Podcasts about maybe i've

Wait, what happened to Danny in 5th grade? Find yourself some time to listen and discover how Brian keeps from being embarrassed and helps Danny reframe his 5th grade narrative with a pretty high school senior - Maybe I've said too much already. You're going to enjoy this.

Stories in this episode: Bullied most of her life, Julie discovers that the autism that made her different is actually the exact thing that makes her gifted at family history work; A comic book heroine helps Sarah find her own superpowers when it comes to connecting with others; Kurt struggles with the weight of his calling as a bishop until the memory of a red superhero cape reminds him of his true desire to help others.  SHOWNOTES To see pictures of our storytellers and get a look at Sarah's DATING GIRL comic, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel Follow us on instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast and facebook to find upcoming themes and to learn more about our team. TRANSCRIPT KaRyn  0:03  Welcome to This is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.   I can't exactly remember when I first heard the phrase "double-edged sword." It was probably in Mrs. McAfee's eighth grade English class, or maybe Ms. Turse's ninth grade English class. Well, whichever well named English teacher at Rockland Junior High taught it to me, I have never forgotten it. Because a double-edged sword basically describes life.   If your junior high teacher never taught you that phrase, let me explain. A double-edged sword is anything that has the potential to have both positive and negative consequences in our lives. It's that thing that is both a strength and a weakness all at the same time. Need a concrete example? Okay, let's talk about perfectionism. It's the standard answer to the question, "What's your greatest weakness?" in a job interview because it's a strength disguised as a weakness. Or is it a weakness disguised as a strength? Trick question. It's both. And I know this because a desire to get things right is my constant companion, and it spurs me forward in so many cool ways in my life. But it's also the thing that when left unchecked leads to anxiety and deep paralysis. See? A positive and a negative, all in one, a double-edged sword.   I suspect that if we dig deep, it won't take long for each of us to recognize this pattern of strength and weakness coexisting in ourselves. It's what makes us both human and heroic. And today, we'll hear stories from three people who discovered exactly what kind of superpowers were waiting at the other end of their weakness. Our first storyteller is Julie who learned that her greatest challenge in life could be transformed when she focused her efforts in service.   Here's Julie:   Julie  1:54  When my daughter was four years old she was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and when I was reading through the symptoms of it, I realized that most of the symptoms applied to me as well.   I was very socially awkward as a kid, and I was often bullied for it. I didn't understand social cues or body language very well, and I would come off as rude because I would interrupt people and I would kind of be silly in a way that they just didn't understand. So it was hard to make friends.   I was really fascinated with names and dates and I didn't understand why. I come from a very big family and I would make lists of everybody's full names and their birth dates and how old they would turn that year, and I didn't understand why I was driven to do this and I didn't want anybody else to see it because they wouldn't understand it either.   It wasn't until many years later that I realized that it was because of family history research that I had that unique quality in my mind. In fact, when I was 16, I had my patriarchal blessing and I was told that I would recognize the choice quality of the mind that my Heavenly Father had given me. And I always thought that maybe I would just realize I was smart, but I think it was more to do with my autism, that my mind worked in a unique way from other people, that I would be able to look at different family records and decipher information that other people had overlooked.   And because of that, I was able to break down a lot of walls that we had come to in our genealogy. I think I was given that because Heavenly Father knew that I would be the one to be able to find these people to have their temple work done for them.   After my dad died in 2001, after a couple of years, I had a dream where I saw him in our backyard, and he was bathed in a white light and wearing the purest white clothing, and he was walking toward me and all of a sudden I could see the veil separating him from me, and it was of the finest material that I had ever seen. It was completely see-through. It was like a curtain hanging down.   And he turned to his right and I could see couples standing just behind this veil. And he would point to them and name them off and I recognized the names in the dream of people that I had been researching, but I hadn't done their temple work for them yet. And they were looking at me with pleading in their eyes, smiles on their faces, but this pleading and they never spoke to me, but I felt that they were saying that they wish that their temple work could be done. And they were like, "Please, please, please get our work done for us." And that is something that I've kept with me for 20 years of just remembering that feeling and it's really spurred me on to be able to find these people.   When my oldest was very young, I started doing family search indexing because I had watched my mom do it. And at that time, it wasn't done on computer, it was done where I would have paper copies of documents, and I would transcribe them over to index cards that I would send over to the temple or to the church office building.   And I really enjoyed that aspect of it because I realized that I really enjoyed the data entry part of it. And it was after we started doing indexing on the computer, I realized that touching the keys gave me a lot of good sensory input that really helped calm my mind. Something about autism is people will really like to have sensory input where that sense of touch gives you comfort.   And because of that gift, I was able to do about 90,000 names in indexing because I can type really fast and it feels really comforting to me, and I can do it with a very high rate of accuracy. And I believe that's a superpower that heavenly Father is giving me because now I can help other people find their family members.   In 2002, I went to the Navoo Temple open house with my husband and our young son. And we were going to be staying in the same city that my relatives came from, and I was really excited about that because I could do research, and I dedicated an entire day to be able to go out and do research, but because of our schedule, I ended up with only an hour.   And so we went to a cemetery and I prayed to Heavenly Father to help me to find my family. Even though I had hardly any time, and I went into the office and I found the information that I needed to go out and find their graves, and I found a branch of the family that I only had very minimal information on. And I was really excited that I found... their oldest daughter actually passed away as a child and I had never even seen her name, and I was excited because I was able to record her and submit her for her temple work to be done when I had never even seen her name before, and this was the only way that I would have found her until many years later when those records were available on the internet.   And I really did feel like that was a miracle Heavenly Father had given me. It was at that point that I realized that family history research is really a treasure hunt, and I knew that my unique mind could help me with that. I have an urgent desire to help these ancestors of mine because I'm doing a work that they can't do for themselves. And I really believe that it is helping me build Heavenly friendships and relationships and deep bonds that I struggle to have here on this Earth.   And I like the fact that I can be a savior on Mount Zion and be a hero for them. I like to tell my daughter who's 14 years old now that her autism can be a superpower for her as well. She has an immense love of animals and ecology, and she has an amazing talent with art. And I know that she can go out there and make a difference. And I tell her that. I tell her that she has a unique quality in her mind that she could get out there and maybe think of solutions other people haven't thought of, and that she can help save the world. And I'm just really glad that Heavenly Father gave me this ability because it helps me to help her to make a difference.   KaRyn  9:19  That was Julie.   From the first moment we heard this on our pitch line, one of my favorite things about Julie's story is that as she began to rely on the Lord to tell her who she was, through things like her patriarchal blessing and personal revelation, she could tune out those voices that were telling her that she was awkward and weird, and begin to see her autism as a gift, and a superpower, a superpower that literally helps her to save souls through genealogy, family history, and temple work.   And that's not all. Her autism also helps her to be the coach and the mentor that her daughter needs. I think about that all the time. Wouldn't it be so great if we could all have someone sooner rather than later who tells us that the things that make us feel different might actually be the key to our greatest successes.   And the good news for those of us who are still looking for that reassurance is that it is available to us right now from a loving Heavenly Father. Even if there's nobody here on Earth who wants to tell us that, he really does, and I believe that, and Julie's story helps me to realize that it's never too late to ask and to receive.   Our next story comes from our friend and my fellow producer, Sarah Blake.   Here's Sarah:   Sarah  10:29  Growing up, I lacked confidence in social situations. Somewhere along the way, in my preteen years, I became convinced that I wasn't pretty or fun, no guys would ever like me. And although I was confident in school and the things that I felt like I was good at, I was very unconfident and uncomfortable in standard social situations like parties or dances.   Teenage girls tell themselves a lot of mean things in their heads and I definitely fell into that, and believed in this narrative that I wasn't good at social things, and no boys would ever like me. And so this was how I went into my young adulthood.   I served a mission and then I found myself living in Salt Lake City as a single member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who still believed she was really not good at social stuff, but the greatest desire of my heart was to find love and get married and have a family.   And I began to realize how ill-equipped I was to make that dream come true. One of my survival strategies, actually, pretty much my only trick for getting through social situations was to look around for people who looked more uncomfortable or lonely than me and go be friends with them. I definitely had an identity as a kind person, and so I had the confidence to do that and I still think that's a good thing. I'm glad I learned that skill and that habit, but it did become clear that it wasn't the way to find my people, my match necessarily.   I was living at the time in the Avenues in Salt Lake with a wonderful roommate who was a really good friend who was really pretty, cute, and fun and was really gifted at all the social stuff that I felt kind of inept at. And it would happen all the time that she would get asked on dates and I would be overlooked. And the low point came when I was at a ward mix and mingle, and I look around for someone more lonely and uncomfortable than me, I see this really nerdy guy sitting alone at a table, I go over and sit down and start talking to him, and he barely looks at me, just stares at my roommate and then asks me if I know if she's dating anybody. It was a pretty low blow.   And the next day, I came home from work, I was alone in the house, and I was just pretty bitter and grumpy, and I was saying to myself, like, "How do people even date? How is it even done? Do you have to be like a superhero to date? Because it seems impossible to me." And I had just read a book about the history of comic strips, and so inspired by that and fueled by my bitterness, I started drawing a comic strip called, "The Adventures of Dating Girl."   The plotline was a mild, mannered legal secretary, Mary Shanahan, whose initials were a transposition of mine, was a nice girl, hard worker, smart, funny, spiritual, but just not a dater. And then on Valentine's Day Eve when she's walking home from work, she stops to smell some flowers in front of a florist shop and she is hit by magic cosmic lightning, and there's this huge explosion of roses and her glasses go flying off and when she finally stands up from the pile of sizzling roses, she's been transformed into this mega babe, and her outfit is different. She's wearing boots that say "Dating Girl." And there's a crowd of onlookers, some of them are holding up signs telling her how hot she is now.   That was as far as I ever got with drawing the comic strip, and it was just kind of cathartic and fun that night. A funny thing I thought to do with my bitterness about dating.   But I found I couldn't stop thinking about the story of Dating Girl, and I talked about it with my best friend Megan and it kind of became a hobby of ours to talk about the adventures of dating girl and imagine the continuing storyline. And a couple other friends got into it, and we spent a lot of those dateless nights talking about the mythology of Dating Girl, and the story evolved.   So the rest of the story is Mary Shanahan goes home that night after being struck by lightning and she washes her face and goes straight to bed and she doesn't even look in the mirror or notice that she's become this super babe. And in the next morning, she wakes up and her roommates wake up and discover that they also are kind of magically transformed. And over the next few weeks, they're like, "Something's different. We're kind of looking better," but also they felt like they had some new wisdom or skill in social situations and dating, understanding that they hadn't had before.   As they're trying to figure that out, they find themselves magically transported to this location where they meet a woman, Magda, who becomes their mentor. And Magda tells them that she used to be Dating Girl, but she has since retired and moved on. And there has always been a "dating girl" and there always has to be a "dating girl." And when Magda retired, the new "Dating Girl" had to be risen up and that's why the universe chose Mary Shanahan to be struck by lightning to become the new dating girl. And every dating girl has her sidekicks who are also dating girls, and they all have this power to bring balance to the force I guess or to improve healthiness and wisdom and goodness in dating.   And dating girl also learns that she has power to look out over the Salt Lake Valley and little like heart flares go up and she can tell where she's needed and she can go there and also she can fly, but that's like nothing compared to the power of love that defines her now.   So we came up with a bunch of plot lines for the dating girls. The most significant story arc of which was the rise of her arch nemesis, Matthew Nan, the natural man, who was a very cool, accomplished, smart guy who moved into her their ward who was a natural leader and who should have been an influence for good, but instead used his power for evil to encourage people to be lame in dating, to not try hard, to not take risks, to not think the best of others, to be selfish and insecure. He was just a bad dude and they were constantly trying to thwart him.   So, time went on, and the really interesting thing was that the story began to change all of us. It certainly began to change me. We had a lot of conversations about what exactly is Dating Girl's power? What is the superpower in dating? And I was very insistent that her power was not going on dates, that was stupid, and her power was also not being hot, because that's not a superpower that was just like a random side effect of being struck by magic, cosmic lightning.   But the power that she had was the power that she already had in her that was magnified by becoming a superhero. And the power was Christlike charity or love, to apply that to dating. Thinking about what that meant was really healthy for me to think, "What does that mean for the way you treat the person you're dating or the people you're flirting with or the people you want to know better? How do you Treat yourself, and how do you wish the best and work for the best for both parties in a relationship?"   And out of that came for me what was wisdom and self awareness about the ways that I was kind of competitive with other women and I was embracing my insecurities rather than my strengths. And I was letting bitterness lead me rather than hope, and that I was also really hard on guys.   I realized that if I tried to see my dating scene with Dating Girl's magic supervision, it made me see people more as I think Christ would see them, more for their potential and their hopes, and less their weaknesses and their failings. It made me see that we're all very scared and vulnerable in the scary world of dating and that we all needed people to be kind.   It was interesting to see that I had really gone through a time of thinking my strategy of finding people who are lonelier than me and reaching out to them was a weakness. But in fact, that was part of my strength that I did want to be kind when I dated, but I could also do it with more confidence.   The way the dating girl mythology affected my friends was also interesting. As my friends chose a "dating girl" alter ego, their superpower was something that they themselves thought was a weakness but became a strength.   And I think just the act of sitting around and talking about this, imagining these superhero plotlines, for each of us helped us organically move on to being the daters we had always wanted to be. We thought we were being super nerdy. I mean, we were talking about imaginary superheroes and comic strips but it actually was making us more competent daters, more gifted socializers, and it really made a difference in our lives.   After a while, I found that before I was going to a party or something that had me kind of nervous, I would literally psych myself up by saying, "You can do this. You're Dating Girl. Nobody knows it. Nobody has to know it, but you know it inside and you can do this." Sometimes in dating, I would literally say, "W-W-D-G-D. What would dating girl do?" And I would sometimes make lists of the ways that I thought Dating Girl would handle a certain dating situation, and then realize that that was who I was now, and I could do it.   It gave me so much confidence and comfort with myself, and I think because her superpower was based in something that was a part of me that I'd seen as a weakness, ut through the power of charity was turned into a strength, it stuck and it became a part of who I am.   I think it's so true in life in general. Whatever we believe about ourselves can become true. I'm happy to say that all of the "dating girls" that generation of Dating Girls got married, found love, got married. We all have kids now. And there's a funny ending to the story.   My husband and I run our own business and a lot of our employees have ended up being singleyoung adult members of our church. And I was talking to one of these girls in our home one night after work, she was telling me about her dating woes, and I started telling her the story of Dating Girl and she was really into it, and she's starting to imagine her own dating alter ego.   When suddenly there's this huge flash of lightning and a huge clap of thunder like right on top of the house, the lights go out and everything, and then they come back on and we just looked at each other like, "What just happened?" And we realized a new dating girl has been risen up. I just retired and I'm Magda now and she's the new Dating Girl and the generation continues. Dating Girl lives. She always lives.   KaRyn  22:05  That was Sarah. I never get tired of hearing her stories. And I'm also always surprised by the inventiveness of her imagination. And great news, the original Gating Girl comic still exists, and we'll have it in our show notes, so you can take inspiration as you try to find your own inner superhero.   There are a few things worth taking from Sarah's story about how we seek to understand our weakness and our strengths. I think it's really easy to compare ourselves to others, like Sarah did, or assume that all hero stuff happens to other people and not us. But I think something special happens when we open ourselves up to the possibility that we can become the hero of our own narrative.   We find that our capacity is magnified through Christ, and consequently our capacity to see others in their full heroic glory is also magnified. We begin to realize that there can never be too many superheroes and that our work is blessed by the existence of everyone conquering the natural man together. That kind of unity is what it's all about.   Our final story today comes from Kurt, who describes the experience of growing into a new calling as he accesses the only true superpower, the power of God upon the Earth, the priesthood.   Julie  23:17  Here's Kurt:   Kurt  23:19  It's Sunday, February 6th, 2011, and I've been Bishop for one hour.   I'm sitting in the bishop's office, I guess it's my office, but it sure doesn't feel like that, even though the plaque says that outside the door. I noticed the candy dish that I guess I now preside over, the strange carpet wallpaper, and various pictures that hang in the room, the First Presidency, Christ, and a random temple. And I guess I really am the bishop.   My Ward clerk comes into the office with a stack of papers, "Bishop Francom, I just need you to sign here, there, and one more here. Thank you." I noticed as he leaves the room, that he is going through a group of people outside the office. All these people suddenly look into the office hoping that it's their turn to now see the bishop. Because some for some reason, they think I have the solution to all of their problems.   Do they really understand who they're dealing with? I mean, I'm a 28 year old that was called to be bishop in an inner city ward, not because I'm anything special, but because the list of options was incredibly short. But nonetheless, the responsibility is on me to answer their questions.   It just doesn't sit well yet. I don't feel like a bishop though I am standing there in a suit. It feels like dress up. And believe me, I know a thing or two about dress up. As a five year old. I'm sitting there in front of the TV day after day watching a man I later find out is really named Christopher Reeves flying around on the TV screen, saving people from falling buildings, landing a helicopter that's on fire, and it was remarkable.   This being, this Superman was something to aspire to. I mean, the suit, the cape, I mean the strength that he exemplified. I thought, "I got to be that. I've got to be a superhero." My mother gave me a remarkable home sewn Superman cape, and every day I represented being that superhero and represented becoming that dream by wearing that Superman cape.   And sometimes, sure, my mom needed to go to the grocery store or run some errands. But I protested and said, "I will not leave this house unless this Superman cape goes underneath my clothes because crime could break out at any moment, and I must be ready so that I could become a great superhero." But now as Bishop Francom, that memory, that feeling of being a superhero seems so distant.   I've survived one full year as a bishop somehow because now I'm standing in the clerk's office with the ward clerk. He's busy at the computer printing off checks, one after the other, after the other. This has been such a heavy welfare month. I mean so many requests from so many people. Some I know, some I don't, and everybody turns to me as the bishop to make the decision. "Will I pay the rent? Will I pay the water bill? Will I pay the utilities?" As these envelopes are being in the stack in my hand all stuffed with these checks, going to landlords, going to banks, going to utility companies.   They remind me of another envelope I receive quite often. From Alice Wilkins. Every Sunday she shows up to church, big smile with their bright red lipstick. She's 92 years old and couldn't be a happier person, hands me the envelope every week trusting me that I will use these fast offering funds for the family most in need that needs these funds.   But I don't know, as I stand there, holding the stack of envelopes, it just gets heavier and heavier. I mean, these are sacred funds. These are Alice's funds that she has sacrificed. She skipped meals so that she could contribute. And now it's up to me to figure out how to use these funds? Maybe there's more I could do. Maybe I should think this through before I really place these in the mailbox.   Because what if I'm making a mistake? Maybe I've spent too much money. I've definitely spent way more than the ward's brought in. And should I sign the next check? I mean, I don't know. I don't really know that guy. And so maybe I should look more into it. What if I have disgraced these funds that have been given to me to use through the authority I've been given. Again, the pile of these checks gets higher and higher and higher. And I don't know if I'm being a good bishop.   The weight of this responsibility presses down on my shoulders, and I don't know if I want to do it anymore. I'm so frustrated with it all of the pressure of making the right decision, that I'm tired.   And in the moment, where I'm frustrated, I begin to utter the words under my breath, "I hate this." I couldn't complete that sentence before the spirit rebuked me in my mind with one simple phrase.   "I thought you wanted to be a superhero."   It was in that moment that I realize that capes don't exist or make men fly, but authority exists. Opportunities of service exist. There were so many families in dire need of help. In the sense I was wearing the cape, that could answer their prayers wth one quick, "Yes, cut the check." Suddenly, that stack of envelopes didn't seem so heavy.   Four more years followed of me being bishop, and throughout those years, there were so many decisions that weighed on my mind, so many circumstances, so many situations that were impossible before me, that took me to my knees to make the right decision and to give the right guidance and advice.   And I didn't always give the best advice, and I made a lot of mistakes, but I always went back to those words, "I thought you will wanted to be a superhero," because then I was reminded that I was doing a good work and that I was helping people, even with all my weaknesses.   The authority in which I was acting under as a bishop, the authority of Jesus Christ, the Priesthood of God, the keys that have been restored to Earth that make it all possible to reach out and use his authority as the greatest superhero of all time, where redemption is found, where infinite grace is in abundance. He is the superhero. We can turn to him in the moments when we have to stand in his place and act like the superhero, and he will strengthen us because he is our Savior.   KaRyn  30:53  That was Kurt Francom.   You may recognize his voice as the creator and host of the Leading Saints podcast. Kurt's work is focused on building the leadership capabilities of Church members around the world. So it's great to hear his personal story of feeling inadequate and then finding a way to grow into a leadership role.   I'm sure he's not the only overwhelmed disciple to mutter under his breath, "I hate this," and I'm also sure he's not the only person to discover that there is divine instruction, and divine power in the mantle of his calling to help him move beyond that place. We all have access to that superpower here on this Earth as covenant making and covenant keeping people of Christ.   So here's a confession. I probably wouldn't ever go see a superhero movie of my own volition, if it weren't for my comic book loving 16 year old stepson. I can barely keep track of all the franchises and the zillions of characters with backstories. My feeble brain cannot retain it all. And I'm a little bit partial to romantic comedies, but I will also admit that I regularly find myself weeping into my popcorn and Diet Coke at those same movies because they speak to a universal truth about weakness and strength.   In almost every movie, while the battles rage, the good guys are faced with impossible odds, their weakness is exposed, their strengths are many, but they're still never quite enough. They are always up against impossible odds.   And I feel that. I really, really feel it. Aren't we up against some really impossible odds? Aren't we staring down the cresting enemy with our battered and bruised armor and exhausted resources? Every day, aren't you and I praying and praying and praying that somehow our weakness, our insufficient faith, our fear will be replaced with power and strength and fortification from something bigger than us all.   And in the movies, that help comes often in the form of a magically activated forcefield, or the discovery of a new superpower they never knew they had, or perfectly timed dimensional leap from a long missing friend. Well in real life we don't get X-ray vision or super strength, or my personal favorite superpower, the ability to do 40 things all at the same time on deadline.   But there is in fact a real force in the universe that can transform us weaklings and weirdoes into truly spectacular beings. It's that transformative power that the Savior comforted the Prophet Moroni with in Ether chapter 12, verse 27, when he said, "...I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."   Moroni charged with bringing the Word of God to you and me in these latter days with enough power that we would be convinced to stay faithful. He was convinced that his weakness was going to ruin everything, that he wouldn't be able to accomplish the task place before him.   The odds were against him, but the Lord wanted him to see in that moment that his weakness, his humility would be made his strength through grace. And I think that's what comes through in each of the stories we've heard today, evidence of the Savior's miraculous power to change us, to show us the double-edged sword of our weakness turned to strength, through his grace, his enabling power.   It reminds me of this quote that I love from President Ezra Taft Benson, where he taught, quote, "Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that he can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their mind, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, and pour out peace," end quote.   If that's not superhero stuff right there, then I don't know what it is. At the end of the day, we can feel assured that God wants and needs all of us, our whole selves, including whatever we think is unacceptable or failure -- our overwhelm, our lack of follow through, our social awkwardness, our inability to withstand that one temptation.   What we learn from these stories, from the scriptures, from that President Benson quote, is that if we offer our hearts in humility, he will help us to see our weakness clearly, which isn't always pleasant, but it's necessary, and in turn, he'll offer a hope that is stronger than any superpower we can imagine.   That's it for this episode of This is the Gospel. Thank you to Julie, Sarah, and Kurt for sharing their stories and their faith. We'll have pictures of our storytellers including Sarah's dating girl comic and a transcript of this episode in our show notes at LDSLiving.com/ThisistheGospel.   And if you aren't already following us on social media, there's way more good stuff throughout the week. Find us on Instagram and Facebook at "ThisistheGospel_Podcast."   Thank you so much for sharing the stories that means something to you with your friends and your family. We love to hear all the ways that this type of storytelling strengthens your faith in God and love for his children. If you have just a minute to leave us a review and a rating wherever you listen to this podcast, that's another way that you can share the good stuff. Every review helps us to show up in the search for more people.   All of our stories on this podcast are true and accurate as afirmed by our storytellers. If you have a story to share about living the Gospel, please call our pitch line and leave us a pitch. We often find many of our stories like Julie's from the pitch line, and we love to hear how the gospel has blessed your life. Call 515-519-6179 and pitch your story in three minutes or less.   This episode was produced by Sarah Blake with additional story producing and editing by Jasmine Mullen, Katie Lambert, Ashley Porter, and Casey Blake. It was scored, mixed, and mastered by Mix at Six Studios And our Executive Producer is Erin Hallstrom.   You can find past episodes, we have 50 of them now of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts, at LDSLiving.com/podcasts. Have a great week.    

I'm feeling drawn to speak to you guys about all of these strange things in our society that we watch YouTube spam videos about instead of learning it thoroughly like everything else and as well the worldly climate changes ahead for us. Maybe I've learned enough in my studies to proceed. I have insightful things to offer, but whatever who else is really talking about this stuff? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

  So now you have decided to have your own Youtube channel. What should you name it? Nate Woodbury and Valerie Morris weigh-in on what you should consider before naming your channel.   So, you're wondering what to name your YouTube channel? I mean what should it be? Right? Should it be your name? Should it be your company name? So, it'd be a cool name. I have a very specific opinion on this. And I'm going to share that with you. So, I've got Valerie Morris here. She is building her YouTube channel. -Yep. -She's expert on influence. She wrote the book on influence. We're All Ears. You can find it on Amazon and you've got several questions about this. Wondering what to name it. So, tell me. Tell me in your words what's your question? -Well, I'm just curious kind of what are the biggest factors that people should have, you know... And the top of their mind, as they're thinking about naming their channel. -In most cases, there's always going to be exceptions. So, I'm going to talk in general. And I work with a lot of influencers. So, that's where my answers are coming from. You don't want to use a company name. -Okay. -In most cases, you want to just use your own individual name because people want to connect with someone. -Okay. -And the more that they'll see a company brand or a business name or a logo or something, the more they realize, "Oh, I might be getting pitched to." Now, your videos could be identical. But just because that's the first thing that they see versus if they, if they see your name Valerie Morris. Or I'm thinking like MarieTV. She's got her whole... Whole company. But yet, it's it's Marie, right? That's the first recommendation I give is generally it's just going to be your name. -Great. Okay, so you mentioned Marie TV. I see a lot of people putting TV behind their name. What do you think about that? Is that a positive thing? Is that a negative thing? I think with Marie it rhymes. It's catchy. We've done it. We used to have Limitless TV. And then we recognized, "You know what? We really want it to be branded more around Kris Krohn." That's his name. And so we've just been transitioning away from Limitless TV. So right now, if you find the channel at the filming of this video, it says Kris Krohn - Limitless TV. Because we're so long people got familiar with the name limitless. We just put TV in there because it sounded cool. I don't know that... People call it, "Yeah, limitless TV. It's a... It's a show. But because of the importance and the value of building around the brand Kris Krohn in his name, we were making that transition. There's no longer do you see the logo of Limitless anymore. And we're ready now. So, any day now, we'll be deleting the Limitless TV part of that. Kind of a weird way to answer question but it just it sounds like a catchy name is why we called it that. -Okay. So, I've noticed that you know. you talked a lot about keywords. Obviously you put the keywords in the video title but what about the channel name? Do you want to have any specific keywords in that the title of or the name of your channel? -You don't need to worry about that at all. And I'll also relate this to your website. Because originally when we started doing SEO for for websites, you wanted to get a domain name (.com) that had a keyword in it. -Yeah. -So, like publicspeaker.com or lifecoach.com or socialmediamaster.com. -Yeah. -That really stopped working many many years ago. -Okay. -And on YouTube... I mean, you can. There's some strategy in it. But what it does is it it kind of paints you into a corner. Let's say that I call it YouTube corner. Okay? I'm literally in the corner of YouTube. What if I wanted to talk about LinkedIn or I wanted to talk about Instagram or I wanted to talk more in general about influence? People would be coming to the YouTube corner. "What? you're talking about something else?" So again, there is... There is some reasons why that could be advantageous to go into a direction of a topic like that around some type of keyword that you want to rank for. In Kris's case, you know, we originally called the channel back before his Limitless TV. We called it RE investor TV. He loves personal development. He loves belief breakthrough in mindset. And he so wants... And we were making a lot of money in the real estate niche. But he loves putting on events like Tony Robbins. I mean, he has people walk on broken glass and do all this crazy stuff. And people love his events. But on YouTube, he's not really known for that. So, he really wants to step into that territory. And I think just by consistently mixing that in with the realist content, will eventually get there. We won't be able to do that if we just kept the name of the channel real estate investor TV. -Right. You kind of target yourself so much that you can't do other things. -Another example is my own. I've experimented with vlogging. And vlogging is a lot of fun. It's a whole lot of work. And so, I've recognized that I don't want to have a separate channel that's a vlog. But occasionally, I just want to put vlogs in there. And if my channel were more branded or more focused around a keyword, it wouldn't relate. But hey this is the Nate Woodbury Channel. I could talk about whatever I want. I can vlog, I can... I mean, I've... I've gone mountain biking at slickrock and Moab Utah. I put that on this channel. If people don't like those, fine. It's a Nate Woobury channel. -So, what are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen with people when they've named their channel? And is it okay to make a mistake? How do you... Is it easy to change? -Well, certainly. I think... I think I've covered some of those mistakes of naming a channel so maybe I could also talk about the mistakes people make when naming videos. -Okay. -But also... If you don't like your name, you can change it. -Okay. -The biggest mistake people make in naming the titles of their videos is that they don't do keyword research first. -Okay. -They'll often name it like they'll name their show. So, let's say it's the influence show with Valerie episode 6. Podcaster I've often named that way too. It's a terrible mistake because people who are searching for your content will never find it. -Right. -You know, you've named it something way broad and it's just episode this. It doesn't go really really specific. So, of course, I talked a lot about keyword research on this channel. And that's one of the biggest reasons why and that's one of the biggest mistakes I see. When people come to me and say, "Hey, can you do an analysis of my YouTube channel and give me some advice?" I'll open it up. I'll bring up the whole spread of videos in front of me. And several things that I look at. One of the first is what are these titles? You know, are they... Are they specific? Are they searchable or are they just episode 57? Episode 58. That's a huge mistake. Another one is not really taking advantage of custom thumbnails. It's custom thumbnails or what are the first thing that people see. We just talked about judging a book by it's cover. -Right. -Cover on YouTube is that thumbnail. And that title like you've got to put energy into designing a better thumbnail that's going to encourage people to click you really want to create curiosity. And I do encourage some type of consistency. So that if there's a whole list of thumbnails that video choices that YouTube's recommending and people like you, if they see a brand new thumbnail for me can they recognize instantly, maybe it's your face. Maybe that's the thing that's consistent is that your face is always in the thumbnail. Or maybe you know, there's a blue circle on the on the side of every thumbnail. And so that's got to be one from Valerie. You know? So, something like that is good to have. And it's a mistake that most people they don't even pay attention to stuff like that. -Wow. Well, I think you know, as far as like starting off a new channel. I feel a lot more confident to go and figure out what my name is going to be. -Mm-hmm. -And a little bit more comfortable to use my name. -Good. Now, some people have heard to spell names. I mean you think of Gary Vaynerchuk. -Yeah. -He went... He just chose to go Gary V. And he regrets spelling it out "V" because he's like why don't I ever do that? It's just been the letter Gary V. And so I think that's what he's doing now. You can play around. Marie TV? I don't know what her last name is. But maybe it's a hard name. Maybe that's why she just shortened it to Marie TV. So, there's... There's different things to consider. I don't know anyone personally that's actually changed and made up a pen name. But you know, that's that's always something to consider. Because it is, it is a person. And people like, was Elvis was that his real name? -I don't even know? Look at... Comment below was Elvis, Elvis's real name? I don't know. -Now, what about if you create more than 1 channel? Do you want them both to be named your name? How do you differentiate? -So, it takes so much work and and so much time and energy to make one channel successful. -Yeah. -That having 2 channels is double the amount of work. Double attention and focus. It's going to be a rare occasion that I'll actually recommend that somebody has 2 separate channels. There's got to be a real specific reason to do that. If you've got one channel that's your name then the other channel could probably be something else. Maybe it's a secondary channel or maybe that one is more business-focused. Or... Or more. It's just for family or something like that. If anyone watching here has a specific scenario of I really do think I should do 2 separate channels. Maybe I've got 2 different companies. One's a restaurant and one's an auto mechanic place. I mean maybe you don't put videos or content on the same Channel. But you've got 2 different businesses. This business has one focus of one channel. So what's that helpful? -Oh, yeah. Absolutely. -So, hopefully that answered some of your questions. And if you have any others, please comment below. And we'll see in the next episode.

  It's easy to think that some people are naturally very influential, when in reality influence is about skills. We can learn how to increase our influence, and it's a good thing to want more influence. But how long does it really take to influence someone?   How long does it take to influence someone? -How long? So, Nate you talk about influence a fair amount. I mean we both talk about it. But I hear you talk about it especially in terms of video content. Talk to me a little bit about how you approach influence building. -So, for me, I love making a difference in someone else's life. And I really just enjoy being around influencers. And so it's really cool that I get to be influential to other influencers and the more that they influence the more fulfillment I get, it's a lot of fun. So, I mean I love having you on my YouTube channel here. I mean she wrote the book on influence. We're having so many conversations so it's fun that I get to kind of share my model about influence because I see influence with 4 different stages. At least that's what I've experienced. -Sure. 1, when I talked to people I mean I've put on retreats or if I speak from the stage. And people tell me afterwards, "Wow, that was really good." Okay, I'm going to get a sense of fulfillment out of that. I've influenced them. Maybe I've helped them feel better. Or I've helped them feel inspired. But that only goes so far. That kind of... can fade out. -Sure. -Right? And so, level 2 of influence is when I've been able to teach somebody something that they then go and they act on it. They implement it. You know, so if I spoke one day and a week later, they're still acting on it. Like, "Wow, I've impacted their lives." I really influenced them. Level 3 is where those actions that they're taking actually get them results. Because how many times do people give advice and advices followed but it just creates busyness? It doesn't create results. Unfortunately, it happens way too often expense. Especially in the YouTube world. I see there... The social media world, I see people doing activities there following advice all day long but they're not really getting results. I saw that myself. I saw that myself even with retreats that I was putting on. It's like how come these participants of my retreat aren't making YouTube videos? How come they're not YouTube sensations now? They should be. -Yes. -So, I started taking my clients from start to finish holding their hand saying, "I'm going to help you with every step along the way." And I love what I do when they're getting results. -Yeah. -And I see... I feel so good about it. -Right. -And that helped me recognize a 4th step because once that started happening, not only have I impact that their lives in a positive way because they're getting results. But then other people start seeing the results. And it comes back to me in the form of referrals. So they're getting enough results that other people are seeing it. And it grows my business in another way. So, if I'm measuring how much influence have I made on the world, what type of impact. If I'm starting to get referrals coming back to me, that's a good sign that I'm at a level 4 influence. Assuming. So, that's how I look at influence. And so the question of this video, "How long does it take?" I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. -Well... You know, I don't think there's necessarily one hard and fast number. And I think it's different on every platform. You know, whether you're building influence through an inbox, through YouTube videos, through Instagram. The amount of time it's going to waver a little bit. But I think the most important thing to realize is that it doesn't happen overnight. -Definitely not on YouTube. -No. And it's hard because a lot of times people share the highlight reel. Whether that's offline or online on different social media platforms or on their website and things like that. The reality is that that's the highlight reel. And they don't... They don't show necessarily all of the grind and all the hard work that built up to that success. We see those little snippets of some of the success and we think, "Gosh. I wish I could be there." But the reality is that's there chapter 100. And we're at chapter 1. And so for us, we have to do that hard work too. And so, it's going to take time. And it's going to take time for people to go through, you know, your four stages of influence or anyone else's definition of influence. It's going to take people whole time to build that trust just from hearing you talk about what works, to trying it and seeing that I'm getting a little bit of success. To trying it and sticking with it and getting a lot of success, to seeing other people getting results too. It's going to take time for them to implement all of that. And for that cycle to continue on. But I think one of the things that I've found to be most beneficial is that if you stick with it long enough, it becomes like a snowball rolling down a hill. It just starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I found that over the years, the longer I have stayed consistent with my zone of expertise the more and more people keep coming back and new people keep coming to me. And I keep wondering where are these people coming from? But I do believe it's that snowball effect. Just building upon itself. -Yeah. I really appreciate that. But with YouTube it's definitely a long-term game. But it does work so well. With one video you can influence somebody. I mean, we can film a single YouTube video post it to YouTube and it can have a significant influence. You know, if we look at the 4 different stages that I described, most of the time it's only going to be beginning level of influence. It's going to be rare so that the longer we're at, the more videos we create, the more content or training or help we put out there. The more likely we're going to be down here to the level 4. I just thought of an example of a big-time level 1. So, my friend Paul Jenkins. We produce a channel for him --Live On Purpose TV. We created a video "How to help a friend who's suicidal?" That video save lives. -Wow. So, it's... I mean there's huge power in an individual YouTube episode. But as he's... And so he saved lives, he's helped people with parenting skills just on a short-term basis. So for me, on one sense that's really encouraging to know that you know, we make one video, we're already having an impact. We're already making a difference. But to really build a tribe to really build a following, to really help people get long-term results, let's be patient. -Yeah. Well, I think it's important too to think through the concept of what your big picture goal is and then those micro conversions along the way. -Hmm. -There are steps along the way that you can celebrate in success of building your influence. You may not have the huge following yet or that huge video that gets you all sorts of traffic and allows you to, you know, sit back and relax for the rest of your life. But you know, you can celebrate the little wins along the way. And those things like one video that's saving people's lives. You can really celebrate that. So, Nate. With your experience on YouTube, how much time are you seeing it take people to really build up that influence on YouTube specifically? -Good question. Typically about a year. And that's a year we're doing 5 episodes a week. -That's a lot. -It's a whole lot. And for those of you watching, Valerie and I, we're filming 20 episodes today. -Yeah. -We're filming 20 episodes tomorrow. So that gives us 8 weeks worth of content. So that's a whole lot. We have to do it in batches like that to even manage that. -Right. -At 4 months... So, if you go five episodes a week on YouTube, at 4 months, YouTube will start to promote your content and you'll see a spike. So, you'll have gradual growth and that for months, you'll see a spike. And you'll get clients, you'll get leads coming in from that. But really, it's at that 12 month mark where there's a significant amount of momentum. So, with the with a YouTube strategy like this plan on a year. -Wow. -So, as you can tell, Valerie has a wealth of knowledge of influence. She's put it on her book. We're all ears. Look it up on Amazon. Her last name is Morris. And you'll definitely enjoy it. It's one of my favorites. Be sure to subscribe. We'll see you tomorrow.

Is Solo Travel for YOU???  Afraid to travel solo – especially solo adventure travel? Today's guests share their insights as to the Pro's and Con's of solo travel and share what they consider the benefits and challenges, plus their tips to make adventure travel solo safe and fun.   Is Solo Travel for YOU???  Afraid to travel solo – especially solo adventure travel? Today's guests share their insights as to the Pro's and Con's of solo travel and share what they consider the benefits and challenges, plus their tips to make adventure travel solo safe and fun.   Today's Guest Interviews on Solo Adventure Travel  This episode is a rebroadcast of an episode on our companion Active Travel Adventures podcast.  Jackie Nourse of Traveling Jackie and the Budget Minded Traveler, Jason Waitkinsand Monica Arangurenshare their thoughts on taking a solo holiday and what it's like to travel by yourself.  See some of their solo adventures photos down below! Seven Reasons to Solo Travel There are lots of reasons you might travel solo: 1. Maybe you can't find anyoneto travel where you want to go, when you want to go.  If you want to go, but aren't comfortable going completely on your own, consider small group travel.  Be aware of any single supplements and look for companies that pair you with someone if you don't want to pay extra to travel alone. My affiliate, Active Adventures(different company with a similar name) does NOT make you pay the dreaded Single Supplement. 2. You need some time to yourself to just THINK! If you need to figure some things out in your life, consider taking a long distance hike or cycling trip.  You'll have all day to yourself, but will meet people along the way for when you could use a little company.  Check out my West Highland Wayand Cotswold Waylong distance walking holiday adventures for some inspiration. 3.  You want to develop your ‘Grit Bone'or what Jackie calls her “Courage Muscles”. There's nothing like adventure travel, and in particular, solo travel to test your mettleand to expand what you think possible for yourself!  It's a great way to boost your self esteem and self reliance, too!  If you want to feel empowered, try adventure travel, and in particular SOLO Adventure Travel! 4.  It's easier to meet new people when you travel solo.  Locals are more likely to come up to introduce themselves when they see you alone, so you'll have more local interaction. 5.  You'll develop better problem solving skills.  When it's just you, YOUhave to figure out what to do when something goes awry.  You'll learn that you are quite good at finding a solution, no matter how clumsy it is, when you know that you simply HAVE to! 6.  You'll discover what you really like and dislike:  when your schedule is completely your own, you have to make ALL the decisions, from what time to wake up, to what, when and where to eat, to how to spend your time, etc.  If you go someplace and decide you've had enough, you can simply leave without conferring with travel mates, or you can spend all day in a museum that rocks your boat, but would bore your normal partner. 7.  Traveling solo can sometimes be lonely, so even introverts learn how to strike up a conversation(my go to questions is, “So how was your day?”  People love to talk about themselves.  You'll always find other solo travelers at the bar next to a hostel, so head there at cocktail hour to find others that would love to chat.  For that matter, consider even staying in a hostel so you can meet folks in the common areas.  Many offer single rooms so you don't have to sleep dorm style.   Alternately, stay at an Airbnb where the people live there as well and the comments from previous guest indicate that the hosts like to be social with guests.  Consider Couchsurfing.  Also sign up to do a Walking Tour or other group activity to meet others.  See if there are any interesting Meetups going on while you're in town and reach out to the group organizer to attend. Solo Travel Tips and Rules I've been traveling solo for five years now and I've come up with some rules that help keep me safe and reduce stress (in no particular order): 1. When ‘winging it' while traveling, I make sure that I know where I am going to sleep before noon. 2. Whenever possible, I make sure that I arrive at the night's accommodations before dark. 3. When out, I never leave my food or drink unattended. 4. Don't drink too much or do any drugs.  Get back to your room at a reasonable hour. 5. Be careful of overly cautious locals who might be setting you up… does someone on the bus or train rush to try to share a cab with you?  This could be a setup: the cabbie could be a partner in crime.  Check the US State Dept Travel advisoryfor the country you are visiting to see what the current local scams are.  Register your trip with the Smart Traveler Program. 6. Ask your hotel to call you a cab or take highly ratedUber or Lyfts to avoid rogue cabbies.  7.  Ask a local to circle bad areas on a paper map. 8.  Be mindful of your surroundings at all times and have an exit plan.  9.  Hold onto your luggage, going so far as to bike lock it to yourself should you be on a long train or bus where you might sleep. 10.  Make sure someone knows where you are supposed to be and what time you are supposed to arrive AND when to sound an alarm should he or she not hear from you. Some of the adventures Jason has taken that have been covered by ATA include: Patagonia(Argentina & Chile) Ecuador Kilimanjaro Nepal Peru  [Machu Picchu] New Zealand South Island  Part I New Zealand South Island  Part II New Zealand North Island Part III Some of Monica's epic trips that ATA has covered: Dolomites Mont Blanc Galapagos New Zealand South Island  Part I New Zealand South Island  Part II New Zealand North Island Part III One of our guests today, Jackie, is also a travel blogger and podcaster. She did an excellent episode on Solo Travel you can access here.  You can also find her at Traveling Jackie, the Budget Minded Traveler(nowJump). Also be sure to check out my interview with Jackie on the Active Travel Adventures podcast on her adventures in Quebec! Other Links Mentioned in Today's Show: Travel Safety Tips Cotswold Way Mont Blanc Dolomites Galapagos Kilimanjaro Part I Kilimanjaro Part II Annapurna Travel Insurance When you buy travel insurance, please use this link to my affiliate World Nomads.  At no additional cost to you, you'll be helping to support this podcast and website - thanks! Training for your Adventures If you need some coaching and advice on how to prepare for your upcoming adventure, please consider using this link to Fit For Trips.  At no additional cost to you - in fact, use Promo Code ATAKIT10to get a 10% Discount, you'll be helping to keep the lights on - thanks!   Active Travel Adventures Podcast Be sure to check out our companion podcast,  Active Travel Adventures.  On ATA, I encourage you to lead a bigger life through adventure travel.  Each episode features an exciting adventure travel destination like the kinds Monica and Jason talked about today! Solo Adventure Travel We're going solo. That's right. Even if you have a partner, I want you to read this blog post because there are definite advantages and challenges to traveling solo. Even if you think, “There is no way I would ever travel solo,” please read on with an open mind. You might change your mind. I'll be interviewing three solo travelers about the challenges and joys of traveling solo. Since I usually travel solo myself, you'll hear my two cents worth as well. It's a great show. Even if you think, “No way, I could never travel solo.” I beg you please read on and see if you don't change your mind. If you're like me, you don't want to live an ordinary life. You want to live a kick-ass life, and one way to do so is to add adventure travel to your life. I find adventure travel brings out the best in me. It challenges me, it encourages me, it enlightens me, and it inspires me to lead a bigger life. On this program, you'll learn about amazing adventures from around the world plus get the tools and information you need so you could do these adventures with confidence. You'll come home feeling empowered and with amazing memories and stories that you can relive forever. Don't worry, the bar is such that my relatively fit 58-year-old body, particularly with some training, can do these adventures and you can too. This episode is a roundup episode. I've got three guests that I will be interviewing separately about their experiences with solo travel. Our first guest is Jackie Norris, who we met on one of our episodes. She is the host of Traveling Jackieand The Budget-Minded Travelerand has been traveling solo for a long time. She has a ton of insights to share with us. When I interviewed her in Quebec, I asked her casually about solo. We got engrossed in it that I decided to take that section of our interview and added to this solo episode. Our other guests are Monica and Jason. I'll let them introduce themselves. Let's start with my interview with Jackie. Jackie, why do you travel solo? The reason I do solo travel is that I'm solo. I don't let that stop me. For years and years, a lot of people struggle with the idea of getting out on their own. It's a necessity for me. It's what I have to do and so I do it. I never thought I would enjoy it, but I do love it now. You have to get to a point where you're comfortable with it. I've already been traveling for a number of years by the time that I went nomadic like fully solo nomadic a few years ago. Even after that much time of being comfortable traveling, it was weird to be on my own all the time. For the cons, you are by yourself. All of those travel decisions are made only by you. Even where you're going to eat for breakfast in the morning or if you're going to get a beer this afternoon, everything is solely up to you. There's no one that you can confer with. That also happens to be one of the advantages of it. Sometimes it depends on which perspective you have looking on it. Maybe it depends on the day. Sometimes it's amazing and sometimes you wish there was someone there. Loneliness is a real thing. I have written about that before and most solo travelers will face real loneliness. It's not just the point of being solo in a place, it's feeling alone. There's a big difference and that can get to you if it's a while. I traveled for months at a time and it can get draining on me to be alone. At the same time, this is where I am in my life and this is what I'm signing up for. This is also my work and this is what I'm choosing to do. It's part of the territory if you look at it that way. The freedom that solo travel provides is unmatched in this world. There is a feeling that comes with being on your own in some far-flung corner of the planet completely left to yourself and your own thoughts. What you want to do for the day, everything is your will. It is the most freeing feeling ever. It's incredible. You can do whatever you want. There are definitely pros and cons of solo travel. I always encourage people to at least try it out because you get to know yourself very quickly. Even if you think you know yourself, you don't, not until you solo travel. You could see what you're capable of and what your weaknesses are. It's an incredible tool for life to solo travel. Everyone should do it at least once. You had a quote in your the Budget-Minded Traveler episode number 63 that I loved. It was, “Lose yourself until you find yourself.” Could you talk a little bit about that? I thought that was excellent. It gave me chills when you read it. That came from a piece that I wrote on my Travelling Jackie blog. It was when I decided to leave everything behind and go out on my own to travel the world solo for real for the first time. This was many years after having traveled a whole bunch already and studying abroad and all that. This was different because I had a relationship, I had a house and I had all these things. I felt very lost at times, but it's because I had to recreate what my life looked like. That was my moment to decide what my new normal was going to be going forward. I did lose part of myself there in that in a good way though. It's like you have to go see what the world has for you and then figure out what you look like in that new normal. Figure out what the path forward is in this new reality that you've created. That's at least how it applied to me. It depends on what your situation is and why you're choosing to solo travel. Where you are and you’re like so much about experience outwardly when you travel, has to do what's going on inside. That was my experience at the time. I totally went out and lost myself until I started to rebuild and find what that meant to start over. It's obvious that travel in general and solo travel in particular, changed your life. I'm grateful for that because I feel so much surer of who I am. I'm so much stronger now. I have so much more confidence. These are the things that come with being on your own for so long in a place. It's not saying being on your own at home where you're comfortable with everything and you know the name of the store owner down the street, whatever. It's not like that at all. Everything is different. Everything is new. Foreign languages, foreign currency, borders, flights, hotels, everything is a challenge. When you add that element to being completely on your own for a long time, maybe for the first time, it changes everything. Your personal growth is expedited more than anything.       In the last few years since I lost my husband, I've been traveling solo. The one question I get over and over again is about safety and the Boogie Man at night. How do I deal with the safety issues? How do you respond to questions like that you get? Are you not afraid about those things at home? Bad things can happen anywhere. It doesn't matter where you are. In fact, US these days could be a lot less safe than a lot of other places that I travel. I don't dwell on that stuff at all. I have some tricks up in my sleeve to make sure that I'm safe and my belongings are safe. I pay attention. I always say that common sense is your best defense. I stand by that 110%. Don't leave your common sense behind when you walk out your door. The world outside of your comfort zone is not a place to invite fear. It's a place to invite curiosity. Go explore that and find out what it looks like because it's not about fear and safety, it's about adventure, life, growth, people, connection, culture, food, language, activity and beauty. That outweighs the fear. It's not a thing. I've been traveling for many years, knock on wood, but nothing's ever happened to me. I've never been in a situation I couldn't handle. Maybe that's because I carry my common sense close by. Maybe I've gotten lucky. Maybe a lot of things, but I do speak a lot about safety because I know that people ask about it and are concerned. You can't let that stop you from doing anything. Otherwise, you'd be stuck in your own house. What happens if there’s an earthquake and your house fell down? You can't be safe anywhere in this world if you look at it that way. Go do it, get out there and go experience it. You'll find the confidence over the fear the more you go. I want to go back to something you said about being more aware and things can happen to you even at home. It could be safer while you travel because you're more on red alert and you're more aware of your surroundings, whereas at home you’re lackadaisical. You know how they say that most accidents happen within our house like car accidents. You've got your guard down. You may be doing other things. Whereas when you're traveling solo, you're paying attention. It's an interesting metaphor. It's the same thing with hiking on a trail. If I’m on a trail I don't know, I'm acutely aware of everything that's going on around me and my surroundings. If I'm on a trail that I know very well at home, I'm not paying any attention whatsoever. I'm glad you made that point. It’s such a good point. Another question I get asked all the time is, “How do you eat dinner alone?”   It's great. I'm used to that by now. It's funny. A lot of the women I know are uncomfortable eating dinner in a restaurant by themselves. That is something you have to put your big girl pants on and go do it. What are you going to do? Not eat? Hide in a corner with your takeout? Go do it. Here's the thing. No one cares. I’ve finally figured out after all these years that if someone is staring at me, which does happen, I know why. It's because they're curious. They're curious about something. Whether it's why I'm wearing a backpack in this town or why am I sitting by myself or, “She's speaking French with an accent. I wonder where she's from?” People are curious. They're not out there like, “Look at that girl. She's by herself.” It's not like that at all. It's not like you're wearing a big L on your forehead. Think about it with you. If you see someone solo walking down the street of your town with a big backpack on, aren't you curious? “I wonder where they're going. What are they doing? Are they traveling?” It's all curiosity and it's not negative. If you're worried about what people are thinking, that's the first part. It is not negative. If you can figure out how to make that place comfortable for yourself, like for example, one of the things I love to do as I travel and as I'm at home is I love craft beer. I love trying different beers all around the world. You could do this with wines or cheeses or whatever, anything that has to do with a restaurant. What's your thing? When I get to a new place, a bar or whatever, I love to sit down and get a new beer. Beer is like home to me. I can do that anywhere in the world. I have the thing that I can go to that's my company. I work at breweries often. I will go to a brewery and get a beer. I call it a focus beer, #FocusBeer. I work that way. It's part of finding comfort anywhere I can be in the world. Those things matter. I will make sure if I'm going out by myself, I will get a drink. Something that makes me feel a little like maybe takes the edge off, I will get a beer and I will enjoy myself. I will people watch, whatever. You can choose to get out your phone and have a conversation with someone across the world if you want to or you can choose to put your phone down. You can bring a book. It doesn't matter. It's about you, it's not about what other people think. It's funny because sometimes I'll pass by a restaurant that's super full. I'm like, “I don't know if I want to go into that one all by myself.” If I pass by a place that I can see that there is a table where I might feel comfortable, that's where I'll go in because I'm still introverted. You’ve got to take care of yourself. That's what it's about, it’s taking care of yourself, making it comfortable for you, and adventure. I find too, if I'm traveling solo, I'll have more opportunity to meet locals because they feel more comfortable coming up to you when you're traveling solo than if you're with other people. If you're putting out an energy that says, “I'm approachable,” then people will approach you for sure. For people who don't want to be alone. Maybe you're only traveling solo because no one else wanted to go with you and you'd rather have a buddy. I highly recommend staying in hostels. It does not matter how old you are. You can find hostels with a private room, which is what I like to do. The beauty of that is you have an immediate community if you choose to have it. You can meet people in the communal areas. That's something that hotels do not offer. Finding either like CouchSurfing, staying at a hostel or staying at an Airbnb where there's a host on site and you can expose yourself to other people. If that's where you are in your travels, your life, and you want to be around other people, then put yourself in those positions. It's easy to retract and do things on your own if you want to be solo. That's easy. In fact, you'll probably still get approached because people are curious. There are other people who are solo who are going to sit down at the bar next to you and start talking about beer with you, and realized you're not Italian and be curious about where that accent comes from. I love that about hostels. I learned that for the first time about a few years ago because it is lonely. If you go to the hostel community rooms, you meet the people. If you're not staying in the hostel, my week time of being alone is cocktail hour. That's when I want to talk to somebody. I don't care the rest of the whole day, dinner, no problem, but at cocktail hour, I want to talk. Go find the bar next to the hostel because that's where they'll be and they're traveling solo too so they're looking for somebody to talk to as well. What advice would you give someone who's considering traveling solo for the first time?    Go and don't be afraid. I don't think you're going to regret choosing to travel solo. You're going to learn something that's time well spent. Getting out, seeing the world, any of these things, these are adventures. This is our one life. We get one shot so go do it. You'll find that you're much more resourceful than you realize. You're going to be the one with a story to tell afterward. I encourage you to try it, test yourself, get out there and make it happen. --- Next up, let's hear what Monica has got to say about solo travel. After her interview, we'll get a guy's perspective. Can you start by introducing yourself and perhaps telling us your age? I'm Monica Aranguren and I am 58 years old. How did you get into adventure travel? Quite honestly, I found myself single again. That was back in 2007, 2008. I started to do a lot of hiking on my own at that time. When I got to my 50th birthday, I decided I wanted to do something bigger and that's when I started to look into adventure travel and planned to go to New Zealand at that time. Was that your first trip to do the New Zealand hike? I take it that you were going solo because you were single again? Yes. I didn't want to leave adventure behind. That's great that you're adventuresome. How did you make the mind shift to say, “I'm going to go on my own?” because it's a scary concept for a lot of people to go on a trip all by themselves. The comments I've also gotten from friends when I've let them know what I'm doing. I've been an independent gal all my life and it's like let's push on through. I was like, “I'm not waiting for life to happen to me. I've got to do it. I'm going to go on these trips because I want to see these places.” That was my motivation. Did you do that on your own solo or did you go with a tour company or how did that work out?   The New Zealand trip I went with a group. I went with Active Adventuresthere and had been making different trips of that nature since. Our regular audience will recognize Active Adventures as one of my favorite companies and affiliates. I'm super excited that I will be going on the same trip that Monica went on. Monica, how do you decide where you're going to go? Sometimes I see a photograph and I’m like, “I want to go there.” I might get a vision in my mind of a place I had been thinking about and then I start to investigate the location and how I might be able to get a taste of it. Are you still traveling now? That's been many years since you were single. Are you still doing solo travel as your primary way? Is that all you do or do you mix it up with others? How does that work? I've made some group-led trips. I've also done some that are self-guided where I'm still with a company that's moving my belongings, setting up the itinerary and the maps and all of that, but I'm doing it on my own. I would imagine when you're in the group setting on the guided trips, that also gives you some more socialization. Can you talk a little bit about that? Each experience is a little different. Meeting people from different places and learning about them, joking with them, creating songs with them, eating with them, all kinds of things. It's a lot of social interaction with the group. When I'm on a self-guided hike, it's a little quieter, but I also tend to favor that sometimes because I like to be in the quiet of nature. Sometimes I like to interact with the culture on a different level. I enjoy that piece as well. What are the pros and cons in your mind of solo travel? The pros are that solo travel lets you expand a little bit more in "getting out of the box." It lets you meet new people that you might not otherwise meet when you're traveling with a companion that you've known for a while like a friend, family member, whoever that might be. Cons, I don't think there are any. I will say I choose a single room so that I don't get any snoring so I can sleep on my own. For me, that's important. That would be the only con for me if I can't sleep. That's why I tend to choose a single room. Other than something like that, I can't think of any, quite honestly. Since I lost my husband and now that I'm traveling solo, the thing I'm always getting is, “Aren't you afraid about the big bad wolf, getting raped, mugged or whatnot?” Can you talk a little bit about the safety issues?       I have never felt not at ease. I've always felt safe on these trips. With a group, you're surrounded by your group all the time because you're doing all the activities with that group. The only time you're separate is maybe if you have a specific day that you have in a particular town on your own. You might visit that, but never any concerns of safety in that sense. When I've been on self-guided tours, in the case of the company that I worked with, I had a GPS, I had instructions and I had a phone. I had a contact I could call 24 hours a day if there was an issue. I always had someone who would check on with me. I felt like I was supported in both styles of travel. How about loneliness? Is that ever an issue? I would say during the self-guided hikes because I might see something and not have anyone to talk about it. Other than that, not really. When I'm with a group hike, I'm with other people. I've always got companionship with me. Another thing I always get is how do you eat by yourself? I've been asked that as well. I carry a book with me and go with it that way. I've gotten used to it. I'm not very self-conscious about it and enjoy interacting with the waiters, waitresses and the hosts wherever I'm eating, and enjoy myself that way. There's also more attention and curiosity when you're traveling solo and that you get a lot more local interaction, which I enjoy very much and think of as a plus. That is true, especially if you're at little small restaurants. The host or the owner might chat with you more, which is great. I was on a trip where an older gentleman, I was walking around and I had my camera going, came up to talk to me in Italian. I was in Italy and he was talking to me about how he had owned a camera like that. We had a nice little chat and then I was back on my way. That was fun to be able to chat with him for a while. If somebody is sitting on their couch saying to themselves, “I’m like Monica, if I don't get off this couch, I'm never going to see the places that I want to see.” What advice would you give them so they get the courage and the confidence to go try this on their own? Don't wait. If you're attracted to making this trip, do it. It will open up a whole other level of possibilities, experience and independence. Do it and enjoy yourself and don't wait for another opportunity. Have you found that solo travel is important too, that it's somehow changing who you are?   I'd love the companionship, but it supports my being independent and doing my life. Living my life the way I want it and taking advantage of the opportunities, especially outdoor hiking opportunities, while I can do it. That's how it positively helps me out. It empowers me. When I get back from one of these trips, I'm like, “I did that.” If I can do that, then I can do this, whatever my current real-world problem is. It's self-empowering. If maybe a particular trip is going to be a little more challenging, I've got to rise to the occasion to work out and get read. It feels great when I'm out there and accomplishing it. It's an empowering experience and one that supports a good sense of independence and moving forward the way you want. Have you kept up with any of the people that you've met on your trips? I have. I made a trip in the Mont Blanc area of France, Italy and Switzerland a few years ago, back in 2016. There were four singles on that trip actually. The four of us have had a couple of reunions. Our last one was in Toronto. We always go out a little hike and then eat out and see wherever we're visiting together. It's a lovely experience and this time, we were also able to hook up with a couple that was from the Toronto area that had been on this same track and got to have a lovely dinner with them. It was a great time together. I found that usually in each trip, there are one or two people I'll meet that we ended up becoming friends. Even if it's just Facebook friends, we keep up that way. In fact, when I go to the UK, I will be staying with a gentleman and his girlfriend that I met in theWest Highland Way for a couple of days before I start the long distance trek on the Cotswold Way. I'm excited about that. Can you tell us some of your favorite stories about some of your trips? I know you went to New Zealand. When you look back on New Zealand, what's the one story you tell? It was deciding to do the bungee jump. There were only two of us in a group of ten that had the courage to do that. I'm glad that I did that and the rest of the group cheered us on. I had a blast doing that. It was a little scary and I was a little nervous once I got on the plank that I was supposed to drop off from. It was so freeing and so much fun to be hanging down on this large rubber band. I'm happy I had that experience, especially celebrating my 50th birthday then. You've also gone to the Galapagos. What's your favorite story about the Galapagos? What struck me is there are many amazing animals, penguins, sea lions, fish and iguanas. It's fascinating to be surrounded by these wonderful creatures that are not timid at all with humans. That was wonderful. I remember, in particular, going snorkeling and seeing manta rays, these giant ones underneath floating and then swimming below me. It was amazing to see their size and beauty. They were golden and had some black spots on them and they were moving on their leisurely pace. It was fantastic. We did cover the Galapagos episode. We also covered Mont Blanc, which you've done too. What's your favorite story there?       This is a social story. All the hiking was fantastic in particular because we were above the tree line a lot of the time. That was beautiful to see these huge snow-covered mountains in your face and you are looking at them. It was a splendor for me. The social story is that the group I was with, a few of us somehow got into rapping while we were hiking. They come up with these silly tunes and that made me start to create this particular rap, based on all the food that we were eating. I presented that at the end of our tour at our last dinner. One of my colleagues in the group backed me up, making all the funky little rap sounds. We put it together and it was a hoot. We had a great time doing that. That sounds fun. That's a great story. You've got another fun place you're going to, which also has been covered on the Active Travel Adventures Podcast. Tell us about that. I’ll leave to make a trip in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, north of Venice. I'm very excited about that. I'm excited to be back with a group because I've done some more self-guided hiking in the last couple of years. I'm going to be with a group again, which I look forward to. I'm looking forward to the scenery and the exercise because that's what we love about hiking is the workout too. It's going to be good. Annie, who I interviewed on the Dolomiteepisode, has traveled all over the world. She's done everything and she said that was the perfect trip.She said it was the best mix of exertion, the hiking, the scenery, the people and the foods. I’ll carry that with me for sure. Any other thoughts on solo travel or adventure travel you'd like to share? Seize the day. There's so much to see out there and so much to do. Get out there and do it. --- There's nothing like going on an adventure. Finally, for our last interview on solo travel, we're going to get a guy's perspective. Can you start by introducing yourself, please? My name is Jason Waitkins and I am 37. How did you first get into adventure travel?   My first trip was in 2003. I wanted to visit New Zealand. I was reading about it growing up and it sounded like a cool and awesome place. The Lord of the Rings came out and that propelled me even more. I'm like, “I have to go here.” In 2003, I went. I didn't want to go there just to sightseeing. I wanted to hike. That's what drove me into that being my first trip. Were you already pretty active before you got into adventure travel? Yes, I hiked. I grew up and my parent's house is right next to a section of the Appalachian Trail. I grew up knowing, “That's the longest marked trail in the United States,” and all that. I hiked the sections of it nearby. I then branched out from there. There are some pretty nice and interesting trails not far from where I live. Where is that? New York. I'm in what's called the Hudson Valley region. I grew up in Garrison, which is the town south of Cold Spring. It has become a hikers town because there are a few challenging trails near there. It's easily accessible from New York City. On the weekends, a lot of hikers come up on the trains because you can easily get off at the Cold Spring Station and travel around and you don't need a car. You can work your way back to the station. Our topic is solo travel. Is that something you've always done or is this something new for you? I pretty much always did solo initially because growing up, it was a small town. I was one of the few who liked adventure travel, so it was only me. I enjoyed it a lot. I always join a group usually. If it’s a tour, there's a group I usually end up joining. If they're not solo, then they are either with a friend or a spouse or whatever. We are there for the same thing. It's a good way to meet new people. What would you consider the pros and cons of solo travel? My best thing is I can pretty much go when I want. I can center around my schedule. There's no coordination. If there are two, three or more people traveling, it's going to be harder to get time off from work, for example. For me, I prefer solo traveling for the most part because it's easy to coordinate with myself. I look at the dates, “This trek is going here and I can go here at this point and I have a certain amount of time off I can take.” I did one adventure trek with my father not too long ago and we do have to coordinate. There was a little more work involved to make sure, “We're going to do this. We both have time off. We can both get there without issue. We’re both fit enough. We both know what we're getting into and all that.” There are pros and cons to each, but for me, I have a set of places I'd like to go, a set number of countries or treks that I'd want to do and want to visit. To me, it's easier. If I don't know anyone else who wants to do it with me, I go ahead and do it. You make an excellent point because not only do you have to coordinate the time schedules but also the physical difficulty rating is consistent for both parties and all parties. At the time, my father had some knee problems at the moment, but at the time, he was okay. It was a not too challenging trip, at least graded three. We always look at the gradings of the trip with a grain of salt. You have to know what you can and can't do. It's better to read the descriptions rather than just reading by the number they give. The company we were with, they assigned numbers one through six, six being the hardest and this one is graded two. Afterward, I say, “This was more like a three,” and it was because we were in Scotland. There are a few sections where there was no trail, it was pretty much bushwhacking and it was muddy. Walking through that section was quite difficult more so than it was. Even our leaders said that. You have to be careful. Make sure everyone can do it and make sure you know what you're getting into. Female solo travelers have a few different concerns than males. Can you talk about safety as a solo traveler from the male perspective? I personally have never been worried about my safety, but it is always a consideration. My first big travel was to New Zealand, which is generally a country more on the safe side. My next travel was in Peru, which is a developing country. I read up quite a bit on it. What vaccines do I need to get? What is the crime rate? I always read up on the countries I'm visiting, although you also have to take those with a bit of a grain of salt. A website I usually go to at least at first to check out the country I'm visiting is the US State Department website because it gives descriptions on visa requirements and any vaccines that are recommended. I always try to look that up. It also tells what the crime is. However, it is over-exaggerated to a degree. You always read about the bad things and I also look at what they say of the crime is. However, it tends to be over-exaggerated sometimes because you will only read about the bad things. They'll always say there are very high crimes and there are police corruptions or there's this or there's that. You’ve got to be aware of your surroundings is what I always do. When I was growing up because I lived close to New York City but not in it, going to New York City, I was always told like, “Put everything in your front pocket, not your back pocket. Watch out for muggers. Watch out for this or that, anyone who tries to bump into you.” You've got to be diligent and to do that. As a solo traveler, the first time where I was there ahead of when the official tour, I was joining started was in Peru in Cusco. I want to go there. I was worried about acclimatizing to the altitude and so I got there a day ahead of the main tour and walked around. I was feeling winded at least at first. I ended up adjusting perfectly fine. I was looking in all directions and making sure there were a lot of people around. No one ever came up and I never felt unsafe, but I was extra careful. The thing I do is a lot of the pants I wear for general walking around have zippers on them. I don't know if that helps or hurts. My biggest concern is my passport or my wallet getting stolen. Let's talk a little bit about what you feel when you're doing an adventure, whether it's hiking, paddling, cycling, and you do it solo. There's the possibility that you get hurt and there's nobody around to help you. Do you have any concerns about that or is that one reason that you do group travel? I experienced that personally. A couple of years ago, I was hiking in Acadia National Park in Maine. I ended up slipping and falling and not able to stand. I was traveling solo at that point. I had to take out my cell phone and I dialed 911. There were a few trekkers who walked by. This was a day hike. I wasn't backpacking or anything like that, but still, it was a very rugged terrain. A couple of hikers nearby stopped and said, “We'll wait until people come and get you.” They had to carry me off and that was a humbling experience. I kept thinking, “I'm not going to fall or this isn't going to happen. I'm still within civilization. I'm not in another country.” I can only imagine what would have happened if I was on the Inca Trail, where you have to hike for three days. What would have happened if that happened? Having a group and having a leader there who at least always had a radio or a cell phone to contact whoever that is, it’s quite comforting and more so now than it was many years ago. I did an episode on safetyon adventure travel and also another interesting story is the episode Part Two of the Kilimanjaroseries where our guest had to go down the mountain on a stretcher. It's a very interesting episode in that regard. Let's move on from the scary things and let's talk about how do you choose where you want to go next. When I first started this back in the early 2000s, I had a bucket list. The main two were I want to visit New Zealand, I want to hike there, and I want to hike the Inca trail. I was reading about how beautiful the trail is, how it's a great payoff ending up in Machu Picchu, which is also beautiful. After that, I started making a list of countries and places I wanted to visit and then looking at, “I want to visit here. I want to do this. Where's this located?” My biggest goal after making the Inca Trail was Kilimanjaro. I said, “Where is that? That's in Tanzania. That's in Africa.” I went from there. “What else is there?” Choosing that trip, there are a lot of tour companies that do Kilimanjaro and the one I ended up picking with was one that was doing a specific route up the mountain. It had extra days. It was more expensive, unfortunately, but it had extra days while climbing and it did a specific way. It did the Western Breach if you're aware of that trail, which most companies do the other way. This one, we did the Western Breach. We stayed in the Crater Camp, which is also rare for that, but I figured that was good for getting used to the altitude. That's why I ended up going with that tour company. Beyond that, there's a list of countries I'd like to visit. The main ones were Kilimanjaro, Galapagos was one, and the next one that I haven't done yet is the Alps, which is on my bucket list. Basically, I said, “Where can I hike that I haven't hiked before?” I started looking at the companies I've gone with before and a few other notable ones. I look at what they offer to see if it's financially feasible, if time-wise it's feasible. I pretty much go from there. I have a semi-life goal to visit every country in the world. I don't think I'm going to get there, but I want to visit and hike everywhere I can. I go with the ones I want to the most and I've done quite a few of them but there's still quite a few left. Have you found that solo travel has changed you in any way? Initially, I don't know if I felt different. I enjoy it like that's my vacation. That's how I get away from it. My first few trips, I wouldn't even take my cell phone with me. I'd leave it at home and that was my disconnection from the everyday hustle and bustle. As far as changing me, I don't know if I have an answer for you. It's helped me grow a certain way like enjoying because I live alone. I'm single and pretty much live alone. To me, it's a great way to meet new people because even if you're not with a group, you're always going to meet someone on the trail most likely. That's the way I interact with people, my fellow hikers. I don't know if it changed me in any way other than that. It's just something that drives me to continue going. I have places to visit. I want to keep going. Have you kept up with any of the people you've met on the trails? A few but not too many. There are a few like with Kilimanjaro because that was such a small group and that was a long track. It was a long trip. The whole trip was eighteen days, but to trek up the mountain was nine days total. We got to know each other well. We still communicate through email every once in a while. It’s usually around the anniversary, which is late January. We usually send emails saying, “It's been five years, it's been six years, how is everybody doing?” There are two people who I do send a Christmas card to because they send one to me each year. We write down what treks we've done or what we're planning on doing. They sent me one a few years ago and they said, “We finally made the Inca Trail that you talked about. It was as you described it. It was great.” I always write down what I did. “I did the Galapagos. I did Nepal and all that.” A lot of people, when they find out that I'm going to be traveling solo, say, "Aren't you scared or don't you get lonely?" What advice would you give somebody that's on the fence and trying to decide whether or not they should try a solo trip? Try to join a group of some kind, an adventure trekking tour where you'll be joined with other people, preferably a smaller group. A nice number would be between eight, twelve, fourteen people is probably ideal because then it's not too big and it's not too small. Do that. Try to look up an organized tour of an area where you want to visit, whether it's Machu Picchu or somewhere in Europe, wherever. See if you can find a tour company that has a group that you can join because of the way I see it, everyone is there to do what you're doing. We're here to hike this trail. We're here to visit this landmark or whatever it is. That's going to be a thing you have in common. Every trip I've been to, I'm nervous when I step off the airplane, especially if it's a country where English isn't the first language. I made it through passport control. I handed them my passport. They stamped and I went through. I'm like, “Where's the meetup point?” I'm always worried that I'm going to miss the meetup. It's never been a problem. Usually, they always say, “The leader is going to either hold a sign or they're going to be wearing a brand of shirt of some kind.” I came back from Ireland and we had to meet in Belfast in a small out of the way bus station. There was a bus station and the train station and they're both connected by a hallway. I was walking back and forth a couple of times through it because the leader was late by five to ten minutes. I was worried like, “Am I missing this tour? What's going on?” I ended up seeing, “There she is.” She ended up walking through and she was trying to find parking because parking was limited in that station. Everyone nearby walked up and said, “I'm part of this group.” I get nervous for the meetup, but once the meetup is done, we all say hello, and we're all like, “Let’s go. Let's do this.” By the end of the trip, we're all saying our goodbyes and saying, “It was a pleasure to meet you and this was fun,” and everything. If you're worried about traveling solo, to sum it up, it's good because you're going to be with other people who are like-minded, possibly other solo travelers, and you don't have to worry too much about the organization. Everything's planned out for you. You just got to get to the location. You make a good point. When you use a tour company, they pretty much take you by the hand. You don't have to worry about the logistics of getting to the different places, which can be quite complicated, particularly if you're traveling solo and you can't juggle cars or whatnot. It makes it a lot easier for you, plus you're solo but with company. In certain countries like I'm about to take an Italy trip. I was going to take a few days ahead of the tour to visit some of the cities and I sat and planned. That was fun now because I can quickly look up, “I can take the train from Rome to Venice. That sounds good.” What hotels are nearby and whatever? I'll just join. My whole plan is I've got to get to where I meet the tour in Venice. After that, all I’ve got to care about is my flight home is the day they drop us off like, “That's it, done. I don't have to plan anymore.” If you're new to the program, I do a Travel Planner for each of the destinations that we cover on the show.You can download these for free by going to the page for each corresponding destinationor go to the directory page and click on the destination and get it from there. If you sign up for my monthly newsletter, you will get them automatically for free. It's my way to help you plan your adventures with confidence. It will have weather information, safety information, recommended tour companies and suggested itineraries. Everything on a handy, usually a two-page printer-friendly with active links document so that you have on one piece of paper everything you need to know and do to plan your adventure. How about we finish up with you sharing some of your favorite stories from your trips. When I name off some of the adventures I know you've taken, can you tell us your favorite go-to story when you think about that destination? Let's start with Annapurna, which is one of my most popular episodes. For those unfamiliar with Annapurna, it's in Nepal. I wanted to see the Himalayas. I didn't want to do Everest because I had already done Kilimanjaro. I was climbing so high to see altitude for the sake of saying I climbed it. That's not on my bucket list anymore. Annapurna, that whole circuit was very beautiful. You see a lot of mountains one after the other. Each one beautiful and the highlight was completing it, getting to Annapurna base camp. I forget the altitude offhand, but that was actually a trek. We had pretty good weather and we got up early one day and saw the sunrise over. I got some great photos of the sunrise over the Himalayas and that was probably the best. It was maybe not of the hiking part, but it was interesting being in the city of Kathmandu, the capital city. It was quite interesting that it was organized chaos on the roads. The section where we went, the Thamel area, where there are a lot of trekkers. The roads are very narrow and everyone was walking around. It was quite a cultural experience to see how people every day get up and do this, but from a hiking standpoint, every day had more beautiful views than the next. What about your first adventure trip to New Zealand? My favorite location, I enjoyed the area where we went to Milford Sound. It was very beautiful. It rained that morning and then it stopped. Our guide had told us this is perfect. When it rains there will be a lot more waterfalls that you'll see because a lot of them just trickle or whatever while it's sunny out. When it rains and after the rain, you'll see a lot. That was beautiful walking around that area. I also enjoyed Mount Aspiring National Park. That one we walked in and we camped in a hut for a night. It snowed that night. On the way back it was snow covered. It’s not a lot. It was maybe an inch or two, but it was cool to have pictures going one way where it's all green grass and clear, and coming back, everything was snow covered. It was beautiful. How about your Galapagos adventure? Did you do just the Galapagos or did you also do mainland Ecuador? I did both. In terms of hiking, I enjoyed the mainland better without a doubt. I can't remember the town we were in, but it was a town down in the jungle. We did what was called reverse canyoning, which is climbing up waterfalls. These waterfalls aren't like the raging waterfall. They are not the Niagara Falls type waterfalls. It was an awesome and challenging, but not too challenging, hike through the rainforest. They told us ahead of time, “You're going to get wet. If your camera isn't waterproof, don't bring it.” It was nice. It was a three-hour hike to where we were going through rivers and up the waterfalls and whatever. It was an hour or two off the trail that was dry to get back to where we were. The Galapagos itself, honestly, the best thing was snorkeling and Kicker Rock. We came up close with hammerhead sharks and they said, “You don't need to worry.” There were quite a few times where I was like, "Are you sure we don't need to worry?" Swimming and seeing, I saw at least three types of sharks. There's a Galapagos shark. The whitetip reef was the other one. We saw quite a lot. There were tons of wildlife in this little area snorkeling. We spotted eagle rays. They are beautiful, that’s another thing. I can't say enough how awesome the sea turtles looked. Everyone that I saw was beautiful. Whether it was sitting still in the areas where we saw them resting or whether they're swimming. The Galapagos, hands down. It was the snorkeling. We did hike a couple of spots, but these hikes were nothing compared to the mainland. You've made some killer trips. How about Patagonia? The biggest accomplishment with Patagonia was definitely the W Trek. That was difficult. It was the second hardest trek I've been on because the way we did it was the first day we go up to Torres del Paine or The Towers of Blue. That was twenty kilometers total round trip. That was the first day and by the end of the day, everything was hurting. I was like, “We've got four more days of this? What did I sign up for?” After that, the next day was only eleven kilometers and it was mostly flat. That was a joke there. They always would say mostly flat. It was never properly flat. It was always ups and downs all over the place. That’s the whole completing the W Trek. After the second day, I was like, “This wasn't too bad. I'm going to do this.” I've never backed down from a hike before. “I'm doing this.” The very last day was beautiful viewpoints over the huge Grey Glacier. That was the biggest accomplishment and the best hike of the Patagonia trip. When is your next adventure? I'm going to Italy and hiking the Dolomites. It's my first trekking in mainland Europe. I've trekked in Ireland and I've trekked in Scotland, but I've never trekked in mainland Europe. It's been on my bucket list and I'm doing it. I'm sure you're going to enjoy that. Annie who I interviewed on the Dolomites, who has traveled the world and done amazing adventures all over the world, said that was the perfect trip. It was the perfect mix of culture, food, hiking people, everything. She said it's marvelous. I'm looking forward to it for that reason. Do you have any final thoughts for our readers? The only thing I can think of is if you're worried about solo traveling, just do it. Go with a tour company. You don't have to organize it completely by yourself. That sounds like a daunting task even for me now. Do it. You won't regret it. I agree because you can plan regular travel on your own but trying to plan the logistics for adventure travel is super difficult. I always recommend using a small group tour company. Seeing some of the trips I've been on, there's no way I would've been able to know to do some of these things or been able to organize it. There are a lot of logistics going on there with fees and permits and all that. Not only is planning an adventure trip logistically difficult oftentimes, particularly in foreign countries, but it can also save you money by using a small group tour company. You don't have to rent all the different vehicles and hire different guides in different places. It's all planned for you and you have the benefit of having other people help share that expense. It's been great having Jackie, Jason and Monica on the program to help share their insights in solo travel. I'd like to share with you some of the rules that I've made for myself now that I'm doing solo travel. These are in no particular order and many don't apply if you're with a small group tour because all this is taken care for you. If I'm truly traveling solo, here are some of my rules. I want to know where I'm staying that night by noon. I don't mind winging it and figuring out my itinerary and such when I get to a place, but I want to know where I'm going to rest my head. I'll make sure I book something at least by noon of the day that I'm going to be staying somewhere. I make sure I arrived before dark, in case I get lost or run into some other complication. I always keep my eyes on my food and drink, making sure they don't leave my sight. I don't go to the restroom and leave my drink on the table so I don't have to worry about somebody slipping a drug into it. I'm careful of overly friendly locals, particularly if they have no reason to be overly helpful. You might find somebody on a bus or a train that says, “Let's share a cab,” or they're all of a sudden your best friend. Often that could be a setup for a con that it's their partner in crime that you're “sharing the cab” with. Be a little bit cautious about that. Get your hotel to call you a taxi or take the ride share programs like Uber or Lyft and use somebody that's got multiple stars. When you get to an area, ask the locals about the area. Show them a paper map and have them circle areas that you should avoid. When traveling, always be aware and keep mindful of your situation. Be aware of who's around you and if the hairs rise in the back of your neck, your subconscious has seen something that you may not even be aware of. Take action and don't be afraid to make noise telling somebody to back off or make a scene. I know we're raised to be polite, but that is not the time to be polite. That’s the time for you to make a commotion. When you're in an area particularly if you don't know, always have an exit plan. Figure out how do you get out of the situation should something arise. Make sure somebody knows where you're going to be and what time you should be there and at what time they should raise the red alert. If you're traveling internationally and don't want to use up your data, still periodically turn on your phone so that your phone registers the GPS of your last known location. If you're not sure if solo travel is for you, try doing what I call doing the plus one. Wherever you are in your comfort zone, push it a little bit so that way you stretch your boundaries. Build up your courage, build up your self-confidence, and get the benefits that I keep talking about by doing this travel. You're not going to regret it. If you've never taken a trip by yourself, why don't you try going for a weekend? It doesn't have to be some big exotic place. Go someplace by yourself for a weekend and see what it's like. Maybe after that, you'll have the courage to try a week and then perhaps after that you might try going on some international trip. Each time you do it, push yourself just a little bit more outside of your comfort zone. In all the times I've traveled and all the places I've gone, I truly have never had an incident that I can even relay to a problem. You heard the same thing from our guests, particularly Jackie who has been everywhere, has never had an incident and she's been doing this for many years. We also talked about a whole bunch of destinations. You can go to the directory page and click on any of the different destinations and see all the cool places we've covered on this program. Finally, I'd like to ask you, as I'm planning the adventures that we're going to be doing, can you reach out to me? I don't care if it's email at Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com, via Facebookor our Facebook group, at Twitter @Kit_Parks, on Instagram, @Parks.Kit. Let me know where you do want to go so I can put together the programs that you need to plan your next big adventure. I will be back with another great adventure. Until then, this is Kit Parks, adventure on. Important Links: Traveling Jackie The Budget-Minded Traveler Travelling Jackie blog CouchSurfing Active Adventures Cotswold Way– Past episode Galapagos– Past episode Mont Blanc– Past episode Dolomite– Past episode Safety– Past episode Kilimanjaro– Past episode Directory Page– Active Travel Adventures Annapurna– Past episode Patagonia– Past episode Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com Facebook– Active Travel Adventures Facebook group- Active Travel Adventures Closed Group @Kit_Parks- Twitter @Parks.Kit- Instagram Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Active Travel Adventures Community: activetraveladventures.com Active Travel Adventures Facebook Page Active Travel Adventures Facebook Group Active Travel Adventures Twitter Active Travel Adventures Instagram Active Travel Adventures YouTube Kit Parks LinkedIn

Apparently, A lot of you don't understand what we are facing on a global scale. Maybe I've been too nice... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/beatriceharris/message

They say love hurts, but it doesn't normally involve magic chains and a giant stone fist, right? Maybe I've been doing it wrong. Anyway, we'll have to come back to that later - it's time to talk Go Go Power Rangers #19 with writer Ryan Parrott! Which page in this issue is a stealth callback? What terrible sin did Ryan not even notice he'd committed? And, after five and a half years, Ranger Danger finally tackles the ultimate question: what's the deal with hot cross buns? All these answers - and more - on this episode of the Ranger Danger Boom Room!

Am I live? Am I live? I felt like the phone was gonna have a small meltdown, like a literal meltdown. I hate meltdown. I'm trying to find that perfect ... What the fuck has happened here? Holy shit. My laptop looks like somebody drew on it with crayons. I think it's because I've got this pen in here in my laptop case, from the W, that has a pink eraser on the end of it. I also have a Lego man in my Chanel laptop case. Seems normal. I don't know how that Lego man got in there, I mean, I can easily guess, but I didn't realise I had a Lego man in there. Hi, hi, Karen. What's up? Tell me hello. That's what I want. Say hello to me people. How are my visuals? Because I'm in that thing of like, I'm in the sun, so I can't see anything. Put my other live on pause to join me live. Joseph always comes on and announces himself. He tags his own name in, is what he does. And then he puts his phone number in, He does this every time! All right, where is my face? Okay. He always puts his name in and then, he puts his phone number in. It's the best thing ever. Okay, I am live. Please share, et cetera. Okay, I just had to message my team. Hello me, hello you, hello world. You guys, oh my God, oh my God, I've been brutalised. It's okay, it's all under control. I've had a traumatic past 70 or 80 minutes. I went to get a massage, as I do, and like my massage really fucking hot. Prank calls on. Who's gonna prank call me? Prank call me, do what you want. I like my massage ... I can't say it Australianese anymore, it just comes out Americanish. I like 'em fucking hot, you guys. Traditionally, over the years I've had some of the top sports therapists in the world work on me. Because I was in that industry, and I just always accessed, of course, the best people in the world the same way that I do now. I've had many comments over the years. One time, Charles Poliquin, he's one of the leading strength and conditioning coaches in the world and trains Olympic athletes, and he's fricking high level, right? He was doing active release therapy on my ... I broke my elbow like ten years ago, so he was doing active release therapy through there. And I was laying actually on his bed in his hotel room, because we had a course and it was there I asked to do the treatment. I was just talking to him while he was doing this work, and I've seen him do this work on other students, back in the day. Sometimes, they would have to be actually held down on the table, or on the bed, or whatever, because how excruciating it is. He strips the muscle right back to the core. I remember I just started talking to him and he kind of stopped and he was like, "Wow, you have a really high pain tolerance." And I was like, "I guess I just know that it's beneficial, or whatever. It's not that I can't feel it, but I just choose to opt into it and allow it." The other week, I had probably one of my best compliments ever. That made me so happy, which was my tattoo artist Vlad said to me, as we were finishing up for the day, he was like, "I really can't tell if you're happier when you get more pain or less pain. Like when we finish earlier, or when we go longer." I'm like, well there's benefits both times. But just now, I had this massage that was so fucking brutal that I kind of stumbled out of the ... it was like an eight dollar fifty, Bali massage, right? And I swear he pretty much created new striations all over my body. He stripped all the muscle just right back to the core, to the point where I kept being like, "Okay I'm gonna tell him stop, I'm gonna tell him stop." It was so freaking excruciating. I was like, he's gonna explode my calf muscles or then my glutes, or wherever it was. And I just kept going, but I can do one more, I can do one more, and I just breathed through it. But my god, I feel like every piece of muscle in my body has been tenderised and pulverised like if you were gonna cook me up for dinner, I would be the most amazing fillet in the world. I mean I get Bali massage all the time, but it was next, next, next level. So then I stumbled out of there, and I was gonna go eat. I was supposed to be sitting down and eating now. That was my plan that I had in my head. I haven't eaten yet today, but I was just like, there's no fucking way I can eat after that. And frankly I don't know if I could think or write anything, or what I'm gonna do. Hang on. My team haven't even seen that I'm live. Let me just share this livestream over. So, I just kind of stumbled back up here and decided to do a little livestream first, before I obviously go and maybe eat something. But I thought, let's talk about purposeful pain, because I feel like it's an area that people could probably stand to get their ass kicked a little bit around. Do you know what I mean? You tell me first. Do you actively lean into pain? Do you actively choose pain in your life? Do you actively go looking for pain? Purposeful pain, right? So, maybe let's talk about what purposeful pain means. I'm not a fan of pain just for the sake of pain. Like, for example, sex comes to mind. Lots of people I know are into pain in sex, for example. To me, that doesn't actually feel purposeful, and I don't like it. So I'm not trying to ... Well, I don't mind a bit of mild choking. But I'm not trying to make some point like I just like pain, or something like that. But I've really learned over the years to understand what sort of pain is purposeful, and what that means by it being purposeful I guess, and how to differentiate maybe. And I really feel ... Okay, let me check this sharing because she doesn't seem to have seen it. Hang on. Okay. Are you not online? Okay, hang on, let's share. I sent my assistant [inaudible 00:06:44] a message that I was live and that she should share it because she does that for me usually. But I don't think she's online, so I'll try and do that now myself real quick and then we'll continue on. Because I think that this is probably, I do feel that this is probably one of the, I guess keys, for me. This is kinda one of the big keys that has made a difference in my ability to create massive results and massive success. And obviously it doesn't always mean physical pain, but we can talk about what it does mean and how it applies to business and how it applies to receiving money. Because I really want to come on here today and give you some powerful content that you can walk away with that's gonna help you to access a higher ability to receive. Money, yes, but also I guess other things that you like and desire and choose. So if that sounds good, and that's what you want to talk about, and obviously whatever else comes up along the way. Send me the love hot shower, because you know I like to see it. Send it to me. All right I think we did our sharing. Okay, okay. Cool. Yep. All right, cool. So that's done. So, yes, massage right. Like I work out a lot, I have incredibly tight muscles apparently and everybody always comments on it whenever I get worked on. So to me it's like, well, if I'm gonna go and spend that time doing that, I really don't wanna just get into like a relaxed, floaty state and then walk out. That's nice from time to time, but I would rather put myself through something that is so excruciating that I'm using my freaking labour breathing exercises to get through this massage. Every moment through the entire hour thinking ... and actually told him 90 minutes and then I think he didn't hear me and did an hour, and at the end I was kind of grateful for that. I was like, "I think that was good. That was, I think, an hour." I'd rather get through a massage like that where every moment, every minute is fucking excruciating and I don't know if I can keep going. I definitely have some kind of ego that comes into it, right? Like I feel tough, or I feel like a badass where I'm fully aware that a very small percentage of people can take the level of pain that I can take. In that example or other examples as well. And I've been told this many times, that I'm way more okay with it than even some of the biggest, strongest men that therapists work on. So I'm like, "Booyah! I'm a badass!" So that's part of it for sure, I'm not ashamed to admit it. But it's also, I'm just thinking of the outcome. I'm just thinking of how tight my hips and glutes get, and my hip flexors, and how that impacts my back. I had a back injury from a couple years ago that still gives me some grief. And how I want to be able to lift fucking heavy in the gym, and I wanna be able to do all the things, and I want to be able to go crazy with my workouts. And I wanna be able to run and play and chase after my children, and I wanna have incredible mobility and flexibility as I get on in later years. So to me it's like, am I going to endure this one hour of pretty fucking extreme, excruciating pain getting my muscles stripped back to the core, or am I gonna say, "No that hurts too much. No no, stop. Please stop." And then walk around with muscles that are wound and bound and don't allow me to move freely. To me, that's obvious, but you've still gotta put yourself through that pain. And I guess reality is people just don't choose this. And this is really, I feel, such a big conversation that's relevant and critical to the results that you may be getting in business. So in business it's not typically gonna be a physical sort of pain, is it? But it can feel more scary or more confronting than that. So for example, let's say that you know, maybe because you watch me and you follow my stuff and you see how I show up and you see the sort of work that I do with my Rich Hot Empire clients to my Inner Circle clients and so on and so forth. You know that I'm about consistency, right? I'm about showing the fuck up every single day, bringing the message, bringing the truth, no holds barred, authentic. And then selling every day as well. I guess I'm pretty well known for putting myself out there and not holding anything back and kind of baring my soul, and baring all and letting people hear my vulnerabilities and my struggles and the ups and downs. And the reality is, it's not just because I show up every day and I message and I preach and I teach and I sell that I have the business that I have. And I think you know this but I think we can talk about this in a bigger way, right? Anybody can come onto the internet and post shit online every day, livestream, message, et cetera, et cetera. That doesn't mean you can build a cult-like loyal tribe following who are going to buy all your shit, often without even reading it actually and regardless of price point. It doesn't mean that you're gonna have some of the highest conversion rates in the industry which is what I have and what I teach my clients. It doesn't mean that you're gonna have this incredible connection where it really is like a soulmate thing with each of your clients and community members. In order to get that, it's gotta be not just, "Oh yeah, you know, I posted every day. I message and I show up and even make stuff online and sell it from time to time." It's really gotta be, are you facing into the fire every day? And okay, it doesn't always feel like that. Not every massage makes you feel like you just went through a giving birth-type experience in terms of the pain levels. Not every workout in the gym feels like you're left on the floor sweating and bleeding and nearly dying and your higher self is saying, "Yes, but are you dead yet? No, then get up and keep going." Which is definitely how I trained and kicked my own ass this morning. I was like, nobody in the hotel gym downstairs here, where I'm at, at an AirBnB here in Bali but the AirBnB's like the penthouse in a hotel. That's where I'm at now in my little garden. And nobody watching, nobody checking on whether, like, there was no one there to impress, right? There was no one there to show that I'm a badass. I do like that, I'll admit that as well. I like when people see me work myself hard in the gym kicking my own ass. I like the looks I get from guys and from girls, kinda like what the fuck? I go hard, right. But today, and many days, there was nobody there to watch that, there was nobody there to impress. Okay, maybe I'm telling you about it so maybe I'm looking for validation now. But it was more that I want to feel the way I want to feel, right? I want to feel alive. I want to feel like I'm really leaving everything there. I want to feel like I fucking showed up. For my workout, for my business, for my messaging, for my life. Because I, probably like a lot of people, I've had enough time throughout my life ... Hey, Sarah! Are you still in Bali? Are you in Bali? Where are you? Are you in Uluwatu? I've had enough years in my life, and I'm sure you can relate, where I've showed up in a half-assed way. I did that. I freaking did that. I showed up in a half-assed way for two marriages, I showed up in a half-assed way many times over the years for different stuff to do with my fitness and my health. I've had many phases where I'm like, "Well I am working out every day and I am eating well, so why am I not maintaining or getting the body I exactly want?" Well I wasn't, like ... there's showing up and there's fucking showing up, right? And I've had many times in my business journey as well. Honestly it comes and goes, it ebbs and flows. There's times even to this day where I'm like, "I'm kinda flaking around here. I'm 'showing up' but I'm not showing up." Oh, almost time, okay. And I just kinda feel like, the more that time passes and the more you learn about what success really takes and the more you learn about yourself, and maybe also the older you become, you kind of like, "I'm not here to fuck around, bitches. I'm not here to fuck around." I mean, I've always been this sort of person and I'm sure you as well ... send me the love hot shower if this is you, right? Since a young age, I haven't been a person to fuck around. Overall, I've shown the fuck up and that's why I'm such a high achiever and always have been in my life. And so yeah, I'm quite certain that you can relate to that and that's you. But as a high achiever, maybe there's a flip side of sometimes we just are never satisfied and we're never done and we always want more and we always know we can go harder. There's kind of this stuff that goes into play with that where we go gotta learn sometimes to be nice to ourselves, and compassionate to ourselves, and have a break. So yeah, that's part of it. But it's also that acknowledging something, and here's probably one of my big points that I wanted to make today. It's about acknowledging, "You know what? I am, you are, we are, the ones who we like it. We get off on the pain. We enjoy it. We thrive on it." Yes, there's an ego aspect that comes into it. Yes, there's like, "Look at me, bitches. I'm a badass." I wanna be the person in the gym, particularly the woman in the gym but even overall, I wanna be the one who's training the hardest. I like when people are like, they're not even quite sure what the fuck's happening. I like when the massage guy is sweating and he needs a one hour nap afterward. Me and the comments that I get. I like that when I leave the tattoo parlour on Saturday ... even though I was really feeling all that pain all day Saturday, I did not really feel like in my flow zone with my inking work I had done a few days back. But when I left, I laughed at the chick in reception who's like, "You literally never complain, I've never seen ..." She's like, "You are so hardcore, I've never seen you make a face, I've never seen you complain all the times you come in here. I've just never seen this before." I like that. I do like it. I feel good about myself. But it's not just that, it's that I wanna feel fucking alive in my life, right? I wanna feel that I'm showing up for my life. I wanna feel that I'm pressing play. I wanna feel that I went all in. I don't wanna get through the day and be like, "Well I went to the gym and I hosted a blog and I did a livestream and I tick, tick, tick." List your way through your fucking life but did you ever know you were alive? That's not what I want and it's not what my clients want. It's not what I, you wanna work with me? It's not the sort of work we'll be doing in Rich Hot Empire, for example. In the Inner Circle, we go into the fucking fire, we go into the fray, we get down on the floor bleeding and sweating and crying ... metaphorically, generally, hence what we get up to on retreats. That can be all sorts of interesting adrenaline shit. Potentially, why not right? But we wanna be, I guess, confronted. And we wanna have to face into our fears or our resistances or our, I don't know, I guess that side that is in all of us. Even the most badass ones amongst us, which is us, that side that's kind of like, "Well, you know, you don't have to. You could just do this and just do that and that way, hey, you still did it. You went to the gym, you did your message, you did your sales activity, your putting your clientele out there, so where's the millions of dollars?" So to come back to the point that I was making about how I show up and why I have the level of cult-like following that I do and what I teach you when you work with me as a client in order to build your soulmate tribe and to have incredible conversion, right? People paying and saying yes without even reading in full, blah blah blah. All that stuff, right? For that to take place, you're gonna have to go the extra mile. You're going to need to be that version of yourself who reaches into their own soul and is like, when it hurts, when I can't keep going, when it's too confronting, when it feels scary, when I wanna hide, when I feel like oh who's watching or who's listening, when I feel self-conscious, when I feel vulnerable, when I feel tired, when I feel like I don't really have to ... I am gonna pick myself up and I am gonna keep going, or I am gonna take a breath and I'm gonna ask myself, "Yes, but is this purposeful and what is the result that I want?" Now, I'm gonna be the last person to say to you that you should endure pain, or putting yourself out there, or not resting or taking care of yourself, purely to make some kind of point. No, I'm not pro-burning yourself out. I'm not pro-never taking care of yourself. I'm like the queen of fucking self-care. God, all I do I feel like half the time is journal and massage and this to me is what I wanted to do. This is feeding my soul, doing this right here. I don't want to be sitting in the sun doing nothing. I'm like, "Okay, I'm in my bikini. I'm getting my tan on. But I want to do content, that's what feels good for me." So you know, it's not that I'm saying don't take care of yourself. Of course not, and I think you know that. But it's about what is the outcome that you want? If you're gonna show up anyway for your business, if you're gonna get your message out there, if you're gonna freaking reach inside of you and create something and put it out there to the world, if you're gonna tell people what's up and what actions to take, are you gonna do it from a perspective of, "Well I did it. I got through the hour," or, "I wrote the damn email," or "I built the landing page," or "I build the funnel," or "I did an opt-in, and so where's my millions of followers and millions of dollars. Where is it? Why? Because I'm doing everything Kat does?" It's like eh, not really, maybe technically in a very 2D, 1%ish sort of way you're doing like a grey scale representation of what I'm doing, or what my million dollar clients are doing, what my six-figure or modest six-figure dollar client is doing, and even what my clients who are just getting started are doing who are like, putting themselves out there from the get go because they actually fucking decided to back themselves. It's a huge difference, right? There's a huge difference in the energy that comes when you're fully fricking showing up, and there is a huge fucking difference in the result. So I feel like what we get to look at, and what I am passionate about looking at with my clients and exactly what I'm going to be doing starting next week, for example, when I dive into the next round of Rich Hot Empire, which I'll tell you about in a moment. It's about not just like hey, here's the building blocks of success. Yay! Let's message, let's do livestreams, let's create videos, let's do an update, sure, let's build a fucking funnel. That's easy, I'll show you how to do that. Let's do sales pages, let's do sales flow, let's, you know, tick all these boxes. That's like, I can write that on a fucking pdf for you. You don't need a mentor to tell you that these are some of the building blocks of having a successful online business. You can just observe that. But where you maybe need a mentor to come along and kick your ass is to help you repeatedly stare into that fire, stare into that heat I guess, feel what feels like pain or resistance or massive fucking confrontation or, "Am I really gonna say that? Am I really gonna put that out there like that? Am I gonna reach in to my soul and let what's inside of there out? Am I gonna reach in and grab them by the soul?" Which is what gets people following and responding. You need somebody who has I guess kind of gone there before and done that and showed up that way in their life, but you'll still need to flip that switch for yourself, with or without a mentor being part of the picture obviously. My point is that I show up for my clients. I'm not here to fricking say, "Hey, do some messaging. Do some sales activity. Here's how. Blah blah blah." Obviously I teach my clients all that stuff, but really what I'm here to do is to reach into your soul, help you to reach into your soul, and then bare it to the world. Because anyone can write a fucking 2,000 word blog post or a sales demo or a sales pitch or any of these things. And if that's your approach, and your approach is to get through that checklist of things in business so that people follow you and buy, I'm gonna tell you you'll be waiting a long fucking time in order to get those results that you're looking for. If right now you feel frustrated or you feel like you don't understand why it's not working, well here's the reality. It doesn't matter! It doesn't fucking matter if you are the most consistent motherfucker on the internet as far as posting your content, if we can't feel your soul. And for that to take place, yes, reality check. A lot of the time it is going to require you to lean into pain. A lot of the time it is going to require you to feel massive discomfort, massive confrontation, massive vulnerability, fear of rejection, fear of what people think, fear of God knows what else happening, fear that it won't work, fear of what your fricking mother or family will say about the way you put yourself out there. "Why are you always telling people all your problems on the internet?" A lot of my clients have family members say this sort of thing to them. All of these different things, that is what I mean by purposeful pain relevant to business. It would be so easy for me so much of the time to not show up the way that I show up. If you follow my content for any more than like a week or two, you're gonna see that I post a pretty high amount of shit that is really fricking raw and it's very vulnerable and it's about my most intimate, transparent, personal stuff. Not just business stuff, well it could be business stuff related to my fears and doubts and insecurities in my journey. But I also post a lot of stuff to do with love, and relationship stuff, and then moving out of my marriage, and how I feel about being a mum, stuff that's really vulnerable. Don't look at me or anybody else that does this and imagine that we've got some kind of superhuman self-confidence because we just don't. It's about commitment to the message. It's about letting what's inside of my come out. It's about trusting and knowing that if I drop my bullshit story about it being scary or painful, and if I let what I know is meant to come out out, then I'm gonna get a result. But for that to happen, yeah, there's that moment where I maybe feel an idea for a post coming through me or I maybe notice myself about to say something on a livestream. And there's that moment where you're like, maybe I won't though. Just like in the massage earlier today where there was many fucking moments for the entire hour where I'm like, "I can tell him stop, I cannot take this any more." It was so fucking painful. It was right on the edge of my tongue, and then I was just thinking, "But I can feel him releasing muscle tissue so deep down to my bones." I felt like he was massaging my bones, he was so deep, and the table was fucking going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards from the amount of pressure he was exerting on me. He's like a strong dude and he was sweating like a motherfucker. It was full on, I'm gonna tell you. So I kept being like I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna tell him to stop, it's too much now, this is crazy, nobody needs to endure this much pain in a massage, I can still get a benefit if I tell him to back off just a little bit. But I could feel the muscles being stripped away, I could feel oxygen coming back into the muscles, I could feel this deep release in areas that give me a lot of day-to-day grief to be honest. And I was like no, it's a fucking hour of my life. Do I want to get through the hour and get the outcome of having like, increased amazing mobility which I now have, which I can already feel in my body as a result of that? Or am I going to back the fuck away? And when it comes to pressing play, pressing publish, pressing post, getting your content out there it is the exact same thing on repeat. You're gonna have that moment in time where something comes through and it's like this is what I should say to people. And maybe it's fiery, maybe it's ranty, maybe it's extremely raw and it feels terrifying and it feels like you're literally stripping yourself naked and showing it to people, and there's that moment in time: "I didn't have to say that, right? Who's gonna know? Who's gonna know if you never pressed publish?" Well you will. When it comes end of this year, end of the decade, end of your life, you're gonna fucking know from the fact that you didn't create the fucking life you were born for. You didn't create the impact that you came here to create, you didn't make the money that you could've made either, you didn't live into your destiny. And it comes down to all these moments in time when we either lean in to purposeful pain, and you can substitute the word resistance or anything like that as well, or we turn away from it. I really think that, to be the leader of the leaders, which is what I am ... My clients in Rich Hot Empire are the leaders. They're the ones who are the 1% within the 1%. In my Inner Circle, which is my kind of follow-on from Rich Hot Empire. Yes, I'm talking about Rich Hot Empire a lot because it's going live next week for my April intake. Actually [inaudible 00:26:01] if you're watching, can you drop a comment about Rich Hot Empire now? And I'll talk about that in a moment. You know, I lead the people who are the leaders, who are the 1% of the 1%, who know that they were born for more. My clients didn't come along just to learn how to make fricking six figures on the internet. They know that they're here to make millions, impact millions, and change the fucking world. And they're willing to do what it takes. But that's just not something you say, right? Everybody says hell yes to that. Everybody says I'm willing to do what it takes no matter what it takes, I am the 1% within the 1%! I'm a revolutionary fucking leader! Et cetera, et cetera. It's like okay cool, then in that moment did you lean into pain or did you pull away from it because it felt scary, because it felt confronting, because you worried about what your fricking best friend from high school was gonna say about it or your mom or your person that you've got a crush on or whoever else it is. Or you're just worried that people are gonna not like me, people are gonna think I'm crazy, or what does this have to do with anything anyway? And it's not just about your messaging, it's about all the different elements of building this empire. I look back through the history of my now coming up to 12 years marketing online, and now I'm at a point in my business ... And this is what a lot of people who want to work with me want, a lot of people who do Rich Hot Empire inspire to this for example. I'm location-free, not everyone wants to be location-free but I think everyone wants to have the freedom where they could pick up and go wherever they want any time they want, right? A lot of my clients like to be location-free. I'm location-free, I do do what I want all day. I really just follow flow, I don't do anything that I don't want to do. I have an amazing team who do all the bits in my business that I used to have to do myself, that I don't really want to do any more. I have an incredible community, thank you for being here. I have what are called [inaudible 00:27:46] my community, meaning that it's total [inaudible 00:27:47] connection it's not just like a group of people and an email list that I sell shit to. It's an actual tribe, it's a family, it's a community. And I get to sell and make money doing what I love, and doing my purpose work in the world. I guess I got to now where it's kind of like the holy grail of being an online entrepreneur right? Of course I'm still striving, as a high achiever I'm never done and I'm completely like, "I'm good enough, I've done enough, I have enough." I'm in full love and acceptance and this moment right here is perfect and I really mean that, and I have everything already. And I'm gonna take on the fucking world and I'll never be done, and I'm sure you probably feel the same. Or a lot of people feel the same. If you don't feel the same, you definitely should not message me about working with me one-on-one in Rich Hot Empire. Just to be clear. But if you know that there's always gonna be more, then you're definitely somebody that would be a potential client of mine. But I guess what I was trying to say is also, we're getting to the point where like I'm past the money shit, right? I moved past the money struggle, I moved past the fear of not being able to pay even for food let alone rent. I moved past the years, and it did feel like years, it was years actually, of frustration and turmoil and why aren't people buying my stuff, and why is it when I go the real offer that I wanna do that I don't seem to get a response. I got through all that, so I have achieved all the dreams and goals that I had for many years as an online entrepreneur. And that's now what I work with my clients to do and it's the most amazing, tremendous honour ever. And when I look back at how I did that, there are literally tens of thousands of moments over the past 12 years and before that even, in my life before the online world which was an actual thing, where I lent into pain. I felt like I didn't wanna do something. I mean, it would be impossible for me to count the thousands of workouts that I've done where I didn't feel like getting up in the morning, where I wanted to hit the snooze button or I just didn't really feel like going to the gym. But if I had of not done those, I wouldn't have cultivated myself into the person I am now. I don't even mean that I am fit and in-shape and all that, and that I just get better and better with age. I get younger with age as well, by the way, just so you know. But mostly what I mean is that it's part of me, it's so easy now, it's automatic. It's who I am that I take care of my health and fitness, because there was a period earlier on where I had to kick my own ass around all the time. I remember day after day after day after day for years, the alarm going off at ungodly-o'clock. And then even when I had a newborn child and it was repeatedly, "But I want more sleep," or I want this or I want this, and then it was like, "Do you want the fucking outcome bitch?" And I did what I needed to do to get the outcome. I was so outcome-focused from so early on in my life, but at so many pivotal stages as well. I think being a new mom is definitely one of them. With business also, it would be impossible for me to try and remember the thousands of blog posts or videos or livestreams or also paid content that would not exist right now if I had of lent away from pain, if I had, "Oh that one's uncomfortable," or "I don't really feel like writing today," or "I don't really think I've got anything to say, I feel silly," or "Nobody bought my last offer that I put out there so now I'm gonna walk away with my tail between my legs." I just repeatedly showed the fuck up, and you have the choice to do this as well. I know if you're in my community and you're telling me, "I know you're showing up, but you know that there's showing up and then there's showing the fuck up right?" I just think that life is this continual process of moments in time where we get to either lean into creating destiny or we turned away from it. For me personally, that is a big guiding light for me. It's a big force inside of me or a driving force or it's a [inaudible 00:31:40] where I make my decisions ... I talk a lot about I make my decisions based on [inaudible 00:31:45] connected to that what fucking feels right for me is for me to achieve my destiny and for me to achieve my purpose. And for me to live a standard of excellence in different areas in my life. I just refuse to accept that I should have to settle, sacrifice or compromise on a single issue in my life. And I refuse to accept that view either, but guess what? For me, or even that for you is probably not gonna be enough. You're probably gonna have to press play on that shit for yourself as well, right? But this is what I believe, for my clients and for my community. I believe you can have it all, I believe you can have it on your terms. I believe you can make millions of dollars, impact millions of people if that's what your messaging truly is, get your true message out there, get paid for your purpose work, get paid every day where you're literally like, "I didn't do anything! I just do what I want all day! I totally follow flow!" But then actually I'm fucking showing up. I'm bearing my soul to the world every day. I'm letting my art out every day. I'm selling every day. I'm building my business every day. I'm doing many other things that I haven't even touched on here in my business every day because I want the damn outcome and because the outcome is purposeful. Not because I necessarily felt like doing it at that time. The many many nights that I've gotten back online when my children were already sleeping, the many many times that I've grabbed even 10 minutes here, 15 minutes here, to jump on and create something or do something. It's just been this continual process for over a decade now of marketing myself online of eye on the fucking prize, take action from that place. Just tuning in, tuning in, tuning in to where it is I know I wanna be and then being that version of myself. I just think it's shocking and astonishing to me how few people seem to get this, and I think it's very sad. I look around and you just repeatedly see these people like, "Oh I was tired so I slept in and I didn't go to the gym." And then, "Not fair, why is she my age and has kids and she has that body?" Okay bitch, how many fucking times for how many fucking years for how many decades now was I in the gym when you were like, "I was tired," or, "I didn't know what to do." Neither did I when I started. It's a never-ending conversation. Tell me some things, what are you thinking? Do I use the five second rule or am I motivated? Do I use the five second ... I can only read half your comment, Britney but I know what you mean. Well, I didn't technically use like a five second rule. I know what it is, but what I do is I think about the outcome. So when I don't feel like doing something, I will tune in and I will ask, "Is it still aligned for me to do this?" If I don't feel like working out, there's certainly occasions where I won't work out because I'll kind of connect in and I'm like, "Well do I need to have a rest or is it that I should definitely go move my body?" And I get the answer based on higher self and soul. And most of the time it's kick your own fricking ass and do the gym thing because as soon as you start you'll be like yes, I'm so fricking glad I'm here. But sometimes it takes like, 20 minutes, 30 minutes before you're like I'm so glad I'm here. And same with jumping in and turning the laptop on and doing some actual work, not just fucking around on Facebook, in your business. It's like "Uh, I don't really have anything to say. I don't feel inspired today. Nothing's coming through me, and nobody's really been engaging on my content and my last thing didn't sell anyway and uh." And then you fuck around on Facebook instead or you just don't even turn the laptop on in the first place. You just get out of the habit, you don't even make the fucking habit, or what if you just had the habit and what if it was about showing up based on where you want to be and based on what would that next-level version of myself do? That's the way I do it. I just go from the outcome. So when I say purposeful pain, to me that also means being result-based. Acting from the result or the outcome of what I want. Lisa says I have to remind myself, even if I feel the message ... I can't read your comment, it's cut off on the screen. Hang on let me read some comments over here. Christine says call you out when you think you're doing what you want but kinda know you're doing what you think will sell. Well that is right, being brave enough and courageous enough to put your true work out there. For sure. I don't know where you're coming in ... it has disappeared ... let me do a little refresh. So I wanna tell you guys about Rich Hot Empire though, I'm so passionate about this programme. There is a comment here, it's in the pinned comment you can actually read that and check that out. It says, "Rich Hot Empire is tick tick ticking towards you. Are you ready? It's motherfucking time. Work with me for six weeks personally, one-on-one, to grow your perfect cult tribe." This is such a cool programme, by the way. "Create and launch a low through to high-end empire and set up multiple recurring income streams to take you to seven figures and beyond doing what you love." So what I do is I work with the revolutionary leaders, the artists, the messengers, the 1% within the 1% badasses who know they're meant to play at this level and beyond. I've created a million dollar per year business doing what I love, like I've sort of been saying, based completely on my purpose work. Like, cool cool to make the money, that's definitely cool and I appreciate and love it and I continue to increase my income. But better than that I get to do what I love, it's based on my true purpose work. And the way that I've done that is I've sold low-cost products, programmes, information products, right through to high-cost stuff. So I think I have stuff as low as $21 up to ... I'm just thinking, oh no even more if you pay ... I don't know like $85,000 would be my highest price point. That's kind of like if a couple come into my Inner Circle together, for example. Or my Inner Circle currently is $6000 per month or $60,000 up front for the year. So it's $72,000 essentially. So that's my highest price point for my private one-on-one clients. Rich Hot Empire is one-on-one for six weeks, it's nothing like that price point obviously. Just so we're clear. But how I've built my business is a lot of low-cost products, a lot of moderate-priced products, and a limited amount of private coaching and high-end stuff. And I've done that by following soul and following [inaudible 00:37:37] but I've done it obviously also over the years by repeatedly saying yes to what I know is gotta be done. Rather than what fear is feeling or what resistance is feeling, I've done it by baring my soul and putting myself out there and showing up fully for my message and for my hustle and for my community. And not just fricking checklisting my way through. So this is some of what I'm going to be teaching you in Rich Hot Empire. So it's a six week personalised mastermind intensive with yours truly. One-on-one access to me as your private mentor throughout that entire six weeks. In fact, as soon as you sign up you're gonna already get access to me on my private client channel, we officially are kicking off next Monday April 30, US time. So if you're interested in knowing about working with me at this level and having my help to build your online empire, or to take it to the next level from where you're at, you can message me about that. You can message me on this page or over on my personal Katrina Ruth page. It is for entrepreneurs at all levels. What joins my clients together, what my clients have in common with one another and with me, is being that badass leader who knows that they were born for more and who refuses to do it based on normal rules of internet marketing. Fuck the rules, fuck the system, I show you how to do it by being you. By reaching into your soul and getting it out there. So I've had many people do Rich Hot Empire who completely were just getting started, and I've had others get started in Rich Hot Empire who were already doing over a million dollars a year in income when they first began with me, and anything in between. And the content is six weeks of structured content as well as six weeks one-on-one with me. I show you exactly what to do and exactly how to do it in every element of cult tribe building, creating your offers, launching your offers, doing your sales pitches, getting your offers out there, selling high ticket as well, creating [inaudible 00:39:20]. Anything you can imagine to do with an online business, I have trainings in there for you. You get to get all that training for life, you get my support on it and my team's support, advertising stuff as well all the way through the programme, and then you get me there by your side kicking your ass into alignment and massive fucking action all the way through. So some people come in and maybe they've already got some of this stuff going on and they don't necessarily need all the content, and others are jumping through every element of content. What I do as your mentor obviously is guide you to where your focus needs to be and support you in order to bring that to life. What else do I want to say? That's mainly what I wanted to tell you about Rich Hot Empire for now. It is honestly just such a life-changing and business-changing programme, I've been running it since 2016 now. It's the only thing that I actually do on repeat. It works so damn well and I'm very proud of it and I'm very proud of my clients and their results that have come through with that. So I'm super excited to jump in with everyone who's going to be starting next week. It is a private coaching experience so numbers are pretty limited. So if this is something that's speaking to you and you want to know more about working with me one-on-one, the very best thing to do now is to go message me on my personal Katrina Ruth page ... I might just [inaudible 00:40:25] coming in, um, no that's gonna come ... Well, you'll find it. You know where I am. Or you can message me here on the business page, I just kind of prefer getting messages on my personal page. I tend to go into that inbox more. So do that and then what I'll do is I'll send you a full overview that breaks down all the six modules and all the content that we do so you're understanding exactly what we're covering but also how the one-on-one side of it works, and obviously everything else you need to know as well. Tracy says, "Just jumping on. Why am I not notified as soon as you're going live?" You can choose that, right? You can choose to get notifications always. Have you done that on my business page or maybe just my personal? What is your opinion on failure? Have you ever felt like, maybe I can't do it, or have you always been quite confident and badass? I think I've always had a level of confidence. I was really fortunate to be raised in a way where I was repeatedly told that you can do anything you want ... my mom would tell me that you're like, better. Like above-average, successful and intelligent. To give it some context, I was a very shy, introverted kid and I really felt very unattractive and super uncool. And I was uncool in a kind of school cool sense, I always had like the wrong clothes and the wrong food and everything. But I was a kind of bookworm, literally to the point where on the play breaks I would go and hide in the bushes and read a book. I had friends as well, I wasn't like no friends. But I didn't feel attractive and I didn't feel good enough. So I think I would go to my mom when I was maybe my daughter's age, like eight, nine or ten. And I would feel bad and sad that I wasn't like the pretty girls or the cool girls. And I just remember my mom saying over and over, "Yeah but ..." Well she didn't say yes, she didn't agree with me that I wasn't pretty I think she [inaudible 00:42:16]. I was though, I look back at my photos now from when I was a kid, and if you see my daughter who I post photos of she's so beautiful, and I was a beautiful child. I can see that now I'm like wow, I really felt so ugly and so unattractive and uncool. And I just felt not good enough, I was super introverted and I had massive self-worth shit. But my mum would always also say that I'm like the most intelligent one, which was true I was always top of the class, and that I'm gonna be the one who creates whatever she wants from life and that these girls are gonna lose their looks basically, and then we'll see what happens. She's [inaudible 00:42:51] for sure. And then I'm gonna be the one that like, creates whatever I want out of life. And it wasn't just trying to contrast me to other girls, I'm probably thinking of one or two conversations that stand out for me when I was feeling bad about not feeling cool enough. Hey, Johnna! So you know, that was just maybe a few conversations but overall I was always told you're incredibly intelligent, you can do whatever you want, anything that you decide to do you're going to be successful of. So I had an amazing amount of support I guess, growing up. I know not everyone has that so I'm definitely very grateful for that. Oh my god, you had the best month ever! Send me a message, tell me about it! You have to join Rich Hot Empire! Move in to Rich Hot Empire now! Johnna just did four weeks one of them with me in Empress, which is one of my other one-on-one intensives. It's closed at the moment. And she just said I had the best month ever, and I did it in a week after working with you. Yay! Of course, because we flick that soul switch baby, and step up and become who you're meant to be. I'm so excited for you. So I was kind of confident and badass I guess, a lot of the way I always believed in myself and I just always knew I wouldn't live a normal life. To me that was never a question in my mind, I didn't doubt it at all. At the same time I had massive self-confidence issues and I was continually scared of failure and for years I didn't put myself out there either, to answer that question. I knew that I was meant to do something like this, but like a lot of people I felt like, "But how? Where do you start?" And also for me, this was back in 2002, 2003 where I first really started to be like, I should do seminars and I should be an author, but there was no online industry like there is now. So there was nobody to model, there was no fricking business coaching Facebook groups to join. You couldn't even find a business coach on the internet back then. So I kind of put it off for years I guess, and eventually I got that ball rolling. I think like a lot of people I've had contrast between periods of my life where I've felt like a total badass and periods where I'm like, not taking action at all. And I think that continues to be true for me and for all people in all areas. I know in the area of love and romance, I've had a lot of fear stuff going on probably for years now. Like I was in two unhappy marriages back to back and then I left my marriage, coming up on two years ago in the middle of this year it'll be two years that I've now left that marriage. And then even when I was in the marriage, I had massive self-worth and fear stuff feeling like it was impossible to have amazing, epic, [inaudible 00:45:22] love. I was quite bitter about it actually, I didn't believe in it and I'd just completely given up hope on it. I was so bitter about it, to be honest, that I would just judge other people's relationships and I didn't believe that anybody was genuinely happy in their relationships and I just kind of looked for proof of that. And of course I found it. So I'd kind of given up, I guess, although not really because through it all I still had the belief that no, I think you can have it all. I believe you can have it all and I know that I'll [inaudible 00:45:51] find a way. Then, even once I left my marriage, it's just been a journey since then of I guess learning to be brave enough to believe what's inside of me. And repeatedly putting myself into uncomfortable conversations or situations and following soul flow, or following what feels aligned and right. That's been the most terrifying fucking experience of my life to be quite honest with you, way harder than business stuff. Maybe I've just forgotten how tough it really did feel in the period in business where I wasn't making money yet and I was repeatedly posting shit on the internet that nobody was liking or commenting on my stuff, right? Back in the day, like a lot of people. Now I'm used to that, people know me, I expect that when I do a livestream that people jump on, people are excited I'm live. Well guess what? I went through all those years as well of nobody watching, nobody listening, nobody pressing like, nobody purchasing, and then when I did put my soul offers out there definitely nobody purchased because I was like known for fitness or then I was known for business strategy I wasn't known for like soul stuff. So things kept falling flat. This is what I mean with purposeful pain, right? I kept going. I stayed the fucking course, I continued to act from faith. And then yeah, in like the last few years in the relationship side of my life it's been kinda similar to that in a different way. To me it feels like that's been more scary or harder because it's more intimate I guess, you're really laying yourself on the line. And you're like, "Fuck! Am I gonna send that message? Am I gonna speak my truth, and like show my heart? Oh my God, not again. No! It's too scary!" And this fear of rejection and you feel like an idiot and you just fucking do it right? This is my whole point, that's purposeful pain. Pain's not always the right word to use, I get that. But I used it because I had the massage earlier and it was kind of in my head. It's acting from purpose, it's acting from faith, it's acting from belief. It would be so much easier to not say what you want to say to that person, to not speak your truth, to not put that flag in the sand and say this is what I believe. And with business, all the time, it would be so much easier to not put yourself out there on the repeat when you're not getting the response you want. Well, honestly, just honestly, if you want these sort of results. If you want to build a seven-figure, multi-seven-figure empire and beyond, doing what you love, being one of the very few people in the world who legitimately gets to follow soul flow every day, like I do and like my clients do and like I will help you to do if you want to work with me in Rich Hot Empire. You've just gotta be willing to be that person. That's the long and short of it. And you know this, you have got to be willing to be that person who puts themselves out there in ways that others won't. Alright. I trust that you got something out of this. Please leave me a comment, or a love, or a share, if you feel so [inaudible 00:48:31]. I do like to come back and read my comments later, I don't read them all while I'm speaking and preaching obviously. But hit me up, I'll read them, and have a read about Rich Hot Empire really. I just encourage you, if you've been thinking that at some point it might be time to work with me one-on-one as your mentor, this is just an absolutely incredible thing that I've allowed out of my. I've given you my heart and soul with what I teach in Rich Hot Empire, really give you all of the kind of how and the behind the scenes and the building blocks of a business so that you have no question unanswered and you have the full support of me and my team as a private client. You get all that content for life, I teach you every possible, imaginable thing about how we make the money and do the sales and all that. And of course, you've got me there by your side. In your pocket? I don't know if I'd fit. Holding your hand and kicking your ass the whole way through. And it works so well because I let what is meant to come out of me out. And that's what I want to show you how to do, and it's just a tremendous honour to be able to do that. It's also super fucking fun. We have the best time ever. So do have a read about that in the comment there. It might be that it's time to really step up and press play, it might be that you've been thinking about working with me at the private client level maybe for some while, or maybe you just came across me. Either way it's fun. I have people jump in sometimes who literally just heard me, and others who've been gearing up towards it for a little while. So have a read, message me, I'll get you the full length overview and all the details and we'll talk about whether this is for you. Either way, do not fucking forget. Life is now, press play.

Katrina Ruth: Scary? Why is it scary? I thought I looked mystical and fabulous, like a fairy in the garden, in the night. Katrina Ruth: Hi Melanie. Hi Megan. Melanie, who says I look scary. Hey Sarah. Hey Kelly. There's many things that we could discuss. It's quite likely that we'll discuss none of them. Katrina Ruth: Hey Mandy. You're such a breath of fresh air on my newsfeed, all the time. I just want to let you know that. You're always so positive and uplifting. Quite commonly, I unfollow people left, right, and centre on my newsfeed just for being fricking boring, or annoying, or I don't know. I unfollow people. Do you guys do this? I unfollow people. Hey Claire. Hey, hey to everybody whose names I didn't see. Hi Brittany. You know, sometimes it doesn't tell me that you jumped on, so if you feel like I said hello to everybody else and then not to you, I'm not trying to blank you out. It just randomly tells me some people and not other people. Katrina Ruth: What was I saying? Do you unfollow people for being annoying? Why would you not? Or do you just let them be annoying on your newsfeed and then kind of be like, “Ugh. You're annoying,” but then you keep them there? I unfollow people Hang on, let me share this over to my group. Hello from the mystical gardens of Bali. That's where I'm at if you didn't know. I will unfollow a bitch. What's the male version of a bitch or is it a bitch as well? I don't know. Shanshera, I'm sending you love and a shout out cause I didn't know what was going on with you and I saw that on my feed not too long ago, a day or two ago. Katrina Ruth: You've been MIA on my feed. Sometimes people just go missing in action on my feed. It doesn't mean I unfollowed them, they just went missing in action. But I will unfollow a bitch or, I was going to say bitchette, but that's kind of the female version, as well. What's the male version of a bitch, Christine? Still a bitch? Christine says still a bitch. She's the expert. Appointed just then, by me. Katrina Ruth: I will unfollow somebody for putting some bullshit post up. I would try and give you an example except I unfollowed all the examples that I already saw this evening. Let me see if I can find my ... No I can't go reading their post. What if the person was on here? I don't know. You know, people put up like kind of “Woe is me" ... not woe is me. What's the word? I'm going to call it a hoity-toity post. Kind of vague. A hoity-toity post is something like, "Did you know that blah, blah, blah, blah blah?" I don't know. I've got no good examples but I saw one earlier today. I was like, "You know what? I'm done with your boringness on Facebook, person" and I unfollowed them. Cause what I want to see on my Facebook, what I want to see, what I want to see is value. Value. Value, which could be entertainment. It could be randomness and shenanigans. It could be something raw and real. Here's what I don't care for. Katrina Ruth: People try to be raw and real. You can tell when somebody's written a post ... I definitely want to see bleeding mother fucking purpose, Christine ... You can tell when somebody's written a post where they're like, "Now I'm going to be raw and vulnerable, and I'm going to share my struggle, and then people will know that I have a bleeding heart, and here is this special bleeding heart that I packaged up for you, to present to the world as a bleeding heart. So that you know that I'm raw, and vulnerable, and real." And I'm like, "No, bitch. You just wrote some shit up that you hoped would get engagement, and we can all tell, and it's embarrassing for you." Katrina Ruth: So then I unfollow them. Why were we talking about that? Why did we start talking about that, what was it? I don't know, but I nearly didn't go live cause I sat here, I stared at myself for some minutes ... Which is a confession that I do pretty frequently ... I put the livestream on. I was like, "Will we do this thing? Yes or no? No or yes?" I felt that I have nothing of interest to say to anybody. But then I reminded myself that, that's often when the best live streams happen. I did want to talk about what I said the topic was ... Let me refer back to it ... because one of my clients had asked me on a Voxer, which I answered, not so long ago. Something around she notices she's becoming an influential leader and building a following. Of course, cause that's what my clients do. Katrina Ruth: I was asked if I unfollow people, or did I initiate that conversation? I felt like I jumped in there. Did I ask myself? Was it higher self Katrina asking current less conscious Katrina? I like it when people make jokes about conscious versus unconscious, because is anybody actually unconscious, then they're dead? But at the same time, I love to be surrounded by conscious, hot as fuck, sexy people. I started talking about it because he said, ... Oh right it was all about Mandy, that is right. Thank you Mandy. Katrina Ruth: Because, you go through Facebook, and when I'm putting my kids to bed is a time when they're drifting off to sleep and I'm still in the bed with them, that's kind of the key time of day I would say when I do a bit of Facebook scrolling. I tend to avoid doing it otherwise cause it's a ghastly, ghastly fricking quick sand of a rabbit hole to fall down, if you're not careful. If you're not careful, your whole life will fall down the rabbit hole of Facebook. And I was on there earlier tonight, when I was putting ... I was like, "This is so much bullshit." Which was very judgemental of me and judge not lest you be judged, so judge me all you like, judge away. Katrina Ruth: You could judge my greasy hair, it's quite interesting what's going on up in there. You could judge that I do have no bra on, that's true. You could judge whatever you like. You could judge the fact that you could stay on here for an entire hour, and it's pretty unlikely that I'll ever get to the point, but it will probably be amazing. You can judge whatever you want, cause it's true, I do judge from time to time. But then I saw Mandy saying something about something. I don't remember what it was. I'm going to go look it up now. Katrina Ruth: I was like, "Well at least Mandy's always very positive and uplifting on my newsfeed." Is it too dark and pixelated for everybody or just for Rachel? Let me turn up my screen on my computer. No, it's already all the way up. Too bad, you're going to have to deal with it, but it looks good on my screen. Mandy has a brightly coloured question here on her page, which I found to be delightful. That was basically the entire story. Odd to see that my hair is greasy. Well that's probably better for everyone. That's fine. That is totally fine. Katrina Ruth: It doesn't matter anyway, it's Bali. There's no need to wash, or get dressed in Bali. You can just walk around looking as you will, like a vegan hippie who eats a lot of meat. That's me, I'm a vegan hippie who eats a lot of meat. I love a good vegetarian diet with steak added. All right, I'm going to try and get on point, cause it's actually a really good point. So, I was talking to my client, I was replying on Voxer, and she's noticed that she's becoming an influential leader, of course because that's what happens with all my clients. Katrina Ruth: She said, "Now the only next thing to figure out is how to monetize that". And I was like, ... well, well, I gave her an answer relevant to her particular situation and examples from her life. So, that won't necessarily apply for everybody, but essentially I was like, "Well, because you just fucking decide to." As soon ... Everybody loves a good vegetarian diet with steak added, it's the healthiest thing for you. Now I'm going to lose a hundred vegan followers. Do I have a hundred vegan followers? Don't worry, I have vegan friends. It's not unheard of. Katrina Ruth: Say what you will. I just said, "Judge not lest you not be judged." I just called it in. That was probably a foolish mistake. So, have you ever noticed that those people who have like two hundred thousand followers on their fan page, or I don't know if you know people, but I know a few people who have a couple a hundred thousand people on their email lists, or even more. I'm gonna let you in on something which may not have occurred to you, and then I'm going to tell you the fastest way to make all the monies that you want to make. Katrina Ruth: There's people have a massive fucking following who make no money at all. So, if you have some kind of idea in your head, ... or they make a small amount of money, that seems like a lot smaller than what it really fucking should be for the size of their following, in my opinion. And I've seen many people at that. Good examples often, comedians and entertainers who have really funny Facebook pages, but they clearly know nothing about monetization or marketing, and it's a very sad thing. But I've seen it with entrepreneurs as well, have massive followings and they just, I don't know, they must be going for a numbers game, quantity over quality or something. I can't be bothered talking about that cause it's just not interesting. Katrina Ruth: But, because why would you do that, it'd just be weird? My point is, or my ... I'm already bored with myself. I get so bored with myself when I try to stay on topic. I'm like "What is this? Am I trying to teach a fucking university lecture here? Do I need a slide show? Should I've made some fricking notes?" Somebody once told me that they make notes before they do a livestream. I felt like I needed to pray for them. Does anybody here make notes before they do a livestream? Katrina Ruth: Do you make notes before you go to lunch with a friend? Do you make notes before you go on a date? Do you make notes before you go for coffee? Do you make notes before you sit down and have a conversation with your children? Because if you make notes in those situations, there's many things that I could say about that, which I choose not to, but I probably would walk away backwards from you slowly if I saw you in person. But if you make ... in case I caught it, nothing against you, just in case it was contagious, but if you make notes when you're going into lunch or coffee or a date, then you probably should make notes before you go on to a livestream, since that's your way of being. Katrina Ruth: How do I stop going off on a tangent? I am definitely not the person to ask that of. Rosie asked me "How do I stop going off on a tangent?" Do you guys realise that so many of my clients say to me, or so many random people as well, not just clients, will say to me "Imagine you made notes on a date. Imagine then you got caught with the notes. Maybe you called in the right person and they wanted you to make notes, maybe they wanted a slide show, maybe they wanted a PowerPoint presentation." That's it, next time if I ever go on a date I'm gonna make a PowerPoint presentation, I'm gonna pull it out, I'm gonna say "Here's all the ways that I'm fabulous and entertaining" cause that's basically what you're fucking doing if you're making notes for livestream. Just saying, all right? Katrina Ruth: On the odd occasion of my notes, I completely ignored them. Well, one should definitely only make notes for the purposes of ignoring them, whether they're mental notes or bullet points on a Post-It. Technically, I did make a note, I made one note, which was the topic title of the livestream, in fact, I'm sorry. I should pay some kind of penance because obviously I'm making fun of people for making notes, but I always make a note, I make one note. I make the title of the livestream and then I typically forget it by about ten minutes in and have to ask what it was. Katrina Ruth: So people will often say to me "Kat, I'm just so rambly all the time, I don't ever get my point across to people, and I don't feel like I'm making any sense or being clear." And then they say to me "You're so clear and concise" or something like that. I'm like "Aaaaah, have you heard me? Are you talking to the wrong person?" I go off onto seven thousand tangents. "Yeah, I still go off on a tangent even when I've made notes" says Rachel. Katrina Ruth: Well, I'm gonna admit that back in the day, I'm not sure which day it was cause I don't keep notes on the day, but back in the day, one day, once upon a time, many, many moons ago, I would make notes when I did presentations of any kind, and then I would typically ignore them or forget them. Or, alternatively, probably give the most boring fucking seminar/workshop or whatever it was in the history of the world cause I was looking at my notes instead of looking at my soul. You have a choice in life which is that you can look at your notes or you can look at your soul. Katrina Ruth: Okay, let me just clarify the topic of the livestream, it was something about just cause you have a following you're not gonna make money. Well, the whole answer to that is just fucking decide to make money, okay? That's actually the answer to all of it. There's nothing more that can be said about it. But if you wanted more detail on it, I suppose you could join me in Rich Hot Empire, and then I teach you all the things, but I don't want to talk about it right now. You can message me about that, and I'll give you the overview of how it works. Katrina Ruth: Rich Hot Empire, six weeks one-on-one with me, it starts next Monday. It's actually very fucking structured, despite all the fun that I poke at structure. It's structured purely, purely so that you can take the structure and throw it off the penthouse balcony; which is where I'm at right now, in my Bali Airbnb penthouse. They call it a penthouse, so I think they're just trying to market it because actually you went up one flight of stairs, so it's technically one level above ground, but it says penthouse on the front door. I'm like "Hmm. I feel like this is an interesting appropriation of the word penthouse, but I'll go with it". Katrina Ruth: So when I was a kid my dad had a book called Nonsense Omnibus, it was a very hilarious book. Nonsense Omnibus, and in it had the recipe to make a nonsense omnibus cake. Let's see if we can find it, it was hilarious. Nonsense omnibus cake. This is going to be important. This is what you should do with notes, let me read this recipe to you. I can't believe I just found it. Did I find it? No, that's bullshit. They're just making shit up, hang on, let me try one more time. Edward Lear's Nonsense Omnibus. Okay, so basically you made the cake and then once you've made ... it would be more funny if I could find the actual recipe. Katrina Ruth: Does anyone know it? Is anyone's family as odd as mine? Then once you've finished making the cake, and it had all these really specific instructions about how to make the cake and then at the end it said "And promptly throw it out the window". And I don't remember why, but it was definitely hilarious as a child. That's pretty much what notes are for, you should make all the notes, you should make a PowerPoint presentation about the notes and of the notes, you should definitely put some pie charts in there. People love pie charts, for sure. If I could procure one right away, I would, but I have a bottle of Bordeaux, similar, same type. Katrina Ruth: And then you should make all of the notes, with the pie charts, and with some graphs in there, and then right as you're going in ready to present, you should throw it somewhere, quickly. Then maybe burn it, as well, just in case you get some sort of scarcity mindset and think that you need it back. That's what notes are for. To say it again, if you are the kind of person who likes to make notes before you like to go to coffee with a friend or on a date with a person, certainly you could make notes for livestream. Otherwise, I feel like you could just turn on the camera and have a conversation. I mean, I'm sure nobody ever built a fucking business based on conversation and communication, imagine that sort of horrific idea. It would be bizarre, it would be next level bizarre. Katrina Ruth: Imagine if anybody ever thought that they could build a business by communicating with people and listening to them, and engaging in like a real, sort of normal, human person, everyday fashion. Imagine if some moron thought they could build a business without 26 pre-written sales emails, and a Facebook ad. I don't know what people are thinking out there in the world. It's similar to if you want to make new friends, which is another topic that I was discussing with a client earlier this evening. She said maybe we could start like a, in the email client group, that they could start some group threads or conversations, I don't know, an accountability thread. Katrina Ruth: What's up, savage? John's just in there, he's like, straight in, commenting calling me a savage. I'll go with it, thank you. Okay, so I see this happen a lot right? I'm gonna call you guys out on this. If you join my client groups on my programme, my high ticket programme, whatever you do, and then you go "Let's all make an accountability thread so that we all have to check in with each other once a week and that way we can all become friends or something" I just want to remind you that in a normal friendship, a real friendship that's a genuine friendship, ... I like the savage part of me too ... you don't typically say "We're going to have an accountability thread in a friendship and we must check in with each other once a week". Katrina Ruth: You're definitely not the first person. I've seen it happen repeatedly. It always happens, and then people tell me about it. "We made an accountability thread" and I'm like "Cool." I don't care, do whatever you want, but that's not actually how friendship works, right? And it never lasts, they never last, and then typically people start messaging me and they're going like "Oh, I feel like I want to quit the accountability thread but I feel bad" basically. I get those messages a lot, cause it's kinda becomes like a chore. Imagine you had a friend who said to you that you've got to check in and give them an accountability update every Tuesday or any sort of timeframe, and that you would have an accountability friendship thread. I'm just saying. Katrina Ruth: The best way to do it is to act like it's already real, and actually that brings us right back to the topic at hand, right back to the topic at hand. Yes! Sometimes we go back there. So the best way to do it, the best way to make money from being a leader, let's say you already have some sort of influence, you might have an influence over four people, or four hundred people, or four hundred thousand people, well done. Maybe, you're fricking hilarious, and you've got millions of people following you already, and you don't know how to make money from it. Maybe you have done some sort of something and you've somehow managed to get people into your list by giving them free PDFs, that definitely does it, always give free PDFs, people love to get a free PDF. Give it to them, they will join your list for sure. Katrina Ruth: If you got into the fricking DeLorean and went back to 1989, I would say that definitely join your list for sure. Now, you're welcome to test it out. But maybe, maybe, maybe you did build the list in 1989 and you still haven't figured out how to monetize the fuck out of it. The point is, you just act like it's already done. Same as with making friends. If you want to make new friends on the internet, and who doesn't, it's a gross place to meet weird and interesting people, then you should act like you're already friends with them because people do like friendly people, it's a true fact. Katrina Ruth: People like to have new friends approaching them, they genuinely do, I'm not even trying, it sounds like I'm being a smart-ass for some reason, but I'm not. Everybody's out there ... I think it's just because it's my nature ... but everybody's out there wanting new friends, for sure, entrepreneur friends. How many people don't want new friends? If they're total badasses, like none of us want flaky friends who talk about PDFs and think that you've got to make notes before you can go to coffee together. Katrina Ruth: I don't have that many friends myself, but I'm always open for amazing new friends, and I'm growing my friendship base all the time. Maybe I've hundreds of friends at this stage, I don't know. A few years ago, I had no friends at all, or I only had several that I'd kept leftover from my previous life, and how I made new friends was I fucking decided to turn [inaudible 00:21:37] in my journal. Now, if you want new friends, if you want badass, entrepreneurial friends, which I would say that 99.99% of people here would desire that for sure because it's pretty normal to feel quite alone, kind of lost in the wilderness, not this particular wilderness necessarily. If you were lost here you'd have me and a bottle of bordeaux, you'd be totally fine. Katrina Ruth: There's a spire over there too, so we'd have the best time ever. Anyway, I think I might have made my point. There's nothing else I need to say about it, but it's the same with making money online. If you ... exactly, Kellie wants more friends ... everybody wants more friends, but don't all of you go friending each other off on the comments thread by offering an accountability for it thread. That's not how friendships work, you guys, you can offer a shenanigans thread, I've seen that done very successfully, and somewhat disturbingly. Don't offer an accountability thread for your friendships. Nobody wants that, I don't know why that became a thing on the internet. Katrina Ruth: I don't think people even want that from their coach. Do you want me to give you an accountability thread? Cause I give you a kind of shenanigans thread, which is my private client message channel and then you can say, you can ask for things for accountability there, as an official, but I don't think anyone wants me fricking knocking on their soul door every Tuesday morning asking for a check in. Your vibe attracts your tribe. Hey Amanda. Great advice about the PDF. I'm full of great advice about PDFs. I've many things I could say about PDFs, I've many PDFs, also. I've made many PDFs. Katrina Ruth: What is that? Accountability thread is when I run a programme, like even Rich Hot Empire which is my six week, one-on-one which starts, again for, open until next Monday. And it's fucking amazing, and people form connections, but they're not necessarily create like a real friendship in six weeks, but they obviously see that they're aligned and the same sort of person and then people want to keep in communication with the other people in the group and they want to make friends. And so then some bright spark says "Let's all do an ongoing group thread together so that we can all stay in touch with each other and be accountable" and the words be accountable are where you just moved out of the friend zone and into some kind of ... I don't know what zone that is because it's not being a mentor because, to be perfectly frank with you, people don't want a mentor with the people that they see as being on the same level with them as friends. Katrina Ruth: Even though, of course, we all coach our friends in some way, cause we're mainly fricking coaches of some form, so that's fine, that's normal, but you know what I mean? Like, delete the word accountability, if the intention is friendship. If the intention is accountability, well, good fucking luck with that, cause I'm gonna let you know most people just don't want accountability. What do I think about accountability? Well, pretty much what I just said. I think that people think that they should want it, but in the end, who wants to answer to anybody. Well, if you did, I'm gonna tell you there's a name for you, and it's called non-entrepreneur. Katrina Ruth: That is largely the problem with accountability threads. So now that we've cleared that up, the money making thing. How do you make money as an influential leader. If you have a following of four people or four hundred or four hundred thousand or four million. Well, it's actually going to happen because you decide that you're going to make money from it. It's not gonna happen because you build a fucking funnel, it is not gonna happen because you make a fabulous offer, it is not gonna happen because you made the best PDF in the history of PDFs and you gave it to your people for free ... they're gonna love you for that. They do love the free PDFs, the people, they don't really care what's on it, it's just the word free with the word PDF, people get very excited about it. You're gonna build your email list like that, hopefully nobody thinks I'm fucking serious right now. Katrina Ruth: People are looking at me like "Okay, must make a PDF, doesn't matter what's on it, Kat said so". Nontrepreneur. Exactly, a nontrepreneur. A person who legitimately wants accountability as opposed to a person who just thinks that they want accountability cause they think they should, person who actually wants accountability is called a nontrepreneur, and you should hire them to work for you in your business as your assistant. You should not try and be accountable because if it works then you have a problem which is you're a nontrepreneur. Katrina Ruth: How've we never thought of the word nontrepreneur before? People love free. People freaking hate free. The wrong people love free. Who wants a free PDF? I would unsubscribe forthwith if somebody sent me a free PDF. As if, I have no tonal inclination to be clicking on downloads in my Gmails. In my Gmails, sounds like my underwear. If you want to send me something in my Gmails, paste it into the email so that I don't have to open any fucking stuff up. I will not open stuff, not even from my own staff, I make them send it to me in a pretty format in WhatsApp, so that it looks visually attractive. I make them put it into something that's visually sexy, like literally, my weekly report that I get that I largely don't look at, but it's called Katrina Ruth's Sexy Stats and it has pie charts, for sure, and it has definitely some pretty graphics on it, which I look at and I go "Ah, looks pretty. I guess we made a lot of money" and then I ignore it. Katrina Ruth: No, I do look at it, kinda briefly. So, the making money thing, did we cover it already, do you feel like we've covered it? Do you have questions about the making money thing? Because honestly it's a very serious topic that's very serious and important which makes it hard to talk about cause I'm not so good with the serious at the moment, I've noticed. But it is a serious topic, people do tend to assume that if they have this following, they're gonna automatically make money, but then there's many people out there in the land of the internet who have a big following, or a reasonable following, and they're not making any money at all because nobody ever fucking told them that if you want to make money you gotta ask people to pay you money. That might just blow your mind, right then and there. Katrina Ruth: Actually, it took me like two or three years of marketing online back in 2006 before I came to terms with the fact that I wasn't making any money online and that it was largely a result of the fact that I hadn't been asking people to pay me, and it was kinda like "Hmm. Probably should've thought of that". I think for a lot of people here if you're not making the money you want to be making, at some point you might want to check in on how much fucking sales activity you're doing, how much promotion you're doing, how much you're putting yourself out there and actually telling people to buy from you, and it might be a little bit of a case of "Well, if you make more money, you may, in fact, have to be selling more often". And maybe you should just chose that that is a daily part of your business. Katrina Ruth: And honestly it's about getting over it, right? Guess we're going to go into preacher mode, I'm warning you, I'm just letting you know. I can feel it coming through me like a flood, like a Bali sweat flood. I think that people think that the people who are making a fat load of money online, such as myself, and a load of my friends and clients, I think that maybe people think, and maybe you think, that we just kind of always got the confidence game going or always know what to say. Even one of my clients did say to me tonight "Do you ever not know what to say? I'm sure that never happens to you Kat" or that we always are like just waking up like ready to sell. Katrina Ruth: What you might not realise, is it's not actually true. I did not feel particularly inclined to press "go live" on this livestream tonight. I didn't want to go to bed though, and it's, what time is it? It's midnight right now, midnight oh five. I was sleeping for like two hours in the car today, I was on a road trip back from the jungle and, you know when you're in that zombie state, where you're not quite asleep, but you're not awake, and your head keeps lolling down and you're definitely probably snoring in the car? I was doing that for an hour and a half. I was like "Am I awake? Am I asleep? There's a temple, there's a cow, there's a goat. I was asleep. I'm awake", it was kinda like those ones for a couple of hours so, long story short, I'm not tired right now at midnight. Katrina Ruth: But, so I didn't want to go to bed, I did all my stuff, I emptied my inbox down to no new email, two motherfuckers have already emailed me again since I emptied my Gmail. One of them was me cause I send myself a load of email notifications for my coder. The other one was Tim Ferriss, I don't mind Tim emailing me but I'm gonna delete him. Now my email's empty again, as of right now, this moment. I've already answered all my clients, I've done everything that I wanted to do today, which was roughly a full 75 minutes of work, so it was somewhat arduous day. And, basically that's the whole story of running a multi-seven figure business at this point in time, which is exactly what I'm going to teach you in Rich Hot Empire so you definitely should fucking message me about Rich Hot Empire. Katrina Ruth: By the way, I'll give you a comment about it because I haven't told you much about it. [inaudible 00:30:51] video break down is the title of my file that I need here. Right, so I was like "well, if I don't go to bed right now, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna sit around and probably read Facebook and then unfollow a bunch of people cause, I kind of, I don't know, you know when you feel like "I'm really good, I've really done everything that I desire to do for today, I feel like in a flow and at peace with the world and myself and life". And I'm not going to go to sleep though, so long story short, here I am. I decided, well, I will livestream because I'm not a selfish person even though I can appear to be that way at times ... there's a comment for you, it's a pinch now, you can read it later, it's all about Rich Hot Empire. I might refer to it later. Katrina Ruth: Work with me six weeks personally, to grow your perfect cult tribe, perfect cult tribe, like this one right here that's happening on this livestream, create and launch your Low through to High End Empire and set up multiple recurring incomes streams to take you to seven figures and beyond doing what you love. And there's a little break down there in the comments. So read that, that is my six week one-on-one, it is super fucking badass. I would love to talk with you about whether that's for you. You can private message me over on my personal page, Katrina Ruth, and I will get you all the details. Katrina Ruth: Anyway, so I decided to livestream. However, I really didn't feel any message or power coming from me. You gotta understand this, you've got to understand this cause I know that people look at how I do business online and that people want to learn from me or find a way to emulate, you know, in their own way, what I'm doing and how I make my money, and people know I make a lot of money and people also know that I live a really cool lifestyle and I just really honestly do what I want. And that I've reached that entrepreneur holy grail where I have put the work in over the years, and I've been marketing online for years, and so now, it's kinda like "Well, I make money doing what I love and I do what I want, and ease fricking flow and ease" and I teach other people how to do that, aka Rich Hot Empire, right? Katrina Ruth: But, a lot of times people are missing out, or just not aware of, or maybe even kinda don't believe me, I think on the fact that, that doesn't mean that it just comes like automatically all of the time. I guess it comes automatically in the sense that I'm committed to being this person and it's a conscious thing that I choose into on a daily basis. But at the same time, I don't really think about it, like it's just very natural that my mind or my heart or my soul or the voices in my head would say to me "Well, if you're not tired, then what does a normal person do at midnight?" Obviously what a normal person does at midnight is [inaudible 00:33:30], it's perfectly natural, like legitimately in my world, I'm not even trying to be funny, right? Katrina Ruth: So, that's normal that it comes up inside me, like "Well, okay, if you've kinda done everything and there's nothing you really feel called to do, well, obviously we'll do a livestream, right?" But that doesn't mean that I feel inspired to do it necessarily or that I have content that feels like it's coming out and also for whatever reason I felt like a little bit clunky in my head. You know, when you feel a bit clunky in your head? Katrina Ruth: Because I didn't do much of anything all day, I had a real like chilled out rest day, I was staying out in the jungle last night with one of my amazing self-made millionaire clients, Amanda Frances, and another amazing self-made, all the badass things clients, I'm just gonna list off like twenty things at once, Katy Henry, and we stayed there overnight last night. Me and my kids and my nanny, and just had a super fun night and a sleepover, and then built a floating yoga studio in the swimming pool this morning. Got so many Instagram stories, you can go watch it. It was very funny. Katrina Ruth: And then, you see, it's like a three hour drive back from there to where I'm at here in Bali. And so really, I didn't do much all day, and so I felt kind of disconnected, I didn't feel that the power, or the spirit, or the flow, or the angel inside ... I was gonna say devil inside but that doesn't seem necessary ... was coming through me. I definitely didn't really feel the vibe of selling or of showing up or of being on this livestream at all, but at the same time I was like "But I kinda want to do a livestream". And so what do I do? Well, I did sit here, I did type in my little title, I did put the camera where it is now on the tripod, and then I looked at myself for a longer than probably reasonable or professional amount of moments to decide whether I felt like actually going live and to reposition my hair forty-nine and a half times. Katrina Ruth: And then I did what I always fucking do, which is that I just press "go live", and it's like "Well, too late. 3, 2, 1, you're live". That's how Facebook live works, right? You hit the fricking button, too late, it's gonna be live, gotta think of something to say. And honestly, 80-90% of the time, that's how I do my livestreams. I'm like "Eh, I'm not really sure if I'm feeling it" and like there's times for sure when I'm like "I'm fucking feeling it, everybody needs to listen to me right now", but like, somewhat contrarily, if I think that I've got amazing fucking content coming out and that it's gonna be gold is when it will tend to be a bit more random or like, not connected and awkward, and if I think that I've got nothing to fucking say and then I just press exactly [inaudible 00:36:02] I did and press play, then that tends to be when it's better. Katrina Ruth: I have no idea whether this one is like rambly as fuck or of any value at all. And do you know what? I'm not saying that's [inaudible 00:36:16] people like "Oh, it's full of value" or whatever. Cool if it is, but actually it doesn't fucking matter, right? This is the point that you've got to understand if you want to make money online, especially you wanna make serious money online, not just a few dollars here and there. You've gotta understand it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't matter what content comes out today. It doesn't matter if it was rambly and random, it doesn't matter if a hundred people got value or nobody got value. It doesn't matter if you feel like you brought the gold or not. It doesn't matter if anybody bought your thing or not, it matters: did you show up? Katrina Ruth: So, if you want to be an influential leader online, and/or you just want to get your message and your art out into the world, number one, show the fuck up for your message and your art. Share it with people on a day to day basis, let what's inside of you out, and like people are doing that. There's people doing that, but then if you also want to make money from it, you're gonna need to sell stuff, right? Unless you're relying on pure, you know, manifestation which is not the worst thing at all to rely on. But manifestation also includes practical motherfucking action, all right? So if your thing is "I will just show up and people will send me donations via PayPal or just offer to pay me" well actually that happens to me all the time. Not the donations bit, I've never energetically decided that people would send me donations. I suppose I could experiment with it but I don't really care to. It doesn't feel interesting to me. Katrina Ruth: But people do just ask me how they can send me money, so that really does happen, so I'm not really proving my point particularly well. But actually the reason why people just ask me how they can send me money, and like what do you, I don't even care how much it is Kat, like tens of thousands of dollars, right, to work with me at the high level, how can I pay you I know I need to work with you, that's how 100% of my inner circle clients sign up by the way, no joke. I don't do anything to sell my highest level stuff. The reason is, though, that they've seen how I've shown up, through all the areas of my business, which includes that I freaking sell a lot. Katrina Ruth: The point I was trying to make, and then I kind of undid my own point, cause of course you can manifest anything, however the point I was trying to make is well, what would showing up fully look like for you is actually what matters, because maybe legitimately for some people here showing up fully would simply be getting the art out there and pure solid gold intentions setting that people find, do just come to you and offer to pay you. That legitimately fucking works, that is how all my inner circle clients sign up. And there's people out there for sure who do business that way, they just trust fully in their art and people show up. Katrina Ruth: For me, it has to at least be in aligned to know that I'm going to sell, and I actually enjoy selling when I get the fuck out of my own way and stop making [inaudible 00:38:59] drama in my head, and that it's part of my day to day flow. That I like to make shit up and I like to sell it. And I've been doing it since I was a little kid, we've all been selling since we were kids, in some way, shape, or form. Katrina Ruth: For the entrepreneur who is not currently making the money that they feel they should be making, a very simple action to take could be "Well, I'm just fricking going to make an offer each day in some way, shape, or form". And of course most people won't do it because they feel like "But I'm not really quite sure yet what I'm going to sell or how to put it out there" or "I tried that and then nobody bought my thing and so now I'm kinda feeling bad or walking away with my tail between my legs" ... what's my favourite book about sales? The Bible, for sure. That's gonna teach you everything you need to know about sales. Katrina Ruth: Seriously, I'm not joking. I don't know, I don't read like sales books off the business sales shelf, I learned everything I need to know about sales from Church, from watching all the preachers and my grandfather being a preacher. And I think I read maybe like maybe two sales book in my life to be honest, but I just practised it the whole time, since I was a little kid. Katrina Ruth: I don't really read business books, I will read them and I have read them, I don't tend to make it through them. I get a bit hoity-toity about it, actually. Actually, no more than this, this is how I feel about it to be perfectly frank with you, and it's not like me the human form, it's my higher self and my soul is like "I'm very good here, like I fricking know that if I tap into source energy and higher self I don't need this shit because I just don't want to hear a fucking system or a plan or a script or a I don't care". I don't want to do it even if it works for a hundred million other people. I know that I access everything that I need to access that's gonna make me money, get me results from when I'm connected to soul and higher power and God and source, and whatever, right? All the stuff that most people don't really want to think about or believe in it, even though they actually fucking know that it's real and true. Katrina Ruth: So, for me, I almost find it detrimental or kind of just plain, it feels very two-day old boring to read something that would teach like how to sell or how to do marketing or business strategy or something like that. It would either be detrimental to me cause it will sway me from my purpose if I'm, you know, kind of not grounded state, which happens from time to time, or it's just fucking boring cause my higher self is just sitting there twiddling her thumbs going "Yeah, okay, cool, sure, you can apply a sales strategy. Or, you could just reach into your soul and decide that you're going to make money, and then you do". And you put an offer out there from flow. Katrina Ruth: Maybe I should start a Kat church. Well, I do say Kat church all the time, well, I say Purpose Church with Kat or Money Church with Kat, I've had that hashtag for years. And I've got a couple background banners and stuff and even, you know how I've got the Katrina Ruth frame at the top of this? So, I've got frames that say Purpose Church with Kat and Money Church with Kat, I just always use the Katrina Ruth one, but I can switch them out actually. Cause I do go into full preacher mode, the problem is that I don't really go into preacher mode on command. Like if I say to myself "I'm gonna go into full preacher mode", then I'll probably end up being really irreverent and just funny, which is great cause I like being funny and irreverent but then it's like, then I'm not preaching. Katrina Ruth: But if I say that I'm gonna try and be funny, then I'll probably end up in serious preacher mode, like basically you've gotta let the message be the message. I'm using my AirPods case for emphasis for some reason today cause I don't have a sceptre handy. I do have a bottle of wine, I could, I don't really want to use that for emphasis I'll probably accidentally tip it on to the laptop. So let's move right along, we did that, it's about my favourite sales book. Katrina Ruth: But what I prefer to read is stuff that's gonna help me to ... ooh ... Hello. It's a small person that's arrived. Can you not go to sleep? It's like the middle of the night. What I prefer to read is ... you can sit on my lap ... is higher purpose stuff, like soul, I don't know, I prefer to read stuff that helps me access my beliefs and kind of reaffirm for me my beliefs and what I already feel and what I already know is true inside of me. That's the sort of stuff I like to read, so kind of woo-woo manifesty, mystical, spiritual stuff. But I'll definitely pick up books, especially if people recommend them I guess, on the other things, and then largely I'll throw them out the window much like the cake in Nonsense Omnibus, except you can't really throw a book on Kindle out the window. You just have to leave it on the Kindle. Katrina Ruth: You can't even seem to actually delete a book, fully, off Kindle. I don't know what that's about. Like I've tried to do it and it's like "Too bad. For all of eternity and all devices that you ever buy from here on out, the world is gonna know that you downloaded this fricking book". And there's definitely some books on there I would prefer to remove from now. I'm sure there's a way. What do you think, are you awake? No, not awake. People are saying hello to you. Katrina Ruth: So, I think I'm gonna go. You want me to come to bed? I'm gonna go, but we said many things about many things. I've no idea if I made my point at all, but roughly the whole point of the entire livestream was if you want to monetize your audience, then you probably should start asking for money. It's just an idea, right? But you can do that asking energetically or you can do it in a practical and physical sense, or you can do both. I like to do all the things, try everything out, everything, everything, everything. Katrina Ruth: And then the other point of the matter was, Rich Hot Empire is my six week, one-on-one, private client intensive, it is amazing. I've been running it since 2016, it is incredible stuff that we do. You have completely unlimited one-on-one access to me through that six weeks, so as a one-on-one mentor, I give unlimited access to my clients. So we talk pretty much every day in some way, shape, or form. We do a lot of audio messages, obviously we have one-on-one call time as well, but then you also go into private client master mind with my other Rich Hot Empire clients and typically some of my inner circle clients come and play in there as well. Katrina Ruth: And what we're doing over those six weeks is looking at how you can build your soulmate cult tribe, build a low right through to high end online empire just like I've done. I've taken my business to multi-seven figures, per year, and continuing to climb each year. With products ranging from like $47 through to tens of thousands of dollars and based all on following what I love doing, I'm following my flow and that's what I teach you to do in Rich Hot Empire. So take you behind the scenes of my business, show you exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. There's some info here in the pinned comment, and really just give you all the insights into what we do do in my business. You get to access that content for life, so you get to keep it all for life. Katrina Ruth: So that's the structured side of it, and then in our one-on-one work we're doing a lot of actually soul trips, inner work, and do transformational stuff that you specifically need. We also do ... Where are you going, are you going to sit down? Alyssa: I'm sweaty. Katrina Ruth: I'm sweaty. We also do ... yeah, I'm sweaty. It's Bali. We also do Hotseat Masterminds and a whole bunch of other stuff. But it's all here in the pinned comment, you can have a read about that. I know I was extra rambly tonight, but I do go all in with my clients when we really just get into the core of who you are, what you want to put out there into the world. And the intention with Rich Hot Empire is, in a six week period we're doing more, and bringing to life more than what most people do in two years, and that's exactly what happens so have a read if it's speaking to you. Message me over on my Katrina Ruth personal page and I'll get you all the details and we'll go from there. I hope that you got something of value from the livestream today, tonight, where ever you are in the world, whatever time it is for you, have an amazing rest of the day, and do not forget: life is now - Alyssa: There's no part of the rest of the day. Katrina Ruth: There's no ... Alyssa says there's no part of ... I thought you were gonna say press play when I said life is now, and she said "there's no part of the rest of the day". Well, sorry everyone in America, the day is over, Alyssa just said so. All right, bye. Love you guys.

Kat: Just get some more attention. All right, we've figured this system out. This is how I want it to be. I'm extraordinarily upset that I had to stop a livestream in the middle of it. Kat: Let's wait for the peoples to come back. Kat: Yo, are you back, or are you new? Back, Haley's back. Eight people are back. Imagine some of the people didn't come back, how extraordinarily rude that would be. I suppose it would mean I didn't put on a good enough intro. Kat: Much better, we can see. Yeah well, I'm happy to roll with all things. Look how chilled out I am, I feel like I'm super relaxed ... do you feel like you really like this hotel knowing it's not weird anymore? Ash: Yeah. Kat: Yeah. Last night, we got here, and we were like, what is happening? It's so weird. There's no bar, firstly, which I found to be a disturbing and unsettling problem. And these keys, like keys that look like this. I'm pretty sure this hotel was transplanted from your land, Lia Steele. I think that's what happened. Kat: But, you know me, I'm like freaking trendy as fuck, everybody can see it. Super classy. And so, a friend recommend that I stay here, it's a quaint old hotel in Santa Monica. And it's not a cheap hotel by the way, but when I got in I was like, this is not my vibe, I am so leaving this place tomorrow. Kind of musty and fusty. Kat: But then, when I woke up this morning in my quaint room, I thought I was in 1847. And I felt like, this might be the most relaxed I've ever been in the world, in my life. Kat: Lia says, "You're fucking welcome." Kat: And so and then, I went to yoga and did other things. And then I came back and I was like, I think I'm falling in love with this place, it's very zen, but in a non-zen way. In an English-y sort of a way. Kat: No, I'm not bleeding. Thanks. Nope, that's not part of it. Kat: Secret garden, hopefully nobody comes into this garden, 'cause they're going to hear a reverence. It's not that secret. But, you should go and watch my Instagram story and see a tour of my room. It's very unusual, it's a whole unusual situation for me. It took me some adaptation. Kat: So, speaking of adaptation. Speaking of adapting to things. You know, I just decided that I really don't care to wait for the normal things and the normal ways of life, and of people. Because actually, I'm pretty sure the normal ways of life, and of people, are basically complete fucking bullshit, and that we all just bought into a scheme of rules that may or may not make sense. And at the end of the day, the way to know if something is real and true, is does it feel right for you. Kat: So, if you feel like, 'Meh, I just think I want to wait X designated period of time that's apparently socially acceptable before I change my body,' or make a fuck-load of money, or attract the exact romantical love connection that I want, or shift any other freakin' thing in our life, then why not just start to choose that you're not going to buy in to that belief system. Kat: So you know, I've been experimenting with this process of living life since before time began, really, I've always. But, I just feel like over the past little while, and specifically on this current trip that I'm on in America, I've going to a whole new plain. A whole new plain of realising that I can get results, I can allow in results, I can receive results. Kat: Now we're getting serious, leaning forward. Oh, okay sorry Maggie, it's the thing not actually bleeding, it's when you go places and time bends. I do that all the time, but I've not heard the expression bleeding relevant to that. I am constantly leaving time and space, and I just, I call it superflow or fugue state, it's a bit of it, but I'll read the rest of your comment later, half of it's cut off, but I'm very interested in this. Tell me more about it, if you like. Kat: Yeah, I've just been accessing higher levels of more magic and superpowers, and just kind of deciding how things get to be, and deciding that there's actually got to be no specific timeframe or framework of how that should be. Kat: So, the specific example, which I did right about ... I can tell you lots of examples, and ask me the questions. Ask me the questions, let's make this an engaged interaction. Ask me anything that you want to ask me about accessing superflow, accessing superpowers, accessing magic. Kat: This is not woo woo mystical shit, by the way. I mean, I think that's obvious. And nothing wrong with that, 'cause everything's mystical, and anything is mystical and nothing is mystical at all. What I mean is, I'm not talking about some voodoo witchcraft, nothing like that at all. I'm not remotely aligned nor either interested in black magic. Kat: Anyway, but I believe that we all have powerful white magic, if you want to give it some sort of name, which I don't really. But, I just did, apparently. I just, okay my point is, I'm literally just talking about accessing the powers that were always available to us. Kat: So, Lia says, "Hell yes, shifted everything in under a day here." Tell us more about that Lia. Tell us about it, people want to know your story. I want to know the story. Kat: So yeah, it's more like, questioning the frameworks and questioning the ways we've been told things are. Which is, I think that's not new information to any of us, right? We're freakin' entrepreneurs, we question everything since before time began, as well. And that's just normal. But, what if you went to an even deeper level of questioning. Every next, I guess block or limit that came up for you, that you then questioned that also. And what if you completely didn't even know any of the rules or laws of how it's meant to be. Kat: So, the example I'm going to give you is to do with my abdominal area. I know you're going to be fascinated by this, but really though, really. I'm trying to be a smartass, and then I'm like of course they're going to freakin' fascinated by it. Kat: I love how Brandon comes on and always announces himself here like a slightly breathless person arriving at a wedding and feeling a little bit embarrassed that they were slightly late. That's the vibe I'm getting anyway. So, everybody tell Brandon a word that has the words O-U in it. Please write in the word honour, or favourite with an O-U. What's another word with an O-U in it? Ash: Colour. Kat: Colour. You can choose the word of your choice. Please type in, Brandon I honour you, Brandon you're my favourite, Brandon please change the colour of the filter, or another O-U word of your own choosing. The reason is he appreciates it and we appreciate each other, and so we like to do nice things for the people that we appreciated. Kat: So, fabulous ... Kiana, I thought you were just saying this is fabulous, so it's like thank you, I thought it was quite fabulous as well. Then I realised that, no you weren't as well. Kat: [inaudible 00:06:52] exactly. Lia, you understand. Kiana, you understand, of course you do. You are my people. Kat: So, anyhow, I supposed I could tell the story. Might only take me two or three live streams and 7,000 minutes, but we'll get there in the end. And we'll certainly get there before 2:00 PM, 'cause I've got to do the high ticket sales workshop at 2:00 PM. Kat: Ash, why don't you drop the link for the high ticket sales workshop? There's a real person sitting here, you guys, I'm not just talking to space and pretending that I have a team. Kat: Everybody knows it's fab-o-lus. What the hell is that? Ash: [inaudible 00:07:18] Kat: Can you drop the link? Ash: Yeah. Kat: I don't even want to talk about the high ticket sales workshop. I won't talk about it, but it does start in less than an hour and you should go and get your place. Or sign up whenever, and get the recordings. And it goes on going, on going until we're done with all the content is roughly how long that we'll go for. Kat: Superflow and super [inaudible 00:07:35] have high ticket sales, he'll put the link in for you now so you don't miss out. Kat: But anyway, let's talk about my stomach. I know you've been waiting for that moment. And then, we're going to apply it to all the things. Kat: So, I wrote the other day, about how on this trip I've been eating way more things that I ... I don't want to say crap or shit, or something like that. But, I've been eating a lot of foods that I don't generally choose to not eat because they generally do not serve me, and foods that I typically in the past have understood would cause me to gain weight. Kat: So, for example, I had spent pretty a whole week in Florida eating rice and beans for most of the week, which is not my normal diet at all. It's a very [inaudible 00:08:11] week. And then, I was eating a lot of Mexican-ish food in Texas as well. And a lot of potatoes everywhere, and I've been eating sugar most days when I haven't really done that for a very long time. Kat: And so, long story short, I work a couple of Monday mornings just gone, and I was like, what is happening. My stomach was not looking the way that I care for it to look, I was kind of puffy and I had gained some belly fat and some body fat. And the next day was going to be my event, my one day San Diego soul shift, so my only American day. Which was little as fuck by the way. Kat: And not that I had the idea that my clients would ask me to leave if I showed up a little less lean than what they expect me, 'cause I'm pretty sure they'd be okay with it. But, and also not because I have felt like I'm not good enough or not happy. Kat: This is an important point to notice and understand, if you want to do magic, do you want to do magic? If you want to do magic, type in 'I want to do magic', except that sounds boring. So, type in something like, aha. Or could be, I love hot shower, obviously. Kat: So, it was not that, it was not like, I need to be lean for tomorrow because of my event, and otherwise I'm not good enough or I don't look good enough. I let go of all that shit, I continually release that shit. Release it from my body. I will teach you about that, right. Kat: Ah-fucking-ha. Exactly. That's exactly what I mean, Brandon. Aha, yes. Yes. Magicians everywhere. Magic me the fuck up. Indeed I will, indeed I will, and indeed you can do that for yourself at any time. Kat: So, it wasn't that. It was just, that I looked in the mirror when I felt a bit stodgy, you know when you just feel a bit like things are sitting in there that you would really prefer not to be there anymore. I went to the gym and I was like, well I just felt like a bit blah. Not my ideal feeling. And I just thought to myself, I actually don't care to choose this, I would prefer, I would like to or prefer to have my abs back, thank you very much, is basically how I felt about it. Kat: I didn't have a neediness around it. It wasn't I need my abs back to be happy or to feel good, it was ... oh, that's an interesting comment. Don't read it. Do not read it. Do not click the link. Do not come and learn from me about superflow, tens of thousands of dollars sales like magic. Unless you want it, in which case done. But, you can do it after. We have time. We have time for all the things. We expand time. Kat: So yeah, I was just like, this is what I want. I just like when I have my abs looking a certain way. I was so freakin' puffy everywhere, and it wasn't just fluid, I'd gained body fat. I gained a small amount of body fat, maybe a couple of percentage points. I know how to read body fat like a motherfucker. If I look at you in person, I will know to the pound exactly how much you weigh and what your body fat percentage is. It's a magical trick based on the science of the fact that for 13 years I freakin' measure people day in and day out, and so I can eyeball it and tell. Kat: And I'm always right. Even for some of you mystical people who have light weighted bones, I still get it right. I know it's an important act, which I probably don't use this skill and talent as often as what the world would really desire or require for me to do, so I'm sorry about that. But, if you'd like me to test it out on you then just tell me when you see me. You may not care for me to do that to you, but I'll be doing it anyway on an unconscious level. It's not like I'm writing it down in a little book, I'm not like writing down exactly how much everyone in my Perth community weighs and what their body fat percentage is. Kat: Caitlyn says there's a problem with the link. Can you read the comment that Caitlyn just popped up, I can only read half of it. Kat: So, anyhow, I'm getting there eventually. If you want to know the magic, you've got to be prepared for the magician, which is me, to craft the story out. Kat: What's the question? Ash: There's no question, but the link works. Kat: Just reply back to Caitlyn's comment with another link. But the link anyhow, is the thekatrinaruthshow.com/highticketsalesworkshop. Ash: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Kat: Do you think I could hold my hands out like Moses for the entire rest of the livestream? Ash: Yes. Kat: Ash has fantastic faith in my medial deltoids. He says, "Yes." Kat: Oh, no problem with the link. Okay, I was just assuming. Kat: I feel like I want to do it now. Because, I really appreciate the faith in my doubts. Kat: Anyhow, oh we could do some flexing. Okay. I don't know what I'm doing. What's happening, why am I in such a bizarre mood? I've been in a bizarre mood all morning. I woke up and sent the most irreverent giggly little girl audio messages to Linda Doctor, about 30 minutes worth of them as well, which was a little irreverent, I think, to expect someone to listen to that much of your shit. But, she replied with grace and fervour, and sent me back a good 16 minute long audio itself. Kat: Anyway, so yeah, I basically decided, I'm going to change this. I'm going to change it now. Because, I just want to have my abs back. And literally over that 15 minute workout ... can you join in on what video? The live workshop? Of course. It's going down at the top of the hour. So, 2:00 PM here too, which is soon enough, that I probably should be thinking about getting to my point here so I can get upstairs to run it. Ash: Put your arms back up. Kat: Sorry. Ash just told me to put my arms back up. What happened if Moses dropped his arms? Ash: I guess the Israelites all drown, don't they? Kat: Get your freakin' bible passages sorted. Ash: Everyone drowns. Kat: It wasn't to do with people downswing, was it? Ash: I don't know. Kat: Was it to part the red sea? Ash: Well, yeah. Kat: No, it was to do with the tabernacle. Ash: I don't know. Kat: Google it. We grew up in church. Our grandfather was a preacher, how can you not know this stuff? This is terrible, this is embarrassing for everybody. Ash: It'll be embarrassing for you if I'm wrong. Kat: What's spaghetti got to do with it? My arms are becoming more toned by the moment. Imagine if this was the new livestream game, you'd have the most insanely amazing arms in the world. Kat: Manifest go ditch your body fat, do it then. Show us your abs. Kat: All right. So, I literally watched my body transform itself in 15 minutes. Now, of course when you sweat and workout a little bit, you lose some fluid anyhow, right. Kat: Eminem was not there with Moses, I can say that with certainty. But, it's an interesting suggestion. Kat: I guess I can't really be certain, because if time and space doesn't exist, then anything could be possible. That's definitely true as well. Kat: Okay I feel like I'm getting my arms a little bit tired now, but it's become a point of pride and ego, for sure. In a moment I'll stand up and show you my abs. Kat: So then, yeah, I like fully got my abs back and my whole body shape-shifted. Not in a weird devils advocate sort of way, 'cause those shape-shifters were scary as fuck, but it's a great movie and you should watch it again. Ash: Oh, you were right. Kat: I was right, what does it say about Moses? Ash: During a battle. Kat: During a battle. What happened? What if Moses is Eminem? Ash: I don't think he is. Kat: Can you just read the fucking passage out because my arms are getting tired. Ash: I don't have the passage, but if he didn't hold up his hands- Kat: The battle would be lost. Ash: The battle would be lost. Kat: But, what did it have to do with the 10 commandments? Ash: I don't know. Kat: Can we just figure it out people? Kat: All right, so. Yeah so, then I wrote about it. I wrote about how I completely just changed my body in 15 minutes, in a way that should technically take two weeks, right? And I know this for sure. But then, I thought to myself, it sounds kind of bullshit and it sounds kind of made up, and I don't think people really understand the power of what just happened, right? Because they didn't see it, and they're going to be like, 'Cool Kat, you just sweat a little bit and you released some fluid'. That is not what happened. Kat: What happened was roughly what a two week cleanse would create, right? In the normal people world who believe in the normal rules, which I use to, and I apologise for that period in my life. We all have parts of our past that we would change if we could, but I'm going to assume you'll love me anyhow. Kat: But then, the next day I did my event with all the badasses in San Diego. They force fed me several servings of tater tots with truffles on them. I didn't know what a tater tot was. They were pretty appalled about that. It's potato gem for the Australians. Which is not a fancy Delmar food by the way, but they put freakin' truffle oil on it and pretended that it was, and required me to eat it along with several unnecessary serves of nachos and a poisoned burger. Which we knew was poisoned, because the next morning we woke up and we were dying. All of us, just dying, or at least me, and Ash and Amanda. So, Amanda stayed over in my room. We did the hilarious slumber party livestream, it was critical and important. Kat: I hope you guys appreciate that I'm going to need a two hour massage on my shoulders after this, and it was all for you. Please send me some love for doing that as a community effort. Kat: So, Amanda and I wake up. We walked down to go to the gym. Well first, obviously we sat in bed for many hours and did many money making things, 'cause that's a normal thing to do when you wake up in the morning with your client in bed next to you. So, we did that, and then we went to the gym. Oh my god, my stomach was ginormous. Okay, not at all, that's obviously ridiculous. But, I was very like, reverted back again, basically. Which is evident of my level of belief, and I'm going to deal with that, don't worry about it. Kat: Because actually what I noticed is, I believe that I can transform my body in a day, or even in an hour or two because I choose to, and I do it repeatedly. But then, I also have still been holding on to the belief, which is stupid if you think about it, that if I eat something like tater tots, I'm going to wake up feeling big and heavy. So, I'm just going to get rid of that belief because I don't find it particularly convenient or charming, I don't know about you. But, at the time, I was still holding on to the belief. Kat: So, we go work out, we do a 25 minute workout. And by the end of it, Amanda is like, 'Holy shit, I just saw it happened with my own eyes'. 'Cause she had seen me write about it. Kat: Look at my arms sinking. They're just going down. Ash: Battle will be lost. Kat: I am strong and resilient. I am a badass. I will keep my arms up if it kills me. That's kind of cheating. Ash: No, well, Moses had rocks placed under his arms so he could hold them up until sunset, so you can cheat. Kat: That's bullshit. What? Ash: Yeah. Kat: He said that Moses had rocks placed under his arms. That's not holding them up at all, that's just casually lounging. That undoes the entire story, if not the entire bible. That's just casually lounging around with your arms ... what, is that a true story? Ash: Yes, are you questions the book of Exodus? Kat: Like, a little rock or a big rock that he could just lounge on? How is that then? How is that a work of effort or resilience? Fuck it then, I'm putting my arms down. I've been let down and disappointing. Ash: When Moses hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Oh, and then two people held up his hands. Kat: So, when Moses got tired, he just gets a lounge chair and some people to hold his arms up. Ash: Yes. Kat: This changes the dynamics of the entire story. How did I not know that? Obviously, I just selectively choose what I want from history. I know people are going to argue whether or not that's history, keep it to yourself. I don't care right now. I'm telling my story. Kat: So anyway, Amanda was like, 'Holy shit, I can't believe how much your stomach just changed in 30 minutes'. Or it was even a 25 minute workout that we did. And then we took some Instagram stories about it because we are here to serve, and that's all. So, if you require them, I can send them to you. It was extra special because I had an apricot coloured sports bra on and Amanda had apricot coloured, I suppose you could call them peach, shorts on from [inaudible 00:19:46]. Kat: And so, we were diagonally in unison, which made the whole thing a vision from a visual standpoint, and we didn't even plan it. So, there's many things that go in to the magic, as you can see. Kat: Anyhow, I don't feel like I need to demonstrate my stomach for the purposes of the story now, but I will anyway, because it's always good opportunity to show off parts of your body on Facebook. We all know that people like to see bits of your body, it helps the views go up. Or in fact, as Frank Hearn told me yesterday, one should always livestream with a throne and a sceptre if you want a load of viral video. And I said, "Frank, I'm all over that shit. I got my throne and my sceptre." In fact, he stole the idea from me, so if you see Frank Hearn sitting on a pink throne with a sceptre, I gave him that idea but I'm happy for him to use it. Kat: So, anyhow, there's my stomach. It looks rather stomach-y, I supposed. It's still a little puffier than what I actually am going to require for it to be by the end of today. There's bits of it. Ash: [inaudible 00:20:43] Kat: There's a little bit of definition there. So, there's a little bit of puff going on there. Kat: By the way, nobody needs to tell me I don't need to worry about my puff, 'cause I'll worry about whatever the fuck I want. Except, I'm not worrying about it. Not worried at all. I'm observing it with curiosity and interest. Kat: But, what you've got to understand is that when I went in to [inaudible 00:20:58] yoga this morning, it was a whole different situation, you guys. It was a completely different body. And actually, quite noticeably so, much more than any other situations throughout this period, because basically Frank Hearn, who I spent the last two days with, provides many snacks in his offices, and they're very mucho fabuloso. And I ate definitely more than my fair share of them. I was eating donuts, packets of ... vegan donut, which makes it okay. Ash: [inaudible 00:21:32] Kat: Whether or not I'm a vegan, but I only eat vegan donuts, because I'm very healthy. And potato chips, and many candy bars, because the driver that he sent to pick us up and take us back had a candy bar box in the backseat of the fancy car. And it would've been rude to not eat the candy, clearly. And then many other things as well. Kat: And I'm mucking around, but this is a really true and real thing. And oh, by the way, I'll fully shift this by the end of today. I'm going to go to equinox later, and then I'll post a photo if you want, or not, whatever it doesn't matter. Kat: But, let me just play out some beliefs here, because I still notice areas where I'm allowing this process to only work if I have certain things in place. So for example, I know fully believe and know I can change my body in a day, or even in an hour or two, but I indeed create some rules for myself. Did you notice the rules, yes or no? Type in what little silly rules I created for myself if you noticed them. Kat: Because of course the next iteration, is that there's no rules, and no requirements, and no conditions and that I would just decide it in my head without getting out of my bed in my fancy little quaint hotel room. So, I'm want to see if anyone can catch watch these rules were. Ash: [inaudible 00:22:43] Kat: Aha, did you learn something else about Moses? Ash: No, I found what I was looking for. Kat: In life? Ash: No. Kat: He found what he was looking for in life. Send a love hot shower for Ash, he has found his answers. Ash: Who's doing the accounting work? Kat: He's doing accounting work. Is that what you were looking for in life? Ash: No, no, definitely not. I don't think anyone is looking for that in life. Kat: Why are you doing account anyway, is it mine? Ash: Yes. Kat: Okay, that's fine then. I'll allow it. They're sending you a love hot shower anyway, it's because they feel bad for you, rightly so. Kat: Are you guys not even going to give me ... like you're not interacting here a part from laughing at Ash, or have you got something to say about what I just said? Kat: What time is it? Ash: 1:33. Kat: Oh, we have much time left. C'mon, where's the comments at? Can nobody guess what my limiting magic beliefs were, even though I did amazing magic and I can post you the photos. Oh, no I can't, 'cause we only took after photos. I've got to remember to take before and after photos one day of this, because it's quite phenomenal. Kat: But then again, I could just share like, for example, the 300K in five day story, which I shared a month or two back and turned it in to a whole workshop, because why would I not monetize a story. Kat: You guys are just commenting bullshit, you're not actually sharing the answers to my question. I don't even know what that comment means. Kat: So, I had to start talking quieter because somebody else came out here. But, it's not just this area, right. Okay, I got distracted because I started to think about whether I should monetize the abdominal thing, and why would I not? Kat: But, my point is, it's only to the level of your belief. It's always to the level of your belief. Kat: Magnetising relationship magna. I definitely did some magnetising freakin' magic around relationships of light, which was basically to do with being fucking truthful and getting out of my own way. Kat: Buffering, Brandon was buffering, as a person, because that's an interesting concept. Kat: My voice changed because somebody else came out and I felt bad 'cause i was being kind of crazy, 'cause it's super quiet serene garden, and I don't want to disturb somebodies space. I should put my earplugs in, 'cause then even if I'm talking quietly, you can fully hear me. Let's do that. Kat: Why is nobody answer my question? Were you so interested in my arms and what was going to happen next that you didn't listen to the point of the story? I'm going to tell you now anyway, 'cause now I'm getting grumpy that you didn't answer. Kat: So, if you listened to what I said, I basically have learned how to change and shift my body in like an hour, right. And in a really real way, not you know like, yeah you dropped some fluid sort of way, in a way where it's like that is not supposed to be like that. That doesn't work. That doesn't ... okay, I didn't see your answer. Maybe I've missed some comments. That doesn't fit within the realms of what we've been told is true and real. Kat: But, where my limits were ... and I'll be curious to see those comments afterwards, I will be checking, is obviously I still had a thing of like, like this morning I was like, I've so got to go to yoga. But then again, I truly just desired to go to hot yoga, I certainly wasn't going to try and shift my body. But, it was more that that was still there. It was like, oh well by the end of this yoga class, I will have completely shifted my body and released it of all things donut-y, and potato chip-y and snacks. I was going to say inserted in to me, but Frank Hearn, he didn't actually force feed me snacks. He just laid them out bountifully though and it felt rude to not eat them all day every day. Kat: And then that happened, but there was still the rule around the yoga thing, right? So, it wasn't even a rule, it was more just like, a condition that I bought into without questioning it. So, I started to notice it. And I'm still noticing, 'cause even today like I just said it 10 minutes ago, I said, "Well, I'll go to the gym later and I'll fully shift it then." Kat: It's not actually that I think I need to go to the gym to shift it, it's more that I'm using that as a marker. I'm kind of like, that's my marker, like my reminder to myself or something along those lines. But yeah, what I noticed is, how can I tune in to an even greater level of magic on this stuff, right. How can I just make it that anything I decide is done in that moment, it's not done ... like the old paradigm is, it's done based on if you do certain things that the world essentially would teach you to do. Like, oh if you want to change your body, the very least you're going to do some kind of fast cleansing detox thing. Like some people have said they can change their body in two or three days, others are going to say two or three weeks, unable to believe 12 weeks for one girl, whatever. Kat: And people would probably say yeah, it depends on your starting point. I'm like, yeah, but it depends on your level of fucking belief, all right. That's actually what it depends on. Kat: So for me, it's come down to I'm like, I use to always believe in you know, two to three days, and it was true. And now, I believe literally one to two hours, and it's true. And it's like you can visibly see your body shifting, almost like you're on a movie editing thing and you're carving that thing up like a freakin' face changing sort of situation, right. Kat: And now, my next iteration that I'm consciously stepping in to is, no it's not based on one to two hours. It's not based on whether or not energy. It's not based on any of those things. It's based purely on belief, and choice, and decision, right? Kat: Same with the money stuff, because like I did the 300K in five days, which was a cool little story and I did a workshop about it back in roughly the end of January. Kat: And so then, it was like, okay but I have these conditions in play. So, I was in superflow and then this was happening, and then this was happening and then this was happening. And it's like, cool cool that's awesome, but actually, there's no freakin' rule that I got to go to Bali and do these certain things to get into superflow in order to access that, it's also just a choice. So, I feel like it gets to be a continual thing of looking in it. Well, where are we putting conditions on ourselves? Maybe our rules and conditions are way cooler, and more badass and more ease and flow orientated than what the rest of the world would say. But, can you release that anyway? Kat: And then, how about this. What if I stepped in to my next belief, which I am now choosing, of just 'cause I would eat donuts, or tater tots or potatoes every freakin' day, which I have been doing. No, it really is changing, and that's why I told the story about when my friend and client was with me and she was like, 'What the fuck? How is that even possible?' Or she wasn't, she wasn't questioning it because she believes in magic. But, she was like, 'Wow, I just fucking so that. That was crazy'. Kat: Bodies one example, only out of many though. Money stuff. Saw my clients disappearing out of nowhere. Situations in all areas of life just turning around. I have endless stories on this and it's all stuff that I would of created anyway, but it's with a higher level of flow and ease. And it's getting to where it's faster, faster, faster, the more that I choose to believe in magic, the more I get results super fast with superflow and super ease in all areas, and complete shifts in situations where it's literally like, how the fuck did that even happen, right. In all areas. Kat: And then now, my next things that I'm practising for myself, is that there's no conditions required, not even my own ones. And that also something like a previous belief that if I eat these certain things, I wake up feeling heavier, or I wake up feeling bloated, or my body shifts, or if I eat them for longer then I actually do gain body fat, that I let go of those beliefs as well. Kat: So, it's literally like, I'm not going to wake up bigger if I ate this stuff, and then I'm going to shift it, no. That's cool, that's more magical than not, right? But, the next things is, I always just get to decide my results regardless of what I do or don't do, which is exactly how I do things in business with money. It's like, this is how much money I choose to make, these are the sort of some of my clients who signed up for my inner circle, this is how things operate, these are the sort of team members I have, these are the sort of men in my life for example if you want to look at other areas. This is how I interact with my friends, this is how I get treated when I travel, just all these different things that previously has some sort of conditions or kind of things around them where I thought I have to do certain things in order to get to that point. Kat: Where over time, I gradually got to where I'm like, oh no, it happens 'cause I decide it, right? And so continually shifting and experimenting. Kat: How do you let go of those beliefs? The first thing is that you decide, right. The first things is to decide to believe in magic, to decide to believe ... you don't have to term it that way either, it's actually just deciding to question the beliefs that have been conditioned into you because who made the people that taught you these things, God right? Like who says that that's real, that that's how the world operates. Who says that two plus two equals four? Who says that anything takes any amount of time or any amount of effort? It's all a reflection of faith. With faith, you can really move mountains, and that's a true thing, right. Kat: Time is irrelevant. Exactly, because who actually defined and measured time in the first place anyway? That is not a thing of the galaxy. That's a thing that a person did, or some group of human people, over time. Right? And we've just all gone like cool cool, this is what a unit of time means because somebody once said so. And then, cool cool, here's what you can do with that unit of time because somebody once said so, and then they try to and spin it on somebody else and somebody else. And now we're just walking around accepting this shit, why? Right, that's what I'm saying here. Kat: I'm just saying, create your own freakin' rules. Decide how you want it to be. I know it sounds like, depends on where you're on your journey, it could sound crazy. It could sounds bullshit. It could sound so made up. It could sound too good to be true. I'm not asking you to try and duplicate my faith, I choose my faith, you choose your faith. Kat: I'm just saying, what if you started to question shit, right? What if you just started to think, I didn't like that one, I didn't like that belief, I don't really want to wait that long for that result, I don't feel good about it. I think I'm going to choose to believe in a different way. I think I'm going to test that out. Kat: And then as far as the how around that, it is deciding first and foremost, and just choosing that that's how it gets to be. And then the how, the strategy is, well what would you be doing in this moment in time in your life if you believed that, right. Kat: So, for me with body stuff, like I look at my body in the mirror when I'm in yoga or whatever I wear, I'm like, oh I'd prefer to shift this. This is not my ideal choice for myself, but I'm not standing there going this is bad, or wrong or it makes me not good enough like I would of used to years ago. I'm like, it just is. It is what it is and that's all it is. I can choose to shift it or now, either way, I'm still complete, and whole, and perfect in and of myself. I am not my body. I am not my income. I am not the people that are in my life, and so on and so forth, right. Kat: Cat ninja, got to save some clip. Let's check that later. Thank you, whatever it was. I can only read half the comments, they chop off on the phone. Kat: And then, yeah so, it's kind of like, it doesn't work if this neediness is attached to it. If it's 'I have to do that or else, or have to do that to be validated, or to be good enough, or to be worthy,' that's just not going to work, right? Kat: So, it's about getting to a point where you fully love and accept yourself as you are. That's been huge practise of mine over the past year, and it really is true. Like, I'll look at my body when I'm not, you know, when it's not in the ideal state that I want it to be or could be something that's going on in my business or personal life, and I've kind of had this weird thing of where I'm like, well this is not what I desire, right? This is not what I expect so this is going to just need to change because I know that I get to choose all things. Kat: But, at the same time, I'm completely detached from it. I'm like, be the way I'm totally good, right. Either way, I'm completely [inaudible 00:34:04], completely safe, completely whole, completely in love, completely happy, so I'm grounded no matter what. I'm not looking at a situation and being like, oh my god no that makes me this or this, or what are people going to think? Kat: All right. So, all of that stuff is part of the practise. The other part is deciding, like I said. And then the other part is believing, and belief is a practise as well. But I guess one thing that you could try is if you want to practise believing, it would literally be well, if I did believe at this level, if I had this level of faith, then what would I be choosing right now? Kat: So, in that moment, in that class, instead of the girl of me from 10 years ago who would of been feeling annoyed, ashamed, worrying about how people are perceiving her, other things that are not positive or uplifting, instead of that it's just complete acceptance, complete certainty, complete happiness and flow anyway, and then simply practising the belief. That's it, it's holding the belief. Kat: And from a practical point of view, what do you do? Well, you do whatever the fuck you're called to do. You go to the class if you're called to, you don't go if you're not called to. You sell something if you're called to, you don't if you're not. You message and share whatever's coming out of you, you don't try to message and share something that you thinks going to get you an outcome, right. You say the actual stuff that you're thinking to the important people in your life, and so on and so forth. Kat: So, this is a topic that I definitely could talk about for ages, and I'm sure I will continue to write about it. I did write about it in a very rambly weird sort of way in today's blog post, which is on this page, it's called How to Discover your Magic. It's here on my Katrina Ruth business page and it's over on my personal page also. Go read that if you would like to dive in to more of my rambly magic musings. Kat: And go to thekatrinaruthshow.com/highticketsalesworkshop. We are going live in how many minutes? Ash: 16. Kat: 16 minutes, it's happening. If you can't join us live, go sign up anyhow. You're going to get the replay. You get all of the content for life. There's going to be ongoing content interaction support, it's not a one time workshop, it's like a mini course or a [inaudible 00:35:58], or something like that. Kat: But, what you should do is go to thekatrinaruthshow.com/highsticketsalesworkshop. Read all about what I'm actually covering there. It's a lot more than simply teaching my sales process and business strategies. There's some really cool shit that we're diving into. Everything that you really need to know to be that person who people just want to give money to, including the mindset and the magic of it as well by the way, which is the intention setting, the inner game side of how I attract such high levels or so many clients who just want to pay me, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff besides. Kat: So, I'll see you there or I'll see you on the replay, have an amazing rest of the day. And don't skip, life is now. Press play. Kat: And Ash has something to say to you to sign off, it's very important. Ash: I balance the book. Kat: He does a lot more than balance the books, but thank you for that profound moment. Ash: Didn't have anything else in my captcha. Kat: It's because he's balancing books that his soul has been a little bit deflated in the past 10 minutes. Why are you doing that? Let's pick somebody else to do that. All right, bye bye. We got to go.

Maybe I've seen too many Criminal Mind's episodes, but this raises some red flags:SWM, 50s, LF SWF/SHF, early 20s, w/o family who likes to travel

I know it seems as though this election has been going on forever, but the end is in site. A week from Tuesday, America will vote on a new president, California will vote on a new Senator and Los Angeles County will decide the fate of Measure M. But today, #DamienTalks with South Pasadena Mayor Diana Mahmud about the proposal. South Pasadena, its newspapers and many of its loudest activists either opposed or stayed neutral on Metro sales tax proposals in 2008 and 2012. But this time, the newspapers and City Council are unanimous in their support for Measure M. I'll be honest with you, the conversation took a turn I didn't expect. Mahmud talked openly about the privilege South Pasadena has with being one of Southern California's first cities to have a rail station. She then pivoted to the need for the city to "pay it forward" by supporting a tax to help other cities in Los Angeles County experience the benefits of having a rail station at the center of town. Maybe I've been covering the ugly fight over development in Santa Monica for too long, but to hear someone argue that it was their duty to help everyone achieve the privilege that they have was refreshing. #DamienTalks is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit foothilltransit.org. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Heyang: A photo showing actor and Beijing-native Ge You slouching on a sofa has gone viral. That posture has been nicknamed "The Beijing Slouch." Now 4 younger male celebrities have inherited the mantel and have been crowned the 4 slouchers of the capital. What is the Beijing slouch? Why do Beijingers proudly proclaim it is ours?YuYang: I guess many people have watched the "Wo Ai Wo Jia". The photo was a snapshot from "Wo Ai Wo Jia", literally meaning "I Love My Family". It's one of the oldest and most famous sitcoms in China. In this picture Ge You, was always seen slouching on the sofa and had not sat up straight once. At first, the posture was called Ge You lying, later people started to call it Beijing slouch since it's a very typical posture for Beijing natives and the photo soon gained huge popularity during the weekend. A lot of people posted photo shopped versions of the picture like Ge You dressing like the American captain, or Spiderman while doing the posture. It also became a popular meme with words like "I know I am wasting my life but I just don't want to stop." It's very interesting while Heyang, as a Beijinger, can you show people how do you do a proper Beijing slouch. Heyang: Thank you for directing that question to me.YuYang: Many people would be interested.Heyang: Well, when it comes to the Beijing slouch, it's very…Ryan: Technical.Heyang: Yeah, because you have to hear me out here. It's about you're sitting there but as if you have no bone in your body and can you imagine how comfortable that is. And also it is not just 1 posture, it is a process. So, basically what you do is you sit down on a chair or on a sofa and then you sort of just lay back, and then here comes the process: you are sliding down the sofa but your back clings to the end of the chair in 120 degrees to 180 degrees. I think that is the technical side of things and you better get it right to qualify the Beijing slouch. That is what I think and also here can I please abuse my position a little bit. I am so sorry about it, but I have to do it. Listen up everyone, you have to use the Beijing slang to describe this that is: "从椅子上出溜下去". That is when you slide down and you glide down and that is what the Beijing slouch is and I think it shows a lot of attitude, it could be 3rd world war out there but I don't give a damn.Ryan: You know, looking at this, I'm going to say something that maybe Heyang won't like here that…Heyang: What is it Ryan? Be nice.Ryan: First of all, I love Beijing, I do but to call this the Beijing slouch, I think I have been doing this slouch my whole life. When I get on a couch, especially when its comfy, I first sit on the chair or sofa then after I have secured my comfiness I decide that I want to accelerate my comfiness level, so then I slowly slouch on the sofa till my shoulders are basically almost touching the back and I make the nice little triangle that you have with your Beijing slouch. So, I am just saying guys I think this is also a slouch that is done everywhere around the world by tons of people looking to be very comfy on their couch.Heyang: Ok, could be true but I beg to differ, Ryan. Because can you make sure it's the 120 to 180 degree slouch?Ryan: Can you make sure?Heyang: Oh yeah, with my fabulous abs, I can make it whatever degree and also you know what's really essential here, that is when you are maintaining the slouch, it is pretty good exercise to the abs. Also when you finish the slouch, you need to bounce up, that's like Beijing style, bounce up effortlessly like a spring or when some guys mess it up they need to put their hand on the ground for a little support to bounce up. That's not called bounce up, that is just struggling. That doesn't qualified.Ryan: Please stay tuned for Heyang's workout video called Slouch in the Abs out. YuYang: I see you guys are both trying so hard to establish your own brands right? Heyang's slouching style and Ryan's slouching style. Actually there are the Beijing 4 slouchers of the capital. Celebrities are trying hard to establish their own brands. Netizens also found 4 famous celebrities, most born in Beijing as the top 4 Beijing slouchers who gave the best demonstrations of the posture. One is Walkie Zhang (Da Zhang Wei), he was an actor, singer, and host born in Beijing, many photos showing him slouching him on sofa or chair. It looks like he wants to show that he's a genuine Beijinger. In a TV show named: "I Go To School", he even slouches down between chairs and desks in the decorated classroom.Ryan: There's many photos of me in school slouching folks well before I got on this show but let's talk about the history of the so-called Beijing slouch. The posture can date back to the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912), in case you didn't know. The Manchu people loved to lie down on the heated brick bed after dinner even including the emperor. It is said that Emperor Qianlong loved to slouch down after dinner read books and write calligraphy. Now, that sounds really nice. I think I would be doing that, and that's why I think I have done that. It's because I think slouching is one of those human necessities we have all done but I do think it's cool that people are really enjoying this here in Beijing. It does definitely have a cultural aspect to it. I am just saying guys, everybody slouches. Yu Yang: People say this slouching posture of the Qing Dynasty with Emperor Qianlong is related to his long-life. He died at 88 years old. He was regarded as the longevity emperor in the Chinese history. People say he knew how to keep himself healthy like he always took the unprotected sleep called回笼觉. Maybe the slouching always makes him feel comfortable and relaxed after long working hours. Heyang: Interesting. But I still think that the Beijing slouch we're talking about today, the type that I have described…Ryan: 120 degree angle!Heyang: Yeah. You have to get the angle right, you know and I don't think it's the same as what the emperors used to do because I don't think they're practically flat on their heated brick beds. I don't think that is the situation at all. Actually, they have a lot of support on their back so it is slouching more like half-way what we're talking about in the contemporary sense. Maybe I've given it too much thought but I think this is an interesting way to see what the Beijing local culture is about.Ryan: Maybe, just maybe, the slouching culture has evolved and especially here in Beijing to perfect the slouch to a 120 degree angle for optimal comfort on the couch. I saw a picture of the guy that's known for the Beijing slouch, and he does look so comfortable.Heyang: There's one thing I think that I do share with Da Zhang Wei. Is he a member of the 4 slouchers of the capital? Our internet users are just so intelligent and clever. I do admire you guys so much. The part that I share with Da Zhang Wei is that yeah things evolve, technology develops. Now, everybody pretty much has a laptop and I'm a busy person, a hard worker. There are a lot of things I want to do on my laptop even in my free time that could be work-related or not. What I do? I slouch and I use my fabulous abs as a table or a desk and I put on my laptop on there and as I do stuff so yes I think the Beijing slouch has many facets to it and now it's multi-functional. Yu Yang: Is it a good way to train your abs. That's a pretty creative way, I guess.Heyang: If you want fabulous abs, I think I have some authority in it. I can only say that the slouch is conducive but it doesn't determine your abs. So if you really do want those defined abs, maybe you should follow a class that maybe I will teach in the future. Yu Yang: Wow. That's very interesting. I agree that it's a fabulous way to train your abs. It is the cultural symbol and it is also a nostalgic thing in Beijing Hutongs maybe during the hot summer time. You can see a lot of people, many old Beijingers slouched on enfolding bamboo chairs in the yard or on the Hutong streets using the big fan to keep them cool and drive mosquitos away while drinking some tea and talking to neighbors. That's a typical Beijing summer night in Hutong.Heyang: Why is it that so many of our parents especially our moms when they have been teaching us our manners as we grow up always say or often call us out and say: "Don't do that!" "Don't slouch"?Ryan: Well that's what I was going to say here is that you know you have painted this picture Heyang of like 6 pack ripped guys just slouching to the best shape of their life, but when I often see someone slouching, I often think they are lazy, not lazy but just careless, relaxing and hanging out or maybe just trying to beat the heat, not so much trying to get the 6 pack abs we all really want. You want what I mean! Also, guys I think that it's bad for your backbones and your posture overall. In fact, I was doing just a little research. Slouching often does increase your chances of back problems, i.e. scoliosis, arthritis and it also might give you that image of the "double chin" You're just so comfortable that you don't care how you look. The double chin's coming out.Heyang: I have an objection to that. Basically, yeah maybe you could be seen with the double chin, that could happen but also you create an imagery that is second to none. That is, it seems as if it's all legs below your neck. Try it out. You will see what I mean.

Subscribe in a reader If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element or Right click to download the audio fileOr listen on Soundcloud! Russia has an amazing taxi system; stand on the side of the road and stick your arm out, and someone will pick you up. I kid you not.The car will be a square item from another time, but the fair will be cheap. What's scary is I've seen young girls doing this. Maybe I've watched too many horror films, but if a beautiful person climbs in a vehicle with an odd-faced character wearing driving gloves (be prepared for that) their odds of showing up on the back of a milk carton are fairly high.If gambling isn't your thing, there's a taxi service called City Mobile. The App can be downloaded to your phone and you can order a taxi to your door. You can even track the progress of your taxi on his way to you.While this sounds too good to be true it's because it is; I've ordered one or two taxis where I can see the person accepting to drive me is far away, he clearly accepted the order to be a greedy little cabby. This means, if I've been monitoring his progress, that I have to order another, wasting my time.Next problem; for some reason you're car driver likes to call you. Why? You have the pickup destination with an alert sent to your phone that says he's arrived. Why would I want to talk to you? What do we have to discuss? You know where to find me and you know where I'm going.Especially if you don't speak Russian, it can get tiresome to say the least when these characters call you to tell you they're 2 minutes away. Yes, I can see your car on the app, dumbass. It gets frustrating to a degree that you would rather walk 500 miles (queue the Proclaimers) in the snow then put up with this unnecessarily lost in translation mess.Next is the cab fare. The app calculates an amount for you, so you'll know if you're getting ripped off.The main bonus is cabs are still a damn sight cheaper than most major cities. Check out my books here: www.jamesbrough.com