Hello everyone and welcome back. I'm Philip Magnus and I love love love sci-fi. Science fiction is one of my favorite ever genres to read. What I love and treasure most in the genre are those novels which are rich in ideas. Today we're talking about just one such book, a desolation called Peace by Akali Martin. It is a special novel and it means a lot to me. I hope that as you watch on, you will discover why. So let's get on with it, shall we? A desolation called Peace makes half and more of the sci-fi works I've read over the last few years seem woefully incompetent. Akali Martin's second book is the sequel to the hero award winning A Memory Called Empire. Memory introduced as readers to Martin's masterfully crafted culture of takes Calan, which draws from many real-world empires and people to create something fresh and unique. Central concepts of the takes Calan-lit slim, such as civilized people versus barbarians and the political importance of poetry are borrowed from the Roman and Byzantine empires. The naming conventions of takes Calan's citizens is drawn from the Mixtec people of Orksaka and the cultural dominance of this empire should be familiar to anyone who has experienced American cultural imperialism, so everyone. I'm not 100% certain and my copy of empire is back home so I can check, but one aspect in which desolation breaks the mould said by its predecessor is it has four very different and well-defined points of view characters rather than a single one and the four unique sets of circumstances show varying elements of takes Calan-lit culture. Mahit and Tri-Sigras are our main characters returning from memory and the two of them continue the conversation about cultural colonization, civilization versus barbarism, personhood. By the nature of the relationship defined throughout empire their perspectives are entwined. Now the most important thing you need to know about those two characters is I ship them eternally and if you don't you're a bad person, bad, bad, bad. Mahit is still that outsider looking in, in love with the culture of the empire and horrified by that love, hungry to be accepted as equal to the takes Calan-lit slim. Boy that's a difficult one to pronounce for me, yet disdaining of the notion that she is any less of a person for her belonging to an outgroup. Wiser and with a thicker skin thanks to the events in memory Mahit nonetheless exhibits a raw vulnerability that left me speechless and at times in tatters.  Together with Mahit the two of them are like Sol Peter and Sulphur. All they lack is a little charcoal and Martin offers them plenty in the face of a first contact scenario that's as heavy on politics, linguistics and tension as memory was, yet offering plenty of levity to laugh out moments that are true to these characters and evisceratingly hilarious. Every conversation between Mahit and Reed is heavy with implication, heady with sexual tension weighed by secrets and hidden meaning. Plenty to laugh about these two, the envoy and her pet, the poet and the ambassador as they take on this first contact scenario that will demand every effort from the both of them. The poetry of Tase Calan takes a backseat as we are given a glimpse of the empire's warriors. Facing an invisible foe, Jartlek 9 Hibiscus leaves a legion of six flagships against this enemy of the empires. The title of Jartlek is a sort of admiral or supreme navy commander. At any rate, six flagships are an entirely lackluster force against this nebulous alien threat from the depths of unknown space. In 9 Hibiscus we see once more that takes Calanly obsession with the past. In the perfect figure she strikes, in the loyalty she awakens, in the way she thrives whenever she is in charge of a crisis. Her second is 20 Cicada, nicknamed Swarm, an unusual name for an unusual character and a member of a minority religion within the empire. Keep an eye out for him, he is a special one. Imperial heir, 8 Antidote is our last POV character and he is an absolute treat. An 11 year old who feels fully the weight of expectations resting on him, Cure as he is called by one of his teachers, has the perfect vantage point to offer an unguarded glimpse at the inner workings of empire at the highest level. So much of his point of view section was heartfelt and funny and intriguing, takes Calan and the jewel of the world are seen through another lens entirely. The absolute highlights for me were the conversations Cure had with 19 Adze and the Minister of War Tree Azimut. These interactions serve to shape Antidote's moral identity, which is a pretty nifty thing to have as far as future emperors are concerned. I would go remiss if I didn't speak of the personal importance of this book and its predecessor to me. Like Mahit, I am a student of a culture that is not my own. The distance is not as great of course, but it is there nonetheless. I'm not English, I'm not American, and yet I think in English more than I think in my own native Bulgarian. I know dozens of poems by Keats and Blake and Milton, but I barely remember the last time I cracked open a book of poetry in Bulgarian. In my apartment in Sweden I do auto on a single paperback in my own language. And if not for Arkady Martin's books, this might not have even occurred to me as strange. But the truth of the matter is, I have been colonized. Every single one of my friends, people I slip into conversation in fluent English with. What does that speak of but just this type of cultural colonization? The values of our culture have been overtaken, misplaced by the values of a more dominating one. And that it is something to grieve to quote Martin. Propaganda is fascinating when it's inside your own mind, or even... Mochette taught in Texcananli, an imperial-style metaphor and over-determination. She'd had this whole conversation in their language. Deliberately she taught in station there. We're not free. And in that same language Iskander agreed.  More than any other work, more than any other thing in my life really, this series has inspired me to pursue a master's degree in cultural studies. Fingers crossed I'll be accepted this here. By the end of the novel, traditions, central tenets of the Texcanani culture no less, will be uprooted. Deferring visions of empire will violently clash against one another, revealing both rot and things worth preserving. You will be endlessly surprised, as I was, when I read memory, and again, when I read this one. Desolation is a novel without villains, without clearly demarcated good guys and bad guys, merely people with differing ideologies, modes of communication, conceptions of selfhood and personhood. Those same questions of conflicting loyalties and of civilization are once again on the fore of Martin's narrative, but a turn to the exploration of different angles of belonging and cultural dissemination. Granted when I say there are no villains, I separate between narrative and my own strong dislike of certain characters. I won't give away much, but I will say Dino Fire, old man! A few funny tidbits added familiarity to what can at times be a distant speculative world, in particular the binging. The Texcanani civilization has as much a sweet toot as we do about binging content, so their strict preferences lie in the way of period dramas. Hello, of course they do, they come from a culture obsessed with the glories of the past, and in capturing those glories in poetic and literal repetition. The cultural, all the cultural capital is aimed towards capturing this recreation, recontextualization even, and it's done brilliantly well, might I add. A note before I conclude this. I have 16 pages of notes in my journal, half of them illegible because I stayed up until three, four in the morning reading this, and the other half consists of, ugh, my head didn't read, please don't fight, make up, make out instead. I love those two. I can't recommend this enough. If you're ever looking for something more cerebral, hence enrich on those questions of cultural heterogeneity that is so interesting from the view of someone whose own culture has been displaced, skewed more than half way out of orbit in a significant way by an all-pervasive domineering culture. I think it is one of the most important works of science fiction that I have read in recent years, and to be sure it is well worth talking about. And this is why Academy Martins, a desolation called peace, is very much worth looking into, very much worth reading. As is a memory called Emperor, in case you haven't read that one, I have a review of it. You are welcome to peruse the link down below in the description to go and read it. Of course if you enjoyed this video please like it, share it with your friends, don't forget to leave a comment down below and ring that bell button for notifications. While else is there left to say, but I'll see you next time.  I know I don't. Until next time, bye!


Roadtrip, ready? Roadtrip, ready? So we just got to Princeton. Look at this, we're getting huge. All packed and ready to go. We're about to leave on the road trip. It's nine o'clock. We were planning on leaving a little earlier, but we just kind of wanted to get a good sleep before driving. So yeah, I'll see you guys on the road. I'm so excited. I really love any road trips like this. They're literally the best. Okay, so we're literally only going to his cabin for a week and I brought a giant, ow, I brought a giant luggage.  Like we literally don't even have like medium ones. So I had to bring this jambotron, but it actually worked out really well because one side I have all my clothing hoodies and everything big. And then the other side is just like my toiletries, things I wanted to bring, random things that don't include clothing. So it actually worked out well that I could put it like all in my suitcase instead of bringing like a separate bag for everything. But yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but that's all we had. So. Hi, what can I get for you? Hey, could I get a large coffee with two sugars and almond milk, please? Can I please get a medium caramel iced coffee with almond milk, please? Beautiful window. Awesome, thanks. Thank you, beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. I just meant beautiful, not thank you, beautiful. You said thank you, beautiful. Cause I always say beautiful when somebody gives me something. I was like, thank you. And then I said beautiful right after. Thank you, beautiful. We need to do a taste test cause this turns out different every single time I order it. Road trip, ready. Road trip, ready. Got a farmer's wrap because I need it. I was going to go to Popeyes and I know I usually stay away from meat but I was just like craving Popeyes. So once in a while it's fine. They're not opening until 11 and there's literally no Popeyes here in my house so that's why I've wanted it so bad but that's until like half an hour so I was like whatever, I'll just get some more. So we're here now. Now this is a real long haul. So we're just stopped literally on the side of the road because Joel needs to take a piss. He's pissing right now in the bush and I'm right on the side of the highway.  I'm safe. I thought that a bear was running at you cause you started running. Joel, that is not funny. I literally just died. I literally just had a heart attack. Like my heart is like beating 10 miles per hour. I'm just going to come here and see the pretty flowers because these are really nice. You were actually that scared. Yes, because I thought it was running at you cause you started running. Well I was the one the bear was chasing. I'm the one who should be scared. Like I don't think you know. Like I'm literally like still shaking. Like I'm literally shaking right now. I got so scared right there.   It's like a, it's like a horror movie. Got. Anyways. Woo! Road trip baby.  So we just got to Princeton and how far are we from the cabin? Like 45 minutes. We're like 45 minutes-ish away from the cabin. So we're just going to stop in town. We got to get a couple of things here. Filling up on gas. The gas is so much cheaper than where we live. Like the gas here is $1.45 and the gas at home is 170. So it's a big difference. So I wanted to wait until we got here to fill up. But yeah, how long were we driving for? Like three and a half hours? Probably. Like about- Maybe three hours. Three to three and a half hours we were on the road. Damage is 40 bucks for half a tank. Not too bad I guess. So it's the next day and it's morning. It's so relaxing here. I'll give you guys a bit of a cabin tour later. But yeah, last night we went on a boat ride and the lake is literally glistening right now. It's so pretty. This cabin has so much character to it and it feels so much like a cabin if that makes sense. Like it's such a cabin vibe here. And the stars last night were insane. I think Joel's mom left me some coffee so I'm gonna have it. I don't wanna make this a big cup. I brought up my silk creamer. Because there's just nothing like it. Like I just love it so much. Because then I don't need that sugar. It has sugar and cream. One is the best. I'm gonna heat it up though. It's kind of cold because I waited a long time. Oh yeah. It's definitely hot. This is the kitchen. Look at how old this stove is. It's very old. Not sure how old but very. You have put what in it? Yeah. You walk in here. It's where we eat.   Dustin, you wanna come? And there's the sun room. These are like screens up here. So it's kind of like being half outside. There's a couch. There's another fridge, some storage over there. And then you walk out here. And you get the light view. I'll go through here. The lake is really, really cold but we always manage to get it. So here is the TV room. Here's the beautiful couch. And you come around here and you have bedroom number one with two single beds. And then you got a cute bathroom. And you walk along and this is just like storage. And then this is the master. Big bedroom.


Good morning everybody, or good evening, or good night depending on where you're at. Do me a favor, put in that chat section there, let's see, hey JR, you got any opinions on the Superbowl Live, wow I do, my opinion is I'm not going to watch it, and the only reason I don't watch it is it just, I don't know, it burns up my time, you know, I like, I would rather do something than to watch somebody do something, I don't know, I just, not my thing, unless it's cooking, I like to watch some cooking channels, I do like boxing, I like MMA because I used to do some Taekwondo and I did a little bit of boxing and stuff, so I like that stuff, but as far as Superbowl, man, I've tried it, I've tried it over and over again, and I just can't get into it, I like the commercials but I don't like waiting for them, so that's my opinion on that, not much of opinion, I'm not a lot of fun there. Guys, don't forget, put your comments in here, I really appreciate you James doing that, James is a good buddy, he's always in there talking to me and I appreciate it, but make sure that you can't hear me sufficiently because I don't want to be talking and people can't hear me, I am going to go over a little bit today to help you guys out and understand this session that I do in the mornings is just to help you grow a business online, that's it, it's all it's for, it's free, I don't charge for it, you know, you don't have to buy anything, I'm not doing any commercials or anything like that, it's just to help you guys out, so make sure that you're commenting, you're liking, you're subscribing, make sure you subscribe, don't forget to ring the bell, turn on all bell notifications so that you're notified every time I go live and you'll know when I upload a video, say greetings Aldi, what's going on man, good to see you, I hope you're having a great day so far, I am, I had a good evening last night, we got together with some friends of ours, we went out to dinner and for the first time, gosh in months, we actually ate inside a restaurant, we didn't have to sit outside on a patio or something, we went to Texas Roadhouse, James Brains is loud and clear video today, good, good, good, good, I'm glad, thank you so much for letting me know that, I really appreciate it, that helps a lot, so you know, if you have a YouTube channel, you know, posted in there that you got a channel, we'll try to get people to subscribe to you, if you're thinking about doing a YouTube channel, I would love to hear your ideas, but I just want to go over, you know, the YouTube channel thing first off, and the reason you would even do one, you know, why would you do a YouTube channel? I will tell you, you know, you hear a lot of stories about people making millions of dollars on YouTube, and they do, and they do, the majority of the people do not, that doesn't bother me personally, okay, it doesn't bother me personally because I'm not, I don't think I'm like the majority of the people, I'm gonna, I've always been the kind of person where I look at the person who's at the very top, and I'm like, okay, what are they doing? Okay, I don't care what the average person does, I don't want to be average ever, average is not fun, average is boring to me. So, you know, if you're interested in doing this YouTube thing, I do want to talk about today, I want to share some of my thoughts on it, I want to share with you what you can do, what you can do to improve things, and let me switch my screen here, I like this other screen better, you can't see it from my angle, but at least I can see myself live. When the other screen has got a delay of like 10 seconds or something like that, it's kind of irritating. So, you know, YouTube, I think is something that everybody should have, I really do man, I think a YouTube channel is like the best thing in the friggin' world, you know, and it's good for many, many reasons, I believe that you should kind of share whatever your ideas are, whatever your life experiences are. Hey, Siddharth, what's going on, man? Good to see you jump in there. And, you know, YouTube is a great way to do it.  I think a lot of people, and I'm reading a book on it now called Show Your Work, and I'll try to put a link to that book in the description section. But I think a lot of people think for them to go do a video or for them to teach anybody, they have to be an expert. And, you know, I read a quote by Charlie Chaplin, and he says, stop trying to be perfect. He said, nobody is an expert, we don't live long, we don't live long enough to become one. So, nobody's really an expert. I don't think they are, I really do, I think there's some people that are good at stuff, but I think you can always learn stuff. So, don't worry, you know, if you want to start a YouTube channel, you want to do this stuff, don't worry that you're not good enough. Okay? It doesn't matter, okay? And it's also kind of showing what the journey is. You know, people are more interested in what the journey is. And for the first time in our history, you know, we have social media where we can go on and say, hey, yeah, I did this, but let me tell you how I did this. Let me show you the process I went through.   When nothing could be further from the truth, you know, maybe they spent 10, 15, 20 years writing a whole bunch of songs that never went anywhere and they were learning their instrument and they were going through all that. And I think on social media, it allows us to really show the process, okay? I think the process is more important really than the result.  And I think the problem with most people on YouTube is that they think that they have to be an expert. They think that it has to be perfect. They think it's got to be so good. And it doesn't. It doesn't. It's just, it's just whatever you want to do. I'm not perfect today. I'm not dressed perfectly. You know, I didn't script out every single word I was going to say.  I don't have any of that. I'm just talking to you guys. Just talking to you guys and sharing with you some things that I learned along the way that may help you out. And if I can help you out, then I feel good about it. You know, I just feel good about it. I think it's a cool thing to do. Let me read some of these comments here. Aldean, what you got to say, man? My main reason for wanting to start a YouTube channel are to overcome my fears and also to make a positive difference. If I made some money in the process, that would be great. That's a really good way to start one, really. And, you know, I want you to kind of think about your fears for a second.  I'll say, okay, what are you afraid of? What is it you're afraid of? And most people will say, well, I don't want to start a YouTube channel because I'm afraid someone's going to make fun of me, my friends, my family, you know, people online or whatever. What difference does it make? Who cares? Who cares? Really? Who cares what their opinion is? If you feel like you want to do something, just do it. Don't, don't let, don't let what you think other people will think. Think about that. Don't let what you think other people will think stop you. It's crazy. I mean, it's just really crazy. And I know I've done it in the past. I've been guilty of the same exact thing. And I just don't care anymore. I really don't care. And here's what you're going to find. If you start a YouTube channel, if you do videos, you do whatever, most people don't care.  You barely get any views in the beginning. So, you know, it's not until you're down the road and you've gotten really good at it that people start picking on you.  I can just block them.  So, that's the really cool thing about social media is you don't have to put up with it.  It's really simple. Aldean says, and Siddharth, your comment got retracted for some reason. I don't know if you took it off or YouTube took it off. Aldean says, I agree that you don't have to be an expert, but I believe that people are more likely to follow persons who can show results. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. They just want to see what you're doing. That's it. It's interesting to them to see what you're doing. You know, maybe you're learning to do something. They want to look at the learning process. You know, I listened to this one guy shoot and I can't think of his name. He's in England and he's a doctor, but he basically okay, you say you took it off cool. That's fine. But he basically just documents what he's doing and as he's learning stuff, you know, people are interested in that. You don't don't. And that's the thing that's going to stop you. Don't have to have great results. You don't have to be really good at something to just go do a video. You don't, you know, I watch. I just got finished watching a YouTube video a couple of minutes ago about a guy who traveled to Saudi Arabia and he's just walking around the streets talking to people. He's not good at anything. Well, he may be, but in the video, he didn't demonstrate that he was good at anything. All he did was demonstrate him living life. That was it. You know, so you can do something along those lines. That's not to say you can't do a teaching video. Like I do a lot of teaching videos where I'll teach a thing, you know, on this channel and you see those five days a week they go up and I'll teach or do a video when I'm teaching something that I figured out along the way. But I don't 100% do every single thing I teach. I don't have time. I can't do everything. It's impossible. It's impossible for me to be a perfect e-commerce person, a perfect digital marketer, a perfect course creator. I can't. So I know I'm not the best. I know it. It's no big deal to me. I don't care. But I also know that I make really good money if, you know, from what I'm doing and the only reason I make the really good money is not because I'm super great at anything. It's because I've tried so many things and that's the key man. You kind of just try so many things and have fun with it.  It's not it's really not that, you know, and I think a lot of people who set it up that way, they go, Okay, well, I want to I want to be a doctor. And that's my end goal. And once I'm a doctor, I want to be totally happy. And they get to that point and they're like, Is this it? This is it. This is not what what I thought it would be. It's not that exciting. So I think you need to look at every day more along the lines of, you know, what am I doing today that's going to move me towards goals? But what am I doing today that I'm enjoying doing? You know, am I enjoying what I'm doing? Am I not wasting time? And when I say enjoying what you're doing, it would be enjoyable to sit back and watch TV all day. I get that, but that's not going to move you towards your end goal. You have to do some uncomfortable things. Very important to understand that. If you are uncomfortable about speaking in front of people and doing videos, that is the thing you should do. That's definitely the thing you should do because those things are going to bring you more enjoyment. They're going to bring you more satisfaction than anything else. You need to look at all the things you're afraid of. Okay.   It doesn't matter. Just start doing them. Let me grab some of these comments here. How much subs do you this is viable to start a brand? It doesn't matter how many subs you have. Subs are irrelevant. Irrelevant. I make them good living and I don't have a, excuse me, a great subscriber base.  And it'll grow and I know it'll grow. I'm not even worried about that. Every day it grows. Every day I make a little bit more money. When it'll get to the point where I'm satisfied, probably never.  I mean, that's enough for me. Don't worry about subscribing. I think that's the biggest thing that new subscribers, excuse me, new YouTubers look at is how many subscribers and how many views and all that. In the beginning, you're not going to get hardly any. You're not. The majority of the YouTube channel is like 98% of them never get 100 subscribers. Don't let that stop you because what you're doing is you're looking at all the failures. Okay. The people who quit, that's why I say it's a failure because they quit. Most of them 98% of the channels that are started on YouTube, people quit. They quit within a year or two. You know, they just don't do anything anymore. And that's a shame because it's right before they're probably going to be successful. But most of them don't.  You know, most channels will never see a thousand subscribers. But it's not because they couldn't. It's not because they couldn't have. It's because they quit. That's the biggest killer of a YouTube channel. People just quit. They get these great ideas. They go, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm so pumped up. And then they just quit. That's the number one reason. And let me take another sip here. Guys, these questions are awesome. They really are. I really like it. I really like that you're doing this. Do you have a bucket list? James Breen.   What's yours? I want to know. I went out with Luigi last night who's my friend. I was telling you about. He's 86 or 87. His wife is 70. Man, she doesn't look it. And he's got a bucket list still. He's got stuff he's doing. He's got countries he wants to travel to. He's got languages he wants to learn. Yes, I do. You know, I don't know if it's a bucket list. It's more of a bunch of things I'd like to do. I really want to travel around the world. I want to go back to Asia. I've been to Thailand. I'd like to go to Japan. I'd like to go to the UK at some point. I'm not really thrilled about England. I don't see anything there that excites me. I think I'd like to go to Australia. And if you notice, my bucket list has a lot to do with traveling. Other parts of my bucket list are really staying in shape, being really fit. You know, I mean, I can be pushed up some pull-ups now and I can do a decent amount of them. And I want to be able to do that when I'm 70 and 80 years old too. That's a bucket list. You know, how cool would it be when you're 80 to be able to do 10 pull-ups, right? Or 20 pull-ups when you're 80? That'd be really cool, right? I think so. I'd like to learn some more languages. I'm okay in Spanish, but I've got a lot of ways to go there. Wouldn't mind learning French and Italian. So it's more gaining knowledge bucket list than anything else, I think. That's probably my stuff. And put it in there, what yours is. I want to hear what yours is. How much subscribers do you think it is viable to start a brand? Okay, you put that in there twice. Start a brand. You don't need any subscribers to start a brand. I mean, I started survival cave food. I didn't have any subscribers. I didn't have any emails. I didn't have anything. You don't need it. You just do it. You know, just do it. I think numbers will prevent you from doing stuff. You think you have to have something or kind of goes right back to you. You don't have to accomplish anything to do a YouTube video. You don't. It's not necessary.  Strauss Bergrow blocks. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. But I would have to block you if you're putting bad comments in there just so you know. You'll never see the channel again. Let's see here. Let's go ahead and remove you and you are done. And see, it's that easy, guys. We just we just get rid of people who are like that. Okay, become a successful entrepreneur and help the society. Yes. Yes, you can do that. And you know, I think it's now when I was a kid, I took karate to Taekwondo and as you moved up through the belts, it was required that you taught because you know, what is knowledge? What is gaining something and knowing something and never sharing it with other people? What is that? Okay. Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to have all this knowledge and keep it to yourself? You know, you want to share with other people. That's why I do these, you know, live talks, you know, each day is like, I just want to share with you what I'm doing. So let's get back to the YouTube channel thing. As far as the YouTube channel goes, think, think about your goal. What is your goal? Okay. And some people's goal is just to entertain people and that's okay if that's your goal. Some people's goal is to make money and that's okay too. There's nothing wrong with making money. Some people's goal is to educate. Okay. I think mine is probably educate and make a little bit of money too. Let's see. Holy bum. I'm so young. I haven't thought about a bucket list yet, but I want to ride the Moscow Shanghai train. That would be very cool. That would be very cool. Do it. Do it. Don't wait. You know, my son works at Cleveland Clinic and I don't know if I told the story the other day or not, but he's got a patient in there now and he works in the heart and lung transplant area.  Has cystic fibrosis. 24. 24. Okay, think about this. Whatever your age is, this person's 24. They had a double lung transplant. So I put two lungs in and his body is rejecting these lungs now. And you know, my son is really sad about that because he's like, this guy's 24, dad. And you know, he won't have a chance at anything. You know, so if you're, if you're alive and well right now, you've got a chance at stuff. Okay. Now, now I want to understand. I want to get real clear. I don't want to separate you too much from him. It's not like, oh my gosh, you're so much better than him.  Did you hear that?  You just don't know when his is more imminent. Right. Maybe he'll pull through.  So why not go ahead and do all that stuff?  It's just, oh my gosh, it's just terrible. And I think we all have some regrets. You know, people who say, oh, I've got no regrets about anything. Oh, you always have some regrets about stuff. You always screw stuff up because you didn't you didn't have the knowledge you needed to do the right things at the time. Let's see, become the servant leader entrepreneur. Of course, we all we're all servants. We're all servants of society. And if you're not and you think you're not, you're not enjoying life. You're not you're not getting out of life which you could. The survival cave have a YouTube channel. We do, but I don't really do anything with it. You know, survival cave food does very well on its own and I'm not a survivalist. I'm not, you know, and I know a lot about that. I have a survival academy that people can join. But that's not something I live every single day and that I'm into every single day. Survival cave food at this point, the majority of the sales come up all the retailers that sell survival cave food and they are really into survival and they have, you know, courses and all that stuff. And they run ads and they do all that stuff to promote my brand. So I don't really want to compete with them. So I don't. I just don't do that. Let's see here. Lessons like you said, do it now. Yeah, you got to do it now because if you don't do it now, there may not be a later. There may not be a later. Okay, what and you can't change the past. I see a lot of people really wrapped up in the past too. They're like, oh my gosh, I'm so messed up because what happened three years ago or two years ago, it happened. So what? So what? Just move on. You know, just move on. It doesn't matter anymore. And as far as worrying about the future, most of the stuff you worry about will never come true. All those bad things you worry about rarely come true. So why not just live in the moment and do what you what do what you know is right. Do the tough, difficult things that you know you should do. I mean, just do that. Guys, I'm getting some great comments. I really appreciate this. Dean says I want to be a successful entrepreneur who's making a positive difference in the world. I also want to be a digital nomad while doing that. What's success without being able to enjoy it? Very true. And I do know a couple of digital nomads. One of my best friends Donnie Gamble and you can look him up. Donnie Gamble. He's in the finance area. He's in Brazil, I think right now. But he's been on the road for about a year and a half and he just goes from country to country and he does a lot of finance type stuff and he runs financial blogs and he does affiliate stuff and he makes a living doing that.  You don't see him on the camera or anything really. He's done some stuff but not much. Let's see here. Do you think doing survival reviews on YouTube would be successful? I do. I do. It's a huge market and I'll tell you most people all Dean they get into the survival thing don't stick with it because they're not into it. Okay. It's hard to stick with something if you're not into something. So I see a lot of them will start doing some videos and then they quit. And that's probably what I would do. So I don't do this. I know this I'm going to do every single day because I actually do digital marketing every day and I can talk about it every day because I'm doing it. Let's see here. Ever check out Shotgun Red Southern Cooking Channel. I have not but I will. I will know that you said that. Let me see what we got here. Matter of fact I'll do it right now. Why wait? Right? Why wait? Shotgun Red. Let's see what we got for Shotgun Red. Maybe we'll check out some channels and guys if you have some channels that you already have those that in there. I will take a look at it. Shotgun Red. Wow. I don't know here. Let's see if I can find this. Cooking with Shotgun Red. There it is. Found it. Got it. Would this be the guy right here? Is that the one right there? James, let me know if that's the one right there. Let's see here. Shotgun Red is fun. Shotgun Red. Cooking with Shotgun Red. Looks like cool guy. I mean, why not? Right? Why not? Let's see here. He's got... Shoot, he's got 368,000 subscribers.  You've got to prep everything. You've got to have all your angles right. You've got to have recipes.  And what's a shame is I have paid a whole lot more for my videos because they're finance-related. And since they're finance-related, I have a very high CPM. My CPM, I think yesterday was $38, of which I got, like, $20. So that's pretty darn good.  There's channels that get 25 cents, okay, per CPM. So I'm very lucky there. I'm not into survival but believe it could work if outsourced to someone who is into it. It's really hard to outsource YouTube videos. Really, really is. It gets so expensive to do that stuff. You know, I would not recommend in the beginning outsourcing that. I didn't outsource anything in the beginning. I did everything myself. Now I outsource some editing but that's it. Nobody writes my scripts. Nobody comes up with my titles. Nobody comes up with what's said on the thumbnails. None of that. We get set here. It's really hard in general to have any business where you outsource the majority of it. If you're going to have a business, you're going to have to do it. You know, if it was that easy, you know, people would just be starting businesses right and left and paying people to run the business. You've got to be there. You've got to run it. You know, it's like the survival cave food doesn't take that much of my time. But when something comes up and something needs to be done, I've got to be the one to do it. Right now, we got in some 14 and a half ounce cans. We haven't had those for almost a year and I wrote all the emails for that. I did all the landing pages for that. I made all the products for that and it took time and it took me like a week to put all this together. I couldn't have outsourced that because I couldn't tell the people what I wanted done precisely. And if I did really do it precise and draw it all out, well, then I've already drawn it all out. So it's really, it's impossible to really outsource that stuff. Brain, Mr. Brain says yes. Paul says I think he's past and wife does channel now. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. He does look like a big guy. You know, you can't carry but so much weight for so many years. And you know, you people who are heavier, you may not want to hear it, but I'm telling you, it ain't healthy. It ain't healthy.  But man, I see people who are 50, 60, 100 pounds overweight and it's going to kill you.  And that's not popular for me to say. I know you're not supposed to say that, but it's the truth.  It's the truth. You can't carry around extra weight and be really healthy. It's hard because you have to pump all that blood to your heart and lungs and all that. And I'll take it so far as you know, my son's a bodybuilder. It's got a lot of muscle. That's not really good for you either because your body once again has to supply blood to all that muscle mass. Okay, it's got to do that. So anytime your body is out of the norm, you know, it's making your other organs work harder. So it's hard on you. He's got a great chicken recipe. I got to check that out. How important is a... Oh, you didn't finish that one. Thumbnail. Very, very important, James. Thumbnail is tremendously important because it doesn't matter if you've got a great title that gets searched and your videos come up or in great content that really, really helps people or entertains people if they don't click on the thumbnail. Thumbnail is probably the most important part of your video. I am not good at thumbnails. I've tried it. They don't look good. They don't do well. So I do have somebody that does my thumbnails. I don't do them. He takes pictures of me and throws my face on there. Now, I tell him what words to put on there, but he does the design of it. He's an artist. I'm not. So I don't do that. See, Paul says most cooking channels have affiliate links like Bobby at his Flav City site. Yes, I watch Bobby Parish. I know exactly who you're talking about. He links to Amazon Store. Yes, very good. And Paul, that reminds me, I'm going to change that link you told me about. I am going to get on that. I've been so darn busy. New excuse. Siddharth says LLC or Incorporated. It doesn't matter. You know, in the beginning, I would just do a sole proprietorship on any business how you don't really need to worry about some of those things in the beginning. Now, when you move on later on, like we are S Corporation, we're actually formed in Virginia and we're doing business in California as a foreign company, but I probably will move the whole corporation to Austin, Texas for tax purposes. So that's what I'm going to do. Get a sip here. God, you guys have some good questions. You have some good comments that are really appreciated. So does anybody have ideas about starting a YouTube channel? Is there something you want to do? So anyhow, once you do start the YouTube channel and put that in the comments there, once you do start a YouTube channel, you're going to need to do a few things. You've got to have a channel banner. Super important that you have a channel banner. If you're not good at that, look at some other ones and try to emulate them that you think are good. And if you can't do that, just hire somebody. I mean, it costs you like $15, $20 if you get a channel banner. Get something like TubeBuddy. I will have a link in the description where you can get TubeBuddy for free. You do need TubeBuddy to optimize your titles to optimize all your tags and all that stuff. You've got to have something like that.  So do that. Love the equipment links. You have listed for products on your site. Want the ring light listed? Yes, the ring light right there. That ring light. And I'm going to see if you guys can see the ring light here. If you can see the ring light right there. Okay. And if you notice, there's a little tiny goal on there. I had a project going on. We went to extra $50,000 a month and you see that on the ring light right there. So we just put that on there because we wanted that extra 50 grand. So I put that on the ring light so I could see it every single day. It would remind me of that extra 50 grand I needed. But yeah, I think I've got a little delay here but I see it going around there. Oh, you can't see it. There's a little piece of tape on there. This says $50,000 on the bottom of the ring light.  Let's see. VSRX. That's my media and innovation thing name. Very cool. I like it. I like it. I really do. So what we've got now, we've got an idea for your YouTube channel. You've got a banner for your YouTube channel. You've got TubeBuddy because you've got to put tags for your YouTube channel. Somebody was saying to me, well, I thought you just put tags on videos. You don't put them on channels. Well, if you want people to find your channel, you put them on channel. If you want people to find your videos, put them in your videos. So what do you want them to find? I think I want them to find both. So those tags are important on your channel and they're important on your videos because like a lot of times I'll search and I'll come across a channel based on my search because they put tags on their channel. I'm like, oh, here's a whole channel of stuff I'd like to watch. Let's see here. James Breen. Why do most business incorporate in Delaware and Nevada taxes? Taxes, it's just quite simply taxes, which, you know, it does save you in some ways, but you got to get an account for me and that stuff gets really complicated to do that stuff correctly. So you're into positive affirmations and manifestations. I mean, I don't lie to myself.   I really do. I think, you know, I think you need to put the truth there and I think you need to put things that you want to achieve around you. I do have that.  I am 40 and I am broke and I live in America. If that doesn't wake you up, I don't know what will. Okay, so, you know, kind of tell yourself the truth and have some goals to achieve.  But I do put goals in front of myself, things I want to achieve. I like seeing those things. That's pretty important to me. We have a Google Home screen thing and next to that it's got all the pictures of the home we're building in Austin, which reminds me every day because I look over at it and these pictures are popping up and it reminds me to keep working. It reminds me to work hard that I've got to get money to do those things, okay? So, I see that every single day. I see a picture of my wife looking at that stuff, okay? And I'm like, ah, I got to take care of that. I get that done. Let's see here. Any recommendations for designer, for YouTube banner? You know, I think it's been done. And what I mean is I would look at channels that are going to be similar to yours and see what they've done and do something similar, okay? I'm not much on reinventing the wheel. I just not, you know, I look for successful people, see what they're doing. I emulate it and do it myself. And I see a lot of people doing that with me.  That's what, oh, see, that's what's great about this channel, no BS approach to business. Yes, yes, there's no point. I mean, there's no point. I don't have a Ferrari. I don't have a Lamborghini. Could I buy one? Yeah, I could buy one, but what's the point?  And I thought about this before. If I had a Ferrari and there's some neighborhoods I go to in South San Diego and they're not nice neighborhoods, but they have some great food. And if I pulled up in a Ferrari, I mean, what is that? What's that really? I'm gonna pull up in a taco stand and barrio Logan in a Ferrari. That would just be absurd.  They're not even comfortable. They look cool. I'm gonna tell you, they look really cool. And I'm sure they're a blast to drive. I've driven one in my life. And I'm picking on Ferrari. It could be any fancy car. And I've just never, I've never been into fancy cars. I just wasn't my thing. I was in the car business for many years. And I guess because I look at cars is they're all going to get older and they're all going to rust and the paint's going to fade.  And you're going to have to do maintenance. Then I look at the maintenance. I'm cheap too because I don't want to spill on my money on maintenance. I didn't have a Jaguar for many years and the maintenance was ridiculous. Oh my God. It was just absurd. And that kind of turned me off to fancy cars right there. Let's see. I agree. Love your honest comments, JR. Thank you so much, Aldean. I appreciate it. Controlling your time is important. Learning to say no is so important. Yeah. You'll have a lot of opportunities to say no. You'll have a lot of opportunities to say yes. And that could be a TV show that you're going to watch. It could be some work you're going to do. It's going to be going out with somebody. And I don't spend a lot of time with friends. I don't. But I do spend time with friends. So in doing so, I've got to be really super selective about the people I hang out with because I want it to really still feed into my lifestyle and what I want. Last night, we went to dinner with some of our best friends. He's an retired attorney and she's retiring as a certified financial planner and she has a business in town. And they have some of the same political views as us, which I won't get into. And, you know, we talk about some of the same stuff that we're interested in. They share information that I didn't know and I share information they didn't know. And I feel like when I go away from that situation, I've gained something. I've gained something. It wasn't just chit chat, you know? So I gained something there. Let's see. So what car do you drive? I have a Honda Pilot. That's all I drive. And I have it because I like to do projects I need to have room in the back. So I have a lot of room there. I used to do gun shows and I would actually take our products around and I had to put, you know, tons of product in the back of it. I like to have a lot of room. It's got three rows. I do have a deposit on the Tesla truck because it's big. It's got a lot of room. I know some people think it's ugly. I haven't decided if it's really ugly or really cool, but I do have a deposit on that because I like the utility of it. I like the speed of it. I like the efficiency of it. I like the size of it. There's nothing else like it on the road. I mean, nothing like that vehicle on the road. Let's see, don't think I could get into a Ferrari. Yeah, they're not comfortable. They really aren't. Think a pickup. Excuse me, that is comfortable and a geezer can get in and out of. James Breen says great ride. Yes, I think I think it's a great ride. I can't imagine San Diego not being nice. I've been there, albeit briefly. Well, there's some bad areas, man.  I've heard, you know, estimates there's 10 to 15,000 homeless just in downtown San Diego. And as a matter of fact, if you want to watch a video on the homeless that I did that I think it's got 100,000 views now, let me just see here. We'll search YouTube. And that was where we went out and fed the homeless. I was actually going to do a movie on that. But I got other projects going on feeding. Let me see here. If I can find this, I'm going to tell you guys to search for it. And it's actually on my other channel. It's not on this channel. So let's see here, San Diego. And I'll put the link to that video. Yes, matter of fact, I just searched feeding the homeless San Diego and I've got the number one video right there. That video there is the number one video. Now, I've got it on a couple of different channels. That particular channel doesn't have that many views. So let me see if, but if you search it, you can watch that. I have it on another channel and it's got like 100,000 views. Excuse me, the throat in the morning. It's not good. It's not good. So the other thing about YouTube channel is it is a very, very, very, very long game. Okay. If you're not in it for a long game, you don't want to do YouTube channel. YouTube channel is not going to work in weeks or even months. It's probably going to be years before you're going to get the traction you want. Now, here's the thing I want you to think about though. Years are going to pass anyhow. Years are going to pass anyhow. So if you build up a YouTube channel and it's making you $1,000 a month or $5,000 a month or whatever, that is, you know, for years, you're going to make that.  So if you want to set up a retirement, you know, where, you know, you're going to have $5,000 or $10,000 a month coming in from, you know, YouTube, then I would suggest starting a YouTube channel. Have one. You know, you can do other things. I don't just do YouTube.  I'm a content creator. I happen to do some stuff on YouTube, but, you know, I have content in other places too. This is not the only place I have it. So don't think of it that way. Let's see here. Oh, okay, I read that one there. Can you list the names of your other channels so I can check them out? Yeah, I would have to pull them out, up Aldine and I don't have that handy right now, but I will, I'll get that out there. I don't do anything with them really. There's no point. I don't do anything with those other channels. This is the only channel I really put any effort into. So a lot of that stuff is old, you know, it may be four or five, six years old because I just don't, you know, I had to survive okay, food, which I was putting some stuff on. And I think survival okay food is where you're going to find the feeding the homeless one. Let me see if that is the case. And if I can, maybe I can send the link to here. And then I'll put, let's see, feeding homeless San Diego. And I'll put survival okay food. I think that's a channel I put it on. Yes. No. Let's see, survival good food. Gosh, why is it so hard to find? Oh, I know why it was survival cave. I think I put it under. I'm going to search channel and maybe that will do it for me. Yes. But that one only has like goodness gracious. That one's got like 16 videos on it. But I'm not even sure if that's the right one. Yeah, I don't think that is the right one. I don't know where I put that video. I got to find it though. But I last time I looked at had 100,000 views. So I'll have to look it up and I'll put it on here. Not quite sure. I love that you batch videos and then release them. What's most videos you've done in one day? Do you have a length of time you shoot for? I don't have a length of time I shoot for. And what I mean by that is I assume it's going to take me all day. If it doesn't take me all day, then I have time to do some more work. I don't get off early. Okay, so if I schedule and I usually start at 10 a.m. because that's when Jessica can help me. And if I start at 10 a.m. I will generally finish. Depends on how many I'm doing. I use I think the minimum I do is around 10. The maximum I do is around 13. I think I've the most I've ever done is 13 in a day. Each one once edited is 10 to 14 minutes. Generally, I mean, sometimes I'll have a 16 minute one or 15 minute one outlier. But for the most part, I'd say 90% of them are 10 to 14 minutes. But understand it may take me 20 to 25 minutes to record to get enough for a 10 to 14 minute video. So how much real recording time that is? Let me see here. That's 25 times, let's say 12. I think my standard is around 12. Okay. And that's because I know I'm going to release five a week. So that gives me two weeks plus a two buffer. So that's kind of why I do it. And that's 300 minutes. And if I divide that by 60, that's five hours right there. So that's a minimum five hours of just recording. Nevermind setting up the lights. Nevermind setting up the computer. Nevermind taking breaks. Nevermind having lunch and all that. So you can see it's pretty much a full day. Last week, I don't think I finished up to about 5.15, 5.30 maybe, and I started at 10 o'clock in the morning. So it was a long day. And it's sitting in this chair talking the whole time. It's very exhausting. I know it doesn't seem like it. I mean, I'm just sitting and talking, but it's exhausting because you get to put a lot of energy into it. Okay.  So it's really important. Let's see here. Any other questions you guys got for me today? I've got to record my masterclass today. So I'm going to be in here for a number of hours doing recording. A lot of people on Sunday and I'm not comparing myself, I'm just saying they look at it as a day just to kick back and relax. And I don't need to relax. I just don't need it. It's not necessary. I can't sit around now. I will read a book. I started reading a book yesterday, which is show your work. And it's a really cool book. I'll try to get you a link to that. Do you think changing locations for variety helps like you're set up because it's so interesting? I don't know. You know, I look at Graham Steppen and he is very, very stationary. However, he's stationary in two spots. So he has two spots that he goes back and forth from. I see people that are always in different places. I think it's more the content than anything else. I mean, I could put a lot of cool things on my desk and have a cool desk and cool background. But if I've got useless information, that's not going to help anybody. And I don't think people will watch. I really don't. I've been watching a new chef I found and I can't think of his name off top of my head. But he has the messiest of all kitchens. It looks like a disaster in there. And he puts a GoPro on his forehead and he just walks around the kitchen and cooks. But he does some amazing recipes. I really like his stuff and you could say, well, man, he's got an awful kitchen and it doesn't look good and all that, but his content is good. And I think that's what really matters. It's your content that really, really matters. Sometimes I do ones outside my office. Not that often, but sometimes I do in different places and stuff like that. Sometimes I'll go live and do that. What's your opinion on Launch Jacking JR? You into it. Yeah, I know what you're saying like piggybacking on other people's launches. I don't even pay attention to other people's launches. I just don't. I know what I was doing. Click bank a lot. I had to because there were a lot of like big click bank people that did stuff on there and you didn't want to coincide your launch with theirs. But I just, I don't even look at it and I don't look at what other people are doing as far as having a launch.  I don't want to say they're bad, but they don't work as well as they used to. People are aware of a launch and what it is now. So they don't work quite as well. Ever read Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins? No, but I did get a chance to listen to Tony Robbins. I went to the ClickFunnels convention in Houston, Texas. No, Dallas, Texas. And he was a speaker there. And he was really good. He was really good. I was very impressed with him, but I had not read his book now. I think it's important to have a good chair like you have, especially if you're going to be in it for hours on end. Yes, I do have an expensive chair. It is very comfortable. I don't know if you could see it. And you know, it's nice leather pad. It's got the big arms here and all that stuff. And I'll scoot back a little bit. You can see it. So there's the chair. But yeah, it is important to have a really comfortable chair. Sitting in this chair is not fun. After a few hours, I don't care what the chair is. You're uncomfortable.  I saw your interview with Justin Atlin at ClickBank seminar in Cancun. Wouldn't mind videos on ClickBank hints. Yes. I can do that. Excuse me. My throat is always bad in the morning. It's just a thing. Justin is no longer with ClickBank. Just so you know, he used to have ClickBank University there. And they did away with that. Just to let you know. So he's trying to do his own thing now. I don't know if it's gaining any traction at all. But that's what he's working on right now. Yes, I've done quite a few interviews. I'm going to do a lot more. If you guys are into interviews and you're somebody you'd like for me to interview, I'm not saying I can get them, but I'll try. So if that's interesting or if there's subjects that you want me to interview somebody about, I'm going to do some more of those in 2021. I think those are interesting when you get into somebody else's brand. We've got a really good feedback from John Christonis. And I think I'm going to interview Sean Donahue who's a friend of mine. He's a digital marketer. He's always behind the scenes. So you never really see his face, but he's got some really cool products. And maybe we could talk about how he grew that company. He is a British guy, I believe, or Australian. I can't remember. But he lives in the U.S. He actually lives in Texas. So maybe I'll do that. Let's see. Yeah. Yeah. He, the new president, decided that ClickBank University was not necessary or Justin was not necessary. So yeah, they did away with that. But yeah. So I got to get my day started. How about you guys? Are you going to do something today? What are you going to accomplish? Tell me what you're going to accomplish in the chat section. I want to know. Okay. And here's the funny thing. If you put something in that chat, even if you weren't planning on doing something, it'll make you more likely to do it. And it doesn't have to be all day long. You don't have to work all day. But maybe you could work an hour or two on something. I think that's what really blows people's minds is they're like, oh my gosh, I can't spend all day doing that. Okay, well, no. Spend 30 minutes. Spend an hour. Spend two hours. Just do a portion of the day. Then I'll relax the rest of the day. Then I watch my TV shows. Then I'll do whatever I want. But do something. I think the momentum of knowing that you're going to do something every single day really helps. Really helps a lot. So do something every day and put in the comment what you're going to do. I want to know what you're going to do. Okay, that would be really interesting to me. And I appreciate each and every one of you guys. I really do. And I'm trying to figure out DBL Dosey. If that's a channel that you want people to subscribe to, I can tell them to check it out. Wow. James, you're going to do 17 chin-ups. Seriously. Can you do that? I want to know if you're messing around with me. That's really hard to do. I could not do 17 chin-ups. You're talking about grabbing a bar like this and straight down. I mean, I don't think I could do that. I know I couldn't do it. I do chin-ups. I can't do that many. If you can do that, that's amazing. Getting copy done. Hope KC wins. KC must be Kansas City. Because I get this guys. I don't know who's playing in the Super Bowl. I have no idea. Okay, I would not be your guy for that. Let's see here. KC wins, but need time now to push the needle. And I know Super Bowl is a big deal, guys. I'm an outlier there. Super Bowl is a big deal to a lot of you guys. Getting some work done around the house today. Got to do that too, right? We got to do our home stuff. James Breen, are you serious? You can do 17 chin-ups. I have got to see you. We've got to talk, man. We got to jump on a Zoom call or Skype call or something, man. I got to see what you look like. That's pretty amazing. Because I have no idea what you look like. Are you on my friends list on Facebook, James? Let me just take a look here. Because I'm going to look you up right now, man. If you could do that, that is like freaking amazing. It is not easy to do that many chin-ups. James Breen. There's a lot of James Breen's. A lot of them. One mutual friend here with the James Breen. Could this be you? I don't see any pictures on this one here, though. So I don't know if this is you. Friend me. James, friend me on Facebook, okay? Or send me a message or something. I got to see what you look like. That would be amazing, okay? In your 80s, if you can do 17 of those, you're crushing it, my man. Crushing it. All right, guys. I thank you so much for being here today. I hope you enjoyed this session. Quadre Jordan, you just got here. Where have you been, Quadre? Man, oh man, we're finishing up and you just now jumped in. But good morning to you. I appreciate you being here. Quadre, love your work, man. Thank you so much. It's very kind of you. Never been able to do a chin-up. Think I'm retaining water. Well, they say the easiest way to increase the number of chin-ups you can do is decrease your weight. So if I drop 20 pounds, maybe I could do 17, you know? Right now, I get up there and I try. You know, I try, but I can't do it. I can't do it. So I got to try harder. The greatest of all time in the Grunk are in the Super Bowl. Yes. Have a blessed weekend ahead, gang. All right, guys. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your attentiveness. Start your YouTube channel. Start something. Don't be afraid of what they'll think. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. You guys have a great day and a great weekend. Talk to you later.