So when you're short, and you have a room like this, it's really intimidating. Because you can only look up. So if I'm looking straight at you, I apologize. How many of you are direct with your clients? How many of you have the guts to tell them when maybe they're not doing the right thing? Yeah, that's pretty good, right? How many of you wishing you had to do that? Yeah, well, it'll appeal to about ten of you. That's good. So what we're going to do today is talk about how it's not all about you. It's all about you, but it's not all about the business owner. So how to take an audience-first approach to connecting with your audience online. So this has basically come about the number of meetings I've been in, the number of hungry hippos I've had in the room that basically... You know what a hippo is? Like a greedy business owner that won't listen to your advice. Anyway, Google it. That's good. So basically, when you need to use data and you need to use analytics to be able to convince people that an audience-first approach is required. And no matter what you do, whether you're a web developer, designer, digital marketer, everything's about the audience. It's why we do what we do. So this will be running through how you connect with the audience. So this is me. I'm Paula.  So I'll talk wherever I can. And I really like sharing my knowledge with people. So if you want to ever reach out to me, I'm more than welcome to chat. And you can reach us on Twitter as well. So feel free to get in touch. So I've got a few cool statements in here. So this is a confused business owner is one who doesn't know how to connect with their customer. I've got to stop the timer. Because they don't know who they are. So if any of your business isn't going anywhere or it's not growing in the way that you want, a large reason of that is, well, who are you trying to talk to? Who are you trying to attract your business to to help it grow? And this can be a big problem in business. And especially when trying to get people to put pen to paper and paper to digital.  So I just, ooh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Damn, what did you do to me? Are you killing me? Okay, there you go. So understanding your audience and their problem allows you to provide a solution. So the idea is solution first is audience first. If you can help provide a solution to your audience, then you're on the right track. So how do you understand your audience? You need to be your audience. You need to understand not what a, not what a solution is. So you have a fuel efficient car, you're going to help fuel economy, you're going to help the environment, et cetera. Okay, but why do people buy fuel efficient cars? Who are those people?  Who are they? Who do they talk to? What do they respond to? Right? So it's about going to that next level and understanding their needs and wants from a demographic point of view and a psychographic point of view. And if you look at the way Google is taking technology, Google's going very much into an audience-first approach with all their digital marketing channels. So that soon you'll pretty much not be able to bid on paid keywords because you're going to be bidding on, is it Tom Dick or Harry and how old are they and what's their interest. And then Google will be able to use that data to then be able to market to other Tom Dick and Harry's and things. So this is the way that the world's going. So really understanding who your audience is more important than ever. So if you think about this in terms of selling, you think about it in terms of the left, left, right. Help, help, sell. Provide value and then sell. You've all heard that from several speakers over this conference, right? Yeah, the one that before, as I watched in, she's saying, you've got to provide value. You've got to keep them interested. This is the way that you do it. We're all in an on-demand world. People are like, oh, it's yelling at me. It's frustrating me. So you've really got to be able to cut through that market. The best sales people in the world don't sell. They educate. They help. They build connections based on their experiences and their understanding. And what makes them successful? What makes them then able to sell is the fact that they know their customer. They've put their audience first. They've taken the time to get to know their customer. This wouldn't be the first time that they've worked in that industry. They know the questions they can ask. They know the time of data knock on the door. They know the time of data bring them. They know everything what time feeding time is. They know all of that information. That's how they sell. So the ability to connect with a target audience separates great companies from the ones that are just doing okay. The great business provides value and is helpful. This is why contact marketing is where it is. This is why SEO is contact marketing, because it's helping. Get to know your audience. Mel style. Who he likes? Mel Gibson. No one. Oh, come on. I know you do. We all love Mel, right? Who doesn't love a little bit of this? Yeah? We have been communicating through creating audience connections for decades. Absolutely great. This is traditional marketing 101. People employed market research companies. People employed groups of women to come into the room. In Mel's case, everyone remembers what women wants? Yeah? Putting a video clip to the slides would have been way too hard. So this is as good as it gets. But he basically was said, you don't know how to sell to a woman because you're not a woman. Right? So he became a woman, so to speak. But he did the mascara. He did the waxing. He did the pantyhose. And he got into the psyche of a woman. He got to know them. Right? He's dead at them. What is she thinking about right now? Right? Why is she here? Why is this important to her? Why is this routine important to her in her life? He became them. So this is why this is really important. And this isn't new. All we're doing now is we've replaced billboards with websites and bannerites. Right? So it's still the same principle. Nothing's really changed. We just need to find out how to use the resources that are available to us to become our audience. So how do you get inside your customers' heads? You have access to more audience data than you think. So when people say, use a research. When people say, learning about your audience.  Have you ever wondered just, this is all really overwhelming? Like, this isn't a big client. This is a small client. How could they possibly have the resources to be able to find out the data and the values that they need to do? Right? I've had big clients. I've had small clients. I've had people with the money and without it. And I've figured out ways to be able to convince the people in the room and the people that need to see the data, what they need to know on a very low budget using mostly free resources. And I'm going to take you through these today. The most important thing is to listen. When you are going through this process, you need to just really try and step out of the psyche of your customer or your business and think about just listening. If it's better if you record it and then come back later, then you can do that. But the idea is to listen to what people have to say and as tempting as it is, don't sell. So, the most successful hands-down thing that I've ever done in my career is talking to the sales team. Okay? And talking to my client's sales team or getting them to do it. It's the longest cycle. So normally you say, can you talk to the sales team about product A? Find out what questions they get asked. Find out the use of frustrations that people ask for when they call them. Are the people that are calling them men or women? What time of day are they calling? And the sales team will think you're the best thing ever because no one ever asks the sales team. No one ever asks the internal business development managers who are answering the phone. Who is our audience? Like, we think we know who they are, but who actually are they? So, if you can organize to connect with your audience through your internal sales team, you're going to find out the questions they're going to be asked. You're going to keep finding out the customer problems and what they are, and you're going to be able to really figure out what that void is. Surveys and questionnaires. Who doesn't love incentivized questionnaires? Come on.  Yeah? So, you've got to go beyond your product though, and the survey and questionnaire is not about you. It cannot be about you. Nowhere in the questionnaire can I ask about your product. Nowhere in the questionnaire can I ask about your brand. This is about your audience. This is about your customer. What time do they wake up? What time do they go to bed? How much do they earn? How many family members do they have? What's their favorite magazine to read? What's their favorite podcast? What's their favorite color? If they were a fruit, what fruit would they be? You know? I mean, this is cool stuff that you can ask them that's a little bit different. That's really going to help you understand what makes them tick. Right? So, make it about them. There's no way shape or form besides that you've incentivized it probably, you know, with a freeback. Coffee or whatever it is. You know, think about it's totally about them. You're trying to get into their psyche. You're trying to be the male, right? So, customer feedback forms is not an old concept. It's about asking customers post-purchase about their experience and the impact that your production service has made for them. Now, this has two benefits. The first one is testimonials. So, you put a little disclaimer down the end saying, are you okay if I use this as a testimonial? Because they're going to be saying, this product saved me time by. This product saved me money by. This product solved this problem. And then before you know it, you've got content for your website without actually having to go and look for it. But the second thing it does is it tells you that maybe the product that you invented or the website that you have wasn't actually originally intended to solve that problem. Maybe it wasn't for that purpose. But from what you're getting back from your customer about the way, the void that it's solving in their life and the impact that it's making, you're actually realizing that your product and your brand are something that you didn't thought it was going to do. Has anyone had that happen? Yeah, if you're not dead? Okay, social channels. If you're not on social, well, you're not in the game. But it's about being active on social. And I'm going to take you through in particular Facebook and Facebook groups and how you can use those to find out about your audience. But if you do have a Facebook presence in terms of the left, left, right and how you need to help them, do not use your Facebook channel to sell. Educate, educate, sell. So make sure that you're helping providing value in your creating that cut through and that someone comes to your Facebook page and they're checking out your business and all they see is sale, sale, sell, case study, sale, sale, case study. That doesn't help them. That's about you. So you need to make that about what do they want to see? What's going to make them laugh? What's going to connect with them? Facebook groups. So Facebook analytics, I haven't particularly talked about a lot, but if ever you have the time, about Facebook analytics for your audiences, Facebook are so far superior. Well, they were until they got busted for it. Really like so far superior in terms of the information that they can show you about the psyche of your customers down to like what audience groups they are and what interest groups they follow and the type of magazines they read. Like they have a lot of really cool free information and if you can still get it, then definitely ride that train as long as you can because it's a world of knowledge and that's like a whole other talk. So if you want me to give you some information on that, just ping me on the channels and I'll give you some really good resources to look at that in. But that's a rabbit hole for me. You'd never leave. So we'll just stick to Facebook groups now. So this is the idea. This is the process you can go through. Join the group where your audience hang out, right? Go to Facebook. You'll see the buttons that's groups there. And then I've done AdWords experts because AdWords is my thing. So I go on there and I go, okay, here's all the groups. I'm going to want to join to learn about these professionals, customers. And then you look at where they hang out with each other in a closed environment, right? So the idea is that there's a little bit of privacy, which is why no sale, ask, listen, it's super, super, super important if you're going to do this. Slowly start to offer advice. Help. Engage news. Advice. Do not sell. Someone makes a statement. You as a professional or you as somebody that can help because you wouldn't have a business if you can't help, then you answer their question. You say, I've had this situation and this is how I handle it. I've tried to use that image on my clients' websites and I found that it didn't work as well, but here's something that did work. You've given advice, this doesn't work, and you've given, but this does. So you've given something that provides the value and that helps. So here's an idea. Find an industry blog. So for me, I might go to Search Engine Land, find a really cool blog or article that I think my other people will like. I go to the people and I share that content. It's not about me. It's something that's going to benefit everyone. I get no direct benefit from that at all. Besides people thinking, I'm cool because I've shared. So you look for hot topics, recurring questions and shared posts. Has anyone been in a group where they've noticed the same questions coming up and up and up and you just like, shut up. Yeah? So do that. Find those really annoying questions. Yeah? They're the things that people want to know. So learn them. Secondly, look for things that are really high engagement. By engagement, I don't mean likes. No one cares about likes. I mean comments, engagements, re-shares. That's what people go, you know, what other people in this network, they like this. This is something that interests them. This is something they want to talk about. Right? So that's getting into their psyche, finding those things that in an overly saturated world, they go, that is actually a conversation that I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing and I'm going to be a part of that conversation. Did anyone know that there's a search bar in Facebook groups? Yeah? Cool. I'm really happy with that. Use hashtags within the group to find content, to find tagged content. So a common one in groups is hashtag ask or hashtag question. So you can do that and you can, in the groups, you're just like, you're not even commenting, remember? Nobody knows who you are by this stage besides the little comments here and there. You're like scouring for information. So I might go into groups and I do this once every three months, say, which are groups that I'm in, which you can see there, and I'll go, okay, add words. How can I help people with add words in this group? What article can I give them? What can I provide them with value? Then you can comment. So once you have momentum and trust in the group, and that takes time, and I'm not talking three days, I'm not talking a long weekend, I'm talking like an extended period of time. Use your common sense. Ask questions. So I absolutely love Clifford. He's amazing and I love this example. So this is a group that's for web professionals. 40 ways to generate leads. We are working on the ultimate guide for where the agency leads and ready this week and would love your input. Which of these have worked best for you? Here's the list. You don't need to think, this went nuts. This has now given Clifford something that he can do and produce content for his people in his tribe that helps him, this is actually his group, that helps him learn about his audience because that's what you're trying to do right now. You're not trying to sell. You're giving something for free. So this is something really cool. Then we've got learn and listen. So this is about using data that you've got already to find out more about your audience. Form fills. So if you have something on your website like a gravity forms, you can actually capture that data. So that data lives on your website. And a contact form seven doesn't, that's as far as my knowledge of forms goes. But if you are able to catch that data, it leads into a CRM. Looking at what questions of people have asked in the form fills is a really good way to figure out what's making them come to your website.  So you can formulate those to have frequently asked questions, but you can also generally get to know the struggles that they're having and what they go through. This is what I call a rabbit hole, but everyone here knows Reddit. Yeah, I didn't until a couple of days ago.  So this is something that what I've done here is a bit of a theme with being a personal trainer. So if you put in something like get fit, how to get fit from not being fit, are any of your guys, boyfriends trying to get fit, how to get fit while poor. At video games, what's an easy way to get fit at home. These are all outside of the box for a personal trainer, but this is bloody good content. Yeah, because people that get fit at home are going to get to the point where they don't want to do it at home anymore. Yeah, so you've produced content and you've started that funnel and you've got to know the audience. And remember, this isn't always necessarily stuff that will directly help your product. So this will help a personal trainer get into the psyche of his customers, but not necessarily the right person for him right at that point in time. But this definitely is something that can really, really help. And obviously forums that relate to you as well. Answer the public. If there is one thing you do from this talk today, please go away and visit answerthepublic.com. It is absolutely free and it is amazing. It just has changed the world of content marketing, changed the world of how we understand our audiences and our customers. So what it is is it's a simple search bar at the top. You put your two words in personal trainer. Now, this is one example of five different screenshots that it presented me of keys, things that come out of it. This is actual, this is not their made-up database. This is the five search engines, Google basically, and what people type into Google, whatever, other ones, to generate search inquiries. And this is a database of those over time. Why, will, can, who, what, which, how, when, etc. If you look at all of those questions, like you can just imagine how many questions are there right now. Imagine if every one of those was a blog post. If every one of those was a content post. There you go. There's your content strategy for 12 months. Yeah? Then you share that content in the group. So educate, educate, educate, drive people back to your website. Get the concept. So you are also learning about your audience. This is totally audience-based. Nothing about this is you putting, my product is $49.95. Google Analytics, another rabbit hole. But all you need to do here is look at popular pages, bounce rates, and exit rates. Because if it is a popular page, you'll have a number of page views, but that could be from SEO. The bounce rate will be relatively low, and the exit rate won't be 100%. Unless it's the contact page, in which case it really cares. So that's essentially what you're looking for. You're just looking for red flags of things that maybe aren't working too good, and things that maybe aren't communicating the right message for the audience. And my absolute personal favorite, user testing. So if ever you've had a situation, and I've had about 10 or so, so, so, where the business owner's gone, I don't like the design. I just don't like it. You're like, yeah, but we've shown it to people. They like it, they get it, they understand it. It's good for them. Yeah, but I don't like it, make it blue. I've shown it to my brother's sister's father, and he said to make it italics, so can you make it italics? Yeah, same story. User testing is about $30 a video. It actually, you can choose your age, you choose the country they're from, the demographics, everything. They find real people, and it's their video. Just looking at your website, you ask a question, the screen flashes to that page. You ask another question, the screen flashes. And you actually get to see them responding firsthand. Tip, also get them to review your competitor's website on the same video. Yeah, so go, here's my video, here's my competitor's video. So you're then seen. They get really angry when you do it, because they only get paid a flat rate. So they get really shitty. But usually about 15 minutes is the total time before they start to sort of make stuff up. But it's a really good way because if they like something, they tell you. And if they don't like it, they will rant about it. So you really get to understand who they are and what it is that makes them tick. But you don't need more than two. So for the total price of $60, you can take that to the business owner. You can take that to the decision maker and go, look, this is what people think. And we've had cases where we've put head-ins with full colors behind them, and we've done this and people have said, oh, I'm trying to click on it, it looks like a button. So you make it 50% transparency. So it's the little things that you pick up that you can benefit from. But my God, does it ever, if there's anything that helps convince somebody that what you're doing is right, it's one of their audience telling them that they're right, that you're right. Worth its weight in gold. AB testing, how am I going for time? Where are we at? Oh, okay, cool. Is everyone following? That's so cool. So AB testing, so what I've done is I've stolen an image, but put it into three areas. So the three things I think that you can test that are really good are ads, and I mean like Facebook ads. So with Facebook ads, you test images. So you can test different images to the same audience, different images to different audiences. And that can be a really good way to test who responds to what and what who engages with what, because Facebook have this really cool, tricky, not so cool algorithm where they actually hovers over an image. They sort of count that in terms of what they show more. So it's not all about like their actual physical engagement that you can see. Another way is landing pages. So you can test AB test landing pages. It's a little bit trickier, but also pretty cool if you do have the budget for that. And the other one is welcome emails. And what I've seen a lot of people test with this lately is emojis. So you can actually put like emojis in your email subjects lines now. Like a love heart against a palm tree. Then you might want to test like a palm tree against a cat. You know what I mean? See what people like. So just test little things to small audience groups. And also you can test things like subject lines and stuff like that. But like these are tons of different ways that you can test. Then you split the audiences. And then you can see which audience responds best to which mechanism you're choosing. Another topic that could be a whole talk, but use of frustrations you can see with heat maps and mouse tracking. Get a hot jar account. They're free for up to like a hundred views or a thousand views. And you can just delete the old ones and reset it again. It's hot jar. It's really, really good. And basically the way that it works is the really red part is where they're hovering their mouse. Like where the mouse is sitting. And people do that with where they're reading. So they'll just like leave the mouse as a navigation device. And you can see over the face. You can see like the connection. Like where the connection's happening there. People are connecting with the person. And people are connecting with the message in there as well. In my personal opinion, I think there could be a button there because they're so like that's such a big heat spot. You could definitely look at that and you know suggest something like that to there. And obviously the free demo on the right maybe that free demo could come down and sit there instead. So you can do things like that. But you can see how important it is to do this to really figure out if what you thought is the way that your audience are thinking. Because it's not all about you, right? So this is a really good way to do it. But it does take effort to solve use of frustrations and plenty of time. This is an invested process and it's just good to know about these things so that when you do get the projects that allow for you to do it, it's often overlooked in planning. So it's often something that people forget about but it is really, really worth it. So how do we apply this to websites? The first thing is to define the problem that you solve. So Mr. Tesla man here, what does he solve? He should solve. To save time, save money, feel good, look good, generate sales. So our personal trainer, he helps people feel good, look good, get their mojo back, get their energy back. So these are the types of things that you have to define right at the start and it's just a simple question. And if they don't seem, if your clients don't seem to know this question, then you basically take them through the process that we've just been through. Use some of those tools to be able to convince them and find out who their audience actually is. Or yours. The old saying, everyone knows this, you have three seconds to connect with your customer. So use your website to connect and engage. So these are just some things that I've noticed over my time doing this sort of thing and that I share them with you. I hope you find them useful. So optimize the experience for your audience. We've got, I've named him Baz, the hipster. But we've got the mum, Mary, the mum up there. It's a brand new baby. And Sue, the career driven woman. So three different audiences.  And you actually capture all of these people. So we'll talk about how you segregate, how you segment that. But maybe you're just trying to talk to one of those people. Don't try and talk to everyone. So let's think about it in terms of travel with site structure. One page, one solution. That's it. No more than that. One thing that you're trying to do per page. So think about Baz, the hipster. Baz, the hipster has a backpacking tour that he wants to do around Europe. So he's got a particular intent under the same brand. Sue, the career driven woman. She might want to take a cruise. So again, that's a different audience, a different page. So think about your audience and think about the way that that would sit in terms of your site structure and your products as well. So you're thinking about your products but also thinking about your solutions and your audiences are making sure that you're not trying to be everything to everyone because your audience would be a very defined person. Site layer. Again, audience respond to a different amount of content. Is it mobile responsive? Is it desktop? Is it long form content? Is it short form content? Is it mobile or desktop? So these are things that you would have noticed hopefully in all of your audience data and in Google Analytics as well. So when you're planning their redesign, then think about these things as well. Have you ever dealt with someone that said you absolutely must 100% do video? Yeah, maybe you don't. Just maybe you don't. Who's your audience? How do they engage content? Is it learning how to, you know, watch them to learn how to teach someone how to ride a bike? How to make a cake? Yes, you probably want to watch that on YouTube. Is it reading about history? You know, you might want to read that. Is it imagery? Some people feel compelled to put images on a website even though their audience has absolutely no interest in viewing that image. So I think it's important to have a team communicate the solution at all. So think about who your audience is and make sure that the content that you're producing really does relate to that person. Meet these old friends. Who's seen these before? Yeah? Personal favourite? The graph. I see that on Facebook ads probably five times a day. Originality people. Originality. I know, right? If only she got the royalties, I tell you what, she'd be a rich woman. So use visual design to engage. Yeah? Are these engaging? They probably were the first time you saw them. Maybe not so much now. And the fact that, you know, there's leading digital agencies out there because Facebook thinks I'm interested in it for some body reason. But they still use this. They still use these photos. Photos. So, you know, how many times have you been to look for a word developer and you've seen the one in the top left? It doesn't help. Apparently there are accountants, business owners, CEOs, finance brokers. You know, he's a very busy man. So make sure it's engaging. Go back to our audience. Personalisation. That's all you have to talk to is that one person that's making the decision about your product to really make that connection with them. Okay, briefly touching this yesterday, but the tone of voice. Talk at a level that communicates. Don't force the sell. If your audience want to yell that, by all means yell away. But for the rest of everybody else, don't do it. What's the right tone of voice for your customer? So some things, other things we've learnt along the way are using frequently asked questions actually into the content. So going back to the solution-based approach, everyone has frequently asked questions page here. If you don't, just build one tonight, because they're really cool. But basically, one list of frequently asked questions in the case of a tourism website is going to be really generic here. So let's talk to the people that are going to Peru. What do they want to know? They want to know what the weather is going to be like in July. They want to know if they need a visa.  You're going to get all those questions that people are asking. And you put those on the page about travel information in Peru. So you're actually helping them and engaging with your audience and providing those solutions right on the site. You have not solved them. Besides the button at the top, there is no pop-up, there is live chat. There is nothing except content, except helpful, helpful content. I'm super proud of that site. Allow users to opt in. So I love a good live chat. We recently put it on one of our sites and it has gone absolutely nuts. I've never been asked how much a website costs so much ever. But the email list has been built in, so that's pretty good. But allow users to control your website. Don't take over their control. So when you start popping things up, when you have a live chat that automatically pops up on the home page, before you've even scrolled off the first banner, why did you even pay for that click? Why did you even bother? Like, let them get to know you. You know? Be aware that you are probably the fourth or fifth website that they visited and they're just going to shut you down just as easily as they open to you. So we had a situation a couple of weeks ago. We had an emergency dentist and I of course went to the paid ads and I said, late night dentist. And I clicked on all the ads. First top five ads, how many do you think were open late? How many? How many had a responsive website with a big click to make a booking number? One. They're the one that we went to. They're the one that we spent $500 with a late night dentist appointment at. Yeah? Because the first people didn't do it. They didn't think about the audience. They didn't think about the fact that if you're in that situation, then you've got a very specific need. You know? You've got to vary. I mean, that would not have been shaped on AdWords, by the way. So make it really good for them. But don't do automatic pop-ups. Live chat is fantastic. It's a great way to connect with your audience. Just keep it on the down low and let them choose to view it if they want to. But let's see the next level of this. Boom. This was after being on the site for a total of seven seconds. God, I hope none of you are this quiet. But if you are, please take this down. So this was like going so soon. I wasn't going anywhere. I was on the homepage. I hadn't gone anywhere. I'm going to be buying Christmas hampers now with my $10 discount for wanting to go somewhere. But I can't even access the live chat anymore. So the annoying live chat has now been replaced with the annoying going so soon pop-up. This was a paid ad that I clicked once to get this. So be mindful of your customers. Be respectful of their space. Be respectful of their process. None of us like people shouting information. I hope I'm not shouting information. So just like really be respectful of it. Last slide. Well done. And again, this is probably like my absolute pet hate. But pop-ups on a mobile? Yeah? When you actually can't click the close button because you're on a mobile? Yeah? Just, again, you know your audience unless your audience really loves to be super frustrated. Just like going to the setting in the pop-ups that says switch off on mobile. Because it's not the right space. It's not the right audience for that. So connect. Get engaged. Help. Solve problems. You will breed loyalty. You will increase revenue. And you will connect with your customer. Thank you.


Good morning y'all welcome to another week in my life vlog. It's 6 30 about to head into well It's like 6 25 about to head into a workout. Don't feel like doing that at all But it's full install week at the foot of the lake Dom and Sam get in town on Friday. It's gonna be a really good block 9 a.m. I'm getting some work done. I made a cute little coffee water my plants showered I'm wearing this really cute. This dress is like $30. I just got something on it sort of wet But it's like a dupe of the free people dresses and everyone is wearing took a couple weeks for to come in But it's just really like wait. They're good summer dresses. I'm just gonna get to work here. Goodbye much later I finished my work. I am getting dinner with new friends tonight But before I'm gonna get my nails done because it's about to be a very busy week So my set this outfit is very weird like it doesn't make sense But it's just like what I put together this set is a ritz.  I don't know I don't know guys. I'm like out of it right now, but like this is my fit like it's just none of it really Makes sense, but I'm into it Anyways, we're off to my nails done. I'm gonna do pink and a surprise surprise I have a headache from my bun from all day So I'm loosening that up right now and then oh I have to pack my loot product all of These is what I've been using lately. I never have like just a go-to. I always have like random stuff That's why I'm like rarely sharing with you guys. It's normally like Charlotte Tilbury pillow talk Like it's the normal whatever. I don't even know where I put my headphones. So anyways off we go I'm like trying to get the shot I'm whispering it because The dogs are sleeping or coca sleeping so last night I went to do it with a new friend and it was so fun like sometimes I feel like I get so anxious During the week because I like don't get out of my routine I don't need my house and like going to that like saved me like I woke up this morning feeling amazing and I just need to remember to like go do stuff like I'm like little little I have my coffee six a.m. Pilates we go it's Thursday all of us podcast I'm chugging this coffee right now to the six a.m.  I got here a little early.  It's 8 a.m. You guys cannot hear me. I Have my hair towel on to dry my hair the people are coming for my pool in like 15 minutes I am was on prime for a while ago at this point After extension cords and then they keep they kept getting pushed back I'm just gonna do it by eight. It's eight now. They're not there and they're gonna be here in like 15 minutes So I couldn't keep risking it so I'm on my way to Home Depot Feels like I am in Missouri like with my grandpa in the morning running errands like the fact that I'm wearing this in The car. Yeah, I know but like blasting Tim McGraw and I'm going to Home Depot And it's giving me kind of like the best vibe I am really considering wearing this in Home Depot, but I just I can't do that like so I've got it I've got a girl up. You know me. So anyways, I'm on a Tim McGraw kick again I'm always on a Tim McGraw kick, but I really am today. So anyways the pool is getting installed I just paid for the rest of it. I just sent them the Zell so it's officially mine And I am so excited so while I'm gone my brother-in-law is like bringing people over and they're gonna give me quotes on Decks and then I'll have someone build a deck around the pool So it's gonna be above ground like I said yesterday, but I am so excited. Hey guys The pool is currently getting installed. I'm prepping for dinner to walk the lake house. So I'm tying some ribbon all these napkins I need to do the same with my wine glasses, but I'm realizing now the mini ribbon like I don't know where it went I never even opened it. So I'm confused. So anyways, I'm watching my morning music videos and Doing this. It's lit. It's 8 a.m. What a good day. Oh, let's go see the pool By the way, I got the one that isn't as cute looking it just lasts longer because it's gonna be covered by a deck Anyways, the other one was like metal and beautiful But it just like doesn't matter because it's gonna be covered and this one lasts longer and in the long run I made a decision that was smarter. Okay, and I never do that. I always go based off like what's cuter I don't know where the pump turned off. It's supposed to be on Oh There we go. So I don't know if that's supposed to be happening like that. Oh, I don't know But it's gonna be full like two hours. They said, okay exciting Fits will not be going in this pool because he's way too big and he hates the water and That's just too many baths at this point But I mean I would like for him to go and he just like won't go in himself So it's okay. Anyways, the deck will be built. Hopefully soon. Oh my god I'm so happy the view back here. Everything's just cute and perfect. All right, y'all The pool is full. It's so exciting. Just put the little chlorine thing in there I'm gonna get in it this afternoon I need to run an errand really quick and get some more work done, but it looks so good It's so much bigger than I thought it would be It's 10 by 10 so it will fit a bunch of my friends and we're just gonna sit there once I have also the deck built out around it I can get one of those like shade protectors for your laptop screen and I can work out here Like I will literally be spending every single day in this in this pool. I need to get floats I can actually have a full one and just like lay on it and read I mean, oh my god, this is the dream backyard. All right, y'all So I just got a little early afternoon treat. I got a little mango dragon fruit refresher I got one the other day when I was really anxious And for some reason I was craving it and it was so good So I got another one and I'm on my way to the craft store because The ribbon that I ordered for the wine glasses didn't come or it didn't I think I just Look, I have no recollection of it actually being in my house So anyways, I'm going to get new ribbon to tie them up to the bottom of the wine glasses My goal is to have everything packed to the lake house tonight I'm gonna trade with my dad this weekend and take his truck and he's gonna take my car So I'm gonna try to have everything packed so then that way I'm gonna be able to not have to worry about it tomorrow and Go work out and go to my body sculpting place and get everything get everything that not only my packing stuff I'm like prepping it. So I did as you guys saw the napkins earlier I'm getting like everything ready for the tablescape and just like actually tying those on it It's just small thing, but it really doesn't make a difference. So anyways, I have my drink I'm blasting country music I don't even care that it's hot out right now because I'm wearing my new tex merch It's out now and I just hope like the cutest cosies outfit like I'm really thriving like this is one Summer Texas Kinsey thrives sometimes. It's just it's rare, but it happens. I think it's because I'm a bull Back from Joanne's or Jones. I think it's Joanne's. That's what I say. I got these two as options I like the pink the best But I don't know if there is enough of that and I can't just do both and do like a brown and pink color scheme Which is very me anyway. So I think I'm just gonna mix them up I have all the wine glasses out here start and I'm just gonna tie little bows at the bottom of this I'm copying what we did last week For the dinner party with host this is like pretty much a setup that we did and I loved it so much It's so easy and it's such a fun little way to like personalize it I just for whatever reason threw away the ribbon from last week Which I should have never done so I could have just reused it and I will never be throwing away ribbon again Cuz it gets expensive.  Oh quite the 180. So Wow All right, I finished these they look so cute. I'm loving everything together I decided that I need all black markers for when we actually do like a tabletop and like drawn it or whatever It's so cute. I'm just stressed about like actually putting these in boxes, but we'll figure it out This is me currently started prepping for the lake house. I have everything packed for tabletop I need to pack my clothes, but I mainly have that covered. I'm giving myself a little blowout I think I might just go sit in the pool and Like read or something. I need to like continue to work. Um, thank you guys so much Everyone who's bought from the Texas Forever merch collection. I'm getting such good feedback And I don't think I've ever gotten more orders on any I don't have like the numbers yet But I'm pretty sure there's gonna be like the most items that have ever been sold or something that I've launched ever So I'm really excited about that and now I'm like dang I wish we would have done like hats and totes and stuff and coosies like maybe we'll maybe we will you know So anyways, I'm watching the Kardashians and I was just doing my hair I hope this actually does something like we'll see I'm gonna keep it in for as long as I possibly can yeah I actually clean my makeup brushes while watching the Kardashians. I feel so productive. Okay, so this is how my blowout not great I think I needed to get it hotter and then have them sit longer I also switched my swimsuit because this gives one like my boobs literally are falling out of it.  I don't know. I'm just kind of hung around so anyways I'm gonna go in the pool for my first time. I'm so excited first afternoon in the pool was amazing I'm now packing up for the lake. I just Tanned so I have tanner on I am packing up I'm only there for like two days, but you know We have to just keep our options open and by that I mean I need like different Lounge clothes that I can wear at all times. So I'm bringing four swimsuits You know, you just never know and then I steamed those dresses back there. I'm not gonna wear the green one I'm gonna wear the colorful one tomorrow for dinner That's the only part of the weekend that will like dress up the rest is like super chill and like will be in like Swimsuits and like lounge stuff all the time. Oh my gosh. Macy called me her AC is out So she is going to come stay here tonight And I'm excited for a workout tomorrow morning because it's like all of our favorite like workout people in the same class And then I'm gonna do bought.  I'm about to go work out Can I really to the legs? I'm inside here at once. I'm picking them up trading cars with my dad It's gonna be a great time. I'm really excited Set active year of ours and then having an Amazon sports bra like I'm like all three different sheets of Brown but like whatever. Okay, so, you know, okay, I went and worked out and I went to the body rolling place and I got Juice land. I've been bad about filming as I'm doing things this week but I'm gonna film into the weekend which I wasn't going to do before So we're heading to the lake. My dad is switching cars on me and heading to my house and like 10 so I've got to get back Really quickly and then we'll regroup Look photo shop or what's what's what do you use to edit these vlogs final cut pro final cut pro? Can you edit? Oh Well, carly carly. Can you edit a wig on my head right now because my hair looks crazy Look crazy.  Because money is washed after you swim, of course and you would think that but it's giving like No one can get my hair wet now No, what I mean because I washed it before I got here because it's only gonna get progressively worse as the weekend got on I love that We're gonna make some spritzes guys. Do you want to see what don't got me for my birthday? It's actually really cute. I brought it out here because I'm looking for scissors It's come Four score ago when Kenzie and I took on the big cinnamon apple new york city We went to the mark jacob store and I bought my first heaven bag And I was like wow, this is so cute.  Where's this back from? So anyways as heavens devolved and evolved and erald um I was like they come out with so many different versions of this bag And they had the collab with blue marine which is just for the slayed slayed slayed girls And well, I'll let kenzie show you all of my followers are gonna think that's her Barbie And that's okay, but it's the blue marine Look at how cute It's also like the perfect size It's the perfect size and you can fit so much in there your vlog camera will fit in there Yeah, the lip gloss will fit in there and it's small enough to take to the bottom like this You can literally take someone out of that This is actually my biggest safety hazard. Do you want to see my mat now your gray one? No, I got a new one. I got a new one. It's the black one. I think I saw it in the horror Yeah, it's cute. So I'm up this one because two types of girls because obviously Like kenzie had got a new bag. So I had a new bag. Yeah And I was saying I'm just like since kenzie is my rich friend. It's just like, what do you buy people who are rich? I'm really not rich Sure If I was rich, I would be like to somewhere else. Actually, you know what? You could be a little more rich because um, you could you could be like Kylie Jenner gifting me a ranch over ranch Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah And I and I know the day will come and when it does I'll be waiting Yeah, that's what dawn's waiting on. I have to keep waiting for that one But like we'll try our best. We got here early. Um, we're gonna get dinner prepped for everyone to arrive at like 7 30 I'm gonna make us some spritz it. Do you guys want an opera? Well, do you want an opera with spritz? Okay, well these are my friends that don't really drink. So I'll be drinking spritz by myself As we prepped but I watermelons how it's really easy. So I figured could you get that one to dawn? Yeah, and then I was thinking you could help me outside because in dawn we'll be complaining and you will be complaining Okay I never complain. Yeah, you just have to be like a little um, you have to be strategic, you know I never complain about anything Oh my gosh, she's so happy Savanair setting the table and it's looking quite stunning Sav is just grabbing some flowers from the yard This is like more of a mix match kind of situation. You guys have seen me prepping for it this week I don't know if I'm gonna add the other candlesticks. I like those instead of just adding black I like it should not be as harsh But if we do draw on this, I just like don't know what I want to do because I feel like it might be a Lot, but we'll do it place cards and maybe draw tomorrow or something. Yeah, maybe not draw. Yeah I feel like it's not the vibe This is too pretty Yeah That's true And we have like glasses and stuff too that'll make computer. So I'll grab that. Okay. We're pretty much done Pretty much all like everything that's from amazon and amazon. These are at home. I did this at home amazon Um, but we decided we're gonna do white candlesticks instead because it'll just look better and more cohesive I also forgot. I guess the name plates were in there, which is fine. We just like won't do a sign seating Um, but looks cute for like a really makeshift like lake house dinner Of like what state is known for corn? Iowa. Yeah, this is how we do it in Iowa Yeah Yeah That's Wisconsin my sister loves their shelter if this makes it what's known for it won't potato. No, Idaho Idaho, well, then what's Iowa? But they don't write anything And then you see her strands of hair and it's so cute. Everyone's here They came dressed. I saw it be a dress. Okay Good morning from the lake Macy and I are making coffee Everyone else is sleeping. So we're proving that we're So much better. Yeah, something like that. Okay.  Yeah I just got back from the castles from Europe Yeah, so I just filled two cups Here's the old tutorial filled with ice. Okay And that's we have iced coffee and we're gonna pour it into this cup. Oh, perfect. Okay next another No, you don't you don't feel good about it. No, you didn't feel good about it at all But what was it that made you not feel good about it? It was just like too much But it's the same amount of the other time. I'm not sure you should get I haven't open all in open our clothes Open our clothes, baby. Yeah Okay, so unlike me since I brought half my kitchen anyways here I didn't even need to like he had enough stuff here I feel for color Take care of another one That's another splash I'm really just a color girl and that's where I switched to half I look I like hopping off. Okay. What I was saying with copies is I'm such a like Like creaminess color girl like I'd love when it's a certain color So like if I could do a lot of half and half and like a splash of cookie better that'd be perfect Because I don't need like she wants to give it her flavor Let's see Only one there. I was like can I get a dozen donuts, please? Thank you Early morning girls. Oh, yeah, I got a shake in a espresso It's okay. It's honestly not the greatest Starbucks, but I was like I literally I feel like the shake and asbestos are also like so hit or miss putting my eyes together Cocoa is really thriving She loves the water Oh Guys, you know how Marissa and I I didn't bring the bottoms. I brought different bottoms It's just so crazy. We always do the same stuff mainly because Marissa says that's mean I buy it, but This was an activity of us. Oh, wow. I'm in black. We're matching. Yeah. All right. Do you have those dirty bottoms? Okay, yeah, these wait and I have those earrings to wear but I have slivered and I have I have the jenny birds five boxes. They're so good by the way. I love them. You would like love them Anyways, we're gonna go to the pool. Oh, is this a set active? No, this is Daniels. Oh, okay. Well, I brought my set active set Oh great. Okay. So we're actually really matching. So that is crazy Yeah, set active and she doesn't like to send me clothing. That would be great. She would love it Yes Marissa influences me and then I influence everyone else We've been in the pool. Oh my god. We're getting crafty. We're making our marks Alex just arrived with this. Thank god. Hell. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No ice. No ice. You look tan. Congrats. Keep it up Happy birthday Good morning guys. It's sunday. We're leaving. We're getting donut shop haul We vloggers It looks like vitz is talking because you're kidding me, but we're back here with vitz and coto It's gonna be good. We're heading home.  I might cook some dinner Perfect. Thank you. Have a good day Um, so yeah, anyways great night. We um, prank all people all night It's really nice turning 26. They're becoming really mature and like a real adult I'm just like great calling. Yeah On my 25th, I seriously, I feel like I woke up and I was sort of like when they say your brain is I believe it it literally happened overnight anything that was like stupid petty stuff or like things with like a guy that bothered me Or just whatever like anything in life that bothered me all of a sudden I was like immune to it and I don't know Now that I'm really thinking about it and we'll get into this now I I have come to terms with the fact that I do have some sort of um, you know commitment issues and some sort of intimacy issues because


Thank you for watching Beyond Grenade today, and today I'm going to review some more curly hair products. Now this brand I saw at Target all the time, basically because I'm a sucker for Q packaging and I loved how the bottles look, and I finally got my hands on it, so today we're going to review the brand called Curls, oh yes, I've seen this on Instagram all the time. A lot of my curly girl friends already pre-approved this, so I wasn't that nervous to try it, but I wanted to try all of these at the same time.  So let me break these all down one at a time. Starting with their shampoo, this is the Berry Bliss Repairative Hair Wash. It says it's rich and creamy, soul-fade-free, cleanser-guaranteed to soften the driest curls. Oh, you know what? I'm glad that I read that because it actually tells me a lot, which I will get into. Hydrate the driest curl and encourage healthy scalping hair growth. Hmm, all y'all want that hair growth, so that's good. Now I'm actually going to show you how I applied this to my hair in the shower, so let me tell you this stuff right here.  It smells so good, and I think I have to say this is my new favorite smelling line. If you do like the sweet stuff, you're going to love this. I love the very fun candy smell it has. So that is the shampoo, which I will show you in the shower. The second thing I did was the Blueberry Bliss Reparative Hair Mask. Now at first I didn't really know what to do with this, but one thing I do love about this brand is that they actually give you great directions on the back that tell you how to use it and when to use it. So the directions say, cleanse your curls with the Berry Bliss Wash, which is what I just showed you.  Leave on for 15 minutes in the shower, or 25 minutes for deep conditioning. So I love that it tells you when and where to use it. So you're going to use your shampoo, then I put this on as my conditioner, let it sit for about 20 minutes, and then I rinsed it out. So this is going to be another great smelly one. This one actually even smells even better than the shampoo. This one is straight up cotton candy. It smells so good, and it's a very thick, I don't want to tip it, but very thick creamy consistency that really got my hair super moisturized, and I will show that in the shower as well. Then once I got out the shower, I did a leave-in and a jelly. Now you guys know I usually like to do one styling product, but I mean they look like their buddies. I wanted to try them together. I will be trying these individually of course later on, so make sure you follow me on Snapchat and Instagram at Ms. Bianca Rene, so you can see the day where I just used the leave-in on its own, or the jelly on its own, and let's see how they do. Solo. Now just like the entire line, it says that there is no sulfate, silicone, parabens, artificial oils, colors, or fragrances. I love how that is right here on the front, and it goes for all of their products. So the leave-in conditioner says that you can use it on wet or dry hair. I put it on damp hair right when I got out of the shower, which you will see, and then I applied the jelly last. So the control jelly, what do you say you're going to do? See frizz, define, hold, and create curls in a place with impeccable sheen. I will vouch that it made my curls very shiny. This is my day two hair, by the way. I like to see how it looks on day two, so I film on day two and day one, so you guys can see the comparison. But even on day one, my hair was super shiny, so for those of you that write me saying that your hair is dull, it lacks shine, these really did that for me. I really gotta say I love the directions on these bottles. It says day one, apply the jelly to freshly cleansed hair, conditioned hair, while it's still wet. Then it even says day two. This brand knows about our day two curls. It's a thing. It's very important. So it says on day two, refresh your curls with lavish curls moisturizer. Is that you? I don't know if I have the moisturizer. And then reapply the blueberry bliss curl control jelly as needed. Now on my day two hair, I just used a little bit more of this and some water, and that is how I got these results. I don't even have the moisturizer, but my hair was so moisturized from yesterday's whole deep conditioning cleanse, I really didn't need any more moisture. So I just used a little bit of this, and here we are. So without further ado, let me hop back in time to me in the shower, where I will show you the shampoo, the hair mask, applying the leave-in conditioner, and the jelly. Alrighty, let's wash this day five hair. Starting off with the shampoo, of course, I'm going to apply this right to my scalp to really get rid of any product buildup, and I'm also going to massage to increase hair growth. And as you can see, it doesn't have that much suds, very little bubbles, but I didn't mind it. So then I'm going to wash this out, and now we're going to apply the hair mask. It's also kind of like a deep conditioning treatment. It's very thick, and this is when I realized it spilled. Amazing.  Then I'm going to apply some more and do the same thing to the other side. Now when it comes to slip, it actually did a very good job from like the top of my head to almost the bottom, and then all my tangles were kind of at the end of my hair where I had to do a little bit more work to detangle and break apart any of those knots. So I do have some hard tangles at the bottom. I like to bring out my Outlast Brush by Goody. I think this brush is discontinued, which makes me so sad because it does such a good job of getting rid of tangles, but whatever, you guys can figure to tangle if you want. Then once I get rid of all the knots and tangles, and my hair is beautifully combed out and full of the product, I'm not going to put this up and let it sit for 20 minutes and then come back in the shower. After 20 minutes, my hair is now super moisturized, and this is the part where I'm doing a thing that Curly Girls told me to do, which is to rinse with cold water. Rinse you with cold water. It's supposed to seal the cuticles and make your curls look extra fabulous. So that's what I'm trying out. I don't know if I'm seeing a huge difference yet, but I don't know. It's just so cold. It's so cold. The things we do for curls. And now the moment I've been waiting for to try these styling products. I've been so excited to try these two. So I'm going to be starting off on damp hair after using my microfiber towel. Never use a normal towel to dry your hair. Then I'm grabbing the leave-in conditioner and I'm going to apply this section by section in my hair. I like to kind of flatten that out throughout my curls. I rake and scrunch. I do this on both sides. And now I'm going to grab the blueberry bliss jelly. I'm actually glad that they call us a jelly and not a gel because it doesn't act like a gel. You know when you put on gel, it usually feels kind of like starchy and your curls just feel kind of like, I don't know. It didn't give me that feeling. My curls still felt soft and this doesn't even have a light hold. Like it has zero hold and it just kept my curls completely soft. So I'm just going to let this air dry and then we'll come back. Ta-da! This is how my hair dried. It did take longer than usual. It took a couple hours to dry, but as you could see they are super shiny, very bouncy, and there's absolutely no crunchiness, hardness, or cast. Just very soft curls. And voila! That is how we got here to the second day curls. So now let's talk about where you can get these products. I personally always see them at Target. They're also available at Rite Aid, Walgreens, and CVS, or their website which is curls.viz. Another cool thing about this brand is that if you go on their website, they actually split up everything by your curl type. So it says loose curls and waves, curly, very curly, or kinky. And then you can click on your hair type and it'll recommend what products that they have that they think will work best for your curl type, which is great. Before you go, you already know what to do. Hit that like button, the subscribe. Let's stay connected. Follow me on all social media. And I post new videos every Sunday. So if you want more curly hair product reviews, make sure you come back next week. And I also have a whole other playlist, my curly hair playlist that has more product reviews for you to check out. I hope to see you guys next week. Thanks for watching Beyond Grinne today.


Good morning YouTube, here's the house we stayed at last night, not too shabby per usual. I'm waiting on people in the morning. Joe Harrison, time to go. At least director of photography, because it's pretty epic. Harrison, have you ever been in a library? Do you own a library card? I think it's pronounced library. Library? Oh man, did I say library? Library. Library. Harrison, you killed it. Scouting a filming location. It's always tough because you've got to think about sound in the background like this drinking fountain and natural lighting and we're in a library and so there's employees in here moving around so there's a lot of factors to consider. I do think this is good though, overall. How do you feel Joe? Oops, the mic's not on. Feel good? Feel humid? Yeah, I'm exhausted. Yeah? Harrison's muscles are taxed. They are taxed. He needs to hit the gym. I should run a marathon. I don't know about that. Get a copilot. You ready? Ready, Cap? Ready to get us to Colorado. Joe, ready? Bane or Chuck? Gary B. Nobody's going to understand. Yeah, that's good. I'll show him the cover there. Gary B. He's kind of a baller but he cheats with DRock in the vlogging world, in the vlogging world. Hey, Joe. Hey, Joe. Hey, Joe. We're in this big rental car return area. We had two separate cars so we're always losing people. I was always losing Carl in Poland. I have a feeling Joe would, sorry Joe, would be the new person. I guess we'll just meet him somewhere. I don't know. Harrison's pinching pennies to get me a car. Nice. Thank you, sir. Thank you. The 12-81 service to Dallas. Folks, have your morning passes out and available. Bye-bye. Just need the one from here to Dallas, and if it's on your phone, please make sure that your phone is on. Bye. Did you talk to him? Not though. We are stuck in Dallas, everybody. We are stuck in Dallas. Anybody in Dallas out there that wants to get breakfast, let us know. Just a breakfast. Well, vlog is going to be up there. We're uploaded. Tomorrow morning. Why is there watching this? Basically, we're supposed to go to Denver, but weather in Chicago, impacted flights in Florida, and the rest of the country, so we're stuck in Dallas for a while. But thankfully we have- What? Who's closing out the vlog? Don't let this turn into amateur hour, guys. Close it out. No! Joe, you got it, man. What? Close out the vlog. Harrison just hit the camera. I just don't like that. There's more to it. There's more- There's more to it than that. Seek beauty. Work hard. Love each other. And remember that McDonald's has- Make sure you pack a lot more toothpaste when you know you're traveling with three guys. See you tomorrow.


The most common question I've gotten probably over five years combined is how to break through a plateau, whether it be bench, squat, deadlift, overhead, my arm size. It doesn't really matter. And I think I wish I had a answer for you and anyone that gives you a answer on how to break through a plateau is full of, you know what, can't curse because YouTube's holding it back. But I'm going to try to give you guys three things to look at, analyze yourself, kind of be a little bit more self-aware on how you're doing it. Give yourself an honest rank. And then either find a coach, do more research on the topic, or just put into practice and focus so you can break these plateaus. If you guys enjoy this style of video, if you learned something, give this thing a thumbs up, let's dive into it. Topic number one, I guess, first thing we should look at when all lifting goals, whether it's strength or aesthetics, is technique. And although sometimes technique is over talked about where it's not the only thing or arguably even the most important thing. We have to be efficient at the lifts and try to get better at them and lift the lifts as possible or the best we can for not only lifting the most amount of weight or targeting the muscle if it's an aesthetic thing. So focusing on your technique, if you're plateauing over months or years or weeks, having a goal of each session or something to improve upon technique, doing a little bit of research, learning a little bit or having a coach and trying to improve your technique little by little by little, day after day, week after week, rep after rep, rep after month will allow you to continue to progress in the long term because one, you'll be able to lift the most amount of weight possible because your lift will be more efficient. And two, being more efficient, you'll stay injury free. If you're injured, you won't be able to lift, gains go down. And then most importantly though, you'll be able to handle more amount of volume over time. And that's going to allow progressive overload, which dives us right into topic number two, programming. Having some type of plan is going to be necessary. And if you've plateaued, chances are you're not following a plan or maybe you're following your own plan that doesn't have a great progression scheme to it. But for the majority of things, especially a natural lifter that's not using some kind of performance enhancing, but even people that are using some kind of performance enhancing stuff, stuff, I said, drugs, you know what I'm talking about. Hold on, big SUV, especially for the natural lifter, but someone who's also using maybe some PEDs or a little bit of assistance along the way, frequency and volume are going to be the key driving factors in not plateauing or continuing our progress. And so what we want to look at is how many times a week can we handle a certain type of lift and how much volume in that week can we handle and how can we slowly progress that more reps, more load, more sets, week to week, month to month, year to year to allow us to progress. And something that's too common, I'd say, in programming or just winging it by people is A, either going too heavy and not getting enough volume where, sure, there is a time and place for singles, doubles and heavy triples, maybe even heavy sets of five in your strength training or even your physique goals training to progress, but just hitting a heavy single every day, getting burnt out mentally and physically from that heavy single, getting all fired up, slapping yourself, listen to angry M&M, smashing close to 90% and then going home is not enough to drive strength or enough volume to drive gains, the hypertrophy that you need long term.  And then the other one would be is just not progressing. If you're just winging it and you kind of do two sets of curls over here and kind of do two sets of curls over here on the preacher and I kind of do some hammer curls, but you don't know the load, how many sets and how many reps you do week to week. And you end up just doing the same amount week to week, just getting that pump, no, no change in either rest periods, how much weight you're using sets or reps, then you won't progress long term. And so that's where the programming comes in or a coach may come in. Last but not least, recovery. And I've probably done videos on this in the past that maybe I have certain disagreements with myself over the years. You know, I'm constantly refining my skill as a coach, as a lifter, my knowledge as a coach and a lifter in the fitness industry. And so there's some things I might have said in the past that I don't agree with right now because all I believe the key factors to recovery right now are those two things I mentioned above. How good your technique is, the better your technique is, the less beat up you'll be from training. The more you'll be able to train over time. Two is your programming.  And then the other ones are simple. They're sad, but they're simple. But they're true is nutrition, sleep and hydration staying on top of those, making sure you get enough sleep for you, not listening to all those hustlers out there that are going to bed at midnight, waking up at 3 a.m. Cause they got a grind must hustle, murder, kill, but actually get enough sleep that you can function not only in your regular job and your family life and in training is more important in my opinion to optimize the hours that you are awake. If I can get more work done in the gym, in business, in life, and do what I want in eight hours being awake and sleeping the other ones, I think that's more important than staying awake 24 hours and sucking at every single hour. So sleep is number one for mental and physical recovery. It's all we have. And then nutrition as always, if your main goal is to gain muscle or gain strength, being in some type of calorie surplus, eating more calories in your body needs daily is going to be key. If I am 200 pounds and I eat 3000 calories every single day and I stay the same body weight at 3000 calories, I need to eat just up from that, depending on how drastic you want to get to gain muscle to gain strength. If you're really trying to gain weight and muscle, you know, maybe it's an extra 200, 250 calories a day. If you just want a slight increase, you can do 50 100, 200 calories extra a day and still make progress in muscle and gains will be a little bit slower, but it will happen. Hopefully that breaks some of it down for you. Comment below. What's your most frustrating lift and how you're plateauing. And maybe a more specific question will dig into that in the next video. I do appreciate you guys.  Turn on that notification so you don't miss a video. Smash that thumbs up and we'll see you in the next one. Silent Mike, we out of here.