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Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild a newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, fuel your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy, and how you can create yours. You're gonna find this book on Kindle, Amazon and as always on my website, samknickerbocker.com Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast today. Actually this is an interesting story about how we have this guest on her name's Wiley Benson. I actually heard about her First from some videographers, who are like, Hey, you should go check out my lane because we work with her. She's awesome. I think she'd be a great connection. And that was like a year and a half ago, two years ago. And it just whatever happened never happened. I don't know, I listened to her podcast because she also has a podcast, which we'll talk about. She hired her first mindset coach after she had a stress-related heart attack. So think about that, like after your life changes and you almost die. That's when you decide it's time to make a change and she basically attributes and living a life devoted to that purpose. So she's been able to live a life of purpose because she found out that was essential. And the first step began her journey of discovery on her own natural gifts, really related to helping others see how to receive wealth and a Christ-centered living fit hand in hand and if you know me on any level then I kind of wrote that same thing about what I love doing.So I love, love, love helping people return to Christ. And I love, love, love helping people understand how money relieves stress so they can do so. So this is gonna be a lively discussion. I'm excited. And not very many times do I get people who have like the same thought processes or at least put in words the same things I do. So we're gonna get to know each other. And you get to listen in on this. But why don't you go ahead and share your story and why you're so passionate about what you're doing start at the beginning so we can get an understanding of where what led up to the events to create who you are today.Sir, I would love to thank you so much Samuel, and I really appreciate you sharing a little bit more about you and the background of when you got when you heard about me first, I actually didn't know that story. So that's kind of cool. And to know that we are so closely connected in our purpose and mission. I've been on a podcast before where I felt like I couldn't I have to tone myself down a little bit and maybe not talk quite so much about Christ or God or whatever. And it's just really refreshing to be in a place where I feel like I can be completely authentic and, and true to who I know I am. So thank you. Thank you for being you. And thank you for inviting me to be on the podcast today. As you're talking, I was just kind of allowing myself to go back over my history a little bit and see where I wanted to start. You already mentioned that I had a stress-related heart attack about eight years ago, that really started me on my journey of becoming who I am today, you know, where I help people with their purpose, really understanding that I have a purpose. And that was what the stress-related heart attack was caused by living a life that wasn't living in purpose. But I feel like I really want to go back even farther. I don't usually go back, you know as far as I'm going to share with you Your audience today that about 25 years ago, I was doing Mary Kay. I know if those of you don't know it's a direct sales company. It's been around since 1963. I remember because that was the year I was born. So it's been around forever. And I did Mary Kay for 18 years and I was a director I had, had earned a couple of cars and Mary Kay I had a really great group of women that I led. And it was right about the time of 911. I remember sitting in my house, I had my little kids, my kids are grown. Now I have little kids. And this happened. And I really was faced with this idea of is, is there really nothing more to live than just helping people look good on the outside and That that was like a turning point in my life. And I started making some changes in my meetings that I did the weekly meetings that I did me with the women. But that was back in the time when mentors and coaches and you know, life coaches and things like that weren't really a thing. And people didn't really hire people. I mean, there was like, some books that you could read and stuff. But I was just like, branching out and kind of doing this thing on my own and trying to help people get deeper into, you know, who are you what do you want to, you know, what is your legacy that you want to leave in your life? And it was like I was people would look at me like I had three heads. They were just like, what the heck are you talking about? It was a totally different time then and totally different mindset. So I actually because I didn't have any training, I didn't really know where I was going. I kind of crashed and burned. With that, and so instead of continuing on with my Mary Kay career, which I thought I was going to be doing that for the rest of my life, I decided to leave that and I went back to corporate America and started working for other people. And, you know, I was a mom, you know, raising kids and, and then when I left Mary Kay, my kids were a little bit older. So I felt like I had the freedom to be able to do that. But the problem once I got back into working in the real world, was that I felt like I was building somebody else's legacy. I was showing up. I'm, you know, really an amazing employee, for people. And I felt like I was taking on this idea that, you know, I wanted to build a legacy by helping somebody else build their legacy. And that's in my book, the seven gateways your map to integrity in life. business, that's something that I share with you is my story of, you know, being in corporate America being in line to become the next CEO of a multi-million dollar company. And then two weeks later I got laid off. So I have put all of my heart and life into building somebody else's legacy. And then it was just cutoff.And that was kind of the beginning of sort of a spiral downtime in my life where I went from, you know, feeling very capable, very confident in who I am to every day and every job that I got laid off from or got fired from, I got fired from a job. All these different things started really eroding my self confidence and my self esteem and my worst, you know, just really, really feeling what I was worth. out in the marketplace. And so it was at one of those jobs that I had kind of spiraled down to. So going from being, you know, in line to the CEO of a multimillion dollar company, down to the last job that I had out in the workforce was a shipping manager. I worked pretty much by myself surrounded by boxes, I shipped snowmobile parts. That was that was where I was, when I had a heart attack. I was actually at work. When I had this heart attack. And the heart attack the doctor told me it was called broken heart syndrome. And the more that I got to, like journaling and really understanding about my journey, and myself and what I was worth and where I had kind of sunk to, I realized that it was because I was not living a life of purpose. I wasn't trying too, I didn't have a legacy of my own that I was building. And so you know, hiring that first coach after I had the heart attack, and just really diving in and finding what my purpose and mission was, and going to God every single day and asking him, what do I need to know? just teach me. And I really was divinely tutored. And the that book, the seven gateways, all came from that time where I was rebuilding myself and rediscovering who I was, and really understanding my purpose and my legacy and my mission. So I would say that that was that in a nutshell, that's kind of my journey that led up to who I am today.And how long ago waslike, did you publish your book?Just January I think January was when it actually was I got my first copies in hand. Had pre sold quite a few copies. But actually having the print book done, I have audio and audio also now and it's in ebook form as well. So, you know, just since January, but it was actually in creation for about three and a half years.That's it interesting how I'm curious why why do you think it was in creation for three years? What took you three years to get published?I knew that, you know, this path that I was on of discovering my purpose. At first, I thought that the path that I that I was being given was only for me, you know, it was just for me to help me get out of the place where I was, you know, to get to a much higher, more, you know, the best person that I could be. I thought it was just for me, but as I started looking over it, I was like, this is a blueprint. This is a way that people can take these seven go through The seven gateways, faith, abundance, charity, prosperity, obedience, humility and equity. Those are the seven gateways. And I started looking over those that list you know, and what I have learned these these quantum leaps, they were quantum leaps for me. And as I started looking over it, I realized that it wasn't just for me, it was actually a step by step plan for people to go from, you know, being stuck in a dark place where you have no idea how to get out of it. You feel like you're completely trapped within your own body, that you know, your spirit and your heart and your soul is just dying to get out and create, but because of either your limiting beliefs or the circumstances that have been created, or whatever it is that you feel like you can't get out and that's what the Seven gateways are so from me, you know, experiencing these seven gateways and then actually communicating those on paper to in a way that other people could understand them and that they could simply and effectively walk through these gateways as well. And then of course, you know, just lots of editing and great people to help me incorporate my story into it and everything to make it interesting. So it wasn't like a textbook. It was just you know, took took some time to get this all put together.I love that there's so much gold in this I'm excited to tear it apart, and in a good way dissect it. Okay, so yeah, um, one of the things that is so important, not just for sushi recognize this from a perspective of her career. So in contrast, she was helping people look good on the outside. And by the way, my mom did kick me Mary Kay, lots of my friends who Mary Kay, it's a great company, I have nothing negative to say about it. And it is very much look pretty on the outside. Now they're one of their. And I think this is a true principle, you often feel how you look, right? So if you look in the mirror and you feel and you look, and you think that you look bad, you're gonna feel bad inside. If you look in the mirror and think, man, I'm looking good today, then that's extra confidence. So it does help like your outer shell does help, how you feel about yourself on the inside, so not to make any mistake there. However, the ability to look beyond that say, Okay, how am I really changing somebody on the inside? If they only feel good about themselves? When they have this makeup on? Am I really making a lasting impact? Am I making a change that's going to change their life and they're the next generation? Is it a legacy proof thing? And that's where I think it's crucial to understand what what exactly are you doing and when she asked yourself that question, People weren't quite into her being that position in their life. And it doesn't mean that those people who she was leading when she starts asking these questions, I guess I'm curious, I'll ask you this. Why do you think that they were not interested? Do you think it was because they, it was just so out of left field from what how they they saw you, or do you think they really weren't interested in and discovering themselves on a deeper level that way?No, I definitely think that there was an interest. I remember in the days building up to the first meeting that I had, you know, where I actually tried to teach people. There was a lot of excitement generated It was like, I had people coming out of the woodwork people who had not attended a meeting and, you know, months were all of a sudden, like, I'm gonna be there, you know, I'm gonna come. I think there definitely was an interest. I think it was a little bit of a combination of me not being ready. You know, me not having the training. I had never had a mentor. I didn't Really no, I was like discovering it probably could have been called more like a mastermind. If I had known what a mastermind was at the time, you know, we might have been able to do something there. But, but I think it was just I was a little bit ahead of the curve. I was a little bit, you know, on the crest of the evolution of people will really, except accepting this idea that there were people who had gone through something that could actually help you get through it a little bit faster. And I'm even right now I feel like I'm on the crest of new things as we're evolving, you know, in our current time right now in history, where there's a lot of uncertainty about the future. I feel like the the new program that I just created the Lord's way to wealth is really on the crest of you know, moving forward, but the the difference this time, is I have had that mentoring. I do you know, know what What it takes to help to inspire people and bring people along with me. So yeah, I think it was probably a combination of the time and also me not being quiteready. Yeah, it's interesting back back at that period of time, Tony Robbins was around as far as like life, if you want to throw them into life coach area, pretty much Tony Robbins like he is the godfather of life coaching. For for most people, there's a lot of business coaches, Brian Tracy Zig Ziglar them. There's lots and lots and lots and lots of business coaches, but specifically in the life coaching space, it was pretty much Tony Robbins. And from that, I mean, there might have been a few other people but no one quite on that level. And now there's tons and tons of people who are specifically helping you withmore lifepractical things and not just on the business or money side of things. So that's awesome. When you went back to corporate America, this is this is interesting. I hope that people are listening. But you ended up feeling like you're building somebody else's legacy. And then it all got taken away from you. And many people they feel like and you use this word there were security there. Mmm hmm. How would you define security? Like what is security when it comes to job security or income security? Let's just label it as income security because I think that will broaden out the explanation a little bit. But how would you define income security?I've had so many different experiences, like I've owned several businesses, I've started several businesses. I've been a consultant in a lot of different businesses. And, you know, work for myself obviously, you know, with Mary Kay and, and other things. And I used to believe that job security or income security came from being a good employee. And so when I would go to work, I would totally like take this on and If I were the owner of the business, like what would I be doing today if I was the owner of the business, and that kind of backfired on me also, and you can read about that in my book. But now, what I realized is that you can put your guts into everything that you do. But if, if you're putting your security into somebody else's hands, there may be outside circumstances well, like even right now, the way we're going, you know, the things that are happening right now, there's a lot of people who are not working through no fault of their own through no fault of their business or their boss, you know, would would would probably never have like said you're fired. But but there's, there's they're not there. So when you put your security into somebody else's hands or into some outside circumstance, then that's not true security. I feel like the only true security is when you yourself know What your natural gifts are, and how to turn that into something that other people need. That is really your own. Your only true securitycould not have said it better myself. I'm going to go back and challenge on something you said, and I am sure you didn't mean it this way. But unfortunately, sometimes people they'll hear something. And as long as it confirms a prior belief of theirs, they'll accept it at face value, rather than thinking about it more deeply. And this is why I want to tear this down. Okay. The idea that they're not working through no fault of their own is absolutely contrary to the idea of they chose to put them put their their security in somebody else's hands. The fact that they chose to put security and their security in somebody else's hands means it was their choice to begin with. It is absolutely their fault. They're not working like let's not sugarcoat it. Let's not pretend that Oh, somebody else happened. I'm a victim of Coronavirus. I'm a victim of layoffs. bullcrap you're a victim of not choosing to create, and that's your own fault. Okay, that's my opinion, you're on top. Now,I'm going to agree with you with also an added little piece is that I truly believe that our belief is what creates our outcome. So if there is the belief that I need to have somebody else to create security for me, then the outcome is going to be produced from that.Yeah. 100%. And, and it's because of that, that I love doing this podcast. This is why I started this podcast because it's my belief that that's not true. It's my belief that the only security as you said is in identifying your identity and learning how to add value to others. That's the only security It doesn't matter what I work in money, right? I help people with money all the time. I teach people how money works. And the irony is money is nothing more than an object. And value is really what we need to have a more honest conversation about and as long as you know how to add value It doesn't matter what the money we could use currency, Let's exchange the word money for currency doesn't matter what the currency exchange is, or the monetary exchanges, it could be Spanish dollars, it could be pesos. It could be whatever it is, as that could change, and it doesn't change. Why Lane's belief in herself, it doesn't change my belief in myself, it doesn't change Riley's ability to provide value to others and receive adequate compensation in whatever form of exchange we're using for myself, right? So because we've identified our identity, we can then add value. And it doesn't matter what that monetary exchanges we're going to be taking care of, and we're going to be have security inside of ourselves and peace and comfort in and hope because we know we can add value. It's people who have given their ability and we're going to get into this here in a second to two other people that are in in pain. So when she she's in line to become a CEO guys think about that you're in line to become a CEO. Have a massive company and you get laid off. The problem is if you've built your identity around what other people think of you, I don't care if you're, let's say, You're this beautiful woman, you've got three kids and a wonderful husband. And then you find out that your wonderful husband's been seeing some other woman on the side, right? Your whole identity was built on your perfect life and how other people saw your perfect life. Not always, but a lot of women, this is the case. And so when they find out that they would have been passed over, or rejected or whatever, it destroys them from the inside out, and they crumble. When reality, their identity, who they are there was always value there and it had nothing to do with who their husband was. It has nothing to do with who their kids were, has nothing to do with that they are you as an individual have value, regardless of anything around you. And it's important to understand that to create boundaries, and ultimately create true peace, happiness, joy and security in your life. And so when you got fired, laid off Maybe go a little bit more into that. How like, I'm sure you've journaled about this at some point. What aspects of your identity Did you have tied to your ability to perform in the corporate world?Everything was totally tied to that. I, I, I started my first business when I was 13. And I've been my identity has always been, up until that point had always been attached to the accomplishes the accomplishments that I created, personally or professionally. That was that was where my identity completely was. And that's why and I'm so glad that you shared that because so many people do attach their identity to something like how good of a mom I am or how good of a wife I am or how you know, perfect my life looks or whatever. But What happened when I got laid off? At first I was just like super confident, you know, I was like, You know what, I still got a lot of good years left in me, I'm an awesome, you know, I, I know that I can provide value somewhere else and I went out there and I started, you know, just looking for the next opportunity. The problem was that I didn't find a next opportunity that was equal to, you know, in, like professional prestige and pay and all of that, you know, of what I had. So it was like, okay, that's fine. You know, I've got this new job, there's room to move up, I know how to move up. You know, I know how to do what's necessary for people to love what love what I do and to promote me. So I still, you know, have this this great opportunity. But that was the job that I got fired from like a year later. I was supposed to go in for an employee review and was going to get a $2 raise. That's what I thought that I was going to get. And it would have brought me back up Almost to where I was, you know, in the prior position, and instead, they said, we're letting you go, we're firing you, you're fired. Here's your final check. Let me walk you to the door, grab your stuff on the way out. That was that was my experience. And from that, that was when I really started questioning my value. That was the moment when I was like, maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was. And then the next job that I got was like, $5 an hour less than what I and it was, because that's what I felt like I was worth. And, you know, even within that, that other job that I got, I started doing things that I typically would never have allowed myself to stoop to in a professional situation because I used to know how much more valuable I was I was actually cleaning the toilets. And there's nothing wrong with cleaning toilets. I clean toilets at my house, but I've never been hired to do That I always felt like I was, you know, capable of so much more. But I had allowed my own value, the value that I gave, I had allowed it to slip to that point where, where, you know, I didn't feel like I was worth any more than that.Yeah, it's a it's such an interesting thing. I have been on this. I don't know if it's a rant or as I've been saying, I thought it for a long time, but it's been coming up more and more in my life. Specifically, I think because of the Coronavirus and people feeling victimized by life. And I just don't have a lot of patience for victims. And so I want to help you proceed. It's not like I want to get you out of my life. I want to help you move to the next level of thought. But like becoming the CEO of your own life has been like the biggest for me and it's interesting because I don't know where I learned this. I think I put better words to it which we're going to get into And second, I put better words to it more recently, but even from a young age, I had my first so the first job I remember being asked to do when I was See, I would have been like 910 years old, the neighbor lady had some some weeds that she wanted cold. And we are homeschooled. So my mom volunteered us to go over there and pull weeds and she was going to pass. So we went over there. And that the woman was nice enough, say, Okay, well, this is the job I need done. What do you think it's worth? You know, she was treating us respectful even though we're 10 year old, 11 year old kids. And so we're like, yeah, I think it's worth about five bucks an hour. Like, I'd rather set basically was this or doing homework. So to put put that in perspective, I didn't like homework, but I'd rather do homework than I do back breaking work for less than $5 an hour, right? That was that was in my mind. I knew what I was doing. And so we came home. She said, No, we came home. My mom's like, hey, why aren't you over there pulling weeds. And we're like, well, because she didn't want to pass what we thought we were worth. And she's like, Yeah, right so she marched us back over the we had to pull weeds for free. It sucked. But what I learned, based on what I'm saying is I always had this mindset of like, I'm going to determine what my work is worth. And if you like it great if you don't fine, you know, I don't need to let you define my work. And then later I was 414 years old, I was working as a brick landscaper, and same type of situation. I was managing a crew of five adults laying brick. Well, the owner of the company would get all the materials lined up and set there and then he would disappear he'd come back to do some some cutting some cuts for brick but other than that, I I ran the whole crew. I was getting paid $7 and 50 cents an hour they were getting paid 1050 and so if you think you can keep from your employees what you're paying everybody people talk like reality is people talk Don't Don't be dishonest. Don't be cutting random deals here because the reality is people talk Okay, there's no point in In beginning that type of behavior, because you can't ever keep up with it. But so I found out they're getting paid more than me. So I confronted the owner of the company about it. I was like, Look, man, I'm, I'm the crew lead, like, I'm the one telling these guys what to do. I'm 14 years old, you need to pay me at least what you're paying them. He's like, Oh, well, they're they have families, and they have all this other reason why they should get paid more than me. And I was like, Well, look, and this was like, on a Thursday, Thursday or Friday, I was like, Look, you can either pay me what you're paying them, or I'm done. You know, like, I'm not gonna keep working for you. And then he called me back later that day, and he tried to fire me and I was like, No, like, you don't get this. I quit already, unless you're paying me more. But the point is, from a young age, I've had this mindset of I'm going to determine my value. And it's so important because if you're walking into even if you are an employee, okay, there's nothing wrong with being an employee. ralina said that multiple times here as well. But even if you're an employee I would still think it's best to think of yourself as a CEO of your company, your company is you and whoever your shareholders are, you're your spouse and your children. That's your company. And it's your job to negotiate a contract that satisfactory for both parties involved the company, you're working for your employer and you and if at any point, you feel like there's a discrepancy there as in, you're being taken advantage of, it's your duty, as the CEO of your company, to either renegotiate that contract, get out of that contract and get somewhere where it's better in your your ability doesn't matter if you get paid hourly commission. Salary doesn't matter. That's not important. The important thing is, are you thinking like a business owner? Are you thinking like I'm the CEO, or are you thinking like a victim, please, I think of Oliver Twist, whenever I please, sir, can I have some more? It's like no, like, why would I give you more I'm trying to make my company profitable, prove that you're worth more and then we'll have a conversation and so Um, speak to that a little bit from from that language, how, how important was it for you to when you pulled yourself out of it, to start thinking again, I know my worth, I know my value and I'm not going to accept less.It was everything because that's actually what caused the heart attack was the in congruence assay of my spirit, my heart knowing really what I was worth and the value that I had to bring to the table and, and living something completely out of alignment. That was really what caused the heart attack was being completely out of alignment with the job, the time that I was getting to this job. And like I say, you know, there's nothing, it's totally moral and ethical, you know, to work in a place, you know, where you're doing manual labor or shipping, you know, cleaning toilets, whatever those things that I was doing. There's nothing wrong with those things that I was doing, but it was totally out of alignment with what I was capable of. That is where that in congruency, you are not being authentic, you're not honoring yourself, you're living well below your privilege, you're going to cause something's going to give, there's going to be stress there's going to be your spirit is going to rebel. And there's going to be something my heart. I lost function of half of my heart because of that. And I know that that's what caused it.So let's, Ah, man, we're gonna run out of time here, which I want to have answered, ask this question because I think this is for me this is this is directly connected to my mission and what I'm trying to accomplish in life. But I forget who who I first heard this from I've heard it from multiple people at this point, so I don't know who to attribute the quote to. So if you're listening, and you feel like you've said this before, you heard me say it. Great. You can take credit for it, but the idea that Well, first off, let's start with just the concept of cognitive dissonance. cognitive dissonance, I think is essential to maintain a certain level of cognitive dissonance. But ultimately, you can't maintain cognitive dissonance forever, one of two things is going to happen. So let's first talk about what cognitive dissonance is cognitive dissonance is when you believe something about yourself or about somebody else. And the results aren't showing up your unmet expectations essentially, is, is a more layman's term of cognitive dissonance. Okay, well, that is a form of cognitive dissonance, we're going to say there's a higher level thought and there's a lower level thought just to make term simple. If you start to believe higher level things, but lower level results keep happening. And you spend your time around lower level thought people than one or two things is going to happen. Either your your body doesn't like cognitive dissonance. So either you will start to lower your thought process to blend in with other people or Those people will remove themselves and you will be attracting or you will be surrounded by more people who have your same level of thought, your results, your results will increase. The problem is most people don't like cognitive dissonance because it's painful. And in Riley's case it almost killed her. Right? Where if you're, if you maintain this higher level of thought, and it takes a long time for the results to show up and to rise to that level of cognitive dissonance, then that can be depressing, can give you anxiety, okay? This is where a lot of people get into this feeling of being suicidal. And this is a real, this is a very real thing. And maybe Marlene wasn't aware that she was suicide, okay, but her body knew that it can't like when you read the scriptures again, I this is where we're getting into Christ to a house divided against itself cannot stand. You cannot serve both God this higher level thought and Ma'am, in this lower level thought it's not physically possible. It's not like you shouldn't, it's not physically possible from an energy perspective. Think of yourself like a magnet. Okay? What happens when you have two opposing magnets trying to, to put them together, they resist each other. Well as that cognitive dissonance increases, the magnetization, the magnetism of your, the energy of your body is doing the same thing and it's literally tearing you apart from inside out. Like that is from an energy perspective, electricity, which is what we're all made of atoms and quantum physically, that's what's physically happening. So then we get suicidal and we want to kill ourselves. It's not that we actually want to end the the function of our electrical being. It's that we are recognizing there's a part of our physical being that needs to exit our life. And that is those thoughts, those mindsets, those relationships that are holding us back that are causing that tension. So here's the Question when you decided to fully live in your purpose and just go for it, regardless of all the fear of what other people were saying, how much like what did that do for you physically, from a healing perspective?Oh, 100% wholeness. The doctor actually had told me that my heart would be working at 40% of its capacity for the rest of my life. And because of my changes, you know, that I made in my mindset, because I started on this path and started asking, day by day, what is what can I do, you know, to get more in alignment, and getting these seven gateways. And ultimately, you've given me a perfect segue to actually share a little bit about the Lord's way to wealth too. But when I started doing that, I experienced a complete wholeness. Within six months, I was hiking the highest mountain peak in our in Utah County. So it is everything. It's everything. To make that commitment to be your highest self to live in the highest capacity that you can be, and to be in alignment with that, that is everything to a whole and purposeful life. And can I just kind of share a little bit about the worst way to weld? Because back in November, so it's been several months ago, I asked the question, because I was experiencing some of this cognitive dissonance, dissonance. I was living my purpose. I was serving people I was influencing I was, you know, giving value in a way that was really serving me, you know, that was serving God. And I still was struggling financially. So it was like this cognitive dissonance. It's like, what is the deal? You know, I feel like I'm doing everything right. And I'm not experiencing the financial independence that I that I feel like I'm capable of. And so I asked the question, is there a different way to wealth if you're on the Lord's errand The answer came that was on a Friday, the whole weekend long, I was just like constant download of spiritual confirmation of the answer to this question is absolutely yes, there is a different way to wealth, if you're living your purpose and if you're taking God as your partner. And that was the final piece, the seven gateways was a way for me to teach people how to get from not knowing what their purpose is, or living totally out of alignment with it to becoming, you know, living a life of purpose. The Lord's way to wealth now takes that one step further, and you can actually make money with it. And that was all came from asking that one question. And then the cognitive dissonance went away. Everything was in alignment, I, you know, was able to understand things the way that God understands them. Sure. Solet's let's try and summarize that I have my own opinions about The way God understands money, but I'm curious if you were to summarize what the Lord's right of wealth like the the summary of it, and I know there's going to be so much more depth. That's why if you guys are listening to this, you just need to go work with her to get the more depth because there's no way we can cover it on this. Well, even if we could cover on this podcast, that's not the purpose of the broadcast. So, but I'm curious like if you were to summarize what what that added step is or how he views that process? What would you say that is?everything that we've discovered, I did actually create a mastermind for this and we've we've been creating this over the past four months. I just we just finished the last module of it yesterday. So it's it is an actual online course. Now, I just talked to my person that's putting everything together, it should be ready by Monday as an online course, and there is a Facebook group called the Lord's way to wealth that anybody can join. It's a free public group. But in this mastermind We discovered principles that are scriptural, scripturally based and scientifically based, and most of it is that we have created different meanings to the scriptures and the way, you know that God has had, the information is already here, and we have the information, but we have misinterpreted or we've changed the meanings to align up with what with our beliefs or whatever, you know, like limiting beliefs that we have within ourselves about money, or whatever to make us feel like we're okay. In the mediocrity that we live in. But when you actually read it and understand it, the lessons and everything are super clear. And I would say that as far as God's understanding of money and what he wants us to understand, we are heirs to everything that he has, that is scriptural. We are equal with Christ. As an heir to everything that he has, he has created a world where abundance is you plant one apple seed, you get a billion apples over its lifetime. There. There is such abundance that's available to us right now and especially right now during this COVID-19 you know, we feel like we're trapped. I needed spinach the other day and I was like, I don't have any spinach. Oh, I've got dandelions out in my lawn. I went out and pick some dandelions and I use the dandelions instead of spinach. And I was like, wow, God provides everything that we need. And I feel like the the main message of the Lord's way to wealth is to really receive the abundance and prosperity that God God already has promised us. That's that's really the ultimate lesson of the Lord's way to wealth. And it again is like a step by step process.

This weeks guest is Nathan Simmonds. Nathan’s sole purpose is to challenge people’s thinking so they can become more incredible than yesterday. He helps leaders and entrepreneurs cut through the noise of modern life, harness their overwhelm and create clarity in the chaos. Nathan’s does this by focusing his energy to help others articulate their purpose, create deeply compelling goals and help them define an incredible legacy through continuous improvement of mind, action and outcome. With over 20-years of Leadership experience combining a wealth of life experience from world travels, martial arts, environmental studies, bullying in school and the work place, health and well-being from literally the bloody end of the blade he shares these in his work as a Leadership coach, consultant and trainer and also soon to-be author. All of this dedication and determination shows how absolutely relentless he is in helping others deliver the impact they’re designed to in the pursuit of their highest potential.Links: https://www.nathansimmondscoaching.com/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToFindFulfilment https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-simmonds-leadership-coach-and-trainer/Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week, we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started.As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon if you will, your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on kindle amazon and as always on my website, Sam knickerbocker.com.Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast and bringing the best in the industry's and I have got on this kick lately, of bringing people to you who are from either Australia, South Africa, or the UK. So it's up to you to kind of determine who and where they're from. Unless they tell you it's kind of a game, or you look at their hands and look at their bio, right? Because if you don't know the intricacies of their accents, then you'll just never know. But yeah, so today we're going to have Nate theremins on and he is a leadership coach, trainer consultant soon to be an author. And just absolutely incredible an individual dedicated to others, really connecting to their purpose. And that's why one of the reasons why I wanted to have them on here is to focus on how are you as an individual connecting to your purpose, your legacy, and then what are you doing to design your life around your legacy rather than making your life fit around your day job or your work? So and that's what we're going to talk about here and I'm just super excited to be able to have this conversation And if you don't mind, go ahead and give us a little bit of backstory as far as where you came from how you grew up, and why you're so passionate about what you're right now,Samuel, thank you, John, I was so excited having the conversation with you, because I feel your legacy just resonated so strongly with me. And I'm happy to be here to share some of this content. The story for me is, I would say, pretty much an average life. You know, the big getting part was my parents. My parents lived in austere times. I grew up through the 80s went to school in the 90s. My parents are both kinds of working middle-class people. My father was a police officer. And I was a very active child and my dad showed us how to do lots of different things kind of, you know, building things, how to put shelves up how to paint and all these sorts of things. And he taught us you know, how to get hands-on with life. But what I found was, as I started to grow up. I went to secondary school high school for you guys. And that's where things started to fall for me because that active child that learned through seeing and doing fell short and it broke me the system broke me through a system of repeat or, you know, sit and repeat to get your qualifications. And that's where everything started to shift for me. So, I felt as I was in high school, secondary school, that I had a purpose, but I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to express it clearly. So all those that pent up frustration of being a young teenager being in an environment that didn't fit me or being asked to live up to someone else's expectation, all those frustrations erupted into no toxic behaviors. When I was around 1314 I started to be bullied by a group of boys older boys from another school. Not knowing what to do that with those emotions what to do with that pain. I then learned that you have to hurt other people to compensate. Later on, more recently I heard a quote from I think is Dr. Sandra Wilson. hurt people hurt people. And that's what I was doing. But I never dealt with the problem. As I then progressed out of school went into work. My father was always asking me what you're going to do what you're going to be. He wasn't a coach. He wasn't he was a police officer. That and that was the extent of his questioning what you're going to do what you're going to be trying to push me to think further, but not giving me any more depth of thought around that. And then that frustration, you know, I don't know what I want to be. He was asking this question for about 14 1516 I didn't know what I wanted to be. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just knew I had a purpose. I just didn't know how to tap into it, what it would what I would amount so I went through the motions and I Listen to some of your previous guests about leadership and the leaders in their environment. And that's what I started doing. I started getting into management roles at 19 years old, I'd look for pay rises, I've moved to another company, I try and develop myself. I'm always looking for that certainty and security that my parents both wanted so desperately for me to have my brother to have, that they didn't have. And when they were growing up, when I bought their first house, at one point, their mortgages jumped in at 20% an incredible, incredibly hard times. And they wanted us to have the best because no parent in their right mind wants to feel good to be equal to or less than them. And I went to see you succeed, and I wanted to see us have that security, work hard, retire and be comfortable. But that never felt right to me. And there was always this internal friction. But I didn't have director so the bullying I never dealt with going into work. And two jobs that just didn't feel quite right. I didn't kind of A-line to my ethics. These emotions were bottled up and trapped inside. And then eventually what happened was the age of 24. I can only describe and tell you it had you seen me you would have done to one or two things, you would have either pulled him away in absolute disgust of what you were seeing because of the mess or was or you would have called me an ambulance because you knew that I'd overdosed on recreational drugs. All these pent up frustrations over the years from going to school, being made to fit in or you know, is feeling like I was forced to fit in doing jobs that never felt quite right and never knowing who I was never feeling comfortable in my skin because there was more for me to give. came to that cataclysmic moment of me lying on a sofa in that state, standing on the edge of a metaphorical precipice, precipice looking over the edge and having to make a decision what I was gonna do with my life.And again, that sense of purpose came up. I can either continue down this road, I'll either be dead or in prison. Or I can step back and I can go and do something about this. And that was the choice of my life gives you repeated lessons, and some other parts their story and I step back from this a few weeks later, deciding to stop doing those sorts of things then. Six weeks later, I bumped into the lady that is now my wife. I made some serious decisions and moved to Amsterdam, where she was she's English, but she had moved there already or was planning to move there. So I wind up living with her for four years in Amsterdam. And I took all those leadership skills that I developed and taken on board and actually and it sounds pretty salubrious it was a great job at the time ended up managing the customer services for time and Fortune magazine and National Geographic for the European country. the base here in here in Europe and Asia before I think the international database, not the American clients so did that for a few months while it's here cutting my teeth as a leader in a larger businessthen returned homewasn't completely sure that what I was doing again with my Anna and myself returned not yet married, making a decision we wanted to start a family we wanted to be near our family so that we could have the build the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren today. They're going to get lost incorporate. I got lost in kind of the expectations. And I went it was getting doing jobs for that security for Okay, the structure that again, it didn't feel right. I was working in the finance sector, frontline banks, became a bank manager and then moving into car insurance. And there are very few financial businesses out there without actually about the people. It remains to be about the numbers. Again, these ethics and these principles just didn't fit me. And his frustration started to bring to the surface and I was getting into arguments with my leaders because I didn't agree with what they were saying with me saying to me, I then encountered bullying, workplace bullying, because of the bullying that I never dealt with as a child at school. Just came back to rear its head again, in a work environment.And I was looking around the officelamenting call him vocally at times about the situation about the lack of leadership about the lack of skills about the lack of support that people were supposed to be getting. Now they were saying great things, but the action you know, the audio and the video didn't, didn't sync up. And eventually got to a point where I can either sit here pointing my finger at everybody else or I can start pointing my finger where I want to go and where I want to take people phrase I heard a couple of years ago. Complaining is the glue that keeps you stuck to your circumstances. retire you're doing it all the time that you're complaining you cannot activate solution or thinking you cannot come up with new ideas while you're busy pointing your finger at other people and saying that they're the problem. Rather than saying, you know what, I've got something I can do this. The next lesson that came up was is the thing that you lack is the thing that you're meant to give. And at that point, there was a level of friction a level of tension came up. The level of intention came up in my daughter was about to arrive around 3536 years old, I stumbled across Sana cynic and the Golden Circle, how great leaders inspire action. all at the same time dojo about to arrive within 24 hours Simon sitting on what is my purpose? Here is a model framework like a building soon from the It's been focused drive to understand my purpose, which I now have absolute clarity on, help other people understand and articulate their purpose as well. Inside that, I've gone and got my qualifications in leadership coaching, started to deliver leadership content to individuals and help them upgrade their skills. And then get deep on what I bring and how I bring it. So the party and your title around fuel your legacy, and came up with these three pillars of the purpose, the goals, and the legacy. So the purpose is you at your genetic best is what you're born with. There is something about you that you are born with. It is hardwired into your genetics at the moment of conception, and you bring that in every single activity, whether you realize it or not. So your purpose is never unknown. is either unclear.I'm focused or unstructured.When we Get into that when you go back and do the analytics and say, Okay, well, what did I do in this situation or this situation, you will always find a core behavior and action that you always take. And what's the phrase, you know, you never rise to the expectation, you always fall back to the level of training.Regardless of what happens, whether it's good or bad,you'll fall back to that, that core principle of who you are, and you will bring that every single time. So when you go back and do the analytics, and you get really clear on it, and you get really focused with it, and you get really structured with it, you can then implement that in every single conversation going forward, every single relationship, every single project, who am I, when I'm at my best and my genetic best, who am I bring into this conversation? Okay, what am I going to put into this conversation? To start to create, you know, you start to create the future. So that's the purpose I and then what we do is we start to build go that are designed from purpose because your goals are a physical manifestation of you at your fundamental best. Big, incredible, staggering, or, you know, or inspiring goals. The biggest possible manifestation of you your best, having a huge impact on civilization as a whole. And then the legacy part is the daily activity, the ripple effect, the seven generations before you that you're going to impact through the work that you're doing, and living at your fullest potential and extracting the gold and the wisdom and the pose of lessons and value in the people that you meet on a daily basis on the failures that you have and how you rejoice in them. And how you bring that back full circle, that living in that purpose, creating the goals, and then working on that daily to feel your legacy.And that's concepts have come up withWhy did thisfor me, the part that really kind of started to lock this into basically is understanding these four stages of work. The four stages of work when you bring this to life is the work that you're taught to do the work that you're told to do, meaningful work and purposeful work. So when I reflected on my life, I saw these four stages. Why stage one is the word that you're taught to do. This is what school is doing for us. It's teaching us to go to work is an outdated factory model to create factory workers post-Industrial Revolution. Except for the concept though the workspace we live in now is more intellectual, more creative. Not so much work-oriented, as AI comes in. These roles and responsibilities are going to know massively doing this. The parents on it won't be the US doing it. So what you're teaching us to do is turn up on time Do is retold and live up to someone else's expectation. Then when someone starts asking your question like my wonderful father did, we're going to do what you're gonna be that frustration starts to kick in. Okay, maybe there's more than this, maybe there's something outside of this box. That concept of I has a purpose. There's something bigger than me there's something bigger I need to be given was already there. He was feeling it with these core questions. So around about 15. For me, my mindset shifted to the work that you're told to do. My question in any of my leadership development code, or events, what I'm talking about feedback or coaching, who likes being told what to do?No one.When we have the word that we're told to do, what happens is we have you know, symptoms that come up frustrations, agitation, conversations, boy, like, why because people can't see what you can see. You can't see what they can see. And the connections just start to break down. Why because you're always right. straightened and always angry. Then when you learn the fresh questions as in leadership development coaching skill, someone gets a mentor comes to you and starts asking you questions, you can then shift from the work that you're told to do to meaningful work. And for me, there was a difference between meaningful and purposeful. meaningful is full of meaning to you as an individual. You can spend time doing it all day you will find excuses to do it. But there's a level of selfishness that sits inside it is not about someone else. Yes, you're good at what you do. Yes, you enjoy it. And yes, you can lose yourself in it for hours on end, and it makes you happy and you can go home happy that is still only about you. We then have to take it up a level and this is where it comes back to that purpose base. purposeful work is where we need to be aiming ourselves. the purpose of work is full of meaning to me, that is full of purpose to the other person. I'm doing it as a servant. Leader. Now I want to talk to people about leadership and they go there a team leader or operational leader, whatever, what comes first, the team, the operation, you know, your team does not work for you, you work for your team, you are an enabler for them to be the best possible versions of themselves to clear any obstacle so they can go and deliver exceptional work and deliver exceptional results for themselves. So that in return, you get something out of the back of it as a side effect, you are successful because they are successful, not the other way around. And if you don't get this concept, right, as a leader, you want to have a team very long. And if you haven't got a team, you've got no one to lead. This is where it comes in with a legacy that has what am I given to these people, my work family who I work for these people so that they can go and do their version of incredible so when we move into purpose will work it's about the other person is about contribution, it's about givingIt's about elevating others.For me, this is the stuff that I now share from these experiences of being bullied of reckless, toxic behaviors. I didn't know what to do with because of my frustrations and lead those attempting to keep on things, the way that I thought about things before. Before I took that kind of twist on the viewpoint, and looked at it from a different angle and got that new concept of this is what I can be doing. This is what I can be giving. This is how I can help other people. And now from there, I've gone from the corporate environment, I've moved out of a full-time job. And I've now moved into a part-time job, which pays me more than my full-time job. doing what I love doing which is delivering leadership content to people going into other organizations and teaching their leaders how to be more credible yesterday so they can get better results for their people. So when you talk about helping other individuals move out of their roles that are out of their expectations and obligations, that contractual confinement that we often feel in the corporate life, there is a way through it. And part of that is about tapping into your purpose, understanding who you are the fundamental best. Working out the things that you enjoy doing the things that excite you. And then ratchet ratcheting them up to talk about gap analysis, you know, the mark itself between one and 10 one being rubbish 10 being great on the certain things will find the things that you're a 10 out of 10 out on your skillset. And then write them on a level of excitement of Are you a 10 out of 10 on excitement and if you can make those things that are 10 out of 10 make them a 12 out of 10 make yourself a specialist make yourself an expert make yourself sought after because you are so awesome that you cannot be ignored. And people will pay you incredibly large amounts of money for fewer hours so that you can spend more time building high-quality relationships with the individuals that are important to you. So there are ways through when you tap into that purposeful work and start giving it to people you will become more valuable and you will raise your status in the arena. And more people will also be will look to lift you so that you can go and do great to work in that space.Yeah, I love that. So, I mean, there's so much there I'm not going to be able to go back and cover all of it but I do want to tear into some of these things. And when I say tear, it's an exciting thing, not a bad thing butgood there'sthere's so many different angles that we could take this show with your history and where you've been because what's funny is you can research people you can look at them on their social media, their stuff like that, and there are certain stories you just don't ever hear until you talk one on one. And, and so I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for being able to share some of these things and pull them out. We actually are maybe surprisingly similar in the area of and I would, I would not just say, you and I, but a lot of the people that I have interviewed, and we have a level of where we felt like or we experienced a situation in our younger years of bullying, of where we were kind of bullied or cornered or forced into a certain perspective that we didn't agree with, or feel in alignment to, and that happens for various reasons. It's always an interesting thing. There's a story of Thomas Edison.Hegot sent home from school with a note for his mom. And in the note, it said Your son is too dumb to be in our class and to be taken to a specialty school or something or to taught at home. And when his mom read that, rather than telling him that that's what the note said, she said, I look, you are just too smart for the teachers and everybody at school. So we're going to teach you at home. Right and so it's all about framing and perspective. And when it comes to that, but it does happen often where we feel forced into something where we don't feel we don't feel fulfilled. And then, as a result, we have this almost dimming of our purpose or our true light. And for Nathan, he mentioned that it went into drugs went into different areas to kind of numb the pain, or lack of fulfillment. And that's so it's just such a fascinating thing that I think of everybody listening to this took a hard look at themselves and said, what, what am I using to numb the pain of lack of fulfillment? That could be Netflix, it could be food, it could be trapped I mean it could be so many different things it could be a relationship to numb the pain of not fulfilling your dreams or not fulfilling your full extent of your being through creation. And there's there are so many different areas that you might be using right now to numb the pain of your life or numb the pain of your lack of fulfillment. And it's so crucial to really identify what that is and not only identify with how you're numbing it, but then go and identify what aligns with me. Do you remember at the beginning of his when he was saying everything was core values, right like it didn't align with who I was didn't feel right? My stomach is always in knots. I wasn't quite right doesn't mean it wasn't being successful. You can have lots of money you can be very financially successful and not fulfilled. Hmm. How many of the people that you're coaching right now, Nathan do you think are in that position where it's not that they're not successful by working standards, but they just flat out aren't fulfilled in what they're doing.I think there's a lot of things that come out of the schooling situation and it's not school bashing, it's reporting is a situation. It breeds a level of uniformity and conformity. When we go into the corporate space, you're looking around and probably 98% of the people are doing the same thing. And I'd say probably 100% of the people of that 98 % sitting there in their heads at some point thinking, is it just me am I just the problem is this there must be more than this. There must be more to this to this life. It can't just be this but some of them to different varying levels and different levels are holding that down or not responding or not answering that call. Because as I said, you know your purpose is always in this you know whether it's a whisper, it's a screaming Banshee, demanding You to take action on it demanding that you do that. So when people come to me for coaching is because they are frustrated because they have hit that kind of glass ceiling in their head. Because someone that they feel frustrated that other people aren't seeing that in them. I haven't got a leader above them that can support them in a way to help them develop up. So when they come to speak to me is because they want clear-talking, they want clear words that are going to help them get to get to where they need to be in their headspace so they can then take the action and go to the job interview or rewrite the resume or redesign the goal according to them. Rather than living up to someone else's expectation rather than staying quiet, because maybe they think the other kids in the classroom might make fun of them for having big goals. Maybe and it can be no we Many people are wandering around and it's still actually just a trap child. They are still the child they were when they were 1314 years old being picked on in the playground somewhere, or behaving in that way. But actually, they're in the body of a 45-year-old.Yeah, absolutely. I think that's what's interesting about what you had mentioned about the bullying if you don't take care of those, those issues that you experienced when you're younger, especially the highly emotional experiences, they have a way of resurfacing in the future. And some people think, man, this is so terrible. Why is this happening again? For me, I tend to look at life as an opportunity to learn and grow. And I'm grateful that if I didn't learn a lesson, the first time that it's going to resurface in my life and another area so that I can learn that lesson. Right? It would be a shame if the every time you fail something that you only get to try that once you only get to try one area of personal development once at once and if you fail to develop yourself that one time, then you don't ever get the opportunity to change that in your life again, that would be really unfortunate. So I'm so grateful in my life, that these issues, these things that do offend us they do resurface in our lives so that we can have an opportunity to understand how to move past them.So the way that I look at it is I look at life as a computer game. Now if you bought a computer game and the first level was so ridiculously hard that you could not get past that. And then the gun got easier as the game progressed, how many copies of that game would get sold? Not many. So your life challenges the things that you know your traumatic experiences those certain events occur with those that gratitude that helps you to learn from it is not about making life easier, is about making sure you do learn the lesson so that you can move forward with it faster because like the computer game When you're looking at certain, certain strategic strategy games or whatever, when you're playing them, when that character dies, it goes back. It responds to the game. And in different ways you have, you still have the same challenge, but you have it from a different angle. And this is this analogy is in the sense of, okay, well, actually, I didn't learn this lesson in this relationship with his partner. But I'm going to go and have the same relationship with a different partner. And that's just life-giving you back this situation, you haven't learned the lesson that you haven't learned yet. So you actually can learn from it, and then move it forward. Then that came back into the thinking that if people are just sitting at work, just going through the motions, what do they complain about on a daily basis, when you're looking in those corporate spaces, they go and complain about the same thing over and over and over and over again, they never go and look for the solution. Then talk about the numbing element that you talked about because energy doesn't disappear. It just gets redirected. How do we redirect it? smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol working for the weekend. Now socially and there are socially acceptable and unacceptable ways of doing this drinking too much coffee socially acceptable. Now in the modern age sitting on the toilet, checking social media is socially acceptable. Why? Because you're being social. So when you these are the clear indicators that there is a problem now had two incidents that happened in the last kind of six months. I went to push the cubicle door in a men's toilets open. The guy hadn't locked the toilet door. Thankfully, for me, he was sitting on top of the toilet lid still with his trousers up checking social media. He forgot to lock the door. So he wasn't even using the toilet. He was hiding in the toilet checking in social media. That tells me there's a problem. Yeah, that's a flag. got to a point though, where I'll be sitting in my cubicle using a toilet and the person next to me doesn't even turn the volume down on their phones. When the video comes up on Facebook now, they're not even hiding it. So there are all these little flags going up, but it's socially acceptable to do this. Why? Because everybody else is doing it yet that lower conformity kicks in. But actually, no one's picking up. Okay? What's the reason this person wants to go and hide from his work and sit on the toilet and check his Instagram? One because he hasn't got a purpose because he's not engaged with what he's doing because not aligned to his value in what he's designed to bring from the inside out. Yeah,I completely agree with that. In fact, one of the speeches that I would give to a corporate and a more corporate setting to managers or business owners, maybe at a rope, rotary club or something, is about redefining the SMART goals and, and turning them into something exciting and so I actually, when I give that speech, I started by talking about having alike a sexual affair.If you're married and you're having sexual affair, right, how terrible is that? How? Why is this happening? What are the symptoms of this? And then I relate that to any company, individual manager, business owner, who has not made their vision purpose. I mean, I love what you said their purpose, their goals, and their legacy. If they haven't put that in a way that's so sexy that it's holding somebody else's attention, then their employees are cheating on them. If they haven't made their that goal so massive that it demands attention. It demands focus, it demands these things, then they're not getting there. And then is it remarkable like well, first is audacious that isn't creating separation. Are you with what you're doing? I Tesla, I don't know if you saw over the last few months, but Tesla's new truck that's coming out.I'm assuming youlove Google it right if you haven't seen it, but it's a funny looking truck, right, but it's going to create a separate Same thing, right? Putting a Tesla car circle orbiting the planet for no other reason it's creating. It's an audacious move. That's creating separation from the people who like Tesla and the people who don't like Tesla. And he's doing something remarkable so that other people are going to talk about it. And then lastly, is transparency. Are you willing to tell everybody what your goals are to hold you accountable, tell the world about them shouting from the rooftops? And if you're not doing that, and then your people are cheating on you. And they could, I've never really thought of it this way. But now this, this is, I'm going to have to add this into my speech, but they aren't just cheating on you with their dreams. There's probably a small percentage of people cheating on you with their dreams. Probably most people are cheating on you with sedation, which with social media, drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever porn, whatever it is. They're sedating themselves rather than getting excited and doing and being part of a contribution or Being part of a movement. So that's fascinating to think about it that way. And I am grateful forthat. That comment, you sent me about Brian and a couple of different directions that he said SMART goals you said about this. So the important thing for me when you get to those goals is understanding that your goals have to be magnetic. They have to have a polar bear as a charge to them. So when you look at lightning coming down from the sky, they're not random strikes. That is the planet it sends up an electrical charge itself that pulls the lightning to that point. And your goals have to be the same they have to energize you they have to move but when you say them, now when I sit in my goal and I visualize that thing, there are times that I break down and cry because it just fills me with so much joy. And not many people have that experience. What they have is here's someone else's agenda. Here's someone else's go Can you help me climb the mountain. And then when you get to the top of that mountain, you're like, well, what was that all about? It's not my mountain. So, you want to as a leader and an as an employee, okay, the organization's gonna have it's got great, fantastic. Does my goal align with the goal of the business? by helping the business? Does it help me achieve my goal? Therefore, I'm not giving up on my goal, we're working in conjunction and parallel to each other. And at the right time when I need to leave because I achieve, I know it goes separate. It's an amicable agreement and we go into different directions rather than the mental health challenges that go with that all the toxic behaviors or the frustrations that then turn into kind of people getting fired. Gotta have that clarity as an individual. The words you use SMART goals. I learned this a few years ago, and I shared it with people now. And I teach people to have SMART objectives, not smart goals. And the difference is when you the moment you make you are smart in the way that I understand it is? Because it was it is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. That's your normal SMART goal. But the moment you're saying is real, it already exists. There is no tension there is no challenge to go and make that thing happen because it's already in your realm of possibility. Exactly. Because it's not about achieving the goal is about the person that you have to become to make the goal a reality. If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. And I'm going to you know, there are several cliches in there that we see on multiple means, but it's so true. So the moment that you made you go smart, and what you do is you make them small, mediocre, average, repetitive and time-wasting.Hmm, that's a new one.So then when we take that back, and we go, Okay, how big Cisco and people are going to give you a hard time people they're going to point at you people are going to say, Who the hell do you think you are for doing what they're going to laugh at you. And as that other Main says, you know, you keep doing it, and then you get so good at it, that they want to come and work for you to make it happen. So my goal right now and I came up with this goal three years ago, when I started to get this real clarity is to positively and successfully influence the growth and development of over 100 million people through my one to one coaching, which includes training so that they are connected to a deeper sense of purpose of creating compelling goals, connecting to the people around them and creating a positive legacy time and time again. that excites up. I believe that this part is, you know, what they say to people is, don't tell everybody you'll go, well don't tell anybody who goes and I say to people, tell the right people who go because I've been people that I've told and I've looked them and I've literally said Who the f do you think you are? So if you think you can impact 100 million people. You know what I'm an average middle-aged man. As decided to go and do extraordinary things to help 100 million people so they can become more incredible than yesterday. And if a couple more people on this planet make decisions like that, and even if I fall short of 100 million people only get to 50 million. will the world be a better place? If I died tomorrow and only got to one person? would the world be a better place? Yes. Because I was striving for a goal. There's no part of that legacy. I'm chasing my potential, not just chasing my passion.Yeah, absolutely. Sowe're along the lines of that, how do you or tell me the story of the biggest naysayer in your life, and how you learn to silence them in your mind and just go for what you want it to do? Wow.And you know what it's been a lot of them and but that becomes comes from the education of when I was a child and not for my parents but for the school from the people that I spent. my so-called friends when I was going through these toxic behaviors in my late teens. I remember once, this is one of the best stories. He said. I said I'm gonna write a book on my life. I was 19. I was like, yeah, follow my provider. And he says to me, it's not interesting. Your life is pretty boring. No one's going to read it.So I never wrote the book.Won't not a lot of people know yet about me. And they will do in future books that I've written to the publisher is I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when I was nine years old. And I was hospitalized for nearly a year. I had multiple operations. We didn't have Google then. So you couldn't do your Google search to find out keywords for it. I had my mom we had a local health food shop with the information that my mom got from that health food shop and the treatments that we went through our keyword Chrome's now there are still 99% of the doctors on this world on this planet. Still saying that crimes are not cured. Now had written that story at the age of 2021 20 years ago, how many people would high have potentially held to overcome that debilitating disease that they believe they're stuck with? Because the doctor tells me all right. But it wasn't until Crikey three years ago that I made the decision. There's some stuff in there that I'm learning. There's some stuff that I'm learning about leadership, about approaches to life, about the ways that I set my goals about the stuff that I've taught other people to see them succeed. You know what I need to put this in a paper now I need to type this stuff down. I need to get lyrical. type this out, find a format to share it and just share this stuff with people. Because even it like I said, even if we got to one person and it fundamentally changes that person's life, that one person has my life is worth living, yes, but to not do it and to keep it inside me. You know, and now I'm seeing more of that transition in my thinking over the last 3458 years, I'm now bringing more of this content out and getting more out of my way, was that voice of the critic in my head isn't my voice. It's all the people that told me not to publish the book. But I'm saying the sort of people that told me Oh, you'll never amount to anything. It's all the people that thought, you know, the teachers that I perceive thought that I wouldn't Excel when I left school. But as we know, from the Roosevelt speech, I think it is now is the voice of the critic. But we also know that the voice of the critic is standing up or sitting out in the benches. He's not in the arena. I am in the arena, you people that are listening to this area in the arena, the people that are coming, you come they're telling you what they can't do based on their map of the world.Yeah, that's exactly. And I think that's probably for me, one of the biggest lessons that I've had to learn over my life is just keeping in perspective why somebody would Choose to squash somebody else's dream and the same. And on the same token, why would I, as an individual choose to squash somebody else's dream not just just flippantly or not thinking about it, why is that something that I feel I should be doing or even giving input on all I should do ever is potentially give some guidance of how they could better do it. But if I don't have a solution that could potentially help them succeed better, faster, quicker on a bigger scale than I should probably just keep my mouth shut. And I've had to learn that gradually over time, and it's been difficult because we all think we know what we're talking about. And even though it hasn't always happened to be that way. So I'm curious for you, what do you like is one of your if you were to focus on like one specific habit, mindset or behavior that you've used to create your meaningful legacy, what would that be and then how could we adopted into our liveswell,but I've got a few that dropped into my head. But the one I want to go back to is the goal-setting piece. And this a mentor of mine taught me this two years ago, three years ago. And even so, and this was in a free webinar, his name is Peter sage. And one of the things he taught me was if you know how to achieve your goal when you set it is too small. And in doing so, you're setting it from a place of fear, you're setting it from inside your comfort zone. So every time that you look at your goal, or you're reading your goal out, ask the question. If this conversation were to stop right now with me with you with whoever would I know how to achieve my goal? And if you come up with two or three actions, I forget an interview or do a bit of that you're not asked which if your goal is too small, double it, triple it, make it bigger, whatever it is you need to do to create that level of tension that's going to push you outside of the outside of your comfort, and we don't go to the gym of life to lift lighter weights, we go out there to pump heavier weights, you know, you start at five, you can go to 10. And then you go to your 20 plates to build the right muscles to do what you need to do. And it's the same with our goals. So one of the habits that helps build the thinking, do you want to achieve this goal? Yes, no, the answer is yes. Make it bigger. How many people do is in Do I need to impact to create that and start looking at those numbers start to get to that point where does feel uncomfortable? And then when you reach your goal out for the first time and you stutter when you say it? Or you start to question yourself, will tell you don't start to question yourself. The voice of the critic that you've learned to listen to in your head starts to question you. That's when you know you're in the right ballpark of the goal that you need to be playing into. Because you have that discomfort. You have that irritation. That you can then use as the energy to propel you forward to create the impact that you're designed to create a visceral level.I like that like just asking yourself when like, it's not big enough and tell the voices in my head start to question it. And then at that point, that's on the right track. Not that I think that's a huge, a fantastic question to ask yourself because I've, I've dealt with the question of like, if I know how to do it, then it's not big enough. And I've kind of stopped there, but I don't think I've gone personally with my goals to the point where it's like, Okay, everybody in my life is questioning whether that's just possible. I don't think I've set any goals that are that big. All the goals are. I have no idea how to accomplish them. But I know they're conceivable because I know other people have accomplished them by sub zero idea how I'm going to accomplish them. But that's different. then something that's such a big goal that everybody would be like, but that's not possible. Right? Put putting a man on the moon. It's not possible, right? Or something like that carving Mount Rushmore, it's I get these goals are so big that anybody who hears it not just a few people, but 99% of the population when they hear it, they're like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. There's no way. That's not possible yet, you know, and we're getting into with AI you mentioned earlier with AI, that's what's possible. Is itexpensive, exploding at an exponential rate for sure?growing fast, so I'm curious, Nathan, if we wanted to get more of your content and where are your books where you're, I mean, do you have your podcast, social media, where's the best place to get active with you? I imagine you serve and serve people all over the world. where's the best place to connect with you and get more of your insight on This season how to silence the fear or naysayers in our own lives.So, first things coming out on January 20th, 2020, book number one of my self-help trilogy, the art of fulfillment is coming out. That's called start working, start living. That's going to happen on the 20th of January will behave a little announcement on having a bit of a refurb of my current stuff. At the moment, I have just been to a two-day seminar and I got to speak or got to hear Tom bill, you speak. And I've seen some stuff around my work and how I can impact more people. So the best place to get ahold of me right now is on LinkedIn. While I'm doing a complete restructure of my thinking and how I can get to more people and create more impact and change more people's thinking so they can become more incredible than yesterday. Find me on LinkedIn, Nathan Simmons, leadership coach or find me there. Handsome chap. Nice beard. Send me a direct message. I would love to connect with you. Yeah, it's all about helping leaders out there. Double their income will half their workweek so they can build quality time and spend it with quality people. That's what I'm all about now.Yeah, that needs me to say I mean this whole thing is exactly. Again every guest I have on our have had on for the last few months. I feel like I've been able to handpick them a lot more the first year of my podcast loved all my guests there. But it was a lot more focused on what I was doing because I was doing using my podcast as a way to build content for books that I'm writing. And so it was more me focused. And over the last five, four or five months, I've shifted and said how can I get more people on here? They're going to further the conversation, fuel your legacy and challenge me as an Individual and challenge me and help me grow. And I'm learning from rather than people that I think I'm on the same level with how am I getting more people that are challenging the way I view the world and think, and that has come to pass. So for this next section here, and legacy on rapid-fire, and I'm sure you've heard this in some of the previous episodes. And so just five questions, we're going to go through them as fast as possible. Are you ready? Bring up? Awesome, what do you believe is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy?Me.So now that I've got clarity on Maria, and what I'm bringing to the world, all I need now to do is implement and take the information and put it in place.Okay, awesome. What do you think the hardest thing they've ever accomplished,has beensaying to myself that I'm going to start my own business and following through on that.Fantastic and what's your greatest success to this point in your life?To this point in my life,Crikey, I've got numerous clients that are doing phenomenal things. One of them has just doubled his salary and got promoted, and it's going to have a huge impact on the American educational system.That's awesome. Now, I love that. Yeah.What's another secret that you believe contributes to your success?Enjoying failure and questioning the living daylights out of it, until I find a valuable lesson that I can then grow fromthat skill in the world. According to my, I'm creating a whole journal that that is completely focused on that you should be able to buy it on Amazon. But yeah, it's focused on that. You can also get it on my website, but it's focused on reframing experiences that we have good and bad, and pulling lessons out of them. That's the whole purpose and focus of the is how do we reframe and experience and Paul lesson out of it? So I love that that's a secret of yours. And what are one or two or maybe three books that you think would be fantastic for the fuel your legacy audience to read?start with why Simon cynics straight upthinking grow rich. I'm looking furiously around my office right now thinking Grow Rich is a good one. And it's going to be either how to get rich by Felix Dennis, which is phenomenal or stealing fire because that's fundamentally shifted my thinking about how I approach life.Yes, they are all good books.I was on a kick for about a year and a half, two years. I read a book a week. Well, it was a lot of reading, listening, I listened to them on Audible, but some weeks it for shorter books. I would do two or three a week and it was a lot of content in so now it's like I don't remember where I picked this up from but it's in a book somewhere. That's really good information.I've got a disclaimer at the end of my book that says if I'm quoted anything here that is not mine, please let me know. So I can go back and reference the author and the owner accordingly.That's a good idea. I should throw that in mind.Because it's, it's a legit thing, like where you just, especially if you're consuming that much content over and over and over and over. And you don't even remember where you started living your life with certain things. You just started living your life that way. And it just seems as though your voices told it to yourself so often that you believe it's you saying it to even though it's from somebody else. Exactly. So and I would say that's where you want to get to because there's those good voices in your head and the bad voice in your head. That and I think they're both I say good and bad. They're both there to serve a purpose. And, and then you want to be programming what voices in your head that you listen to the most.Exactly, and if you spend time in the company of the Even fictitious characters like I've got Gandalf on my bookshelf, I've got Bruce Lee on my bookshelf. And if you spend time having conversations with those people even made up imaginary conversations, like in the mastermind principle of thinking Grow Rich, you will start to kind of have more thoughts like that individual, and potentially what you're writing will come out in a certain kind of esque way of that individual. So it's more likely you're going to repeat stuff that they do show or bring up new ideas in that sort of vein and it will sound similar toYeah, absolutely. And I feel like he should have said that. He didn't say I said itis Gator speaking? Now. Okay, so here's the here's my favorite part of the whole episode. Right? So it's the last question. And if you listen to the end of this podcast on other podcasts, and you know what I'm going to ask Nathan, and but get ready because if you haven't yet answered this for yourself, please do that. Write it down, share it with your family, share it with people around you and broadcast this to the world. So we're going to pretend that you've died, Nathan, you're dead gone. six generations from now. So this is six. This is your great great great great great grandchildren sitting around a table, you get the opportunity to come back and listen in to what they're saying and what they're saying about your life, your legacy, your contribution to the world. What do you want them to be saying about you and 200 years from now?This part may depend on how old those generations are when they're reading it. So there's part of me that doesn't almost want them to disbelieve what I'm saying. There's a part of me that wants them to read that book, and say, What is this guy going on? And then there's the other part of me that then wants them to go and live their lives and have those experiences and realize and then go back and go. Now I get it. Now I know what my purpose is. Now I know what the impact is I can have on the world because of going away and got these experiences. I've had some self-doubt I've had some disbelief have gone away and tested it, I've developed and now I'm going to deliver something even more incredible than he did six generations ago. And I'm going to expand his idea and create an even bigger impact on a galactic level, let alone a global levelthat has in six generations from now, we could be in a galactic universewill be starting to be a thing.Yeah, you never know. It's moving fast. That's awesome. I love that because I think that that's exactly in alignment with who you are. Your goal is to help other people identify their legacy and, and forward that and their purpose and get in touch with that. And that's that is very much mine as well. My input into one sentence is to empower people with financial confidence to create a meaningful legacy for them. Right. So very similar. Mine is maybe just focused slightly more on the financial side of how to fuel the legacy that they want to build. And but I love Love that answer for you. And I'm just so grateful for you taking the time to hop on this, this podcast and share your knowledge, share your skillset and share you with us because we're going to be able to go and go connect with you on LinkedIn, and hopefully other social media platforms as well anywhere that's possible by his book. I'm excited to read his book and see what it is that I can be doing better for myself athome. Excellent. Thank you, Samuel, so very much for space. I appreciate it.No problem.We'll catch you guys next time on fuel your ladies.Thanks for joining us. If what you heard today resonates with you please like comment and share on social media tag me and if you do give me a shout out I'll give you a shout out on the next episode. Thanks to all those who've left a review. It helps spread the message of what it takes to build a legacy At last, and we'll catch you next time on fuel your legacy.Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerIf this resonates with you and you would like to learn more please LIKE, COMMENT, & SHARE————————————————————————————————————Click The Link Bellow To Join My Legacy Builders Mastermindhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/254031831967014/Click here to check out my webinar as well!————————————————————————————————————Want to regain your financial confidence and begin building your legacy?In this ebook you will learn:- The 9 Pillars To Build A Legacy- Clarify you “why”- Create Daily Action Steps To Launch ForwardWant Sam’s FREE E-BOOK?Claim your access here! >>> Fuel Your Legacy: The 9 Pillars To Build A Legacy————————————————————————————————————

Although ALL Offers can use a facelift, the main driver of a purchase isn't the offer itself…    So your offer may be good enough to sell already.    Here are two common things that really keep people from selling…   Steve Larsen comin’ atcha from the Two Comma Club X Cruise…   I'm here (with 400 Two Comma Club Xers) on the largest ship I've ever seen in my life.    It's so BIG that I can't feel the waves - I wish I could. I like it when mother nature lulls me to sleep on a ship.    I’m wearing ‘the team shirt’ and having a ton of fun…   I was on the same cruise a year ago… and let me tell you, A LOT has changed for me since then…    Business is different.    I'm different.    So I just wanted to share two common issues that stop people selling…   One is an external problem   The second is a gamechanger that I would have made fun of and called “Fluffy” only a short while ago.   I also want to sure with you WHY your offer may actually be good enough already…   And WHAT you should be focusing on instead!   So without further ado…   HOW TO INCREASE PRODUCT SALES IN #1 MOVE   Real quick, let me tell you a powerful story... (I think I've told you guys this before, so I'll be brief).    I was a door-to-door sales guy selling pest control in Salt Lake.    And basically I had learned how to sell, (I'm just gonna say it, hopefully, it doesn't offend anybody), poor lower-income neighborhoods.   I'd spent five months doing door-to-door sales, (which if you've ever done that, you know it's completely grueling but an awesome, awesome place to learn and grow).    At the end of the summer, I was so excited to go pick up my check from the mailbox…    I go to the mailbox to collect the check that is meant to funds the next (however many months) of our life.   I grab the check, I open it up, and my jaw hit the floor.    You know when you're on a roller coaster and it shoots down really fast, that feeling in your stomach?    I was like, "Oh my gosh. Oh, Holy crap. I can't... This has to be wrong".    On the check from five months of work was ONLY $1200.    I called my buddy and I was like…    "Dude, what's wrong with this check? Something's wrong. You've clearly made a mistake!"    And he goes, "Dude, that's it."   I was like, "Oh, my gosh. This is it!"    I call him back again...    I was like, "No, this has to be wrong. There's got to be a mistake in what you're showing me right here."    And the REALITY is, he goes…    "Dude, you spent the entire summer learning to sell people who have no money.    What do you think happens when it's time for the second service of their pest control contract that you sold them?    They canceled! … and can you blame them?"    Meanwhile, all these other guys who’d actually sold fewer (but higher value) contracts in more well-off neighborhoods (who didn’t cancel) made waaay more money.    Now, hopefully, it doesn't offend anybody, but that's the reality.    The main takeaway here is…    Good products die in poor markets   So I want to share the two major traps that might be stuck in…   TRAP #1   You might be doing the equivalent of going into the wrong neighborhood to sell your product.   And that might be one reason why you're NOT selling!    I stand up and I go to my market…    A market is NOT a person, a market is a location.    I was going to a bad location (without many dream customers)...   While my buddies had learned to sell in…    Richer    More well-off   Dream customer-filled    … locations or neighborhoods.    This BIG deal to understand, my friends.    This one principle has literally changed my business.    So #1, please understand that some of you are just selling the wrong person.   It's easy to make a mistake and say, "Oh, you know what...”    My product is wrong.    Something's wrong with my funnel.    The ads don't work.    The reality is you might actually have…   A Great Product   A Great Offer   Great Ads.    But you're going after the wrong “WHO.”    In fact, it's such a wrong “who” - that they have no money!   So check yourself, sit back and ask...    Am I selling people who actually have cash?    Am I fishing into a pot where my dream customers are?    Am I fishing into a pot that makes ‘me' feel comfortable 'cause I have a money objection... (which is what I was doing)?    Does this make sense?    Marketing does not work without insane ridiculous clarity on WHO you want to serve.    Good products die in bad markets   HOW TO INCREASE SALES #INTERNALLY   The second thing I want you to understand and this happened to me personally this last year...    (No one get weird with me!)   2018 -  I did 800 grand   2019 - was almost 4 million.      (I haven't actually done my goal video for this next year, I will do that soon.)   We almost hit 4 million - it's very, very close!    However, I feel like it was with less ferocious, obsessive, "I'm gonna kill myself 'cause I'm not taking care of myself" style of work.    It wasn't like that at all.    Here’s what happened…   About a year ago, on the previous Two Comma Club X Cruise, this really awkward thing started happening.    I’d taught for three hours during one of the days at sea.    And after that was over, I had a very challenging time being around people.    Some people got offended by it and they were like, "How dare you? I can't believe that. This is crazy. I have a question for you."    And internally, what happened was I started freaking out, almost panic attack style freaking out.   ONLY, I wasn't self-aware about it.    So Funnel Hacking Live happens and I started getting more of this internal anxiety popping up.    And for the last eight months, I've been very open about that on this show, I've been having a lot of therapy…   Mondays, (at 10 AM), Baby, is usually when I go do therapy stuff.    Everyone should do therapy    Oh my gosh, this cruise, for me personally... and on an internal level, I am so much calmer.    If I feel a trigger happening, if I feel anything going down, if there's anything...    I know how to stop it.    I have tools to sit back and grab some mental stability    … I have a foundation - it’s so nice.     I didn't know that I had anxiety.    I thought it just was just like, "Oh, you're an introvert..."    But that was not the reason, I might be a little bit of an introvert, but that wasn’t the problem.    The problem was that there was a bunch of mental junk in my head I’d not ever dealt with.   I thought it would be appropriate right now to have you sit back and ask two extremely key questions...    TRAP #2   You might just be a bad driver…    You might have some stuff in your head -you might need to do some leveling up inside your brain.   I always thought that ‘mind stuff’ was some fluffy crap the first time I heard people say that.    I was like, "Stop telling me to do this.”   … it was so frustrating for me.    I was like, "Just give me the formula."     "Stop telling me, ‘It's all in my head and it's all a mental game.' Just give me the formula, man. What is it? Tell me it, I'm gonna go get it done. It's gonna be awesome."    You may have felt that as well in the past 'cause I was believed that, too.    In fact, I used to make fun of meditation.   I was like, "Stop telling me it's all in my head."   Well, about a year ago, stuff started hitting the fan personally just a little bit and I started realizing that I needed to go deal with a lot of stuff.    So now, I…    Do therapy   Learned how to meditate   Do a lot more self-care   Have somebody who goes and makes my food    Have a personal trainer to help keep my feet to the fire - 'cause you all know me, I work super hard.    THE TWO MAJOR DRIVERS   So the two major drivers of EVERYTHING that’s happened during this past little bit, are…   #1: Good products die in poor markets.    You may have a great funnel   You may have great ads   You might have great fulfillment   ...and you might be miscalculating, "Oh my gosh, I don't."    Because you're thinking, "Oh, no one's buying it."    But…   You might just be selling in the wrong neighborhoods.   A market is a location, not a person.    You might be selling in a neighborhood that neighborhood doesn't have enough of your dream customers. Make sense?    #2: You might not be a very good driver of the vehicle yet.    You may not have gone through a lot of the issues and stuff that you have going on.    If you don't have to have issues, don't go searching for them.    But if what I'm saying right now is  clicking in your head, you're like, "I know what he's talking about..."    That one billion percent affects business.    I wanted to act like it didn't for so long.    I’d be like, "Yeah I got these problems, but who cares?”   And a lot of them are still there…   But I have learned to calm my mind and bring it down.   In fact, several people on this cruise have said, "Stephen, you're not all “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”."    It's like, "I'm NOT like that all the time - it's just for fun sometimes.”    Business is fun and I'm gonna have fun while I do it... and sometimes I'm like, "BOOM, Baby! Yeah!"    And other times, I'm just calm.   In fact, when I landed in Miami right before the cruise I went and meditated at night on the beach.    Oh my gosh, that was so cool.    It was so fun that I did it again off of my suite balcony.   Anyways, I hope you're doing well and that you enjoyed this little heart-to-heart moment here.    YOUR FUNNEL MAY BE GOOD ENOUGH   Honestly, most of the time when I look offers, there are changes that need to be made... but that's usually NOT the issue.   Instead, there’s usually  …    A ‘Who mismatch.’     No idea of the market being sold to       No idea the official positioning within that market       No idea of what the sales message really is and what the hooks are.     The offer is usually the smallest part...    So while I lead with being ‘the offer guy’ ...that's the smallest session in my events 'cause it's ALL this other stuff that’s REALLY in the way!    Offers are easy, man - it's all these other things that are a bit more difficult.    And finally, understand this, I don't care how nice that cruise ship we’re on is, I don't qualify to drive it.    And the funnels that we help you guys build are like that ship, 'cause sometimes…    You need some educating to drive them.   You might have anxiety when a big wave pops up.    But…   You can't let that steer the course of the ship!    You steer the ship, not the wave.    Make sense?    Alright, guys, I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks so much.    #GetRichGiveBack   If you guys want me and my team to create your offer and build the funnel that sells it, go to myofferlab.com.    Thank you so much and thanks for being part of the show. We'll see you guys later. Bye.   Alright!    I've been asked, "Steve, you were the lead funnel builder at ClickFunnels, why aren't you offering a funnel building service for people in businesses?"    Okay, that's a fair question.    Check this out…    Back in early 2016 when I joined ClickFunnels as an employee, there were only about 12,000 users of ClickFunnels compared to the 100,000 now.    And there were only like 40 employees compared to the 400 that there are now.    Okay? What does that mean?    It meant Russell and I were literally the only funnel builders     *PERIOD*    All the sales copy   The design   The video   Building the pages   Email sequences   Integrating software with ClickFunnels    ...it was literally just he and I.    About a year into my employment at ClickFunnels though, other funnel building team members started getting hired, we finally had a copywriter, a designer, etcetera.   It changed my whole world as we now had a funnel team.    So before I offered funnel building services, I wanted to make sure I could not only find my team but that it was also air-tight.    What I did not tell you, and what I've NOT been public about was that my team has already been building funnels for other people for over a year now...   Testing   Tweaking   Building   Making our process better   ... and so finally, I will tell you that we are ready.    We've been building other sales funnels for a while, I just have not announced it until now.    If you want me and my team to build your company a professional sales funnel, come get more info at myofferlab.com.   Make sure you use the “MY” …  myofferlab.com.    You can talk to us   Learn about the process   See what we ask of you in the process as well.   It comes with a live three-day event just with me, so I can teach you    How to use the funnel after it's done    Get traffic   ….as well as a year of coaching from myself and my staff.    If you want us to be the nerds while you continue to run your business…    If you're still looking for the core offer and funnel that supports your business revenue needs...    If you’d like to hand the critical funnel building task over to professionals who do this full-time…    If you want to learn how to design and launch your lucrative offer while my team of techies takes care of your funnel building and logistics for you...    Get more information and apply at myofferlab.com.   When you think about it, all businesses need to be able to do three things…    Get leads   Sell a percentage of those lead   Fulfill on what they sold   And your professional business needs a professional core offer and funnel to deliver it.    We've already been doing this for a year with students who have businesses that are…    Online    Offline   Physical    Digital   Software    Supplement   Experience with revenue     Just starting out   ...you get the point?   Not only will we build the funnel, but I’m also actually going to hook you up with the very people that I use to send various types of traffic to my own funnels.    I want you to be taking care of post-funnel build.    If you're tight on money, it's totally fine -  we have various payment and funding plans which are also available.   Come learn more and apply at myofferlab.com.   Just be aware that we're actually building you a professional sales funnel, and my team and I actually have very limited capacity in what we can handle monthly.    So skip the line of people shouting the most popular question I'm asked which is, "Steve will build my funnel?"    The answer finally is, "Yes," just go start at myofferlab.com now.

  So you've decided to start your YouTube channel! But in this digital age wherein you have a lot of competition, how exactly do you jumpstart your channel when you are just starting out? In this podcast, Nate willshow you exactly how you can grow your channel from having no subscribers to becoming a six-figure generating machine!   What do you do to grow a YouTube channel when you're just starting out? You've got zero views, zero subscribers and yet you really want to take this seriously. You really want a chance of making 6 or even 7 figures. I'm going to show you how to do that. You're definitely watching the right video because I've done that. And I've done it several times. Meaning, I currently produce 13 different channels. And there's several that are making 6 figures that I started from scratch. One of them is making 7 figures every 7 weeks. So, here's what you can expect. What I'm going to cover in this video is first, I'm going to talk about YouTube's search and I'll introduce you to my leaf strategy. Which makes it really easy for you to pull in traffic from people who've never heard of you before but are searching for your expertise. And then I'm going to talk about how to start your video and how to give content hooks so the people will stay to the end of your video. Next, I'll talk about calls to action. There's 3 different main calls to action that all that I'll teach you how to do so that you can get people to take action on your videos and send signals to the YouTube algorithm that this is a good video. Well then, talk about click-through rate. And some of the things that we've done to get better click-through rates so that you can get more and more people to click on your videos and get better results. I'll then share the sequel technique. There's a few different channels talking about this strategy. It's a really good strategy. I'm going to share how you can do it specifically to a video on your own channel and share with you a story of how we got 5 million views on one video just using this one technique. And then I'm going to wrap up this video sharing a 4 ingredient formula that if you make videos that follow these four ingredients, you will get exponential growth on your channel at the 4-month mark. It works every time. The key to getting found in YouTube search is to do keyword research before filming. You've got to do it before filming. So many people have come to me and asked, "Hey, Nate. I've got hundreds of videos. And they're just amazing content but they're on YouTube they're not getting any traffic. How can I SEO these videos. Can you help me with that?" There is nothing that I can do to SEO a video. YouTube has taken away that ability. You have to do keyword research before filming and I'll give you an example. A friend of mine Doreen's Beckman, she came to me and says, "Nate, I have a great remedy for sore throats." So, we could have just pulled out the camera and started filming her. And she shared her secret and maybe I would have titled the video, "Doreen's secret remedy for a sore throat." Okay, we could have done that but instead we chose to do keyword research first. I found the phrase, "How to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics." 9 words long. That's not a phrase that I made up. But that phrase had consistent search volume every month on Google and YouTube. So, that was a title of the video. Now, Doreen is like, "Okay, I know the formula by heart. I use this all the time but I'm going to answer it in a way that answers this specific question." I'm going to teach this principle. That video ranked number 1 on YouTube instantly. And has been getting traffic for many many years now. That's what we do with the hundreds of videos that we launch every single month across all 13 channels. Now, after you've watched this video, I want you to go watch my leaf strategy video. I'll link to it right up there. I go into way more detail on how you find the questions that people are searching for online. I show you a lot more examples and I show you the tool that you can use that you just put in your idea and it will tell you the specific questions that you can use as your video titles. Now, we're going to talk about how you start your video. See, if you've done the keyword research first, you know what the title is and your job is to do 2 things in your intro. The intro is the part that you start with right before your video logo, your branding piece or your opener. Okay, the intro, it needs to tell people what the video is about and why they should watch. Okay? What and why. What's the video about? Why should they watch it? So, I'll demonstrate this for you. Let's use that sore throat remedy example. Welcome back, in this video, I'm going to talk to you about how to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics. There really is a way. You probably have these ingredients in your kitchen. I have been using this remedy for years. It really works and I'm going to teach you everything about this remedy. Beyond just the what which I said right at the beginning, I then elaborated with another sentence or 2 explaining why I'm the person to deliver it. And although this is Doreen's remedy, I have been using it for years so I could make this video. That's it. That's your intro. You want people to know that they are in the right place that the video that they hit play on is what they were expecting. They have clarity on what the video is about and why they should keep watching. So, after that 2-part intro, then you go to a video logo. The video logo might only be 5 or 10 seconds long. 10 seconds at most. And then you come back into your content. At the beginning of your content, you'll want to lay your content hooks. Okay, content hooks give people curiosity about all the different things you're going to be teaching or sharing in your video. And you may have noticed that I did that in this video. I went through... I've got them listed right here. I went through and told you that I was going to introduce keyword research. Then I was going to talk to you about the intro. That is going to talk to you about keeping people to watch all the way through the end. That's the content hooks. Then I assured that I was going to teach to you about call to action and how to get more people to click on your videos. Then I introduced it I was going to talk to you about the sequel strategy. And then I talked to you about that exponential 4 ingredient formula that I'm going to share at the end, right? When I prepare my videos and I have my clients prepare their content for their videos, we just do it by bullet points. So, when you start into your content, you want to give a summary of these points but not telling people, "Oh, the first ingredient is raw honey the second ingredient is cayenne." No. You might say, "Well, I'm going to share with you the first ingredient..." Alright, you might say it this way: "I'm going to go through all 3 ingredients and tell you why they're in this concoction what they do for your body. And then I'll explain how you mix them all together." That make sense? So, I'm giving a summary but I'm not giving away the meat. I'm creating curiosity so that they want to watch the rest of video and get all that meat. You want to have a call to action in every video. And there are 3 different types of calls to action that you can give. One, it can be a call to action to get people to join your list. Now typically, you don't say, "Hey, if you want to join my list or get on my email list or buy something from me, click the link below." Typically you say, "Hey, I've got a free gift for you. I want to give you my book for free. If you want access to that, go ahead and click the link or go to the link in the description below." See, that type of a call to action, they'll know, they'll get your free gift. And they'll be in your sales funnel. You'll have their contact information. You can follow up with them after that. That works all the time. And you definitely want to every once in a while, have a video with a main call-to-action leading people to your lead magnet. The second call to action all share is you can get user engagement. You can ask people to like, to subscribe, to comment below. You can actually do a poll. I'm going to do a poll right here. Go ahead and click this link and answer the question. Did you know that you could do a poll on YouTube? Just click yes or no. And we'll see what percentages come up there. That's a great way to get engagement and you can have that as one of your main calls to action. The reason for doing that is the YouTube algorithm likes engagement. The more engagement you get on your video, the more YouTube will promote it to other people. Now, a third type of call to action that you want to do regularly throughout your videos is recommending that people go to other videos whether on your channel or other great videos on other people's channels. So, I've already done that in this video. I've recommended my leave strategy video. It's still linked right up there. After this video is done, I definitely recommend that you check that one up because it's really going to help you know how to find those questions that people are searching for. So, when you're preparing the content of your video, know what is the main call to action for this video? Am I going to lead it to my lead magnet? I'm going to lead it to user engagement or am I going to lead people to click on another video? When you get to the end of the video, you don't want to say, "Hey, hopefully found this video helpful. We'll see you tomorrow." Because you're essentially telling people, "Bye, you can go about your day now. You're done with YouTube." YouTube would actually rather that after they're done watching your video, they watch another one. So, at the end of the video, you might say something like this: "Now, that you've got a good foundation of how to grow from 0 subscribers and 0 views up to a seven-figure revenue stream, let's dive deep into that leaf strategy. Okay, go ahead and watch this video next. That makes sense? I'll probably say that at the end of this video. Click through rates, thumbnails, they become far more important. My business is really focused on YouTube for the last 7 years. In all the years that I've been doing YouTube, thumbnails have just become more and more important especially in the last year or 2. See, when people open up YouTube there's a whole menu of different videos that they can watch. They see an image with a title underneath. The do I want to watch this one? Do I watch that one? Do I watch that one, right? You've seen this. So, how do people choose which video to click on? It's really a matter of what's interesting. What creates curiosity. So, the first recommendation I have is to definitely design your own custom thumbnail, okay? YouTube will go through and pick three different still images from your video and you can say, "Which of these three do you like the best?" Or you can design your own custom thumbnail. You can design your own image that creates curiosity that relates to the content of your video of course but will compel people to want to watch your video or want to click on it. In the beginning, all you can do is just give it your best guess. Put your imagination and your creativity to work and create a thumbnail. You can use Canva or Photoshop for that. But then you can actually do A/B split testing. YouTube says that this feature is soon coming. Right now I use a tool called tubebuddy. So tubebuddy, I use that to do my A/B split testing. That's where I can design version A, launch it. A few days later, I launched B and then it will do an analysis and compare which thumbnail gets more clicks. Sometimes all I do is I just change the color of the text. That's it. The image, the the design of the thumbnail stays the same. I just changed the color of the text and that might change it from a 4.6% click-through rate to a 5.9% click-through rate. It's crazy. But you can do stuff like that to get better and better results. So, as you launch your channel and you're putting all this work into creating these videos, doing a/b split testing can really help you get better and better results. Now, let's talk about the sequel technique. Okay, a lot of YouTubers are using this. They'll find a very successful video on YouTube and that they'll create a sequel to it, right? They'll try and create a similar video that's better than it and they'll try and get some of the traffic from that video to then come to yours. I've tried this strategy for other videos. And it works maybe one out of every 10 or 20 attempts. And it works okay. I'm going to share a strategy that works way better, okay? And that's to look for great opportunities within your own channel. So, YouTube analytics is great. Once you've been at this for 4 or 5 or 6 months, you have a lot of videos in there. Chances are there's been some that have caused spikes. When you're in your analytics, the best thing to look at is what videos are YouTube suggesting. Okay? There's a lot of different ways that your videos can get views and traffic. You can get it from search, you can get it from what YouTube calls browse. Suggested. There's other sources of traffic like you know Facebook leads or email clicks. Okay, we're talking about suggested. If you find a video that YouTube is suggesting to other people to watch, that means YouTube likes this video on your child because it's making YouTube money. They're probably pairing ads with it. That means YouTube likes this video and it's suggesting it to other people because it's making YouTube money. Either because they're pairing ads with it and it works really, really well or this video leads to long session watch time. You know, something like that. YouTube has chosen this video and likes it and is suggesting it to other people. So, here's the opportunity that you have: You can create a sequel to your own high performing videos. Let me share with you a story, okay? So, one of the first videos that Kris Krohn and I created is "How to invest your money in your 20s?" So, I'd noticed that that video it had I believe over 60,000 views at the time and a lot of those views had come from suggested traffic. The original video is only about six minutes long. Kris Krohn was sitting in one place. In fact, he was sitting on his pool table with the red felt. And he just shared his story. So, I told Kris, we're going to redo this video. We're not... We're going to leave the old one there on YouTube. It's still doing well but we're going to make another one with the exact same title. And I thought... I tried to think like, 'Why did they like that thumbnail? Why did have a good click-through rate?" I thought if they liked his pool table, they're really going to like his car." So, I had him put his BMW i8 in the video. And when I filmed the video, I actually... I had to really twist Kris's arm at the time. He was... He didn't want to be that guy. But I had him pull up in his car, the wing door came up and I followed him with my glide cam as he walked and talked into his house. So, I followed him in through his door. His cleaning lady happened to be vacuuming so I said, "Hey, cleaning lady." Went into his kitchen. Got a drink of ice water. Went downstairs where his pool table was. Went back upstairs where a flipchart was. We made a longer video. Shared the same story but it was a lot more inviting like we're going into Kris's home. This strategy totally worked then and it's worked in many times since. Over the next 2 weeks, this channel performed above average. Okay? It was a good video. And then, it totally took off. From the next 5 weeks, our channel grew from 80,000 subscribers to 160,000 subscribers. I don't want to confuse this but we actually did two sequel videos at the time. This one that I'm telling you about was the main one. And these two videos together or the next five weeks doubled the size of our channel. We got way more views. Adsense revenue became significant. You know, 5 figures. So, how does this apply to you? Well, you'll find similar opportunities in your own YouTube channel. Just look through the analytics and find which videos YouTube is suggesting the most and create a sequel. Are you ready for the 4 ingredient formula to take your channel exponential? Right? You're going to have spikes in 4 months. It works every single time if you have these 4 ingredients. I'm serious. I've done it many times. Ingredient number 1, you've got to do keyword research before filming. Number 2, your videos have to be 10 to 12 minutes in length on average. Okay, have a minimum of 7 minutes. You can go longer. That video that I just told you about the sequel that went huge it's got over 5 million views, that one was actually a 20-minute video. We didn't plan on it being that long but it's worked really really well. Have your videos average 12 minutes in length. Okay, ingredient number 3 your videos need to have a good retention rate. You know, have an average of 45% or higher retention rate. So, if you've got a video, we'll just make math easy. If you've got a 10 minute video, people should at least be watching 4 and a half minutes of that video on average. Ideally, 10 to 12 minute video should have a 6 or 7 minute average view duration. The reason that that's an ingredient in this formula is YouTube likes watch time. And if you're putting out tons and tons of content but your videos on average are only being watched one minute through or one minute 20 seconds through. Which I've seen. This formula will not work and your channel will still grow gradually but you won't experience a spike. Okay, here's the last ingredient. Ingredient number 4 is you've got to post five episodes per week. Now, there is some controversy. Different YouTube influencers that I highly respect that are friends of mine and there are other ways that you can achieve success on YouTube with different amounts of frequency. Such as one video per week. In the space of experts making how-to informative type content, this formula works. And if you have these 4 ingredients, you will get a spike. I've never seen it fail. Keyword research before filming; 10 to 12 minutes in length; average retention rate or view duration of 45% or higher; post five episodes per week. And at that 4- month mark, you'll experience a spike. On the Kris Krohn channel, it was 4 months to the day we had a spike. We were averaging like 500 views a day. Something like that. And our first spike we got up to 10,000 views in a single day. And we never got down below a thousand or 2 a day even when that settle down. But then quickly had another spike up to 30,000. 35,000, in fact. Soon we got to a point where our average baseline was higher than our first spike. And we've never looked back. You've heard me talk a lot about keyword research in this video. And I've actually created a keyword research mini-course. So, in addition to watching my leaf strategy video that I've linked to above, down in the description and on my end screen here, it's probably somewhere on the screen, I also want you to check out my keyword research mini course. This is a free gift where I actually take you step-by-step through finding the questions that your audience is searching for. You know, so you have expertise. This'll guide through finding the questions of people are asking. So you'll know what to title your videos. Go ahead and click the link below and watch that leaf strategy video next.

In this episode Don Anders gets into whether you should pick the FRS Investment Plan or the FRS Pension plan. You make this decision when you first start working, but you can also change it using your one-time second election.For more information, to register for one of our upcoming webinars, or to schedule an appointment, visit us at http://www.frsdrop.comTranscription:Don Anders: Hello, this is Don Anders, and welcome to the Florida Retirement System Podcast. The purpose of this is just to educate people on retirement, and it's myself, Don Anders. I've been working with FRS retirees for over a decade now. My firm and myself, we've helped over 2,000 people retire, just like you, from the Florida Retirement System.Don Anders: The reason I started this podcast was because we hear all the time of, "Hey, we really wish we had this education earlier on, before we chose our options, not right when we go to retire," because that's when my firm works with people. So, we decided to do this podcast to educate.Don Anders: With me we have Alex Dingman. Alex is a longtime friend of mine. He works doing radio, doing podcasts. I brought him on to help me produce this and get it out to you, but more importantly, Alex knows nothing about the Florida Retirement System. So I wanted to bring him on and almost make it like he's a new employee, or someone that is getting ready to retire, and my goal is going to be to educate him on your options, on the FRS options. Because if I can educate him, who's starting from pretty much nothing from an educational standpoint with the FRS, then hopefully I'll be able to educate you on it as well. So, Alex-Alex Dingman: It's good to be. I hope I can guide you, kind of ask the questions, given the perspective that I'm going to have here, of not knowing much, and then, like you said, you can be the one to educate me, Don.Don Anders: Hopefully we can. Well, we'll see what we can accomplish. By the way, this is a serial podcast. What that means is we're not going to do a bunch of ongoing ... There's going to be about 15 episodes, and then if there's any updates or changes down the road, we'll go ahead and issue bonus episodes. So, don't think this is going to be a two- or three-year commitment to listen to. 15 episodes, not too long, so you could even knock these out in an afternoon, okay?Alex Dingman: Outstanding.Don Anders: Okay. What I wanted to start off with is the difference between the pension plan and the investment plan, Alex. What the pension plan and investment plan is, are the two options. Let's say you're about to start working. Okay? What do you want to be? You want to be a teacher, firefighter, police officer?Alex Dingman: Firefighter. That sounds pretty cool. Always been a dream of mine to be that cool, so let's do it for this [crosstalk]Don Anders: Were you playing with the fire trucks as a kid?Alex Dingman: Yeah. Oh, you know it. Yeah.Don Anders: Okay.Alex Dingman: Love it.Don Anders: All right. So you finally get your dream to become a firefighter. You get on board, and they're going to give you a packet. In that packet, it asks, "Do you want to go with the pension plan or the investment plan?"Alex Dingman: And I have no idea. I mean, I can think in my head, I've heard these terms before, investing, obviously, putting my money somewhere, a pension, I think that means money you get after you retire. But I'm not really sure what the difference is, Don.Don Anders: Yeah. And that's pretty accurate, but they both apply to the pension. The FRS is a little unique. Not all pension plans allow people to do this, but the FRS allows you to either have a cash value, a lump sum, or they allow you to have a monthly traditional pension there. There's a few factors that you want to factor in. First off, how long do you plan on being a firefighter?

  Got a great question from a listener about how to test that a product could do well before you enter the market… What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a special episode of "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, guys. Hey, I am stoked about today, so, periodically ... wasn't as frequently as of late but recently I actually have been going through and I listen to a lot of the questions people are submitting on salesfunnelradio.com. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you go to salesfunnelradio.com and scroll down kind of at the bottom right there, there's a green button, and if you click that you can record a question to me straight off of your browser, an actual audio file. It emails that over to me and I go and I kind of vet through them to see which ones would apply most kind of the group. Then, I can toss them out here. So, anyways, we've got one of those today though. This is to a guy named Matt who has a special skill at the Rubik's Cube. So, anyways, I'm gonna play the question here because there's a lot of elements to this and I wanna make sure that everybody understands clearly how awesome of a position Matt is actually in this. But, I don't think he knows that. Hey Steve, it's Matt here, hope you're well, dude. I've got a question I was hoping you could help me with. I've got an idea for a product or a company, which is teaching people how to solve the Rubik's Cube, but I don't want to be known as the Rubik's Cube guy or the puzzle guy. Is it silly to think like that? Also, how do I know if it's a product that people actually want before I finally pull the trigger and get something out there? It's yours, dude. Hey, Matt, thanks so much for the question. When I heard that, I think my eyes rolled back in my head and I was like, oh, yeah, this is the question. I love this question. Great, great question. First off, just know that you guys can make a course off of anything. No joke. And it doesn't need to be ... if you got a special skill, whatever it is ... it's funny, because reading the book, like Expert Secrets, I think sometimes people might think that you've gotta be some highfalutin suit and tie-wearing briefcase-carrying expert and that's actually not true at all. I don't know if you've seen funnelhackinglive.com. Yeah, "Funnel Hacking Live 2016" there was a guy, I cannot remember his name, but he's known as the Jump Guy, and he literally teaches people how to jump, no joke. They travel the world. He and his wife, his kids, at the time had not had a home in like five years or something like that, huge amount. Because they liked to go travel around and they live like kings and he literally teaches people how to jump. That's what he does. And he's taken that on, he's like yeah, he's the Jump Guy. So, basketball players, athletes, whoever, if they want to learn how to jump higher he teaches them how to do that. There's a little course that he sells on it. I'm trying to tease as many names, hopefully they're okay with me sharing these stories ... there's a lady at one of the first FAT events we ever did, the "Funnel Hackathon Event," and she was there. She was sitting kind of in the back left. I remember where she was sitting, as we were teaching, and I was on stage there and we're sharing those different strategies and stuff, she goes off and she makes like $1.3 million on like a $27 product. It hasn't even been a year. It's been like eight months, six months, something like that. I'm not good with months. I always, always have to say the months in order by name to figure out what they are. Anyway, so that's the whole point, though. It doesn't necessarily need to be expensive, although you certainly will ... how many $27 products do you need to sell to make a dent in your wallet? Quite a few, which is why I usually tell people to start with a thousand-dollar product. But, it doesn't need to be something ... if you see a spot where you're like, hey, I've got an expertise here. Don't feel like it's discredited because it's the Rubik's Cube guy, right? I will tell you I still cannot solve mine. I'm holding it right now. In fact, when he first sent that first message to me I was walking home in the snow. I like that's where I was. So, I was walking home in the snow, and I was like, "Man, I would pay for your course right now. I don't know how to finish solving this thing. I can get like three-fourths of the way through and I cannot get the last, like, layer." I don't know, my head doesn't naturally work like that. I've always wanted to learn how to do it. So, I was laughing when he said that, like, "Do you think people would pay for that? Do you think X, Y, and Z, whatever?" And Matt had reached out to me previously, so everyone knows, so I said, "Hey, would you ask that for the podcast because I think people would benefit from it?" The answer is 100%. You asked several questions there, you said I don't wanna be known as the Cube guy, Rubik's Cube guy or the puzzle guy. I get that. That's fine. In order to create a mass movement you certainly would probably need to take on that persona just a little bit, but if you're just trying to toss something out there for some extra cash flow coming in that's totally fine, that's 100% fine. I don't know that you necessarily need to take on, hey I'm the Cube guy, I'm the Rubik's Cube guy, the puzzle guy, but it certainly will help you the more you're wiling to do that. There are tons of YouTube videos of people trying to figure out how to do it. It's honestly one of the easiest ways to figure out if it's gonna sell really well, right. People are on YouTube for like, two reasons. One, to be entertained and distracted and the second is like for how-to stuff, how to do this, how to fix that, it's like tutorial-based things. When I actually first started launching the product that allowed me to quit my job, that's actually one of the ways that I knew that it was actually gonna sell so well, is because there's tons of YouTube tutorials. And, since it's such a hot, hot, hot, hot market that YouTube basically told me it was, I knew it was a safe place for me to go launch my thing in, as long as it was a new opportunity and I was following the Expert Secrets model, I would actually be able to be successful with it. So, that's one of the easiest, fastest ways for you to actually make sure that you could actually sell with it. It's probably big enough, though. You can check out semrush.com and type in "Other Rubik's Cube people who are seeling that," I mean, there's gotta be people making several grand a month at least selling Rubik's Cube education courses. I'm sure that there are. So, I actually don't think the question is, "Is it big enough," I think the biggest question you should ask yourself is, How will I defer myself from everybody else? How will I be different? How can I create a new opportunity out of somebody else who's teaching how to do Rubik's Cube stuff?/ somebody else who's teaching how to do something that's similar? How can I make myself different and differentiate enough so that it feels like a brand new opportunity? And part of that is you can just have a cooler offer than everybody else. It's not necessarily one of the strongest forms of creating a new opportunity, but by just changing up the delivery of stuff that already exists, you actually can get yourself into a new opportunity enough that you actually can create good cash flow from it. Here's what I mean. So, I would use the Stack Slide from Expert Secrets, and the Stack Slide if you guys don't know what it is, it's kind of a model and a map for how to create new opportunities. So, what I would do is use that, and the very first step on the Stack Slide is, it's your main thing. So, it can be an info product, right? Let's say you've adapted this course for beginners and kind of intermediary and advanced people. So, they can get in, they can do their own, wherever they are. If they know how to and they want it faster, or if they have no idea what they're doing like me, they want to get in, just kind of learn, you have a place for each one of them. So, that's kind of the first thing, is the main product. Then, it's like a tool. What tool could you hand out to them to accelerate how they use your main masterclass? The first thing on the info product? Man, I would ship out Rubik's Cubes. Ship out a Trainer's Cube, and then also like a Speed Cube or something like that, so that people can go through and do your whole thing with them. Then, think through, like, hey, well, what are the other beliefs someone's gonna have about this that they think that are real but that aren't? What are those things? It's pretty awesome when you start thinking through that way. First, let's think through a vehicle, okay? So, what are all the other gurus who teach Rubik's Cube stuff missing that you could go out and throw rocks at? That's like the first question for bonus number one on the Stack Slide. You're throwing it at the vehicle that currently exists in the marketplace. What's the current vehicle? If everyone else is trying to get better at the Rubik's Cube, if everyone was trying to get out there and say, "Hey, yeah, this is the thing," what is it that you can throw rocks at to help people realize, wait a second, all these other gurus out there ... I'm shaking the cube like you can see it ... all these other gurus out there are missing this one step, these things right here. That lets you throw a rock at the current vehicles inside the market, right? And create some product, whether it's info product or whatever, something you ship out to, maybe a workbook, or something, I don't know that lets you differentiate yourself from everything else that's available out there. It's part of the first way that you create a new opportunity. Then he has to say, okay, internal beliefs. What are some of the internal beliefs someone has? "Oh, it's gonna take forever, oh, this is for someone who's mechanically minded, I'm not mechanically minded." You start thinking through, and if you don't know what those things are, you can either ask the market, which I certainly invite you to do, but you also probably have an idea of what the internal false beliefs are of people who want to get faster at the Rubik's Cube. The third thing though are the external beliefs. So, external beliefs, what are the things that others would blame for reasons for not being successful? It usually has something to do with time, money, and resources. They're pointing away from themselves, "I can't do this because of that, because of that, because of that." It's no longer about themselves as much, it's I don't have the time, I don't have the money, I don't have the resources. Usually somewhere around those three. Start thinking through what those are and that's how you put together an offer that makes you different from everybody else that's inside the marketplace and then one of the easiest ways to start testing it? Man, I would record some super cool tutorials and I would just put them on YouTube for free, and I would see what the response is, and in the description on YouTube ... this is literally how I launched my course, by the way ... in the description I would say, "Hey, if you want more of this kind of thing, or if you want to figure out phase two," you could show them here's the fastest way to solve the first row of a Rubik's Cube, heard from a Rubik's Cube master himself, or something like that. You go through and say, hey, look, if you want more of this go to, I don't know, solvemyrubikscube.com or I don't know, whatever your URL is, and in there, now you've captured their email address, you've qualified someone who's interested, you've qualified an opt-in, now it's time to qualify a buyer. So, you go through and you teach them this stuff and you're teaching them for free on YouTube, then you teach them a little bit more at the beginning of a funnel, and then you say, hey, do you want this thing for, I don't know, 10 bucks, 15 bucks, and it's the full course, or whatever. But then there's an upsell, and there's a bump, and there's a downsell, and you could have this really cool tripwire funnel on the front, and quite literally be able to ... anyway. The answer is absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I would do is I would go through and I would create it that way, and I would somehow figure how to split between ... maybe you don't have a thousand-dollar course on Rubik's Cubes but maybe it is $99. Maybe it's even $500. I'm known to say no on price points, or to say that it won't work, or whatever, but figure out how much you do want to get paid per course, and maybe it's something like, as part of the value added, whatever, they get on with you once a week and it's a live Q&A section, group Q&A, not one-on-one, charge higher price for one-on-one, but if there's a group Q&A for like a mid-tier, mid-value ladder area that would be awesome. That would be super cool. Because, I would love to have asked the three questions for how I was trying to solve this thing at the beginning. I kind of gave up after, like, a week. It was awesome, though. When I saw your thing, like, totally man, I would have paid for that. And you could target ads at people who are buying things at like Toys-R-Us or whatever. That certainly in my opinion, in my opinion, could totally be a viable source of cash flow, and I think could be awesome. That's the whole point for everyone else who is listening in this. Please understand that it doesn't matter what you're an expert at. Okay? What matter is how well you market it. I know I've brought this up before but it's a quote from Joe Polish, and Joe Polish says, "There is no relationship between being good and getting paid." There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. How many of you out there think and believe and know that you are better than most of your market at what you do? If you're listening to this podcast I fight that probably all of you guys are better than most of the market at what you do. So, why are you or aren't you getting paid how much you think you are worth? Because of Joe Polish, he said, "There is no relationship between being good and getting paid." You can be the best coder, the best programmer, the best whatever, but that does not mean you're gonna get paid at all. So, I love the second part of the quote. The second part of the quote is, "There is, however, a huge relationship between being good at marketing and getting paid." Go learn how to package and sell and market the thing you're good at. It doesn't matter what it is. There is most likely a market for it. What's funny is, I'm sure you guys heard the term, "The riches are in the niches." Funny enough, like, it's true. Like, what? Rubik's Cube training? Are you serious? Yeah, I'm telling you, you could make a ton of money with this stuff. It's funny to see some of the things people come through and make a whole bunch of money on using click funnels, that come through those doors, and it's like, man, are you serious? I'm overthinking this. That guy made that kind of money with this kind of thing? That's awesome, fascinating! Absolutely. So, think through whatever it is. Don't think your thing is too big or too small or whatever. Let the market tell you. Take your own opinions out of it, and know that you're not the one that's gonna fill your own wallet. Doesn't work that way. So, you have no idea, you have no idea. I don't care what I sell as long as it's moral and it sells. It doesn't matter to me. I'd totally start Rubik's Cube training if I knew how to do that. I have no idea how to do it, though, so tons of power to you, Matt. Anyway, that's what I would do, though. So, gosh, 100%. Anyone else who's listening to this figure out whatever your thing is, if you're like, I still haven't started, or whatever, if you're having a hard time pinning down what that thing is, start asking people what it is that they think that you're good at. I did that for a while, literally. I was like, what am I good at? What am I good at? I did that, like, three or four years ago, and then when I finally dropped anchor, it was like, I'm gonna try to be the best funnel builder in the world. Am I? Probably not. Of course not. But, I know I'm probably one of them, and I've worked super, super, super hard to get to that spot and develop that expertise, and there's times when I look around, I'm like, crap, I could go sell Rubik's Cube training. Did I overthink that? You can make ample money. Oh, darn it, it didn't quite put you in to a club but you made 700 grand, darn! You know what I mean? So, don't be afraid to marry your thing. Don't be afraid of exposing what it is, and understand that there's probably people out there who are already looking for your expertise. There's probably people out there who are wanting what you do. Then figure out how to market it. It's not good enough to be good at it. You'll never get paid that way. Funny enough, it's the reason why you can buy something on Amazon, or somewhere else and it shows up and it's pure crap. It's because they got good at marketing rather than the actual thing, which is a sad reality. That's the sad flip side of it, but that's also where the power of it lies in, what I'm trying to put across. Figure out how to market the thing. How do you package it up? How do you sell in a way that's different than everyone else in the market that makes you unique? Blue ocean, new opportunity, something that is not ever seen that's out there before, and it's one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money quickly, marketing a new opportunity from a submarket that you're taking one step out of. Such small risk. Just that little tiny step out, it's huge. The reason I knew I could be fine with my stuff, I did the exact same things I'm telling you to do. All right, guys, I'll talk to you later. Hopefully, that helped and Matt, thank you so much for the question, and if you do choose to go do the Rubik's Cube thing, please let me know. I will buy it. 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 prebuild sales funnel today.

Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us bleed and cheat, and only bug family members and friends? You want to grow a profitable home business? How do we recruit a players into our downlines and create extra incomes, and still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. Hi you guys doing? Super glad to be here. I feel like it's been a while since I've published. Really, it's only been a week, but super excited to be able to get this out. It is definitely cold here. We've had a lot of ... Anyway, it's been really, really chilly here in Boise Idaho. That's where we live right now. My wife and I are both from Denver. Now, it's funny because last year there was a ton of snow here comparative to how much they usually get, but compared to Denver, where my wife and I were from, it was nothing. Everyone was calling it snowmagedon, and all the stuff, and there's barely any inches of snow on the ground, and we're like ... Anyway. There was a five foot snow storm once growing up. Anyway, been all over the place. Been lots of fun. Well, as such, it's been very lively here in the Larsen home because I believe since it's been so cold, a little bit of wildlife has been trying to move in. So we've had some mice, which is totally disgusting, and I've never had to deal with that problem ever. It's been very lively with my little four year old and two year old, and we've been running around. Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, but it's been fun, and I've enjoyed being able to go and just spend more time with the family. You know what I mean? I hope you guys do too. Hey, I wanted to touch on something here that I think is one of the major reasons why stereotypically MLMers have a hard time recruiting. Okay? Now, someone asked me this question yesterday actually. Asking, "How do I get my people ... How do I just even get like the base team, the core team, the team of people that I wish that I had to go run my MLM with me?" And I was thinking about the answer to that question, and I was thinking about how I've done it. Guys, just in the last week alone I've recruited 20 people. All through automated systems, or at least, so far right now, they're all on the phase where they've been automatically filtered. I should call it that, and they've applied to join my downline. I told you guys about that. that system that I have running, and it does amazingly well, and it's very, very exciting and I think it does so well because I always tell everyone in my downline when they join, to get all my systems because obviously I want them to be successful because of course, it makes me successful also. So why would I not? Right? It's gone really, really well. I've actually enjoyed going through just tons, I mean, awesome stuff with this team that I have, and it just ... Rock stars. I mean, guys the quality of individual, and I'm not comparing people ... I feel bad. Please don't think that I'm judging people at all, right? But there are certain times in a person's life where they're going to be better at business than others, right? If they have the actual time to focus on a business. If they want to do it, rather than me trying to convince them. If I have to convince somebody to join my downline, they're the wrong person already. Okay? Now, I was super sad, a person that I know, that I've come close with decided that they did not want to join, and I was like, "Gosh." I was actually hurt by that because I just have so much respect for this individual, and I was very, very sad about that actually, and I'm sure you guy's have all been there as well because I knew that that person would be successful with it, if they just wanted to be coachable or trainable with it. Gosh, it stung. It did sting. But if you have to convince somebody to join your downline, you shouldn't want them anyways. Okay? What are you going to do? Are you going to put a cattle prod behind their back the entire way, and force them to do all the things it takes? No. It takes a very motivated individual to be successful in anything, but especially in MLM. Anyway, interesting stuff, right? so I was thinking about this person's question. "Hey, how do I get these people, right? How do I find more awesome rock stars? How do I find rock stars?" And that's honestly ... I was really excited she asked that because it's the entire ... That's all that my chorus that's coming out in January, January fourth, that's the date. January fourth. That's all my course teaches. It's how do you find and recruit rock stars on autopilot? Right? How do you actually get those kinds of people to come to you? A lot of people treat the MLM game as if they're hunters. They track and they trap, and they ensnare, and they grab, and they hold, and they strangle, and they get people, and those are the actions that define what they do to go recruit people. That's the wrong way. You're not going to get ... you think you're really going to go get an A playing team like that? No. You have to flip the table. You got to flip the cards. It's a totally different game. It's not like you're playing the wrong hand, you're playing the wrong game. Okay? I mean, it's like anything else, right? It's all about becoming attractive. It's all about creating offers in a way that makes people come to you, right? What I really wanted to point out in this episode is that ... Okay, this is one of the biggest lessons I've learned. When I was sitting on my couch like four years ago now, almost four years now actually, almost exactly, I realized that I had been going about MLM all wrong, and that I was doing the hunting method. Right? I was a hunter, right? And I was hunting and I was saying ... I was tracking, and tracking, and ensnaring, and trying to ... What are the three magic phrases I can say to get somebody to join my downline at any time. That kind of garbage that you see all the time inside the ML Ministry from other educators and stuff. I think it's garbage. It's dumb. Are you kidding me? Are you really going to force somebody into success? It doesn't work. I mean, the amount of effort that's with it, it is not passive income. Oh, my gosh. It is not passive income. All right. 20 people recruited in the last week, and they're all for recruiting, doing crazy stuff also. That's nuts. That's nuts. I didn't beg any of them to join. They are motivate. They're fired up. They're killing it on their own. Why? How did that happen? It's part of what I realized when I was sitting on my couch, 2:00 AM in the morning four years ago. It was freezing. It was a winter time, and I was reading this ebook and I realized that I was doing it all wrong. Then I realized that I needed to create value, okay? I learned, and I don't remember if it was from what I was reading or what, but what I learned is that in some way shape or form you're going to purchase your customers. Okay? Understand that. You're going to buy them somehow, whether you're going to buy them through ads. So, some money or you're going to spend time creating relationships. Right? So, time or some other value piece that you put out there to get them to come to you. The time, value, or money. I mean, something like that. You're going to spend something in order to get attention. Okay? If you think that you're not going to, you're kidding yourself. So think through. Like, "Okay, how can I actually start being successful in this MLM game?" Right, and I'm excited to go through and teach you those kinds of things. That's exactly what I've created and put together, and I'm excited to show you what I've done in order to do that, and that's what the Secret MLM Hacks course is all about coming up, and I think I just spoke in a huge circle right there. But, I'm excited for you guys to go through that because it teaches ... Start thinking that with your MLM. Okay. What's my plan? Am I going to buy my customer? Meaning, am I going to spend money on ads? Whether it's on Facebook, or YouTube, or I don't know, wherever. Am I going to buy my customer through my time? Now, it's going to be hard, especially in the beginning phases of an MLM, to not spend time. Right? You should spend time mentoring, creating leaders, creating ... I'm not trying to ever take the networking out of the network marketing. Does that make sense? I'm not trying to take the personal touch out of this game. That's not how this works. It does require a little bit of personal finesse with each other. Obviously, you have to develop as an individual, which is trust for anything, so I don't have to point that out. Or am I going to put pieces of value out there. Now, I chose that third one. I chose number three. I want to put pieces of value out there that create relationships, so that people see what I can offer, and I don't have to spend so much time on the front end recruiting people. I can focus on training the ones that are actually joining. Does that make sense? That's how I struck ... I did that on purpose. I structured it in a way to do that. So what I did, is I went and I found the top people who were in the industry, and I found a lot of the content pieces that they had put out there, and I figured ... I was like, "Okay, I see what this guy's doing, but I actually think I could recreate that, and better." So that's what I did. I married up several different concepts and things like that from different gurus that were out there, and I re filmed it, and I put it out there for free, and the response was insane. I could not believe how many people were messaging me. the weirdest thing happened. I put it out there out on the open web for free, I was just trying to help solve problems, and then one day somebody messaged me and they said, "Hey, what's your downline? I just want to join it. If this is the kind of thing that you're doing." It was something like that. If that's the kind of stuff that you're doing or if that's the kind of systems you have or whatever. Like, I really want to be apart of it. And I was like, "What?" It took me back, but then that started going faster, and faster, and faster, and people started joining, and people started coming in like hotcakes and bringing their friends in because suddenly I was answering some big questions for them. That was my whole value ad. I was just trying to answer legitimate questions. I was trying to actually be very, very valuable. Stuff that they should have paid for, I was giving away for free. Right? That's one of the ways that I created the relationships with it. So that's all I wanted to say. When you think through your MLM, when you think through the business opportunity you have, ask yourself, what is my upline telling me to do right now? Are they trying to have me buy my customers through money? Do they want me to spend money on ads? Through my time, which is what most of them do, or by putting value out there that solve actual problems, which most of them don't teach that. Start thinking through, like ... and it's fine. If you want to do it some other ways, I'm not telling you not to do it, but I am telling you that there are other ways, and start thinking through what legitimate problems you can solve in the marketplace. What are those problems? What can you actually go solve? I'm not telling ... It does not have to take a lot of your time. You could actually just go and record little content pieces. I'm sure you have a phone. There's a mic feature on your phone most likely, right? There's probably a camera, and you flip that camera sideways, you answer some questions, start publishing, and putting stuff out there, pretty soon you're going to start finding like minded people who want to do what your doing. Who see the issues that you see. Who see the problems. I guarantee you it's the reason why you're still following me. What is this, episode 40, 41, something like that? You're still following me because you're resonating with the things that I'm talking about, right? You are literally walking through the very thing that I'm describing right now. Okay? I want you to think about how? How did Steve Larsen do that to me? What are the beliefs that I had ahead of time about his thing that I've realized are wrong? Hm? I want you to do that. I want you to start thinking through like, "Hey, what are the beliefs that people are having when I go and start talking to people about my opportunity?" Are they saying, "Oh, it's a scam." Or, "Oh, it's a pyramid scheme." Or, "Oh, that's a ..." whatever it is, those top concerns. Right? They're going to give you a lot of surface level concerns. It's your job to look a little bit deeper. Find the core, real reasons why they're saying what they're saying. Maybe they failed an MLM before. Maybe they wish they could be in it, and they just don't know what to say, or maybe they wish they could be in it, but they're afraid of how their family or friends will look at them. Right? Or maybe they want to be in one, they're looking for something. They just don't really understand what a comp plan really is, or how it works, or how they actually get paid, or how I'm going to make money? Whatever it is that you get passion about solving, solve it for free, put it out there, and I guarantee you ... Maybe I'm not allowed to guarantee, but ... Insert legal disclaimer here. But you're going to get people to come to you, and they're going to come and it's going to resonate with them, and they're going to say, "Oh, my gosh. Yes, thank you. I get it. I see what you're doing. What's your opportunity, right? And whoosh, Oh, my gosh. You just flipped the tables. Why?" Because you contributed to a relationship before asking for a sale. That's why. You got to do that. If you don't do it, if you don't contribute to a relationship before asking for the sale, that's like asking for someone to marry you on the very first date. Let alone maybe you didn't even go on a date, you're just walking up to strangers. You wouldn't do that. That's ridiculous. So how come we're not creating relationships before we're asking for sales? I understand it's one of the easiest reasons why. You can just go straight to friends and family because you have relationships with them already, but it's scary to do so. Again, not telling you not to do it, but if you feel confident that it's not going to mess anything up or be weird or whatever, okay, totally fine, but understand that you need to contribute to a relationship. You've got to solve problems. You've got to have a little bit of likeability or whatever it is. Sorry, likeability or whatever it is. Attractability somehow, or perhaps a little bit of attraction to you because what you're doing is you're developing trust with that individual through your content. Okay? If I have a hard time knowing what kind of episode I want to put out there, I don't publish. I want this to solve actual problems for you that you should be paying for. Okay? Whether or not you join my MLM, totally fine with that. This is not a pitch fest. I'm not here to talk about that, okay? I want purpose. If I even tell you the name of the one I'm in, it will kill the goose. So I'm never going to tell you the MLM I'm in. That's why it works so well because it follows rule number one, my rule number one, which is they come to me. Okay? Oh, my gosh. When you do that and when you teach your downline to do that, huge problems get resolved. Stereotypical to the industry kind of problems get resolved because now I'm not tracking and trapping, right? I'm attracting. I'm solving legitimate issues without ever asking for the sale. Now, some sales personnel will probably tell you that I'm being ridiculous. I get it. I know. You're right. I probably could be a little but more aggressive in certain areas with it, but I've learned over experience that I'd rather do it this way and get a little bit fewer recruits, but really high quality ones. Does that make sense? So I want you to start thinking through that. I want you to start thinking ... Because this is one of the biggest secrets to true duplication. If you can teach people how to do what I'm doing right now, which is what I teach my downline to do, it starts to actually duplicate for real because now they're going and solving other people's legitimate issues as well. And you know what? Let's say I get someone who's like, "Ah, Steven. I wish I had a podcast, but I just can't get myself to do it." You know how much ... Everyone talks about MLM, how it's business opportunity wrapped on a personal development course, right? MLM is a lot of personal development. Well, that's not just MLM. That's all business in general. I've had more personal development through the active entrepreneurship and business than any personal development course out there ever. Right? So I get excited when someone say, "Gah, Steven, I don't know if I can create lead gen stuff. Steven, I don't know if I can create X,Y,Z. Ah, I'm nervous about this or whatever." I get pumped about it because I know now what to work on with them. I know where to move with them. I see a person in action. I see a person with desire, okay? That's one of the biggest issues with old MLM models. You're trying to go get people to buy something who had no desire at all in the first place to do it. That was one of the reasons why I stopped doing door-to-door sales. It's not that it wasn't great. I was good at it. But I realized, wait a minute. I'm waking up every single day trying to convince people who were not planning to spend money to spend money. Who are not planning ... Not that it's not possible. I did it. I was good at it. I was a telemarketer too. I was really good at that, but instead I wanted to flip the switch. I wanted to be able to change the game. Where I could put stuff out, and start having them find me. Okay? Again, I know. I could probably be a little more aggressive and pull people and be like, "Hey, this is my thing and I'm going to close you," and I'm still solving problems, but I just ... It's not worth it to me. So I don't it that way, and whatever your MLM is start thinking through how you can do that, and how you can apply it to your thing. How you can apply it. What can you do to start flipping the tables? If you're having a hard time recruiting people, take what I'm going ... Okay. Please raise your hand right now and say, "Steven, I will be coachable for this next sentence." Okay? All right. Here it is. If you're having a hard time recruiting people, you're probably not valuable enough yet. Now, I don't mean as an individual. I don't mean as you as a person. I'm sure you're an amazing individual, and that's not what I'm ... I'm not saying that you're the bane of the existence of the planet. That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that you're not valuable enough yet. Meaning, you have not solved enough problems for another person or you've not created enough of a relationship, or you have not gone out and actually shown genuine interest in the other person, and they can tell that you're looking at them like a number. Okay? That's where the game will fail. Learn how to become valuable. That is worth more than any check that you could write yourself. Learn how to become valuable in the marketplace and it will serve you forever. Anyways, that's all I got for you guys. Okay? Anyway, I ... You buy your customers somehow. Don't expect not to. You won't get anybody. So somehow you buy leads, whether it's your time, your money, or your value, and figure out which one you want to do and then marry it. Get good at it. It's just like anything else. You'll suck at first, and that's fine. Just like anything else, and you'll get on the bike again, and you'll fall and you'll scrape your knee, and you'll get bloodied up a little bit as you do it, and that's fine. It's part of the journey, and it's part of the purification that comes with entrepreneurship, which is amazing. It is so fun. It's my favorite part of the whole thing. One of them anyway, but anyway, that's pretty much it. That's all I got for you. Figure out how you're actually going to buy, quote-unquote, buy your customers. Money, time, or value, and get to it. You will see how funny ... You'll know when you hit it because you'll have struck a pain point and people are going to come flooding to you. That's exactly when I knew that I had struck it directly on the pain points that people were feeling, and I knew that I could go help them. Anyways, that's it. All right, guys. Have a good one. Talk to you later. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback for me. Do you have a question that you want answered live on the show? Go to secretmlmhacksradio.com to submit your question, and download your free MLM master's pack.

Welcome to episode 333 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today we're answering a question I get all the time, the "how often" question. We're going to talk about how often you should be creating content, because it really hinges on three other questions. There is not, contrary to what Pinterest infographics may tell you, one perfect answer to this question. It really depends on the answers to a few other questions. We're going to go through those questions so that you can figure out the answer for you because, guess what, guys, it might be different than the answer for me. Just like my answer now is different than my answer was a year ago or two years ago or three years ago when we started this show. As you might know, we moved from two episodes a week to one episode a week moving into 2017. It's been a little weird because I created 300 and something episodes of the show going twice a week for three years, almost four years, so it's a little strange still, I'll be honest, but again, it became about, what is the answer to these questions. That's why I wanted to present this to you, because this answer might even be different for you now than it was before. Go through this. Remember there's not one right answer to this question. If you say, "Well, you know, you do episode once a week, maybe that's what I should do." No, not necessarily. Okay, so let's jump in. First things first, real talk, guys, your schedule. If you are currently doing the side hustle thing, then committing to doing five blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, whatever it is, a week, is going to be really, really, really difficult. Even if you're full time, it's still going to be really difficult. Five episodes a week is a lot. Five pieces of valuable content a week is a lot, so that might feel impossible to you, then that's not the best place to start. Or maybe you have gone full time but you have the content to do more than once a month. That may feel like just not enough for you. Great, if your schedule allows you to do more, do more. Factor in, first and foremost, what is your schedule? When do you have the time and space to create value? One little thing I want you to notice about that statement is, I didn't say to create content. I said, to create value. If you say, "Oh, well I can absolutely bust out six or seven blog posts a day, no problem, easy breezy." How much value are you going to be able to find in that content when you're busting out six or seven pieces a day? Not a lot. Certainly if you're doing that five days a week. It's tough. Now, full disclosure, I do tend to do four-ish episodes of these when I record them, but I don't do that every day, I do that every few weeks. I'm trying to get to a point where I'm doing this once a month where I record four weeks of podcasts in a day. That, A, it took me time to get there, B, I know the answer to a lot of other questions, so it's easier for me to create content. Also, C, it's the structure I've built that allows me to do that. I'm not creating that every day. Make sure there's value in there, okay. How much valuable content can you currently create in your schedule? Now, if you say, "Oh, well, I can absolutely do once a month." Do once a month. That's totally okay. Maximize that content, really use that content in as many ways as you can. I would rather see you honestly putting out one spectacular piece of content a month that you repurpose and you reuse and you promote the bejeezus out of, than eight half hearted pieces of content a month because you go twice a week, absolutely. First things first, what does your schedule allow? Number two, how much content is your audience consuming? This actually was one that I had to get really, really comfortable with at the end of 2016 when I was thinking about my marketing plans, content, social media, email, in person, everything for 2017. As I was laying out those content plans and marketing plans I was realizing that to do some of the new things I wanted to do, I was going to be adding a lot of extra content. For example, we've ruled out weekly lives, so we're going live once a week now, which I absolutely love doing, but when you figure out that, "Okay, I'm going to go live once a week. I've got two podcasts a week. We want to do this guest post. We want to do this LinkedIn Publisher post. I was putting out essentially four to six pieces of content per week, which is spectacular. It's great, it's all valuable. A lot of it's repurposed, awesome. It's a lot to promote, it's a lot to give my audience to consume, and it's a lot from an audience perspective for them to consume. I don't want people to spend all of their time consuming my free content. From a business perspective, the next logical step to Hit the Mic, you know we're all about transparency here so this is going to be a really transparent sentence, the next logical step, as I've set it up, to Hit the Mic, if you enjoy this podcast, is Hit the Mic Backstage, it's this podcast plus, it is this podcast with more detailed trainings, one on one access to me. It's this podcast even better. Here's the deal, if I give you guys so much free content to consume, you'll never make it back there. That's just a straight up real transparent sentence, okay? Think about how much content your audience is consuming. Are you going to overwhelm them by giving them too much to consume? That's a big reason we stepped back to only one, because also there is such a library of episodes to listen to. Now, full disclosure, I have zero interest in you going back and listening to episode one of this show, because, a, I don't think it's as awesome as this episode is. I like to believe that I am getting better every episode. I cannot bear the idea of even me going to listen to episode number one. Also, episode number one, if I remember correctly, is about Facebook Ads. It's three years old now, which means it's outdated. I don't think anyone's going to go through and sort of like, "I'm going to start at the beginning." However, with that said, there's still a huge library of content for people to dig through already there. It made sense for me to say, "Hey, my audience has a lot. My audience is doing a lot of consuming already. If I want to add more things, I'm going to need to make sure that I am taking some of these things out. I'm going to need to make sure that what's here is here for a reason. What's here is providing value. Because if it's not, then it's not serving anybody's goal and that's not going to be valuable and it's not going to be useful." Again, we come back to this place of value, we come back to this place of purpose. Think about your audience and how much they have to consume and how much they're willing to consume, all right? Number three, we've talked about your schedule, we've talked about your audience and their consumption style. Next let's talk about your funnel. Like I mentioned, kind of briefly in the last one, for me, Hit the Mic Backstage is a logical next step to this show. It is this show plus. I want to make sure that the purpose of this show is to get you from here to there. Now, there are a lot of you who don't need that and who want to just listen to this show and that's absolutely wonderful and listen away and I appreciate you listening. There are also a lot of you who are saying, "Really? That's what Hit the Mic Backstage is? I'm going to go check that out right now." To you, I say, "Welcome backstage." There's also a large section of people who are like, "I don't know, there's just so much here. Can I really ... Do I have time to go there and add that and blah, blah, blah, and I love the podcast and I want to listen to the podcast and blah, blah, blah, blah." You've now shut down. I know that third audience, because that's how I am with a lot of pieces of content, that's how I am with a lot of people. That's the other reason we have pulled back a little. We have replaced that Friday episode with other pieces of content, absolutely, but I'm not just continuing to add more, because again, I don't want my audience to fit into overwhelm because that's going to get them to jump out of the funnel. Where does your free content sit in your funnel? What is the goal? What is the purpose from a marketing standpoint, of your content? I would rather have less frequency and more targeted, more focused, more specific content that gets you guys to the logical next step of the funnel if that's a step you need to take. Now, if that's not a step you need to take, that's fine. Listen to the show, I love you, we're great, cool, thanks, welcome, thanks for being a part of the community, welcome to the community, whatever. For those who backstage is the solution, for those who are like, "Yes, thank you. I want it. I need it. Take my money." I want to make that solution easy. I want to make that answer easy. I want to make that answer obvious. This content needs to be really serving up that next goal, and so when you're looking at, what does your content frequency need to be, you have to to look at your goals. Because you're not creating content for the sake of content. You're not creating content for funsies. You're not creating content because, you know, well that's the thing to do. No, you're creating it because you want to help someone solve a problem. The best way, as we've talked about in past episodes, to get them to the solution, is to walk them there, is to guide them there, down the path from problem to solution, and that's all the sales funnel is. Where does your content fit in your sales funnel? By the way, this content can be podcasts, this content can be blog posts, this content can be live video, this content can be prerecorded video, this content could be something from each of those categories. I know for me, it's something from each of those categories. We do weekly live shows, we've got the podcast, the podcast gets repurposed in the blog post, we may be adding, because we're doing some cool stuff back behind the scenes, some more recorded video to the mix, because it's super fun to do and it converts and you guys seem to love it. Whatever it is, whatever piece of content you're creating, I don't care what the type is, it's got to serve a goal in your business and it's got to serve your audience in getting them to their goals from problem to solution. To recap, what does your schedule allow you to create value? How often? How often is your audience available to consume that value? Three, know your goal. Where does it fit in your funnel? If your goal is to get them into a membership site, then daily content might be a little bit of a reach, because guess what, I'm going to be so busy consuming your daily content I have no time to consume your membership content. Pay attention to that, all right? Big note, we are starting today, on the 24th is day one of the three day Launch Your Podcast Challenge. We're going to go Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we'll have wrap up call on Friday. All of that's going to happen live over on Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris. If you want to make sure you're getting the emails and you're getting where you need to go and you're launching your podcast now, check out the show notes for this episode, TheStaceyHarris.com/episode333. All the way down at the bottom of the post you'll see a link to the Launch Your Podcast Challenge, get on a list, you'll get the emails. I know this is starting the day this goes live, that's okay, join us anyways, join us over the live streams over on the Facebook page. Even if you don't necessarily want to launch a podcast, if you want to get serious about any kind of content, this is going to help, because we're going to talk about a lot of the fundamentals of planning that, and really getting content that your audience is actually going to want to consume and that's going to solve their problems, it's going to get them again from problem to solution, which is what a sales funnel is for. Okay? What's your content for? I will see you backstage.   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