Podcasts about shawn it

A few fun facts about our guest today, Shawn Malloy: 48yr old Father of 2, a little trouble being ‘present' sometimes.Married 17yrs to a very tolerant and patient wife Meghan.Undergraduate degree in Biochemistry (after starting as a music major) from California State University, Long Beach (study abroad semester in Nottingham, England). 21 years at current employer, Biogen, 12 roles in 8 groups over 21 years. Hobbies: parkour (6 stitches), rock climbing (sprained knee), mountain biking (sprained ankle, lots of scars), and trail running, Yoga, meditation, swimming, racing midlife crisis Camaro, guitar building from scratch. “Poor student” all the way from kindergarten through high school – a few flashes of brilliance caught by the odd teacher throughout. Dangerous teenager and mid-20s kid. 25 jobs by the age of 27 and only fired once. Still struggles with honing in on 1 passion. In his own words:  “I've always preferred breadth to depth but I know that if I gave my full attention to one of my passions, I'd conquer the world. As with most ADD folks, I tend to be my own worst enemy in that regard. But anytime I've given something full attention I've had wild success – the guitar is one of my favorite examples. I had a desire to build a guitar for a while, a passion for artistic endeavors, creating things, and woodworking, and a goal of finishing it before Christmas as a gift for my dad. The end result was a beautiful piece of functional art, and it was the first time I ever saw my father cry”. Today we're talking mostly about Neurodiversity in the workplace.  ——  In this episode Peter and Shawn discuss:   00:40 - Thank you so much for listening and for subscribing! 01:01 - Intro and welcome Shawn Malloy 03:36 - You had 25 jobs by the age of 27. Let's talk about how you're not bored now, finally. 04:25 - "An ADD brain is like having a Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes" 04:55 - ADD can really be a blessing if you're in the right environment or you've put yourself in the right environment 05:55 - Growing at work under good, or ideal managing 06:55 - What happens when you get a dud for a manager at work? 08:05 - About Human Resources 09:40 - About recognizing talent and knowing how to utilize it in it's best possible ways 10:22 - Trust = Commitment 10:54 - On Managers and management 13:19 - On how purposeful planning is so important 15:00 - What do you tell the up and coming manager about how to manage folks with neurodiverse brains? 15:47 - “You don't manage to the role. You manage to the person”. 17:47 - On the power of diversity 18:42 - What is the one thing you've learned about your brain, that you wish you would've learned earlier in life? 19:12 - This bit right HERE on Imposter Syndrome and permitting your neurodiversity to work 20:00 - How can people find more about you? LinkedIN profile page is here: linkedin.com/in/shawn-malloy-3636696 20:22 - Guys, as always thanks so much for subscribing! Do you have a cool friend with a great story? We'd love to hear. I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via email at peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits  — TRANSCRIPT via Descript and then corrected.. somewhat:  [00:00:37] Peter: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal my name is Peter Shankman. I am thrilled to have you here today. It's great to be here. Its a gorgeous day outside its approaching the end of August as we're recording this. Couple more weeks to labor day, I am about to get outta here and take my daughter out for a week to Tenerife. If you don't know where that is, all need to know it's off the coast of Spain and it is the largest has the largest water park in the world. So you could make the argument I'm going to the largest water park in the world and taking my daughter with me. So it doesn't seem weird. Anyway, thrilled to have you for another episode!   We have a guy named Shawn Malloy on the podcast. Shawn is different than some of our guests, but also very much the same as all of our guests. 48 year old father to 12 year old boy Killion, 10 year old girl, Anna. He loves his kids to death has trouble being present sometimes .Sounds familiar, born and raised settled north of Boston, Massachusetts married 17 years to a lovely tolerant and patient wife named Megan. Here's the cool part undergraduate degree biochem okay, so abroad in England, 21 years, the past 21 years, he has worked at a company called Biogen, which is how I met him when I gave a keynote to Biogen about a month or so ago, 12 roles in eight groups over 21 years, loves adrenaline sports .Sounds, familiar, parkour, rock climbing, mountain biking. I love that he puts all this stuff in his bio and includes the number of stitches and injuries he got with each one, which I think is just so ADHD for all of us. He races a car. He has a midlife crisis Camaro on track. He built a guitar from scratch. Don't we all with that? Anyway, his story is like all of ours. He was a poor student. He was a dangerous teen, he, hit his stride stride in college. Let's talk to Shawn and figure out what turned him into what he's doing today. Shawn, welcome to Faster Than Normal man.  [00:02:37] Shawn: Thank you very much, Peter. Um, your talk at Biogen was definitely it hit home. Um, I was an adult diagnosed #ADHD or #ADD um, survivor, I guess you could say. Uh, and my teen years is definitely a survival story to some extent, um, But, yeah. Thanks for, thanks for having me on this is, uh, I'm looking forward to a fun conversation. [00:03:00] Peter: At the end of the day, we make it through, we survive it. Somehow we move on, you know, we become adults. I joke that, um, you know, I turned 50 a couple of weeks ago, but didn't really hit me until yesterday. When I had a wall unit delivered. I now own a wall unit in my living room, which is. What kind of bullshit is that right? That's how, you know, you're getting all that, a goddamn wall unit. You know, I used to just hang my TV on the wall, right? No, not I have a wall unit cause you know, I need storage. What is that? Right. Welcome to middle age.  [00:03:30] Shawn: Adulting. Um, it's horrible. [00:03:32] Peter: Yeah. So let's talk about ADHD. You had 25 jobs by the age of 27. You were only fired once you got bored, super fast, right? Biogen, you found a place that never let you get bored. Yes. Um, okay, so let's talk about that. Cause not everyone has the fortune to not always, you know, not everyone has a job where they don't always get bored. [00:03:56] Shawn: It it's been, honestly, it's been pretty amazing. Um, I think Biogen's been a place that. If you're performing reasonably well, you don't even have to be a top performer, but you're performing reasonably well. They'll let you try different stuff out. And I've moved from jobs that were somewhat adjacencies to jobs where I, I didn't know what I was doing. Um, And much to my surprise, each time I would be at 80% of my peers within a couple of months. And I attribute that to that ADD brain. Right. You've got this #Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes. Um, I. I was always able to assimilate information really quickly, put the pieces together, learn really fast, and it started to be intrinsically rewarded, rewarding. You talk about that dopamine hit, but the success profile that Biogen let me build over the years, just continued to add confidence to me as a person. Um, but also to the power of ADD. Like once I found out that I had ADD it started to click that this really can be a blessing if you're in the right environment or you've put yourself in the right environment. [00:05:02] Peter: Well, and that's sort of one of the, sort of the unexpected gifts of, or ADHD that we, we figure out, right? No one can tell you that, right? No one can say, oh, trust me. It's gonna be, you know, you don't believe it. It has to happen. And it has to show up naturally, but once it does. It's sort of that way of call, like, wow, I'm in a position. I, I, I have this job where I have ability to not only do my job great, but then I can create things within my job that give me that dopamine hit that, let me work harder and let work more and let do better. So it's almost like selfing, prophecy.  [00:05:33] Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. And in my time here, right, I've had 21 years. You can imagine I've had a lot of managers in that time. I've really only had two duds. And those were the times where there was such rigidity placed on me. And what I was allowed to do that I really did actually flounder. I, I was not good at the job, or I just couldn't get engaged with the job. And those were really hard and it got me to a point. You know, rather than looking for the ideal job, I look for the ideal manager and just make sure that the work's gonna be interesting. [00:06:04] Peter: That's an interesting point. Instead of finding the, the, looking for the ideal job, you look for the ideal manager. And I think a lot of that actually resonates because I remember, you know, the few jobs I've had, right? I, I, I, I worked for America online, back in the nineties. That was the last job I ever had. The only job I ever had. And I had a great manager who let me, who understood, like do your job, you know, do it whichever way works for you, but get it done. And, and that. I think for me, you know, for my first job, having that as a first job was a bit of a, a problem because, uh, I just assumed every job was like that right. I went to my second job and, and, and it totally was not. And, you know, there were 8:00 AM meetings. There were check-ins and like, you know, I quit in two weeks. So having that ability to find that, or to have a boss or to have a, a manager. Who understands how you work and let you, lets you go the way you want I think it's key. You sort of honed in on that and you said it, you only had two sort of duds. What happens when you get a dud though? How do you, how do you sort of handle yourself? Because it's not, you know, if you can't be yourself, if you're not allowed to do the things you want, be the way you want. It's difficult. [00:07:06] Shawn: It's very difficult and it, the problem that was just, it continued to get worse is I didn't stop being myself. I don't think that that's in the, a add profile is the ability to not be impulsive and not be yourself. Right. Um, that's so one of the things that defines us, so the relationship just deteriorated from not good to really bad. But what I did have was this long history of performance with a lot of people, I had a big network, so I was able to work through my network to find the next opportunity. Um, and really that was the only way out. I was not working my way out of this, this problem with the manager that was the dud or the managers that were duds, it just wasn't gonna work. Uh, one of the managers was removed, so they were a dud for everybody, not just me. The other one was the manager who was highly regarded and really was a brilliant man, but it was not a good personality match between how I needed to be functioning and how he wanted me to be functioning. And that one, the one where I network.  [00:08:04] Peter: That's interesting point. That's interesting point because you know, it's not all the time that, you know, remember there are a lot of times where you you're sitting there and you're going okay. It's not that the, the boss, isn't a good boss. He's not a good boss for me. Yes. Right. And how do you, how do you sort of explain that, you know, to, to the powers that be when they don't understand what he, not a good boss for you, he's a boss, you know, you deal with it. Well, it doesn't work that way all the time. [00:08:31] Shawn: No, it really doesn't. And you're very right. HR is almost always gonna side with the boss and they did, um, they didn't fully get it, but I wasn't in a unique position. This was, you know, maybe 15 years deep into my career here. I had built this legacy of everywhere I went, I did excellent. So it wasn't like, they just thought all of a sudden I'm not doing my job, but it was not a pleasant experience trying to, to escape if you will. I, there were a lot of things up against me, but I don't, I think there are gonna be a lot of people that don't have that benefit.  [00:09:00] Peter: Well, that's the thing that brings up a really interesting point is that, is that every, you know, for as long as you're in a job, whether it's 15 years or 15 days, you know, your goal is to create a, a sort of, uh, security blanket around yourself where people look at you and go, yeah, he's a really good worker, or he's a really, you know, smart employee or whatever and so if something's not working. Right. Let's not be that quick to blame him. Let's see what the issue and, and that doesn't necessarily happen all the time because companies aren't trained to think that way.  [00:09:35] Shawn: Not very often. No, I've what I got to know when I became a supervisor, is that there are very few people who don't want to do a good job. I would say it's bordering on none. Nobody wants to come in and be known as the crappy employee. Um, there's usually a barrier in their way, and it's whether it's a barrier in how the job is functioning or the training, or in my case, if you having a person with a ADD or some other, um, I don't wanna call it a disability, a different ability, a different brain, right. Um, you've gotta find ways to get them to be their best, cuz if you can find that for them; man, will they run through brick walls? Like if you're the person who discovers what that person's talent is after they've been, um, pushed down their whole life, what a connection seriously. Um, and had many of those over my career. [00:10:22] Peter: That's really a key point also, because if you are a manager and you're able to bring that out, Your in your employee. Right. And, and, you know, not only bring that out, but, but appreciate it as opposed to try and push it back down, you know, these employees will go to the end of the Earth for you. And I don't think enough managers- don'ts that, that. They don't realize the level of commitment that someone with a different brain will give you. If you give them that level of trust.  [00:10:54] Shawn: Oh, you I've seen it too many times to not believe it's true. Peter. You're, you're dead right. And. The not only that, right? The work side of things, but that personal connection that you get that personal, just watching somebody light up because they've been discovered for what they bring to the table. The, the trouble with managers is very few of them receive good formal training. It's kinda like when you're parenting, right. You become a parent. And then all of a sudden you've gotta figure out how to raise a human being. Um, when you're a manager, most of them are thrown to the, the, the job because they were good at a job, but not necessarily good at managing right. The good ones over time, come to realize that you manage the individual, you don't manage to manage your role. You manage to the people that you have in front of you. And, and that does get to you're managing to every individual difference. You're bringing out the bright spots and trying to minimize the deficits and it's not easy. It really isn't. So I don't, I don't fault always the managers who aren't good at it because it, it does take a, a really dedicated person to be able to do that. And you also have to have the bandwidth to do it. A lot of managers are given a day job as well as a manager role. So there's gotta be some patience for the manager as well.  [00:12:04] Peter: Isn't that, um, what you said earlier that, that, you know, most managers aren't born into, into the concept of managing they're they're they're become, they become managers cause they were given a job which isn't necessarily a manager job. Isn't that the Peter principle, the Peter principle is, is the object that basically states that every worker will rise to his or her highest level of incompetence. Yes right in that, in that you, you, you, you hire someone and they're good at their job, so you promote them and they're good at the next job, so you promote them again and they're good at the following job. So you promote them again. Then they're not good. If finally reach a point where they're not good. Well, you don't demote. But you don't promote them again. Right. So they sit there. Right. And they, it that's how bureaucracy happens.  [00:12:43] Shawn: yes. Yeah. It, it plays itself out over and over again in corporate America. For sure. I, I don't really have a good solution for it. Right. But I, I think, I don't know if there is one there really,  [00:12:55] Peter: I think we can make a lot, you and I can make a lot of money, but you figure one out.  [00:12:58] Shawn: No question. Yeah. I would agree. Um, I took a few notes as I was thinking about this podcast and, and the things I wanted to be able to convey. And we've talked about a, a great one, right? I think understanding how to navigate your career with ADD is important. But one of the things that I've I've learned throughout the years is, um, purposeful planning. As a person with ADD and activation energy. And I think they do relate to how I've navigated my career over time at Biogen. It wasn't just that I bounced around from job to job because I'm a ADD; I did all along have plans. Um, and for me, it's similar to the guitar that I built. Right. I had a, I finally had something that I could leverage my artistic capability, my engineering capability. I had a goal around it. Timing. And step by step of how to approach it. And I've, I've approached my career much the same way. And when I first started supervising people, I was in the manufacturing element of Biogen, very small little world. Okay. Very small little world. Right. But you feel like it's all there is because you're in the science, you're actually making the drug. But as I was developing people, all, I really knew how to develop them for were manufacturing roles. So I wanted to get out and see the broader thing that is biotech. I wanted to hop into some individual contributor roles, learn what different roles did so that as I came back to a management role, I'd understand how to develop people. Like when I saw somebody's passion to speak to what we were getting to before, when I noticed somebody's niche, I didn't necessarily know what to do with it other than maybe a small part in manufacturing, but now that I've come full circle with all this knowledge of all these roles, when I see somebody who's got a particular passion, I know where that fits in the organization. I know how to put them in a role that's gonna get them into that flow state. And that's good for people with a ADD that's good for people in life in general, but it all came because I had a plan that as a manager, I wanted to be able to develop people better, to be able to do that. I had to understand  [00:14:53] Peter: that brings up a great point. What do you tell, you know, if you had to. Sort of hammer that down in 10 words. What do you tell the up and coming manager about, I mean, managing in general, but obviously managing people with neuro diverse brains, right. Because you know, , you certainly do not learn this in school.  [00:15:11] Shawn: No, I think it's the first question I ask my people, um, when I meet them is- what is your passion? Where does time disappear for you? And then I'm gonna do my best to find the aspects of the current role that you're in and whatever future roles you wanna point yourself towards where that passion can come to bear as often as possible. Every job is gonna have crap you don't wanna do, sorry. It's work. Yeah. But the more that you can leverage those points of passion. The more you're gonna enjoy your work. The more you're gonna succeed. And the more you're just gonna really shine. And that's, that's what I would tell managers is you don't manage to the role you manage to the person. [00:15:51] Peter: Ooh, I like that.  [00:15:52] Shawn: If you wanna get the most out of the people that are around you, find out what drives them. Where does time disappear for them? You'll be surprised, right? You may hate analytics. You may hate looking at data, but I've had people under me who that is their passion. Mm-hmm they love working in a spreadsheet. They love seeing the story that comes out. When you start looking at the data and the numbers. If you have somebody who hates that, don't put them in a role that that's their main function. Find the person that that is their passion and oh, you're. Get such better work outta them, and you're gonna get better dedication, better loyalty. And you'll have people coming to you for jobs because they wanna work for you because you get it. You get how to place them in success. [00:16:35] Peter: You bring an interesting point because I think a lot of people, whether you're manager or not, you know, we tend to gravitate towards the stuff that we're good at the stuff we like. Right. I mean, you know, let's. As we're as we're growing up and we're in school when we're undiagnosed with a neurodiverse brain, um, it's no surprise that we gravitate towards the stuff we're really good at, right. For me it was, it was English or it was, you know, it was social studies or whatever it wasn't math. Right. And so math would be horrible. So I would avoid math as much as possible. I think as adults, when we're in job roles, we sort of keep that uh, in the back of our heads and we don't really let that go away. So that, so that, that, you know, we tend to gravitate sorts of stuff we like to do and try to avoid the stuff we don't. And so, because of that, I think, you know, we look at our, our, our sort of employees when we're in a managerial role and we put them in the same boat, but what we have to sort of understand is that, that we might have employees who love the very stuff that we hate, like love. Yes. The very stuff that we hate. And we have to sort of, I guess, embrace that. For them. Right. And let them under, you know, Hey, you, you have that math kick. Great. Go do math. you know, I, I, I look at along lines of, I, my assistant is awesome at the stuff I'm terrible at. She doesn't let me schedule stuff in my calendar because I screw it up, but she's great at it. She loves that stuff. And so it's that, it's that giving over that ability for her to do that. [00:18:08] Shawn: It's the power of diversity, right? We're talking about neurodiverse brain, but the power of diversity is everywhere in life. It's everywhere in work. And if you can work with people who are different than you, you're gonna be so much better off because everybody can bring a different strength to bear. Yeah. The hard part is a hundred percent. Different personalities that are there. Cause that can be a little weird. We are humans at the end of the day and sometimes we get a little quirky on the personality side.  [00:18:32] Peter: I think. We could do nine and a half hours on managing personalities. So I'm not even gonna start with that. but I will, I will end it with this. I'll ask you this. What is the one thing you've learned about your brain, whether it's, you know, in a professional setting or personal setting with your wife or your kids that you wish learned earlier?  [00:18:54] Shawn: That is a great question. I think you had mentioned it it's that the imposter syndrome, um, that it's very real, that it exists, but it really isn't true 90% of the time. The ADD brain, you are so good at so many things, and you can see the big picture better than so many other people. You're gonna be your own harshest critic. Yeah, that does not mean that you are not still better than 80 or 90% of the people who are doing the same thing. It means you're not 80 to 90% as good as you wanna be, or, you know, you could be, but stretching that extra mile may not be worth the effort. Your, your good enough is gonna be better than most people's best. So don't let imposter syndrome beat you down.  [00:19:46] Peter: I love that. [00:19:46] Shawn: Don't fall prey to it. Have faith that what you're doing is probably better than the majority of the people around you. [00:19:53] Peter: That's that's a phenomenal, uh, a phenomenal line. That's that's awesome. I love that. I love that. Awesome. Well, listen, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time, Shawn really appreciate it. I'm so glad we connected, uh, at the Biogen talk. Guys, Shawn Malloy , uh, how can people find you? How can they, how can they, uh, learn more about you?  LinkedIN profile page is here: linkedin.com/in/shawn-malloy-3636696 [00:20:11] Shawn: Uh, LinkedIN I am on LinkedIn. It's Shawn S H a w N M a L L O Y. Uh, and you'll find me as employed by Biogen. That's probably the cleanest and simplest way to find me.  [00:20:22] Peter: Awesome guys. We've been visiting with Shawn Malloy and you've been listening to Faster Than Normal. My name is Peter Shankman as always. We love that you're here. And if you had a second right now, go and leave us a review. I cannot tell you how those reviews help our uh, podcast growth, the more reviews the more it helps the website and the podcast is seen. It is really incredible, and we're able to help more and more people understand that ADHD is a gift, ADD is a gift, Any form of neurodiversity is a gift, not a curse! We will see you again next week with a brand new interview and a brand new episode. We appreciate you listening, and we appreciate all our guests, including Shawn, thank you so much Shawn for taking the time. Guys, thank you for listening. We will see you next week. My name is Peter Shankman. And remember the ADHD and all forms of neurodiversity is probably the best thing that ever happened to you. We will see you next week. Stay safe. Talk to you soon. Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at shankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week!

He joins Joey to discuss the company – which was recently acquired by Adobe – the platform – how it's used, what it's good for – and a little bit about how we're planning on collaborating with one another. As ever, if you like the episode, please share and review. Talking Points Shawn's story at Frame.io (01:35) How video is exploding as a medium (03:20) How Frame.io works (05:03) io current and future integrations (12:16) Typical Frame.io customers (15:19) io during the pandemic (16:14) How Camera-to-Cloud works (18:50) io and Viddyoze (23:56) Working remotely (28:41) Quotes “Just the number of problems we've managed to solve because of this tool is just phenomenal.” - Joey “We couldn't now work without something like Frame to help us with our process with the amount of content we create. I just got to say, amazing job really because it's just such a fantastic tool.” - Joey “I think that's where Frame flourished a little bit because everybody's working remotely, so they need tools like this to work together.” - Shawn “Essentially, Frame.io, in essence, is a review and collaboration tool.” - Shawn “With frame-accurate timestamps on Frame.io, it makes it a lot easier to collaborate.” - Shawn “It's a great collaborative tool. It kind of covers all those facets.” - Shawn “We try to build our product to be very user-friendly and make it accessible to everyone. Your application is incredibly easy to use as well. I think you guys have a really great tool.” - Shawn Useful Links Guest Links Frame.io Frame.io YouTube Main Platforms Viddyoze Website Viddyoze App Films By Viddyoze The Viddyoze Story | How We Built An 8-Figure Bootstrapped Software Enterprise Viddyoze Presents 'Fade To Black' | From Broke To $30 Million | Joey's Story Social Media Viddyoze Facebook Viddyoze Instagram Joey Xoto Instagram Viddyoze LinkedIn Joey Xoto LinkedIn Jamie Garside LinkedIn David Chamberlain LinkedIn

INTRODUCTION: Shawn Jacobson is the host of Tough Titties podcast!!! This show is an entertaining comedic lifestyle podcast and is as raw as it gets. She gives it to us straight when it comes to sex, dating, relationships, friendships, mental health and all the good shit in between. Shawn graduated in May 2020 from Syracuse University with a degree in TV, Radio, Film. Unfortunately, because of COVID-19, she was unable to get a job, so she started a passion project, which is her podcast. Shawn's goal is to break negative stigma around talking about sex and other topics seen as taboo. Tough Titties is available to listen to wherever you get your podcasts! INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):·      Shawn's Message To The World About Vaginas ·      Warning Signs Of Abuse·      Mental Health Struggles From A Young Age·      The Emotional Toll Of Break Ups·      Fuckboy Defined·      Trade Defined·      Pig/Spit Roasting Defined·      Dick Size Preferences·      Let's Talk Orgies!!! CONNECT WITH SHAWN: Website & Podcast: https://www.podpage.com/tough-titties/Facebook: https://bit.ly/30yylPWInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetoughtittiespodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/toughtittiespodTIK TOK: @shawn_jacobsonYouTube: https://bit.ly/3Fe7ebM SHAWN'S RECOMMENDATIONS:Safe Horizons: https://bit.ly/3cp3Wpw DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS:·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)o  https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370o  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEsTRANSCRIPT:[00:00:00]You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to. And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right. At the end of the day, my name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world. As we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your.There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: Hello. Hello everyone. And welcome to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast. This week. I'm talking with Shawn Jacobson and she's the host of the tough titties podcast. Yes. I said tough titties podcast. Now her show takes a comedic approach to podcasting and she also gets very raw.With her subject matter and everything that she likes to talk about. She covers sex, dating relationships, friendships, mental health, and all the good shit in [00:01:00] between. Now in this episode, we're going to be covering some of the warning signs of abuse. We're going to be talking about breakups and in case you don't know what a fuck boy is, we're going to break that down for you as well. And, Shawn's got a special, message to the world about vaginas and Hey, have you never had an orgy before thenyou can live vicariously through this episode.Sean in the house. Y'all look for the sex, drugs and Jesus podcast. And we, we going to be preaching to y'all today about sex. How are Shawn: you allowed to be here? I'm Jewish. De'Vannon: I won't tell no one. Shawn: Okay. Well, Jesus was a Jew anyway, so it's okay. De'Vannon: Hey, you know what God created sex. We didn't, we didn't create dicks.We didn't great pussies we didn't assholes or mouths or ears or eyes or navels or any of the holes that we use. That was all his idea. Shawn: And the clit, he [00:02:00] made the clit, which is literally purely made for pleasure. So I just need to let that out there. De'Vannon: There's all kinds of interesting things in the vagina.What would you like the world to know about the vagina? I was going to ask you that later, but since you, Shawn: I would like, I would like the world to know, well, okay. This is more like the men world, the male world that likes women look at a diagram and figure out where the clip is because you guys are out here rubbing like the left lip and we're just like crickets.And we're just like, yeah, that's great. Like figure out where it is pleased for the love of God or ask, I guess it's better than just, you know, guessing because you guys are horrible guessers and you're just not good [00:03:00] at it. You're just not good at it. Also. Another thing I want to say is to the, also the men, I just am going to be mean to the men. We don't really like the vaginas in the world. Majority of us don't really like the like Jack rabbit. So like get a better stroke game. Okay. That's it, De'Vannon: when she says Jack rabbit, she is talking about Jack hammer, fast porn star, fucking, you know? Yeah, yeah. Shawn: Do you like that De'Vannon: giving it or receiving it?Either both. It depends on the situation. My dear is if it's like this one drag queen performance song that they do, and they, and I can't think of a song that they remade, but the drag queen will be lipstick and on the song will go like it's true. [00:04:00] Sometimes, you know, a woman needs to be made love to that's true.And sometimes she just needs to get fucked and it's up over there for me, like me and my significant other. Usually it's pretty fast, you know? I'm a wild bitch and I really, really like it rough, but sometimes I like to slow it down for a variety. And to also to make him to , like, to reverse control him in a way, even though he's usually has his Dick in me.So then what I'll do. While he's doing it all fast, tell him to stop while he's still in me. And then I won't let him move at all for a while. And then I'll tell him the cadence and the pace, and then I'll eventually allow him to speed it back up again.Shawn: Well, I think, I think for women, when they're, when the guy is going really fast, [00:05:00]like Jack hammering it, doesn't get into the G spot. If that makes sense. Like when you're like slow stroking, but going deep, then I think that's when you really get the pleasure, if that makes sense. De'Vannon: Right. Because the G-spot is kind of like.From what I've understood is like, if you were to stick a finger in there and do like the come here thing, it's kind of like in the middle of the vagina canal. So a Dick is going to reach away past that. So, so yeah. So a different technique, Shawn: if you're lucky,have you ever hooked up with a girl? De'Vannon: Yeah. I'm not a gold star gay. Oh no, no. A gold star gay is a gay was only ever had sex with men probably only ever will have sex with men. And no I've had sex with both. Shawn: Who do you like better? De'Vannon: Men [00:06:00] because I like the, the domination and then I like come a lot. I'm a come whore.And so women don't have to be long stick, which can be inserted into my asshole mouth ear, or whatever the case may be that day. And so, yeah. Shawn: I'm scared of ass sex. I haven't made it De'Vannon: there yet. I believe in you. This is your year Shawn: 2022. Give me a few months to prepare. Maybe I have to find somebody though that I actually liked.Like, I'm not going to let some random hookup put anything up my butt hole. I don't trust them. And guys straight guys are really fucking stupid. Like they just shove it in and I'm like, I feel like there's a lot we're missing here. We need to like prep the area we need to use lube maybe as maybe means definitely we need to use loo [00:07:00] both slow.Like, I don't know. I've just heard so many horror stories from people or girls that have tried anal and their guy just really didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Maybe I need to have sex, anal sex with a BI man that could work. You De'Vannon: think about that? We have bisexual. Men are great. They're wonderful.I recommend them. Or you could just send them to my house for some remedial lessons before they come over to you. Or Shawn: I actually read that they are like the best lovers De'Vannon: probably for us, but you know, it always depends on what you're looking for. Okay, so, so I'm curious, so your, your podcast is called tough kitties, the tough titties podcasts, which is what we're highlighting today in the logo is very interesting.You got different cup sizes of titties with very, got lots of boobies, [00:08:00] right? It's nice nipples and everything like that. I already showed you mine because I'm a lady.It's true, though. What I want to know is why the name tough titties, and I guess the logo speaks for itself, unless there may be something I'm Shawn: missing. No, there's no hidden message there. I just wanted a bunch of tickets on my art. So the name I was trying to come up with a good name for a while and.It kind of just came to me because my mom used to say tough titties to me when I was a kid, like, I'd be a brat or something and she'd be like, well, you don't get everything. You want tough titties type of thing. And then obviously, you know, when you're little, you hear that, but you don't really know what titties are, you know?So I was in kindergarten and I said it to another [00:09:00] classmate in class. I don't know. I don't remember exactly what that person was doing, but I said like, well, tough titties. And my kindergarten teacher had an aneurysm and, and I got in trouble for that. And then I've kind of just really loved the phrase ever since then.And I just think it's just a good, it's just good. I don't know. That's no deep meaning. I just like it. De'Vannon: You rebel rouser, you. So, what is the, the goal of your podcast, who is your target audience? Shawn: The goal of my pod cast is just, you have, you know, an open and honest conversation about sex, dating relationships, you know, sprinkle in some mental health and psychology because those things contribute to a lot of our behavior and [00:10:00] interpersonal relationships and insects.So I think it's important to touch on those things too. And so my target audience you know, I don't care. Anybody can listen. I would like everyone to listen because I think I talk about a lot of stuff that could be helpful for anybody. But the majority of my audience is 23 to 27. Like 50% is in that age range.And 60%, 65 to 70% is female, 30% male, which I would like more men, more men to listen because they're the ones that really need to learn. De'Vannon: I would just like more men in general, honey, Shawn: me too, because I got slim pickings here. I don't like anybody De'Vannon: in Florida. Oh God, you even boys come up there and I mean, everyone's so beautiful and delicious looking [00:11:00] you think.Well, what part of Florida are you in? Exactly. Shawn: I'm in south De'Vannon: Florida. Well, it depends on what you have a flavor for. So. Shawn: My thing is just like, there's such trash. I mean, some of them are cute, but like parents, they just don't know how to treat a lady. Me.So yeah. It's the dating scene down here has not been my friend. De'Vannon: Well, I invite you to Los Angeles, which is my favorite city. I'll move back there one day and you can just say I Shawn: want to go there very badly.De'Vannon: We'll be there for Halloween almost like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday for folks. Shit damn near a week. Yeah. So I'm Gengar this year. Pokemon Pokemoning it Gengar. The pokey. [00:12:00] I believe he is he's as victims. Okay, mom, he just kind of like, Shawn: I thought you were going to be something sexy.De'Vannon: Well, that was last year. I was Fred Flintstone with the no underwear underneath his robehoochie dress. Anyway, what about you? Shawn: I don't think I did anything for Halloween last year. And then this year I have not thought about it at all. I'm not a big fan of Halloween. I like the camp sale candy on November 1st. That's it? I don't like being scared. I don't trust people. I feel like on Halloween, people go fucking crazy and like shit goes down on Halloween because they think it's like the purge low key.And I don't fuck with that. I don't fuck with people that were mass. The [00:13:00] medical mass. That's fine. I don't care about that. I'm talking about like the purge mass or scary, any mass you get at like spirit Halloween. I can't, I just let me stay in my house and I'll eat the candy that I'm supposed to give to children.De'Vannon: Fair enough. But, and so speaking of mental health issues like he did, I didn't want to touch on that on one of the shows you were talking about. I want to get your thoughts again on you. You were talking about the warning signs of abuse, which you hadn't gotten from safe horizon that, or, yeah. And I know that you have your own history of mental health issues too.So I was curious if any of your history has to do with some sort of abuse. Shawn: No thankfully, no. Yeah, I did that little disclaimer, just because, you know, the Gabby Pitino case has gotten really big. And it kind of gave me the [00:14:00] opportunity to touch on it. I like to have serious conversations on my show, but a lot of the time it is like funny, you know, and I thought, you know, if anybody who listens to my show needed to hear that, that I should put that out there. So yeah, for me, no, I have never dealt with any abuse like that, but my sister was with this guy for like 10 years, who was. Physically emotionally, mentally violent. And she finally left him last year during COVID cause he was home way too much and she's like, okay. Yeah. Like I can't even put up with this anymore.And that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. So she's been out of there for like a year or so. So for me, no, but I have a sister who went through that, [00:15:00] so yeah, I think it is important because I think it's a lot more prevalent than we think, you know, De'Vannon: the warning signs from safe horizon that, or I'll put that in the show notes for sure. No, the ones that stood out for me was when they try to isolate. The person being abused from friends and family. Shawn: Yeah. So they have no support system besides the abuser. And that was how my, my husband, my sister's husband was, he did not like when she visited me and you know, my mom and my other sister, he did not like her doing anything without him. But he was not allowed at my house. So, you know, that caused a lot of, a lot of stuff. He was just very controlling and it's just, I think, you know, all these abusers start out small because [00:16:00] if they started out the way that they end up, nobody would be with them. So they start out small. So I think that it's kind of important just to recognize the small signs before they get too big.And you know, when to leave. De'Vannon: Right. And and safe horizon.org has those warning signs. And it was important that you, that you've experienced it because from listening to your podcast is like you were saying, it can be hard to tell if a loved one is in an abusive relationship, unless, you know, the signs to look for.I feel like it took you awhile to realize what was going on with your sister. Shawn: I knew I didn't like him from the beginning. Keep in mind, my sister's 10 years older than I am. So she was with him when I was younger and I didn't really know what this kind of stuff was. So she did talk to my mom a lot about it and [00:17:00] you know, my mom would always tell her, you know, like you should leave him, but it's never that easy. And so. Yeah. When I first met him, I was like, I don't know. I don't like him, but I don't know. Maybe I was just feeling like he was like taking my sister away type of thing. But as I got older, I started hearing more of the things that he was doing. And so I think I didn't, I didn't really see it.I just heard about it because I didn't get to see her that often because of him. But now that I know the signs and I'm like, he literally checks off every single one, you De'Vannon: know, she made it out. Yeah. So then what are some of your personal mental health struggles that you have dealt with or, or dealing with?Shawn: Yeah, so I [00:18:00] think that I've had depression probably since I was nine years old. But I wasn't really sure what it was, you know, because I was like so young and most nine-year-old kids, at least when I was nine years old, did not struggle with that. Or at least I didn't think so. I just thought I was different. And so when I was nine, that was like the triggering point was that my dad passed away, like unexpectedly. So that kind of triggered that. And I went to therapy, but I was nine. So I didn't really know. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing there. You know what I mean? Like I couldn't process what therapy was.I didn't want to be there. I was like, just random man is trying to talk to me about shit. I don't want to talk about so after a little bit of that, I stopped doing it. I should have [00:19:00] went back when I was in high school. When I started liking boys, because that's my downfall. And then in college I think I was probably severely depressed, like 75% of my time there.And my, I got a boyfriend and that brought me out of it, but. I was like, so dependent on him for like all of my happiness. He was like my whole life. I did not have a life outside of him. Which I think is kind of, it kind of happens to a lot of people in their first relationships. I think I've seen it in, in some of my friends first relationships, like when we were younger, it's just like that puppy love , you know, you don't want to, you don't want to be away from that person.And so I was so happy with him whenever I was with him. So we spent literally [00:20:00] every second together pretty much. And so when we broke up, I literally had a mental breakdown, like severely unwell. And so that kind of is what triggered me to be like, okay, I need help. This is not a normal response to a breakup, obviously regularly.Break up your you're sad, but you can like still live your life. Like I could not live, like it was horrible. And so that's when I got back into therapy and that's kind of what made me start thinking about and start talking about my relationship to men and to sex, because I think it all kind of stems down to losing my dad at a young age, which is kind of fucked up.De'Vannon: I am sorry that that happened to you. But I am glad that you seem to [00:21:00] be aware that there is a problem that you're down from it. And I think that that's where it begins now, healing it and going to come until it's meant to, you know, I think, I think our task is to recognize our weaknesses and the issues establish a plan and to work with them, to be incredibly patient with ourselves as we stumble and fall along the way.But God, you know, I could see that, you know, not having that masculine foundation. Shawn: Yeah. And so this is kind of where the psychology and mental health stuff comes in on my podcast is, you know, a lot of the shit that we struggle with has to. Like it comes from our childhood, whatever we experienced. I talk about attachment theory. I don't know if you're familiar with what your attachment [00:22:00] is, but mine is anxious. So that comes in the form of being clingy as fuck being needy as fuck. And like scared of abandonment. And so if you're not securely attached and some people think they are, but they're not if you're not securely attached it, you have your own struggles that you face in all of your relationships, not just romantic.So I think it's very important that we kind of, we got to sadly get, go back into our childhood and figure out where we were fucked up.De'Vannon: Hey, it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. I've been so, so much of that, you know, my own, this, this, this show here that I have has been very healing. Shawn: Ronnie, my brother, I feel the same way too. Very healing. It's like [00:23:00] cathartic. Right. De'Vannon: And I didn't expect that, you know, I started this podcast to compliment my memoir.That's coming out, but didn't the process I'm like, just talking to people has just helped me to get past some shit, which is why I love having people like you on, because we're willing to be transparent because it helps people. I probably say this on every fucking show, but yeah, like it's just something healing. About being transparent. Whenever somebody hears about a similar struggle with gives them the strength to go on a little bit further, not advice, not even needing advice, just knowing that somebody else is out there suffering the same ways, so helpful to people.Shawn: Yeah. And I think a lot of people have struggled in the way that both of us have, but not a lot of people are vocal about it. So someone's gotta be, and though someone's or us, De'Vannon: oh, someone's arm us with a [00:24:00] capital R so, okay, cool. So let's switch gears and get into a more fuckery.So, and I was trying to see the name of that particular show. That's what I've been giving out, trying to put a little bit Dov. It was something like something in origin. Shawn: Yeah. What is the first word? Oh, my tape sex tapes. De'Vannon: Six saves the word threesomes. Oh my. And I listened to several of them, but that one stood out to me.The most, that guy has said, Shawn: just because you have a crush on him. That's why I De'Vannon: have a Bonnie him, but I have to play hard to get, because I already heard his secrets. Yeah. I don't want him totally not interested.Shawn: I'm gonna see if he wants to come on the show [00:25:00] for you. You want me to text him right De'Vannon: now? I do it. I love the fucking with like straight guys and stuff like that. Not necessarily trying to turn them straight, but I like to see how much of my feminine energy they can handle without getting offended. I feel Shawn: like he would probably like flirt back with you.I think it's just American guys. They're like almost, I don't know. They're just like so hyper masculine. Like they, they can't even. Like play around with it. You know what I mean? I De'Vannon: just toxically just, just fucking bored with it. I'm Shawn: saying I have a POS podcast opportunity for you,De'Vannon: the good way to say it. So in there, you and sexy man there, we're talking about Shawn: sexy De'Vannon: man. Couple of things here, [00:26:00] like you, you described him as a fuck. Boy. He didn't want to be called a fuck. Boy. He felt like that it was a negative term. So I want to get into some terminology here. So there's a fuck boy. I want to get your take on what a fuck a boy he is.And then we're going to talk about trade, which is a, more of a term in the gay world, but they're kind of the same Shawn: trade trade. I've never heard that. Okay. So I feel like a fuck boy is a guy who will literally do anything to get in your pants. If that includes making you feel like he likes you, he will do that.He will lie up and down just to get in your pants. He'll make you feel like you're special just to get in your pants. And I think there's no problem with casual sex. Okay. But I think the problem is when [00:27:00] people aren't honest about what they want. And then that's when people's feelings get hurt. And I don't like that, you know, is that what a trade is for you?De'Vannon: Trade. That is a good definition of a fuck boy. And I would just ask you that a foot voice, somebody who has basically fucked everyone in town that's like a guy version of what some would consider to be a whore or promiscuous woman, Shawn: nothing wrong with being a whore. There's something wrong with being a fuck.Boy. I think it's De'Vannon: yes. The line, not the amount of sex, right. Okay. We'll be on that for sure. And a trade is the same way. So trade in the gay world would be a very masculine guy. Usually in very fucking good shape. We'll have a girlfriend on the side, but then he's gonna come around and fuck the dudes on the other side of town.But she don't know. Shawn: Oh, that was spot.De'Vannon: Trade. So [00:28:00] some people may call him an undercover brother or whatever the case may be. Trade will be fucking trainees and real girls, real fish and men all at the same time. And then, but that's not necessarily, everyone knows what's happening. He's at the center, these, the nucleus of this fuck world that he's created.Wow. Wow. So that's what you call a piece of trade this urban dictionary. If you don't trust me, I'm gonna put urban dictionary in the Shawn: show. I have a feeling that you wouldn't lie to me about that. I'm De'Vannon: not talking to you, honey. I'm talking to the audience audience. So I'm going to put urban dictionary in the show notes that somebody out there probably hasn't heard of urban dictionary can really help you understand a lot of shit in this world, urban Shawn: dictionary, at least once a day.I never know what the fuck people are talking about, De'Vannon: right? Like what is a. I [00:29:00] need to know, oh my God.Shawn: Oh my God. No, I think the most recent thing I looked up was a sneaky link. I'm like what the actual fuck is that I've never heard that, but I think that's like the generation under me uses that it's De'Vannon: just like a hookup. Shawn: It's just like someone you hook up with, I think De'Vannon: very covert way of texting and your parents, their parents don't know what the fuck they're talking about.So so speaking of terms and urban dictionary, I looked up pig roasting earlier, which is something that sexy man did when he was like 19 or something like that. And so doing what you care. So on the tail, the audience was pig roasting, as we were talking about orgies now. Okay. Shawn: I think it's spit roasting spit RO.De'Vannon: Changeable terms, but tell me what your understanding is of it. [00:30:00]Shawn: Okay. I think it's kind of like an Eiffel tower situation. Where, why are you smiling so big? I think it's like two guys and then a girl in the middle. She is on all fours, maybe that's Eiffel tower and maybe spit roast. And she's on her back. I don't know the technicalities.I haven't done it, but one penis is in her vagina. The other penis is in her mouth and then they just rotate her around like a rotisserie chicken. De'Vannon: Right. And that's why it's called pig roast. In Hawaii or you see that they stick the steak or the rotisserie chicken all the way through the ass in the mouth.So it's like, if you have a death in your mouth and a Dick in your ass and you're in the middle, that it could be a rotisserie chicken or a pig roasting on the motherhood, the [00:31:00] whole thing she's been skewered. And basically Shawn: it is an Eiffel tower then. De'Vannon: Yeah. It can be called that. Shawn: I think the Eiffel tower is like the guys hold hands.So it's like a triangle. Oh De'Vannon: yeah. In order to balance the balance, the forest, Shawn: that's a dream though. I'd love to do that. And my dream threesome. I want to guys, because I will not be sharing any attention with another bitch. I will tell you De'Vannon: that. Yeah. You pointed that out because, cause in your show you were talking about how they had like a whole five way going on.It was two guys and the one girl they thought was ugly and the other two, they thought work and she left the gracefully and you were like, okay, that would not be me. I would not bow out gracefully. Shawn: Oh, are you kidding? Like that is just so mean. They kind of just started leaving her out and I'm like, if that were to ever happen to me, I would lose my mind.That's why I [00:32:00] can't be put in those situations. Oh, wait dog just texted me. He said, what about I might be interested?De'Vannon: Oh, Honeywell will, we will, we will deal with him after the show picture of my tits, which I flashed you before we came on the air and that'll seal the So you've never had an orgy report. Shawn: No, I know shocking. I know I sound like such a whore.De'Vannon: I Shawn: know I have not having orgies. I don't know. Where am I supposed to find these said orgies?De'Vannon: Well, you can go on app and look for them. Or if you have ever have a significant other, you can look for them together, either out or on an app or. I mean, you're a girl. You can just go to any fucking club and just look hot and find two guys or show it up together.And there you go. Shawn: Yeah. I don't know. I just feel like [00:33:00] it's a hard to F I feel like you have to really coordinate a two guy threesome. De'Vannon: Well, any kind of threesome or two, there were three plus it's going to take some coordination cause you have different agendas, different energies, different everything.Well, you know, like y'all were discussing on your show. You know, the guys are concerned about the other Dick sizes of everyone else. And like, like, like, like my new boyfriend said he would prefer that if he's in a group situation at all the, all the other guys, they are having similar Dick size to him, not, not too much smaller than too much bigger that way.There's no like intimidation, because he was like, you know, women, you know, there's subjectiveness to what classifies a sexy woman, but either you have a 12 inch Dick or you every six inch Dick or a nine inch, one or 14 inch one, there was a clear winner. And so they, so they would [00:34:00] rather similar Dick sizes personally.I don't give a fuck about Dick size. I'm happy with Shawn: average, to be honest with you, De'Vannon: there's a point where it's too much for you. Shawn: Yeah, I have had sex. This is like my sophomore year in college. But I had sex with this guy who went to my school, but he was from Spain and. He kept saying owl. And I'm like, why are you saying Al?I'm fine. And he was like, it feels like something is crushing the tip of my Dick. And then I was like, okay, like, let's just stop. Like, I'm not trying to hurt you. And then I started researching it and I think it was getting like caught in my cervix or something. I don't know. So average is good for me and yeah, I have a tight [00:35:00] punani so I think that, that I prefer De'Vannon: like all up in your guts, literally.Shawn: I don't know. I felt fine, but he was saying, oh, and I was like, I've never had a guy say owl from sex from like putting his penis in me that you use. You're like, wow, that's great. Was he like super long? Yeah. De'Vannon: How many answers are now get honey. Shawn: I think he said that he was like nine, but I feel like you're like, Hmm, but you want a whole foot long.And your ass, De'Vannon: the longest I have had was about maybe 15 or 16, Shawn: who is walking around sling in that De'Vannon: dog. You got them out there, honey. I have had, I even do with that, whatever you can, I'm Shawn: like, give me a [00:36:00] nice seven inches and I don't live my life happily. De'Vannon: I mean the first time I had a date for that long and he was on like a 19 year old and I went over to his mom's house and picked him up and she greeted me in the driveway.Sorry, am I I'm a Cougar? Anyway, I'm like 38. My boyfriend is 24. I love him young bitch. And so it is what it is. And so like I'm older and so Hey to shade. And so, and so, yeah, he was, I think like in the 14, 15 inch range and he was one of these profiles on an app that almost looks fake because you're like, can this Dick really be this long bitch?It really, really was. And I feel Shawn: what race was this man? He was black. Have you ever seen a white man with that? De'Vannon: Yes, when I was a method dealer in Houston, one of the trucks used to hang out at my trap house. He wanted something, but I didn't know [00:37:00] because he had a wife and kids. And as far as I knew he was straight, it just one day he popped the Dick out on me.Out of nowhere, I was backing up some drugs at the table and it was same. And of course he was one of those white boys kind of like who acts black, like, you know, like G-Eazy and shit like that. You know, he has that, he got that about him, which I think is very fucking like boys. And and so there was that there was a Latino, when I lived with in Tucson and his shit, he had like imported, double XL, condoms with magnums were too small for him.And that his shit was way past 12 honey. And Shawn: so what do you do with a Dick that big, when you're like not having sex, do you have to like tape it to your leg? Well, they also don't understand. De'Vannon: Now they all start off as a little bitty wormy, looking, squiggly things, all of them. Shawn: And then they grow flat De'Vannon: long row.That fucking big, like [00:38:00] the picture made out of like a spongy sort of cellular material. And so it can expand greatly. So you're not always walking around with it, down to your knees and you know, and so that's why we get surprised by it. Sometimes it's nerves have really big dicks too. They just do. Yes.You used to find it and find you on any given day. You find me hanging around the apple store, honey. There's nothing wrong with my iPhone, but you know, those little skinny jeans and shit like that, they've got some huge monster. Shawn: It's like the spinny nerdy boys. They're the songs.De'Vannon: I'm telling you secrets out. Everyone had to the apple store and get you some Dick it, cause that's Shawn: like regular. De'Vannon: You've got to do. I know of people who have run from monster dicks before you have to listen to your body and your body's telling you, it doesn't want to get destroyed by that. But I feel sorry for a lot of guys like that, [00:39:00] because it's difficult for them to come.Cause they can't really go balls deep and most people they don't get, they don't get enough sufficient friction because you barely have a third of the Dick in there and this is why you can't go. And so there's a lot of masturbating. It's a lot of blow jobbing, you know, and stuff like that. No, but there's a lot to work with, you know, three or four people can all get both of their hands on this, that long, like fucking go for Shawn: it.It's like a magic bean stock De'Vannon: that just, yeah, you can climb then motherfucker and find, find Jack NGO. Sowhen it comes to sex and things like that you know, from listening to yours, like the guys were talking about how they like to do a good job while they're having sex and everything like that. And I feel like the focus should be more on [00:40:00] a conjugal. Experience, you know, like the, the whoever's there are all experienced to get, to get together.You know, I say this to try to release guys from the pressure of feeling like they have to perform a certain way or, you know, and everything like that, you know, like I don't, I don't think we should look at it like, okay, this is my project here. I need to get this person off. You know, how about, why don't we find a way to get off together, you know?And you both help each other. You understand what I'm saying? But what do you think about that? Shawn: Here's the thing. Okay. Maybe it's an age thing, but I don't think it is because I've hooked up with the older guys, like 39, 40, 43, and they don't give a fuck about my orgasm. They just only care about theirs.And they're like, okay. Night-night and then they turn over and I'm like I [00:41:00] am nowhere even finished here. So, so I think it's hard because like, I get the performance anxiety that guys get. But at the same time, if you took a moment and focused on the woman, because let's be real I'm I think only like less than 20% of women will orgasm from penetration.Like we need other stuff. So take a break, relax. And just like play with her puss. I don't know, like do something like women really love foreplay. And I think sometimes men get so excited to fuck like actually do the penetration that like, they, they skip over that really fast. And I think in my opinion, foreplay is better than the actual penetration.Like it's, I think it's more [00:42:00] fun. I think it feels better. And I'm more likely to come from that. So I think if men focus more on the feeling and the feelings that they're giving to the woman, rather than performance, I think maybe that would help, but I don't really feel bad for them.De'Vannon: Well, well, I mean, if that's the experiences that you had, and I can, I can, I can imagine, I could imagine, but you know, one day, Sean, you're going to find a guy who, who treats you exactly the way you want to be treated. I just, so what kind of foreplay do you like? What do you like have done to you? Let's tell the world right now.Shawn: Oh God. Okay. I love a good make-out [00:43:00] sesh. Like I just really love making out, but also if you're not good at kissing, the sex is probably going to be bad. Do you agree? De'Vannon: I don't let things be bad. Like if I'm going to get, get, get down to visit with somebody, it will be good. And it's just decided, so they suck at kissing.Now I'm going to teach them how.Shawn: Like, how do you do that? How do you teach somebody to De'Vannon: make them stop and be like, you're doing it wrong? Let me show you. And even though, cause I'm usually the submissive in sexual encounters and, and I've had married men who haven't been married to women by men, gay men, all kinds of men. Like they, you know, they, once they get turned on and everything like that, it doesn't matter how they're getting touched that you just go out there just black, that they are.It's really just that simple. [00:44:00] So right. It's the men are not super complicated. Actually. I Shawn: know there are. So you guys are so simple, but the women just can't believe that they're so simple. So we're like, okay, we have let's figure out what's really going on here, but they're really just. Simple De'Vannon: this thing, if you're going to agree to kiss them and you don't like it, then you stop and you show them how to do it.Right. There's no sense in going through an experience that you don't like or something you can do about it. Pause it. Let's have some conversation won't take long, but I don't necessarily equate bag kissing the bad Dick because. People have all kinds of emotional connotations with kissing. Some people feel like that's a super close thing to do was sticking a Dick.And somebody is not in any emotional attachment at all. Doesn't make any fucking, but you know, whatever you believe in your head is the way that you're going to go out there and approach society. [00:45:00] So maybe they're not kissing well because they haven't decided to give you their heart yet. And maybe they just want a kiss because you want it to kiss, but they really aren't fully committed to it because they're not in love with you.And I think they need to be in love with you to do the kiss. It's all kinds of shit that goes through people's head over kissing. And so that's Shawn: just too much.De'Vannon: It is too much going on. I'm like we in this bed, we fucking, we might as well kiss and do every damn thing else and be done.Shawn: Yeah, I, so yeah, I love a good make-out session. Like starting out like slow. Cute. And then it gets like nasty, you know, then I love like boob and nipple stuff, so maybe I should get my nipples pierced, but I'm scared. I'm not trying to like, have my Teton is out in front of like the whole tattoo shop and then they have to flick your nipples.I'm like, [00:46:00] I don't want this random man in a store flicking my nipples De'Vannon: that turned into the sex session. Shawn: Yeah. But I feel like that's more like porn. I don't know if that would happen in real life for you. Maybe you're like I would make it happen. Yeah, so some boob stuff, whatever I've really. I have started to love a good fingering because I had someone this is really hot and I think people should do this more and he was older.So I think that's why he did it. He was, he started fingering me and then he was like, hold on one second. And he turned to his nightstand and just brought out some lube squirted on his hand, squirted it on me and just like went to town. It felt so good. And guys, my age would literally never do that.They're scared of lube. And I was like, do you not [00:47:00] understand how hot that is hot? So like the straight boys in their twenties get some lube and put it in your nightstand. Yeah, love that love when they go down on, but also like if you're not good at that, then I'd rather you just finger. You know, cause sometimes for me, like if it's not, if I don't feel enough, like pressure or something, it literally feels like rain.I'm like, okay, let's just get back up here. De'Vannon: Well, you know, you got to talk to people. Sex is all about communication. Even if it is a random hookup or a one time thing, you know, you got to tell us how to do you the right way, because you're going to be different than the previous girl he was with versus the next girl.So I don't hold that against them. I understand this, this boy needs some instruction and some direction channel the inner Cougar and you bitch [00:48:00] and teach the men that shit. That is how it ended up itself. When a woman tells a man what to do. Shawn: Yeah, I think, I think it's coming with age. It's coming with age when I was younger, I would never say anything because I was like scared to hurt the boys feelings.And I still kind of feel that way, especially because I do date and hook up with guys older than me, like 10 plus years. So it's a weird little like power dynamic that I feel like I shouldn't say anything or like build up the courage to say something, but I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I just need a little more time De'Vannon: at a time.At least, you know, that are wrecks. You need to be headed in. This is how people out there, you know, we get to a point where we're happy with everything that we do, especially when it comes to an interaction with somebody else. If there's something that we don't like, change it and tell them[00:49:00] now ended if they're unwilling to adjust.But you'd be surprised how open and receptive people would be to to, to talking through it. And guys has got to get past the being intimidated if she wants to toy in the room. Shawn: Oh yeah. I don't understand that at De'Vannon: all. But the men are being taught by men who were also fractured and broken and head all the time, or they're just meeting taught by porn and not by anything else.And then, so they're approaching you with a whole head full of bullshit, but they don't know. It's both, they're just thinking, okay, I'm supposed to do this as the guy in the porn did it that way. You know, the education is so he needs to be reeducated and that's where you come in one day once you're ready to do that and take him to that house.Shawn: Yeah, I think I'll, I'll think I'll get there. I think I will get there. [00:50:00]De'Vannon: But what, what was that trick that you had for forgiving him? Had a cotton mouth cure. Apparently if you smoked some weed or whatever the fuck and you have dry mouth you, how, how, how, how can we fix that? Shawn: Okay. My newest favorite thing to do is honey head.You can do this on any genitalia that you want. It works for Dick. I don't eat pussy, but I learned this from someone who is bisexual. So she's done it to both. So for men, you get some honey, well, Yeah. I mean, I don't travel with honey. I just assume people have it in their kitchen, but yeah, so you just literally put a little like dollop on their deck or just like a little, little [00:51:00] bit on a clit, depending on who you're working with and you just, you know, suck it, how you normally would or like how you normally would, but the honey stimulate your salivary glands.So you make a lot of spit. So if you were smoking, if you have cotton mouth, if you're nervous and you don't have that much spit, this is like a really great tip. And it's like, Whoever you're hooking up with probably has honey in their kitchen anyway. And you know, when I do this to guys, I've only done it to two so far, but when I bring it up, they're like so excited.They're like, what, what do you need honey for? Okay, I'll go get it. And then they like run to the kitchen ass naked. And I've gotten like really, really great reviews from this. I think [00:52:00] the guy thinks it's like really hot because it's new. Like, I don't think a lot of people have like dropped some honey on their deck before they got head. And so, yeah, I kind of spice it up plus like 99.9% of guys like sloppy head. And the honey will help you achieve that because you get a lot more spit. De'Vannon: Wonderful like the honey too. We haven't done that in a while. The breakout, the honey, honey, Shawn: you should, it's so fun. And it tastes good. De'Vannon: We, I liked the Hershey strawberry syrup, which is used in much the same way, but we basically basically juggle it all over him.Shawn: I think the, so if you're gonna go down on a girl and you want to use the honey, I think you as [00:53:00] honey, like don't use like Hershey's chocolate syrup. Because, you know, vaginas are very sensitive and at least honey's like natural, right? A little, it might still, it might still fuck up your pH. I don't know, but I can guarantee you that chocolate drizzle will definitely do that.So you might as well go with the honey. If you are a vagina owner. De'Vannon: So, so you said pH the pH balance. So, so you have you find that the pH balance of a vagina that you stick like a litmus strip?Shawn: I don't know. I don't know what the pH balance is of vagina, but I will tell you when your pH in there gets the runoff and mine is very sensitive for some reason. Like if there's a new toy, a new finger, a new Dick, the condom, like anything, anything foreign she's like what the [00:54:00] actual fuck is this. And like, I get bacterial vaginosis or yeast infection and that fucking socks.So yeah, no, you don't stick a strip up your Cooter. But you know, women, if your. The smell down there changes. If it smells fishy, it's probably a bacterial vaginosis or some form of an STI. And then, you know, if you pull down your pants and you have some cottage cheese up in there, probably a yeasty.So girls know, girls know, we don't know our actual pH balance, unless like everyone's sticking strips up their vagina to find that out. But I do not do that. I just know when something's off De'Vannon: the girl who taught you about the honey, you said that you have never eaten a vagina. Did she [00:55:00] eat yours? No. So you never done any girl on Shawn: girl?No, I'm so scared of vagina. I really love man.Right now. Yes, right now I'm strictly dickly. I feel like, I feel like, I don't know, as people age, they're kind of like, oh, sure. I'll try. But right now I haven't gotten to that point. She, the lady that I'm talking about, she was a guest on my show and she's a kink educator and I asked her what her favorite sex tip was, and that was it.And I was like, okay, gotta try that shit. And it has rave reviews. De'Vannon: Hallelujah. On Tuesday afternoon. Favorite positions. Shawn: Okay. I'm going to have to be basic and say that I love doggy. I just think it's hot. And that's like kind [00:56:00] of where they get in the deepest. But I also love I don't know if this has a name, so I'm just going to describe it.Okay. I'm, I'm laying on the bed. The guy is standing up and my ass is kind of hanging off the bed and then my legs are on their shoulders. Just I have a name. De'Vannon: Yeah. I think that might be like the hang man or something like that. Cause the cosmopolitan. They used to have know they still have it on their app.They used to do the six position of the day and they cover every possible fucking thing. And they all have a name, but I know the ass off the side of the bed. Shawn: And I liked that one too, because it feels good. Those were my feet. Honestly, I have a bitch. I'm a good bitch for missionary. I'm a pillow princess.And it's, it also [00:57:00] feels good. And like, you can make out while you're doing it, like dog, you can't do that. De'Vannon: Sure. You can. Like if he reaches up and you turn your head, you can still kiss while you're doing doggy. Shawn: Like I guess it just like that's so much De'Vannon: work. Oh yeah. It's that? It's definitely that you got to put in that work.Honey. What about public sex? Have you done that before? Shawn: Okay. I've had sex in a car once and I was literally so scared, so scared. And I, I don't know why, dude, I've never even gone to speeding ticket. So I was like, if I have sex with you and we got in trouble, I'm going to be fucking pissed. So I start like hanging up every single item of clothing that I could find and just like sticking it in every inch of the windows, because I was so scared.And honestly, I fucking hated it. I do [00:58:00] not like car sex. De'Vannon: Whoops. At least you tried, you were Shawn: open-minded I tried, but what public sex have you done? I don't, I'm too scared of getting caught. Like I don't find that hot I'm like scared. De'Vannon: Well, the first time I was in like a truck, this guy I hooked up with a couple of times and I was.And living in Arizona picked me up. I don't know. I was like 19 Joe, just starting on my sexual journey and being a total whore. I'm trying to feel the void that my dad left by not being present enough in my life. And so I went about the business of finding that in the arms of other men. And I knew it when I was doing it.I was like, I want you to be embraced by someone more masculine than me Shawn: and I still do that. It's like sad De'Vannon: that you'll heal. One day. He'll heal one day, baby. Shawn: I've been on a sex cleanse. I haven't had sex for three months. So. That's [00:59:00] pretty good. The last time I did a sex ban, I lasted five weeks. So there's progress.Anyway, continue, De'Vannon: go, and go and get going. And so now he picked me up in his pickup truck and he intentionally wanted to park in the front of some people's houses to make it more erotic. And so we were in this neighborhood and then he laid me on my back. And so we did it missionary and stuff like that.And that was totally fine. Another time. I think I was walking around Montrose and Houston and the gay part of Houston high on probably at least ecstasy and maybe he'll cane or G in DHB. And GBL is like a liquid substance. It's a very European drug and you take it like a cap full, and that makes you feel very euphoric.You don't have like the groggy come down and hang over. You don't feel like a zombie when you're done. The high is only gonna last for a little bit. Anyway, it's not like a, an all night, several day high, but it's a very. [01:00:00] Party drugs, you take it and you go to raves and bands. You can take it and fuck you just kind of feel really, really fucking good, you know, kinda like ecstasy kicking in, but didn't take as long.And don't though when some guy was like walking around as they do, you'll find a lot of trade and a lot of just hot men walking around the gay parts of different cities. And so I was like, I want you to fuck me in this bitch right here. And so he didget you bitch. Shawn: Have you done that more than once? De'Vannon: Not that I can recallpretty much like every day, especially back when I was a drug dealer and you know, and all of that, all of the high, like all the time. And so.And then other than that, I was always trying to seduce guys to fuck me in different jacuzzis and pools and stuff [01:01:00] like that. But you as well, you probably wouldn't be surprised, but some men are, men are very adventurous, but some of them are not, some of them don't want to have public sex, but most guys would want to try some shit like that.So it wasn't just, you know, what was meant for me, my experiences were not as voyeuristic as I would've liked them to be. And so, but you know, now I now have enough sense to know about like a nudist colony is new, you know, there's places where you can go do public sex legally, and that there is getting in trouble.And then what you want to do back then? I didn't know all that.Shawn: I am not down for getting in trouble. Not not about that. Life De'Vannon: is not for everyone. Orange is not the new black, you know, I've been dressed in the orange jumpsuits and shit before it's hideous, fascia. That's when you're in jail.And so I take [01:02:00] it, no drugs, sex for you.Shawn: No De'Vannon: drug Shawn: druggies. No. Oh no. I, I haven't even really had like really drunk sex either. Most of my sex is sober. De'Vannon: That's a good way to connect and stuff like that. So that wayShawn: I heard, I heard having sex while high is good. De'Vannon: It, it can be, but you have to be careful that you don't let yourself have, like, I wouldn't do the first time experienced that way because then your bar is going to be set way too high. And then I wouldn't do that. Often, because then you're going to read, right?Like your synapses in your brain and the way your sex drive is. And then you'll, you can become, you will become codependent on it if you Shawn: will need it to have sex. De'Vannon: Right. So like when I go into like these different, like say [01:03:00] crystal meth, anonymous groups and meetings and stuff like that, you know, invariably you would hear somebody talking about how they cannot have sober sex anymore because they've had so much sex on meth or in the same thing, applies to any kind of drug that intensifies your sexual nature.You know, some things are not meant to be that intense and that shit is so fucking intense. Like, but you can't like, you know, do it every fucking day. You know, if it's a couple of times a year in, God bless you. If you have enough self-control to only do addictive drugs a couple of times a week, To answer your question.Yeah, it can be, but it's also a double edged sword. Some people said somebody, some people is going to experiment with the shit. It is. So what I'm saying is don't go down that road, tell yourself, put it in your subconscious that you are going to control it and not let it control. You started to get out of hand stopped because these people are like desperately trying to find ways to connect with people because they've had so much drug [01:04:00] sex that they cannot, they can't figure out how to have sex without being high.Shawn: They won't get hard De'Vannon: that, yeah. Wow. So it can fuck up your shit dudes, if you take it to the, to the extreme. You know, with S with anything you don't want to overeat, you don't want to be, you don't want to go to church too much if at all you want to just, and I say that because churches just generally suck these days, you know, I don't have anything to get to Jesus.Clearly you have him in the title of my show, but churches don't have to, you know, there's a whole, another thing. They ain't got nothing to do with Jesus half the time. And so, yeah. Okay. So then our last thing we're going to talk about, and of course it's still going to be Dick's cause it's both of our favorite subjects.You know, we love the stuff on a Dick together with you one day. Technically it would still be two guys strictly, Shawn: oh my God. Should we ask my friend? I was De'Vannon: thinking about him. [01:05:00] So I really love,you know, just, you know,you see in that stage of he in Italy Shawn: now he's in Florida. Oh, De'Vannon: Oh, that's fine, honey. Fly American airlines. I have, I'm always flying somewhere. And so yeah, I'm gonna have to bring the boyfriend. Are he made my work in, are kind of starting to open things up. We've actually made the decision to start doing that.We haven't made the jump yet because we're waiting for the right time, the right person, the right, whatever the case. So, so yeah. Let's make it happen and oh, so the last to see being circumcised or uncircumcised, IShawn: don't care. Do you care? De'Vannon: I don't [01:06:00] give two shits one fuck or good. God damn. Does it work?Okay. And work Shawn: with.I have experienced both. And I feel like when someone is uncircumcised and they're hard, you don't even notice really. So it's like, why does everybody makes such a big deal? Now, if you are uncircumcised and you don't know how to clean your deck, that is honestly, even if you are circumcised, if you don't know how to clean your Dick, like, I am not about that.But if you take care of yourself and you have good hygiene, like who gives a fuck? And I actually was thinking about if I were to have a son who would I circumcise him or not? I think it's so I think it's mean, I don't know. Are you circumcised? [01:07:00] Yeah, I'm cut. I'm like, it's kind of like, it's kind of fucked up.And, and okay. And I was going to say that the people that are uncircumcised have more pleasure, like they're more sensitive. So like, what is the reasoning of circumcising? That's what De'Vannon: I was going to say. So this comes from the Hebrew tradition from the middle Shawn: Jewish. De'Vannon: So, you know, this is something that God gave to Moses to separate them from the people around them, just like the other hundreds of hundreds of traditions that they had Shawn: pierced his ear or something.They had to chop his little Wiener skin off. De'Vannon: Hey, you know, everything goes down to the D at the end of the day. So and so, but so the reason it happened to me is because I was raised [01:08:00] in a Pentecostal. You know, family church and everything and who, and they pull so many things that they do from the Bible, but they don't separate the fact that it's no longer relevant our culture.It is not our culture. And they try to fit middle Eastern cultures into ours, which should not be being done. And so strictly speaking, if you're not Jewish and you don't clean or not clean to the old traditions, you know, in the old Testament that there is no, there's no health reason to get circumcised.It's strictly a spiritual thing from years and years and years ago from another land from another time. And if I had a sign I would leave for the day, just the way God made it apart from, you know, snipping, the, you know, whatever the hell you have to when they're born. But Other than that, that he could decide if you want to get your shit chopped up later on and that's you, but you know, I'm not doing that, you know, to him because there isn't, there's no [01:09:00] spiritual reason to do it because the Lord says he wants our hearts to be circumcised, not our bodies.You know, these already disavowed the need for physical circumcision. So why, you know, I don't do shit just because my family did it and the people before them. No bitch. Why does this make sense to me? So right. There is no logical reason. Shawn: There's a lot of, a lot of European men. Like they don't, they don't circumcise much over.De'Vannon: I mean, what the fuck for, you know, it doesn't, there's still the same amount of calm that's going to come out of it. It's going to poke you the same way. I feel sorry. For some of them, some of them sometimes can get like this really sensitive, mid sex because of the, it is so sensitive, but it never stops them from finishing their fine.They go fuck right through the pain. But but no, but then see in the gay world, there is Shawn: like [01:10:00] a stigma in the gay world for people that are uncircumcised. De'Vannon: No, the stigma is for people who are yeah. Yeah. People who are uncircumcised. Cause even when you're on like the gate hookup apps, they ask you if you're cut or uncut, some people will not talk to you if you are uncut.Some people are just so turned off by. You know, porn has taught us that every Dick has to look this way. And so if somebody has an uncut fetish, okay, well then now there you go. There's uncut dildos. You can get now and everything like that. If you want your, you know, your hooded, you know, you're there to help you where you're going, but it's, it's a shame, you know, all dicks matter,all bigs matter. Damn it. And but unfortunately, you know, and that's a huge thing that I've had to work out, [01:11:00] but, you know you know, in, in my relationship, because you know, my boyfriend is from Trinidad and Tobago. That's where his people, you know, they don't cut up nothing down there either. You know, it's all on natural route.It is what. You know, he questioned a lot. He really, how I felt about his Dick being uncut. And I had to really, really convince him that I literally do not care because he's come up against so many people being turned off and put off by him because he has an uncut Dick in, in the gay community, but gave each day gay boys, bitches, you know, about a lot of things.Oh, your hair is fucking your nails, not right. We not fucking cared about you down the street. We know, you know, all kinds of bullshit,which is a reflection of the insecurity that prevails in our community. You know, we, if somebody has a problem with [01:12:00] you, the problem is really within them is not, they ain't nothing wrong with you. Shawn: Yeah. I mean, I know like women who are like grossed out by. Uncircumcised Dick. And I'm like, girl went to tarred.You don't even know the difference. Like it really doesn't like, you really can't see a difference. De'Vannon: I didn't know. That was a thing in the straight world. Yeah. Shawn: Yeah. It definitely is. And I think it's just because like, we're so used to seeing circumcised, Dick that it's like, when you see uncircumcised, you're like, is something wrong with it?But once you're, once you realize that it's the literally the exact same thing, just one has a flap of skin and one doesn't, it really doesn't matter. And like, don't you want your partner to have the most pleasure that they can possibly have? You know, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. [01:13:00] So, if any of you uncircumcised guys want to hit me up, let me know.De'Vannon: I know that's right. Her contact information will be in the show notes and shit. And then you're right. 90% of the time, once they get hard, they look just like an uncut Dick. That's hard because that skin pools back to the base of it. And if you put a heart uncut bit right next to a hard cut big, you couldn't tell now some of them out of four skin, and even once they're hard, it is a hood there, but at the end of the day, it still works the same.It's just ones like like it's like, they're both red wines. One's a Cabernet. One's a, malbac,one's a little, had a little bit more character than the other, but they both don't get you fucked up. You drink enough of it in, so. [01:14:00] Okay. So with that, my dear we've had our delicious titillating conversation today. Oh, Shawn: that was good titillating. Cause Teddy's you do that on purpose? We De'Vannon: taught that right. We gave it to the air guns on that one lady.So I'll let you have the last word until the world. Oh God, my audience. Any fucking thing you would like to say about anything? Shawn: Oh my God. Guys, just keep fucking, but be safe about it. Be honest, communicate your needs. Talk about your STI history and now the best sex of your life. That's all. And here are your heal, your childhoods Rama De'Vannon: having great sex and heal your childhood trauma.That's all we need to know. Hey, that's good enough for me. Thank you so [01:15:00] much.Thank you all so much for taking time to listen to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast. It really means everything to me. Look, if you love the show, you can find more information and resources at sex, drugs, and jesus.com or wherever you listen to your podcast. Feel free to reach out to me directly at DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com and on Twitter and Facebook as well.My name is De'Vannon and it's been wonderful being your host today and just remember that everything is going to be all right. 

Shawn Bowen is the Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of World Fuel Services, a Fortune 500 energy, commodities, and services company.  He was formerly the Global Head of IT Security and Compliance (Chief Information Security Officer) for Restaurant Brands International (parent company of Burger King, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, and Tim Hortons). In this role, he was responsible for establishing the strategic direction, instituting comprehensive security programs, along with building a thorough data governance program and consumer privacy framework. He has over 20 years of experience in information technology, primarily in cybersecurity. Previously, he was the first-ever Chief Information Security Officer of the US Marine Corps where he directed the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Enterprise (MCISRE) Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) Cybersecurity Program. For over 23 years, he served as a reservist in the Air Force Cyber Command as a Command Chief Master Sergeant and Senior Enlisted Advisor. Shawn is a Certified EC-Council Instructor (CEI) for the C|CISO course and is regarded as a highly passionate, transformative, thought leader in IT Security, with a record of leading successful strategies in various environments. Shawn is passionate about people and educating them on cybersecurity. He 'wants the willing, no matter what your rank is.' "Meaning, find people who are interested in cybersecurity at any level in your organization: your cybersecurity champions. He notes that it's more important for most of the staff to know a little about cybersecurity than a small percentage of staff know everything about it. It's with this approach that people will start proactively reaching out to Shawn when they have questions and creating a more open dialogue about security throughout the organization." He fuels this passion by serving on the Board of Advisors for YL Ventures and cloud security startup, CloudDefense. Highlights: 0:00 - Introductions & Background Installing Windows 95 on his own kickstarted his interests in computers, etc 2000s getting "stuck" with an audit and learning about the challenges with security Problem solving and the difference between wicked and complex problems Curiosity and being satisfied with "never finishing" Daily puzzles on a calendar 8:05- Personal Bonding and Sharing Within The Team Story: In his 20's focused on the job, personal lives irrelevant, even his personal loss. Learned that he is not a robot and learned to address emotions through team meetings - Personal and professional ratings Understanding the trends between personal and professional performance to help the team to be real Importance of creating a safe place to fail and sharing leadership paths for the next generation leader Held up a solved puzzle during a tough meeting Recognizing different aspects within the team and partnerships EQ prior to Shawn's wife, he looked at personalities based on his assessment and what "value" they had to him. Learned to shift expectations from what the team could do for him and move toward how can he help the person achieve goals. 18:50 - What Is Shawn's Vision of Life After CISO? The evolution of CIO and CISO CISO is where Shawn wants to be Shawn sees a future of CISO as Board Members or Advisors Retirement plan - Advisory work 27:15 - Avoiding Burnout Soccer Hobby the last few years, sky diving! Managing risk and sky diving Finding the right balance between home life and work Passion helps keep things in interesting and fun Don't fake passion for the job, get away and do something else. Reddit comments are gold 30:47 - Where Shawn Got His Passion Self admitted perfectionist and will analyze Soccer story - Goalkeeper and heard comment about him "nitpicking" and analyzing players on the field "Don't Shawn It!" - aka. Seeing forest from the trees Ongoing learning - how to minimize the constant...

Join us on a very special episode of Launch Financial, as we are joined by CPA, Shawn Donovan. On this unique episode, Brad and Shawn take a deep dive into Biden's Tax Proposal and provide the audience with the confusion surrounding this new tax plan. For more questions about Biden's tax proposal and thoughts on the episode, please reach out to us at info@shermanwealth.com.  --- [Transcript] Announcer: Welcome to Launch Financial, your guide to important financial decisions that you should have learned about in school, but were never taught or that no one ever talked about, conversations you should be having, but never did. Together, our hosts, along with a guest speaker, will tackle topics and issues we come across and think about daily, but often don't discuss. Subscribe to the show and put yourself on the path to financial success by visiting shermanwealth.com. Brad: Good afternoon. And welcome to a really special edition of Launch Financial Tax Edition. We had the President yesterday unveiling tax proposals as part of the legislation around infrastructure bill. Got our special CPA guest to help unpack a lot of these changes, things to think about and things to do. We are joined by Shawn Donovan, CPA and partner at Turner, Leins & Gold. Shawn, how you doing this morning? Shawn: Great. How are you doing,, Brad? Brad: Good. Good. So you have climbed out of a cave during tax season. As everyone knows, we have seen tax season extended till at least May 17th on the federal level. Depending on where you live, the state level might be even further along. So we really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're really swamped with tax and to remind everyone, of course, that you have until that time to contribute to your traditional and Roth IRAs from 2020. So thank you for taking a small break out of your busy day. Wanted to unpack some of this tax proposal with you. If you could go through some of the highlights that you're seeing and some of the changes that folks should be thinking about. Shawn: Well, obviously, President Biden's been very steadfast in saying people who make over $400,000 are most likely going to be getting a tax increase. When he was running for President, he had his tax plan basically on his website. So far, it's pretty much he's following it to a T. I would expect the top rate to go back up to 39.6 from where it is currently at 37%. He's talked about increasing capital gains for people who make over a million dollars up to the 39.6% rate with an additional 3.8% net investment income tax. Meaning if you lived in New York City or California, you're all in capital gains tax rates could be upwards of 58%. It's pretty high compared to where it is currently. Brad: But why would you want to live there anyway? But yes, I know, we have a lot of friends of the firm that that live in New York and California, of course, so exactly right. A million dollars going to be hit. I've seen anywhere from that 53.6 to 58% in the higher tax states. Shawn: Sure. Yeah. Brad: So, go on, what are the other changes that you're seeing? Shawn: The other one was the 1031 exchange. Here at Turner, Leins & Gold, we deal with a lot of real estate clients that utilize this 1031 exchange. One way people have been doing it, let's say you're an older taxpayer and you have a house that you're sitting on. Once you sell it, it's going to generate a big gain. You don't want to pay the tax on that gain right now. So what you're going to do is you're going to sell your house, identify a property within 45 days and close within 180 days, which is a 1031 exchange rules. Then you're going to buy a new property. What happens is instead of paying that gain, you're going to get a reduced basis on your new property. So then what happens now is, let's say you die and you pass it on to your heirs, your heirs receive this stepped up basis, basically up to where it wasn't fair market value at the date of your death. You basically avoided paying tax on that gain altogether, passed it onto your heirs and now they have. Shawn: He's looking to eliminate what's going on with that, things like that. The 1031 exchange is not just used by people for that reason, though. There are a lot of people in real estate using it too, because they're continuing buying and fixing up properties and selling them for gains. They continue to utilize this 1031 exchange rule. It's helped them, to be honest with you. Eliminating it, that can cause some issues in the real estate market, potentially less buying, less inventory, less purchases. That's just a guess as to what might happen, but we don't know. Brad: Let's stick with the real estate market. Of course, the 1031 exchange will create even less transactions, I guess, but we should go back to this step up in basis and explain what that is. Basically, if you have accumulated gains at the time of your death, your heirs step up the basis, meaning that at the date of your death that becomes the basis of the stock or any asset. Eliminating that, which in the Biden proposal we've been reading, a million dollars for a single couple or sorry, single person, 2.5 million for a couple, would have a dramatic impact on estate and tax planning. You want to speak about that a little bit? Shawn: Oh, that would absolutely have a dramatic impact. It's not just the loss of that step up to fair market value. If your parents or grandparents have been holding onto this Apple stock or Google stock for a long time at this real low cost basis, we have actually clients that do that and they're looking to pass it onto their heirs at the stepped up value, that's going to really hurt. They actually know what their cost basis is, but there's a lot taxpayers out there who bought stocks and real estate so long ago that the records just don't even really exist for them anymore. Trying to go back to that original purchase price for some of these assets, that it's just really easy if someone died. You step it up to what it was at the date of death. But if you have to go back to the '70s, early '80s to buying some of these, it's going to be tough and a difficult challenge to track what the purchase price is and whatnot. Shawn: That's not even the hard part. The hard part is going to be the tax bill once the heirs receive it and actually end up selling it, they're going to get hit with a tax bill at that point. It would definitely impact more than just wealthy Americans. It would impact a lot of people, for sure. Brad: Right. What we're seeing, we had Elizabeth Goldstein from the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington speak about donor advised funds. I think that we're going to see a lot more of that as it relates to tax sheltering. Some of these were very charitable at the firm, of course. So looking for other clients who are looking for strategies to shelter this potential loss of a step up in basis, donor advised funds, direct-to-charity transfers. What else are you seeing and some strategies that folks can look at to donate stock without it being subject to excess tax? Shawn: Donor advised funds is a great one. The required minimum distribution for 2020 was waived. So far in 2021 it hasn't been waived. So we're going to go ahead and assume that you're going to need to take it for 2021, with the caveat of rules have been changing mid year a lot lately, in the last couple of years. You always want to have that little bit of a caveat. But as of right now, we have to take the RMD for 2021. An easy way, if you're donating to a charity every year, is to do a qualified charitable distribution. Basically, what happens is your IRA sends a check directly to the charity organization that you choose. It comes right off the top of your income. You don't pay any tax on it. And you've satisfied your required minimum distribution for that year. Shawn: It's a very good tool that a lot of savvy tax payers use with the help of their CPAs and financial advisors. It's a very good tool to use. It's going to come back for 2021, not that everyone has that requirement again. Brad: I'd say that the only way that we're not getting requirement minimum distributions for 2021 is if we have a third wave of COVID. God forbid that that happens. I don't think that we'll have a repeat of the CARES Act or any of these. For those retirees out there, be planning on taking the requirement minimum distribution. Great tip on the QCD. There is also potential legislation of raising the requirement minimum distribution age to 75. We'll be following that along, as well. For those of you who are between 72 and 75, who just started the requirement minimum distribution and might not have had to have it last year. We also did a lot of great tax planning last year as it relates to Roth conversions, which would be huge for 2021, especially if there is an increase in tax rates, even at a 2 to 3% level, depending on each bracket. Major savings there. You want to speak about a Roth conversion and how that might be beneficial to retiree clients in filling up those tax bracket buckets? Shawn: Absolutely. The key with Roth conversions is people who like them, they say, "The tax rates will never be lower than what they are right now." That is going to be very true when you listen to President Biden's tax proposals. You can see it. It's coming. And it's coming soon, the tax increases. It's definitely going to be something you're going to want to utilize. You want to pay attention to see when these tax increases are going to come into effect. Will it be 2021 or 2022? If it's going to be 2022, you definitely want to try to do as much of a Roth conversion as you can afford to do for 2021. It's definitely going to be a tool you want to utilize this year. Shawn: It was a good tool to utilize in 2020, because you didn't have that RMD requirement. We had a lot of clients who were doing the Roth conversion, basically, in place of their RMD and keeping themselves in the same tax bracket. But then they're also lowering their future requirement minimum distribution, paying tax on the dollars now at a low rate so that when they're able to, they can pull it out at tax free, basically. Brad: Great, great, great advice. Shifting gears to the younger generations, hopefully some of these podcasts listeners are going to be lower in age than 72, because a lot of young clients that are going to be listening to this are going to be also looking for tax strategies. The advent of the Roth within the 401k, I think is something that we're really been seeing a lot of as plan sponsors are adopting the Roth piece. A lot of their highly-compensated employees, as we know, don't have an opportunity to do a Roth IRA, given the income limits there. Seeing Roth 401k is huge. You want to speak about that as it relates to a tax hedge? Shawn: Roth 401ks are a great tool, obviously. Some people still do Roth conversions or backdoor Roths is what they're called. But the one downside of a Roth is you're contributing with after-tax dollars. The upside is it's tax free down the line. Right now, we know that we're paying at this low rate, this 37% top bracket, or if you're younger, you're in the 24, 22%. Biden has said he's not planning on raising middle class taxes. We don't know that to be a fact. He's saying that $400,000 mark. If you're living in New York City, $400,000, you're probably not super wealthy with 400,000. Shawn: If you're living in the DMV, like we do, it's an expensive area to live. $400,000 doesn't go as far in these areas as it does in other areas of the country. It's definitely something you want to pay attention to if you're a younger taxpayer on the rise, making more money, you want to take advantage of many of these Roth ideas as you can. Brad: Right and then even if you're just starting your career. We had a seminar yesterday with the corporation with a lot of young staff, educating them on tax arbitrage and making sure that they're understanding the Roth 401k. I know that we've had conversations even before this tax plan. You like to take the deduction sometimes, right now in times zero, but I'd rather figure out what the future tax rates might be. And especially with these on the table, 2021 could be the last year, as you said, to take advantage of generationally low tax rates. Shawn: It really is. It does really feel like we're on the cusp of it being really the lowest rate we'll see the rest of our lives. Who knows? I remember in 2002, 3, 4, when I first started out, they were saying, "These are the lowest rates." And then they actually did go lower in 2017. But I highly doubt they're going to be any lower than this for a long time, especially with all the stimulus and everything like that with the pandemic, all the money being spent. Revenue is going to have to go up somehow. I can't imagine the tax rates are going to be any lower than they are now for a little bit of time, but I don't have the crystal ball to see that in the future. Shawn: As far as what you were saying with whether to take a tax break now versus in the future, it's just up to the taxpayer's appetite for that. You just have to basically explain to them the pros and cons of each, whether it be taking a set contribution, which you could get a deduction for this year or doing a Roth conversion, which is a future benefit thing. If you explain it to them, let them know what they're going to owe, what the savings will be, if you basically explain to them the different scenarios, it usually works out well for them. Brad: Right, right. Everything, as we talked about in financial planning, tax planning and all aspects of it, is definitely an individualized decision and making sure that you have all the facts, which is why we're getting you out of the tax season taking a small break to look at future taxes. I hope for your sake, as you said, everything changes. I hope that they're not going to make this retroactive to whenever the bill is going to, because that will make your 2021 tax season miserable. I know you have a lot going on with Maryland and S corps and other things. What advice can you give, as we have a lot of also some small business owners, what are you seeing as it relates to either the change in tax proposals or just any good tax tips for small business owners to be thinking about as you've seen a bunch of returns this year? Shawn: Well, here are the state of Maryland they have adopted, as you know, the new entity level tax. If you're a small business owner, S corp or partnerships, you have to actually be a pass through. If you're a Schedule C, you unfortunately can't take advantage of it. But what it is, is you're basically paying your state tax at your company level and getting a deduction for it. Only seven states adopted it for 2020. Maryland was one of them. I'm assuming for 2021, all the states will adopt it. I haven't heard anything about that yet, but I would assume they would. This is something you want to look into, see how your state's handling it. It actually is saving some business owners that I work with, tons of money by doing it this way. The reason you're saving it is because when the tax cuts and Job Act of 2017 was passed, they limited your state and local income tax deduction to $10,000. Shawn: This is a workaround to pay your state taxes at your entity level, so you have no limit, essentially. You're paying it at that level. You're getting a deduction for it. If you overpay, you get the refund on your state return. You're basically paying your state taxes at your business level. It's worked out to save thousands of dollars for some business owners in this area by doing it that way, that are in Maryland. Unfortunately, for our Virginia clients, you couldn't take advantage of it this year. DC clients, same thing. We're hoping for 2021 that those states adopt the IRS ruling for 2021 and those taxpayers can take advantage of it for this year. Brad: Great, great. So a lot of good tips there. The good SALT debate, we'll see. That impacted Maryland taxpayers a lot and some of our New York clients. And some of these higher tax states, as you're mentioning. We'll see if that changes at all. A lot of debate as to whether that's good, bad or ugly. Shawn: [crosstalk 00:17:14] last night. I didn't hear anything about it in President Biden's speech. From what I've heard, he's not really interested in getting rid of that $10,000 ceiling. We'll have to wait and see on that. Brad: Well, as we know, this is just a potential legislation, a idea, as you mentioned. I don't know. People are surprised to see it. The market had a crazy reaction for about an hour as they digested it. But I think you brought up a really good point that this has been on President Biden's website ever since the campaign trail. This is his proposal. We have a lot of folks within Congress who are going to have something to say about it, whether that's SALT, whether that's California, New York, any of these different ideas. We're going to be following this along and hopefully, Shawn, have you on as this progresses through and becomes a little bit more real. But we have a lot of folks, as I'm sure you do, calling, asking what the deal is, what should we be doing and really wanted to have you on to talk about this. Brad: So really appreciate your time again. Again, check out the blog. We're going to release this as a blog and a podcast. Mostly going to, as of now, just affect folks making a million dollars a year or more. But a lot to unpack, especially as it relates to charitable giving, step up in basis, potentially, 1030 exchanges. Financial planning and tax planning could be turned on its head. As you know, Shawn, never dull moment in our business. As Hyman Roth says, "This is the business that we chose." So this is what we have. And really, thank you for listening. Thank you for coming on, Shawn. I know you're so busy. Shawn: I appreciate you having me, Brad. It's good seeing you. Brad: Good to see you. It's been 15 months. The audience doesn't know that we're actually seeing each other, but audio only. But it was good to see you. Really appreciate your expertise. It was invaluable, especially at a time like this, where people are so confused as to what to do next and looking for guidance from the experts. Thanks for coming on and sharing your words of wisdom. We'd love to have you on as this becomes more real. Have a great day, everybody. We'll talk to you soon. Shawn: All right, take care, Brad. Announcer: All opinions expressed by the hosts and their guests are strictly their own and do not reflect the opinion of Sherman Wealth Management. Clients of Sherman Wealth Management may maintain securities discussed on the podcast. Sherman Wealth Management LLC is a Registered Investment Advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Sherman Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. For additional information, please visit our website at www.shermanwealth.com.  

Make a donation to Unity Center of Norwalk "Get Yourself a Good God" Rev. Shawn Moninger @ Unity Center of Norwalk CT (1/10/21) You can see this talk and others on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/c/UnityCenterNorwalk Last week's post from Rev. Shawn "It's Today” Hey Everybody, For many of us, it’s a New Day rather than a New Year. Most people I know cannot handle a whole year right now, but almost all of us can handle a day. I can conceive of life events taking place from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. (If that should be too much, take it moment by moment.) Let’s face it, on New Year’s Day of 2020, none of us could have conceived this whole past year. Plus, misery or at the very least, confusion set in for many of us when we tried to plan for an unknown future. We still can’t plan for a definite future. But we can be present in the Presence of God. It’s today; it’s Now. Right now, the Light of God surrounds me, the Love of God enfolds me; the Power of God protects me, and the Presence of God watches of me. Right now, where I am, GOD IS, and all is well. Perhaps “well” in ways that I don’t know about, but as long as I am in spiritual integrity, all is well. Let’s begin each new day with a plan of conscious-God-connection. Remember, it’s just for today, ultimately. Let’s affirm together, “The Superconscious Mind is awake in me now!” Happy for a Happy New Day, Rev. Shawn

  In this episode, we have an interview with Susan Guthrie - Family Law Attorney, Mediator, and Host of Divorce & Beyond Podcast. Learn more about Susan here: https://divorceinabetterway.com/. Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Shawn: In the beginning of the process, as you're doing your research, one of the most important things you can do is figure out what are your options and what are the best ways to proceed during the divorce process. And know that the traditional method of divorce litigation is not the only method that exists when it comes to the divorce process, and you may have options. There's mediation, there's collaborative divorce. But in this particular episode, I want to discuss mediation, and to do that, I'm bringing in a great guest. Shawn: Her name is Susan Guthrie. She is a family law attorney with over 30 years of experience. And she's going to give us an overview of some of the key things about mediation to think about. She'll describe the process really well in this episode. And the other thing that's interesting about mediation is that there's the possibility for online mediation. And so, there may be some advantages to that as well. So, I hope you enjoy the interview with Susan Guthrie and also be sure to check out her podcast. She has a really good podcast that's called Divorce and Beyond. So, without further ado, here's my interview with Susan. Shawn: Today on the show I have with me Susan Guthrie. Susan is a family law attorney, mediator, and a podcast host of her own. Susan, welcome to the show. Susan: Thank you, Shawn. I'm so pleased to be here. Thank you for having me. Shawn: Susan, let's start with ... actually, I just want to start with the podcast so other people can listen to it. It's great. I recently did an interview on it. Why don't you tell us about your podcast? Susan: Thank you. Yes, and by the way, your episode is doing very, very well. People are always interested in Divorce and Their Money, it's called, my podcast is, Divorce and Beyond. It's really focused on, I've been a divorce attorney and a mediator for 30 years, so I bring that insider knowledge to the divorce process, and bring experts on to help with that, such as yourself. But I also am very much focused on the beyond, because divorce is really a finite time in your life or I certainly hope that it is, and you have a future ahead. So, many of our episodes are focused on preparing for the beyond, preparing for your future. Shawn: Great, and I encourage everyone to listen to it. There's lots of great episodes on there and you bring a great collection of interview guests on there as well. That's really interesting. Susan: Oh, thank you. Shawn: So, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background. I know you said you practiced for 30 years, but why don't you give us your credentials so to speak? So, we all understand who we're listening to. Susan: I have practiced as a family law attorney and still do to some degree for 30 years. My original State of practice was Connecticut, and I was located there in Fairfield County for 25 years or so, with a pretty traditional law practice. Then, branched out on my own and started moving around the country. I moved to California first, so I'm also licensed to practice law there. But I also segued my practice over to mediation, and in fact, that's all from a divorce perspective that I do in the process of helping couples negotiate and settle their divorce issues. I now live in Chicago. Susan: My practice is now entirely online, and I help people both through online divorce mediation services as well as legal coaching services around the world because I can do it online. I feel very lucky that I have been a divorce attorney and operating at a fairly high level. I dealt with a lot of high conflict and high net worth cases during my litigation practice. So, as you mentioned, I have access to a large number of really excellent experts because I've worked with them over the years in my practice, and I love bringing that wealth of knowledge and really that insider side of things to my listeners. Shawn: Yeah, I think that's great. You worked with a lot of high conflict people and now you do a lot of mediation work. Why did you make that shift? Susan: Yeah. So, it was sort of two fold. But really what it boiled down to, and for anyone who's seen the movie that's out right now, Marriage Story, you will understand I think what I'm talking about. But I got involved in divorce litigation when I first got out of law school, because frankly 30 years ago, that's really all that was out there. The litigation process is very adversarial. It is set up on a party A versus party B platform like any other lawsuit. Unfortunately, when you're talking about restructuring families, that is not a very good model for success. Susan: Unfortunately, that process actually drives people further apart, and then, when they find themselves post-divorce needing to co-parent or communicate, the animosity and the adversity that was brought up during the divorce and exacerbated during the litigation process really only makes it worse. It sets up an ongoing conflict cycle. So, mediation is an opportunity for parties to sit down, couples to sit down, and work together in a more cooperative fashion to communicate and restructure their family in a way that works best for all of them. Susan: It's not based on that win lose model, and so now having worked in both formats, the reason I only do mediation at this point is because the results for clients are so much better. Shawn: Let's start by defining what is mediation versus litigation. Can you just give us an overview of what that means, what that process looks like, how it differs? Susan: Sure, and actually that's a great place to start because there is a great deal of misunderstanding at times for people when it comes to mediation. I always hear it called the kinder, gentler way to divorce, or the kumbaya method of divorce. I will tell you, divorce mediation, like any process that you would go through to negotiate or resolve the issues of a divorce, it takes effort. It has its moments where it's not an easy process, but divorce mediation is based upon a principle of the two parties sitting down with a neutral professional, that could be an attorney like myself. It could be a financial professional. Susan: I know a lot of professionals who are financial advisors, who also are mediators, or therapists, or other professionals, but they sit down with a trained professional who's there to help them identify the issues that they need to resolve in the divorce, to give them an understanding of the law, and context, and nuance around those issues. Then, really importantly, to support both of them in having the difficult conversations that need to be had on how those issues are going to be resolved, with an eye to identifying what works best for all of them. Again, we're always in mediation looking for the third solution. Susan: We're not looking for the win for one side and a loss for the other. We're looking for that third solution that allows everyone to get as much of what they want on a needs base or interest based perspective, so that everyone walks away with a decision and with agreements that incorporate as much as possible what they've chosen that they can and cannot live with. Shawn: Let's give a concrete example of that, and I'm just thinking of, I want to just use a very simple case. Let's just say we have a house, a couple of retirement accounts, a couple of cars. How would I know when to use mediation and what would that look like for me versus going the traditional route and what would that mediation process look like start to finish? Susan: The two processes, they look similar because any method that you're going to use to resolve your divorce is going to sort of go through the same stages. You're going to have the quantifying or the pulling together of information stage. In litigation, we call that discovery. In mediation, we call it information gathering phase, but then you're going to discuss the issues. Then, you're going to come to agreement on the issues in 95% of the cases. So, the difference with mediation is, in litigation everything is done on a compulsory manner and fashion. Motions are filed, requests for orders are made, requests for production are made. Susan: Everything has time limits, and rules, and things are done because you are under court orders to do them. The difference is, in mediation, everything is done by agreement, including the fact that the parties are in mediation at all. Mediation is 100% voluntary as opposed to litigation, which people can be dragged kicking and screaming into, or if they ignore it, it's going to happen without them. So, the mediation process itself, just as a litigation case would start, does start with the information gathering. But it's not done in that fashion where you exchange compulsory requests for information. Susan: We sit down with your mediator, with the two clients, and compile all of the necessary information by agreement that we're going to do that as a part of the transparency of the process. That has a lot of different effects. The biggest one being it takes much less time to pull together all the information because we are talking about what everyone needs to see, wants to see, and agreeing to pull it together. It's also much less expensive because the parties are not utilizing legal counsel, filing of motions, all of which that they pay their attorneys for. Susan: It's usually much more successful, because nobody will drag their feet usually in the same fashion because, again, they've agreed that they're coming to the table to work through the process. So, in many ways, I've seen litigation cases where we have literally spent years, you mentioned a simple case where there's a house and some accounts, et cetera, that could take a relatively short period of time with that type of state to value things, because you have either written statements or you can get an appraisal. But when you get into some more complicated cases, or where there's a family owned business, or a cash business, or something of that nature, I've had cases drag out forever in the discovery process because it's so hard to get the information exchange, and that really just doesn't happen in the mediation setting. Shawn: You covered a lot of things that I have some kind of followup questions on. One of them that comes up, I hear every week or so is, oftentimes one party may not be as forthcoming as they should be during mediation. How does one handle that? Susan: So, that happens. Definitely it happens in litigation as well. So, the first thing to remember is, because mediation is by agreement, both of the parties have a reason or reasons why they have agreed to come to the negotiation table in mediation. Mediation tends to move much more quickly than litigation, so maybe time is an issue for them. It's usually infinitely less expensive. Maybe money is an issue for them. Maybe they feel it's a better forum for working through the issues. Whatever their motivations are, that brought them to the table, are the motivations that will also compel people to be forthcoming with the information that is required. Susan: Because what happens is if people do not come forth with requested information, the mediation process comes to a halt. Because if you are sitting at a table and one party does not feel they have the information that they need in order to make the decisions or the agreements that need to be made, the process can't move forward. You are putting people in the position, by making that choice not to be forthcoming, you're putting the other side in the position of having to take you into litigation. Susan: Having to compel your discovery as we were talking about earlier with the motions, and the depositions, and all of that. So, usually, it takes the mediator reminding the parties why they're there, that this is a voluntary process. They agreed to be involved in it, and failure to comply with reasonable requests for information are just by necessity going to bring the process to a conclusion. Shawn: I think that makes sense. I want to ask some technical questions about mediation, or just some basic questions is, you're a mediator and you're also an attorney, do the parties also have their own attorneys? How does that work? Who's actually in these mediation sessions? Susan: The majority of my mediation sessions are just the two people who are going through the process. That is not to say that they don't have outside consulting professionals, and I am very much a believer in the team approach to divorce. I think that everyone usually will need some sort of support as they go through the mediation or divorce process, whatever they're going through. That can include a consulting attorney, because as you point out, I am an attorney, but when I am operating as a mediator, I am not representing either of the parties. Susan: That would be an ethical breach. You can't, as an attorney, represent both sides of an equation. There's a conflict of interest there. So, your mediator, even if they're an attorney, is there as a neutral professional to support both parties. But often, people will need some outside legal advice, and it can be very, very helpful to the mediation process for them to have a good professional that they can go to. Other professionals are people like you CDFAs. I highly recommend using a certified divorce financial analyst, or a financial support team, especially in those cases. Susan: You mentioned that there are often one side of an equation in a divorce where they're not forthcoming with information. There's another paradigm that comes up all the time where we have one party who's pretty financially savvy and the other one who is not, and so, they feel very disempowered in making decisions. So, getting them some support by getting them a financial advisor or getting them a financial planner analyst, can be very helpful to the mediation process because it helps to support them and educate them as they go through. Another person that's often brought in is a therapist. Susan: If we have parenting issues, and maybe we have an issue with special needs for a child or developmental issues around the child's upbringing. So, I very much believe in the team approach to divorce, the divorce process as a whole, and certainly in mediation. Shawn: If I'm thinking about the mediation process, sometimes people think, is it just one meeting in an afternoon, is it multiple meetings? How does that work? Susan: Generally, it's a series of meetings. My mediations tend to be scheduled for two hours at a time, and that is because in two hours we usually can make some headway, start talking about real issues, and making proposals, and making agreements. But beyond two hours, it's an emotional context, right? You're talking about your kids, you're talking about your money, you're talking about separating all those things. So, the emotional content is very fatiguing. You are either in the same room, or if you are with me mediating, you're in the same Zoom meeting, and two hours tends to be where people sort of burn out. Susan: And what I don't want is my clients making decisions out of fatigue, or just saying because they're just so tired and they want to move on saying, "Fine, I'll do that." Because what ends up happening is they then leave the mediation, that session, come back to the next one having thought about it and they will backtrack. And that's harmful to the process only because now we have trust issues, "Well, you said you would do it. I relied upon that and now you're backtracking." So, it's better to do it in bite sized chunks that you can process, take your time, and move through it. Susan: Usually, it depends on the couple. It's usually a few three, two-hour sessions. It can be certainly more than that. I've had cases move faster. There are other types of mediations, so another type of mediation for family cases that people will be acquainted with is a case that's been in the litigation process all along. They're usually close to the courtroom door for trial, and they will, as what I call last ditch effort, resort, to sitting with a mediator for sometimes a full day session to try and resolve those last outstanding issues. Susan: In those cases, usually the attorneys who have been representing the clients all along are involved, and those usually tend to be one marathon type, long day type session. But for people who start in mediation, their divorce process from the start is in mediation, usually two, maybe three-hour sessions and a few of those, but infinitely faster. I will tell you, most of my divorce mediations are completed before the sixth month. California has a six-month waiting period. Connecticut has a 90-day waiting period. Susan: Those are my States of licensure, and we're definitely usually done by the sixth month mark in California, three months ... It just depends on the complications of the issues. Shawn: That's good to know, and if I'm sitting at home listening to this or wherever I may be listening to this, how do I know whether I can go down the mediation route? What kind of things should I be thinking about to say and maybe even conversations I might need to have with my spouse in terms of, "This is an approach that may work for us." Susan: That's another great question, because that's one of my key things I want people to know, that your best approach to divorce is to try mediation in most cases from the beginning. Because if it doesn't work, you always have litigation to fall back on. That will always be there for you. But knowing that it's a possibility at the beginning and giving it a try for all of the reasons of all of the benefits that it has, is something that I love for people to know from the very beginning. So, some of the things to be thinking about are, do you have the ability to self advocate? Susan: And if you don't feel that you do, can you find support to help you with that? There are a lot of amazing divorce coaches, legal coaches like myself. I work with a number of people going through mediation, helping them to strategize what they're looking for. I was just listening to one of your podcast episodes and you mentioned the question, what do you want? That's a huge question when you go into a mediation. You don't go into any process of divorce without knowing where you want to go, or the process is going to happen to you rather than you being an active participant in it. Susan: But that's really the question, is do you have the wherewithal to sit down and do the work that needs to be done with the help of your mediator? And to bring your spouse to the table, people ask me all the time, "Well, I'd love to do mediation. It's less expensive, it's less stressful, it's less time consuming, it's less adversarial. All of those things, it's better. It helps us create communication pathways for our kids so that we can co-parent in the future." All of those are benefits and those are actually the things that help you to talk to your spouse about trying mediation. Susan: Because the thing I always tell people is, the one thing that we do know after having been married to someone is usually what their interests are. And usually, there's one or more benefit of mediation that will appeal to them. Often, it's the cost savings. You and I both know the average divorce in the United States is in the 20s of thousands of dollars per person these days to litigate. Many people, even if they have that kind of money laying around, don't want to spend that kind of money on getting divorce. By the way, it can go much, much higher than that. Mediation is much less expensive. Susan: It tends to be much less time consuming, less stressful. You have much more control over the process. So, knowing whatever you know about your spouse and what would appeal to them, that is usually the best way to approach them and ask them to consider the process. Shawn: That make sense, and can someone come to you for select issues in a divorce? So, let's just say there's 10 things to figure out and they agree upon seven of them, but there's three issues that they still haven't quite resolved yet. Would mediation work for that? Susan: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I often work with couples who maybe have worked out the financial side, but they need help with the parenting plan or vice versa. They know what they want to do parenting wise, but there are certain issues on the side of the finances that they just can't quite resolve. So, you can bring limited issues to mediation. Any sort of any issue can be mediated. Many people who have gone through divorce but then after the divorce there's been a change of circumstances. Someone loses their job, someone gets a big raise, something with the kids comes up and you need to change your parenting plan because children aren't static. Susan: I often mediate that post-dissolution type matter as well. The only thing I would caution, and I just don't want people, because attorneys and mediators are accused often of ramping up, making problems in a divorce that didn't need to be there. What happens sometimes, when a couple comes to a mediator or an attorney to work out issues and they think they've resolved a bunch of them, but they have a couple that still need to be resolved. The thing with a divorce settlement is it's a puzzle. It's not separate blocks of issues. Susan: Everything works together, right? It's a family. So, the money, and the kids, and the house, and all of those things work together. So, sometimes the outstanding issues will have an impact on those issues that they feel they have resolved. So, some of those issues may need to be reworked or looked at again if they don't fit into the overall puzzle context. But, again, that's where mediation is great because you can sit down and talk about, in the broad picture, why maybe perhaps something that they thought they wanted to do isn't going to work in light of another aspect of their settlement that they also would like to accomplish. Shawn: Yeah, that's a good point, is that sometimes it's very hard to isolate particular issues in a divorce, because if you pull on one thing or adjust one thing, it can affect every other item. Susan: Exactly. Shawn: It may work in certain cases, but you have to be open to shifting or changing other parts of the big picture when you do that. Susan: Absolutely. I always tell my clients in mediation, I work off a written agenda. I find people like the visual of an agenda that outlines all of their issues, and then I take notes on it for them as we're going along. I always tell them, although an agenda is a linear thing and item one, item two, item three, and even if we're going to move through it in that order, it doesn't mean that we have to resolve issue one in order to move on to issue two. Often, it's, let's discuss issue one, come up with some possibilities, and then table issue one and work on the next issues because in the end, all of them need to work together. Susan: As an example, someone often wants to keep the marital residence, and both sides may be open to that and may have reasons why they want that to happen. But until you get into the financial side, with support and asset distribution and debt distribution, you may not know if that person can actually afford to maintain the property. So, that's a very common question that will come up, where we have to sort of resolve the support issues and the financial issues in order to know if what they want to do with the house is actually going to work. Shawn: That's great. One last question, which is, at least as it pertains to the mediation, is you do online mediation work. I know you've done in person, of course, work as well. How do you find the difference between just the setting, be it a video call versus everyone's huddled in a conference room kind of atmosphere? Can you just kind of give us your pros, cons, thoughts about that? Susan: Yeah. It's interesting because I do now have an entirely online practice, and I have to say, especially for divorce mediation, I've actually found that the parties having the ability to have a little bit of space, because they do not need to be in the same physical location in order to mediate online, that's actually been a benefit for most of my clients. That they feel more able to emotionally deal with the conversations that need to be had as opposed to sitting just a few feet away from each other in the same room. Susan: I've had many people, when I had a brick and mortar practice, who would come and I would meet with a couple for a consult to just decide if they wanted to mediate. And in the end, it would come down to one of them saying, "I loved all the benefits, but I just emotionally don't feel like I can sit in the same room with my spouse and do this at this moment in time." Because as we know, divorce, yes it is a financial transaction, we're talking about money, et cetera. But in reality, it is an emotional transaction as well. Susan: And so, the video context gives people a little more space, but still you have the ability to see the other person because 85% of our communication is visual, and most of that is our facial expressions and voice. What we say and how we say it, our voice inflections. So, much of that is still readily available in the online context. So, for me, in my experiences, it's actually been a benefit to the mediation process, and most clients are thrilled to be online. They don't have to sit in traffic. They don't have to get a babysitter. They don't have to leave work early. Susan: I know you work online quite a bit and so you know some of those benefits. It has translated very well to the mediation practice. In fact, I train other mediators in how to conduct their mediations online, because this is such a quickly growing aspect of the mediation practice. My colleagues are fascinated by it. Shawn: Yeah, and I think that's one of the hardest things is when you are getting divorced, having to be three feet away from the person you're getting divorced from, staring right at them the whole time. It can make the emotional side of things amplify them quite a bit, just being in the same room. They're funny in retrospect even from the client's perspective, but a lot of times where someone yells, stomps out, runs out of the room, just can't stand being in person with that person they're getting divorced from. Shawn: It's divorce and it's not a pleasant process to begin with. This isn't a civil suit business dispute. So, I think there are a lot of advantages to the online perspective for people who might not have considered it as well, just from that. Susan: Yeah, the ability to, in any way that we can, keep the emotional content a little at a lower level is beneficial to the process. Because the minute people start making decisions from that emotional place, from anger, from fear, from hurt, whatever, divorce unfortunately doesn't embody usually a lot of positive emotions. It's usually a lot of negative emotional content, and the higher that level, the harder it is for people to make rational reason decisions. As you know, these are decisions that are going to live with you, and your family, and your children for years to come. Susan: So, you want to make them from the best emotional place possible, and I'm not saying that it's always easy. But another thing that I do is I incorporate mindfulness techniques into my mediation practice and encourage my clients to have a mindfulness practice if they're open to that, only because it does help. When the emotions start to rise up, to be able to take that step back and find some space. It's really important to be able to think clearly, and that's another reason, going back to where I said the sessions are usually only about two hours long. Susan: I want people making decisions in a space where they feel that those decisions were good ones, or at least made from a reasonable place and that they can live with them. Shawn: That's excellent and thank you for coming on and explaining the basics and the essential parts of mediation. It's not a subject that I talk about too often on my podcast. Why don't you give us the best way to contact you and to learn more? Hopefully, have people potentially work with you in the future if mediation or other services are right for them. Susan: Absolutely. Pretty much everything about me can be found on my website, which is divorceinabetterway.com. My email is susan@divorceinabetterway.com. I encourage anyone who's going through divorce to take a look at the website. I have a lot of curated resources, most of them free, or special discounts that guests on my podcast have offered. I have your book going up on my website shortly, so that people can find it who have listened to the podcast, or go there. But I like to bring as much information to people because that is so empowering in the divorce process. Susan: Get your education, get your information. So, divorceinabetterway.com, and then also the podcast has its own website which can be found through Divorce in a Better Way, or at divorceandbeyondpod.com. Shawn: And outside of mediation you were telling me you do a few other services. Just so people can know, can you describe those? Susan: Yeah, so one of my biggest areas of practice at the moment is legal coaching, which is a little bit different than divorce coaching, because what I'm doing is getting involved in cases. Usually, they're either high conflict cases, where someone is dealing with a high conflict ex that can be a narcissist, a borderline personality disordered person, or just someone who is very difficult to deal with, or high net worth cases. I'm helping the client to learn to manage those relationships, manage the communication so that they can have as much control over their lives as possible. Susan: I help with strategizing, with negotiation strategies. I've been a divorce attorney for 30 years. I negotiate every day of my life. I have to stop myself from doing it in the grocery line because it's so second nature for me. But your average person, unless they have negotiation in their business life, that's not a normal, that's not something that many people are comfortable with. So, I work with just a lot of clients on how to identify what they want and then how to strategize and negotiate to get that in the divorce process. I work with people all around the world in that context. I have clients across this country, Australia, Europe, Canada, all over. Shawn: Well, Susan, thank you very much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation and I hope the listeners will, too. Susan: Well, and thank you so much for having me, and thank you for coming on my show. Again, I loved that episode and so do my listeners. So, thank you. Shawn: Now, before you go, I want to make sure you get some really important information. I'm going to tell you about a few things that maybe of interest to you. First as a favor, is if you could leave a review, if you're on the iTunes store, leave a review on iTunes, or if you search Divorce and Your Money on a website called Trustpilot or on Google, you can leave a review there. It's quick, it's anonymous. It only takes a few seconds and I really, really appreciate your feedback. I have lots of reviews on iTunes and on Trustpilot, and I appreciate hearing your stories. Shawn: Also, on divorceandyourmoney.com, you can get lots of great information. Of course, you can book a 30-minute strategy session directly with me. There's two types of strategy calls you can book, just a normal strategy session, where we discuss the questions that are most pressing to you regardless of where you are in the divorce process, be at the beginning, towards the end, or in the middle. It doesn't really matter. There's lots of great information we can cover during that strategy call. Also, we have a document review call. Shawn: It's been one of the biggest things that we've done over the past year, which is you can send me your documents, be it your financial affidavit, a settlement agreement, or other documents that you would like for me to review. Then, I review those in advance of the call and then we get to discuss them in-depth as part of a strategy session and get specific answers to some of the specific documents and things that you are considering. Also, for those who need ongoing support, we do have a few options for ongoing support, but regardless, it all starts with a coaching call that you can book at divorceandyourmoney.com. Shawn: Don't forget to also get a copy of my new book. It's called Divorce and Your Money: How to Avoid Costly Divorce Mistakes. It's available on my website, or also on Amazon. You just look me up and make sure you get the new edition. It is filled with excellent information regarding the divorce process, and I know that you will find it helpful. Once you've read the book, be sure to leave a review. That really helps me. I appreciate your feedback and it also helps other people as they try and find this information. And finally, last but not least by any means is on the store at divorceandyourmoney.com, if you click on the store button, you can get access to the full archive of podcast episodes. Shawn: There's over 200 episodes, and what's great about the store link is that the episodes are organized in neat buckets, and they're organized by topic. So, it's very easy to follow along with the information, and it is easy to pick out the key topics that matter most to you. You can get all of those podcast episodes in the store. Thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Shawn Leamon, MBA and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. Take care.    

This is the first part of Shawn McCraney’s interview of Denver Snuffer, which was recorded on October 8th, 2019 in front of a live audience. Transcript Shawn: Denver Snuffer. Denver: Shawn. Shawn: It’s good to meet you. I’ve heard many things about you. I have not followed up to confirm any of it. I’ve heard … Continue reading 88: Interview with Denver, Part 1 → The post 88: Interview with Denver, Part 1 appeared first on Denver Snuffer.

Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.   Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.   Chris: Hey everybody, it’s Chris Denmon with Denmon and Pearlman out of St. Petersburg, Florida and today I’m with Shawn Leamon. Did I pronounce that right Sean?Shawn: You got it right.Chris: All right. Shawn Leamon, who is a certified divorce financial analyst and the host of a podcast which is Divorce and Your Money. Which is how I found Shawn and we’re continuing our series today. We’re interviewing tangential professionals in other professions that can help our clients get through the divorce process in the best possible way and help them move onto their lives in the best possible way. And so Shawn, you’ll be talking to some of my future clients and my current clients. And take it away, what did I miss? What else about you should we let people know?Shawn: No, I think that’s great. I’m a certified divorce financial analyst. I get to work with people all over the country. My podcast, Divorce and Your Money is probably the largest divorce podcast that’s out there. I like to help people as much as possible because you know, divorce in many aspects, financially, legally and emotionally as well, is a very complex process for someone. So I like to help at least in my small segment where I can. Chris: Absolutely. And yeah, the same idea, right? So when I’m a lawyer and I do lawyer things, and my clients are going through the process, they’ll come to whether it’s for a figuring out a budgeting issue, or whether it’s a tax issue and I’m not an expert at that. That’s not what I know best, and I turn to people like you to help me answer those questions, and a lot of times, it’s easier for me to just introduce my clients to somebody like you, or you to you because then you can help them get the answers they need better than I can do it. And you and I were talking before we started, and I know you from your podcast. I also know you because I was looking up an answer to something that here I am, the divorce attorney, I didn’t know the answer, and you had answer it on a very detailed, excellent blog post that I was able to get the answer for me and then share it with my client. And you’re able to help that way. Chris: So, thank you for taking some time to chat with me today. I appreciate it.Shawn: Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.Chris: With my clients, I have two different phases where I think they need help and I’m going to kind of just mention that and let you kind of help educate in any way that you can. But I know that I have clients that right at the very beginning of the process, in anticipation of a divorce, or in anticipation really of a separation where they have one household and they’re getting ready to potentially move into two households, and they have to figure out how to budge for it. Plan for it and make the right decisions with their finances. That’s kind of one bucket where my clients need help.Chris: And then the other bucket is when it’s all said and done, you know as a divorce lawyer I think we’re good at getting things done and then we shake hands and then we release our clients into the wild, right? And sometimes we have clients like maybe a needy spouse who for the last 20 years, she hasn’t really done any of the budgeting and I don’t want to leave them … I don’t want to shake hands and let them go off and have them ill-prepared. And that’s another, that’s an area where I think that they need help. Is that kind of your experience?Shawn: Yeah. You know I think the main focus for anyone who’s thinking about divorce is already in the process, really boils down almost to two things. The first is knowing what you have. The number of conversations where people don’t know they have a retirement account, or you need to know … I mean, if you have a house, you need to know what it’s worth and have a good sense of that. If you have a mortgage, or if you have other debts somewhere. If you have credit cards. Regardless of whether you were the spouse who took care of the finances, or has never seen them at all, your first step is just to figure out, “Well, what are we splitting up?” And from that comes the second question which is, or a second answer that one should know the answer to is, what do you want?Shawn: The other problem or other area I see everyday is that, well you know you have a house that’s worth a certain amount, you know you have these retirement accounts, you know you have maybe a little credit card debt or whatever the case may be, but you don’t really have a clear sense of, “Well, what do I want when this process is over? What will I need to live?” Most of the people, at least that I deal with getting divorced, I like to say, “Look, you’re going to probably die these days at 100 years old. So if you’re 50, you’ve got 50 years of thinking and planning to do. What are you going to be thinking about over the next two or three or five decades? And are the decisions that you’re making right now, splitting up your family and your assets and everything else, are these really kind of what you want for the long-term and are they working for you?”Chris: Sure. And I mean, how do you help people engage in that conversation when … Because divorce is so life-changing, right? People tend to identify with what they’ve been for an extended period of time, especially in a long-term marriage. And then now, sometimes, am I right, would you say that sometimes they don’t even know what it is they want yet? Shawn: Yeah, it’s a great point. And one of the things that I try and tell everyone, which is very hard to do in practice, but actually makes a lot of sense is to depersonalize what you’re going through when it comes to making your decisions. Or the way I like to phrase it is, pretend like you’re the CEO of this process and you’re the businessman, businesswoman and what would just a rational person looking from 30,000 feet think about and would recommend for you and your situation? Meaning, if you’re going through a divorce, there’s any number of overwhelming emotions that make it hard to have any sort of clarity of thought. You know you have got a million questions, you’ve got to figure out this process, let’s forget all of that for a moment. Let’s just pretend that we take … Or the way I do it, or the way I speak about it with people, is let’s just take at least the asset part, the financial part. Let’s just put it all on a piece of paper. Your name doesn’t even have to be on it. It can John Doe or Jane Doe. What would you recommend Jane Doe for their future given what they have right now? And what do you think makes sense?Shawn: and once you kind of remove the you from it, I know it sounds weird, is to take yourself out of this process, but when it comes to making decisions, if you make emotions kind of cloud your judgment, that’s where people can go very far astray or end up making pretty poor decisions. Once you kind of depersonalize it a bit, you can really sit there and just treat them as X’s and O’s or numbers on a sheet of paper and say, “Hey! This person that I’m looking at on this piece of paper should probably do X instead of Y. Or take more of one asset or ask for more support, or ask for less support. And would be better off if we did whatever.”Shawn: And it becomes actually, for most people, a lot clearer pretty quickly once they take the me out of it.Chris: Sure. You got me thinking of the scenario where a party, they’re emotional to a home, and maybe the home is too big for the party by themselves,. The kids may be out of the house, the home might be too big already. But then you may have a, one of the party’s who are really attached to the home and they want to stay in the home but maybe the numbers don’t make sense and maybe if they were to keep the home, not only would they be keeping assets that are not going to generate any money for them in the future, I mean not really, unless you sell the house, it’s not a liquid asset.Chris: But they’re also, their standard of living is necessarily going down because they’re not going to have enough cash flow to do what they want to do. You know, so that’s a … Is that something, is that a problem that you … Is that a scenario –Shawn: That’s one of the most common things that I have to deal with on a daily basis. And the way that I teach people to think about it is before you decide what you want, start with your expenses. And so, the divorce process for most people, as painful as it is for most, is really only going to be a year or two of their life. And as I said earlier, you have decades to think about. Well, let’s start with, what is your life going to cost after this divorce? What is your mortgage payment or rent going to be? How much are you spending on cars and telephone bills and everything else. Once you kind of know – or your kids as well. Once you know what your expenses are, then you can start to say, “Well, all right, now I know at least how much income I need to stay even.”Shawn: And also you can say, “Well how much am I …”, and then you can start thinking about bigger questions like how much am I going to need for retirement or whatever else. But if you start with your expenses, things like that house that you have an emotional attachment to, you can see very quickly and very clearly that in many cases it’s not affordable. And you’ll see, like wow, you know if you’re spending … I’m just going to make up a number but if you’re spending 3,500 dollars a month on a house, and your income for a given year after a divorce is only going to be 5,000 dollars a month, it becomes very apparent that you don’t have much money for anything else.Shawn: And, once you just kind of map out – and when I say map out, I do things very simply. I take a blank sheet of paper and a pen and I say, “Let’s just do some simple math. How much is the house? How much is the car? How much are you spending on kids, clothes, going out, travel, vacations, whatever?” I just take a pen and a paper, nothing fancy, and just start writing down these kinds of things. And then once you have that kind of rough number, doesn’t have to be precise, you can start to think about is, well what is that really look like for me and start making the right decisions based upon that.Chris: Right, that’s a great way to do it, because … I think a lot about the stay at home mom because we represent a lot of stay at home moms and they just … Their responsibilities for the family have traditionally been kid-related stuff, maybe. Maybe the stay at home mom hasn’t traditionally had dollars and cents responsibilities. I mean, they’ll go out there and they’ll do the work and they’ll go do the shopping and all that stuff. But they may not be doing the budget and then it comes time, they have to now figure all of this out and they also have the great unknown of what their income is going to be when this is all said and done, and you know alimony will often play a big part in that.Chris: But if you don’t know what your expenses are, how are you going to know what is the money that you need outside of just saying, “We’ll get you the most amount of money possible.” Which is great, but it’s not really a great way to solve the problem. You just gotta know what you need and then try to get that and maybe some more. And I like your idea of just putting pen to paper with it because sometimes there are lawyers will do things that become a little cumbersome. Spreadsheets and it doesn’t really work. Sometimes simpler is better to help people, especially with so much else that’s going on in a divorce. So many other things to worry about, you know?Shawn: Yeah. There’s a lot to say about that point, particularly with the stay at home moms. I also work with many and there’s a variety of issues oftentimes with the stay at home moms. Sometimes a lack of confidence. I said you have to be the CEO of your divorce process. I’ll always say, because I talk to stay at home moms every day, everywhere, and I’ll say, “Hey, so, while your husband was working, who took care of the kids? Who took care of the house? Who took care of every other daily detail that happened?” And it was always them. And they have all of these skills in terms of managing a very complex life. They might not feel like they do, but they’ve been doing it for 10, or 20, or 30 years. And this is just one other challenge in that process. But they already have everything they need. They just need a little bit of guidance in terms of focusing that same energy they’ve had for a very, very long time.Shawn: And, as part of that, sometimes it’s, you know when I think about things that you need to do when it comes for planning for the process. Well, one big question is, we talked about the house. Sometimes I’ll say, “Well, let’s take some action towards it and find out. If you want to stay in the same neighborhood, why don’t you contact a real estate agent. See what houses are available in your neighborhood. You know particularly if your kids need to stay in the same school district.” I’ll say, “Go check out some apartments in the area. Are any of them feasible? Find out what the rent is for something that you could live with.”Shawn: It might not be the same, but sometimes just gathering some basic information that’s free, no cost to anyone, to call up a realtor and say, “Hey, I’m about to get divorced, or I’m in the divorce process, can you show me what some options are in the neighborhood?” Or, walking to the apartment building or driving over to the apartment building and say, “Hey, what’s a three bedroom in this area cost?” And those types of little steps, not very hard, and you can also start to crystallize, and you can say, “Hey, you know what? This three bedroom apartment actually could really work for me for the next few years while I get back on my feet.” Or you might say, “You know what? I’m priced out of my neighborhood. I need to think about what the right option for me in the long term.”Shawn: And it gives you the ability to confront reality head-on. Good or bad or anywhere in between. But at least you come through, or you start the process with some solid information so that you can make the right decision when it comes to going to mediation or talking with you or whatever else. It’s just you have a real, clear picture of what the future might look like, instead of just guessing and hoping for the best.Chris: a little bit of information goes a long way on the path. So that’s a great idea. And do you find yourself encouraging people to do that early in the process? In the middle of the process? When?Shawn: Yeah, it’s a good question. The answer is as soon as you can. You know, divorce is challenging of course, to understate it. And, you know, it’s not an instantaneous process even to get to the point where the D word gets dropped, much less serving papers and everything else. So, you know, it really depends. What I say is, the sooner you can figure these things out, the better. But, I have people who, and I actually am talking to someone in just a few minutes, who has to, has their proposals, their settlement proposals on the table. Right? And so the question is, well, does this make sense or should I be trying to make some adjustments? And some of the things that we’ve already discussed are going to be exactly that.Shawn: It’s like, “Hey, did you check to make sure that you’re going to be able to afford the house? Or be able to move to another place? Or be able to refinance? Or whatever the case may – or your spouse be able to refinance? If you go with this proposal, and if not, we gotta get these kind of details done now, so we make sure that we’re not walking you in to something that is not ideal for you.”Shawn: You know, the sooner you can plan the better. For the people that I get to work with before even papers are filed, I’ll say, “This is awesome. You’re going to go into your consultation with an attorney, with almost everything prepared, and your attorney is going to be able to take this job and do everything for you and I won’t need to talk to you again.” Other people, if you’re kind of still in the middle of the process, figuring things out, it’s okay, if you’re in the middle, so long as you’re starting to formulate that picture of what it is that you’re really aiming for.Shawn: I mean what I’m trying to say is that, if you don’t have a goal, you’re not shooting towards anything and you really need to have a clear sense of what your goal is for this process, otherwise your attorney, you aren’t as empowered as you could be to help them get to be where they need to be when this process is over.Chris: An awesome way of framing it. And we, again as an attorney, we’re always, we’re goal oriented. We have a process from the very beginning of getting them to conceptualize our clients and focus on their goals. But it can be easy to focus on goals that are more related to the divorce process and maybe kids, and sometimes, for however, it works out, because maybe our clients when they’re coming in, some of the issues we’re addressing at the beginning are more emotional. Sometimes the financial goals outside of minimizing my alimony payment, or maximize my alimony award, which isn’t very concrete, it isn’t very helpful. But outside of some of that stuff, we tend to maybe miss some of those financial goals from the very beginning. Whereas, if we have them from the very beginning, makes it easier to get people to where we need to get them to.Shawn: That’s exactly right. And you know the only thing that I would add to that is also if you have the goals, I say this all the time, is, once you have your goals written down, now’s a great time to talk to your attorney and make sure that your goals are reasonable. Because, you know, I see people who might say, “I don’t want to pay a dime of alimony and no child support and I want 100% custody.” And you’re like, “Your spouse is a decent human, even though the two of you don’t get along. That doesn’t seem like a reasonable case. You might want to think about those a little more.” But, you know, it’s having kind of a sense of what that is, so you know, my job, the way that I do view my job is to make them prepared for you.Shawn: And to, so that whatever time you spend with the client is maximized and you can do your job more effectively. You as the attorney and as the people listening are the people in charge of this process. And you know I’m sort of a support person, but you know, I want to make sure that what you’re doing and what I’m doing can kind of help them get to the best position possible.Chris: Absolutely. Before we go Shawn, do you have any like any tips to help somebody, whether it’s the husband or the wife, when they’re in the beginning of the process, maybe they’ve contacted me, maybe they haven’t, and they’re considering separation. And so, from a financial perspective, do you have any tips to help somebody who is thinking, “Hey, I think I need to get … I think for my own emotional wellbeing, I think I need to be in a separate household from my spouse. Obviously I’ll talk to a lawyer about things like custody and stuff like that. But what do I need to pull off from a financial perspective? And how do I get there?”Shawn: Yeah. I think the two things when it comes to separation. Some of the things that we’ve already discussed, but one is your credit report. Knowing what’s on your credit report. I have clients who make 100,000 dollars a year. I have clients who make 100 million dollars a year. You’d be surprised what’s on a credit report, and there are always surprises. And so just kind of knowing what that is. And then also, knowing what your expenses are. I mean look, when you’re separating, we’ve talked about expenses before, but, your income is going to be the same more or less, whether you’re married or in the separation process. The income part is semi-fixed. The expenses part is now all of a sudden doubling. And so you need to really understand is can you afford that? And what that looks like. Do you have enough savings? Do you have enough income? Do you have enough whatever the case may be that you need to separate.Shawn: And actually might add a third thing to that, is, separation can have other effects on the divorce process and so I always encourage my clients before taking that separation step, to talk to someone like you. You know, consultations are confidential. It’s not like, you know I have some clients who are afraid to step into an attorney’s office. I say, “Look, attorneys are confidential. No one’s going to know that you’re there. No one’s going to sign, put a billboard up in town that says, ‘They met with Christian’. It’s just so that you can understand your situation, the implications of what you’re doing and making sure that you ultimately protect yourself and don’t unintentionally run afoul of something that might come back to hurt you later.Chris: Absolutely. That’s right. I can help them with the legal pros and cons of separating, but you can help them with the practical if you separate, can you do it, and how will you make it work? And what’s it going to cost? Shawn, thanks so much man. I had a great time. I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to chat with me and ultimately chat with my clients and some people that are watching this just for advice. If somebody needs to reach out to you, what do they do? How do they do that?Shawn: Yeah you can visit me at divorceandyourmoney.com, and there’s a podcast by the same thing if you search any podcast player called Divorce and Your Money.Chris: Sounds pretty simple. Shawn, thanks.Shawn: Yeah.Chris: I appreciate it.Shawn: Thank you, Christian. Take care.

Let’s face it, even if you use an LLC, you still need insurance. However, when we need insurance for LLCs, corporations, and land trusts, our local insurance people and providers don’t know how to write the right type of policy to protect our assets. Clint Coons of Anderson Business Advisors talks to Shawn Woedl from the National Real Estate Insurance Group (NREIG) about the importance of insurance and different types of policies that are available. Highlights/Topics: Creating a Limited Liability Company (LLC) doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility to insure the property REIGuard: Accommodates portfolio of one to four family rental dwellings or any line of commercial real estate through any phase of occupancy, anywhere in the country Flippers should purchase Builder’s Risk Forms that include liability coverage for the premises Fix and flips are highest risk type of property for an insurance company; investors are forced to buy a longer-term policy, but won’t get a refund if they sell the property sooner Liability claims take down a company faster than any property loss, regardless of size General Contractor’s Policy covers faulty workmanship; a general contractor needs to provide Certificate of Liability Coverage and Workers’ Compensation Coverage Call monthly to verify their coverage, or add yourself to their General Contractor’s Liability Policy Flipping through a corporation can make it difficult to obtain policies; some carriers only offer coverage in the property owner’s personal name Local insurances don’t insure LLCs, only individuals, because of pre-negotiation through their reinsurance treaties and contracts, so they can’t accommodate for it Insurance agents encourage separate policies for each LLC, not an umbrella policy, to run up the cost; NREIG can aggregate them under one policy to lower rates Name anyone who has an ownership interest in the property that can potentially be included in a lawsuit as additional insured on your policy New investors who come to NREIG discover that they have many choices for property and liability insurance; NREIG structures unique coverage based on client’s needs Resources National Real Estate Insurance Group REIGuard Clint Coons Anderson Advisors Tax and Asset Protection Event Full Episode Transcript: Clint: Hi everyone, it’s Clint Coons here with Anderson Business Advisors and today I have Shawn Woedl on from National Real Estate Insurance Group, and he’s going to talk to us about the importance of insurance and the different types of policies that are out there. We all know as real estate investors that when you go out and you try to find insurance, you talk to your local guide. Many times they look at you as if you’re from another planet, because you’re using strategies that they’re unfamiliar with. We’re talking about LLCs, corporations, and land trust and we’re putting our properties into these entities or as a protection. Many times, when we need the insurance, our local insurance individual does not know how to write the right type of policy that we need to protect our assets. Because let’s face it, even though you use an LLC, you still need insurance. Just this week, I was speaking to an attorney who’s an investor. They called me up, and he said, hey, I have this property in an LLC, and my tenant has been hurt. The ceiling fan fell down and hit him on his foot, and he can’t walk anymore, he’s going to be permanently disabled, and he’s suing my LLC and I don’t have insurance. You think I have a problem? Now, of course, you do have a problem, because even though you create a Limited Liability Company, it doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility to insure the property. So, when we’re setting up these structures, it’s imperative that you get the right information. That’s why I brought Shawn on, I think he can explain, why that’s important. We’re going to ask him a number of questions, and hope that by the end of this, you’re going to understand this is the group you want to go to. So, Shawn, thanks for coming on. How are you doing? Shawn: Doing well, thanks. Thank you, Clint, for having me. Clint: Great. With National Real Estate Insurance Group, can you just give me a brief background as how this came together –  this group, because you offer a number of products out there that I think are really advantageous for investors. Shawn: Absolutely. National Real Estate Insurance Group itself is a national independent insurance agency who are licensed and active in all 50 states, with a focus on real estate investors. About twenty years ago, we developed what’s now known as the REI guard insurance program, and it kind of started with two separate programs that came together as one. We have Mike Wrenn here, one of our owners in Kansas City that was working with the home investors franchises and developed renovators insurance, which was a short term program for guys and girls who were doing fix and flips that needed a month or two of coverage and the insurance industry wasn’t responding to their need. Tim Norris and myself were in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we were developing National Real Estate Insurance Group and National Condo and Apartment Insurance Group, with the focus on residential real estate investors that were buying hold opportunities, as well as larger apartments, condo, association, really any line of commercial real estate. In 2010, after really passing some business opportunities back and forth that multiple events across the country, Tim and Mike actually merged their agencies, and developed this crazy program called through National Real Estate Insurance Group called REIGuard, that now can accommodate for a portfolio, one to four family rental dwellings through any phase of occupancy, anywhere in the country, on monthly recording. And then in 2014, I went ahead and merged my agency as well, and we now can accommodate really for any line of commercial real estate an investor decides to dive into. Clint: Wow. I mean that just, I mean, seems like it’s perfect for our clients especially, because at Anderson, we pride ourselves as being a one-stop shop for real estate investors, giving them the tax information, business planning, and asset protection, even a state planning. And it seems like what you’ve done with National Real Estate Insurance Group is hit the same type of demographic target, and that you saw there was a need out there, and people could then go to one place to make sure all their insurance needs are covered. And that’s refreshing, because I know how frustrating it can be, even with my own investing. As I tell people, I own over a hundred properties and it’s just difficult to go out there and find an agent that gets it, and it sounds to me in my experience with working with you, that you guys understand it. And I can tell you this, it took us a long time to finally find someone such as National Real Estate Insurance Group that understands real estate investors. I’ve been real happy with our relationship, to make you a trusted resource for our clientele because of the value you bring to them. So with that, you’re talking about policies. Can you tell me why is a flipper, because we have a lot of flippers, they go out, they buy and sell properties. I don’t think they understand the importance of the insurance, and what type of insurance should they get? Shawn: So, a couple of quick points that I’d like to make on those builders risk type of policies, or forms that these investors can purchase for these fix and flip opportunities: one, it’s typically a builders risk forms for property only. So, unless you specifically ask for liability coverage, that can be an exposure on a lot of builders risk forms to think of, maybe slips and falls, personal injuries like you just mentioned with one of your friends there, that’s happening, those are exposures on a lot of builders risks forms unless you specifically ask for liability to be included for the premises. Understanding the market the way we do, because we’re all investors ourselves, we of course include that into our forms, but to just kind of piggyback on that –  renovation properties, short term fix and flips, are considered probably the highest risk type of property for an insurance company to agree to insure. There’s lots of parties going in and out, there’s a lot of ongoing operations, typically, those are susceptible of theft or people breaking and entering. So, insurance companies are going to force investors most of the time to come in and buy a longer-term policy, a six-month to an annual policy, which doesn’t make a lot of sense if the flip in your possession, you think you’re going to have it done in three to four months. Because these policies are fully entered in conception. Meaning, from the get-go, as soon as you agreed to purchase coverage from your carrier, you have to pay the full premium up front, and by the way, if you cancel early because that flip’s completed, you can’t get any money back from the unused premium, that’s the cost of doing business with a lot of these carriers that will agree to actually take on risks, and it’s just on renovation property. And it’s really just because they don’t have an appetite for the risk they’re taking on and they don’t understand the market. Clint: Wow, yeah, I did not know that. I haven’t flipped properties in years, but yeah, I bet a lot of people think that when they buy a policy like that, once they cancel it, they’re going to get a refund of the premium, but they’re not. So that’s good to know. So you’re saying that with all your fix and flip policies, and you’re going to automatically include that liability coverage for them? It’s not something they have to ask for? Shawn: Yeah, this premises liability that’s going to be included on every opportunity that we propose and go over with an investor, whether it’s regardless of its occupancy, we think it’s more important to cover the liability exposure than any property exposure. Think about it, a liability claim, a wrongful death, a personal injury that is severe, can take a company faster down than any property loss regardless of the size. It’s the unknown, once you fail on it, liability goes a couple of years down the line where you think your business is growing well, and then all of a sudden get hit with a lawsuit for a slip and fall that occurred on the site a couple of years ago when you had ownership and percent of property. So absolutely, we always include liability. The only time we’ll ever remove it is if it’s specifically asked for by an investor during a proposal process. Clint: So, you just said something interesting in there. So if I bought this property and renovating it, and then I sell it, and then a year and a half later, somebody brings a claim, that they were injured on the property while they were working on it. You said that would be covered under your policy. Shawn: It would be covered – liability is a slippery slope, there’s a lot of gray areas, right? So, if the injury happened, and they were just maybe, maybe they were breaking and entering, or the house was left unsecured, and they fell down the steps and were injured, then yeah, then that type of exposure would be picked up under the premises liability coverage that was enforced at the time of the loss. If it’s a loss that was occurred under from general contractors negligent, or if you, as the investor, were actually doing the renovations yourself, and then a lawsuit was filed for faulty workmanship post-sale by the new owner, those are all types of stand-alone coverages that you have to purchase in addition to your premises liability. But yeah, a lot of those would be covered under the premises form. Clint: Got it. So there’s other policies you can or additions you can acquire when you’re purchasing a builders risk policy to cover that. So I’m going to give you an example. Just the other day, someone came into my office. They had rehabbed the property, they sold it, and it turns out there’s an issue with a catch basin in the basement. They have both greywater and rainwater that run into it, that pump it into the sewer lines. Supposedly, that’s not correct, and that needs to be changed. Would you have, would an insurance policy cover that type of change, that the contractor screwed up on or not? Shawn: The general contractors policy would pick that up, for faulty workmanship, right? So, your carrier, the premises liability, if needed, would provide you with defense clause, would go in and help you, you know, go against the general contractors policy, but that’s a GC exposure. So, you know, typically what we always recommend that our investors do, is when a general contractor comes on to your site just to bid on the property, to work on a property, they should be able to give you two pieces of information: their certificate of liability coverage that tells you their business is covered adequately, as well as their workers compensation coverage, if they have employees that are going to be on site as well. And you know, the certificates of liability give you a couple of cool pieces of information that you can use. It gives you the carrier that wrote the piece of business, as well as the agency. So if you want to go in and reach out to the agency each month and make sure their premium is paid, this will get a nice shiny certificate for a year showing coverage by paying a month or two of premium up front. You can do one of two things, and I always recommend the second, but the first one is you can call monthly to make sure their coverage is in good standing, or you can learn as an investor that those general contractors policies can work for us as investors, and we do that by adding ourselves as additional insured to their general contractors liability policy for the duration of time they’re working on your property. Those are always, those are usually free to do, or at most it costs $50 to endorse their policy, it’s well worth it to pay that money if they’re bellyaching about it. But that extends their liability coverage to you, if they do something negligent and you’re named in the lawsuit. And equally as important, it’s going to notify you as an additional insured prior to their policy cancelling or non-payment, or any other underwriting issues, and you can get out ahead of it and make sure that it’s right. Clint: Wow. Sounds like, kind of like buying a tail, then, on their policy. Nice. So how about if they, when someone comes to you and they have a corporation, because a lot of our flippers will teach them is it, either flip through a corporation, or better yet, flip through unlimited liability company that is owned by a corporation. Does that pose any difficulty for obtaining these policies? Does it matter? Shawn: It does for a lot of carriers, and a lot of carriers are limited to only being able to offer coverage in the personal name of the owner of the property. Again, knowing the market as we do, we’re all residential real estate investors ourselves, it made little to no sense for us to put that limitation on our investors, so we can actually accommodate for any type of name insured ownership entity, we can still have them all on one single schedule so we can leverage portfolio size and activity to keep an investors property rates and costs down at a time, because you’ve got common ownership or interest in the property, so LLCs, corporations, IRAs, trusts, you name it, it can all be bundled together through our program. Clint: Okay, so hold on, I’m going to back to that topic, because that’s really important for the listeners here. But just on the side of talking about insuring the LLC, for instance, if it owns the property. Why don’t local insurances agree to insure the LLC? Why do they only want to insure the individual? What’s their hang up there? Shawn: The best I can tell you is that it’s already been pre-negotiated through their re-insurance treaties and contracts, if they have, that’s just, they can’t accommodate for it. And those are the companies that you run into, like the State Farm, the Farmers, the Allstates of the world, they’re all, by the way, tremendous companies for what they do, and what they specialize in are home and auto and some life policies, some lower-risk type of deals homeowner policies. When you start getting into the investor world, where these are higher risk locations, your tenant’s more likely to burn your house down than you are, they always offer the coverage out of a sense of obligation to their existing clientele. They don’t have an appetite for it, and you can tell by the fact that they require you to insure a property through a very high evaluation per square foot, more than you’ll ever recover from in a loss. And they do that in an effort to garner, to recover enough money in the premium to offset the risk they’re taking on on a higher risk location. So I think it’s just not having the appetite for the risk, more than anything, along with the contracts that they’ve negotiated to be able to extend coverage to them. Clint: Interesting. Yeah, I can never figure that out, because it seems to me like you’re insuring me, I’m the owner of my LLC, it’s still the same insurance policy, who do you care or what does it matter who owns it, if there’s a claim made, you’ve still got to pay, so yeah. That makes sense. So, when you’re talking about this bundling, that’s something that’s really important, because the few that I’ve talked to, clients that have actually found that maybe their State Farm agent would offer them a policy, and I’ll give an example here. An investor comes into their State Farm agent and they have six limited liability companies, with one property in each LLC. The agent tells them, you need to have six separate individual policies, we can’t give you an umbrella policy over all of these, we have to do six separate agreements. And it just seems to run up the cost. Did I hear you to say that you can aggregate them together, it doesn’t matter how the properties are held in different LLCs, we can do it under one? Shawn: Absolutely. That’s exactly what we do when it comes to property, and the primary premises liability, your underlying liability, we’ll touch on umbrellas here just a second, but it’s a master schedule for a particular investor or investment group, and it allows you to add and delete locations from your schedule as need me, but think about it, me, myself as your agent, right, if you came to me and said hey, I’ve got one location, and I’ve blanketed it out to the 250 different, you know, carriers that I’m contracted with. One location, as opposed to ten locations, as opposed to a hundred, the more leverage I can get with that underwriter to drive your property rate down. So when we do a one-off policy for each location, you’re really at the mercy of the underwriter on what they want to assign as a property rate, and that can be based on the different areas of the country maybe that you’re investing in. could just be the mood they’re in that day. So, leveraging that, just it gives me more, you know, kind of fire power to go to, ammunition, we call it, and you go to the underwriter and drive those rates down for you. Clint: So, tell me this. So, who should you name then as the additional insured on your policy? Shawn: You know, it’s a good question, and we run across that all the time, and you can look at a couple of things if you have a lender on the deal. So, somebody, you know, whether it’s private or a larger institution, they’re usually going to require that you listed as additional insured, or the very least, certificate holder on your liability insurance. That way, again, they’re notified prior to your policy lapsing for non-payment or any other underwriting issue, on the off-chance that they’re named in a lawsuit, which would never happen and your liability cover, it would also extend to them. But you can, you know, many property management companies, if you’re dealing with a large property organization, would also require that you list their company on your liability as additional insured, so, again, you do something negligent, their liability coverage, or excuse me, your liability coverage extends to them. And you can do the same thing, vice versa, and be listed on their liability coverage, but really, anyone that has an ownership interest in the property, they can be potentially dragged into a lawsuit. Clint: Okay. So as far as if you had a corporation that’s the manager of an LLC, should it be named then as additional insured, as well? Shawn: No, the corporation would be listed as first name insured, though if the corporation’s managing other locations, if they don’t have ownership ventures then at that point, yes. That doesn’t stop, that doesn’t prevent them from having to seek out the correct liability coverage to cover the property management operations, as well. But, at least with the premises, they’d be covered without being listed as additional as well. Clint: Perfect. Okay, so you can do business in all fifty states, right? Shawn: Absolutely. Clint: And then, for our clients, all they have to do, we have that link that we’ve set up that drives them right to your page and then they can put in some information and then someone will contact them, is that how it works? Shawn: Yeah, and we do things a little bit different, as you well know, I’m sure. The last thing we do, especially if a new investor comes to us, and says hey, I need coverage but I don’t know what kind of coverage I need. You know, we’re not just going to send them a proposal and say, hey, take it or leave it. The most important thing that all these investors, all of our investor friends can know is that they have so many choices when it comes to property and liability insurance. So, what we do is we get one of my license advisors or myself to actually jump on a phone call with our prospect. In the first ten, fifteen minutes of the call, we want to listen to you. We want to know exactly what your business model is, we want to know what your appetite for risk is, what you’re okay self-insuring, what you’re not, what you do, God forbid, a total loss occurs. Would you rebuild the property, or would you clean the land up, sell it, and go buy something else like it? Are there lending insurance requirements that we need to comply with? And then, we’ll help structure your coverage, unique, whatever your package need on it. Clint: Perfect. All right. Well, I want to thank you for taking the time to be on this podcast today, and I know that for sure we will end up giving hopefully more people brought over to you so they can have their insurance needs taken care of. So with that, Shawn, thanks a lot, looking forward talking to you in the future. Shawn: Thank you, Clint, have a good weekend. Clint: You too, bye.  

Josh Kueber - President & CEO of NEXGEN Building- NexGenBuilding.com - San Diego, California *Podcast recorded above the butcher shop at Valley Farm Market in Spring Valley, California. Summary Josh is the president and CEO of NEXGEN Building Group and Derek Marso’s lifelong best friend and neighbor. Josh following his gut and turning down an established positions and large offer to establish NEXGEN Building Group with the a core team of people he is able to trust. Tackling the digital landscape and utilizing technology as a resource in any industry, especially construction. Adopting the advancements in technology: Dubai 3D printing an office and Google Maps Distance Tool allowing projects to measured remotely. “Get it done now” vs. “Get it done right” and how valuable a general contractor is to properly execute projects based on the effective foundation building Offering and asking for help from your Community. Overcoming the misconception that people aren’t welling help you. Links Mentioned in this Episode: NEXGEN Building Group Website Instagram Facebook Linkedin Shawn’s Business Book Recommendation - “McDonald’s: Behind The Arches RestaurantOwner.com @BBQWarStories Weekly Social Shout Out: @hootennannybbq Winner of a sexy new #BehindTheSmoke Mug. Be sure to tag @bbqwarstories in all your #behindthesmoke photos and interact with the podcast on social for your chance to win. Remember...if we can’t tag you then we can’t pimp you. Shareable Quotes From This Podcast: “If you’re not gonna start now, when are you gonna start?” {13:30} - Shawn “We know less and less every single day but we have to rely on people that we trust that have experience.” {17:44} - Shawn “It’s not so much the successes as it is the failures. It’s when you fall on your face and your team members are there, your brothers and sisters are there, to pick you up. {21:43} - Shawn “Implementing something may impact efficiency and productivity immediately.” {29:55} - Josh “You’re in that ‘all in jumping off the cliff moment’. This is time to make the right decisions. Don’t try to do it by yourself. Reach out!” {40:19} - Shawn “Preparation in terms of clarity of scope of work allows for cost effective pricing, planning, sequencing of work [...] that leads to timely completion.” {44:17} - Josh “‘We’ve been kicking and screaming for 10 years and finally they are taking notice. Not in the way that we want but it’s a step.” {51:40} - Shawn “For me it’s the transparency. I just feel so much better about life when it’s that way.” {53:30} - Derek Get in Touch: Derek Marso - https://twitter.com/MarsoDerek Shawn Walchef - https://twitter.com/shawnpwalchef Cory Wagner - www.twitter.com/TheFifthPofmkt Behind The Smoke Media www.BehindTheSmokeMedia.com behindthesmoke@calicomfortbbq.com Facebook Page Behind The Smoke (Live Videos of the Podcast Recordings) Instagram - @bbqwarstories Twitter @bbqwarstories Valley Farm Market www.valleyfarmmarkets.com derek@valleyfarmmarkets.com Instagram @valleyfarmmarket Twitter @valleyfarmarket Facebook Page Valley Farm Market Cali Comfort BBQ www.calicomfortbbq.com shawn@calicomfortbbq.com Instagram @calicomfortbbq   Twitter @calicomfort   Facebook Page Cali Comfort BBQ YouTube Channel Cali Comfort BBQ Connect with Shawn P. Walchef on LinkedIn Honorable Mentions & BBQ Business Resources: Behind The Smoke Media BBQ Business Resources 3rd Annual Turf & Surf BBQ Championship @DelMarRacing #BETonBBQ Sunday, August 19, 2018 Kansas City Barbecue Society Sanctioned State Championship Event Limited to 70 BBQ Comp Teams Request our Sponsorship Deck: BETonBBQ@calicomfortbbq.com 9th Annual Spring Valley Tailgate & BBQ Festival #SVBBQFest California’s Largest Annual Amatuer Tailgate & BBQ Competition Date: Sunday, October 28, 2018

Mynd VR - Virtual Reality for the ElderlyChris Brickler and Shawn Wiora are businessmen addressing a large, and growing market. Its not surprising that Samsung decided to partner with them early on with a strategic alignment. Their backgrounds respectively are in Content Distribution, such as Video content from the major studios and TV syndicates, and in Nursing Home care administration. What strikes me is the need to address the aging population. Well, that actually includes every living being… but specifically, in the US we’re adding 10,000 people per day to the retired and aging population. When I was a student at Berkeley I remember taking a geography class with a focus on Global Population dynamics. Two terrifyingly awesome trends were burned into my brain. 1) How China completely cut its massive population boom by instituting 1 child policy 2) Seeing the ‘boom’ bell curve of baby boomers, and forecasting that out in the future 30 years. Many of those boomers (my parents included) are approaching retirement age, or already there. These are often affluent, highly educated, and competent individuals who are seeking high-levels of customized care as they age. I’ve visited nursing homes over the years. From singing to them as an elementary student, to later in life bringing flowers to people I’d never met before as a good-deed practice. While the levels of care vary, and the administration and staff are doing their best to care for aging people, often the homes are lacking mental stimulation, deep community, family, and educational outlets. Can VR help with these? I believe it can. Specifically, VR can bring such an immersive environment to these elderly, they’re able to be transported back in time, or take a completely novel trip to some-place tropical for example. Later, I hope they can connect with like-minded people in a Virtual environment. A clear next-step with VR in the Nursing-home environment is integration of biometrics. It will happen. For Chris and Shawn It seems they are taking the content distribution and entertainment tack as a sales tool for distribution. This is a great idea because its not a far-cry from the current form of entertainment, TV. It seems it would be an easy sell. From there, with distribution in place, one could launch all kinds of other programs: Education, Virtual Human Assistants, Mind-enhancing games, Community interactions, Family Connection portals. So many possibilities. One idea Chris and Shawn are launching is their ‘Missions’ platform. While I don’t have the details on what this is, it sound like it could be bringing in the youth of the Church to connect with Elderly in a virtual environment, hopefully bringing love, optimism and faith to their lives. www.myndVR.com

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think and work. Work on building your focus muscle. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time. Show up every day and do your best creative work. If you can't overcome fear, push through it—fear is a sign that you're doing something that matters. The way you feel about a product doesn't change how much it's worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it. Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before. Don't undervalue your products. Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing. Pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. Show Notes: Aaron: We both really loved Cal Newport's Deep Work book. When did you get interested in the idea of intense focus and structuring your life in a way to make sure you get your best creative work done? When did you find that book or that idea and really start working on that? Shawn: I think I found the idea years ago. When I was a creative marketing director, like I mentioned, I was doing 80 hours a week. Part of my schedule was that on Fridays, I would come home and work from home. I wouldn't be on email or answer the phone. I had an assistant, and anyone who needed to get ahold of me needed to go through my assistant. She would screen anything and see if it was urgent or important for the day. If it was, she'd let me know. I set up this distraction-free work time for myself on Fridays, because as the director for the marketing and all the creative stuff we were doing, it was on me to make sure that our marketing campaign for this big, end of the year, 25,000 person conference was going to happen. It was all on me. I had to drive that. You can't do that in 10-minute time blocks scattered throughout your day. For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, process, come up with ideas, and work on stuff. That was my first experience of going, “I have to have this. If I don't, I won't be able to do my job, and I will always be in reaction mode.” That was my first experience, and that was in 2008 when I came across that idea. It was born out of necessity for me. Obviously, that's not new to the world, but it was new to me. When I quit my job and started blogging for a living, I came to that same spot of saying, “I need to set aside time every day to write without distractions, intentionally.” That has evolved as we've had kids, schedules have changed, and seasons of life go up and down. I need uninterrupted stretches of time on a regular basis to do my most important work and to focus on the stuff that's not urgent today but is very important. If I neglect it, those things will become urgent, or the needle is going to start going backwards and I'm going to start losing ground. Why Deep Focus Matters Shawn: Focused time has always been important. Then I came across Cal's book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. I read that in 2015. That's a fantastic book. There was this chapter in there on intentional practice, and that resonated with me so much. It's very similar to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow. He has a lot of books on very similar topics on finding flow, getting in the flow, whatever. He has one book called Flow and another one called Finding Flow. It's the idea that not only do you need those times of uninterrupted work, but when you're in that moment, if you can get into the flow, it's challenging, it's hard, etc, but you feel more rewarded. You feel better. You have a higher motivation about the work you're doing. You feel like you accomplished something. I don't know if anyone listening can relate to this. You spend your whole day in reaction mode, bouncing around between your email inbox, your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, back to email, back to Twitter, back to Instagram, back to Facebook, back to email. You're bouncing around all these inboxes, and then you're like, “Wow, I just spent four hours. I haven't done anything.” Aaron: You read a bunch of short emails, maybe you replied, maybe you sent some tweets, maybe you saw some articles. It's so easy to spend all day doing short, quick tasks that don't really change anything. Shawn: Exactly. They don't change anything, and you feel zero satisfaction afterwards. You don't feel like you got anything done, as opposed to if you took those four hours and, instead, spent it focused on something intentional, something that was challenging. If you set aside time to do deep work, when you come out of that time (even if it's just one hour or half an hour), if it was distraction free and you're focused and being intentional, you come out feeling better. After spending intentional time working on something without any distractions, you feel more motivated and you have more energy. It's this muscle. You have a focus muscle that you have to work on, as opposed to the distraction muscle. Why is Creating Focused Time So Hard? Shawn: The hardest thing for getting into that focused work time, getting into the flow, is called the Activation Energy, just getting started. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Something I like to do is have a set time every day when I am going to have my focused writing time, and before I even get there, the day before, I write down what my single most important thing is that I'm going to be writing about. I have the time on my calendar, and I have the challenge, project, or task that I'm going to be working on. As Cal Newport would say, what's the artifact that I'm going to try and get from that focused time? Then I come, sit down, and do the work. I know that the first five minutes will be hard and I probably won't be into it. I have to power through those first five minutes, and then you get into that flow. Time begins to get lost. Anyone who has been a painter, artist, musician, whatever, you can usually relate. You say, “I was just in the flow. I was in the zone.” That's where your best work is going to be created. That's where you're going to feel the most satisfaction with your job. That's where you're going to increase your skill level as a creative person. You're going to level up your ability to do stuff. Sean has talked about this so much with his Learn Lettering course: he did 9,000 hours of intentional practice! That's what he was doing every day. He had this focused time where he was practicing letters. You have to put in the time. How to Stop Procrastinating and Do Your Best Work Aaron: Everyone should read Cal Newport's books, So Good They Can't Ignore You and Deep Work. Both of those books are phenomenal. It's so important as podcasters to pick a day to outline and record an episode, and write the topic in advance. Say, “I'm going to spend 30 to 45 minutes at this time writing about this thing, and then I'm going to record an episode.” Otherwise, what ends up happening, and this is true of so many areas of life, is that you will spend a lot of time thinking about how you should do a thing. I've been thinking about how I should record a screencast for three weeks now. “Hey, I have to record that ‘introduction to limiting' screencast for my Logic course,” and I've been thinking a lot about it, but I haven't done it yet. It's so silly, but that's how procrastination works. You spend more time thinking about how you should do a thing instead of just doing the thing. Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time. That's such a simple version of an idea presented in Deep Work that is so life changing. I talk about that book all the time because I love it, and I know there are still some people who haven't read it yet. It is a book that anyone who wants to create stuff for a living professionally needs to go listen to. Shawn, you should do a whole series of videos or interviews where you talk about deep focus for creative people. Shawn: I do. I did some stuff, like the TheFocusCourse.com/margin page. I interviewed Cal Newport, and we talked about this. I interviewed a few other folks and wrote some articles, and it was on this topic of having margin in your life, the breathing room, so that you can do your best creative work. That's our mantra over there at The Focus Course: Show up every day and do your best creative work. I think margin is a huge part of that. The deep work, the focus, it's a huge part of it. Otherwise, you're just working on your email inbox all the time. That's no fun. Push Through Fear Aaron: The first question I want to talk about is this one from Mariali. She asked, “How did you overcome the insecurity of giving birth to a new idea you weren't sure people would respond well to?” I think this was about a book but it could be about anything, really. Shawn: I didn't overcome the fear. I put it out there and stuck to the plan. The way that worked with my Delight is in the Details book, was that I had done it as a podcast mini series for my members only. It was a little five part podcast, and I got a lot of positive response from people. I had teased it out, and I got a positive response, so I thought, “I should sell this for maybe like $5 as a sample for the Shawn Blanc membership thing.” I thought, “I should rewrite it, so it's a little bit more structured. I'll rerecord it so it doesn't have the welcome in it, so it's a little bit more of its own product.” As I'm doing that, it goes from five episodes to like 12. There were all these extra chapters that I ended up writing. Then I thought, “Gosh, if I'm going to to this, I might as well interview some other people, and then I can charge more for the thing.” Instead of charging $10, I could charge like $20. That would double what I'd make from it. So I made the book, and when I was getting ready to sell it, that was the hard part. That launch day, I just felt super insecure. I felt bad and sick to my stomach. I texted a few friends of mine. I was like, “This book is coming out in an hour. People are going to hate it.” Everyone was like, “Stick to your plan. Put it out there.” The people I trusted, who's opinions I cared about, all said, “You're fine, keep going.” I listened to them, and I did. I kept going and it. I pushed through that fear. I never overcame the fear—I just pushed through it. I kept going. You begin to learn that the fear becomes this mile marker for you, a sign post that you're probably doing something that matters and creating something that matters. Now I've learned that when I feel that, “This might not work,” or, “Holy crap, what am I doing? I'm in over my head!” I should probably keep going, because I might be on to something that matters at this point. Aaron: That's fantastic advice. The Market Decides What a Product Is Worth Aaron: I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I talked about this in the Fired Up Mondays podcast this morning, which is that the market decides what's valuable. People will complain when they see a product that they don't think is worth as much as the company is charging for it. Let's say that you look at a Lamborghini, and you're like, “I don't know why anyone would ever pay $400,000 for that car. Why would you want that car? You could just buy a 1999 Toyota Camri that has 140,000 miles on it for $4,000.” “This '99 Camry works great. It gets me everywhere. Good gas mileage, pretty comfortable. Not the most amazing sound system, but it does have a Bose sound system in it, so it's fine. Why would anyone spend $400,000 on a Lamborghini?” The way you feel about a product doesn't change how much it's worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it. There's somebody out there willing to pay that much money. They have that much money, and it doesn't matter what you think about that product. Somebody else went out and made that, and they're going to make money from that while you're at home complaining about how somebody else is spending $300 for a picture book from Apple. How you feel about the price of a product doesn't matter. Shawn: It's how the people that are buying it feel that matters. To say, “I'm not going to start a Lamborghini company because used Toyota Corollas exist,” that's silly, but that's how we feel. Aaron: Relating to my courses, which I'm getting close to wrapping up, pricing is interesting for me. If I hadn't met Sean and the people in the seanwes Community, I think I would have charged a fraction of what I'm planning on charging. I probably would have charged closer to $20. I would have put all this time and energy into it and not priced it high enough, because I didn't realize that there are people out there that sell courses for $1,500 and $10,000. Don't Undervalue Your Products Shawn: I bought a course recently that cost me $2,000. Aaron: So many people don't know that. A lot of us still think that $2,000 is a ton of money. For a lot of people, it is. That doesn't mean that you have to apply such a low price to the product that you're making, just because you feel like $50 is a lot of money. Don't charge too little for your product because you feel like a higher price is a lot of money—that's an easy trap to fall into. Shawn: That's very true. You have to step back. This course I bought, for me, it was a no brainer. I bought the book that was written by the guy, and I went through the book and implemented some of the stuff in there, and it helped me launch my time management class. That did $20,000 its first launch week. I spent something like $18 on this guy's book, and it helped me make $20,000. So his $2000 course was a no brainer for me. This master class version of that book, the online course version of it, that was a no brainer for me. There were a ton of videos, all this implementation stuff, coaching, and all this stuff that was involved in it. There were all these things you can do that can increase the value of your stuff. Don't increase your price just because. Start with your basic price and then double it and double it again. Now you're probably at a decent starting point. You're so prone to under-valuing your own work. You don't just jack the price up because people say so. You need to look objectively and say, “Alright, am I providing the value?” If someone comes in and takes my Focus Course, for example, we charge $350 for it. It's not a lot, but it isn't a little, either. If someone spends $350 and goes through this course, are they going to be able to walk away with at least, ideally, $700 worth of value? I want them to get at least double the value they're paying for it. Can I get it to be even more? Can I get them to walk away with $3,500 worth of value, 10X the amount of value that I'm providing? You charge that, and if people take it seriously, they'll walk away with something that wil literally change the way they spend their time with work, family, health, and finances. This is across the board for their life, and you can't put a price on that. Objectively ask yourself if you're delivering on your promises and providing the value that you say you are. With your stuff, Aaron, with podcasting, if you can help people get a podcast off the ground, they can turn that into a full time business. That's worth $50,000 or $100,000. Someone could say, “Thanks to your stuff, I started a business that's now thriving. I do this as my job.” That's worth so much money! To charge $20 for it? Don't undervalue your stuff. First Steps to Improve Your Focus Aaron: I want to answer Kyle's question here in the chat. I'm going to read his question and I'll let you take a stab at it, Shawn. Kyle asked, “Is there a best first step to improved focus? I can think of so many directions I should go: exercise more, eat better, write down what I'm doing the next day, sleep better, etc. Trying to do all of it at once isn't sustainable. What should I start with?” Shawn: This is great, Kyle, excellent question. I feel like there are two best first steps (which obviously doesn't make sense, you can only really have one first step, but play along). We talked about this in the Focus Course. On the very first day of the Focus Course, there's this super dorky assignment. You have to set out your clothes for what you're going to wear tomorrow. Tonight, when you go to bed, pick out tomorrow's outfit. It's super dorky. You can do it in two minutes. In the morning, you have to wear the outfit you picked out the night before. You have to actually follow through with your commitment. You set this thing out, and you say, “I'm going to wear these pants and this shirt,” etc. In the morning, you wake up, and you have to wear it. You've made a commitment to yourself the night before. In the morning, you wake up and you follow through on that commitment. It's a small step towards strengthening your personal integrity, which is your ability to follow through with your commitments to yourself. That's super powerful. The other component to setting out your clothes the night before and then putting them on is that it's your current self helping your future self. You've saved your future self five minutes in the morning. The quality of my time in the morning is super valuable. My mind is fresh, it's the beginning of the day, there are no fires happening yet. That's my best chance to get my best work done, early in the morning. Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before. It's this idea of helping your future self. Once you get your toe in that water, you begin to see all the other areas of your life where you can begin to help your future self. We were talking during the podcast about this. Kyle says, “Yes, I've done this.” That's awesome. As Aaron and I talked about earlier, when you have that deep work focused time, try to decide ahead of time what that focus is going to be. This is your current self helping your future self. It's so powerful. For me, I write down my topic that I'm going to be writing about tomorrow when it's time for me to write. I have the topic ahead of time, so I know what to write about. Then, when I sit down, I don't have to think about. I have the singular focus to write about this topic that I've already chosen. That can really help with improving focus. Be ahead of your own curve and help your future self. Those of you who are registered for the Creative Focus Online Summit will get to hear Josh Kaufman and I talk about this. He talks about the importance of going on a walk in the morning and having 30 minutes where you leave your phone at home. You go outside, you're moving, you're getting sunlight, but also, it's 30 minutes of thinking time where you can be undistracted. You can just think. He calls it “noodling.” You let your mind “noodle.” He talks about how when you have a productivity system and a focus system that gives you space to think and to be uninterrupted for a little bit, you're going to be far more productive than if you have a system that doesn't give you space to think. For him, he says that that is the number one, single most important component of being more productive and focused—actually having carved out time on a regular basis where you can just think. Be distraction free. That's why he says to take a walk. You can combine that with movement, being outside, getting sunlight, and things like that. It's easier than sitting on your couch and staring at the wall for 30 minutes. I don't say that to put that idea down, but it can be easier to be undistracted when you're outside walking around and you leave your phone at home. As opposed to, you put your phone next to you on the couch and you hope that it doesn't buzz. You can put it in airplane mode, obviously, but it's still right there. You want to grab it and take it off of airplane mode. So coming back to Kyle's question: You have so many directions you want to go. Exercising, eating, writing down what you're doing the next day, sleeping better. Right? People say, “I want to improve my relationship with my spouse. I also want to get better at budgeting my finances. I also want to get better at budgeting my time. I also want to read these books.” You look at it, and there is so much stuff that you want to do. You can't do all of it right now, so pick one thing. What's the one that's most exciting? Build One Habit at a Time Shawn: Kyle, you listed exercise as the first thing on your list, so I would start with that. Not to pitch my course, but I'm going to pitch my course. We go through all the core areas of your life: your job, your relationships, your finances, your “down time,” your physical health, and your inner or spiritual life. These are the six areas of your life. We go through each one of those and spend time on each one, where you list out what's important to you in this area of your life. What's a goal that you want to have or a lifestyle practice that you want to implement, and how can you move the needle forward toward that goal? You come up with six goals and six action plans, one each for the main areas of your life. Spoiler here, at the end of the course, you pick one. Focus on improving one area of your life for six months and ignore the other ones. Don't ignore them in terms of ignoring your wife for two months while you're focusing on work, but you pick one area to build a habit, a routine, a lifestyle practice, that has you making meaningful progress in that area of life. A lot of people say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Actually, if you're a habit building master, you might be able to do it in 21 days, but it takes most people 60 days to build a habit. That's the average. That's two months! I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the Jerry Seinfeld productivity tip with the calendar. You write a joke every day and you put a big X on your calendar, and you don't want to break the chain. It's the same with this new habit of yours. Say, “What's one thing I can do on a daily basis that's going to help me move toward my goal of exercising more, of being more physically active?” What's the minimum dose, the smallest thing you can do? You're going to go walk for 20 minutes, or whatever it is. Do that every single day for two months. It's a small start, but now you've done it. You're two months in, and now, instead of it being this thing you are trying to get the motivation for to move forward, you're doing it. It has become routine for you, which requires far less activation energy, far less mental energy. It has moved into your life. It's there. It's something that you're doing on a daily basis. Now, you pick the next thing. “Okay, I have the exercise thing.” Keep that and layer the next thing on top of it. You're doing that for your physical health. What about for your inner life, your spiritual life? What's something you would want to layer on top of that, something you could do? Now, during that walking time, maybe you're going to think about something. If you read a Bible or something like that, you could say, “I'm going to have a Bible verse that I think about during my 30 minute walk.” Maybe you're trying to improve your relationship with your spouse. Bring them along on your walk. Now, you can incorporate this. Say, “I'm going to do this on a regular basis,” and you do that for two more months. Then you pick the next layer. Maybe it doesn't build on that 30 minute walk itself. Maybe it's an entirely different part of the day, but the core is the same. Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing. This is why New Year's resolutions never work. We say, “I'm going to go to the gym for five hours a day every day starting on January 1st, and I'm going to start budgeting, and I'm going to stop eating chocolate, and I'm going to go on date nights every week, and I'm going to read a book a week.” January 1st, go! It's so much. You're going to run up and try to push a truck, but you don't have the energy, the strength, to move and change that much that quickly. With the truck analogy, if you're driving a car and you want to try and tow another car, you don't gun it with all this slack on the tow line. You're going to rip both of the bumpers off. You start super, super slow. You slowly build up that speed. That's how you do it without getting in a wreck. You actually make that momentum. Start with just one thing. The hard part is giving ourselves permission to pick one thing and focus on that for two whole months. That's the hardest part, really. It's not in the doing. It's in the not despising those small beginnings. That's the crash course of the Focus Course right there. This is the value. If you stick around for the after show at seanwes, this is what you get. Aaron: I'll agree with Shawn and say this: pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. I know how many goals you have right now. I know, because I have that many goals, too. Pick one thing and write it down. Get a little calendar. Make a big X. Do that every day. You'll get other stuff done, too, but you need to think about doing one important thing first thing in the morning right after you wake up. Get that thing done, and then pat yourself on the back, feel good about it, and move on to the next thing. You can follow Shawn Blanc on Twitter @ShawnBlanc, and be sure to check out his website at www.shawnblanc.net.

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think and work.Work on building your focus muscle.The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest.Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time.Show up every day and do your best creative work.If you can’t overcome fear, push through it—fear is a sign that you’re doing something that matters.The way you feel about a product doesn’t change how much it’s worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it.Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before.Don’t undervalue your products.Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing.Pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal.Show Notes:Aaron: We both really loved Cal Newport’s Deep Work book. When did you get interested in the idea of intense focus and structuring your life in a way to make sure you get your best creative work done? When did you find that book or that idea and really start working on that?Shawn: I think I found the idea years ago. When I was a creative marketing director, like I mentioned, I was doing 80 hours a week. Part of my schedule was that on Fridays, I would come home and work from home. I wouldn’t be on email or answer the phone. I had an assistant, and anyone who needed to get ahold of me needed to go through my assistant. She would screen anything and see if it was urgent or important for the day. If it was, she’d let me know.I set up this distraction-free work time for myself on Fridays, because as the director for the marketing and all the creative stuff we were doing, it was on me to make sure that our marketing campaign for this big, end of the year, 25,000 person conference was going to happen. It was all on me. I had to drive that. You can’t do that in 10-minute time blocks scattered throughout your day.For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, process, come up with ideas, and work on stuff.That was my first experience of going, “I have to have this. If I don’t, I won’t be able to do my job, and I will always be in reaction mode.” That was my first experience, and that was in 2008 when I came across that idea. It was born out of necessity for me. Obviously, that’s not new to the world, but it was new to me. When I quit my job and started blogging for a living, I came to that same spot of saying, “I need to set aside time every day to write without distractions, intentionally.”That has evolved as we’ve had kids, schedules have changed, and seasons of life go up and down. I need uninterrupted stretches of time on a regular basis to do my most important work and to focus on the stuff that’s not urgent today but is very important. If I neglect it, those things will become urgent, or the needle is going to start going backwards and I’m going to start losing ground.Why Deep Focus MattersShawn: Focused time has always been important. Then I came across Cal’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. I read that in 2015. That’s a fantastic book. There was this chapter in there on intentional practice, and that resonated with me so much. It’s very similar to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow.He has a lot of books on very similar topics on finding flow, getting in the flow, whatever. He has one book called Flow and another one called Finding Flow. It’s the idea that not only do you need those times of uninterrupted work, but when you’re in that moment, if you can get into the flow, it’s challenging, it’s hard, etc, but you feel more rewarded. You feel better. You have a higher motivation about the work you’re doing. You feel like you accomplished something.I don’t know if anyone listening can relate to this. You spend your whole day in reaction mode, bouncing around between your email inbox, your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, back to email, back to Twitter, back to Instagram, back to Facebook, back to email. You’re bouncing around all these inboxes, and then you’re like, “Wow, I just spent four hours. I haven’t done anything.”Aaron: You read a bunch of short emails, maybe you replied, maybe you sent some tweets, maybe you saw some articles.It’s so easy to spend all day doing short, quick tasks that don’t really change anything.Shawn: Exactly. They don’t change anything, and you feel zero satisfaction afterwards. You don’t feel like you got anything done, as opposed to if you took those four hours and, instead, spent it focused on something intentional, something that was challenging. If you set aside time to do deep work, when you come out of that time (even if it’s just one hour or half an hour), if it was distraction free and you’re focused and being intentional, you come out feeling better.After spending intentional time working on something without any distractions, you feel more motivated and you have more energy. It’s this muscle. You have a focus muscle that you have to work on, as opposed to the distraction muscle.Why is Creating Focused Time So Hard?Shawn: The hardest thing for getting into that focused work time, getting into the flow, is called the Activation Energy, just getting started. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Something I like to do is have a set time every day when I am going to have my focused writing time, and before I even get there, the day before, I write down what my single most important thing is that I’m going to be writing about. I have the time on my calendar, and I have the challenge, project, or task that I’m going to be working on.As Cal Newport would say, what’s the artifact that I’m going to try and get from that focused time? Then I come, sit down, and do the work. I know that the first five minutes will be hard and I probably won’t be into it. I have to power through those first five minutes, and then you get into that flow. Time begins to get lost. Anyone who has been a painter, artist, musician, whatever, you can usually relate. You say, “I was just in the flow. I was in the zone.” That’s where your best work is going to be created.That’s where you’re going to feel the most satisfaction with your job. That’s where you’re going to increase your skill level as a creative person. You’re going to level up your ability to do stuff. Sean has talked about this so much with his Learn Lettering course: he did 9,000 hours of intentional practice! That’s what he was doing every day. He had this focused time where he was practicing letters. You have to put in the time.How to Stop Procrastinating and Do Your Best WorkAaron: Everyone should read Cal Newport’s books, So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work. Both of those books are phenomenal. It’s so important as podcasters to pick a day to outline and record an episode, and write the topic in advance. Say, “I’m going to spend 30 to 45 minutes at this time writing about this thing, and then I’m going to record an episode.”Otherwise, what ends up happening, and this is true of so many areas of life, is that you will spend a lot of time thinking about how you should do a thing. I’ve been thinking about how I should record a screencast for three weeks now. “Hey, I have to record that ‘introduction to limiting’ screencast for my Logic course,” and I’ve been thinking a lot about it, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s so silly, but that’s how procrastination works. You spend more time thinking about how you should do a thing instead of just doing the thing.Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time.That’s such a simple version of an idea presented in Deep Work that is so life changing. I talk about that book all the time because I love it, and I know there are still some people who haven’t read it yet. It is a book that anyone who wants to create stuff for a living professionally needs to go listen to. Shawn, you should do a whole series of videos or interviews where you talk about deep focus for creative people.Shawn: I do. I did some stuff, like the TheFocusCourse.com/margin page. I interviewed Cal Newport, and we talked about this. I interviewed a few other folks and wrote some articles, and it was on this topic of having margin in your life, the breathing room, so that you can do your best creative work. That’s our mantra over there at The Focus Course: Show up every day and do your best creative work.I think margin is a huge part of that. The deep work, the focus, it’s a huge part of it. Otherwise, you’re just working on your email inbox all the time. That’s no fun.Push Through FearAaron: The first question I want to talk about is this one from Mariali. She asked, “How did you overcome the insecurity of giving birth to a new idea you weren’t sure people would respond well to?” I think this was about a book but it could be about anything, really.Shawn: I didn’t overcome the fear. I put it out there and stuck to the plan. The way that worked with my Delight is in the Details book, was that I had done it as a podcast mini series for my members only. It was a little five part podcast, and I got a lot of positive response from people. I had teased it out, and I got a positive response, so I thought, “I should sell this for maybe like $5 as a sample for the Shawn Blanc membership thing.”I thought, “I should rewrite it, so it’s a little bit more structured. I’ll rerecord it so it doesn’t have the welcome in it, so it’s a little bit more of its own product.” As I’m doing that, it goes from five episodes to like 12. There were all these extra chapters that I ended up writing. Then I thought, “Gosh, if I’m going to to this, I might as well interview some other people, and then I can charge more for the thing.” Instead of charging $10, I could charge like $20. That would double what I’d make from it.So I made the book, and when I was getting ready to sell it, that was the hard part. That launch day, I just felt super insecure. I felt bad and sick to my stomach. I texted a few friends of mine. I was like, “This book is coming out in an hour. People are going to hate it.” Everyone was like, “Stick to your plan. Put it out there.” The people I trusted, who’s opinions I cared about, all said, “You’re fine, keep going.” I listened to them, and I did. I kept going and it. I pushed through that fear.I never overcame the fear—I just pushed through it.I kept going. You begin to learn that the fear becomes this mile marker for you, a sign post that you’re probably doing something that matters and creating something that matters. Now I’ve learned that when I feel that, “This might not work,” or, “Holy crap, what am I doing? I’m in over my head!” I should probably keep going, because I might be on to something that matters at this point.Aaron: That’s fantastic advice.The Market Decides What a Product Is WorthAaron: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I talked about this in the Fired Up Mondays podcast this morning, which is that the market decides what’s valuable. People will complain when they see a product that they don’t think is worth as much as the company is charging for it. Let’s say that you look at a Lamborghini, and you’re like, “I don’t know why anyone would ever pay $400,000 for that car. Why would you want that car? You could just buy a 1999 Toyota Camri that has 140,000 miles on it for $4,000.”“This ’99 Camry works great. It gets me everywhere. Good gas mileage, pretty comfortable. Not the most amazing sound system, but it does have a Bose sound system in it, so it’s fine. Why would anyone spend $400,000 on a Lamborghini?”The way you feel about a product doesn’t change how much it’s worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it.There’s somebody out there willing to pay that much money. They have that much money, and it doesn’t matter what you think about that product. Somebody else went out and made that, and they’re going to make money from that while you’re at home complaining about how somebody else is spending $300 for a picture book from Apple. How you feel about the price of a product doesn’t matter.Shawn: It’s how the people that are buying it feel that matters. To say, “I’m not going to start a Lamborghini company because used Toyota Corollas exist,” that’s silly, but that’s how we feel.Aaron: Relating to my courses, which I’m getting close to wrapping up, pricing is interesting for me. If I hadn’t met Sean and the people in the seanwes Community, I think I would have charged a fraction of what I’m planning on charging. I probably would have charged closer to $20. I would have put all this time and energy into it and not priced it high enough, because I didn’t realize that there are people out there that sell courses for $1,500 and $10,000.Don’t Undervalue Your ProductsShawn: I bought a course recently that cost me $2,000.Aaron: So many people don’t know that. A lot of us still think that $2,000 is a ton of money. For a lot of people, it is. That doesn’t mean that you have to apply such a low price to the product that you’re making, just because you feel like $50 is a lot of money.Don’t charge too little for your product because you feel like a higher price is a lot of money—that’s an easy trap to fall into.Shawn: That’s very true. You have to step back. This course I bought, for me, it was a no brainer. I bought the book that was written by the guy, and I went through the book and implemented some of the stuff in there, and it helped me launch my time management class. That did $20,000 its first launch week. I spent something like $18 on this guy’s book, and it helped me make $20,000. So his $2000 course was a no brainer for me.This master class version of that book, the online course version of it, that was a no brainer for me. There were a ton of videos, all this implementation stuff, coaching, and all this stuff that was involved in it. There were all these things you can do that can increase the value of your stuff. Don’t increase your price just because. Start with your basic price and then double it and double it again. Now you’re probably at a decent starting point.You’re so prone to under-valuing your own work. You don’t just jack the price up because people say so. You need to look objectively and say, “Alright, am I providing the value?” If someone comes in and takes my Focus Course, for example, we charge $350 for it. It’s not a lot, but it isn’t a little, either. If someone spends $350 and goes through this course, are they going to be able to walk away with at least, ideally, $700 worth of value? I want them to get at least double the value they’re paying for it.Can I get it to be even more? Can I get them to walk away with $3,500 worth of value, 10X the amount of value that I’m providing? You charge that, and if people take it seriously, they’ll walk away with something that wil literally change the way they spend their time with work, family, health, and finances. This is across the board for their life, and you can’t put a price on that.Objectively ask yourself if you’re delivering on your promises and providing the value that you say you are.With your stuff, Aaron, with podcasting, if you can help people get a podcast off the ground, they can turn that into a full time business. That’s worth $50,000 or $100,000. Someone could say, “Thanks to your stuff, I started a business that’s now thriving. I do this as my job.” That’s worth so much money! To charge $20 for it? Don’t undervalue your stuff.First Steps to Improve Your FocusAaron: I want to answer Kyle’s question here in the chat. I’m going to read his question and I’ll let you take a stab at it, Shawn. Kyle asked, “Is there a best first step to improved focus? I can think of so many directions I should go: exercise more, eat better, write down what I’m doing the next day, sleep better, etc. Trying to do all of it at once isn’t sustainable. What should I start with?”Shawn: This is great, Kyle, excellent question. I feel like there are two best first steps (which obviously doesn’t make sense, you can only really have one first step, but play along). We talked about this in the Focus Course. On the very first day of the Focus Course, there’s this super dorky assignment. You have to set out your clothes for what you’re going to wear tomorrow. Tonight, when you go to bed, pick out tomorrow’s outfit. It’s super dorky. You can do it in two minutes. In the morning, you have to wear the outfit you picked out the night before.You have to actually follow through with your commitment. You set this thing out, and you say, “I’m going to wear these pants and this shirt,” etc. In the morning, you wake up, and you have to wear it. You’ve made a commitment to yourself the night before. In the morning, you wake up and you follow through on that commitment. It’s a small step towards strengthening your personal integrity, which is your ability to follow through with your commitments to yourself. That’s super powerful.The other component to setting out your clothes the night before and then putting them on is that it’s your current self helping your future self. You’ve saved your future self five minutes in the morning. The quality of my time in the morning is super valuable. My mind is fresh, it’s the beginning of the day, there are no fires happening yet. That’s my best chance to get my best work done, early in the morning.Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before.It’s this idea of helping your future self. Once you get your toe in that water, you begin to see all the other areas of your life where you can begin to help your future self. We were talking during the podcast about this. Kyle says, “Yes, I’ve done this.” That’s awesome. As Aaron and I talked about earlier, when you have that deep work focused time, try to decide ahead of time what that focus is going to be. This is your current self helping your future self.It’s so powerful. For me, I write down my topic that I’m going to be writing about tomorrow when it’s time for me to write. I have the topic ahead of time, so I know what to write about. Then, when I sit down, I don’t have to think about. I have the singular focus to write about this topic that I’ve already chosen. That can really help with improving focus.Be ahead of your own curve and help your future self.Those of you who are registered for the Creative Focus Online Summit will get to hear Josh Kaufman and I talk about this. He talks about the importance of going on a walk in the morning and having 30 minutes where you leave your phone at home. You go outside, you’re moving, you’re getting sunlight, but also, it’s 30 minutes of thinking time where you can be undistracted. You can just think. He calls it “noodling.”You let your mind “noodle.” He talks about how when you have a productivity system and a focus system that gives you space to think and to be uninterrupted for a little bit, you’re going to be far more productive than if you have a system that doesn’t give you space to think. For him, he says that that is the number one, single most important component of being more productive and focused—actually having carved out time on a regular basis where you can just think.Be distraction free. That’s why he says to take a walk. You can combine that with movement, being outside, getting sunlight, and things like that. It’s easier than sitting on your couch and staring at the wall for 30 minutes. I don’t say that to put that idea down, but it can be easier to be undistracted when you’re outside walking around and you leave your phone at home. As opposed to, you put your phone next to you on the couch and you hope that it doesn’t buzz.You can put it in airplane mode, obviously, but it’s still right there. You want to grab it and take it off of airplane mode. So coming back to Kyle’s question: You have so many directions you want to go. Exercising, eating, writing down what you’re doing the next day, sleeping better. Right? People say, “I want to improve my relationship with my spouse. I also want to get better at budgeting my finances. I also want to get better at budgeting my time. I also want to read these books.”You look at it, and there is so much stuff that you want to do. You can’t do all of it right now, so pick one thing. What’s the one that’s most exciting?Build One Habit at a TimeShawn: Kyle, you listed exercise as the first thing on your list, so I would start with that. Not to pitch my course, but I’m going to pitch my course. We go through all the core areas of your life: your job, your relationships, your finances, your “down time,” your physical health, and your inner or spiritual life. These are the six areas of your life. We go through each one of those and spend time on each one, where you list out what’s important to you in this area of your life.What’s a goal that you want to have or a lifestyle practice that you want to implement, and how can you move the needle forward toward that goal? You come up with six goals and six action plans, one each for the main areas of your life. Spoiler here, at the end of the course, you pick one.Focus on improving one area of your life for six months and ignore the other ones.Don’t ignore them in terms of ignoring your wife for two months while you’re focusing on work, but you pick one area to build a habit, a routine, a lifestyle practice, that has you making meaningful progress in that area of life. A lot of people say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Actually, if you’re a habit building master, you might be able to do it in 21 days, but it takes most people 60 days to build a habit. That’s the average. That’s two months!I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the Jerry Seinfeld productivity tip with the calendar. You write a joke every day and you put a big X on your calendar, and you don’t want to break the chain. It’s the same with this new habit of yours. Say, “What’s one thing I can do on a daily basis that’s going to help me move toward my goal of exercising more, of being more physically active?” What’s the minimum dose, the smallest thing you can do?You’re going to go walk for 20 minutes, or whatever it is. Do that every single day for two months. It’s a small start, but now you’ve done it. You’re two months in, and now, instead of it being this thing you are trying to get the motivation for to move forward, you’re doing it. It has become routine for you, which requires far less activation energy, far less mental energy. It has moved into your life. It’s there. It’s something that you’re doing on a daily basis.Now, you pick the next thing. “Okay, I have the exercise thing.” Keep that and layer the next thing on top of it. You’re doing that for your physical health. What about for your inner life, your spiritual life? What’s something you would want to layer on top of that, something you could do? Now, during that walking time, maybe you’re going to think about something. If you read a Bible or something like that, you could say, “I’m going to have a Bible verse that I think about during my 30 minute walk.”Maybe you’re trying to improve your relationship with your spouse. Bring them along on your walk. Now, you can incorporate this. Say, “I’m going to do this on a regular basis,” and you do that for two more months. Then you pick the next layer. Maybe it doesn’t build on that 30 minute walk itself. Maybe it’s an entirely different part of the day, but the core is the same.Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing.This is why New Year’s resolutions never work. We say, “I’m going to go to the gym for five hours a day every day starting on January 1st, and I’m going to start budgeting, and I’m going to stop eating chocolate, and I’m going to go on date nights every week, and I’m going to read a book a week.” January 1st, go! It’s so much. You’re going to run up and try to push a truck, but you don’t have the energy, the strength, to move and change that much that quickly.With the truck analogy, if you’re driving a car and you want to try and tow another car, you don’t gun it with all this slack on the tow line. You’re going to rip both of the bumpers off. You start super, super slow. You slowly build up that speed. That’s how you do it without getting in a wreck. You actually make that momentum. Start with just one thing.The hard part is giving ourselves permission to pick one thing and focus on that for two whole months.That’s the hardest part, really. It’s not in the doing. It’s in the not despising those small beginnings. That’s the crash course of the Focus Course right there. This is the value. If you stick around for the after show at seanwes, this is what you get.Aaron: I’ll agree with Shawn and say this: pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. I know how many goals you have right now. I know, because I have that many goals, too. Pick one thing and write it down. Get a little calendar. Make a big X. Do that every day.You’ll get other stuff done, too, but you need to think about doing one important thing first thing in the morning right after you wake up. Get that thing done, and then pat yourself on the back, feel good about it, and move on to the next thing.You can follow Shawn Blanc on Twitter @ShawnBlanc, and be sure to check out his website at www.shawnblanc.net.

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he's learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he's gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience. Start selling products as early as possible. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. Be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. Show up consistently to earn people's trust and create an anticipation of future value. Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience. Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Show Notes Aaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He's been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now. His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that's knowing who you're creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become. I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that's going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out. If you're listening to this in your podcast player, it's starting today, I think. I'll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you're creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work. A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output. Shawn, that's one of the longer intros I've ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here. Shawn Blanc Aaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You're so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you're at right now. Shawn: Absolutely. I'm in Kansas City. Originally, I'm from Denver. I'm a Colorado guy at heart. I've been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It's insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago. Aaron: Congrats! Shawn: It's awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think. Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums. Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It's a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running. 25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don't want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it's a very demanding spot. Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There's no way. I don't want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I'm doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought. I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there. Aaron: How old were you at this point? Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I'm quitting. I'm going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I'm doing, I'll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership. Aaron: You aren't still doing that, are you? Shawn: It's on hiatus at the moment. We'll see. I'm going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It's fun. Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing? Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that's $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That's not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit. I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger. Aaron: I bet that was exciting. Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I'm here. I'm making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we're going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It's for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you're doing. Let's keep the relationship going,” it's like having a DTR with your audience. There's something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It's like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there's going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever. Aaron: Some of the haters that come later? Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on. Aaron: That's awesome. Asking for Money Aaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life? Shawn: There were so many. It's hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'” Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing. Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it's called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews. I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite. It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I'm going to charge for it.” Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money? Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can't believe how much I'm asking for this.” Aaron: What did you think was going to happen? Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something. Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right? Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.” Since then, in the last four or five years that I've sold it, I want to say that it's sold $50,000 over the years. That's awesome. There's something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot. Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience. Now I'm creating products for them to buy. That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I'm providing people and to price it correctly. That's just hard. I think that's why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn't a formula for how much value you're providing and how much you should charge for it. You can't just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you're providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It's hard to do it when you're starting. The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products. Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you're doing. I'm sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I've done this once before already. Now it's like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.” Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it's there. I'm done. It's out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book. Product Launch Hiccups Shawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it's not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.” I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I'm listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I'm reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing. The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What's worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified. Aaron: Nobody said anything?? Shawn: They didn't. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don't even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren't going to consider valuable. Here's this huge, huge mistake. What a goof! Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details. Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it's a case study in sweating the details itself. You'll see all the areas where I've sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified. Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it's almost humanizing. It's like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they're not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it's kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You're like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That's really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully. Shawn: That's why it's so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it. Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you're thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it's so much better to say, “What's the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let's do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.” If you don't ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly. Before you know it, it's been a year and a half, and you've got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you're still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened. Start Moving Shawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They're these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way. Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.” Action brings clarity. You're waiting for clarity before taking action, and it's not going to happen—you have to start moving. You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn't. Aaron: That's an incredible analogy. I'm totally going to use that in the future now. It's perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That's where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they're at the end, so you're like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can't make any mistakes. I can't take a wrong turn, because that's where all my friends are, and that's where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That's really incredible. Creating a Customer Avatar Aaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go! Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn't have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it's very similar. Who's your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who's name was Shawn Spurdee. He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he's going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball. He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I'm interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.” It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing. You know who you're trying to target. I'm still the writer for sure, but we've switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don't have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they're huge, these giant sticky notes. Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon? Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I'm sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It's weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself. Aaron: It seems like a waste of time. Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You're trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever. Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.” Shawn: Exactly. It's not just business, it's just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they're feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. We talked about, “Here's Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he's got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That's not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he's making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He's also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit. He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he's really tired, so the evenings don't feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he's not a morning person either, so he doesn't know when he's going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel? When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there's a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base. Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting. When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience. Creating an Empathy Map Shawn: There's this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what's your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down. Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can't focus. I'm distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I'm trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I'm trying to grow it. I'm working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I've only got about an hour left in the day. I'm so tired, and I don't want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don't know where to get started.” The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they're really in touch with their pain point. There's a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.” You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You'll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer. If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they're hungry for a solution. That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they're going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That's what we did. That's how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It's time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what's important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that's already happening in life. Or, they look at the thing that they're trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don't even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we're going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution. Use Your Audience's Language Shawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you're also even speaking their language. A) it's going to be cool because hopefully you'll do more sales, but B) you'll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That's the whole point. That's why we're here. That's one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you're trying to talk to and what it is you're trying to talk about, to help them. Aaron: That's mindblowing. That's fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction. How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper Connections Aaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It's always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. That's where listeners come from. So many people think that they'll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won't have any idea of who these people are. They're nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you're talking about. By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you're doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that's how you're going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships? Shawn: I think that's a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience: Consistency Honesty and transparency Relationships. 1. Consistency Shawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it's a phrase I like to use, and that's this: show up every day. That's consistency. We're just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you're in people's regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Show up on a regular basis. Also, that's how people know you're going to be there. There's something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you're showing up consistently. When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people's trust, but you create an anticipation of future value. You want to have that. That's huge. People are like, “I want to know what's next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge. 2. Honesty & Transparency Shawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there's a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don't want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you're also a person. You've got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that. Aaron: Stuff you cared about. Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff. Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. You're a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time. 3. Relationships Shawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I'm trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here's a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I'm going to tweet about it. I'm going to link to it. I'm going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That's a way for you to grow your audience, but it's also a way for me to grow my audience. Your listeners, a lot of people, don't know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There's a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are. Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience. I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It's a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him. I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I'm going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that's awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that's worth talking about. Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we're doing, the Focus Summit. I'm punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it's a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we're doing and visa versa. I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they'll find some incredible resources. It's just fun. We're all just folks trying to do our best work, right? Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That's one of the best answers for building an audience that I've ever heard. The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your Listeners Aaron: The thing that I'm working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It's hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I'm sure you know, Shawn. I'm sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I've wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do. Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I'll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that. I'm trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I'm at the point now where I've started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you'd be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads. It's the building of community that will eventually attract people to you. When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net. You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too. Shawn: Yeah, exactly. Focus Summit & Products Aaron: That's fantastic. We're getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you've got coming up. What's the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that. Shawn: The summit! I'm so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It's about email distractions and stuff like that. We've got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain. Aaron: So much good advice. Shawn: It's like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here's the link: The Creative Focus Summit. After the summit wraps up, we're opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course. I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn't a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that's really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact. For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we've had close to 1,300 people go through it. It's basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It's way, way more than that. It's not tips and tricks. It's what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time? This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It's hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you. Aaron: That's me! You have to have a healthy life to do your best work. Shawn: You can't sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I'm super excited about it. We're going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We're doing a winter class for it. We've got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It's going to be a blast. I'm really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously. Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won't take it seriously. Shawn: It's so true. Aaron: You have to invest. Shawn: That's something else. We didn't get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that's another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They're going to find value for it. Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.” Shawn: Exactly. Very true. Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions? Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I'm @shawnblanc on Twitter.

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he’s learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he’s gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires.Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience.Start selling products as early as possible.Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there.Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them.Be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum.Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested.Show up consistently to earn people’s trust and create an anticipation of future value.Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience.Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now.Show NotesAaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He’s been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now.His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that’s knowing who you’re creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become.I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that’s going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out.If you’re listening to this in your podcast player, it’s starting today, I think. I’ll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you’re creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work.A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output.Shawn, that’s one of the longer intros I’ve ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here.Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here.Shawn BlancAaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You’re so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you’re at right now.Shawn: Absolutely. I’m in Kansas City. Originally, I’m from Denver. I’m a Colorado guy at heart. I’ve been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It’s insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago.Aaron: Congrats!Shawn: It’s awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think.Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums.Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It’s a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running.25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don’t want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it’s a very demanding spot.Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There’s no way. I don’t want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I’m doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought.I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there.Aaron: How old were you at this point?Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I’m quitting. I’m going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I’m doing, I’ll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership.Aaron: You aren’t still doing that, are you?Shawn: It’s on hiatus at the moment. We’ll see. I’m going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It’s fun.Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing?Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that’s $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That’s not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit.I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger.Aaron: I bet that was exciting.Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I’m here. I’m making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we’re going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It’s for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you’re doing. Let’s keep the relationship going,” it’s like having a DTR with your audience.There’s something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It’s like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there’s going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever.Aaron: Some of the haters that come later?Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on.Aaron: That’s awesome.Asking for MoneyAaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life?Shawn: There were so many. It’s hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'”Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing.Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it’s called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews.I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite.It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I’m going to charge for it.”Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money?Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can’t believe how much I’m asking for this.”Aaron: What did you think was going to happen?Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something.Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right?Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.”Since then, in the last four or five years that I’ve sold it, I want to say that it’s sold $50,000 over the years. That’s awesome. There’s something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot.Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience.Now I’m creating products for them to buy.That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I’m providing people and to price it correctly. That’s just hard. I think that’s why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn’t a formula for how much value you’re providing and how much you should charge for it.You can’t just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you’re providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It’s hard to do it when you’re starting.The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products.Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you’re doing. I’m sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I’ve done this once before already. Now it’s like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.”Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it’s there. I’m done. It’s out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book.Product Launch HiccupsShawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it’s not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.”I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I’m listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I’m reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing.The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What’s worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified.Aaron: Nobody said anything??Shawn: They didn’t. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don’t even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren’t going to consider valuable. Here’s this huge, huge mistake. What a goof!Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details.Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it’s a case study in sweating the details itself. You’ll see all the areas where I’ve sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified.Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it’s almost humanizing. It’s like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they’re not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it’s kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You’re like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That’s really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully.Shawn: That’s why it’s so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it.Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you’re thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it’s so much better to say, “What’s the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let’s do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.”If you don’t ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly.Before you know it, it’s been a year and a half, and you’ve got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you’re still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened.Start MovingShawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They’re these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way.Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.”Action brings clarity.You’re waiting for clarity before taking action, and it’s not going to happen—you have to start moving.You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn’t.Aaron: That’s an incredible analogy. I’m totally going to use that in the future now. It’s perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That’s where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they’re at the end, so you’re like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can’t make any mistakes. I can’t take a wrong turn, because that’s where all my friends are, and that’s where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That’s really incredible.Creating a Customer AvatarAaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go!Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn’t have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it’s very similar. Who’s your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who’s name was Shawn Spurdee.He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he’s going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball.He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I’m interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.”It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing.You know who you’re trying to target. I’m still the writer for sure, but we’ve switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don’t have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they’re huge, these giant sticky notes.Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon?Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I’m sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It’s weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself.Aaron: It seems like a waste of time.Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You’re trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever.Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.”Shawn: Exactly. It’s not just business, it’s just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they’re feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person.Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there.We talked about, “Here’s Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he’s got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That’s not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he’s making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He’s also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit.He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he’s really tired, so the evenings don’t feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he’s not a morning person either, so he doesn’t know when he’s going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel?When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there’s a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base.Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting.When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience.Creating an Empathy MapShawn: There’s this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what’s your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down.Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can’t focus. I’m distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I’m trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I’m trying to grow it. I’m working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I’ve only got about an hour left in the day. I’m so tired, and I don’t want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don’t know where to get started.”The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they’re really in touch with their pain point. There’s a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.”You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You’ll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer.If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they’re hungry for a solution.That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they’re going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That’s what we did. That’s how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It’s time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what’s important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that’s already happening in life.Or, they look at the thing that they’re trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don’t even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we’re going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution.Use Your Audience’s LanguageShawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you’re also even speaking their language.A) it’s going to be cool because hopefully you’ll do more sales, but B) you’ll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here.That’s one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you’re trying to talk to and what it is you’re trying to talk about, to help them.Aaron: That’s mindblowing. That’s fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction.How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper ConnectionsAaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It’s always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here.Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them.That’s where listeners come from. So many people think that they’ll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won’t have any idea of who these people are. They’re nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you’re talking about.By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you’re doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that’s how you’re going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships?Shawn: I think that’s a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience:ConsistencyHonesty and transparencyRelationships.1. ConsistencyShawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it’s a phrase I like to use, and that’s this: show up every day. That’s consistency. We’re just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you’re in people’s regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum.Show up on a regular basis. Also, that’s how people know you’re going to be there. There’s something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you’re showing up consistently.When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people’s trust, but you create an anticipation of future value.You want to have that. That’s huge. People are like, “I want to know what’s next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge.2. Honesty & TransparencyShawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there’s a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don’t want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you’re also a person.You’ve got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that.Aaron: Stuff you cared about.Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff.Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested.You’re a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time.3. RelationshipsShawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I’m trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here’s a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I’m going to tweet about it. I’m going to link to it. I’m going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That’s a way for you to grow your audience, but it’s also a way for me to grow my audience.Your listeners, a lot of people, don’t know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There’s a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are.Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience.I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It’s a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him.I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I’m going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that’s awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that’s worth talking about.Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we’re doing, the Focus Summit. I’m punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it’s a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we’re doing and visa versa.I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they’ll find some incredible resources. It’s just fun. We’re all just folks trying to do our best work, right?Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That’s one of the best answers for building an audience that I’ve ever heard.The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your ListenersAaron: The thing that I’m working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It’s hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I’m sure you know, Shawn. I’m sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I’ve wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do.Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I’ll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that.I’m trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I’m at the point now where I’ve started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you’d be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads.It’s the building of community that will eventually attract people to you.When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net.You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now.Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too.Shawn: Yeah, exactly.Focus Summit & ProductsAaron: That’s fantastic. We’re getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you’ve got coming up. What’s the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that.Shawn: The summit! I’m so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It’s about email distractions and stuff like that. We’ve got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain.Aaron: So much good advice.Shawn: It’s like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here’s the link: The Creative Focus Summit.After the summit wraps up, we’re opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course.I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn’t a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that’s really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact.For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we’ve had close to 1,300 people go through it. It’s basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It’s way, way more than that. It’s not tips and tricks. It’s what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time?This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It’s hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you.Aaron: That’s me!You have to have a healthy life to do your best work.Shawn: You can’t sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I’m super excited about it. We’re going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We’re doing a winter class for it. We’ve got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It’s going to be a blast. I’m really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously.Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won’t take it seriously.Shawn: It’s so true.Aaron: You have to invest.Shawn: That’s something else. We didn’t get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that’s another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They’re going to find value for it.Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.”Shawn: Exactly. Very true.Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions?Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I’m @shawnblanc on Twitter.