What's up everybody, I'm TheMangoose. You were awesome. Today I'm sitting down with Trenadas from Project Stamina. He's their map designer. Do I have that right, Tren? Yes, map design. I do a little bit of the game mode also. Awesome, and we're gonna be talking about the various maps and modes. If you don't know, Gigantic had different maps that you played on instead of just one standard map and Project Stamina is gonna follow suit with that. And today we're gonna be talking about the importance of map variety and different modes in a game-like Project Stamina. And we've got the perfect man for it. So Tren, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little background, a little history and all that? Well, I don't have an extravagant background or extravagant history. Basically, I've been playing video games since I was little. I absolutely loved them. It's kind of all I did through high school. Then I basically tried out the Unity engine. The Unity engine, it's nice, not bad. Programming was not my dealio. So I switched to the Unreal Engine once that came out and I think UE3, and then that was fun. Making maps on it was fun. And then UE4 came out and that's when I really, really started liking things. Blueprints made things a lot easier, like when I need to have stuff interact with the map. Just the way it's set up is just beautiful. Other than that, I've just been learning since UE4 came out. Now, what's the, how many maps do you guys plan to have available when you do your alpha launch? And how many maps down the road is this gonna be like an ever-evolving thing? Do you plan to continue to add maps as the game progresses? Well, making maps adds a lot of, oh, what's the word, assets. So I think this is common knowledge. We wanna make sure that things are very modular. So we wanna be able to, like let's say, DFG, Dead Fin Gorge, we have a TDM map for it and we also have a main game map for it. So in turn, we wanna be able to use the TDM assets for the main game mode assets but make it a completely different setup. So we're able to make less assets but also still making custom assets for each map because you kinda wanna make things pretty and give it a uniqueness but be able to use some of the base assets to create that map so there's not much into it. But maps, how many we're gonna have is alpha, I would say one, maybe two later on. I can't really give any definitive number. We're really not big on giving definitive things unless we are 100% on it. Yeah, I can understand that. So I'd expect maybe two. Kinda go back to what you were saying there. So you're not just gonna have different maps and modes. You're gonna have different variations of maps for the different modes. Yes, the main game mode is completely different than the TDM mode. Oh, that's awesome. So what inspired that? Just the different playstyle for the different modes? Yes, because we really wanted what we said before. We really want the, not the main, but the TDM game mode to be this quick play type of deal where you go in, you get out, you have your fun, you play the game. I'm not gonna get in too many of the full on details because it's still ever evolving. But one of the base things is we want people to get in and get out fast, have that fun and not be committed to playing the game, but also be able to have enough play time in it where they can learn something. Right on. So with a lot of MOBAs, the replayability, they kinda separate themselves out with having an item system, like your various item combinations makes it fun to kinda have a fresh take on a new character, but you guys don't have an item system, you have the branching talent tree, which you could take the various talents to also freshen things up and make your character a little different than everyone else. But having different maps, that is also a great way to increase the replayability of your game. Do you envision the maps just like encouraging people to kind of play different characters and play them different ways on different maps? Yes, that is one big thing. We wanna be able to make sure like, like not just one hero is just gonna get used, like let's say R4, R4 is like the mainstay and R4 is on every map. You have to have R4. No, we don't want that. We want people to be able to play any hero that they want to play, because it's not fun when you're not being able to play that hero that you want to play because it's bad per se. I mean, there's a lot of balance stuff. Fancy would get into that itself, but we just want people to experience a game that they want to experience. What do you consider when you're creating a different map? How do you go about making it different from the others? Is it a thing of increased verticality or wider lanes or some narrow lanes for more one-on-one fights and that sort of thing? And how do you go about that? Like, what's your determination? What affects your decisions when creating a new map and making it different from the others? Well, right now I'm working on a second map. I think I've said this somewhere else. I'm not gonna get too much detail about the map because it's still under wraps, but I have a second map that I'm working on. I mean, we have Infinity, which people have seen the concept art form. We do have that gray box down and whatnot. We have DFG, and then we also have the DFG main mode, which no one except for inside the team has seen the map, the blocked out map for that. But I'm also working on a separate map right now. And it has its unique verticality to it. And it also, like in Gigantic, what we really kind of base a lot of our things in game on, there is a thing called... Cliffing, there we go. It's been a while since I've done that. But there was a thing called Cliffing. And then that makes it so you can knock people off the map. With this current map, I am making Cliffing a little bit more prominent in some areas that might not be 100%. It might change. I mean, everything is iterative. Is that the right word I'm using? I guess iterative. Well, it's gonna get changed as you go and it's gonna evolve. And those areas that have a lot of places where someone could fall off and die might actually change to a rock wall or a big old tree or statue. But when I'm making a map, I try to figure out what I want out of this map. And then I go from there, I build the focal point, which would be maybe the main area of the map or, let's say I can start off with a summing point or like when I made DFG, the TDM one, I started off with the center of the map. We wanted something where we had two different levels. And we wanted it look like the earth got carved out right there. And as you can tell, you got the bottom and then you got the top right there. Then you also have the two sides things that you can jump on. And then you can go into it by either jumping down, jumping over the two side spots. And then also there's ramps going into it. So you got sort of envisioned that open area in the middle where the kind of the lake is or pond, whatever you want to call it, that to be like kind of the main area where people will end up fighting it out. Yes, an orb sponsor, the primary orb for TDM mode. Yes. I don't know what that is. Does something we need to cut out? See, did I cut out? No, I need to cut that out of the video. No, no, no. Orbs are a thing and we've showed that. I think we've talked about it many times too, but it's part of the main game mode. And they are still evolving. We know we want it because it plays a role. I guess I shouldn't get too much into it because it might evolve. I don't want to give up people's hopes or lie to them because lying and giving up people's hopes is a very bad thing. But they play a role inside the map. And that role is to direct the fight to different areas of the map at different times during the game. So kind of like a capture point in Call of Duty or something like that. It provides a way to direct people into the fight instead of having them just mill around on the sides. Yeah, we don't want this free-for-all.    Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. So how many, the TDM is one mode and then you've got your regular mode, which I don't know what you guys are calling, but how many modes do you guys plan to have for the game? That's just the two. The main mode, which we don't have the name released yet. And then the TDM mode, which I guess we don't have a name for that. It's just team death match, I guess. We might come up with a name for that, but it's TDM for now. There's no just regular free-for-all death match? No, no, not right now. So there's something, like with most MOBAs, you have lanes and the lanes kind of direct where the fighting happens because the minions are there and the minions are how you gain experience. Now Gigantic didn't have minions or lanes or anything like that, but you still need to be able to create various avenues of approach. How do you go about doing that? Like how do you make, how do you channel, I mean, you've already given one example of it having these orbs that's gonna lead people to a certain area, but how do you create sort of, do you want just one main area for people to approach and retreat, or do you want several side areas? How are you guys gonna do that? Oh, I guess that depends on what you want out of the map and like the TDM mode, we want the main area to be usually in the center or at least the DFG TDM one. It, I think it's a little bit different with Infinity, but we still have some irritative, sorry that word just completely lost on me right now, but we still got some work to do on that, but with the Deadfin Gorge TDM mode or TDM map, a lot of the fighting we want on the two side points, life and death, and then we want the center being with the big orb spawns and we want them to fight there. And I have multiple different avenues to get to mid. We have multiple different avenues from the beginning of the game, like do you wanna get on the high ground? Do you wanna go to low ground? Do you wanna come to the side? Do you wanna flank them from behind? And all those have different lengths of time that would take to get to said point from point A to point B or what you wanted to do. It might seem a little open right now. I don't know what your thoughts on that was, but as we go along, a lot of that map, that map used to be a lot smaller and it has grown by one, I think by half right now. And I don't think it's gonna grow any bigger than that at the moment, but as we are creating maps, we're constantly taking feedback from the team, constantly taking feedback from anyone who's testing it and then evolving it from there on out. So one pathway that I might've thought that was nice might not work in general and I might have to just completely clear that out and turn it into a different pathway or raise it up and make a drop off or many other various things that we can do to it. So is it all just like, whenever you're creating these avenues, is it all like physical like walls and stuff like that? Or do you use any kind of visual cues just kind of provide some sort of perspective for the player? Like this is a different color than this. Is that sort of like any kind of optical illusions? Do you use any of that whenever you're building the map? That is very big in map making, especially in single player games. And I want to try to find a way to incorporate that into our maps, but right now where we are, I can't really as much, but like if you look at Tomb Raider games, have you played Tomb Raider? You can tell what ledges you can climb on or what ledges you can hang off of or like let's say if you can climb a wall, it looks all cracked. Right. Or vines. We want, well, at least I know I want to do something like that, but once we get more along in the process, I would expect some form of that to be incorporated into the map. I don't know exactly what it's gonna look like yet, but yes. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that's a, seems like it would be a good idea. I also like the idea of having, you know, one map that has large open areas for fighting others that have more of that, you know, small ridgelines to take and small sort of tunnels to go through because it really promotes, you know, different character picks. Like different characters are gonna be just because for their ability sets are gonna be better on the big open maps and other characters will be better on the closed maps. I don't really know what I'm trying to ask here. I'm just thinking a broad comment here. I don't know if it'll be that intense. I mean, everyone's gonna have their own different playstyle and with what our game offers, they have a wide variety of playstyle that they can have. And hopefully our maps will encourage that a bit more. I'm hoping they will. We're, I mean, we're all hoping they will, but yeah, I think a lot of people will have a large, a large wide variety of ways that they can play the character or move around on the map. And it's a, I like, I don't know if you ever played, here's the storm, but that's one of the things they do is they have different maps that make different characters a little better than others and have different map objectives and such. I think it works well for, here's the storm, here's the storm, definitely isn't the most popular of MOBAs out there, but I think they hit it on the head there. And I think you guys, I'd really like that you guys are doing various maps. I think it does get a bit, as much as I loved Paragon, it was a little tedious having the same map and it wasn't always kind of nice when they changed, you know, a couple of little things up on the map, just the freshen things up. I like the Christmas or Halloween deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I like that. Well, I really like the visual update they did to the map recently, well, before it had gone downhill, but stuff like that is nice. And yes, it does get a little stale playing the same map, like League of Legends, that map makes sense and it's perfectly tuned to what they need. Like I don't know how it would be like, I guess I don't play that game at all. Sometimes, if someone invites me, I'll jump on and, you know, embarrass myself. But that game makes sense to have that single map because it is totally tuned. Every hero is tuned around that map. Right. And they don't have to balance anything else after that. There's nothing changing. They have that one point of reference for that right there. And then with multiple maps, you have multiple points of reference. So you might have a hero that might be a little bit OP on those maps and then you have to figure out how you got to tune things to either change the map, which would kind of suck, because, you know, I like maps and something that has made me change because it's broken and would kind of stink. But yeah, it's just, you have a lot more sense and then we can also make it. So this map is a little bit stronger for said type of hero or said hero because it feels a little weak. Yeah. Like Lucio, whenever you watch, really, really strong whenever you can do the cliffing, I think, is what you call it in gigantic. Yeah. Lucio booping people off. Yes. Yeah. That and how they set it up. So he has certain little paths that he can take around and whatnot. I mean, some of them probably were unintended, but I've seen some of those videos for you. They're pretty insane. I could never do that. I think that's gonna be quite the challenge for you in particular is people exploiting various points in the map in ways that you never would have thought possible. You know it's gonna happen. Oh, it's already happened. And yeah, I've had to deal with that. Yeah, you can test as much as you want, but once you get a thousand heads working together to try and break your game, it's gonna happen. Yeah, it's gonna be a long, long, long process, especially with every map coming out. I mean, yes, we want multiple maps, but I don't know how fast it's gonna be. We don't know how fast it's gonna be because we don't know how each of these heroes are gonna break the map or if the map will break them. I mean, a map shouldn't break a hero, I guess. It can though. It can. I am bald to fall down on him. See, Paragon, there's stairs that any character that had a flying animation instead of a walking animation, they would get to those stairs and just pop straight up in the air every time. It would just make you a sitting duck. I remember the fey, especially, because I loved her, but I would always have to avoid that one spot in the stairs and it's weird when you're playing a game and when some characters, you have to avoid a spot on the map as opposed to others. That was just a bug though. I mean, that was like an intended thing. Are you playing? What's that? You shouldn't have to avoid a spot on a map. You shouldn't. It just kind of sucks. I mean, it means your job was not done because, I mean, yeah, that spot could be weaker, but you shouldn't have to avoid it.  Just in general, I've asked you a lot of questions about maps and modes and stuff. Just give us your perspective. Just tell me about it. Just let me know, you know, your philosophies, whatever you want to talk about as far as maps and modes go, just let me hear it. Let me have it. Modes, I won't get too deep into. It's a very important part of the game. Extremely important. It takes a lot of evolving just to get to the right balance inside that because it's got to interact with the maps. It's got to interact with the heroes. It's got to interact with them. For us, the runes and various other things, but the maps itself, it's so much fun because you're creating an environment that they are walking around in, that they are playing in. And I mean, this goes along with the game modes too. You're kind of pushing a pathway that you want to see. This is gonna be the main pathway. And it's so interesting because you put so much time and effort into that and then they end up using the other pathway and the other pathway ends up being better. So I don't know if you ever heard, you put nine monkeys in a room, 10 monkeys in a room and then give them what, 10 ways to escape. They're gonna find the 11th. No, yeah, I thought you were talking about the typewriter I think with monkeys, but no, I never heard that.  It's the same with players. They're always gonna find what is better about your map. So it's just fun iterating on it because our first TDM map was actually a lot of fun. A lot of people liked it. A lot of the original tests that tested it early, early on really liked it, but it isn't what we were. It isn't what we really, really wanted. So it's just interesting. And then taking what you learned from there and then putting it into that map or taking like what I've learned with the TDM map, I put it into like the main game map. And now the second map that I'm working on maps that, I'm taking everything I learned and I'm putting it right straight into that. And like I'm already falling in love with this new one that I'm doing. I wish I could speak more on it or show you guys, but it's just so much fun. And then there's a running joke inside the tester group where I usually yell at a certain person for breaking my mask because that's what he likes to do in life. But it's just, I always find it great finding all these new bugs that I need to fix. And then hearing what they got to say about it, like does this ramp work or because sometimes like you want to slow down a player and it's really difficult because let's say you can have a ramp going up or you can have steps going up where they have to jump. And a lot of people want that quick, easy ramp, but you might want the steps where they have to jump up because it slows the player down. So instead of making it up there in like two seconds, it takes them three seconds. And that extra second actually like, you know, adds on to it. All right, it completely affects how the entire rest of the game is played out. That's interesting. Yeah, designing the map and ways to affect the way that the player plays, like intentionally making it harder to get to certain areas, I like that. Yeah, no, no, that's what we really wanted. I mean, sometimes you do need to change it because the players do get pretty upset about that. And it just feels awkward. And that goes back to one of the points that you're making earlier, making it so it was a visual cue on it.  So I'm talking to run up to it, then they hit a wall and they're just pissed because they hit a wall and they're wasting more time or a blocking volume, I guess that works. Yeah, I like that though. No, it does make a difference, man, it does. So I think that's all the questions I had for you. Was there any final comments you wanted to make before we close it up? No, I don't think I have any final comments other than, you know, check us out because we're awesome. I mean, we have the Fancy Pants and an amazing team. And an amazing community. We hit over 22,000 people, 22,000, 2200 people recently and it is still growing, it is still growing. And hopefully we can see a bunch of you guys at PAX. Yeah, I can't wait to see some video of that. I'm sure you'll be out, you guys will take some pictures and some videos and that. Yeah, I mean, we don't have a booth there unless someone wants to like, you know, give us a large chunk of money. But no, we will definitely be there. We'll be shaking hands and, you know, trying to meet with a bunch of the community because it's extremely important to us. Community is important because it makes the game go. Right on, good to hear. Yeah, I was hoping I could go meet you guys there. PAX doesn't look like it's going to happen, but I do hope that you guys have fun. Everybody out there, if you're in the area, if you hit up PAX, make sure you hit up the project stamina team, go hang out with them, learn a little bit more about the game. And they're just, they're good people, they're good folks. I'm sure that they'd be fun to hang out with. But I think that's gonna wrap it up for today's little episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you learned a little something about the maps and modes. And be sure to check out Project Stamina. I'll have links to all their social media in the video description below. But for now, this is the man goose signing off. You guys, have a good one. A man goose. You wanna learn more about Project Stamina, check out the video on the left. If you wanna see my latest cooking episode on my other channel, The Manly Goose, check out the video on the right.


I found 10 different lists from different sources, each claiming to be the top 10 best countries in the world to live in for 2022. I compared all 10 lists, and I then made my own top 10 from them from the ones that come up again and again. For example, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, followed by Germany, Australia, and Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan, New Zealand, the UK, and USA. Every one of the top 10 best societies in the world is considered secular, but not one Muslim country ever made it to anyone's top 10. So we could say, based on your list, that black and Hispanic societies are inferior. No. That's the list. Your list didn't have any Hispanic countries. It didn't have any black countries. I think it actually did. Which one? I'd have to go back over the whole thing.


boom So money geeks mr. V here welcome to another video and this one we're gonna do our quick trading recap Just talk about some of the stocks that we kind of watch today and trade it and just give you overall Perspective on the market. So that's what we're gonna cover into this video But before we get started guys if you're new to the channel We talk about how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth So you have something that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell So you don't miss out on new content. So Another day. Remember today's thursday guys. So Tomorrow is good friday. So there's no markets. The markets are closed tomorrow. So consider today Friday in the market. So or sleep tonight. Don't look at your phone at 4 a.m. Or 3 a.m. Depending on what time zone you find yourself. So relax Um, yep. So we're starting the day. This is the watch list we sent out today some stocks Of the watch list did pretty good others Just didn't really pop as we expected But yeah, we did make some good money Especially with upc. So we alerted UPC a lot of people got in and made some money as you can see that was our top trade for the day made some good money off of that. So Let's jump right in and kind of take a look at to what happened at UPC So Right off the bat, you can see here UPC open the day It started gapping really really well pre-market. So you can see here. I didn't take a trade pre-market And so I just kind of kept an eye on it. So I missed this this entry right here So I didn't want to chase it pre-market. So I waited for it to come to me As soon as the market opened and market opens it didn't disappoint at all So this was a really good trade Market opens you can see here kind of like a little pull back and then You know crosses vwap and health. So first one many kind of to make a new high So I got into this one about I think 5.2 or 5.3 That I got into this one and then I squeezed up all the way here and I'm sitting in this trade. We got halted right here So at about 6.1 or 6.2 We got halted. So I'm sitting in this trade like boy. This is not What I wanted but the good thing is that when a stock is halted on the way up At least that's better than being halted on the way down So I would I mean I was excited about it Even though it was halted on the way up then it came out of the halt I just kind of jumped all the way to I think it was like 7.1 or 7.2 and then went as high and tested at 7.2 So what I did is I had A bracket order. So once we got in here, I had a bracket order And so I had my take profit set to $10 and then I had my stop loss Set to $6 Right here just to protect it. So as soon as you squeeze and came out of the halt and Went all the way to 7.2. I pulled my My stop loss all the way to 7.1 and then it revered and kicked me out and I was happy So that's how I got in and out of that trade It was yeah, it was an exciting one But as you can see from there pulled back Tested view up again here Didn't really hold and just crumble and then the rest of the day Look what happened and this is this is happening more and more if yesterday If you guys saw some of the stocks that we traded it did the same thing Right out of the gate it popped and then just just crumble But at least we made some profit off of this, which I can't really complain. So that was our best trade of the day A really excellent way to go into the weekend And have some fun and get ready for Monday again to you know, tackle it I mean this week has been a great one Hopefully it continues, but if not, it's just that's do the market As the market give it and the market take it I never said that several times here on the channel So I want to give a quick shout out here to black bat for pointing out this one in our Discord server He actually pointed out when you saw was ac y was gapping Um, I stepped away came back and I saw the message like let me take a look can see right here it opened It was pretty quiet four dollars. I'm changed. There was really no action happening. So I didn't really know or Keep an eye on it and I came back and that's where I jumped in and take and take a look at this one So I traded this one in my other account But look at this squeeze From four dollars and some change to a high of 15 dollars and eight That is crazy. I mean that if it just imagine that you got in here And just bought a thousand shares at four dollars and some change and ride it all the way to 15 Like you are we're going to be a rich man today I missed that I got in at about 10 50 somewhere around 10 50 Where is that? Yeah, somewhere here and then rode it all the way to 15 dollars and I had my price Uh, uh, my my price target to 15 bucks and it got all the way to 15 kicked me out And and still squeezed all the way to 15.8 I what I did here. I didn't I didn't go in big here only took only about 100 shares because I already made more than triple or even quadruple my daily goal, which is 250 bucks So with my trade on upc I mean, I didn't want to be like a greedy savage. So I really took a small position just not to miss out But I made some good money here too good enough, you know to spend over the weekend Um, yeah, but this was a great trade and then look at that pull back and then After that try squeezing up again Never really got back to that high and then look at look at this massive drop towards the end of the day And never recovered so but it's still sitting At about nine dollars and some change which is almost a five dollars spread from Where it opened the day. So that was an interesting one. And then we also had a ft ft on our watch list And ft ft right off the gate pull back and then squeeze so right here At seven six to squeeze all the way to eight forty five for a high And then just look at that crumble and the reason why these drop here because they didn't offering At about 11 am they didn't offering which is crazy So the start just went from here and crumble all the way down To five dollars and some change right now trading after hours, which is crazy So as you can see, that's just how crazy the market is. So this thing came from Almost at five dollars squeeze all the way to eight And they made their offering and they got smack in the face So I didn't trade ft ft at all But that would have been like this little squeeze here would have been an opportunity to make some some money If you had to and they wanted to start that also gap that I didn't trade was uh, ux in if you can see this one and This one just went crazy because if we see right here, um started the day A low of a dollar and 20 cents and then squeeze all the way guys even after hours shoot So i'm doing this video right now after hours. Okay. The thing is also, I mean it's gone up To two dollars and 25 cents after hours So this is insane, but I didn't trade this one. I mean it's too late. I'm not gonna chase it I'm just gonna let it go Sometimes you don't win them all but those are the key ones that we traded. So again, like I said all in all A wonderful day. I can't really complain a good way to go into the weekend So if you're wondering, uh, again, I'm gonna put maybe in the description. I'll put the links to our discord server You can come join us there. Um for people that want Uh, right my full attention everything you can join a true patreon and just Come in there. I'm actually still setting up everything. So if you come in, um, there's several Channels that you can join that would help you. Um, you know, just keep me help you motivate if you want to learn in my style and everything Um, I'm really really trying to consolidate everything right now into the server So people can reach me anytime and ask questions and we can actually do one on one and also Um, maybe just um, you know guide you through some of your trades So that's if you want that I'll put a link in the description below so you can definitely go check it out If you're new to the channel, we talk about how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth If there's something that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell to you Don't miss out on new content. Also if you are looking to get started with investing We both has your promotion where if you sign up and deposit a hundred dollars You get some free stocks links in the description and as always do your due diligence.


Hi everyone, welcome to another edition of Barnes Takeout, your daily serving of art. My name is Kaylyn Jewel, I am senior instructor in adult education at the Barnes Foundation. And today I wanted to spend a little bit of time in gallery number 16 up on the second floor. This is a very busy gallery, as you can see by this view of the east wall, and it's a gallery that is extremely eclectic, which is a sort of funny thing to say, given that many of the galleries at the Barnes Foundation are just filled with objects from all over the world, all different time periods, all different kinds of materials, and we can see that on display in front of us right now. The object I want to focus on for our discussion today is this small head here of a woman. And before we do that, let's just sort of orient ourselves to this ensemble. So the ensemble is filled with objects from all different time periods and all different geographical locations. We've got some American furniture down here. We've got some ancient Egyptian objects here. We've also got some ancient Greek objects like this little vase right here. And if we zoom in, you can see we've got Navajo jewelry on display. We've got some medieval manuscripts. We've got some Persian manuscripts, paintings by American painters, the metal work, all kinds of stuff. So let's get a little bit closer to this lovely little head here. So here we go. So this is an object that doesn't really have a title. We don't know who the artist is. It was made sometime during the Roman Empire, probably in the first or second century AD. And it's an image of a woman. It's a little bit hard to discern who it depicts. It's certainly not a portrait of an individual, but it could be an image of a goddess. And we know that it probably is an image of a goddess given the distinctive hairstyle, which is pretty fabulous. This hairstyle where her hair is kind of divided into two sections. It's tied into a bow on top of her head. The rest of it sort of pulled back into a loose bun in the back that is sort of gently knotted, which we'll see in a second. I'll show you some, we'll look at some images of the sides in the back in a second. But let's zoom in to see some of the work that this ancient sculptor did. It's made out of marble. And we can see here a little bit of the hair kind of poking out on the side. You can see these areas here have been carved, not with a chisel, but were carved with a drill. And we see these here, here, and here. So an ancient drill was used by this Roman sculptor to create this image. So who is she? It's very likely that it's a representation of the Roman goddess Venus, who was the goddess of love. It seems sort of funny to say that though, because it's just an image that we just have the head, we don't have the rest of the body. But we do have other examples of this type of sculpture with this distinctive hairstyle. And notice the kind of the turn of her head. And it's not unlike the images from the ancient world like we see here. And this is an example of an image of Venus. It's called the Capital Line Venus. It's at the Capital Line Museums in the city of Rome. And it was discovered in the 16th century on an ancient plot of land that had been a villa during the Roman Empire. And all of these copies of images that we see of Venus, and you again notice the distinctive hairstyle up here, right? And her head is tilted. And this is one of the most famous images of Venus from the ancient world. And all of these Roman copies, whether it is the image we are looking at on the screen right now that is in Rome, or the one that we have at the Barnes Foundation. And so here's a view from another side. And let's look at the other side and the back. And these are all representations, they're all copies, I should say, of that ancient sculpture, which was originally made in Greece by a sculptor named Prec Sitalis. And Prec Sitalis carved the sculpture out of Perian marble, so a very fine-grained, kind of sparkly type of white marble. And he made it for the island of Canidos, which is in Greece. And they had a, there was a whole sanctuary. An architectural complex was built around the sculpture, around the original sculpture made by Prec Sitalis in the 4th century BC. And it was so popular, this ancient image of Venus, known to the Greeks as Aphrodite, that it was visited by people from all over the Mediterranean. And it became a sort of tourist destination for people wanting to see this image of Venus. And why it was so interesting is because it was one of the first, probably the first representation of the goddess in the nude.  But it was the first time that anybody had seen an image of a Greek goddess in the nude. So when we think about it within the context, so our copy that we have here, which was made by a Roman sometime in the 1st or 2nd century, when we think about it within the context of the foundation, and we think about all of the other objects that are on display in this ensemble. And of course, we understand that Dr. Barnes is wanting us to look at these objects in terms of their formal qualities. So that distinctive tilt of her head that you can see is something that you can sort of pick out. One of the things that I noticed when I look at this ensemble is that you can pick it out in other images on display on this wall. And we'll just look at two of them very quickly. So here we have a 14th century German manuscript. So it's from the Middle Ages. And notice the distinctive turn of the head of Christ here who is showing his wound in an image that is referred to as Christ as the man of sorrows. We can see that here. And then if we look at another image that is displayed just in this same area, we can see another medieval manuscript page also from 14th century Germany. And we've got the Virgin Mary here holding the Christ child in her lap. And notice when we zoom in that we have that sort of distinctive head tilt. It's not as exaggerated as we see in the image of Christ, but it is still there. And then also I'd like to point your attention to the hair that's sort of cascading around her shoulders and her head. It's not unlike our image of Venus down here, which we see here again. So when we are all back at the barns, I would encourage you to venture into Gallery number 16 and take a moment to look at all of these objects, whether they are ancient or medieval or modern and try to see some visual connections between them. It's always a fun thing to try to do. And Dr. Barnes would really like it if we tried to do that. So thanks for joining me today. I hope you've enjoyed looking at this fabulous ancient sculpture. And be sure to join us for another Barnes Takeout. Thanks, take care. Thanks to the director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.


Alright, so we're talking property on your feel-good breakfast show this morning now You've been searching for that perfect home, and then you finally find it now what so once you have found your dream properly How do you proceed and take on this task? Well today? We will be answering just that question and also deal with a number of perceived issues consumers may have and we look at how To handle those and here to help us as private property CEO Simon Bray Simon always good to catch up with you my man Yeah, good to see you again. All right So listen man It's always great to hear you advice when it comes to property a lot of people are wondering about it So I think first things first. We're looking for a dream home The question I think a lot of consumers have when especially when it comes to logging on to private properties. What can they expect? Well, I mean when people come to a property website like ours, it's all about finding the next home You know that dream home for for a lot of people is is high up on their bucket list It's a life accomplishment to you know own and and live in a beautiful property and Private property is one of those websites that you can go to and you can see all of the homes available on the market at any time So obviously it's about starting your search It's about Investigating the markets that you want to live in Finding the property that best suits you and your family's needs You can add them to a wish list on the site. So, you know your top 10 properties are all there ready to go Well, you know what it beats driving around and trying to find it I mean cuts down on so much of your time as well now once you've logged on you found your dream home now Obviously the next step is you need to see it and you know what I find through experience That's sometimes it's hard to get in touch with the agent to make sure that you actually can go see that home How are you guys finding that? You know it can be quite a big frustration people find that the home of their dreams It's this you know lovely bachelor pad or this this urban apartment and they want to go and see it And they want to go and see it now And often they don't realize that the estate agent that's on the other side the guy advertising the property is on the road He's running his business. He's in show days so he's often quite difficult to get hold of and a lot of people that send emails in particular over the platform Get frustrated that their email goes unanswered for days and they just kind of lose hope with the process In fact, we see 70% of inquiries on the site are actually phone calls And that's the best way to get hold of an estate agent the guys on the road Just pick up the phone give him a shout and you can organize a viewing as soon as possible Obviously, if you don't like that if you want to you know have the guy call you back There's a convenient service on the site You just hit call me back the agent gets the details of the listing you're looking at And your name and number and you'll give you a shout when he's got a chance I love the fact that you guys are making it so easy because house buying can get quite stressful now You mentioned the importance of viewing of course you are buying a property online or searching for online I mean, it's not the same as let's say come buying a pair of shoes across 200 bucks No for sure for sure I mean this is the biggest investment a lot of people make in their lives and no two properties are the same So you absolutely have to see the property before you buy it and so viewing a property is essential And I think that's where the age-old art of showdays really come in if you're in the market and you're serious You should probably be going to showdays Our website has a great tool that allows you to see all the showdays coming up for that week And that type of thing is really good That means you can go in there on a Sunday afternoon You can check out the house with the agent and there's kind of a no commitment viewing that that happens there Now my next question is can I trust the private property agents because it's daunting as it is to buy a house I mean going online as well. It's maybe unfamiliar for a lot of people out there.  Well, absolutely And I think that's the ultimate vision for a business like ours is to connect the people that are really searching for property to the People that make that property dream happen So you can absolutely trust the agents on the other side of the phone We spend a lot of time with them In fact, we have sales people on the road that call on them building relationships We're working with them on their their online service provision. We see about 500 agents a week So we can vouch for most of the agents on the site. They certified their reputable agents They know what they're doing. There's certainly professionals in their market. Well, Simon Thank you once again so much you guys are doing a great job with the website before we wrap up this morning What is your tip of the day? And there's great property content is great information about properties on our website But if you're really serious about finding your next home, you've got to make that appointment You got to go and view those properties. All right. Thank you so much go and view those properties Don't let the lack of knowledge be the pitfall between you and your dream home Ask if you don't know and make use of platforms such as private property to guide you through the process Of course, you can log on to private property.co.za for more info and before you know it You could be sipping coffee in your very own dream home You


Over the last decade, we've seen the emergence of a new position in the fitness industry, a way to make money, the fitness influencer. This really didn't exist more than about 10 years ago, but now it's a potential avenue to build a business if you love fitness. Here's the problem, most people do it totally wrong. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the biggest mistakes people make when trying to build a business as a fitness influencer. You know what I wish we would have done? Maybe Doug can do this while we're talking. I wanted to find out the stat on, because I remember hearing you, you know, reading it in an article, one of the other on the like top like five things that kids are asked in high school, like, what do you want to be? Oh, well, not YouTuber or influencers like up there now, right now. Yeah. I mean, that didn't exist just say 15 years ago as an even option. And it went from being not ever being an option to all of a sudden a top five thing that a kid or profession that a kid wants to wants to be when they grow up. I find that really interesting that something like that skyrocketed that fast.  You know, like, depending on culture, kids tend to want to do the thing that gets a lot of attention.  I don't think kids say astronaut at all anymore. You know, professional athlete, although I think that now kids are starting to realize that that's or have realized for a while that that's super, super rare. 98% of middle school and high school students would like to be a social 98%. Oh, my God. I think the perception is that it's just like easy thing to do. Well, I. Well, I actually know barriers. I mean, there's no barriers. It's relatively inexpensive.  So it's like they're constantly just like paying attention to all these other people doing it. So and I would imagine that everybody or every kid by now probably has, you know, like the Kevin Bacon thing, right? But within six people, they've probably got somebody who they know who's young and making a lot of money doing it. Wow. Or at least has a lot of followers. You know what I mean? OK, that's probably what. So that's a good point. I have and I even have a big gas. I have a buddy who's in his late 40s who I talked to and his his wife and him are in the social media thing. They kind of got into it in the last like 10 years or whatever. And he'll send me people over who he really likes. And even someone who's older than a serial entrepreneur, I would I would consider a smarter guy or a more savvy guy when it comes to business.  Like he's so impressed with this, this guy's business. And I'm like, you know, it's funny because I know more about that person's business than obviously he does.  It's like this dude's ball and he's got a killer. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't I don't think he's got his killer of a business as you think he does. So there is this misconception around two, probably and that probably exacerbates this situation, right?   And this is the kind of conundrum with the influencer space. It's just like, you don't really know for sure if they're authentic in what they're presenting. And this is just something it's it's always like very grandiose what they want you to perceive. There's a whole business around that. There's an entire industry built around products and services to make you appear as if you're more successful than you are because it provides some form of like social evidence.  They got good information. I kind of like them. And then you see that they have like a Lamborghini or they're in a private jet. Okay, they must be really good. But the thing with social media is obviously you can present whatever you want. And you're always trying to present an image which makes it hard to judge whether or not somebody's got good information or whether or not they're actually successful. Now, to be clear, it's very, very rare to make millions of dollars as a fitness influencer on social media. Extremely rare, very, very rare, but it's very possible if you do a good job and you're diligent and you're consistent and you provide good information, good value to make a living as an influencer. I mean, you can, I could take somebody so long as they're not terrible and they're lazy. If they're good and consistent and they do a good job and they apply themselves, I would say, you know, you've got pretty good odds at making a good living using, you know, being a fitness influencer. The whole millionaire thing, that's the forget that that's like trying to be a pro athlete. But could you support yourself as a fitness influencer through work, effort, providing value, learning and growing? Yes, you totally could. It's totally possible. These are the people that make the biggest, biggest mistakes, though, or the people who have that potential make massive mistakes throughout this pursuit and then they become disenfranchised or they stop altogether. And I think that's what we should focus. All right. Today's giveaway is Maps Power Lift. This is a powerlifting workout program. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you do all those things and you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. We're also running a sale right now, Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro and the Prime Bundle all 50% off only this month. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Back to the show. Using your pro athlete, you know, analogy, what do you think it is? Do you think that they are, you know, watching the, the one percenters that have made millions of it and seeing like how they act and what they do and then trying to, to mirror that and thinking like, that's the reason why they've had all this blueprint in the form. Right. So what do you think is that, is that like that causes that like, that's got to be part of it, right? Uh, what you think that that person is doing and so you try to copy it, but all you really see is their social media. So you're not really sure you just see their presentation. And unfortunately the top, top popular people, I should say with the most follower followers in fitness tend to be like models or they look like models. And so you think that that's the value and that's what you try to present. In fact, that takes us to the first one, which is a huge mistake that people make in the fitness space is you see the people with all the following on Instagram or social media and they tend to be these perfect bodies, good looking, super ripped, super fit. And so you're like, okay, this is how I'm going to build a business is by trying to be like this, which your odds of success with that are not only small, they're extremely small, but then also if you do succeed this way, your, your shelf life is very, very short. You're not going to have a long term business. Well, I think that's the part that is most important is that because there is a part of that, the formula that has been proven in our space to work, right? Like the before and after pictures, the, you know, look where I was before now, look at me. I'm shredded, like, or I'm your, this gorgeous model. And so you get all this attention. And so there is, there is a part of that that actually might be viable enough to, to grow an audience, right? But to your point, it's really, really stressful to have built your success off that we've had the opportunity and I won't name drop on here of people that have been in our space for a decade or so that have built it around social media, that have got millions of followers and a lot of them battle with like depression or feel like they're not being their authentic self because they have created this image that was built around their body and their physique. And even if they love fitness and working out, they're like, man, it's like, if I'm not putting that out there all the time, then I'm not getting the traction. If I'm not getting the traction, I'm not getting the conversions. I'm not getting the conversions. I don't have a viable business. And so they get in this hamster wheel of having to kind of use their body and themselves like to promote that engagement all the time. And it's like, even though they made some good money on the way up, it's torture. In fact, I meant to bring this up on a koala the other day that I didn't bring it up to you. There's actually a counter movement to all this. I mean, there's a girl, I'll look her up, see if I can find her name. But she's, she, they did a big article on her. She's a big influencer, had like a million plus followers with that. And she's been doing this for a while. And she's now making a business on how to get out of being an influencer.  And then being like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then feeling trapped because you've made such good money. So she's now making a business out of the business. There's, there's a few reasons why this is really a terrible way to build a media business or an influencer business if you're in fitness in terms of in the context of, you know, selling your body as evidence. One, and I'll start with the most obvious one, is to be beautiful enough or attractive enough or have a body that looks good enough to gain that type of attention puts you at the point one percent of everybody. So right away, if you're watching or listening to this, you're probably not that. Okay, I'll bet that almost everybody watching this right now is probably not that. So that's number one. That's just realistic. Now people might have distorted, you know, what do you mean? Yeah, but the truth is, look, the truth is you're not gonna, you're not that good looking to make that kind of an impression. It's just that that's just that. So that's number one. But now let's go down a little bit. So let's say that you are that person that you do have that point one percent of appearance or body or whatever to gain that type of type of attention. Well, now you've gained that attention.  Because it's free. You're looking at me for free on Instagram. So you see lots of pages like this on Instagram where people follow people because they like to look at them. But that doesn't mean they want to buy something from you. In fact, they're getting the product that they value already for free. And we've seen this before with their stories of these influencers who have lots of followers because they're booty shots or whatever. Then they try and sell a t-shirt and they can't sell a single one. So so that's the second tier there is now how do you even convert that? And then here's the third one that I think will appeal to a lot of real fitness enthusiasts or people who want to do this for a living. This is not the right way to sell fitness. If you're a trainer, if you're not just trying to build a business, but you actually have a passion for fitness, selling the appearance and the looks is the worst way to convey the right message for fitness. It's actually what's a big problem with the fitness industry and you're not helping anybody. It's not going to help anybody to do so. It's one of the reasons why we don't even use before and after here at Mind Pump, even though our marketing team is constantly telling us to do so. It doesn't sell fitness the right way because the way you look is but one of the values that fitness provides. And if you focus on that, you are never going to help people develop this long term relationship with health and fitness. But I'm inspiring people with how awesome I look. No, you're not. And here's the last part. Here's the last part. I'll say this. This is what Adam's talking about. You can get trapped in this. This is why people like me. This is my value. I'm making money off of it. I'm getting older. This is getting boring. I feel like I have more value in this, but this is all people want. And I know people listening right now who've never had a lot of money or probably like, I don't care. I just get lots of money. I think it's exactly how I know it's so it's going in one ear and out the other. I'm going to tell you right now tell we know lots of people like this where this becomes a personal hell to where people like them for for what they're actually not. And they're making money.   I don't like to keep posting this. What am I doing slipped?  So it's just a terrible way to build a don't you think it's a bit of a microcosm of celebrities and pro athletes totally and what they go through like you.   But many of those those actors, actresses and athletes after their career is over, go into crazy depression and become alcoholics, drug addicts. And a lot of that is because they've they've identified as this character that they've built up their entire life. And it's not really their authentic self and they're tortured inside yet they have all this money and all this fame, but they're completely depressed. I think we're seeing that play out at a smaller scale or a smaller scale in terms of probably revenue wise of fame in social media. Sure. Yeah. No, I think that's a great parallel because even you'll see a lot of these like actors, actresses like later on in their careers, like they're so known for their look, right? Like that's their entire value. And so they have to try and recreate that or at least preserve as much as possible with crazy surgeries and things. And those don't always go so well. And it's just like they just look completely tortured. Yeah. And you have a you have a short shelf life. Like if you're if people value for looking perfect, how long can you look perfect for? And then what? And then you got nothing, right?  And it's much more meaningful. But again, at the very top, your odds of building any kind of business based off of your looks is almost zero percent period in the story. And I'm saying that because again, there's people who are like, I don't care. I just want to make money. You're not going to make money doing that. So don't make that big mistake. All right. The second one. Adam talks about this all the time whenever he's talking to people about building business on social media, which is like people focus a lot too much, I would say, on the follower count versus actual engagement. I love it when you go into this Adam. Yeah, well, I mean, it's no different than if we were talking about like a, you know, brick and mortar or a business that you would start 20 years ago is getting so hung up on just trying to get so much traffic your way. But if you don't have a good product, you don't add value. You're not engaging with the customer the likelihood that all these people are going to purchase or buy anything of you is very low. And I don't know how many times we've had somebody on the show or we've met who has hardly any followers, but has this multi, multi million dollar business and extremely successful and vice versa. Somebody comes on and they have millions of followers and they have a terrible business. So this idea of just having tons of eyes on you is means that you have a great business is completely false. It's what if I had somebody right, like, and I, by the way, like I went through this like experiment myself when we first turned on Instagram and Facebook and all these platforms.  I didn't know how to build a business off this. And I was trying to figure that out. And I remember using my physique to gain attention and get followers.  But then what I realized was those people were following me for those reasons. And if I was trying to sell them a nutrition plan or a personal training or a product had nothing to do with my half-naked body or my abs.  And so I'd rather have five new people listening to me because I posted something about rehabbing knee surgery, right? Because I've trained a lot of clients that have had ACL, MCL issues. It's a common thing that's happened. They want to get back in the gym. What are good stretches? What are good exercises? I'd rather do a post about that, get hardly any likes, but get two or three people who go, oh, wow, this really helped me. I just went through ACL, MCL surgery. Thank you. That person or those two people that engaged in that post are far more valuable than 500 looky-loos because I showed my abs on a picture before because one of those is attracting my client. The other one is just getting attention. I'm going to be even more extreme. OK, I'm going to really illustrate this. From a business standpoint, from building a business, it's far more valuable to have 1,000 really hardcore disciple followers. People that really are like, man, this person is the man or the girl. This is the person I'm following. I love what they say. I trust them. It's more valuable to have 1,000 of those than it is to have 100,000 normal social media followers. OK? If you have 1,000 people that really follow you, you have, no joke, a deep six-figure business, or maybe even a million-dollar-year business. If you have 100,000 people following you on social media, just normal following you, you're lucky if you make 10 grand a year off that. Lucky if you can make 10 grand a year. So that's the difference. 1,000 people who really find value in what you have to say, it is not hard at all. It's very easy to sell them a $300 or $500 or $1,000 service or product. You have 100,000 people following you on social media just because they like to look at you. Try selling each of them a dollar product. Good luck. You're probably going to sell to 20 people and get nothing else. That's the illusion that people have with social media. They see followers and they think, wow, all those people, no, that means nothing. Now I'm going to take a step back. Adam, you mentioned brick and mortar. We have become so distorted with followers that we don't even realize that these are potential customers.  But for some reason on social media, 1,000 is like, oh, that's nothing. I need hundreds of thousands. No, that's not true at all. Engagement is everything. The follower count is almost nothing. Well, and two, big businesses are privy to this now. Like they're looking for influencers and people who actually have those kind of comments in their posts where there's back and forth and there's dialogue. And they're really interested in what you have to present versus just the robots kind of like marketing, whatever they're marketing within your post. And I think, again, this goes back to being popular or just or having that kind of like fervorous type of engagement. Like big businesses are paying attention to that and they want to invest in the smaller influencer that actually has that kind of power and engagement in conversation with their fans. No, that's 100 percent right. Like I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of these companies, right? Because I handle that side of the business for us with partnerships. And there was this kind of like learning curve for them. Most all of them at one point when they had a lot of them took on funding and so they had capital and they could go, OK, we're going to go spend $100,000 on advertising. So what do they do? They go to the top of Instagram or top of Twitter.  And it was and then what they found was way more successful was finding these what they call micro influencers that had maybe five or ten thousand followers, but lots of engagement. They're they're five or ten thousand followers, but hundreds of comments because those people are all talking to that one person. That and that person was far more valuable for their business than the person who had a million followers that just gets, you know, ten thousand likes, but no comments. No one's asking questions. No one's engaging with that person. And so to your point, Sal, you are far better off than kind of the original point I made about chasing after that those two people who are going to engage with that post that aligns with your business than gaining ten thousand people as attention by, you know, a booty pic or an ad pic or, you know, the trends, right? There's always these trendy videos that are going on tick tock or hit the algorithm.  And there's this like feedback, this positive feedback loop of, oh, it's working because I'm getting more views and I'm getting more likes and it's just like, well, yeah, but are these people really the type of people that are potentially going to buy from you? All you're really doing is driving your conversion rate down. You're getting a bunch more attention, but then the likelihood of that one of those people is going to convert is even lower because they're not coming in there for your information. And to go deeper with that, people like, well, who cares if your conversion rate goes down, if you have more potential? It's harder to read your business that way. Yeah, of course. If you have a lot of people and your conversion rate goes down, like it's hard to read the signals in terms of what's working, what's providing value. You want a high conversion rate because you could read the signals, pivot and be very effective with your business. This is just a business fact. So look, if you want followers, follow trends. If you want a business, you have to add value. It's a big difference between the two. I'll add one more thing to that too. You also, by adding value, you're going in versus just trying to get followers. You also minimize the amount of negative attention that you tend to get. You know, when you're chasing just followers and you get lots of eyeballs, so do all the hate. And that's an area that a lot of these influencers struggle with is, you know, it's hard enough to get attention. Then you finally get the attention and you get equally as bad attention as you get good attention. And then you have these influencers that go into depression because they're like, oh my God. Well, yeah, why are they turning on me? I mean, I remember even feeling that a little bit.    Boy, that starts to affect you.  So by adding value and going that direction and only trying to pick up three or five people through value versus getting thousands of people through attention, you also minimize the amount of negative attention that you get. Awesome. All right, so this next one, Adam used to talk about this a lot, was just people jumping to any sponsor that offers them money because they get excited. Wow, this person's gonna offer me a dollar per supplement or 10% affiliate fee or whatever. And you always made a really, really big deal about not doing this. So I'd love for you to go in this game. Yeah, we were very slow to add sponsorship to the podcast. We agreed early on that we didn't need it when we do decide to do it. We're gonna pick partners that we really love and we wanna work with.    But then what you do is you're, it's like a marriage, a partnership like us that we have is like a marriage. So as an affiliate or a brand I decided to work with.  Like you should be very slow to that because it is now attached to your brand. I did a post the other day where I shared a post of Jeremy Buendia who's, I don't know, I think he's up to 4 million followers. I've now seen this guy in like the last five, six years, he's on his fifth protein shake, fifth company.  And all they care about is brand awareness, eyeballs. Now 4 million people have seen their brand by whatever they're paying him to do that. And they eventually it'll probably happen after a six month or a one year contract, his revenue will start to decline. He won't be giving the ROI that they're paying them anymore. And then they cut his ties and they already got what they wanted from him. And then the next supplement comes along.  You're following that is paying attention to you and see that they see you just brand hopping. And then they start to question like, does this guy really care about what he's providing us? Or is he just hopping from brand to brand whoever's willing to pay him more? And the reason why we convert so high for our brands is because we talked about this on the show beforehand. We said, we're not gonna take these partnerships. And when we do, you guys are gonna know that these are brands that we love, we use that are aligned with our message. And so when you do it that way, then you get way more loyalty. You get a lot more people that are gonna convert from it. And so this is a major mistake that you see a lot of influencers. One of the reasons why micro influencers, companies are finding are great ways to advertise is because they're following trust what they have to say. You, there is no faster way to lose the trust of your audience than switching from company to company to company to company that provides the same product. This is the best protein powder that's on the market. You're like, no, this is the best protein powder. Actually it's this one. And oh, this protein powder is breaking out.   So then when you actually have real product that is maybe life changing for you comes along and you finally get to partner up with them and then you talk about it. People are like, okay, yeah, buddy, sure. So it kills your personal brand and your ability to actually truly influence and actually do well. And now on the flip side, a sponsor can actually hurt your business, which is what we're talking about, but a sponsor can also, if you do the right job or do a good job, help build your business. So I'll use an example of a company that we started working with that actually has now helped our business. So there's a long process of working with us. We don't work with just anybody. We're very picky. And as a result, our audience tends to trust us. We have the highest conversion rates almost of anybody in our space as a result. And we take that very seriously. But I'll give you an example. We started working with a company called Viori a while ago before they were massive, before they were as big as they are now. We started working with them. We love the owner. We love the concept. The people are amazing. And Viori has since exploded. Now I'd like to think it's because of us, but I don't think so. I think they're just an awesome company. But nonetheless, now we're affiliated with this company that's exploding. So now it brings us as much brand awareness as almost as much as we bring them. We also look good because we've picked a great company to work with. You don't wanna work with a company that then has a bad reputation. But it's also amazing to work with a company that grows and develops this incredible reputation because it's also a reflection on you. It's like, wow, look at that person working with that company. And that company has really taken off and they've started working with them before they were that big and they continue to work with them. Like that looks pretty damn big. By the way, to that point Sal, and if you're listening and you are aspiring to be an influencer or you already are one, you will come across a point where you have to make this decision where I could partner with a brand that I love that I think is gonna be huge or great one day, but I might not make hardly any money or any money at first to build this relationship where I have this other competitor who's like a no-name brand really, but they're willing to spend money on me right away and do that. And so a lot of times you will have to sacrifice potentially money to build that relationship first with the brand that you really like in order to show that you have value to add to their company to work on that partnership and relationship opposed to taking the quick money. And so there's gonna be a point where that happens and if you make the right decision, you may not make it more money initially, but in the long run, you will to the points that you're making. We did that. I'm not gonna say names, I don't wanna call anybody out, but we were working with, I think Organifi at the time, we've been with them for a long time. And then another supplement company, and I'm not gonna say who they are, but let's just say they're one of the top or they were at the time, one of the top bodybuilding brands that was out there. And just to get their attention was actually quite humbling. Like, wow, they wanna work with us, but it's a no right out the gates because we don't like the products, we don't like the practices, they stand for a lot of things that we speak against. They would have offered us a lot more money than at the time Organifi did, but we said no because we looked down towards the future, not just right now, which I think takes us to the next point, which is being impatient. This is a big mistake. I think part of jumping with sponsors right away is being impatient, wanting to make money. But then the other part of being impatient is people tend to look at building a business through social media or become an influencer as if it's this business, it's like it doesn't follow the same rules of business. Like I'm gonna get into this and within a few months I should have this like flourishing business. In no other business space do people think this way. Nobody says I'm gonna open a brick and mortar, anything in three months I'm gonna make tons of money. Everybody expects I'm gonna lose money for the first year or two or five before I really start to make a lot of money. For some reason the influencer space, people have this weird perception that if it's not working after 90 days or six months or a year, well then it's just not gonna work. All business rules still apply. Still takes a long time due diligence and consistency to build a business and the social media game is really no different. This is the advantage the four of us dorks had, I think when we first got into this space was that we understood building a business really well before we got into the social media space and we applied that same philosophy of what makes a business successful and we knew we embraced the failure, we embraced the slow grind, we embraced not making money for a long time. You have to. I mean, that's just part of the process. If you think it's gonna turn overnight, like you're in for a rude awakening because very few people get the overnight success. And I do think because there's these anomalies that are out there where somebody, it was mentioned on Joe Rogan and so all of a sudden they get viral overnight or they come out with some product or they do some gimmicky thing that goes viral and they make a bunch of money off of that one viral post. I think because we have these anomalies, people think that that's a viable way to try and build your business. That's the norm. Sure, but even then like a lot of times they don't have the infrastructure in place, they don't have a lot of that added value already built into their business.  What a great point you make, Justin. When we first started and we were starting to build some attraction and I would put us in the category of a micro influencer back then, people would always be like, oh man, if you guys got on Joe Rogan, oh man, if you guys, and I used to say like, I hope we don't get on Joe Rogan because at that point in the business, we hadn't built the infrastructure and this is a year or two years down, right? So we're a year, two years in, we're getting good traction, businesses doing all right, we're not crushing.  Yes. Just all the water's on the floor. Yes, and you're like, yeah, great, I got a full glass of shot glass but then I missed all this other thing and like, so there was a part of me that like, I didn't want that attention. I didn't want that traction yet. Like it takes time to build an infrastructure. It takes time to build a good backend and to have all the systems in place to support the traffic of thousands of people all of a sudden coming to your website. Like that would be the best and worst thing happening all at once because if a customer comes in and they have a bad experience the first time, the likelihood they're gonna come back is extremely low.  There's a good likelihood. They're gonna say negative stuff which could kill your business. I'd much rather go slow, very slow, slowly build it and be ready, learn from helping one or two people, reiterate, help a couple more people reiterate, keep improving, keep getting better. Yeah, keep trying to get those two or three people to have such a good experience that they go and tell five other people. Then once you have proven that model, okay, now maybe we can handle this. But man, I don't think it was, it was, do you remember when I finally said, okay, I feel like, it was like four or five years later. Way later, that I would say, I don't want Joe Rogan, that would be terrible if we got on there. We're not ready yet. We're not ready. I barely feel like the business is ready to where it could support that kind of trap. Yeah, I mean, just to give people an example, use ourselves as an example, we had normal jobs, we had families and we would meet up every single week multiple times and record in the beginning three episodes and then five episodes a week for a full year before we made a dollar. Consistently, every single week we'd show up with content, record an episode, we'd had no media experience so it was definitely took a lot longer than it does now, edit the whole thing, put it out there for 12 months without making a single dollar. People have a tough time doing this for two months on Instagram where they could just type something out and post a picture. So just to give you an example, like we're definitely practicing what we preach, like any business that's gonna take time, that's just the bottom line. All right, the next one, I think this one's really important because people don't realize that if they pick the right medium for their strengths, it can have a profound impact on their business or if they pick the wrong medium for their strengths, then it can also have a profound impact on their business. So in the fitness space or in any business space, I think what people tend to do is they tend to look at social media and they look at the platform that tends to sell that space the best and they disregard their own strength. To give an example, if I say fitness, most people look at Instagram because it's visual. Oh, fitness, Instagram, that's the place to go because of people posting pictures of their workouts and of their muscles and whatever and that's where the biggest fitness influencer pages are. That's true, but if you suck at posting pictures, if you do a good job communicating through text or video, then it's a terrible medium for you. You're better off using another medium where you can really utilize your skills. I know people who built a tremendous fitness business through blogs because they were great at communicating that style and Instagram just wasn't their strength at all. So there's a lot of different ways to build this business. Think of yourself, think of what you would do best using, think of how you communicate. That's where you should probably focus most of your time because that's where you're gonna wanna spend your time and that's also where you're gonna get the most impact. Yeah, I think if you're great at writing, I think things like medium, I think blog posts. Yeah, sub-stack, things like that to get attention. If you're really good at communicating in long form, I think things like podcast are really good. If you're really animated and comfortable speaking to the camera. I think- Charismatic on YouTube, yeah. YouTube is really good for you. If you are good with taking photos and visually can do things with it and you can write good captions to obviously, I think Instagram is good for you. If you're really good at doing very controversial, short, witty type posts like Twitter, like so you have the ability to say something that is controversial and then be able to defend it within your posts. That's why I think Sal was always made for- Do you like to argue? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember telling Sal for the longest time, you gotta get on Twitter. I think it was made for you because Sal is great at this, is saying something that I think gets a lot of attention from people and then he can go back and forth and explain and articulate his point really well. So I think that type of medium does well. And the idea is that, and I remember hearing, I think it was Gary Vee talk about viewing all of it as types of real estate. And at one point, when you build a big enough business that's smart to have acquired property in all these categories and allow that to build equity in your business over time. So I do think it's smart to eventually dabble in all of these and have a presence in all of them. But initially, when you're trying to build and get traction, it makes the most sense to find the medium, not that's necessarily best for that business you want to Sal's point, but that you speak the best to. Highlights your strengths. That you like, that you're most comfortable with, that you use well. Lean into that, get good at that, learn how to get traction there and then you can start to learn the other means. Versus trying to do all of it at once, which I see a lot when someone starts. Yeah, out the gates. Yeah, out the gates, they've got a Twitter, they've got Instagram, they've got Facebook because they're told you need to have all these platforms. And it's like, yeah, eventually you can get there, but let's first prove that using the one you're best at and that you enjoy the most, that you can gain traction and attention there. Because if you can't even do it there for free, why would you waste your time and energy and equity everywhere else trying to build? Now, to that point, Adam, the next point is a mistake, which is always going in all in on one platform, right? You built your, you started your business, you found the platform that works with your strengths. Now it's growing, and then you just stay there. But that's the only place you're at and you built everything there. Now, for me, the obvious mistake with that, and again, I'd love your input on this, Adam, but the obvious mistake there is you don't really own your business when you're on one of these platforms. Like if you're on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, they hold the keys, they really do. And they can take it away at any moment. And I've known a lot of people where they've lost their entire businesses because they were completely concentrated in one platform. So to me, that seems like the most obvious one, but... So the way I help somebody with this that's starting their business, the very first thing, I don't care which platform you've chose to go all in at is to build an email list to compliment it right away. So if you're becoming famous or building a lot of traction on, say, Instagram and you're not capturing those leads and getting them over to an email list simultaneously, you're in a huge risk category because if something changes on Instagram algorithm-wise or like what happened to Sal completely kicked off, imagine if our entire business revolved around your Instagram when you went down for almost a year, that would be crazy. Like that would have just totally destroyed our business. Now, if you have an email list that you have, and I know it's on Google's platform, but they've email has never touched, it's been left the same for the longest. It's probably one of the safest places as far as a platform that you can get people off because then you have this list that you own. And if for some reason, one of those platforms either shuts you down or changes algorithm, you can reach your people and hopefully direct them to another potential medium. So I think one of the best ways to hedge when you're building on a social media platform is to also compliment that with an email list first. So that's like the easy like, okay, I'm gonna go- Step one. So all in on the platform, I believe that I communicate the best on. Simultaneously, I'm going to build an email list that and what does that look like, okay? Offer something, either be a newsletter. And it doesn't, by the way, people, there's a great book, Doug, it's slipping my mind right now that I cannot think of right now for that you and I both read. He's one of your favorite marketing guys. Oh, all of us read it. It's one of your favorite marketing guys that we've- Russell Brunson. There you go, Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson's two books that I really like that it's slipping the names for me right now. Yeah, that's dot comsecrets and expert secrets. Thank you, dot comsecrets, expert secrets. He goes into how simple the emailing can be. It doesn't need to be this like formal business email. It's just communicating with your people, adding value to them, whatever it is that you're doing. So run that simultaneously as you're also growing your whatever medium as that is one of the ways to hedge. So usually when you get enough traction, enough of a business, you can start to acquire all the other platforms and build those out. But to protect yourself, do not just go all in on one platform and not own your people or list of your people because of the fear of what could potentially happen. Yeah, it's a terrible fate. I've known a few people where they had great businesses and then got kicked off or lost. Like overnight, yeah. Oh, or even just got hacked and then they can't get it back for like a week and they lost tens of thousands of dollars in that entire week. Terrible, terrible position to be in. And it makes you very, very vulnerable. All right, lastly, this one's interesting because this has always been a challenge for people in the fitness space. I saw this before social media was even a thing in the gyms and to me, this is a huge mistake because number one, it's wrong and number two, not only is it wrong, it's the opposite of what's right. And that is the scarcity mindset. So here's what used to happen in gyms. When I would run gyms or own gyms and I'd have, let's say trainers working for me, you have that trainer, they're trying to build their business and they're afraid to refer potential clients to other trainers or other health practitioners for fear of losing that person. So it's like, well, they're buying 10 sessions for me but if I send them to that chiropractor that might help them with their low back or that nutrition person or that therapist or whatever, then their funds will get spread thin, they're not gonna afford working with me anymore and I'm gonna lose that customer or if I refer to that trainer who's better at, let's say athletic performance than I am, they're gonna wanna hire that trainer and not me. So I'm just gonna not refer this person to anyone. I'm not even gonna quote other fitness professionals for fear that this person's gonna end up leaving me. This is not just the wrong way, it actually will kill and hurt your business. The most successful trainers that I had in gyms and one thing that I did that really built my business was I built a network of people that I refer to and what it did is it made my value go through the roof as a trainer, it made my value go through the roof to where my clients, anytime they had an issue, they came to me and said, hey, Sal, do you have somebody that works with an naturopathic medicine or do you know a good chiropractor or Sal, what do you think about acupuncture? I became the go-to person and my value went through the roof. So this is not just the wrong way, literally it'll kill your business if you have this mentality. Yeah, I remember this mentality with something that I always had, like just if I'm not the best person for the job and I know somebody for that, like I'm gonna send them their way and it's a tough thing for a lot of people in the space to understand that what's gonna happen as a result of that? I'm gonna lose this client potentially and when you're first starting off with your business, that's a really hard pill to swallow because you need every client you could potentially get and this is all very like short-term thinking of, I need this money and so therefore I need to do this and it was tempting a lot of times, like I could take somebody through the process of like preparing them to get on stage and do a show but I'm like, I'm not that guy, I'm not that trainer, this is not my strength. I know somebody that's amazing at this, I'm gonna send them their way and I just started doing that especially when I was like an independent trainer on my own and what did that do? That created an opportunity for that trainer to now look at what I do really well, start referring people to me, we start having this like just natural network that we create and it was a powerful thing that just started to funnel more clients my way and then I had also like that kind of value established where I could send, I would keep going out and find other people like you said, like for chiropractors, for physical therapists and start thinking like even bigger than that of being able to support even a client that I have, I could send them to get even better service. It's all about building trust and adding value. Of all the points, this is the one I'm probably most passionate about because I was wildly successful as a trainer and have been my entire career and I don't think I've ever been the smartest person in the room, the most educated or the most experienced. Most handsome though, you would probably most handsome. I was, okay, I was well liked. I was well liked by my clients, by my peers and it was for these reasons. I was never afraid to say that I got this from somebody else. Oh man, I was, Sal told me this the other day and then I, I've never, because the people that you're communicating this information to, they just want the right answers. They just want the best information. And they wanna trust you. They just wanna help.  They know that you're willing to do that.   It is the scarcity mindset and it's prevalent in gyms and it's even more so in the influencer in fitness space. It's why you every once in a while you'll hear me on this show where I throw these kind of subtle jabs that other fitness people, a lot of the times the reason why I do shit like that is because I've already tried to reach out and help them out or do something for them or invite them on our show. And they- They have the scarcity mindset. And they have the scarcity mindset that they don't wanna come on our show or they don't wanna communicate because they're afraid we're gonna poach their business or maybe that they think that that's my desired outcome. By the way, that's our goal now when you do that.  It's okay to do that. They create a ceiling for themselves. They create a box for themselves.  Not to mention when you lead with this, I just had a conversation with somebody we will have her on the show in the future. She reached out to me and she was like, we've known each other for a long time. We were on her podcast a long time ago and she wrote me this long old, and she started it with, hey, shooting my shot wants to come on the show. And I really like her content. I like her, so do you guys. We guys know who I'm talking about. She puts out really good business information related to fitness people and stuff. And you could tell she was like nervous to ask me to come on the show and that it's okay, you can say no, this and that all these things that I know that you're affiliated with this other company and it's like, I said, no, listen, I like the stuff you put out, come on the show and we'll do this. And I said, the guys don't want anything in return. We're not, you don't need to give me something to get on there. Like I think you put out good information. We're a friend, therefore we would do that. And you could tell she was just like blown away by that response, but it's like, when you do stuff like that, that's when those things end up coming back around. Now, maybe nine out of 10 don't, but that one person that you do solids or you help out with without any sort of conditions or transaction, I have to get something in return to help your business out or do something for you. Boy, man, you keep, if you lead a business life like that for a long enough period of time, those things really come back around and eventually boy, does it really pay off? Yeah, now that we've closed you on why scarcity mindset is terrible for your business because we have to sell you on it, here's the other part of it that's actually quite true.  It actually has to be done in a way to where it's actually selfless. The person who does something with the intention of getting something back, it doesn't last very long, very easy to tell. So big picture, okay, so first we had to sell you on it, but now here's the big picture. If you're in the fitness space because you really wanna help people, the best way you could help people is by collaborating with other experts and professionals because you don't know everything. So if you look at it from big picture, which we've done many times, we have trainers, we just had Braden come on the show, there's zero in it for us, all for him. Actually for us it's just for our audience, the guy's got great information, he's the person you can follow in the fitness space, that's got good information. We did this with Jordan Shallow before he became massive, we loved his information, he provided value that we weren't necessarily providing in a way that we didn't provide, we put him on our show, we had zero potential growth from that. It was like- Dr. Brink, Danny Mantrego. Right, so big picture it's like, okay, I'm here to help people, this is the best way to help people. And then of course we already sold you on why it's gonna help you build your business. And again, if you go into it thinking, I'm gonna get something in return, it's not gonna work. It has to be because you see this as being the best way to bring value to your audience. It has to be unconditional love. That's it, 100%. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Justin, I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump DeStefano, and Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the- Yeah, it was for me, it was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.