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After blowing the first Unhireable Podcast, I’ve decided to release the individual segments as separate videos.

This first one is a deep dive into what people think it means to be Unhireable.

To get a diverse range of opinions, we went out to the Mall at UTC (and promptly got kicked out), stopped by the HuB to ask some entrepreneurs, sat down with the founder of Sarasota Day, and even interviewed a few randoms out on the street. All with the specific intent of finding out what people think it meant to be unhireable.

It’s part of a long term project we are working on here at Raymmar.com, and is an idea we will be exploring further in our future videos.

Were you surprised by any of the answers?

What do you think it means to be Unhireable?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

  • NSFW – Language & other things your boss won’t want you to see while you’re at work. 
  • Skip to 1:16 to get past the blue disclaimer screen of death.
  • Skip to 4:23 to get into the meat of the opening. (It’s actually a pretty good podcast once you get past the technical miscues.)

Tonight we tried to run our first live podcast. It didn’t go so well.

It’s kind of ironic actually. We pre-produced a funny intro video that showed us screwing up the live stream, and then actually screwed up the live stream. We thought it would be a funny way to open up our new live segment, but it turns out the joke was on us.

At the end of the day, we did run into some technical difficulties, but the truth is that we should have been more prepared.

In typical Raymmar fashion, I wanted to go all in, without really knowing the depth of the water I was jumping into. But don’t worry, I’m a good swimmer. Over time, I know this will all get better, and even though we screwed up, we did a lot of things right.

To be completely honest, my biggest concern was letting all of you down. Those of you who wanted to watch, but couldn’t. Those who set aside time to be there and then found a blank screen when you showed up. I want to personally apologize for that. This is all part of a learning process, and I appreciate your patience as we figure it all out.

And even though we did not “succeed,” we did learn a few lessons from fucking up our first live stream.

1: Test Everything… Twice

We thought we double checked everything, but in the end, it was something simple that did us in.

We tested the ability to broadcast live before the show and it worked perfectly. Then, in an effort to optimize the production process, I decided to use the auto broadcast feature on the encoding software we are using. Whoops.

After realizing that the broadcast had not begun on time, we tried again a few times manually, finally getting it to start streaming, but inadvertently starting the stream in a new feed instead of sending it to the previously scheduled event on YouTube. This created a new URL for our broadcast, which meant we actually did broadcast live last night, but unfortunately not many people saw it.

2: Give Yourself Twice the Time

If this is your first time trying to produce a show live, you should plan on spending twice the amount of time you think it is going to take you, if not more. There are all sorts of hidden hurdles that will jump out to derail you so make sure you give yourself enough time to navigate all of the obstacles that are bound to pop up.

Tyler and I worked our assess off in the weeks leading up to this live stream, trying to produce a few of the segments ahead of the show, but timing them up, cutting them just right, and packaging everything up for the live broadcast was more time consuming that we initially expected. And although we messed up big time, we did get a few things right, and I look forward to learning more on the way towards the bigger vision.

3: Keep It Simple Stupid!

We tried to complicate the show in an attempt to tell a better story. But at the end of the day, those complications cost us the quality we were looking for. Moving forward we will simplify the entire process to eliminate some of the moving parts.

Additionally, I feel like as I am typing these “lessons,” I am just repeating things to myself that I knew before we started. I guess I just thought we could pull it off, and to be honest, we almost did. Unfortunately, in the world of live broadcasts, “almost” is about as good as not-at-all.

4: Keep it Short

In retrospect, trying to do a full hour for our first live stream might have been a little too ambitious. We may need to take some time to build our audience before too many people devote an hour of their day to tune in live.

We definitely should have spent more time working on shorter segments, producing them ahead of time, and then getting a feel for how to string them all together over time. Instead we tried to cram a months worth of work into a week and a half. This leaves the podcast feeling a little scatter brained. Not to mention, the fact that I am the talent and the producer, which made it hard for me to direct my focus completely in one place.

Moving forward, we will stick to telling short stories, and then we will start a recap show where we talk about all of the content we have created since our last recap. Maybe we start this once a month, and slowly move  towards a more regular show schedule.

5: Practice Practice Practice

We were under the gun to get all of the content produced ahead of time, and at the cost of doing one thing right, we did it all wrong. We left ourselves no time for a dry run, or dress rehearsal. We should have failed inside of test run, not on live airtime.

At the end of the day, I think we were just a little too ambitious here, and I think we learned some valuable lessons, even if we did screw some things up.

And if I am being completely honest, I think this makes for a way more interesting start up story.

For those who made it all the way down to this part of the article, then you might want to bounce around the first show below. We’re not going to make a big stink about it, but I am going to leave it up as a reminder of where we started.

We also think it might be a good faith gesture to our audience, to show that this is all part of a learning curve, and that we are planning on sharing everything on this journey with you. Even the shitty parts.

So stay tuned, I promise this will all get better as we go.

Until then, thanks for your patience.

Regards,

Raymmar-logo-Enfold-blue

Welcome to the ground floor of the ray.do network. Learn more about our new podcast, and how you can get involved here at Raymmar.com

Update 12/9/2015

I have been following the team over at Digital Telepathy for a couple years now, so when they asked me to write a post for them about their public launch of Filament, I couldn’t resist.

Our relationship started with the podcast in this post, but evolved in to so much more over time. Since then I have developed a great working relationship with their products team, and was even a part of the Alpha and Beta teams who gave feedback to help them refine Filament’s functionality and performance.

A few months ago, I wrote this article for the DT Blog, and recently, we have even been talking to their COO for strategic direction on a new venture my team has been working on for the last few months.

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of this company and their work over the last few years, and it has been a pleasure to be a part of the Filament launch up to this point.

So with no further delay, here is everything you need to know about the team over at DT, their company philosophy, and a little inside skinny on the launch of their new product.


Originally published June 5, 2014

Understanding the philosophy of the San Diego start-up behind Filament.ioDigital Telepathy – Rated R for Raymmar –

In this episode of RayDO…

I interview Jason Amunwa (Director of Products) and Shawn Leslie (Product Designer) from Digital Telepathy.

Disclaimer: This is not a paid advertisement and I received no compensation for conducting this interview.

I simply bumped into these guys online while trying their online apps and then reached out about doing an interview.

I have written other popular articles about other useful productivity software and this is just another in that same style. It was simply a way for me to test my podcast skills and tell a fun story about a cool company.

Part of my goal on Raymmar.com is to inspire people to create better products and I believe in their motto of “Design Matters.”

This is the first of two podcasts that I will publish. Both from the same interview with DT, but I wanted to talk about their philosophy in this one and in the next one we will get a little more technical about the product and how it can help your website.

Subscribe to be sure you don’t miss it. And make sure to grab us on Stitcher so you can listen to us while you work-hard, or hardly-work.

Podcast Transcript and Summary

Look, I know this is not a perfect transcript.

Some of this was available because I scripted parts of the narration and others because I wanted to summarize the content for search engines.

However, I highly encourage you to listen to the podcast itself as it is entertaining and educational.

Plus only weird people read transcripts. Just saying.

Go download the Stitcher app so that you can take RayDO on the run. It has a robust mobile experience, allows you to save your place in the episodes and that way you can always have our newest shows right on your phone.

A few weeks ago Jason Amunwa who is the director of products at Digital Telepathy, along with product designer, Shawn Leslie, joined me via Skype for a short interview.

They asked me to hold the interview until after their big launch but that has happened so, here we are. One of my goals is to to keep my audience on the cutting edge of all things digital so in this episode I am going to introduce you to a company that is leading the way with some of their own online software.

Digital Telepathy has worked with companies like New Relic, Apple, and Google so these guys are the real deal.

I wanted to talk to them about their philosophy of “Design Matters” and why they are so adamant about trying to creating a better web for everyone.

But wait just one minute. Before we get too far into this thing, let’s go ahead get this shit started.

Intro music

Cut 1 – Thanks and cool intro music.

For those who don’t know, Digital Telepathy is a company that develops software and web applications and they have just released a new product called Filament, which acts like an app store for your website but we’ll get into that a little later.

Cut  2 – about being under the radar with Filament and not pushing it out because they want to get it right.

So tell me about Digital Telepathy

Cut 3 – Basically we are just a bunch of people who are passionate about the web and are trying to make the web a better place for everybody. We want people to be able to do more with the web.

So this brings up a good point, and a trend in online businesses, where we are seeing companies fill a very specific niche.

I do not think we will see many more monster companies like Microsoft, IBM or Google, but what I think you will see are very specialized companies that do one thing really well. They do that one thing awesome.

Instead of dictating what the person needs to be doing, where they need to be doing it and how exactly they do it, they just give the person a task and base their performance on the results of their work, as opposed the time it took to create it.

These companies are embracing a concept that is based on paying people for the value they bring as opposed to the time they spend “working” and that is allowing them to do truly amazing things.

We talk about the Results Only Work Environment regularly, on this podcast as well as Raymmar.com so I wanted to ask these guys what they thought about the Results Only Work Environment as a whole philosophy and how it fits into their overall culture as a business.

Cut 4 – Betterment – It stacks upon itself and continually helps you grow.

DT takes their culture one step further with a betterment blog and a philosophy that empowers their individual employees to constantly strive to get better.

They also integrate their marketing strategy by allowing all of their employees to help tell the story of their company.

They allow the personality that makes up their company (their employees), to shine through, as opposed to restricting that function strictly to the marketing department, much like other companies do. Something Jason refers to as “Silo Thinking”

Cut 5 – Silo thinking – Lessons we learn and why we share them.

Another one of DT’s driving principles is that “design matters” and since I am a design school drop out, I wanted to get to the bottom of why design is such a big part of their company culture.

Up until this point we have been talking to Jason, the Director of Products at Digital Telepathy but he thought Shawn might have a better perspective on this question.

Cut 6 – Design Matters – Why design matters – Shawn It is more about design thinking and you can apply that to pretty much any problem in the world.

 “We find ways to bring design into almost every component of our projects as well as our apps like Filament.” –

This answer struck a chord for me as it touched on something that is near and dear to my core philosophy.

The thought that creative thinkers and that “design thinking” to solve any problem is going to be a highly sought after skill. If you listen to my podcasts on a regular basis then you know that I talk a lot about the creative entrepreneur taking over the world.

I talk about the value of applying creative problem solving skills to every day situations and the power in being in touch with your inner content monster.

Cut 7 – Raymmar Analyzing everything. Looking at the big picture, being able to analyze the entire process step by step.

After my little mini rant our conversation took a little bit of a turn towards business strategy as we started to talk about a few of the other apps they have planned for the future.

Since most of their apps are free… I kind of wanted to know how they made money. So I asked.

Jason explained that they work off of a Freemium model which means some of their software is free but you can upgrade for more functionality and to get rid of the sponsored branding that appears on the free versions of the software.

Cut 8 – Freemium – Go with “try-it-before-you-buy-it,” because we want you to be happy with the product you are about to pay for.

This brings up a good point.

The internet is the last free market and it really is changing the way people do business.

Because information is so prolific, it becomes more important for companies to bond with their customers and it also becomes infinitely more difficult for any of them to take advantage of the consumer. Considering I am in start-up mode, I decided to ask them for some free consulting. I wanted to know what they would do as a first step to building a digital product online.

Cut 9 – Tear it down to its smallest pieces. Play to your strengths and make it immediately obvious how you are different than your competition.

So let me clarify the point he just made. He said you need to be immediately different.

You need to understand what and why your model is different from the rest of the competition. Something we talk about regularly on RayDO.

I wanted to take my free consulting one step further so I asked them about their philosophy behind building and testing the apps. I wanted to know how they approached the ongoing development of a digital product and how much of it should be left up to the consumer. I wanted to know if it was too simplistic a request to just find a core segment of users and then let them tell you what kind of product they wanted you to build.

Cut 10 – Objective Based Design – We keep the conversation going with the client and the user. Test and iterate.

His answer was pretty reassuring because this is how I’ve been building my website. It is a work in progress and it will not be done until it is done. And even then, I’m not sure it will ever be done.

I knew the guys weren’t going to let me get my free consulting on all day so I asked them what was the next step for Digital Telepathy and about their new Filament product.

Clip 11 – What is Filament? Filament is like an app store for your website. We wanted to create this app store so that it was easy for people to find high quality apps that work with their site and then make it easy to install it.

So… that’s pretty awesome. I think. But aren’t there other apps out there or products that do this already? How does Filament stand out from the competition.

Cut 12 – WordPress Plug-ins. When they upgrade they can brake your site so Filament eliminates that by allowing you to manage the apps in real time.

I see. So can any developer begin to develop applications on the Filament platform?

Cut 13 – Not Yet – Right now we are focusing on making sure that we have the installation process down. Right now we are creating our own apps for the platform. Once we are confident that we have solved those problems then we will be looking to bring other people on board.

Jason continued to tell me about some plans for future software and other benefits of the Filament platform but for me the most important part of their products is the ability to integrate new features on my website without spending a ton of money in development.

Cut 14 – Making the web a better place – Hiring people is expensive and learning is time consuming. We just want to make it easier for everyone to do these things because we just enjoy it when the web is better.

So what website should people go to in order to learn more about Filament.

Cut 15 – Fliament.io – Check it out, download the apps and learn more about creating a better web.

What an awesome way to look at building a product and I think more companies would do well to take this type of approach to building their digital products. Make sure you subscribe to Raymmar.com and grab us on Stitcher so you don’t miss an episode of RayDO And be sure to go check over at Fliament.io – But for right now, we got to go!

Want more perspective on Filament? Here is an article from the Pando website that goes into more detail about the Filament App Store

Subscribe-to-raymmar-com-master

In this podcast, I talk with John Lyon who is a researcher for one of the top financial research firms in the country. His research and advice helps direct the people who manage billions upon billions of investment dollars and I wanted to ask him a few questions about the current fiscal climate and where he sees the future of the monetary system as a whole. We also get into China and the monetary moves they are making and dive into a concept I am calling open source sales. Something I think could completely change the world of sales as we know it. But if you think this is just going to be another boring talk about those little green pieces of paper that we call money, then you must have lost your mind, because after all, this, is Raymmar Radio! So kick back, and let’s get this shit started!

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

China moving against the dollar Ripples on the surface Homegrown Learners – Growing learners one day at a time Learn more about my ventures.


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The Importance of Learning to Control Your Inner Killer

In this podcast we explore the power of a positive attitude and expose the human predisposition to being controlled as a species.

– Highlight any text in this article to tweet it directly –

As always, if you want to skip over the introduction, you can do so by jumping to the 1:40 mark. Just remember, a polar bear will be left stranded on an iceberg every time someone does this.

1:40 – The Power of Positivity

Pretending to be positive is a powerful way to impact the world around you.

Most sales people are trained in the art of pretending to be positive but it is something that we would all be well served to learn. People underestimate the impact that positive thought can have on the lives of the people around them. Especially if you can find a way to stay positive on a regular basis.

When you understand that we all have problems that we are dealing with and that complaining about your particular problems does nothing other than push the people around you away, then you can finally start to see the real power of positive thinking. Even if you struggle with the execution early on.

Now, I am not talking about stupid, overbearing, goofy-faced pretending. I am talking about genuinely believing that things in your life are good and will get better. Start believing it or others will see it for exactly what it is. Fake.

The truth about happiness – Read the full article

3:09 – The slave mentality

Humans have delegated their entire existence to external controls. Everything outside of entertainment and the facade of education that is. We have given up on trying to understand the world around us and how it really works and instead accept whatever the popular belief is, regardless of how easy the truth might actually be to access.

We have given ultimate control of our lives to the government and we have become slaves to our elected leaders and the corporations that place them.

We are slaves to our lives, jobs, debt, drugs and on and on.

The perversions of our attitudes and over all psyches have been so completely corrupted, that we are actually satisfied in our slavery. The lack of individual accountability has put is in a precarious place as a population and the uninformed masses that make up the membership of that new majority are dragging us all towards mediocrity.

solving-problems-like-a-psychopath

“The world is a very dangerous place. Not because bad people do bad things, but because most people do nothing.” – Albert Einstein –

5:50 – It’s a cancer really

The distractions have been purposeful and direct. What we are watching sprout up around us, is the fruit of more than a hundred years of hard labor. The culmination of closet communism in America. Something that the whole world seems to be running from, while we  (America) run towards it with open arms.

The good news is that people are waking up to the truth. Every day people like you are listening to podcasts like these and reading articles like these to learn more about what is really going on in this country.

I think more people need to be reading and exploring the history our founding, where we came from and where we are going. Understand the ultimate fallibility of man and the inherent nature of large societies to self destruct. It has happened over and over again throughout history, yet we continue to accept it as if everything were ok.

8:10 – How to claim your superpower

Becoming bulletproof is important to finding your place in the world. Learn how to be comfortable in your own skin by finding beauty in your individual flaws. So many of us are worried about what is going on in the world of others more than worrying about our own world as a whole.

How to claim your super power Read the full article

A community of support

None of this is going to be easy. It is up to you to apply and execute these ideas as they apply to your particular place in life. If you want to dig deeper and join the conversation then register as an early adopter and then join us in the forums.

10:18 –  It’s not always easy

It is important to understand how powerful a shift you can make in your own life (as well as the life of others) by allowing yourself to commit completely to making these changes. To convince yourself that you are actually able to do it.

You may have to fake it before you make it early on, but I promise that over the time, you will love the new, freer, you. The people around you will love you more too. They will actually be able to see you. Maybe even for the first time.

12:05 – Let’s not pretend that pretending is always enough

Just pretending to be positive is not going to cut it.

Some days you may have to go to war with yourself, all on your own. Depression and self imposed hurdles are real, and pretending to be happy is never enough. Eventually you have to buy into the idea of actually finding fulfillment in whatever it is you are trying to do and let it consume you from the inside out.

13:45 – What if money didn’t matter?

What if we just give everyone a million bucks? Think about it.  It would cost pennies on the dollar compared to the level of debt we are burying ourselves under as a society and it would instantly free us all of the constraints of our current monetary monopoly. Or would it?

You might think that by giving everyone a million dollars, you’d make everyone rich, but what it would really do is expose the trivial nature of the mirage we call money. Imagine how devalued the dollar would become if all of a sudden, it was all actually spendable, by you and I, the average person.

Flooding the market with that much cash would expose the nature of our monopoly money. It would make the entire system instantly irrelevant. It just goes to show how perverted everything about our monetary system actually is, and why it is important that the average American do a better job of understanding the monetary policy that has enslaved us all so effectively.

15:50 – A cure for depression?

Disclaimer: I am not a psychiatrist and you should not take my thoughts as mental health advice. I am only offering my perspective, insights and personal points of view that has helped me cope with my depression personally. 

Acknowledging the dark thoughts and exploring the evil nature of your negative emotions is an important step in your development as enlightened individuals. You have to explore the boundaries of your positive and negative thoughts, if only in your own head, in order to understand the limits of what someone else might do without your level of control.

You have to learn that those dark thoughts and the crazy voices in your head are just other parts of you.You must learn to embrace and control them, just as you control any other part of your emotional interactions in life.

Depression can make that difficult but these theories can help. Take it from a guy who has struggled with depression his whole life. These tips may not cure your depression but they can definitely help you understand and manage it.

You also have to understand that these emotions do not define you. You can have these thoughts and know that they are not in control of your actions. Exploring these thoughts in depth is really the same as exploring the other thoughts and desires for knowledge that you might have through life. All a part of the insatiable curiosity I try to inspire with the content on this website.

18:20 – Solving problems like a psychopath

Embracing these thoughts and learning to use them as pieces of the bigger puzzle that is your life, can really help set yourself free. Many powerful professionals and personalities have characteristics that are common among psychopaths.

Buy the book – The Wisdom of Psychopaths

Knowing and understanding those boundaries will allow you to understand that there is real evil in this world. An understanding that can lead you to strength and eventual mastery of the thoughts in your head.

20:00 – Are you even capable of succeeding

So many times we are responsible for holding ourselves back. While the whole world is waking up to the idea of mass slavery, America (the one place on earth where people actually found freedom) is succumbing to a type of soft-tyrannical control.

21:10 – Getting fucked

It is your responsibility in life to not get fucked.

Not that I am excusing the people who are doing the fucking, but it is ultimately your responsibility to provide yourself with an adequate defense against all of the fuckery in this world.

Each of us enjoys a certain level of chaos, so it is natural for us to find comfort inside of a certain level of it, but more often than not, you are the very reason why you will never do anything amazing with your life.

23:50 – Why you should think about robbing a bank

Seeing the world from the perspective of a master criminal allows you to see all the angles.

When you allow yourself to see the world as if you were trying to rob it blind, then you can see where all of it’s weaknesses are masterfully hidden.

This is the same reason hackers are important to website security and why master criminals make great informants. They are uniquely qualified to exploit the flaws of whatever system they are tasked to sabotage, and then find creative ways to fix them. This is the very approach I propose  for solving problems in life. It is the reason for this podcast and a large  reason behind much of what I do.

I think the average person walks around this world completely clueless to what is going on and I plan on doing all I can to reverse that trend.

 

A comprehensive guide to creating, sharing and nurturing viral content online.

Listen and read along as we teach you how to build a strong organic online presence.

People ask me all the time…

“How do you get so many people to your website?”

They want to know what I have done to increase my online exposure and how I get such got such a large audience in such a short amount of time.

Most of what I have done has been trial and error and even now we are constantly experimenting with different formats of content in an attempt to perfect our art, but there are a few things we have learned along the way that can definitely help you reach your online goals.

In this podcast…

We talk about the process of creating, sharing and nurturing viral content in some serious detail.

I invited Sean Smith to join me in this episode of RayDO (pronounced Ra-di-o) Uncensored. Sean is a prolific writer and you can find his work on a number of national publications including the Hufington Post, 99U, Moz and Medium.

I suggest you take notes along the way, as we dive deep into the process of creating, sharing  and nurturing viral content. You should also listen to the entire podcast for a deeper understanding of our entire content conversation, especially since the notes below are just an overview of everything we talk about in the podcast.

As always, if you find value in the podcast, please be sure share it with a friend, subscribe and grab us on Stitcher. That way you can get all of our newest content first.

2:50 – Skip the audio intro

I always like to let you skip the intro so if you don’t want to hear the lead-in to the podcast just skip to about the three minute mark. Just remember, a baby squirrel will get run over by a car every time someone decides to do this.

In all seriousness, the beginning of these podcasts is where I briefly explain what the show is about and I also give occasional updates on what we are trying to build here at Raymmar.com. If you are interested in getting involved or want to know more about what we are doing then I suggest you listen all the way from the beginning.

4:00 – A quick intro to Medium

I have enjoyed some recent success on Medium (especially when my article reached #1 on their top 100 list) but I think they are changing some of the things that made them great. I am working on on article about why I think they might have messed up big time but I have also had some great success by sharing some of my posts on Medium.

I am not sure whether the changes they have made recently will affect their long term viability as a social sharing platform but I think you should know about it as a content creator because after all, finding new places to showcase your work is a big part of increasing your audience and building a viral presence online.

6:15 – Starting a blog

The race to stand out online is on in full force and most people are doing it all wrong. At this point in the podcast we start diving into the theory behind creating, sharing and nurturing the content in an attempt to create a continual viral presence online.

These strategies, although helpful when creating any content online, are not intended to help you get one specific article to go viral. The internet is a finicky place and you should worry less about creating individual pieces of viral content and instead focus your efforts on always putting your best work out there for the world to see.

Once you start driving enough traffic (assuming the site is interesting) people will start spilling over into the other sections of the website. What we are hoping to teach you on Raymmar.com is how to build a consistently strong arsenal of quality content and how to elevate your entire blog  so that everything you do has a chance at going viral.

8:05 – It starts with a title?

For me it all starts with the title. I get an idea and then it evolves in my head as a theory but I am never fully inspired until the title hits me. Sean and I both agree on the importance of the headline as well as why it is so important to think about getting the readers attention early on. On the internet, many people do judge a book by its cover so be sure that your blog titles are as thought out as the content inside of them or in the end you re really just wasting your time.

It would be like throwing a huge party and then forgetting to send out the invites. Not the proper way to plan a party right? So why would you take the same approach to creating your online content?

9:30 – The evolution of an article

Most great content is not a one and done proposition. In this part of the podcast we talk about letting the content sit on the shelf and why you should let your stories and simmer. I think it is important to throw down all of your thoughts and then sleep on your idea for a few nights. Then you can come back and clean up the content to make sure you are always delivering your “A” material. I do not know many people who do everything perfect the first time around so if you really want your content to go viral then you really do need to take your time and make an art out of writing your articles.

11:30 – The structure and flow of the article

Sometimes you should just spit out all of your thoughts and then look at them on the screen and work on the structure and flow of the article. Then you can start moving pieces around and assembling the article in the way that makes the most sense. The structure of your article is important and you need to hook the reader early, especially online.

Blogging Tip:

You should be telling two stories through the course of the article and also make sure you are formatting it properly for online distribution.

Story one: Should be told in the headlines and subheadings. Consider this the top level story. A fly by of your high level ideas if you will. People are really impatient online so you need to make your article easily skimable while also trying to suck the reader in and get them to commit to reading the entire story.

Story two: Should be the article itself. This is the long form version of your story. This is where you can dive in and let your work shine. The other benefit to formatting your content like this (besides the value that long form content brings you in the sense of SEO) is that it makes long form content digestible. You can deliver more information in one place and not overwhelm the reader with a page that looks like it was copied and pasted from an encyclopedia.

15:05 – Delivering value to the reader

In order for your story to have a chance at going viral, there has to be a strong story line. At the end of the day, if your story sucks then no one is going to listen, read, watch, etc. You should make an attempt to educate and entertain your reader while telling that story. Think about the stuff that engages you online and then try to mimic and copy that approach but be sure to make it your own along the way.

You can use metaphors and other creative writing practices to give the reader some creative liberties while reading your work. This allows the reader to make your story their own and it allows them to create the environment in which the story takes place inside of their own head. You allow them to paint for themselves the vision that you are trying to share and then you put yourself in the perfect place to entice the reader to actually share your story.

17:06 – Leave the story up to the reader

The point that we are trying to make here is that getting something to go viral online becomes more about getting the reader to attach their emotions to the blog than just writing something interesting. Most businesses, entrepreneurs, etc. just want to pitch their products on their blog, but they forget about connecting with their audience in an emotional way. They forget to give something to the reader in the form of digestible value before asking for the sale.

Business blogs would be well served to understand the concept of connecting with their readers and should strive to turn their website into a place where their customers come to not only hang out but learn from you. Think of it as if you were building an online lobby for creative thought.

19:33 – Reading is the ultimate virtual reality

People can immerse themselves in your words. When they watch video they see the exact vision of what the person who created the art wanted them to see. But, when you are reading someones words or listening to their voice, the reader gets to become the artist. This leaves you with a beautiful opportunity as the author, to connect on multiple levels with your audience. It allows you to reach directly into the heads of your readers and paint with your words.

You also have to remember that it takes time to build an audience and a following online. You have to be willing to invest the time and hone your skills as not only a writer but a self promoter of the things you write. No one is going to read your early articles so don’t feel bad when you publish something and no one reads it. It happens to all of us when we first start out. You should use this early part of your online development process to test your writing style and keep experimenting with different techniques in order to find out what is going to work best for you.

23:25 – Building Credibility online

You can expect to spend as much time online building credibility in what you do as you do creating and distributing your content. In order to have the best chance to stand out online you need to find people in your area of expertise and start sharing content, connecting and engaging with them on their websites, blogs and social platforms. You need to connect with your readers, not only through your writing, but inside of your interactions as well. Building real relationships with your readers is important to maintaining a viral presence online and you should make it a top priority to respond to all of the comments made on your website as well as the social media sites that you are active on.

24:50 – Become an expert

You have to know what you are talking about before anyone is going to listen to you online. It is easy for anyone to start a website but that does not mean that everyone with a website is an expert. You should make it a point to become the best at whatever it is you are trying to explain to your audience. You have to prove to them that you know what you are talking about by being able to do what you are telling them to do for yourself.

If you doubt yourself or are making things up as you go in an attempt to fill up space, then your reader will not only know that you are faking it, but you will also destroy any small amount of credibility that you might have built up until this point. You must believe in yourself but that does not mean you need to be a tyrant when talking to your audience either. You need to know that what you are talking about is right and then find creative ways to relay that to your reader.

26:15 – Having actual authority vs. thinking you have it

Finding credibility online and building an overall viral presence on your website becomes a process of getting involved in the existing conversations online. This is a piece that many people forget about when trying to build their own blog from the ground up. Whenever you want to get other people involved in your conversations, then you should look for places where people are already talking about the things you are trying to talk about and find a way to get involved in their conversation. Do not be so naive that you think people are going to rush to your website when to talk about what you want when they are already in the middle of that discussion somewhere else. Instead, you should learn how to hack those conversations and become someone that they look to for advice on the issue. Then you can start funneling that conversation to your website and separate yourself as a thought leader in that category.

34:30 – Getting involved

If you are a regular listener then please join the conversation. We have a lot of people who come to the site more than 5 times a month and I would really like to get to know those people better. I want to know why you come to the site so regularly and what we can do to make that experience better for you. Please take a moment to reach out and leave me some feedback about your experience on the site and with this podcast, etc.

We are really trying to make this about the consumer experience and we want to build it into something beautiful for our readers and listeners.

37:05 – Remaining a student

Make sure that you are always learning. You should always think that other people are smart too and that other people can teach you something you mifht not already know. You should become a sponge and then regurgitate that info to your audience in a way that they can relate to or understand. The best teachers are always learning and the beauty of the internet is that it can easily become a medium by whitch information can be passed from one person to another and that is helping all of us learn at a really fast pace. More so than ever before.

Podcast correction – In the podcast I mention that we have shown up more than 100,000 times in Google search results but that number is actually closer to 1.3 million. Turns out I had some filters applied to the webmaster tools and that was restricting the results. Talk about a great mistake! 

38:25 – A few final tips

Here is a link to the Gibbon.co learning platform that Sean was talking about at the end of the podcast.

As we wrap up the podcast, here are a few final thoughts from both Sean and I that will help you take some steps towards building a viral presence online.

Get in the habit of reading your writing out loud.

Seriously, this has been one of the best things I have done for my writing. It allows me to write as if I was actually speaking to someone which is important because when someone reads your work, the concepts could be entirely new to them. You cannot assume they know the things you know, or that they are thinking like you are thinking. It is up to you as the author to make sure that the flow of your work makes sense and reading your work out loud is one of the best ways to do just that.

Leave internal cliff-hangers.

When you tell your story, leave something for the reader to discover later in the writing. This will ensure that they remain engaged throughout the entire post. It can be difficult to learn at first but as your writing style matures you will get better at teasing out the hooks of the articles early on in the content and use them to drag the reader throughout your work in the exact manner which you intended. When you learn to do this then you can really have a chance at building something special online because it really does become about more than just reading a blog article at that point.

Get creative with the article structure.

Start from the end and then bounce around. Or in the middle then to the beginning. Don’t just think that your story has to go in chronological order. A little confusion for the reader is a good thing. Again, this is like leaving little hooks throughout the article. Things that draw the reader in and keep them around until the end.

I have not done a political podcast for a while. mostly because my views have been changing quite a bit over the last 4 months.

Listen to the full recording to hear me describe the evolution of my political perspective in a little more detail.

Why cover this?

Considering my platform, and position on the current state of political affairs, I could not ignore what was going on with the current IRS scandal in Washington. It has me in disbelief as I sit here and watch this administration tell lie after lie. I just couldn’t sit quiet and neither should you.

Please share this podcast and article with your friends and let them know it is time to realize that we are in deep shit as a country. 

Raymmar’s Rundown

So here is what is going on with the IRS scandal and why this it is absolutely ridiculous for anyone to think that this recent “hard drive failure” is just a coincidence.

This is the same administration that told us that the attacks on Benghazi were started because of a YouTube video. For two weeks they told us it was a video and then it all turned out to be a lie.

You can keep your healthcare. Lie!

I am going to shut down Guantanamo bay. Lie!

I am going to get our country out of war. Lie!

Taxes will not go up. Lie!

Lie, after lie, after lie!

This administration, which claimed it was going to be the most transparent administration of all time, has turned into one of the most power hungry and tyrannical administrations that the American people have ever seen.

To round it all off, back in 2013 it was discovered that the IRS was using its powers to target conservative political organizations and other right-leaning non-profit organizations, especially if the words “Tea Party” were in the organizations name.

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IRS Targets Conservative Groups – Click image for source reference.

Now, a few weeks ago, we find out that a bunch of emails, that just so happens to correspond with the time in question, have gone missing from the hard drive of the woman who was at the head of the IRS when it happened.

1. Shannon Bream, filling in for Megyn Kelly on Fox news – Start at 0:19

Announcing that emails were announced missing by John Koskinen and deemed to be unrecoverable.

Let me explain how these large email servers actually work and why they couldn’t have just disappeared. These systems are backed up daily, backed up across multiple servers and stored in multiple locations. There is so much redundancy in a system like this that there are probably back-ups of the back-ups. To think that these emails just disappeared is preposterous. Or is it.

What about the people who received the emails? Did those computers all crash too? Have we forgotten that in order for an email to work it has to be received as well as sent. What happened to the emails on the other end? Why can we not run the entire database through a search query and look throughout all of the other computers for emails sent by Lois Lerner and find them with a reverse look-up process. Seems logical to me.

The other thing that strikes me about that last clip is that only one out of every eight Americans that think this is suspicious. How can you look at this information think that this is anything other than a cover up. This is simply a pitiful attempt to cover up the even larger conspiracy, which is that this administration was systematically picking off its political opponents by means of regulation, excessive audit and general molestation by the Internal Revenue Service.

We have seen the IRS grow by more than 16,000 agents just to enforce the healthcare legislation and if this is any indication of what conservative groups will be facing in the years to come, then there is a lot to be worried about.

2.  Mark Thiessen – From  American Enterprise Institute on Fox News. – Start at 5:59

Now apparently, the Democrats are in a tizzy too? Give me a break. Again, this is just part of the game and I predict that both sides of the political aisle will come together to cover this up because there is too much at stake here. The IRS is the largest weapon the government has to control the people. It is the system by which all of their revenue is collected and to think that anyone of them is going to let something bring it all down then you have another thing coming.

What we will see is a “bi-partisan effort” to get this scandal under control and bury it any way they can. Probably in the upcoming 4th of July weekend which I think is even more ironic. As we watch our liberties slowly disappear, we also celebrate the anniversary of our independence.

To make things worse, we also find out that 6 other employees, who are also under investigation have miraculously had their emails disappear as well. How stupid do these guys really think we are?

This is absolutely absurd and it just goes to show the level of corruption that we have allowed to take over this entire government. Think about how corrupt the entire system must be for them to think that they can get away with something like this.

The crazy part is that they probably will. Much like the other lies and cover-ups from this current administration, this will get swept under the rug and we will all forget about it soon enough.

This is what happens when you get government organizations with unchecked power. The IRS has had unrestricted rule for a while, and now we are watching the Executive Branch take their lead and step out on their own. They are taking more power and making congress more and more irrelevant every day.

3.  The arrogance of Obama talking to Bill O’Reily. Start at 0:50

Back to President Obama last year. In this next clip he is talking to Bill O’Reily about the IRS scandal and asking why Douglas Shulman, former IRS Chief had been to the White house so many times over the last year? 157 times to be exact.

Listen to the arrogance. Look at his face while he sits there. He can not believe that he is being asked these questions.

It seems like he is asking us why we won’t just sweep this under the rug? Do you hear what he is saying here? He is literally wondering why we won’t just let them bury this. His face screams “Why are you asking me so many questions?”

First of all, lets look at the number of visits to the White House from the head of the IRS. 157 to be exact. And we are to believe that he didn’t meet with this guy once? Not even to say hi? I find that hard to believe.

If you would like to see more about who is visiting the white house and why it matters then click here.

This is nothing new though. President Obama has a long history of allowing his political operatives access to the White House. Andy Stern from SEIU has been there more than 20 times, 677 Billionaires have come to see Obama in the white house out of 1326 logged visits. Throw in another 50 for top political donors and a couple other hundred misc donors, lobbyists, etc and it is not hard to see a pattern in the type of political games that are being played here.

Obama then goes on to tell us “That is not what happened.” He expects us to believe him as if he never lied to us before. “There have been multiple hearings on this.” he says, although there has been no conclusion or verdict reached and there is no hard evidence to refute anything other than this being a scandal. Now you throw in these missing emails and things really start to get suspicious.

“It only comes up because people like you keep bringing it up.” Obama continues, talking about how it is O’Reily’s fault that people are still talking about it. As if it is the medias fault that this is still an issue. Again, telling us to just let it go.

Later in the video,  President Obama passes the blame to the political organizations inability to understand the tax law and then goes on to say that there is “not even a smidgen of corruption.”

I agree that the tax law might be complicated but how come there were so few liberal or left leaning organizations caught up in the confusion? If it was just a difficult law, then you would think that there would be at least some level of fallibility from groups on both sides of the political aisle. But that is not what is going on here. The majority of the targeted organizations were conservative or right leaning which points to this having been a planned political attack and not just a fluke.

You have to watch the whole clip to appreciate the presidents complete arrogance while being questioned. In the podcast, I try to point out his laughter and smugness but it is plain as day in this video.

4. Obama calls IRS scandals phony. Start at 2:18

Check out this montage of Obama and his press mouthpiece calling these scandals phony.

It is like he is telling us to just quit paying attention. Seriously, these are just made up scandals and Washington problems. He wants us to believe that there is nothing to see here. No need to bother yourself with this. Just go back to your Kardashians. Does anyone have a line on the next sext tape?

So now this is a phony made-up scandal, but somehow the missing emails are real, and they just happen to be from the time in question. Additionally, 6 other employees that are also under investigation have had this mysterious corruption affect them as well.

It’s all just too difficult to believe if you ask me. I think that the average person paying attention would also be hard pressed to think that this was actually just a mistake.

5. Jon Koskinen talking to congress. Start at 0:00

In this video, temporary head of the IRS Jon Koskinen, is finishing up his prepared testimony in front of congress.  He then goes on to talk about how all of the emails after the investigation are still there. As if anyone actually ared about the emails that have been sent since the event.

I couldn’t listen to it for much longer than a few minutes but I was astonished at what I heard in that short time.

What I want to know is what these guys are hiding from us? Why won’t they produce those emails? And how out of touch must they actually be, if they think we are going to believe this line of crap.

We are coming up on a point in history where we either stand up or we get run over. The people in power are getting bold and if we let this go by then they will know that they can get anything over on us. If this thing goes unsolved then they will know that they can lie to our face and tell us whatever they want. We will eat it up and the media will be right there to help them sell it to you.

I remember growing up as a kid and learning about the Watergate scandal. I remember thinking about how crazy it would be to see a president resign and how the people of that time must have felt. What is happening now makes Watergate look like a joke and if you think this is something that is just happening in the IRS then you would sadly mistaken. This is something that is systemic and this level of inbred corruption has infiltrated every level of our political establishment.

Where are the people in the streets? Where is the outrage from the public?

At what point are people going to realize that this is all a charade. When will we realize that the elites are finally getting bold enough to do what they have always done. They are staking claims to their power and soon we will lose any semblance of what is left of the republic. This has little to do with a technological failure and everything to do with power and corruption. This has all happened before because all societies eventually self destruct. We just happened to learn how to do it faster than most might have expected.

Image credit

So what happens next? Will they just sweep this under the rug and let it go or will we actually get an answer? Will there be any change? Leave your thoughts in the comments or click below to join us in the forums.

In this episode of RayDO…

Jerry Banfield joins us to talk about building a presence online and whether you should hire a professional or try to do it yourself.

1:15 – Rated “R” for Raymmar

Why some of these podcasts have been a little crude in the past and how this is all a learning process online.

2:30 – Meet Jerry Banfield

Jerry has a large organic search presence on YouTube and is a monster at getting  ranked in search on YouTube and Google. He helps clients manage their online advertising campaigns and optimize sales from paid advertising.

Many people have recently asked me how I approach building a presence online so I thought I would give you some insight on how you can take our knowledge and use it to propel your website to the next level.

4:15 – It started as a personal blog

I explain a little about the beginning of Raymmar.com and the problems we have faced while transitioning the site from a basic online resume, to a full fledged content-engine. Do you pay for advertising? Do you use social media? Should you hire someone to help build your online presence? All of your questions about building an online presence will be answered in this podcast.

9:00 – The who behind the what

Companies segment themselves from their audience through their brands and their products, but I think that more companies should start letting the world see a more personal side of the operation in order to really stand out online.

11:05 – The difference between organic or paid traffic

Before moving too far into building your presence online, you should understanding the basic difference between organic and paid traffic . Your focus should be on creating organic traffic but once in a while, you might want to pay for a few ads to give your content a boost. Personally, I like to focus on building my presence purely organically, while Jerry thinks paying to spark some of that sharing is a smart strategy. What do you think?

 16:00 – What is a keyword?

We discuss the basic context of understanding keywords. Both long-tail and short-tail keywords. We discuss how to target them inside of your content so that Google and the other search engines can properly index your work.

You need to learn how to speak to Google but also understand that Google is getting very smart at understanding and reading what we write. Their artificial intelligence is getting good at reading the article much like a human does, so make sure it makes sense to you as an individual reader and not like some piece of keyword bait for a robot. You need to focus on writing for a real audience, not for Google, but, you must also understand Google in order to be as effective as possible in optimizing your website content and building your online presence.

19:00 The shift that is happening in Search Engine Optimization

We dive a little deeper into SEO and some of the trends we are seeing across the web. We are creating the future of SEO and how you think the game is played is not how you should be playing it. This is where the crux of our podcast theme comes into play, as we discuss whether you should do these things yourself or whether you should hire a pro.

21:12 – Agencies who steal from their customers

How do you know who you can trust when looking to hire online help and how do you decide who to pay when-and-if you do decide to hire someone to help you build your online presence. So many companies claim to know what they are doing and they do a good enough job of making it look like they know what they are doing, but there are a few ways to tell. (We give a few specific resources later in the podcast.) Me? I like to look at what they have done for themselves. Why would you want someone to build you a beautiful web presence when they have not yet done it for themselves.

24:03 – Is there a magical price you have to pay in order to get a good website?

Jerry tells us about a presentation he sat in on once where they said that you have a worthless website unless you spend more than $30,000. We discuss whether there is any merit to that statement or whether it is complete garbage.

25:40 – Vetting the agency

Look at the work. Look for them to be doing for themselves what they say they can do for you.

26:50 – Resources for learning to build an online presence

Hubspot – Visit their website, subscribe to their blogs and get your inbound marketing learn on.

Moz – The online leader for search engine strategy and beautiful content on understanding SEO

Copyblogger – Copy writing for the creative entrepreneur. Tips and advice on writing strong online copy.

29:58 – Paying people what they are worth

It is very easy to overpay when it comes to online advertising, exposure and presence. There is a reason that the people who know what they are doing  charge a lot of money. Sometimes we just trust people who have the storefronts and brick and mortar locations so even though they might not be the best, people seem to trust them to do business.

34:02 – One of the tools I use – Alexa Traffic Rank

Alexa has a chrome widget that I use which allows me to quickly rank each website I explore. It allows we to vet and explore a companies online reach and help you determine whether or not the person you are hiring actually has any real online credibility.

 35:59 – All that matters is what happens when I get to your website

The battle we are seeing with business owners and their attitudes towards the web sometimes. Cost per conversion, online sales are so much less expensive than selling

37:30 – It is a closed store when someone wants to visit

And that is stupid as a business owner. Some of these Buffoons are in big offices, charging lots of money and delivering shit work. Just because someone has a beautiful storefront does not mean they know what they are doing online.

43:10 – The corporate counter culture

What we are seeing as trends in the business world and how the workplace is evolving to a more results only work environment. We are going to lead the charge in changing the way that businesses do business.

47:45 – Jerry Stumbles into my master plan

This was seriously unplanned but after my mini rant, Jerry literally stumbles into my master plan. In a nutshell, he states my vision for Raymmar.com and how we help lead that corporate counter culture and how we can make sure that we are always delivering beautiful products and getting things done. #DoWork

51:10 – Don’t be afraid to try something new

Building an online presence is like tuning a musical instrument more than building a house. It is something that has to be constantly tweaked as opposed to just built once and done. Online collaboration and exploring with content is a smart thing and our final point is talking about trying new things online.

Sometimes showing some of your flaws and making yourself vulnerable can be beneficial in the long run.

 

In this episode of RayDO uncensored…

Raymmar talks to Mr Sarasota himself. Frank Maggio talks about being a young professional in Sarasota County and other nationally noteworthy topics. Stay tuned to the very end to get a sneak peek at Sarasota Underground and what I am working on here locally in Sarasota Florida.

2:24 – Start here to skip intro

We introduce our guest (Frank Maggio) and give a brief i ntro of what we will discuss in the podcast. I just know that sometimes you don’t want to wait before you dig right in so I am going to start including the time mark for when we come out of our intro music.

3:00 – An unplanned dip into the Global Warming debate

We hadn’t planned on talking about this but somehow Frank and I start talking about global warming or “climate change,” – or whatever other politically correct term they come up with it to hide the political agenda behind global warming. I have recently been reading research and other arguments on both side of the global warming debate and I think I have a common-sense based approach to the issue. Most of the Global Warming debate is really just a shell game that will allow corporate giants to become even more powerful as we as allowing the government to insert themselves into another portion of our everyday lives.

7:22 – How the people pendulum swings

We live in an information rich world where everything is bad for you, until it isn’t and then it is good for you, until it isn’t. Rinse, lather, repeat. We spend so much time reacting immediately to information that we just got, that we often overreact and have no real ability to understand it completely and how it really affects us. We run screaming from scientific report to scientific report that all give us conflicting views. First, salt is really bad for you, and then it isn’t. Milk is good for you, then milk is bad for you. Don’t you ever just get tired of the back-and-forth of this yo-yo style, science-saturated society, that we currently live in?

8:55 – It’s about the individual perspective

One of the biggest problems in living in such an overly reactionary time in history is that we are really only capable of understanding the world through the lens of our individual time on earth. This leaves us with a fairly limited perspective of the true impact of anything we do as humans. It’s easy to see how our overall perspectives might be a little limited, considering that the average life span of a human being is around 80 years, and most of the changes in nature, evolution and societies take place over the span of thousands or even millions of years. In this segment we also talk about minding our own business and how we might be better off as a society if we all just did a little better job of minding our own business as opposed to that of our neighbors.

11:38 – Giving people power

I talk a lot about finding your super power and in this podcast we talk about giving other people power over us and how that influences society. Are we giving away too much power? Are we sure that giving any person, or group of people, this much power on a mass scale is really a good idea? The problem behind our flawed corporate and political structures is this aggregation of power and wealth. Not in the middle class but at the very top. And inside of the structures that they build for themselves to play in. Religion is tied back into minding your own business and not having to take advantage of people in an effort to grow and we move into the next section where we talk about the coming economic revolution.

14:54 – An economic revolution

After chatting about government and large corporate corruption for a while, we dive into the transition that is happening in workplaces across the entire country. The results only work environment is allowing peple to be more productive and still live a free life. We are working towards an environment where the individual is being empowered to once again, become the entrepreneur. People are waking up to the fact that they do not have to live and work inside of the social confines that have restricted the conscious development of our entire society. The progress that we have made over the last decade with the technological advancements that have come. Take a look at our recent breakdown of the history of social media and you can get a taste for how fast it has all come upon us.

17:20 – The new entrepreneur

The future of inventions will come from the aggregation of the data that is currently being collected about each and every one of us. This creates opportunity for the resourceful entrepreneur and the individuals who strive for excellence.

19:00 – Getting back to getting good

The drive to split off from the machine in an attempt to create beautiful products. As we empower the individual entrepreneur, we are seeing true free-market capitalism flourish online because it is the last truly free market.

21:44 – Locking down the middle class

The basic destruction of the middle class and the vilification of success. Did you earn what you have? Or are you standing on the shoulders of the people that came before you.

23:04 – Becoming a self made man

Why it is important to succeed on your own and pass that on to your children as your true legacy.

26:10 – Does capitalism really suck?

I mention an article I wrote about why people who think capitalism sucks are just pain stupid and then talk a little bit about my views on the current economic system and where we are headed. Are we creating a defacto Oligarchy?

27:15 – Northwestern football players unionizing

Is college football growing out of control? How do we solve some of the issues facing the players, schools and NCAA. I agree that there might be a problem with the current system but I am not sure that unionization is the way to go. Listen to Frank and I discuss the concept of football players unionizing.

35:50 – It’s all about the hustle

College is no guarantee for success. College sports are no different and more than anything, the person behind the education and how they look at the world is more important than the education itself. The drive of the individual is more important than any education because that person will always find a way to have the right skills for whatever job they are attacking in that specific moment.

38:40 – You have to perfect your art

Get good at something. Find something that makes you happy, find a way to get good at it and push your self to become the best you possible.

41:20 Building a system of values inside of a university

How can we fight the culture in our schools when we are turning these student athletes into gods. Can a coach really change a kids outlook on life? How much influence does the coach really have to affect or instill morals and values in their players if they do not already have them when they get there.

45:10 – Everyone wants to be a celebrity

Some people get paid to perform on a field or in front of a camera but most of the real players in the world are getting paid to perform for no audience other than the people that they surround themselves with. More importantly, most of us act and pretend for ourselves.

46:05 – Medical marijuana legalized in Florida?

Is it all about taxes? We didn’t talk about it too long but we did jump into the legalization of weed in Florida and whether medical use is legitimate or whether they should just pass it as a recreational drug. What do you think?

50:45 – Introducing Sarasota Underground

Why I am going to take over the media scene in the city of Sarasota. I introduce my concept for Sarasota Underground and what we are working on here in this city to change the status quo.

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SU_CTA-for raymmar

In this episode of RayDO: Brian and I talk about the sales process, discuss the benefits of LinkedIn and how to make sales personal again.

I am trying a new format to publishing the podcasts. The first number is a time stamp followed by a headline of what we are discussing at this point in the podcast and then the text is a further discription or explination of what is happening in the podcast.

1:40 – Leveraging Linked In

I hate LinkedIn and Brian tells me he has had some recent success with it. What do you think about LinkedIn as a social tool?

2:40 – Internet Marketing Is Secondary

Raymmar.com is really just a passion project. It is really just a playground for me to explore my ideas and test my theories about life and sales online.

It is less about selling anything in particular and more about exploring the ideas behind sales and how it interacts with the world around you. However, as we dins out later in this podcast, there is a bigger strategy at play here and eventually you will see the whole picture of what I am trying to do.

3:30 – Are Corporations Evil

Is evil exclusive to corporations? Or are they just groups of people making decision on your behalf?

Why the games being played in the media and elsewhere are just disingenuous and focused on manipulating people to fit an agenda. Whatever the agenda may be, we all have one and we all walk around trying to force it on the people around us. Whether we like to admit it or not.

5:20 – Change Something

Not happy with where life is headed? Then do something about it. Pretty simple really.

7:00 – Selling Business to Consumer (B2C)

We start talking about my experience in sales and how I ended up in Florida and how I came to be who I am and my quest to find enlightenment.

Car sales can be dirty so we talk about and dive into how some people might be taken advantage of in that type of buying situation. I also reveal a little bit about my evil side with relations to sales and why it is important to be an informed buyer.

11:40 – Is There A Road Map To Making Sales?

Breaking down a bit of sales theory and dissecting the myth that you can follow a certain number of steps and somehow arrive at a sale.

The truth is there is no magical number of steps to a sale but there are certain things that must happen in each situation before a sale can be made. Learn about creating a closed loop sales strategy as opposed to living inside of an up-then-down sales cycle.

14:00 – Making Sales Personal Again

It is ok to let a little personality shine through online. How to get creative as a small business with a small marketing/advertising budget.

15:03 – Is Anyone Actually Listening

Please let me know what you think about the podcasts in the comments below. Be sure to grab us on Stitcher and be sure to leave us a show review.

We are trying to build a community of like minded thinkers so this is all an adventure. I cannot know what you think if you do not share your thoughts so please take a moment to let me know what you think (even if you hate it) so we can keep making it better.

16:10 – What Do I Do With This Website

What do I do with all of this. What do I do with a website that started out as a place for me to share a few ideas to the world and has turned into a viral content engine online? How do I deal with the increase in traffic and the strategy behind that transition.

Correction – During the podcast I said we publish 4-5 articles a day but I meant a week and that obviously varies based on our schedule. 

17:15 – It Really Is just Me Building All Of This

Everything you see on Raymamr.com (for the most part) was built by your truly. I have really just been laying the foundation for what is yet to come. There are many things yet to come and we are really just getting started.

18:40 – An Organic Sales Engine

I give you a taste of my master plan for what is to come on Raymmar.com. You may want to go back to the 17 minute mark here so you can get the context of what I am doing with the website and how you can get involved in the circle of influence.

20:49 – Separating Sales From Serivce

Have we detached people from the buying process? When corporations focus on people instead of products then we might see a change in the way the world thinks about the corporate structure that seems to be getting such a bad reputation right now.

22:08 – An Introduction To SMART Marketing

Sales and Marketing as an ART – Attract new business, Retain existing customers and Transcend the competition. An introduction to the sales model we are working on.

23:40 – Are Some Companies Too Big To Succeed?

Understanding your customers. Why are some companies better at understanding their buyers and how some companies can get it and others don’t.

Why you should understand your buyers persona long before you start selling anything. Take a look at this guide to building a buyer persona and then listen to this podcast to get a deeper look into the personality of the people who buy your products.

28:30 – Creating Influence

A deeper taste of the master plan in world domination. How I plan on leveraging my Circles of Influence concept to drive real change in the world.

The influence of media and the draw of the power that comes with it. We are basically building a media company here that will influence ideas all across the world. People are either watching for two reasons. Either they think I am going to succeed or because they are waiting

32:00 – More about LinkedIn

We wrap up the show by diving deeper into LinkedIn again and I realize mid sentence, that they have just made some major changes to their user interface. I admit that LinkedIn is actually trying some new things and trying to make it better.

34:00 – Stealing Content

The trade off between generating original content and the balancing the relationships I have with some nationally syndicated websites.

In this episode of RayDO uncensored…

Jeremiah Smith and I talk about sales, inbound marketing, buyer personas and the evolution of sales and technology into a power that could be misinterpreted as godly.

Be sure to connect with Jeremiah online at SimpleTiger.com.

Introduction and understanding the sales process

Why everything in life is a sales. We talk a little about my sales philosophy and how sales and life are all about relationships and therefore life equals sales. It is the foundation for everything I do and the premise for my first book.

Resources (links) for some of the books, products etc that we mention in the podcast.

Focusing in on the right ideas – 6:30

Bouncing around ideas for how to explore business growth. Finding what it is you do and why you do it. Learning how to simplify your message and finding what it is you are actually doing with the business. Focusing on listening and letting your customers guide your business strategies.

Leveraging relationships – 9:48

Understanding long and short term relationships, becoming an artist and finding your way.

Showing us that there are humans inside of your product or company? 13:00

Why larger companies should change their online philosophy, question their advertising strategies and focus on telling better stories.

Are corporations the evil villains? 16:25

Corporations, government and people. What is the difference and why do they suck? Does it really just come down to people making decisions? how much does a CEO or president affect the outcome of the whole?

Killing corporations with a thousand paper cuts – 18:22

How small companies are taking on the giants with small, hyper-focused products and solutions.

Instant gratification. Shopping online or in person – 23:38

Why I regularly pay more to buy things in person instead of online. Do real life interactions and personal relationships make a difference in the sales process? Competing with the big box stores.

A sleeper superpower – 26:30

General Electric and their connections to media, war and the strategies associated with it. Controlling the war debt, checking the IRS and auditing the Federal reserve. We talk Bitcoin conversation and the recent IRS ruling might affect it as well as the impact it might have on society as a whole.

The Bitcoin peer-to-peer supercomputer – 31:01

Understanding how big the Bitcoin network actually is. The computing power behind it and the implications of digital currencies and whether or not they can actually stop the process of information overflow.

Taking over the world – 34:14

Surrounding yourself with knowledge and striving to know more. Become a resource for your friends and the world, explore both sides of the issue. Know the facts and prepare yourself for a battle of ideas.

Is Technology Becoming God? – 37:56

This is a concept I am toying with and there will definitely be something we will dive into deeper in the future but I think we are quickly approaching a point where technology, life and religion are all blurred into one interface. Listen to my thoughts on the topic and listen to Jeremiah and I discussing this interesting topic.

What is good or bad? – 40:40

Is anything man makes inherently good or bad. Are things evil or is the way we use them evil. Guns, Bitcoin and then human consciousness. The animal instinct, is it neutral and how do we differ from raw nature.

Why do Aliens have to be the ones to find us? What if we find them first? 42:10

What if we are the ones that are going to find alien life in outer space. Why do we always assume that we are the ones that are going to be found? Why does no one allow for the possibility that we might be the pioneers of exploration on other planets and be the aliens that travel the solar system wreaking havoc.

Is religion the perfect mechanism by which to control man forever? – 42:50

Understanding knowledge and the interplay of science and religion as well as whether or not self enlightenment is a real thing. The challenge of faith and trying to truly explore good and evil.

Believing in a singular God – 47:42

What if we had to re-write the bible today. Understanding that we have absolutely no idea or ability to understand what a God might be. Could we ever really understand what a God of that power might actually be?

These are the conversations we love to have –

I hope you enjoyed this episode of RayDO uncensored as we bounced all around life, philosophy and love. Be sure to subscribe on Raymmar.com, grab us on stitcher and be sure to share us with a friend.

P.s. Hopefully you like the new format where we break down what we are talking about and give you some time stamps to reference. This way you can jump around and listen to the parts you want. We would rather you listen to the whole thing to take it all in context but I know you are busy so I will keep trying to make it easy for you. Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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The purpose of this article is to explain the social media adoption curve, the growth of the internet as a whole, and to help you understand how it will all affect the American political machine moving forward.

A Brief History of Social Media

Social media is a broad term. Social media websites are quickly becoming the communication hubs for new, digital nations. Nations which are forming all around us right now, without borders or geographic reach. Places where people can come together to interact and engage each other freely, share ideas, and gossip about life.

They have become real time forums for exchanging information, pictures, status updates and even piddly little arguments. And let’s not forget the amount of business that is transacted on the internet each year. They have become a large part of our pop culture and a primary means for the majority of internet users to interact with each other, even from across the globe.

The question then becomes, what will the next evolution of technology and social communication look like, and how will it affect the world around you? And more specifically, for the purpose of this article, how it could affect the next major American election cycle.

As web technology evolves, and the web becomes more interactive, it becomes easier and easier for the average person to get involved and make an impact. For some punk kid like me to come out of nowhere, and reach an audience that was only possible as part of a big boy media network.

This evolution of technology and innovation is empowering the creative class like never before, and it does’t mean that the big boys are going away anytime soon, but it does open the doors for a digital revolution. But for now, back to the topic at hand.

Social Media Adoption Timeline

In order to truly understand the speed at which everything is moving, let’s look at the major milestones in the timeline of social media development over the last 20 years. For more social media stats, click here.

1994

  • More than 1,500 Web servers were online in 1994 and people were referring to the Internet as the Information Superhighway.

1995

1997

  • The Web had one million sites.
  • Blogging begins.
  • AOL Instant Messenger lets users chat.

1998

  • Google opens as a major Internet search engine and index.

2000

  • In the world of business and commerce, the dot.com bubble burst and the future online seemed bleak as the millennium turned.
  • Seventy million computers were connected to the Internet.

2001

  • Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and world’s largest wiki, was started.
  • This is also the time Apple started selling iPods.

2002

  • Friendster, a social networking website, was opened to the public in the U.S. and grew to 3 million users in three months.
  • AOL had 34 million members.

2003

  • MySpace. another social networking website, was launched as a clone of Friendster.
  • Linden Lab opened the virtual world Second Life on the Internet.
  • LinkedIn was started as a business-oriented social networking site for professionals.
  • There were more than 3 billion Web pages.
  • Apple introduced the online music service iTunes.

2004

  • Facebook, another social networking website, was started for students at Harvard College. It was referred to at the time as a college version of Friendster.
  • MySpace surpassed Friendster in page views.
  • Podcasting began on the Internet.
  • Flickr image hosting website opened.
  • Digg was founded as a social news website where people shared stories found across the Internet.

2005

  • News Corporation, buys MySpace.
  • YouTube began storing and retrieving videos.
  • There were more than 8 billion Web pages.

2006

  • MySpace was the most popular but Facebook would take away that lead later, in 2008.
  • Twitter was launched
  • Facebook membership was expanded and opened to anyone over age 13.
  • Google had indexed more than 25 billion web pages, 400 million queries per day, 1.3 billion images, and more than a billion Usenet messages.

2007

  • Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook.
  • Apple released the iPhone multimedia and Internet smartphone.

2008

  • Facebook surpassed MySpace in the total number of monthly unique visitors. Meanwhile, Facebook tried unsuccessfully to buy Twitter.

2009 

  • Facebook ranked as the most-used social network worldwide with more than 200 million. The site’s traffic was twice that of MySpace.
  • Unfriend was the New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year.
  • By this time It’s estimated that a quarter of Earth’s population used the Internet.
  • Google saw one trillion unique URLs — after eliminating duplicate entries.
  • The Internet had at least 27 billion web pages and could have had as many as 58 billion web pages. They changed so many times a day it was nearly impossible to count.

2010

  • Facebook’s rapid growth moved it above 400 million users,
  • Apple released the iPad tablet
  • The Democratic National Committee advertised for a social networks manager to oversee President Barack Obama’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
  • It was estimated the population of Internet users was 1.97 billion. That was almost 30 percent of the global population.
  • This was also the first time the Internet had surpassed newspapers as a primary way for Americans to get news,

2011

  • more than 550 million people on Facebook, 65 million tweets sent through Twitter each day, and 2 billion video views every day on YouTube. LinkedIn has 90 million professional users.
  • Public sharing of so much personal information via social media sites raised concern over privacy.
  • It was estimated Internet users would double by 2015 to a global total of some four billion users, or nearly 60 percent of Earth’s population.

2012

  • Some 2 billion people around the world use the Internet and social media, while 213 million Americans use the Internet via computers while 52 million use the Web via smartphone and 55 million use it via tablets.
  • People also connect to the Internet via handheld music players, game consoles, Internet-enabled TVs and e-readers.
  • The top ten social networks are Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, MySpace and Wikipedia.
  • More than half of adults 25-34 use social media at the office. Almost a third of young adults 18-24 use social media in the bathroom. All use social networks to stay connected with acquaintances, be informed and be amused.
  • Advertisers look to social “likes” to enhance brand visibility.
  • Facebook reached a billion users in 2012.

The Age of You Tube:

  • YouTube has more than 800 million users each month with more than 1 trillion views per year or around 140 views for every person on Earth.
  • Seventy percent of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
  • YouTube is local in 43 countries and uses 60 languages.
  • 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute with more than 4 billion hours of video watched each month on YouTube.

2013

  • YouTube topped one billion monthly users with 4 billion views per day
  • Facebook user total climbed to 1.11 billion. 200% growth in 2 years
  • Twitter had 500 million registered users, with more than 200 million active.
  • LinkedIn had 225 million users, while MySpace had 25 million users.
  • Pinterest had 48.7 million users, while WordPress hosted 74 million blogs.
  • Dropbox had more than 100 million users with 1 billion files uploaded daily.
  • Google+ had 343 million users.
  • Reddit had 69.9 million monthly users, with 4.8 billion monthly page views.
  • There were 156 million blogs. Blogs, online videos and podcasts continue to be staples for marketers.

Where do people use social media?

An Australian survey found that as a percentage, social network users logged on…

  • 34% at work
  • 13% at school
  • 18% in the car
  • 44% in bed
  • 7% in the bathroom
  • 6% on the toilet.

Social Networking Fact Sheet

Highlights of the Pew Internet Project’s research related to social networking.

Click here for a link to a current version of these stats and the source for this graphic

As of September 2013 — 73% of online adults use social networking sites

  • 71% of online adults use Facebook
  • 18% of online adults use Twitter
  • 17% use Instagram
  • 21% use Pinterest
  • 22% use LinkedIn

In May 2013, 74% of women were users of social networking sites, compared with 62% of men.

For a detailed demographic portrait of users of various social networking sites please see this recent report, Social Media Update 2013.

Early Adopters & Growth Curve

It is not hard to guess that the earliest of adopters were the 18-29 age segment which is made up mostly of millennials.

Between February 2005 and August 2006, the use of social networking sites among young adult internet users ages 18-29 jumped from 9% to 49%. Social networking site use by age group, over time:

As it stands now, the total percentage of 18-24 year olds who already use social media is at 98%

Mobile Adoption

As social networking sites grow and evolve, so do the means of accessing them.

Mobile phones are quickly replacing desktops and laptops as the primary means of accessing the internet as well as interacting with social media applications. Native iPhone and Android apps make up a large part of direct traffic to each of the major social networks, and many are starting to design their entire experiences with mobile as their number one priority.

A battle for eyeballs which is taking place right in front of our eyes.

40% of cell phone owners use a social networking sites on their phone, and 28% do so on a typical day.

Social-networking-on-mobile-phones

Holy shit! That’s some social growth!

Social media is upon us in full force. Furthermore, as trends continue to develop social media will evolve and become a larger piece of the entire internet culture.

As websites begin to implement more social features and developers find ways to make the process of building social websites easier for the average person, you will see an almost imminent adoption of niche style social networks built around small, targeted interests.

“Instead of lobbying happening in the back rooms in Washington, it will take place all around us.”

Privacy concerns will continue to grow, and security will become an even more important part of our daily internet activity.

Masses will flock to seek shelter from spying governments and over powered online collectors of information such as Google and Facebook.

We are on the precipice of a new economic explosion. One where information dictates your status in society and your ability to control and manage your digital presence is becoming something we all need to worry about.


 

From here forward, I’ll be explaining some of my theories on how all this information will come together in the future, to help you understand the progression of social media and the effect it will have on our entire political system.

Voter demographics

Who votes?

 

Social media is good for online discourse, but in the real world. people who show up have all the power. Something that social media has failed to replicate. At least for now.

That being said, lets look at some voter demographics and find out if the same people that are using social media are actually voting and what conclusions we can draw based on the growth trends of social media and the voter turnout trends over the last 20 years.

Voter turn out by age 

This is a chart illustrating voter turnout by sex and age for the 2008 US Presidential Election. The source is the U.S. Census Bureau. I used the 2008 election because it was the highest voter turnout in the last decade. It also represents the last election before mass adoption of social media and as we discussed already, there were massive disparities between the two sides of the political aisle and their social media adoption rates. Disparities that have grown exponentially since the 2008 election.

Voter Registration vs. Turnout by Age

This chart takes a look at voter registration, turnout, and turnout-of-registered trends across the past four presidential elections in the United States: 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. The data come from the Current Population Survey and are smoothed to reduce the variability across age due to survey sampling. — source

Voter-registration-and-turnut-by-age

Voter turn out year over year 

A comparison of year over year voter turnout over the last 18 years. The bold text indicates it was a presidential election year.

YEARVOTING-AGE
POPULATION
VOTER
REGISTRATION
VOTER TURNOUTTURNOUT OF VOTING-AGE 
POPULATION (PERCENT)
2012240,926,957NA130,234,60057.5
2010235,809,266NA90,682,96837.8
2008231,229,580NA132,618,580*62.3 
2006220,600,000135,889,60080,588,00037.1
2004221,256,931174,800,000122,294,97860.4
2002215,473,000150,990,59879,830,11937.0
2000205,815,000156,421,311105,586,27451.3
1998200,929,000141,850,55873,117,02236.4
1996196,511,000146,211,96096,456,34549.1
1994193,650,000130,292,82275,105,86038.8

Read more about these numbers: National Voter Turnout in Federal Elections: 1960–2010 | Infoplease.com https://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html#ixzz2x0wTNOtb

There was a substantial drop in voter turnout from the 2004 and 2008 elections which is interesting because this correlates with a massive increase in the social media timeline. You can also look at the difference between social media presence between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. Obama had Romney beat by a substantial margin which might have helped demoralize the republicans and decreased their excitement to even vote, feeling that the election was out of their hands already.

I feel like this more than anything was the value of social media in the last few elections. They served more as a demoralization engine, making the other party believe they had already lost. Leave out the arguments about the weak candidates as that theory only increases the effectiveness of poor social strategies. President Obama and the Democrat Party used Social Media flawlessly since its inception and there is much to be learned from them. More than I could ever cover in this short report.

Much like the mainstream media, social media will have to be mastered by any politician hoping to compete on a national stage moving forward. A shift that will leave some of the existing political class a little exposed and scrambling for help on their campaign teams.

Voter confidence levels

Do people still believe in their elected officials?

The american people are absolutely fed up with the federal government. With an insatiable thirst for power and an inability to spend within their means the United States Government has completely lost touch with its citizens and the voter turnouts reflect their lack of confidence. Voter apathy and overall engagement are down because the Amreican people have been beaten into thinking that nothing they do matters. All the decisions are to be made in Washington and the people be damned.

Presidential approval ratings are down, congressional approval ratings are down and most Americans would be ok with throwing all of Washington DC out on their asses. How come no one is talking about term limits for everyone? How come no one is talking about anything drastically different than what we have done to get us up to this point.

No matter how social politics gets, there is no changing anything until engagement and political education as a whole increase across America.

Presidential approval rating over the last 4 years

In this next chart, you can see the timeline of voter confidence in President Barack Obama as determined by ABC’s Voter Confidence Index.

presidential-approval-rating

Congressional approval rating over the last 5 years

This chart shows congressional approval ratings since 2009. The highest they have been at any point since then is 39% which is disgusting in and of itself, even if you do not take into consideration the current low of 13% and the all time low of 9% congressional approval which we set at the end of 2013.

congressional-job-approval

The American People Are Just Fed Up and Tuned Out

The overwhelming majority of America feels that their voice is not making a difference and they have completely tuned out. They are made to feel like they cant make a difference which then creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

By looking at the charts of the social adoption levels by age and comparing them to the average voter demographics you start to see that the majority of younger voters, although involved in social media are not necessarily voting at the same rate. This might lead you to believe that social media is not that effective in swinging a major election but that would make you really wrong.

As you can see by the information below, Barack Obama had an overwhelming advantage over Mitt Romney in regards to social media in general. With this kind of ass kicking online, it is easy to see how much of the voter base for the opposition might have felt defeated already.

 

View original infographice on inc.com

We like to pretend

Because my generation likes to pretend that they are involved, they will share the pretty stuff with their friends. Apparently, we only care about skin deep, so send out a tweet with a cool picture and some catchy words on it and you got us hook line and sinker. No way we might actually care about the meat of the issue, we’ll just forward it on as the truth. Even worse is their assumption that we wouldn’t be able to understand the issue. Maybe that is why they treat us like they do. Maybe we are too stupid to understand, after-all, we do keep making the same mistakes over and over! #GenerationStupid

If you plan on running a successful campaign, either nationally or regionally, you need to master the art of marketing and making effective social connections. Design, messaging and copy-writing are all things that must be part of a strong online campaign in order to have a chance against a social media savvy opponent.

Politics is evolving and so is the battle ground of ideas. As technology creeps into every facet of our lives we will have to fundamentally shift the way we recieve, interact with and are impacted by, information. We are seeing it in all facets of life, and politics will be no different. It just so happens that the people who run the political world are not the ones who run the social sphere… yet.

Politicians need to understand that they should be using the same tactics they would use for a strong inbound marketing campaign. the same concepts that help drive people to take action online are the same tactics that can drive people to the polls. Companies are adopting it by the masses and any politician who wants to have a chance moving forward would be well served to do the same.

The future of Politics 

As we enter into an age of massive information we will see the political playing field be expanded, shifted, morphed and manipulated in ways that we have not even thought about. Well.. maybe you have not thought about it yet but this shit keeps me up at night.

The next few segments will cover my thoughts on the current information age, how it is being used as a political tool and where this road we are on leads us.

We live in an Information Age

In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt did an interview with Tech Crunch in which he talked about the rate at which we are generating information. The excerpts below give you a taste of what is coming but even this is almost 4 years old.

Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003, according to Schmidt. That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says.

The real issue is user-generated content,” Schmidt said. He noted that pictures, instant messages, and tweets all add to this.

I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,” Schmidt said.

In this article from science daily they tell us that upwards of 90% of all of the worlds data has been generated in the last 2 years.

These numbers are astounding. What this really means is that we are just barely stepping into the world of being able to dissect and understand all of this data. As I mentioned before, businesses, politicians and more importantly governments are all scrambling for ways to collect, understand and exploit the data they are collecting.

Information is the new currency

Related: The Future of Sales: Understanding Information as a Currency

The more information we generate, the more people will scramble to find interesting ways to assemble, analyze and monetize that information. Because of this you will see a whole new world of digital innovation.

We are on the precipice of a technological revolution that will fundamentally change the entire world much like the industrial revolution did. This is not a dot.com bubble or anything else. Inventions will be made from the assembly of massive data sets and artificial intelligence will eventually predict the future.

This is some world changing, god making, human breaking type shit. As we reach a point where technology and humanity collide there will be a fundamental shift in the value and understanding of currency. It will no longer be based on fiat (paper) money, but it will be about the secure exchange of information from one place to another.

Your value to the world will be based on your ability to gather, or produce quantifiable and actionable information. How many data points can they get from you in order to know you more completely. Just like Amazon serves you the products you want, and Google tailors your search results based on your overall browsing patterns, the information you give other people will help them understand you completely. This will in turn lead to them being able to control you completely.

As information becomes more instant, web bots and sophisticated artificial intelligence will become better at predicting large patterns of human behavior. There will be a time where the pulse of the people will be able to be taken in real time. Where crime will be predicted before it is committed and where our individual rights to privacy will be a distant memory as we are video taped, recorded and monitored at an unimaginable pace.

The future of America and politics in a post social media world is an interesting one to say the least. There are many things to learn but the one thing to keep in mind is that it is anyone’s game at this point. It is up to us to decide how we use this technology and whether we let it become part of the status quo, or whether we use it to flip the entire system on its head!

The personalization of politics

As politicians learn to use online relationship building to get closer with their voter base, the need to be more transparency and the ability to hide from your constituents will become more difficult. I see a future of truly transparent politics that will be made possible by technology.

Imagine being able to hold your politicians accountable in real time. Imagine if there was an app that showed you their voting record and allowed you to chart it against their promises. What if you could even immediately give feedback to your elected officials. Imagine really giving the power back to the people by forcing our elected officials to serve the people as opposed to themselves.

As technology evolves and we get better at understanding how to take advantage of this network that is the internet, we will see an evolution in many things. I predict the digital voting debate is not too far around the corner and there are many more evolutions to come.

Right now there are very few people with the budget and infrastructure to take advantage of all of this information. As it becomes more main stream, as the technology evolves, it will allow us to connect and interact like never before. Something that should be as intriguing as it is intimidating.

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Happiness is not what you think it is. 

Dave Myers takes you soaring adventure, talks with Raymmar about finding happiness and explains how to maintain a positive attitude in life.

You may think you know happy because you have a good job, live a healthy life and have a few friends but guess what…

It could all be gone tomorrow.

In the blink of an eye you could lose it all and then the true test would begin. Then we would all get to see how strong you really are.

In a moment of broken brilliance, you would have to reassess everything you thought made you happy. You would be left looking deep into the dark abyss of what used to be your life and wonder what went wrong.

You would have to reach deep into your soul and have an honest conversation with yourself about what it is that truly makes you happy and you might just find out that you have had it wrong all along.

Maybe then you would realize that It’s is all up to you!

In that dark moment you might realize that happiness is more about understanding that you are perfectly flawed as opposed to thinking about flawlessly perfect you might be.

It is about understanding that you are not the picture of perfection you try to present to the world. You will find that it’s about understanding you’ll never be perfect and learning to embrace yourself anyway.

Happiness is the ability to know how imperfect you actually are and still being able to stand up to the world like none of it really matters.

Why? Well… because at the end of the day, very little of it actually does. In the real world, the only thing that matters is what you want to matter. What you decide to make important in your life.

“Happiness lies somewhere in between desperation and motivation and it often waits until we quit looking for it before revealing itself to us.”

You have to attack happiness by understanding that you were put on earth with a mission to do something amazing. However, you must also understand that it doesn’t have to be that way. It is up to you to you to make sure it goes down in the history books just how you see it. You, and no one else.

Doing that thing you love.

The power of doing or even chasing something you love is highly underrated. People talk about it all the time but very few actually do it. Fewer yet follow through and find fulfillment and financial independence doing what they love but for those who can it is a beautiful thing.

Most people are caught up in their own lives, trying to scrape by, feed a family, enjoy a day off once in a while and then waking up to do it all again the next day. Stuck in the status-quo, unwilling to let go.

Unwilling to jump into the deep end, fearing the water below might be too shallow. Feeling as if they cannot make the jump while watching others walk right up to the edge and take that leap of faith.

You sit there and watch others dive head first into happiness, while sitting back pretending to enjoy it for yourself from the sidelines. Fearing the failure that might just lead you to finally find it.

But, but, but… you just don’t understand…

Oh, I understand all too well. I understand that there is something in your life that you think is holding you back. Something that you honestly believe is keeping you from becoming the person you know you are supposed to be.

We all have our Kryptonite. Maybe a better description would be to say that we all hold on to what we think is our Kryptonite. Thinking that we are Superman and must succumb to its power. Not knowing that this is the real world and what we perceive as Kryptonite is really just a stupid weight we carry around in our heads.

“It’s an excuse you idiot, not some magical rock that has somehow hindered your ability to fly.”

We place these obstacles in our own path as if we were not resourceful enough to find a way around them. As if deep down we didn’t know that we could just walk around, step over, crawl under or otherwise get past this one thing that just seems to keep holding us back.

The reality is that we are often the only ones holding ourselves back. More often than not, you, and only you, are the reason for a lack of amazing accomplishments in life.

It’s all in your head.

You may not want to admit it yet but you know it’s true.

You know that these little voices inside your head are just the different versions of you, fighting among themselves to try and find a place inside of your consciousness. Fighting to find a place in a world of thought that begins and ends with you.

The more you get to know them, the more you can understand how to use them to enhance one another as opposed to letting them interfere with your life. You have to be willing to acknowledge the evil thoughts as well as the good ones. You have to accept the fact that you are after all, only human ,and that might make you feel weak.

But you are wrong. Knowing these things should make you feel strong. It should make you realize that the voices are just other versions of your personality. Why wouldn’t you have to learn how to interact with your own personality; it is just as important as learning to interact with the personalities of others.

In order to find happiness you have to learn how to take this power away from the people around you. You must learn how to live with yourself but this is just the beginning, learning how to let others live with you is step two.

Sometimes you don’t have a choice.

Sometimes failure just smacks you in the face.

No matter how you prepare or plan, life has a way of keeping things interesting that way. No matter how solid you think your foundation might be, there is always an earthquake brewing somewhere waiting to shake you from the foundation. Waiting to bring everything around you crumbling down in a moments notice.

Some people make it through life never having to face their 100 year stormbut some get to face them all too often.

Ours is not a choice of “if”, but more often than not a choice of “how”.

How will you react when your storm does hit because you cant buy insurance for that type of catastrophe.

The only thing you can do is learn how appreciate the scars because more often than not, they define who you are.

So you grind.

When life knocks you down, sometimes you just have to grind. Sometimes you just have to stay low, stay out of the way for a while and just survive.

These are the moments where we are reminded of how fragile our existence actually is.

This is when you discover how susceptible we truly are to the influence of the world around us.

In these moments you get to see how delicate the world can actually be ,but it is in these same moments when we most often find ourselves.

It is so often in these moments where we get tired of hiding from the world and become comfortable exposing our true selves to not only the world but to ourselves.

And then you find it.

Then you discover that even with the weight of the world on your back, you can make it.

You find out that even with the drag of depression, or the struggles of suicide, you can survive life.

You can decide to let the happiness find you. You can allow it to fill you and to flow through you completely.

It is in this moment that you discover your invincibility.

It is in this moment of desperation that you can show the world how strong you really are.

It is in this moment of weakness that our strength is truly tested and our resolve must be resurrected.

It is in this moment that we discover the true adventure of life, when we discover what this whole thing is really all about.

Fun because, once you have discover how to look this hurt in the face and still stand to hold your place, you will begin to see the emergence of real life super powers.

Powers you never knew you had.

The power to influence others and pass on the gift of happiness.

The power to pass on thought and move others through emotional empowerment, and the ability to help others understand their own path to happiness. A path you must explore for yourself. One we must all discover at our own pace.

Image Credit — Sumit Mantaporn

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“There is going to be a new way to pimp people, and you and I have no clue what the ramifications of that are!”

Kyle Cross

Why the F**K do we cuss so much?

RayDO podcasts are completely uncensored conversations between myself and the people I interact with on a regular basis. My friends, business associates, artists, entrepreneurs etc. The people I think are going to help me change the world. I realize that sometimes our language might get out of line and we are testing this to see how you respond so please let us know what you think in the comments. Are we too vulgar? Do we use too much profanity? Please let us know what you think in the comments section at the end of the article.

Are you listening on Stitcher yet?

Stitcher allows you to save your place in these podcasts which helps when you are on the run or in the car. It also keeps track of which episodes you have listened to already and saves your place in each episode so you don’t have to miss a thing.

Grab the Stitcher app here

Meet MetroViking

If you do not know Kyle Cross… you are probably missing out. Do it now or continue exiting at your own peril.

Am I a journalist?

I hate the thought of being defined as a journalist, and I am definitely not unbiased so where does that leave me? I do not pretend that I can present news free of opinion, I just happen to think my opinion is pretty freaking easy for most people to get behind.

I do push people to discover the world for themselves and know who they really are on the inside but I also like breaking news and telling amazing stories. I understand how it could become a power that people would covet and I start to understand how the massive media empires might have found their way to where they are now.

The cool part of this medium is that you can help me get the story right. More often than not these stories become conversations among you and your friends. Most of the time I am jet trying to get the ball rolling and the conversations we share are the result of those sparks of thought.

My take-away from my time in the insurance industry

My time in insurance and how learning the back-end of insurance was getting to explore the inside of so many different industries. The complications of the sale, the size of the sale, the underwriting, the complexities of the relationships with multiple members of an organizations. Getting to see the inside of so many businesses gave me an early opportunity to learn from multiple businesses at a time while still standing on the outside looking in.

I also learned and developed the ability to understand and execute an intricate sales process. Insurance is a complex sale so I got to learn early on how to build meaningful, short term relationships in order to navigate the entire underwriting process. This was really a huge step in my developmental process because it allowed me to get a diverse understanding of a number of industries while trying to solve the same problem for all of them. It was really the first time I sold anything focused around an intangible item and that is a completely different sales than something the consumer might be excited to buy or an item with tangible value.

Why do I need to punch your clock

With the development of the Results only work environment we are finding that the corporate mentality is being broken and supplanted with another system of productivity. A system focused solely on the results of your work and not the monitoring of your efforts. Who cares if I can be more efficient than you? Who cares if it takes me longer than the next guy to do the work. I say pay me for the task at hand and forget about everything else. Pay me for the results I produce and forget about the rest.

Is this all a pipe dream? Can a work environment like that actually infect the current corporate climate? Can we bee freed from the time clock as a society? I have a feeling this is not the last we will be talking about this topic on Raymmar.com.

We are the future of search engine optimization

The progression of search engine optimization is shifting quickly. Having someone who can navigate the worlds of search engine results is very important and will become more so moving forward. As I build my audience I bring credibility any time I interact with you or your brand online.

When I mention people, products and services, they have the potential to take over the first page of search results pages. When I guest blog on your site you instantly get a bump because my name has authority through Google.

Believe it or not Google+ is going to become relevant in your online world. It will become your customized face for the internet. They will continue to force it upon you as they find a way to integrate with every piece of your life. That being said, content and authorship credits are now more important than ever and who is writing for your website is very important.

This is another concept that deserves to be dived into deeper and we will have more on these concepts coming up on the show shortly. Please subscribe and grab us on Stitcher to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

The tools I use to build my website

I am working on a detailed post on how to use these tools in more detail but for right now I wanted to let you know the tools I use to build and maintain my website. For less than $100 you can start building a website like mine.

WordPress theme: Lots of people ask me what theme I use for my website. So here it is. It is called the Enfold theme and it is absolutely awesome for the codaphobes like me.

WordPress: If you want to use a WordPress theme then you definitely need to be using WordPress so be sure and check that out.

Computers: The new official language of life

you can be completely self sufficient on your own with these little bits of technology at our fingertips. With the power of computer broadcasting anyone, anywhere can just turn on their own beacon and build a following. The problem is that in order to do this you must learn to speak computer. More and more this is fading away though and eventually we will all speak computer. Computers and human thought will eventually become one.

As we become more and more dependent on technology we open ourselves up to new opportunities at exploration of not only our world, but our brains. Very interesting concept and one that we will definitely be discussing more on future shows.

Are we losing touch through technology?

Because of this technological revolution, it will be more important than anything to have someone helping you navigate this online journey. Moving forward, a creative strategist will be as important to the success of your business as an accountant, lawyer, banker or any other aspect of your business that you currently rely on others to manage for you.

Do not diminish the value of the creative strategist as he is part sales executive, part psychologist, part marketing manager, architect of ideas and director of operations. We are the navigators of technology in a sea of information. We live in a time where information is created faster than it can even be processed. We cannot even keep up with it, how would you expect to?

You may not even understand the concept yet but competition online is coming for you and you may not even know about it so as a creative strategist we need to know design, web development, search engine optimization and more. We need to be fluent in technology and engineering and that is a tall tale for today’s business owner so it is becoming more and more specialized. 

The companies who learn how to keep up will write the future of American economics. The rest will get left-out.

The misguided marketer

so many people claim to be marketers, designers, viral online monsters but then you look around and see that they are not really doing anything exciting. People with an idea for how you should build your online presence while not having built anything themselves.

How can you claim to know anything if you can not produce the results on your own? Are you only capable of producing as part of a team? Are you not able to execute your own initiatives? Why would I then want you on my team? I only want people who are capable of producing on their own. I will then take them and show them how to dominate as a team.

I often wonder if marketing agencies are great because of the products they represent or are the products they represent great because the of the people that sell them to us. Just think about that the next time you fall in love with some Nike advertising.

Regulate everything

Mechanisms for control. The government wants to get their hands on every part of your body. Smart grids that will allow them to regulate your environment, healthcare, retirement, and welfare is growing fast so soon we will see more than 50% of the voter base be supported by this government that has replaced religion, family and knowledge as the main support column for this crippled country.

Crippled by bureaucracy, crippled by regulation and stagnation of innovation due to a desire for indoctrination. The road we are on leaves us completely detached from any privacy and true expression of free speech. The political agenda and censorship through media.

We delve into these topics briefly but this is definitely something you can expect us to dive into deeper soon.

Next time with Kyle

We talk about the power of being able to manipulate images. being able to augment reality by overlaying digital interfaces for life that will eventually become wearable devices and later be implanted permanently. We are not far from a time where humans are able to plug into a machine and that is definitely not a discussion you want to miss.

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 Rebecca Merz takes us on a journey through conscious exploration with and without drugs

Disclaimer: In this episode of RayDO Uncensored, we cover topics ranging from mental health disorders to psychedelic drug use. While I do not condone excessive recreational drug use, I do have a unique perspective on some drugs and their power to heal and help develop the individuals who use them. If you are incapable of listening with an open mind, I recommend you go read or listen to something else.

Working at the Mind-Spa

Dr. Merz works at a place called Mindspa. Mindspa is a “Neuro-Disney” it’s kind of like a playground for your brain.

I have been on a quest to explore my inner consciousness for a few years now so I was instantly intrigued when I first met Rebecca. Her unique view on the world and the psyche always leads us to interesting conversations and I just thought I would let you in on one of them.

The exploration of consciousness

Is really a never ending quest… I can’t remember when my quest started but I have always been intrigued by the science of the world, desired to understand the universe, and for as long as I can remember, questioned the truth behind everything most of us take as reality on a daily basis.

I fell in love with cosmology and theoretical physics when I was 18 and that has lead me down some interesting paths of exploration. Some have come through the pages of books and others have come from other types of experiences.

You cannot get too far into the conversation about consciousness without someone bringing up psychedelic drugs. In this podcast we explore some of those drugs and experiences and we will definitely be talking about more of this in the future.

Not everyone should be out there looking to trip balls…

but… if you are ready to find out who you really are inside… I would recommend you at least look in to it.

It is one of the most eye opening experiences I have ever had in my life and I would recommend it to anyone who is ready to truly explore themselves deeper. Just know that this is not a toy and you should us extreme caution when experimenting with any of these types of drugs.

The board meeting in my brain

As I explore my consciousness, I quest to find a balance in my brain. With chemical instability in my brain and diagnosed depression, anxiety and more, I always struggle with how to control the voices in my head. Something I think many of us struggle with.

When I look to explore my consciousness, I talk about sitting all the voices down in a board meeting in an attempt to get them all on the same page. This is something that until recently I thought might be a waste of time, but the power of psychedelics has helped make that a reality, as difficult as that may be for some of my readers to accept.

Separating consciousness from the body?

How does that work? is our consciousness created in the brain? How can we best explore that consciousness and how is the best way to do it.

In this adventure we talk about my recent experience in a Sensory Deprivation Float Tank which was an interesting experience to say the least. It allows you to separate your mind from your body by equalizing the surrounding air and water temperatures to your body temperature. Couple that with the fact that you are completely buoyant in a salt water solution and your brain can definitely start to play some tricks on you.

The more you learn, the less you know

How does religion tie into what you start to question? Everything becomes a possibility and you tie that in with your own history and philosophy and it becomes a crazy road. It really is quire hard to explain to someone who is not currently seeking it or has searched for it and found it.

The further I get on this quest to understand the universe and world around me, the more I start to realize how little I actually know at all. This, to me, is the ultimate enlightenment. Understanding that we have absolutely no way of completely understanding the world around us.

“Our science cannot postulate that… maybe Quantum Physics can explain it?” – Rebecca Merz

While talking to Dr REbecca Merz, we even dive into some Quantum Physics and talk briefly about super-positions and trying to understand the physics of the world that surrounds us. We talk about our limited understanding of how things really work and that exploring altered states of consciousness might actually allow us to rethink the way we perceive the world and how we define what makes up reality.

These are just questions that I ask

Most all of my thoughts, writings and creative endeavors start out with a question. Exploring your consciousness and beyond is not different.  Whether you are using a drug or not, exploring the deeper meaning of everything always starts with a question.

  • What is the meaning of life?
  • Is there a God? – The meaning of life is always followed by this one. Followed by where do we come from. All basic questions when trying to understand your purpose in life. Can there be room for God inside the scientific theory? Wouldn’t an all powerful God know how to make that true? And, how could we ever pretend to comprehend what a God would be in comparison to our consciousness.

Imagine the difference between a human and an ant… now multiply that exponentially and imagine the difference between us and God. We would be no more capable of understanding the world in which God exists as ants do at understanding ours.

  • What is real? – Multiple universes, string theory, time travel, all possible in the realm of theoretical physics and something that leaves me asking all sorts of questions about what is real and what is perception. Especially after having your entire perception flipped on its head through some of my personal experiences.
  • Where do we come from? – Evolution or creation. Is there room for both to have some credibility? Does one person have to be right? Are they both completely wrong? Religion is an interesting topic and one that we will be diving into in more detail in later podcasts but we cannot talk about consciousness and separate it from religion all-together.
  • Why are we here? – Not just humans, but life in general. What is the purpose? This question always leads me back to what is the meaning of life. Really all of these questions all boil down to the desire to know as much as possible about everything so they end up wrapping into each other which can make it even more difficult to keep track of.

These are just a few. Most of which have mystified philosophers for thousands of years. Who am I to think that I might be able to understand or dissect such intricate topics but these really are the genesis for everything I do. My thirst for understanding drives me and the realization that I will never understand keeps me grounded.

Allowing yourself to look at the world through these eyes can be equally scary and powerful but it might just help you get out of your own way in life.

As always, we try to stay well rounded

Don’t like the topic on RayDO? I don’t really care, you can always turn it off, but, our conversations always end up taking us on diverse roads of discussion. We never stay on the same subject for too long as we explore how all of these things are interconnected and how they can affect your everyday life. Stay tuned all the way through, you might be surprised with how it all comes together.

Subscribe to Raymmar.com for more like this and be sure to grab us on Stitcher so you can get all of our new episodes directly to your mobile device.

Exploring enlightenment; Can you find it or does it find you?

Kyle Cross helps me break down the quest for enlightenment and how to participate in the conversation. We talk about why you should not be getting your news in 3 minute segments from the main street media and why you need to surround your brain with interesting ideas from other people in order to truly stimulate your own creative process.

Learn more about Kyle Cross

We discuss the basics of enlightenment being the ability to recognize that you know absolutely nothing but desire to know everything. It is a self awareness and understanding of how significant you can really be but how much easier it is to allow yourself to become insignificant.

Between discussing the quest for enlightenment we dive into a bit of religion, drugs, graffiti and more. Kyle even dives into a bit of his personal background and talks about his childhood and even mentions growing up as an orphan.

Always A RayDO Twist

We talk about some of my favorite YouTube channels and how to find the information you need and want in the moment you need it. Quit pretending like you have to wait for the information you need to come to you, instead of just going out and working hard to find it.

You Tube References –

Here are the YouTube channels I mentioned in the podcast.

  • V-Sauce – Awesome videos about science and life. History from a whole new perspective. I promise you will love this.
  • Minute Physics – Quick videos that help you understand complex physics in a fun way.
  • Smarter Every Day – Down to earth explanations of curious topics in science. #LoveThisGuy
  • ASAP Science – More simple science that blows your mind. Short video crack.
  • Raymmar.com – Obviously you should subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Digital Connections

We also explore the growing digital network that is enslaving all of us, discuss the possibility of an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) destroying it all and how instant communication could potentially lead to a completely new digital nation.

We touch on the evolution of online commerce and understanding how we might soon be able to plug into computers. Whether for gaming, porn, gambling or any other experience that will inevitably be digitized, the human experience will be merged with the digital life soon enough.

As always, we explain why we do what we do and show you how all of these issues are interconnected and how they can let you bring all of these experiences together in a completely new understanding on the meaning of life.

Introducing Sarasota Underground

In this episode of RayDO we talk about my current city of residence, Sarasota Florida and my plans for SarasotaUnderground.com.

We begin to explore the inner workings of a city that is dead set on staying the same and why some would restrict its growth.

We also talk about the difference between Bradenton and Sarasota and how people from the inside look at it versus the way people from the outside look at it. Why don’t they work better together and why this really is an amazing place to be and will be for the next few decades as the entire culture in Sarasota shifts towards a new generation of doers.

We Always Bounce Around

This is RayDO, and we do bounce all over the place so there might be a few more surprises along the way. You’ll just have to listen in to find out what else we talk about this time on RayDO.

Make sure you grab us on Stitcher and iTunes Podcast app so you can get the newest episodes delivered to your phone immediately upon release.

The listening experience is totally customized and if you have to turn it off in the middle of an episode it will save your place and start it back up from the same place.

Finally, be sure to subscribe to Raymmar.com to keep up with all of our progress and updates about what we are doing.

The first episode of LizABoss ray.do takes us on an adventure through the hiring process.

Say hello to Liz. Much like me, you’ll either love her, or hate her.

Check out Liz Cotners website to learn more about her.

Liz is a career ninja who loves helping other people do what they do better. In this podcast, we dissect her bubbly personality and how having a positive attitude can help you get to your goals in life. She tells us that some people actually take her personality the wrong way; obviously someone can’t just be as happy as she is.

Are the people that judge you based on first impressions wrong? Or should you look deeper?

I’m no fool

We discuss the front that we all sometimes put up to keep people at bay. To stop them from really understanding what is really wrong with us on the inside. How we hide from the world, mostly in plain sight.

Getting high on careers

“I was so high and I kept getting promoted.” Liz explains the process of dealing with a fast paced career and then the shock of having it all fall apart on her. “It was such a high and a low” Liz further tells us about how she dealt with the hostile work environment and how mental health plays a role in understanding all of it.

We dive deeper into my depression and the medications used to treat it in my past as well as how I look at depression now. I talk about being unemployable and the HR nightmare that I often present to the companies I work for, and we weigh those negatives against the results I can deliver when I am given the right tools for the job and set free to solve the problem the way I see fit.

Is that the right or wrong way to look at it? Am I just stubborn or am I right in holding out for the opportunity where I get to call the shots and set the rules. Shouldn’t we all strive to hold out for the best version of ourselves possible?

Its all up to you

At the end of the day, it has to come down to your ability to deliver what you say you can deliver. You have to be confident and know how to sell yourself. Liz explains the importance of coming through on your interview and owning the product of you.

“You have to follow up.”Liz explains,” When you are on the job hunt, you need to make sure you follow up with people all along the way.” Her career advice is pretty straight forward but is in hot demand right now as a new generation struggles to cross the face-to-face communication and culture divide.

“Use social media to connect with them.” Liz tells us about ways to follow up with the companies you interview with. “Connect on LinkedIn, cold call into the company, whatever it takes. Find a way to follow up and network with the people that can help influence the decision making process.”

I sing Aladdin!

That’s right, I break into a song, as I try to interrupt Liz in one of her stories about her and her ginger husband. Right between that and muting Liz’s microphone I reveal some strategy about what we are trying to build on Raymmar.com and how I see the future of technology, social media and how I plan on breaking into that world.

Liz gets muted

As she brings up my least favorite networking organization I actually mute her mic. Right before we break into a discussion about the proper way to network. Should you belong to cult like networking groups or should you just network with cool people? Where do you find people to network with?

Networking is supposed to be about meeting other people, but forcing it in a structured format is not productive. I talk about the value of independent thinking, even when it comes to networking and influence building.

We talk about how thinking differently and learning for yourself can really help set you apart in the world but then you run the risk of becoming a target. Whether networking on a local or national level the dynamics for effective networking and relationship building are very similar. Be yourself, have a purpose and don’t be shy.

What the hell is wrong with a technical education

No one wants to go to a technical school… they all want to get a degree and pretend like a six figure income is waiting for them on the other side of that door.

Is that what we sold them? Is that what we have trained them to expect. Is that what our society breeds?

Do we encourage anyone to learn on their own anymore or are we teaching everyone to just read the headlines for their 14o character news updates? Is that the age we’re live in?

How can you not have a dream? How can people not see where we are headed and think about how to make a real difference. We do not teach people to dream anymore. To remove all restrictions from your mental path and at least envision the future you wish could be true.

We should all dream more!

We close the show by encouraging you to chase your dreams. To pursue your passions. Don’t be afraid to let your light shine! Believe in yourself and maintain a positive attitude and watch what you can do.

It works for Liz. It works for me, and I promise it can work for you. If you learn how to control your attitude, you can control whether you fly or fall.

Make sure you grab us on Stitcher or iTunes so you can take these podcasts on the road. And let us know what you thought of Liz in the comments below.

“You are doing sales wrong!”

Highlight any text in this article to Tweet it or share on Facebook.

It took some time to get him warmed up…

But Brian has a good mind for sales and helps me discuss and explain some major sales concepts and how they relate to life. We briefly mention his bio but feel free to learn more about Brian Geery and his work.

With 20+ years experience in the world of sales, Brian has worked with fortune 500 clients and been published in the Wall Street Journal along with many other publications. Join us as we discuss the world of sales and many of the other issues below.

What is a VP of Sales?

Someone with sales leadership responsibility. We talk about understanding the sales process and how to fine tune your sales engine. While Brian is still a little cold I throw him on the spot and ask him to pitch me while I pretend to be a customer who really just wants to throw him out.

How do you think he did? Let me know in the comments below.

Will door-to-door sales ever disappear?

We talk about my time in door to door sales and how to make a five minute friend. We talk about how I learned to sell on demand and the process that the company used to make us sales machines.

I think that door-to-door sales are on their way out but Brian claims they might hang out a little longer than I think. Which of us do you think is right?

Brian flips the script

Brian flips the interview and asks me about my business and how I have grown my online presence. He asks me about the three technologies that I think were most important in helping me get my blog off the ground. Here are links and descriptions of each technology and how I use them.

WordPress:

Learn more about WordPress 

The largest open source content management system on the internet. It is easy to use (there is a learning curve) once you get the hang of it, and can allow you to update your website easily, post new blog articles and evolve digitally. The core files are always being updated and there are numerous plugins that can help you do what you need to do.

There are some other low-cost website builders online but WordPress offers you the most scaleability and diversity of options. For the non-developer, non-coder out there, this is the perfect place for you to get into the web building world.

I plan on writing a comprehensive WordPress write up, along with my favorite plugins but for now, know that you need it and it could make your life much easier.

Evernote:

Download Evernote

I wrote an article here where I talked about my favorite features and why I upgraded to Evernote Premium. I still think it is the best, free or paid, note-taking app on the market.

The way their web clipper works with my web browser along with their email functionality has really helped improve my workflows and productivity. It will help you stay organized and keep track of everything.

ITTT:

What is IFTTT

I just mentioned this briefly in the podcast but it is an application you should know about since it lets you connect different applications and set triggers for different functions.

For instance, I have IFTTT set to ask a contact to connect on LinkedIn when I scan an Evernote business card. There is life-hack article coming on how to do this but for now know you can do it and go explore their website and create your own recipes.

Social Media:

I think as a whole, Social Media is the third most important tool I use online. I use Social media as a tool and although I am active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, I hate Linked In. I still use it and have a profile but I am not really finding it useful and that might be partly my fault. It just gets really hard to manage all of these channels and mediums by myself. Maybe soon I’ll be able to afford an assistant.

How to steal ideas

Brian calls it “Liberating” the idea but I call it stealing inspiration and I am not shameful about it. Brian asks me about my viral online explosion, I talk about stealing inspiration from all over the internet and talk about how I got my website to the top of Google in so many different categories.

I expose a little more of the big picture of what I am trying to build and talk about the fact that the whole world is socially engineered. Whether for good or evil, it just is because that is how we work.

One of my biggest challenges will be to help you understand the simplicity of these systems and how they are all interconnected. After that, it is up to you whether to use the powers for good or evil. Whether to chase the dream and be the best you possible or will you sit on the sideline and think about what might have been?

None of This is About the Money

I have no desire for massive amounts of money. Although I wouldn’t hate it or turn it away. My primary motivation is the elimination of the word “no” based a lack of a funding mechanism.

I make enough money to live and I am reinvesting every dollar I can into the infrastructure of Raymmar.com in order to increase the quality of the content we deliver on a daily basis. I also want to start introducing you to the other companies that I do business with as well as the creative people that I surround myself with.

As we grow we will also be looking for new ideas on how to bring other people with us. Stay tuned for how you can get plugged into the RayDO network.

Part Of It Is About The Aesthetics

We wrap up the show talking about my connection with Steve Jobs and how I see a lot of his character traits and flaws in myself. I talk about my desire to keep the website clean and fresh but also understanding the need to try and monetize it soon.

At one point I even mention my plans for monetization briefly as we talk about how I plan to grow Raymmar.com to the next level of social commerce. I explain the concept of building a trusted network of amazing individuals. People who we help get off the ground and help find their way online.

I hope to take amazing people and help them follow their dreams. I hope to give them a platform to change the world. I give a huge “thank you” to all those who listen and follow us so closely. We really do appreciate your support.

Apparently Brian had a hot date…

Or something like that because he jumped off the mic quick. We will definitely ask him back to talk more about sales but he was a fun guest and we hope you enjoyed him.

Make sure you subscribe to raymmar.com, grab us on Stitcher or iTunes and make sure you hang on. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

Are you doing something amazing with your life? Something the rest of us should know about? Tell me about it in the comments.

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From 90’s porn to taking the world by storm.

This impromptu podcast will have you laughing, screaming and thinking about life like you have not done in a while. Explore your past and join us as we discuss some other experiences that are sure to hit close to home.

Remember trying to load pictures with a 56K modem? That is where it all starts out and then we dive into a host of issues including some insight into the darker thoughts inside my head, and how they help me look at the world differently.

I introduce parts of my sales theory in this podcast and talk about how everything in life is a sale. We discuss how I developed my sales skills, understanding how your upbringing can help shape the person you become and how looking at the world from multiple angles can really help you stand out.

We also delve into the way businesses track your every move inside their stores and the way you need to think about the information that these companies continually connect with you.

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