Today, I'm really excited to interview Greg Faxon. He is an extraordinary business coach, but he's also building a new coaching business in a different niche. So I'm excited to ask him about that and hear the lessons that he's learning as he's applying his own business and marketing strategies and experience into a new niche. I know that a lot of you watching this are trying to build a service kind of business from scratch, so I think you're going to get a lot out of this interview. So Greg and I first met because he was writing a blog post that was going to incorporate different sort of thoughts from different, you know, experts, and when he reached out to me, I said, you know, I don't really do that kind of thing, but maybe we could stay in touch by other things, and somehow we got back in touch. And that's also to the testament of the power of, you know, authentic networking. Like we wanted to find a way to connect, to collaborate in a way that felt really good for both of us. And Greg was, you know, I think either Greg reached back out or I reached back out, but we felt something there, you know, and that's what I encourage all of you to do, too, is like when you find a kindred spirit, you know, keep in touch, you know, try to find a way that works for both of you to feel like, hey, this is a value add to both of us and to our communities, et cetera.  So Greg, thanks so much for doing this interview. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And I want to let you know, George, I was thinking earlier today that I really appreciate your approach to staying connected and when you reach out and, you know, what you want to chat about. And I remember we looked at each other's websites a while ago. So I appreciate how you model that sort of authentic networking. Oh yeah, thank you. Absolutely.  That's the feeling that I have anyway. I mean, you GregFaxson.com, G-R-E-G-F-A-X-O-N.com for those who are looking for your, for the main site that I've known about. Now we're going to talk about the new website too. You are just very focused on helping coaches and service providers fill their client roster. So for those of you who would like, I would love to fill my client roster, go and check out GregFaxson.com, F-A-X-O-N. And he has amazing articles there. He also has an online course there if you want his strategies and wisdom on how to do this, you know, have a full business.  I want to apply my own, my own strategies to filling a new business and you have multiple interests. You have been a very dedicated athlete for most of your life.  I'm going to teach men how to, how to stay fit. Right? So tell us about your, your new business. Sure. So this started around this time last year, actually, and I had a couple of thoughts at the same time, which kicked this new business off. One thought was, you know, coaches often come to me and say, well, your strategy works because you're working with coaches. So of course they're going to invest in coaching. And so maybe what if what you teach only works if you're coaching coaches, right? And we are kind of in a world that gets very meta, right? Where there are a lot of people, you know, offering to help coaches build their business as well. So sometimes if you're just getting into it and you're not a coach for coaches. You're a life coach, business coach, you know, health coach, whatever it is, it's easy to say, well, am I just in this weird little snow globe that, that isn't actually no one makes money except if they're working with other coaches. So the first thing is I kind of wanted to prove that wrong. Like I had heard it enough times. I was like, all right, let me just show because I knew, knew I had worked with clients and none of my clients coach other coaches, but I wanted to show people that it was possible, not just that I could give advice of how to get clients, but actually show people how to do it. So that was number one and number two. I was starting to get to the point where I was antsy. I know you sometimes have side businesses, side projects, and it's this constant tension of mastery comes from focus and discipline and not just quitting when you're in the dip, as Seth Godin would say, but also if you're a creative person, you sometimes reach points where you're lacking motivation or something that's not as exciting and you need to try other stuff. And for me, I was at a point where I was more passionate than ever about fitness, which had always been an interest of mine. So I started off last year just running an experiment and I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go through my own course, which is called coaching business bootcamp. I'm going to do it in a whole other niche and I'm going to journal my process each week. I'm going to make a video. I'm going to write a journal entry for my audience of what I did that week, what results I got, what I learned, and it'll be hopefully a fun way to both kick off the new business and spend time on that without neglecting my existing business because I'll kind of be, you know, two birds with one stone in terms of serving both sides. So I did what I recommend in my course, which for anyone who's kicking off a business, this is a good strategy. This is one of the things I teach is to put out an offer to your warm network, right? Everyone always wants to start with Facebook ads or, you know, building funnels and webinars and things, but you already have a sea of people who know, like and trust you. So tapping into that can be scary, especially if you're in a new world as a coach or a spiritual advisor or a healer, because maybe that's something you've kept a little bit to yourself.  Yeah, yeah, and offering a complimentary strategy session, clarity session, whatever you want to call it, but a coaching conversation with people in us with who are dealing with a specific challenge in their life, right? Yeah, and putting that out in a warm way, but also in a compelling way that shows the value of that conversation.  It's, hey, here's going to be the focus of this time and what you're going to get out of it. Yeah. Now, of course, a certain percentage of those people will want to work with you beyond that single session. So that's how I recommend that most people get their first five clients is by tapping into their warm network. Facebook tends to be the best way. You can also use Instagram, put the offer out there. And I give people a template that they customize to their voice and their niche. So I did that. I went through my course. I got five clients in this new fitness coaching niche and started working with them and did that alongside my main business. And those clients that I got that batch of clients, they were primarily focused on losing weight. And in the fitness niche, that's a pretty common result or outcome. That's sort of a painful, frustrating problem that someone's been struggling with that. And throughout the 90 day program, I was working with these people one-on-one, people lost between 10 and 30 pounds during those 90 days, using a really habit-based approach, a good sustainable approach. And then I just kind of put it to the side. I did those eight weeks of journal entries and I was like, all right, this is good. I got to now focus back on my business. I got to have that discipline to just stay focused on. It's hard enough to scale an existing business. So I spent some more time fine-tuning and tuning stuff in. And in the first quarter of this year, I actually had the best year financially that I've ever had. And I was just focused on GregVaxen.com. I dialed in a lot of my own systems. And at the end of that quarter was also the least motivated I ever was for GregVaxen.com. So it was this very weird contrast. And I just couldn't let go of those experiences I had had with the batch of five clients. And there was something about helping someone with their fitness and their confidence and how they felt in their body that just was really, really fulfilling for me. So around, you know, end of third quarter of this year, I jumped back in and I've been doing more journal entries so people can see right on my blog each week, you're seeing what I'm trying and what's working and what's not. And I'm really having to go through that process of building from scratch. It's crazy to look on, you know, my ConvertKit account and it's like 11 people or whatever, right? But I'm used to having an audience and it's good to cultivate that beginner's mind again, too, of going through the process and really having empathy around the same time I was starting this back up. I was running a live cohort of one of my courses and like really being able to feel how they were feeling where when I was only doing GregFaxing.com I had sort of forgotten what it was like to be in that starting phase. So that's the story of sort of how I've gotten to this point of starting the new business. It's called Enough Fitness. It's at enoughfitness.com and my main focus that I'm working through now and the specialty is helping guys feel good naked. So it tends to be guys, you know, 25 to 35 have very, very demanding careers.  And so I'm sort of exploring what's going to work in terms of attracting clients. And I focused on guest blogging. Am I going to focus on building a podcast? I'm going to focus on Instagram. There's so many different options. And so I can even speak a little bit to I've been speaking for a while, but I can speak a little bit to this idea that might help people in your audience of marketing archetypes. I don't know if we've even chatted about this. But no, we haven't. We haven't. But there's there's a lot to unpack and what you just said there. I want to encourage people to go to your your website, Greg Faxon, to see those journal entries about you, you know, eight weeks of building a new business. A lot of the folks watching this know that I have also over the last year been dabbling with a new site project. Now, the difference between you and me is that I think you gave enough time to it. I mean, even even in the eight weeks when you were doing it, how much time would you say you spent in those eight weeks? Man, I'm sure I put it in my journal entries, but actually like you, I'm like very dedicated to my calendar and walking things off. And I guess I spent 10 to 25 hours a week on it. See, that's that's the key. That's what I didn't do. I spent an hour and a half to two hours a week on that site project. That's it. And so all I could really do was write something, make a video, run Facebook ads because my my commitment was that was that I would keep it secret so that my current audience I wouldn't benefit from. Oh, Georgia is already well known or whatever. But it's like, no, no, people who have no idea who I am, not no, no friends of family, nothing is just like new people, random people finding me through Facebook ads. Anyway, so that is that's the chord. I want to just I want to make that point that if you think that you could also build a business in two hours a week or even four hours a week, it's it's really, really I mean, even for so-called business experts like us, it's highly unrealistic. So at this point, just to give everyone an update, I'm still dedicated to that hour and a half, two hours a week, but I'm making it I'm making a hobby now. And maybe long term, it could become something, but I want to ask you right now about enoughfitness.com. So enough fitness, your your your new business, however, how is that related to your eight weeks business? Yes. OK. Yeah. So that was me picking it.  OK, so in the year, so I view those those eight weeks I did last year was almost like what you would do alongside a full time job, like, is this going to work? Can I make money doing this? So great. And then this phase now is like basically as if I basically quit my job. And yeah, so because now you're spending 90 percent of your time. Yeah. On enough fitness and I wanted to offer something to what you said. There's a flip side to that. It's it's really delicate, that balance. I think that you know, when I was spending, I'll say probably it was probably 10 hours a week. It probably wasn't more than that when I was doing the trial. I think that's important to you need. It's tough because you've got to put enough time into get traction, but then you also can't let go of the thing that's get making most of your income and where you already have traction. And so I think the flip side is now is, you know, my wife and I recently moved to Burlington, Vermont, so we just went through a move a couple weeks ago. And that was that move coincided with me transitioning to this new business. So the cash flow is more limited. I have some money coming in from Greg Pax.com passively. But it's there's two sides to that is like you have to spend the time, but also there's sacrifices and there's instability in that transition as well. But I think that I think that's the balance is can you get five paid clients? That's sort of how I did it when I started this original business. Like can you make some good do you can you validate it alongside whatever your main gig is, even if that's an existing business that you already built and then being able to devote more time to it. So about enough fitness, I mean, this video is going to go on Facebook and YouTube. And I was thinking, man, YouTube is your audience because YouTube is like mostly men. I mean, at least when I look at my stats, whereas Facebook, most of the viewers are women on Facebook for my page, anyway. But on my channel on YouTube, it's mostly men. But that's that's generally true for YouTube. It's mostly men in there from teens all the way to, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. But it's it's very so anyway, I want to encourage you to add YouTube to the mix. And I think I think you're going to reach a lot of your people there. So you started to mention marketing archetypes. No, we haven't talked about that. Do you want to kind of talk a bit a bit about it? So one of the things that's been aiding me in figuring out what is my channel and what is my way of reaching people. And I appreciate the tip about YouTube is this idea that I developed in the original business around marketing archetypes. And this is something I'd recommend after you get your first five clients. Don't really worry about this until you go through the process. It's not that difficult to get your first five paid clients. There's actually a pretty solid formula that basically works for everyone. You don't need to figure out how like what your own way of marketing is. Just reach out to your warm network in the right way. And it's pretty straightforward. After that, you got to figure out, well, there's hundreds of different ways to get clients. It's really easy to get overwhelmed by everyone to OK, this is my special system or you have to do it this way or you have to be on Instagram. Right. And then you end up doing 10 things in a mediocre fashion. So I stole this idea from Malcolm Gladwell or I adopted it to marketing and coaching. He has this idea in the tipping point that there's three types of people. There's three archetypes that help ideas spread. The first is connectors. Second is mavens and the third are sales people. OK, so connectors have a naturally large and deep networks. They are naturally curious. They're just charismatic, good at connecting with people, good at listening. Connectors tend to be the pure coaches, the coaches who like I don't want to have a signature system. I just want to ask the client questions and do that pure coaching. Right. And I don't even really want to market myself. I just like being with people. The mavens are you and I are both mavens. So we're idea people, thought leaders. We like to like think about the system and the right like the best way of sharing a concept and idea. And we like to teach that. OK, so mavens are natural teachers and sales people are a lot of people, as you know, a lot of people in our audience get turned off by the concept sales, but they're naturally persuasive when they have an idea or something they're starting. People just naturally want to buy in because they show this excitement and they're convincing and they're persuasive. And so people that are sales people like in our industry think about like Brennan Bruce Schardemri for Leo or Tony Robbins like those people just rally behind them because they're just very persuasive and they get people excited about things. So if you know your archetype and actually have a quiz on GregFaxing.com, I can give you the direct link. But if people scroll down to the footer, it says quiz and they can figure out their archetype. You can get a sense in this conversation. And then each archetype has a series of strategies that tend to work well for that archetype. So like most of the stuff we do, all this is really made up. It's not that you have to be just one archetype or that you can't do other things. It's just a way to help guide yourself to narrow down the options and have a sense of your personality so you can market best for your strengths and personality. So let's talk about connectors. So if you think you might be a connector, you tend to know a lot of people, you tend to like being with people asking questions, being curious, things that work well for connectors, referral partnerships, right? Who else in your niche might serve your audience in a complementary way, not necessarily in a competitive way where they're doing exactly what you're doing, but in a complementary way. How can you add value to their audience? How can you just reach out and start a conversation and start a connection? So this would be an example of a good connector strategy. You reached out, we're doing interview, we're sharing concepts. I'm also getting the opportunity to teach, which is more of a Maven strategy, right? So for connectors, referral partnerships, establishing those referrals can be a really good strategy. Connectors also tend to do really well and those like free session offers when you launch the business because they've gotten to know and they've established trust with all of these different people and they haven't really tapped into it yet. So second archetype Mavens, what works well for people who are good at teaching. So we like doing like webinars, we like teaching, we like having really super detailed like I'll create these blog posts that are really, really, really long where I'm breaking stuff down and establishing your kind of unique concepts and thought leadership and even naming your concepts and things like that. So you become the person, oh, this is George, he's well known for this concept. Right. For sales people, you really want to be on calls as much as possible, because if you can get people a potential client on a call, like they're probably going to want to sign up with you. Even if you don't, you're not doing a fancy script or anything like that, they're just going to be excited to hop on board with you. Live speaking engagements can work really well for sales people because again, people need to be around your energy field. You have a magnetic energy field, Facebook Live videos, anywhere where people are getting is directly connected to that natural energy field as possible, tend to work really well. The reason I brought this up is because knowing that I'm a maven, it's helping to sort through some of the different strategies that could work for attracting clients. And I know the things that probably don't make as much sense to spend time on because I know what my archetype is. So good. So good. I love that. I love that you are kind of giving people the permission not to have to be good at everything. I think that's really, that's really, that's really key. It's like, no, I can, I can, I can lean into my strengths and know that if I am consistent there, there will be fruit, you know, that comes from it. Well, Greg, it's been great to chat with you. So just to recap, for those who are wanting to fill their client roster, who want more clients who want to understand their marketing archetype and the strategies there, people should go to GregFaxin.com, G-R-E-G-F-A-X-O-N dot com, Greg Faxin. I'll put the link in the notes of the video. And for those who are men particularly, so your, your ideal client for enough fitness is guys, you know, 20s and 30s, right? Okay, who are wanting to be fit, look good naked? I love that idea. It's like, yeah, you know, we look at ourselves in the mirror, take a shower, we're like, yeah, you know, there's some work here that needs to be done. Why is this always happening or whatever? So yeah, for those, the guys who want to look good naked, go check out enough fitness. I haven't even looked at it myself. I'll go check it out enough fitness.com. Greg, you, you walk your talk both in terms of the business coaching, marketing stuff as well as your, your fitness. So thank you for the work that you do. Thanks for being, you know, a good model in the world. Thanks, George. Appreciate it. Thank you.


Let me show you what this bad boy can do. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Titanium Man Garage, and today I have a 2004 Polaris Sportsman 500. I decided I'm going to go through the whole process of what I do when I tear something apart. The story behind this is a guy thinks the engine locked up. I'm just wondering if it's a piston, so we're going to be tearing that engine apart. First of all, I'm going to take the plastics off and show you guys how I do it. There's a lot of guys that they won't pick the headlight pot off and they'll try to get the plastics off around it. They say it's a pain in the butt and if you do it the right way, it's actually really easy to get the front fenders off. It takes me like 15 to 20 minutes. So you don't need a lot of tools to take the front end apart. I've got the rack off already. It's a T25. So I already disassembled that.  Now I'm going to take the bumper off so I can get the plastics. So I'm going to unplug the lights and you grab a half inch socket. Go to town taking the bumper off. Now this has a wench on it. So I'm going to have to watch where the wires go. Or a lot of times I just set the bumper on the bucket. But that works. Brush guard on it. Longer bolts. But these are the half inch. There's two bolts on this side. Two bolts on the other. The wench right here. I'm feeling lazy so I'm not going to do that. My bolt's in a tray so. The ear which I see is missing. And there's a nut for the bolt at the bottom of the end right here. Which always makes things worse because the guy messed with it. You don't know what he did. Wrong. So I guess we're going to find out. Three bolts going up the fender flare. I'm going to take a half of those off. And then I'll do the other side. Screw and nut at the bottom of the bolt. It's on the fender. It doesn't even bolt on. That's funny. Makes my job easier. The guy pulled the clutch off because that was actually a good idea. He wanted to know what the noise was. He thought the clutch was making noise. So he immediately pulled the clutch off. And then went from there. Realized that it wasn't the clutch. The bolt's here. And for some of you that have never done this. Take pictures of how the wires and the throttle and choke cable go. So I've seen so many guys take this apart. And then the choke cable was wrapped around Goofy and then the guy couldn't figure out why it idled bad. They've always wanted to try to put it back the way it was. As you're going to have issues with your throttle cable. You unplug your effect sensor from the speedo. And there's another clutch here that you press in and plugs up from the speedo. This is where it starts to get a little tricky because there's little rubber bands on the highlight. Just pop it off that clip. One on each side. And then what I do is take the key out.  And just let that hang loose. Then you can unplug the light and pop that on. And then once you get your choke cable unscrewed. Two screws down here. There's one on this side, one on this side. And we're going to slide that thing up. I know the lighting isn't that great in here today. Just have to bear with me. I said, guy taking apart again. The little rubber band on the headlights. Headlight. It's a little equipped. It's disconnected. You can use a one inch wrench on plastic nut. Get that loose. I think that's one eighth on the choke. Or you can just use the pliers that I like using this. So for me, I just like getting all the plastics out of the way. I'll take the gas tank off. Now I can drain the gas. Just using bad gas in there. I'm going to push that against the switch in. And I'll pull up on this hub plate. Those two screws I showed you. I'm going to take those out. And I'm going to plug the trigger out later. So this is a long video. Are you guys ready for a long video? It's Friday for me. So I might have to have a beer while I'm doing this. But when you're self-employed, there it is Friday, right? These are bent. I'm putting these up to get them out of the way. Watch your wires in your clips, so you don't want to break any plastic clips off. Alright, so everything's free. I'll take the gas cap off. I should be able to pull the plastic off. Like I said, if you haven't done this before, this is your chance to take pictures. It's much nicer.  So I'm going to take the fuel tank off. And that is a T25 Torx head for the bolt. So let me show you my little trick on how I like to get the gas tank off. Without removing too many fuel lines. Let me take this little screw out. I already got it loose. Pull that off. Remove this plastic nut.  Fuel's off. Now to unplug your fuel line from the pulse pump, which I have the clip disconnected already. And of course the fuel shut off does not work, because it's leaking. So hold on a minute. Put yourself vice grips or hose clamp onto that. So I'll push out. And there's wiring in the way. That'll push out while I'm lifting up on this. I'm going to have to put these tire wraps, because the guy's got the winch on here. And then the whole thing should pull right out. I'll tell you, you'll know if this thing's got bad gas, because it really stinks in here. And not that kind. Stale old gas probably has ethanol on it. Remember my lazy part? Once I got the fenders off, I mounted that back in place through a bolt-in just to hold it in. Tank is now off. If you do have a fuel sending unit, you'll have to unplug that before you take the tank out. Look at that. Yeah, that's why it didn't start. That's kind of funny. Alright, so I'm going to start tearing this thing apart. Yeah, I think I'm going to first start with taking the rocker cover off. See what I got going on. See if this thing turns over freely. And go from there. And just start disassembling the engine.  I got that footboard out of the way. Alright, so here's what I'm finding out so far. Pull the starp rope and feel like a little, I don't know, little tiny clunk in there. So I'm going to tear this top end apart and see if it's the piston skirt. Maybe there's chunks at the bottom of the case. I don't know. But I got a half rope to part already. Got the exhaust off. Drain the coolant. In the middle of taking the timing chain off. I took the tensioner off. Just pull that out. I'm going to pull that gear out. You got two 10mm bolts here.  And we're going to pull the jug off and see what I got. Alright, so my battery went dead, which is kind of unfortunate. I would have showed how to take this apart. I explained the bolts. Need the 14mm from the top heads. Took the timing chain sprocket off. 2.8mm here.  Also on the other side, there's 2.17mm bolts that go to the oil lines. And then unplug the wire going to the head for the temperature sensor. So I'm going to go ahead and take this off. I keep in mind I'm thinking I'm pretty much going to have to tear the bottom end out. So I'm not worried about the timing chain. If I thought I'd just have to do a top end I would make sure I hung this up and got great. And I also found out the ground wire from the top of the engine was missing. It goes to the motor to the frame. So somebody must rebuilt this already. I'm going to see what we got. One more thing. I forgot to take this hose off. Hopefully it's just the cylinder. The cylinder looks good. The connecting rod on the crankshaft. I can get you in here. It looks really burnt. This is stuff that's not even moving. So yeah, we're looking at a bottom end here. So that was my issue. So the guy was correct. Something to bottom end. What I did notice was there was a lot of fuel in the reservoir. I pulled the dipstick out and it was over full and there was a lot of fuel in there. So that was telling me that the oil was pretty thinned out. My guess is the carb probably leaked and when your carb leaks it leaks right into the cylinder. Goes to the bottom of the engine. Thins out your oil and this is what you get. End result. See how that's all burnt down here. This is stuff that won't even turn. So connecting rod bearings are toast. I could just get away with putting a new crankshaft in but I do have a bunch of bottom ends. If you've been watching my channel you know how I like to take 425s and convert them into a 500. I think they're a little more snappier so I think I'm going to do that. I prefer that. You know I'm not saying you should do that. That's just my preference. Alright guys so I figured it out. Pull the pull-start cover off. Bend X gear. Slowly stuck open. Flywheel is so rusted if you look back here. It's nasty. The guy swamped this thing. Water got in there and rusted everything tight. It should have no matter when I went to pick it up. Actually it was the border of Wisconsin snowing out. I was sitting under a foot of snow. The guy never covered it up. Never protected it. I didn't do anything. Either he swamped it or he just let it sit out in the snow. I don't know. My guess would be swamping it. So there's a lot of stuff going on here. Pick up coils rusty.  Inspect the starter. Inspect the stator. Yeah I'm just basically going to tear this whole bottom end out. Alright let's get that rusty flywheel pulled off. Shot a little PB blaster in there first. Loosen up. I'll see if I can get this thing to pop. Look at that. That thing's dirty. Look at that. It's all crusty. I have to clean that up. I just got to take the two bolts off the back. Take the stator out. Hang it up somewhere. And this engine's ready to pull. Don't forget to pull your oil lines from the engine. Got two of them. And this is what I disconnected here with the 17 mil. This bad boy's ready to pull. Who wants to watch me pull out my engine? Oh and by the way it's a lot easier if you take the top end off first. Get the engine out. Especially if you're going to do a major rebuild like this.  Got my 425 and my 500 in sitting there. Don't know what's wrong with those yet but I'm going to strip them down. Ideally I'm going to take the 425 and build it. Have to see how that goes. See what it looks like inside. Alright let's see how oily I got. Put this bucket here. The cooler dog. Starter's disconnected. Easy peasy.  Pressure wash it. This machine's pretty clean. Oh I see I got a broken motor mount. We'll be replacing that too. So let's build some engines. Let me show you what I got going on with this engine that I pulled out of the O4. Connecting rod shot. If you can see in there. It's stiff. It won't turn until it was overheated. Like I said the guy probably has carb leaking. And all the fuel ran into the oil, thinned out the oil. Overheated the crank connecting rod. So I talked about building a 425 into a 500. And I've done this about four times. I was warned one year I think it's like a one year old only. Won't convert to a 500. And I happened to stumble across it. This I believe is a 1996. The hole's a little different. I've got a good 500 motor here. You can see the opening in the case is bigger than that one. So just to kind of warn you guys I've posted videos in the past about converting a 425 into a 500. Not all years will work. So I'm going to take this 500. Got her all cleaned up. Piston's good. It was actually pulled from a unit that a friend of mine he buys them and he parts them out. Guy said the motor didn't run really well. Well I tore this thing apart. This thing is clean as a whistle. The piston rings. The piston's good. The cylinder's good. Let me show you why.  You've seen some of my older videos. I've talked about replacing rubber fuel lines, rubber vent lines, everything. So this is the rubber vent line that goes on the engine here. Well it was soft. It folded over. Probably collapsed.  So, bonus for me because this motor is in excellent condition. So I'm just going to hone out the jug and rebuild it.  There's a little cutting oil in there. Very gently. You bought 10 times of the dollar first. Not sure if you can see that in the camera. Got really good cross hairs on the cylinder wall. I'm going to clean this up and install it. Alright, ready to slap this thing together. I am. What I like to do is take a little oil. Throw it in the cylinder. Kind of lube everything up. Piston slides in the cylinder real nice. My base gasket here. And now the fun part.  One person. One person. Not so easy. I do have a piston ring compressor here.  Sometimes I've been lucky if I can use my hands. I've got a pretty tight grip. Squeeze the rings in and slide the jug on. Sometimes it doesn't work. So, let's see what happens. Maybe I'll get lucky. And for the tricky part I've got that out. I've got a screwdriver in here. Put the screwdriver in to kind of lock the connecting rod in place. These get torqued down to 49 to 50 foot-pounds. There. What I like to do is I've got the new piston in. Clean up my oil a little bit. Check the action. It's open down good. So at this point put everything on the engine as much as I can before I put it in. So, put my hose on here. Make sure your oil lines are tightened up and they're fastened on. And one thing I'm liking about this this is a this engine the cylinder was bored over already .25 which is great. More power, more power. I love it. So I'm going to put this on. I'm actually going to install the engine just like that into the wheeler. And I'm going to put the head on top of it. I found out it's lighter. It's easier to handle. You can build the whole engine and try to weasel it in but it's kind of a pain. That's just what I like to do. I found a couple shortcuts over the years. And also by judging by the piston and the cylinder looks like there's barely 2000 miles on the rebuild. I'm not really concerned about it. There was a lot of carbon deposits on the top of the piston which I cleaned off. Ideally you'd want to install a new piston and if your cylinder looked bad you'd want to board out or at least honed out. But after seeing how the last engine was I got a good feeling about this. A couple times before I mean this is going to be my own personal four wheeler so if something goes wrong with it it's no biggie. I could always tear it back down and rebuild it and once I install the engine I'll use the air gun blow everything off, clean the surface off make sure everything's clean before I install the head gasket. Alright let's get on it.  The remote bolts in with that plate there's actually an access hole frame underneath. Get everything done as much as you can before you get everything back together makes life a lot easier. Alright guys I've built quite a few engines and I've gone over this a bunch of times. I always recommend going to my video that I have I'll post a link for it how to build an engine but I'll go over the torquing sequence for the head so it's I don't know a couple step process it's the first time I'm going to go with 22 foot pounds first cross pattern 52 yeah it's kind of goofy because you've got to tighten it then loosen it then tighten it then loosen it it's 22 foot pounds then tighten it to 52 foot pounds then loosen quarter turn and another quarter turn and then you tighten it to 11 foot pounds and then you mark it and it's half turn to half turn so you notice I'm doing it in a crisscross pattern 11 now I know you can only see the top two bolts right here right here and then I mark the bottom two bolts half turn in and another half turn in that's why I put the marks on so I watched this video years ago and the guy that was doing the head gasket said oh just torque it down to 52 pounds and you'll be good I messaged him a year later hey how did it hold up guess what he never replied probably leaked another trick I like to do after an engine build is now that I got this far I'll put my motor mounts on before I put my stator on I'll tilt this wheeler on an angle like this and with a funnel I'll pour like a quart of oil in here that way there's already oil in the engine when you go to fire it up it's already pre lubed and like you saw I did put oil in the cylinder already so when this thing fires up it's not firing up dry alright guys here we have it fresh rebuild went through the cooling system burnt the air out of the the coolant make sure the TPS is adjusted correctly after cleaning the car after you clean your car but install your cables make sure there's a gap in here a lot of guys will clean their carbs without this and the gap will be closed there's a little turn thing here so if I turn this all the way in see now it's closed it won't start turn this out make sure you got a little gap in there make sure you got a little finger play in here step one step two burp the system I had the radiator cap off I let it run for about 10 minutes got a little air out of the system it should have kicked in I believe at 165-170 it should have kicked in also seeing it was a fresh rebuild I also turned it on let it run for 5 minutes shut it off let it cool down start it up let it run for another 5 minutes and then it's good to go I want to make sure I got oil through the whole engine before letting it run letting it rip I need an air filter this bad boy is ready to go back together not crazy about that camouflage purple some guys like it some don't I'm not a fan of it my son likes it so this one I'm probably going to keep and put the purple back on and let it rip alright guys hope you liked this video turned on a 500 engine rebuilding it got a couple odds it ends to finish up here got it all buttoned up put it back together thumbs up if you liked the video and like always till next time


heart rate variability, HRV, is a measure of how much variation there is in a person's heart rate over time. It is used to assess the health of the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary bodily functions such as breathing and digestion. HRV is measured by calculating the standard deviation of the differences between successive heartbeats. Higher values indicate better cardiovascular fitness and overall health.


Okay very good morning to you. It is Monday the 17th of August. I hope you had a fantastic weekend. Don't forget to check out on my Twitter account. I've pinned the tweet from Sunday for the macro menu, the fundamental kind of three-minute review of what to expect for the week ahead. Do check that out and also don't forget to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Has some really great engagement and some good questions last week, so long may that continue. But let's get straight into the actual briefing and talk about a few things then going to talk about the delay of the US China meeting from the weekend, further liquidity injections from the PBOC overnight. Also going to talk about the importance for the dollar from a medium and long-term perspective this week. Could be a real catalyst for a break of some key trend lines we've been watching in the likes of Eurodollar and in Aussie dollar. And then also going to talk about the calendar. We've got the FMC minutes of course on Wednesday and you've got a variety of economic data coming out throughout the week. Also a quick update on the things like COVID, the JMMC meeting as well. So that's what's on the agenda for the briefing. A quick look at the charts this morning though. And I was kind of tracking, you know, one thing I look at to just gauge very simply sentiment over the weekend is if you were just to punch in to Google the weekend Dow by IG, which is kind of a product that they've created in order for people to trade the US indices over the weekend where obviously the major markets are closed, it would just give you an indication then of whether or not markets are going to gap up, gap down or accordingly at the reopening of trade for the week. And yeah, it was basically absolutely flatlining all weekend. And when I was going through the news on Sunday, riding my macro menu, I was just a little bit surprised about how really quiet it was. I mean, obviously a lot dominated by the delay in the US China trade talks, which we'll talk about in a moment. But very quiet overall, there's certainly lots going on this week. But the weekend news flow was pretty tame at best. Just having a look at the charts then this morning, Eurodollar seeing some slight upward movement, cable pretty flat though for the moment, gold equally so, just sitting around what has been a technically important level around 1954. Equity indices, US touch higher, the DAX a little bit lower 17 points this morning, and the US 10 year up three and a half ticks in combination with gold up around three bucks, and then oils up about 38 cents as well. So all in all, you know, the Dixie training down about one tenth to a percent, it's a pretty quiet open to kick things off. And that might be surprising for some who obviously a lot of their market attention at the weekend was into this teleconference call that's supposed to be happening on high level officials between the US and China. And you could be forgiven for thinking that a delay and that meeting not occurring could be considered as a negative in terms of its reaction on market prices. But as I'll describe, there are a number of things that China basically has been doing in terms of accelerating its purchases of these goods as what was per part of the original plan for phase one. And that seems to have just kept both sides then happy for the time being. And whether or not there is a meeting to follow up in the coming days or weeks, I don't really think is that important. What is is that China start after being very uncomplaint with the deal that was in place as long as they start to fall back in line. And I think both sides will be happy at this point in time. So a quick look then at this, this Reuters exclusive, which came out at the weekend and got a couple of notes here. So the US and China delayed their review of phase one that was initially slated for Saturday. This was supposed to have been the sixth month anniversary from when they initially signed that historic deal back in February. They cited in terms of the official reasons, scheduling conflicts and also allowing the time for more Chinese purchases of US exports. No new date has been set as yet. The postponement did not reflect any substantial problems with the trade deal, according to one of the sources in Reuters. Another source familiar with the plan said US officials wanted more time to allow China to increase its purchases of US goods agreed in the deal to improve the political optics of the review. China imports. So this is where there's a little bit more detail now. So China imports of US farm and manufactured goods, energy and services are well but behind the pace needed to meet that first year target, which was an increase of $77 billion over 2017 purchases. Remember over a two year period, they committed to an additional $200 billion but if you look here a couple of things then Chinese buyers have been snapping up generally commodities on Thursday last week. They booked deals to buy about 200,000 tons of US soybeans and that was the seventh weekday in a row that the government had reported a sale to the world's top buyer of oil seed. The other thing as well is Petro China so far has booked about 10 million brows of US oil loading in August and September as well. So a lot of this then, I mean if you look at it here, US crude exports to China, they jumped sharply here more recently as shipments to China are set to rise sharply following that state-owned firms of ramping up purchases of US specific crude. And remember China typically a big buyer of the more heavy grade of oil that comes out of the Middle East and predominantly Saudi Arabia and particularly Iran as well. But also just looking to appease then on this deal and the Americans at this point given some of the recent escalation we've seen whether on the tech side through TikTok and WeChat or whether through the political side with the consulate situation and what's been going on in Hong Kong with that national security law, things seemingly are starting to fall a little bit into place here. So I think on the balance then although this meeting hasn't occurred I think the message has been received in my view by Beijing which is that over recent weeks then knowing that there was a formal kind of meeting or gathering that was due to take place they've just started accelerating now Batsuo's purchases and then partly I guess due to the fact that economically things in China have stabilized somewhat. If you think about it the deal was signed in kind of February time but that was pretty much about a week and then COVID broke. There was a COVID outbreak in mainland China which of course is where it all began with the pandemic and so China's all was always going to be behind the curve in terms of these purchases because there was no way they were going to be buying large amounts and importing goods through that period March April. So I think for the moment then Trump will be happy he'll be able to say well look the tangible result of what I've been doing in terms of being quite aggressive with China is paying dividend here because of look at these numbers and I'm sure he'll be tweeting about how much of US goods that they're buying to try and dismiss some of Biden's claims about the whole thing being quite economically damaging for the US economy. So yeah the other thing is overnight in terms of the Asia-Pacific indices the Shanghai Composite did actually outperform. This was against a fairly flatlining Asia-Pacific region overall the Shanghai Composite was actually up in excessive 2% at one point. The PBOC once again boosting the liquidity they've been doing it in all forms of duration over the course of the last week or so they added 700 billion yuan in one year funding via the medium term lending facility overnight that equates in US dollar terms to around a hundred billion dollars worth. The net injection according to what analysts interpretation is that it indicates a more cognitive stance on keeping liquidity levels ample so that commercial banks can continue to support bond issuance and to stabilise credit growth. So rather than in a Western format where the central bank just interjects or intervenes in the form of government bond buying in QE they're looking to support then the commercial banking sector so that then it's kind of dripped down and as long as there's liquidity in that area then it can facilitate then the companies and consumers being able to remain confident that conditions will remain generally low in terms of lending rates so that continues to be their strategy at this point in time but does show then that a general easing bias in their monetary policy strategy from overnight in Asia which if anything as we've seen globally whenever we see a more expansive more cognitive monetary policy stance it typically underpins then supports markets going forward that's happening in China. A quick look elsewhere and I just wanted to talk about the dollar because I read this article this morning I thought it was quite interesting because I was looking at a couple of charts I know Sam if you if you didn't see it he did an excellent video with his trade setups that he does on Sunday for the week ahead and he was talking about this at length and first of all some details here so hedge funds are short on the dollar for the first time in two years as falling US real yields are sapping the currencies allure this is coming out in Bloomberg this morning so the actual details here is that net futures and forward positions held by leveraged funds against eight other currencies dropped to minus close to 8,000 contracts last week according to the CFTC the swing was driven by growing bullish bets on the euro so this isn't very different from really what we've been talking about for a while but you know the reason why this is quite interesting of course is because we've been eyeing up this euro long-term chart for quite a while and here we are this morning you know just kicking things off we're just going to the european open right there back at that key critical level so definitely for this week I mean obviously we've got the Fed minutes we'll talk about those in a second well in fact let's just incorporate the Fed minutes into this discussion here now the last Fed meeting that we had was fairly benign there wasn't really any way of expecting more surprises against expectation that came out but analysts at ING this weekend were writing that any suggestion at impending average inflation targeting or yield curve control could be perceived as a dollar negative that in combination with the fact that we've got the eurozone PMI date is coming out the end of the week and that is expected to continue to show a relative rebound that could be the catalyst and so a couple things there midweek end of week generally then still support of this narrative where we've got a weakening dollar story against somewhat a continuation of more bullish themes for the euro and again we've we've been rejected a number of times here up at this key long-term trend line and summer 2018 high but I do feel that a break is going to come this week and if that does then a big push up to 120 is definitely the kind of area I'd be looking at in particular 120-50 which starts to incorporate some of those highs from 17 and then support point back in August of 2012 but we're talking quite long-term levels here if that does really get ahead of steam well then the medium-term target for the euro then would be up at around this 125 which I know Alex has been calling for for quite a while just going to quickly see if I can bring the Aussie in I haven't marked up the Aussie you have to forgive me but I do recall that Sam was talking about this in in quite a lot of detail let me just remove some of the pivots kind of weekly so let me just put a trend line on here if it will allow me again apologies I've not marked this up in advance but I believe this is what Sam was talking about here so as you can see it's pretty similar ish slightly shorter time frame to what we were talking about in the euro but going back to 2014 had a test up at around the beginning of 2018 and here we are again here so interestingly for the Aussie despite the slight apprehension because of the repercussion that any fallout in in trade rhetoric with China could have and it has been a fairly rocky relationship of late despite the ongoing fact that the COVID situation has hit the Australian economy particularly bad it comes in addition on the coattails of those bushfires that we saw which were going to be economically damaging as well the Aussie still be firm at the moment I mean but like most other currency pairs like the euro and cable for example being a beneficiary of a generally weaker greenback and here as well quite a key level to watch in the Aussie any break above then you've just got that high from the deck of 18 that would be up at around the 174 handle but you're talking about a decent two point plus move beyond where we are trading at the moment if we were to break through these levels so the point being here is that I think that it's a big week for the dollar personally and certainly then keeping on that yield story which was obviously a real focal point for last week whether or not then we start to reverse back into trend after that brief momentary kind of yield push that we had as ultimately you know the longer term view here is the Fed are going to remain accommodative there's a risk of that even emerging in the minutes I actually think the minutes will be quite dull personally and I think that just heightens the importance then for the Jackson Hole Symposium which will be hold virtually this year that's taking place to a week after so August 27 28th and then that leads us into the meeting on September 16th for the FMC and I actually think that September meeting is the big one for the Fed because I think by then they're going to have a little bit more clarity over the current COVID situation which is shaping up relatively positive in the US but they're going to have their latest projections that typically historically means that they like to give a little bit more transparency to supplement then any particular more enhanced forward guidance they might issue at that time so yeah that's my overall kind of take on those those things so yeah keep an eye on the dollar for sure and actually this morning we've just dropped through 93 and we're at lows now so since I've been talking the dollar has been weakening we're down two tenths now so keep an eye on those major currency pairs could get quite lively even today other headlines this was something I thought was quite interesting this is the German Finance Minister and reports are this morning that he's proposed a 10 billion euro plan to safeguard jobs so the details here is that extending as extending the job preserving and subsidies during the coronavirus crisis to 24 months this is above and beyond the the regular more 12 month kind of fixture saying the measure would cost the government extra 10 billion euros or less now 10 billion euros sounds like a lot of money but actually if you can keep people in jobs and that work and continue to then facilitate the economic recovery well then 10 billion euros could be deemed as a bargain if all things play out accordingly and the reason why I think this is quite interesting is that obviously there's a lot of pressure building on the UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak to deliver something similar perhaps because when the furlough ends is when we should be looking to strike a tentative agreement then on Brexit which is coming in the autumn around October time and I just think there's going to come a little bit of a crescendo here for UK focus at that point in time because there's a lot of meaning around that that kind of October timeline so it'd be interesting to see Germany have gone for it whether the UK will do the same obviously it comes at a cost though talking of the UK and just having a look at the UK I'm just having a look at the pound at the moment obviously the pound in itself has been kind of carving out a little bit of a of a range which we've talked about last week that did hold last week 130 to 132 on the upside obviously into that dollar weakness story could see us retest up at these year-to-date highs around 132 plenty of things going on in the UK this week from a data perspective you've got July CPI August PMIs and July retail sales data all throughout the week the activity data should support the recovery narrative even though the outlook may start to deteriorate in September as higher joblessness starts to come through one interesting thing I saw from capital economics who do tend to be on the quite bearish side of things they said that the impact of tax cuts for the hospitality sector and a government subsidy eating out program could mean the UK enters a brief period of deflation so I could come forward it'd be interesting particularly then this is July CPI data we'll get this week but then for the August number the following month also as well to boot with the economic updates the next round of EU UK Brexit talks recommenced this week as well so yeah plenty going on from a UK perspective for you guys to be aware of okay moving on the next thing I want to talk about quickly is the oil market Bloomberg just just locking in on on really two main things one being the the JMMC which stands for the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee they're set to meet midweek it's going to be closely watched to see how basically certain countries being identified specifically as Iraq and Nigeria those who have been corporates of high uncompliance in the past and how they were deering to this new plan remember as part of the existing OPEC deal it was important that a lot of these uncompliant countries would cut even deeper than what is necessary month to month going forward in order to make up for that lack of compliance in the past so whether or not that is happening will be quite key to see whether there's any longevity or not with this deal really really biting to help markets or underpin and support the crude market it's not expected this meeting the JMMC is more of a technical update than it is something spectacular in terms of the way of real new meaningful decision-making on on the deal itself so shouldn't be too exciting the one thing though that might help underpin oil is kind of like what we were talking about with the Chinese story earlier remember what I said about the fact that Petrochina the state-backed energy company here is booked about 10 million barrels of US oil loading in August and September so this is a really important kind of step here and you know if that then starts to mean that China are ramping up and if there is let's say a continued pickup globally in demand which yes in the case of America things on a covid side are looking fairly good at the moment but elsewhere in the world there's obviously been new travel bans in Britain on the likes of quarantine in France and Netherlands people traveling to those locations quite a few European countries Germany France Belgium Netherlands have seen minor upticks Italy and Spain closing nightclubs at the weekend but you know if covid remains relatively contained at this point then certainly China ramping up their purchase of US crude could help then us start to see a bit of a breakout of what otherwise has been a period of consolidation around this 42 36 a really key area we got rejected on that March 2nd lower 43 32 back on the 5th of August that's kind of the nearest upside target here and we are you know within one dollar range of that as we speak to kick off the week interestingly short-term price action you can see the 21 DMA has provided quite a nice area of support both on Friday session but also on Monday session and the prior Friday back on the 7th so near term I'll keep keeping an eye on there and yeah let's see what can happen for the oil market if we continue to kind of edge up and sentiment remains fairly positive if equities continue to claw up to record highs we got just short of at the end of last week in the likes of the S&P for example I'd expect that to be fairly correlated then with oil moving and following in tandem with that with that progressive move higher okay quick look at the calendar then for the week ahead from a US data point of view this afternoon you've got US New York Fed manufacturing you've also got US building permits and housing starts and then you've got the Fed minutes the FMC minutes coming out on Wednesday night so they're kind of your main things coming out in fact from the US for the whole week one other thing you actually have got that's happening Monday through Thursday is it's the US Democratic National Convention now I did talk about this a little bit more detail in the macro menu so I'll leave you there to review the full report but this is an update on the real clear politics average kind of poll of polls and we have been seeing I mean it's actually come Biden was actually a little bit had rewidened this lead a little bit further yesterday it's actually narrowed again slightly now you see it's just bumped up on Trump here overnight literally and the lead though has rewidened since Biden has appointed Kamala Harris and going into the convention week analysts do suggest then that just given the amount of press attention media coverage it gets it does tend to exacerbate then probably in favor of the political party holding the event so you'd probably expect then by by middle to end of next week that that number of seven and a half percentage point lead on average for Biden might well increase to eight and a half nine again how sustainable that can be yet to be seen if you did want the full speaker scheduling for the entire event you can access this here again the link is in my macro menu but one of the things I talked about there was this site if you've not looked at it before 538 it's one of the most kind of infamous statistical modeling websites by a very famous chap called Nate Silver who gets closely followed every political event that happens in the US and he basically last week unveiled his latest model for the US election and where he simulates an election 40 000 times inputting then a whole multitude of different variables to see what the outcome would be if the US election were to happen today and basically the sample of 100 outcomes came out that Biden would win 72 in 100 times now interestingly this is pretty much exactly identical to what his model was suggesting that Clinton would win over Trump in 2016 and obviously we know what happened there but the point being is between now and November is a lifetime in politics as we know it's a fairly fluid situation one story that comes out or a misplaced comment can shift things spectacularly bottom line this is to be monitored going forward in combination with some of that rcp average polling check it out though this website there's some really interesting analysis here I particularly like this the path to victory where he basically identifies the solid wins for both camps but then almost chronologically and how to then zone focus on the night of election where the tipping point of balance might come dependent on various different indicators that we know at this point in time so here Pennsylvania could be that tipping point alongside Florida and Minnesota and either side so yeah check it out it's super interesting analysis that he does and it is something that is very closely followed by in the market otherwise just going back to the calendar as I said from the UK you've got quite a few other things coming out you've got the the CPI number the retail sales figure the the PMI numbers and you've got Brexit talks happening and they meet those chief negotiators on on Friday you've also got the ECB minutes on Thursday as well as RBA minutes tonight going into tomorrow morning from an earnings perspective things start to turn off a little bit from a brick and mortar point of view and obviously Home Depot is quite a big Dow component you've got them and Walmart reporting pre-market on Tuesday maybe worth just keeping an eye out on as well but yeah that is it for the briefing this morning hope that was useful any questions at all just let me know and I'll see you same time tomorrow all right thanks very much and have a good week


What's up everybody, Jason here for JaspysCaseRace.com. We just sold out another team random that helped sell out a 2022 Bumming Girl and Paysball hobby edition, Picket Team's number nine. So this is the team random for number nine. And the way this works guys is that we sold 11 spots, there's 11 teams here in this list from the Guardians down to the Phillies. So what we're gonna do guys is randomize those 11 names only, click the dice roll to see how many times. And then of course after the dice roll, and we randomize the names, basically whoever comes in number one gets to Guardians, whoever comes in at 11th gets the Phillies, and we match up with whatever you get. So here we go guys. Let's dice roll this. Six and a two for eight times, good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And boom, Jake, last spot, Mojo striking at the top. Six and a two, eight times. Boom at the top, Jake down to Adam Copperman to 11. And just like that, boom. So Jake, you have won the Guardians. David with the Nationals, Steve with the Yankees and the Rangers. Cassandra with the Red Sox, Jose with the Orioles. David with the Royals, Mark with the Angels. Scott with the Mets, Ariana with the Braves, and Adam Copperman with the Phillies. So there you go folks, I'm gonna paste your guys' names into the sheet for Picket Team number nine, and then coming up next is Picket Team number nine. Appreciate you guys, good luck.