about my marriage even though we're constantly working on it, I just think, man, I wanna-- Makes me think [Jennifer] Of the kids. [Aaron] Yeah, I wanna pursue you more. I want to constantly be doing that for the sake of our outward ministry and for the sake of our home, so thank you for these stories, the openness with us. We're gonna ask you our question that we're asking everyone. What is your definition of a marriage after God? [Lisa] I think that it's that ever growing a deeper love for each other. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think sometimes we just go, well, it's perfect, so we throw our hands, or it's not perfect, so we throw our hands up. Instead of thinking, no, I'm gonna move forward in this. And I'm gonna grow in these areas. I can even think of things I have struggled with. Believe it or not, I do have a temper. And Matt has the ability, somehow, to press that button better than anybody else I know. [Matt] Well, I mean, just on a boring Saturday. I mean if there's nothing else to do. [Lisa] Press my buttons. So I'll find myself reacting to him, and I will stop myself literally mid-sentence and go, wait, it's like, yep, like okay. [Aaron] That's a good-- [Lisa] What I wanted say was. I didn't quite the first two seconds or minutes, however the situation was, wasn't right. But checking myself and going, okay, but that's not who I wanna be. That's how I was, but that's not who I wanna be anymore, so I wanna try again. And giving each other that grace to grow, but being determined to change and not say, this is not who I wanna be; I do want us to be loving close. [Matt] And for me, I think I would boil it down. I mean, that's a huge subject, right? And there's so many facets to it. But I would boil it down to this. The fundamental understanding that my marriage is what God is doing in the world. It's not what I'm doing in the world. It's not the thing that I have; I have a marriage. My marriage is what God is doing in the world. The Bible says what God has put together let no man put asunder. This is something God is doing, and so if you have that basic, fundamental faith about this relationship, it's a foundation and a starting point for moving forward. [Jennifer] Thank you guys so much for joining us today. This has just been, like Aaron said, incredible and inspiring. If people were inspired today and they want to follow you more, can you just remind them where they can find you? [Lisa] We have a podcast, Faithful Life. And we'd love to have you join us over there. And we also, both of us have a website. Matt has faithfulman.com, and I have club31women.com. [Matt] And then you're also on Instagram, club31women and faithfulman, on Instagram, so you can find us there as well. [Aaron] Everyone listening, definitely go follow them, they are golden. [Jennifer] If you like Marriage after God, and you like what we share, you're definitely gonna like them. [Aaron] We actually just steal all of our content from them and repurpose them. They have been integral in the growth and maturity in our life. And so, we appreciate you guys. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] And we thank you for not only sharing with our audience now, but for sharing with us over the last five years. [Lisa And Matt] We love you guys. [Aaron] That we've known you guys. So, we're gonna close out with a prayer. Jennifer's gonna pray and then, yeah. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry, and the impact we have in each other's lives and in this world just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order, or if we are not unified, please help us to change our course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point other to you, and may you be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Matt] Amen. [Aaron] So, thank you all for listening today. I hope this blessed you guys. And as always, we want you guys to have a conversation about this. Go on a date, and discuss the things that we talked about today. We have, what is it, 11 more episodes in this series. 11 more interviews to come. They're gonna be awesome; please stay tuned. We look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageafterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Mike: Hey, welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed. I'm Mike Mahony, your host, and today I have a guest with me. His name is Matt Plautz. He's the 17-year-old host of Unfazed with Matt Plautz. His podcast focuses on current events comedy, philosophy and various subjects that guests bring in. So please welcome to the show, Matt. Hey Matt Matt: Yeah thanks so much for having me, Mike. Mike: How are you doing today? Matt: I'm doing great. Just excited to get going and talk a little bit about what we were talking about with Howard Schultz and everything like that. Talk about some independent candidates in just 2020 in general. Mike: Sure well before we jump into that, you know since it is Super Bowl Sunday when we're recording…Patriots or Rams? Matt: I'm Patriots. I got a patriots jersey in my closet right now. I am a Bears fan, but they never make the Super Bowl so I usually root for the Pats and I've got Pats by seven. Mike: Alright, awesome. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a good game, that's for sure. So, we'll see. So, so yeah, you mentioned Howard Schultz and I mean, that's been the the big uproar in the media. You know, everyone's afraid that Howard Schultz is going to run as an independent and taking votes away from the democrats, that he will help re-elect Donald Trump. So what are your thoughts about that? Matt: Well, first of all, I mean, I think it's a little ridiculous that everyone's attacking him for running as an independent when he is an independent. Like, what else would he be running as? He was a former Democrat, obviously, but he no longer aligns with the Democratic Party in terms of, you know, free college for all he doesn't agree with, as far as I'm aware, free health care just doesn't think it's affordable. So when your party has shifted, people leave the party. It's just like, you know, you wouldn't expect someone to continue to vote for the Democratic Party if their opinion has changed on it. So I mean on that side of things, I just think it's a little unfair for everyone to be so accusatory towards him when really, it's just, he's still very against Trump. Whether you like Trump or hate Trump, you can't say that Howard Schultz is trying to help out Trump in any way. And I don't think there's any guarantee that it really would help Trump because personally, I've worked on the Republican side for a couple years now, and I know a lot of Republicans who are agitated with Trump and I know a lot of Democrats that love him. So there really is no way and that just as you saw with 2016, deep diving and analytics doesn't really work anymore because people are extremely unpredictable with how divided our nation is right now. So I don't know I think they're being a little bit unfair. What about you? Mike: Yeah I completely agree with you. I think that third party candidates in general get bagged on and you hear how if you're voting for a third party candidate, and you tell somebody if they're Republican, they claim you're going to help get the democrats elected. And if you're if you're a Democrat, they claim you're going to help get the republican elected. And like in the last election in 2016, I personally voted for Gary Johnson and I was told by both sides, you know, you're going to help the other side get elected, you're going to take votes away. And I asked them well, you know, you like a Democrat, you're assuming I would have voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm gonna tell you something. If I was forced to vote for either I wouldn't have voted. So you know, there's no you can't use this, oh, you'd hurt my side, because both sides think that and there and they're both wrong. I mean, the most third party candidates, and that's what I find really interesting about Schultz is he saying he's not just saying he's going to run as an independent he's going to run as a centrist independent, which is, if you're, you're too young to remember this guy. But you probably heard the name Ross Perot Matt: Did it didn't he didn't Ross end up getting about like 15% in some states? Matt:Yeah Mike: He definitely affected that election. But it was because he ran more on as a conservative independent and so he, you know he made that, he created, you know, a situation that they're claiming Schultz is going to create. I don't think he will. I think if he runs with a position in the center he's going to have a good chance of getting a lot of votes but he's going to pull them from both parties. That's the key thing that I think they miss. Matt: Yeah. Did it didn't he, didn't Ross end up getting about like 15% in some states? Mike: Yes, yes I mean, he did quite well but of course, Matt: Yeah. Mike: You know, a similar situation to Schultz, he was a CEO of a major tech company. He had a lot of money to burn and I mean, that's, you know, money and politics is another topic for another day. And maybe you can come on another time and we can talk about that, but for now, I mean, I think. Matt: For sure. Mike: It's known that one of the weird things about our country is, you know, I think it was Thomas Jefferson that said, you know, we should avoid political parties and you know, I think he was right. I think political parties…what it does is you get some people who are automatically against Donald Trump because they're democrat and then you get some people who support anything he says, because they’re republican rather than, you know, I've gone through the last two years as a libertarian. I've gone through the last two years going well, okay, I like that idea. Oh, I hate that idea. I can't believe you said that. I'm all over the place with it, because he's all over the place. And that's how it should be. But then you get the people that are like, in lockstep and I know they're intelligent people because I know some of them personally and you just say how is it that you miss like, like, how do you feel about this wall that he wants to build? Matt: The wall well, yeah, just before I talked about that a little bit, I 100% agree.What I always say is that you get entrenched with a two-party system you're forced to check a box that you stand slightly closer to and then everyone gets mad at you if you check that box was oh you agree with this that he said. No, I don't! I was forced to choose one of them because there isn't a viable third party and, so yeah, that I totally agree that it's a broken system I don't know that parties are unnecessarily the problem, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I think the lack of choices it's just not representative to the population, you know? You have people that couldn't check republican or democrat and that's why there should be four to five parties maybe even more maybe less. But and with the wall, it is it's a hot button issue and I can go either way on it. I understand both sides because you on the Democrat side of things, their reasoning for not wanting the wall is mostly financial saying that it's not worth the dollars spent..And then there are also those further to the left that just think that it's inhumane. Um, I think there's definitely an argument to be made if it's worth the money or not if it would actually be effective and depending on what side you are, they're going to say one thing or say the other, but I think it's a little ridiculous, the inhumane part, because in my opinion, it just…it's not inhumane to keep people out of your country when they can come here legally whether or not the system's broken,you know I don't actually know too much about that because everything every information you're getting they're trying to nudge you one way or the other so it's really hard to truly know how broken the system is, but to say that it's inhumane to try and keep border security, you know, talk to the people that are that are being raped, and being murdered and stuff by people that we didn't get a chance to vette and I don't think that all illegal immigrants by any means. I don't even think the majority of them I think most of them are coming here because they want abrighter future, but you know, they can come here legally. And the argument I've always had is because I'm actually I leaned away and the wall that's one of the things I do like about Trump, because he's so adamant about border security. I always say, you know, regarding illegal immigration, it's just like, for me, you know, it's, it's way easier for me to just hop on the highway and never take driver's education never have to go get my license at the DMV, because God knows no one wants to go to the DMV, you know, it'd be way easier to do that. But in a society, there are laws that may inconvenience you just for the sake of the general population safety and if we need to vet people, we need to vet people if you have a problem with that, you know, I think that maybe you should look at going somewhere else. That's just my personal opinion. What about you? Mike; Well I mean I kind of have a kind of a hybrid libertarian view on this issue i think that you know first of all, let me tell you, my wife is from Canada and we've been going through the immigration process herself. And the first thing I'll tell you is it's extremely inefficient Matt: Yeah Mike: .We've been in the process for quite a while now. And we still don't have it. We we've been told there's an interview date been picked and that it's being sent to us. But you're talking over two weeks ago, why does it take two weeks to process a letter that goes, you know, from maybe I think it's coming from Chicago to Orange County. Matt: sounds like getting approved by iTunes Mike: right? It's exactly like why Why does it take so long and And not only that, I mean, we spent over $5,000 on the process. And I mean, imagine if, you know, I'm lucky enough to I'm running multiple businesses and making good money. Imagine if I was making $10 an hour How do I afford the 1400 dollar filing fee to get her here? And so I think that what we need to do is we need to be Matt: Yeah Mike: Give people a pathway that if they want to come here and work that they can do that with a work visa, where we vet them, like you said, and we also make sure then that they're paying their income taxes because you know what, they don't pay their income taxes, we can revoke their visa and have them sent out of here. But I also think that it comes down to this there if there's going to be an immigration system at the federal level. And I don't think we're ever going to see that go away. And if that's where it's going to be, then they need to have it so that the pathway to being a legal immigrant is affordable and something you can have helped doing if you don't if you know, that's one of the things that's lacking. Like if you don't have you don't understand something you call the immigration people and they'll mostly tell you, well, you're supposed to check this box and you're supposed to make sure that this is filled out, but they can't really give you advice should you fill out this form or this form and there needs to be someplace ever I mean, I don't know how it is in every state, but I know in a few states I've been in the court systems have helped centers that people are there volunteering their time to help you so that you are able to avail yourself of your rights and of course as a libertarian personal freedom and liberty it's huge for me. So I think if they could they could fix that. Then we get to the point where and this is where I think I part ways with libertarians because I feel Remember I said if they don't pay their taxes we can revoke their reason and get them out of the country. I think we need if once we've had an affordable system that makes sense the people can understand and actually have a legal path to work here. Then we need to be like Australia where you don't you overstay your visa they send somebody out to find you and support you and attach a penalty to it you're banned for three years you can apply again for three years I think what would fast happen is we would be would make a lot more revenue in the immigration system because you know, it's it's a volume thing more people going to going to apply legally and you're going to you're going to make that that money but also you're going to have higher tax revenues because you're you're getting people in this country who really want to work and they want to take these jobs and I don't know they it seems like we should allow them to do that that's just the where I where I go with it and i think you know as far as I my stance on the wall is i think it's it's it's extremely expensive and I think they need to use a system like we have on the Canadian border on the Canadian border we have technology there's electronics that if you walk across the border it goes off and they and it'll trigger infrared cameras that'll turn on I mean they can find you if you're you know trying to tempt into the country illegally the wall I mean they're going to go around it they're going to go under it. They're going to go I mean right away. The joke was if it's a 50-foot wall, someone's gonna make a 51-foot tall ladder. I don't necessarily think they'll climb the ladder to go over it but you know they're gonna they're gonna find their ways yeah you know they're gonna they're gonna find their ways and I think we it may just be too much money especially since there are areas of the border where the terrain it won't allow someone to cross so don't have a wall there..Yeah, you only have two choices. Matt: Yeah. And so. So when I say that I'm I'm pro wall. I think it's just because I'm forced to. Like I said, that's the problem with the two party system, you have two choices. And the Democrats, they want to say that they have no word for border security. They're not really doing a whole lot about border security and they don't want to and that's very clear for risk because because they receive a primary amount of the votes that come from that, but that's a discussion for another day, but it's um, it's a little unfortunate that you're forced to check one of the two boxes, which is almost no border security or border security that I don't think is the most effective and I've always agreed with the argument that well, the wall isn't the most cost-effective option on the wall isn't X, Y, or Z, that those are legitimate arguments. What I have a problem with is when people come in, and you know, they, they try and instead of doing a logical appeal, they use an emotional appeal. And that's my problem is because I've never really been a recipient of emotional appeal because, you know, it's not the best way to do things. You know, if you make a decision based on an emotional reaction, it's usually not the best result. And so I think the discussion that should be had is not and I understand Trump's angle Trump wants to build a wall because it's it'd be very hard for the Democrats to undo that to justify undoing it because once the money is spent, that's what we have, you know, taking the wall down wouldn't make sense it'd be very hard to justify so I get that angle of it. But at the same time, it's you really have to think about is technology a better solution? You know we have drones we have all kinds of technology we could be using to our advantage we just need to figure out how to make that a permanent solution and also how to fix the system it's similar to taxes you know you should tax people when we tax the rich far too much they just load all their money the Bahamas you have to find the right percentage where people will actually be willing to get taxed. So we need to fix the immigration system like we try to fix the tax system is where people it's easy enough for people to come. But we also can at least attempt to filter out the bad ones, you know that we have to find some type of a sweet sweet spot where it's effective. But also like you said, I didn't know that type of angle from the Canadian perspective. And I'm similar. I'm sure it's similar to Mexico because one of my friends had an immigration problem as well. They had to move back to Mexico for like a year to resolve it. So it is it is a broken system.we do need to figure out how do we fix it as opposed to just not doing anything so like like I said it's that's what's important about a third fourth fifth and party is so that we can have other ideas then just build a wall or do nothing it's a two extremities is what it is MIke: Yeah I agree with you and I think like how do you think someone like let's say Schultz were to run and by some miracle he were to win. So now you have, you know, probably a democrat-controlled house or a Republican-controlled Senate, and you have an independent president in the middle. How much do you think that would affect the outcome of issues like this? Matt: I think the the opinion that Schultz is a true centrist is I think it's a little bit skewed because if you look, you know, he's a lifelong Democrat I think it would be similar to like having a 2000 democrat or 2004 Democrat in presidency..He would probably lean towards democratic issues but the the more radical progressive you know Alexandria, Kazuo Cortez Bernie Sanders type of thing I don't think those would be I don't think he would fight for those but the more moderate type of you know Nancy Pelosi would do very well I think if that makes any sense in a Schultz presidency she tries to be progressive but we all know that she was a moderate and she's just switching with the times to keep on staying relevant I think it would lean democratic to be completely honest and then everyone's know on maybe tax issues he'd lean a little more conservative from what I've been able to understand he he's not a huge fan of taxes but he thinks Trump's tax cuts were a little extreme you know top heavy whereas they should have been towards the middle class which I honestly agree with you know if I could have chosen one or the other I as a libertarian with some conservative beliefs as well not a big fan of taxes i live in Illinois one of the most tax states in the nation and I can tell you people are fleeing out of here so we have to find like I said a sweet spot with taxes as well where people are not you know loading out there money to the Cayman Islands to the Bahamas. We need to find something that people are actually willing to pay and it's it's a truly fair and balanced tax, but that's difficult. Mike: But ok so like one of the things I read is the you know, they actually think was Fortune magazine said well you know maybe he can maybe he could help fix this country because you know he's a corporate he's been a corporate executive he's run a large corporation Starbucks of course but then isn't that what they said about Trump? Matt: yes and no, um, I think the fact that Schultz wouldn't carry in very many. You know, opinions. He's not the most he's more of an open minded whereas Trump it's kind of my way or the highway. And some people love that. Some people hate it. I'm not trying to reprimand or trying to praise him for that. But I think that's pretty obvious that people love Trump because he's so close minded and the people hate him for that reason so but I think Schultz is that the type of person that will listen to both sides I almost think that he would be easily influenced for bad and for good just because he he is so open minded but he is a smart guy at the end of the day obviously you can't be where he is today but I think it's kind of interesting that the the democrats primarily are attacking him so much for his success when he came from almost nothing he's he's quite honestly living the democrat you know, the dream of coming from nothing and becoming something but it's a he's being attached..That and I think that's why the democrats are almost losing their mold if that makes any sense. Mike: Well, I think like I was you were saying that I was thinking about how if you are a third party candidate so you know, of course of the major third parties that makes sense and have a big, big enough numbers to make a dent in a run for president, you're talking about either green party or Libertarian Party and the problems that they have getting elected is people say, Well, okay, if I had voted Gary Johnson and is the president he goes into office with no allies on either side. I disagree with that, by the way, he goes in there with no allies. I think that's too simplistic of a concept. Matt: Yeah. Mike: I think that he would definitely have allies because I think what it would do is it would force Congress and Senate to start thinking long term and start thinking about the best interests of the people they represent. Rather than their party line because they're going to have a president who's going to say, Well, okay, the Republicans, you're thinking about the solution this way yours is a democrats your solution is be but like my solution is see kind of a hybrid of a and b. So now what are you going to do? And I think what will happen is for the first time in a long time, you would see kind of that bill clinton cooperation where, you know, Clinton I you know, despite his moral issues, I think he was a pretty darn good president and he he managed to speak to both sides of the aisle and convince one there was an important issue and he needed some support on the on the left, he would go after it when he needed support on the right he would go after and I think that's what you would get with more of a third party slash independent president is someone who would pull support from both sides so that what passes would be something that the majority of our country would buy into. Matt: Do you think people want that though? Like, I mean, I want something similar to that, that I feel if you go on Facebook or Twitter, which obviously isn't necessarily representative to the the small towns and all that. But if you go on Facebook and Twitter that doesn't seem like something that people actually want, they like to pretend like that's what they truly want. But is America in a situation where we truly want cooperation or or do we just want my way or the highway and let's switch for years of being selfish and crying when we don't get what we want. Mike: Well, yeah, you make a great point because I'm very active in the California Libertarian Party. And as a side note of that there's a person that I've met here locally who runs a… well he calls it a Liberty club but it's essentially a chapter of the libertarian party at a city level and he there's a city here in Huntington Beach California you know the Beach Boys made it favorite famous and it's his club meets there and we just had a meeting this past week and they're sitting there talking about how a lot of them were saying hey you know what, you know I wasn't really I'm not a big fan of Trump's tax cuts but it was a step in the right direction and they say that but what I've said and even have an episode out of liberty revealed I think that the libertarians and I do think pretty much every party is like this they're more of a political cult than anything else they they have an ideology and that's what they want and I always tell them like okay guys I understand what you're looking for you're looking for the utopian libertarian society but the reality is you're never going to get that ever it's not going to happen so you need to do is you need to get yourself elected using reasonable ideas. And then once you're elected, show people how you can govern. Like, for instance, I ran for Orange County Supervisor this past election cycle. And one of the things that I told they kept saying, Well, how are you as a libertarian going to make a difference in the county? I said, Well, the first thing I would do, I've reviewed the staff numbers, and they have like, 25 staff members, and they're spending $4 million a year each office that's $20 million on five districts offices a year that, hey, I could probably cut that down to five people per office. So I would reduce the size of my staff and they said, Well, what does that show it? What if it works? Well, if it works, it means we can also reduce the size of government because we just proven that we can do the same job just as efficiently with less people, which thereby saves a lot of money which means that money is available for either cutting taxes or using the money for something like homeless people.It's think that you have to be more pragmatic in your approach and that's the problem you know if you're a republican your your problem I mean, of course we're speaking in absolutes here and absolutes are never you know realistic in society but you're right i think if you were to do a poll I would say more than 80% of Republicans fall in line with the Republican platform and more than 80% of the democrats fall in line with a democrat platform and even I'm going to say 80% of libertarians 80% of Green Party members I think the majority fall in line with the platform and the don't bother to think about the real world implications of the decisions they're trying to force on society and with libertarians it's kind of ironic because I'm not sure if you're aware of this but like when you become a a dues paying member of the Libertarian Party. One of the things that you initial says you will not use us or support any idea that imposes its will by force on anyone So you know you have a non aggression principle and it's great it really is but at the same time they're trying to force their ideology on everybody by saying we're there's one guy I met at convention last year who's running for president and his he says that he'll be the shortest term president ever because he's going to get into the office and then he's going to eliminate the federal government ask yourself you really think the republicans and democrats and house and senate are going to say oh yeah sure let's just eliminate the government we don't need the government anymore and and and that's where it comes down to being more like a cult because they're they're only thinking about their ways the best way I mean if you've ever I don't know if you're religious at all but like religious cults they all say the same thing our way is the way and and so that's what it is you know political party Our way is tthe way and I think really That way is a mixture of all of the ideologies Matt: Yeah, it's actually really interesting how the Foundation of America was, you know, the, the popular phrase is a melting pot. But the thing about a melting pot and I said this on my podcast, too, I'm in a melting pot. Nothing can just remain solid. You can't, you can't entirely remain solid and everything else melts. No, I'm gonna keep my beliefs everyone else you all be open. I mean, you'll be open minded to me. But I'm not going to be open minded to you. I'm not going to understand your opinions you know we all have to mount and I don't think that was necessarily talking about race. I think that was talking a lot about ideology, and in the the foreshadow of this type of thing, I think they knew that something like this will eventually happen and… Mike: So I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think. I think we're in agreement actually more than I thought we would be. So why don't you tell people where, where and how they can find you. Matt: Yes. So I'm on almost every platform, iTunes, Stitcher. Google podcast will be on YouTube next episode and you'll just look up, Unfazed with Matt Plautz. I've got an Instagram at unfazed.podcasts and I'll talk a little bit about politics current events, I'm going to be having guests such as you know as well.Mike said I'm going to be having I'm going to be doing the cardinal sin of having a pastor on that I also want to have a lot of other religions on and just talk a little bit about philosophy and how they look at other religions I think would be interesting and also might be able to get some state representatives possibly even a congressman on so it's gonna be a lot of a lot of everything almost I don't have a set theme you know I'll talk about politics one episode then maybe comedy one episode it's just really whatever is going on and yeah Mike thanks so much for having me Mike: Do you have a website? Matt: we don't have a website yet I host on PodBean right now Mike: I'll put that in the show. I'll put that in the show notes and I encourage my listeners to go listen to and subscribe to your podcast. unfazed and definitely follow you on social media and I I've got your social media links I'll put those in the show notes as well and again it's been a pleasure having you on and I'm sure we'll follow up and have you on again in the near future Matt: Yeah thank you so much Mike: Alright well this has been another episode of liberty revealed If you or a friend or family member wants to find out a little bit more about liberty just go to https://YogisPodcastNetwork.com/libertyrevealed it's all there for you and we appreciate you listening.

Katrina: We are live. Matt: So you just wanna like rest that on you? Katrina: Sure. Katrina: Is this lighting gonna be good with the beach behind it for your videos? Matt: It's gonna be a bit hard to get it all in. Katrina: Hello. Matt: [inaudible 00:00:19] Katrina: I look amazing on my own live stream, but that's a one-time thing. We need it to look amazing on the actual videos. Katrina: Hello, people. People of the internet. Hello and welcome. I'm gonna turn the camera around so Matt can say hi to you. Katrina: Matt's gonna film, filming myself. I'll explain it in a moment. Katrina: So we're gonna do, hello Michelle. Hello, Amber. See, I find that the only way I can sit properly on this throne is to sit up like this, in some sort of a lotus ninja position. But I don't want that- Matt: It's gonna be like just wear your boobs. Katrina: Okay, perfect. Katrina: Hello, floating devil Katrina. Have you seen this? Come and check this out on my live stream. Centre more Katrina, so Matt can see. He's not seeing it yet. Look at those little floaty Katrinas. Katrina: And look that says 1%. Send some press play ones, guys, be helpful. Send some press play ones. Where are the press play ones. It's so cool. There's some Katrinas. They look like little possessed demons. And that says press play. Matt: That's awesome. Katrina: How cool is it? Katrina: Oh, and if you go watch this replay on my page, it has a banner down the bottom that says- Matt: Oh, [inaudible 00:01:36] idea. Katrina: Which is so next level here. High tech as fuck. I feel like my own live stream here is off-center. Who wants to see behind the scenes of creating my new funnel? Who? Who? Well, presumably all of you, or you wouldn't have jumped on. Hi, welcome. I'm gonna explain what we're doing. Hang on, I've gotta tell my team I'm live. I am live. Please share. Okay, don't forget. I'll just tell you right now. Do it right away. I'm messaging Kat [inaudible 00:02:08]. Katrina: I'm about to film, hang on, do you think I need my press play cushion in the frame there? Matt: I wouldn't see it in this but if you want [inaudible 00:02:17]. Katrina: Okay, yes. Pass it over. Throw it over. Katrina: It's happening here. Katrina: You can never have too many sparkles in a live stream. That's a proven fact. It's in the Wikipedia. Katrina: Oh, that's better. All right. Welcome to the show. Do you know what? Remind me always if we're filming and I have a hairband on my wrist, 'cause I'm always shitty about it afterwards. Lucky I just noticed. I'm shitty about it when I see the footage. Katrina: So Matt's here doing my professional videography. He's gonna create a new episode of what's it even called? Katrina Ruth Unchained or is it still called Kat Unchained? Matt: Kat Unchained. Katrina: Kat Unchained, if you don't know is one of my, it's my publicly created and edited and put together show which Matt films, edits, creates, Katrina: And it shows lots of cool insights behind the scenes of what I'm doing and what my team's doing and how I bring things to life. You should go check out previous episodes of that. You would get a real cool insight into the journey that is me. Even the journey of the evolution of Kat Loterzo into Katrina Ruth. Katrina: And today we're gonna create a new episode of that, 'cause why would you not? We haven't done it for ages, 'cause people are just travelling merrily around the world too much. Katrina: But we're also gonna film three videos, I think it's three videos. Let me find the three specific short videos that will only be like two to three minutes each and we're gonna use these videos, me and my team are gonna use these videos in my new funnel marketing. So i thought that rather than selfishly film only by myself and then you had to wait till you saw it on a Facebook ad and then you didn't understand what I'm even doing, why would I not just share with you the behind the scenes? If you love that idea and you think I'm amazing, send me extra love, hot emojis and extra press play ones. No, 1% ones, 'cause they're pink and they match the throne. Katrina: How's your footage? Am I all set up properly? Matt: Yeah, it's good here. Katrina: Before we start, I wanna remind you, thank you [Min 00:04:18], for dropping that comment right there. Before we start, I would love to remind you that there are, or tell you, because you might not need reminding, 'cause maybe you don't realise this but there's only three places left for reach out empire. Reach out empire has just begun a couple of days ago. It is my most transformational one on one intensive six weeks one on one, you and me, me and you, us together. I will kick your ass with love and compassion every single day and sometimes a little bit harder than that. You're gonna get super accountability. Super alignment. Super ass kickery and all the crazy results [inaudible 00:04:52]. You should check out just all the testimonies we'll be posting everyday. They are bad ass as fucked. I real, as fucked? I realised I've been, this is a confession. Katfession, you should film this, Matt, we can use this for some kind of little page. Who wants a Katfession? Katrina: Soon, I'll tell you what we're doing with the funnel. Here's my Katfession. Hashtag Katfession. I actually have two. But the first one is, I'm talking to this camera now, just so you know. The first one is I haven't been, pretty much in the entire history of my business or maybe back to the fitness business, I don't show client results. Like, I'll show them like once a year, or I'll sort of mumble mumble them under my breath. Katrina: I consistently get insane client results, like people making crazy amounts of money. Fast. But better still, alignment, random weight loss, which just happens from alignment anyway, whole life up levelled, location free stuff, quitting jobs, getting into [inaudible 00:05:42] relationships, whatever it is. And my clients are telling me this stuff every day. And pretty much for years, pretty much since I was showing bikini body results, like years ago. I just haven't shown that shit. And I think, I wonder if anyone else has done this? I think that I had some kind of reverse weird ego thing going on with it, where I was kinda like, "I don't want people to think I'm just kind of flaunting myself on the internet". Katrina: And so just kind of note it down and obviously, celebrate with the client, but then never tell people. And so I kicked my own ass around it. You've gotta kick your own ass from time to time. You can't wait for somebody else to do it. And I just got over myself and started fucking posting them everyday just since like last Sunday, but they're insane, the results that I've been posting and it's been so inspiring for me, 'cause it reminds me how bad ass my clients are. But I gotta admit, I've always been like, "What in the fuck? Do I not like making money?" I mean, clearly I make a lot of money anyway, actually, which is another thing just relevant to the fact that you make money from your energy, not from whether you post testimonials. But it does make a difference. So there you are. Katrina: So if you wanna see all those, you probably been seeing them all week on Facebook anyhow. Reach out empire. Three places left. This will sell out. My estimation is, my prediction is that it will sell out by lunch time tomorrow my time. So let's say, maybe 24 hours from now. So you wanna message me, message me, message me on my Katrina Ruth personal page right away if you'd like the full details and overview of that. I don't know why this is my new thing. I think it works for me. And I'll get you the details and if it's for you, we will get your ass in, it is one on one. You get unlimited one on one access to me, by the way. And also this is the final chance to work with me at the intensive six-week rapid result level for the significantly lower investment than the only other way that you can work with me one on one, which after this will be my $72,000 Inner Circle. And at some point, of course it's gonna be on reach out empire again, but it's gonna be way later on in the year. Katrina: All right. I had another confession, but I'm gonna save it. You can just stew about it and wonder what it is. It's super embarrassing for me. So we're gonna film three videos. Three videos. Here they are. What we're doing. I hate being under command you guys. I fucking hate it. So I know I said that I was gonna live stream this so that you can see behind the scenes of how we're creating my new funnel and I'll talk you through what I'm doing, because I think that's a nice thing for me to do and it's helpful of me. So I give myself credit for being a nice person and a helpful person, but if you wanna know the real initial reason that I decided to do that, it's because I fucking hate making things under command and then the way that I would feel happier about it is doing my own content at the same time. Even though, technically, this is my own content, 'cause it is for me. Katrina: And [Frank Cohn 00:08:33], who's my private mentor, and is the most hilarious man on the internet and also fucking amazing marketer and the only person I'll listen to on internet marketing has asked me to do this and so indeed, I will. Katrina: So what we're doing is were creating, I believe, a five or it could be five to seven small videos that are gonna be roughly two to three minutes in length each, I believe. Let me check the minute time over here of what they want. Katrina: No, okay. So, Matt, what's your take on this? Hang on, let's put Matt on the camera. People who are talking should be seen. So [Brahman 00:09:05] says it could be up to six minutes, but it can't be six minutes just of Katrina talking, can that mesh together with other interesting random stuff, mash up with testimonials and client footage or be [inaudible 00:09:21] stuff? What do you think about that? Matt: What's this for? Oh, for this. Katrina: The videos. Matt: Yeah, we can do that, yeah. Katrina: We can do that. You heard it. Katrina: All right. Of course we can. Like he's gonna be like, "No, we can't do that. I refuse. I won't do it." Katrina: Okay. So basically, I don't know why I'm worrying about how long I should talk for, 'cause I think we all know that I'm gonna talk for exactly as long as I desire to talk for and when I'm done, I'll be done and not before, but really it shouldn't be longer than five or six minutes, 'cause these videos are for Facebook ads and as much as I do think people love to watch my shit, they're not gonna watch Facebook ad videos for no longer than six minutes and they're probably not even gonna watch six minutes either. Katrina: Brahman says, "I would be okay with the video done professionally for six minutes long, but it can't just be six minutes of Katrina in front of the camera." I think everybody fucking wants six minutes of Katrina in front of the camera. I feel like that's offensive, but maybe not new people who don't know me yet. We would need breakaway shots of purpose-built footage samples from live streams and still images from the Kat archives. While I wouldn't wanna tell you what to say in each video, and indeed she should not, because good luck with that, attached is a high-level storyboard of what could be included in the videos. Katrina: Look how fucking strategic I am. I don't think I've ever done so much planning in my entire adult life. I'm gonna go off script now and do whatever the fuck I want. But basically, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have five, there'll be no business to [inaudible 00:10:44], John. I think you've manifested that I always reply quickly to your comments, 'cause I saw you said that the other day, now I find myself responsively doing it. You've somehow trained me on it. Katrina: I don't know if I care for that sort of neurological conditioning. So what was I saying? Five to seven videos. Here's how it works. You'll get the first video in your newsfeed. The first video is gonna be that one we made in Santa Monica, you know the one Chris produced from, the official one that shows the whole story and bad assery of me. That's a good video if you've not seen it. It's super high-level. Katrina: And then if they watch 25%, this is how the campaign works. If they watch 25% of video number one, numero uno, then they get elevated like in a, what is it, video game. They go to the next level. They get to watch the next video, which is gonna be this one. Katrina talking about journaling. See, even though I love journaling, and I'm totally happy to make a video about journaling, when I read this, my inner mind just goes, "Katrina talking about journaling." Okay, fine. I'll talk about journaling. Katrina: Why, what, when, where, how? We need the video to answer a question. Possible questions could be can journaling change your business overnight? No. But maybe. Okay, fine. Yes. Is this one thing the reason you're constantly stuck in your business? We gotta think of a question. Tell me a good question. Katrina: Don't worry, we'll get it. And then we want breakaway video shots. Video shots of Katrina journaling, still shots of Katrina journaling. Shouldn't be a problem. Okay, so we're doing that. Then we're doing a fitness video. What? No, we're just talking about self-care and fitness. And then we're doing messaging, about messaging and sharing and unleashing what's inside of you with the internet. I'm sure I have many things to say about that. And we're gonna do a sales one, as well. Katrina: Those are the four videos we're gonna film now. I may or may not livestream the whole thing. We're gonna let it be freaking real, right? So it's not supposed to look like no mistakes or something like that. There's gonna be outfit changes for this livestream, just so you know. Because that way, every time they get a new video on their feed, they're gonna see, I chose the scenery myself. They're gonna see the same background, but I'll have a different top on, so it'll look a little bit different in the feed. Katrina: So then each time they watch 25% of a video, they go to the next video, 25% or more and that's what they'll then see in their feed. And so the four videos that I just talked through, they cover what you might know, 'cause I've talked about this a lot on my four daily non-negotiables, right? So some form of inner work, like journaling. Some form of self-care like fitness. Some form of messaging and sharing your work when you're out with the world, and some form of sales activity. I say over and over again, these are the four things that you wanna do each day to be super fucking successful as an entrepreneur creator. Katrina: So the purpose of this funnel, this Facebook ad campaign, is to obviously indoctrinate people into me, into my message, into what I'm here to teach, get to know me, have some fun. We'll probably mash through some client testimonial stuff, as well, of course. And then at the end, or somewhere throughout, what it's gonna be promoting, what the funnel is promoting is my inner circle. Katrina: So as I just mentioned earlier, after these final three places for reach out empire are sold out, then I'm focusing only on the inner circle for some time now and really investing my time and attention into my existing private clients who are in reach out empire, as well as into the inner circle and growth of the inner circle. Katrina: And so, that's what I'm doing this campaign for, as well as obviously, general indoctrination into the Katrina Ruth community. And then there'll be other things that get marketed into the funnel, of course, beyond that. Katrina: So that gives you the whole story, now you're up to speed. Are you good with how it all looks? Matt: Yeah. Any chance we can move the front of it a little bit that way? Katrina: Yes. Yeah, that's good. All right. Let me have some water before we begin. All right, so- Matt: Do you wanna have a look before we shoot the whole thing? Katrina: Yes. Okay, we'll go and look how I look on the camera, because- Matt: Can you sit down for a sec? Katrina: Oh. Katrina: Can you get the whole Grateful Dead top in or not? Matt: I can. Katrina: Because one thing that drives me insane is that when I'm doing my own livestreams I can control my appearance, but when somebody else is filming, I have no fucking idea how I look and I feel very out of control. Katrina: All right. So anyway, what I'm gonna film now. I look amazing. All right, show the people. Good job. All right. We're set. We are safe to continue. Katrina: Anyway, so now basically, I'm just gonna talk to you about journaling, so really you can ignore the fact that I'm filming this behind the scenes and I'm just gonna drop some bad ass value and content on your ass and that way you don't even have to watch all the Facebook ads, you can save yourself the time. Matt: So you just look in this camera? Katrina: I can't talk to you guys, though. Did I put that back in the right spot? Matt: Yeah, that's fine. Katrina: I'm not gonna look at you. I'm gonna look at this camera. All right? Matt: When you're ready. Katrina: Do you know what? I'm having a moment of nervousness. I feel like what I need to do first is just watch a minute of Frank Kern's videos, remind myself of how he intros himself. That's right, people, sometimes I'm not sure of myself and I go into a mild panic. Label Frank Kern. We're all gonna watch a minute of a Frank Kern video now. He has 44,000 views on this video. I adore Frank. He's the president of the internet, if you aren't aware. Did you know that? Matt: Nope. Katrina: Just like I'm the queen of the internet. He has Tony Robbins on his video. I don't have that. Video footage: My name's Frank Kern. About ten years ago [crosstalk 00:16:33]- Katrina: What's happening? He seems to be talking fast. Video footage: ... great joy and honour to work with Tony. He's just a real fun guy and the same person that you see on stage and on screen is the same person you'll sit across the table from. Katrina: All right. I've got it now. I just needed some Frank Kern energy in my soul before I began. I got it now. Thank you, Olga. Katrina: Isn't it funny? 'Cause I have no problem live streaming for like 59 hours straight and it would be such gold content and why couldn't my team just not fucking chop the content out of a live stream and use that for the ads, that's what I get shitty about. As soon as I've got like a topic, Matt notices this more than anyone, 'cause he's the one that has to put up with it, then I'm like I don't feel as natural and I get it done eventually, though. Katrina: And then I'm proud of myself, because I'm continually just exploding past those comfort zones, people. All right, let's talk about channelling now. Do I need to turn like that way? Matt: You can if you want. Yeah. That's probably better. Katrina: So should we turn the whole throne a little bit? 'Cause in my- Matt: Yeah. Katrina: ... off centre now? If you know what I mean? Matt: Yeah. Katrina: Okay. Just the normal everyday sermon, should we turn the whole throne a little bit. All right. So now I'm not gonna look at you guys, but you're gonna get some gold about journaling. [inaudible 00:17:54] for five minutes, okay. Katrina: I'd make a terrible camera woman on a news show. I feel so nervous. Katrina: Hey, it's Katrina Ruth here from the Katrina Ruth show and today I wanna talk to you about the most powerful practise, which has transformed my business and my life and allowed me to bring in multi millions of dollars per year, just by putting my purpose book out into the world, connecting with clients who I consider to be my soulmate clients and doing the work that I know I was born to do in the world. Katrina: What I'm talking about is journaling. Now if you've never heard of journaling, or maybe you've not really dived into this as a practise for yourself, or you don't know much about it, then I know that probably the response you might be having right now is like, "Journaling? How can journaling really change your business or allow you to create anything that you want into your life?" Katrina: And that's exactly what I'm here to tell you. I feel so passionately about this that when I hear that people don't journal, or they don't journal consistently, I kinda feel like as if they would've told me that they don't drink water. I feel like alert. We need to tell somebody. This is the problem. This is like a national disaster. How are you living like this? I mean, I understand that you're somehow surviving and getting by, but do you realise how powerful this practise is to allow you to call in and to create everything in your life? Katrina: Now I've been journaling since I was about six or seven years old. I don't think I was using journaling for manifestation at that point in time. I think I was logically documenting my day, like dear diary, and then when I got a little bit older, I'll admit I used to hide in the bushes in the front yard of my parents home and I would kind of take notes like Harriet the Spy. I would take notes. Some people as they were walking by and then I would make up stories about them. Katrina: But by the time I got to about 18 or 19 years of age, I naturally or maybe I read it in some personal development books, probably heard about it from somewhere, but a lot of it just kinda naturally happened. I love to write, I love to be inside of my own head, I'm a natural introvert and I am a writer first and foremost, and so I started to just naturally journal about a lot of my hopes and dreams and I guess, use it as a way to process my thoughts, but also write down goals and ideas, do brainstorming, make little plans and slowly but surely, over time, I noticed that I had this pretty consistent habit of writing down the things that I wanted in my life, so kind of like, yeah, my dreams and my visions and the things that I wanted to bring to life. Katrina: Probably when I was around 21 or 22 years of age, I started to learn about and understand about manifestation and I know I watched the movie the Secret when it came out, which was roughly around that age for me, as a lot of people did and I was sort of fascinated by this idea that you could just focus on what you want and then create it into your life. Katrina: And pretty much like I do with everything to do with personal development and creating your own reality, I straight away believed, even though I didn't understand how. Katrina: Now if you have that same sort of belief inside of you, even if you don't understand how, then I know that you have so much available for you, that you could literally step into within the next several months, the next several weeks, in fact even now, using the power of instant manifestation. Katrina: And this is exactly how I live now and how my tens of thousands of followers and clients around the world and smaller group of private clients, obviously, but how my extended community and clients around the world operate. We call in our reality. We write into reality the things that we want. Katrina: For me, I've now been journaling in that way since, well, at least when I was 21, 22, journaling my affirmations and dreams and goals down, I'm 38 years old now, and so for well over a decade, for a decade and a half plus, I've been actively writing down what I wanna create and I've been learning different things about journaling and the power of our words along the way. Katrina: What I wanna impart to you is so powerful and so important that I feel like it's almost impossible to get it through to you, but I guess to just kind of make my point here, every single thing that I've written down, that I then held a belief with some faith around has come to life. Katrina: When I look around me, like literally right now when I look around me, I'm in my own studio right now in my home. I've got full wall-to-ceiling ocean views on seven balconies in this home. This is a double story sub penthouse apartment. I've got my own studio. I make millions of dollars a year just by showing up and being me and writing and speaking to the camera like this. Katrina: I work only with bad ass soulmate clients who really align with my message and who I feel like are the same sort of person with me. And they kick massive ass, they take names, they create incredible businesses all around the world doing what they love and on top of that, I've achieved my fitness goals. I continue to achieve and maintain my fitness goals, lifestyle goals, love and romance, fun and adventure, friendships, you name it. And every single one of those things started with me writing down my dreams in a journal. Katrina: So here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about what is it that you really want. Firstly, are you admitting to yourself what you really want? I think one of the reasons that journaling is so powerful is it's kind of like a mirror in front of you, right? It's holding up that mirror in front of you. And you can't run from that. You gotta look there, look it in the eye and look your own inner self or your highest self in the eye and confess what's in there. I think that most people out there are continually running and hiding from their dreams and refusing to pay attention to the message that's coming through them. Katrina: So journaling is a powerful tool to simply acknowledge and let what's inside of you come up and put it into words. Words are powerful. Words create reality. Yes, you can do that without writing them down, however the written word is incredibly, incredibly fucking powerful. Katrina: And so when you write that down, you lay claim to it. You take a stand. You create some accountability around it and you already in fact, start to bring it to life just from writing it down. In fact, there's many different tips and tricks around journaling for how to word things in a particular way that brings them to life faster and that's something I can certainly teach you more on and talk about as we continue our journey of discussion together. Katrina: But for now, I want you to think about what is it that's inside of you that you're hiding that you're not maybe admitting to yourself that you're running from. Can you put that into writing? And then from there, it's a matter of stepping into permission around it, right? So acknowledging first, this is what I want, this is what I desire, this is what I feel is available to me inside of me. Katrina: And then through that process of writing it down, taking the time internally to go, you know what? I'm going to give myself permission. No, I don't know how, I have no clue where to start or what I would do to bring this to life, but I'm going to give myself permission that I do get to have this. That can feel incredibly scary. Journaling is a scary and confronting thing to dive into. Katrina: And from there, though, it's faith. It's faith-based. So if I've given myself permission to have this stuff. If I've acknowledged that it's inside of me. If I then choose to believe and have faith that I could bring it to life, then what aligned action am I going to take as I go into my day? Katrina: And so this simple process might take you 10 to 15 minutes in the morning of just kind of checking in, tuning down, writing down some of the things that are inside of you. You don't then have to go and make an action plan, but it's about the fact that you've set that internal compass. You've pointed yourself in the direction of what you want. It will impact your actions throughout the rest of the day. You can take a moment or two to think of what is an action I would take from a place of really believing in yourself, but you know what? Journaling is so freaking effective, that even if you don't do that, you've literally just moved yourself in that direction. Katrina: So I can't tell you how passionate I am about journaling or I feel like I can't, but I just did maybe a little bit of a decent job of trying to explain that to you. I hope you found it really helpful. I hope you get out there and give this a go and if you have a journaling habit that you think that you could maybe increase a little bit, then I really encourage you to do that. Leave me a comment below. Tell me your experience about journaling and what are you gonna make some changes and shifts in that area. Katrina: I'm Katrina Ruth.Have an amazing rest of the day wherever you are in the world, and do not forget, life is now press play. Katrina: All right. First one done. I have no idea how long that took. How long did I go for? Matt: Four minutes. Katrina: Oh, is that all? Matt: Yup. Katrina: Great. I thought it went way longer. Matt: Oh, actually, it's a lie. Katrina: It's a lie. Matt: Six and a half, seven. Katrina: What do you guys think? Was that helpful around journaling? What's going on? People in the comments are saying they never journaled. Okay, John, you need to watch this whole Facebook ad sequence when it goes live. Everyone freaking journals. For the reasons I just explained. By the way, none of that was scripted. I had no freaking clue what I was gonna say, I just opened my mouth and it popped out. So I had a little few fumbles there, but we'll either leave them in or Matt will edit them out and put some other different footage in there or whatever is needed, right? Katrina: So you just saw me like, I know I didn't freak out for ages. I am pretty practised, I guess at doing this sort of stuff compared to maybe a lot of people. But I still, it doesn't feel comfortable for me to do this stuff. I feel like out of my comfort zone. It's definitely why I put this live stream on, so that I would kind of put myself in that accountability and I knew that it would elevate my energy having you here so thank you and I appreciate you for that. Katrina: I knew that it would provide good content for you, as well. Good content for the YouTube show, so I'm literally creating three pieces of content at the same time, if not more, 'cause then we can pop it on Instagram and all that sort of good stuff also. Katrina: But I guess my point to you is, and this probably should be me just doing the messaging video now [inaudible 00:27:14]. But my point is, you've gotta just start, right? Like I feel so squirmy when I do kind of professionally created content. I don't do it anywhere near as often as I do my normal day-to-day messaging, so I'm less practised at it in that regard, but I still step up and I take that leap and I open my freaking mouth and I let shit come out and I get better and better each time. Katrina: Like even now, how I'm presenting and even how I feel inside of myself compared to when we were filming when we first started working together a couple of years, it's a whole different thing, right? So just wanna remind you of that, if maybe creating a high level of content has been something that you're avoiding in your business. Katrina: Okay. So we're gonna do next video now, which is around self-care. Oh my goodness, this is so good. I'm so excited to speak about this. We're gonna speak about self-care, health and fitness being non fucking negotiable for entrepreneurs, except I'm not allowed to say non fucking negotiable on a Facebook ad, so we'll see how we go. All right. Should I just go? Matt: You gonna change? Katrina: Oh, fuck. Thank you. Matt: [inaudible 00:28:14] Katrina: I better get changed. Matt: Do you want me to, just change it all, that'd be fine. Katrina: Okay. Katrina: All right. We'll be back with an outfit change. Katrina: All right. Matt: Good to go? Katrina: Yes. This is my favourite ever top in the world, 'cause you can see my tatties through it. Look you haven't even seen it yet. Matt: Oh, I haven't. It's sick. Katrina: In front of everybody else. It's like psycho. All right. Just a little intermission there. It's not done yet, though, you guys. Go around here next. I'm getting my boobs done in three weeks. Matt: Are you? Katrina: Yup. It's all happening. Matt: Where you getting that done? Katrina: South port. Dr. Ian McDougall. He's apparently amazing. Katrina: I'm gonna do such a post when I get my boobs done. You know how everybody gets their boobs done and then they pretend that they didn't and they just kind of, they don't say anything about it and they just hope that nobody, but probably particularly their parents won't notice. I'm gonna do the opposite of that. I'm gonna post about it, and I'm gonna blog about why I haven't done it earlier, which was largely just that it wasn't a hell yes for me. But there was also a part of me that was like I'm already so out there, I'm already too much. Kind of like who do you think you are type thing. Like I've already got, you know, I've got like a super successful business and I'm in shape and now I've got tatties all over me and my hair is extra shiny and now what? I'm gonna have boobs as well? It's all too much for the world to handle, so I thought about it, but I felt like it makes me seem like I think I'm all that. Katrina: And so then I noticed a lot of times men will post up about, "Ladies, you don't have to get your boobs done or whatever or change your body or any sort of work done." I haven't had any work done at all, actually, but if I wanted to, I will. And they think that they're putting a supportive post up, but I just find it interesting because women would never put a post up about what men have permission or don't have permission to do on their bodies, but it's kind of like women's bodies are up for grabs as far as conversation around whether you should or shouldn't do that. Like sometimes men will post like, "You should be happy to just be, we love you just as you are." [inaudible 00:30:53] a nice intention that maybe they're trying to be nice, but it sort of feels like it's reverse shaming. Do you know what I mean? Like that if you would do that, then you're not being authentic or real. I feel like I can get so much content out of this. And it should go viral. Right? Matt says yes. Okay, you guys heard it here first. That's happening May 29th. Everybody write it in your diaries. Katrina: We should film a show, not the actual fucking surgery, but there should be a show about that, for sure. Because it's a transformational moment in somebody's life. I feel, I don't know. I haven't done it yet, but I would imagine so. Katrina: Okay, and also I should probably be in the Gold Coast bulletin, 'cause I'm probably the last female in the Gold Coast to get her boobs done. Katrina: Have I changed angles now? Oh, no. You just changed angles. Okay. All right. So now we're talking about fitness and self-care. Matt: You good to go? Katrina: Yeah. Katrina: Hey, it's Kat here. Katrina Ruth from the Katrina Ruth show. Today I am here to give you a little bit of a smack down around fitness and self-care with love and compassion, of course. Katrina: Here's the deal. I have worked with entrepreneurs, high performers, driven creators and bad asses for several decades long and I do indeed classify myself as one of those people and what I've learned in that time is that fitness and self-care is non-negotiable for an entrepreneur or should be, in my opinion, non-negotiable for an entrepreneur. Katrina: And it is something that can drastically and massively improve the results that you're getting in your business, in your income, obviously in your energy, in your happiness, in your ability to access creativity and flow, and even in how much time you have available. Many, many other benefits also. Katrina: Here's the deal though. I don't wanna come in here kind of like, all right, I'm here to kick your ass about fitness and you've gotta get to the gym, and you've gotta be in shape and you've gotta do this and this and this. In fact, not too long ago, I heard that there was some people [inaudible 00:32:51] who were kind of like, I guess you can call it, hating on me, or feeling triggered by me is maybe a better way to say it, because they said, "Oh, you know, that Kat, she just thinks that everybody has to be hot. And she just talks about being hot and being fit all the time". Now , if you don't know me well, then you might not know that my background was in fitness. I was a personal trainer for 13 years and my first online business, which I began in 2006, and which I built up to nearly a million dollars per year income before I transitioned into the business that I've created now, that was a fitness business. Katrina: So it is something I'm very passionate about, that I have a really solid history in. I've been actively involved in the fitness industry now for over two decades, and it's part of my everyday life to this day. Katrina: But let me tell you about this everybody should be hot and fit thing. I may have said everybody should get to be hot. I may have said something like that. In fact, I wrote a blog post around this topic not too long ago when I heard that people were getting like a little bit upset [inaudible 00:33:40], but what I mean is, when I talk about everybody getting to be hot and fit and in great shape is that hot AF energy. Why did I just say AF? Hot as fuck energy. That hot as fuck energy that we should get to experience and be able to [inaudible 00:33:54] into our businesses and lives. Katrina: Hot is an energy, right? And it comes from when you're in a place of feeling really proud of yourself, really good about yourself, and when you know that you're in alignment with your values and with what's important to you and with how you're showing up in your business, in your life, in all different ways and areas. So that's kind of the hot thing, right? Katrina: But if we look at the fitness and self-care thing in a little bit of a broader spectrum way, not just about how you maybe look or how you feel. Let's really consider and look at how this relates to entrepreneurs. To me it's quite shocking and I find it, I guess concerning or I feel sad or worried when I hear that somebody who's really wanting to take over the world and just create an amazing empire during their purpose work in the world is not consistently attending to their fitness and self-care. Katrina: Now, I fully understand and have compassion and empathy around the fact that not everybody has that background or history. I am so grateful that I built this habit before I was even 20 years old and it stood me so well until this day and it's definitely crossed over into many other areas of my life. Katrina: So if you don't have that background or that habit, of course it's gonna feel like something that you don't necessarily have time for, or it feels like it should come second to your business or maybe second to business and being a partner or being a parent or whatever it might be. It feels like something that you know is important maybe or that you do in some sort of a somewhat consistent fashion, but that it kind of gets left off on the days when you're busy or on the days when you've got a lot of balls in the air with your business or in the times when you don't really feel like it. Katrina: So I fully get all of that and I'm the same as anyone else, I have habits that I'm still working to implement. Fitness, however, is a habit that's really well implemented for me in my business and life and I really, literally, legitimately consider it to be non-negotiable. It's something that along with journaling, along with daily messaging in my business and sharing what's inside of me, along with sales activity, these four things, fitness being one of them, I consider non-negotiable and I make sure that they happen everyday. Katrina: The reason is, that I know that when those four things come together on a day-to-day basis, I'm moving the needle in all critical areas in my business and life. I'm progressing forward. I'm creating momentum. I'm creating results. And these things all work together to just create faster and faster momentum, flow, results, outcomes, access to the super powers that are inside of me, you name it, right? Katrina: So I feel like when I'm taking care of these four areas, and this is what I teach my high-level clients in my inner circle for example, as well, that I've taken care of the big blocks that are really gonna move me forward. Katrina: Of course there might be a million other things that I wanna get done for the day, which may or may not be given some time and attention through the day, but you know what? Even if all those extra things are ignored, if I take care of my own inner work, my mindset work like my journaling, my fitness and self-care in some way, shape or form, whether it's at the gym, or whether it's elsewhere, my messaging and sharing with the world and my sales activity, that's gonna get me going forward even if everything else got ignored completely, right? Katrina: So where fitness really comes in is it's not something that takes time and energy, it's something that gives you time and energy. In fact, just the other day I was having a conversation with one of my closest friends and she was saying how she's just been eating so much more while in a fitness routine, and she was kinda like, "Isn't that weird?" And I was like, "Not really, because of course you're gonna overeat when you're not working out, because working out gives you energy". So if you're not getting that energy from going and moving your body and moving your digestive system and kind of moving your mind, as well, and clearing out the cobwebs, then you're gonna naturally go reaching for and looking for energy elsewhere. Katrina: And particularly for an entrepreneur and somebody who's building a business from home and maybe you've got kids running around or you just got a hectic life going on and you're kind of on the go, or perhaps you travel a lot, like me. It's really easy to obviously just reach for kind of convenient foods that are not necessarily ideal or even maybe you're trying to be a little bit healthier but it's a load of protein shakes and protein bars and that sort of thing, which is not necessarily real food. Katrina: Look, I'm not here to school you on this what you should eat. I actually don't follow a diet at all. I eat intuitively. I work out intuitively. But what I am here to say and to suggest to you, is that if you were to start making a small amount of space and time for your fitness and self-care everyday, even like 20 to 25 minutes where you gave some sort of time and attention to taking care of your body, to moving it, to expanding it, to freeing it up, to going into some kind of a physical, or mental or spiritual meditation, which can come about from that, that you're gonna find that you have time abundantly given back to you, energy given into you, you clear out any sort of kind of messiness that's going on emotionally, or you had that's distracting you form being in flow in your work. You sort out problems. I like to set intentions at the start of my work out time. Katrina: There's so many benefits that go far and beyond the obvious kind of like, if you want a gym body type thing. If you want that, cool. But really what we're talking about here is getting your body working inside and out in the way that it was meant to. So I really urge you to consider what building blocks you have in place in your business and life at the moment. Katrina: Are you taking care of the fundamental things that are actually gonna elevate you into being that next-level version of yourself who automatically has the energy, the confidence, the creativity and the access to super flow required in order to show up for all the different areas of your life. I don't think I gotta remind you when you're taking care of yourself inside and out, it's not about how you look, it's about how you feel, which dictates how you look and certainly also dictates how you're showing up and what you're putting out there for the world. So I know you have massive dreams and so much you wanna accomplish here and it's all available for you. Everything you feel inside of you is always available. Katrina: We've gotta look at, if I'm gonna be that person, if I'm gonna be that next-level version of myself, and also accomplish all these fricken things in my business and life, I gotta take care of myself like a well-oiled machine, right? I've gotta treat myself as a premium machine. I've gotta treat myself as a temple, basically, that's gonna last for life and that is gonna be operating at a standard of excellence such that I can do all these amazing things that I wanna do into the world. Make millions of dollars. Impact millions of people and change the whole fricken thing. Katrina: That's it for me for today. Leave me a comment below. Tell me about your fitness routine. I'd be happy to answer any questions. And don't forget. Have an amazing rest of the day wherever you are in the world. Life is now press play. Katrina: All right. [inaudible 00:40:08] is watching. That's our second video completed. Cool. How long did that one go for? Matt: Almost eight minutes. Katrina: Eight minutes? We might have to chop some bits of it out. Actually, what do you think? Eight minutes? Too long? My brother's on the live stream. Okay, what are you guys talking about? We have shows here about that. About what? About the boobs or the fitness? Okay. I'm gonna go straight into the next one. Katrina: If you jumped on late to this live stream, we're filming some videos here for my new marketing campaign, teaching people the fundamental stuff that I believe is really important and that can change your business and life, so you're getting all my best secrets right now. We're gonna make these into some bad ass Facebook ads and we're gonna open up the inner circle. There's so many new bad asses. Ash says can work with eight minutes. I'm sure we could chop bits of that out anyway. Matt: Did you wanna change tops? Katrina: Yes. I forgot again. All right. We're gonna go into the messaging video next so if you wanna hear me talk about how to message and why it fricken matters, communication with your audience, stick around. Katrina: [inaudible 00:41:50] Katrina: I think you could wear it over the, check it out, I'm wearing my bodysuit on top of my pants. Looks like I'm about to record a 1980s video for fitness. I'm gonna do a fitness video now. But you won't see that on the video. On my own video. Matt: Where's the kids? Katrina: They are probably at [inaudible 00:42:17] digging through [inaudible 00:42:18] toys. She picks them up today. Matt: [inaudible 00:42:24] Katrina: Oh my God. Ashley, I don't know. Can you remind me, you just reminded me that when we're in L.A., are you gonna be in L.A. July 11 and 12th still? Matt: Probably. Katrina: Oh my god. Matt: I could. Katrina: If you are, you can film [inaudible 00:42:36]. Katrina: And we're all gonna go to Ashley's new house in L.A. and have a slumber party there. But I'm doing, you know I did the retreat here in November. I'm doing the L.A. one in July at the Paley House in West Hollywood, which by the way, I haven't told any of my clients yet and I just randomly announced, so just so you know. Katrina: Can you get me some let warmers and then we can do a fitness video? Katrina: All right. Yes, Ashley or John O., remind me we're gonna film a hip hop music video with my clients and we're definitely gonna film like body suit and leggings fitness video together and Matt's gonna film it. He just found out about that right there. Katrina: Everyone's gonna go to Ashley's place and we're gonna have martinis. 'Cause she's moving to L.A., my friend actually. I don't know if you'd remember, but you would know her if you saw her. She's from Sydney. So she's moving to L.A., so we're all just gonna go sleep there. Katrina: All right. Now I've lost my train of thought 'cause I got very excited about we're gonna do the hip hop video and the fitness video. It's actually critical. If you're joining the inner circle, just to let you know, you're gonna be involved in shenanigans. It's actually a requirement. It's part of the initiation, except the initiation just keeps going forever after you joined. Katrina: We leave tomorrow. Shit. Shout out. Following your dreams. Moving to fricken L.A. Bad ass. Katrina: Okay, now we gotta focus. Freaking focus. People stop distracting me. So now we talk about messaging. Katrina talking about sharing her message. Why? What? When? Where? How? Possible questions could be how to create and distribute your message anywhere. Spend 6% of your day on this? I spend my whole day messaging. My whole life is message. My whole life is monetizable. I'm just like, if you come into my life, just know that you're gonna be turned into content. I'm just letting you know. Literally. Katrina: All right. I'm ready. Maybe give me like some kind of sign when I get to five minutes, though. I feel like I'm just gonna get longer and longer with each one, 'cause I'm getting more excited. Matt: [inaudible 00:44:45] Katrina: Yeah. Cool. Katrina: All right. Katrina: Hey, it's Kat here from the Katrina Ruth show. Today we are gonna talk about one of my very favourite things to talk about of all, which is messaging and specifically, unleashing your message, your ad, what's inside of you onto the world. And the reason that you would wanna do that is, because you wanna do it. Actually, if you're watching this and you resonate with me and the things that you've maybe been seeing and you feel coming through from my bad ass little videos that I'm making for you, then I'm gonna guess that you are naturally one of those people like myself, like my incredible inner circle private clients, who wants to be seen and wants to be heard. Katrina: Let's just be honest. When you're having a party or you're having a dinner, or you're at someone's thing, you are the one who wants to be the centre of attention and you get kinda loud and kinda shouty and kind of excited, and you tell amazing stories and really, everybody should just shut up and listen to you, right? Right. Katrina: I know this for sure, because it's how I am. It's how my eight year old daughter is. It's how every single one of my inner circle clients are. In fact, it's hilarious when we all get together, because you've basically got a whole room full of people that all think that they're the one person who should be talking and I've even had clients tell me that they get kind of shitty at me when I'm presenting my own retreat or event, 'cause they're kind of like, "When will she shut up so that I can talk?" Katrina: So if that's you and you know that you have powerful stuff inside of you to share with the world, you know that people should actually be paying just to listen to you and to be around you, then I've got fabulous news for you and you may already know this, but I'm just gonna kick your ass with it a little bit more. You can get paid to do this stuff. You can get paid to share your message. Like literally just what you're thinking and feeling with the world on a day in day out basis. Katrina: It is actually exactly how I built my online business to where it now makes multi six figures per month, so it's a multiple seven-figure online business, continually growing. All I actually do is live my life and be me. Okay, I feel like I'm gonna hiccup. It's under control. Katrina: And document that. And show what's inside of me. And so I write a daily blog. It's called the Daily Ass Kicker. I love to write. I'm a writer first and foremost, so there's no rule that you've got to write a daily blog post or anything like that, but that's what I like to do. Katrina: I like to create videos, as well. I do a lot of Facebook live streams. In fact, right over here I've got a Facebook live stream happening at the same time as filming this video for you. Katrina: So I'm continually sharing my message. So messaging is simply the process of sharing your message with the world. And by me doing that and doing it consistently for some time now, for a period of years in fact, on the internet, I've been able to attract in my soulmate clients from all around the world. Women and men who think like me, who know that they're born for more. Who know that they're that 1% within the 1% person, who always also have something to share with the world. Katrina: I've been able to build a location-free lifestyle where I'm never bound to any time or place. I can go where I want when I want with my children. I made amazing friends with people all around the world. I've been able to get this amazing apartment that I love and I guess all the other dream things that I've got in my life. Katrina: But mostly, I've been able to step fully into my purpose work and into a life where everyday I get to wake up and all I gotta do is open my mouth and open my soul and be myself. Katrina: And that's the crux of my whole entire business. I would certainly love to share with you a little bit about how that works, because here's the deal on messaging. There's a lot of people on the internet who are posting stuff online, right? I don't gotta tell you. So posting blog posts, Facebook live streams, YouTube stuff, Instagram stuff, you name it, it's out there. Katrina: However, what is very rare, and the reason why powerful entrepreneurs [inaudible 00:48:26], perhaps even including you, and not getting paid the way that they should be getting paid, is that they're sharing the surface space. Katrina: They're sharing something where it's like okay I told a story. Or I wrote an inspiring blog post or a motivational blog post or I totally [inaudible 00:48:42], or yeah, I did a Facebook live or I did a video or whatever it is. It's got to have the soul in it. Katrina: For me messaging is firstly so easy, it's not something that I find difficult or that I've gotta think about like to think about how to write a blog, how to do a live stream. Yes, I get nervous. In fact, I was freaking out before I filming these videos, 'cause I just felt self-conscious about doing professional videos, which I'm doing today for you. Katrina: All right? So it's not about not having all that. But I don't have to think about what to say. I don't think about what to say ever any day of the week at all, and I create a lot of content. And the reason is that I don't think about it, is that I give myself permission to just say what's inside of me, right? Katrina: So messaging kind of all the time. I write a lot of content and I produce a lot of content, but yet I feel like I'm not really doing anything. I feel like I'm just expressing what's inside of me and that's what I love to do as a person, anyhow. Just the same way as my eight year old daughter and my four year old son want people to shut up and listen to them. And they're not like this is work. I've gotta get paid in order to express myself and make people stop what they're doing and listen to me. That's what they want. Just like that's what I want and that's what I know you want. Katrina: But for this to work, it's not only understanding that it is about just sharing what's truly inside of you and not making it complicated. Not trying to plan it out, not trying to think it out. It's also about understanding that for messaging to work and for you to build a business, based on you as a messenger, as an artist, creator, leader, then you've gotta be giving people the whole truth. The truth, nothing but the truth, and also the whole truth. Katrina: So yes, that means the stuff that feels really vulnerable or scary to share. Or maybe you think like a lot of my clients think and I have this conversation frequently with my high-level clients. Oh, that's like embarrassing, or I feel self-conscious or is that good enough or who am I to speak about this or I already said that a million times. I feel like everything I'm saying is being repetitive. Katrina: These are all exactly the sort of things I fully understand because I've had all those thoughts myself and I work on it continually with my clients and what it's about is plain and simple. Katrina: What if you got out of your own way? What if you dropped your story and dropped all the bullshit about whether or not what you have is good enough or whether you're good enough and what if you just gave what's inside of you permission to live and permission to be expressed and permission to get out there into the world. Katrina: So when I feel stuck or unsure or when my clients feel stuck or unsure, I remind myself or I remind them, it's not about you. It's about the message. Take a deep breath. Do what you gotta do. Put some music on. Put some [inaudible 00:51:06] on. Have a coffee. Whatever. And then let what's inside of you out. Imagine the power of what could happen in your business and life if you just consistently, every day, starting today, began to share what's inside of you in an unfiltered and no holds barred way. Katrina: I challenge you to do this. Drop me a comment below. Tell me when you went and posted a new message. Leave a link, even. I'd love to see it. Have an amazing rest of the day and do not forget. Life is now press play. Katrina: Okay. Hey, Laura. Get out your own way and save lives. Exactly. Katrina: All right. Shot out to everyone that's just jumping on. We are over here filming behind the scenes here. Filming for my new funnel. There's Matt. He's doing my video work. He's gonna match up some amazing Facebook ads from what we're doing today. I'm just live streaming so you can see behind the scenes. We've got one more to do, I believe. And that is around sales activity. So if you'd like to hear me talking about how bad ass, how bad ass? I don't know. That doesn't really relate to what I was gonna say. Katrina: If you'd like me to talk about sales activity. I'm gonna do it whether you'd like it or not. But if you'd like to listen, then you can listen on for this next final video. Katrina: Hang on, wait. Ashley, if you're still in the live stream. I sent you a what's app that I need you to enter. Okay, I have a client here. A bad ass client, who's like do I wanna meet you in New York or L.A.? I think both. Oh, do I wanna do fourth of July in New York or L.A.? What say you, Facebook? Where should I do New York, or where should I go? Matt: L.A. Katrina: Matt says L.A. You recon? Why? Matt: It's fun. Katrina: [inaudible 00:52:44] fun here. Matt: I'd rather be in New York on the fourth of July, so L.A. was fun. Katrina: Okay. L.A. it is. You've heard it here. Katrina: All right. Oh, hang on. I've gotta change again. Forgetting every time. All right. One more outfit. One more video. And then I think there was one other little video, but we'll do that off camera. Katrina: Okay, I'll be back and we'll do the sales video. Hey, hey to everybody who just jumped on. Katrina: All right. I'm making a rare appearance in a t-shirt. I basically never wear sleeves. Look at this cool shirt. [Collette 00:53:32] bought it for me. By the way, you don't have to wait for the, my hand looks massive. You don't have to wait for the Facebook ads to drop in your feed if you know that you're already supposed to be in the inner circle and by the way, you could still get into the room for our July retreat. Oh my goodness. Next-level [inaudible 00:53:55] and money making is what goes down on those retreats. It's always next-level inappropriate shenanigans. You should message me about that now if you know that that's the level you wanna play at. I can tell you all about it. Katrina: Okay, so now. What? More videos? I thought it was only one. All right. Okay. We're gonna do sales activity. So now I'm gonna talk to you for a few minutes about sales activity. Katrina talking about selling naturally. Electrolytes. Going out shirt. How good is this? Just so people know, I'm not going anywhere. Sitting right here on my throne. I guess we'll go out later then. And so some footage of me drinking espresso, 'cause we haven't done that enough times. Matt: And it's Friday. Katrina: And it's Friday. So clearly, it's required. Katrina: Sales is not a dirty word. Do you know what? I don't even wanna fucking market to anybody that thinks sales could be a dirty word. They can all go mosey on along to another town. How selling is a daily non-negotiable in my business. So I'll talk about that. All right. I think we can do it. Katrina: Actually, I'm gonna put some more pink lipstick on for this video. Katrina: [crosstalk 00:55:43] Katrina: Do you think that there's a single man in the world that thinks having those plumped lips where it sticks out on the side is a good idea? I think John's the only man on this live stream. But Matt said no, so John, add your vote. Katrina: We were just talking about it while I was in there fixing up my lipstick. All right. Ready? Do the five-minute thing again. Matt: Okay. Katrina: Hey, it's Kat here from the Katrina Ruth show and I am so fricken [inaudible 00:56:19] excited today, 'cause I'm gonna talk about one of my four daily non-negotiables, which is sales activity. If you've been watching my videos pop through your feed, then you'll know that my four daily non-negotiables are in fact, daily mindset work in journaling of some kind. Getting connected to that inner game. Setting your internal compass so that you go in the right direction. Fitness and self-care, of course. Non-negotiable for entrepreneurs and driven bad asses like you and I. Katrina: Some form of messaging, because you are in fact a messenger, a leader, an artist, a creator, and you wanna share what's inside of you with the world and then fourth and finally, selling. Because guess what? If you wanna be an entrepreneur, if you are an entrepreneur, [inaudible 00:56:58] of course, but if you want to have a successful business, you are going to need to sell. You're gonna need to make money in some way. You need to ask for money. Katrina: Whether you're asking energetically or like on the actual internet, by telling people on Facebook to buy stuff from you. I did not really make any money in the first three years of my online business, actually, I must admit. So I started marketing in 2006, except I wasn't marketing at all, I was blogging. Katrina: And for the first few years, I made no money at all and it took me maybe two and a half years before I realised that the key reason that I wasn't making any money was that I wasn't actually selling anything. So I just kinda laugh about it, but the truth is, I didn't set out to be a marketer, I set out to write or be a blogger and then gradually, back then, twelve years ago, I gradually kind of started to learn that this internet thing was somewhere that you could make money. Katrina: I've actually always been really good at sales, and so, you know, from a young age, I've been selling things and I've always had a hustler side. Hustle. Even as a little kid. When it comes to online marketing, I've been marketing online for over 12 years now. I've made millions and millions of dollars on the internet. I've gradually evolved and fine tuned my business to where it's completely based on me getting to wake up each day, do what I love, make money for my purpose work and live my life on my terms so somebody I met recently said to me when they kind of connected on Facebook and how to look at my life and my business like, "Wow. You're really living the dream, hey?" And I said yeah, I am. And I did the work for it. And so I'm really proud of myself, with what I've created and I'm very passionate about sharing how to create a business and a life that's location free and freedom-based and purpose-based for women and men who are like me. Katrina: And when I say like me, I mean you've always known that you were born for it, that you were born for more. You've always known you're here to make millions. Impact millions and even change the world. And you've always known that there's something powerful inside of you to get out there to the world. And so if that's you, well, probably if you're watching this, then you're already showing up online in some way, shape or form. Katrina: You might be early on in your journey or you might be well down the track and you're already making a lot of money. Sometimes I have clients come to me who jump into my inner circle working with me privately, who are already making 10, 20K, 30K, 50K a month. Other times, they're completely starting out and there's no money coming in yet. But what joins my clients together and the reason that my clients get such rapid results, big money leaps and bounds, big alignment leaps and bounds, big lifestyle shift leaps and bounds, as well as all other areas, is because they are that person who has that inner flame and who's always known that they're gonna do something amazing with their life. Katrina: So if that's you and you relate and maybe you are already selling on the internet or selling off the internet, or wherever it is that you're selling, I just wanna remind you, though, that if you just make something like daily selling and sales activity part of kind of who you are, if you make it inherent to who you are, and you make it habitual, then you can elevate your income 10 times, 20 times, I believe even 100 times more in a very, very rapid period of time. Katrina: Now this is obviously not just about how much freaking money can we make on the internet? That's amazing and it's super cool. And it allows us to have an incredible impact into the world doing our purpose work. I don't think I need

The Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Stargate Pioneer, Agent Haley, Agent Lauren and Consultant Michelle discuss the premiere The Defenders episode “The H Word,” highlight some recent Marvel news and respond to listener feedback. The Agents debrief you on why Hero is a bad H word, where all the Defenders are at the start of the series, the intrigue and command surrounding Sigourney Weaver’s character, what exactly Sigourney Weaver’s relationship with Elektra might be, and each Defender gets their own Cinematography.   THIS TIME ON LEGENDS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.:   The Defenders “The H Word” Marvel News Roundup Listener Feedback     THE DEFENDERS “THE H WORD” [3:36]   DEFENDERS THE H WORD   The Defenders ShowRunners: Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez   Douglas Petrie (“Marvel’s Daredevil,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) Marco Ramirez (“Marvel’s Daredevil,” “Orange is the New Black”)   Executive Producer: Drew Goddard (“The Martian,” “Lost,” “Alias”, “Marvel’s Daredevil”)   Netflix made all 13 episodes of The Defenders available on Friday August 18th, 2017.   Directed By: S.J. Clarkson http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1237416/?ref_=tt_ov_dr#director 29 Credits Since 2002 2 x Hustle 6 x Life On Mars 2 x Heroes 1 x House 3 x Dexter 1 x The Bridge 1 x TURN: Washington’s Spies 1 x Orange Is The New Black 2 x Jessica Jones 2 x The Defenders - The H Word (2017) - Mean Right Hook (2017)   Written By: Douglas Petrie http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0677956/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr3#writer 17 Writing Credits from 1992 1 x Rugrats 2 x Angel 59 x Buffy The Vampire Slayer 2 x Tru Calling 2 x The 4400 2 x The Batman 2 x Charlie’s Angels 2 x American Horror Story 7 x Daredevil 4 x The Defenders ALSO PRODUCED: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Tru Calling, The Robinsons: Lost In Space, CSI, Pushing Daisies, Charlie’s Angels, American Horror Story And Daredevil   Written By: Marco Ramirez http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3059675/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr4#writer 8 credits since 2007 3 x Sons Of Anarchy 2 x Orange Is The New Black 6 x Da Vinci’s Demons 1 x Fear The Walking Dead 6 x Daredevil 7 x The Defenders ALSO PRODUCED: Da Vinci’s Demons, Fear The Walking Dead, and Daredevil   “THE H WORD”   Cold Opening Fight in the sewers with Danny Rand and …. Colleen comes in War you fight is in New York City   Closing Time Jessica Jones in a bar Trish ‘s car is being towed Is there whiskey in this?   Seagate Luke Cage back in jail Luke Cage released Foggy Nelson!!! Hogarth’s Law Firm Luke Cage is moving forward   Murdock Endoxopreme Matt wins $11M Personal talk with Aaron James Karen Page comes to talk to Matt to get a statement   Danny Rand on the Corporate jet Weird dream Danny won’t talk to Colleen   Sigourney Weaver New York cancer treatment She’s dying Months to weeks   Michelle Raymond My husband is missing Don’t look for John Raymond - distorted voice phone call   Luke Cage meets up with Claire Coffee? He has potential Something is up in Harlem Misty Knight comes to the door   Karen and Matt Do you miss it? The city is better off without Daredevil and better off with Matt Murdock   Malcolm Comes In To See Jessica Jones Jessica took a case Researching John Raymond 11th and 49th - track the phone call   Misty’s Task Force 20 somethings Candace murder unsolved Be Pop and help this young man   Matt Murdock In confession Lied   Gao meets Sigourney Weaver Need to move faster Sigourney gives Gao orders   Luke Cage looking for Cole Come to pay respects It’s too late to trust Luke It’s too late for heros   Jessica Jones Goes To The Building Holy Shit - lots of explosives   Gao and Sigourney on the garden rooftop Are you sure?   Danny and Colleen chopper in   Daredevil pauses   Earthquake   It’s just a city. You’ll get used to watching them fall   NEWS [32:19]   HIGHLIGHT STORY OF THE WEEK   Upcoming Marvel TV   Fox The Gifted - Fox - October 2, 2017 Legion s02 - FX - February 2018   MCU The Punisher - Netflix - 2017? Runaways - Hulu - November 21, 2017 Cloak & Dagger - Freeform - 2018 New Warriors - Freeform - 2018   NETFLIX SERIES   NYCC Punisher panel canceled https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-punisher-pulls-its-panel-from-new-york-comic-con-af-1819157690   Punisher release delayed   Danny Rand will be in at least 1 episode of Luke Cage season 2 https://io9.gizmodo.com/iron-fist-will-be-stopping-by-luke-cage-season-two-1819170416   X-MEN   Gore Verbinski directing Gambit movie with Channing Tatum http://deadline.com/2017/10/gambit-gore-verbinski-channing-tatum-x-men-spinoff-1202182926/   The Gifted’s practical effects are its not-so-secret superpower https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-gifteds-practical-effects-are-its-not-so-secret-sup-1819116604   FEEDBACK [44:33]   https://twitter.com/BornToEatBacon/status/914659091359944704 @LegendsofSHIELD Listened to the latest episode. Must say I was a bit taken back by the level of hatred and vitriol towards The Inhumans.   https://twitter.com/adanagirl/status/915095957213237250 @LegendsofSHIELD Christy added,   Whedonesque @whedonesque Agents of SHIELD NYCC poster 1:07 AM - 3 Oct 2017   OUTRO [50:41]   Haley, Lauren and Stargate Pioneer love to hear back from you about your top 5 Marvel character lists, your science of Marvel questions, who would you pick in an all-female Avenger team, or who’s Marvel abs you would like to see. Call the voicemail line at 1-844-THE-BUS1 or 844-843-2871.                    Join Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. next time as the hosts discuss The Inhumans third episode “Divide And Conquer” on Sunday October 8th, 2017. You can listen in live when we record Sunday Afternoons at 1:00 PM Eastern time or Thursday Evenings at 9:00 PM ET at Geeks.live (Also streamed live on Spreaker.com). Contact Info: Please see http://www.legendsofshield.com for all of our contact information or call our voicemail line at 1-844-THE-BUS1 or 844-843-2871   Don’t forget to go check out our spin-off podcast, Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D..: Longbox Edition for your weekly Marvel comic book release run-down with segments by Black Adam on S.H.I.E.L.D. comics, Lauren on Mutant Comics and Anthony with his Spider-Man web down. Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Longbox Edition is also available on the GonnaGeek.com podcast network.   Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is a Proud Member Of The GonnaGeek Network (gonnageek.com).   This podcast was recorded on Thursday October 5th, 2017.   Standby for your S.H.I.E.L.D. debriefing ---   Audio and Video Production by Stargate Pioneer of GonnaGeek.com.

Nasir and Matt discuss the allegations of American Apparel intimidating and silencing employees from complaining about the company and talk about guidelines for employers in making social media policies. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: The Staub and Pasha Brothers are here. Why is that so funny? MATT: You’ve never mentioned that ever. That’s kind of funny. NASIR: I don’t know. I was just trying to think, like, what are we? The duo? The Staub-Pasha duo? MATT: The duo, yeah, I guess. NASIR: Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. MATT: Not to get too far off track but you know what I’ve always found was really weird, and you might not have ever even seen this, the commercial for State Farm – I think it’s State Farm – one of the insurance companies. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Do you know who Chris Paul is? He’s a basketball player? No? Okay. NASIR: I have no idea. MATT: It wasn’t a question to the listeners; it was a question to you. He’s a player in the NBA and the whole thing is Chris Paul and Cliff Paul were separate. They’re twins and they’re separated at birth. It’s Chris Paul wearing glasses, you know. NASIR: Oh, okay, yeah. MATT: It’s this whole thing, it’s like, oh, they were separated at birth and they were adopted by different families and they’ve lived different lifestyles and then they meet each other or something. I don’t understand why they have the same last name if they were both adopted through different families. NASIR: But, wait, are they really twin brothers? MATT: No, it’s fake. It’s him and then him wearing glasses, basically. NASIR: So, even their fake story doesn’t make sense because why would they have the same last name? MATT: Exactly. NASIR: Sometimes, you know, it’s not abnormal for the adoptive child to keep their own name, too. Perhaps that’s what it is, Matt, since you think you’re so clever. MATT: For both of them? NASIR: Yeah, both. MATT: The odds of that happening. NASIR: Maybe that was the condition of the adoption. MATT: I guess, but they were… NASIR: I actually did take a course in Columbus Ohio on adoption law, very interesting. MATT: Oh, I bet. NASIR: If anyone needs an adoption, don’t contact me just because I’ve taken a course. It doesn’t mean anything. MATT: Well, I don’t have a good lead-in for this. NASIR: Yeah, what’s your transition here? MATT: Maybe we’ll adopt this story or something. I don’t know. We’re dealing with American Apparel which, I believe, is a nationwide store. NASIR: I’ve heard of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. MATT: I went there once and I bought a shirt but it’s very slim-fitting – not my thing. NASIR: Maybe you should lose weight? MATT: Yeah, that’s true. Well, maybe that’s why these employees that work for them are upset with all their slim-fitting close, that’s probably not even all slim-fitting either but whatever. Anyway, basically, what American Apparel is in the news for is that employees are upset with the company and that happens all the time but American Apparel is taking it a step further and there’s been two complaints filed in the last, as of today, when we’re recording it’s been the last couple of days, but it’ll be a week by the time this comes out. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: But it’s saying that American Apparel is allegedly intimidating the employees and trying silencing tactics, preventing these employees from discussing their transgressions, I guess. You know, some of these employees have met off-site after work hours and have just been, you know, kind of complaining about things there, and American Apparel actually sent, one of the people said, they were accosted and interrogated. But the company sent security to this off-site meeting of people gathering and, according to the complainants, intimidating them and telling them to be quiet about voicing their complai...

Going Linux #253 · Computer America #76 Topic: The most Googled Questions about Linux -- and some answers. We thought we'd try a few searches about our favorite operating system to reveal today's burning questions about Linux. Then we thought we'd answer them for you. We typed these four phrases into Google and waited for the suggestions to pop up.why is linuxcan linuxdoes linuxwill linux Episode 253 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux #253 · Computer America #76 00:15 Introduction 02:50 IRC Chat Room 05:57 Topic: The most Googled questions about Linux 10:00 Why is Linux better? 16:09 Why is Linux more secure? 23:57 Why is Linux free? 28:43 News Tips Bulletin Review 31:36 Why is Linux better than Windows? 32:12 Why is Linux faster than Windows? 35:02 Can Linux read NTFS? 36:51 Can Linux run Windows games? 43:33 Can Linux read exFAT? 44:40 Can Linux get Viruses? 49:34 Does Minecraft work on Linux? 50:41 Does iTunes work on Linux? 52:59 Does Netflix work on Linux 53:45 Does Steam work on Linux 58:29 Will Linux overtake Windows? 61:06 Will Linux run on a Mac 64:41 Will Linux run on my computer? 65:33 Will Linux run Windows games? 66:29 Will: OSX tips 68:42 Will Linux make me better looking? 70:17 Richard: Upgrade issues 73:08 Del: Can I burn 64-bit on 32-bit? 77:53 Jonathan: Sonar GNU/Linux 73:57 Matt: Do you like Synergy? 76:06 News Tips Bulletin Review 79:27 Bill: Bootloader trouble 83:32 Andrew: Gone Linux story 87:17 Amy: Handling file formats in a Linux-only office 94:40 'Back in my day...' 111:09 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 114:26 End