HOW TO MAKE A WEEKS WORTH OF CONTENT IN 3 MINUTES

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU TO MAKE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT FOR A WEEK? IF IT’S MORE THAN 3 MINUTES YOU NEED TO READ THIS.

This blog is created to illustrate how easy it can be to generate content for your digital marketing. Using a simple 3-minute video as our input we are able to create a massive amount of content that can be used to fuel an entire week’s worth of social media posts on all the major networks.

If you would like us to create this system for you our content team is standing by to help. We can take something as simple as a cell phone video from an open house that you attended and process it into an edited video. Then we can parse it down into enough individual pieces to keep the attention of your audience on all of your major social media channels for up to a week.

THE MAIN PIECE OF CONTENT
YOUR VIDEO (PROCESSED FULL LENGTH)

We purposely used this clip that was taken in less than ideal conditions to prove that we do not need cinematic gold in order to produce content that can be used by this system. I’m sure that you can easily create footage that is much better than what we filmed for this example. The soggy footage from our rainy day walk and talk is not what most people would submit to us to produce their content, but for the sake of example, we wanted to make these results be indicative of what anyone could produce. The video was taken on an iPhone 8 that was attached to a gimbal that cost less than $100. Equipment that is affordable and accessible to virtually everyone.

Here is the full edit of the video:

The first thing that we did with this video is to have one of our team members “Big Marc” transcribe it and turn it into a blog. The blog is made up of the combination of the video, and the transcription of the video. If we wanted we could also add still frames from the video or supplementary pictures that were taken to go with the video.

To go back to the example of a realtor filming an open house, it would not be hard to take a walk and talk video and then make a second lap to take some stills. It’s completely up to you if you want to submit more inputs you can, but for the sake of this example, everything comes from this simple video. You could easily incorporate some very natural key wording into the production of your video if you wanted to increase your chances of ranking for your desired keyword, like maybe for instance the address of the open house you were visiting.

Here’s an example of what the transcription/video blog came out like for this one. There was mild editing that was done to the transcription to turn the spoken word into the written word, but nothing too heavy in terms of editing.

MEMES ARE CREATED FROM THE VIDEO

The next thing that we did is to take some screenshots from the video and make some Memes with them that are to be used on Instagram and Facebook. These are made from quotes from the video combined with freeze frames from the video. Nothing special, but definitely enough to keep up some awareness from your IG and FB audience as they scroll through their feeds. I’m sure with a little planning you could come up with some much better stuff. To go back to our real estate example, maybe some freeze frames of each room in the house combined with your reaction to it from your walkthrough video.

IG & SNAPCHAT LENGTH VIDEOS

Once we have constructed the memes the next step is to parse down the video into multiple pieces that are less than a minute in length each. These will be able to be posted in natively in the newsfeed of IG and Snapchat. The larger square format of these videos provides plenty of room to provide more branding on the videos and the way that the video is broken down into pieces actually makes it inhabit more space on the newsfeed of your audience which helps to increase the branding and exposure of your videos.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA THAT CAN BE PRODUCED

In addition to what we have created here, it is also possible to use the points covered in the video as blog topics that can be sent to our content team that can be written into additional blogs that are also illustrated with freeze frames from the video.

CONCLUSION

Hopefully, from this very basic example, you can understand the power of spending the time to fully process and parse out your content. I’ve run into so many people that have told me that they simply “Do not have time” to put anything on their social media profiles and this video and blog article will hopefully prove them wrong.

INTERESTED IN HAVING US DO THIS FOR YOU?

If you would like to sign up for this service you will need to do so as soon as possible. We are charging only $1250/month to do this and we are including 4 videos and related content per month! Right now we are only allowing 4 people to sign up. We will be allowing additional people to sign up in the coming months but the price will be going up to closer to $2000/month once this is released on a larger scale.

Please contact us if you have any questions or sign up below to claim your spot now. Many different people could benefit from this system. Realtors, activity companies and personal brands are some of the people that immediately come to mind but to tell you the truth, I can’t think of many businesses that would not benefit from a massive amount of content posted on their social media profiles.

*This is a limited time offer.

MEET JOE – THE SOLAR LEAD GENERATION ASSASSIN

Joe is one of the top solar lead generation specialists in the nation. During his career, he has brought in thousands of leads that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in solar sales and today we are going to talk with him to discuss different ways that you can be successful in the Solar industry. If you need solar leads there is a contact form on the bottom of the page where you can contact Joe directly. If you are looking to get more information about Joe’s course you can contact him for that as well.

Transcription:

Jake : Alright, so today we got a very special guest on the podcast. We have one of the number one solar lead generation specialists in the entire country. We happen to have apartments right across the hall when he ramped up a campaign from 0 dollars to a 100 000 dollars in just a month. Made an incredible amount of money. It really… definitely caught my attention into what was going on in the solar industry. If you don’t know anything about solar, this podcast is gonna have an incredible amount of value. It’s one of the few kind of easier ways to make money that’s out there and it’s something that’s not nearly as crowded as some of the other kind of more popular things that don’t require a ton of money to to get started. There definitely is some investment in the beginning but if you follow what Joe does, you can really make a lot of money extremely quickly so let’s check him out. Here’s Joe Kinney. Alright, so Joe you’re known as one of the number one solar lead generation guys that’s out there. I saw you just destroy a competition of lead generation for solar companies that was put on by Tyler. There was everyone else and then you were way up here. So it seems like you really know what’s going on in the solar lead industry and I’m really happy to have you on the podcast today. Basically, we want to help people enhance their productivity and have more happiness in their life and using specialists like you instead of having to reinvent the wheel. I think is a great option for people to have. Let’s start with a bit of background. Before you did the competition with Tyler and destroyed everyone on that, what led up to that? How long have you been in the solar industry for?

Joe : Well, I’ve been generating solar leads probably for two or three years now. It’ll be actually three years coming up here in July and that’s online. We used to …. I did solar probably back in 2014 for a bit. You know, we had different ways of generating leads and now that Facebook’s out there, it’s just a hundred times easier than knocking doors or making phone calls.

Jake : Okay, so in the beginning you were starting out with you doing the grunt labor. You were out there knocking on doors. Doing phone calls, doing things the hard way and then now pretty much facebook has been the majority of what’s going on, in terms of the solar lead gen?

Joe : Yeah. I mean Facebook’s pretty much taken over the market when come to, you know. Not only solar lead gen pretty much any lead gen. Based on the targeting and the audience that you can choose from, the areas, that just makes it so much easier. Now, you know, the cost has gone up drastically. You know, we’re not getting the $4 leads, $2 dollar leads and so we used to get like two years ago but it still definitely makes sense. Lead to appointment, it’s super easy as long as you have that process in place.

Jake : Ok, so if there’s a solar company that’s having problems getting business for you, you can pretty much help them out in most areas? Or are there specific areas that you work with over others? Who can you help?

Joe : Well, I mean. See, we actually have a solar company. We do installs. We do everything from start to finish and then the other side is the power cell marketing. Which we do marketing, appointment setting for solar companies throughout the united states. We’re also coming out with a course on how to generate solar leads. So pretty much in the solar niche, we can help people out from start to finish.

Jake : So it can turn on pretty fast. I remember when I first really met you, it was kind of right in the beginning of the month where you went from basically zero up to a hundred K in one month and I saw first hand how fast it can go. You wanna walk us through that process a little bit because it’s something that I think there’s lots of people out there that are either basically at zero or completely at zero and just getting into the game and there’s a kind of preconceived notion I think that you know, it can really take a while to be able to ramp things up but I think you’ve proven that you have the magic formula to be able to flip the switch and really get a lot of business coming in quickly.

Joe : Yeah, I mean I’d say the biggest mistake that people in lead gen is the way the Facebook algorithm .. Actually nobody knows the way that Facebook but you know based on my experience and what’s happened to me is in the beginning if you have, you know the most important thing is to have an offer right. Once you get the offer right where people are actually opting in, you know you’ve got half the battle won right there. Knowing what angles, what emotions that people buy from and how you know, each person opts in differently so you run different ads. Different areas, you gotta test a bunch of things but one of the things that really helped us is that most people that run leads they’ll either get a bunch of leads for cheap and then they ramp it up and then it’s not cost effective because they didn’t do it right and the beginning the way facebook you know again my experience is that you get a bunch of cheap leads but they’re a bunch of people that are just … they opt in to everything. So Facebook initially shows it to people that very frequently opt into things. So, you know, usually you get a bunch of cheap leads in the beginning and then you’re gonna ramp it up super high and then it’s gonna go from 6 dollars to 120 dollars and you’re trying to figure out what happened, you know, what’s going on.It’s getting over that step is what helped us so we started out, I think we were spending, you know we started out usually four or five hundred dollars a day. Two to five hundred a day per ad set and then you know, find the winners and start ramping it up from there.I think in that month we started it out around five hundred to a couple of thousand a week and ramped it up to thirty five thousand per week in less than 30 days

Jake : So, in order to do that, did you see things kind of go up and down and then back up again, in terms of the amount of leads and the cost of leads and the effectiveness of the campaigns or what when you say push it over the hill what are you talking about?

Joe : Well cause Facebook has what’s called the initial learning phase. Once you get that 50 to 100 leads, it starts to optimize, it starts to know what you’re looking for and what’s working for you. So once you start to get over that you know, four or five thousand that you spent, now the lead price starts to come down. So it goes up and it comes back down. Most people quit when it starts going up. We threw more money at it. We did kind of the shotgun approach. Just throw a ton of money at it and we know we’re gonna lose on some, we know we’re gonna win on some. The ones we are winning on, we do more of them. You gotta pay to play.

Jake : Okay, so the leads that you generate, I mean it’s obviously taken lots and lots of money for you to be able to hone things in to the point that you have versus trying to do stuff and kind of a do-it-yourself sort of thing. There’s definitely some pretty big advantages to working with somebody like you that already has things figured out. Since you are kind of in a unique position where you have a solar company that’s in Florida right? That’s the only area that you’re serving for that?

Joe : Well, that’s the only place I have sales guys. We do have contracts throughout the US but our main focus is lead generation. Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, Colorado but most of the West. We’ve done a lot of leads on the East Coast. That’s kind of like what we’re looking for. It’s to kind of move into that area.

Jake : Okay, so because you kind of have had the unique thing of having a regional company and then also doing the leads. You have a good perspective of what the numbers are like being on the install side which is where a lot of the people that’s where everyone that’s purchasing the leads are. They all have an install company right? Or they’re middle manning it. What kind of opportunities are there to make money and how much money can you make by generating solar leads and by actually following through on them. How much is there typically on the back end. Like, what are some of the companies able to pull in to warrant you know, spending $35 000 a week on leads?

Joe : Yeah, I mean the installs, there’s huge profit margins on them. Especially if you get them right. We kind of reverse engineered the whole solar process where we were a marketing company first and then we started getting into the sales side, the install side, the finance engineering and you know, so we kind of went backwards but it really helped us out because you know, in the beginning we had too many appointments and our closers kind of sucked at the time. So our biggest challenge in the beginning for us was closing deals. Where most companies, their biggest challenge is finding the people willing to listen. We took it a bit further than just the lead process. You can generate the leads but more importantly it’s you know, lead to appointment. How many of these leads are qualified. How many of these leads are setting appointments? How many are closing? So there’s a lot more to it than just generating the lead. Obviously, you want to find companies that are able to just take the leads as many as you can, send them. They got their own call center, they set them and you’re just sending them a top of volume that converts. We’ve got a couple of different models that we use. We can generate the lead and set the appointment for you or we can just send you the lead. There’s a lot more to curating the lead

Jake : Okay, so the leads that you generate, I mean it’s obviously taken lots and lots of money for you to be able to hone things in to the point that you have versus trying to do stuff and kind of a do-it-yourself sort of thing. There’s definitely some pretty big advantages to working with somebody like you that already has things figured out. Since you are kind of in a unique position where you have a solar company that’s in Florida right? That’s the only area that you’re serving for that?

Jake : Okay, so the leads that you generate, I mean it’s obviously taken lots and lots of money for you to be able to hone things in to the point that you have versus trying to do stuff and kind of a do-it-yourself sort of thing. There’s definitely some pretty big advantages to working with somebody like you that already has things figured out. Since you are kind of in a unique position where you have a solar company that’s in Florida right? That’s the only area that you’re serving for that?

Joe : Well, that’s the only place I have sales guys. We do have contracts throughout the US but our main focus is lead generation. Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, Colorado but most of the West. We’ve done a lot of leads on the East Coast. That’s kind of like what we’re looking for. It’s to kind of move into that area.

Jake : Okay, so because you kind of have had the unique thing of having a regional company and then also doing the leads. You have a good perspective of what the numbers are like being on the install side which is where a lot of the people that’s where everyone that’s purchasing the leads are. They all have an install company right? Or they’re middle manning it. What kind of opportunities are there to make money and how much money can you make by generating solar leads and by actually following through on them. How much is there typically on the back end. Like, what are some of the companies able to pull in to warrant you know, spending $35 000 a week on leads?

Joe : Yeah, I mean the installs, there’s huge profit margins on them. Especially if you get them right. We kind of reverse engineered the whole solar process where we were a marketing company first and then we started getting into the sales side, the install side, the finance engineering and you know, so we kind of went backwards but it really helped us out because you know, in the beginning we had too many appointments and our closers kind of sucked at the time. So our biggest challenge in the beginning for us was closing deals. Where most companies, their biggest challenge is finding the people willing to listen. We took it a bit further than just the lead process. You can generate the leads but more importantly it’s you know, lead to appointment. How many of these leads are qualified. How many of these leads are setting appointments? How many are closing? So there’s a lot more to it than just generating the lead. Obviously, you want to find companies that are able to just take the leads as many as you can, send them. They got their own call center, they set them and you’re just sending them a top of volume that converts. We’ve got a couple of different models that we use. We can generate the lead and set the appointment for you or we can just send you the lead. There’s a lot more to curating the lead and setting the appointment than just calling leads. Leads dry up super super fast and that’s what people don’t understand is that you got to hit people while they’re excited about the offer. So I mean you got to hit them within five minutes. So as soon as that lead comes in they need to be contacted, as soon as possible. We like to put a webhook in into the lead and send it directly to a dialer, where somebody’s sitting there ready to set that appointment.

Jake : Ok so in terms of just the potential profits that people can have, how much is typically made and for other people that are listening that aren’t in the solar industry yet. I’m sure a lot of the installers that would be purchasing leads have a pretty good idea of where they’re at but what kind of profits happen here? You have a lead coming in that you said earlier between three and a hundred dollars and then some of those are going to fall of and you’re not going to be able to set an appointment with it. When you set an appointment and you’re able to close a sale, what kind of numbers does that generate on the back end for the installers? What kind of profit margins are we looking at here?

Joe : It depends on what kind of red line that solar company is working with but I would say the typical solar install is gonna have about 8 thousand dollars worth of profit in it., probably more but there’s usually a bunch of different hands in the pot. One of them is obviously the financing. They take a huge out of that but typically after your cost per install which would be the cost per acquisition, paying the sales guy to go out there to close the deal. Usually there’s four to five thousand left over in the deal. So these companies that are doing 300 installs a month are definitely making some cheddar.

Jake : Yeah, sounds like it. So there’s the initial money on the install and then is there any residuals that come through as a result of the power that’s generated on these things? Is there anything that happens on that end too? Or is it all mostly upfront?

Joe : As far as for the customer or for the marketing side and on the sales side, as far as residuals?

Jake :Yeah, is there anything that comes through with that or does most of that go to the customer and forms a saving on their power bill or how does all that work?

Joe : Okay, so there’s so many incentives out there for customers right now and that’s why it’s super easy to you know. I wouldn’t say it’s easy to generate leads but if you get the right ad out there, you can get people to opt in. Having somebody good on the phone, convincing them to set an appointment. Someone going out there to close it. Depending on the state, there’s different tax incentives. Across the board there’s a 30 percent dollar for dollar tax incentive for people to purchase solar. It’s supposedly going away at the end of the year so it’s one of those urgency things you can create. However, there’s other states that have net metering where it’s dollar for dollar or you get paid per hour, per kilowatt hour. There’s just so many rebates out there depending on the state. You know, like VRBO and AirBnB rentals actually can get the macro as soon as their eligible for up fifty five percent tax credit. So, once the systems all zero down for the most part. It doesn’t cost the customer anything. They’re basically swapping apples for apples. A clean energy further traditional power bill so they’re going to have a solar payment, it’s usually lower than what their typical utility bill is. The huge savings on solar comes not on the first year. The first year they might save $20 or $30 a month but utility companies have what’s called an escalator so your utility bill goes up here in Florida about 4.2 percent per year and it continues to rise with inflation fees. That’s just things they add in there. So, kind of the way we like to explain it is if I were to tell you that you could lock in the price of gas at 99 cents in 1990, you’d say that’s a good deal right?

Jake : Definitely.

Joe : You know, it’s kind of the same thing here where you, you’re locking in the price of energy at a lower rate than what you’re currently paying and that price is gonna stay the same. Once the system’s paid off then you’re not gonna have any type of utility bill. You might have connection fee. Usually, we try to put the offset above whatever their $5 connection fee is so they’re overproducing to pay for that. There’s just so many benefits to going solar. In the next five years, it’s just going to get hotter and hotter. I mean, obviously there’s more competition out there but competition drives awareness, makes the industry healthier. There’s just so much money. If anybody’s thinking about getting into marketing or they’re already into marketing. I’m not into the big niche hopping thing because the grass is never greener on the other side. However, if you’re thinking about getting into solar and it’s something that you want to stick with, you can make tons and tons of money and there’s lots of solar companies willing to throw tons of money at you to generate them leads.

Jake : What’s kind of the standards that people are willing to pay for leads and for appointments? Is it something that’s common to sell the appointments by themselves or sell the leads by themselves and then some of those are gonna transfer to appointments, some are not. What kind of costs are people looking at in order to be able to get going?

Joe : As far as for a marketing standpoint, our first solar company looking to buy leads.

Jake : For a solar company looking to buy leads, if there’s an installer out there that you know, has a small company, they’re looking to ramp up. They don’t really know how to do the marketing side of it, they want to get some more business. How much money are they gonna need to be able to get into the game?

Joe : Usually, if they’re trying to buy leads, there are companies out there that are selling them for $50 and those leads have been sold to 25 different companies and they they just typically, you’re in a bidding war and they don’t work. There are companies out there that are selling them for appointments for $150, $200. You know, probably not the best closing ratios. What I like to do and one of the offers we’re working on, we’ve already beta tested as a front end back end payment. So we would charge per set depending on the state and then we’d get money on the back end that you can just build into a system. So it’d be depending on the state, 75 to 100-150 per set, qualified set and then 10-15 cents on the back end and again that depends on what state you’re in. Obviously in California, lead cost and appointment cost is going to be a lot higher than if you’re in say Nevada or Arizona or Illinois. So there’s a bunch of different models that companies go after or look into. I will say, there’s no one really doing how we’re doing it. The appointment to close ratios, you want to keep that cost per install under $800 – $1000, that’s where you’re really maximizing your cost.

Jake : Ok, so you’re able to get a sale for 800 to a thousand dollars and you’re making up to eight thousand dollars on it. Five thousand on the low end. That’s a pretty big markup. I can definitely see where things can ramp up pretty quickly with that kind of returns. You can start people pretty small and they can quickly work their way up the ladder to where they’re really raking in some cash.

Joe : And the front end back end payment makes you buy in cheaper and then it also you can build that cost into the back end of the system. It doesn’t change the customer’s price. If you’ve got to raise it ten cents or fifteen cents, it doesn’t change the customer’s monthly bill enough that it’s really gonna affect the sale and most of the companies that we work with, the smart ones already have some kind of marketing already built into or allocated to their cost per watt.

Jake : It seems like a really really good opportunity. If you’re able to get the leads at that price and you’re able to get the margins how they are and the sale is basically a no brainer because what you’re saying is basically people have their conventional utility that their saying for out of pocket currently which may be upwards of two hundred dollars a month. Instead of having to pay that, they’re gonna make a payment on the hardware that they’re putting on their roof that’s gonna be able to produce the same amount of power for them and they’re not gonna have to put any money down so they’re basically given the option to be able to have clean energy and be able to be running under their own power versus having to pay for it so it’s basically like having your own power plant instead of having to rent it, right? So, the sale makes a lot of sense. Seems like it really is a no brainer for people to be able to say yes to that. So the closing rates are pretty high.

Joe : Oh yeah. The closing rates are very high. Right now, it’s pretty much a no brainer if they qualify, that they have taxable income, they have a good roof that we can put solar on. It’s the long term savings that really sells them. I would say the biggest objection that people run into is the preconceived notions that people have about solar and you have all these political campaigns that run anti-solar campaigns but it’s confirming what they really heard and then overcoming those objections. Part of that is done in the marketing side, where people can actually do their research and see that what solar is all about. You can actually look up your bill and see four years ago you were probably paying 20% less than what you’re paying today. One of the things is people say finance companies we use charge 3.99%. However, you’re paying a hundred percent interest to the utility company right now. It’s just one of those sales and there’s not too many things you’re gonna sell where you can’t get the “I can’t afford it”. They may not qualify as far as sometimes. It doesn’t pencil out if they have a low electric bill and no taxable income but if they can afford it. Actually, if they qualify, they can afford it. because you know, you have two options. You can either use electricity or you could use a candle to light your home. I guess, I know they have batteries and generators but the technology is just not there yet. Solar is the future. That’s why the big companies like Apple, Amazon, Tesla, all these companies are getting into the solar industry. Facebook, they all went completely solar even for their own buildings. There’s a reason why that smart money went there

Jake : Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Obviously, it sounds like a very very lucrative industry. You’re able to make things very very easy for people. Where, basically they can have essentially a done-for-you marketing solution where all they really have to do is close and install, right?

Joe : Well, solar is a major project but your install team should be aware that you should have a process in place to be able to pull permits, get the NOC. They’d do the engineering but most solar companies already have that. What they’re missing is the marketing side. A lot of them try to do the in house marketing and then it costs them too much money, they hire their own person. You know, I’ve heard this story two, three dozen times and then they start doing it themselves. I’m not saying you can’t still make money knocking doors, you can. It sucks. There’s just too many things working against you now, knocking doors. I know with my house, just in the neighborhood the first time someone knocks on a door. Now their posting it all over social media “Who’s this guy, what’s he selling, call the cops”. With lead gen going to an appointment is so much easier. To have sales guys just go straight to an appointment. It’s easier to keep people long term. It’s easier to get better sales guys. That’s why you see the big companies like freedom forever or powerhome, they’re taking over the solar industry based on just appointments.

Jake : Being that you work with so many different companies that are out there, you have a pretty unique insight in terms of what works and what doesn’t. Aside from trying to do the in house marketing where obviously there’s a lot of money that can be lost by doing that incorrectly. What are some of the common pitfalls that you see with different companies that make it so that they can screw this opportunity up? What are some of the things that are roadblocks that people hit that either keep them from being able to stay in business or keep them from really being able to take their revenues to the next level?

Joe : A lot of them is with a solar company, it’s the smaller solar companies that don’t have the finance companies that the bigger ones have so sometimes their offers are not as good. People genuinely think they can throw $200 a week at ads. It doesn’t make sense but people actually do that so it’s you know. Again you gotta pay to play so they gotta be willing to spend four or five thousand. At a minimum I would say six thousand a minimum monthly. If you really wanna start generating appointments cause it’s that volume that .. you know Facebook is correcting itself with cost however, that volume catches up. So you want that lead to appointment ratio to be 20%, 25%. So you’re spending say ten thousand . You should be generating , I’m not a real good math guy but you should get a hundred appointments out of that or whatever it is but it should be enough appointments where you’re closing deals, cover the costs and make a ton of money.

Jake : What kind of closing ratio would you say is common? Obviously, it’s different all across the board but if you were to make a generalization. Do you think it’s like one out of four appointments? One of ten appointments? How many people, it seems like a fairly easy sale so it seems like that ratio is probably pretty high compared to other industries.

Joe : Yeah, the closing ratio is high depending on the area. Again, it depends on the electric company but I would say it’s hard to generalize. If you look at Illinois, if you’re not closing over fifty percent, there’s a problem. Florida is a little bit higher or a little bit lower as far as closing. You’re probably going to be in the, depending on how vetted the lead is. You should probably be 1 to 4, 1 to 5. Some companies go out there to get the electric bill and then they don’t set an appointment to get the proposal out to the people. So it comes down to process but I would say, lead to sale, lead appointment to sale, you should definitely be one in five leads that you generate should set an appointment and then one out of four or five of those leads should sell.

Jake : That’s definitely pretty high. Is there any places geographically where solar doesn’t make sense? I mean, obviously a place like Florida is gonna have much more sun than in Illinois. How’s the technology work with places that have a little bit more of the four seasons kind of climate versus places that are typically sunny year round like Florida. Do the solar panels work in the winter?

Joe : You use less power in the winter than you do in the summer. It’s what’s called net metering so you’re actually hooked up to the grid so that the grid would be your so called battery. It’s like debits and credits. You’re selling the solar you produce back to the solar company. You’re getting credits for energy that you use. Different states have different rates so some areas don’t make sense as far as … you know the rates are just so low. As far as the Sun being out, all the states we’re in, there’s really no issues. It just comes down to awareness like California is so far ahead in the solar game where the customers are already pretty much educated on it. Even though the leads are more expensive it’s still an easier sale. In Florida, we’re not so educated on solar here. People are really unfamiliar with it so it’s a lot more of an education based sale when you’re going out there.

Jake : I know that you’re a busy guy, you got a lot of stuff that you got to get to so I don’t want to take you, take too much of your time away from your work day today but before we wrap things up can you please let everybody know the best way to get in touch with you so that if they’re looking for solar leads, if they have a solar company that needs more help setting appointments, getting more leads coming in off Facebook. How can they get in touch with you Joe?

Joe : I would say the best way to get in touch with me would probably be either email or through Facebook. You can email me at joseph@powersolusa.com. That’s p-o-w-e-r-s-o-l-u-s-a.com. My Facebook, I know a lot of people that probably see this or either friends with me or mutual friends so just Joseph Kenney. That’s probably the best way.

Jake : We’ll put a contact form under this or a link to a contact form if you’re watching this on Youtube or on our website, wherever you see it and if you’re listening to the audio online then “joe@powersol”, one more time

Joe : “Joseph”, j-o-s-e-p-h @powersolusa.com.

Jake : Perfect. So aside from the… One last question before we wrap it up Joe. I know that you’re busy. You mentioned that you’re also putting a course together, to help other people that are aspiring marketers to be able to do what you do?

Joe : Yeah, we’re working on putting together a course for solar lead generation. We just wanna do it real time and not. You know, most of the courses you see out there were what works 6 months ago. That’s one of the hesitations that I’ve had with it, is if we put out a course, we want to have what’s working today. Well, it’s working in the solar industry right now to generate leads and not what works 6 months ago or a year ago, what’s gonna get you kicked off Facebook and things like that. So it’s something we have in the works, it’s probably going to be, I would say in the end of March. It’ll just be open probably for maybe two or three months and then we’ll close it and open a new one. One of the cool things is that if you do get the course, we have someone that’s willing to buy all the leads that you generate so there’s a good opportunity there.

Jake : Pretty much a done-for-you kind of solution. They just gotta insert their own marketing dollars and use the formula that you provide them and pretty much they can use that to turn into a cash machine. Is that what you’re saying?

Joe : Yeah. Pretty much, you don’t have to go find a client. We’ll buy all your leads.

Jake : Wow, wow. Definitely if you want to get on the waitlist on that course, contact Joe about that on the contact form or by sending an email. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today and explain the kind of ins and outs of the solar industry, provided an incredible amount of value and really really happy to have you here on the podcast. It’s a really lucrative industry and I don’t think many people really understand the ins and outs of it and once it’s explained in the way that you explained it, it’s a very very good opportunity to get into so thank you so much Joe.

Joe : Yeah man. Anytime.

Jake : Alright.

Joe : Alright. You guys have a good one.

INTERVIEW: JAMES (JAMIE) MAUK – EMBODIED STRENGTH THROUGH MOVEMENT

James Mauk is one of the top movement specialists in the nation. During his career, he has worked with hundreds of people to help them regain movement and vitality that has been diminished from long hours at work or in a chair. Today we are going to talk with him to discuss different ways that you can improve your life through natural movement. If you are interested in contacting him or trying out one of his courses there is a contact form on the bottom of the page where you can contact James directly.

Transcription:

Jake : So today, we have a very very interesting guest on our podcast, James Mauk from Embodied Strength. He does natural movement fitness, which is relatively something new. To tell you the truth, I’ve never heard about it until speaking with Jamie. Some of the concept that we go over in the podcast really make a lot of sense and I think that this information is extremely valuable for anyone that spends a lot of time in a chair or people that are constantly on the grind, working really hard. Which, I know is kind of a category that most of our listeners are in. So, let’s jump into it. Let’s talk with Jamie and see what he has to say. So, today on the podcast we have James Mauk who owns, he’s one of the co-founders of Embodied Strength, which is a really really interesting company. They have a very unique concept that I think has a very very broad appeal especially to people that work really hard, entrepreneurs, a lot of people like you who are listening to the podcast right now. Our goal is to help people increase their productivity and happiness and one of the main things that gets forgotten about… We talk a lot about helping people increase their productivity and their businesses and increase their happiness by creating more money. But really when it comes down to it, your body is very very important both for productivity and happiness and Jamie has a company that is pretty much focused on helping people have less pain in their lives. So, tell a little bit about what you do Jamie. What is Embodied Strength all about?

Jamie :For sure. Seriously dude, thanks for having me on man. It’s really nice to chat with you. I appreciate the work that you’re doing too.

Jake : Thank you.

Jamie : Yeah, yeah. So, I think it’s pretty interesting. One of the work that we do. My partner Jonathan and me, He’s in Portland nad has been an awesome movement coach that I met a few years ago and just really appreciated his work. So, we kind of teamed up to create what we’ve been delivering as our flagship program, which is a 3-month program which basically teaches people how to reconnect to their bodies. That in itself is a really complex to start to break down. “What does reconnecting to your body even mean?”. And so we have a pretty holistic approach. On the kind of the left brain mechanical side of things, we’re teaching people how to move again. We see a lot of people trying to get into good shape via kind of really outdated models or some models work ok, they just don’t really have the principles that it takes to succeed. And something like weightlifting or crossfit, in on itself I enjoy things like crossfit, weightlifting or yoga but there’s a phase that a lot of people are missing which is actually how to move properly, how to feel their own body and there’s a lot of things that can go wrong with whatever programs and modality these people are deciding. So, we’re kind of taking people a step back to take a look at some of those components.

Jake :Ok. So, basically if you were to describe fitness as a pyramid, you’re helping people with kind of the foundational levels that are really necessary before you get to the other things. The yoga, the weightlifting all that sort of stuff, is that right?

Jamie : Exactly, exactly. Right, totally. We take a look at some really intuitive pieces and I think calling it foundational work is a great way of describing it. One of the reasons tend not to use that word is because it gets overused a lot and it gets chunked in with a lot of… I’ve seen a lot of “foundational programs” and it’s like… What they would consider to be foundational, I would consider to be way too advanced in some sense and not actually taking people through the necessary steps and looking at each individual and where they are and helping them meet those needs to become advanced movers or to get into shape or meet the physical goals that they have. It’s a bit of a different journey than most people are painting it out to be in the fitness and the health world so for example I guess, most people today as you know especially if you’re grinding, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or trying to make a dollar. You’re spending a lot of time at your computer, you’re spending a lot of time commuting and driving, you’re spending a lot of time in a really shitty position. Rolled forward shoulders, tucked tailbone, you’re shortening your hip flexors, your core is getting pretty turned off. I’m on a ball right now so it’s more active. For the most part, we’re creating the sensory motor amnesia. We’re like at some point in the journey, we’re at a computer, we’re students or we’re working or whatever. There’s signals that are being sent to our body that’s saying, “This sucks. Get up, go play, go on a walk, move around, go sweat”. And you’re almost done with your project or you’re sitting in class and you’re like “No it’s good. Just a little bit longer.” So we start to shut down that signal. At some point we kind of lost the relationship to actually listen to what our body is needing, what it’s telling us. We kind of have a lot of methodologies for reintroducing the communication that people have with the body if that makes sense. But what people end up doing is they’ve lost touch to their own body and they’ve got these dysfunctions. Rolled forward shoulders and tucked tailbones or Donald Duck Syndrome where it’s anteriorly rotated or whatever, tight hamstrings, bad lower back and they’re like I need to get in good shape and they’ve over simplified the solution. So then they go to the gym or they go to a yoga class or they go do some cross training or they go join Tony Horton and do some P90X but they haven’t corrected the issues that they’ve created over ten years ago. They can’t even sit on the floor comfortably and now you want to go lift 140 pounds over head to feel good or go swing some… Even the cool stuff like functional fitness, slam balls, battle ropes, the more hipster kind of really cool things you’re seeing a lot of. Like great, have you even addressed some of the basic dysfunctions through the neglect that you created. If you haven’t, repetition will not be your friend. You keep showing up at the gym thinking you’re doing something good cause you’re sweating but you’re creating some serious overuse issues in joints and tissues and that’s the cycle that we’ve been continually getting our clients out of. I feel bad, I need to get in good shape, I’m gonna go do this thing, gym, rock climb, yoga, whatever it is. And then they feel good for 6 weeks maybe 2 months if they’re lucky and then something snaps, something tears, something doesn’t feel good. And then they’re back on the coach, getting a little bit fatter or feeling a little bit worse about themselves and the cycle continues. And they find that modality and then everyone we talk to 10 years later, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Like they know moving is good for them but everytime they try, they get hurt and that’s the cycle that I’m seeing. It’s become a worldwide epidemic. I’m working with people from around the world and that’s the cycle that everyone calls us with a consultation and they all have the same problem with a different story. That makes sense?

Jake : It really does. People are very… Based around habits, I remember I went to a meditation retreat at one point about ten years ago and it was about ten days, sitting in a position that was probably actually a little bit more of a healthy position that I normally sit in when I’m in a computer or a desk or something like that. And for the first couple of days, it was extremely painful and then after my body got kind of used to sitting in more of kind of an erect straight position. It got used to being like that and I could actually notice the pain of… You know, when I got back. When I was done with that whole process. Sitting back at a desk, I actually started to feel that. Now I think I’m kind of at another part where I do lots and lots of deskwork and when I initially kind of transitioned into getting back behind the desk and a computer for long stretches of time, I definitely would feel the “I need to get up, I need to straighten out a little bit more” you know all those sort of things and then after a while it kind of just becomes the norm. And now it’s you know, I understand what you’re talking about. I probably share some of the same things as some of your clients feel where it’s like you know, if I went and did like some heavy deadlifts or squats or something, it probably wouldn’t be a good thing to do cause I think my back is a little bit at the mercy of what the desk chair has done for me in the last couple of months. Focus on the fundamentals and just getting straightened back out to the point where I can actually do those functional movements. It makes a lot of sense. How does this play out like on a typical day in the life of somebody that’s doing your course. How do we go from the idea to the reality of this actually happening?

Jamie : Totally, yeah. I’d love to share that and I’d also love to give your listeners a few takeaways and take something that’s at this point recognizing that it’s a little bit of tracked and talk about some of the work that we can do and that even philosophically, you can apply it to your own day to day life that would make some improvements. And cover some of the blind spots that some people have kind of missed. That’s the definition of a blind spot right? So, I really like your story and I think awareness is kind of the big piece you got. Sitting in itself isn’t bad. It’s like the tuning out that sucks. What’s the best position to sit in is something that we hear a lot in the so called movement community and the answer is the next position. You just don’t want to be doing one thing for too long. You want to listen and hear what your body needs to do to do something a little bit differently and I think you’ve just really narrowed in a big piece of what we do. It’s the same thing. We have mutual people that are in our lives and one of them is Lee Joseph, who was my massage teacher and just an incredible man but you know… Going to school with him, the big thing that he taught wasn’t a technique for touching. It was having awareness to tune in into myself and use that awareness to then really feel into someone else. That has really translated continually. I mean, that was over a decade ago and to the work I’m doing now. It’s really about tuning in to yourself. Like from the standpoint of being effective in the workplace. What happens when you’re in control of your body, when you have a relationship with this thing, when you can feel into it deeply and you can powerfully use it in a way that makes things happen. Like when you need to be the hero that needs to run after something and catch something or reach for something and pick something up heavy and be that guy or that woman. Like how does that show up in the workplace and your family life. Like it’s a really awesome place to focus to just make you more effective everywhere else. It’s like the foundational piece, right? The people that come to us don’t necessarily come to us to fix one problem. They come to kind of solve a few problems and focus on one place, if that makes sense. So to answer your question, a day in a life is basically… We have different ways of kind of attracting our audience. Typically, we have like an open facebook group, like a free facebook group where we’re delivering quite a bit of content and really trying to create a nice community there, give a lot of people who may be can’t afford to work with us at least enough stuff to do, takeaways. A lot of the work that we do is implementation. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t share with you that we do. I don’t wanna hide my secret sauce. Like, I’m happy to share everything we do it’s just I know that the implementation and the structure that we’ve created for our clients, which I’ll share in a moment, is really the value in what we have to offer as coaches. So anyway we got this free facebook community. A lot of people hear about us through word of mouth, clients we worked with, and we also have facebook ads and stuff like that. And so on our facebook ads, we have like a master class, fancy name for a webinar where we deliver some of the philosophy. It’s pretty uniquely different when we talked about a lot of things that we’re talking about now and if that’s something that vibes with someone who watches it, we invite them to have a phone call with us which we end up kind of diving into where they want to be in their life and where they are right now and help them get really clear on steps that they would need to take to fill the gap and basically for a lot of people who really feel like they want help with that process, we show them what it looks like and we work with our clients for a minimum of 3 months. And so when they say yes to that and they wanna do that journey with us and have some help in the implementation of these concepts and ideas and things that we’re working with with people. They basically jump on for this wild ride with us for 3 months, where their getting one on one coaching sessions. So these are people around the world so it’s all virtual. It’s all online. They have access to 12 weeks of material basically. So it’s pre-recorded videos that are all scalable depending on where someone’s movement capacity is at. Does that make sense? And then we also have each and every video. So one of the things that a pre-recorded video that just has not worked in the past with the things that we’ve created, with programs programs that we’ve been participants in has been that there’s no follow through. Often times, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen like a beach body workout thing. At some point, I don’t know if I’m doing that right. Like you’re learning something new, you’re learning a new complex movement pattern and it doesn’t feel right to your body and you can’t call up the dude on the phone and be like “Hey, I bought your $90 DVD. I’m trying to do this thing but it doesn’t feel right. Am I doing it right? What do I need to do?” We’ve noticed there’s a complete lack of explanation and theology or concept mapping around the movement structure. And so our audience, our target audience, our entrepreneurs, they’re really intelligent people who are critical thinkers, who enjoy deductive reasoning, who just need to figure out how to apply that to their own bodies. How to start to solve the mystery of their bodies. So for every movement that’s in our program, we have something called mastering the sequences where we explain exactly how it should feel in the body, how to activate, which muscles are being targeted, what the point of it is. When you get really good at it, how it can scale up. If it’s not accessible, how you can scale it down and also where the movement goes so when it’s something that’s integrated into your movement pattern, when you can own that movement or whatever it is that we’re teaching, here’s what’s next. Here’s how that transfers into something cooler. Does that make sense?

Jake : It does. It does.

Jamie : So that’s a huge chunk of the program. We do one on one coaching. Once a week, we’re doing like a diagnostics thing. So there’s something that we have like weekly milestone check-in . So every week we hand select a number of exercises that they’ve been working with and we have them film them. Which is huge for them, to see themselves recorded. It’s different than looking in a mirror. It’s different for a lot of reasons which I can get into later. They then send us the footage. They send us their own critique cause we want them to start using critical thinking.”Hey what are you doing really well here? What feels really great? What do you think you need to work on?” And they give us their answers and we give them ours. So they get 3. They’re basically the observers from 3 perspectives. They observe themselves which most people don’t do. And then they get two people who have been doing it for decades each, giving them our feedback. What we’ve seen is just skyrocketing exponential shifts and things that took me years to get over. I can get people over in a week. It almost makes me jealous. I was like “I wish I had me 10 years ago.” That’s a huge part of the program. We do a lot of journaling. We do mindset work. We do emotional work. We do you know… You’re from Hawaii. I borrowed some really cool principles like Hoʻoponopono. Like really making good with yourself. The process of really feeling your body. I think that’s a huge missing piece that’s kind of put every personal trainer who doesn’t implement the more holistic version of the self at a huge disadvantage. Like if you’re not willing to address the emotional self. This is really logical right it sounds kind of “wuwu” or “?” for a minute but just follow me. Like at some point if you’re not acknowledging like you’re emotionally intelligent self, like what it means to feel emotion. How do you feel emotion? When you’re happy and excited, you feel it, right? You feel it in your body and your tissue and at some point we’ve all kind of gotten really numb. Like our ability to express ourselves, that window’s gotten a lot smaller. Our ability to emote, feel, to express is very very directly related to our ability to be good movers, right? You see like what’s a sexy body that you can think of? Like a dancer, a modern dancer. They got jacked bodies, their strong, their capable, their flexible, their mobile. What do they do? They’re out there on stage fully expressing different emotions to an audience, right? Those things are highly related. So we dive in to different pieces of that throughout the program. So there’s a lot of self work people are doing. And we’re taking them on a rites of passage. This isn’t just a “do this get strong.” This like a transformational rites of passage that we just use movement as part of the modality for that. So we do 2 group coaching calls a week where I was just hopping on to calls. Doing Q&A on any questions they might have about specific movements or support with the journey and we’ll just go off on different things that we see that our group needs. Some might be mindset work. It might be inspirational stuff.It might be really technical aspects, the principles like around efficiency, adaptability, confidence all that kind of stuff. We might just dive deep and get really geeky around that kind of stuff. That’s basically the structure and it’s a long one. It’s complex. We put a lot of time and energy into it.

Jake : It makes a lot of sense what you guys are doing and how you’re doing it. There definitely is a connection between emotional state and the body. You could definitely tell like… For instance, I do a lot of sales so if I have a sales call and at the end of the sales call I’m not able to close the deal, normally there’s kind of like you feel that kind of hunching feeling of rejection. “Man I wish I had been able to make that work” vs you knock it out of the park. You close the deal, you’re walking out of that meeting just standing tall and standing really happy. You know, there’s a connection between the two. And you can definitely see where people have residual effects of different things that happen for a long time. They’ve been missing the deal for years and years and years and they just keep getting more and more hunched then they’re not gonna stand up straight until you know, you get that inner thing straightened out that has gotten them there in the first place cause it’s you know… The body is only a part of it. That makes a lot of sense.

Jamie : I just got back from doing some weightlifting at the gym and I’m seeing a lot of stock emotion especially in men. Their perception of they think strong is but they’re just putting strength on their strengthening dysfunction for so many of them are so closed off. So closed off emotionally. So closed off in their hearts and like there’s so much dysfunction that’s creating like… They lack power. I’m a martial artist. I can see dudes that are way bigger than me but I’m like they wouldn’t handle in a fight. I can see that they’re closed off. Their arms no matter how big they get, they’re not connected to their lats. They’re not able to move like the way that they should. I know that and it’s like… I know it’s scary. It’s scary to think that maybe if you address some of the stagnant emotional stuff and did some meditation that you’re talking about that you’d actually get bigger gains than the gym. It’s funny that not many people talk about that but I used to you know… I don’t just teach movement. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of coaching and I was doing some coaching for some people, men and women around dating, actually. And it’s funny when you acknowledge postural changes, the energy that you. It’s impossible when you… I use dating metaphors a lot when I’m coaching people still. My brain is just wired that way I guess for better or worse. I don’t think my fiance likes that my brain is like… Nonetheless like you know just like what you’re saying. You can’t show up to a date like groveling, like needy, all like broken and be like “ Hey do you want some of this?” You have to own it. Speaking with owning it, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the company Onnit. Aubrey Marcus is really cool, awesome, fortune piling like CEO guy in Austin, Texas. We were just talking about this metaphor that I think really resonates with what we’re talking about of like we’re at this time where I think a lot of people in business and in movement and in dating, a lot of people will teach you to how to pretend to be like… If you’re fishing, we use a fake lure. We don’t need to use live bait, right? So, a lot of people teach you to be like a fake lure. Like to pretend to be the thing and it’s like, we’re living in a time where people are just getting smarter. We’re getting more intelligent. We don’t accept that bullshit anymore. You don’t wanna pretend to be strong. You don’t wanna pretend to confident. Like you know.. It’s time to just fucking be the thing. Be the live bait. Be the thing that attracts the things that you want in your life. You want a beautiful partner in your life? Don’t pretend to be confident. Take the necessary fucking steps to be a confident person. Have things in your life that you’re confident about. Make decisions that you’re stoked on, where you’re proud of yourself and just show off that way. Don’t pretend anymore. And I think we do that same kind of thing when we’re coaching our students. Like what is… Let’s look at strength. Let’s figure out how to really cultivate real strength. Not this pretend armor that a lot of people are trying to cultivate.

Jake : It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. So to give some people some action steps and somethings that they can work on right now after listening to this podcast. What are some of the first steps that you’d recommend for people to really kind of start making the change? What are some of the catalyst that you see that people hit in their lives that enable them to do things and how would you suggest that they get to those places and push through those things that are keeping them from starting their path towards better health and more mobility and better mind body connection?

Jamie : Yeah, that’s a really great question. Awesome question. You know, a big thing that Jonathan and I pride ourselves on is not having a “one-size fits all approach” and a lot of that phone call is like we really personalize everything we say specifically to the person that we’re working with. That said there are some universal truths and some basic approaches that I would recommend for everybody so I can share some of those. That said, depending on where you’re at and having to coach, having someone really get you to like… I can witness where you’re at and really coach you into feeling it. You can get the idea of something and it might not change your life. It’s the implementation part that’s really important. So that’s you know… What I see, a lot of people especially men and what’s trending is mobility, I think. People are like they’re finally recognizing that strength is always gonna be limited by your ability to have functional mobility. Meaning like your expressive range of motion through your joints, right? So a lot of men specifically but women too are realizing that they’re lacking that flexibility and we’ve kind of… It’s good. We need to have a language around these things. It’s good that mobility is a thing now. Like, I’m really glad that it is. At some point though, we need to start to merge mobility, flexibility and strength and some other attributes too back into just moving. It’s just your body expressing it’s capacity, if that makes sense. And so, my point is when a lot of people are trying to get more mobile or more flexible, the main approach that I see if I could shave some years of some agonizing pain off of your life if you’re trying this right now. I have for years and I’m seeing more gains and weeks if not months when I kind of switch my approach. The thing that I would leave with people is that going to end range of motion and just hanging out at your end range of motion is completely going against what your body wants to do to open up. So a lot of the work we do is just planting like a concept, creating a conceptual framework to move from. We’re always moving and creating from ideas like if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re starting a business, at one point was an idea and depending on that idea that’s gonna shape your business. And the principles that you use is gonna shape the way that you interact with other people in that business. So the idea aspect is really important so we want to get people really clear and one of the ways that we do that is I think is when we’re reconnecting to our bodies. When we want things like more flexibility and more mobility rather than doing what a lot of systems do including pitkin yoga. I mean certain teachers do it right like for sure and I’ve got a lot to learn from yoga and I don’t want to put it down in general but I’ve also heard hundreds of stories that whose point is about how yoga’s let these people down. So, you can imagine somebody who doesn’t have a good range of motion or mobility, they go do yoga class and they’re like “Cool now tie yourself into a pretzel, do a forward bend and do this flow with us” and what ends up happening, I heard the story today. It’s like they feel like they need to talk their body like “Hey it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok” and their body is freaking out. Their nervous system is like “ Don’t do this, don’t do this. This is freaking scary.’ You can imagine if you did that to like… You take your kid or your friend and you know… in Hawaii one of my favorite things to do is jump off of a cliff, over a waterfall, into the ocean, doing backflips 30 feet off of a cliff. That’s my thing. I love doing that stuff but I couldn’t even imagine taking my girlfriend up there and be like “Alright, do this, do this, do this” She’s like freaking out and I’m like “Go,jump, jump,jump“ and I’m yelling. There’s no way she’s gonna jump off that very well. There needs to be a level of trust right and so, so much of gaining your flexibility and mobility and opening yourself back up is gaining the trust of your body back. You have offended your body by not listening to it enough and now that you wanna finally pay attention to it, you’re treating it like you’re cracking a whip on the… When you’re cracking a whip on the horse it’s like a slave driver and you’re doing that to your body. You’re like “Stretch further. I need you to be flexible.” You start doing these things to your body. What you need to do is to back way off. We need to do things that feel really good. Like that’s the key. Show your nervous system “Hey buddy. It’s ok.” Like train it like you would when you get a dog. You know when you get a dog and you need to build trust like “Hey it’s cool. You can trust me. You can come here and do what I say.” And the second it has trust it starts listening to you again and it does what you say. Same as when you’re raising a kid. I’ve been a teacher for kids. You need to have trust and so a huge part of it isn’t like bending as far as you can on a forward pull to touch your toes to finally open up your hamstrings. That’s why your hamstrings are still tight ten years later. Because it’s holding on to fear. What you need to do is to start working from the inside out. Here’s a really tangible way of working with this. It’s super simple, I’ll even show you. You can see me ok?

Jake : Yeah.

Jamie : So, let’s say I’m going here and this is my end range of motion. I feel this isolating in my hamstring. I can hang out here or I can push further or further and now this is getting a little scary. Now my back is starting to round and now I’m training dysfunction and this how most people won’t address it. Actually, I’m just gonna be here until I can feel the hamstring activate a little bit. And now I’m just gonna start exploring. Can I sway? Like hips are huge, pelvis. Where can I move? Can I rotate anteriorly and posteriorly? And I’m tucking my tailbone and as simple as that is, my hamstrings, my glutes, my hips’ axis in the front, my Transversus Abdominis, my deep core muscles are all tied to this one magical thing called my pelvis. Doing some little like hip sways, side to side, is affecting dozens of muscles and it’s showing like “Oh look what you can do.” I’m nearly grooving patterns in my nervous system saying “Hey look how many options you have.” You can fall this way. It’s falling or it’s parkour. It leads to so many things. By mapping out I’m creating motor maps in my nervous system that allow me to bend, go deeper and deeper and deeper into flexion and extension and all the hot stuff. That’s one example of kind of a different approach to starting to open tissue up. So we really address what we would call Pelvic Intelligence. Really starting to articulate the pelvis again. A lot of sitting, a lot of center stuff. We’re either posteriorly tucked. Meaning we’ve got like this thing going on or this thing going on. It’s too much one of the other. And so, a lot of people are always trying to fix that and correct it but just managing it in their head like “Oh is this where it’s supposed to be I think.” But the truth is you need to be articulating it from side to side, front to back, circles. So we have a lot of stuff that we’re training. Quadruped position, meaning all fours, standing, seating and when you start to open up that articulation it finds neutral on its own. And that’s a huge principle. As long as you start to open up expression, you shouldn’t have to concentrate too much on “How’s my posture? How’s my posture?” Your body is smart enough to figure that out. As long as you give it a lot of options, does that makes sense?

Jake : Yeah. So for the people who are listening to the podcast on an audio stream, let me just kind of break down what Jamie did.

Jamie : Oh yeah, yeah.

Jake : Basically, stood up, put one foot on a stool or some sort of raised elevated position and showed that a lot of people are trying to go… If they’re trying to reach their toes or something like that. They’ll try and go to the 97%, 101% range of motion to really try and push that. When actually, it’s much healthier to go for like the 20% range motion and work on the different variations so that your body isn’t just locking itself into a different motion that it’s not really liking. To really let things open up and be able to be more flexible and more free and from there you can move. I’m assuming people in your program are probably gonna end up with a better range of motion than when they started without having to torture themselves to do it. Is that correct Jamie?

Jamie : Oh 100%. I was doing a similar thing yesterday with a student, who just went through our program. She’s a mom with a 2 year old from Germany and she came to us and she couldn’t do a proper lunge. Like she couldn’t lunge without like kind of shaking… It looks like she just got off a boat and she’s been on a boat for 3 months. She couldn’t like find her… You know, she still have her sea legs and in 3 months, she’s doing really advance single leg squat patterns. So like on one leg, squatting all the way down to the ground like just incredible work. And the biggest, I was like one of the biggest takeaways that she had was… She’s a movement coach. She’s a yoga instructor and she was just like “ It’s never been so easy. I didn’t know it could feel so good. Like my body enjoyed the whole process. I’m stronger, my legs are stronger than they’ve ever been, my whole body’s stronger that it’s been ever been. I’m more flexible than I’ve ever been. I’m more coordinated than I’ve ever been. I was never sore. I never woke up sore.” And that was like, it was conflicting for a lot of beliefs that she’s had had. That you could actually navigate like feeling really… Like swaying my hips from side to side is as silly as it could look and I wouldn’t do it on a dancefloor quite like that. But it feels good. It feels nourishing and and there’s a lot of layers to it. But it’s like, part of it in the head it’s like, you don’t think you’re stretching unless it hurts a little bit. Unless you’re at that anger and emotional. Like “Oh that’s what stretching has been.” That’s the concept that a lot of us have downloaded but it’s totally wrong. That’s just stretching wrong feels like. Stretching really well is just like, it should all feel like when you get up in the morning and you’re yawning. You know like “Haaaaauuugh. Yes.” You know that opening and there’s some contraction like somethings are getting contracting and some things are opening and you’re just grabbing hold of the tissue and you’re kinda… It just feels good. That’s what the whole practice is.

Jake : Ok. Well this really makes a lot of sense on a lot of different levels and I know that you have a busy day today so I don’t really want to take too much of your time. But before we wrap things up, I want to make sure that people who are interested in learning more about your process and more about your program have the information in order to find you guys. What’s the best way to get in touch with you for more information?

Jamie : Yeah, yeah. So there’s a couple of ways. One would be “embodiedstrength.co”. That’s our website. If you wanted to book a call with us. You’re like… We typically spend about an hour on a call just kind of… Like we talked about earlier, figuring out where you’re stuck and helping you get unstuck. It’s really no judgement kind of place and it’s a place where you can kind of share as much as you’re willing to share the more we can help. And if you want our help personally, we can look at what that looks like but we certainly don’t wanna… Don’t feel scared to call us and just get some free health. You’re totally welcome to do that. That’s what we’re here to do. We haven’t enough clients so I would really encourage you guys of this is exciting for you. If you get on the phone, we’re gonna help you out a little bit. Another place you can go is our free facebook page which is the Art of True Strength. So you can just look us up at the Art of True Strength”. And then yeah myself, James Mauk and then my partner Jonathan Mead are the administrators are there. So lots of good information. We do interviews and fun stuff like that and a lot of Facebook live stuff and dive into some really cool principles like we were talking about today, like every week.

Jake : Awesome. So if you’re listening on one of the audio streams, “embodiedstrength.co” is a great place to find more information. If you’re watching on youtube or you’re on our blog on the Trouble Free Employees website, you’ll see a contact form that you can contact these guys directly and get more information or if you’re watching on youtube, you’ll see a link to that. So, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast today and really explain what you have going on. It’s extremely interesting and I’m really excited to be able to share this information with people cause I think that… You’re basically… There’s an epidemic of people that are getting locked into these positions that are affecting them in so many different ways and it’s very important to have people out there like you, that are helping them break these patterns. Get back more into natural movement and get more in touch with their body and I really really thank you for taking the time out of your day to do this with me.

Jamie : Yeah Jake.It’s been an absolute honor and a privilege. I really appreciate your presence and all the work that you’re doing too. It’s I think that’s what both us got excited about. Brought us together. We’re on a similar mission. Just different versions of the same story like we’re really wanting to empower people in their lives and we just have different tools for empowerment but it’s really so we can really own the day and do things to make this life worth living and also this planet, a more beautiful place to be for us and future generations and it feels like we’re an awesome team, doing the work. So I appreciate you too. Thanks for everything man and I hope we get to do it again. There’s a lot there.

Jake : Yeah. I’d like to have you back on and we’ll let some time pass and then bring you back on and see how things are evolving. I’m really interested to stay in touch with your story and be able to hear more about the success stories that you’re able to bring to your clients and some of the different things that you figure out along the way cause it’s really a cutting edge sort of thing that you’re on. Really appreciate you and what you’re doing. So, to everybody that’s listening, “embodiedstrength.co”. Find out more information about these guys. They’re definitely gonna help you out. You only have one body to live in. You’re gonna have it for the rest of your life. Take care of it. So thank you so much Jamie. I really appreciate it.

Jamie : Thank you too Jake. Have a good one.

TROUBLE FREE VLOG – BLUE BAR

Transcription:

So yesterday we started a new account with a guy named Jeffrey from Australia. He flew out here personally to train his virtual assistant. And we’ve been working with him all day long and he’s really happy with the service that he has so far made some sales already today and invited us to go to a place called the blue bar with him which I have never been to before. But I’ve heard that he is very nice and we’re going to go check it out right now. So let’s go see what it’s like.

TROUBLE FREE VLOG – BPO WARS

We had a party/competition with one of our sister offices that is also based in Cebu City. We threw the party in a venue that was decorated in a Star Wars theme and we dubbed the event as “BPO Wars”. We had a lot of fun and we were close in the competitions but unfortunately we got edged out of an overall victory due to some close losses in some of the events.

TROUBLE FREE VLOG – A TOAST TO THE WEB DEVELOPERS (AKA “THE TIGER BOYS”)

Transcription:

Alright so today we’re gonna do something a little bit different. We had some exceptional work happen this week and I really like everyone to feel as appreciated as possible so we’re gonna do something fun for everyone. We’ve got a new office that we’re opening. We’re gonna take this cooler, we’re gonna go inside of the store here, we’re going to fill it up with all kinds of beverages. Took everyone’s requests for what they want…

These guys are so nice over here. We bought a cooler of beer and insisted that he will wheel it out for us so we didn’t have to carry it. Pretty good service.

We’re gonna go over to our new office. We’re gonna have a toast and make sure that everyone ends the week with a nice big smile. So let’s go!

Thank you so much for doing all the work that you do. If it wasn’t for you guys we wouldn’t be able to go from tiny office to a big office. Thanks so much for being here, being on the team, doing what you guys do. Really really appreciate you. So knock yourselves out. Have fun. Hopefully, that thing’s drained because I want that cooler back after.