syndicated on about 40 different sites. You can find us on Pandora. You can find us on iHeart, on BBS Radio, on Radio Public, as well as Spreaker, Stitcher, Apple and Google Podcasts. If you love the show, and by the way, thank you so much for writing in about the show. I actually do read everything that you guys write and it's so meaningful to me. Please recommend this to your friends, subscribe, leave a review. So people like you can find the show as well because this is the number one transformation conversation. And as always, it's an honor to be with you. I wanna talk a little bit today about the power of empathy and understanding. And I'm gonna be bringing on a guest in a little bit, Joe Sannock. And Joe talks about the practice of the practice. He took his clinical practice out of the corporate environment, which for many people who are clinicians or counselors, that means that you're basically living on what insurance will pay. And we all know that story. It's not great for the people who pay for insurance and it's not great for the medical people who are supposed to be receiving from insurance. So he found a way to create a very thriving practice and he does things. And I want you all to stay tuned for this. So for those of us who are entrepreneurs and business people, he found ways to make a thriving practice we can all learn from. And I'm very excited to learn from him. I chose the subject today of the power of empathy and the power of understanding because I thought it was so perfect for therapy, if you will. And the therapy maybe that you're going through with yourself right now and the ways to be a little bit more kind to yourself and maybe a little bit more kind to others. What I know is that there's a lot of power in shifting things, right? So wherever you're headed, whatever's going on that when you can instead imbue it for yourself or for another situation with compassion. I mean, something I play with sometimes when I'm driving in a car, we all know that feeling like you're trying to get somewhere and someone's in front of you or there's a lot of traffic and it could be maddening. I live in Los Angeles, so let me tell you that's sort of like all the time. But I will say that I try to play around with the idea of compassion.  What if the person in front of you just lost their job? What if the person in front of you is, and fill in the blank, something that might move your heart, might move that needle and cause you to have a second thought instead of that it's an animate object in front of you that is completely meaningless and move the heck out of my way that something may be going on and to have some compassion. And by the way, so we should for ourselves too because we can also paramountly be very difficult on ourselves and why not have a lot of breath and capacity and compassion. And what it does is it basically when we allow that capacity between ourselves that allowance between ourselves and somebody else is it's about communicating to another soul and having an open heart and an open mind. It's much easier, things go much better. There's so much power in empathy and acceptance. And it really is the transformative power of love we're talking about. It's interesting, I'm going through a situation right now and my mother has Alzheimer's and caregivers stressful. I'm in a world I had no idea I'd be thrown into. And I'm constantly coming up against the learnings therein. What I know for sure with my mom or with anyone in my life is it is not necessary for me to try to heal or change someone.  And it's not me. They used to say, they probably still do in 12 step programs, you have a God, I'm not it. And I think it's really helpful to remember that. It is enough that I listen, that we listen. It is enough that we speak. It is enough that we act from an open accepting awareness because in this present moment consciousness has clarity, receptivity and love within it. I love the word receiving. I remind myself every day sometimes to just stop and receive. There's so much gratitude and just receiving this moment, this breath, the nature, the sun, whatever is happening. So when we are being our very deepest self, we naturally feel and understand another person from that same deep level of awareness. So I offer you this thought for today, which is I am true to myself when I have an open heart and an open mind. It was John Steinbeck who said, you can only understand people if you feel them in yourself. Well, this show has been nominated for two people's podcast choice awards. And I thank you for those of you who have been voting. This show is sponsored by Dr. Dane Heer, D-A-I-N-H-E-E-R, drdaneheer.com and accessconsciousness.com. They do amazing work out into the world. Check them out. They're anywhere you are. And I am so excited today to introduce you to my guest. Ever wonder how to slow down so you can spark innovation? Do you know how to build your consulting business solely from speaking gigs? My guest today is Joe Sanuck. Joe is a speaker, mental health counselor, business consultant and podcaster. Joe has the number one podcast for counselors called the practice of the practice podcast. And Joe is a rising star in the speaking world. Joe is a writer for Psych Central. He's been featured on the Huffington Post, Forbes, Good Magazine, Readers Digest, Bussell and Yahoo News. Joe is a keynote speaker, author of five books and a top consultant. His website is practice of the practice. And I am going to bring on the fabulous Joe Sanuck to the show. And Joe, welcome to Dear to Dream. Let's bring this little guy. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. So you have interviewed some pretty profound people over time on your show. And I really am curious, how did you fulfill that wish list? How did you get to these people and get them to say, heck yes, I'll be on the show with you, Joe? You know, one person that, for me, it was just, I wanted him on the show so bad was Pat Flynn, smart passive income podcast. He was one of the first people I really followed. I reached out to him via email a few times and really nothing came back. But then I noticed at the time that he was on Instagram quite a bit. And on Instagram, I noticed that he was actually posting a lot of kind of personal things. And so it got a little stalker where I noticed what time of day he was typically on there. But I did a personalized video for him around the time of day that I guessed he was gonna be there. I said how much of an impact it was on me. And that was a public video that I tagged him in, how much his podcast had really impacted me, what it had inspired me to do. And then I sent him a direct message as well. So then he said yes to it. And he was really kind of the first big name that I got from my podcast. And I knew he was connected to John Lee Dumas and to Chris Ducker and some other people. But it all started with that just personal reaching out to Pat. And I think that at the time, I overestimated how much a kind of big name would mean for the podcast. I thought as soon as I get a Pat Flynn on there, I'm gonna be the next Pat Flynn. It's gonna make everything just erupt. But the hard work of podcasting, the regular content, in the regular person's stories are usually actually what people tend to resonate with most of my podcasts. And so now when big names come along, it's great to have a lot of people that are New York Times best sellers or people that are really respected. I love having them on. But a lot of times they're talking points are the same as what's been on other podcasts. And unless they're willing to get vulnerable and show something new, it's really similar to a lot of the other podcast interviews. And so I actually now prefer those kind of rising stars that have some really great content but are yet to be discovered. That's where I love putting my energy into who I interview. Oh gosh. What I really appreciate about you, Joe, is how much you use technology today and what's available, all the different platforms. And you have brilliantly used them to change your life. So I wanna talk about that because what you do today is you consult with people, you help them start to grow, to scale private practices. And I've got a quote from you, which is, we don't usually talk about money and how to make it in an ethical way. OMG, I so agree with you. I was just coaching a client the other day. And one of the things she talks about is money. And I was coaching her on her story, right? Cause I'm helping her get interviewed. And so she's got her story and out of nowhere, she's just sharing with me as an aside off the record. You know, Deb, one of the things I grew up with was the idea that money is a secret. Like nobody talks about money. How do people get money? Then I got into the entrepreneur world and no one's talking about money and you all assume everybody's making all this money but you don't know. And I had to stop her and say, that's the story. Like let's drop that other story about you growing up. This is this compelling story, the secret about money. So I wanna talk about that because there are people listening and watching and they wanna increase their influence. They want to increase their income. What are recommendations you know for creating more money that is ethical and that is maybe unknown to us right now? Well, I wanna start with talking about a date I just had with my wife. So we're going through this book called Eight Dates put out by John and Julie Gottman. And the last date, what you do is you read through this chapter and then you answer some questions. The last date we did was all on money. And it was really interesting because the exercise that it took us through was to look at our grandparents. What would they like? What were their mindsets? So then those four grandparents come down into our two parents and then come down to us. And it was really interesting to look at how hardworking my grandparents were, my grandpa worked for GM and then had a family store and so hard work and kind of being cheap and getting a deal was all four of my grandparents had and then my parents both acted that way. And then I am usually the brakes in our relationship. And so if I didn't know that about myself in my relationship, that would be tough but also in my business, that would be tough because if I'm always being the brakes rather than saying, well, maybe I should reinvest maybe I should stretch myself and hire a coach to do something. If I don't first address kind of the core values that I'm given and don't say, well, should I keep those? Should I not keep those? Should I challenge those? Is that true? Then everything else is gonna be really difficult to do. And so I start with that because if I hadn't addressed that I would have stayed at my full-time job. I was working at a community college five years ago. I had this side gig of a counseling practice and doing a podcast on the side. And I waited and waited before leaving that full-time job because I had a state pension. I had full health insurance. I had, for counselors, one of the best paying jobs in the area and my limiting beliefs were a therapist can only make about $80,000. That's about where it caps out. Now I had to, and we talked about this actually on my show when you were on about the idea of moving outside of the role that you see yourself in. I had to move past just being a full-time job person. Both my sets of parents and my in-laws all worked for the school system. So work hard and have somebody else hire you was the message I received. I didn't know a single entrepreneur except for one. And he kind of seemed a little kooky. And so that was a really big thing to overcome. And we all have these stories. And so I start there because if we don't start with like where, what's my starting point? It's gonna be really hard to figure out how to make money. So then to your question of how do you level up? How do you make more money? I think that we need to start with what's already working. Too often people start with the product that they want to pitch rather than the people and the pain. So I encourage my audience and your audience to start with the pain in the people and then you can pitch the product. And so for most people being involved in podcasting in some way is gonna be essential to you leveling up. Right now I'd say there's not a better way to quickly get a national stage. From there you want to have a very clear call to action into an email course. And so this is a nine-part email course we've figured out. And then once you get at least a hundred people on that you're gonna reach out to them and say, hey, could I sit down with you for 15 minutes over Skype or Zoom and do a 15 minute call? Let me ask you a quick question. When you say the nine email course are you referring to a funnel? Or are you referring to a different system? Yeah, so I think we would also call it a funnel but the system that we've created walks through three specific parts. So the first part is how did we get here? So we're normalizing whatever your specialty is. So say it's how to be seen.  So why are you basically set up in our society to not wanna be visible? And so we're normalizing it. We're saying, so here's some national stats. Here's how schools teach us. Here's what we learn in college. Why do people have these fears of speaking? So the first three emails are really saying, you were set up for failure and that's normal but you don't have to stay there. Then the next three emails, that next part is all quick wins. And so here's some experiments that we're gonna do to challenge what you feel is a very true way of living that I shouldn't be seeing, that I shouldn't be visible. Let's actually challenge that a little bit and see if the data comes back how you think it's gonna come back. And so we might give them a few quick wins, a few quick experiments for them to do over the next three weeks. And then the next three emails are long-term habits. So we've deconstructed how you think about the world. We've challenged that and now we're gonna say, let's build some long-term habits. It's gonna help you grow. Now by doing that, you're immensely building that know, like, and trust that we know is essential in the business world. And rather than just have an email newsletter or an email funnel, there's all product, product, product. We're saying, I'm gonna walk you through a transformation process in this email course. People don't want another newsletter. They don't want another email sequence. They wanna go from this pain to this transformation. And if you have that as your mindset when you build on an email course, it's completely different than how most people are approaching email marketing. Yeah, that's incredible. I love that. I'm actually involved in somebody's transformational process right now because she's going to be a guest on my show and her publishing company sent me her book. And I thought it was so brilliant. And in her book, as you're following along, it says, here's a URL. So here are some audios that will help you actually do the process in real time. And I thought, just had a curiosity. This is pretty cool. So I went on and God bless her heart. They're four minutes each. Like, that so works for me. How could you not do three to four minutes, right, of a process? And I love it because that know, like trust factor for me with her is up. My connection, that intimacy with who she is and what she provides is up. Her personality, I'm connected to it. So this is really smart. And I love the idea you're talking about getting away from the salesy thing because it's not working anymore. We're inundated with that everywhere. Me, me, buy for me, my this, my that, but why you? Because I've got a lot to choose from and this much time and capacity.  I don't open email. Why would I create an email course? Yeah, we're all busy. But if you had a specific goal, like for me, I've never been a weightlifting, like athletic type of guy.  So say I wanted to have a six pack by the time I turn 41, if I subscribed to an email course that says have a six pack by the time you're 41 and it legitimately worked, like I would open that email every single time. You know, and so people have goals, people have pains. It's just the way that we tend to give content isn't structured enough. It isn't clear enough and it's not small enough steps. And so if we can break it down where we walk through this process, we see that our open rates are through the roof. So our typical open rate, depending on the email is 60 to 80% open because people actually want it. And then when we put a link to click on, it's usually 25% or so click on it. And so then when you do have something to sell or something to ask of them, they're ready to do it. And that's where that next part of it of saying, let's jump on a phone call to hear what that pain is. We have a process that we go through that every product we've launched has sold out right away. And we can walk through that too if you want me to walk through that. Okay. Yes. I want to know how, I mean, I was getting somewhere else but the moment, you know, you talk about that, that's huge at a time when I think for most people's sales have gone down nearly because it's overrun, you know, this whole arena, it's constant, the barrage. There's more entrepreneurs than ever. So I want to know how we can stand out and how we can actually sell something. And I always have to end with this because I have people come to my workshops and take my programs and they always leave and say, you're the first person I've paid money to and I left with what you said I would and 100% more than you even promised. Like thank you. And that is so important to me. And I'm even a skeptic about what I'm going to align myself with, because I've done, I'm not someone who runs to do things but I've had a few experiences as well. I'm like, I don't think that moved my needle. So how can we sell a product and of course something that's actually going to move the needle for people out there make a difference in their lives. Yeah. So we've done this. So the last two times that we've done this, the first time was to launch our membership community. So that's grossing us about 15 grand a month in passive income. And then we just did an $80,000 launch with four sales using this exact process. And this is all recently. So what you do is you reach out to your email list and you have an automated scheduling system like acuity or Calendly, something like that. And you say, I want to figure out what's going to help you move forward faster with whatever the pain is that you help solve through your transformation process. So then what you do is you say, I'd love to jump on a 15 or 20 minute phone call to ask you three questions. And so when you do this, you're being upfront. I'm not going to sell you anything on this call. It's literally me digging in to understand your pain more. So the first question I'm going to ask you when we meet on this call is, what has it been like to find visibility? Like for you, what has it been like? What's that experience been like? So we'll talk about that. Second is if there was a dream product that I offered maybe it's a mastermind, an e-course, a membership community, individual coaching that would answer all of your questions, solve that faster for you and help you get results. What would that look like? And then third, what would you pay for it? So every time we've done this, we have learned how our customers speak about their pain in a completely different way than we expected. And so the first question there is them saying, oh my gosh, launching a counseling private practice has been so hard. I feel so alone. I don't know what to do next. My mind feels jumbled. We didn't learn this stuff in grad school. So these are all actual quotes from people that I interviewed. Second, hey, if I created something that you would love to start your private practice, what would that look like? So people said, you know what? If we had a deeper community than your typical Facebook community, that would be awesome. So what did we do when we launched it? We have small groups that they're assigned to of groups of 10. They have an individual accountability partner. And then we also still have the Facebook group. And then the second thing that they said that they really wanted was ongoing knowledge. So we don't just have an e-course. Every single month we're doing live events. We're doing a new e-course every month. And then the third thing they said was tools of the trade. That they wanted just things that they knew that they needed. So for example, a free logo, blog images, infographics that they can put their branding on that they can use on Pinterest. And so, yeah. And so then how much would you pay for? We had people that said $400 a month. We had people that said $20 a month. And the $400 a month, you know, I knew that that was probably more than what the average person would pay. There's no way we could do this for $20 a month. And so we landed at our very first cohort was $55 a month. They locked in that price forever. But they also knew that we were gonna screw up a lot of things in the first couple months. So they were our beta test group. We went through five webinar systems in the first month and a half. And though people were locked out of it, one of them didn't work with iPads. And it's like, this is why you're getting $55 a month. But those first 20 people, almost all of them bought it because I had interviewed them. I have my first cohort now. And I can say, hey, remember how we had that conversation two weeks ago? Here's what I found that everybody pretty much says that they universally want. They want these three things to be included. They want a price point of somewhere between $50 and $100 a month. I'm gonna give you guys it at $55 a month. And now we're at $99 per month. And so being able to do that then allows you to sell to your customer exactly what they want to solve their pain rather than you create some e-course that you're trying to sell people into. And when you say you offer them as part of this monthly membership, live events, what does that mean exactly? Yeah, so every month we schedule three to five live Zoom calls. And so one of those is a what's working call. And so we'll say what's working in marketing. So we have 350 people right now that are in our membership community. We have a new cohort starting soon. And so in any call, 20 to 30 people will show up for it. And so in Zoom, we can divide them up into small groups and then bring them back together. And so we'll have a topic like marketing. What's working in marketing your private practice? We might haven't asked the expert. And so we had camera confidence recently with Molly Mahoney. And so she came in and Molly rocked it out of the park. But they then get access to these people that they never could afford to pay Molly's hourly rate. But they get the behind the scenes. But then we record all of those and also put those into teachables. Every single month, we've got a good five hours of new content. So we say that we're like the Netflix of private practice because there's more content than you could ever keep up with. We also do live Facebook lives within the group and Q and A's and things like that as well to help them just keep moving forward quickly. Yeah. I taught for many, many years the red carpet interview mastery course. And when I wanted to give it a facelift I did exactly what you're talking about. I set up calls, 20 minute calls with people. And I basically said, I'm not selling anything. I literally want to know what it's like to be you. And I had these questions you're talking about. And what was amazing to me is out of all of that, first of all, the connection, the understanding of people that was important to me. I learned something I never would have known which is there are so many entrepreneurs out there who do not know how to message themselves. And that shocked me. And I realized I've got this great course. It's everything they're saying and their pain points they need. That's good. But what they don't have in that course is how do I speak who I am, what I do, what the problem is that I solve and how I solve it, like why me? So I had to retool my course and start with the message merely because of this research you are talking about, it is genius. And I will say too, what Joe's saying in the process is you create a real connection with people. And it makes it easier for them to come aboard and work with you. So I wanna know about CEO, I wanna know about what SEO has to do with promoting ourselves, establishing a plan about SEO. And I also wanna go a little bit into hourly rate because I know these are your specialties. So I wanna deep dive. Yeah, so around SEO, I think the biggest thing is to make sure that you are creating content that's first authentic to you. But the way you name that content doesn't have to be your first idea of it because the way that you think about your content is probably different than what people are Googling or what other people are searching or thinking through. And so even just doing some basic work, going on to Google and starting to type in something that's related to what you're speaking about. So say you're talking about public speaking, just type into Google, public speaking and then see what it says are the most likely second, third and fourth searches. That alone will put you ahead of most of the pack. Most people aren't taking the time to say, well, how do I optimize this blog post? How do I optimize this Facebook live? How do I reuse content? And so if I do a Facebook live that I do some research on. So say I wanna talk about five tips for public speaking and I go and I look and I see that public speaking, master tips, maybe that's what's trending right now. So I name it public speaking master tips or something along those lines. I do this Facebook live, then I download that video and I upload it to Dropbox. At that point, my team takes it over. They then take that and they take that video, they make it look pretty, they put it into YouTube as well. They then pull the transcript from that and make a blog post out of it. They then embed that YouTube video into that. They also add it to our email list and then they also build a Pinterest graphic off of those five steps. So now I spent five minutes creating content and my whole team then has put all of that up there. And so the big switch for most people is that when it comes to creating content and ranking in Google, you are the master of the content. You are smart and you are the only one that can do that. Whereas all the backend SEO, all of the transcription, that is a terrible use of most consultants time.  I'm not focusing in on the internal linking and the external linking and all of that to rank higher in Google. I'm saying the best use of my time is hanging out with Debbie right now because only I can show up for this. Only I can provide this content. Whereas the rest of my team, they can be on social media sharing that's getting it out there. And so even though we're talking SEO, the biggest thing that an influencer can do is focus on the thing that only they can do.  Thank you. That's beautifully laid out story about how it can work and how you can make the best use of your time. And I love that. So I hope everybody's taking notes because this is tremendous information and content that Joe is offering all of us. I'm gonna keep it a little bit of a cliffhanger because when we come back, we will talk about hourly rate and I know this is a pain point for people. I was just being interviewed yesterday on the show and this came up one of our conversations about how we're trying to manage and figure out what's going on in the other person's space. What do they make? What can they afford? What should I charge? Should I discount it before I say it? Should I go for it? OMG, so stick with us. We're gonna talk with Joe about this when we come back and folks, if you are interested in supporting and I hope you are in supporting this show, please go to patreon.com. Patreon.com is where, for price of a cup of coffee for a dollar or more, you can donate to the show and be part of the Dare to Dream team. This is your number one transformation conversation and this show has been around for over 12 years for one reason, my curiosity because I love, love, love learning and connecting with people like Joe where it's a masterclass and I want to inspire you to live big and bold to create your dreams, to feel free enough to know that in this lifetime, you can do it. You can create whatever is right and light for your soul to be and have. And so go to patreon.com. I thank you in advance for supporting the show and I love you. I am interviewing Joe Sannak and he is the dude behind the practice of the practice and that is his website as well and also I'll talk about a debbyd.net slash visibility you'll see here. That is the new course that's rolling out. It's not new, it's been around but this is the new incarnation. You get to work with me live and I teach you how to be interviewed on radio and podcast shows and 60 days or less and get great results. You don't need publicity knowledge. You don't need to know where the shows are. You don't even know how to be interviewed or if you've been interviewed and you're ready to really get great results like filling workshops, like selling books, like getting clients, finding your community or doing some of the steps, having a database that you can even interact with people like what Joe's talking about. You'll wanna be part of this course. I've got specials right now and they're only good for the next couple of weeks. So you wanna get in on this amazing price plus for folks to sign up, you get a free $500 value session with me private strategy session on media. So love to see you there and we always attract some really magnificent people. And thanks for joining us today and thanks as always for posting and being involved and I am again speaking with Joe Seneck and Joe, okay. We are talking about hourly rates. This is big. So how in the world have you found a way to help your clients have peace around this conversation and have the confidence to name and claim their price? Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things here in regards to private practitioners kind of having their price but then online influencers or consultants. And so I do wanna differentiate that a little bit. So for someone that's local in a private practice doing private pay outside of insurance then they can set whatever rate they want. And so being able to understand a few different things that go into their price. And so I had this one consulting client who was in kind of the Eastern kind of Washington, DC, Baltimore, somewhere kind of in that area. And she helped people that were dealing with narcolepsy from a psychological point of view. And usually within four or five sessions she could solve their narcolepsy. They were sleeping normal, they were back to normal. It was all psychological techniques, no medication. And so she was having a very hard time in her own beliefs of herself in charging more than $200 per hour. So what did we do? We looked at, well, the typical person dealing with narcolepsy, how much time would it take with a normal therapist? So it might take 20 sessions. Now someone that's dealing with narcolepsy then doesn't typically drive because they might fall asleep. So they'd have to have a support person come. Now if we just look at the time off of work plus the time for parking, plus the time that's saved, when we actually broke it down her hourly was closer to $900 per hour of the value that she was offering because she was doing it such a short period of time these people then weren't missing work. Their friends or support system wasn't missing work. They weren't losing all that time driving. So even understanding that I think is really important for clinicians. Now I think that people that are online for consultants they have a lot more freedom and a lot more ability to raise their prices. And so most of my consulting clients are making between $500 and $1,000 per hour when they're doing consulting because they are looking at it from a spectrum standpoint. And so when we say, all right, I'm for 45 minutes, I'm $1,000 you're gonna lose in that game but the way we look at it is if someone's brand new, they listen to the podcast and they say, yeah, I wanna start a practice but I don't have a whole lot of money. What is the yes? Well, we have a $17 newsletter where they get a email every single week walking them through how to start a practice in a year. One $17 investment. Now what if they say, hey, I wanna grow faster than that. Well, then we have next level practice which is an $88 a month commitment and that's gonna be, we have live events, our e-courses, we have things that we give them. Now they're still in a large community with 300 plus other people. Say they wanna move faster than that they wanna start a group practice. Well, then we have a mastermind group that Allison or Whitney, they run those and that's small groups of 12 or so that meet twice a month and there's an e-course that goes along with that. Well, what if they wanna grow faster than that? Well, then we have individual consulting and all the way up to when we have the done for you podcasting that's a $20,000 investment. Now, all along that range, people don't lose what's below them. So for example, if someone's in our membership community and they upgrade to Allison's mastermind group, they still get full access to all of this. So they're never saying, well, do I stick with this cheaper product or do I do this more expensive product? Now that does something important psychologically for people because if someone does consulting with me and I have say nine sessions over nine months and we're only meeting monthly, if I just said, you know, we're gonna meet monthly for an hour and it's gonna be $9,000. So wait, that's $9,000, that's $1,000 an hour. I don't wanna pay that. But if I say, okay, it's over nine months, we're gonna meet nine times that first month, we're gonna split that into two 30 minute sessions. Also, you're gonna get text and phone support. So between sessions, if you feel stuck, you know, of course on the weekend and hanging out with my family, you can text me and if it's a quick five minute call, we'll jump on the call. The reality is most people only make about three or four of those phone calls over nine months. You know, most people underutilize that. And so I'm not having people flooding me with it. If I also say, you get access to over 30 e-courses so that you can save time in consulting to learn how to blog, to rank in Google, to learn how to market on Instagram, all these other things. Also, you get my designer at $50 an hour instead of her normal $95 an hour. Also, you get all these other things. So now it's, I'm answering the question they have. How do I grow a private practice or how do I start a podcast? I'm answering the question and it's not just based on here's my hourly for that. But my bottom line is, you know, for every 45 minutes of my time, I know I'm making about $1,000. Now that's really important so that you know that, okay, I need to raise my game. I need to have more things to offer that I can give to people for free at that highest level but that I can also then sell at the lower level. Yeah, that's amazing. So, and I just want to reiterate, so you said something about providing podcasting the entire package for people. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so we have a done for you service. One thing that we did is we surveyed our highest end clients and said, okay, you've gone through a mastermind on how to launch your big ideas. You're doing one-on-one consulting with me. What do you wish we did? And I realized that they said instead of having a hot seat where I direct it, I know you've done this stuff, Joe, just do it. Just tell me what to do. Like be more directive than you've been. And so by listening to our highest end clients, they said we would pay three times more if you would just tell us what to do or even better, do it for us. So then I went to my team and I said, hey, you know, if we had a cohort of eight podcasts come through one at a time, could we handle that with our show notes, with our transcription services, with our audio editor, with our backend coordination with guests, with literally everything except showing up and recording the podcast? And they said, yeah, we could totally do that. We do need some audio engineers. So I reached out to the local community college. We hired four audio engineers from their audio engineering program. Boom, now I have a program. But the thing is I didn't start hiring all those people until we had cash in hand. And so I wanted to see, these people just said, I would love to do it. I'd give you the money, will those people actually buy?  Is it worth it for you to learn how to transcribe a podcast? Not really. Is it worth it for you to even find a transcriber? No. Why don't I, you know, we have a done for you service. Here's all the bullet points that are included. You know, it's an $18,000 one-time fee or you can break it up over four, you know, to pay $20,000. I think this would be a really good fit. And so then when people bought, then that's when I hired the four audio engineers because we've got eight podcasts now that we need to launch. And so it's a lot easier to do that once you have the money in hand. What is the platform that you put the podcast out on? Yeah, so we start with, we make sure first and foremost that the host always owns the content and there's never a question. And so we have them set up their own hosting through Libsyn, we do it all through their website. We help them submit feeds to a variety of services. We do all of the kind of, all of the video editing. We do all of the show notes, all of the downloads that go with it. And the email sequence, the email course we talked about earlier. And we help them build that entire thing out as well. So when you say this is a one-time fee of $18,000, what happens once that money is done and the podcast is still going on and the emails are still going out, how do they still interact with you financially or otherwise? Yeah, so after those nine months, they'll have 26 podcasts out. And then at that point, they can switch over to just hiring us to do the ongoing marketing of it and all the show notes. So there's a much lower fee for that. Or if they like how fast they've grown, they can continue doing consulting with me and then having kind of the backend services. So we can get more into a catered approach. They also get included within that some transition consulting as well. So if they wanna have their own team members manage it, I am all about letting people be independent if they want to be. That's why we have them buy their own music. That's why we have them set up their own hosting, have it all on their website. Cause a lot of consultants out there, they'll get you going, but then you're locked into their system and it's a pain to get out of their system. And I would rather we come in and support it within your system, but we have very specific ideas of where we have, you know, all the email marketing or what types of websites we work with.  That's so cool. I know one of the things that you're really big on is slowing down. And I love this idea of contrary action. Cause the thought process is generally, oh, and my God, you should see, I have books. And this is like my daily to-dos. Like it's banana-rama, right? And it never ends. And a lot of times my to-dos have to go on to the next day and the next day and the next month. It is what it is. But I feel intimately the idea of making a choice that isn't logical because logic says, no, let me just make my way down this list and see if I could chip away at almost everything. But I believe energetically that something else calls to us and can be created in a contrary fashion. So I love for you to talk about how running a successful business actually means slowing down. How do you coach us to get off of the hamster wheel? Yeah, you know, I'm totally off the hamster wheel. I'm out of the hamster cage now. You know, I think that we know this intuitively. Our best ideas come when we're in the shower or we're on a long drive and we have the music off or we're on a hike. That's when our good ideas really come to the surface. And we see this at slowdown school, an event that we host in the summer where we spend two days hiking, hanging out on the beaches of Northern Michigan. We bring in an executive chef. We spend time in nature and tell people, don't turn your phones on unless you wanna take a picture. I mean, that's really, we have campfires for the first few days. And then it's amazing how Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning, people run full tilt towards their business goals because their brains have sorted through the most important use of their time. The problem with a to-do list, a problem with an email when you open your email is everything looks the same. But in reality, if you get an email from the Today Show that says, can you be in New York tomorrow? We wanna spotlight your podcast. That has a lot more weight than if I just email you. Or if someone is trying to sell you something. And so the big thing is our brains need to be able to have the capacity to really focus on what's important. Now, we know that the stress on a brain is not when we make decisions that are good. We make decisions when we're stressed, but usually they're not the best decisions. I remember there was this time when I was in Nepal between my undergraduate and graduate school and we were on this hike in the jungles of Nepal. And our guide had said to us, if a rhino chases us, climb a tree. And I joke with my friends that there's times in life you should ask a follow-up question or two. Like, what kind of tree should we climb? Could we practice climbing a tree? How often does this happen? So we're going through the jungle and we come across the rhino. And this was before digital cameras and I took a picture and then I had the like. And I take a step forward and I don't know if this is a good picture. Take another step forward. And this rhino charges. And I take off running, blatantly disregarding the climb the tree idea. And my friend Todd, I knew he was a distance runner and I was a sprinter. So for at least a hundred yards, I know I've got Todd beat. And I just like outrun Todd. And I know after that a hundred yards, like he's got me.  And it's like, why didn't I try to run up a tree for the first time when a rhino was chasing me? Well, it's because when we are stressed, we don't try something new. We don't take risks. We go with what we know, whether we think it's gonna be effective or not. And that's so true in our businesses as well that when you're stressed, when you're burned out, when you're not getting enough sleep, when you're not eating healthy, when you're not exercising, when you're not socializing with your friends on the weekend, when you're thinking about business all the time, even if you love your business, that's not when you have your best ideas. And so when people learn this, it's this hack that so many people know. Winston Churchill had a non-negotiable afternoon nap. Steve Jobs, one of his most important times was when he would walk with people instead of sit at a boardroom table. Timothy Ferris and Tools of Titans showed that most CEOs meditate. Like why is it that our most influential thought leaders actually slow down? Even the most recent Netflix documentary about Bill Gates, how he has think week, that he goes out into a cabin and he thinks and he reads and he gets away and that's when he's had most of his breakthroughs. So we know this intuitively, but it's one of those things that it's like, we need to be reminded of it, that slowing down actually is the key to sparking big innovation. Any idea for people saying, man, that sounds good, I can really feel what he's saying, but how the heck do I start? Where do I start? Yeah, I would set one clear boundary. So it could be that this Friday, you're gonna put your phone down and you're not gonna pick it up till the next morning. It may be that you aren't gonna check work email for a certain period of time, that you're gonna take all of your social media on your phone and put it into a folder that's called social media. So there's one extra click to get to it. Just so that you say, should I be doing this? Is this intuitive that I need to go onto Instagram right now? I did an experiment a number of summers ago and this was when I had already left the college and had my own business. So I was working five days a week at that point, very fearful of, I don't wanna go back to this full-time job, so I gotta work all the time. I said, summer in Northern Michigan is beautiful. We live two blocks from one body of water, two blocks from another body of water. I wanna spend more time out in nature this summer. So I did an experiment where I took every Friday off for the summer and I said, my wife and I said, if at the end of the summer, it's a disaster, I'll go back to work on Friday. Guess what? I made more money that summer in four days, not working longer hours, working the same amount of hours on those days as I had when I worked five days with that full extra day. Why? Because I was focused on the things that mattered the most and I dropped the ball on the things that didn't. So then I had to start outsourcing the things that were important, thus making me use my time in the very best way possible. So then I did that all the way through that winter in the next summer, I did the same experiment where I took Mondays off. And I continued that experiment. To this day, I don't work on Mondays or Fridays, I pack it all into a Tuesday, Thursday schedule. But what's the small step? What is your experiment that you can do? Because we know the top people that are really moving and shaking, that they do experiments, it's not pass, fail. If I had to go back to work on Friday, I would have just had information, okay? That's really hard for me to work four days a week and get as much done, okay? I'm not gonna beat myself up over that. That experiment was different than I expected. So I'd say do some sort of experiment that challenges how much you're working and stressed out. So let me ask you a question. Somebody like me, I've got a situation, elderly parent, Alzheimer's, fairly lucid, but definitely some issues. We're looking for a facility for her. I'm the only one here in the West Coast. So tag, I'm it, right? Yeah. And as much as I would like to unzip myself from my human suit most of the time around the subject and fly far, far away, I'm here and I'm the one dealing with it. On the East Coast, I thank you, God. I've got an amazing uncle. That's the therapist I mentioned to you earlier and an amazing brother who are really doing everything they can from the East Coast. They're definitely involved and I'm super blessed. However, when it comes to anything action-wise, it's incumbent on me plus the multitude of texts that come through between the three of us, plus her best friend, plus the caregiver, plus the bull. And it's very difficult. So I have some daily practices. I ensure every day I meditate and I'm doing, I'm incorporating various things that I'm enjoying actually very much. However, there is still that feeling often of stress and this is just all too much and I'm a creator and there's so much, I'm on the precipice of so many wonderful potential things but this is often dragging me back and taking away time and all of that. And I know it sounds horrible because this is a mother and someone you love but I feel it's difficult being in this caregiver situation. So I would love you to weigh in as a therapist and as a business consultant. What would you recommend for anybody like me whether it may be they have children that they're going through or a family or other circumstances where they feel that weight that mantle all the time. Yeah. Well, let me just start with that's super normal to feel that way when you're in the midst of so much. I mean, I think just having somebody say, yeah, I think anybody would feel stressed over that. You know, my mom while we're talking is in the hospital. She had cancer a number of years ago, some things went awry. And so that's something that weighs on my mind. And my oldest daughter, her first year, she was in and out of the hospital and needed open heart surgery. We have these phases of life where things hit the fan and it's unexpected and our business goals do need to be paused or slowed down. With that said, I would say, a couple of exercises can be very helpful to just start with, if I was to erase all of the ways that we get things done. So right now the family's texting each other all the time, the friends are texting, it's going crazy. If we were to say, I'm gonna create the system for this, what would that look like that would be healthiest? Maybe it's saying something like, okay, brother and uncle, you know, once a week, let's schedule a 15 minute phone call where we can all just check in and talk about mom. And if we need to text outside of that, let's try our best to do that between the hours of five and six or whatever it is. Just to say, I can't keep up with this. And I know there's sometimes things that feel urgent to you, but they really aren't. And maybe there are things that are that urgent that do need to be kind of real time. But being able to figure out, if I was to create my own system, when do I have the most energy to work in my business? So maybe with, you know, mom, maybe you're there late and so first thing in the morning, maybe isn't the best time like it used to be. So figuring out, if I was to just shape my entire schedule to align with what I'm feeling in my body, what I'm feeling in my emotional needs, the pressures from outside of me, I'm sure there's ways that we could tweak things. And if we make the texts with your brother, 5% different, and then this other area is 5% different, and another area is 10% different, all of a sudden we have a little more space where that yoga class we wanted to go to, I think I could actually go to that. And I could go there and do my best to not think about mom during that time. And that's not that you're a bad daughter by saying, I need time. It's actually saying, for me to be most present and most helpful and most energized when I'm here, here are the things I need. So like when my mom was in the hospital last time a couple of years ago, my dad got in this great habit of doing walks three times a day. And they were long walks and he'd be gone for 40 minutes to an hour. And when we visited, sometimes we'd walk with him, sometimes we'd be with mom. He realized that just sitting in a hospital room wasn't good for him, keeping up with everything. But he also knew that he needed to have those eyes and ears. So he talked to the medical staff and said, is there anything planned during my walk? I don't want the nurse or the doctor coming during this time if I'm gone because I need to have those extra eyes and ears on what's happening. And so he set very clear boundaries around when he would walk, how he would walk and not missing out on that information. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. There was such great information in there and I'm just absorbing all of it. But I love the sense of boundary that you're talking about. And I think that's easier than some of the, I've been doing a little bit of pasta lately, which is, you know, this is going on or I'm gonna be offline for this. And so that's not, it's fluid, but it's actually not creating a sense of, yeah, let's get together once a week, let's zoom. And then the other times, and there is constant when there's an Alzheimer's patients, if it's not the knee, it's the teeth, it's the phone, it's the credit card, it's the Amamamiya, it's constant with her every day, the drama, and yeah, and it's not good. I don't think for the cortisol levels. Well, I think that's, I mean, that's so true. Like you and I both really value self-development, we value being better people, but a friend of mine right before my daughter was about to have open heart surgery, he was a former hospital social worker. He said advice that he would give to his clients, which is so counterintuitive.  We would give that advice.  If you see it as, okay, my daughter is in the hospital, now is not the time to give up smoking. I can choose to do that when I'm stronger on the other side. That's what he encouraged families to do. And so for me, how that manifests itself is, you know what, if I feel like I need a glass of wine at the end of the night, then I'm gonna have a glass of wine at the end of the night during times of stress. Now, when it becomes a long-term habit and you actually notice, oh, maybe that glass of wine isn't that good for me all the time, then you wanna rein it in. But I think having a lot of grace with yourself and saying my tendency towards self-improvement isn't gonna go away when this is over. Even if I get into some things that got me through this that are unhealthy, I'm gonna pull myself out of that. But anything that can relieve that extra stress to help me be focused on mom and to help me be focused on what I need, that's okay to have a little bit of grace around that. I hope you folks will post your takeaways down below because there's so much here in a personal level and a professional level that Joe is providing. And again, Joe Sannak is at practiceofthepractice.com. Joe, this is Dare to Dream. What are your next Dare to Dream? What are your future dreams and goals? Yeah, you know, my dreams and goals, actually our family, my wife and I and our eight and five year old, about a year from now are planning to get an RV and travel the nation and podcast out of national parks. Oh my God, what is the subject you will do when you're in the national parks? What will you be looking for inspiration? Yeah, you know, I bought LeaveToFind.com a number of years ago just to, I think there's always stories of leaving one thing to find something else. So that's kind of our working title for it. But we're also, I'm gonna keep doing my regular podcast as well. And people who wanna connect with you, some of this amazing, the free things you're offering, you're offering even the $17 newsletter or the $18,000 fully done for you, mastermind plus podcasting, where can they find these things? Yeah, so practiceofthepractice.com is our main hub. If people are interested in talking about the done for you podcasting, they can go to practiceofthepractice.com forward slash apply. And then we also have a new e-course coming out for people that wanna kind of bootstrap their own podcast, but wanna save time and do it right. That's over at podcastlaunchschool.com. We also have a free guide there for people, 27 tips, tricks, and stats that will help you start a podcast faster. And anything you'd like to say to everybody, we covered so much ground and I am so grateful for this conversation. I could keep going with you very easily, so many questions. Thank you for all you provided. Thank you for your brilliance. And is there anything, Joe, you wanna say to people here at the end? I think the biggest thing is that I noticed that most people underestimate the skills that they have and underestimate how many people wanna hear about what you know. We all have areas that through life experience, through education, through our own learning that we're really good at. And you don't have to know everything. All you have to do is say, hey, I'm a co-learner, here's what I'm learning. And the more that you get out there and share these things, the more it's gonna positively affect the world. Because for the longest time, I thought that what my skills were, we're just in the therapy room, one-on-one with people. But I've discovered that there's a whole group of people that wanna learn these things. Same with Debbie. Her skill set is now getting out to the world. This isn't reserved for people like Debbie and myself. We all have access now. That's beautiful. My God, right.  Skills indeed. So no better words that if we can do it, you can do it, that's for sure. I'm gonna end today's show with this quote from Michelle Obama. Becoming isn't about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn't end. Tune in next week on Dare to Dream. I'm going to be interviewing my guest, Corinne Grillo. She is the author. She's also a therapist, by the way. So there's a theme this week. She is a psychotherapist, and Corinne will be talking about her new book called The Angel Experiment. Subscribe to Dare to Dream podcast, your number one transformation conversation. And if you'd like to see the guests that I'm speaking with, go to youtube.com slash Debbie Dashinger. And for those of you who are ready for the next piece, you are ready to be visible out in the world and learn how to be interviewed on radio and podcasts, go to DebbieD.net slash visibility. I've got an amazing video there for you, full of content about how you can get started to do this right away. Thanks for joining us today. And remember the secret of success is having the courage to begin in the first place.


Russian S-350 air defence system damaged by own mines. The Telegram channel spy dossier disclosed an incident involving the Russian airborne forces in the occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk. The 50P6E launcher, part of the S-350E Vityaz air defence system, was damaged during night operations. According to available information, the Russian forces ironically became victims of a mine from defences presumably laid by themselves. Army recognition media outlets say that the explosion caused no casualties as the missiles on the 50P6E launcher were not detonated. However, the chassis of the vehicle was considerably damaged, leaving the launcher immobilised in a densely mined area. The Russian soldiers fear of triggering further mines, delayed recovery efforts, with the damaged launcher still at the scene of the incident at the time of writing. However, this fear shows that this minefield has served its purpose, even if it is the Russian, not the Ukrainian advance, that is being slowed down. The S-350E Vityaz air defence system developed by the Russian defence company Almas Ante was introduced to replace older systems like the S-300PS, offering advancements such as improved radar and a launcher with a capacity for 16 missiles, a significant upgrade compared to its predecessors.


Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with John Furling, author of Winning Independence, a new book about the decisive years of the American Revolutionary War. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, July 6th at noon, Zachary M. Schragg will tell us about his new book, The Fires of Philadelphia, a study of anti-immigrant riots in 1844 Philadelphia. And on Thursday, July 8th at noon, Amy Sohn will discuss The Man Who Hated Women, her new book about anti-vice activists and U.S. postal inspector, Anthony Comstock. In just five days, we'll be celebrating our nation's 245th Independence Day. Each July 4th, we recall the bold words of the Declaration of Independence, but we do not always remember that independence was secured only after many years of warfare. The first official shots were fired in 1775, but the final decisive battle played out more than six years later. The latter years of the war, when the main theater of operations moved south, are less familiar to us. This southern strategy nearly led to success for the British. The correspondence of George Washington and others, which have been digitized and are freely available through Founders Online, reveals the concerns for the success of the revolution. In May 1780, Washington wrote, I assure you every idea you can form of our distresses will fall short of the reality. The country in general is in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its interests that I dare not flatter myself with any change for the better. In winning independence, John Furling shows us how the decisions on both sides led to ultimate victory for the Americans at Yorktown. John Furling, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of West Georgia, has also written extensively on the political and military aspects of the American Revolution and the early republic. In addition to biographies of George Washington and John Adams, he is the author of Almost a Miracle, A Leap in the Dark, and Whirlwind, which won the Francis Tavern Museum Book Award for the best book on the revolutionary period. His most recent book is Apostles of Revolution, Jefferson Payne, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe. Now let's hear from John Furling. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for that splendid introduction. It's an honor to be invited of the National Archives to speak today. I've done research in the National Archives, and I think I've spoken twice and also been on one panel at the National Archives, and I regard those events as among the real highlights of my career. So it's quite an honor to be here today. I just wish I could be with you in Washington and Boston are my two favorite cities in the country. So I would love to be there, but the pandemic has gotten in the way. So today I want to talk with you a little bit about my book and go through some of the things that I tried to highlight in the book. A couple of years ago, when I was writing the book, I rewatched one of my favorite movies, The Two Jakes, and in that movie there's a line by Jack Nicholson that I had never really noticed before, but this time it caught my attention. You can't forget the past any more than you can change it, Nicholson says, and I think why it caught my attention this time around was not that I think that the Revolutionary War has been forgotten, but I was writing about the last four years of the war, and I don't think that period is as well remembered by a great many people as the first thirty months of the war, the period from Lexington and Concord in April 1775 through the surrender of a large British army under John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October of 1777. Even though the period after Saratoga witnessed the deaths of more American soldiers than was the case prior to that time, in fact I think close to sixty percent of all of the American soldiers who died in this war died after Saratoga, so I think it is a crucial period and obviously culminates in Yorktown and the Allied victory that did secure independence. You'd probably spend the full hour talking about why the latter part of the war isn't as well remembered, but I think I can sum it up, I think, in just one sentence, and that is that Saratoga is often characterized as the turning point of the Revolutionary War, and I don't for a minute minimize the importance of Saratoga, I mean Britain lost an entire army there and it was what really brought France into the war, and without French aid and the alliance with France, America could not have won the war, so Saratoga is really crucial, but I think because it is often characterized as the turning point, I think every American textbook that's ever been written says Saratoga is the turning point of the war, that many people just think that what happened after Saratoga wasn't important and that the American victory in the war was now inevitable, and I try to argue in the book that that's not quite the case, in fact that it becomes a long war that goes on for four more years and the outcome of the war isn't known until York at the end of 1781, it could have gone another way as I'll try to show. If, let me show you one of my slides here, there we go, if many people think that the that American victory was inevitable after Saratoga, so did a lot of contemporaries, and one of those was George Washington, Washington goes into Valley Forge right after Saratoga and while he is at Valley Forge, he gets the word of the French alliance and Washington says that the war is now burging fast to a favorable issue and he also said the French alliance must put the independence of America out of all manner of dispute, so Washington along with a good many others thought that victory was now at hand and the victory was inevitable and I think he saw that time was on America's side now, he doesn't say this categorically but I think Washington probably thought that one of two things was likely to occur in the near future, either the French and the Americans would join forces and win a decisive victory over the British sometime in 1778 and that would bring an end to the war or that in the very near future the British would decide that this was just an impossible task that they should get out of the war, it was a fool's errand to stay in and that they would make peace and grant America its independence and as given this state of mind Washington reflected on what he was going to do in the near future and he doesn't spell it out but he does say while he's at Valley Forge that henceforth he would not act as he put it with impetuosity, I don't think Washington ever acted impetuously but he certainly didn't after Saratoga and again as I said he didn't spell out what was entirely on his mind but I think what given what we know about Washington over the next four years down to Yorktown I think what Washington was probably thinking at that point and from that point forward as a matter of fact was that he was not going to act without the consent of the French and perhaps not even with unless he could act in concert with with the French. Well if Washington and others felt that the war was virtually over what was going on on the other side of the Atlantic the British got the news of Saratoga in December of 1777 and it creates quite a debate through the winter of 77-78 over what Britain should do and I think there were there were probably three elements in in British politics at that point. One element wanted to just get out of a war that they either because they thought it was an unwinnable war or they wanted to get out before France came in and that they they didn't want a major war again with the French and there was a second element it was particularly strong among within naval circles in England and also among those people who had made fortunes off of sugar and slaves to not fool with the war in America in North America any longer on the mainland but to concentrate on trying to hold British possessions in the in the Caribbean which they believed that France would attempt to take and which France did attempt to take as it as it turned out but there was a third element in England that wanted to stay in the war and that element is really led by the American Secretary as his title was or official title was Secretary of State for America and that was Lord George Germain and by virtue of his office he was not only responsible for of the American colonies but he was also in in essence something of a war minister and the British commanders of the British army in America reported to Germain throughout his tenure during the war and Germain wanted to remain in the war continue to fight in North America though he realized that there had to be a change in strategy after all the British had fought for 30 months trying to defeat the Continental Army trying to in the north trying to take control of of states of colonies rather in the north where it was Massachusetts or New York or New Jersey or whatever and they hadn't succeeded so they just simply could not continue to do that British public opinion wouldn't tolerate that any longer and so Germain devised a new strategy and the strategy that he devises is comes to be known as the southern strategy and Germain believed that it was possible for Britain to regain control of two and quite possibly three southern colonies Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina Georgia and South Carolina were extremely important economically for the British Empire rice and and tobacco were produced in those areas and as I said earlier fortunes were were made off of that and so he he wanted he wanted to try to retake those areas and he thought it was a feasible strategy because he believed and I think he was correct and this as as his studies by historians over the last couple of generations have demonstrated that a greater percentage of the population in in the southern colonies remained loyal to to Britain than was the case in the in the northern colonies and since the since France was coming into the war Germain knew that the the British army in America would have to be reduced in size some of those troops would have to be sent to the Caribbean so he needed somebody to take their places and he reasoned that the the loyalist in the south and many of those would be willing to take up arms for their their king and they the idea was that those loyalist would go into what came to be known as provincial regiments that is they would become regulars in the British army the regiment might be commanded by a British army but everybody else would be an American loyalist who served in those those regiments and other loyalists in the south would go into loyalist militia units and the nob of Germain's idea was that the British army the regulars would drive the rebels out of an area and the loyalist militia would follow them and come in and occupy the area and complete the job of the pacification of the area and and that within a relatively short period of time Germain felt that as I said perhaps as many as three of the colonies could be reclaimed by Britain if Germain's strategy panned out and the war ended with Britain in control of those three southern colonies there might be a united states but the united states would not look like it did after Yorktown the area on this map that's shaded in red was the area that might have been there would have been the united states but everything else in white on that map would have been held by Great Britain you can see Georgia South Carolina North Carolina down below Virginia and below Georgia you can see east florida and west florida which Britain had acquired in an earlier war in 1763 the British still held the transmontane west and it held Canada so the united states would have been surrounded by by British held territories and it would have been small it would have faced a very uncertain and and rather bleak future whether it could have survived or not is an open question but even beyond that if even if the united states did survive if you think of the British empire is including everything in white on this map as well as what it continued to hold in the caravan then Britain would come out of the war with something in fact it would come out with still a pretty vibrant American empire so germane wins the struggle in in the winter of 1778 and the ministry under frederichord north and the king george the third agreed to continue hostilities against what what the americans called the united states at the time and that left germane with an immediate task and that was to name a new commander of the british army because the previous commander william howe resigned in the wake of sarah toga and he was back in london and germane names sir henry clinton to be the new commander of the the british army clinton learns that he's been named commander in may of 1778 so that that much of the story in my book winning independence deals with the choices that were made by washington and by clinton and they're both major figures in the in the book so let me say a word or two about about sir henry clinton um he was 50 years old two years older than washington in 1778 came from a very different background than though then washington came from he came his family was part of the aristocracy in england his father had been a career officer in the royal navy and he had served as a royal governor of new york and in fact young henry spent some of his childhood growing up in uh in new york city he entered the british army while he was a teenager uh and uh he he served in two wars before the revolutionary war and in fact was seriously wounded in a battle in germany during the seven years war in 1760 so he's a unlike washington who we served for four years in with the virginia regiment in the french and indian war and then left the military and became a planter in in virginia at mount varnan clinton is a professional soldier washington i i look upon as an amateur soldier when he became the commander of the continental army in 1775 clinton by contrast as i said was a professional he was an intellectually curious individual read widely especially in military history and military tactics even a 1.1774 out of his own pocket he traveled deep into eastern europe to observe a war between the russians and the turks hoping to learn more about military strategy he was sent to america in 1775 he arrived not long after lexington and conquered just in time to be part of the battle of bonker hill and he served with some distinction during the 30 months down through saratoga and into 1778 before he's appointed commander of the british army in fact he won a reputation during that period as perhaps the the best strategist of all of the british armies uh in uh in america but when clinton took command of the british army uh the first thing that he said when he wrote to a friend in london is my fate is hard and what he meant by that was that along with germain's orders making him the commander germain told him that he had to give up 8 000 of his troops and these this would be 8 000 men atop all of the british soldiers that had been lost at saratoga and then that numbered something like 7 000 uh men so that clinton knew from the beginning that his army would be uh about one third smaller than the army that had been unsuccessful uh previously and uh in addition to to the problem of manpower he now had to contend not only with the american rebels but with the french who would were coming into the war following the alliance with the united states so when he said my fate is hard what he went on to say was that he now thought that british victory in this war was hopeless and uh he said that he feared that he would be saddled with a considerable portion of the blame for britain's inevitable lack of success and in that regard clinton was oppressive uh he has not enjoyed a good historical reputation he was in fact maligned by contemporaries in england following yorktown and historians since then have largely criticized clinton portraying him as overly cautious and unwilling to to act and and not a risk taker so forth and in fact one of the things that that i try to show in the book is that uh washington was not a risk taker either remember he said he didn't want to act with he wouldn't act impetuously after this and uh clinton is is actually far more active between 1778 and 1781 than was washington but washington comes out on the winning side and he emerges from the war as an iconic figure whereas clinton comes out of the war with uh as as sort of the scapegoat the guy who lost the war because he failed to to to take risks and that he was just to to enact throughout the the war i argue in the book that that clinton was far more active than he was given credit for by contemporaries or by by most historians in fact he at the beginning of his command he faces more crises in a very short period of time in about three months than any other british commander faced in this war uh he immediately fights a battle with washington in new jersey the battle of monmouth and uh it's an indecisive battle but shortly after monmouth just days after that the first french fleet to be sent to america arrives off the coast of new jersey and it's a large french fleet commanded by uh comp disdain and the allies plan an attack on new york city with the french using their navy washington using their army his army um the the allied plan is foiled uh for two reasons one is that disdain ships were too heavy to get across the bore and the bar and into the new york harbor but also because clinton acted uh immediately uh by sending men and artillery to positions around new york from which they could shell uh any friendships that got too close to to new york harbor and no less than the second in command of the royal navy in america praised clinton and uh characterized him as the savior of uh of new york clinton guessed that uh now that the allies had struck out in new york they would try to take newport road island which the british had held since 1776 and clinton guessed exactly right in fact he he rushed men and provisions to the the british garrison in newport and got them there three weeks before the french navy got there or before an american army formed on aquedic island where newport is uh is located and uh again the the allies did plan to try to take newport which was a valuable harbor but again they were foiled and this time it was because a great storm roared out of the atlantic and caused serious damage to disdain's fleet and he had to retreat to uh boston to have his ships repaired but the allied army composed mostly of militiamen under uh continental general john selvin but also including about 2000 men that washington had sent under lafayette remained on aquedic island and clinton saw an opportunity uh he immediately cobbled together an expedition of about uh more than 80 british vessels and about 4500 men and sailed for aquedic island and his plan was with this american army there that the british garrison and newport would advance on it from a south wall clinton's expedition landed on the north end of aquedic island and the americans would be caught in a pincere movement and defeated and if clinton had succeeded in that plan the americans would have lost an army roughly the same size as the army that were going and lost at saratoga only 10 months earlier but now it was clinton's turn to be foiled because he his expedition ran into contrary winds when it was sailing toward aquedic island took a long time to get there and general selvin learned that they were coming in he managed to to get his army off of aquedic island literally just hours before the first british troops landed on the north north end so clinton had had been quite energetic and quite active in in his first three months as commander and his activity continued in in december of 1778 his first year in command he sends a 3000 man expedition to savannah to the coast of georgia and it takes savannah and a one-day engagement and the royal government of georgia is reinstituted it becomes at least in the british eyes a royal colony once again every law passed by the the rebel legislature since 1776 was was repealed the king's laws were put back on the books in may of 1779 clinton sent a large expedition to virginia which landed cock the virginians by surprise put the torch to thousands of acres of crops destroyed several ship construction sites liberated hundreds of slaves and that same expedition returned in new york and before the men could get off off their vessels clinton sent them up the hudson river and they in may of 17 may and june of 1779 they took two american forts at king's ferry well up the hudson and the hudson highlands and what clinton was hoping was that by taking those force he would would force general washington to take the field to try to defeat the british army because the americans lost not only their forts but they they now face communications and logistical problems as as a result of having lost those installations but washington did not come into the field he again remains very cautious and as he tells one of his generals washington said we can only lament what we cannot remedy and so clinton was unable to get washington into the field so clinton was quite active but there was one thing that he might have tried to do and he didn't and he was after the war severely criticized for for not having attempted to do it and that was he might have tried to take west point the american installation american fort at west point up in the hudson highlands and if the british succeeded in winning new york in taking west point the war is over purely and simply because the british would would control the hudson river from new york to albany and the four new england states or colonies whichever you prefer would be now indelibly separated from the other nine american states and america just couldn't continue in the war even with french help under those conditions but clinton did not try to to take west point and in in my book i tried i defend clinton's decision clinton inherited an intelligence network that according to the historian who has studied it most closely was still in a primitive state the result was that clinton knew next to nothing about uh west point's defenses uh he he essentially knew only two things he knew that washington had had five years to develop the defenses at new york at west point and he also knew that washington would call on every continental and every militiaman that he could get his hands on uh to defend west point so that clinton would have to go in blind attacking a fort that he knew really nothing about against an army that he knew would be a numerically superior adversary and uh he he uh did not take that risk and i think he was probably wise in not taking the risk and one reason i think beyond those that i mentioned a moment ago for him not striking at at west point was that whereas if you remember i mentioned that i think while washington was at valley forge he he concluded that time was on america's side a year later by the summer of 1779 clinton believes that time is on britain's side and so it would be foolish to act uh in a risky manner why did clinton think time was now on britain's side for for two reasons in effect one was that the american economy had absolutely collapsed uh by by this point as washington put at the value of money is melting like snow under a hot sun and clinton reason that the americans just could not continue the war for much longer he didn't think that it was going to to come to an end in the next week or anything but uh that that um time was running against america and of course we know uh that ultimately the from a financial standpoint americans survived because of french loans and and just money that the french gave to america not to mention weaponry and clothing and whatever for the uh for the uh for the troops but also clinton saw that or believed that and i think rightly so that um american morale was beginning to sag and not just because of the the economic collapsed uh but because this war was going on and on and on and there was no end in sight to the war by 1779 uh when clinton is thinking this two years have passed since saras saratoga the americans have not gained a single victory the french have been in the war for a year and they haven't gained a single thing uh from uh from this war and so uh morale is beginning to sag uh in the in the united states again i don't mean to suggest that that the end was near but that that probably for the first time since the really dark days of 1776 morale was waning in areas in america so clinton stays inactive for the remainder of 1779 and one reason one other reason for his inactivity is that after distangs fleet was repaired in boston distangs sailed for the caravan and he campaigned there through the through the winter of 1778 79 but clinton and washington expected uh distang to return and both thought that he would in sometime in the late summer of 1779 that he would return to to new york and that the once again the allies would campaign for new york but distang didn't do that instead distang landed on the coast of georgia and in conjunction with a continental army and militiamen under general benjamin lincoln distang the french the french and the americans attempted to retake savannah and they failed they lost heavily uh in their siege and attack on savannah after which distang sailed back to england and never returned uh to america and once distang leaves clinton knows that he can at last really begin to put uh uh uh lord germain's southern strategy in operation in earnest and so just after christmas of 1779 clinton puts together a large expeditionary force and thousands of british troops and he sails for charleston and they land off the coast of of georgia they advance on charleston uh slowly they're there by april of 1780 and launch a siege operation of charleston which succeeds an american army under benjamin lincoln again surrenders uh all of the american troops in charleston and the city of charleston in may of 1780 and this is a loss of uh of uh men almost as many americans are lost in the siege and battle and surrender at charleston as the british had lost at saratoga so it really is america's saratoga and uh it made clinton something of a hero in england there were many people who felt that lord norse war ministry was saved by the victory at uh at charleston and a friend in london wrote to clinton and now said and told clinton that he was now the most popular man in england which it was probably drew he may very well have been more popular in england than washington was in america in uh in the summer of of 1780 so clinton doesn't remain in uh charleston for very long he returns to new york and once he returned to new york he appointed uh as his successor in um as his command and person who was to command the british southern strategy general cornwallis url char charles url cornwallis who like clinton he was eight years younger than clinton but like clinton was a veteran and a professional british office cornwallis's orders emphasize that he is to focus on south carolina he is to try now to to pacify the back country of south carolina and he's left with about 7500 troops and the assumption is as i said earlier that lots of loyalists would rally to arms uh and join the british army and in fact cornwallis would have several thousand loyalists not very many from the south as it turned out most of them were from new york pennsylvania and new jersey but there were some southerners uh who who went into those provincial regiments and things went went very well uh early in the first weeks that that cornwallis was active in the south carolina back country so well in fact that he writes to clinton in july of 1780 that he believed that the insurgency was was almost over uh at at that point and he had even better news for clinton in august of 1780 another american army a successor army to the one that lincoln had surrendered at charleston is sent into uh the south that's under haratio gates and it collides with an army under cornwallis at camden in south carolina in august of 1780 and the american army is utterly defeated uh at the battle of camden in fact it was the fourth american army to be destroyed in the south in a space of 20 months two armies had been lost at at savannah lincoln's army had been lost at charleston and now gates's army had been lost at um at camden more than 8 000 american troops had been lost in 20 months in those four uh engagements and not for nothing did washington that same month of august 1780 write a letter to the chief executive of pennsylvania in which he said uh i have almost ceased to hope it now really began to to appear that an american victory in this war might not be uh likely at all and even more telling i think than than what washington said in that letter was something that arthur lee said arthur lee was from virginia he was one of the first diplomats appointed by congress he'd spent years in um in uh europe he was one of the three that negotiated the alliance with uh france and he returned to america in um in august of 1780 first time to come back to america since before the war and he lands in boston and he's in boston a few days and he talks with many of the leaders of boston and some of the leaders of massachusetts and arthur lee writes that after that he he felt that the that the leaders of massachusetts according to lee believed now that the war would end in a negotiated settlement that would be short of american independence that america would not achieve uh independence so this is a very bleak period for uh for the for the united states in many ways i think as dark as those dark days in in late 1776 and in a sense they they grew even even darker even though cornwallis began to experience some problems losing a about about a thousand-minute kings mountain in october of 1780 and other reversals would come down the road clinton as he looked at the situation as 1781 approach concluded that america faced a brighter future than than the british uh then the then the americans did um in in 1781 that he was now really hopeful that the southern strategy would pan out and he devised a new strategy a strategy that i think came very could have that could have succeeded and brought the war to a different end and clinton's new strategy was twofold on the one hand he put a large army in virginia for the first time an army that swelled to about six thousand men and the job of that army was to destroy supply depots and interdict the flow of supplies from the north down into the carolinas the only way the any american army or any american partisans fighting in the carolinas and georgia could stay in the field stay active was by getting supplies from the outside and this large army i think in virginia had the resources to shut down the flow of those supplies and the second aspect of clinton's strategy was that cornwallis was to remain in in south carolina and he was to focus on destroying whatever uh insurgency uh existed in south carolina and i think between the two clinton strategy might have succeeded all along clinton believed that the allies would try to retake new york in 1781 he was getting intelligence reports from london that demonstrated that that if the allies did not score a decisive victory that year that france was going to drop out of the war it would take a face-saving means of doing so by agreeing to a european peace conference that would determine the fate of america in the outcome of the of the war and uh so um uh clinton i i i knew too that the french were sending over a navy another navy a successor navy to distanced this one under admiral de grau and that uh he expected the allies to attempt to take new york and his plan was that during the summer of 1781 he would recall all but about 2000 of those 6000 men in virginia to new york so that he would have an an adequate army to defend new york against the allied onslaught but two things went awry and those two things i think sealed britain's fate in this war and that what one was that cornwallis didn't stay in in south carolina in violation of his orders he took his army to virginia which means that there's now 7500 british troops in in virginia and the second thing is that lord germain wrote to clinton in june of 1781 and told him not to remove any troops from virginia so an army of 7500 men remain a british army of 7500 remains in virginia and i think i can't answer this question no one can but uh i wonder what the brit what the allies would have done if clinton had withdrawn all those troops from virginia and only 2000 remain would going to the into the chesapeake after that small 2000 man army in virginia would would scoring a victory over them have been a decisive enough victory to have won the war or would washington and his french allies under principally under prompter the rochambeau would they have decided that that they had to attack new york and if they attack new york could they have won uh an engagement in new york after all the british had had five years to fortify new york and i think all of the indications are that rochambeau did not think that the allies could could emerge being victorious in new york but clinton has foiled and the result is that the road is now paved to york town as you know and washington is going to come out of this conflict as an iconic figure and sir henry clinton is going to come out of this war with a reputation as a failed british general well i'd i'd be happy to try to take any questions that that anyone has oh okay well there are no questions okay well i i go much further in my book uh into many things that i discussed uh today uh some things i didn't get to at all today the decisions for example that clinton made when the allies began moving toward virginia what what did he do why did he uh do it and so forth and the last couple of chapters in the book deal with the siege and the victory at york town and ultimately i conclude that um that that mistakes were made if clinton had had a free hand i think the war might have turned out differently but also i think uh the british lost the war because they found themselves in a um a a world war uh and they were just spread too thin especially the royal navy was spread too thin it it was unable to defend the british homelands british imperial interest in asia in the caravan and in north america could do some of it but it couldn't do all of it and the result was the the uh french succeeded in gaining maritime supremacy in september of 1781 in the chesapeake and that doomed the the british oh there is one question here and that is the did clinton have a fort named after him uh no i don't i don't not that i know of um maybe wrong i i just bought a a book about two or three months ago on british forts in on long island and i got a book on the interlive the interlibrary loan on british defenses in new york uh that i i read when i wrote the book and i don't remember a fort clinton in new york there was a fort clinton that was an american fort but i presume that it was named after george clinton who was the governor of new york revolutionary governor of new york oh another question any comment about the financial condition of the states from 1780 well the uh the americans uh were getting loans from from uh france and uh at the outset of 1781 uh congress was so desperate for money that it decided to bypass its minister in france who was none other than benjamin franklin and send a special envoy to france to plead for for money and that envoy was colonel john lauren's of south carolina he was a continental army uh officer and he comes to meet with washington and washington writes a very lengthy letter that uh uh that lauren's takes to um to to france uh with him and franklin didn't give up franklin sought loans lauren sought loans they both got money and that that money was crucial uh in getting the army to york town there were there was some evidence that the army which many of the these were northern soldiers by and large looked on the south as something of a death trap because uh diseases were more prevalent fevers were more prevalent in the south and in the north so many were reluctant to go into the south in the first place they hadn't been paid for in forever and uh so uh uh washington had to to pay them and the money that that that was used to pay them was the movie the money that lauren's brought back from france so it's a it's a crucial move and crucial on the part of france which didn't want to come out of this war empty handed and and helps sustain america through the through the york town campaign any other uh question well if there are no other questions uh thank you very much and as i said at the beginning it's really i appreciate the the invitation from the national archives induced sincerely regarded as as an honor to be invited to uh to speak today by the national archives thank you very much