Hello, everybody. JR Fisher here. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night, depending on what time zone you're in. I got to hit it right. I am joined by the lovely and talented Jessica. You want to say hi, Jessica? It is a bright and sunny. Gosh, it's really nice here today actually. It'll be 75 in San Diego. I'd like to know where you're from. If you would put your comments in the side there. Jessica's going to monitor that. And she's looking at it right now. So say hello. Put where you're from. All that good stuff. What's going on today? Give me some thumbs up. Give me some input there. I see we've got Marcus from San Jose. We've got Ginger from France. Oh, that's pretty cool. We've got Rebecca from Rhode Island. Who else you got over there, Jessica? Hi, everybody. Make sure you put something in that comment section. I want to make sure that you can hear me and I want to know who you are. Tell me about yourself. And it's all private guys. So when you put comments in that section, nobody sees it but us. So we're starting to see a lot of comments in here now. Jessica, you want to read off a couple? Mandy. What's up, Mandy? Let's see. Oh, Lusaka Zambia? Lusaka Zambia. That's a very cool name. I want a cool name. I got like two letters. Oh, that's where she's from. Well, that would be a cool name too. You got to admit. That would be a very cool name. Okay. Mita is from Connecticut. Mita, what's going on, man? I see you all time. Alina is also from Connecticut. Alina is from Connecticut. Hey, Alina, you ought to meet Mita. You're both in Connecticut. Who else we got? Wayne is in Fakersfield. Wayne, what's going on, buddy? Good to see you again. We've got Thomas there in Pensacola. We've got 9C. I can't pronounce that. It looks like in the UK. We've got all kinds of people out there. So that's really good. Okay, so you can hear me. I know some of you in the US are getting ready for the holidays. And that's very cool. And we are pretty much getting ready, I think. Are we ready, Jessica? Mandy says he's a he. Mandy says he's a he. Sorry about that, Mandy. I'm not sure if I'm saying his name wrong then. Okay. Well, maybe, you know, maybe Jessica's, it's Jessica's fault then. It's not my fault. So this is a bright Friday. It is a little after 11 a.m. on December 20th of 2019. And we're about to end the year. As a matter of fact, we will not have a coaching session, guys. Next Friday, obviously because of the calendar. Let me check the calendar real quick before we get going here.  What's going on. Yeah. So we won't have one next week. So I won't see you guys till next year. And that will be a whole new decade, man. We've seen so much happen. This decade, I know with us, Jessica, right? 10 years, a lot of things change. Yeah, we started our business. We built a brand and that's what I'm going to be talking about today. And I got such a good response last week. So today is going to be secrets to grow your brand and increase your sales. I got such a good response about you guys getting a preview to one of my YouTube videos. I did another one on branding. So it's going to sound like you're watching a YouTube video because I talk about subscribing and all that kind of stuff. But you guys are getting sneak preview because you're inner circle people. Now there's a couple of you on here that are not inner circle and you've been invited. And that's pretty cool. We got you in here for free so you can kind of see what the inner circle people get. But we're going to talk about building a brand and I've got a little bit of knowledge in that area. I built a brand called Survival Cave Food. And let me give you some statistics on that guys before we get started first. My brand started in 2010 and it actually started because of a mistake. And the mistake was the company, I was selling some survival food from another company and they couldn't supply it. I was having sales canceled and I was just terrible. I'm money taken out of my account. I lost my eBay account at the time. I have it all back now but so I had to start my own brand. So that's what I did. So I think I'm qualified to speak in this area. That brand is still out there and we sell stuff every day off that brand. Today it's on thousands of websites including eBay, Amazon and even Walmart. You can find my products and it's called Survival Cave Food. It's the brand right there, SurvivalCakeFood.com. We do freeze ride, dehydrated and we have a line of canned meats. We actually have shipped recently to China some pretty big orders. So it is now an international brand, which is pretty cool I thought. So I'm going to talk to you today about branding in this video that I'm going to play for you and kind of talk to you how you can build your own brand. Now you may think, oh my gosh, I just want to be able to sell a product. I don't need to have my own brand. I don't need to do all that. But you know what, it's not that hard to do. I knew nothing about it whatsoever. And I just got some products and had them made and slapped my name on it and went out and marketed it, which I'm going to share with you today. So you can do the same thing if you want. And the cool thing is if you have your own brand, other people who just want products to sell, you can approach them and that's what I did. You know, if you were to, one matter of fact, I did Google Survival Cave Food. I googled it last night when I did this. This was the results I got when I googled it. Check that out guys, 20,700,000 results when I put in Survival Cave Food. And I understand it's searching for survival and cave and food, but I can pretty much promise you the first four or five pages of Google is all my products. If you notice the first result that's organic is survivalcavefood.com. That is actually my website. And yeah, so we're the number one results out of 20 million. So I know something about that. I also noticed they have the wrong address for it. They put Falcon Way and we're on Trina Street. So I put in a change for that last night. But so yeah, that's pretty much it. We're going to talk about how you can build this brand today and do some of the same stuff. So this is the actual video I made. Now this has not been fully edited. So don't expect this to be perfect because it's not, but this is what I did and just got this video together yesterday for you guys so you can see it. Jessica, I'm having a couple people ask me about joining the Inner Circle. So can you put the link for that? They want to join that. Guys, the Inner Circle is a pretty cool thing. And check your emails. Yeah, you know what? I'm going to tell you what, guys, I'm running a special just this weekend. And if you're on my email list, you can get in the Inner Circle for half price, which is pretty awesome. So check that out. So let's get this thing going, guys. How to grow your brand and increase your sales. Be seen and be known. Are you trying to become more visible online? Are you trying to grow your brand and let people see you more and more and more? Well, you've come to the right place because in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to increase your brand and be seen all over the place. And we're starting right now. Hey, I'm JR Fisher. If you're new to my channel, do me a favor. You got to subscribe. Hit that subscribe button below there. Once you do that, you got to turn on notifications. Super important that you ring the bell. There's a little bell next to that subscribe button. Then you got to turn on all notifications. And guess what? You will become part of the VIP group. That's right, the Fisher family. And that way I can notify you every single time I do a new video. I've been selling online since like 2009. And I've sold millions of dollars of both physical and digital products. Because a matter of fact, my products are listed on thousands of websites including Walmart. On this channel, all I do is share with you how you can start running, grow your online business and have real success. Okay. At the end of this video, I'm even going to give you a bonus. It is a free e-commerce course. All you have to do is click the link in the description. You can grab it for free. No credit card needed. Okay. Let's get started with your brand and how you can start increasing your awareness. Okay. Check out this infographic here.  And if you check it out, you may know some of these logos because of the color, because of the style. And none of them are really that complicated. But as you look through them, I bet a lot of these are very familiar to you. Now, these companies have spent years and years and I don't know how many millions of dollars building up these brands. But it was really important for them to do so so that when you just look at them, you can recognize exactly what the brand is and what they do. That's what you want to do for your company, too. Okay. First off, what is brand awareness? When we say brand awareness, what are we really talking about? Here's the thing. If people don't know who you are, the odds of them purchasing from you are very slim. So we want to first let people know who you are and what you do. Once people know who you are, it's really important to educate them about what you do, about what your company is about.  For example, think about Starbucks. Now, Starbucks is a very well-known brand. And if you were to see their logo from a distance, you know exactly what Starbucks is. They have built up all these good feelings about the company. As a matter of fact, you probably know the reward system. You know the point system. You probably know what your regular order is every single day. You know, they generally have a pretty clean environment. And you can go in there and you can sit for hours and work online, which I've been guilty of many, many times. I still do that. But you know a lot about the company. So just seeing that logo can bring in some really good feelings for you. Now, the question is how can you build brand awareness for your company? And I want to let you know Rome wasn't built in a day. This stuff takes time. You know, people are not going to automatically just fall for your brand. They have to get some information from you. They have to get some content from you. They have to receive something in advance that they see as value to really make your brand more valuable to them so that they'll purchase your products over your competitors. On the surface level, you want to be able to target your audience. You want to get them to know who you are up front. Now, one of the big keys is focusing on brand recall. Now, a couple of minutes ago, we talked about Starbucks. And as soon as you saw that emblem, certain things would pop into your head. Certain things would engage and you would say, oh yeah, that's Starbucks. That's where I can get my coffee high. That's where I can get that special drink I want. That's where I can get Wi-Fi. That's where I can collect more points. So all those things were triggered in their head as soon as they saw that logo. And that's what we're shooting for on your brand. You also have to be consistent among all the different platforms you use. That consistency across all platforms is super important. Okay, so let's talk about some components that we can use to add to our branding strategy. Number one is consistency is key. Consistency means that you're going to be doing whatever post, whatever content, whatever tweets, whatever it is on a consistent basis. This is super important. So if you decide that you're going to post once a day, you've got to post once a day from now on, or change your strategy. If you can't post once a day, maybe once a week or once a month, but make sure it's consistent. Don't do like a whole lot of post in one week, and then the next week do nothing, and then wait three months, and then do two more. That's not consistent. That won't help you build your brand. The other thing about consistency is it helps with SEO, search engine optimization. If the search engine see that a particular brand or a particular company or page is posting on a consistent basis, it's going to increase your overall SEO so that your generic search results are going to come up higher in the rankings. Now, there's a couple things to consistency that people forget about, and the search engines really know this. You want to make sure that your NAP or your name, address, and phone numbers are consistent across all platforms. So let's say on your website, you have the law offices of JR Fisher, but on Yelp, it's law and order JR Fisher. You can't do that. They have to be consistent across all the different platforms. If you don't have your name, address, and phone number consistent across all platforms, then search engines probably won't index you as high. Now, another thing I want to tell you about this is a lot of people say, well, I don't want to have an address there and I don't want to have a phone number there. You can certainly not do that, but the thing is it's going to lower you in the rankings. If you don't want your personal address there, get a PO box. You can use a PO box, that's fine, but I will tell you for SEO purposes, PO boxes rank lower than street addresses do. So that's something you want to consider. Next thing you want to consider is having a phone number. And you say, well, I don't want to have my personal phone number there. You don't have to. You could go to something like Google Voice and have a phone number from there so that you actually have a phone number. Make sure that's consistent across all the different platforms. Okay, as you can see in this picture right here, brands are consistent in everything you do. They need to become a trusted and reliable source for your customers to have so they can return again and again. And this is a good example of it right here. Number two, invest in advertising. I know everybody wants to do everything free nowadays. Well, there's free social media and I can just tweet, I can do post, but understand that that will work, but it's going to take a lot longer for you to do it. You can actually buy an audience by doing advertising and spending money on those things. So if you want to really increase your brand awareness, doing ads is super important. Make sure when you do ads, then you try to hit as many platforms as possible too. So if you can hit more platforms, you're going to increase your audience. This doesn't have to be done. I mean, you can focus on one platform. But keep in mind, if you do decide to go to several different platforms, you want to make sure your message is consistent. You don't want to have one logo on one platform and a little bit different logo or color on another platform. They have to be consistent throughout every single platform that you use. Another thing you can do is blogging. Now companies that do blogging generally have about a 67% higher rate of leads per month than those companies who do not blog. So if you have the time or the staff to do this, blogging can be really helpful to building your brand. You can also run ads on Google. You can use Google AdWords and you can run ads in the search results. And you can also run ads on YouTube by using video ads. When doing advertising, you can also do display ads, which in this case here, as you can see, there's a display ad on the search result here. This is something you can do through Google and it can also help your brand awareness too.  And I understand with ads you can actually calculate based on what you spent your return on investment. So you'll know how many people clicked, you'll know how many people bought. Nowadays you can really control your advertising to where it is exact and you'll know exactly what you're getting out of it. So don't forget, advertising can really help you. Number three, make sure you have a social media presence. This is so very important. In today's digital age, most people are spending their time online. They don't watch TV, so you really aren't going to build a brand by running ads on TV. Not even that, that was even economical to do. But you've got to do this and you've got to be consistent about this. The same as with your ads or anything else, you've got to post on a regular basis and put this content out so they get to know you. Now something else that's super important is that you have to interact with your audience nowadays. Too often I will see people posting comments or questions on somebody's page and they don't ever reply to it. I'm saying that's crazy. You've got to reply to each and every person and if you say, oh my God, that's a lot of work. I mean that would really take up a lot of my time, you are right. And that's what it takes nowadays to build a brand. If you don't have time to do that, you can hire a social media person and they can go in there. But the whole thing is if somebody has a problem and you solve it, you have built a customer right there. Somebody has a question and you can answer it for them. It's so very important that when you get these comments on any of your posts, whether it's a post or it's a video or it's a blog or whatever it is that you do answer each and every one. The next thing you can do is live stream.  You can go live on Facebook. And when you go live, it seems like more people are willing to watch it. Now it's not as great as it was a few years ago. It used to be when somebody went live, everybody watched because they thought they had to see it right then and they finally figured out, well, I can always watch that later on. But going live every now and then is a great way to build your audience or just interact with your audience. I have a Facebook group called The Art of E-commerce Success. I asked a bunch of members to sign up every now and then. I will go live and I'll call out all those members. I'll call out their names and I'll say, hey, welcome to this group. We really appreciate having you here. And them hearing me talk about their name really, really do like that. So do that on a regular basis also. The next thing you can do is create your own hashtag on Instagram.  Because if you don't encourage them to use it, they won't do it. If you don't encourage them to comment, okay, so it's really important that you remind the people of this. And in every post you do, make sure you have a good CTA or call to action. In other words, they like your brand, they like what you've got to say, they like the content. What do they do next? So you want to make sure you always have a call to action. You can say, you know, download my free report by clicking here or get my latest book or buy my whatever by clicking here. So make sure you always have a CTA in every single post that you do. So make sure that that CTA that call to action is easily accessible. And what I mean by that is if you're doing a post, let's say on Facebook you want to make sure that that call to action is in the very top of your text because what's going to happen on Facebook is they're going to have all your texts there and if it's real long there's a little bud that says see more and it's going to knock your CTA or your call to action below that area and as soon as it gets knocked below that area your odds of having a click go down a whole lot. Now, check out this post right here. This is an Instagram account called food in the air and it has gained 389,000 followers and it built enough brand awareness to have its own hashtag which is hashtag F-I-T-A and hashtag food in the air. In this post they also have hashtag bagels which is generic but if someone is searching for photos of bagels they might just stumble across their account. Make sure you have a clean and clear theme to all of your posts. The tone and the colors and the style that you use really are going to set up the brand awareness in somebody's head but they see it. Creating a theme is so very important that all your photos in your account all kind of have the same feel. Now, Nisalo's shoes has a clean Instagram theme and all of their photos have similar tones so when a customer sees a photo that looks similar to their theme they will associate it with their company. Not to mention having a consistent theme just looks nice and put together and more professional. Now you can also use Pinterest and a lot of people will say well that's an old thing nobody uses that anymore but they actually do and if you have nice clean, clear crisp pictures in there you can get a lot of interaction on Pinterest. Number four is partner with other big brands and what I mean is start to comment, start to interact with some of these other brands out there. It's really important to build a relationship first but once you've done that you can partner with them and use their brand awareness to promote your company and help you do giveaways and build your brand awareness. Okay, check this out. This vlogger and influencer partnered with another brand for a healthy giveaway. Contests like this are perfect because in order to enter Instagram users have to follow both brands. You can easily increase your follower growth and make people aware of your brand by doing this. Alright, check out this partnership. It is a giveaway between Brands Rifle Paper Company a stationary lifestyle brand and Lossetain a line of natural beauty products. An interesting partnership right? I mean Rifle Paper Company actually designed some packaging for Lossetain's products. These are more well known brands but they have taken a collaboration to social media in order to gain more exposure. I mean check it out. Even really huge brands will partner. Apple partnered with Hermes and they came out with a fashion watch really expensive one but that was their Apple Series 3 iWatch and that got a lot of recognition. Another thing you can do number five is refer a friend. If you've got some loyal customers out there, if you've got some loyal purchasers out there, you can ask them to refer a friend and build your audience that way. Now Blue Apron is very famous for their refer a friend program where both people actually get some benefits. With Blue Apron when you refer a friend, you can actually get discounts on your orders. Blue Apron has it set up when you refer a friend, that friend can get a free trial and that's pretty cool because it saves them advertising dollars because all they have to do is build up a loyal customer and as all those people refer out more and more people and get out more free trials, they build their customer base. Number six offer a free trial right up front. This is a great way to build an audience. A lot of times if somebody can try out your product or service in advance, they'll actually end up buying from you. Now Shopify does this too but their trial doesn't even require a credit card. They'll build out an entire store for you and let you use it. Oftentimes the free version won't come with all the bells and whistles. Maybe you could hold back part of the things that you would normally get if you were paid member. But I can tell you Shopify now has over 70 million users by using this free trial type of marketing. Number seven do something positive. You know there's so much negative in the world now we hear all these negative things. If a company can partner with the idea that they're doing something positive, that's pretty good. Number eight is respond to all the positive comments and use this to your advantage. Another thing you can do is have a positive cause. I know Domino's did this with pizza and for a certain number of pizzas they were fixing potholes and robes and their positive thing was pizzas for potholes and that became a big marketing campaign. Number eight is provide value. Now you're going to provide value. One of the things you could do with this blog should be helpful to people. It should give them tips and tricks and things they could do. I know our blog on our survival food site talks about protecting your family and what to do in times of a storm and what to do if an earthquake hits or whatever. So it's just useful information. You can do this in a written blog. You can also do this in videos on YouTube. If you go to my YouTube channel which is JR Fisher Training, you will find that on that channel you can actually get useful information about your business. Like you're watching one of the videos right now on this channel. Number nine is entertain. The more entertaining you can be, right, along with education, the better off you are. Shoveys is a clothing brand that has built enormous following. Their marketing goal was to target the younger generation but also be as entertaining as possible. In this example, their main focus is on posting great content that will entertain their audience and make them laugh. Without this fun, their free content, the Shoveys brand may get lost in the mix of other clothing companies that sell similar products. Number ten is retargeting. Retargeting is so important.  Maybe they bought from you. Maybe they just visited your website but it's been found that if you retarget customers, they're eight to ten times more likely to buy your product if they've already interacted with your company.  I really appreciate you watching this video. Don't forget to subscribe below. Hit that subscribe button there. Turn on notifications. Get that notification bell.  Also, don't forget, grab my free course. There's a free e-commerce course below in the description. All you gotta do is click it and learn how to make your brand required. Thanks for listening to this video and I'll see you in the next one. Okay guys, I'm back live now and, you know, understand this video is not edited all the way. It goes to my video editor and he makes it look pretty and puts words on the screen and does all that stuff. But since you're inner circle people, you get early access to all this stuff before anybody else does. Now the cool thing is Jessica is going to put a link in comment section if you go to that channel what you want to do is subscribe to it and then turn on all notifications and that way when I do one of these videos and it goes up on YouTube, it'll actually send you an email and it'll say, hey, JR just did this new video. You may want to check it out. I'd like to take a few questions. We have tons of questions in here. You guys have been really good about that. Really appreciate the questions too and keep putting them in there. Okay, so right now after you've solved this, you probably have more questions and I get it. So stick them in there. This is your opportunity since you are inner circle folks that you can actually ask these questions and get them answered and not have to pay me for consulting which is really cool. So make sure you're putting them in there right now and then I'm going to go ahead and go through some of them with Jessica. I do want to go through real quick for the people in here who are not inner circle members what you get out of the gross. Well, there we go. There we go. First off, when you join something like the inner circle what it really does is it gives you answers to all your questions. So in the inner circle, if somebody has an issue has a problem, they can actually we have a special group. They can actually join the group on Facebook and they can ask a lot of these questions. They can also email our staff. They get input from me.  Let me go to the next screen here. Everybody's always asking what areas can I submit stuff? What do you help me with? Almost everything. Ads, landing pages, websites, products, pricing. If you're working on funnels we can help you with that. Your emails, subject lines, headlines. Imagine having me kind of stand over your shoulder and say, hey, this is what we're going to do next. That's kind of what the inner circle is. Any of the ideas you have we can go through your frustrations. If you're having problems and failures, and everybody has failures, but if you have successes, we'll talk about those. Now we can increase those successes because that's what we want to do. I always get asked about Cartra. It is the single best piece of software. If you're going to market online guys, you need Cartra. I don't care if you've got MailChimp or Constant Contact or Infusionsoft or Aweb, I've had them all. Cartra beats them all and it's cheaper. I run all of my funnels, all of my marketing, all my emails, everything through Cartra. It has a membership site in there. You can get a $1 trial by going to that link on the screen right now. It's bit.ly. Cartra-UpperCaseJR and if you go to that link you don't have to put in a credit card to do anything. A video will play there and it will show you what Cartra will do for you. It will blow your mind. I mean just watch the video. It will blow your mind. It's the best Christmas gift or holiday gift you can give yourself is getting into Cartra. Use that link there because it does give you a discount. We're going to get into some questions and some thoughts. We brought back the cat and we brought back Shaq because they're just good people to have on the screen when we're going through all these questions. Jessica, could you hit me with a couple of the questions? There's a bunch over there. One person did ask me how long it took me to build a brand. There isn't really a length of time. I'm building it today and it's been 10 years. If you ask Coca-Cola or Walmart or any of these companies, how long does it take to build a brand, you're always building it. It just never stops. It just doesn't stop. You say, well, my guys will have to work forever. Yeah, you probably will but it's okay. You got to work for somebody else. You might as well work for yourself. Jessica, you want to hit me with a couple of questions? I plan on building up in 2020. Guests, vloggers are encouraged. What happens when you incorporate them and then you have to concern yourself about consistency of addresses? Not sure that I present the problem as clearly as I should. Sorry. Alina, I think what you're saying is people are going to be commenting. Is that or blogging in there? If they're guest bloggers or something like that. Now, the way you can set up your site and most sites have this where when somebody puts in information it has to have approval from an administrator before it goes live and I would certainly recommend you doing that because you don't want just anybody posting in your site stuff. You just don't want that. Put in the comments if that's what you mean or try to clarify that a little bit. Jessica, do you have some other comments over there? Danny says, do you think an animated GIF logo has value for notizability? GIF logo. I will tell you that logos mean very little. We concentrate on them way too much in the beginning. I see people spending weeks or months on a logo and if you look at something like Nike it's a swish. That's it. Most logos for big companies are very simple. They're recognizable. If you look at the woman or whatever it is for Starbucks it's just recognizable. That's the thing. I think I would answer your question directly. I think that would be tough because how are you going to put an animation on station area or how are you going to put animation if you're having somebody else promote your products or on your labels or whatever it is. I think that would make it really difficult. I've never seen an animated logo so my personal opinion is I would stay away from it. I want it as simple as I possibly can. If you look at the inner circle logo that's on the screen right now that's pretty simple. It's got my name. It says inner circle and it's got this bird up there and it kind of says what we do. I would keep it as simple as you possibly can. What I was referring to is your comment about the box looking for consistency of addresses running through your site. I'm not sure how that would apply. I don't know how to guess people would be doing anything with your address. Your name, address, phone number just has to be consistent across all of your platforms. In other words I don't know, I don't do Twitter that's a bad example, but on your website on your YouTube channel on your Facebook page all of those need to be consistent to build a brand is kind of what I was referring to in there. I don't know how somebody outside of your company would have anything to do with that. Outside of the fact that unless you're allowing them to post their contact information on there that may be what you mean in a mall type situation and that wouldn't affect you because what Google does is they look for the name address phone number on the site itself not on individual posts and that may be what she's referring to I think Jessica. Let's see I actually have a number of people asking kind of variations of the same question and that is how would they build a brand if they're selling AliExpress products well that's a good question actually because I know what you're saying you're selling other people's products you're really not selling your own products but you know Amazon sells other people's products matter of fact I think I heard this morning that 61% of the products on Amazon are sold by third parties it's not even sold by Amazon so what they've done is they did their platform they say this is the place where you can get anything you can get it fast you can get it cheap we have quick delivery so you can brand something even if you're not selling your own products now Amazon does have some of their own products and they do some of their own shipping now but for years they didn't it was just a place to go and it actually started off selling used books oh good good good I did something right today I like to start off the day doing something right that's pretty cool alright so we've got a couple other questions in here somebody's saying how did you get all those other sites to sell your products Mark's asking that question Mark it was not easy matter of fact it was really difficult and it took literally thousands of emails I would go into people's sites and I would go into their contact information I would find the company address and then I would send an email to that particular website and I would explain to them I had these survival foods and I thought it would match up to their site and I explained to them my program where they didn't have to stock anything they didn't have to pay for anything they could actually list it on their site and when they listed it on their site and somebody bought it they could collect all the money I wouldn't be involved in that at all and then I would give them a wholesale cost they could send me the order and then finally we do that for Walmart we do it for Amazon, eBay and thousands of other websites that same business model now I didn't stop there and just send an email I also would try to find a phone number and I would call them up and I would say hey this is JR with survival cave food and we've got this great product if I could get them on the phone and I would tell them all about it and I made literally hundreds of phone calls doing that so I'm not going to tell you it's easy it's not because once you get some people that will carry your products what I would do is I would send an email and I would say hey you know survival warehouse I want you to sell my product and if you check all these links all these other websites are selling my product and they're competitors of yours so I kind of would say like hey if you're not selling it these people could outsell you because now they've got my product and you don't and you know people are going to be asking for it so you know I never really said it in that many words but what I did do is list out all the sites not all the sites but you know maybe five or six of the sites that are selling my product right now that were bigger ones that they would recognize and that way I got them to sell my products too so that's another way you could go about doing it Jessica I'm going to turn it over to you maybe one or two more questions we've got a really nice lunch plan today guys and if you follow me on Facebook we generally will post pictures on Fridays and we've been doing this for a number of years every Friday so you can check out where we're going to be eating today and I never tell anybody in advance you're welcome to guess and you can put it in the comment section there if you want but Jessica's got one or two questions she wanted to ask me or actually from you guys and just give me their name and what the question is Jessica Tom is asking if you sell services do you have to be the brand what up Tom how you doing you know Tom it depends on the services you know if you're selling lawn care no, no you don't have to be the brand it wouldn't matter because you're going to have your staff come out and do it and I sell services too you know we do coaching for example but I am the brand on the coaching because I'm the one who actually does the coaching and we've already got a question on that Jessica give them the link to the coaching application I guess I would send them to the woofoo one right now so yeah if you want coaching guys Jessica is going to put a link in there I only have like a couple spots open after the first of the year so if you're interested in having me work with you one on one and help you grow your business I do not do it for free tell me that however just if you fill out one of those applications I will give you a $1500 free blueprint for your business now this I'm doing this because you guys are inner circle people but it's a $1500 free blueprint now even if you've been invited on this call you're not inner circle you're welcome to apply for that coaching and when I say apply you really do have to fill out an application I don't take everybody I don't have time to do it but if I select you and it doesn't matter what level you're at you could be at a very very high level doing millions of dollars or you could be at some of the beginner stages you do have to have some expertise know what you're doing know how to do some stuff but I coach you I actually get on the phone with you we do that a couple times a month I walk you through things I give you lists of things to do and I help you build your business so if you're interested in that Jessica is going to put a link in there you can actually click the link fill out the application if you don't hear from me please don't be offended but I can only talk to a few people and this $1500 free blueprint obviously I can't afford to give away too many of those so she'll put that link in there for you though questions Jessica she's doing that do to do to do thing she does she makes that noise Marcus is asking how he can get help with his Facebook ads how can you get help with your Facebook ads well the art of e-commerce success Jessica will put a link in there for that if you're not in my group I would join that group I also have a course on Facebook ads and shoot I think there's do we have a webinar on that don't we that teaches them how to do that Jessica okay so what she'll do Marcus is in the comments section there's a webinar that walks you through Facebook ads that I would suggest you attend and it'll have the dates and times on it when you click the link when it's available watch that webinar it's really good take you through all the steps it actually takes you behind the scenes and it lets you see my ads and how I run my ads and how I make them profitable and all that so definitely definitely check out that if you have not seen that Facebook ads you're going to do one of two things with Facebook ads you're going to pay and get some really good training on Facebook ads or you're going to waste a lot of money on Facebook ads and I've wasted thousands I will tell you if somebody had had a good course at the time I started I would have gladly bought it there were new courses so I actually did a course and that course actually includes four pieces of software and it takes you from beginner all the way through highly advanced automations and all kinds of crazy stuff so I would check out that course Jessica's going to put the link in there do you have that link she's getting it she's getting it it's terrible terrible over here somebody's saying they really enjoyed the training today they like getting early access well that's part of being inner circle member guys if you're inner circle and if you you're not inner circle and you've been invited you know go check out the video right there there's a video that you can go to it's jrintercircle.com forward slash enroll that doesn't mean you're enrolling that's just the video that shows you all the benefits of the inner circle those people are quite successful they do really well but they have access to like $46,000 worth of my software and training and they don't have to pay for it that's all free with the inner circle so you'll want to check that out if you're not a member you know you won't get invited to every single one of these calls if you're not a member you know we just let you in every now and then so you can kind of see behind the scenes and I think we're nearing our end there Jessica do you want to hit me with any more questions or should we go ahead and end it at this point we need to get to lunch okay she says she wants to be fed so that's what we're going to do guys thank you so much for being here today I really really appreciate all your input and all your attendance if you're celebrating you know Christmas and all that have a great holiday if you take in some time off for work for the you know beginning of the new year enjoy your time off and I will see you guys next year Jessica you want to give them some words of encouragement for the weekend Jessica always has these really I mean if you got a pen handy guys grab it now because she always has some really cool things that she shares with us at the end of these calls she prepares for like a week and it's always something really interesting so Jessica would you hit them with your words of encouragement so that they can have a better year next year well something like that so the holidays can actually be really really tough for a lot of people um and if you're one of those people then I pulled up a quote and it says no matter what you're going through there's light at the end of the tunnel so just be careful it's not a train you know if it's a train you need to get out of the way right be kind to people because you don't know what they're going through that's very true you know a lot of times I'll get a bad waiter or somebody driving crazy or whatever and it's hard to do what's going on in their life did they just find out they had cancer did the relatives just die did they just get fired from their job something's going on if somebody's in a bad mood so don't just think they're just bad people we've all been there so yeah it's the season man be kind to everybody that's the right thing to do thanks so much for listening guys and I will see you next year hey thanks for watching my video don't forget to subscribe to my channel and click that little bell right here so you can be notified every time I do a new video also click on one of those videos there keep watching on my channel


we opened every special edition the other day and this was one of the coolest ones how about we open three of them what's up guys we're back with another epic video we're opening three forbidden legacy blisters today it's going to be pretty awesome some old school en cards we also have a giveaway i'll be giving away these three cards all you have to do like this video be subscribed and let me know what you want to see from these blisters let's get right into it this should be a really fun opening before the opening i want to remind you guys we are doing a magician's force booster box break yeah we have sold several of these packs we still have a lot left so if you guys are interested check out ruxam34.com it's going to be a youtube live stream it's going to be a lot of fun it's going to be a really awesome opening hopefully it has the dark magician girl inside even unlimited dark magician girl it's crazy in price these days so it should be pretty cool okay let's get right into these blisters guys so i think we're going to open all the blisters at once what do you guys think so we've got one we've got two and we have got three okay let's open these all at once and get into it all right so we have all three of these open we have three pop tart packs we've got three spell ruler three metal raiders and three legend blue eyes hosey s sent us these to open for him so thanks again hosey this is going to be a lot of fun let's hope we can get him something awesome let's start off with i think we start off with spell ruler pop tart pack is pretty exciting so we're going to save that one we have a spell ruler pack inside of these there is en card so what do i mean by en the prefix down below i'll show you guys has the en prefix for english prefix i should say so check this out here they started doing this around i guess 2004 2005 this came out in 2005 so all of these packs have the en prefix which they did not have original in 2002 and 2003 so it's pretty unique to find these cards they're only in for lo b mrl and mrd they're only in this set the forbidden legacy it's not really a set but the blisters as well as the master collection one so that's the only place you can find these en cards so it's pretty cool electric snake wait why did i think this is a metal raiders card i don't know i don't know for some reason i thought that was metal raiders all right minar flash a salient and there will not be a rare and a foil just a foil it were rare flash a salient and a mother grizzly okay we've got the crab turtle snake fang peacock and the wall shadow okay first packs are done but that's okay let's try out a metal raiders pack so they changed to spell ruler in 2003 so since this is 2005 they have the spell ruler name so there's no mrl en it's only srl en for spell ruler okay next up it's a lot of fun these these forbidden legacy are one of the coolest products like most random products that they ever made i think we have a killer needle very cool skull knight very awesome that's one of the coolest looking cards let me check them out that's really cool guardian of the labrith all right a monster that guards the entrance to the nether we've got a tainted wisdom and a white magical hat just a regular wear we got the tongyo lava battle guard more infant and unhappy maiden okay we're starting over to we still got 10 packs left though so i'm feeling pretty good that we got a chance one legend of blue eyes here we could pull the blue eyes en which is a pretty cool card i did grade one in ps8 10 a couple of years ago i sold it for 300 and 400 something like that so uh yeah it's a lot more expensive than that now okay the king fog beaver warrior the en beaver warrior one of the rarest okay what is his name what this creature lacks in size it makes up for in defense when battling in the prairie okay t dragon and oh okay it's only the fourth card it's only the fourth card root water next one grave digger ghoul we got the one-eyed shield dragon umi hinotama and r-mail okay over three on the first blister let's see what the pop tart pack can give us so inside there's only three options it's going to be caribo dart magician or blue eyes so obviously we're hoping for the blue eyes hey what's up guys check this out whoo looks like a pewdie pie thumbnail all right let's go here we go what's it gonna be it's a normal monster the blue eyes wide dragon check it out i'm very good luck pulling blue eyes white dragons out of these for some reason okay let's check it out the it's definitely a little warped which is pretty normal for these things if it's just warped though that's okay it's actually bent that's when you're in trouble looks pretty good though overall actually i mean it's warped but i think it could be flattened these are actually like 22 dollars or something near mint they used to be like literally like a dollar but they actually look really good honestly i really like how the seeker rare looks with this art it looks better than the ultra in my opinion one down two to go oh well don't start blue eyes we're gonna go to spell ruler all right spell ruler yeah we'll so we'll save the blue eyes we're gonna get an ultra rare blue eyes and a seeker rare blue eyes we already got the seeker rare so all right it's not quite october we got the october sir or the october sir however you want to say it but it's almost october so you know hungry burger eat in what a legendary card the commencement dance all right the metal fish a metal fish with a razor sharp codle fin okay yeah i don't know a lot about fish so i should probably know what that is and a giant trunade we've got a srl-en giant trunade super rare that's really cool okay our first foil of the video besides of course the blue eyes that's pretty cool i mean it looks like it's in good condition let's check it out yeah it looks to be pretty good guys very nice very nice giant trunade then we've got the archery girl the malevolent nuzler ancient one and the firecrack this is going uh fairly decent we're looking for a huge hit though something really cool like a secret rare gate guardian a summon skull ultra rare a black skull dragon time wizard solemn judgment barrel dragon thousand there's so many options like you go on forever we have the dragon piper let's go germ infection ancient lizard warrior the seven colored fish and elegant egotis we got the unhappy maiden uh oh pocainio moth in one of the rarest forms of pocainio moth armor ninja and then of course what is this card what does this name mean again for this card i can't remember on to the blue eyes pack by the way guys we mentioned earlier but if you've not seen the every special edition opening go check it out it's very long oh almost two hours an hour and 48 minutes go check it out i spent a long time editing it so hope you guys enjoyed it let's continue on to that will be packed just one foil so far we're really hoping for like three oh thing i think three is past ratio though it's like between two and three foils is what we should get okay we've got the root water the root water what a weird card all right drooling lizard speaking of weird cards uh the drooling lizard sparks one of the strongest cards of all time if you are playing modern yugioh you have to be grinding sparks or you will not win so you want you definitely want to you know save that one's probably worth like 50 bucks in warrior number two and a stop defense hard armor kumitoko forest and the skull servant a skeletal ghost that isn't strong but can mean trouble in large numbers second to last pop dart pack not final let's see what we can do also hopefully i can get these audio things that are being really weird fix oh there's a karibo okay karibo very cool maybe we'll get the dart magician get the whole set there's a little bit of like stop stuff there's a little bit of spots on the back but it's so pretty good um there's been this weird audio thing where it it's my mic is not picking up my s's and i'm like it's like it's like a it's really weird i don't know why it does that and i don't know what to stop it so hopefully it's fixed by now i don't know um okay one more one more thing bow ruler we got three more packs one more popped our pack and then we're done let's get hose some good so far we got him a blue eyes we got him a karibo and we got him a giant chariot let's get him an ultra rare i don't want to these packs ratio is one and 12 so we have 12 packs so hopefully we'll get something we got a guardian of the throne room labyrinth wall the liquid beast house of adhesive tape what is this card doing in if the defense of a monster sewn by your opponent is 500 points or less oh okay good against like zombie cards mystic tomato we got the peacock wall shadow stone ogre grotto and the chain energy all right chain energy is an awful card it is so annoying okay second the last pack metal raiders if there's ever going to be something epic now's the time let's do this come on forbidden legacy give us something good we've got an ocu beam the castle of dark illusions roaring ocean snake he became a and here should be the big boy or the big girl or what is going on what is that we got something in here it's like a dust or something okay the blade fly dome of the angel of science little swordsman avail block attack and oh peccano moss growing up okay that's at least good okay two more packs all right we're hoping for a dark magician of blue eyes over here this one's like extremely warped you can just tell in the pack come on be something goodness pack we only have one foil this is killer the ratio is only two really i mean it's one and five one and six something like that but well you really you should get two supers in ultra so really it's like three but we've only gotten one so hopefully we can get two here we got a root water the drooling lizard one of the most powerful cards in the game in warrior number two so they have a number one and a number two in the same set it's very interesting okay guys send him some luck here we go two pronged attack you know thomas soul 13th graven your hobby all right not great luck with the packs so now we need good luck here either dark magician of blue eyes would be insane all right let's try not to ruin it it's already warped so we gotta be careful all right there we go that that's it opening well okay all right let's try not to damage anything here yeah okay you gotta be careful here it's not it didn't rip great on that side so let's go like this there we go okay we got it out yeah see as you guys can see it had that corner right there but you gotta be really careful of those corners they can damage very warped here all right put your guesses in the comments what will it be check out this thing i think it's very warped okay i'm gonna go with dart magician we're gonna get all three boom we nailed it dart magician all right that is awesome super warped definitely book worthy you gotta put under a book that's so really cool if you can flatten it out i think it'll be great but uh let's see we didn't get too much we did get the legendary pakenyo moth which is pretty awesome and then of course giant trunet we got the whole set of forbidden legacy which is really cool you love to see that but uh only one foil throughout the video which is uh you know not great but thanks again hosey for sending these in it was so much fun to open these up i always love opening forbidden legacy any lov mrd srl mrl whatever is always so much fun as you know mrd is my favorite set so if you guys didn't see yesterday's video or whatever this comes out two days ago whatever go check it out it was crazy it was awesome and this was a lot of fun as well so i appreciate you guys being here if you enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe because we are on the way to 100k i really want to open all those retro pack two after i open the retro pack two in the special edition opening i was like itching to open the box but i was like i gotta wait i gotta wait so retro pack two i also have some more surprises coming for the 100k and that's it for this video i will see you guys later peace


Good, good, you're awake. So I have discovered something about myself. I'm an extreme extrovert, which means I draw energy from other people, so if you guys start to fall asleep or don't laugh if I'm funny or don't just generally look attentive and give me some energy, this is gonna be a really dull 45 minutes to 50 minutes. All right, so are you with me? All right, very good. The last time, well one of the last times I was in this gym, I was sweaty, beating Christendom College and on the basketball team and yeah, yeah, and now I'm just sweaty, so we've come full circle, it's hot in here, yeah. So a few years ago I had a really cool opportunity, before the Lord brought me to Franciscan University, I was at the University of Michigan, not the response I was expecting in Ohio, but well done you, thank you very much, I feel so at home, this is great. So while I was there, a couple really cool things took place. My freshman year, I tried out for the basketball team, didn't make it but I was a manager on the team which was really great, I traveled all these different arenas and just got to live the basketball experience and then my sophomore year, I tried out again and got put on the practice squad, which means I was on the official NCAA roster but I wasn't dressing for the games, I was practicing every day and I was like okay, one step closer to my ultimate goal here. And then a couple really fortuitous things happened for me, a couple guys got hurt, a couple guys transferred and next thing you know, I'm in coach B-Line's office and he's saying Pete, kind of begrudgingly, Pete, you need to dress for the game tomorrow. And I'm like yeah coach, cool. Inside I'm like oh my goodness, here it is. He says all right, go talk to the equipment manager Bob and he'll get you set up for the game. So I pretty much skipped down to the equipment room and I say Bob, did you hear the good news? And Bob's kind of a curmudgeoning old guy and he just said yeah, yeah, yeah, you're gonna have to take what I have. And I said that's fine. As long as it's Michigan on the front, I'm happy, right? And he said, so he goes into the closet and rummages around for a little bit, pulls out, double XL, number 53 with no name on the back. Every boy's a little dream, 53 in lights, you know? But didn't matter, he said Michigan on the front, I was happy. So first game went off without a hitch, it was at Northwestern, no problems at all, I didn't get in the game, which was great. I shot the lights out in warm-ups, which was also great and I just was just living the dream, okay? Second game was at Illinois, Assembly Hall, great place to play basketball game. And we were the road team, so we had a couple options as to what uniforms we were gonna wear and we wore our Mays uniforms, for those of you out there that's yellow, because at Michigan we're elitist and we call it Mays, right? And so we're wearing our Mays uniforms with our white warm-up shirt, that detail we'll be pertinent in a minute. And the game's going fine and I'm sitting on the bench and like I said, I was that little guy at the end of the bench who went crazy when somebody else hit the three, right? I went out and chest bumped the guy and that was all I ever wanted. So I'm sitting there kind of leaning forward, Mays uniform, number 53, no name on the back, white pullover. And at Assembly Hall, the students section was about from me to you, ma'am, this far away. They're right on top of you, which is just the best. You hear all sorts of new words. You make all sorts of new friends, it's just wonderful. And so I'm sitting there just leaning forward and the students are gonna get in restless because Illinois was very good and we were not very good and they were beating us by a significant margin. And all of a sudden, one lone voice shouts out from behind me, number 53, number 53, who are you? I didn't realize because of the quick changeover, they hadn't even put me in the program. So this eager beaver had done a little research and realized that I probably wasn't supposed to be there, right? And so then it gets a little bit more louder and he gets his friends involved and he said, 53, 53, whose uniform did you steal? You know? Are you supposed to be here?   And then I hear a very slow, low but steady, 53, 53, 53, 53. Now, if you know anything about college students, they will chant anything. As long as it's to that rhythm, it could be rice and beans, you know, rice and beans. It doesn't matter, they're gonna chant it, right? And so what was two became five, became 15, became 100, became a good portion of the lower bowl is now chanting 53, 53. And I am just dying a thousand deaths, you know? But it gets better. They shifted to put him in, put him in, yeah. Yes. Yes, they did. So, now I am really just, and again, I don't think any of them had any idea what they were chanting. They just, they were bored and they were chanting, right? So I'm at the end of the bench. Coach Mealyan's at the other end and all of a sudden he rises out of his seat and begins to walk very purposely down the bench and the crowd gets louder and louder and louder. And by the time he's getting close to my seat, which I am no longer paying attention to him, you know, I'm looking at every, avoiding eye contact at all costs. It's building and building, probably the loudest cheer of the night so far. He stretches out his hand and turns on his heel and walks back to his seat. And the place just erupts in booze. I mean, they were so mad and I melted into a puddle of gratitude. I could have kissed him. I know, I just was like, oh, thank God. And to this day, this is true, I still have teammates who text me, hey, 53, how you doing, you know? It's like, oh man, oh man. So I begin with this story for a couple of reasons. One is funny, you know? The second reason is there's a bunch of guys in the room looking at me going, I think I could take him, you know?  And then the third reason is this, a few years ago I was kind of meditating on that season of my life and the Lord often will use very, kind of, well, this wasn't very normal, but use everyday stuff of life for me to teach me some lessons. And I was kind of reflecting on that experience and I felt like the Lord said to me, Pete, why didn't you want to get in the game? And I thought about that and I said, I immediately came up with a bunch of reasons why. Well, I wasn't really wearing the right thing. I was kind of wearing the right thing, but I wasn't wearing fully what I should be wearing. And what if I'd gotten into the game and thrown the ball away? Or what if I didn't know the play? Or what if I just made a fool of myself and I realized I was really, really, really content to be on the bench, watching the experts play the game, and I was more than willing to cheer for them. And I had even done the things necessary to get out of the stands and on the bench and be part of the team, but in terms of entering into the game, that was a step too far. Again, I had started as a fan, I had entered the arena, I was watching what was going on, I had worked really hard, I had done the things necessary to be considered a Michigan basketball player. But I wasn't quite ready to get off the bench, I wasn't quite ready to enter in to our collective mission as a team. And I feel like this is where many of us find ourselves in our spiritual life. Where we've done what's necessary to be considered Catholic and Christian.  Now, some of you may be in the crowd still trying to figure out whether or not you wanna be part of this Jesus team. But I'm gonna guess that most of you have done something, baptism, confirmation, the sacraments, prayer, maybe even living in community, where you've come out of the stands, you're doing the things necessary to be identified as part of Jesus' team. But when it comes to mission, when it comes to catching the vision for what God has for entering into the mission field, to seek and save the lost, to go where he's going, to follow him in his mission, we often balk at that one. We often look at that and go, you know what? Actually, I'd rather just write a check so the net missionaries can go do that. Or I'd rather write a check so that focus can go do that. Or I'd rather let Steubenville do that for me. And maybe you've entered into the game, you've heard Christ's call to come follow me into this mission to bring others into the kingdom and you've started to do it and then you really screwed it up, all right?  Or you realized you weren't quite wearing the right thing and so you retreated back to the bench, right? And you said, okay, I gotta pray more. I gotta get holier. I need more things need to be in place before I enter back into the game. And what's interesting though is very often we are quick to check ourselves out of the game and very slow to check ourselves into the game, right? We've all experienced that where we were quick to say, oh, back away, you know? Now it's not the right time to sit on the bench. But then when it comes to re-entering into the vision and the mission that Christ has for us as missionary disciples, we come up with every single excuse that we can think of. And so before we get into actually the meat of what I wanted to share, I wanted to just do a quick gut-chet audit of your heart and say, where are you with Jesus Christ? Is Jesus Christ the Lord of your life? Are you entered? Good, that was a good answer over there. Have you entered into his mission because it's one thing, brothers and sisters, to be growing in holiness. It's one thing to be personally committed to the Lord. You know, we have that universal call to holiness. We love to grow. Growing holiness means loving God, loving neighbor. We're comfortable with that one. We love to feed. But then have we responded to the universal call to mission, the great commission to go make disciples of all nations. It's two legs of a person. We need to grow and we need to go. It's, I like to think about it this way. If we're running the race, we need to step out and we need to grow. And the more we grow, the more we need to give it away. The more we give it away, the more, oh my goodness, we need to grow, right? But if both legs are operating, we are running towards the prize. We're running where our master is running. And so before we get into receiving a new vision from the Lord, before we get into kind of what is God doing and how do we step into it? We have to first ask ourselves, is Jesus the Lord of your life? In everything, personally, financially, everything. Are we in it? Are we in his mission? Are we trying to follow him where he is going?  Because we cannot receive a new vision from the Lord unless we are first his. We cannot receive a new vision from the Lord unless we are first his disciple. If we believe, because if we try to receive a new vision from the Lord when we are not a disciple, it will be a false vision. It will be pride. It'll be a twisting of the truth that will actually lead to our destruction. And as we'll see as we go through scripture, whenever we reach out and try to take vision, whenever we try to manufacture a new vision, it leads to destruction. But when we receive a vision, when as good disciples we are led, that's what leads to the kingdom. That's what leads to joy. That's what leads to revival. That's what leads to the transformation that we're all looking for, okay? So let's pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that you just come down in this session right now, that your spirit would operate in me, that your spirit would operate in my brothers and sisters. Lord, open us wide open to your signs and wonders so that we may know how powerful you are. Lord, open us up to new prophecy, new speaking so that we may know where you are leading us. And Lord, break our hearts. Break our hearts for what breaks yours. Break our hearts, Lord Jesus. Amen. Okay, water break. Okay, so the talk title, if you will, is a new vision, seeing what God is doing. And it's drawn from the theme verse for the conference. So if you'll pull out your Bibles, no judgment, but come on Catholics. Pope Francis actually had some great words about it.  You don't need to get back to that, you know? And I was like, but Pope Francis, I'm only 30 years old. And then it dawned on me, I've been baptized in the spirit for 22 years. So I guess I could be considered an old charismatic now or whatever you want to call it. All right, so theme verse Isaiah 43, verse 18. And my translation is a little different than the one they picked for the conference here. But it's basically, I mean, it is the same thing. Remember not the former things or consider the things of old. Behold, or see, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Remember not the former things. See, I am doing something new. See, I am doing something new. And when Tanner asked me to give this particular talk and he said break open the theme verse for the conference and talk about seeing what God is doing, I enthusiastically said, oh, I can't wait to do that, Tanner, I will do that. That sounds great. And then I sat down to prepare and I thought, well, shoot, I've never really given a talk on this before. I have no idea what to say, which was really beautiful actually. It was a wonderful moment of like humility. Like, okay, Lord, it's all on you. And then God just took me on this beautiful journey that I'd like to take you on as well through the scriptures because what I started to realize as I read the scriptures, if you're actually looking for it, the theme of vision and sight runs through the entire scriptures. It's constant. It's a little overwhelming. There's this constant theme of God's vision and man's vision. And then the devil kind of thrown in there to mix things up. And there's this constant theme that when God's vision is received by man, good stuff happens. But when God's vision is taken or twisted, it leads to destruction. It leads to pain, it leads to sin, it leads to all sorts of different things. And so what I'd like to do is I'm gonna hopefully pull out what I've found is three ways throughout scripture. There's many ways, but there's three ways that I've seen that God grants new vision and helps his people see what he's doing new. And then, not coincidentally, the devil has three temptations or three lies that he attaches to those three things. And we're gonna see throughout scripture, there's three ways that the Lord is trying to lead his people. And then there's three ways often that the devil's trying to whittle away at that. And I recognize that there's a whole bunch more and if Dr. Han were up here, he'd probably break open about 55,000 different ways that sight is used in the Bible. And I'm definitely not him. So we're gonna stick to three, okay? So let's start in Genesis. Decent place to start. Genesis chapter one, verse 31. And also, I will not judge you if you look up these verses on your phone because I'm a millennial and that's what we do. So if that, as long as you don't get distracted, you promise no texting, no Snapchatting, you crazy people, unless you hashtag Stuby18 and then they'll love you forever, okay? All right, Genesis chapter one, verse 31. So this is after God has created everything, right? The heavens and the earth, the fishes and the sea. And he says this, and God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. So right from the beginning, God is giving his vision to us about the way he sees his creation. He saw that and beheld everything he had created. And then prophetically, he speaks out and says what? It was very good. It was very good. So that's, in some ways, the operating vision of our story is that God looks at us in love. He looks at what he's created and says you are very good. That's his vision, fundamentally, to start. But then you go a little further in that chapter and into chapter three, all of a sudden there's a new vision that enters the scene. So we have the scene where the woman with the serpent, right? And of course the serpent begins by trying to immediately cast out as to whether or not what God said was what God said, right? And so there's that whole exchange of did God really say you shall not eat of any tree of the garden and then Eve responds. But then the devil says this, you will not die.  So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desired to make one why she took of the fruit and ate it. You see that? She saw it and here's the devil, classic the devil. He takes something that's true and just twists it ever so slightly. And his temptation is not that the tree wasn't good and actually the tree was good and it was a delight to the eyes. But there was that twisting and the key phrase here, the tree and she took of its fruit and ate. God's vision for humanity that was that we were very good and that his plan in some mysterious way was for us, for our eyes to be opened. He wanted to draw us into his heart, in his timing and in his plan and in his providence. But instead of receiving the gift, Eve saw something, caught a different vision and reached out and what? Took it. There's such a fundamental difference there that the Lord is showing us. That vision bestowed and given is beautiful and wonderful. Vision taken does not work. It leads to sin, it leads to death, okay? So that's this fundamental principle and what you're seeing in Eve is she has a desire to know what is good and evil. She has a desire to be like God because God put that in her. It was a gift and the devil saw that goodness in her and then tempted her in it and again she reached out and took it. We have a desire for vision. We have a desire for knowledge. We have a desire for the truth and those are very good things. We want to know what life is supposed to be about. We want to know the future but what often happens instead of trusting our good, good father, instead of trusting the father who loves us and has laid out a gift for us, we grow impatient, right? We wonder if it's gonna happen. And we're like, come on Lord show us. Show us what's supposed to happen. Teach me. And then we just grow so impatient that we just start taking. We just start taking ground for ourselves and whenever we take that posture we actually alien ourselves from the gift of the vision that the Lord has for us, okay? Okay, so let's talk about three ways that the Lord has in his providence chosen to reveal himself and chosen to reveal his vision and what he's doing. Okay, so the first one is in the miraculous, in the kind of whoa, right? In the blow you off your feet type of way or God where heaven meets earth in such a way that a new vision is born. Think about Moses in the burning bush, right? All of a sudden Moses who was going on one path thinking he was doing fine encounters God in this miraculous way and this burning verse that talks about how Moses saw this bush and it's consumed by this fire but it's not burning in and then out of that miraculous whoa moment God shows him a new way. Think about the whole, everything with the Israelites practically is a pillar of fire, pillar of smoke. That is a very dramatic, miraculous way to show where you should go, right? In some ways I think we'd all love a little pillar of fire to lead us around and then during the day it's a pillar of smoke and it's like, wow, I actually know where I'm going. This is wonderful, right? So super miraculous, think about the New Testament. St. Paul, going one way, pretty miraculous and think about the site that's involved with that. He loses his site, miraculously regains his site and now has a new vision for how he's supposed to live. St. Peter, when he's praying on the roof, he's granted this vision of all these animals and the Lord says take and eat. This is a miraculous occurrence. This is not like just a normal thing that's happening and it's in that vision, in that kind of incredibly miraculous moment that Peter catches God's view of the Gentiles and how we are supposed to bring the gospel to them because just right after that, that Cornelius has him over to his house and the Holy Spirit shows up and bada boom bada bing, right? That's biblical language for you. So you can see that there's this theme throughout all of the scripture that God loves to use the miraculous, the extraordinary, often to kind of get our attention. Very often the miraculous is more of like a shake-up moment. It's a, you're going this way and it kind of slap across the face, the spiritual slap, if you will, that then re-orients us and gets us moving in a different direction, okay? So the first is through the miraculous. The second is through prophecy. Turn to Proverbs, let's see, make sure I get this right. Proverbs 29 verse 18. You've probably heard this verse before, kind of quoted a lot where it says without a vision the people perish. A different translation of that. Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint but blessed is he who keeps the law. So when we are not operating in the prophetic, when the people are not listening to the voice of God and hearing his call about the state of reality and where we need to go, when we're not operating in that fundamental gifting, you know, St. Paul even talks about it, he desires that all may prophesy. It's part of our inheritance, priest, prophet and king. When we are not walking in our prophetic, we often don't know where we're going. And I mean, it's a pretty strong statement to say without prophecy basically the people perish. Because it's through prophecy, through the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts and our minds that we begin to see that what reality is really like, the veil is lifted and all of a sudden, oh, now we know who we are, what we're made for and where we're going. Oh, this is actually the truth. And not only the truth in the moment but the truth as to where we're going. One of my favorite stories is when the Israelites come up to the promised land, even that phrase, think about that, the promised land. That's a prophetic phrase. It's a gift, remember, it's a gift. The Lord is giving them this land. Moses sends 12 spies into the promised land. It says, scope it out for us, will you?  Probably pretty cool. And then they came back and they reported. 10 of them said, no, nope. They're big, they're bad, and they get so, they're so scared of the people who inhabit there that they actually change their report to say like, actually the land is garbage. It doesn't even like grow anything, you know? We don't even want to go there. There is no way we can take this land. There is no way we can take this land by force. Caleb and Joshua, they come back and they're like, what are we waiting for? This land is flowing with milk and honey, and God has already given it to us. It's his gift. We don't have to be afraid. He's already prophetically said, this is your land. I have given it to you. So the two of them are eager to receive the gift the 10 others are thinking about, I don't think we can take it. So what does that lead to? The 10 others and their tribes, pretty much anyone in that age are told prophetically, you will not enter the promised land because you did not believe my word. You did not believe in my gifting. Caleb and Joshua, you will enter because you will receive. That's the power of prophecy right there. Think about another example. John the Baptist, I mean here's a guy who just receives this unbelievable gift from the Lord and then just goes out and prophetically says, prepare the way of the Lord. Prepare, prepare, prepare. And so you can see throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Lord starts to show his people a new vision of not only who they are and where they're going through the prophets. And not only like the prophets with the capital P, but each one of us listening to the spirit. And so if you're feeling stuck, one of the things I would suggest is that you spend a lot of time listening to the Lord and asking for him to prophetically reveal where he wants you to go, okay? And then again, we don't reshout and take it, what do we do? We receive it, okay? Now the third way is through heartbreak, through the Lord breaking something in us, then causing us to see a new way to live and how to kind of resolve the heartbreak. One way I've heard it called is holy discontent. I can't take it anymore, something needs to be done here. And then it's often in that holy discontent, in that heartbreak that the Lord starts to give us little breadcrumbs of clues as to how we can go to resolve the heartbreak within us, okay? Nehemiah, everybody's favorite book, right? Everybody loves Nehemiah. You've probably read it many, many times. So if you're wondering where it is, it's right after Chronicles, okay? So Nehemiah is the cupbearer of the king. So the Israelites have been thrown into exile and he is the cupbearer, which means he's right next to the king all the time and he's in a very privileged but dangerous position because if you think about it, if you hand the king the cup and he gets the runs, he's gonna blame you, right? I mean, so there's a very tricky situation right there. Sorry, I didn't intend on saying that. Oh, you have to forgive me, I'm 30, all right. So Nehemiah, at the beginning of Nehemiah, he hears that the gates of Jerusalem have been destroyed and that the people who have been left behind are scattered and are mocked and are under constant attack and this is his response. So chapter one, verse four. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. When he heard these words, Nehemiah's heart broke. Why did his heart break? Because he was open to it and because God's heart was broken for the situation, he received the heartbreak of God in that moment. And then what did he do? He wept and he fasted and he prayed and he sat in it and he let that holy discontent just stir in him. That was not something he was searching for, okay? He was not looking for heartbreak. I don't know of anyone who's looking for heartbreak, right? Nobody's looking for it. I would really love to be discontent right now. I would just love to be all stirred up. Wouldn't that be wonderful, yeah? No, that's not what we're looking for but God in different seasons of our life takes a piece of what his heart is breaking for and implants it into ours so that we can continue his work but the response has to be weeping, fasting, mourning, sitting and praying. Not rejection, not immediately trying to make it work, just receiving this heartbreak because then it inspires him to do really ridiculous things. He goes to this king who has conquered this people who has laid waste to their country and says, oh, mighty king, I need time off and I need money and I need men and I need supplies and we're gonna go to the land that you conquered and we're gonna strengthen it. We're gonna build up the city that you had conquered and make it strong again. What do you think? You know, that does not fly. That makes absolutely no sense but it makes sense because this is what God wanted.  How much men do you need? How much time off do you need? You're gonna make it strong? Okay, we'll make it strong, you know? Go, go do it. And Nehemiah comes back, builds up the city and then Ezra and Nehemiah are the ones who are able to bring the law back to the people, right? And God's plan is accomplished. The heartbreak that was in God for his people who were wandering and who didn't know him, who were unprotected, who were being mocked. His name was being mocked because his people were being mocked. His heartbreak over that was instilled in a man who was willing to receive it and that man then had the courage after weeping and fasting and praying to go do something about it. I don't know about you but I don't do a lot of weeping for what breaks the heart of God. And as I've been thinking about that, that actually breaks my heart. If I claim to know Jesus and to be his friend and to love him, then why am I not distraught over the things that he is? Because if my best friend's father dies, I weep with him.  But why is it different for the Lord? And he tells us in his scripture what breaks his heart. He stands over Jerusalem at one point and weeps over the city because they don't know him because they're rejecting him. Jesus weeps when people reject the life and the truth and the goodness and the beauty and the plan and the vision that he has for them. Does that break our hearts? And if not, again, we don't want to reach out and take it but we absolutely want to be in a state of prayer to say, Lord, go ahead, break my heart for what breaks yours. Okay, so the miraculous, the prophetic and the heartbreak. So the devil doesn't like that too much because whenever God's people get a vision and receive that vision, he gets destroyed, right? So he doesn't want to do that. And so in the temptation of Christ, as I was reading, after he receives a new vision for his life in a particular way after going in the desert and fasting for 40 days, right? Jesus has tempted three different times and it's amazing. These temptations almost directly line up with the three things I just said. It's unbelievable.  Jesus goes off into the desert right before he begins his ministry, this new path that he's on, right? And the Lord, I'm sure in that time, was just receiving all sorts of grace and insight and just receiving what his father had for him and what he needed to do. And so he comes out of that time and the devil immediately attacks in these three areas. The first one is this, he's hungry. So he attacks the miraculous. He says, turn these stones into bread. That would be a miraculous thing, right? He's saying, turn these stones into bread. And Jesus said, you know, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God, God's vision, okay? Then he takes him on top of the temple and says, jump off, because it is written. It has been prophesied. He takes a prophecy and throws it at Jesus. His angels will stand guard to protect him lest he dashes his foot against the stone. Jesus throws prophecy right back at him, you know? You shall not tempt the Lord your God. So okay, the first one, the miraculous temptation. Second one, prophetic temptation. Third one, takes him to the high place, shows him all the kingdoms of the world, right? And tries to go after his pride, which ultimately is he's going after his identity. And why this is important is he's saying, he knows if he can shake the identity, especially when it's tied to pride, when we are not strong in our identity, if we are not secure in our identity as sons and daughters of the king, we will never have heartbreak for what the king desires. If our identity is not strong and firm in him, then his heart will never be able to enter ours and break it. And so the devil in whatever wisdom he has or whatever insight he has, is trying to erode Jesus' identity so that he will not be able to accomplish his mission, which his mission is about seeking and saving the lost because his heart is broken to seek and save the lost. You see that? And so what the devil's gonna come after you is he's going to try to eliminate the possibility of the miraculous because he's gonna try to convince us that it won't happen to us, that it's not for our time and place, that miraculous things don't happen, so he's gonna try to take that one off the table completely. Then he's gonna try to take prophetic words, the scriptures, and he's gonna try to twist them ever so slightly to his game, so we start to actually doubt them. He wants to twist it so we doubt it or we try to take it, remember? It's back to that taking thing.  He's gonna erode your identity, he's gonna chip away, did God really say that? Are you really a son or daughter of God? You're not lovable, you're garbage, you're not good?  You and I both know how you spoke to your kids. You and I both know how you and your husband spoke to folk about your kids. We know what you did with your friends Friday night. You're not lovable, you're not a child of God. And when we don't resist that temptation, he whittles away at our identity, he whittles away, we become more ironically more proud and introverted and focused, navel gazing, you know, trying to figure out what's going on. And when that happens, the pride, the self-centeredness, the fear, the uncertainty, all that becomes a barrier to our identity in Christ, and therefore the heartbreak and the vision and the mission that he has for us. You with me? Good, okay, I'd like to tell a little story. So about four years ago, I got a call from my dad. He said, hey, I wanna go out to lunch with you. I said, great, we went out to lunch on a very regular basis. He was my best friend, pretty much a daily phone call, he and I. And we're sitting across the table at each other and there's something different in his eyes. There's just like this fire, there's something going on. I'm going, and he's like 60, let's see, 61 at this point. I said, dad, what's happening? And he said, Pete, I don't know how to describe it, but about a year ago, I felt very convicted that I was no longer living in the power of the Holy Spirit as I had in my youth. And this is an example of he was not dwelling in the past, but he noticed the past to inform his future. Consider not the things of the past, look, I'm doing something new. It doesn't mean we completely ignore what happened behind, but we don't dwell on it, we don't reach for it, and we don't pine for it. We let it inform where we're going, okay? And so he was saying, you know, I remember he's like, in my early 20s, 30s, when I first baptized in the Spirit, I was just super evangelistic, Pete, and I was trying to show the gospel with everybody, and it's not to say that he hadn't been living a very faithful life, he had raised my brother and I in the faith, and he was still one of the most evangelistic men I know, so I was kind of surprised that he was kind of evaluating himself this way. But he was just saying, I wasn't fully open to the power of the Holy Spirit, and he was reading some of the popes, and he was reading different things, and just felt very convicted that he needed to start praying, come Holy Spirit every day, come Holy Spirit, and praying more in the Spirit, and worshiping more in the Spirit, and just letting the Spirit fill his heart with power, fill his heart with courage, fill his heart with even just conviction as to where he goes. He had no idea what was gonna happen, he just knew that this is what God wanted him to do. So God speaks to him in a prophetic way and says, you need more of the Spirit. Fast forward a few months, and all of a sudden he's finding this incredible wound opening up in his heart, for his nieces and his nephews, for the kind of the young people in his life who had been raised in the faith, and who by and large were no longer living it. And all of a sudden he found himself actually weeping for their salvation. He found himself crying and mourning and being heartbroken over the state of his nieces and nephews. And he sat me down that day and kind of was like, what do we do about this? Like, what is this? I said, I don't know, but this is beautiful, dad.  God was drawing him back into the game. My dad was an excellent bench player. He was an encourager. He wore all the white things, but he had found himself on the bench and through the power of the Holy Spirit and through some heartbreak, God was saying, come back into the game. I have great use for you. The harvest is plentiful.  And so what I started to see in him, he didn't do anything like super duper dramatic. He just started inviting his nieces and nephews out for coffee, he'd send them little emails, and he would just spend a tremendous amount of time just asking them questions and getting to know them. And then he would just start to kind of weasel the gospel in there every little bit and wait for the right opportunity. Weasel's probably not the right word. In the anointing of the Spirit, strategically preach the gospel into those situations. And he just started building relationships and I just started to see something happen. Fast forwarded about another year or two, I get a phone call from him. The phone call, none of us ever wanna get. But I'm sure many of you can relate to. He said, Pete, I don't know how to tell you this, but I have cancer. And it was an extremely rare form of cancer. Only 50 people in the country get it every year. And they had eight words in it because they couldn't figure out what it was. So they just kept adding adjectives to it. And so he went from a 63 year old, healthy, didn't smoke, didn't drink, worked out every day, small business owner, totally in the game. In about a calendar year, I found myself sitting next to his bed, looking at the man I love the most in the world, covered in these grotesque purple sores, having lost close to 100 pounds, and holding his hand as he went to be with Jesus. And his whole family was around him and he had persevered to the end. He had received a new vision. This was one of the most powerful things. The Easter before he died was the hardest day of his life when all of a sudden he was stripped of all attachments to this world and the Lord gave him a new vision for heaven. And he started pursuing it. But in that moment, as I'm holding his hand, as he is leaving, and we're cheering him on, we're saying, go dad, go be with Jesus. Go be with the one you love. When he died, this is God's honest truth, when he died, my overwhelming emotion experience was joy. It was joy. I was weeping. I was deeply saddened, but I was joyful. Why? Because this man loved Jesus Christ. This man had gotten into the game and I had seen him be faithful for decades, but I had seen a fresh springtime of the Holy Spirit erupt in him and a fresh fruitfulness in God's mission where he had been on the bench and he had entered the game at different points, but he had gone all in with Jesus before he got the cancer. And then when the cancer hit and God said, actually I have a different plan for you, you're gonna be more fruitful where you're going. When that happened, he was able to just run fullheartedly to the one he loved the most, to Jesus. And so I couldn't be upset. I was just so happy for him. I was like, you did it. You fought the good fight. You finished the race. The prize of everlasting glory is for you. And in many ways, my joy was able to be kind of complete in him because of the transformation that I saw the previous couple of years, because of his openness to receive a new vision, because of his openness to hear the voice of the Lord, to let his heart be broken and then to walk forward in some ways in a miraculous way into the lives of the people to whom he was sent. I mean, he kind of had an unfair advantage. I mean, who are you gonna say no to? They're like, hey, I'm dying of cancer. Let's get coffee.  And then he sit down. I don't have a lot of time. So I know I've asked you a lot of questions, but I'm gonna tell you what I think now. Okay, Uncle Chris, you know? And he just preached the gospel. And so wherever you are with the Lord, whether you've got a lot of hair, no hair, gray hair, brown hair, whatever you've got, wherever you are, however long you've been walking, today can be a day where you start in a new vision, in a new fruitfulness, in a new anointing for where the Lord is sending you. Consider not the past. See I'm doing something new. And don't take it. Don't reach for it. Let it happen to you. Be wide open to it. Receive it. Because ultimately, the one who grants vision, the one who makes things miraculous, the one who breaks our heart is Jesus. I am the way of the truth and the life. He's the one who reveals the Father. He's the one to show us where we're going, the things that need to change in our hearts. And if we're his disciples, which basically means there's where he's going, I'm gonna follow him. It's almost the simplest definition of a disciple. What's my master doing? Okay, I'm gonna do it with him. What's he doing? I wanna do it too. And another kind of gut check question is, what is God saying and what are you doing about it? What is God saying and what are you doing about it? So today, this morning, as we go throughout the day, let's just be wide open to receive, to receive, to receive whatever vision, whatever purpose, whatever new sight that the Lord wants to give you. And I promise, if we are open the rest of this weekend, we will see miracles, we will hear prophecy and there will be heartbreak. Are you in? Yes. All right, let's close our eyes. Let's just ask the Lord. Where, actually, better way to put it. Just ask yourself, am I open to the miraculous? Am I open to God acting miraculously in my life? Am I open to dramatic movement of the spirit? Am I open to the Lord breaking through the monotony of my life and the normalcy in let heaven meet earth? Am I open to that? Now ask yourself, am I open to prophecy? Are my ears open to the voice of God? Am I open to hearing a new word, a word that may change me, a word that may challenge me, a word that may put me on a new path? Am I open to letting God speak prophetically in my life? And finally, is my heart broken? Do I have heartbreak? Do I mourn for the things that cause the Lord pain? Do I mourn for the souls in my life? Am I willing to be wounded for the gospel? Am I willing to be wounded for the salvation of my friends and family? Am I willing to have my heart broken in pursuit of the Lord and the pursuit of souls? Now Lord Jesus, I just ask, in this silence and in this moment that your spirit would come in great power, that you would move in signs and wonders to confirm your truth, to reveal how present you are, how good you are, how gracious you are. Lord, I pray that you would begin to speak to us in a new way, that you would give people courage to not only hear your word, but to say it out loud, to share it with the group the rest of the time, to share it with their neighbor. Lord, speak prophetically at this conference. Hey Lord, if we can't hear your voice, who can? So speak Lord, your servants are listening. And Lord Jesus, break us, break our hearts. Draw us deeper into your sacred heart, a heart that is pierced for love of the world. Let our hearts be pierced as well. Come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit.