Podcasts about so november

If you've ever heard the phrase "Don't Drink the Kool-Aid"  and ever wondered where that phrase came from, you've downloaded the right podcast! This week we take a look at what was the single most loss of American lives until 9/11.....JONESTOWN. Jonestown was a township located in the jungles of Guyana where Rev. Jim Jones and his church, The People's Temple, had relocated due to pressures from the media and defectors of the church who were going public with the many atrocities that were occurring behind closed doors.  When the entire church relocated to the jungles of Guyana, many concerned relatives were concerned their family members were being held against their will. So November 18, 1978 , Congressman Leo Ryan and a small crew of aids and media members went to Jonestown on a "fact finding" expedition. Leo Ryan and over 900 members would never make it back to the United States....listen to today to find out the whole story.    As always follow us on the stuff Merch Store- http://tee.pub/lic/doEoXMI_oPI Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/Artandjacobdoamerica Website- https://artandjacobdoamerica.com/ Network- https://podbelly.com/ Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/artandjacobdoamerica YouTube Channel- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0rT6h3N2pWtlkxaqgIvaZw?view_as=subscriber Twitter- https://twitter.com/ArtandJacobDoA1 Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/artandjacobdoamerica/ ALSO! Make sure you're checking out our sponsors  https://www.elyucateco.com/ https://cavemancoffeeco.com Use Promo code "AMERICA" for 15% off at Caveman Coffee  Use Promo code "DoAMERICA" for 10% off at El Yucateco

It started with a question in the #AmWriting Facebook group: How do you get it all done?And the answer was, of course—we don’t, no one does, we push things off until tomorrow or we put out fires all day and then frantically write until late in the evening or we drive our children around for hours while chastising ourselves for not making better choices. But really, you all said. Really truly when do you write? And how d you put it first? And what do you do when you don’t or can’t? This is us, three full time writers and also parents (all of teenagers), talking about the push and pull of looking like you’re at home and available when you’re not, and how the awful truth is that sometimes you are, and how we control what we can and scream hopelessly into the void at what we can’t. (That’s just who we are.) We realized we’re each good at some parts of this and not others, which means we can take a little inspiration. We can protect our time, do the important stuff first and cut ourselves a little slack. And we can always, always recognize that it’s what you do the day after you feel like you really lost momentum that matters most. Episode links and a transcript follow, and that’s pretty much it for this week. Of course, a #WriterTopFive will go out to supporters Monday, and the topic will be a total surprise (heck, it’s a surprise for me too) but we promise it will be practical advice you can use that we probably need too. If you’re a fan of the podcast—if we’re offering, say, two grande mochas worth of advice a month, please consider supporting us for actually less than that. $7 a month, and we promise we’re not coming for your coffee.As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer, Ted AlvarezA Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father, Augusten BurroughsDry: A Memoir, Augusten BurroughsKJ: Toil and Trouble: A Memoir, Augusten BurroughsSarina: Great and Precious Things, Rebecca YarrosWe love our sponsor, Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE, and if we were being coached right now we would probably somehow be managing to pull off better time management, because time is money in more ways than one, and when you invest in your writing career, it’s a lot harder to make excuses. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.Follow KJ on Instagram for her #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series: short reviews of books that won’t make you hate yourself and all humanity.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by KJ, who totally wants credit.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey fellow writers, KJ here as we launch into an episode that’s ostensibly about how we get all the things done. Spoiler alert, we don’t, and I’m having a really depressing winter on that front. BUT—I can tell you that one thing that can help you shift into really prioritizing your work is to invest in it, and to make a commitment to another person to work through challenges both on the page and in the calendar. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, matches writers in both fiction and non-fiction with book coaches who can help you go from stuck to done no matter where you are in the process. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:43                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        00:44                    Yay.Jess:                                     00:45                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:46                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:50                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:51                    Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now, one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, pitches, proposals, really as I do say every week. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done. And oh boy, today is it ever the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done!Jess:                                     01:28                    I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and I write about kids, and I write about substance abuse, and I write about so many fun things at places like the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post. And I'm currently editing my next book, which will be out in 2021.Sarina:                                 01:46                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels. And I have a deadline on March 10th, guys. So this is a great topic for me today.Jess:                                     01:56                    This is so timely because we all have various deadlines that we're working towards right now.KJ:                                        02:04                    Wait, I haven't introduced myself yet, people won't know who I am. I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of The Chicken Sisters, a novel coming out this summer and How to Be a Happier Parent, which is out in hardback now and will be out in paperback this summer. So big summer for me. Mostly at the moment you'll find me on Instagram, but I'm also a pretty regular contributor to the New York Times and a few other places.Jess:                                     02:30                    You've been getting some really fun book talks lately, Missy Instagram.KJ:                                        02:34                    I have been. It's my series called #BooksThatWon'tBumYouOut and it's all books that won't bum you out. Because I felt like I needed someone to recommend those books to me. And one of my things for the year is start the things you wish other people would do. So there we go.Jess:                                     02:52                    I love it, I absolutely love it. So we should talk about what our topic is for today and why it's our topic for today. Do you wanna talk about that, Sarina?Sarina:                                 03:00                    Well, what we really do all day is try to figure out where does the time go. And we all have children and other responsibilities besides writing.KJ:                                        03:14                    And someone asked us...Jess:                                     03:16                    Yes, someone asked about this in the Facebook group, too. Someone said, 'It's all nice and good when you talk about the broad strokes, but we want the nitty gritty, like how you're actually getting the work done with all the other things you have to do.'KJ:                                        03:31                    Right. And we had this great exchange in there in which we sort of all went back to, well, you know, when our kids were little, things were different. And I sort of ended that exchange thinking, well, and that's true when the kids were little it was harder. And yet as I look - I've actually been keeping track of my week and I'm realizing, okay, when the kids were little, I had a babysitter. So I had dedicated work time. And at the moment I have made the mistake of not, and my work time is looking super pitiful at the moment. So yeah. Let's dig into what we actually do all day and when we do it.Jess:                                     04:15                    Since you've been such a good Doobie and kept track of your time, why don't you go ahead and start?KJ:                                        04:19                    It's been really depressing, guys.Jess:                                     04:20                    You informed me on a text the other day that I was a 10 minute time-waster.KJ:                                        04:27                    You did, you did. You sucked my time away with a tempting text, that granted I should never have looked at. No, one of you start and I'm just gonna do a little ugly math.Jess:                                     04:42                    See, here's the thing. I feel really bad about this because my reality is different. We all have kids that overlap, but I only have two of them. One of them is in college and he's actually even away this semester. He studying away from his college so he's even further away than usual. And then I have a 16 year old kid who is so sort of self-directed and doesn't want much to do with me, except for this week he's been really sick. So this week has actually been a busier week than usual because I've had a lot of interviews, I've had a lot of obligations, phone calls. I've got a bunch of travel coming up and before I do that, I have these conference calls with the organizers. And so it's been a lot of that this week. And there's been a few things I've had to move around because I've had to pick him up from school when he's like 'I can't stay, I real feel horrible.' So this week has been, you know, dicier than usual. But for the most part, I'm sickeningly flexible because except for like these three dogs that get bummed out when I leave the house or when I move around the house. I have a ton of time to get my stuff done. So I'm not very helpful. But when I look at what I was doing when my kids were little, you know, again, it was really different. I didn't have a babysitter, but I did have friends that I traded with a lot. I had neighbors close by and my kids would run off to their house. But on a nitty gritty day to day basis, I'm just gonna make people mad. I sleep in, I'm not a good morning person. I get up and shuffle into my office, which is 10-12 steps from my bedroom. I sit down and I work until I'm done working. And then my 16 year old kid doesn't even come through the door until four o'clock in the afternoon when the bus gets home. And at that point he doesn't actually want a ton to do with me until dinner time. So there you go. I'm sorry.Sarina:                                 06:43                    You know what though, Jess...Jess:                                     06:45                    I feel bad that I'm not contributing.KJ:                                        06:47                    You should not feel bad.Sarina:                                 06:48                    No. First of all, you're not allowed to feel bad. But secondly, I actually do hate you, but not for the reasons that you think.Jess:                                     07:03                    Let me say one other thing, which is that, I am very, very lucky in that I work fast. And I credit a lot of that with working with KJ for the couple of years that I did the column at the New York Times because I didn't use to work so fast, but I'm much faster now. And so when I actually sit down and get focused, I work really, really fast and I think that's been one of the saving graces. Even when I was teaching full time, I'd get up crazy early, get home from school and then sit down to do the other work, which was not only the grading, but also the article writing. And when that happened I was working really fast. So I will add that caveat in that I'm a pretty fast writer.Sarina:                                 07:46                    Well also, the boundless energy whereby this week you're editing a book and also removing wallpaper from a room and then painting another one. Like I just want to like weep when I hear about this.Jess:                                     07:58                    That's my fun time. I mean, I've said it before, weeding or gardening and I can't do that in the winter here in Vermont. So I've been removing wallpaper and repainting a room that I promised I would repaint when we first moved in a year and a half ago. I'm finally getting to it. And that's how I relax.KJ:                                        08:13                    Is that your point of hatred, Sarina?Sarina:                                 08:16                    Sort of. I think it's the boundless energy, but it also might just be focus, because I have as many work hours as Jess does probably. I mean, today alone, my husband has made me two meals and a latte worthy of Italy.Jess:                                     08:51                    What KJ is trying to say is that sometimes having people in your space is difficult.Sarina:                                 08:55                    Yes, it's true. I also have a kid home from school today, so you know, good times, but it's not the hours that I'm fighting against so much, as getting my hands around the business itself all the time. I need to like silence everything and write a couple of hours a day, which is hard when my email inbox is like one of Dante's circles of hell and I literally every day don't know what to do first.Jess:                                     09:25                    That's something that mystifies me about your work flow - is you're getting so many words written, but you're also managing the business of self publishing your books, which blows my mind wide open. So I'm actually really curious and I know a lot about your schedule. I'm really curious as to how a daily workflow works for you.Sarina:                                 09:45                    Well, when it works, it's because I do those words first. And that's been really hard for me lately because of that inbox, and I know that if I look, there'll be some fires to put out in there or people who want answers and it's really hard for me to ignore that, as like a pleaser. As my personality type wants to get back to people right away. But if I do, it's just done. So I've actually had to make silly little rules for myself. Like when I'm drinking my Italian worthy cup of coffee in the morning, I can't look at my email right then. I just can't, because I'll get sucked in. And I'm like, 'Oh, it'll just take a second to answer her and then I'll start to wonder like, Oh, I wonder what the numbers looked like after that latest promotion.' And then I'll go look at them. And it's really hard because that's working as well. Like that's work and it arguably needs to be done. So I'm wrestling the writing and the business all the time. And what really does not get done is like painting a room or even maybe vacuuming it, because that's just got to go. Like when this topic came up, you know, how do you guys get it all done? I immediately thought of JK Rowling and her quote, 'You know, but you don't understand I live in squalor.'Jess:                                     11:10                    Well and you know, on the other hand, again I like vacuuming and so there are certain things that for me - well the reason I like painting, and the reason I like vacuuming, and the reason I like cleaning is that when I'm doing those things, I'm plugged into an audio book. Or, even better I'll drag my laptop into the room where I'm painting and I'll watch a television show, or a movie, which is like crazy luxury. So for me, that ability to turn my brain off and listen to something else while I'm actually getting something done for me is incredibly satisfying. And if you think about it, I was talking to someone about this this morning, I can point at that wall and say, 'Look, I did that. It is done.' Whereas with my edits, no one knows, it's this big morass of words and no one knows what was there and I can't point at anything. It can be tough cause my husband's a physician and he's out there saving people's lives, and my son's out there learning things, and I'm sitting here at home. So that's my thing is being able to point to something and say, 'Look, I cleaned that today.' at least makes me feel like I got something done. Especially when the edits aren't going well.KJ:                                        12:31                    Well maybe my reason for hating you will make you feel better because my reason for hating you is that you are so extremely good at protecting your time. And some of that has to do with the number of kids, and where we live, and the flexibility and stuff like that. But you don't let people dump 47 dentist appointments, and extra carpool, and I really want to get my hair red on the bottom can you drive me to Fairley and pick me up again three hours later. And also, the guy is coming to fix the heat in the bedroom and I feel like you're much better about, 'Yeah, no, sorry people, you can't do that today because I'm editing. And my whole week has basically gone to that/health stuff that I can't deal with.Jess:                                     13:25                    But partly that has to do with the kind of kid I have, too. I mean, I have a 16 year old who basically goes up to his cave time room and hangs out in there and does his stuff in there. And if on the rare occasion he needs a haircut it doesn't take three hours. So no, I get that. But I, on the other hand, I also don't have joiners and even when my kid was a joiner. You know, for example, when Benjamin did cross country, he would tell me which meets to go to cause he knew full well I was not going to all of them. And I think that's important. Then if I knew he said to me, you know, please come to this particular meet, you know that's important to him and then I showing up means something. But yeah, I guess you are right.KJ:                                        14:15                    Well, that's what I'm getting out of this. I really did, I wrote down my time from when I got up until when I sort of stopped working for the day. And Monday I didn't do because I forgot it was Monday, basically. I did work, but I forgot it was Monday cause it was that kind of week. We are recording this during Martin Luther King week. So I forgot Monday, Tuesday I had total writing town of an hour and 50 minutes and total work time of three and a half hours because two kids had dentist appointments and I went to the dentist and then one kid looked at the dentist and I think I'm going to barf and the dentist said, 'You sit over there and don't touch anything.' So I ended up even having to reschedule that kid's dentist appointment in a burst of true inefficiency cause to me if you don't take at least two people to the doctor or dentist at a time, you've completely blown it. I sort of came home and I did (I mean props to me, I'm going to take this one) I do write first. I write first almost no matter what, after the things that I have been unable...Jess:                                     15:24                    And you write outside the house, too.KJ:                                        15:26                    No, I do sometimes. Yeah.Jess:                                     15:29                    You're so good at that, though.KJ:                                        15:30                    So that's what I'm looking at is like, okay, I had an hour and 50 minutes of writing time and total work time of three and a half hours. Because carpool, because I made dinner, because I drove someone to hockey, because I took a Spanish lesson. What I'm looking at is what time in there could I have probably gotten back. And the answer is maybe the dentist appointment - and my partner does do a lot of those things. So it just depends. I need to speak up. Carpool I could work harder, because I ended up with carpool every day this week, so I could work harder to make that not happen so well. Cause Wednesday was much the same thing, except they were my doctor's appointments and I can't really do anything about that. I have issues, and I have to go, and then I'm depressed, and that doesn't help. But again, I did come home and I did right first.Jess:                                     16:31                    Actually I want to break in here cause I think listeners need to know something important. When you say carpool it's because - if I still lived where we live, where you live, I would be having to do a lot of that driving because where we live does not have a bus to take the kids to the high school. So there's this requirement of someone to go down a town away and pick up the children. And you know Finn has a bus he can take everyday now, but if I was still living there I would at least once a day have to jump in my car and carve an hour out of my day to go get children.KJ:                                        17:10                    But if I were meaner, I would make the children sometimes do other things. And I've been so much better about this this year, but I could be better still. Like you know, you could go to the library, or in one child's case there is a bus. It doesn't get the child all the way home, but instead of being an hour round trip, it would be a 20 minute round trip. But the child doesn't want to take the bus. And part of me is like, well, once I'm in the car for 20 minutes, I might as well pick all the other children up. And that's how I get stuck with carpool all the time. And then I have a sick kid and other people had sick kids and that stuck me with carpool all the time. This is not been a good week, but it is sort of forcing me to go, 'How am I contributing to this not being a good week?' And some of that is saying yes to things that I could either pack into all the same time or just say, 'I'm sorry. You're going to have to sit at the library for two hours until your dad's ready to come home.' I could do that. I could do it more. I do it some.Sarina:                                 18:20                    Well, I have found and it's a little lesson that I keep learning over and over again. That even when I think I'm paying attention to these details and getting my hands around this. Sometimes, in fact, usually, there's more attention I could be paying because the answer's in there somewhere. You know, I knew going into January that I needed to get words first and I wanted to get it, and then I was not getting it, and I would end up getting my sticker at like 10:30 at night, having sat down to work sort of at 7:30 in the morning. So obviously, lots of slippage going on there. And I really had to say, okay, why, why does this keep happening? It's not because we're not smart enough to get this job done. It's something is blowing us up every day. And it was me going into my inbox, just for something quick.KJ:                                        19:24                    Yeah, that's killer.Jess:                                     19:27                    It's Twitter for me.KJ:                                        19:28                    I agree. You can't do that. I am actually so resolute about this. So onto this morning, when I didn't have a doctor, or a dentist, or anything, and in theory I would have been back home and sitting at my desk at 8:15 ready to write. Except that when I went out at 7:30 to feed the mini ponies, we were startling one mini pony short of a pair. That's not normal. There should be two. So I sort of followed the evidence, and looked around, and fortunately there was not a mini pony laying and hurt anywhere. He had broken through the fence and burst down and headed down to our barn. So, I had to stop, take the child to school, and then I had to come back, repair the fence, strip the wires, rewire the fence, go down, get both the ponies again, because in the interval the other pony had gone down to the barn and put them back. So, at that point I kinda gave up on the week.Jess:                                     20:32                    I don't know, if you had been Sarina, you could've been dictating your book the entire time you were doing all this work. Cause it appears that Sarina's getting her words in through alternate means recently, which is also just infuriating to me. I mean inspirational, yet infuriating.Sarina:                                 20:52                    It doesn't really work quite like that, Missy.Jess:                                     20:56                    I'm just impressed by the whole process, cause it's something that I just haven't been able to do and I'm just impressed. That's all.Sarina:                                 21:14                    I don't actually dictate the prose of my book, much. Instead, when I need to work out what happens next in a book, like I do my pre-writing this way. You know, so I'm walking around Lebanon while someone's having a violin lesson saying like, 'And then he has to run into her in this place and it's awkward because of this thing and then...'. You know, but it's not words that I can save.Jess:                                     21:40                    I think actually what I enjoy most is the image of you all bundled up talking to yourself as you walk around high school track in another town, talking about the plot of your book. I enjoy that image very, very much.Sarina:                                 21:58                    Well, good. But it really helps.KJ:                                        22:03                    I mean cause one of the things I gain from sitting down and doing this thing where I sort of every half an hour wrote down what I did and how many words I ended up with - was that actually doesn't take me that long to get a fairly large amount of words. I wrote 2,700 words in two and a half hours today. But part of that is because I had pre-written, a little of it I pulled out of an old draft and was able to drop in. And this was all pictured. Like I knew what was going to happen. I knew what they were going to say to each other. I knew who the people were, I knew what I was doing. So I was both sort of heartened and disheartened by how little actual time it would probably take me to finish the draft. And yet how slowly I am accomplishing it.Sarina:                                 22:55                    You know what though, when I worked on Wall Street, we had a daily profit and loss. Everyday you would have a P and L and the boss would walk around at the end of the day, and look at everybody, and you would say up 25 grand or down 10 grand or up 50 grand. And then every few months you would have like a career day. You would be able to look at the boss and say, 'I made $700,000 today.' And then you would walk away after that and get your overpriced glass of wine or whatever and think, what if I just came to work on those days?KJ:                                        23:32                    What if I just wrote bestsellers?Sarina:                                 23:34                    Yeah, but that's the thing about your 2,700 words in two and a half hours. Like the stars and moon were in perfect alignment for you to get that. And that's why I look so carefully at what is my average take over time? Because you can't put that pressure on yourself all the time. Like just because your day theoretically has two and a half hours in, it doesn't mean you're going to end up with 2,700 keepers.Jess:                                     23:59                    What's been really noticeable about that, Sarina, is that this month I have worked every single day on my editing and there've been some days that I haven't worked a long, long time. I've been having some of those brain cramps that KJ talks about sometimes where she's like, 'Ow it hurts. I want to go do something else.' And I feel like I'm wrestling my brain to stay on the page, but just the fact that I worked every single day means I think I'm going to hit my deadline at the end of this month. Or at least I'm going to come within a couple of days if I go over. And I think that just comes down to the fact that even if I had a couple of really slow days or low work sticker days, that they're all there and that something got done every single day. And that's really helping me more than I thought it would. I thought, you know, Oh my God, this is going to be a grind. I'm going to have to sit down for six hours a day this month to get it done. And that hasn't been the case. I just have to sit down every day.Sarina:                                 24:58                    Yeah. And you have to forgive yourself when you can't. Like I'm finding myself in the odd position with the book that I'm working on now that I know a lot about how it ends, but it turns out that the beginning was a little bit mysterious to me. Which never happens, it's usually the opposite. And so I've been so frustrated with myself about not knowing how to get to that point in the future. And you can't rush that cogitation time. So I could tell you all my tricks for writing books in the passenger seat of the car while the kid is doing his karate. But it doesn't matter if I'm not ready to like spit out chapter four.KJ:                                        25:44                    Agreed.Jess:                                     25:45                    I have been noticing that you mentioned earlier that it's been harder for you to get your words done every day. And I have been noticing that your text with the word stickers coming in later in the day than it usually does.Sarina:                                 25:56                    Yeah. That's cause I'm spending the whole day thinking, 'But why are we doing this in chapter four?' And trying to move the steering wheel in ways that it doesn't want to move. But anyway, that happens. And when I know what I'm doing, then I really just have to sit there and let it happen. Like at the end of our podcast we talk about what books we've read and I won't have one today because I finally figured out some stuff about chapter four and I don't want to walk away.KJ:                                        26:27                    You're reading your own book, in your head.Jess:                                     26:29                    I'm actually about to have to do that again just to get the big picture because I'm at the point in editing where I'm trying to drop in a few pieces here and there and when I do that without going back through the whole book, I end up repeating myself. Like not even realizing that I already said that. Or you know, this feels so brilliant right now. Oh, that's because I already wrote this entire section and it was 20 pages ago. I think it's so hard for that reason, though. I think it's so hard to get back in any kind of flow because you're trying to dip into something that you wrote six months ago. And that's what's proving really mentally challenging for me. Cause I've now made that mistake a couple of times. Writing something that I realize is two paragraphs before. But what I'm actually doing right now is a fun thing (I say fun sarcastically). So in books by big publishers that are not academic books, you have to do this thing at the end called key phrase call-out where you go back and you find a little key phrase and then you go to the end and you give the little key phrase and then you give the reference for the key phrase. And that's what I'm in the middle of doing now. And there really isn't anything more boring than that. Very, very few things anyway.KJ:                                        27:51                    Wait, but that sounds like the kind of thing you would normally have sort of done at the same time.Jess:                                     27:58                    Yes. So I have traditional end notes because I was using that citation manager. Well that's the kind of thing where I can have a movie playing, or I can listen to the BBC's Pride and Prejudice for the 3,000th time while I'm doing that kind of thing. And that makes the process a little bit happier for me.KJ:                                        28:29                    I don't know if we've learned anything, because these fall into the category of, as Sarina said, lessons we just keep learning. But, I'm taking away that I need to protect my time and heck, at least I'm good at not looking at my emails and texts.Jess:                                     28:59                    Actually, KJ, I have to tell you. I actually was being interviewed for something yesterday and I referred to you and I referred to How To Be a Happier Parent because the person was asking me about how she was feeling like her time was just being stolen away from her and how much time her kids were spending in extracurriculars. And I said that one of the most meaningful action points from How To Be a Happier Parent was about talking to your kids about if you commit to this thing, here are the things you're not going to be able to do. And as you went through, I think when one of your kids was thinking about doing an extra sport or something like that. And I said, 'You know, that's one of the things that yes, we have to keep relearning this, but it's also important to talk this through with our kids. If we're going to say, you know, our kid wants to do another team sport, and you say, look, your parent works as a writer and your parent is going to have to drive you back and forth. So let's talk about the things that you won't be able to do with the time. And let's talk about the things that are going to be difficult for me to do with my time.' And I don't think that means we're selfish. I think that means that we're teaching our kids that it's important to value their time as well. And that was sort of the point I made to the journalist and when phrased that way, it's about teaching our kids to value our time, allowing ourselves the ability to sequester our most valuable bits of time for the work that we want to do the most. And that just means we're taking ourselves seriously as professionals. So that's my big takeaway. I'm giving everyone permission to tell their kids that they can't do another team sport because they have to be able to get the words written. There you go. Well and I also like Sarina's point about having small rules about the coffee. I happen to have small rules. My rule is the opposite of hers. I'm allowed to sit at my desk and have breakfast and my coffee while I look at Twitter, but as soon as my breakfast is gone, I have to shut down Twitter and get to work.KJ:                                        30:57                    Having these little practices is important. For me it's basically no phone till I take kids to school, because I just will get derailed so easily by a work text, or a work email, or something. Our mornings are so calibrated that five minutes later is a problem. So that's one and I didn't think about that anymore. And then no email until after I've got the words done. That's another one I don't think about anymore. And it's a little bit of a luxury. I don't have an editor. If there's something I really needed to check, I would, but I don't have to. So, I'm used to those I wasn't giving myself credit for those.Jess:                                     31:41                    One other small thing that also works for me is my rule generally is morning is for the words. So if I'm scheduling a dentist appointment, if I'm scheduling an interview, or one of those conference calls I was talking about I say I'm available anytime after noon and just the morning is not available. That's just for the words.KJ:                                        32:02                    Yeah. I just have to cut myself a little more slack this month, for whatever reason, for basically every appointment known to man. I apparently at some point last fall looked at it and said, 'Well, January would be good for that.' With the result that every week is like orthodontist, and hair, and dentist, and chiropractor, and I have all my followups. And that was not a question of choice. That was a question of timing. And just endless, endless stuff. Plus, it's hockey season. It's the only sport that two of the three children that are still at home play. Things will get better when it is no longer hockey season.Jess:                                     32:47                    That was my November, my book will be turned in. So November is just wide open, schedule all the things. And I paid, man, I paid in November. That was tough.KJ:                                        32:59                    That's a lesson I wish that I would learn. But yeah, I don't know. I mean they gotta do those things sometimes. It wouldn't be any better in February. I don't know if it's better to mash them all, but boy it is frustrating to look at a week and go wow, every single morning somebody has an appointment to do something at eight o'clock. Because that's when I make mine. Cause you can get them done, and then you can get them to school, and about half of them my partner takes. But sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.Jess:                                     33:33                    Alright. Sarina, you have anything to add before I move on to the reading stuff that you didn't do?Sarina:                                 33:41                    You know, I actually realized that I did read something. Should I kick off with that?Jess:                                     33:48                    Oh, sure, sure.Sarina:                                 33:49                    I read a beautiful novel named Great and Precious Things by Rebecca Yarros, which comes out in February. And she does angsty, emotional, military heroes in sort of a crossover between romance and women's fiction.Jess:                                     34:08                    Okay. That sounds really good, actually. I read something that I think I'm going to be lending probably to KJ I'm assuming. I picked it up at the Vermont bookshop in Middlebury, Vermont, and it's called The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer. It's by Ted Alvarez. And Ted Alvarez is an editor for Backpacker Magazine. And it's really, really fun. They're sort of short pieces so you can dip in and out. And it's really, really funny. It's making me laugh a lot. I really liked it.KJ:                                        34:48                    Well, I read a book that I am going to be passing on to you, Jess. I read Toil and Trouble by Augustan Burrows. And it is so much fun. It's basically what if David Sedaris believed he was a witch and do I need to say anything more than that? Because it's awesome.Jess:                                     35:08                    So Augustan Boroughs, you know, I've been a fan of for a long time. I was just really worried because Wolf at the Table I didn't love, even though he wasn't trying to be particularly funny in that book because it was about his abusive dad. So I was concerned with Toil and Trouble; it sounded a little off the rails to me. Like Augustan Bouroughs is convinced he's a witch, but I'm so glad that you liked it because I wanted it to be good.KJ:                                        35:33                    I do like it and I don't care that Augusten Burroughs is convinced that he's a witch. I enjoy that about Augusten Burroughs. I appreciated that. Yeah, it totally works in this context, I think.Jess:                                     35:47                    Cause as far as I'm concerned, Augusten Burrough's book Dry is my favorite addiction memoir ever. I love that book so much. And I'm an Augusten Burroughs fan, so yeah.KJ:                                        36:02                    Alright, well that's our episode. What we really do all day and today we spent about an hour recording this. I spent the preceding hour prepping tomorrow's episode fully. That's the other thing about actually tracking what you do is you end up with little notes that say things like, 'Wrote Instagram story about pony escape, half an hour.' and then you are forced to realize that seems like nothing - it's not nothing.Jess:                                     36:39                    Well, I actually kept track of how much time it took me to get this one email address that I really needed to work, to work. And it took me over three and a half hours of my time to get an email address to work.KJ:                                        36:53                 

Why Dave Decided to Talk About Premature Story-Telling: Dave recently learned the hard way the importance of preface to an emotionally charged gift. Long-story short, he was a little too excited about his 25th anniversary gift. From this experience though he thought about the importance of preface and build-up to a sale or proposal. Listen in for some great insights on attaching emotion to your sales and do Dave a favor, learn from his premature gift giving experience. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: (4:52) Building Up to a Proposal, In Marriage and Business (9:04) Would You Give an Emotionally Charged Gift Without a Build-Up? Then Why Would You Give an Emotionally Charged Pitch Without One? (10:24) Allowing Your Customers to Feel Quotable Moments: (6:06) “It’s not the jewelry that mattered, it was what the jewelry represented. And I see the same thing take place so many times in storytelling.” (8:04) “It’s not the stats, it’s not the data that matters, it’s the emotion that’s with it.” Other Tidbits: Dave can’t get gifts without wanting to give them immediately. Gifts don’t have nearly as much of value. If anybody has the invention of a Reset Button in the works, Dave would definitely get his use of out of it. Important Episode Links: FunnelHackingLive.comFunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00         Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody. The holiday season. This is a crazy time of year and one of the things I cannot handle his gifts, not receiving gifts. It's giving gifts and not in a bad way. My promise. I get so excited when I have a gift for my wife. I can't wait till Christmas to give it to her. And so I have this problem as far as premature gift giving. And I see the same thing happen at times in premature storyteller. That's, that's really what I want to spend some time talk to you guys about today. Speaker 1:     00:45         Alright, so yesterday, uh, let me back up here. So November ninth is my wedding anniversary with my wife. So for my wedding anniversary was 25 years and I'm. So I was so excited and we actually decided to celebrate earlier in the year. We went to Paris after our trip to Africa and just had a great. That was our way of kind of celebrating, but on our actual anniversary day we're spending time together and I thought, you know, I want to do something else to, to so she can remember like longterm and every five years in the past when I had, I would always buy her a piece of jewelry, so like five at five, 50 anniversary, 10th, 15th, 20th and 25 here. And I was sitting there thinking, what can I get? And she really didn't like Dave. We went to Paris, I to spend a whole bunch of money on this right now I know we don't need to do anything and so I thought, you know what, I'm going to surprise her. Speaker 1:     01:36         And so I decided to get her some, some earrings and diamond earrings. And so I had him all designed and, and, and I was, my problem was I, I knew they were, they wouldn't be done in time for our anniversary, so it actually took some time and I got them yesterday and I said, okay, I'll give it to her for Christmas. And I thought, oh my gosh, my problem is that it was like literally burning a hole in my pocket. And so we got home and yesterday was absolutely just crazy. My, my two boys and my mom and my daughter in law, they've all come in. Everyone's getting ready for the holidays. Things are crazy around the house. Uh, there, his kids were going everywhere just trying to get things done. My wife's super busy, just getting ready for the holidays. We had a special thing happened last night at our house. Speaker 1:     02:22         My daughter in law, French, he's from Chile and she'd just gotten her, uh, her papers basis and she could become a citizen here in the U, s. and so we had a party for her last night that my wife was putting together. So all this crazy stuff is going on. We had a click party yesterday and I still wanted to. I still had these stupid earrings in my pocket. They're burning a hole and I'm like, I just have to find some way of getting into. I can't wait. I can't wait. And so I just said, hey sweetie. No, I've got a gift I want to give you. She goes, Dave, can we just do this later? I might. Sure, sure, no problem. I can. We can do that. And I'm like, you know what sweet is. I'd rather not wait till Christmas. She's like, you know, Dave, let's just do it later. Speaker 1:     02:59         I said, okay, okay, fine. We'll do that later and she's busy. We got dinner going, we've got everything set for Fran and for her big celebration and my wife has got all the things upcoming to Christmas. I mean we're like today's the 20th or 21st four days away. She is just stressed out of her mind and is trying to get Christmas presents wrapped. She called me in the other room and she's like, Dave, listen, I don't know what we're going to do here. I've got certain gifts for one of the boys and I don't feel like I've got the equal amount. I'm like, sweetie, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. As far as equal amounts of stuff. She goes, well, no, I just want them to have the same number of gifts and I don't know if you've ever felt that anxiety of around the holidays where you're like, you don't what the stress of the holidays. Speaker 1:     03:43         It's too much. This is not supposed to be this way. It's supposed to be an exciting time, a happy time and all the stress is driving me crazy and so we got to the meeting. We went in the kitchen, we had this big party for friends. We had dinner and just literally as soon as it's over, I'm like, sweetie, I got to give this gift to you, and I got down on one knee and I said, sweetie, it's been 25 years, which or me again, and opened up the the box of earrings and everything else and she was super excited but my problem was I had. I didn't do any of the setup. It just fell flat on its face and so she was super, super excited. The kids were excited, but I'm like, you know, I didn't do that. When I proposed to my wife, I'm. Speaker 1:     04:25         When I proposed to my wife, it was. It was totally planned out and I sat back and thought, you know, I see the same thing happened in storytelling and I did this, so I was a premature gift giver. Meaning I didn't provide enough value. I didn't provide enough context. I didn't allow her to get emotionally vested in the experience and share that gift is fine, but it wasn't the gift that mattered. It was more important than that was what that gift meant and I look at it now and if I was to rewind things, I would take it back and say I would've done totally different and I would basically, I would have preferred to have gone out to dinner with her and set the stage more. Talk more about our marriage, talked about how excited I was and how much I loved the our trip to Paris and how much I loved our, our anniversary time and our, our, our, our time together and really built the emotion up and been able to reflect more on the feeling of the last 25 years. Speaker 1:     05:25         Because it's not the. It's not the jewelry that mattered, it's what the jewelry represented and I see the same thing take place so many times in storytelling and it was one of the things that happened just recently. I was real excited to podcasts and guys, if you've listened to it, it was with Roland Frasier who's a dear friend of mine and I was just super excited the day I was super excited to have a on and I got done with the introduction and I will sit there and look at that and I'm like, okay, rolling. I just totally screwed all that whole introduction up. I mean I just, I was like a little kid. I just, I spoke fast and just out of control and yeah, there was a lot of enthusiasm, excitement there, but I'm like, I didn't give him the value of all that he'd done and all the credit that he deserved to actually in recognition of who he was. Speaker 1:     06:09         And so I've thought about that and then I thought last night about the crazy mishap I had as far as presenting this jewelry to my wife going, you know, I need to be better at, at helping people experience more of the emotion. Because for me, the craziest thing is I'm not real big on, on gifts, but I love experiences. I mean experiences to me are like nothing that is more because I think people will remember the experience and I got so frustrated I laid in bed last night going, man, I totally screwed that up and I've thought a lot about it this morning. And I see the same thing happen in storytelling where people get so excited to tell the story that they don't let the person experienced the journey and the epiphany to get to that level of emotion to where they can appreciate the actual event and the story itself. Speaker 1:     07:01         And so as I'm looking at this next year, one of the main things that I'm really trying to focus on, the main things I'm trying to spend time on is to really help people and help myself actually get involved in telling a story with emotion. And there's a lot of preframing the tasks that take place. There's a lot of setting the stage. You have to provide time, you have to let people actually feel the emotion. It's not the facts, it's not the stats, it's not the data that matters. It's the emotion that's with it. So just like with my wife, it wasn't the gift that meant as much. It's the emotion of 25 years of marriage of what that gift represented. And I really wish I'd taken a step back and said, all right, what I really need to do is presented in a way that validates her sacrifice, the validates her hard work that validates the love, the trial, the journey, the pain, the tears of time, and also the laughter and the fun and the excitement. Speaker 1:     08:00         And again, some. I don't know if you've ever had that experience. Unfortunate happens to me too often where I'd like to rewind it, go back in time and say, all right, let me read you what I wish I could just have like a a Redo and undo button and let me just replay that one one more time because I would totally do a different. Fortunately my wife loves me and it's all good, but again, it was premature giftgiving. It's premature storytelling where you tell the story so fast that no one is able to really appreciate the emotion of it. It's one thing that I love as I've, as I've seen Russell tell stories, how much time he allows for people to feel and it's one of the main things I'm really spending time on this next year is helping others feel what I'm feeling kind of goes back to. Speaker 1:     08:49         It's like with my wife, she's totally stressed right now with Christmas, trying to make the experience of the holidays magical for every single member of our family and if I would just allow and and not just listen to her, but more importantly feel what she's saying. I would be able to help her that much more and so I'm really trying to listen more with feeling to tell stories with more feeling and you're gonna see over the course of this next year on my podcast, my facebook lives where, um, a lot of that feeling is going to come because I'm going to dive back into some of my past experience that weren't very pleasant and to actually try to really feel those experiences and tell those in a way that provides emotional connection and emotional feeling for those who are listening. Um, that's where the, that's how an epiphany takes place where if you, if you don't allow a person to experience the emotion that you were experiencing, there's no way for them to actually appreciate the bridge that you went across to get to the other side, to then be excited to bring them to that. Speaker 1:     10:03         The whole key here is you've got to allow people that opportunity to feel and something I'm really going to spend a lot of my time working on. And so this is more of a podcast more for me than for you guys probably is to really tell stories in a way that helped people elicit and to feel more so that at the end there's such an impact where that person wants to, they've now experienced for themselves what you went through and now they want to do whatever it is that you're going to do next. So with that said, I hope you guys enjoy the holidays. I again, hopefully that your, your gift giving experiences aren't a. weren't like mine just was a. I got too excited. But anyways, just know how much, uh, again, I, this time of year, I, I spent so much time reflecting and I hope you know how much I appreciate taking the time to listen to. It really does mean a lot to me having an amazing day and we'll talk to you guys soon. Speaker 2:     10:58         Hey everybody, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me or I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get that next few $100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as it's acutely like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

So November might not be quite as busy in terms of game releases as October was, but there's still plenty to look forward to! We also have a special guest on the podcast, Jay from YouTube channel JayRPG (https://www.youtube.com/c/JayRPGee), who talks to us about Lost Sphear and the Secret of Mana remake that he had time to go hands on with recently. And, finally, we have a chat about Visual Novel maker - a new and exciting addition to the "Maker" family of software (think RPG Maker), that makes it very, very easy to create your own VNs. Thanks as always for listening! Here are our Twitter accounts: Matt S: @digitallydownld Matt C: @MC_Odd Ginny W: @ginnywoes JayRPG: @JayRPGee As always, please do let us know what you thought of this episode!

Yup I fired myself. That's what I did. April 1st, 2017 I fired myself from my business and went on a business sabbatical. So you may be wondering what prompted me to take a business sabbatical in the first place. Let me take you back to September 2016. I was in Australia speaking at Problogger and staying in this amazing suite Darren Rowse and the team organized for me as a paid speaker. The view was incredible and the hotel complex was too. I was there to do a Tony Robbins style pump up session in between keynotes and also to run a session track on how to have a lucrative sales funnel that converts. Josh was with me and that made it extra special as it was his first real look into my world and the circles I connected with as well as some of my community who were there. I even managed to get in some videos for a Ten Day Freedom Plan Blog challenge with my fave videographer Mick Russell. After that we had some quality time in Byron Bay and a surf session before heading to San Diego, US where Josh was speaking at a conference in an entirely different area to what I operate in, and then I was speaking at FinCon. Both our events were back to back and we were fortunate to stay in lovely hotels once again with sunshine and swimming pools. The trouble was I was in launch mode for my signature program, The Freedom Plan. Even though I've launched this four times before, and even though I was super systemized this was my first time taking my team through a launch and training them up at the same time. I was working in between time and not doing the normal networking and socializing at conferences that I like to do. In fact I really didn’t feel like it. I was kind of tapped out and feeling a bit jaded and while I was enjoying the relatively new romance with Josh I wasn’t enjoying what I almost always have done, the art of launching and running my business. It all felt heavy. And as much as my team tried to keep up and do their best, I just felt like I was pulling their weight and mine. As a result I was exhausted. I’ve come to realize over the years that for whatever reason, I am incredibly focused and can work at speed on almost any task I set my mind to. Until I worked with around 6 people on my team during a launch I realized this was not normal, and that you have to respect and understand other people's’ working methods. It’s just that during a launch it’s really hard to do this - you NEED to work at pace and everything needs to be timed super well and you do actually need to do things on the fly and change tactics at any point to reflect the nature of how your launch is going, and how people are responding. While this is great and exciting for a Wealth Dynamics Entrepreneurial ‘Star’ Profile like myself, it’s a nightmare for a Lord or Mechanic who have a much more grounded energy and need detailed plans and order to work best. So to them it looked like we were out of control but to me it seems very very much in tuned with exactly how everything should be going along. And slowly but surely deadlines got missed, communications broke down, things didn’t go out on time and it ended up being the worst launch that I’ve ever done. I still made close to $40,000 in the space of a couple of weeks but I spent a lot more on my team. I spent a lot on advertising. And at the end of the day, it just really felt heavy. And it wasn’t a successful launch and I felt like my list and my community just felt tapped out including myself. I remember getting off a live webinar where a thousand people turned up and the energy was fantastic but the results from it were not great. And I sat back at the end of that webinar and I was like, "That's it. I'm done. I just don’t understand why this is not going well and I have had enough. I have run this launch before and it's an amazing program and I made multiple six figures! I know it works and I know it gets people results and I just don’t understand what happened. This was a flop. The ironic thing was I was running a Freedom Lab at the same time and this is where I actually show you real-time, something that I am doing. So I have done one on “Write the Damn Book - how to write a book in three months but the first one was called “How to Launch like a Rockstar. And so people following along my launch live, every tactic we were doing around Facebook advertising, emailing and sales copy and I was sharing it live through videos, through blog posts. Here I was at the end going AND it was a big flop! It might not look like it to you, but transparently doing something live and sharing the real results when they don't come off how they should is embarrassing and at the same time very real. If anything it taught me, our team and everybody else out there a lesson that shit does not always go right. So that is when I decided, I am going to fire myself and it was such a great decision to make, but that was in late September, early October and I did not end up taking my business sabbatical until the first of April. And why was that? A couple of reasons: We were changing over to a brand new design for The Suitcase Entrepreneur which looks amazing. (Thank you Filipe - my team member in Portugal!) We were changing the website over so we were using a new theme and Kasia - WP Rockstar, who has been through my Freedom Plan, she handled all of that. We were changing from Infusionsoft over to ConvertKit for email, Clickfunnels for my sales funnels Leadpages and landing pages. Closing down the Leadpages pages that I had. And shifting over my courses and creating new ones on Teachable. So November and December were massive months. And even though I thought all those changes are beneficial, they actually affected my business for the next two or three months in a bad way. Just because when you change systems and change lots of things - like we took a ton of pages away from my website, we leaned it right out from over a hundred pages and 950 blog posts right down to just several pages! We took a lot of our landing pages and sales funnels over to Clickfunnels and the traffic dropped because we were just cleaning everything up. So what prompted me to think that firing myself was a great idea? I have been on a few digital sabbaticals before when you go completely offline and of course when I was cycling down Africa in 2012, I was pretty much away from my business for a good two months. I remember clearly from that that I forgot about my business, I did not worry about anything because I was so busy cycling up to a 150 km a day. I felt freer than ever while I was cycling down Africa, simply just waking up in the morning, crawling out of my tent, putting out my bike, having breakfast and just hitting the road. At the same time, my business was doing just fine. I was in my early stages, my virtual assistant, that I had hired just before I left, was doing a great job. And it made me appreciate that it had been a long time since I had really left my business behind and handed it over to people I trusted or just trusted in the systems that I had built. I thought for me, as a freedomist who is constantly preaching you need great systems, you need to outsource, you need the right tools and you need great sales funnel, I was like, Well, why not put mine to the test by removing myself as the bottleneck of my business? Around this time I actually chatted to Jason Van Orden, a good friend who used to have Internet Business Mastery with Jeremy Frandsen and he had also gone on a business sabbatical. In fact, they handed over to a CEO to run it, so I had a quick chat to him because I was interested to learn from him: what went well, what did not and why he took that step. Here is the conversation we had about it: Eventually I had to stop and ask myself why there was that waning in motivation. I’m sure partly I was maybe scared a little bit to look at that but what does it mean? What if I ended up figuring out I've got the wrong business or that I am done with this business. One thing that finally helped is when I went on a personal retreat. By then we were living on Paris so I went to Prague for 4 or 5 days. I did a little soul searching, journaling, thinking and I remember coming back from that and just saying to my wife, "I think I need a sabbatical from this business". So I asked Jason, how long did that take you to remove yourself from your business and here is his response. Truthfully it was really fast for me but I am not saying it was the right thing to do. In hindsight, there’s a lot of realizations here but basically I was so ready to be removed and that might have been maybe a little too fast. We probably needed a few more processes in place, expectations and measurements. So as you can see it was really quick for Jason once he made that decision. I have to say for me, I made that decision pretty instantly, the minute that launch finished, that I was going to take a time off. Then I spent the time just gearing up my team to be able to survive without me and to show them it was fully possible that without me in the business, it potentially would go even better! Because as the CEO of your business often, you do end up still doing things, making the shots, calling the shots, having the key relationships and all those things. Usually that is a great thing but sometimes you can just hold on a little too tight. You just need to release and beauty comes into the picture. Things that you'd never even considered before. And I am going to talk about those in Episode 3 for Season 2, so make sure you tune into the next episode by subscribing in iTunes and Stitcher. I would love for you to share in the comments section below: Have you ever taken a business sabbatical? What freaks you out about doing that? Have you thought about firing yourself when you've been a little less motivated in your business recently? Tell me where you are at. I want to know. I am doing this for you so I really want your insights. Stay tuned for the next episode of Season 2 where Jason Van Orden will tell us about what actually happened when he basically took a break from his business. We'll also have some other key guests on here that I think you are going to love with their discoveries on this topic. Want to sell your own online courses (and have a great launch)? Selling online courses is one of my favourite things to do, but as I pointed out in this episode, it can be a real headache. With Teachable, you don't have to worry about the tech. Teachable is the easiest way to create, sell and deliver online courses. And while it is so easy to use, it's also packed with a lot of powerful features. With Teachable, you're able to... create your own course website, with your own custom branding, so you get all of the credit for how professional your course website looks. accept payments and get paid instantly when you sell your courses integrate with hundreds of your favorite tools and email service providers create beautiful sales pages for your courses Teachable is the #1 course creation software, with over 12,000 instructors using their software to create, deliver and sell online courses. All types of business owners and online entrepreneurs use Teachable. Sure, that includes people like Pat Flynn or The New York Times. But most of their instructors are just regular people like you and me and who are looking grow their businesses with courses. And guess what? Teachable is offering a 30 day free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to teachable.com/suitcase.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, we switch things up and talk about a few of the biggest lessons I've learned over the past 6 months for building a bulletproof brain to feel better, become more productive, and become a better thinker - all by taking control of your health! Enjoy ;)   Transcript Hey what is going on guys and girls. This is Jeremy Reeves with another episode of The Sales Funnel Mastery Podcast and I hope you all had a very, very fun Halloween. If you have kids, then you know, hopefully you took them trick or treating, well maybe not until like 16, that be kind of weird, but if you have young kids I should say or if you you know, did the whole trick or treating thing with people coming to your door, I hope that was fun. We had our boys out last night and it was freezing here in PA. I think it was, probably like below 30s you know, by the time we got home so it was really cold. I am not looking forward to the cold weather, but it is what it is. So today -- actually, I have a really quick update first before we get into it. So the webinar project right, the high-ticket project that I am working on that I have been telling you about over the last couple of weeks is almost done. In fact, the product itself I actually just finished you know, there are some little tweaks and added some stuff here and there, one or two little things that I have to add, things like that, but you know, it is essentially done and one of my things that I am doing today is actually getting it set up in the membership and like kind of getting all that prep and all that and then I have to actually put together a webinar you know, that is going to sell the course on doing webinars, right. So first of all, you know, I am planning on launching that in the next 2 weeks. So November 14th is, hopefully, the starting date. We are going to find out -- I do not like to rush launches. A lot of people -- a lot of my clients -- you know, they will come to me and say, hey I want to launch tomorrow you know. And I do not like doing that. I always like to get myself extra time to really do it properly, to make sure everything is set up right and all that. So as of right now I am planning on launching that course on November 14th and I am really excited. It is going to be freaking awesome. Everybody I have shown into so far is like, oh my God, this like a total game changer. It is like completely -- unlike anything else it is out there right now. So I am really, really excited about that and I will tell you why it is so awesome as we kind of come closer to it right. So if you are in the market for doing something high ticket. If you have anything high ticket, I would highly suggest not getting anything else until I launched that course because I am telling you right now it is going to be absolutely just completely game changing for you. If you have a webinar and it is not converting well or if you want to put together a webinar and it is just been a giant pain in the ass hint.. hint.. it is going to be perfect for you hint.. hint.. and yeah so that is it. So today, I want to go -- I want to talk about something a little bit off topic right. It is not technically about business, but it is about productivity right and that is health, okay. So I actually just cut down -- I have been -- when it was, let us see -- about the middle in March maybe early April something like that, I was 195 pounds. I was -- I have been fluctuating a lot you know in my life and I think the highest now -- I am only 5’9 by the way, so I am not a tall guy. The highest I have ever been was 205. I think that was when Katie was pregnant with Connor. I kind of did the whole you know, she is pregnant so I am going to eat like she does. Even though you know, the whole pregnancy myth with you know, eating everything is you know, that is also a myth. You really only need like 3 to 500 extra calories a day. But you know, so my wife does not even really eat all that much extra you know, definitely extra, but not like you know, disgusting huge, you know, gross meals every night. But anyway, so in March or April I was 195 pounds and I remember going back like I was -- every single day, I would get really tired in the afternoon. I would get my 2 waves of tiredness so to speak would be between 1 to 2 o’clock and then between 6 to 7 o’clock. So I was getting two different points in the day where I was getting really tired right and I mean like you know, like I am about to pass out tired right. And I have never eaten horribly right. I have always had like a semi-healthy you know, lifestyle. My problem back then was you know, I would drink like high-calorie beers and stuff at night and that kind of thing. My nighttime is really bad you know, I would have a giant bowl of popcorn with butter something like that. So that was one of the big things. But what I have noticed as I have really cleaned up my diet and my exercise program since November so how many months that is, it is like the last 6 or 7 months whatever that is -- is that my productivity has gone way up right. And that is why I want to talk about it today, right. And because a lot of people on this are probably you know, you are probably a little bit overweight or a lot overweight or you are -- maybe even if you are not like you have really good genes and you are not overweight, but you still eat bad, it is still going to drastically affect your mental performance right and as entrepreneurs, that is really, really, really important because if you are not there mentally right, if you do not have a clear sharp mind, you are not going to be able to come up with new creative, innovative, breakthrough ideas, right. You are going to go through your day just kind of like forcing yourself to get it done rather than having the motivation to get everything done rather than having the excitement to get your work done rather than coming and waking up energized and ready to tackle the day, right. So a couple of things that really helped me right. Number one is no breakfast. Huge, huge, huge breakthrough for me was no breakfast, right. And a lot of people are thinking, oh my God I am going to be starving in the morning. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. No. You really won’t. Now some people do. It does take a little bit of a period until like kind of get used to it. Now I have never been a huge fan of breakfast, but I have always eaten it just because I thought I was supposed to, just because you know, breakfast you know, “is the most important meal of the day.” It turns out that is absolutely not true. Whoever you heard that from, not that they are lying, but basically, the what happened was -- back in the -- I think it was the 60s. I might be off from the timeline, but 60s give or take a decade or two, the people that started saying that were you know, where do you think I am going to this? The people that came up with that idea guess what they sold? Breakfast food, right. They were marketers. Just like the people that came out seasonal affective disorder. That is not actually a real thing, right. It is just something that has been implanted into like the minds of American citizens you know and then the people that are making these things up are then selling the solution. It is actually a brilliant marketing technique, but when it comes to eating breakfast, it is absolutely not necessary whatsoever. It has nothing to do with your metabolism, right. This has been proven like a thousand times that not having breakfast does nothing to your metabolism at all, right. It actually, it takes like 2 or 3 days of eating nothing for your metabolism to really start dropping a lot. So if you are worried about like your metabolism dropping. It will not happen. I promised you, okay. You can look up the research. I am not going to go through it all right now because I do not have it in front of me, but you know, it is -- basically, there is zero evidence of it reducing metabolism, okay. The second thing is -- oh well, I am going to be like -- I am going to be hungry all morning. When you first do this, right. If you eat breakfast every morning, you are in the habit of eating breakfast and because of that habit, your mind is going -- your body goes through these you know, these habits. So if you wake up and the first thing you do is put food, put calories in your body. Your body is going to expect that. So the first week maybe 2 weeks, you might still a little be - be a little bit hungry. What you can do to stay that off is drink a little bit more coffee right that helps blunt your appetite and also, big thing that I have done is carbonated water or like seltzer water or something, some kind of non-calorie -- please do not drink diet soda, it is gross, except for like a treat once in a while. Something you can put in your body that is carbonated because it fills up your stomach right. That helped me a lot. Now these days, like I am up at 5:30 in the morning. I usually do not eat until 12 to 1 o’clock, right. So I am going like whatever that is like 6-1/2 or 7 hours, I do not really get hungry right and it is because I have trained my body to do that, okay. So the first thing is no breakfast. You are going to instantly drop weight because what happens is, if you have like a 2000 calories you know, if you are eating 2000 calories to say, and you are eating like a 4 or 500 calorie breakfast well now you can put that into like your dinner right. If you have the same lunch no breakfast now you can have a 4 or 500 calorie extra for dinner and still have the same amount of calorie. So you can have such more amazing meals, okay. So it just makes it way, way easier okay. So that has been a huge thing for me. Second thing is, in terms of like mental performance energy that kind of thing, is for your lunches, low carbs okay, because carbs are going to make you tired right. When you get that blood sugar spike, when it comes down right that is when you get really lethargic and that is why I used to get at 1 or 2 o’clock, I would get that you know, that drop right and the same thing (inaudible 10:18.2) because we eat at 5. So like within the next hour to 2 hours, you are going to just you know, hit a rock and if you do not want to do that anymore, try eating lunches with lower carbs okay. Now I am not one of these people like, carbs are not enemy. I eat a lot of carbs you know, today actually, I am eating a giant thing of chicken and rice for lunch and I am eating pasta for dinner, right. Now I am in a bulking stage now actually because I got out in 170s. Now I am going to start putting on some muscle. So I am actually eating a little bit more, but you know, in a normal day, I do not really eat that many carbs for lunch, right, when I am cutting. Now I added them back in because I am bulking and I am also going to do a huge you know, big long workout right before my lunch so that kind of counteracts the carbs, okay. So that is another thing. But in general, if you want a clear sharper you know, faster mind and you do not want to be tired throughout the afternoon, then eat low carbs for lunch and therefore, you are going to get more fats, right. Fats help fuel your brain. They are going to help you again, you know, have a clear sharper mind. So add some more fats. Add some coconut oil. Add some nuts. Add some really good healthy omega-3s, some Fish oil you know, Fish oil supplements are really good for brain function you know. Have a cup of coffee you know depending on how much you drink in the afternoon, I mean in the morning, you do not have too much because you can definitely have too much. I think they recommend about 400 mg a day. So depending on -- you should also look into where you are getting your caffeine. So like a Starbucks coffee, I think has about 400 mg which is like insane. That is called the Robusta bean. You probably want to look for Arabica beans. They have like, it is like a 3rd or a 4th Robusta. So anyway, so eat you know, eat healthy omega-3 fats you know, salmon, nuts, you know, have a steak you know, good grass fed steak even for lunch you know, smaller one probably because a huge (inaudible 12:30.4) get you tired probably. Next thing is, do a little workout. So I started adding in a workout right before lunch because I know that at 1 or 2 o’clock, I am going to get tired and I realized that well, you know, if I do a workout like kind of in that period right before I am going to get tired, then it is going to help kind of reboot myself, right. So I work from you know, I get up at 5:30. I work from about 6 until 11:30 or so and then I do a workout you know, it depends anywhere between 15 minutes to like 45 minutes, depending on what I am doing that day, depending you know, some days I go for a quick fast run. Yesterday, I did sprints. Today, I am doing strength training. Tomorrow, I will probably going to do a circuit training workout. So it is kind of like a mix of you know jump roping and burpees and box jumps and sledge hammer swings and that is where you get a sledge hammer and you hit a tire essentially. And you know, things like that right, kickboxing I put into that. So I do a mix of that type of stuff. So try adding in a workout right. And by the way, with all the stuff adding them one at a time do not let go and change everything that you do, just add it one at a time. And then the next thing is -- another thing that I do with my lunch is I take a greens drink, right. So it is really good to get your body in the alkaline state. If you get into too much of an acidic state, right, and that is from things you know, if you look in like a pH scale that you learned in high school you know, there is the acidic side of things so you know, coke right, not cocaine you know, soda is really acidic; alcohol is really acidic; meats are acidic, you know, basically, anything processed is acidic. And then you have the alkaline state and that is what makes you feel better right, is vegetables are alkaline you know, most healthy foods are alkaline you know, and you could look up kind of tables that show you what is alkaline, what is acidic that kind of thing. So just add in more alkaline. I am not really a big fan of adding only alkaline because you know, this people that only eat alkaline foods they do not realized that your body needs both right, you need both for different things you know, it is kind of like -- a lot of people when they are reducing inflammation, they actually have so many inflammation reducers that they do not have enough inflammation in their body right, because you need a certain amount. Your body is -- it wants to stay in homeostasis. It wants to be balanced right. It needs balance kind of like business plan or kind of like life you know, you need balance. Too much of one thing and you start kind of going off the edge. So just start adding in more alkaline state but with the greens drink, I drink 1 cup of (inaudible 15:29.3) vibrance and it is -- you can get it from Amazon. I think it is like I do not know $40 or $42 something like that for 30-day supply and basically, it is just a little scoop of you know, greens. There is all this like crazy you know, stuff in there (inaudible 15:44.9) you know, cracked wheat and like all this kind of crazy stuff that you would never normally get in your diet and you just put it in the glass and drink it you know, the first couple of times you drink it is going to be gross of course you know, you are drinking a big thing of greens, but then it actually taste like I do not mind the taste at all now. It actually kind of gets you out of that. People that eat a lot of sugar, if they eat something that is not sugary, they think it is disgusting, but it is funny like once you stopped eating a lot of sugar -- I actually do not like sweets that much you know, even you know, coming home from Halloween last night, I only ate like 2 or 3 little candy bars like I am good now. It is because you know, my body does not crave it because I do not really eat it that much. I ate healthy food now and I do not really crave sweets any more you know, except for like a good pie like an apple pie, oh man, I love that. That is my kryptonite, that and peanut butter ripple like the vanilla ice cream with peanut butter on it. Oh man, although that is not really a sweet. That is more of a fatty meal. But anyway, so I do that after lunch, has tons of probiotics in it which are super, super, super healthy. It keeps your gut you know, your gut balance, your gut flora in check which is actually also helps you think better and clear and feel better and that kind of thing. Makes you less tired. And so those are you know, some of the things that I am doing in my life. So to kind of recap, number one, do not eat breakfast. It is going to help you -- first of all, it is going to help you increase productivity because you do not have to be worrying about food right, and also, you just focus better. I focus better when there is no food in my body because my body is not worried about digestion you know, digestion slows you down. So when you do not have food in your body, you can then like your resources can kind of go to your brain you know. You can also try to add in a bulletproof coffee which is basically -- it is essentially coffee if you never heard of it. It is coffee with butter and MCT oil which is all really like it is kind of like brain food you know, because like I said, really, really healthy fats are basically brain food you know, that is what your brain thrives on. So if you eat a higher fat you know, diet then you are going to think better. It is better for (inaudible 18:10.0) than higher carb diet. So that is what I do, like right now, I am doing 40% fat, 30% protein, and 30% carbs you know, and it is because you know, you need a balance again you know, I know me like if I go too low in carbs I feel horrible. If I go too high in carbs and too low in fats, I feel horrible and if I go too low on protein I noticed a significant decreased in my strength right and so I need a balance, not shocking you know. So but I do a little higher fats because more of like the brain power you know, the mental kind of brain power. So do higher fats and so you can try adding bulletproof coffee in. You can try not eating breakfast and that is just going to help you lose weight which is automatically going to help you feel better, you know, because the less fat that you have on you, the less toxins that are in your body because your toxins are held in your fat right. So when you start losing fat, those toxins get released because your body like they kind of infect your body and so the less of them that you have, the better you are going to feel. Next thing is lunches. Eat smaller lunches, bigger dinners right. That has helped me quite a bit. When it comes to lunches you know, again, go for like a lower carb lunch because carbs are going to slow you down. Digestion slows you down, but carbs especially kind of make you tired because they release various chemicals that make you tired. It is actually good eating carbs right before bed because you kind of get into like tired state and then you can fall asleep easier. A lot of people actually will eat like tablespoon of honey at like 9:30 or 10:00 right before they go to bed because it helps their body just kind of calm down and relax and you know, and that kind of thing. So yeah, smaller lunches with higher fat and then also workout you know, so sometime whenever you naturally get tired add in a workout like an hour or so before that, an hour to two hours to say because it is going to kind of reboot you. It is going to recharge you, you know, and if you do it in the middle of the day kind of gives you like a nice you know, again, it kind of just reboots you like you know, I am working from 6 until like 11:30 or so and then I get a workout. So by 11:30, my brain is starting to you know, starting to drop off a little bit. So when I am able to do that workout and get more oxygen flown through my body, get the energy level, get the blood pump in, then I feel better and I kind of get like a second wind for the afternoon, okay. And then, you know, when I am done working around 3 or so, then I can just kind of chill and relax my feeling. So that is another thing. Another thing actually that I have noticed is if you are feeling tired and this is more of a disciplined thing. If you are feeling tired right. If you are feeling just sluggish and tired at you know, 1 or 2 or 3 or you know, whenever you are kind of tired state is, consider taking a nap you know, take a nap somewhere between 15 to 25 minutes. Do not go above half hour because you start shifting into the next phase of sleep. It takes you know, basically up to about half hour where the first stage of sleep essentially REM I think it is where basically your mind like you do not get into a deep -- like there is kind of 2 stages. There is one where your brain kind of recharges right and that is the first one, that is REM sleep. I am pretty sure it is REM sleep. Basically the connections that you have made. They all get like sorted out right, essentially and you just get like a quick little boost right, whereas if you get into, if you start going into the deeper sleep that is when it repairs your tissues and your muscles and like it does that like deep tissue repair process. You do not want to get into that throughout the day, that is for nighttime because your body essentially is working so hard. It essentially like shuts your brain down so that it can have the energy and the resources to be able to repair your body, okay. So think of it that way, like short is just kind of brain boost you know, brain recharge and longer is like a deep tissue repair, okay, and you only want to stay in that first one and that is like within a half hour or so you know, that is why a lot of people they wake up from nap (inaudible 22:36.4) okay, while if you take a nap and it is only you know, 20 or 25 minutes you are not going to fall into that state you know and a lot of times like I will wake up and I cannot even think I am so tired -- not really anymore I have been taking a lot of nap in a very long time because of all these things and I do not really get tired in the afternoon anymore, but when I used to do this you know, I would take a nap and like 20 minutes and I will be you know, jumping, roaring, and ready to go. So try that you know, add that into your thing on the days where you just, you know, you cannot think of anything because otherwise, you just kind of sit there and stare at the computer and that is obviously not productive. So you might as well go and take 20 minutes, take a quick little nap and then come back and you know, be ready to hit it again. I would say the final thing is make sure you are getting good quality sleep you know. Make sure you are going to bed at decent time and make sure that your -- and this is one that I still struggle with. Make sure that your you know, you are not watching TV or playing games or things like that on your phone right before bed you know, you should essentially be trying to stay away from blue light for about you know, 2 hours before you are going to bed you know, and I again, this is one I still struggle with because I still you know, I like to watch TV you know, God forbid an entrepreneur watches TV, you need to be at work all the time, oh my God, oh my God. No, I have a couple of TV shows that I really loved you know, I am watching The Walking Dead now, the Blacklist. I cannot wait for stranger things to come back in July, it is one of my favorite shows ever. If you have not seen Stranger Things it is on Netflix, you absolutely need to watch it. It is freaking ridiculous. But you know, so there is a couple of shows you know, I think Game of Thrones is going to be starting soon. So anyway, so those are a couple of my tips that I have used not only to lose a lot of weight in the last whatever 6 or 7 months, but also just to feel better. I mean my energy levels are so much higher now than they used to be and I just feel better. I am stronger you know, it is just -- I think way, way better than I used to because my brain has the you know, the nutrients and needs to be able to you know, make the connections. So anyway, I hope that helps you. I know it was a little bit off topic you know, it is not really about business, but it is extremely important because if your mind does not clear, if you are tired, if you are sluggish, then you are not going to be able to think properly. You are not going to be able to think clearly and you know, you are not going to -- those breakthrough ideas are not going to happen for you. So I hoped you enjoyed this. Let me know if you like topics like this that are not you know, 100% business related but they still have to do with business because they you know, directly affect your brain you know. Brain health is one area that I am really getting into now and I am trying out a couple of (inaudible 25:35.2) and you know, essentially brain pills like that. I am going to start adding in bulletproof coffee, I was never a huge fan, but I want to kind of retry it just to see how it works with my you know, with my brain and I had some stomach issues when I tried the last time. So I am going to try it again. But anyway, so that is it. Again, the webinar product is coming out either the next 2 weeks or 3 weeks. If it is not the 14th, it is going to be the 21st that I will launch that. So keep your eyes and ears open for that. The week that I do launch it I am probably going to have multiple podcasts in that week as part of the launch so that will be kind of cool and you will be getting like you know, couple podcast from me. So anyway, that is it for me today. If you -- by the way, if you have a high ticket item and you have been thinking about working with us and having us you know, do it and done for you automated webinar, I would get in touch now because once we launch this, it is -- we are going to kind of specialized in that and it is going to be -- we are going to get a lot of new clients that are looking for done for you webinars. So if you have been thinking about working with us for a done for you webinar or even coaching, that is also going to be one of the packages, then I would probably reach out now and kind of get you know, jump ahead of the curve here because, again, we are going to get really, really, really busy, okay. So I hope you enjoyed this. I will talk to you next time and yeah, just you know, make sure that you take health into consideration because it is really, really important you know, for your business, for your just overall energy levels and how you feel everyday and I can tell you now like looking back to how you used to feel, you would like -- if you are overweight and you you know, if you are not eating healthy when you switch you will notice a huge difference and it is one of those things you do not realized how bad you felt until you feel good you know. You do not realized how bad you felt until you feel good. Once you feel good then you look back and you are like oh my God, how do they even get through the day you know, it is one of those things. So take that into consideration. I hope this helps you. All these things that I have done, I do on a daily basis and they have all helped me. This is the biggest changes I have made and they made a huge impact. So I hope enjoyed this. I will talk to you soon. Bye.

We know it's SO November 2, 2004, but this series of videos was shown on election night 4 years ago to cheer people up. We anticipated that every vote "would count" and that the election would have a happy ending.Get the latest video podcast here: The Polls Pt.1

We know it's SO November 2, 2004, but this series of videos was shown on election night 4 years ago to cheer people up. We anticipated that every vote "would count" and that the election would have a happy ending.Get the latest video podcast here: The Polls Pt.2