How I escape a slump or rut...

Foreign Rich Sheffern here. I have not done a live stream in what feels like several years. It's probably been at least a year, I think. And for tonight, what I thought I would do is just kind of do something that I thought was relevant to me right now. How do I get out of a slump? Because I just recently got out of a slump. And also just a short live stream to kind of reintroduce myself to live streaming because it's been so long. And because of that, it feels a little awkward, to be honest with you. Just I'm sitting here in my office all alone talking to a empty screen right now and hoping that some of you show up and throw some questions at me, because I would love to answer some questions. So if you have any, by all means, put it in the chat. It's been an insanely up and down kind of experience last couple months for me, dealing with a bunch of different things from changing the management of my company to my mother being diagnosed with Alzheimer's and that progressing much more rapidly than any of us would have thought, to just the normal challenges of being a friend, a dad, a spouse, this and that. Hey, Lorna. Sorry. I know I owe you a call and we will eventually talk. I apologize about that. Hey, geez, I'm going. Wine too, if that wasn't bad enough. Hey LS good to see you. And so if you have any questions, let me know. Just put it in the chat, no matter whether you're on Facebook or YouTube, and it will show up on my screen. The I think every entrepreneur goes through phases where they feel totally like they could take on the world. And then there are times when they feel like they would prefer to lie down on the floor in the fetal position. And as long as that doesn't happen back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, then that's normal, right? There'll be times when you feel like you can do so much more, and then there are times when you can feel like you can't. And I've recently gone through a time where I felt like I couldn't. And so this is highly relevant to me, and I wanted to share some of the things that I feel can. Can make a big difference both for you and for me. So what I would say is that the first thing that I try and do when I hit a rut or a slump is to look at my routine. Now, if I've kind of fallen away from my routine, my morning routine, let's say, then my goal generally right up front is to re. Establish. Establish my morning routine. But. So let's talk about that first. My morning routine is I get up at 6am, working out by 6:30. I have a checklist of all the things that I want to check off in the morning, which includes pemf, red light, cold plunge exercise with oxygen, jump rope and so on and so forth, right. I take a bunch of supplements in the morning. I take Bromantane, and if you don't know what that is, look it up. It's one of the few stimulants that's also an anti anxiety, which is kind of cool. Bro. Mantain I write my journal and in my journal I make sure to take some time to identify what it is that I'm grateful for. People, places, ordinary things and meditate. But let's say you don't have that morning routine and you're hit a slump or you've hit a rut. You would want to establish a morning routine and if it's not working for you, then possibly change the routine dramatically. There have been times in my life where I've changed my routine dramatically and it changed my day, right? It changed how I experienced the day. So there are times where I depart from that daily routine that I just went through. That is really what I tend to bring out the best of me. I will sleep really late and I won't wake up early, I won't work out, I will wake up late, do my calls, and then maybe I'll do some of that stuff in the evening or take a day, a few days off. But dramatically changing your routine is another way that you can really make a big difference in how you perceive the day. And I guess that's the older I get. I'm now in my mid-50s, right? The older I get, the more I realize good day, bad day has a lot more to do with what's going on in here than it is what's going on out there. And that there are days when I didn't get a good night's sleep the night before and everything seems horrible. And there are days when I've gotten a great night's sleep and those things that seemed horrible when I didn't get sleep seem really easy to surmount. So I recognize so often these days that it's much more of an internal issue than anything external. And I actually have some quotes that I want to share with you towards the end that have made a difference to you. So let's see here. I'm going to try and answer questions just kind of as we go right now, I think that what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be doing live streaming much more frequently, probably scheduled at some point really soon. And then I'm going to try and actually tie down some kind of format that makes sense. But today we're going to operate with no format. I'm just going to jump around because this was really more for my team to schedule the livestream as opposed to me so that we can get some practice with that and for me to just kind of clear the cobwebs, so to speak, and get used to being on air again. So I have to look to the side right now just because of the way I have this set up when I want to look at comments. So, Robert Bowman, let's see. Oh, I can show these now. Oh, and I was told that I have to look up here when I put them so that it doesn't look. So that they can still see me. Hey Rich, great to see you back. I'm at a point of raising the pricing in my rates and my agency services. What's a good formula to not scare off people but attract higher paying clients? Great question, Robert. And I'll get back to that. The, you know, there I was just actually reviewing some notes on pricing and pricing is one of the most significant decisions that you can make. And I think, Robert, I'd love to do a live stream on pricing, although I definitely would have to prep for it, I can tell you. Let's see if I can just find that book. Really quick pricing. Let's just see if that happens to come up. You know, they tell you that dead air is the worst thing that you can do. Now there's a great book on pricing, I forget and. Oh, thanks Robert, for sharing it. Yes, Accelerated Success Consulting. I plan on doing live streaming again, getting back into the swing of things. Thanks, John, for saying that. You missed these. I'm excited to be doing them again. Your transformation videos changed my life. Glad to see you back. Oh, well, thanks, Sam. Yeah, I'm excited to see you live stream again. I've been binging some of the 2000, 2021, 22 ones. Cool. Rich Heffern is in the house. Hey Cam Fats, one of my attendees of my old live stream. So great to see you in the house and awesome. Accelerated Success Consulting, Morna. I'm sure there's something behind that. I'm interested in hearing all about it next time we talk. So the first thing is looking at your morning routine. Your daily routine is it working for you? Did you get away from it? If you got away from it, can you get back to it? Or if it's not serving you, than possibly dramatically changing it. The other thing that I find that is helpful for me is to believe it or not, create a stop doing list. That I find that my ADD brain gets me into a whole bunch of things that are non productive. And sometimes I have to take a step back and look at all the things that I'm wasting time on and create a stop doing list. And that stop doing list isn't necessarily forever, but maybe for the next week or the next two weeks or the next three weeks, I won't be doing whatever that thing is or those group of things that seem to bring me to a worse place. Right. So a stop doing list reestablishing healthy distractions to replace unhealthy ones. So I find I have, I have to do this one more frequently than I would like to admit. A lot of times I get into the habit of watching just way too much YouTube. It's passive. It's easy to just sit there and scroll. And so a lot of times I'll be like, oh my God, I'm embarrassed by the amount of hours that I'm wasting right now. And I will replace it with reading, writing in my journal, more evernoting, all those kinds of things that are also distractions for me, but they're much more positive ones. Another kind of, as it relates to routine, I kind of broke these all out into different categories is to go on a digital detox. You know, I write in my journal every day and I write it by hand, right. And a lot of times I like to do a lot of my work by hand, right? But. But I'm on my computer most of the time with Steal Our Winners. With the work that I do, it requires me to be on my computer. Computer. But taking a couple of days away from any screen is something that I think not enough of us do. And I can remember if you're in your 50s or then you can remember a time when screens were not as pervasive, when kids used to go out and play. And there is a huge benefit, right? And so let's kind of even pull back for a second and talk about a slump. Like what is a slump? And for me, I'm using it kind of loosely. It could be a rut or a slump. It's really where you are not really into it. You're not feeling like you want to take over the world. You're not Feeling like you're making progress and it just is. Blah, right? If someone asks you how you're doing, maybe you go, meh, right? So that's what I'm talking about. And that overall feeling, it's difficult to thrive when you feel that way. And so the goal is, is to reverse that, right? To get out of that. And so the last thing on routine, if you don't do it, it's also really can be very beneficial. And that is taking an hour a day to learn something new, like a learning hour each day. Right. There's an excitement if you pick the right things to learn that can carry forward into the rest of your day. Now, the next thing that I want to talk about is goals. And my personal feeling about goals is probably different than most. And I'll share it with you. And it's not that I'm suggesting that this be the way you look at goals. I'm just sharing what works for me. And this is based on what I came up with when I went through my midlife crisis in my early 40s. And in my early 40s, I had achieved, I had surpassed all the goals that I had for myself. And I'm not saying that to brag in any way. Maybe I had really low goals, but I had surpassed them. I made more money than I had ever thought I was going to make. I had more notoriety than I ever thought I was going to have, et cetera, et cetera. And I wasn't happy. And that really started a tailspin, like, you know, a negative spiral, you could say. And I tried for a period of time. There were a lot of other things going on, but let's not go there. I tried for a period of time to have figuring that I was pursuing these goals because I thought they would make me happy. I surpassed these goals, and I'm not happy. Maybe I shouldn't have any goals. Well, that didn't work at all. At all. My girlfriend has tuned in. Kim deslik. And she said, yay, let's take a break from screens and go on a vacation. I like that idea, Kim, where you want to go. But I decided no goals, and that didn't really work well at all. And then one night in my journal, I was writing about this malaise that I was feeling and what could I do to get out of this malaise? And as I thought about what triggered it and all this kind of stuff, I recognized that when I felt most alive, when I was most happy, I was in pursuit. I was in pursuit of something and didn't matter what it was. You know, my junior year in college, it was a girl. You know, when I had my first clothing business, it was about changing the way that people buy clothes, or when I had my hypnosis centers, it was about changing the way mental health was being done. But I had these goals that I was pursuing, and it was not the accomplishment of any of those goals that made me happy. In fact, they were kind of a letdown. But pursuit of goals was the opposite. I felt extremely alive. Like when I was in pursuit of something that was meaningful to me, I had all the energy that I could muster, right. I had never ending, like fountain of energy. And so what I realized about myself, and you could try it on and see if it fits with you, is that that's the only purpose of a goal for me. The only purpose of a goal is does it get me out of bed in the morning wanting to do stuff? And if it does, then it's a great goal. Because the accomplishment of the goal for me is not going to be the payoff that I thought of, right? But the pursuit of it is what life is all about. So for me, if goals are no longer getting me going, getting me juiced, then it's really a scream that I need to change my goals, I need to find goals that I would find empowering, pursuing, etc. So I find that for me, that matters. Right? But in addition to that, I've also played with timelines of goals. Like instead of having these goals way out there, maybe I have a daily goal. I had a client that was not his business. I don't remember. I'm going to make up numbers because I really don't remember. But let's say he was making a million dollars. A, he had this goal of doing $3 million a year, but that just wasn't exciting to him. And what was interesting though was when we broke it up into a daily goal, that 3 million, let's say divided by 200 work days a year. So that's 15,000 a day. And I'm just playing with numbers here, so the numbers are kind of unimportant. He then had a purpose each day to generate $15,000, right? And that to him was exciting, especially when he made it into a game to see how early he could make that 15 grand because then he was checking out for the rest of the day. So, you know, can you play with the timeline? For me, short term goals seem more exciting than long term goals. So change them. Set clear goals. If you don't have them set goals that get you into pursuit of something that matters. And then also what I found is setting a personal goal, a challenging goal outside of work, maybe something physical or personal, something that doesn't revolve around work, can also be quite uplifting. So for me, this year, my goal is to jump 1.5 million jump rope jumps. I've already. I'm at 1.3 something million, so I'm hoping to get to 1.5. I did 1.1 million last year. 1.3 million jump rope jumps is 175 hours of jumping. And so that's where I'm at right now. But I can tell you that that also provides some momentum, some push. Each morning when I do jump rope, it makes me feel like I'm getting closer and closer and that is exciting to me. And that enthusiasm can carry forward through the day. Felicia said, how does Cabo and June sound? I told, I told Kim that we need to book those hotels. So I'm hoping maybe we could do that tonight. Kim, maybe we could stay there a little bit extra long. Okay, let's talk about more physical stuff because that's what's next on my list. And some things that I've done physically to get out of a rut, besides setting like these big physical goals is sometimes I'll take a day and just do all physical activities, right? A day of working out just to kind of do a reset where I push my body to the absolute limit that I can. I will fast, I will take. I will go on a multi day fast. I'm trying to just disrupt whatever is occurring, right? I'm trying to figure out if I change this, what else cascades, right? What dominoes does that kind of set down so that things just change as they are. The I also found this, right? Joining a gym, especially a gym that has like a group kind of workout, can be really one of the few places that adults can meet other people really easily, especially people that are also interested in improving themselves, bettering themselves. For me, that was F45 and I've made a. I've been to F45 in a few months and if I don't go this next before the end of the year, then I'm going to cancel my membership. But I used to go with my friend Donnie. And you know, it's interesting because what I've discovered about myself and I share it only for the reason that maybe some of this lands on you in a way that might be helpful is that I generally thrive when I have like A single male friend that is someone I'm closest with that I spend some considerable amount of time with, that used to be Todd Brown, a gazillion years ago. Then recently it was Donnie French. But, you know, people get busy, they have their own lives. And so nowadays those are two of my best friends, but I don't see them as often as I'd like to. And for me personally, for some reason, having a very close male friend makes a difference. Right. And I also think that part of maturity is knowing yourself better and better. Right. So I know, for example, for myself, that having a goal is not the important thing, but having a goal that puts me into pursuit of something that matters is important to me. That's I've learned over the years just about what works for me and what doesn't. Same with having a close male friend that that is something that I've discovered that times when I felt at my best, I had a close friend that I was constantly in contact with, and times when I wasn't at my best, those people were absent. And so what I'm saying is, is that it's only through reflection that I've kind of come to these conclusions about myself. And so if you've never taken the time to really think about when is it that you've kind of thrived the most, where you felt like you could take on anything and what was going on for you during those times and versus when you didn't feel that way and what was going on for you during those times. And are there any things that scream out at you when you look at those two different experiences of life? Was there anything else going on that was consistent between all the bad times and all the good times? The next thing is, well, I said set a physical goal, but I feel like we already covered that. So let's look at work a little bit closer. What about setting a goal for some kind of like not a goal? What about taking on a exciting project or something you're passionate about? Right. Another thing that I've done with a bunch of clients, I haven't done this in a while myself, but maybe. But then I'm kind of lazy, so I don't know that I need to do this, that cutting your work hours. So over the years when I used to do a lot of entrepreneurial coaching, quite often surprisingly so I would talk to an entrepreneur who was working 50, 60, 70 hours a week, but that's not really how much they were working, that's how long they were at work. And maybe they were Getting, let's say they were working 10 hours a day, but they were getting two hours of work done a day, like real work. And what I found that worked best for those entrepreneurs was actually cutting their work hours way down, but that they had to live with that. Right. So if they were only getting two hours of productive work done a day, then maybe they only allow themselves to work two and a half hours a day. And that first day, they're going to get almost nothing done. The second day, they're going to get a little bit done. But by the third or fourth day, as work starts to pile up, they start operating a little bit differently. They start making decisions a little bit differently. They don't answer their phone when it rings. During that block of time, an employee or team member asks if they have 10 minutes and they say no, because they only have these two and a half hours to work. And what slowly happens for some, but for others it happens very fast is that all of a sudden those two hours or two and a half hours that they're working, they are getting two hours to two and a half hours of work done. And that's a total game changer. And then if you go on Weight Watchers to lose weight, when you get to your goal weight, they put you on maintenance and then you slowly add more calories until you start gaining weight and then you back it off a little bit. And that's kind of what you can eat on a daily basis without gaining weight. In this example, you would only add time back to your work hours and half hour blocks. That where you can maintain some sort of ratio of productivity based on time invested. But a lot of times if you spend too much time at work, you end up having this like, lackadaisical approach where it's like, oh, I don't, I can waste a little bit of time now because I'm working long hours anyway. I can do it later. And that sets up just a bad kind of scenario. All right, let's kind of check in with the comments here again. I will have a better setup next time where I don't have to turn my head. Let's see. All right, glad to see you too, Hannah. There's my girlfriend saying, let's take a break. It's from screens. SOW has changed my life and my business forever. Well, thank you, Robert. Thank you for saying that. I'm really proud of what we've created in Steal Our Winners. It's unlike anything else that's out there. And because of that, in and of itself, I'M proud of it. But the fact that it makes such a difference for so many people is also really awesome. Adrian says really love steal our winner tactics and strategies, but I really did get so much value from your live streams. So glad you were able to do this again. Well, thank you, Adrian. Let's say, let's see. Next one. Do you have a specific way of writing goals? How often do you measure and reassess your goals? I try to have just a limited number of goals. I find that for me, that generally tends to work better. But one of the things that I'm a big believer in is once you've targeted a goal, to write that goal out daily so that it stays front and center so that you're really programming yourself to notice for things that will help you get there. You know, I think I learned this from Joseph Riggio, who was a coach of mine years ago. But, you know, it's great to have goals. But then he asked me this question that I've always remembered, which is, what do you need to be noticing for to reach that? And that's a great question. I've always loved that question because that starts to get your mind working in ways to notice things that you might not have noticed. And so by writing out your goals every day, I like to write them in my journal. Like, you know, what I'm writing in my journal. It kind of primes the pump to just be on the lookout. And then by thinking through my day and where might I have an opportunity to actually advance towards those goals, I find that that is really powerful. Let's see, let's see, what's this? What are some methods you would recommend to maintain an appropriate amount of skepticism and not allow it to create paranoid boundaries? I've never really had that challenge, so it's hard for me to say. Robert as I've gotten older, I guess I've gotten a little bit more skeptical. But I tend to want to believe, and I haven't. I think everyone's been screwed over in their life. I have, as well as, I guess, everyone else. But I tend to default to that. The world is a good place and people are good, even when I know that maybe some people don't fit that. And so I've never, I've never operated in a paranoid way. And I think that those that do often limit their happiness, their growth, their connection, etc. So I'd rather get screwed than be the person screwing someone. And I am very clear that, you know, those people, people that know me best, know that Something I really strive to live by is that to treat people as good as possible at the end of a relationship because you learn a lot more about someone when it doesn't matter than you do at the beginning or during a relationship. And so to me, I don't really operate in a paranoid way, maybe to a detriment, but I feel like it works out better than the opposite. Combat axle. How's your diet looking these days? My diet's a shit show right now, but I still have my six pack. And I think that has to do with the jumping rope that I do. People are always shocked that I have the muscle that I have from just jumping rope these days. But it's a workout. When you do 5,000, 10,000 jump rope jumps, you can, you know, I can bang out about 5,000 in an hour, which is hard. It's not easy. So When I do 10,000 in a day, that's two hours of jumping. It's a lot, right? It's a lot of work on the body. Reverse your problem solving approach. So I tend to be very linear, very sequential, like when I'm trying to solve a problem. But if I'm in a rut, I'm in a slump. Sometimes I'll try and not do that. I'll try and solve problems with my gut and see how it goes. Just switching and kind of changing the way I approach things can often make that difference that I'm looking for. Another one that I like to do is change. Either my rearrange my workspace here, like this office, right. Or go someplace else and get some work done. Go to my friend's office, go to Starbucks, go to the beach, go to a restaurant. But do it someplace other than where I've grown accustomed to doing things. Because sometimes a change in environment can make all the difference. Short projects. I think I said this earlier about goals, but it's the same with projects. Like instead of taking on like a big project, take on a project that will be started and completed in a very short period of time so that I can lose myself in that. I would say that probably one of the biggest things that I've noticed about myself, and you can just check it with yourself, is a lot of times when I go into a slump or rut, there tend to be a ridiculous amount of open loops. And these are loops that are taxing me. Right. For example. Right. Like I mentioned earlier that my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and we're dealing with that now. That's not anything that is going to be A loop that's closed. But there's a lot of things going on right now and I'm so fortunate that my girlfriend Kim has really attacked a lot of that. And we hired an assistant to help and we might be hiring a second assistant to help. But until that is somewhat handled, I find that it's taxing my brain that there's a daily tax to be paid. Talking to my sister about it when I do, I try to avoid that as much as possible. But there is this tax, mentally emotional tax, that weighs heavily when you have a lot of open loops that are significant. And so I've had to do a lot of shifting around of things to start closing loops. I closed a loop this evening, which I don't want to go into, but it had been bothering me for the last week and yet it still like hung there open and it was taking its toll. And it's one of those things that, and I think everyone can identify with this in some way, shape or form that you're resisting, like closing that loop because it's going to be uncomfortable. But as soon as you do, you feel this surge of energy like that, God, I should have just done this like a week ago. But nonetheless, so looking at open loops, figuring out if any of those are really dragging you down and then addressing accordingly and sometimes just knowing that today's the day to close a lot of these loops that are going to be uncomfortable, you will feel different at the end of the day and there's no doubt, at least from my perspective, you'll feel a lot better. Some other things that I've done is teach or mentor others. You know, part of a slump or a rut, you can often get very kind of self centered and I don't mean it in a. Like you get too focused on yourself. So one of the easiest ways to break out of that is actually to focus on others. Whether that's a friend, whether that's teaching, something that you know that would make a difference to others, etc. You know, I have this and it's one of two, right? You could either spend time alone or spend time with others. You know, there are times, me being an introvert, that the one thing I need more than anything is to spend time alone. That the only way that I'm going to recharge is to be completely by myself for some period of time, not talking to anyone. There are other times though, where I feel like I've been alone too long and the best thing I could do is actually spend some time with others. So you know, their emotions are contagious, they're infectious. I find that if I'm around negative people too long, it starts taxing me. And when I'm around happy, excited people, it impacts me as well. And so being around the right people is. Being around the wrong people is. I'd rather be alone because it's actually more damaging. But being around the right people, there's. There's nothing that really that can compare. Attend an in person event. I find that a lot of times when I've been in a rut, when I've gone to an event, been around a bunch of friends, industry peers, etc. That's enough to lift me out of that rut. As long as I get myself out of the hotel room. Sometimes I want to just hide in my hotel room. Volunteer for a cause that can make a world of difference because you start to get swept up in making the difference and you meet with other people that are part of that common cause can make a world of difference. Random acts of kindness. Anytime I do a random act of kindness for some stranger, I always walk away feeling better about myself. And there's always that little extra juice that I get as it relates to slumps and ruts. Can you identify the precipitating event? Can you identify what caused it? What happened right before it? A lot of times you can get a lot of great insight from that and you possibly can find the seeds of the solution in that. Some other ones. Right. That I'll just run off really quickly. Then I want to answer some more questions. Then I wanted to share a couple of things I've highlighted over the last couple months. Plan your weekends. You know, I know that me being the lazy person I am, if I have no plans for the weekend, I will possibly do nothing all weekend. And then I will not go into Monday really feeling all that wonderful. So whether that plan is to be around friends, do something fun and exciting, or even just spend a day jump roping, something that is on my agenda that I'm looking forward to is powerful. And then doing that thing is even better. So like this Saturday I'm meeting with a business partner of mine, Kevin Donegan. He's going to be coming over the house for like five hours. We're going to totally re strategize the business and for a nerd like me, that's fun. So I'm looking forward to that. An artistic or creative endeavor, you know, the closest I get to that is designing my slides for my PowerPoint presentations. But I can get Lost in that. And I really enjoy it. And it's not a. I'm not very artistic, but yet I really enjoy that. And I. Yeah, so if I had more talent I'd probably do that a lot more often. But I do enjoy the creative artistic endeavor, especially in an area like that. Isn't writing because writing is too close to home and feels like work. Pursue a hobby, you know. One of my mentors, Mark Ford, also known as Michael Masterson, is probably the most well rounded person, the most renaissance man I've ever known. And I'm envious of how many hobbies and interests that he has. He's a world champion in jiu jitsu. He's written books on poetry, he's written bestselling financial books. He's built a billion dollar company and many 20 to 50 million dollar companies. He has the largest palm tree nursery. He collects palm trees in the U.S. he's one of the largest collectors of Central American art. And the list goes on and on and on. Having hobbies outside of work makes you, helps you recharge, makes you more interesting and makes you more worldly. Over communicate. I have a tendency when I hit a run or a slump that I tend to withdraw and isolate. And I know that that's the worst thing I can do. And so pushing myself to talk to more people often helps me get out of the rut. But I have to push myself because I know that left my own devices. I want to hide in the fetal position under my desk. The see, I try to limit big decisions and I try and eliminate decisions on mundane things like the stuff like, you know, if my girlfriend is watching, she'll know this very much about me. Like with the stuff with my mom that we're dealing with, there's a hundred problems. I want to focus on just two of them because those are the most important and I don't care about the other 98, you know. And I can tell you that my sister cares about all hundred and I think she's about to have a nervous breakdown. So really kind of looking at what's really most important and kind of pushing other things to the side, maybe not forever, but for some period of time to allow you to kind of get back into your best self, be more selective, say no to more things to give yourself more space. Collaborations, collaborations to me are so valuable. Sometimes when you get into a slump or a rut, you need to kind of catch some energy from the people around you. And so I find that when I collaborate with others, oftentimes my Energy level goes up. As long as it's the right people. Learn something new. Implement a no meeting day so that you totally do have the space and time. One of my favorite books in the self help field is called the Slight Edge. Recommend that. And then also when it comes to your business, if your business has hit a slump, maybe take a week. I'm not talking about like for long periods of time, but maybe not focus on profit for a week. Focus instead on product quality, customer satisfaction, employee morale, but giving yourself other things to focus on, to just allow yourself to pursue something for some period of time without that pressure for profit. Right. As long as you're. That's not the biggest thing. So those are some of the things that I put on this list of different things that I do and I've done to overcome a slump, to get myself out of a rut. And I think we're making pretty good time. So let's like check it back in with everybody here. And I wonder if I can. Let's see here, one second, guys. Just bear with me one second to see if I can actually just have this open in two different windows at the same time. Because if I can, then I can have it. Let's see. Hunter Studio. Let's see how this goes. Will that work? Which one? Okay. No, still not good. Okay, I'll leave that. All right, that didn't work. But you know what, let's see here. I think I should be able to do this. Hold on. Next time the. Let's see here. Just. How's your diet looking these days? Did that one. All right, so sorry for bothering you. I want to offer promotions for your channel. Okay, yeah, that's not going to happen. I love catching. Hey, Martin. Good to see you, man. Haven't seen you in a long time. Thanks, Robert. And I will do one on pricing because I love the idea. Oh, Felicia, I don't know if you were invited. Alex. Alex, man, we do have to catch up. Sorry about this past weekend. It also helps surround yourself with good people. It's hard to be trusting when the people around you are just assholes. Yeah, then you got to find different people, Heather. Or B. I've been in those situations and I can tell you that, you know, one of my favorite times of working in the last, I'd say 10 years was my time working in Agora Financial when I was working with Joe Schreifer, Pete Coyne, Katie Evaldo. Just a great group of people. And I look forward every day to coming into work and spending time with Those people. Perfect timing hearing this. Yeah, we gotta catch up. Looking forward to that. True. When you procrastinate, you won't get inner peace. You will just keep worrying about the things you haven't done. Yeah, that's been my experience for sure. Sending. What? It's not easy watching a parent decline with dementia. Glad you have support around you. Take care. Yeah, no, it's not pleasant at all. Especially when other people are trying to take advantage. And that's really what we're dealing with a lot. I guess he is invited. How do you feel about having a negative friend? Can you share a story about one time when you had to deal with this situation? Yeah, sure. You know, look, sometimes I can be that negative friend and I need someone to help me kind of get it out. But the. Where's the thing I printed? Hold on a second. Because I really liked what I printed here. The one thing that I would say on this is that, well, one is to have a conversation with that friend. But you know, there are so having a conversation with that friend. Right? Let's start there. And that there's always going to be things to be upset about, right? No one that I know has everything in their life working perfectly. Right? Just like I don't really know anyone that gets it all done, gets everything done. Like that has left nothing undone, right? So if I have a friend that constantly feels stressed because they're not getting everything done, it's a conversation to let them know that that's never going to happen. And so they're going to have to get to be okay with that. That there's never going to be a time in your life or my life where there isn't a problem. But what you do with that problem and how it impacts you in every area is insanely important. Since the likelihood is there will always be something. Right. I was talking to my girlfriend about this today, right? Like, we're dealing with my mom right now. But you know, with kids, parents, friends, there's always something, right? And the question is, do you need to be sharing that on a consistent basis? Because, like, the friends that I have that I enjoy the most are the people that when they're around, I just find myself uplifted. Right? And so a friend that is constantly complaining is someone that I just cannot spend a lot of time with because at the end of the day, it's going to impact my performance. And I would have a conversation about that. So Felicia says improv is a good creative endeavor. She's saying that because she just completed an improv class where they did a live performance in San Diego. And she just signed up for a. If that was 101, she's now on to 102. So, anyone in San Diego, I would pay top dollar for a smuggled video. Video on your iPhone of Felicia's next improv performance. Free consulting for a year. If you live in San Diego, that would be the easiest way to get me to work to grow your business. Mike Marin in the building. Oh, nice. Hey, there he is. Slight Edge is a great book. Yeah, one of my favorites. I wasn't the biggest fan of Mike Marin of it. My go. I love the One thing and the Power of Less. A lot more interesting. Who how to Stay Energetic and Never Lazy Forever. Please elaborate on the two. Wow. Well, stimulants are always a good thing as someone who's used a lot of them. Right? No coffee because it's late already. But, you know, they're the obvious things. Getting enough sleep. A sleep schedule is really valuable. Going to bed around the same time, waking up at the same time. Never lazy forever. Well, you know, I am lazy, but I'm not always lazy. And the easiest productivity tip is to work on things that you're passionate about. And so if you're doing the things that you're meant for, if you're pursuing the goals that are exciting to you, then those things shouldn't really show up too often. That's what I would say. Onyeka. Thanks, Wayne. People are the juice of life. Yes, people are the juice of life. People are also the source of most problems. So it's the good and the bad. Right. And something I've shared on numerous other live streams that was shared with me by a psychologist is that all trauma happens in relation to other people. And the tendency after trauma is to isolate yourself. But yet all trauma gets resolved in relationship to other people as well. And that's why it's so bad to isolate. But people, yeah, relationships are everything at the end of the day, right? This is a great list for getting out of a slump. Thank you. This is timely. Cool. Not gonna happen. I don't know. I'm. Big reward for anyone who can figure out where that. Where that improv class does their live performance. Huge, huge reward could happen. Felicia. All right, so let me just share some quotes that I like in podcasts that I've listened to that I wrote down. So take it for what it is. But these were things that, in the course of listening to countless podcasts, were for me, writer downers. Right. First one I can't. I wish I could credit who said these things. All I can tell you is that none of them came from me. Okay, Find three hobbies. One that makes you money, one that keeps you fit, and one that makes you creative. I thought that was kind of cool. Being honest leaves you with a clear mind, free of lies running through your head, which you're forced to keep track of. Like that one desire is suffering. Every desire you have is an access where you will suffer. So just don't focus on more than one desire at a time. The universe is rigged in such a way that if you just want one thing and you focus on that, you'll get it. But everything else, you got to let go of. Mark Ford, Michael Masterson used to have a goal program, and it was like, pick one goal. If you have two goals, the chance of you hitting that first goal just went down 50%. If you have three goals, the chances of you hitting that first goal just went down 66%. Right? So there's a lot of wisdom in that. In today's day and age, many people think you get peace by resolving all your external problems. But there are an unlimited number of external problems. The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up on the idea that there are problems. It's just the way it is like that. If you have something you really want to do in life that feels important, there's very rarely going to be a convenient time to do it. I agree with that. Success in many areas of life can be measured by the number of uncomfortable things you are able to do or uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have. And that goes back to the open loops thing, right? A lot of the times I get open loops because it's a difficult conversation to have or it's an uncomfortable thing to do. And so I'm glad I wrote that one down. I just have to remember it more often. For every opportunity that you have, try and ask yourself, will this give me more time or more energy? Question mark? If the answer is no to both, don't proceed. A Simple happiness hack. Just think of all the bad things that could have happened to you that haven't. If any one of them did happen to you, you would consider your prayers answered if you could just return to the current moment. Right? Do you know how crazy that is? And it's so true. I, you know, I make. I've. I think I've shared this before. I know I've shared it before. I have this picture of myself at 220lbs with about a 40inch waist. I'm obviously in much better shape today. But that was supposed to be my before picture and then I went and gained another 30 pounds. So now I was 250 with a 44 inch waist. Moving to 46 inch waist and I looked at that picture when I was 220 and miserable at 220. I took a before picture and now before picture had become my short term goal, actually a long term goal from 250. And it's so interesting how a thing can be a problem in one perspective and yet be a blessing in another, right? And so thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong that didn't and then thinking about one of those things had they happened, how much you'd be willing to trade, you'd just be right back where you are right now. I just. That resonated with me. Four important questions to continually ask yourself. How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say that I don't want? Let me read that one again. How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Second question. What am I not saying that needs to be said and to whom? What am I not saying that needs to be said and to whom? What am I saying that's not being heard and who needs to hear it? What's being said that I'm not hearing? Those were the four questions. Easy choices, Hard life. Hard choices, easy life. And those are some quotes that I pulled from a ridiculous number of podcasts. I hope they were interesting to you as they were to me. Your last email keeps asking me about my business concerning Steal Our Winners. Please help me get clear on what to do exactly towards the email onyeka. I have no idea what email you're talking about. We send out lots of emails so you could always reach out to mail at Strategic Profits and I'm sure they'd be glad to help you. So like I said, we were just going to do a quick live stream today. I just really wanted to get my feet wet because it's been a long time. I wanted to share though with you. I did a couple of Steal Our Winners today and I wanted to share a couple of just thoughts about what I'm seeing what we've been accumulating for anyone. I did an episode about two years ago with Walter Birch and it's funny, he. He's his name came up in another SOW today. SOW stands for Steal Our Winners for those that Don't Know and That's our core product, and it's a subscription service that delivers two strategies or tactics a week. And these are strategies and tactics that are currently crushing it that most people don't know about yet. That's what Steal our Winners is. So we did an episode about two years ago on the difference between teas versus taste with Walter Birch. And. And it was one of my favorite episodes. And he showed that this was from YouTube advertising, but it really is applicable anywhere. And I've played around with it in webinars and presentations etc, and the idea is, is that with YouTube where it came from, right? The idea that YouTube can help. Like, if you're advertising on YouTube, you can target the exact right person. But just because you're targeting the right person does not mean it's the right time, right? So you could, let's say you got a copywriting course or something, and you're targeting, like, beginner copywriters, and YouTube can put you in front of beginner copywriters. But just because someone's a beginner copywriter doesn't mean that they want to see an ad. That's an interruption of the video that they just clicked on at that moment. So what's going to get someone in the mood? What's going to get the right person in the mood if it's not the right time? And so Walter contrasted tease like a. A video ad that starts out by saying, in this video, I'm going to share with you, bop, bop, bop, right? You know, versus jumping right into it being like, here's the best way to whatever. First you do this, right? That would be more of a taste. You can then always go into a tease after you've dropped that nugget. And to me, it resonated because of all the research that I did over a decade ago on attention and about my predictions back then, that attention was going to become the scarcest commodity online. So to me, when I heard what Walter shared about teas versus taste, he was just articulating how the price of someone's attention has consistently gone up. Where a promise will no longer hold someone's attention, you now actually have to deliver something first to warrant someone giving you more of their attention. So, like I said, it was one of my favorite episodes, and my closest friends know about my favorite episodes because often I will send that to them and say, you really got to watch this. And it's. I can't tell you how cool it is as a creator to have a product that you are consistently sending pieces of it to Your friends because you believe so strongly in it. And, and so I, I'm just saying I'm very, I feel very good about that. Anyway, I shared that episode with a close friend of mine, Donnie French. And Donnie is a partner in performance Golf. They're about a. They were a 20 million dollar business. They're now 100 million dollar business. Last two or three years, they've really grown dramatically. They've spent about 60 million dollars on advertising in the last 18 months. And that was somewhat influenced in a great way by that episode Tease versus Taste. So I did a steal our winners with Donnie recently. It's called the $60 million ad secret because they spent $60 million in the last 18 months. They tested 5,500, 5,600 different ad variations across all platforms. They had 85 ads that scaled above a hundred thousand, some to a couple million, some to 1 million. But ads that they spent well over a hundred thousand on because they were profitable. Right, 85 out of the 5,500 plus. Right, 85 out of the 85. So 100% of the ads that scaled all followed the format that Walter was talking about. It's insane. You'd have to spend $60 million and you'd have to test an amazing amount of variations and have a team behind you tracking all that stuff meticulously to learn this one fact. And to me, that's an insane piece of valuable information. So really excited about what we're doing right now at strategic profits. I will be sharing a lot more of that in future live streams. As I said, we're making some changes to the management. We continue to grow here in the States as well as overseas. We just had our Japanese partner in town. He was here filming for a couple of days. We also are opening up India, Spain, Italy, etc. So we're growing and there are a lot of exciting things happening. And we'll be leveraging more and more AI ourselves. We feel like we have one of the best data sets out there as far as winning strategies and tactics and marketing. And we want to leverage that in as many ways as possible. For those of you who are Steal our winner subscribers, we are working right now on a major update to the way we do action guides. We want to make them a lot more beneficial and useful. Even though we liked the old format, we think we can do a lot better. We're also going to be changing our email strategy as well. So if you're on our list, you're going to see a big and you are a subscriber you're going to see a big difference there. I just wanted to say thank you for joining me. Thank you for making this so that I'm not just talking to an empty screen. And I'm going to try and keep what I said as far as to an hour to an hour. I have more jump ropes to do today because I haven't finished and I know that my girlfriend Kim would like to spend some more time together as well. So I will wrap this up. But my plan is is to get back into a groove where I'm doing these live streams pretty consistently. If you were watching my live streams a long time ago, then you know that one of the things that I always wanted to do was figure out a way where we could take content from these live streams and then turn them into YouTube videos for people who are not checking out the live streams. And I feel like we're much closer to that today. Have a great team that's really starting to work on my YouTube. If you haven't checked out my YouTube channel, please do. What you'll see is a very interesting mixture of live video of me plus a digital avatar of me. And so the team uses the digital avatar of me to set up scenes to explain certain things. And it's really cool to just be surprised myself when I see the videos that are being put out. So really cool stuff there. You should definitely check it out. For no other reason. If you're watching this and you like my content, but even if you didn't like my content, you somehow just tripped on this. It's interesting to see the combination of using a digital avatar of me, right. And then live me going back and forth. So it's kind of cool. And yeah, that's about it. I think we'll end here. I will talk to everyone real soon. I assume that I'll be doing another live stream next week. Don't know when yet, but we'll figure that out. Until then, to higher profits and beyond. Rich Sheffrin. Over and out.