Hello and welcome back to a very special episode of the Much Love Podcast. Today I have a variety of topics I want to discuss and if you don't want to wait for the whole episode, you can watch the individual clips that will come out afterwards. But these all flow very nicely together so I'm grateful to be sharing this space with you today. To frame the conversation or really the topic of discussion, I want to read something that struck me right in the heart this morning.

while I was making breakfast. And it's a quote from chapter 10 of Love, Service, Devotion, and the Ultimate Surrender, Ram Dass on the Bhagavad Gita. If you watched my last episode with Dave Lasavio, we talked about it briefly, but I've been listening to this a lot lately. And without further ado, I'll just read the quote to you. If you think you need a teacher, look around and find a teacher. If you feel you are being guided from within,

That's okay. Trust it. As far as I understand the law of it all, we are all within grace. The only thing that falls out of grace is your own mind because you think you fell out. And the minute you give up your thoughts, God is always exactly one thought away. And the minute you quiet down your mind, here we are again.

What a beautiful reading. I like it for a lot of reasons. One, this book is actually a transcription of Ram Dass's lectures about the Bhagavad Gita. So if you listen to it on Audible, it's actually the way it originally was transmitted. So with some books, sometimes you lose something listening to it instead of reading. With this, you actually gain something by hearing Ram Dass have these words flow out of him organically.

I'm a big believer that what comes from the heart reaches the heart. And boy, did he hit me right in the heart today. When I heard the line, and I'll say this part again, God is always exactly one thought away. I started crying. Because how often do I make my own journey, my own seeking, my own mission in life so impossibly difficult because I'm holding myself to an impossible standard, a standard that God doesn't even hold me to.

And whenever I'm going through it and I'm feeling agony and struggle and pain, that just letting go and allowing the thought of God to come back to me is all it takes to be reminded that I'm within God's grace. And it's such a beautiful, beautiful statement. I really got a lot out of this time through listening to this audio series again. And I'd love for anybody who found anything beneficial from that quote,

I'd explore you to, and I suggest you explore some of Ram Dass's works and maybe even check out the audio series. But that idea of being one thought away from God, where we direct our attention, what we give our focus and energy to, this is what our life becomes. And how often, I know I'm guilty of this, I stray from my ideal because I get so focused in what I think is the answer.

instead of just letting go and allowing the answers to come to me. But the beautiful thing is there's like a promise in that. There's this gift that as soon as I'm willing to let go and turn my attention back to God, I'll be restored to the grace that never left me. Now, why am I starting the podcast on this note? Something that's become really important to me is making time for reflection on the podcast itself. Almost a meta podcast about podcasts.

that I'm doing with you, but I'm really doing as a learning exercise to be able to look back and see where have I come from, but also where was I going and how much intentionality did I bring to that process. So lately I've been thinking a lot about what's the impact of what am I trying to create. The name, The Much Love Podcast, started because my only goal was to create more love in the world.

You can call it cheesy, you can call it, you know, juvenile, silly, naive, but it's truly all that matters to me. There's other things that come up along the way, like building businesses and making money and in the what of the materialism that we can get caught in. But if you took away the entire system of what do we need to do to survive and just got back to what is it that fills our hearts and what is it that gives us joy?

I wouldn't do most of the things that I've done to get to this point. Those things have allowed me to experience a greater spiritual liberation. And then moving forward, how can I take the material skills and mix it with the spiritual inner callings to then simply just be me and be me in a way that's valuable enough in society to make an impact on others. So hopefully I'm not getting too esoteric and too heady, but this is the kind of stuff I think about when I'm alone.

When I think about the people that I invite on the podcast, they are people who I believe are doing something important and they're doing it in an interesting way that's just made me want to know them better and also want more people to get to know them. For example, my last guest, Dave Lasavio, one of my best friends. He's a really interesting cat. If you take the time to watch the episode and not only listen to what he's saying, but pay attention to the look on his face when he's saying it.

get a feel for the energy that's bubbling up within him in the way he lights up talking about leaving a sales job at the peak of his earning capacity because he wanted to go follow his heart and go on a journey with his friend. Like talk about an attitude and a spirit of play, which is really what this all is. But there's this other concept of how do I create content that's engaging and relevant to what people are thinking about?

while also making sure that it's evergreen. And it's not just a news trend or a topic that people are gonna forget about, but something that I care deeply about and want to have lasting impact in that space. When I brought JohnBorn Bourne on as the first guest, which has actually been the best performing episode on YouTube, he had an NFT project that was going live that week. So it was newsworthy, it was timely, it was topical, NFTs were a buzz.

but he also had a really dedicated community and a discord group that was excited about the project. It had that element of something catchy and something relevant, but what was deeper is here is an artist who's made a living creating art in a way that I was genuinely curious about, because I make a lot of art and I've had a tremendous fear of monetizing my art in this fear that if I were to rely on my art for income, it would stop being a joy and it would start being

And I've done a lot to shed a lot of those ideas and to rebuild my foundation of what does it mean to earn a living and what does it mean to create art? And I have plans in the future for how to monetize that art in a really meaningful, special way. So interviewing him was such a joy. And from the first interview to the 22nd interview I mentioned to the interviews that are to come ahead, I think the thing that's going to tie all of the guests together is that.

They're somebody who I believe cares deeply about the work they do in the world, not just what they do for a living, but how they find joy and connect to faith and a higher purpose and higher power. And also they have something worth listening to and they can provide actionable insights for my guests. So people, whether they're working out or they're driving somewhere or they're just putting some podcasts down while they're getting work done, they can feel like

their lives were improved and made better because they focused on a topic that could add value to their life. And maybe they even learned direct action steps they can take to create some sort of positive movement. With that in mind, I want to discuss what I've learned from my most viral and disliked content. And that was episode 21. I interviewed Isa Watson. Actually, I'm sorry. That was episode 20. I interviewed Isa Watson.

and I loved the entire process, but I also was shocked at how much negative feedback I got on the internet. So before I go into what the feedback was, I want to walk you through the process. Isa is a woman that I knew of through Twitter, but had no actual knowledge of, no shared relationship with prior to just shooting my shot and sending a tweet her way. And what I said was,

Hey, I've really appreciated your takes on this and this. I'm curious to learn about this other opinion. Would you like to discuss it on my podcast? And what I hoped would happen was she would see that I have some commonality with her, but I'm also curious about something and I wanna explore it together. She then asked me to send her a message. I sent her a message, then asked me to send an email about the show, about myself, and what would we talk about.

I went through this long process, this cold outreach that turned into a warm lead, which then eventually turned into somebody who was excited to be on the show. We scheduled 15 minutes to just have a chat about the topics I wanted to discuss, learn a little bit more about each other. I think it was really helpful because it was the first time I had a guest on my show from a complete cold outreach and going from, I have a topic, a thing that I'm curious about to actually having her on.

And then it being a massive hit in terms of new views, new subscribers, new interaction, the process worked really nicely. But I took a step back to analyze what I also didn't like about the process. So I'll start with what have I learned from this thing. First, having a process is super helpful. Knowing how I want to approach somebody to be on my show who I've never met before. Having content ready of an email, who am I? What's the show about?

Why do I think you'd be a good fit? And then here are some relevant episodes that might relate to the topics we're talking about. And then when we were going back and forth and she wanted to know what could some of the questions be like, I actually grabbed tweets that I liked from her that showed, I'm not just some random person who saw one thing, but there's a deep, several month long history of me appreciating content and there might be a legitimate conversation to be had. From there, when we did our pre-framing.

My goal was to set the tone that I'm not coming into this conversation with an agenda. I have something I'm curious about because I really agree with this long list of things you've said and then I'm not quite so sure about these topics and I believe we could have a good faith conversation to get to the core of why you believe what you believe. One of those items was around December when there was issues with some of the higher ed

and they wouldn't just outright condemn Hamas and they wouldn't condemn terrorism. A lot of these presidents received backlash. And specifically, Harvard president at the time, Claudine Gay, was coming under fire and being called a DEI hire. And ISA took exception to that. She thought that Bill Ackerman was a racist and he brings race into everything, and he was only singling out this woman because she's a black woman, and he didn't call the other women DEI hires. And while I

didn't feel confident enough to declare Bill Ackman a racist, which I still don't. I was curious to hear why she felt the way she felt, and I wanted to give her the space to explore that idea. I also felt that doing it over a long form conversation was the right forum, because if people could hear some other opinions she had, maybe they wouldn't just put her into a box of you're some leftist, which is what a lot of people said in the comments and just isn't true.

She agreed wholeheartedly that the rise in anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel rhetoric is a problem. She thinks what's happening on college campuses is a problem. She was very sympathetic to a lot of the viewpoints that Bill Ackman has. She just also thinks that Bill Ackman is a little colorblind or a little bit color in the other direction when it comes to issues of race and education. She thinks that demonstrates a bias he has, some sort of racism.

that should be addressed. And while I still don't feel qualified to judge the contents of someone's heart and declare somebody racist, save very few very openly explicitly self-acknowledged racists, I completely understand where she's coming from and I'm grateful I gave her the space to do so. What I'm maybe not so grateful for was how much time I spent in the comments defending ISA, but also trying to clarify that the goal of the conversation was to explore the idea

that I wasn't out in YouTube declaring Bill Ackman a racist. And so what it taught me was that there are certain topics that are going to draw in an audience and draw in viewers very, very well. But those same topics are going to create a lot of controversy in my comments that if it's not an issue I care deeply enough about to give a lot of my time, give a lot of my focus to, I don't want that to become my reality. So hooking back to that intro quote,

you know, where we direct our attention, what we give our focus and energy to, this is what our life becomes. I want to be one thought away from God at all times. And quite frankly, whether or not Bill Ackman is a racist has nothing to do with what God wants me to focus on. So moving forward, I'm definitely still gonna be reaching out to guests who have ideas that I might disagree with, but I'm only gonna be putting together.

some content to explore those ideas if I think it's worth my contemplation and if I think it's worth amplifying in the world. From a technical perspective, I also learned a lot of really cool things. So if you think about content as a funnel, and the whole episode, which was just about an hour, being the ideal goal, like I'd love you to watch the whole episode. But the number of people who consume that whole episode, I think now is around 200.

Then that episode was broken up into five to 10 minute clips. And some of those clips have been viewed 600 to a thousand times. And then I made a couple of shorts that were less than a minute and some of those were viewed maybe 2,500 times. So what I learned was that if you want the full context, you listen to the whole conversation. But the most people are just getting a snippet. And so if I'm going to go viral off of a snippet.

that is completely unrelated to the context of the rest of the conversation, I better make sure that snippet is something that I feel like entertaining and being in my comments and getting subscribers from, because I want to make sure that they're also going to connect to the bigger picture of what it is that I care about.

We're talking a lot about my process and getting very meta and analyzing what am I doing behind the scenes and what have been the results of my efforts. I think it's very clear that I'm intentionally up-leveling my podcast episodes right now. And that's largely thanks to Danny Miranda and his Art of Interviewing course. If you're unfamiliar with Danny, I'll include a few links in the resources. You definitely need to check him out. If there's one podcast I recommend the most, it's his podcast.

podcast with Mike Posner. And the reason why I think that's the one place you need to start is actually there's a few reasons. The first is this is very clearly one of his dream guests. Like the fact that this is happening in Danny's life just shows how the hard work that he's put in has manifested him living out his dreams. And to be able to witness somebody very at the peak emotionally living their dream, I just think is a beautiful experience. So I've definitely check out that episode.

but also he really knew his guests super well to the point where the things he brought up were always fodder for conversation. In the depth of the storytelling and the love that transpired between the two of them, I felt transported to that moment with them. So even though I was at America's gym, cranking out a workout while I'm listening to these two basically have a love fest for the world, I felt like I was in that room with them.

I just think it was A level top tier, top of his craft and definitely worth checking out. But the reason why I purchased his course was that I wanted to get intentional about being better at podcasting. I care a lot about podcasting. It's fun for me. I did six episodes my first year. It was really just when I get time. I did 15 episodes last year, which turned into more than just

this is something I think could be worthwhile, but turned into I need to find a way to create more space for this. And now this year, I've already released two episodes. I've got nine episodes scheduled with guests, and my goal is to put out at least 24, but really I think I'm pacing for between 30 to 50. So as I'm putting out more content, now I'm getting clear about how can I make it better visually? How can I make it better audially, auditorily, listening-wise?

invested in microphones, invested in cameras. How can I make the energy a better experience? Well, let's do it in person. So that's why I've been having people come over to my in-home studio. And then when I'm thinking about how can I make the actual content matter more effective, that's where I've gotten into brainstorming questions, thinking about what is alive for the guest, which is something a guest that was on my show, Andrea Enright, I think episode 17.

She asked that question to me one day and I love it. What's alive for you today? That's so much better than like, what are you up to or what are you doing? Because I want to connect to the thing that's going to get you up to level 10. I don't really care about all the ones and twos you have to do along the way. So all that in mind, what are the things that I took away from Danny's course? First is creating a process that's authentic to me and a system that allows it to scale.

Part of why I only put out six episodes my first year and 15 the second is I was still learning a lot of how do I do this? What do I want it to be about? And I was building the muscles, but I've built the muscles well enough to go, okay, how do I do this better? And so I created a process for cold outreach. I created a process for people I already knew. I actually built in my CRM and task management system.

workflow very similar to any kind of sales pipeline where I have a dream guest list and I start to move people through that list based on where they're at in the production cycle. I'm also building a team around me. I've been working with an incredible YouTube team for the last two to three months now and I just hired a VA to help me with my editing full time so I can just focus on cranking out the great content and I could have somebody else who's zone of genius is making it look and sound excellent.

take care of that part of the process. And then the part that allows scale, I also built into my calendar system links for in-person guests or online guests. So now when somebody expresses interest, I can send them a calendar link and I don't have to waste any time with coordinating details. I also built a page into my website that hosts all of the episodes and it has a space for you to subscribe on all of your favorite platforms, whether that's YouTube, Spotify.

Apple podcasts, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and you can find each individual episode on my website and a direct link to take you to that platform. All of that took work, but now the system is in place and the process is in place, so it's just time for me to show up and execute. The second thing that I really took away from Danny's course was giving extra attention to the front end of the conversation is going to lead to better takeaways on the backend for the audience.

So if you watch my last episode 22 with Dave, what you'll see is he brought in the blue piece of paper that he printed out my questions on and took time to pre-frame. What that led to was me thinking about the show instead of being one hour to hour and a half conversation is actually four to 10 minute micro segments that somebody can listen to on their own and just think, all right, this thing is appealing to me, let me learn this thing.

And then in guiding the conversation that way, I can now make sure that my guest and I aren't just getting lost in the love of that moment, but we're also thinking about the person who's watching this conversation. The third thing that I took away in thinking about what impact do I wanna make is I wanna make sure my guest feels like it was worth their time. My goal in somebody coming on the show is to improve my relationship with that person. I wanna learn from them, I wanna celebrate them.

I want to get them in front of a larger audience. And I hope that when they leave, they feel better for the interaction. And long-term when they look back on it, they go, that was a positive. I'm really grateful I did that. And I'd like to be a part of it again. And I've already had people say like, I can't wait to do this thing again. I even had a first where somebody just posted, they're excited to come on the show. We haven't even had our conversation yet. So I know there's something there by focusing on my guest's experience that.

is like intuitive and seems very simple, but just having Danny draw attention to that in his course, I thought was super impactful. The last thing is reaffirming what I already knew to be true, which is the quality of the things I choose to do. I have to do things that I would do regardless of the money. Gary Vee was actually on the cutting edge talking about this when people were trying to get into social media marketing. Gary said, you have to love the process.

If you don't like making social media content, you're not gonna be successful if you're just doing it to chase clout or money. You have to do things that you would do regardless of the outcome that you're hoping is on the other side of that. And very clearly podcasting is that for me. I mean, right now I'm sitting in my basement talking to myself in front of a camera. I've got lights shining at me. I'm trying to make sure the microphone is in the center of the screen. Like nobody has to watch this thing. I'm only doing it because I like it. And when I think about

who I was as a child, I had a hard time falling asleep and I used to stay up for hours listening to sports talk radio, usually 670 the score. And I'd listen to guys like Jonathan Hood and Lawrence Holmes. And yeah, I liked sports, but I also liked the way they just talked to people and the way they had me feeling like they were a part of my struggle to fall asleep. Hearing really great speakers.

make awesome points, but also do it in a way that's entertaining. That's brought me so much joy. I want to get better at that and I want to give that back to the world. So when I think about all the things I do, you know, lifting weights, now I'm learning to love cardio, doing things that leave my body, my mind, my heart feeling better than before I did them. I don't.

work out because I want to have this physique that might make people jealous or turn them on. I work out because I want to be active my whole life. And there's also something in my brain that just works way better when I've had the endorphins rushing from doing the work. And I love getting to the gym. I love nodding at the guy that I see every day, but I still don't know his name because he's locked in the zone, but he nods and that's good enough. I love the smell of the weights.

I love the feeling of when perspiration just starts to take place. And I love how tired I feel at the end. And even better, I love two, three, four hours later when I'm just smiling and grinning like a fucking idiot and I can't even remember why. It's because I worked out. I put in the work and on the other side of that was I get to enjoy the byproduct of a life well lived, a life of health, enjoy and satisfaction. So

Danny's course really did a lot for me. And it helped me think about what's on my heart and connect to my feelings moving forward. What is in store ahead for the Much Love podcast? Well, first of all, a ton of really incredible guests. About half of them are gonna still be virtual like this, and the other half will be in person. And that's just because I live in Chicago and I have awesome guests from around the country, and I'm just not ready to travel for podcasts yet, and nobody's expressed the desire to fly in yet.

We'll see. But also a lot more intention around making sure the things we're talking about are relevant and going to grab somebody's attention to say, I wanna listen, I wanna tune in. And also making sure they're actionable, where somebody says, I feel like my life has improved from listening to that, and I feel like I could take steps towards whatever's truly on my heart. I don't really spend a ton of money marketing my business.

in trying to push ads because that's never been my ethos of who I am and my character. I feel like this is the best marketing strategy that I could pursue. How can as many people as possible get to know me and what's in my heart and what's in my mind and what are the things I care about in a scalable one-to-many fashion? So I'm just enamored with podcasting right now. I'm super grateful for everybody who tunes in and listens. I love feedback.

So whether or not you think I'm going to like what you have to say, I'd love to hear it. So please like, comment, subscribe, respond to my emails when I send them out. Anything I can do to improve, I'm really grateful for. So just to hook back to where we started, love, service, devotion, and the ultimate surrender, Ram Dass on the Bhagavad Gita. There are so many incredible texts and so many incredible speakers.

who analyze and bring their own viewpoint forward. Ram Dass' personal experience is one I connect to very deeply. So I turn to his books and his speaking, his teachings, his auditory experiences. I turn to them often because it hits me in a place where what he's saying for his lived experience, I know to be true inside.

If there's anything that you found helpful, feel free to give me a comment, send me an email, whatever I can do. I'm just really grateful that there's anybody tuning in and hopefully I've improved the quality of your life today. And most importantly, you're connected with love on a little bit of a deeper understanding. Much love, have a great day.