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dvp95 · 5 years

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quiet on widow’s peak (1)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, youtuber phil lester, dan howell is not a youtuber, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.2k (this chapter & total) summary: Phil's got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story. Bingo squares: met on tumblr

new wip? NEW WIP.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

The wind is loud in this one. That's frustrating, and it makes Phil's job a lot harder, but he can't control the weather. Be cool if he could. He does his best to level out his voice and the background noise of Mother Nature before he settles in with his good headphones and really cranks the volume.

It's even more annoying to listen to the alternating crackle and whistle right in his ears. Phil has dealt with worse during this whole process, though, so he finds the strength to power through it. He listens to the full thing three times, scribbling a few timestamps down on a Post-It pad as he does. He takes a break after that, does some stretches around his tiny bedroom and tiptoes out to get a snack without waking the whole damn house, and then he's right back in his apparently ergonomic office chair to subject his ears to more of this nonsense.

Wind, wind, and more wind. And sometimes just Phil's own voice. Nothing of note.

Phil is about to give this video up as a loss altogether when he hits one of the final timestamps and... can't figure out what that noise is.

For the first time since he opened this file, Phil grins. He exports the clip and plays around with it in Audacity. Some videos are always more fun than others, and Phil had felt like he was slogging through this one until now.

"Do you hear that, Theodore?" Phil murmurs. The tiny cactus on his desk, thankfully, does not respond.

It sounds like a person. It sounds like a person, whispering, and it definitely isn't the wind, and it isn't Phil's own voice, because he's in the middle of a question in this clip.

Phil might just be going crazy from sleep deprivation or wishful thinking, though. He pulls out his phone and texts the only group chat that doesn't cause him anxiety, which is comprised of the housemates that he actually gets along with. Anyone up? he asks, adding a single eye emoji for good measure.

Even though it's gone two in the morning, he gets immediate responses from all of them. A string of vaguely dirty emojis from Chris, a simple yeah from Sophie, and a cheerfully morbid did you know that insomnia leads to an early death? from PJ.

Wanna listen to a noise for me?

Within three minutes, Phil's bedroom is full of people in various states of sleepiness. All of them are in ridiculous pyjamas - including Phil - and PJ's hair in particular has taken on a mind of its own. Phil's room isn't really big enough for all of them, so there's some awkward shuffling before PJ claims the office chair. Phil sits at the foot of his bed with Sophie and Chris on either side of him, pressed close against each other's shoulders. It's a good thing he likes these people.

"I mean, it isn't the wind," is PJ's confident opinion. "Did you have anyone with you?"

"No, it's just me and my camera against the world," says Phil.

"No need to be a twat," Chris informs him. He taps at PJ's upper arm, impatient. "Let me have a go, then, if there's something there."

Chris is famously bad at hearing things in white noise, but PJ acquiesces the seat easily enough. Phil laughs, watching them do a weird step dance around each other in the small space between Phil's bed and desk.

"I can't hear any specific words," PJ says as he flops down across Phil's pillows, making himself comfortable. Phil just nods, because neither can he.

"How d'you know it's a person, then?" Sophie asks. Her voice is probably the only one soft enough for the hour. Their other housemates hate them for their frequent all-nighters, but Sophie is kind and quiet enough that she slips under the radar.

"You'll see for yourself."

When Sophie goes to respond, Chris interrupts in a hilariously loud voice, as if he's forgotten that having headphones on doesn't mean they can't hear him. "It's some kind of ghoulie or ghostie! I can barely fucking hear it, Philly, why didn't you mic it?"

"Why didn't I mic the ghost?" Phil asks, bewildered. Naturally, Chris doesn't hear him.

Sophie taps Chris on the shoulder and stands, leaning over his shoulder as she takes her turn listening to the sound clip over and over. Chris spins in the chair a few times and gives Phil an unhinged sort of grin.

"You got something this time," says Chris. He sounds like he's having just as much fun as Phil is, now that there's actually a thing to listen to besides his own voice and the loud, loud wind.

"I think so," says Phil. "Why didn't I mic the ghost?"

"I'm saying it would make your job a lot easier if you mic the ghost, yes."

"If I could mic a ghost, I'd be a millionaire."

"Then you better get on it, eh?" Chris laughs, spinning a bit faster. Phil has never seen the man sleep. It's a little bit worrying.

"Sure," Phil says, giving up on trying to teach any logic to someone who's clearly long lost their hold on it. "Next time I spend all night in a graveyard, I'll mic any spirits that might be hanging out."

"Shut up," Sophie tells them, mild.

Chris mimes zipping his lips, wrapping an easy arm around her waist, and PJ laughs.

For the first few months they all lived together, Phil had struggled to keep up with whatever dynamics were going on between the three of them, but he's long since given it up as something he's not going to understand.

After a moment of quiet, Sophie nods. "I hear it," she tells them. Even with the headphones on, she's quiet. "It's not words, I wouldn't put any subtitles over it."

"Yeah," PJ agrees. "Just let your audience duke it out in the comments like they always do."

"Thanks, guys," Phil says, feeling a sort of warmth sink into his shoulders. He notices that Chris is pulling up another application and half-heartedly protests. "Chris, you don't need to edit this one for me. I still haven't paid you for the last video." Or the one before that. Or the three or four previous. Phil has it written down somewhere.

"Don't be stupid," Chris hums, already clicking around erratically. It makes the editor in Phil want to scream, but he has to admit that Chris manages to find more weird visual stuff to isolate than he could on his own.

"I feel bad," says Phil, chewing his lip.

"I've told you," says Chris, "you can pay me back in chores and sexual favours."

PJ's slippered foot knocks against Phil's hip, and he grins brightly when Phil turns to him. "You know, I do have a bit of a laundry backlog."

"Funny thing, that," says Sophie.

Biting back a laugh, Phil shakes his head. "Alright, alright. Everybody leave their laundry in front of my door tomorrow."

"That's a no on the beej, then?" Chris asks, raising a single eyebrow and pointing dramatically at Phil. It has been near two years of this, and Phil is still too afraid to ask if it's a joke.

It's not as if Phil's answer would change if it wasn't a joke, because he's not interested in Chris, and he's especially not interested in becoming entangled in whatever nonsense his housemates have gotten themselves into. But, still, he might be kinder about letting Chris down if he were being genuine.

"That is a no," Phil confirms. "But I will wash your pants."

"Kinky," says Chris. He turns back to the screen and makes an incomprehensible hand gesture. "This is pretty shit. You know that, right?"

Yeah. Phil does know that. It's getting harder and harder to have the same optimism in every video that he'd had when he first started recording his wanderings around the supposedly-haunted places of Rossendale. He'd brought the camera with him when he left, but might have left that optimism behind. Phil only kind of believes in supernatural things - the way he only kind of believes in giraffes or true love - but it's been more fun than anything else to pick up a camera and try to find some evidence.

He's been doing this since he was nineteen, though, and he's getting a little bored by the formula of it all. Go into a haunted place, try to communicate with the spirits, pick up some garbled words or creepy noises, highlight visual oddities like orbs, and let the internet tear it all to shreds. Honestly, he'd have more fun making proper horror at this point in his life.

Phil shrugs and pulls his knees up to his chest. He wants to hide away from the sympathy in Sophie's eyes, from Chris' blunt words. "Yeah. I'm getting kind of... I don't know. Restless."

"Maybe you should ask people to submit things again," PJ suggests. "That went well last time."

It had, actually. Phil had needed to sort through a lot more ridiculous stories and obvious hoaxes than usual, but he'd found some nuggets of gold in all that hay. Or however that saying goes.

"People did like having their stories read out," Phil says slowly. "I'd just need to be extra sure that nobody's, like..."

"Ripping off r/NoSleep," says PJ.

"Yeah, exactly."

"We can help," Sophie says, and Phil could cry at how easily PJ and Chris agree with her.

He really doesn't deserve to have such great people around him. They've got work and lives of their own, but they're always happy to spend time crowded around Phil's computer listening to weird noises together. Phil sometimes wonders what they get out of it. Do they just like helping him, the way he has fun holding the boom for PJ's films or testing Sophie's concoctions? Or are they just as fascinated as Phil by the weirdness of it all? Do they want to see the cool instances of paranormal activity, too? At this point it feels nearly impossible to ask.

"That's going to be a lot of washing pants for me," Phil sighs. He doesn't know how to thank them, not when they always just wave it off.

"Sure is," says PJ. "But you should... ask the audience!"

"Your Chris Tarrant is pretty good," says Phil, only a little surprised by it. PJ's voice is as much of a tool to him as the rest of his body, and it's one he's always been skilled with. The impressions still tend to catch Phil off guard sometimes.

PJ tips an invisible hat. "Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week."

At his friends' not so gentle encouragement, Phil makes a few posts on his socials to ask his followers for new creepy things to explore. It might be the middle of the night in Brighton, but he has a feeling that Chris isn't leaving his desk until he's found every instance of an orb or strange shadow in the fifty minutes of currently uncut footage.

It seems like Sophie is on the same page, because she excuses herself to make tea for everyone. PJ leans over Chris' shoulder and watches the clips without sound, his lips moving as if he's murmuring to himself.

Sometimes this feels more like a group effort than Phil is comfortable with. He's never been very good at asking for help. As grateful as he is, he still itches with the need to take back control of the situation. He uses the slow trickle of fan submissions to distract him from that feeling, because all three of them do make his videos better when he stops being so possessive over his footage. Phil flops onto his back and scrolls through the incoming emails, tweets, and Tumblr messages to see if there's anything promising.

For the most part, the answer is a resounding no. Some things are blatant lies - there are countless ripoffs of films or novels that Phil happens to be familiar with, a few things swiped from creepypasta or subreddits, and his usual amount of conspiracy theorist fans insisting that some high profile person or other is a lizard - but most of it, to Phil's dismay, just doesn't grab his attention the way he wants it to.

Sophie comes back with tea and snacks. She leans her head against Phil's shoulder and watches him cycle through his apps, fact-checking idly and sighing every time something easily proves to be a hoax. Her hair smells like coconut and she makes a soft humming noise every time she lifts the mug to her lips. Her presence alone, small and warm and supportive, is enough to keep Phil from throwing his phone across the room and having a right sulk about how his career is in a tailspin because nobody makes ghosts like they used to. At some point in the night, Sophie's breathing evens out to the point that Phil thinks she's asleep, but then she reaches out to tap a tiny finger to his screen.

"What's this, then?" she murmurs.

Phil has been zoned out entirely for at least fifteen, and he blinks back into reality. There's a new message in his Tumblr inbox, one that seems like it must be over the character limit for asks. He must have submissions turned on or something, that's the only possible explanation for an actual essay being sent to him. It's barely broken into paragraphs with very little punctuation and no capitalization, and Phil has been staring at screens for far too long to try and parse this on his own.

"Can you please make sure this isn't, like, the entire Bee Movie," Phil asks, handing Sophie his phone with only a slight twinge of anxiety. He trusts her not to go snooping, but. Still. "I need to pee."

"Mhm," Sophie hums, already apparently lost in whatever stream-of-consciousness has been dropped into Phil's inbox.

The floorboards in this old Brighton house creak, and Phil has always envied some of his housemates for being able to sidestep the noises. It doesn't seem to matter how long he lives here, how much he tries to avoid making any noise, it's like the floorboards are determined to creak under Phil's weight. He winces as he passes two bedrooms whose occupants surely don't appreciate creaking outside their doors at such an ungodly hour.

At least he doesn't run into any walls this time. The nightlight in the bathroom at the end of the hall is the only thing lighting Phil's way, and he tends to stub his toes on absolutely nothing in this kind of semi-darkness.

When he makes his - very, very creaky - way back to his own room, he's bewildered by the scene that greets him. PJ and Chris have joined Sophie on his bed, and all three of them are poring over Phil's phone as though they're looking at a map to the Holy Grail.

"Hello," Phil says slowly, closing the door behind him. It creaks, too. "You aren't going through my pictures, are you?"

"No," Sophie and PJ chorus without looking up.

"You got nudes on here or something?" Chris asks with a mild sort of interest, clearly also too engaged in Phil's phone to put his all into the flirting.

"I don't," says Phil. It doesn't sound convincing, even though it's true, and he waits for Chris to tease him about it some more. When he doesn't, Phil has to admit that he's curious. "So I guess it isn't a meme or something?"

That makes them look up, in almost comedic synchronicity. Sophie blinks a few times, as if she's coming back to herself. She holds out Phil's phone and shakes her head.

"It's not a meme," she says. "And near as we can tell, it's genuine."

Phil joins them and takes his phone back, adjusting his glasses. His bed really wasn't made for four people, but his housemates have never had any personal space amongst themselves, and Phil isn't one to say no to human contact when he isn't getting it anywhere else.

The message is just as hard to read as it was at first glance, but Phil puts his brain to work. If his friends are reacting like this, it usually means he's in for something good.

hi ok so the thing is that this is completely ridiculous and i dont think its what youre looking for at all but theres a building near my uni thats got a ton of stories around it and it only started happening like this year like it isnt an old obviously haunted type of place but theres a lot of weird shit that goes down there so i found all the references to it online that i could and ive summarized them here (w/ sources ofc im not a dick) and its all just this side of strange so it seems like the sort of thing you might be interested in ok here we go SO

And it goes on like that. Phil feels his eyebrows raising as he clicks the provided links in the following walls of text, which are exactly what they're advertised as. Not a single rickroll in there. Just a handful of posts on Reddit and Facebook and independent blogs about various experiences people have had with a particular abandoned building in -

"I know this place," Phil says, surprised. He looks up at PJ's grin, Sophie's wide eyes, Chris' palms rubbing together in exaggerated interest. "I've been to parties here. Well, okay," he corrects himself before his friends can do it for him, "I've gone with Martyn to parties here and left early."

"Yeah, it isn't far out of Manchester," PJ hums. He bounces in place a bit, like he's suddenly energized enough to go jump on the soonest train up north.

"It didn't seem that weird," says Phil. "It's been a few years, I guess, but it wasn't even that scary."

"Sounds like it's only just started, though," Chris pipes up.

Phil isn't sure how much he likes that. The idea of a place he's been a few times, half an hour from his childhood home, being so suddenly full of haunted activity feels... weird. Still, it's catching his interest in a way that nothing else has in months, so.

"I'll look into it some more tomorrow," he decides, glancing at the time. His brother is probably still awake, to be honest, but Phil doesn't want to be that guy asking 'hey, do you remember the Wilkins place?' before dawn has even broken. Again. He has definitely done that sort of thing in the past. "I'll have plenty of time while I do, what, seventeen loads of laundry?"

"Something like that," PJ laughs. "Want us to clear out?"

As nice as the company and help has been, Phil still feels a rush of relief at the concept of being left alone again. He nods, still scrolling idly through the Wilkins place submission.

It hits him, very literally, too close to home to ignore. He wonders if his fan knows that, if this is somehow an elaborate prank that will end up just wasting Phil's time, but he's too curious to leave it alone. He'll just have to ask around, see if anyone else has heard these murmurings.

Til then, maybe he ought to try and get some sleep. Phil's computer, still open on the editing software, tempts him.

Well. What's another couple hours at this point?

#phanfic #phanfiction #dnp fic #words words words #qowp..... mayhaps i made a mistake w this title......#quiet on widow's peak #YES it's another marianas title what are you the marianas title police?#bingo

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helshades · 5 years

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Tip of the Nose : You Be For Men, My Scent

Does perfume really have a gender? Not remotely likely, says the purist, and don’t come telling me that virility smells like those pine-shaped car deodorant thingies. Everybody knows that real men smell of lavender.

This article is actually a rewrite of my response to this post, which my dying aging computer ate right before I thought about saving three hours worth of work. I’m not entirely sure what burning frustration and bitter regret are supposed to smell like, but if someone wishes to bottle it, they may as well name it Parfum de Hel.

On a side note, one of the participants to the earlier conversation had me blocked for some previous reason—probably unrelated to perfume discourse—so I could not reblog the initial post; nor am I willing, out of politeness, to simply caption the discussion. Therefore, here is the original post, and following is the segment I will more precisely address:

@thatiswhy:

Also, maybe I hate the mainstream cotton candy uwu line for women but don’t want to smell like a fucking frat house trying to deo away the smell of vomit on the carpet. You know what I want to smell like? White musk, and leather, and cedar, and sandalwood, and old parchment, and vetiver, and various teas, and juniper, and citrus, and cypress, and cashmere wood, and maybe in the summer like orange blossom and jasmine or fresia. These notes, while mostly present in women’s perfumes, usually are combined with overbearing fruity or flowery tones that make it smell like an aging late 17th century courtesan’s drawers, or “oriental” scents that make the whole thing reek like a 1920’s opium den. (Seriously, I have walked into a perfume shop, asked to be shown something fresh, woodsy and clean, and had Gabrielle shoved under my nose, which smells like rosewater-flavoured Turkish delight.)

Let women smell of non-jellybean scents, you cowards.

That being said, I have found all but two scents for men (to date) that don’t smell absolutely abrasive. (I’m suspecting the cheap synthetic ambergris.) 99.9% of the stuff directed at men smell as if I had one of those scrubbing metal wire thingies shoved up my throat. So no, I don’t want to shop at the men’s section, I want to be given the opportunity to find a scent that doesn’t say 80’s cartoon for girls and/or I read palms for a living.

There are many things to address in this fertile, if angry, intervention, and like often I’m starting by the end and by making a remark that has little to do with the subject at hand: I don’t think, my darling Tatty, that the ‘abrasive’ harbinger of olfactory doom you perceive in most ‘masculine’ fragrances would be synthetic ambergris, cheap or other. All ambergris today is synthetic, to begin with—well, not all, but natural ambergris is so terrifyingly expensive that we’ve got to forgive perfumers for furnishing us with only an approximation. Ambergris is extremely rare a substance; think around €10,000 per kilogram, in the lower estimation. Back in 2016, a nearly two-kilo block found by a man who was walking his dog on a Lancashire beach sold for £50,000… People have become millionaires over ambergris, although most of the time one only finds small quantities of it at once.

Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for gray amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odourless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter’s in Rome. Some wine-merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavour it.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is.

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1922), chapter XCII, ‘Ambergris’.

In perfumery, ambergris is distilled into an alcohol-based solution known as ‘pure amber’ which, when exposed to air and sunlight, can be separated into several derivatives, notably terpenes and steroids. In fact, ambergris is mainly constituted from ambrein (25–45%) and epicoprosterol (30–40%). Ambrein is progressively degraded by sea water, sunlight and air into several compounds which are chiefly responsible for its smell, notably ambroxide and ambrinol. Modern perfumery uses ambroxide as a substitute for natural ambergris, which is easily synthesised from… a type of sage plant! To be exact, from sclareol, a fragrant chemical compound found in clary sage (Salvia sclarea). Sclareol kills cancer (yes.), and also it smells really good, with a sweet, balsamic scent very reminiscent indeed of the most important notes of natural ambergris.

Ambergris is essentially mucus naturally produced by certain sperm whales (it is believed that less than 5% of the species produces ambergris, possibly the largest of them, which prey on bigger animals) to protect their intestinal tract from lesions caused by the passing of sharp objects, chiefly undigested squid beaks: eventually, the whale excretes this soft, blackish, pungent concretion which is going to drift for a long while before landing on the shore, where it’ll spend maybe years drying out and hardening under the sun and the air. The colour lightens to a golden grey, and the smell gradually sweetens to a salty musk with whiffs of honey, tobacco and leather—depending on the block, the notes will vary in proportions and in potency.

Almost needless to say, then, that the number of perfumes using authentic ambergris isn’t especially high. Conversely, synthetic ambroxide is a beloved template of the modern perfumer’s palette, one of the reasons being that it helps stabilise scents very well. So popular, in fact, that specialists speak of 40% of the perfumes created in the last thirty years using it! Ambroxide was first synthesised in 1950, by Max Stoll for Geneva-based Firmenich SA. That means that Aimé Guerlain had to use natural ambergris when he created the masterpiece Jicky in 1889 (the oldest perfume in the world to be sold without interruption since its creation), even though Jicky was amongst the very first perfumes to use synthetic ingredients! Most notably, Jicky pioneered a great use of several synthetic molecules, chief of which vanillin, the synthetic vanilla which had been discovered in 1874 by German chemist Ferdinand Tiemann. (The first perfume using synthetic ingredient was Houbigant’s Fougère Royale in 1882, using coumarin, one of the key molecules of tonka beans.)

According to the legend of Jicky, it was composed by Aimé Guerlain (one of founder Pierre Guerlain’s two sons, and the second generation’s in-house perfumer, whilst Gabriel was the manager; then came Gabriel’s own sons, master perfumer Jacques and manager Pierre. The last family perfumer was Jacques’ grandson Jean-Paul, who retired heirless in 1994, after which the company was sold to soulless, tentacular multinational LVMH, much to the dismay of Guerlain aficionados all over the world) ... in memory of a broken heart he suffered in his youth as he came back to France after studying in England without his lady love, the lovely ‘Jicky’. Though mostly advertised to a female clientèle, Jicky shocked many a respectable woman of the time by its daring use of sensual animal musks (ambergris, musk, castoreum, and the devilishly sexual civet) at the heart of its balms, spices and aromatic flowers, most especially lavender, luxurious iris, sultry sandalwood and hot leather... Until the 1910s, when women’s press began recommending it, Jicky was quite the sensation amongst... English dandies... and Marcel Proust, of course. (In 1925, for the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Jacques Guerlain presented a twist on Jicky, in which he had removed lavender and woods but added bergamot and, especially, a massive dose of ethylvanillin [three times more potent than vanillin!]: Shalimar was born.)

Men and women used to wear the very same perfumes. Until the 19th century, really, the market wasn’t segmented and there was no such thing as a masculine scent. When the European courts started bathing again and heady perfumes fell out of fashion to the benefit of lighter, tarter, fresher fragrances modelled after the famous Eau de Cologne (1708), women wore them too. The French Jean-Marie Farina who became with his own Eau de Cologne (1809) the official perfumer of the imperial court furnished Empress Joséphine as well. It was for Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, that Pierre Guerlain created his 1853 Eau de Cologne impériale in the famous ‘bee bottle’ (with his 69 bees symbolising the Empire), which earned Guerlain the envied title of ‘Patented Perfumer of Her Majesty’.

The real difference in perfume usage that occurred during the 19th century was actually a matter of social marking via the use of perfumes of varied qualities, complexities and prestige: if perfume remained an element of luxury, now the aristocracy wasn’t alone in this privilege; moreover, clothes weren’t so elaborate and expensive anymore, and social differences were expressed in subtler ways than before the Revolution. In Paris, House Guerlain furnished a more aristocratic clientèle, whereas the upper-middle class went to Roger & Gallet (successors to Jean-Marie Farina), Lubin or L.T. Piver; meanwhile, middle-middle and lower-middle classes patroned Bourjois and Gellé Frères. The lower-middle class also went to ‘perfume bazaars’ that proposed the same products on sale, plus low-quality products.

The first respectable (only) concurrent to French perfumery was actually England, thanks to the well-earned reputation of its barbers, who created their own fragrances, at once discreet, elegant yet tenacious. Those were scents designed to be applied on the skin as tonics in the first place, after an expert shave, and as such they were based on aromatics, chiefly lavender, made from the essence of the delicate English variety: in the beginning 20th century, Frenchmen often wore Yardley’s 1873 English Lavender, precisely, and it was something of an ubiquitous odour in cosmetic products more specifically destined to men, such as soaps and creams.

It is no wonder, then, that when Ernest Daltroff created the first ever perfume only for men, judiciously titled Pour un homme, in 1934, for House Caron which he co-founded with his brother Raoul in 1904, the fragrance was based on lavender, tenderly joined in matrimony with sweet vanilla and lying on a respectable, tranquil base of an ambre accord (vanilla, benzoin, labdanum, the ‘oriental’ assembly created by genius François Coty in 1908 Ambre antique, the family namer of ambrés perfumes) sandalwood and musk. Legend has it that Ernest, who loved lavender, added the vanilla to please Ms. Félicie Wanpouille, Caron’s artistic counsellor, whom Ernest might have loved even more than lavender. She had joined Caron in 1906 and their collaboration produced some of the most beautiful perfumes of the time, and most original: in 1919, they created the first ever leather-scented perfume, Tabac Blond, in 1927, Ernest made En avion as a gift to Félicie’s friend the star aviatrix Hélène Boucher... They also invented the ‘loose powder’ technique in make-up.

Félicie never left, but Ernest did, along with Raoul, when the Nazis invaded France: the Daltroff brothers were the sons of Jewish Russian immigrants, after all. Since Caron exported a lot of products and had opened a shop on New York’s 5th Avenue, Ernest emigrated to the United States in 1939. He never came back, and died in Canada in 1941. But Félicie Wanpouille stayed, in spite of the Occupation, keeping Caron afloat; 1941 was also the year she got the genius idea, since she couldn’t pay the heavy taxes the Nazis imposed on Jewish-made goods, to rename Pour un homme into Pour une femme, a name which it kept until the war ended. To this day, Caron remains one of the very houses to be devoted entirely to perfume—and free of any multinational’s influence, for that matter. (They’ve not, alas! remained free from the clutch of Reformulation, but that is a story for another day.)

There are two very good reasons why Tabac Blond bears this name. The first was purely commercial: in 1919, women were beginning to smoke, but they smoked almost exclusively blond tobacco from Virginia, which was considered too feminine for men. The second was that blond tobacco exhales honeyed mossy notes which the perfume evoked tantalisingly alongside the darker leather, the cooler iris and the warmer amber, meaning that it was the perfect perfume to cover the smell of tobacco smoke. Two years later, Molinard released the wonderful Habanita, in a small bottle shaped like a cigarette lighter, as an oil to dab the tip of your cigarette so as to make women’s clouds suaver (it was released as a proper perfume in 1924, and long advertised as ‘the most tenacious perfume in the world!’, not without reason).

It wouldn’t be illogical to consider that if there are masculine scent in the first place, it’s probably because femininity went through some drastic changes from the late 19th century onwards, especially as a consequence of the two World Wars. The daring, tobacco-covering orientals which the flappers favoured were a direct reaction to the dreamy flower ideal of the previous decades, notably the artificial immobility of the Victorian woman and her continental equivalents, which the Roaring Twenties more or less exorcised with a call to adventure and independence. Women wore more perfume and more daring perfumes; it was only expected that men would start wearing perfume, real perfume again.

Something really odd happened in the 1980s, but maybe that, too, was to be expected: a kind of paradigm shift occurred in perfumery, as the laundry detergent companies which had become extremely rich and powerful thanks to the combined power of advertisement and mass consumption bought most of the perfume houses, perfume started imitating cosmetics more than the reverse. Once upon a time, the cosmetics industry would copy, or try to, the scents most popular in perfumery, like L’Oréal’s Elnett hairspray famously reprised Chanel’s Nᵒ 5’ aldehyde overdose. Now, trendy perfume smells like shampoo or body spray.

It seems, nonetheless, like the ancestor of all terrible men’s perfumes that smell like body spray—the men’s version, the kind that makes you want to claw your own nose off—was the otherwise respectable Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche (1982). So beloved by the public that every hygiene or cosmetic product targeted towards suddenly attempted to smell like it. Drakkar, however, was a good perfume, even if by today’s standards it would be perfectly unwearable for one’s entourage (in a vicinity of approximately 30 metres). ‘Powerhouse’ doesn’t begin to describe the type of scent that was popular in the late 80s and early 90s. And then they started using Calone™. Like, a lot of it. Have you ever smelled calone? Wait, you have. You’ve hated it. Calone in itself was a great chemical revolution: finally, the possibility for perfumers to imitate the very odour of water! Bring in the marine-like scents! Bring in the marine-like scents... I kinda want to throttle Calvin Klein for Escape (1991). Whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not approach anything subtitled ‘Sport’. It’s worse. It’s way worse. (These days, calone is used to give a ‘watermelon’ aspect to everything, but chiefly summer flankers of denatured classic feminine perfumes. A hint: it smells like shampoo. Everything does.)

You can blame advertisement for convincing men to wear perfume on top of extremely pungent deodorant, too, but me personally, I strongly resent women who think classics are ‘too feminine’ and want to shop at the men’s section of their local perfume supermarket because it’s supposed to be ‘gender-defying’. It really isn’t. That’s not what equality is about, getting to smelling just as bad as the dudes, it isn’t. Even more importantly, perfume is not gendered; marketing is. Skin chemistry varies noticeably from person to person and our hormones do play some role in what we smell like, and therefore in what one perfume will smell like on different people, but apart from that, any sex-based olfactory discrimination is but a marketing ploy to exploit a segmented market so that the members of one household purchase and consume as many differentiated items as possible. Mainstream perfumery these days is mostly hopeless: the Thinking (wo)Man would be well inspired to turn to ‘niche’ perfumery, which isn’t always that confidential but presents the great advantage of being generally more creative and personal. Websites exist where people exchange ideas and samples and there is a whole alternative market for scents that allow people not to ruin themselves buying a full bottle of certain great fragrances. Overall, it is a nice way to get to wear something that feels like a personal choice.

#tip of the nose #aromaphilia #answers #thatiswhy #a work in progress as i've yet to address the lutens question #will do after sleep #but as it happens i must go to bed and get a few hours of sleep in #for tomorrow morning i'm bidding on several bottles of lutens perfume

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 7 years

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Episode 63: Cry for Help

“I don’t understand.”

Pearl has done some awful things in Steven Universe. She nearly kills Steven in Space Race, and even if we ignore the rocket malfunction, her plan was to steal him from Earth for fifty years under false pretenses. She nearly kills Steven again in Rose’s Scabbard through inaction during a fit of furious sorrow. She indoctrinates Connie to see herself as fodder to be sacrificed at a moment’s notice. And she only apologizes in one of these cases.

Before Cry for Help, the show seemed pretty lax with Pearl’s tendency to lash out at others when in pain. While her grief explains her harmful decisions, it also appears to excuse them: most of our focus is on the suffering leading to her actions, not the victims of these actions. Steven comforts her every time she endangers him or his friends, which is nice of him, but suggests that his own feelings are secondary to hers.

It’s honestly reminiscent of Island Adventure, where the show refused to acknowledge the severity of Sadie’s physical and mental abuse. The difference is that Pearl is shown to be in the wrong, while Sadie is portrayed as a hero despite abusing Lars, but it’s still troubling to see Pearl more or less get away with hurting people on a recurring basis.

But it was all a glorious ruse. The Week of Sardonyx is here, groundbreaking for its depiction of a brutal rift that has almost nothing to do with the show’s title character, taking full advantage of the Steven Bomb format to tell a long-term self-contained story about what happens when Pearl finally gets called out for her toxic behavior.

If this story arc was condensed to a single episode, we would certainly spend it watching Pearl and Garnet. But with extra time to set the tone and understand the stakes, we instead see Pearl’s instigating betrayal from Amethyst’s point of view as the latter faces similar fusion woes. The focus on Amethyst is absolute (she even gets a song!), and it makes Pearl’s actions sting so much harder when her perennial rival’s reaction isn’t anger, or glee at the opportunity to tattle, but a deep and heretofore unseen discomfort.

Amethyst, who uses motor oil as a condiment and hoards literal garbage, is ashamed of Pearl. But even so, she comes to Pearl’s defense after outing her deception, because unlike Garnet she can understand the rationale behind Pearl’s actions: Amethyst and Pearl both see Garnet as strong, and themselves as weak. Amethyst misses being Sugilite, conflating fusing with Garnet as a means to share her strength, so she gets why Pearl misses being Sardonyx.

In a conflict between Pearl and Garnet, the most obvious approach is to have our third Gem act as a mediator, but I’m so glad the show developed Amethyst to fit organically into that role. Not just because she’s secretly the most sensitive Gem, or because she understands Pearl without condoning her behavior, but because she’s spent Steven’s whole life as a bridge between him and the other Gems. When you’ve got two close friends coming to a head, there’s nobody better to have in your corner than a middle child.

Amethyst's other big role is as a counterpoint to the notion that being sad excuses selfishness or cruelty. Cry for Help encapsulates the series-wide reactions that Pearl and Amethyst have had to sorrow, and seeing both at the same time removes any doubt that Pearl's approach is unhealthy, even if Amethyst’s is far from perfect.

When Pearl gets especially sad, her self-loathing fuels her self-centeredness until she stops caring about how anybody else feels. This is obviously bad news for the people around her, but eventual remorse over her actions fuels her self-loathing even further, and the fire just keeps burning. Everybody loses when Pearl is sad.

But look at what happens when Amethyst is sad in Tiger Millionaire, On the Run, Maximum Capacity, and Reformed: her first response is to show off, usually to Steven. She longs to be included, to be looked up to, so she becomes hyper-aware of how she’s perceived. She plays up the attributes she desires in herself (respective to those episodes: strength, belonging, the ability to chill out without thinking about sad stuff, and a better sense of self) in hopes of hiding her vulnerabilities. Or perhaps just to cope? I wouldn’t want to get all psy-cho-logical on her.

Amethyst and Pearl both struggle with self-esteem. And their actions have some overlap: Pearl taking Steven with her in Space Race sounds like something Amethyst might do, and Amethyst ignoring Steven to hang out with Greg in Maximum Capacity sounds like something Pearl might do (minus Greg, of course). But the intents that prompt these actions are night and day. Pearl wants to punish herself and Amethyst wants to feel comfortable with herself. Pearl is depression and Amethyst is anxiety.

And then we have Garnet, whose healthiness has always been portrayed as a universal positive. She’s strong in every sense of the word, which is great, right? It makes her the bedrock of the team, and gives her an ironclad sense of right and wrong with the conviction to back it up.

But it can also make her oblivious to suffering.

Nothing excuses what Pearl does to Garnet (which we’ll get to, don’t worry), but Cry for Help is part of a long line of episodes displaying the downside of Garnet’s strength: an inability to understand what it’s like to be weak, leading to many moments of callousness that honestly remind me of Pearl at times.

Remember how in Serious Steven she thinks plowing through the dungeon is the best option, even though Steven is clearly rattled? Remember how in Beach Party she’s incapable of caring about wrecking the Pizzas’ sign? Remember how in Monster Buddies she can’t see that her gauntlet is what’s bothering Centy? Remember how in Warp Tour she��s more interested in humoring Steven than taking his worries seriously? Remember how in Love Letters she prefers absolute bluntness to a polite but firm rejection? Remember how in Reformed she gets aggravated with Amethyst instead of exploring the root of the problem, leaving it up to Steven to figure it out? Remember how literally one episode ago in Chille Tid she ignores Pearl’s pleas to help out? Is it really any wonder she can’t see that Pearl and Amethyst are upset in Cry for Help?

This is a huge gap for a character that’s all about understanding, and it’s the reason the Week of Sardonyx is important for Garnet beyond making her a victim. Spoiler alert for Inside Out, but sadness is critical for nurturing empathy, and Garnet's general lack of sadness can make her miss when her friends are upset without...well, without a cry for help. There’s a reason it takes defusing into Ruby and Sapphire for her to start processing what happened to her, because Ruby and Sapphire are a lovable bundle of neuroses next to Garnet’s cool calm.

But there’s also a reason defusing into Ruby and Sapphire doesn’t directly lead to Garnet forgiving Pearl, because holy shit Pearl. Once again, fusion’s value as a multi-faceted metaphor is crucial to the tone of the show: there’s plenty of sexual innuendo to it at times, particularly in Cry for Help’s dances, but the fact that it stands in for relationships in general instead of just sex is all that prevents Pearl from being a literal rapist. Not only is consent important, but we were explicitly reminded of this only three episodes ago in Keeping It Together. It would’ve been bad enough if Pearl did this with Amethyst or Steven, but Garnet is particularly concerned with consent in regards to fusion.

Cry for Help tones down the drastic implications of Pearl’s betrayal by giving Garnet a somewhat childish initial response (“You tricked me!”), but from there it pulls no punches portraying Garnet’s righteous fury. Amethyst’s defense only makes her angrier, because it doesn’t matter if Pearl had a motive for fusing with her under false pretenses, and it doesn’t matter that Pearl feels bad about it. Even if it isn’t read as sexual assault (and I genuinely don’t think it’s meant to be, given how the situation resolves), Pearl’s actions are a violation of Garnet, their relationship, and fusion itself. It’s the dark side of the insecurity that fueled the longing hopefulness of sister episode Coach Steven, and it packs the biggest emotional wallop of the series thus far.

There’s a feeling of hopelessness to the end of Cry for Help that I deeply appreciate, because really, where do we go from here? It’s unlikely that the show would break up the Crystal Gems permanently at this point, but there’s also no real reason for Garnet to ever trust Pearl again. Garnet’s still mad (and she should be), Pearl’s a wreck (and she should be), and Amethyst and Steven have no idea what to do. Cliffhangers like this are rare on Steven Universe, but it does so well at capturing the awkward, awful aftermath of a friend wronging a friend.

Because despite all of this, Pearl is still Garnet’s friend. And I’d argue that despite all of this, Pearl is still a good person. In fact, I’d argue that Pearl being a good person is the most important thing about the Week of Sardonyx. It’s easy to tell a story about a bad person doing a bad thing, but most people see themselves as good, and most people have done at least one bad thing. If we write Pearl off as a monster and leave it at that, what room is there for us to learn? If doing one horrible action is enough to make you a villain, what hope is there for anyone?

I say this while knowing that I’m actually pretty quick to condemn people forever for certain actions: namely, try as I might, I struggle to see any reason for any rapist to be allowed to live. Like, to the point where my first wish if I ever nabbed a genie would be for every rapist on the planet to vanish and get replaced with a note that says “Don’t mourn for me, I was human garbage.” (Obviously there would be many footnotes for this wish; for instance, if a rapist is a pilot I don’t want to endanger folks on a flight, so extra magic would have to intervene. I have really thought this out, I got the footnotes all set, I am ready to find a genie.)

If that’s how I feel, how is it that I have such empathy for Pearl, even though I’m completely on Garnet’s side? It’s not that she’s fictional, because I’m not huge on fictional rapists either. And it’s not that her action isn’t actually rape, because it’s still a gigantic violation. So I honestly don’t know. But Steven Universe is capable of making me examine how I view the world in a way few shows can, and even if I don’t think the Week of Sardonyx quite sticks the landing, the opening is appropriately wrenching stuff.

(With funny weeping foodstuffs to keep the younger audience from getting too upset. Not the subtlest subtext in the world, but I’ve got no beef with kids’ shows keeping things grounded for kids.)

Future Vision!

Nothing too direct, but the Week of Sardonyx’s angst returns with a vengeance in the Breakup Arc immediately following Wanted. Multiple episodes of working through an argument? Check. A sense of betrayal involving fusion? Check (sorta). A resolution brought about by a common enemy? Check. The biggest difference (beyond the shifted focus to Steven) is that the Breakup Arc is more invested on making you miserable on an episode-by-episode basis, making it even harder to watch. Want a break from Steven and Connie not talking? Have a secondary breakup between Peridot and Lapis!

Pearl’s similarity with Spinel makes the movie’s exploration of a suffering Gem’s toxic reaction to pain a fascinating companion piece to the Week of Sardonyx. The major difference is that Pearl hurts others due to selfish thoughtlessness and Spinel’s goal is hurting others, but both have great reasons to feel terrible, neither has a great reason to inflict this pain upon others, and both need to make a change.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

This is the episode in my “Love ‘em” category that I’ve watched the least, because it’s a tough one. I more appreciate Cry for Help than enjoy it, because it’s not meant to be enjoyable, but it’s still worth putting up there because man does it nail the tone.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

Chille Tid

Keeping It Together

On the Run

Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

The Test

Future Vision

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

No Thanks!

4. Horror Club 3. Fusion Cuisine 2. House Guest 1. Island Adventure

#cry for help #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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kristinastorey27 · 5 years

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Successful Founders Share Their Advice for Starting Your Own Business

Image Credit: geralt on Pixabay

If you’ve long been dreaming of joining the ranks of successful founders, read on. We’ve culled some of the best advice from the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. What’s more, we hope this post gives you the clarity and motivation to forge ahead and follow your dreams.

Believe in Yourself and the Good of Your Enterprise

Ariana Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post and one of the world’s most successful founders, has said, “If you’re going to start a business, you need to really love it, because not everybody is going to love it. When The Huffington Post was first launched in 2005, there were so many detractors. I remember a critic who wrote that the Huffington Post was an unsurvivable failure.”

It’s hard to believe that something like that can be said about the successful and enduring Huffington Post, but it’s true. What this tells us is that every endeavor worth its salt will often come with naysayers. What’s more, it’s often best to ignore them. When you believe in your business, the opinion of others should matter only if they’re saying something that is aligned with your growth.

Do What You Love and Love What You Do

Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs was born February 24, 1955, and died of cancer on October 5, 2011. He also had something to say about work: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Simply put, believing in your work will be your North Star. What’s more, your belief will help you persist when challenges arise and obstacles lie in your path.

Be a Problem-Solving Enterprise

The first American black woman to become a self-made millionaire and one of the most successful founders of her time was Madam C. J. Walker. Madam Walker got started on her path to success when she noticed that black women had specific hair problems and concerns that required new solutions. Over the years, Walker developed, marketed, and expanded her growing line of hair and scalp care products. She believed in her products—she personally used them—and she filled a void in the market.

Madam C. J. Walker’s success is a perfect example of how a business can succeed when it solves a problem. Therefore, no matter what enterprise you start, be sure to ask yourself what value you are offering others. When you can confidently answer this question, you will be on the path to becoming one of the world’s successful founders.

Must Successful Founders Always Invent Something New?

However, this does not mean your goal is to invent something totally new. This is especially true now when new things pop up every other day.

On the contrary, the trick is to innovate. See what’s already out there and figure out how you can improve it to serve a specific market. Send Later CEO Nathan Latka says, “Don’t invent something new. Copy what works and make tweaks to push it over the top.”

In other words, successful founders often think in terms of product innovation. For example, consider smartphones, which get yearly refreshes. Likewise, when it comes to the product you have in mind, think of ways you can improve it. What new features can you introduce?

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Successful Founders Find New Solutions

Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, did right by consumers all over the world by creating an efficient platform for sending money online. Today, we take for granted that we can pay for goods and services within seconds. Moreover, Musk created this platform in a world where paying online by credit or debit card was already commonplace.

However, Musk took it one step further. That is, he combined money transfer with payment for goods and services without having to expose your credit card to all the merchants you transact with.

Successful Founders Get Technical

Profit is one of the cornerstones of entrepreneurial success. After all, if you’re not making any returns on your efforts then why pursue them?

However, if you want to know if an endeavor is making enough profit, it pays to know the details of your financials. This is especially true when you are just starting out and are still in no position to hire a lot of staff. As you go it alone (or with a very lean team), learn to do many tasks on your own. This is particularly true with tasks that require performance monitoring.

Sian Lenegan, founder of widely successful digital agency Sixth Story, advises entrepreneurs to personally attend to their finances. Doing so, she says, will allow them to discover growth opportunities as they come to terms with their company’s real numbers.

Get Help When You Need It

However, are you not so good with math and accounting? No problem, says Lenegan. Fortunately, there are resources that can help entrepreneurs manage their finances. Lenegan also goes on to say that she personally uses a virtual financial director service that’s designed for both small- and medium-scale businesses. This helps her to manage her business’s financials.

RELATED ARTICLE: LEVERAGE DEBT AND TAXES TO BECOME RICH: TIPS FOR SMART ENTREPRENEURS

Recruit People You Admire

Once you feel that you’re ready to get others on board, it is important to be prudent about whom you welcome into your entrepreneurial fold. This applies to all individuals who will play a part in your business. Therefore, whether you’re aligning with a new partner or hiring an administrative assistant, look for people who share your mindset when it comes to work.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman shares that the one quick way to change yourself is to be in the company of individuals whom you admire. You need to see the kind of good you like in the people who are part of your team.

Focus on Incremental Growth

When you have a great start and your business is doing really well, you might see this as a sign to take it to the next level. While that’s the natural way of doing things, remember that a good approach is to concentrate on your next small step.

Coach.me founder and CEO Tony Stubbelbine says, “Focus on the next step and don’t try to make your five-year vision happen tomorrow.” In other words, aiming for the stars is perfectly acceptable. But focusing on small expansion goals will be easier and poses fewer risks. Always remember that small gains add up. Moreover, before you know it you will be in a whole new level of doing business.

No Two Paths Are the Same

Remember: When it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s going to be different for every person. If an entrepreneur runs more than one endeavor at a time, it will be different for every type of business he or she runs. There is no linear formula that every person can follow to success. In fact, for many there will be roundabouts, one step forward and two steps back, and so on.

These wise words from successful founders will certainly help a lot. But a large part of getting your endeavor up, running, and thriving will be based on your gut feel and personal assessment of how things are going. Leave room for mistakes, take opportunities as they come, and always stay the course!

The post Successful Founders Share Their Advice for Starting Your Own Business appeared first on Business Opportunities.

from Business Opportunities http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2019/02/09/successful-founders-share-advice/

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filtration-products · 5 years

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Damian Prosalendis – Telling The Truth?

I first encountered “Damian Prosalendis” when he was featured in “Bold and Determined” – a blog by Nick Kelly/”Victor Pride”.

Going under the guise of “Damian Pros”, he started posting results from a Fiverr business he set up, eventually claiming that he’d made $40k+ in a single month from the platform. This was followed by a post on “TheFastlaneForum”.

He also operated a website called “Dare and Conquer” which I perused at the time as well.

Now… the important thing to note here is that what I’m about to write is not some sort of vendetta against the guy, or anything like that. I respect what he’s done and continue to read his content.

However, it’s become painfully obvious that the majority of what he’s posting now is either rehashed nonsense or wholly incorrect. Further, there have been a number of instances where a number of his claims have been proven to be entirely false.

This is important, as it’s a direct indication of his character, and whether you should believe what he says or not.

It’s especially important considering the “anti university” stance he has taken to; continually telling people to avoid higher education, through his Twitter feed. This is extremely dangerous for the next generation, and what I wanted to address with this article.

“Millionaire”

The biggest gripe I have with him is that he’s labelling himself a “millionaire”, and latterly a “multi millionaire”.

I don’t know how much money he has, and it’s not really my business, but I’ll tell you now that if someone is a “millionaire”, they won’t typically spend all day on Twitter or try and convince everybody of the fact.

Real wealth speaks for itself. And real wealth typically leaves clues – business dealings, associates and other things.

Prosalendis has none of this, bar a Fiverr account which I’ll explain in a second.

The point is that the “millionaire” tagline – like most things I’ve observed from Prosalendis – is likely a ruse for something else; a spin on words designed to paint himself as prolific as possible.

Being a “millionaire” isn’t about having $1m+ in cash – it’s about having access to, or control over, $1m+ worth of assets.

Many people are millionaires on paper, but their capital is locked away in property or some other illiquid asset base.

Labelling yourself a “millionaire” is highly indicative of someone who either doesn’t understand what it means to be legitimately worth over $1m, or is trying to gain attention.

Fiverr

To explain who Prosalendis even is, he apparently set up a “Fiverr” business when he was in college and eventually made enough to quit and focus on it entirely himself.

Whilst commendable, someone later discovered the business (SPXMAC) and it appears that it’s a legitimate outfit.

The foundation of Prosalendis’ story is based around the idea that his “Fiverr business” was able to generate $1m+ in revenue within the first two years of its founding.

This is a great achievement by any standard, but should not get in the way of reality – “Fiverr” takes 20% of any money earned through its platform, as well as the various expenses the business would have incurred as a result of its growth.

In other words, whilst the $1m ideal sounds good, it’s not the net profit of the business.

The reason this is important is because it gives a perspective on the character behind the persona. You can’t fake a business’ profile, and whilst he tried to keep it all covered up, it’s pretty much the case that most people know about it now.

Fake

The reason I felt it pertinent to write this is to help anyone looking to research the guy.

There have been a number of instances where he outright lied to people in order to make them think he was more successful than he was:

Dubai Penthouse –

Around 2016/2017, he started claiming that he’d been living in a Dubai Penthouse.

His website was highly suggestive – “From a cockroach-infested dorm room to… a luxurious Dubai penthouse” – giving the impression that he’d indeed become so wealthy that he’d been able to buy a penthouse in one of the most glamorous cities in the world.

Whilst this would have been commendable, it was later discovered that all the pictures he’d taken were from a room in the Sofitel Dubai (hotel), which someone even identified as being just a normal room (not the “penthouse” as claimed by Prosalendis).

The reason this is important is because of the picture it painted before it was discovered. Anyone looking at his stuff could easily have been mislead into thinking he was a serious player – when in reality, he was just a tourist staying for a couple of weeks.

Personal Chef –

In 2017, his Twitter feed started to mention that he’d hired a chef + maid to “save his time”.

Like most things he espouses through Twitter, he was emphatic about how “his” chef provided him with meals etc. Like the Dubai Penthouse, the implication was that he’d actually gone out and hired a chef who came to his residence to prepare his meals for him. After all… that’s what a “personal chef” does, right? Well… not according to Prosalendis. His idea of a personal chef is one of those “delivered meal” services, where you pay a monthly or daily fee to have meals prepared + delivered to you.

The tell was when someone asked him about how many people his chef cooked for – to which his reply was that he “didn’t give a damn”… essentially suggesting the notion that he’d just signed up to one of these “meals on wheels” services.

Again, the blurred lines between fact & fiction are extremely thin here.

Instagram Followers –

In 2018, he opened a thread on the popular “FastlaneForum” – where devotees of the author MJ DeMarco like to hang out to discuss ideas etc.

Whilst the forum has a large blend of different individuals, there are many veterans on there who can see clearly through any false / highly inflated comments posted.

Prosalendis’ post – “1,000,000 Followers On Social Media: How I Am Doing It & How You Can Too” was initially welcomed by many on the forum.

However, due to a lack of actual content, several members began to question the veracity of what he was posting, eventually leading to a “showdown” about his Instagram account.

The question arose as to how he’d been getting Instagram followers, to which Prosalendis replied that he’d been featured by several large accounts.

Further inspection of what he’d been posting later highlighted that he’d been using “Comment Pods” – essentially where people comment on each other’s posts to get them onto the “Discover” section of Instagram (and hence more followers).

The problem with this was not about the method itself… but rather the dishonest nature that Prosalendis used as a response. Using vitriolic responses to try and berate the respondents, he tried to browbeat his point that he was “correct” and that he was being misunderstood.

Even the forum’s owner had to step in to try and gain assurance that he wasn’t trying to falsify his claims to anyone, to which Prosalendis responded that he hadn’t (a lie) and that he’d now be leaving the forum to focus on his business.

No one cared that he had left… but the whole episode highlighted the way in which he had tried to hoodwink his way to gaining reputation and influence… and – as highlighted by many on the forum at the time – an attempt to get more people into his “funnel” so he can sell them consulting or some other products later on.

Personal Branding –

“Featured on Forbes, INC, Entrepreneur Magazine, HuffPost” would be something to be proud of for anyone… but only if you’d earned it.

The problem with Prosalendis – like many things we’ve posted – is that the “interviews” posted on those sites seem highly questionable.

Indeed, there was even an allusion by a popular marketing magazine to “Brian Rashid” – an author on Forbes who’s known for posting some quite “interesting” content that you have to question the origin of.

Nonetheless, the idea stuck – and Prosalendis used his “interviews” as a way to position himself as a “successful entrepreneur”.

I have no problem with the method behind this (it used to be called PR) – but to do it dishonestly is a major issue.

If the interviews were paid, they’d be a dishonest proposition in my opinion.

“Model” –

Had to add this one too – his latter claims of being a “model” are actually comical.

Models are a special breed; you can tell who is, and who isn’t, one relatively quickly.

And whilst it used to be the case that you had to be signed to a modelling agency to even be considered one; the truth is that “real” models are paid to pose. Prosalendis pays someone to follow him around & take photographs.

The point of this is that whilst this isn’t uncommon in the “selfie” generation, it is a problem when you’re using it to try and make people think you’re better than what you actually are.

Millionaire –

Lastly, coming back to the “millionaire” claim.

Millionaire is a very loaded word – it means many things to many people.

In the modern world, I typically consider a “millionaire” as someone with a number of assets (perhaps property and/or a business) which is worth $500k/$650k and the rest either in cash or some other “liquid” form of capital.

The notion/idea is that if you liquidated your entire asset base today, you’d be left with $1m+ in the bank after tax etc.

Whilst Prosalendis may have this, I really don’t consider his claim of being a “millionaire” to either be valid or legitimate.

Again, this is mainly speculation – but judging from his past discretions and his Fiverr story – I’d surmise the following to be the case:

SPXMAC has made revenues of $1m+ through Fiverr since its inception in 2015

Of these revenues, money would have to have been paid in employee expenses + any further provisions the company may have used (IE is not take-home profit)

The SPXMAC business doesn’t really have a presence outside of Fiverr – further adding to questions of its veracity

Ultimately, I’d suggest that his allusion to his Fiverr $1m revenue is where the “millionaire” idea came from.

If that’s the case, he most certainly isn’t a “millionaire”… at least in my definition.

A good example of this is that I know a guy who has a business turning over ~£3m per year. Since he sells physical products that he doesn’t manufacture, his operating profit is £650k and net profit comes out at around £300k after everything has been paid for.

You may argue that this guy is a “millionaire”, but I’d suggest otherwise. He still goes to work every day and is continually trying to build the business up (as if his competitors would take him out).

He may label himself as a “millionaire”, but I don’t think so. There are too many variables working against him.

Pattern?

All of this basically highlights a pattern of behaviour.

He likes to over-inflate even the smallest achievement, even to the degree of being dishonest about what actually happened.

I adore success and honor those who become truly successful… but you have to put things into perspective.

Truly successful people don’t sit back on other people’s inventions / ideas, they create their own.

They don’t do everything necessary to persuade others of how much they’ve achieved; they continue doing what made them successful in the first place.

Of all the people I’ve seen / met who have been worth significant amounts of money – the one thing they had in common is they basically did what “they” wanted to do… and kept doing it (even when they became wealthy).

Whilst they may allude to their wealth, it really doesn’t bother them how much money they have. They use money as a tool, and continued to develop as much value as possible – typically because they cared about what they were doing.

In terms of Prosalendis, I get a very superficial feel from him.

I also get a sense of someone out of their depth; rather like a young Justin Bieber trying to cope with the Paparazzi.

I would not trust most of what he puts out on social media.

If you are interested in anything he’s selling, you will need to get verification of his results if you really want a perspective on what he’s going to deliver.

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#Filtration Products

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 6 years

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Does Anyone Hate Donald Trump More Than Donald Trump? An Interview With David Shields

Cataloged in Psychology

Does Anyone Hate Donald Trump More Than Donald Trump? An Interview With David Shields

David Shields Updated September 22, 2018

In his new book, New York Times bestselling author David Shields deconstructs the idiot-savant-autocrat at 1600 Pennsylvania, his fan-fiction base, and the emotional needs/moral failures of the city, country, and world that created him.

is at once a psychological investigation of Trump, a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, a satirical compilation of the collected wit and wisdom of Donald Trump, and above all a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse—a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump. The book is organized into six chapters and 60 subsections and gets increasingly harrowing in its focus, moving from childhood to sex to media to virtue-signaling to chaos theory to “apocalypse always.” The book’s central thesis is that we have met the enemy and he is us.

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A conversation with David Shields

David sits down with Leah Paulos to discuss his new book, , a psychological inquiry into Trump’s brokenness, a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, and a satirical compilation of the wit and wisdom of Donald Trump. Above all, it functions as a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse—a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and that now sustains Trump.

Leah: There are a lot of Americans, including this interviewer, who despise Trump with every cell in their bodies. Why is the book called NOBODY HATES TRUMP MORE THAN TRUMP: AN INTERVENTION, and do you think it’s true?

David: Yes, of course Trump loathes himself. No human being on the planet is less capable of joy or even fulfillment. This is a key connection between himself and his voters. He’s as unhappy as they are, or he’s very good at pretending he is—it’s very difficult to tell, which gives his hyper-performativity its immense frisson.

Leah: But close to 90% of Republicans voted for Trump. Trump voters were Bush and Reagan voters, and they were Goldwater voters. Are you saying they are all deeply unhappy people and always have been?

David: The key people are the five million people who voted for Obama and who voted for Trump. They are who matter. They are low-income, low-information, disenfranchised, blue-collar voters. They are furious at the varieties of ways in which the world has left them behind. Obama offered them hope. Trump offered them rage. HRC offered them precisely nothing.

Leah: Books about Trump are a dime a dozen these days, and everyone is drowning in tweets and hot takes. What is different about this book?

David: It’s not everybody else’s Trump-bashing book. It offers a tragic take on human nature—Trump’s destructiveness and self-destructiveness echoing with an existentially lost populace. It has leaked off-air Fox News conversations. It’s about a very scary American strain of death wish. It offers a new reading of his psychology and childhood to suggest origins of his anhedonia.It shows the many subcultures which gave rise to him and which now sustain him. It raises the real question whether he’s a genius quasi-punk anti-hero or a near-Asperger’s idiot or neither or both. It’s about the emotional weather of living under Cloud Trump. It’s a manual for beating bullies.

Leah: There’s always been loads of money, charismatic celebrities, and bigoted flamethrowers in American politics, but a person like Trump becoming President never seemed possible until it happened. Or did it?

David: Oh, please. Sonny Bono. Ronald Reagan. Shirley Temple. Jesse Ventura. Jerry Springer. George Murphy. Fred Thompson. Cynthia Nixon. Clint Eastwood. Clay Aiken. Al Franken. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Caligula.

Leah: When did you realize America was screwed up enough to elect Trump?

David: When, at age 7, I realized being bad was more fun than being good (a more perfect foil than HRC would be impossible to imagine).

Leah: How many of the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump did so because he’s a big, sick joke?

David: A huge number of things we love are big, sick jokes (from WWE to horror movies to the NFL). The method to Trump’s madness is that, in a shame culture, he’s shameless; this gives him enormous appeal and leverage to people who are resentful (as Louis Theroux has pointed out).

Leah: Trump is a needy, unloved, extraordinarily damaged, outer-borough millionaire with a genius for low-brow marketing. In a culture steeped in celebrity worship and with a mass media allergic to serious issues, was the marriage between Trump and his scared, aging, white base inevitable?

David: “Outer-borough” is a tell that you hold yourself above Trump, but the key to iconic celebs (e.g, Jesus, Napoleon, Elvis, Madonna) is that they embody the culture’s contradictions. Trump is a “winner” who acts like a “loser.” He’s a millionaire “schlub.” This allows him to play both ends against the middle. This is mad brilliance or luck or both. Trump is karmic payback for an America lost to simulacra for at least twenty years; as Andrew O’Hehir says, “Our culture is obsessed with ‘real’ events because we experience hardly any.” Trump pretends to be “real.” It’s black magic.

Leah: What particular talents does Trump have that tap into the American psyche?

David: What such talents does he not have? He has swallowed America whole.

Leah: In this entire disgraceful, scary, embarrassing saga, who is the person you hate the most?

David: Exactly the wrong question. G.K. Chesterton, asked what’s wrong with the world, said, “I am.” If you can’t find in yourself what’s scary about Trump, you have zero chance of figuring him out and/or counteracting him.

Leah: I fully understand that within myself I can find what is scary about Trump. The spectacle is impossible to turn away from; we’ve all been rubbernecking for 3 years now. In the debates, I laughed at “low-energy Jeb” and “Lil’ Marco,” while simultaneously knowing the whole thing was gross. But I think your answer absolves Trump and his administration of their cruelty. They took babies from their mothers at the border. They won’t stop until poor people don’t have health care. It’s not just PT Barnum giving people a good show. So, let me ask again: whom do you hate the most?

David: The book is the book and my life is my life. In my actual life, I work to bring an end to the oligarchy. Along with everyone else, I yell at the TV and radio and web. In the book, though, I strive to understand the phenomenon. And to understand all is most definitely not to pardon all. That being said, whom do I hate the most? To my surprise, the person who comes to mind is Comey.

Leah: In the book, you mention Will Blythe’s TO HATE LIKE THIS IS TO BE HAPPY FOREVER, a book about the Duke / UNC basketball rivalry. Does Trump vs. liberals feel like a sports event to you? On some level, is checking Twitter every morning and getting outraged fun? If it is, is that white privilege?

David: Love the title but have never read the book. To not view Trump as both deadly serious and a “funny” game-player is to miss the entire point. Of course it’s sport; that’s a huge part of the shtick. “Bread and circuses” means there are circuses. Overreliance on the term “white privilege”: another reason Trump will be re-elected.

Leah: Is Trump your perfect foil? What about him as subject matter makes him so conducive to your writing style and thought process?

David: ADD. OCD. Logorrhea. Graphomania. Ressentiment. Weariness/wariness re virtue-signaling. Originary woundedness. Vanity. Narcissism. Avariciousness. Lust. All the usual human vices and sins.

Leah: Should America still be a country? How can you stay in a marriage with 63 million people that voted for a monster?

David: These are the very questions that got Trump elected and that threaten to get him re-elected. The moment you call Trump a monster, you’ve stopped trying to understand him and the conditions that gave rise to him and why he resonates with so many people. There’s nothing remotely useful about this sort of moral self-congratulation.

Leah: How do you hope this ends?

David: I’m not in the hope business. I’m in the tragic-news-about-the-human-condition-business. We are a fallen, doomed species. People want apocalypse always. Trump promises to deliver the end or a glimmer of the end.

About David Shields

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-two books, including (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), Bestseller, (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), ( Editors’ Choice). The film adaptation of was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017. is forthcoming in 2019. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in the , , , , , , , and . His work has been translated into two dozen languages.

You can follow David Shields on Instagram and Twitter and buy his latest book here.

See Trump like you've never seen Trump before...

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fesahaawit · 6 years

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My 10 *Favorite* Posts From 2017

Welcome to the last official business day of 2017!! That went fast, huh?

As promised, here’s a list of my all-time favorite posts from the year, to compliment the most popular posts we just featured on Wednesday.

You read all of these and not only will your wealth grow exponentially, but your standing here on BudgtsAreSexy will rise to the tippy top too! And there will be a quiz at the end of this – so make sure to pay attention and take notes!!! (Okay, no there won’t, but still smart to take notes :))

Here are my favorite posts from the year, sprinkled in with a few extras…

(Instead of taking a couple of hours to summarize them all like I did the last one, I’m just going to copy & paste my favorite clips from them here :) Why re-work the brilliant words that got these posts on this list in the first place?? Also, I’m lazy. #SorryNotSorry)

#1. If You’re Smart Enough to Retire Early, You’re Smart Enough to Figure Out The Future — “Here’s the thing: if you’re smart enough to retire early, you’re smart enough to figure out how to live for the rest of your life. You’ve already done the hardest part! You hit your early retirement number! And we all know damn well that “retirement” really isn’t “retirement” for folks in our community anyways… What blogger, or early retiree, do you know who just lays around all day wasting away their lives? (Answer: no one) If you’ve figured out how to get – and keep! – millions of dollars for yourself, and certainly by your 20s/30s/40s, you’ve earned the right to do whatever the $hit you please in life. Whether that’s to keep working for more or just completely change your life.”

#2. The Ultimate List of What Belongs in Your Net Worth (And What Doesn’t) — “Do you include pensions in your net worth? How about art, insurance, homes, cats, baseball cards? These are some of the most popular questions I get asked, outside of “Is J. Money your real name?” (Yes) and “how did you get so damn sexy??” (I don’t know, it just comes natural! ;)) So today I thought I’d list out my personal feelings on it, and then everyone can chime in and let me know if they think I’m a big fat idiot or not. Although the reality is that we’d all be wrong, because: THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO TRACK IT!””

#3. A Different Way of Looking at Spending — “I’ve been trying something new lately where every time I have to spend money on something – whether a need or a want – I try to look at it as I’m “supporting” the place my money’s going to vs. “I’m spending my hard earned money” there. The effect to my wallet usually remains the same, but what I’ve noticed is that I’m starting to appreciate these transactions a lot more, and not only that – but in some cases even enjoying it!”

#4. Let’s Bring The $2.00 Bill Back!! — “When it comes to cash, I’m an equal opportunity owner. I have $10 bills, $5 bills, $20 bills, and of course many many $1.00 bills. But the one bill that I secretly admire more than any other, and also the one that gets the least respect, is the lonely $2. Not only has it been forgotten for the past handful of decades (yes, they still print them!), but some even think they’re fake and have literally gotten arrested for using them. #AlternativeFacts So today’s goal for this post is quite simple: to get you to start using the $2.00 bill! I don’t care if you use it just once or a thousand times. I want these puppies circulating so fast that McDonald’s comes out with a $2.00 Item Menu! ;) “

#5. If You Can Afford to Spend It, You Can Afford to Save It. — “What I have been doing differently is that, if I decide I can afford it, and I don’t really need the items, I immediately transfer that amount into my savings account instead of spending it. Light bulb moment: if I can afford to spend it, I can afford to save it! WHOOOOA. This has revolutionized my savings life.”

#6. I’d Scoop up Poop if it Made Me Happy! — “Back when I quit got laid off of my job 7 years ago, I told the world I’d never go back to a 9-5 myself and thought I was pretty hot $hit for saying so.

“9-5? Those are for suckers! Blogging’s where it’s at, bitches!” – Said the guy who worked a 9-5 just days earlier…

But the truth is, I was a big fat idiot. And so are others who say they’ll “never” do something again. You may feel that way at the time, and maybe you never do end up going back to something again later, but I’ve since learned that the more limits you put on yourself the less opportunities you end up having later on in life. Why say “never” when “never” could actually make you happier one day?”

#7. A Beautiful Way to Save Money on Cards? — “Among the old notes and doodles from school, apparently my mother thought it would be nice to store some of the old cards I made for her and my father too – particularly around the holidays. And rather than throw them all out which I was about to do, I thought – what if I can reuse them? Instead of buying another Hallmark card each holiday, what if I actually gave these hand-made cards BACK to my parents as if I were still that same 10 or 13 year old boy? And pretend no time has passed at all? Wouldn’t their hearts just explode with memories and be so much more meaningful? And bonus win: it wouldn’t cost a thing!”

#8. The Real Reason We Buy Stuff — “Have you ever met anyone who buys stuff they hate? Who willingly goes out of their way to blow money just because they see someone else doing it? I haven’t, yet we’re always talking about these “Joneses” who we’re supposedly keeping up with as if we were robots without any capability to think for ourselves! We are influenced by them, but the real reason we buy stuff isn’t just to be like other people. No. IT’S BECAUSE WE LIKE $HIT!… Everything we’ve ever bought or spent money on (outside of bills and boring adult stuff) we’ve done so because we LIKED what we got in return for it at the time… There were no Joneses holding up guns to our heads.”

#9. “It’s Strange Going From Saving Money Your Whole Life to Spending it!” — “How do you get okay with spending money after decades of saving and skimping by? How do you break a habit that’s 20, 30 or in my father’s case – almost 50 years old in the making? It sounds like the opposite of everything we’ve been trained to do, right? I still haven’t come to terms with it if I’m being honest, but two years later I’m proud to report that my father has finally overcome it and officially had his last day of work just last week :) At 60-something years old he has stopped hustling for that almighty dollar, and is now on a mission to soak up what he hopes is an even almightier life of leisure.”

#10. “Maybe The Life You’ve Always Wanted is Buried Under Everything You Own” — “Similar to the book, Essentialism, I raved about the other month, this is another one that helps get your mind right and back focused on finding your MORE out of life by saying no/less to everything else that doesn’t match our priorities. Namely, our stuff… And if you’re fan of Joshua’s popular blog, Becoming Minimalist, you’ll enjoy his book even more – especially if you don’t know the story behind his epiphany which led him down this “less is more” track. You never know where inspiration will hit you!”

The beauty of minimalism isn’t in what it takes away, it’s in what it gives. – Joshua Becker

And that’s the Top 10 list!

Here are the runner-ups… mainly because I’ve already talked about half of these ad nauseum lately ;)

Nothing’s Ever Permanent

The Triad of Hustling

What If You Just Don’t?

$20 Does The Trick!

Whatcha Know About Legacy Binders?

“The Challenge Is Not To Touch It!” (And Other Things I Recently Overheard)

And here are some posts that just attack you with one tip after another after another… Good for when you’ve drunk massive amounts of coffee and are ready to speed-read!

10 #Money Tips For Ya

9 More Financial Hacks to Put In Your Pocket

8 Tips for Appreciating What You Have

6 Great $$$ Ideas To Steal

Lastly, here are a bunch of crazy and fascinating (and crazy fascinating!) stories from our recently created “Financial Confessional” series. Great for feeling better about your own “boring” lives.

My Life (And Finances) After Escaping a Cult

How I Survived Prison And Accidentally Found My Path to Wealth

What My Ridiculous Parents Taught Me About Money

Financial Confessional: I Used To Be An Escort

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith

So there you have it. 25 more articles to read when you’re in the mood to stalk the blog ;)

Who knows what will come out next? Or how many of us will go on to become millionaires in the new year??? Only time will tell, but if I’m doing my job right, you’ll grow that wealth faster and faster with each passing year… and hopefully not get put to sleep in the process.

Have a happy happy new year, everybody!! If any of these posts resonated with you above, please let me know in the comments so I can sleep knowing I won’t get fired! ;)

My 10 *Favorite* Posts From 2017 posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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amacoupo-blog · 7 years

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How to Make Money Out of Thin Air

http://amacoupo.com/how-to-make-money-out-of-thin-air/

Money-making is one of the strongest desires of human beings. Whether young or old, everybody is thirsty for financial sufficiency. This is why I have decided to X-ray this text entitled “How to Make Money out of Thin Air”.

The text is written by Brian Sher, who obtained a degree in Marketing from the University of South Wales. His subsequent business travels overseas sparked his interest in consultancy, and after spending two years in Los Angeles, he returned to Australia and formed his own company specialising in marketing and business-growth strategies. Working with businesses both big and small, one of his major clients offered to partner him in a new venture – Vision Publishing.

Under Sher’s direction, Vision Publishing experienced phenomenal growth, and ultimately boasted more than $12 million in annual sales. His extensive network and strong reputation as one of Australia’s most dynamic and exciting marketers made him an active and sought-after business coach.

The author says given the title of this book, he can hear the critics sharpening their pencils and the cynics saying “Oh sure, we’ve heard this all before”. Sher admits that this is perfectly understandable as on the surface, making money out of thin air seems like an unbelievable claim.

He confesses that to be honest, he was cynical himself when he first learnt of this practice, adding that but what made him look beyond his initial distrust was that he did not want to work hard for a living. Rather, Sher wanted to work smarter and less to enjoy the finer things in life and have the time to enjoy them.

He says while deciding on how to achieve this, he remembered a statement his father once made, which was “Never work with your hands – it will never make you rich!”

This author submits that although he was not literally working with his hands, he knew he was not far off from this in the wealth-creation stakes, as he was working hard and was not exactly rich. Sher says he had a head full of great ideas and concepts, and was working at a frenetic pace, running around selling these ideas.

The author reveals that he learnt a good living, but that was all, and he needed to learn more. He adds that he needed to learn how and what the rich were doing that he was not. This author says they were making the money and he was just earning it.

Sher explains that he set out to try to change all that by studying what they did, the way they thought and the way they operated, and after a while, he discovered that their habits were not rocket science and it was entirely possible to make money out of thin air.

According to him, if you want to achieve success, it requires nothing more than changing your attitude as you approach your next business venture, and this simple change will be worth millions of dollars to you.

Structure-wise, this book has 15 chapters. Chapter one is entitled “Secrets of the rich”. According to Sher here, “How many times have you heard people use the words ‘make money’? I just want to make money…Thousands of times, I’ll bet, and you’ve probably said them to yourself. Although the words spoken might be identical, what ‘poor people’ (that is, people with a ‘poor’ mentality) mean when they say them is completely different to what the rich mean. The ‘poor person’ looks for ways to do the only thing he or she knows how – that is, to sell more of their time. And this can mean only one thing: working longer or harder.”

Sher educates that when rich people use the words “make money”, they are talking about wealth creation. That is, they never mean selling their time.

In this chapter, the author also discusses other concepts such as unlearning a “poor” mentality; knowing what rich people know; stealing from the rich to give the poor; and a secret file.

Chapter two is based on the interrogative subject of “How rich are you?” Sher quotes Michel De Montaigne here thus: “We are, all of us, richer than we think we are.”

According to the author, almost everyone you know wants to be richer than he or she is at the moment. He says but it is important to understand that being rich in life is not simply about making more money. The author stresses that many people mistakenly believe this is the case.

Sher explains that money is something you can use to get things done and the more money you have, the more things you can do. Many things are more important than money: a loving partner, a supportive family, friends you can trust and depend on, a career you enjoy, submits the author. In Sher’s words, “You might be rich, but without these things you won’t enjoy life as much as you could.”

He reiterates that happiness is largely based on non-material things; and living life to the full is about focusing your emotional energy on positive channels, and directing this energy into everything you do, at work or play.

In chapters three to nine, concepts such as making money out of thin air; never go to school if you want to be rich; the fastest way to make money; his business successes and failures; your need of rocket to reach the moon; it is not worth a thing if you cannot sell it and twenty habits of the world’s least valuable businesses are examined.

Chapter ten is entitled “Twenty habits of the world’s most valuable businesses”. According to Sher here, the wealthiest companies in the world are capitalised in the hundreds of billions of dollars, placing a huge value on these businesses and bringing wealth to the owners.

He adds that however, total capitalisation is not the most important thing to look at when you are assessing how valuable a business is. Sher advises you to look instead at the price earnings ratio (p/e ratio), printed beside the stock price on the business pages of newspapers and you will see that most of these ratios are somewhere around 15-20, but some are much higher, even reaching the hundreds.

The author says the twenty attributes valuable businesses have are operation in large or growth markets; production of unique and timely products; selling only leveraged products; control of residual income; institution of great systems; great customer service; powerful brands; non-dependence on one person; usual market leadership; and attraction of the best and brightest people.

The remaining are predicating reward on performance not longevity/time; possession of high margins; possession of few real competitors; continuous innovation or flow of new products; possession of an investor entry and exit strategy; possession of a big customer database; institution of great marketing; anticipation of customers’ needs; constant addition of value to customers’ experience and education of customers before they sell to them.

In chapters 11 to 15 of this book, this author analytically X-rays concepts such as the world’s most successful and unsuccessful habits; twenty-eight habits of the world’s least successful business people; forty-two habits of the world’s most successful business people; twenty-six secrets to making money out of thin air; and the question of whether you will become a millionaire.

Stylistically, this book is a success. Sher displays a high level of skills of analytical presentation and simplicity of language. He employs reflective illustrations, classical/literary allusions and autobiographical effects to ensure analytical reinforcement, as well as concrete conviction on readers’ part.

There is also inclusion of the question-and-answer section, “The road to riches” exercise, to achieve reader practical participation. What’s more, the title of the book is alluring and emotionally challenging. The cover design is attractive and communicative, while the inside pages are well laid out.

However, since chapter nine entitled “Twenty habits of the world’s least valuable businesses” is the opposite of chapter ten entitled “Twenty habits of the world’s most valuable businesses”, one of them should have been left out of the chapters of this book to avoid conceptual redundancy, especially that we can antithetically deduce the attributes of one from the discussion of the other’s attributes.

But on whole, Sher’s efforts are commendable. If your desire is to make maximum use of the least of opportunity and become rich this year, then you need to read this masterpiece. It is simply irresistible.

Source by Goke Ilesanmi

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rapmillionaire · 7 years

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Why I no longer give money to the poor

Money can solve world problems. Any hundreds of millions of amounts of dollars can solve numerous world issues whence aptly infrastructured. In a Facebook post a few weeks ago, on the news-feed was listed that the footballer Pogba signed a $150M contract with Manchester United. Then I saw comments on how an African country that same month had sought financial assistance for their 14+ million populace, asking for a similar amount Pogba signed for in his lone contract. That had me thinking: how much would it take to solve the turmoil found in the ghettos of America, in the slums of Africa and South America, in the occupied territory of the Gaza Strip? And yet, how void would such funding become after x-amount of years due to insufficient infrastructure serving as the basis unto which the socio-economy’s prosperity is founded upon. .

And what about those who accumulate wealth, spend their riches, and live extravagantly? In my opinion, money like water will always resurface itself in the cycle of energetic abundance. Whatever water seeps from the kitchen faucet is led down through the pipes, traversing itself through more pipes, reaching ponds I imagine, whereupon it takes on the state of being refurbished, absorbed, and is poured-down again by the clouds which is then soaked by established water infrastructure systems, thus then presented in quality to flow out through the kitchen faucet again. "Water wasted" is only money wasted. And yet money is neither finite, for the cycle of cash-flow based upon supply and demand makes money available to any and all who know the law of attracting it to themselves within the economic framework of supply and demand; a tangible benefit of Capitalism (and yet ironically such same infrastructure to maintain status quo). However, such is the surface-level upon which the wealthy afford themselves to spend money on absurd luxuries whilst poor men and women sleep in the streets; the difference between the poor man and the millionaire is the will-power (or lack-thereof) to create a cash-flow into one's pocket. At a deeper level, this difference represents itself based upon circumstance, environment, and social cues; yet such isn’t much of a worthy explanation when free libraries and the internet abound in today’s American society; there is no reason why any man/woman should not be able to try to create an income for themselves in our present day and age. To say they tried but gave up is also inexcusable. And yet mental sickness too is a topic of discussion in and of itself, one in which I will not touch for this post.

Globalization as a concept is a great idea. But as an implementation you create a lot of question marks. Are we on the right or the wrong track. The right track is globalization where everyone benefits. A bad is one win and one lose (the rich countries take over poor countries is a bad globalization). At the moment, globalization is mostly bad - it is a threat of controlling the economy. It is a monopolization. The answer is why don't we have rules - for when big countries go to poor countries - how shall they behave, how do they not exploit the people, how do you create abundance for the poor country. You do not exhaust the resources. There should be rules to the use of resources. The resources are for everybody to use efficiently. You have to create globalization "police". In our current globalization there is anarchy. There must be a system. We have to share this planet together. Well meaning people are everywhere. Well meaning people have to speak out to make the world greater for the future. -Muhammad Yunus

I like what the Grameen Foundation has created, whereupon beggars are made into sellers. As Mr. Yunus has stated before, being poor means being in poor health. It's synonymous. Charity is wonderful, but it has limited reach - you can't solve all of the world's problems through charity. And for myself personally, I wish to use an accumulation of cash to setup a platform for the homeless to feel inspired. Education is where reigniting the self belies, as aptly put by the floor plaque at the steps of Alderman Library:

Books, including free access to library shelves, and the internet are two great ways to evolve one’s being and change one's life. The internet and books is how I learned everything I know and formulated my character. The two things I owe all of my current successes and development of character to (under Him) are my parents who raised me, and my reading of books and absorption of knowledge made accessible by the internet, specifically Google and YouTube. Education is the foundation of all of a society's betterment. To say “knowledge is power” is true... But beyond that, organized knowledge of self, and not just useless information, is ever more powerful in constructing individuals and societies on the whole. With knowledge, infrastructure may be setup. And through ideal virtues such as honesty, trust, and integrity, such social institutions may be created, developed, sustained, and evolved to benefit future generations to come.

If the homeless person has lost hope & motivation, their first step is to read self-help books & begin formulating realistic goals for themselves. Strategically, they (he) must disassociate with the environment of folk whom do not benefit their (his) drive toward greater heights. They (he) must go to libraries & educate the self; and with the accumulation of whatever monetary change one has indeed accrued they (he) shall buy a shaver & soap and nail clippers and retrieve a hair-cut for the self. They (he) must develop the demeanor of self-worth, displaying humility and self-respect; to smile everyday to at least 10 strangers as he walks past them & nod his head in appreciation to their existence. He must change his demeanor from victimized to challenged, & associate God on his side through good deeds, for where God exists is in the breathe of his livelihood and up through toward the outskirts of the skies above. He must integrate than to separate from society. He must locate himself in a town where opportunity for menial jobmanship exists as a first step; and even better yet if they (he) can create a job. He must cultivate his desire to list day-to-day goals with a vision aimed beyond mediocrity of his fellow men. He must rejoice his childness into the glist of his eyes. He must make the public library his place of peace, his second abode, the monopoly of his time of existence. he must exercise weekly, both aerobically and by calisthenics. he shall understand the concept of service as to give with gratitude & graciously what he was born with to gift, and to seek to live such out as his purpose... Then, he shall pursue his course with excitement without expectation for return, for this will diminish his comparison of self to others as having faith in himself, & will rebirth spiritual loving for himself, letting go of grudges by looking outside himself and into the lens of others. he shall repent his astraying through worship in a place of worship of his choice, whether it be a mosque, church, synagogue, monastery, temple, etc. ... he shall meet, greet, and acquaint those who serve his best interest inside and outside such places of worship, for then will life ascend.

Opposite of Maslow’s Hierarchy, I believe the homeless man/woman’s conditions shall sprout evermore from the top-down view of his beingness; from the psychological to the tangible; from the spiritual to the material, invert of Maslow’s Hierarchy:

And yet what does Islam, a religion divinely revealed to humankind through the vessel of an angel and to the prophet Muhammad (saw) and followed by one-fifth of the world’s populace, have to say about the giving of money? Zakat is one of the fundamental pillars of Islam, citing to every financially able human-being to give just 2.5% of their accrued earnings to those in need, on an annual basis. And yet such formulation comes into account only upon a certain amount of accrued earnings accumulated based upon economic standards per-capita, known as “nisab”. In Sharia, nisab is the amount one’s net worth must exceed for a Muslim to be obligated to give zakat. The current rate for nisab at the moment of my writing this blog post: $3,772. In other words, anyone who has an accrued value of less than $3,772 in total assets (Jewelry such as gold, silver; Cash, in hand and/or in bank; Trade, in investments and/or value of stocks; and Loans, given and/or taken) is exempt from paying a liquid of 2.5% of their total in assets. This means that one who has a total asset amount of $3,773 must give a zakat amount of about $95 to the poor (i.e. low-income), and/or the needy (i.e. someone who is in difficulty), and/or zakat administrators (i.e. any trustworthy organization that helps you calculate your zakat and accepts the payment for it), and/or those whose hearts are to be reconciled (i.e. new Muslims and friends of the Muslim community), and/or those in bondage (i.e. slaves and captives), and/or the debt ridden, and/or in the cause of God (i.e. donations for the building of a mosque and/or muslim schools and/or muslim youth groups, and/or the wayfarer (i.e. those stranded or traveling with few resources such as refugees and/or stranded motorists, for example.

While zakat is not the only form of charity in Islam, it is so important that it was made the Third Pillar. Through zakat, the prosperous can uplift the poor, help those who are troubled and comfort those who are in hardship. The law of zakat establishes the rights of the poor to support and help, and releases those who are held captive as slaves or as debtors. Zakat has the power to change the world. But it starts with you paying it.

And yet I cannot but consider where a certain dollar amount extends itself in the hands of a person down-trodden. Or pan-handlers whom are able and fit to create a job than to stand on the side of a road for days on end seeking donations from the public. The ability to fix the root of an issue is of much more importance than to give sustainability amidst a broken philosophy and/or system and/or way of living. And yet those most in need are likely those too self-humbled to place themselves in front of society with their hand out for a hand-out in the form of dollar amounts. I have seen it before, and yet at times, it has become a hustle whereupon a pan-handler ends up being one behind the wheel of a nice vehicle, encouraging well to-doers to sheepishly give away their wealth. So it is in the world of capitalism. And yet, by my own character I would buy such man a meal whether his/her net worth is less than that of the nisab rate, or a billionaire. I won’t even give $1 to a random homeless person. But I will buy three of them a slice of pizza. More than tangible tender, I would give them tender in the form of an idea, a compliment, a piece of advice, a word of inspiration, a meaningful conversation - supplement to a paid-for-meal. In fact, I would give $1,000,000 to the poor. I just wouldn't put it in their hands. I would build a rooted infrastructure.

Would rather feed a bum than give a fund Why? - Ain’t tryna supply a doldrum with change To keep them unchanged for the better. . . Would rather put that in the belly the old-fashioned way Conversate them like, "How was your day?”

Monday, May 23, 2017

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christianstewardshipnetwork · 7 years

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CSN Podcast Host Announcement: A New Season

A CSN Podcast Host Announcement

In May’s episode of the CSN Podcast, our host, Derek Sisterhen, announces his new role in ministry at Hope Community Church and passes the baton (or microphone I should say) to our NEW CSN Podcast host, George B. Thompson. George is the Pastor of Stewardship at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California. He has been a member of CSN for many years.

CSN Podcast Host: A New Season

George B. Thompson is a devoted father of two twin boys and a daughter, a husband, and a Pastor of Stewardship at Faithful Central Bible Church. He is, also, a nationally recognized financial expert and motivational speaker. George has written several books, including Millionaires In Training: The Wealth Builder, Set-4-Life: The Diary of a Champion, and coauthored The Total Package: The Keys to Acquiring Wealth and Walking in Divine Health. His most recent books are part of a series called Ready, Set, Grow where he has taken over 20 years of teaching and living out these life stewardship principles and turned them into easily digestible lessons for anybody to consume. You can follow George at http://ift.tt/2rcAxJl.

Subscribe to the CSN Podcast on iTunes or Google

Follow the Christian Stewardship Network online on Twitter at @CStewardshipNetwork or http://ift.tt/2jZgpYj.

What to read more about this month’s episode? Here is an excerpt from the transcript of this episode.

Derek: My name is Derek Sisterhen, your host for today’s conversation. I also serve as the director of finance and stewardship at Hope Community Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. On today’s podcast, I’m joined by George Thompson, pastor of stewardship at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California. George is becoming a bit of a regular around here. George, how are you doing today?

George: I’m doing awesome.

Derek: Thanks for joining. So, today, we’re talking a little bit about me. Isn’t that fun? Start off the podcast with “Yeah, we’re gonna talk about me today”? How about that, everybody? We’re talking about me. We’re talking a little bit about a transition that I am making within my church, here at Hope Community Church. I’m shifting away from my full-time focus on just the financial and stewardship aspects of ministry at Hope. I’ll be bringing some attention to the broader church stewardship, as in the leadership of the church stewarding its resources well and being an example to the congregation, one that the congregation can count on and look to as a model of how biblical stewardship should look.

Today, I’ll share a little bit about my little journey. Then, George may have some questions for me. Ultimately, George is going to be taking over the responsibility of hosting The CSN Podcast. So, this conversation is the passing of the torch or the baton. That’s what’s happening here.

God has had me on a pretty interesting journey prior to and then since I’ve started working at Hope. Before I ever started working in the church world, I worked in banking. I worked in risk management. I worked in project management. From there, I transitioned into a small business that did financial consulting. Out of that, I ended up doing speaking and teaching. I wrote a book. I became a radio show and podcast host. (An old radio show and an old podcast—before I hosted the CSN Podcast). All of this had come before I worked in the church world.

I started to wonder; this is a wide variety of things. I feel like I’ve been at the buffet of things to do. Some of these things I never would’ve imagined that I’d do. I never would’ve imagined that someone would’ve put me on the radio. And then it happened. And then I never would’ve imagined that I would’ve written a book. And then it happened. And I never would’ve imagined that I would’ve walked away from a career in banking.

So, I started to wonder what the point of all these different experiences is? Next, I wound up at Hope Community Church. I began serving as the stewardship ministry director formalizing a ministry that had been run by a band of brothers and sisters that were sort of fledgling, kind of under the radar. We were not very organized. Then, in the fall of 2010, I started to provide some leadership, galvanized that, and we’ve been able to minister to a lot of needs of our congregation and our community as a result.

Over the course of the last few years, though, I’d taken on responsibility as overseeing our finance and accounting area while also managing the stewardship ministry. In the last two years, Hope has come through an extensive capital campaign season where we built a brand new campus that is also a community center. It has been an incredible project. One that challenged us and stretched us in many ways. At the end of this past year, I was asked to join our executive team to continue oversight of our finance and accounting teams, human resources, facilities, and information technology. So as a result, I’m shifting away from the role that I’ve occupied for the past six years, which has direct ties to the stewardship ministry. I’ll continue to teach in the ministry, but I won’t be as directly linked to it.

And so here I am handing over the reins to George. That’s been the catalyst. That’s why you’re here, man.

George: First of all, thank you for just giving us a little bit of a background. I did not know you worked in banking. You worked in banking before you got here and also financial consulting. What happened during that process to where you got to be on staff, working at Hope from there? There had to be a little something going on. Like, where you were meeting with people and finding out it’s just not all about the numbers? Or what did happened? How did you get from working in banking to working at Hope?

Derek: The short story is that I was convinced that I was going to make the corporate climb in banking. Right when I left college, I was like, “That’s what I’m gonna go do. I’m gonna be a lifer. I’m gonna climb the ladder.” I was very fortunate. In the course of a short period, I started working in a role where I was interacting with some people that were several steps above me in the food chain. The more I got to know about them and what they were doing, the more I was like “This is not the life for me.”

George: And earnings for the company and building up the company and not building up people. Go ahead.

Derek: That’s right, yeah. I was like “I feel like I have a glimpse into the future here, and it does not look like a future that I want.” God was really starting to move in my heart to have more compassion for people around personal finance. So, I left there and joined one other guy who had started this firm working with families and small businesses on improving how they handle their money. The more I got to know the people that became my clients, the more I realized I was dealing with emotional issues and relational issues and spiritual issues, not numbers on a page. I wish it were that simple. But, there were people behind those numbers. The more I got to serve them, the more I realized this is all about the heart and how people view themselves in relationship to God.

I got more involved in serving at Hope. Then, one day. I asked the question, “Doesn’t the church need to get some sort of group together, some person that can lead or spearhead charge on this particular area of discipleship?” And, of course, God’s timing is always perfect. Little did I know that, at that exact same time, the senior leadership of our church had just come back from a conference where they had heard from people at Gateway about how critical it is to have a stewardship ministry. So, I heard through the grapevine that they were thinking of starting one. I told them, “This is gonna sound crazy, but I might be your guy.” I’ve never done anything like that in my life, put myself out there, but that’s how I got to Hope.

George: You said, “I’ve never done anything like that” in your life. But, other people actually come into this type of ministry, and we hear quite often that they worked in corporate America, then ministry began out of their heart for people. Or they make a statement, similar to what you just said, “You know, I saw how people were out there, but I didn’t know how I could just deal their finances,” because you have to deal with them as a whole person—their time, their talent, and their treasures. So, did that have a big role in how you implemented classes or how you taught when you were at Hope?

Derek: Absolutely. Part of my experience in banking that really helped a lot is was the experiences were I worked in the collections area. I did some special projects in collections.

George: You were all the way in. You were all the way in.

Derek: I was all the way…I was down there.

George: You were collecting money and talking to people and with the higher-ups. You did see it.

Derek: I saw it all, yeah.

George: You just had to come down the altar after that.

Derek: That’s right. Oh man. Yeah, so there I was figuring out the ins and outs of, you know when people get into a financially stressed position, how does that actually work on the bank’s side? A lot of times, in our classes, we’ll talk to people who…maybe they got a bill that’s gone past due, or they’ve got an account that’s in collections. They’ll start to get stressed and wonder, “What do I do? What do I do?” Well, I’ve been able to train our entire stewardship team, our financial coaching team, to say, “Here’s what actually happens. Here’s the legal stuff. Here’s the timeline the bank’s gonna run on. And if they’re telling you this, they really mean that.” And, you know, we’ve been able to bolster the equipping of our team based off of all that experience that I didn’t think would ever play into it. I mean, it turned out that God had a plan with all that experience for me.

George: Right. And what I want the listeners to understand is that in your process in going through; God prepares you from the day you were born until the time that you’re doing that. So you said, “I don’t have any experience,” but, actually, you had your whole life experiences. God puts you in a position so that you’re able to learn how something works so that you’re able to help others.

I have one more question I want to ask you. What are you doing new and going to do in your new position? A lot of times, as a pastor at stewardship, I feel like we’re picking a lock. I feel like if someone is…they’re chained and they’re spinning around in a circle, and it’s just getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And then they come to us at different times. Unfortunately, some people come when they’re so tight. They cannot move. And we’re the ones who are picking the lock. And then there’s just that chain around them. So we can loosen that chain and so that they can walk and be free.

And I wanted to thank you for all the people that you’ve helped, not only in North Carolina, but just all over the country, and as this podcast has gone all over the world and been helping and touching people, just the impact that you have in doing that. And I’m glad that you were able to be able to do that for so long. And then so how did you start doing the podcast?

Derek: Well, it turned out that…I guess I said something to someone about how I had done a radio show and podcast in some of my prior…

George: That’s famous last words, “I said something to somebody.”

Derek: Yeah. And it sounded like sweet music to their ears, and they said, “Well, we should do a podcast.” Well, CSN, Christian Stewardship Network, years ago used to do, effectively, a large conference call with people, because back at the time, you know, we knew of maybe 30, 40, 50 stewardship leaders around the country. So you could just do a call and have people sign on and listen to something, and that would be it. But as time has gone on and as churches have really embraced launching stewardship ministries within their overall ministry, you know, activity, it’s like these stewardship leaders are all over the place. And it may not be someone that actually is on the church staff, but it could be someone serving as a volunteer leader.

So, we made the decision a couple a years ago with CSN, because at the time, I was also serving on the board, “Hey, we’ve got an opportunity to reach way more people if we put this in a nice podcast version where we’ve got 20 to 25 minutes with someone who’s an expert or who has maybe a great story of success or even a great story of failure and lessons learned that they could share and get that out to stewardship leaders across the country.” So, fortunately, I was drawing a little bit from some prior experience of doing a radio show and doing a different podcast. But it really, I think, has been a great resource to leverage through the Christian Stewardship Network.

George: Wow! That is great. And that has just been a blessing. Those are big shoes to fill. But, hey, can you talk about how your transition has started, and then just kind of how the different things we can expect from you in the future?

Derek: Yeah. There are a lot of expectations of me in the future. Sure, I’ll tell you about some of them. So, as I mentioned at the top of the show, Hope has just concluded a two-year capital campaign. We called it, “Unleashed, the Power of a Changed Life.” We focused for two years on not only funding all of our normal ministry areas and operations as well as our outreach to the local and international partners that we have but also expanding some of our international outreach and expanding our local ministry efforts by building a permanent location for one of our other campuses.

But we made a big decision, and that was not just to build a church building, but to build a community center that the church meets in. We really wanted that project to be a blessing, to be an asset to the community that it’s a part of. We built it in Apex, North Carolina, which is an incredibly family-rich area. There are so many families with kids there. We thought, “You’ve got an opportunity right out of the gate to impact two generations, to impact the parents and to impact their children.” We set about that project a little over two years ago and just opened that facility right before Christmas 2016.

And, now, on the other side of that, my role is shifting to where we’re trying to say, “What does it look like for Hope Community Church in the future?” We’re a multi-site church. We reach a lot of people. But what does it look like to really be a partner with churches across the Triangle area, which is Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill? What does it look like to bolster the faith community here, to be a resource, not just for the people that come through our doors, but to be a resource to other churches? And so, as we start to look forward into the future, one of the things that have come to bear is the need to add some new leadership at our executive level. So, I and a couple of other folks were invited to come in and take on some of the challenges and opportunities that await us to make sure that we are executing as best we can on our mission of loving people where they are and encouraging them to grow in their relationship with Jesus so that we continue to be that blessing to the community.

George: Wow. It is great just to hear about and watch all of that progress, and not only just in watching you, but just watching what God is doing just in your whole area and at your church as well. The vision that your senior pastor has in doing everything for the community, because, see, that’s kingdom-building. I’m gonna also give you all the website at gethope.net. I was just looking at all your different locations and how you are spreading the gospel. Just how you guys have planned this and how it’s going, that’s great.

Hey, just two other questions for you. And I just wanna let you know; you have two minutes for each.

Derek: Thank you.

George: In your time doing the podcast and being the host, what has been your vision for that? Or how did you see this starting and changing as the process went?

Derek: That’s a good question. You know, I think, like any good ideas, sometimes you just don’t know until you get out there. And so, with the podcast, I think what we saw it as or what I saw it as was we’ve gotta have an opportunity to continue the discussion out of the CSN Forum. You know, the CSN Forum happens once a year. You have this chance to come and just get bathed in experience from other stewardship leaders. You get bathed in wisdom. You get to share some of your wins, some of your failures. And you come out of there, and you feel like, “Oh, man, I have been totally rejuvenated.”

And then a month goes by, and you’re back at your church, and you got deadlines to meet, and you got classes that you’re trying to fill, and you got stuff you gotta do. And all of a sudden, the forum is, you know, that was back then, back in Texas. And I think that the podcast really started off as a great way to continue the conversation. A lot of the people that had been a part of the podcast as guests, they’ve been people that have attended the forum. And so, hey, we’ll take a subject matter from the forum, and we’ll say, “Let’s unpack that for 20 more, 25 more minutes on a podcast.” It just gives us a chance to continue that connection between stewardship leaders throughout the year.

As far as a vision for the future, I would say that what we would want…what I would hope would happen is that this resource grows as a go-to point of contact for stewardship leaders, whether they’re just getting started or whether they’ve been at it for a long time. And they can pop this on, and they can say, “I’m gonna get something of value that I can use.” Whatever the time may be, they may listen to a podcast three years from now. They may listen to this three years from now, and they may just say, “Hey, that was encouraging.” So I think that’s what the vision is, how can this be a meaningful resource to the people that are on the ground doing stewardship ministry?

George: Right. And one of the things that I think is very important, and that’s one of the reasons why, but getting involved was just listening and finding out how to keep things going. You used a great illustration at the very beginning. I’ve gone to the conference for ten years. And every time that I go, I always say, “This is great information. This is great information. This is great information.” And then how you would during the year be able to keep cheering us higher and higher by saying, “Good, now, we can break this out,” and break things into practical applications that we can have in our lives and do.

My last question for you is quite simple. It is what are some good nuggets or different things that you have learned over the years or over the time of doing stewardship ministry that you would like someone to know that is just getting started in stewardship ministry?

Derek: I guess a couple of things. One is, just like we would say in a class that we’re gonna teach that God owns all of our stuff, it’s all God’s money, it’s all God’s stuff, this is also God’s ministry. This is not our ministry. We are stewards of the stewardship ministry. If we ever take an attitude of ownership or if we think too highly of ourselves that we’re the driver behind this thing, that’s where you start to get way off track. That’s one of the things that I’ve learned is that it’s gotta be God’s ministry. And I just get the privilege of partnering with him in doing it in my local church.

The next thing that I would say is that in the stewardship world, in the stewardship ministry world, it’s easy to have that one person that’s the champion. They’re on staff, or maybe they’re a key volunteer that’s the champion. You cannot do this alone. You cannot do this alone. As soon as you think that you can do it alone, you have just put a cap on the ministry, and you will not be able to reach or serve the people that God wants to bring your way. So, by all means, you must engage other people who have a passion for this and get them alongside you. You will multiply your energy. And it will be a beautiful, beautiful thing for the kingdom.

And then the third thing that I would say is that this is a…and you have shared this before, George. Stewardship is not a department. It’s a way that we do things. It is an element of our culture. And so for a stewardship leader, you have the opportunity to engage ministries all across the church in something that must infuse its way into every aspect of a Christ follower, a disciple’s life. This is a part of who we are if we say that we’re Christians is we are stewards. So it should show up. And you have the ability to engage other ministries. It should show up in those.

So those are the three things I would say. It’s God’s ministry, don’t do this alone, and see yourself as a resource to all of the other ministries in your church.

George: Good. Hey, I just wanted to give you a standing ovation for your work with CSN, as the CSN Podcast Host and everything that you have done. It has been an honor. You have blessed so many people. And I, along with all of the other people that are involved with stewardship and ministers, pastors, everyone, just wanna say thank you so much for all that you’ve done and your commitment to excellence and thank you.

Derek: Well, thank you, George. I appreciate you taking the time to do this little kind of reverse interview with me. Thank you for being a part of the podcast. I thank you, also, for taking on the baton of this CSN podcast, because, as we just talked about, there is so much potential for making this resource available, so thank you.

George: My pleasure.

Derek: All right. Well, I am just so grateful to all of our listeners who’ve tuned in and who’ve allowed me to serve as a host in this capacity. I may not be around as much, but I’ll still be around, so don’t forget that. For all the great content that CSN produces, the podcast, and now, of course, with George at the helm, and info on the next CSN forum, and so much more, you can visit christianstewardshipnetwork.com. Until next time, whenever that time may be, here’s to leading and serving well for God’s glory and your joy. Thank you so much for being with us.

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personaldevelopmentnow · 7 years

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The 67 Steps – SUMMARIES OF STEPS and FULL Tai Lopez Review

Here is my long awaited Tai Lopez review on his popular 67 steps course. If you don’t know Tai Lopez by now, then you haven’t been on YouTube, or you live underneath a rock. He is YouTube’s most popular channel. The 67 steps is an awesome collection of wisdom that Tai has accumulated over the years from his reading and listening to his mentors. This wisdom (knowledge in action) is from the best and most successful people in history. This course is not a get rich scam. This course is geared on giving you the tools to reprogram the way you think, change your mindset, and beliefs.

This Tai Lopez review took me a lot of time and effort to create so I hope you get a lot out of it.

If you find this article helpful or enjoy it, please consider sharing and liking this with the icons above. Your action really helps me out a lot in growing this website.

The post is pretty long so make sure that you bookmark it (CTRL + D) and come back later!

Do I think Tai Lopez is a Scammer?

Visit my in-depth article on my own Tai Lopez Scam Investigation.

The 67 Steps Review

Below is my 67 Steps Review. I discuss the program structure, the negatives and positives, and whether or not I’d recommend the program to anyone.

If you are looking for my LONG summaries, keep scrolling past the review.

Program Structure

Web based: Members are given a username and password to login where you have access to Tai’s video training steps

Video Lessons: 67 Steps are Video Lessons lasting 30 min to 1 hr long.

Online Community: Interactive community where you post and journal about the questions inside the 67 steps. Users can comment and encourage one another.

Phone Calls: Monthly phone calls with Tai’s team to consult your questions, progress and ideas.

Bonus 1: Book of the Day summaries emailed to you.

Bonus 2: How Tai Lopez Reads a book in 10 minutes.

Cancelling: When you cancel you lose access to the video lessons and monthly phone calls.

Payment: This is a monthly payment through clickbank, however, you can just cancel after one month.

Pros

Collection of Wisdom: A collection of wisdom from the most successful people in history. With Tai’s insights, you’ll gain the most important from all around

Lots of Examples: He provides extensive examples to help you understand the certain foundational ideas that may seem difficult.

Detailed Explanations: He really provides detailed explanations and comprehensive logic to his concepts and explanations.

Guarantees / Refund: Tai offers a money back guarantee through clickbank.

CLICKBANK: If you don’t know what clickbank is, it’s a highly reputable service that is the middle man between the buyer and seller of a product. They are awesome at refunds so this subsided my worries when I ordered.

Cons

Not as Transparent about pricing: The pricing on the website makes it look like you’re just going to pay $67 for one time – HOWEVER if you read the fine print, you are paying $67 a month. This is easily solved by canceling the next month’s payment.

Cancelling: Some people have had trouble cancelling the 67 steps, this was prior to clickbank though as I’ve had no problems whatsoever.

Production Value: There is no editing of the videos – this is minor though since I only care about content.

Videos are long: Some videos are long and drawn out and I feel like they could have been summarized in half the time. You still get good content. But, everybody has their own way of teaching. YOU WON’T COMPLAIN about steps being too short.

Sale Tactics: His ads are everywhere! It gets a little annoying sometimes. He teaches you about something called “cognitive biases” and I find it ironic that he’s used the very cognitive biases that he warns you about to sell you the “67 steps”. Haha! But, what else does a salesman do? And in reality we all use cognitive biases when we try to influence people. At the end of the day, everyone has their selling tactics… I just think the selling tactics behind the Ferrari and big mansions aren’t really necessary ( a bit tacky IMO) but who knows maybe those ads tested well for him. This is a minor complaint because what matters to me is if it’s a good product or not.

Neutral

Reiterates: If you’ve heard his YouTube videos, then his delivery is very much the same. He reiterates his points a lot and may rehash a story 3-4 times. This may seem annoying and inefficient for some people to have someone repeat the same things over as they feel like it wastes time, however, for me it helps hammer the idea home so that you actually remember it. Repetition is one method to remember things. I actually find reassurance in the reiterations because it reaffirms the idea, however, it might not be for you.

Check out his website for The 67 Steps program.

Feel free to use my summaries. However, if you decide to buy his program through my link, I’ll give you my convenient 16 page study guide for FREE. It summarizes THE WHOLE 67 steps in a clear and concise way.

The 67 Steps Review Score

Content

Presentation

Supporting Material: i.e. Website

Support: Ordering & Canceling

Summary

You could probably buy 3-5 books and spend a month or two sifting through them to pick up all the info that Tai is giving you in his 67 Steps. I don't like the monthly recurring charges (It's easy to cancel though), his videos are long and he bounces around off topic, but offers a lot of personal anecdotes and experiences. Despite those complaints, this is a solid buy, and it was definitely worth the $67 for me. If you can't swing the $67, just use my summaries below, as for me, I learn better when someone is talking to me.

4.4

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Bottom Line: Do I Recommend it?

So if you’re here, you’re probably on the fence on whether or not to buy Tai’s program. So the question is, would I recommend it? Well, it depends. If you’re like me and you like to improve yourself and look at things differently then I definitely recommend this to you, and it is definitely worth more than the $67 in my opinion.

There is SO much information out in the world today and it’s hard to decipher what’s good information and what’s bad information. Tai devours information, and he becomes the filter for you saving you time. Instead of searching, buying, and reading 67 books, Tai has aggregated the best of the best. Also, Tai has real world experience and has witnessed the principles he talks about, he’s walked the walk, so he’s just not a talking head that is just regurgitating information.

Click the link below to get Tai Lopez’s Program now:

LEARN MORE

Remember: if you do decide to buy Tai’s course from the link above, I’ll give you my complete study guide that will help you learn all of the steps in an easier / digestible way!

Tai Lopez Books that He recommends:

Here are the top books that Tai Lopez recommends in the 67 Steps program:

Managing oneself by Peter Drucker

How to Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud

The One Thing by Gary Keller

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Peter Kaufman

Disrupt you! Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive In the Era of Endless Innovation by Jay Samit

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley

The Essential Drucker by Peter F. Drucker

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins

Check my post on Tai Lopez Books & Recommendations.

Can’t find the time to read? Want to learn more in less time?

TIP #1: To learn more in less time, I use a service called Blinkist and give it my highest recommendation. See my Blinkist review here to find out what it is and how I use it.

TIP #2: If you want to read more, you have to learn how to read faster. Another great tool I love using to increase my reading speed is 7 Speed Reading. It’s software teaches how to read the right way with the correct techniques and exercises. Definitely worth it if you want to drastically improve in this area.

The 67 Steps Summaries & Chapters

Be Worth a Damn and Deserve it

Tai Lopez’s first lesson is that we need “to be worth a damn” and to “deserve it”. This chapter contains a variety of information that will be discussed more in depth at later times in the 67 steps, it serves as a overall summary and driving force for the 67 steps.

Be Worth a Damn Factor: People who are “worth a damn” do certain things that other people don’t. They invest in themselves, their health, their minds, their relationships, and their finances. They respect themselves and place value into themselves.

To increase your “Worth a Damn”: Add wisdom, remove ignorance. Ignorances are things that you’ve been taught such as “people who don’t go to college are not smart”. See, degrees can be worth something or they can be worth nothing. Wisdom could be learning anything.

Deserve it Factor: To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. If you want success, you will need to be worth a damn and you need to deserve it.

To increase your “Deserve it” Factor: This is a bit more challenging. You have to push yourself, challenge yourself, force yourself out of your comfort zone.

Invest in Yourself

Tai Lopez suggests that you need to take yourself seriously and invest in yourself. Become a better version of you and improve in the areas that you need to improve upon. Are you adding any value to your life and others, or are you becoming wiser and wiser every day? Are you improving yourself and GROWING every day? If the answer is no, or you “don’t know”, then you need to start. Two ways of developing yourself is reading BOOKS and practicing what you’ve learned from others.

READ – Input knowledge into your head

You can learn anything and everything from books. It is incredible that we can learn from other people’s lives and mistakes and download all their information into our brain via reading it. That is the power of reading.

If you are a slow reader, you’re going to have more difficulties succeeding and reading the books you want to read, especially with the mountains of information we’re expected to know these days. It’s crucial to learn how to read faster. You can start by looking up Youtube videos on the subject however I have found that the best way to drastically increase your reading speed is taking the program/software 7Speedreading. I’ve been through a lot of books and programs and they have the best course on the market that I personally use. They teach you the best techniques from world renowned experts in reading and productivity. The software trains you step by step to develop new reading habits and discard bad reading habits. If you’re reading around 200 wpm (the rate at which you speak) then this is a no brainer. I don’t care what you do or buy, just TAKE ACTION to try and increase your reading speed.

If you can’t find the time to read, then let I would HIGHLY recommend investing in a book summary service called Blinkist. The amount of time it will save you is totally worth it, and it’s really not that much, like $4/month. It cuts out all the fluff and allows me to see which books are worthwhile to buy later. I have the upgraded account that has the audio summaries. I love this feature, because I’m constantly on the go listening to the best ideas and important information of new books and making the most out of my time when I’m commuting to work. You can also invest in audible books, however, I like variety and I tend to get bored with my attention span. Definitely check our their free trial here.

PRACTICE – Put your knowledge into ACTION

Practicing often increases your odds. Later you can refine your practicing to practice smarter. But you MUST put your knowledge to use. If you don’t, it remains useless and you’ll probably end up forgetting it.

Here are two examples of people practicing non stop:

Michael Jackson practiced his simple spin 8 hours a day in the mirror video taping himself.

Michael Jordan, told his coaches at the end of the basketball year at UNC and told them he was burned out and needed the summer off, they understood. The next morning the coaches entered the gym and there was Michael Jordan on the court practicing.

“When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win”

-Ed Macauley

These two examples of Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan demonstrate not only practicing hard, but learning how to “love the grind” that is one of the keys to success. What are you doing to “deserve it” more than the next person that comes along or who is practicing more than you?

Why name it 67 Steps?

This PDF from the Univserity of London Study – How Habits are Formed found that the average amount of time to create a habit and rewire the brain is 66 days. And of course, some people associate 66 with negative connotations, so one more step was added on for good measure.

The whole 21 days to build a habit is really a myth based on a popular book in the 1960’s, Psycho-Cybernetics – (Free Text).

Read more about the habit study in the huffingtonpost.com

Reverse Engineer Success & Problems

In my engineering job, a lot of the times you have to think backwards to deconstruct something down. You can apply this to a lot of problems in life, reverse engineering any sort of desirable outcome that you want to achieve is a pretty good strategy to have. Like a hard math problem, look for models and proven solutions and then work backwards to see what you need to do to make it work.

(Benjamin Graham) Warren Buffet’s Thought Experiment (YOUTUBE)

Warren Buffet’s thought experiment is taking success and reverse engineering it.

Warren gives you a hypothetical question. If you could go back in time to your high school and earn 10% of any classmate and his future career, who would you choose? Is it the smartest person or most talented person that ultimately succeeds the best? Maybe, but not all the time. There are always talented people out in the world and they come dime a dozen. Think of it this way, ask this question: “Out of your High School class, who would you bet money on in having the greatest success?” I bet you’re not going to pick the kid with a perfect 4.0 or most talented person. You should bet on the kid with a set of intangible traits like energy, focus, determination, passion, drive, wisdom. On paper he might not look the best, but by looking at him, you know that kid is going somewhere.

Now, take these qualities and find ways to implement them in your own life. Go ahead and flip the question on it’s head and ask “What student/ classmate would you bet against?”. You’ll probably find their characteristics to be, Lazy, disrespectful, undisciplined, non communicative, no drive, no integrity. Do you have any of these qualities? If yes, then focus on changing them. Maybe you’re shy, then you need to force yourself into more social situations.

Would you be the person that people would bet on? Learn and train yourself to become better and improve your intangible qualities.

Tai goes highly recommends two books:

Learned Optimism – Dr Martin Seligmen’s book which says that “we can train the brain” to do extraordinary things. This also plays into NLP – Neural Linguistic Programming which is a set of tools in psychology that allows people to change their behavorial patterns, develop better skills, communication, etc.

Poor Charlie’s Almanac – This book is for additional wit and wisdom by none other Charles T. Munger, the individual who came up with the 25 cognitive biases. As one of my friend’s said, “think of it as a gift to humanity from a higher more intelligent species”. A bit expensive, I’d look for an online version somewhere for cheaper.

So I need to ask myself if I am really spending each day getting wiser? Am I improving everyday a little bit?

Use your overall happiness as a gauge. If you’re not happy, then that’s just a feedback system telling you that you need to change something.

Questions to Answer:

What are my strengths?

Weaknesses?

What are my Goals?

ADAPT

The Chameleon adapts to it’s surroundings and so should you

Tai Lopez quotes LSU Business professor, Leon C. Megginson.

Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself.

It’s not strongest and smartest species that survives, but the species that is the best able to adapt.

You can take this simple statement and apply it to virtually every thing in your life. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO ADAPT. If you don’t, you die in business, marriage, investments, your life etc. It doesn’t matter how strong you are or how smart you are.

In Order to Adapt You Must Understand that…

Everything is NOT Black and White… but rather shades of grey.

Older generations have been caught up in the black and white mentality such as:

Racism – “Blacks are substandard species of Human”

“the world is flat”

“Earth is the center of the universe”

Even common thoughts we think today, we think in black and white, good and bad, but they really aren’t.

“Failure is a bad thing”

“Only straight A’s equates that I’m smart”

“You need to go to college for anyone to take you seriously and to get a good job”

Transitioning into another important area when talking about black and white thinking is failure. You might think of it as a black and white situation – “Failure is bad. Failure is painful and avoid failure at all cost”. However…

Try to look at Failure Differently. I personally try to look at Failure as my friend.

I’ve collected a whole bunch of fear of failure quotes that will show you that you’re in good company.

Tai talks about truth seeking but doesn’t tie this in right here into failure (at least that I remember when I was taking notes). I’ve noticed that in order to look at failure differently, you must be a truth seeker. If you are, then why should you be afraid of being rejected by that girl or boy that you’re so afraid of talking to, or the dream job that you’ve always wanted? Whatever outcome it is, that’s what it is. A lot of us, including me, have a trouble with accepting truth. If we learn to embrace it, we’ll allow ourselves to get more repetitions in and we’ll be a lot better off.

Now don’t get me wrong, fear serves a purpose, and so does fear of failing. Fear motivates us to prepare for important things. What I’m trying to say is that don’t let fear immobilize you.

Here are some famous people that learned to adapt and not be afraid of fear.

Sam Walton – He was a man that was never afraid to fail

Jeff Bezo – Failure was not black and white

Michael Jordan

Wayne Gretzky

Think of your life and goals as experiments. You can’t really fail at an experiment. Think about it, you usually think of goals as a pass or fail based on what you want, HOWEVER, in an EXPERIMENT it isn’t a pass or fail. It is a reiterative process that refines in closer and closer to a desired outcome. Science doesn’t look at pass/fail, it observes OBJECTIVELY and concludes its findings. The experiment was either close to your hypothesis or it wasn’t, you observe the results and you compare it with your hypothesis, tweak the experiment and variables, and run the experiment again. When you think of goals and trying new things this way just like how Thomas Edison did then YOU CANNOT FAIL.

One of your mantras in life should be “Try, Observe, Tweak”:

Try, observe, tweak. Did you get your desired result? If no, go to step 2.

Try, observe, tweak. Did you get your desired result? If no, go to step 3.

Try, observe, tweak… on and on and on

On a side note: Some people change too often and it seems like they are changing just to change which is what I call “hyper adapt”. So yes, you can adapt too much sometimes.

Look for Evolutionary Stable Strategies

Evolution Stable Strategy – (ESS) – This is a difficult concept but in a nut shell it means that you have two or more groups in an ecosystem and their choices and interaction becomes stable at some point.

Evolutionary Stable Strategy Examples:

When cows eat grass, their saliva helps the grass grow back healthier … the cows “make a deal” with the grass and the situation becomes stable.

Have Humility

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Sure, sure, sure, I am humble”. Tai challenges you in this section by saying that most everyone says that they’re humble, but very few actually are humble.

Let me explain. There are different types of humility, inward humility and outward humility. Most everyone has outward humility which outwardly shows others that they are humble – For Example: “I’m ok, but I’m not that great”. Now inward humility is what you really want to strive for. People who have inward humility admit that they don’t know everything and that there are lessons to be learned from almost everyone AND most importantly, they take action and strive to improve. If you’re really humble, you will go out of your way to seek the right information to help you in your situation. Most of us get the “I don’t know” part right, BUT very few of us get the “I’m going to do something about it” – the action part. This is usually because our egos don’t want to be hurt.

My personal example for me in this case is:

“I’m not a very good public speaker”… I have not chosen to improve as I need to in this area because subconsiously I’m trying to protect my ego and in a way, I’m not very humble in that area.

Here are two examples of being humble:

Michael Jordan – Michael Jordan’s best asset was his listening and being coach-able. The best basketball player in the world was still looking for ways to get better from all sorts of different people, mentors and coaches. Yes, don’t get me wrong, outwardly, he is extremely cocky. But his actions show that he is humble and that he doesn’t know everything.

” My greatest skill was being teachable. Even if I thought my coaches were wrong, I still tried to listen and learn something.”

” – Michael Jordan

Sam Walton – Embarrassing to some people, Sam would go to competitors stores all across the globe trying to find out new ways to run his store. He was found measuring distances of aisle ways and was arrested. Imagine billionaire Sam Walton, on his hands and knees measuring the floow and then getting arrested.- Sam Walton didn’t let his ego get in the way of searching for the truth.

Sam Walton tried learning from everyone by asking and prying and listening to other businesses and customers and he always looked for a couple of valuable things that you can learn from that person

Humble People do the following:

Know that they don’t have it all figured out

Listen more than others

Sacrifice their egos for information and truth

Take action

Tracking down mentors

Reading as many books as you could on the subject (I use Blinkist)

Copying and studying competitors

Going to Seminars and Trainings

If you do these things on a regular basis, being mentored, reading books, etc then the more humble you are because these our ACTIONS that show that you don’t know everything and are willing and hungry to learn. In other words, don’t tell me that you’re humble, show that you’re humble.

This is a strange way of looking at being humble, but it makes sense to me.

EVERYONE IMPORTANT HAD A MENTOR

Michael Jordan, Tesla, Warren Buffet, Einstein, Sam Walton, etc

How humble have you been in action? Not lip service saying that you’re humble.

Questions:

How much money have you been spending on info/seminars etc?

What are your distractions from doing this?

You need a Mentor. Law of 33 Percent.

“Good artists copy, Great artists steal”

– Pablo Picasso.

When Pablo Picasso said this, he wasn’t promoting copying or stealing, but rather making a point that anything great that has happened in the world – inventions, ideas, movements, etc is because they’ve been built on the past ideas of other people. For example, computers today, are a summation of all the different developments and innovation. Without the past building blocks of computer, such as the microchip and processor, are technology wouldn’t be what it is today. In a way, anything we create is because we are “standing on the shoulders of giants” as Sir Issac Newton quoted.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”

-Sir Issac Newton

Looking at this again at a philosophical level, there really is no “original idea” out there because all ideas are comprised of older thoughts and ideas. Also, we need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel, and copy/ imitate other people more and “stand on their shoulders” and wisdom. This nicely leads into the next point – the law of 33%.

The Law of 33%

The law dictates how and who you should spend your time in order to grow and improve best as a person. You can’t just spend all your time with mentors, it’s unrealistic. You’ll become really strong in certain points however other areas in your life will be lacking. Much like exercising, you need to work out all areas of yourself. You don’t just exercise one muscle and expect great physical results – you have to exercise all muscles. The Law of 33% is broken down the following.

People below your level (Apprentices): You need to spend 33% of your waking hours with people that are “below” or “behind” you. These friends will be the ones that you’re mentoring, it will provide you a way to boost your confidence and hone your teaching skills while helping your friends out.

People on your level (Partners): You need to spend 33% of your time with people on the same level as you. These will be your closest friends.

People above your level (Mentors): You need to spend 33% of your time with people above your level that will help you with your goals, aspirations, etc. These people are your MENTORS.

This spectrum of different people will provide you a spectrum of people that are necessary to grow in all areas.

Look for Patterns in People

Connecting dots and looking for patterns in other people and situations will provide you great insights

So here’s the fifth step of this Tai Lopez review of The 67 Steps summary. This step, is all about using your judgment and observation skills on people. You need to tune in and be aware of who you talk to and what information you pick up from people. You’d be surprised how many crappy thoughts you are exposed to. Some people are rich in certain different areas of their lives and others are poor in those areas.

If you can decipher what areas are good and bad with certain people, you can hone in to the good elements of that person – dissect them, reverse engineer it, and imitate their behavior.

So how can you tell if someone is good or bad in a certain area in his/her life? The question is easily answered with a verse from the bible (not meaning to get churchy with people, as I’ll also pull quotes from other religious books that have good wisdom).

“You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”

– NKJV Matthew 7:16

Here are 4 examples of Patterns:

One example of a pattern that Tai’s observed was that his rich friend Joel Salatin said a lot of quotes. When you say quotes, you’re not just saying, “listen to me” you’re also referring that someone else said it to. This plays into using the Authority bias to your favor.

His rich friends are good at Math.

Another example of a pattern that Tai noticed is that a very successful coach always asked questions

Poor friends are usually mad when they get criticism

Rich friends are always asking for criticism

Here are 3 things that you need to do:

You must BUILD a habit of observing people. Get a level of awareness.

“Mirror cat” and “parrot” the people you want to be like.

Identify People and ask for Knowledge

What I typically do when asking for wisdom is tell the person your observations you’ve had about them and deliver it in a complimentary form (avoid excessive smoke), comment with a brief sentence about your goals and then ask them their input and how you can achieve the same. You’d be surprised by how many people open up. If you want to get more detailed.

Questions:

What are the patterns in your friends?

Focus on the Sculpture & Beware the Media Bias

The media sells you this grand picture of becoming rich, getting fit, without giving you the full story of the actual process and they do this by design to usual sell you something. They also always make it sound easier than what it is. If you don’t understand all the details and implications of a well rounded, happy life then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

There is no such thing as instant success (the type that lasts at least). Success is a slow process that takes persistent work. Think of life as a stone sculpture chiseled by hand. A stone sculpture isn’t made overnight. You have to chisel away at that stone day by day. You know the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day” – don’t expect yourself to have success right away. This mentality makes you compare yourself with others when you don’t know the exact details they’ve had to go through. Be patient with yourself. Start today and slowly chip away at the sculpture you envision. Maybe it’s something small like starting a speed reading program or getting a gym membership and working out.

You’ve gotta learn to love the grind. Because life IS the grind.

– John Calipari

Take a look at these old adages that have been around for a long time:

Easy come, easy go.

A tree that grows slow, bares the best fruit.

This program is all about building better habits (planting the seeds)

Off Topic Mentions:

Rule of 72 – A shortcut that people use when figuring out a rough estimate to interest rates.

Tai recommends Evernote

Learned Helplessness

Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism and Helplessness discusses the psychology and a state of mind that humans get trapped into. Being trapped in a state of helplessness

The Dog Experiment

To explain this topic further, experiments were performed on two dogs ( And no, I do not condone violence to dogs). The first dog was placed in a box small enough where it could escape when it was shocked. The second dog was placed in a much larger box where it could not escape when it was shocked repeatedly. Later, the took the second dog and placed it in the same box as the first dog so it could escape when it was shocked. What they found was that the dog’s mind can be rewired to learn helplessness.

This awesome YouTube video explains the book pretty well – Learned Optimism.

The Elephant Tied to a Rope

Most of us have heard the story of the elehpant tied to a stake with rope. An elephant was tied to a rope for a long time. When the elephant was untied from the stake, the elephant did not move from its radius.

The Salary Slave

A common example that you might not have identified as learned helplessness is someone who works as a salaried employee. Since they are conditioned to wait for their paycheck, they don’t take any action to obtain more money, they become dependent on waiting for the paycheck. This is known as a Salary Slave.

People are looking for a quick fix or an instant pill and they aren’t looking for a life style because they want to escape the pain of changing their habits.

Some people get stuck in this habit of waiting for the newest diet to try or the newest self help book to read and they don’t apply any action to what they have learned. They have become spectators, they read the books out of enjoyment. They have the mentality of a dog in the box who can’t escape.

“You can innovate out of any problem.” – Jeff Bezos Amazon CEO

The United States is a truly unique place to live. The beauty of it is that we have support systems in place so we can take risks and fail.

You’re never going to get anywhere in your life unless you take some sort of risk.

Laziness will kill you out in the jungle. The habits that you have will determine whether or not you die or survive in the jungle.

Just get out there and start doing things, take risks. If you stay the same, you’re going to keep on getting the same things so don’t expect different results. What’s the worse that can happen?

Be quick, but never hurry.

– John wooden UCLA Basketball coach.

A book about Amazon – The Everything Store – Talks about an employee who said something couldn’t be solved and Jeff Bezos said that they will innovate out of their problems.

So, the antithesis of helplessness is creativity. This reminds me of a great quote by Albert Einstein.

“You can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s thinking”

– Einstein

Questions

What’s an area that you’ve been helpless in your past? It could be health, relationships, wealth, career.

And, what can you do now to fix it?

Integrating your Life – Your Four Pillars

This is step 8 of the Tai Lopez Review of the 67 steps, titled “The Integrated Good Life & The Four Pillars Of Eudaimonia”.

This lesson is about integrating your life together. A lot of us have been sold a habit of breaking things down and compartmentalizing items in our lives when we shouldn’t break them down. Now don’t get me wrong, I break complicated things down most times and I believe it’s a good habit to have because it usually makes things easier. However, some items aren’t meant to be broken down and segregated. Sometimes, there are certain things that work much better when they are integrated and not segregated.

Some Items that I Need to Integrate:

Friends: I have a lot of friends and I tend to spend a lot of time with individual friends. One on one time is important, however, I need to include inviting more friends together so I don’t feel like I’m spreading myself too thin among friends.

Location: I just recently moved so that I could be closer to everything including:

Work– If you have an extremely long commute, try to move closer to decrease your time.

Gym – Pick a gym that is close to you and your general commute direction

Church – Church is typically 1 time a week, so I feel like the integration doesn’t need to be

Grocery Store – minimize your commute

Friend’s Houses – minimize your commute

Exercise at Home

Instead of finding a gym, invest on your own gym equipment, save money, and save time from commuting and worrying about if you look cool enough to enter the gym.

The idea here is to make it easy on yourself in the things you do ever day. Sometimes it’s a struggle when you have to commute 2 hours to work everyday. Integrating saves you time while increasing your productivity flow.

There is something called Edge Biological Theory which supports this idea of integrating your life. The principle behind the theory is that in nature and ecosystems you will find the most life on the fringes where multiple ecosystems merge. For example, there is a forest and lake and on the edge where they connect, you will find the most animals living around that area. We as species on this Earth are wired the same way where we want to be on the edge where resources merge.

Reshape your external surroundings to tailor your lifestyle.

Tai Lopez had an idea of integrating his office with his home gym and creating an office gym.

Did you know that 8 hours of sitting down at your office job is extremely unhealthy for you? Studies have shown that prolonged sitting is dangerous to your health and decreases your life by many years.

More Examples of Integration:

Integrate Work and Health

Standing desks

Exercise and Stretch during work:

Integrate Work and Tasks

While on a break, save a trip going to the store later by shopping on Amazon

On lunch, use Task Rabbit to hire other people to do whatever tasks you need.

Integrate Work and Social

It’s not a crime to socialize during work, it’s usually encouraged as long as you don’t abuse the privilege. Socializing increases team unity. Find and make friends at work and don’t feel guilty about it.

Integrate Work with Learning

While commuting to work, don’t waste that time doing nothing. Put on an audio book and learn something.

Integrate Fulfillment and Social

Participate in a charity event in your town and invite your friends.

True Happiness and Fulfillment

We are after the goal of Eudaimonia which is this concept from the classic philosophers of a fulfilled life. Health, Wealth, Love (friends, family, romance), fulfillment or a bigger purpose.

Martin Seligman says that the more you integrate your life, the happier you’ll be.

A lot of people are trying to be happy by getting something. True happiness is built around giving to others and bettering other people and meaningful relationships

Learn Faster by Learning from other’s Experiences – Books

Tai Lopez reads a book a day – (skims a book a day) this is how he does it.

Step 9 – Warren Buffett’s Book-A-Day Diet & Making War With A Multitude Of Counselors – Book a Day Diet.

Some Examples of How Important Books are to Successful people:

Buffet and Gates were asked what superpower…. they both said that they would have the ability to read super fast.

In the book Screw it, lets do it by Richard Branson – he explains how important books are and how he came over his dyslexia.

Alexander the Great had books sent to him thousands of miles away to him while traveling or in battle.

When most people hit road blocks, they create reasons why they can’t do it. “They got lucky” “People stole all my money from me – I got ripped off”.

The book – The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a great book that Tai also recommends and it explains why the human mind is wired the way it is.

The Selfish Gene – Explained Further

In Chapter 4 ” Survival machines that can simulate the future, are one step ahead of survival machines that only learn by overt trial and error.”

Overt trail and Overt error it takes time and energy and fatal.

Simulation is both safer and faster.

It’s a heck of a lot easier to learn from other peoples mistakes. We all make mistakes, but it’s easier to learn from other people’s mistakes.

Books are the easiest way to simulate the outcomes and gain the hard experience from others.

The better that you can accurately simulate outcomes, the faster and better you are.

Simulate successes, mistakes, and the future by reading books. It could be anything from Michael Jordan to Warren Buffet or Elon Musk. You will cut the learning curve exponentially.

The people that operate alone are… usually poor in all aspects of life. You won’t be able to be a jack of all trades and specialist in everything without simulation

“Make War with a multitude of counselors” – means that you choose your battles in your life with the smartest people on your side. With their wisdom, you will be in good company.

Over 100 million books exist… Read the tried and true classics, and authors who have credibility.

How Tai Lopez Reads a Book a Day

NOTE: Now I don’t really disagree with this approach but I disagree in calling it reading a book, it really is skimming instead of reading. To call it reading a book a day is a bit deceptive and intimidating for most people.

1st Pass – Previewing the book (5 min) – He reads the Front, Back, the inside jacket, about the author, table of contents – This allows him to anticipate what the main point is.

2nd Pass – Browse through the chapters (30 min) – Try to find one chapter that looks interesting to read.

3rd Pass – Read One or Two Chapters ( 1 hour) – Read the entire chapter.

Break the Rules of Reading

Don’t focus on reading fast but focus on mining for gold nuggets of knowledge.

You might say that “But I’m going to miss something?” Sure, you’re going to miss some information and details but that’s assuming that all the words

Come over your fear of reading every word.

I feel bad that I’m being rude

I also feel like I need to complete every thing

Questions

What’s your excuse for not reading and what’s your plan to start reading?

Toughen Yourself – Stoics vs Epicurean

Step 10 of the 67 Steps by Tai Lopez – Title: Stoic vs. Epicurean Arnold’s 1000 Reps, Apache Cold Showers and the Spartan Whipping Post

Stoics believe in toughening and sweating it out and sacrificing to get what they want, sucking it up and just doing it. They believe in preparing and sacrificing early to later reap the rewards later.

Epicureans believe in the YOLO mindset of “you only live once” and live for instant gratifications. They live for convenience which creates a soft person.

Why become Tough? When hard times come through your life and if you’re not tough enough or prepared, then you’re not going to survive.

Money comes to people who don’t need money, and the stronger the person is, the more attractive that person is.

If you’re only stoic, then you would be like a robot and would be unbalanced. So you need to have a balance of the two. However, I believe our generation of people tend to be more lazy and pleasure seeking, so I would error on the side of being more stoic, because it’s easier to change from being more stoic to being epicurean.

It’s the wealthy capital that preys on our basic instincts to find the easy way out.

“Adversity makes men. Prosperity makes monsters.”

– Victor Hugo

Examples of Stoic people:

Apache who take cold showers

Arnold Schwarzenegger who performs 1000 lb calf raises

Spartans would start extensive training when they were young boys.

Small Suggestions to become more tough:

Taking the stairs vs elevator

Eat that vegetable that you absolutely hate

Shower with cold water

Sleep on the floor

Do something outside your comfort zone

Get rejected by someone

Tony Robbins teaches you to get excited when you fail! When you succeed, you celebrate, and when you fail you begin to ponder. When you ponder, you’re one step closer to finding the solution.

Questions:

IN what area have you become the weakest in health, wealth, love, and happiness?

What can you do to rewire the brain to strengthen yourself?

Whispers of 10,000 Generations

Step 11 – Whispers of 10,000 generations

When can we trust our instincts and when can we not?

The Whispers of 10,000 generations is a term that describes the impulses we have everyday due to our genetics, human hard-wiring, and learned habits from ancestors and how they influence our life.

For example, 10,000 years ago, food was scarce back then and they ate as much as they could. Nowadays, the survival mindset is still built in us.

Food companies design our food to prey upon us. They know that our genetics desire the fat, sugar, and salt.

A lot of our problems begin because of evolutionary mismatches:

We now have complete silence when we sleep – Sleeping in complete silence isn’t natural or beneficial

We now have artificial Light – Artificial Light keeps us up during hours when we are designed to sleep.

We need to fight our DNA impulses (whispers of 10,000 years) and develop a investors mindset.

Go to bed early

Get a noise generator to sleep

Set up auto payments to help you save, that way you don’t

Don’t place yourself in to situations where you know your DNA impulses will overpower your decision making.

Questions:

What area is the worst area where your DNA impulses are strongest?

Find Your Eulerian Destiny

Step 12 – Mike’s Stack Of Resumes, My 96 Year-old Grandma, & Your Eulerian Destiny

This step is all about matching up your unique signature strength with what you should really be doing.

To do this, you need to find out your strengths and a One Sentence Destiny Plan, like a mission statement. If you can’t crystalise what you want to do in one sentence then you don’t know what you want to do.

Peter Drucker has a fantastic book, Managing Oneself, that I recommend and that Tai also recommends. This book is really short, easy to read, cheap, and has invaluable information in there – i absolutely love it because it’s straight to the point how most books should be.

Inside his book, he states that “Most people think they know what they are good at, they are usually wrong”. (Think American Idol)

How do I know what I should be doing with my life?

In the past you didn’t need to know what you wanted to be because you were born into your family’s occupation.

What’s your mission statement or plan in life? Crystallize what you want to do in one sentence and make sure everyone can understand it – including your grandma.

Tai’s Example: Tai says what he wants to do is “Spreading good ideas through mass media.”

Some Questions and Items to think about:

What makes you think that you have a lot of options?

Most people are delusional in thinking that they can do whatever they want.

What are your real skills?

Do You have American Idol syndrome?

The Law of 5%

This law states that in order to really excel at what you want to do, you have to be within the top 5% of your niche.

When this law is put into the context of your life, it makes you think twice about what you spend your time on and makes you focus on what you’re good at and where you can grow too.

Kill the myth that you can be good at so many things. Do not have American Idol Syndrome where you think that you’re good but you’re not that good. You might be the best singer in your town, but on the global stage, there is so much competition.

Don’t get me wrong, you want to have big goals but you need to BUILD them around your real skills or your “signature strengths”.

General Electric – This company focused on making everything. Later it slowly phased out some of it’s markets to focus on their “signature strengths” – GE’s plan was a huge success. We can apply this mentality to our own lives – focus on the things you’re good at and double down.

If you chase after two rabbits, you catch none. – Chinese Proverb

“Don’t live other people’s dreams for you”

“Know thyself”

How to create your One Sentence Destiny Plan

Draw a ven diagram with 4 circles.

Think about the 4 pillars of life when answering the questions below(health, wealth, love, and fulfillment).

1. What did you grow up around? What you grow up around deeply influences you and imprints upon your mind of who you’ll become.

2. Get feedback from strangers. What have strangers said that you’re good at?

3. What have you been doing for the last 10 years?

4. What do you love talking about?

Personal relationship Problems

Religion

On your ven Diagram, where do they all meet in the middle? Where they meet, that is what you should be doing.

Recommended Books:

The Paradox of Choice – Barry

Signature Strength?

Managing oneself – Peter Drucker

Questions:

What’s your one sentence destiny plan?

Do What You Like, Not What You Love

Step 13 – Tai actually got some production value in this track with some inspirational intro music!

This lesson is about wisely picking a career path based on what you like and not what you “love” or are lustful after. How to set up your life, so your work is your vacation.

Don’t get stuck in a dichotomy of hating your job and escaping.

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time. – Picasso

Don’t base you’re life around vacation. Living in a state of dreading day to day and looking forward to your escape / vacation is not a quality way to live.

Don’t do what you love, Do what you like.

A lot of people now a day say they love something, but people get really confused between love and lust. Most of the time it’s really lust. Lust eventually burns out.

Work at something that continually excites you.

Don’t worry about missed opportunities that are not right for you. A lot of people have general fear of missing out (FOMO). FOMO is a dangerous time waster that will take you down rabbit holes you don’t want to go! This is an quality that I have and I’m working on it. Always think if the opportunity makes sense to you and your direction.

Amish – The Amish have life not built around anticipation but built around rituals, hard work, no anticipation and they are statistically happier than most people.

Don’t follow your lust, follow your like.

This is something that Tai doesn’t talk about, but I believe you could have a miserable job and still be happy at that job. It’s all based on your mindset and making it enjoyable – In other words, your attitude.

Questions:

Do you have your mindset based around vacation?

When you woke up early, were you excited to start it?

Are you going after something that you’re lusting after?

Prepare for Everything Because Everything is Your Fault

Step 14 – The Shaolin Monk & Touching An Electric Fence

Everything is your fault is a mindset that puts you in control to prepare.

Growing up as a kid, I was heavily involved in the Boyscouts and all you fellow scouts out there, you know that the Scout motto is, “Be Prepared”.

Ask Yourself These Questions:

Could you anticipate this happening?

Could you have prepared for it?

“How full is your tool belt”?

Removal of procrastination and laziness, winning friends, charisma, influencing people, determination, perseverance, hard work.

Usually poor friends are good at one thing, and they don’t have enough tools in their toolbelt.

I liked this quote that Tai said: “positive words are only effective when they come in the context of massive preparation.”

A lot of people spew out “think positive and that’s all you need” – I agree with thinking positive, however, I believe that people get stuck in the illusion of avoiding anything negative with that sort of thinking. You need to be optimistic, however, realistic with your head grounded.

“The answer is stuck in the balance”

– Aristotle

You need to find the balance of KNOWING the right time to be optimistic and to be pessimistic. You can’t be 100% positive all the time.

Who else are you going to blame?

How can I better prepare myself for the next day? I don’t look at it as preparing because a lot of people think “I don’t want to be preparing for my whole life”, I look at it as improving. When you look at it this way, it’s not as difficult.

Hey guess what? Reading is learning, and is also preparation.

What can you do this week to prepare yourself financially, relationship wise, and health wise?

If you have health issues, start addressing those now. If you have relationship issues, start addressing those now and stop procrastinating.

“Do not put off tomorrow, what you can do today” – Ben Franklin

Claim Responsibility HOWEVER Don’t Fixate or beat yourself or freak out. Claim that it was your fault for not preparing, make a mental note that you will prepare next time, and then forget about messing up – give yourself a break because no one is perfect.

Questions:

In your 4 areas, where have you been lacking in preparation?

What’s a specific time where you should have been prepared but weren’t?

Calculate Big Decisions

Removing beliefs about things that aren’t 100% true.

You’ll have to make complicated decisions in life. Most of the Billionaire’s are investors (not surprising) and they have to make big decisions all the time. They just don’t decide with their gut, but they take very calculated risks and look at all aspects in their mind.

Switching a job for a higher paying salary might not be as easy as you think. Sure you’ll get more money, however, there are a lot of other factors that play into whether or not if it’s a good move.

In order to make good decisions, it is a good idea to break down the decision and quantify it while taking account the risks.

For my important decisions, I make a pros and cons list in excel (This is my own system for making choices), I think of every possible pro and con, then I weight it by assigning it a number (1-10). Then tally up the points. Let’s take our job example above.

Pros:

Make 15% more money

Commute is extra 30 min

Larger, Stable Company

Change of Pace

Lower Stress

Cons:

Commute is extra 30 min

Parallel Move in Position

Low career opportunities to move up

Not sure if the job will make you grow as an individual

This was a recent job switch that I had, and it was obvious that I was going to take the job. If it was more difficult, I would weight each point as I described above and total them.

The only thing that’s left true is math and numbers. From an engineering perspective… amen

The Renaissance Man

Step 16 – Rousseau, The Renaissance Man, & Iron Sharpening Iron

Touching on this topic again of learning and reading. Learning History (just like other books) is extremely important because we can learn from it. It’s also important because history always repeats itself and it allows us to prepare for it.

Become a Renaissance person

Don’t get this confused with being a jack of all trades (trying to be everything). Here, you’re just learning about background information so you’ll want to read a wide range of books even outside your niche.

Why should you read broadly?

Reading broadly will give you a wider view of how things work in general. This is absolutely key when managing people or systems.

You might be able to apply principles you’ve learned in one area to your work related area.

You’ll become a more interesting, well rounded person.

Increases your ability to communicate to other people.

Be able to understand both sides of an argument.

Iron sharpens iron, as a friend sharpens a friend.

Questions:

What area are you weakest in? Art? Geography? Politics? Religion?

Put Your Time in

Step 17 – Elon Musk‘s 14-Hour Workday vs. The 4-Hour Workweek

Today on the internet there’s a big illusion that you can get rich quick and you can work 4 hours a week. It takes a lot of work to become wealthy. There is no end. It is the grind. That is where you’re motivation and excitement is.

Now the popular 4 Hour Work Week is a good book. However, a lot of people get caught up on the title and think that they can only work 4 hours a week. It’s bologna. Do you think that the author, Tim Ferris works 4 hours a week? Now I understand that the title was chosen because it converts better. The book isn’t about trying to work as minimal as possible. It’s about trying to work as efficiently as possible.

If you don’t like going through the steps to take to success, then maybe you’re doing the wrong thing?

What are you doing in your spare time?

Name important people that only work 4 hours a day. You won’t find any. And if you do, it won’t last long term. If you want to have an impact on the world, then you have to put in your hours. You can’t just chuck up 4 hours and expect to be a millionaire.

Questions:

Compile a list of people who have impacted the world

In what part have you sabotaged yourself with incorrect efficiency?

How to Contrast & How to Keep Things Easy

Step 18 – 18. Man-On-The-Moon Contrast Keeping Easy Things Easy

This step is all about using a mental framework to simplify anything so it doesn’t seem as daunting. To do this we will use contrast bias.

What is Contrast Bias?

Contrast bias is comparing your task / situation to a much more difficult task. This is a useful mind hack because it puts things into perspective. Play a mind game with yourself by using contrast bias.

Contrast your problems with REAL, larger problems.

For example: The feat of getting a man to the moon took NASA 10 years, trillions of dollars, and an exponential amount of hours and engineering effort. It was an ENORMOUS effort.

Watch a documentary on going to the moon. There were so many different issues and problems that they had to solve.

After I think about the difficulty of getting a man on the moon, I ask myself, “Is what I am doing now really that difficult?” and it really helps me put things into perspective and motivates me.

The key here is to take your problem and mix it with a larger problem. The bigger the problem the better. In engineering terms, I think of spring back which is a term used in metal forming – to shape the metal correctly you must force the metal beyond where you want it to be formed because the metal springs back a little bit to it’s original position.

Keep simple things simple. There are a ton of things that I overthink when I don’t need to. It’s a horrible habit.

People spend their time on useless things – like spending so much time getting dressed, traveling to work, researching the best TV to buy, deciding on what color or car you want to buy, writing long emails instead of just calling the person. These might be important in their own aspect, but in comparison to the MAJOR things in life – they simply are not.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time researching the best products. Sometimes it’s as simple as toothpaste. Maybe it’s a little OCD, but you have to force yourself to think, is it really worth it to spend two hours researching toothpaste or should you just go out and buy some toothpaste? If you have this same problem, to solve this type of thinking, I give myself 5 minutes max to make a decision.

For example, some people spend an hour or two commuting to work. That’s 1/12 of your day. Why don’t you keep it simple and move closer to work?

Reduce your research time on trivial things and the time you write pointless emails. Get out of that habit, stop making things harder than what they are.

What is something that you have fear of? Now contrast it with something similar.

Public Speaking

Talking to Girls

Having my ideas, dreams, and endeavors fail

Questions:

What is super simple, that you should spend less time on?

What’s something that you’ve over simplified?

Reinvest in your Learning

Step 19 – Amazon.com & The $32,000 Brain Budget

Reinvest in your learning and in yourself. In order to do this, you must get control over your finances. Know what you’re making and what you’re spending on.

I use – www.mint.com: it links all your accounts, credit cards, loans, into one and provides a nice overview of everything. Love this thing.

How to Spend your Left over Income

Spend 33% on Education and investing in yourself.

Spend 33% on Entertainment and however you want.

Save 33% into a Savings account

Here are some ways to be frugal when investing:

Instead of buying new books, buy used books, or go to the library.

Don’t get caught up in having the newest things. Billionaire Warren Buffet drives an old minivan. He’s realized that cars are a waste of time and money that only serve the ego.

Use Torrents to download free information.

Go to Ross or TJ Max for discounted clothes that still look great.

Questions:

What’s the discretionary income you have?

How are you currently spending it?

What are you going to reinvest in?

ReEngineer your Life

Step 20 – Richard Branson’s Hurricane & The Imaginary World Of Kanye West

This lesson is about making the world in your own image.

Alan Nation once said that entrepreneurs remakes the world in their own image. They imagine a world and make it like that.

If you had enough money, how would you change your life? In your imaginary world, what would you want to be doing? Realistically.

Maybe you love singing and playing the guitar – Realistically, you wouldn’t be a superstar but maybe you would be an agent or start up your own record label. What I am saying is, don’t be so rigid in what you want to do. There are so many ways to live out what you like.

What’s all the stuff you don’t want to do and find a way how you can get rid of it by outsourcing it to someone else.

What’s your social life like? Are you building a life around what you want?

What do you want in life, financially, socially, and health wise? and what do you have to do to tweak it?

Tai recommends the book again: Screw It, Let’s Do it.

Questions:

How would you stay healthy in an ideal world?

What Job would you have in an ideal world?

How would you be social in an ideal world?

What cause / charity would you be involved in?

Anticipate and Type people with the P.A.S.E. System

Step 21 – Mastering The Four P.A.S.E. Energies & Casanovas Chameleon

How to interact with people will probably be the most important skill you will ever have in life. Networking and creating allies is essential. It’s important to read people correctly and anticipate what they are all about.

Tai Lopez has developed the P.A.S.E. system that allows you to stereotype people to try to understand them. What are your core energies?

Practical – Aren’t very flexible. They are very planned. They like numbers, money, things on schedule. A little more slower to act.

Action – Spontaneous, Enlightened, high energy, self-starters, hardly ever finishers. Not very patient. Aggressive.

Social – Go with the flow with things, relaxed, hippie like, they like being around people, a little flaky, Spontaneous, don’t stand up for themselves often.

Emotional – Decipher people, intuitive, analyze people, driven by fear and are often offended by others easily. Afraid to change.

Be more sensitive, open yourself up.

If you can understand what type a person is, you can play to that person’s type to influence them better.

For Example: If you identify someone as being emotional as their primary letter, then you might want to start by opening yourself up to them on a personal level and be more sensitive.

Remember that when you’re trying to influence people, the old saying “like attracts like” holds very true. Think of yourself. Don’t you hang around people who share your similar interests?

“birds of a feather, flock together”

Tai’s system is a bit like the Brigg Meyer’s Personality Typing Test.

Believe it or not, surprisingly it is very similar to the 4 areas of astrology however he has put it into modern langauge. Instead of Practical, Action, Social, Emotional you have Earth (Taurus, Capricorn, Virgo) , Fire (Leo, Sagitarius, Aries, Air (Libra, Aquarius, Gemini), Water Signs (Pisces, Scorpio, Cancer).

Casanova was great at meshing with all people. He was an expert at changing how he interacted with people. Just like Casanova, we need to learn how to play the part of the chameleon. Casanova knew that he needed to bring out different parts of his personality to convince different people.

What are the PASE energies of your family and friends?

My Family PASE Signs

Me – SEAP

Dad – PASE “Blow and Go” “Get it done”

Mom – ESAP

Brother – ASEP

Sister – EASP

Sister – ESAP

Tai is: APES, Action, Practical, Emotional, Social

Tai’s Brother is: SAPE

Questions / Actions:

Focus on working each side of the P.A.S.E. to help you relate better to these types of people.

Do something that makes you more practical.

Do something that makes you more emotional.

Do something that makes your more Action based.

Do something that makes you more social.

Set Up Life Experiments with the Scientific Method

Step 22 – The Seven-fold Path To The Obvious Signs

This lesson is about assessing yourself. Because in order to change something you need to identify the problem correctly and understand the cause of it. Read the obvious signs of yourself.

Is your body the way you want it to be? Yes or no?

Is your bank account the way you want it to be? Yes or no?

If the answer is no, then what do you want it to look like, and decide on the best plan to get you to that goal.

People want to make changes out of emotions or anger. This is the WRONG way to do things. Anger and emotions always subside. You want to base your changes on something more foundational that won’t waver or change from time to time. You want to build your decisions on beliefs by the truth.

Become a truth seeker. A truth seeker will not be afraid of assessing himself and they will sacrifice everything for the truth. Ask yourself a questions to kick start your thinking. A lot of people embrace the truth but don’t make their decisions based around the truth.

BEWARE the black and white mind. Avoid extreme ideologies. The black and white mind is biased and very stubborn in keeping it’s ways. This type of mind doesn’t try to look for truth because it can’t change even if the truth appeared in front of it.

Read the obvious signs of your health, wealth, and happiness.

For Example: You’re on a new diet, you try it out for 60 days, however, whenever you eat a certain food, you get diarrhea. The overall diet doesn’t make you feel any better either and you haven’t achieved any results. You would observe these, make a conclusion to stop eating the food that gave you diarrhea and change the diet.

It’s hard to know when to change, what to change, and the difference between the two. Here is a FANTASTIC quote that i love.

Serenity Prayer Quote:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. ”

Set a goal, decide which system moves you towards that goal, monitor it, adjust accordingly, and then continue on with the system.

Effective 7 Step Method

Ask yourself a question

Research the answer

Hypothesis

Test

Observe

Analysis

Conclude / Get Other’s opinions

REMEMBER: A mistake is an experiment that was ran too long. Don’t run your experiments too long or too short.

Percentage of Quiting after Failure

50% of people quit after 1 failure

80% people quit after 2 failures

95% people quit after 3 failures

Your goal is to get past 3 failures. Don’t look at it as failing, just look at it as experimenting and finding ways that don’t work for you. The more you can fail and be accepting of it, the better off you��ll be.

Examples of Famous People Failing:

Thomas Edison made tons of mistakes from his experiments.

Walt Disney failed as a cartoonist early in his career

Abraham Lincoln failed an enormous amounts of times

Michael Jordan missed the game winning shot 26 times

There are plenty of self made millionaires who have failed or went bankrupt.

Just remember when you fail, you are in the same process that all these geniuses have utilized. Visit my article on how to fail your way to success for some more insights.

Questions

What are the things you’ve been stuck in black and white mode and what experiments are you going to run to change it?

For Finance

For Relationships & Romance

For Physical Health

Build Faith and Weather Out the Storms

Step 23 – Landing Your Plane On The Great Wall

How to bypass the obstacles and storms in your life.

Plan to generate faith: Envision but also FEEL yourself making it THROUGH the obstacle. You have to believe that you’ll make it through and survive.

You can apply this faith to life in general, to

Face it, eventually you’re going to have a life altering obstacle come into your life. Anticipate things to happen. Expect to get problems. Put things in perspective. What I like to do is imagine certain things happening in my life and placing myself in hypothetical situations. This gears your mind into preparing for the worst.

When you hit an obstacle in life, you’ll have to innovate a solution to make it around the obstacle. Learn to love to figure out how to get around the obstacles.

To be able to innovate you’ll have to read a lot and experience different things.

Start embracing the obstacles, make it yours, and make it beautiful.

Questions:

Do you have a plan that can support and generate faith?

Scale from 1-10, what’s your ability to generate faith?

What have you lost perspective on?

What books are you going to be reading today to give you better perspective.

The Funeral Test & Determining Your End Game

Step 24 – Gandhi’s Funeral, Stephen Covey’s Wars, & Flurries Of Activity

This step is about putting your life in perspective to know whether or not you’re on the right path.

Funeral Test

This is a reverse engineering exercise. Imagine your own funeral, how many people are there? How many lives have you affected for good? What do you want these people to say at your funeral? What type of person were you? What did you accomplish? Were you a good friend or good business partner? Do you want you’re funeral to look like someone’s like Gandhi?

What’s the end goal in mind – Steven Covey. You need to think of your main purpose, your war, not the tiny battles in between. If you forget the reason why you’re fighting and can’t see you’re end goal in mind then you will lose your drive and motivation. Stick with things that win wars.

Most times we get lost in the details and minutia in life, forgetting the overall end goal. Society has taught us to perform busy work – a flurry of activities. Don’t perform pointless forms of activities. These are the people who say they are too busy, give excuses that they are so busy, and are always running around with their heads cut off.

There’s a cool song by Jason Mraz called “Details in the Fabric” that talks about people who get lost and overwhelmed in life with all these details that we really should be paying attention to.

“The biggest tragedy in life, is being good at the wrong thing.” – Joel Salatin

Run everything through this mindset. There are four wars in your life. Health, Wealth, Love, and Fulfillment (happiness). It’s ok to not be happy all the time, but you can be fulfilled. It’s normal to be depressed. It serves a purpose. Depression is a feedback loop that is telling you need to change something (not talking about people who’s brain’s are wired to be depressed).

You have to step back and see the bigger picture of your life and how you fit in to things and how you want to fit into things.

Questions

Who is the epitome of how you want your funeral to look like (effect you want on people)

Do you have a clear end game?

What does your war look like?

What area have you been just creating excuses and busy work or what tai says “flurry of activities”?

Remember that Nature Laughs Last

Step 25 – The natural cycles that dictate your life

This step/ lesson is all about realizing that there is something way bigger outside of you. There will always be outside forces and not everything is about you. However, a lot of people are stuck inside an egocentric mindset where they forget about outside forces much larger than themselves like nature. Snap yourself out of the ego centric mindset.

Progress is the ability to increase our control of our environment.

Be Patient, things take time. Allow yourself to have time. You can’t rush nature or physics. A lot of people become frustrated because their business isn’t performing as well, or they aren’t seeing results right away from a new diet they are trying out.

We need to lower our expectations in understanding that some things take more time than others.

We always think the grass is greener on the other side or that the other guy has it so figured out.

Be aware of the forces of nature and that there are different seasons of your life. There are dark times, happy times, challenging times. Sometimes you have to let the season run its course.

Questions:

What have been some of the seasons of your life? Spring, summer, fall, winter?

What did you do wrong and right in those seasons?

What Season are you in now?

Minimize Mistakes by Building Backup Systems

This is one of my favorite sections because I’m an engineer ( yes I’m a nerd) and we have to think of all the things that can go wrong when designing anything. Our design has to prepare for those moments if the system fails.

This planning can be applied to all aspects of our lives. There is an EXCELLENT quote.

“Do what is difficult when it is easy.” – Lao Tsu

Tai’s mentor, Joel Salatin, used a belt AND suspenders to keep his pants on while working on the farm and Tai uses this belt and suspenders analogy to advocate the importance of backup systems in our lives and that they are there so we don’t have to spend twice the amount of time fixing things and being “retroactive”.

I get the analogy, but it doesn’t make much sense to me because I’ve never seen a belt break before. I could see how suspenders could break, but there’s no need to wear both. I’m not from a farm, so maybe they’re extra rough on their belts. I don’t know.

Here are some examples of Backup Systems or secondary systems in life:

Parachutes: Parachutes come packaged with an emergency backup chute

Cars: Most of all new cars have air bags as a secondary

Hospital Backup Generators

Relief Valves on Oil and Process Plants:

Secondary Motors

Emergency Elevator Break

Emergency Break

Spare Tires

So you can see from the above list that usually anything important has a secondary backup system. This makes complete sense. Now, most of us don’t integrate backup systems in our own lives. Why aren’t we doing this? We either say that we’re too busy or don’t have enough money. Well, sorry to say it’s more expensive in time and money to be retroactive than proactive in building backup systems. Now FYI, a backup system in your life could be anything, a plan, a person, money, that extra tampon that you put in your purse (if you’re a woman).

“FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL”

What is the point of a backup system? Think of it as an insurance policy, the system is there to catch you when you fall. It saves time and money. Not only does it save you time and money, but most important of all it also adds a confidence to your life & lowers stress. You really don’t need to worry about things failing and you can focus on the more important things in life like your family and friends and personal endeavors. For example, I have a lot of websites and they weren’t being backed up regularly. This was a huge stress for me, because in the back of my head I always asked, “What if my websites get hacked, or is somehow fails due to automatic updates?”. This happens to a lot to most websites. I decided to get automatic backups on all my sites and once I did, I felt a HUGE weight lifted off of my shoulders. Now IMAGINE all those other worries and stresses in your life that you have that can be taken care of with a backup system or a backup plan?

Now of course, there’s a balance to building backup systems in your life. The art of it, is knowing what’s important to safe guard. You don’t want to waste time building extensive backup plans in case your toothbrush goes missing.

Here are some of my backup systems that I have integrated in my life:

A Savings Account: For surprises along the way such as medical expenses, job layoff, etc

Emergency Road Kit: I recently purchased a little emergency road kit that is placed in the back in my trunk

Backups for Websites:

How to Minimize Mistakes and Failure

1. Build Redundancy in everything. Expect things to go wrong.

2. Preplan & Anticipate Possible Scenarios

Anticipate what could happen. You can anticipate about anything for example a road trip. You could get a flat, do you have a spare and jack?

BEST CASE SCENARIO

WORST CASE SCENARIO

MOST LIKELY SCENARIO

3. Minimize Mistakes by using 6-sigma

Is a quality control to eliminate defects that drives towards “six standard deviations between the average and neatest spec limit.

Levels of 6 sigma

Level 1 – 691,000 mistakes out of 1,000,000

Level 2 – 300,000 mistakes out of 1,000,000

Level 3 – 66,000 mistakes out of 1,000,000

Level 4 – 6,000 mistakes out of 1,000,000 (3.4%)

4. Planning and Executing

Have an Idea

Make a Plan – (harder)

Execute the Plan

5. Simulate more

The philosophers Seneca once said to “Make philosphers and historians your friend”. As Tai puts it, ” Make war with a multitude of counselors.” Richard Dawkins “Selfish Genes” has said that one of the reasons that humans have large brains is that

Questions

What level of sigma are you?

I feel like don’t make many mistakes, because I’m very cautious about everything that I do. In turn I feel like there is a price for this I pay because I’m always thinking twice before I do something. I feel like this wastes time, however, when I think about it, I’ve done pretty well and the times when I rush something or don’t think about it, I make more mistakes and work for myself. So I feel like this has paid off.

What’s the reason why you’re at this level?

Which of the Tools do you need to work on?

I need to work on the execution of the planning stage. I think too much about things sometimes where I don’t finish executing the plan. I feel that I’m afraid that I’m going to miss something if I don’t research it to death.

Where do you want to be? and what’s the most likely?

Well, I want to be married, a couple of kids, a successful business online that brings in close to $100k while still working as a mechanical engineer. I’d focus on whatever is most scalable.

5. What’s a practical thing you can do?

Well, I just installed an automatic backup system for my websites, so now I don’t have to worry about websites failing and work being lost.

Create a Support Group and Become Allies

Step 27 – The Frontman & The Two Ways To Pick Your Trench Mate

You are personally and professionally going to go through a lot of battles in life. To make it through these battles, you need to surround yourself with allies. You can’t do it by yourself. You can’t run a business by yourself, you can’t go through life by yourself. Anything great that was ever built, took a team.

When building your allies and coalitions, you need to look for:

Integrity: It’s important to have people who are honest and will do the right things. You want good people along your side.

Loyalty: You want people who are loyal, who will fight for you and help you out when you need it.

Complimentary: Look for people who compliment you because no one is well rounded, but there are well rounded teams. If you’re an introvert, then look for friends who are extroverts that will draw you out of your shell.

References: This is an indirect approach – Testimonials and References – Charles Munger – Forget the job interview. because you might just be hiring people who are good at interviews.

Questions:

Where have you failed in choosing your allies?

Business:

Friends

Romantic

Do What is Difficult When it’s Easy

Step 28 – Lao-Tzu’s and John Wooden’s Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Don’t let things build up in your mind. Do things before the become urgent.

It’s easier to save money when you have the most money

It’s easier to get into shape when you haven’t let yourself completely go

You can’t request insurance for a sickness when you’re already sick

Procrastination

“Do what is difficult when it’s easy” – Lao Tsu

Learn to jump into things. People procrastinate because they are avoiding the pain of doing the activity. There is usually a false understanding of how much pain it the activity actually is. You need to build a habit of just jumping into things. Not everything needs to be thought out and double checked.

The Amish have a saying – When you don’t know what to do, and you have something hard to do, just jump in to take action and you’re half way there.

I think that this quote is a good one however, you’ll need to use you’re judgement. You’re not going to just jump into something dangerous that you don’t know about.

Questions:

What’s something that you’ve procrastinated on?

What’s a bad habit you have with procrastination?

What can you do today to help your procrastination?

Fight Entropy

Step 29 – Stephen Hawking, Entropy, & Remembering The Future

This lesson is about fighting against entropy and learning not to waste your time.

Heed the words of Seneca!

On the Shortness of Life by the Philosopher Seneca- Life is long if you know how to use it.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

Source: Brain Pickings

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

-Source: Brain Pickings

We are wasteful of time by using it on luxury things like playing too many video games, watching too many movies, or being busy just for the sake of being too busy.

IF we expect endless time, then we will frivolously spend time. So remember, that if you have a lot of free time, you need to protect it by setting up time limits for yourself. Right now, I’m writing this LONG article that will most likely be well over 20,000 words and there have been a lot of times where I’m researching things when I don’t need to be researching them. I’m just wasting time from what I want to accomplish – this INSANELY long article!

The most important thing is not money, it’s time.

What is Entropy?

Entropy is a state of disorder or degradation. In a simple metaphor: When you clean and organize your room, you are fighting entropy. Entropy is wanting to make your room disorganized and messy.

IF YOU DON’T PUT ENERGY INTO THINGS, THEY WILL DECAY. This goes for everything in life, your relationships, finances, health.

Sometimes, you have to get away from the fray. You have to step away from the rat race. You have to inject knowledge into yourself. If you don’t do this, you’re overall health will decay.

Mike Tyson made 200-400 million dollars over his career. He’s now down to 15 k. He is an example of entropy. His finances are degrading.

Below is a 70 year old body builder on YouTube. I have to admit, after seeing this guy, I don’t have any excuses hitting my lifting goals.

You’ll never be able to conquer entropy, because nature will always laugh last

To get motivation to fight entropy, you need to remember the future. always make it a habit by looking into the future and seeing yourself and talking to yourself in what you should be doing today.

What do you invest in? You double down on yourself, by investing in yourself.

WHY do we spend all our time benefiting other people, working for their end goals, mindlessly floating down the river of life or racing all the other rats.

You can travel through time

Seneca said that when you take an interest in knowledge and psychology, you’ll begin to learn how to transcend time.

Quote: “we can choose whose children we want to be. You won’t just inherit their name, but their property.”

The enemy of Greatness is expectancy. Planning for things that aren’t guaranteed.

“today is the youngest you’ll ever be.”

You will be losing out on the hopes and dreams you had… because you didn’t know how to use your time, you wasted it when you should have been investing it elsewhere.

Questions

How have you been squandering your time?

Who have you been procrastinating to learn from? Managing oneself

What are you going to do to slow down time?

I’ve taken a break on my long summaries for now and stopped at 29.

If you found these summaries helpful and insightful, you should share them with a friend! It also helps this website and encourages me to write more.

Final thoughts on the 67 Steps and my Tai Lopez Review

The summaries are great, However, if you want in depth and detailed examples and explanations from Tai and you can afford the $67, then I highly recommend his course. When he explains it in video format, he hammers home the ideas into your head, a little redundant sometimes, but he’s extremely clear. And if you won’t like it, you can always get a refund.

THE 67 STEPS

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