So this horse by now is very very dead but its corpse is too big for me to move so I may as well keep beating it. Lightlark was a book series that came out last year and it was a massive success sort of like it uh it sold a lot it blew up a lot but a large part of that was just people hating it and a lot of the people hated it because it didn't pander to them correctly but also it is a pretty bad book on its own that and the author really did not take criticism well like at all she responded remarkably poorly to it but when the first book came out I did a regular review on it because I figured whatever the drama is surrounding it it does deserve a fair shake and the verdict was that yeah Lightlark is a bad book but mostly it's just incoherent you know like most of the stuff in there just doesn't make sense like there's other people who made multi-hour long videos about this go check those out if you want more info and you aren't familiar with Lightlark but mostly yeah it's just stupid and incoherent and it's a mess of random tropes that don't fit together and there's zero in-universe justification for them and because it's young adult fantasy it really is just isekai but it's aimed at young girls instead of young boys like that that really is what it is because it's a total self-insert main character the world is set up to do nothing except make the main character look as cool as possible the story of Lightlark has zero structure and it's just a mess you know the second book Nightbane just came out recently and there hasn't been much discussion or fanfare about it so far like months ago when they announced it and they announced the release date there was a little bit of talk about it but since it came out which at the time of filming it's been like two weeks now and I've seen very little people very few people talk about it very little discussion of it so I figured let's let's see what's in here and I can confidently tell you after finishing that Nightbane is not good at all I can't say it's really worse than the first book but I can't I can say that it seems as if none of the criticism or feedback that Alex Astor got was listened to like or none of it landed like this is exactly the same as the first book and it feels like there was zero effort to improve here which is kind of annoying to be frank there's also several really really dumb plot twists in here but you know we'll get to those later I will say that at least there's a map in this one because the first book didn't have a map I don't believe so I personally had trouble figuring out where everything is in relation to everything else and this one had that and fixed it so that's kind of nice and I will say the cover is also pretty cool because like this one has a crown on the cover but it's also an island in the shape of a crown it's it's cool looking I liked it and while I was reading I kept thinking of ways to roast the book you know I kept thinking of ways to go okay here's how I'll make fun of this here's how I'll make fun of that but I was basically just re-signing the entire plot when I did that so I guess I'll do that now yeah I'm gonna recite the entire plot of Nightbane and go over all the problems with it as we go and that also works out for all the people who are curious about this book but don't want to go to the trouble of reading it so yeah you're you're welcome I guess uh spoilers ahead obviously no god no god please no so from the very first line Nightbane is not good Isla Crown tasted death on the back of her tongue that is dumb also yes people were telling me that the main character's name is pronounced Isla but I don't really care I'm gonna say Isla I don't respect her enough to say her name properly now if you remember the first book at the very end of it there was a magical door that Isla was about to open and the book ends with her about to open it and then this book starts with her about to open it and then she opens it partway and she feels some power and she hears the voice of Grim coming through Grim being the guy that she was in love with but also kind of betrayed her in the first book and then the door is mysteriously slammed shut so the mystery remains we didn't actually find out what was in it which is not how cliffhangers are supposed to work and I might as well tell you now we only open that book and learn what's in it near the very end of the book or excuse me we only open that door and find out what's in it near the very end of the book and I gotta say the phrase filler is thrown around a lot nowadays like way more often than it should be it is thrown around a lot but nightbane is entirely filler I am not joking when I say that in the slightest it is 100 percent filler because it's literally just a slow drip of information that the audience needs to know in order to understand what's happening and then there's a battle at the end because isla has selective amnesia that selectively goes away one chapter at a time giving us little bits of exposition about stuff that isla should already know I swear to god amnesia has been a disaster for literary canon it is just one of the worst ideas that writers can use most of the time I swear to god I hate it so much so after the door throws isla out and we don't know what's inside even though the cliffhanger of the last book was hey we're about to find out what's inside we don't get to find out what's inside uh oro who is the king of light lark and isla is also in love with him uh he says that she can only enter the vault's door if she masters her wildling powers and remember wildling is the realm that she's from that she's the ruler of now how does oro know that the vault will only open if she masters her wildling powers because he doesn't know much about this either unimportant I guess he just knows it now he also offers to teach her how to control and use her powers how does he know how to do that because he doesn't have wildling powers unimportant I guess now remember in the first book we learned that isla's father was a nightshade so she also has nightshade powers and at the end of the last book she killed Aurora who's the leader of the starlings the ruler of the starlings as they put it uh and now isla also has starling powers and also she's the queen queen of the wildlings and the starlings there's a big party to celebrate the curses being lifted because everyone wants to talk about how awesome isla is and how she saved them and how she's just the best but she is also like I said a nightshade and they would hate her if they found out that she was a nightshade which means that she gets to be horribly persecuted and put upon and misunderstood and abused while also being effortlessly powerful and wealthy look if you're gonna do those do one or the other either have the mc be super powerful and wealthy for no reason and for with no effort or have them be hated for something that everyone just hates them for even though it's not really fair and if you're going to have somebody or excuse me if you're going to have society hate them rather than having them be hated for something that they are having be hated for something that they did a good example of this is a movie that came out a while ago called no one will save you like the main character that movie is really hated by everyone in her town and near the end of the movie we find out it's because when she was a kid she killed one of her friends and it obviously it's a horrible thing but she was a child and it was an accident so like there's some moral gray area here is what i'm saying as opposed to just having it be pure wish fulfillment look at them they're put upon now king oro says that maybe grim and the other nightshades are going to attack so he is going to prepare the army and there's also a moonling who is named soren and he asked asks isla some questions about wildlings that she doesn't know the answers to questions that a ruler really should know like how many of them are there do they have enough food and shelter like isla is in charge of these people and and she doesn't know these things like she has two realms that she has to look after now and she doesn't know that she's a really shitty ruler i gotta say now she also realizes how that she needs to make an air a sap because she doesn't have an air and if she dies without having produced one then her entire realms will die like both the starlings and the wildlings like that's been a thing since the first book i don't blame you if you didn't forget it and also this thing about her needing to create an air never comes back in fact i kind of forgot about it until i was going over my notes for this video like i just i just forgot oh yeah uh she needed to make an air but it just wasn't a thing something about light lark causes everything in it to just slip out of my mind immediately after i read it like just immediately it's gone which is why i took copious notes while i was reading this time so i could actually go through and do a proper summary for you isla gets coronated without much fanfare it just it just sort of happens and then this big crack appears in the ground and a bunch of flying monsters come out of it and start attacking people and isla tries to help them but her powers just don't work very well and once they manage to beat off the attackers people are angry with her and they blame her for the attack because the protagonist must be oppressed it doesn't make any sense for isla to bring an attack there but she's blamed for it and also the creatures that attack are these like dragon-like things they're called drex which is a weird name now the ruler of the moonlings a woman named clio says that she is leaving and her realm is not siding with light lark like essentially they are declaring independence and they're going to side with the nightshades because again the nightshades might be attacking soon now during the night some rebels try to kill isla they use the ocean to pull her from her room and into some underground tunnels and then they attack her but she manages to use her powers even though she couldn't really use them before and then she runs away and this assassination thing doesn't really come back again but it does happen now a nightshade man named remlar does try to separate isla's wilding powers from her nightshade powers like because she inherited both they're like mixed together in weird ways and that's probably what's preventing her from using them properly now while this is happening she passes out and she flashes back to when she met grim apparently she just accidentally teleported over to the nightshade island where he was because let's not forget she also has a magical teleporting stick which nobody else has she just has had that since before the first book even begins she just she just has that and that's also how she met grim and in the present she passes out and then when she wakes up her powers work she doesn't have great control over them but they work and then she's sick for a couple of days after this and she speaks to oro and we get one of the few good lines in the book she nodded and it didn't do anything to make her head feel better before she could respond she added do you wish i wasn't everything i am he was quiet for a moment her eyes slowly began to close suddenly heavy fighting against sleep was useless in this state no isla he finally said it's the part you don't seem to like about yourself that i love the most like come on that's a cute line now isla is still really bad at actually using her powers like i said earlier but she can use them like she tries to move pebbles using telepathy which is her starling power but she can't really do much with them and so she decides to go train in the wildling new land which i straight up don't remember if the new lands were even in the first book but they're in this one it's like other islands that are a little farther out that people from various realms went to and have started colonizing while she goes to train she brings some of her friends along and the wildlings tell her that isla needs to bond with an animal and the way to bond with one is to shoot it with an arrow okay sure whatever it's magic now while she's out looking for an animal to bond with she gets attacked by a bear and this bear has horns i don't know if that's an important detail but i felt the need to mention it like bears just i guess have horns in this world that's a thing and uh while it chases her she manages to throw it out of a tree and then this black leopard appears and it seems really friendly and then it allows her to stab it with an arrow and now they're bonded and she jumps on the back of this black leopard and rides back to her friends and the others are shocked and they recognize it because apparently his name is lynx and he was bonded to her mother naming a leopard lynx is kind of like naming a dog dachshund but whatever that that's the thing that happens then isla goes to starling isle because things are pretty bad there and i'm not sure exactly what's going on there like the book seems to say that there's only a hundred starlings left i i think it's kind of unclear the way it's written is very straight i don't know but like sure there's only a hundred starlings left and then we go to a flashback and actually the rest of the book from this point forward is kind of one chapter present one chapter flashback it's very obnoxious and i'll get into more detail later but in the flashback she duels grim and then she loses and then he throws her out of his realm and the flashbacks only happen a little bit at a time because isla only remembers a little bit at a time like there's a bunch of chapters that end with oh this event reminded isla of something that she had forgotten before and now that it's now it's back and remember this entire book is just exposition like that's all that's there and if all this information that again isla really should know if all of this was given to the audience at once it would be like 30 pages long and that just there wouldn't be a book because that's all that there is now in the present isla takes a shower in her room i don't know how that's possible again this is like a medieval castle and i get that there's magic but i don't know i feel like this book is so allergic to making the protagonist work or suffer for anything that she gets to have hot running water in a medieval castle like that's that's the only reason i can think up for why this is even a thing it's so stupid so her and oro are hanging out still and he's like avoiding her touch and she asks if he's not attracted to her and he says no i totally am and then he gets a boner and then they have sex and they keep having sex a whole bunch it happens and finally something happens because grim actually sends out a warning to the island of light lark he says everyone vacate the island within 30 days because he's going to destroy it and then the moonlings again join the night with the nightshades because they don't want to die alongside everyone else and if isla wants to stop grim from destroying light lark she has to remember her time with him at least according to the oracle she speaks to the oracle might have been in the first book she might not have been i don't remember and i'm not going to check and honestly the fact that there's prophecies in these books means nothing the prophecies make no sense it's literally just excuses for the plot to happen basically without isla and her memories and her being so special everyone will die and so the more she masters her powers the more she will remember which i guess that does make some kind of sense but it's still not a great way to structure your story so we go into a flashback where isla is wandering a bazaar there's a stand there that sells human teeth that doesn't lead anywhere but i felt the need to mention it and there's another stall that isla makes note of that sells nightbane which is a potion of some sort that takes away troubles and pain and based on the way they describe it later it seems like a magical opiate of some sort because it sounds like it's really addictive a man in the bazaar attacks her and she stabs him in self-defense but the crowd sees her stab a guy and then chases her like just an instant lynch mob forms and then grim catches her and throws her in the dungeon and that's that and then we go to the present and oro says that there's a magical medal that can make weapons to fight drecks because their scales are really hard and it's hard to hurt them with normal weapons but there is a magical ore that he knows about which is awful convenient and then a man named zed appears who is apparently an old friend of oro and he likes to steal and break into places that's about all we learn about him but you know he likes to steal and break into places and then isla oro and the other rulers start coming up with a plan to defend the island from grim in the nightshades when they attack basically they want the wildlings to cover a bunch of the island in thorns and poison plants to force the nightshades to attack in a specific spot which is actually not a bad plan it's not a particularly complicated one but it's not a bad one either but wait the skylings we need the skylings because they need to cover the air and protect them from the drecks because the drecks can fly around and the skylings might vote to leave because the skylings are not a hereditary monarchy they are a democracy even though if the island is destroyed they will all die anyways it doesn't matter where they are they just they'll die so it's kind of dumb for them to vote to leave instead of trying to defend the island because without the okay whatever the contrived conflict really is the best kind of conflict so isla decides to go to this area called the vinderlands to recruit people there were the vinderlands mentioned before maybe i don't know all i know is that it's a place near the moonling realm and the people there are not cursed they're not part of one of the realms that were cursed they're just different people who happen to live in this area isla starts training some more and remlar who is helping to train her tells her to kill a tree with her nightshade powers and she doesn't want to and she has trouble doing it but eventually she manages to kill it and then she uses the power from the tree to make a whole bunch of saplings sprout around her so basically she's combining her wildling powers with her nightshade powers which is actually kind of cool you know this this scene does work it's not amazing but it does work which is why i can't really hate lightlark as much as a lot of other people do like there it has moments which are kind of okay like the idea of a character having power over death and power over life and rather than distracting from each other or canceling each other out they actually reinforce each other that's kind of cool and it could be an interesting metaphor for something this book isn't smart enough to do that but you know it could be so then flashback again grim says he needs some sort of magical sword he doesn't say why he needs it he just needs islas help in finding it and then they go to a place guarded by a man who is called the blacksmith although grim also calls him baron at a couple of points and then he tries finding them and islas stabs him in the eye and he barely reacts to that just okay that's a thing that happens uh and basically the sword whatever it is whatever grim needs it it has been enchanted so that no nightshade ruler can claim it so that's why he needs somebody's help and then grim takes the blacksmith's memories uh but the blacksmith doesn't know where the sword is and neither do they and later also in flashback grim teleports into islas room because remember he can do that that him and her are pretty much the only ones that can do that from when i can gather uh and he actually wants her to continue helping him go look for the sword and the nightshades at this time are still cursed remember so they can't go outdoors at night but grim has a charm which negates his curse so he can go out at night no problem why doesn't everybody get a charm that can counteract their curse no idea maybe they don't know how to make them and they're super rare maybe i don't know there's no explanation given at all so they think the sword might be at a thieves base so they go there to go check some people attack them while they're there isla kills some of them and she's upset about it because she's never killed people before but you know isla kills some of them because she's just so cool and badass grim interrogates one of the thieves and actually cuts off his hand while doing so he's pretty brutal while torturing this guy uh he finds out that a man named victor might have the sword so grim kills the thief after he gives him the information because he's an edgy emo bad boy that the main character is attracted to despite him being a fucking sociopath seriously guys like that there is a difference between bad boy and evil boy a very very big difference so in the present isla goes to moon isle and ever since the moonlings left the place is apparently a lot warmer than it used to be which okay that's worth noting i guess uh and then they go looking for the vinderlands and a whole army of them appear in front of isla which remember the vinderlands is the name of the place but the people from the vinderlands are also called vinderlands it's a it's a little weird but you know that's a thing that happens they try to kill isla but when they do uh she actually touches the blade that they're swinging at her and it turns to ash and they're all oppressed because they're like whoa she's a nightshade and a wildling that's so cool main character girl gets to be awesome and beloved without actually doing anything she was just born this way and they agree to help her if she helps heal some of them because they're having issues with magical sickness and injuries in the past she has a weird conversation with grim about painkillers and how he needed to get used to pain so they like peeled skin off of his back to do it okay sure and also grim seems to be the one who taught her how to fight even though she was taught by her tutors before so i again this book these books just contradict each other all the time i don't know why i'm even bothering to mention it when it happens you should just assume that things are being contradictory when we're talking about light lark but you know that's a thing that happened anyways they learned that the magical sort they're looking for is probably in uh this place on nightshade called the caves of irida and they're guarded by a monster of some sort and then we go to the present again in the presence of the skylings i i think they vote to leave i'm honestly not sure like i read this passage several times and i'm still a little bit confused like i think they vote to leave but then there's some of them that decide to stay behind if if they were voting to stay or leave but then some of them could just disobey why did it even matter i'm not sure i don't know just go with it man uh but yeah i had to read that passage a couple of times sometimes you really just need a character to come out and say yep they voted to leave because i'm sure this made sense in alex aster's head but it doesn't make sense in anyone else's and also isla decides that she might turn the starlings into a democracy later now i'm not sure how she moves the magical curse because you know again this is a magical curse which is supposed to affect hereditary monarchs i'm not sure how they would change it from a hereditary ruler to an elected one but okay whatever zed also found the magical ore that the characters needed down in the mines but he needs isla to mine it for him because the main character has to be the center of fucking everything now in the past isla and grim go to the cave where they think the sword is and they they see it but it's being guarded by a dragon and there's also a booby trap there that they trip and it fills grim with like a dozen arrows he's fine but he gets shot with like a dozen arrows and then rather than continuing trying to get the sword they just go to a ball which is being held at his palace because fuck it you know this this book doesn't have enough balls yet just just throwing some more who cares and while while isla is walking around at this ball she mentions that there is quote music so loud and fast it drowned out the moan she could hear when she passed by the dark halls which we get no other information about what type of music this is but i like to imagine that this medieval palace they're just playing edm or heavy metal music you know it's just drowning everything out like i just like the mental image of grim being a really big fan of mastodon you know while they're there somebody tries to roofie isla like they give her a magical roofie and grim saves her from being magically roofied which i i guess that is pretty much the only way you can make grim look good is by comparing him to an actual rapist so you know grim looks a little better than he did a minute ago you would also think that this experience might you know change isla a little bit like you know maybe she's fearful and paranoid brown strangers from this point forward but no it never comes back it's just hey you almost got sexually assaulted but you didn't and now you're fine like again that's the sort of thing that tends to stick with people in the present isla makes some super cool armor for lynx you remember lynx her magical black leopard that she bonded with like yeah i forgot about him until just now when i read about him in my notes so i don't blame you if you forgot like he does very little in this book but yeah she makes some armor for him he does nothing he only exists to show that isla is so cool because she has an animal companion and other people don't at this stage we do get one reveal which is actually kind of cool we learned that everyone all their lives are tied to the lives of their rulers because one of oro's ancestors cursed the people of light lark to prevent them from staging any sort of uprising so if any ruler dies and they don't have any heirs then everyone will die and that actually is kind of cool you know that's a good detail they probably should have mentioned it in the first book but you know it's it's there now a skyling named maren tells isla that she is immune to curses and that she has also freed the wildlings and the starlings which means that neither realm is tied to her life like if she dies then the people in the wildling realm and the starling realm won't also all die which is again something i'm not sure how he knows that but he knows it and he tells her or more accurately he tells the audience because isla doesn't do much with this and in order to free the rest though to free all the rest of the realms oro has to die again i don't know how he knows this i'm not exactly sure how this plan works but he tells her hey we're going to have to kill the king if we want to you know free everybody else from that nasty curse and isla does not agree to the plan because she doesn't want to kill the king and then she leaves and nobody tries to stop her again they just told her about this super secret plan to try and kill the king and they just let her go after she says fuck no i'm not being part of that like that that seems like a security risk to me but i guess i don't know anything in the past we learned that grim only needs this magical sword because not only does it create dregs like the flying creatures from the beginning but it allows whoever wields it to control the dregs why we couldn't be told this from the beginning i was well okay i was about to say i'm not sure why we couldn't be told this from the beginning but i know exactly why we couldn't be told this from the beginning we couldn't be told this from the beginning because well again this whole book is just exposition so if we just give the exposition then that's boring and we don't have an actual book we need to stretch it out and pad it out by pretending that there's some sort of plot and adding fake intrigue then back to the present grim apparently has the sword in the present we again we haven't found out how he got it yet but he has the sword in the present and he kidnaps a bunch of wildlings and then tells everybody to surrender and isla decides that she's gonna try and cut off his powers using a love bond which is a thing from the first book again it doesn't make much sense but basically if you're in love with somebody who has different powers than you then you can take their powers away temporarily and use them for yourself like it this is just a thing that exists in the world of lightlark because the world of lightlark is dumb and so there's multiple steamy scenes in the present between grim and isla in the past they go to get the sword in you know the dragon's den and it doesn't go very well isla nearly dies and grim uses her powers his powers to save her and because he used his powers near the sword the sword disappears like it got transported somewhere else far away and isla is like oh my gosh grim i'm so sorry i messed this up for you and he's like yeah that's okay you're the main character i'm not gonna actually be mad at you and then she wanders in the woods for a little while and she finds a small dragon a baby dragon and then she gives it to him as a pet in the present isla has finally mastered her powers and she goes to open the vault and inside is a vision of terra who her old teacher who was supposed to be dead i'm not sure if this is an illusion or just like the spirit of terra or maybe isla is just hallucinating whatever it is terra is there and we get more flashback after that so after all of this isla is literally just wandering the woods and then she finds the sword just chill in there and then she gets it and gives it to grim and apparently even though the sword was cursed so that a nightshade ruler could never use it somebody else finding the sword and then giving it to them apparently broke the curse which is a very easy curse to break so now grim just has the sword and he can use it that's stupid use your common sense and he explains that lightlark like the island and all the surrounding areas was actually created a long time ago by people fleeing other lands and when he says other lands i think he means like other dimensions other worlds that they had to get to magically not people from like another island or something like this was magical they came here they created lightlark and if the portal that they used to come here is ever opened then lightlark will be destroyed again i think that's what's happening nothing in these books is explained super well or super clearly but i'm pretty sure that's what he says here now he mentions that the portal is somewhere in the wildling palace and that only a wildling ruler can open it why is that because the main character is a wildling ruler so obviously she has to be the special one that gets to do everything and it turns out that the vault that isla just opened was actually the portal and now grim is coming to take control of it and again remember this is isla just remembering something that was magically erased from her memory if she had known this from the beginning then she just wouldn't have opened the vault like they would have already known what it was and they wouldn't have done it so all of this her only slowly getting her memories back is not only really obnoxious in terms of hey the two different storylines are distracting from one another and we keep switching back and forth and we are learning all this information that we should have known way earlier way late because the author just doesn't know how to do anything here uh on top of all that this is the only reason that the villains plan works at all so after that we just the final battle happens you know like we just the final battle just sort of occurs now grim teleports his army into the middle of everything which sounds like a shitty idea to me but whatever i suppose that doesn't matter because he's the bad guy bad guys do stupid shit and then they come really close to winning and then the heroes also do a bunch of stupid shit but they managed to stop the bad guy at the last second because that's just that's just how that works uh and then the drecks appear and the battle starts going poorly for the heroes and then isla winds up cornered by grim so that plan that they spent the whole book making all the preparations that they were doing the magical ore that they needed isla to mine that is all irrelevant literally none of that matters in this last bit like this all comes down to the main characters the army plays no role in anything that goes down in the climax and because the army plays no role in anything everything to do with the army is just pure filler like again the the term filler is overused nowadays but in this book it fits like out i would honestly rather this book just be like 80 or 90 flashback than have all the present stuff be this irrelevant you know i would rather just spend most of the book reading about stuff that happened several years ago than switch back and forth between stuff that happened several years ago and is important and stuff that's happening now and is very unimportant like that sounds better uh and anyways while isla is cornered oro appears and he fights grim because even with a female protagonist that everything revolves around only men can be strong enough to actually fight the villains especially if the villains are other men like girls are only allowed to come in at the last second and give a final burst of magical power that saves the day because young adult fantasy is a very feminist genre now some drecks come and attack them and grim can no longer control them for some reason so isla takes the sword and tells the drecks hey you quit it you stop that and then they stop and then she takes grim's powers temporarily through the love bond and oro is about to kill him but it turns out that isla is actually bonded to grim like she just remembers at the last second and he tells them which means that if one of them dies so does the other like apparently at the very end of the flashback they were going to go to a place where some drecks were attacking and apparently while they were there isla killed a bunch of people while fighting them and we only hear about this afterwards in very vague terms because again the memories only appear when the plot conveniently needs them to also isla and grim are married now apparently and she only remembered now because we needed a plot twist at the end of the book and he says that if isla leaves with him and goes back to nightshade then he will call off the attack and so she agrees to it she tells oro hey i love you but i love grim too and then she goes with him in the book ends like that that is it that's where it ends what the hell was that i have done my best to make the summary of this book makes sense but it has required not only some thought on my part but also some serious trimming because there's just other details and other stuff in here which does nothing and means nothing at all like the book is so committed to the slow drip flashbacks that every other chapter is a flashback they get flashback then present and flashback then present throughout most of the book even when there's nothing important there like there's a lot of points where we get important flashback and then important present and then unimportant flashback important present unimportant flashback important present because alex aster was just so locked into the uh going back and forth uh every other chapter way so this structure shoots itself in the foot because both plot lines distract from each other like every time there was something that kind of intrigued me like again isla using her powers of life and death to reinforce each other every time there was something like that that was kind of cool i wound up getting dragged away it would honestly be better if we got like two or three chapters in the present and then we got a flashback chapter and then we got two or three more in the presence and then flashback chapter but even then that wouldn't fix everything it would just be an improvement and even if we set all the flashback annoyances aside there's no structure to this book at all like neither of the storylines have any structure the plot has no inciting incident at all there's no falling action at the end it just again it stops like seemingly in the middle of the climax and the flashback storyline doesn't have a climax at all we just hear about isla apparently killing a bunch of innocent people in the present in very vague terms like most events in this book do not matter in the slightest like the only important subplot is isla learning about her powers because that's what allows her to open the vault but that turns out to be what the villain wanted all along now i believe lightlark is intended to be a trilogy like i obviously that could change and i don't think that's ever been confirmed anywhere but i'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a chill trilogy and if it is it has the worst middle book syndrome i have ever seen in my life like briefly if you're not familiar with middle book syndrome it's when the author knows how to begin the story and they know how to end the story but they're not really sure how to connect them you know like you've probably read a couple of trilogies over the years where book one is the introduction you know this is where we are introduced to this world and these characters and we find out about the main conflict and then book three is some sort of big final battle and that leaves book two with a bit of an identity crisis you know like what is book two and a lot of authors have trouble figuring out what book two is and so oftentimes the middle book will wind up having nothing happen or it'll have a bunch of stuff happen but none of it seems to contribute at all and night bane somehow manages to do both which is kind of impressive alex aster had more than a year to get this book out and i figured at first that the extra couple of months she was taking was time she needed to rewrite stuff but i guess not you know and the thing is i considered splitting this video into multiple sections kind of like my fourth wing review but i honestly didn't see the point like do i need to explain to you that every character in this book is completely empty or that the many fight scenes feature isla doing weird and impossible stunts or that she has zero chemistry with grim and oro or that isla's dresses are given more description than any character appearance or that there's no recognizable themes anywhere to be found like i don't think i need to tell you that i think you can figure that out on your own just based on well everything else i'm telling you there's very little in night bane that surprised me you know the only thing worth noting is the depths to which the stupidity delves because again it is occasionally very funny and i think that's why the first book was huge not for good reasons a lot of people were just mad at it because it was not properly advertised and it didn't pander to them enough but the first book was huge and night bane doesn't seem to be huge so far you know it seems like it's just kind of come and already gone with very little fanfare like that is i don't know that that's a tragedy in a way like despite its success lightlark has very few actual fans it connected with almost no one like there is a fan wiki for the series but there's nothing on it like no one has added to it it's completely dead and i before filming this looked up to see on youtube to see what other people are saying about night bane and i've seen very few videos on it and those videos have very little viewership like it seems that lightlark has not connected with anyone it doesn't have much of a fan base now i'll say right now lightlark is better than fourth wing like the first and second books that it's better than fourth wing but fourth wing does have a huge fan base because it takes all of the boring story world building character development it just shoves all that to the side in favor of making the self-insert protagonist effortlessly amazing so that she can go around and fuck hot dudes lightlark also has the effortlessly amazing protagonist who goes around and has sex with a whole bunch of hot dudes but the books try to have an actual story and world building and stuff outside of that they just really half ass it whereas fourth wing zero asses it so that there's absolutely nothing to get in the way of the wish fulfillment that is why fourth wing is beloved by the same people who should like lightlark but they don't because again it's just not pandering to them the way that fourth wing does the only reason to read lightlark is to laugh at the ineptitude which is what i am doing like the first two books are amusing i've enjoyed laughing at them and this may seem like a bit of a tangent but bear with me for a few minutes i think that's why we haven't seen very many successful screen adaptations of these really popular young adult fantasy books like in the past few months i've covered three of them i've done red queen i've done fourth wing and now i'm doing night bane which is the second in the lightlark series like there are these are all books that sold really well and outside of that there's a bunch of other young adult fantasy stuff that has also sold really really well but we haven't seen any really big successful adaptations of them which usually you get with really popular books you know like red queen came out eight years ago it was a huge success in terms of publishing but it had no adaptation same with throne of glass it's even older and it's still nothing has come of it yet shadow and bone came out around the same time as these and that was also a massive success and it did get an adaptation on netflix but that was canceled prematurely after only two seasons before that we had the mortal instruments and vampire academy both of which got big screen adaptations which flopped and so we only got the first book adapted and then both of them came back later and had television shows that tried to adapt the story but those also flopped and were prematurely canceled like you could probably write an essay on why all of these books are connecting with audiences in written form but they're failing to do so in visual form however my brief take on that is that a lot of them and light lark and fourth wing are way way worse about this than pretty much anything else i've read lately but a lot of them are just self-insert wish fulfillment and there is literally nothing else to them like there's no other story or anything there like there's nothing to say about isla crown beyond her romantic entanglements and the powers she gets just for existing like she's completely empty as a character that's why i'm not really going into detail about her there's nothing to go into detail about she is empty she barely exists and the world of light lark is complete nonsense it has a little bit of effort put into it like more than you would expect from something like this but it's complete nonsense there's nothing there like these young adult fantasy novels are just isekai light novels but they're aimed at girls instead of being aimed at boys and just like isekai they aren't just all the same like they they are all the same but that's not just the reason to hate them there's also just nothing there at all like again if you are at all familiar with isekai anime manga light novels like there is nothing to them there's no character no themes and there's no story beyond the protagonist being awesome and being the center of attention and stuff like light lark is exactly the same and if that's all you ever have then you're only ever going to appeal to a small niche audience even if that audience is very loud but you can get away with it in the realm of books and light novels because books and light novels are really cheap and really easy to make television shows movies and anime are not they need much bigger budgets and therefore much bigger paying audiences to justify their own existence and that's why so many of these adaptations fail to get off the ground like they can get a bit of an audience but just not enough to pay for everything that's also why these sorts of things get so much hate from people outside their target audience like people gave me shit for criticizing fourth wing as harshly as i did and they were going oh obviously you only hate it because it focuses on romance which first of all those people are fucking stupid and they clearly didn't pay attention to the hour of complaints and criticisms i had about fourth wing secondly those people and other fans of these types of things whether again it's shitty young adult novels or shitty isekai light novels or whatever like if you're a fan of that sort of thing you need to understand that this is pure wish fulfillment that's all it is like there's nothing wrong with that at least in moderation but you need to be cognizant of the facts and you need to stop pretending it's anything other than what it is because that's what's annoying and that's what gets you hate from other people now lightlark is bad night bane is also bad but the author did something that none of her genre contemporaries seem to be doing and that's that she tried she failed horribly but she tried and that's why i just can't bring myself to hate lightlark as bad as it is it is earnest but that's also why it's funny bad instead of boring bad you know because there's energy and passion put into it and that's why i'm going to keep reading you know if there's a third book i'll read that if there's fourth fifth i hope not but if there's fourth fifth sixth i'll probably read those two just because i am just happy that someone is actually trying okay anyways that's all i have to say please like the video comment and subscribe goodbye hello huge thanks to all of my patrons you see these names here yeah these are my patrons uh their names are very cool you should sit here and read all of them especially a thanks to all of my ten dollar and up patrons who are aposavalanan olivia reyan brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay chibzahoy dan anseljevich dark king dio echo flax jalal dalool james m lexie delorm lyza rudakova lord tiebreaker microphone mist boy mitzimona peep the toad roby reviews sad martigan psych xs selene sillier the vixen stone stairs tesla shark vaivictus vimek zole and wezzley all of you you're you're all amazing i swear all of you you're you're great and if you watch until this point well you're even more amazing or so yeah uh see you later goodbye like the video comment on it subscribe consider donating patreon what why am i still talking


Restaurants are closing left, right, and center. Whether it's the pandemic or just bad business practice, they are one of the hardest business models out there to perfect, which is the reason why we're shooting this video for you. The top five most biggest mistakes that restaurants or owners are making, so in that way, you can choose to avoid them, be aware of them, and become a great restaurant here. Hey guys, it's Wilson here, your friend in helping you build a profitable restaurant and a thriving small business. Just want to give a major shout out to these two individuals here for giving us so much positivity and motivation to continue creating these content for you. This is the positive community that we want to be able to build and be part of.  Now without further ado, let's dive right in. Number one biggest mistake that most restaurantiers make is not knowing who they're serving. This is a huge fundamental mistake by not understanding who you're serving to, because if you don't know who you're serving to, you would never be able to line up out the doors. You'll never be able to understand exactly what brings in your customers, then therefore you're not speaking directly to your customer. Just as an example, if I don't know who I am talking to in front of the camera, someone that wants to build a successful restaurant, and I go off on a tangent on saying that, you know what, building an e-commerce business is amazing. Having real estate is amazing.  Whereas right now, I'm talking specific problems, mistakes that restaurantiers are making, and that is directly relatable to you, and that's the reason why you're watching this video. Same thing goes for food. If you create food that doesn't speak to your client and your customers' problems, then most likely they're gonna come in once and they'll never come back again, which is the reason why, if you want a thriving restaurant, if you want people to come in all the time, then you need to know who you're serving to and speak directly to them and solve their specific problem. The second biggest mistake that restaurantiers make is not knowing their numbers. This is one of the biggest fundamental flaws out there. I know numbers are not sexy, it is not fun, it is not exciting.  I hate weeding through all my receipts, trying to figure out and categorize each of the expense, but this is crucial for you to understand which levers to pull within your business to make it more efficient.  No one wants that. And for us to know which levers to pull, which functions of our business is not working to its optimal, we need to understand our numbers. To give you an example, if our cost of goods solds account to 50% or even 60%, we know something is not right because typically speaking, in the industry of food, the cost of goods solds should range around 20 to 30%. And that's the optimal cost of goods solds that we're looking at.  How can I fix that? Now I can make better inventory purchases. Maybe I can have them scheduled to deliver maybe three times a week instead of once a week. Maybe I can order less. I can have less of a bulk discount, but at the very least I'm not wasting my food and then that way I can be a much more efficient business. At the end of the day, you need to understand your numbers to understand which numbers to pull within your operations to put more money in your pockets. That's the ultimate goal by understanding your numbers. The third biggest mistake is staying complacent, not learning and adapting to the environment. It is crucial for us as entrepreneurs for us to always adapt to the ever-changing landscape. Today we're talking about COVID, tomorrow it could be something completely different. If we're staying stuck with our playbook, thinking that that's the Bible that we need to actually do and actually follow, then we're gonna be left behind in the dust as the economic landscape changes. For example, if I think, you know what, dine-in service is the best, that's the only thing I can bank on is my customer service. And throughout this whole COVID I'm not doing delivery because I need to make sure that dine-in is my way to go. Then most likely you're still gonna be out of business by now because dine-in is being impacted tremendously and takeout is the new norm. So that's the reason why adapting and learning is the best way for you to actually stay ahead to make a thriving restaurant. If you guys find any value whatsoever in this video, make sure you smash the like button so that way I know this is the content that you enjoy. Now without further ado, let's dive right back in. The fourth biggest mistakes that restaurant owners make is not treating their staff well. We have definitely heard of customer first as a motto, but at the end of the day I truly believe that employees and our staff is first because they are the front of your house.  These guys are the ones that represent you. So if you don't treat them properly, how can they treat the customers properly? How can they give your customers a pleasant experience? Which is the reason why you need to treat your customers with care and you also need to love your employees because they are the ones that are actually facing your employees. You cannot penny pinch them. These guys are your money maker. That's the reason why you need to invest with your staff. One poison apple, one bad client, one bad staff would poison your whole pool of talented staff, which is the reason why when you're hiring you need to hire the right talent. You need to treat them well. Definitely check out this video if you want to learn more about how do you retain and how do you hire the best talent in your restaurant. At the end of the day, building an all-star team is everyone's dream. This is the biggest problem that restaurant tiers face is hiring talented, common-sensed staff that truly loves your business. So then that way you don't need to get stuck working 16 hours in your restaurant. You can choose when to go to work instead of being stuck there because you're the only capable one. That's why you need to treat your staff well. The fifth biggest mistake that restaurant tiers make is working in the business instead of working on the business. The key difference here is that when you're working in the business, you're doing all the nitty gritty details. You're working 16-hour days and the business will fall apart without needing you. That's the reason why it will bleed into your family life. It will bleed into your personal life because you're just so burnt out working 16-hour days and then you go home and it affects all your relationships and it just makes you become not the person you want. That's the reason why working on the business is super, super crucial because when you work on your business, when you work on the strategies to take yourself out of being in the business and needed in the business every single day, you get to have your freedom back. You get to choose when you get to drop into your restaurant and when you don't need to drop into your restaurant. You get to actually work on growing the business just like how we're growing this tree. You can work on that. You can work on moving the needle one step closer to your financial freedom, your locational freedom as well. So there you go guys, the top five mistakes that's preventing any entrepreneur from achieving success. You need to make sure you fine tune and avoid these mistakes at all costs so then that way you can build a thriving restaurant. If you guys want to learn more about the step-by-step process and building a successful restaurant, definitely check out our free guide in the description below. Otherwise, I'd love to make sure that I see you guys soon. Make sure you guys subscribe along the journey and I'll see you guys in the next video. The fifth and final mistake is trees and rain. What is trees and rains? I don't know.  Why?  Okay, I...


Good morning everybody JR Fisher here Want to make sure you can hear me do me a favor if you would put in That chat box there if you can hear me I want to make sure that's going on James brain. What's going on buddy? Good morning JR 74 and mostly sunny. Oh my gosh We're barely gonna hit 70 today here today is a chilly day in San Diego And you know you guys may not know that and you think of San Diego is this nice warm perfect place There's a thing called may gray may can be our coldest month of the year and then that's followed up by June Gloom which can be another one of our coldest months of the year So it's not always perfect here I mean, I see a lot of people in here today that had been with me for a long time. I see Christine Christine Carmine's My goodness, she's been with us for years. Good to see you here. Of course. We got James James is loud and clear in Savannah That's good. Christine says the sounds good for her. That's awesome Who else we got in here Richard Brown my buddy Richard? Are you asking about? Cartra and I will remind me to talk about Cartra a little bit today Some really cool stuff that made me Gosh probably close to $40,000 in the past week in Cartra Let's see here. I did post something in there guys if you're worried about what people think about you You worried about what they're gonna say about you. They're gonna talk about you no matter what So it might as well be about all the things that you're accomplishing Your successes will always overshadow your failures, but your lack of trying will always be recognized So keep that in mind guys all these people who are very successful had tons of failures I mean tons of failures, but you just don't notice them because of the few successes They've had it overshadows them and the only way to get to those successes is to keep trying and keep doing new things Today I'm gonna talk about things that really screwed me up and screw up other businesses And I'm gonna share those things with you so that maybe you don't have to go through that But if you have other questions about starting running and growing your online business, please put that in the chat section there I really want to see all those questions It doesn't matter if it's on topic if you just have a question about SEO or sending out an email or whatever it is Put it in that chat section there. I really do want to see it Re-review I can't say it movie review mom good to see you haven't seen you in a little bit good to see you here She says June Gloom yes, you must know about it Movie review mom cry July happens to sometimes, huh? Are you in San Diego?  I bet you're here But maybe we got some cool stuff today guys Do me a favor subscribe hit that subscribe button down there if it's red turn it gray you do that By clicking it and then what you do is you turn on all bell notifications all the bell notifications So you're notified each and every time I go live or I upload a video Which I do just about every single day during the week and I go live Monday through Saturday right now So I've been staying really busy. I've been doing this since like I don't know January February Maybe you guys can remind me. I've been in here for a while If you know 500 people you have 500 reputations. Yes each and every that's a cool one James Each and everybody thinks of you differently.  What if you got I just saw you put something in there pops up on one of my screens here But I got two screens going on just so you guys know I used to live in Carlsbad. Oh, where do you live now? Curious, where do you live now? Carlsbad's beautiful area very expensive now just like San Diego is but we're moving because I'm building that house in Texas That's coming along.  It's getting worse and worse and worse And let me see here movie review mom says Vegas when we moved here People always said one word when we told them where we were from why a great question. I missed the ocean Well, you know, we're moving actually to Austin and I'm gonna get back to cyber security in a second But we have a huge lake there called Lake Travis and it's like an ocean So you can boat and you can windsurf and I do windsurf. I have a sailboard. I'm gonna be bringing that with me So we have that that water there. So we're good in Austin Okay, so small businesses that focus their attention on an e-commerce space really need Policies and procedures to create a solid cyber security framework.  That's really bad We have all types of securities there. Nobody has ever gotten any of our customers information Of course anything could happen anything, but so far we've been really good there So that's really really important guys that you protect that What else we got going on got a lot of good comments in here today Movie review mom. We paid a fraction for our house in Vegas, which was the same size as the one in curls But yeah, we're getting a really nice house in Austin we signed the contract In November and that house has gone up over two hundred and ten thousand dollars Now I'm not kidding you guys we signed it in November in the housing market just skyrocketed It's two hundred and ten thousand dollars more than when we signed the contract and it's not gonna built yet So yeah, I'm pretty happy about that What service do you recommend for paying virtual assistants overseas any tips? Yes? I have a great one It's called panier Let me put that in here. I pay my people in the Philippines with this pay on your This is the one I would recommend right there panier check that one out. I think I pay Want to say a 1% fee when I pay my employees there or something like that, you know, so for a hundred and sixty bucks I pay a dollar sixty which is well worth it. They get their money really quick. They're very happy about it It's very accepted in a lot of foreign countries. I would highly recommend that a security system that you would advise for e-com Site, please. Wow, it really depends. I can't give you a blanket one because it depends on Your hosting company like we have a hosting company that hosts about five of my websites And that's on one type of security and then I have other ones from a Jento So you've got to look into your hosting company and the thing to do is before you get hosting find out What type of security they have that's super important next thing you got to worry about if your small business is competition Competition comes in a lot of different forms. It's not just somebody else selling the same thing You've got you've got to keep up with competitive pricing product services everything As a small business you can overcome price competition by having a very clear company value proposition The customers can't go elsewhere and get the service. Maybe that you provide e-commerce space has become so saturated really that Standing out from other e-commerce businesses is really difficult Though no fault of your own, but it can be done. Okay You've just got to distinguish yourself from your competitors It's really crucial to standing out and attracting new customers for your business This can really be accomplished by making sure your website looks professional. What does your website look like? It's got to look better than everybody else's Then it's optimized correctly to suit today's you know Google algorithm. All those things are really important Also by providing a unique product or service that you can focus on a Smaller demographic making it easier for you to increase your domain authority the next thing I'll tell you about is Cyber is order fulfillment. This is a big one. I had a warehouse in Poway. It was about 14,000 square feet. It had six bay doors and you know for trucks to drive up and all that and I got rid of it I got rid of it because I can use a 3 pl in Utah Which is in the central part of the US are more centrally located and they can ship out to all the parts of the US a lot cheaper Plus I only pay for the shipments. They do. I don't have to pay for all those warehouse employees I don't have to pay for the logistics. I don't have to pay for any of that I pay for storage of my pallets of stuff and I buy supplies as I need them and saves me a lot of money You may want to think about that if you've got the volume to where you can afford to do that Because you have to have minimums like I got a order You know hundreds and hundreds of whatever orders to go out a month to make that worthwhile, but I have that so it doesn't matter You could be inundated with more orders than you prepare to handle if you're doing it on your own Order fulfillment should be outsourced to a third party fulfillment company whenever possible for increased efficiency Okay, and I didn't believe that years ago. I did my own matter of fact I was physically in the warehouse putting stuff in boxes Which was craziness because my my efforts can work so much better in other areas Is that what is called a unique selling? Proposition Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Yeah, that would be a good way to label that a security system that would advise Okay. Yeah, I talked about that one there What service do you recommend for paying virtual? Okay, I did that one. Okay, so I think I'm up to speed on the comments there But continue to put them in there guys. I'm loving your content comments. They're very good They're going to help a lot of people out when you think about writing a question here Think about the fact that whatever question you asked some other people may have the same questions And they can refer back to your question in my answer and get things fixed So you're actually helping other people when you do that customer experience This is a big one guys This is a primary e-commerce business or any business that has e-commerce Okay, figuring out how to offer your customers that same experience They would get in a brick brick and mortar store can be challenging actually I think you can give them a better experience really one of the most overlooked areas of customer experience is moving to e-commerce is Pricing and customer segmentation. We're pretty good at segmentation I send out emails that are so segment and people respond back to me as if I'm just talking to them And this is an automation that I have Customer experience is really especially important when launching an e-commerce initiative because customers expect they expect to be treated Well, or better online as they face Or as a face-to-face type business. So it's really important that we do that We really kind of struggle to meet these new demands I know all of us do because it requires a very precise handling of pricing analytics consumer segmentation all these things Successful experience of e-commerce space require the same if not greater clarity in product offering Pricing and more has required as a face-to-face type buying process Let's see is moving to Texas Where's I'm not quite sure what that means Richard. I see Richard in here a buddy of mine They're a friend of mine for years. Tell me how your business is doing to Richard. I know you were doing a lot of different things I understand that it's not good to Compete on price Here's the deal with price if you've got a unique product I have a unique product, you know, we do these canned meats that are long-term food storage And they're gonna be more expensive than other products out there and I can do that because it's unique There's nobody else out there really that has what we have we've had people try to compete with us over the years They've all failed every single one of them has failed It's tried to do it because we have a specialized process that being said if I'm selling something More unique than somebody else than price doesn't matter for example my courses You can buy Facebook ads courses all over the place, but you can't buy my course from anywhere But me and my affiliates so you know, I don't have to worry about pricing So what I would say to you when pricing is if you get into a commodity thing if you're selling I don't know chairs anybody can sell a chair But if you're selling a really unique chair that they can't get other places you can charge more for it So I don't want to compete on pricing. I would rather have unique products. So that's the direction I go Let's see is moving to Texas purely financial or more freedom. How much will you say I'll save enough in taxes Richard to pay for the house How's that? So let me tell you why we move. There's politics. I don't like in California I I don't I don't like big government and people tell me what to do. So that's one of the reasons The personal income tax In California is like I think it's 14% And there is none in Texas the corporate tax I think is eight or nine percent in California. It's 1% in Texas. So that covers the tax port The cost of living there is a whole lot less money. The weather is very nice in Texas Now, I know it gets a little bit hotter in the summer And maybe a tad colder in the winter but not much I mean, it's down to freezing in San Diego now in the summertime. We've had degrees up in the 100s So that did it plus we were able to build a house that what we wanted the size we wanted to have a nice piece of land nice community We don't in no offense to homeless people, but we don't have the homeless issues not that we have it in our neighborhood here But it's encroaching on our neighborhoods There's so many things there that you know, it's really changed plus the Centralization of where Texas is I can fly to the East Coast the West Coast, you know, Vegas wherever I went pretty quickly And being in California. I couldn't do that. You know, we have relatives in Virginia And my wife likes to go back there. So it was really tough It was an entire day flight from San Diego to Virginia. Whereas this is gonna be two three hours three hours Yeah from Austin to Virginia. So that'll be a lot easier. So there was a lot of things coming into play a lot So yeah, next thing I want to talk about Is quality website traffic and visitor conversion. This is another big one Building designing and running an e-commerce website is hard but receiving quality converting traffic is even harder Getting good people to your site According to the owner of black and Bianco She says it's really hard to get business and I'm just looking at some of my research. I've done on this stuff Conversion rates globally are less than 3% on an e-commerce site making driving relevant traffic to your site a real sticking point How do we get them there? Richard's saying here In Houston real estate auctions have been shut down by the County leader. Ah, sorry to hear that. So my title search biz is very slow So I'm promoting in other areas across Texas for now If you need any help with that, let me know Richard To turn your traffic into converting customers You must have a website that really is modern clean user-friendly trustworthy and virus free That's a big thing Every industry is different. So understanding your audience is crucial to designing a website that really resonates with your audience Having an attractive well run website and you know when we think of attractive websites I see people put so much into it and there's so much stuff going on And it's really cleaner and simpler is the thing that works don't have a real busy website Don't have a lot of things there for them to do simple things is what we want to do Extensive short tail research can be conducted For your SEO processes, and they work a whole lot better than trying to optimize two or three words that there's so much competition for Understand that relevant, you know what how who where within your niche don't even count in your SEO search today It's it's I think easier to do SEO because people aren't doing the long tail And that's what we do is long tail Therefore engaging the customer and getting their attention has not been as meaningful or as impactful Because people are trying to go after these really high competition words The next thing I'll tell you about is visibility How are you supposed to get quality traffic to your site turn these visitors and the customers if you can't find the site to begin with Okay, you got to be able to find your site It's a big issue for e-commerce businesses and one that could make or break your business Okay, so you need to show up on that first page if you can if you search survival cake food Obviously, we're going to show up on the first page, but we also show up on the first page for you know Can meet can chicken can beef all these different things that we sell we show up on the first page Which is really nice So the best way to overcome this challenge is to invest in SEO e-commerce companies should really conduct keyword research Implement SEO practices and work on building these high authority links to their website Super important that we do that And the next thing I'm gonna tell you about what you probably don't even think about But this is the one thing that will make you a lot of sales on your site And that is your retouch. Excuse me your return and refund policy Having a good return and refund policy could be the difference between success and failure I know that sounds extreme, but it's really really true If you want your brand to really stand out Then customer satisfaction should be your first policy They've got to feel like there's no risk in buying from you think about it You know if you buy I know if I buy from Amazon That I know no matter what it is I buy I can send it back. I'm not worried about it Same thing with your products. Okay, same thing with all of our survival foods Anybody can send it back if they are not happy. We have almost zero refunds almost zero. I mean literally In the past three years, I don't think we've had a refund not one and we've done millions of dollars of business I mean during 2020 our business was through the roof through the roof no refunds None the only time we have a problem is if something gets damaged and heck yeah if it's damaged I'd want my money back too as far as my courses go. We have a good refund policy now a good refund policy is also Letting people know up front what that refund policy is if somebody gets one of my courses You know for 14 days or 30 days or whatever they get a 100% refund However, however, and I will say however they have to go through the course and try the course That's part of the refund policy You can't buy my course and then a day later say I want my money back It doesn't work that way it works like you buy my course you implement all these things You show me that you implemented these things and if you don't get results I'm gonna give your money back if you don't make money and you could determine how much money that is if you didn't make it up But you do have to go through the course and that's what trips up a lot of people is they will buy these courses And then they want to refund but they haven't done anything and never went through the course They never even tried how do you expect a course to make you money if you don't even try? It won't work. So having that refund policy and spelling that out letting the people know that and when I do a webinar I say hey, we'll do a hundred percent refund The only thing we ask is that you go through the course and try it that sounds reasonable, right? I think it is And guys feel free like I say put your comments questions suggestions in that chat box I'll be happy to answer you and what other thing here's my little commercial I'm not trying to sell you anything hey subscribe to the channel really do that I am less than 100 subscribers away from 5,000 which makes this channel a fame bit channel fame bit channel Which which we can do endorsements. I won't be doing that many But you know we can do that James Breen says do your customers pay shipping on refunds Generally no if it's our fault if it's our fault no If they don't like the product You know we work it out on a case-by-case basis, but I just don't have that I would I would say in the past 11 years we may have had five or six people who didn't like the product No kidding and I'm talking millions and millions of sales because it's that good of a product when you taste our food You're gonna go holy crap. This is amazing. It's really good food. It's not supermarket stuff It's better than supermarket. It's not the kind of survival food that you go Oh my god, I have to eat this when you taste it I mean literally see my wife because we have like cans of chicken or beef will give my dog every now and then you know We'll just take out some meat and give it to her and my wife is eating it out of the can going oh my god This is so good because it's super high quality because we put that label of survival K food on people go Oh my god survival thing. It's not gonna be good. It's great quality. So that's one thing you could do to reduce refunds is Have great quality. That's a big thing I'd like to recommend your Facebook ad course to my author clients as an affiliate Is there a way to take a peek at the course first? I don't just give it away because honestly I Have had literally thousands of people going hey, can I get a free course and I want to sell it So that's why we kind of shut that off However, if you know my training and you know me and you know you see what I do the course is a lot better than what You see for free. I can tell you that and you can go to click bank and you can become an affiliate for that course If you're a cartra member, I also have it in cartra. So you can find it in cartra. You can also promote it there Let's see here Cameron what's going on? What's going on buddy my Cameron dude there in Pakistan James Breen. Wow. That's awesome cool Finding the right market guys. That's the next thing don't think That your product is for everybody now you may be able to just justify in your mind Everybody should have your product I can justify in my mind that everybody should have my survival pooch. Yeah, I can justify that That doesn't mean everybody's going to buy it. That doesn't mean everybody's interested in it So I shouldn't try to market to everybody. You got to find your right market You got to market to a niche a niche niche something like that So that's my next thing is find the right market And the next thing is making and increasing sales. You got to get sales to make money You got to get sales to make money and the only way you're going to do that is market your stuff and learn marketing You know, I've had people trying to steal my courses my videos all kinds of stuff But they can't sell it because they don't know how to market. Okay. I have the right emails I have the right sales pages. I know what to say in videos. I know how to market They don't know how to market so even with a stolen product, they didn't pay for they can't sell it They can't sell it because they don't know how to market and if you knew how to market You wouldn't have to steal anything from anybody. Okay, because that's the real skill is marketing Aside from customers already having in mind what they need You've got to make your stuff sound more attractive. That's super super important. So That's my list of things that you need to do to be successful I will entertain some questions here now. So feel free to put whatever questions you got in there We're approaching about 23 minutes. I've been on let me get a little sip here.  That's what I want you to do And also the other thing that really helps and I didn't realize this and till just recently is a thumbs up If you guys would just please take a second click that thumbs up. It costs you zero But it will bring you amazing. Good luck. I've heard of people winning the lottery right after clicking that thumbs up No, sure. Seriously. No, they're really they do. Okay. So what else we got in here After my illustrator courses, I will work at up works, but lock down. Okay. That's very cool Richard says, can you review or critique both websites of mine? Uh above some time Not quite sure you're watching me by above some time I can give you a little input if you want to send me a link to something sure Now we don't do a thorough Breakdown because I do charge for that. That's not free, but we can do that. Uh, and we do charge for that Richard, obviously um I was doing photoshop. That's very cool. I like doing photoshop too. I did do some stuff on canva yesterday We are going on a trip to a really nice resort And I think we're going to be reviewing some of their rooms there So I had to, you know, give them some information about what we would do in videos You may see that video about a really nice resort on the east coast very soon That will be on my channel. Uh, you forgot to mention your books. Yes, I have books If you want books, I have a book on how to find right products Uh, I have a book on um called the great american food shortage. You can find that at amazon Let me put that in here. Thank you so much james Um Check out my book on amazon called the great american food shortage You know that that's an interesting book too because I wrote that I think 2016 everybody thought I was crazy And then when this illness hit the world we ran out of food the grocery stores It was exactly what I said in the book. Uh, so it's kind of funny. Uh, let's see here Man, you guys have some good stuff. Thank you so much for posting in here when looking for customers in a niche How do you target them in market selling which you want to sell? Find out where they are. That's a great question. Find out where they are. So let's say I determine I want to sell my survival food to people who are survivalists and preppers Find out where they are. Um looking groups looking blogs. Um, look look online, you know There's so many like facebook groups and stuff like that. That's where they live. That's where they are You can also target them through google ads, uh, which we also do that Let's see here. Man good stuff in here guys Uh By the way that friday lunch looked good. It was good, you know just get in like hers as much as I like mine But it's pretty good and guys if you don't know every friday. I go out to lunch with my wife I've done it for years now probably Good seven or eight years and we post some pictures and we couldn't do it as much during the illness But you know, we're back to doing that now Uh great pointers for success and thanks for the super advice re-ecom sites. Sure. No problem my friend That's my buddy richard brown Cameron oh make a blog you're gonna make a blog good. I think that's awesome Paul so in jessica's biz is she going to expand her product line? Um, she has no plans to do so Now however, that doesn't mean she won't um, she's put a lot of effort She has a diy channel on youtube and she also has a pet training on youtube and she's gonna put a lot of effort into that So she'll be there doing that Richard I sent a message here that was missed that had the links read prior to message of mine If you put links in this chat it probably got Taken out or Richard you can't really put them in this chat section anytime you try to put a website or links It will delete it. So I won't even see it. Um, so I will tell you that's probably what happened to that Uh, but you're welcome to send me something via email the novel by vince flinn deals with shortages and Possibilities of widespread panic when terrorists take down bread.  Are you worried about the zombie apocalypse? I'm like, no, that's the end of the world. You don't need to prepare for that.  That's craziness. That's not happening We we have people who are intelligent and educated and realize grocery stores run out of stuff Okay, when there's a storm when there's a hurricane an earthquake Civil unrest and grocery stores get burned down, which we just saw happen. Okay, so that's what we do We sell to intelligent prepared people makes sense, right? Let's see here Yeah, and keep putting those suggestions in there guys and those comments in there now If you're watching this and it's not live I can still answer your questions. You've got to put it in the comments section below Right down there the comments section and I swing back by and I answer them And you can ask some people in here. I do come back and answer your questions Is that not right put it in the chat if I've answered a question for you at the best Any questions you want to put on those videos? I go out there. I look for them and try to help you guys out I try to give you useful information. So I definitely do that Need to check out Her do it yourself channel love the testimonials you had about your canned food. Well, thank you very much Yeah, people do tend to like it. I mean they they like it and that's been going strong for over a decade now That's hard to believe because you know, I just came up with that idea And it it just really it grew into a thing of its own now, you know, people have been buying it for years and eating it And I've helped a lot of people I know I get I get messages from people say my god, we cracked out your food We fed the neighborhood we helped a lot of people were so glad we had your food Then I have people say well, I make recipes with it and we cook with it on a weekly basis It's become a staple item for a lot of people And you know it all started because I tried to sell cell phone cases and I failed But I didn't fail because failures build your successes, right? Everybody forgot that I failed at cell phone cases Everybody forgot that I failed at selling little trinkets and stuff online Everybody forgot that and they just focused it on the the success, which is what I told you in the beginning If you try people will forget about your failures and they only remember your successes. That's how it works guys That's how it works. But if you never try Your lack of trying will be painfully obvious to everybody. Okay? That's all they're going to see is your lack of trying.  So don't worry about what they think about you It doesn't matter uh, let's see here need your recipe For the uk I'm not quite sure what you mean about that You mean the food or the way to market because the uk is no difference We market to the uk too not not my food because we can't ship there Do you track what's trending to see what's selling 100% I look at I'm on my I'm on the email list for almost all my competitors in many different areas I I literally read hundreds of emails a day. I don't know that sounds excessive I check the stock market probably Yeah, I'd say 10 to 15 times a day to look at my stocks Um, I look at a lot of stuff on a daily basis. I read the news maybe five six times a day to see what's popped up There's no such thing as failure only feedback. Yes. That's 100 true. All this is data It's like, okay, I try that that doesn't work. So I must I might try this if that doesn't work on try this And that's how it works constantly and constantly learning stuff constantly learning stuff You got to add that many people are here in the uk doing white, uh, youtube outdoor channels Oh cool X army of bivying and survival in the field, etc Great number of views. Yeah Now here's the thing with youtube You can't quit I see too many people quit There's so many channels that have 50 subscribers 25 subscribers or even a thousand or 1500 subscribers.   You can't As soon as you get successful, you get a double down to work harder.  Why did you do that? My daughter was one of them and she's just restarted her channel. I mean she had like 2500 subscribers She was getting, you know, thousands of views and then just quit doing it Now I will say she had a two year old and she was pregnant with twins So she was a little busy But now she's got the twins are a year old and her son's three years old, I think now So she's back to her channel. She's working on it. She's getting views. She instantly Did some video or excuse me. She put some videos up and instantly got a ton of views So she's going to do well as long as she sticks with it. That's the key. You got to stick with it Um, let's see here. Do you still survive okay food outside the usa? Yes and no, um, I have shipped to australia However, some of it got caught in customs and they dumped it in the ocean of all things Because they didn't want pork when we had uh sent pork there and we have pork chicken turkey beef and ground beef I also have a Oh guys, I guess they're a distributor who will buy Pretty large quantities of our product and they send it to china But I don't sell to china We ship to the long beach port and they take care of it from there But we don't ship outside the us and we just don't do that We used to ship to canada, but it was too expensive and customs and duties and all that stuff was ridiculous Uh, let's see How long did you sell at weekend markets before switching fully online? When you were selling at markets were you also selling online at the same time? I've always sold online 100. I started off online Um, I started selling at gun shows and survivalist shows and that was in I want to say 2010 or 11 Paul and I personally did it Probably through 2015 help not me but helping out some of my retailers I have people now that go to gun shows and sell my products at gun shows Um, and that's to this day. So you can find it in gun shows across the country now I don't have as many doing it now because of the illness and they shut down those gun shows So a lot of those guys got to get ramped back up But I'm seeing a lot of my older retailers that have been with me for, you know, seven eight years Starting to come back now and selling more um The girl who has site wholesale ted is a great line of sale But not consistent definitely need to be consistent. Well, here's the problem And um, I know who you're talking about And wholesale ted is a great channel and she's a very sweet person, but she's seen a lot of success She's made a lot of money. That's what I was saying that success thing can kind of slow you down Because you got so much money coming in you don't have to do much You just don't and that's sara chris. She's an awesome person. Shout out to sara But when you have all that much money coming in you sit back and you go Well, I could do one video a month and make a lot of money and she can So, you know, how hard do you want to work? It's up to you now Maybe that is what she wants to do too, you know in all fairness She doesn't have to do a video every single day to have the money come in. It's not necessary however You know, we see it time and time again and I don't put her in this category You look at boxers who become like famous boxers as soon as they get comfortable They have a lot of money in a big house and all this stuff They start to lose they start to lose because they lose that that eye of the tiger. Remember that the eye of the tiger They don't they don't want it as hard because there's no fear of going back to a bad situation That's where most fighters come from is a bad situation And they're trying to fight to get out of there once they get out of there and they're in a great situation It's hard to be it's hard to be tough. It's hard to have that eye of the tiger anymore, right? It's really hard. So that's what happens there. So guys We've had a good session today. I think I'm going to duck out of here I hope you guys liked it if you did do me a favor put a comment in that chat section that you like this If you have ideas for other subjects, I'd like to hear that And I do entertain a lot of these other subjects. I make a list of them Somebody said something the other day. I think it could have been you Paul about credit cards and management of credit cards I do have 17 of them And I'll tell you why I have 17 of them at a later date And I'll show you how I make money off credit cards if they don't cost me money I make money off credit cards Because of the offers they have and because I have to buy supplies for my business anyhow So I use these cards to get points and all this good stuff So I will talk about that But guys, if you like this, if you like what I'm doing here, uh, please Let me know in that chat section.  Don't forget to ring the bell Yeah, I ring that bell a few times right during these trains My wife hates this bell. My dog. My dog hates this bell. Um, I happen to like my bell. I really do So, um, do me a favor and do that. Um, Let's see here Richard Brown. Let me see Richard Brown What's so good about these jr sessions is that my mind works over time. I love that. Yeah And you know what I'm going to read the rest of your comment in this section My daughter said that the other day I was just in the shower and I came up with this great idea for a video And the reason she came up with a great idea for videos because she had just done four videos When you start doing something and you're involved in it every day You'll start coming up with more and more ideas people usually sit back and they go when I get a great idea I'm going to start doing something No, no, no, no start doing something just doing things around that that area whatever it is And all of a sudden the great idea is going to come to you. That's how your brain works It gets in that gear. So when you're in that mode of doing something you'll come up with great ideas. That's how it works Have an idea or two for the uk re your business model. What's the best contact email for you? Um, you can send training at jrfisher.com training at jrfisher.com And that will get sorted My team takes a look at those and sends the right ones to me in case we get spam or something like that This was great. Thanks for sharing today brother. No problem. Paula. You're always Appreciated james bring peace and blessings. Always everyone see all monday. Thank you so much james Movie review bomb. Thanks paul share with friends. Yes. Thank you so much How close to five thousand, uh, you know paul, I know it's under a hundred I think I checked last night. I needed like 90 or something like that or 90 something Um, so very very close. We'll get there right? We'll get there It's a matter of not quitting. We'll get there. Maybe we'll get there today Maybe you guys will share this out today. It'll go viral and I'll get there today And if you don't I'm still going to get there because monday I'm going to be back again and I'm going to do another video and so will I on tuesday wednesday thursday friday And I'll get there. I'm not worried about it and I'm going to get to 50 000 I'm going to get to 100 000. I know it because I'm not going to quit and every time I do a video I get more views and if I get more views I get more subscribers. It's bound to happen. Right? It just is. Um Appreciate it. No problem richard Great and thanks richard brown Guys, you have a great day. Let me switch over to my other screen here real quick Uh, very uh christine. There you are christine. I didn't I didn't hear from you the whole time very good jr How can um You tell on your courses whether someone actually went through them and isn't just saying they did because the software and Cartra monitors them It shows me their degree of progress 10 20 on every single video in the course So I know exactly what they did and what they watched it records it all. That's why I love cartra You know, you know, I have people say well, I went through the course, but I don't understand this I'm like, no, you haven't you haven't even logged in yet. So I know everything they do Using cartra it monitors all of their activities pretty cool stuff, right can't fake me out Richard brown I'll get you one or two awesome sounds good You guys have a great day and I will see you on monday I'm taking it off tomorrow, but you guys have an awesome sunday put in some effort Be prepared on monday to tell me what you got accomplished. I will