The 2008 recession was terrible. 2.6 million people lost their jobs in the U.S. alone. The Great Depression was historic. If it wasn't, why would they call it great? But guess what? Between 1929 and 1932, only 12 million people were unemployed in the U.S. Now that we are in for the really great one, COVID-19, which started less than four months ago, and by now, according to Washington Post, 22 million people are already unemployed in the U.S. alone. Nothing in history is even close to this. Nothing. So what are we expecting? Since we might be in this hell for the next couple of months, well, if the whole world loses 50 million jobs at the end of this pandemic, then we are lucky because the numbers might even rise to as much as 100 million or more with the rate at which the virus is spreading. In today's video, I'll be sharing with you what I think you should do to prepare for what is coming, and I'd like to warn you ahead by saying, I really don't expect many people to be able to do what I'm about to recommend. If 1% of the people who watch this video can do what I'm about to suggest, I'll consider myself extremely lucky. If you're an entrepreneur or an ambitious person, we especially invite you to join our Motivational Channel, which is designed to give you daily inspirations so that you will have the strength to pursue and achieve your most important dreams. We call this channel Hunt TV, and you can join in the description box. 1. Make sure you don't need a job, ever again. When I was around age 18, I got to understand how unemployment is by far the biggest problem in my country. I then decided that I would never in my life need a job if unemployment is the problem. I bet I don't need a job because I would be in a challenging situation. Does that mean that I never work a job? No, I did work a job for about 17 to 19 months. But that company needed me as much as I needed them, so I was very much respected. Let me explain what I mean here. There are two types of people who will forever remain relevant in the future, regardless of what their unemployment rate is. They are the people who know how to create what others want to buy, and the people who are needed by their companies as much as they need the company, regardless of any situation. The people who don't need a job are the ones who own the future. And when I say people who don't need a job, I don't mean that everyone should become an entrepreneur. Instead, I mean that everyone should figure out how to be of so much value that they are needed all the time in the economy. If you know how to create values which others can't, you'll be forever needed in the future. Even if you are an employee, some skills are forever going to be required, regardless of what happens in the future. If you have any of these skills, even if you lose your job, you'll be very much valuable to the economy and getting a better job won't be an issue. Those who are truly valuable don't need a job. Instead, jobs need them. 2. Value is skill When I was an employee, one day, my boss wasn't able to make it to the meeting he had scheduled with the company's clients. So I had to chair the meeting. When the meeting was over, I heard people saying, even the boss can't handle people this way. What people don't realize was that years before the meeting I had with the company's clients and even before I got the job, I had spent my time reading about and practicing leadership, public speaking, and human relationship. When I was employed, my boss didn't know how much magic I can get people to perform. But when the need arose for me to show my skills, he was so impressed that while he complained to other employees in the company that the business isn't making money, he offered me a promotion and increased my salary. This, I tell you, is going on in all companies. While some people are being fired, some people will be bribed to remain in the company just because such people are needed more in times of crisis than the time of peace. And it's not about your degree. It's not even about how many hours you work each week. It's about your skills. It's about what you're able to do which most people cannot.  First, identify the three most valuable skills in your industry. Then, go out and buy at least three books for each of the skills. Don't just buy any book. Buy books with a great review so that you won't waste your time reading junk that won't make you better. You can also look at the internet and download a lot of free books. For me, as an entrepreneur, the three most important skills are marketing, communication, and leadership. I've read more books on marketing in the last decade than most entrepreneurs. The reason is that I want to know what makes people open their wallet and know more than any competitor. Because of this single skill, I've competed in the market with people who are far bigger than myself and won a larger market share, not once or twice. I hope you get my point here. Identify the three most important skills in your industry and be ready to acquire those skills and be better at it than anyone else. Read and practice those skills and you will soon become very much valuable to any economy, good or bad. Three, start thinking like animals. When a bird is hatched, just within 15 to 21 days, it leaves its parents and become independent forever. Snakes leave their mothers almost immediately after they come to life. Humans are the only creature who depend on others for 70 years. And the reason for that is simple. We've been conditioned to do so. School has programmed everyone to think that someone is out there to give them jobs and all they have to do is to get a degree. If people have been programmed to think independently, most people would never have needed a job at all. Then someone would tell me, but it's not easy to build a business or pursue your dreams. Yes, but why do you want it to be easy? How do you think it's easy for fishes to be independent of its parents? Why do you think it's easy for birds to cater for their own needs independently? Who told you that insects and other millions of animals will look for their foods all alone without the help of any government? Find it easy. Animals are independent not because it's easy, but because there is no other way. Humans depend on jobs and fellow humans, not because they cannot be independent, but because it's easy to blame others or rely on them than to face our fears. If you start thinking like an animal, if you start thinking independence, though your life may be difficult at first, you will end up having a better life because you won't plan all your life on someone else's help or job. And just before you go, watch other videos on YouTube. If you're an entrepreneur or an ambitious person, we invite you to join our Motivational Channel. The objective of the channel is to give you daily inspiration so that you will have the strength to pursue and achieve your most important dreams. We call this channel Hunt TV, and you can join in the description box. We love you.


Hey coach, how's it going? My name is Ben neighbors and I'm the founder of soccer entrepreneur and in today's video I'm gonna get really specific on answering a question that I know so many coaches have before they start Their training Academy and when I say training Academy, I'm talking about private training group training Starting your own business for soccer and that's what my whole channel is about if you haven't seen any of our videos yet Go ahead check out all of our videos. Look at our resources. This is what I do I help you as a coach start your own business now the biggest Question that I've seen recently and this is a question. I had when I started is That I thought I had to get certified to be a coach And I'm talking about like the a-level license the B-level. I mean, there's all these different coaching certifications that are available now for coaches to go to courses be instructed on how to coach teams and a Lot of times when trainers are looking to start their own business They think that they need a piece of paper to tell them that they can start now and Here's my experience and I'm very Transparent on my videos and my emails and my book I'm very transparent about how I started and I wouldn't want to lie to you because if you did it a different way Then how I show you like then I wouldn't be telling you the truth And a lot of coaches when they hear about what I'm about to say right now They're gonna be like what like how did you do that? But a lot of coaches have asked me hey, like what's your certification? Do you are you a-level, you know certified right and I say no Those certifications in my opinion are not going to help me personally train players individually and I know this because I've seen lots of other trainers who go through those courses who still need advice about how to train players privately and here's my my opinion on everything when it comes to certifications or Getting a master's degree in business all of that stuff can help you But nothing is going to be better than real ruled experience And so what I say by that is like I would rather you you know Dip your toe into training players see how that goes get results like results is what matters not a certification and I've trained now over 3,500 players in my city and across the US and not one of those parents has ever been like hey Ben I don't think we're gonna train with you because you're not certified. You don't have an a-level license No, one's done that parents don't care about that and most parents don't even know what that means So knowing that your experience you're you getting results with the players is way more valuable than you having a license So The way that I can explain this is very blunt very simple. Do you need that to start absolutely not? Do you need that to help you? Maybe I don't know like for me. I don't do that. I don't need that I've already trained enough players where I have a lot of experience. I Feel very comfortable now to go train any player no matter what their age group No matter what the love the level is and I the same with coaches I can help you figure out how to train players, but as far as having an actual License to go train players that should be the last reason to stop you from starting training players in the first place And I know right now. This is a common question I get so that's why I want to make this video So do you need a license to train players? No You don't have to have that that's a piece of paper That's telling you that you have a certification in my opinion. It's the same exact thing is having a college degree I didn't get here To where I'm at right now creating these videos creating our information products Helping lots of coaches. I didn't get a degree in consulting I got a degree in exercise sports science, which in my opinion has nothing to do with business And so I didn't have to have a business degree to start what I'm doing You don't either so don't let that stop you from starting your academy That's the last thing that should stop you and going forward to I'm gonna be answering a lot of other questions From coaches who have asked me about other things that are Stopping them from starting so if you have any questions on that about maybe there's an obstacle right now that you need to Help with about not knowing how to get something set up if that's the case Comment below this video. I want to help you out Maybe we can hop on the phone this week and I can call you and walk you through how to overcome that So comment below this video hit that subscribe button If you want to stay up to date with all our new videos, we have two new videos coming out every week I'm really excited about that We have so much brand new content that's gonna be on this channel for you If you are a coach that wants to take your passion of soccer training turn that into a business This is why I'm here I want to share my experience of how it's worked for me And I'm also going to be sharing all the experiences from the other coaches who I've been able to personally help with their own businesses So if you have any questions comment below Go below this video. There are several different links. These are all my resources That are going to help you step by step structure your soccer business So the first link there is my book. It's called the startup soccer Academy book This is going to show you exactly what to do how to start It's gonna show you my story about everything I had overcome And I know in that book that it has helped hundreds of trainers now And it's going to help you if you take action right now, it's gonna help you So go check that book out there. We also have my four-week advanced business course This is an online course that you can access from anywhere The results that coaches have gone, you know after they have gone through this program are pretty unbelievable We have coaches who have quit their nine to five jobs that are doing this full-time now So that's an awesome resource that I highly recommend you check out as well. That's gonna be under the the link below


When we started talking about purpose, it reminded me of a story when I was a very young CEO. My first week as a CEO, I was overwhelmed and I started working like crazy 14-hour days. In the end of the first week, the owner of the company invited me to his room and said, What are you doing every day? 14 hours I see the lights on at 10 p.m. What's going on? I said, I'm working. I'm working as hard as I can. I'm a CEO now. And he said, what are you trying to achieve? And I said, that's a really good question. And then he gave me an analogy that I'll never forget. He said, you know, we're all dancing in the dance floor, but from time to time you have to go up to the balcony and look at what's going on and look far and know what you're, you know. And for me that stuck as always have a vision, a purpose to what you're doing. So let's kick it off by what is for you, what is the meaning of purpose? What is it? So purpose is the why. You know, why am I doing this? You know, why am I giving this talk right now? I could be at the beach. No, wait, we're in lockdowns. I couldn't be at the beach, but I could be doing, you know, a dozen, two dozen, a million other things. Why am I doing this? What is the goal? Do I have a goal? Am I trying to achieve something? If so, is it a legitimate goal? How does it relate to all my other goals? So it really is this, the pursuit of a goal intentionally. Purpose is about, you know, being intentional. It's about knowing what you're doing, knowing why you are doing it. And it's a recognition of the fact that I can actually choose. I can be here or I can be at the beach. I can be somewhere else. I, you know, I can choose how to set my life. I can choose what values to pursue. I can choose how to live. I'm actually in control. And that means I've got a whole selection of values. I'm not set to go in one path. I can change paths. I can pursue lots of different things. So, you know, purpose is really that goal directedness. It's the idea that you are goal directed in every aspect of your life and every aspect of your existence. That is open to choice where you can choose.  It's about pursuing values in an intentional way, in a thoughtful way, in a purposeful way. Okay. I'm being told that something's wrong with the video. Is everything good? The video is not great. So you're kind of jagged. It looks like low quality bandwidth on your end. Okay. Well, we'll try. Anyway, so I wanted to continue. It seems like before we dive in more kind of detail, but it seems like there's a need, a human need. Is it psychological? What is it about the need of having a purpose? Because sometimes, you know, when you lose purpose, it seems like everything's going down, right? So what is that need that humans have to have purpose? Where is that coming from? Well, at the most foundational level, at the most basic level, it's the fact that we don't know instinctually, automatically how to live. That we have to choose our values. And because of that, if you think about the fact that we have so many values, there's so many things you could be doing. There's so many things you could be choosing. You have to consciously decide what's important and what's not. What's going to lead you towards your goals and what is not? What goals are worthy of having? From the most abstract to the most concrete, there's no automatic mechanism to make that happen. You have to actively pursue it. You have to actively engage. You have to actually actively think. And this is all the way at the level of survival, right?  We have no automatic knowledge of how to survive. So you have to, in every activity in life, from the basic activity of getting food. And you have to pursue certain goals. You have to pursue a certain path and you have to figure out what those goals are and figure out what that path has to be, needs to be. And that is at the very core of why we need purpose because we don't know how to live. We have to figure it out. We have to make the right kind of choices. We have to use our reason and allow our reason to help us solve the problems of survival.  Well, it gets more and more complex. It gets more and more challenging. But all of that is part of living. And all of that requires us to be very goal oriented, to be very focused, to be very rational, to be very systematic about the values that we choose. And if we're not, then we flounder. If we're not, then we choose values that are anti-life or we waste a lot of time.  And the bad thing that happens as a consequence is unhappiness and lack of focus and depression and drift, not knowing what's going on. Why? So why is it so hard? Why do we see so many people confused, unhappy in the world around us? Why is that so hard to achieve? Why aren't we, it's not like a nature to us to always pursue something. I don't know if it's by default, we're not pursuing rational values. Well, but that's the point. There's no default. It's so hard because it's not automatic. It's so hard because it requires choices, it requires action, it requires thinking and reason. And it's so hard because at the end it is dependent on our fundamental choices in life. It is dependent on a fundamental philosophy, a fundamental morality. That is going to guide the purpose or lack of purpose in our life. And if the purpose in our life is anti-life, then you get this constant clash between the values that you're pursuing and the needs for self-preservation, the needs for living a life as a human being. And that clash manifests itself in anxiety, in stress, in unhappiness, and in difficulty in life, in midlife crises, in all of these kind of phenomenals where self-preservation requires a certain path because reality is what it is and human nature is what it is. And you are pursuing a completely other path because you're guided by, let's say, altruism, a philosophy that tells you self-preservation doesn't matter, what really matters, or living doesn't matter, or taking care of your needs or your unhappiness doesn't matter. What really matters is other people, what really matters is sacrifice, what really matters is denying yourself for the sake of others, what really matters is sacrifice. Then, even if you choose a purpose, let's say, in your career and you're successful in it, at some point that's going to clash against this other idea of, but wait a minute, what am I doing? I should be sacrificing, I should be taking care of others. And that conflict is psychological, that conflict is in every dimension of your life, and it causes people to rethink their life, to question everything. But then they still lack, okay, but what do I do now? Unless they will need to question their morality, unless they will need to question their most fundamental, the purpose of morality, the goal of morality. Then they are stuck with purposes that clash with their actually human nature, with actual requirements of happiness, with actual requirements of success qua human being. And that creates all these disasters. Would you say that a midlife crisis, would you say that a midlife crisis as we know it is related to that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a sense in which when you're young, you're focused on a few things, right?   And you haven't really thought about ethics, morality is in the background, but for most of us it's altruism in the background. But you're just focused right now because you want to be successful, you want to do good. And many people who have been a life crisis are very successful people. People who have, you know, from their 20s on, you know, single-minded focused on this career and then they've got a family and they've got two kids and they've got a dog and they've got a house and they've got an old days of station wagon or whatever. And you know, everything looks like it's clicking, right? And then at some point I think the altruism and comes into the forefront and it says, what are you doing? On the one hand, isn't the good something else? Isn't the good that you've been taught you're entitled to something else and you haven't been doing that? But also, you know, why have I devoted myself long term to a family and a wife? What's the, where am I going with this? What's, what's the purpose of this? Why can't I just go with any young, you know, beautiful woman? Why can't I drive a sport? Why can't I do these other things? Why, if, if I'm not going to be moral because they usually put that aside, right? They put, I'm not really going to be Mother Teresa. Nobody wants that. Then, well, why this? Why career? What's the point in career? Right? Why, why follow that? Why, why family? Why any of these things? And there's no, there's no answer because they've divorced the fundamental abstract moral concepts, which they've never really articulated, never made, really made real. From the day to day life and that conflict manifests itself in, you know, in this midlife crisis. And then, you know, and you look at, and it's not just midlife crisis. Look, young people, young people experiencing this as well. There's a, there's a well documented phenomena and you can see it with, with people like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and religion and Rick Warren, who wrote a book about, you know, purpose in life, the evangelical preacher. Young people who don't know what to make of their life.  They don't know why they should do anything. They don't know what the, what the purpose is and, and they're drifting and, and they're going nowhere and they're in their mother's basement and they, you know, they're attracted to crazy ideas or they're just playing video games because they don't know what life is about. And, and then you listen and, and, and, and then what happens is people, the self-help people and, and people who may be a little bit more intellectual than just self, self-help people like Sam Harris or Jordan or religion. They come about and say, yeah, there was a, you need a purpose, guys, let me help you find a purpose. But almost all of them, Sam Harris is a bit of an exception here, but certainly Jordan Peterson and certainly religion and so on. They say, yeah, life, and, and this is Jordan, right? This is what he says. He says, life is miserable. Life is pain. Life is suffering. And the only way you can deal with it is to find a purpose. And the real purpose, if you really want a meaningful purpose, a purpose that will really animate your life. It has to be outside of you. It has to be focused on others. It has to be on other people. He talks about taking responsibility. First, he says you have to take responsibility for your own life, you know, make your bed, stand up straight, do stuff like that. Take responsibility for your own life. But then to really achieve, he never talks about happiness because he doesn't think that can be achieved. That just happens. Then you need something external to use. Again, even the self-help gurus, at the end, in the guise of self-help, helping you, they sell altruism.  It's about, in John Peterson's case, reducing pain. It's about eliminating struggle. But the only way to do that is by adopting some, in some form, adopting altruism or some kind of altruism. So let's go for the positive. Let's talk to an 18-year-old, a 20-year-old. They're ambitious. How would you guide them towards, you know, well, what would you answer if they ask you, okay, Aaron, what is the purpose of life? What am I trying to achieve here? And then maybe the next question is how should I go about figuring my purpose? Because I don't know yet. I just graduated. I don't know what I'm interested in. Where should I go? How should I start building my purpose? Yeah, so first, the purpose is the purpose of your life. There's no purpose to life other than life. The question is what is the purpose of my life? And what is the purpose of human life, if you will, as individuals? And the purpose is to live, to live well, to live as Inran described a life as a human being, as a life that is fitting for a rational being. So you can't, and this is what, this is the problem with most of the self-help guys. So some of them want a divorce purpose from morality. And some of them want a self-purpose in the frame of altruism. Neither one of those can be successful. I mean, you can give somebody purpose that's altruistic, but there'll be a clash and it'll destroy them. And you can try to divorce purpose from morality, but again, that'll clash and that'll destroy them. The beauty of objectivism, the beauty of Inran's ideas is that purpose is a cardinal value in morality. It is an essential part of what it means to be moral. It is an essential part of what it means to live. It means to pursue your life. And what is the moral purpose of your life? Well, it's happiness. It's to achieve happiness. It's to achieve that state of non-country, to enjoy it, and to counter the Jordan Peterson's of the world. It's not this momentary pleasure. It's not just having a party. It's not having fun. It's something much deeper, much more sustainable over time. It's a state of being that is a positive state of being, a belonging in this world of embracing and loving the life that you have. So that is your purpose in life. It's to live that kind of life, the kind of life suitable for a rational being. And to do that, well, you need to do, I think, two things. I mean, you need to do a lot more than that, but two things to start off with. First, you have to embrace morality. You have to embrace certain abstract values. You have to understand them, integrate them, and really, really understand how they adhere towards making your life purposeful, making your life valuable and ultimately leading to happiness. So you start with the most abstract values. And then you have to have more concrete values that lead you to those greater abstractions and ways in which to achieve them. And a lot of those values are going to be personal values. So you have to figure out what your personal values are. But let me ask you this. So it seems like there's a relationship between value and purpose. And isn't like a spiral, would you say that me is beginning my life, trying to figure out what my values are and being more purposeful around it? Is this like a spiral that grows and grows over time? Would you describe it like that? Well, absolutely. As you achieve your values, as you learn more about life, as you understand moral principles better, as your knowledge was abstract and at the concrete level expands, you know more, you're better integrated, your choice of values becomes more mature, but more informed and more meaningful. So it's a constant spiral. You're constantly learning, you're constantly proving.  I mean, thank God, that's not true. I mean, the things I liked when I was 18, I, you know, I completely reject it. Some of them are rejected today, right? So you want to be able to grow and to learn and to integrate your knowledge into your values. And that's what purpose allows you to do. Purpose is this focus on doing that. It's about focusing on your values. It's about focusing on your choices. It's about focusing on your goals. And it's about prioritizing them, choosing between them, creating hierarchies of them. And it's not fixed every day requires you to reengage that purpose because every day there are new value potential values. There are values you might want to drop. There are things that there's new information, new knowledge, new ideas that you've encountered that will, you know, make your life richer. So purpose is the standing command, if you will. You know, focus on the values in my opinion. It's a huge abstraction because it covers self-esteem. It covers every, you know, it's one of the three cardinal values in objectivism, reason, purpose, self-esteem. It covers every human activity because every human activity, every individual activity is about values. It's about pursuit of the things that are important to you that you want to act again or keep. And it's, so it's a task. And as the value, it's that I am going to be focused on this. This is important to me. This is what I'm going to spend real energy and real thought and real effort to do. I'm going to figure out what's really important. And it's more than just what's really important because you have to be careful here of subjectivity. You know, a lot of times people say, oh, well, think about what's really important to you and what you love and then go pursue what you love. That's your values. But one of the important steps there is to make sure what you love is good. And what does good mean? Again, what is the purpose of it? It makes sure that what you love is life enhancing. It is truly life enhancing. And it is life enhancing relative to the other values you could, you could follow that or you could pursue that, you know, there might be more life enhancing than might. So it's a constant, you're constantly choosing and you're constantly creating hierarchies and you're constantly evaluating. And that's what it means to have a life of purpose. It's not you do it once and it's over. I mean, maybe what you do once is define the abstractions. But even then, I learn something about the objectivist ethics every, every day or every time I listen to one of our philosophers or, or every time I pick up one of our events books or one of our events essays and read, I learn something new. So even there, you're constantly evolving, you're constantly learning, you're constantly growing, and that's going to affect your hierarchy of values that's going to affect the purposes. That you have in your life. If you see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


So this one is about power soccer. I can see it rolling down the court in my wheelchair, cage in my front, players everywhere. When I play this sport I feel very free. We all work as a team and have responsibilities once and for all. I feel independent having fun on the court. This is power soccer, the first one. So this next one is the very first one I ever wrote. The soft brushy brushes, blowing in the wind, the small birds chirping, flying through the sky, the early morning breeze, while the sun slowly rises, then the fog rolls in as the yellow sun sets. No, no. This one is about independence. What is independence? Independence is something you can't buy, but something you can never lose. The fight will never be lost, but it won't be a cruise. Keep pushing for yourself and all the others around you until you get what you want to gain your independence. Independence is limitless while there may never be enough to get your independence. Times will be very rough, but when you win, you don't stop fighting. Keep on moving forward and never stop trying. Independence is yours. I'm done. Thank you. Okay, this one is about my surgery. I get to the hospital, ready for my big surgery, not knowing when next, but hoping for the best. I get to the radio room with my whole body nervous. I know the time is near with my whole body in fear. They eventually call me in and get me ready for what's next. They insert the IV and slowly giving medicine. My body slowly calms down as they eventually start to relax. Then they wheel me in. The surgery room is here. I know the time is now more nervous than ever. After this, everything will be different, but I know it's all for the best. Then they give me anesthesia. My eyes slowly start to close. All I hear is background noise, as I finally fall asleep. It's short, but long eight hours until I finally wake up. The surgery is now over. My back is much straighter now. Thank you.


Hi, beautiful. Today is finally the day I bring you my very own color line, X-Mondo color. We're gonna have so much fun with this.  Today was the X-Mondo color shoot. We had an amazing time. We had amazing models, amazing hair. Oh my God, those colors just popped on camera like I wanted them to. And we're really trying to get across that Brooklyn Grunge feel, that very like, I'm too cool for school type of vibe. And I think we did just that and I'm so excited to see the pictures. I mean, it was incredible. We have so many amazing hair colors going on today. We have blue, purple, pink. It's incredible. I cannot wait for you guys to see what we've been working on. Oh my God, this color is just the best thing you'll ever use for your hair. It repairs your hair.  It brings it back to health while you color it. And that was the most important thing for me when I created this color. So I hope you guys love it. So that was a little bit from the shoot day of X-Mondo color, our very first campaign shoot for my brand new portion of my haircare brand X-Mondo. These are the colors. I can't believe we've gotten this far guys. Thank you for helping me get here and all your support over the years. We have super blue, super pink and super purple. Let's look inside real quick. Oh, damn. Look at how vibrant that is guys. You're gonna get extreme color payoff with these colors and that is the purple. I'm also obsessed with how our packaging came out. This was a concept I had in my brain for a while to do these D-Boss Xs. They feel so beautiful. They look so beautiful and you can see yourself. Of course, being a narcissist, I needed that. As you guys know, I've been a colorist for many years. I've seen so many people online botch their hair. I wanted to create a color line that took my knowledge professionally and combined it with everything I've learned from you guys. So I wanted to create something that would repair your hair as well as color it at the same time. That was the most important thing when creating this color line and that is exactly what we did. We combined ingredients like bond builders, very luxurious oils and we packed it with protein. Of course, a vibrant as color. Everything you could possibly want. Last but not least, we put glitter. It'll be all over your bathtub. I'm sorry, it's like a little glitter bomb type of vibe but it's a lot of fun and I needed to put something extra in there because that's who I am and I want you to feel like I am there with you whenever you color your hair. But we'll get more into my color line when I answer all your questions you guys text me with. If you guys don't already have my number, here it is, please text me. It is really my number and yes, I really do reply to some of your messages. So I asked you guys to ask questions about the line, things you've been wondering about or curious about and I'll be answering them today. But besides that, I will be coloring my hair. Finally, this color line was supposed to come out a few months ago, but due to COVID, things got pushed back. I have been waiting to color my hair for this very moment to use my own color on my own head. So I'm thinking I want blue hair today so we'll be using super blue.  I finally get to color my hair with my own color line. What? That's wild. Is this real life? Hmm, are we living in a simulation? So let's bring in Miss Cassidy and let's begin my color process.  I don't like sitting here, it's too long for me and I just want to get up the entire time. Okay, let's do it. Welcome Cassidy. Hi. So we're using 20 volume by Guy Tang and Magnum 8 to lighten my hair today. And of course we have these fabulous pink foils.  So you're gonna still have the blue on the side but I'm not gonna actually color the sides with bleach beforehand. So you'll see the difference of putting it on your existing color rather than bleaching it first. You can do both. You don't have to have platinum blonde hair in order to use my color. It will not be as vibrant but it will still show up. So let's begin foiling and then we'll answer some questions and get more into X-Mondo color. I'm taking like a very fine section here. Are we done yet? No, not even close. I don't know how much you guys know about Cassidy already but we worked together as assistants actually at a salon for a long time and then became stylists at that salon. Both of us did color only. So we both pretty much have the same background. Cassidy now works for X-Mondo and she does product development for both the hair care side and the color side. So her and I actually collaborated on a lot of the products you guys see now and especially the color line. She had a lot of input for that and we both created our dream color. Over the years I think we both seen a lot of bleach damage on clients and every time we wanted to use like a bond building treatment on a client it was like multiple steps and there was just so much work and as much as we loved it I didn't want to take the extra step a lot of the time. So with my color you're getting a high impact, bright, vibrant color while rebuilding the hair all in one step for that 20 minute treatment period that it takes for this color to a process.  That means you're gonna have healthier re-strengthened hair fibers post-coloring. So that was the coolest part for us. It was not easy to find for Cassidy to find a bond builder that was vegan. She did and so we're really happy about that. Took a lot of searching. This product is vegan, cruelty free, self-made free, paraben free, gluten free and on the bottle this actually says it is a hair healing color. So we don't like to call it same permanent, permanent, denim permanent, whatever. If you wanna get technical, yes it is same permanent but it is more than that. It is hair healing color. Think of it like a treatment instead of it being like a same permanent color because a lot of the same permanent colors do not have additives like bond builders, oils and proteins like we do. You're getting a lot more than just a same permanent color with our color line and that is the coolest part of all. And of course we colored Cassidy's hair using X-Mondo color. She is wearing super pink and we did a little Charlie D'Amelio Bradmondo special on her. This is how I did Charlie's hair and if you guys wanna see how I did Cassidy's color step by step, you can head to X-Mondo color on Instagram and the video is there. How's it going Cass? It's good. We're almost done with the back. Very tedious here. I'm done. Well, I have to color every sugar hair. Well I'm sorry. So like I said in the intro, I have questions for you guys that you want answered about X-Mondo color. So we're gonna get to it. Michael says, is your color a beeswax based petroleum jelly base or other base? And is it safe for under heat use? It is actually aloe vera based. Aloe vera juice is very hydrating for the hair. So we wanted to use that as a base versus like beeswax, which could create some buildup and like leave a bit of a film on the hair. And aloe vera is amazing for the scalp. So you're gonna get a nice scalp treatment in there with it. Can you use it under heat? You do not need to. If you end up in the sun with it on, show it'll be fine. Mackenzie says, do you suggest bleaching your hair before dyeing it? Or could you dye it on virgin hair? If you would go to our website, we actually have swatches that show you what the color will look like on each different hair color up to a level six. It will not be as vibrant as what you're gonna see today or on Cassidy's hair. It'll definitely depend on what your starting level is to understand what the vibrancy will be as a result of you using the color. But they're all very cool and very fun. And the color washes out so you don't have to commit to anything for too long. You do not have to bleach your hair to use my color. Catherine says, how often do you recommend reapplying semi-permanent color? It's different for everybody based on the process of your hair. Your hair is healthier. Sometimes it doesn't last as long because it has nothing to latch onto. Sometimes if it's more damaged, it latches on for a lot longer. Color is very much not a, this is exactly what's gonna happen to your hair. And this is how it happens for everybody. It happens different for every single person. You can reapply whenever it fades out. That may be after, you know, five washes. That may be after 10 or up to 20 washes. So it's different. Emily says, okay, which was the most difficult pigment to get right? And which pigment are you most proud of? Blue, I think the blue, we didn't like the tones. It was like more of a turquoise at one point. And then we're like aiming for more of like a solid blue, blue, intense blue. And the blue getting to stay was a little bit trickier. The one I'm most proud of, I mean, I'm very much proud of all of them. But I think the pink is most iconic to me. And you guys associate me a lot with pink. So I think that one. Kennedy says, what was your inspiration for this line? I was inspired by many things from my career as a hairdresser using so many different color lines that didn't have bond building properties to them that you had to do extra steps, colors that I use that weren't vibrant at all or washed out after one wash. There was just so many different things that I wanted to make better about hair color. And so I took this opportunity to do that. I also wanted to make something that would be user friendly and just super simple for anybody at home to do on their own hair. Back my hair. It's done, you guys. I have to just finish it. And now we're going to move on to the front. Do the same thing over and over and over again. My life's a mess, guys. Yeah, this is really a difficult foiling job. We are done with the foils. As you can see, Cassidy got a little sloppy. It's really hard to do it when you're like, yeah, I was kind of all over the place playing with my dog, like having meetings during the whole thing. Don't blame her. We already rinsed at the back. As you can see, it's really, really white and I'm so excited. We're gonna let this process for probably like 25 minutes. Then we're gonna rinse it off and we'll be back to apply Super Blue. Why do I kind of like it though? That's the issue. Like I look like a kid in high school that literally used actual bleach to color their hair and then just like left it like that.  Okay, so now we're going in with Super Blue. As you can see, we got those beautiful roots like I wanted. So let's do a cast. Let's begin applying and let's answer a few more questions. Next question is by Sylvia and it says, how do your colors work on gray hair? Gray hair tends to be more resistant than bleached or natural hair. The reason this works well on blonde hair is because your cuticle is already open and the color can go into it and kind of lock in there. Gray hair, if it's resistant, the cuticle is really closed. So it will stain it. However, it might fade or rinse out more quickly than if you had light and tear. Next question is by Summer. Can the colors be mixed to achieve personalized color? Yes. Of course. Of course. You can mix.  I don't care. Have fun with it. So I'm just doing a small section here and then I'm combing it through just to make sure I didn't miss any spots. And guys, you can see that Cassidy is using the color straight out of the tub. That is exactly why I created this product in a tub.  You can also use your hands with this. Still, please section out your hair. That would really help make it perfect and even. We also made it really simple to tell which color it is. You have the color right here. You have the color right there. It's all around the entire product. There's no like searching in your drawers because that happened to me so many times as other brands where I'm like, where is the blue? I can't find it. I used to actually write like B on the top. So I knew it was blue. You have everything in the same color that the product is inside. Charlotte asks, is it okay to leave your hair dye on for hours at a time and is it conditioning? Yes, Charlotte, you can honestly leave it on for as long as you want.  You just only need to leave it on for 20 minutes. And is it conditioning? Yes. Oh my God, it is a heavy conditioner, guys. Your hair is gonna feel so silky smooth after. Next question is by Nick. What was the creation process? I want the whole story on how these products came to be. We started probably a year ago and that all starts with finding a place that makes color. Find something that you trust to do your colors was definitely something that we worked a lot on. Then once we found our lab to do them, we gave them kind of benchmarks of how we want the product to be, feel, smell, how we want it to look, all that good stuff. So that's the really exciting part for me and I kind of just gave them all my dreams, hopes and ideas. From there on, it's just kind of samples after sample after sample and we just keep testing products for, I mean, it was probably six months. Once we landed on the formula, we then began producing these caps sent, you know, renderings of what we want the bottle to look like. There's so many steps, guys. So many caps. This is probably only a quarter of what we really did. We write the labels, the back of the labels, the front, what we want the color to be called, how this is gonna work out in the future with the naming system. Once we have all that done, everything comes together in the lab. They package everything together and you get this component here. Beautiful, fabulous, pigmented color. It's a little harder than that, but I'll keep it there. Beverly asks, what sets your hair dye apart from the rest? Let me just tell you, it smells incredible. I don't know why that's the first thing that comes to my mind but I've used so many different color lines that just smell like color and apparently you don't need to make them smell like color which I found out when I was promoting my own color. I'm like, how good can we make this smell? They're like as good as you want. And I was like, really? Because everybody else's color smells like. I mean, it's not really good. We actually use the same signature style we use on our care care products into our hair color products.  It smells incredible, amazing. I'm like, I could eat it right now. It doesn't have that hair color smell at all. Beyond that, it's very hard to find a color line that has proteins in combination with amazing pigments and bond building additives into the product. It's not easy to find and we've done that for you guys so you don't have to buy extra steps to do after your color treatment, it's all in one. We created a great formula that is creamy but not too creamy that it'll all stick in one place and get clumpy like peanut butter. It is liquidy enough that it'll distribute nicely throughout your entire head. Yeah, like I could easily apply this with my hands right now and it wouldn't be like an issue. And I mean, what other color line has glitter in their hair color? There you go, that's what sets X-Mono color apart. Katia asks, is there a certain way to apply it and how many colors are you planning on doing? I like to apply to the roots and mids first and get it all in there. I take the comb and I comb through the rest of the hair. That way the ends are just a tad bit lighter when you're done. The majority of the product is sitting at my roots and mids because that is the best looking way of coloring your hair with the same permanent color like this in my opinion. So like you can see, I'm kind of leaving these little bits out. The sides, especially since they're short can be a little bit stubborn. So you really wanna make sure you're kind of like going in different directions to make sure you're fully covering them. So I kind of like to like go side to side a little bit. And as you can see guys, we are coloring over my natural hair color right here. This is the most important part. I'm gonna look as cool as you now, Katia. I know. And just so you guys know, Cassidy used about a third of this container to do my color. I'm in chic quite heavily laid on the color. So you do not have to use this much. Okay, Cassidy has completed the blue application process. Super easy, super fast. Just wanna touch on a couple more things. This retails for $28. It is enough for I'd say pretty much everybody's hair. And now I will let this sit for 20 minutes. And then I will see you guys for the finished result after I've cut and styled my hair. I'll see you then. Are you guys ready to see the final look in three, two, one. Oh my God. Oh my God. So different. I mean, I think it's really, really fun and it's shocking. I don't often get shocked by new hair colors myself because I've had everything, but this today is shocking. I still love it. I hope you guys like the change too. I feel like I'm expressing exactly who I am right at this moment in my life with this new hair color, which is exactly what I want X-Mondo color to represent.  Being exactly what you wanna be and not giving a f*** what people think about it. If you've never tried colors in your hair, definitely try it at least once in your life. If you don't like it, it fades away.  So guys, you can officially shop X-Mondo color linked below. Have fun with it, guys. Experiment. Tag me and X-Mondo color in your photos. I would love to see what you guys get up to with my hair color. Thanks guys so much for watching this video. Make sure you're subscribed right down below. Press the bell icon to be notified every time I post a video and press the like button if you enjoyed this video today. You can also text me at this number right here. Yes, it is really my number. Yes, I really see all your texts and yes, I will be answering a few of you guys after this video. Make sure you guys follow X-Mondo color and X-Mondo hair on Instagram. These are the handles and also the websites are linked below. Follow me everywhere else. Here I am. You never know when I'm gonna change my hair color again. So keep up to date, baby girl. Today's Instagram shout out goes to Kaylee. She says, hey, from Scotland. Getting so bored with my hair, I'm 23 and have been getting blonde highlights since I was around 14 or 15. Because of work, I can't get a crazy color but I was thinking maybe something darker. Also, I'm bored having straight hair. Do you recommend any styling for my face shape? I've tried your home salon, blow it and loved it. Yay, I'm so happy about that. I think if you've never had brown hair, I'd say 100% go for it. Maybe something like this would look really chic on you. The other thing I'd recommend is cutting your hair shorter. I think collarbone would look stunning. I hope you end up doing it. Let me know, I would love to see how it looks. That's all for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to live your extra life and I'll see you next time. Bye, guys.


Good afternoon. I'm Jamie Klassen. It's been a long day, so I'll briefly share a gentle story with a happy ending. I'm an engineer at a big tech company and nearly all I do is work on open source backstage as a maintainer of the Kubernetes project area. I like this job. I was the first project area maintainer outside of Spotify and I want to see more people in this role. It'll make our code base better, our jobs more fun, and it could also help my boss and yours depending on your circumstances. Since I'm here to talk about value, here's an extremely shallow summary of my career to give you a sense of my personal values. My first software job was at Pivotal Labs, where we practiced strict test driven development and pair programming. To this day, getting into a shared flow state working this way is one of my fondest experiences. However, I was always working on somebody else's code base for a short contract, never getting to see my work in production or put my name on it. Later, I was assigned to work on Pivotal's open source, continuous thing doer concourse. My contributions had my name on them and I was even involved in feature ideation and project management. I was proud of the code quality. I felt a real sense of ownership but worried I might be building a toy since the product was mainly used internally and not really supported for general customers. VMware acquired Pivotal at the end of 2019 and I was moved to a commercial project, then called developer console. I loved building something with real paying users but shifting back to closed source, I inevitably dropped some test coverage or introduced duplication in the interest of meeting a deadline. I felt guilty about it. The public nature of an open source repo with quality at the forefront helps prevent these kinds of compromises. One day, leadership told us we were changing strategy and the core of our developer portal should be this open source thing backstage. I expected the company would have a team dedicated to contributing to backstage as other open source projects had similar teams. Dreaming of returning to concourse level, code quality and autonomy, I hassled my manager to put me on this team and eventually succeeded. I poked around the whole repo and got the hang of the project's ways of working but I mostly got the team to work on Kubernetes-related contributions in support of VMware's Kubernetes-based commercial application platform product. I unwittingly developed a broad base of familiarity combined with a single area of specialization. This is popularly called a T-shaped skill set. When the CNCF style contributor ladder model was announced March 2023, the stars aligned, my company wanted to maintain our presence in the community and I was a natural fit for the Kubernetes area. So what's it like now that I've arrived? Maybe surprising for an engineering role but a lot of correspondence, planning and project management. For those who don't know, this is fairly normal open source life, lots of email, writing up tasks in GitHub and JIRA and mediating discussions. I also stay aware of internal strategies and keep them unblocked. For example, declarative integration is the next big thing in backstage but a sister team in VMware has been building something similar. It felt great for me to be able to take a few full days and do a thorough comparison of the two solutions and come up with a plan to make them stay compatible. I do still work on VMware internal stuff regularly but it's always backstage related and I'm glad for the perspective check. I know I'm not just building a toy. Since we're short on time, let me give one illustrative example of the value I believe I provide as a project area maintainer. The existing Kubernetes back end plugin was built with a pretty narrow use case in mind but teams within VMware were trying to use it as a general purpose data access layer for building UIs. Brushing over the details, this had some serious performance problems. Because my effort is nearly full time, I could look at use cases from multiple teams and research solutions in similar open source projects. Because of my authority as a project area maintainer, I could initiate a long running track of work to create and maintain the proxy endpoint. This enhancement has saved resources and improved stability for many use cases. In summary, my company has a big investment in backstage and here it's normal for significantly impactful open source technologies to have their own teams. Also open source tends to be the most fulfilling way for me to work personally and the backstage community in particular strikes an excellent balance between open-hearted kindness and critical artistry. This talk is about value and I spent most of it discussing my personal values. When it comes to business value, I'm much less assertive. So I'll leave you with a testimonial from my friend and certified business guy, Woldir Montoya. If you want to take on an increased role in the backstage community, please check out the QR code on the left. Feel free to leave feedback about this session with the one on the right. Thank you for your time.


One of the passages that gives people a little bit of problem, a little bit of pause, or has caused some consternation in the body is Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 27. Let's look at that passage and see what it means and what it doesn't mean. In verse 27, chapter 36, God makes a statement through the prophet. He says, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. Well, this is in response to the people of Israel, the fact that they have a wayward heart, the fact that they keep engaging in sin, they are disobedient, they are not faithful. God addresses this issue. He talks about how this person who might be made righteous, maybe the atonement is now unrighteous because of the works that he continues to do. And so what is the remedy that God is going to bring about? That is him putting or changing their heart. Notice what he says in the previous passages. In verse 25, he says, then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean and I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. And the point is that people without the spirit will not be consistent in their walk. We are disobedient. So what is the remedy? He is going to change the hearts of men. We'll come back to this issue about cause because that's the issue. What does this word cause mean? But he also speaks of this in Jeremiah 32. Let's go there. He says in 32 verses, starting 39, he says, and I will give them one heart, speaking of his people and one way that they may fear me always and the point is that they will continuously fear me for their own good and for the good of their children. Look what he says. I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do good and I will put the fear of me in their hearts so they will not turn away from me. And so what God has stated that he is going to do, there should not be any ambiguity about what he means. He means to say that he is going to put, as he says, the fear of him in their hearts or in our hearts. He is going to give a new heart, take the heart of stone out and replace it with a heart of flesh. How is it going to do so? By washing, by sprinkling clean water, as he says and pouring his spirit into the heart. It needs to be understood that when the Holy Spirit is in a person's heart, there is naturally going to be a change, a new disposition to that heart and to the person who belongs to that heart. In other words, their desires, there's going to be some changes. And so here's where the issue comes in, going back to chapter 36, verse 27. And I will cause you to walk in my statues and the word that's used here is the Hebrew word, asa, which means to make, to do, to fix. So the question is, is God going to make us do good? Are we going to be like robots? Do we have a choice in this? Well, I think too often we focus on how it's going to be accomplished, as though God is going to physically move us and direct us by force, or is there an urging something that's happening from the inside? Well, what's going to happen is something from the inside is going to emanate that's going to cause us. It's not that he has to push us or turn us any sort of way, but it's something that's now happening with our heart. Jesus says in Matthew 15, 19, he says that for out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and slanders. These are the things that come from a man's heart, the things that we say, the things that we think, the things that we do. Why? What's the issue? It's not our hands, it's not our body, it's the heart. The Bible tells that the heart is wicked, is desperately wicked. And so the issue is the heart. Jesus says in Luke 645, he says that the good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good.  So whatever is in the heart is going to come out either in word or in deed. And so again, what is the Lord's remedy? Well, simple. He stated he is going to give us a new heart. This is what Jesus means in John 3, when he says that we must be born again, born from above. We have a new disposition given to us as a result of the spirit, bringing about a brand new change or a regeneration, if you will, as it stated in Titus 3, this newness in our heart that is accomplished by the Holy Spirit in us. He's not pulling us or pushing us, but he is the agent. He's the cause of why we do things. We have a new disposition, new desires, if you will. We are a new creature. Now the Jews should understand this because they're told prophetically what God is going to do. As a matter of fact, there's a caution in the book of Hebrews, which is written to these Jewish believers or to a group of Jewish believers. And he says this, the writer says, take care, brethren, chapter three verse 12, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. And it's not that they will lose their salvation, but they intentionally, because of their heart, place themselves willfully away from what God has done. Make sure that that is not the condition of your heart. Now, will that happen? It cannot happen if you are a believer. This is why this is important to understand it. People might run to this text and say that because of this text, it proves that Jews who have placed their faith in Christ can then, in turn, have an unbelieving heart after having their heart regenerated and then fall away. The problem is that clearly is a contradiction to what the Lord says in Jeremiah 32. Let's go back to it. He says, I will give them one heart. So again, he's dealing with the issue of the heart. And when he gives them the one heart, what is going to happen? He says, I'll give them the one heart and one way that they may fear me for their own good. And look what he says in verse 49. I mean, verse 40, he says, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them that this is after they had been given this new heart. And he makes this everlasting covenant with them. And what is the result of this? He says, the result of this will be that he, God, will not turn away from them to do them good. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from me. So you see, it would be impossible if you have this new heart, this fear of the Lord placed in your heart, as he also says, writing on your heart or circumcised heart, that you then will not have an unbelieving heart. So the warning is for those who have an unbelieving heart. Not that you used to have a believing heart and now unbelieving, clearly those two can't be if a person was once believing, have the Lord to write on their heart to give them a brand new heart and then have an unbelieving heart because he just says they will never go away from him. So those that do go away are those who, in the head-wise, those who have a mental ascension to agreeing that, yeah, this is what God did, but internally, nothing has happened with their heart. Why? Because out of the goodness of their heart, good things are going to happen. But as Jesus says, out of the evil treasures of a man's heart flows evil things, such as unbelieving and intentionally moving away. And so however this is working, if the person wants to believe that he's going to physically make someone according to Ezekiel 36, 27, and he's going to physically make you to walk in his statutes, or there is this newness in the heart that because of that, it causes us, the heart causes us to want to do, right? Because let's be honest, we are caused to do things and think things and act in certain ways because of what's in our heart. And so when he says that after I put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, the issue for some people probably ought not to be how is it done, the fact that it will be done, that it will be accomplished. The main point of this passage is not how it works, what are the mechanisms behind how this works? In other words, opening, lifting up the hood and seeing how the engine works, that's not as important as the fact that we will walk into his statutes. We will walk according to what he says, and we will be careful to observe his ordinances. The reason why is because he has given us a new heart. Unless someone thinks that this only applies to Israel, it does not. This also applies to anyone, Gentile or Jew, who has been born of God. Jesus is speaking of being born again, referencing Ezekiel, when your heart is been born of water and spirit. Literally what he says in John 3, and it doesn't just apply to the Jews, but according to John 1, look what it says he says, but as many as received him, he gave the right to become children of God, even those who believe in his name. And the word he is, the believing ones, Toys Pistu-Euson, Istah Anomaiotu, which is those who are believing in him. And so those who are believing him, he says, who were born not of blood, not they were born of the will of flesh, nor were they born of the will of man, but they were born of God. That's all of us. John makes it clear that all of us who are born of God with this new heart, we are overcomers and so we will not walk away. There's something about the heart being changed, a brand new heart giving us a disposition that will make us internally want to do right. So does he make us? Yes, he changed our heart and that is the agent that causes us to walk with him and never to depart. Amen.