What's going on, everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards, ripping 22-23, Peninimozek, basketball hobby, six box, half case break, number 23. Pick your team style, read off Elizabeth Names and our teams. You've got Andrew H with the Knicks, Brandon K. Kings, Brandon G. Thunder, Callum F, Netson, Timberwolves, Chengyao T with the Mavs and Rockets, Chris B has the Cabs and Hornets, Koreas, Magic Pistons, Courtney C with the Wizards, Dale F, Pelicans, Daniel T, Grizzlies, and Jazz, David H with the Hawks, John Carlo F, Sixers, Jason H, Celtics, John W, Bucks, Kevin L, Heat, Long J, Sons, Luis M, Clippers, Matt H, Nuggets, Matthew A, Lakers, Robert S, Pacers, Bulls, Raptors, Robert P with the Blazers, Ryan G. Spurs, and Thomas C, Warriors. Good luck, everybody. Let's get into it. Here we go. Again, just for to go on the next one. And my next one. Where is my next one? It's right there. My next one. This is all-card chip. Oh, thank you, sir. See a big goal? Or see a one-on-one? Be pretty nifty. Nifty. That would be. All right. Off we go, everybody. Vince Williams, Bryce McGowan, Silver, Yovitch, Isaiah Pink, Jordan Noir, and a 149 for the Pacers. Benedict Mather in breakaway and Mosaic of Dame on the breakaway as well. Yeah, Kings would be sweet. A bit of a little Keegan Murray action here. Benedict Mather in rookie. Simone Fontecchia, Jonathan Caminga, Red, Anthony Simons, Jalen Brunson, and Jason Tatum, both on your montage base. Kind of scroll through the base there. Jabari Walker and Josh Monoth, Devon Bissell, Lonnie Walker, Zach Levine, and an introduction of Jaden Hardy for the Mavs on the rookie. Hi, Ty. There's Keegan Murray rookie. Silver Claxton, Purple Jot to 99 for the Grizzlies. Jaden, I.D. Notoriety, and a breakaway of Hallibur. I will say, I do like the base design of Mosaic better this year. I do too. I think they killed the base design for sure. Benedict Mather in rookie. Simone Fontecchia, Silver Al Horford, Red, Danny Green. I like how it has like game action in the background. Yeah, it's kind of cool. It's not like completely photoshopped out. Yeah, I know what you mean. Blake Wesley, Wendell Moore. Hardaway Mosaic, Red, Cam, Reddish, Levine, and Ant-Man. Jalen Durin in rookie. Liza Mobley, Mosaic, Dame. Red, McCall, Bridges, Zion, and a LeBron breakaway for the Lakers. Jovic, J-Dub. Silver Cat, Red, Levine. Keegan Murray, introductions, rookie, and Jaumarant Stairmasters. I would say anything white and under for color. You could recap as well as any glitter. If we pull a glitter, we throw that in too. It's Williams, O'Shaig Vajie, Jose Alvarado. Red, Keegan Murray. Nice one there. There you go, Brandon. What's the Kade and Julia's room? What's the average on the glittery? Four case maybe. Give or take around there. Like we'd probably pull two in this break, would be my guess. Maybe less. Could be less, honestly. It's very random from what I've seen between full and half cases. Jabari Smith, rookie. Two, 49. Precious Achua on the pictograph's auto. Going to the Raptors. Vito with the Hawks down to three. James with two in the NT photo mixer. Thank you there, James. Buddy Heald that day. Blue, Jeff Green to 199. Uncle Jeff. Palo, Stormchasers, and KD Mosaic Montage. Fox two. We're down to three to go in the next one now, everybody. Three, two, go. Cavaliers, Spurs, and Utah Jazz. That is it. That is all. Steps us back if they win this game. Hornets, not Cavs. Oh, Hornets. Thank you. Hornets. Thank you, Donny. Kevlar in the list. Jabari Smith. Walker, Kessler, Rookie. PJ Washington, red, reddish. Jason Tatum in the purple. LeBron James, notoriety. 23 of 99. That is old at Jersey number. Nice, Bron. Not Benedict Matherin. Derek White, red, Santiago Dama. Julius Randall in Jaden Ivey introductions for the Pistons. Jaden Hardy rookie. Jordan Goodwin. Silver Alandes Williams. Pink, Michael Porter Jr. to 149. Jaden Ivey, notoriety, and a Jeremy Sohan. Montecchio, Ty Ty, Silver, Triple J. Pink, Josh Hart to 149 for the next. Stairmasters of Zion and Mosaic, breakaway, J. W. Rookie. Big NERC, PG, red. Levine and Ant-Man. Keegan Murray, Rookie. Wessel, MPJ, Shade on Sharp, red Rookie. LeBron and Ivey, breakaway. Caleb Houston, Silver Lonnie Walker, red, Aldama, Keegan Murray introductions. Hitting with the old razzle-dazzle, a mellow ball for the Hornets. Go Bears, Silver. Red, Simons. Jamal Murray, straight fire, Jah, short print. Short airplane. Jalen Williams, J. Will. Mark Williams, Mosaic, Rookie. Kobe White, blue to 199 for the Bulls. Jah and KD Stairmasters. I can't notice the fire on the just straight fire because of the design of the mosaic. Yeah, like the pattern. Jalen Williams, Rookie. That is a Malachi Brannum pictographs, Rookie Otto. Nice one there, Spurs. Congrats, San Antonio, SA. Jada McDaniels. There's Malik Monk to 199 for the Kings. Stairmasters, Brunson and Mosaic, Booker on the Montage. Box 3, Contecchio, Ty Ty, Silver Pertle, Hollandeis Williams, Red Rookie for Brooklyn. Luca and Shade on Sharp introductions for the Blazers. Got a glitter coming up here, Mark Williams, Dyson Daines, Carl Anthony Towns. Trey Jones, nice one there for the Spurs on the glitter, short print. Grats on that. Lamello and Keegan Murray. I bought the Knicks and one of Kyle's Breaks on the list and it hit me a glitter. Nice. Pretty pumped about that. Yes, Keegan Murray. I think I told you about that already. No you didn't. Blake Wesley, really? Walker Kessler, we got a White, Josh Green for the Mabs to 25. Grats, Dallas 22 at 25. That's me just using my noggin, Sam. Giannis and Kevin Durant. Do you sort it or ship it? Nope. Really? I just guessed. I just knew R.J. Barrett was the bigger player for the Knicks. Learning. Jalen Durant, smart man, smart man. Kennedy Chandler, blue Rookie Otto to 49. Going to the Grizzlies. There you go, Memphis. He's literally the only player I know. And she wiggins silver. Norman Powell to 199. Stormchaser, Steph and Mosaic a B-Book. Jeff Green, red Markel Foltz, Damian Lillard, Jaden Ivy, break away. Jalen Williams, Rookie. Bari Smith, Rookie. Silver, Franz Wagner. Purple, Buddy Heald for the Pacers to 99. Damian Yolkitsch, Isaiah Mobley, Vince Williams, Trey Murphy, Bogdan Bogdanovich, Laurie Markinen. Every Keegan Murray in the set after this break. You probably will, to be honest, Brandon. You probably will have every Keegan Murray in the set, to be fair. That is a Bryce McGowan's, Jabari Walker. Silver, Dyson Daniels Rookie for the Pelicans. That is a pink Kennedy Chandler for the Grizz to 149. Nice one there, Memphis, Josh Giddy, and a Jeremy Sohan introductions. Walker Kessler, Jaden Hardy, Pascal Siakam, Keldon Johnson, A.J. Griffin, Steal the Draft, and DeMar DeRogen. Josh Monats, Benedict Matherin, Colin Sexton, Reddick Kogi, Paolo Notoriety, and ACP3, break away. Again, guys, just three teams remain in the next one. Just two remain in the next one. Just kidding, Spurs and Jazz. Spurs and Jazz, everybody. Both two very good teams in this product. Very good team. Spurs, you've got three rookies. Chris M. with a tiered spot. Thank you, Chris. William S. with the Hornets. Thank you, William. We're also down to three in spectra tiered, everybody. Three to go in spectra tiered. Random team style breaking a little bit later on. And then we're into football. Got a leak to sell. We've got NT Mixers to sell. We've got full cases of NT. Two of them, to be exact. One divisions, one tiered. And we've got encased, full case, random division style as well. So thank you all. Adia, Seth Curry, Lebron, and a white, Nikolai Jokic. Two at 25. Nice one there on the montage for the nuggets. Bryce McGowan, Malcolm Brogdon, Redd, Peyton Watson, rookie. The aim and Tyrese Hellebutton. Spurs and Jazz still available in the next one. Jalen Williams, rookie. Jabari Smith, Silver Keegan. Nice. There you go, Brandon. Grat, buddy. Grant Williams, blue to 199. Zion, and a breakaway of Ivy. Josh Mnot, Silver Rose here. Purple, Lebron James. Nice. 61 of 99. Going to Lakers on the color match. Another NT Fodal and Hobby Mixer spot came in from Jeremy S. Matthew P with the Spurs. Just the Utah Jazz available. Matthew, thank you, buddy. And Nick Matherin, Shade on Sharp. Jeremy, thank you as well, buddy. Awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Walker Kessler and Jaden Hardy. Gary Trent, Luca, and J-Dub breakaway. Kings PC going to look, I know honestly, Brandon. Kings PC is going to look great, dude. Benedict Matherin, Fontechio, Paul George, Tobias Harris. Giddy and breakaway of X Benedict Cumberbatch Matherin. 3-3, okay, okay. Got ourselves a game here, Donnie. Tenzo, Jamal Murray, Redd, Devin Booker, and a overdrive. Shade Gilders, Alexander. The glitter coming up here. Keegan Murray, Silver Cam Reddish. Glitter, Devin Bissell for the Spurs. Zach Levine, how about a stained glass palo? Congrats on that one, Orlando. Very nice. There we go. I would say, look at this one when you get a chance, if you don't mind. I'm not sure on this. I guess I could look it up real quick. I just realized I'm like, yeah, I could probably just to be safe, maybe. Yeah, there's one with five days left at 170. That will be a yes. We'll get that into a Mac. Congrats on that there. Magic. Jonathan with an NT mixer spot. Go ahead. Even if it wasn't that much. Yeah, it's like a short print and palo. Jonathan picking up an NT photo hobby mixer. Thank you, Jonathan. Wendelmore Jr. Pink Mo Bamba to 149. Sohan introductions and a name. Mon polish. Mountain polish. That they just left the replay go. It's a 49 blue auto Alphan Shengun. Nice one there. Going to the Rockets. Silver Beale. Pink.  That's fine. You just got pink jingled to 149. Joe Ingalls for the Bucks. Jaden Hardy and Damian Lillard. I think I hate this how it's directed straight to the top of it. That's what it's turned into, dude. It's, we're the only person here, so therefore you have to, you're the only moron I could jingle. Just in that, just in that context. Just in the Joe Ingalls, in the Joe Ingalls meme context. Other than that, you're not.   There's Silver Scotty Barnes, Mark Elfvultz, and Steph Curry. Don't worry, there's Unreleased, no, not Unreleased, it was a Friday morning. Dylan and Forrest were in here when we pulled the Joe Ingalls. They were both morons. They were both morons, yeah. It was the first time, I think, in very long time that moron was plural. It was morons instead. Palo. Reddish, Trey Mann. Trey Young and Clay Thompson. Trey and Clay. Malkai Brandham. Quentin Grimes, nice one there. On the Mosaic second-year auto for the Knicks. That's New York. Oh yeah, he plays on Knicks too. Yes, he does. Dame Silver. Now I know who he plays. Pink Jared Allen to 149. Jabari Smith and Benedict Matherin on your Mosaic inserts. LaRavia, Jeremy Sohan Rookie, that is a Jaden Hardy. Pink Chris Paul for the Sons to 149. And then with the old Razzle Basil, Jason Tatum and Stairmasters Kyrie. That is Jared Allen, Dylan Brooks, Halibur and NKD. Shade on Sharp Red. Yolkich and Yanis. Dylan Williams, Silver Oshai Baji, Rookie for the Jazz. Blue, Trey Murphy to 199. A Jalen Halyadurin and Stairmasters of Jason Tatum. And I think it's just Utah now, right? Yes it is. Just the Utah Jazz available. Hello, Steve. Steve Robert. Janiah V. Rookie. Silva, Tim Hardaway. Blue Aaron Nessmith to 199. Jalen Williams and Jalen Green. Chat Rookie. Kara Slivert. Luca Red. Harden and Kyrie Irving breakaway. Chris Middleton. Red Luca again. Palo breakaway and Deer and Fox montage. Last box of the break. Good luck everybody. Here we go. So quick recap after is one. So sold out on Optic Choice, breaking after the next Mosaic. Sold out on the Legacy Illuminance Mixer. Three to go on Spectra Tiered. And Joel picking up a NT Mixer spot. Joel B, thank you my friend. Appreciate that buddy. That is NT. I'm at Collegiate Mixer spot to be more specific. Malachi Branham. Silva Red. Shredd Russ. Bass and bass. Keegan Murray Rookie. Blake Wesley. Scotty Barnes. Jared Jackson. Tyrese Halliburton breakaway. Yabate Caleb Houston. Jane and Hardy Mosaic. White Isaac Acoro for the Jazz to 25. 19 to 25. Jason Tatum hit him with the old razzle dazzle. And DeMarco Rosen. The old razzle dazzle die. Wendell Moore Jr. Herbert Jones. Nice one there for the Pelicans. On the auto. Brad Pell's. Silver Dame. James Wiseman Blue to 199 for the Pistons. A Jabari Smith overdrive and Dame Montage-Mose. What do you consider a razzle dazzle? Huh? What do you consider a razzle dazzle? Like if something on the court happened, what would you be like? Wow, you got a razzle dazzle. Well, if you get like someone hit a spin move or something, or like, I don't know. Vince Williams Jr. Rookie. I don't know what the old razzle dazzle would be, to be honest. No variety of J-Dub. Yeah, think about it when you watch basketball. I know. I'll be like, huh, all right. I'll take notes on what razzle dazzle, what we're going to consider razzle dazzles. She's Nicola Jovic. Jalen Williams Rookie. Jeff Green. Cam Thomas. KV. Jalen Durin. Like, if it was football, I would think like a nasty like juice move or something. Yeah, that, right. So like maybe a good crossover or something in basketball. Yeah, that sounds like it. Shep. Tim Hardaway. That is a purple Killian Hayes to 99 for the Pistons. Would someone just break someone else's ankles? Donovan Mitchell, true. That's, yeah. I can get on board with that. I can get on board with that for sure. Jabari Smith Rookie. Walker Kessler Rookie. Silver Peyton Watson. Purple Eric Gordon for the Clips to 99. Stairmaster's Harden and A.J. Griffin introductions. Mosaic. I'd be sweet if they had ankle breakers. These are just someone crossing someone over. Yeah, that would be cool. That would be a good idea. I feel like they've had that before, to be honest. Well, I want to collect that. Palo Rookie. Mosaic Sabonis. Bryce McGowan's Red. Dearon Fox. And Jabari Smith introductions. And we got our last pack of our break here, everybody. Good luck. Good luck. Jaden Hardy Rookie. Jordan Goodwin. Chris Middleton. Red Olenek. Kyrie Irving. And Shrey Young. Let's do a quick recap here, everybody. We've got the Glitters of Devin Vasell and Trey Jones. Bulkona Spurs. White to 25. Josh Green. Nicola Yoakic. Isaac Acoro. And our autos. We had Herbert Jones. Quentin Grimes. Alphan Shengun. Kennedy Chandler. Malachi Branham. Precious Achua. And Palo Van Carrow. Stain Glass. That is going to do it for the break, guys. Thanks again for the film. Up next, the second mosaic.


How's your Sunday? How was it? I hope it was great. Happy Sunday everybody. We're just chilling, listening to the Broncos. Man, I'm tired. We had a big Sunday baptism, congratulations. Seth, no, not Seth, Sebastian. Mark, Sebastian. Twin boys, Maggie and Josh just had, and it's beautiful, beautiful. We are the godparents of Mark, Sebastian. He's gonna go by Sebastian, and so anyway, it's just been a beautiful, amazing Sunday, and now I got to go to the office, sell some stuff, come back, put the boys to bed, and watch the donkeys, the Broncos. And this is life. It's fine and stuff in the yard. Bottom line, I hope you had a great Sunday.  On this fine day, right? Even though it's simple. Sellin' more stuff. Sellin' more stuff. Remember four months ago, we had a garage sale here. Check out that vlog, and basically, I did not do a thorough job going through the shed to find stuff to sell. So, we're selling more stuff, stuff we literally have not used, these aero beds in three years. Now, I'm gonna see if one of them works. If one of them works, we're gonna keep one. We have two. We used to have three. What? What? So, anyway, organizing the shed, organizing the patio. It's nice to be home. Hi, hi, Joseph. Here we go. Got a nice little shout-out today from Cofuzzi in Chicago. A little reflection on his favorite YouTube runners that make vlogs or running videos on YouTube. So, I appreciate it, Cofuzzi. Thank you. Appreciate it. Deep from the heart, man. It's nice to connect on Strava and see your training and yeah, just fun and to see your performance in it, the Chicago marathon. Anyway, it's a good video. Go check it out. Cofuzzi. Seth, what happened to your socks? Let me see. Let me see the other one, buddy.  It says serious bedhead.


So there's an updated version of invoice ninja. They've added a few more features and for those of you that may have just discovered this now I've been using invoice ninja for quite a while. We have about 20,000 invoices in the system and Over 6,000 clients now this includes our retail store as well So there's a lot of data that we use in here and I've been really happy that now There's two versions of invoice ninja not really two versions, but two ways to use it So here you have invoice ninja comm and here's the pricing on it free forever ninja pro plan Enterprise plan that means they host it and take care of everything for you and it's really nice so if you don't want to go through trouble of setting up a server or Understanding how to manage security on a server. They will do it for you for eight bucks a month or free for the most basic plan And if you're a bigger company depending on number of users Like three to five users $18 a month really inexpensive So we're using the self-hosted version because well my background is in setting up servers and working in IT So we'll talk about the free and open source version It's really the same thing whether you have this or that and this is a wonderful concept They have is they offer a free version that you can download. It's all open source They're entire code development process is done on GitHub So it's you can interact directly with the developers and you can host it yourself or their monetization model You can pay them to host it. They're the ones that wrote it. They do a good job hosting it So let's jump into what's new in the latest version and it says a few things, but they're really nice One of the big ones This is this last four or five one just a couple minor issues They're quick in the forums by the way because you notice that Ten days later and then last night just a couple posts in the forum Someone found a little bug here and there on the self-install version and they quickly updated to fix that there The developers are wonderful for this project. I will say that that means a lot Because you can interact with them if you have ideas and I talked to them about the user permission idea and how it's You know with a discussion with some other people in the forum and boom They added a really nice granular user permission. So that's been added So for those of you that I skipped over that in my larger review That's now a feature in here enhanced product drop-down selector. I'll just show you that one that one's cool Made translations files update safe. It has a lot of translation support So it comes in many languages adding statements to the client portal definitely really cool What this does is allow the client and I have an example of it here You can turn this on in a portal and allow a client to download an entire history of their interactions with your billing system Which means they can see the payments made the invoices they can view all the invoices They can see what checks or payment types they made so if they paid you via PayPal they paid you be a check However, those payments were entered it all shows up in the statement for the client Now you can download this internally and mail it to them But isn't it great when the client can self-service you can send them a link to their own portal and from that portal You can they can view all the settings and all the things that happen This has actually been really handy when clients have Internal disorganization issues and who hasn't worked with a disorganized client just because we have all of our ducks in a row Does not mean our clients always do Which leads to occasional? We don't remember what invoices are paid not paid and we don't have a good record You can just send them a record and they actually because it's self-service they can choose date ranges to find the things Out and sort them out. So it's really cool that they have that Go back over here to release notes Now zap your improvements, I haven't really used much of this, but it's kind of neat one of the things invoice danger has a lot of support for Is integrations with other cloud products? So they support zap your functions pie sync and we'll open a couple of these new tabs So automate invoice engine integration use that here This is actually kind of cool because you can do things like slack notifications is up here You can create invoice danger clients from a new pipeline person So it has options that as they integrate into other platforms So add invoice danger clients to MailChimp list These are nice little automations you can do so you can say hey man I've got all these clients in here and I want to just send a mailing list and please make sure these people agree to get on Your mailing list But there's a one-click option so you can just export all that right into a MailChimp and then send out your newsletter So those are some just a couple of them and of course sky's the limit This is all open source. So if you want to configure custom more features, just add them and modify the code Hi sync is interesting as well, which I hadn't heard of this previously, but it allows you to sync all your contacts into here So if you're an independent freelancer, awesome You can get in here and take and do an integration so when your Google contacts get added They also get added to your system So someone can go from a basic contact to a customer and it the flow through stays in sync and something changes It changes in both places. So with a lot of people using Google Cloud or Office 365 Any of these other integrations and there's quite a list of ones on that support here So this is great and including like HubSpot's on here So if you're using HubSpot for some of your marketing automation You can tie in your HubSpot list and integrate them sync them with your invoice ninja So it's just really cool that they keep any more of this and This creates a very automated workflow for your payments and like I said He was worked with us on a hired us for projects, especially remotely for like YouTube We just use invoice engine. You get an invoice link. You can pay it We actually get an instant email notification that you paid it That's actually a more filtered option. They add it as well. So you can say don't show me all the payment notifications We actually get them have them set up a little bit different because of filtering But you can have the email notifications come back right to the person at Senate And we're probably going to be doing that and moving it with us So each person will only get the emails related to their Invoices so that way they if they create a quote for client if that quote approves it directly emails the person created the quote So having several employees that's gonna be very handy right now We have slack messages for that and well, that's a whole different talk Now I want to show you right here. This is the final piece the how they change So this is our McTest face client and our production system. We use this anytime. We want to test invoices and Whatever playing stuff we want to do to see how something works or when we're doing some training So we're gonna go over here and do new invoice And this is how it looks when we first create a new invoice and all the different things They show up better instead of just showing us a basic like data drop as the product It actually fills in and you can mouse over so you can see all the different ones and then mouse over and get the details And it auto fills and auto complete. So if we look at like the managed services one So here's our information for managed services per workstation. Whoops if I type it right and Fills it all in like this and Creates the invoice on the fly right here So it's a little bit easier because now you we are keep adding more and more products as we had services We do especially with the remote stuff. So we're we don't mind flat rating certain things So we'll build those things in here and then we can just type in the unit cost quantity, you know, so 50 bucks 15 and away we go now we have an invoice for 750 dollars just ready to go hit email in its sense But yeah, these little tightening up of integrations They do and suggestions and that make me really happy with invoice But so this is kind of a brief updated video if you want to see invoice ninja more in-depth my other Longer tutorials are still completely relevant for using this system. Like I said, I did some in-depth Deep deeper dive into the entire invoice into platform. Let's see if we use it for our system and we're really happy with it So that's just a follow-up video on here. I may do a video at some point They have an integration that I haven't used but they allow you to actually integrate with your website So customers can come in there and buy products and set up right away with complete automation So when they click buy it flows through your system as a Client workflow, which is pretty cool. I haven't done a video on that yet But it's a pretty neat feature they have so you can integrate it as a shopping cart on your website And that's that's our neat feature. Like I said, I'm still exploring how all of it works But it does let you create these buy it now buttons You can embed onto your website and just create a better workflow and flow through so you can use it now What I like about that compared to hey Tom, there's already a million stores out there I know but when you're a hybrid company like us that's doing some retail work doing some Online remote work doing a whole lot of local work There's all these different interactions We haven't having everything in just one system where all the money comes in becomes a lot easier to track things So if you have multiple systems and you have to then sink those multiple systems back into one system Now you have a more complicated Integration so I'm always thinking about efficiencies and workflows and I love that all this is open source because we've customized things and added features Played around with it And then you can just talk to the developers and give them the code that you created and say hey Can you integrate this and they'll review it and if it looks good and if it's helpful they'll incorporate it Like I said, they really have embraced the open source development cycle This is a quick update on the invoiced into a product that we're still using and still really happy with Thanks for watching if you liked this video go ahead and click the thumbs up Leave us some feedback below to let us know any details what you like and didn't like as well because we love hearing a feedback Or if you just want to say thanks leave a comment If you wanted to be notified of new videos as they come out go ahead and subscribe and the bell icon that lets YouTube know That you're interested in notifications. Hopefully they send them as we've learned with YouTube Anyways, if you want to contract us for consulting services You go ahead and hit Lawrence systems calm and you can reach out to us for all the projects that we can do and help you We work with a lot of small businesses it companies even some large companies And you can farm different work out to us or just hire us as a consultant to help design your network Also, if you want to help the channel in other ways, we have a patreon We have affiliate links. You'll find them in the description You'll also find recommendations to other affiliate links and things you can sign up for on Lawrence systems calm once again Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video


Did you have a difficult childhood? Childhood trauma can have a negative effect on how you perceive and relate to the people and the world around you It's characterized as anything that makes a child feel alone, vulnerable, overwhelmed or frightened. In the grand scheme of things, the trauma you experienced as a child may have robbed you of your childhood. Curious to learn more? Here are five hidden signs your childhood was robbed. Number one, you completely avoid intimate relationships. Do you find it hard to build intimate relationships with people? Are you constantly worried about how they may act or react in certain situations that you aren't the most comfortable in? Some people may leave their home at the first chance they get to be as far away from their childhood environment as possible. However, the painful memories from it may stay with them no matter how far they go. You may become apprehensive of all types of relationships and fearful of being trapped or hurt by your partner as you had been in the past. As a result, despite having a need for intimacy, you may avoid it entirely. Number two, you've taken over the role of the helper. Are you often labeled as the helper or parent of your friend group? If you grew up in a traumatic household, you might have taken over the role of being the helper, thinking that you owe it to the people around you to serve, assist, and save them. Sometimes you may even find peace in the fact that the people you care about are happy and well-taking care of. But at the same time, as a result, you may end up developing a muddled sense of self-identity outside the role of the assistant. Number three, you appear happy on the outside. Even when you're sad, do you love making people laugh? Perhaps you are even known to be the class clown, the joker in the life of the party. This habit to make people laugh and joke around may have developed as a way to ease conflict and to mask the grief you've been through. However, even though you may appear to be the happiest person in the room, deep down, you may be unable to connect with your inner self. Underneath the jokes and laughter, you might feel lonely, anxious, and afraid. Number four, you often feel empty. Is it hard for you to pinpoint what you're feeling? Perhaps it feels like a void within you that nothing can fill. The appearance of emptiness can vary from person to person. Some people get a noticeable empty feeling in their stomach or chest. Others experience emotional numbness, a sense of floating around in difference, or a sense of unfulfillment. You may experience a sense of emptiness from believing that something significant is missing from your life. And often times, what's frequently absent is the access to emotions that were deemed invalid when you were a child. Number five, you can't relate to those around you.  Emotional neglect can leave you with the impression that something is wrong with you. But you may be sure of what it is or why you feel that way. This is a typical symptom since emotional neglect can negatively impact your sense of self and your relationship with other people. Do you think your childhood was robbed? Let us know in the comments below. If you found this video helpful, be sure to like, subscribe, and share this video with those who might benefit from it. And don't forget to hit the notification bell icon to get notified whenever Psych2Go posts a new video. The references and studies used in this video are added in the description below. Thanks for watching and see you in our next video.


Hey guys, I'm so glad to be here. I do an appointment. Makes it sound like I've got a scheduled dentist appointment up here in Michigan. I miss my Carolina one. Caleb, thank you for that. No, I actually have a meeting. I love church. I am at church and just full in with church back home. So I actually do have a two o'clock meeting about our weekend programming back home. So that was, I didn't wanna cancel on that team because I help lead that meeting. So I'm just gonna FaceTime in with them. But so that's just to kick things off. That's a little bit about me. I love church. I love serving in church, probably like many of you guys. And I've got a wife, Beth. We met in school. I went to school to study music and ended up studying this girl that turned into my wife. And I was up. Let's do this thing together. We got two kids, Jo and Adelaide. She's amazing at, Beth, my wife is amazing at helping just organize our home and parent while I'm away. I don't, I love, I'm a homebody.  But I also am like, I've missed them so much when they were home, but I come back. I kid you not. I came back from being on the road a bit a few weeks ago and I was folding some clothes in Jo and my son's room, he's eight. And I was folding some clothes that he and I brought up and I was putting him in his drawer and he was like, dad, that's not how Marie folds them. I was like, who's Marie? And he said, Marie, Marie Kondo. She's apparently this lady on Netflix. While I was away, Beth, my wife taught my eight and six year old how to organize our home even better by watching this Netflix show. And he comes over and folds his own clothes. I'm like, I'm good with that. Like that is amazing. You can totally put your clothes up, fold them however you want to. So that is a millennial thing if I've ever heard one my eight year old telling me, Marie doesn't do it that way, dad. So I've been in Elevation Church. That's where I'm from, our team's from. Been there for 12 plus years serving with Pastor Steven. He and I actually met in high school when we started playing in bands together in high school. So I knew him first as a worship leader and songwriter before church. And then we stayed in touch through college. And so when he went to start the church, it was kind of an easy decision, long story, but an easy decision at the end of the day on me and Beth's part to join. And it was amazing. And the reason I tell you I met him years ago because it'll come into play. He and I and our team do a lot of writing together. And I think it's a unique, a bit of a unique thing that a lead pastor would be so involved in songwriting. He wasn't always in our church, but again, I knew him as like the songwriter before I ever imagined him as a pastor or a preacher. So it felt natural when about six or so years of the church he got involved in writing and having that creative outlet. But I'm gonna jump right in and hopefully today's session provides value for you. Hopefully it provides some insight. I am not coming with the ABCs or the three tips on how to write an amazing song or how to write a crazy hit song. I don't have that. All I know is our context and we write for our church. And so I'm just coming from a place of like, this is what we've learned. This is not, I've not gone to school to study how to songwrite.   I don't, I'm not coming with that. But what I am coming with is just experience of us writing for years and making a lot of terrible music. And then learning along the way and finding songs that do in fact work for our church in and out of seasons. So I thought it would be cool if we talked about four C's today. You know, when you guys, I don't know if you remember this, women, you may be a little bit more clued in like when I was searching for my wife's diamond and talked about like, you got to pay attention to the four C's of like a diamond, right? You remember there's like clarity, cut, color, and carrot, of course carrot. There it is. So I thought for our songwriting session, we might talk about, you know, it's a bit, songwriting is a bit like finding a gem, finding a diamond. It's like uncovering all these different things. I don't think one is at least in my experience has ever just been laying out there in the middle of a field or God hasn't just dropped a song in its entirety in its full like out of heaven. Here you go. This is everything. It's always felt like an uncovering in a search and okay, this part is right. Got the color right, but the cut's not exactly what you want it to be. Okay, you got the cut, right? But you know, the carrot's not all there yet. So the four C's, I guess that we can shape this up today. The ABC's always be connecting.  Connecting, collecting, collaborating, and correcting. So those again, the four C's for today's purposes of songwriting, connecting, collecting, collaborating, and correcting. You know, we were, a few years back, we had scheduled this writing session at church and we showed up and like normal we're just kind of chit chatting and getting ready to dive in and we opened with prayer and asking God to bless our session, right? That's God to, God would you give us a song today? And we felt that God said, you give me a song today. I've given you all the tools. I've given you the ability. I've given you a lot of things to help shape you know, and offering for me and offering to me. So like, how about you get to work today? And I've found that so often songwriting is like that. It's like, no, this is, we all have skills and ability and gifts and talents and experience and years that we are bringing and all these things are parts of what we're bringing together to help you know, shape a new sound and shape a new song and shape a new offering to give to God. And so hopefully today is just another building block for you on your journey of writing and to jump in with connecting, I think again I mentioned that what I'm coming with today is just our context and we write for our local church. Like that's who is in mind, our people are in mind like the people of Elevation Church and specifically, we have several campuses, specifically even the people, I think that I'm seeing weekend and week out at even my, you know, localized campus. I'm picturing like the one guy, Rick Parker who's always there, you know, on Sunday morning and Saturday night. And I'm picturing is Rick going to relate to this song? Is Rick going to connect with this lyric? And I think that's important wherever you, I mean we're all here at a church conference, obviously to be empowered as church leaders. So I'm assuming we're all writing for the most part maybe for our church and maybe some of you are writing out in other contexts as well. But I think it's so important to be able to say I one am in touch and connect and in touch with the people of my church to a point where I know what's going on in different ones of their lives. I'm in touch with the people of my church to have a pulse on, okay, like this lyric, I'm not writing a song to try to put a broad brushstroke over the global sea church. That's not what I even feel called to do. Nor do I feel like our ministry is called to do as a worship ministry who is writing songs. We feel like God's hands been on some of our songs and God's breath on some of our songs because we have remained focused on we're gonna write with who's right in front of us and for who's right in front of us. And so I just wanna encourage you like to have that pulse of what's happening in your church, know what's going on in your community. Don't be interested in writing or so concerned at least with writing this timeless song as much as you're concerned with writing a time lease song. Like God, what in this season are you wanting to say to our people? What in this season are you wanting to say?  I found personally, I can lose sight sometimes in the revision process of songs that a song loses even its personal connection to me. So let me just encourage you always go back and have this like checks and balances in place where, hey, am I still resonating with this lyric or does it feel kind of like, no, like it doesn't connect with me in quite the same way. Is it feel a little half hearted? There was, we were writing this song here is in heaven years ago and we had gone away for a week to write and I was at a Starbucks actually on the morning we were leaving early and Starbucks is where the song began. God gave me the atmosphere is changing now for the spirit of the Lord is here. I think I was listening to a Bethel album and I just felt the melody and the lyric come for the verse ended up writing the chorus and bridge over the next 24 hours and thought the song was gonna end on the bridge, like thought we were gonna be done with the song and that was gonna be it and not bring it kind of back down. And I felt a bit, a bit fine with it. And when then we started talking, well, do we need to wrap it with like a verse or something? It didn't quite make sense to like wrap it at the end of the song by singing the atmosphere is changing now. You know, like you state that up front and so we were just worshiping through the song, singing it after it had been finished and Pastor Stephen actually was in the session and he just randomly throws out a miracle can happen now for the spirit and that line arrested me and to me it took something that was, I thought was finished and was kind of like, okay, this one's got a bow on it. It's good to go. I think you want those magic moments and that checks and balance you want in place is like, as I go through, do I always feel this sense of like in the writing stage at least the sense of like the magic or this sense of being like immediately just, immediately resonating with the song? And the last thing I'll say about connecting is for those of you who are worship leaders here and under a lead pastor's vision, make sure that your writing and your art is connecting to your pastor's heart and vision or is at least submitted to where your pastor is wanting your ministry to go. I feel like that the ultimate, one of the ultimate signs of humility is when you can submit your personal preference to a larger vision. And as artists and as creatives, so often like that's one of the hardest things to do is to submit your art to someone else's maybe preference or maybe opinion, but certainly submit your own preferences to a larger vision and I can just speak on the principle of it that I really, really believe that God will always honor that. And I think at the end of the day, like if your pastor does want to be involved in at least the process of seeing songs, hearing them before they go to platform, before they go in front of your church, then value that opinion, value his input. And I think it's so important for you to have checks and balances simply from either your lead pastor or someone else on staff who can just check your theology too in your writing.  So just having some of those things in places is great. So that's connecting, making sure you're connecting with the people, connecting to your pastor's heart. And second one, collecting, I'm gonna kind of breeze through some of these and then open it up to a bit of Q and A at the end as well. So hopefully we can just make sure we're hitting as much as possible. But collecting, always be generating and getting ideas. I've got so many voice memos. I'm sure you're similar. It was so many awful voice memos on my phone, usually at any given time where I'm just collecting ideas and I'm collecting this thought. A lot of times they're in the midst of like my kids screaming in the background. Yeah, a lot of times they're in the midst of just the craziest noise or I'll be in an airport and just like quickly hum like eight seconds of something because I don't wanna forget it. And there's so much noise. I'll share a few of like our starts in a bit where something started as a memo. But I don't see these like starter voice memos as a waste. I do see them as a way. Like I never feel like they're, when I look back, I'm like, oh my God, there's like so many collected on here that just seem like a bit of, they're a waste, they're taking up space on my phone. And I don't see that they're being used. But I think innately now, at least having been writing for years now, I've seen so many ideas lead to this next one. And we talk about for building something, you have scaffolding at every new layer, right? And so we talk about, is this maybe a scaffolding idea? I think all this is a way somewhere. Like this idea is gonna lead to that idea. That idea may come back three years from now. This idea may all be like really terrible but maybe 5% of it or maybe just that one word actually spawns this one. But I think like just taking the pressure off of yourself, whether you're in a session with others or like a collab session with others or with yourself, taking the pressure off of yourself that like the whole song idea needs to come and be completed in its entirety, like in one session. Or you're gonna have a complete song in a matter of two hours. I think like that very well may happen but at least take the pressure off of yourself that it's supposed to happen or that's the way songwriting does happen. I haven't found that to be true in most cases. And I listened to this podcast and the writer is, have you ever heard of this? A few of you, so write that down just if you're interested and it's just another tool. And the writer is the name of the podcast. It's a songwriter, he's been doing it for a long time named Ross Golan and he interviews other songwriters and it's just pop songwriters, country songwriters, just people who have been doing it in the game. It's not a Christian thing, so disclaimer. They're just, they're writing in their fields but they're writing some of the largest pop hits and so of the last, like however many years and so he's gotten Ryan Teter from OneRepublic on there, he's got Busby on there, Benny Blanco and I was listening to this one just yesterday on the flight on the way up with Greg Wells who's been around for, I don't know, 20 years or so producing and he produced like, Apologize by OneRepublic like 10 years ago and produced Katy Perry's Teenage Dream has co-written with Katy and Adele and everything. So, and Greg Wells, this guy, this writer was saying, most days his writing amounts to absolutely nothing. Like 90% of what he does never feels like it sees the light of day. But if you're always collecting this idea, the principle of always just putting in the work and always collecting the ideas, that principle is going to work for you because you don't have to feel like you're generating ideas from scratch every time if you haven't picked up a pin or sat down at a piano to write in three months.  However many days they're at 65 for. He writes that many days. Like I've seen it in print where he's like, I even write on Christmas Day. I think what he's just saying is that he believes so much in the principle of writing for the sake of writing or that book by Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art. He said, Stephen Pressfield says, it doesn't matter if I wrote anything worth anything today as long as I wrote today. So I'm just saying all that today to hopefully relieve some pressure from you that you're probably going to come out of a session one day after one day or come out of a session even after one week and you have something amazing. And again, obviously very well could happen but I think people that have been doing this for years and decades have found that to not necessarily be the case but what does help them is just the consistency of putting in the work and the consistency of creating and to reinvest the dividends basically of that creative momentum. And I think sometimes you can even write a high of like creative momentum. So like sometimes we've found like we're writing a, we're in the midst of writing a song or finishing a song, finishing a session and let's say we were gonna stop at eight PM or something. There's certainly been times where we're like, we're so like freaking amped about like whatever we did. We took that and jumped off into one other idea that we had the smallest start because we wanted to just like ride this momentum and then we carry that momentum as long we ride that way for as long as it happens. And I know that sounds probably fundamental but I just I'm trying to give you like any little trick or trait like when you feel like a bit of the magic then try to chase that magic and go as far as it'll go and then like be okay. Like when it lets up and trust that, all right. You know, the next day I'll get back to work and we'll see what happens then and then the day after that. So collecting just be collecting ideas all the time be routinely creating the next one, collaborating. I mean, this one's pretty straightforward. There's just no reason not to be collaborating with others in my experience at least and don't wait for someone else to prompt it. We collaborate all the time. The song, we have a song, a newer song called Here Again and I knew what the song was meant to be about when it was beginning. So that song actually started when my mom was passing a couple years ago and I started the song when she was in, she was in ICU for like the last, for like 10 days before she passed and I saw this interesting thing. Like she was unresponsive in the last 10 days and it felt like she was obviously present in her body, but not necessarily in her mind and in her spirit. And so she had like kind of one foot to me, like one foot here, one foot in heaven. And I was watching her kind of just look a little, like suspended like in between two places, right? Like so she was just kind of in between two places. Like so she was just kind of caught in between and began writing some lyric down during that time and melody and ended up writing a few verses, set it down for a few months and didn't come back to it until maybe three or four months later. And it was good for what I thought, but I brought it to a session and the lyric was, it was about being caught in between and the lyric was meet me in the middle. Where, something like a find me in this lonely place or in this hurting place, meet me in the middle. And here's what collaborating did. So I sang through the verses and then Pastor Stephen, who was in the session, he was like, so what's the objective? Like what are you wanting to say? So I explained just the, I feel like, what's it feel like when we're caught, when we're in this like in between state, we're not here, but we're not there. And so he's like, okay, well, let's not say it so on the nose. Let's not say like meet me in the middle. Why don't you say, can't go back to the beginning, can't control what's tomorrow. Okay, that's way better. That's so much better. And I think like that's the beauty of collaborating, right? Like you can just bring other people around a message and they can hopefully help like fine tune or in that case like, you know, kind of re-print the lyric altogether to open the song. But I just don't think there's any reason for you to not gather around other people and just see what might come out and surprise you and captivate you differently. And the last thing I would say is correcting. So the fourth C. So, you know, I mentioned this is about like, kind of like a diamond hunt and I guess, a bit of a archeological, archeological dig. And I think it, for us in our experience, songwriting is just taking work so much of the time. Like it's not been, in some cases, it's not even been an enjoyable process. Like it feels like this excavation, like you're digging for something.  And I do feel like we kind of have mental models that we have talked through as a team and staff back home. And I feel like as one of the songwriters on our team, like my mental model is like an archeologist, like, okay, this helps set my expectation.  Like I'm not going to find it sitting on top. And it's not gonna come across that way. And correcting lyrics, correcting melody, revising, and revising and revising again is I think so, so key. And so I don't know like your experience and we can jump in in just a moment to some Q and A and maybe you can let me in and ask anything. But I don't know, early on in writing, I just thought like, okay, where we leave the session, like that's gonna be the song. Or if we're sitting with a song for a couple of weeks, that's it. I can tell you like some of our songs have been revised for 12 months, 18 months, and it feels laborious and it feels tedious and it feels like this isn't gonna turn into anything, let's give up on this. And that was the case with a song called Resurrecting. We rewrote and rewrote for nearly a year and a half on that song. And we didn't know at the end of the, like we tried it in front of our staff. One version that was totally different. We tried it in front of our church even that didn't have verse four finished yet. And it just, I think having a tenacity and willingness to not give up until you feel like, this thing is connecting. This thing has something that stirs me inside. Me personally, as a leader, or this thing I've heard from people, they connect with this lyric or this melody. I think there's so many like different ways to look at melody writing or like, said to be top line writing. And there's so much to cover about songwriting in general that I just don't think we'll have time at all today, nor do I feel like completely qualified to do it. But I think like what I have learned is that, okay, like the other night we went home, we were pre-proling, we're getting ready to record a few songs in a few weeks. And we were doing some pre-production on some songs. I came home, I always do and show it to Beth, my wife. And I'll sit there and watch her as she listens to the songs for the first time. And I'll be looking for like, ooh, I'll be looking for like, ooh, I like that. And she is musical, but not like a ton. And so that's kind of like the perfect little bit, right? Like she, I'm just looking for a reaction. And if I don't see a reaction in a spot where I really was thinking there might be a reaction, then usually that's a sign or I take it as a gut. Like, okay, we gotta figure that out. And the hardest part I think to me is like, so is it the lyric? Is it that the melody should have gone up and we took it down or the melody went down and we should have taken it up? But that's all part of the digging. And you just don't, I think you keep at it and be willing to go another week or another six months. And I, you know, hopefully that's what takes something from good to great and in your case. And so I wanted to, for instance, I'll come to the altar. This is where the song started for us. We had this idea sitting around for quite some time. It's coming up here in a minute. So this isn't 4-4, time signature 4-4. One, two, three, four. I don't know why I'm singing so poorly. Just barely whispering into the, so that's in 4-4, right? And I had the idea, Pastor had this idea that sat around for quite some time. We kept trying to write it right around it. My life be an altar. Your life laid down my sacrifice. And it was like, what does that mean? That's like super heady.  And it was in 4-4. But can you hear? Oh, come to the altar. And so again, months and months and months. We finally were about, we had sent it to someone else to try and write something to it. And we were eventually away for a session. And throughout, well, what if it's in, why don't we try it in 6-8? My life be an altar. And what, okay, maybe the lyric is the thing that's just like not connecting because it's just too complicated. So what if it's like an invitation song? Oh, come to the altar. And after 18 months of trying to make this work, then we finished the rest of the song in a matter of a couple of hours. Because when he was like, I'm gonna put it in 6-8 and try this invitation. And I said, oh, well, if you have that idea in 6-8, I've got this idea I've been working on that starts. Are you hurting and broken within? And it was like, this thing just came together. But you just don't know that until you just decide to stick with something and finally something will unlock or maybe you're in a room with somebody different and they're like, oh, well, if you're gonna do that, I've got this. And I swear there's some like little magic part of, and I'm using magic, I'm not like, I understand the Holy Spirit. I keep saying that, I'm just gonna clarify. I just kind of use that as the symbol or the, but I, man, sometimes I'm like, there's just some moments that like it wasn't meant to happen until this like group in this room or this, this might like, you had to go through this even to get to that melody or you had to go through this to even understand what that lyric meant. And so just stick with it or certain songs may never even come out. This was resurrect, this was resurrecting like early like it wasn't even anything. So you have different chords from the ashes of defeat, our rise in victory for the resurrected King has resurrected me. So really all we took from that after, that was maybe version one, I won't show you version two and three that led to the, to the final thing. But we were like, okay, well, if we're gonna chop all this stuff away, what's worth keeping? All right, resurrected King, resurrected me. Okay, let's keep that and let's change the chords. That was the chorus, maybe that lyrics, not meant to be in the chorus, maybe the lyrics meant to be in the bridge. The, here's the chorus, I think, of resurrecting. It was so complicated. Here's the chorus of resurrecting at one point. So many words already. Not done yet, got another one for a chorus. So we sat, that's like, I think one of the versions we put in front of our church and we're like, man, why aren't they like getting with this chorus? And I'm like, because it's like a verse. There's a hundred lyrics in the chorus. So we went from that to your name, your name is victory. But sometimes I swear like, when I used to hear like Chris Tomlin, you know, put out songs that seemed like the guy next door could have written them. I was like, man, that joker. He just sits down and God gives him the simplest song for the global church and it just happens. And it's just so simple. And like my six year old could have come up with that melody. That's the way I used to feel. And then I realized, no, Chris Tomlin works his tail off because what happens is you start with all this stuff. And if you're willing to whittle away and whittle away, simplicity is extremely hard to actually accomplish in most cases. Like it is so difficult I think to get something down whether spoken in its most simple form or communicated in its most simple form or the melody started doing this and you had all these runs and then you were like, oh no, maybe we just need to go from dot to dot and go, you know, one, three, four, three instead of one, two, three, five, four, one, seven. It takes so much work at least in my experience to get there. I've got several more silly little ideas in start so that I could show you, but I think you get the point. So just don't give up on collecting ideas or correcting your ideas, stay in the revision process, stay in it with melodies, stay in it with lyrics. And I really just believe in what God is doing right now with worship songs that are coming from churches and from local voices and local sounds and houses that are placed in different parts of the country and our world. And if you're in the midst of writing right now, just please be encouraged to stick with it because I believe that you're meant to give an expression to your people that no one else can. I really believe that Hillsong is giving songs to their church and the global church or reckless love clearly was meant to be given to God's church. I believe that with all my heart that it was a message that God breathed on and meant to get to his people in the global church at large. But I also think there are so many songs that you can be working on and presenting and giving as gifts to your people that they'll connect with in a way that they won't ever connect to maybe one of our songs or Hillsong or any other one. And it's because it can be personal for your context and it can be from your heart to your people. And so hopefully that helps. We got, I don't know, 15 minutes or so. And if you have any questions, we could open it up here and you could ask whatever you'd like or we could shut it down. Yes. Yeah. So there's not like a special room necessarily or anything. We have a studio that we typically write at now. We have plenty of times gotten away for like a actual retreat more or less for a week and we'll get away and we'll like shut everything down. We'll try to shut phones down aside from capturing voice memos but like work turns off so that we can, it usually takes about a day, about a day of writing before we feel like creativity starts to kind of be unhindered a little bit or so we've done that. When we get together, I think energy is so important. Energy in the room, like the atmosphere. So encouraging like people to just throw out ideas. So if you're writing with two or four other people like really being okay, just encouraging any idea safe like no idea is dumb, throw it out, throw it out, throw it out.  Or I don't see that working because it feels like just from an atmosphere standpoint it shuts something down. And I don't know if like, I may not like that idea but if I don't let that idea maybe lead to this idea or that idea, then why am I shutting it down as soon as it's out of someone's mouth? And it just like songwriting is so vulnerable, right? Like so it's extremely difficult to build up already the courage to throw something out that you, you know, may have zero clue if it's good or not. And so I think creating that, you wanna, I mean right now for the most part we're writing with people at least one other person that we're comfortable with and then writing with some others it may be new or whatever. But I think like in the beginning stages we didn't have that obviously and we were building trust with one another and building but I think one of the things we did early on is like identify, man sometimes we just, I'm gonna pick up my guitar and march around the room and just shout this melody just so I can like lift the room because it kinda, well it felt like everybody just ended up doing this.  Cause we all, none of us wanted to share like our thoughts. And then that, and it's like, well what are we doing in the room together? Like we could do this at a home with our internal dialogue and our internal thoughts and our journal. So sometimes it just takes like a hard reset like all these things I think are worth doing. Like there's of course times where I've like gone over here to my own space and in an actual session and jotted something down. But I think like knowing triggers to help lift an environment or a session is good. And we just, I mean we just chase as many ideas and let's say like a good session where we always, we always come in with an idea. So we're never starting like from zero and just looking at one another going or like, does anybody have any something, anything? And no one has brought something. We always start a session knowing like someone's bringing an idea because it's just so like we found cause we have done that in the past and we found that it's like it feels a bit pointless to just try to create something if none of us have been doing the legwork ahead of time. So I think bringing an idea or multiple ideas to a session is very important. And in a good day, like a, I don't know, a perfect day like then we would, we've done anything from like demo and full, we usually try to like demo and full means on our phone or now that we're writing in a studio we usually just do acoustic piano and vocal demo. I have, in the last couple of years like I've, there may be, I'm sure there are like a lot of feelers here. I have leaned way more on like communicating an emotion in a, in a scratch tape, like in a first demo than like trying to get the, the mellet, the technicalities of a melody across. So early on, I used to really be nitpicky about if we had multiple worship leaders cause different campuses, right? And like, I really wanted them to make sure they heard all the melody in the demo so that they were singing it right when they were teaching it to their campus and their people. So I noticed though, like over the years, like man, my demo like, I didn't, I was feeling it way more in the writing session and then my demo lacks this like kind of passion and feeling. And so now, I mean, this is just for whatever it's worth but now I'm on a scratch demo. I'm shouting, like I'm wanting to convey like, I believe in this thought. I believe in this message. I believe in this melody. And I think, I think that's so important to try to communicate. So yeah, that would be a quick overview top to bottom. Yeah. We, we found like four seems max. I don't, I don't know that there's like a right number or a wrong number necessarily. I think it probably would be contextualized. But for the most part, I think like three is like a sweet spot for us. Three other like right people. A few months ago, we did a like three or four days straight with like four of us. And it ended up being really energizing and felt great the whole time. Two like has at times felt like it can, if you hit a wall, like if both of you hit a wall there's not that tiebreaker, right? Or not that third like kind of odd ball or just kind of crazy dynamic to throw in like, what if this was it? So two sometimes feels like it loses energy sooner than later. But past like, for instance, Pastor Stephen and I have written several just the two of us, but usually that goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for like weeks or months. Yeah. Yes. It was a podcast and the writer. Oh. Oh, war of art. Yeah, by Stephen Pressfield. Also not a Christian book. He has some just out there ideas, but yeah, but he, man, he's, he's quite, he says a lot about the enemy of creativity. He has a lot to say about the enemy of creativity, whether that's not putting like I'm mentioning in that part, not putting in just the regular consistent work or insecurity and how all these things obviously play into being an enemy of creativity. Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, we're as just church band as it can get. So like we have, we have like an image so to speak that like we have developed for, you know, whatever purposes over the years, but I just culturally even, I think like the thread for us will always remain like, we're all already serving at church for our context. So I don't know, like the album process of that particular, one was, one just, we have multiple worship leaders. It's the deciding and hearing what, what voice is meant to carry, what song, not every voice. And this is the case for a lot of our albums currently, not every voice that's singing a song had anything to do with writing it. I don't think that matters at all, but I also want that person whose voice is leading and carrying that song to believe in that song like they wrote it. Like I want them to have so much conviction about what they're singing. So that, that can be quite a process even now of identifying because it doesn't always just jump out like what voices, so obviously meant to carry this, this or that song. Sometimes it's hearing multiple voices. We just put out a, kind of like an auxiliary project called Paradoxology and we heard so many different voices on a lot of different songs because we intentionally went to the studio to just kind of play with that album, like just play around and just try stuff. But I think what comes along with that, and this is a whole other breakout session, but what comes along with that in church because we are as church band as it gets and just we're doing this together in ministry is it's a lot harder because everything is gray. There's no black and white of like, all right, well like Corey's obviously gonna carry this one.  And like Chris Tomlin obviously wrote this one, every one of his album, he's obviously gonna carry this album. It's not black and white. And so it's there's so much gray and we all have like emotions and everybody is a gift to our ministry and playing different parts and I mentioned it's a whole other breakout, but like that can be a difficult process of like, because we're all also human and have hearts and have like everybody is for church first. But then when you just throw in a weird dynamic of like singing on an album, it can bring along a lot of things and maybe I'll sing this one, maybe I won't, maybe I'll sing on this album, maybe I won't sing on this album. And so walking through everyone through that, walking everyone through that is always not fun, but it's a part of it. Anything else? Yeah, yeah, a lot of, I think a lot of it would be message. So sermons that are that are being preached. I think it's important that always feel connected personally to something that God has been like revealing to me about my character just a few months back. I really needed to get something on paper that didn't feel like a corporate worship song at all to me, but it was something that I was just dealing with like when it came to feeling a bit in over my head and a bit unqualified for this or that. And so I jotted it down and I think those, I think it'll end up turning into a corporate worship song, but I think the reason I bring that up is to say like it is so deeply personal to me that it came from what God was dealing with me. I think that's also equally important. So it's a mix. I think, you know, like sometimes we have a lot of, we didn't own this last album, but we currently have like a bit of a hymn that's focused on the cross. We have one writer on our team named Jane who brought, we have a song on a few albums ago called Mighty Cross. She just brought one to the team that's like centered on the cross and it's a hymn as Mighty Cross is kind of a hymn format. This one's a hymn format. She's like really rich and kind of deep with like theology and does a lot of research. And so that's not coming from necessarily a message. It's not coming, but it's just coming from, you know, her wanting to have something that's really grounded. So I think we just try to stay well-rounded. Yes. Well, I think, yeah, that's a good question. For us, our objective is always serving our church in a corporate sense when it comes to like the main, like our main albums. So we're always having that as the starting point. I think we have been developing like what that sounds like for us for the last, you know, several years. I think right now we're like just starting to toy with, well, okay, so what does it mean for us to evolve sonically and knowing that like usually when someone evolves sonically it's not received well at first until maybe years later. And I don't know that we'll do anything like that, but like at first when someone kind of takes a different step, I think a lot of times they're meant, like I would say John Mark McMillan, for instance, he's like meant at least in my mind to help carve out sounds that the global church will be and in writing style, writing arranging, that the global church, he's breaking new ground, he's kind of doing something different. He's a bit of like, you know, John the Baptist going before, if you will. And I just think everybody plays different roles and obviously feels different, you know, has different goals and objectives. Ours will always be to serve our church in a corporate sense. I think like how we end up, so we're not setting out in other words to write something that feels so deeply, or not deeply personal as much as like, we're not setting out to write a Christian music song. Maybe will there be an expression one day, like as an offshoot for what we're doing possibly, but I think like for elevation worship, as far as I can see, like that'll always be there. So I think, yeah, I, yeah, yes. I think my Enneagram type is a three. My wife thinks I'm a one. I relate to a lot of what the one description is, but I'm pretty sure I don't relate to a lot of it. So I think I'm a three. I'm right behind me as a six though. So I've got loyalists like just one number under. What is it, performer or something? I struggle. I struggle like, I'm not gonna have that thing tell me what I am. Whatever. Is it, yes. Yeah, a couple. We have a song on this last album called Worthy Worthy is your name, Jesus. And that chorus pastor, Steven actually wrote coming out right before his sermon, we were in worship. I don't remember what song we were doing. And he just came out with this piece of crumpled paper, set it on his like podium and literally this is like, if I could pull up the film tape, I would show you. This is what it looked like. He was like, you know, ministered for a bit. He was like, I was just backstage and I heard this song and it went Worthy is your... And he's given out, like we deal in number system. So he's throwing up the chords for our LJ or our MD. Worthy is your name, Jesus. LJ catches up, you deserve the three. Worthy is, and then he's like, no, six. That's how it was. And so it's happened a couple of times. Yeah, not much, but a few times it's kind of, it's kind of cool to see it happen. Yes. Yeah.  Is that right? Okay. Right, right. Yeah, totally. I think, I mean, there are some resources online. I'm not sure how, there would be one site called Praise Charts, I think, that might have, I think they do lead sheets, which would show you the melody. Like on a treble clef. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know any sites off hand that necessarily do break it down from an orchestral sense. Maybe someone else does, but I think Praise Charts does it at least by lead sheet so you can see the top line. Hopefully, yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the trick I think every day is figuring that out. Truthfully, like I grew up in church. My dad was a minister. Is all I knew was like small local church ministry. I didn't have, I didn't have a dream at like 16 to be like at this place, like this certain stage or to do this certain type of album. I just, I don't think I was, I lacked aspiration. I just didn't have it. My context growing up was like, I love seeing my parents serve in local church ministry. And so I was like, I knew at 17 I was called to the church. I wanted to just do that. And if anything, man, some days I'm like, I mean, the Lord and I have conversations about this. So it's nothing new. But if anything, some days I'm like, Lord, I would like to just kind of, just be at a campus and go back to church and not do travel. I love, yeah, like I love my family. And that's not the reason I say Lord, not talk about it. That's not, I hope you don't hear me taking anything for granted, but I just, I love like serving people in the local church context and balancing this with that is extremely difficult. And it's not something I even knew to look for. I didn't have a context of it growing up. I don't have like necessarily like a model because I've, you know, I've been at church since the beginning too. So I'm not, I have fortunately some friends and other ministries that are further along, but it's not, I'm not in a, at least a church situation where I'm looking to people who have gone before me in our church that have done it before. And so I, I don't know, man, I may have so many thoughts on like worship and image and brands and everything. I don't think they're bad. Also think they can just complicate things. I have a whole lot of thoughts on social media. But it's, it's an interesting thing. I just, I think like honestly my, my answer at the end of the day is like, if I can just stay grounded focused on local church, still while I'm traveling, it's important to me that I'm getting ready to jump into this call back home with our programming team because they're relying on me and they're not seeing me like travel and be like, well, you know, we'll see what happens for the weekend.  I don't want that to happen. So I think just staying grounded in that way, like honestly helps just keep me, keep me rooted and obviously helps move our teams forward. And just want to bring my, my family to church with me on Saturdays and Sundays. And so, good. Thank you guys so much.


Honestly, has anybody ever called you a goodie-two-shoes? Hooray! Goodie-two-shoes. Alright, what does that even mean? That tree is my father. What does that even mean? It means he's half-tree. It's like, yes, I do wear two shoes. Those must be comfortable shoes. I bet you could walk all day shoes like that and not feel a thing. So it's to protect my two feet? I wish I had shoes like that. My feet hurt. And I do try to get a good pair of shoes. Well, I'm always sad. There's an awful lot you can tell about a person by their shoes. A pair meaning two shoes, which I believe is the primary form of purchase of shoes. Where they going? Where they being? You know, to do a good job protecting my two feet. I've won lots of shoes.  I bet if I think about it real hard, I could remember my first pair of shoes. When I was your age, we were so poor I could only afford one shoe. $2.50? How in the real do I get with that? So I guess that's about $0.50 a rib, huh? Let me get one. I had to wrap my other foot in duct tape. Right on. One out of, one out of ribs. No, no, no, no. One rib. And to get to school, I had to hop my way through waist-high snow for 40 miles. One way. One rib. I sure am hungry. Make that one rib to go. One rib. Each day, dang spoiled goody two shoes. Mama said they'd take me anywhere. She said they was my magic shoes.


Hey everybody, it's Hari Swaminathan. It is Friday, December 18th and we are looking at our swing trades. Now the ES Future is showing up about four points but let's go take a look at the intraday chart. You can see it was down up to you know 3700 so it was negative for most of the pre-market. It's just turned positive and plus it's not a whole lot. I want to take this video to explain some margin issues because there's some confusion as to you know how this margin system works. So whenever you have a debit spread you just have to pay the debit and whenever you have a credit spread you have to put up margin. So on Apple you can see the BP effect on the final column here. The BP effect is $14000 so even though it's 20 contracts and I think the spread size is about $7, the margin effect is $14000 and as I mentioned I look at this as a $50,000 account. So here you have $14000 for Apple, Facebook is $5000 and Mastercard is $1250. Now the others are debit trades and so for Netflix if you look at the trade price is about let's say about $7 difference between $20 and $1295 and so for five contracts that will be $3,500 and then for PayPal once again you know the price would be somewhere around $3.5 so which would be another $2,000 on PayPal and the SPX is a $9 difference over here so that means it's about $4,500. So overall you can see the margin being used is $20,250 and then if you add the three debit trades that will be another $12,000 or $15,000 so it comes up to $35,000 so I try to keep it that way. So just to understand you know this is a $50,000 account so depending on your account you can scale up the size of contracts or scale down either way is fine but you know that's how I look at this as an as a $50,000 account and I make sure that it doesn't go over that. Generally I leave at least $10,000 for as a you know gunpowder if you need it for adjustments. Now today you can see PayPal has done up has gone up very well and you know both these are deep in the money now. PayPal is at $236,000 so yesterday we had a great trade on Shopify. Shopify made another $600 after the open so it was a $3,500 trade and today we've got PayPal should be about $2,100 or so. So let's close PayPal and being a Friday and the futures are looking iffy we won't take a trade today we'll just let all of this develop. Now Apple has recovered quite well we just need about $2,300 more for breakeven and there's a lot more premium than that and it's sitting right in the middle there. Facebook we've recovered I mean we booked $2,300 so we've got just $2,100 to go Mastercard we've recovered about $12,000 or $13,000 so not much there also so all of these are doing well Netflix is doing well and we'll close PayPal today and we'll let the SPX trade develop. No new trade today have a great weekend folks. Thanks.