In this episode, I talk with mindfulness expert, Stuart Carter. In 2005, Stuart began his journey of “waking up” by re-examining every aspect of what it means to be alive, what it means to be happy, what it means to be fulfilled. He publishes a regular video series on YouTube offering tips on mindfulness, meditation, letting go, and living a happy and balanced life.

Featured links:

https://www.simplymindfulness.com/

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Transcript:

Jason: All right. So why don’t we start with you introducing yourself and then we’ll move forward.

Stuart: Sure. Okay. So I’m Stuart Carter, I currently run simplymindfulness.com. I’ve been through a series of sort of business, what should we say, ideas over the years. It’s been a constant evolution really. I went self employed in 2009 when I was made redundant from my full time job, computer programming. Went into photography. Discovered… Because I liked business more than photography started helping other business owners [inaudible 00:00:45] in place. But I’ve always been sneaking mindfulness in through the back door and I’ve got a 15 years mindfulness practice of my own. And I went to Japan in the summer of 2018 and kind of, it was a bit rocky out there. It was very, very wet.

Stuart: I think some, was it 2 million or 8 million people were evacuated from their homes from where we were in the camper van getting lost in the mountains. So yeah, it’s not one of those life changing situations when you go… Actually, life’s a bit too short and not do the important stuff. And I’m sure your emails have had an influence in where I am now. And because I’ve done a lot of the inner work on myself, your daily general posts done regularly and your webinars and things like that. And I truly see the value in that stuff. And at the moment I’m kind of helping people to be more mindful. I’m helping people to get to know themselves better. We actually spoke a while ago and I tested the business or best part of your life. I don’t know if you remember that conversation.

Stuart: Well, that never quite sat right with me. I don’t know if it was the audience. I think it was the audience only, if it wasn’t the audience it was probably the men serving. So yeah, I’ve got this business, it’s doing okay. I’ve got two media platforms, with are my YouTube channel, which has a video twice a week, and my daily journal of kind of just wholesale copied your idea. So its a value add every day with lovely messages at the top, which I think you’ve taken those off actually, but also, the occasional, do you want some help? That kind of message. But I think the problem I have at the moment, which is I think why I’m on the call today is really, I heard it put beautifully the other day where there’s, a donkey and there’s some hay to side of it and some water to the other side of it. And it can’t decide which ones to go for so it ends up dying.

Jason: What a terrible play.

Stuart: Because if you just go for one, apparently you can do that. And then move to the next one. So I think it’s about clarity. I would really love now to master something. I’ve got the discipline in place to do that but I don’t know what I’m mastering and I think maybe I can use some help on the clarity of that.

Jason: Do you know what’s in your two buckets? The water and the food or, would you just know there two?

In this episode, I talk with Jason Vargo, (a guy who has the world’s greatest first name AND a daughter with the same name as my oldest daughter!) about his project/podcast/business/whoknowswhatformitwilltake focused on conversations about “getting better” (as in bettering oneself).

Featured links:

[PROJECT IS TOO EARLY ON FOR A LINK!]

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Transcript:

Jason V: Well, my name is Jason Vargo and I am the person who does the best they can in any way they can with whatever they’re doing. And I’m looking to formulate my energies and actions in such a way that I can just focus basically on doing just that to whatever positive end it may have.

Jason L: So why don’t we catch the people up? The email that you sent me. We’ll start there. You tell me what are we doing here today?

Jason V: Well, it’s kind of funny. There’s a bit of a backstory actually, because for you, this is like probably just another conversation that we’re having, but for me, as I … how to say it. We’ve had a bit of a one sided relationship for quite some time now because I’ve been reading your emails for I think it’s been at least two years now. And obviously we’ve known each other for some years just being in the same town and all of that. But not being immediately in each other’s sphere, kind of in a second tier sort of thing. And I had an idea, I have lots of ideas and sometimes they just don’t let me go. And I had an idea about, I mean it’s probably coming up on a year ago now and the idea was just two words. It was getting better. That’s the idea. And the idea just kind of popped up to me and I sat with it, which is kind of the way that my ideas typically happen. I have a flash of an idea that makes sense, but I don’t really understand details and so I just let it sit.

Jason V: And what I realized over time as I did let it sit, that it was related to what I’ve always done, which is try to make situations that I’m a part of better in some way. And I’ve always been interested in what people do to get better and bettering oneself. I’ve always been very self reflective and really drawn to people and ideas that are for the purposes of growth and expansion and getting better. And so over time, I realized that this was something that I wanted to actualize in some way. And over time I realized having conversations about it, which is something that I tend to do anyway with the people that I talk with would be a great way to do it. And so of course, I’m thinking, thinking, thinking about it, all the time thinking about it. And again, it was one of these ideas that wouldn’t let me go. And over time I’ve been building a list of people that, wow, wouldn’t it be great, mind you, I’m not talking to them yet.

Jason V: I’ve been building a list of people that would be great, that I believe it would be great to talk to for this purpose, to explore the idea of getting better. And so it’s funny because you’ve been on my list. And you’ve been on my list for at least probably eight or nine months. And every time I read one of your daily journals, I’m like, yeah. Because I realize, I recognize in what you’re doing that’s a fundamental premise of what you’re doing too. You’re working on reflecting and getting better and obviously you’re focused on business. But I see many, many touches of deeper things in what you do. And you just, you’ve been on my list. So fast forward, however long, up until what I guess it was probably three weeks ago,

In this episode, I talk with Andy Lockwood, “unindicted” founder of Lockwood College Prep. We talk about the evolution of his business, his appearances on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox News and his new certification program.

Featured links:

Lockwood College Prep

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Transcript:

Jason: Why don’t we just start with you telling everybody who you are and then we’ll get into it.

Andy: All right, Andy Lockwood, unindicted college advisor, out of Long Island’s New York. We help kids get into college and families pay wholesale prices for college. Help them figure out what the hell they want to do with the rest of their lives. I started a certification program to train other people how to get in on the college advising business without lying, bribing or Photoshopping included.

Jason: As everyone listening on the other end will soon notice, Andy has a flavor of humor that is really unparalleled across any of my life experiences. If you follow his emails, you’ll see that there is very little that will knock you off. I mean, this is who you are because you get some flak for telling the truth to a lot of people about some other people but you’re pretty firm. You know which way you’re going.

Andy: When you say unparalleled, that could really… It doesn’t mean funny. Unparalleled sense of humor, just noting that for the rest.

Jason: It’s extremely funny. But you know how those people add humor in, they’re trying to be funny but it just doesn’t work. It is so well intertwined in who you are, this is my perception of course, that it totally fits every time you do it and you take people way over the line in terms of business to places where they need to go. So I applaud you.

Andy: I appreciate that. I usually think of myself as… When I’m writing my emails, I’m as prolific as you are, but I do write a lot. I’m usually sitting here in my basement, unlike this podcast, because I was enjoying the green room and the lobster thermidor you were serving but normally I’m sitting daily on my own words and assuming that maybe one or two other people will think it’s funny on my list.

Jason: Do you get ideas on the spot? Or do you come down to the basement with clarity about where you’re going?

Andy: Yeah, I am not that methodical about it. I definitely write down a lot of stuff. I put notes on my phone. I have all these scraps of paper that I put away and find a couple months later. But there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the news also which is very timely and easy for me to use. Talking about college-related subjects without the scandal stuff.

Jason: You’ve been getting a lot of material handed to you lately.

Andy: Basically yeah. A lot of my colleagues say, “The sky was falling.” I was like, “Are you freaking kidding me? This is like the best thing that could have happened to…”

Jason: Tell people what it means to pay wholesale for college. Just clue people in a little bit on what you do for people.

Andy: We have a few different businesses that are related and one of them is helping people get discounts for college. Whether that’s through the need-based financial aid system which involves doing a lot of financial aid forms and occasionally kind of optimizing where money is saved, moving it from one place to another. But that’s not a big part of the business.

In this episode, I talk with Mark Welch, Barton Murray and Jana Murray from Barrier Island Organics about their product, Mother Earth’s Root Cider. We talk about an educational, systems-based method to marketing, connecting with an audience in ways that build trust and credibility and about how to tell a story (a real story!) that completely separates you from your competition.

Featured links:

Barrier Island Organics

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If you want to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the podcast, visit this page and let me know!

Transcript:

Jason: So yeah. Go around and introduce yourselves…

Barton: Go ahead Mark.

Mark: Hey, Mark Welch, owner of Barrier Island Organics. Glad to be here.

Barton: I’m Barton Murray, online marketing, in charge of online sales for Barrier Island Organics.

Jana: This is Jana, and I do the website maintenance and working on marketing his juice as well.

Jason: All right. Well, why don’t we start with you guys just telling your story a little bit, talking about where you’d like to go, and then what are some of the things you’re working through to get there?

Barton: Yeah, sure. My wife and I have been doing online marketing of various kinds for the last 15 years, and as I mentioned in the earlier, we joined up with Mark about a year and a half ago to promote his wonderful product, his product Mother Earth’s Organic Root Cider, which is under the label Barrier Island Organics, which is the company he founded with the product. We’ve been developing and building, trying to build sales and get the word out… We got a wonderful amount of repeat customers. It’s a small amount, but they’re just all in with it. They’ve had tremendous experiences doing their daily dose of the tonic, everything from inflammation control, management of pain, especially keeping colds and virus and flu away.

Barton: It’s based after… and Mark can tell you more about it… based on a particular protocol from… is it Marian Gladstone? Is that correct, Mark?

Mark: Rosemary Gladstone.

Barton: Rosemary Gladstone. There’s another company called Fire Cider that got into some legal problems because they tried to copyright the term fire cider, and fire cider is a known tonic that’s been created by many people over the years, and they tried to take the name, and I think recently they were decided against, against to have the name copyrighted, the term fire cider. It’s free for everyone to use, but nobody can… and Mark can tell you more about this, but for the last year and a half, we’ve been focused on organic traffic results, driving traffic. At one point we were ranking number one on page one for all things apple cider vinegar-based, because the tonic is in a solution of apple cider vinegar, along with a bunch of other roots and fruits. And Mark can probably tell you more about all that.

Barton: We at one point were getting hundreds of thousands of visits every month, but the sales has been in a 3-5000 volume range. 5000 is a good month. It fluctuates between the two. We’re not really sure exactly why… we see the volume of traffic. We’re not sure if we’re being penalized by Google, because Google was really doing a lot of the algorithm changes. It may show up, but we may not be getting those exact traffic stats for what we show up for. There’s been a lot of push towards… let’s just say alternative health solutions, especially natural solutions. It’s been relegated to second, third, fourth page.

I was under the impression, for quite some time, that certain things belonged in the world of business and other things did not. It was made clear in the books and courses and expert speeches that business is one thing and life is another thing.

When this turned out to be a bunch of B.S., I started thinking about how blurring the lines between who you are, what you do and the people you serve and removing the artificial boundaries we’ve been taught to believe in can make decisions much simpler and more clear.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk with consultant to independent buisness-to-business professionals, Robert Middleton, about succeeding with kindness.

Featured links:

ActionPlan.Club

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If you want to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the podcast, visit this page and let me know!

Transcript:

Jason: Why don’t you tell everybody, if they’re not familiar with Robert Middleton, who you are?

Robert: Well, I am a 67-year-old guy who has been self-employed for 35 years. My company is action plan marketing. What I’ve been doing is working with self-employed professionals and helping them all kinds of ways to attract their ideal clients. There’s a lot to that. There’s all the technical things about networking, and speaking, and the sales process, and writing, and million things. I’ve often found the most interesting things about my business is the psychological things related to the marketing yourself and selling yourself.

Robert: What I’m continually fascinated with is the incredible fear that people have of other people, the fear that we have of reaching out, the fear we have of having conversations with people, the fear we have of being rejected, the fear we have of doing it wrong, making mistakes, looking bad, all that kind of stuff, and helping people get to the other side of that, and just finding ways to naturally express themselves and communicate about what they’re excited about. Everybody is different. Everybody does their marketing their way. It’s been interesting. We get a lot of very interesting conversations. I just got off the phone with a guy in Dubai. I have two clients in Dubai right now and one in India.

Jason: Wow.

Robert: They’re all connected. That’s how I got them. How do you ask to connect to other people? That’s a big conversation I’m having these days. I call it connecting your bubbles and just …

Jason: It’s odd in this day and age. We have more ways to connect and far less connection probably than ever in certain ways.

Robert: Yeah. I think an interesting thing has happened, I started on the internet in 1996, my first website.

Jason: Wow.

Robert: It’s funny. I thought I was late to the party, but I wasn’t very late. I found out recently that in 1996, there was only something like a quarter million websites then.

Jason: Amazing.

Robert: You know how we always feel behind in some ways. Now, there’s 1.9 billion websites. That’s 2000 time and a quarter million. That would be 8,000 times as many websites as there were when I started. If you work diligently at SEO, you could get found online a lot easier than it is now. The thing is, with this proliferation of emails, social media, et cetera, it’s like a minnow in a gigantic sea and it’s very hard to be found. The good thing about that is I think I’m finding it helps people to get back to let’s just create relationships with people, let’s just connect with people, let’s just have conversations with people instead of 10 kazillion messages.

In this episode, I dig deep into the world and platform of the Life Regenerator, aka Dan “The Man” McDonald. Make sure you follow along and get the links here: http://www.incomparableexpert.com/fruitsandvegetables.

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The Desert of Arizona

Clear 42 Degrees

Most people talk about how “time gets away from them…”

Most people think they can’t do what they want because they’re too busy doing what they must…

Most people say they’re actually too busy to get anything done at all.

Most people feel trapped, stuck and hope the rest of life somehow gets better than their current reality.

Of course “hoping” isn’t all that effective. Channeling your energy like that out into the nonexistent future is a great way to waste it. But your mind likes it, otherwise it gets bored.

Channeling your energy and focus into this present moment and towards what you can do NOW is a much more effective path.

Today, I have a conversation to share with you that I had with Craig Ballantyne, author of The Perfect Day Formula.

If you’re not sure if this book is for you, you’ll know after listening to this. You’ll either WANT TO DO IT or not.

Much like I’m a proponent of creating a client attraction system which allows you to make smart decisions you simply follow in the “heat of the moment,” Craig has created a perfect life attraction system to help you live better.

And instead of focusing on your 30 year plan, you focus on today. You design the perfect day and then you live it. And you wake up tomorrow and live another one.

Pretty soon, you look back and see the amazing transformation that’s happened.

Get the book here.

Get the entire kit (explained in the podcast) here.

In this episode, I talk with storytelling expert, Lisa Bloom, about connecting with the story of YOU.

In this episode, I talk with Michael Port about his new book, Steal the Show.

In this episode, I dig deep into the magic of SHOWING UP with Donnie Bryant.