Freedom FastTrack Podcast

Welcome to the Total Freedom Podcast! It’s Chris Duncan here with Stacy Tuschl. Stacy is absolutely crushing it on her online and offline businesses. I am super excited – she’s not only somebody that I’ve had the ability to spend a lot of time with, and see inside of her business, but also someone I massively admire in the business sphere, so.

[00:00:44]

Chris: Stacy, it is so great to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Stacy: Thanks, Chris! I’m so excited to be here today.

Chris: Now, you have lots going on! I mean—

Stacy: Yes—

Chris: -- you have your own successful podcast, you’re a mum, you have a seven-figure dance studio, a coaching business – like, wow!

Stacy: [laughs]

Chris: I’m always so impressed whenever we talk about everything that you’re doing. It’s pretty amazing. I’d love for you to start by giving the listeners a bit of an intro into who you are and what you’ve been up to.

[00:01:13]

Stacy: Yeah! So – well, first, I am a mom. I’ve been married to my husband for eight years. My two little girls – I’ve got a fifteen-month-old baby and a three-and-a-half-year-old. That alone can be very challenging. And then you start to pile on the business and everything that comes with it.

Stacy: Like you said, my first business was – is my dance studio. I started teaching dance in my parents’ backyard for free, for fun, when I was 18. And it was just something I was going to do as a hobby.

Chris: Wow.

Stacy: Yeah – and it kind of snowballed into a real business. That was 14 years ago, and now it is a seven-figure business with two locations and it’s just incredible.

Chris: Wow!

Chris: And that alone is enough! I mean, being a mom, and then the kids, and then the marriage, and then one business – but you went and stacked on your internet businesses and everything as well.

[00:02:13]

Chris: The first thing I want to ask is how do you manage it all?

Stacy: Yeah, good question! And I do get that a lot—

Chris: [laughs]

Stacy: I think you have to realize that when you see somebody that is doing all of this, it’s never just them. There is a team. And whether that team is at home, they have to have a supportive family backing them – but I also have a team of – an amazing group of staff, about forty people in my brick and mortar business.

Chris: Wow!

Stacy: It didn’t just all of a sudden start with forty people. One by one, we slowly added where we needed it. We have these systems and what makes us, you know, go up and running right now. Yes, we weren’t there fourteen years ago. We had to really build that structure in.

Stacy: So things have been going well, but it really is finding those right people and getting them on the right seat on the bus.

Chris: I agree. It’s absolutely huge to have the right team and the right people.

[00:03:06]

Chris: Listeners, we can go a lot of ways today. I think a way that we haven’t explored in quite a while is scaling offline businesses and systems and delegation. So, Stacy, if it’s alright with you, I think that’s where we’re going to head.

Stacy: Yeah, that’s perfect!

Chris: So, you said that it wasn’t always the way that it is now. What was it like in the beginning?

[00:03:26]

Stacy: Well, just like normal. Everybody starts as a solopreneur, right? So, it was me for the first three years, completely by myself, nobody there to help. Year four was when I decided; “okay, I really need to start stepping back a little bit.”

Stacy: I wanted to add some more things in, and I just couldn’t do that by myself. And it was kind of like I was missing certain specialties. I wanted to have other teachers that could come in and teach something that maybe I wasn’t that great at. I started by adding two different teachers that could come on for me, and also teach them in my classes, so I could step out of my business and work on it.

Chris: So, the first thing you focused on was getting other people to do the teaching?

Stacy: Yeah! It was. It was something that – and I shouldn’t say all of the teaching. I mean, I was still the main teacher. But it gave me a night to myself to be able to work on it. You know, get those systems in place. Think about marketing and everything else that I needed to be doing besides actually being in the classroom.

Chris: Right.

[00:04:25]

Chris: Now, most people that have a service get stuck in their service.

Stacy: Mm-hmm.

Chris: They need to be able to not only build it successfully with revenue, but also have time freedom as well. So you obviously had to be able to do a lot of systems and planning and those sorts of things. Would you take us on a little bit of journey?

Chris: Let’s say we’re talking to somebody right now who’s sitting out there, who’s got a service – they’re delivering it, and they want to make those moves! They’re listening to this, it’s the total freedom podcast, they’re thinking; “gee, I’d like to have the freedom that Stacy has.”

Stacy: Yeah, and it can be really challenging because when you’re the person providing the service, you have very high expectations, and – yes, I have to think as the dance teacher, but I also have to think as the studio owner. And those are very different positions with very different objectives when you’re running both of them. That is something I see happen a lot with somebody who is – you know, they’ve created this product or program or service, and now they have to step away and they have to actually focus on it.

Stacy: So, it’s a really – it’s a different mindset. You have to shift, but you have to be careful, because you still need a little bit of that dance teacher in me to come out and say, “well, we have to create a really high-end product and give the people what they’re looking for,” but then I have to make sure that we’re actually making money from it too, because sometimes people are losing money because they’re trying to over-deliver, and they’re not making up for it in other areas.

[00:05:48]

Chris: So, there’s different positions – which I know as well – and you’ve obviously just shared as well. There’s obviously the person that’s good at doing it—

Stacy: Mm-hmm—

Chris: -- and then we have to make that shift. A lot of people don’t make it.

Stacy: Nope.

Chris: They – they end up doing it forever. What was it like for you to make that shift? Was it something that was easy – you were just over doing the dance?

Stacy: No, it took me about a year – after I incorporated, it took me about a year to go; “okay, something’s not working, something’s gotta go.” It was just, I was overwhelmed, I was working like crazy, I was gaining weight – because, as a dance studio teacher, I would teach all night! I would eat dinner at about ten o’clock at night, stop at a fast food restaurant – I mean, it was just bad habits everywhere.

Stacy: So, a year in, I said; “okay, I’ve got it.” I had a postcard that came to me in the mail for a conference, and I thought; “let’s try this. Let’s just go and learn and see what – see if I can pick something up.”

[00:06:43]

Stacy: And that’s what really changed me, was getting out there, listening to somebody who was already doing it – and doing it well – and everything that I wanted; I wanted the lifestyle, but I wanted a place where I could spend time with my kids when I became a mom, and – and I knew all of this stuff going in to it, so that was a big eye-opener for me, was that first event.

Chris: So, you went to the event. You knew that something needed to change. What was the first thing that you really had to work on? I know you said that you started putting on some other staff, but I think there’s something deeper there, because – here’s what I know about you [laughs] – is, for you, it’s like; “no, it’s like – it’s easy! I just did it!” and—

Stacy: [laughs] Yes!

Chris: -- the thing is, only three percent of businesses ever make it to a million. So, you and I are both in the top 3%. And, I know both of us are all, “oh, yeah, whatever. It was easy!” But, what are some of the things, like – how did you make that transition? So many people don’t.

[00:07:40]

Stacy: I had to really understand that I don’t know everything.

Stacy: And there are so many people out there that are smarter than me. I had to become teachable, which was kind of different for me, because I am very – growing up, I was very bossy. I was always the leader, I wanted to be in charge. I started a business so I could be my own boss, but now I’m hiring coaches and listening to other experts. And it was different, because all of a sudden it was like I did have a boss. They were telling me what to do.

Stacy: So, it was different, but I had to learn to be teachable because you just don’t know what you don’t know.

Chris: It’s humongous.

Chris: We spend so long in a job and at school, making it all about us. And then, as soon as you realize it in business, it’s nothing to do with you and your skills as an actual doer, and more of a leader. Everything changes.

Stacy: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Chris: It’s crazy to me.

[00:08:38]

Chris: So, you did that. You were able to be teachable, you learned, you created systems, and you hired, and then you brought on other staff to give you freedom and your time back. Once you got your time back – when you say working on your business, what exactly is that? Like, I know a lot of people say, “I work on my business,” but, for you, what are you focused on the most?

Stacy: Well – and this was something that I did incorrectly.

Chris: Uh-oh.

Stacy: Yeah! [laughs]

Stacy: So, I thought getting out of my business meant, “okay, I need to get out of the classroom, and now I’m going to work at the front desk, and I’m going to be kind of the receptionist, and I’m going to work on it,” thinking, “I’m going to work on it, not in it.” But I was still in it.

Chris: [laughs]

Stacy: You know, I didn’t really back away. I kind of had to transition twice. I removed myself out of the classroom, but then I had to remove myself out of the desk, because people got so used to seeing me, having me answer their questions. And what I realized is, I can’t be sitting there in my brick-and-mortar facility and think I’m going to get work done. Like, that just is not going to happen, because your staff is there asking questions, your customers are there. And you want to be engaging with them, so you just – you can’t mix that. You really have to separate.

Stacy: So when I say, you know, working on it, I mean I’m actually in my home office, working on things that need to happen that are not physically in the space. And that made a huge difference.

Chris: Wow.

Chris: So, moving out to your home actually increased your productivity. Whoa!

Stacy: Yeah, 100%. Which, I know people think that’s so crazy. I mean, right now, I have two locations. What’s great about that is I could never be at both locations at the same time anyway, so now that I have two locations, I literally work zero hours in my business. You’ll never see me at one of those locations. But, I go in once a month, and I have a huge leadership meeting with my leaders that are on my staff. So all of my managers, department heads – people like that? And I’m there just to structure that meeting, and kind of do a little check-in, see where we’re at.

Stacy: We measure, we track, and then we make sure we’re getting better each month. So that’s what I’m doing in my business specifically, but everything happens from my home or if I’m travelling. I just really need my laptop and I’m good to go.

Chris: Wow! True freedom.

[00:10:52]

Chris: A lot of people think that their brick-and-mortar business can’t turn into a freedom business. I think you’ve got something there that you can probably teach people [laughs]

Stacy: Absolutely! You know, I had – I met a friend at one of my conferences, and she owned a studio in Michigan, but she lived in Texas.

Chris: Wow!

Stacy: And when I heard that, I thought, “okay! So if she can do that, there’s no reason I can’t run it from my house, versus an office inside of that brick-and-mortar.”

Chris: That’s huge, Stacy! If you ever – have you ever looked into that, like, taking a service in a brick-and-mortar business and actually showing others how they can actually get freedom from it?

Stacy: Yeah, absolutely! And that’s one of the things that people do admire about me. They like their brick-and-mortar, they don’t want to let it go, but it’s just – they’re drowning in it. They can’t keep up with it. They’re nonstop. They feel like they have to be the front-and-center person that people see when they walk in the doors. And that’s not the case.

Stacy: My business is very – it feels almost like a franchise. It’s very professional. People always think we have several locations all over the place. But we’re still very engaging, and very small-town community. Everybody knows everybody. We have these amazing staff members that get to know our dancers and their parents. It really is a community. And I think that’s the key – creating that in-house, and you don’t have to be the center of all of that.

Chris: That’s huge Stacy. If more people could actually see that that is a possibility, I think people would be even more excited about being an entrepreneur. It’s so big.

[00:12:33]

Chris: So, you’ve obviously got a lot on with just running that. And then I heard that you’re now doing coaching and doing other things for other businesses. What are  you excited about now – well, actually, first; was one or two just not enough?

Stacy: [laughs]

Chris: What happened for you to start another business? You were making seven figures, you got that going – why did you decide to start another one?

Stacy: Yeah! So, what’s interesting about that is, it really was about needing a challenge and needing to keep busy, because I built this business that didn’t need me anymore – which is great! – but I like doing things! And I like working. I’m a really hard worker.

Stacy: So, when you build up businesses that you don’t need to be at them, and they’re all self-run – we’ve got systems in place and a team of forty people – everything is great! I all of sudden felt, like, “okay, but now what? What can I do?” because I was looking for something. It kind of started organically, like the dance studio. You know, people would ask me; “hey, can I take you to lunch? Can we go to coffee?” I had somebody say, “hey, can I pay for a Skype call with you?” because they lived out of state.

Stacy: And that was when I started going, “okay; maybe I have another business here. Maybe I could be doing this!” And it was so fun! I was already doing it for free, for people that wanted to kind of pick my brain. So that’s how it started!

[00:13:49]

Stacy: And I love that both my businesses started organically, with me doing them for free. Because that means I’m really passionate about what I’m doing.

Chris: That’s true.

Chris: Do you know how many people have come on this show and they’re number one piece of advice for people starting a business has been; do it for free, and then use case studies as you build your business. From Russell Brunson to Ben Settle to Ryan Stewman – the top of the top, people making seven and eight-figures every single year all said that same thing. So, what a great little gold nugget you just dropped right there.

[00:14:24]

Chris: So, you obviously decided that, “wow, okay, I’m coaching and mentoring these people. Maybe I should give it a go.” So, who are you helping with, right now? Like, what’s your focus?

Stacy: Right now, I’m helping other female entrepreneurs. Most of them are moms. They’re looking to build that business from home, but that doesn’t mean they’re online. They might be offline, brick-and-mortar, but the whole point is, they want to be able to be at home and have that flexibility that they can be wherever their kids are. Be at fieldtrips, don’t miss the dance recital, go to those soccer games – things like that.

Stacy: And I love it! It fuels me to be in business, but now that I’m a mom, there’re so many other challenges that come along with it that I want to help people figure out that productivity side and that high performance.

Chris: That’s big. You’re working with the mums so they can have more time, high productivity, high performance. Obviously, there are a lot of mums that aren’t being high-performing and having high productivity, so let’s dive in to it. I feel like we’ve covered so much, Stacy! I think we’re in hyper-drive on this show.

Stacy: [laughs]

Chris: Listeners, if you’re struggling to just, like, take this all in – if it feels like a fireman house, the amount of information that’s coming at you, you might want to take a short break right now. You can head over to christophermduncan.com/podcast, and you can have a look over there, get the shownotes, maybe you want to reverse through this.

Chris: We’re going to make a shift. So we’ve talked a lot about Stacy, and as soon you come back, what I want to be talking about is, I want to be talking about productivity with you, Stacy, and what it is you’re doing now in your online business.

Chris: Come back to us in just two minutes, listeners, and we’ll be back with you very shortly.

[00:15:56]

--

[00:16:57]

Chris: Welcome back, listeners! Here we are with Stacy Tuschl – seven-figure business owner, offline dance studio extraordinaire, and now coaching other people online how to do the same and how to have total freedom. We’re excited, Stacy, we’re covering so much. Let’s dive into productivity.

Chris: Why do people need to still go into productivity? It seems like we’ve all had time planners, everything, for years.

Stacy: Well, I think you have to just understand that you’re going to spend time, you’re going to spend money, you’ve got to figure out how to use the most out of it, because both are limited resources. So, I’m looking at both – whether it’s money or time – understanding that I only have so much, and I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to cram into my day-to-day to really get me to my goals at the end of the 90 days, or however long you set them.

Stacy: It’s just so important – especially when you are a parent, and you’ve got to make sure that you’re not planning just for yourself. Now you’re planning for your kids, maybe your spouse, you’re just getting everything ready to go. So, productivity is a huge thing that I teach other fellow entrepreneurs.

[00:17:58]

Chris: And, every single listener, you’re subscribed to the Total Freedom show. So, if you don’t think productivity is critical in freedom, here’s me saying productivity is critical in freedom. Because, as Stacy has said, we’re all running out of time. We’ve all got a certain amount of time.

Chris: Now, I just want to interject with something here, and that’s this – actually, let me ask, Stacy, just for fun; think of the person that you care about a lot in this world, and then let me ask you this: how much money would I need to give you for you to give me their life?

Stacy: None. It just isn’t going to happen.

Chris: It’s ridiculous, right! I get that answer a lot; “what a silly question!” And then I always back this up with, “well, then, why are we doing it with our own [time]?” So many of us are giving our time away, and people are trading it for money. So we’re effectively doing it with our own. So, listeners, that’s why productivity is important.

[00:18:52]

Chris: So, let’s dive in. What are some of your big productivity hacks or tricks that helps you to manage not just one business but multiple businesses and a family?

Stacy: My biggest thing is I schedule proactive work in the morning, and then reactive work in the afternoon. So I do a lot of podcast interviews, whether I’m on somebody’s show or they come on mine. It’s just – little things like that; I need meetings, coaching clients, anything – there’s a lot of times where I have to meet with people.

Stacy: All of those meetings have to happen in the afternoon, so that I can actually get to work in the morning and get stuff done.

Chris: So proactive in the morning – forward-focused – reactive in the afternoon.

Stacy: Yes.

[00:19:30]

Chris: What are some things that fit under proactive?

Stacy: Proactive is really just – it’s you, working by yourself, getting things done. I do not get in my email, that’s a huge thing I have to make sure you’re aware of. I am really working on my computer, doing things where it’s like revenue generating. I’m thinking of ways that – the business is going to grow, right? I’m looking at ways to – I’m not reaching out to people, I’m not engaging my community. That’s time for me to build the content to share with my community.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Stacy: So it’s all about long-term. What can I actually do? Because if you have – let’s say you use an appointment calendar – a lot of people use Calendly – things like that. If you’re just opening up your calendar and letting any timeslot … all of a sudden, it’s like; “well, when am I going to get my stuff done? When am I actually going to work on the business?” like we’ve talked about.

Stacy: When you block out all of your mornings, it doesn’t matter how many people – even if it’s just 9 to noon, three hours is a lot of time to work on your business, and I bet a lot of people aren’t even working that much on it, because they’re so used to checking their email, jumping on Facebook, communicating with their community – all of those types of things.

Chris: Wow.

[00:20:46]

Chris: So, blocking out time and having productive – forward-focused – in the morning, and reactive – proactive in the morning, reactive in the evening.

Chris: To me, when I think about proactive – I mean, I’m focusing on strategy and marketing and leadership. What would the chunks be for you? When you’re being really proactive, working on your business?

Stacy: I think everybody has something different. So the two things I focus on are marketing and business development. I am the strategy behind everything you see in my businesses. Yes, there are people that are helping me, but I’m really the visionary. I’m the one that’s picking and putting it into play. So, every time I’m doing something in the mornings, it has to do with business development, and then that marketing component.

Stacy: So those are my two – those are my vital priorities. Everybody might have something different that they need to be working on, but it is going to be something very close to that. So those are the two things that I am doing every single morning.

Chris: Got it. That’s huge. Write that down, everybody listening, and just put a note next to that: Stacy Tuschl told you; proactive in the morning, reactive in the evening.

[00:22:01]

Chris: I do something similar that, that just actually really clarifies a few things, so I really appreciate that.

Chris: I’ve got a couple signature questions, because we are getting ourselves towards the end of our show today. It feels like we’ve covered so much! And I knew that would happen with you.

Stacy: [laughs]

Chris: But let me ask you this: if you could do a bit of a time travel, go back to – I don’t know. Back to the beginning. Not the beginning of you, but to the beginning of you as an entrepreneur. And you were able to spend just one minute with yourself. What piece of advice or what would you give yourself right back at the beginning.

Stacy: I would say; there is no right time to start anything. It’s always about waiting – like, “oh, if I was just a little bit older,” or “if I just finished doing this,” or “made this much more money,” – all these are making excuses. You just have to be ready to go.

Stacy: It’s something I learned a lot later in life, but I wish I had known that in the beginning. There is no perfect time. There is no right time. Just get started.

[00:23:02]

Chris: True that!

Chris: And the other big question – obviously this is the Total Freedom Podcast – what does freedom mean to you?

Stacy: Freedom is just the choice.  It’s the choice, the flexibility, to do what I want, when I want, with who I want.

Chris: Flexibility and choices – I love it!

[00:23:20]

Chris: We’ve got entrepreneurs out there, and some of them are going to be massively inspired by you – Stacy, we probably need to get you back on multiple times. Number one, we need to talk more about how you took your offline business and travelled the world just using your laptop. Two; productivity. Three; just balancing your whole life – being a mom and doing everything – you’re kind of like superwoman. If there’s a definition of that, I think your face needs to be in the dictionary.

Chris: What are your final thoughts, or what do you want to leave with all the listeners out there. What do you think they really need to know at this point?

Stacy: One of the things that I learned, just in the past few years where I’m really diving in to it, is the power of collaborations and partnerships. I think we get in the mindset of – you don’t want to share anybody with anybody, but you have to realize; there are so many people out there, and nobody does what you do like you do it. I think the power of those connections, those relationships – whether it’s community partnerships, or your collaborating with other influencers – that’s when you’re going to fasttrack your business. I think, yes, you can do this by yourself, but why take so long when you can fasttrack it and surround yourself with these amazing people?

Chris: That’s huge. Stacy, I want to partner with you – that’s how good this is!

Stacy: [laughs]

[00:24:37]

Chris: What about listeners out there – they want to find more out about what it is you do and get some more information on who you are. Do you have a site they can go to?

Stacy: Yeah! My website is just http://stacytuschl.com/ , they can check out tons of free stuff there. Another great place to catch me is in my free Facebook group, and that’s a little bit easier to spell; it’s Level Up Tribe.com and that’ll get you in the free Facebook group. Either of those places are great, and then my podcast is Business Rescue Road Map (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/business-rescue-road-map-stacy/id1081130355?mt=2).

Chris: Business Rescue Road Map – what a great title! Listeners, definitely head over to that.

[00:25:12]

Chris: I just want to say, thank you so much. You’ve brought so much today – and, when I mean so much, I mean, I wasn’t even able to write! You were giving so much quality content – just from being the person you are, and also just the level of things I know you have to do, every single day. For you to spend this amount of time here with us is massive.

Chris: I’m definitely getting you back on the show. I’m going to be scheduling that in your proactive time—

Stacy: Perfect! [laughs]

Chris: [laughs] Obviously not your reactive time.

Stacy: Yes, yes!

Chris: I think there needs to be more people like you that get the success in business, have that success, and then step into the world of going, “you know what? I actually want to help,” rather than what I sense is a lot of people who are making their success by helping. And I want to ask you about that. What’s the difference when you look for mentorship and look for coaching, look for support?

Chris: How do you know?

[00:26:15]

Stacy: Well, I spent so much money on coaches and mastermind groups and all of that. I think it’s crucial. You absolutely have to find somebody. But, yes, you sometimes will take risks. And you might not get in the right group or find the right person, but it’s worth the risk.

Stacy: When you find the right person, it’s going to just skyrocket your business.

Stacy: For me, I’m always looking for somebody who is doing what I want to be doing. I can just tell, and I can see it everywhere. I can see it on their Facebook, their social media, their website. Any time I’m going, “wow! I can’t believe the kind of value or the kind of content!” I really am a big observer. I don’t just watch what you put out, I watch how you put it out. And I think that’s really important too, because you want to find somebody that is also living the way that you live – with the values that you have, and just be really like-minded.

Stacy: So be an observer. Just kind of watch and see who you resonate with.

Chris: Massive value, right there.

Chris: Everyone listening? If you have loved what Stacy had to say, you go and check out what she can do and how she can help you in your business. I’ve been watching you progress over the last six or seven months, and it has just been awesome to watch.

[00:27:41]

Chris: People out there, looking to take their lives to the next level? The fastest way to move to where you want is to find someone who’s already been there. If you’re a mum, if you’ve got a service-based business that you want to get freedom [from], I highly recommend that you go check out Stacy.

Chris: Stacy, again, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I really appreciate you.

Stacy: Absolutely! Thank you so much for having me on, Chris, this was a blast.

00:00:27- Chris: Welcome to the Total Freedom Podcast, with your host Christopher Duncan. Today I’m with the publicity guy, Mr Andrew O’brien. Andrew, it is so good to have you here man. Everyone’s talking about you to me from Russell Brunson to Alex Charfen and Dr. Ed Osburn. Dude, seems that we just needed to meet, so thanks for spending in some time.

00:00:46- Andrew: Oh, thank you for having me on; really looking forward to.

00:00:49- Chris: We’d talk a lot about different marketing strategies and I think today’s going to take the cake. Getting publicity has to be the case. So let’s make sure we get a big hook in Andrew. Why should all listeners be listening and care about publicity today?

00:01:08- Andrew: I’ve got a click funnels and Russell Brunson in front of over a hundred and eighty one million people in less than ten months.

00:01:20- Chris [Laughing] Wow! Boom! [Laughing]

00:01:25- Andrew: [ Laughing]

00:01:26- Chris: There you go listeners. If you’re out there, you’re small business owners, still business owners; you’re sitting on the beach listening to this, wanting to be on the beach listening to this, if Russell uses it then that’s good enough for me; A hundred and eighty million in ten months. That’s huge man. I’d love to find out a little bit more about you and really let you introduce yourself to everybody listening because I’m certain that it wasn’t just an overnight success. Let us know a little bit of your story man.

00:02:03- Andrew: Yeah so I started, became a real entrepreneur about three years ago and what I mean by real entrepreneur is I was broke and trying to figure out how to make money [laughing].

00:02:11- Chris: [Laughing]

00:02:12- Andrew: No, I started public speaking and sharing my story. I’ve had crazy life. There were four key elements that happened in my life; prostitution, war, suicide and murder. Raised by a prostitute mother, I’ve deported to Iraq when I was in army. My mother actually, I came home and detentions take my whole life because of depression and trauma. And then my mother actually murdered her husband and I had c’est fight against her in court where she sends her life in prison. My life was crazy. It’s been a very crazy life. I used all of my experiences, I realized I had such a powerful story that people needed to hear. And I have to figure out how to get it in front of them. I started using the media to share my story and I actually became a public speaker and within three years, I was seen on a seventy global media outlets. I had to date; spoken to places like the White House, The Pentagon, all over the world like South Korea, Japan, all coast of military bases. And I actually became the most requested military speaker.

00:03:22- Andrew: I’ve been given over 20 awards from my work including the congressional recognition award from the House of Representatives in the United States. It was all thanks to media so that’s how I got started. I realized that there’s media that can really have a huge impact.

00:03:50- Chris:   Wow man, that’s huge! This is such a big shift in media. When you say media I think; it’s our offline but it seems there’s huge way of online media. What’s that shift and how’s that play a big role?

00:04:13- Andrew: Well you see a lot of people want TV and radio because it makes them feel better. So TV will make you feel good about yourself and it’s a great marketing tool as well but the thing is, online media is becoming the place that everybody gets their information. No one watches TV anymore. If I want to know something going on, I just log in to facebook and if people sharing articles about what’s going on in the world; all online. So getting seen on TV is great but someone has to get up their butt off the couch, go to your computer and research you and find you if they see you on TV. Someone read you on the blog or online media publication; all they have to do is click your name in a pretty blue link and it goes directly into that sales funnel and you catch up a lead.

00:04:59- Chris: Right. So is that your sole focus when you’re working with these top people that are getting the online media or do you do some offline as well? 

00:05:08- Andrew: No, my main focus when I’m doing my-done-for-you services; we only do online publication. We don’t do TV or radio because our biggest thing is, we want conversions, we want to capture leads; it’s not just media to get on TV to make you feel good. It’s more of a “how to get leads out of this” and so we focus on online publication.

00:05:28- Chris: I totally hear you. I got on TV a couple of times and I’ve felt so great, my parents recorded- I really came down to “did that actually generate money? Direct?” Hmm, it was ok but I totally hear you man. One thing that has really impressed me already is what you’ve done in public speaking. What is your suggestion for people out who have actually got a story and they want to start getting that, how do they start speaking? Where did you start with that man?

00:06:16- Andrew: First thing I did, first thing I always tell people is everyone has a story. We’ve all been through things I’ve had a lot of people kind of talk to me like “Well my life wasn’t as bad as yours” and I was just like “No, it’s not a competition. I don’t want to win that competition”. People have been through much more than I. It’s about realizing the power of your story and then what you want to do is create- what I do is I made the youtube videos, sharing my story and I sent it out to local media outlet so they could watch it. I made it short and simple and to keep their attention, it’s not like a ten minute video. It’s more of a two to three minute video and that sort of gain attraction. I got on youtube in my kitchen on a computer working, I wasn’t even all hi-tech. I didn’t even have a microphone. I just shared my story and I sent in some media outlets and they just jump on it. My second interview was with the local newspaper here in Austin Texas and I landed front page in twenty different newspapers across the United States.

00:07:19- Chris: What was that story?

00:07:23- Andrew: It was surviving suicide as a military veteran and how I overcame all of my trauma.

00:07:30- Wow dude. Well done. Some of these things are just absolutely huge. I’d love to hear about that positivity because when I spoke with Alex just last week, he said to me “Man, Andrew O’brien went from x amount, x amount; really quick in revenue”. You’ve also really done well in your business and this is a lot of where you started. How’s your business growing so fast? What are some of those numbers because you’ve done a lot of these things, that seems so quite a while ago and you’re doing pretty well right now, right?

00:08:13- Andrew: Yeah! I went from broke to like, I have to borrow money from my brother to pay my mortgage so I wasn’t get evicted and literally the next week after I borrowed $800 dollars from my brother, I made $60,000 and since then, this was just in February of this year. I’m sorry; it was March or April of this year. Since then, we’ve broken six figures a month sales. Actually last month, we made our first; a hundred thousand dollars one time sale. So we went from broke to six figures a month to six figure one time sale.

00:08:53- Chris: Wow! And this is in one year?

00:08:58- Andrew: This is a in about six or seven months.

00:09:03- Chris: Wow dude! That’s exceptional. What do you think like, after everything that you have. Obviously, it’s not an overnight success. What made the difference to really have such incredible growth?

00:09:15- Andrew: I signed two very important people at the very beginning. The two people work here at Maddix. I think you spoke on site with them. The second one was Russell Brunson. They were my first two clients. Getting those big names behind me and proving my work to them really boosted my business because it wasn’t just “Here’s what I’m going to try to do for you. Here’s what’s going to happen”. I gave them exactly what I said I would give them and they spread the message out for me.

00:09:51- Chris: So how did you do that? I know Caleb and I know Russell. So Caleb and Russell, you signed both of those as your first two and that both have been in this podcast as well. How did you go from “I don’t have anything to getting them as clients” share that process for us man if you’d like. That would be- it’s huge!

00:10:25- Andrew: What I did with Caleb is I; I called his dad because they didn’t feel like to reach out to a 14 year old directly. So I messaged his dad on facebook and say “Hey, I just saw your son’s video and I see that he’s doing really well. I think the media would love the story. Here’s what I’ll do, I’ll do this for free. I won’t charge you a dime for this and all that I ask is recognition when I make you happy.” So I offered value and ask for nothing in return besides recognition for making him happy. When you’re able to do that, people will give you chance to offer value. That’s not going to cost them anything, “why not?” right? So I did that and then that’s how Russell Brunson found out about me. Russell Brunson reached out. I charged Russell Brunson but I gave him a big discount for what everybody else is paying. Since then, I don’t charge Russell Brunson for my services at all anymore because Russell Brunson has grown my business by eighty percent. He has increased my business eighty percent just because he tells people who I am and what I do.

00:11:31- Chris: Got it man. I want to dive into it. What is it that people need to do to get themself in social media? It seems freaking and horrid but not many people do it.

00:12:23- Andrew: Yeah.  Getting media is- one of the four important prices of doing it is; media is great but if you don’t use it the right way, it does nothing for you. The reason I aid that is, Forbes alone has over 1800 contributors. The majority of those contributors write a post a week. Getting on Forbes is great but 1800 people a week also got on Forbes. Getting on media, the actual steps on getting on it is; most important is building relationship with the writers. What I tell people is reach out directly to writers, look into their articles and then send them an email, commenting about how much you love the article they wrote about each topic especially when they said this thing in paragraph 2 or whatever because you want them to know that you really read their work. That’s the first step of getting media exposure to actually reach out and contact them directly.

00:14:49- Chris: You mentioned that media is just one of the steps; I know you got a four step process. Let’s dive into that. I’d love to understand more about what it is that you can do for them especially how they can make sure that they get the most out of social media. Let’s start at the top. What’s the name of your system again?

00:15:10- Andrew: The name of the system is the visibility to growth formula.

00:15:17- Chris: The Visibility to Growth formula, what does it mean?

00:15:19- Andrew: It means, get more visibility and scare your business. Getting visibility is great but if you’re not taking the right steps; being in front of a hundred and eighty million people is awesome but if you don’t have a way for them to buy your services or follow up with you or join your trade, it means nothing. Just means you got in front of a hundred and eighty million people.

00:15:41- Andrew: There are four steps and the biggest thing is; if you think about the average entrepreneur; we have more than one title. My name is Andrew O’brien and I am the publicity guy and that’s what I’m known as but I’m also an author. I’m also a public speaker, I’m also a consultant. So a lot of people, most entrepreneurs have more than just one title. We maybe CEO of our company but a lot of us like speaking on stage, a lot of us are consultants, or digital trainers. We do online courses. A lot of us write books, we’re authors. You want to use the visibility growth formula with every title you use because every time you use it, it’s going to be different depending on the title you’re trying to be recognized in that specific media.

00:16:28- Andrew: The first step is message. You got to understand, what is your message and how to share? A lot of us want talk about how awesome we are and the great was I for getting but what people really want to hear, is that you understand their opinion. That you’ve been there and that you’ve overcome it and you’re going to show them how to do it. So it’s “Hey, I know what you’re going through. I was a broke entrepreneur. I didn’t know how to pay my mortgage. I had to borrow eight hundred dollars from my brother and literally within the next week I made $60, 000. Here’s how I did it”. So what I did right there is I built a relationship with my audience. I made them trust me, “Wow, I’ve been there. I know what that feels like. He understands me. I want to learn more about this guy.” You know what I mean?

00: 17:09- Chris: Right. I think it’s huge that you really got into story and storytelling. I’m going to double background to that. I’m going to take a note here. I want to get through and understand the other parts of the system because that is such a key first step man.

00:17:28- Andrew: The second step is your market. So you figured out your message. You figured out how to make the audience feel supported and protected because they heard your story and they know that you understand their pain. The second part of market is who do you want to be in front of? So if I want to be known as a public speaker for the specific reason, I just want to get on my stages. This is what I’m doing right now because I do want to get on my stages. What I’m doing is; I’m trying to be “Where is my market?” Well my audience are business owners so obviously, the publications I want to go after; I’d place as such as an entrepreneur at Forbes in business and say success magazine, business type publications. Why? Because my market which are event planners, contents coordinators, people that are entrepreneur focused that’s why they’re reading and you have to think; what’s going to give you the highest credibility in that market? Getting on to someone’s blog really is going to give me credibility but If I get on to Forbes, Inc and Entrepreneur, that’s going to boost my credibility with the audience.

00:18:42- Chris: Huge. What’s the next step?

00:18:44- Andrew: The next step is media and that’s just; “How do you get on to media?” “How do you build those relationships?” and the most important part of the step is realizing media is so much more than social group. You should be able to turn every podcasting of you, every blog, and every life scale media publication into an automated lead generation tool which means you complete the podcast and I’m going to do with this podcast right here. I complete this podcast, it goes lives. I run facebook ads to it and I retarget that audience and I get them to subscribe into my tribe because that’s where- all media outlet should be doing for you is a lead generation tool.

00:19:21-Andrew: You also want to make sure that you’re getting on there more than once. Being an entrepreneur once is awesome so now you can put the pretty little logo on the side but media is so much more than pretty little logos. You want to be an entrepreneur five times Forbes, six times Inc. seven times- because the more you have that the more you’re recognized as the expert in your industry.

00:19:40- Chris: Got it. Where do people go to get more information from you? You mentioned there’s a little, facebook, community or group or tribe? Where is that?

00:19:51- Andrew: Yes, it’s just “Authority Unleashed”. It’s on facebook. It’s Authority Unleashed.

00:19:56- Chris: Perfect. Thank you so much. I love it. You’re going to drive facebook traffic to this. That’s amazing1 [Laughing]

00:20:06- Andrew: Yup. Then we have one more step. The last step is magnetism. What I meant by magnetism is not just how do you get on media, but how do you attract that audience that saw you on video to join your tribe. How do you capture those leads? How do you actually get them to convert into sales, into fans? I always say fans are more important than customers. Customers by once, fans continue to return and buy, then wait for your product launches then want to buy and then they send their friends to come, buy from you too.

00:20:39- Chris: Send their friends. Getting fans and actually attracting people to go on be your evangelist and get out there and really share, it can make such a big difference. I know Russell talks about the thousand fans thingy and it is a big deal. So message, market, media, magnetism; one thing that really stood out and this is number one; what a great system because it really is everything that you need but the power of the story. We’d talk about that a little bit but you’ve really crafted a great story and you said that the message section which were from $800.00 - $60, 000.00 and such a great story. Would you be able to expound a little bit of what makes you great story in media?

00:21:26- Andrew: The most important thing is something that makes you stand out above everybody else right? Because a lot of people are doing “here is the very step to become a billionaire”, and they’ve never made a billion dollars. The media is used to all those who want to be professionals, want to be people talking about how wealthy they are, how they’re going to teach you how to run the successful business and they’ve never run one themselves. So what they want to make sure is that you know what you’re talking about, you have proof, actual proof; that’s of course you did it so if I want to go and pitch about “How millennial’s aren’t lazy” and actually are, this proactive people who just need to believe on what they support or what they’re doing then what I’ll do is I go and look out research done out a college and I’ll send a link to their writers saying “look, here’s a proven research by an accredited University”. So it’s providing facts.

00:22:25- Chris: There is a massive amount of non experts showing up as experts at the moment [laughing]. I’m glad you’re talking about facts and getting out there and make sure that we provide that because the story needs be really true but what else is need in the story because you got this- It’s just profound. I don’t know if you know how profound it is but it’s like “He had it here, boom!” That’s the story. It’s just so clear cut. Do you have a different story for every one of your titles because you also mentioned that as well? Do you have a different message, market, media, or magnetism for each one of those?

00:23:03- Andrew: I do so if I want to be known as an author, my goal is to buy my books right? So I want to talk more about; here’s a story that I went through my life that I share in my book where I go, I dive in deeper. So I gave them a little face of it like “I’ve been to prostitutions, war, suicide and murder”. You want to learn more, dive deeper and see the life I’ve lived, go buy my book. That’s the kind of message I want to give right away from or get into the media so I want to make sure that I’m leveraging the right way to get the audience do exactly what I want them to do.

00:23:39- Chris: [laughing] It’s brilliant. You’re so good at this man. I’m just like “Wow!”

00:23:46- Andrew [Laughing]

00:23:47- Chris: I love when you’re sharing that. There’s prostitute, war, suicide, murder and then you have the- it’s that something that’s part of it having that little like really simple easy kind of thing to say. I don’t know; elevated kind of pitch but not really. It’s that an important part or is it something that you’re doing naturally.

00:24:04- Andrew: A lot of us want to send out emails and tell people our whole life story. Especially if we are asked about our business, we can talk for hours about it. The most important thing is making as clear cut and simple as possible to get them intrigued. What I call it is “Open the door”. You just want to open the door. You don’t want to walk in; they’re not going to let you walk in. Just open the door and get them intrigued with enough information, where they want to follow up but not too much where its’ just overwhelming and delete the email.

00:25:21- Chris:  You’ve taught so much value on this show already so thank you so much. We’ve got a few seconds questions that I love to ask so I just want a quick shift into those before we double around and talk more about you. One of them is; if you’re starting over from scratch today, like right now and the only thing you’re allowed is your experience. No context, no money, complete scratch, no relationships, only your experience, how would you start?

00:25:51- Andrew: I would start by going out and creating the relationships and what you got to do is go to every conference I could ever get into and start networking.

00:26:05- Chris: Why start with the relationships?

00:26:08- Andrew: Because that’s what money comes from. Money always comes from relationships. Success comes from relationships just like my relationship with Russell Brunson. I don’t charge him forward anymore because he took such good care of me for getting my message out there. I wanted to let him know I appreciated it. A lot of people asking me, “Why do you not charge this guy who’s super successful doing hundreds of millions a year?” “Because I’m making more money by him promoting me than I would charge him.”

00:26:37- Chris: [Laughing] Super smart. Here’s the revert part of the question. If you could go back ten years and you could just have one minute with yourself ten years ago, what is it that you’d say?

00:26:51- Andrew: It’s really simple. All I would say is understand your value because that was my biggest issue. Realizing my value and being afraid of charging what I could charge or sharing my story. That’s just, understanding the value of what you can do in this world.

00:27:14- Chris: The last question is this, what is freedom to you?

00:27:22- Andrew- Freedom to me is being able to spend every minute that I can with my kids and my wife. It’s being able to not have someone tell me that I have to work 8-5 for the next 30 years to do some crap retirement and never make enough money to do the things I’d always wanted to do with my family. Take them on trips. Get to spend quality time with them.

00:27:42- Chris: Amen to that.  I’d so love being here with you and learning so many more about you. We do need to wrap it up because we want to keep this nice and short so everyone gets all the information that they need but I think we need to get you back on another time because I’ve got two pages of notes here that I needed to go into as well from getting first and doing it for free with Russell and Caleb King is self started, from building relationships rather than getting to.  Prostitutes, war, suicide and murder, we could really talk just on that. Your four steps is huge man. The message, the market, the media, the magnetism, the power of the story, power of opening the door, I don’t know where to start man but I really appreciate it you dropping and sharing it to everybody. What’s one thing that you would love that you haven’t shared already that you think is really important that they know?

00:28:33-Andrew: The most important thing that I would say is always share every media out you’ve been on more than once on your facebook page. Don’t just share once say “Hey, I’m on Forbes! Check it out!” and then leave it alone. You really want to use media to its full potential. You need to be running ads, you need to be really focusing your coward audience and sending them directly to media once they give that instant credibility and builds that instant trust for people who have never heard of you before.

00:28:59- Chris: So badass dude. More value just keeps coming. So where can people who are ready excited about hearing this getting more information from you.

00:29:10- Andrew: I would just tell every man, check out my facebook group. Would love to have you on there, it’s just Authority Unleashed. I’m not going to give you a sales funnel jumping to. Just join my group and I’m passing, dropping value. Every day we have daily videos that go out, Monday through Friday. Everyday giving you more tips and advice.

00:29:26- Chris: That sounds really cool. I’m going to find this straight after we jump off on this today. Dude, I appreciate you so much for getting on here. Listeners, take action on this. It doesn’t matter where you are in your business right now or starting out. I think that things Andrew shared today; let’s get into his group and I highly recommend it. People I trust massively have used Andrew. I could tell just from this call that he really cares. Freedom for him is getting out there and doing good things, charging his value but also looking after his family and it sounds like if you’re in his tribe, you become family so man get in there and  Dude, thanks for caring man. Awesome stuff, appreciate it.

00:30:09- Andrew: Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

00:30:12- Chris: [laughing] We’ll get you back man!

00:30:14- Andrew: [Laughing]

00:30:16- Chris: Hey listeners live with Total Freedom, Free your mind! Free your time! Free your life! Subscribe to this show. Please leave us a review and we’ll be back in two days time for another Total Freedom Podcast. Have an amazing day! Do what matters most. Smash it!

00:00:23- Chris: Welcome to the Freedom FastTrack Podcast! My name is Christopher Duncan and I am super excited.  We had Brian Evans on the show earlier and now, we got his partners in crime in Influencive; Clinton Senkow. Dude, I am excited to learn more about you! Thanks for jumping on the show.

00:00:37- Clinton: Thank you so much for having me. I’m pumped to be here and yeah it’s always fun just connecting with other entrepreneurs and people doing cool things like yourself.

00:00:46- Chris: Thanks man and likewise. I don’t really know we’re going to go. I think we’re joking on something about marketing.  I think it’s going to be fun. You guys have done amazing with Influencive and it looks really cool. So I’d love to start up by you sharing a little bit about Influencive and how that’s going. I saw your Youtubes, it’s got 400 thousands’ subscribers.  You guys only started it less than two years ago, right? 

00:01:14- Clinton: Oh yeah. We started; with the website, Brian started it in January. It’s kind of the best way to say it.  And you know we just kind of use a lot of different techniques and just start experimenting for the past few years just to keep growing all of our different channels. It’s been really, it’s been mind blowing. Honestly when I started contributing for the platform back in June, I saw few pieces, few posts that I wrote; just kind of went completely viral. Some of them were like post that we wrote, other ones were just like post that we have on facebook. They reach 5 million people, 8 million people. We kind of saw that happen and when we saw that, that’s why we knew we have something good. We were doing; we’re in the right area, we’re in a good niche. We’re just trying to keep modelling through. We know that we’re just getting started and we still have a lot more to do.

00:02:15- Chris: Nice man and it is exciting. I’ve kind of learnt about it and saw what you guys are doing. I think what’s great about the platforms that’s happening is there’s so much opportunity. I’ve been in business 12 years and you know travelled and done most of the same figures and so many people but here’s what’s interesting right now. The right at which we can get something moving is incredible.

00:02:41- Chris: I would love a little bit of your story. You’re entrepreneur, your journey and what it is that you’ve been up to that time.

00:02:53- Clinton: Yeah! My kind of entrepreneur, whole journey is a little bit different. It’s kind of all over the place you’ll see but I; my first adventure business experience whatever you want to call it when I was seventeen. I joined this after school program called junior achievement. Basically junior achievement; it teaches kids from 15- 17 years old after school- once a week for three hours, “how to grow business”. You create a business plan, you create a product. You sell shares, you sell products. You create, you do everything.

00:03:31- Clinton: I have friend of mine that brought me into that and we ended up creating a Lip balm and Lip Gloss Company. We created that, actually sold to our friends and family type of thing; making a little bit of money. That was kind of my first school. Little thing into business and I’d been an athlete my whole life. Went to college on scholarship, got my business degree and graduated in 2013; three or four years ago now. Ever since then, I’ve just been involved in mostly sales and marketing type roles. I’ve been involved in sales with one of Venture start ups; that was the 1.5 Million C Brown. Another one was a crow funded back start up as well. So I was in sales, marketing kind of top marketing partnerships often. I’ve started to write for a bunch of different platforms; few wellness and health magazines up in Canada where I am.  That’s where I really found a passion and hobby in writing.

00:05:03- Clinton: We’re starting to see a lot about “come about now”, when people start to send messages and say “We love what you guys are doing. Your posts help us get from here to here”. That’s what really drives me every day, just getting those positive encouragements from other people in all over the world.

00:05:22- Chris: A lot of people thought that blogging was going to die and I heard it just like you hear “It’s going to die” every single year. Why blogging? Why do you think people listening take up blogging and do that?

00:04:59 - Clinton: The reason why I think people should take up blogging is; it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, whether you’re entrepreneur or not you need to have those good communication skills. When you become a good writer, it forces you to perform better in multiple areas of communication whether it’s writing an email to a colleague or for potential customer or client. Once you become better at writing, you start writing, you start seeing that little things that you could be doing better. How you can work something better, how this sound compared to this. And I feel that time, the benefits that I’ve really had through the years of becoming a better writer; I can communicate whether it’s face to face or in person. In front of a crowd, I can talk to someone in an email; we can have a phone call. Whatever it is in multiple areas of communication, it really made my skills so much better.

00:07:07- Clinton: If you’re starting a company, you’re starting a start up. It’s always important to have your own personal brand. When you’re able to write and you’re able to blog, or whoever contributing on your sites; it really helps build up your profile, build up your image and I think overall it’s just a huge benefit to you and your business or whatever you’re doing at the time.

00:07:40- Chris: I think a lot of times, people get scared or worried they’re not going to be good enough or they’re not going to know what to say so did you take a writing course before you started or you just start? How do people get started?

00:07:55- Clinton: [Laughing] I love it! That’s so funny. Another unconventional way of how I became a writer but I honestly had a 52 in English 30. Never going to have a strong writer, you could have never paid me money to write anything. I had that sense of structure. Always been a god speller, and it came to me in probably about my third year in college where I started; I always started getting better and I started getting better grades from some of my teachers. I was like “Oh wow!” and I’m like “This is cool”. I’ve got a little bit of confidence. There were two contests. They were both in twitter, believe it or not and they were for post secondary/collegiate students. You submit an essay for this and you can win a trip to this conference. I submitted to one and I was one of ten students from across the province in Canada to go. I was like “Wow! I won!” Few months later, came up another contest and I submitted and I won again! That one was light-year, crazier than the other one. Everything is paid for; meeting these mayors and these business leaders, everything from all over my area in Canada. So that was just really opened up my eyes like “Wow! Maybe I should start writing. Maybe I should do this a little bit more”. I kind of getting started; involve online and do some writing in four different websites.

00:10:51-Chris: Why do you think people are so scared to start man? What is that all about?

00:10:56- Clinton: People are scared because number one, they don't like failing and number two; they love comfort. That’s why not everyone’s business owner, not everyone’s entrepreneur because probably they have a job right now that maybe they’re not hundred percent happy at but it’s paying the bills.  I guess this is where entrepreneurs’ success stories came from “When you do get down into that really dark place on your journey of entrepreneur and you’re struggling to pay the bills, or you’re just struggling to make things work, you become crafty. You find ways to make things work because in the end if you’re passionate about it and you really want to do whatever it is  you’re doing and build it to a success, you’ll find ways to make it work. You really become resourceful. That’s the sign of a really good entrepreneur.

 00:13:14- Chris: Freedom is huge and is really all about starting. I think people want some crazy secrets but honestly, you start and then you get better. So you do a lot in sales and marketing with Influencive, so what do you think is the key to really get Influencive off the ground? You mentioned that, that’s kind of took you by surprise. What do you think made the difference of why that blog is taking off the most and some are not?

00:13:59- Clinton: Honestly number one, I think Brian and I make a really good team. In any product or any business, if you don’t have the right people around you; it’s going to be hard to get something going. Brian and I have a really good relationship. We have very good networks of people and connections that we stay in contact with that we provide value to. Definitely having the right team is one. I’m always trying to connect with other media people, other writers, and other entrepreneur; finding ways that we can kind of leverage each other and our networks. I know what we have is a valuable asset to other people as well.

00:17:14- I like to dive into that a little bit. So what would you give some of your advice or things when you build relationships? Which platforms do you use the most? Do you get them on a call? How do you build business?

00:17:28- Clinton: Honestly, I feel this is another thing that people are sometimes scared of. They’re like “Hey, you’re on for podcast”. One of the best things you’re creating a podcast is connect to other who’s really successful and know what they’re doing and connect with them in their community. One of the best ways to get people to take it noticed is; Yeah! It’s to light their stuff; it’s to communicate with them. You’re building that rapport and relationships to people over time.

00:19:21- Facebook is definitely something that’s very important to me in growing myself and growing Influencive and it’s definitely helpful. Just the last check that I’ll say is that, I think that’s super important for people to have consistency within your platforms, consistency within your social networks and your organity. If you’re on facebook, and it’s different name than what you have on your instagram then it’s hard to find you. It’s hard to figure out what you’re doing, what your value, what your experience is and I think the easier it is to find information on someone, the more trustworthy, the more professional that person is.

00:20:58- Chris: If people really want to build a relation, here’s my tip: Find or build something that add value to somebody else. If you can come and say, “Hey, I’ve got a podcast and this podcast that you’re on right now; this is going to reach hundred thousand people. This is value, I can get Clinton on a podcast, I can get Russel Brunson. We had Garry, we can get people on the show because we're coming with value. I think relation is so important. I want to hear your tips on this. We create a personal brand but we also need to create that other thing that other people can be part of. They want to go on something that’s community. So last question, when people building a community in getting others, what are your tips on naming that community because you don’t want to name it yourself and how could they think about that?

00:22:04- Clinton: I think one of the things that kind of important to start is obviously, you have that personal brand. If you’re starting from nothing, you’re behind that eight ball right? You have Chriduncan.com, you have whatever built up already, you have some followers or you have that people following you on linkedin, whatever it is; you have someone that you can start from. Lastly, you have access to those platforms and be professional.

00:22:33- Clinton: Moving on from that, this is how I come up with names. I’m always buzzing with ideas; things are always going to my head, as an entrepreneur we’re full of ideas. Whenever i come up with a name, I ask some people like “hey, what do you think of this name?” and “Oh yeah, that’s a cool name!” Then I go and buy the domain for $15.00.

00:23:17- Chris: I tell you something funny. I’m so sorry to interrupt but every single Tuesday when we go through our book keeping, my VA says to me, “Chris here's the list of all the domains that are expiring, do you want any of them, no? And I said “put them to expire”. It means i bought them a year ago.[Laughing]

00:23:57- Chris: Let me ask you this question. What does freedom mean to you?

00:24: 03- Clinton: Freedom means to me that basically, I can pick up and go anywhere that I want. Do whatever I want. For me success-freedom is not about having all the money in the world. If freedom is being able to go to maxicle tomorrow and not worried about it and just pick up, go to the airport, go book your holidays, don’t worry about anything, everything is taken care of. Freedom is just being able to do what you want, when you want on your schedule and that’s what Freedom is to me.

00:24:49- Chris: I want to finish off by asking you this, Is there anything that you’d like to give us your parting advice or wisdom to people out there starting to create a business to get some freedom? What would you say that they need to know?

00:24:59- Clinton: The biggest thing that they need to know is; they just need to act and when they act, they need to realize that when you take action, you’re going to fail and you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to fail, you’re going to make mistakes but you can’t get sidetrack from that.

00:25:51- Chris: Obviously, you’ve got the system that’s working. What’s next for you? What’s your vision? Where are you taking things?

00:26:12- Clinton: With Influencive? Definitely, Influencive is my, it’s the baby. We’re working on it. That’s what taking my time. I love what we’re doing. I love the mission that we have. I love impacting people, creating a platform that other are inspired by. It’s just really taking Influencive to the next level. Being a publication, being an online business that people are like, they know Influencive. It’s everywhere, they know it and that’s ultimately what the dream is just to keep inspiring it and make Influencive as biggest we can get it.

00:26:53- Chris: What a great dream and what a great vision. Everyone can go check out Influencive.com. All the social media handles, you can go and stalk this amazing man. The most important thing that I got today is make sure that you start. Get there and get started. Start writing and start straight away even if you’re terrible writer but know that it’s not what’s happening on the screen. A lot of it is behind the screen where you’re networking and connecting and adding value to other people. I think this really came out today; everyone should have something like the Freedom FastTrack Podcast as a minimum where they can add value to another person they really want to connect with. It’s huge! For me, I’m just looking forward connecting with you and more people. Listeners, thank you for tuning in today. Make sure you subscribe, like and share this podcast. Please leave us a review if you found this valuable. Track this man down and live with Total Freedom, Free Your Mind, Free Your Time Free Your Life, so you can do more of what matters most. Have an amazing day! Go right there, smash it!

00:00:24- Chris: Welcome Freedom FastTrack, here’s another episode of Freedom FastTrack Podcast. Today I’ve got a really special guest, Brian Evans. He’s the founder of Influencive and also the Inc. 500 Serial Entrepreneur. Brian, dude I’m so happy to have you here. I’ve been looking at Infuencive. What’s been coming out, some of the content and it’s quite impressive. Thanks for being here man.

00:00:46- Brian: Thanks man! Yeah, it’s awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:00:49- Chris: I think a lot of our listeners know will know about Influencive and be excited to hear from the founder. I think the best way to start is to talk a little about that. What are you most excited about with Influencive? And how did you get started?

00:01:09-Brian: Influencive, really I started it because I was looking for a place to voice my voice [Laughing]. I wanted to write online. I want to be in some of the big publications so I just literally created it as a personal blog to start with when I created it about ten months ago today. I was just literally looking for a place to feature my stuff. Before I knew it, a bunch of my friends came to me and said “Hey, can we write for two.” And I was like “Okay.” I was just kind of “keep it for a personal blog”.  Before I knew it, I had ten people that want to write for it. Then there were twenty, there are 50, there was a hundred.

00:01:47- Brian: In the meantime, I started to work. Like my content went from poor to good so I started getting asked from other publications to write for them as well. I was kind of accomplished my first goal of getting into the other platforms. But then the side effect was I started, built this site that’s getting a lot of attraction. A lot of people want to read it and write for it. So it really started to take off and I have to give a lot of initial credit to a lot of the writers. That’s where all of the contents are coming from.

00:02:16- Chris: That’s an amazing story because I think a lot of people think they need to do the writing and be the person that does it all and here’s someone like you saying “It was actually always other people”.

00:02:28- Brian: Yeah, absolutely! I think when you’re building something especially when you have a reason behind what you’re doing; it’s to affect people and help people and things like that. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, so it’s about the people that are reading and that are benefitting from it. Whoever I can get the best content from, I’ll forward that.

00:02:46- Chris: I love that man. Some of these are really important. We’re going to hear more about your entrepreneur journey. There’s a big difference between entrepreneurs who understand leverage of delegation and those that really don’t and it seems to be a divide.

00:03:02- Brian: Totally.

00:03:03- Chris: It is really exciting to talk to you more about that. We’re going to go down apart of marketing, obviously you know a lot about marketing and PR. Delegation and getting other people to do things for you Brian is a going to be fun to explore as well.

00:03:21- Brian: Oh yeah! Absolutely, definitely!

00:03:23- Chris: Let’s start off with you man. I know Serial Entrepreneur obviously doesn’t mean that you’re here to sell your products. Take us with the journey man. I’d love to understand a little more about you.

00:03:39- Brian: Yeah, before Influencive I have a company, still have it. It’s called BDE Ventures. It was my company that made the Inc. 500 list. We were named 25th fastest growing advertising and marketing agency in America. We drew everything from the PR side to actually the performance side of driving traffic in users installs for their apps and different things like that. We also deal a lot with direct response marketing companies online.  I had a lot of experience for many years. I was entrepreneur since I was 16, 32 today. So I’ve been an entrepreneur for basically my whole entire life. I’ve been doing advertising and marketing essentially the whole time online and grew up in sort of an early days of google when it was first starting and learning how to sort of leverage traffic and things like that. So yeah, it’s been a very interesting journey, exciting journey. I wish I could say this is my first, you know with Influencive people say “Wow, it’s been so successful in ten months!” but really it’s been a sixteen year over a night success.

00:04:47- Chris: [Laughing]

00:04:49- Brian: What they don’t hear about is all the failures I walk with. I had success too of course but there’s been a lot of stuff that you know it’s like “Oh, we’ll talk about that one day” [laughing]

00:05:04- Chris: [Laughing]

00:05:07- Brian: It shows perseverance and you have to keep going. Failures are lessons in disguise.

00:05:14- Chris: Right. The thing that most people tend to think is that, people just kind of turn up and there it is “Wow! Ten months! Look at this amazing blog and all these different things”. I want to dive in a little bit about what was it like 10, 15 years ago doing marketing online but it’s now, what’s really  changed?

00:05:38- Brian: 10, 15 years ago is early days. It was a pain years. People out there, we’re just kind of figuring it all out. It was like “Okay, google is brand new, facebook ads and it’s full form yet; it was figuring out, it was kind of “Wild West Days.” There was no structure. It was “Wild West” thing; algorithm’s differently exists anywhere to the extent they use today. It was completely, it’s a different world. It was a volume day’s world rather than the quality based world especially on the contents space. We had a lot of a quantity of content; you could just get lots of traffic online. Whereas today; quantity is only so much beneficial. It’s a lot about the quality.

00:06:34- Brian: My first business, I was selling physical products on Ebay and I sort of tapped out Ebay and I said “Okay, well everyone that’s on Ebay’s buying my stuff. It’s in this niche, “how do I get more traffic to it?” So I started creating sites with, early days ago basically to get traffic to Ebay; that was like my sale’s page basically, I was leveraging google starting out. I was leveraging that kind of traffic to get them back to my Ebay store. I was actually confused because I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneur. I just want anyone to buy my business so I was like “Oh you want to buy it?” “Okay”. I didn’t seek out to become an entrepreneur. That was very much accidental for me. I was like “Okay sure! I’ll sell it” so then to me this is my moment of time that allowed me to sort of experimenting with a lot of different things.

00:07:30- Chris: I think that experimenting is such a key component Brian and I want to pause and I know you said about it but I want to hear about it because I see a lot of entrepreneurs getting out there and starting. We talk a lot about freedom and one thing that sort of scared of is failing. I like to say this thing that business is just a series of micro tests. [Laughing]

00:07:57- Brian: [Laughing] Absolutely.

00:07:58- Chris: Tell us about some of the experiments and what you’ve figured out?

00:08:05- Brian: From there basically what I did was “Okay, I figured on how to sort of get some traffic online” so I started building these big sites, it was lots of content. I was putting ads and I was using google ads back in the day. It’s very successful times early on due to figuring out sort of the early google algorithms. So I would test out and put ads on there but then what I realize was “Okay, somebody’s making money from these ads.” There was like no competitors back then especially just google ads and one or two others. I said “Okay. How else can I make money?” I started experimenting with different products. So I said “Okay. I’m going to go directly with the source.” Who’s advertising different ads? And I would go to them and I would join affiliate programs and things like that, get permission, or get percentage of a sale or whatever and it started to work as well. I would work with these different companies. It was more successful I would say when sort of tech products coming out, Netflix I first started. I would drive traffic into tem and they would pay out $20.00 per user that I get to sign up for example.

00:09:10- Brian: I started to figure out “Okay, there was more to this.” I started tinkering and experimenting with all these different ways to monetize and to make money from the traffic. It was like this fun journey of “Okay, what kind of traffic do I have?” Also, you learn things too because what people don’t realize is that; just because someone’s on site looking on a video game content or something like that, something random like that, they can still be part of a bigger demographic. It’s interested in something else; they don’t have to be something about video game, whatever. What this experimenting taught me and made me learn was that “Wow, there’s so much psychology behind everything we do”. We’re program, so much colours, images, words; everything is program inside of us so deeply. It’s like you go to a movie theatre, even if you don’t like, even if you’re super health conscious and you don’t like popcorn or soda but you hear it on the screen before the movie even for a second; almost everybody’s like “Man, I want some popcorn and some soda.”

00:11:40- Chris: For the starter entrepreneurs that they’re trying to find their idea; would you suggest they just follow things that they’re curious in and take on an experiment?

00:11:49- Brian: I think you have to because this is what happened for me. When I was a kid, I struggle big time at school. If you go to my sort of back story, I struggle in school big time. I didn’t learn traditionally. So I was forced to literally find a different ways to learn to do things. The traditional path didn’t work for me, I ended up, I tried quote and quote three times in school, dropped out three times out of college [laughing].

00:12:34- What I was learned was, the things that I was especially interested in: I like a lot of basketball shoot. I would sit outside and shoot basketball like shoot three points thousands of times. My mom would be calling me in for dinner and I’d say “No, I have to make ten more shots” and I would not come in until I make ten more shots.

00:12:55- Chris: I just need to let you know how incredibly similar our story is at this exact point.

00:13:02- Brian: Wow!

00:13:03- Chris: I end up playing basketball for my country. I do thousands every morning.

00:13:10- Brian: I had no idea! That’s amazing.

00:13:16- Chris: I actually paid someone else to go through all my lectures.

00:13:22- Brian: I thought, I got to try that too [Laughing]

00:13:28- Chris: I love that. Here’s what I love about that shooting stuff man. There’s metrics there’s numbers and there’s a system to follow and for me, it was one of the most meditating and enjoyable but also sometimes very frustrating.

00:14:26- Chris: Here’s my question. How did some of your upbringing especially sport, do you think it’s correlated to your success in business?

00:14:34- Brian: I think there’s definitely a correlation. Going a little bit deeper, what happened to me is; I was a kid. I was eight years old and this is also sport related I guess. I was riding a bike. I was playing football on my bike.    

00:00:25- Chris: Welcome to the Freedom Fasttrack show, my name is Chris Duncan and I’m here with Mr. Goodlife- Farokh and it’s so great to be catching up with you and hanging out. We were talking off the air and we just have to press record because both of us connect with so many different things. You’re born in Paris, you live in Montreal and right now you’re zooming in on this show all the way from Etsy, is that right?

00:00:48- Mr. Goodlife: Right, exactly right from Bologna.

00:00:51- Chris: From Bologna. Nice man! You’re smashing it dude! You’re getting a hundred million impressions on instagram every single week which is amazing. You’ve started two companies so you’ve got the Mr. Goodlife brand, the Impact Billions brand. Dude there’s so much having! Listeners, we’re going to dive deep in everything social. Dude, welcome to the show! Thanks for being here man!

00:01:28- Mr. Goodlife: Thank you man! Thank you Chris so much and thank you Austin for this opportunity as well. You guys are great! I got told “Hey, do you want to be on the show with Chris?” And I am like “Hell yeah! I’m sure the listener’s are going to love this!” Let’s do it man! Let’s just get it on!

00:01:47- Chris: We have to bro! And it’s exciting man! You’re twenty one years old, you’re full time at college right now and then you’re running these businesses. I want to dive right into that. How do you manage your time? How do you get all that fun? You’re doing lawyer, you’ve got a business doing all of that six figures. You’re crushing it! How do you manage all these?

00:02:09- Mr. Goodlife: You hit the nail! How do I manage is the question I get the most because I’m twenty one so on top of all these I have to make in a certain social life. I guess it’s a lot of discipline. That’s the word. That’s the key word because you got to know when it’s time to work and when is the time to party or when is the time to do some sports or when is the time to study. And balance, balance is important. There’s a certain work like process email’s hub which is hard being so young because you just want to do something else but I guess it’s mostly passion because I’m doing what I love.  I love studying law in international relations.

00:03:02- Mr. Goodlife: Once it’s something you like you don’t realize the time goes by. You just have to be careful not getting lost and keep in track so once it’s time to work, you work and when it’s time to study, you study. That’s it because there are so many hours in a day and no time should be wasted.

00:03:42 – Chris: We were talking off air and that’s where we had to press start about a lot of things. You’ve talked, brought up discipline right now and being passionate; something you are so passion about and have to be discipline at sport. You’ve played all around the world and you tell me about your squash cray, sponsored athlete; USA is Muhammad Ali, almost everything. How do you think that has translated to you?

00:04:17- Mr. Goodlife: I think sports; I played a lot of sports when I was younger. I started squash when I was three years old.  My family always put me into sports mostly squash where I was a sponsored athlete. I think sports taught me a lot about that discipline I was talking to you about. Sports teach you ‘’when there’s training, there’s training”. And you have to get better.

00:04:46- Mr. Goodlife: Sports teaches you how to be focus especially on one on one game I was playing. You have to be focus on yourself, not the crowd. It teaches me something “get it done”.  It allows you to say something as well because you want to win. Learning how to lose will teach you how to win. On the business point of view because now that I don’t do sports professionally like I used to, it allows me really to know how to work since I couldn’t do sports.

00:06:56- Chris: There’s going to be people listening to this and going “Oh instagram! Like that thing where you take pictures at facebook. Can you really make money from it? Why should people be using instagram in business talk?

00:07:10- Mr. Goodlife: Why people should be using instagram? Why you should do it? It is because it’s amazing! It’s the best thing that can happen right now.  I think people should understand that instagram today is of reality. It’s really implemented into our daily life for most of people especially from millennials and generation to come as people get addicted to social media that we are. On instagram, it’s a window for your business so we can attract a lot of potential clients, network. It’s very important for influencers, people like myself or people who have media agencies. You got to be from the comfort of your home, you don’t have to all over the place.

00:08:47- Chris: I think you’re so smart and you’re doing so well like this numbers are huge and you’re right when you say that TV can’t even get that. That’s amazing. I want to ask. What do you think is the future of TV? Do you think that the television and radios going to die?

00:08:50- Mr. Goodlife: I think it has died out a lot since the last ten years. Radio is just terrible right now. First of all I never listen to radio. The ads there are terrible. People are sick of it. People changed channel every time. I think the radio shows today; they never show you the neighbourhood rapper or singer or something or put it on there. It’s just all the same thing over and over again. It’s a typical music that we hear all the time. I did a case study before going to my business.  I look at my friends. Nobody watches TV. Netflix, or they’re streaming. There are no ads in Netflix and there’s no ad when you stream a movie or you download something. You just buy the movie. A lot of TV station is going to go down. If the TV station use social media, your shows get more views, that’s another way. Now even TV station, they have to post everything online after that for free. Do the show and post it for free and replay online because that’s how they make money. So the ad is not there anymore. It’s not on TV.

00:10:56- Chris: So it’s not on TV and you talk about “the ads aren’t there anymore”. How do we actually advertise in instagram? Would you be able to dive in deep about some tips on people moving on instagram. How do they actually advertise?

00:11:25- Mr. Goodlife: Are you asking me “How do you advertise from a customer’s point of view or from a person that has an instagram point of view?” Or those that has business.

00:11:30- Chris: It is business, definitely from a business. Out of our listeners that’s listening right now, they’re starting businesses, they’re growing companies, they’re doing things and they’re going to listen to this, they’re going to say “This guy is crushing it! How do I get my ads?” Because they’re spending money on TV, they’re spending money on facebook ads, so how do they do that? How do they actually make money using instagram?

00:12:25- Mr. Goodlife: From an influencer’s point of view if you want to make money; from your instagram pages, you just head up some brands like we do. Ask them if they want some advertisements. How many brands are there in the world, millions? The market is so big.  Competition doesn’t exist in my business because everybody can find their own brands to work with. There are so many brands, just find local brands around you to get started.

00:13:01- Chris: I love it my friend! You’re just making it simple!

00:13:05- Mr. Goodlife: I’m making it sound very simple because I’m a professional but let me tell you something that as a beginner’s point of view it’s not complicated. I started my business out of nothing. I had no money to start my business. And I grew an audience. I saw an opportunity two years ago, actually I was earlier but it’s never too late. There are 500 million active users. They’re pushing to a billion.

00:14:22- Chris: I’m going to ask you to reveal some of your big key secrets. What is something that you do or that you know that really helps you build an audience? So you can show the guests so they’d get started.

00:14:33- Mr. Goodlife: You’re asking for my secrets here for free.  

00:14:35- Chris: I know Dude! For free! I know! That’s what New Zealanders do man. We just ask the question, no one else can ask.

00:14:42- Mr. Goodlife: I’m more than happy to share this with you.

00:15:53- Mr. Goodlife: There’s no secret to grow an audience. There’s no secret and I tell everyone the same thing because that’s what I applied to myself. I teach people on daily basis on snap chat, instagram “How to Grow an Audience” basically repeat the same thing as I said in my previous article and stuff. You have to be unique and different so you have to bring something new to the table because everything is saturated. You got to be unique and find your own thing. You have to consistent.

00:17:03- Mr. Goodlife: Be consistent in your posting habits and your schedule in every aspects of your life. You need good content; everything depends on your content. Everyone will follow you depending on what you put out there, what you do, how you’re branding it, so it’s very important.

00:18:35 Chris: It’s enough to get started; be unique, be consistent. I think a lot of people fall down in two humane points there, three actually. You know what? Out of the four points you make, I think it will fall down on three. Number one; consistency lacks. Start and stop, start and stop and that’s never going to build rapport to somebody. Next, I see content and honestly, I think there’s content fatigue in the market place right now. What I mean by that is I think people are overloaded by it but the next thing coming out, another quote card I agree. And Dude, networking and actually working together is huge. We’ve got a little couple groups.

00:19:26- Mr. Goodlife: What we do, I have my seven million followers and my company Mr. Goodlife has an agency. We have a hundred and fifty million followers. There’s so many agencies out there trying to collaborate but we don’t allow it because they don’t bring business so we don’t trust them. When I go see my friends and say “I have a deal for you, business opportunity. We need you to do campaign” I’d say yes because of its network and the reputation it built in my business.

00: 21:14- Chris: I really appreciate it brother. It’s really cool to hear what you’re doing and you’re up to some amazing things. I’ve got really couple of questions I love to ask. Number is all about freedom. I’ve travelled the work and now living in the United States from New Zealand, always in a different place and so my question to you is “What is freedom mean to you?”

00:21:41- Mr. Goodlife: Freedom means being happy with your situation and where you are and just being able to do what you want as a person, without having to worry about something at all times, keeping a positive life. It’s pretty interesting actually. Freedom is really being able to do what you want in a very “open minded” mindset. Freedom is to live.

00:23:33- Chris: Dude, what’s next for you? What’s your vision man? Where do you see yourself going? You got a hundred million; you got your consultancy, what’s the next big move for you? Where are you heading?

00:23:45- Mr. Goodlife: I’m currently restructuring my tour company and scaling it up. We’re looking to be one of the biggest social media company. That’s my goal. If you ask me what my goal is, it’s to make my single life the most influential media company out there and known worldwide.

00:24:36- Mr. Goodlife: I don’t know what to say. Life changes every day. I don’t really know where i see myself. My goal is to grow this business into something amazing.

00:25:49- Chris: We’re going to wrap this one up. It’s been absolutely amazing. We’d talked about what you’re doing on instagram, how to actually use it; making sure people have discipline and following their passion. We’d talked about audience being unique, being consistent, having great content and networking. So we talked about a lot but I would love for you to finish up and share your message to everybody out there, getting started on social media or getting started in a business, just to finish ourselves, what would be your final message to everyone to hear today?

00:26:18- Mr Goodlife: Stop over thinking. Sometimes stop thinking, just do. Stop thinking, stop saying “Oh but we’re going to do this, that!” No. Just get your feet wet and go! Get started. The day I told myself, I sat down. I remember, Nov. 2014. Left my last job, ever! And I sat down. I was twenty years old and I said “I’m going to start business with Mr. Goodlife”. I sat down. I wrote Mr. Goodlife on a sheet of paper. I offered service I was going to do, obviously they’ve changed them today but I want to do this and that. I did it! I launched my business. I launched Instagram. I started talking everyday business. I didn’t care about making that money in the first 2016.

00:27:18- Mr. Goodlife: Just get started. Your biggest teacher is not the books that you’re reading. They’re good to read; the content. Even listening to me, I’ll never be your biggest teacher. I could show you the way as much as possible, your biggest teacher is yourself. You will learn. You will have experience by losing it.

00:27:58- Mr. Goodlife: At least practice. Just do your homework. I tell it to everyone. Your homework will apply to you as a person and as a business. You must go get done! I just spent fifteen hours a day in social media.

00:28:48- Chris: It was a great message man. Just go and your best experience is going to be you actually doing it. Thank you so much.

00:29:02- Mr. Goodlife: I need to add this.

00:29:02- Chris: [Laughing]

00:29:03- Mr Goodlife: I’m sorry I need to add this because once you get started people will laugh at you, envy you, be jealous of you, or hate you. Once you get started, don’t let anyone or anything step on your foot or step on your feet and then stop you. No obstacles, anywhere you confront, break it and just go through it. Focus on yourself and on your brand because what you do today may change your course of your next 15-25 years.

00:29:38- Chris: [Laughing]

00:29:39- Mr. Goodlife: The decisions you made today may change your life. If you want this and that, it doesn’t mean you want to make money. If you want to be free, travel around. If you want to get that lifestyle, you got to get done and not care about collateral noise. That’s it! That was it! Mr. Goodlife from Italy!

00:30:05- Chris: You are a rock star dude and you smash it! Everybody listening to the total Freedom Podcast, I hope that you enjoyed this. You’re going to want to re-listen to this and get the gold nuggets because this man is just oozing energy. What he said is actionable and brother I just appreciate your time.

00:30:31- Mr. Goodlife: No I appreciate your time, really appreciate it. It was very cool! Very enjoyed it! Thanks everybody for listening. I want to make sure this is shared, just follow my instagram page.

00:30:41- Chris: I was going to say. Where can they find you? So Mr. Goodlife, instagram

00:30:51- Mr. Goodlife:  My personal which is the most interesting for you guys is Farokhgoodlife. F-A-R-O-K-H Goodlife. It’s my personal page where I take you on the journey. It’s my like “little diary”. I give a lot of advice, total advice. Thank you very much for this podcast; it was actually a lot of fun.

00:31:23- Chris: [Laughing] Yeah dude, I enjoyed it. So if you’re listening, make sure you subscribe. Share this with other people wants to start their business and follow this amazing man Mr. Goodlife. My name is Christopher Duncan; this is the Total Freedom FastTrack Podcast. Live with Total freedom! Free your mind! Free your time! Free your life! Just get started on instagram today! Smash it!

00:00:23- Chris: I’ve heard so much about you and people keep telling me “Talk to this guy” and a lot of my friends. You’re nineteen and you’ve founded when suppressed, you’re doing PR in this new age of PR and it’s just impressive what you’re up to being hoping to imposed and everyone keeps telling you that you’re the guy that get people into PR and also to things so it’s a pleasure to have you on the show man. Welcome!

00:00:48- Ulyses: Thank you. I appreciate it. I’m really happy to be here.

00:00:53- Chris: I’d love a little bit of background. I mean you’re 19. It seems to me, in the short time that you’ve been in business, you’ve been out of crime and a lot and also lot of success. I’d be honoured to hear a little bit of that your journey and that story.

00:01:11- Ulyses: I haven’t been doing PR for like a decade but I had actually just started two months ago but I’ve grown super quick. I’ve been working with a lot of influencers and I got started because two years ago I’ve watched an Ad in youtube. Basically the ad was like an infomercial. Telling me that if I follow this proven step by step formula, I’d become a multimillionaire and I’d have all the cars, the women, the clothes, the houses, all that. Men I want that! I’m all in.

00:01:47- Chris: Right on!

00:01:49- Uluyses: But you know like in finality, there’s like “know one blueprint”? It didn’t really work out but after that I just went golden to all my marketing. Finding this familiar name, his name is Neil Patel. He ranks for the online marketing first and third, with three different websites so that’s crazy in itself because that’s what everybody does. I was doing research and I was like “Men, that guy is my hero, I want to be like that guy”.

00:02:29- Ulyses: Two months ago I was already contributor, entrepreneur, business, influencer, of the Hufft post and then somebody told me that I could make money off for that. I can’t take payments for myself because that’s against the rules, I’d get block listed but if you pick me, I would have to get somebody else to write a story about you. That’s what the middle man does. I even got the attention of tag workers like Myer, he’s PR person; contacted me yesterday saying that we should set up a cost, and do some PRP tag so that it can grow exponentially.

00:03:16- Chris: We talk about a lot of freedom and building businesses here so where’s your business out at the moment? Are you solopreneur? Have you got staff? What’s kind of division for you?

00:03:27- Ulyses: Right now I’m a solopreneur. I tried having a team and personally I don’t know how to manage them. I don’t know who would be good at; I don’t know how much I should pay them, so I just kind of do most of the work, most if not I’ll work myself. I do have people helping me but usually if they help me and they make money, they make all of the money so it’s not like staff. For example if they make any type of money that comes from me, they keep it.

00:04:32- Chris: I see those different moves. I’ve been helping a lot of people for quite a few years. Sometimes the hardest part is monetizing your service or product and you’ve got that and then obviously your next step is team and systems, and scale and leveraging and all of the other final aspects of what’s next. It seems that you’re just doing it, pouring your heart and it’s kind of like ‘Oh ok, I guess I can help some people of this”. How did that occurred out man?

00:04:38- Ulyses: I was doing something completely different and I got on a call with this guy named Tim. He’s the founder of Daily Dose years ago. He basically told me “Yeah, you can make money off of this”.  I didn’t really believe him and then the next day I was kind of stop everything that I was doing. The next day I called him, outreach, and I head people up and I made $2,000.00. It was just very random. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t structured, it just happened and I’m really glad it happened.

00:05:34-Chris: What were you doing before this opportunity came along to prepare? I know you’re in instant marketing, so what were some things happening and you were doing before?

00:05:45- Ulyses: I was just helping influencers, websites done, stuff like that. I think the thing that prepared me is that I was already contributor and I’d always wanted that. Ever since I got into entrepreneurship two years ago, I wanted to become like “Men I want to be at Forbes, I want to be an entrepreneur, whatever. Just because you get a certain fact that you can’t go anywhere else, for me it’s kind of a life of everything that I want. People respect you, you get to work with influencers, you’re paid a lot of money, and you’re not constantly working really hard to schedule things and it’s just aligned properly. Once he told me that, everything was already in place for me to just jump on it.

00:06:34- Ulyses: If I didn’t have all of those connections, if I didn’t have influencers that I am working with, If I wasn’t in any publications, it would be a lot harder to get started and impress because the way to dominate spesh is to be in the spesh. That’s not the case for every industry but for PR it is because you know the impact, you know the in and out, if you’re contributor; you know you get pitched.

00:07:00- Chris: Let’s dive in to that. What are your tips? If you were to give us some of your gold nuggets about getting into these publications, where would you start?

00:07:21- Ulyses: For a normal person, they would look it up as a natural thing to do. I’m going to tell you that right now, google is not your friend in this case. There are things that won’t help your case at all. I’m going to give you an example. If you type in google “write for ink”, you’re hopped on their contactor’s page. On their contact page, it will say “yeah, if you want to submit post to ink, send it to contributors at ink, whatever, columnist.ink”. That’s the wrong way to go by. And I track my emails. So I know people who note my emails or not so I sent a sample emails to each of those emails that they set to send you pitch to, never open. I came to a conclusion, that’s a junk folder. This publication gets million and millions of pages a month.  So I just write a letter again. I think that’s the way to reach people up. And I set my emails on multiple occasions. It’s like a one time trial so I have it in a screenshot.

00:10:23- Ulyses: The thing that I do a lot is I do trades. Since I’m already a contributor, I’d like you to know “Hey I love what you’re doing with this. I’m contributor for “here” and I love to feature your story and in return would you be able to add this awesome story that fits/target audience”. You get that mutual trade, who wouldn’t want that? Everybody wants to feel like they’re loved, that they have mission, that they’re name in a limelight. That’s just one of the ways.

00:10:56- Chris: Got it. When you say contributor; is there way to find them?

00:11:09- Ulyses: Yes. If you just look on these blogs and you see the people that post on these blogs, you’ll find who the contributors are just because it doesn’t say staff. It will say contributor and you don’t want to hit staff at all. I don’t want to hit up staff. Contributors are entrepreneurs so they want their business out there. That’s why they’re perfect date for press.

00:11:35- Chris: Got it. Obviously you got a good story. You have something to give these people and to make sure that they get or met that connection. How important is the story?

00:11:55- Ulyses: It is still very important. You have to understand that some people have editors so if you just put anybody on their column for a feature; their editors take a look at that so you can’t put their status as a contributor in danger. The reason my business is called Influencer Press is because they’re a lot easier to pitch. It’s a lot harder to pitch somebody that is local and stuff like that. The story does matter a lot because even though you don’t really care too much, they’re still human, you care enough.

00:12:41- Chris: Right. Everyone once have a good story and I’ve been on TV and featured in magazines and offline press news so I’m assuming it’s very similar to that. You’ve add value to the journalist this time, you just add value to the contributor. It seems a lot about who know and knocking on the right door.

00:13:10- Ulyses: Eighty percent of the game!

00:13:11- Chris: Right on! That’s just footwork right? What about some of your success stories? I know you’ve worked with some really cool people. Do you have a couple or one that really sticks out as a really bad ass success story?

00:13:31- Ulyses: Ryan Stewman, the founder of Hardcore Closer.

00:13:34- Chris:We’d had him on the show.

00:13:35- Ulyses: Yeah.

00:13:36- Chris: Listeners if you remember Ryan, I think it’s like episode 20, 25, anyway Ryan; Hardcore Closer.

00:13:42- Ulyses. Yeah. I got introduced to Ryan, personally I think he never really care about me. It’s kind of like a challenge. He want me to get him on Forbes as a contributor because he’d been trying to do it, he didn’t have any success so I ask him three things. I forgot what I ask him, it’s kind of just like “Okay. Tell me what have you done in order to make it into Forbes?” He sent me that “Alright, cool! Thank you”. That’s it! After that I told him to check his email and within forty eight hours, he got on as a contributor for Forbes. That was pretty cool for me because I’ve never done it before. I did it pretty fast.

00:14:48- Chris: Nice Dude. Ryan is such a good guy. I am sure he was super happy and appreciative about that. What was the secret man? You got to let us know how you got it so fast. Was it a hustle, was it connecting with the right person? What’s the story? What’s the secret?

00:15:01- Ulyses: [Laughing] A lot of it was already done on his part. The last part was just I put him on the right spot.

00:15:10- Chris: Got it. It sounds you’ve got a little bit of genius around that which is great. Which are next with your business man? Obviously you got this happening really well. Are you looking to bring on staff and to grow? What’s your overall vision? This seems you got this nailed and very fast, quickly by the way. What’s next? Where do you see yourself heading to?

00:15:38- Ulyses: I have competitors in the space and we all work with entrepreneurs that work, doing crazy and amazing things. I’m thinking like “How can I up my game?” And I’m thinking that to level up my game is to work with celebrities. They’re kind of like, on top level entrepreneurs. I’m going to start celebrity press. That can be really cool. I have couple of friends that are friends with celebrities so I’m going to give them PR like a very low discounted rate so that we have those few celebrities under my belt. So that when I target higher celebrities, I’ll actually have credibility. That’s the next game.

00:16:18- Chris: It seems like a really smart move. It seems that you’re doing that really naturally, getting the case studies first and getting some proof. We had Russell Brunson on the show earlier this year and he said the same thing. The fastest way that anyone can start their business and get freedom is to start getting some case studies. Give them some results. I love that you said that as well. That’s really important.

00:17:48- Chris: On the show what we’re really about is freedom. I’d love to ask some of the big questions and the best one is “What’s freedom to you?”

00:18:01- Ulyses: Freedom to me is being able to live a life I want and not to worry about like “This going to be so expensive.” Going to the mall or Wallmart or anything like that and ask my mom “Hey Mom, can I get this? “Oh no! We can’t afford it.” You can’t enjoy and get things in life because you can’t afford it. So freedom to me is being able to not worry about that. And I just like to pleasure myself like food or activities, anything like that.

00:18:34- Chris: Do you have any big bucket list, goals or any travels, speaking gigs or anything like that?

00:18:39- Ulyses: Yes. I’m going to Mexico in a couple of weeks and then I’m going to Bali and Thailand in December.

00:18:46- Chris: Nice!

00:18:47- Ulyses: Yeah. You know I want to travel. I want to live the life. I want to stay at a beach house or something like that, just enjoying myself because as an entrepreneur, you work day in and day out just to make this happen so I’m working so I don’t have to work a lot.

00:19:01- Chris: Chris: Nice. Well I’ve lived in all those places and they’re all fantastic so when you get there, you have to ask me and I can help you find the right people. There’s a few really great spots especially Ubud in Bali. There’s a cool entrepreneur hanging in there. When are you planning on going?

00:19:19- Ulyses: Dec. 22 I think.

00:19:22- Chris: Right on. So you’re going to go straight into rainy season.

00:19:25- Ulyses: Oh is it really?

00:19:26- Chris: I was mixing! [Laughing].

00:19:30- Ulyses: [laughing]

00:19:33- Chris: No, but I think it is. I’m just completely time zone wacked right now. I just thought of that speak engagement in Singapore and the Philippines and, I am speaking here tomorrow. It’s so crazy Dude like, you’re in Asia on one time zone and then suddenly you have to be shifting and change clock. It is very cool.

 00:20:18- Chris: Let me ask you this man. If you were going back to the beginning, say we’ve got a listener on here and they’re just starting as entrepreneur, what would be some of the first things that you would do, maybe differently or things that you think you did right. If you’re starting from scratch today, how would you do it?

00:20:35- Ulyses: If I was starting from scratch, I would solely focus on working with the influencers again and then just impress because that is it. The thing that I did that kind of help with that is I thought I had to know everything, and that send me back a lot because I try to learn even marketing facebook ads, with the SEO.  I always have that sort of stuff but you don’t really need to know all that stuff because if you try to do all of them, you won’t be getting any of them.

00:21:57- Chris: So what would be next when you’re focusing on that like how would you get started?

00:22:01- Ulyses: I’d start as I work for free and then after that if they like my results then they would pay me. That’s easy just because I have to be persistent. It’s like trying to get hired when you don’t have anything under your belt. That’s hard. Now if you’re able to work with them for free, you have nothing under your belt, that’s easy because who doesn’t want who work for free. After you proved yourself then you could charge. That’s how I would start again.

00:22:37- Chris: That should be the core concept for you right? I love that. Congratulations on being humble enough to do that and also getting out there and make it happen. That is awesome. Let’s jump into the quick five questions. What’s the best advice for your industry you’ve ever received?

00:23:18- Ulyses: People respect you more when you charge.

00:23:21- Chris: That’s a big one! I was actually reading that today. I was reading someone’s blog and they said “The biggest value I ever got for one program was the person didn’t let me off the hook when I tried to not pay. They actually made me pay, and because I was paying I then actually went, ended the program and signed, legally signed to say that I payed for it”.  They said it’s actually one of the biggest things. It’s kind of funny thought isn’t it? Yeah, do stuff for free. Well Dude, people actually respect you more if you charge.

00:23:59- Chris: Can you share on of your personal habit that you strongly believe, contribute to your success?

00:24:04- Ulyses: I don’t do it anymore which I should but I used to train my mind so I would constantly give myself positive informations and make myself believe that I’ll go through this or whatever. Almost like I was invincible, it would really help me bust through some major problems, I’d overcome them pretty much.

00:24:29- Chris: We are what we think man. We are what we think so that’s huge. Next is what tick, piece of equipment, app that you and your business can’t live without?

00:24:37- Ulyses: Facebook. [Laughing] Mostly all my leads, all my business goes through there.

00:24:47- Chris: You’re driving out traffic.

00:24:48- Ulyses: No.

00:24:50- Chris: No ad traffic?

00:24:51- Ulyses: I just hired like a facebook ad agency that’s going to start doing that but most of it has been just referrals. So I don’t really have to go out anymore, the best thing ever.

00:24:58- Chris: nice! That is great. I felt like facebook an ad is just coming out of a really dark period for us. We have such a tough time for about 4-5 months this year like everything is just difficult. Then the last six weeks, everything is just taken off again and now conversions are better, price for conversion is lower, so that’s good timing man. Do you have book you’ve recommend?

00:25:31- Ulyses: I don’t have a book but I do have a website. It’s called backlinko.

00:25:39- Chris: What is it? Backlink

00:25:41- Ulyses: Backlinko.

00:25:42- Chris: Like B-A-C-K-L-I-N-K and then O?

00:25:46- Ulyses: Yes.

00:25:47- Chris: Backlinko.com. Who is your hero man?

00:25:55- Ulyses: Neil Patel.

00:25:56- Chris: I knew you got to say it because you say that earlier, other than Neil Patel?

00:26:07- Ulyses: Nathan Latka. He could be very egotistical at times but he’s very smart. He makes himself seem like his a phenomenal, unstoppable and I like that.

00:26:21- Chris: You seem very unstoppable man. We’re just kind of go straight to the point. You just drop so much value in a short quick time. There are lot of listeners out there who are listening to this; I think they would really get a boost of motivation or short of inspiration or something because one thing it seems to me is you’re not trying to be anything other than you bro. It’s really cool.

00:26:47- Chris: is there anything that you want to share, really important to any people out there listening who want to start a business, get freedom and do more of what they love?

00:26:54- Ulyses: Yes. Most people already know what they needed to do, they just going to do it. A lot of people ask me “How do I do this? How do I do that?” They already know what they needed to do, they just kind of looking for my confirmation to tell ‘yes. Go ahead and do this.” If you’re looking to start a business, if you’re new to this space, you pretty much know what you need to do. You need to go out there and hustle. You need to research; you need to learn your crafts, because most people don’t actually want to learn the crafts. They just kind of do it like half pass.

00:27:32- Chris: Why is that man? Why do you think that happens?

00:27:37- Ulyses: I actually do it all the time too. I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I don’t know.

00:27:45- Chris: [laughing] I try to write it down to something to figure out myself. Our four steps J-F-T-I system, you just going to change the game, if you suggest, do it. Do you have something you want to direct people to? Some free gifts or anything like that?

00:28:29- Ulyses: I have nothing like free gift yet but if they want to check out more of my business just go to influencerpress.com.

00:28:38- Chris: And I would highly recommend it. Awesome job and it’s been such a pleasure having on here. I wish you all the best with what you’re doing with the celebrities and also, I know what’s coming next for you man so I look forward to hearing you’re building your team and the next challenges of building your business and I’m sure you’re up for it bro. Thank you for stopping by and sharing something here on Freedom FastTrack Show.

00:29:16- Ulyses: No problem man. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

00:29:17- Chris: Listeners out there if you’ve got so much today just get out there and start. If you want to get into some of this amazing press, don’t go on google. That’s not seemed to be a very good option at all. Make sure you really go out there and start building relationships and talk to this man as well. In forty eight hours, he got Ryan into Forbes which is huge. So go right there, live with total freedom, free your mind, free your time, free your life. Do what matters most! Smash it!

[00:00:27] Chris: Welcome to the Total Freedom Podcast, today it’s my honor to be with Satyen Raja and we are here to talk about total freedom just like we do every single time. Now let me tell you a little bit about this amazing man who I'm just getting to know so were going to an exploration and learn more about him on this episode. He’s the founder of The Warrior Sage Group of Companies and his prove himself in creating and running multiple successful conscious companies and that’s one of the big things I love, is the conscious company so excited to talk about that. He's a well guided secret adviser mentor and [00:00:58] a high power leader, circus of globe offering experiential training for martial arts to the art of generating money and creating passionate love, so Satian, I am so grateful to have you here. Thank you for spending some time with us in the Total Freedom audience and I don’t know where this going to go so Im excited for this spontaneity of it.

[00:01:20] Satian: Thanks for having me Chris. And the topic of Total Freedom is very close to my heart. One of my events is about total freedom, and it's close to my heart because freedom is a value, it's one of my highest values. So you can grow where you’re up to this is really going to be awesome. 

[00:01:39] Chris: I love it and leave it this start right on that then, I have my own definition of freedom but what’s yours? When we hear the word freedom what does it mean to you? 

[00:01:50] Satyen : Well really simple, one of my mentors Kevin Nations, he shared this model with me of apps, freedom standing for apps. So for me the freedoms are having the freedom of my faith, my capacity to believe in myself, the forces of the universe, the divine, so faith, family, having freedom to have time with my family my wife, my beloved children to enjoy my time and experience with them. So faith, family, finance. To me money, there's only one purpose of the money and that’s to create life experiences. That’s it. So to be able to generate, freedom with my wealth to be able to create life experiences I want. And that’s fitness, so fitness to me means having my body, my spirit, my being [00:02:37] alive so I can fulfill my mission have a great time, have awesome adventures, great sex and great energy to do it, to really live this juicy life that we have. So really for me to be able to what I want, when I want, how I wish coming from my soul and my mind unity. Not just from my ego or from my shallow itself, but from the totality of my being. 

[00:03:03] Chris: What a great explanation, and I love it. And it's so align brother that a I don't even need to share my definition, so align so that's perfect. So let's start it by hearing your story and how you moved yourself into this place of where you are today, what your excited about, would love to reintroduction to the man of [00:03:28]. 

[00:03:30]  Satian: Well, I came from Easternian family, hard-working business family. My father side was all very entrepreneurial for many generations back Easternian family. My mother side are also social reformers, Gambians, doctors, people [00:03:44] so very conflicting in some ways from traditional view [00:03:49] of business vs spirituality or social care versus growing business so I had this conflicting energy’s growing up as a child. In my heart I wanted to just serve everyone and then from the other side of me is I have to take care of myself, my business and growth that. So my journey has been really taking that [00:04:13] and getting tied of reason in between those and learning to unify them. It started [00:04:19] my induction to martial arts when I was a boy. I got deeply involved, I saw this TV show Kung Fu by David Carradine and when I saw Bruce Lee, something in me I want to become that. I didn’t have a words for it as a boy but I just knew that's what I wanted. 

[00:05:53]  Satyen: I consider myself, yes people consider me a teacher but first of all I consider myself a professional student. That's been my journey and I created an organization called Warrior Sage in '99 and my wife and I Suzzane who co leads events with me. We've been distilling all what learned in our practical life for 29 years of marriage and having two powerful growing teens and our home, and the beauty of our relationship that what we've just been sharing that with tenures of thousands of people through the years and our current focus is we work with leaders who really have a feeling that there's a next level of destiny. That they trying to live into. And we serve them to live into that greater destiny. 

[00:06:45] Chris: Right, and that's huge you because and I just want to appreciate you as a human being and I think what you're bringing in, I can feel it already. And Im sure the listeners across time and space can also feel just the congruency that you came from. It's really quite something so, honored to have you here. And I think that such a great space is moving those leaders to the next level. We seem to be in this, 2016 seems to be an amazing year and the ladies are getting cold forth and the things that they're dying just would not die. The things that seem to be falling away are just so, so amazing to me. So, I'd love to hear what you think the new leader looks like. The new person who's going to lead. 

[00:07:36] Satyen: Certainly, you know. Well first of all I feel business leaders are the most influential people on the planet right now in this era. We are more powerful than religious figures of the past, were more powerful than the political figures, in fact we own them. That as business leaders this may not be a nice thing to hear but the reality is we carry a tremendous mode of influence. And in the work that I gave you. Share about three stages of consciousness as a simple model. The first stage is ego and be focus on self and gain. The second stage is on sharing and equality at [00:08:20] balance, harmony and I feel that there is this growth going from this ego based gain just me based into this re based. But I feel them there’s, when Im entrusted in where my heart calling in missioners is those who are already understanding this view point and can relate and can be active of this view point of having a higher level of affinity with other beings not just being egoically self-centered, they're ready for another level and I feel that's the level of transcendence, destiny for the sake of all beings. Let me sound lofty and you know what it is, but we need this, I feel level of loftiness this level of depth, we need it now, more than ever. The next level of leadership is that, the awakened leaders, what I call it like will be transcendent leader, one who recognizes that they must take care of self, society and that they're plugged in to that divine mission. A divine awakening, that’s where we're at. I feel that where we need to go. 

[00:09:32] Chris: I love it, and a lot of our listeners are cold to leadership and that’s the leading of the ship, the leading of others and I really see there’s movement into meaning, true meaning and you know there's a lot going on out there we see we've got the elections in the US happening and the whole world are focused on that. Craziness, and there's a lot of craziness happening and I think, and Im in a movie coming up later this year with [00:10:01] [00:10:01] and Tony Robins called "Rise Up" and it really seems that we're in this [00:10:07] of were either we're going to shift and rise up. Why should not see on the option cause the other option is not good the way. Right there aren’t we? That everyone is a leader not just the business leaders I think its [00:10:20] [00:10:20] to that, that leadership. So I would love to dig out some gold nuggets on leadership from you. So maybe just a broad scope of leadership from the business owner to the parents to the person that's inside the company leading from the bottom up which we all know they can. What would be the things that happen to hit the most when I asked you what's important for a person stepping into leadership. 

[00:10:51] Satyen: Well you know there is a principle and accuracy [00:10:55] vulnerable question I like to ask myself which dials into this and I am inviting everyone who's listening to ask this of themselves to really listen. Very simple question that is what must I do on myself today to live, to love and to die completely without regret. I allow myself to let that question landed myself daily and helps me navigate and get in touch in my highest core values. And then I act on it. This is the key so if I would ask you that my friend what must you do today, this week to live to love so that you could die completely without regret. Can you share to me what would be those things for you? 

[00:11:53] Chris: I can share you lots. I think the number one thing that pops into my head is showing up more authentic through my You Tube and video channels. because in telling great are truths. Actually no, there's something even more important and this is beautiful and this came through me last night is I've been sitting in a lot of judgment and judgment of things I thought I wasn’t judging, for example I have a lot of people in my past who haven’t step up and step out in created businesses and done the things and don't believe that living to the full potential. And so last night Im doing some self-work on myself and I'm going "Am I judging them?" " Am I judging people who don't live their own potential? " And my excuse was " No I'm not judging, I'm polarizing Im pulling them to me." But then I looked into it deeply and I said " Okay but what is judgment?  Judgment is not thinking that it's okay. Judgment is looking and I go" I wouldn’t be okay having a friend or an acquaintance or anybody who didn't step out and be moving towards their greater self and so the one thing that’s come through me today and from last night that Im sitting in this huge [00:13:25] is how do I, who was the person who has created an identity around helping his many people to live freedom. Make it completely okay for people to choose not to hurry [00:13:40] them. And to help them anyway. And this is what Im sitting in, so what a great question. 

[00:13:47] Satyen: You know when you bring up my friend is what I call my work antagonistic polarities. [00:13:54] [00:13:55] so should I care for others and evoke them and provoke them into living their freedom. Or should I release and surrender and know that, that’s their own path and let it unfold and just watch placidly as beings live their life. This is the fundamental polarity that many of us in the helping world have. Imaginably drawn to serve and make a difference. 

[00:15:41] Satyen: You asked me what can we do? I think this is what we do. We ask that question and we live it. That makes us a leader and we start living our own selves. That brings units of energy been choice back to us and away from the popular emotion. 

[00:17:14] Satyen : Freedom for me is to source your own truth, rather than be suck into the popular emotion that’s constantly being evoked by media.

[00:17:36] Chris: Yeah, most of them don't understand that each moment that their energy is moved to something else that pulling into their life even more. 

[00:18:23] Chris: There's a lot of talk about, I don’t turn my TV

 on or I don't listen to this, or I don't do that. And then I'm posting that in Facebook. And I feel this social media thing that is just replaced that crackly magazines a lot of times and my challenge to the listeners is this to really hear this and don't let your attention go. 

[00:18:47] Satyen : Well I'd love to share about that because as a warrior sage we looking for this one particular energetic within ourselves. We checked it within ourselves and that's the energy of self-importance. And self-importance shows up in two unique ways. The first one we all know about the brandishing yourself as the big shot or the boastfulness and the saying that your more skillful. You’ve done more than what you actually done. We all know about that form as self-importance. I called that loud power. Then there's the opposite and that's the rule is me. That loud power, although you may get adherence what's the quality of it adherence you’re going to get? 

[00:20:05] Satyen: So loud power, this exaggeration of yourself importance creates a balance in force that happens in your own reality and one of my mentor said to me " It’s better to be humble all the time, than to be humiliated all at once. " 

[00:22:10] Chris : And it's good I think a wise man learns from other people's mistakes and other people experience and its huge. It's saying that I love it and I think it really encapsulates what our saying is, "If you don't go within, you go without. And if you just stay without, you’re going to go without." And there so much it is external freedom that we seek but it literally starts, it starts in here as your shade. So I can agree more I feel I have said the right ten times. Everything that [00:22:40]. I feel we need to have a second episode, because we are ourselves get ourselves to the end of the time. So I'm going to schedule that up for us so we can continue this. 

[00:22:52] Satyen: Yeah, I would love to invite everyone is to go through an experience we can do together. Where everyone can experience total freedom in consciousness within 10 minutes. Next time we do that we'll do that. I think we'll have fun with that, alright? 

[00:23:05] Chris : Ride on men! Ride on! I think so. So, what I would love is I would love to finish up today in this episode with any final comments or final pieces that your heart feels you need to share to the audience today. And also just leave us where they can find information from you. 

[00:23:22] Satyen: Absolutely. Well you know because your whole topic is total freedom I'd love to share the essence of that for me. And what it is for me is there's the capturing in creating of freedom but if we're doing it in a place of we're not already free unfortunately we created a paradoxical that firing effect. It's a way to create real total freedom is to see where am I already free now, and free to sit with you and have this wonderful discussion. After this to go meet my wife and kiss her and enjoy a meal. When we look at where are we already free. " How am I already free? " One of my other mentor said " When you want what you have, you'll have what you want." So my invitation and challenges. First, to look at where are we already free? Live that and don't be so egoically seduce [00:24:26] anymore freedom. Paradoxically we'll gain more freedom by enjoying, acknowledging, and embracing the freedom we got right now. In this moment. 

[00:24:40] Chris : I love it. I just need to type that down that is such a good quote. " When you want what you have, you'll have what you want." that simply puts some things that I’ve been trying to [00:24:54] to people. That's beautiful so thank you so much. You've got websites and what’s the places that people can go in there and learn from you as well?

[00:25:05] Satyen: My main website is warriorsage.com. and we have a community there. And I have events, live events, retreats and I also do online trainings. So those of you who are inspired by this [00:25:21] you can get it on our community listener and be invited to those. 

[00:25:25] Chris: I love it, and just from this Im going to check out and have a look as well. I thank you for something special and really look forward to number two. What we do some live 10 minutes getting centered and getting into consciousness and getting into flow. I think it's going to be really good.  So thank you so much for your time. 

[00:25:47] Satyen: Your welcome! I really love who you are, and your vibe, and you’re the authenticity that comes after you. And everyone who's listening today blessings to you guys and go ahead create more total freedom. It's awesome! 

[00:25:58] Chris: Thank you so much and have an amazing day! And everyone out there listening, live with total freedom. Free your mind, free your time free your life so you can do what matters most. Have an amazing day! Tune in next time! To toll free and podcast, my name is Christopher Duncan and today we talked to Satian Raja and what a pleasure it was! Tune in for the next episode where I get him back! And we go through some more things. Bye for now!   

Welcome to the Total Freedom Business Show with Ruby Fremon. I am so excited to have you here, Ruby. I know we only just met briefly, but I've done a lot of research on you online, little bit of a stalk, and I'm very excited to introduce you on to the show, so welcome.

[00:00:41]  

Ruby: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. 

Chris: I know! It's exciting to meet people like you. We bumped into each other on stage at that event – I can’t remember what the event was, down in San Diego – it’s just exciting to run into people!

[00:00:53]

Chris: I'll give you little bit of a rundown on Ruby, and then I'll let her kind of take it from there about who she is. But basically – Ruby, from my experience of you online is that you're all about self-love. You're all about creating this amazing loving relationship, I believe you're a healer, you're a spiritual coach, and you make others ridiculously happy.

Chris: And I just think that's so cool. Your story of coming from a place of prescription drugs and addiction, and with alcohol, and then into self-love. I think so many people are waiting for this message, and I just want to honor you, and say thank you for what it is you're doing.

[00:01:29]

Chris: I’ll let you share all the other juice about what it is you're excited about and what it is you're bringing into the world at the moment.

Ruby: Thank you so much.

Ruby: I am truly excited about just being an igniter for other people, so by sharing my story I feel like it’s giving people permission to be really raw and authentic about their stories. So many people just deal with the fear of sharing their truth, right? Because they don't want to be judged.

Ruby: But there is no judgment, because we've all been through s***. If we all take the time to just be raw and authentic, we can learn from each other. So a law of my business is built on speaking about my story, on igniting people to share their stories, and showing people that by sharing and speaking our truth, we can then heal. 

Chris: And sometimes, the things that we’re being shown by the universe that we have to go through – it’s our lesson to pass on.

[00:02:30] 

Chris: I had a guest recently say to me this, and I want to see what you're thoughts are. He said; "we get given our challenges to solve them and then share the learnings with others".

Ruby: I hundred percent agree with that.

[00:02:43]

Ruby: I feel like we all learn the same lesson, but in different ways. Whatever we experienced in our lives, why keep that to ourselves? It's a gift. And if we share it with people, we can help other people. It's uplifting, it's inspiring, it's motivational.

Chris: I love that you’re an igniter. I haven’t heard anyone call themselves igniter before, and if I didn’t have this on recording right now, I would nearly plagiarize that but –

Ruby: [laughs]

[00:03:13] 

Chris: So tell us a little bit about your business. We want to really highlight it today, and on this show – you know, your business and what it is you're doing, and how that’s serving people, and then dive deep into your story.

[00:03:25]

Chris: So, how exactly or what exactly do you bring into the world? I know there’s a lot of things, but what is the exact business and how does that look?

Ruby: My business is coaching. I'm a transformational life coach, I'm a workshop facilitator, and a speaker. I also bring in conscious contents, so I video a lot. I share a lot on social media. Anything to get raw and authentic discussions ignited online is something that I'm super passionate about.

Ruby: I love helping people through coaching on-one-on basis or via groups. All of that, to me, just feels like a super authentic way to connect to other people. Because when you're working in a one-on-one basis or when you're working in a group basis, and you create a safe space like I do, people really have the opportunity to open up and to create change and to transform any safe and supported environment.

Chris: And it’s only when they get that space and that allowance, I think, that they truly care. Honestly, I think 90% of businesses and business owners out there, and people in general, they’re stopping themselves based on their past and their thinking, so things like this is so important. I love the value that you’re bringing in.

[00:05:03]

Chris: Tell us your story. We’d love to hear from right back wherever it starts to finding your way into becoming an entrepreneur. I might stop you and highlight some things I find interesting, but we would love to hear about you and how you transitioned to where you are.

Ruby: Sure. Something I don’t share a lot is the real beginning, right? My upbringing. And that was actually pretty healthy.

Ruby: I grew up in a house with a dad who was very successful, very hardworking. He always made us write our annual goals, we always sat down at dinner and talked about things. I grew up in a household where it was very caring, supportive, motivating environment, but there were ways in which I felt a little challenged.

Ruby: To my parents, it was really important to get straight A’s. It was really important to feel accomplished, it was really important to go to University. I didn't get any of that then, so somewhere down the line, a seed was planted. And that seed was telling me that I wasn't worthy, that I’m not good enough.

[00:06:06]

Ruby: When you have a seed like that planted, that's called a limiting belief.

Chris: Right.

Ruby: And as I continued on my journey, I just kept feeding that limiting belief. I was feeding it fear and I was listening to it. I got married really young, I stayed married for five years, experienced a divorce when most people are just beginning to live, like at twenty-five.

Chris: Whoa!

[00:06:30] 

Ruby: And that was when I had also experienced my first addiction. That was to prescription medication. So at a very young age, I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, clinical depression and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as fibromyalgia. All at once. They put me on a concoction of – I think it was like 5 or 6 different prescription pills. A twenty-three-year-old. Five or six different prescription pills.

Ruby: I became addicted very fast because I realized that a lot of those pills were numbing the pain that I was feeling, and that numbing feeling felt good.  When I went through my divorce and started experiencing life for what felt like the first time, the numbing feeling stuck with me. That was my addiction; it was feeling numbed out.

Ruby: Not feeling the depression, not feeling the anxiety, not feeling the fear, not feeling the limiting beliefs. I just wanted to numb myself out from all of it.

[00:07:27]

Ruby: My relationships were completely unhealthy. Very toxic. It was one mentally and emotionally abusive relationship to another, and each one would progressively get worse.

[00:07:39] 

Chris: Let's dive in on the numbing. This is a really big thing, and my opinion is this; it’s that if you turn off the negative, you can't feel the positive—

Ruby: Right!

Chris: -- and you just plateau. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

[00:08:04] 

Ruby: Yeah, I did plateau, and that's when I got into different sorts of recreational drugs to get me to feel high and happy. To get me to feel like I could do anything. That became my addiction for a long time, because wow; all of a sudden, now I can feel all these amazing things. Who cares if I'm in like a severe depressive state for two days afterwards? It is worth it. I'm going to do this – and that just became part of my life.

[00:08:42] 

Chris: Why do you think we're so scared and why is it so wrong for us to feel this negative feelings? Why is it like you’re not allowed to feel sad?

[00:08:58] 

Ruby: A lot of us can relate to the parent who told us; "don't cry.”

Chris: Right.

Ruby: So that's another limiting belief I guess planted; I can't cry because it shows that I'm weak. And If I show that I'm weak, then I can't do this, this, and this. That limiting belief grows and so many of us experienced that, so it all of a sudden becomes taboo to show that you're sad, to show that you're going through something. It's about saving face and putting on a mask and looking like you have your s*** together all the time.

Ruby: And that's exhausting.

Chris: I think there’s this huge movement right now called; The Perfect Guru Seems to be Dying.

[00:09:54]

Chris: It’s such a shift.

Chris: And now, moving on to another person and going; you know what, it’s not perfect. It’s so cool.

Ruby: It is cool. I think people are realizing the power of authenticity. Especially with the rise of social media, it’s refreshing to see people post about the stuff that they’re really going through versus; here’s my perfect yoga pose. Here’s my perfect relationship. Look at my perfect car!

Ruby: And then, all of a sudden, you see; today I’m having a bad day. And that draws people in. So authenticity is really winning right now.

[00:10:51] 

Chris: So you're in this place, you’re numbing yourself on one side, and then you're using ups and highs to go the other way. So take us back there, and talk us through what happened next after that? Obviously, you would have hit rock bottom at some point.

Ruby: Yeah. I was in a relationship for four-and-a-half-years, and it was just a relationship that really tested my self-worth. I put up with a lot more than I – I mean, I think back and I'm like; holy cow, I can't believe I put up with that. I would never put up with that. But I did.

Ruby: And it was just betrayal, lies, manipulation, and when everything came to the surface and it became very real – like, I had tangible proof – I decided to end things. That's when I found myself feeling very, very alone. 

[00:11:38]

Ruby: That was definitely Rock Bottom Moment for me because I didn't know how to cope, and I just coped with more partying, more drugs, more alcohol.  I coped with filling my time with other people. I was just doing anything to not feel the misery that was going on, the chaos that was going on. 

Ruby: But it was in that moment that I realized something that changed my life forever and it was; it can't be that all those people are doing things to me.

[00:12:06]

Ruby: In my entire life, up ‘til this point, and I think I was about thirty – up until that point, I was blaming everyone. I was playing the victim. I was saying; "why me?" I was blaming God, I was blaming the Universe, I was blaming my exes, I was blaming my friends. But I never really looked at myself, and in that moment I looked at myself and I was like; the only common denominator in all of these experiences is me.

Ruby: So what am I doing to attract these situations or people and why am I keeping these things in my life? Why am I choosing to keep these things in my life?

Ruby: That was a pivotal moment because I realized; if I have the power to create such chaos, I also have the power to create something different.

Chris: Wow. Wow, this is huge.

[00:12:56] 

Chris: How were you able to know that it was you without slipping further into self-pity or into a deeper, darker hole?

Ruby: That’s a great question.

Ruby: This wasn't the first time I hit rock bottom. I'd hit rock bottom a few times, and it was; "why am I here again?" And it was just that feeling of; I'm so sick and tired of being here. It was my breaking point, and I realized that if I don't change something, I'm going to keep ending up in this same place.

Chris: Right.

Ruby: Yeah. I looked at it like a do-or-die moment.

[00:13:46]

Chris: I love the “have to” points in our lives. Like, no other option. It’s like, literally – it sounds to me as though you just went; well, either I’m going to figure this out, or I’m done.

Ruby: Right.

Chris: Sometimes those moments are the most special. 

[00:13:59] 

Chris: Obviously, you made the decision to take responsibility. I think the listeners out there that – they might be going through something right now – this is the point that you really want to tune in to.

Chris: We can take so much from stories. From there on, how did you make the moves to where you are now?

Ruby: I just want to emphasize that this phase takes a lot of time. It’s not like I woke up and I had this epiphany, and miraculously my entire life changed. It’s not like that at all, and I want to make that very clear.

Chris: [laughs]

Ruby: This is the most difficult phase; it’s like taking action and putting things to work and integration.

[00:14:44]

Ruby: For me, the most obvious first step was detox. Not just substances, because that took a long time, but people. It was the people that I realized I needed to detox from first, because I was surrounded by people who are really just dragging me under. People who supported by negative habits, people who encouraged my negative habits. And I needed to get rid of them. So I stopped going out as much.  I replaced nighttime at the club with yoga. I began replacing people with self-love habits for myself.

Ruby: I just started spending more time on my own. The other part of that was really just incorporating healthier habits. Instead of doing this, what should I do?

[00:15:35]

Ruby: The doing-it part is the hard part, because you can tell yourself everything. You can read dozens and dozens of personal growth books, but putting it to action is the toughest part because that takes a strong will and determination. When you're in your weakest point, sometimes you don't feel that determined because you feel super beat down. 

Ruby: The other huge part was really just taking ownership for everything. Taking ownership for all my actions. Taking ownership for every single thing in my life. Really just putting myself in a position of; "well, if I can do that, I can do this.”

Chris: It sounds like it’s perfect. For anyone out there listening, step one seems to be – it was all around getting the right people around you.

Ruby: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Next, replacing the habits, and then just action, action, action, and positive reinforcement.

[00:16:31] 

Chris: Did you get a coach at that time?

Ruby: No. I had a therapist. [laughs]

Chris: [laughs]

Ruby: I mean, you need somewhere to vent. You need a safe space and you do need support. Whether you're going to find that support with family, or with friends, or a therapist, or a coach, seek out the support.

Chris: And, for me – a lot of times, people really miss this. It’s good that they rely on their family and friends, but the problem is; friends and family have a secondary gain. They still want to be your friend.

Ruby: Right.

Chris: Even your parents! They have a secondary gain for you to look good, so that they look good. You can’t get rid of it!

[00:17:37]       

Chris: So you get through it.

Chris: And then, obviously, now, you – start building business straight away, and social media consulting first, or was it – ?

Ruby: I was doing social media throughout that. The coaching came after.

Ruby: It wasn't until I really started feeling more grounded in this new version of myself that I felt like I wanted to do something with it. Throughout the transformation, I was blogging about it because I really wanted to hold myself accountable. That blog started getting a lot of attention and people were reaching out to me

[00:18:11]

Ruby: So, I realized I had something here. There was something that could really fulfill my purpose, which has always been to help others. Eventually, I ended going back to school, got my life coaching certification, did tons of workshops, tons of personal training, and just stepped out there and started doing it. 

[00:18:32] 

Chris: Now you do all sorts of stuff, and there’s a few things I was interested – and you do, like, an energy healing and crystal works. Want to tell us about that?

Ruby: The energy healing crystal work – I mean, I use crystals for everything. I believe in the power of the metaphysical world, and I strongly believe in the power of energy. If you look at it in just plain physics sense, because a lot of people are scared of the whoa –

Chris: [laughs]

Ruby: Everything is made out of energy!

[00:19:02]

Ruby: So, let's just get down to science, right? Everything is made up of energy. That is indisputable. Everything is made up of energy; that is proven in physics. Everything. Water, the air, us, our words, our thoughts, our actions, the table in front of me, the computer. Everything is energy.

Ruby: And energy feeds off of energy. That's also proven in Science. So, if you can feel the energy that you're honing in your system, then that helps you integrate a deeper sense of healing. 

[00:19:55]

Chris: So many people who listen to this show are stuck. They are stuck in their jobs. They see all these people doing all these things, and they say; I wish I could, but I don’t have the time, I don’t have the money – obviously, they don’t believe in themselves.

Chris: I truly think it comes down to everything you’ve talked about – the negative self-view, the negative beliefs – but here’s the thing I really believe; most of us grew up with employee parents.

[00:20:27]

Chris: For the person listening, we’re going to get some free coaching; if they are there, and they know that this is something that they want to do. They know it, viscerally; "I've got to do more but don't have the time, I don't have the money, I don't have the self-belief,”), from Coach Ruby where should they start? What should they do? What's your advice for them?

Ruby: You should start by dropping your excuses.

Ruby: Recognize that saying you're too busy, you don't have the money, you don't have the know-how? Those are all just bull**** excuses that you're telling yourself. You’re basically limiting yourself from hitting your true potential.

Ruby: If you can't get through that, you're going to be stuck in that same damn place.

Chris: Just drop the excuses?

Ruby: Yeah! I mean, you’re going to feel fear, because you’re doing something different. It’s natural human instinct to feel fear when we’re challenged with something different. It’s natural to feel fear when we’re confronted with something new. So fear is natural instinct.

Chris: It’s just newness! I say this all the time – it’s not uncomfortable, it’s just new.

Ruby: Right!

Chris: It’s just new. You’ve never done it before!

Ruby: Exactly. So just push through it! You feel it, that’s great, but don’t let it block you.

Chris: Yeah!

[00:22:11] 

Chris: There’s probably some listeners out there – whether watching the TV show or they’re on listening to the audio – where can they go to get more from you? I know your website’s really cool, but, if someone’s out there listening, they go; you know what? She’s really resonating, where could they go, what can you give them? What's happening out there for you online?

[00:22:26] 

Ruby: Just head to my website, www.iamru.by. On there, you can read about my group coaching programs, one-on-one programs, and if you want you can dig through my big vault of blogs amd vlogs, which can be found there. That’s the best way to reach out to me.

Ruby: You can also find me on social media @iamruby – pretty much on every platform known to man. My personal favorites are Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook so if you want to have a conversation feel free to hit me up.

[00:23:14]

Chris: I would empower anyone who’s out there who is needing – if you don't have a coach, you’ve got to find one, because the challenge is everyone in your environment is either a friend that they can't tell you the truth. I would empower you – if this sounds like something you want to do – go check Ruby out.

[00:23:44]

Chris: Any last words or thoughts to our soon-to-be awesome entrepreneurs who are listening?

Ruby: Don't be afraid to own your s***.

Ruby: Whatever it is in your life, understand that every single experience has brought you to where you are today, and that you played a role in that. The moment that you own your sh** is the moment that you gain the power to create change. 

Ruby: So own your shit.

Listeners, I love you, Thanks for tuning in to the Total Freedom Business Show. Wherever you are, make sure you go to www.ChristopherMDuncan.com to get the show notes and live with Total Freedom; free your mind, free your time, free your life. Do what's matters most and do it right now. Bye now!

Welcome to the Total Freedom Podcast. Today, I'm with Melissa Ambrosini, and I'm so excited to have [her] on. If you don't know who Melissa is, I don't know where you've been hiding. She is the best-selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, self-love teacher.

[00:00:48] 

Chris: Melissa, I'm so glad to finally be here talking to you. I'm really inspired to have you on the show, so welcome. 

[00:00:56] 

Melissa: Thank you. I knew it would happen when the time was perfect.

[00:01:00] 

Chris: You're from Brisbane, Australia aren't you?

Melissa: Originally yes, I was born there, but I don't live there anymore. I spend most of my time in Sydney and I head to L.A. a little bit but my main base is in Sydney.

[00:01:25] 

Chris: Tell us a little bit about you, and how you got started! I mean, you’ve got so many things that you’ve done; I love your show, I love your groups that you’ve got online, your YouTube channel is awesome, you’ve got business bootcamps – so many cool things going on. I’d love to hear, just – where did you start out?

Melissa: I actually haven’t always done what I do now. In my past life, as I like to call it, before 2010, I was living a very different life. I was actually a professional dancer and I danced at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. And I did some acting and some TV presenting and a little bit of modelling. I was a wannabe model, which is code for I just did promo work and the occasional modelling gig to get by. It was not a very glamorous life – that is for sure. Although some people really think that it is, it's definitely not. 

[00:02:45] 

Melissa: I was living with anxiety, depression, panic attacks, [and] eating disorder. I was surrounding myself with not so inspiring relationships. I did work that was no longer true for me.

[00:03:12]

Melissa: In 2010, I hit rock bottom and I ended up in hospital. There was no more candle left to burn. All the partying and doing drugs and drinking and running from myself. There was nothing left to burn after that.

Melissa: So I ended up in hospital, and prior to that hospital experience, there was warning signs. There was in and out of emergency and the doctor’s office … saying; oh, you don’t have anything wrong. You just have chronic fatigue. You’re fine, just have these anti-depressants. Oh, just take this for your anxiety. That kind of went on for about two years.

[00:05:46]

Melissa: I had tears streaming down my face because I just didn’t recognize myself. Literally. I was like; what has my life come to? I’m so unhappy. I am so unwell. And I’m looking at myself in the mirror and I do not recognize the girl that I know was deep in there, once upon a time.

Melissa: From that moment, I had beautiful angel friend, who I call my guardian angel, send me a book called Louise Hay's "You Can Heal your Life”.

Chris: What a good book! What a good friend.

Melissa: I devoured that book in one day – because I had nothing else to do and daytime TV in a hospital bed wasn’t appealing. So I devoured this book and it planted this seed within me. And I was like, okay. This is a very dark, hard time, but I knew – in that moment – if I sorted my health and my life out, I could live an awesome life.

Melissa: I didn’t know how – I don’t know how I was going to get better – but I just knew there was this tiny glimmer of hope.

[00:07:21]

Melissa: Six years later, here I am; bestselling author of this amazing book that I'm so proud of. I’m a motivational speaker, I speak all around the world, inspiring people to be the best version of themselves and live their best life. 

Chris: Wow. I’m so inspired – and good for you!

[00:08:05]

Chris: I’m sure you agree that sometimes we have to see the dark before we can see the light. And, sometimes, it gets the darkest before it actually then becomes light.

[00:08:26] 

Chris: You’ve obviously had a huge journey. What were some of the moves or the steps that you made. You read that amazing book by Louise Hay. What kind of happened next for you? 

[00:08:48] 

Melissa: I did a lot of external work. I overhauled my whole health. I went and studied holistic nutrition and health coaching, because I had no idea how to nourish my body. I went and studied it so that I understood and really could dive deep into that.

Melissa: I stopped flogging my body at the gym, and I started doing yoga and things like that. After I overhauled my health, I then started doing work that I loved, so I went on and studied life coaching. I began sharing what I was learning through my website, melissaambrosini.com. I started coaching women one-on-one, running workshops and seminars and things like that. 

[00:09:58]

Melissa: And then I also realized that the people I was surrounding myself with weren’t very supportive, and so I started to put myself in situations where I was going to be surrounded by like-minded inspiring people.

[00:10:25] 

Melissa : So I did all of these things external, and I realized that it didn't matter how much green juice I was drinking or who I was surrounding myself with or the work that I was doing, if I hadn't have mastered my inner mean girl.

Melissa: Even though I was doing all of these external things, my mean girl was still like; "you're not good enough, you’re not pretty enough, you're not skinny enough, you're not working hard enough, you’ll never be successful, who do you think you are, may as well give up, you’re never going to meet the guy, you’re never going to get out of debt.”

Melissa: I realized that none of that other stuff mattered until I mastered my inner mean girl. And everyone has that inner critic.

[00:11:48]

Melissa: So, I mastered my mean girl, and I'm still mastering her every day. It's a choice, and then this how my book was birthed into the world. It's a guide for women – it’s the No BS guide for women on how to be wildly wealthy, fabulously healthy and bursting with love – and to silence our inner critic that we’ve all got.

Chris: What a great title! 

[00:12:18] 

Chris: For all the listeners out there that have a mean girl and for the guys that have a mean … boy – mean guy – [laughs]

Melissa: Bad boy!

Chris: -- bad boy on the inside, what would be your suggestions or what are some of the big things from the book – and I suggest everyone go and grab the book – [but] what are some of the big takeaways from the book that the listeners can kind of hear and put into play right now? 

[00:12:47] 

Melissa: The first step to mastering that inner critic voice is to read the book – like you said. But I can share with you a little three-step process that people can start to do today, if you like?

Chris: I would love that, Melissa!

Melissa: Awesome! So, the first step is awareness, you have to become aware of what it is that that internal voice is saying to you. And maybe it’s; you’re not skinny enough. Or you’re never going to meet your soulmate.

[00:15:33]

Melissa: The second step is; gently close the door on that thought. That thought may pop up a couple of times throughout the day and maybe it’s triggered by something someone says. Instead of inviting that thought in to come and hang out for a couple of days with you, and to swim around your mind and plant other seeds of fear and doubt, I want you to gently close the door on that thought.

[00:16:34]

Melissa: And then the third step is; you choose love instead. 

Melissa: How can you reframe that to something more loving and kind?

[00:17:31]

Melissa: So then, whenever that thought comes up again, I want you to take yourself through that 3-Step Process. I want you to go; okay, there it is again. That’s fine. Thank you, but no thank you. Gently close the door, and then repeat to yourself; my business is growing and evolving at the perfect speed. Whatever resonates with you.

Melissa: That doesn’t mean that you just sit back and take a holiday! You still take inspired action and put into place the things that you need to do to help your business grow. It takes the power out of your ego and puts the power back in your hands. And in that moment, you just mastered your ego.

[00:19:01]

Chris: It absolutely makes sense!

Chris: I think, for all the listeners out there, maybe you want to listen to this a few more times and really get those steps, because they are simple, but it definitely is that whole just reframing that voice.

[00:20:51]

Melissa: Personal development and being the best version of yourself is work! Spiritual, personal development – it doesn’t have to be so serious. I’m so bored of people being so serious about.

Melissa: Life is meant to be fun and joyful and happy. We’ve got to bring that element of play and joy into everything we do.

[00:22:39] 

Chris: What’s on the cards for you in the future? What have you got planned this year and coming up?

Melissa: I'm going to start writing my second book but I'm about to launch my Mastering Your Mean Girl 10 Week Activation Program, so it's an online program to help catapult you into living your best life. I’m so excited to launch this bad boy into the world!

Melissa: I've got some amazing guided meditations – there's ten chapters in my book and ten guided meditations. That’ll really help you ingrain everything that you’ve learned, because I’ve realized something; nothing changes if nothing changes.

[00:23:30]

Melissa: And you can get all that information at https://melissaambrosini.com/ or www.masteringyourmeangirl.com, and I’m on all social media. I run lots of events. You can just check out the Events section of my website. Yeah, head on over to masteringyourmeangirl.com to get my book! It’s in all good bookstores, and if you’re an online person, you can get it online; Amazon – all those good places.

[00:24:14] 

Chris: I know that we’ve got to say goodbye in a second but, before we do, what piece of advice would you give to that person who has that ego that's running wild – other than to get your book?

[00:24:34] 

Melissa: Know that you didn't come here to suffer. That God, the Universe, Jesus, whatever you believe in, didn't put you here on this earth to suffer. You came here to grow and evolve and be the fully expressed version of yourself and to share your unique authentic gifts to the world. And when you really realize that, and you let go of the suffering, joy, and happiness, and love and light become your default settings. 

Chris: Perfect.

[00:25:09]

Chris: Hey, thank you so much for spending some time. I think there’s been so much for the audience and all the listeners to grasp hold of already. And I think I’d love to leave them at that – we could talk for hours I would love to.

Melissa: I would love to come back, you just let me know when.

Chris: I think it’d be fun!

Chris: Thank you for your time. Listeners, everything will be up on the site, so you can go to www.christophermduncan.com/podcast and you can grab links to all of Melissa's places and books and things that we’ve talked about on this episode of Total Freedom TV. Thank you Melissa, and ‘til next time, be well and let’s talk real soon. 

Melissa: Thank you so much, and thank you for all the work that you do in the world and for spreading all the love and light that you do. It's a true pleasure to connect and come across you. I'm very grateful.

Welcome to the Total Freedom Podcast with Ashley Zahabian – who I just learned how to say her last name properly, and what a great last name it is.

[00:00:37]

Chris: I’m so excited to have you here, Ashley.

Ashley: Thanks!

Chris: It’s so much fun to have someone at your age doing great things. I mean, you’re 21. You spoke on stage with Gary Vaynerchuk. You’re one of the youngest female public speakers there is, that I know of, for sure. You’re doing motivation, helping people get their teams fired up and all sorts of things, so. Welcome to the Total Freedom Show! It’s an honor and a privilege to be spending some time together.

Ashley: Thank you so much for having me, I’m so excited.

Chris: Let’s drop right in! I’m excited about this.

[00:01:14]

Chris: I’d love to hear your back story. How did you get started becoming a speaker? What led you to this place?

Ashley: Yeah! So, when I was 14 years old, I was going through a lot of my life. I felt like I was losing control – I feel like everybody kind of goes through that at some point in their life. Kind of like, what do I do next? Especially young entrepreneurs that are very innovative creative people, they’re kind of like; what do I do next? What’s the next step? There’s no platform for me.

Ashley: At fourteen years old, I was diagnosed with anorexia and was rushed to a hospital. Literally, the first week I went in, the doctor was like; you’re dying. I had no idea! I thought I was the healthiest person. It’s a mental disorder – completely, completely mental. I had no idea that I was so unhealthy. The doctor literally told [me]; “it’s time for you to say goodbye to your family. You’re done.”

Ashley: And I was like; “No, I’m not. This is not the end of my story.”

[00:02:28]

Ashley: When I finally came out – you go through so much self-development, you realize how much you’ve changed, over time! You don’t realize it in the moment –

Chris: Right.

Ashley: -- but when I came out of the hospital? I was like, whoa.

Ashley: It was so inspiring to be able to put myself out there again and see [that] what was normal to me was abnormal to others.

Ashley: So, there was this one guy in Toronto. His name is Mike, he owns a ping-pong studio. And he was like; "Okay, were going to do a video, if you want, on my YouTube channel." So I put it out there and that’s kind of where my name started pick up.

Ashley: I decided to open up my own YouTube. I started on YouTube, right? Like one of those YouTube stories. I guess I had the competitive advantage of being a female. My story took off from there, I started getting all these emails, and it was this one hit on Motivation Grid – shout out to Motivation Grid – and that video hit 1.6 million, so.

Chris: Good for you! That’s awesome.

Chris: And what a story. I didn’t know that about you.

[00:03:s3]

Chris: Are you able to see that is a gift yet? Everything that you went through?

Ashley: Absolutely.

Ashley: That’s where the seed was planted.

Chris: Right on. I think sometimes some of the hardest times turn into the best of times.

[00:04:00]

Chris: So, you’re speaking around on stage. You use, obviously, a very powerful story. You’ve got great energy. What are you most excited about? What are you speaking on, what’s in the pipeline, what’s happening?

Ashley: Well, there’s 2 projects. Number one, I’m working on my book, so I’m excited to drop that soon. It’s called "I’ve Conditioned Myself This Way”

Ashley: The reason I titled it that is to help people realize that all these great leaders that they see out there – it’s only because they conditioned – like, we’re human. We’re all human at the end of the day. We literally conditioned our brains to be this way. And anybody can do it.

[00:04:47]

Ashley: And what really I’ve been going out on stages and doing [is], instead of talking about all my achievements –

Ashley: Actually, my last visit with Gary Vaynerchuk, I didn’t talk about any of my achievements. I spoke everything about [what] I failed about. I think that’s what makes my story a little more different. I think that’s what makes a speaker – when you share your story.

[00:05:00]

Ashley: I take a bunch of bullets so that the audience can sharpen their own knife.

Ashley: Being able to show that vulnerability. The mistakes that you’re making, it’s not like I never made them!

[00:05:35]

Chris: The biggest thing about vulnerability is it’s the most powerful thing. I really want to dive deep on this, because I feel as though we are moving to a vulnerable and authentic state in the planet. I’m in a movie coming up with Tony Robbins about rising up to consciousness.

Chris: So tell me about that; how were you be able to do that? Aren’t you worried about what other people going to think? Aren’t you concerned? How is that different? How does that work?

[00:06:01]

 Ashley: So, again, being vulnerable? The answer is, yes. I do think about what other people are going to say. And it does cross my mind, you know, like; oh, are they going to think that I’m fake? Are they going to think that I’m really not doing what I say I am?

Ashley: At the end of the day – if you think about it, I can go into an interview at a company and my vulnerability can win me a position, just because it’s so highly respected.

[00:06:33]

Ashley: The biggest advice I can give anybody in the world is stop dating yourself.

Ashley: When we date people, we become blind to their flaws. We do things that are so completely irrational. But when you watch yourself from a birds’ eye view? You know what’s right and wrong – we all know what’s right and wrong – [but] you do it anyway.

[00:07:43]

Ashley: Vulnerability – the reason I did that on stage was not just for the crowd – even though it benefitted the crowd – was for myself. By calling myself out, I will never go back to that place.

Chris: First off, good for you.

[00:07:58]

Chris: You’re an inspiration. How amazing is it to hear somebody talking about vulnerability at your age, when what I see so often is the amount of fakeness out there. And I love that you just said; yeah, I called myself an entrepreneur before I actually stepped in to having my own company and those sort of things. I love that going first mentality.

Chris: Let me put this out there, see what you think; it’s like the universe is a mirror, and everyone’s waiting for the mirror to smile back at us before we do the smiling! We need to understand that if we want the mirror –

Ashley: That was beautifully said!

Chris: I don’t think it’s mine; I think I got it from somewhere else, but – we’re waiting! Right? We’re waiting for the mirror; “Show me an entrepreneur!” The mirror’s saying; well, show me an entrepreneur, and we’ll show it back to you.

[00:08:44]

Chris: Here’s the second thing I want to ask you about; it’s almost like there’s an echo. We put out “Yes, I’m an entrepreneur,” and then the first echo back goes; no you’re not.

Ashley: [laughs]

Chris: Right? Because it’s still echoing. It’s your own vibration –

Ashely: You have to make it louder, your; “Yes, I am! Yes, I am!”

Chris: Right on!

Ashley: When you start to believe it – and this is scientifically proven – when you give yourself a title you don’t deserve, it fulfills your ego enough for you not to actually do the work. And that’s where people are failing. That’s why people are just not having the work ethic!

Ashely: And I realized that in myself! And I was like; I need to call myself out.

[00:09:24]

Ashley: I think it’s more impressive for people to put out videos saying “Here’s where I went wrong,” rather than “Here’s where I went right,” because behind the right, there’s twenty wrongs. And if you’re not sure about the twenty wrongs, you’re really not bringing value to the audience. You’re really not, because then you’re making it look like it’s all easy.

[00:09:54]

Ashley: It’s not like that! I’m on my way, I’m doing my thing. It’s hard, but I make the same mistakes as you!

Ashley: I have an ego, I’m hotheaded sometimes, I’m insecure.

Ashley: I’m human. And I think that delivery is ten times more powerful.

Chris: That message is ringing so strong right now in the universe.

[00:10:26]

Chris: I would love to hear; what are some of the big failures that you’ve had? What are the vulnerabilities that you shared or you think the entrepreneurs listening right now need to hear so you can bring some mad value to the crew?

Ashley: Here’s a really good example; when I was doing all this speaking, and I started getting my name amped up and my ego was hot, I was like; I’m going to start monetizing this. First of all, I only put out a year; that is not enough to start monetizing in a sense of coaching.

Ashley: I was making a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, a thousand, four thousand, six thousand, eight thousand, ten thousand – and at that moment, I was like; this is not my money. It’s not my money!

[00:11:47]

Ashley: I think the word deserve is so important. And I said this in my speech;

Ashley:  In order to deserve your wealth, in order to deserve that good relationship, in order to deserve that consistent business, to deserve the good lifestyle, the freedom, the happiness – you need to be able to serve.

Ashley: If you want to deserve, you gotta serve.

[00:12:37]

Chris: I guess what you’re really trying to say is you’ve got to find your own person. Now, I’m going to bring in some controversial stuff here, because I think it’s important.

Chris: Let me ask you this; say I want be a good basketball player. Who do I get coaching [from]; Michael Jordan or the person down the street?

Ashley: Michael Jordan.

[00:12:57]

Chris: But here’s the challenge – and I want bring this up; what if he is so good at doing it and not good at coaching.  What if he’s forgotten what it is you need to learn all the way back there, just what if?

[00:13:08]

Ashley: I don’t think that’s possible!

Chris: What if –

Ashley: I’ll tell you why; because somebody who goes through their own journey will never forget the journey. I will never forget how to take somebody out of depression because I did it myself.

[00:13:58]

Chris: Question; do you believe there’s people that are good at coaching [but] some of them are not good at doing?

Ashley: Yeah. But –  

Chris: 100%.

Chris: Hundred percent, and here’s what I want to add to this; sometimes we place so much value on the talent. Truth is, Tiger Woods had his dad coaching him. Truth is, he had mentorship. But the truth is, there’s parts, I think.

Chris: I think everyone out there who’s looking for a coach – I want us to just look and dive into and think; what if. What if Tiger Woods isn’t the golf coach for you right now?

[00:14:51]

Chris: What if there’s a place that I want to explore of the coach who hasn’t got the result, but has got result from others.

Ashley Oh, yeah! So you go to the expert who got the result that you’re specifically looking for.

Chris: And what if you can’t access them?

Ashley: You dilute. You start at the top.

Ashley: I think what a lot of people are doing is, they’re starting low, and they’re saying yes to the first one they get because they don’t have that confidence to think they’re good enough.

[00:15:18]

Ashley: You have to do your research. Look for a person who is really, really, really good at exactly – you know, directing what you want.

[00:15:43]

Ashley: Like I said; I know I brought value, but – again – there was another expert who was two times better than me, or three times better than me. I believe it was their path.

Chris: I just want to let you know how much I love you for having that vulnerability, and that acknowledgement.

Chris: And I also want to acknowledge that there are people that you are coaching that – maybe there was someone else more experienced – but maybe you’re just the right person for them.

Chris: Maybe you’re being a little bit hard on yourself when you say that, because honestly – here’s a little thing I want to introduce; say you want to be good at tennis. You look up; “I’m going to go to Roger Federer. Of course they’re going to be my coach.”

Chris: But who do you go down to the pro office, down the road, who – for fifty bucks – will stand there and show you how to get your swing, right? You’ve got to have those people.

[00:16:35]

Chris: The truth is, sometimes, in some areas – in many areas – there’s somebody else that can actually give you the time and can work with you at a certain place that’s going to help you to get there.

Chris: Thoughts?

Ashley: Everybody, here’s a vulnerable response to that;

Ashely: Maybe … I’m wrong! I don’t know!

Chris: Maybe I’m wrong!

Ashley: That’s how you grow!

[00:17:05]

Chris: I want the audience to hear this from me; find the people to surround you that are going to get you there. Choose wisely – if they’re not helping you, right, Ashley? – if they’re not helping you, choose someone better.

Chris: You know, I freakin’ love your vulnerability, and good for you. Good for you!

[00:17:17]

Chris: So, I want to hear a bit more about your journey. So if someone’s out there [and] they want to be a speaker, they will look at you.

Ashley: Yes.

Chris: What should they do?

[00:17:25]

Ashley: How to become a speaker!

Ashley: The biggest thing in becoming a speaker is to focus on your story.

Chris: Right.

Ashley: One of the biggest mistakes that I found – you know, starting out, was; I wanted to be everybody else’s story, because I didn’t believe mine was powerful enough.

[00:18:29]

Ashley: Believe that your story is impactful, because somebody else didn’t go through it.

[00:18:35]

Chris: Right.

Chris: And were given that story for such a reason, and yours is so powerful. Hearing that and where you at and coming through is just perfect. I’m so proud to know you. It’s really cool.

[00:18:53]

Chris: So, what’s next on the cards for you? What have you got coming up?

Ashley: Like I said; I have my book coming up which I’m really excited about. Another big project that I’m working on – we’ve been working on for about four months now – is creating a world tour with some of the top influencers.

Chris: What’s the tour about?

Ashley: I want to bring in together probably ten to fifteen influencers and connect with every single person’s audience. I think it’s really important to, number one; cross-pollinate on who we’re speaking to, and also bring in new advice from different areas.

[00:20:24]

Chris: Nice!

Chris: When’s that coming in to action? Is that this year, or is it [on the] drawing board?

Ashley: I think it’s going be within the next few years, because I really want to get the venues and everything planned out before I reach out.

Ashley: Once everything’s done and I have that to bring to the table, nobody says no!

Chris: Right on!

Ashley: It’s my dream. I’m excited.

Chris: Good for you!

[00:20:51]

Chris: It’s so nice to have you on this. Just hear, you know, the voice – there’s not many young female speakers, or female speakers in general. We need more women on stage. We’re moving in to a feminine consciousness.

[00:21:05]

Chris:  For the women listening – they’re inspired, they’ve listened this long to us – what do they need to hear from you? A message for the women to get out and to share their story and their message?

[00:21:17]

Ashley: To every single female that’s listening to this, nothing matters more than you being yourself.

Ashley: I think for women, there’s a huge pressure, and – I mean, huge – vulnerability that we have to be a certain way because we’re so naturally insecure. We’re so naturally judgmental on ourselves.

[00:22:00]

Ashley: To the females, embrace the fact that your mind is just racing all day. For me, when I meet people, I show that vulnerability. I don’t try and hide the fact that I’m an emotional person. I don’t try and hide the fact that I’m a deep person, or that I think a lot.

Ashley: If you’re having a bad day, you’re having a bad day! If you’re having a good day, you’re having a good day. But that’s what makes you the strong woman. That’s what puts you up to the front.

Ashley: Don’t hide who you are.

[00:22:31]

Ashley: I think that’s what makes me a little bit more aggressive, because I have a very direct approach to life, but I got that from hiding who I was. Literally hiding on my death bed. When you know what that feels like, you’ll never do it again.

Ashley: I will never, ever hide who I am again.

Ashley: Whatever it is, you can’t hide who are you.

[00:23:13]

Ashley: Be free. Be you.

[00:23:15]

Chris: That’s it, and I think we should definitely finish on that: Be free, and be you.

Chris: What an absolute pleasure it’s been to chat with you.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Chris.

Chris: I’m sorry we have to say goodbye, but I do want to keep it on-point, on the timeframe.

Connect with Ashley:

Website: http://www.ashleyzahabian.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw17_Cf0SpANLI2hI0t8SWw

Twitter:: https://twitter.com/ashleyzahabian

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashley.zahabian