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Time for Fan Mail Friday.
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We re gonna answer some of your questions and drop some knowledge and feedback to help you kick the weekend off right.
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If you re new to the Art of Charm podcast, there are better places to start because most of our content is more in-depth and longer formats.
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Check out the best of at theartofcharm.com slash best or the fundamentals toolbox at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox.
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That s where we ve got the fundamentals of body language, nonverbal communication, attraction, negotiation, networking, and everything else we teach here at the Art of Charm.
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All right, let s cut to it.
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Dwayne writes, Hey, Jordan, I m an intelligence agent for a country that you ve heard of.
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Haha.
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Anyway, my job is to elicit information from people without letting them know much or anything about me.
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I m very good at my job, but outside of work, I m terrible at making friends and keeping relationships.
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Can you help?
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Awesome.
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Yeah, Dwayne wrote a really good question with a little bit of context that some of which needed to be edited and redacted if you will for the show here because I have heard of that country as have many other people.
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So the reason that you re having trouble Dwayne is in that many intelligence agents have trouble
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Because we get tons of email about this people right they call they even come to boot camp and they have a very similar issue you would tell you Intel folks and Without giving away your tradecraft, which I accidentally got you to give away some of when helping you with this problem the reason is because
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When you re talking with people and your agenda is to get as much out of them as you can and never give up anything about yourself, you re doing a couple of things.
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One, you re communicating with an agenda, which isn t really authentic communication, so that doesn t do a very good job generating authentic and trustworthy relationships and connections because people do feel that even if it s subconscious.
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And the other reason it doesn t work
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in your personal life is because you lack vulnerability.
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By definition, not letting people know anything about you creates a buffer zone for your own personal safety at work, but to your detriment in your personal life, because you re not opening up about yourself, you re not letting other people connect with you.
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So you might get a lot of information from people, they might even like you a lot in the beginning, but they don t create lasting friendships or connections, and they don t have a real relationship
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with you of any kind other than there s that nice guy that I chat with sometimes, even if you deal with this person regularly.
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And so this skill set that you have works really well for people that are guarded or maybe unguarded but should be, but it doesn t work very well in your personal life.
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So you re gonna have to do a really big shift and practice vulnerability.
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and practice opening up and being comfortable sharing a lot about yourself without worrying about getting information or anything from anybody else that you re talking to.
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So you ve got two totally different skill sets here that actually compete with each other even though they seem similar.
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So even though this is kind of a niche problem because it only affects
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intelligent, covert intelligence operatives generally, the answer to the problem is the same thing that I would give somebody who s maybe a software engineer that doesn t open up very easily or an emotionally stunted guy of which there are hundreds of thousands if not millions.
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It s all about practicing that vulnerability, opening up and leading the way with vulnerability.
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In other words, by talking about things that are personal to you and taking conversations in that direction.
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You ll find, honestly, that your job gets easier when you do this.
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even if you have to maybe edit the details of what you re being vulnerable about.
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So I hope that helps, I know it will, because we get a lot of Intel guys in here, a lot of operators in here at the Art of Charm, and this is a very common problem.
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Neil writes, good evening, Jordan.
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I appreciate you handing out your email so listeners can connect with you.
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I hope this email does reach you because I would love to hear this become a topic on the Art of Charm.
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I would love to hear the opinion of everyone about personal identity.
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In my case, I ve worked long and hard since high school graduation to become a better son and more successful person.
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I went from being a rejected college applicant to a community college stunner who transferred to a top 10 university.
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However, the group of friends I had in high school missed my transformation because I dedicated myself to work and home while they had fun and went out.
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And they ve kept their old image of me, which they labeled introverted.
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That makes me anxious because I m scared that my past will hurt the new image I ve established for myself.
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My close friends now, the ones I made in college, tell me that it s not good to hate my past and past self.
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What do you all think?
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Is it wrong to hate your old self?
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Is it wrong to be anxious that the past may rear its ugly head and ruin all the hard work you put in to create a new identity?
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A lot of people who are listening and a lot of people who aren t listening, and especially those people, don t have an old self.
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They haven t changed much over the last several decades, and much to their detriment for most of them.
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You know, I also hated my old self, and sometimes I still do.
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It can rear its ugly head, but more than that, I laugh at my old self and thank the old Jordan for taking such a beating to make me who I am today, and quite frankly, for putting in the work
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So your old self couldn t have been that bad if you managed to motivate and put in the work to become who you are now.
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That old self had some tricks up its sleeve.
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Now your old friends having that image of you, that makes a lot of sense, right?
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But the good news is they can t force you to become who you are now.
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your old self again and shed all your righteous virtues that you ve developed, right?
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They re not gonna get rid of all the work you ve done on yourself.
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It might be annoying to hang out with them, because they have different expectations than you have of yourself, but it s not going to cause you to revert or regress.
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There s really no sense hating, because it requires energy and time that you should be using to move forward, not looking backward, replaying old events and failures in your head.
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If the events are actually traumatic, definitely go to therapy.
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Otherwise, this is a good sign.
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Old friends are going to take a really long time to see the new you.
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You don t have to cut them out by any means, but make sure you have a new crew who can reinforce your new identity, or you might find yourself slipping backwards a little bit to meet those expectations of old friends.
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Mike writes,
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A few weeks ago, I realized that I might not be being the best friend to go out with and want to fix the problem.
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My best friend actually said, the only time we see Mike when we go out is at the door when we first get in and at the car on the way back home.
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That didn t sit well with me.
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I d imagine it s wrong leaving my friends, but I can t imagine myself staying in one spot for the night, not trying to talk to as many people as I potentially could.
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What do I do?
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Well, this is an interesting question as well, right, because Mike s doing a lot of work on himself.
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He s been listening to the show for a long time, and he is going through what we call growing pains, right?
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He s got his old crew friends, and some of them are probably jealous of his progress.
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They don t like, again, the expectations mismanagement or mismatch anyway.
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The old friends are expecting one thing out of him, and he s delivering something else, or not delivering what they expect, and so they re making him feel a little bit guilty.
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That reflects a lot on them, but here s the thing.
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You can t just ditch all of your friends.
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However, I would strike a balance.
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Hang with friends and bring people into the group.
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Your friends might be a little awkward, but instead of running around all over the place, you can run around a little bit and bring them back to the table to hang out if your friends are cool with that.
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Sometimes you might have to go out alone or with other highly social AOC types and be social without the less social folks.
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It doesn t mean don t hang out with your friends anymore, but it might mean one or two nights a week.
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If you re going out three nights, you hang out with them, and the other nights you just either go out by yourself or with your wingman, so to say, and you practice your skill set.
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Because if you try to placate your friends while working on your social skill set, and they re not up for that, you re gonna run into problems.
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They re gonna be unhappy, and you re gonna be unhappy, and you re not gonna get the progress that you want.
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Him writes, how do I sell myself while staying authentic?
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I m in a sales job and really struggle with this.
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Yes, this is a super common question.
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In fact, I edited the details to be that simple because everybody writes me like seven paragraphs about this.
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And it always comes down to how do I sell myself while staying authentic because I m in a sales job.
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The way that you do this, and this is what advanced salesmen know all the time, think Ian Altman with Same Side Selling, which we did a show with a couple of weeks ago.
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You have to be thinking about how to help others.
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Don t focus on the agenda of making the sale this time around.
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Think about their needs, think about how you can meet those needs with or without your product that you re actually selling.
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That s the key.
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Don t just think, well, this car solves your problems because of this.
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Solve their needs in any way that you can, even if it means showing them a competitor s solution instead of yours.
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Your sales manager might not love that, but you re actually earning more trust than you even can imagine showing that to somebody else.
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Further, don t keep score, right?
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If you re thinking, okay, well, I helped them with this, now they re gonna buy something,
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probably not, but play the long game here.
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You got to dig that well before you re thirsty.
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Help the clients help the sales leads help people become friends and contacts and you
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will be selling the crap out of yourself and whatever products and services you have in an authentic way instead of just trying to get the money.
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Man, this one s a doozy.
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Farza writes, how do I stop my cousin from joining ISIS?
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He s hell bent on it and of course everyone here getting angry about it isn t helping.
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You re my last resort and I m appealing to you because I know you ve got a talent for influence and persuasion.
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Yikes, this was a doozy when I saw it.
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Yeah, you re damn right.
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And of course I changed the name.
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So before people call Homeland Security and have the AOC Studio computer seized, they re from another country, they went to lengths to stay anonymous, aside from what I assume is a fake name, which I also changed, just in case it wasn t.
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And the answer- Good call, good call.
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Yeah, I mean, for real, it s like, I m not protecting anybody in ISIS.
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The kid is gonna end up, you know, doing what he does, and we can t track down people doing this.
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Hell, remember those girls from Germany that tried to join?
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They couldn t even find three white chicks, you know, who were trying to join ISIS, let alone somebody from the Middle East, you know, trying to do it.
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But the answer here, Farza, is,
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is tough, but the suggestion I have, I should say, instead of the answer is appeal to emotion.
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Who does he know who ISIS would kill?
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Who would they put the death penalty on?
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You in her email, Farza said she was an atheist, which doesn t go over well in her whole country, let alone with her family.
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Does he know that you would be murdered brutally by this group?
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You have to make this as personal as possible.
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You know your cousin loves you and you re very, very close.
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That s why you know that this is even going through his head.
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Does he know that you would be murdered brutally by this group?
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Does he know that that group would do terrible...
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Sexually violent things to use simply because of your gender and the fact that you re atheist if he s young I here s the thing if he s young this sounds so cool because it s not real to him yet It s like joining a gang or it s like joining any gang
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really, or some kind of weird cult, and by the time it is real to him, it s gonna be far too late.
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The appeal to emotion is huge.
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I m not saying you re gonna get him to go, you know what, this is a terrible idea.
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Your mission is to get him thinking, because the propaganda that he s watching, whoever he s talking to that s getting this idea in his head, there s probably a personal contact that he knows and trusts, so maybe try to sniff that out.
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And instead of going, you can t hang out with that person anymore, highlight their shortcomings.
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Don t say, you can t hang out with Jordan because he s trying to get you to join ISIS.
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You say, don t hang out with Jordan, that guy s such a loser.
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He has no girls and he s short and smells like bad cheese.
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That s the kind of thing, lowering the status of this idea in his head is what needs to happen.
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not making it harder to do, not being very disapproving because you re just gonna alienate him, which makes their job easier in terms of pulling him in.
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So make it very personal and make it as uncool as you can.
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And that is a good start.
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And of course, for God s sake, find out who s recruiting for ISIS and report them to your national security agency, whatever it might be.
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I should mention, though, before reporting anything, of course, I m going to leave this up to your judgment, because whatever country you re in, reporting something like this might bring down the whole security apparatus on your whole family.
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I don t know exactly where you live, but if it s not a Western country, it s probably a bad idea, but you can probably find out some way.
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If you can find out some way, you can report that to your national security agency, but you definitely don t want to get your cousin in trouble, or have him under surveillance, or ruin his chances for a life inside your country by reporting this.
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Because it s hard to say, is this really serious, or is he just messing around, or is it just cool for this week, and next week we re on to something else.
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This is a scary question.
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So Farza, when you hear this, please let me know what happens, and if you need any more help, I m here for you, and I won t read it on the air.
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It ll just be for you.
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Hope you all enjoyed that.
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Don t forget you can reach us at Friday at TheArtofCharm.com.
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I read everything, so does Jason for that matter, and I d love to hear from you.
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More from The Art of Charm at TheArtofCharm.com.
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Now have a great weekend.
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Go out there and connect and leave everyone better than you found them.
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And don t join ISIS.