Podcasts about right does

Sunday Morning Message Pastor Dr Peter Eley. " Just Because I have the Right Does not make it Right".  Join us each week!

Alas, fair friends, but it is time for Brian Westbrook and Adam Lefkoe to eulogize their beloved Philadelphia Eagles' season. Twas over before it got started, truly. Also, the Patriots are definitely cooked, right? Right?? Does anyone ACTUALLY believe that? Lefkoe believes John Harbaugh is absolutely the Coach of the Year, and that one other first year coach needs to be fired (but you'll have to listen to the podcast to find out who! That's called a tease!!). Keep coming back all season long and through the playoffs for more of Lefkoe and Westbrook's football discussions!

  Sleep is absolutely critical to being healthy. But do you know how to get your best sleep? Answering that question and SO much more is my dear friend and business partner, Matt Gallant. We start the show by talking about how he got interested in the topic of sleep. When he was in his mid-20s he wanted to do it all: he wanted to record an album, learn all about marketing, work out at the gym and he had a full-time job. So he decided he would cut back on sleep. And he took the resistance training approach by doing it in small increments. He shaved off 15 minutes at a time and thought his body would adjust if he did this gradually. He eventually got down to 5 hours of sleep and experienced some side effects when he did: he had to be pristine with the food he was eating and keeping himself hydrated or his body would completely crash. Matt also shares another story about his experiences with sleep that showed him it's the quality of sleep we get more so than the quantity. We explore that story, plus Matt’s best sleep hacks. At night, Matt recommends wearing glasses from True Dark or Swannies about 2 hours before bed to help your body block out any type of light that might keep you awake. He also recommends using a program called f.lux on your computer, which lessens the amount of blue light emitted by your computer. Iris is a similar program that Matt likes best. As far as actual sleep, you want to keep your bedroom cool at night (16-18 degrees C or 60-64 degrees Fahrenheit). But you also want to keep your mattress cool because otherwise your body heat gets trapped underneath you and you will sweat. The sweat will dehydrate you which leads to poorer sleep and waking up tired. Matt gives us his specific tech recommendations for greater sleep on today’s show before we dive into which supplements can enhance your sleep, and how they work plus the reason 15 minutes of meditation before bed can help you fall asleep faster. You’re going to hear those fascinating topics, and you’ll hear Matt explain why he’s not a fan of melatonin. Join us for this illuminating discussion on sleep. Resources: True Dark glasses Swannies glasses f.lux Iris chili pad Tim Ferriss The Ooler sleep pad EMF shielding tech Faraday cage Oura ring Dreem headband Delta sleeper EarthPulse Dream Tea from Anima Mundi Magnesium Breakthrough Read the Episode Transcript : Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart at the Awesome Health Podcast and I got my good friend, buddy, business partner and co experimenter Matty G. How's it going today at the biOptimizers extreme lab? Matt Gallant: It's going great man. Always, you know, I always love talking about health with you and I think we're going to be sharing some more deep gold today. Wade Lightheart: So I'm excited about today's podcast because we're going to talk about something that we've been in I think a circuitous conversation for I think almost the entire time that we've known each other for around 20 years, certainly 15 very deep. And that is sleep. And for those who don't know the statistics and what's happening, sleep issues is one of the biggest issues in America today and is expanding worldwide. And there's a variety of reasons for that, why that is. We're gonna dive into that. If you're struggling for sleep, you definitely want to listen to this podcast because of all the people I've met in the health industry, I don't know anybody that has gone as deep in sleep is Matty G and we've had a lot of discussions about it's, I'm a guy that wants to sleep the the, you know, for years I was like, if I could just throw sleep away, I'd be, I'd be happy. Wade Lightheart: When we started out, Matt was like, no, you need us. Like he wanted to get as much sleep as possible. But now we've both come for circle on this where we're kind of in what is the optimal sleep amount? How do you get there? Why are we in trouble for sleeping? How important is sleep and where does sleep play as far as hormone optimization, brain functioning, recovery from training. What are the hacks? What are the tricks? What are the tips? And Matty G, if he doesn't know all of them, he knows everybody who does know all of them and he's probably tried more of them than anybody on the planet. So Matty G, Mr sleep, where are we going? What are we doing? How are we, what, what's happening today? Matt Gallant: I will start with the story of how I really started to understand the need for sleep and the importance of it. So at the time I was 25 years old, maybe 24, I was living in Moncton were Wade and I are from, and you know, I had the same mentality that you have. I'm like, you know what, I, I want to work like a hundred hours a week. I want to record an album, I want to learn marketing, I want to work, you know, literally 80 hours in the gym. I don't really have time for sleep. So, so again, like little, I was working 80 hours at the gym at a four 40 hour job, plus 40 hours of personal training clients. I'm recording a hard rock album in the studio and then I'm spending about 15 to 20 hours learning about marketing. So I did the math. It was like a hundred to 105 hours plus I was training twice a day. Matt Gallant: So in order to do all of that, I'm like, okay, I got it. I started cutting sleep. At the time I was probably sleeping, you know, normal seven hours. I'm like, okay, here's the plan. I'm going to start cutting my sleep by the 15 minutes slices and keep going down. My body will adapt. I was thinking like like resistance training and all adapt to the, to the stress, so you know things were going decently. When I got to about five hours, there's an interesting oxide effects that started happening. One of them was my hypersensitivity to water and food, so literally that's how I really got into water because if I was dehydrated like a micro amount, like I had to literally like be drinking water all the time. If I dehydrated even like a little bit, I immediately just kind of crash. Right? Same thing with food, it's like any food that my body wasn't really happy with. Matt Gallant: I would crash so I had to eat like flawlessly and be drinking water all the time. It otherwise it just crash. Then I kept going and then I finally crashed and burned at around like I think four hours or three hours and 45 minutes. You know, I, I just pulled the plug on the experiment and then I read a book called power sleep, which, you know, started educating myself about the need of it and the power of it and then kind of went the other way. It took me about two months to recover, you know, it was like nervous. It was pretty deep nervous system burnout and I was sleeping eight, nine hours now. So for the longest of time I was the kinda guy that, you know, needed eight, nine hours and whatnot and I didn't understand the quality of sleep is really what matters, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Matt Gallant: Not, you know, everybody's heard you gotta sleep eight in a seven to nine hours, which may be true for some of you, but I think in my opinion, the quality's really the key. So another story four and a half years ago, I, I crashed in a different way. I went on a big European tour for business, came back my testosterone at crashed an all time low and my body fat was at the highest that I've recorded it on a DEXA. And I realized right then that my S and I, and I've got an oura ring. So it was kind of like this, this convergence of all these events. And on the oura ring I was getting zero to 15 minutes of deep sleep at night. Like I was basically having no deep sleep. So that's when I realized that my sleep was garbage. Matt Gallant: You know, typically I would wake up at that time in the morning, I'd be really tired and you know, dehydrated. And even though was sleeping like eight and a half, nine hours, I felt like I've slept for, and of course the oura ring validated the, the the data, the experience. So that was the turning point and I realized, you know what, in terms of up leveling me as a human being, probably the number one thing, like the one thing that would improve my body fat composition, improve my brain, improved my ability as a, as a businessman improve myself in relationships was sleep. Like I realized right then it was a huge kind of revelation that if I slept better like every part of my life would improve and it has. So for me sleep is, you know, very close. It's hard to say which one is number one, a number two, but I'm going to make this bold statement. The top two things in my opinion you can do to buy, to biologically optimize yourself as a human being is high quality sleep and resistance training. I think those two, you know, in terms of improving across the board are the top two things. I'm just a lot of other things you can do, but if you sleep well, do resistance training, I think your quality of life, your health span and probably your lifespan will, will have a big impact. Wade Lightheart: You know that you make a couple of interesting observations with that conclusion. If you look with the advent of electricity and the advent of technology, particularly computers, digital screens, television and blue light, and the shifting of circadian rhythms, which is plays a big point in that this is the one area of humanity where we've have, I'd say civilization has throttled the endocrine system or the normal patterns. It's not normal for all this light to be present at night and over, you know, literally billions of years. Every creature is, is running on a circadian rhythm that is related to a light cycle, which there's a hormone cascade, there's an energy cascade, there's an awareness cap, there's this, there's just so many things that are tied to that. And so all of a sudden with the civilization, we've accelerated that curve. And then the other part of that is over the last, particularly the last hundred years and even more so, maybe the last 50 with, I would say with the beginning of the remote control in cars, we really don't push our physicalities that much. I mean, if you'll think back to the great statues in history, the Greeks and the Romans have these, you know, really idealistic bodybuilder type bodies. It's obvious that people were walking around looking like that to be the Wade Lightheart: Inspiration for those artists to develop those Herculean like qualities. And if you look at the population today, Herculean qualities is something that's only reserved for Olympic athletes, for professional athletes and the general population is anything but so based on all that what have you learned? What are the big, what are the things that mess people up first? Let's start there. What are the big don'ts or the things that people might not think of that are really affecting their quality of sleep and their quality of their life? Matt Gallant: I'm going to get into that, but I just want to answer the why first. It was really quick. No, why is sleep so critical? So first of all, let's look at it from a physical level. So your growth hormone, all you're, you're this, there's a whole prolactin cycle. That's where your GH gets released. Thus when most of your testosterone gets produced prolactin. Matt Gallant: Yeah. So it's this whole cascade that starts with the melatonin and then it triggers your prolactin is another hormone in the body. So, but what matters is the healing hormones though, the fat burning hormones, the muscle building hormones all getting released in that cycle. So if you're having no deep sleep or not enough, you're basically not producing these really powerful anabolic healing, anti aging hormones that you know we want. It's critical. So that's the first piece. The second thing, which gets produced typically during REM sleep, which is the end of your sleep cycle, the bulk of it is your neurotransmitters. So that's what allows you to feel good, to be happy for your brain, to function, for you to think that's when that happens. Then there's also memory consolidation. You know, when you're moving things from short term memory to long term memory, a lot of that also happens during the, the light sleep cycles as well as during your REM. Matt Gallant: So basically, and then let's talk about weight gain. You know, let's and grill in, all of these things get thrown out. So if you have a bad night's sleep, your hunger is going to be typically out of control. So the odds that you're going to snack and cheat, you know, your blood glucose is going to go up. So like literally if you, if you want to gain fat, like if your goal is to gain fat as easily as possible, if you have bad sleep, that's the formula. So, and I really feel that, you know, the weight gain, the fat gain epidemic that we have in around the world, a lot of it is being driven by poor sleep. And, and that's just again, just, it's just a physiological reality. So if we just look at all of these and pretty much every part of your body gets negatively affected, even your DNA. Matt Gallant: I read some recent research like a month ago where one night of bad sleep like four hours, you know, affected all of these epigenetics. So, eh, the, the consequences are extreme. Now let's the shift over to the fundamentals of how to maximize sleep quality. And it's really about eliminating the five sleep disturbances. If, if you just eliminate these disturbances, your sleep quality is going to transform. So the first one is light. You mentioned light. So let's just explain a little bit why light is so critical and there's so many components to light. We'll get deeper into it. But the big picture is as, as you said, that we're not programmed. Like I've got this massive light shining in my eye right now. Plus I've got two computer screens, plus I've got this other light. So I've got like four sources of blue light that are completely unnatural hitting my eyes. Matt Gallant: It's, and it's hitting my brain. So, and this is fine at this time of the day, but if I, let's say I had all of these things on and it's 11:00 PM, I'm going to be wired. And like I know I think a lot of night hours, you know, and, and I'm one of them right in the chronotype call them, call us wolves. We are hypersensitive I think to blue light more than other people cause I used to be able to like, you know, work on the computer till three, 4:00 AM and it's like I just wouldn't get tired. And I think this, the light is just stimulating my brain. So that is telling my brain that it's still daytime. Right. And like you were saying back in the day where it was candles or no, you know, just no light. As soon as it would get dark, our brains, it's like okay let's start shutting things down. Matt Gallant: Let's start priming the melatonin and then you'd get tired and go to bed, prolactin cycle, all of these things. So light is probably one of the biggest disturbances. Now let's talk about the basics, which is managing light during sleep. So you want your room like pitch, pitch black, dark as possible, you know, and if you're living in a city, it's even more important now for those of us. And I used to wear a sleep mask and then I found out that your skin has these photo receptors. In other words, when you're, when the light hits your skin, it will disrupt your melatonin production. So even having a mask, even those protecting your eyes and it does help, it's not going to be as good as a pitch black room. So that's light. Now that's not enough. We'll get back to light in a second and just want to cover the other four. Matt Gallant: So second is heat and this is very well researched. I mean I read that in power sleep back a long time ago. We sleep best in a cold room, especially our, it's important that our heads get. And then there can be heat disturbances where your is touching the mattress. And I'll talk about that in a second. The third one is blood flow restriction. That's another one. This is where a bad mattress comes to play because if you're lying on your side, like I'm a side sleeper. If you're a back sleeper, this is not as critical. But if you're a slide size sleeper and you have let's say wide shoulders and you don't have a good mattress, the blood flow gets trapped in your shoulder, in your arms, and then your body's going to toss and turn because your body knows, okay, there's not enough blood flow, it's time to move and you're going to move. Matt Gallant: So, and you can track that with a lot of these apps that'll tell you how many times you've tossed and turned. Fourth is noise, noise will disrupt your sleep. And you know, of course there's ways to mitigate that. And fifth is electrical magnetic disturbances. So wifi signal, cell phone signals, Bluetooth, all of these waves that are flying all over the place as we speak will disrupt your sleep. So what our goal is to, to use technology and tools to minimize the disturbances of those five things. The more we can do that, the better sleep gets. Wade Lightheart: You bring up something really important there about, I mean, there was really no way out of the technological advancement that's going in. Of course there's a lot of concerns with things like 5g being rolled out across the world and how that's going to have profound effects perhaps on our, on our biology. And there's a lot of people in the area that are concerned about it. Some people say it's unwarranted, some people say it's the worst thing for humanity coming. What are some of the things that you do specifically to mitigate these areas of your life? Like what, or like, okay, we've got the five main things. What can a person today go out and do in regards to that? And then we'll kind of get into some of the more advanced tax after that. So what are, what are the go-tos for, for Matty G. Matt Gallant: All right, so let's start with each one and I'll give you kind of my list of hacks. So let's start with light. Wade Lightheart: Get a pen and paper. Folks are gonna want it. You're going to want to write fast and furious cause Matt, by the way, Mat, how much money have you spent in total on your sleep systems? Matt Gallant: It's, it's around 30 grand. I mean, and I could add a couple of more devices on top of that movie, which would take people over 40 so, and you think it's one of the more valuable things that you've spent money on for sure. Right? Yeah. Like I, you know, if again, the way I look at it is if I'm 10% more effective, which, which I feel a more than 10%, but if I was 10% more effective, it's an incredible ROI. If my health span improves 10% or my lifespan improves. Like if I look at it from any of those three perspectives, it's a no brainer ROI. You know, people spend so much money on cars and these, these deep dish, the right appreciating assets where I think in this case it's like it's a compound health benefits. So your number one asset is health. Matt Gallant: And again, to me this and resistance training on the top two things. So speaking of lights, the first thing is let's talk when you wake up. Okay. So our bodies had these circadian rhythms. And one of the things that surprised me how effective it is is when you wake up, and this is a really huge travel tip to this, so we'll talk about how to reset your circadian rhythm when you travel. But this is the first thing that you do. So you wake up, you want to blast your eyes with blue light. Now you have two options. One, you can go outside and you know, go stare at the sun but get sun hitting your eyes. That's the natural organic way. And for those of us that live in, you know, one day or it's winter time and you don't want to do that. Matt Gallant: There's a device called re timer. It's not Australian company and he's these, it's kind of like these white glasses that literally blast your eyeballs with blue light. There's also the human charger, which are these EarPods like earbuds that blasts your brain with light. So the best time to use that is in the morning. Like, as soon as you wake up and let's say you want to start waking up earlier, if you wake up and okay, the first time's going to be tough, but if you wake up and blast yourself with light, like it's amazing how tired you get around, you know, 16 hours later. It's like, it tells your body this is the beginning of the day. So in terms of hacking your circadian rhythm, whether you're traveling or you want to just kind of start shifting your, your, your wake up time, I think it's incredible. It's very, very impactful. Matt Gallant: Now let's shift to the end of the night. So before you go to bed, probably around two hours is probably optimal. So as you want to go to bed until 11 was around 9:00 PM, you would put on blue light blockers. I'm a fan of the, the probably the most intense ones. The best ones is true dark. The, the red ones. This is a company that Dave Asprey's invested in great glasses. I mean, they're the most intense. The only thing is you're going to watch TV. It's like if they're so intense, it's hard to read. The more stylish ones, I would probably start the Swannies from James, my friend James Swanwick. And those are really good for like going out and you know, the block most of the pool. So that makes a big difference. That is, especially if you're using technology like TV or computers or your phone or your iPad, those will have an impact. Matt Gallant: Now if you're using your phone or your computer, you know, I use something called the, it's called, there's flux, which is really good, but I use a nuts by the way, is a, is a computer program that will actually change the screen color so you're not getting as much blue light. Yep. Now there's another one called Iris, which I think is better. It's a little more, a little more control and a little more aggressive. He's got all, all kinds of options. So I use that. So either flux or Iris and, and on your phone there's also built in like it'll start shifting and you can hack your phone where I'll show you what it looks like. So you see my phone, if I triple click, it becomes red. So this is more aggressive and, and you know, you can search on how to create tense in your phone and then you can control it with the home button. Matt Gallant: So those are all the things I do to, to manage, mitigate light in my room. I had double blackout curtains cause one was still literally the light coming here and there. I just put two layers of 'em and it solved the problem. So that's the light equation. Second is heat. You know, obviously if you're living in, if it's winter time in Canada, you don't need to worry too much, you know, it's going to be pretty chilly. But for those of us that are in summer or in hot climates, I live in Panama. You know, AC is mandatory, but that's not enough because going back to when I used to wake up tired, I was, I was sleeping in AC, I was losing around four to five pounds of water from going to bed to wake up. Like I would weigh myself for bed and wake myself. That's a lot. Wade Lightheart: I think a lot of people don't realize how dehydrated they can become sleeping. It's not, I mean, I watched that fluctuation as a way to monitor my own health to see how much water I lose in a particular leaving. For me, it's somewhere between two and three pounds is generally where I'm at from breathing. But if you go beyond that, I know that I've got some, there's some, there's some challenges. Matt Gallant: Well, you're going to wake up dehydrated if you're dehydrated, you're tired. Right? I mean, you know, you know any top water experts in the planet, he knows, he knows. He knows this as much or more than anyone else. I mean, you know, your brain, everything drops. You're dehydrated. So the answer is the chilly pad and you know, God blessed Tim Ferriss for talking about this on think it was you know, eight or tools of Titans is in that book. Matt Gallant: You gotta love Timmy. Yeah. Tim. Tim delivers the chilly pad is this machine and then they got a new version called the OOLER that they just released. So it's this machine that you put distilled water in it and it cools the water and then pushes the water in this thin layer, a thin mattress that you put underneath your bed sheets. So all that heat that would typically get trapped because again, the room can be 16 degrees Celsius, which this is pretty much what I sleep in. But you're still sweating where your body's touching the mattress, your body's trapping the heat, the chilly pad or the OOLER solves that issue cause it's getting, you know, you can control the temperature, you put it where you're comfortable and it'll prevent the sweat from happening. So now I'm losing like one to one and a half pounds of water while I'm sleeping. So that's a big reason why I'm not as dehydrate. Wade Lightheart: Quick, quick question on the chilling effect and it's power. Cause I, I grew up in as we both did in freezing cold new Brunswick. And when I was a kid, there used to be frost on my bed sheets on certain mornings and, and, and, and I, I can recall that the total label being frozen, going to the bathroom. So extreme cold. Is there an optimal level of cold? Like have they done research on, on how cold is optimal? Like is there a point where there's a benefit and a point where there's a liability? Do we know what that is? Are people doing Wim Hof sleeping? What's the, what's the deal? Matt Gallant: Um yeah, it's between you want your room to be between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius. That's, that's optimal. Cause your head needs to be above one degree core than the rest of your body. Matt Gallant: And it'll, it'll do that. So here's a trick too. Like I go in my room, I turn on my AC about four hours before I go to bed. So I walk in my bedroom, it's just super cold. Cause if, you know, if I go to bed and I turn on my AC at that point, I mean it, you know what I mean? It's gotta be still warm for about another hour. So if you want to fall asleep faster, that's one of the things now and another, does that change? Wade Lightheart: Just a quick question on that, cause that's the thing is important, but you live in Panama, which your base temperature on any given day is in the, in the high 20s or you know, low 25 celcius here with, with, yeah. With high humidity though as well on top of that. So if you're living in a colder climate, does that variance differ for people? Do we know, uh, is there any cause, is it the, is it the absolute temperature that's important? Or is it the variance from kind of your waking state energy? Matt Gallant: It's the absolute temperature. Now the difference is your metabolic rate, you know, and I'll give you an example. So I do a massive reef eat on Sundays, on Sundays. My body temperature is one to one and a half degrees hotter than if I'm fasting. Fasting like my second day of fasting. Like my body's dropped one degree. So second, you know, at that point probably go like more like 17 degrees or 18 degrees and I'll adjust chilly pad versus on spike day it's 16 degrees and I dropped my chilly pad down to like 14 cause otherwise to counteract that thermic effect. Correct. And you know, like men typically run a little hotter. You know, if you have a really fast metabolism, the more food you eat, women tend to run a little cooler. Matt Gallant: So there, there is those adjustments and that's the cool thing with the chilly pad. You know, if you're, if you're a couple you can get a couple versions so you can control her side and your side so you can adjust the temperature accordingly. But as far as what the research has shown, it's 16 to 18 degrees in the room regardless of where you're at is optimal temperature. Got it. One more thing too that I experimented with. It was kind of an accident. So I had these, these ice best, okay. There's these cool fat burning vests. You know, we'd be, we do a whole episode on, you know, we're in fat loss hack, so I was using it for fat loss. And, and you know, this is a well researched thing where you lose body heat with, you know, eater cryo or ice baths, but use these vests that you could wear that have you put them in the freezer and you put them on and it's really cold. Matt Gallant: So you know, you lose some body temperature. So when I use those, and I have even this cryo helmet that you also put in the freezer and it was recommended by our friend Katrine and you put these on. So when I was wearing these my deep sleep went up a pretty significant amount. So when I do that, I don't do it every night just cause you know, it's a little bit of a hassle. But when I do do it, my deep sleep goes up. It's almost like it's priming my body. It's like the, the, the temperature drop before bed would probably kicked start the prolactin cycle again. I don't know the exact science. All I can tell you is that the ring the data said, yeah, it's improving your deep sleep. Wade Lightheart: So, so what a cheap hack would be to take some bags of frozen peas and strap them together, a duct tape and kind of create a little helmet. Would that be the cheap, would that be the cheap, the cheap pack versus the cryo helmet Matt Gallant: And then the cool vest? Yeah, and I've seen what's interesting too, I've seen recently they did a research where like a hot bath also improved. So it seems that you're kind of, and that's more of a relaxation thing. So I think it's hitting different mechanisms like the heat. It's probably relaxing your nervous system. Wade Lightheart: Well also if you're doing a hot bath with magnesium as a big fashion term, we'll get into magnesium in an upcoming podcast. Cause I know we're going to go deep on that. But maybe the most important mineral to mankind is magnesium. So let's, but anyways, I'm diverting of course. Matt Gallant: So yeah, so that's the heat components. Next is the blood flow restriction. So that's really the mattress. Now I, I spent like months doing research on mattresses and the conclusion is you want up, especially if you're a side sleeper, you really want a memory foam because you want even weight distribution. Let me explain. If you have a hard mattress and you're a side sleeper and like let's say you have like wide shoulders or you're a woman wide hips, what's going to happen first of all is you're going to sleep like this, right? Cause I'm not going to sink in enough and it's going to tilt my body. So you're gonna have a spine curve which you don't want. And second of all, it's gonna really trap the blood in my shoulder. So it's a multitude of issues. Plus some people say that Springs are creating other sets of problems because of the waves and it's hitting this praying. Matt Gallant: So anyways, I'm not going to get too deep in the spring problems, but the point is you want to kind of sink in and how perfect with distribution. Now the rule of thumb is if you're, if you're really tall and you're light, then you don't need to sink in that much. If the heavier you are the diff, the softer you want your phone, right? So there's a company called Essentia, Canadian company. They're available in the States as well and they make a memory foam mattress out of a tree sap. Now you know there's other mattress companies like Tempur-Pedic but they're using oil based materials to make the mattress. And there's pretty significant offgassing that happens for petroleum based products is what you're meaning is petroleum base oil base. So for the first six to 12 months there's a pretty significant offgassing that happens, which you know, I wasn't interested in. Matt Gallant: Plus they tend to trap heat a little more. So that's why I went with Essentia. Now send you has all these different grades of softness or you can get a custom made mattress, which I did cost about 10 grand. And what's cool with the custom made is, you know, my wife got her side optimized for her shape and weight and I got mine optimized. So you know, personally, certainly improved and minded as well. So that's the blood flow component. Next is noise. Now you kind of have two options here. Either you go with white noise, which is what I do, which is not the best, but you know, if you're sleeping in a city, for example, I'm in Panama, you know, we'd notice how noisy you can get here. You know, it's the only alternative. So I had the AC running, I have an air purifier running and I had the chilly pad running. Matt Gallant: So it kind of creates this ocean of white noise, you know, cause all three of them, I mean kind of produce level of white noise and there's white noise machines that you can buy as well. And they do a good job of kind of hiding background noise, I think optimal. And when I go back to my parents' house, it's like there's no noise. And I think that makes a big difference. Right? Does ignore cars, there's no nothing, no technology earplugs can help a lot. I think your plugs have another set of benefits where you're hearing your breath and when you hear your breath, it has this calming, hypnotizing, a brain swelling effect. And we know that from meditation, just, you know, classic meditation, just focus on your breath and we have earplugs like you're hearing yourself breathe. And I think that that has a big impact on latency, which is how fast you fall asleep as well as cutting off the noise. Matt Gallant: So when I travel and I don't have all my gadgets, I, I'll, I'll use earplugs. And by the way, as far as the earplugs, my favorite ones, they're like almost like a wax based thing. So you don't put it inside the canal. Yeah, put, it's like a put that you put on top and you just smash it in again. That was another Tim Ferris. Not with a hammer by the way. You just, with your thumb, your thumb, you just kind of press it in and it does the same effect without kind of, sometimes you'll push the wax in or whatever and I don't like those, those old school cheap foam ones. So yeah, those, that's the noise component. Now electromagnetic disturbances is the last one. That your only option if you're living in technology is a fair day cage, which I, which I have one. So there's a website called less emf.com and they sell EMF shielding materials. Matt Gallant: So they have one that looks like a mosquito net. It looks pretty cool. It was a little worried when I bought it. I'm like, is this going to look really bad? But it looks like those, you know, African mosquito nets and it blocks, you know, all the waves from hitting, you know, hitting your body cause they're gonna I'm in a penthouse, you know, if I pull up my phone I think there's like 15 wifi I can find on my phone. So all of these are hitting me, you know, plus all the other waves that you know, self waves. And that said you got 5g coming. So sleeping in a Faraday cage cage, probably a smart move. Now for those of you that live out in the countryside and you can shut all your technology down in your house, I mean that would be the ultimate, you know, or if you're building a house from scratch. And when I, when I do build, you know, my next house or build the house, you, you can actually put all the shielding in the walls so you can actually build like a Faraday cage, you know, in the walls themselves. It's just absorbing all of the waves. Uwhich would probably be the, the ultimate. Wade Lightheart: That's great. I think that's really important of course. If you're living in a city and so for example, I spent a few months last year in Venice, California, which is like just an electromagnetic crazy zone. I think the leveraging technology yeah. Is really, really important. Or if you're, you're in a city, I think also there's just a subjecting to light light and noise is usually pretty significant. So putting in some of these little even little things is, is really key. So one of the things I think is important to reveal to people is what are the key components, cause I know you're a real data component. I think one of your stains is data shapes destinies. And you've literally tested all of the sleep technology. What are you using for data collection? What do you think of the best data collection devices about monitoring your sleep so that you get out of the realm of out of the realm of opinions and theories as you like to say? And where does someone get that or what should they look for for S for these types of things? Matt Gallant: Yeah, so probably the most popular one is the oura ring, which I'm wearing right now. So it's, it's a, you know, three to 400 bucks depending on which model you get. That's the one I started this journey with around four years ago. I bought it as soon as it came out. And you know, it's really, it was really good data. Now, about a year ago I bought was called dream D R E M and we'll get all this stuff in the show notes. Yeah. It's a headband that is measuring the EEG. So I used to wear the zeal. Kendra was a predecessor, like a great product way back in the day, right? Even in a business or whatever. Right. So the dream is kind of new version of it. And the thing is with sleep, like the oura ring, and I think they've done as good a job as you can using what I would call secondary metrics. So the primary metric would sleep is your brain waves, right? That's how you directly measure your, your sleep. Now the oura is using heart rate, heart rate variability, motion, body temperature. So those, what I mean by secondary metrics, the primary metric is your brainwaves. The dream measures all of the secondary plus the primary. So you, you know the oura. As much as I like it, it cannot match the accuracy of a dream in terms of the precise sleep cycles. Here's what I can tell you. The oura. And I, and I've talked to other people that have compared the data and actually look at sleep labs as well. Matt Gallant: The oura ring will actually be accurate at tracking the overall deep and REM. So let's say your overall combination of the two is four hours. Now the, the oral might say, okay, you had two and a half hours of REM and 90 minutes of deep. Okay. Now on the dream is going to also give you a say four hours of the two, but typically the oura is under measuring deep sleep and over measuring rep versus the dream. It will be more accurate on, on the, on the deep sleep. Now the one thing I love about the aura that you don't get from the dream is your readiness score. So your readiness score is basically how fried you are, is giving you a really good, accurate measurement of your nervous system. And you know, it's really powerful. I'll give you an example. Like recently my heart rate went up like 10 to 15 beats. Matt Gallant: My heart rate variability crashed and I knew there was something going on. So, you know, I, I hired Katrine who's one of the people we've worked with for health. And you know, I, I had had an infection, so I had had an issue that I had to deal with. So it's really good for that. It's good for measuring. If you're over-trained, you know, and you know, classically the two measure over training, if your heart rate goes up 10 beats per minute over three days you're over-trained that was the classic tool. But now with their, where the oura ring, we can really see, you know, a lot faster when that happens. And you can adjust your training accordingly. You know, just maybe take it easy. It doesn't mean you don't train, but you might not go do squats and dead lifts and sprints that day. Matt Gallant: You'll, you'll do more of an active recovery type of workout. So those are the tools to, to measure sleep. And you know, all the things that I've done have improved. Now don't forget things compounds. So you might do one thing and improves your deep sleep like 20%. You do another thing that's another 20%. No, you had 44%, you do another 20%. Now you know, you're, you're at 70 ish percent. So keeps compounding. And that's how, you know, an average now went from like zero to 15 minutes of deep to probably like 75 to 90 minutes. And then my REM is usually like two to three hours. So that's what I've found. Now I'd like to shift over and talk about other techs to improve and, and hack your sleep. So the first one is the nano V. The nano V is a machine that you put distilled water in it and hits the water with a very precise signal. Matt Gallant: You breathe that water in and it starts repairing your DNA. Okay. It's improving, scald the protein folding in your body. Now for sleep, what I've noticed is if I use it for like 90 minutes, my HRV will will go up significantly. It'll actually improve it by, you know, 15, 10 to 20 measurements on the HRV, which is pretty significant. So in terms of of restfulness and quality of sleep, it definitely makes an impact. Then I use what's called the Delta sleeper every night. You put this on your carotid artery, you can actually put it on your forehead as well, and it's sending the Delta pulse for like 20 minutes and it shuts off. So in terms of falling asleep or shifting you into Delta faster, it's a great little, you know, one else thing. And if you wake up during the night, you just hit the button and then you'll fall asleep faster. Matt Gallant: So I'm a big fan of the Delta sleeper. The next one is the earth pulse. So it's another PEMF device and you put these under your bed and you can control the, the frequency. So you gotta be careful. This thing is really potent, is very powerful. You know, when I first got it, like has like four built in programs and a level one program one and two completely wreck my sleep program. Three and four were great. So four is like just pure Delta and you know, three kind of brings you down and brings you back up and you gotta you know, you gotta control, you can control the, the strength of it, you know, for me, you know, I'm kind of a maximalist in nature and extremists. I started really high, but I found that, you know, dropping it to like 30 to 50% work better than like 80 to a hundred are going. Matt Gallant: It's a really strong, it creates a pretty strong field. So I like that. The vice, it's a good one. Then. what else do I use tech wise? That's pretty much it on the tech side. We can shift over to supplements unless you have any other thoughts. Let's, let's talk about supplements because I think you've kind of cracked the code on some powerful integrations around that. Okay. So first, you know, it's all about controlling brainwaves and your transmitters for the most part. So lavender oil pills are really powerful to increase alpha. So lavender oil and L-Theanine have been scientifically shown to increase alpha, which means that you're going to slow your brain waves down for those and listen to our other podcasts that when I just did around your nervous system. We talk a lot about this stuff and the issue is a lot of people are kind of stuck in beta and for the people that had a hard time falling asleep, that's what's going on. Your brain is just stuck in beta, which is a high fast brain wave and then it takes you a long time to shift it down. Wade Lightheart: For people are listening. That's like if you're the type of person that can't shut the brain off at night, the thoughts are still into this and that and the other thing, chances are that means you're, you're in a, in a, in a high beta state. Matt Gallant: Yeah. Your brain is kind of stuck there. Yeah. It's kind of like the beach ball of death that comes up on your computer just keeps spinning and spinning and you know, you can't get that, you know, that conversation in your head or that, that deadline that you have or that that conversation or relationship issue. Matt Gallant: Now you can hack that with meditation. I mean, which is a great pre bed ritual is you know, meditate for like 15-20 minutes, which slows your brain waves down. Then you go to bed. So that, that's a really good, good tip. But as far as supplements go, the lavender oil and the L-Theanine will both hack that and L-Theanine is probably one of my favorite supplements for sleep dosage wise. I would start at 200 milligrams and if, you know, I'll go up to like 600 sometimes. If I want a plane, I'll tell you about my plane stack. Right now it's 800 milligrams of L-Theanine and about 50 to a hundred milligrams of CBD. If it's legal where I am, I'll pass out like, you know, and you can dose a little bit of melatonin with that. I'll talk about melts on a second cause I'm not a huge fan of melatonin but that, you know, and I don't sleep easily on planes. Matt Gallant: I usually just pass out with that dose. Now typically though, it's more like two to 400 milligrams of both evening and around one or two Lavela oils. So if you're GABA deficient, GABA supplementation can be powerful. You can use, you know, GABA doesn't absorb that well, but it's an option. There is a Philippian route which also hits the GABA pathways. That is another option. And you know, I want to try injectable GABA so I'm, I'm the stream and the extreme optimizer here at BiOptimizers and I haven't tried it yet, but it is on my agenda to, to experiment with actually injecting GABA straight in. Cause when you take it orally, the absorption rate is really low. Wade Lightheart: I think for people just as a commentary,uif you're a coffee drinker, caffeine drinker, I think theming is a great, you're probably going to get even more benefits. It seems to be really works counter counter counter balances. The caffeine like L-Theanine is present in a lot of teas and not so much things like coffees or some of the more darker caffeinated and I'm a big tea fan. I'm going to get a topic about that one day. Umhe other thing is I think holy basil, if you're GABA deficient the L-Theanine, holy basil. Umhe Athenian holy basil combo is, is great to, to throw in there with, with your CBD. And a lot of people get a lot of power out of that. Matt Gallant: Yeah. yeah, I have not tried to obey as well. I'll, I'll add that to my experimentalists. Now. CBD works well the, for most people will disrupt your sleep. So, you know, personally Wade Lightheart: It'll make you dopey in a lot of cases, but not improve your sleep. And there's a difference there. It's kind of like if you're, and that, I think that's a difference between pharmaceutical sleeping, pharmaceutically enhanced sleeping, which you pass out and go out. But the quality of that sleep is often countering. And of course we w in on the extreme cases, I think it's Roseanne Barr, and when she kind of went on that crazy street, she was on a heavy tranquilizer called Ambien, which a lot of people use for sleeping, which has all sorts of serious negative consequences about what happens when you don't sleep properly. So I think that's the difference between chemicalized nation asleep, which is just looking at the sleep as an overall result as opposed to optimization sleep, which is what you're into by using elements that are natural and indigenous to our bodies and using those in a constructive optimized way. Matt Gallant: Yeah. Now I'm really excited about CBG and CBN. I actually ordered some, and this should be arriving any day cause for sleep. They're supposed to be even way more effective than CBD. So you know, we'll, we'll talk about in a future podcast. Haven't tried it, read the research. I'm excited we're come back. Some other things ashwagandha, a gram of that can work really well. One to two grams of reishi can work really well, but one of my favorites and you know, we are really excited and pumped to be releasing this product is two to four caps of Magnesium Breakthrough. So one to two grams of a blend of magnesium. So like the glycinate is a great one to help trigger sleep and improve sleep. The L-Threonate will actually be really good for your brain. So we have this seven magnesium blend that releasing very, very soon in the next couple of weeks. And you know, we've been experimenting with it. So two to four caps of that should move the needle on your sleep. Wade Lightheart: Especially well, especially if you're deficient. So you know, it's the most common mineral deficiency in the world and magnesium's responsible for 350 different known chemical reactions and it's one of the things that they put Epson salts for example, or actually magnesium salts in are used to calm and tone and magnesium is essential for relaxing muscle tissue both stride at muscle and smooth muscle has a very powerful effect. And if you're deficient in it and almost every North American is because it's a ratio between calcium and magnesium, magnesium is the control on a two to one ratio. You have two parts, calcium, one part magnesium. And we have a very high calcium, a component in her diet. And it's interesting, it's like when you have high calcium in your diet, it actually creates bone loss. It creates muscle cramping. It creates dis balances in the chemical processes. Wade Lightheart: And I've seen literally dozens and dozens of my clients who had trouble sleeping. We just add magnesium to their diet and that's it. All of a sudden, or people who suffer from cramping. And that's other big issues, particularly people get older in combination with dehydration. They cramp at night time. They wake up, they're very stiff because they're not only dehydrated but their D, magnesium and magnesium. And I used to use the word, so you want to not just, you don't want to be de magged, you want to be defragged. So the bottom line is, is a magnesium is super, super powerful for people. It's one of the reasons we've done so much research on. I mean, there's like 30 different types of magnesiums. We found the seven best, which we'll talk about in another podcast as you said. So I carry on with this Matt Gallant: Yes, we're ready. We're here the last 90 seconds. I'm gonna go rapid fire. There's a great tea called Dream Tea from a company called Anima Mundi. It's a blend of herbs, really big fan of that. Put your pajamas on. Ah, let me talk about melatonin really fast. Melatonin is a hormone folks like to me, I look at melatonin as seriously as I do testosterone, you know, and like in Canada for an example, like you can't, you can't buy that. And, and that's true for a lot of countries. So melatonin, I only use it when I travel. If I want to reset my circadian rhythm, that's the only time. And when you do you want to microdose like people will wreck their melatonin production by just going to crazy dosages. And what we found is that microdosing melatonin, if you go to use melatonin, like 0.3 milligrams is all you need is kinda like a little kickstart. Matt Gallant: And again, I'm not a fan of it. I only use it when I travel or when I want to reset my circadian rhythm. Otherwise I strongly recommend you stay away from it. Next thing is five HTP that hits the serotonin pathway that can have a positive impact on sleep. Some people. And the last thing I will share is a human growth hormone product or secretagogue you want to use before sleep. I have not experimented with these yet, but a lot of people report much improved deep sleep. I am planning on experimenting with a growth hormone, secretagogue very soon. Wade and I at BiOptimizers several years ago we did have a growth hormone releasing supplement. And I mean the, the dream, like it was affecting sleep. I didn't have the tools to measure it back then. But man, the visibility boost is a great product. It's insane. They shut the labs down. Unfortunately we couldn't find the sources of the, of the ingredients, so we had to stop it. But that, that was powerful. It was very interesting, very interesting product. So anyways, so I think that summarizes all the sleep things and again, you know, he, brain physiology is very unique and you need to experiment and find what works for you. And that's where the data comes in with the dream or the aura. So you know, you've got to try things one at a time and see what works. Wade Lightheart: So what we're going to do, folks is we're going to actually put this all together in a little book for you at the BiOptimizers sleep optimization handbook, which will be put together with all of these components, these hacks, we will be upgrading it, but you're going to be able to get a copy of that in the very near future. If we don't have it right here on the show notes, you'll be able to go to the BiOptimizers site. Check that out, download it as part of your biological optimization program. I want to thank you for joining us. Check out the show notes. Come back to the podcast, hit your comments, hit the likes. We love to hear that it helps us get the message out about biological optimization. I want to thank our guest today, the radical edge biological optimization maximization experimenter himself, fresh in the labs and Panama, Matty G. Thanks for being here and I'm delighted that you're coming onto the show more often because you're very knowledgeable in a course. A, if it's bleeding and it's the edge, you're there Matt Gallant: Awesome. A great, great fun. We'll be back soon talking about some more great stuff. So have a great day. Everybody.

Surely you can’t just ask for what you want? Kevin begs to differ. If you’ve been struggling to find a way to market your books on a shoestring or no-string budget, you’ll want to tune in to this episode for some first-step author marketing advice.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE BELOWTHIS WEEK'S NEWS:Introducing Scribd Snapshots: A New Way to Discover The Best Nonfiction Books — Scribd Blog - https://blog.scribd.com/home/introducing-scribd-snapshots-a-new-way-to-discover-the-best-nonfiction-booksAAP calls for closer regulation of Amazon and Google - https://www.thebookseller.com/news/aap-calls-closer-regulation-amazon-and-google-1027576START AN ACORNS ACCOUNT AND GET FREE MONEY!VISIT KEVINTUMLINSON.COM/ACORNSDID I MENTION?Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-teesNew to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book DescriptionPick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller at https://kevintumlinson.com/books--THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerWordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.comSupport this show: Subscribe and share!Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcastPick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/booksTRANSCRIPTWANT TO HELP IMPROVE THESE TRANSCRIPTS? REACH OUTKevin Tumlinson: 00:00 Hey slingers, this is another week of the Wordslinger Podcast. And one you're not gonna want to miss. Stick around and find I, you can get what you want just by asking for it. Hey, you looking for a jump on your own India author career. Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson: 00:14 Kind of confused about where to start. I got the place for you. Check out draft two digital. That's where you're going to be able to convert your manuscript, distributed worldwide, online, and get help. The hallway from the best author support there is. Trust me on this one. So go check out drafted digital@drafteddigital.com slash word slinger.Announcer: 00:37 It's the Wordslinger Podcast where story matters. Build your brand, write your book, redefine who you are. It's all about the story here. What's yours? Now here's the guy who invented pants, optional Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordslinger.Kevin Tumlinson: 01:02 Well, I am Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordsligner. Uh, youKevin Tumlinson: 01:05 are whoever you are the person listening to this broadcast. Uh, so I'm, uh, I'm in the middle, so you may have noticed I didn't, uh, do an episode last week. Um, and I gotta tell Ya, it's, it's probably going to be tough to get episodes out over the next couple of months. I got, I got conferences coming up August. I, I, I literally have a conference every week of August. Um, and, uh, lots, a lot of travel. It's a lot of trying to work everything out. I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna do my absolute best to, uh, to get you at least one episode a week in there. It might just be a bunch of Solo slinger episodes. Um, and I'm sorry to the folks who I have interviewed that I'm trying to, I'm trying to get through that bad catalog as fast as possible, and I got more interviews coming up.Kevin Tumlinson: 01:57 So, uh, but you know, this is crunch time, uh, for me in this, in this business with, um, basically it's conference season. So, um, I'm gonna do my best though, and I'm looking out for you. Uh, and speaking of that, uh, you know, we've done a couple of webinars now or while we've done one webinar so far for a draft to digital, the d to do d to d a You a as we call it, ask us anything. Uh, the first one went really well and we set up a bunch of, uh, author consultations. Now, unfortunately, I didn't check a box, uh, that needed to be checked in order to evenly distribute the consultations. So for two weeks, two, three weeks now I have, um, I've basically had back to back consultations with authors with no gap between, uh, and no lunch breaks and none of that.Kevin Tumlinson: 02:49 So it's been a very rough couple of weeks. Uh, plus we've had some other, I've had some other things going on here, like a whole family thing happened. Um, so it's been challenging to get everything done and that includes getting the Wordslinger Podcast recorded. Um, but I'm here, I'm back at least today. Um, but one of the things that's come up in the author consultations that I thought would make a great topic, uh, it's a very basic marketing technique or marketing, um, strategy that I think gets overlooked all the time. Now, everyone I talked to, uh, asks marketing questions, they're always very focused on, you know, Facebook ads, uh, Amazon Ams ads, that sort of thing. You know, how do I handle I up my game and get people to buy my book wide or, you know, uh, just discover me and get on my mailing list. And the one thing that I've discovered that, that hardly anyone does is just ask for what they want.Kevin Tumlinson: 03:53 So if you have a mailing list, now, a lot of the VA, a lot of the authors I've talked to at all, you know, they only have like maybe a hundred people, some only have like 20 people on their list. Uh, some have 1500. It is, it's, it doesn't really matter what the size of the list is. But one of the things you should be doing regularly is engaging that readership with personable emails, which we've talked about in the past. When you want to become a human being to these people, you don't have to share personal, private details of your life, but you want to, uh, frame yourself as someone that they can, that they might enjoy knowing. You know, as someone you're having a conversation with. Um, and in these emails you should periodically ask them to share the, the links to get your free book or short story or whatever you're using to get people on your mailing list.Kevin Tumlinson: 04:47 Um, if you're not offering something, some top of funnel offer or incentive for authors to get on your mailing list, you need to come up with something. Um, I just talked to an author just now. I won't, I won't reveal who she was. I, she's, she's a little shy, but uh, she has a free novella. I have no a prequel. It wasn't an Avella cause it was like 75,000 words. So it was a full on book. She'll give that book away for free. She sells it, but she also gives it away for free. If you get on her mailing list a, but she created this a bonus content that was a, uh, sort of a like almost like, uh, an espionage case study kind of thing. Um, and uh, she offered that as a sort of, I'm sorry to her list for not having emailed him for a bit.Kevin Tumlinson: 05:35 And I, I told her to, to package that and offer that as an incentive for people to just get on the list in the first place. That's a great resource. So if you, if you could pull together a little things like that, just content people can't get anywhere else. Exclusive content for being on your mailing list that is attractive to a lot of readers. And, uh, it's also going to pull in the kind of readers that you want, the readers who are interested in this, this topic that you cover. You know, whatever your genre happens to be, um, who are willing to take an action, uh, which makes them much more likely to take the action of buying a book when you have one to promote to them. Now, um, email your list regularly, once a month at least. Um, and tell them it's perfectly okay with you if they share the links to get the free downloads.Kevin Tumlinson: 06:33 Say, ah, look, I am trying to reach as many readers as possible. You know, this is my dream. You can help me achieve my dream. If you share this link with everyone you know, everyone you think would be interested in reading, um, my kind of books and uh, and just do that every now and then. This is a, this should become a, a regular part of your author diet. Uh, you are going to go out and ask your readership and your platform to share, um, ways to get on your mailing list. The mailing list is where the money's at. It always will be. I'm convinced of this. It always has been for sure. So you want to nurture the mailing list before you try anything else. If you're, if you want to advertise and you're not making a lot of sales, I would advise you to advertise Facebook ads or otherwise.Kevin Tumlinson: 07:30 Um, well the focus on growing your mailing list rather than focusing on sales. Now Amazon's a little different. Uh, ams, the, you know, it's all internal. Um, I have my own opinions about Amazon ads, um, and uh, sort of the toll to play an idea. But um, you can do the same thing on Amazon ads. You can have a book that is, uh, geared towards, you know, for example, this author is pretty cool. This book is actually geared towards enticing people to get interested in the rest of her series. Um, I would heavily laden that with, um, you know, calls to action to get on her mailing list. Definitely a CTA to read through in the next book in the series. Definitely want that. But I would make sure that the call to action to get on the mailing list is front and center and then the Freebie that they get at that point should be like that bonus material or something that they can't get anywhere else.Kevin Tumlinson: 08:30 Cause what you don't want is for the author or for the readers to feel cheated to find out that they could have gotten this book. They just spent, you know, a couple of bucks on for free if they had gotten on your mailing list. So instead you're advertising this prequel or the first book in your series or whatever. Uh, definitely trying to promote, read through, but also trying, pushing, uh, to get people on your mailing list. Once they're on your mailing list, you get a whole lot of other options. Uh, you nurture that list in, you'll go far. So, um, so that is part of this ask. Um, you should also ask, asking is always this to me, it's a magical tool. Ask your readers how things are going, how are the, how, how are you liking the books? Take that feedback and learn from it.Kevin Tumlinson: 09:28 So if someone says to you, you know, I like the books, but there's a lot of typos. All right, well there's an area to focus on. You got to get better at editing. I like your books with the covers stink or I like your books. I really love the covers. You might get some positive feedback out of this, which is always good and always motivational. Um, and then, uh, ask you can ask them what you know for ideas. You can say, I'm trying to get more people to uh, to check out my books at the library. Right? Does anyone know any librarians I can talk to? Does anyone know any programs I can be involved in? Um, and you may be able to find this stuff with a Google search, but if you find this stuff through the people you're engaging with it, there's a bond that happens.Kevin Tumlinson: 10:17 So don't be afraid to ask your platform, um, to help you out and frame it that way. You can say, now you're, you should always focus on trying to give more than you get when it comes to your platform. And I'm using platform to encompass emails, social media conferences, you attend, whatever. But uh, you want to try to give more than you receive, right? So give out some free bonus stuff. Give out, you know, make sure you are engaging your, your email list with, uh, tales from wherever. If you're not personally comfortable sharing personal information, then share things about what you're reading, share trips that you're taking chair or not. You don't have to give people insight information about you're going to be out of town during such and such date. But you can come back and share photos, share history that you've learned. If you're a romance writer, share a, you know, funny romantic comedies that you've watched.Kevin Tumlinson: 11:17 Um, you want to share, share, share. You want to get these people to start thinking of you as a friend that they are willing to help. And then you periodically a, asked them to share with as many people as they can. Your link to get a download or whatever. Or, um, you're linked to by a renew, a preorder or buy a new release or something along those lines. And, and be, um, you asked them to buy this, softens that ask, ah, it's not a hard sell if you spent three months prepping to make it right or to even ask for it. Um, so there's an underlying philosophy here. It's something that it's part of, it's one of my sort of principles, right? That, um, you never get anything you'd [inaudible] you're going to, everything you get you have to ask for in one way or another, right?Kevin Tumlinson: 12:16 Even if you didn't intend to ask for it. So the phrase my grandfather used to use is, I never got to think, I didn't ask for, even if it was a punch in the mouth, which I always took to mean, you know, you, you get, you ask for everything you get out of life in one way or another, your reap what you sell, right? If you got punched in the mouth, you probably set that up somehow, even if you didn't sing or do anything to deserve it. You put yourself in these scenario somehow. Right? Um, and maybe that's not true. Maybe someone just randomly ran up and clocked you in the jaw. It, it's been known to happen. Uh, this is not victim blaming. This is personal responsibility, right? This is you deciding you're empowered rather than deciding everything has to happen to you. You, you are deciding, I am make things happen. When you think like that and you're willing to ask for what you want, you increase the odds of getting it.Speaker 4: 13:15 Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson: 13:15 So you may not get it every time, right? You may not actually get what you asked for. You may ask for something and you don't get exactly what you asked for. Uh, but maybe it comes close or maybe it goes off in a different direction and you decide you didn't want that anyway. You know, maybe you could change your mind, but getting used to and getting comfortable with asking, uh, will carry you much further. This is part of a whole bootstrapping idea by the way, that you can use this to promote yourself without having spend money. So that right there should make your ears perk up. So, uh,Speaker 4: 13:56 okay.Kevin Tumlinson: 13:56 There's a couple of concepts at play here and we talk about this often, but your first priority should be to build up your platform as much as possible. Your platform can be defined as, as your reach to a willing audience that that has a higher, that has higher odds of actually going out and purchasing your books. That's going to be your platform. Your mailing list is the biggest component of that platform. The more people you can get on your mailing list, who are sympathetic to you, who are vetted, uh, the better. So your goal there is you want to build a mailing list of people who, uh, who like the type of thing you write and are willing to part with money for it.Speaker 4: 14:38 Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson: 14:38 Which, you know, seems pretty basic and no brainer. And yet nobody, nobody, I'm not going to say that. A lot of authors don't think about it and they don't do what it takes to make happen. Um, so this is all kind of a mindset thing. I'll be honest, it's, it's all, it's all kind of go out and own your author career, right. Be empowered and empowered. People ask for what they want. The idea is to ask, ask, ask and play the numbers game increase your odds every time you ask your odds go up. Right? So that's what marketing is. Marketing is all about increasing the odds that the right person will find your book at the right time and make a purchase. That's what marketing is. Some people spend money to increase those odds. Some people don't. Some people do a mix of both. Um, I do a mix of both.Kevin Tumlinson: 15:37 Uh, but for the largest portion of my career I had, I only did free promotion stuff cause I only had $0 million to spin. So it's not impossible to market your work without money. It's not impossible at all. You, you don't need a budget to market. Uh, but money is uh, in a nice, interesting little reciprocal relationship with time. You are either going to spend time or you are going to spend money. Money is a shortcut. Money means you don't have to spend as much time and you can actually amplify your time with money. But that doesn't make it the end all be all of my marketing resources. That would be, um, your creativity. You know, because even if you have a budget, let's say that you've got $1,000 extra a month, you know, you sell cans or you or blood or, or you have a book income of thousand dollars or you, um, mow lawns on top of your regular job or something, right?Kevin Tumlinson: 16:40 You've just, somehow each month you've cobbled together an extra thousand a month that you can throw into an advertising or rather a PR I, um, marketing budget, I don't want to call it an advertising budget, cause advertising isn't always the right answer. Advertising can be the right answer, but it comes down to how are you going to spend that thousand dollars? What, how do you, how can you most efficiently spend that thousand dollars? And let's just say it's not $1,000. So let's say the best you're able to do each month is an extra hundred dollars. How do you spend it? Well, you know, you can't go do, um, in an elaborate Facebook ad campaign for 100 bucks a month. You can run Facebook ads for 100 bucks a month and you might even see some traction, but it, it, you need to assess, um, how best to apply those funds. If Facebook advertising is going to be the way to go, chances are you're going to need to figure out, um, the best way to funnel traffic from those ads into something that you can use.Kevin Tumlinson: 17:44 I would argue that at that point, the lower your budget, uh, the important it is to focus entirely on your mailing list. And I think that's just, that's just marketing life right there. In fact, with us, we, let's just engrave that in stone. The lower your budget, the more important it is to focus entirely on growing your mailing list rather than on direct sales. Because you can sell to that list over time. Once you have those people captured, you don't have to spend any more money to, to engage with them necessarily. I mean there are, there is some overhead in, you know, the email management systems, lots of tools out there to explore, to help keep the cost down. But in general, if you have a mailing list, you're not going to spend a ton of money, uh, to be able to remain in contact with them.Kevin Tumlinson: 18:38 Um, but you control that list, you control that group. I mean, if it came down to it, I don't advise this, but you could export that list and import it into a special Gmail account and email those people on blind. See, you know, blind copy, right? There's always going to be a way, I'm not always an advisable way, but at least there is a way, right? So, um, that's the, that's our new one of our new commandments. Well, maybe one day, I should write all these down actually, but that's one of our new commandments. This is lower your budget. The more your focus should be on building your mailing list, uh, and asking that list to help promote you to others is how you grow that list beyond having you spend money, right? So if you can only spend 100 bucks a month and you're focusing all, all of it on getting a couple of people on your mailing list here and there, then I'm asking them to go off and be advocates on your behalf.Kevin Tumlinson: 19:39 It's, that's the fastest way to grow without a bunch of overhead. It's a little bit like network marketing that I don't know if anybody in the audience has ever had this experience. I got approached by tons of people who did network marketing, Amway and things like that. I'm not saying I'm not going to pass any judgments on this. Uh, this practice. There are a lot of millionaires out there who built their millions through network marketing. So Kudos to you. Um, it was never quite my bag. However, the principle of it is pretty sound from a marketing perspective. Uh, I just think we take a different, more heartfelt approach than going out and blind recruiting, you know, hundreds of people to do our bidding and be in our, our downline or whatever they call it. Um, and here's how that would work. So you get, you get your readers to download your Freebie, you get on your mailing list and, and maybe they've even gone off and bought a book or two from you.Kevin Tumlinson: 20:43 And if you only have one book, you know, maybe they've bought your book, now you've, uh, you've enticed them to get on your mailing list, you've somewhat vetted them. And if you asked them to go off and share with just, you know, could you just go share with, say, I would always say everyone, you know, but even if it's just two people, if you could just get two people to sign up and get this Freebie, think of two people you like who might like it and enjoy this book or this bonus content or this short story and tell them, give them this link. You can share this email with them. And that's really when you want your emails to be on point, by the way. You want your emails to be, um, focused on, uh, being personable, engaging, asking questions, open loops. We call it, you want people to respond, right?Kevin Tumlinson: 21:36 Uh, but if you, I'm telling you, as you get people on your mailing list, people are, are really kind of wonderful if you ask for help and you frame it that way. Hey, I need your help. Okay, I need a favor. If that favor doesn't cost them any money, then there's a bigger chance that they're going to go ahead and do it. Uh, there's a book and I'm gonna pop over into a web browser real quick and try to remember what the, I know that the title is influence. Um, but I can't remember the author's name right now, so let me look that up. But you want to, you want to get your hands on this book, uh, influence science and practice. Is that it? No, the psychology of persuasion influence the psychology of persuasion. Uh, this is a written by Robert B and I think it's chill, chill, chill.Kevin Tumlinson: 22:31 Deany CIA, l. D. I. N I, um, pick up this book. Read this book, get it on any book. Get it on audible. Uh, wherever you like to, uh, consume your books. Uh, this is a, this is a good one. This is this, there are a lot of ideas in here that are very applicable to authors. One of the ideas was, um, people respond to and ask if you give them a reason, if you say, because, right? So, uh, I think, and I'm, I'm, I may butcher this, this example. So if you read the book and I'm completely off base, forgive me, it's been a bit, um, but they did a test with, um, people in line to use a copier and someone comes along and says, do you mind? Could I get, could I cut in front of you and use the, the copier because I have 10,000 copies to make or I have 10 copies to make.Kevin Tumlinson: 23:30 That's probably closer to what they actually said. Um, so what they found was when people did this and they gave a reason, no matter what that reason was, it, it increased the odds that the person would let them cut. So when you say to someone, um, would you mind sharing this email with everyone? You know, because I'm trying to build up my readership and it would really help me out. Okay. So now they get to be a hero. You're asking them to help you fulfill your dreams. I would even frame it that way if you wanted. I have a dream of being an author. This is the only thing I really want to do with my life. I love writing. I love, I'm so happy that you enjoy my books. Would you help me find new readers by sharing this with as many people as you can think of?Kevin Tumlinson: 24:24 Thank you so much. I'm so very grateful. And so now you're, you're coming to them hat in hand asking them to help you. You've got to get past the ego. But on this, by the way, don't think of this as begging or, or, or anything like that. Asking for charity. Uh, these people agreed to get on your mailing list because they were interested in what you had to say. They're interested in your book. They were interested in your Freebie. They voluntarily got on this list. You asking them to help grow. That list is not charity. It's just to, you know, two people interacting. We do this. The social contract allows us to do this all the time in our personal relationships. Stop thinking of your list as being a bunch of customers and start thinking of them as a bunch of friends of yours and your life is going to change for the better. I promise you start treating everybody on that list like, like you are so thrilled that they're there because you should be everyone on that list. They're more than just numbers. They're more than just the dollars. They represent their living, breathing human beings who care about you and showed it by getting on your list. Nelson, are there deadbeats on lists? Yes. Are there people who aren't going to respond positively no matter what you say or do? Yes. They're not your audience.Kevin Tumlinson: 25:49 They're welcome to leave that list. You have a special club that, uh, that this group belongs to and you want to treat them like that and remind them of it all the time. You are a, you are in and the exclusive, a company of, of wonderful human beings. And, uh, I am so happy you're here. I am your guide in this, in this, uh, community. Uh, but I, you know, I am a also a servant and if you could help me by spreading this around, you would make my dreams come true. People will respond very positively. Um, and the same thing can happen outside of your mailing list. It can happen on your social media, social media circles. But an interesting thing happens on social media. Uh, there's a kind of, uh, it's a little bit like high school. Like if you to say to your friends in high school, I could really use help in math.Kevin Tumlinson: 26:48 Uh, if you went to your friends individually and said that they, they would help you. But if you said that to your group of friends who are all equally trying to impress each other and build their own audiences and, or cliques, uh, you know, and promote themselves at the same time, chances are instead of being helpful and kind, they're going to be cruel and, and hurtful. They're going to make jokes, they're going to make light of it. Or even if they don't go to that extreme [inaudible] sorry about that. Hold on and to clear my throat. Um, even if they don't go to that extreme, they may just rib you and make fun of you a little out of kindness, you know, out of love, quote unquote. Um, just because a, they don't want to openly commit to anything cause they may get approached by others to do it or whatever. So it's the fact that they can be seen when you ask them. I think so you want to ask them more privately in, in an email newsletter is private. It feels like they're getting an email directly from you. So, uh, you can still ask for this stuff with social media and you'll oftentimes you will, you will get some help. But in my experience, it's much better to, uh, to approach your list. One second.Kevin Tumlinson: 28:11 I absolutely hate putting little gaps in there, but when my throat dries out and what can I do, I could edit, not going to do it. Um, anyway, we're coming up on time. Uh, just a couple minutes left. I, uh, I hope that this has been useful to you. Um, this is how I approach everything. And honestly, it's, it's worked so well for me. I, I don't spend much in advertising. Now. I have some promotions coming up that I do. I have spent money on. I have a $2,500 promotion coming up. Um, you know, August. Uh, I spend money on ads, you know, from time to time, not, not a lot, but then, you know, I spend money on BookBub's and I spend money on, uh, the various different, uh, uh, promotion tools. Um, and I, but I do it sort of sparingly and I do it experimentally.Kevin Tumlinson: 29:09 And, uh, I think I can say without a doubt that I get more traction out of, uh, out of this, this type of thing out of asking the more organic way of doing this. And it's more stable. It grows better over time. It does take more time. So don't, don't think this is an overnight kind of thing. Uh, but you can spend tons of money on ads and never see the needle move for sales. I would spend that money. I'd focus. If I were you and I did this, I would focus entirely on a, I'd focus a hundred percent of my efforts on building my list up and then only promoting to my list. Cause if you can get 50,000 people on your list, you know, and they all buy a book, that's great.Kevin Tumlinson: 30:00 So anyway, uh, that's going to do it for this week. I hope you got something out of it. I hope I'm able to give you an episode Friday, but just in case I'm not a, just be aware I'm doing conference stuff. So, uh, reach out if you want to. God bless and I'll see you next time. Hey, how are you doing on money? I know it's a touchy subject, but, uh, I got some that may help you out. See, I'm using an app called acorns and it helps me manage some investing. Uh, put some money back, get a little interest. It's Kinda nice to watch my money grow. So I want to share that with you. Go to kevintumlinson.com/acorns and you'll get some free money. See you there.

Åsa Poeche is a metaphysicist, witch, and shamanic practitioner. She’s an intuitive who loves mentoring people to help them achieve their goals or to help them get through struggles in life. She believes that a solid spiritual practice can very much be integrated with your personal and professional life. She uses her client’s own belief system to form the basis of the work while using her own tools, ritual and experiences to supplement. She agreed to let me record and share our first investigatory session together regarding the Love Curse I talked about in an earlier episode. Listen to Love Curse: Part 1 GUEST LINKS - ÅSA POECHE asapoeche.com HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Asa: Okay, so I'm just going to go through at a high level with you what's happened, so for everyone to know what's going on. I received a recording from you about a week ago, almost exactly a week ago, and I listened to that the same day. So I took some notes and it's given me a basic idea of what's going on. In a normal session, I would probably have a really small outline of what the client's problem is and we agree to have a session. And we sit and we talk through the whole thing in one conversation. And as we talk through the whole thing in that conversation, I start getting an idea of what needs to happen in the session. And then maybe what we need to do going forward for both myself and the client. In this session though, like I said, I've listened to all of your story and it's so much detail in there. When I sat and listened to it, I took a lot of notes, and a lot of the notes that I take are about phrases that you're using, the way you're talking about things, probably a little bit about the emotion that's in there too but mostly the phrases because, I know you understand this quite well, if I want to talk to you about something, I don't want to introduce a different way of talking about it because then we have to do the translation thing. So if I can use words that you're using already, that's much easier for me to get you to understand what we're talking about, if I want to help you work through something, right? So a lot of notes on that and a lot on how you structured this and how this panned out in the last 28 years. So a bit of a timeline. And then when I did that, we agreed afterwards to do this session and have this discussion today. So you're coming in a little bit more blind than I am to be honest, I think. Because I have the backstory. Have you got any questions so far? Slade: No. No, I'm loving it. Let me just tell you this. I want to put this out there for you. I stress feedback so much when I am working with intuitives, and I encourage people who are learning to get a lot of that kind of feedback and everything. But I just have to say, I'm really terrible at giving emotional responses in the moment and so, I don't know that I won't, but I can see me just processing and taking a lot of stuff in. So my being quiet sometimes is process. You may get another episode out of me where I'm like, "Okay, now I've simmered on all this." And I also really want to hear what you have to say about it. And I want to preface this, I think I did a pretty good job when I recorded... No I didn't... Did I? I talked about the fact that you had answered this question in the community and I wanted, I didn't want to lock us into necessarily doing the session and releasing all that, so I left it a little light. But the reality is, when I saw your response, it hit me like it was a revelation. I thought, oh shit, you know, in a good way and in a bad way simultaneously. But I knew, well wait a minute, what would she have to say about my story? Asa: And this is really interesting for me. When you said that, I went, ohh! Because I remember answering that question and it was a shamanism question. It was in a shaminism thread I think or something, and I put that witch thing in. I hit the button and I'm going, okay, stay on topic, because now you've involved the witch thing too and that was shamanism. I was actually mad at myself because, I thought, oh I'm just leaving it because it's stupid. Right? And then all of a sudden you come and say something to me and I'm like, ohmygod, that's why I went witch curse thing because it was almost like that was for you. Slade: Yes! Asa: And I thought, okay. And it's interesting how that happens because like I said, I'm in the shaminism space most the time in Shift Your Spirits but I am probably more of a witch than a shaman to be honest with you. But I try to kind of stay in that kind of field mostly in there because there are so many other witches in there and we don't want to have too many differing opinions arguing with each other either. But yeah, that was very interesting from my own view. What you were saying just then about how you won't have any emotional responses. Normally when I start and I agree to do a session with someone, I'll start getting pictures and I've got power animals coming in and it's like I'm doing okay. So this week I've had nothing, and I'm like, uh.. okay. There's no messages, there's no kind of imagery, nothing. So it's very, very quiet. There's no noise and I'm going, okay so what I'm dealing with is someone then who will process it probably after. And then also, you probably have a lot of background work done already. So really I don't have to get a picture to help you too much with this one. That's already sitting in there and it's kind of ready to go I think. This morning, actually, I was just waking up. That's the only time when I started getting some imagery coming in and I was ready to go now. And that would've been a couple of hours before. That was about 7:00 in the morning or so. So it was very interesting for me in that sense and I was very, very focused, and that makes sense with you. There's not a lot of going off on a tangent. This is what we're here for today and this is what we're dealing with. With a lot of clients, I have problems kind of saying, "We're focusing on this now. Don't worry about the chicken in the corner there. Look at this one here." It's been an interesting week in that sense. It's been very, very quiet and it's fine. And that's a good thing for me as well. One of the other things that we've really got working for us in this session too is we share a common language in witchcraft. So I try to speak to a language the client understands like I said. So if I'm treating someone whose got a Christian worldview, I will probably use that terminology because it just helps, you know? What I'm going to do - I'm going to describe this story like I got it, very briefly, and you used the witchcraft stuff. We talk about cursing and stuff and spells. You also had some psychology in there, so Maslow's hierarchy. I love it actually because it's quite interesting. But I'm also going to include some shaminism stuff because if we do go to air with this one, a lot of people are interested in this as well, so I'm just gonna give that perspective as well. You're okay with all of that? Slade: Yeah. I mean, the one thing that we have in common, that all the people that are attracted to our tribe, is the eclecticism. It's like we all just have all this stuff and I think that the diversity is what we have in common, which, it's a weird contradiction. I'm actually the one person who loves it if you mix metaphors and bring in a bunch of different symbols and, you know, I'll keep up. Asa: Yeah. So we know the sorcerer who cast this curse on you because it's you, right? It's really good. You don't have to sort of try to understand how these happened, because we know the whole mechination/machination (7:59) of this... And we also know that you're willing to dissolve this. You really want to do the work now. You're not afraid to go in there and do it. So that's also really fantastic. I'm just going to ruffle my papers a bit. So when you were 22, you cast a spell to protect yourself, to protect something that was very, very valuable to you. And you didn't want that to be threatened again. So you said, "This will NEVER happen to me again." And the feeling emotion was, as you said, an anger that was so strong that it made you cry, basically. And you were mad and hurt and wounded that you had been made to make a choice. And then you reinforced that with a mantra that you kept on using. I think that's correct, right? Slade: Umhmm. Asa: Yeah. And you said, basically, please let me have that gift. And I'll give away everything else, but I want THAT. And that's a bargain that you're striking, right? So you made the bargain, you cast the spell, and you said that you lost your creativity a little bit through your 20s. So it wasn't until you were 29 when you met Seth that that kind of, the writing came back again. Yeah? Slade: Yes. That is correct. Asa: And this is interesting for me because you mention Maslow's hierarchy, and I don't like to prove Maslow right, but you said, and I've had these thoughts myself as well, when you think you've skipped a step, right? So the belongingness and the love needs, you're going, I feel like I've skipped that step. Seth is probably one of those people, he's provided that fraternal love, you know? And you actually cast a spell to say, I want to keep that. I want to keep that belongingness and that love from him because I know that's going to sustain me. So you've had that piece, in a way. And you've even sort of gone, I NEED to keep that. I need to have it in my life to be able to do this. And that kind of makes it interesting too because you've actually gone and kind of counteracted your own curse a little bit, about 10 years later after this and said, "This is what I want to happen." And you said you came to being 39 and that's when it really took off, the writing, and now 10 years later you've gone and "I want the whole package. I want everything now." It's probably because you've showed up, your gift is pretty strong now. You have an audience. You have an outlet. And this is very much a part of you. We feel like you can let that in. Apart from the stars being aligned, of course, in the right way as well. We're ready to do the work now. So, knowing that, I would like to know how you feel about knowing that you've kind of already started rolling it back a little bit? Slade: You know what? That actually feels like a huge relief, and when you said, "Seth represents the fraternal layer of Maslow's pyramid", I thought, ohmygosh, he did! Like, I sort of, I didn't entirely skip that step after all. So that was an epiphany for me right here, like 30 seconds ago, I'm thinking, oh, you're right! I didn't skip it because I got a new kind of love with him that was really more important than some of the brittleness that goes along with romantic love. You know what I mean? There's some heavier love that exists on that platform in that pyramid altogether, as a group. And it didn't occur to me, like, oh! You got one of the really big ones. So that's interesting. Asa: And it's a really important one because I think, that's probably one of those loves that are more stable, that you can trust that they will generally be there for life maybe even, because you have a very strong bond in that, it's more of a brotherly love I guess. And you two seem to be very close anyway and neither of you want to let go of each other so at least that bond there is strong and safe. I think when I look at where you want to end up, and hopefully he's listening out there now, we should be really nice, this will be a person that totally says, that gift that you have, that you protect, that might be one of the things that attracts him to you. That might be one of the things that he would like to protect too. So if you think about it like that, it's probably not as threatening anymore. The person that you're going to attract now is not going to be jealous of your gift. They're going to be older. They're going to be more mature. And they're going to be probably saying, I really like this about Slade. His creativity and his writing and all this stuff he's doing. Because it's so much part of who you are now. Whereas when you were 22, you were still forming that personality. You know you wanted that in your life but you probably didn't know exactly what it was going to look like. You're probably able to structure your life better now. To say, "Okay, this is my writing time and this is my personal time and this is my... you know. So you don't have to spend as much time protecting that territory because it will probably be part of the life you'll have with this person. Slade: Mmm... Asa: Yeah? Slade: Nice. Asa: Does that make sense? Slade: Yeah. Asa: So the mantra that you used, you remember that, right? You remember what that was. Slade: Oh god, yeah. Asa: Okay. I'm not going to ask you to say what it is. But have a think of what the counteract to that is. Because we probably want to have a mantra now too that we go and say, this is what we're dissolving this with. We're dissolving this. We're making space for this person. I want to let this peace in. Because as we do that, we have obviously, you disassociated, basically if you made that happen that day in the shower, you sent a piece of yourself away. And it's an interesting thing from a shamanic perspective. If we have soul loss, normally it happens through trauma. We're unaware of it most of the time. It might be like 30 years later we come across a shaman and go, you've got soul loss, and we don't know how it happened. We know we've had an accident but we don't know exactly how that sped away or how much of it. But you know exactly what piece you sent away. It's a conscious process and you've gone through and said, "No. That's not.. I'm not gonna let that lead me astray. Because my gifts, my writing, is so important to me that that part I'll give up. I'll give up love for this." It makes it easier to countersay, you know, we know exactly what we're looking for. We know exactly when it was sent away. We know exactly how much time we've spent keeping it away. And we also know we let part of it back in again. So there's a little part in this romantic love thing that we're looking for now. And there is a piece, right? I don't think, from my perspective, what I saw this morning, I don't think I'll have to go and get it for you. I think we need to do some work around getting you to sort of lure it back, letting it back into your life again, because if I look at what you're saying, I don't think you've done the prep work for it yet because you haven't been ready. So now we're going to do the work of saying, okay, you know what? I'm going to get used to the thought of my gifts being safe and secure, and me being able to let another person into my space. And it's not going to be a threat. Because I know I can protect it. Right? Does that make sense? Slade: Yes. Asa: So the question for you then is, what do you feel needs to happen for you to get the love space? Slade: Oh.... God that's a good question. Well, I mean, part of it's a choice, right? Part of it is just a decision. I mean, I'm kind of that person that really has no problem believing that I'm pushing all the buttons because I prefer to have it that way. But, you know, it's a dance between me choosing it and also seeing something that I can trust reflected back, you know what I mean? I think that there's a part of me... I'm very, very willing to choose to let that back in. But I think until I see that... Maybe it is the person. Maybe it is a person. Until I see that person in the flesh and I experience it, and I know, I think then I'll exhale. Does that make sense? It's like there's a part of me that's going to be holding my breath. I want to say that some of the things that I mentioned about Deena reading my chart for me, some of the things that came up working with her, which has been in a way a little bit of a preparation, was that I was getting messages through people over the last 9 months or so, I've been attracting people who have these little bits and pieces of evidence. They're not the person, but it's like they're like showing me things that I probably didn't really think existed in people. Asa: Yeah. Slade: So that has softened me up and made me go, Oh, well wait a minute! It's enough that it feels like a message to me. Asa: Yeah. And I think that, from my point of view, it's almost like, and I'm going to use, for lack of a better term, the Universe is serving you up examples, right? And you get this very, I like that, not so much that one, but that one there... Oh! Never knew people could be like that. So it opens the possibility of kind of assembling this picture of what you want and how they make you feel. You go, I like how that person made me feel. But how they treated me and what they said to me and what they liked about me and how they responded to me. And that kind of opens the possibility a little bit more. You're going, okay, now I can see that I can actually want these things because they do exist. Right? Slade: Yes. Asa: And it's kind of like you, but you have to be open enough to see that, because, you know, you can drive past 15 restaurants and say, "There's no Vietnamese restaurants in this neighbourhood," and you've just passed 3 because you're not looking. You're looking at something else and you're being angry about something or you're being worried about something, right? So you close down. You've already started kind of going shopping a little bit. Window shopping. And going, okay, what's actually out there? So you're looking more out now than you're looking in. And saying, okay, now i'm going to have a look outside. And it feels like people are coming at you kind of like all of a sudden you’re being presented with these things but you're actually looking. You're actually paying attention. You're starting to notice these things and the more it happens the more it starts. You're going, Ooo, ahh, okay... I see! And, I think, yeah, with you having a presence out there where your work is getting recognition as well, on start, the person you're going to meet is going to have some sort of idea. And even if they don't, that's so much part of your personality now that it's going to come up very quickly, right? You're not going to tolerate anybody who's got a problem with it. Your main focus is, you know what? I am stable in my life and I'm adding this. It's like gravy on my potatoes. I've got my potatoes. I'm going to put gravy on them now. That's going to be good gravy. I want good gravy, right? That makes it easier because you can kind of turn around and work with yourself and say, you know what? I trust myself now. I trust myself to be able to say, You know what? I can put the brakes on if it doesn't feel right. I know when to stop. I know I have my boundaries. I know that this is my thing that I do that I'm not going to give up. This person has to be willing to be part of it. And I almost get a feeling, I hate doing this to be honest, but I'm going to say it. I almost get a feeling that the person coming will be very supportive of this. This will be something they treasure too, right? And this is what you want. You want someone that says, "I really like this about Slade. I'm fascinated by it. I might not be involved in it but this is something I treasure too. Because he treasures it. That's important to me because it's important to Slade." And that's kind of what you want too. Slade: Yeah, I don't need a fan. I don't need anybody to be so involved with it that they feel that they have to consume all of it. I think that's an interesting thing that comes up a lot is, sometimes you attract people who are attracted to the work persona, so I almost trust it more if it's someone who is like, "Oh, that's really cool that you do that. It's not really like my thing, but I think it's awesome that you do it." And end of story. Which, interestingly, is how my family is. There's a kind of weird, like, super amount of support and they're not necessarily paying a lot of attention to it. Asa: Yeah. If you look at it from the point of view of saying, I’m been in engineering most of my working life, in my family, we go, yeah that's alright, but they don't want to talk about it all day, right? Yeah, you do this and we do this. It's really good that you're successful with it and you're doing well and you're enjoying it. But that's what it is. It's a job. Slade: One of the biggest turnoffs to me is when somebody that I'm kind of interested in going for a coffee with, or a date, or whatever, comes at me with the offer to have a really deep philosophical conversation. Asa: No, no, no, no, stop! Slade: Please don't make me do that! Not on my off time! Asa: It's not work! Yeah, I know, and you want that kind of thing where the both of you have a life and then you grow and then you grow this thing that you have together with the relationship. That's a nice kind of.... And I think both of you and I are at that age now that we can understand that you have to have yourself. And then you make this relationship together with someone else. That's the kind of sweet spot that you want. Where are you at now with thinking about how easy it's going to be for you to kind of stop thinking that you're not cursed? Slade: Well, you know I said I probably would process a lot of things not in the moment. And that's not true. I'm actually kind of jotting down notes of things that are almost kind of epiphanies as you say them. It was funny because there was a realization I had at some point in this conversation, I made the note that when I was with Richard who was my first person in the story, I actually had a situation happen with him where I had developed a kind of physical violence as a way of defending myself as a child and as a teenager, and I got through high school by being very wiling to fight anybody that tried to victimize me in any way. And I remember being in a horrible fight with Richard and him saying to me, "You don't have to go there anymore." I was still in this mode, this teen warrior mode, there was a part of me that was always on a school bus ready to take on a bully. I carry that all the way up until my early 20s and I was doing that in my relationship with him. And I remember him saying, "You don't have to do that anymore. It's just not necessary." And as you were talking, kind of even about the Seth thing, realizing like, oh, the Maslow thing that I thought I was missing, I really wasn't missing. I actually had a piece of that. And I realized when you said being able to release the curse, and believe that you don't have to live like that anymore. I flashed back to that relationship with Richard when he told me that. What a huge revelation it was in that moment to realize like oh, I'm in this super aggressive mode that's just not required anymore and I let it go. So in answering the question, where am I in feeling like I can kind of let this go and everything, I think one of the things that I most was interested in talking to you about, because we always need someone outside our own head to look at the situation, and that's really what you're doing. There's always this fear that there's something that I'm missing. Now you've already told me a couple of things that I felt like, Oh, I was missing that. So I think one of my biggest questions is, what am I not seeing? What am I beating myself up about that I need to stop? What am I being stubborn about? What am I being really melodramatic about? I feel like the whole thing is really melodramatic. I am trusting you to tell me that kind of truth, you know? Like what do you see me doing, because you've known me for years, you know my work, you know we're friends, we message each other a lot, so you are in a good position to recognize this as a thread within my personality. Maybe you see evidence in other ways that I handle myself. So I'm here in a very raw and vulnerable way, saying, What am I missing here? Asa: I think, and I'm the kind of person who, I like to get everything out on the table and I'll pick the pieces that I can do something with, and you're an interesting person because you have pieces that you've put out in front of me and then there's pieces where I'm going, Oh, there's more, there's more. And I'm going, he's not quite ready to either see them himself or let me know about them yet. This is what I’m saying, I’m thinking — We're having a conversation now and then you're probably going to go away to process and then you go, okay I'm going to get rid of these pieces now. And that's really cool. That's okay because we don't go through this in a session basically. We just, it wouldn't be feasible I mean, we've probably spoken for half an hour or so now and we've gotten quite far, right? We've had a few points where you went, Ah, okay, I see this now. Which means that you as a storyteller, you'll start re-telling your stories slightly differently. So we're going back, if you want to be kind of melodramatic about it, we're going back to the past and we're going, okay, I'm seeing now things that I've done to kind of start undoing this. Seeing how things weren't quite the way I thought they were, and I'm wasn't quite as doomed with this curse as I may have thought, because there's things that have happened that I've shown myself that I'm actually capable of starting to unravel this as well. There's something still that's kept you in that space. You're going, I'm not quite ready to trust this yet. And that's the piece that we probably, it's probably going to take a little bit more, to say, okay, what is it down there that still makes you go, "I'm not quite sure yet. I'm seeing all these opportunities but I'm not quite ready to step over to the other side and go, I'm free! I'm ready to do this." Almost 30 years ago, 3 decades. It's a long, long time. It's a really, really long time. And the work that I'd like to see happen now is, we sure have to decide where the stuff that's in your consciousness, that you can literally go, okay, I got it, I understand that I have partially let love back in. I did that at 29, so ease the pressure there, took the foot off the brakes a little bit. And then whatever else is happening and you really, you realize your dream. You have realized your dream of using your gift and it becoming very much a part of who you are. So you can go, Ooo! Don't need to protect that as much. It can protect itself now. It's grown up. It's a grown up now. Slade: Yeah. Asa: It's not a baby that I have to defend. It's not a kitten that I found somewhere I have to defend. It's a really good thing that's happening. It's kind of getting your head around them, saying, that's not part of my truth. My truth is this. And then kind of extending that, if that makes sense. So, yeah. Slade: So is the shoot-the-moon thing my new mantra? Asa: If you want it to be! Now this has got to work for you, right? But it's also the picture you get with shoot-the-moon, I mean, what does that mean? Does it mean I can have it all, I can live, you know what? I'm gonna swear now. I earned that shit. I have earned that shit, right? I can have it, and I don't have to pay any dues to have all that. Literally. I worked my ass off to get to where I am today. And now I want. I want the extra bit. I want that and it's gonna be good because I'm not taking half-baked, right? I want that good part. And I deserve that. I can have that. There are so many cliches saying you deserve that, but you know, literally, you DO, right? You deserve to have that in your life. You can have it, you know? There's nothing, and I hate to say this, but nothing's stopping you but literally there isn't anything except for ourselves. Our minds put limitations on things all the time. And we can look at people, I'm going to mention Trump, who's got no limitations, he just goes, "I'm just going to have it all," and you sit there and be like, how can you even be like that? But he's kind of the opposite end of the scale, where he thinks he deserves everything, you know? I am the best. I'm going, give me some of what he's got, because I need that in my life because I could literally stretch myself a bit and understand that I don't need to limit myself out of fear so much again. And you have very little to fear in my mind, right? Except for the story that you tell yourself. Slade: Yeah. And you mentioned something at the beginning of the conversation that I do when I'm doing assessments for people working with their intuition or intuitive development. I do an assessment and the assessment is very much a, it's not even about the symbolism. It's about the words that they use when they're describing the symbolism that reveal subtext. So I was wondering if there's anything, you said you know when you were listening to the story that you noticed certain phrases and things that I said. Was there anything that stuck out to you that was telling about the way that I spoke about it? Asa: Yeah. It's very heavy on the defense, right? I'm under threat. Survival words are used and there's incredibly strong emotion in the beginning. There's anger that makes you cry. It's not even rage. It's that, I am really hurt. I am so hurt and I can't believe that this person made.. I'm so hurt that he attacked the one thing that I treasure the most. You know what it is? It's a rejection of you, right? He's taken the thing that was most precious to you and rejected it. I don't want that. I don't like it. I hate it. You need to stop it. So this is an attack on YOU. Like, literally. Go stab you in the heart, right, because it's Slade's baby that he's trying to kill. And it's very much a survival threat to me. If you lost that part at that age, if you had to give it away, your life would have been incredibly different. If you'd said, Okay, no, I'm gonna give that away for Richard, you would have given up your whole life. You would've a hunk of it. Slade: Ugh. Gross. Asa: Right? I couldn't count on him in the way I could count on myself. Slade: Yeah. Asa: And you are a person who relies very, very much on yourself. Slade: Umhmm. Asa: And I see sometimes, please don't take this the wrong way, I see sometimes you have almost literally hard time reaching out saying to people, "You know what? Take care of that for me." Slade: Yeah. Asa: As much as, you've got us girls in the Shift Your Spirits community to help you out there, the High Priestesses, as you like to call us. But at the same time, I can sometimes tell it's like you find it a little bit hard to let go of the reins. When I look, I'm going, this is perfect because that's like a training ground for you to say, I can actually step back, and go, It's probably going to be okay. Slade: Yes! Asa: Yeah. This kind of understanding that you are literally sitting in a space now where you've got it really good. You've taken such good care of Slade, right? And you've set him up in a space where he really likes to be. He gets to write. He gets to do his business. He gets to run his own days. He can plan his own life. He can do a little bit of extra things like travel and stuff, so you've taken really good care of yourself. But it's letting someone else in to that space now, because you're going, I don't want you to mess with that space. This is my space. I've made it really good. And I have a similar problem for myself, to be honest with you. I do the same thing, right? I'm going, I made my space. I don't want someone to come in with dirty, muddy shoes to walk through it, right? But we probably have to expect people to, to some extent, mess up our space a little bit. And learning to be okay with that. And learning to be okay with the fact that they don't fully understand our space, and you know, if we're lucky, we'll come together and we'll learn about each other's space and we'll create a better space out of that. Because we'll learn from them and learn from us. But it's really tricky to get past that hurdle, going, I'm really comfortable in my bubble. I feel really secure, and understanding that I'm not threatened. Does that make sense? Slade: Umhmm. Well and you identified something that's been a real theme for me within the past year or so, which was really in the last 2 years, was going from this sort of one-man band, this solo episode where I control everything, you know, not episode, sort of machinery, where I don't have to rely on anybody else. But I can also be a complete slave driver to myself if I choose, you know? In a way that I could never be to anyone else. I can only do that to me. Asa: Yeah. Slade: There's a lot of hesitation, not even in letting other people help me, but in fear of like, what a tyrant I can be if I went in the other direction. Like Trump, you know? There has been this theme of collaboration and community, and the platform going from being about me to being about all the other people who come on this show. It's sharing the stage, and also sharing the space with the people who are listening and participating. And hosting without having a party of 1. It's like, it's not me watching Netflix with the cats. It's me allowing there to be a keg party in the backyard. So that is definitely, like you said, having you guys that are my social media moderators and administrators, has put me back in a situation where I'm practicing being a manager of other people but, you know, in the context of letting other people's gifts work for me. I mean, the reason why I chose you guys, is because you can do all these things without me having to tell you how to do it. Because I trust you guys and you're all smart and capable in your own way. Sometimes I'm just constantly having to remind myself that, like, it's okay to let everyone else do what they do. So that's been something that is opening up for me. I wanted to say just for your own personal feedback, I've got a double Scorpio wrapped around this Leo, so when you start to, when you feel like there's something he's not telling me, of course there is, you know? I've got like a secret bat girl wall with a button with that cat suit hiding somewhere. And I definitely see that as kind of being part of my persona and all the astrology in the world tells me about the secrets that I keep, and my relationship with my shadow, and all that kind of stuff. So some of that may be kind of private or whatever, but I wanted to kind of end the conversation today, and you and I will continue with this conversation, because like you said, I'm going to go sleep on it, process, and, oh man! And I'll share that with you and with everyone that I can, but for the people who are listening, I wanted you to know that I put out such a personal episode, to the point that I thought, is this really so indulgent that nobody else is going to be able to relate to it? I got such overwhelming feedback from people writing and telling me what their version of this felt like, and realizing, ohmygod, I've done this to myself too, in different aspects of their lives, so it was really cool. So in speaking to them, and a lot of them I kind of wrote behind the scenes and I said, "Stay tuned! I have something coming." And I think you would find, if you work with some of these people and you may, because they may contact you and be like, "Ooo I want to have this conversation", that they all come with a self awareness and a capability and a bag of tricks and all this stuff too. And so, as you were talking, I was kind of making some notes about what this process is about, because I think that I believe at the root of it all, that if we put a curse on ourselves, we can certainly reverse it ourselves. So I think some of the things that I noticed, to kind of put out there for others who are thinking, how can I process this for myself, there was the idea of where it came from, obviously, what is the language around this curse? Who did it? Who is the source? And it's probably themselves. The idea of having a sort of reverse mantra, some other kind of language just to start to reinforce, this is a framing exercise, right? Asa: Yeah. Slade: The idea of the soul loss, when that happened, what the events were surrounding that, and then this idea of prep work around what you're missing, when did this happen, what kind of language are you using around it? Maybe even take the time to do what I did, which is to write your story out as if you're going to send it, and look for those words. You know, what emotions are in your story? What story are you really telling here? So I think it could be really helpful for people to look at some of those components for themselves, and they may have some revelations of their own. But it also would be very helpful, if they're going to do a session with you or someone who does this kind of work, to have some of those answers ready. Asa: Yeah. I'll shortcut the process a little bit too, but I have to say, most people are not as easy as you are. You're very self-aware and I think you understand, with language for instance, when I looked at, I've probably got about 6 pages of language that you were using and phrases, and I'm going, this is all survival mode, right? It's all about, I am so threatened, you know? I'm just gonna defend myself and I'm out there. And it makes sense now what you said about like in your teens you were ready to fight all the time. And that kind of kicked back in a little bit. And it might have been physical but all of a sudden, you are in a very high state of alert and it had to be protected at all costs. There was like no other way here. I have to protect this at ALL costs. I have to chop bits of myself off. Those bits can't be trusted so they need to go away. If I look at it this way, going forward probably what I would say is, I might turn around and say to you, I would like to do a soul retrieval for you eventually. If it doesn't spontaneously come back — it’s a pretty big part — but I think we can do the groundwork first. It always helps before you do that kind of thing, right? And also doing their reversal mantra will fortify the base that we're having here. So that when that comes back, it'll be... And also another thing is, that's the 22 year old part of you. That kind of needs to mature as well. That's a part of you that hasn't had a lot of attention. So it's working through that as well. Sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes people have enormous problems. We're kind of getting that part of it back in again because it's not functioning at the same level as you are. That's another thing as well. You're saying people can do the work. I was recommended to talk to someone because it is, like you say, people see things that you don't see. They hear you say things that you might not hear because you're so used to going over it in your head. And finding those patterns for you and saying, "Okay, this is where I see the work happening." It's funny what you were saying, the double Scorpio, I have very few clients where I'm going... It's not a wall but I'm going, there are secrets here. And I can push around and go, okay, I want to know what's behind that, but that's a bit rude. And I'm going, we had that discussion before because I said to you, "Do you want to know everything? And do I have permission to do this?" So literally you've given me permission to do it but it's not useful for me to come back at you and go, this, this and this. Because you'll be going, "Uh oh. Now I feel threatened again." So I don't want you to retreat back there. And it might not be things so useful for me to know anyway because those are your secrets, right? They're there for a reason. You want to be mystical and stuff, that's okay! The stuff that's come out today, it's the beginning. It's a journey. We'll talk again about this for sure and see what's new. And you are the kind of person who'll go away and you'll mull this over. And then probably I'll get a message, "What about this?" And that's perfect for me because I'm going, okay, now I can see what's happening between, we chat for a bit and what's the next step after that as well. So yeah. Slade: Awesome. I thank you because I definitely have at least two pieces that I, like I'm writing notes by longhand on a piece of paper and I've got these little stars by these kind of 'aha' moments and I'm like, OH! Part of my brain is already running off, trying to unpack those and unravel them and go, wait a minute! But for anybody out there listening who might be interested having heard this, for this reason or for any other, you know, who really resonates with you, tell us where we can find who you are, where we can find you online, and how to get in touch with you. Asa: So I've got a website. I'm on Facebook obviously, Asa Kristina Poeche. I've also got a Page on Facebook that's Asa Poeche. A webpage that's AsaPoeche.com. My services that are offered there currently are a session called, I call them mentoring sessions, a one-on-one session, because I don't like to call them healing sessions. I tend to sit in the space where I coach people more and get them to kind of come to realization through a discussion that we have. And I hope that kind of came through in what we did here now. It's more effective if I get you to solve your problem rather than me trying to fix you. I think sometimes you have these, I call them Tony Robbins moments, where you go, "Ohmygod! That's fantastic!" And then two days later you're like, "I'm not feeling the momentum anymore. And that's an important thing too, I find. I think when we have a session like this, you go away more pumped and sometimes you just lose momentum. Anyway, going back to my stuff, I'll do a lot of shamanic work but I think at heart I would probably call myself a hedge witch, which means I sit in this space where I'm very much working in the other world, tapping into a lot of beings around people and getting messages. I've got decades of studying metaphysical stuff, about two decades in shaminism. Yeah. That was a really, really messed up explanation of what I do, but ... Slade: It was very authentic. Well, one of the things that I... I, just for the record, and you know this but for the rest of the audience, I've been wanting to have you on my show since I had a show. Obviously those of you who are in the Automatic Intuition community, who are strong in the Shift Your Spirits community, meaning you produce a lot of content and you do a lot of teaching in the group, you're an active participant, you're a moderator, a lot of people will recognize your material from there and the interesting thing is, I don't just want the show to be like, oh, here's another intuitive and they do sessions and they're going to tell us about their sessions and here they are. It's like there's an added bit of extra expectation for you guys. I want you guys especially to have a really special introduction to everyone, because if it's someone that I've never met before, I can ask them a lot of curious questions about who they are and what they do. It comes from a really genuine place. But in order for you and I to have a genuine conversation, if we need to do something like this, it needs to be extra juicy. I was so excited when I saw your post in the community where you answered that question and you use a little bit of that witchy language and you caught my eye. I thought, oh wait a minute! So the idea to do this whole two-episode so far conversation came to me in that moment and I was so excited that you were willing to do this with me. Because it's a real tightrope act for both of us. You know what I mean? Asa: It is. And this is my first podcast too I've recorded for. So it's a big thing, right? Slade: Ohmygosh, is it? Asa: Yeah. I usually don't like listening to myself at all. It's one of those things … Sometimes you'll have the conversation with someone and you bounce off each other really easily. And sometimes when you have a client, it's like, are they there? Slade: Yes. Asa: Are you alive? Slade: Yeaaah. Asa: You always kind of end up worrying a little bit about that as well. I suppose, also, I have to say is, I always say I don't like teaching but that's probably not true because I also mentor people. You probably have to nudge me to have a few conversations with me before I take you on as a student. But it's probably one of the things I find most rewarding actually, and it's mostly helping people grow. And I do these also in business and professional space where I coach and mentor people to integrate spirituality into their professional and business lives. Becaue I think we can do with a lot more of that in the work place as well, and there are a lot of people that really struggle in that corporate environment. How can I be more spiritual in that kind of environment? And it's possible, right? So that's another thing that I do as well. Slade: Well I'm going to close with a shoutout to Amy Oscar, who gave me the term 'illuminated conversations', and I think that both you and I love to work in that capacity, right? We want a participating client, we want a collaborator, and we want someone to have these really beautiful deep conversations. So thank you for having one of those with me around this. I will keep you posted about my epiphanies and we'll probably hear some follow up for everyone else who's listening. So, again, thanks for doing it. Asa: Thank you for having me on.

After 223 Episodes of being gross dudes the guys finally let a woman into the guest co-hosting clubhouse. Is it a monumental moment for women’s rights? Or is Late To The Table still just the worst? Probably that last one. But The Birdcage though! Right? Does it hold up? Give it a go yo!.

>80-90% of kids on the spectrum can't move, look, and listen in a fast, accurate, effortless, sustainable-appropriate, and meaningful way. This results in high fear, high anxiety, high distractibility, and will leave your child in a perpetual state of fight or flight or your child will simply adapt and learn how to not pay attention. In this episode, Douglas W. Stephey, O.D., M.S provides information regarding children on the Autistic spectrum and how to effectively assess the visual system and provide solutions for them to move, look, and listen through their life with greater ease. Douglas W. Stephey, O.D., M.S. 208 West Badillo St Covina, CA 91723 Phone: 626-332-4510 Website: http://bit.ly/DouglasWStephey Website Videos: http://bit.ly/DrStepheyOptometryVideos The Move Look & Listen Podcast is brought to you in part, by Audible - get a FREE audiobook download and 30-day free trial at www.audibletrial.com/InBound If interested in producing a podcast of your own, like the Move Look & Listen Podcast, contact Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com or visit www.InBoundPodcasting.com Transcription Below: Tim Edwards: The Move Look and Listen Podcast with Dr. Doug Stephey is brought to you by audible. Get a free audio book download and a 30 day free trial audible membership www.audibletrial.com/inbound. You'll find over 180,000 titles to choose from, including several books mentioned here in the podcast. Support the Move Look & Listen Podcast by visiting www.audibletrial.com/inbound.  Dr. Stephey: If our two eyes are not working together well as a fast synchronized team. Our internal mapquest continues to be off. It's consistently inconsistent with our ability to judge time and space. Those that don't feel well-grounded, those that have some measure of anxiety, oftentimes it starts in the visual system. If you can't move, look and listen in a fast, accurate, effortless, sustainable, age-appropriate, meaningful way, you're in a world of hurt. There's a whole world in vision and how it affects brain function that no one's ever shared with you. 20/20 is perceived as a holy grail of going to the eye doctor. Well, I'm here to change that paradigm.  Tim Edwards: Hello and welcome to episode number seven of the Move Look & Listen pocast with Dr. Doug Stephey. I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network and a patient of Dr. Doug Stephey, who is an optometrist practicing in the southern California area. Now Dr. Stephey. Today's topic, I believe is going to be a gold nugget found by parents of children who happened to land somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Never have I heard how autism and vision are connected, but we're going to discuss that here today.  Dr. Stephey: We're talking about autism and vision because about 80 percent of our brain's neurons are wrapped up in the processing of visual information. Remember, there's about 3 million sensory neurons that feed information to the brain, vision, auditory, taste, touch and smell. And of that 3 million fibers, there's about 30,000 auditory fibers per ear and roughly 1.2 million per eye. A staggering difference, and there's instances clinically.  Dr. Stephey: What I've seen this happen in the office where vision has the capacity to change how you hear, vision has the capacity to change balance and gait and posture. Vision has the capacity to change the way your body feels, your feet on the floor. It changes a term called proprioception or the awareness of your body in space. I've had patients, kids and adults alike where I'll tell them, I'm going to take my index finger and lightly rub it along your forearm. And I want you to tell me how it feels. And if you're a touch sensitive in this manner, it just about freaks you out. It's like walking into a spiderweb when it gives you the heebie jeebies. Who hasn't done that?  Tim Edwards: No. But it is fun to watch people do it.  Dr. Stephey: It sends a shiver through your whole body.  Tim Edwards: It's creepy. Yes.  Dr. Stephey: So people in this manner don't like light touch. And so I'll lightly rub their forearm and I can, sometimes I can see them visually get the shutters. And or they'll get a screwed up look on their face where it's like, oh man, I really don't like that. And then I stop and I say, how does it feel? And they're like, well, I didn't like it, number one. And if they don't spontaneously tell me, I always then ask, is it still itchy? And they're like, yeah, well then itch then and make it go away. So then they'll itch their forearm and I'll say, okay, well you know what, let's put on this pair of glasses with color in prism in them or color or prism or whatever. Whatever the combination is. And I'll say, let's try it again. And more times than not I'll do that when they put the glasses on and they're like, oh, just feels like you're touching me now.  Dr. Stephey: And how about when I stopped? They're like, well, you just stopped. It's not itchy anymore. No, it didn't feel like anything. Tim, it's the craziest stuff.  Tim Edwards: That is something you see at a circus that just seems like hocus pocus. I mean that's like something you'd see at a magic show or something.  Dr. Stephey: Well, it seems like hocus pocus to me as well, but I've learned over the years that this is repeatable outcomes. There's two adult stories to tell you. One is I did this with a wife who was in the exam room with me and her child. And she laughed about how annoyed she was by touch. And essentially she said it's a wonder we have any kids. Because I like it so little.  Tim Edwards: Never heard it put that way before. I like it, so little to be touched. Wow.  Dr. Stephey: So yeah, so I put the glasses on her and she's like, this is crazy. And then I had a different mom do the same thing and she remarked about how she didn't like it and hugs from her husband. And we put the glasses in prism on her and it again, remarkably changed her sense of touch. And then I said, well, you know what I want you to go out of my exam room. I want you to go out to the reception area with my glasses on and I want you to give your husband a hug and come back again and tell me how it was. And so she did. And she's like, oh, it was awesome. And he let go of me before I was ready for him to let go.  Tim Edwards: Dr. Stephey, it sounds like you could add marriage counselor to your repertoire there. Dr. Stephey: I am the love doctor.  Tim Edwards: And she had this and it's immediate. This is something that's immediate. Because they're putting the lenses on right there and boom, there's change instantaneously.  Dr. Stephey: It is the craziest stuff. Now, has anybody written an article about this? No. I don't know if any of my colleagues are even trying stuff like this. You know, I've, I've.  Tim Edwards: How did you discover this? Like how did you, how did you know? Maybe you didn't discover this. Maybe this is just something that that's been happening for years in your industry, but no one's talking about. Or is this something that you just happen to discover while experimenting with lenses with your patients?  Dr. Stephey: You know that's a good question, Tim. And I don't really know how to answer that because I don't think I've had this discussion with my colleagues, so I don't know if they're doing similar stuff. I haven't had anybody spontaneously tell me that they do. So I don't really know. I do know that there's a modest amount of time that I feel like I'm the only person on the planet thinking about these things and putting these things together. And there's very few people that I can really talk to about this because they just don't know.  Dr. Stephey: So if we circle back to the kids with autism, let's recognize a couple of things first of all. It is a behavioral disorder by its very definition. There's no test for autism per se, but you look at a checklist behaviors and the timelines of which they manifest and the consensus is you then fall on the spectrum based upon the checklist that's completed. Arguably and most commonly speech delays. Right? Kids have delayed speech or their nonverbal. It's one of the most easily recognized markers. There's some research that I don't particularly know all that well. That indicates that we might be able to use eye movement and eye contact and gaze of infants as a predictor of autism even before they're were even close to having speech.  Tim Edwards: Yeah, I've heard that many times.  Dr. Stephey: So I think speech becomes one of the most common indicators because if the kid's not talking when they should be or they're talking very little, well, it's obvious that that's the case. But if you have a child who doesn't know how to point and focus their eyes and space easily or effortlessly or accurately or sustainably, that's not obvious.  Dr. Stephey: They might be clumsy. They might not like wearing certain clothes or the tags in their shirts or the seams in their socks. So remember there's normal quote unquote, is a pretty broad spectrum and that's a pretty continuous continuum. And because again, autism and ADD and ADHD are behavioral disorders. They're really driven by a checklist of behaviors. And my whole contention is if you can't move, look and listen in a fast, accurate, effortless, sustainable, age-appropriate, meaningful way, you're in a world of hurt. So that's what I think in great part is happening with kids on the spectrum. Because so much of our sensory input is tied up in vision and the vision input we're talking about has nothing to do with the ability to see 20/20, which is where most eye exams default to, right? If you can see 20/20, everything's fine and vision has no role to play in your kid's autism.  Dr. Stephey: I could not disagree more. 20/20 is the tiniest little bit of what we're talking about.  Tim Edwards: And that's where most parents, this parent included just stops. Oh, you're 20/20. We're good. Don't need to investigate any further, as far as your vision is concerned.  Dr. Stephey: No absolutely.  Tim Edwards: You know 20/20 is what we're taught. That's what we were told. You get your glasses to fix it or contacts. Let's move on to something else and that's where it should not stop.  Dr. Stephey: This is universally as what is happening and that's why so many kids have trouble recovering function because in most cases I'm going to be so bold as to tell you conservatively 80 to 90 percent, 100 percent seems too boldt. But I can tell you 80 to 90 percent of kids on the spectrum have vision problems that have remained undiagnosed and untreated. And unless your finding somebody who really is taking the time to look at components of nutrition, retained primitive reflexes, something called a millisecond timing clock deficit, motion processing or magnocellular vision.  Dr. Stephey: Eye focusing, eye tracking, eye taming and working memory in executive function and visual-auditory integration, visual-cognitive skills, visual-spatial skills, visual processing speed, your kid's been under assessed, underdiagnosed and undertreated.  Tim Edwards: Now, are you talking about every child or just a child that might have been diagnosed as being somewhere on that spectrum?  Dr. Stephey: Well, the thing that I would just rattle off, they're all skills that we have to possess to function in a relatively normal way. What might be referred as neuro typical behavior. So I would suggest to you that any child who's been diagnosed with dyslexia or a learning disorder or a specific learning disability or reading disorder or have been diagnosed or suspected of having ADD or ADHD or is on the spectrum or has a diagnosis called clumsy childhood disorder, they likely have a vision component that again, has been underassessed, underdiagnosed, and undertreated. And the problem that I see is this is so commonly true that oftentimes these kids get lots of other therapies, speech therapy, occupational therapy, maybe adaptive P.E. through the school district. ABA therapy as a behavioral therapy. But the missing factor in all of that is nobody's looking at the vision piece. And it's tremendously huge.  Tim Edwards: Sounds foundational, again.  Dr. Stephey: It is foundational. And as an extension of that, I go back to something I believe we talked about before. It has to do with our subconscious mind continuously asking ourselves the question, do I feel safe? Do I really feel safe? I'm not sure if I feel safe. If you can't subconsciously answer that question, then you're gonna default to, well, I don't feel safe, which now means that all of your sensory systems are going to be at defcon one. You are on high alert status because your brain is perceiving your environment as one giant eminent, unrelenting threat.  Tim Edwards: Can't even imagine the anxiety going through one's being living like that and how it affects their behavior.  Dr. Stephey: Oh, absolutely. Because at that juncture, and especially when you're a kid, these outcomes now are reflexive in their outcome. Meaning you have no ability to control how you're behaving. So if you're that child and you have a meltdown that is beyond your voluntary control, because what.. Dr. Stephey: Whatever the episodic event was, it triggered you to have a fight or flight response, which is high anxiety, high fear, high distractability and survival at all costs. Which means that if you feel that you're being cornered, there's an expression that a wild animal is the most dangerous when you corner them. If you don't leave them an escape route, they have no choice but to go crazy.  Tim Edwards: For self-defense. Right. Dr. Stephey: Yes, their very survival is based upon them escaping the perceived or real threat. So much of these kids' aggressive behavior is beyond their voluntary control. You can talk to your blue in the face. But until they can regulate their autonomic nervous system and facilitate a more calmer response, you can't talk them off the ledge. It's very challenging because it's beyond their voluntary control. And remember, vision and auditory are our two primary threat detectors.  Dr. Stephey: They are the two sensory systems that we use to gauge a threat at distance in preparation for fight or flight. And you know, the idea of personal space and that your arm's distance is like a personal space bubble.  Tim Edwards: Yeah, no doubt.  Dr. Stephey: I don't know if somebody's written about it, I wouldn't be surprised. But my clinical take on this is if your visual system is operationally functional, you don't need a bigger bubble than arm's distance. Because your ability to perceive a threat at arm's distance gives you the opportunity to punch it away or push it away and then turn and run. Right? Does that make sense?  Tim Edwards: It does. Perfect sense. Yes.  Dr. Stephey: But here's the problem. If you can't see a large volume of space and you can't see it fast, arm's distance isn't good enough for you. You've got a bubble around you that's maybe 20 feet in diameter and any sound within 20 feet or any motion within 20 feet or any target or object visually within 20 feet is going to freak you out.  Dr. Stephey: So now the question becomes, remember separate from 20/20 because all that means you can see a tiny letter at 20 feet on a chart. The volume of space that you can see and the speed with which you see it is paramount to you being able to ask that question, do I feel safe? And is arm's distance as a personal space bubble around me an adequate amount of space? Well it's not, for these kids. One of the things that patients never accused me of is never giving them enough information.  Tim Edwards: That is true. I have a folder over here of information that you've given me, which I love. Thank you.  Dr. Stephey: And so because I read not only within my own discipline but because I read in so many other disciplines, I've got a book list that I put together that I share with parents. I have a computer full of articles that touch on every topic that I'm likely to discuss and assess. In the kind of evaluation that I do.  Dr. Stephey: The primary thing that I want parents to know is that almost without exception, the child has been under assessed and underdiagnosed and undertreated. So whatever they thought their child's life trajectory was going to be, I'm here to point them in a different direction and give them a different trajectory. Because of how the kids have been underassessed and underdiagnosed and undertreated. Typically when someone comes to see me for a first visit, I am going to talk about eye focusing, eye tracking, and eye taming. I'm going to talk about a concept called visual elea scene, which is the inability to look at black and white stripes either comfortably or without having eyestrain or the patterns move or blur or wiggle or you see colors or it's just overwhelming. And that you can't get yourself to look at these stripes. I might initially look at aspects of balance and gait and posture and how those things change with a low plus lenses or colored lenses or prism lenses.  Dr. Stephey: Because if I can notice a behavioral change in visual output or sensory input on the first visit, we have an opportunity right then to change that kid's life. Just by prescribing a pair of glasses, even if they can't see 20/20. So I will oftentimes prescribed glasses in this manner that have nothing to do with seeing 20/20 because I'm interested in how these glasses change the kids' physicality or their motor abilities or their ability to hold the pencil and improve their handwriting skills or make it so that they can tolerate a hug for mom or dad. Or they can play with a sibling and not freak out. Or they can join in other kids on the playground at school and not be overwhelmed by the motion and the sound of their environment. That's the initial part of what we do. When I do have patients come back and we do further testing, we do discuss components of nutrition. We look at a term called retained primitive reflexes. We look at this millisecond timing clock in our brain and how it facilitates our attentional control networks and how it facilitates our brain's ability to integrate different lobes in the brain, so that it improves our cognitive efficiency. We will look at eye focusing, eye tracking, eye taming. We look at working memory. What I want to do is do a comprehensive assessment so that when I come up with a treatment plan, we've got enough data to be able to do it in a logically, developmental hierarchy.  Tim Edwards: So you mentioned treatment plan. What are some examples of a treatment plan beyond lenses now? Something that I want to make sure that our listeners are not confused by. You said if a child comes in or a person comes in with 20/20 vision, you will still prescribe lenses. So we're talking color?  Dr. Stephey: Yes, we're talking color. We could be talking prism or we could be talking low plus lenses are any combination there of.  Tim Edwards: All right, so it doesn't just stop at seeing clearly.  Dr. Stephey: That's right. It doesn't stop at seeing 20/20.  Tim Edwards: So what other type of treatments are there?  Dr. Stephey: Well, typically there's nutritional interventions. Could be inulin fiber to change the gut bacteria. Could be omega-3 fatty acids to change and reduce inflammation in the body and in the brain. It could be zinc and magnesium discussion or calcium or sodium. I think the two most common things though are dealing with the microbiome. Microbiome being in the gut bacteria, and the omega-3 fatty acids. Those two things are monstrously huge.  Tim Edwards: And we'll be discussing omega-3s in our next episode.  Dr. Stephey: The next thing I look at is retained primitive reflexes. Retained primitive reflexes can be simply thought of as software that we're born, within our brain stem. And they're pre-programs, if you will, that facilitate our survival behavior.  Dr. Stephey: It helps us as a baby roll over on her stomach, lift our head, push up our upper body off the floor, get up on all fours, start to crawl, get up on two feet, free our hands to manipulate space around us and begin walking. And all of that motor planning and sequencing, serves a role into a springboard for developing speech and language and eye movement control and working memory and cognitive abilities. So primitive reflexes is something that's been commonly overlooked for a long time. And it can no longer be. It's too critical. I alluded earlier about this millisecond timing clock, the instrument that I use and the company that's been around for 25, 30 years now is called Interactive Metronome and there's no other device like it on the planet that I'm aware of. It is a powerful tool, not only for measuring whether you're timing clock is off, but more importantly to facilitate your brain's ability to retrain it and get it back to a normal timing function.  Tim Edwards: To retrain it. So that seems like a monumental task? Or is it?  Dr. Stephey: No, it's simple. It couldn't be simpler. The interactive metronome instrument was originally created by a music producer and a conductor. And it was designed to look at other musicians timing so that he wanted to produce better sounding music. So if your timing was a little faster, a little slow, he wanted you to be able to change that and feel where you were in that timing output. And he created this instrument to measure that. And it has just turned into this a wonderfully creative tool to change brain function. It is a powerful tool.  Tim Edwards: My goodness. Great Story.  Dr. Stephey: So, so the initial stage of therapy for me typically is nutrition intervention, retained primitive reflexes and this millisecond timing clock. Now I have some kids on the spectrum where the timing clock therapy, it's beyond their current abilities.  Dr. Stephey: So when that's true, I will either incorporate something called the safe and sound program put together by a researcher, neurophysiologist by the name of Stephen Porges, who has written about the Polyvagal Theory of affect, emotions, self-regulation and communication. It's a big deal. So if I, if I find somebody who is highly dysregulated, they don't feel safe and sound in their environment, we will do this program as a, as prep work for the other therapies.  Tim Edwards: To build them up too.  Dr. Stephey: Yeah, the safe and sound program is specifically filtered music where you, you do the listening one hour a day for five consecutive days.  Tim Edwards: That doesn't sound too arduous or painful, that's for sure. No sounds almost kind of fun. ] Dr. Stephey: It is. And it can really change your body's ability to regulate your autonomic nervous system or the part of your body that pushes you to be in fight or flight, or that you're so overwhelmed that you go into shutdown.  Dr. Stephey: So if we do the safe and sound program as a five hour introduction and interactive metronome is still beyond the child's ability. We'll then on incorporate different sound therapy into our treatment model. And this sound therapy is best done with bone conducting headphones and bone conducting headphones are over the ear headphones that have a, a button or a vibrating transducer, if you will, that sits on the top of your cranium. And it vibrates imperceptibly.  Tim Edwards: Wow.  Dr. Stephey: So if I turned the headphones off, but turn the music on, you'd still hear the music. But only by the way the bones in your cranium were vibrating.  Tim Edwards: Now is that how those who are deaf are able to enjoy music?  Dr. Stephey: Yes, it's called, it's called a cochlear implant. And they're getting sound into their head through that cochlear implant, which is vibrating the bones in the cranium.  Tim Edwards: Gotcha. Wow.  Dr. Stephey: And the bone conduction is different than air conduction. It's getting sound in the brain in a different way and in a more powerful tool and it seems to stimulate the stipular system or the inner ear in a way that air conduction can't do. And the reason that's a big deal for me as an optometrist is because the vestibular system and the visual system are intimately linked with each other. So we might see better eye movement control when we do sound therapy. And just like when we developed the visual skills and somebody is able to see faster, that person can use lip movements in order to prime the auditory cortex to change auditory processing outcomes. So the two systems are very interconnected with each other. So just to review, stage one, nutritional discussion, retained primitive reflexes, safe and sound program, if needed. Sound therapy. If they can't handle interactive metronome and if they can handle interactive metronome, I will usually start with that intervention rather than more conventional sound therapy.  Dr. Stephey: And the reason I do that is because interactive metronome involves physical movement in conjunction with this metronome beat and there's something magical about this temporal sequencing or you generating physical output in conjunction with this beat and being given feedback about changing your internal timing clock. So for me, that's stage one. Stage two, we're going to move on to magnocellular vision or motion processing and eye taming, eye focusing and eye tracking. And stage three therapy in my office is then working memory and executive function skills, the ability to multitask, how large of a chunk of information you can hold in your mind, components of processing speed, divided attention, selective attention, sustained attention. And that's stage three. And stage four might move us on into phonological processing and something called rapid naming speed. And then in stage four, I might even weave in some reading therapy at that juncture, either provided through my office and the training that I've had. Or then at that point suggest that the kids get other reading therapy even if it's not through my office.  Dr. Stephey: And that model, Tim, for me, it makes perfect sense. It's based on a developmental model. It's done in a order that we develop in as humans and it is not the model that is happening in practice today.  Tim Edwards: And you're talking about these four phases of therapy.  Dr. Stephey: I'm talking about these four phases of therapy and what I'm really more getting at is I think that the kids on the spectrum should see a developmental optometrist first, not last. And too often, what I see, is I get kids that come to my practice and let's say they've had an IEP through their school district since they were three years of age and maybe I see them at eight or nine or 10, so they've had an IEP for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, and never had this kind of a developmental vision exam. So they might've done speech therapy or occupational therapy six, seven, 800 hours, but they never had an exam like this.  Dr. Stephey: I think that parents need to know that this exists and need to seek out and find optometrist like myself that will do this body of work and do it in a comprehensive way. And too often I'll see kids again on the spectrum. Eight, nine, 10, up to 15, 16, 17 years of age who've had hundreds of hours of reading interventions and are still struggling to make any substantial gains in their ability to read and comprehend. And then I find them and they've got a whopping array of all the stuff that we're talking about today and parents have never heard it before.  Tim Edwards: Oh, my. That's a tragedy and that's why we're doing what we're doing.  Dr. Stephey: That's exactly why we're doing what we're doing. We want to. We want to get this word out so people know one, that this exists. Two, what's the depth of what exists and three, that they know if they're getting a comprehensive assessment or not.  Dr. Stephey: It's not enough to go and be told that you've had a vision therapy assessment. If it doesn't include all of these pieces. And that's one of the other reasons that I'm doing this podcasting because I would tell you that vision therapy either seems like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Or it doesn't work at all. And don't waste your time and money. And that really bothers me as an optometrist. Because I know the power of vision therapy when it's done correctly. I know the power of vision therapy when it's done comprehensively. I know the limitations of vision therapy. So if kids need assistive technology or they need an audiological assessment or they need further speech or occupational therapy or they need assistive technology to facilitate their ability to access the curriculum at school, I'm the first one to make those recommendations. And the supportive parent in and looking at other things. But there is just a vacuum of information that parents don't know because medicine hasn't told them that. Nor has the educational community. I'm hoping to fill that void.  Tim Edwards: Thank you for listening to the Move Look & Listen Podcast with Dr. Doug Stephey brought to you by audible. Get a free audio book download and a 30 day free trial of audible membership at audibletrial.com/inbound. You'll find over 180,000 titles to choose from, including books mentioned here in the Move Look & Listen podcasts. You can listen to these books through your iphone, your android, your kindle, your computer, or even an MP3 player. And if for any reason and at any time you choose to cancel your membership, you keep all of your audio book, downloads. Give it a shot for 30 days. You got nothing to lose. Support the Move Look & Listen podcast by visiting audibletrial.com/inbound. We will include a link for your convenience, in the show notes of this and every episode of the podcast. And of course if you like some more information regarding Dr. Stephey's practice or to make an appointment, we will include links in the show notes to Dr. Stephey's website and his youtube channel.  Tim Edwards: Dr. Stephey's website is stepheyoptometry.com. That's s t e p h e y optometry.com. You can also call the office at 626-332-4510. Again, all of Dr. Stephey's contact information will be included in the show notes of each and every episode. One last request before we let you go on to the next episode. Please subscribe to the podcast from whichever platform you might be listening in. Of course, it is free to subscribe and it ensures that every time we post a new episode, you'll find it right there waiting for you to listen in your podcast app of choice. We really do appreciate your listening and until next time for Dr. Stephey of the Move Look & Listen podcast. I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network.     

In S2E3, we fall hard for Adda Birnir, founder and CEO of Skillcrush—the online coding school with a heart. While coding bootcamp programs tend to talk about turning students into rockstar programmer gods, Skillcrush focuses on using tech to build a fulfilling, creative, and sustainable career. And the message is working: after some early ups and downs back in 2012, Adda has taken the business from a fledging idea to a stable, profitable, and growing company of 35 employees. And she’s here to tell us all about it. > At some point I decided that I wanted the business to survive and I was going to figure out what it would take for it to survive and do that. And that really meant sort of letting go of kind of any idea I had about what the business was going to be. > > —Adda Birnir, founder and CEO, Skillcrush Listen in for a super-real convo about: Bootstrapping a business instead of raising venture capital How to bounce back when the bank account runs dry Why women are flocking to Skillcrush to learn technical skills—while most bootcamp programs struggle to attract them Building pay equity into the heart of how Skillcrush runs Making sure you don’t end up hating the company you built Plus: Friend dates, cheese plates, and ordering as many desserts as possible Vocab swaps for “crazy” and “guys” (for more ideas on this one, check out this article from The Establishment) Morning people: are they a fuck yeah! or a fuck that? Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. CodePen—write code like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly in a browser and see the results as you build. CodePen is giving away three free PRO accounts to NYG listeners. Enter at codepen.io/nyg. WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. _ _ Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher [Ad spot] This episode of NYG is brought to you by our friends at Shopify, makers of great tools that help entrepreneurs around the world start and grow their businesses. Shopify started with just a few people obsessed with personal growth. Now they’re a team of more than 3,000 with offices and remote workers pretty much everywhere. What’s next? Oh, just redefining the future of entrepreneurship. If that’s interesting to you, visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re working on [music fades in, plays alone for ten seconds]. Jenn Lukas Welcome to No, You Go [music fades out], the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. Katel LeDû I’m Katel LeDû. SWB And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. KL Today on the show we’re talking to my friend, Adda Birnir. Six years ago she developed and launched an online coding course and has since built a thriving company around it. We talk about the early days of starting a business; how to decide when and if you need financial help as a startup; and we dig into what the future of working in tech might look like. But before we get to that, can we talk about our co-host date we just had? JL We can definitely talk about this. So, last month was my birthday, and I had the chance to go out with these two lovely ladies. And it was so awesome, we went to dinner, and drinks, and then dessert, and then we went another place for more dessert [laughs, others laugh]. SWB It was my favorite part about our co-host date. KL We know—we know how to do dessert. We know how to like do a night out. Clearly. JL I think that is definitely true. And I—I think that, don’t get me wrong, I love this podcast, and hanging out with you during this podcast, but I really loved hanging out with you over dinner, drinks, and dessert times three. SWB I was soooo happy to… get out and just kind of have fun with both of you because I was thinking a lot about this like we’re all busy and have so much different stuff going on in our schedules, and we all have like other work to do that’s not the podcast, of course, right? And so it’s really easy for like the only social time we have with each other to also be podcast time, and then you realize like… all we do is work on the podcast. And as much as—you’re right: I love it. Like I love doing it—I wouldn’t do this otherwise. But then you’re like, oh wow what used to be friend time is also now work time. And then you’re like, oh what happened to like just having friend time with my friends? And so I think that’s really cool that we sort of were, you know, making that time and I think we gotta make sure that happens more often. [2:29] JL A lot of us are so lucky to be able to have found friends that we can work with which is so cool because you’re just like doubling down on awesome time spent together but I—we—I keep coming back to this: this balance thing, right? And trying to figure out how to remember that… [under breath] I don’t have to remember that you’re my friends, I do know you’re my friends [laughter]. KL Do you remember why we fell in love? [JL laughs boisterously, others laugh along] JL The next Nicholas Sparks book! [Laughs] No, You Go: a Love Story. KL Yeah, yeah, exactly [chuckles]. JL But I think it’s—we all keep coming back to this balance thing, finding that balance. So, I don’t know, just going out to dinner with you all just reminded me (not that I forgot, I promise I didn’t forget) but just like, again, that this is the reason I think I love this so much is because I’m doing something I love with friends that I love. SWB I also love having like a cheese plate and not also talking about whether or not we can sign a sponsor, or what we’re going to do for the upcoming episode, or how many downloads we got this week. Like that was a pretty good cheese plate and also we didn’t have to talk about the podcast. Which, like, I love the podcast but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it all the time. I love work but I don’t want to talk about it all the time. JL That’s true. KL Yeah. JL We did talk about one thing about the podcast which was that we should bake this in every time we finish the season: a No, You Go…Out to Dinner [all laugh]. SWB Yeah, I mean, totally! I love this idea that we work that in as sort of like these celebratory moments. And like a season is little; like we’re talking 10 episodes at a time right now. That’s what we’re, you know, that’s what we’re calling a season. And it’s not like we’re, you know, doing these like major milestones, but it’s like these little mini markers that like, “Yeah! We accomplished something and that matters!” JL And I really like it. I mean and I think scheduling stuff is ok. And we’ve talked—and we’ve talked about this before with guests, right? I mean I know last week with Carmen, Carmen had mentioned, you know, how she’d scheduled weekends off. And, you know, to have that specific time booked. And, you know, and Lara Hogan has talked about how she likes to celebrate with donuts, and I think having these things that you specifically whether you mark them on a calendar or they become habit or routine. Something that really reminds you to keep celebrating these victories, these friendships, these professional milestones, anything that you want to love, to really celebrate that about yourself, some way or another. It can be something small, it can be something big, whichever fits into your lifestyle. [4:50] KL I love that and I’m so glad we did that, and I can’t wait til the next one. Something else that I really like that we’re doing is, you know, just working on improving ourselves a little it and part of that has been, you know, this new thing we’re going to do with the vocab swap. And I just thought, like let’s check in on that a little bit. So, vocab swap is something that we are starting because we realize we were saying things like “you guys” a lot or, you know, things like “we’re going crazy” about something, and we just—we wanted to change the way we were talking and just be a lot more aware of those things, and learn more about how to practice that a little bit better. So h—how do you feel like it’s been going? JL I feel like it’s been going well. I’ve run into a few hiccups here and there. For “you guys” I’m really good if I’m typing: I can type “y’all” or “folks.” But it feels weird for me to say “y’all” or “folks” out loud. The face I’m making right now [chuckles] is like mmm. It just doesn’t roll off my tongue that well. So, I don’t know, are you—are y’all saying something else? KL I also find that if I simply just take a beat and say “you” because that can apply to a group of people. If I’m not sure or like don’t feel comfortable saying “y’all” or “folks” or, you know, whatever, I like saying “friends” or “pals” [yeah][mm hmm]. I don’t know, just kind of thinking of all those different ways you can kind of experiment. I had a hard time with it, too, and then I was like, “I think I just need to force myself to say it,” and then it became a lot more comfortable. SWB I think that a lot of time like other things sound weird in our heads [yeah] because we’re not used to them, but they don’t actually sound weird. But I think, you know, something I—it depends on the context, right? Like so at the beginning of a conversation if you’re like introducing yourself or, you know, you’re saying hi for the first time, it’s like—I sometimes find that something like a “hey everyone” is more comfortable for me [yes yes] and then in conversation if it’s like, you know, “What do you guys want to get for lunch?” I find myself not saying that anymore because I find it’s pretty comfortable to say like, “What do you all want for lunch?” Not a y’all but like, “What do you all want?” KL Right. Yeah. SWB I found that those—those are the ways that it tends to work for me I think most of the time. JL And then the other one for me, you know, we were talking about substituting “crazy” for things like “wild.” So, “I’m wild about that.” And I love that, but then I ran into something like, what about if I’m saying, “This drives me crazy.” [7:24] SWB Yeah, so I mean that’s an interesting one, right? Because what you’re implying there is that this is making you mentally ill. And that’s kind of like what you mean, right, when you say that but it’s not really what you mean, right? And so for a lot of people it feels like that’s making light of people with actual mental illness. And so, you know, it’s hard to just swap out a word there. It’s like you kind of need to change up the whole phrase [mm hmm] so that you’re not—because if you say some other word that’s a substitute for crazy, like, “This is driving me nuts,” you’re basically saying the same thing [mm hmm]. So—so we started brainstorming some potentials [laughter]. Ok, so, “That makes me frustrated.” That’s a—that’s a good baseline one. You can use that pretty much anywhere. JL Totally. SWB What else did we come up with? JL Uh, “This really grinds my gears.” SWB [Laughs] These get bad so quickly [laughs]. KL “These really—really get my panties in a bunch.” JL [Laughs] Uh, “This makes my blood boil.” SWB “This really rubs me wrong.” [Mm] Meh [laughter]. JL That phrase, “Rubs me wrong,” rubs me wrong [laughter]. KL “That really… steams my mussels.” [Laughter] SWB Is that a thing?! [Laughter] KL No!! [Laughter][Music fades in, plays alone for two seconds, fades out.] Thanks to our sponsors SWB [Ad spot] Have you visited noyougoshow.com yet? Well, you should. Because that’s where you sign up for our brand-new email newsletter, “I Love That.” And guess what? We made that site with our awesome sponsor, WordPress. We love them, too. WordPress gives us tons of flexibility, so we can add whatever features we want easily. You can even use it for ecommerce. Whether you want to add a simple “buy” button, or have a whole online store, make your site your own when you build it on wordpress.com. You don’t need to do the coding or design. WordPress customer support team is there 24/7 to make sure things are [kisses index and thumb] chef-finger-kiss good. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo for 15 percent off any new plan purchase. That’s 15 percent off your brand-new website at wordpress.com/noyougo. We’re also hyped to be supported this week by CodePen, a powerful tool that allows designers and developers to write code like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly in a browser and see the results as you build. It’s like a big, virtual sandbox where you can learn new skills, show off your work, get help, and more. Not only is CodePen an awesome community but they’re also doing this awesome giveaway. They’re giving away three free Pro Developer accounts. Enter to win at codepen.io/nyg by answering just one question: What do you love about CodePen? And if you don’t use CodePen yet, you can still win. You just need to tell them what you’re excited to make first. So check out CodePen today and enter to win one of those three free Pro accounts. Visit codepen.io/nyg. That’s C-O-D-E-P-E-N dot I-O slash N-Y-G [music fades in, plays alone for two seconds, fades out]. [10:16] Interview: Adda Birnir KL I know my way around HTML and CSS because of one person: Adda Birnir. She is the founder and CEO of Skillcrush, the online coding school with a heart, which she’s built from the ground up over the past six years. Adda helped me learn programming languages, but more than that, I felt confident after learning something new, which is amazing. She’s helping thousands of people learn to code so they can make a living doing work they actually love. Adda, I’m thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome to No, You Go. Adda Birnir I’m so thrilled to be here! KL So let’s just get into this: how did you launch Skillcrush? AB We started, you know, in April of 2012 and basically at that point I had been working as a developer for probably about two years or so, and was kind of interested in this idea—was a moment in which startups were really hot, and it was like right when a lot of those incubators were sort of coming out. And it was kind of like everyone had a big idea and I was like, “I want in on this too!” So I was playing around with some different stuff with some friends of mine. At the time I was—I was running sort of a very, very small design/development shop with a business partner who became one of the founders of Skillcrush, and we were kind of experimenting with different ideas around apps and services and stuff like that that we could offer people. And we’d actually had one that had totally flopped and that had been a really good lesson for me because it was definitely one of those things where instead of starting with a problem and a customer, we started with a solution so we were, you know, there’s kind of a typical startup thing like a solution in search for a problem. And therefore I wanted to do everything with Skillcrush totally the opposite way. So we actually launched the first like first thing where we put the Skillcrush name out there was just a newsletter that we launched, and we launched it at South by Southwest [SXSW]. And by launched at SXSW, we put like an email form signup on an iPad and like walked up to people at SXSW and [laughs] tried to get them to buy it with an email address. So that was the first sort of genesis of Skillcrush in the form that it is today. [12:23] SWB What did you tell people at SXSW? Like what did you tell people they were signing up for? AB Basically the kind of like hypothesis or like the question that we were trying to answer for ourselves was: would women buy a product that was about technical topics if we positioned it in a much friendlier kind of way? That was kind of like the scientific experiment we wanted to do. Our hypothesis was that it’s not really that coding, per se, is unattractive to women, it’s that the way in which every other, you know, major university, education, everything outlet talks about it is the problem. And so if we repositioned it in a much friendlier way that seemed a lot more relevant to women’s lives, would they be willing to buy it? And our thought was if we can’t get women at SXSW to buy it, we’re screwed. Right? Like this is—this is definitely like the early adopter audience, and what we sold them, and by “sold,” again, it was for free with an email address. But what we sold them was a tech word of the day newsletter. I think. And it was like, every day we were going to define a new tech term in like a fun and interesting way. But I’m sure our pitch changed a lot, I’m sure, person to person, because we were literally doing direct sales person to person. KL I—I remember that newsletter. I mean, I signed up for that and I remember thinking like, “This is such a great entry point.” So, I don’t know, it—it worked. AB I got Katel! KL [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. So in the early days, after you grew sort of from making just that newsletter, you started doing these tutorials… what were those early days like creating all those tutorials? And like you—you yourself were at the center of this brand and kind of giving the lessons. Like what was that like? AB It was just a lot of work [laugh]. I mean it was like… I would literally—I mean I think that’s sort of every founder when they start, right? It’s funny for me to think about now because there’s people who’s like full-time job it is to video edit for us, for example. Whereas I used to write the content, do the video, edit the video, upload it to the site, code the site, you know what I mean? [KL laughs yeah] It was just like every single part of it. Yeah, I mean—I mean honestly like I think I am somebody who happens to be—like really enjoy that aspect of it. I mean I love Skillcrush and what it is now, but like I miss those early days. I miss the days when I could like have an idea… you know? Run through the entire production cycle and have it up the next day. That was super duper fun. It was also like soul crushingly like… you know like the weight of like, “Is this going to work?” You know, “Am I deluding myself?” Like all of that stuff was really, really hard. So, you know, it’s a—it’s a give and take. [15:05] KL Did you always feel like you were the kind of person who would start a business? Like, when did you know that you were that person? AB I… discovered that I was the type of person to run a business probably like four or five months into running my first business when I realized. I mean I really had to like have a heart to heart with myself and be like, “You know what? I’m running a business.” Because what had happened is that I had basically been doing this job, I was working at MTV at the time, and I really didn’t like it. And I met this friend who became my business partner and she had run a freelance—she’d basically been like a solopreneur kind of freelancer, sole proprietor, before that as a designer. And she was basically pitching to me that like I could be the developer, she would be the designer, and we could take on bigger projects together… And I was basically like, “I’ll do anything but stay here.” [Laughs] So I was like, “Sounds like a great idea. I’ll do whatever you say. You seem to have a vision.” So I did that and then I like had that—I had some sense that we needed to incorporate the biz—the whatever it was that we were doing. Again, I was not thinking about this as a business. And so I did all this research into co-op business models which is actually like a thing you can incorporate as. And I had this like fantasy that we were going to be this cooperative, and I was doing all this research about what that meant and like all this stuff. And then eventually like it just got to this point where I was like, I just dug myself, like really dug into some rabbit hole, and she was like, “We just need to make an LLC and be done with it.” I was like, “Ok, fine!” And that was kind of the moment at which it dawned on me that like this was a business that we were starting. Skillcrush obviously was very different. When I started Skillcrush I had already run a business for two years, and gone through a lot of the things around like incorporating, and, you know, hiring your first person, and then, you know, what does it mean employee, contractor, like you know—health insurance—like all of that stuff which is its own big learning curve. SWB Adda, when you started Skillcrush did you kind of go all in right away or were you still doing client work and kind of doing this on the side? Like how did you spin it up into what it is now? AB Yeah, no, definitely not going all in like right away. I started, you know, we were doing—we were a design and development consultancy, effectively, so we would you know build websites for clients for hire and so that, you know, luckily it lent itself really well to this because we kind of were—like we had a workflow that sort of accounted for a lot of different projects and moving them along at the same time. So it wasn’t so hard to like slot in a personal or a sort of, you know, more of like a pet project for us. But so we started off that way. We did apply for an incubator. So that was helpful for us for a number of reasons: they gave us some money, which was great. And then, you know, sort of allowed us to dial down the client work and really focus for awhile. I think it also was, you know, at the time like I think it was like a lot of validation for us—which, looking back on it, I don’t really think that getting validation from like any sort of incubator or investment really means very much, but at the time it did. You know, like, I guess what I’m trying to say is objectively, it’s not like they really knew that we were, you know… going to work out as a company. But I think just having anyone tell you that this is a good idea and then put some money behind it like obviously is really helpful and encouraging at that moment in time. So. [18:21] KL Yeah. AB That was super helpful. And then we actually got a follow-on note from another investor so that gave us a little bit more runway. But I will say, like, we burned through all that money and then literally had negative dollars in the bank account and had to like figure out what the hell to do with ourselves [laughs]. So then we went back to doing client work. So it was definitely like it was a long road. Like I… went full-time on Skillcrush in the fall of 2014. So that was like over two years after we had batted the company. SWB That’s really interesting. So… so yeah something that we hear about a lot is when people start talking about, you know, running a startup, they’ll—they’ll immediately launch into… how they went from an incubator or whatever into, “Ok when we got our Series A,” and, you know, “Going for our Series B.” And did you kind of stop going down that investment path or did you continue once you went past the incubation stage? Can you tell us more about how that played out? AB Yeah so we did basically an incubator, which was $25,000, which is kind of traditional for an incubator. Then we did a convertible note, follow-on investment, which was basically like we just got—we got handed a $50,000 check and we didn’t even have to ask for it. But convertible notes, for those of you who aren’t familiar: basically they’re debt that will convert at the point at which you raise more money. Meaning that it’ll convert to equity. So it’s like you owe $50,000 on this timetable, but the idea is that instead of having to actually pay that back you raise more money. Like a Series A, for example. And at that point it converts to equity instead of being a debt. So we basically got a total of $75,000, and we used that to sort of fund the initial creation of our product and at that point we got ourselves to a point where we were making money but very little money. It was like $5,000 or something like that which, Katel, that’s probably like, you’re probably like one of the first dollars in the door [laughs, KL laughs]. KL Yes! AB [Chuckles] But yeah, so, and, you know, I think at the time like we were like, “Oh $5,000, that’s awesome.” Like, “Next month it’ll be $10,000, and then $15,000!” And instead it was like $5,000, then it was like $4,000, then it was like $3,000, and then we were like, “Oh no! This is a disaster.” And that was the point at which we had to, you know, just out of necessity, had to go and start doing other work to just make a living—I mean just to pay my rent. But in terms of the whole question of like whether or not to raise. You know, honestly this is something I fought with my co-founder about a lot, and I think she would be comfortable with me saying this. One of my co-founders I think kind of like basically left because I effectively refused to fundraise at that point, and the reason I refused at that point was I really didn’t—I just didn’t know even where to begin with that. Like I didn’t really know what I would do with the money if I raised the money. I didn’t really know what potential there was. I mean for me, this was so new at that point in time. It just wasn’t something I felt comfortable doing or wanted to do and I also think like that there was an extent to which like I had this sense of like, like, “I have a lot to learn here.” Both like myself as a person but also just like in context of this, like is this a viable business? What is needed for it to be a viable business? What does it look like? What needs to happen? [21:31] AB [Continued] And I think I just didn’t want kind of the pressure that bringing on more people would bring into it. So yeah, so I didn’t raise money. And then later on when I got to the point where I could’ve started to answer those questions, it kind of felt like the same thing, except for now I like was more knowledgeable, like I felt like I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep. I—it was growing really organically, and it was growing at a high rate, but not at a sort of venture-backable high rate. And at that point I didn’t need the money, like I—we were profitable. So I just kind of continued to grow it like that. SWB I ask about it because I feel like so often when we have any conversation about a kind of tech-related business, nobody seems to understand that like… this is actually one potential path you could take. It’s almost like people have forgotten that since, you know, like people have been starting businesses by doing work for money [chuckles] for a really long time, and then it’s like, all of a sudden, it’s like everybody collectively forgot that, and assumes that what you have to do is go out there and get, you know, large amounts of funding and that it is all about raising capital, and then having to make those people happy. And so I—I really like, you know, looking at what are other ways people do this kind of thing? And then, how does that change what you offer, and how you offer it, and how you choose to grow? AB I don’t regret anything about what I’ve done. I mean I will admit, just for full disclosure, I did raise money from an angel investor in 2015 and the reason for that was that at that point we were making a lot of money but I also had a lot of costs. It was making it hard for me to invest as much as I wanted to in growth because, you know, I think as a young company, like it’s really hard to sort of build up the cash reserves that you need in order to feel really stable. So at that point I did take on some money just to sort of have some more cash in the bank, and allow us to continue to invest in the growth of the business. But… running a startup business, like I have—it’s really keeps you honest and I think that I can’t imagine like even for me now like having more money in the bank like it does fundamentally change the way you make decisions. And sometimes at some points in the business I think that’s like ok and appropriate if you know what you’re doing. But early on, I mean you’re literally just spending blindly. Like you have no idea what to spend money on, or like you just—you don’t know how to do anything. I mean you don’t know how to like spend your time or money, and that just lends itself to spending money on things you shouldn’t be spending money on. And it’s not that it’s impossible to like raise money and then do it right, but I think that it’s impossible to bootstrap it and not do it right, right? Like you can’t do it for very long if you don’t do it right. So it like really, really forces you, in such a healthy way I think, to know what the hell you’re doing—or to learn really fast. [24:16] SWB Right. There’s no pile of money sitting around that you can misuse— KL Exactly. SWB —because it’s not there [giggles]. AB Exactly. Yeah. It’s like I mean and you feel the pain. It’s like you’re looking at negative dollars and you’re like, “[Choking sound] What am I going to do to get myself out of this?” KL [Laughs] Yeah. You feel the effect right away and you have to make a decision to turn it around and—I mean the—I don’t want to say the cool thing is, because sometimes it doesn’t turn out to be cool but, you know—an interesting thing is that when you make a decision to try something else or something new you also get that feedback like right away. You’re like, [chuckles] “Ok this is working. Keep doing that.” AB Yeah. And granted like it only works for certain types of businesses and there’s other types of businesses that it’s very difficult and stuff like that, but I am really thankful for the experience, I’m really proud of having gotten through that. And I think Skillcrush is a much stronger company today because of that fact. So I definitely would recommend it. That said, though, like, listen: it’s true, nobody give you a—you know like I was profitable, like, I don’t know, maybe my third year in business or no, my second—or whatever. My first, my second full year of business and like nobody gives you a parade for that. And then you raise like a Series A and everyone’s like, “You’re amazing!” So like, I don’t know… I get it. KL That’s totally true. SWB It also seems to me like that’s sort of part of the problem [AB yeah] with like the tech industry and sort of like, what it chooses to celebrate and not celebrate. and what kinds of incentives that gives people. [25:40] AB Yeah, I mean listen: if we want to get real cynical, I think the tech industry is premised on like wealth consolidation, and like, what are you rewarding at the end of the day? Like some VC invests a bunch of money and then sells the company. Who is actually benefiting from that, right? Like I don’t—I don’t know. So yes. So I think there’s like some fundamental problems with what the tech industry and what our world values. I could not agree with you more. SWB Well, totally. You know what, though, I don’t think—I mean—I don’t actually perceive that as cynical, or maybe I don’t know maybe I’m just cynical, but I perceive that as being sort of like celebrating other ways of doing things. And, you know, like speaking of that, I’m actually really curious. I mean you kind of went around building the business a little differently than what some other people in tech might’ve done, but also the message and the sort of positioning of Skillcrush has been pretty different too. I mean you mentioned that when you mentioned the SXSW launch and sort of going up and trying to make it approachable for women, and I’m wondering if we can talk more about that. Like, how do you see Skillcrush as being different than other code bootcamps or academies and things like that that are out there? AB So [sighs]… I—it’s funny. I had an interesting conversation with a founder of another bootcamp and he was basically asking me, like, how do you—you know, because I think a lot of the other bootcamps struggle to attract women. And like our audience is 80 percent women. And we’re, you know, we’re literally enrolling hundreds of women a month. So it’s like they’re not not there, and they’re not not interested. They’re interested. And it was just funny for me because I was sort of like, “Oh it’s so simple.” And at the same time, like, you’d have to change everything about what you do. I think—like I can tell you how we do it in a million different details and sort of how we execute on it, but I think fundamentally it’s that the mission of our organization is focused on this audience: it’s women who are looking to make a career change because they want to make more money, have more flexibility, be more creatively, you know, fulfilled in their jobs. And we believe that by empowering them with tech skills, it’ll give them a lot more opportunities they don’t currently have. And we want, you know, to help them sort of make that transition. So then what that means is that like… we start everything from that premise. Like I mean we actually literally have a persona and she has a name and everything is like, “Is this what she would want?” Right? Does she want this class? Does she want this color? Does she want this design? Does she—like would she resonate with this imagery? Like so it’s just like it’s completely baked into every aspect of how we run the company. And—and I mean I would go as far as like to a certain extent like—I mean [sighs]… this is where like the persona and me I guess get a little conflated but like [chuckles] you know the company also is sort of—we want to build the company that would be a company that she would want to work for. Right? That is—that sort of does right by our people in the way that we think that like, you know, they should be done right by. So yeah it just… it’s just how—it’s the air we breathe. [28:32] SWB I’m thinking about even just a really tangible way that this plays out. You know I was taking a look at… how you talk about Skillcrush like on the website and I was looking at the reviews that you have, and I was noticing the difference between… what I see there versus like what I see on like a lot of these kind of bootcamp sites which is a lot of those feel so sort of like aggressive, like that you get out and you’re immediately this like coding rockstar who’s going to get this six-figure salary and I think, you know, that may well be true for somebody who comes out of the program, too, that they’re going to end up getting a great salary, but there was a lot more message of like, this very achievable feeling of like, “Yeah, I was able to transition into a job in tech doing support and then I was able grow that from there into this bigger position,” and it feels a little bit more like realistic? Maybe. Or a little bit more… just not—not so aggressive in that—in that like super… domineering way. AB Yeah I mean I think there’s a lot of culture in tech that I really struggle with, which is very much about virtuosity and [exhales sharply] sort of extreme technical ability, extreme, you know, you want to be the best coder ever! Who knows like the most languages! And like so fancy, and have like a really tight hierarchy of like what technical skills are valuable and which ones are not valuable. And fundamentally that is not a message that resonates with our audience. Like if we were like, “We’re the single best, most advanced, most intense place to learn Python,” like our audience would not come to us because that’s just not what they’re looking for. And I think like that is a huge distinction that I think differentiates us from everyone else basically, and I think that’s kind of what you’re speaking to. And I will say, too, like (and this is anecdotal) but like we do have male students and we also will get a lot of male students who will look at our programs, and it’s so funny because like… it’s so different in talking to them. And they tend to be much more interested, like they’ll really like hammer on our customer support of like, “What languages do you teach?” Like, “How do you teach them?” “How updated are they?” “What version are they?” Like all this stuff. And that just isn’t, you know, with our core audience it’s much more about what you can do with it rather than like kind of like how hardcore and how like legit are my skills going to be when I walk away from this program. And like, we still are legit. And like teach awesome stuff but, you know, that’s kind of not necessarily like our number one value proposition. SWB Yeah I like this idea that—that there’s lots of ways to do tech. Like there’s lots of ways to work in tech and like, sure, you might be the kind of person who wants this like super intense kind of thing but… there’s so much work to be done in tech and there’s so many interesting problems to solve that like you don’t have to be that person to find like a really cool career in the field which I like—I like that that message is coming through. I love that so much. AB Yeah I mean I think again, you know, fundamentally like our audience is not sitting around being like, “The most important thing to me is that I work in tech.” That’s just not what they’re motivated by. Like they are motivated by, you know, having a career that is more fulfilling to them in like, you know, in lots of different ways. Whether that is that it’s creative and flexible or that they make more money, I mean whatever, you know, that can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. And kind of the role that we’re playing is saying, “Listen: like tech is not even like a career. It is the career,” you know what I mean? Like it’s—it is the world we live in. And the more empowered you are from a technical perspective, the more choice you’re going to have, and the more options you’re going to have, and the more power you’re going to have, frankly. And this is kind of that moment. Like it’s like the industrial revolution or something, it’s like if you don’t sort of get on the bandwagon now, like there’s just a—there’s a lot to lose, potentially. And so, you know, we’re trying to—you know, trying to sort of bridge that gap. [32:25] KL Yeah. That makes so much sense and in making tech, you know, and sort of this whole world more approachable for women do you—do you like ever worry that they’ll, you know, what they’ll encounter in the culture when they get there? AB If I thought that the only that you could take advantage of the skills that we’re teaching you is to go work at a tech company, I think I would feel a lot more conflicted about what we do. But from my perspective like and, you know, and I say this partially from my own experience and also from, you know, just what I have observed and also just, you know, reading lots of data on jobs and where they’re moving. Like I don’t think that the only way that tech skills is useful to somebody is like to go work in the tech industry in sort of traditional like quote/unquote like “development” job. And I have major concerns about people who go do that and I definitely like would caution anyone. I mean, you know, and to go in with open eyes. Like I think—and I think [sighs]… it’s complicated like obviously I want women to have those jobs and I want more women to be in those roles but I also think fundamentally like, you know, it’s the big, I don’t know, you know, I’m just going to throw out some names here. Not to just single out any single company but at the end of the day I really do fundamentally believe that it’s like Google, and Apple, and Facebook, and all those, and Uber, like they’re the ones who have the most to lose by not diversifying their workforce and I don’t want to promote an idea of a like—I don’t believe in the idea that like… we should be begging them for jobs or begging them to like—like I fundamentally think that what’s amazing about the internet is that it really does democratize and distribute the power in a way that is kind of unprecedented in human history, and I’m about like distributing that power, and I don’t necessarily think that anyone should feel like they’re at the whim of some, you know, sexist tech company’s culture. KL Well, speaking of that like what [exhales sharply] what could change there in terms of I don’t know, like, this industry and those people just being, you know, better at supporting more diverse folks coming into it? AB Honestly, like I don’t know that I’m always like the best person to comment on this. I mean I can tell you like the things that we think about in terms of like how we create our company to try to combat bias, you know? And from a structural perspective: it’s hard. Like I get that. You have to do things that are not sexy. Like, you know, a big thing we did was institute these salary tiers where we really kind of worked really hard to equalize people’s salaries, and not—it doesn’t mean everyone makes the same amount, but like sort of create really strict standards of how we divvy up salaries and decide on salaries. And I mean I think it’s super sexy, but like from an individual’s perspective it’s not. It means you can’t, like, maximize your salary at Skillcrush. Like that’s not something that’s going to happen to an individual because we think about it from like sort of the collective perspective. So I think, you know, it’s about really reexamining the values of what these companies are going after. [35:18] KL Yeah totally. AB And that’s hard. SWB I’m so into this idea of like thinking about it from the collective perspective, I mean if you are working in a traditional environment where nobody is thinking about it from the collective perspective, like obviously you kind of gotta like… get yours or whatever. Like that—that ends up being like a mindset you have to get into to survive there. But if you are in a company where there’s this collective feeling in where you do have a sense that people are in it together. I think that you can approach situations totally differently. I love that. AB Yeah. I mean I think the thing is like from an employer’s perspective like everything is collective actually, right? Like I—like, you know, and this is based in my actual experience: like if I negotiate with someone and they negotiate an extra like $30,000 for their salary. That’s $30,000 dollars I can’t pay someone else or pay another like three people or whatever or raises I can’t give or bonuses. Like there is—it is a zero-sum game. I don’t have endless amounts amounts of money and I guess what I became really concerned with personally was pay equity, which I think is what you’re addressing, right? Like when you don’t have standardization and you don’t have pay equity then yeah, you should just basically try to get everything you can for yourself because like otherwise you’re just a sucker [laughing]. It’s like getting the short end of the stick. But I just, I mean like, I’m like whoever would think that that would create like a good structural outcome? KL Yeah. SWB Right, like, that’s more about like how do I—how do I like… exist in this environment or this culture in this system that is not like actually designed in any sort of healthy way, versus what would a system look like that was actually, you know, going to be like positive and good for people. And those are such fundamentally different questions that I think maybe we don’t spend enough time like parsing out, like, the difference between those things. [37:10] AB Yeah. Absolutely. KL So we were reading an interview with you where you talked about how you get out of a rut, and part of your answer was sometimes you, quote, “Must surrender and trust that you won’t feel so uninspired forever,” and we—we just really loved that like, you know, getting caught up in the idea of forward momentum and I think so many of us do that. That, you know, that kind of like unrelenting [laughs] you know push that you feel. Like how, I don’t know, how do you—like how do you deal with that? AB I think step one is always acknowledging it, right? Like I think that it was a big revelation for me just to be like, my role at this company has really changed, and I don’t get to be the person coming up with all the big ideas all the time. You know, and I really miss that, and I don’t—I don’t really have a solution for it. It’s been really helpful for me to talk to other people. Like I have a mentor who sort of gave me warning. He was like, you know, like, “You know like when you get up to like 30 to 50 people,” and we’re at 35 right now, he was like, “A lot of founders wake up and realize they hate their [laughing] lives and hate their companies,” because it’s just this, like, weight. It’s like all the fun parts are drained out of it, and like now all you do is like bureaucratic stuff, and for a lot of people that’s not why they got into the business at all. And that can be a real challenge. And that was kind of a warning he gave me and, you know, I don’t hate my company, but it was good for me to sort of have some warning that that wasn’t—that was like very normal. KL Yeah some perspective that you’re like, “Ok, I’m not the only one going through this.” Well, ok, so we’ve got one last question because we know we’re running out of time. But so, what would you tell someone who is considering building their own company or, you know, starting something new like that? AB It’s really funny because I feel like I do get asked this question a lot and I meet with people and it’s funny because it’s like I feel like I’m always like there to rain on their parade. And that’s so not what I want to do [KL chuckles] because I’m like, “No! You absolutely should go for it. It’s awesome.” So I—let me start by saying that: like you should totally go for it. It’s totally awesome. It’s completely—I think something that’s really important for people to understand is like there is a method to the madness. Like there is a way to make it much more likely that you will succeed. You know? It’s not just luck. And then, you know, and then to rain on your parade: I would say that like, you know, fundamentally—and this is something I say to people and they don’t like, but I will say it anyway—you at some point have to decide whether you are more attached to running a successful business or more attached to like realizing the vision that you had for your business. And in a perfect world and actually like I will say for myself like Skillcrush exceeds my expectations like by like a factor of like, you know, 25. Like it’s—I’m so proud of the company I’ve built and the product and there’s so many aspects of it that I couldn’t have even—like that I literally just would never have known to do, and that are so phenomenal. And like going on that journey has been, outside of like marrying my husband, the best thing that ever happened to me. But I think that like it’s successful from a business standpoint because at some point I decided that I wanted the business to survive and I was going to figure out what it would take for it to survive and do that. And that really meant sort of letting go of kind of any idea I had about what the business was going to be, and really base it on, you know: what was the problem? Who was the customer? And how was I going to solve their problem? And I think when I say that to people like they hear it as me telling that their like baby’s ugly or like they need to throw out their baby or whatever which I understand why they see that way but I really believe it’s about like letting go of like your vision of your baby, and like trusting in the process to like bring you an even better baby [laughter] and like I don’t know how much longer I can stretch this baby analogy but uh—but I just—yeah. I just think that like you—it’s like being in business is—like to really, really fundamentally be in business, it’s a lot of like really, really painful, hard choices that in the end, I think if you like come at it from the right perspective and don’t just like become a diet pill company or something like that, it will lead to like a much better outcome than you could’ve even imagined on your own. But I think it’s a very humbling process. [41:30] SWB Thank you so much for being on the show! This has been sooo interesting, and helpful, and thoughtful, and I am so glad we could have you. AB Yeah, no, it’s so good. No, thank you! [Music fades in, plays alone for two seconds, fades out.] Fuck Yeah of the Week KL So it’s time for one of my favorite parts of the show: The Fuck Yeah of the Week. Jenn, can you tell us what that is? JL I can, Katel. How about fuck yeah, mornings! Question mark?!? SWB Ugh!! Are you sure?!? JL I’m not sure. But I am sure and I’m going to try to be sure. I’ve been trying to dig into more about this whole morning-people thing that I’ve been hearing so much about my whole life. And I—I’m not so much a morning person, and I—right now I’m not an anything person because I’m sleep deprived and with a one-year-old, the mornings are the nights, and it’s all the same. But even before that I only dabbled in and out of being a morning person, but I feel like I’ve always had that pressure to like want to be a morning person. You know? I get it. It’s great. Sunshine. Do a bunch of stuff. It sounds amazing. Right? Like get stuff done before work, enjoy the coffee, there’s so many things about the mornings that are awesome, right? There’s so many things that like, fuck yeah, mornings! But there’s still something about the mornings some days that you get up and you’re just like, “Ugh! Mornings [laughs].” So I’ve been trying to think about how to more fuck yeah, mornings! And one of the things I read recently that I really liked was that… when you get up instead of being like, “Ugh, you know, I didn’t sleep well,” or, “I’ve got this thing to do.” Instead ask yourself: what am I looking forward to today? And I love that, so the other day I got up and then I said to myself, “I’m so looking forward to seeing my friends today,” and when I like reframed the morning like that to then think about the positive things that were coming up, it completely flipped the script. So it like switched how I was going to look at the rest of that day and all of a sudden I was like… “Fuck yeah, morning!” [43:36] KL I like that so much. I—I think of myself as more of a morning person than like a, you know, a night owl, but I still find it like over this winter it’s just been, you know, extra hard getting up and it’s dark and all that. But I always love like the first coffee [mmmm]. And there’s something about it that like always gets me—I’m just like, “Yes, if I can just like get to that, it’s all going to be good [laughs].” JL Something I started doing a few years ago was not waiting to get to work to have my first cup of [KL yeah!] but making sure that I woke up and had that cup of coffee at home. So that like I could really enjoy it and didn’t feel like I was rushing all around. So I’ve always made sure, even like with changes in schedule, that I have at least 15 minutes to enjoy that cup of coffee and have that be my time. KL That’s so funny. That reminds me of—and this like a while ago but my sister at one point I—I just like hadn’t realized that she did this, and she was like, yeah, you know, she and her husband would like—they would go get out of bed, make coffee, and then get back in bed, and drink the coffee in bed and just like sit there for 10 or 15 minutes like enjoying coffee! And I was like, “That sounds amazing!!!” I was like, “Oh my god. Why am I not doing that?!?” SWB You should’ve all seen my face when Jenn said that she realized that she didn’t have to like wait till she was at work to have the first coffee [laughter] and I’m like, “I don’t understand. How did you get to work?” But like how did you move your person from your home… ? [Laughter] But anyway so like ok, there’s that. But also I really think like—I don’t think of myself as a morning person necessarily. Like I can drag myself up and out for something early when I need to and occasionally for like an early workout when I don’t think I can do it later or something like that, but I kind of like to, you know… wake up a little more slowly and like not have to talk to anybody right away [laughs]. Like I don’t have to be a morning person, necessarily, to still say like, “Oh! But I can find some joy in what’s coming up that day,” right? Like you don’t have to transform yourself. You don’t have to wake up smiling, you can still be kind of dragging ass, but you can also say, like, “Ooh! What do I have to look forward to today?” And I’m—that’s a habit that I want to start getting into so that I don’t go into the day like with that general sense of dread and [laughing] foreboding and instead identify something good that I’m looking forward to that day. And if I don’t have anything to look forward to at all that day, then maybe I should take a moment in the morning and come up with something because— [46:04] KL Yeah! SWB —like if you don’t have anything coming up in the day that you can be like, “That’s going to be good. That’s going to be my time,” [inhales sharply]… maybe that’s the problem… maybe it was never the morning’s fault. KL Maybe we can all learn to love mornings. JL You know this is like what we’ve talked about before where sometimes you just like—like with salary numbers in one of our previous episodes we were saying, you know, if you’re going to go in for a salary negotiation, keep saying the number that you’re going to ask for until like you sound confident in it. So maybe if I just keep repeating over and over again… “Fuck, yeah, mornings! Fuck yeah, [laughs] mornings! Fuck. Yeah. Mornings!” Until I really really believe and then it will happen [laughter]. KL I believe it. Fuck yeah, mornings. SWB I’m a little unconvinced but I’m going to say—I—I’m going to say, fuck yeah to taking a moment to think about things I’m looking forward to on any given day because: fuck yeah, I like looking forward to things. KL Yes. JL Fuck yeah! SWB Well, I think that wraps up this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia, and produced by Steph Colbourn. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. Thanks to Adda Birnir for being our guest today. Be sure to check out “I Love That,” our new, biweekly newsletter. Sign up at noyougoshow.com/ilovethat. And if you like what you’ve been hearing, we’d love if you’d give us a review on whatever podcast app you use. We’ll be back next week! See you then [music fades in, plays alone for 30 seconds, fades out to end].

Steve Larsen: 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 create and cheat and only bug family members and friends who want to grow a profitable home business? How do we recruit A players into our downlines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question in this podcast. We'll give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. What's up guys? Hey, hopefully you're doing awesome. I know it's been a little while since I've published here. I've been at several events. I've spoken at several events. Been flying like crazy. It's been a lot of fun. What I wanted to do for this episode was, I wanted to drop in a recording of me coaching the people who were inside of the program that I sell called Secret MLM Hacks. And it's been a lot of fun coaching them. I realize that I've now brought almost 900 people through this process or similar process as well, and had a lot of success with it. I've been able to go through it and help create millionaires, many of them now, and it's been great. And so one of the things that I notice, there's always this point as people start to learn something new, that they will go through, it happens to pretty much everybody that I've ever seen and watch. And what they'll do is, they'll sit back and they will start to question the very process that they're going through. And what I wanted to do is, I wanted to drop in. It's kind of special, guys. It's unique. There's three things that I ask every single person that I am coaching to go through internally. And so the next, it's like 20, 30 minutes, something like that, but it's totally worth it I promise, for you to go through and see what those three things are that I drop out to my students to help them know what I expect from them as they move forward inside of my program. So if you're sitting on the fence or whatever, every Friday what I do is, I always want people to know that I am there for them to help them answer questions, to coach them along the path, to push them when they need pushing. I look at myself as a coach. I tell them I'm a coach. Now, one thing about a coach is that coaches don't always make things comfortable. The purpose of the coach is to cause progression. And sometimes progress requires a little bit of pain, or discomfort, or things that are new, things you never ... Anyway, this is me going through and setting kind of the premise as far as hey, here are the three things that I require. And what's kind of cool is, regardless if you're in my program or not, these are things that you can use inside your own downline that I think that you will be able to help set the bar so that you create people who are people of action. One of the things that is most dangerous is when you recruit a whole bunch of people, which I've totally done this before, and probably most of us have, but you recruit a whole bunch of people who are not expecting to run on their own. Right? How do you get someone past that? And so this what I tell my people. This is what tell not just the people in my group, but also people inside of my very downline to help set the bar and help people realize that, yes, I'll run, but I'll run with you, not for you. These are the three things that I have people go through and understand. Anyways, I'm going to cue this over here. You can even take notes if you'd like to. These three things though, drastically, drastically, I've always found increase the speed of success for the person who is either in my downline, or the person I'm coaching, whatever it may be. Anyways, hopefully you guys enjoy this. Thanks so much. Guys, I'm excited for today. I hope you're doing well and I am just thrilled to be part of this group. I'm so touched by the number of you guys that are just out there just killing it, just doing everything that you can to just run forward. One of the hardest things I have as a coach is, I've had a total of about 900 people, ish. Let me think. Yeah. It's almost 900 people, 900 people in the last year that I've coached through these kinds of processes and similar thing as you guys are going through right now. And the thing that gets heartbreaking for me is this whole idea that, you guys, no one's teaching what I'm teaching. You've got the material, in my mind, the best tools, in my mind. You've got the best stuff that's out there, your complete Blue Ocean Strategy. You've got all this stuff that's out there. And the thing that hangs people up, it's like, well. What is it then? It's actually the ability for the individual to believe that it can work, and that's it. That's it. The ability to believe that it actually can work. And yes, Stephen, I totally get it. And yes, I will marry the process. One of the things, every once in a while I get someone to reach out. They're like, "Are you telling me that I actually have to put a few things into this? I actually have to work on it?" I was like, "Well, yeah. It's a business. Of course you have to." But it's not completely turnkey all the way? It's like, no, it wouldn't be valuable then. Are you serious? Are you serious? I've turned key to everything that I can. You know what I mean? And it's hard for me to see that as a coach. So those of you guys who are, you're out there, you're hustling. You're trying to apply all the stuff that I'm teaching. You're going through and you're just going through the motions. You're just doing it. I thank you. It means a lot to me. It's heartbreaking for me to see that. I've been where you are. And two years ago, I was broke, guys. And I went through and I started putting all these pieces together and putting these ... And it's crazy. I ended up getting my first Two Comma Club award. What? That's crazy. Million dollars through a single funnel. Crazy. Changed my life. And I started coaching people on this process. And over the last year I've had over almost 900 people in, which is crazy, that I've had a chance to bring through at this, both personal coaching students, you guys, Russell's group, which is huge, another group of mine that I have that's big. And it's been just, it's so fun. But it also is an emotional roller coaster for the coach. And those of you guys who have an existing team and you're trying to get people to take action, you've been through that before and you know what I'm talking about. And so I'm very appreciative of you guys and just going forward and just doing it. There's been a ton of success stories already in this group alone, and it's not that old. It's pretty new still, actually. And I've had a lot of people reach out, and it's the classic excuses. Well, I don't know that I have time. It's like, "Are you serious? This can make you a million bucks. What's the worth to you?" It's not going to be done in a week? No. How long does it take for my four year old to grow into an adult? Years. Right? I want to shortcut that process for you by a ton if you just do what I tell you to do on it. But one thing I want you to know and understand and be a part of and realize is, I wish people would just stop questioning the process. The process works, but people get so caught up in questioning whether or not the process works that they're not actually doing the process. So sit back like, "Will that actually work?" Why don't you get there, try it, and find out. You know what I mean? It's so much better to do it that way and do it that model than it is to go the other way and start questioning every little thing. Something, doing something, is always better than sitting back and questioning. You just won't get anything done. At the very bare bolts of it, I have never seen anybody who actually is failing when they just have pig headed discipline running towards stuff. It may not even be the fact ... They might not even be running towards the right thing, but just the fact that they're running, they drastically increase their chances of actually being successful with something. Rather than sit back and go, "Oh, what about this? What about this? What about this?" So I'm so thankful because, especially those of you guys, typically it's those who get on these calls with me or will see them later that are the ones that are actually doing it, pushing forward. And not to be a jab at anybody, I hope that it's a teachable moment though. If you want to look back and think to yourself, "Am I actually teachable?" Right? A lot of what I teach you guys, I think it was model three, goes through and teaches you more about internal beliefs of your customer, or your prospective customers, of people you'd want to sell both on your product and your downline. And what I want you to do, what I invite you guys to do, is to take the time to sit back and think to yourself, "Self, what are my false beliefs about what Stephen's telling me?" And do the same thing to yourself as what I'm trying to teach you to do to your customers. Start asking yourself, "Am I believing him or am I?" Because I know it works. I was just at Funnel Hacking Live in Florida this last week. And it was so cool to sit back and watch 90 more people get their Two Comma Club award and sit back and go, "Wow. They were from my program. They were from my program. They were from my program. They were from my ... " Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Holy crap. And it's cool to see that. I know the process works. The issue I run into is the person's individual belief. And funny enough, I have to treat you like I do a normal customer like you have to. Right? Just because you're in this program, it's not over for me. Just like when you get someone in your downline, it's not over for you. You've got to continue to look at them and go, "What is the belief? What's the belief that these people are struggling with as far as taking an action?" I an put a cattle prod to your back and get you to do something for a little while, but that's not sustainable. It's better for me to sit back and think, "What is the belief?" Behavior is driven by belief. So if I want to affect your behavior, I've got to [inaudible 00:09:10] your belief. What's the belief you have about this program's success, or my product's success, or my downline's ability to make you ... Does that make sense? And then I go, "Hey. Now that I know what the vehicle related beliefs are, now what are the actual internal beliefs?" Which, typically go towards things that are insecurities, meaning someone will go, "Oh, this looks like it could work for me, Stephen, but I'm not a coder. I don't know any ClickFunnel stuff." I'm not a coder either. Or, I'm not going to know what to say. I'm not going to know what to do. I'm not good face to face with people. I'm not either. That's why I freaking built a funnel for it. Right? Does that make sense? I constantly am looking at what you guys are doing. I'm constantly, and I'm watching. Just so you know, I'm watching and I'm seeing where you guys are and I'm seeing what you're doing and I'm watching. I'm trying to be reactionary to what it is he's doing in a way that we've been more successful with it. So I am going back and as far as the external, that's the next one. And people will blame their ability to be successful on things that are away from them. I can't be successful with this program, or I can't be successful with this downline, or with this product, whatever it is, whatever you're selling. I can't be successful because of this, and they blame it on that. They blame it on things away from them. Time, I don't have enough money. I don't have enough energy or resources. I work a nine to five. So did I, guys. That's how I bootstrapped the whole way. Okay. My ability to be successful, I can't do it because, boom, look at this. My spouse, they're not going to be supportive enough. Right? Those are the internal and then external things that people deal with, and so I'm watching. I'm watching you. Not in a creepy way, please understand. But I'm watching you. And I'm watching and I'm going, "Oh, gosh dang it. That's the thing right there. They're struggling with this, or they struggling with that." And the thing that just will wreck me on the inside is when I sit back and I watch people and I'm like, "You wouldn't be saying that. The reason you are saying that is because I sound like you're believing that in order to be successful, you have to have zeros and ones running through your veins." Not true. Or, you feel like you've got to have a ton of time. Well, yeah, but I'm going to short cut the five years I've taken to do this hopefully down to five weeks. You know what I mean? And shorten it down if you're just willing to feel ... So the thing that I have to ask you to do and I know that I'm preaching to the choir here because you guys are on here with me and you're typically the ones who are doing it, which I'm very excited for and just so appreciative. I can't tell you how much mental kudos that gives me to see you and watch you be like, "Oh, man. He's doing it. She's doing it. They're doing it. Yes, yes, yes, yes." Road block, sure. Right? Something unexpected, something hard, absolutely, totally going to happen. But to stop questioning the process and just marry the process and be willing to give yourself to the pieces of sacrifice it requires to be vulnerable, to sit back and go, "I don't know this. And the first time I start publishing, Stephen, I'm going to look like an idiot." Well, yeah, duh. I did too. And you go back and you're like, "Oh, my gosh." And you start backtracking, backtracking, backtracking, backpedal, backpedal, backpedal. And you've got to be able to know and marry the process as you go. I'm thankful for you guys like crazy, those of you guys that are doing it. It makes it worth it for me. At this point of where it am, it doesn't have anything to do with money. I want to be able to be building something that has direct impact and is able to go. If I can get you to do it, think of the dozens and maybe even hundreds, maybe even thousands of people it will affect as you teach your downlines this stuff. I know it works better. I know it does. I'm doing it. Right? You guys know it does. You're in it. And if I can get ... This is how we change an industry. And so I'm attacking it from several levels. I'm trying to help you guys, us, the little guy. I'm trying to help us get this done. And then I'm also starting to work through some possibilities of working through a few different MLMs from the corporate angle who are willing to accept this stuff, who are not trying to use it to crush the little guy. You know what I mean? I'm very careful. I do not want that to happen. So anyway, it means a lot to me, so if I can get you to believe that the process is the way and that you marry the process and set your own feelings aside and understand that there will be moments of embarrassment. You're going to be feelings you have no idea what to do. Sometimes you'll be like, "Oh, my gosh. Tech stuff, or not enough time in my life." There's never enough time in your life. That's all an excuse. Or this, or that, if you can get past that piece of it, holy crap guys, the world is your oyster because you're able to go through and actually make progress on these things without actually sitting back and going, "Is this actually going to work?" You're never going to find out if you just keep asking that. You know what I mean? So I'm thankful for you guys. And then the second thing I would encourage you to do is find somebody to teach quickly. Find someone to teach quickly the things that you are learning. It will solidify it in your head. It's the way I got through school was by ... Even random people, I would just teach random people the stuff I was learning from teachers that day. And it's what got me from completely failing and getting kicked out of college. True story. And going back, reapplying, getting back in and almost getting straight As the rest of college. And it was that piece right there. A few other things as well, obviously. Very religious, I certainly believe that God helps me with that. But one of the things I did on my part was to make sure that I was teaching people what I was learning, so please do that. And keep learning and teach what it is that you're learning. So I'm like, "Publish. Publish. Publish." That's what you're publishing. You're publishing the things that you're learning. Someone had asked me the other day, "Stephen, when do you think you'll run out of podcast content?" I'm like, "I never thought of that." Maybe at the very beginning when I started, but that is it. I brainstormed over 100 episode topics just like this last Monday, or Tuesday I mean. And 100, and someone was like, "When are you going to run out of stuff?" And I was like, "Wait a second. You believe that I know all this already." When I started publishing a year and a half ago, no. I was like, "Whoa. Okay. Thanks for saying that." Here's the big secret. Here's the big secret. You are learning with me and I publish as I go. And if you can get to that spot, start publishing what you are learning, it will change your life because it will solidify the message in your head. You're teaching what you're learning will solidify it. You're bringing people along with you and if you wait to be the guru on the mountain, nobody's going to follow you when you're this expert already. They're going to look at you and go, "I don't know if I can get where you are because look where you are." And since you haven't documented your journey down in the spot when you weren't up here, when you're down here and you're still kind of figuring it out. And you mess up and you've got the blunders. It's the reason why my first few episodes are not that good. But I leave them up there so that people understand, yeah, Stephen's gone through his own transformation. Right? So if you're like, "I'm brand new," you're in the perfect spot to start publishing, which is why ... What is it, model four that goes through that? Model four or five goes through and actually teaches you more about the actual publishing parts and why I do what I do. That's why that's in there, so that you can go through and do it, have the funnel and start actually implementing this stuff because you're in a prime position to start publishing as you're just one chapter ahead of everybody. And they'll see the transformation and your speed will increase. And it's not a linear curve. It's an exponential curve. And it'll take a while and you'll feel stupid for a little bit. And you'll blunder up and there'll be things that people will not be able to follow you on. And then suddenly one day you're just like, "Wait a second. Today I didn't take one step. I took five, but it felt like one. Huh." It's happening to me right now. I left my job three months ago and it's happening right now. And I can feel myself on this curve and it's been really weird, but it's been really cool. And since I published before I felt myself kind of like leveling up fast. That feels weird to say that. But since I was publishing beforehand, I have a lot of people reaching out going, "Stephen, it's so cool to see you out there just winning and doing it. Oh, my gosh. It's so cool. It's so refreshing to know that there's some guy out there who's actually pulling it off. It's not just all a whole bunch of smoke." And I'm like "Of course not. What are you talking about?" And so I was like, "Well, if I follow this guru or that guru, I don't know. Were they always like that?" There's no documentation of them being somebody down here. And so publishing is your safety net for this entire game, all of it. I know I've said that before, but it is. It's your safety net for the whole game. And if I can get you just to publish, oh my gosh, that's so much better. That's so much better because if you jack something up on some ... Whether or not we're using ClickFunnels, I don't care if you're using ClickFunnels or not. It'll speed up your progress a lot. It will. But if you don't want to and you don't have the cash for it, that's fine. Start asking yourself. How do I afford it? And get it eventually. My first funnels were on YouTube. Literally, they're just YouTube videos with links on the bottom. There you go. Until I could afford and asked myself the question. How can I afford ClickFunnels? And started developing little assets that paid for it. I just want you guys to do it and I'm excited for you to be part of this. Just marry the process. Be willing to go through some of the cuts and scrapes that are required for any individual as they start to move up, I should say. Increase their income. Increase their influence. Gain a following. For you to have a following by definition means you must be a leader. And that's what I wanted to do was to help you develop into that person. And if you can publish and you can start building these funnels and you start doing all this stuff and start learning, I know I dump a ton of stuff on you guys on that course. It's a lot. I know it's a lot. But I'm trying to overwhelm your brain in the right ways that cause growth, not scared-ness, like oh crap, I'm never going to make it. I hope it doesn't do that to you. But if I can cause overwhelm in the good ways and decrease the time. Guys, I have all of college I slept maybe four to five hours, maybe a lot of times three every night, all of college, learning this stuff. I would after, in the middle of my nine to five job, I would get to the office at 6:00 AM. I did this for such a long time. I'd get to the office at 6:00 AM and then I would go and I would be working on my own stuff until 9:00 AM for three hours. And then I would be on the clock for my employer, Russell. And then I would stop at about 6:00 PM. Hang out with our kids. At about 8:00, I would start again. And 8:00, I did this every day, every day. 8:00 PM, I would start again and I would go until another three hours, until about 11:00 PM. I'd go to sleep. I'd get back up at 5:00 and I'd do it all over again. And what I'm trying to do is, I'm trying to shortcut the time. You have to know some of this stuff. The only two tasks you need to know in this whole business, you've got to figure out how to innovate and how to market, which ultimately is exactly what the course teaches you. Everything else is a cost on the business. Don't worry about your logo. Stop worrying about what your colors are. It doesn't matter what your mantra is. How do you market? That's not what a mantra is. How do you market? Which is storytelling and belief shifting. And how do you innovate, offer creation? That's it. And then once you can understand those things, then I bring you into this whole thing called funnel building. If you want to you can take it to the big leagues in the ClickFunnels area. But before that, it's just fluff. It's all noise. Anyway, I want you to know where this path is. And if you can just stick to it and just do it, man, it's so rewarding. It's so rewarding to look back. I was telling one of my buddies the other day. For the first time in my life, and I'm about to turn 30 in like three weeks, yeah, about three weeks. For the first time in my life, I feel fulfilled. Isn't that interesting? I mean, professionally. Fascinating, isn't it? And it's affected all these other areas of my life. But it came with a crap ton of grinding. And so I'm trying to cut out the crap and the fluff and the noise and the junk that does not matter for you to actually get there. And if I can do that ... Just marry the process and don't spend time doing that. Make the sins of commission, not omission. Meaning, just act. Make mistakes of committing, committing, committing. Maybe you're in action. You're actually doing stuff. The status thing is when people sit back and their making the mistakes of omission, meaning they're just sitting back and they're just questioning. Well, I'm not going to start until I go beginning to end. That's garbage. You're not going to do anything. Total garbage. If that's your belief, please be coachable in this moment and let me tell you that is not a correct and accurate belief. That is not. You do not ever know beginning to end ever. If you wait to, you'll never see. You'll actually never do anything. If you instead sit back and you say, "Look. These are the three steps that I'm going to take right now." And in fact, I only care about step number one. And you put your foot out there and you take that step as perfectly as that step can be placed, boom, you take that step. Funny enough, after step number three usually, for me anyways, I can see a thing. It's pure black. I have no idea. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing on the 25th. You know what I mean? I don't know. But I know where the peak is and I'm just heading towards the direction of that peak. Is there a way for me to get to that peak with the most efficiency? Yeah. Totally. But I don't know that until I'm there. And hindsight's 20/20. I don't know that until I've gone through it. So if I can sit back and look back and go, "Oh, man. Next time I do this, I should do it that way." What I'm trying to do is, I'm trying to make it instead of a line up to that peak where it's like, all over the place, I'm trying to go through and help you know, look, the straight line is by doing this and then this and then this and then this. But don't worry about this, this, and this, until you do just step number one. And funny enough, a new step number three will appear when you place your foot down. Boom, new step number three. That wasn't there until I placed my first step. Interesting. What if I placed my next step? You don't learn anything else until all you're learning is, you're learning how to place the next step, the new step number one. Boom. Oh, sweet. What? A new step number three appeared. Right? And that's how it happens the whole way through. And the thing that will ... It rips me up on the inside, guys. I know I'm totally on a soap box right now. I'll get your questions in a moment here. The thing that rips me up on the inside, I'll be coaching these people. I just had a chance to speak in front of 3000 people last Friday. It was super fun. It was amazing. And the thing that eats me up on the inside is when I sit back and I watch people and they're like, "Stephen, that sounds really good. And I see what you're doing. I actually think it works, but there's these other areas over here. I just don't know how they work, so I can't get started." No. That's not how it happens. That's not how anything is built. That's not how any progress is made. This is enough for me to get motivational and passionate over. And yes, I'll shake my computer screen and I'll let you know that this is the way it works. It is as much of a faith game as it is anything else. Entrepreneurship is really the story of the relationship with you. And as you sit back and you're like, "Oh, man. This whole game, I've got to get good at this game. I've got to get good at this game." You'll find that half of it is having an idea of what to do next. The other half of it is being okay with the fact that you don't know what to do next. And so being okay with this ambiguity and you've got to sit back and go, "Here's the step I see that I can take." You take it. You don't sit back and try to figure out step two. You're not even there yet. Don't worry about it until you take that first step. Right? Don't worry about step number three until you've taken step number two. Don't even worry about it. And so I applaud you is all I'm saying. Develop that mentality of it. I got voted the nicest kid in high school, seriously, the nicest kid in high school out of 600 people who were graduating. It shocked the crap out of me. And the reason why is because I was not the nicest kid in high school. And not in my mind, I was not expecting that award at all. I was the shyest kid. That's why I was nice. I just wasn't saying anything. I was a little rage machine on the inside. And what I had to learn, especially in this game, is that it's all about being able to develop yourself and get over those barriers. So what I'm telling you is, I had to go and I had a serious fear of adults. I had a hard time talking to people. Doing this, oh my gosh, it would've killed me. Now it's like breathing. It's totally fine. But take it from a guy who had a really hard time getting over this kind of stuff. I've told you this in the course. I would take my computer and I would stand in front of a mirror and I would mute the audio and I would literally just physically mimic because I was buttoned up physically, emotionally, speaking, nothing. I had all this anxiety on the inside. And the way I broke myself from it was by being willing to be uncomfortable. And this whole game, like I said, it is about the relationship that you have with yourself. It's like the second story that's actually happening. And for those of you guys who've gone through the training piece where I talk about the heroes through journeys, that's what this is. We think that the main journey, which it is, the main journey we're going on is this whole thing. We're like, "Hey. I'm going to go and I'm going to try and make a million bucks. And I'm going to build a sweet downline, a sweet team." That's cool. That is the main journey. The real journey though, is the journey of transformation that's happening underneath. It's the internal transformation that happens that's going on, on the inside of you. And I'm trying to teach you to be cognizant of it. Because if I can teach you to look back, be introspective and go, "I don't know if this works." Or, I think one of my false beliefs is, I believe I don't have enough time. And you can self solve, oh man, your speed to success is so much faster. It's like, so much faster, because now you'll be in a spot where you can start self teaching and have a relationship with you where you can develop. You can change. You can grow. And you can look back at yourself and go, "Oh my gosh. I'm not performing in this area very well because I have a hard time with this, this, and this." And just acknowledging the fact that you know what those things are, it's self discovery. And be like, "Oh, man. The way I was raised taught me that, yeah, there's no such thing as anyone who's actually going to make it." You know what I mean? Whatever that is, whatever that is for you. And as soon as you become cognizant of it, you can do something about it. So I'm trying to teach you to be introspective. Look back on yourself and go, "Sweet. All right. These are the areas I'm struggling with. Tactically, this is what Stephen's telling me to do. Okay. But you know what, he doesn't know me personally. And this whole area here I'm struggling with. What am I going to do? What's the thing I'm going to do to help break me and move forward and develop in a spot where I can actually get to the spot and start moving forward on this?" I'm just going on. I'm going to town right now, huh? That's the thing that I try and get people to understand. That's what I'm trying to help people take on and have ownership of. Okay. Do not put the roles of personal development on others. It is not in a course. It is not in anywhere else. Those things can jumpstart you, but it's ultimately on yourself. And if you can learn to be introspective, self medicate in the correct ways where you can go forward and literally craft your own path, oh my gosh, this game gets so fun. It gets so fun. Are all the answers for you personally inside Secret MLM Hacks? Yes. For offer creation, for message creation, for funnel building, learning how to build and automate systems, things like that, yes. For you as an individual, no. There's no way anyone could ever do that besides you. And I believe, God, and your relationship there. But if you can look back and be like, "Oh my gosh." I had to realize. I remember the day I was ... I don't remember where, but I remember the realization, oh my gosh. I suck at talking to people. Isn't that interesting? And a lot of people walk up to me now and they're like, "There's no way, Stephen. Are you kidding me? You're so good at that piece, that part." Well, let's go here. Let me take you back. If you guys want to, go three years back on my YouTube videos and watch me try to do a periscope. This was back when periscopes were big. One of the funniest things you'll ever see. They're terrible. They're terrible. Right? But it's me publishing when I'm not really far down the path yet. And if you can do that, it's so cool, guys. It's so fun. And your ability to transform other people will also increase because they will be ... You'll take them with you, which will break a whole bunch of beliefs that they'll have if you come at them when you're already here. And if you're already here, that's fine. But you've got to get vulnerable, and not just with other people, with yourself. And that's how the whole things happens. That's how you speed this thing up. Anyway, I just talk like crazy. Hopefully that's helpful to you, though. I'm very passionate about this and entrepreneurship itself because if I can get you to be introspective, to stop questioning the process, to marry it in a way that says, "You know what, I don't care how long it takes." Those are the people who put their head down. They don't look at a timeline. They put their head down and they just work. And suddenly they look up one day and they're like, "Holy crap. Look where I am. Huh, I really like that. I'm going to put my head back down again. This is cool." That's exactly what happened to me. You're like, "Whoa. Okay. Sweet." And it happened one day when I was sitting there next to Russell. And I had been teaching a lot of stuff in his place when he couldn't get up on stage. That's crazy, by the way. I was able to do that because publishing, I was practicing. I was telling stories. I was re-breaking, rebuilding belief patterns. What I'm trying to help you guys understand is that I sat back and I remember what happened to me one day. And all of a sudden Russell turned to me and he goes, "Dude, you're better at teaching offer creation that I am now." I was like, "Bro, you're Russell Brunson. Are you sure you just know what you just said?" He's like, "I'm being serious, Stephen." I was like, "Whoa. How did that happen?" And I started looking around again and I was like, "I'm publishing like an animal. I'm looking around. I'm coaching. I'm being coached and I'm also coaching." That's very key. I'm teaching people what I'm learning. And nothing but even just a year, that was technically a year and a half has passed. What if everybody did that? And I started looking around and I was like, "I'm going to put my head back down and do this more." And it just increased my speed and it feeds on itself. And now there's nobody who's sitting back going, "Come on, Stephen. Do the next step." I wake up just smiling. And I'm like, "Let's go take on the day," because I've created my own testimonial of myself being able to do it. And I'm trying to get you there. It doesn't happen, I can't cause it for you. But I can get you in an environment and teach you the environment where it happens. And you will have to develop it on your own as you do this process. It's so freaking awesome when you get to this spot. It causes belief on a level that no one can teach you because it will come from inside. And you'll learn a better relationship with yourself. It's really exciting, anyway. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Whether you just want more leads or automated MLM funnels, or if you just want to learn to get paid more for your product, head over to secretmlmhacks.com to join the next free training today.

  Click above to listen in iTunes... Yup, I just changed up the whole funnel. Here’s what happened What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, "How will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch?" This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up guys? I hope you like my new intro. Just had several of you guys reach out actually and say that you like it. And so, it means a lot. I take a long time to write those kinds of scripts when I know that I'm gonna hear them a billion times probably. But, I wanted to create more of a journey. More of a ... Anyway, I've talked about that a little bit in the past. I wanted to share with you a little bit more about my webinar and what I've been doing to it. I did a lot of stuff this week. It's been a crazy week. There were two days this week where I almost stayed up a full 24 hours just getting stuff done and working on it and the different aspects that I needed to crank out. It was ridiculous. And, I do not recommend that. In fact, I always think it's kind of weird when people are like, "Yeah, hashtag the hustle." You know? And, they stay up 24 hours all the time. But, it just wrecks your next day anyway. So, that never makes sense to me. Be smart with your health. Don't do that too often. Hey, what I want to share with you though is more about the webinar and the actual stats. I automated it. I already automated it. I know that a lot of people will probably ask me, "Steven, you always say to do it for seven months." Well, here's the thing. Before I actually launched the webinar, I tested it like crazy. I knew the messages were gonna work. I knew the offer was gonna work. It was all already tested before I actually pushed the button. You know what I mean? And so, I didn't start from complete scratch when I started to do my live webinars. I did it maybe 12 times and I still, that final time, I was still using the original script. And so, here's the thing guys. You gotta understand this. This is how I look at the webinar. This is the three phases of launching any product. The three phases... And, I didn't realize that this is what I do or even that Russell, that this is what he does, but this is what it is. We first ... This is three spots. We first figure out a sales message. Understand that I said, "Sales Message". I did not say, "Offer". I did not say, "Funnel". Now, 99% of the time Russell already knows what the sales message is going to be. He's done it so well. He's done it for so long. But, he understands right from the get go without really even thinking about it. He kind of starts from this place of sales message. Meaning, if he can sell it then we'll go make the offer. And, he already starts from those places ... So, this is how I did my webinar. My webinar. Phase number one is all about creating the sales message. I don't give a crap about the actual product or the offer until I know that I can sell the thing. Right? Does that make sense? And, I know a lot of people say, "Well, duh, Steven." Well, most of us don't do that though. We actually turn around and we're like, "Hey, what am I gonna sell?" Wrong question. The question is, "How will I sell it?" And, the problem is that when you start with an offer, when you actually start with the offer, the problem is that you become tethered by the offer when you're creating the sales message. Does that make sense? You create restrictions. You're not free. You're not liquid... You're not fluid to create whatever sales message you want... So, what I have been doing for a solid probably year before I actually launched my webinar, what I did is I actually went and I started testing the sales message. I created an entire second podcast show about it. And, I just started dropping out the stories. And, the ones that really resonated, I kind of took note of that. And, I was like, "Huh. That's the one that did it over here. Huh. Oh, that's interesting. That's the story that did it over here. Interesting. Oh, wow. They really like this one and they hated that one." And, I started testing sales message. Also, my story. And, when we actually get the story down, when we get the sales message down, whatever it is that gets people's butts out of their chairs and their wallets, and credit card in your hand, then you create an offer that fulfills the promises that you made in the sales message. Does that make sense? When you actually find the sales message that gets somebody off their butt and gets their wallet in your hand then you create the offer that fulfills whatever that sales message promised... When you do it the other way and you create an offer, and then the sales message, and then the sales thing, you are tethered in your mind. And, you have this thing where, "Well, my product doesn't do this." Okay, well stop thinking about that. Figure out what it is that gets people into action. People are inherently lazy. What is the thing? And, if you found out, "Oh my gosh. This is the thing that gets people into action, sweet. Then you create. Does that make sense? So, step number one, sales message. Step number two is then the offer. And, both of them stem off of belief. Both of them stem off of belief. At the very, very bottom. Or, sorry. The very, very last one, that's when I start building a funnel. And, that's when I build the delivery mechanism that will serve up those two things. Funny enough though, people usually do the exact opposite. They build a funnel and be like, "Hey, I want an... funnel." And, they think of it in terms of funnels. That's not how it works. You think of it in terms of what are you trying to deliver? And, you go and you put together a funnel. If you do that first, then you build them out an offer, then you figure out how to actually sell the thing, super scary. Super scary. Right?... And, so you guys know I'm already automating it, but it's because of the three steps that I take. You do it the other way around and you say, "Hey, what's the sales message?" And, as part of that, you're figuring out where the traffic is. With step number one, what's the sales message? What gets people off the butt? It's like ... I know I bring up this example a lot, but it's because it's true. Before Tim Ferriss even finished writing a book he was out there testing headlines and titles for the book. And, he would test tons of headlines and he would spend a little money, like 20 bucks on tons of different ... Like, "Hey, 20 bucks for this headline. 20 bucks for this title. 20 bucks for this title." And, he would go test it. And, whatever one they liked, that's what he named it. And, there wasn't even a book written half the time. He was just seeing what people clicked on. And, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You figure out the sales message. What is it that gets people off the butt? They are so insatiably connected to what it is that you have promised. You've broken and rebuilt the belief patterns. You've helped them see the world in a brand new way and you are now served up to give them an offer. Aww. And, it's not there yet. That's okay because now you know it's safe. It's worth you time to go create that actual offer. Does that makes sense? Sales message number one. Offer number two. And then, you create the funnel. And then, as soon as I've done that, I go back to sales message. Then I go back to offer, tweak that. And then, I go back to funnel and I tweak that. Then I start all the way back over again, a sales message. So, the reason why guys is because I've been following my process. And, my process is first figure out the sales message, which I did. And, since the beginning of the year, we had like 50 grand and hot traffic sales. People were just super hungry for it. So, the first month, we did 100 grand. The second month we did like 25. And, it was mostly because I didn't focus on selling it that much. I was just building the offer that I knew was selling. My numbers were looking great. Everything was looking fantastic. And then, the first two weeks here, I actually haven't really been selling it that much and the reason is because I had it down for like two weeks 'cause I was going and automating everything. First, I was talking about the sales message. Then I built the offer. Now, I've been tweaking the funnel. And, it's almost been like month, by month, by month. Like, since Funnel Hacking Live is ... I'm been getting on my plane here in an hour? I gotta get out of here. I was like, I just gotta podcast one time though. I'm excited to talk to you guys. I woke up at 2:30 hardly being able to sleep. I'm so excited. I'm that much of a nerd, yes. And, I will admit it. But, anyway. It will probably be really April before we actually start to get real traffic turned on towards it. But, what I'm excited about is this guys. I'm so pumped. I went and I actually turned on a little bit of traffic and my numbers are holding true... Meaning, I was nervous that automating the webinar would drop some numbers. 'Cause people can sense that it's not live. The products are freaking awesome. That's never usually the issue. It's usually not that, "Hey, can we make something that's sexy?" It usually does not have anything to do with the actual offer. It's a formula. The way you get to the offer is a formula. And, you follow that formula, you get to the offer, great. You might tweak it a little bit here and there, but the real thing that you are trying to figure out and the real place that people will struggle and suck it up on is the actual message part. It's the belief part. It's the part that ... And, how to not number one just create it, but how to glean it from the sub-market they're trying to sell to. And so, when I figured out, "Oh, my gosh. I've nailed the beliefs. I know I've nailed the beliefs." That's one of the reasons I've sold so well. And, I was selling that puppy before it was actually even ready. And, they knew that. There was no slight of hand thing going on there. They knew that. They were getting beta access to certain other bonuses that I had in there. And then, when I created the actual offer, now the offer is actually done, then I went and I ... Now, I'm focusing on the funnel. Okay, what's the funnel that gives me back a little bit more of my time? I'm telling you, running three webinars a week, holy smokes. That is so much work as a solo one man guy. You know? One man show going on right now. Oh, my gosh. I tried that three webinar a week thing I was talking about for just a little bit and I was like, "There's no way. There's no way." I could do it if everything else in my business was set up, but it's not and I'm the only guy running it. I'm excited just to barely have my first employee to come on over. He's swinging on over and he's handling support. And, he's kind of my assistant. He's also handling a lot of front line relationships. And, he's wearing a lot of hats, which he's pumped about and I'm pumped about. But, he's not gonna be over for another month. I was like, "I gotta automate this thing." So, anyways. The reason I automated it was because my registration rates were about 52%, which is really, really awesome. And, even went to up to probably 62% for a while. 62% opt-in rate on a webinar page. And, I think on how I did it. It was really, really cool. I had many engagement things all over. My show up rates were 7-13%. Really low. Right? Really low. And, I've talked about in previous episodes how I believe it's because the time in front of my webinar was way too long. Meaning, I did a webinar ... Especially, for who I was selling to, I can barely remember three days out what ... I don't remember what I did three days ago. And, if I'm asking someone to register for a webinar three days ago and it's not till tomorrow, I'm gonna forget. You know what I mean? It needs to be sooner than that. So, I'm shrinking the time from when they register to the time the webinar actually happens. Right? I did that for a while and it really helped. And, I was like, "Whoa." And then, on that backend, my cart close sequence it was usually three days. I was like, that seems way too long. So, I went down to 24 hours. And, there was a big spike in sales. I didn't change anything else. I was like, "What the heck?" Just because there was a little bit more pressure. But, it was almost a little bit too fast. Some people didn't really have a chance to go watch the replay that they wanted to, so then I'm out to a 36 hour replay sequence now... That part I could keep. But, what I decided to do ... So, I was getting anywhere from 15-25% close rate, which is freaking huge, guys. That's awesome. Freaking huge. 15-25% close rate is a multi-million dollar webinar, which I know it will be. And, it's already shown signs that it's going to be, which is awesome. So, the one number that I needed to chance, which I know I've gone through before is that show up rate. Well, when we automate webinars, the average show up rate is like 85%. It's like 90% because it's happening in the next few minutes. That's how they work. That's why they work. You know? Next webinar happening in the next 15 minutes. What? So, I made a top of the every 15 minute webinar. So, every 15 minutes, that webinar starts over again and it's really, really awesome. So, I'm super pumped guys 'cause yesterday I really had the first time to really turn it on. Got traffic sent to it... And, my registration rate, I'm so pumped, was 46%. So, it only dropped like 10%. But, the show up rate was like, it was almost 100%. It was freaking huge. And, I was like, "Oh, my gosh." And, I was so stoked. And then, we made sales at a close rate of 14.62%. Guys, that's huge. That means I can now drive tons of traffic. It means the rest of the numbers are working. It means that I can celebrate as if I've made a million bucks already 'cause it means it will. You know? Unless I really, really jack it up and I've got some awesome silver bolts up my sleeve that I actually can't tell you about. Some cool things for traffic that I'm very, very pumped about. Getting hooked up in several ways. Working that Dream 100, which I am, which we are, which we do. I will never stop doing that system. And, that's what's been going on. So, anyway, I just wanted to give you guys a little bit of accounting before I see a lot of you guys. There's so many things in my mind I want to share with you guys that have happened this last little bit. Things that I'm learning. More clarity, the things that I've been understanding. And, teach you how I've been ... Why did I feel comfortable leaving a job when I really had no business set up? You know what I mean? Like, that was ridiculous. That sounds so crazy. I don't ... That's mere madness almost, honestly. To go out and do that. But, it's because of these certain things that I knew, and I learned, and I saw the patterns that saved my emotional sanity and said, "Yes, you can go ahead and leave your job and it's gonna be fine because of these signals and signs." Number one, it was testing the sales message because people were knocking my door down. I mean, I think I have probably close to ... It's several hundred Facebook message requests asking about my MLM product. And, I barely have gotten to a spot where I can even respond to them and say, "Hey, let's get over here and you can check it out here." When I saw that. When I saw the ... Frankly, the other podcast audience is far more interactive with me than this one is. When I saw that ... When I saw ... When I even just talked about ... There were certain buzz phrases I learned that they liked. And, when I would say it, they would go nuts, and they'd look for a product that was the one I was saying and there wasn't one out there. And, I was like, "Sweet. I can totally do that." Does that makes sense? So, all these little signals and signs. And, I had a beta group that I brought through. I didn't even have the actual product. I was just teaching them the concepts. And, they were going nuts. I had a beta product overall. Not just group. Like, that I launched about a year prior to. And, I saw the ridiculous response from it. It was insane. And, I took that off once I saw all the issues with it, which is great. So then, I knew more of actually what to ... You know what I mean? There was a lot of stuff that I did. A lot of ground work. It was not just like I pulled the ... I jumped out the airplane and build the parachute while I was falling, but I still had all the materials laid out before I jumped. You know? Does that make sense? The groundwork was still there. And, funny enough, the ground never really comes when you jump out of the plane. Usually not. When you jump out of the plane without a parachute in that metaphor. Please don't do that in real life. Anyways guys. I'm really, really excited. I woke up at 2:30 this morning, like I said, just super excited. I had a hard time going back to sleep. I got a mastermind that we're running tomorrow with a bunch of you. Very excited. I still gotta figure out more of what I'm gonna teach there. But, at those, I feel like highest level stuff is too ... I'll teach my cool stuff, but I love doing one on one Q&A and taking people's businesses a little bit further. If I could do that the rest of my career I would do that, I think, mixed with one or two other product styles that I know I want to go after. So, anyways guys. Gosh. I'm so excited. When you get to Funnel Hacking Live, take notes. I could not believe the first time I went. I bootstrapped my whole way there. I gave more to get there than the majority of the people who were there. And, I sacrificed my face off. I took 52 pages of notes. Very detailed notes. I still have them. They're right next to me. And, that last night when I didn't have a place to stay, I stayed up. After I applied to Click Funnels, I stayed up and I started going piece by piece through the entire, all the notes that I took, because I wanted to solidify them in my brain. I should go through those. There's some good stuff in there. Take notes. I was appalled how many people left their notebooks that they gave them on the chairs. I was like, "What? Do you know what I just learned? Did you just sleep through all of that? That was ridiculous. I just finished my marketing degree." That's where I was at the time. I'm finishing my marketing degree and that was better than all of it. The first day. The first session. I was like, "What? Take notes." Anyway. Something that happens when you write it. Guys, I'm very, very excited. Please come with an open mind. And, if you're hearing this after the fact, that's totally fine. Anything you learn from any guru that you've realized that you need to study from, take notes from them. One of the things I've learned recently as well is that it's good to read deeply on a broad spectrum. Or, I should say, it's good to read it on a broad spectrum from lots of different ... And, learn from lots of different gurus, lots of different people that are out there... However, I found that just really deep diving with only one or two people and you study what they done deeply, very successful individuals. Obviously, the one that I'm going after is Russell. Obviously. I go through, I study him very deeply. And, all of the study, all of the strategies, all of the pitch strategies, all the things that ... And, figure out who that is for you. Study that person and their work very deeply. And, stick with them. Don't just go so broad. Broad is good, but choose a few characters particularly and go deep with them. And, when you do that you, you learn a lot more of the patterns inside that's ... I mean, it's just like I share on this podcast. The only reason I can do that is because I've studied the heck out of the scripts. I know his scripts. So, when I see him change it up, I'm like wait, what did he do? And then, I see the connection and I see the pieces. And, I'm like, "Oh. Did anyone else see it?" And, lots of times, no. Because we're all studying this guy and this guy, and this guy ... Okay, that's great, but especially at first. Like, to really super advance your progression in this game, just go deep with one or two people. You know what I mean? And, really get to know them. Really get to know their mind. Not just their works. And, their materials that they've put out. Anyway. Great stuff guys. Super excited. I'm writing a book. That's awesome. We made the outline already and it's freaking incredible. If I say so myself. We just barely launched the affiliate program, which by the way, if you are interested at all, would love to have you. We're gonna have a lot of sweet affiliate contests here in about two weeks. It's so cool. Basically, I figured out the math to basically buy anyone a new iMac. And, a new iPhone. And, a new ... Basically all the Apple products 'cause I like Steve Jobs. Rest his soul. And, anyway, there's a lot of stuff that's been going on guys that I've just had a ton of fun with it. And, anyway, excited to see you guys. Remember the secret phrase. I filmed the special stuff yesterday for those of you guys who remember the secret phrase and walk up to me. Anyways, you guys. Thanks so much. That's kind of been a counting of the last two months of my webinar and me automating it and why. And, I will certainly continue to do live webinars for sure, but as I finish this funnel side ... Now, I'm now gonna go back step number one and it's time for me to tweak my slides. And, I know what to change. And, I've got some cool other things that I'm doingthat I can tell you about a little later. Anyways, guys, thank you so much. And, go crush it. Bye. Whoa, thanks for listening. Please remember to write and subscribe. Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to SteveJLarsen.com and book my time now.

How can I "remove" my own salary from the biz expenses... Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've got a sweet lesson for you today. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up everyone? I am loving that new intro. Hopefully you're loving the purpose of this show and what I'm doing and what I'm trying to help you guys understand and see. I had a guy reach out to me once and said, "Stephen, I like listening to your stuff because," actually I've had a lot of people say this to me, "because you're not like massive, massive yet." I was like, "Yeah, I plan to be. I appreciate what you're saying." He's like, "Hopefully it's not offensive." I was like, "No, it's not offensive at all. I totally get it. I know exactly where I am. I'm not lying where I am. I know where I am and I'm owning it and that's fine." He's like, "You're not massive, massive, massive, massive." I was like, "Yeah, awesome, cool." He's like, "But it's cool about that, because I can relate more." I was like, "That's interesting. That's very interesting." Anyways, hopefully you guys are getting the same kind of value as that guy was saying. I'm trying to be very, very painfully transparent about what it is that I'm doing and why I'm doing what I'm doing. Hey, I told you guys I've been traveling quite a lot lately. There's an experience that happened as we got to one of the hotels we were staying at. I say we, I'm with my buddy Colton Woods. What's up buddy? Colton and I built, he and I built our first successful sales funnel together. My very first one in ClickFunnels was with Colton. We built a smartphone insurance funnel back in college and that story, if you guys ever heard the story about me hiding in the box office seats in the basketball stadium on campus, that was with him. I would sit and we'd look and we'd wait for all the security guards to look away and I'd toss my backpack through the window and then I would wait for them to turn again and then I would jump through the window. I would stay up there for literally all day and get homework done within a couple hours, but then spend literally the entire day studying marketing, building the business, building a small little agency, building the funnels for other companies while we were in the middle of college. First of all for ourselves, and a whole bunch of other people. It was a ton of fun and frankly I did that for about a year and a half, hiding up there. Anyway, so I was with Colton. Colton, he is taking the role, I'm super excited, the moons aligned, the suns came into align with each other and he and I are, he's moving out here actually and he's going to work with me full time, which I'm super stoked, guys. My little business officially has two employees now. What? We've got a bunch of freelancers, a lot of other people on the side, but as far as in here, with me in my office, I'm sure you guys will all get a chance to see him and meet with him. He's the man. I'm excited to have him. Anyway, so I was with him. That's why I'm saying we. Colton and I were out and we were walking into the next hotel, we've been traveling like crazy going all over the place, and I walked in and I turned around and I was like, you know, he and I were just, we were sharing a hotel room and keeping cost low as much as we can. There was this ... We walk into the hotel room and I turned around and I was like, "Dude, what can we do to give ourselves a raise right now?" The webinar's going great, we're fixing out the final tweaks. It's always probably going to be in that stage regardless. It's going well though, okay? We're doing some massive plays on it coming up here soon, and Colton's kind of handling the assistant/support/lots of different hats, running a lot of the business side while I go continue to build stuff and sell stuff. Which is awesome, because I can do the thing that I'm good at and he's extremely good at the other side, which is awesome, and I'm not good at that part. We complement each other well. I'll tell you guys more about him as we continue to go, but he's the man. Anyway, so I was like, "Dude, what can we do to give ourselves a raise right now?" He's like, "What do you mean?" I was like, "Well ..." I told him, we were sitting there and I was like, I remember listening to Russell once, I was talking to Russell once and I was like, "How can we do the Inner Circle?" One of the reasons why is just because the way it helps with the structure of his revenue of where things come in. I'm sure he's okay if I share this. He shares this all over the place. It's not the reason, okay, but one of the benefits for him having an Inner Circle and doing coaching was that he does not have to take ... It pays for his living expenses. I was like, that's clever. I started looking around at all these other gurus where their coaching platform is what pays for their living expenses while whatever the product makes, they can roll that money directly back on itself, which means they can spend a butt load of money in ads. They don't have to take profit from the product sales for quite some time. I was like, ah, that's very fascinating. What I've been doing is I was like, and I was telling Colton that story and I was like, "I want to do that. What is it that everyone wants from me right now? What is it that everyone wants from us?" He's like, "Dude, everyone wants you to coach them. Everyone wants you to look at their funnel. Everyone wants you to build them a funnel if you can." I was like, "Yeah. I can't build funnels for people right now. Focus on my own stuff, but coaching." Gosh, I love coaching. I love looking at people's funnels. What we decided to do, I was like, "What if we built the coaching?" I was speaking in 24 hours and I was like 90% ready. I was like, "What if we built an entire coaching program right now?" What we did, the only reason I'm trying to tell you guys this story is please observe the speed at which we did this. Okay? I went through and we decided like okay, how are we going to do it? I was like, "You know, I love Voxer Coaching because I'm not always available to talk on the phone, and we're not always going to match up. We might be on different sides of the world or whatever, but people are going to ask me questions over Voxer, and I love it." That's a sweet way to coach, and I love having a cool introductory session with people where I get to dive deep with them with the funnel. Anyway, so what I did is I said, "I would want like 10." He and I started crafting it together, like how many people are we going to have? I was like, "I only want like 10." I want to keep it small, especially while we kind of figure out the first pieces with it, stuff like that. I was like, cool, this is going to be awesome. I was like, cool, so what's the URL? We found a cool URL. Then we started planning it all out, and I was like, "I want to gauge some interest." Even though we're going to launch this thing in the next 24 hours, I was like, "What if I tried to treat this," okay, understand what I'm doing here, okay? I'm trying to pre-frame the market for what I'm about to drop on them so it doesn't feel like a cold drop, so it doesn't feel like this massive bludgeoning across the face like, "Oh, I was not expecting this at all." What I did is I put a post out there. I put the post out there and I put a post just on my major Facebook profile page, my main one, and a lot of you guys who are listening to this probably saw it. There's 144 comments on the thing within like 12 hours. It was ridiculous. It got shared. Anyways, a lot of likes and stuff like that, but what I asked was, I didn't want to say, "Hey, let me get you guys in a coaching program, because I know I can help." What I wanted to do though is I wanted to salt the oats a little. I wanted people to tell me that they wanted to get in. Does that make sense? I was trying to actively flip the sale. Right? Does that make sense? What I did is I kept it very, very light. In fact, I'm actually going to click over here. I'm in front of my computer right now. I'm actually going to go to Facebook and grab the exact words I said, because it was amazing at how well it worked. This is what I said. I said, "Sitting thinking, what do people wish I was delivering to them? Funnel coaching, anyone?" It was a question mark. That was it. It was all over the place. Guys, I've never had ... I was like, huh. There's something to be said about like, okay, you have to understand, this is me just being open about where I am in my business right now. There's a lot of people that want me to build the funnels for them right now. A lot of people. I'm honored and I would love to, it's super cool, but it's not what I'm focusing on right now. Right? My whole focus is to say no to everything else except for me making this webinar even more awesome. When it gets to a certain spot, I don't exactly know the certain spot, but I know I'll feel when it's time to take on something different. It can be automated and everything ... Does that make sense? I will feel it. I'm not feeling that yet. I don't know totally why. Probably because I feel like if I walk away, it will start to crumble. You know what I mean? It's not at a spot where it's completely self-sustaining yet, and so I'm not going to walk from that. Why would I bring on a different focus? Does that make sense? I'm like okay, well I can't do that. I was like, what do people want from me? Not need. I know what they need. What do they want from me, and is there a place where it fills the need at the same time? Colton and I, we were kind of like pacing around. I pace a lot when I think and talk a lot out loud. I swear if I was not sitting in front of my mic right now, I'd be pacing around the office over here. We were walking around and I was walking around just kind of feverishly, that's kind of how I work out ideas a lot of times. I was kind of feverishly just kind of walking around the hotel room and I was like, "Dude, what is it that people want? What do they want from me? What is it that everybody is asking?" Inadvertently, what are people saying as if I asked an ask campaign? I was like, it's coaching, man. Everyone's asking for the coaching piece. They want me to look at their funnels before they launch or right after they launch. I was like, huh. Do the same though. That's what I'm trying to get at. This is not me, me, me hour. I'm trying to help you. What is it that people are asking you for? You guys have heard me talk about the theory of, it's not a theory. It's called Duct Tape Marketing, I think it was called. I believe the phrase came from Duct Tape Marketing. I believe the phrase came from when people would buy a car off of the lot, this is before there were mirrors, you know what I mean? When people would buy a, meaning like a rear view mirror. When people would buy a car off the lot, salespeople and car dealerships would see people drive off the lot, pull the car over, and duct tape a mirror to the middle of their windshield facing backwards. Okay? Duct tape marketing. That was the market telling the dealerships what to make next. The user was literally telling them the next evolution of their product. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. What I was trying to do is trying to see where the duct tape marketing was, meaning, what are people asking me to do for them right now? What it is, I was like, funnels. They want me to see their funnels obviously, which for obvious reasons, okay? They want me to see what they've been building. They want me to double check it. They want a second pair of eyes. They want the emotional validation that yes, run some traffic, come back and let's talk again. What he and I decided to do is we would, like hey, let's build it. If that's what they're asking, let's build it. I was speaking to, it was the CEO of this company, I'm not going to say the name of it. I was speaking to the CEO of this company and I didn't know he was the CEO of this extremely successful company, and extremely wealthy individual, and I was sitting in a room with him. This was not long ago. I was sitting in a room with him and a bunch of other people and they said, and I was like, "Well yeah, I got to build it. I got to get X, Y and Z done." I can't remember exactly what I was talking about, but like unanimously around the room they were like, "If you build it, they will come." I started laughing. I was like, "Oh, man." I thought they were joking. I was like, "Yeah, that is the most false crap on the planet." I said that to the CEO. I was making fun of it, and then later I find out that that's actually the motto on some of their Facebook pages. I was like, are you serious? Anyway, so I was sitting there and it was like, "If you build it, they will come." You guys, funnel stacking is the only scenario where that's kind of true. The opportunities stack. Not funnel stacking. The opportunities stack. Opportunity switches. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read Expert Secrets, okay? Opportunity switches, if you build it they will come, is not true at all. Okay? Opportunity stacks though is one of the only scenarios where if you build it they will come, kind of works. Not even really that much, but it kind of works. You'll get a little bit of windfall. You know what I mean? I was thinking through if you build it they will come. I was like, that's so not true, but there's enough people that are already asking, that if I build it, they might actually just come. Meaning there might actually be a little bit of people jumping into the coaching program. That was kind of the logic I was going through, and he and I were talking this through. I was like, "Okay, cool." What we did is first of all, I salted the oats by dropping something out on my Facebook page. I don't really post that much on Facebook. I probably should do it more. I've had a love/hate relationship with Facebook. It's not for any particular reason, it's just, I don't know. I like Facebook, guys. Sometimes I just can't get into it, okay? Like with the frequency that I need to, which is why a lot of stuff is auto-posted and things like that. Anyway I was like, I'm just going to go post something out there and just say like, "Hey, sitting, thinking, what do people wish I was delivering to them?" I knew, but I just wanted to see if anyone resonated with this. I was like, "Funnel coaching, anyone?" Lots of comments. Holy crap. Lots and lots and lots of comments. I had over 145 comments on this thing. All over the place. Shares and people liking it, and I was like, I guess it didn't get shared too much, but anyway. What was cool about it was then I had the opportunity to treat it like an ask campaign. When people said, "Oh my gosh, yeah." I responded to every person who commented. Literally every person. I said, "Cool, what do you have in mind?" Or, "Cool, what would be most helpful?" Or, "Hey, awesome. Is there something that you wish I was delivering/helping with?" I kind of already had an idea, but everybody else came up with the offer for me. Does that make sense? I kind of already had an idea of what I wanted, but there were some particular very good, a few ideas that a few people said I was like, "Oh, that's a great idea. Let me toss that in." I basically created a stack. It was an unofficial stack. Maybe I should go create a more official stack with it, but it was basically a stack, meaning there was an offer with it. You get this main piece but what happens is you get this and you also get this and you also get this. I ended up creating somewhat of a stack, and spent the next couple hours putting the funnel together, tweaking stuff, putting a few things together, putting a few little ninja things in there. Building out the business side so that Colton could manage it while I continued to be the coach. Does that make sense? We built a little coaching funnel... With just that little post, we closed $15,000, which was awesome. And I know I can help them. Obviously they could too. This is like hot, hot, hot, hot, hot market. Okay? And we were at an event. I was speaking at an event. It was funny because there was a guy who ran up to me after I spoke and he's like, "How do I get your help with X, Y, and Z?" I closed him right there on it too. What I'm doing, there's really two things I wanted to bring out here with us. Ask like, okay, if you've been selling consistently inside of your market, is there an area that people are just begging you to be in, and you're like, "I don't know." Is there some kind of way that you could still kind of fulfill and deliver in there? Like I can't do funnel builds for people yet. I'm sure that time will come. It's my plan to, it's later on in the year. 2018, later on in the fall to kind of offer that kind of stuff. But for right now, I don't want to do that stuff. I'm staying totally focused. I don't want to do anything else but what I'm doing. Does that make sense? But I love coaching. Every Friday is already spent coaching. I've got no problem adding in another 10 of my own students. Anyway, so that was the thing. Then what I did is a little tiny mini ask campaign, after salting the oats with that Facebook post. Then I got a whole bunch of people who came on in and said, "Oh, that's awesome." Then really, really quickly we closed out ... Anyway. We closed out $15,000 with it, which was awesome. I was like, "I don't know if we'll take more. I don't know." Anyways. This is not me pitching. If you are interested, that's awesome. I made a whole bunch of cool outros for my new podcast intros and outros. You guys will hear about it. Awesome. That's be great, love to have you. This is not me pitching. I'm just trying to help you understand, sometimes there's just cash that's just in front of you and you just have to reach out and grab it. For your expertise, the thing that feels so easy to you it feels like you're breathing. Does that make sense? It's massive value to others and other people will pay for that. Does that make sense? I was talking to Jamie Smith, shout out to you, buddy. I'm like, "Hey man, how do I do X, Y, and Z?" In three seconds he's coded out some cool thing. I'm like, "Man, that is your expertise, bro." Good grief. Man, you're so good at that. That is clearly your thing. I don't even know where to start. Whatever their expertise is, is there some other aspect that people wish they could just give to you? The reason I chose coaching is because I wanted to move up on the value ladder first before going down on the value ladder. Before doing other cool low-end things, which is in the works, by the way. There's a really cool thing coming out, which should be done in probably like a month. Month or two, and very, very excited for that. It's freaking awesome. Anyway, I can't say any more. What I'm trying to do is I want to pay for living expenses so that I don't take cash away from the product. I want the product to be completely self-sustaining and then next I'm putting out little self-liquidating offer and I'm removing costs to the business. I'm removing costs to the product, right? The product has a margin, but the business has a margin too, obviously. I'm trying to remove my cost, my own employee status. I pay myself as an employee of my own business. How do I remove that cost from the business? Well I offer coaching, and I'm going to go through and now I easily pay for my salary and then as well as Colton's off of the coaching. I'm still able to deliver great ridiculous value, but keep all the cash from the product in the product and keep the ads rolling and spin faster. In my opinion, doing what I just did will speed this product off to making its own award much, much faster because of that one move because I'm going to be able to re-dump ads, all the profits directly back into ads again and just explode the thing. When I do add an SLO, when I do add a front-end offer, when I do add something a little bit in the back-end, the whole thing is completely self-sustaining and I can just crush it with that. Anyway, does this make sense? That's my new coaching program, and I was super stoked about it. Anyway, yeah. If you guys want to hear about it, it's in the outro that I'm going to toss out here. Feel free to dance a little bit. It's sweet music. Anyways guys, thanks so much for listening. Start looking too ... One of the things I'm nervous about saying all this stuff, I hope you don't take your eye off the balls and just build one funnel at a time. Don't take your eye off the ball, but when you get to a certain spot and you know that your offer's converting, you know your message is converting, you know you're finding the right individuals that you're actually pitching to, one of the easiest next steps is to start doing something a little more high ticket that can remove your payout from the cost of the business. That way the whole thing rolls on top of itself, and that's exactly what was screaming through my brain. All those thoughts, like boom, boom, wait I can do this, I can do this, and because of this, this could happen. Because of that, this can happen. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I was like, "Oh, let's do it. Boom." Within 24 hours we launched the program, and it's freaking awesome... Anyway. Hey guys, thanks so much for listening. Hopefully you got some stuff out of that, some value out of that, and you can go out and apply that and get more ad spend out there. You should want to spend as much money as you possibly can to acquire customer so you will crush it. Alright guys, thanks so much. Talk to you later, and woo, Funnel Hacking Live, baby. That is coming up. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Oh, man. If you have any sway at all, you get yourself to Funnel Hacking Live. Even if you don't have a ticket yet, man, just find a way. Find a way. Alright guys, talk to you later. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, "Steve, will you look at my funnel?" Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some hand-holding and guidance during your funnel build, or simply review the one you have, head over to CoachMeSteve.com and book your session now.

Today’s show is all about getting back into the driver’s seat of your sex life! Are you worried you’re doomed to a G-spotless bedroom existence? Are your impossibly high dating standards holding you back from meeting Ms. Right? Does “eye for an eye” really apply when it comes to marital infidelity? Emily and Anderson share sage advice to help steer you towards sex and relationship bliss, and uncover which careers are more likely to land you a Tinder date. If you’ve wandered off the desired sexual path, learn how to get back on track with tips from this podcast!

When I say the word "Shakespeare," what emotion washes over you? For us, it's a strong, dull boredom sort of wash. Not a great wash. Our whole lives Shakespeare is forced down our throats as if it's the be-all-end-all in prose and poetry and plays but like, NO. Get away. It's boring! Right? Does anyone like Shakespeare?!? Apparently. Entere James Urbaniak. I put the extra 'e' on 'enter' to make it seem more Shakespearian, k? James Urbaniak is a brilliant actor who we have had the pleasure of working with and knowing. I first saw him in American Splendor as Robert Crumb and I was like "WHO IS THIS MAN?" He's just great and you probably know him from his voiceover work on Adult Swim's "The Venture Bros." Next to maybe Patrick Stewart or something, James Urbaniak is the best possible guest we could have had on the show for this subject! If you’ve got any questions, comments, or concerns about the current, past, or future Make Me Like It podcasts, shoot Dan and Kelly an email at littlepuppyquestions@gmail.com! Theme Music by John Haskell Logo Art by Darin Shuler

N E W + P O S T + P O D C A S T: Breaking Soul Ties Have you ever been so connected to someone you couldn’t seem to shake the notion of letting them go? Was there a time in your life where if loving someone was WRONG ----you didn’t want to be RIGHT? Does a special someone make your SOUL glow? You might be dealing with a soul tie. Listen to this DOUBLE-HITTER on ONE|MO|MINUTE and The Single Black Female Project @sbfproject to find out what a soul tie is and how you can set yourself free. Please listen, like and share. The Single Black Female Project: www.sbfproject.com