This is one of many work camps I've been to and spoken at, so I'm always excited to be at a work camp, it's fun for me. Somebody asked me why I came and I said it's for all the fields, because I like being here. So I'm very interactive, I try to get you guys to laugh a little bit, so shake up your, you know, loosen your laughing muscles a little bit so it won't be so, like, oh my gosh, it's a lot of stuff today. And we're going to talk about pricing, and contracts, and diversification, and so really more about the business of WordPress. That's what I've been doing for the last 10 years, and I've been a freelancer for the last 18. So prior eight years before I started with WordPress, I actually was doing everything from scratch in Notepad with HTML. I didn't even know what CSS was. Knowing that WordPress existed was a huge thing for me, and I was like, yay, I'm so excited that there's something else out there, and I don't have to sit here with all this crazy code all the time, and I can do this really easily and teach other people how to do it. So I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself. You've probably seen my Greengrass, this is my famous, you know, brand stuff, so you probably see this a lot. I'm actually an accounting founder, like I mentioned, and we're one of the sponsors this year, which is a big thing for me first year as a sponsor at WordCamp. I'm a stage hog. If you were at the opening remarks and you were there a little early, I was like, hey, everybody! So I do that a lot. I've even been to WordCamps where the speaker didn't show up on time, and I went up in front of the audience, and I was like, so, what does everybody do? And they thought I was a speaker, and the speaker came in and was like, what are you doing? So we got in trouble a little bit, and I'm a webmaster, so I love the web. I love websites. I love everything about building websites. A lot of the stuff when it gets to developing stuff, I don't know all that stuff. That's okay, because there's like a lot of guys that do, and I just say, hey, I need some help. I'm an expert marketer. I do love, love, love marketing. I like to see how one person can connect with another and share their idea, their wisdom, whatever it is, and really make that actual connection, not just that they're selling a product. Business guru, I do a lot of business coaching, and I think I'm somebody who should know. So I'll be in the happiest bar quite a bit today. If you want to come and hang out with me and ask me stuff, I'm always happy to give free stuff all day today, and then after work camp, then you have to pay. Alright, so we talked about the apocalypse. That's what I talked about. How to survive the apocalypse while being self-employed. And leaving politics out of this, do you think the last 10 years is kind of apocalyptic? Or do you think the next 10 years is going to be apocalyptic? And that goes not just for politics, that's why I'm saying that. I'm talking about that. The economy, the way that small businesses are working and growing or not growing. And depending whatever your affiliation or whatever it is, you have an opinion about one way or the other.  But my whole thing is, it should not matter to you what is happening out there. You should be able to sell your way out of a paperback. Pretty much. And that's what I've done. And I have had a lot of different opinions on the economy and stuff like that given to me. But I say, well, then how did I grow a six-figure business? The economy was so bad. It's because I didn't care about what was happening out there. I didn't worry about what was happening out there. I found a product and a service that kind of transcended all that. And that's what I really feel like wordpress is. It transcends a lot of the stuff that's happening out in the world and you can really use it to grow yourself a business, a job, or even an entire lifestyle. So that's what I mean by the apocalypse. So we're going to talk about these few things today. And at the end we'll have a little bit of a recap. Diversification. I don't know how many of you think or have heard that you really should just pick one thing and focus on it. How I believe that. And do you believe you should have multiple revenue streams? You should have your main piece you focus on and then you have multiple orders. So we're going to go into that a little bit. We're going to talk about pricing. I get that question all the time. And then product pricing is consultation. How do you handle consultations? Cash flow management. This is almost sounding like an accounting thing, but it's not. Because cash flow management is something you should be doing. It doesn't matter what industry you're in or what business you're in. If you have a business in WordPress or in any kind of web or any kind of development, you should be managing your cash flow. And this is super, super hard to do. So I'm horrible at it, just entirely right now. But it's something that you have to always strive for. And then contracts, always get contract request questions. And then perseverance. Because we have to end on an inspirational note. Alright, so. Did anybody have any questions before we get into diversification? No? Okay, good. So let's talk about this for a second here. Diversification does not mean that you're going to take on more than you can handle. So think about the matrix, know thyself, Neo, know thyself, right? You have to know yourself. Can you handle diversifying today? Or is that something you want to plan for next year? So by the way, you should have a business plan. If you don't, come talk to me. We'll talk about it. And if that's something you need to plan for next year, you need to ramp up to that. But you need to know yourself, can you take on another piece right now? And I'm going to show you how. You may not think you can, but there's actually ways you can. And then add services. You don't want to add services that you're mediocre at doing. If you had somebody say, oh, yeah, I can do that for you. And then they do it for you. And you're like, I thought you said you could do this. I could have done that part of it. Because they added a service that they were not so great at. And they didn't basically outsource it to someone, which they probably should have done, and said, yes, I can do that service, mark it up a little bit to make some money, and then give you a stellar service. You wouldn't have cared that there was a markup. You wouldn't even have known there was a markup. But they were adding a service they were mediocre at, and then you were disappointed. I'm sure all of us have had that experience. So we don't want to do that. We do not want to add services because they're the only way to diversify. So let's say you're doing websites, and you're like, I have to add SEO. I have to add copywriting. Those are adding services to what you're already doing. If you're just doing design or you're just doing development, I need to add design. I'm just doing development. I've got to add this. You're adding services, which means you have to do more work. That is not the only way to diversify. There are other ways of doing that, which we're going to talk about. So don't think that just service adding is the only way to diversify yourself. The second one is, the fourth one to me, is to add a second full-time job. Mass screening is a fun part-time gig. Has anybody had been recruited for that? Like, okay, so you like wine, and you should totally sell wine. And you know your clients like wine, so it's a perfect match. But that's not really what you do, right? It doesn't really go with anything you do. Or you have skin, and your clients have skin, so you should totally sell the skincare, because it's like kind of what you do already. Which it doesn't really do with what you do.   We have the same clients. Yeah, sort of. Not really, not at all. So just remember that you have a job. You made this job, so you've got to kind of stick to it as well. So what we are going to look at is adding a service if it makes sense. If you were like, you know what, I'm going to spend the next six months learning SEO in January, or the next nine months, and then in January I'm going to add SEO to my services. That's you putting in the commitment, putting in the time, and adding a service that makes sense. If you're saying, you know what, I need to add SEO next month, or in the next two months, I'm going to take the next two months, find a really great SEO partner, and subcontract them. And I'm going to add that service. So you're either going to do it yourself, but you've got to do it well, or you're going to hire someone to do it, and then they've got to do it well. And you've got to be prepared if they don't, since it's on you. So adding a service is good, but it has to make sense. Does anybody have any questions about that? Anybody have any stuff I've talked about? Any alternative sources of income? Has anybody ever done affiliate marketing? Okay. Has it been great, or in, or bad? Depends on traffic. What was that? Depends on my traffic. Depends on traffic, absolutely. What'd you say in the back? Meh. Meh? Okay. So I actually have always been like, no, affiliate marketing, stay away. Because it has really bad connotations sometimes, but that's not true. I have actually found that if you find the right pieces, affiliate marketing can be amazing for you. It can really be like almost this little supplemental income that you know is going to be rolling in for you. One of my favorite affiliate marketing partners is actually Commission Junction. They have so much, they're so diversified in what they offer you to be an affiliate for, that, and you don't have to use that service in order to be an affiliate, which is also a nice perk. I used to make probably around 500 a quarter, and it doesn't sound like a lot, but 500 every single quarter, it just shows up in your bank account because you have some blog posts about some things, or you have some links on your site that make sense for your clients, and they're getting helped, and you're getting a kickback, and they know that. Most people, if you're their client, and they know, hey, this is my affiliate link, I'd love if you check it out, they're like, oh, well, I'm going to buy it from you rather than just going to the website directly because I want to help you out because I like you. Right? And it does depend a lot on traffic. My site gets very little traffic, and I was doing pretty well. So it's not a hard and fast rule, there's no standards for it, but it's worth trying. So if you're not familiar with Commission Junction, definitely check them out and see if there might be something in there that you could offer. Also go back to the people that you use. I use Social Pilot, I'm an affiliate for them. I use Content Snare, I'm an affiliate for them. I use, there's so many different products that I use site route. Best affiliates ever, they're really great for their affiliates. So make sure that you're looking back at what are you paying for every month, and if you can get five affiliates with that every month, that could probably be your service freight, essentially, or maybe you're making more than what you're paying for your service. So look at who you already have a relationship with, who you're already telling people about. You're probably already saying, oh my gosh, I use Site Route, they're the best. Why aren't you getting 50 bucks for that every time somebody signs up? And then online courses, so a lot of people have a lot to share or they find out something really cool they could do or something really neat that they've condensed or whatnot. So like I did the same thing, I found that I have all these formulas for simplification of stuff, and I created an online course. That's a very simple thing. As web designers and people who know web designers, it's very easy to do that. You can make a course like two seconds flat, do some videos, and you've got a recurring revenue stream. You can keep pushing out to clients and other people that may see it, so that's a great way. And then author a book, and then you get more speaking gigs, and then you're in front of more people, and it gives you more exposure, but it's a way to diversify the types of revenue that's coming into your pocket every month, into your business area. Any questions about that? Alternative sources of income? Anybody have any that you want to add? Have I missed? Let's hire someone to run your day to day. This is the hardest one. That's why it's the third. If you have ever worked with a VA, a virtual assistant, how has it been for you? Great, we love it. Was it hard at first to give up some control, maybe? Yeah, a little bit. Did it take you a couple months? I did a lot of reading about how to do it first, so I thought that was pretty different. So you were a little more prepared on having procedures in place, and having manuals, that kind of stuff ready to go? Yeah, I'm real big on documentation. Awesome. Many easier, much better. Yeah, that's awesome. So if you're going to hire a virtual assistant, a lot of people think that it would be great, but then when you actually get them, they're like, what do I do? And they're like, give me something to do. Then it's like, okay, well, no, you can't do that. Okay, hold on a second. No, you can't do that either. And then you get to the point where your entire to-do list is still on your to-do list. So having documentation, the process is in place, is going to help you make that transition easier, but you eventually have to let go of some of that. And you know what? They're going to do it wrong. Up here. But you have to either say, no, they did it good enough, or they did it correctly, or maybe I didn't communicate correctly to them, or maybe I need to tell them, no, this is how I would like you to do it, and really educate them on that better. So it really comes back to you. Are you just thinking that it was wrong? Are you receiving it differently? Or do you just need to educate them and train them better? Which, first time, they're going to do it wrong most of the time. But it can free up your time. You can take on more clients. This is how you diversify. Yes, you're probably doing the same thing. You're probably still selling websites, you're probably still making websites. But if they're doing some of the work for you, and you're not physically doing all, it takes you a month to build a website, and you can only take on two or three at a time, and if you're making on half the work, how many can you take on five or six at a time? Because that person is helping you do that. Finding that person, I think, can be a little difficult, but if you at least make that decision to do that, it can be very rewarding and very profitable. And then the last thing for taking on that is they will help you reduce those menial tasks. Anybody in here have a client portal that they use? Anybody in here have a client portal that they do not use? That's what I thought. And I actually was very scared about this because my clients were like, listen, we need you. And I was worried that I was going to lose people because I was telling them, go to the portal, go to the portal. And every time I get an email with a request, because I have a VA, every time I get an email with a request, I have a canned email in my Google for work. I do not reply to them, I just send them the canned email that says, do to the high volume of emails that we receive every day.  And so if you can go to our portal, then everybody's going to win. Everybody's going to be better for everybody. And you're going to get a response within 48 hours, sometimes 24 hours. So I'm giving them this incentive, hey, if I just put this question in the portal or I just put this request in the portal, it's going to get done. So as soon as it hits the portal, I check the portal every morning, I assign all the tasks, respond to the ones that I have to respond to, but it's all done through the portal. And then the clients are trained to go through the portal. That means when I'm on vacation, when I go on my cruise in July, I can go to my portal in the morning, check what tasks are there, assign them out as they needed, and then go about my day. So it's something that I can still do, you know, while I'm gone and it's remote. And I don't have to worry about it. So if you're not using your client portal, please start incorporating that and forcing people to use it. And if you're not a client portal, I use Fresh Desk. It is full, really. So check it out. I'm not an affiliate, but it's free. Okay, so let me go back, actually. I have a research field in the corner that says, how have your competitors diversified? So maybe if you're, like, unsure, like, what could I even do? Check out what the other guys are doing, and maybe there's something there you thought, but they're doing this, but I could do the other part of this. Or I could do it cheaper or better or quicker or whatever if you have whatever knowledge you have. Okay? Oh. Pricing! Any questions about diversification? If you have questions about what you should do to diversify, come see me in the happiest bar. I'm more than happy to chat about that. Free consultations all day. Price is not about cost. It's about value. Okay? How many people think they're worth $100 an hour? I guess I'm good. I guess I'm good. How many think their people are worth $1,000 an hour? All right. How many people actually charge $1,000 an hour? That's what I thought. Okay. But the thing is, if you don't value yourself, you devalue the industry. You shall all tweet that. If you don't value yourself, you devalue the industry. And you know what that means? That means that later on, when you're up here and you're at six plus figures or you're at seven figures or wherever you end up at the top of your game, you're going to look down to the bottom and you're going to go, why are they doing this to me? I have this great product and they're undercutting me and I know it's going to turn out horrible and they're going to crash your burn and their client's going to freak out and then they're going to come to me and then I'm going to have to charge them more because then I'm going to have to fix it and it's going to be this headache that just keeps perpetuating. And so no matter what level you're at, you have to value yourself or you devalue the industry. So don't make it harder on yourselves later. Let's try and clean that up now and make everybody value themselves. There is an overinflated sense of yourself which you don't want but there is a timeline to go there. So you do not necessarily need to be the cheapest to get the job. I don't always think that's the right strategy. If you can do the level that they're expecting for the lower price, that's fine but you don't want to be in a bid war trying to say, well I know my competitors charge five thousand so I'm going to charge fifteen hundred for the same job because you're going to get end of game screwed than that. It's just an area on that equation because it's not going to turn out well for anybody. And then there's other people that overprice themselves out of their market. You have two markets that you're in. Maybe three, I'll think of what I want to share. The first market is that you are in your regional market. If you are doing websites for people out of your region, you are now in their market, their regional market, what they could get in their area for the same product for a different price. So if you're in New York City and you're selling a WordPress website and you're in Jacksonville, Florida and you're selling a WordPress website, two totally different markets, two totally different pricing structures, two totally different ways of selling and buying. Not that they're like some alien planet up there or anything but they do have different expectations and also different price expectations. If you say $5,000 to somebody in Jacksonville, they're going to go, if you say it's $5,000 to somebody in New York, they're going to go, all right, we'll see. Let me do some numbers and we'll get back with you. All right, it's good, right? And that's depending on where you are. Not saying $5,000 is like the hard and fast price but you get the idea, right? If you say it's too high a price here and the same price in New York, you're going to get totally different reactions. So then again, do not undervalue yourself. That's another one. All right, do not overinflate your value which we just kind of talked about. Don't say you can do something and then you can't. Under promise over delivery for them, sure. You want to make sure that you're saying, here's where I can get to, here's the people I can bring in to do X, Y and Z. That's what we've got. I can do it all unless you have the subcontractors lined up ready to go and you know they're solid. Do not work for free because they're poor and have to help them. They have no money. You're not valuing yourself. You're valuing the industry. So if you see a nonprofit come to you and they say, we're poor, we have no money. But we help all these people, all the way we do yet. And we just love you to help us. That is on your conscience to do or to not do. If you're like, you know what? This is my favorite charity in the entire world. I can't believe they're asking me to help them with their website. I am so on board with doing this. I will help them. I will be there. I will run their website. I will buy their domain name for them. I will pay for their hosting. You're in.  Okay, does that make sense? You just spent $5,000 with that nonprofit. You just funded that nonprofit with five grand. Okay, so remember that when you're thinking about doing things for people for free. Does anybody ever ask you, it's a great investment opportunity. I really need a partner. I know anything about like tech stuff. And I, it's going to make a lot of money. It's totally going to make tons of money. Just like in a year or something. And everyone is waiting for this. Everyone wants it. I see something to build. Have you heard this? Have you heard this? Have you heard this? Okay, now the reason you've heard this is because they're looking for a freebie. Someone asked me to build a membership site for them. She's like, I can't make money unless I have this membership site. I can't have a membership site because I don't have any money. And she was in this test 22 and I had to help her. And I said to her, I'm really sorry. I don't have any more pro bono hours for this month. That's a really great one while you're two years out. I just stole it.  This is my free hour. And then I tell people, I'm sorry, I'm out. Maybe we could revisit this another time. Usually that debates everything that works. Well, she didn't take that for an answer. She didn't like that answer at all. So then I said to her, I'm sorry because I told her what it would cost and she was like, I don't have any money. I said, I don't have 10 grand to put into your business right now. I'm not an investment person. I'm a website builder. And I don't, I'm not an angel investor and I do not have $10,000 to give you because that's what I would essentially have done given her $10,000. Not in cash money, but in blessed wedding tears. Mostly tears. Probably some blood. So, think about that when you have that person ask you, well we're poor. Now if you feel like, I go to this sandwich shop every day and they really need a website and you can negotiate a free sandwich a week for a year. Do it. Just do it. Be nice, even if it's just a free sandwich every other week for a year. Figure out what's going to work for you and them and make a deal. Or just do it for them because you like them and they're nice and they're cute and they make good potato salad. I don't know. So, but don't, if it's just because someone's guilting you into it, you're devaluing yourself and you're devaluing. So don't do, don't overcharge because they can afford it. Plastic surgeons. Who else can explain? That really big engineering for contractors. Right? Oh, they went to the site. That's a good one. Marketing agencies. I call myself a marketing firm. Okay, am I some contractor? Right? I'm a firm. Some people are trying to charge me extra. No, I can see that a couple of times. But don't, just because you think they can afford it doesn't mean that's what you should be doing. So I actually was speaking with a lawyer the other day. Knew he was established. Knew I could probably get five, six grand out of him for something I normally charge a lot less for. And I gave him my, my price. I just gave him a regular, regular price. What I normally would charge. Anybody else who came to me for the same exact website. And he said, you know what he said to me? It was a 10-minute phone call. And he said, let's do it. Send me the contract. I'll sign it today and pay you. Done. I got my rate. I didn't try to overinflate myself so that I could get more from him because he had the money. He could afford it. Right? I was like, you know what? I'm going to be honest and fair with him and say, you're going to need this kind of website. I can do that kind of website for X amount of dollars. If Kathy came to me and said, I need this kind of website, I'd charge him the same amount. Yay! You don't want to know the price. No, I'm just kidding. But you know what I'm saying? And if anybody in this room came to me and said, I need this kind of website, I'd charge him the same. Because for me, yes, it doesn't have to do with value, but that's the value I put on that product. That's the value I put on that product. Not the value that everyone else is like, well, they can afford it. I can put 10 grand on that product. And it's, you know, if that's your business model, go ahead but tread lightly. Okay? All right. Let's go to the next one here. It's not working. Word for you to even tell them what your price is. You have to have a few things in place. Has anybody heard this? No, like and trust. Anybody been in a B&I or a networking group? Okay, this is their big thing. No, like, trust. If someone doesn't know you, then you can't vote them. If someone does not like you, you will never be able to quote them. Let me tell you. They won't even like 10 foot pole now. Nothing. And if someone does not trust you, you will never get their money out of their hands. I just want to be the one and wrong person to ask. What if I ask you for $5? Sorry? What if I ask you for $5? Sorry. Okay. What if I ask Kathy for $5? Kathy doesn't. What do you want it for? See? She has to know me, but she knows me. Now she knows like, well, what is it for? But she kind of likes me a little bit. But does she trust me enough to give me $5? I don't know. Do we have that kind of shook happy? Why can't you do $5 in the park? See? What do you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense to you? If someone asks you right now for $5, you have to have that know, like and trust. If I ask Nikki, I've known Nikki a long time. I'm going to single her out. Nikki, if I really needed $100 right now, would you give it to me? I really needed it. See? But Nikki knows me. She likes me a little bit. And she trusts me, though. She knows that if I told her, no questions asked, I need that $100 right now. She would say, okay, Liz, I don't know what's for, but I know that something's happening. I'm going to give it to you because I trust you. She worked really hard for the $100. That's her money. See what I'm saying? You're not asking for it for nothing because you're giving them this, but it's very close to the same thing. They're not sure. They have to trust you. I actually had a client walk into my office one day. We were in the middle of negotiating her deal and her contract. And she just walked in. She sits down. She goes, my last guy did. And I was like, okay, stop story. Here we go. And the last guy did this and the last guy did that and he took her money and he took advantage. And I said, I'm not that guy. I'm sorry that happened to you. I really am. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to work with you. I even gave her a discount. Don't ever do that. Don't give discounts. You won't have to. I gave her a discount. I was really trying to get the job because I really wanted to work with her. I wanted to help her. I was devaluing myself at this point as you can tell. And she looked at me and she goes, well, I don't know if I can give you that money. And I said, well, I don't know if I can give you that service. And she goes, she was never going to trust me because she already been too burned by someone else. You know what she did three weeks later? She hired a firm who took more of her money but the man convinced her he was like one of those sales and he was sweet talking. Like, oh man, you look so party today like the whole deal. And then she asked me if it was a good deal. And I said, it is. You should take it. It's just like the wedding photography.  Oh, Uncle Joe's going to do it for free. And then they give you the pictures and say, can you edit? And I just spit back the same price as I originally would have been. Yep. It's one of those things when that person doesn't trust you, they're never going to be your client. So you have to get to that level of trust. So when you're working with someone, what are you doing for them? Are you building a business? Are you taking something off their plate and giving them back hours in their day? Are you helping them with their marketing? Are you being their own personal married pop into marketing? No. So what do you think it is? Any ideas which answer is my correct answer? All of them are correct in a way, but there's one that I think is the most important of all of them. Yep. You can always make more money. You can never make more time. That's on my website, by the way. And that is true. People want to, they value their time, they value their families, and you're coming in asking for some of their money so that they can have more of something else that they really want. Whether it's a much better website. I really need that. I really want a much better website. I really would like more time with my family, so I don't have to sit here and try and figure this out. I really would like my marketing to be designed every single day and keeping me up at night. You're giving them something that they value. And this is typically one of the most, the biggest things I see that people value is their time. And they're not going to be able to do it any faster than you. You're going to probably be the fastest person they know in doing this kind of stuff. Well, the S is all on the wrong spot. Consultations. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. Any questions about what I've talked about so far? No? Oh, yes. In the first section we talked about the board of ministers and we talked about writing a book. Do you have any suggestions for self-publishing? Self-publishing for writing a book is your question. Yes. There are a lot of self-publishers out there. Like, you can go online once you've written the book and formatted it. And there are also local people that you can probably find as well. I have some referrals if you need something that will help you either ghostwrite a book, which is sometimes helpful.  If you write it, there's people that will help you just format it so that it's correct formatting so then you can get it published. There's a lot of online stuff, like there's book blurb and a couple other ones, book baby or something like that, but there's ways that you can just get it published and then you purchase the copies to then resell. So then you would have to ship them and you would have to do all that. Now if you want to go to Amazon there and you know to do that, but when you're selling a book, it's more for think of it as like when you buy swag to give out. You're buying it to basically give it away. Not necessarily to sell. Correct. Correct. Yeah, speaking gager's book signings. Credibility. It just builds credibility.  I'm on the process of that, so look at my book next year. But that's the kind of thing that I do myself.  Did I answer your question? Yeah. Okay, great. All right, so let's talk about consultations really quick. I've got a few minutes. Okay, great. So some people ask me like do I charge enough for my fee or do I give a free consultation? That's going to be up to you. But you need to know these are hours that you are not being paid for. One of my favorite strategies is to take the consultation and say it's my hourly rate for a one-hour consultation. And then if they book with me, it's refunded onto their project. So now their project is minus one hour of my hourly rate, whatever the project total was. And the reason I do this is because it gets them committed up front. If they're not that committed, they don't even bother. They're like, oh, schedule it later. I'm really busy. And if they do not work with you, you spend an hour giving them all your ideas. You know you will. It's how it works. No one's going to buy a website from you if you don't give them any ideas on how you're going to do it. Right? This is the way it works.  You know, it's gone. You know, you don't have that hour back. So I charge that up front fee for one hour. And then if you work with me, I'm already done. Don't worry about it. So don't give all your ideas at once. I had somebody ask me something and she was like, well, how would you do that? And I thought, well, I get this plug in and then I do this code and then I ask my developer to do this little thing and then I have to put that other plug in so that I integrate them and she doesn't want to hear all that. She wants to know it's going to work and it's going to look beautiful. So they don't need to know all the technical and I usually tell them I could get really technical here but the main thing is it's going to work better than that guys over there or it's going to work and you're not going to have to worry about this, this and this and show them the benefits of the features of it. And then I didn't experiment a couple of years ago and I tracked all my time for two months. The first month I tracked my time I didn't believe it. I thought the numbers were wrong. The second month I tracked my time I understood that I was being extremely bad. I was taking every single coffee invitation that came my way. When I calculated it I looked at how many hours were actually profitable meaning I got something out of it. Not necessarily monetarily but like I met somebody and we were like wow now we can work together or I did get a job out of it or maybe they introduced me to someone else so I discounted those hours.   You don't have one, you should get one. My budgeting is a little different.  Because there's a lot of things I sign up for and that I never use or I use once and I was like, eh, I'm still paying. So if you sign up for my academy, don't do that. But until you're like, it's one of those things that you don't realize, your money's just like fitting out into these little things. The other thing is when I sign up for plugins that I use, but then ended up not using for some reason, and I've already paid the yearly subscription one year later, they're like, we're here to renew. And I'm like, no, wait, I'm not using that one anymore. Don't take my $150. So make sure you're following what's coming in and what's going out mostly. Free stuff that I use. My favorite free stuff. Calendly, Managed WP, which I love. There's a lot of other free ones too, but there's also some managed WordPress hosting things you can do. And there's a couple guys here today, so check those out too. Sometimes that's a better fit than the free ones. Find out what's right for you, don't just listen to me. And then Mailer Lite. They give you up to 1,000 email subscribers for free. Unlimited senders. So please listen to that. If you're using MailChimp or something else, they give you unlimited sends. I have the second tier package. It's $10 a month. I get up to 5,000 people in my list. And I send like 43,000 emails a month. And I still pay $10. So pretty awesome. Social Pilot, please forgive me. Social Pilot has greatly disappointed me. Actually, Facebook has greatly disappointed me. They took out being able to post from schedulers to groups. You didn't hear the snooze? I'm sorry for ruining your day. But Social Pilot has also been caught in this crossfire. And so now they don't let you post in groups anymore for scheduling. So I'm not using them anymore. I'm so sorry. SiteGround is my favorite hosting. They're not free, but this is the paid section. But they are really, really good. And I feel comfortable if my client leaves my service that they're taking care of SiteGround. I don't have to worry about the client being like with GoDaddy and being in a nightmare situation. And then Square is also my favorite for invoicing and POS and return. People that come back, you know, multiple times in analytics and do all my invoicing, all my recurring invoicing. They now have auto invoicing. So they do really great. They are a paid service, though. Okay, last thing, contracts. About five minutes. All right. Yes, you need one. Many people do not have a contract. I'm calling you out. I won't work without it. You won't work without it? That's right. If you're not going to sign my contract, you can't do business. Keep it simple. It's not going to be super complicated. I would advise talking to a lawyer, though. Everyone needs to at least talk to a lawyer. Is there actually a lawyer here today? Does everyone know that? Ryan? She's doing a talk later? She's here. You can talk to her. You can ask her simple questions, which she might answer for you. But I'm sure you don't work for free either, so, you know. But keep it simple. And keep it really simple, but do talk to a lawyer about it. Now, I had my lawyer drop a contract. I went back through, after I understood what each clause meant, and I reworded it my way. I then re-sent it to her, and she said, It's okay. You'll be covered. Because my clients are going to look at that and go, I understand what it means. I want to sign eight pages of nothing. But when I reworded it, they're like, Oh, that makes sense. Because I know what my clients want. Like the way they're going to speak and the way they're going to read it and hear it. So I reworded mine. Know what you want from your contract. My clients, to give me all their data, buy the 15th day of the beginning of our contract. So from day one to day 15 of our contract, if I don't have their crap, guess what happens on day 16? I charge them $100 every day until I get 50% of their content. That makes them move really fast. I've had a lot of bad experiences, and all those bad experiences have influenced my contracts and my policies. So as soon as a bad experience happens to you, don't go, That sucked. Moving on. Go, man, that sucked. Hey lawyer, can you write a sentence or two that will protect me from this next time? Because it will happen again. It's not something that's just a fluke. And don't forget your boundaries. My boundaries are client portal. Client portal. Client portal. Client portal. Also, if you like to send emails at midnight, but you don't want your people emailing you and expecting a response at midnight, use a delay sender for your email. So that it sends at 8 a.m. Not at midnight when you're actually writing it. So those kind of things. Keep those boundaries. Hire a lawyer. Trade or pay them. They don't need to devalue their industry. And then always be signing. Make sure you sign it, too. A lot of people forget. All right, last thing. We've got three minutes here. I don't know, something like that. You do not need to be annoying when you're trying to follow up. So, and if you think you're going to be annoying, if you have that thought in your mind, like, I don't want to be annoying. Guess what? If you have that thought, you're not going to be annoying. So I'd be like, am I crazy? You're probably not crazy. You think you're going to be annoying? You're probably not going to be annoying. And you only sell on follow up. Sometimes if you actually follow up, they're actually like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. And they were actually going to work with you. But if you don't do your part of that and you don't kind of reach out to them, they may just, you may have lost a sale. You didn't even know you were going to lose. Because you just forgot about them or you didn't have time or whatever. So we're going to talk about what you should do for that. Never, you don't want to not follow up because they don't need me, if they don't call me, then everything's fine. Like, they just didn't need me. Because you don't know the answer to that question. You're assuming that answer. And what does this say on my channel? You know what that is. So you don't want to assume that they didn't need you because they didn't follow up. Maybe their kid got sick. Maybe their friend, something happened. Maybe their business is really busy, whatever it is. So you want to have a process for this. I think about processes and formulas. If there's a process and a formula, you can replicate it.  So you might want to use a CRM, customer research management, or client research management. You might want to use... I use Evernote Alerts, actually, as my CRM. I use Evernote. Each client gets a note. I type all their stuff in. The dates when I do things, if I call them, whatever. It's just easier for me, my brain. And then when I want to follow up with them, go to the top, hit the Evernote Alert. I'm going to follow up with them in three weeks or two weeks or whatever it is. Oh, by the way, my contracts are only good for 10 days. If I send you something today, on the 11th day from now, if you don't find it or send me anything back, we have to renegotiate the price. It's going to be higher. Google Calendar Reminders. Also, if you want to use that for your follow-up, I use those sometimes. So let's recap. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversification. Remember that? Know your value. Because when you value your... when you devalue yourself, I feel like Tony Robbins. Consultation process in place. Because if you're just throwing out consultations or you're going to every single copy, it's going to waste a lot of time. Have a budget for your business. And it can be a loose budget. It can be a tight budget. But know what's coming in and going out. Put everything in writing. Please. If you really don't put your business card for you and then you don't put it in the contract and they're like, I bet you're going to do a business card for me. I don't ask you about it because it wasn't in the contract. And they were like, well, I guess you just didn't want to do it or whatever. Then they may have a bad feeling about that. Like, well, she ripped me off. Because you were the one who said it, but they needed to put the contract and maybe you forgot. So then they're telling you weird things. So put it in writing. And then have a follow-up process. Again, another process. Okay? Any questions?


Okay, James P. Madonna, from the Facebook group, everything is food. Megalife21, progressive discussions, I am directly, and I repeat, directly headed for the Royal Hibachi Grill and Buffet on Route 46 West in Soutter Brook, New Jersey. It is, thank God, it finally became much cooler. The temperature really dropped. It is the beginning of September, the Friday after Labor Day weekend, 2018, and the heat wave is over because we've had a horribly oppressive summer with the heat and humidity, and as you can see, this is a rare treat that I am directly approaching the buffet, the lunch buffet. Can't go wrong for ten bucks, all right? All right, there you go. All right. And this is the perfect weather. I love it. It's overcast, no sun. It very has a nice gothic look. It is going to rain, and it will put me in the mood for much consumption of fine fresh seafood. Okay, I am entering the building. James P. Madonna is entering the building right now, right now. Okay, let's see what this Friday has in store for me here at the Royal Hibachi. Let's see what this Friday has in store. Oh, everything's quiet, but a Mongolian barbecue. Oh, sushi? Not too bad. See some bok choy? Will not give you much joy. The duck doesn't look too bad. What do we got over here? What's the entree here? Oh, codfish. Whoa. Look at that. Look at that. The lamps are on. The lamps are on. Look at that. Look how beautiful. The lamps are on. Oh my God. Godfish. Oh, buckle up. Look at that. Deep kebab. The only, I guess the only way I'm gonna get lamb is in the Arabic rice. This is grilled ranch chicken. Nah, I don't want that. Well, let's see what we got here. Any hard core? White tuna is the only hard core sushi. Well, yeah, and the shrimp, and the octopus. They're a little chewy though. A little chewy. Okay, what do we got over here? Italian entree? There you go. There's the Arabic rice. Okay, good. You know what? I tell you what. Me do a little surf and turf. Commodore Jeff Zanbello. Actually, you know what? Forget about it. I don't see any meat on the duck. The people took all the duck with the meat on it. I don't see any. Goodbye, duck. Goodbye, duck. I'm out of luck, but I will get, I will get turf. Oh, Jesus. What happened to the lamb? There's no lamb in here. The lamb is gone. Oh my God. Look at this. What's going on here? What's going on here? I get out. I don't want that. I gotta wait for the next tray to come up. There's no lamb in there. Boy, I'm out of luck here. There's no lamb in the Arabic rice. What's going on here? What do I got left? What are my, what are my choices? Surf and surf? How am I going to get turf? I guess I'm going to have to try some, some armadillo kebabs here. I hope they're tender. Or is it, or is it woolly mammoth kebab? I have no idea. I'm going to try one because if it's tough, I'm not going to finish it. All right? What's going on here? How, how dare the duck?  Didn't they know I was coming here? Don't they know I'm coming here? I'm, I'm, I'm absolutely disgust-upated Commodore Jeff Sandbell. I am disgust-upated. All right, what do we got here? I gotta find a, a turf. I already got the surf with the codfish fillet here. Scrot cod. Scrot cod. Cockdribble fillet. All right, general tizos chicken. Yeah, I see that. I see that at home. It's Chinese takeout. All right, what am I going to do? What am I going to do here? Man, what's going on? What's going on? Yeah, I mean, oh, let me see if they call them Marys out. Not yet, not yet, not yet. Not yet. Uh, no, I don't see. I gotta find, I gotta find a turf. So far, I'm not, not finding any turf. So what am I going to end up with turf, a surf and surf? What do we got here? General tizos chicken. You know, every time I ask people in the Chinese takeout, who is General So? They say, they don't know. And I say general, general So, So what? Get it? Get it? So what? But they also have something called General Chen, General Chen's chicken. I say, well, what's the difference? They don't know. Who is General Chen? Was he a real general? Was General So a real general? They don't say anything. They don't know their Chinese history. All right. I gotta find, I gotta find myself something to add to this. I think I'm a little early. I think I'm a little early. Oh, dear. But you know what I'm going to do? Jabronis, I'm going to take advantage of the papaya, because the last time I hesitated and I did not get any papaya. So I'm going to take advantage of this succulent papaya. Oh, yeah, papaya. Papaya. Oh, yeah, I'm not losing out this time. I'm going to be an opera, a tropical fruit opportunist in partake in the magic melon of the tropics papaya. It's bad enough I get aggravated from people in the circular strength training world.  There's no doubt about that. I have something to say and it will be said Kamenorchev Zambal. But anyway, yeah, that's good. Papaya is a wonderful, a wonderful fruit. Now you can't see the food, right? All right. It really is. Now I have partake in the papaya. I'm telling you, I'm tired of being Mr. Nice Guy. So what am I, how am I going to add to the surf? Harboiled eggs? That's peasant food, Kamenorchev Zambal. Peasant food. It's for peasants.  What am I going to do? I have a little grape leaves. I'll take a couple grape leaves as my salad. That's about it.  Now I would have had succulent duck. I would have had duck. Well I got to come back for the limes. I would have had duck if the people didn't grab the duck. Now this, this Muslim woman was cracking up when I was talking about the duck. Somebody grabbing the good pieces. She was laughing. At least I got it all left. You know what?  Oh look, she gave me a lime. The waitress gave me a lime, but guess what? That's not enough limes. That's not enough. Doesn't she know that? Doesn't she, doesn't she know that by now? That I use a thousand limes? Doesn't she know I use a thousand and one limes? What's the matter with these knuckleheads? Knuckleheads in social media, knuckleheads in real life. I'm surrounded by, I'm surrounded by knuckleheads. Or is it imbeciles or numbskulls? Well any word that Moe Howard used this is okay by me. You know what? I think, I think the color green. I think the color green actually would go well with a beige ball. I'm gonna go with a beige ball. It's not my favorite ball, but hey, it's not my favorite ball. It's not my favorite color rather. But I think, you know, I like the color coordinate. You know, in case she brings me a mojito, which I doubt, because they don't have a liquor license. Right? These limes are seedless it looks like. Are they genetically modified limes? I don't want, I don't want any toxic limes. Take a quick look at the dessert. There's a baklava, and they will be putting in a more delectable dessert later. They're usually at three, three at 330. But at least I got my papaya. There it is. Let's, let's their hearts for putting out lots of papaya. They must have received my mental telepathy, my brainwaves, about the last time when I missed out. Color coordination brother. Color coordination. Royal Hibachi. There's the ice cream station. Soak in the beauty of the flashing LED lights. I don't see any fatty or buckles here. Any fatty or buckle children hovering over the freezer letting all the cold out. That's good. Now he's blocking the LED lights. Oh, there we go. Obviously, you can now hear a typical undisciplined child in the United States. There you go, Commodore. They're putting out the more stuff crab shells. This just came out. Cornucopia of the sea. Definitely going to try that. Now I forgot about the duck. I'm going to have a little cornucopia. Zuppa dip. No, not Zuppa Dipesh. Bullya, bullya balls. I mean bullya bakes. Cock dribble clams. New Zealand green lip muscles. Okay, the pink ones are female. I'm serious. And the gray ones are male. I'm very serious about that. Colomari greens. Too bad I don't see Colomari tentacles. But you know, what are you going to do? Hey, it's another climb. Now what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to put some broth. Hey, I'm going to have to put some broth on that. On this. Now you know what's going to happen if I put broth on this dish. I'm going to spill it. I know it. I know what's going to happen. Commodore Jeff Zambal. Hey, there's a male. It's your bronies in education out there in the internet. All right. First of all, your bronies. How come I can't? Anyway, I can't peel this off. It's a shell. Anyway, the male New Zealand green lip muscle. Maybe it applies to the Northeast American muscle and is the female. Male. Female. Got it? Education. You get an education from James P. Madonna. Oh, wait a minute. Remember that beverage Clamato? Clamato. I was drinking a lot of it in San Diego. Clamato. All right. Got a little cocktail. Now I got to find a way to get some broth. And you know what?  I'm going to use the clamshells, the spoon. There you go. Look at it. Look at it. Look at it. Millennials. These millennials today wouldn't think it is. It's all common sense. Don't touch with your hands, please. You can't touch it with your hands. I know. No, this doesn't matter. Okay. You cannot touch it with your hands. Please. Thank you. One more. Do that. Please. You know what? I've just changed my, um, my overall, um, the, um, okay. Hey, what's the name of the real estate company? They're all okay. Because I got 8,000 hits on my, my Google reviews. I want to bash them for not doing the right thing. Okay. All right. Maybe these sell the stores now because I will, I will, I will tear them apart. Believe me. You know me. I don't take, I don't take business. All right. This is the first time here at Royal Bachi guacamole, guacamole with potatoes. I'm going to pass on the potatoes, but I definitely will not pass on the guacamole. Holy moly, guacamole. All right. That's good to me. I'm not going to do guacamole and potatoes. That's for sure, but I'm not in the mood for squish squash. I'm not in the mood. No, no squish squash for me. It's always French toast here lately. You know what? Never tried it before. I'm going to have one slice of French toast. I don't know why, but oh, the papaya is still there. The papaya is still there. I'll try one slice. Yeah, that's it. Just one because it's not, it's not whole grain bread. Here we got a fattier buckle over here. Fattier buckles. Semi, semi fattier buckle hovering over the ice cream. Okay. The marinated beef was actually tender, which I didn't think it would be. It is very, it was very good. Pull your base. All right, here we go. I'm just going to get some raw white tuna. That's all. I don't know what that is. Some raw white tuna. Get a few of these and that's it. And one more for the road. No Mongolian barbecue action. It is kind of slow today. Maybe that's why everybody is kind of grouchy today.  Anybody wants, wants trouble? I'm not hard to find. Well, when they say handle, they mean handle with your hands. As you can see, there's tongs. Any, any decent person is going to use the tongs to grab the meat. You know what I mean? They're not going to use their hands. So do I sense a little anal retensiveness here? Perhaps, perhaps. Okay. I've got some broiled salmon filet, but I will say that the beef kebabs are excellent. I thought they would be dry, but they're not. They're not dry. So this is kind of a weird combo. Oh, they're putting out whiting now. Whiting, like, like the Yankees pitcher, Whitey Ford, who was named after the Whiting, I think because his mother loved Whiting, named her, her son Whitey Ford after the Whiting. There we go. Whiting. Is he saying they call an Italian merlot, St. Teresa's fish. Okay. All right. All right. Oh, no action. No Mongolian barbecue action. Not today. Not this week. Post Labor Day weekend, 2018. Okay. And like I said, this is a little odd combination, right? French toast, guacamole and white tuna sashimi. A little unusual. All right. I anticipate the ice cream will be very solid because there was only one kid and the parents supervised that child by the ice cream, hard ice cream. Oh, they brought out the trezeleche. We're out the trezeleche. We got some powdered cocoa on top of this cake. Papaya is still there. Oh, Eureka.  Good thing I didn't hold my breath. Oh, I have no idea why I tip so well.  They really don't. And that goes for the, for the bitch at La Fortalezza, on Midland Avenue in Garfield.  So I don't know why I shouldn't have tipped her big. I think a lot of people are cruising for a bruise and nowadays the old Sicilian Five Knuckles shuffle across the chops. Hey, since I'm in such a wonderful mood, this message is, well, first I want to give a shout out and a hello to Professor David Coulter. Professor Dave Coulter is an outstanding beer reviewer. When I say beer, I mean high quality, high end, top shelf craft beer. And I also want to give a shout out to my good friend and also fermented beverage, political and nostalgic baseball, and classic rock and roll enthusiast, Mr. J. Ronald Thirio, J. Thirio. I want to give a shout out to him. And of course, Commodore Jeff Sandbella and Salvatore Mercurio, the creator Mario Petrus and everyone else. But being that I gave a shout out and a hello to Professor Dave Coulter as seen on the web.  I don't care. I know you have aliases that have been trying to hack me on the internet and trying to push my buttons and antagonize me on both faces.  And I know you have people that or a person that knows how to hack, right? I don't know if it's that scrawny Seymour guy or maybe he's another alias of yours. But I would love to, being that you have a face only a mother can love, I would love to take one of your passions, which is Velveeta or better yet, cheese whiz, a can of cheese whiz. Wouldn't it, wouldn't that be, wouldn't that be a fantasy if somebody took a can of cheese whiz and just shoved it down your throat and made you drown on cheese whiz, Red Rooster? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head? I'll be really enjoyable if someone did that. But I know you have a hacker and I know you have aliases.   Or even, I don't even have to go through any academy.  And that goes for any of your buddies. Okay, ice cream. It's time for ice cream. Jane's payment down here. What am I going to have? Got chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate chip mint, rainbow sherbet, coffee, vanilla, or no, I'm sorry, that's orange. That was French vanilla. Regular vanilla. Maybe I should try the penguin again, the black and white ice cream. Yeah, let me try the penguin. So anyway, I think I'm going to make the penguin, the penguin ice cream, vanilla and chocolate. I'm going to make it real high. You want to be on YouTube, want to advertise your profession? You have enough work? Yeah. Handyman David is the greatest handyman in the New York metropolitan area. It's the best. I see you. I see you. Thank you. Bye bye. Okay. All right, I'm going to. Okay, that's it coming on Jeff Zanbel. The penguin is back, baby. The penguin is back. Dark chocolate with vanilla. What a work of art, huh? It kind of looks like Mickey Mouse lost one of his ears. What do you think, Commodore? Look at that. Right from the ice cream station, the hard ice cream station. I can't wait to autumn weather. And of course the end of October when you come south to meet up with me at your event. Can't wait. Can't be beat, man.


A Panama-flagged bulk carrier that was headed to a river Danube port to Lodegrain hit a Russian mine in the Black Sea on Dec. 27, injuring two crew members, Ukrainian officials said on Dec. 28.The vessel lost course in control, and a fire broke out on the upper deck after it hit a Russian mine, Ukraine's southern military command said on Telegram. A captain and a sailor, an Egyptian citizen, were injured, with the latter hospitalized in the city of Ismail. The head of the Odessa Regional Prosecutor's Office said at a briefing.He added that the incident happened early on Wednesday at a river mouth.The IT was the latest incident of a civilian vessel hitting an explosive in the Black Sea and what Kiev says is stepped up Russian attacks on shipping and port infrastructure.


Grow your team by coaching employees. There are loads of skills that you should help your team build that will significantly increase overall team performance. Better team performance means better career prospects for you, the manager, a brilliant win-win. In this video, I'm explaining how to coach employees to build five incredibly valuable skills for great team performance. Coaching your team is the most effective way to build their skills. Google's People Analytics team discovered one-on-one coaching is the number one factor linked to great management. From my personal experience of being coached and coaching teams, I know coaching employees to build their skills is amazing for building team performance for multiple reasons, including, firstly, coaching your team creates higher team engagement and motivation, leading directly to higher team performance. Secondly, offering bespoke development creates a more appealing deal in exchange for hard work from the team. Third, the team increases their skill levels, which means more is done in a shorter time frame. Fourth, with increases to skill levels, the team successfully overcomes a greater range of problems which frees up management time to reinvest back into further increasing team performance. The five skills I'm focusing on helping you build in your team are, firstly, improve problem-solving skills, secondly, great decision-making skills, third, successful project management skills, fourth, encouraging better teamwork, and fifth, improve people management skills. Improving all of these skills in your team will make your job as a manager easier. Your team will be able to take on many of the tasks and responsibilities that you look after. This frees up more of your time to reinvest into improving team performance. An example would be focusing more time on solving the tougher challenges the team faces, creating a better solution and implementing it quicker. All very good news for you personally as a manager. My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new here in HeartStalk Training Shares, people management expertise, resources, and courses, teaching you how to build higher-performing teams. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below, as well as a video timestamp, so do take a look at these. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. Before we dive into improving the five skills in the team, a little about coaching. Coaching team members is not telling a person what to do, but helping the employee to think through options and come up with their plan of action. Coaching employees is not acting as the expert, but encouraging the employee to become an expert. The process of coaching is focused on the employee, not you. When you are coaching as a manager, you should spend most of your time in a combination of listening, asking questions, challenging, providing feedback, and asking for actions. Keep the ownership and responsibility with the person you're coaching. The first way to grow your team by coaching employees is to improve their problem-solving skills. There are lots of different problems a team faces every day. At the easy end of the scale are problems that regularly occur, which have low impact for which a known approach can be applied to solve the problem. These types of problems are a great place to start coaching problem-solving skills. At the other end of the scale, are problems not encountered before with a high impact to the team, which will require a bespoke solution to be designed in order to solve the problem. The best problem solvers typically tackle these types of problems. They are usually managers or small groups of experienced staff working together. Think about the different problems your team faces in terms of firstly how simple to how complex is the problem faced. Secondly, do you have a standard solution to apply to solve the problem or do you have to design a solution completely from scratch? Third, how big is the impact of the problem on the team and business? Match the difficulty of solving the problem and the impact of the problem with the skills of the team members. To build skills, keep increasing the complexity of the problem and the impact to the person solving the problem is regularly stepping outside of their comfort zone. Coaching problem-solving skills is asking questions to get the employee thinking in the right directions. Coaching is providing a safety net so team members know that they won't mess up. And coaching is not telling them the answers or solutions but leaving them to work out solutions to the problem and being on hand to ensure the solutions they reach are good ones. Coach through asking questions to challenge their thinking, to push their thinking in different directions and to ensure the solution can be practically implemented. The more problems your team can solve the less you have to solve. So you can focus more of your time on the really challenging problems. This increases the speed of work and results your team produces. The second way to grow your team by coaching employees is to improve decision-making. Setting out clearly for each team member which decisions you expect them to make on their own, which ones they should make with you and which ones you or others will make. Creating this framework increases control and the employee's feeling of safety and reduces the risk of too many wrong decisions being made. Start by asking team members to make the easier decisions which have low impact. Easy decisions are the ones with an easy choice from an obvious set of options available or ones that are regularly made by you or others. Much harder decisions to make are those with lots of bad options or lots of possible right options and situations which are chaotic or decisions that no one has made before. When coaching employees in decision-making be very careful not to make the decision for them. Coach the individuals to understand exactly what they are making a decision about. Coach employees by asking questions to challenge their thinking and get them to explain their thinking. Coach team members by asking questions about options and consequences they may have missed. Ask questions about different impacts of the decision being made. Coaching employees to build decision-making skills and confidence is providing encouragement and guidance without telling them what to do. Even more important is coaching employees through the actions and activities needed to implement the decisions they make. Third, grow your team by coaching employees in project management. Project management skills are great to develop in your team. Projects successfully implement change and improvement. Things like to remove problems being experienced by the team, to take advantage of opportunities, to increase efficiency and team performance, to be able to successfully plan and deliver projects are a must as a team. The more people in your team that are confident and able to successfully manage projects, the more the team will be able to improve what they do and deliver. Great news for you and the team. Start interested team members on small, easy to implement projects contained within the team and progress them step by step towards larger, more complex projects that impact departments and teams across the business. By acting as a coach to multiple project managers rather than project managing each project yourself, you multiply your influence and impact. You help your team to deliver a lot more improvement while keeping yourself too close to what is happening in each project. Being on hand to support and help as needed loans a lot of confidence and knowledge to project managers. Coach employees through working out what steps will be needed to create the desired results. Coach employees through organizing resources, managing office politics, the people problems they encounter and how to deal with suppliers and customers at different stages of the project. Coach team members by asking questions, challenging their thinking and plans and encouraging great ideas and solutions. Encouraging employees through coaching to improve their project management skills, multipliers improvements and results your team can deliver. Fourth, grow your team by coaching employees to work better as a team. As a manager, there is lots you can do to encourage trust and communication in a team which I view as essential ingredients for great teamwork. Set the example by extending trust to the team members and communicating openly, honestly and frequently. This encourages team members to do the same. Coaching employees to work better as a team might include actions like, firstly challenging team members to provide updates direct to other team members rather than via you. Secondly, encourage team members to seek help from colleagues. Ask questions like, have you spoken to XX about this? I know they have the time and have done this before. Let me know how you get on. Third, delegate problems to be solved to two or more people to encourage collaboration and then coach the individuals or team through solving the problem as needed. Fourth, coaching employees on how to give feedback and encouraging them to practice with their peers. You could ask something like, in yesterday, who did you give feedback to on a good result, action, behavior or decision made? And you could follow this by, take me through what you said to them. Fifth, encourage employees to give praise often and coach team members on how to give praise in the most useful way. You could ask, what is the most useful bit of help a colleague has given you this week? Followed by, how did you tell them you really appreciated their help? The more you encourage collaboration, colleagues helping each other, feedback, joint problem solving and any other actions that build trust and increased communication, the quicker teamwork will improve. Coaching helps equip your team members with the skills to perform better as a team, which will increase team output and performance. And better teamwork generally means a nicer place for everyone to work plus better team performance, a very good outcome from coaching employees. Fifth, improve people management skills, coach this amazing skill set to your team. Managing people well takes a lot of different skills, used in the right way to help and encourage individuals to do the best work they can. Becoming a good manager is both a personal and a professional journey. You are much more able to manage others well when you are very self aware and able to manage yourself. You can start developing people management skills in others well before they're officially managers. You have a couple of easy to implement ideas to get you started. Firstly, implement a buddy system pairing a more experienced person with a less experienced team member. Secondly, get team members to provide on-the-job training to new joiners and inexperienced staff, which requires very similar skillsets to people management. Third, leading small project teams are great opportunities to develop people management skills. Coach employees by asking them about, firstly, how they might handle different situations, both actually experienced and hypothetical. Second, ask what they might have done differently to improve the outcomes. Third, discuss what the other person might have felt during the situation. Fourth, ask what the individual felt during the situation and how they expressed that in their words and body language to the other person. When coaching employees, get them thinking about how they can help and support the people they are managing. You ask them how they can improve the clarity of direction they give. Ask how they can improve the environment in which the individuals they are looking after can work in. And finally, ask them questions to develop the employee's self-awareness during these situations. Take any opportunity in coaching employees to develop their people management skills. So in summary, grow your team by coaching employees to improve their skills, their approaches, their attitudes, in short, everything that helps build a better, more enjoyable and more productive environment for everyone. Coaching employees is not telling people stuff. Good coaching is helping the individual learn more quickly using their own thinking, ideas, skills, and approach. Coaching is helping individuals overcome their self-imposed barriers to getting better. Taking a coaching approach takes more time in the short term, yet produces massively better improvements in the medium to long term. For those interested and willing to learn, coaching employees is a great investment to make as a manager. The better your team does, the better you do personally and professionally as a manager. Help your team improve in the most effective and quickest way possible. As a quick recap, the five amazing skills for great team performance that I suggest use a coaching approach for are, firstly, improve problem solving skills, secondly, great decision making skills, thirdly, successful project management, fourth, better teamwork, and fifth, improve people management skills. If you have any questions on grow your team by coaching employees, build five amazing skills for great team performance, please leave them in the comments section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.


Hi everybody, this is Bahamut of Xtrades. Over at Xtrades, I am an analyst, dealing mainly with day trading small caps and micro caps, and the occasional swing trades as well. Before we begin, if you guys like what we do over here, please like and subscribe. And if you will, go join us over at our Discord channel. So today we are going to review the ticker GNS for Genius Group Limited. I want to go over how we found this ticker and overall how we traded it as well. Because we traded this several times because the momentum was clearly there and we were able to capitalize on it several times. So to start off, we had news on this ticker. Here is an article from Benzinga. This article is detailing mainly why the stock was rocketing for a couple of days now. And essentially it's because the company is going to try and tackle the illegal actions of naked short selling. And so what is naked short selling? It's a process where you can essentially short a stock without ever owning or borrowing the shares that's necessary to short the stock. Now what that does is it creates a very unfair atmosphere and huge imbalance for the trading of that ticker. Now because the company came out and said that they wanted to basically create a task force to tackle those illegal actions of naked short selling. That is what caused some huge momentum for this stock. Now GNS has a whole, it's not a very high short interest ticker. FinViz is not always spot on. But even FinViz and Yahoo Finance, they have this maybe around 10% or so or a little bit more for short interest. I've seen some maybe like 20% or so from other sources. It's not up there with some other tickers. But it's high enough to create some momentum and give it some more attention. But this article is definitely highlighting the real reason why it went up. So here is the chart for GNS. And you can see it has severely diminished volume for a while now up until this past week. Week in a week and a half or so. So I caught my eye for two reasons. One, because Benzinga, which has a nice pre-market scanner and it even has a free one as well, had GNS going off that morning and showing huge momentum. And the other thing is why I traded it is because I saw a cup and handle pattern present. So here we have the original cup and handle because I'll get to the other one soon. This is where the first cup and handle was present. Here's the cup and here's the pullback. These two days saw a pullback and the volume wasn't that great either on that pullback, which is why it also interested me in entering a position here. So we'll go to the four hour, which is a little bit more of a visible cup and handle. Here's the handle here. So how do we trade this for one? Well, proper way is to start a position once you see a breakout of the upper trend line of the handle, which is this blue line here. And you can begin a long position there and you can stop out. If it goes back in the handle and below it as well. The idea is you might see a fake outbreak breaking out from this handle. And then it might retrace and come back into the handle and you don't want to stop out very quickly. But you do want to stop out if it definitely breaks below the lower trend line of the handle. So I have a long position tool here that I was using on TradingView. And once I entered in pre-market, it was on the break of the handle. I entered at around 68 cents. That was near the top of the handle because you want to enter when it breaks the handle. You also want to see confirmation when it breaks over the highest edge of the cup, which was around 70 cents. So I entered right around there and momentum continued that morning on very, very nice relative volume in pre-market. So we had the price target was basically right at the $1 range. And you get that by taking the lowest price of the cup and extending that up into the highest point. And this is that blue area right here. I took that and I replicated it into this one right here. And what you do is you stack them. You take this one, you stack it right above where the breakout is on the handle. And that would give you a target of about a dollar. And I have other price targets listed here on these green lines. So we entered at around 68 cents. We took profit and I'll go to a smaller time frame. We took profit right around 85 cents, which is a small resistance over here on this trading range in early November. That's where it dropped and it failed to get back over 85. And these two candles both close right at around 85. So we ended up closing the position there, but not fully. Because I still believe that the $1 range would play out from the cup and handle pattern, which it clearly did. And then $1, we exited the position for the runners. I usually leave around 25% of the position for runners. And then what happened later on in the day, we saw continued momentum and another cup and handle was created. So this cup and handle goes from all the way back here from late October. And it stretched all the way to the after hours trading session for GNS. And this saw over $2 in the regular session and it had a pullback which created the handle right here. I also argue this is a full flag in itself and then this is the pullback. But I was trading this as an even larger cup and handle. And what I did was I entered for a second time that was in after hours at around 250. Because once that cup and hand, once that broke out of the pullback, it came up here and started having another, another base. And this blue shaded area here is the depth of the larger cup and handle replicated to show where it broke out at around $1.82. And it has a high price target of around $3.45. So I ended up taking profits at around $3.30. That was in pre-market the following day. That was basically the start of this candle, which we saw. Ultimately, we saw this go over $5. It spiked hard in the morning and leveled off the rest of the day. And that's where we entered for a third time. That third time is now, I believe, $3.48, I think, is where we entered for a third time. And that's where this zone right here is being formed. And this looks like another possible handle on maybe a larger cup or on a flag, the flag on a bull flag. Either way, we're going to be trying to play this again. Monday morning pre-market. I'm definitely expecting some kind of retracement up here. This is also what I like to call a pop and fade, which is another, it could be describing a bull flag. So we have the pop here and fades and levels off forms a nice base. And we should see a nice pop on Monday. So here's a nice zoomed out picture of GNS and how I'm going to be playing this in the coming trading session. So we have this old zone right here, which was forming support and then failed. And now we are officially above that. So I'll be trading this next zone right here, which was proven support. And this is on the daily chart as well. And then when it came back down, we had a little pivot here between these two candles held support, but then failed. So now we're going to be trying to trade this zone right here, which is right around $4. So I'll just extend this over here. We also reached a resistance here on a channel or a wedge, however you want to look at it. So I'm going to that's that would be a high resistance around 516. So right now my next resistances are going to be 355 and around the 4.2 area. And then we're going to go back up to 478 520, which is right at that pivot that I just mentioned right here. And then beyond that, we'll go to the next main support area, which was going back to July of last year, which is right around the 545 area. Beyond there, my next price target at 6 and then 6.68. That would be well over this trend line here. And there's plenty of room above there. As you can see, the price fell and did not catch any support from those previous levels. So there is plenty of room to the nine to $10 range. I'm not promising anything, but a ticker that has a decent amount of short interest. And now it now was actively targeting naked short sellers. This has definitely the most momentum. And there's a couple of other tickers as well, such as HLBZ. And I'm sure others will start to follow as well. And we'll be also creating task forces to target illegal naked short selling. The two positions we've had so far on GNS were both around 30 to 35% profits. And on the next one, I'm aiming for roughly the same. So let's take the technology tool and we'll do a high to low retracement. And we'll take our long position tool, place it where I entered. I think the point 618 is a reasonable price target on this retracement, which will give us about another 27% for this position. If everything goes well, of course, and we will plan to stop out below this range. If this range fails, so I like the four hour candles on here, which is some nice support around 317. So if that fails, then I will likely stop out. And we will definitely be trying again on this if that position fails, because I really believe this momentum is not going to go away for this week. I want to thank everyone for watching this video. Please leave a comment if you have any questions, or definitely check us out on our Discord channel. And I will definitely get back to any comments on there or on this video. So thank everybody for watching and good luck trading.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazzy'scasegrakes.com coming at you with a brand new release 2021 Panini certified football Random team breaks are four boxes. This is random team break number three one spot gets you two teams All-card chip pretty nice big. Thanks to this group here for getting in on the action Let's double you up like Sir mix a lot all 32 teams are in let's roll it randomize it names and teams Five and a two seven times each one two three four five six and Seventh and final time after seven we've got The porterhouse steak down to Karen five and a two seven times for the teams one two three four five six and Seventh and final time Arthur. What's going on man?  I marked these boxes Where are they kind of hard to see yet mark them with X's right there? So we know that they're from the same case. That's where we're using for the random teams Let's use that die right there One two three for the left side four five six for the right side Four one two three four five six will do that and this will be That's already loaded up. So if you want to run back the last four boxes, let's do it All right, so we're gonna pause the video allow for some trades when we come back. We'll have the break stick around All right, welcome back folks a lot of trade chatter, but in the end no deals are done It's all good. So the list you saw on the previous screen remains the same here's the final printout hot off the presses Thanks, everyone Appreciate everybody making this happen the final four boxes are on my back table right there and And And that will be the final four boxes of that particular case We may have some more cases for random teams double check, but May have some more cases for random teams that of course is on jazby's case breaks dot com Good luck. TWC the moose out front should have told you moose I Do not understand that or TJ understands the reference. I do not. Oh, yeah Yeah We talked about this last night. I don't think I've watched a lot of national lampoon stuff Justin Herbert and we've got Monty rice to 75 and Derek Henry gold team to 50 and Our first hit is Jalen waddle nice three-color patch and autograph 65 out of 75 Miami Patrick Phelps with the dolphins some nice colors in there the Dolphins colors really pop in that window. I think I need more top. Yeah, that's the second art It's the second RPA in this case. I didn't see him in the picker team case But the second one in the random team case Sometimes there can be some repeats in a case Happens. All right, let's see what's gonna happen here To do that. Well new generation rally 87 out of 249 rams Brian crouch with the rammelie Jalen Régor 299 and TJ saying that the basketball mixer is on the cusp of filling up. There's Rashad Bateman to 299 For the Ravens that'll be for Darren and the Jalen Régor another bird team Going to KLM out of 99 Devin white Chris Evans to 149 Well, I don't think we've had three Jalen waddle RPAs We had one for you in the other random team break and then this one right here We did a full case in the other one Maybe there was a relic I didn't see any autos though Jalen waddle until now Pat Fryarmouth to 199 Steelers that's for Brandon My homies TJ Vasher They thick card stock there. Oh, it's a one-of-one.  Oh, there's top loaders on the belt There you that's a nice ring all aboard the big hit Express whoo-hoo now. Hopefully you'll be good There's Lamar Jackson There's Rashad Bateman to 249 Next box just saw that NFL player social evening. Can you know signing a 20 or do a fanatics? You just saw that that that that news was last Last week get it. They have they have MBA to there's a brave and Jordan The same from 12 hour. Well, you need to do some better research Rex. I don't work on those research skills Maybe the terms of the deal It was a 12 days ago. Yeah, maybe the terms of the deal Were announced but the news itself is is not new maybe like the length of the deal There's Kyle Trask 28 out of 149 Yeah, Rex, you got to get with the times Next you know Rex is gonna tell us that that that Panini Took the football license away from tops There's Shane Bouchel 97 out of 149 Shane going to Kansas City. That'll be for Michael Michael P with that Quitty pay to 399 Right there. Yeah, next thing. You know Rex gonna tell us Trevor Lawrence drafted number one overall It's Josh Jacobs 249. There's Dwayne Eskeridge Two-color patch and autograph freshman fabric 41 out of 299 nice colors pop really nicely there. That's lamb with the Seattle Seahawks is I don't know who Steve Bouchel is Steve Bouchel American for former major league third base coach Current front office executive of the Rangers at Stanford his roommate was John Elway. Huh? Yeah, his son Shane attended SMU where he played quarterback Well, he was not drafted signed as an undrafted free agent by the Chiefs trivia 67 out of 125 Rex you only know who Steve Bouchel is because he played for the Cubs for three seasons If he wasn't a cub you wouldn't know who he was either. There's Elijah Moore jet. Don't try to act like I should know Who Steve Bouchel is There's Nick Bolton to 149 See was a former driller with the Rangers Was a coach Frisco for no idea Justin Fields What's that Frisco Texas team call? I have a friend who lives like across the street from that that that stadium Texas all right next box Good luck. There's Javante Williams at 399. Yeah, that whole area is like this huge sports complex Looks like it looks pretty cool. You're saying the Stars and Mavs train there together, too There's CD lamp to 199 Chase young to 299 The rich part of Dallas. Yeah, it looks like a nice area at a 299 Kirk Cousins Vikings that's gonna be for Patrick and we've got Charlie joiner three out of five mirror signatures Charlie joiner For the Chargers Brian Crouch all aboard the Big Head Express Michael Strockman struck hand Why am I I'm having trouble? I want to say stray hand. That's why that's the 249 for the Colts out of 249 David Montgomery and We've got a Diami Brown 54 out of 99 three-color patch and autograph for Kea Lam and the Washington football team There's Baker Mayfield the butcher the Baker the candlestick maker 221 out of 249 two-color dual relic Cleveland, this is for you Sean M with that one Ryan Donovan saying Frisco's pretty out there Like they're kind of cuckoo and maybe they're a little wacky out there be a crazy part of town Fourth and final box. This is random team three random team four in the store right now No, I read it the wrong way Ryan meant to you go TJ got it. Yeah, I think I don't think it's that far It's like I Think it's pretty close, right? To like where they play I think close enough for like the Mavs and the stars to have like practice facilities, right? I think that's what TJ's saying for a second. I thought you were just like pretty yet They're pretty out there like a lot of kooks that live there All right gang fourth and final box. Good luck. Watch out Joe watch out There's Greg Rousseau to 199 you got Devon White to 199 for the Buccaneers Big Ben Rothsburg for the Steelers to 299 Steelers will be for Brandon Buccaneers for Sean Bill's Karen and we got a piece of the game here for the Ravens Piece of JK Dobbins Jersey 112 out of 249 Darren with the purple birds D4 Mirror signatures to 45 16 out of 45 for the 49ers Darren You got Luke Farrell to 299 or Pharrell Hovery says it Matthew Safford to 299 and Nico Collins to color patch and autograph maybe three will maybe blue peeking out the bottom there That is 31 out of 349 Stafford to the Rams that'll be for Brian Kellan Mond new generation relic To 299 Clyde Edwards II layer to 149 and Stefan digs at the end there you go ladies gentlemen quick little break four box random team three in the books I'm Joe for jaspys case breaks calm. We'll see you next time for random team number four. Bye. Bye