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I chatted with Matt Plummer, VP Product Strategy, ZipRecrecruiter. ZipRecruiter is a premier sponsor of the 2019 TalentNet Live Recruiting conference taking place at Toyota North America HQ in Plano, Texas on December 6th. With over 40 speakers and a total of 300 participants, this will be TalentNet's largest event yet. It's fitting as TalentNet Live is celebrating 10 years of hosting these rather intimate yet highly impactful recruiting events. It is one of the largest and longest running regional recruiting events in America and the largest in Texas and the Southwest. ZipRecruiter's Brian Carillo will join me on stage at TalentNet this year to chat with the audience about the state of job boards and ZipRecruiters innovative AI approach. Below are excerpts from my conversation with Matt Plummer. Matt, catch us up on ZipRecuriter Two thousand and ten is when we got started. And then about twenty fifteen, we started to really look at some of the problems with that model are the sort of post and pray model if you will. And a lot of it came down to discover ability. We've really just learned that for the most part job seekers aren't really good at searching for jobs. They don't understand skill transfer ability too. Well, and then recruiter spent much time trying to do Boolean based searching to find people with the right skills and everything. So that's when we set about, to build sort of our first real major technology innovation around our base, matching built out a great team. And Tel Aviv Israel, so to build that up. So our second way, it was really more discovery based recommendations. If you think about like a Netflix model, where you can sit down and fire up your Netflix app on your Apple TV or whatever it is. And you're recommended content, and a lot of the Netflix consumption comes from that model. So we kind of took a queue from that. And then we really think about the third wave that we're getting into, not just discovery on the jobs at your side, but really creating human connections between recruiters and job seekers or candidates. Because right now, both sides of the marketplace are complaining about effectively a black hole. We've always known about the job seeker, black hole where they apply, and they never hear back. But now a lot of recruiters are complaining about not being able to get a hold of job seekers. So they find a good candidate in their. They try and reach out and they're not getting anything back. So we look at that is real material problem to try and solve for. And we think that using oddly enough using a artificial intelligence, we can actually create more sort of actions between recruiters in candidates and that's what we're really excited about. And I think we continue to sort of keep that differentiation between the, you know, traditional job board model. Yeah, so I I think the the regular communication that a little bit of automation can help employ on the candidate communication side is is a game changer. It really does assist in sort of the human connection. And it's because recruiters are are too busy and active job seekers are are really busy and it's difficult without a massive spreadsheet or some sort of. You know, really good system to even keep track of all the jobs that you're applying for when you're active. Passive job seekers, you know, they have jobs. Right? I mean, so it's very difficult for them to even respond in real time most of the time. And so, you know, a little bit of that automation goes a long way when you start to understand and learn Windows passive job, seekers are responsive. Yeah, totally agreed. And there's this whole process that happens today. That is pretty transactional. Right? You've got maybe a recruiter posting a position a job seeker discovers that applies to it, but there's no real connection there. And then the recruiter's back in their eighty s, and looking at a list of candidates and so we By Craig Fisher

In today's episode, host Jerrid Kalakay takes us on a journey into the concept of balance and how it applies to his life. Is balance possible? We have all heard the phrase "work/life balance," and is it possible what other types of balance do we truly need for the long-term. Jerrid proposes thinking about balance as different seasons and what is necessary for our lives for each season. Transcript Jerrid Kalakay 0:09 Welcome to the Teaching Change podcast, where we explore issues social entrepreneurship, education, and innovation. I'm your host, Jerrid Kalakay. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about finding balance. What does that mean? How does someone go about finding balance? And is it even possible? So on a previous episode, we talked about basically recharging your batteries, and understanding the need to restore oneself to stay in the game for the long haul. And the finding balance everyone talks about work-life balance.Jerrid Kalakay 0:46 Is that a real existence? Is that even possible? You know, the thing that's difficult about finding balance is what are you finding balance with? So a lot of times people talk about their personal lifeJerrid Kalakay 0:59 and theJerrid Kalakay 1:00 Their work-life, you know, and then balancing the two or balancing one's family life with their friends' life, or balancing your work life with your family, friends, personal growth, all those kinds of things.Jerrid Kalakay 1:18 I think it's a work in progress for pretty much everyone I don't know if anyone has would say, honestly, they found complete balance because it's, it's an ever-moving target, right?Jerrid Kalakay 1:31 You feel like you're doing pretty well. And then you get thrown a curveball.Jerrid Kalakay 1:37 You feel like you're on top of the world, and then all of a sudden you backslide, or tumble down the front of the hill, all the way down to the bottom. And so it's kind of a constant struggle, a continuous battle to try to figure out where is your balance and where can it be I know for me in my life as a professor as a social entrepreneur.Jerrid Kalakay 2:00 As a father, as a husband, as a son balance is ever elusive, many times, I'm trying to continually figure out what's the right amount of work to put in here, whether it be in my personal life or whether it be in my work life, whether it be my, my academic life, so forth and so on. And I think that it's probably a healthy conversation to have with yourself, not only with yourself but also with your family, with your friends, if you have a partner, so forth to really try to figure out what, what right now and this exact stage of my life, what does balance look like? What could balance look like?Jerrid Kalakay 2:41 And I don't know if it's, I don't think it's going to be a perfectly balanced thing. Like I'm looking, I'm thinking about a seesaw, you know, and I'm, I'm looking for, you know, what point is a seesaw utterly horizontal with the ground. Very rarely have I ever in my life and all the playgrounds that I've taken my kidsJerrid Kalakay 3:00 too, and probably all the playgrounds I've ever gone to as a child myself, have I ever seen a seesaw exactly horizontal with the ground?Jerrid Kalakay 3:10 And so using that as a metaphor for life, is it possible to have a perfectly balanced life to have your work? Have your academics or your extracurricular activities, your clubs, your organizations, the things you do on the weekends, your family? All the requirements that go along with with having a family and so forth is is it ever going to be a possibility that it's going to be perfectly balanced?Jerrid Kalakay 3:39 I don't think so. I think the answer to that question is no. And the reason why I say that is because I believe at certain times, it naturally should not be in balance ultimately, right. You've got a deadline and work, and so that's probably going to, you know, coming up that's going to be it's going to take a little bit more energy from you.Jerrid Kalakay 3:57 One of your children gets sick if you are fortunate.Jerrid Kalakay 4:00 have to have kids, or we know one of your dogs or animals get sick or your partner gets sick, or you get sick, then you know, obviously that's going to take energy away from your work.Jerrid Kalakay 4:12 If you're pursuing if you're on a softball league or you're in a bowling league, or you know anything like that, if something goes wrong with that, and you're having a tough season or tough go of it, that might take more energy to try to try to remedy that situation try to get better at whatever it is you're trying to do. Right. And so I think it's natural to kind of oscillate between projects and activities and things that you're doing. And not necessarily be super caught up with everything has to be 5050, you know, exactly even across the board or 3333 33 and don't forget about the third and each one of those.Jerrid Kalakay 4:50 That's probably not a healthy way to do things. I think a much more robust is to realize that with each season, different things are going to be taking our energy andJerrid Kalakay 5:00 Our focus and so what we need to do, and what I need to do more telling myself than I am, my listeners are, is to realize that every season requires different things from us and that we need to be able to focus on those things and not feel guilty aboutJerrid Kalakay 5:20 that, and then paying more attention to one thing over another,Jerrid Kalakay 5:25 You know, realizing that the season will pass and that there'll be a new season and the new season will require something different from us. I think that's what right balances. I think, in the end. That's what we really matter. You know, what do we spend our time doing, and how we do it on a day to day basis is essential. But I think in the long run, it's much more critical that we're in balance.Jerrid Kalakay 5:50 On the long haul, you know, the long term for short term, so many things in this world, come down to the long time versus short time, you know, what can we get done now in the short termJerrid Kalakay 6:00 You know, whatever that looks like, that's a day, a week, 30 days, 90 days a quarter, or whatever it might be, versus the long term, you know, what, what will matter a year from now, what will matter two years from now or four years from now?Jerrid Kalakay 6:15 The short term versus long term folds into the seasons, and that concept I was talking about earlier with trying to figure out what the season of now is, and how you can find balance overall in those seasons. You know, with this being said, you know, I'm not advocating that anyone forget that they have a family for six months to get a project done at work. That's not what I'm saying. That probably wouldn't Bode very well for you, or your family, for that matter. Likewise, I'm not saying that suggesting that you forget about the fact that you have to go to work from you know, nine to five or whatever you whatever your work looks like because you know, something's going on in your personal life.Jerrid Kalakay 6:58 But rather, maybe thisJerrid Kalakay 7:00 It's a day or two that you need to spend in the office only and not worrying about other things. And perhaps or maybe the exact opposite is a day or two or so that you need to spend away from the office and not worrying about anything but your personal life or your family life. And being honest with yourself, and being honest with those around you, both your employer or the folks you work with, and also your family about kind of where you are, I think is right. And I think that's a healthy scenario. I think a lot of times people try to deal mainly, men that I know, myself included, try to deal with everything on their own. I know I get caught in that often. Where I'm trying to deal with things entirely by myself, you know, if I, if I'm not able to do this and work, then people will think less of me they will need they won't think I'm as productive. They won't think I'm as good as I would like them to, you know if I can't deal with something in my personal life and my family life. You know,Jerrid Kalakay 8:00 Well, what would that mean? So I mean, I'm not a good husband, I'm not a good father, I'm not a good son, so forth these all these kind of negative concepts, negative thoughts, that kind of go could go and permeate our mindsJerrid Kalakay 8:16 Exists when we're trying to find a balance that may not be exactly possible. But when we're open and we're honest with the people that are in our lives, whether they be employees, employers, people we work with in general, our families, our friends, about where we are and what season we believe we are in and kind of what's on our plate. I think that we will more easily find balance in our own lives and in doing so will be much more successful on all fronts. And so, I'm inquisitive I'm interested in finding out from you all as, as my listeners as our listeners.Jerrid Kalakay 9:00 What do you see balance? As? Do you believe finding balance is possible? What is finding balance mean to you? You know, one of the things that I grew up on as a professional in higher education was taught was in graduate school andJerrid Kalakay 9:20 in graduate school at Florida State University in their higher ed program shut out to FSUJerrid Kalakay 9:26 Not doing so well in football, but that's okay. They're still doing well in the classroom. So good, good, good going. But in Tallahassee, Florida, Florida State, I will I went there for my Master's in science in higher education. And one of the very first things one of my professors talked about was finding work-life balance, and how can we do that as professionals, and I remember thinking as a 20, something-year-old and a professional preparation program toJerrid Kalakay 10:00 To work as a professional at an at a, you know, university or college, and we're thinking, wow, you know, the, that's probably not that big of a deal. Like I don't need to worry about finding balance because I'm just going to go out and I'm going to do the best job I could do. And I want to make a name for myself this in this field of higher education.Jerrid Kalakay 10:20 And I dismissed it all. And I think a lot of my classmates did as well. I don't believe that any of us focus the time and energy that we needed to on having a conversation with ourselves about what that could look like. And I think partly because it's all in the abstract.Jerrid Kalakay 10:37 You know, when you start to think about what your life is going to be after x or after y,Jerrid Kalakay 10:45 whatever those x's and y's are, whether they're the graduate program, law school, medical school, college in general, after you get married, you buy your house, you you know, whatever, whatever those X & Y's are you, you start to thinkJerrid Kalakay 11:00 Somewhat intellectually about what that's going to be like, but you don't know what it is. It's all in the abstract. Right? You never you don't know what it's like being a parent until you become a parent if you happen to be fortunate enough to do that, you don't know it's like to get married until you get married. Right if you're lucky enough to do that, you don't know what it's like to buy a car house, you know, so forth like you, you know what it is intellectually, but fully, you don't have any idea. So it's the same. It was the same thing for me when I heard about the work-life balance in graduate school. And it wasn't until many years into my professional life,Jerrid Kalakay 11:38 that I start to realize that I needed to take some time for myself and my relationship.Jerrid Kalakay 11:46 And for my partner and for, for our life together and so forth. And it was a long, hard roadJerrid Kalakay 11:55 and lesson for me to learn because what I was basicallyJerrid Kalakay 12:00 Doing is I was trying to make the most significant impact in my professional life as possible. And so, you know, eight 910 15 hours a day, you know, working during the day and then going to events in the afternoon in the afternoon or evening for workJerrid Kalakay 12:22 was perfectlyJerrid Kalakay 12:25 Perfectly acceptable, not only accept the Buddha is encouraged. So I would work, you know, my nine to five, and thenJerrid Kalakay 12:33 I worked in campus activities, so I put up to put on events and concerts and different things, which is a lot of fun. But it also still works. And so I would get home at you know, midnight, or one o'clock in the morning sometimes. And I did this pretty extensively for the Liesl first, on a three-four. If you asked my wife probably ten years of my professional lifeJerrid Kalakay 13:00 I what I did in that is yes, I've made somewhat a name for myself at some level.Jerrid Kalakay 13:07 But in doing that, I also neglected a lot of things I neglected myself my well being, and I neglected my relationship, I neglected my life outside of my work completely.Jerrid Kalakay 13:25 And in the long run, that will never work. In the short term, it might have worked well in a particular focused area, but it won't work in the long run. And I and I still have a lot of colleaguesJerrid Kalakay 13:38 Who I knew from that time, that that seem to be still doing that same thing or the seem to be still trapped in that same rat race. So I encourage you to think about, you know, what, what does balance look like for your life? What season Are you in? have that balance, you know, where do you think you need more excellent stability? Where do you think youJerrid Kalakay 14:00 Let's balance. Do you feel like you're in pursuit of that, that balance for yourself? And I would, and I would argue that and ask you is if you don't feel balanced, do you feel rewarded by that imbalance or you burdened by that imbalance?Jerrid Kalakay 14:24 And that's pretty it's a pretty profound concept. So do you feel rewarded by that unbalanced? So if you are,Jerrid Kalakay 14:31 whether it be in work or your personal life, are you getting the rewards wherever they may be for that imbalance or are you being penalized or you beingJerrid Kalakay 14:43 Martyred or hurt by that imbalance? And realize that whether you're being rewarded or whether that imbalance is punishing you that the pendulum Chloe swing the other way,Jerrid Kalakay 14:57 that your reward today could be a punishment tomorrow.Jerrid Kalakay 15:00 vice versa.Jerrid Kalakay 15:02 And the pendulum swings. Like I said both ways, the door swings both ways the pendulum swings both ways, whatever metaphor you want to use. So what we're rewarded for today might be what we're punished for tomorrow.Jerrid Kalakay 15:16 And that's something that we all have to deal with, and we have to think about it. And so I would, I would encourage you to think about where's your balance? And where can your balance take you? And what does that look like? For social entrepreneurs for social innovators, balance is a really, really, really important concept. Because of balancing the the triple bottom line that people profit planets, they're they're balancing the social value creation, the doing well in the world, with the profit and the profit-taking models, the revenue, and so there's a lot of balance to be found in that there's a balance of the storytelling. How muchJerrid Kalakay 16:00 How much of the story do you tell versus how much of the money do you try to make? You know, and realizing that you as one individual, as a social entrepreneur, social innovator can't do everything all at once? Right? You've got to build a team. Again, that is balanced. And soJerrid Kalakay 16:18 What does that look like in each one of your lives? I encourage you to spend some time this next week, thinking about that, analyzing that figuring that out. And then I will we will talk next time.Jerrid Kalakay 16:34 Thank you for helping me kind of figure out some of my balance. This is an I have not done a single show. Just by myself in a while, I've had only guests on, and this week, I thought that we would like that I would analyze balance a little bit with you all, just as Jerrid Kalakay not as Jerrid Kalakay interviewing someone so I appreciate it. Hopefully, you enjoyed this episode.Jerrid Kalakay 17:00 Your listenership, you probably noticed that we'd redone our website we've redone Teaching Change podcast calm. We've also rebranded some of our stuff for our third season, which debuted last week.Jerrid Kalakay 17:15 Appreciate and honor your journey with us, and if you dig our podcasts you dig the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or the highest compliment would be to share us with one of your friends. Till next time, be nice and change some stuff 

This all-star squad built out a multi-team marketing department to support multiple products for their first-to-market fantasy sports content provider. Hear how Veronica Hamel focused her team around the right priorities and hires to scale with speed and purpose. Jeff Singer provides insight into the technical side of integrations while Morgan Lee gives a marketer's perspective on channel expansion.       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] Interviewer: Hello again and welcome back to Braze for Impact, your martech industry discuss digest, and this episode is the pain points of scalable production, and I'm so pleased to have esteemed guests with me today from DraftKings. Veronica Hamel, Veronica is the senior marketing director here at DraftKings. Morgan Lee, CRM specialist, and Jeff Singer, software engineering manager. Thank you guys so much for being here.   [0:00:41] Veronica Hamel: Thanks for having us.   [0:00:42] Interviewer: So where are we right now? It's All-Star break. Right? Is there seasonality to this? Are you guys kind of like in relaxed mode or reset mode or-   [0:00:50] Jeff Singer: Definitely, All-Star break is by far the quietest time of year for DraftKings.   [0:00:53] Veronica Hamel: From an execution perspective-   [0:00:55] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:00:55] Veronica Hamel: I think it's quiet, but from a strategy and planning, this is like the peak time of year for NFL. The end of June, early July, is when we're doing most of our NFL planning and when we're starting to have meetings with our executives, and getting them involved in our strategy, and getting their approval, and all of that kind of stuff. So from an execution perspective, it's definitely kind of a quieter time of year, but from a planning perspective, this is like peak time for us.   [0:01:19] Interviewer: Right? It's just a different part of the brain.   [0:01:20] Veronica Hamel: Exactly.   [0:01:21] Interviewer: You just got to switch gears.   [0:01:21] Veronica Hamel: Exactly.   [0:01:22] Interviewer: That's cool. So for those of you listeners out there, those folks who don't know what DraftKings are, who's got the boilerplate? Who wants to do it in two or three sentences?   [0:01:30] Veronica Hamel: So DraftKings historically was a daily fantasy sports company exclusively so really drafting a lineup, and you kind of rack up points, and you score points that you're competing against another player's lineup to win cash. And so historically, we've been exclusively daily fantasy sports and then recently in August of this past year, we launched Sportsbook as well, so now in New Jersey only we have Sportsbook which is just traditional sports betting. Who's going to win the Super Bowl this year, for example.   [0:02:00] Interviewer: Gotcha. And you guys were first to market with that. Right?   [0:02:02] Veronica Hamel: We were, yes, in New Jersey.   [0:02:04] Interviewer: That's very exciting. Veronica, I think you're the most tenured person in the room. Right? You've been for quite a ride with DK. Was it four or five years?   [0:02:12] Veronica Hamel: Five and a half.   [0:02:13] Interviewer: Wow.   [0:02:13] Veronica Hamel: Yes, it's been quite-   [0:02:14] Interviewer: Five half and a half.   [0:02:15] Veronica Hamel: Quite the long ride.   [0:02:16] Interviewer: Jeez. And I guess that wasn't even that long ago, but for some reason in my brain, it's like smartphones didn't exist five and a half years go. I don't know why.   [0:02:24] Veronica Hamel: Well, some of the channels we currently use did not exist or weren't being used by us five and a half years ago.   [0:02:30] Interviewer: Right. So DraftKings sprouts up in 2012, and you joined in 2014. Right?   [0:02:35] Veronica Hamel: Yep, yep.   [0:02:36] Interviewer: So what were some of the initial priorities and obstacles that you had to face to get the marketing engine really humming? Like was there a team in existence? Were you kind of the first one of your kind to start out some of these initiatives?   [0:02:48] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. So as most startups do, we started out with a pretty big acquisition team, and when I say pretty big, I mean three people.   [0:02:55] Interviewer: [crosstalk 00:02:56].   [0:02:56] Veronica Hamel: But we didn't have anyone doing retention yet, so I was the first retention person to come on. At the time, we didn't have a ton of customers, and so the whole point of having an acquisition team first is because you're trying to acquire new customers and then once you have those customers, you then hire and kind of build out a more retention-focused team, and that's what I came in to do five and a half years ago. In terms of the types of things we were tackling at that time, honestly it was getting out an onboarding series. Like, we started out very, very slow, and we didn't have all of the sports that we have now. We were mainly focused on just MLB and NFL. It was a very different time where it was easier at that moment because we had less complexity in terms of sports' seasonality and the number of sports that we had. But we also were starting up as a company, and so there was a lot that we had to kind of take on and figure out how to navigate.   [0:03:48] Interviewer: And as far as customer-facing comms, you were basically starting from zero. The world was your oyster. Right?   [0:03:54] Veronica Hamel: Exactly, yes.   [0:03:56] Interviewer: When you jumped in some of your first retention stuff, was it cross-channel right away? What were kind of the foundations of that?   [0:04:04] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, so when I first started, we actually only had email. We had email in what we call site merchandising, so a couple of placements on the site that we were using to communicate to our users, and that was basically it. Those were our two channels that we were mainly using. Email we split into transactional and promotional. That was it. So it was a very few channels, and at that point we actually didn't even have an app. We were exclusively a web-based product. So from there, when we actually launched our app, we started then in push channels and started getting a little bit more into the mobile experience side. Pretty shortly after we got into the push side is both when Morgan joined and when we actually brought on Braze.   [0:04:45] Interviewer: So mobile wasn't even part of the game when you were in there?   [0:04:47] Veronica Hamel: No.   [0:04:47] Interviewer: And now is it the biggest part of your business? I mean-   [0:04:52] Veronica Hamel: So in terms of the app, the app is definitely a much bigger part of our business. In terms of the channels that we use, it's actually still a fairly even split. We see a lot of traffic coming from email. Then again, it's mobile email, so people are opening on their phone and going right into the app, so it's a little bit different than kind of when we first started where our mobile web product was interesting to say the least. Now, we've kind of mobile optimized. We both have that in terms of a mobile optimized site, but also we we direct deep link into the app and people kind of have a better experience from there.   [0:05:26] Interviewer: Cool. And so acquisition team of three.   [0:05:28] Veronica Hamel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:05:29] Interviewer: Adds Veronica.   [0:05:30] Veronica Hamel: Yes.   [0:05:30] Interviewer: Team of four. And then Morgan joins the following year?   [0:05:35] Veronica Hamel: I think it was a year and a half, maybe two years later, like June of 20-   [0:05:38] Morgan Lee: Yeah, June of 2015.   [0:05:38] Veronica Hamel: 15.   [0:05:40] Interviewer: And what was Morgan's mandate when she started? She was brought in. You had one job.   [0:05:45] Veronica Hamel: It actually was push.   [0:05:46] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:05:46] Veronica Hamel: So when we brought her in, we were starting to experiment with push and kind of other different channels. And so originally the team was so tiny. It was me, you, Robyn, Jesse.   [0:05:57] Morgan Lee: Yep.   [0:05:58] Veronica Hamel: So it was pretty small, and at the time it was kind of generalists. Everyone had to do a little bit of everything, so I think Morgan got a pretty solid foundation of everything. But pretty quickly thereafter, her mandate was push and kind of figuring out this new channel that we were bringing on.   [0:06:13] Morgan Lee: Yeah. So I guess it really started off with email and learning how to code an email because that's all we were doing, and then we had one website where we were sending push notifications, but it was like once a week maybe. It wasn't really a strategy. It was just kind of, "Oh, we have a big contest this week. Let's send a push notification."   [0:06:32] Interviewer: And so still no mobile app at this point, or it was just kicking off?   [0:06:34] Morgan Lee: We had the mobile app.   [0:06:35] Interviewer: Okay.   [0:06:36] Morgan Lee: Yeah. And then, yeah, for me, I came on and, straight out of college, was just trying to learn everything that I could about email marketing, and mobile push, and CRM, how to send an A/B test, stuff like that, so I think it really helped me build a foundation for a lot of the skills that I have today.   [0:06:56] Interviewer: Gotcha. And so your focus was push. Is this when you started to move? I mean eventually after you hard-coded some emails.   [0:07:05] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:07:06] Interviewer: You moved away from the generalist perspective, and people started kind of focusing and like doubling down on channels.   [0:07:12] Morgan Lee: Yeah, I was kind of email and push for quite awhile actually because we had different life cycles. So I was managing the inactive life cycle, just trying to get people to reactivate, for NFL mostly. And then as part of that we started... I did email, but then also it was like specializing in push and figuring out the best campaigns to send users.   [0:07:36] Veronica Hamel: We've actually had a number of different organizational structures, so we've gone kind of back-and-forth between doing it at the life cycle level versus doing it more at the channel level. So we had a push expert, and we've kind of gone back-and-forth a few times, and I think ultimately it's really where you are in your business to know whether or not which one makes sense. So we're currently more at kind of a user perspective, so we've got all of our different teams. Like, we've got some calendar-based teams, and they're all doing all of the different channels versus being really specialized in one. It's all based on what you're trying to do with your users and where you are in your life cycle as a business, I guess.   [0:08:18] Interviewer: Meta. That's cool. And so, yeah, I mean also... Jesus... Having the agility to be able to kind of switch the dynamic and chemistry of your team. I mean I guess it's crucial. Right? Sometimes people just kind of stack broken stuff on broken stuff, and it's like, let's let it work itself out.   [0:08:35] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. That's one thing that DraftKings has always been really good at is being agile and kind of changing with the times, and reorging, and trying to figure some things out. Maybe a good time to bring in Jeff because that was a big reorg that we had that has been kind of the most impactful, I think, from the marketing perspective, is adding a platform layer and adding some engineering resources to us. And that's something we never had before, and it basically was that. It was one of those times where we had said, "Hey, this isn't really working. Let's try to figure something else out." And we decided to invest some engineering resources from the marketing perspective, and here we are with Jeff.   [0:09:13] Interviewer: And here he is. What a good segue that was. What an intro, rolling out the red carpet, Jeff.   [0:09:19] Jeff Singer: Yeah. So as Veronica was saying, engineering historically hadn't had much of a mandate to help CRM. There was a Marketing Platform team, but it had been very focused on the acquisition side and sort of site merchandising type thing, so some of the critical sell flows along the app but not sort of the actual retention and-   [0:09:43] Interviewer: Right, [crosstalk] products.   [0:09:44] Jeff Singer: The things that Veronica's team was focusing on. So I kind of came into the Marketing Platform team with the mandate of just like, "We need to figure out this whole CRM thing from an engineering and product perspective." And so actually my first week, I went to Braze LTR.   [0:10:01] Interviewer: Hey!   [0:10:02] Jeff Singer: And it was a great way to really deep dive because I had no prior experience in the marketing world.   [0:10:08] Interviewer: This was like three years ago?   [0:10:09] Jeff Singer: No. So this was last year.   [0:10:11] Interviewer: Last year.   [0:10:11] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:10:12] Interviewer: Oh, right. Because you'd been with the company for-   [0:10:13] Jeff Singer: I joined DraftKings in 2015. I hadn't moved over to marketing until 2018.   [0:10:19] Interviewer: So you were at LTR last year?   [0:10:20] Jeff Singer: Yes, I was at LTR last year.   [0:10:21] Interviewer: Oh, cool.   [0:10:22] Jeff Singer: And also my first exposure to the marketing world basically, and-   [0:10:26] Interviewer: It was a lot.   [0:10:27] Jeff Singer: It was a great-   [0:10:28] Morgan Lee: He's grown up on Braze.   [0:10:29] Jeff Singer: It was a great way to learn a lot about marketing really fast.   [0:10:33] Interviewer: I love it. That's so cool. And so what were some of the first things that you were kind of tasked with?   [0:10:38] Jeff Singer: So one of the things we had been working on at the time is... For a lot of the transactional emails, we had a previous engineering driven system that would basically take the things we knew that was going on with the user at the time, and transform that into some text, and call Brace to say, "Hey, basically this is the text, go send this email." That obviously isn't great from a marketing perspective because it makes it really hard to iterate. Like, if the turnaround time on changing the text or testing something new out is a month, you're not really going to be able to get anywhere fast. So one of the first things I did was kind of help move a transition over to have those emails be based off of events in Braze and then allow Morgan and Veronica's team to really iterate quickly on those emails.   [0:11:27] Interviewer: So who brought Braze to the table? Like, when you made this switch to marketing is it around the time that... I mean you guys have been using it for awhile at that point.   [0:11:35] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, so we started out using Braze just for push. So actually that's not true-   [0:11:41] Morgan Lee: For any [crosstalk 00:11:41].   [0:11:42] Veronica Hamel: [crosstalk] messaging.   [0:11:42] Morgan Lee: That's how I became like the Braze expert because I was doing push as a mobile channel and then we started off using Braze, and it was like, "Okay, another mobile channel. Morgan, you can take this, and kind of run with it, and figure out basically how we want to use the in-app channel, and how we can use it to upsell users, and cross users over to different sports." And it just kind of became another channel that we could use for upselling and crossing users over and reactivation.   [0:12:11] Veronica Hamel: So it actually came from our product team.   [0:12:14] Morgan Lee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:12:14] Veronica Hamel: So our product team had brought on Braze as a way for us to pop notifications in the app itself. So if there was like a place where rather than them kind of having to build a new placement or a new pop-up at any given time in the flow, they hooked us up with basically the ability to be able to use the in-app messaging for us to be able to manage a lot of those pop-ups. Whether it was like, "Hey, user, take the survey, rate your experience," all the way through to we have a user or a player out in the lineup, and we need people to know. So we were using it more for the product side, and then we had kind of realized, "Hey, this is pretty intrusive to the customer experience." On the marketing side, we actually would really like to use it and manage it to make sure that it's being used properly and really being used to benefit the user experience rather than just kind of pop-up notifications everywhere.   [0:13:07] Interviewer: Gotcha. Cool. So we've got Morgan working with in-app and push. We get Jeff in the mix. He's going LTR. He's learning all this stuff. You guys start to scale, and it's with sophistication. So I mean how does the nature of your business complicate email marketing? Is it pretty nuanced?   [0:13:23] Veronica Hamel: Honestly, it's not just email marketing. It's all marketing. The big thing for us is the complexity of the business. Even when we just had DFS, it was a ton of different users, and we know so much about them that you want to be able to use that data to personalize and give them a better experience, but we almost had data paralysis. We had so much to use that it was kind of hard for us to know, well, what's the most important split or the most important for a segment to create? And from there just getting more sophisticated. So that was when we just had DFS. Then we launched two more products. So we mentioned that we have Sportsbook, and we're live in New Jersey. We also have Casino Games within embed in our Sportsbook app, in New Jersey as well. So basically we now have three products and now-   [0:14:09] Interviewer: And that's all owned by you guys, you all-   [0:14:11] Veronica Hamel: Correct. So that just increases the complexity because now you have users that are playing one only. So you're playing only DFS, only Sportsbook, only Casino, or we've got people that are playing kind of all of the combinations in between of of all of the different products.   [0:14:26] Morgan Lee: The sports world too is changing daily, and we have contests daily, and you can basically bet on any sport, so it's just constantly moving and changing, and especially for email which is a channel that is a little bit more difficult to personalize. Like, you receive an email in your inbox, and that's it. It's not going to change.   [0:14:46] Interviewer: A lot of tools out there for that.   [0:14:47] Morgan Lee: Yeah, Braze has definitely helped.   [0:14:49] Interviewer: So, again, let's wind back. We're talking about multiple products, multiple channels. How do you even manage that? I mean was this going on before the multiteam things started happening or did that kind of bring about the need for a multiteam setup?   [0:15:08] Veronica Hamel: I actually think that was one of the biggest reasons why we then decided to invest Marketing Platform resources. So engineer resources for our marketing team was... As soon as we got to a place of having multiple products, we were managing the complexity on DFS. It was difficult, but we were managing it, and we were kind of coming up with some different solutions for us to use. But as soon as we kind of got into this place of having three products... And one of our biggest advantages in that space is actually that we have a customer base already who might be interested in those other verticals. And so in order for us to be able to leverage that and do it well, we needed some sort of automation, and we needed to be able to better personalize to these users without manually creating 10 different versions of a campaign. And that's kind of what we're working on now.   [0:15:54] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:15:54] Interviewer: I haven't seen any of your campaigns because it's none of my business, but do you guys work with Canvas? Do you use that cross-channel... You know throwing promotions between people across products to kind of get them deeper and deeper into the DraftKings bubble?   [0:16:09] Morgan Lee: Yeah, I think right now we're using mostly campaigns, but we have setup some things as a Canvas. Jeff was talking about how we're moving all of our push notifications, the transactional ones, over to Braze as one of the big projects that we're working on. And we're building all of those in Canvas so that we can test copy, and test personalization, and how we kind of want to alert users of tickets, and stuff like that.   [0:16:38] Interviewer: So the three products are Sportsbook, DraftKings Live, and Casino?   [0:16:44] Veronica Hamel: It's Sportsbook, Daily Fantasy Sports, and Casino.   [0:16:47] Jeff Singer: There is also DK Live, but that's-   [0:16:50] Veronica Hamel: DK Live is more of a content platform.   [0:16:52] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:16:52] Veronica Hamel: So it's like complimentary to our products.   [0:16:54] Interviewer: Oh, cool.   [0:16:54] Veronica Hamel: Yeah.   [0:16:55] Interviewer: And do you guys plug that as well? Do you have whole campaigns around it?   [0:17:01] Veronica Hamel: It's mostly secondary, so it's kind of in the same campaigns that we're doing. We're already talking about placing a bet, or we're doing whatever, and then we're also giving you content in order to have you make better decisions in drafting your lineup.   [0:17:13] Interviewer: Nice. Any other cool tech toys or strategies that you guys are using?   [0:17:18] Jeff Singer: So one of the interesting things in our industry is that there's so many different regulations, and almost every state has different regulations around what users are allowed to do, and that's probably going to continue to happen with the way the regulations seem to be shaping up in the U.S. Around sports betting and casino. So we've actually been playing around a little bit with Radar for being able to trigger things around knowing where people are and kind of adding more location context to some of our campaigns.   [0:17:50] Morgan Lee: Yeah. And we've also been able to personalize messaging in campaigns using Radar. It's different to say, "Hey, enter this contest," but it's even more personalized where you can say, "Hey, thanks for entering this stadium. Plan DraftKings tonight because you're already there watching the game." So I think that aspect too has been really cool for us.   [0:18:13] Interviewer: Did you see the CEO of Radar, Nick Patrick, at LTR when you were there for that first time?   [0:18:18] Jeff Singer: I actually didn't, but I think-   [0:18:19] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, funny enough, I actually think that's exactly where this came from.   [0:18:22] Interviewer: Oh!   [0:18:22] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:18:23] Morgan Lee: I was blown away. I thought it was a really cool product, and I was like, "Veronica, we should really look into implementing Radar," and we kind of ran with it.   [0:18:33] Interviewer: What?   [0:18:34] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:18:35] Interviewer: I got to let the marketing team know this. This is fantastic. And so now you guys have the multiteam difference from what I have come to understand. You have your calendar team and your triggers team. I mean how did the idea for a multiteam setup come about and was it difficult to rally support from that executive team, right? Because I mean I guess it's kind of you, Veronica, who has to kind of round up with Dan and kind of let them know this is a priority. This is what we need to invest in.   [0:19:05] Veronica Hamel: So in terms of us deciding we needed it, basically where we ended up landing was 95% of our effort was really going towards these calendar-based campaigns that were, "Enter this contest today or place a bet on something that's happening today." And we weren't really focused enough on user life cycle, so we had some kind of set it and forget it onboarding treatments, but we weren't paying enough attention to things like better notifications for a better user experience, or you've got a player in your lineup that is projected to score zero points because they're out for the day, and all kinds of these small different things that were both user experience and player life cycle that we just didn't have time to focus on. When we were focused on the things that were happening today and tomorrow, we filled up 99% of our plate, and we just never had time for anything else. So we decided to kind of break off a team and have them very specifically think about things that are a little bit more user life cycle. It was made possible by Jeff and his team. So in order for us to be able to do a lot of these things, we needed these kind of event-based triggers and data that we were able to then use in Braze to trigger those communications. So it kind of was both. We weren't focusing on it, and we realized that there was a huge opportunity, and too, we now had the resources in order to be able to enable this team to be effective.   [0:20:27] Interviewer: Gotcha. And so, like you mentioned, you just didn't have the bandwidth because there's just so many of these high possibility conversion moments around user behavior. Right? And you just can't grab them all. So when you expand to these two teams, was there concerns that it could be too much? Every little thing they do, they get a ping, and maybe it's overwhelming for a user?   [0:20:51] Veronica Hamel: It's a great question. When we started thinking about how we would setup this team, we also started thinking about needing a Preference Center and needing the ability for a user to opt out of very specific communications. We also then were piloting an internal tool. We were working on [inaudible] prioritization. So to make sure that a user could only see one contact in one day from the broadest sense, so there's still obviously transactional emails that a user can see, and transactional notifications a user can see in the back-end. But if we were trying to get a user to... Either they're inactive, and they dropped off, and we're trying to get them to come back to the site on some specific promotion that we know that they've reacted to in the past versus, "Hey, it's MLB All-Star break, play in that.' We started kind of prioritizing the life cycle campaign above the promotional campaign, so we were trying to be a little bit careful with that. But these two can actually speak a little bit more to an upcoming project that we have on Preference Center that I think is probably going to help that even more.   [0:21:52] Morgan Lee: Our Preference Center right now does have some communications that you can opt in or opt out of. We have leagues where you can play contests with your friends, so there's a lot of notifications in your league if someone posts a contest. So we have some of those, but it's not as personalized as we'd like it, so we want a notification center that includes push and email and also has a lot of the different trigger notifications that we've added. So we have a push where if you have an injured player in your lineup, you can receive a notification and letting that user know that the person is out, so having a preference for that. Also, user preferences in terms of what teams they like, what sports they really like. So that's also a project that we're taking on, hopefully pretty soon, Jeff.   [0:22:43] Jeff Singer: NFL's coming up, so we've got-   [0:22:44] Morgan Lee: Yes,.   [0:22:45] Jeff Singer: A lot of other things too.   [0:22:46] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:22:47] Interviewer: Are you guys big sports fans? Is it a prerequisite to join?   [0:22:50] Jeff Singer: Definitely not.   [0:22:51] Morgan Lee: No.   [0:22:51] Jeff Singer: I mean I am a pretty big NFL fan. There's a lot of people here at DraftKings who actually aren't sports' fans. I remember having to explain once to someone on my team, what I touchdown was.   [0:23:06] Morgan Lee: Oh, wow.   [0:23:06] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:23:07] Veronica Hamel: So [crosstalk 00:23:07]. From a marketing perspective-   [0:23:09] Jeff Singer: Maybe that's an engineering thing.   [0:23:10] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. That's definitely an engineering thing. From a marketing perspective, I think it depends on what they're going to do. So it's definitely not a prerequisite, but we do tend to hire, or we try to hire people that at least understand or want to understand because they're writing a lot of the copy, and they're talking to our players.   [0:23:26] Interviewer: I was just going to say copywriters.   [0:23:26] Morgan Lee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:23:27] Interviewer: Right?   [0:23:28] Veronica Hamel: So from our perspective, it's much more important for people to kind of understand sports and have a couple of people. We do a pretty good job of almost having a balance between the super heavy sports fans that can kind of help and share some of that knowledge. And then more of the like creative, innovative marketers, we're not going to turn someone down if they're an awesome marketer but just don't understand sports. It's just a balance of making sure you have the right amount of both on your team.   [0:23:53] Interviewer: I mean it might be an idea to update the onboarding process at DraftKings to teach some of the... You know Football 101. What is a touchdown? How do I do it?   [0:24:02] Veronica Hamel: Well, maybe on the engineering side at least.   [0:24:03] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:24:05] Interviewer: So with this dual team structure, do you guys see an expansion to even more teams outside of Calendar and Trigger, or what does the next evolution kind of look like from your perspective?   [0:24:17] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. We actually just added a second team that is kind of cross product, and so we have someone that is very specifically focused on tech tools and process, and we're working with Jeff's team pretty heavily on trying to get to a place by the end of 2019 where we're pretty automated. And that has been a lot of work on both his team and my team in terms of coming up with the strategy and figuring out how do we test some of this stuff first before we just turn on automation and make sure that it's actually valuable. And automation is so broad that it's been a lot of strategic conversations around, "Let's bite off a piece of it, automate that, and then move forward, and kind of sequentially get to a place of better automation." So we have someone, Jesse, who actually was my second hire at DraftKings, and used to be Morgan's boss, who's been working very closely with Jeff's team on kind of automation, and tech tools, and process. And that's been really helpful to kind of push things forward a little bit faster than they were moving before.   [0:25:20] Interviewer: What other things in your stack are you guys working with? You mentioned Radar.   [0:25:24] Veronica Hamel: We use Segment today.   [0:25:25] Jeff Singer: Yeah, we use Segment pretty heavily for some of the event stuff I was talking about earlier. I know we're evaluating some kind of analytic tools. That's more on the product side than the marketing side, but as far as being able to understand how many of our users went through some flow and then the result of where they ended up.   [0:25:46] Interviewer: So between the three of you, you've seen a nice handful of iterations of the marketing team here at DraftKings. Do you have any like parting words for our listeners that are trying to build out a marketing org and balancing/juggling priorities?   [0:26:03] Jeff Singer: I think a big thing for me is just staying flexible and kind of being able to react to opportunities as they come up.   [0:26:11] Morgan Lee: Yeah. And I think so too, and it's actually gave me an opportunity to kind of move my career in the way that I wanted to. So I started with mobile, got really invested in that, and then learned a lot about Braze, and so that's now helping me on the triggers team where we're using a lot of the features in Braze to trigger notifications. So honestly think it can be good for a team to grow, and people can specialize and learn more about what they want to.   [0:26:38] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, I'd say the biggest thing is don't be afraid of change. Again, we've gone back-and-forth between segment-based to channel-based a couple of different times, and I think it really just depends on where you are as a company and what makes sense at that time. So hopefully, we have hired a great team of people who are super flexible, and they're willing to learn new things, and kind of take on new opportunities. And that's been the biggest thing for us, and just having a team that's flexible, and is willing to learn, and change with the times has been the most impactful.   [0:27:10] Interviewer: Don't be afraid to change. Stay agile. Will I see you guys at LTR this year? Maybe?   [0:27:15] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:27:15] Veronica Hamel: Probably.   [0:27:15] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:27:16] Veronica Hamel: We usually go.   [0:27:17] Interviewer: Excellent. All right.   [0:27:18] Veronica Hamel: Maybe we'll find another cool tool that we want to use.   [0:27:20] Interviewer: I think you just might. Keep your eyes and your ears open.   [0:27:22] Morgan Lee: Let us know who's going to be there.   [0:27:24] Interviewer: Absolutely. We will send you guys the lineup. So Jeff, Veronica Morgan, thank you guys so much for being here. Or, you know what? Thank you for allowing me to be here in your headquarters in Boston.   [0:27:34] Jeff Singer: Thanks for coming.   [0:27:35] Morgan Lee: Thank you.   [0:27:35] Interviewer: And thank you guys for joining us as well. Take care. [0:27:38]

Content note: animal abuse, murder, rape, sexual violence, torture, necrophilia, child molestation, drug use and misuse, cannibalism, gross details of so many things, sanism, and ableism. Photo: Dahmer's sketch of his body altar, courtesy of Oxygen. Even thought part one wasn't even an hour, I wanted to be rid of Dahmer as quickly as humanly fucking possible, y'all. So, part 2 is almost two hours long... but we don't have to talk about it anymore. This episode starts right as he moves into the notorious apartment on North 25th Street. For the early stuff, make sure to listen to the first episode. Resources Wiki Biography Crime Museum Inside the Mind of Jeffrey Dahmer: Serial Killer’s Chilling Jailhouse Interview 1991 Vanity Fair piece Jeffrey Dahmer Trial Victim Impact Statement Highlights (video) 5 Of The Most Shocking Moments From The Jeffrey Dahmer Trial 9 Mind-Blowing Quotes Made By Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer Dahmer on Dahmer Sneak Peek from Oxygen 2 Servicemen Reveal Their Stories Of Being Sexually Abused By Jeffrey Dahmer These Are The Chilling Crime Scene Photos From Jeffrey Dahmer's Apartment Stone Phillips interview Murderous Minds: Inside Serial Killers S1E7 on Amazon Prime All the other links I said I'd include Study Shows Mentally Ill More Likely to Be Victims, Not Perpetrators, of Violence True Crime Obsessed - Episode 40: Kidnapped For Christ Bruce McArthur (Toronto serial killer)How alleged Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur went unnoticed Toronto serial killer destroyed gay safe space Grad student claims she tipped off police to serial killer a year ago The sad predictability of Toronto’s alleged serial killer Patreon poll Transcription Welcome back to the Spooky Sconine podcast. This is the podcast that covers everything that is paranormal, criminal, spooky and just plain weird from the state of Wisconsin. This is the second episode in the Jeffrey Dahmer Series. If you haven't listened to the first one, go back and catch that because there are going to be some things I talk about in here that I explained in the first episode. And also like you wouldn't watch the last half of the movie, right? Like, go listen to the first one. ----more---- When we last left Jeffrey Dahmer, he had just convinced a judge he was going to change his ways after molesting a child. Let's rejoin him a year later, shall we? On May 14th, 1990 Dahmer moves out of his grandmother's house where he had had to move back into it, because of the molestation charge and having just gotten out of jail and all that jazz. He moves into apartment 213 at 924 north 25th street and takes any momentos he'd kept from his previous victims, including the mummified head and genitals of Anthony Sears. Within one week of moving into his new apartment, he had already killed his sixth victim. Raymond Smith was a 32 year old sex worker who Dahmer lured to his apartment with the promise of $50 in exchange for sex at the apartment. He gave Smith a drink laced with seven sleeping pills and manually strangled him. The following day, Dahmer purchased a Polaroid camera with which he took several pictures of Smith's body in suggestive positions before dismembering him in the bathroom. This all becomes a very major part of his M.O. and, with very few exceptions, this is what he tends to do with the rest of his victims from here on out. He boils the legs and arms and also the pelvis in a steel kettle with Soilex, which allows him to then rinse the bones off in his sink. He dissolves the remainder of Smith's skeleton with the exception the skull in a container filled with acid. Dahmer later spray paints Smith's skull, and he places it alongside the skull of Anthony Sears upon a black towel inside a metal filing cabinet. About a week later - and it's on or about May 27th - Dahmer lures a young man to his apartment but he fucks up. Um, you know how he spikes the drink, right? He'll go and he'll be like, "oh, I'm going to make us a drink." And then he sneaks the sleeping pills into the one drink. Well, just this one time he forgets which drink is which and drinks the laced drink himself. He wakes up the next day and his intended victim stole a bunch of his close $300 and a watch. He doesn't report this to police, natch. You know, when you have like a severed head hadn't genitals, you don't report this. On May 29th, though, he does share that he'd been robbed with his probation officer because, remember, he's also still on probation, you know, for molesting a kid. In June of 1990 he brings a 27 year old acquaintance to the apartment named Edward Smith. He drugs and strangles Smith and instead of just immediately acidifying the skeleton or going through his normal process, he actually puts Smith's skeleton in his freezer for several months because he thought maybe it wouldn't retain as much moisture, which like from a scientific background, bruh, no, this is not going to work. Obviously it didn't work and then he acidified the body like later on. He'd destroyed the skull on accident because he placed it in the oven to dry and it exploded. It exploded! Later, he told police that he felt 'rotten' about Smith's murder since he didn't get to keep anything from the body. Less than three months later he meets a 22 year old Chicago native named Ernest Miller on the corner of north 27th street. Miller agrees to company Dahmer to his apartment for $50 and then is like, oh, you want to listen to my heart and stomach? Okay. Dahmer decides, 'mm, since I'm here I might as well try to suck your dick.' And Miller says, 'you know what, that's going to cost you extra.' So that's when Dahmer goes and grabs the drinks. He only had two sleeping pills to put in Miller's drink though. So he is out for a very short amount of time and when he wakes up suddenly in the middle of Dahmer doing stuff to him, Dahmer kills him by slashing his carotid artery and he does this with the same knife he uses to dissect the victims bodies. So it's a knife he really has taken time to like sharpen and make sure it's in the best possible form, which to be honest, is kind of a godsend in this type of a situation because I'd rather have something sharp nick my carotid and die quickly then try to have someone use like a very dull knife to do that. He bleeds to death within minutes, but not before Dahmer grabs his Polaroid camera and is like taking pictures of Miller dying and bleeding out. He puts Miller's body in the bathtub for dismemberment after he does the sex to it. While he is dismembering the rest of the body, he takes time to like kiss Miller's face and talk to him, which everything I read was really um, happy to point that out with this victim. But I'm pretty sure if you're going to do it to one victim, you probably do it to most victims. And let's be real. How many of us don't talk to random stuff when we're doing things? Like I talk to random stuff all the time, like, 'hey, cherry coke, how you doing? I'm going to put you in my mouth.' Um, which I am, but like, you know, I cannot be the only other person who does this and also isn't a serial killer. That's all I'm saying. He wraps Miller's heart, Miller's biceps, and parts of his legs in plastic bags and puts them in the fridge so he can eat them later. He boils the rest of the flesh and organs, and they turned into this jelly like substance because again he's using that Soilex and he wanted to keep the skeleton. So he rinses it off, puts the bones in this light bleach solution for 24 hours and then allows them to dry like, like you would with dishes, right. Um, and this is all stuff that his father had taught him to do - by the way. The severed head was initially placed in the refrigerator before being stripped of flesh and then painted and coated with an enamel, which is a smart move because at least it won't get as brittle as the other ones that he's had to discard at this point. He's learning. Three weeks after murdering Ernest Miller, on September 24th, Dahmer meets a 22 year old man named David. Thomas at the Grand Avenue Mall. It's a mall, but it's like weird because it's set up between several buildings and then there's like skywalks and like I, I was there like a decade ago going through the mall and being like, what the fuck is this place? It's weird. Anyway. It's not like Ye Grand Mall, okay? It's, it's a weird mall. Anyway, Dahmer persuades Thomas to come to the apartment for a few drinks and again with his MO of picking up people who are down on their luck or people who are sex workers. He offers money for nude photographs. Dahmer would later state that after giving Thomas a drink full of sedatives, he felt bad because he realized all of a sudden he wasn't attracted to Thomas, but he was still afraid to allow him to wake up in case he would have been angry about being drugged. So he decides to go through with strangling and dismembering. Since he wasn't attracted to Thomas, though, he intentionally doesn't keep body parts. He does take photographs throughout the dismemberment process and keeps them and honestly that's part of what led them to being able to identify this victim as being David Thomas. So, as creepy as it is that he took photographs - he didn't remember people's names, he probably didn't know many names - and these photographs at least allowed us to find the victim's families and let them know what had happened. I can't believe I'm saying I'm kind of grateful for these photographs. Jesus Christ. Um, okay. He doesn't kill anyone for like five months. He tries to bring a couple of guys back to his apartment during that time period. But like, you know, it just wasn't happening. So he takes all of that creative energy, you know, that you use when you do the same thing over and over again to dead bodies and starts planning the altar he wants in his apartment. And this is really interesting because it's got like different sets set ups. So he wanted this black shower curtain behind the altar, um, and was going to put that in front of a window. And then, um, I'll put a link in the show notes because this is wild. So on either side he's got skeletons that have been painted. And then there's a black table where he has the skulls that he's saved that have been painted. And then there's like one of those funky lights that has like several different bulb things coming down behind that in front of the window. And then he has like a little plaque above the window and a chair set up in front of the altar so that, you know, he could, uh, sit there and look at it. It's so creepy. He is also known to regularly complain of anxiety and depression to his probation officer throughout this time. And you know, talks a lot about being gay, being alone, not having a lot of money. And this is when he also starts talking about feeling suicidal. He was really careful if you think about it to select victims on the fringe of society. They were often itinerant or criminal or even criminal by association. They were children at times or even slightly older people, not too old, but still. And often he went after, men who were not white. Um, his first two victims were white. But I think the bulk of the rest of them are Black, Hispanic, Native American/Indigenous, and Asian. Like he picks people who are not white on a regular basis. And this actually led, once he's captured, to a lot of racial tension in Milwaukee, which is consistently battling with St Louis to be one the most segregated cities in the United States. Like whatever one is number one, the other one is either number two or three like it. They are consistently in the top three. Um, and just because it's 2019 doesn't mean that's changed a ton. I gotta tell Ya. In February of 1991, he observes a 17 year old named Curtis Straughter standing at a bus stop near Marquette University. He brings Straughter back to his apartment again with the idea of giving him money in exchange for nude photos. And he's also like, 'Hey, I'll pay you to do the sex.' Dahmer drugs and and strangles Straughter with a leather strap. Then dismembers him and keeps his skull, hands, and genitals. The head is put in the freezer along with several other heads at this point. On April 7th, he meets 19 year old Errol Lindsey who iss walking to get a key cut. Now Lindsey was straight, but Dahmer somehow gets him back to his apartment, drugs him, and this is where he starts his major experiment to try to zombify his victims because remember, he doesn't necessarily want them dead - and he later says this in interviews - but he wants them to not leave him. And what's the best way to get someone to not leave is to have complete control of them. And if somebody is in a Zombie like state, you can do that a lot easier then, uh, you can with just keeping them bound, especially in a safe way too. So, after being drugged, uh, Lindsey winds up with a hole in his skull - Dahmer drills a hole in and he pours hydrochloric acid right into Lindsay's brain. Lindsay wakes up, um, and says, 'I have a headache. What time is it?' He then collapses on the floor and, um, just keeps holding his head. At this point, Dahmer drugs him again and strangles him because he's like, well, this didn't work. He decapitates Lindsey, keeps his skull, flays the body, and actually places his skin in this solution of cold water and salt AKA like a brine for several weeks because he wanted to keep it. But of course that doesn't work. Um, so he tosses it eventually. At this point his apartment smells like awfulness and the other residents in the Oxford apartment building are continually like repeatedly complaining to management about foul smells, about falling objects, about hearing a chainsaw, etc. The manager Sopa Princewill contacts Dahmer in response to these complaints several times. Although Dahmer initially excuses the odors because he's like, 'aw, my freezer keeps breaking. And the, you know, the stuff inside got spoiled.' 'Oh my tropical fish just died. So they're kind of smelly and I haven't had a chance to like clean everything out,' et cetera. But we'll come back to his neighbors cause it will get wild. Anthony Hughes is a friend of Dahmer's and he's Deaf and mute. Um, so he can't hear and he can't speak. He communicates by signing with his hands and also by lip reading for people who don't know how to sign back to him. They are hanging out somewhere else when Dahmer's like, 'hey, you want to hang out at my house?' So they go back to the house, he drugs Hughes, drills a hole in a skull, and injects acid like he previously tried. But this time - and I'm not sure if it's because of the volume or the location of where he drilled - um, the injection winds up killing Hughes and Dahmer gets really sad about that. Like, he didn't want to kill his friend, he just wanted to keep him around and um, he gets really depressed. Like, I don't know... If you don't want to kill your friend, maybe don't do stuff that could kill your friend? That's all I'm saying. That's why I don't text and drive with friends in my car - only on my own. Um, he leaves Anthony's body to rot on his bedroom floor before dissolving it in acid several days later. And actually his body comes into play in this extremely close call I'm about to talk about. On the afternoon of May 26th in 1991, he meets a 14 year old kid on Wisconsin Avenue. The kid's name is Konerak and I cannot pronounce the last name because I am so white. Um, I'm going to try [failes miserably several times] Sinthasomphone. Um, I'm just going to keep calling him Konerak because I don't want to mess up his name several times. Um, he approaches Konerak and is like, 'Hey, I'll give you money for pictures.' And the kid's like, 'okay.' Um, actually the kid's really reluctant at first and then comes with him. He poses for two pictures in his underwear before Dahmer drugs him. Um, while he's drugged, he performs oral sex on this kid. And it's important to note this kid is actually the younger brother of the boy Dahmer molested in 1988 and was convicted of molesting after the kid had to go get his stomach pumped, um, from being drugged. And you know, the kid didn't know that Dahmer was that guy. He didn't remember. This is a couple years later. Um, but Dahmer also doesn't recognize kind of the familial resemblance. Um, it's not until quite a long ways later that they figure this out. But while Konerak is drugged, Dahmer drills a hole in his skull and injects hydrochloric acid right into the frontal lobe - o the front of your head. Before Konerak falls unconscious, Dahmer leads him into the bedroom where Anthony Hughes' body is sitting on the floor naked. And Dahmer says that he believed Konerak saw the body, but Konerak didn't react to it, which is probably because of a mixture of being really sedated and then also, I don't know, having acid in your brain. Soon, Konerak passes out. Dahmer drinks several beers while sitting there next to him and then is pretty sure that the experiment has failed again. He is really upset. So, now that he's out of alcohol, he decides he's going to go drink at a bar and then buy alcohol and come back and he's gone for a few hours. Konerak manages to not only wake up but to escape despite being injured and being incredibly out of it. Um, this kid was a bad ass. Dahmer's neighbor Sandra Smith calls police to report that there's an Asian boy running naked in the street and it's the early hours of the next day when Dahmer comes back to his apartment and he is greeted by Konerak sitting naked on the corner of 25th and state speaking in Lao - cause he he's Laotian - with three distressed, uh, young ish women standing near him. He approaches the trio and explains that Konerak - he uses a fake name by the way - was his friend and tries to get him back into the apartment, but the women are like, 'oh no, no, no, motherfucker. We called 911.' So, 2 officers show up - John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish. Dahmer is like really relaxed and he knows he's got to put on a show. So he tells the officers that Konerak who was 14 was his 19 year old boyfriend who had had too much to drink after they fought. And that he just acts like this a lot when he's drunk. The three women were like, 'Excuse the fuck out of me. Do you see that this kid is like actively bleeding from his ass and that he doesn't want to go anywhere with Dahmer? And like, this kid has been hurt.' The officers tell her to butt out, shut the hell up, and not to interfere in this "domestic situation." So the officers have a towel with them, they wrap Konerak up in it and bring him back to Dahmer's apartment. They do try to verify the claim that Dahmer and Konerak lovers. So Dahmer shows them like these pictures he'd just taken of the kid along with his neatly folded clothing - because if he was a victim, why would he fold his clothing, et cetera. The officers later report having noted a strange smell that kind of smelled like shit, um, inside the apartment. And clearly it was coming from Hughes' decomposing body. Dahmer stated that to investigate this, one of the officer's peeked his head around in the bedroom, but he clearly didn't take good look because he missed the body on the floor. The officers leave and tell Dahmer to take good care of Konerak. The thing is, had these officers done their due diligence and at least run a background check, um, like run Dahmer through their system? They would have seen that he was a convicted child molester and on probation. Um, and probably would have investigated this more deeply, especially since this kid is clearly a kid. Like I know it might be hard to tell whether someone's 14 or 19, but I think when you add the layer on that he's a convicted sex offender, that that gets less difficult. The cops leave and Dahmer's like, 'okay, time for round two.' He injects hydrochloric acid right into the frontal lobe again and um, kills Konerak. He takes the next day off of work to devote the entire day to dismembering the bodies of both Konerak and Hughes, and he keeps their skulls. Within a few days, there's an article that appears in the local paper about Konerak being missing and one of the women who had tried to protect him that night calls the police to tell them that like this was that kid. The police don't follow up with her at all. So we've had two spots right here where women - and probably honestly Black women - are saying like, 'Hey, this is this guy. This is what he's doing. Hello.' And police failed to investigate throughout this, this like giant murder period, right? Dahmer is able to maintain his job at Ambrosia Chocolate Factory. His friends and family weren't really suspicious even when they came to his house cause he would take care to really clean up before he let people come over. If he knew his family was coming, you know, he'd clean up, et cetera. The only thing that his father was suspicious of is, you know, Dahmer hasn't revealed that he's gay. By now, Lionel is like, 'yeah he gay - probably,' but they don't talk about it because toxic masculinity. To quell the neighbors, Dahmer by now has had a 57 gallon drum put in his apartment that he's filled with hydrochloric acid. So this way he's able to like dissolve bodies right away - very quickly - and has multiple ways of doing so, meaning less smell at this point. He also knows he needs to change things up a bit because that was really close call with Konerak. So he decides to take a Greyhound bus - cause he doesn't drive - to Chicago, which is about, well on a greyhound bus it's probably closer to three hours of a trip. You can make it in like an hour and a half depending on how fast you're going. That's all I'll say. On June 30th he meets a 20 year old named Matt Turner at the bus station. Turner is like, 'okay, I'll come with you to Milwaukee' because Dahmer has convinced him that he is a professional photographer and is going to have a photo shoot. At Dahmer's apartment, he drugs, strangles, and dismembers Turner, placing his head and internal organs in separate plastic bags in the freezer. Everything else was put into a vat of acid. Turner winds up not ever being reported missing. Five days later on July 5th, he lures a 23 year old - mm, I've seen his name either as Jeremy or Jeremiah. I'm going to go with Jeremiah - Jeremiah Weinberger from a Chicago bar to his apartment to spend the weekend with him. Before accepting the offer, Jeremiah asked a friend who he was at the bar with if the friend thought Dahmer was a safe person and that this would be okay. And the friend was like, 'okay, yeah, no, he seems really nice' - like after having a conversation. The two actually wind up having a really nice couple of days, um, until Weinberger's like, 'hey, I really got to go home. Like I have to go to work and shit.' And of course that's the part Dahmer hates. So he drugs Weinberger after requesting one last drink together. He twice injects boiling water into Weinberger's skull. The first time it didn't seem to work at all and Weinberger wakes up seemingly okay. Dahmer drugs him a second time and does the second injection that sends him into a coma and he actually dies 2 days later. During this kind of waiting period. Dahmer's like, 'okay, I'll go to work. Like, it's fine.' Even after that close call, which I think is brazen. Um, and he comes home after a shift to discover Weinberger dead. The body is dismembered and dissolved an acid, but the head is added to the growing collection in the freezer. The friend who greenlit Weinberger's visit to Dahmer's place later commit suicide because he feels hella guilty. I know what you're thinking right now. Uh, with all of these heads and body parts in the freezer, Dahmer was running outta room, right? He was. Like, honestly, he had no room for real food in his fridge or his freezer. Um, that really didn't stop him. On July 15th, he meets 24 year old Oliver Lacy at the corner of 27th and Kilburn. Lacy was an aspiring body builder and had just moved to Milwaukee from Illinois to live with his girlfriend and their kid. And Dahmer was like, 'Ooh, I like the muscle boys.' So, again, the proposition of posing nude and Lacy agrees. He goes back to Dahmer's apartment and they do some sexy times before Dahmer drugs him. Dahmer really wanted to spend as much time as possible with Lacy while Lacy was alive. So he tries to render Lacy unconscious with chloroform, which does not work. He has to strangle Lacy. And then, um, he has sex with the corpse before dismembering him. He placed Lacy's head and heart in the refrigerator and his skeleton in the freezer. And he had asked for like a days absence during all of this from work, which was granted, but then he was suspended because he kept missing work, right? And then his performance was getting shit. And on the 19th, he actually gets word that he's fired. He doesn't get to come to work anymore and he's distraught, he's pissed. And he goes to bar and approaches 25 year old father of three, Joseph Bradehoft. Like many other victims, he promised cash in exchange for nude photos. Bradehoft was strangled and left laying on Dahmer's bed covered with a sheet for two days. And on the 21st he removes the sheets to find Bradehoft's head covered in maggots. It's gross. He decapitates the body then cleans the head and places it in the refrigerator - which like, brah, that just had maggots - like, why? He later acidifies Bradehoft's torso along with those of the other two victims he killed within the previous month - so along with Lacy's body and Weinberg's. So that's kind of the end of his lucky streak. On July 22nd, 1991, he approaches three men with an offer of $100 to accompany him to his apartment to pose nude for photographs again. Um, but he throws in like, 'Hey, I've got a bunch of beer we can drink and we could just hang out.' Out of the trio, one of them agrees to come to the apartment and that's 32 year old Tracy Edwards. The other two agree to come party later, but Dahmer gives them the wrong address so they don't interrupt his fun. Upon entering Dahmer's apartment, Edwards notices it smells and also sees the acid on the floor. And he asks about it and Dahmer's like, 'Oh yeah, like I do Xyz for work. I use those to clean bricks.' Dahmer keeps pressuring Edwards to get naked and drink a spiked drink and he quickly changes from the sweet talker Dahmer from the bar to very pushy and angry. Edward's decides he probably should leave, and Dahmer distracts him and put a handcuff on his wrist. By the time Edwards is like, 'wait, what's happening?' Um, Dahmer brings Edwards to the bedroom to pose for nude pictures. While inside the bedroom, Edwards notes that there's nude male posters on the wall and that there is a video tape of The Exorcist III playing. This was Dahmer's favorite movie at the time and especially during those last couple of weeks - he got increasingly obsessed with it for some reason, nobody knows. Edwards also notes that 57 gallon drum in the corner that smells. Dahmer brandishes a knife and informs Edwards he intends to take nude photos of him. So Edwards unbuttons his shirt and says he would allow him to do that as long as he takes off the handcuffs and puts the knife away. In response to the promise, Dahmer simply just turns his attention towards the TV. Edwards sees Dahmer rocking back and forth and chanting before turning his attention back to Edwards. He places his head on Edwards' chest, listens to his heartbeat, and then with the knife pressed up towards his neck says that he intends to eat Edwards' heart. Edwards repeatedly says, 'you know, I'm your friend. I'm not going to go away. I promise. Like you don't have to worry, you don't need to attack me.' In his head, Edwards had already decided he was going to have to jump from a window or bolt through the unlocked front door at the next opportunity he had. Edwards says he needs to go to the bathroom and then he asks if they could sit with a beer in the living room because that's where the air conditioning unit was. And Dahmer agrees. So the pair walk to the living room. As soon as Edwards is done in the potty, inside the living room, Edwards waits until he observes that Dahmer has a momentary lapse of concentration. And then he asks to use the bathroom again. So Edwards gets up from the couch, saw that Dahmer was not holding onto the handcuffs, and he turns & punches Dahmer in the face - which knocked him off balance - and Edwards bolts for the front door. By about 1130 - and this is on July 22nd - he has flagged down 2 Milwaukee police officers at the corner of North 25th Street. Um, it took a while for them to understand this was not a domestic thing, but they did notice that he had handcuffs on his wrist. Um, and Edwards explains to them that a "freak," that's what he said, had placed the handcuffs on him and asked if the police could remove them. The police officers try but their keys failed to fit that brand. So Edwards, um, agrees to show the officers where this apartment was that he just spent, you know, several hours and they go. Dahmer invites the three people inside and acknowledges that yeah, he did put handcuffs on Edwards, but he says nothing about why - not a thing. And normally he's so quick with those explanations. At this point, Edwards also tells the officers Dahmer had brandished a very large knife and that this had happened in the bedroom. Dahmer says nothing about that. And he tells one of the officers that the key to the handcuffs was in his bedside dresser in the bedroom. So that officer goes to enter the bedroom. Dahmer tries to kind of block him to get the key himself. And the second officer tells him to back the fuck off. In the bedroom, [Officer] Muller notices that there is indeed a large knife beneath the bed. He also sees an open drawer which, upon closer inspection, contains tons of Polaroid pictures... Not only of naked dudes, but also of, like, the dismemberment process. He notes that the decor in the photos is the same as the apartment that they are in right now. He walks in the living room and shows them to his partner Robert Rauth and says, uh, these are real. When Dahmer sees that Muller's holding several of the Polaroids, he starts fisticuffs with the officers to try to resist arrest. They quickly overpower him, cuff his hands behind his back, and call a second squad car for backup. At this point, Muller is, um, you know, looking around, doing more investigating and opens the refrigerator to reveal the freshly severed head of a black man sitting on the bottom shelf. He's later recalls that he heard someone screaming before realizing that it was him. Like he was screaming himself. Dahmer is pinned on the floor by Rauth and he turns his head towards the officers and mutters the words "for what I did, I should be dead." Uh, yeah. Well, Edwards is deemed a hero. The publicity also is a negative thing for him. It helps the state of Mississippi catch up with him. They had a warrant out for his arrest due to sexually assaulting a 14 year old girl. Um, at least allegedly. He's arrested and charged with a crime, but I can't find anything about the outcome. I tried. By 2011, he is back in Milwaukee. He is homeless and he gets into a fight with two other homeless men, one of whom falls off of a bridge that they are on and drowns. Edwards winds up with time in prison and probation for, um, like aiding and abetting because - Well, one of the things that I saw said the guy just fell off. The other thing that I saw said the other guy pushed him off and then Edwards stayed quiet. And so that's why he got charged. I don't know. I don't know. But that shit's gone down. Back to Dahmer in 1991. A more detailed search at the apartment conducted by the Criminal Investigation Bureau reveals a total of four severed heads in Dahmer's kitchen. There are seven skulls - some painted, some bleached - in his bedroom and inside a closet. They discover collected blood drippings upon a tray at the bottom of Dahmer's fridge because apparently motherfucker does not clean that shit out. They also find 2 human hearts, part of an arm muscle, and those are all wrapped inside plastic bags on the shelves. In Dahmer's freezer, they discover an entire torso - plus a bag of human organs and flesh is stuck to the ice at the bottom of the freezer. [humorous wretching noises] They also discovered two skeletons, a pair of severed hands, 2 severed and preserved penises, a mummified scalp, and in the 57 gallon drum, three further dismembered torsos dissolving in the acidic solution. Um, there winds up being a total of 74 Polaroid photos that detailed dismemberment and sexual stuff. The chief medical examiner later states that it was more like dismantling someone's museum than an actual crime scene. Beginning in the early hours of July 23rd, Dahmer is questioned by detectives Patrick Kennedy and Patrick Murphy as to the murders he committed and the evidence found at his apartment. Over the following two weeks, the detectives conduct numerous interviews with Dahmer which, when combine,d wind up equaling to about 60 hours of face to face time with this motherfucker. He had waived his right to have a lawyer present and said he wanted to confess because he had "created this horror and it only makes sense. I do everything to put an end to it." He readily admits to having murdered 16 men in Wisconsin since 1987 and Steven Hicks back in Ohio in 1978. The detectives, uh, wind up being floored and disgusted because Dahmer's so matter of fact about all of this. He readily admits to performing necrophilia with several of his victims' bodies including performing sexual acts with their viscera as he dismembers their bodies in the bathtub. Now, um, what this means I have sadly learned is that he, you know... In the process of dismemberment, he cuts a hole, say like in the dude's belly button. And especially if the body is still a little warm, your body retains the most warmth in your core. I mean, you can tell if you go outside when it's cold, like your arms get cold, your legs get cold, but your core usually stays warmer because it has to cause you have like your heart and shit. Okay. So again, he, let's say he cuts a dude in the belly button and the body's kind of warm and that's a hole for things to go in... Yeah, it's gross. Uh, it's so gross. Mm. He noted that a lot of blood pooled inside his victims chests after death. So he usually would remove their internal organs first and then he'd suspend the torso. So all the blood drained into the bathroom. He then would dice any organs he didn't want to keep and then pull flesh off the body. Bones that he wanted to dispose of we're pulverized or, um, acidified with Soliex, and bleach solutions were used to aid in the preservation of skeletons and skulls that he wanted keep. He confessed to having consumed hearts, livers, biceps, and portions of thighs of several victims that he'd killed within the last year describing the increase in his rate of killings in the two months prior to his arrest. He's stated he'd been completely swept along and added. "It was an incessant and never ending desire to be with someone at whatever cost. Someone good looking, really nice looking. It just filled my thoughts all day long." This is, uh, I don't know why this is so wild to me. I mean, I do because it's a wild case, but it's, it feels so disturbing. When asked why he had preserved seven skulls and the entire skeletons of two victims, he shared about his private altar that he wanted to make. The display of skulls was to be adorned at each side with the complete skeletons of Ernest Miller and Oliver Lacy. The 4 severed heads in the kitchen we're going to be removed to all flesh and used on the altar and he still needed one more victim to complete the skull number that he wanted on this altar. Incense sticks we're going to be placed at the end - each end of this table above which he was going to put a large blue lamp with extending blue globe lights. It those lights that are like an octopus thing, right? So you've got the stand and then there's several different arms with the, with these blue globe lights. And this is, again, all to be placed in front of a window that had been covered with a black opaque shower curtain. And then he was going to sit in front of it in a black leather chair. In a November 18th, 1991 interview, they asked who the altar was dedicated to and he said "myself. It's a place I could feel at home." He further described it as kind of a place for meditation where he felt he could draw power from, and he felt that if they had arrested him six months later, that they would have already seen the altar - that it would be complete which, at the rate he was going, I could see it. Um, I don't know if the whole thing would be complete, but he had at least have all the components he wanted. He also - it's interesting - he explained that things he does to the bodies like preserving certain parts, taking souvenirs in the form of body parts, et cetera. Um, the photos, whatever. All of that was a way of remembering. And this is, this part's a quote, "remembering their appearance, their physical beauty. I also wanted to keep - if I couldn't keep them here with me whole, at least I felt I could keep their skeletons." On July 25th, 1991, he is charged with four counts of murder and by August 22nd, he is charged with a further 11 counts in the state of Wisconsin. Again, brings the grand total up to 15. on September 14th, investigators in Ohio have like, by this time they have gone back to his childhood home and explored the woods right there and found a shit ton of bone fragments. They formally identify two mplars and a Vertebra with x ray records of Steven Hicks and he's charged by authorities in Ohio with Steven's murder. He winds up not being charged with the attempted murder of Tracy Edwards or with the murder of Steven Tuomi. Now for Tuomi, it was because the Milwaukee County district attorney only wanted to bring charges where there could be no reasonable doubt. And since Dahmer didn't actually have a memory of killing Tuomi, um, and there was like no physical evidence of it, they didn't feel like they had enough to proceed - And that including that within this larger, um, number of charges could actually hinder the ability for him to be charged successfully and like convicted. At a scheduled preliminary hearing on January 13th, 1992 he pleads guilty but insane to 15 counts of murder. His trial begins on January 30th, 1992 - the day my sister was born. I spent the day like in the hospital holding her while she slept after she was born. While she was getting pushed out, like watching The Jungle Book. Um, I dunno, for me, it was a great day. He was tried in Milwaukee for those 15 counts before Judge Laurence Gram. By pleading guilty and on the 13th, he had waived his rights to that initial trial to establish guilt, um, something that is at least required by Wisconsin law. The issue debated by opposing attorneys then is whether or not he was sane. The prosecution says that any disorders he did have clearly did not, um, deprive him of the ability to appreciate how wrong his actions were - and/or I guess that they wouldn't have deprived him of the ability to control his impulses. And the defense were like, "Nah." I mean, basically their experts argued thought he was insane due to his necrophilic drive. And one of their experts, Dr Fred Berlin, testifies that Dahmer's unable to conform his conduct at the time he committed crimes because he was suffering from necrophilia, which is also known as paraphilia. Dr. Judith Becker, who is a professor of psychiatry and psychology, was their second witness, who also, you know, comes at them with that diagnosis. And then forensic psychiatrist, Dr Karl Walstrom not only diagnosis Dahmer with that, but throws in borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, alcohol dependence, and a psychotic disorder. All of that is a lot. But I also want us to step back and take a look at - are there people with BPD, borderline personality disorder that don't kill people? Oh yeah. Are there people who have schizophrenia or any similar disorder and don't kill people? Like all of them. Um, what about people who are dependent on alcohol? Oh, good amount of them don't kill people unless they're driving. I just want us to take a look at that because, yes, you could have those things, but those things do not drive someone to kill. Having a mental illness, having a chronic illness, having a disability, those things do not make it more likely for you to commit crimes. In fact, they actually make it more likely for you to be a victim of crimes. Um, and depending on your diagnosis, that can be anywhere from up to like two times more likely, all the way up to like 10 times more likely then, you know, the average mentally abled person. So I just wanna throw that out there. There will be links in the show notes for ya'll to educate yourself further on that if that's something you're into. This is the social justice corner for the week. Having a chronic illness, disability or mental health issue does not make you a murderer. Thank you for coming to my tedtalk. Okay. Back to this, right. The prosecution is like, "no, he's not insane." Um, one of their experts, forensic psychiatrists, Dr Philip Resnick testifies that, yeah, Dahmer likes to do the sex to dead people, but it's not a primary condition because he actually prefers live sexual partners - which is why he was trying to zombify people, right? He doesn't want them dead. He just wants him to do exactly what he wants them to do. He wants control. And so it's not true necrophilia. Another one of their experts, Dr Fred Fosdel says that he believes Dahmer was without mental disease or defect of the time he committed these murders. He says Dahmer is calculating and cunning, able to differentiate between right and wrong, and definitely able to control his own actions. He does believe necrophilia is something Dahmer deals with, but also says he's not like a sadist. He's not necessarily, um, you know, going out with this need to harm people. Um, it's essentially derived from - I'm on a wiki spiral. It's derived from the Marquis de Sade. So sadists are people who derive pleasure if they, or someone else is undergoing pain. And it can actually be a part of personality disorders, which I mean, again, we're going to take a look at and say, hmm, does it make it, does it make you a terrible person? If you have a personality disorder? No. Does it mean you're going to do bad things? No. Anyway, um, the final witness for the prosecution is forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, and um, he begins his testimony on February 12th. He says, the Dahmer's completely sane. Um, because you know, he's gone to great lengths to be alone with his victims. He's gone to great lengths to have no witnesses. There's ample evidence that he was really prepared. These crimes were not impulsive, um, and all of that. Right? So he believes, too, that Dahmer's alcohol dependence before committing murder is something that's significant. And he says, if he had a compulsion to kill, he would not have to drink alcohol. He had to drink alcohol to overcome his inhibition to do the crime, which he would rather not do. I think that's really important. He also notes the Dahmer strongly identifies with evil and corrupt characters from The Exorcist III - which we already know he's obsessed with - and also Return of the Jedi. He also really identified with the power that these evil corrupt characters had. He saw himself on a similar level. Dahmer would occasionally like wash his favorite scenes from these movies before he went out and looked for a victim and really took power from them, which is creepy. It's creepy. Don't turn my Star Wars into your creepy stuff. I know this was before me, but don't do it - well, not before me, like before I was super obsessed with Star Wars. Given the fact that the majority of Dahmer's victims were African American. Um, there were, like I mentioned, some big racial tensions. Um, it got to the point where we were having a number of, um, you know, racial justice leaders coming in to lead marches, give talks, et cetera. Strict security precautions were taken around the trial. So there was an eight foot barrier of bulletproof glass between Dahmer and other people. Um, one of the things that also pissed off people was there was only one Black person on the jury, which like, I don't know, I'm sorry, but if a lot of this, a lot of what this person has done is negatively affected the Black community locally, you should have more than one Black person on the jury. Also like one Black person on a jury in Milwaukee is not, um, it does not represent a jury of your peers. Like I'm just going to be honest. Like it's just like in everywhere else. You wouldn't just have one Black person on a jury. It's, it makes me mad. Anyway. Um, and then another thing to note is that Lionel Dahmer, Jeffrey's Dad and his second wife, um, attended the trial throughout. Two court appointed mental health professionals both independently testifyed - forensic scientist George Palermo and clinical psychologist Samuel Friedman. Palermo thinks that the murders were result of pent up aggression the Dahmer had within himself. He wanted to kill these men cause he thought they were attractive. And so like he was trying to kill what he hated in himself and also thinks that Dahmer's a sexual sadist who has antisocial personality disorder but is sane. It's amazing how many different personality disorders they're going to try to diagnose Dahmer with - amazing. Um, Friedman testifies that it was more of a longing for companionship that caused him to kill. He says Dahmer's not psychotic, speaks kindly of Dahmer. Um, talks about how he's amiable, pleasant to be with. Nice, funny, handsome, (I don't think so) charming, et cetera. He diagnoses Dahmer with a personality disorder not otherwise specified, featuring borderline, obsessive-compulsive, and sadistic traits. I will say out of all of the diagnoses, um, that one may feel like it fits the most. Um, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a mental health professional, but I do think that it is important to note when a personality disorder or any other, you know, mental illness has certain traits. So maybe it's just that like, I like how it's laid out. I don't know. I don't know these things. It just feels somehow a better fit than some of the others. Perhaps it also includes because it includes the obsessive compulsive trait. I don't know. Anyway, the trial lasted two weeks. On February 14th, both lawyers give their closing arguments. They speak for like two hours. The defense attorney Gerald Boyle goes first and keeps referring to the mental health professionals - just about everyone said he had some sort of mental health issue. And, um, one of the big sticking points, and it's been quoted in a lot of different things, is that he says that Dahmer's compulsive killings had been a result of "a sickness he discovered, not chose." He keeps painting Dahmer as desperately lonely, profoundly sick, out of control. Um, and you know, I can see where that could sway some people on the jury. After that, Michael Mccann delivers his closing argument for the prosecution. He describes Dahmer as sane, in full control. He simply strove to to avoid detection. He argued that that first murder in Milwaukee - again because this is for all the Milwaukee/Wisconsin crimes - that it was committed hostility and anger and resentment and frustration and hatred and all these big negative feelings and that each victim "died merely to afford Dahmer a period of sexual pleasure." He further argued that by pleading guilty but insane to the charges, Dahmer was trying to avoid accountability or responsibility for his actions. The next day, February 15th, the court reconvenes to hear the verdict. Dahmer was ruled to be sane - not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of each of these murders - although in each count, two of the 12 jurors signified their dissent. On the first two counts, Dom Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 10 years with the remaining 13 carrying a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 70 years. The death penalty was not an option because, we in the great state of Wisconsin had that abolished in 1853. Dahmer addressed the court later on and he said, Your Honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did not for reasons of hate - I hated no one. I knew I was sick of evil or both - now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness and now I have some peace... I take all the blame for what I did... I should have stayed with God,” he said. “I tried and I failed, and created a holocaust." [audibly cringing] We're going to get back to that statement in a second. I just want to finish this part. In addition to expressing remorse for victims and their families, he expressed remorse for causing two policemen to lose their jobs - the policemen that failed to rescue Konerak. He said, "I hope and pray that they get their jobs back because I know they did their best and I just plain fooled them." In both of these statements we see his cockiness, right? "I've created a holocaust." Holocaust is such a big grandiose genocidal act, which is not what he did. And all of these poor cops, I just fooled them. It's not their fault, I'm just that good. Even in this statement, he is reasserting his control of these situations and reasserting the fact that he is better than everyone else in that room. And honestly he's probably doing it with a boner. Let's be honest. People like this thrive and get thrills out of having power over other people. I mean, it's what they do, right? Of course, the statement really wasn't consoling and definitely wasn't convincing. There were a number of powerful impact statements from family members that were read. And, um, so far I've only found one video that puts together a lot of snippets of, um, some of those statements, but I'll put that link to that video in the show notes. Um, there's a really, it's really important I think, to read them, to remember that this is not just like, Ooh, creepy story, but look, this case affected so many more lives than just - 'just' - these 17 people that Jeffrey killed and then his own family, right? It's these people's families, these people's friends. It's Weinberger's friend who commits suicide, right? Because of saying that Dahmer seemed like he was okay. Um, all of these different people struggling with the actions of this man. One of the most impactful victim statements is at the very end of that video Um, so please watch it because I think that's important. Upon hearing of Dahmer's sentencing, his father and his stepmother request to be allowed a 10 minute private meeting with him before he's transferred to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage to begin his sentence. The request is granted and they exchange hugs, um, and well wishes before Dahmer is escorted to begin his sentence. Three months after that conviction, he's extradited to Ohio to be tried for the murder of Steven Hicks. It's really just a formality at this point because, again, he has confessed. So the court hearing lasts just 45 minutes. He again pleads guilty and he's sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment on May 1st, 1992. After that, he has transferred back to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin. Um, Portage is in again, Columbia County - it's the Columbia correctional facility, right? It is technically part of the Madison metropolitan area, but to be honest, I don't know that I would consider it that. Um, it is really... I mean, I guess? It's north of Madison and just to the east of Wisconsin Dells, so it makes sense to lump it in with Madison, but it's about a 45 minute drive. Like, it is not necessarily close, but I guess that's Wisconsin for ya, right? Hooray! For the first year of his incarceration, Dahmer is placed in solitary confinement. They were worried about his safety should he come into contact with fellow inmates. And we're talking like some of the worst people are in this prison. Right? You've got other serial killers, you've got other, um, rapists, other molesters, and they all absolutely despise this man. I think there's something to be said with that. I don't know what, but... While Dahmer is isolated, he does have a television and access to books, so he's probably blasting like Exorcist III and reading all the Exorcist novels while he's holed up in his cell for a year. After that - and with his consent - he is transferred to a less secure unit after a year. Um, and then he is assigned like a two hour daily work detail, cleaning the toilets. He was actually really happy to get out of solitary because he felt his intrusive, disturbing thoughts were way more harmful than anything anyone else could do to him. He also didn't give a fuck if he lived or died. He had regular phone calls with his family. His father actually visited a lot, making the 11 hour drive from his home in Ohio. He really wanted to understand why Jeffrey committed these crimes, um. To that end, you know, he writes a book, he does a lot of interviews with Jeffrey. He tries to work to figure out the puzzle pieces that, you know, what, what was that last piece that slid into place that caused Jeffrey to really go from very excited, exuberant kid he'd been before that hernia surgery in his youth, right, to where he is now. Shortly after completing his lengthy confessions in 1991 he [Dahmer} had requested that he be given a Bible. And from then on he really devoted himself to being a Christian and you know, use the phrase 'born again.' And his father also like urged him to read a bunch of creationist bullshit. His father - Um, there is an interview I watched earlier, I'm sure it's in the links, but um, with Stone Phillips, and Stone Phillips asks Lionel what um, Lionel would have done had Jeffrey come out as gay, you know, without killing everyone. And Lionel said that he was - and this is paraphrasing, right? - he basically would have made him read the Bible and like try to do something to 'fix him' AKA probably send him off to conversion therapy camp. Which is terrifying. And if you don't know about conversion therapy camps, y'all - whoooo - I'm going to put a link in the shownotes - a couple lins for you to checkout. Um, one of which is a great episode of the podcast True Crime Obsessed (which I'm obsessed with). Um, I think that's the one called Jesus Camp. I mean, whatever one I put in the show notes is it, but if you've listened, you probably know which one I'm talking about. In May, 1994 Dahmer is baptized in the prison whirlpool by Roy Ratcliffe, who is a minister in the Church of Christ and a graduate of Oklahoma Christian University. He visits Dahmer on a weekly basis until Dahmer dies. And they regularly discuss things like death and whether or not Dahmer was sinning against God by continuing to live. And that's Dahmer bringing this up. in July, 1994, a fellow inmate Osvaldo Durruthy attempts to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor embedded in a toothbrush. Um, and it was right after Dahmer was coming back from Roy's weekly church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer gets, you know, some superficial wounds but doesn't wind up seriously hurt. They had a conversation and Dahmer's family said, you know, he'd been ready to die already and was ready to accept whatever punishments he might endure in prison. His mom, um, also retained regular contact with him at least over the phone, um, in contrast to like his dad and step mom coming to visit every so often. But prior to, um, Dahmer's arrest, he hadn't seen his mom since Christmas of 1983. Um, but now at this point he's talking to her on a weekly basis over the phone. And whenever she would express concerns about his wellbeing, he would say, 'you know, um, don't worry. Whatever happens, it'll be fine.' And this one's a direct quote: "It doesn't matter, Mom. I don't care if something happens to me." In a 1994 interview with Stone Philips - Okay, so this is the one I was just watching. It was on Dateline - Dahmer had stated that "If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway." So before he'd become, you know, Super Goddy, right? He didn't think there was any higher power and so he didn't think it mattered what his actions were. This is essentially what he's saying there. So now that he's born again, he realizes the error of his ways and all that good shit. Um, and supposedly wouldn't do this again. Supposedly. On the morning of November 28th, 1994 Dahmer left his cell to conduct his assigned work detail in the toilets. I just, I like the idea of Dahmer having to work in the shitter. Oh, I like it so much. Um, accompanying him were 2 fellow inmates, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The trio wound up being left unsupervised in the prison gym, like shower, toilet area for approximately 20 minutes. And, at 8:10 AM, Dahmer is discovered on the floor of the bathrooms, suffering from extreme head and facial wounds. He had been severely bludgeoned in the head and face with a metal bar. His head had also been repeatedly struck against the wall - shit. Although he was still alive and then and then was quickly rushed to a nearby hospital, he died within an hour. Anderson had also been beaten with the same instrument and died two days later from his wounds. Scarver who had already been serving a life sentence for murder committed in 1990, um, comes clean. He tells authorities he attacked Dahmer first with the metal bar as Dahmer was cleaning a staff locker room before attacking Anderson as Anderson cleaned an inmate locker room. Um, they were in, you know, kind of separate areas, which is weird to me that they were still left on supervised - at all. According to Scarver, Dahmer did not yell or make any noise when he was attacked. He had been adamant at the time he had not planned the attacks in advance. He did later divulge to investigators that he concealed the 20 inch iron bar to kill both men in his clothing shortly before the killings, though. There were questions about how involved the prison staff might have been in these murders. Surprise. Scarver hadn't been on toilet detail until literally that morning. He completely loathed Dahmer. He carried around a newspaper clipping about Dahmer's crimes and just completely hated him. Additionally, it's highly irregular for guards to leave inmates alone together at a maximum security prison like Columbia. Hmm. Weird, isn't it? In 2015 Scarver, speaks to the New York post about his reasons for killing Dahmer. He alleged that he was disturbed not only by Dahmer's crimes, but by a habit of Dahmer, um, where he would take prison food and make it look like severed limbs and then squirt ketchup all over the place to look like blood. This fits very much in with the shit that he pulled as a kid, right? Um, and then he would like taunt and antagonize people. So that was part of the reasoning. And he also alleged that both Dahmer and Anderson had, um, taunted him during work detail while they were in completely different spots. He said he confronted Dahmer about his crimes and Dahmer seemed to be unrepentant and that's when he beat him to death. He also claimed the prison guards allowed the murders to happen and that's why they left him alone with these guys. One more thing about the death that puzzles me and many other people is that Dahmer was in really good physical shape. I mean, what do you do in prison? You work out like that's what you do - and I guess make jokes with your food. Um, he could easily have fought back. I mean, a metal bar is no joke, but like he could have fought back and Scarver says he didn't, and his wounds say he didn't. That just leads me back to this whole idea where he's shared his thoughts consistently from his teens even about being suicidal, about not deserving to live, and about questioning if living spits in the face of God. And it, it feels like he wanted it. Um, one of the things that I watched was talking about how, as a born again Christian, he knows that suicide is a no-no, but then if someone else killed you, that's not suicide and you don't necessarily have to fight back. Like I dunno. I thought that was an interesting thought. In Dahmer's will, he asked that there be no services conducted. And he stated he wanted to be cremated. And by September, 1995, he was, and his ashes were split between his parents. His estate was awarded to the families of 11 of his victims who had sued for damages. In 1996, Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer that represents eight of the families, announced that they were planning an auction of his estate. Although victims' relatives stated that the motivation wasn't greed, 'eople were like, oh my God, you're so greedy. Like, dude, I don't know, especially for the people who had kids - at this point, they've gone without, um, you know, the income that parent would have had. I don't know. It's not greed to ask for any sort of reparations or monetary or property payment. I would say like for wrongdoings that you've been through. I think honestly like early nineties peoples weren't there yet in the mindset there was not enough Judge Judy {laughs] I hate that bitch. She's an awful human being. So just FYI. A civic group, Milwaukee Civic Pride was quickly established in an effort to raise funds to purchase and destroy Dahmer's positions. They pledged a little over $400,000 including $100,000 gift by a Milwaukee real estate developer for the purchase of Dahmer's estate. Five of the eight families agree to the terms and Dahmer's possessions were subsequently destroyed and buried in an undisclosed landfill in Illinois. Oh my God. I accidentally scrolled like way up. That was terrifying. On August 5th, 1991 a candlelight vigil to celebrate and heal the Milwaukee community was put on and over 400 people attended. So it was really well attended. There were community leaders, gay rights activist, family members, and they really wanted it to be a spot for people to share their feelings of anger and pain and frustration. And it worked. You know, they got out those feels. And I think it did bring the community closer together, although it also definitely pointed out - like this whole shenanigan right pointed out the lack of fucks the police gave about queer people and especially queer people of color. That's still going on. And the recent serial killings in Toronto are a, uh, good way to say that this, uh, It's not a thing of the past. I'll put a link to that too. I'm going to put a link to everything. The Oxford apartments where Dahmer had killed 12 of his victims were demolished in November of [1992]. The site is a vacant lot still. Um, there've been like these thoughts about like, oh, how do we, how do we fix this piece of land? Do we build a memorial garden or a park or a playground or new housing? And it just never happens. Which honestly, from a ghost perspective, pretty glad about. Lionel released a book in 1994 called A Father's Story where he explores Jeffrey's life and tries to examine what happened. He also talks about their similarities. It's pretty interesting, like I watched a snippet of him reading some, and it was interesting. I think we all have some issues about having control over things. But Lionel tended to blame himself and then also his wife who had been on some medications during like her pregnancy with Jeffrey, that Lionel's pretty sure caused Jeffrey to be a serial killer. I don't think that's how it works, dude. In fact, I'm like 99.999999 to the ninth percent sure that's not how it works. Jeffrey's younger brother - cause remember he has a younger brother - David, he changed his last name. He lives in anonymity. He's not doing any fucking interviews and shit. He's not having it and honestly good for him cause fucking bullshit. I wouldn't want my sister to have to deal with that. I will say it's interesting. Um, there is an odd amount of pride that Wisconsinites seem to feel talking about Dahmer and it's weird. Um, there's an episode of the Netflix show Dark Tourist where he visits spots in the United States and one of the tours they go on is The Cream City Cannibal Tour and it is so disturbing. They make a lot of jokes, which like, okay, I'd probably laugh at the jokes, but then they have like some jump scares along the tour route and stuff? And that just feels wrong. I mean, the jokes are probably a bit much too, if we're honest, but like jump scares? it's wrong. Um, and I mean that tour had been shut down for a time to get it's shit back together before it started to back up. So there's some shit. Um, you know, the other thing is that there's just so much incredibly wrong when we have tours that are light hearted and also only exists to cash in and make light of what happened? And I would say, especially when those tours tend to attract white women. You know, the, the bulk of the audience on this Dar

Nailed it. Nailed it. Yo, hello people of the internet. Hang on. I thought I freaking nailed it. Where is my best siding at? Maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. Hang on. All right, that looks terrible. What if we sat on the grass? How do you feel about that? Where's my best siding? What if we put the light on? That did ... No, nothing at all. I already did this whole 360 before I pressed Go Live. That's super dark. That's a little bit lighter. That's a breezy. I really wanted to livestream of the beach. I feel certain that if I went and sit on the grass over there, I'm gonna look more fabulous. So we're gonna do that. Currently I'm sitting on top of the table. I'm on a pick-nick table. This is how I do. There seems to be some mushrooms growing over there. I'm not sure if they're edible or not. Side note. So I had my hair done. So it seems like it would be selfish to not livestream afterwards. Because I feel confident to show my face to the internet again. My hair was looking max level skanky. I didn't get it done for like seven weeks from travelling so much. Okay, we can sit on the ground. Well, now I'm more ... That's not working either, is it? This is a dilemma, you guys. Oh, was that the moment right there? I'm gonna tell you how to let it be so fucking easy, that you'll be wondering what the hell you are even thinking or doing with your life previously. Okay, there's literally nowhere where I have good lighting. I'm just sitting on the ... Oh, maybe that's it. I'm just on the grass doing circles on my bottom like a toddler wearing a diaper just spinning around. I'm spinning around. Get out of my way. I know you're feeling it 'cause you like it like this. Not like that. I'm breaking it down. That's it. Okay. It was a team effort. We did it together. Thank you, everybody. Now we just have one more small problem, which is that now we have a leaning tower of tripod situation. What do you think we need? Should we build a small canoe with some bark? I'm crafty as fuck, you guys. I didn't like the dark roots, It was looking brassy. What just happened? I just nailed the lighting, and now it's gone. Jana, you're the sweetest. And thank you for using the dancing emojis. Do you know that I had a small moment of panic when I went to Go Live just now. Because the dancing emojis which everybody knows is my favoritest emoji of all the emojis, they were not even in my ... You know your little panel that you've got of your most frequently used emojis? And so do you know what that means? That means I've been absolutely flaking out on proper emoji use. Maybe I'll go back to that table over there where I was before. I'm gonna tell you something that's embarrassing for me. And it's gonna make you shake your head at me in despair, although perhaps you'll understand. I was over at this table over here earlier, and I was ready to livestream. And I'd felt that I'd nailed the lighting situation. And then I saw that there was a chick sitting on the grass not far away, and I was like, "Well, then I'm gonna filter myself a bit, 'cause she's gonna hear me carrying on and waving my arms in the air like a crazy person." And I thought I'll end up being self-conscious and not livestream properly. So on the one hand you could say what a wuss I am. But on the other hand you could say that I'm certainly considerate of her, 'cause maybe she wanted to have a nice nap on the grass and not listen to me carrying on. Okay. This could be it. Now the thing is, I refuse to sit ... This is a pick-nick table. There's no fucking way I'm sitting on the chair when I could sit on the table. I just feel better when I'm above other people. You know, table sense, not necessarily anything else. Okay. Are we ready now? Do you think we can settle in? Got grass all over me now. Hope you guys appreciate it. So the beach is right there though, if you don't know the Gold Coast. If you do know the Gold Coast, you'll know where I am and you'll probably come to hang out with me. Don't, 'cause I'm gonna livestream and then go and do many important things. Tell me before you come down and hang out with me. Don't creep up on me. Anyway, the beach is like 20 metres or maybe 50 yards. I don't know what a yard. I'm just making up shit that sounds good. It's very fucking close. I wanted to go and sit on the beach for you all, because I thought it would be a beautiful background for you. And I'm super kinda that way. But it was so freaking windy that I probably would've been blown to Kansas if I would've sat there. And it would've ruined my hair. And you wouldn't have been able to hear me either. Okay. I don't know why I just got my laptop out like I was about to present a slideshow. But that's what I just did. I have just been at the hair salon for four hours, or however fucking long it takes to achieve this level of fabulousness, which is roughly 38 years and four hours. Because really the fabulousness comes from my energy. Mt energy. It just come on out of me. It just splays on out. I don't know about, "Splays." It sounds kinda gross. Anyway, I do nothing at all to make the money I make. I just open my mouth and things pop out of it. And I put no preparation time into anything even if I do an entire three day event, I just show up and see what pops out. But then on the other hand, i prepared for 38 fucking years to show up this badass. How long have you been preparing for? Just a reminder? You've got all that knowledge and power inside of you already. So what I did though whilst I was at the hair salon was firstly fucked around for a bit on Facebook and Instagram, because that's basically a rule of life, and I'd already done my journaling and my blogging and that sort of thing for the day. But then, then I did something very interesting, [Jamie Jod 00:06:15], very interesting. And everybody else too. I just point out Jamie, 'cause she's the most recent one to comment. Okay. You know when you take a drink of your water and you're like, "I think I've been reusing the same water bottle for too long," because I can smell something that smells like, I guess, my own saliva, is the truth of the matter. 'cause they get the [inaudible 00:06:39] bit. And then I have a $6000 dollar fucking water filter at home that is God's gift to the Earth apparently. And so I refill the bottles. Is my skin fabulous from all the water? Or is it from the yoga? Or is it from the journaling? Or is it because I chose to age backward? Who knows. But the water people will say for sure that it's the water. But it's getting that funny sort of smell. I think we're gonna have to throw it out after this. Somebody remind me. Keep accountable, 'cause it's quite disgusting otherwise. I just realised I made my life so fucking easy that it's actually a little bit scary. It is nasty. Yeah. How embarrassing. I shouldn't admit this stuff on the internet. I should maintain a professional visage at all times. I'm actually a little bit ... I feel destabilised by how easy I just made my life. I feel a little worried. I feel like a kite that's been snapped free in the breeze. And I haven't even lived into what I just did yet. But I thought I should share it with. I can't stop touching my hair, because it's so silky. Look how silky it is. If you were here, you would be stroking it like a kitten, depending on who you are might be nice for everybody. And yes, I will tell you about the easy thing. I feel like I could build it up into quite a story, but there's nothing come out of me to do that. So I might just get to the point and tell you, and then we'll see what else happens after that. So I keep lists, and I feel embarrassed to admit it. I'm Katrina Ruth and I have lists of things that I never action. I have always been a list making type of person since I was a kid. I would ... This is embarrassing. I would come home from school when I was about seven or eight years old, and I would make a list of everything that I had to do that afternoon after school, like whatever homework, maybe a chore or something that my mum had given me. And then I would even put on the list kind of like fun or creative things that I wanted to do just for myself. I always had a side hustle. I mean as a child, you should always have a side hustle. So my side hustle as a child typically selling shit to people. I used to take all my broken old toys and also just random bits of half eaten candy, I'm not even kidding, that I would smuggle away from parties or something. And I would take them to school and I would sell them on the school yard. And then I got shut down. The store of Katrina Ruth got shut down. It was a black market operation from the get-go. And the principle of the school shut me down. And I'm pretty sure I got reported to my mother. And yes, that was the end of that until I did it again and then got caught again. And that cycle basically perpetuated itself until like I say, I stopped going to school. Interestingly though, I was such a good girl. I was such a rule follower. I really was. Except for when it didn't suit me. Which is roughly how I play life these days. I'm actually the most obedient civilised, well-conditioned member of society that you could ever care to encounter, except for when it doesn't suit me. And then I do what I fucking want. But from the outside looking in, if you were to encounter me in the normal day-to-day operations of your life, you would think, "What a well-behaved lady about town." I'm sure you would. You would probably label me as gentile. Particularly if I had long sleeves on and you couldn't see. I guess the tattoos add a level of rebelliousness. But I tend to think ... I tend to feel like nobody can notice the tattoos anyway, 'cause to me they look very normal. I don't feel like it at all stands out. So probably nobody's even aware of it. I'm very proper is what I'm trying to say, except for when it's not proper to be proper, and then I'm supremely improper. But nobody notices, because I've always been exceptionally good at selling to people. And one of the things that maybe you didn't realise about being a fantastic sales person is that you can convince people that you're anything, because you almost believe it yourself. Or you do believe it yourself. You become the thing. So people believe that I'm an upstanding, well-about town gentile type of a lady. I am upstanding. I [inaudible 00:10:49]. And I'm upstanding as far as the morals and laws of society anyhow, just not I guess other areas. But I've always been very good at ... I don't know. I don't do it on purpose. I'm not trying to manipulate or trick people. But I'm thinking back to when my teachers always thought I was just the best most obedient, subservient, good student. Because I kinda was. And I always got the top available mark on everything academically, because manifestation. I never studied for it. I just ... Well, I have like a really high IQ. I do, it's true. But it runs in my family. And it's also just how it was in my family. So my parents were just like, "Well, of course you'll be the top of the class. That's just how it is as. It's who we are." So then as a kid, you're kinda like, "Oh, okay." And you just expect to get the top grades, and so then you do. And so then because you kind of on the surface of it, you appear to be this very subservient, well-behaved child about town. I supposed I wasn't a lady about town back then. Then what happens is, you build up a perception of yourself. You build up a reputation. I built my reputation from an early age of being a good girl, a square. And I am a good girl. I'm not trying to say I'm not. I'm very good when it suits me. So basically, I'm getting there. And I'm gonna tell you about the easy thing, and I'm gonna. I thought I was gonna spit it out in tow minutes, but it's turned into a fabulous story, so I'm happy about that. Okay, send more of the cat stickers. If you see where on the right-hand side of your screen is the little emojis. And then just to the inside left of your little emojis, you've got some cat stickers. You can hit that sticker button, and you can choose some cool shit to send at me that's, "1% [inaudible 00:12:36]. She'll press play. Sure it's about me." It really smells gross, but I'm very thirsty. There it is. There's the Press Play signs. They're so cool, aren't they? Where's my banner by the way? I had the freaking Katrina Ruth Show banner on this, and now it's disappeared I just noticed. Whatever. Yeah, so you build up a reputation. And I feel like once people see you as a certain ... Once people have labelled you, and they see you as a certain type of a thing, then it's maybe difficult, or it could be potentially difficult ... Oh, it is there, is it? The banner? Cool. Thanks [Brittany 00:13:11]. It's potentially difficult ... You'll only get the emojis if you're on your cellphone. Potentially difficult to change that. I guess you would have to consciously do that. But the point is, even though I broke min rules from an early age at school, such as continually selling on the school yard, I did get told off and shut down for it. But then I would always get away with it again. Because overall the way that I was categorised as far as the academic people were concerned was, "Good girl," at school, "Square." And then even in later years since schooling, like my final two years of school. And I just rocked out all my grades and all my classes. And I came like top three point something percent in the country. But I barely went to class at all, and I'd continually broke all the rules. But it was like nobody noticed. It was like they were all blind to it, because I had so effectively created my persona. All right? So I don't know what you wanna take from that. But be a badass and people will think you're a badass, because you then created yourself into a badass. But are you really a badass or not? Who really knows. And it doesn't matter. It's all perception. So that was one of the side hustles as an eight year old. And then my other side hustle was, I had membership clubs, which I would charge people $5 to join my member. It was a one-time fee. It was the best fucking deal offer ever. There was no repeating monthly fee, I should've thought about. It was very non-entrepreneurial of me to only charge a one-time fee of $5 I suppose. But I guess nobody else was selling memberships at that age. And people couldn't just get the $5 from their parents though. They had to present to me a list of how they'd earned the $5 by doing chores. The rules were ... I mean, I wouldn't follow the rules myself. But I will make them up for other people no problem. The rules were, you could do one task that gave you a full dollar, like washing a car. You were allowed to get a dollar for washing a whole car. But you couldn't go around washing five cars. You had to prove your metal. So one task I would allow them to do where they got a dollar. And then the rest had to be 10 and 20 cent tasks such as unstacking the dishwasher, or whatever it was. And then I would peruse the list. And basically decide if this person had the work ethic to be in my club. It's pretty much exactly how I take inner-circle subscriptions to this day. All right. I just want to know if people have different moral and ethical compass that I have around the hustle. So that's how I made my money. That was my side hustle. Well, that was several of them. I was also selling my own drawings door-to-door, and daffodils, and oranges and lemons. But that was since I was three years old. And then by the time I was 11, I was an Avon lady and I was making a $1000 a week. When it's in the blood, it's in the blood. But my point is that I would come home from school and I would make a list of all the things that I had to do that afternoon that I wanted to do and chose to do for my hustle as well as my homework, et cetera. But I would make the list and I would include like 20 things on the list that I'd already done. I would just make shit up and put on it on the list and cross it off straight away. And I still do that. I still make lists, and I'll add like a whole bunch of random shit onto the list like, "Sit in park and do a livestream." I'm like, "Oh, well I did that already. Tick." And I'll just add it on for the fun of it. But then the things that I put on the lists that I haven't already done ... Who does this? Who makes lists at all? Am I the only person in this sad world ... No. Am I the only sad person in this amazing world who's still addicted to making lists? Because for me, the things that I put on the list that have not already been done, it's taken me many years to finally acknowledge this. Like 30 fucking years plus. I never do them. I just never do them. [Rache 00:16:45], would you do the things on your lists though? I repeatedly make lists. I like to organise my lists. I'm a fantastic list organiser. I will write and rewrite the thing till kingdom come. And I will merrily continue on my life path without referring back to the list, or doing a single item from the list, except for when I refer back to the list in order to reorganise the list. And then I feel really good about myself, 'cause for that one moment in time I'm like, "Maybe I am an organised person who plans things." I don't know why I even wanna be. I don't actually even wanna be an organised person who plans things. I am full conscious of the fact that I built a multi million dollar empire online by being chaotic as fuck, and surrendering to that. So why would I wanna be organised? But I think it's like an emotional detoxification when I write the list. Okay, what's that person doing behind me? Julian says, "Just so you know, when in horizontal view, the banner is completely covered by the comment box." Is it bottom-right? We're trying to figure out where we wanted this banner to be. We're just moving the banner all around the screen from every livestream to livestream. So thank you for that, and I'll check it out later. Well, there's my confession for you. And then here's the problem though, like on the one hand I'm like, well it's good to get it out of head so I'm not carrying it around in my head, so I write, get that shit down like an emotional detoxification like I said. But then on the other hand, I've got to admit to you, it feels like it's hanging over me a little bit, right? It feels like I'm never fully maybe relaxed into my flow. Well, that's not true. When I'm in Super Flow, I couldn't give a fuck whether the world is turning or not. I'm just creating content and doing stuff. Or even like when I'm working out, or when I'm hanging out with my badass clients or friends, I'm not aware or conscious of anything. But it's more so on a day like today, where I'm in the hair salon for four hours. And like hello, I don't think I need to say this, but clearly I'm not sitting in the hair salon reading fucking magazines. Clearly I'm sitting there with my laptop like a normal human person making money. Hello to everybody who I was messaging and going back forth with about Rich Hot Empire over the last few hours. [Mim 00:18:50], if you're watching, you can pop that Rich Hot Empire comment in right now. Rich Hot Empire, six weeks 101 with me started yesterday. Our live call is tonight my time. You can still join. It's the final chance to work with me in Rich Hot Empire until well until the end of this year. Six weeks unlimited one-on-one with me. After this closes in the next few days, then the only way to work with me one-on-one will be in the inner-circle. So Rich Hot Empire is fucking amazing. The money results, the alignment results, the dream, life and business creation results that my clients consistently get with this programme every time I run it are beyond. Check out what [00:19:25] just put in the pinned comment. I don't know exactly what it says, but it will say something like, "Rich Hot Empire. Work with me for six weeks one-on-one so we can build your soulmate [inaudible 00:19:33]. Create your low right through to high-end empire to build your multi seven figure and beyond online business doing what you love, just like I've done, just like all my clients do." And you literally get unlimited access to me when you're working with me at the private client level. So message me now on my personal Katrina Ruth page if you wanna get in before the doors close. Like I said, final chance to work with me in this sort of short-term intensive, rapid result way. After this closes, it's only gonna be inner-circle, which is a $72,000 investment currently. And at some stage of course I'll do something shorter again, but no current plans to. I'm shutting it down after this and focusing on existing clients and inner-circle growth as well. So you can message me about that after this, 'cause I wanna get back to this conversation and talk about the list thing, and how I just did like a big release of everything. And who that's freed me up creatively to make a fuck-load more money and content. So anyway, yeah, on a day like today I'm at the hairdresser and I'm like ... I kind of already did ... I'm very good at ignoring lists, which is an important trait to cultivate in yourself, by the way. Because I consistently ignore all my tasks and the things that I think I should be doing, or have previously told myself I should be doing. Because I consistently ignore shit that I put on to list, I have instead created literally thousands of pieces of content on the internet, launched over 300 products and programmes online. I drafted in badass high-level [inaudible 00:20:56] client. I just posted today's testimonial from a Rich Hot Empire client, Jessica who did the January run of Rich Hot Empire, did 30K in January, 43K in February, 45 in March, and has just hit her first $100,000 mark in April. That's the sort of results clients are getting from their Rich Hot Empire. And of course, she's gone into the inner-circle because of that after Rich Hot Empire. So anyway, those sort of clients though, they come into my life and become part of the norm for me, in large part because I've spent the past decade plus ignoring shit that I put on the list, and instead showing up for my content, showing up for my purpose work, showing up for my own inner-work, showing for my own flow, taking care of myself, whatever I need to do to be in that super flow state. And to unleash my message and to speak into your soul. That is my number task and job every single day is to be in my soul, to be in my super flow, and to let what's inside of me out for you, right? Not to freaking work my way through a list. So just a little reminder there, if you feel like undisciplined, or you're undisciplined, or disorganised, or you're not getting your shit done. Just step back for a moment and be like, "Okay, but what are the big things that are gonna move the needle?" Because I know for me and for my clients it's typically inner-work, messaging, sales activity and your own self-care and getting yourself into flow. If you did those four things every day and nothing else, you're gonna build a freaking empire. That's how I do it, that's how my clients do it. Yet still, I've had all this shit on the list. And like well, some of it might be to do with P.S. stuff, getting my name out there in a bigger way, random things that maybe I want to improve on my social media, or on my website, different cool ideas that I have to leverage existing platforms. Sometimes when clients tell me awesome results, I just kind of note it down on the list like a little reminder for later, "Oh, we should do a little testimonial piece about that," and then it just goes on the list. Or like personal errands or whatever. But I have probably 50 random things there all together. And I just consistently don't fucking do them, because I'm just not a person that works by sitting down and working my way through a checklist. It's not who I desire to be. And fundamentally, I don't believe that it's how it needs to be. However for whatever reason, I'd still been telling myself this story that if I don't write this stuff down and kinda keep it somewhere, then I'm gonna forget important things, and it's kind of like a fear mentality, right? Kind of telling myself that I might miss out on something that's gonna make a difference in my business or life. So today I just thought, "Fuck this shit." I was thinking about the fact ... Gross water. Gross water break. I was thinking about the fact that there's like these two or three things creatively that I've consistently not been quite getting around to doing. Like I would do them, but I'm inconsistent with it. I'm motherfucking consistent with the things that I just said, right? Like I do my daily Ass-Kickery blog, 365 days a year. Zero exceptions. I've done it for decades. I typically write two or three blogs a day. Sometimes I post them all, sometimes not. I do my sales activity every day, I do my inner-work every day, I do my fitness and self-care every day. It's all just so automated. Where I wanna step up further is around creating videos as opposed to Facebook Live. Specific short videos created into kind of like ... I don't know, really engaging, either entertaining or inspiring pieces that could be shared and re-shared and that sort of thing for YouTube and Facebook. That's one of my projects that I really give more time and attention to. And then the other one is publishing more books. I'm already writing all the content for the books, but it's kind of just being collected in my Dropbox, just endless reams of articles, poems, mantras, affirmation, stuff that's not being collated. And so I noticed today I was like, it feels like ... And tell me if you've ever felt this way. It feels like I can't get to that shit yet, because I've got all this stuff hanging over me that I've been telling myself I need to do. Even though fundamentally, I do not believe that success comes from a list. And I logically actually legitimately know that I don't need to do it. But yet, because I've been carrying it around so to speak. Like lugging it around on a list, it's kinda weighing me down, or detracting from me energetically. And finally today, and I must admit I've done this before, and I've had the list then creep up again. It's kind of like when you do a Spring cleaning at home or ... Or I wouldn't do that. I'd pay somebody to do it. But when you do something like that, and then the clutter kinda creeps up again. But today I was just like, "Fuck this shit. I'm getting rid of all of that." And I spent probably 90 minutes, and I worked my way through every single item on the list, and either sent it straight off to a team member. So [00:25:18], you now understand why you're getting gajillions of small emails from me today with random comments and little memories. And like, "You should do this." And, "There's this happening. Let's do this." So I either like sent it off to team members. Or for things that weren't really ... Like for that, that were more to do with me. Or that just felt like, "Uh, it's not actually relevant right now." I popped it into my Google Calendar as a reminder, like decide when that would get to be action, put it into my Google Calendar as a reminder. So that that way it will send me an email notification on the day that I chose for it to do that. And got down to nothing. I've got my list down to absolutely deleted. Completely stripped off the list. And then I sat there, and this was just now. I currently just come out of the hair salon before I started this. Hair salon's right there. Beach there. Hair salon there. My house over there. Now you're fully orientated. So I jumped out of the salon, drove down here we are. And so that was only less than an hour ago. But I just sat there for a moment before I finished up and paid, and left. And I was like, "Huh, interesting." What I noticed is there's no more excuses left for why I don't have time to make these cool videos I wanna make, or to bring my books to life in a bigger way. Well actually, the book thing's been fully actioned now, because part of what I did just now as go back and forth with Cat Ninja Mim, who's in charge of collating, putting all my written content together into some sort of sequential order for my different poetry volumes, affirmation books, and my actual real books and that sort of thing. So fully passed over all my thoughts and ideas to her that I had sort of had on a list still, 'cause I was like, "Oh, I'll talk to Mim about this once we get past the initial phase that we're working on." I was like, "No, I'll just send it all through to her." So that's done. The book side of it's done. The only thing I still need right now to continue my book business the way I wanted to is I only gotta find a new cover designer, 'cause my cover designer had a change of freaking purpose and stopped designing books covers, which sucked 'cause he's amazing. But good for him in his purpose work. And that's it. And so it was this feeling of, "Oh shit, I just made it so easy." Like I literally stripped my whole list down to nothing, meaning that now as of this moment right here, there is nothing I have to do. I have nothing on my life list. Yes, I have upcoming things in my calendar, like reminders or well, appointments. I have very minimal appointments in my life in general. But I have upcoming reminders, like I know I popped in the calendar for later this week, "Book in for a dental checkup." That sort of shit. And a few little reminders for things to do with stuff I do wanna change in my business. But there's nothing that's a list. There's nothing that's like, when I go into my day ... When I continue on with my day now or go into my day tomorrow, you know that feeling that you carry around, fears of like, "Fuck, I've got all this shit that I've gotta do." And then I'm like, "Done," or then I can relax, or then I can be fully present. Or then I can have time for my purpose work. There's nothing there. It's just me and the freaking air around me, right? Now I'm gonna give myself massive credit here to say, like I did say before that I've been fucking amazing at consistently creating my purpose work into the world day in and day out for many years now. Even while having an idea in my head that there's other things that I've gotta do. I've been really good at putting first thing first. It's probably one of the best life lessons I ever received. And if you haven't kind of figured that life less out, figure it out right here right now. I learned it from Stephen Covey. I think learned it even earlier than that. But I religiously read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People over and over again when I was about 22. I think I read it for the first time when I was like 12. So 26 years ago. But I remember religiously reading his book Seven Habits, as well as his other book, First thing's First when I was 22. I was supposed to ... This is another example. I was supposed to be doing fitness management, but I hacked the job and figured out how to do the 38 hour job in like three hours a week. And since then I was reading and journaling. Much like back in the school days with getting the top grades. And I really just implemented that, and I have ever since. I've been really good at first thing's first. And I just don't react. I don't react to other people, even clients and friends. I don't react to a list. I don't react to anything until I do my sole work in the morning, I do my journaling work, I do my blog, I do whatever writing's coming through me. Even now, right? There's other things potentially I could be doing rather than this livestream. Well not really, since I just deleted them all. But there's a few little things that I know that I will do today. But I'm doing the livestream first, because that's content, right? So that's been probably one of my most effective success habits that I really suggest you fucking think about. Like if you do one thing, then make it that you learn to freaking prioritise and do first thing's first in your business and in your life. Because the big rocks, if you leave them till the end of the day, there's no space for them. You filled your whole life up with little rocks and pebbles and things that are relatively meaningless, and just responding to other people. And then ultimately your life gets cratered from that. Whereas when you do first thing's first and you go, "Okay, what is like the one big thing in my business where if I did it every day, I would create the business that I dream of even if I just did that one thing and nothing else?" Then you make that your first thing, your highest priority. And then, "What is the next thing after that, and what is the one big thing in my fitness, or the one big thing as a mother, or the one bug thing for my own sanity?" Or whatever it might be, right? That has seriously been ... Like I'm so grateful for wherever that knowledge and awareness first came from, whether it was through Stephen Covey or even before that through my dad, who I first got those books from, or whatever different sources. But I know for sure that I would not have the business that I have, the multi seven figure online empire. Nevermind like the term and the lifestyle freedom, and the incredible way that I get to live. But also my physical results in my health and my body. And even how much time I get to spend with my friends and my children, and that sort of thing. All of that really stems from the fact that I freaking learnt to put first thing's first. And it is a discipline, because I'm the same as anyone. I wake up in the morning and I'm like, "Maybe I'll just quickly check my messages." No. I just don't. I just don't fucking allow myself to. Sometimes I break the rule for sure. But extraordinarily rarely. I would break that rule literally 1% of the time. And 99% of the time I'm laser focused. The world does not get a piece of me until my soul got everything that it needs, right? Think about that. Because I'm pretty certain that most people are the other way around. 99% of the time, the world gets all of them, and nothing's left for their soul. And then you think, "Oh, I'll do it later in the day." No, you fucking won't. You burn out, and you're also energetically depleted from giving your life for the wrong thing. How do we get on to this little piece of sermonising? Let me come back to it. Okay, okay, okay. So I was like, giving myself props, right? Because yeah, I just cleared my list. And I'm like, "Okay, I've got nothing to do. I've got no more excuses." I just made my life so easy there's literally nothing on my list. There's nothing there at all. "Oh my God, what do I do?" Well, all right, I was already putting first thing's first. But what I would love to do, and what I have now chosen to do, and what I just went through today was making space to do that. What my choice is, is to now add to the foundation that I've already created of putting first thing's first. Now I love the concept of there's never anything you need to do in order to manifest anything you desire and have it all. There's nothing you ever need to do, but there's always ... Always magic. There is always magic. There's always action to take. It's one of my favourite philosophies and concepts. And what it means though is to not have a freaking list or a plan, right? But yet you're always taking action. So I have nothing on my list. Like I just said, I have nothing I need to do at all in any area of my life. I'm completely free as a bird. However, do you think that means I'm gonna be sitting around twiddling my thumbs, and sunning myself on the grass? Well, maybe if I could turn it into content. And maybe sometimes anyway, for sure. But what I'm going to be doing is being the person who automatically lives a certain way and creates certain results into their business and life. And currently for years now, the vast majority of how my time is spent, is me just being me. So I say frequently, I ... Like I'll often say to a client or a friend, "Oh my God, I did nothing today. I had the laziest day ever. I did nothing." And clients say this to me as well. And then we always laugh, 'cause I'm like ... When a client will say this to me ... Like actually my friend Linda who's staying with me at the moment. So hopefully we'll do a livestream together in the next day or two. She said this to me the other day, she's like, "Oh my God, I had the laziest day ever. I did noting." She's like, "I just wrote a blog, and then this, and then this, and then this, and then ... " And I was like, "So let's just clarify, you did nothing. You wrote a blog post of 1500 words. That'd take most people a month, if not a lifetime firstly. You did a great workout. You did a live training with client. So you met a client for the first time in-person who's like a private client, or whatever. And created content together, and that turned into sales action at the end of the livestream, and in the blog post. And then whatever other different things as well." Like literally her doing nothing was more than most people would do in a week or even a month, and that's for real. And so whenever I say, "Oh my God, I did nothing. I had the lazies day ever," then when I actually reverse-engineer it, I'm like, "Well, technically not nothing, because studied and did like ... Study and meditation." In the morning I just do it automatically every morning. To me that's like ... I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek to say this, but not really. But to me doing my morning spiritual study is the same as brushing my teeth or putting my clothes on. You wouldn't go around being like, "I put my clothes on today, and I brushed my teeth." It's not really something that needs to be talked about. I know that it's not that. But that's how it feels to me, and this is the big point that I'm trying to make. I'm like, "Well, of course I did my study in the morning." I always read something that inspires and uplifts me, and feeds my soul in the morning. It's hardly something to report home about. But at the same time, it very much impacts who I am as a person. I'm continually growing, right? Of course I did my morning journaling and my mindset work, and my inner-work, 'cause I just always do. I don't think about, "Am I gonna do it again?" It just kinda happens. So well, I didn't feel like I did anything. And then well, of course I wrote a freaking blog and a powerful message to the world after I did my journaling, 'cause that's a natural thing, right? After you do journaling, don't you wanna tell the world the things that have bubbled up inside of you? Isn't it logical that you wanna tell people? Even if you weren't publishing it on the internet, if you're reading or learning something inspiring, or having like an, "Ah-ha," moment in your life, don't you then as a normal human person, legitimately, not being a smartass now, you go and tell someone, right? Just look at anyone who's ever happened upon the latest fad diet. Is it or is it not true that they're sermonising about it to everybody that they encounter, because they're so passionate about it and they're excited about it. Well, that's all I'm doing when I let my blog come out at the end of my journaling, so that's not doing anything. Okay, but because I write like a 1500 to 2000 plus word daily Ass-Kickery blog post, every fucking day for years now, that's really like the cornerstone of how I've built this empire. The content, why do people wanna [mentiod 00:36:37] me? Because of what I've said, because of my words. Maybe livestreams is about also. But blog posts, huge part of it, right? To me the ... That's not doing anything. That's not like work, right? I don't even feel like I do anything if I write a freaking blog post. That's for my own soul and my own sanity. I get super antsy and don't feel connected to my self if I haven't unleashed my message, so I love to do that. And on the days when it doesn't happen for whatever reason, I feel that kind of restlessness. Like I just gotta get away from the world for 20 minutes and just be here and create something for my soul. And sure yeah, I'll chuck it on Facebook. And then yeah, you know what? People pay me tens of thousands of fucking dollars collectively or individually as a result of that. Sales activity, it's like an automatic thing that happens. Of course if I write a blog I'm gonna put a call to action at the end of a blog. I'm not stupid, right? So I don't feel like I did anything though. I just chucked a little P.S. on the end of a blog post like, "Hey, buy my thing." And then I could keep going all day, right? This doesn't feel like I'm doing work. I'm like, "What else would I wanna do after sitting in a hair salon for four hours, looking largely as spreadsheets," 'cause I was doing all my ... Counting all my monies, which I do calculate my net worth and check in on my payments. And make sure that I know which payments are coming up, and manifest more money. I did all that. And then I was deleting things, slashing them left, right and centre off my list and sending them off to other people. That was fun. And now I'm like, "Well, of course I wanna come and talk about it. What else would I do?" That's not work, right? But yet, I'm creating content that you now get stripped off Facebook, put onto YouTube. I already did a sales call to action about Rich Hot Empire. Make sure you read that pinned comment. Literally final few days to work with me one-on-one at this amazing price point. Six intensive weeks unlimited access to me. And then it's closing, and then it's inner-circle only for one-on-one work for the foreseeable, right? So okay, sounds like too many [inaudible 00:38:26]. That's not a big deal. And you see my point. So on the days when I do nothing, I could add up all the different things I've done, and there's a million other things I've done today that I haven't even listed. But all of it felt so just like ... Well, of course I respond to people's messages. I haven't checked in on my clients yet, but I'll do that. That probably is the next thing I'll do just while I'm going on a walk on the beach or something, I'll probably listen to [voxxes 00:38:46] from my high-level clients. And that's me mentoring ... Well, that's one aspect of my mentoring of my high-level clients is ... Well, what else would I wanna do? I mean, I'm there. Sometimes I like to listen to music while I walk or drive. But pretty freaking cool to get to listen to my high-level clients checking in, asking me stuff, or sharing their massive wins. So if we bring it back to the point that I'm trying to make here for you, my point that I'm sure you can feel this and see it already is, let it be easy by making it into part of who you are. Any thing that is in your life that feels disconnected from who you are, just think about this right now. Anything that feels like, "This is something I've gotta do that kind of goes against my nature in some way, or I don't really wanna do." Or, "It feels like it's separate from me, or outside of me." Or it's more like a chore. It's kinda like, "Yeah okay, I gotta go do such and such thing," right? Those are the things to seriously consider deleting, delegating, or just freaking get it done really quickly. You know that old saying, "Delete, delegate or do." Or just realise that maybe actually, this is a big thing I've learned over the years, that if you just did the big rock stuff, like the messaging, the showing up, the letting people see and hear you, connecting and communicating, then all these other freaking shit that you think you need to do to make money, wouldn't even be necessary. Because you could do a 100 things on a list of internet market to-do's, but if you're not doing this in some way, shape, or form, communicating, connecting, sharing message. None of that shit's gonna fucking matter. Nobody cares if you have a perfect funnel and website if they don't know you. So you're over here like, "I gotta do this, and this, and this. And then the world will see me as a very important person." No, they're gonna see straight through that. They're gonna see smoke and mirrors, and no substance. And they're not gonna feel your soul. If you want people to follow and buy from you, you need to reach in and grab them by the soul. And by the way, that is not gonna happen if you're not connected to your own soul. It's not possible. So the more that you get rid of anything that takes you away from soul and super flow, and just focus on what your soul needs, what you desire. And focus on integrating anything that would be a great habit into being part of who you are, the more it becomes so easy. It becomes like money tap that you can't turn off. I know that's a controversial statement that might trigger or annoy some people, but that is how I feel about how I make money. I'm like, every day I get a little report from one of my assistants, Kelly that says I pulled this much ... She transfers the money out of PayPal every day and puts it into my bank account. So she'll go, I pulled out whatever it was. I think yesterday, $20,700 out of PayPal. And she just tells me the number. And that's every fucking day, right? And I'm like, "Cool." Like, "Awesome. Of course. I expect that." Or whatever. I'm appreciative and grateful. But I'm not like, "Oh, I don't really know where it came from. I guess I could technically figure it out and break it down." But my actions have got nothing to do with that. That's how I see it. The money comes in because I turned on a freaking money tap by living life purposely. And by claiming and stating, and my journaling, and in my mind and my heart, and my soul what it is I wanna receive. And just choosing to believe that that's how it gets to be. What I'm doing, I'm never doing shit with the intention like, "If I do this, then I make that money." No way. No way. That's totally separate. I'm only doing what my soul grants be to do, which is the job of being myself. So when I go through my list of shit that I got rid of, if there was anything on there which was there literally like two things, which is the two things that I said earlier, like the videos and the books, that I want that stuff to be a day-in, day-out habit. Because I know that when it becomes a small thing that gets attended to every day for a small period of time, that's how you build epic fucking results. That's how I have my fitness results, that's how I have my business results. Results in all areas. Just a very small amount of time each day for all these different sections. And it's all effortless, and I feel like I do nothing, because I've made it part of who I am. So for those things that I'm like, "Okay, these are things I wanna implement into my routine and into being part of who I am." Those are the only things that I will give concerted daily attention to now. All the rest of it is like well, it doesn't actually matter. Here I have some cool ideas on that list of things that could improve my social media presence in different way. So I just sent if off to my team and they can do whatever with it. But I will focus only on, and have focused only on up until point to get these results, becoming more of who I'm meant to be, right? And making it so easy by just making it into who I am. So I feel that I do nothing, and yet I create a very impressive ... What's the word? Prolific amount of content each day. I probably be content creator. And I'm continually immersing myself in growth work and mindset work, which then feeds on into what I'm creating and how I get to make the money I make, I guess. 'Cause people wanna learn from me. And it all feels so effortless, because I just made it who I am, right? So literally my laziest day where I'm like, "I honestly did nothing," is still mad insane awesome mindset work, even if I wasn't journaling, it's still going through my mind all the time. Or it's just how I converse with my friends and people that I care about in my life and my clients, plus content creation in some form 'cause it just kinda bubbles out because of all that I'm putting in. Plus sales activities, just is automatic, right? So my suggestion to you is, I'm not here obviously to go on and on about how awesome my habits are, and yay for me. But my suggestion to you is, what do you need to make into part of who you are? Like if you think even now about what is an area of your life where you already have epic results, whether it's something in your business, or your health and fitness, or potentially it could be even how you keep an amazing beautiful home or something like that, whatever it is or whatever comes to mind for you, isn't it true that you just made it a habit? It's just part of who you are. Like you automatically attend to that area of your life, and you do it even without thinking, right? There's some ... I know for sure there's some people that really struggle to cook and prepare healthy food. It feels like a chore, and then I don't really wanna do it. Well, when I grew, my mum would automatically prepare a home made from scratch healthy dinner every single night. I don't know if she loved doing it or not. I think sometimes yes, sometimes no, right? But either way, it was definitely habitual. Like it just fucking happened every day. It wasn't like, "How do you do this?" It was a habitual thing. Same as the way she kept house and other ... Even same as the way she parented us as far as always coming up with cool creative games. We always did cool creative games after school. So it was just like a habit. For me, the cooking thing is semi-habitual. I definitely always wanna eat a healthy great meal. But I won't necessarily cook it every time. I'll go out and get it sometimes. "What is better to do? 10 Day Wake Up or Die? Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life?" Probably Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life is deeper and more powerful. But honestly, they're both fucking amazing programmes. Really, those are two of the best mindset programmes I've ever created. The 10 Day Wake Up or Die audio goal setting course is just in your face and it gets you straight to the point. And Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life I created straight after that. It was kind of a lead on. They really work together. So yeah, you've already done this in different areas of your life. Right? You've already created habits, you've already become the person who automatically does whatever it is. And guaranteed, that's the stuff where other people look at you and they're like, "How do you get such great results in that?" And they maybe think that it takes you a lot of effort, or a lot of planning, or a lot of energy. And you're like, "I don't do anything. What do you mean? Like it's easy." That's how I feel about fitness, it's how I feel about blogging and messaging and creating content for my business. It's how I feel about selling. It's how I feel about inner-work. It's how I feel about various other things also. And I know that for me to go to my next level, and to become the next version of the content creator that I wanna be, and do the different styles of content that I haven't quite stepped into yet, it's the same fucking thing. It's not set aside a weekend to do it all in a weekend. It's not, plan out the different elements and bits and pieces of it on a list. It's literally just make it part of who I am. Make it something that gets a little bit of attention every day. And I'm talking like 20 to 25 minutes. All those things that I just listed, usually like 25 minutes. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. But none of those different building blocks of my success, none of them are taking me hours a day or even a full hour. I'm doing like 15 to 20 minutes of mindset work in the morning, and then it feeds into the rest of my day. I mean, every fucking conversation I have is mindset work at this point as well. I do usually probably 30 to 40 minutes workout, but it's not uncommon for me to do a 20 or 25 minute workout. I do 20 to 25 minutes writing my blog post each day. And collectively if you added it all up to the days, probably 20 to 25 minutes of sales activity. So we are not talking something that's out of reach for any person here. We're just talking having some Goddamn consistency, and creating a habit out of the things that are gonna change your business and your life. All right. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. So read the comment, pinned comment. Rich Hot Empire. Six weeks one-on-one with me. Build your soulmate culture. Create your own low right through to high-end empire top multi seven figure and beyond, doing what you love, doing your purpose work in the world with me as mentor, one-on-one. It's a six week structure programme with content that you get to keep access of, for life. I show you everything behind the scenes of how we do all the different elements of strategy and putting things together, and launching, and selling, and coming up with your ideas, clarifying your message. Anything you could imagine where you're like, "But I'm not sure about my message yet," or, "I don't know what I'm gonna sell yet." Or, "What about high-ticket, how do you sell that?" Like everything. I teach you everything in there. We also do live hot seat mastermind calls each week with our other private clients. And it's one-on-one you and me as well. So we'd be talking pretty much daily through my client private channel. So I do audios and messages with my clients day to day. As well as obviously one-on-one calls. There's a whole bunch other stuff I can tell you about Rich Hot Empire, the very best thing to do if it's speaking to you, is message me over on my Katrina Ruth personal page. I'll give you a fully overview, as well as a couple of videos that you can watch that explain more about this. It gets amazing results. I get amazing results from my clients doing this work. And it's for clients at all stages. I've had clients who are typically in each Rich Hot Empire intake. There's like 30 to 40% of people are total startup. And then there's people who are already making as much as 30, 40, 50K. Or I have even had a couple clients do Rich Hot Empire who are already doing over a million dollars when they came through. So it's not about where you're at now. Depending on where you're at now, you may need more or less support on different areas. There might be things where you need more support and hand-holding around structural stuff and strategy stuff. You will get that, not just from me, but from my team as well. But what does join all my clients together is not whether you're in a business, it's who you are as a person. And it's being that 1% within the 1% revolutionary fucking leader who knows that they were born for more. And is willing to now do what it takes no matter what it takes to bring that purpose work to life. You should message me now about this. It is the final few days to join after this intake closes, which it will do in a couple of days at the latest. There will be no more way to work with me outside of my high-end inner circle 12 month mentoring until way later on in the year. And I'm sure I'll do something at some point again. But I'm really locking it down for this point in time after this intake. So send me a massage. I'll give you all details in the overview. If it's for you, we can get you onboard. And if not, that's totally fine as well. Have an amazing rest of the day. Think about who you need to step in to becoming, to let it be so damn easy that all you've gotta do each day is wake up, be you, and then create everything that's inside of you. Have an amazing rest of the day. Like I said, don't forget, life is now. Press play.

Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. I have a very special episode for you guys today. I have a guest that I'm bringing on the show. His name is John Ferguson. John Ferguson is an expert in face to face selling of MLMs. He's been hired and worked for the Rich Dad company. He has been ... He's one of the guys that MLMs hire and bring in to help improve their entire sales process. He creates scripts to help sell products, he helps scripts ... He create scripts that lets you sell your MLM product in a way to people you've never met before that is not pushy. So I'm very excited for him to be a here. It is a treat to have him and please take notes on this. This is not your normal kind of a thing, and I had to beg him to get on the episode here. So I'm excited. Let's go ahead and jump into the episode today. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us [inaudible 00:00:48] and only bug family members and friends, who wanna grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A players into our down lines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. You guys actually have a really special treat. I'm excited. I have a guess on the show with me today and his name is John Ferguson and literally every time I speak with him, I feel like I learn and I grow, and there's different things that I learn about the MLM industry. I learn about what he's doing and frankly, it's amazing, the resume that John has and I wanna bring him on the show here and give you guys a chance to be elevated for ... with what he's being doing. So without further ado, John how's it going? John Ferguson: Doing fantastic Steve and I'm super stoked to be here. I'm glad you invited me on. I am ready to deliver and I appreciate that introduction dude. I feel like a hero already. Steve Larsen: You are. I feel like ... I don't know. Every time I speak with you, you're like, "Oh, yeah. I helped ..." I don't know if I can say this, "Yeah, I helped Robert Kiyosaki. I helped this huge person over here. I set this MLM up over there." Like what? Like you've been doing a ton of stuff. John Ferguson: Yeah. I've kind of tried ... I've played the backend role for a number of years, where like you mentioned the Rich Dad organization, I really played that backend role. If you think about like Batman, he's got not Robin, which was the sidekick, but Alfred. Right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: The guy that's making sure all the gadgets work, make sure that Batman's not getting himself into trouble and it's really a role that in the past, has really helped a lot of people like people you just mentioned. So I ... It's a lot of fun for me to see others succeed with the systems and tools and the coaching and mentoring that you offer them. So yeah, it's been an awesome career so far. Steve Larsen: Now I wanna be able to go through kinda how you got into this and did it and all, but could you just ... For everyone else on here, if they don't know the amazing John Ferguson, could you just give us a run down of what it is that you actually do when you say Rich Dad organization and the other ones you've worked with? John Ferguson: Yeah, certainly. So what I do is I help closers sell more. Okay. I help individuals who've never sold in their lives sell their first sale. When it comes down to network marketing and multi-level marketing, I find there's a lot more nurturers than really the A type personalities, and for me what we do, is we take individuals by the hand, we guide and we direct them through selling without selling. And I know that sounds kinda weird, 'cause you're like, "What's selling without selling? Like you've gotta sell." Right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: What it is, is I remove the ... we remove the animosity by helping people learn an evaluation process like stepping people, rather than just going in like a hardcore close. Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: [inaudible 00:03:52]. So that's really what we do. We ... In the past like with the Rich Dad organization, I came in and contracted as a trainer and I worked a number of years, where we took their telemarketing, their speakers, their trainers, their coaches and really developed them in some better methods of asking better questions to help get to the root of the desire and the needs of people and then we can deliver that, through the products and services that we offer. And the cool thing about MLM is that there are so many people that need so many things and I buy so much stuff from network marketing companies. I think I'm like ... on like an auto ship for like seven different ones. It's not that I sell their stuff. It's that there are so many wonderful products out there, I wanna help other people get them to the marketplace and get them in the hands of consumers and eliminate that fear of enrolling people and making a sale. Steve Larsen: That's incredible. I mean so you've done it ... I mean you have quite the rap sheet and thanks for explaining that. I knew you'd do a better job than I would doing that, after talking with you extensively this past little while ... past few months, but are you ... I guess ... there's two different directions I want to go with this. My brain is just all over the place. I'm excited to have you on here. Is ... Do you use a lot of like spin selling methods, like the book Spin Selling? Is it that kind of thing a little bit? John Ferguson: You know, it's more direct and- Steve Larsen: Okay. John Ferguson: I'm not the proponent network marketing that is gonna always jump after mom, dad, sisters, cousin, next door neighbor's dog and try to invite them into my network marketing business. I've never done that in sales either. What I like to do is, I like to put out the proper marketing, which I know that your people are learning some phenomenal tools Steve and you're teaching them how to attract the right people ... actually people who really want what you have and then enroll them and get them buying from you. And so my ... And is coming on the backend of that is, is how do I determine ... Like how do I determine the wants, the desires, the needs from somebody? And so I take them through a series of questions, like broad based questions, pointed questions and direct questions and I always get the question, "Hey, John isn't a pointed question a direct question?", and not really. A pointed question just kind of gets more to the point and a direct question is literally right on the money. It's right when you're going for like the heart of the matter. And so if we can learn to ask a little bit better questions, what I can do is I can find out exactly what their needs are, where their pain is, and I'm not usually paying to like make that person really feel it 'cause who wants someone to like squeeze their wound, right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: "Hey, you've got a cut there. Let me get some salt water and just start spraying it on there." No. Okay. But we need to know where the pain is so that we can move them away from it or motivate them towards pleasure and that pleasure point is what I'm after mainly, because we live in a day and age right now that everyone can see through the BS. Like their belief systems, not the other BS. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Okay. But where there's so much on the internet, there's so much on YouTube, there's so much all over the place that we just want the information we need now, but we also wanna know that the individual that is working with us is gonna help us for us right, and really cares. And so, our method allows our closers to step into a role ... You know I wouldn't wanna say expert advisor because I don't think coaching closes. It's not something that I believe. I've had a lot of people go from the coaching industry into selling and when they coach, they can't close because they get so much information. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: The person is like, "Oh, this is great. I'm gonna go out there and do it." So- Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: When it comes to our method, it's really just getting to the root ... It's human communication, man. It's just understanding what your goals and focus and expectations and you as the closer, knowing your product well enough, knowing your services well enough, that you're able to match what is needed and what is and what is desired with that individual in a way that they beg to buy from you. I mean it's backwards. Like if you wanna call it something, I wouldn't call it spin selling. Let's say backwards closing or something like that. Steve Larsen: Right. That's interesting. Do you mind giving a few examples of like the kind of questions you would ask? I guess you and I meet on the street and I show a little bit of interest in what you're doing. What would you ask me? John Ferguson: So here's the thing, I would first off ... If we're gonna meet on the street, like we're at Barnes and Noble or we're in some book store or some function, and I believe you have some type of an interest in my business. Right? So for instance, one of the easier ones out there right now is like health and fitness or real estate, it's a pretty hot topic. So what I wanna do is, I wanna just kinda ask you a broad question. Right? Steve Larsen: Okay. John Ferguson: So for what I would do is this, I really just kinda get in it, "So what do you currently do for a living?" Right? And someone's gonna say, "Well I'm a tractor driver." And I go, "Wow. How long have you been doing that for?" And they're gonna say, "Well, I've been doing that for 16 years." And I go, "Oh, man. You must love it." Steve Larsen: Okay. John Ferguson: And that answer right there is an answer and a question all at the same. Once, I'm slapping them upside the head- Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Going, "Wow, I love it." Steve Larsen: Interesting. John Ferguson: And then they're gonna say, "Not really." or they go, "You know what? It's not bad going through other people's junk. I just don't see retirement in it." Right? So you're gonna find out an answer ... What I'm doing there, is I'm trying to poke them a little bit without being rude and I don't wanna create a situation where I'm hurting anybody. But I wanna find out, "Okay. Where are you at? Like are you ready to move out of this thing or you're in dysfunction for what?" And if they say, "Look yeah, I hate it. I wanna get out. I've been stuck in it for a number of years." And then I'd say, "Well, fantastic." Right? "So what would you be doing?" or "What ... If you had a better opportunity, what would your life look like?" So what I'm trying to do is I'm giving some broad questions to find out where this individual may fit and I'm building rapport, but I'm gonna stay on an agenda. My agenda is to get them to a more pointed question on how I can get this person into my business now. So I'm ask, "So would you keep your ..." The classic, "Do you keep your options open for making more money?" I don't like that question. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I don't either. John Ferguson: I don't usually use that question because it's too weird. Like for me, it just makes me feel weird. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: So ... You know shower time. No. So what I gotta do now is I just say, "Hey look ..." I tell him what I'm doing. I say, "Look, I've been a real estate investor for 17 years. I'm looking for some individuals that might qualify to work with me in that arena. Have you ever thought about real estate investing as an option to make more money?" So I'm gonna get a little more direct, a little more pointed on my questioning and I'm gonna ask him right, and if they're in a real estate function or if they're in a network marketing function or I'm going ... So I'm never just going blind a lot of the times into ... just question people off the street. I believe that if you ... there's enough people out there that we can target the proper marketing to attract people on the front end, that by process allows me to help them through all the way to the backend in becoming a buyer. Steve Larsen: Interesting. John Ferguson: So pointed questions. If I was giving all pointed questions, I'd just ask him for instance, if that person said, "Yeah. I'm looking for something better." I say like, "How would you like to better your experience in life?" Right? And they're gonna [inaudible 00:11:16] what they wanna accomplish. Now I'm not gonna get into becoming their buddy. Okay. Those questions aren't gonna be for me to go okay, they say, "Well better life ..." They say, "Well, I'd love to travel more." And if I get into a discourse of, "Oh, I've been here. I've been there. Oh, my life because of what I've been doing in my business has allowed me to do this." I get into my like 30 minute pitch on how great my life is because of my business, I've just lost those guys. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: They don't care. Like they really don't care. What they care about is, is that you care that they care about what they want. I know that sounds a little weird, but that's what it is and if I'm able to say, "Oh, that's fantastic. I love travel too. I've had the blessing of being able to travel with what I do." And then follow it up ... That statement always opens up another question, "Where would you travel if you had the time and money? Like if money wasn't an option, time wasn't an option. If you weren't dumping trash, where would you go?" Right? And be genuine, like literally we've gotta be more interested. It's about questioning rather than dictating and I think that's where a lot of MLM upline don't understand. They came in the same way and they're like, "Hey, give me your story, give me your two minute blast." Just chase until the buyer dies, literally you're gonna kill them. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And so I think ... Today's day and age, if you're able to ask proper questions, you're able to minimize that shortfall and you're gonna be able to lead this person down and you're gonna be able to help that person. And in the meantime, you will build rapport faster if you stay on target with these types of questions, rather than trying to dictate, "Hey, your life is so much better." Find out about them, ask them the questions. It's gonna build so much intrigue in this person that you're asking these questions, you're giving these little mini statements, what I call little micro commitments or a mini statement of where your life is, or what you're loving about your current company and your current situation is you're growing than it will ever do ... You're just dumping a whole bunch of information on [inaudible 00:13:15]. I know a lot of people talk about that, but [crosstalk 00:13:17]- Steve Larsen: You're saying [crosstalk 00:13:18]. So you're saying that it actually works to pay off and actually like care about people? John Ferguson: Right, right. Steve Larsen: Just real quick. I wanna just run through this real fast. So you're saying ... First of all, I love that you defined the difference kind of between a pointed question versus a leading question. You're not asking leading questions, your asking pointing questions. Right? Where it- John Ferguson: Correct. Steve Larsen: Where you're going out and you're saying ... you're saying, "Hey ..." I'm writing notes like crazy, just so you know. You start by saying, "Hey, what do you do?" And big broad question, trying to figure out where they fit like, "Whoa. You must love it." And like that is huge. Before you go on that, you're talking about yourself. You're like, "You must love it." And you say ... From there, there's gonna be a split, "Yes, I do." or, "No, I don't." And then from there, you kinda know where to take the conversation. Right? They're the ones basically ... You're just kind of guiding it. John Ferguson: Correct. Steve Larsen: The whole way. That's amazing. Okay. John Ferguson: [crosstalk 00:14:12]. Yep. You're guiding the process and what you're doing is, you're leading them down this path to essentially want to buy from you. They want to enroll with you. Well they wanna continue to engage. Steve Larsen: So where do you- John Ferguson: The whole [crosstalk 00:14:24] psychology, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: I mean everyone wants to be heard. Right? And so if someone's gonna listen, they're gonna keep telling you, but you have to guide that not down a road, "Hey, let's become best friends. We're gonna talk about what we ate last night and oh, I love pasta too." "No, I like fried ferret." Whatever it is, don't go there. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Like try to keep a pointed ... And so, it's less about us now and it's more about what their needs and desires are and if they feel that they're getting their needs met and their desires met by talking to you, that's gonna draw them in to wanting to move forward, even if it's a simple invitation. "Hey, you know what? Sounds like you'd do really well with what we're doing. I'm pretty sure that you'll love it. Let me give you my business card. Let me get your information and I'll send you an email on XYZ. I want you to watch this five minute video. I want you to watch this 10 minute video and real quick it's gonna ask you a few more questions, it's to introduce you to my business and some of my partners. I think you're really gonna love it just based on our conversation." It kind of opens that door for you to do that initial interview, that initial quick introduction to your business, even if you're out live at an event. You're able to hand your card off, you're able to show them your website and it's less abrasive and they're gonna have more intrigue to go, "Wow. That was a really cool conversation. I don't usually have those conversations, so I'm gonna watch this website 'cause what those guys have might be something I've actually been looking for for a long time." Steve Larsen: So from there- John Ferguson: Whether they're looking or not, they're gonna wanna go look. Steve Larsen: Okay. No, awesome. So from there, they're going ... I'm just ... I'm trying to outline it. So you go in broad, then you go in pointed questions and then you kinda go through ... you called it kinda the needs, desire sections. Right? Where ... And how long do you usually stay in that? I'm sure it's per conversation, but I mean how do you know when you're able to go out and finally drop the line of, "Hey. Let me get you my business card. Let me email you. Let me send you this five minute video." When do you know you've gotten to that spot that you can actually say that kinda stuff? John Ferguson: So typically what happens is, is once I've asked enough of these questions, even before I get very direct, I might ask a direct question of an individual. I might say something like, "At the end of the day, you've influenced your family and you've won more freedom by working with us. Why did you do it?" And then they're gonna tell me and/or ... What's gonna happen even is, is we've been asking them questions so long that they're gonna get like I said, intrigued about us. They're gonna ask us what. They're gonna say, "So I mean it sounds like you've got something awesome going on. What is it you do?" Steve Larsen: Yeah. What are you doing? John Ferguson: Like who are you? Right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: That's gonna open the door for you now to share that invitation. Right? You've understood their needs. Now this would ... We're talking face to face right now. Now if I was gonna be over the phone right, some of my advertising was through ... Like don't tell anybody, but I've done some of this ninja stuff on Craigslist. I've just posted a little ad that says, "Hey look, are you interested in XYZ? If you are, call me or if you are, respond." And this stuff works there too and obviously building funnels and posting those paid advertising through like Facebook and Instagram. All that works really, really well, but when it comes down to it, let's say you've got people in Nebraska and you live in California. What are you gonna do? Like how are you gonna meet that person face to face? They've just introduced themselves to you. They're gonna go through your phone, they're gonna [inaudible 00:17:40] your thing, but I like high ticket sales, and so I wanna help this person get the maximum of what's gonna help them. And so the lowest product price point that we typically sell is about $2,000.00 and we do a little bit over the phone, and so if I'm ... I can run this line of questioning over the phone, I'll have a notepad right next to me writing the answers down as I go. So I can go okay, wow that's a need. Okay, wow that's a desire. Right? And so now as I'm asking questions, I can define out what my next questions are. When you get ... We're really good at these types of questionings. These types of questions, it will just come natural to you and it's just following a progressive line, broad based, pointed, direct, broad based, pointed, direct. And sometimes you'll ask a direct question and they won't wanna answer it. They may feel a little standoffish if you haven't done a good job of building that initial rapport, bringing them down the ladder. Right? No one wants to go from the 15th step on the ladder and jump down to step number one, like it hurts. Okay. It's kinda like dropping 150 feet with your buddy, filming it on Facebook and screaming until you fall, like I saw that video of you. That's nuts, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: But no one wants to feel that way without the bungee cord. Okay. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: So we have to take them down that ladder and sometimes you may have to come back up and ask a little more pointed questions to get to where you want, and then come back down to the direct question to the root of the issue of what their true desire is. So now, they're literally asking you Steven, this may sound a little bit more complicated than it really is. It's literally one or two broad based questions, one or two pointed questions and one very direct question. You'll have five questions and you have literally opened the door and they're literally asking, "So what is it you do? How long have you been doing it? Is there any information that I can have that I can talk to you about?" And if I'm doing this over the telephone, it's about an eight minute conversation. Right? I like to keep it about five to twelve minutes. Anyone out there who I typically find ... especially individuals putting this in their practice, as when we're teaching telemarketing teams or when I'm teaching a network marketing business ... Like I was just in New Jersey teaching 200 network marketers in the room in like a six hour session how to do this and the challenge was is asking less, but doing it in the right way- Steve Larsen: Interesting. John Ferguson: Because I think we have this desire to talk and what I found was a lot of people spent more time talking and trying to talk someone into liking your thing because you like it. No one cares why you like it, they just don't. What they care is why they might like it or why ... what will help them. Spend less time dictating and more time recording right, taking down the right information and ultimately they're gonna ask. They're literally [inaudible 00:20:36], "What's my next step? How do I move forward with you?" I've never had ... I've had people say that they've never had conversations like this ever in the network marketing world. Right? I'm sure a lot of your listeners right now are going yeah, I mean that ... People would just beat me up and just ask me, "Hey, come to my thing. Come to my thing. Oh, you're gonna love it. You're gonna get this. You're gonna get that out of it.", and it was just noise. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Well just turn off the noise, ask them more questions and let them speak for a minute and guide them down this path to where they're literally begging to buy from you. Steve Larsen: What's the golden that someone can ask you? Obviously besides, "Hey, where do I put my credit card?" But like what's the question that when you know that you have them, you know what I mean? When you know that this person's progressing and maybe that's probably the wrong way to say that, but when you know that they're following the process to the T and they're eating out of your hand, you know what I mean? When do you know? John Ferguson: It's a number of things. It's a number of questions. Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: Typically, in our industry because it's sales, some of your listeners may have heard the title buyer's questions. Steve Larsen: Sure. John Ferguson: Really it's ... I like to call them intrigue questions, but really what it is, is they're asking you, "Okay. What's the next step?" That's it, like because it doesn't feel abrasive like a sales pitch or a sales opportunity, it's more of like an invitation. They're typically asking, "So how do I move forward with you? Like what's my next step with you? Do you have a meeting that I can attend? Do you have something that I can acquire now?" Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: And so they're literally asking you at that point for the sale. Does that make sense? Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. They're asking buyer questions, yes. That's how I think ... Absolutely. Okay. Intrigue questions. John Ferguson: Yeah. Steve Larsen: And so what would be your follow up at that point? Obviously you said, "Hey, go to the five minute video." or "I'm gonna email you." What's the preferred thing that you do with them after that? John Ferguson: So depending on what I'm doing or depending on the organization that I'm working with, some of them have like an initial introductory video or an initial introductory meeting where they're gonna have to come sit down with you and meet with some of the other team members that you have, or they're gonna come out or they're just gonna stay at home. They're gonna watch a webinar and they're gonna go through this introduction to the company. So typically, I'm delivering them to some type of information that continues to build intrigue, but also delivers some information and it's what we call kind of a either a business orientation, a business briefing and that is literally our first few steps in this entire process. Okay, because at this point now, it's a presentation. Now we're gonna be delivering some of the information to continue that intrigue, but to deliver on what we promised, and then at that point, we're gonna take them to our closing process and it's literally a three step process. It's introduction, invite, presentation and then close. I mean that's as simple as it gets. Steve Larsen: Wow. Wow. Now this is something that sounds like you're doing this like face to face and over the phone but not just for- John Ferguson: Right. Steve Larsen: Not just for ... It's fascinating because most ... especially phone scripts, right? Most phone scripts that I've ever used especially in the internet marketing space, kind of the other market that I'm in, right. I ... Typically, these kinds of phone conversations is something that we would do for more warm audiences and people who knew who we were and knew what were doing, and we were just there to kinda close them and guide them in the sale. But you're able to do this kinda thing to ... I don't wanna say cold, but people who you've honestly may have never met before. John Ferguson: Yep. That's exactly what I do. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. John Ferguson: I don't like the whole ... I got my mom and dad and my cousins and sisters in my first couple of network marketing business. Steve Larsen: Sure. Who didn't? John Ferguson: And it [inaudible 00:24:21]. So I think all of the listeners have done that. Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. Sure. John Ferguson: They've tried that. So there's only so many family members you got right, that can buy from you and join your thing. So you have to go out there and build new relationships and the only way to do that is to either go out there and literally cold market, which can be a little more [inaudible 00:24:42], warm them up first. Right? Why not send them to an initial video? Why not get them to opt in to an advertising piece? Why not have them call you first? Get them knocking your door down first and then take them through these little bit of questions, take them through an introductory video or a webinar and then invite them to participate with you. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. This ... I mean is an incredible expertise. I appreciate you just kind of outlining that. I'm sure top level ... For those of you guys who don't know, I've been talking to you guys a lot about the program, Secret MLM Hacks that I've created and my team's in and we're selling also to any of those ... of you guys who want, we ... John is so good at this, that I pretty much begged him to come and teach a huge segment of this insider course as well. So those of you guys who are like, "Oh, man this stuff's so cool. How do I get more of that?" Well you a lot more of John Ferguson inside of Secret MLM Hacks as well and this expertise is incredible, John. How did you develop this? I mean this is not like a normal ... You know what I mean? I don't know many people who are doing what you're doing like this. In fact, you're probably one of the first ever in this kind of way. How did you get there? John Ferguson: It was out of bare necessity. So let me give you some back story. My ... Just real quick some of my back story. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yeah, please. John Ferguson: I grew up in a home in Southern California. My father was laid off seven times before I was 17. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: For most of my life growing up, I lived with my grandparents and my mom, my dad, my two brothers and I, my grandma, my grandpa and my great-grandmother lived in like a 1,500 square foot home in Whittier, California. It had three bedrooms, one and a half bath, and there's a need for four bedrooms there and so I learned a lot. One, I learned family, the importance of family and how hard it takes to work to keep a family together, especially when you're struggling financially, and I also saw that working a job wasn't for me, like I saw the struggle. My father worked three jobs at one time. They would go around cleaning churches when I grow up, and I was a little squirt running around at five, six, seven years old, taking the chalk erasers, smacking the board with them as my dad was finishing up wiping them down in the church and he'd have to go clean them up again. Let me ... Later down the line, I realized why he was a little upset with me but couldn't really freak out 'cause we're in a church. But I saw that level and so I decided to go to college and like most people, they're like okay, go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a good career. So I took that path and I played basketball in college and I went up and dunked on somebody in a preseason game and I ruptured two discs in my back- Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: Blew out my knee and my ankle- Steve Larsen: Oh, my gosh. John Ferguson: And there was no way I was gonna be able to get in NBA and I'm sure some of your listeners were going, "NBA, yeah." I mean I was not gonna be able to play in the National Basketball Association because I had blown out my body. To this day I can't feel my left leg, like part of my left leg is like numb. My foot is a little bit numb because of that injury. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: And so going to college, I mean why go to ... I thought at the time and no disrespect to anyone that has a diploma. That's awesome. You guys did it, you won it. Fantastic. There are careers that definitely need the execution, but for me at the time, I was like well if I'm not gonna get in the NBA. Right? That's the whole reason you're going to college, is to get in NBA ... Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: I quit. I was like I'm out and so I got into the career world. I started working at a company called Hollywood Video. You know that dinosaur video place you used to go rent videos from? Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. John Ferguson: I wore the red cummerbund, I had the red bow tie. I was waving at people and within a short period time, it was about four and half, five years, I had risen from the ranks from just customer service representative up to a district manager, and I had 14 stores. I was running multimillion dollars for this company and I remember coming home from one vacation, we got five weeks paid vacation. I came home from one vacation and my beeper, like for those of you guys who don't know what that is, it's kinda like a little box that buzzes and beeps on your hip. Okay? So half the size of cell phones today and like three times its width, but I was coming down the mountain, I was up fishing and camping with my family and it goes off, like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And I'm looking down at it and I'm going what is going on with this thing? It was like 911*. 91111*. 91111 and I'm going what is ... Like something ... Someone had to have died in one of my stores. I'm freaking out. I call my manager, the VP over there area and he's like, "Where are you? You need to come in right now." And I'm like, "I just got off of vacation." And if you don't know the type of organization I was working with, it was like to go on vacation, you had to like ... I filled out the form and then the form had to be filled out by my boss and then the boss had to send up to his boss and then corporate had to sign it. They had to send it back to you and you got like five pages of documentation showing you're gone. Right? Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: So I get back ... Literally I got written up for being gone because one of my store managers got sick, the assistant manager couldn't come in to cover their shift in one of my stores. It's like an hour away from even where I live and my manager had to go in and cover the store for like 20 minutes. What I found was- Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: It's that I was climbing the wrong ladder on the wrong building and ... I mean at the time, I was the number one in revenue, I was the number one district manager in the company for holiday contests and sales. My teams were like at the top of my level and I had a lot of loyalty and at that one moment, I lost my 2.5% raise. Now think about that. Steve Larsen: Two and a half percent. John Ferguson: [crosstalk 00:30:28] I was freaking out about not earning another 1,600 bucks, 1,700 bucks a year. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: Because I was only making about 80 grand a year and 2.5%, 2% of that is 16, 1,700 bucks. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: And like to someone like that ... Like I look back on that like how did I survive? Right? Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: But that's how it is. Like that was a good salary then and for me, I had to find another way. And so getting into this situation, I got into my very first real estate property, started becoming ... I became a real estate investor and I ... For two years, I spent a ton of money, like over 200 grand in trends and boot camps and seminars and coaches and I'd finally be able to ... I was able to quit my job and I got involved in a network marketing organization and I've never been involved with one before in my life and they said, "Okay. Go get everybody." So I go ... I get everybody I can get like ... I got like 30 people in this one meeting. I had 25, 30 people. The guy in the front of the room is rocking. Like he's up there, he's like telling a story and I'm watching all my guests and I'm in the very back ... The room is filled with like maybe 200 people and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna make like a hundred grand tonight." Like it's- Steve Larsen: Look at all this. Yeah, yeah. John Ferguson: [inaudible 00:31:48]. Right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And I'm like, "[inaudible 00:31:50]. This is so great" and I'm looking around at everybody around me. I go up to my mentor, I tap him on the shoulder. I'm like, "Dude, check it out. I'm gonna get certified in one meeting. I'm gonna me a hundred grand, you're gonna make like 50 grand. This is sweet!" Like I'm so excited and I'm telling everybody and all the people that I looked up to in my [inaudible 00:32:10] network marketing business and have been involved with me a couple months and I'm like, "I've been working my guts out trying to get people in this room and this is gonna be so awesome. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And at the very end of the night, most network marketing companies do this is, is, "Okay. Are you a one? Are you a two or a three? Are you an A, a B or a C?" Right? And all my people are like two or a like one, meaning that they're in! They wanna join and they got some questions, but they wanna join! I'm like oh, my gosh. How am I gonna handle all this business all at once? And so I grab like two laptops and I go run into the front of the room, I grab all my guests, "So you guys follow me." Right? Like the pied piper, you guys are all just getting. "Let's go!" And so I get to the back of the room and my brain is exploding, my heart's pumping out of my chest. I'm sweating profusely because I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is gonna be so cool." How do I not ... Like how do I hide my excitement? Right? [crosstalk 00:33:02]- Steve Larsen: Yeah, to keep it cool. John Ferguson: [inaudible 00:33:03]. It's like this rush, right? It's like drinking five Red Bulls at once. Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: And so [inaudible 00:33:09], I'm going, "Okay everybody. For those of you who are the number ones, raise your hands again. Okay. Fantastic. I've got two laptops over here. I've got them open and ready to go. Just get your credit cards out. I [inaudible 00:33:20] to sign up [inaudible 00:33:21] here. [inaudible 00:33:23] got questions [inaudible 00:33:24]. Let's go!" Yeah. That's about how it was man. Silence. Nobody moved, like not one bit. Steve Larsen: Wow. John Ferguson: And you know I had the, "Oh, man. That's great stuff, John. I'm just not ready to move forward." "Oh, I didn't bring my checkbook." I got all the excuses and like when you go from such a high, like you're gonna win, right? Then you literally drop and then you melt and you're like about to be in tears, your face turns red and you're like, "Oh, my gosh. How did misjudge all this?" Steve Larsen: Right. Right. John Ferguson: That was the moment I knew that I screwed up and I needed to do it better and I had learned right then and there, that I didn't know enough about the people that I had invited to this meeting. That I was told what I considered a lie, was that just invite people, throw a diaper against the wall, some of them will stick, others are gonna slide down, and I realized it doesn't matter what you're throwing against the wall. It's just gonna leave a mess and so I knew right then and there, I needed a better system. I needed a better way to engage the right people and not just people. I knew that I never wanted to chase other people. I never wanted to feel that way again, where I had this pit in my stomach, not because of the success that I was gonna have, but because what did I just do and how did I look, and I just told everybody this was gonna be fantastic and I was exhausted- Steve Larsen: Yeah. John Ferguson: Because I worked so hard, not one person purchased man, not one and that was the day. And I went in I started ... we're finding the systems and we're finding how I ask people questions and I read every sales book I possibly could and I wasn't finding the information in there. And it was difficult and I started with Rich Dad organization, I started working with some of these telemarketing teams and learning what they did on the phone and how they sold coaching and mentoring and packages and I literally just went into the trenches for a couple of years. And I took what I learned from speaking and training and teaching in the network marketing industry in front of these big rooms and what was going on behind the scenes with a lot of these organizations selling trainings and services and products on how they were enrolling people at these higher levels. And it just ... It just ... They had a baby dude. They had a baby. I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna take that, it was like a mad scientist, Frankenstein, let's just put it all together and over the years, it came out fantastic and to like ride it off of the wings. And I don't really like to like talk about myself a lot, but in this instance I need to and I don't like the phrase ... I hate this phrase and maybe you do too, I don't say this to impress you, but to impress upon you. I hate that phrase, like just tell us the truth, you're trying to impress us. Right? And so I hate that phrase- Steve Larsen: Brag about yourself John. Let us know, let us hear it. John Ferguson: Yeah, man. So it's time to impress you. So I'm telling this so you are impressed by some dude who grew up in Southern California in a box with his entire family, looking like Charlie from the Chocolate Factory, who was able to make it out of that world just by sheer bull dogged determination. I wasn't smart, I just gathered all the stuff, mixed it up in the blender and poof. I joined a network marketing company a few years back and I said, "Look, I have test this method and I'm only gonna be using my method. I'm not gonna be using anything else. I'm gonna con ... I'm gonna throw out some bait. I'm gonna throw out some advertising and get people calling me, and I'm gonna see if these people that I do not know, I can put in some information with ... through a webinar, through testimonials, through Craigslist ads, and let's see if I can build a rapport well enough just with this system, but it works." I started that in the network marketing company, I think it was about November, when I actually started selling and advertising, and by the end of the year, I had taken their sales contest. I was number one that year. I was inducted into their ... Like a lot of you guys know like the Diamond Club or the President's Advisory Council of [crosstalk 00:37:33]- Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Literally inducted into that crew and people were upset. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Because there were people who worked all year long in the network marketing business and they hadn't closed enough sales to make it. Like I remember I had beaten one of the ladies who did a phenomenal job. She's a wonderful person, very good dear friend of mine now, who I've had the opportunity to train and teach her teams this as well. They had done great but I only won by like six grand. Like my revenue was ... It was that close. But with only having a couple of months to finish off this ... the contest by the end of the year to go to their national convention and at that point, I knew I had something different that you could use on the phone, you use in person. That an influencer can use to sell coaching, that you can sell products, you could sell water, you could help people [inaudible 00:38:23] literally a [inaudible 00:38:25] individuals [inaudible 00:38:26], 'cause we know that people don't like what they need. Right? We know that. Like if you just give them the needs like, "[inaudible 00:38:32], like I know I need to take vitamins but I'm not choking the horse pill down." Right? So how do I give them the desire? How do I fulfill the desire and the need at the same time and then wrap it all up into a bow to where they're begging me to buy? And that's what this is man and that's what we've developed and it has shrunk the time it takes for me to work with people. I work about 20 hours a week now in what I do and the rest of the time I spend with my family man and I like to invest in real estate still. I like to buy properties, I really like helping people, I like traveling and speaking and running masterminds, and that's it dude. I mean that's kind of the evolution of this process. That's how I came up with it and I can't a 100% credit because I learned a lot in these different organizations from different people, that had little pieces. Right? I think that's we do as entrepreneurs- Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: As influencers. We've been influenced ourselves to actually go out and influence and so for me to take credit, I'm not a self made millionaire. Okay. It's a team thing, whether it's a book that you've read from someone who has passed away, passed along that knowledge in that book or that audio course, or the mentors that you've continued to have and the friendships and the relationships. Like I've learned a ton from you Steven, like a lot of what you've taught has helped even this process succeed in greater- Steve Larsen: Oh, cool. John Ferguson: And the other businesses that we own. And so like I think that the more people understand how connected that we are, the whole lot easier that everything becomes and it's less about closing and it's more about connecting and getting people to desire what they need, than shoving it down their throat. So hopefully the answer's there. I went on a discourse man. Steve Larsen: I love the discourse, but it's so true like that whole phrase, we all rise together. To me, for some reason that always seemed a little bit cheesy but the longer I've been doing this, the more I've realized the exact same. It's like look, I did not get anywhere on my own, like it's all ... We all do it together, we have to. If you try to do it on your own, you actually will drown. Anyway, I ... I'm so thankful for what you taught here and it just ... I think the listeners are gonna love it. Guys if you have, please reach out to John and say thank you. You can learn more from him as well. Where can people find you, John? John Ferguson: The easiest thing right now to do is I like to connect with people. I like to see who you are, what you're doing in the industry and one of the greatest tools right now out there Facebook. I'm on Facebook, you gotta go by my real name John Albert Ferguson. I know, it's not just John Ferguson. I got the big Al from my dad. So John Albert Ferguson on Facebook and it's real simple. I've got my personal profile and I got my page, and my page ... You can hit me up in the messenger and if you need some help, I'd love to spend about like a 15 minute consultation with you for free. No charge, just to kinda see where you're at, what you're doing, maybe we can unlock a few things and help to implement it and if it's something we wanna work together, you'll be on that, fantastic, and we'll find a way and we do coaching. I do mastermind, such like that, but really I wanna provide value first, and what they're gonna see too Steven, is I love real estate investing. And so you'll see a lot about my real estate and things I do and as well as my coaching and training and speaking within the sales and network marketing arena. So I think that's probably the easiest thing to do man, is just so they can get a picture of who I am, like my family and what I do. I think that one's the biggest thing, is in this industry I think a lot of people don't sell, they don't close. They can't because they feel they have accomplish some level of success before they can introduce their thing. Right? Well let's say I've got this bottle of water here that's gonna change people's lives. Right? Well maybe it's you're first week and your life hasn't changed yet. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can poster the water, you can your upline, you poster just the experience you've currently had in the last 24 hours of being involved in an amazing community of people and enough is enough. Don't have to be right now and I like the whole act as if thing, but why not just be you? Like be yourself. Steve Larsen: Right. John Ferguson: Like are you going to allow somebody into your house with dirty, muddy shoes? Probably not. You're gonna ask them to take it off. Are you gonna let just anybody join your thing? Probably not and you shouldn't. Like if you're like, "No. Yeah. I will. I haven't made a sale so I gotta close somebody. Like if anyone wants to come in and give me money, they're in." No. That could be way more headache. Steve Larsen: Yeah. No way. John Ferguson: That would be ... It's not worth the headache. You wanna retain the right people so they can build the right community with you and you'll have a whole lot more fun. Like the money doesn't matter. You'll make more money being happy and enrolling the right people than you will trying to get other people just to buy- Steve Larsen: Amen. Amen. We need that on t-shirt and a mug. That was good. Yeah, anyway. I appreciate that. Sorry to cut you off there. John Ferguson: [crosstalk 00:43:32]. Steve Larsen: You were on a roll man. I'm loving the dialogue. This is awesome. John Ferguson: Yeah. No, we're good. Steve Larsen: Hey ... Thank you so much. Hey guys, go check out John though. Go to ... Go to his Facebook page. He's doing ... What ... You said working 20 hours a week, which is awesome. Obviously walking the walk, talking the talk. You know what you're doing and for me it's been fun to look around and go find out like, "Oh man, who were the ones in MLM who are really killing it? Who are ..." and not ... Meaning they've actually figured out a system and you clearly just over and over and over pop up as like one of the most expert individuals in this space and this area and I'm just so thankful to have you on the show. Please go check out John though at Facebook, connect with him. You can do a 15 minute consultation with him. For those of you guys who are jumping in Secret MLM Hacks, you also got an awesome training module from him as well. John, thanks so much for being on the show today. John Ferguson: Yeah. Fantastic. It was a pleasure. I really appreciate it and love what you're doing, Steven. You got some amazing things happening for your listeners and Secret MLM Hacks rocks. I mean if your listeners haven't joined that yet, you need to because that is what we're talking about today, is really engaging the proper people with the proper solutions that are geared towards their desires and their needs and you're laying it out there in plain speech that anybody can implement. So yeah, I'm just glad to have been a part ... a smart part of this and helping your audience succeed, man. Steve Larsen: Oh, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate it and thanks everyone for listening. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe, whether you just want more leads or automated MLM funnels, or if you just wanna learn to get paid more for your product, head over to secretmlmhacks.com to join the next free training today.

President Donald Trump Addresses the National Rifle Association - The NRA First President in over 30 years to address the NRA - A Powerful speech, a MUST LISTEN! It has been over 30 years since a President addressed the National Rifle Association - (NRA) President Donald Trump, thanked the 5 million plus members of the NRA for helping him to win the election. “You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you,” he said. His words were met with multiple rounds of cheers and an uproarious applause. Related: Here’s what Ronald Reagan told the NRA in 1983 Below is the full transcript of his Friday remarks: PRESIDENT TRUMP- Thank you, Chris, for that kind introduction and for your tremendous work on behalf of our Second Amendment. Thank you very much. (Applause.) I want to also thank Wayne LaPierre for his unflinching leadership in the fight for freedom. Wayne, thank you very much. Great. (Applause.) I'd also like to congratulate Karen Handel on her incredible fight in Georgia 6. (Applause.) The election takes place on June 20th. And, by the way, on primaries, let's not have 11 Republicans running for the same position, okay? (Laughter.) It's too nerve-shattering. She's totally for the NRA and she's totally for the Second Amendment. So get out and vote. She's running against someone who's going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your healthcare, and he's for open borders—lots of crime, and he's not even able to vote in the district that he's running in. Other than that, I think he's doing a fantastic job, right? (Laughter.) So get out and vote for Karen. Also, my friend—he's become a friend because there's nobody that does it like Lee Greenwood. Wow. (Applause.) Lee’s anthem is the perfect description of the renewed spirit sweeping across our country. And it really is, indeed, sweeping across our country. So, Lee, I know I speak for everyone in this arena when I say, we are all very proud indeed to be an American. Thank you very much, Lee. (Applause.) No one was more proud to be American than the beloved patriot—and you know who I'm talking about—we remember on gatherings like today, your former five-term President, the late Charlton Heston. How good was Charlton? (Applause.) And I remember Charlton, he was out there fighting when maybe a lot of people didn’t want to be fighting. He was out there for a long time. He was a great guy. And it's truly wonderful to be back in Atlanta, and back with my friends at the NRA. You are my friends, believe me. (Applause.) Perhaps some of you remember the last time we were all together. Remember that? We had a big crowd then, too. So we knew something was happening. But it was in the middle of a historic political year and in the middle of a truly historic election. What fun that was—November 8. Wasn’t that a great evening? Do you remember that evening? (Applause.) Remember that? (Applause.) Remember they were saying, "We have breaking news: Donald Trump has won the state of Michigan." They go, "Michigan? How did that"—" Donald Trump has won the state of Wisconsin, whoa." But earlier in the evening, remember, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, all the way up—we ran up the East Coast. And, you know, the Republicans have a tremendous disadvantage in the Electoral College, you know that. Tremendous disadvantage. And to run the whole East Coast, and then you go with Iowa and Ohio, and all of the different states. It was a great evening, one that a lot of people will never forget—a lot of people. (Applause.) Not going to forget that evening. And remember they said, “There is no path to 270.” For months I was hearing that. You know, they’re trying to suppress the vote. So they keep saying it, so people say, you know, I really like Trump, he loves the Second Amendment, he loves the NRA; I love him, but let’s go to the movie because he can’t win. Because they’re trying to suppress the vote. But they’d say—I mean, hundreds of times I heard, there is no—there’s no route. They’d say it, “There is no route to 270.” And we ended up with 306. So they were right: Not 270, 306. (Applause.) That was some evening. Big sports fans said that was the single-most exciting event they’ve ever seen. That includes Super Bowls and World Series and boxing matches. That was an exciting evening for all of us, and it meant a lot. Only one candidate in the General Election came to speak to you, and that candidate is now the President of the United States, standing before you again. (Applause.) I have a feeling that in the next election you’re going to be swamped with candidates, but you’re not going to be wasting your time. You’ll have plenty of those Democrats coming over and you’re going to say, no, sir, no thank you -- no, ma’am. Perhaps ma’am. It may be Pocahontas, remember that. (Laughter and applause.) And she is not big for the NRA, that I can tell you. But you came through for me, and I am going to come through for you. (Applause.) I was proud to receive the NRA’s earliest endorsement in the history of the organization. And today, I am also proud to be the first sitting President to address the NRA Leadership Forum since our wonderful Ronald Reagan in 1983. (Applause.) And I want to thank each and every one of you not only for your help electing true friends of the Second Amendment but for everything you do to defend our flag and our freedom. With your activism, you helped to safeguard the freedoms of our soldiers who have bled and died for us on the battlefields. And I know we have many veterans in the audience today, and we want to give them a big, big beautiful round of applause. (Applause.) And, like I promised, we are doing a really top job already—99 days—but already with the Veterans Administration, people are seeing a big difference. We are working really hard at the VA, and you’re going to see it, and you’re already seeing it. And it’s my honor. I’ve been telling you we’re going to do it, and we’re doing it. (Applause.) Thank you. The NRA protects in our capitols and legislative houses the freedoms that our servicemembers have won for us on those incredible battlefields. And it’s been a tough fight against those who would go so far as to ban private gun ownership entirely. But I am here to deliver you good news. And I can tell you that Wayne and Chris have been fighting with me long and hard to make sure that we were with you today, not somebody else with an empty podium. Because believe me, the podium would have been empty. They fought long and hard, and I think you folks cannot thank them enough. They were with us all the way, right from the beginning. (Applause.) But we have news that you’ve been waiting for for a long time: The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. (Applause.) You have a true friend and champion in the White House. No longer will federal agencies be coming after law-abiding gun owners. (Applause.) No longer will the government be trying to undermine your rights and your freedoms as Americans. Instead, we will work with you, by your side. We will work with the NRA to promote responsible gun ownership, to protect our wonderful hunters and their access to the very beautiful outdoors. You met my son—I can tell you, both sons, they love the outdoors. Frankly, I think they love the outdoors more than they love, by a long shot, Fifth Avenue. But that’s okay. And we want to ensure you of the sacred right of self-defense for all of our citizens. (Applause.) When I spoke to this forum last year, our nation was still mourning the loss of a giant, a great defender of the Constitution: Justice Antonin Scalia. (Applause.) I promised that if elected, I would nominate a justice who would be faithful and loyal to the Constitution. I even went one step further and publicly presented a list of 20 judges from which I would make my selection, and that’s exactly what we did. And, by the way, I want to thank, really, Heritage. And I want to thank also all of the people that worked with us. Where’s Leo? Is Leo around here? Where is he? He’s got to be here. Where is he? He has been so good. And also from Heritage, Jim DeMint. It’s been amazing. I mean, those people have been fantastic. They’ve been real friends. (Applause.) The Federalist people—where are they? Are they around here someplace? They really helped us out. I kept my promise, and now, with your help, our brand-new Justice—and he is really something very special—Neil Gorsuch, sits on the bench of the United States Supreme Court. (Applause.) For the first time in the modern political era, we have confirmed a new justice in the first 100 days. (Applause.) The last time that happened was 136 years ago, in 1881. Now, we won’t get any credit for this, but don’t worry about it, the credit is in the audience, right? The credit is in the audience. (Applause.) All of those people. They won’t give us credit, but it’s been a long time, and we’re very honored. We’ve also taken action to stand up for America’s sportsmen. On their very last full day in office, the previous administration issued an 11th-hour rule to restrict the use of lead ammunition on certain federal lands. Have you heard about that, folks? I’m shocked to hear that. You’ve all heard about that. You’ve heard about that. On his first day as Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke eliminated the previous administration’s ammunition ban. (Applause.) He’s going to be great. Ryan is going to be great. We’ve also moved very quickly to restore something gun owners care about very, very much. It’s called the rule of law. (Applause.) We have made clear that our administration will always stand with the incredible men and women of law enforcement. (Applause.) In fact, countless members of law enforcement are also members of the NRA, because our police know that responsible gun ownership saves lives and that the right of self-defense is essential to public safety. Do we all agree with that? (Applause.) Our police and sheriffs also know that when you ban guns, only the criminals will be armed. (Applause.) For too long, Washington has gone after law-abiding gun owners while making life easier for criminals, drug dealers, traffickers and gang members. MS-13—you know about MS-13? It’s not pleasant for them anymore, folks. It’s not pleasant for them anymore. That’s a bad group. (Applause.) Not pleasant for MS-13. Get them the hell out of here, right? Get them out. (Applause.) Related: Guns in America: NRA boosts national reciprocity push We are protecting the freedoms of law-abiding Americans, and we are going after the criminal gangs and cartels that prey on our innocent citizens. And we are really going after them. (Applause.) As members of the NRA know well, some of the most important decisions a President can make are appointments—and I’ve appointed people who believe in the law, order, and justice. (Applause.) That is why I have selected as your Attorney General, number one, a really fine person, a really good man, a man who has spent his career fighting crime, supporting the police, and defending the Second Amendment. For the first time in a long time, you now have a pro-Second-Amendment, tough-on-crime Attorney General, and his name is Jeff Sessions. (Applause.) And Attorney General Sessions is putting our priorities into action. He’s going after the drug dealers who are peddling their poison all over our streets and destroying our youth. He’s going after the gang members who threaten our children. And he’s fully enforcing our immigration laws in all 50 states. And you know what? It’s about time. (Applause.) Heading up the effort to secure America’s borders is a great military general, a man of action: Homeland Security Director [sic], John Kelly. (Applause.) Secretary Kelly, who used to be General Kelly, is following through on my pledge to protect the borders, remove criminal aliens, and stop the drugs from pouring into our country. We’ve already seen -- listen to this; it never happened before, people can't even believe it. And, by the way, we will build the wall no matter how low this number gets or how this goes. Don't even think about it. Don't even think about it. (Applause.) You know, they're trying to use this number against us because we've done so unbelievably at the borders already. They're trying to use it against us. But you need that wall to stop the human trafficking, to stop the drugs, to stop the wrong people. You need the wall. But listen to this: We've already seen a 73 percent decrease -- never happened before -- in illegal immigration on the southern border since my election -- 73 percent. (Applause.) You see what they're doing, right? So why do you need a wall? We need a wall. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Build the wall! THE PRESIDENT: We’ll build the wall. Don't even think about it. Don't even think about it. Don't even think about it. That's an easy one. We're going to build the wall. We need the wall. I said to General Kelly, how important is it? He said, very important. It’s that final element. We need the wall. And it’s a wall in certain areas. Obviously, where you have these massive physical structures you don't need, and we have certain big rivers and all. But we need a wall, and we're going to get that wall. (Applause.) And the world is getting the message. They know that our border is no longer open to illegal immigration and that if you try to break in, you’ll be caught and you’ll be returned to your home. You're not staying any longer. And if you keep coming back illegally after deportation, you will be arrested, prosecuted, and you will put behind bars. Otherwise, it will never end. (Applause.) Let’s also remember that immigration security is national security. We’ve seen the attacks from 9/11 to Boston to San Bernardino. Hundreds of individuals from other countries have been charged with terrorism-related offenses in the United States. We spend billions and billions of dollars on security all over the world, but then we allow radical Islamic terrorists to enter right through our front door. That's not going to happen anymore. (Applause.) It’s time to get tough. It’s time we finally got smart. And yes, it’s also time to put America first. (Applause.) And perhaps -- I see all of those beautiful red and white hats --- but we will never forget our favorite slogan of them all: Make America Great Again. All right? (Applause.) Keeping our communities safe and protecting our freedoms also requires the cooperation of our state leaders. We have some incredible pro-Second Amendment governors here at the NRA conference, including Governor Scott of Florida. Where is Governor Scott? Great guy doing a great job. Governor Bryant of Mississippi. What a wonderful place. Governor Bryant is here. Thank you. Governor Deal of Georgia. (Applause.) And we're also joined by two people that -- well, one I loved right from the beginning; the other one I really liked, didn't like, and now like a lot again. (Laughter.) Does that make sense? Senator David Perdue -- he was from the beginning -- and Senator Ted Cruz -- like dislike, like. (Applause.) Where are they? Good guys. Good guys. Smart cookies. Each of these leaders knows that public officials must serve under the Constitution, not above it. We all took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States -- and that means defending the Second Amendment. (Applause.) So let me make a simple promise to every one of the freedom-loving Americans in the audience today: As your President, I will never, ever infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Never ever. (Applause.) Freedom is not a gift from government. Freedom is a gift from God. (Applause.) It was this conviction that stirred the heart of a great American patriot on that day, April, 242 years ago. It was the day that Paul Revere spread his Lexington alarm -- the famous warning that "the British are coming, the British are coming." Right? You've all heard that, right? The British are coming. Now we have other people trying to come, but believe me, they're not going to be successful. That I can tell you. (Applause.) Nothing changes, right, folks? Nothing changes. They are not going to be successful. There will be serious hurt on them, not on us. Next, came the shot heard around the world, and then a rag-tag army of God-fearing farmers, frontiersmen, shopkeepers, merchants that stood up to the most powerful army at that time on Earth. The most powerful army on Earth. But we sometimes forget what inspired those everyday farmers and workers in that great war for independence. Many years after the war, a young man asked Captain Levi Preston, aged 91, why he’d fought alongside his neighbors at Concord. Was it the Stamp Act? Was it the Tea Tax? Was it a work of philosophy? "No," the old veteran replied. “Then why?” he was asked. “Young man,” the Captain said, “what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: We always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to" govern ourselves. (Applause.) Captain Preston’s words are a reminder of what this organization and my administration are all about: the right of a sovereign people to govern their own affairs and govern them properly. (Applause.) We don’t want any longer to be ruled by the bureaucrats in Washington, or in any other country for that matter. In America, we are ruled by our citizens. We are ruled by each and every one of you. Related Stories Guns in America: Majority Oppose Carrying in Public Guns in America: NRA Boosts National Reciprocity Push Guns in America: Supreme Court to Discuss Gun Case But we can’t be complacent. These are dangerous times. These are horrible times for certain obvious reasons. But we’re going to make them great times again. Every day, we are up against those who would take away our freedoms, restrict our liberties, and even those who want to abolish the Second Amendment. We must be vigilant. And I know you are all up to the task. Since the first generation of Americans stood strong at Concord, each generation to follow has answered the call to defend freedom in their time. That is why we are here today: To defend freedom for our children. To defend the liberty of all Americans. And to defend the right of a free and sovereign people to keep and bear arms. I greatly appreciated your support on November 8th, in what will hopefully be one of the most important and positive elections for the United States of all time. And to the NRA, I can proudly say I will never, ever let you down. Thank you. God Bless you. God Bless our Constitution, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)