So the next panel is going to be led by Sarah Levinson, who brought Sarah Levinson Moriarty, who is a fellow at New America. She was instrumental in getting the Levinson Act passed, which was named after her father, who was the longest-held American hostage in Iran and who died in captivity. So I'm going to hand it over to Sarah, and she will introduce the panel. Thank you, Peter. And thanks, everyone, for joining us for what I think is a really important discussion, and I'm sure everybody here will agree. Do we have Cindy? OK. So virtually, we will have Cindy Lercher, who is joining us from the Foley Foundation. She's the director of research hostage advocacy and government affairs. I have a little handy note to myself, so I'm going to put the phone away afterward. Don't worry. I'm happy to introduce Roger Carstens, who's our special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. There's Cindy. I see her now. We also have Ali Soufan, who's the chief executive officer at the Soufan Center. And he's also a former supervisory special agent at the FBI. And then we have Elizabeth Whalen, who's the sister of Paul Whalen, who's currently held in Russia against as well. Thank you all for joining us. I am going to pass it over to Cindy for a moment. I know she wanted to share a little bit more about the Foley Foundation's annual report bringing Americans home. Thank you very much, Sarah. And first, we'd like to give a special thank you to Peter Bergen and Sarah, Levinson Moriarty, both former Foley board members, I might add. And we're just so grateful for you leading the discussion today, as well as our panelists and our audience for joining today. Just to give a quick little introduction of the Foley Foundation, we are named after James Wright Foley, who was a freelance conflict journalist who reported, often in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Jim was kidnapped on Thanksgiving Day in 2012, then held captive by the Islamic State until his public and brutal murder on August 19, 2014. The Foley Foundation began three weeks after Jim's murder. And since then, our president and founder, Diane Foley, has been advocating for the freedom of all Americans held hostage in roughly detainee abroad and promoting journalist safety around the world. What brings us here today is our fifth annual Bringing Americans Home Report. Our reports consist of over 250 interviews with hostages, wrongful detainees, and their families, as well as interviews with current former US officials across what we like to call the US Hostage Enterprise. That was stood up by Executive Order 13698 and Presidential Policy, Directive 30, also known as PPD 30. That was back in 2015, which all was later codified by the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage Taking Accountability Act in 2020. This year's reports findings, which can be found on the Foley website, are based off of two Foley data sets, which consists of 215 hostage and 207 wrongful detainee cases, going back to 2001. However, this year's results focused primarily on the 2022, up to July 31 of this year. I should first begin by defining a hostage versus a wrongful detainee, which we adhere to the US government and how they distinguish between the two cases. Specifically, a hostage is an individual kidnapped by a terrorist organization, criminal and militant group, as well as pirates. However, we do exclude criminal cases in our data set. Wrongful detainees, however, are individuals held by foreign governments, i.e., state actors. However, we do at Foley recognize the strong similarities between hostages and wrongful detainees, such that both groups are targeted for being Americans and both are held for the purpose to try to effect change in US policy, force concessions, and or request a prisoner swap. At the time the report was written, there were 59 US nationals held hostage and wrongfully detained overseas, and over 90% of those cases were wrongful detentions. And it's been consistent that way. The majority of those cases, 79% were US nationals that were held in China, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. However, 14 other countries either detained or wrongfully held a US national in 2022 and 23. While we have seen historic levels of US nationals wrongfully detained by foreign governments over the past decade, specifically 175% increased in the number of wrongful detention incidents and a 580% increase of the number of US nationals who continue to be held year after year. However, there has been, which is very good, a 31% decrease since the publication of last year's report of US nationals held abroad. This is due to 25 releases, at least public releases, that occurred from 2022 up to July 31 of this year. And the year 2022 also contained the highest number of wrongful detainees released overall within our database that begins in 2001. However, while there have been significant number of releases, it's important to note that the number of US nationals who continue to be held remain at historic high levels. At the same time, the number of US nationals held hostage by terrorist organizations, militant groups, and pirates have fluctuated over the past two decades. Overall, though, there's been a general downward trend since 2016. Since 2022, there have been nine US hostages released, which occurred in Yemen, Afghanistan, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Groups responsible for holding these Americans were the Houthis, the Taliban, the Khani network, and JNIM. While there have been several successes over the past year or so, I'd like to end with a very stark reminder that we continue to still see Americans held hostage in wrongfully detained overseas. Currently, the Foley Foundation is tracking at least 60 of those cases. And of the current hostage and wrongful detention cases, six US nationals have been held for over 10 years, which is an hour to 14 years. Thank you very much. Cindy, and I think that is a great place to kind of start the conversation and think about it. I think there's a lot of details and statistics that are in the report and I want to get into kind of the nitty gritty and a little bit of the meat behind it. Before we do, I do think it's important to acknowledge the death of Governor Bill Richardson. The funeral is tomorrow. And so I wanted to take a moment, given the success over the past year, and I know that there was a close partnership with Governor Richardson and a lot of the people on this stage, I wanted to give everyone a moment just to say a few words about his impact on the hostage ecosystem as a whole. I'll go ahead and start if I may. Bill Richardson was a great American. He spent pretty much a good part of his life trying to free Americans around the world, whether their hostages were wrongfully detained. I consider him a strong partner. He gave me a lot of advice, especially when I was just starting out. And I can go back to my time trying to work the Venezuela portfolio. There was a time when the United States government just was not gaining traction in Venezuela and Governor Richardson was able to get a meeting with the Venezuelans, flew down to talk to President Maduro, and it kind of highlights how, in a way, this is a team sport. And there are times when the United States government can't get the job done for various reasons and yet were able to work with titans of foreign policy like Bill Richardson, who can still try to get the job done. So he'll be missed. He was a good friend and ally and my heart goes out to not only his family, but also the Richardson Center and Mickey Bergman and the team. I second everything Roger said. I mean, Ambassador Richardson was the trusted third party before there were any third parties. He definitely will be missed and it's gonna be very difficult to have somebody fill his shoes. And I'll just add in that we really appreciated the help that he offered early on when we couldn't get any traction with the Trump administration and it was good to have somebody down in D.C. going around and knocking on doors for us. Thanks Elizabeth. I'm sending a pass it to you. It's a tremendous loss and I think for most families that worked with Governor Richardson, he was almost a center of gravity in this space. He was a champion, a leader, a trailblazer for decades, focusing on hostage and wrongful detention cases and truly my heart goes out to the family and to Mickey during this time and he'll be missed greatly. Thanks, Cindy. So great, let's jump into a bit of the meat of it. Roger, if you could just level set a little bit for people, how do wrongful detention cases come to your desk? Someone finds out that their family member is being held. How did they get to you and how has the Levinson Act helped to enable you to do your job? Fantastic, first question. So first off, I wouldn't mind thinking a New America Foundation and my former boss, Peter, for hosting this. I'd also like to thank Arizona State University also for their part in putting this together. And to thank my fellow panelists up here. This is a team effort, it's not just the government, it's people like Sarah, Elizabeth, and Ali who actually do a lot of the hard work behind the scenes to pull this all together. And in a way, you're all included in that, except for Colonel Liam Collins. You are not included in that. And Liam, you'll see how war boots, just in case I have to quickly escape the stage and ex fill all the way back to the State Department. So I'm ready for it. Looking forward to your panel. Anyway, so wrongful detention has come to us in numerous ways. I've had mothers send me an email saying, Roger, I got your email from so-and-so, my son is being held in Country X, the details are such, would you please look into that? And that's actually a good thing. We take that seriously. In other words, we have a hunger to get Americans out. And so however it gets to us, that's a good thing. So if we take that, we will go straight to consular affairs and reach out to the Embassy of the country in question and start gathering all the facts that we possibly can't. Because at the end of the day, we wanna build a file with the facts of the case, take the Levinson Act criteria and apply that criteria over those facts to see if it's strong enough to send to the Secretary of State for recommendation. But we also get them from embassies. You might have an embassy, a consular officer, see that someone's been arrested in a certain country and they'll say, you know, something looks wrong about this case. They'll dig into it a little bit and eventually we'll get a cable coming to the Department of State in Washington saying, embassies such and such believes this case to be that of a wrongful attention. And again, it's not a done deal yet. At that point, we still start gathering information. Journalists, by reporting something, I would say Catherine Swadon gave a wonderful interview. I wanna say it was in the Houston Chronicle many years ago. And I don't know how I read it, but I read an interview with this grieving mother and was like, we've gotta figure out whether this case belongs in our desk or not. So they come in various ways, but once it hits the State Department, it's really the starting point is really SPIHA and consular affairs taking a look at the case and then starting to do all the queries, whether it's going to the CIA, the embassy, talking to reporters, talking to the families. We're essentially trying to vacuum up any bit of information that allows us to build the facts of the case. And when the facts of the case are there, then as I said, we apply the Levenson Act criteria on the top to see if it feels wrongful. And that maybe gets to the, maybe the cruxier question, the Levenson Act has been seismic for various reasons in that it codified what we do. It's actually put it into law. It's allowed us to garner resources. It's allowed us to write a report to Congress that fulsomely explains what we've done and what we're trying to do. But I would say the most important part to my mind is that it gives us criteria with which to evaluate these cases. Before the Levenson Act came out, I think we were just kind of winging it. We would try to get a sense of whether someone was held, purely because they were an American citizen and a country was leveraging us. And now we can take a look at that criteria and actually take a look at some of these cases and bring them on board. And I would argue that one of the reasons that we've seen an uptake since 2020 in the Mount of Wrongful Detentions is because we now have criteria. And as you probably know, and I'll end on this, when the criteria came out, we sent a cable out all over the world and every single US embassy and every single consulate had to relook every single arrest.  I said, I know you've probably seen all your cases before but take the criteria, apply it to the facts and let's see if we've missed something. So I can't thank you enough and for members on Capitol Hill and everyone else who put that legislation together. But again, it's an example of the partnership of working with family members, members on Capitol Hill, their staffs and such to bring something together that has been of great value to this enterprise. Thanks, Roger. And I ask the other panelists to forgive me because I'm gonna ask the second question to you as well because I think it's at the top of everyone's mind right now is the Iran deal that's happening. Oh good, no comment. That was easy. I wanted to ask you just a bit because there's a lot of people out there who might be saying things to the effect of this incentivizes hostage-taking. And I wanted to give you a chance to respond to that in this kind of setting. And then Ali, I have a follow-up question but how do you see this deal coming about and what do you say to those naysayers about whether this incentivizes through these different channels? I think on the deal itself, these are things that we hope for and I can't really say much at all because it's something that we wanna wait until it's all over and then we're going to be very open and engaging with members of the public press, Congress, et cetera. But in terms of your question, the United States has made some trades in the last two and a half years. The Secretary of State and the President have together worked to make some very hard decisions to bring Americans back. They're hard decisions to make. And yet in some of these trades that have gone down range, we've just not seen the bump up in numbers and we're still gonna run the math but I would say anecdotally right now despite the fact that we've, I would say I can think of five people that we've traded during the Biden administration, we've just not seen uptick and if anything, I might say that the number of wrongful detainees is actually going down. So you'd think that if you made a trade that would incentivize everyone and everyone would be out there trying to grab every American that they possibly could to use this leverage against us and the data is just not showing that. And I do wanna get a bit into deterrence on top of that afterward. But Ali, I wanted to give you a chance to speak from your perspective as a third party intermediary, how you see the Iran deal and how important adversaries or partners in other countries might be helping us and how we should be thinking about that. I think as an outside third party, I just get about the people who are gonna be released and their families. So towards the end, everything is gonna be political. We're in a political year. People will have different view of anything that happens based on their partisan lens. And to the most part, the American people understand the importance of having these folks back with their loved ones and their families. So if a government official can say no comment as a third party, no, no, no, no comment. Other one I said. But third parties play a very important role. And they play an important role in trying to help the government, sometimes go around bureaucracy, sometimes open channels that it's difficult for governments to open, reach out into regions that's difficult for the US government to diplomatically reach out to or operationally reach out to. And dealing with other partners and government partners overseas in explaining the USFU in order to kind of like grease the wheels for Roger and others to get involved. I think it's extremely important for third party to be very well trusted by all players, especially the US government, have the knowledge, know exactly what they are doing because sometimes third party can complicate a case more than it need to be complicated. Sometimes for reasons it has to do, let's say, I wanna say promotion or whatever, it might also create some difficulties in moving forward and solving a case. So I think from the report that the Foley Foundation just put out, we had about 25 cases this year that were solved. 17 of them were from the, there's two different ways. There's two different categories here. You have the hostages and you have the wrongfully detained. From the wrongfully detained, I think we had 25 cases, 17 of them were just diplomatic efforts of State Department and the US government and Roger. 12 of them were third party and government. So there is definitely a big space for trusted third parties. They have to be trusted in order to get involved. And I think they can help the families and they also can help the US government reach to a good conclusion in bringing those folks back to their loved ones. Thanks, Holly. Elizabeth, I wanna ask you a bit about your own experience. So your brother has been held since 2018. You've seen over two administrations how these kinds of cases are being handled. What's your perspective on what we can be doing better? How should we be thinking about this? And how has the hostage diplomacy as a foreign policy grown from what you've seen since 2018? Well, it has been, it's almost been five years since Paul was wrongfully detained. And I actually, I don't like the term wrongfully detained. I consider Paul a hostage because he's being held by a foreign government who wants something for him. And that's hostage taking. So I tend to refer to it as state sponsored hostage taking rather than wrongful detention because I think wrongful detention is too soft of a term to describe what's going on. And I would say, I'd like to speak just for a second as part of this response to this whole business about giving some kind of trade or whatever incentivize further hostage taking. And I'd like to point out very particularly my brother's case, because Paul was arrested. No trade was made for him, but then Trevor Reed and Brittany Greiner were both taken. So the Russians were incentivized by their own minds as to what they've done. It had nothing to do with anything that we have or have not done in response. So what a hostile foreign government decides to do and why they decide to hold Americans, there are a myriad of reasons, but it very rarely in my opinion from what I've seen in five years has anything to do with a trade that went before. Now I will say though in Russia's case that we have seen them try to play the U.S. government with their trades. In other words, release Brittany Greiner and not Paul because they knew of the partisan chaos that that would cause back here. And so one of the things that I have been doing recently is pushing to make sure that Paul is not left behind for a third time. We have another case and I feel for any family in this situation and any detainee, but I want to see Paul home. And so my job when I'm here in D.C. is to go to the NSE, the State Department and such and say thank you for all the work you're doing because we have seen a huge upturn particularly after the Levinson Act has passed and in this administration of people really caring and trying to do as much as they can. But you can't say that every stone is being left unturned if there are some stones that still need to be turned over. If there are some boulders that we've gently pushed against but we haven't done anything more with. And so I have to come down as a family member representing Paul who can't be here and ask the government to push over those boulders to do what it takes to actually get my brother home. It is no good to go 80%. This other 20% that would result in a win is what is necessary. And I look for a winning mentality from any administration. Thanks Elizabeth. And Cindy I'm gonna ask you to speak for a minute just to build on that some of the big boulders that we see what information from the report could we take and really push maybe if we had to prioritize one or two of the findings in the report that we should be encouraging Congress and new legislation to build on the Levinson Act. What would you say we should be thinking about? Yeah, to build, I think it's great everything that Elizabeth just said because she represents a family's voice and the work that we do at the Foley Foundation we come alongside family members. So we understand, so we work with them days after their loved one is either kidnapped or picked up in a foreign government. And so we understand the challenges families face as they try to navigate the DC in hostage enterprise. Most families don't even know what the hostage recovery fusion cell is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. They're just not aware. But the Levinson Act has been and I agree it's been a linchpin to the hostage enterprise. But the biggest challenge and I would say this even for wrongful detainee families and for the audience, I think it's important to know the only one that has the authority to make the determination for a wrongful detention is the Secretary of State. So some of these families to be able to get that wrongful detention determination to be able to get access to Ambassador Carson's office there is an enormous challenge. And I think the largest challenge and one of the biggest takeaways is the fact is to identify the fact that there's a gap between how the State Department might view a case versus how a family views their case. And a family can have a lot of information a lot of intelligence, but it's unclear whether or not that internal process in the State Department before it reaches the State House office if they have all of that. So it's really an opaque process for a lot of these families. So one of the things that we would like to do and it builds off of our recommendations as well is to help try to close that gap. So it's less of a opaque process for the families so they know what they're fighting for what they're fighting against. They really just don't know. And it can take a few months to get the designation or it can take a couple of years and it would just be advantageous and helpful for families. So they can know what, they wanna put that right foot in front of them. They've made the left step they wanna make the right step. Which direction does that need to go? And I think there's a lot of room within our US government to be able to close that gap to help make that more of a transparent process for families. Thanks, Cindy. And I think that there is work being done on the Hill in that regard. And I'd love to give you a chance to respond but I'm conscious of time and I really wanna get to deterrence because that's where my passion is right now because I think that it's great that we're bringing so many people home but we need to stop this practice. So I wanted to ask both of you and I'll have you guys weigh in in a second but the secretary had in 2021 been part of the Canada initiative, the declaration against arbitrary detention in state to state relations. What's happened since then? What should we be looking to? I know the secretary is very big on deterrence. How should we be thinking about this both from a government, non-government and private corporation perspective? I'll try to be very tight on that. By the way, I should say thank you to Cynthia for that great report, another wonderful report that you've put out and also to the Foley Foundation. I see Ellen back there scribbling notes but thanks for all the work that you've done and this report is actually very important to us so thank you. In terms of deterrence, the secretary, I think within the first 14 days of his time here he put his hand on my shoulder and said, we've got to get this to where this problem goes away that we put it on the dustbin of history and this may take 10 to 15 years but we have to start it now. And since then we have been working with the Canadians they're up to 74 signatures at this point. You may or may not know but at the UN General Assembly in New York next week the Canadians are hosting a gathering to talk about the declaration. The United States is co-hosting along with Costa Rica. So the secretary has stayed right on top of this. He's kept it front and center. And I would say as I just, as again I wanna make sure that everyone else has a chance to talk here, we try to look at this very holistically. I think right now something happens in the foreign policy arena and the United States feels they have to go for a deterrence effort. They'll quickly reach in their bag of tricks and pull out sanctions. And it's probably, it might be an overused tool by this point. We would like to take a look at this more broadly across the all elements of national power, what you might call the dime bill. Diplomacy, information, military, economic, legal efforts, economic, financial, informational aspects. What can we do across the entire elements of US national power to start using tools to make a country not do this anymore? To raise the price of this so that a country like Iran, for example, will say, you know what, we used to do this, but now if we do it again, the US is going to raise the cost. But in a way that's not the entire answer. This has to be a multilateral effort. Right now the Iranians are gonna take hostages from the Swedes, the Belgians, the French, the United States, country X, country Y, country Z. And then they'll make their separate deals with each. We wanna get it to the point where a country suffers one of their citizens being arbitrarily detained in Iran and 10, 20, 30 countries all band together until the Iranians, you've done something wrong, we believe this person's wrongfully detained, and we're all getting together to use these tools across all elements of our national power to raise the cost of this. If we can successfully do that over the next 10 to 15 years, we can take a practice which is essentially 4,500 years old and put that away. Thanks, Roger. And I'm just gonna weigh in here as an active moderator and say that I think there's a couple of things that you and I have talked about that would build on that and the US can lead the way and in terms of making wrongful detention officially a crime as part of Title 18 or opening up the foreign sovereign immunities act to allow for private litigation against wrongful detention. I also think from an American perspective, we need to stop having people travel to these countries and build more awareness so the State Department has a website for do not travel to certain countries or the risk of wrongful detention but making more awareness of those risks so that people don't go to these countries. Ali, I know you had some thoughts on the declaration. I wanted to give you a chance to add it and I think we're wrapping up on... Oh, okay. Well, I think the Canadian initiative is a very important step. As Roger said, there is, I think, 70, you know, more than 74 questionnaires. I think we need to have a common definition between all our partners and because what's happening, like, for example, I'll give you an example instead of talking around it, Jeff Whitkey was kidnapped in a Sahara region but he was kidnapped because they thought he was French and they know the French policy in giving concession but when they found he's an American, they kept him for seven years. Same thing with sister Sue Allen. So every country, even from our allies and partners and Western partners have a different definitions in dealing with these things. You know, constraining the liberty of any individual is illegal according to international law and according to UN laws. However, they always define it as a hostage, not wrongfully detained. So states are using this, like states like Iran or Russia or China and many of the entities that's using the wrongfully detained just to use it, to use that term for the sake of argument, they are using it because they are, they are trying to get something and those individuals or these countries are heavily sanctioned anyway and they are pariah states, some of them anyway. So just putting additional sanction on the regime is not gonna, you know, affect the people who are making these decisions, it's probably affect the people. So we need some kind of an international coordination with the international community in dealing with these two issues, not only from a hostage perspective but also as a nation states using detention as an international relation tool that they have. So this is essential, this is important to have something like this and hopefully that down the road can be an International Lovingson Act, right? Codified all the things in international law and international treaties. The other thing is prevention. I think, you know, I would love to see for example, if you're buying a ticket even online from any of the platforms, something comes up that, you know, it explains to you the danger of going to that place and you have to say, yes, I agree or I read that and understand the complication of what you're gonna put your family through and what you're gonna put your country through. So I think that can be something, the travel industry and state department hopefully can work together on something like. The third I think is pre-deployment to training. Journalists, I think the Foley Foundation, they have a course for journalists who, you know, independent journalists especially who go overseas. Also, you know, this pre-deployment training can be done with coordination sometimes of the US government or by independent third party experts for NGOs, faith-based organizations, you know, individuals, you know, groups of people who are more at risk, students and so forth who go for research to these areas.  So these are things that, you know, can happen and I can see them happening but we definitely need to do it in order to create prevention and also to create deterrence. Thanks, and I'm gonna go to you in a second. I just wanna say for the record that I've been trying to get in touch with the ad council. I really think we need some public service announcements around this and I think when somebody goes to search for a location in Google, you should get targeted ads as a result of travel to Iran or travel to Russia so that you see some of these risks and have more of that awareness as well as the hostage flag being up at passport agencies or I understand that Congress is putting in the passport book some legislation to have information in your passport book about the risk of wrongful detention. Elizabeth, I know you have some thoughts on this. Well, I had wanted to throw another sort of entity in there that I think could play a part in helping with hostage taking a wrongful detention. We tend to look to the government and to NGOs to solve these situations but we are letting corporations, large corporations who already operate globally and have contacts and connections in different countries we're letting them off the hook. They are allowed to not participate in helping bring Americans home. And I feel very strongly about this because my brother was a corporate security director for Borg Warner Automotive and would travel around the world doing business for them. And so he was not in Russia on business he was there to help a friend with a wedding but they had contacts and the ability to potentially help Paul in those early days. And instead what they did was they made sure that their investors were protected and they eventually a few months later terminated him so that he was no longer an employee. He hadn't at that time there was no Robert Levinson act so it took him almost a year and a half to be declared wrongfully detained and it was just the biggest blow to him that not only was he the global security director but he had created a process for dealing with hostage-taking and kidnapping and his own corporation didn't apply it to him. Another case that I only know of of course as an observer is the Citgo corporation when the Citgo 6 were taken and they did not do what needed to be done for their employees. So we see on the other hand the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are doing what they can't you know for Jason Rezaian and now for Evan Gershkovich they have a bully pulpit and they're definitely able to weigh in but is that at the expense of some of these other detainees like my brother for example. So what I am looking for is for a way to whether it has to come from the government or how else to have a level of accountability from global corporations who might have connections and ways to help whether it's help the U.S. government help the Svihar or whatever but that that is considered only the that's the acceptable standard and not helping is considered unacceptable. Thanks Elizabeth and I think we brought a lot of information into a really small discussion. I think we could talk all day about this but I know we're out of time so. Is there a time limit? Oh good. Oh I got the hook. Okay. You're running bit late. Okay good all right perfect then I can go over to Cindy I don't know Cindy if you want to weigh in on your perspective from everything that's just been said. Five more okay. Sure I'd be happy to. I mean of course going last years everybody had great opinions on this. It's challenging at the end of the day accountability is what matters. Having the world watching when you're committing crimes that does something. You know and I agree I agree with sanctions right like you know there's sanction fatigue right and but at the same time you know if we look at the sanctions that we do have is do we have the ability to delist some of these individuals? Does that help would that help in steps and negotiations or lead to future and further negotiations? In addition to that you know along with what Ali was saying having that international attention having that broad definition so it impacts globally. You know there's the international convention against taking a passage that you know that was written in 79 that has not been updated to include hostages taken by foreign governments that would be a good tool to use. My last suggestion I'll be real brief here and this is kind of a long stretch here is the United Nations again what would happen if you had if you here's the word again if you do sanction somebody globally we do with the especially designated global terrorist list we will designate and you know foreign terrorist individual here in the United States which restricts their travel and their funds but in addition to that the UN will come on top and also sanction that individual that meets their criteria and they usually and they typically do that within the first week up to a month when the US does designate and that restricts travel globally for the countries that do participate as well. So that's just another look at that but again it's really difficult the challenge here with holding individuals responsible for state hostage-taking essentially is how high up the chain do you go. You know what you know how is a sanction effective if you know if because you can't hold the entire regime accountable we can but at the same time how effective are individual sanctions if it's difficult to be able to identify which individuals are responsible for those human rights violations I would say. They have to feel the direct impact. Yes. Can I give you some good news I would offer that when the president put out his executive order last summer President Biden he actually directed that we keep pushing on this deterrence effort so it's not even just the secretary of state saying you will it's the president of the United States with all executive authority saying to the interagency figure this out and let's get a deterrence effort up and running and additionally he did give us a sanctioning authority within the sphere and we've so far used it against the Russian FSB their intelligence services and the Iranians IRGC IO. So there is an ability within the Spieha realm to like throw a sanction down on an offending organization or person but the most important thing is everything that we're talking about we have an order and a director from the president to figure this out and make it happen. Yes and I think when those sanctions did come out Josh I'm not sure who it was exactly but said that it's okay to build sanctions upon existing sanctions because it's about hostage taking it's about wrongful detention taking and so I think seeing more Levinson Act sanctions is something that's very much welcome and then building upon that. I do want to allow for one or two questions out of the audience I'm told I have a time for that now. So Peter. So this is really first of all a comment about Roger. Roger is I think one of the very few senior officials who was held over by the Trump administration from the Trump administration into the Biden administration precisely because he's been so effective and the families really wanted him to stay in that position. So just wanted to thank you for all the work that you did. It was your leadership Peter. I learned when I worked for you. The other thing is I wanted to put a little meat on the bones because Ali had been talking about parties and Ali was involved in an effort and I think it's all public now that involved David Bradley who's the former chairman of the board here at New America which is Theo Padnos an American journalist taken by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria and held for I think at least two years and Ali and David Bradley were instrumental third parties in getting him out. So Ali just if you could reflect a little bit on what you can say about that. You know I think the way we were dealing with hostages and excuse me wrongfully detained was very different before than it is now. It was very complicated and frustrating to deal with the government. And I think due to the leadership in the FBI today there is a different culture looking into things and more cooperation between the bureau and outside third party. And I mean just to build what you said. Spihar, Roger, his office, everybody in the office they have been fantastic to work with. We really feel that we are one team. I think with Theo it was very difficult to reach out into the groups in Syria. We dealt with a trusted I think at the time Qatar to reach out to some opposition groups in Syria and those opposition groups reached out to the folks who were holding Theo and there was a deal that was facilitated through I think Secretary Kerry and other folks who were involved in this. And I don't wanna go on a lot of details because sometimes we utilize, we still utilize some of these tactics. So I prefer to keep it, you know and one of the things about third parties I believe that the moment that they start talking about what they do a lot, the moment that means that we're having a failure because you need to operate a little bit behind the scene just to facilitate what needs to be done. And we have a lot of friends around the world, a lot of partners around the world and those partners have been instrumental and continue to be instrumental in solving a lot of the difficult cases. And I think what I can talk about, what I cannot talk about, I think it's better to have Roger talk about these things. I think you already said no comment. We have one more question. Yeah, me and Colin, senior fellow with New America. I guess as many of the panelists know my background in hostage recovery is probably a little different than what we're talking about here though it might have a role in deterrence for non-state actors, but I don't wanna ask about that but the media, we haven't really talked about that. So I can imagine the media can be helpful in bringing awareness, but at the same time when you're trying to get a deal across the finish line can you just stop, we're closed, now you're causing problems at home with politics at home or the actor you're trying to deal with. So it might be a question for Roger or someone else on the panel, but what's the role of the media and do you find them helpful or harmful in your efforts? Well, thanks for that question. Liam and I, when we were young officers, we served together in Germany before we went off and did some more high-speed hostage rescue stuff. So great American to hear right there. I look at the media as, this may be kind of strange to say from a government perspective, but I look at them as a part of the hostage recovery enterprise. They've done so much to bring awareness to this whole topic. They've brought cases to our attention. They've held us accountable. I mean, I probably have one or two uncomfortable interviews, I would say almost every week, right? To where I'm held accountable by the media. And we actually, strangely, I think appreciate that. I think that when you have a journalist asking hard questions, that's all right. I think they have a reason to and you all have a need to know a lot of this stuff. When it gets classified, I've been encouraged by the amount of journalists who when we say this is going on, please hold that story. I would say almost 100% of the time they do that, even if they lose what could have been a groundbreaking release. So overall, I would say the journalists we've had the opportunity to work with have done a great job of doing all the things you would expect of a journalist. And yet in that one area, I guess those few examples where it could actually violate national security, they've been kind enough not to report. Specifically, you might talk about what's going on right now. I think everyone's doing their job and part of our job's not say too much or even say nothing until after the fact. And I think we have that relationship. But to my mind, we've not really had anything go seriously into the ground because of reporting. Maybe that will happen in the future. We make sure that we work with journalists. We have a very good relation all day long. We're talking to them. So I think in building those relationships, we can make sure that we do our part and they do their jobs as well. And again, I'll repeat, because of what they do, I feel like they're a part of the hostage recovery enterprise. Did that scratch the issue? Did I answer that? And I'm just gonna add to that. And then I know we're now officially out of time, but I'm just gonna add from a family perspective, I think that they're really, it's really important that they also have the courage to cover the stories that maybe aren't as sexy. We were talking in the green room before this about how important it is to recognize when people come home that they actually came home, as opposed to the mechanics of the deal and beating up poor Roger or others about the deal itself, but focus on celebrating that five Americans, hopefully, God willing, come home next week or the week after or whenever it might be. I also wanted to add, I've been doing this since 2007 when my father was first taken. I think we've grown in this ecosystem tremendously and we continue to move forward in such a great direction. And I hope one day we won't have to have these discussions because maybe we'll have brought everybody home and stopped it, but until that day, it's been a pleasure to have these colleagues next to me and hopefully we'll have something similar in the future.


Does it go to the right any further? Oh, yeah. So all these link clicks and all the the cost per result Right, so then when you look at the dashboard here What you also want to do is is look at the cartridge dashboard as well just to kind of see if the numbers resemble each other Yes at all. So so this this one here is the So where where I think the weak link is right now is the Landing the video that they're taken to after they fill out the form mm-hmm That video was not really ever designed to be the first video. They see You know when they come to a page the actual video ad that you watched it has kind of the green You know, they got the plants grow on the ground the music and mm-hmm And that's the one you said man I'd buy it right now that that that was the one that was really designed to be on our main landing page But I ran that as the ad because it is the catch here So I'm thinking that the the video that the people see which is this one. They're not even getting passed You know right here after two minutes to get a huge drop off And it's a 20-minute video. So it he wasn't really That that video was not shot in mind with hey, this is like a sales video It was more of just a kind of a little giving you a look inside. So I think we need to reshoot a video mm-hmm that that grabs people attention or What we do is we put We put this video that you watched Which is this one Which that's the that's the four and a half minute one that really got you excited maybe we put that back on the page that they view after they give us information and We put up some other Little ad that little promo video that he shot that would get people to that page as far as the video ad That's that's what I was thinking because obviously they're getting to the ad am I right? I mean they're clicking on Yeah, they're opting in right there they're opting in so let's let's look at the well you got the cost per result So that's how much it's costing per right for 65 per per opt-in and see that's what I'm saying So as you as you look at this You got to look at these numbers and be like, okay the third one I spent 282 To get a lead these other ones for 65. I would have shut that one off right away And then even that even at 423 I would have shut off right away now It's based on the cost result, but then it's also based on the result. So as far as the sell so Let's like for example if I was paying for 65 per lead But I made more cells you got to look at that way as well So that 20 22 those are those those were the actual opt-ins, right? So so those so you should have 20 42 42 and 33 is 75 and then and then that 20 what is that 28? We're what are you looking at? I'm looking at results the 20 22 33 28 Yeah, and so you get 103 here, right? Yeah. Yeah, so let's look at your cartridge real quick click on the my sequences or my communications and then let's look at the list real real quick Yeah, I don't think we've gotten anything that in What do you mean? I don't think we've gotten one sale as a result. Yeah, no not one sell but the opt-ins So where's that? Um Sprouting with Steve We're looking for just the opt-in page. No the list like we're what list are they going on to when they opt in Words what list was it you have so many lists. I don't even know which ones which Yeah, I think it was that it was that SWS opt-in form with ten top reasons. Yes That's the list you got 99 people on that list So those are all leads those are all people who opted in those are all people who are on the true and false right now That's why it's so important to clear out these lists whichever list you're not using like get rid of them because it just becomes clutter These are all people that are in the sequence. Did we reset that list? I don't know if you reset it, but I don't think you had 99 before. Yeah Did you not see this part? Well, I what do you mean like this list? Did you not come and take a look at the list like no? Yeah, dude, there's there's there's 99 leads right there. So these people are all on the True and false all it like if you hover over the number one on sequence hover over it Okay, I go back to So that right where it says sequence it says number one hover over the number one the other one the sequence Yeah, hover over that one So they're all in that four-day. They're all in the true and false now What you're seeing in the graph is you're seeing yeah, most of them are dropping off and not watching the full thing So you got damn near 99 leads all on the false side probably You know all on the false side getting people within the four-day period to get back to watch the video That's why those emails are so important Because that's where you'll you'll see a lot of your back-end revenue coming from those those sequence that email that sequence But at the same time, yeah upfront that message needs to be clear whether it's that Facebook video ad that video needs to be clear And then when they opt in and they're watching that presentation that presentation needs to be clear And I tell you the truth pastor that that's where I'm stuck at personally like I'm gonna be very transparent with you Like in my case with my business my webinar So you go to my landing page you opt in I could be I'm very clear with my Facebook ad Like very very clear my videos very very clear on my messaging my audience very very clear But when you go to my landing page and then you opt in to watch the presentation That's what I've yet to fully complete is my presentation because that video when they opt in That video has to be super clear man not as far as clarity.  Like what is you know? Yeah, and that and that's why yeah that four minute one Although it's super short Maybe that might be your homerun hitter Maybe taking them to have four minute one because that video that's where I'm stuck on stuck out in my business where I'm trying to master this dang presentation You know and and that's that's that's the one video that I've yet to complete Because I want it to be so clear So when they watch it because my in my case my video is gonna be long my video is gonna be anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes And and when you're selling high ticket and not not necessarily high ticket, but a thousand dollar product minds, you know 997 That's kind of the magic number is you want to be anywhere from 60 to anywhere from an hour to three hours of her presentation Like there's science behind that So mine has to be a little longer, and that's what I'm stuck on is completing my presentation video because that's so freaking important So dang dude here on the bright side, what should I what should I do that presentation? On on the bright side. Okay, so I'm just wondering which which one of these should I turn off and whatever is high Shut off the highest ones. So for example, how do I shut them off? Do I just click this blue button over here? Yeah, let's look at them real quick So again 20 leads came in and you paid 465 per per lead 22 leads came in you paid for 23 per and then you got 33 leads at 282 That's the one that's on fire. So yeah, you would shut off the first two. So how Toggle the blue to the to gray That one and then the second one Okay, so now now let's let's okay. So let's okay. So now we're at the 282 and the 332 Okay, perfect Now that one turned off Did that one turn off automatically, I don't know if I click that That's fine.  Anyways, that was the higher one One of the why do these these are on they? Yeah, those just moved up. They just shifted up. That's all But I wonder how that other one.  No, no, no, no, no those ones need to stay on So if I were you I'd leave those two on you got 28 leads at 332 per you got 33 leads at 282 So so if anything you can turn off if anything you can turn on it just depends on your budget, man That's really what it comes down to in this. Yeah, what? We're looking at we're looking at The cost per lead and how many leads came in You know, if you're looking at four and you want to just just have one out of four Okay. Well, then there's your one the 33 leads at 282 If you don't mind spending a little bit more 3.32 per lead then you would leave on the second one But if you don't want to spend that then yeah, turn that one off and just right on the first one So right one out of four if if I was to ride one out of four right now I'm spending a hundred bucks a day still, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, you'd be spending You'd be spending you'd be spending 25 a day Okay So remember it was only a hundred a day because we went 24 times 4 or 25 times 4 But as we shut off the other three we let that one ride at 25 a day Until you recoup your money on those other three Okay, that's what I'd like to do. So right now looking at this. I've just got the one going in the home and garden Mm-hmm, which is running at 22 good man. So so then that's a good audience So then what I'm gonna do with my partner is I I'm going to Sorry, I gotta go tell my daughter No, no worries. She's watering the note. You hear me? All right. Yeah Yeah, I can hear you. All right. Okay. I'll just leave you going She's filling up a pool for my dog and it makes a lot of rattle inside the walls where the pipes are No, you're good. So What I'm gonna do with with with this then is I'm gonna ride this one. I'm gonna work with my partner we're gonna So if I wanted to change this Add from a dip from a different video ad is that real complicated to do? No, you don't want to change anything right here So if anything you let this one ride until you into you until you until you don't want it to ride anymore What I would do is I would if you're getting that many leads that that's good. I mean 33 leads at 2.8 to per lead We need one we need we need I mean you spent 372 already. I mean you need four cells and So with with those numbers those are decent numbers anything above five dollars per lead is good But when you're looking at four dollars and twenty three cents when you're looking at four sixty five Versus two others that are lower and then you're looking at one. That's the lowest Then obviously you you you you accommodate and you you make your adjustments, but at the same time it's like You can still let it run you can you can let it run into you until you pop a cell and knowing that your back end is Where the problem is I think it's that video they're opting in they're not watching that full video It's that video is not catching their attention for some reason and that that right there looks like it's your it's your It's your it's your issue It's not the Facebook ad because right look how many people opted in you know hundred people opt in so it's not the Facebook ad The Facebook ad is first definitely grabbing the attention The landing page is converting. They're getting to the landing page. They're actually willing to opt in But then we're losing them on the presentation page. Yeah, so that video needs to be either more compelling It needs to be more basic or more more understanding. You know, it just needs to resonate more To that lead. Yeah, that's just it's a video. The video starts out slow because he's not It's almost like he's It's almost like a video that he shot for people who have already looked at everything. It's so it's not a And I think he watches it and if he see if I tell him look, this is what's the first thing people see He's gonna say yeah, we need to spice that up. Yeah. Yeah for sure And then that could be a video that you're that you're sending on the back end. That could be a video in one of your email sequences Yeah, I could be email on the truth side Yeah You know that could be a video on the truth side But yeah, it's this presentation video that that I'm even stuck on in my business Just making sure that that presentation video is is right But right there man that that's something to at least get Fired up about yeah, you spent a few hundred but dang man It worked like your ads are kicking ass right now. It's just that presentation that needs to be tweaked If I looked at this and saw five leads I would have been like dang it But then at the same time I kind of I still wouldn't have been dang it I still wouldn't have said that because I know everything is set up right on the ads at that point If only five people opted in okay, then something's wrong with our actual ad But it's like dang a hundred people actually liked your video a hundred people actually gave up their name and email You know I mean like now it's time to Yeah, adjust that presentation video to get some conversions But again, even when you look at those numbers, okay 372 do a little adjusting get that conversion up It's four cells man Yeah, that's why I love digital products. That's what I'm saying once you take this to 497 Then you could play around with all these ads and play around with all these different variations And at that point it's like dang you need one cell You know like the what I'm trying to say is the profit margin It doesn't take that many and and what you're seeing here is good data This is good data to know that that audience is the one that popped to know how to create these multiple ad sets To see which one is your winner out of four? That's gold right there now. You'll just do the same thing with video ad number two You'll go do the same thing Maybe put in that same audience and retarget all those people and then and then maybe create four different audiences Or three other different audiences now you have a whole new four four sets of ads ready to go for week number two It's all about it's all about testing different audiences. And then once you get this pixel Enough data then you create what Facebook calls look-alike audiences, which that will be our next call But that's when you take your custom audiences people that are actually landing on your landing page People who are actually opting in and landing on your presentation page people who are actually landing on your order complete Page these are custom audiences the pixel is on each page. It's now a custom audience I'm retargeting these people or I'm excluding them from future ads because they already registered they already purchased whatever But these custom audiences after I would say after after running running ads for a consistent four or five six weeks These custom audiences will start building up and then what you'll do is you'll turn around and create a look-alike audience And you'll tell Facebook, okay? 500 people opted into this page in the last 30 days, which is your presentation page Which is these 99 people right here you'll tell Facebook. Hey 500 people not 99 500 people opted in I want to create a look-alike audience. So now Facebook will start finding you people like that who you're not targeting You're targeting people in a specific audience There's so many other people that Facebook knows that would resonate with your stuff that you're not targeting in that specific audience So you create a look-alike audience you create a look-alike audience around those who registered and Then you just start running ads to your look-alike audiences and that's like that's when you scale That's when there's an unlimited amount of people to talk to to to go after because Facebook shows you Facebook shows ends up showing the ad to so many more people that you're not even you're not even thinking of But they're relevant and they're they're look-alike. They're quote-unquote look-alike. They're look-alike people When compared to your registered people When you compare it to the presentation people SWS presentation, they're look-alike They they look just like that when it comes to their profile and And they're they're they're online habits and Facebook has that data So so the best of the best the best of the best continue to retarget those who are watching their stuff Retarget those who are landing on their pages and then create look-alike audiences around those custom audiences That's how everyone wins on that's how you scale so Don't have to let me say this one last part Don't say you don't think you have to know all these different audiences you do in the beginning So so as I'm showing you four ad sets and then I just got done telling you okay in your next ad create four more Ad sets don't think you're gonna have to do that all the time You're gonna have to do that in the beginning like let's just call it the first couple months You're gonna have to know these different audiences find these different audiences so the pixel can start getting data So we can get that pixel as much relevant data as possible So Facebook can start knowing who your ideal client is right once we do that and spend a few hundred bucks Let's even call it a thousand over the next month or two two months three months You put a thousand at it you get this pixel all this data and then after that You turn on look-alike audiences and you only target so now that we're in the ad set We would only watch scroll scroll down scroll down Down down down. So right here. So so right in the custom audiences click in the box right there What you would start doing let's call this month number three month number three What you would start doing is you would only start you would only run ads to your look-alike audiences and Those look-alike audiences the way you can kind of look at it are clones They're clones of your custom audiences. Who are your custom audiences those who registered?  You have to do this in the very beginning so Facebook can know who you're looking for and then after that you look-alike it You look-alike the custom audience and scale So this what I'm in right now you would you had tasked me with Creating a couple of custom conversions. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm and a couple caught custom audiences I think I did the custom audiences right And I was just in this step right here Setting up the custom conversion Mm-hmm check out you you want to check out and purchases. Yeah, and see that that's where you would that's where you would you would Test as well. So it's it's either we're gonna do a custom conversion in the presentation and The purchases and the add to cart But that that comes later that comes later in more testing that comes later At the same time you want that pixel to to read Who's even laying on those pages you need some cells first of all you need some cells like let's get some cells first right now All you're gonna do is conversion and and we're quote-unquote optimizing for presentation That's all you're gonna do right now for a few weeks is is optimize and run ads for the presentation To get people to register that means we need to get that I need to get that Work on that presentation video. Yeah, maybe put it So so the one that you have now cuz I didn't I didn't watch anything. So the one that you have now What which one is that is that not the four minute one? Well the four minute one that we really spent some time on is That the video in the ad itself That's the Facebook ad Okay, so Yeah, that's gonna be different than the presentation Yeah, so the the presentation ad or video is This one right here which Really was not designed like I said to be a caption a captivating video was more of an informational Video I want to thank you for coming this far and I want to tell you a little bit more actually quite a bit About the actual course itself as we all know when a person gets married and they need to get to know the person First before they say I do because I do is a big commitment Buy anything major like a car or whatever it is You do your homework before you pull the trigger and purchase what you're gonna buy and Obviously, it's the same thing with this video course sprouting the Steve So I'm gonna take you inside and show you around and show you what will actually happen and what you'll get and the value You'll get if you pull the trigger and join my course So what's gonna happen is as soon as you click buy and you sign up and you put in your credit card information You will then receive very quickly an email which will give you login information to yeah See this is this is a sequence email or sequence video That's not that's not that's not a cold target a cold ad bring someone here for the first time and they're hearing that So there's your your drop in the ball Yeah, so that that was evident now on We have another landing page You can close that one out close out the red one. This is This was our original landing page Landing page or presentation page presentation page. So you got the landing page and the thank you page Thank you page is where your videos at your cells your cells video. Hey, this is this is this was the original Sales page so people would this would be Before we did Facebook when someone entered sprouting with Steve calm mm-hmm. I am Steve Let me tell you about sprouting Many people today are deeply concerned about This is the video that it's actually environmental pollution deadly toxins and the rise of killer diseases are alarming seriously if we And this is the ad too, right? This is so this is the video that we used in the ad. Yeah. Yeah, yeah And but this used to be the video that it would was what people would first see before we got You know, I didn't have a squeeze page or a landing page. I just come straight to this And so they would watch that then they would scroll down and learn more about the course the benefits of sprouting Read some testimonials. There's a testimonial video right here of someone who bought the course Popular online physician talking about, you know, the benefits to sprouting Meet via coverage talking about, you know, the need to build the immune system with sprouting mm-hmm and another Video here this video here. I actually have in one of the sequences Right, so this video that's is in a sequence. This is a short video talking about As you can see it is a beautiful winter day in North Idaho We just got a nice snow last night And my garden is behind that building and it's completely under snow and nothing's growing But guess what? I do have things growing right here inside this kitchen And these are called microgreens. We have sunflower microgreens that are growing in the next So I guess some buffering, but this is a two minute video raised peas And then we have buckwheat See that's good stuff, man. That's really good stuff Prop of wheatgrass And this is a tray of No, it's buffering. My internet's really slow, but it's right and I switch over to him We'll let it play here and we've just planted another tray of corabian amaranth That will be starting soon Probably the best part of this little little video here is the finished product Take a look at me Dude, I'm telling you once you get your once you get your messaging down, which I which I don't think it's the messaging I don't I don't think I'm using the right word once you get that video presentation part down The rest is history, man Because you have a phenomenal product like it is we just have to portray that in that presentation Yeah, that that's the most important and and anything and everything else goes in the sequence What what about using a shorter video like this that gets people to click? And then they come to This video right here, which is the one that gives It's the most salesy. It's I mean after watching this people are Use our health. We're ready to buy Including the joy of living. I mean almost So what can we do to flood our bodies with super nutrition and strengthen our immune systems? Slow down the aging process and fight cancer all without spending a fortune The answer is simple We can grow fully organic super healthy live vegetable sprouts and microgreens in our own kitchens laundry rooms and even our own bathroom So anyways kind of I got my internet buffering right now, but So I'm not sure I should put this video back on The presentation page and go with a shorter video like you know like one of these where You know we're showing people in the kitchen Well, you're gonna show them one video like they're gonna see the ad and then they're gonna opt in to one video Now everything that falls below that's that's fine, but the actual presentation You just gotta figure out what that video is going to be that one video Well, like I said, this this was the one that we shot with that in mind. So when people come to our page They see this video he talks about That's the video then That that's the video. That's the one that does the selling Yes, so should this be on The presentation page the thank you page Yeah, and and change and so we need to change the videos around which in this in this ad The video that we're using Is the ad that we're thinking of You know putting on the the presentation page. Okay, so I would just simply grab another video and use that as the video ad Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. I mean but at the same time it looks like people are digging that video They're clicking they're opting in Showing them the video again is not necessarily a bad idea. I would test it I would test I'd get that video right now and throw it on that landing page right now connect it right now as that as that as live Like do it right now So go back So this is the page here We currently Is our current presentation page Okay, we need to switch out this video and put that other one I would I would do that in the meantime while you're thinking of your next Your next yeah, see Yeah, see this right here. Yeah, I'm already seeing course. I'm already seeing modules. Like yeah, that's not the video Go ahead and switch it out real good now should I have this video down towards the bottom of the page? Like I used to I used to have it right well you can you can you can Like all that stuff below is just added. That's just icing on the cake That main video because I'm not going to see this drop down until a few minutes in anyways like three minutes in Okay, then everything drops But what's going to keep my attention and what's going to make the most sense right now while you have my my attention for just a few seconds Well, it would that necessarily be the same video that you just watched on Facebook? Why not? I mean, why not now again? It's not it's not like you're going to be running that same one all the time The whole strategy is different Facebook ads But but right now I would throw it there right now and I would change that headline. Here's a sneak peek at the course It's not a sneak peek And I'm not even mentioning course just yet so Well, I would put a different headline If that's the case, why don't we make this? The landing page, uh, let me go So this is what I call the original landing page which would be original presentation page and Because this one doesn't it this one has the regular video on it Which would be the same video as in the ad it's it's that's the thumbnail for it And the title is hi. I'm steve. Let me tell you about sprouting Okay, then this button right here Skips them down the page to where they can watch that video Um The sneak peek one that we were that we currently have is the presentation one where he actually kind of walks and through So that is at the bottom down here So they do get to see if they're looking on this page and they want to know more about the course They can watch this 20 minute video about it But it's not up here at the top You know what I wouldn't even put it there. I wouldn't put it there I would let that be I would I would put that video in email number two on the true on the true side Okay, so hey ron just wanted to follow up Here's a quick video. I shot here's a sneak peek at the course Like I'd send that a couple days later On this front page, you don't want my attention going anywhere else Like that's why a lot of times it's just when there's multiple videos. That's fine. And here's the thing when Videos and testimonies and credibility and and doctors and other people talking about stuff stuff That stuff matters when you when you have when you're when you're when you're at a high ticket And high tickets not necessarily high ticket, but when you're selling anything from 500 and up Then show me some testimonies and maybe show me some more credibility But at 97 bucks, man, that one video will sell me I don't need to read any of this other crap Now I don't think that's just my opinion. I think that's real fact. I really do. I truly believe that I don't need to read any of that stuff put all that stuff in the sequence on the true side Not right here Now again, that's me if that price was 997 then okay, let me read some more. Let me digest this stuff This guy's asking for a thousand bucks. Let me see some credibility and some more social proof But at $97 man, he does a heck of a job on that four-minute video selling me Click the button and buy now. There's nothing else to watch That's just how I see it Yeah, you know right here. You're just giving me too much And that's another play another reason why you'll lose me Is because I'll I'll end up scrolling down And in reading everything else and before you know it dinner's freaking ready and I got to go so underneath here I used to have a All that buy now and everything was right underneath that video and then they could scroll down That one red button takes me to the checkout page Okay, well, here's here's what I'll do then I'm going to change the The presentation page to be this Well, the one we were just looking at or something similar where you're watching that same video again There is right underneath the video They do have the option to go right to the checkout and I'll know the price the discount code all of that Then I'll leave the other stuff there if they want to browse down through it. That's fine um And then I'll put that In internal presentation video inside a follow-up email On the true side. Yeah for sure I would I would do that for sure But again, I'm telling you man instead of take a look inside my video course I would say click here to purchase now, right? So I will change that I'll put the buy now button the price It'll look similar to this It'll look similar to that button, but it'll have a little bit more underneath as far as the discount code how much they'll get off now And remember you can always clone, you know clone it clone it and use that use that clone That way you still have this one intact and you don't got to change anything just clone for the next one And play around with that new clone Okay But but I yeah Trust me man this this stuff I I learned this stuff from the best of the best man And and and I've been through so many funnels myself Where I purchased low ticket low ticket digital courses a $47 course a $37 course a $60 course a $97 course And and and there's there's not there's not much to it man, but that presentation that video needs to sell me And then one button is all it takes I click that one button I go check out. That's it Any other information if I did not do that any other information would come via email And that's the follow-up Yeah, you know So it's just about locking down this video. So when they register they're watching this one That's that's that that that's what I see clearly. Okay, you know Okay, well, so that's what I'll do. I'll switch around that presentation page And I'll put the other the the Inside the course I'll put in an email follow-up Um, I'm running one ad now Yes, that one But and when I would do two man without going another minute, I would switch out that video right away Like whatever whoever's because look that 34th lead is about to come in any second now When they opt in where they going? Yeah, no, they'll they'll I'll switch it out right away. Yeah switch that out right away And then in the meantime work on work on the rest of the page, but at least they're often to see that new video Okay, okay. Well, that's I that's I feel urgency to do that right away. Um, I've got you Scheduled in a couple of days. So let's let's look at these numbers again Let's do it after we after we change things around and we'll see maybe if You know people are sticking around or opting in and I am I am getting my own emails So I know that that's all flowing good So, how did you not know all those leads came in? Did you not receive an email notification? Well, I need new lead new lead new lead new lead. Oh I see I see here, you know that we're reaching people and we're getting reason I didn't know exactly what I mean the results are that we reached our Yeah People here. I just didn't wasn't clear on what that actually meant The the results and that's why I setting up this this dashboard the way I The way I wanted you to set it up, but I think the first time we looked at it We didn't it wasn't The facebook wasn't there was a hiccup and we'll do it again right now real quick because that's that's super important But um those results The way that's being tracked is those are people who land on your thank you page Who land on the presentation page because that's what we're optimizing for we're optimizing for sd sdc or whatever it is sws presentation Yeah, so those are people who landed on the presentation page. That's a result Yeah, but then also the way I want you to set it up is where You can read it under what you titled on titled it under so for example click on performances Let's see if we can get through this part now Okay, I think the first time it wasn't allowing us to click on um right there at the top where it says columns Performance there's a drop down the very top right. Yeah, right there columns performance and then go down to customize columns Okay, let's see if yours is And then click on custom conversions to the left Right there and custom conversions Perfect perfect. Okay, cool. So let's clear some of this crap out this stuff to the right We don't need a lot of that stuff. Let's x out Go ahead and x out quality ranking You don't need that. You don't need that right now quality ranking x that out engagement ranking right x that out conversion rate ranking x that out um Even even results because we have our we have our own results our results is going to be sws presentation So when I look at my dashboard, I don't want to see results because I'm going to be questioning What the heck are the results just like you did what we're going to see rather than results is we're going to see sws presentation So that's going to that's that's that's results. That's going to tell us how many people actually landed on that page Yeah, x out of that Out of results and then at last last significant edit get rid of that and then um link clicks Three second get rid of the three second video plays free. We don't we don't care about that. I I don't care about that video percentage wash I mean videos Videos average play time. I guess you can keep that. Yeah, I'd like to compare that with the kartra Well, that's not that's not no that's your facebook ad So that's the video. How many what's the percentage watched? That's a good metric. Um But at the same time, I don't even care about that. I care about how many people opted in But at the same time if that percentage is low then obviously You know, I I like to know, you know With that four minute video. I'm I'm thinking they watch, you know, it's a captivating video For people interested in sprouting. So yeah for sure for sure. Um What about bid strategy you can get rid of that get rid of that um And I guess you can leave the rest for now. So here's what we're gonna do We're gonna right here in the middle sws presentation click on total check the box total And then check on cost The box for cost Okay, perfect. So now those are to the right So scroll to the bottom the right on the right hand side the right column very very right And then just drag those up drag drag both of those up. Oh Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So now let's name it save as preset go ahead and save it to the bottom left Okay, so go ahead and title it something Okay, so now what you'll be able to do is you'll always be able to refer back to this To look at to look at um to look at it from this site So now look as I come into my page into my dashboard I can see how many people opt into the presentation right there So that's how many people that those are your leads And then cost per lead 283. So it's the same same metric. It's just my actual title of what I named it So I can know what the heck it is, you know, I mean So why is this check over here on the left? You can check that Uncheck the box Yeah, so you're fine and then What's that This one here still says active Go ahead and check on that box check on that box And then click on let's just check the other tabs And I think it is because we haven't we need to review and publish that blue button at the top But let's check on the let's click on the tab real quick. The third tab adds for one ad set Click on that real quick Okay, perfect. Let's check on the first bless you click on the first tab campaigns The tab yeah, there we go Okay, cool. So you're good on this. So just go ahead and um hit the blue button at the top right review and publish That number. Yeah, click on that blue one Let's look at this real quick. Okay, so cancel and then just hit discard drafts cancel and then discard drafts at the top discard draft Okay discard Okay, perfect. So we should it should be cleared out now. So click on the ad sets And if not, it's okay. It's okay because it's not it's not active check the box and see if you can just move it to gray again No Yeah, that one it's shaded. So it shouldn't it shouldn't be on What's locked the others don't okay hover over it hover over it. What does it say? This ad can't can't be used while changes are being applied to it. Okay, that's fine That's fine. So, um So it's the homing garden one that you're so just check this in a couple hours check this And and let the changes let let whatever facebook's doing in the background Play out and then come back and see if that lock is there And then just turn it off again because this is the only place you need to shut it off You don't need to shut it off in the campaign tab or the ads tab. It's an ad set So all it has to do would be shaded a gray right here. There should be only one blue and that's that top one so So at that's not a bad cost per lead 282. It's it's not bad. Now you can for sure I would use that as your benchmark So we improve from this point on we improve on the 282 we need we need lead that two dollars We need leads at a dollar we need leads at 75 cents cost per result, right? That's the lead the cost per lead The cost per presentation in this case now so This right here. I would bookmark this page And um and and and be able to come back to it fast right away Yeah, I I it's bookmarked. I I've come back to it Okay, and then so now anytime go back to the columns custom that drop down again to the right Columns custom so all you do in the in any any, you know future time you'll just come down and you know click on cancel You should just be able to see um click on it again custom column custom scroll to the very very bottom Yeah So you're in the um right there sd sws presentation So now you'll be able to just check that right there and you'll see you'll be able to see this view at all times Okay, okay. I don't think you have this part this this book marked That star would be blue in the top Right Like hit the star. Yes. See now now it's and be specific to title that Title that you know sws presentation ads manager You know something very specific so um You know one one specific person that I learned from Five dollars per per lead and lower is is where you want to be shooting form from almost it almost doesn't depend on It doesn't even depend on the on the cost on the price of what your product is Anything below five dollars per lead, you know, you're you're you're in there and you're at two and two point eight two So again the whole goal is to get that lower And how how do we get that lower from the it looks like your landing page is converting the landing page brought in a hundred leads, man It's that presentation page that hasn't converted just yet. We haven't made a cell So that's different. So the landing page is converting the presentation page is not The video is converting the presentation page is not so your video is doing great your ad is doing great Your landing page is doing great And you could tell clearly right there We got to get that The presentation page converting get the presentation page converting and and and just make sure that those sequences man Those emails make sure those those emails are are are in order Because that's where you're going to win a lot a lot is on that back end A lot of those videos that are on that landing page I truly believe every single one of them needs to be taken off and put in in the sequence on the true side That's just what I my opinion There doesn't need to be anything below this page right here that red button is all I should see Check out At this price point, especially at this price point I educated you enough on the facebook video ad and that's why we want a video every week a new one going out every week Because I want to continue to educate. I want to continue to retarget these people who are watching my videos That's one custom audience and then I want to continue to retarget all those who are landing on my landing page That's another custom audience and then I want to retarget all those who actually opted in to watch the presentation But haven't purchased I want to retarget all those and I want to retarget all those with a new facebook ad So a lot of the education is upfront in the video So the by the time I get in the video ad so by the time I get here All I need to do is see one video of steve and I'm in If I do need to see any more credibility it should be in the email sequence When you're selling a lower ticket in my opinion So you're thinking a lot of this stuff here would would would just go in the follow-up All of it, man. Yeah, all of it in the follow-up sequence. Heck. Yeah, those make great. Those are great emails right there So what now on the checkout page Well, no, let's see A lot of times before you get to the checkout page Like with your checkout page, you know how you gave your all your values Mm-hmm Those I aren't those normally like on the sales page No, post Well, well, they can be they can be when you're when you're selling something high ticket in my opinion They can be They can be on the sales page below the video show me more Especially when you're asking for 500 bucks Yeah, but it's like dude. This is such a that I just believe And again, I guess I'm giving you my perspective from a marketer and also from a consumer My consumer perspective. I got my consumer hat on now I'm looking at this video and I'm freaking sold man I'm in I'm into all that hell stuff I'm in So it doesn't take much convincing in my opinion It doesn't I don't need to see five other videos if you want to slow me down Okay, great. Show me five more now before I even make a purchase and before you better hurt hurt I do it before I do you better hurry up and hope I do it before my freaking wife comes you know, it's like Get me to buy now on on this It doesn't take more much more convincing That's my opinion from a consumer and then from a marketer standpoint same thing All that is not necessary So so put this video so they're seeing the same video twice, but here now they have the call to action to buy Yes, get them right back out page now. They're only seeing the same video twice in this specific case Right next video ad. It's no more seen it twice Yeah, right. They're only that's why I'm wondering what if what if we took Like this this is a really good two minute video here. Well, what if we put that in the video ad? So that when they come When they come here now they're just watching this Yeah, but but yeah, yes, but In each video ad and you want to just make note of this This has to be like you got to do that. You got to know this like the back of your hand For for the actual video ad. There's always a call to action So at the end of the video, it's always hey guys and click learn more We put together an amazing presentation That's going to go over the ins and outs of what we're providing and what this is all about Click learn more where you can register and watch our next presentation coming up So something like that has to be at the end of the video. That's the call to action If that video down there below is just a video and there's no call to action Then I guess you can run it But you'd have to put a lot of that in the text Click learn more You know all that So here's how let's just watch the rest of it. This is one minute 31 seconds left.  I just don't remember what it was exactly Just showing you a little window into an online video course that I'm Teaching called sprouting with steve. It's quite a journey. We have a facebook page where you you can ask questions and There's just a lot involved in this. It's very simple Once you know what to do our motto is you can do this and I'm teaching people how to Sprout how to grow microgreens in soil And then also without soil Hydroponically as part of this course if you'd like to be doing this you'd like to come and join us Just check out our website Sprouting with steve and you can learn all about it And then I hope that uh, you'll be It'll work man. It'll work. It'll work That's how hard right there And believe me it will bless your body putting live food superfood Into every cell of you There's hardly anything you can do that will be better for your health So hope we'll see you it's sprouting with steve.com So click below for more information. So that was a yeah, yeah, that that's already in the video That that could work that could work So how how hard is it to change the video in this ad that's currently running you're you're not going to change it You're going to just run another ad You just run another ad to that same Yeah, it either you turn this one off Or yeah, yeah, you would turn this one off and just start that next ad But but right now man, I'm telling you see look 34 just hit You were just at 33 right now 34. You you just got another registrant registrant That video on that thank you page needs to change but needs to be changed like like this second So switch out the video. I can I can change it. I guess my question is Is it would it be worth turning this off and and putting that other video on the front end? So they're not seeing the same video twice Yes and no How long has this been running this this actual ad right here? We started on the sixth Okay, it's been four days. Okay. Yeah, see four dude in four days. You got 103 leads Like that's insane. That's really good. Especially going to a cold market So the way I'm trying to answer your question is the fact that I don't see anything wrong with this one right now It's that presentation that needs to be changed right away And and as you run it for the next three days Because you're going seven days As you run it for the next three days, then you can kind of micromanage it and and make your adjustments from there If no one has bought by then then okay, there's our seven day run Now let's run this next video for the next seven days and let's do it the right way this time so so You can shut it off if you want But at the same time, I think it's doing that. I think it's doing its job What's not there is the presentation Which if If we just upload this Video the the presentation page will just be a rerun of the video ad is is what we're talking about without all the stuff below it Which I can incorporate into the follow-up Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm here. It would just be the click for the discount code Yes, man a free trial let that run for the next three days, man finish out your seven day period Okay, let that run for the next three days With with with just going with the basic call to action after this video here on the presentation page Yep, and that button that says click here to buy now Skip all this stuff You can leave it, but I'm just saying it's not it's not I think it's not necessary I think it's not necessary The video sells me enough and it's only 97 dollars and I know 97 dollars. It's I know it's um It might be a lot to some and it's not a lot to others or whatever vice versa It's all relative a number, but at the same time Digital courses people buy 97 dollars all day It doesn't take much convincing Especially when it comes to something like that like something like that All the proof is in that one video. This guy's showing me everything You know so it's like and you're gonna see all the other stuff in the next couple days with the follow-up Heck, yeah, that's where I built even more rapport And and they hit you with my left right uppercut You know Remind me the true that the the separating factor for the true is if they watched this whole video Not necessarily the whole video you can determine, you know, what that we got to change that true false If we put this video there because this video is only Four minutes and 23 seconds compared to that 20 minute. I think our true started at 18 minutes Yeah, so then you have to change out the tag um So you would just go to the video See so is that video on cartra? Yeah, okay, so you just have to go to the video create a tag So this is This is the video right here zero tags Yeah, so you just create a tag and then um You create a tag by editing it. Yeah edit so tag leads I I'm pretty sure you can create it from here. Yeah new tag. I'm pretty sure you can create it from here Uh, yeah create new tag right there to the right. So yeah, you could do it from here But at the same time it's the same it's the same tag you should already have that tag Right you already have that tag We have to just change we're just changing we're just gonna we're gonna just add it here Change the minutes and remove the tag from that other video So you already have the tag you don't have to create a new one So go back hit cancel Hit cancel.  Yeah, it's four four thirty three Yeah, tag it tag it tag it maybe tag it at four minutes Okay And then there goes that tag so go find that tag There's the tag and then remove the tag from the other video Well, so we need to So and then you gotta retitle it that's all so go ahead and choose that one Okay add And then save and then go to the other video Let's actually let's hit the green button down here publish Okay, so now go to the other video and remove the tag And then we'll go into tags and we'll rename it So go ahead and remove this one x that went out No, you'll exit out Okay publish video And then um what you'll do is you'll just go to my communications go to tags And then just simply um rename rename it This one here Okay, cool got that got that. Okay. You're good And then edit So this tag expires. No, you can leave that. Yeah, that's fine. So Now you got to go back to that thank you page that presentation page and just switch out that video Right. So that's gonna be that's gonna be It's gonna take me a little bit. Yeah, so take care of that part And then let that ad run man. Let that ad run for the next three days. Let's chat when that ad is over Okay And let let's let's analyze the numbers from there and then again whatever whatever that's what you always need to be thinking Is that next video? What's the next ad? Yeah, that's the only thing you need to be you need to be in communication with steve about man to tell you the truth I don't know how you guys have your business setup, but it looks like you're the cartridge guy and the ad guy So all this part he doesn't need if I if it was me steve, you don't worry about none of this stuff, bro Your only focus is to give me a new video every week That is it forget about this part. Don't talk about numbers with me You'll see the cells coming in just focus on that one video per week because that's where you're gonna drop the ball That's where most people drop the ball Is they're not consistent with that weekly ad they're not consistent with fresh content And in this case, it's not just content.  I need a video for an ad Right, so so that's where most drop the ball It it's staying consistent And so from this point on make sure that every video that steve does Hey guys, and by the way, we put together a presentation if you click learn more You can register and take a look at everything we got going on blah blah blah Like however, you want to spin that at the last 10 seconds of every video There's a call to action to click learn more to watch what we got going on The last two videos I shot I he actually I had him end it with the click learn more now perfect perfect perfect Good keep it up Keep it up. Okay, so should I I have Scheduled wednesday and and friday should we cancel wednesday and just let this run until friday? Yes, let's chat friday You want to go in there on wednesday and cancel that then i'll take care of it On my end and i'll just it so our next one will be friday at four then perfect sounds good boss Let's go man. Everything looks good man. You're right there. You are right there. What chat friday What's that what chat friday? Yeah, we'll chat friday. So cancel me for wednesday then. Okay sounds good boss. Talk to you. Thanks. Yes, sir. Bye. Bye