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Much excitement this episode as we head across the pond to welcome a new guest to Hearts of Oak, Karli Bonne'. Karli runs arguably the No 1 Conservative and current affairs social media account on the web, so this is a lady with her finger firmly on the pulse of what's happening now. So who better than 'The Cackling Conservative' to talk through what has piqued our interest in the news, in articles and from her social media posts over the past seven days. Buckle up 'Midnight Riders' as Karli and Peter take a close look at.... - The crowning of King Charles III. - Sleepy Joe Biden misses the coronation of King Charles because he has a 'lot going on' !! - New York City shelters 'maxed out' with migrants. - Laptop From Hell: Biden says son Hunter 'has done nothing wrong'. - TikTok workers 'compiled list of users who browsed gay content'. - Boston holds 'Satan-Con' 2023. - EU displays Satanic Anti-Christian artwork by godless lesbian in Parliament. - 2024 National Republican Primary Polls. - The Don visits Scotland. Trump on top form as he lands North of the border. - Tucker Carlson makes first public appearance since Fox News committed Hari-Kari. - Military Bud Light moment? Drag performer is Navy's new 'digital ambassador' in bid to boost recruitment. Karli Bonne' is a retired model, dancer and a Rockstar wanna be. Now she is a full blown MAGA maniac video clipper with three phones, continuously laughing at the establishment because it's like holy water on a demon. And these demons must be eradicated. You must follow her here.... Telegram: https://t.me/realKarliBonne (Midnight Rider Channel) Truth: https://truthsocial.com/@KarliBonne GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/karlibonne Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarliBonnita?s=20 Originally broadcast live 6.5.23 Transcript available on our Substack... https://heartsofoak.substack.com/ *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share! Transcript (Hearts of Oak) And it is always good to have a new guest on, and it's good to have Karli Bonne' with us today. Karli', thank you so much for joining us.   (Karli Bonne') Wonderful to be here. I was saying to you before we started to be speaking with someone with that beautiful British accent on Coronation Day, and I took the liberty to ask you for apologies in advance for any memes or anything that I might have posted. That you would find offensive, but it's all good. We discussed it and we understand each other perfectly. It's all in jest, but congratulations. This is a historic day. It is. It is. And certainly, I know that you always speak your mind. Any jest and good humour and mocking is always welcome. So people can find you @KaliBonne on Getter and Truth and @KarliBonnita on Twitter and @RealKarliBonne on Telegram, nearly forgot there, find you on Telegram. And you, I just feel bad bringing you on because I think you're just up day and night posting. So I feel bad cutting into your proper job. I well, I've been doing this a long time. This is a new Twitter account. I've had like eight in the past. Elon Musk or his team reinstated one of my accounts midnight rider, But I no longer possess the phone does that I did it on doesn't work. I don't have the email or the, password so I just stare at it I look at it I go on Twitter said oh there's my old account and I waved to it I can't do anything with it and a dear friend from the Keystone Channel when I got finally got kicked off Twitter for the last time started my telegram account for me and now recently she started this Twitter account and they can't get me because she lives in Mexico now where she used to live in Europe. So, you know, I'm biding my time. I haven't even been on like a full week, you know? And it's like, you're on Twitter when you've been kicked off so many times, you're like, you're constantly looking over your shoulder. When are they gonna take me down? You know, I already got an 11 hour timeout. I got smacked on the hand because I called Brian Killmeade on Fox News a whore. But you know, it I didn't you know, it was a lovingly. You know, he does like a hundred different shows He does radio and anytime there's an open slot they stick his his head in and he took I mean, Tuckers seat wasn't even cold, and they popped him in there and you know, we were, I don't think it was just me. I think all of America was just livid over this and to put him in there. I guess, you know, and then, you know, he's had a few words about Steve Bannon and that really set me off. So the timeout was worth it and they didn't make me take down the tweet. So Brian Killmeade is still a whore. Give us give us a minute of your background. We were chatting before, obviously, you said what you're doing is, is fairly recent, although you're a master of editing those videos. But what was your, what was your life leading up to that? Well, as I told you, I was a wannabe rock star. My whole life I wanted to do acting or singing or modelling. I've tried it all. A lot of extra work. I sang in a Russian restaurant for almost 30 years of my life, every weekend, every holiday, every New Year's. And so, that was something I would imitate Marilyn Monroe. I had different characters I would do. And in between that, rock bands. We discussed how I lived in London for a couple of years trying to make it in music. And that was back in the day when we had People's Express Airlines and it was only $99 to fly to London. And the dollar was almost equal with the pound. So I had the most glorious wardrobe shopping in Kensington. And I lived in Camden Town. I worked at the Dingwalls restaurant in Camden Town and the big place you wanted to see was the Camden Lock, which was this little waterway with a little bridge and little canoes going through. That was the tourist attraction in Camden Town. Still is. When all of that failed and I kept trying, I started, because I was posting my music, I started with MySpace and Facebook and then all of a sudden this whole thing with politics started and I was like, who is this Trump guy? I mean, I loved him on TV, always made me laugh. And then I was like, they keep attacking this guy. There's something up with that. And I've been a Trumper ever since. And I have three phones. I just post and post and post and get the videos out there Telegram is a great, App because I can edit the videos right on telegram Which saves a lot of time and this this just what I do now. I try to make people laugh. I keep them informed I use the telegram is like almost like an aggregator, I post everything on there. A lot of people say well, why do you post clips from Fox and I'm like, Because it's basically the only app that lets me rip the video. Where I tried it with CNN MSNBC. You can't do it. They have it blocked. You can't screen record and I do everything from an iPhone I have like three little mini computers on my bed and I work, you know, like this I put the big glasses on and this is what I do. But I enjoy it. There's a lot of wonderful people that support me and use the videos. It's all good. I love having that telegram and getting all those clips that you put out, but let's jump in to the news. And as I said, today was was a huge day in British history. And I also get all the huge issues and push back on all the WEF stuff, everything else and I get that. But I do love the pageantry which is in the UK. So ProJam, can we play the first video? (video plays) God save the King! (music) And it goes on. That's a little, but what were your thoughts as someone across the pond, kind of, we obviously, Queen Elizabeth after such a long time, passed away, but kind of, how do you view those type of events? Is it with curiosity? Is it mocking even? Tell us Karli. Well, I mock everything. I have no mercy. I mock everything. But, you know, I've always, you know, the pageantry is beautiful, you know, and you like the intrigue. I'm not a big, crown fan. I don't watch the series or anything like that. I do love period pieces, because I love the costumes. I love the clothing. You know, you love all the gold and the diamonds, you know. You'd be a liar if you didn't like all that. And, you know, wanted to see what what Harry was going to do. And you know, I had it on the TV, but I was too busy making memes about it. I'm so sorry. But no, it was beautiful. You know, I woke up just in time to see Charles crowned, and there it is, it's done. And now tonight, which I find pretty amazing, they're gonna have the big concert, and all the people in this concert are American performers. What does that say? Here you have, here's your new king, who's very big with the W E F and the climate and all the stuff you would think Labour and all the lefties would appreciate where the queen was just like, you know, kept it on the down low. You know, she wasn't vocal. I mean, if you hear Trump's story about her, she said, oh, I like everyone. Everyone is wonderful. You know, she was just neutral and just kept the ship sailing. You know, this guy, Charles has come out and has said things like, we're all gonna die. We gotta do something about the climate. And you know, I don't know, is he gonna still do this? But the fact that you don't have, you know, where's Adele? Where's Elton John? I mean, why aren't they performing? I mean, this is a real slap in the face by your own people. That we got, we got Katy Perry over there and Lionel Richie. I mean, they had to take the stars from our Idol TV show. Seriously. There's one video out where there was a view of the chapel, and you can see like this figure that looks like he's the Grim Reaper walking across. And I put up, I said, is Gandalf Katy Perry's plus one today? Because they made a big thing. She had a whole article that she was making fun. She couldn't find her seat. We had, well, they had Jill Biden, the professor, Dr. Jill, the professor, all the way in the back row behind Slavonia. And, you know, she's all the way in the back. Joe Biden couldn't even be bothered to go. He said last night on his Fluff Piece, interview that he's very busy. You know, he's getting, you know, he wants to finish the job. He's very busy.   Can I bring what actually you, the president, actually the president did come, Dr. Jill did come. I think she probably knows what's happening much more than Joe. But this is, I did find this Funny, Professor Curtains. Tell us about this, because she does seem to blur in. And there she is with her, was her granddaughter. And it does look like the Ukrainian flag in many parts, as she did. And their carpeting was Ukrainian flag colours. Did you see that? I saw that. Saw that. I was like, what is that all about? You know, I am friends with a lot of, people that look into things like this and see it as messages, you know, is there a conspiracy there? It's yeah,   It's it's not that you're putting up the lookout on. Ronda, Ronda Nell, Iowa. I inspired her because it seems like everything that Jill Biden wears looks like a piece of furniture or curtains or something. And she did a whole thread over on Twitter with all the different looks like Jill Biden is a couch. Today, they put up she actually looked a little bit like if they melted them both together, it would have been Snow White's outfit, even with the little bow in the hair. It's just crazy. And she did shower curtains. See, I joke when I put it in a tweet that's like, there's what is Alice wearing today? The joke is she looks like Alice Cooper. Yeah. And we say, you know, and I'll put up an outfit that she has on at the time and I'll say, okay, everybody, what the hell is Alice Cooper wearing today? Everyone goes nuts and they do the side by side pictures and it's just become this running gag and some people have done whole threads. [14:24] They have found actual tablecloths and curtains and throw rugs and couches and vinyl shower curtains that have matched all her outfits. It's very disturbing. This is the First Lady. It's very disturbing. Yesterday she met with Kate. And I believe it was the Zelensky's wife. And they both had solid colours on they look very nice. And she came in with this flower dress. I said all I got to do is tip her over and put the tea on top of her and use her as a table. Cause she looked like she was wearing the tablecloth. It's true, I saw that.   It's so embarrassing. Well, yeah, you've got many things in your political worlds are embarrassing. Actually, we also are the same, but let me, this was a clip, I think it was from Fox News. You'd posted talking about Biden being rude and anti-British. Let's bring this up. Pro Jam. Can you play that little clip?   (video plays) Here in London. Also missing, of course, along with Meghan Markle, is Joe Biden. Biden is absent from the coronation. I do think this is a very rude signal that Biden is sending to the British people. A lot of unhappiness, certainly on the ground in the UK, with regard to Biden not bothering to attend. And Biden is seen by many Brits as very anti-British. Really? You know, Hilary,   You see the woman, she said yes, because you realize it was just a week ago he was in Ireland. And he had the crowds all swooning and you know he can't get crowds like that in his own country. They all sit in little circles.   They actually believe he's the president there, so they do come out. But you're right, he was over in Ireland and the whole thing was he was in Northern Ireland and the car, I think someone had posted, didn't even have a Union Jack on the car but he went to the Republic of Ireland and again all the tricolour flags and it seemed to be two fingers up to Britain. So yeah.   That question, because you would know this better than I do, the part of Ireland he supposedly is part of or his, you know, lineage or whatever, is this the part of Ireland that doesn't want Brexit? Are they part of Brexit? So it was part of the Republic of Ireland. So the Republic being a separate country for just over 100 years. So you've got Northern Ireland as part of the UK, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And you've got the issue with Brexit in Northern Ireland. But the issue is Republic of Ireland rely on the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland for trade. So anything that happens to us hits them. But it's a yeah, it's it's a very.   We did one of these.   Yeah, yeah, he did. Yeah, I know how to curse in British. But was that was that reported on at all? His trip over by a Biden trip over to the UK? Oh yes, they made a very big deal of it, you know. They're saying, oh, look how they welcomed him. And meanwhile, he was having his usual brain farts. He's there with Hunter, now supposedly Hunter, the broke son who wants to give less money to his daughter. OK? He supposedly slept on a cot while he was in Ireland. I'm like, give me a break. A lot of stuff is hitting the fan. I don't know if that was like their last hurrah trip. And then Jill going to England without Joe, like Joe is playing it low key, or they're basically, he's announced that he's running. So now there's no debates and they're gonna run the basement campaign they did during COVID. He did a little puff interview last night. Even with the editing, it was terrible. What, 10 p.m.? Was it late at night, 10 p.m. I saw.   Well, I don't know that it might've been taped. I don't think it was live. Okay, so I think it was definitely after tapioca and close to bedtime. So I think, you know, they got him. He was still a lunch bag. It's embarrassing. But he has the media covering for him. He has newspapers covering for him. And now, I noticed that I'm on Twitter now. I would always check. They never tweeted for him much. I know he doesn't tweet. The man does not tweet. Okay, he just learned how to take selfies this past year. Because I remember when he started his campaign, he didn't even know how to open the phone. He was looking to see if it flips open. Okay, but he doesn't tweet, but it seems his staff, they think they're going to get him out there through social media. So today it's been like a tweet storm. I've lowered these costs and I've added these jobs. And it's like every 20 minutes or so, it's a new tweet with some lying stats. And what's great now that Elon purchased Twitter, he's getting community noted to death. He's getting fact-checked by the community. Not by Politico, not by all those phony fact-checkers that used to fact-check all of us. No, it's the community, because this is the town square. This is where we all go. We're all independent. We think independently, and we see that this is a lie. So it's a beautiful thing. Now, this is why they didn't get rid of TikTok. Because if you go over to tick-tock and I'm on my fourth or fifth or sixth account over there because they kept taking me down. They hate Steve Bannon on TikTok, Hate him. I've lost so many accounts He's the guy, gotta stop putting up the Steve Bannon videos, you know, and I'm like, I'm never gonna stop doing that, But it's all these young, with 1 million 2 million followers young lefty kids and and they've invited them to the White House. This is, you know, they're going to run their campaign the way they think Donald Trump did in 2016, where it was social media, minus the rallies, because this man can hardly speak and doesn't know when to get on or off the stage or what direction he's going. I'm just so glad he's announced he's running. It's one of the greatest gifts, I think, to your country. And the world. But you mentioned about in the interview, this is the Daily Mail article, Joe Biden claims he couldn't attend King Charles' coronation because he's got a lot going on. And also the interesting thing, and this was the editorial piece in the Daily Mail, it says, the president dispatched his wife Jill to attend the ceremony's place. I know that was a beautiful dispatched, it seemed to be quite disparaging, quite mocking. I thought this is great, the, media are getting it and they're willing to mock him and I've seen that fairly regularly, where in the first year or so he could do no wrong, he had slayed Trump and suddenly they seem to be turning on him and realising he's an utter disaster. Well, you know, the Daily Mail, that's a British paper, isn't it? So this is very insulting. I mean, they'll do different articles and stuff that are very good, but they cover the monarchy and everything that has to do with the queen or the king now and this, this does not rub them the right way. This is a total two fingers up that he didn't go, that he's too busy. Now I'm sure that the White House didn't use the word dispatched. I'm sure the Daily Mail is taking that a little that's that's their wording. You know, I don't think the White House would say that. And the fact that oh, he's very busy. Well, he's not busy with AI because Kamala is doing that now. He's not busy with the border because he sent my York is down there. What else is he not busy with? I can't think. And also, he's not busy with press conferences. He doesn't do those. What is he busy with? His team is arguing with Hunter Biden's lawyers. Hunter Biden wants to start his own GoFundMe for the lawyers. And Biden's team is like, you can't do that. I mean, we covered for you with the paintings. We couldn't be transparent, you know, you're solo artist, you're out there, you know, who buys your paintings, that's your business, that's separate from the White House. But now you want to start a GoFundMe for your baby mama problems? And now we're finding out, you know, Brennan, that the same cast of evil characters with the Russia Russia Russia hoax. Here we go again. They're the ones that we're talking to Blinken and do we got an IRS whistle-blower? We got other whistle-blowers and it's all bubbling up and you know what's going to happen? They're going to bring in Michelle Obama. How can they really run this guy? They won't let him debate. Yeah. They won't let him go out for too long and speak. They're going to win by tweeting and TikTok? A bunch of kids screaming on TikTok? Think about it. I think, you know, are they gonna have a new kind of COVID? Don't give them ideas.   They're gonna have to pull something because you can see with the polling and with that, even with that softball interview last night, it's utterly embarrassing. And this coronation thing, him not being there, and they're keeping Jill very low profile. They stuck her all the way in the back of the church. Okay. We have no American media taking, you know, oh, she's so glamorous and look at this, you know, because she's not. She walks like she's been on a tractor for six hours. You know, this is not an attractive woman. And see Simpadwey, what kind of stupid thing? She's going to talk like this, like, you know, Jersey girl. Oh, it's such a mess. And, you know, for the life of me, because it's so embarrassing, I can't think like a Democrat and see how the hell do we get out of this mess? Well, let me bring up, this was the New York Post headline you put up, and this is another thing that Biden is not doing, sorting out the border. Beautiful headline, maxed out with New York City shelters full, Adams buses migrants to Rockland County. Furious officials say this is absurd, we will not stand for it. I love it the way these Democrat cities and states are actually beginning to feel the heat, whenever Texas and Florida and others say, well, enough is enough. How do you view this? Will this force things to happen? Will some of the Democrat voters waken up and realize actually what is happening on the border?   Well, it can't be ignored anymore. And this is maxed out now, and this is before title 42 is lifted. Meanwhile, they never were really enforcing it. And they're trying to pass a bill to have title 42 for another two years, because even if it's, It was used for COVID. There's other diseases coming. They have these tent cities and stuff. They got scabies. We could get an outbreak of smallpox, measles. There's all other diseases. It's not just COVID. And they say, well, it was used for COVID. Well, it should be used for the next two years for a lot of things. I've watched videos where they're actually washing lice out of the migrants' hair. This should have been addressed when the first baby. First little baby was thrown over the wall. Not Trump's wall, another piece of wall, someone climbed up there and threw a baby over and left it sitting there. That's when this should have been addressed. When they had they weren't in cages, they were in plastic tents. And Ted Cruz went down there. That's when it should have been addressed. And they're saying, oh, we have a six point plan, eight point plan, my orcas should be thrown out. Actually, the way our country has been so overrun, I consider it treason. And I think Biden should be sent out on a rail. Because this is treasonous. This is invasion of our country. And this has been going on for two years. And they're saying Congress has to do something. We didn't have this problem when Trump was president. And they all had AOC down there crying next to a fence in a parking lot. And she said, oh, they're drinking out of toilets. Meanwhile, it's in those facilities, the sink is on top. And the toilet, it's one fixture. And she's drinking out of toilet, where is she now? Where is she now? They found a young girl was raped so many times, They found 47 or something different kinds of DNA inside of her. They have lost 87,000 children. Joe Biden is a child sex trafficker and a child sex trader, slave trader. They're talking about reparations in California. Look at your president, people. You voted for this man! And he is flesh trading your precious migrants that you're all so concerned about. And now you're saying if the men down there, which is a lot of men, Chinese men, all different countries coming in, if they dress up in drag, they'll be let in immediately. This is the signals they're sending out. We have warriors that are down there at the Darien Gap and at the, border since day one of this nonsense reporting on this. So don't say that this is all new news. We all know about it. America knows about it. A lot of Democrat senators, governors, mayors, congressmen that are on those border states, they don't wanna lose their job. They're speaking up now too. So the fact that they waited until the last minute. It's shameful, it's shameful. I don't want to see anybody in pain. Well, another thing that's shameful, and you talk about treason, you mentioned it earlier on, this was the headline from Fox News, Biden says Hunter has done nothing wrong ahead of possible indictment. I did listen to him saying that because I thought, no, surely he couldn't have said it. I trust him. I had faith in him and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him, Biden says of son Hunter Biden. I mean, it's all out there, all the evidence. Again, will the American people get it? Because obviously the last election, this was suppressed and that's all come out. All the information is now out there. What's going to happen? Because it seems as though the net is tightening closer and closer on Hunter. Well, the fact that he went on there, he's gonna stick to it because he's a stubborn, nasty old coot, okay? A lot of people say, oh, he's got the dementia and stuff. I watch him in different settings where he starts drifting off, but then someone will shout a question at him and he'll turn around and snap and you see the nasty old man. All right? So I take the dementia with a grain of salt. I think a lot of it's acting and he's playing the grandpa love me Joe, but he's nasty. Yeah, this is a nasty white trash family. They're white trash. They're trash. And remember the video when Tucker Carlson interviewed Tony Bobulinski and Tony Bobulinski, Tucker asked him, he goes, how are they getting away with this? How did they think they were going to get away with this? And Tucker was being honest. He's like, you know, bewildered. You're telling me all these horrible things and you got proof and you got emails. How are they getting away with it. And Bobulinski just looked at him and said, plausible deniability. Because they're actors. This man, he said last night, I have the best resume, I've been doing this forever. I know better than anyone. Yeah, knows how to play the system, skated through it, kept getting put back in office. You know, you got friends at the unions that are gonna pay for the politics and pay to play. And then you bring in other countries. It's, I just hope this whole thing with Comer doesn't turn out to be like, uh, Trey Gowdy and Benghazi. Because here we all thought, oh, we're going to get some, every time we all thinking we got the popcorn ready and we're going to get some accountability and then it just disappears and we have nothing. And the left laughs. And we're left like just all that energy drained. So I don't get my hopes up. I post what's coming out. I keep everybody up to date with what's happening. And I keep myself up to date. But you know, I take every, I don't get excited anymore. They broke in my spirit. I want to see justice. There's a lot of things we still haven't seen justice for. What happened with Durham? Where is Durham? We made all the memes with, you know, the Punisher shirt and we're, yeah, Durham's coming. He lost two cases and then he disappeared. And they were such low bar cases to nobodies. And there's so many, in the hierarchy of the, as Cash Patel would say, the government gangsters, there's so many at higher levels of power that we have dirt on, that the country, the whole world has seen. And no one cares. It's business as usual. And that drives me crazy. Just when I think I can quit and say, Oh, everything's good in the world. I can't let it go because it's not been settled and these people are getting away with things. And every time, this is a funny bit, every time there's new news on some rotten stuff that these people have done, there's a new accusation against Trump. You know, don't look here, look here. but Trump did this, so don't even worry about that. That's, you know, that's Russian propaganda. Look at what Trump did. And then they put out videos of Trump and his deposition. And he's a beast. He's a beast. You know, I've never been one of those women that was like, oh, he said, grab him by the, oh, oh, that's terrible. Oh, you're such a liar. You're all lying. You women love it. Everyone wants a man's man. Nobody wants a Bud Light drinker these days. We want real men, especially if the zombie apocalypse comes, you want a real man. You know? So none of that bothers me. And all the phony, they're so phony. All of them, they act prissy and like, oh, it's so horrible. Oh, he's a rapist. Oh, he's this. Oh, he's that. And they're all, you know? Oh, you're so phony. I see right through you. You're a piece of... I have to mock you and meme you to oblivion because you're ridiculous. Ridiculous people. I love watching some of the depositions. I haven't seen it all, but they're so good. There's so many outtakes of it   He's such a beast. Oh god, just when you think you cannot love this man more. Oh god, I love it. Wonderful. Let's go to something completely different. This is TikTok and I'm curious to get your thoughts, not specifically on this, but on TikTok in general and all the debate. I had to laugh at this. TikTok workers compiled lists of users who browse gay content, which sparked complaints from some employees who were concerned it could be used to blackmail people. Surely not. There's a massive debate at the moment in the US on TikTok and the influence it has. And of course, that leads back to China and whether individuals are in control of China. And this kind of connects with that, that TikTok gathering information to be used for blackmail, that kind of does connect at all the dots, doesn't it? But what's been happening TikTok-wise in the US? Well, I told you, I'm like on my seventh account, they keep taking me down because they don't like Jesse Waters, they don't like Steve Bannon, they don't like Fox News. Now you will get taken down for supposedly disinformation about the climate and it's basically an lbg ptq playground. And it's sad because you know it is a great platform for making videos and things it really, is a it's great I love using it a lot of people say oh it's china in my phone I said you're worried about China in your phone. Can we be completely honest here folks? You're worried about China in your phone. The overlords of our own government are in your phone. You have Google on your phone, you have Facebook on your phone. We just found out from the Twitter files that the CIA and the FBI were in your private messages. Okay? And you're worried about China? What's China going to do to me that hasn't already been done? Where they released a catastrophic virus and you're worried about TikTok? This is how I knew they were never going to get rid of TikTok. They went through the motions, oh, federal employees can't use TikTok. They could go home and use it, but when you're on the job or if you have a federal employee's special phone or something, you can't use TikTok. And it was all the big rage. They had the CEO of TikTok up there. None of these people knew what they were talking about. They know nothing. And another thing, if you've ever been on Discord, or any of these other platforms like that, gaming platforms, the CIA's in there, China's in there. I would say MI6 is probably in there. So this is nothing new. Spy versus spy, this is nothing new. So this new thing that they, you know, had a bunch of information, didn't we just get through a whole bunch of employees from banks that they got hacked and all their information was put out? You're going to see this a lot more, especially now we're getting closer to maybe China invading Taiwan, or right now there's a stalemate with the Russian-Ukraine war. We're going to see a lot more cyber stuff go down, a lot more. So, who knows, someone might just take TikTok down all on their own. So I just, I don't worry about it. I just use any outlet I can, whether it's to make videos, post videos, or share videos from. You know, because I got 50 followers now on TikTok when I used to have 20K. You know, it's hard to build up again when they don't like you. They're not gonna let people see you. So who does that, the Chinese overlords, or is this now the Democrat party that's in charge? Because if you look, all the people that say to get off TikTok are not on TikTok, but now AOC, what was it, Watermelon Head Schiff, the minute he got kicked off the intel committee, he opened up a TikTok account. Was crying over there, you know what I'm saying? These people don't care what you think. They don't care. They don't listen to their own advice because a lot of them know it's nonsense. So I feel bad that people's information is being put out there, but that's it. Look, your bank information could fall into the wrong hands. Look what's happening with the banks collapsing. All right. You know, you're one hack away. All of this reminds me, they took the show off, Westworld. Have you watched Westworld?   Yeah, I've watched some of the early ones off it. Yeah, yeah. The last season, it was incredible. They were able to do with sound waves, like they would infect you with a fly, like a fly would fly into you, I guess with nanobots and stuff. And they had a building that you couldn't even see. And it would let off a sound, and it was able to control you. But the season before, the robots or fembots or whatever they were, were able to hack into the system and show everybody what everybody really thinks of them. Everyone was exposed. There was just one day everyone's looking at their phone. The system was hacked. The AI was hacked and everyone saw the truth and it became complete Anarchy. People were just killing each other left and right blow countries blowing each other up when everyone finally saw the truth It was anarchy now, what if we all finally got the truth and we weren't all just conspiracy theorists anymore, What if we finally were told the truth? Have they been hiding the truth from us because they're afraid of this kind of anarchy? Or do they just want to keep us dumb cows, tell us what to eat, what stove to buy, what car to buy, pay the taxes so we can have other people tell us what to do? Is that the point of our existence? or is our existence to ask questions, worship God, have a family, enjoy life, feel the grass under our feet, one with our beautiful world. Like Elon wants to go to other planets. Let's deal with this one because we got some evil people on this planet. I told you, I laugh at them. I get kicked off of platforms because I laugh at them. And I record myself laughing at them. It goes viral. And I laugh at them because it's like holy water on a demon. When you make jokes, like the memes are so important that everyone does because that laughter, it's not only good for the soul, but it exposes the truth. That's why they try to shut down so many comedians. And now the comedians are shut down because we got a strike. I saw that. No, but memes are so powerful. So powerful. And President Trump put up this latest poll, 2024 National Republican primary, Trump 58%, DeSantis 22%, Pence, is Pence still running? 5%. Ramaswamy 5%, Haley 4%, Christie. And what are your, because he obviously is streets ahead, and what's kind of the process? When did the kind of primaries start and when? I really can't believe anyone would run against him. As much as I really do like DeSantis and like what he's done in Florida, I don't understand the logic for running against Donald Trump. Well, from what I've seen in the past, a lot of people get in primaries because they're looking for cabinet jobs. They don't expect to be president like Ed Buttigieg and Kamala and all those people that lined up at the last election. Buttigieg is now in charge of airplanes. Look how good that's working out. You got Kamala, she quit. She was less than 1%. She quit before they even had a primary, and now she's vice president. So sometimes people run, like you saw President Trump put out a truth social giving some kudos to Varuswamy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that. You know, so saying, you know, you're doing a good job, you know. He never puts down Nikki Haley. But he goes right after Ron because everyone says oh because you know, he's closer to him in the polls No If you know anything about our President Trump, He's been saying it his whole life. If you ever read any of his books or seen old videos of him, you know one thing, he values loyalty. He is a businessman if you're not loyal and I do something for you stay loyal to me. We'll make things work out. He could have made him, in DeSantis in 2028, the biggest thing anyone's ever seen. Or even think about vice president, but because he's doing this, now you got people fighting on Twitter. Oh, the DeSantis people or the never Trumper people and now DeSantis people and that Chris Christie and his fat ass wants to get in. Give me a break, you know? I guess nothing happened when Mike Pence went to give his deposition because I'm sure if there was one iota of damning things that he said, it would be in the news right now. It's true, yeah. Because they love to leak. They love to leak. So when you don't hear anything, that's a good thing. It's a very good thing when you don't hear anything. But Mike Pence, I don't know, is he gonna run? Who knows? A lot of these people. I mean, who is it that in California? It's this people running that have no chance in hell. It's a Hutchinson. Are you kidding me? A race ahead. Get out of here. All right. What does he want to do? Is he running so he could just collect as much money as possible? Then once he doesn't even make it to a primary, he can go and write a book and then do a tour. I ran for president a lot of see this is a whole, money-making scheme Beta O'Rourke has run for everything with his arms flailing in the air looking like he's on the parking lot of a used car lot. And that's how he makes his money. He's disappeared Where is he now? They got a new guy that did pumping up, to run against Ted Cruz in texas, I never heard of the guy, but he looks like one of these bodybuilders and there's already dirt coming out of the sky. You know? So bring it, people, because you know what? We do our homework and we will find the dirt on you and not be quiet about it. Let's move on to, there are lots of comments down on GETTR, I won't be able to pull them. This for just the first minute or so but we'll play it anyway. (video plays) Welcome back. Welcome back. President Trump, a quick word to the Irish friends. What's it like being back at Ireland for the first time since the election? This has become a big success. We love it. Special place. You see what happened out there with the kids and yeah. We help them and they help them. It's really a very special place. Great course, great hotel. You're here very shortly after President Biden's visit. What did you make of President Biden's visit? What did you make of the crowds? I mean, I didn't see too much of his visit. I don't know what he did here, but this is special. And we're here to pay homage to this great property. This property has revitalized a big part of Ireland and the people are happy. And we have incredible people working here. A lot of them, too. You see some of them, a lot of them. And so it's been great, it's been really great. There's a lot of yous in Ireland, a lot of them paying an awful lot of corporate tax here. Do you think some of that corporate tax, or at least most of that corporate tax should be paid in America? Well, that's an interesting question, but I won't answer that question in your country. But a lot of people would say yes, but Ireland's done a great job. You've lured a lot of companies in, and they love it here, they really love it here. They've been treated well, just like I've been treated well. This has been a great success, and we bought this, it was a great property, but it had to be finished. And we have really completed it, and it's beautiful. And now we'll do some additions. And the course is one of the best courses in the world, actually, one of the best courses, with some of the most beautiful dunes in the world. So we've had a good time. You've had some planning difficulties, though. What do you think of the Irish planning system and the recent refusal of planning commission? Well, I think we've had very good luck. You know, most of this is built because of planning commission. But what we've wanted to do, I think they've pretty much led us to the important things. There's been a lot of attention on the Northern Ireland post-Brexit trading agreements. How do you think those negotiations are going? Well, we're going to see. They're negotiating and we're going to see. But there are a lot of negotiations going on in Ireland and other places right now. But that's going to be a tough one. It's not an easy one. We're gonna have to work it out. Will cut short, uh, President Trump, but it was, it was Ireland. So he did do Scotland and then went to, uh, Ireland, but it's   Right before that he was outside with a hat on and all the kids saying to him. Yeah. So I felt bad because he knew his hair was messed up. He knew it. He knew he had that little puff right there and he wanted so badly to fix it, but he was just like, he's so stoic. You know, he takes the questions, he knows, you know, sometimes they're going to be hard, but let's say, yeah, but and he knows how to direct to something else and say, yeah, but we're doing this and this is good for Ireland. And he's very good. He's, you know, Joe can't do that. Joe can't do that.   But Trump, he always is so good. He, he, he takes all the questions. He, he doesn't but anyway, and he, he's that personal touch because he knows his stuff and poor Joe doesn't know what day of the week it is, never mind knowing about policies, talking to the press.   Well, supposedly Joe was picked by Obama, for his, he was good with foreign affairs, and we all see what has happened with the foreign affairs. Since Joe became president, okay. If anything, he was good at foreign affairs because he was able to send his son the bag man and make some bank for the family. That's why he knew the foreign affairs. He knew who to talk to and where to send the poor kid, you know, who turned out to to be pretty rotten, you know, it's just, oh. But Trump, he's a businessman, you know, I love you get a morning Mika and and that whole rotten crowd over there on MSNBC and they're like, Oh, he's just a game show host. He's been a businessman. He's been in real estate. He's worked with the boxing, the casinos. He's not, just because he had a great show. All right, because of his status from all the other things that he did. Best selling books. I mean, come on, you know, they try to really cheapen him. Because they're so damn jealous. And they all loved him when he was a Democrat. Chuck Schumer was like, come back, come back, you know, when he was running against Hillary at that dinner. And then what did Chuck do? He came out with as many knives and Uzis and whatever else, landmines, anything he could throw at this man to ruin his presidency. Well from a political heavyweight to a media heavyweight, and then we'll just finish off with looking at your US military gone fully woke. But this is Tucker Carlson. This is just short, 30 seconds, I think. Pro Jam, play this and listen to Tucker and his speech. If you can. Or not. This is, well Tucker's line is, I didn't realise how much free time I would have when I accepted this speech. This is his first public appearance since his removal from Fox News. But what are, your, everyone is speculating, everyone is thinking what on earth is he going to do next. He obviously wasn't expecting it because he said he was going to be on on the Monday and then wasn't. And I mean, Tucker could do anything he wanted. So how are you watching this individual who is bigger than really anyone else in the in the media space? I'm what you know, when he posted that video at 801 on the first night that the whore Brian Kilmeade was in his slot and he posted on Twitter and that tweet of him, you know, just being him and putting out a message to everybody got more views than anything. It was just, it was insane.   Like 25 or 40 million or something or some,   It's like I don't even know where it's at now. It's just Ridonculous. All right, and uh, he could go anywhere the question I have is I would like him to do an interview or put out another video to let us unless he's, they might have him, Under a contract where he can't speak, like, you can go and do these speeches at these private venues, like, that video is somebody holding up a phone, that's uncivilized. He could probably, he could do things like that, but if he was to go on somebody's show, I mean, Fox could have him silenced. I would like to know these things. I want to know how much freedom does he actually have. Are they keeping a boot on him till after the election? How long is this gonna last? Are they paying him out? Is he fired? Was it mutual? You know what I'm saying? They did him dirty. They did him dirty. But is he and he can go anywhere. He could just start his own podcast. It would just be insane. It would be the biggest thing ever. Is he taking time now to enjoy his family. He'll talk here and there. I think he sent a message to CPAC in Ukraine, not in Ukraine, in Hungary, didn't he? He did. He sent a 30, 40, short message to them. But I think he did that before he was removed.   Because it was on his set. Yeah. But he said, if I'm ever sacked, then I will be with you. And then he was sacked. Well, that's what I'm saying. Anything that he was to do now. He could get sued by Fox because he's under contract. You know that they get you. They get you. You thought you sign your life away. Or you read renegotiate but they could have him on hold for for six or nine more months. I mean, he it's not like he's he's gonna starve to death, but you gotta think of politically where we are. He was a huge voice that we needed and nobody on Fox is gonna fill that hole. So that's why we go the independent route and we all support each other, and just keep supporting each other like what you do. Me with my kooky videos and my memes and stuff, everybody, keep the pressure on, keep laughing at them, keep throwing that holy water, exposing these demons that need to be eradicated from our world. Because they will not stop. They will never stop. They will never give up. They're dug in. Now are we gonna be like all the RINOS of the past and the ones that want to move in now because there's a void there and we're going to roll over and show our bellies and say, oh give me a little scratchy it's okay, let it be like that no we've been fighting for too long to to give up now, way too long, please. Giving up, it shouldn't even be a thought. Can I just finish, just two or three minutes just on this. I just want to throw it in on the US military. And Steve had posted this, which Daily Mail story, but the Navy is 8,000 recruits short because red blooded Americans don't want to join a freak show, I'm not sure this Navy is ready to defeat the CCP fleet in a gun battle in the South China Seas. I mean, the last thing you need for your recruitment campaign for the military is a bloke dressing up as a woman and somehow, someone, somewhere has decided this is the way to fix your military shortfall. Um, yeah, uh, Steve calls it I perfectly. It is a freak show. Well, there's someone that is friends with that Dylan Mulvaney. Because they used to work together on the Book of Mormon. They were like theatre kids together or something. And they just put out a TikTok video showing this old movie. And it also had Ronald Reagan and where all the men dressed up like women and this was to raise money, for the for the military and, because of this old movie that this guy found he says What Dylan's doing and what the navy is doing is all right because look there's even a child in the audience and I'm like, No, no, no, no, no That was different because all those men that put on a woman's dress. And did some camp Okay They all went home to their wives, if they didn't get blown up in the war. Okay, it's a big difference. Okay, everyone knew it was just a play acting. Remember, you want to go back even further? Shakespeare, plays that were performed way, way back in the day, all the performers had to be male. And the men played the women's roles. Okay, so there's a talk this drag thing that you're doing the hyper sexualized. Yes. Oh, oh, all right. That's not what that old movie did. It was a bunch of men dressed up in these hokey lady, old lady dresses. Okay, and Milton Berle, that was part of his his shtick was, dressing up as an ugly old woman, okay? There's the comedy part and then there's this over-sexualized nonsense that's being pushed. So don't show me an old movie with Ronald Reagan of a bunch of our military guys dressed up as women and compare it to the nonsense that's being portrayed now, this hyper sexualization these guys you know, doing splits and big rubber boobies with nipples in the kids faces, Yeah, okay the heavy makeup. You know these drag is an art drag is a nightclub thing It's just like going to see a stripper in a pole dancing thing. That was drag. And now you got these really low budget drag performers going to kids' schools. And a lot of them have been arrested for kiddie porn. They've got their junk hanging out, their costumes are low, low budget. You got professional drag performers saying, stop this nonsense. It's embarrassing. We don't stand for this. We don't go to kids. I will. Who is it? Jesse Waters had a drag performer on his show and said that this is horrible. I don't stand for this. When I go out to the club. I don't want kids crying in the background. I want to have my mimosa and see a show. And that's my thing. But now the I don't know what is it with the kids. And you know, there's something really, and I don't want to say evil, because, you know, I hate to think that everyone's evil. But there's an evil agenda going on with this, a very evil agenda and it's towards the kids. And they started off, you know how you start with soft porn and then you get addicted and it has to get harder and harder to get more clicks or get more outrage. They're using it as a tool to get an outrage mob going on both sides, for and against. We still haven't seen the manifesto of the trans murderer. None of those family members were invited to the White House but the three insurrectionists were. And I thought it was also very funny. One of the insurrectionists, the guy with the bullhorn was out in front of the correspondence dinner, in a tuxedo with the bullhorn yelling at the people coming in, the reporters for climate change and get rid of big oil. Here's all the people that stuck up for this little maggot, and he's yelling with the bull horn in their face. Wow. Wow. Karli, I'll bring us into a close. As I said at the beginning, I feel bad taking out of your time on posting non-stop. Great having you on. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Well, this afternoon with you, this evening with us.   Oh, this is wonderful. I was just, I couldn't believe you invited me because I'm such a goofball. And I always see, I always watch your videos and you have very serious people on. I'm like, what the hell does he want me on for? I am like goofy and you know, my eyes are wacky. And you know, I just make memes and stuff. This was wonderful. I hope everyone enjoyed my goofiness and listen, enjoy the rest of your celebration over there. I pray for you and I pray for your country just as hard as I pray for mine right now.   They both need prayer. They really do. They really do. No, but I love your memes. Absolutely love them. And that's where we win this battle using the power of media and memes using humour. That's how you get people and that's how you connect to people. So thank you for what you do. And Midnight Rider channel, love it on Telegram. So thank you. Let me finish off with our viewers. Thank you for tuning in wherever you are, however you're watching. Great to have you with us. Obviously, if you didn't know Karli before, all the links are on the screen there, on GETTR, on Truth, on Twitter, and @RealKarliBonne on Telegram, so make sure and follow her. Or if you're listening on the go after, thank you for joining us. So I wish you all a wonderful rest of your weekend, and we'll be back with you on Monday with Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch.   Oh he's my favourite!   He's so good, I met him when I was over a couple, well, just CPAC and them before. And I love what Judicial Watch do, just the power of using those freedom of information on the government. So he'll be with us on Monday.   He's another patriot that he doesn't stop. He doesn't stop. Like, I don't know when he finds the time to lift weights and keep up that Superman bod with all the work that he does. You know, I get the newsletter. 25 years, 25 years he's been president of Judicial Watch and it's a phenomenal organization. So yeah, he'll be with us on Monday. So on that, I wish our viewers a wonderful rest of your weekend and we'll be with you on Monday. Thank you for joining us and goodbye.

In this episode, Holy Cross professor Stephanie Yuhl reconnects with friend and former student Meg Griffiths '04.  They reminisce about Meg's days on campus, and reflect upon the many ways that the Holy Cross Mission and its pursuit of social justice is evident throughout Meg's life and career. Interview originally recorded on July 31, 2020.  Due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic, all interviews in season 2 are recorded remotely. --- Meg: I think people who come to the dialogue table… they come because they’re in touch with something that means a lot to them, and they care enough to show up and listen and try to muddle through with people who they know occupy different positions.  And to me, that’s a sign of hope in and of itself: that people are willing to come to the table. And that they have a shared commitment to making some kind of change, making their community better, making space for more voices and rehumanizing the “other.” Maura: Welcome to Mission-Driven, where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I’m your host, Maura Sweeney ‘07, Director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross.  I’m delighted to welcome you to today’s show. Maura: In this episode we hear from Meg Griffiths from the class of 2004.  Meg can be described as an educator, space maker, practitioner of dialogue, crafter of questions, and human can opener.  Ever since graduating from Holy Cross, Meg has pursued mission-focused work. After starting her career with the Jesuit Volunteers Corps in New Orleans, her journey has evolved to include work in the nonprofit sector and higher education. Today, she works for Essential Partners, an organization who partners with communities and organizations around the globe, equipping them to navigate the values, beliefs and identities that are essential to them.  Her work showcases the importance of dialogue and connection in order to build trust and support mutual understanding among diverse groups of people.  Stephanie Yuhl, Professor of History, Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies, reconnects with Meg to speak about her life and career.  Their conversation is filled with mutual admiration and respect, stemming from Meg’s time as a student at Holy Cross.  The importance of living the Holy Cross Mission is interwoven throughout the conversation. Despite coming to Holy Cross not knowing what a Jesuit was, Meg has lived a life devoted to the Jesuit values of social justice ever since. Stephanie: Hi, Megan, it's Stephanie. Meg: Hi, Stephanie. It's Meg. Stephanie: How are you doing Meg? I'm so excited that we get this chance to spend some time together and to talk about interesting things related to you and Holy Cross. I have to say, whenever I think of students that to me, have really lived out the mission, you see the T-shirts at Holy Cross that say Live the Mission, and I think that certain people actually really do that and you're always at the top of the list of that, so thanks for sharing your time with us today. Meg: Thank you, Stephanie. When I think about my Holy Cross experience, you are one of the people that regularly comes to mind. So, this is a pure joy to have some Zoom time with you these days in this weird, strange time we're in. Stephanie: It is and hopefully the listeners won't be bored with our mutual admiration society that we're having. Let's get started and let's talk about Holy Cross and you and then, we'll move into your life and career. Tell me why did you choose Holy Cross? What was it about the school that attracted you and how did you move through Holy Cross during your time there? Meg: Yeah. So, I was looking at colleges in the late '90s but before I actually stumbled into Holy Cross, this glossy, beautiful materials that came my way in the old school snail mail, my sister was looking at colleges and she's a couple years older than me. We are very different people in all kinds of ways. My parents had taken my sister to do a New England college tour and Julie came home, very uninterested in Holy Cross and my mom said to me, "Megan, I found the perfect college for you, because your sister is not interested." So, it was sort of planted in the back of my head, before I actively started looking at colleges and I just loved it when I stepped on campus. Meg: I think a lot of Holy Cross students say this, they have this experience of sort of feeling something when they come to campus. My mom said she could read it all over my face, but it really sort of met a lot of what I was looking for in a school at the time, which is a small liberal arts Catholic school. I didn't know what a Jesuit was yet but I was Catholic educated my whole life and that felt familiar in a good way and in a challenging way. Yeah, I landed here in 2000 as a wee freshman, and took me a little while to find my sort of academic home and you, Stephanie, were a big part of that. I meandered through all of my distribution requirements and learned that I wasn't a disciplinary thinker but a multi-disciplinary thinker. Meg: Got a chance to design my own American Studies major before that was a thing on campus, and you Stephanie, were wise enough really, to say yes to being my advisor for that- Stephanie: It was wise because then we got to be friends, and you did your senior thesis on Child's Play, which I think is really interesting and I think it reveals a lot about you and the way that your brain works. Can you talk about that a little bit, explain what that thesis was about, if you can recall? Meg: Yes, I can recall. I can recall sitting in the library at a giant table every Friday writing it, my senior year. I was really interested in gender. I was also a women's studies concentrator before it was women and gender studies and then, material culture, and so, I studied how doll play and child rearing manuals sort of told a story about gender and the role of women in early America and how girls were socialized to grow up to be mothers and caretakers, through the use of dolls and doll play. So, it's really interesting, kind of nerdy but lovely research. It was sort of the bringing together of all of the disciplines of my American Studies major and my interest in sort of gender, and culture. Stephanie: Yeah, and also, I think creativity, right? The idea of looking at something and you see something extensible in that, a doll but then, being able to read and interpret more deeply into it and try to think about what are the influences and impacts that this artifact could have? I think that that is in a lot of ways really connected to some of the work that you do about seeing things one way and then trying to shift one's angle of vision to see it another way to unpack its power. So, it might look like doll play, but I think it was really indicative of future trajectories, perhaps. Meg: I love that. Stephanie: So you mentioned that you didn't even know what a Jesuit was and then, your biography really kind of spent a lot of time in that Jesuit social justice space. So, can you talk a little bit about ... and that's what we would stay around mission, right, around how you're formation at Holy Cross, what are the sort of the things that you think are part of your Jesuit education at Holy Cross, and then we can talk about how you then put those into action after graduation? Meg: Yeah, I love that you brought up the Live the Mission T-shirts, because I was an orientation leader who wore that T-shirt many summer and I'm a little bit of a mission statement nerd, because I just love the way that institutions and communities and even people can take an opportunity to name explicitly what they're about and what they aspire to be. So, I think they're both aspirational and descriptive. The Holy Cross mission, I stepped into it in a variety of ways. I mean, my experience as a student is that you can't go to Holy Cross and not be steeped in mission, but I understand other people have different experiences of that. Meg: For me, I saw it everywhere I looked, and I sought it out also. So, I got involved in the chaplains office, pretty early on in retreats, and in singing in liturgical choir, and sort of embracing the social justice mission of Jesuit education and formation through Pax Christi, and going to the School of the Americas protest and participating in the Mexico Immersion Program and SPUD. Really, seeing the ways that a faith doing justice was a huge part of the college's larger mission and I also just ... I think, part of what I loved about specifically, the Holy Cross mission statement was that it was full of questions and when we talk about what I do now, this might become even more clear to people but I'm sort of all about questions. Meg: I love the ways in which a question can invite us into, again, aspiration and also possibility, and deep personal reflection at an institutional level, sort of organizational reflection on again, who we want to be and how we want to be in the world. The Holy Cross mission statement asks these super powerful questions like what is the moral character of teaching and learning and what are our obligations to one another? What's our special responsibility to the world's poor and powerless? How do we find meaning in life and history? Meg: These are what I have always called the big important questions and I love the way that my academic experience sort of mirrored that more spiritual formation in wading into those big questions and finding the nuance and complexity that comes through sustained engagement with those kinds of questions. There's no simple answers to be found here and I love that. Even though I'm someone who really likes clarity and planning and a clear path, there's a big part of me that also knows, we need to wrestle with the complexity and the gray areas of what it means to be human. So, those are the parts of the mission statement and the way that the mission was lived in my experience that really captivated my imagination. Stephanie: That's awesome and that notion of patience and ambiguity, which is also in the mission is a wonderful thing and it's hard for type A organizers, like yourself and myself, sometimes to sit in that space but I think that that's really probably where we're most human, right? Particularly today in our really Balkanized political discourse, it's important to try to find these spaces of more nuanced. So, let's talk about that a little bit, so you come to the college, you find your way, you figure, you learn what a Jesuit might be, you live the mission, wear a T-shirt and then you graduate, right? With this thesis in Child's Play where everyone is banging on your door to hire you to do something with Child's Play because they don't know that Child's Play is not a play, it's very serious. Meg: I think that was the subtitle of my thesis. Stephanie: It was. This is no joke. I think it's serious- Meg: Something about seriousness of ... Yeah, anyways, yes. Stephanie: Exactly. So, tell me a little bit about ... I know right after college, you joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, right? Meg: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: And went to New Orleans. Meg: Yeah. Stephanie: Tell me a little bit about that decision and how this question driven impulse that you have, played out in that space. The kind of work you did there, and how maybe your sense of your own personal mission started to shift a little bit in that time. Meg: Yeah, so I served in New Orleans in 2004 to 2005. I served at a domestic violence shelter. We had a transitional shelter and an emergency shelter. My work there involved being a part of the life of the shelter, of the residential life of our clients and guests. I dropped into a culture that could not have been more different than my suburban New Jersey Catholic upbringing, although New Orleans is very Catholic, but sort of my sheltered, very white suburban, middle class upbringing. For me, that was a transformative year in terms of coming to see the lived realities of some of the things that I had studied at Holy Cross. So, I took great courses, like social ethics with Professor Mary Hobgood, and liberation theology with Jim Nickoloff. Meg: I had studied ... and also in my local volunteering over the four years that I was in Worcester, obviously, coming face to face with the realities of injustice and poverty and violence, and sort of had this sort of charity orientation. Definitely, Holy Cross moved me into a conceptualization of justice as a really important aim, more so than charity. They go together but really, that more of my activism sort of bloomed as a Holy Cross student. It was entirely different to move to a city I've never lived in before, worked in a shelter, live in intentional community with six other humans, doing all kinds of work in the city, and tried to live in some shape of solidarity, which is not really possible in some ways, because I was bringing all my privilege and my social network of support with me. Meg: I remember feeling like I saw a different side of the world for the first time, that I really was face to face with three dimensional humans, who were experiencing these things that were really sort of more theoretical in my head at the time, oppression and discrimination, and violence, and classism, and sexism, and heterosexism and all the isms. Yet, New Orleans is this amazing, cultural, rich, historic place that is so much an example of finding joy and having resilience in the face of so many difficulties. Of course, I left New Orleans, three weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and never was that clear, that sense of resilience and hope and richness of community than when I returned to New Orleans, about 10 months after Katrina hit to move back. Stephanie: Let's talk a little bit about that, because that was a really interesting ... an interesting move for you, I think. They joke that JVC graduates are ruined for life, right? That sort of tagline and I think a lot of our students would find it interesting and helpful, frankly, who also choose this path of service as a postgraduate moment. After that, sometimes they feel a little stuck about what next, right? Because you've just had this really intense experience, an experience in which hopefully, you've made some kind of impact but really, mostly it has an impact on the server, as we know, around that quest around justice and charity models, right? Stephanie: You opted to come back to New Orleans, right, to go back to New Orleans and the listeners might not know this, but Megan, Meg Griffiths was a member of the CIA and I think you should explain that, because I think it will surprise people that you are a CIA member. Do you want to explain that Megan and what called you back to New Orleans? Meg: Yeah. Yeah. So, I had moved up to Milwaukee. I was serving at Marquette University, an internship in their university ministry office, so that's where I went when I left and that's where I was when Katrina hit. I didn't have a television in my apartment. I was living in a residence hall. I just come off of a year of simple living. I do not bring a lot with me to Milwaukee. As the news of Katrina was sort of coming up to Milwaukee, I was really not as in tune with what was happening as I would have been if I had a television and sort of made a point to be following the news. Simpler times back then. I quickly started checking in with some people who I knew who were in New Orleans, and it became clear that it was being taken increasingly seriously, as Katrina was approaching. Meg: So, I think that the fact that I had been a resident of that city three weeks before Katrina hit, I mean, I just ... it felt like home still, as much as a place you've lived for 11 months, can feel like home but- Stephanie: Very intense 11 months, so that makes it more home, right? Meg: Yes, and I just ... the only way I could explain it is I felt like I was having the experience that my heart was still in New Orleans and was breaking for this beloved city and its beautiful humans. So, I made my way down several times that year when I was serving at Marquette. I brought students, I went down and met up with other JVs and at the end of my internship, I didn't really have a plan as to what was next. My supervisor at the time, at Marquette who is Jocelyn, she was the liturgist there, she decided she was taking a leave of absence and going to move to post Katrina New Orleans because she felt so called to do so. Meg: I remember so clearly that she asked me straight out, "If I do this, will you come with me?" Without even thinking, I said yes. That is a moment where I felt so deeply certain about the word yes, that I didn't even have time to think before it came out of my mouth. Then, I was like, "Oh, no, I just said, Yes. I think I have to do this." Stephanie: Wait a minute the overthinker didn't overthink this. She just responded. That's great. Meg: Yeah. Stephanie: That's a pure yes. Meg: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it felt like a call. I mean, it was a direct invitation- Stephanie: It was an invitation, literally. Yeah. Meg: So I said yes, not knowing what it meant or how we would pay for anything or what we would do. Another person joined us, a recent alum of Marquette, my dear friend, Stacy now. So, the three of us moved to New Orleans, rented a house started calling ourselves contemplatives in action, i.e. CIA. Stephanie: I love it. Meg: So, we built this fledgling nonprofit to help people ... to help receive short term volunteers into the city. So, our Jesuit high schools and colleges and parishes, and so many others but in particular, we had a connection to this larger Jesuit family, and people wanted to come to New Orleans and help rebuild and stand with the people of New Orleans and accompany people in their moment of pain, and hear their stories and bear witness. So, we created an opportunity that made it easier for people to find their way to do that work by helping place volunteers and connect them with local nonprofits and local community leaders and with the spiritual and religious and cultural history of the city of New Orleans. Meg: It was really hard work. I mean, physically hard labor but also emotionally hard work. I remember, Stacy, my colleague and co-conspirator in the CIA, say, "I came to New Orleans, to lighten other people's burdens and what I didn't realize was that I would wind up carrying them, with them." That's how we help lighten other people's burdens. Stephanie: Right, accompany them. Meg: Yeah, and that weight of living in what was, for many years after I was there, still a city in distress and in disarray, is emotionally difficult to show up every day and be present to that and to be able to leave was a huge privilege. That wasn't my life. It wasn't my community. It wasn't my home. It wasn't my school, that was destroyed and yet it felt like a part of me. I also knew that there was a limit to how much capacity I had to continue to show up. So, I made a commitment of a year of doing that work in community and then, stepped out of that work and into the next thing. Stephanie: Right, and that's, I think, really ... I just want to thank you for sharing that. I think it's really important for people to know that, you can step up and step in and accompany and do your very best and sometimes it feels like failure to step away, but stepping away is also stepping towards something else. It's not always stepping away from. This notion of sharing the suffering and sharing the stress, and sharing the work is something that very few single people can do, right? It's something that many people need to step in and come in and go. So, I think that idea that you were there, you went away and you came back, I mean, that's that kind of push, pull relationship. Stephanie: I think it's important for people, particularly younger folks who might be listening, to recognize that one, you make a commitment to something and you follow through on your commitment and then, it's okay to also make a different commitment. That's also part of the development and you're not abandoning people, you're not quitting. Meg: I mean, for me, it was about how can I find a different way to support this work. So, I think, also like, especially right now, in our world, when there's so much work needed, and so many people joining in the long struggle for racial justice, for the first time, finding your place in the work can be really hard and I think we sometimes ... I'll speak for myself, I think I sometimes think that there's only one way to show up, to be part of the work and the truth is, there are many ways and we are as different, in terms of our gifts and our assets, and our limitations, as you can get in humans. So, noticing what you can do, what serves the work, what sustains you and the work. Meg: Then, being okay with pivoting, when you realize that that's no longer the role that you can play or want to play or is helpful to play. So for me, I moved to Providence, which is where I live now after New Orleans and I took a job in higher ed setting and one of the first things I did was asked if I could start a program to bring students to New Orleans. So, I continued my relationship and my work and in some ways, built a much more sustainable way. My advocacy continues like super- Stephanie: Particularly you singularly doing the work. Meg: Yeah. Stephanie: Something that amplifies and continues. Yeah, the sustainability question. Meg: Yeah. So, I mean, not right now because nobody's going anywhere but up until last January, students were still going on the NOLA immersion trip from my previous institution. I built that program in 2009. It ran for 10 years, and it will come back I hope, when travel is a thing again, because the work in New Orleans also continues. The immediate response and rebuilding was ongoing for many, many years and yet, there's still ongoing work that we can do. Stephanie: Yeah, and I think that's really interesting, Meg to hear you talk about how you can best serve because sometimes we do have these default notions that it needs to look a certain way. I would connect this with the spiritual exercises, right? That idea of you have to find your way, right? Discern your way, not the way that the culture might tell you is the way or what does service look like, what does a simple life have to look like? We bring a lot of baggage to that and the hard work of reflecting on what is my path and being okay with that even if it looks a little counter-cultural, if it looks like someone's leading something or pivoting. Stephanie: I think that has a lot to do with letting go of ego. Did you think that had to do at all with ego, the idea of who you thought you were in that moment and then, recognizing there's another way of using your skills and gifts toward a larger end? Meg: Yeah, I don't know that I would put that language around it at the time but certainly looking back ... I mean, I did have a lot of moments of asking myself, like what am I here for? Am I here for the right reasons? Am I the right person to be doing this work? I mean, the answer wound up always being yes or enough of a not no, to stay. I think there are moments where in my own development and sort of self-actualization we might say in the fancy words, where I would look at people that I admired and try to be more like them. I think it was actually another of my Holy Cross mentors, Kristine Goodwin, who at one point, used this frame of sort of holy envy. Meg: That when we see people who live out values that we share in a particular way, we can have some jealousy around it almost, that like, we want to be as good, quote, unquote, as they are. I think there have been a lot of people in my life that have served as beacons or sort of examples. The challenge is to always stay rooted and figuring out how I can live out my own values in my own way. One of the things that I care really deeply about and how I show up in the world, is with a sense of integrity. For me, that means living in alignment with my values and who I am and who I've been called to be. So that there's an integrated self in that way of the word integrity, that what I say I'm about, I'm about or at least I'm trying real hard to be about it. Meg: The same with the mission statements being both descriptive and aspirational. I think my values are things that I hold dear, and I want to live out and I also have to aspire to because I won't do it perfectly, and I won't always get it right. Stephanie: Well, of course and I love that phrase holy envy, I have to say the reason I went to graduate school was because of holy envy. One of my professors at Georgetown, I wanted his life. I thought it was just remarkable what he was able to do and the impact he had on me as a young person. We're very, very different. Went to really different fields and different personalities. We're still friends and that's right, you find your ... you might have the catalyst, the inspiration. Then, as you emerge and you grow, you find your way, hopefully in it. That back and forth between achieved ... hitting the mark on values and aspiring to living that, I think that's really interesting. Stephanie: Tell me then about how in your life, if you can ... and you have a really rich professional biography, educational biography, activist biography, and we don't have time to go into all of them. So, I want to give you the opportunity to highlight if you can, either a moment or a choice or a career path, that for you, really puts this values in action, where that integrated self has found firm ground, and what kind of ... and how you manifest that in your work. Meg: I'll leave it to you, Stephanie, to ask the big old questions. Stephanie: Sorry, but you got to give me a good one example. I'm just wondering, is it your current work now? Is it navigating higher ed? Is it your work, which I'd love to talk about at one point with the LGBTQ alumni network at Holy Cross, which to me has been so important, so we can get to that unless you want to talk about it now. So, it's really up to you. I mean, I think ... like I said, the beginning of our conversation, you are a person, remarkably. I mean, I admire you so much, Meg. When you talk about being catalyzed by people, and you put me in that list, I need to share with you that one of the great things about teaching at Holy Cross is being catalyzed by your students. I mean, I put you in my list. It's true, though. It is true though and you know that and I would throw your wife Heather in there as well. Stephanie: I mean, you the two of you really live what ... from the outside and someone on the inside feels very real. A real life where you don't run away from the hard stuff and you try to stay true to your moral compass. We need more of that in the world, frankly and so I'm glad you're in it. So, having said that, what's a way that you think that that's succeeded for you? Obviously, never 100% but what do you think what's been a moment where you've been able to make those choices and live the way you seek to live? Meg: Well, thank you for that kind offering. When I think about how I've had to navigate and negotiate what it means to live out my values, I mean, I think what has been the ... one of the pivotal sort of negotiations has been around identity. So, you mentioned my beloved wife, Heather. She's a Holy Cross alum as well. Stephanie: And a former student. Meg: Yes. Although Stephanie can take no credit for the matchmaking directly but- Stephanie: Much to my chagrin. I had each of you in class and yet you didn't even know each other as undergrads, which just breaks my heart. See, fate happens, right? Meg: That's right. Yeah, so I mean, I ... So when I was an undergrad, I didn't believe myself to be anything other than straight. When I started to come to know myself, as at first, not straight, and then later claiming various identities over time, but then, partial to queer, because of its sort of umbrellaness of many things. When I was an undergrad, I imagined myself working in Catholic higher ed for the rest of my life, ideally, Jesuit higher ed. I wanted to ... I'm obsessed with mission and mission statements. I wanted to be the person on a Jesuit campus who helped the community live out their mission, of course. Stephanie: You pointed at it, you'd be fantastic. Meg: I was born and raised Catholic. In many ways, my Catholic faith was nourished in college, which is often, I think, not the case for what happens in terms of spiritual development of many young people but Holy Cross was a place that nourished my spirituality, and gave me an intellectual and theological frame for holding complexity, as I was sort of mentioning earlier. So, I took classes like sexual justice and feminist theology and liberation theology, that helped me make sense of a world in which multiple things can be true at the same time, both in the world and inside of a human. So, when I came to know myself as a queer Catholic, that was a lot to take in. Meg: Also, I felt really prepared in some ways to hold those identities at the same time. There is internal tension there, that is never going to be resolved and it's taught me a lot about embracing paradox or seeming paradox. I think that that process of negotiating my identity and trying to live out my values as a faithful person, and my identity as someone who falls outside of the church's teachings about what is right, quote, unquote, I think is what was part of the path of getting me into the work that I do now, which is the work of helping people hold tensions and manage internal conflict, and sit across from someone else who holds a drastically different opinion, idea, ideology, set of identities, and see them as human still, not in spite of but because of what they bring in terms of their humanity. Stephanie: We're listening to them and taking seriously in. Meg: Yeah, absolutely. Stephanie: This seems to me a good segue to talk about the kind of ... what it is that you do? Sometimes people talk about the language of bringing people to the table and having people, and it is sounds wonderful, but it's hard to understand what that actually looks like and I think about my own struggle right now, given our current climate and as an American historian, and the ways in which history is being bandied about and weaponized, frankly, and I feel like I know certain things. I know certain things to be true and you're telling me correctly, that multiple things can be true at the same time. Talking about how does a community respond to what's going on right now and to me, let's just use the example of Black Lives Matter, to me, this seems like it's not an ambiguous at all, right? Stephanie: You're either stand with Martin Luther King Jr. or you stand with Bull Connor and his dogs and hoses. To me, it feels like that kind of choice. How in the work you do, which I think is so important, because I feel myself getting more and more entrenched and frustrated, how would you bring someone like that to the table with someone who had a different feeling? What are some of the things ... this is very much mission. I mean, how do you do that and I want to ask you another question, what do you call yourself? I mean, I know your title is associate, but are you a teacher? Are you a mentor? Are you a space maker? What do you go? So, those would be ... I want to know more about how this actually works, largely, because I feel like this is a free consultation. Stephanie: I don't need to pay you for your expertise because I feel like I need this. I need this in family conversations, Twitter ... my goodness, the text threads, I need Meg Griffiths and your skillset. So, how do you do that work and what do you call yourself? Meg: Well, first of all, we all need a little Meg Griffiths. I mean- Stephanie: True and we need Meg Griffin's baked goods. The whole other story of your community making baking space but we do need a lot of Meg Griffiths, not just a little. So, how do you do that when we're in this moment, it's hard enough anyways, particularly, this reactive moment we're in right now. Meg: Well, let me start with, who I work with and for and what we do, and then, I'd love to talk about what I call myself and how we're responding to this moment. So, I work with an organization called Essential Partners. We were founded over 30 years ago by family therapists in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These were a group of mostly women who looked at the public debates around, say, abortion that were happening in the 90s and could clearly see patterns of dysfunction in these quote, unquote, conversations on public television between the pro life and pro choice sides of the issue. They said to themselves, "You know, these are patterns we see in family therapy sessions. We are familiar with this dysfunction and what these systems produce. These communication systems. These power dynamics, et cetera." Meg: So, they went to work and started playing around with an approach to dialogue that would begin to bring their tools to the public conversation. So we were founded as Public Conversations Project, about 30 years ago. We had a name change about five years ago to Essential Partners. So, what we've done over the last 30 years is fine tune, adapt, iterate, and evolve an approach to conversation around polarizing issues. So, what we do is we come into communities, organizations, schools, faith communities, nonprofits, anyone who wants us, and they usually call because they're stuck. They're stuck or they've gotten bad news because they got a climate study back that said, things aren't looking so hot or because they've had some sort of acute conflict come up in their community. Meg: They say, we need help. We don't know what to do. We don't know how to get out of these stuck patterns that were in. Stephanie: Even where to start, right? That kind of news is just so shattering if it's not your experience of the institution, but you know that some of your colleagues it is their experience. Meg: Right, right. Stephanie: Even that moment of recognition is huge. Meg: Yeah, that cognitive dissonance of, well, I love this place and this place feels like home and community and family to me, what are you telling the other people don't feel that way? Yeah, and other people are like, "Thank you for putting the data in front of people, because we've been telling you this for a really long time or we haven't been able to say it out loud because of fear of consequences, of naming our experience. So, I mean, we do a lot of different things but we usually start by listening and trying to get a sense of what the real ... what hasn't worked in the past. What people's hopes and concerns are. If they can imagine a preferred future, what would it look like for them and their community? Meg: Then, we do all kinds of things. So, yes, my title is associate. I talk about my work as being a practitioner of dialogue and of facilitation. I am a trainer, I am an educator, I am in accompanier. This work feels like the Venn diagram of everything I've done. It feels like the middle of ministry, which I have a history in working in ministry, education, I've done teaching of various kinds, and still work for justice because I think this is about helping everyone in the community feel heard, valued, understood and understand that they have dignity, and that their community sees them as having the same dignity as everyone else. Meg: So, we work with people to build skills, to try on new ways of speaking and listening and structuring conversation. We build people's capacity to lead and participate in dialogue and we also work with faculty to help them bring dialogue in their classrooms. We bring coaching and consulting support to organizations and leaders. We just try to ... I mean, when it comes down to it, what I think this work is about is helping people see what's possible, because when we're stuck and all we have are bad examples of destructive communication about hard topics, we have lost our sense that anything else is possible. We can't even imagine that I could sit across the table from someone who disagrees with me, and feel heard and understood by that person. Meg: Be able to hear and understand what their experience and how they've come to their beliefs has been. That's what we do. Stephanie: It's such important work. I mean, it is a real crisis, I have to tell you and I feel like in a differently trained way than you, I tried to do that in my classroom and yet, in personal life, things get more complicated and it's really easy to fight or flight, that you either fight the fight and sometimes it doesn't always have to be a fight. It can be a combination but everything feels like a fight these days or flight, which is just shut down. I'm just not going to deal with you. I'm not going to engage and there's a certain amount of ... there's a lot of disservice and violence in that, of negating someone entirely and yet, engaging when another person doesn't have the same skill set, and where my skill set might be really out of training, because of the world we're living in, can be a really, really hard thing. Stephanie: It also seems like it's a hard thing for someone like me, I would say, who's very outcome oriented, right? When I directed Montserrat, one of my colleagues said, "Okay, we need to process these program goals and outcomes all around assessment," right? I said, "Well, we did that, didn't we." She said, "No, we need to have more meetings and more conversation." I'm like, " Ugh, process." So, I discovered, I'm kind of a closet autocrat, that I ... the illusion of democracy but I really just, let's get it done, right? So, I've learned as an adult to slow down and listen and embrace process more. My teenage children might not agree with that but at least in the professionals space, I tried to do that. Stephanie: It's been a challenge for me, and I know that you also are a person who's outcome oriented, action oriented, but you're also a process person. So, what advice would you give us today, who are all having these conversations in our lives, professionally or personally, around this idea of process itself being worthwhile and not just thinking about the win or the outcome? Meg: Yeah. That is- Stephanie: Consultation, free consultation, but it's true and this is mission, right? This is exactly ... when you talk about your Venn diagram, again, I think you're very lucky and I think you've also been really intentional about creating that diagram. Some of it might be luck, but a lot of it is choices and most of us don't necessarily have as integrated of a Venn diagrams as I think you've been able to construct. So, what do you think? How can we do this better? What would you say to folks that want the outcome that weight with the process. Meg: So I mean, my thing is ... I often say this to clients who are like, we got to get to the business. We got, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "Y'all, this is the work. The process is the work because if we're stuck in destructive patterns, we got to rebuild a different kind of pattern. We have to examine the processes that are getting us stuck and every process is designed to get exactly what it gets." So, if you're going to try and like, be different together, you have to have a different process. For me, I think about naming that with people up front, because we are so outcomes focused, right? People call us because there's a problem, an acute problems. Sometimes a very public problem, sometimes a lawsuit kind of problem. Stephanie: Right. Meg: They want to fix things and I think- Stephanie: Make it go away. Make it go away. Fix it and move on. Meg: Yes and hopefully, people when they call us, they're not trying to just check a box, they're actually trying to change the culture of their organization or their campus and build some new skills so that they don't need to keep bringing us in all the time if they can start to build their capacity to change and shift things themselves. Stephanie: I was thinking that it sounds like the kind of work people and organizations should do before the acute crisis. In other words, you should build your skill set before the crisis, because what I talked to you about was this idea of how do you bring people who are so outcome oriented, think of the process is the work because ... And also how do you do it when it's asymmetrical? Let's say you have the skills of process, but the person on the other end doesn't have the skills? How do you leapfrog them? Meg: Yeah, and so, one of the things that we do organizationally is we have a couple of certain organizational norms and principles. One is, we say, connect before content. So every time we're doing anything, a client call, a workshop, a dialogue, we build the time in to connect as humans before we get down to business. We do that really simply, we might ask a question like, what are you bringing with you into this conversation that it would be helpful for other people to know about as we prepare to like land in this conversation, or tell me about how your morning has been, right? It doesn't have to be so fancy and what we do in every engagement is we try to model a different kind of process. Meg: Bring people into that so that they can see what shifts. So, I'll say, I actually have done some work at Holy Cross, I worked with the chaplains' office with Marybeth Kearns-Barrett, who was trained by us when we were still Public Conversations Project back in the late '90s, as an early adopter of dialogue and we were able to work together to re-imagine the freshmen retreat and I trained a bunch of Holy Cross faculty and students and staff in our facilitation model to prepare to lead that retreat last fall. Marybeth, she took this idea of a connecting question into other work that she was doing on campus, and that she heard from someone who participated in that conversation, that it was the most seen and understood, that community member has ever felt on this campus. Meg: Because they were able to show up and tell a different side of who they are in that space. Because in our work lives, we're often put in boxes of ... and we introduce ourselves, name, rank and serial number, how long we've been here where, all these things that can actually serve to disconnect us rather than connect us because it can highlight our differences or different levels of power and status. When we ask a connecting question that actually invites story or experience, a little bit more of our humanity into the room, and we suddenly see each other in a new way, in a more three dimensional way. The same is true in a deeply divisive polarizing dialogue. Meg: That what we do is we invite people to share a story about something that would help other people understand how they came to their position on an issue. We don't ask people to state their positions. That's a destructive pattern of communication. We know what that looks like when it plays out when all you do is bring a position to the conversation. When you can bring a story, a piece of who you are and then when you can share the values that are underneath that story, you start to get a more complex picture and then, you ask people actually, where have you experienced internal tension on this issue? That is a completely different conversation. Meg: There are infinite, more possibilities for how that conversation can unfold and if we stick to our typical pro and con, or and against position conversations, Stephanie: That's really, really helpful to think about, and it makes me ... I don't think I did this in the class I taught with you but I do this political autobiography assignment that actually, Margaret Post back when she was directing the CBL and Donelan Center really helped me shape and she also does a lot of this kind of service work and scholarship. It's the same thing, I asked my first years to write a political autobiography without any guidance, just like who are you? What do you believe? It's very much a position statement, pro, con and then, through a series of interviews with peers and different reflective exercises and the readings and of course, over the course of the semester or year, if I'm teaching at Montserrat, they rewrite various points of it. Stephanie: It's so interesting, because slowly as trust is built and confidence, and a sense of community, they feel able to share, exactly what we're saying, when you said a piece of themselves. It makes that position so much more legible, and it makes it legible to the peer and the various peers that are reading those autobiographies or having the interviews. I always try to put people that I've ... have a sense of might be oppositional in the conversation, because it's easy to be oppositional on paper but when you're sitting at Cool Beans with a cup of coffee, and I say go to breakfast, have coffee, sit on the hovel, suddenly, I understand Meg, even if I might disagree with her. Stephanie: Suddenly she's going to understand me differently and 201, the students that comment, they love the assignment and again, it's built on the shoulders of other people and their help to me. They comment that, that experience of being with a peer talking about serious value driven questions, and needing to listen because they have to reproduce the conversation, each of them and then reflect on it, as part of the assignment, was the high point, right? That's just like a teeny little bit of what sounds like what you're doing though, that adults need to do that, right? So, these are these young people information and it's underneath this academic umbrella. Stephanie: Then, it's like, okay, your credential, if you've got your BS or your BA go out into the world, you're fully formed now and clearly, we still need that. I need that reminder, in my own life. It's funny, I feel like I can facilitate that a little bit with my students because of my position as professor and they have to do what I say, but am I doing it in my own life in the spaces that that needs doing? Meg: Well, I love that and that is so beautiful, Stephanie because I mean, when we talk about how to bring this work into the classroom, we have a particular approach. It's highly structured and it's structured because we know that that helps people feel safe enough to contribute. There's a sense of certainty about what to expect. They know that there's a container for the conversation to happen inside of and it can hold a lot. The container can hold a lot of emotion, a lot of disagreement, all of those things but you don't have to bring a 90-minute structured dialogue into your classroom, to create the kind of dialogic spirit that you have clearly demonstrated, right? Meg: It can be as simple as helping students, and then also to your point, bringing this out into the world, in our families, in whatever, right? Helping them to ask questions that will invite that deeper experience, that is behind their belief. It's about following our curiosity instead of listening to debate or persuade, right? The intentionality that we bring to our listening and to our asking of questions, we know has a powerful impact on what we hear and how a person responds. So, we come with a genuine curious question. We're going to get a really different response from our interlocutor or conversation partner than if we come with a question that's actually just a suggestion with an inflection point at the end of the sentence, don't you think it would be better if you just did this? Stephanie: Do you mean my mom voice? Yes, I know that, I've heard that once or twice. I always say I'm a better professor than I am a parent. I'm so much more generous and open ended with my students than with my own children. Meg: My God, please. Heather is like, that doesn't sound like a curious question. Stephanie: There's no fun in it. Yeah, I'm not talking ... That is great, I love that she says that. Look, bring your work to home. Usually, it's like your work at the work place and you're like, "Okay, bring it into this conversation." That is too funny. Well, I would like to write my congressional representative, Jim McGovern and suggest that he bring essential partners to Congress, because I think exactly what you're talking about is what we need and we need it frankly on local and state government levels, as well as institutionally what you're talking about, because I really think we are in a crisis and unfortunately, I don't believe that playing to just ... I mean, leadership matters and the tone is set from above in many ways, I believe in a ground up model too. Stephanie: I don't think that necessarily just notions of who's in charge is going to magically change how we have trained ourselves over decades frankly, really, it's not over a few years as a country but over decades to not listen and to not understand because people are angry and frustrated and then shut down. So, it sounds like if you were to describe yourself beyond, you need a new title. The associate does not encapsulate it. It's teacher, it's curiosity generator, it's ... you're a human can opener. You're a maker of space for these things to happen. We need a more- Meg: Crafter of questions and- Stephanie: Crafter of questions, that sounds like Hogwarts. The Crafter of questions and potions. Well, this is such a pleasure and I have to say I'm so glad you do this work, Meg, because we really so desperately need it. It must feel wonderful to do work that you really believe and see, as needed and effective. That's really awesome, so thank you for that. I'm going to shift gears and do you want to say one more thing? Go ahead. Meg: I just want to add, I think sometimes dialogue gets a bad rep because there are so many urgent issues that need action and attention. So, I just want to say that dialogue is a tool, and our approach has, at its heart, a purpose of building and supporting mutual understanding, and it is not going to solve all the world's problems but what it is really good at is building trust, building understanding and building social cohesion in communities that have been sort of torn or harmed in terms of their sense of community, and it can lay a really strong foundation for action, for a community coming to know and understand where its shared values and shared hopes are and then, moving toward that. Stephanie: Again, this is a ... it's a really helpful precondition. A really necessary precondition but I appreciate you saying that because I think, again, as historian of the ... and I think about Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama, Birmingham and the City Council saying, "Just wait, don't do this now, wait. This isn't the time," and he wrote his piece why we can't wait and the letter from the Birmingham Jail. So, there does come a time when dialogue shuts down, because it's not really dialogue. It's not dialogue of ... sort of you're talking about, which is people on various positions and I'm saying sides because we don't want to be binary, occupying various spaces in the conversation, who are equally equipped to have a true dialogue, as opposed to not equipped. Stephanie: If people refuse to be equipped, and they insist on being equipped or failed to be equipped, then, of course, I understand why it breaks down and people have to act, because you're right, action toward justice is what the process is hopefully leading toward. Meg: Yeah and people have to ... I think people who come to the dialogue table, they come because they're in touch with something that means a lot to them, and they care enough to show up and listen and try to muddle through with people who they know, occupy different positions and to me, that's a sign of hope in and of itself, if people are willing to come to the table and that they have a shared commitment to making some kind of change, making their community better, making space for more voices and re-humanizing the quote, unquote, other and that ... again, process is an outcome. Stephanie: It were, you say, yeah. Meg: The outcome of that is increased trust, increase connection, increased resilience of listening and social cohesion that, as you said, can be a precondition for greater change in terms of structural change or organizational change, or societal- Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely and even an opportunity for decreasing certain kinds of behaviors, right, is also ... plus its increasing capacity, but not just dismissing a person because you think you know their whole bio or of course, that's how they're going to react and I'm sure that in your work, you come up against certain parties in various institutions, when they hear your plan, say, "Well, I'm not going to do that, right. That's not for me." That must be really frustrating because the idea is to build that trust so that, people who need it, who's all of us, that's the other piece, it's not just certain parties need to hear all, all the parties need to hear. Stephanie: I think that that's a really inclusive model. Awesome. That's great work. It's so needed, I want you to come to my house in my next Thanksgiving dinner, Meg and we'll have a consultation. All right, so let's shift gears, because we don't have too much time left, although I could do this all day long. I wish I could. I'm going to do something called speed round for fun. Meg: Okay. Stephanie: My gosh, what is it? Okay, and I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I just want you to answer in whatever way you want. Okay? They're really, really heavy questions. These are heavy questions that are going to shape the future of the world, ready? Favorite vacation spot? Meg: Wellfleet. The Cape. Stephanie: Beautiful. Favorite baked good that you make yourself? Meg: Homemade no knead bread. Stephanie: Favorite dessert that's a dessert, baked good. Of course. It's so funny that I say baked good, I'm immediately thinking chocolate and you say bread. So, favorite dessert, dessert not just bread. Meg: It's the Italian in me. Stephanie: I know. Right. Meg: I don't actually make a lot of desserts but I buy the most delicious brownie from The Vegan. I know, it sounds unbelievable. The Vegan bakery down the street has amazing fudgy chocolatey brownies. Stephanie: Delicious. All right, then that sounds perfect. I like that. My mother was a baker like that. She was like, I don't really bake, but I go to Paris Pastry Bakery and I buy the best stuff in pink boxes. What is one of your favorite places in Worcester, because you also lived here for a while after graduation, what's one of your favorite places in Worcester? Meg: Can I say your house? Stephanie: Yes, you're so sweet. Thank you. More importantly, what's your favorite restaurant in Providence, your current home? Meg: We have a weekly standing Friday night dinner at the Vegetarian Place down the street. It's Garden Grill and we miss them terribly while they were shut down and now, we get takeout usually on Friday night. Stephanie: Nice. Garden Grill in Providence. Excellent. Do you make New Year's resolutions or is it every day resolutions? Meg: I don't usually make a New Year's resolution. I try to reflect on the previous year, around that time of year. I don't really make resolutions. Stephanie: That's good. I think you live resolutions every day. Resolutions are outcome oriented. They're not process oriented anyway, right? Meg: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: Maybe what we should make are New Year's process commitments. We need to change that to ... change your title and change that tradition. All right, what about ... real quick back to Holy Cross, what was your favorite dorm that you lived in? Meg: I was the first class to move into what was simply called the apartments, my senior year, now Williams Hall. I was the senior resident director. The first ever in the senior apartments. Stephanie: Did you get a room with a good view of downtown? Meg: I was in the basement, so not the perfect view, but close to the nice balcony- Stephanie: They do. Meg: Yeah. Stephanie: That overlooked Worcester. What about if it's possible back in the early 2000s, your favorite food at Kimball? Meg: Gosh. Stephanie: It's gotten so good. Meg: Probably, froyo with cereal on top. Stephanie: Yeah, I think that's probably still, because that constant open machine of the froyo, yeah. What kind of cereal? Meg: Cinnamon toast crunch or something with sugar- Stephanie: There you go. Excellent and then, what's the best part about being a Holy Cross graduate? What's the best part about being part of this community and I'm going to add, what is something you would like to see more in this community of people? Meg: Well, one of the best things about being an alum is that I got to build the LGBTQ alumni network and meet a bunch of really fabulous and I mean fabulous in all the ways, LGBTQ alums and be part of creating a space where some of our alums who had never stepped foot on campus since they graduated, and had felt really disconnected from the college could reconnect. So, we have a network of hundreds of alums from across many decades and more than a handful of people have made it known to us that they have not had a relationship with the college until this group was founded and recognized and the college was so supportive when we approached them a number of years ago. Meg: Really, the request and encouragement of students at the time from the Abigail Allies now Pride group who wanted to see alums be recognized and organized so that they could see themselves in the alumni community, and that they could have support from alums. So that work has been really meaningful and my colleague, Phil Dardeno, from the class of 2002, has really held that work and steered the ship for the last few years. Stephanie: Wonderfully so and I can attest how important that group is for students. This model of, of being able to move through this place and be true to oneself and have a community that matters, that's wonderful. What would you like to see more from your alum group or from ... what do you what do you hope Holy Cross graduates can bring to the world right now? Meg: Gosh. Stephanie: It's a diverse group of people, so it's so hard. Meg: I know. Stephanie: A hard ask. Meg: Holy Cross alums are doing amazing things in the world and I love how we have Dr. Anthony Fauci out there representing some of what it means to be a Holy Cross alum right now and I'd love to see more storytelling and more ways to bring alums back together. I think the affinity spaces is the future of alumni development and alumni community because I imagine I'm not alone in this. My relationships and connection as a student spanned all four ... well, more than four, graduating classes because I was involved in so much. The idea of coming back for reunion is like, lovely and also, those are not all my people. I missed the people that I saw and had relationships with, that were years ahead and below me. Meg: I would love more opportunities for alumni to gather and now, that must be virtual. Also, for the college to tell the story of more alumni who might be not as famous as Dr. Fauci is and doing really amazing and important work in the world and that's why I love this podcast, but also, I think to amplify and elevate voices of alums who are doing ... who are living their mission and the colleges and then, have opportunities to like hang out together and learn from each other and like rub off on one another a little bit. Stephanie: Exactly, and then, that's that sustainability thing, right, that it fires in sustainable and relationships. That's awesome, Meg. I am so grateful for you, taking the time today to share your story with us and also to share your wisdom around process and relational exchange and hope. Whenever I speak with you, I always leave with a great sense of admiration, love but also such a sense of hope. You're a person who makes things possible and I thank you for that because sometimes this world feels like that ... possibilities feel, they're shutting down. They're literally shut down with isolation, right? It's just really revivifying to spend time with you and I appreciate how well you live the mission. Do you still have your T-shirt, we should have had you wear it. Stephanie: Maybe you have to find an old picture of you in the T-shirt to send ... to post with the podcast, of moving people into the apartments, right? Meg: I'll have to ask Brenda Hounsell-Sullivan, if she has an old orientation photo of me with the Live the Mission. Stephanie: I'm sure she does. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much. I will hopefully come down to Providence and grab some Garden Grill with you and Heather, and my husband Tony soon and keep up all the wonderful work you do. Thank you for being part of the Holy Cross story, Meg. Meg: Thank you for being one of my beacons along the way, Stephanie. Maura: That’s our show!  I hope you enjoyed hearing about just one of the many ways that Holy Cross alumni have been inspired by the mission to be people for and with others.   A special thanks to today’s guests, and everyone at Holy Cross who has contributed to making this podcast a reality. If you, or someone you know, would like to be featured on this podcast, please send us an email at alumnicareers@holycross.edu.  If you like what you hear, then please leave us a review. This podcast is brought to you by the Office of Alumni Relations at The College of the Holy Cross.  You can subscribe for future episodes wherever you find your podcasts. I’m you’re host, Maura Sweeney, and this is Mission-Driven. In the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, now go forth, and set the world on fire. --- Theme music composed by Scott Holmes, courtesy of freemusicarchive.org.

On this new installment of Creepy Side of the Network, Chris is joined by Andrew Lenz, host of Let’s Talk, But No Politics, Okay? They delve into Andrew’s experiences and thoughts on ghosts and hauntings, UFOs and aliens, and all things dark and creepy. Find us on the web and social media: BICBP-RADIO.com Instagram Johnny Townsend    johnnyism28 Chris Chavez            ccchavez13 Twitter Johnny Townsend    @johnnyism Chris Chavez            @cchavezforreal

Eddy and I had the honor of meeting Michaela Murphy (aka Jessie Flowers) [voice of Toph] and Olivia Hack [voice of Ty Lee] at Anime Expo on July 7th, 2019. I had messaged Michaela earlier and asked ahead of time if I could interview her for Beyond Bending Podcast and she said yes. I was ecstatic. It’s not everyday you get to meet one of your idols, let alone interview them. I have never made an Instagram post so fast in my life. I shared the news with our fans and asked them what questions they would want to ask Michaela, or TOPH BEIFONG. Leading up to Anime Expo, I was trying not to think too much of it. “They’re just regular people…” I told myself over and over. But like many other die hard fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender, this was a show that changed my life in so many ways and has shaped me into who I am today...Who am I kidding? These “regular people” that I was about to meet were my idols. My adolescent self was freaking out but Podcast Marilyn kept me calm. Finally the day came. We drove to L.A., paid a ridiculous $35 for parking in front of the convention, and wandered around Anime Expo until it was time to meet them. As Eddy and I approached Michaela and Olivia at their booth at Anime Expo, the butterflies hit me. Thank god Podcast Marilyn took over and kept me normal. Michaela was occupied with another fan, so we approached Olivia first. My heart jumped over the moon. I was meeting the voice of Ty Lee, one of the most badass female characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Olivia was so sweet and amazing. We chatted for a bit and I asked her if I could interview her as well and she agreed. Michaela finished up with her fan, looked over at us, and smiled. And I swear my husband Eddy had a heart attack. Toph Beifong is his favorite character of all time and to him, it was like meeting Jesus.We got to their booth towards the end of their time slot so we were able to chat with them for a while. What was minutes felt like hours to me. Olivia suggested doing a joint interview with Michaela and I said “Yeah! Sounds good!” She then offered to take us to “the back” where it was quieter and that there were couches in the back that we could sit on while doing the interview. I felt like I had been struck by lightning. “It’s not much…” Olivia said leading us behind the curtain, but to Eddy and I it might as well have been Disneyland. Olivia and Michaela sat down on one of the couches and Eddy and I sat adjacent to them, with Michaela being closest to me. I hooked up my cheap lavalier interview microphones into my iphone and passed them each a lavalier to pin onto their shirts. Unfortunately I didn’t have an extra set on me for myself but I was only concerned about getting a clear recording of their voices. After sound testing, we started rolling.Michaela: I’m Jessie Flower, I voice Toph Beifong in Avatar: The Last Airbender...Olivia: And I’m Olivia Hack and I play Ty Lee! Marilyn: So great to meet you guys. Oh my gosh… O: Great to meet you!M: Nice to meet you as well!Marilyn: Be honest, when was the last time you watched the show?M: I’m actually binge rewatching it this week. So, technically right now. But before that it had been probably about two years...maybe three, since I’d watched any part of it. It’d been a while. So yeah, in spirit of Anime Expo I was like “Okay...you know, I think I need to rewatch everything from top to bottom.” So yeah, I’m about to start Season 2 so it’s been a full week. *laughs*O: And I’m with Michaela. It’s been a couple of years. I’ve seen some of the comic books and stuff but the actual show it’s been a while, yeah….Marilyn: It’s been a while since both of you voiced your characters. Off the top of your head, [what’s] the fondest memory you have when you voicing them?M: For me, I really liked when multiple cast members got to be in the recording booth together because a lot of the time it would be separate. My usual date, ‘cause I was still in high school, it was like every other Tuesday after school I would go in and record. And sometimes it would be just me, sometimes maybe Jack [voice of Sokka] or Mae [voice of Katara] would be there...But there was one day when every microphone...and I think this only happened once...every microphone was full. We had...you know, Toph, Sokka, I think Azula, and...was it Zuko? Yeah, and Uncle Iroh. We had like everyone kind of in the recording booth together so we got to go through like 3 or 4 pages without stopping and like everyone was there to like go through the scene. And like that was a cool moment ‘cause it felt like it came to life for a second, you know? And it doesn’t really get to feel that way until you watch the episode later. And so I just remember, and I forget which episode it was...cause...just memories of all different things happening but that was my favorite day because Mike and Bryan were also there cause they came in to listen sometimes...So like they were sitting with our recorder...person...audio engineer. That’s like a proper term!O: *laughs*M: “That recorder person.” *laughs* The audio engineer. And that was probably the highlight cause it was all of us in one place and just, you know...like, 45 minutes we got to kind of be going through it live together, which was awesome. So yeah, that’s like my favorite tidbit from recording.O: I was literally gonna say the same thing cause as voice actors, a lot of times you record separately! Which is fine...and we’re used to that but when you can record everybody together, there’s a rhythm and...yeah it feels like real acting. You can play off each other. They tended to record all the fire nation girls together, so that was kinda nice. But yeah, I’d say 50/50 they don’t record everyone together...but when they do it’s like more a magic kind of in the air. So yeah for sure…M: And for me it was even less, and I don’t know if it was just a scheduling thing, but I’d say probably only 20-25% of the time somebody else is in the studio. Most of the time, it was just me. So...I don’t know why….O: School, man! M: Yeah, school! *laughs*O: *laughs* School’s a drag.M: Yeah, high school… *laughs*O: That’s the one part of being a child actor that’s just like...blows...it’s the school factor.M: Yeah...You have to figure in to the scheduling but yeah….*laughs*Marilyn: Have you found like there are some days...since you don’t have someone to interact with or bounce off of, you just like struggle with…?O: I’ve personally seen performances that I...I mean obviously you read the script but you kinda didn’t realize what was going on in the scene or the tone later and I’m like “Ugh...I would have said that differently…” or “I would have played that a little different had I seen what the other person was doing..” you know? So it’s always better to act with another human being as you can imagine. M: Yeah, I agree. We’re two different instances. Me being by myself, I got used to it. BUT! Sometimes they would have the animation already made or like roughly done and maybe it wasn’t completely finished. So they would play that out while I was saying my lines so I can kind of see what was going on so that would be helpful. But then other times it would just be blank and it was like “Okay…” They send you the script beforehand usually so I would just read and see what was happening in that episode. But there wouldn’t be something to actually react to so sometimes they would be like “Okay, that was good...we need more…” or “Do three takes that were kind of like that last one and be a little more surprised.” Just to give a little bit of nuance of like what they were envisioning and I didn’t know necessarily. So yeah, it can get a little tricky but usually people then hop in to direct you and help shape what you’re supposed to sound like. *laughs* Marilyn: Yeah…*laughs* So in our podcast, we’re revisiting it as adults. We watched it in like middle school and high school and so...you know, like we were dumb kids… M: *laughs*O: Yeah, yeah, yeah!Marilyn: Everything just flew over our heads...We didn’t realize like “Oh, it’s just kids fighting a war...you know, no biggie!” Like years after you guys finished recording, was there anything that hit you later? Like “Oh wow, I didn’t realize that these themes came up or…?” O: Just how dark I think the show is...You really kinda go like “Oh this is…” I don’t know, it gets there a little bit sometimes, right? I mean just what you said...there is a lot of adult themes that go with it.M: Yeah, um...Well on a more personal note I think...when I was younger…*laughs* I’m still young...Everyone: *laughs*M: We’re still young. BUT! When I was younger, people would come up to me at cons or send some fanmail and just be like “Oh, you’ve really helped inspire me to just like be more confident in who I am and to not care about what people think...” Just kind of have a stronger attitude specifically relating to Toph...and I don’t think I realized how important and then helpful for me that would be later... just cause I was kind of in my weird-like actor kid world and grateful enough to to like have a great relationship with my mom and like always felt comfortable with like who I was...But then as I got older and I started to feel a little uncomfortable myself in college and then like noticed that a lot of people struggled in middle school and high school...Just kind of recognized that having such like a bold, doesn’t give a fuck character…O: Yeah… M: You know, 13 year old blind chick who’s just like “I’m who I am. This is it. You’re gonna like it or not….”Marilyn: Yeah…M: ...is helpful! For any age…O: ...and strong female characters!M: Yeah! O: Like ass-kicking women that you don’t see in TV...especially then.M: Right! In light of today, being a...you know, a more popular topic obviously to talk about...along with LGBTQ! Just like the whole thing. A lot more conversation happening...but this all happened, you know, a decade ago! And so it was kind of cool just to recognize like “Oh! We were a part of something that hopefully played a part in the conversations that are happening now! Which is nice...So…”O: It’s weird to be in something, especially kind of...not that Avatar was pre-internet but kind of...you know?M: Kind of...yeah. Instagram wasn’t like really a thing yet.O: Yeah! You don’t realize that you’re in something that’s culturally significant or something that’s touching children until those children grow up, and then can reach out to you and that sort of thing. So that’s a cool part of being an entertainer now, is you immediately know…Is this show a hit? Do people like it? Does it resonate? Whereas Avatar I feel like I didn’t know until 8-9 years after it was off the air…M: Yeah! Yep… O: ...that it was a big deal! So that’s been kind of cool to see how it’s touched people…M: Cause people just don’t look at your followers or how many reposts you have...or how many...you know, it’s just not the same way anymore. So it took a second to marinate, I feel like. And then we started watching people...kind of come back to us. So I don’t know! It’s cool…yeah. *laughs* Marilyn: When I started doing this podcast and being more active on social media, I definitely noticed like there’s a lot of high schoolers that are just getting into the show right now and kind of reliving what we went through…O: And streaming helps too!Marilyn: Yeah! Just binge all of it…M: Amazon Prime! Everyone, run…Everyone: *laughs*Marilyn: Like for us, Avatar is my favorite show. What are your favorite shows that you think resonated with you as much as like...for me and Eddy… M: So I didn’t really have TV growing up on purpose. My mom just like...I like to read a lot so she kinda just kept me doing that for as long as possible...Just cause she didn’t want to get me to get like sucked into staring at a screen all day. So I watched a lot of Winnie the Pooh on VHS growing up.O: Awwww!!! M: And like a lot of Arthur and...I guess we’re pretty hardcore Disney fans. Just with you know, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid...The Little Mermaid live action [news] came out!O: Yes!!!M: Very exciting! But yeah, so it was a lot of VHS, you know, like “Watch it once.” and “Okay, now you have to go outside.” So I didn’t really know even more what I was a part of until like college because I didn’t go home and then watch the episode that I had recorded.O: Did you see Avatar when you were young? Or no…?M: No, not really. O: Oh wow! Okay… M: Like I didnt...you know, in the booth I would see scenes happening and watch snippets but I didn’t really watch it on TV until...maybe college...or so just cause I didn’t have access to cable. So I mean at friends’ houses and stuff like that there might have been an episode on or they’d be like “Oh let’s watch it because it’d be funny.” and I would be like “Sure…”Everyone: *laughs*M: But you know, it never was something that I went home and watched because I just didn’t….we didn’t do TV really….Although I will say Kim Possible, if I had to pick. Just, that was around a lot and I always wanted to be her. So that was probably my kind of influential-like “Go out and kick ass...be a cool chick.” *laughs* Everyone: *laughs* M: Yeah, exactly. Toph in another dimension...So yeah that’s probably my show.O: That’s awesome. As a kid...I mean I’m like from Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake generation, you know?M: *laughs* O: But Little Mermaid came out when I was 6 and I thought I was a mermaid that entire summer…. M: I understand…*laughs*O: But yeah, I’m like….X-Men, Gargoyles and that whole kind of classic animation era age cause I grew up with the 80s-90s. And then I was obviously on Hey Arnold, but I love Hey Arnold. I think that’s just like a really classic show...Yeah I’m just into all that stuff. I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid, I’m like the opposite of Michaela.Everyone: *laughs* Marilyn: So aside from your characters, like I wanna know...Michaela Murphy and Olivia Hack….Eddy: Or Jessie Flower…M: Yeah...either way....*laughs* Jessie Flower, Michaela Murphy, they both work. *laughs*Marilyn: Which element...or would you be a Kyoshi Warrior, a non-bender? Like which would you be? Aside from your character!M: So I can’t choose earthbending? Okay...Cause I have decided that I think I actually would be….so aside from that, if I’m moving away from Earth...I honestly...I was actually talking to Olivia about this yesterday...I feel like I would be a Ty Lee. I do a lot of acrobatic and like trapeze stuff and I dance! And I’m like typically high energy and bubbly...with just like a quiet, sassy side if someone gets in my way kind of girl…O: She’s a really good Ty Lee right?!Everyone: Yeah! M: So I think I would just kind of be Ty Lee! *laughs* That’s who I would...yeah, if I had to pick another route in Avatar world. And I was talking about for the live-action, if they’re not gonna be casting any Caucasian human beings...BUT! If they were, that was hardcore who I would be gunning to be…O: Speaking of casting Caucasian people, what’d you guys think of the movie? What’s the….Eddy: The movie?*Eddy and I make a sour face…*M: Yeah...I know…O: Everybody makes a face when I say that! I’ve never seen it, and everyone says don’t see it!M: Oh I have...I mean yeah, there’s not a reason to see it but I did see it…O: *laughs* Eddy: I hate to say it but it feels like they didn’t watch an episode. Like a single episode of it...They say “Oong” instead of “Aang”, they say “Soak-a” instead of “Sah-ka”....M: Yeah...it hurts….it’s painful….Eddy: Sorry I can ramble on…O: Yeah, yeah, yeah!M: *laughs*Marilyn: I think it was just like...for fans of Avatar the cartoon, like we really love the show….and so like going into the movie and just having it disappoint us but...but kind of like...stab you and then turn the knife on you…O: It’s like disrespectful to fans!M: Yeah… Marilyn: Yeah! And so...that’s how we felt...and with the live-adaption on Netflix...we have hope again. So it’s nice. Eddy: Thankfully, the movie didn’t hurt Toph or Ty Lee…O: Yeah!M: Thankfully! Marilyn: I think after everyone saw that movie, they revisited the show. M: Yes! Cause they were like “Oh, well...we gotta go back to what was good.” *laughs*O: Fingers crossed for the Netflix show!Eddy: I have faith… O: I think it’s gonna be good!Marilyn: You mentioned earlier you met with Mike and Bryan...can you reiterate what you told us?M: Yes! So I had just heard little twitterings and people had been sending me articles and being like “Hey, are you going to be a part of this?” I was like “Okay, so this is a thing that’s happening.” So I reached out to Mike and Bryan and I came to Los Angeles in May, just for a little bit. A couple of days...and then I was like “Hey! Can I get lunch with you guys? It’s been a while…” *laughs* “...and just like wanna pick your brain!” So...they’re much more involved with the live adaption...this...THIS live action! And I just wanted to hear...you know, what their thoughts were. They were on the fence, Nickelodeon was on the fence about partnering with Netflix. A lot of things kind of had to be arranged and it was a bit crazy apparently...but finally it got settled. They are scouting places, you know, up in Canada for shooting...and I asked like “Are you casting soon? Who are you casting? What’s happening?” And they’re trying to keep it as true to...kind of location in the animated series for real life. So they’re focusing on different sectors of...you know, Northern Asia and like Southeast Asia for like the Earth tribe and Fire Nation. They’re tryna like appropriately space...SO! Actually like...verbatum...They said “We’re really excited to not cast any Caucasian people.”Everyone: *laughs*M: And I was like…”That’s understandable!” It’s cool, and I was like, you know…”Are you gonna cast in Los Angeles?” and they were like “We’re tryna do like a nation/worldwide search...and try to make it as available as possible to anybody and anybody that wants to send in a video and audition or whatever...cause we want to find the right people. We don’t just want to find somebody’s cousin who happens to know the producer or whatever”...right? They want to find people who will really represent these characters...which I thought was cool. And a lot of people have been messaging me being like “How do I send in something?” Like, they’re from that point. They will probably cast like maybe mid-fall earliest...and then start filming like next spring. So there’s a long timeline for things but point is...they’re going to make it accessible to anyone. They’ll be public about it, whenever they do start...so yeah, it’s just cool. They’re gonna be very open about it I think...and like a lot more public because they know that the movie was so like “Eh…” that they want people to be on board for this...yeah. So it was cool! And they’re both doing well and they’re excited to be back and like working on the project and…O: You guys got the hot exclusive scoop!Everyone: *laughs* M: And with all like the CGI technology just in the last 10 years, it’s gotten so, so much better. I mean they’re doing all sorts of stuff with various green screens and like creating models and doing...I mean it’s...cause it’s you know...This world is so involved and kind of magical..you know, four flippered penguins and flying things...you know, just like a lot of...a LOT OF detail so that’s why it’s gonna take a second…*laughs*...to get started, understandably. But yeah, I’m excited for it just after talking to them, cause i think they want it to be as good as we do...you know?Marilyn: Yeah...Thank you for telling us this.M: Of course! Yeah...and I got the clearance, so this is all normal. There’s nothing secretive... None of that is like exclusive. It’s just like normal...they’re figuring things out...yeah, it’s cool. *laughs*Marilyn: So for Ty Lee...we were talking about it in the car getting over here...she’s like a female version of Aang! Like she’s so positive…O: She’s so positive but she’s a killer!Marilyn: She’s like the best friend you can want. Like the scene...I think like one of the most iconic scenes is when Mai betrays Azula and then Ty Lee saves her! And you see like Ty Lee’s face and she’s like “...we have to go! Let’s bounce!”O: *laughs* Ty Lee is always kind of cleaning up after Azula a little bit...yeah, yeah!Marilyn: Yeah! And we were just wondering like...in your life do you have like a Ty Lee version? Like a friend that’s always positive…?O: Yeah, I mean...I kind of...well I’m a little dry, but I mean I feel like Ty Lee a little bit. It’s like I try and look on the bright side of everything and whatever...but I would definitely go in there and kick some ass if I have to. I just like Ty Lee. My favorite episode is the beach...cause I like that you get everybody’s backstory in that. (My favorite Ty Lee episode I should say…) But yeah, I like her story cause she was in the circus and then she ran away...It’s kind of just this...yeah, it’s not what you would expect. But yeah, Ty Lee’s just a fun character. Like I didn’t know...my first two episodes or whatever, I think they casted another actress...Because I walked in there and they had already...the animation was already done. Like DONE, done...and I was just matching stuff…M: Ohhh...Interesting…hmm… O: Yeah! And so...I went in there kind of just thinking it was some anime. I had no idea what it was or whatever...so that voice just kind of came out of nowhere and like...it’s fun to do it because...*slips into Ty Lee voice*.... “She’s just really...Your aura is very pink!” *talks normal* Like she’s just really fun and yeah…. M: *laughs*O: Do a Toph line! Do your…. M: Oh gosh! Um...there are so many… Everyone: *laughs*M: I mean...it’s...popular one I guess is uh….*slips into Toph voice*....”I am not Toph, I am Melonlord!!! MUWAHAHAHAHA….” Everyone: *laughs*M: I mean…*laughs*...oh it’s so fun. For me, I mean...it’s also funny. A lot of people ask like, “Oh do a Toph voice.” I was just being extra sassy at 13...and so it was me, higher voice and just kind of in tomboy mode. Like I’m very...very close...with my voice. Although I don’t know if everyone knows this but I voiced Meng in Season 1, with the big pigtails sticking out. She had the crush on Aang, yeah yeah yeah! So that’s actually...I did her first but because they...you know, we just got along and when they decided to make Toph a girl they were like, “Hey wait! Bring back this Jessie chick…” and they were like “Alright, so this character is not that...She’s tough, she’s mean, she’s blind…” and I was like “Cool! Okay!” So yeah...a little bit of a shift with intention. But yeah...it was close to home…”O: And being mean is fun!M: Oh yeah!O: Being mean is really fun, yeah.M: Tough love! It’s all in love. Just, you know…*laughs*Marilyn: Thank you guys so much for this interview!O: Awesome! Thanks guys!M: Perfect! Oh my gosh, of course! It was so nice to meet you! Thank you for reaching out...I’m glad the timing worked out and everything….End of Interview.——————————————————————————————-Michaela’s IG: @michaelamostlyOlivia’s IG: oliviahack1Host/Editor - Marilyn Chanthala | Animation/Music - Edward Naputi | Cover Art - trai no angle & Eric VoWe are now on Spotify, iTunes, Youtube, Stitch, idk a lot of places![(Social Media).com/beyondbending]Website: www.beyondbending.com

Boom, what's going on everyone? It is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.   Today I'm gonna talk to you guys about product evolution.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.   The real question is how will I do it without V.C. funding or debt, completely from scratch. This podcast is here to give you the answer.   Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.   My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.   What's up, guys?   Hey, I'm excited for today, got the whiteboard with me if you guys are watching on YouTube. If you're out listening on iTunes or some other place, welcome. I'm so excited about this.   This episode specifically has been a long time in the making. I'm very excited about it. I have gone through and I have I spent the last hour and a half just thinking through it alone. Let alone the months prior.   I've been trying to figure out how to describe this very critical lesson. And I don't know another way to be able to describe this except for like two or three stories. So I gotta tell 'em here really quick…   What I'm trying to do is…   I first want you guys to know right, this episode specifically is all about how I create good products. I'm not talking about offers, I'm talking about products. Products and offers are totally different. And I'm here to talk about product creation.   Now I had the good pleasure in one of my semesters in college... I'll never bag on college. I think it's good. It's not how you make money though, but it does open up the noggin a bit, right?   So anyway, one of my semesters in college was kind of cool 'cause the professors walked up and they said, "Hey, check it out. You have no classes this entire semester. Your only task is to make as much money as you physically can." That's what the whole semester was…   They assigned us a random industry. And I got stuck in the food industry. If you guys know me personally, you know I am not a good cook. I was like “Crap, I don't wanna be in food, put me in the knick-knack. Put me in you know, the e-com space. I was like food, seriously?”   But it ended up being the best education I got the entire time I was in college. And it was fascinating.   At the beginning what they did was they put us into groups of like 15. So we're in these small groups, and we went on this retreat. They brought us up and super high mountain place for like three days and, we just did a whole bunch of like team building stuff.   I always made fun of that stuff, but if you guys ever heard of the terms Form, Storm, Norm, Perform? Meaning you're gonna get with a group of people, people are gonna unofficially be assigned roles.   You're gonna fight with each other and then finally the team can actually start producing, right. Well, we did that in that three day period. And that was one of the reasons they did it so fast with us.   Anyway, so we go in, #1: we start brainstorming cool product ideas.   We went through and we started writing out ideas for the name of the business, for what the product is gonna be, what the price point should be.   We were all over the place just coming out with this crazy deep dive of what we think would be best to sell.   Well, when we came back out of our high mountain escapade, it wasn't challenging or anything, it was a lot of fun though. When we came back they said, "Hey, you know what's helpful is to start asking your customers about what is it they wanna buy." And they started teaching us about design thinking.   Design thinking, meaning: here's how to actually think in order to design cool stuff. And they started teaching us these really cool processes. It was really really fascinating, it was a ton of fun.   And among those techniques were different brainstorming methods - different ways to go through and create products with customers. Which is where a lot of what I know comes from. It's really really cool.   Well, I remember there was this really fascinating point where they started telling us we had to keep a journal of what we were learning each day. And I found the journal, and I just read it for the last little while … and this thing is full full full full full, okay. And super awesome.   I started reading the journal entries and what I was writing, and I'm so glad I took it seriously 'cause like there's some good crap in here. It's fascinating to see what they were teaching us.   It was a combination of how to be creative, mixed with what they call data-driven decisions.   And I'm not the first person to ever say that at all. But that was when I was like, “Oh yeah, that makes total sense. Why would I not make decisions based on data? That makes sense. There's security in that…”   Remember, I'm specifically talking about product creation here. So I'm gonna go through 3 separate things on how to actually create products.   Some of these stories, some of you guys may have heard in the past, but I don't think I've ever done an episode where it’s kind of laced altogether.   So first of all, remember I'm not talking about offers. I'm not talking about offers at all. I'm talking about product creation and how to make sweet products that make people be like, "Oh my gosh, that's so freaking cool."   The first time I ever learned about this was data-driven decisions, right. Meaning I can go out, I can see what other competitors are doing - essentially funnel hacking, right?   I can start asking and see what other markets are doing; what other products are doing, how they're making money?  Very very data-driven - obviously data-driven decisions.   What was interesting is like as we started pushing forward and as we started learning these cool techniques and methods, I started having these really massive “aha's” on what actually created good products.   I've told this story in the past, but … so the guy, the professor that was assigned to our group, was not allowed to intervene with us at all. Only when we asked specific questions. So it was very much like, “Let's throw you off a cliff and see what you do in free fall.” And the whole semester was like that. It was a bunch of fun.   Anyway, so I was voted to be the CEO at the beginning, and what was cool is I got a lot of really cool interactions with him. He kind of became one of my first unofficial mentors, and I spent a lot of one on one time with him.   He was fantastic. He was the CEO of Denny's and of Pizza Hut. The guy invented stuffed crust pizza,... ahhhhhh!  He was the man. He was super cool.   Well, one day he walked in and he goes, "Okay, this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna teach you guys more ways to brainstorm effectively." And so walked in this room and there's like toys, like child toys all along the tables. Child’s toys all over the place.   There's Play-Doh, Silly Putty, there's Lincoln Logs and K'nex. There's Legos - there's toys all over the place. Any kind of toy you can imagine, all over the place. The room is filled with 'em. And we're like, “What the heck?”   This professor was awesome; next to him was a squirt bottle. There was one person that was the scribe, and they'd stand up and write down on the board the problem we were trying to solve.   We were like, “Okay, here's the problem -we're trying to solve this.” And we would start writing different solutions down. He would watch like a hawk and when somebody said something that was like a negative reaction…   Let's say we're gonna figure out how to solve world hunger, and somebody's like “Oh yeah, let's feed the world with Big Macs!” And I'm like, “Eh, I don't know if that's a good idea.”   Any kind of negative reaction, he would take the squirt bottle and shoot it in our face and yell, "Bad kitty!" And he would start spraying it at us. The guy was crazy, he was awesome though. He's the man...   What he was trying to teach us... and I wrote this down in the journal. I said: “Ridiculous ideas are essential in the creative process.” That's what I wrote down.   “Ridiculous ideas are essential in the creative process!”   And what was fascinating about this process is that we would start with an idea… We found out the market wanted empanadas. I didn't even know what that was…   I was like “Okay, right.” What if? How could we sell it this way? How could we sell it this way? And when we actually started realizing that when we started brainstorming, this really interesting stream of events started happening.   We started listing out tons of our own ideas - which is great, but to do this we had to get inside this creative zone where there was no judgment.   I’ve found that that is one of the major reasons why people I’m coaching now do not move forward; they’re afraid that their ideas are stupid. They're afraid that they're gonna be exposed as a fraud.   There's some imposter syndrome going on. Like, "Oh my gosh, people are gonna find out that I'm really not this amazing individual."   I was like, “Well, you're literally creating a new identity. Of course, you're gonna feel that way, right?” I've totally had imposter syndrome in my life, I totally get that.   But what's interesting about this is you have to give yourself license to go to the crazy zone. You have to give yourself license to be able to go into these spaces. The areas where like “Hey, you know what? Let's write some crazy stuff down.”   When I was doing the FHAT events, the funnel hack-a-thon event at Clickfunnels, one of the ways I would teach them... when we sold the original 2 Comma Club Coaching Event it was the night before we were gonna sell something we sat at a board... it was Russell, Dave, Brent, Melanie, and myself, I think that was all in the room... and we  just started writing down cool things that we could offer for this package.   We wrote everything down that was crazy. I want you to know that we use this. We wrote everything down that was nuts:   They're gonna come for this three-day event.   They're gonna fly into this crazy place called Boise, Idaho.   They're gonna stay on Russell's pajamas.   They're gonna brush their teeth with Stephen's toothbrush in the morning. Oh yeah, they're gonna love that, oh my gosh.   We’d go in and we write down all these things that are like, nuts, right? They're ludicrous, and we write that down. All this stuff, and then we'd go back and we'd cross out all the stuff that's totally unrealistic.   Okay…   They're probably not gonna stay in Russell's pajamas...   You know what, they're not gonna use Stephen's toothbrush, that's a little weird...   You know what, his wife's not gonna make breakfast for them...   They're not gonna stay at his house. It's a little bit crazy…   But what we're left with at the end this was a product or an offer, you can use this for products or offers - ('cause remember they are different) that is prolific. That is new, that no one's ever really done before. But is also from a place of security. It's really interesting.   So data-driven decisions, super impactful. Super powerful. Should be amazing, but there is a hindrance inside of it…   You guys have heard this story before as well, alright...   My wife was pregnant, we literally were driving to the hospital to have our first baby...   Just before I move on... the whole point of this one is I want you to know product creation very much involves data-driven decisions. Very much involves data-driven decisions.     ...Said in another way, “Funnel Hacking.”   That's data-driven decisions. That's where you farm data. You see what's already being done.   Moving onto the next one... Number two of three here.   My wife and I we were going to the hospital to have our kid...   The flaw with data-driven decisions is that when you go in and you start doing things like an ask campaign, right…   I was texting Noah Keegan in the hospital. We're about to have our first kid, and I was like, “Hey dude, what's up man?” He had this offer where you could text him before you actually bought. (I know I've just told this story recently so just to recap for those of you guys that didn't hear it, right.)   I was texting him, I was like, “Hey dude, I've got all this data…” That's basically what I told him. “I've been asking all these people and I wanna go launch this business, do you think that's a good idea?”   I can't tell you how many times I get asked that on stage in the Q & A section. "Do you think that's a good idea?" I get asked that all the time. I Five years ago, I asked that same question to Noah Keegan.   I was like, “Hey what's up?” And he goes... I should probably ask him about this. See I don't know if he remembers it, maybe not. But it was about five years ago. My kid's almost five…   Anyway, he texts back and he goes, "I don't know."   I was like, “What do you mean you don't know? I've asked all these people that this is a great product idea, and I said is this a good product idea and they said yes, so, therefore, I should go do this product, is that right? I should probably go do this?”   And, he's like, "Man, I don't know." And I got all frustrated - and so did he.   I was like, “Dude, all these people have said ‘Yes.’ I've collected tons of data, I've done my homework. Should I launch it?” And he goes, "Dude, I don't know. I let people vote with their wallets not their mouths." And I was like... it's interesting, right?   So the data is important. It shows you where the yellow brick road stopped, right. It shows you where you need to get to, but it's not what creates something that's prolific. It doesn't get you that extra step out.   It doesn't help you create that next brick. It just helps you know that you're creating something that is somewhat secured. Does that make sense? This is a huge thing to understand.   … ‘Cause most people that do this will be like, "Do you think this is a good product?" And then they go ask like their friends, family or someone. They're like, "Hey check this out, my parents said this was a good idea. Do you think this is a good idea?"   I’m like, “Are they gonna be the ones buying it in the first place?” “Erm...Well, No." “Then why the heck are you asking them?” It makes no sense to ask if that's a good product if they're not the ones gonna be buying it anyway! Right?   You're not the one buying your own product, so your opinions only matter “this amount.” (small gesture) Does that make sense?   The market is the one that pays for it. You don't fill your own wallet, right? So data-driven decisions have massive massive flaws inside of it, as far as creating prolific products. Huge, huge flaws inside of that.   Next one I want you to understand - this comes from a book I've really been enjoying lately called Niche Down. Really really awesome. Right at the very beginning of the book…   I can't agree more with what this guy is saying. I was laughing so hard when he said this. One of the things I've been saying a lot lately is that your whole goal in product creation, and your whole goal in funnel building, your whole goal in market creation, is to be different, not better. Different not better. Alright.   When I ask people, “How come I would buy your thing over the next guys?” And they default to, "Well, 'cause we have a better this, we have a better that, we have a better this over that." I immediately already know they're gonna be strapped for cash.   It's not enough of a reason for someone to jump. It's gonna become a feature war really fast. It'll become a price and a feature war super fast:   Your goal is to become different, not better.   And I was laughing because this book right, Niche Down, says, "It comes down to leveraging the exponential value of what makes you different rather than leaning on the incremental value of what makes you better."   And I was like “Hallelujah!” I was sitting on a plane when I read that, and I was like “Wooo! That's exactly it! That's 100% exactly what I'm trying to say.”   Your product should be different, not better.   It's a very subtle way to think about that.   I was on a Q & A for 2 Comma Club X a little bit ago, and that's exactly what I said and I was like, “It's about being different, not better.” And I think that that's a better way, it's an easier way, fast way, to understand what it is that we're trying to share all the time.   It's about being different, not better. If I'm like, “Oh, this is a better widget.” That's gonna be rough, that's gonna be really really rough. Anyways, let me move on here…   The third thing here is this game, (again remember I'm talking about products, I'm not talking about offers and I'm not talking about markets or categories)And you feel like Stephen, that is a lot of vocab. I understand that, and I understand a lot of my podcast lately has been definitions - which can be freakin' annoying and boring…   So I'm trying to keep it engaging, trying to keep you very involved with this and hopefully, you guys have been enjoying this? But I want you to understand that it’s not about going out and creating something that is brand new, totally prolific - something that nobody's ever seen before, you know what I mean? That's what college taught me until I got to this semester here…   So in that business where I was in that food semester, right, where I was creating that business, we ended up doing two to three grand a week in sales to poor college students. We did quite well. We made a lot of money in that.   I had a lot of false beliefs and fears melt away as we started building that. And it was awesome, super cool.   At the end of it you go and you donate all that money out to charity and such, and so it was a bunch of fun. So anyway, we went and we made a sizeable amount of money. And I sat back after that semester was over, it was easily the most impactful one that I had in college, and I sat back and I remember thinking like, “How can I teach what I just learned?”  Because I was already very aware that I needed to coach other people for me to speed up my personal progress. It's one of the reasons I do these episodes…   And what I did, I actually wrote a chapter of a book. I didn't finish it, but this is it guys, I freakin' found it, how cool is this? It's awesome, it's only like 60-ish pages, but I was just trying to write down and encompass the things that I learned.   I should probably put this in the new book I'm writing now.   I'm writing an offer creation book which I'm super stoked 'cause there's not really a book out there like that…   So anyway, it was it was; “How a group of college students used these 5 rules to get our business off the ground in a week for 3K a week.” Which is awesome, right!   And I went through and I wrote it down and one of the points that I wrote…   I'm just laughing because I just barely found this thing in like some cupboards and stuff. And I went and I found it and I was like “Oh, check this out!” And there's this whole idea that I was trying to put across.   Most of the time what people say you need to have, right, this totally brand new thing, something that's completely prolific. But that's not the case at all. I call that The Product Big Bang Theory.   Bam, this brand new thing that's never been seen before just pops out, boosh. Product Big Bang Theory. Product Big Bang Theory is like so risky! It's like blue oceans that are truly blue, that truly nobody has actually seen before. Those kinds of products exist. But they’re risky to create.   The product is cool, the product serves a real purpose, the product actually solves things, but it is not marketable. Does that make sense?   It's very hard to make money on a truly blue ocean. 1991 is when the internet became publicly available for the public. It was being used way before that, right? The infrastructure, the whole economy, there was no infrastructure available for something like the internet for such a long time.   The book Innovator's Dilemma talks about this very concept. It’s by Clay Christensen from Harvard. That guy's amazing! It's the exact same concept. You can go too blue.   So it's not about product Big Bang Theory - it's about product evolution.   Again, talking about products, not markets. Products, not offers.   It kind of ties in with data-driven decisions: you're gonna go and you're gonna funnel hack and you're gonna figure out how far somebody has carried that product and then you're gonna figure out what you can add to it to make it different, not better.   Does that make sense?   I know I've dived into this quite a bit, and this is kind of a more technical episode, and I'm trying to make sure that like people understand what I'm trying to teach when I share this kind of stuff.   It's about:   Product Evolution, not product Big Bang Theory.   Using data-driven decisions to make you different, not better.   Most of the time people make data-driven decisions, they take data to make them a little bit better than the competition. That's great to do once you already own a category - but it is not the way to dominate a category.   You must craft something that has never existed, a category that's never existed and then use a product evolution to actually get people into that new place. That make sense?   That was deep, probably too deep. I've done a lot of episodes and I can feel there's not enough story in this one, but hopefully, that makes sense to you guys?   This is the whole idea:   We take market data, meaning you ask people that hopefully will purchase from you.   You add, right, you add the ridiculous ideas - that equals good products. Attractive products - products that are talkable.   That's basically it. That's how I do what I do:   I see how far people have gone.   I come and I add ridiculous ideas on top of it.   I take away the things that are just not realistic.   And I'm left with good products that people are like, “Crap that was awesome, no one's ever done that before.”   And I'm like, “I know because I've done my research.” I've gone through and I'm like “Hey check this out. Oh, this is what everyone's doing, this is how everybody's delivering that product.”   Then I just go in and I lace in my own crazy, I lace in my own prolific zone. And when I add those two together, that's honestly what leaves me with good products. (I'm talking about products again, not offers.)   Anyway, guys hopefully this is helpful to you?   This is a deeper episode, I don't really like to go this deep on that. And I promise I'll go more story based so that they're more interesting to listen to, but hopefully that makes sense to you? Hopefully, you see why I do what I do in this stuff... And what's going through my head when I start to see someone's product, or their offer, or whatever they're doing.   This whole game's so much more formalized and more formulated than I think people realize…   It's not a scary thing - there's just a formula behind it. And once you learn the formula, it's not that hard.   Dedicate yourself to learning the process. Fall in love with the process, fall in love with the personal process that you're going through as you develop into a character that can create and own that product.   Most people are not the person they need to be in order to deliver the product to the market. So fall in love with the process of it. Don't judge yourself, it's okay.   Start learning to enjoy as you move forward and start moving down the road…   I got one last quote here, okay. Oh crap, let me grab it. I dropped the book thinking that I was done here and I'm not. Check this out. I don't remember who said this:   "Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius."   That's awesome. "Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius." '   So just act.   I'm not trying to cause analysis paralysis in anybody:   Create your first iteration of the idea.   Go try and sell it.   See what happens.   Then take what they did and didn't like an make adjustments.   Then relaunch.   Then take the adjustments, and go relaunch again.   Then adjustment and relaunch. That's all the game is…   That's all the game is. Pretty soon, you got it. That's the reason why we say “You're just one funnel away.” 'Cause honestly you are:   If you know you got a good idea.   If you know the market's telling you “Yes.”   If you know there's a place for you to do things differently, not better.   Then just keep rinse and repeating, rinse and repeating, and suddenly it'll hit.   Some of my products right now, like the Secret MLM Hacks one, that's the third time. The beginning of this year was the third time I've launched that product. Isn't that fascinating?   Anyways guys, thank you so much, appreciate it. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed this episode? I know it was a little bit deep and I promise they will not be that crazy in the future. I just had to get this one out because a lot of people ask.   Alright guys thanks so much, I'll talk to you later, bye.   Boooom, if you're just starting out, you're probably studying a lot. That's good.   You're probably geeking out on all the strategies also, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?   That's also what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula. So I created a special mastermind called The OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script, to get it off the ground and sell it. Wanna come?   They're small groups on purpose - so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to offermind.com. Again, that's offermind.com.

What Dave Woodward taught me in-between stage time... Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best Internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right, all right. I am in the throws of just building like crazy. I'm about to finish my webinar product. I have had, I've had a ton of people come out and say, "Hey, will you build this? Will you build this? Will you build this?" It's so funny you guys. It's been this way every single time I've ever built anything, ever. I remember I was going out, and I can't remember what I was building, it was years ago. I started noticing this pattern that any time I got ... I started setting this resolve of like, "I'm going to go build this, and I'm going to stay focused, and no one else is going to get distracted." Like, "All right, no one's going to distract me, and I'm only going to do one thing at a time this time." As most entrepreneurs probably go through. It's every single time I go out and I start having that kind of intent to build something different or put something out there, it's like the world and the market come flying out from the woodwork and just trying to distract me, trying to say, "Hey, well here's an opportunity over here. Come over here, there's an opportunity here. This piece over here. Don't miss out on this over here." Right? I'm sure you guys have all seen that before. If you haven't, get ready and buckle up, okay? As soon as anyone ... Here's the funny thing, okay? Most people in life don't really do that much stuff, right? If you're listening to this podcast, right, you're probably one of the other ambitious individuals on the planet. There's like, newsflash, there's not many of us. I didn't know that, and it's not to put anyone else down, but some people are completely content of doing the same thing over and over again in their life. That's great, good for them. I'm not and you're not either, I'm assuming, right, that's why you're listening to this, okay? I'm not. For me, I had the hardest time when I was in school knowing what to try and choose to do. I would stand around and go, "Oh my gosh," like I, do I try and go ... My major at BYU-I was actually finance and then I was like, "Maybe I'll do supply chain. Maybe I'll do this over here. Maybe I'll do ... Gosh, I have no idea, because if I do this, I'm going to get stuck at a desk doing the same thing over and over again. If I do this over here, oh my gosh. Like literally, I'll look at spreadsheets all day long." I was like, "I don't want that." It's funny, because when I started getting really clear on what it is that I wanted, two things happened, right? The first thing that happened, well first of all, just so you know, I was like, I was in this huge conundrum and suddenly, and finally I had this professor, this teacher, he's kind of one of my, he was a mentor of mine basically. He was a teacher. He and I spent a lot of one-on-one time together actually and he would just teach me stuff. He was a former CMO of Denny's and of Pizza Hut. I've talked about him before. He was the guy that invented the stuffed crust pizza, and all hail. He would teach me a lot of amazing stuff. One day, he took me aside and he goes, "Look, Stephen, I see that you are like massively torn between what you should do." He's like, "You need to come and you've got ... Come get a marketing degree, man." I was like, "Serious?" I was like, "I'm not going to lie. I look at the marketing degree as like a cop out." Okay? That was my view of what marketing was at the time, which was so skewed. Like oh my gosh. In my mind, there's no other skill set that will pay you more than learning how to do sales and marketing but for some ... Like the way it's taught, right? The cultural perceptions of western society look at sales as almost like the people who couldn't get any other career. Like are you kidding me? That's like the most valuable, most important career on the planet. Like without sales, the entire economy dies, newsflash, right? Like holy smokes. Learning how to be salesman, learning how to market, those are like the most profitable skills you could ever learn, right? Which is amazing, it's just amazing. Anyway, so I was like, "Okay." He's like, "Come, come and do this thing." Like, "Fine, fine." He goes, "Look, I know you're going to like it because you have to solve a new problem and a new challenge pretty much every day. It changes, you're never doing the same thing over and over again. Even if you have to, it's kind of different, right? It's for different people." I was like, "All right, fine." He goes and he convinces me to get into this. He's like, "Go do marketing," so I get into marketing. I started studying marketing stuff and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing. This is super cool." It's always, it's been fascinating to me how much of it has to do with psychology than anything else. Some of you guys might be thinking like, "Steve, are you just realizing this now?" No. I'm not, but I had it reinforced to me again two weeks ago, and I wanted to tell you guys about it. Again, I'm talking about the FHAT event. This last one was, frankly, like so freaking awesome. I was on point, Russell was on point. Like it was just, my gosh, and it was our last one, which makes me super sad, but I get why. Just logistically, it's a hard thing to pull off, it's three days. We clearly over-deliver on ... I mean, anyway, it takes a lot. It takes a lot to pull them off. I was up there, I was teaching, it was going great, it was awesome. I love, I love, and I hope you guys understand in the future, I would love to have a coaching program of my own, I would love that. The reason I'm bringing this up is because one of the things that's such a huge benefit of being attached to a place like ClickFunnels, which I still am, which is great. I'm contracted to run the Two Comma Club coaching program or part of it with them now, which is awesome. I just signed the contract, I'm very excited about. It's a huge deal, very huge deal. I love the mentorship. I love ... I'm scared to death to actually completely remove myself from the marketing nucleus that ClickFunnels is. Internet marketing status quo as a whole gets created in those rooms, right? It's amazing, it's amazing. Common practice, think about the power of that. It's huge, right? It's like a massive innovation center. I mean, I feel like ClickFunnels is the apple of the Internet marketing world, right? Just massive innovation on an intense level at all times. It's very, very fun to be part of. Extremely electric environment, right? I loved, loved working there, very sad to not be. You guys know that story though, for a lot of reasons why I'm not now, but I still wanted to be a part of it, so I was super, super thankful when I was asked to be contracted as a Two Comma Club coach there, and still be a part of that a little bit. I wanted to tell you guys though about an experience that I had that kind of reinforces what I'm saying right now about how much of this has to do with human psychology. Had way more ... Which is funny, because I almost went into psychology. I was like, "Yeah, this is really interesting stuff." I was like, "That's a lot of science terms and I don't really want to learn that stuff." I still am ... The parts that interest me, funny enough, are actually all the things that I still use for marketing messages and storytelling as it is anyway. Anyway so, gosh, mentorship is such a huge piece of growth to this, I love it. I hope to be able to do that, and a lot of you guys have asked, actually reached out and asked. Probably more of you guys are doing it than you realize, then the rest of you guys realize. Yes, the answer is yes. I would love, love to be able to mentor and coach and show you guys the very obvious places where you could improve your funnels and things like that. It's all I do anyways. I've been doing it for the last year with hundreds and hundreds of students. We have over 600 students now inside of the Two Comma Club coaching program. I'm on with them every week, pretty much for the most part. Unless I get bronchitis like I did a while ago, it was crazy. Anyway, so I was on stage and I was teaching, and it was awesome. I noticed that the room was starting to drop in their responsiveness on what I was saying. If you guys have ever taught or ever spoken, you can feel that as the speaker, right? I'm sure you guys have felt that before. You stand up and you starting to deliver, and you can feel the responsiveness. You can feel how people are with you or not when you're actually speaking, and teaching and do whatever you're doing, selling, okay? Which is one of the major reasons why I tell everyone, "You've got to publish consistently. It would be an amazing teacher for you." Just you, that's like self-teaching. Just you publishing is like self-teaching. An amazing, a very powerful way, right? It's like tailored coaching to yourself, but it's from yourself, which is pretty interesting. You only get that with publishing frequently, right? Anyway, which is why I'm like, "Oh my gosh. Get good at telling stories. It'll be so ... You'll see the responsiveness." Anyways, I'm on stage, I can tell. The reason why I knew is because they were just getting tired. Okay? They had been there for eight hours the day before and I don't let them take breaks, okay? If they got to get up and go to the bathroom or anything, they get up in the middle and then leave, okay? I don't really ...There's like two breaks the whole time, lunch and kind of dinner, kind of. Okay? They'd already gone eight hours the day before and we were like six hours into day number two, and there's still like another seven hours to go. We're stopping for dinner, okay? There's been a lot of progress. I'm helping them make their webinar scripts. I'm helping them make the actual funnels. We're going through and we're teaching storytelling, we're teaching, and we're helping them. They're doing it and we're also coaching them through it on different ways. They're listening to each other being coached and it's a great ... Oh my gosh, huge accelerant, massive catalyst for growth, and so I love that event so much. They're getting tired and I can tell the responsiveness of the room is beginning to drop. I kind of started making fun of them just a little bit. I know a lot of you guys listen to this podcast, "What's up?" You guys are a great group, love you. Just know from my side, that's what I was seeing though. I was like, "I know they're getting tired." I was like, "How can I break state? How can I break their state? How can I jar them in a certain way?" I was kind of like jesting, in a playful way, making fun of them like, "Come on. Stick with it here, we got to keep going. This is three days that can set up the next 30 years of your life if you do it right." It's like ... Anyway, and so we break for dinner, I'm going on in the back. As a speaker, I got to decompress from just this constant ... It's like, let me think. It's like 24 hours of me on stage in three days. It's a lot. Russell told me 90 minutes is the equivalent of an eight hour day, and I'm on there for 24 hours in three days. Like I am wrecked by the end of it, okay? The day after and several days after, it feels like I ran a Sprint triathlon, which I used to do. It's like the same feeling of just exhaustion, but it's super fun. Keeping the energy high is super key with it. Anyways, I go to the back, I'm decompressing, I grab food, and I was just kind of sitting in the back. One of the brilliant people that I love being around in ClickFunnels walked into the back, and his name is Dave Woodward. He walks into the back, and he sits down next to me, and he's eating food. We're just chatting it up, and he's asking how things are going. He's like, "Hey, you're on your own, this is awesome. What are the issues? What are the cool things?" Back and forth. Then Dave goes into this brilliant teaching mode. I hope he's okay with me sharing this, but I wrote it down. He goes, "Have you ever heard of the four C animal psychology approach," or whatever. I can't remember what it's called. You guys out there, I'm sure some listeners listening to this probably know what I'm talking about. I was like, "No, I have no idea what you're talking about." Because what I had just said was, "I can tell that I'm losing some of them. They're getting tired. I want to make sure ... I'm trying to keep them engaged. They have to be engaged mentally in this process for the three days. It's a lot, but they got to stay with it." I was like, "Trying to get ... I can feel ... It's going really well, but I'm killing them a little bit, I'm killing them. I got to resurrect the feeling a little bit. I got to keep them engaged with it. I got to inspire them a little bit." He goes, "Hey, have you heard of this? It's like the four C animals approach to psychology." I was like, "No." I'm calling it wrong, okay? Whatever it's called, I don't know, okay? He goes, "Okay." He goes, "You and I, we're sharks. Sharks are go-getters. They stop at nothing, okay?" I was like, "Okay. That makes sense." He's like, "Then, there's also dolphins. Dolphins are bubbly. They like being the center of attention a little bit." He's like, "There's always a few people in the room that are really engaging with you the entire time?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "Those guys are totally dolphins, okay? Those are the dolphins. They're very, very friendly, they're open, they're bubbly. They have no problem being engaging and energetic." I was like, "Okay." He goes, "Then, there's whales, okay? A whale is someone who wants to make sure everything is fair, okay? Those are the people in the room who are kind of like your checks and balances system when something ..." "You say you're going to do something and you forgot to cover that, they'll go back and they're the ones correcting you. They'll make sure everything's fair, everyone's treated fair. That everyone feels validated and everyone feels edified, right?" I was like, "Okay." Then he goes, "Then the fourth kind though is the sea urchin, okay? The sea urchin are like the accountants. The accountants are sitting back, and they're extremely logical. They're very number driven, they're very process driven." He goes, he said, "We all have pieces of each one of those in us but there's always a dominant, okay?" He goes, "You're a shark." I said, "Yes." He goes, "You need to understand that people will not ... If they don't have any shark in them, they're not going to respond to your shark-like mentalities. They're not going to respond to yours shark-like communication style." I was like, "Huh, that makes a lot of sense." He goes, "If you watch the way Russell speaks, and you watch the way Russell goes, he's very brilliant at making sure he communicates to all four of those personality styles, of those learning styles, right? Communication styles in the room. He hits all four of them in the room." I was like, "Huh, that's fascinating." It was dinner, and we had another five hours to go. I mean, we usually stop that event at 12:30, 1:00, right? Afterwards, after it was over, we all, Russell and I and Dave and Melanie and John, we all just kind of hung out. It was a lot of fun. We just kind of chatted up and caught up for a little bit, because it had been several weeks since I had been there. Anyway, so but that was fascinating to me though. He goes, "Make sure that ..." He said, "You're doing great. I mean, you're really, really awesome." I was like, "Oh, thanks so much." He goes, "But make sure that when you get back up there, and you are trying to keep them motivated, and you are trying ... That you are talking to sharks, yes. You are a shark, that's easy for you to do." He said, "Make sure you're talking to the dolphins that are bubbly and energetic." He goes, "You can do that. That's very much your style also." I was like, "Yeah, I'm definitely energetic." He goes, "Make sure also that you're talking to whales, right? The whale, meaning the personality who wants to make sure that everything's fair. Making sure that there's everyone's nice." He goes ... Even though I was jesting, making fun of everyone. I was like, "Come on, stick with it. You guys ..." He's like, "That may have been bad," that I was jesting, making fun of them, right? I was like, "Come on, you can do it. Stick with it." I was just trying to keep them motivated but I was like, "Huh, for that personality style, for that communication style, they may not have liked that, and that was a mistake of mine." Right? "Then for the sea urchin, make sure that you're still going through logical progression, you're still ..." He's like, "Make sure that when it comes down to motivating, when it comes down to communicating, when it comes down to script writing. When it comes down to any communication piece that you're doing whatever you can to communicate ..." "Because a sea urchin, if that's their preferred style, they like to learn like a sea urchin, right? Not like a shark. You got to speak like a sea urchin, all right? Make sure if the person's, right, dolphin, you got to speak a little bit of dolphin, right?" He's like, "Make sure you're learning each one of those four." That was such a huge lesson. It was such a huge lesson. I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's okay, okay. Awesome, cool." I went back out and for those of you guys who were there, you might have noticed, I don't know. I was trying to incorporate more of those things throughout, and I did that specifically on the third day. I don't totally know how, but I know that like when people say like, "Oh, when the student's ready the teacher appears." It has everything to do with the student's ability to learn though. I was like, "No, it does have a lot to do also with the teacher's ability to deliver." Right? I was trying to practice that, and I was trying to get good at that. Anyway, it was fascinating, so that's what I'm doing. What I'm trying to do is I actually went back to my webinar script that I'm currently running right now, right? My webinar. It's going great, going actually very, very well. It's been fun because I'm trying to incorporate now, I've got the shark piece but I'm trying to incorporate a little bit of dolphin, okay? I've got that pretty naturally also, okay? The whale, right? How can I make sure everyone feels like things are fair? How can I make sure that there's still logical progression, and the people like to analyze stuff, for sea urchin? You know what I mean? I'm going through, and the actual sales scripts themselves, on the pages, inside the webinar, after the webinar. I'm going through all those things, I'm trying to add those things in. It's gone really, really well. It's actually been really, really cool to go through and do that. Anyway, guys, that's all I wanted to tell you guys about was try and figure out which one you are, and then learn to speak the other languages, okay? As far as communication skills, communication tactics. If you are a straight up shark, unless you're looking for just straight up sharks also, right, make sure you're speaking other forms of communication as well that people ... It's kind of like the love languages. These are almost like communication languages. That's how I look at them anyway. I'm probably botching some pieces of it... I don't know the name of that methodology or whatever it was that he was teaching me, but the lesson, the lesson was powerful for me and I'm like, "Huh." I've always tried to incorporate certain things like that, but I never heard it described that way. I think I was neglecting specifically a certain part, and certain personality and communication style in the room. I didn't know that. It's not that it wasn't good, not that they weren't getting the stuff also, but I'd be more effective if I was like, "I got to learn these other pieces here." Anyways, that's what I'm doing right now. Trying to go through and toss a few of those, more of those elements in. I am dedicating right now full days to just the actual webinar script. That's how much I'm trying to master and just get it down. Selling once a week right now, and it's the only funnel I'm running. I got plans for all these other funnels. I got offers for tons of other funnels to go build. I got offers for all the other things, but it doesn't matter right now. Okay? I know I'm literally one funnel away. That's not just a phrase or a saying that's kind of cute, it's a real thing. I know that, and I've seen that, and I'm doing it, and so I'm trying to say no to everything else. Also, with the communication style of, "How can I speak to everyone else's language?" Because we're all different. Anyway, okay guys. Thanks so much, appreciate it. I hope you guys learned something from that. You can go back and incorporate that into your scripts and your copy and communication styles. I'll talk to you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best Internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/FreeFunnels to download your pre-billed sales funnel today.  

Welcome to Episode 313 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, so last month in Hit the Mic Backstage I answered a very common question by doing a training all around free challenges. We see these all over the place, they're a huge list growing opportunity. Basically, what they are is a challenge to actually grow your email list. You're providing value for your audience, you're getting them engaged right from the start, and it's totally free for them. All it costs is an email address. Usually this up sells to some sort of paid program or coaching opportunity, something like that. It doesn't have to I guess but generally speaking I like to do something on the other side of that opt-in, right? That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the three things you need to know about running a free challenge to grow your list. All right, let's do it. Thing number one that you need to know about running a free challenge is getting people engaged is critical but keeping them engaged, that's where the money is. Here's the deal. A lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot by feeling like we need to deliver an epic amount of value. Here's the deal. I'm really, really happy that you want to increase your value and you want to provide your audience with this killer, killer information. Real talk, they can only do so much. Okay? They only have so much time in the day and because this is a free challenge you have to factor that into where you fall on their priority list. They've got to deliver to their work or their business, and their family, and their friends, and themselves, that's a lot of cups to fill up. You want to make sure that they have a reason to spend time with your challenge for the duration, whatever that may be. Now, that is going to directly impact what that duration is. Meaning you don't want to have a free challenge that's 21 days long because again, real talk, it's hard to keep somebody engaged for that long when there's no financial investment on the table. Think about how many courses you've paid for and fallen off hanging out with it way before 21 days rolled around. Make sure that, especially when you talk about something you're not financially invested in, you're not sort of trying to prove that it was a good investment, think about that when you factor in their attention span. Length of time but also the day-to-day of it, keeping them engaged from one day to the next. Making sure that you are giving them a reason to keep opening those emails, keep visiting the site, whatever it is that you are doing. Number one, yes, getting them engaged is absolutely critical but keeping them engaged, that's where the money's made, that's where the difference happens. Really, that is the most important decision you have to make when you get started. Number two, there are a lot of decisions to make and I want you to make them all before you start marketing. There's a lot of things you've got to decide. You've got to decide length of time, what kind of content it's gonna be, what problems are you gonna solve? You have to figure out all of this stuff. How are you going to deliver it? You have to figure out all of these things. We dove deep into that stuff inside the training, inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. If you want to sort of break through those questions I give some input on how to suss out those answers. The reality is, is too many of us fall into the trap of, "Okay, so I know I want to run this challenge around X,Y,Z. I'll just build it as I go." That makes it really difficult for us to do a good job of actually engaging the audience. It makes it really, really difficult for us to actually share the value we're trying to share because we get so focused on creation. We get so caught up in simply building and making sure that this thing is a real thing that we miss out on the opportunity to really say, "Hey, I'm here for you.  How can I help you? How can I support you? This is why I want you to take the next steps, this is why you're doing this. This is why you're staying in the room and staying engaged." Don't skip through the planning and jump right into, "Oh, I've got this idea. I'll just figure it out as I go." Take a step back, map out the email sequences. Map out the up sells. Map out the delivery methods. Map out what content you want them to have delivered. I'm not saying you have to come out of the gate with the primo super shiny offering. What I am saying is I want you to come out of the gate with the foundations of a valuable, consumable, engaging challenge. Have the decisions made already around is there going to be a Facebook group, how you're delivering the content, what that content is. Have all that stuff prepared because some of the best value they're going to get is from you actually showing up, you actually being available to them. That can only happen if you are able to be 100% in deliver-ability and outside of that creation space. Factor that in, make sure that you make time and you give it the attention it deserves. That is absolutely 100% a lesson I learned the hard way so please don't relive it because it sucks. Okay, guys? All right, buzzing right through this list, number three. Market this like you would any other program. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making when it comes to these challenges is they take a really laid back approach to marketing it. They don't gut out their end run Facebook ads and share it in their group, and talk about it in their speaking engagements, and reference it in their content. They're not talking about these things all the time. Whether you're running this as a one off challenge and it's 100% live and it's just for this short period of time. Or you run this an an Evergreen thing and it's a standard opt-in on your website and people can get in any time, either way you have to market it. Sometimes we jump ahead to, "Oh, I'll just wait and I'll market the actual program I'm selling instead of this challenge. Really, the challenge is going to convert much more frequently to that paid thing than a cold ad is, than a cold sell is. Even a warm sell at the end of speaking engagement. You can say, "Hey, I want you guys to take the next step with this. Here's a free three day challenge I have. Text the code blah, blah, blah to X,Y,Z and here you go." Then sell them from that because you've given added credibility, you've given added value and you're going to convert at a much higher rate. Give this the same marketing attention, the same marketing investment. Not just financial but time-wise that you would any other program or offering in your business. It deserves that attention, it deserves that priority. Again, going back to sort of step two where I talked about make sure you're out of creation mode, make sure in addition to creation time you also have marketing time. You also have space for you to sell this, share this. Get people invested in it before they ever walk through the door. That's so, so important and it's something that I see so many people missing, all right? There we have it, out quick and dirty three things episode. We're going to start trying to keep these a little bit shorter. I want it to be super consumable for you guys and I want to see you taking action. If you're ready to take action on this and you want to take it a step further and you want to dive deeper, head over to HittheMicBackstage.com. You will find inside of Hit the Mic Backstage an entire 30 minute training dedicated to this. Plus, we have the brand new private forum which is so amazing, so much better than a Facebook group. I'm so excited about this. It is such a powerful way for you to engage, not just with me but the other members, and really get the feedback you need, the feedback you want on your challenge. Come through and work through it with us, that's what that space is for. Get feedback on your landing pages, get feedback on some of the copy in your email sequences. Get feedback on your Facebook ads, learn how to run the Facebook ads for it. Really take it to the next level by giving it the, again, the financial and time investment it deserves to really run at a next level epic for you. Okay? All of that stuff is inside of Hit the Mic Backstage so join us once again, hitthemicbackstage.com and it's going to be super fun. I'm excited to welcome you backstage, I can't wait to see you. If you're already a member and you missed that training go check it out right now, okay? All right, I will see you guys on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show