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Learn more about The Financial GymSupport the show and even get on monthly mentorship calls with Fabian. Join here.-------->Full Transcript:F Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Shannon.S McLay:Thank you. So happy to be here.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, thanks for being here. You are the CEO and founder of The Financial Gym, a fitness inspired personal financial services company that to me shouts millennials and Generation Z. I have proved since my brand consultancy's creative lead, Chessy, brought up your brand to me and she shared the surprise swag bag with me that comes with a tote saying, "Money is my spirit animal." It also has a little card that's signed by you. Then I had to look into Financial Gym a little bit more because she was super excited about it. She just signed up. I had to immediately invite you to be on the show. I'm a huge proponent of financial literacy and empowerment. How could you not be, right?S McLay:Right.F Geyrhalter:I'm originally from Austria where things are a little bit different than Europe when it comes to financial literacy and the whole social environment, but here in the US, it is definitely a crisis. I heard the statistic. I believe it was even a Forbes article that I researched where they mentioned The Financial Gym, but they say that about 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with even $400 to pay for an unexpected bill. That is unbelievable.Obviously, what you're doing is crucially needed here in the US, creating that kind of platform that speaks the language of the next generation is absolutely heaven sent. How did it all start? Give us a quick tour of what happened in the last, gosh, like eight, seven years, something like that, right?S McLay:Seven years. Seven very long years stated. And yet they've gone by in a flash. So yeah, we are dealing with a financial health crisis and it's been around for a long time. I wasn't really aware of it until I became a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, and I became an advisor after a 13-year career in financial services where I was working for investment banks, for a hedge fund briefly. I was always around money and making money, so I didn't think too much about my own personal finances, my solution to my own personal finances was always, "I'll make more money," and I always did.So I just didn't even think about it. Then I became a Merrill Lynch financial advisor, because I felt like I needed an advisor. I was now in my early 30s and about to buy a home, and have a child, and all that reason to feel like you need some financial planning. When I looked at the financial advisory space, I became woke to it and I always say 85% or pretty much old white man and no offense, I will say I love men, I married one, I birthed one. They're fantastic, but money is really personal.It felt very unfair if somebody couldn't find who they wanted to work with. I thought if you can't beat them, join them. So I became a Merrill advisor. To work with me, you have debt of $250,000 in assets. You didn't even count as a client unless you did, and I didn't think anything of that. I thought this will be easy for me to find clients. I have been around money, and I was finding clients.I laughed, because the gym never would've existed if I took the advice of my first Merrill advisor/mentor. He said, "Pre-screen all your meetings. Make sure that they have money before you even meet with them. Because if they don't have money, they won't even count. So they won't even waste your time." I remember thinking to myself, because he was an old white guy like, "Okay, boomer." Before, okay boomer was a thing, right? I was like, "What?"I was like, "I have plenty of time. I can meet with whoever I want to meet with and I'm not going to ask somebody how much money they have before I even have coffee with them." So I needed a point of taking every meeting, and one of my first meetings with what I would then call my pro bono clients was this woman who was looking for a financial planner and came through a friend of a friend. We sat down and it was like a scene from a movie.She was like, "I have 250,000 of student loan debt. I make $50,000 a year and all this stuff." Like, "Oh my God." The kicker for me was she said, "And I feel unlovable. Who would want to marry me with all this debt?" I had no idea how to help this woman. I hadn't seen a profile like this before and I thought a Merrill Lynch wealth management package is going to just depress her. So I couldn't help her at Merrill, but I wanted to help her, and I figured out and did a plan on the side.Then I became the process of becoming the worst financial advisor ever, because I loved my clients with no money. I found real joy and passion in helping people figure out their finances, and that led to I call the Oprah Ah-hah week for the gym where I started with a meeting with a couple. We were doing their quarterly review, and they had $1.3 million invests with me and their portfolio was down 3%.It was like the end of the world for them. They are like, "Where's our money? How are the kids going to go to college? How are we going to pay our bills?" I spent an hour of my life making them feel better about being a little less rich. It was just really soul-sucking. I thought, I guess this is what an advisor does.Then two days later, I had a plan meeting with a pro bono client. I did a plan for just like we do at the gym, just bulleted, "Here's how much you need to save. Here's how you deal with the student loans. Here's what you do with the credit cards." At the end of the meeting, she said, "You know you're saving my life, right?" I was like, "This feels so much better than that meeting." It was the ah-hah of, "I need to create a business for people like this," which is the majority of Americans like you're saying.It all came to very clearly. It's interesting I think about this a lot, because I never wanted to start a business. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, but in that moment, everything was very clear. I was also in this weight loss journey and I remember thinking around the same time like when I wanted to get physically healthy, I had so many places I could go to physically healthy. But if people want to get financially healthy, where would they go?That was my dilemma is where do I send these pro bono clients to a place that's going to treat them like human beings with care, and decency and respect just because it doesn't matter what's in their bank account. I thought, if you want to get this financially healthy, you go to a financial gym. It was very clear to me I said, "It's like H in our block, but fun and cool, and advisors or trainers they wear jeans and T-shirts." People pay a monthly membership fee just like a regular gym, and that was seven years ago.F Geyrhalter:That's amazing.S McLay:In a long seven years.F Geyrhalter:No, I'm sure. What a great story. It literally came to you the whole gym analogy came to you immediately, because of the situation that you were in, but did it all start with that brand name of financial gym and everything just, it all just came together right in front of you?S McLay:Yeah. You know what's really funny is I'm a blonde so I tell people, "I'm not really that creative." It's very clear to me.F Geyrhalter:Hey, I'm a blonde. I'm creative. You're putting a bad wrap on those.S McLay:No, I own my blondness. I just remember thinking it's a financial gym, a place to go work out. The funny thing about the brand over the seven years is that you can imagine I've had brand specialist say to me, "Have you ever thought about changing the name? Because it's just so obvious." They don't like it because it's so obvious and I'm like, "But I like it because it's so obvious." Because in my mind we're like the Kleenex of financial health. Where else would you go but a financial gym to get financially healthy?That always surprised me when we got into the branding process formally. So seven years ago I thought it's financial gym, we own the trademark for it. I thought this is it, it's financial gym. Maybe at some point I thought maybe we're the money gym, but we kept coming back to Financial Gym, because I didn't want it to seem like a cash payday loan place, which would feel more like a money gym. I said, "It's Financial Gym." Then we went through this formal branding process after we raised our first round of venture capital money.Everybody that we interviewed for the process wanted to create a new name. Everybody wanted to create a new name.F Geyrhalter:How interesting.S McLay:Yeah and I was like, "Money is confusing enough. I don't want what we do to be confusing." I don't want to be glitter and we're a financial services company. I just don't understand that part of branding, but that's me. I just always wanted to be very clear about it. What's funny is that we had people who didn't love it, but our clients get it. It's clear to people when they come to us what we do even if it's not totally clear exactly how we do it, they get the concept.F Geyrhalter:Totally. You just talked to the wrong brand specialist. If you would've talked to me Shannon, I would've said, "Keep the name." Look, there's something to be said. The whole reason why I have this podcast and now we're on episode 50 or 52, God knows what, is because I can't hear myself talk about branding anymore because I do it all day. Actually, listening to people who did it and very often, there was so much gut instinct involved in creating the name or creating what the brand stands for. So often, it goes against a lot of the brand thinking, right? That specialist like myself usually bring to the table.I think that is what is so fascinating to me, because it doesn't all need to go exactly according to a big book that has been written about this is how branding needs to work. Financial gym literally after you have that name, the language was just so easy, right? To create the actual language. It's funny, so your client met with a BFF, that's your best financial friend. The call to action on your website says, "Let's crash some goals." Trainers introduce themselves by saying, so trainers not advisors, trainers introduce themselves by saying, "You're about to get financially naked with me.Your podcast is called, "Martinis and Your Money." The description reads, "Shannon created this educational and entertaining podcast combining two of her favorite activities, drinking and talking about money." How have you defined the brand personality early on? Because that tone of voice, it is so authentic. It's not really crafted. It just feels authentic, but it's such a fine line to come across as hip and empathetic versus unauthentic especially with this group, right? If we're talking mid-30s and it seems like that's most probably the group like late 20s to early, early 40s. That's the sweet spot most likely.S McLay:Yeah, it is. Our youngest client is 17, our oldest is 74, because we always say just like a regular gym, anyone can work out here. Yeah, what's interesting is finding the authenticity of the voice. I worked in financial services for 13 years, and so I knew the voice that wasn't going to be. It was that. It was like as long as it didn't feel like that, then it was this in my mind. I knew very well what the jargon and what I didn't want it to be.So whenever we have gone through those iterations or finding the right tone in the balance, and we went through a lot of those exercises in that branding process that we went through a little over three years ago now of what is the voice. What's interesting going back to the feedback you got from the team, they wanted us to have a more serious voice, because they're like, "Well, you're authoritative. You want to be the authority." I was like, "Yeah, but we don't have to be in their phase about I don't want to have to wear a Hilary Clinton pant suit for me to have authority. We can have it in a more casual way."It was always really important for me that our authority came through that we were actually saying versus what we looked like and the jeans and T-shirts and all of that was really important to me, because that was definitely not something I saw at Bank of America, at Merrill Lynch that I thought was really important, that I haven't seen anywhere else that was really important for us to have.We stuck very true to it. It's funny because I always envisioned jeans and T-shirts like I'd seen trainers are ... Really, actually our trainers are allowed to wear anything from below the waste. It's just the financial gym T-shirt above the waste. I don't love personally jeans and T-shirt look. I don't personally love that. I think it's funny I created a brand that I wear it every day and I don't necessarily love it.I've been on the Today Show. I've been on CNBC. I've been on Squawk Box and they're like, "Are you going to wear a T-shirt?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm wearing a T-shirt. I'm not changing for you guys." The only challenge we had on the Today Show is they wouldn't let me wear the logo, so I had to wear just a black T-shirt. Friends and family were like, "Why are you in jeans on Today Show?" I was like, "That's our brand."So if people can't see, hear what I'm saying and know that I'm in authority and they're going to get focused on what I'm wearing then they are the wrong people for us anyway.F Geyrhalter:No, totally. I mean, you have to exclude many in order to gain some, right? That's the whole idea. Coming from that background where you have been in a very stiff and unattractive environment in the financial services industry, especially when it comes to the advising part, you want to do everything exactly the opposite, right? So whatever they do, like you said, it is so easy. How do they do it? They all dress up in blazers. How are we going to do it? Jeans and T-shirts. It was like a nice blueprint for you to follow.Your brand icon, we have to go there, because we're talking branding. They're actually my initials, it's FG, which is really awkward whenever my employee gets mail from you. She's like, "I just got a cup with your initials on it from Financial Gym. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it." In all seriousness, why did you opt out for that simple FG instead of like an icon or anything like that that your tribe can wear proudly? Especially now that I know you went through a branding.S McLay:Yes. You know what's so funny Fabian is that did not come ... An icon did not come up in our initial branding. We went through with a many branding process a year later where we came up with the BFF concept. The icon didn't come up again. The icon actually did not come up until a recent board meeting with a recent board investor who asked about an icon. Again, I don't know a lot about branding and nobody had brought it up. We had the FG logo is like our smaller logo, but there wasn't the talk of some unique symbol.So actually, it's something we're in the process of creating. One of our clients is working with us who does design work. We're working on an icon to replace, yeah. That will be a thing in the past, your initials. We are working on an icon, so actually that process just started two months ago. We started the icon process.F Geyrhalter:That is fantastic.S McLay:We're right in the middle of it. It's funny you had mentioned that Fabian.F Geyrhalter:Well, there we go.S McLay:I wish we did it three years ago, but again, I didn't think about it. I was so upset we had to pay so much money for the branding experience, because again, I just didn't know anything about starting a business. I remember seeing the price tags of the services and I was like, "This is insane. They're picking colors? Why are we paying so much for colors?" My lead investor is like, "You just don't understand branding, Shannon." I was like, "You're right. I guess I don't."F Geyrhalter:Now that we talked about how Shannon does not understand branding, yet she creates a brand that people love, and it's a very empathetic brand. I know that Chessie, my creative lead, when she got all the swag and everything and she met with her advisor whose last name by the way is Penny, because I'm never going to forget that. She's like-S McLay:Yes. So Ashley is her trainer. I love her.F Geyrhalter:My financial advisor's last name is Penny. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'm like, "This is the funniest thing ever." She is as hip as it gets and she's as brand educator as it can get because she works in the brand consultancy, right? Creating brand mark. She just absolutely love the entire brand experience. So obviously, by using you don't know anything about branding, that is absolutely incorrect. What does-S McLay:I've learned, Fabian. Three years ago, I did.F Geyrhalter:You learned on the job.S McLay:Yeah, I've learned. I always tell my team, "All we can do is get smarter every day. We might not get today right, but we'll get tomorrow right." So I have learned a lot about it over the three years. So I'm getting it.F Geyrhalter:What does it mean to you now? What does branding mean to you?S McLay:Honestly, so I didn't get it three years ago just because of the cost of it. Especially for start-ups, I wish, and there are some more agencies that are more start-up focused, but every day you're running out of money, and you're trying to create the brand and not run out of money before people even know the brand exists. So I just wish there was a better model early on. That being said now, it is truly everything. It's the way that your clients engage with you and identify you. It's the way your team identifies with each other.It really does the tone for everything. I joked about picking out colors, but you know what's funny is I had no idea what our colors should be. We went through the process though and our agency was like, "Well, you don't want to pick green, because it's too obvious, right?" They struggled with us, because they were like ... I was like, "No, it's definitely this name and it's definitely green." We explored other colors, but I was like, "We just have to be green, but not a funny dotty green."What's interesting is, so we have our Financial Gym green, my CMO. She knows the green fonts by the numbers. She could tell you exactly what our power green is or like green and then-F Geyrhalter:She better, yeah.S McLay:She does and she does them often and people ask her. What's funny is after years later, you see the green and you know it's our gym green. We've had clients say, "Oh, that's Financial Gym Green," or we had an employee who works from home. Her husband was like, "I want to paint the room that she does her virtual calls in Financial Gym green," and he did. So when she's on calls, you watch her and it's Financial Gym green. She feels connected to it through our green. So yeah, it just interweaves in so many ways.F Geyrhalter:No, absolutely. You already mentioned a little bit, but let's talk a little bit about company culture, because I just personally think it is so crucial. How do you keep a unified vibe, a unified brand language and the feeling of belonging when I assume the majority of your staff are "trainers," right? So they're out on their own working with your clients. How do you keep that in sync? It is a challenge for everyone, but since you have a very specific operation.S McLay:Yeah. I think honestly, it is around the gym concept and financial health is our mission. I feel very fortunate that we have a business that is mission driven, because it just influences and impacts everything. Financial health is our mission, it's clearly tied to our name and the work that we do. So that's easy to translate. About two years ago, I did ask as we were expanding, I have a mentor. Actually my mentor was the CEO of SoulCycle, Melanie Whelan, and not one of the founders but she's a recent CEO.I was asking about how we could grow, because we had set this really special group of initial employees and this initial location, and we knew we're opening new locations. I said, "How do we keep this secret sauce as we grow?" She gave a number of great ideas. One in particular was to create very strong core values for the company and for everyone to buy into that. Then core values is just the interconnectivity of your team. The core values are actually very much tied to our brand too, because even in the way, like I knew core values from my Bank of America days, which I never ... It was so corporate. I don't even really know what our core values are. It was just something I got in the employee handbook, and I didn't really connect with.So I pooh-pooh that idea initially, but then when she said it I thought, "You know what? We can do core values, but in our brand." So our brand voice, our core values, it actually starts with we believe in. It's this collective of being part of a gym, being part of a community, but even our core values start with "we." We believe in dot, dot, dot and then that's a few different words that define who we are, and that do one of our core values is gymsplaining, which is we ... As opposed to man slang we say we're explaining things in English, financial literacy in English and we believe in the power of it.So it goes into our core values too. Our employees are even reviewed and graded on their core values, and we fired people over core values issues. Because we do practice them and live them, we expect the team to.F Geyrhalter:So many thoughts on what you've just said. First of all, what you said prior and it fits into this that you wish that there would be brand help for start-ups that is actually attainable and easy for them to actually manage. I created this course called, "eRESONAID." So from resonating and aid, RESONAID. Literally, it's like a brand workshop in a box that founders can do. In the end, it is all about their core values. The funny thing is that I ask them to finish the sentence with "because we believe," which is exactly where you're heading with this, right?It's a couple hundred box and it empowers them to actually take a lot of that in house, which sometimes is the best way for entrepreneurs to actually work, because they have it in them. It's just they need the guidance, and they need a process, and they need a framework to actually voice all of this. So I thought that that was really interesting. Talking about mission, so mixing politics and business used to be a no, no, right? But those walls have clearly come down more and more over the years, but especially in the past couple of months which were ... What a roller coaster, right?They were so horrifying for this planet and then they were also so uplifting and empowering, and there was so much positive change because of it. How does Financial Gym see its role in taking stances, and showcasing shared values with its tribe?S McLay:Yeah. The last three months have been extremely challenging as a leader. I'm not going to lie. I think I'm really excited for where we're going and how we've done it. The gym has always been a place of security, because money is the ultimate taboo topic. So one of our core values is in our gyms and our community, and creating safe place for people of any type of person. That's always been our mission. Our mission is financial health and it doesn't matter what the person looks like who's getting financially healthy, and that's always been a practice.So when we make statements as a company or actually one of our core values is empathy. So when it comes to making those statements, I'm actually excited that we can remind people that that's what we do every day, but it's also who we are. It all comes back to our mission, and especially recently to remind people that black wealth matters. It's a challenge we've seen behind the scenes at the gym.Our client's information is private, so we're not ... unless they want to be profiled or talk about their financial experience, we're not putting it out there and publicizing it, but we've known internally the struggles. We see it. We've got a very diverse client mix. We have a very diverse employee mix, and we know. So I'm actually excited that we're now talking about this even though the conversations are hard and challenging.I'm excited that they're coming more to light, because that's how we move forward and that's what we're committed to, and committed to profiling more of that and highlighting more of that situation. We embrace those conversations and we embrace our community that's very diverse. So it all works together. At the end of the day, it's financial health and it doesn't have a look to it.F Geyrhalter:Yeah. How has COVID-19 otherwise, well, in the financial downturn obviously how has that affected your brand? It seems like you would be in higher demands, but also your audience might like the spending power now, right? Even if it's just a very small monthly fee.S McLay:Yeah, so when COVID-19 first happened, that was extremely scary for us because our clients pay a monthly membership fee, so they could cancel it anytime, and that's really important for us to be flexible. So one of the first things we did, we did pause our costs, our monthly fee for people who did lose their jobs from COVID-19 and still continued to work with them. Then we were waiting to see what other dropout we had. The interesting thing is our business has not done better. It's done extremely well because we've just really proven our model, because it's been such an extreme roller coaster ride financially from the financial markets to unemployment, to concerns of recession, to the importance of emergency fund.All the work that we do on a daily basis has been highlighted and compounded during this. So our retention has been extremely high, and we've never gotten more five star reviews in the last three months than we have, because we're just proving our model of, "Gosh, don't you wish you had a BFF for this ride?" It's crazy.F Geyrhalter:It's also a time now where people have more time to think and to plan and to look inward, and to really rethink their life because they're stuck at home.S McLay:Right. Yeah.F Geyrhalter:In person appointments at the gym and events have also been a huge component of your brand, right? Have you pivoted that? How did that affect you?S McLay:Thankfully, we've always worked with people virtually. We've always had the virtual model, because for until just this year actually, we only had one location in New York, and we work with clients in all 50 states. So with the same results. So we know how to get results virtually and we've moved everything virtually. Our in person events are all now virtual. We have our local money tribe, which is our local community groups, they're all virtual. Everything's gone virtual.We've actually seen more engagement, because it's easier for people to get to these things in their home. We've actually seen more engagement on the virtual side. We are in the process of reopening our gyms. We will open all four of them in early July and what we'll be doing is testing out first with our employees and how they can go back in and commute, and all that kind of stuff. Then we'll open it up with different limitations and capacity, but we do have clients who use the gym. As a co-working space, we have a lot of freelancing clients and people have their own businesses.So we still want to be there for them in the safest way possible. My COO has been inundated nonstop with the PPE preparations and how do we do this, because we are committed to opening again and being that safe space again.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, because I was wondering, the way that it worked, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but in the first month you meet your trainer and that's really the big month, right? You get the analysis, you get the plan, but then I was wondering how does Financial Gym provide continuous value to its members? I think you just answered that, right? The idea that you're constantly there for them, there's events, there's groups, and I didn't even know about the co-work space. It sounds like that's also part of the financial thing.S McLay:Yes. There's the accountability, so once people become clients we start tracking your money and we have a system that's like mint.com. I would say anybody can do a financial plan. Financial plans are actually very easy to do. They're just a template, but not many people can seek to a financial plan and that's where we really excel is that accountability, and helping clients through the situation understanding the behavioral finance aspect of it as well. I think that's part of our secret sauce we've learned over the last seven years is being a BFF for our friends is really listening to people and their money stories. That's really guided how we work with our clients and get them the success that we know we can.It's funny we have people just like a regular gym or a fitness program who'll quit early on because they're not seeing results right away. They're like, "Oh, it's a waste of money." It's funny that anchors my trainers more than anything because they're like, "They gave up on themselves." I could've either, they're just like, "If they just gave it some more time. If they just gave it a little more effort." That's the biggest frustration for my team because we know that just like physical health, some people just take a little more time. It just might take a little bit more time to figure out what we need to do, but over a year of working with us, 90% of our clients hit their goals. So we know we can get there. It's a partnership to get there.F Geyrhalter:I think that that is really the amazing component of your brand. Instead, you are not cookie cutting this. Yes, there is like these are the five, six steps to create your plan, and all of this is in a way, cookie cutter. Like you said, it's like, "Yeah, it's actually quite simple," but then the idea to actually listen to your clients, which sounds so logical, but you coming out of the industry you're like, "Well, that's not really how it works." It's like, we listen to how much money you have and then we take it from there.With normal people, I don't know the percentage in the US, but with your potential clients, the emotional baggage that is involved with money, it goes all the way to how you're raised, and it goes to inferior complexes or it goes to ... There's so many complex parts to it that if you feel understood and if someone is dear with you eye to eye and they say, "Well, I know how you feel. Let's get you over to this and I'll do that slowly over the next month." That must be huge. That must be a game-changer.S McLay:Yeah. We do have a number of secret sauces and that is one of them, I mean, just a great example is with COVID-19, I did a review for some clients. And one of my clients spent a thousand dollars in Costco in early mid-March. I was like, "You didn't buy appliances, or [crosstalk 00:33:52] spent a thousand dollars in Costco." It was right when the pandemic was kicking off and people were freaking out, and she was freaking out. She was in the store and she was just like, and she even called her husband from the store. She's like, "I'm freaking out. Come stop me," but he was like, "I'm 20 minutes away so I can't."She loaded up her cart with a thousand dollars. Then two weeks later spent another $500 somewhere else on groceries. I know them. I've been working with them for three years. This is not normal, "normal" for her. She's like, "I just lost my mind. I was so freaked out." I was like, "Did you return any of those things?" She's like, "No." So then now they have to work through their pantry. So one of their exercises for this next quarter is the pantry challenge.I was like, "You are going to be eating." Their pantry, which expanded to their basement. I was like, "How do you even have room in your home for all these things?" That's the work we're doing. I wasn't like, "How could you spend a thousand dollar?" I didn't shame her for it. We don't shame our clients. I get what drove her to that, but I was like, "You know we got to lay off the food this quarter. We got to do all that."F Geyrhalter:Look, she's not the only one, so she can feel good about it. I had to extend our pantry too after my wife came home from a Costco run that was very unusual, very unusual Costco run. It's amazing that you actually talk in that detail and that depth with your clients, because that's really what is necessary. So looking back, what was that one big breakthrough moment? I always love to hear that from entrepreneurs, because it's so difficult. It's not easy being an entrepreneur. It's not easy being a founder. It's not easy being a CEO, you're all of that.When was that moment where you felt like, "You know what? We're turning into a brand. This is going to be real and this is going to be big."S McLay:I haven't had the big moment, but I've had a lot of little moments and that all add up to I'd say the breadcrumbs on the trail that keep you going, and that tell you to get sometimes as an entrepreneur, just to stay in yourself it's breadcrumbs. It's a few things. I didn't put the Financial Gym brand concept out there right away when I first left Merrill, because it was just me bootstrapping it. Even though I always knew it's going to be Financial Gym, I called the bootstrap company Next Gym Financial, because in my mind I always thought, "Well, I could go back and work for Merrill." Like this, "See what happens."I had a handful of clients and then when I finally raised my first investor money, I decided to put the Financial Gym concept out there. It's interesting, because you could see the number of clients that I have from 2015, because that's when I put the Financial Gym name out there, grew significantly. I have a handful clients who started in 2013 when I left, but I have a number of clients now this year who I'm five-year reviews, because I just even put the name Financial Gym out there and they got it. That was always surprising to me, or I love that because it was like just the name sold the business without trying.So 2015 was a big ah-hah. Then just a number of little moments like we have our first location in New York, and I was walking up Madison Avenue wearing one of my gym T-shirts, and this woman yelled from across the street, "Financial Gym, I love you guys." I was like, "Oh my God." New York is so huge and I was like, "Oh my God, I love you too." She knows the brand. Or when I see people tag us on social media and see the experience they're having, they're like, "I love the Financial Gym." Or hearing from people who post things on social and their friends are like, "I heard about that place."From across the country, it's just sometimes because the days are long, but you're like, "We did this. That people have heard about it." Your employee, I don't even know how she found out about us. How did she find out about us?F Geyrhalter:I don't know. It's word of mouth, right?S McLay:Right. There she is. [crosstalk 00:38:23]F Geyrhalter:No, exactly. No, absolutely. I think that those are the moments where you just have to sit back and you just have to really let it get you positively, where you actually notice these moments, because everyone's going at a crazy speed, building their companies, but to let that sink in. I had the founder of Farmgirl Flowers on and she said it was so cute. She said it was the same moment. She was walking on the street, and she was delivering flowers, and then someone was shouting from across the street, same story of like, "Oh my God, Farmgirl Flowers. I love the flowers. It is so great."She just had to pretend. She would have loved to say, "Yes, it's my company. I'm the CEO," but she was just like delivering flowers, so she was all ashamed just like, "Yeah, I love working for them. It's great," and she just kept walking. It's a big moment. As a brand strategist, to me, the most exciting part is once I work with my clients and I do it usually in one day, and at the end of the day, I really want to take the entire brand and describe it in either a two word phrase or just one word of like, if we could actually take a funnel and put all of your brand thinking, the entire Financial Gym with all of its trainers and BFFs and we put them in, what would one word be that could describe the brand?S McLay:Empowerment.F Geyrhalter:Great. Yeah.S McLay:Money is power. There's something so phenomenally, life-changing about getting to watch somebody go from a point of fear and shame around their finances, which is the two words we hear all the time at the gym to truly feeling empowered by their financial situation. It's why I do this every day. It's like a drug.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, it's empowering to you too, right, to get up in the morning and do this, and to everyone of the trainers. Now that we slowly come in to an end, do you have any brand advice for founders as a takeaway? After listening to your journey, I think it's super interesting the way that you did things, and out of your gut instinct, a lot of right decisions were made. Any thoughts for a founder who listens to this and finds your thoughts aspirational?S McLay:Yeah. Just like you were saying, "Trust your gut," because especially if you're the founder of the brand, there's a reason why you founded a brand, right? There's a reason why you had an idea for this company, this product, this solution. So trust that, because like I was saying there were so many times in the branding process, or I have investors and you have employees, you have clients, you have a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about your business. At the end of the day, you really should trust your gut, because it led you there.So yeah, what you said looking back in hindsight we make our decisions, but they all just came from the gut of like, "No, this feels right." Don't let other people try to tell you what's right at the end of the day. It's your business.F Geyrhalter:Determination, right? Yeah.S McLay:Mm-hmm (affirmative).F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. So listeners who fell in love with the gym again, where could they start their financial work out?S McLay:Yeah, so financialgym.com, they can find out more about what we do and sign up for free, warm up call, we call it the work out warm up call. The first call is a free call with, it's actually our clients you talk to. They are not incented to sell you anything. They just want to hear about your journey, what your particular financial challenges or things you want to work on just like a regular gym. We've got clients who want to level up and make more money or invest more. We got clients who want to get out of debt. We have clients who want to learn how to budget. There's all different financial challenges that we work with.Then they pair you with the BFF and yeah, and they can find out more about that. Like you said, we have videos of all of our trainers, and lots of content, they can get to know us. It's really important because we know money is so taboo and personal. We really have probably the softest cell possible for a business, because we're like, "You get comfortable with us first. We're ready for you." Like we talked about that first session getting financially naked, because we know that that's an extremely vulnerable time for people. Most people are sharing their financial numbers for the first time ever to another person. So we understand it's vulnerable. So we're like, "Take your time. Get to know us. We're here. We're ready when you are."F Geyrhalter:That's awesome. Perfect. Well, Shannon, it was so nice having you in the show. I so appreciate your time.S McLay:Thank you. Glad to be here.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely.
As we head toward the beginning of real Summer here in South Louisiana - you know, the day you wake up and it's H-O-T - we might typically have vacation and hurricane season as top-of-mind issues. But this year things are different. Who knows if you'll be able to take a vacation? With all of our Covid anxieties do we have the capacity to worry about hurricanes as well? Plus we have a whole range of new unknowns: The Saints, LSU, and back to the office. On this edition of out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuti, Stephanie Riegel and Christiaan Mader run through those three current unknowns. The Saints It's no secret that not everybody in the state of Louisiana has warm feelings for New Orleans. In towns across Louisiana it's not unusual to find a certain amount of political and financial resentment about the amount of money and attention given to New Orleans. But all of that melts way when it comes to football. The name of the team is The New Orleans Saints. But it might as well be The Louisiana Saints. From Shreveport in the North, to the most Southern point of Barataria Bay, Saints fans are everywhere. And so, along with all of our individual problems that we're grappling with as we work our way through this pandemic, we have one question that unites us: What's going to happen to football? Whatever else happens during football season this year, one thing is becoming increasingly apparent. And that is, football stadiums are not going to be allowed to be packed to capacity. Ed Lang, Chief Financial Officer for The New Orleans Saints, and The Pelicans, discusses the question that I'm sure every team in the league is trying to answer: Is there a way to have an NFL season where football becomes a sport more like golf or tennis, where most of the audience is not in the stadium, and revenue comes from sources other than ticket sales? Is that model financially possible for the NFL? LSU There are a lot of unknowns in our future. One thing we do know for sure though is, the State of Louisiana is facing a massive financial shortfall. Whenever this has happened in the past, the first victims of cost-cutting out of Baton Rouge are healthcare and education. This time, the Governor is proposing to cover the budget gap with Federal funds. However, as of today, that is far from a done deal. So it won't be surprising if we start to hear some of the familiar economic-crisis catch-cries coming from the capital. One of the old faithfuls is taking the ax to LSU – including proposals to close down whole departments. If this happens, one department that will not be on the chopping board is the department that might be the future of education itself – online learning. Dr Sasha Thackaberry is LSU's Vice President of Online and Continuing Education. The stay-at-home learning that colleges have had to suddenly adopt over the Covid lockdown is being talked about as possibly changing the nature of college education forever. As every single department is now looking at putting at least some of their curriculum online, Dr Thackaberry is suddenly a central figure in the future of LSU. Back To The Office Over the past couple of months, if you have an office job… Well, we might have to come up with a different title for your occupation. We've traditionally called it “office work” because it was done at an office. But, as we have all discovered, you can do office work at home. Working from home has turned out to have all kinds of advantages. Office workers can avoid commuting and enjoy a more integrated work/life balance. And employers can cut down on the expense of running an office. But what do these changes mean for people whose life and livelihoods revolve around the office? And there are plenty of them. Realtors. Food courts. Commercial cleaners. And almost every retail outlet in downtowns and CBD's everywhere that revolve around the foot traffic that clusters of offices generate. Possibly nobody is more affected by these changes - or more of an expert at being able to predict the future of office work - than Ashley Thibodeaux Herbert. Ashley is CEO of a New Orleans-based company called Bart's Office. Bart's Office is a full-service office moving company. But it does more than just move office furniture. Bart's does everything from making sure you buy the furniture you need, to setting up your internet network. One of the clients they worked with in 2019, for example, was setting up the new New Orleans International Airport. So Ashley is in a good position to look at the what might be the future of the office. is this whole work-from-home period going to be something we look back on as just a temporary phase? Or are we looking at a permanent change to our relationship with the office? Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. More conversation about the Louisiana Covid economy is here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As we head toward the beginning of real Summer here in South Louisiana - you know, the day you wake up and it's H-O-T - we might typically have vacation and hurricane season as top-of-mind issues. But this year things are different. Who knows if you'll be able to take a vacation? With all of our Covid anxieties do we have the capacity to worry about hurricanes as well? Plus we have a whole range of new unknowns: The Saints, LSU, and back to the office. On this edition of out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuti, Stephanie Riegel and Christiaan Mader run through those three current unknowns. The Saints It's no secret that not everybody in the state of Louisiana has warm feelings for New Orleans. In towns across Louisiana it's not unusual to find a certain amount of political and financial resentment about the amount of money and attention given to New Orleans. But all of that melts way when it comes to football. The name of the team is The New Orleans Saints. But it might as well be The Louisiana Saints. From Shreveport in the North, to the most Southern point of Barataria Bay, Saints fans are everywhere. And so, along with all of our individual problems that we're grappling with as we work our way through this pandemic, we have one question that unites us: What's going to happen to football? Whatever else happens during football season this year, one thing is becoming increasingly apparent. And that is, football stadiums are not going to be allowed to be packed to capacity. Ed Lang, Chief Financial Officer for The New Orleans Saints, and The Pelicans, discusses the question that I'm sure every team in the league is trying to answer: Is there a way to have an NFL season where football becomes a sport more like golf or tennis, where most of the audience is not in the stadium, and revenue comes from sources other than ticket sales? Is that model financially possible for the NFL? LSU There are a lot of unknowns in our future. One thing we do know for sure though is, the State of Louisiana is facing a massive financial shortfall. Whenever this has happened in the past, the first victims of cost-cutting out of Baton Rouge are healthcare and education. This time, the Governor is proposing to cover the budget gap with Federal funds. However, as of today, that is far from a done deal. So it won't be surprising if we start to hear some of the familiar economic-crisis catch-cries coming from the capital. One of the old faithfuls is taking the ax to LSU – including proposals to close down whole departments. If this happens, one department that will not be on the chopping board is the department that might be the future of education itself – online learning. Dr Sasha Thackaberry is LSU's Vice President of Online and Continuing Education. The stay-at-home learning that colleges have had to suddenly adopt over the Covid lockdown is being talked about as possibly changing the nature of college education forever. As every single department is now looking at putting at least some of their curriculum online, Dr Thackaberry is suddenly a central figure in the future of LSU. Back To The Office Over the past couple of months, if you have an office job… Well, we might have to come up with a different title for your occupation. We've traditionally called it “office work” because it was done at an office. But, as we have all discovered, you can do office work at home. Working from home has turned out to have all kinds of advantages. Office workers can avoid commuting and enjoy a more integrated work/life balance. And employers can cut down on the expense of running an office. But what do these changes mean for people whose life and livelihoods revolve around the office? And there are plenty of them. Realtors. Food courts. Commercial cleaners. And almost every retail outlet in downtowns and CBD's everywhere that revolve around the foot traffic that clusters of offices generate. Possibly nobody is more affected by these changes - or more of an expert at being able to predict the future of office work - than Ashley Thibodeaux Herbert. Ashley is CEO of a New Orleans-based company called Bart's Office. Bart's Office is a full-service office moving company. But it does more than just move office furniture. Bart's does everything from making sure you buy the furniture you need, to setting up your internet network. One of the clients they worked with in 2019, for example, was setting up the new New Orleans International Airport. So Ashley is in a good position to look at the what might be the future of the office. is this whole work-from-home period going to be something we look back on as just a temporary phase? Or are we looking at a permanent change to our relationship with the office? Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. More conversation about the Louisiana Covid economy is here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As we head toward the beginning of real Summer here in South Louisiana - you know, the day you wake up and it's H-O-T - we might typically have vacation and hurricane season as top-of-mind issues. But this year things are different. Who knows if you'll be able to take a vacation? With all of our Covid anxieties do we have the capacity to worry about hurricanes as well? Plus we have a whole range of new unknowns: The Saints, LSU, and back to the office. On this edition of out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuti, Stephanie Riegel and Christiaan Mader run through those three current unknowns. The Saints It's no secret that not everybody in the state of Louisiana has warm feelings for New Orleans. In towns across Louisiana it's not unusual to find a certain amount of political and financial resentment about the amount of money and attention given to New Orleans. But all of that melts way when it comes to football. The name of the team is The New Orleans Saints. But it might as well be The Louisiana Saints. From Shreveport in the North, to the most Southern point of Barataria Bay, Saints fans are everywhere. And so, along with all of our individual problems that we're grappling with as we work our way through this pandemic, we have one question that unites us: What's going to happen to football? Whatever else happens during football season this year, one thing is becoming increasingly apparent. And that is, football stadiums are not going to be allowed to be packed to capacity. Ed Lang, Chief Financial Officer for The New Orleans Saints, and The Pelicans, discusses the question that I'm sure every team in the league is trying to answer: Is there a way to have an NFL season where football becomes a sport more like golf or tennis, where most of the audience is not in the stadium, and revenue comes from sources other than ticket sales? Is that model financially possible for the NFL? LSU There are a lot of unknowns in our future. One thing we do know for sure though is, the State of Louisiana is facing a massive financial shortfall. Whenever this has happened in the past, the first victims of cost-cutting out of Baton Rouge are healthcare and education. This time, the Governor is proposing to cover the budget gap with Federal funds. However, as of today, that is far from a done deal. So it won't be surprising if we start to hear some of the familiar economic-crisis catch-cries coming from the capital. One of the old faithfuls is taking the ax to LSU – including proposals to close down whole departments. If this happens, one department that will not be on the chopping board is the department that might be the future of education itself – online learning. Dr Sasha Thackaberry is LSU's Vice President of Online and Continuing Education. The stay-at-home learning that colleges have had to suddenly adopt over the Covid lockdown is being talked about as possibly changing the nature of college education forever. As every single department is now looking at putting at least some of their curriculum online, Dr Thackaberry is suddenly a central figure in the future of LSU. Back To The Office Over the past couple of months, if you have an office job… Well, we might have to come up with a different title for your occupation. We've traditionally called it “office work” because it was done at an office. But, as we have all discovered, you can do office work at home. Working from home has turned out to have all kinds of advantages. Office workers can avoid commuting and enjoy a more integrated work/life balance. And employers can cut down on the expense of running an office. But what do these changes mean for people whose life and livelihoods revolve around the office? And there are plenty of them. Realtors. Food courts. Commercial cleaners. And almost every retail outlet in downtowns and CBD's everywhere that revolve around the foot traffic that clusters of offices generate. Possibly nobody is more affected by these changes - or more of an expert at being able to predict the future of office work - than Ashley Thibodeaux Herbert. Ashley is CEO of a New Orleans-based company called Bart's Office. Bart's Office is a full-service office moving company. But it does more than just move office furniture. Bart's does everything from making sure you buy the furniture you need, to setting up your internet network. One of the clients they worked with in 2019, for example, was setting up the new New Orleans International Airport. So Ashley is in a good position to look at the what might be the future of the office. is this whole work-from-home period going to be something we look back on as just a temporary phase? Or are we looking at a permanent change to our relationship with the office? Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. More conversation about the Louisiana Covid economy is here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Learn how Ashley Pearce implemented the Innovation Room in E-commerce. Find out the strategies that come with it and how you can use it too. Why do something more than pure eCommerce? Ashely and his team had learned a lot about Google SEO and mimicking from the Amazon affiliates. While doing Pinterest more scientifically for their own Amazon business. All the way through to using SEO to warm up audiences; then using retargeting ads to actually get sales. Strategy led Some of the tactics and strategies they have developed are big picture and have taken a lot of R & D. They would at home in an 8- or 9-figure business. They are strategically-led and not just tactics/scrappy. IC/FC - intellectual capital vs. Financial Capital Ashley's team had generated all the Intellectual capital and know-how and Ashley is commonly acquainted with how this gets evaluated in a corporate environment. Then the question became: how do we turn our know-how (IC) - google, Pinterest SEO, high ROI ads - into capital? (Ie how do we monetize our knowledge?) Why go the agency route rather than the capital raising route? Ashley has become quite good at using credit cards and loans to get through cash peaks. It does come down to particular days in fact. However, to take on higher-risk capital in an organization where you are trying to run quickly - there is an underlying feeling that an Amazon account suspension could trip you up. If they took on a high-interest bank loan with security, they don't understand the Amazon space - they wouldn't have a clue how to react eg repayment within 90 days. Venture capital - Rand Fiskin - founder of Moz When one of his friends says they just raised capital, he says well done - but your business is finished! So Ashley is wary of outside capital investors. Download Worksheet Engine Room/Innovation Room How did you arrive at Future State Media as an idea? (It's a change of direction) MICAS Framework - briefly, IC and FC, hence FSM, Mention 2 Rooms MICAS means: Monetise Intellectual Capital Assets Systematically Just because the business model is different, doesn't mean you're not using the same skills/knowledge. FC/IC - Financial Capital/Intellectual Capital The whole idea is to be able to unlock FC eg assets and IC and monetize those Sometimes you need to do more with what you already have. It's doing a stock-take of both the IC and FC. The mechanism for unlocking IC: There's a mechanism - the 2 rooms: Engine Room and Innovation Room for eCommerce. The engine room generates cash and moves FC. The innovation room for eCommerce isn't necessarily a function that is alive in all businesses. Financial innovation or product innovation for example for Innovation Room in eCommerce. This is very applicable to an eCommerce business Download Worksheet Engine Room/Innovation Room How would someone apply the 2 rooms in their eCommerce business - and why? Why does it? Mentality, long term view, stay ahead of the competition who are innovating (newcomers are doing nothing but innovate whilst you're busy running your business). In Ashley's eCommerce business, they had a great innovation room and were deployed back into the Engine room. Used small cash to develop innovations and short time - in some cases 9-12 months. In the innovation room, still healthy - doing things that wouldn't offer to clients yet. Surely these conflicts and contrasts with simplifying and focus? Focus and simplifying and shorter-term thinking is a helpful mindset for the Engine Room However, different rules of physics apply in the innovation room! That's where the conflict and contrast come in. Misapplication of the 80/20 in the innovation room is a particularly big danger. If you just focus on what's performing now, you miss out on what will perform in the future. It doesn't account for the future - eg Amazon ads, Google Ads,
So Ashley drank the Bachelor Kool-Aid and is totally sucked into this dumpster fire of a season. We break down Pete's final four and why he's definitely going to walk away from this season disappointed. Spoiler alert! Megan is not impressed by any of these people.
Ashley Micciche is the CEO of True North Retirement Advisors, an independent financial advisory firm managing $230 million in client assets, and located just outside of Portland, Oregon. Ashley specializes in helping small business owners exit their business & retire with financial security by crafting and implementing a custom-designed exit plan. Whether you’re looking to retire in the next few years or you’re on draft one of your business plan, you should plan for the end in mind. Ashley is going to walk us through the 3 universal, must-do steps to help you get what your business is worth so you can retire with confidence and financial security! Press play and get ready to take some notes! More about Ashley: Ashley Micciche is the CEO of True North Retirement Advisors, an independent financial advisory firm managing $230 million in client assets, and located just outside of Portland, Oregon. It’s a family business, that she owns with her father. Ashley specializes in helping small business owners exit their business & retire with financial security by crafting and implementing a custom-designed exit plan. She started her career as a financial advisor in 2007 after graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Finance from Portland State University. Early in her career, Ashley developed expertise in 401k consulting for small businesses, and she quickly realized that business owners nearing retirement were not taking the steps necessary to exit their business. She watched several of her business owner clients walk away from their business at retirement without the financial security they needed. Today, she is on a mission to transition 300 small business owners successfully into retirement in the next 10 years. Ashley started her first business at the age of 8 years old, taking care of her neighbor’s pets & plants, and picking up their mail when they went on vacation – for $3 a day. She ran that business (a complete monopoly with 100% profit margin!) for 3 years. FULL TRANSCRIPT Karen Litzy: 00:00 Hey Ashley, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on. Ashley Micciche: 00:04 Thank you so much for having me, Karen. Karen Litzy: 00:06 Sure. Now before we get to the meat of our interview, I would love for you to fill in the blanks a little bit from your bio that we read to introduce you so that the listeners get a little bit better sense of where you're coming from. Ashley Micciche: 00:21 I know one of the things that was mentioned in there was I started my first business when I was eight years old. I didn't know it at the time, but you know, I was very entrepreneurial growing up and I started this business where I would pick up your paper and your mail and water your plants and feed your dogs and cats if you went on vacation. I found out really early on that if I worked really hard and I posted flyers and put flyers on mailboxes, put stuff in the newsletter and our neighborhood advertisement that I would get business from that. If I didn't work hard, if I didn't post flyers or do any of that, I got nothing. So I learned these really awesome lessons about hustle and working hard and making $3 a day doing all this work early on. And so that was a really neat experience because it taught me a lot that I have carried with me over the years and now starting my own real business. Karen Litzy: 01:32 And those are lessons that you know you can take with you for your whole life. And now you are at True North Retirement Advisors as the CEO and retirement plan specialist. So today you're going to share with us three universal must do steps to help you get what your business is worth so you can retire eventually which is something we all want to do. Well, maybe not everyone, but most people want to retire and we want to be able to retire with confidence that we can live a lifestyle that we want to live. So let's go through these three universal must do steps. Ashley Micciche: 02:13 So what we do is exit planning for business owners. And I think what's really unique about that is that we don't have any skin in the game. Like it doesn't matter to us who you sell your business to or you could sell it to a family member, another employee, you could sell it to an outside third party. We don't have any skin in the game in that regard. So what we do is we really just work with our clients to identify those goals and what's important to them and what the value of their business is so that they can achieve what they're looking to do when they exit their business. Karen Litzy: 02:50 Oh, I was going to say, because I'm assuming everyone's got a different goal to exit their business. Right? And so it has to be personalized and individualized. Ashley Micciche: 03:00 Yes. And so we have a step by step process for this. But what I found is that the process really diverges after the first three steps based on who you end up selling your business to, what that timeline looks like. But there are three universal steps to exiting your business. And so the first universal step is valuing your business, understanding what your business is actually worth. And it's kind of like if you know, you want to retire, Exit Your Business, sell your business in five or six years or whatever that is, that's sort of like the destination on your GPS. And if you don't put a starting point in, if you don't put in where you are today, what the value of your business is today, it's almost, your GPS can not tell you how to get where you want to go. So you really have to take inventory of what your business is worth today. Ashley Micciche: 04:00 And I find that a lot of people don't do this vital first step because they have a lot of misconceptions about what's involved in value in a business. So they think that it's going to cost them thousands of dollars. It's going to take weeks or months. Someone's going to come in to disrupt their business because they need to ask questions and you know, dig into the books and records and all of a sudden, so they're like, no, I don't want to do that. Like I'll just use a rule of thumb or hey, I know this other practice across town that's close in size to mine and they sold their business for this much. So I'm just gonna, you know, I'll go with that. But you know, if you don't start with an accurate valuation, it's nearly impossible to take the other steps necessary to exit your business. Karen Litzy: 04:52 Okay. So I will admit, I have no idea how to do that. Yeah. So what would you say to someone like me and I am a business owner? How do I even start valuing the business? Ashley Micciche: 06:07 Yeah, so that's a really good question. And you're not alone, Karen. There was actually a study done about three years ago by the business exit institute. They do a lot of research in this area and they found that 98% of business owners have absolutely no clue what their business is worth and how to go about doing that. So, the neat thing about valuing your business is that more technology tools exist today. So there's a software tool that we use to value a business and anyone can access this. It's free, but really with a pie with eight pieces of information, like your revenue, what you pay yourself, what your compensation is, your debt and certain other things like if you rent or own the space where your business is occupied, but there are a critical pieces of information to value your business. And if you get those, if you can get those eight pieces of critical information and enter it into the valuation tool, then it will spit out an evaluation for you. It'll tell you, you know, Karen's practice is worth $689,000 or whatever it is based on those parameters that you put in. And it doesn't take long. It takes like five minutes to do it. Once you've gathered the data, the toughest part is gathering the data. When you use this software tool, there's 50 pieces of information you can put in. But what we did is we went back to the software developer and we said, okay, tell me the bare minimum pieces of information that I could put into the software tool for it to spit out the valuation for my business. And so we use that, what their advice was to us. Ashley Micciche: 07:03 Plus some of the other things that we know from what we know moves the needle on valuation. And we came up with this checklist like, Hey, if you can get these eight pieces of information, what your revenue is, your pretax income, if you owe other people money, if you have bank loans, if you rent or own the space that you're in, those are the things that have the largest impact on what your business is worth. And then once you enter that into the software tool, it'll spit out your evaluation. It's fantastic. And I'm so excited about it because what I found, this is not our core business, like this is it. So we actually make this tool available to anyone who wants to use it for free. Because what we want them to do is get unstuck, get out of the head mind space of using a rule of thumb or a really inaccurate estimate. Ashley Micciche: 08:01 Because once you know what your business is worth, it unleashes the rest of this process. And when you see that number tangible, you know, Karen's business is worth this amount, then you can start to make some important decisions about, okay, so is this going to be enough that, you know, if I want to exit and a year or two years, you know, what do I need to do if this isn't what I hoped it would be? So it really influences a lot of the other decisions we make in the process. Valuing your business and knowing how to value your business is step one. So what is step two? Step two would be establishing what your timeline is and your goals. So you know, a lot of people have this idea in their head, I want to retire and exit my business in 10 years or five years. Ashley Micciche: 09:00 Or maybe it's like January 25th you know, 2021 like they've got it dialed in down to the day. And so that would be the first thing. And not just when you want to leave, but figuring out, okay, how were you involved in your business today? And then how do you see that involvement evolving over time? Because the reality is for most people who are not business owners or entrepreneurs, they have a very specific set retirement date and they go from working full time to retirement date and then fully retired. But for a lot of business owners there, they sort of have this phased out exit. And so it's important to kind of think about how to do that, which is great for a business owner because if you have somebody else who's taking over ownership at or who's doing a lot of the day to day management or seeing patients or whatever that may be, you can pull back over time a little bit and have this phased out retirement so that you can test the waters and make sure that whoever that person or those people are are fully equipped to be able to run things in your absence. Karen Litzy: 10:16 Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And also I would think it's really hard for some business owners. Have you found that with the clients that you work with that that's not easy? Ashley Micciche: 10:28 Yeah. I mean, cause your business, it's like your baby, you know, blood, sweat, tears. You've made so many sacrifices, a lot of it too. It is very much a part of your identity and who you are. And that's okay. You know, I totally get that. I think that the important thing about this establishing your timeline and goals is what feels right to you and what do you want. It's not up to me to tell you what you should do. It's up to you to figure that out. Karen Litzy: 11:00 Not Easy, not easy. But this is good. As you're saying all of this, I'm kind of thinking in my head like, okay, I should probably be thinking about this stuff cause it's not even something that's on my radar right now. But I guess it's never too soon. Ashley Micciche: 11:14 No. And actually the best exit plan starts when you start your business, but most people are so heads down focusing in growth mode that rarely if ever happens because it really does require this mindset shift. But you have to start it before you're burnt out. So I've seen a lot of business owners who, because they didn't plan, they didn't start this process, you know, five, 10 years out, which is really an ideal timeframe to be doing this. They wait until they're sick and tired of working and they're ready to retire. And so they don't have the time to be able to craft that ideal accent or maybe they sell their business to somebody who in a fire sale where they just want out and they don't care what they get for their business, but if they would have planned more, they could have got, you know, what they wanted in a lot of cases. Ashley Micciche: 12:18 I didn't work with this person on their exit, but I know somebody who just retired this past summer and he was a third generation owner of his family business that his grandfather started. It was a good business, a good cashflow, it was a solid business. But he didn't do any planning and didn't identify a successor and he just got way too burnt out and literally just walked away and shut the doors and left with nothing. And that, to me it was really sad just because it was, you know, third generation. And he was fortunate because he didn't need to sell his business in order to retire. You know, it wasn't a must do, but for most people, you know, your business is your largest asset. And so it's so important we plan for all these other things, like when we're going to take social security and investing in all these things, but a lot of times the business and the value of the business gets neglected. Karen Litzy: 13:29 Yeah. There's no question. I am in a lot of different entrepreneurial groups and this is a topic that never comes up. Ashley Micciche: 13:39 Oh really? That's surprising. Karen Litzy: 13:40 Yeah. It's a topic that never comes up and it really should because now that as you're speaking more and more on this, it's got me thinking about my sort of long-term plan and where do I see myself and what should my goals be. So this will be something for 2019 for me to really sit down and give it the time and space that it needs. So I think it's great. Okay. So, number one, valuing your business. Number two, establishing a timeline and goals that I'm assuming are realistic. We don't want to say, well it's January, so I want to retire in three months and now this is it. Ashley Micciche: 14:25 And actually before we move on, can I give you a couple of other questions that I think your listeners may not say. So obviously it's important to consider the WHO. So who is best suited to take over the ownership of your business after exit. Now a lot of times, especially in family businesses, there are family considerations and we'll just kind of a trick question cause there was always family issues, like maybe somebody is involved in your business, like one child out of your three children is involved. And you know, most parents want to do what's fair for their kids and so it can create a lot of strife in the family, when there's family involved. So we want to be really careful about that. And I think a lot of business owners make some not so good decisions because of that family element. Ashley Micciche: 15:20 Like I'm sure we've all seen it where you have a second generation who doesn't have the same mindset, doesn't have that same fire and isn't very well equipped to, maybe they were a good employee, but they're not very well equipped to run the business. So that's really important as well. And then the other thing that I think really drives who you want to look at to be your successor is whether or not how important it is for the business to stay in the community. So a lot of business owners are really heavily involved in their community and no matter what an outside buyer tells you, that dynamic is going to change. So it's really important, especially if you're looking to sell to maybe like a competitor or someone like that outside of your immediate community. It's definitely going to change, you know, that experience from your client or your patient's point of view. Karen Litzy: 16:21 Oh yeah, definitely. Especially in health care because if you're in any sort of healthcare business, you are deeply entrenched into that community and they depend on you. Yeah, that's a great consideration to think about during this timeline and goal step. Anything else that we really need to think about in this second step? Ashley Micciche: 16:48 You know, a couple of other things have to do with the financial element. There was this other study that was done that looked at most business owners want to retire in the next 10 years. And that same study that I mentioned before from the business owner acts or business exit institute said that they found that 75% of business owners would exit today if their financial security was assured. So most entrepreneurs, business owners who aren't looking to exit, aren't doing so because they feel like financial aid, they're not ready yet. So that really plays into the next step that's universal in that process, which is to determine if you have a gap financially. So you know what your business is worth, you know, what your other financial resources are. And when you look at all of those things, is that going to be enough to, do you have enough to retire? Ashley Micciche: 17:51 Is that going to be enough to provide the income needs that you have and your family has in retirement or not? That's really the third step. And so what we do in this step is we look at what are your assets? We know what the business is worth, but we also have to consider the after tax business value. Cause that's a big surprise, right? Then you have what you get to keep after Uncle Sam does. So you know, we have to plan for that. And then you might have other assets like your investment portfolio or rental properties and all of these things are, or social security, you know, all these things are providing income for you in retirement. And so you have to replace whatever income you were getting when you were working in the business. Ashley Micciche: 18:45 That’s usually the challenge is because most people, they do have a gap. The business or their personal financial resources are enough to provide the income that they want and desire in retirement. So, we have to start making some decisions about what levers we can pull. So sometimes you can pull levers to increase the value of the business. Depending on what the business looks like, sometimes there's not as much flexibility there. So it might be, you know, rethinking what your plan was for retirement. Like are you willing, you said you all work five more years, are you willing to work six, seven or eight more years if that's going to help fill the gap. So understanding if a gap exists or not, and discovering your gap, that's the third step because it really leads to how much are you either going to need to grow your business value or on the personal side, your personal assets and income in order to make sure that that gap is filled. Ashley Micciche: 19:55 I would think that that third step is where you really have to start making some hard decisions depending on how you want to live your life when you retire. And actually one of the things that comes up a lot is if sometimes people get revenue from very limited sources, you might have, you know, five or 10 clients that provide 50, 60% of revenue or maybe you have a practice that especially on the medical side, maybe are more dependent on insurance reimbursement. And so one of the things that can increase value is if you can convert or incentivize more of those people to pay with cash. Know that can be something that's more attractive now to an outsider versus relying on insurance reimbursements found that true for dental practices. I would imagine it's true pretty much across the board for most medical or physical therapy type companies. Karen Litzy: 21:00 I would agree with that. And I think there is a big trend moving towards a cash based therapy practice. That's what I have. So I don't take insurance. I'm out of network. I'll help you get reimbursed. But my clients pay me cash for my physical therapy services. And I think there's definitely a big trend to that, especially now with rising costs of healthcare and large deductibles. Everybody's cash based at this point because some people have deductibles of $10,000, which needs to be paid before you can get reimbursed anyway. So everybody's paying out of pocket. Ashley Micciche: 21:45 Yeah. Well good. Karen, you've already increased the value of your business by doing that. Karen Litzy: 21:50 All right. Yeah, go through this tool and look at my goals and all that other stuff and get at least a rough idea of the value of what my business is. I even think about retiring and I always said, you know, Oh, I've got like 30 more years before I retire, but I feel like I said that like 10 years ago and I'm 10 years older. You know what I mean? So this is a good reality check for me and hopefully for the listeners as well to really start thinking about your business and how you want to, like you said, how you want to exit and how you then want to move on into retirement years at whatever time frame that is for you. Do you have examples of clients, you don't have to obviously say their names, but clients that you worked with that did a really good job at all of this and how that ended up improving their retirement? Ashley Micciche: 22:50 So one of the clients that comes to mind is somebody who's actually still in the process of exiting, but I think the key for this client was that they really started early on. So this is actually another medical practice and they have two other partners and both of whom are younger, but one of them is in their early forties, and then the other one's in their 50s and then the one who's retiring is in his sixties. So the trick is, the younger people have to be able to afford to buy out this older owner, but they have a great relationship. They've talked and communicated with each other along the way to minimize any misunderstandings or potential lawsuits or breakup of their partnership, so they've done a really good job of planning that and having those discussions. Ashley Micciche: 23:46 He’s a planner by nature, so he's done a really good job in making sure that, this is what the practice is worth, this is what I need when I exit. And he's most likely going to get that just because he's done all this planning and all the partners are on the same page and they're structuring his buyout in a way that they can afford and they're not going to rely on bringing in somebody new or doing that before he exits. So just the planning element and the communication is really helping them out. We’ve had other clients in that same boat who did successfully exit. And it all started with just understanding what was required to exit the business. What do I need to do? What are the levers I can pull to increase either the value of my business or the value of my personal assets. So I'm not relying so much on the business now. Some people, their business is so huge as far as their net worth, the percentage of their net worth that they have no other choice than to really focus and hone in on that to maintain the same lifestyle that they had or provide a legacy or you know, satisfy some of those other exit goals. Karen Litzy: 25:15 Yeah. And it sounds like aside from these three universal steps to exit, that communication with other stake holders within your business and your family and business partners is paramount to having a smooth exit. So there's no surprises. Ashley Micciche: 25:33 Yes. And actually that is something that we tried to do. So if we're working with a client x in the business before we ever draft the exit plan, it's kind of like the strategic plan, but it's for your exit. So before that's ever drafted, we bring everyone together the team. So family is involved, especially the spouse and if your children is in the business, we want to involve them early on in the discussion so we make sure everyone's on the same page. And then also all the others like CPA, attorney. There's a lot of people who have a role in making this process as successful as possible. And so part of our job is to facilitate all that and to help move the process along by getting the attorney or the CPA involved at the right stage of the game. Karen Litzy: 26:31 Yeah, absolutely. If you're not an entrepreneur or you're not a business owner, you don't realize how many people are on your team, how many people are working behind the scenes to make your business successful. And so it's obviously important to involve all of them in your exit plan cause everybody's going to be affected in one way or another. Now is there anything that we missed going through these three universal steps? Ashley Micciche: 27:00 No, I don't think so. It's about sally in your business. First and foremost, figuring out where you're at and then get most important goals and what that timeline looks like and then figuring out if there's a gap or not and then what to do about it if there is. Karen Litzy: 27:15 Well, this was great and I have to tell you, I am really going to start looking at this more seriously now after having this conversation. Hopefully the listeners will as well who are entrepreneurs or even for people thinking about being an entrepreneur. So maybe you haven't started your business yet. Like you said, the ideal time to do this is when you start. So they'll have like a leg up on all of us entrepreneurs who have not done this yet. I'm a little jealous of those new bees. Now before we end, I always ask everyone the same question. And that's knowing where you are now in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to yourself as a new Grad out of college? Ashley Micciche: 28:00 Gosh, that is such a good question. It's funny cause when I graduated college I pretty much, I didn't have a lot of fun in my twenties. Honestly I didn't, I didn't travel. I started in what I'm doing today straight out of college and that was 11 years ago now. So, I think if you would've asked me that question a few years ago, cause I always regretted not having a bit more fun in my twenties and now that I'm in my thirties, I actually am glad that I did. I did what I did and I didn't travel more and I just really focused on my career because I think I'll have a few more options down the road. But honestly, to answer your question, the thing career wise that I wish I would've done when I first started as a fund generalist financial advisor, one of the things that I was told by a lot of mentors who had been advisors for 20, 30 years was that the best way to grow your business when you're new is to cold call. Ashley Micciche: 29:08 And so I did that and I cold called for two years, I made over 25,000 calls and I wouldn't say it was a total waste, but when these people who are giving me this advice very well meaning advice, they were genuinely trying to help me. They built their business cold calling in the eighties and nineties before the do not call lists before, people hated you if you were calling them cold. And so it's a different world today. So I think I learned career wise is that I wish I would have been a little bit more creative and trying other things in order to grow my business early on because I feel like now if I would have done that, I would've obviously done some other things and not relied so much on a strategy that for me it just didn't work very well. Karen Litzy: 30:07 Yeah, I think that's why the advice to give to yourself and we've all been there definitely doing things that looking back on it, you're like, what was I thinking? Ashley Micciche: 30:17 Yeah. Karen Litzy: 30:19 Where can people find you? Where can they find true north? Let us know where we can connect with you online. Ashley Micciche: 30:28 Sure. So the website is http://www.truenorthretirementadvisors.com/and for the free unlimited lifetime access to the valuation tool where you can enter that information, go to https://truenorthretirementadvisors.com/valuemybusiness/ If you go there, you'll get access to the checklists. So it's a pdf checklist that explains to you here are the eight pieces of information to gather, where to find it quickly and easily. And then from there you'll get access to the valuation tool. And the beauty of this is you could go in and do the valuation for free and then you can update it in six months or a year or you know, if your business changes and see how some of those adjustments have changed or valuation. So it's cool. It's not a one and done and it's totally free because we really want people to just, we found that if they can figure out what their business is worth and that's the key to unlocking the rest of the steps that are so necessary to exiting. Karen Litzy: 31:41 I'm going straight to that url and I'm going to get this valuation tool because I think it's awesome. So thank you so much for sharing that. That's such a generous share. And how about social media? Where can we find you? Ashley Micciche: 32:10 Yeah, so our YouTube channel where we go a little bit more in depth on some of these exit planning, retirement planning topics. We have our biggest presence on LinkedIn. Karen Litzy: 32:29 Yes. And just before we went on the air, I said, is this how you pronounce your name? And I got it right, but only because I watched your YouTube videos. I knew how you pronounced it, but don't worry, everyone will have a direct link to the youtube and to linkedin and to of course the free gift that Ashley has so generously shared with all of us. So Ashley, thank you so much. This was eye opening. Ashley Micciche: Thank you so much, Karen. This was a lot of fun. And I'm so happy to share this with your listeners. Awesome. Karen Litzy: And to all of you listeners, get that free gift and we will be back with you in a couple of days. Have a great few days and stay healthy, wealthy, and smart. Thank you for listening to this episode with Ashley Micciche! Share your thoughts with the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart family in the comment section below! Connect with me on twitter, instagram and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest! Show your support for the show by leaving an honest rating and review on iTunes! Have a fantastic day and stay Healthy, Wealthy and Smart! Xo Karen
This show originally aired on the Big Seance Podcast - Ep 132 "Straight Dudes! Get Thyself to a Spirit Triangle!" and was produced by Patrick Keller. Where are all the straight men in the metaphysical and spiritual communities? Patrick Keller of the Big Seance podcast hosted a "triangle table" chat with Ash Riley of In My Sacred Space and Slade Roberson of Shift Your Spirits. We talk about ... the divine feminine, LGBTQ spirituality, coming out of the (spiritual) closet, and how to make spirituality more accessible to the elusive straight male. A fun, lively, original discussion of some rarely approached topics! GUEST LINKS - ASH RILEY InMySacredSpace.com In My Sacred Space Discussion Group on Facebook In My Sacred Space on Instagram GUEST LINKS - PATRICK KELLER BigSeance.com Big Seance Podcast HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Ash: I've decided that I am a connector. Slade: Yes. Patrick: Yes. Ash: That's what I do. I reach out to people, and I meet people and I connect them with other people, because, I don't know. I just feel like, oh! You guys should know each other because I like you and I like you. You should like each other. Slade: I feel very much the same way. I consider myself a matchmaker, and I used to do it even when I was in corporate. I would hire people and put them in certain places to work with other people. I have six marriages that resulted from that and... Ash: Holy -----! Slade: And there are at least three children that I can claim. Ash: You can start a business on that! Patrick: I remember you saying that, yeah. Slade: I don't know that I could do it if I did it intentionally with a romantic intention involved. But if I do it in the context of maybe work or, yeah, like you said, just recognizing, you guys should know each other. Like, my Automatic Intuition program has become this party that I host. And whenever I add someone to it, it becomes increasingly more difficult to screen people to become a part of that. You know what I'm saying? It gets to be more and more kind of delicate and intricate. And that's what I think about when somebody's like, I want to take your program! I'm thinking, okay, what's the seating chart here, at the dinner table? You know what I mean? Ash: I feel like when I meet people that I want to introduce to other people, it's because I feel like they're gonna vibe and it's like a certain energy that I get from them. I feel they're similar. Slade: Yeah, I mean I would love it if people would do that to me. I mean, it does happen. People do introduce me to people, but I have become, especially with all this podcasting stuff, really kind of aware of the fact that, it's interesting that you say that, because I feel like my power is in introducing people to other people, also on a scale of like, discovering someone, or finding this person and being like, why aren't thousands of people listening to this woman? Ash: Yeah, yeah! Slade: You know? And interviewing them and I'm not interested in interviewing people who are already famous, or have more followers than I do, or whatever. Even though Patrick does. Patrick: Do you know how many people I've had the opportunity to, and I just go, and I either drop the ball and don't do it, or it just doesn't feel right. And the ones that I have interviewed that have been, you know, bigger names, just like landed in my lap. Ash: I've always wanted to... I mean, I have a decent following for what I do and the amount of effort that I put into it. It's not spectacular, but I recognize that I have a much bigger platform than a lot of other people. When I do meet those people who I think, Gawd, people should know who this person is! That's why I always want to give them an opportunity to be exposed to my audience at least, because I'm like, if I meet somebody and I believe in them and what they're talking about, I think that that's really valuable for other people. Slade: Well you're also displaying your talent for recognizing that in other people. And people come to associate you with someone who has cool people on their platform. You know what I mean? I don't want people to feel like I have a bunch of canned interviews, or.. Ash: Right! Slade: I want them to think, Wow! He always finds these people that I would've never known about otherwise but I'm so glad that I do. That's the feeling that I want them to have. And I also want the people who are on the show to feel like it's a big deal for them. To feel like, either they love the show already so it's really cool for them to get to be on it, or they feel like, Wow, I went on the show and now I have so many more people listening to me. Or I've got so many new clients from that or whatever, and to be really excited about it. Because we do this stuff so much more frequently now than the average person that we might put on. There's just an energy about having someone be excited about being a part of what you're doing. And being excited about being a collaborator and it comes through. You can feel it. You know what I mean? When you listen to a show with somebody who's really excited and happy to be there, even if they're kind of nervous or something. Ash: Absolutely. Patrick: So, I'm just considering this thing started. Slade: Well why don't you tell everybody how we met, because I'd love to know what your perspective is on how we all three know each other. Patrick: I think I talked a little about it when I had each of you on the show, but I think I talked about it the most when Ash was on the show, and in my... it's not really a previous blogging life, because a podcast is just kind of an extension of what I started doing with the blog. I met Ash through her blog, and I think when I realized she was from my area, that's when we started talking. I think I had, you might remember this, Ash, I don't know exactly how... If like, I messaged you or you messaged me. Or maybe you commented on my blog or something, but we started communicating pretty regularly. I had lots of questions for her about my website. She had already been in the blogging world and I was still learning about it. I think we were talking about how I was experiencing the intense early part of my spiritual shift. We've all talked about this, where I couldn't get enough books about it. And I couldn't stop reading about it and... Ash: The information-gathering phase. Patrick: Yes! Yes. And I was overwhelmed and I think Ash was like, You know, there's this dude that I need to connect you with because he's real. That's how I got connected with your blog. I don't think I actually communicated with you until quite a bit later, Slade, but I was following you and learning from you at that time. Slade: Cool. Patrick: Then I think you reached out to me, Slade, before you started your fabulous podcast and Ash always pops up in topics, like, Ash said this, or Ash is so... Ash: SURPRISE! Here I am! Slade: From the closet. Ash: Like a jack-in-the-box. Patrick: By the way everybody, I made Ash sit in her closet because that's the greatest place for someone with a mobile laptop to record for acoustics, and it turns out her closet is basically a spiritual oasis and is beautiful. Slade: There's fashion in there too. Patrick: Yes! Ash: When I come out of the broom closet, it's like literally the spiritual broom closet here. Slade: It really is what I would expect your closet to be in the best kind of way. My closets are very suburban and not exciting at all. They are arranged by ROYGBIV and they all have the same exact hanger on every item of clothing, I will say that. Those are my two. Ash: You're not OCD either. Slade: No, not at all. I have a south node in Virgo, I've discovered, which is where I get all my perfectionism in this lifetime from. Ash: I have a south node in Sagittarius, which is where I get all of my bluntness. Slade: Oh good! I like Sagittarius energy. We can trust it. That we're getting the exact, undistilled, unvarnished... Ash: The unvarnished truth. Slade: Yes. I like that. I like that quality. Patrick: I just wanted to tell people that we were, when we decided to do this, I don't know whose idea it was first, but it just... Ash: It was me! I said we should do this. It would be like the Avengers except with a better ending than Age of Ultron. Patrick: It just makes sense that it happened, because... Slade: We end up talking about each other anyway. If any two of us are together, the other person's name gets invoked, so... Patrick: Yes. Ash: We're like the Holy Trinity. Patrick: Yes! And by way of joking, it's funny. We discussed what we were going to talk about and I don't know if you guys ended up being serious, but I was just joking and coming up with all these funny, ha ha things just to entertain people. And it ended up that we came up with the curious thing that there are more women and gay men in our spiritual, psychic, metaphysical world, and not a lot of straight men. Like, what's up with straight men? Where are the straight men? And I think Ash said something like, I think I copied and pasted it here, she said something like... Hang on... Slade: He's got receipts, Ash. Patrick: I apparently didn't copy. But you said something funny about, "Where are the straight men at, yo?" Or...Oh! I know! "When are straight men gonna get their sh*t together??" is what you said. Something like that. Ash: Yeah! Slade: Mmm... I have some theories about why it is a women-gay-men alliance predominantly. That's pretty easy to speak to. And it's so weird because when we were joking about this topic, we're kind of joking about it but then I was like, That's actually kind of a real thing that I observe all the time. It came up in conversation with so many people over the next few days. Ash: Oh, really? Slade: There were other people who commented on it as well. It came up in a really super woo-woo way when someone told me, at the teahouse I go to, the next day, she brought up the fact that a lot of women were murdered for witchcraft during the Inquisition are reincarnating at this time. And that there were a lot of gay men that were crucified along with them. That is a very common lore, or whatever. It's where the term 'faggot' literally comes from. Patrick: Ooo explain that more. How does that...? Slade: Well, they burned them along with the witches but in the context of like, Okay, we're going to have this big grand inquisition inquiry public burning to kill 1 or 2 or 3 women at a time, but then they just take a handful of queers and throw them in just as kindling, just to dispose of them. It wasn't even like, they didn't even waste a lot of energy on having a specific murder event for us, you know? So the term 'faggot' refers to kindling, sticks that you throw in the fire to help it start burning. And that's kind of one of the origins of that disparaging term, or whatever. So I was talking to this woman the day after you and I, the three of us, were kind of tossing that concept around. Where are all the straight dudes?? She just came out of nowhere with this idea that those souls are reincarnating right now. And I'm not a huge past-life, reincarnation, that's not a rabbit hole that I go down really often. But I will always engage anyone in a conversation about it that wants to talk about it. Yeah, she was like, "There's all these witches, the souls of all these women, who have chosen to reincarnate at this time." It's, you know, I'm just passing it on. Ash: You just recently did an interview with Susan Grace, which is a long-time friend of mine as well. One of the things that she talks about pretty regularly is how... I would need to go back and... I think she's mentioned it in every single reading she's done for me in the last year. Astrologically, we're coming back around through a cycle, and I can't remember which planet it is, but... Patrick: I can read your comment. Or actually it's Slade's comment. Slade said that she said something about the planetoid Regulus causing a 2,000 reign of men. That is over in 2020. Ash: So I think that might be what she's talking about, is the last time this happened was, it put us into the Dark Ages, which was the time when women were being burned at the stake for being witches. It was a suppression of the feminine. That cycle is ending in the next five years. And it's kind of coming on right now. So you're seeing a lot of that collective pain and energy from that time coming up from beneath the surface for healing. Patrick: Mmm... Slade: I like the thought of it being kind of a cultural zeitgeist, or like an ancestral DNA kind of thing where it's just in our collective psyche to deal with that again. So I don't even think it has to be as literal a story as 'those souls are reincarnating', like they're all hanging out, going, "Okay, now's the time. Let's go y'all!" Like it's a suffragette march. I like to back out of those things, you know what I mean? I like to zoom out a couple of notches when talking about those things and imagine it in more of a, I don't know, mystical, collective consciousness kind of archetypal thing. Ash: Mmhmm. Slade: Like for some reason, I'm more happy and more comfortable getting onboard with that. In the way that you described it, as being like, that, whatever it was that's been repressed, we're not standing on its throat anymore. Of course it's gonna get up and wake back up again. Or, if nothing else, it's gonna have to be processed and dealt with differently than it has been. Another way that this has come up, which isn't as specific as, 'Where are straight men?' and 'Why are women and gay men the allies in new age spiritual movements?' But in my Shift Your Spirits community, someone was posting about how Wicca and pagan-identified religion was really on the rise in the United States. And I told her in a comment, I said, I've actually been hearing that since the 1980s. It started in the 1970s actually, that identification as a witch is one of the fastest growing religious identities in the United States and has been our entire lifetimes. Like it's not just happening. It's something that's BEEN happening for awhile, so I'm down with that. Patrick: Well if I may come down to Earth for a second and let's just talk about, like Ash said, I can't even think of more than a handful of straight psychics, for example. Ash: Straight, male psychics. Patrick: Straight male psychics, thank you. What is it about... Is there something about the feminine, or, you know, there probably are a lot of gay men who want to smack me when I refer to them as feminine, but is there something about the brain of the feminine side or what makes... Is it more capable of getting into the spiritual and all of that...? Ash is raising her hand. Ash: So, just to back up, everybody has masculine and feminine energy in them. I think that we have genderized that concept and that's not necessarily the case. It's just a way to refer to an archetype. Think of it more in terms of yin and yang, where yin is the feminine aspect. It's the receptive. It's what's connected to the "Divine". So I think that the reason why we see more gay male psychics than we do straight male psychics is because they are more in tune with that energy. And that is the gateway through which we pull in psychic information, archetypally speaking. I'm a tarot nerd and I love going through tarot archetypes but the archetype of the card, of the Lovers in the Major Arcana, it shows that. The traditional depiction of it is a man looking at a woman and the woman is looking up at a god-like angelic figure. The message within that card is that it's through the feminine that we reach that sort of enlightenment. Divine energy. Slade: I also want to throw in the fact that I think that whenever you exclude people from a social order where they're not in power, by virtue of survival or being able to make things happen for themselves, they have to become more resourceful and they have to learn how to do things in ways that people who, let's say you're heteronormative, white male in this culture. Sometimes there's a lot of things that happen for you that you don't have to think about, in the same way that someone who is excluded from that, whether they're a woman, or they're a minority, ethnically, or they're a gay man, we have to go around and find windows, unlock doors and sometimes tunnel our way in if we can't go through the front door. So I have a theory that that's also one of the reasons why gay people are considered more creative. Patrick: That's interesting. Slade: Or that women have an eye for the way that energies are interacting in a space in a different kind of way. I don't think it's about the fact that we are... I do agree with everything you said about being more in touch with receptive energy. And also being released socially to experience that, you know? Women actually have it shoved down their throat. Gay men come to it by exclusion, well I might as well! But I think that there's something that happened with the programming of straight men that is a little bit more on autopilot sometimes. And one thing that I will say for the straight dudes, because we've got a couple out there, and I can name them, but I won't embarrass them, but something that I've noticed about the straight men who ARE our allies, who we do find at our party, is that they're the real deal. They're the coolest of the guys. They're the ones that we all want to marry and they're the ones that probably need to be procreating more than the rest. Ash: And unfortunately, there's like two of them and all the rest of us are flinging ourselves at them. Slade: Oh, they're already married. And we meet their wives and of course she's adorable too and we hate her. Ash: That bitch. Slade: Yeah, exactly. You know, I do know these men in my life. And I think, gosh, what special kind of guys they are that they're able to shake out of that matrix, right? They are able to see through the matrix a little bit and see past that. So they are more awake. So when you do find them, they are truly empowered and powerful guys. And they do exist. But we can't ignore the fact that there's not a lot of them. And they don't tend to be working in this field the same way that we do, right? Ash: Yeah. One guy comes to mind that I discovered very recently and I completely, totally, just bought into everything. His name is John Wineland, and he's technically a relationship coach but he basically teaches yogic sexuality, and he just radiates this sacred masculine energy and it's so palpable. And you don't, I don't come across a lot of people that have that kind of presence, and who are able to talk about spirituality in a way that comes from that very masculine perspective. I think he's fantastic. If you've never read any of his work or anything, I definitely recommend checking it out. Slade: Patrick, do you have any theories? Patrick: Like in college I can think of... and I'm not a psychic or a medium, or anything like that, so I'm not going to comment on it from that angle, but for example, after coming out, or being completely honest with some of the male friends that were straight that I had in college, I think were all these people that we're talking about. Because those are the ones I connected with. They were very accepting and cool. They're not, I'm sure, psychics or mystics or anything like that. But I guess that's what I was thinking of. I also think of the future of our world, my students, when I made the decision last year to officially kind of come out to my school community, meaning parents and students and no longer worried about that. Previously, I had only been out to my staff. When I came out to my school community, I had some of the, and I'll use boys as examples, high school boys who I'd had as students in middle school, either came up and gave me a hug or told me how proud of me they were. One of them came up to me crying. And I thought, those are the cool peeps. Slade: Mmhmm. Patrick: Those are the cool kids. And, you know, I have some students now, currently, they'll say, "Hey, Mr. Keller, how's your husband?" And I'm like, that's cool. They're not afraid to be seen as 'I'm accepting this' or whatever. So I think in that way, the future is very promising. Slade: I think that that's an amazing form of activism that gets overlooked, and it a cumulative thing and it's one of the reasons why being out is important. Because it's so hard to de-humanize people when you know an actual face and name of an individual person. It makes it a little harder for people to put messages out there that are bigoted in some way because if you're someone who says, "Wait a minute, you know, they're talking about my teacher and that's not true." Therefore their whole theory is bunk. I do believe that being the person who maybe you're the first out gay person that this straight guy has been friends with before, has an impact on how he raises his son down the road. That guy that you knew in college who's like, I never knew a gay dude before, but you're cool. You just inoculated an entire potential family from future homophobia and probably misogyny as well. Because the issue with all those things are about people who are fearful and abusing people that they believe are beneath them. And one of my friends who I work out with a lot that's a straight guy who's an ally said to me, he was like, "I'm not insecure about my masculinity." The only way that you could be a misogynist or a homophobe is if you are. Ash: You know, I think that's an interesting conversation too. I always share this article in my Facebook group. It's called 'Healing the Mother Wound', and the name of the woman who's worked this is... I'm trying to find it... Bethany Webster. She also has a really great article on how that sort of mother wound plays into toxic masculinity. I think I shared a link to it in one of my more recent blog posts. Women talk a lot about men needing to take responsibility for how women have been treated for centuries and centuries and centuries. But also, there's a very important aspect here of, women also have to take responsibility for how we've raised our boys to be a part of that culture as well, and how toxic femininity has fed into toxic masculinity. So I think, you know, in the midst of the #MeToo movement and how feminism is kind of gaining this momentum right now. We also have to, at some point, stop and also accept our role as women in what we've also helped to perpetuate in some ways by being unconscious. Just as unconscious as the unconscious masculine. Slade: You're right. This polarity that's introduced by genderifying it, genderizing it, I can't remember what term you use, but by making it about masculine and feminine instead of making it about receptive versus projective energy, or dominant versus receiving, or all those different kind of terms, there's a lot of ways to talk about that stuff where it's not gender. And this gender thing is kind of like the first basic form of social division, you know? We keep talking about how our culture's still so divided. That's like a basic division that has been going on for who knows how long, right? The idea there, for a little while, that, before the #MeToo movement, there was kind of a meme within feminism about how feminism was humanism. Like, to be a feminist was essentially to be a humanist. And I know Justin Trudeau even brought that up recently when asked in an interview if he considered himself a feminist. And he said yes and that's why. So I think that there are a lot of reasons why women would perpetuate a system that is misogynistic, because there are some women who would perceive themselves to be still elevated enough within that system that they wouldn't rock the boat. They'd rather indoctrinate their daughters in order to inhabit those positions of influence, however small they may be, as opposed to the real work of what Susan talked about. Susan Grace said everything is going to be re-built. And part of what's happening is, everything's gonna fall apart first, you know? In order to renovate stuff, you have to blow it up. And I think that, you know, my feeling politically, culturally and humanistically is that we are watching a lot of stuff unravel. And one of the things about her message that was so meaningful to me is: You want it to break apart. Because we can't put it back together in a different way until it comes apart. So... that may have been a tangent... Patrick: I would love to bring something up, and that is, I mean, it goes along with everything we've talked about. But I've had a few guests on my show discuss how this women's suffrage movement happened... I mean, it's hand-in-hand with the spiritualist movement. And that was maybe kind of the first #MeToo era. And so I would just be curious to know what we think, now that we are having this #MeToo movement and many people have referred to it as Another Year of the Woman, or The Year of the Woman. What's that mean for spiritual peeps? Like us? What's it going to do to, if it was connected with the spiritual movement before, what's that do now? Ash: I think you see them kind of rising in parallel. And I think that's because, again, it goes back to that connection with the Divine Feminine and spirituality and that's how we're rising right now. Slade: I think women also are more receptive and use the principles that we teach and speak and talk about. Women have already mainstreamed a lot of new age culture to be tools in their tool box. The average woman is much more likely, in the United States, and I don't know, I can't speak to other cultures but here it feels like even people that, 10 or 20 years ago, we would feel like would never be seen chanting or burning incense or in a yoga class or something like that. A lot of that stuff has just become a regular part of women's toolbox of self-care, right? Women don't hesitate to seek things like readings, as one of their sources of information. And they're much more likely to pass along a lot of their information to their spouses. Like, I know a lot of guys whose partners and wives are getting readings from me. But I've even had situations where the husband is on the phone, or the information is clearly intended to be for the couple, but it's kind of like, it seems to be women who are just really comfortable with dialing that in. So I feel like if women are in a position of power and are in a position to make more decisions, they're going to include those kind of tools and making it more available. And it will just be like, not as big of a deal to say, have something like that taught in a classroom, right? Do you understand what I'm trying to get at? Ash: I have a question for you guys, and this is something that I've kind of pondered from time to time. And this could go off on a tangent as well. I talk about coming out of the spiritual closet, and I think that there's a lot of similarities in being a spiritual person and sort of being discriminated against in certain ways for your personal beliefs. In that regard, I think a lot of that parallels being gay and having to hide who you are from the world too. So I'm curious, especially with you guys, you're real spiritual and homosexual, so how does that... I don't know, let's talk about that. Slade: Hmm... Well, I will say this. It's easier to be out of your closet as part of your sexual identity than it was for me as a spiritual identity. I withheld THAT for much, much longer. Even though they both were happening in parallel in my awareness, I was actually more sensitive to the idea that I could be victimized for talking about hearing voices, being intuitive, being sensitive to spirits, knowing things about people. I was MUCH more afraid somebody was going to throw my ass in a sanitarium over that stuff than I was that I might be victimized for my sexual orientation. That has been my experience is that, it actually might be harder to come out of the spiritual closet. Ash: I mean, I know for a fact, over the last 5, 6, 7 years that I've been doing this and have been administrating Facebook groups that many, many, many people are still afraid to be out about their spirituality. Because they are terrified of what friends and family are going to think, about how people are going to react, they're afraid of losing their jobs, their credibility, and I kind of agree with what you're saying. I've never experienced having to come out about my sexuality, but I know that in terms of spirituality, that's been a really... It wasn't something that I just, you know, threw the door open and said, "Here I am!", dressed like Miss Cleo. It was sort of slow bits and pieces. I kind of just pushed it out there and I think maybe people just kind of saw it as an evolution. Slade: Like first you're bisexual for men, women... Ash: Right. Slade: You're really gay and everybody knows you're on your way to gay, but maybe you test the waters with the bi. Ash: Psy-curious. Slade: Psy-curious. There's your title for this show, Patrick. Patrick: Well I joked around about how it's a triangle-table discussion instead of a round-table discussion and that works too. Triangle, gay, bi-curious. Slade: Gosh, right?? So many layers... Patrick: Well I can tell you that I don't know that I relate it to coming out or being gay as much because I have considered myself very lucky. I had a very smooth coming out process and I haven't really had a lot of, at least that my eyes are open to, a lot of discrimination thrown against me since coming out in my senior year of high school. But I can tell you that I think part of my fear, like Slade is saying, of coming out of the spiritual closet, which I do, like Slade, that's more of a fear for me. It's harder when you have a podcast about it because everybody's like, "Yeah, he's a weirdo." Ash: What about blog?? I didn't even want to put my face on my own blog for three years. Patrick: Yeah? Ash: You know? Slade: Okay, you're a weirdo. Patrick: But what I was going to say is that I really have been also running away from organized religion my whole life and growing up Southern Baptist. And so, also, part of even though I'm so done with that and have left it behind, and I'm still running far away from it, worried about what people think, I guess, if you start talking about certain subjects. And I do have people give me weird looks because I don't have a lot of people in my community that are just kind of open to, "Hey, so let's talk SPIRITUALISM!" That type of thing. I do remember being more concerned about it when I was early on in the spiritual shift, that time period we were talking about earlier, when I was obsessed with EVP for example, and talking about spirit voices and people are like, "Uh........... I'm gonna go now........." Ash: I remember having a conversation with... I had several of these conversations actually, in a short period of time. I talked to my mom about it. I talked to some friends about it. And I had people, my best friend, ask me if she needed to call me an ambulance. I had people basically tell me I was delusional. My mom just kind of laughed it off and was like, "Oh, that's great. That's funny." And changed the subject. Really quickly. I had a lot of people change the subject very quickly. Slade: What was the ambulance gonna be for? Ash: Because I'm crazy, apparently. Slade: To bring the straitjacket. They need an ambulance to deliver the straitjacket. Ash: Do you have a head injury? But what IS funny is that since those conversations, a lot of those people have actually shifted on over with me. Slade: Oh, cool! Can I say something about my observations with this? Because this is something that I get asked a lot, and I work with a lot of people who are smackdab right there on the cliff. A lot of people are emerging and putting themselves out, not only as a spiritual person, but identifying themselves as a psychic, right? Or an intuitive, or whatever the case may be. And so, I hear these questions a lot. And I will say this, who you're imagining.... First of all, if you're in that space where you're like thinking, Ohmygosh, all these people are gonna think I'm nuts. I want you to sit down and see if you can make an actual list of who those people are. Are there actual people who think that? And is there more than three? Because sometimes you feel like, Oh there's all these people, and it's like, Okay, who are they? Well, my mom and this person over there, I don't really know, but I bet they would. It kind of falls apart a little bit and you start to realize how much you're pumping a lot of that up to be maybe more than it really is. And I'm not discounting the people who do say beep to you like you're delusional. But they are a minority. So what happens when you do just say, "You know what? I'm not going to convince anyone of anything. But I'm going to put what I think out there." It's like you're running a flag up a flag pole and all the people who agree with you, there's actually more of them in the closet than you ever realize, and they start approaching you and whispering, "Hey, by the way, I love your podcast." Ash: Exactly! Slade: That happens to me at the gym! Like it's a secret. Like I'm a drug dealer or something. You know what I mean? Ash: I had the same experience though. Like I would also meet people who, you know, I would tell them about some kind of weird paranormal experience that I've had and they'd be like, "You know what? This also happened to me one time." And it seems like everybody HAS had at least one of those stories that they've always been reticent to share with someone because they don't know how that person's gonna react, and they don't know if that's a safe space. Slade: Right. Ash: Just by you being yourself and being open, you give them permission to also do that. Patrick: It's like a very therapeutic moment for them too. In those situations. I've had a few of those. They've been like, at the xerox machine. Those have been a lot of where these conversations have happened for me. Where they're like, "Oh, you know, I know you're into this stuff so I have this, the other night I had this blahblahblah..." Just them getting it out of their system is, you know, I feel like I was their therapist or something. Slade: Feeling somebody that could witness them. And just to tie up what I was trying to get at with, can you list the people who are supposedly going to think you're nuts? You might. You might get a handful. But now when you start to list all the people who've emailed you and said, "Ohmygod, I love your podcast", or who have emailed you with their stories, and I know both of you get emails from people who tell you their life story and it's so vulnerable and so personal, and they've chosen YOU to be the person to tell, right? And if we start to make a list of those people, the point that I'm trying to make for everyone out there who's feeling fearful of what the people who are gonna judge you negatively are going to think, when you start to really pool and list and add up all the people who are going to be connected to you because of it, or are gonna identify you as a safe person to talk to, or gonna agree with you or be interested in what you have to say, that population is so overwhelmingly larger, don't you think? Patrick: Yeah. It's just fear that keeps us assuming that we wouldn't be accepted. Slade: Yeah. We're afraid of what those 10 people are gonna think, that we don't even really like anyway. Meanwhile, there's a football stadium full of people who are like, "Bring it on!" And what you realize when you walk through that portal, that vortex, and go through to the other side, you go, "Ohmygod, there's tons of people here." That's the first thing that really happens, is people flock to you because you have run a flag up and said, "I'm someone you can talk to about this." That is a courageous act. Those of you who do put yourselves out there and do that are creating an opening for all those other people who can't. And creating a moment for them at this xerox machine, that they wouldn't have had otherwise. So I think that that's the way it happens. And I understand why it's scary, and also understand that once you're on the other side of it, you'll think, What the hell was I waiting on?? Ash: Yeah. Patrick: Kinda like when I came out this last year. I was like, why couldn't this have happened years ago? Because honestly when I started teaching 17 years ago, I always assumed that there would never be that moment. That I would be, I would have to wait until I was retired, to live that 100% out of the closet experience again. Why couldn't it have happened at least five years ago? I don't know about 17 years ago, but... Slade: Well, I mean, the reason why it doesn't happen is because there is a very real danger that something really bad could happen to you. You could be targetted in some way. I mean, I don't want to say that, just by being brave and doing it, that that will make all of that stuff go away. Ash: Your dad could try to give you an exorcism in a public parking lot. Patrick: Or your parents could throw you out of the house as a teenager. Slade: Yeah. Patrick: And those things happen. There are very real dangers of, well, I'm sure coming out of the spiritualist closet for some, there might be a very real danger of someone, depending on where you live, or what your family situation is... Slade: I live in the Bible belt. I know what it's like to be surrounded by fundamentalists all the time. To the point where sometimes I feel like, maybe I actually have some kind of programming that I'm numb to it now. Because when I travel to other parts of the country that are different in some way, I think, Wow! Even the average redneck on the street is liberal! It feels like I'm in Oz or something and it makes me aware of the fact that I do live in a place that is so conservative. But I will say this. The bigotry is on both sides a little bit because I have such an expectation of these people around me, who maybe identifies as Christian or whatever, being unable to process what I do or connect with it in some way. I'm often finding that I'm the one who's being narrow-minded. They do come up to me and approach me and sometimes people who are mystical people in a religious way are actually much more able to talk about mysticism period. I've found that little old ladies who identify really strongly with Jesus are MUCH more open to the idea that your grandfather visits you at night. They don't bat an eye about spirit visitation at all. Or the existence of angels, some of these things that are part of the new age... Ash: In some cases, I feel like they've just lived long enough to have those experiences. Slade: Right. And it's a matter of vocabulary. At some point you have to ask yourself, she's using the term she's using because of the time period that she grew up in, and the education and spiritual system she was indoctrinated into. That's her vocabulary and that's her words for it. I often find myself putting it on myself to do the translating. The angry, younger version of myself was like, "Nah! This is BULLsh*t!" Like, in your face about it. Now I'm much more compassionate and empathetic to the fact that, you know what, I'll do the translating. I'm not gonna force them to accept my goddess vocabulary because sometimes that shuts people down just because they can't process what it is that... You're using a word that they've never heard before and their mind shuts off at, "What? Did he just refer to God as a woman..?" or whatever. And then they don't hear everything you say afterwards. And so I have learned to do the translating myself. And even though it wears me out sometimes, and I wish everybody was a little bit more fluid with their vocabulary, sometimes I have to look through the words that they're using and look at the energy of what they're trying to communicate. And say, "Okay, I get what she's saying. She's talking about empathy. She's talking about psychic receptivity. And she's just couching it in, a more conservative way of talking about it." So it does go both ways a little bit. I'm just owning that for myself. Patrick: Word. If I try to bring us back to the initial question, keeping in mind that we know that there are straight men, for example, who are our buds and who are completely down with all of this. And they're probably the ones throwing their phone across the room right now as they're listening. Because they're like, "Why can't you see me and hear me?" And just as there might be women who are completely lost on what we're talking about, and aren't down with it. Keeping that in mind, how do we bring straight men in, or is it possible to bring straight men in? Do they have to do it themselves? Ash: Ooo good question. Patrick: Well I am a genius! Ash: There is no off position on the genius switch. Slade: For myself, I will say this. The same thing I was kind of talking about stepping out there and running a flag up the flag pole and letting people identify with you. So I think you live your example and you gather the other people along with you and you create those spaces. And you make sure that guys feel welcome when they do show up. As far as recruiting them, that seems like a different kind of situation. I don't know that we can do that. I think that we need to make sure that we're not excluding the men that want to participate. The straight guys that wander into our meditation circle or whatever it might be. And I do think that one of the things that could be different for Ash, for example, with the community she runs from mine, I do get a lot of male clients. And I get a lot of younger guys that come to me for readings, and I think that they do feel more comfortable just because there is a man present in the room, gives them a kind of permission to participate. Even though I'm very out about my sexual identity, I do feel like sometimes the guys who show up to participate with us, it helps to see a couple of dudes in the room. Ash: I totally concur with that. I was having a conversation with a friend just a couple of weeks ago about how there's not a lot of masculine voices when it comes to spirituality, particularly not straight male masculine voices. And I feel like there's a really big... Everybody wants to be able to see someone in a space that looks like them. And we always talk about how it's always a white male everywhere you go, EXCEPT where we are, you know? Straight, white male. So I think that's also a big barrier for those guys, is that they don't see a lot of people like themselves in our communities. So I think it's hard for them to be able to identify in some ways. Slade: I send a lot of men who are looking for relationships into those environments, particularly when straight guys who are in their late 20s and they come and have readings about their love life and where they can go to meet people. I do send them into those environments because I know... Patrick: You have match-making services also? Slade: Right! Just to bring that back in. The fact of the matter is, if you are one of those men and you're really a special, unique, you know, maybe minority. But listen, if you want to be like the coolest person that ever walked through the room at yoga class, go to a yoga class as a straight man, as a place of putting yourself out there and saying, I'm a different kind of man. I can't imagine that you wouldn't have lots more opportunities to meet the kind of women that you want to meet. Ash: Exactly. Slade: You know, like those environments for the right kind of mindset, like if you're the kind of guy that thinks, You know what, I'm comfortable enough with myself. I don't mind being the only guy in the room. You get a kind of attention for being the only man in the room with a bunch of women. Even when I was in college, I would take these women's studies classes (I have a Women's Studies certificate), and back then, they would give you a certificate if you took certain classes that were within other disciplines and fields and but they didn't have a major for it yet. So if you took history classes that were designated as a women's studies history class, eventually if you had enough of those credits, they would give you a certificate. So I would often take, say, for instance, a literature class or history class or politics class that was a women's studies class, because it was more interesting. The topic was more specific and granular and meaty in some way. And I would find myself in these classrooms where I was the only man. And even though I was a gay man, I still was the only MAN. And there is an attention that you get from women when you're the only dude in the room. And so I would think, that for a straight dude, that sounds like a great spot to be in. Ash: Just walk into the room, turn to the women and go, "Oh heeeeey!" Slade: So we are recommending that for your spiritual growth and edification, as well as your dating life, straight dudes, get thyself to a... Ash: Spiritual circle! Slade: Spiritual circle. Patrick: Right away. So Ashley, what do I call this episode? Ash: Mmm... I don't know... Good Times in the Spiritual Closet? Patrick: Actually, I kind of like, Get Thee to a Spiritual Circle. Ash: Or triangle? Patrick: Or triangle! Slade: Ohmygosh. Patrick: Ash. Tell us what's going on in your sacred space, besides the closet that you're sitting in now? That could look like anyone's living room or bedroom, and it's your closet. So tell us what's going on in your world. Ash: Oh... my world is quickly shifting and changing and I'm honestly not 100% certain where it's going right now. I just kind of started a re-brand over the summer, and I'm actually getting away from doing readings and being so focused on metaphysics and I'm kind of branching more into personal development and I'm on this big authenticity kick right now. A lot of my writing has shifted quite a bit over the last year. It's kind of taken more of a creative, emotional direction. I'm not selling anything, I'm not pedaling any wares, I have nothing to tell you other than if you just like to read my daily thoughts, you can follow me on Instagram and also subscribe to my blog. Patrick: I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's awesome. Just BE. Ash: Yeah. I kind of decided that I'm doing this for pure enjoyment at this point, and I think that that's the best way to approach it. Especially if you want to grow something, do it because you're passionate about it, not because you need to make it happen. It's my passion project. Patrick: So you've made this cool move that a lot of people would be very jealous of. This chance to just kind of jump out there and be brave and start something and move somewhere. How many years now have you, you're in Brooklyn, right? Ash: I'm actually Jersey City. Patrick: Oh, okay. So how long have you now been an East coast nerd? Ash: It was a year in July, so almost a year and a half December. Patrick: Wow. I had thought that it'd have been longer by now. Ash: Still pretty fresh over here! Patrick: Tell everyone... It's InMySacredSpace.com, right? Ash: Yes. Patrick: And you said your Instagram is where it's at? Ash: Yup. And InMySacredSpace.com. I'm also on Facebook too, but I seem to be gravitating more towards Instagram these days. Patrick: Slade! Just recently, I see that you kind of revisited some stranger angel stuff going on at sladeroberson.com. Slade: I did! It was my most recent episode. Just talking about the phenomenon of stranger angels, which is something that I read about and podcasted about in the past, but I had a whole different take on it while travelling, really around the concept of how you can be one of these people. Like my past experiences have been all about receiving those experiences as opposed to, this time I was travelling with someone who is very actively likes to be a stranger angel. So it activated a different awareness about what it means to move through the world and interact with people that way. Patrick: What else is going on? Slade: You know, like Ash said, it's really not, for me, about pedaling anything in particular. I also believe in authenticity and I believe that putting yourself out there and talking about things that you're interested in and hosting a space where other people can do the same is a really powerful form of marketing, and you don't have to jump up and down and sell things in order to connect with people. I really do believe in the concept of marketing yourself as being... Find a group of people that you share something in common with and go be relentlessly helpful to them. Ash: I love that. I love that! Be relentlessly helpful. Slade: I have to give credit to Tim Grahl. He's something of a business mentor to me and he comes from the independent publishing community. That's his definition and it's one I've taken and borrowed. My interpretation of that has been to create space with my platform for other people to come and... It's not only about me making this content and putting it out there. That's one part of it. The authenticity. But also using my social media platform as a big keg party basically. I don't have control over it. It's not a... The Shift Your Spirits community on Facebook has been a surprising revelation in how... you know when you are in these groups where there are tens and thousands of people and no one is talking or commenting on anything, and the moderators and admin people are trying to get a discussion going and it's just fallen flat... Ash: I feel like that's how my group has become, but only because I've neglected it. Slade: Well, you know, it was one of my biggest fears, honestly, and starting a community like that was like, Ohmygod, how do I pump these people up? I thought I needed to be some kind of cheerleader or something and that's not my personality. And what I have found... Ash: No! Slade: What I've found is that by inviting all these people and just creating a space for them to talk about all the things that they want to talk about, they all have their own paranormal experiences. They all have their own spiritual modalities that they study and so I have been very hands off with the community. I'm hosting this community and that's my role. The people who participate, the members are the ones generating the discussion. I often don't even comment on the discussions because there are so many of them, and I love just kind of drifting through, quasi-invisibly, and seeing all the things that are going on. And I have to tell you, I'm really proud to have my name on something that I didn't make but that nevertheless I feel like I invited to happen. And it's really about other people. It's not about me. And when you're an author, you're an online personality or podcast host like we are, it's very easy to come from this ego space of being a performer and being like, the one who's the centre of attention. I have found that I'm moving into that. Weirdly I've become more collaborative, less about it being about me, and more about it being about everyone else. So for me right now, the growth in Shift Your Spirits is all about the people who listen to the show and interact on Facebook and create this cool space where they talk about cooler stuff than I might even think to bring up. If you'd like to check that out, by all means, we'd love to have you. Patrick: And I'll put all of the links that we mentioned two groups and Instagram and websites. And we'll put all of those in the show notes. Great idea, Ash! Ash: Thank you! Slade: That was fun! Patrick: You are a genius. Ash: I know. I'm also humble. Patrick: And I'm, right now, just so you know, I'm gonna take a screenshot selfie of all three of us on the screen. Are you ready for the countdown? Here's my classic smile. You ready? One.. Two.. Three..... Wait, did I do it right? OH NO I didn't do it right! I did it wrong! It's Command-Shift-3. One. Two. Three. YAAAAAAAY! Thank you. Slade: Fun.
There's lots of ways to make a difference and influence others. Take 16 year-old Ashley for example. She was tired of hearing her friends at school putting themselves down. Saying things like “no one likes me” or “I'm so ugly.” So Ashley decided to do something to change things on her campus. Listen to Steve; Larissa and Kati discuss what happened to the entire student body. Find more on our website utalkradio.com and follow us on social media @utalkradio
Covers all three volumes of QQ Sweeper by Kyousuke Motomi Spring is finally here! So Ashley and Laura prepare to start spring cleaning by first reading QQ Sweeper. Which is legit about sweeping. Like, with a broom. A plain old broom. Sure, it's also about exorcisms and supernatural stuff and punching giant centipedes, but mostly, it's about sweeping. And it is SO GOOD. Ashley and Laura get to the heart of what a Cinderella story even is, why this series has a sequel called Queen's Quality, the power of cleaning in real life and in metaphor, and take a quiz on how to properly clean your kitchen. (Sorry. Only your kitchen will be spotless. Kyutaro is very disappointed.) LINKS QQ Sweeper is available from Viz Media's Shojo Beat line The sequel, Queen's Quality, is also available from Shojo Beat (currently running series) It's advised that you have already read Motomi's Dengeki Daisy as well, as there are some crossover characters Laura runs this great blog, Heart of Manga If you want to delve further into what makes a Cinderella story The Four Gods (Genbu, Byakko, Suzaku, Seiryuu) Cleaning quiz! Learn how to clean your kitchen Ender's Game and Hive Queens Outro song: “Like Swimming” by Broke For Free, a really awesome electronic music producer your should support! SOCIAL Follow Laura on Twitter @Ellesensei Follow Heart of Manga on Facebook Follow Shojo & Tell on Twitter @shojoandtell Follow Shojo & Tell on Instagram @shojoandtell Follow Ashley on Twitter @AshMcD00 Comments, questions, concerns? Want to give us your speculations on why QQ Sweeper stopped after three volumes and has a sequel? Have suggestions for the show? Email shojoandtell [at] gmail.com or simply leave a comment on the episode page.
Hey guys, welcome to episode 80 of my High Performance Living Podcast. This time I am joined by Ashley Kalym, who is an expert in calisthenics and bodyweight training. Calisthenics is becoming increasingly popular, and it's likely you are already doing bits of it, like push-ups or pull-ups. Or maybe, like me, you have ventured to more advanced methods like the human flag. And if you can do the flag, you're AWESOME. So Ashley is here to break down what is calisthenics, the advantages and disadvantages, where to start, his ideal beginner programme and the quipment you might want to use. This is a great show - enjoy! If you want to get involved with my coaching, read here -> http://exceednutrition.com/coaching/ And check out the Exceed Masterclass for ambitious FitPros here -> http://exceednutrition.com/the-exceed-masterclass/ Get Ashely's book 'Complete Calisthenics' here -> http://goo.gl/chH9pi Grap my HPL book here -> http://goo.gl/RDAz6v
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