Hi guys, this is Christian from swimtofly.com. Today we are going to learn how to swim freestyle in three simple steps to master the front crawl. Remember that the front crawl is always something easy to learn. The first thing is to remember the intention. So when you swim freestyle, you need to learn how to glide, how to stretch forward and how to relax. It's all about relax. Swimming is all about sensation, relax and be effective and effortless with big stroke power through underwater and the right way of movement. So there is three steps to learn how to swim front crawl which are really easy. We're gonna start now with the first step. Before everything, you need to learn how to kick in the water correctly and you need how to feel the gliding sensation, the correct posture when you are in the water. So we're gonna start on the shallow side just to show you how to practice the kicking. So I'm here. The freestyle kick needs to be done with your feet like straightened here, your knees like not bent, no, I think I like straightened. And it's just the kick like this, one after one. Try to avoid to bend your knees and do biking in the water. This is completely ineffective. So what you want to do is just do small and fast movement with kicking legs and you kick faster on the surface. You see my foot here on the surface, I kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick and I can see the water on the surface. Of course when you swim freestyle, you are on the other side. So for the freestyle since we are on the other side, my leg needs to be on the surface of the water. At least some things. Don't bend your knees. Kick small and fast. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. And you need to stand behind me to pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. This is the sound of my kick kicking in the water. So your kicking, remember, need to be on the surface fast with the sound behind you, okay? Once you are able to do your kicking to master step number one, which is the arrow position, you need to learn how to put your head and your arms correctly to glide on the surface. So the arrow position is to be able to start, push on the wall, glide with your hand correctly position and kick, kick, kick, kick and that's it for five meters. So if I want to practice the arrow position, I need to go always deeper. So I'm gonna do the arrow position for like maybe five meters only. So I'll put my feet on the wall. I will kick the way I have shown and I will straighten my hands like this on the surface of the water. Remember then your hand here need to stay on the surface side by side. You can practice like this straight on your arms or you can if you want to learn from a simple way you can be side by side straight on your arms. What you want to do is to stretch your arms. Remember that's the key point. You want to fly. You want to swim freestyle so you want to glide for one. If you're helpful or a band like this you're not flying. This is broken. The more you stretch for, the faster and easier you're gonna swim. Okay, so step number one to learn how to stretch your arrow position. I glide. Take my big breath, five second bubbles in the water, kick, kick, kick, kick with my feet and glide for one. And that's it. Okay, pretty easy. I go back on the other side. Remember when you do your bubbles try to look straight down at the bottom of the swim.  Don't be like this. Your head's back. You want to look down so we cannot see your head all the way. You are in the perfect gliding position. Remember that position is called arrow position. Show again. Okay, I keep my kick on the surface, small and fast. Don't bend your knees. My head is down. I blow my bubbles. Relax five seconds. My hand on the surface don't move. One more time. When I can master my arrow position that is very good. You can now learn how to swim with paddling in the water with your hand. It's time to learn the step number two which is learn how to do the strokes, blow your hand.  Now you need to learn how to paddle inside the water with your hand by being able to still glide in the water. A lot of people will fight in the water. They swim, they spend so much energy to try to swim faster and they swim so slow and they are so exhausted after just 10 meters of swimming because they don't try to feel what is the gliding position. A big stroke with the other hand gliding forward. Every stroke needs to be big, strong in the water and relaxed outside the water. So to learn how to swim with the step number two, we'll just repeat the step number one. We'll just repeat the arrow position one, two, three, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, blow your bubbles but this time you will have a little board in your hand. Okay, when you have a board like this, it's a small board. If I push the board down, it's gonna drown. Okay, a lot of people they learn how to swim with the board but they push the board down because the board is huge, the board stays up but that's not the way because you never want to go down. You want to go forward, you want to glide, right? So you do your arrow position five seconds. One, two, three, four, five, do your bubbles, your kick on the surface. This is all good. Okay, the step number one is perfect. Okay, all right. So now you need to learn how to do the same with paddling in the water. One big stroke paddle. Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles, bubbles, two big stroke bubbles, bubbles, bubbles, paddle and then at the third stroke you need to breathe.  Why third and why not two because you will learn how to swim both sides left and right. Later when you compete you can do only learn every two stroke, brief every four strokes, whatever you fit you well but when you learn you learn both sides left and right.  Two big stroke go back to the board. Three big stroke breathe. Go back to the board and continue. One big stroke go back to the board.  Three big stroke breathe. Go back to the board. Okay at the beginning if you are a beginner don't focus so much on turning on the side. Learn the rhythm. One, two, breathe at number three. The rhythmic is very important for the step two okay. So I don't want to learn how to breathe on the side yet it's a bit too advanced so I will go very easy with learn how to just move my hand and go up at number three. I have my board.  Go down and continue. Okay this is the arrow position with the ball and moving the hands. Let's practice. Same position. Head down big bubbles. Let's go.   This is normal.  Okay and try to cool and breathe at the beginning.  So we repeat this skill again. The bubbles, two stroke bubbles, two stroke, go up, breathe and go down. Be careful when you go up.  Keep your legs on the surface kicking quick and fast. Okay with kicking doing this little sound on the surface. Blow your bubbles and be relaxed.   That's why every streamer when they learn the correct freestyle stroke they're gonna turn the head to breathe instead of going up and look forward. To turn the head is very easy. You just need to turn at the right time with your half face in the water. The closer you are the better you are. Don't stress.  Most of people they believe then if they turn up like this is good but this is wrong.  You don't want to do that.  Half of your face inside the water here. And then I go down. Okay so the stroke is very simple. But remember when you want to breathe from the side half face cut by the water. One eyes inside, my mouth outside breathe. Blow bubbles go down again. And to keep pushing the body you want to pull and turn at the beginning. Remember pull and turn in the same time. Don't pull first and turn after especially when you are a beginner because it will be more complicated.  So I have my board. I do my arrow position. I repeat my stroke but this time instead of going up I'm gonna turn my head. But when I turn my head I make sure that I turn down in the water with my arms here. Never use a pillow here.   Here's in the water, half face in the water, over there. Not on your hands. This is the mistake to do. Okay going up.  What? Here. Okay. And remember you look on the side here. It's pretty easy. Now let's try. Up here. Take my big breath. You have to see something because I hold that board. When I turn my head I keep my hand with the board on the surface. I don't want my hand when I turn my head to go down. That's the thing. You need to learn how to swim freestyle by keeping your hands on the surface of the water. To glide for. To fly. Okay. So always make sure your hands are on this case. When you turn your head, don't let your hand go down. This is missing. You see my hand is down. I lose. I keep my hand up. I push myself to glide until the other one is going back. Okay. So one, two, three. Turn at number three. Move your hands on the surface catching the board all the time. This board never goes down. Okay. Practice step number two last time. I blow my bubbles. I can swim into the arrow position, which is to step one. I do my strokes underwater. Relax, big catch my board forward. The board stays on the surface. I turn at number three. I can turn now with half face in the water. Excellent. He starts to learn how to swim freestyle at step number three. So I don't need the board anymore. Okay. Now we are at the last step for the freestyle. So to learn freestyle with the last step, you just need to remember you need to keep your hand forward. And on the same things, on the same things, you need to be able to keep your hand on the surface and imagine you have a magic board with your hand. Imagine you have a magic board in hand. So it's the same point. You want to learn how to swim with your hand gliding on the surface, but never going down. One stroke, two stroke, keep the magic board on the surface.  Don't go down. You see my hand here?  Good touch your hand. Back. And again, one stroke. Go back. Two stroke. Go back. Turn at number three. Go back. Okay. For the step number three, you learn how to swim on the first part, the freestyle touch with your hand staying on the surface of the water. So one big touch, two big touches. We turn at number three and touch means your hand never goes in the water. Never let your hand drop in the water. Especially when you turn your hand, don't drop your hand. Keep it on the surface here and touch your hand. Okay? Can you see my hand here? Yeah? Keep it on the surface. Okay? Never forget. Let's practice. You have the magic boards the same things. I just don't pull the board. I just imagine it's the board. Big stroke. You see my hand here? Stays on the surface. When I turn my hand, my hand don't drop. Okay? I do one more time. Freestyle touch. Turn at number three with your hands on the surface. Don't forget your bubbles and swim into the arrow position looking down. So this is the step number three. Freestyle touch. This is not yet the real freestyle. The step number three is having three portions. When you can do that, when you can blow your bubbles, do your big stroke, touch your hand every time. Keep your hand on the surface and touch your skin. Touch my skin. Go back. Touch my skin. Turn right on the side. Touch my skin. Then you can practice with a pool boy in between your legs. It will be the step number three, part number two. This is a pool boy. This pool boy will be in between your legs.  Because you have these floaties in between your legs, it will be easier for your legs. You're going to float more. But the problem is you cannot kick anymore. You need to just close your legs. And because you cannot kick, you lose a bit of balance. Because you lose a bit of balance, you're going to practice more on your upper body to balance your body. So it's a bit more complicated, but it is great for the sensation. So part number two to learn the freestyle. The step number three is to do the same skill, freestyle touch with a board in between your legs. So you turn at number three, but you don't drop your hand. You touch your hand, but you cannot kick this time. Let's practice. So as you see, I turn one touch, two touch. Turn my head on the side. Breathe. My hand stays up and I touch. Make sure your hand always stays up. It's kind of important here. So this is the step number three. Part number two, freestyle touch with a board in between your legs. So we are going back the same skill again. So you can practice and look at the hand. The more difficult portion is to make sure your hand doesn't drop in the water. When I turn my hand, my hand here can drop in the water. You see my hand here? Hello. You need to follow my hand when I explain my hand. Okay? Two, one, let's go. So this is done. You will see sometimes when you turn your hand, because you cannot kick, your body will twist and you can turn your body in the water. That mistake might happen. So it's you to turn your head at the right time and to practice again to be able to swim straightforward. Okay? So let's do it. Now I can do my freestyle touch with a board in between my legs. This is perfect. So let's remove the full void. I can kick again. And now I'm going to learn the real freestyle. So you can do the freestyle touch one hand after one hand touching and waiting. This is a great skill to do, but that's not the real, real freestyle yet. The real front crawl will be with your hands crossing on the surface. No more touch and with crossing. When my hand is gliding forward, the other one is coming back and will not touch, but they will glide crossing on the surface. And I glide, I cross. And I cross. And I breathe. So one glide, two glide, three glide turn and breathe. Okay? Step number three, part number three, freestyle glide. You need to learn how to fly when you swim. And you will learn also how to use your elbow to relax. You will learn how to pull in the water with your elbows up. Pull to the end. Then at the end, relax. Roll your shoulders elbows up, glide with the other hand. And when this one is coming back, then change. Pull and glide. And pull. When I pull, the other one is gliding. You see, this is together. One hand is pulling the water, the other one is gliding. It's always like this. A lot of people, they focus on this end, the pulling one. But that's a little mistake because the very important portion is actually why this hand is pulling. This end is pulling to have this one. This one is the more important. This one is the gliding one. The one on the front is the one stretching forward. When you pull, you pull to make the other one gliding. Never lose that intention. You want to glide forward. You want to grow. You want to fly. You want to stretch forward. Okay? That's why we are in the arrow position. So you glide by pulling. I pull and I glide. I pull and I glide. I pull and I glide. At the number three, I turn my head at number three. And I glide. I don't go down. I go forward. And again. So freestyle glide. This time you need to touch. Just make sure you cross and you glide on the surface. Try the most important. Hit the skill again. One glide, two glide, turn at number three and glide. Remember to keep your elbows up, roll your shoulder and relax. When you can relax, we've had number three. Be comfortable. Increase the distance. Increase the intensity. Because this is great. Now you can swim your freestyle. Catch the right sensation. Remember swimming is all about sensation. You need to feel it right. You need to feel in your stretching for a while. You need to feel the glide on your skin. You need to feel it easy. It's not fighting. It's easy. All right? So to learn how to swim freestyle, just turn several steps. Remember our position. Learn to swim the arrow position with the stroke with the board forward to learn how to keep your hand on the front. And brief at number three. And step number three. You need to do without the board to learn how to glide forward. Don't drop your hand in the water. Always make sure your hand stays on the surface to glide and glide and glide. When you feel it, you will see you're not fighting anymore in the water. Just enjoying the swim. Okay? So this is Christian from SwimFly.com. If you want to learn our method to swim freestyle, just visit our website. And for swimming lessons, you can check on the website also. Thank you.


So, hello everyone. My name is Stephanie Newell and I am a writer as well as a book coach. I own a company called Write One Publications and I help writers bring their book ideas to fruition. So, today's session is going to be all about writing your first book. We're going to cover a lot of information in a short period of time. But before we do that, I want to kind of walk through so you know where to find me on the internet. So, my website is writeonepublications.com. And if you go on there, you'll see that I offer a variety of different services from manuscript critiques to phone consultations. I also do book marketing services and different things of that nature. I also run a blog, The Write One Blog, if you're looking for tips on how to get started writing, book marketing, self publishing versus traditional publishing, copyrights, ISBNs, it pretty much covers the gamut there. Thelifeoverwriter.net is my personal blog. I also do a YouTube channel if you're just looking for quick three to five minute videos on different topics. I do that there as well. And then the rest is my social media as well as my email address. I encourage everyone to go and sign up for my email list. And if you do, you'll get a free copy of my e-book which is finding beta readers, which is beneficial for anybody that's looking to write their very first manuscript. And then also I'm offering everyone a free 30 minute consultation. So, basically what I'll do is I'll ask you a series of questions to kind of help me understand where you are with the writing. And then we'll work together to kind of determine what kind of help you need in order to get started. So, you can schedule a consultation between the hours of 11 and 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Okay, so a little bit about me. I have been a professional writer since about 2000. I started writing for Unrated Magazine which is an entertainment magazine where I handle like red carpet events, concert reviews, CD reviews and things of that nature. And about 2006, I got the idea for my very first book called The Buzz. And I started writing it and it took me about two years to write it. It took me a really long time to write it. Now, the reason why it took me so long was because I was a very new writer. I had been writing professionally but I had never written a manuscript before. I was working a full-time job. I was working. I'm sorry, I was going to school full-time. I was blogging. I was a mom. And I really didn't know how the whole process went at that particular time. So, it really took me a long time. When I got to about a year and a half into the process, I said, I have been writing this manuscript for so long. And I didn't want to be one of those people that had a computer, had my manuscript on my computer, but never did anything with it. So, I really kind of tried to speed things up and get things done. So, around 2008, I had to make a decision about whether or not I was going to self-publish or traditional publish. And then, you know, self-publishing wasn't as popular as it is now. It's more of a norm now. So, I had all these preconceived notions of what self-publishing was. I thought it meant that I had to go stand in Walmart and sell my book or something. And so, I finally made the decision and I said, okay, I want to traditionally publish. And so, I sent out a couple of query letters because, of course, in order to have a traditionally published book, you have to have an agent first. So, I sent out a couple of query letters and true to my personality, I continued to do research to try to figure out if that was really the right decision for me. As I started to do more research, I realized that whether I was traditionally published or self-published, it would require me to have to do the majority of the marketing. And that really kind of changed my idea about whether or not I was going to self-publish or traditionally publish. So, I stopped sending out query letters and I decided that I would put the book out on my own. And about the early part of 2009, I released my very first book and to great success as it was self-published. So, I was featured on television, radio, magazine, newspapers, and I had a really good response from it. And then in 2009, I co-wrote a book with another author and again, we had a lot of success. We were asked to speak in New York at the Madison Square Garden. We had a news crew come out and feature us and it was just a lot of success around the book. So, people started asking me, how were you able to do that? So, I started a blog and when I started the blog, you know, everyone was like, that's great information. What else can you provide? So, I started Write One Publications, which is a book consulting company and I have been helping writers for about six to seven years to bring their book ideas to fruition as well. So, I'm assuming that everyone in this room has a desire to at least start a manuscript or complete a book. So, that's what we're going to cover today. So, here's some of the things that you're going to learn. You're going to learn how to bring your book idea to fruition, how to outline your manuscript, how to make time for writing, manuscript formatting, how to get your idea onto your computer, how to cater to your target audience, how to choose between self-publishing and traditional publishing, and then the basics of editing your first draft and manuscript critiques. So, if you're considering writing, you have a decision to make, or not, you want to write fiction or nonfiction. And some people in this room have an idea for both books. So, I'm going to kind of talk about both of them. And just briefly, here's what fiction covers. So, fiction covers novels, novellas, and short stories. They're going to be made up of characters and a made-up series of events called The Plot. And then, in addition to the main plot, you're going to have one or more subplots. Fiction also includes conflict and setting, and it's going to be told from a point of view, which is usually first person or third person point of view. And most of the time, it's going to have a theme or a message about life. If you are considering writing nonfiction, it's going to cover biographies, autobiographies, and informational texts. You want to have a title that engages your target audience. You want well-written, factual information. The writer is going to be an expert or has extensive experience in the field or subject matter that they're writing on. It should be well-organized and nonfiction will deal only with real people, real events, and real ideas. And so, this is going to be narrated from the point of view or perspective of the author, who is a real person. So, just to get an idea of where everybody is, how many people here are interested in writing nonfiction? Okay, good. And then fiction? Okay. So, I'll talk a little bit about both. So, when you're writing your first book, you want to kind of hone in on the very main idea that you want to write about. So, that's the first thing you want to do and make up your mind, whether or not you want to write the fiction book first or the nonfiction book. So, a lot of you have ideas and you're wondering where you get additional ideas.  You know, when I first started blogging, I had people coming into my comments section and they were writing me questions. And the questions that I would see over and over again were the ideas that I knew that I needed to expound upon with my book. Another great way to get ideas is to utilize your email list. So, reach out to your email list and ask them, you know, what ideas or what subject matters would you like me to speak on? Ask them about their challenges and that's another way to get ideas. An additional way to get ideas is Yahoo Answers. Yahoo has a section on their website where people can go on and ask questions about whatever topic that you write about. So, in my situation, I went and looked up writing and book marketing and all these different things and the questions that I saw being asked repeatedly were the things that I wanted to focus upon in my particular book. And so, that's something else you can do. Google is another great way. So, if you're writing about a certain topic, go right into your Google and put it into the search bar and those first five or ten things that drop down first, those are the ideas that people want to have information on. So, that's another way to do it.  As I said, my very first book was fiction and how I came up with the ideas was that I was freelancing in the entertainment industry and I was being exposed to a lot of different things, celebrities and social media and I took the two, married them together and I created my very first book. So, you can draw upon real life, your friends or family situations or things that are going on. Okay. So, how to avoid Writers Block? You know, as you start writing, it's inevitable that it's going to happen. There are some people that don't believe there's such thing as Writers Block. I do because I believe writing is very creative and when you get into something creative it's really kind of difficult to always have that on. You know, so sometimes you're going to go into a Writers Block. My suggestion for Writers Block is to have a good idea of what you want to write about. When you have a good idea of what you want to write about, it's easier to work through that process. And if you don't, and if you do still get Writers Block, I would suggest that you just go back through edits or do something else so that you can work through that Writers Block that you're experiencing. I'm going to talk very briefly about choosing a book title because I noticed, having done this for some years, that most of the time people have an idea of what they want to call their book. But I want to encourage you to give a lot of thought to the title that you give to your book because your title is what's going to draw your target audience and much like SEO for a blog or for a website, the title of your book is going to contain keywords that attracts your target audience. So you don't want to choose something that's so obscure that your target audience doesn't know that it's for them. And you also want to choose like a subtitle as well so that you can continue to draw your target audience in. So you have your idea for your book. You know whether or not you want to write fiction or nonfiction. I want to talk a little bit about outlining your story and is it necessary. So when I first started my book, I did not outline my book and that might have been some of the reason why it took me so long to write it because I had no idea where the story was going. I just was writing. And as I continued to write and got better at the writing, I made a decision to start outlining my manuscript and it made it such an easier process. So is it necessary? It is not. It's a personal preference. But I believe that it makes the writing easier. How do you create an outline? You know it really is entirely up to you. You can do a very formal outline like they teach you to do in school where you have chapter one and then the bullet points that you want to hit. Or you can do something very casual like I do sometimes if I'm not at my computer I'll just pick up my phone and put it into my notes and say, okay in chapter one I want to talk about this and chapter two I want to talk about that. It may be a long drawn out process but you do kind of want to get an idea of those areas that you want to hit within your manuscript. So how to make time for writing? Now when I first started I sent out a survey to about 20 writers and I asked them what were some of the challenges that they faced. And the number one thing that came up over and over again is everyone said that they didn't have time to write. So I told you initially that it took me about two years to write my book on purpose because I want you to know that you have to learn how to steal time. It doesn't matter if you're the president, a basketball player, a teacher, a celebrity, we all have the same 24 hours in the day and it really is up to you to make a decision about how you're going to best use your time. So for me when I first started writing my book I was living in Chicago. So I had a commute from the south side of Chicago all the way to downtown Chicago 30 minutes to get there on the train. So instead of listening on my iPad or looking out the window, I would pull out my computer and I would write every day for that 30 minute commute to work and then the 30 minute commute back. That gave me one hour every day to write.  That gave me an additional hour to write. Instead of going out on the weekend and writing, instead of watching television I would write. And so because of this I was able to get that writing done. Because again you don't want to be the person that has the manuscript on your computer and you haven't completed it. So if you absolutely don't have time, again you're always thinking, you know I know I'm in the car on my commute I'm thinking all the time, you know use your voice recorder on your phone put those ideas into your phone because what my experience has been the longer you stay away from your manuscript the more likely you are not to finish it. I have a lot of people come to me and say, oh I wrote a book about 15 years ago and they're really excited about it at 15 years ago, but the longer you stay away from it, you're not going to write it. I promise you you're not going to write it unless somebody encourages you or something happens that's going to motivate you to write it. So while you have the time while you still have the inspiration find the time throughout your week. I also want to make a suggestion don't feel like if you don't have an hour you don't have time to write. Sometimes I write 15 minutes sometimes I write an hour sometimes I write all weekend so make sure that when you're thinking about the writing process you don't limit yourself to thinking that it has to be a certain amount of time all time is valuable whether it's 200 words that you get written in that period of time or a thousand. So now that you have your idea, you want to get it onto your computer there is a standard guideline that people use when they are submitting their manuscripts to people.  Now you can write it in whatever format you want to get ready to submit it there is an easier way for us as professionals to kind of read it so that it doesn't take us a really long time to do so. So here's the standard formatting it's one inch margins a 12 point font you have three different fonts that you can choose from Times New Roman Ariel or Courier font you want it to be double spaced this is really important a lot of people want to do the single space but it should be double spaced you want to have a title page and on that title page you're going to drop down to about the middle of the page and you're going to put your physical and email address the title and then you want to include your word count which is very important when you're submitting it to people they want to know how many words your your document is and then in your header you want to include your name and the title of your manuscript on the left and then the page number on the right and that's how you're going to submit it to anybody that you're submitting it to. Oh and just so you know if any of this is still unclear I have a YouTube video on my YouTube channel and it shows exactly how to go through this whole process okay so now you have your idea how do you get it onto your computer so there's you know once you have your idea you may not know how much to write like how long should my book be and there is a couple of things you want to think about there's ebooks versus print books versus genre so let's talk about genre first because let's say you were writing science fiction science fiction is a genre that allows for a big word count so some books are 300,000 words and some are smaller but certain genres allow for bigger books so you want to really do the research as it relates to your book and you can do that you know just by googling it or you can go on Amazon and look at books within your genre and see how many pages those books are and then kind of make your decision based off of that as far as print books are concerned the publishing industry really has already made the guidelines for how big those books should be so when you go on Amazon you're not going to see any super thin books you're really going to see kind of you know really hefty books about you know whatever the topic is that they're writing now ebooks kind of allow you to write as much as you want or as little as you want ebooks as short as 10 pages all the way up to hundreds of pages and what I find is is that the newer the writer the less they want to write so you know you really can have the freedom to write as much as you want to write if you are writing an ebook and especially if you are writing an ebook and you're deciding to sell it through your own website there really is no gatekeeper and you can make a decision about how long that book is now the wonderful thing about Amazon is that they now have a category on their website called short reads and so what they've done is they've determined how many, how much time it takes to read a certain book so you may go on there and see that there is 30 to 45 minutes to read a book 45 minutes to an hour and you can kind of make a determination of how long it will take the reader to read your book so you want to give all of these different things some thought when you're making a decision you want to make a decision about whether or not you want to do ebooks or print books my suggestion is is if you are a nonfiction writer you should probably consider doing both because you can obviously sell your books at events and speaking engagements you can sell it to your clients and then ebooks anybody within the world obviously has access to your book and you can definitely benefit from that so why it doesn't have to be perfect so you may determine that books within your genre are about 200 pages you start writing you can only get to 175 don't feel like you have to drag the book on in order to make it work you know if you have said everything that you needed to say within that period of 175 pages then end your books you know it doesn't have to be perfect just do do the best that you can okay so we're going to talk a little bit about catering to your target audience and we want to talk about it in two ways both the writing and the book marketing so we've already talked about how you use your audience to determine the topics that you're going to talk about we want to also talk about book marketing because as someone has done this for quite some time I find that people wait until their book is complete to tell anyone in their target audience about their book and that is a mistake because then you don't have anyone to sell the book to so you want to draw the readers in from the very beginning especially if you have a blog and you already have a built-in target audience or you have an email list that you're sending out to just start to groom them and let them know that you have a book coming out you can talk to them about the writing process you may want to share a chapter but start to groom them so that when you are ready to publish your book you have somebody to actually market to now as beginning writers or new writers you probably feel like is the hard part and I'm here to tell you that that is absolutely the easiest part the challenge is selling your book to somebody you know so you're going to think that okay I can sell it to my friends and family but once those 10 or 15 people buy your book and that's what everybody says they say I want to sell it to my friends and family but once you sell it to those 10 or 15 people you need more people to sell it to so that's when that book marketing comes in that's when your title begins to get important and all of those things are factors in how you continue to sell your book so ways to determine who's a part of your target audience so I always hear from new writers that my book is for everyone that's like the most common statement I hear made and while that may be true there is a smaller audience that will benefit the most from your book so we kind of want to look at it like this funnel here now I'm going to use myself for an example I obviously target writers so if I were to have a funnel there's a whole bunch of writers that could fall into the top but I want the writers that are going to fall at the bottom so my specialty and my brand is helping new writers so those are the people that are going to fall at the bottom will the people at the top buy it? Absolutely yes they will but my niche market is those people that are going to fall through at the bottom so you really want to make sure when you're thinking about your book that you don't say or subscribe to the theory that my book is for everyone because your book is going to be for a smaller target audience that you want to market it to and those are the people that you're going to market your book to and those are the people that will go out and champion your book and tell more people about your book and help you to sell it so choosing between self publishing and traditional publishing so this is one of the major decisions that you're going to have to make as a writer and there is no right or wrong answer traditionally published is generally going to be a longer route it's going to take you probably one year to two years in order to get that done because you're going to have to have an agent and then that agent first off you got to get the attention of the agent that's the hard part and then once you get that agent they're going to sell your book to a traditional publisher and then that process takes about a year to two years depending on the publisher you possibly will receive in advance it kind of varies for new writers you can get a couple thousand dollars maybe up to about five thousand dollars depending on your main script they will handle for you your editing your book covers your book tours they kind of act as your team and they're going to handle all of that stuff for you it will require you to market like I told you guys earlier when I started doing the research I realized that whether or not I was traditionally published or self published marketing falls on the writer basically so while they will help you a little bit if you have a traditional publisher for the most part you're going to handle the marketing on your own physically both yes both and then they will also help you to get your book into bookstores which is hugely important now as a self published author I was told that my book wouldn't get into a bookstore but I don't subscribe to now so I kept at it and I made sure that my book got into a bookstore and so one of the things that I did to get my book into a bookstore is I went to my school that I graduated the college that I graduated from and the bookstore that is associated with it is Barnes & Nobles and so I said to them I used to go to this school I would like to get my book in here and they allowed me to do that and as a result I was able to get in Barnes & Nobles at the time borders was very popular so I went to my neighborhood borders and say hey I live in the area I would love to do a book signing I went to Costco which is another neighborhood store and asked them could I come and do a book signing there so don't subscribe to you know you can't do certain things you know if you choose to go to self publishing route because you can and I am a living example of I was able to accomplish a lot of things that people thought that I wouldn't be able to accomplish because I was self published now as far as self publishing is concerned there are going to be upfront expenses so where your traditional publisher is going to help you with those costs you're going to have to do that on your own editing and book covers and things of that matter you're going to have to do that on your own now one thing I will say about the upfront expenses cut no costs you know the reason why I was able to accomplish as much as I did was because I wanted to make sure my book looked like any other book I wanted it to compete I didn't want someone to pick it up and go oh that's a self published book you know and know it so if my book sat on a shelf with someone else's book you wouldn't be able to tell the difference so I spent a lot of money and made sure I got a professional graphic designer especially with the editing people will say oh I'll have my cousin edit it no you don't want to do that you don't want to do that because as self published writers you're going to be scrutinized more than someone else that is a traditional publisher so make sure you put that money into the editing if you don't put it into anything else make sure you put it into the editing because as a result what will happen is the people will go on Amazon and they will write reviews and they'll say it's poorly edited the grammar was horrible and that's going to affect your sales and people won't buy it you know they're going to talk about it in your comment in your reviews I should say and that's going to affect your sales so you really want to put your money into that editing and get someone who's well versed in that and knows grammar and all these different things that goes with the editing I think there was something else I wanted to say about editing but I'll come back to it so self publishing is a quicker route you're going to be able if literally if you finish your manuscript today you could get your book up on Amazon tomorrow so it's going to be a much quicker route there is no gatekeeper and with that being said take caution don't feel like I got it done I need to get it up tomorrow really kind of take your time with it and make sure that you're putting it out there because once it's out there it's out there even though you have the freedom to pull it back to leave your reviews regarding whatever you put out there so you really want to take caution another great thing about self publishing is that you have creative control so when I was making that decision about traditional publishing versus self publishing one of the things that I wanted to have control over is the title of my book I had an idea for how I wanted my cover to look and I didn't want anyone to tell me to change it so creative control is really important if you have a traditional publisher and you have their experience which is very beneficial they can tell you what cover sale what titles work well and that's really great and that's the reason why I made that statement earlier about titles if you're not going the traditional publishing route make sure that you are conscientious of the type of words you put in your title so that you're drawing in your target audience again we already talked about self publishing requires you to market you certainly can and take time and do a nice website some of those hideous websites and let's look ten years ago are some of the best selling authors out there and I still have yet to find like a good one a good website? they look very ten years ago they look cyclical and most of them are spun out by the major publisher very true because they still don't understand the social media aspect of it the website aspect of it but that's a very great point so lastly we're going to talk about the basics of... go ahead I'm sorry do you have any additional any additional revenue that I would receive from using intellectual property it was in my book okay and they do because they put up all the upfront costs in order to put the book out there to begin with so that's very common it's a huge decision maker yes a decision maker for me about whether to go with traditional house or self publishing so your preference was self publishing? yeah mine's too and I thought exactly the same way that was another one of the reasons why I decided to go self publishing because you know I didn't want to split my royalties with anyone I wanted to have all the income come to me and you know make the final decisions on everything so great point okay so lastly self editing so I already kind of talked about how important the editing is if you were going the traditional publishing route you don't necessarily need to edit it or have your manuscript edited but I would still recommend that you have someone look at it because if there are too many mistakes grammar spelling and those different things it's going to be really hard to pick up an agent because they're going to feel like you're not a really good writer so you don't have to get it professionally edited but I would suggest that you have someone look at it so as a self editing step I would suggest that you use Microsoft Word and use their spell and grammar check while it's not perfect it will help to pick up some things and you can also read it aloud and that's a suggestion I really make because you know when you're reading something on your computer you may put the word there when you have to actually read it aloud you kind of can hear whether or not make sense if you've used too many words not enough words if it's not very clear so I make the suggestion to read it aloud and it really really is useful go ahead just a free software you can get to and I haven't read that to you before oh really what's the name of that software there's a plugin for Microsoft Word and then there's a program called Palo Poco okay never heard of that A-A-L-A-B-O-K-A and if you look under there a lot of are designed for people with dyslexia learning it works for all others okay there's a website called Ginger it's also free for one of the number of characters who just drop it in there and it'll fix atrocious disabilities oh okay and also do a lot of grammar check alright thank you so much I never heard of that program and then you want to do just basic checks for unneeded capitalization I know when I was in high school and they were teaching us to type they said two periods I mean one period two spaces and that's no longer the case so you want to just kind of do a fine and replace in your document if you have any of those things going on and then the next thing you do after you do the self editing you want to get a manuscript critique and that's something that I can offer basically it's just a professional opinion of how well your manuscript is I can offer suggestions on plot, pacing, voice, writing style conflict, characterization and dialogue and then the next step, the final step after that is to get beta readers so that's going to be people within your target audience so if you're writing let's say self help about health you want to get about five people that really love that topic and ask them suggestions on how you can better make your manuscript so here are some resources for you oh I stopped right on time so here's some resources for you here's a video on the manuscript formatting you can find this on my YouTube channel which is the life of a writer along with a whole bunch of other videos that can help you to get a free copy of that beta reader book I was telling you about you can find that on my blog what you need to do is sign up for my email list and then it will be sent directly to you and then lastly if you still have questions on traditional publishing versus self publishing I have a blog post that kind of breaks down for you to so that concludes my session and I'm open for questions I've never heard of that and follow down it's relatively new isn't it it's been out for a couple of years I know several clients have done that and we're hosting a blog have a lot of content and you can even choose the category and the post and it basically takes all your blog content to format it into a book and an editor just check your flow but you're almost done so if you've been writing and hosting a blog you put that plug in and it's made for WordPress and all the guys you never had any experience with it but I'll look it up thank you certainly can you talk more about marketing so now you have a book whether it's published whether it's self published or a publisher gotta get it out there so the first thing that I did was get publicity so you want to go to those book reviewers bloggers, websites anybody that you feel will feature your book within your target audience and then that will start the momentum and then they'll send it out to their readers you'll send it out to your email list that's a way to market your book you want to put it on your social media you want to use tags that relate to it so that people that may not be a friend of yours can find it it really is just about getting out there doing the traditional stuff like book signings, parties asking your friends to share information giving out business whatever way you can get it out but you want to start it while you're writing your manuscript absolutely want to start it while you're writing your manuscript I was going to say I've worked with a lot of experts in building and environmental and all and all of them want to write a book one of the things, one of the strategies I've had with them that's been pretty successful is to, as you said, outline the book and all the things you want to talk about and organize it and then as their social media just pull things out like blog entries if you're going to do a speech somewhere write that chapter that ends up being your speech that's very focused get it on there but then the real value to that is you get reaction to it so if you have a following and people are reacting to it and the one post may resonate enough for that because of your book and then other things that are just like crickets you're like, well, maybe I shouldn't include that and it's a great way to kind of vet create your audience and I think most people are afraid oh, I'm giving away all the information and you're going to charge to bring it all together in a book or to do small e-books that are on the chapters so you can pull out and kind of get those out there and create the buzz and then it breaks it up into pieces that most people are really busy can handle and then another suggestion I don't know if I gave this one but if you go to Amazon go to read people's books your competitors or who would be your competitors go down and read their reviews the things that people are saying is missing from the books that's the thing you want to write about if you go down to review sections and people are saying over and over again well, she was talking about SEO but she missed this point well, that's the thing that you want to talk about you want to maybe offer a different perspective be contrary to what everybody else is saying but that's another way to come up with ideas for how to what to write about I use a company called Lightning Source but my clients also use Create Space and Ingram it's a lot of different places I wanted to use a company that I felt could make a good final copy and it looked like everyone else's book yeah, absolutely absolutely and yes, Create Space is owned by Amazon mm-hmm go ahead mm-hmm I use stock photos so I would go to just a free royalty stock photo and just make sure that you can use it for commercial release and pretty much that's what you want to do I was thinking more for like public figures oh, okay good question I'm not sure about that actually that's a really good question not very sure that is very helpful yeah, I hear if you google like different self publishing stories success stories you will hear that over and over again people that started off self publishing to kind of gain the momentum because it's a little harder now to get that traditional publishing deal and so if you already have an audience and you feel like you can sell a significant amount of books it's a great way to get started to kind of get the eye of the traditional publisher the other question is about doing a press run a certain number versus printing on demand right, so as far as printing on demand is concerned you know that's beneficial for like if you have a book up on Amazon or something like that and they'll print it on demand as the people order the book as far as a big runners concern I would do that only if I was certain that I was going to sell those books because a lot of times what happens is people have a garage or a room full of books because they thought they were going to sell them but they really you know weren't able to sell them so personally I do runs if I have a speaking event or I'm going to go and do like there's writers workshops all over the world and different things I go to I may do a run of 50 or so books take them with me because I know I'm going to sell them but as far as just housing books in my home I don't do that anymore I did it when I first started because I didn't know any better but as you learn you you know if you don't know that you're going to sell it I wouldn't just do a run right so it depends on the company that you're choosing so I went with lightning source I think there was a setup fee you know usually for them to set up the actual inside tax the cover for you there's going to be a setup fee associated with that if you get a proof copy there's usually a setup fee associated with that which you do want that proof copy because it may look good on the computer but when you get it the text may be way up here way down there so that's you know definitely something you want to do and then after that there's going to be a per price per book so I have two different books I have a really really small book that's like two dollars and something sent to print it you know and then I sell it for ten dollars all the rest comes to me so that's pretty much how it works yeah like traditional publishing yeah now what do you mean by print it at home I'm not certain of that I would suggest if you were going to do that why not just do an e-book that you could do a pdf and sell it from your website or your blog you guys know everything what's it called a mix book? mix mixbook right from your computer wow it's pretty complicated but it's an option yeah okay awesome okay okay there's another one that you can download the app to your computer I built from there I think I've heard of that yeah I've heard of that go ahead so you can get yeah so when I did my book cover seven years ago I paid about $400 to have someone actually you know design my cover and I had an idea for something that I wanted on the cover there was no stock photo for it so I went on Craigslist and I put an ad on there before you know all the Craigslist stuff so I put an ad on there and I said I'm looking for someone to model for my book cover I'm not paying and I got both a photographer and models for free so that's why I said I don't take no for an answer and I encourage all of you not to take no for an answer I got the cover done basically shot for free but I had to pay someone to actually create it and that was about $400 now that was seven years ago before I knew better now I realize that you can get pre-made covers and they can be as cheap as $25 to you know on up if you decide so it really just depends on there's a website if you email me I can give you the website but there's pre-made covers I mean they're everywhere you know and really the thing about it is though you may have somebody else with your same cover obviously you're gonna put your own stock photo in there and change certain things the title is gonna be different but it's you know it's very cost effective you know it's better than paying for $400 like I did and Fiverr great point whoever said that yeah Fiverr yeah great point although I would caution some of those people on Fiverr you know it looks like $5 but I've had I've had covers done for $5 like if I were doing an ebook for my website and I didn't want something really really fancy I'm not gonna pay $400 for that so yeah $5 get my little pdf file for $5 and I'm done $10 but if you were going to Korea would you use a print designer yeah yeah absolutely I would use a print designer I would use a print designer oh okay awesome create space has wonderful templates that you can download in Photoshop or PDF and you can use that as your layout so you can see where the market goes but you have to know how long your book is how big it is it's a little bit more complicated obviously than an ebook cover but create space and I'm not sure about lightning source no lightning source does the same thing they give you a template so you can lay it right on there and you know where the barcode goes and everything you're right any more questions are there any good guidelines to get on that I don't have a lot of experience with that the second book that I wrote was a book that was going to be presented into schools as well but I didn't do a lot of like sources in the book it was really kind of just yeah so I don't have a lot of experience on that somebody back there I saw a hand go ahead yeah I was going to say Scrivener personally I don't use it but I have a lot of clients that really enjoy Scrivener I use Microsoft Word any kind of word processing sources you know good story is story is okay everybody loves Scrivener oh well yeah yeah but once you got it yeah sure sure any more questions yeah there is I think it's what's the five and a half by Aten yeah and when you get ready to print you'll have a whole bunch of different options as far as the size of the book the color of the paper there's so many options on it the weight of the paper the weight of the paper there's so many choices yeah right so yeah you're going to have to start it off in your Microsoft Word document in the standard size that is and then you have to get it typeset which depending on you know who you decide to have do that on the sizing of the page and everything so I actually bought one of his I just bought one of his I love them it makes it so much easier and you can do it right in Microsoft Word and then he'll give you the eBook version of it the regular version it'll have all the fonts everything it's perfect it's like so much easier because when I did my very first book I actually had to buy well I didn't have to buy but I decided to buy Quark Express and I laid out myself two books and it was too much work so you know book designer like she said I found that and again these are all the mistakes I made initially well not necessarily mistakes but doing too much trying to be every single person and now I have book designer and it's so much easier because you can write it it's already set up you don't have to have someone typeset it which is an additional cost for me Quark Express was $800 so that was a huge cost whereas you can just buy the template for $70 or whatever yeah it's book designer you talking about the cover yes absolutely so when you're getting your cover design you want to make sure that it looks good she'll tell you as both a thumbnail yes a thumbnail as well as the big because of course Amazon when your book is on Amazon you're only going to initially see that thumbnail so you want to make sure it looks engaging both big and small now I can't give a ballpark because you know why it depends on so many different things you know like for instance your editor how much is your editor charging I've seen editors charge as little as a couple hundred dollars to thousands of dollars so it really really depends but I guess ballpark you know it could be oh and it also depends on are you going to do a print book are you just going to do an e-book so it really is so many different variables to go into it I guess a couple hundred dollars up to a couple thousand dollars it really just depends depends on the cleanliness of your manuscript how much work the editor has to do absolutely you'll have like when you get ready to send your manuscript to an editor they'll say well let me get your first chapter and they're not saying that because they want to see how good your writing is they want to see how much they're going to charge you based off of that first first chapter is it exactly exactly so that you know they may come back a couple hundred dollars they may come back a couple thousand dollars it just depends and for me I actually had my manuscript edited twice so you know once I got that first round of edits back I was I had new ideas and so I couldn't just put it out so I needed to have it edited again so you know you really can cost can go up there too when you have to get it edited more than once any more questions awesome I hope you guys enjoy today's session I thank you for coming


Hi guys, my name is Shachi and welcome to this video. So today I am in Georgetown Penang and if you are planning a trip to Penang, you would have definitely heard of Georgetown, which is sort of the centre and the cultural capital of Penang. Now Georgetown is this eclectic mix of street art, heritage houses, amazing food and lots of sightseeing and shopping. So this video is going to be about Georgetown. Now if you are planning to come here since there is so much to do, it makes some sense to plan out your day and really plan what you are going to do here. In this video I am going to show you around my day exploring Georgetown and tell you about all the things that you can do here, keep on watching. The agenda is to first start with the street art, that is the street murals. Now these are scattered all over Georgetown and we are just walking around searching for them and there is the first one. The story behind these murals is that it is actually quite recent, it is just about 10 years old and once Georgetown became a UNESCO heritage site, the government actually commissioned these murals to make this heritage town even more interesting and most of these have been done by foreign artists. So it is a good idea to have a map with you to find all the murals and we found one physical map right here near the jetty and this has a list of how many, I think about 10-12 murals and we have covered just one. Around 20 murals. Around 20 murals. So let's go. Ready? So one hack to find murals is to look for people. So any corner you see groups of people standing with a map, looking at the map and trying to figure out that is your clue to know that there is a mural somewhere around there. To find all these murals, you can either walk, which is what we are doing, you can rent those tricycles that you just saw, they take you around for about 10-15 minutes and they even stop at the mural so that you can take the pictures. Another option is to rent a bicycle. So there are all these bicycle rentals and you can also rent a bike and just go around the entire street. We are really confused about finding the murals and you don't know where to start. A good landmark could be Armenian Street. Especially if you are getting to Georgetown by a cab, then put the location as Armenian Street. This is a street where I am standing on and this is where you will find the maximum number of murals. The oldest part of Georgetown is that you basically have a church, a mosque, a Chinese temple and a Hindu temple all together in one road and starting at the beginning of the road is the church behind me. This is called the St. George Church and right now it's close, we are not going inside. But we are going to continue further down the road. Penang is a mishmash of different cultures. There is Hindu, Islam, the Malay culture, the Chinese culture. So this street is actually called the Harmony Street and after seeing the church, the Chinese temple, the Hindu temple, the last stop is the mosque. This is called the Capital Kelling Mosque and this is one of the main landmarks in Georgetown. So we have spent about I think two hours walking around Georgetown and exploring all the murals. It's currently about 2pm and we are going to stop for lunch.  One such place is the one behind me. It's called the Healthy Leaf and now we are going to go in and have crabs and lunch. After lunch, the next thing that we are going to do is check out the upside down museum right behind me. Now Penang is a place which has a lot of interactive museums. You have a 3D museum, you have a magic show museum, you also have a gold museum and of course you have the upside down museum. So today we have decided to check out this upside down museum and now we are going to go in and do that. Let's go. If you are on Georgetown, don't feel restricted to just stick to the streets where there are murals. Feel free to wander along any of these lanes. So this is one such tiny lane we found where there are these beautiful houses which are built along the Perinakan architecture and all along Georgetown you will find many such lanes. So feel free to just get lost a little bit and explore whichever part you feel like. Next we are at the Chew Jetty. So in Penang there is a big establishment of Chinese families. These are more than 100 years old and these were the families who are the original trades people who came here to Penang and they settled along the coast. So you have 6 such jetties and each jettie belongs to one clan of the Chinese family and first we are going to check out the Chew Jetty. Now these are basically water villages. People still live here and part of these villages have been converted into restaurants into cafes and to souvenir shops. So this is a nice place to just stroll around spend about 30 to 40 minutes but make sure that you come here in the evening towards the sunset because it's really beautiful to observe the sunset from these jetties. So let's go and check out the Chew Jetty. So these are the houses people still live here and these are basically water villages. So in Georgetown then the one place that you need to come is the Love Lane and that's the lane behind me. So this lane is basically a series of cafes which have outdoor seating and music and also this is open till really late in the night. I'm told it's open till about 1 am to 2 am. So if you're looking for a nightlife or a place to just hang out after an entire day of searching for murals then this is the place you need to come.


President Mohammed Buhari has urged leaders and members of the all-progressive Congress to channel their energies into improving the fortunes of the party in the forthcoming elections and avoid squabbling that easily distracts and creates disharmony. Receiving APC National Assembly leadership at the State House, the president reminded members of the proximity of election dates set by INEC admonishing that positions be harmonized with a bigger picture of winning elections and providing good governance. In the statement signed by the Special Advisor to the President of Media and Publicity, Fermi Addition or the President told the lawmakers that they are settled with the responsibility to conduct the upcoming convention in a manner that not only fortifies the unity of the party but also improves the prospects of its electoral fortunes in the 2023 general elections. We have a couple of days to national convention and we must collectively ensure the success of the event. As you all know, the national convention of our party which we have committed is holding on the 26th March 2022 and we cannot afford to do anything that will jeopardize the chances of the party in the 2023 general elections. A zoning template was produced and adopted by the party after a wide consultation in order to ensure that the leadership of our party is reflective of our diversity in unity while representing our collective various dynamic interests. It is imperative that we adhere to that template. Mr. President emphasized the need for us in the APC to be united, always act as a family, ensure that we remain focused. We have the leadership of Nigeria today at the national level and of course we have many states, about 22 states under the leadership of the APC governors, actually 22.5. We have half a state in Anambra where we have, no, it's gone already. But we have 22 states and controlled the federal government. As many of you are aware, the president in the last couple of days has been having a meeting with stakeholders towards the convention that's coming up on Saturday and the whole idea is to encourage all stakeholders to unite, present a common front and have a peaceful, rank-of-free, successful convention. That's what that meeting was about.


What would you create with a hundred thousand dollars? Maybe I'll travel around the world and make a film out of it or I get abducted by aliens Or maybe just produce an action film Picture a wildest video idea an artist would give one creator one hundred thousand dollars to make it happen more details in the caption


I don't know why it's such a difficult thing, such a no-go, such a touchy, taboo area to actually discuss one's religious beliefs or lack of their off. And when I wanted to record this video and I told Elaine about it, that a friend of mine has been curious to know how, in his words, I'm sailing through life without being necessarily tagged as a religious person and seemingly disconnected from religion and possibly even dismissive of it. She was against the idea of recording such a video because spirituality and religion tends to almost always go south when the topic is raised, especially when you are of a different stance. And I think it makes it even difficult for people who have questions or are curious to possibly start the practice to even get into it in the first place because it's almost always leading to fanatism when religion is brought up. But I have to say, even before I even go into how I became what is termed agnostic, that I'm happy that I'm surrounded by people who do not make a dear lives mission to try and change my mind about what I do or do not believe in and what I do or do not practice in terms of my religious standing. So I was brought up in a Presbyterian home and that is what I grew up knowing. That is what I was introduced to. So I don't know what I would be if I didn't have that or I wasn't introduced to that. I may have been born into another family which is completely devoid of any religious practice or some other religious practice, which is also fine. But that is what I grew up knowing and like everything else in society that we are taught when we are born into certain families or certain societies, that is what we know until we are old enough to want to decide for ourselves what we want to do with our lives with regards to these practices. It happens with school, it happens with associations, it happens with the kind of friends you make, it happens with the kind of partner you choose, it happens with the kind of church or religion you choose to practice. All these things are part of our human life but for some reason when it comes to religion it's like a no-go area, it's like a don't-touch-it area, it's either you are for or against it and if you're against it then technically you're not even to be considered somebody who is wholesome enough to be part of the human race that is and I think it's rather sad that this has to be it that is one or the other which is what even makes it more unattractive for me to practice religion and I wasn't always like this like I was saying I was born into a religious home and then growing up I had a few questions and even with the principles of the religion, some of the contradictions that were difficult for me to come to terms with led me to decide you know it's it's okay to not belong to any group I don't ascribe to any of them I don't think either of them is right or wrong and I think that as it's always said it's a personal journey it's a personal choice and that is what I am sticking with so I do not condemn the practice of religion although some of the things that happen within this practice tend to border on oppressing other people and that is although those are a few things I do not agree with and when it comes to religion just as any other practice what religion offers those who practice it is basically something to believe in doctrines or principles to live your life by to make it actually easier and it's more like a workbook that you live your life by and the other side of it is something that we cannot see or quantify and that is what we choose to base our faith in and I also don't think that faith is only limited to religion because faith in its other form is what you would term as the law of attraction or a strong belief so whatever you believe in strongly mentally you can equally attract it or have its work for you in whichever way so long as it's a strong belief and for me I think some of the limitations that come with religion also makes up the reason why I chose not to belong to any group because some of them are limiting and I believe that for humans as we are and in nature in itself there's some kind of limitlessness however this limitlessness is not also to be abused and used against other people and I can understand that religion actually helps with controlling some of these free will abilities however it's not all of them that work in this modern day or work for everybody and those things should also be considered and spoken about but it doesn't look like that is what's happening or that's what's ever going to happen and so that makes it difficult for me to as a human being relating to other humans commit to such practice religiously or be devout to it in any shape or form so for me I don't think that there is no supreme being or beings I don't think that there's nothing out there that is mightier or orchestrating whatever is happening here in whichever shape or form whether it's scientific whether it's physics whether it's spiritual whatever energy whatever it's based on I do not doubt its existence and I do not confirm its existence either however I am happy to be here as a person I'm happy to exist and interact with other humans based on some of these principles that I've come to know based on existing in what we call society knowing what is right from wrong knowing that kindness is something that is good knowing that love is mostly what as humans we almost always need we are social animals we want to belong and be a part of things and not necessarily feel that some of these things limit us in being who we want to be so long as this concept of free will is not infringing on another person's own free will or right to be however they want to choose to be and they can also be respected and loved and still belong to one you know uniform group of people who live with nature as it is we all came to meet it we're all not going to take it anywhere and it will keep evolving and that's one thing also that makes it difficult the evolution isn't happening as fast and it seemed that some of the parts of religious practices are only picked and chosen to evolve and others are stagnant and don't want to even bend or engage possible change with how the world is going and that makes it difficult if you are somebody who is progressive and want to live a certain kind of lifestyle then it doesn't work for you so if i am not practicing religion it's because personally me it doesn't serve me well to practice religion in its fullness because you can't pick parts of religion that work for you and leave other sides of religion that don't work you can't pick and choose which makes it difficult to balance so i'd rather live off what i know works for me what i know i can use to interact with other people and what i know would essentially be right in my own journey as it always is or always boils down to personal choices and free will and living your life the way you see fit so this is how people often become what i term or know what i term what is termed agnostic that it's okay to just live your life based on your human interactions based on your personality based on your growth based on your evolution as a person and play your part in the world enjoy what is here and now and see where it goes wherever it goes just evolve adapt and be so that is my stance on being a person on this earth in society without the tag of belonging to a religious group i think i'm a human being and if humans have flaws and other things that work for them everybody deserves to exist a way to want to so that is my religious perspective or my perspective on religion yeah so that's about it for this particular video it's not been an easy thing to share or talk about but i hope that it doesn't attract um comments that tend to border always on yes you find out later or you need that personal encounter to know that religion or belonging to a certain religious group is the thing which almost often is tied to uh something bad happening to you that changes your mind about the existence of a deity or not and you're committing to worship or belonging to a group which for me it's like fear mongering and that also is something that i don't even want to go into so yeah i'll end the video here that is my perspective on religion i'd rather be a human to other humans i'd rather be kind when i can i'd rather love i'd rather open up about my emotions when i need to and exist with other humans as is and play my part so i'll catch you in the next video peace


This may hurt some people's feelings, but it's true. The Bible says that whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instructions. Granted, Paul is speaking of the Old Testament Scriptures, but it also must include the New Testament Scriptures. That very same Paul says that all Scriptures have been God-breathed or inspired, and they were written for our instructions. The Word of God has given so that we can lack nothing. If what you live, experience, teach, believe, walk by, is not found in the Bible, that is the very definition of unbiblical. That is a dangerous Christian, an immature Christian, and maybe not a Christian at all. People cite things such as being slain in the spirit, angelic tongues, praying in tongues, women who should be pastors, and also lost salvation. What are those things having in common? There's not one example of any of those things happening in the Bible. So to preach those things is the very definition of unbiblical. We have too many unbiblical Christians, and we're going to find out that many of these unbiblical Christians are either not Christians at all, or just not very mature Christians.


Tryna go natural Hi, everyone. Welcome to my channel today. I'm bringing you a sotanicals wash day It's just been way too long since I've used sotanicals. Y'all know I love to leave in I love a lot of the deep conditioners The creams like I think it's a really good brand overall I just haven't been using it because I just have so much fun to try I just have so many products to try I haven't really been using it But I was like okay today let's do it so I think I've tried half of it before on the channel and half is new So a little a little new let's get to it So I'm starting off with the cocoa rasu butter shampoo, which I have reviewed before on this channel And like I said, this is more of a cold wash and a gentle cold wash at that But you know right now I've been living the shampoo life So I'm gonna use this in the way that I mentioned works really well for me Which is to mix it with a stronger shampoo in this case it can't really come clean which really takes all the business I'm leaves it out the door like really stripping. So that's what I'm gonna do now. I'm gonna mix this pretty thick yummy Chocolatey center cream with some of the candy clearly come clean and apply to my hair Can't you clearly come clean and I'm mixing it because it's not really an official review It's more like a wash day and I have a demo of this on my channel already So you can see all this with by itself if you want to but you do So go check that out any news So I'm being a very generous I guess with the shampoo trying to remember because I know this was like just please put a drop in A bucket of water so I'm being pretty generous with it But still kind of softening it up with this gentle kind of cleansing conditioner So you can tell me what you do with co-washers that are too gentle or shampoos that are too stripping. This is one of my little things Yes, definitely what's well together. So this is what we're working with and I go ahead and rinse This is what my hair is looking like after in saying it's not as Moisturized as if I had just used the butter, but it's also click cleaner. So it's a good trade-off And now I'm gonna go to the deep conditioner You already know it just smells like really spicy which I like I think minty maybe slightly gingery, but it just smells spicy like a nice sweet potpourri spicy So love the scent like that's peppermint clove all the things that just give you a really nice scent Definitely as ginger. I don't really see any glycerin or honey or anything cream, but it's a light cream It's been a while since I use the light product For see myself using the entire thing already just because I'm two depths in and I mean it's on my hair But doesn't feel really Like coated like how I like to bathe in it So definitely see myself using all and again, it's also been a while since I used an entire egg house But that's keep going think I'm smelling the clove the peppermint the ginger all that really smells good. Oh, did I show you guys?  Let's stop Looking in Right away The slip definitely is not amazing. It really feels like there isn't much on my hair. I'll be honest My name should be used too much stuff. They go using a whole jar. We should be fine at least I'm just trying to wait this in a little bit There's a favorite so something I can get my way to the leaving will be fine to get you this deep conditioning step Which isn't to say that I don't love the deep condition. I just don't know yet, but you know, it's very light a lot You have to use a lot basically and the slip isn't that great. It feels almost like there isn't much on my hair Let's put it that way. So this is my hair after application. I definitely used it all but I definitely have enough I don't feel like I need another jar or like it. I don't have enough or anything and My scalp is kind of tingly but not in an excessive way And yeah, it feels moisturized already. So it's not a sitter. It's pretty instant But I am gonna let it sit for 30 minutes and then come back to you So so far besides I wish it had more slip. It's still doing really well in terms of moisture and everything Plus like it has all these great ingredients Okay, it said massage into scalp for extra benefits like I said my scalp already tingling, but we can do it You know, I don't usually like to massage conditioner into my scalp But I'll make an exception for this one and you know, my hair feels great already like my strands feel so moisturized and soft And I haven't even done it sit yet. So yeah, so far my kid Yes It brought you but I like it I like it. Okay, so I'll be back. See you in a bit I'm back after letting it sit. My hair just feels light and moisturized Which is how I like my hair to feel like even before that it sit like you know I just like that instant moisture and penetration and this is definitely giving me that so I'm happy overall The only downside I would say is that I wish it had a bit more slip But other than that, I really love this deep conditioner plus like all the ingredients is just a plus So you get the moisture on you get the onion juice and the ginger and the clove and the Chebe and everything so it's just you know, definitely something I could see myself People just think I'm using regularly in my regimen. So yeah, love that. Let's get on to the styling This is my first time using this on my channel as well So, you know, it's good that I can actually bring this to you Let me know if you've tried it. I know I'm kind of late with it But you know, if you buy something good, so you haven't picked it up yet Definitely pick it up think it'll be great for all hair types because it's like light but moisturizing now get into the styling portion We have my one of my favorite leave-ins the first was leaving from Sotanicals Yeah, yeah We have the cobliss here glares So if you haven't used this before it's not a gel So it's a gel. Let me see because this is not a gel. Yeah, it does taste a gel Well, it's not a gel. Okay, this Y'all saw that I mean a screw tie, but it's still flying all over that just shows you how watery it is anyway This is the consistency is water Water like just water. It's not a gel in any shape or form I do think it has some definition, but basically I'm not about to play myself using this as a gel So I'll be using it over the leave-in and then I'll be adding some Eco Styler on top of it So hopefully they'll just soften the Eco Styler. That would be if it just softens and moisturizes the Eco Styler That would be great for me. I don't need to be a gel much more than that I didn't waste about half of it because every time you put it on your hands half drips because it's water like I said, but if you haven't seen this use before now you're about to and With the Eco Styler and everything it seems like it's working out pretty good so far Let's get to the front So like I said I've reviewed this leave-in before on my channel, but I just love it. It's just very kind of Soft silky moisturizing great slip actually adds some whole nice definition so This is on the podium for one of my favorite leave-in some of it just ended up on the floor Think it's time for top three What's the top two with the Inasi leave-in and possibly the Dekura beauty Hiyalate This is my hair after applying the leave-in just juicy moisturized happy and now I'm gonna try to get some of that glaze on my hair So this is like I said it's a struggle so I'm just gonna put it over here on the rest So it's on here, but Yeah, I'm just gonna put some on cuz I thought I'm any prayer of actually getting it on I'm gonna have to just try to get on as soon as I Spray it. It has an interesting scent as well. I know I haven't been talking about the scent What's this smell like? I don't really like the scent, but it's very light You like some kind of a little scent, but not one I like It's a very light scent I feel like it does a little something something in terms of definition of whole I wouldn't say nothing, but Probably not enough either So it does do a little something in terms of definition of whole I can't say it does nothing because I do see that there is some definition I do feel like there is some whole but I'd be very skeptical like just letting my hair dry like this without putting like Some insurance on top of it If any of y'all use this as a silo by itself and you have like a little kinky Yeah, let me know because I think probably only somebody would like loose waves can get away with using this alone It has added definition for sure. I just don't trust it like really don't trust it so back in the day I would let it dry like this, but Yeah, I'm going out tomorrow and I don't trust it But this is it with the hair case. I believe in definition is there But is this gonna hold and the product is basically just water.  So yeah It's not even holding itself. I was gonna hold my hair and I know so some eco style will be occurring presently And if it gives me eco style a whole with like moisture, I'll consider it a win because that's what I was kind of hoping for By planning to use the combination From a time I shook it and felt the water and it wasn't gonna be going on alone So if you are looking for like a top or bottom, I don't know like I know you guys who use multiple layers of gels I think this might be a good one because I do feel like it's moisturizing and I do feel like it adds definition So it definitely does something. So if you are a type that likes to pee at multiple gels The only thing is that that's up this room and I know I don't know only Doublers don't really like to use things with this room, but if you are a doubler that likes to use things with this room I think this will add moisture and definition to your Washing room or your style. This is my after adding the eco style And I'm just gonna shake it out and then yay tomorrow. Yeah, watch they done. Yeah Yeah Washington This is my wet results, I guess and I'll see you guys in the bit when I dry There's need I say more people have been noticing my hair has been getting kind of shorter I've just kept like cutting it like I'm just so over it if I see any piece taken out now I'm cutting it like I have some of my trash right now This is my life right now like it's just going it's just going when this criminal thing gets sorted out I don't know I might come back a lot shorter than this. We'll see how it goes So yeah, but I'm enjoying this and I do feel like it's softer and more moisture And if I had just used the Eco Styler, so those of you who like gel layers, so those of you who have a very Silky texture, I would definitely recommend the hair glaze I'm even tempted to buy it again. Like if I can use it under gels and like reduce the crunch So it's still a tad crunchy, but it's a lot less crunchy on me using Eco Styler by itself So if I could use it under Something that Eco Styler to reduce the crunch or maybe over like I still haven't tried over But it's maybe a great tupper or bottom up just to add moisture reduce crunch and so I definitely recommend it like that Like I said, it's pretty much water like it just keeps dripping everywhere. Like I said, it's pretty much water so Don't buy it to use by itself unless your hair is really silky and you basically don't need gel So I don't think it would add definition reduce frizz regardless But for kinky hair, you know, it may not have enough hold But if you want to just use it to get some softness a little moisture Then yeah, I recommend it for that. Like I said, the scent is a kind of weird fresh herbal Not my favorite, but it's not horrible either But if you're into that kind of scent like not fruity at all kind of scent You may like it. I'm definitely enjoying my hair. Enjoying my week I'm almost done with buying again just so I can have this experience So you shouldn't be using You guys know that I don't even have to say that so to be using Enjoy my wash my result is a like a miracle amazing thing It has happened other times and I never did that need you But really if I can just put some kind of softness some kind of butter or something With the kabama gel it can really just give me the best of both worlds in terms of moisture and less crunch So this is another way to do that basically for me So the conditioner so pretty much everything I mentioned when I was applying it still stands not on my slip Did you use the whole thing like appreciate the tingle? I don't appreciate the ingredients My hair was moisturized at the end and overall it's definitely something I would repurchase so Uses by itself and if you're expecting what to come out I still think it needs to be like in a spritz bottle or something But the way I used it was definitely when and you guys already know for my previous reviews I love the other two items I use so I'm happy. I'm thrilled Okay, so let me show you Conditioner show you the ingredients So just kind of all the good stuff like all the good stuff. So this is definitely something I would like to use More frequently like gorgeous every black Friday. I'm trying to use it. You know, I'm trying to use it So yeah, the cool gliss here gliss back to you did have a great wash day I don't think I've any new hg's but the conditioner is definitely top shelf Which does say a lot because it means like it's in the top 20% of deep conditioners. I've tried which is probably like a hundred so, yeah, I guess 8 1⁄2 because of the lack of slip otherwise it would have been 9 1⁄2 probably so definitely would we purchase this And I even think I might repurchase this like you know, I just might have to think about it some more But I'm loving my hair and it definitely has its purpose. It definitely has its place So yeah, and I found I found this place But I really feel like she's for the people, you know, and she's not afraid to speak out I know she's not perfect. I know she makes mistakes I had like some really close friends to buying from her because of like the whole thing back a couple years ago with the People getting poor quality stuff and stuff and she's major just to correct that So I don't know if you're gonna get any so that it goes here Love in the comments, but I am on the side of Sultanica's love I don't mind waiting for my products. I have a lot of products as you guys know, and I enjoy good products So yeah, I probably put the Sultanica's videos where I use these products the two products down below in the description box So you guys can check it out as well But yeah, I love Sultanica's products. So this haven't used them lately But over the weekend, I was like, you know what? So when I'm really glad I did Thanks for watching. I'll see you very soon in the next one