A mysterious faux-person makes an email introduction to a possibly real person in a strange marketing scam. We try to figure out who these people are and what they want.

In Which I Take Issue With Chris Curran Our loyal listeners may have noticed that our opening drumbeat, courtesy of our good friend Chris Curran, features Ralph’s name. But I want to know why Ralph gets top – and only – billing? Is this the Ralph show? I think not. So I issued a challenge to Chris to work my name into a drumbeat. Creatively. Let’s see what we get. Another Apology Last week Ralph apologized to various people and today I have to issue my own apology, to the great nation of the USA. In last week’s episode I mistakenly mentioned the Whopper as being an item you could eat at Mc Donald’s. Travesty! Are there enough mea culpas? I wonder. In Which We Admire Chris Curran After I expressed my demand for a drum track with my name in it, Ralph mentioned something that Chris did with his businesses that was very clever. Chris has a couple of businesses. One is called Podcast Engineering School, which teaches people how to professionally record, mix, master and engineer podcasts. The school is for people who want a career in podcasting. The other is called Podfudge, an agency that provides editing and marketing services to podcasters. Chris had one of his engineering school graduates produce The Podcast Engineering Show, which is Chris’s podcast. The show sounds great, which goes to prove that Chris is churning out qualified professionals who even HE is willing to hire and trust with his own show. He also hires his grads for his editing business. And Ralph thinks that’s pretty smart. It’s a way to market your product (in this case, school) – not by saying how great you are and not by talking about all the wonderful things you do – but by actually showing it. Show Don’t Tell We had an experience a few weeks ago where we went to a business dinner with colleagues, and in the course of the conversation we gave some advice to one of them about how he might improve his Facebook ads. A few days later, we were at a networking meeting with this same colleague. He stood up and told the room that after implementing our advice, he immediately got seven new leads for his business. We didn’t have to tell people that we know what we’re doing. He told them for us. And that’s worth more than any dollar amount you can spend on an ad. I know a woman who knits clothing. And she wears her own clothing. So when she’s out and someone says, “Hey, nice sweater!” She tells them she makes them for a living. It’s a great way to demonstrate that she stands by her own product. When you do a good job for people, when you stand by what you do, then your work will speak for itself. And if other people speak for you, all the better! A Travel Wrapup Last week we talked about our trip, what we spent and how we can budget next time. This week we summarize a Top Ten list of easy ways to save money so you can travel even if you don’t have a big budget. Bring food. Grabbing Mc Donald’s, grabbing a coffee or a donut or a snack can really add up. Eat at your destination but avoid expensive food traps. Bring water. Don’t spend two bucks a bottle at a convenience store when you can spend two bucks a case at the grocery store. Go where the tourists aren’t. Go to a beach town during the winter or the desert in the summer. It may not be your idea of the perfect vacation but you can still get away and do it a whole lot cheaper. Camp. If you’re adventurous, grab a tent and pitch it. Some campgrounds have great amenities like wifi and electricity. Use apps. Hotel apps can help you get really good deals. If you don’t mind the risk, you can get some great deals by just showing up and getting what’s left. Be flexible. Do things that you might ordinarily think you don’t want to do. With the right mindset you can make the best of things you might not have expected to enjoy. Use a credit card with points. Whether you get points that you can use for a purchase later, or cash back that you can use to pay for whatever you charged, take advantage of the opportunity. Find a library. The wifi is free and it’s a great place to work. Plus, if you’re the camping type, you can use the library to work instead of sitting in a tent all day. Hub it. Find one place to stay and travel out from there instead of moving from place to place. You can get much better deals on rooms sometimes when you stay a few weeks or a month. Keep receipts. If you’re working and traveling, you can write off at least part of the trip on your tax return, and that can save you money. Let People Help You We share war stories today about people who insist on doing things themselves. Ralph talks about trying to help our friend Sophia with her website, only to be un-helped by her interfering. To be fair, Ralph volunteered to help and Sophia wanted to make things easier for him – by doing some of them herself. The problem arose when she started doing things she didn’t understand, which got in the way of what Ralph was doing and ended up making everything take a lot longer and be a lot more complicated. In the end, they both could have handled it differently. Ralph by being clear about his role and what he would do, and Sophia by simply letting him do it. But we get it. When someone helps you, you feel a certain responsibility. You’re grateful, and you may feel bad about adding to someone’s workload. If that’s you, and someone has offered to help you, let them! Just find another way to thank them. A few weeks ago we called a colleague in the HVAC business to help us with a furnace problem. We didn’t ask or expect him to do it for free, but he did. Instead of freaking out and worrying about it, we simply bought him and his wife a gift certificate for dinner. People like to help. YOU probably like to help. So let people help you when they can, and then be grateful. Sometimes that’s enough. If you can return the favor, do it. DIY Madness Sophia wanted to be considerate of someone who was helping her so she tried to do things herself. But some people do things because they simply can’t NOT do them. We had a client for a month who micromanaged everything we did with his website, until we finally gave him his money back and told him he wasn’t ready to hire someone. He ended up getting a college kid to do it because he could sit there and point over her shoulder and bark orders. But at what cost? He could have afforded to hire someone. He just refused to. He wanted to control it himself. Except while he was micromanaging his website, he was not out selling. People who do everything themselves risk two consequences. One is doing a thing wrong. Professionals are professionals for a reason. We don’t replace furnaces or fix car engines, we call professionals. We don’t know how to do their job they way they do. We don’t know what we don’t know. The second is the opportunity cost. What are you NOT doing when you’re doing something you could have delegated? Delegating is a skill that more people need to learn. We Want To Eat Sophia’s Cows But that’s an apology for next time. More Things & Stuff If you’re thinking of a career in podcasting, check out Podcast Engineering School. Listen to the Podcast Engineering Show produced by one of the school’s alumni. If you're a podcaster, visit Podfudge for editing and marketing services. Check out our friend Sophia Lemon’s podcast Double Exposure. And her other podcast, Ridiculously Happy People. If you’re in eastern Canada and looking for a photographer, Sophia is one of the best you’ll find.

We’re not “lifestyle entrepreneurs” who work from the beach. But we like to travel, and you can too, even on a budget. You just need a little bit of travel smarts.

Last we left off, we were on our way cross-country. Some two dozen states and 11 weeks later, we learned a lot about ourselves and our business along the way.

When a friend and business partner started his own full time creative services agency, he asked us what he needs to be thinking about in order to run a successful business. Here are 23 things we came up with.

We talk about some major mistakes we made on our way to launching Podcaster's Toolbox, why we got so lost in the weeds and what we changed. Plus we share ideas for getting unstuck when you're overwhelmed and behind schedule.

A Puzzling Mystery Solved In our last episode, we talked about how right before we went on hiatus from podcasting last year, the official Web.Search.Social puzzle was left in the hands of Alisa Meredith. So we called on Alisa to get back in the game and start recirculating the puzzle among listeners again. And then we heard from Alisa. Turns out, at the same time that she got the puzzle, she also adopted a stack of kittens. And it appears that in the game of Kittens vs.Puzzle, kittens win. Alas, the puzzle is no more. But fear not, Carbon Nation, we'll find another, and if all you can think is, "OMG, I want to be in on the game and do the puzzle too!" Then let us know and we'll add your address to the recipient list! Dumb Marketing Strikes Again We've talked about "follow the leader" marketing before but since it's not going away, today we bring up an email that I received recently where the subject line was "Please unsubscribe." We know this hustle. It's the "I'm cleaning my list and if you're not going to buy something from me then get off it" silliness. Which really boils down to the "I'm doing this because some other marketer told me this was a good way to jolt my list into action" folly. Come on, people. If your only trick for getting people to act is to insult them, then maybe it's time to stop marketing until you come up with something better. First of all, I've been on this person's list for a long time. I've read and shared her content. So to be told to "unsubscribe" only makes me say, "Ok. Bye." If you really can't think of a better way to get someone's attention then at a minimum segment your list so only people who haven't opened, read, clicked or shared will get your dumb unsubscribe email. Better yet, how about an authentic and human way of getting someone's attention? How about reaching out and asking WHY someone hasn't opened or read your emails. How about asking whether there is anything better you can do to help or inspire someone? When we were sending out regular emails, we would often take time just to say "hi" to our readers. No marketing, no selling, no expectation. And when that happened, we got feedback from people we never heard from otherwise. Imagine if we had asked them to unsubscribe. Well, once we sort of did… Actually, we wrote a tongue-in-cheek email playing off the whole unsubscribe thing. It was meant to be a joke, over the top, a goofy way to get a response. Well, we got a response. We got unsubscribes in droves. Turns out that some people were not amused. Some were, and we got some great feedback and lots of folks enjoyed the joke. But some didn't and boy were they mad. Just goes to show that even with the best of intentions you can't always figure how someone will react. So keep that in mind as you follow tired advice. Consider how your reader will perceive your words, whatever you say. Working In Your Pajamas I admit it. I love working in pajamas. Well, more like sweats, but I wear them from bed to work to the bank to the grocery store. I bet lots of work-at-home entrepreneurs and business owners do that, at least sometimes. Turns out that may not be the best idea. We got a comment from a listener recently who told us that when she gets dressed, even just to work from her kitchen table, she is much more productive. And it's true. How you dress affects your mindset. If you're in raggedy old sweats, nice and comfy on your couch, you're probably in a pretty relaxed and comfy mindset. But put on a nicely ironed shirt and an actual pair of shoes and you're dressed for "work." We're not saying you need to get dressed in a suit and tie but if you want to be successful then you need to dress the part. Figure out what works for you, then do that. And we bet it's not sweats! For our listener, Sarah Dawn, wearing the knitwear that she designs is perfect. When I taught kindergarten years ago, I used to wear clothes that had big giraffes up the leg, complete with matching earrings and accessories. For painting with kids, that was great. But when I transitioned into marketing, that wasn't so great anymore. As Sarah said, she's a walking advertisement for her clothing. But even if you don't design clothing, you're still a walking advertisement - for yourself. You may run into clients or prospects. You may run into perfect strangers who present networking opportunities. And if you're wearing your pajamas or sweats or pink fuzzy slippers, you're probably not presenting yourself at your best and most professional. My father is an accountant and the CFO of one of our businesses. During tax season, he made a lot of trips to the post office to mail tax returns. One of the people at the post office noticed, and asked him to be her accountant. He got a new client that he may not have gotten if he'd slouched his way into the post office wearing sloppy clothes. So you never know. And it's true that people who run into you may understand that you're just a busy person running errands and they'll look past your fuzzy slippers. But probably not. Admit it - you make snap judgements. And so do other people. So give people every reason to make a positive judgement about you - one that accurately reflects the successful business person that you want to be. On The Flip Side… We actually lost a job once because we appeared too successful. We had pitched a prospect and were pretty sure we'd get the job. Except one day, he saw us pull up to his office driving a BMW. And he told us that we clearly didn't need his money, so we didn't get the job. Like we said before, you just never know! You can't always figure everything out. But you can do your best to be the best. And that's all that really matters. Getting Fat One of the side effects of working in pajamas and sweats is that I gain weight. If I don't have to get dressed and go out and look professional, I tend to sit around the table eating cookies while I work, and before you know it, stuff stops fitting. It really all goes back to taking care of yourself. When you get up and get dressed you're demonstrating a certain level of self-care. You're taking care of yourself physically, which helps you take care of yourself mentally. Ralph says that he is in better shape when he makes it a point to get up in the morning and dress professionally. That makes it easier for him to draw delineations in his mind between work time and relaxing time and exercise time. So physically changing from one set of clothing to another helps him mentally shift gears, too. Clothing As Networking Here's a tip someone shared with me once. The next time you're waiting on line at Starbucks or the bank or wherever, instead of checking Facebook or your email, strike up a conversation with someone who is wearing a t-shirt or jacket with a company name or logo. For example, if you see someone wearing a t-shirt with a painter's logo, ask him whether he works for that company. If he says yes, explore the opportunity to network. If he says no, ask what he does and use that as an opportunity. Try it, because if there's one thing we've established today it's that you just never know!

Get Back In The Game! Long ago and far away when Carbon Based Business Units was the Web.Search.Social podcast, we had a jigsaw puzzle that we started to circulate among listeners. Each person solved the puzzle, took a photo then sent it to another listener. Then we went on hiatus, and somewhere around that time, very sexy friend of the show Alisa Meredith took possession of the puzzle. And there is disappeared. We assume she’s not actually holding it hostage, so Alisa, it’s time to get back in the game, solve that baby and send it on its way! And if you, dear Fred, would like in on the traveling puzzle, shoot us a message in the comments, on social, or via email and we’ll add you to the list! Traveling Begins Soon In about two weeks we’re starting our two-month road trip to Anaheim California, where we’ll attend Podcast Movement and launch our newest product, Podcaster’s Toolbox. We’ve talked a bit about it before, but today we’re diving a little deeper into what Podcaster’s Toolbox is, where we are, how we got here the mistakes we made along the way and the failures we learned from. A Bunch Of Tools There’s a lot that goes into podcasting. From ideas to research, planning, guest booking, audio production, and editing, it takes time to produce a single episode. And it doesn’t stop there because having an episode is not as good as having one that people listen to. Even after an episode is published, you still need to have email campaigns, social promotions, graphics, and all the things that go into getting the word out. So we started building ourselves tools to make it easier to manage our podcast workflow. I would say something like, “OMG I HATE DOING THIS!” And Ralph would come up with some kind of automation script to make it easier. And that worked, mostly. But we had to manage and maintain the tools, which ended up being more work. Plus there were a bunch. And they were all separate. At some point we thought, if we find tools like this helpful, we bet other podcasters will, too. So we decided to build a business around creating a toolbox for podcasters to help automate and streamline all those aggravating, repetitious things. Thing Went Well For Three Seconds We started our partnership with me, Ralph, our creative director Michael, my father as CFO, and another partner responsible for sales. We were excited and ready. Until we tried to name the product. If you’ve ever tried to name a product AND come up with a domain name at the same time, you feel our pain. It took us a year to come up with the name because we didn’t want to be either too clever or too boring. Plus, there was the practical reality of needing a name that wasn’t already taken by some domain squatter. But our bigger problem was that we were out of synch with one of our partners. Ralph, Michael and me have been working together for a long time and we have a very collaborative creative process. For example, when we named the company, we went back and forth with lists and ideas and spreadsheets (and arguments and some snark) for a very long time. In spite of disagreements and frustration we all enjoyed the process and we ended up with something we all loved. On the flip side, our other partner believed we should all stick to our individual roles. He believed, for example, that as our creative director, Michael should design the logo and we should all stay out of it. His argument was that we had asked Michael on board for a reason and we should trust in his judgement. Whether you want to collaborate or not in your business, it’s up to you. But you have to be in synch with your other partners or it will just cause frustration. And that’s where we ended up. Some of us wanted to collaborate. Some of us wanted to separate responsibilities. Nobody was happy. The Partnership Breaks Up In June of 2016, as we were preparing to go to Podcast Movement to announce our product, the partner who didn’t agree with our approach to building the business decided to drop out. That left us in the lurch, one person short of what we had expected. In the long run, it turned out to be a good thing. We had too many disagreements and nobody would have been happy. But even though it was the best thing for the business and for us in the long run, it still affected us personally. Our lost partner was a friend, so we were not only relating to him as a business partner but as a friend. We didn’t make the best of business decisions because we were thinking like friends. The fact is, you can’t separate business from personal. What happens to you personally affects your business. It affects how you feel. It affects what you do. We went through some personal unhappiness and a long depression dealing with the partnership breakup. We Move On The breakup set us back. Not only being one man down, but being personally affected, meant that we didn’t get where we wanted to be. We made a lot of promises to a lot of people and failed to deliver on them. We set launch date after launch date and missed every one. Then on top of being in a bad place, we were feeling pretty miserable about our own failures. We got to a point where we were afraid to say anything at all because we had little faith in our own ability to deliver. But we didn’t give up. This is our business and our baby. We know it can grow and we know we’re onto something that people want. So we moved on. It took some time, but we picked up and got ourselves going again. We refocused. This is “do or die” time as we gear up for Podcast Movement. We’ve streamlined operations in our marketing business so we would have more time to focus on Podcaster’s Toolbox. And we dedicated ourselves to launching an MVP (minimum viable product) with only a small set of key features so people can start using them and we can iterate from there. In fact, releasing a product with a bunch of features is dumb. We’d rather give people the things we know they want, then listen to what they need. We’re better off starting small and growing. We’ve also gotten pretty good at firing clients. Not in a burning bridges way but in a way where we’ve focused solely on projects that hit that sweet spot between “good fit” and “profitable.” That has given us some much needed extra time to focus on what we really want to do instead of what we think we “have to” do. Lessons Learned For me, one of the biggest lessons is that any partnership needs good leadership. If you’re working with friends or people you already have a relationship with, it can be tough to give directives. It was tough for me to tell friends what to do, or to recognize that we weren’t in synch from a business standpoint. It’s been tough for me to give my father directives. He’s my father… I don’t tell HIM what to do! But I’m the CEO and for the business to succeed, I need to be a leader. I need to be sure our team is working together, that we’re all doing our jobs, that we’re all being heard. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Also, patience. Things don’t always go the way you want. Sometimes they take a lot longer than you’d like. It gets frustrating. It gets draining. You’ve got to deal with it, adapt and keep going. Homework Do you have a business story? A tough time, a failure, a lesson learned that has made you better and stronger? Share it with us. We’d love to talk about it!

Get Your Fizz On! Today we've got lots of good takeaways about how to start, grow and scale a business. We talk with Jessica Rhodes of Interview Connections, a company that helps people find guests for their podcasts or get booked as a guest on other podcasts. At the time we recorded this in February, Jessica had just moved into a new and bigger office. As she was in the middle of the move, running her business, raising her kids, and taking care of her family, we saw her at Podfest where she was both selling and speaking and still making time to get to the hotel gym. So basically we wanted to know how the heck she does it. Turns out it's about hard work, commitment and being smart about how you imagine and grow your business. It's also about making time for yourself and taking care of yourself, which is something we all know yet so rarely do. Competition Gets Real Jessica refers to her company as a "premier guest booking service". When she started her company, she was the only booking service. But now a bunch of imitators have sprung up to do what she does. And we wonder how that's affected her business. Jessica says that it's the challenge of every entrepreneur to channel a mindset of abundance. It's not always easy but you have to believe that there is a place for everyone. What she's come to realize is that the market is big enough to hold her and her competitors. And since each of them is slightly different in their approach, style, and the types of clients they work with, she's found a way to not only keep going but to grow. Jessica Is A Bitch And that's a good thing. While she doesn't recall anyone actually calling her a bitch to her face, she has been called abrasive and intimidating. And that's because she doesn't put up with any BS. Case in point: at a recent staff meeting, she called everyone to task for dropping the ball on some things. Everyone got a little nervous as Jessica laid it out. She said, "I'm not your friend. This is a business." And she's right! We ask her if she thinks people have called her abrasive, blunt and other similar things because she's a woman, and she says she does. She speaks directly and doesn't use phrases and manners of speaking typically associated with women. In other words, she isn't going to coddle or nurture or tell you that if you mess up it's ok. Because it's not ok. She says men speak the same way, but people don't question it. Growing A Seven Figure Business Jessica thinks she can get there in the next few years, but recognizes that to do that she needs higher ticket services to sell. So she plans to expand her product offerings not just to provide more services, but to provide higher value services. The key for her is not necessarily to get more clients but to get higher paying clients. But it's more than just the numbers. You can make a lot of money on paper but if you're not profitable, it doesn't matter. Jessica says that it's important to hire the staff you need and no more. She says the work you give someone will expand to fill the time you give them. But that's not necessarily efficient. So she makes sure that someone has plenty to keep them busy, so they're not just "filling time". And only when that person can't take on any more work does she hire new staff. She also says it's important to price your services correctly. She realized at some point that her prices were not high enough to be able to pay herself and hire people to help her. It took some time to figure out, but eventually she got there. When Money Is Tight It's one thing to decide not to pay yourself but if you've got people working for you, you still have to pay them. So when things are not as profitable as you'd like, what do you do? Jessica says she had other work she was doing at an hourly rate, so that helped subsidize the lack of income from her business. And she racked up a lot of credit card debt. There are always "experts" out there who will tell you not to use your credit card or go into debt, but there's a perfect world and there's the real world. It comes down to this: you do what you have to do. Jessica wasn't spending frivolously. She was spending money that the business needed. So was it ideal? No, but it gave her the flexibility she needed to grow and to get to a point where she's now paying down large chunks of that debt because she's profitable. Raising Prices We want to know when and how Jessica decides to raise her prices. She had to do it at least once, when she realized her prices were not high enough to sustain her. And she's done it since. For Jessica it's pretty simple. She knows that she's profitable right now. But she also knows that she could charge more. She says that she raises her prices until she starts to get pushback. If nobody is complaining about your prices, she says, then you're not charging enough. Get Out Of Your Own Way One of Jessica's most recent changes was to rebrand from what has essentially been "Jessica Rhodes" to Interview Connections. Jessica spent time building a personal brand, which has helped her get recognized in the industry and get invited to speak at industry events, but she doesn't want to be her business. She wants the business to stand on its own, so she can do other things. So rather than be the face of the business, she's giving it its own identity. Like having a child then sending it off into the world to make its own way. She's still working in - and on - the business, but she has a team, and those people are the faces behind the business. Bigger Space, Bigger Vision Jessica recently moved into a much larger office space when she realized that her current space was a bit small. At the same time, her husband, who works at home, was talking about possibly getting his own office space. It was perfect timing, and the price was right on a local office space even though it was a lot more space than Jessica needed. But she says that being in a large space has actually helped her expand her vision and see how her company can grow even more. She says her vision was literally held back by the four walls she saw it in every day. And now she has all that extra space in her house to actually have a house! Leading By Example In light of how much time and energy Jessica puts into her business, we wonder how she manages the rest of her life. She has a philosophy that it's important for her to demonstrate to her kids that she takes care of herself (hence her gym trips) and that she is committed to her business. She says nothing sends a message to kids about independence and work ethic like being an example. And nothing contributes to gender equality like demonstrating that she is a strong, independent and powerful career woman. Now that's a philosophy we can get behind. Links Want to find a guest for your podcast or be a guest on one? Interview Connections can help. Listen to Jessica's podcast, formerly Rhodes to Success, now Interview Connections.

Politics, Religion And Sex That’s what today’s episode is about. Yes, it’s safe for work! This is one of the episodes we recorded in February at Podfest and it’s with Daniel J. Lewis, host of the Audacity to Podcast. The conversation was precipitated by a controversial Facebook post where Ralph called out Daniel, who is a Christian, and asked him to explain how it’s possible to reconcile President Donald Trump’s behavior with Christian values. That wasn’t the controversial part, though. In the Facebook post, Ralph mistakenly said that Daniel had endorsed Trump, which he didn’t. So Ralph apologized for the error and the rest of the conversation was amicable. The controversial part comes in when other people jumped onto the thread to denounce Ralph for “attacking” Daniel, and in turn Christianity. Nothing of the sort happened. But people reacted. So today’s question is: why can’t we have a conversation about faith or politics without everything turning into – or being perceived as – an attack? Daniel says this drives him crazy, too. He thinks people are too sensitive and instead of having an open conversation, people simply react. Respect goes out the window. Dialogue goes out the window. People take their beliefs so personally that any disagreement is seen as a personal attack. He thinks that you can communicate with passion and with truth, but it’s important to do it with gentleness, love and respect. Love The Haters? Daniel hosts another podcast called Once Upon A Time, which is all about the TV show. And he took a lot of heat for one episode where he didn’t comment on a scene in the show that was related to homosexuality. Fellow Christians were angry that he didn’t address it from a Christian perspective. And people who support same sex relationships were angry because they thought he was ignoring it and being a “hater.” But Daniel’s podcast isn’t about morality. It’s about the TV show. So he didn’t feel it was necessary to discuss the issue. That didn't stop people from being outraged, though. Some even threatened him. Sometime later, another episode of the TV show had a similar scene. And this time Daniel addressed it. According to Christian values, homosexual behavior is a sin. But Daniel told people that it was not his (or anyone’s) place to judge any person’s sin as worse than any other person’s. Homosexual behavior is no reason for any more moral outrage than lying or cheating or anything else. The difference for Daniel the second time around was that he spoke honestly, with love, kindness, gentleness and care. And he managed to bring people from both sides of the equation together. They may not have agreed, but they understood. No threats. No trolling. Some hate – but far less than he had expected. Be Yourself. But Not Really. One of the contradictions of social media is that you constantly hear people talk about “being yourself” online. Yet the moment you’re “yourself”, someone gets all uppity and rants about your opinion or behavior or thoughts. Daniel says that people are presented with so much stuff on social media, and it’s a such a constant stream of information, that it’s hard to process it in context. You’re not reading a social media post in the context of a relationship you have with someone, or an understanding you may have reached. You’re just getting bombarded by words, without the emotional context, without being able to hear someone’s tone of voice or look into their eyes. And by the time someone gets to your post, maybe they’ve already read ten things that were negative or that bothered them. Daniel says they’re already “negatively charged” and that’s when people become reactionary. The Emotion You Express Is The Emotion You Attract Daniel says if all you’re putting out is negativity, you’re going to get negativity back. You can “be yourself” but still be mindful of what you post and how you post it. Sometimes there are topics not worth posting on social media, especially knowing what we know about how social media works. There are some things not worth being associated with. Perhaps if we all spoke with more gentleness and kindness, we could disagree and still coexist peacefully. And just maybe, we could open a door to change people's minds. Links Listen To Daniel’s show, the Audacity To Podcast If you’re a fan of the TV show, listen to Once Upon A Time