The Maven Nation

 

Show Notes:

* What is priming – 0:18

* If there is a need, you are susceptible to being primed – 03:41

 

What if there was a way to statistically (and significantly) influence the actions of others through suggestion? It’s a real thing, and it is called “Priming”, the subject of todays podcast on the Maven Nation!

Michael Interviews Super Athlete Paul Romero and picks his brain about nutrition, supplements and technology that gives him a competitive edge!

 

Show Notes:

* Filming oneself is one of the most underutilized tools of self-improvement – 0:15

* Refine flaws out of your system if you want to become the best at whatever it is you’re doing – 03:34

 

Good morning everyone. Michael the Maven here. Today, I’m going to talk about one of the most underutilized tools of self-improvement and that is filming yourself doing whatever you want to improve in. This is kind of mind boggling to me because we live in a day or age that everybody has a Smartphone or camera of some type but we don’t really use it as much as a tool to improve whatever it is we’re doing. I like to exercise a lot and something that I wanted to improve on was running. I worked with the running coach here in Maui; something that he likes to do is he will film his student running and he breaks down everything from the impact of where the foot hits the ground to how they carry their head and arms; things of that nature. It greatly improves the running form of an individual.  

Back in the days of playing football, every game we would sit down as a team and watch game film, on the following Monday and the coaches will point out what we did right and wrong. The reason why this is so important because when we look at ourselves, we tend to prefer to wear rose colored glasses. We like to see ourselves in a flattering light and that is not always a good thing. When I was getting started with my YouTube channel, for example, I was very nervous about being in front of the camera. This is something wired into my biology; I didn’t like to be in front of the camera. Sometimes I still don’t like being in front of the camera but the way I read it that out was I just practice. I set up a camera and I recorded and practiced over and over and over again until I can get my demeanor to a point that I felt I was presentable. I care a lot less now but I wasn’t able to overcome that hurdle until I found myself talking as if I was teaching a lesson.

CrossFit is something I love. I talk about it a lot. There are many different lifts in CrossFit that require very specific technique in terms of form, here you’re placing your arms and your legs and hips and locomotion is. Some of these exercises I was doing incorrectly. “Hey, I’ve been working out for a long time and I’m just really strong and I just pick this weight up and put it up over my head.” That’s how the mentally I was thinking but the truth of the matter is when you have good form you are able to lift much more weight. There are some exercises in CrossFit that are almost impossible to do without perfect form. Like a muscle up; I still can’t do muscle up. I will one day but that is something very tricky to figure out the technique. What happened was during the CrossFit, the owner of the gym, he would film this little videos of us working out and post them on Instagram and I started seeing myself working out and I said that form was incorrect. This whole time I’m thinking that I am doing it right, that I’m doing great and when I see the video, Oh my goodness, this is not good. I need to fix that.

When you film yourself doing something that you want to improve in, you are providing a very objective look, demonstration of what you may be doing wrong. It is proof. It overcomes the rose-colored glasses and our disposition and desire to see ourselves in a positive light. You have to be brutal with yourself if you want to improve. You have to refine those flaws out of your system and your soul if you want to become the best at whatever it is you’re doing. You have to embrace the fact that you might be wrong. There is a way to improve and in order to do that in a very passionate, hardcore, effective, efficient way is to demonstrate to yourself when you are wrong and accept that you are wrong and just live with it. It’s okay to be wrong.

 

Shownotes:

* What is EON mindset? – 0:14

* Get rid of all the little stuff and focus on the things that really matter – 03:43

 

Good morning everyone. Michael the Maven here. Today, I want to talk about the EON mindset. What does EON stand for? Stands for “everything or nothing”. It comes from the creators of the James Bond films Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli; they became the producers. When they were organizing and getting their film productions team started, this is in 1961. It is a great documentary that occasionally pops up on Netflix called Everything or Nothing the James Bond story. It’s super fantastic because it sheds light into the mentality of these two prolific filmmakers. They basically said “If we are going to do this, we are going to burn the ships so to speak and we are going to put everything in it. If you’re not willing to do that it would be better to not do it at all”. I watched that documentary and I said “Wow!” that is a beautiful mindset to embrace. If you are not passionate enough about something to throw literary everything, all of your resources, all of your time, talents, energy, money; everything into something…it isn’t even worth pursuing. That kind of a mindset that rubbed off on me.

When shooting our independent films, that was the mentality that I had. I spoke of it, I said this is everything or nothing. I would give this project everything that I have in order to bring it to fruition. Something that stuck with me since is that if I do not feel that way about a project then I don’t do it. With time what I’ve learned was I spent more and more resources; rejecting opportunities than I do considering them or taking them and with the more success an individual has, what happens is other people want to pick your brain; you start getting all these opportunities put on your plate and you’re not going to be able to chase all of them. The more success that you have the more picky you have to be about how you’re going to spend your time, supply and demand. If you didn’t have success, there is no way of your interest you take any project that came into your life if you had one.

Once you start succeeding and doing well and getting attraction, you get more and more offers. Something that helped me personally with this mindset is knowing that we are going to die; we are mortal creatures here on earth and at some point we are going to die. If you ask yourself a question; how would you live your life differently if you knew you’re going to die in a couple of days? I talked about this in a book. What would change? You probably quit your job if you have one. If you know you’re going to die in a week, you would totally quit your job. You wouldn’t spend time working on your taxes. You wouldn’t do all this little menial tasks that we feel like we have to do. In the reality of things, they’re really not that urgent. I like to go through life thinking, “Hey, I’m going to die next week, and I’m going to die in two or three days.” Maybe that’s a little bit morbid and pessimistic but it changes how I approach my day. If I’m going to die in a couple of days, I’m going to get things done like right now!

It is a tremendous filtering tool to get rid of all the little stuff and the things that really don’t matter and just focus on really, really big things. The more I do it; it feels like the more productive I am; the more quality interactions I have with loved ones; the more careful I am with my time. I still take the time to relax. If that’s my dominant thought, it could happen. I could go to the store and have a car accident, I don’t know. I could get sick, who knows!

My stepmom Susan, she was at the church event, she’s going to the parking lot; she said she had a headache and the next thing we knew she was gone. I mean that quick. Literary within a minute; hey, I have a headache,

 

Show Notes:

* Michael shares insights he recently learned from a 3-day fast – 0:15

* Consult a nutritionist if you have never fasted before – 02:45

* Studies indicate that a 3 day fast can reset the immune system – 06:52

 

Link from this Episode: 3 Day Fast May Reset Immune System

Good morning everyone! Today we will be talking about top things that I learned recently from a 3-day fast. I just finished it last night and  I found some insightful things I thought I would share with you. It sounds kind of crazy but let me give you a little bit of my background. I was raised in a Mormon church. Every first Sunday of the month, traditionally in the Mormon church you do not eat food or drink water for a full day. This is something I was kind of raised into. Most religions have some kind of fast. Something I have continued to do since college was I just extended it to every weekend. So Saturday night, I’ll have my final meal, I would go to bed, wake up and have my regular Sunday routine and then I would eat dinner again on a Sunday night. This is typically how it works 24 hours. I’ve been doing this for a while I’ve been doing it weekly and there was an article published in 2014 that basically says when you don’t eat food for 3 days, your immune system resets itself. Your white blood cells for whatever reasons are killed off and new ones are created which is really fascinating.

Now, something I will talk about at some point is the fact that I use a machine called a Beemer Matt which is an electromagnetic field that increases the circulation of your capillaries. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now. A good friend of mine Paul Romero introduced it to me. He’s an ultra marathon runner and he runs 200 miles races and wins. He is older than me. I think he is 46 or 47, incredible athlete! But if you could reset your immune system and increase the circulation of your capillaries to 10 or 15 percent, this would be a great healing mechanism. I have a bunch of aches and pains that I’m trying to get over. There is that aspect of it, the part that I wanted to see is what would happen when I fasted for 3 days in terms of resetting my immune system. There is also the psychological part of it. In the Efficiency Playbook, we talked about prestressing your mind or body in a training type situation. You overload yourself, stress yourself out in some way and when you have these moments of truth and battle, you take that weight off and you are able to perform at a higher level than your competition because you were trained for it.

There are many aspects of it and the way I did it was being careful. If you have not fasted before, if you do not have experience, definitely consult a nutritionist or doctor before you try to do this. Some people hurt themselves fasting and there are even reports of people dying from fasting because they’re not being mindful of their electrolytes. So what happened was, I decided that I do a regular fast on the first day. No food or water for 24 hours. And then starting on the second day, I would drink water with electrolytes. When I say electrolytes, I’m talking about things like salt. I just pour some salt in the water. I have a potassium pill, a magnesium pill and some of the regular vitamins that I normally take. I just told myself, I’ll drink as much water as I feel I need. I’ll just make sure there is some salt in it and I’m getting my electrolytes.

The second day was a little bit easier in terms of the hunger pains. It just got easier as time went on and it felt really good! Surprisingly! As time went on, it got easier and easier. But the thing that I learned,

 

Shownotes:

* “No One Doubts You more than you.” Lavell Edwards – 0:22

* How self doubts affect you on a day to day basis – 01:32

* Examples of Self Doubts that amounted to nothing but fear – 03:02

 

Good morning everyone. Michael the Maven here from the Maven Nation. Today, we’re going to talk about self-doubt. I don’t know if Lavell was the original person who came up with this quote but it was something he always said to us that you doubt yourself more than anyone else. You, this is something internal and let me tell you a little about doing microbiology research.  A big part of it is using something called gel electrophoresis which is essential, we make a type of jello that we create this little holes in the jello and we put DNA, different sizes of DNA and this is on one side, it’s kind of like a flat slab of this clear gel. I’m sure you guys have seen it on different types of forensic television episode where they put his DNA on one side of this flat slab of gel and put a lid on and turn on the electricity and this electricity is the current that pushes the DNA from one side of the gel to the other. This is a tool that I probably used tens of thousands of times in my grad work. I mean, it was something we did several times a day, no problem. There is something that I notice about that had a huge impact on me and that was when you take something and you put it through a workload which in this case would be resistance; the gel. The gel is resisting the movement and then you put it under stress which should be the electricity flowing through this gel and it’s pushing this DNA through this resistance. When you give something a workload or a type of resistance and then you start to stress it out, a very interesting characteristic, something that you can reproduce time and again is that the smaller and the lighter; those particles, those DNAs; the farther they travel.

Think about that is that you have resistance to your dreams. You have stress. You have doubts. This is the resistance and then when you try to go out and attain these goals and you’re working, your stress out. The lighter you are the farther you will go. If you look at all the things in your life that are creating this resistance and we come back to this quote by Lavell Edwards, you create more self-doubt than anyone else, what I’m trying to say is you need to be able to identify your self-doubt and figure out a way to get rid of it.

Let me give you a couple examples, I’m always looking for new products to create, maybe an app, it may be a physical product, it maybe a DVD. With each and every single product that I had ever made for some reason or another in the back of my mind, I think, man I hope somebody doesn’t hurt themselves and ends up suing me for this. I made some contract maker apps. We had hundreds of thousands of downloads and guess what? It never happened. Nobody ever had a situation where it hurt them enough that decided that they would come after and sue me. I think that is something in the back of the minds of everybody who goes into business. I’m going to get sued for this; I don’t know maybe it’s just me. That is something that I am creating. It could happen, I guess.  The idea is that I am creating more resistance in my own mind than what reality is.

You look at what some manufacturers create; a nail gun. There are companies out there who make money off nail guns. This is something that’s super dangerous that people actually do hurt themselves. Look at a car, the dangers of a car and there are a lot of products out there that are just inherently really dangerous yet these companies stay in business and they are successful. The point is that if you liken your life into electrophoresis; there is a certain amount of resistance that you have to go through daily, weekly, monthly and we could change the concentration of this jello,

 

Shownotes:

* Not all Friction is bad – 0:35

* Traction is positive friction and goes far beyond physics – 06:12

 

Good morning everyone! Michael the Maven here. Today, we are going to be talking about the Chapter of Traction, also painfully removed from the “Efficiency Playbook”. Traction is a great topic. It sort of niche and it was removed simply because I couldn’t express it in a way that I felt fit with the rest of the book. We’re talking about friction and friction is bad in all the things in this nature and it just didn’t feel right.  So I wanted to cover it here. There are some that we cannot do without friction; in some cases,  friction is a great thing. I refer to good friction as traction.

If you think about a car tire and what a car tire does if the tire is spinning all by itself, it’s not really doing any work, it’s just kind sitting there rotating, right? A tire needs a road to propel itself forward. The road provides friction; it provides a way for the tire to move and push the car forward. Without the road the tire is more or less useless in terms of transportation. What this means is that in certain situation even as a creative individual as a photographer, a musician or things of that nature. There are situations that you will not be able to move forward without the friction or the traction of another person. This is a very important distinction than bad friction; to be able to identify when traction occurs.

I’ll give some very specific examples, as a student of music, I used to take piano lessons, I haven’t done it in few years but I had a music mentor; a very talented digital musician, his name is Jason, incredibly talented. We would meet up and we have these sessions, he would teach me how to do digital audio files and digital studio and all that stuff and he was really, really good. Very experienced, very knowledgeable but something that I learned from him was that, when we would meet and have these brainstorming sessions it seemed like we were both benefiting; not only he was teaching me these incredible things but it kind of felt like I was giving him some ideas. I would ask him a question and he would go Oh! You need to go like this and you go like this and he would get into it. Then he would design his incredible music tracks. It was interesting to me that the question that I had inspired to create what he did. In a very subtle way, there was traction there because I had a curiosity about something and he had the knowledge and he was able to demonstrate in a way that was creative and new. There was something positive there.

Now as a photography mentor for almost ten years; I have trained many photographers in different capacities. I’ve become specialized for being a teacher more so than being a photographer. What happens is, I’ve seen this time and again. A new photographer brand stinking new will come to me and will have questions about how to operate the camera, how to use Photoshop. Some of these stuffs are really basic and what happens is overtime they become a better photographer than me in whatever specialty it is they’re doing. I have seen this so many times. They continue and they keep on working and keep on working and they become professional in some kind of niche. They become world class. This has happened many times. I’ve limited myself to teaching and instructing beginning and intermediate photographers that is what I’m really good at, not so much the very high end niche, professional work. I’m not really doing it anymore because I like teaching.

That was very instructive to me that during the learning process if I’m working one on one with somebody; how many times I have seen a beginner or novice photographer do something or ask something that inspires me; a photographer pro for almost fifteen years now; I learned from them. If the teacher and the instructor are aware of this,

Good morning everyone, Michael the Maven here. Before we get into today’s tip, I wanted to just make a note about the Bemer Mat in Wednesday’s podcast, is that I wasn’t suggesting that you needed to go out and buy this five or six thousand dollar device.

You can reap the same benefits by merely laying on the ground. The actual earth. We’re talking about something like the sand, or grass, just for 15 or 20 minutes. Get your body in contact with the electromagnetic field of the Earth and then ask yourself how do you feel. It should help improve some of your microcirculation, which has tremendous benefits. And that’s really the point I was getting was, there is a Bemer Mat that amplifies it, but you can also do it by getting in contact with the Earth. You know we live in a very modern society so we have all of this insulation of concrete and rubber and metal between us and this field. And so, that was my point.

So, for today’s tip I wanted to point out that most of us can speak much faster than we can type. Obviously in terms of texting, there is a speech to text recognition feature on our smartphones. And I hope you’re using that feature. It’s the little microphone next to the space bar on iPhones. And so you can talk your text messages and it’s a lot faster than using your thumbs.

So, I’m a little embarrassed to admit I didn’t really know about this, but there is a feature called dictation on MACs and speech recognition on PCs that allows you to talk your text into your computer. So, if you’re writing a very long email or a report, or you have to type a very long document, it is going to be much faster to speak it than it is going to be to type it.

Now, it’s not 100% accurate and it really helps to kind of go by one sentence at a time, but it is way faster for me at least in terms of doing it with voice versus typing. So, check it out. If you have a MAC look up turn on dictation. If you have a PC, look up turn on speech recognition. There’s also the Dragon Software that some people use. Again, not perfect, but in the end it’s going to save you a lot of time.

That is the tip for today. Hey, I just want to say thank you guys so much for listening. We are growing. Some of you have left reviews. Thank you so much for that. If you guys like what you’re hearing, please subscribe. Give me a review. Share with your friends and we’ll continue to grow this. I have pretty much an unlimited number of topics that I can share with you and a number of great guests I want to bring in to the show.

So, I hope you have a great weekend. And I will see you guys on Monday.

 

Shownotes:

* Michael introduces the Bemer mat and how it improves capillary circulation, as well as other effects he is noticing from daily use – 0:17

* Sleeping faster and recovering faster from strenouos activity are some of the benefits of Bemer Mat – 03:41

 

Good morning everyone! Michael the Maven here! Today I’m going to talk about a tool and device that I’ve been using a couple of months now that has  a huge impact in my life. I did not receive any compensation, I’m not an affiliate with the company that makes this product. I’m simply saying this is something I’ve used and I’ve seen a huge improvement. This is called the “BEMER MAT.” Link: Bemer USA

This is a mat that you buy. It is very expensive. It is about $5000-$6000. But my perspective on it is if I’m using it every day and it has huge impact on my health, it’s definitely worth it. I was introduced to Bemer Mat by a good friend Paul Romero. He is an ultra marathon runner of 200-mile races and he wins them. He’s a little bit older than me. I think 46 or 47, but he is a stud of an athlete and he’s obviously doing something that I’m not. He has a secret list and so I picked his brain and he shared with me that he used this device something called Bemer Mat to recover faster. So a Bemer Mat essentially replicates the electromagnetic field of the earth. So, when you go to the beach and you lay down on the beach you are in direct contact with electromagnetic field of the earth. When you are in a city and there is asphalt and rubber and all these layers of insulation between you and the earth as well as the higher the altitude when we are on an airplane, we are farther away from the electromagnetic field or this insulation between us and the earth, we do not get the natural positive benefits of the electromagnetic field in our body. NASA studied this extensively because astronauts run into problems when their bodies are not in contact with the electromagnetic field of the earth. The idea and science of it is that this electromagnetic field coming from the Bemer mat or the beach, it has a direct effect on the circulation in our capillaries.

If you type in “bemer”, there are really good videos on youtube or you can see how this electromagnetic field changes the circulation, the amount of circulation, there are often stagnation in certain branches of our capillaries that slow capillary flow down. Capillaries are very small, fine blood vessels. It is really where most of the magic happens in our bodies in terms of gas exchange and removing toxins and wastes products. So the more circulation that you can get in your capillaries, generally speaking, the healthier your circulation system is going to work. I would definitely recommend taking a look at some of these videos and see how this circulation improves with the bemer treatment.  There are some chiropractors who offer beemer treatment for 40 or 50 bucks per session. I am convinced it works because I’ve been using it and I see the effects. The biggest effect that it has had on me is in sleep. I fall asleep faster and I sleep through them night and I wake up rested. That is the biggest effect the bemer mat has had on me. I also have tinnitus a ringing in my left ear, it’s constant, it never goes away. There are some reports that it cures tinnitus It has not cured my tinnitus, it’s still the same. Another benefit that I’ve noticed is that I do seem to recover a little faster when i started using beemer matt. I have ruptured my Achilles due to wearing wrong kind of shoes, and it was something that did not heal quickly, I tried ice baths and switch to hot water. I was trying everything, I even went to see a massage therapist. Eventually, I found out it was the kind of shoe I was wearing and I...

Shownotes:

* How did Michael meet Becker? – 0:47

* Becker shares his story of becoming successful as a wedding photographer – 02:05

* Who was his mentor? – 05:09

* The skill sets you should have if you are starting in wedding photography – 07:41

* How important is efficiency and workflow? – 09:26

* Becker’s take away on Raw vs. JPEG – 11:20

* The greatest lessons learned from running the [b] school – 14:40

* He is still mentoring and a working wedding photographer – 17:23

* What is the ketogenic diet? – 20:44

* Becker shares the misperceptions about dieting today – 25:42

* Are there medical benefits that we know of about the ketogenic diet? – 29:08

* How much exercise is required – 34:27

* What’s the thought and the logic about having a cheat day? – 39:34

* Michael recommends Ketogenic Diet to those who do not have time to work out – 41:47

* Connect with Becker – 45:28

 

Links from this podcast:Becker’s Ketology Website

Becker’s Wedding Photography Website

Becker’s Price Check

Becker’s Social Media:

Twitter: @thebecker

IG: Ketology.co

FB:Becker’s Ketology On Facebook

Michael Andrew:               Good morning everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the very first guest on The Maven Nation and in The Efficiency Playbook, Chapter 11, The Spyglass, I talk about the importance of having a mentor. If you are going to do something very difficult or if you have a new job or a challenge, you are making it exponentially harder on yourself if you do not have a known expert in the field guiding your way. I cannot stress this enough.

When I first got started in wedding photography, it was about 2004, 2005, I met Becker online. He had a promotion packet that I purchased and it was hugely beneficial and I credit him as one of the top three photographers who really mentored me and allowed me to become successful and competitive. Becker, the thing that I love about him, is he sees himself as a mentor and he’s done it in a couple fields now. He started something called The [b] School, which was for photographers.

I don’t know how many photographers he’s mentored. It has to be several hundreds, potentially thousands, and now he’s a ketogenic diet coach. I am thrilled to have the Becker. If you guys want to check it out, his photography work, it’s thebecker.com. I’m sure we’ll hear more about his websites. Becker, I am thrilled to have you on the podcast. Thank you for joining us.

Becker:                                     Oh, I am very excited to talk to you Michael. Again, I really appreciate you sending me an advance copy of your book and I’m about halfway through it, but I absolutely just love it because I’ve always been an efficiency guy and I just love the little tips and nuggets and anything I can learn from somebody else and apply it to my life to make my life a little better, that’s what I’m all about.

Michael Andrew:               How in the world … I have to ask you this and if there’s anything that I missed about your...