#and anyway i cant get back into my building (there is an option but panic catastrophy brain is not very perceptive of this option)

[emeraldelysium]

BOY DO I HAVE A STORY FOR YOU TONIGHT.

[sporksaber]

Ok, I love the role swap concept with zuko and azula, but I feel like they switch their abilities and personalities a bit too and I think itd be more fun without that. Where Azula is an antisocial and unstable genius who wants to gain power and zuko still struggles with being the less powerful and extremely empathetic sibling. So here's how I'd do it.

(Note, this is just for fun. I'm not saying anyone else's version is bad. But I've though about this so much and need it out of my head before I go off cuz make a whole comic and I do not have the time, i need to work.)

First off, Azula wouldn't call out in concern for the men like how zuko did. In my version she's allowed into the meeting because of the aptitude for strategy shes shown. She speaks up because it's an inefficient plan that uses up too many resources when there are other options. This enrages her father and leads to the agni kai. Azula is terrified and feels betrayed but has no idea how to handle any of it. She fights back during the agni kai, but in her panic she sets off a bolt of lightning. Ozai finishes the match and severely burns on her lower back. Azula is banished for her use of lightning on the fire lord (bc ozai fears she will no longer be easy to manipulate and might plot his death) and is forced to leave the next morning.

Some things to note: azula is eleven at this point. I changed the placement of the scar bc I think zuko's is very symbolic in a way that doesnt suit azula. Zuko's scar being over his eye and close to the light chakra shows the way his view of the fire nation and honour obscures his vision and how he is unaware of the truth of the world under fire nation rule. I set azula's over her spine because that chakra is based on survival and blocked by fear. It also represents trust which will fit into her arc with the gaang. Finally, she doesnt have Iroh to guide her. One of the things that bothered me was Iroh writing her off as evil despite her being a mentally unstable child. She did have to be defeated, but the way he talked about it was too dismissive. (Personally I think he was projecting his views of his brother and his perceived failures with him onto her.) Azula isnt sent to capture the avatar so she isnt given soldiers. She's completely alone without an advisor to look to or keep her calm.

Azula is given a manned ship with a disgraced soldier and an attendant when she leaves. The way I see it the soldiers zuko had were probably more irohs than his. The soldier is relieved to not be executed but hates being demoted to playing babysitter to a child at sea. The attendant views it as a punishment and hates Azula for it. Eventually the attendant will betray her and be killed for it. Azula never trusted the soldier and he eventually leaves to start a family in an earth kingdom colony. Azula doesnt miss him, he was no longer useful. The loneliness does get to her though.

Azula is obsessed with getting the underhand, so she had been successfully building connections and planting spies where needed.

(Zuko has been acting as a respectable crowned prince. He holds a zealous loyalty to his nation and father. He still faulters as Iroh tries to steer him from tyranny, but his sights are set on his father's approval and that alone. Afterall, if his prodigy could be discarded who's to say what would happen to him if he failed?)

This brings us to the start of the series. Like Zuko Azula witnesses the trap on the old fire nation battle ship go off. She investigates and finds that an air bending avatar is living at the south pole village. She decides she wants to speak with him.

Azula didn't believe the avatar existed before this point. Hiding didnt add up to her knowledge of the morality of airbenders, so she assumed the air nation avatar from the start of the war would be dead. She would know if one had appeared in the water tribe, as the south had all its benders killed and the north was compacted so close together it would be impossible to hide. Earth would be harder, but they were most likely to fight back and out act. And if in ba sing se they'd be used as a weapon or gotten rid of to preserve the peace of the city. Once the culcle progressed to the fire nation it would either be used to take over the other nations or enf the cycle for good. After all, there hasn't been an air bender for a hundred years even if the rumors of some acolytes surviving were truthful.

Azula kidnaps aang with far more ease than she should of been able to. Once he stops struggling she calmly offers him tea and promises to release him once their discussion is finished. He takes the tea and drinks it without question and besides a wary glare shows no more hostility. She thought him a fool, the tea could have easily been poisoned and promised are nothing but words. His naivete makes her job easier though.

She finds out that he was suspended frozen in the avatar state the last 100 years. And so, Azula informs him of the war and the fire nations crimes, advising him to master the elements if he wants to prevent all his new friends and the avatar cycle from certain destruction. Aang is conflicted, he never asked for any of this. Azula just gives a bitter smile. "The hands of fate were never designed to take requests, they move without regard to any life dependent on it. Dont waste your breath when there is nothing you can do."

Azula wants to see Ozai fail. If helping the avatar is what it takes then so be it. When his friends appear to save him she let's them leave without a fight. Theyll be useful in the future.

As the gaang's travels kick off she sets out to find out if the rumours about the acolytes are true. In this she finds a traveling circus. The youngest daughter and an old friend of hers was eager to escape and found Azula's life exciting. She didn't hesitate after being invited along, insisting that traveling would be easy for her and that she'd pull her own weight.

She encounters the gaang a few times as time goes by. The relationship is reluctant on the water tribe siblings part, they dont trust her and hold a decent amount of fear towards her. Her cold and calculating demeanor was unsettling, but the unhinged way she fought was terrifying. Her form was perfect and her attacks were precise, but the bigger the fight the more lost she became as she laughed and shrieked and occasionally snapped at someone who didnt seem to be there. The only worse reaction was when she zeroed in on one opponent, picking them apart both mentally and physically as she drove them to the ground. )

Things that'll happen as I move through an episode list:

Azula doesn't have her ship attacked do she diesnt run into zhao while doing repairs, instead going straight to ty lee.

Azula learns that the gaang is on kyoshi island and heads ther after them. She has been keeping track of the avatar as they move. Ty lee gets along well with the kyoshi warriors while azula buts heads with them. They dont want her there and azula hates it when people get in the way. Zhao appears to try to capture aang and Azula dips at the same time as the gaang. She tells ty lee she can stay but she insists on sticking with azula. This puts her on edge.

Ty lee gets captured by earth benders, when she escapes on her own she cements her usefulness to Azula.

They run into zhao trying to capture the avatar and azula tells him she'll capture him first. They both attack aang during the solstice, though azula's attacks are all purposefully set to miss and trip up zhao as much as possible. Aang is the best way to prove her father wrong and she's not going to lose that.

They rob the pirates that try to capture the avatar. Azula needs the resources and it gives her leverage over the gaang.

After almost killing ty lee for scaring her by popping up behind her Azula tells her why she was banished. (In more of a "my own mother thought I was a monster" way than an opening up about trauma way.)

Azula learns that zhao has captured aang and frees him. She then sets to reworking her information network as not all of them are scared enough of her to not fail her. She remedies it quickly.

Azula learns that zhao is plotting her assassination and decides it's the perfect moment to fake her death.

Azula enters the north pole to defeat zhao and gain any information she can. Ty lee rades a library during the confrontation. Zhao is surprised and infuriated to see her alive, Azula smiles as she sends him to his death knowing that she is not only helping the avatar but also that he gave her a perfect way to hide from the fire nation. (When news of his sisters death reaches hum, Zuko doesnt know what to think. She was always cruel to him, but she was still his little sister.)

The crown prince of the fire nation is sent to capture the avatar. Azula follows him as he begins his search. (Zuko begins to think he's going insane as he keeps catching glimpses of his recently deceased sister out of the corner of his eye.)

Ty lee keeps running into a girl she slowly befriends. She's gloomy and sarcastic and ty lee thinks Azula would like her. (Zuko's fiance Mai tells him that she thinks his sister is still alive.)

As Azula notices ty lee become more and more distracted as she absorbed herself into the cultures that surround them she decides it's best for them to split up. Ty lee diesnt agree, but Azula leaves anyway. She has work to do.

While traveling alone Azula cant escape the thoughts of her mother. Of her fathers betrayal. Of the life she lost because the idiot elders had no grip on proper strategy that even a child could create. She meets a boy that reminds her far too much of zuko with a mother far to similar to theirs. When she sends the bandits controlling the town running she knows it's more than just controlling a territory that compelled her. But at the same time she doubts not following through on the whim would have bothered her.

Ty lee meets toph and chat for a bit. Ty lee tells her about azula and how she left. When toph tells her she should forget her she insists that azula didnt really ditch her and that they're still friends. They talk about their friends and childhood.

Ty lee finds Azula and immidiently jumps at her, which she does not enjoy. Ty lee insists that she still wants to travel with her and Axula sighs as she let's her tag along to the next location, ba sing se.

Azula slips through guards and protocols as she tries to gain any information she can to help her once they reach the city. Ty lee befriends a guy named jet and his group, the freedom fighters. When he tries to get more than friendship she turns him down and it becomes much more awkward.

Ty lee becomes a street performer and chames everyone she meets as Azula researches the dai lee and how they keep control. After lashing out in frustration ty lee drags her out to enjoy the city's night life.

Azula learns of the presence of the avatar and location of appa. She frees him and sets to work taking control of the dai lee. She let's herself be briefly captured but her plan shifts when katara is thrown in with her. Katara is pissed just being around her and azula plays up a cool kind of annoyance. Katara briefly catches sight of the burns on Azula's back and offers to heal her, only for Azula to freak out and yell at her to stay away, backing against a far wall in a fighting stance. They are saved by the rest if the gaang and ty lee shortly after.

Azula goes back to try and salvage her plan only to be caught off guard by the appearance of her brother and his offer to return to the fire nation. Not willing to lose all possible advantages, she agrees. They battle the gaang, and when they are almost captured azula sends a bolt of lightning at aang, causing them to retreat. Katara can heal him more easily than she can maneuver them out of an execution.

Azula returns to the fire nation with her brother, mai and ty lee, starting the beginning of a large power play between her and her father. They are sent to lo and li beach house. The relationship between the siblings is tense, zuko has always been the child born with nothing who gained everything when his blessed at birth sister lost it all. Azula has always been cruel, but he cant help but let his heart catch on the moments when she's not. ("My own mother thought I was a monster, My father thought i was too difficult to keep around" "Don't let their words blind you, you need to be more careful, zuzu." "I learned the hard way to never turn your back to anyone, and the scars will always be there as a reminder if I need it." )

Azula runs into iroh, who is very disapproving of her presence. He warns her to stay away from zuko and to watch herself while at the palace. Later, zuko comes to her asking about their great grandfather. Upon being pressed he admits that he was sent a mysterious letter. He thought she was going to burn it when he handed it to her but instead the heat from the fire revealed a hidden ink. "Honestly brother, did you ever pay attention at all during lessons?" They find a autobiographical scroll of their great grandfathers life and the secret that their other great grandfather was roku. Azula scoffed at the idea of bloodlines deciding fate and quickly left. But Zuko remained conflicted.

During the day of the black sun Azula confronts Ozai. As iroh and Zuko fight the avatar. She learns that her mother left for zuko's sake and that she was never going to be fire lord. Azula tells him she'll be somthing even better and leaves the palace.

Azula and ty lee follow the gaang to the western air temple. Katara immidprntly attacks but is quickly rendered unable to bend by ty lee. Azula tells them that the only way for them to of gotten out was for Aang to be incapacitated, and she knew katara could heal him. Aang decides they can stay but have to stay distanced from everyone else.

Azula tries to teach aang fire bending but is slowly growing sick while aang is barely able to produce a puff of smoke. Unable to sleep and constantly on edge, it soon affects her bending, sending her spiraling as she loses control on the only consistent power she's ever had. Her and aang journey to find the true source of fire bending to try to help their conditions.

Still sick, Azula is itching to do anything away from the temple. Finding sokka trying to reach the boiling rock to find his father, she decides to go with him as she knows the prison well. Sokka declines but she goes anyway. They dont find his father, but they do find suki. Azula formulates a plan but they postpone when sokka's father arrives.

Azula comes up with a new plan, now reluctant to include sokka. He tells her to trust him but she insists she has no reason to. Her sickness has been getting worse and he tells her she needs to trust him, making her angry. Only when he catches her while they're escaping dies she finally begin to accept trusting him, if only slightly.

(While they're away ty lee tries to convince

Azula goes with Katara to find the man who killed her mother. Azula has no concept of why katara is so upset, which causes her to get angry. But azula tracks the man anyway.

Ember island players- azulas character has the scar across her chest. She's absolutely insane and "not entirely inaccurate, but I'd never come up with such a dumb plan." Shes also heavily implied to be more than close to ty lee, which azula has no reaction to even as the others freak out.

I havent decided the ending, zuko will probably turn to the gaang's side. I'll add more later and maybe write or illustrate a bit.

[anastasiabeaverhousen87]

Praying to the porcelain God

words: 3205

You been told before never to eat from suspicious food stands, especially if you never tried them before or if Kara or Alex haven’t already approved the food. But today you forgot your lunch at home and the food from the cafeteria was not very appealing for you. One of your co-workers saw you make faces at the food options and invited you to eat lunch with them. They were going to get burgers from a new street vendor a couple of blocks away. It was too tempting; you love cheeseburgers and they made it sound like they were really good. So, you said yes. Everyone was going and you were starving.

The following day you woke up feeling a little odd, a bit nauseous but you didn’t think anything about it. You got a chamomile tea instead of coffee and went about your day as usual. Kara was already gone so you just decided to grab a yogurt and granola bar at work.

You finished getting your things ready and were about to leave the apartment when you felt a sharp pain in your stomach followed by cramping. You went to the bathroom and removed your sweater, you felt a swelling of your abdomen and yes, you lower abdomen was inflamed and felt tender to the touch. Another painful cramp made you run to the toilet and you knew you were screwed the moment you sit down.

y/n: “Fuck!!!, ughh it hurts…damn it, Alex is going to kill me” – you didn’t leave the bathroom for a while, you lamented your poor choices while you were sitting in the toilet seat.

 You decided you needed to let someone know you felt like shit and wouldn’t be able to get to work with further incidents, so you called Kara. Kara was softer and if you play your card right maybe she could be the buffer between Alex’s lecturing and you.  You dialed her number and put it on speaker while washing your hands, you were standing Infront of the sink mirror and put the phone down.

 Kara: “Hi sweet girl, what’s up?”

You were about to respond when you felt nausea hit hard, you saw your reflection become green and you ran to toilet once again. Just in time for you to continue emptying your stomach contents, tears sprung into your eyes as the pain in your stomach grew stronger and effort of being violently ill into the porcelain bowl.

On the other side of the line, Kara was listening to you suffering. “Y/N baby? What’s wrong, where are you?” but at not getting a response she ditched everything to fly straight home following your heartbeat.

You stopped vomiting and felt exhausted, you spit into the toilet and flush it.  You use toilet paper to clean you mouth and drop to the bathroom floor exhausted.  Kara enter the apartment looking for you.

Kara: “y/n?, oh my God what’s wrong baby?”- Kara panics at looking at your body sprawled in the bathroom floor all pale and clammy.

y/n: “Ughh best guess? stomach bug. I just puked my guts out, and before that I emptied my bowels in a different way” - you grimace at the explosive diarrhea you went through less than half an hour ago.

Kara: “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry you feel so poorly. Come on, let me pick you up from the floor”- the blonde woman tries to pick you up, but you feel like you’re not quite over.

Y/n: “Kara, I don’t think I can move quite yet and the floor is cold, it feels nice” –you move a little on the floor to get more of the chilly sensation on your hot skin- “I feel like crap sissy” a tear runs down your cheek and you look up to your sister. Kara brushes the tear away and cradles the side of your face. You are about to move again into a sitting position when you feel your stomach painfully cramp again and you roll into a fetal position trying to make the pain lessen somehow.

Kara: “Oh baby, looks like a horrible stomach bug. But I’m so bad at human illnesses let me call Alex really quick, she is the best when it comes to this kind of things.” Kara looks desperate and seeing you so sick on the floor. Kara is now sitting next to you holding your head in her lap and running her fingers through your hair.

Y/N: “You can’t, busy. Summit in New York” – you mumble trough clenching teeth.

Kara: “I know she is busy with work, but she can take a phone call if it’s an emergency. Its her or the ER. Your call.”

y/n: “Alex…” – you much prefer hearing your helicopter sister ask a thousand question that being prod and wait in the Emergency Room.

Kara takes her phone out of her pocket and dials the number; it rings a few times and then it connects.

Alex: “Hey what’s up, everything okay?”- the red head asks immediately, knowing her sisters wouldn’t be calling her if it was not an emergency.

Kara: “No, y/n is sick. I just found her on the bathroom floor all clammy and she told me she vomited a lot. Also, she thinks it’s a stomach bug.” You can´t hear what Alex says on the phone, then Kara turns the phone on speaker “Ok hold on, yes. Ok ok now you’re on speaker now”

Alex: “Hi little one. I’m so sorry you got sick baby and I bet you feel awful but I need to ask you a few things ok?”

You nod, even though Alex cant see you, but you think if you can let her think it’s a stomach bug going around the office you’ll be off the hook and avoid the speech on getting food from street vendors.

Y/n: “Yeah ok…”- you feel to tire so yes, you can answer whatever she wants as longs she doesn’t ask you to move.

Alex: “Ok sweetie, Kara mentioned vomiting, what else are you feeling? Do you also have diarrhea? is she warm or cold Kara?

Y/N: “painful cramps, diarrhea definitely that was first and the puked my guts out. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything left inside my intestines by this point. It was super gross Alex. I feel a little cold now. There’s a bug going on around the office and some of the guys got sick”- you say the last part a bit fast and avoid looking at Kara, then you groan in pain at another cramp.

Kara: “She is all clammy, her cheeks are flush, and she is shivering a little. Also, she is now avoiding direct eye contact…” – Kara raises an eyebrow at you, knowing there’s something you are avoiding.

Alex: – “y/n baby, was your stool a little bloody and watery? Or soft and muddy? , also Kara can you check her abdomen does it look a little swollen and prod very gently please “

y/n: “first one”- You can hear Alex give a long sigh

Kara: “definitely swollen and a bit tender”

Alex: “What did you eat yesterday either at lunch or dinner? And don’t even think about lying to me y/n. I will know if you are lying. That’s not just a stomach bug”

Kara is looking down at you worry on her face, “We ate steak and mashed potatoes with some veggies last night. Lena cooked. and I know I can’t get sick, but Lena was okay. So, what did you eat for lunch baby?”

Y/n: “a cheeseburger” –you mumble

Alex: “Where?”

y/n: “A new place near the building, a few of the guys I work with we got burgers yesterday”

Alex: “when you say ´new place, you mean a well stablished franchise or restaurant? Not a street vendor with doubtful hygiene and suspicious meat or produce, right? -  ughh busted, you thought.

y/n: “Street vendor” – you lamented

Kara: “ohh sweetie. You know better than that”- Kara kept her gentle touch but looking a bit disappointed in you.

Alex: “Well baby, I hope the burger was so amazing and worth it, because what you have is food poisoning and most likely due to contaminated ground beef with E. coli. There is nothing to stop it or make it better faster. Your body will get rid of the bacteria during the following days. Simply needs to run its course.”

Y/N: “No cheeseburger in world is worth this pain or disgusting vomiting or explosive diarrhea. I feel like crap Lexie”- you play your Lexi card, so your big sister takes pity on you. You feel bad enough as it is, you don’t need to hear more disappointment from her.

Alex: “I know baby girl. Its quite uncomfortable and painful. You need rest and avoid over exerting, that will only make your stomach feel worse. Kara, I need you to make sure she drinks lots of fluids, she will keep vomiting and having constant bowel movements in the next couple of days and she can get dehydrated very quickly. Lots of water and Pedialyte . Let her stomach to settle first .  Avoid giving her any solid foods until she is no longer nauseous or vomiting as much. Avoid juices or other beverages with a lot of sugar or sweeteners that can make diarrhea worse. Let’s wait for 24 hours like this without any food and after that we can see if you can ease her back into eating soft and bland food. Call me if she gets worse or if the fever is too high.”

Y/N: “not even hungry anyways…”

Kara: “will do Alex, I’m taking off work for the week I’ll let Lena know. She is out of town as well, but I can handle goober just fine. right kiddo?”

You just try to crawl into Kara’s lap you starting to feel cold and so very tired. “Yeah, I’m cold. You warm”

Alex: “She will sleep a lot, wake her up and make her drink water or fluids Kara, its very important. Make sure her temperature doesn’t go above 102 F. if she get above that range just make her take a bath in lukewarm water or use a cold compress. Let her eat ice chips, NO dairy, no caffeine, no sugar, or fatty food. If she does eat those, she will end up throwing up everything. If temperature goes above 103 take her immediately to the ER. It shouldn’t but keep an eye on that. Seriously Kara call me anytime ok?”  

Kara: “Will do Alex. Thanks, and I’ll call you later once y/n is more comfortable and asleep”

Alex: “Ok, feel better sweetie, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be good for Kara and try to relax and let your body get rid of everything at its own pace. Don’t rush anything. I love you sweetheart. Love you Kara, bye”

Y/N “Bye, love you Lexie”

Kara: “Bye Alex, love you too” – the phone calls gets disconnected. Kara looks down at you. “You think you are ready to move from the bathroom floor to the living room?”

y/n: “can you help me up to rinse my mouth? It tastes like crap ugh”

Kara: “of course. Up we go”- Kara gently stands up with you in her arms and helps you to your feet.

But you get dizzy and grab ahold of Kara’s arms for support

Kara: “hey hey I got you, easy there baby girl”

y/n: “everything its spinning and I don’t feel so g…” but before you can finish the sentence your eyes go wide and Kara see what’s about to happen and helps you to your knees in front of the toilet once again. Kara holds your hair away from your face with her other hand rubbing soothing circles down your spine while providing word of comfort.

You keep vomiting for a few minutes more “ughh I thought I had ridden of everything by now. This Is so disgusting” a few tears leak down your cheeks and Kara just helps you to your feet again and flushes the toilet.

Kara: “I know sweet girl, but Alex did say you will be experiencing vomiting and other stuff for a few days. So, let’s get you rinse your mouth and settle down in the couch so you can sleep this off, okay?”

You just nod and work on getting your teeth brushed and get rid of the nasty taste. Kara helps you to your room to change into your pajamas.

Kara: “Bed or couch?” -you just point down to your bed giving her your answer. “Okay okay” Kara lowers you on your bed and goes to close the curtains so you can rest more comfortably.

y/n: “Hold me?”- you pout pitifully

Kara: “of course baby girl. Let me just get your water and text Lena to let her know I won’t be into work for a few days and also text your boss you’re sick” – I’ll be right back.

y/n:” don’t want water please just hold me, I’m cold sissy”- more tears run down your cheeks, you just want your sister to hold you now.

Kara: “aww chucks, baby you feel real awful don’t ya? Ok here I’ll call later, and you need to drink water in an hour or two. I will wake you up. come here sweet bean”- Kara moves you so you are now lying basically on top of her, you hide your face into her neck and wrap your arms around her. You are leaching on her warmth shamelessly. Kara doesn’t mind at all begins to pat down your back softly like when you were little she needed to calm you down and put to to sleep.

Kara: “Aww my little koala is here. You’re so cuddly baby. I’m sorry you are feeling so poorly but I’ll be here with you all the time. You just close your eyes and go to sleep. You’ll feel better in no time, you’ll see”

y/n: “I’m never eating cheeseburgers again”- you give a yawn and began to drift off. Kara juts chuckles and starts to hum softly a lullaby song she uses since you were a little girl and where having trouble falling asleep or felt sick. You are out in less than 5 minutes.

Kara wait for you to be completely asleep to grab her cellphone she still has on her pocket. Texts Lena you are sick and will call her later, but you are okay just miserable for eating street food. And then sends a quick text to y/n boss, thank Rao she is close friends with y/n otherwise would be a pain to explain why she is texting instead of her employee.

Kara puts the cellphone down on the nightstand and holds y/n more to her chest and begins to run her hand up and down y/n spine and watches her sleep for a little while until herself starts to feel sleepy and decides to take a nap too.

Kara is awaken by your moving around and painful moaning. You curl into yourself as much as you can, trying to wave through the painful cramp in your tummy.

y/n: “It really hurts Kara, it hurts so bad”- you say through clenching teeth and tears sprung into your eyes once again. You feel miserable and in so much pain.  

Kara feels you are getting a bit hotter now and you are sweating too. “Okay little one, I think a bath can help you now, and you need to drink a little bit of water. Come here”

y/n: “No. pelease, no Kara. I just want the pain to stop and sleep again. I don’t want a bath” -you cry softly into her neck

Kara: “I’m sorry baby, but you feel too warm and you will feel better after the bath. I’ll stay with you the whole time.”

Kara picks you up from the bed and takes into the bathroom, she sits you down at the toilet seat while she runs a lukewarm bath for you.

Y/n: “Kara I don’t feel so good…” again you turn green and Kara helps you to sit infront the porcelain bowl once more.

You throw up again, but its mostly bile. Kara holds your hair out of your face while making comforting rubs on your lower back while you continue to be sick. your stomach its already empty from all the previous vomiting and you didn’t really eat anything for breakfast. You feel so weak after the effort it took to vomit once again. You are sweaty and pale and slump into Kara. Kara gently runs a hand down your spine and grabs a small towel to clean off the bile in your lips.

Kara: “sshh …baby come one. Its over now.  Here use this mouth wash to rinse and spit it in the toilet” -Kara then flushes the toilet and strips you off your clothes. She also strips down to her underwear and gets into the tub with you.  She helps you lean into her so she can wash your skin with a soft washcloth and pour the lukewarm water down your body to cool you down. After a while she notices your feel cooler to the touch. Washes your hair gently and lets you lean back onto her. You have always loved the skin to skin contact when feeling sick or unwell. Your sisters have done this many times over the years as well as you mom Eliza. You like feeling their warm skin and listen to their heartbeat. But Kara posses a special feature, she is warmer than any human. You feel her skin on you help you with the chills and you feel yourself drifting off to sleep again.

Kara notices you are almost asleep, and decides you are cool enough now and gently nudges you awake.

Kara: “sweet girl please don’t fall asleep quite yet. Let me dry you off a bit and you need to drink a little bit of water. Then you can sleep again promise”

You grunt in disapproval “Nuh uh … don’t wanna, I just want sleep”

Kara: “ I know sweetie but its not an option, come one”- Kara immediately stands and grabs ahold of you and takes one of the bath robes and uses one on her and then she uses a big fluffy towel to pat you down enough to remove the water excess but leaving your skin a bit damp to help keeping you cool.

She takes you back to your room and sets you on top of the bed and quickly grabs a set of lose shorts and tank top to avoid overheating you.  She then sits you with you back on a pillow resting against the headboard while she speeds to the kitchen to get you ice water.

Kara: “Okay sweetie small sips, just a few smalls sips and that’s it.”- she makes you drink a bit of water and leaves the glass on the nightstand again. You notice she is now wearing a pajamas too and in the nightstand there’s also a bowl with water and a few small towels and an empty plastic bow- “Just in case you feel sick and need to vomit again and avoid a trip to the bathroom”

Y/N:” thank you sissy”- you tear up and your chin trembles.

Kara: “No no don’t cry baby girl. Come here”- she gently lifts you up sits down and then lays you on her side you head resting on her collarbone. She left her soft button- up pajama top mostly open so you can lean into her and feel her skin near the collarbone and upper chest. You settle down and keep listening to her heartbeat.

Kara: “sshh sshh…sweetie just close your eyes and sleep. You’ll feel better soon just sleep now” – once again you feel her gentle touch on your back, down your arms and temple. And that soft voice humming the melody you associate with comfort. you move a little trying to find the perfect spot and just like that in less than 10 minutes you’re asleep.

[oh-theatre]

Consistent

A/n: HI HEY I WROTE FOR THE INTRUALITY BFFS AU I HOPE YOU ENJOY! Uh basically just a few things from across the au, its probs confusing so ask me questions :DD and ill answer. But ye! Let me know if you want more okay BYE IM SORRY ITS BAD ENJOY

Words: 1860

Warnings: Swearing, kissing, therapy mention

Pairings: Logicality, Demus, possible prinxiety

Summary: Just some moments from across the Intruality bffs au!

“Elevate a little higher!” Remus sings, Patton chuckles but nudges him to quiet as weird looks glance their way. Apologizing with his eyes he continues working away, Remus whispers next to him, bobbing his head to the music. “Throw a party in the-” 

“Could you not?” A voice from across the room begs, a smirk hidden by a bite from Remus. Pattons blush quickly appears as he pops his head out from behind his friend. “Oh! Patton” Logan notices, both sharing a rosy tint to their cheeks.

“Just get married” Remus mumbles, pretending to focus on his math. Patton coughs, turning back to his computer, Logan scratches the back of his neck, patting away the sweat with his handkerchief. Roman bites back his own laugh but says nothing. “Play ‘Frozen two’, I wanna listen!” Remus pleads, a sweet affection as his eyes push forward.

“Its your phone and airpods?” Patton hands him the device, a giddy shuffle as Remus starts the playlist. Both instantly feel more triumphant as they continue their work. “Show yourself!” They sing together, fits of laughter as they dance. Logan once more goes to shush the pair but finds himself endeared with the boy. They had come to expect these antics, when all six had been put into the same study hall they knew chaos would ensue. Dee looked on, watching Remus butcher every last note as his own music blasted in his ears. 

“Hey, broadway!” Virgil lashes, Remus turns, an innocent perk to his ears. ���Maybe shut up so Dee and I can focus?” He spits, Remus obliges but only after he sticks out his tongue. Winking slyly at Dee, the more quiet. “God, hes worse than his brother” Virgil mutters, erasing roughly at the problem he had failed to do. 

“Its fun V” Dee admits, his own foot matching the rhythm of his music. “Plus lets be honest, its Friday, no one is actually working” He continues his silly doodles across his homework, knowing he can finish it in two minutes. Virgil huffs but keeps quiet, the distraction too much. 

“Be right back” Patton whispers, taking his laptop towards where Logan and Roman sit discussing their psychology classwork. “Can i?” He wonders, Logan hiding his excitement nods. “I had a quick question about our recipe?” Patton sits, Logan listens. “I was wondering if you wanted to tak-” He pauses as the music in his ear shifts. 

‘I just had sex!’ Rings out loud, Patton's eyes grow wide quickly turning to Remus. His idle face as he conceals his giggles looking at his work. Logan tilts his head but Patton simply removes the device, recovering from his fright.

“Your question?” Logan repeats, Roman mimics his brother with his own dancing. 

“I was thinking we could maybe take it a step further?” Patton proposes, knowing how anxious Logan was about his culinary abilities. “A pastry tree, we start with bigger ones on the bottom and slowly work our way up! So we can experiment and give the judges different options” He finishes, the sweetest of smiles.  Logan wants to argue, find a problem but his plan worked and worked well for their grades. 

“We can try” He decides, a quick grin and Patton leaves once more. Silent punishment to Remus when he returns to his seat. The class continues and ends fast, they all part to lunch, gathering in their separate areas.  

~~~

“You good lego?” Roman asks as he unpacks their chairs from the locker, Logan snaps back from his distant stares into the bleak plaster. He nods taking his seat, his eyes setting upon a very hyper Remus and Patton as they prepare for their meal. “Hey Virge” Roman greets, Virgil and Dee join them, a quadrant of four chairs forms. As usual…

“What's up with nerd central?” Virgil asks, snapping in front Logans face. He shakes his head returning once more. Virgil follows his gaze however, biting back a knowing smile, Patton already sunk into his book as Remus lays his feet across the boys lap. “Ya know, I heard that they were dating” He puts out, Logan snaps his eyes, fear ridden.

“Hah! Please, Remus and Pat?” Roman laughs, sitting down with a shake. “Thats hilarious, Remus and Patton are best friends and anyway Remus has a huge crush on Dee” He adds, munching into his sandwich. Dee rolls his eyes, a soft kick to Romans knee. 

“I know, just wanted to see what glasses over here would say” Virgil teases

“I assure you, I could care less about Pattons romantic status” Logan adjusts his glasses, sitting neatly eating his food. Virgil and Dee share a glance but leave it be. “We should invite them to sit with us, they are our friends” He offers, no qualms could be made. They did consider the pair friends...so what was the problem? 

“Sup losers” Ethan kicks his chair into the circle, forcing his way between Roman and Dee. 

Ah right…

Ethan

~~~

“Easy Remus!” Patton urges watching his friend balance atop the table trying to hang the valentines decorations. The door opens, Logan accompanied by Roman, Dee and Virgil strut in. “Remus get down” Patton asks, Roman chuckles, a sweet squeeze to Patton as the group passes them. “Tell your brother hes being an unsafe” 

“Just say idiot” Roman corrects, Pattons expression changes as does Remus’s. He removes himself from the table, returning to his spot behind the desk in the library. Roman sighs, dragged away by Virgil. Patton sits next to his friend, softly kicking his friends chair.

“You're not an idiot” He assures, Remus nods, burying his head in his arms. “Ro’s your brother, its his job to make fun of you” Patton comments, Remus huffs wishing the insults wouldn't go so far. “Come on rum-rum” He hums, Remus giggles, frustrated with his resilience. “Come help me please and then we can go home, watch a movie, make snacks, build a fort” He says, laying his arms and head on Remus’s back. The idea sounds wonderful, but hes not sure hes up to it...just yet. “Oh and dont forget we have therapy today” Patton reminds, Remus groans. He knows its helpful and he gets to do it with his best friend but the idea terrifies him. “I know you dont want to...but its going to help” Patton encourages

“Fine, on one condition” Remus decides, annoyed with his friends walking eggshells around each other. Patton faces him, furrowing his brows in question. “You have to go up to Logan right now, kiss him and then ask him to be your valentine” Remus dares, Patton squeaks almost knocking over the books behind him. 

“What!” Patton exclaims “You cant be serious! Youre not actually leveraging therapy over my valentines right now” 

“Do it or you'll be flying solo” Remus leans forward, Pattons breath seizes as he swallows looking towards the said target. “Hmm” He sighs, wistfully looking away. Patton shuts his eyes tight but snaps.

“Fine” He barely whispers, Remus cheers pinning delighted in his chair. 

“Have fun!” Remus grins watching Patton walk away, so much hesitance to him. Patton wrings his hands as he approaches the group, Logan spots him a formal smile to the boy. He stands to meet Patton halfway, Patton takes a deep breath. 

“Pat-” No time, he takes Logans tie, only tugging softly as he pulls the boy into a kiss. The absolute silence that falls over the room save for Remus’s disbelief, is frozen. Pattons heart pounds until suddenly Logans melting right into the kiss. 

And its perfect, its absolutely everything Patton had dreamed of

He pulls away in a frantic panic, forgetting what he was doing. Logan clears his throat, dusting himself off. Neither dared to move or speak, they simply stared in delighted confusion.

“Will you be my valentines?” Patton remembers the deal, Remus pounds hard on the desk through his exasperated laughter. “Im so sorry” He rushes, ready to turn away in his shame, feeling a soft hand take his. “Im sorry im not thinking straight” Pattons fear drips out of him, feeling the world grow silent with the simple pound of his breath.

“Ever! He's not straight!” Remus calls out, shushed by Dee. 

“I would love to be your valentine” Logan replies, a soft tone just for them. Roman and Dee erupt into cheers, Virgil nods satisfied as Remus waste no time running into his friend. Embracing the petrified boy, Patton still believes he's dreaming as Remus hugs him. “And you don't have to make a deal, I would have done it regardless” Logan adds, Remus falls to the floor much to happy.

“You told him!” Patton cries, Remus can barely nod. 

“He just texted me” Logan shows, Patton's face surely matched that of a tomato. “I'm glad however, it was taking too long” Logans coy expression only set Patton's heart a flutter.

“Motherfucker!” Remus stands, taking Patton from behind, the teens feeling safe in one anothers hold. 

“Yes good point” Patton murmurs, Logan chuckles. One more quick peck to Pattons cheek before he returns to his friends. “I'm gonna faint”

“Do it coward, you wont” Remus dares, still nuzzling into Patton's shoulder. Patton locks eyes with Dee, tuning out the silly teases from Remus. 

“Dee would you like to be Remus’s valentine?” Patton inquires, Remus falls silent. “Sucks to suck” He jokes, patting Remus as he returns to his position. Dee stands, ignoring the eyes that now watch him. Remus stutters failing to connect a coherent sentence. A hushed conversation and the pair meet in the hallway. Returning moments later, now words spoken but their interlaced fingers said enough. 

Suffice to say, Patton and Remus had a very good first session.

~~~

“One cold brew for you” Remus presents as Patton approaches the locker, Logan accompanying him in the early morning. He takes it, the most grateful look upon his face, Logan yawns. “Goodest of the morns Logan” Remus smiles, Logan nods through his exhaustion

“Coffee starlight?” Patton offers, Logan moans in happiness taking the caffeinated drink. Remus laughs sitting comfortably in his chair, kicking Patton in a rhythm. The boy doesnt mind, hes used to the fidgets and it didnt hurt. 

“Pickles did you do the homework?” Remus questions scrolling through his computer, Patton sets up his chair, taking his coffee from Logan. He gestures towards his own locker, Patton nods a quick kiss goodbye.

“Gonna have to be specific” Patton says, allowing Remus to lay his feet across him. Remus shows his computer screen, Patton checks the work and nods. “You got it” He assures, Remus fist pumps, shutting it happily.  “Wheres Dee?” Patton wonders, going over his schedule for the day. 

“He had an early test so I dropped him off, but we’re having dinner later for valentines” He smiles, Patton smirks. “Happy one year by the way” Remus celebrates

“You too” They cheer their drinks, falling casually into their conversation. The pair joke and laugh through excitement for the day, cheer and the musical. Everything felt right...for now. I mean it was senior year who knows what might happen.

At Least this, was solid and consistent.

Them

Their friendship

[prince-demando]

This is a story about all of you who never got to grow up.

We never forgot. Not a single name. Each and every single one, engraved in that crystal as poison distorted its power and its owner himself. We thought that eternity that the white Moon achieved was an heresy; not because we believed in some god, not because of whoever whispered in our ears reasons to go to war. No, this eternity... was mocking our own fate. Our own children, dying one after another while on another planet, they all lived for eons. But our rage was used against us and that’s what doomed us. Not the poison of Nemesis. Not the war we lost. No, all of this... was caused by a single man’s mistake. These decades won’t change a thing. We know now for sure... we can’t change the past. We can’t just go back and fix our mistakes. Even those who cost lives. Peace costed way more than war but this was our only option left.

That is why we will never forget. We carved your names in every house, every monuments we built. As we made Nemesis a place we could call home with pride and affection... you were in our thoughts. And we entrusted your story to the next generation, who will tell it to the next one... You as well, I swear... you will achieve eternity.

King Demando’s eyes closed for a moment and he left himself fall back in his throne. Even standing was too much for what little energy his body still had. Fortunately, this didn’t show in the hologram: in the record he just finished, the old king appeared as regal and serious as usual, not betraying the state of his health.

His breath erratic, he brought an hand towards his chest. Ah, so soon... he still had so much to do. Just a couple of weeks would do... the new treaty... that tower in the Saphir district... he had to...

As he raised his head, trying to focus his eyes and calm down, he caught a glimpse of green hair, gloved hands waving in his direction. A blink, and next to the silhouette was a young man, much taller, a knowing smirk on his face and then- oh it had been so long- those honest eyes and the slight tilt of the head his brother used to unconsciously do when lost his thoughts.

“You...” he held his breath, afraid that a single move would break whatever spell was cast here.

“Wow! Rocking that beard, Dem’!”

“Rubeus!!”

“What, I mean it. Oh right it’s King Demando now! That does sound better!”

“You were always fit for that title, brother. It does sound good.”

“Right? And look at that crown! I dig the black cape and the crystal staff~! You’re as stylish as always, Prin--- I mean, King Demando!”

“Even with all those wrinkles! Finally caught up the actual age where you can rock white hair...”

“Rubeus!”

“This was a compliment!”

Demando barely blinked. Was this a dream, was he dead? They... as if nothing happened, bickering under his eyes...

“You...” his voice was low first, “You really think it fits me? Being king.”

“Duh. You were the one who were so stuck on being called ‘Prince’ instead because you were not married yet or whatever!”

“I was fourteen Rubeus, give me a break.”

“Yeah as if you never said stupid things too.” Esmeraude laughed behind her fan.

“Oh I did, but I wasn’t the one claiming I’d marry the prince!”

“You little---”

“Actually, if I recall, you did claim that as well at some point, Rubeus.” Saphir noted. While the two others kept bickering, Saphir turned back his attention to the king. “You never got married, brother.”

“Yeah, what was that? All those talks about wanting an heir when we would dream about the future, but decades after you're a bachelor!”

Demando rested the back of his head against the throne.

“I named an heir. There won’t be any fight after I die, because--”

“We know that, but it’s not your kid!”

“... I thought...”

For a second, he thought they were gone. And yet, he still said:

“I didn’t think I had the right to replace the family I lost with another one. I was afraid that too much happiness would make me forget. So I never married anyone. I raised those orphans myself and named an heir, but a child of my own... no, I wasn’t allowed.”

“Who the fuck said that?” Nobody called Rubeus out on his language.

“Probably his own self.”

“It’s too harsh even for you, brother. We never--- “

“It was my fault.”

All of this... was caused by a single man’s mistake.

“You all died because I was stupid, and reckless and young and---”

“But weren’t we all? Stupid, reckless and young. Maybe Saphir wasn’t that stupid...”

“Thanks.”

“But the rest of us...”

Esmeraude nodded. “Cant argue with that.”

“Anyway. We never blamed you.”

Demando hide his eyes behind the back of his hand.

“I could never atone but at least... with my own hands, I... this planet that people love... I worked hard. I wanted to build a place you would be proud of. A place you guys would... want to call your home.”

“We saw.”

“It’s wonderful, brother.”

“It rocks! As excepted from the best King Nemesis ever had!”

Demando coughed and as usual, the taste of blood was heavy in his throat. Yet he was smiling.

“I was so lonely.” he admitted in a shaking tone, “I thought it would drive me mad. I just--- “

For a few seconds, their voices were gone and he was alone. The old man, in a panic, grabbed his scepter and left his throne, only to find himself in front of the last person he was excepting to see here. Behind her, they were all back.

“Good work, Demando.”

“You...”

Ah, this was probably a dream. She couldn’t be here. But... at the same time, neither could they.

“Does that mean... I can finally join them?”

We never forgot. Not a single name. Each and every single one, engraved in that crystal as poison distorted its power and its owner himself.

“What are you talking about? They never left you!” Sailor Moon raised her hand and a crystal similar to the one in his scepter appeared in front of Demando’s chest. Purple eyes widened, and for the first time in years his vision got blurry because of tears.

“Ah... it was that simple. As usual, I don’t see what’s under my eyes if you’re not here to point it out.”

His eyelids felt heavy and his breath shorter. He was exhausted, barely able to stand. Despite that... there was no pain anymore. Her smile was making everything easier. Brighter.

“Can I rest now?” he dared to ask.

“Of course.” she offered her hand, “When you’ll wake up, will you tell me what you dreamed of?”

“Sure.”

“Sleep well, Demando.”

“Sweet dreams, Pri- King!”

“Get plenty of rest, brother.”

---------------------------------

King Demando was found dead that day, sitting on his throne, both his hands folded over his scepter. At first, the general of his guard thought he was resting like he used to. Aged 78, he was the first king of Nemesis to ever live that old. His last hologram, and everything he built from his hands, would carry the legacy of those who called themselves the Black Moon Clan for centuries.

You as well, I swear... you will achieve eternity.

[angstalottle]

I See You

Part 1:

The life of a superhero really isn't that glamorous. Everyone acts like being in a team means you always have each other back and are the best of friends. And while that is true to a point people love to forget just how annoying other people can be. Lance had been the newest recruit to the Paladins, he was technically only there for surveillance since he didn't really have a combat oriented power but after proving his skill as a sniper time and time again he was finally brought on as the team's eye in the sky. “Ok team the plan for the mission is simple.” Shiro began pointing to the screen with his cybernetic arm. Considering he was a cyborg it was kinda hilarious to have spent the last ten minutes watching him try and fail to get the computer working and eventually gave up to let Pidge take control, they all had the feeling that even if she wasn't a technopath she still would have been the best option for him. “Me and Keith will enter the compound at point B while Hunk covers point A in case anyone tries to escape. We need this to be a stealth mission so no busting down the walls ok buddy?” Hunk chuckled nervously “ill try, I'm sorry again for that truck I swore it was going to hit a kitten.” Shiro sighed “yeah I know, but maybe tossing it in the air wasn't the best option at the time.” he cleared his throat deciding to change the topic before they got too far off track “Lance you will be stationed on the clock tower covering me and Keith.” Lance gave him a lazy two finger salute “no problem boss, what would you guys do without your sniper.” “Exactly the same as normal without having to listen to you in our ear.” Keith huffed a small puff of fire came out his mouth. “Oh please, you would be dead a hundred times over without me hot head.” Keith raised an eyebrow “and whys your superpower again? Oh yeah, you got good eyesight right?” Lance couldn't help but touch his glasses. His powers let him see far away and even zoom in onto small details. The problem was that the further he looked the worse his close up vision got. The medic said that he can't push himself much past 100 meters otherwise he would lose his sight entirely. “Shut up Keith you know he only needs those things because you keep running off.” Lance smiled at his best friend, never doubt that Hunk will be there to defend him. “Yes thank you for reminding me Hunk” Shiro pressed a button and a blue circle surrounded the map “50 meters, don't leave the circle or Lance cant keep an eye on you.” Keith didn't look happy but Lance didn't really care, they were off in less than an hour and he had to get ready.

Lance would be lying if he said he wasn't excited as he set up his rifle. Some may think watching down from an old abandoned clock tower is boring, but to Lance, it was like playing the most exciting video game. He carefully took off his glasses and placed them in his case as he zoomed in on Keith and Shiro checking around them “Your clear to enter.” “Rodger,” Shiro replied. “And here I thought my name was Lance.” He could see how they rolled their eyes but decided not to humour him and instead entered the building. They were lucky that large windows lined the top of the walls so Lance could watch everything instead of having to shoot through the concrete like he had to in the past. “I count seven hostiles, five to your right Shiro rest on your left Keith.” Lance pulled the trigger on his gun “light em up boys.” he smirked as the light bulb exploded above them and the targets began to panic. It went quickly after that in flashes of red and purple blasts, it was particularly amusing to watch one try to make a run for it right into the broad chest of Hunk. Poor guy was tossed back inside like a rag doll. After ten minutes the building was clear. “Lance, can you see the package?” Shiro asked trying to look where he believed Lance was and instead missed entirely and was more focused over his right shoulder. “Negative, there's a back office out of view check there.” Lance shrugged as they did just that. He was so focused on Shiro and Hunk entering the room that he almost missed the unmistakable silver briefcase flash on the back of a motorbike that sped away from the building. “Purple motorbike heading north has the case!” Lance yelled. “I'm on it” Keith blasted through the wall and took off running. Keith really was a sight to behold, his fire powers all flash and destruction making him so powerful but also so beautiful. Lance hated to admit it, but he could watch Keith for hours. However thanks to Keith speed and the thrill of the chase Lance didn't realise he had long since left the safe premature until the familiar ache returned to his eyes. “Keith buddy you're going too far I can’t follow you.” Lance hissed pulling his vision back to normal as he rubbed his eyes with a hiss of pain. “Thank don't, in a big boy I can look after myself.” “Sure you can cowboy, just try not to get yourself killed without me.” Keith didn't answer but then again Lance didn't expect him to. Judging from the sounds he was fighting and though Lance wanted to watch he knew from the static from the coms that Keith was well beyond his limit. He was content with just listening to Keith kick the bad guy's ass. Then Keith cried out in pain. “Keith?” No answer. “Goddammit Keith” Lance hissed as he looked around for any new perch he could get to. Anyway, he could get closer so he could help. There was nothing. This was an abandoned industrial area, they had been lucky to even find the clock tower. Lance bit his lip unsure what to do. Then Keith screamed and lance made up his mind. He steadied himself as he pushed his eyes to where he last saw Keith, then further and further until the colours began to dull. Keith was laying in an alleyway being kicked over and over again in the ribs. Lance took a breath ignoring how his eyes burned. He took aim as hot liquid ran down his cheeks. He fired as he blacked out.

Keith thought he was going to die. This guy was fireproof and no matter how many times he blasted him nothing happened. The guy was tougher and stronger than Keith and despite being a hell of a fighter ended up on the floor being beaten to a pulp. Then the guy stopped and fell to his knees a bullet hole in his neck. “Man Lance I gotta admit that was a good shot” Keith chuckled as he struggled to his feet. “Lance?” He was met with silence, his com had been damaged in the fight. Sighing Keith began the task of returning to his team and prepared himself for a lecture from Shiro on going off plan.

He expected to find his leader standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and a stern expression on his face. He never imagined to find him with blood covering the front of his shirt and a horrified look on his face. “Shiro? Oh God, what happened are you ok?” Shiro nodded numbly “its not my blood…” “Hunk?” Keith whipped his head around unable to see the friendly giant “did he get hurt?” “It wasn't hunk” No. Oh God no please not Lance. “W-what happened? He was supposed to be safe in his perch.” “You happened Keith.” Shiro muttered, “you knew to stay in the perimeter and despite that, you still ran off.” “I had to” Keith tried to defend himself but the next words to leave Shiro's mouth left a sense of cold dread in the pit of his stomach. “You were more than 200 meters away! That was twice Lance’s limit!” Shiro snapped grabbing Keith by the collar “because you decided to run off and play lone wolf Lance had to push himself too far, I found him bleeding from the eyes and passed out in a pool of his own blood.” Keith felt like he was going to be sick “w-where is he now?” Shiro let go of him “He’s heading back with Hunk, their performing emergency surgery… maybe they can save his eyes but… Keith, I want you to understand something. Even though you believed you were doing the right thing you didn't save any civilians or prevent any world ending event. You stopped a drug lord's address getting away. Something we could have done another day. Because of you, Lance may never see again.” Keith took off running. He had to get to Lance.

[sunnyvaiprion]

You can give advice? O.O PLEASE TELL ME YOUR STRATEGY FOR BRAVE VERONICA.

Brave Veronica, hm? Well, personally my strategy is this guy walking in her range and taking 0 damage from one to four times (depending on dance and speed), then kills her/holds her attention while others can get the Aether. It actually works but… this answer may (more like, it will) not suit like… the majority? So here’s other options:

 (read more since it’s another long post) 

 First of all, what do we need to do with B!Vero? Her huge range will make it difficult to (safely) kill her from a distance, so logical decision would be bait her closer to your team and kill her there… and she, like all staves, has a dazzling effect… BUT. You dont have to kill her the exact second she approaches you. It’s very possible to survive one-two (or even three-four, if she gets repo’d back and danced) of her attacks without much damage and kill her on the subsequent player phase very easily, because of how frail she is near enemies, and all her attacks were charging your special... 

“Normal” Veronica of a player, who put her in a def team cause she’s “meta” has 49 attack and 36 speed (neutral IV + 3att A). “Super-invested” (+att IV, +10, atk/spd solo A, AND dragonflowers) Veronica has 60 attack and 47 speed… Usually you’ll be seeing something in-between. With only 54 attack on average and no access to offensive specials - that’s something a good number of heroes can take. If baited at max range - she is also away from her team - no goads/drives.

Note: with her abysmal HP - any visible buff she can receive is an invitation to panic ploy. Since there’s a lot of panic tools in AR now (Panic ploy users, panic manor, Aversa in particular) visible buffs on defensive teams arent popular (unless they use a rally/restore+ trick, watch out for that, but that’s -1 dancer turn already), but if she has a visible - you can panic it, go ahead. She has silly res too so all other ploys like atk ploy will easily land too. It applies to every other enemy too, but Veronica in particular is easily ploy-able. 

What heroes we can use for this?

Disclaimer: I’m not saying these are the only characters that can be used to bait and kill Veronica, but rather something popular/requiring lower investment.  

Eir. Just free vanilla Eir. She was inroduced as a pretty much forced memeber of every raiding party during light season and beyond, and she has pretty strong stats and skills to deal with Veronica. Her base res with Lifjaberg is 34 (can be further buffed by allies and/or S slot), her B skill effectively halves damage dealt by staff users, and even that damage will be partially (or fully, since far from every Vero will double Eir) healed after combat. There isnt much Veronica can do against Eir in any given situation. I personally know people who were literally saved from doom when they found out Eir can bait Veronica. 

Raven mages are very effective against Veronica, since she cant inherit Cancel Affinity, like some sly archers do. Raven mages with Triangle Adept are hard counters to Veronica, since they needs only around 35 res to take 0 damage from Veronica (or close to that) even after she applies her staff effect, and in turn need very low attack (like 40) to OHKO her on their phase.

  Any mage you inherit a raven tome and TA onto can fit the bill, as long as they have at least ~20 starting Res on them (Res tactic/class buff on ally + Distant Defence SS will bring their res to 35 range) which isnt too much. Gronnraven+  users are preffered meta-wise, because along with Veronica and other colorless threats, they will be able to take on blues like Reinhardt. But other colors are viable too! After all people like Lilina and Lewyn exist too. 

 Units that naturally come with Raven tomes are: Cecilia (I used her to cheese through lower tiers, where VeroLynHardt was a constant thing, pretty solid unit), F/M!Robin (both have prf raven which will help a lot in tactic teams that dont have many spare slots for visible buffs, although F!Robin is preferred for Green color), newly refined Sophia, Lyon and Henry (although less reliable due to very low attack. might get a refine soon). But again - any mage with above 20 res (I’d suggest also having above 20 def too for archer/dagger purposes) can run a Raven (PA!Inigo is a popular choice, since he is green and can also double as a dancer) 

Magic tanks (of any color again) will have little problems baiting Veronica with little harm too, since dedicated PP mages actually hurt more than her (but can be killed with counterattacks ay). There’s a big variety of heroes that would fit in this category. My boy Julius actually sits here, with his atrocious magic damage soaking abilities, but I’d also note ranged heroes like Leo, Micaiah, Deirdre, Kliff, F!Morgan, Innes, Felicia, W!Ceclila, built enemy phase, and others, whose weapons directly reduce damage or have a lot of res, making stacking res an option. Double distant def and guard bow/serpent tome with a visible res buff from an ally will bump up your res by so much that having 30 base may entirely/almost nullify damage from Veronica. 

While ranged units typically have more res, Dragon units are often built into mixed tanks with lots of defences, and 4* ones are also popular merge projects so chances are you might have one merged. W!Fae is a res monster, Myrrh with her prf hold a special place in my heart, others with ~30 base res like Fae can be brough up and used as mixed/res tanks too, which should cover Veronica. Other melee units with high res and useful skills like Sheena and Fjorm can be of use too, even if some of them dont run DC/DC weapons because you arent counterattacking anyway.  BUT if you have a wall between her and your melee unit - you’ll have to use something ranged to actually go for a kill. (not that it’s too bad)   

Head-on method - Nailah and her Null-C-Disrupt. Extra and premium, but … also worth mentioning.

Of course each different situation requires a unique approach in terms of positioning, sometimes you can go around some buildings and assassinate Veronica first, sometimes you can avoid combat with Veronica on first combat phase and bait someone else, so on so forth, but here’s just some general ideas that may help. 

Also another note: Double savage blow (that Veronicas often run) doesnt affect the target, so if you dont put anyone within 2 spaces of Veronica’s target - no one will take splash damage. Eir’s C skill heals everyone as long as they took equal amount of damage, so sometimes it may be not that bad. 

About Restore+: if enemy Veronica has Restore+ and her ally in range has any negative status effect - she will prioritize healing them instead of attacking someone she cant kill (or significantly damage, unfortunately I dont know the details but the idea is that it’s not a unit you want to bait her with). You will need to get the enemy formation moving your way by killing/damaging or baiting someone else, unless number of enemy units with negative status effects (excluding veronica) She will start healing statuses even before you trigger the rest of enemy movement so be careful for her not to catch you off guard with shifted range, because a dancer will dance her after she heals! The rest of enemies wont move before you interact with them anyway. This applies to any staff user with Restore+.    

I hope you find something that you like using and Veronica stops being a problem!!  

[chryseumaureus]

/rant about university admissions and life

i am just really tired of everything. for the last 3 months, i have been mentally dragged from a point of hope to a point of desperation daily in and out, just waiting for university admissions results. i am generally anxious by nature and while i never had a panic attack, it doesn’t mean that my heart isn’t palpitating quickly or my brain isn’t busy trying to run through every variable and factor that could compromise my application.

didn’t intend on applying for university this year but several people around me insisted and like the person i am, i am easily influenced by my environment. from someone who did not care about whether i got a place, i changed into someone who constantly checks her inbox daily to see if there is any hope in getting a chance at an interview for university admissions.

nope. first a rejection from ntu, then nus and smu. i am tired. half my brain is telling me that not securing a spot in either of those universities means that i am not as intellectually inclined as those who entered; not as capable. my friends tell me otherwise and thats where the other half of my brain tells me that it’s alright to not receive a place in the universities because i can always try again next year. however, what are the odds that i will receive an offer next year? what guarantee do i have that i will receive an offer the following year? that aside, i graduated with a diploma in business studies and something i really regretted is not having the foresight in 2016 to choose something else. to explore other options. i don’t regret my 3 years, but some days i just wished there was a way for prospective students to try everything, y’know? a day in the life of someone who does science, engineering, designing, business, music, etc. i hate that singapore has this stigma that students must always score all As in order to be SMART, to be CAPABLE. our education system is good, i admit, but that insane amount of stress on every student to do well and the feeling of falling behind or not being good enough when we DON’T DO WELL sucks big time and is seriously detrimental to our physical and mental health.

there is also the stigma where not having a degree equates not being able to find a job. go overseas to study? study in a private institution? i would, but i am poor. it would take so long to earn the amount needed for overseas education, not that it is really a choice since i have to take care of my aging parents. private institutions? there is a stigma that those aren’t as recognised in the local scene. do i believ that? not really. am i influenced by it? yes. ._.

i thought i could build a foundation in business with my diploma, and take up a degree in other fields. guess not.. currently second guessing pursuing business as an education. right now, i want to simultaneously do everything and do nothing. nothing because i have no direction in which i want to pursue. everything because by trying everything, i will know how it is like to pursue the fields of my interest and i can make a definite choice in what i want to do. 

in the case i pursue a business education, what is the guarantee that i can find a job? what meaning can i find in my job? inititally i took the course also because i wanted to explore other areas of business, see if there is anything else i like besides accounting. the only other thing i liked studying was marketing/marketing communications, design (user experience design) and business analytics. i learnt that anything that does not hold my interest likely translates into a bad grade because i just could not bring myself to understand it. then i went for a finance internship and completed regretted it and never wanted to do finance or accounting because it was so mind numbingly boring. so really: why the hell did i do a diploma in business? i don’t have any legitimate skills aside from presentations and calculations. i only wished i knew this in 2016, so that i would not have chosen this course.

i also wished i stopped following everyone’s whims. follow where people go. i am not a person who stands out and i never had much independence and i realise that now. i need to do something for myself; fight for whatever i choose to believe and study in. except i am so extremely lost and i can totally hear my brother chiding me in my brain “i told you so. you should have gone to JC. see la now you don’t even have a place to go” (don’t even know if that is what he will actually say, given his personality, or if its just my brain hearing his contempt from previous interactions and warping it.) anyway, i am so lost and confused and i don’t know where to direct my attentions at. i just hope for once, i make the right decisions. people say that everything you do requires a reason and that reason must have solid backing. sorry - i’ve always relied on my intuition and i just hope this time, it is one of those times i read my intuition right. because i don’t know what i will do if it doesn’t.

feels like i am 3 years late in doing this. very frustrated with everything. i know i can do great things as long as i put my mind to, but i only have how many years in my youth to experience real life and i cant spend it trying everything because i would not have the finances to do it, or to focus and excel on that one thing. i can’t do everything but i sure have a heck ton of shit i wanna try. i just dont know how or where to start. if you have some advice, dm me or reply to this. thank you for even reading part of this - i probably sound very annoying and whiny...

had another thought: how do i find a career that gives me a good pay, gives me purpose and is helpful to the society? i don’t frelling believe i can’t find my dream job. i’ll just have to be patient in hunting for it, don’t i? :”)

[toobusylyintomyself]

Sinister ǀ 03

A/N: Here is the third part of Sinister! Hopefully this will clear up any questions you have about anyone’s roles in the story. It’s a longer chapter, but gives a lot of background information as to what exactly is going on with Y/N and Taeyong’s involvement specifically.

On a side note, requests are open! The groups I write for are posted, so feel free to send in requests if you have any~ Now back to the story

Genre: SupernaturalAU, Arts School AU, Romance

Pairing: ReaderxDemon!Taeyong , ReaderxDemon!Ten

Morning rolled around uneventfully after you woke randomly during the night. Johnny was the first one up, quietly shaking Ten awake and motioning for him to come with him. Despite his silent protests he followed the taller male away, surprised when Johnny also grabbed Taeyong to bring him along. Once the three boys were in the hall Johnny was the first to talk. “We’re going to go get breakfast down the street for everyone, and we’re going to talk about what the hell happened yesterday.”

Ten could feel it in the way his friend spoke, knowing well that his tone was not one to be talked back to. Taeyong, however, was more stubborn and quick to lash out. “I’m not going anywhere until she’s awake and I know she’s alright.”

Johnny laughed humorlessly, a sound that sent chills down the other twos spines. “I wasn’t giving you an option. You think I don’t want to be beside her right now? I’ve spent my entire life with her. She means more to me than anything in this world, which is exactly why we need to talk about this.” He started down the hallway, “Come on, it’s a long walk and we have plenty to discuss.”

Taeyong and Ten scurried after Johnny, trying to catch up with much shorter legs, causing Ten to call out to him. “Johnny, stop walking so fast!”

Immediately the taller boy froze, causing Ten to smack directly into his back, a dry chuckle coming from both him and Taeyong. “Caught up now?” He snickered before resuming his walk down out of the building and into the courtyard outside. “It’ll take about 20 minutes to walk there, I hope everyone is comfortable.”

The others mumbled their agreement, walking in a line with Johnny in the center. They remained silent until they hit the gates at the end of campus, where Taeyong decided to ask what exactly it was that Johnny wanted to discuss. “I get that you’re worried about Y/N – we all are – but how is this going to help anything.”

Johnny noticed that he’s gotten fidgety as he brought the topic up. “You’re a demon, right?” He tried to sound as casual as possible about the topic, though judging by the way Ten paled out he must have failed.

Taeyong cocked his head to the side, a little annoyed, but curious as to what Johnny was saying. “Is that really the best you’ve got?” He wore an amused expression, glancing over to Ten, who looked terrified for his friend, causing him to laugh quietly. “You can calm down, it’s not like I’m going to hurt him.” Ten visibly relaxed, slowly regaining some of the color in his face.

Johnny smirked, spinning on his heel to walk backwards in front of Taeyong. “Royal demon, more specifically one of the seven princes of hell if I’m not mistaken?” Taeyong raised an eyebrow as the taller male continued to speak. “Hence why Ten almost had a panic attack when I referred to you as simply a ‘demon’. The princes have a tendency to be a bit hot headed when not addressed properly to my knowledge.” Johnny turned back around, facing the empty sidewalk ahead of him. “I’m a marid, I can know anything I want.” The group approached a small café that many of the students frequented, though it was currently dead, thanks to Johnny’s prior planning.

Before they made it all the way to the door, Taeyong couldn’t help his curiousity. “What is a marid anyway?”

“Glorified genie.” Ten choked out, pretending to cough.

Johnny held up his hand, effectively silencing him and shooting a glare his direction. “Marid are a type a djinn. Well known for being the strongest of all the different djinn. We can grant wishes, but we aren’t bound to any objects or humans. It’s difficult to control a marid and can go extremely wrong. We have free reign over magic, which makes us ‘scary’, I guess.” He groaned a bit with the use of the word.

Taeyong quieted down, unsure what to even say in response other than a brief ‘oh’ that escaped his lips after. He felt a strange sense of comradery with Johnny in the way that people were innately afraid of him. It was unfortunately someone he related to far too much. Johnny put an order in with the single waitress waiting at the register, not another soul in sight, as if it were entirely normal. She promptly turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving them completely alone.

The three of them sat in a booth, Johnny and Ten facing Taeyong. Johnny turned to Ten beside him. “Do you know why Y/N actually fainted?” He asked softly, trying to coax his younger friend to talk again after he had frightened him earlier. Ten simply nodded in response, quickly canting his gaze to Taeyong who sat stiffly against the bench. Johnny let out a sigh “Right. You can talk Ten, you know I wasn’t going to hurt you.” He nodded again, but still kept his gaze down.

Taeyong cleared his throat, grabbing both of their attention. “It was my fault, I should’ve paid more attention. I just found it strange that she held up so well around two royals at the same time… I know that it creates an energy draining field, please don’t start that lecture.” He leaned his head back. “I was planning to take care of her immediately after, but she seemed relatively fine until that dance class.”

Johnny couldn’t help the groan that escaped his throat. “You don’t really get to say that. You haven’t known her for even a day. What could you possibly have noticed in that short of a time, honestly?” He hadn’t meant to sound condescending, but he couldn’t help himself when it came to you. You’re safety and livelihood was his first priority.

“I’ve been watching her since the day she was born, along with half the royal court. Did you think it was a coincidence I showed up?” Taeyong retorted without missing a beat. “I have watched and protected her since day 1-“ a hint of some indecipherable emotion caught the words in his throat. He took a second to breathe and calm himself. “I can tell when something is wrong with her, is all I wanted to say.”

Johnny and Ten both looked at him in shock, a unison “why?” falling from their months. Taeyong glanced out of the large windows in the café, shrugging noncommittally. “I don’t see how that information affects you.”

Ten practically growled in response, but was immediately silenced by the glare the other two shot him. He settled for a quiet huff. “I don’t get why I need to be here if I’m not allowed to talk.”

The air felt tense surrounding the boys, no one sure how to break it at this point. Eventually, it was Taeyong who spoke up. “Look, no one here wants her to get hurt, right?” The other two nodded in response. “Then we’re on the same team. Not everyone is, and they will come.” He glanced around, feelingly slightly paranoid. He knew no one would be able to protect you alone, but he also had no idea when he needed to start really worrying, just that it would be soon.

Ten must have picked up on his unease because he moved over to rest his hand on Taeyong’s shoulder. “Then we protect her together.”

The gesture shocked Taeyong, finding himself instinctively flinching away from the contact. He noticed the fear in Ten’s face from his reaction, quickly moving to apologize and assure him that he simply hadn’t expected the contact, not that it bothered him in any way, placing a hand on his shoulder with a sheepish smile. “Thank you.” Trying not to overthink the situation he pulled Ten into a firm embrace. “I’m glad you’ll help.”

Ten hugged him back shyly as Johnny stifled a laugh from the other side of the table, earning a glare from both of them. “So we help you keep her safe, but from what exactly? Why is she in danger? Last I checked she was fine before you showed up.” There was a hint of venom in his voice that he wasn’t doing much to hide.

Taeyong released the younger demon, turning back to Johnny. “You’re kidding, right?” He deadpanned, once again wearing the stony expression from the first time they’d seen each other. Johnny froze, slightly concerned by the sudden shift in mood. “You call her your best friend and you don’t even realize what she is?” He turned to face Ten. “You know, at least, right?”

Ten nodded in response, looking over to Johnny. “She’s the daughter of Abaddon.”

Johnny paled, nervous with the situation. He knew who you were, but it shouldn’t have mattered. Children of the knights didn’t have powers, not unless- “Abaddon is dead?”

[brendajhensonblog]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Click on the video above to watch Episode 224 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

 Announcement

Bradley: Okay. Now we’re live. This is screwing me up. Hey everybody! This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts Episode 224. It is February 20th, 2019. I’m sorry I don’t have my camera today. For some reason Google Hangouts decided it did not wanna recognize my camera at the last minute. You guys would probably appreciate the fact you don’t have to look at my face. I’ve only got two people on with me today because Adam and Hernan are out at the Funnel Hacking Live event. They’re out having fun while we’re hard at work.

Let me say hi to Chris. What’s up, Chris? How are you?

Chris: Doing good. Great to be here.

Bradley: Marco.

Marco: I made it, man. I’m here.

Bradley: Good. I don’t really have any announcements specifically, except that we’ve got a Mastermind webinar tomorrow, for those of you that are in the Mastermind. We’re gonna be covering several things that I’ve been tracking for the last few weeks now as far as doing some off-page tests for ranking GMBs, doing a whole bunch of different types of off-page tests and isolation.

In fact, let me se, for one moment, I’ve got pause the screen for a minute. Marco, do you have any announcements while I do that?

Marco: No. But I’m so glad you’re gonna talk about this because my write-up for the Mastermind, which I’m finishing up today by the way, is about that, testing, whether it’s single variable testing or whether it’s testing in isolation, or what it actually is that you’re trying to do.

What you’re trying to do is gauge whether there’s an effect. You’re not trying to show that something doesn’t work. It’s crazy going in and trying to test that something doesn’t work. The test should be, what does it do? You should get the data. The data should speak for what the tests. You’re testing a variable, but does the variable move the needle? No, it doesn’t. Okay, onto the next thing, which is what you’re doing, you’re testing all of these different variables and you’re isolating so that you can do whatever it is that you’re doing to each one.

I’m really glad that you’re talking about this. I’m gonna go a little bit more in-depth in the Mastermind newsletter about testing and how people are being misled by so-called, all of these are expert testers that don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So I’ll just leave it at that.

Bradley: Yeah. I’ve been tracking, well, about a month ago was. It was around January 21st when I started setting these tests up. I’m testing every one of these methods and isolation. In other words, they’re GMB or Google My Business profiles that had the initial on-page stuff done and what my standard operating procedure is for optimizing a new profile, and then from there, all I’m doing is specifically one of these methods.

I’m testing across multiple properties per methods so that I can see if we get positive results or negative results or no results on any one method, I want to see if that occurs across more than one property for the same type of method. Because if we get positive results on two properties, if I’m only doing two tests or testing on two locations per method and they’re both positive, then that’s a really good indication that that’s a viable method or something that moves the needle.

Like he says, that’s actually funny you said that because that’s the title or the subtitle of the actual test that I’m doing Which Method Moves the Needle the Most? These different tests that I’m doing, and like I said, if a positive result occurs on two properties, two separate locations, then I know that it’s a good method to use and that it will continue … It will be duplicatable, in other words.

I will obviously set it up and see if I can repeat it again across other properties. If I get two no changes, or two negative changes, then it’s probably the case also. But if we get one that’s positive and one it’s neutral, or one that’s positive, one is negative, then it’s obviously gonna have to require further investigation.

So that’s essentially what I’m doing. I’ve tried several these things and I’ve got some really super good results back with one of these methods in particular. I’m not gonna tell which one here, guys, you got to join a Mastermind for that. But I’m gonna be covering it tomorrow because I’ve got really, really good results from one method in particular. It’s actually one of the easiest methods and that’s what I love about. I’m pleasantly surprised. Actually, I was not surprised that the method works because of what I know about that method, but I’m glad that it’s one of the easier methods for any one of us to achieve, or to implement, I should say.

Again, I’m gonna be covering that in the Mastermind webinar tomorrow as well as I’m also gonna be covering some questions about PR stacking from some of our members. I’m also gonna be talking about setting up display ads for remarketing using the Google Display Network because it’s a much, much easier process now and it’s very, very effective.

So that’s what I’ve got to tease with for tomorrow. It looks like we don’t have that many questions. But I’m gonna get right into it.

Chris: I got a question, man.

Bradley: Go ahead.

Chris: I scrolled through my Facebook feed today, people are literally scared of GMB and Google all of a sudden. You just were talking about, yeah, which method is the most potent or the biggest needle move of them. Anybody, you wanna share your insights on that, Marco or Bradley?

Bradley: I’ll start. Yeah. Armageddon is coming, right? The sky is always falling, Chicken Little type stuff. By the way, that screenshot that you’re looking at there, guys, that’s the tease for tomorrow’s webinar in Mastermind because those are the movements that I’ve seen occur just in the last few days from that one particular method I’m gonna be covering.

Anyways, Marco and I, well, we’ve been around long enough to know that shit changes all the time. It’s SEO. For the last several months we’ve been pushing really hard on GMB stuff because it’s been working so well and I’ve been saying all along it at some point Google’s gonna shut it down. I don’t necessarily think that existing properties are gonna be taken down. What I think is gonna happen, and this is just my assumption, guys, my educated opinion about this or my educated guess, prediction I should say, is that it’s gonna become damn near impossible to register new GMB profiles. I think that’s how it’s gonna be shut down.

That’s why I’ve been pushing for people to build, build, build for the last several months, and to build your ass off and to build a team for scaling your build processes so that you can secure as many location as possible prior to what I think is going to happen, which is going to be damn near impossible to register new businesses.

I don’t know exactly what they’re gonna do to shut it down, but it’s likely going to be something like having to take photographs at a storefront or at the business location. It could also be requiring … Again, guys, just speculation, but it could also require you to send corporate documents in or something that shows proof of address with the business name on it, so like a utility bill or something. I know because I’ve actually had to call Google Support before to get help moving a legit business for a client of mine to get the Maps listing updated. That was one of the things required, was a bank statement, the account details and everything could be blurred, but it had to show the company name and the mailing address and all that.

Those are things that I assume or that I predict are going to happen. But we always find workarounds and we always find ways to continue to make money. That’s really the name of the game, guys. Don’t freak out. Don’t go into panic mode. Relax. Know that you’re gonna have other options. We’re gonna figure them out eventually and other people will figure them out as well, and you can too. But it’s about keeping your head cool and realizing that this is a cat-and-mouse game that we play and that’s the business that we’re in.

Marco, what are your thoughts?

Marco: I get a little bit more basic, man. Yeah, I don’t care. Why? I say basic because there’s basic web principles. The foundational stuff that we teach is based on web principles, right? We’re in the semantic web. We all know that, right? We talked about ART, activity, relevance, trust and authority, and how to generate all that. But there’s foundation of principles. You can only code one way. If you write spaghetti code, you’re writing garbage that nobody’s ever going to be able to tell what it is if someone needs to come and take over. So there’s international standards that are set.

There are basic principles where the guidelines are not set by Google. Google’s Terms of Service and Google’s guidelines are determined by Google, but coding standards are set by other people. In order for Google to mess with that, Google has to go and push at a higher level where there’s a bunch of other people pushing back. I’ve been talking about this since Semantic Mastery began. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Correct, but there’s others on the web. Google can’t just go and do whatever the fuck they want to do. There’s some stuff that they just can’t touch.

While that goes on we’ll just keep going and getting the results that we get. That’s what you saw. The test that you’re shown, which is beautiful because it’s based on basic foundational principles, that’s what we work from. Now all of these other stuff, yes, they’re hacks, guys. We manipulate. That’s our job. We’re in this to make money. We’re not here to make people happy. We’re not here to make Google happy. I’m in this to make money. I don’t care. They can’t tell me that it’s wrong to do what I’m doing, well then, Google should go and change their whole scheme for making money online because it’s all based on lies and it’s all based on moving people into their funnel and keeping them there as long as possible; they don’t care how they do it, they just want to do it. Well, that’s fine. That’s their business model. I have mine.

Just to get back to this, basic principles, they still work. Why? Because everyone has to adhere to the same standards no matter what. That’s my rant for today – well, hopefully.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree with that. Let’s get into questions, guys. Not a whole lot of questions and I’m surprised. Maybe it’s this new platform that’s scaring people off, the discus platform. All right.

Chris: The sky is always falling.

Bradley: What’s that?

Chris: The sky is always falling. Some people say it’s …

Bradley: Chicken Little, yeah. Okay. Ben’s up. He says, “Hey Bradley, thanks for our call last Thursday.” Okay. Ben’s one of our Mastermind members and I’d been doing Mastermind calls. I opened up an opportunity for our Mastermind members to schedule a 30-minute call with me. It started the first week in January and this is the seventh week that I’ve been doing those calls. Next week, I’ll wrap it up and then it’ll be closed down until June. In June, I’m gonna open it back up again.

I encourage our Mastermind members that even scheduled to call with me in this first round to call schedule a second call with me in June because in six months you will have hopefully overcome some of the issues that we discussed on our call, and hopefully you have a new set of issues. I really want to continue to find out what’s going on with our members. It’s been super insightful for me to learn more about what’s going …

Well, first, to get to know our members on a more personal level. It’s been great. It really has been. I’ve really enjoyed the calls. Number two, it’s given us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, and in our Mastermind, which is our top level program, what’s going on in our members’ businesses, so that we can develop better tools and resources and training to help them overcome their obstacles. It really has been beneficial to me as well as, hopefully, to others.

Is Local GMB Pro Included In The MasterMind?

That’s what Ben is referring to here. He says, “Thanks for our call last Thursday. It was good to talk to you and I got a lot out of it.” Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that. He says, “A couple of questions. Number one, is Local GMB Pro included in the Mastermind? Not that I need it. Local Lease Pro is looking pretty comprehensive as I go through it. I’m just curious as it doesn’t recognize my username.”

Yeah, I know. We had Rob Beale collaborate on that with us and so there is an additional charge for that. But as a Mastermind member you get it at a silly ridiculous discount from what the advertised price is, if you look at the sales page publicly. Just contact Support when you’re ready for that, Ben. But since I did talk with you, trust me, you’re not ready for that yet. Go through Local Lease Pro, start implementing those strategies, provided that they’re still going to work, depending on what happens with the GMB stuff going forward.

As it stands right now, it’s still working just fine. But just keep in mind that you should be implementing that right now and then the Local GMB Pro training would really be more about assets that need the additional push, or if you’re in super competitive areas, that’s where you’re going to want to implement Local GMB Pro. But again, that’s not something that I would recommend you start with right now, you’re gonna be overwhelmed. I know you and I talked about that. Do not overwhelm yourself with too much training. I’d rather you take action and Local Lease Pro is set up with actionable data, actionable information for you to go out and implement immediately to start building, and that’s the most important thing. Okay.

Good question. But, yeah, as a Mastermind member, you’ll get a significant discount on that when you’re ready. But I can tell you right now you’re not ready for that. Okay.

How Do You Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome?

Number two, he says, “You said you were a former shiny object syndrome sufferer.” Yes, I was. That’s absolutely true. I think most of us in this industry or in this space are or have suffered from that, and maybe still do at this point. As SOS is so clearly at the root of my lack of progress to this point, I was wondering what it was that helped you turn the corner. You are clearly totally recovered and in control today.”

Yeah. You know what it was, honestly, it was kind of a perfect storm in that I was trying to do too many things and trying to not only teach on too many different topics as far as digital marketing, but I was trying to do too many things for my agency and provide too many services. What happens is I became overwhelmed with chasing different methods and trying to implement every method that I could learn about. So every time I saw a marketing email come through, and you guys know, I’m sure you are all on a million email list too, I would get the same type of emails, you guys would about new methods, about new tools and processes and things like that and I would get sucked in. The grass is always greener, right? I would see the opportunity that I thought, as an entrepreneur, I would see opportunity and I’m want to go after it, I want to chase it.

But what happened was over time things started to accumulate and accrue to the point where I had 15 projects going on and none of them were really progressing because I was spread too thin across too much. We, as a corporation, Semantic Mastery kind of suffered that for a period of time too and in part, I’m the face of the company, I should say, not to discredit my partners or anything, but in part because I was doing that in my own business as well. So we were kind of going that way with Semantic Mastery, trying to be too many things to too many people.

Really what happened was, and fortunately, my partner Adam, he’s not here today, but he introduced us to a book by Gino Wickman, I think it is, called Traction. It’s a program for really zeroing in on a singular focus and purpose for a company, for any organization. We’ve been working through that now, guys. What are we, over a year now into that, Traction? Are we on our fifth quarter now? Somebody would comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what quarter we’re on.

Bradley: I think we’re on our fifth quarter now. Anyways, we do everything now. It’s kind of a combination of various methods, but the 12-week year is one of the books that we provide to our Mastermind members when they come join. Another one is That One Thing. That’s another book that where it teaches you how to really focus in on one thing to get results and find out what is the most important thing, the one thing that I can do such that everything else becomes irrelevant or less important or irrelevant, or something like that. It’s a great book. Then there’s the 12-week year, which is about taking 12-month goals and boiling them down into 12 weeks, which is a 90-day period. What we call them 12-week Sprints. It’s a quarter every year.

We started implementing these strategies and then traction really kind of started giving us the organizational structure as a corporation to start developing our goals, figuring out what our primary focus was going to be, zeroing in on that, and then building out our processes and systems to achieve those goals. Like I said. I think we’re on our fifth quarter of that process now. That’s why over the last probably six months or so, you guys have been following us and probably noticed we’ve really shifted to just local marketing stuff. Not that we don’t still talk about and teach and share and present information in the Mastermind about all types of marketing, but our primary push is local.

That’s because I needed to do that in my own business in order for me to get better results for my clients to increase my own income and to get some of my time and my sanity back because I was just all over the place and it was overwhelming and, honestly, it was exhausting. Also, as you guys know, shit’s changing all the time in the digital marketing space, so having to stay on the cutting edge of everything is incredibly difficult.

So I really wanted to shift my focus into something that I preferred, which was local marketing. I also feel that that’s one of the quickest ways to earn revenue, is local marketing. So I kind of shifted to that. We took several surveys of you guys, our members, to find out that that’s what the vast majority of our audience was doing, was local marketing or lead generation, that kind of stuff. So we really shifted all of our focus to that.

Again, Ben, to answer your question, how I got over it was kind of a combination of recognizing the fact that I was really spinning my wheels and not making any progress in a lot of different areas because I was going after too many things, my attention was spread too thin, and then also, again, when the student is ready the teacher appears.

Adam kind of presented us or brought to our attention like this, Gino Wickman’s Traction program and they call the EOS, I guess the employee operating system, and all this stuff. Just get the book, guys, it’s inexpensive, and go through it. It’s a lot of work. We’ve been at it for five months now-, or excuse me, five quarters now, I think five quarters, and it’s a lot of work. But it’s totally worth it because we’re seeing the benefits and the fruits of the work that we’re putting in.

So a combination of those two things for me really kind of got me to stop … Guys, I’m not kidding, I’ve unsubscribed from just about every single email list. I got one specific email that I would always sign up for stuff and now, because over the years I’ve subscribed to so many lists, I’ve unsubscribed from just about everything. But yeah, I still get emails for internet marketing products and stuff all the time, from stuff that I’ve never even subscribed from. You guys know how that goes, people sell lists and your name gets passed, your email gets passed around from one list to another, whether you subscribed or not.

I’m not gonna lie, every single day now when I get a marketing email unless it’s from somebody that I want to be on their list, I go find the unsubscribe button. as soon as I open an email, hit the unsubscribe button, and then I come back and hit the spam button. I do it every fucking day every single day. Some days I might only get one email now, other days I might get five or six spam type marketing emails. But I do the same thing. I open them up, I don’t even read them, I just go right find an Unsubscribe button, click Unsubscribe, and then I come back it’s hit the Spam button. What it’s done is it’s really reduced the amount of junk that I see on a daily basis.

I was telling this to Ben when we had our call, our Mastermind call, it’s like being an alcoholic and going to a bar. Right? When you open your email account, if you know you have shiny object syndrome and you’re not getting any traction in any one area of your business because you keep chasing opportunity, stop, stop going in your email box and reading these emails, guys. Stop. It’s like get yourself out of the bar if you’re a recovering alcoholic, right? It’s the same principle. You need to avoid the shit that’s detracting from you being able to get make progress in your business.

So for me, it was just eliminating the marketing messages. I’m a marketer so I’m susceptible to marketing messages, right? For me, it was just avoiding them. Out of sight, out of mind. Putting blinders on. Putting my nose down. Working through what I knew I needed to do and that was local marketing. Right now it’s about building a lead gen business and developing processes but I’m not doing all the work and then teaching our members about what I’m doing and how we’re doing it. So that’s what’s worked for me.

Any of you guys have comments on that?

Chris: Yeah. You probably should read the latest Mastermind issue, for February, because what I wrote about was pretty much what you’ve just talked about, but in steroids. It’s like if you’re struggling with that there’s something really, really valuable in there for this month.

Bradley: It’s awesome.

Chris: Not to reveal everything, so from Masterminding members, you can be looking forward to some really sweet stuff. I recommend you check it out as well, Bradley.

Bradley: I sure will. Marco?

Marco: Well, the way that I stopped is I realized that we’re producing better shit than most people out there. So I focus on our own things and I know that you focus, we, the Mastermind’s focus is local. But I’m still in the lab looking at manipulation methods for national, global, just whatever, because that’s just how my mind works. I can’t just do the local thing and be happy. I have to be able to see where all of the algorithms are going, where Google is going, where it’s taking us and why, and then try to intercept at the right time, which is kind of like how RYS Academy was born, then RYS Reloaded, Local GMB Pro, as a matter of fact, came through because of that. It was just looking to see where Google was going and why. So I’m constantly after that, where is Google going, why?

As long as I’m on that, I don’t care about somebody else’s shit because I’m too busy with my own shit. That’s how I was able to overcome. We’ve all been there. If you’ve been online for any length of time, it could be a week, you bought something. Yeah. That’s just the way it is.

Are Both G+ Personal And Business Profiles Be Shut Down By Google?

Bradley: Yeah. That’s a great question, Ben. I really appreciated that question. Hopefully, that was helpful. Ken. What’s up, Ken? He says, “Are both G Plus personal and business profiles going away or is it just personal?” I believe it’s all Google Plus. I think the only Google Plus that’s going to remain, and I could be wrong about this guys, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all being killed off unless you’re what they call Google Plus Enterprise, which is only for like, it’s like internal Google Plus for large organizations. I don’t even know anything about it. I just read somewhere about it.

So as far as I know, Google Plus is being completely killed. I think in April it’s gonna be down completely. You won’t be able to access even your old stuff. I got notifications, dozens and dozens of notifications about it where they say if you got any photos in Google Plus, the notifications, you got to download the photos and all that kind of stuff because in April they’re gone. That’s it. They’re extinct. Whatever. Good riddance. No big deal. Move on.

Which, by the way, guys, we covered the Google Plus … Oh, yeah, guys, if you’re in the Syndication Academy and you didn’t watch the update webinar from last week, go back and watch it. I mean, literally, as soon as Hump Day Hangouts is over, go watch it because it’s super, super powerful what I was talking about, because one of the things I was covering was Google Plus being shut down. We had a lot of people comment and question about, “What’s going to happen? Because Google Plus is down and that’s one of our main social hubs.” Yeah. So what? We find others.

I shared exactly what I’m using now, which is so much more effective anyways, and it’s really, really powerful. If you’re in Syndication Academy, guys, go watch the update webinar that was just recorded last week. It’s in the archives area, the updates area along with all the notes and everything in there. Super powerful and it’s easy to do. Okay. AlL right. I’m gonna keep on moving.

What Photo Selection In GMB Is It That Dictates Which Image Is Displayed In Google Maps?

Jay says, what’s up, Jay? “Inside the GMB, what photo selection option is it that the dictates which image is displayed in Google Maps? I’ve tried several options there but it won’t change.” Yeah. I’ve had that issue in the past too, Jay. I don’t know, maybe Marco has an answer. I’ve tried in some cases to get an image to change too and not been able to get it to change. I just don’t even care at this point. I know some clients do, but it’s not been a major issue for me so I haven’t dug into it that much.

Marco, do you have an idea as to what you can do to get Google to display what you want?

Marco: No. I don’t have an answer for that. It sometimes displays the latest one, it sometimes displays what it wants to, I don’t know. If you have GMB that is legit, that is tied to a company or whatever, you might wanna get in touch with a Google rep and see if they can help you out. If you act really ignorant, if you act really stupid, like you don’t know what’s going on, they’ll really help you out. They’ll go out of their way to help you out. I found that the more ignorant you act and the more that they … “I don’t know …” “Oh, you mean like Chrome?” I mean they go that deep into … Just totally being blissfully ignorant about everything online.

Because you’re a business owner who doesn’t have time for all of this. The only people who have time for this are marketers who are in there trying to manipulate every day, who are the first ones that find out what doesn’t work and what does. So you wanna try to avoid being that know-it-all marketer because if you do that you’re gonna get nuked, your IP is gonna get tagged, and you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree. If it’s a legit business, man, just contact the Google My Business Support. Again, if it’s legit verifiable business, guys, I don’t have any problem contacting Support anymore. I found them to be quite helpful when needed. Again, don’t be afraid to do that. I remember years ago it was damn near impossible to get support help from Google and it was only via email and it would be sometimes days or even weeks before they would reply and it was just a bitch. But now it’s a lot easier to get in touch with Google Support. Again, if it’s for legit business, don’t be afraid of trying.

What Are Your Most Successful Tactics In Getting Client Response From Cold Emails?

Okay. Jeff says, a minute, I still got to get used to this platform, guys. Jeff says, what’s up, Jeff? He says, “Two questions. What is the record for most F-bombs dropped by Marco in one rant?” Well, apparently, Ken’s been counting, he says 87.

Chris: Did you see the RYS Academy sales video, the webinar, the very first one? I bet it goes higher.

Marco: Guys, listen, I don’t do it purposely. It’s just when I get excited I get really animated and it just flows. Please excuse me, I don’t mean to offend. Well, I have meant to offend people in the past, let me change that. You guys, in general, I don’t intend to offend you. If you are, please excuse me. Please understand that that’s just … My partners know that that’s me because they have to deal with me on a daily basis, so they know. They know Marco.

So you guys, just please excuse me. Next time if you come to my webinars or whatever, please put the kids away and you might not want the wife, girlfriend, boyfriend or whatever around while you’re listening to me talk.

Bradley: Yeah. I remember we had a Mastermind webinar about three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago, and Marco and I, we’re a little loose with our lips as far as some of the things we were saying. One of the members posted like “I’ve got kids in the room.” It was so funny because immediately after that I put a parental guidance suggested explicit language, image, or whatever, graphic on the bottom of the header image for the page that we were hosting the webinars on. In that point forward, we always kept it to be like, hey, keep your kids out. It’s not safe for work-type stuff. I think it was really funny. I think Carolyn was her name.

Anyway, so to carry on with the real stuff here, guys. Jeff says, “I know you mentioned this previously, but I couldn’t find it when researching out-, or excuse me when reaching out to business owners. In an effort to sell them the leads we were generating, what has been your more successful tactics for getting them to respond? This is primarily a cold email question.” Jeff, that’s a great question. That’s something we’re going to be covering a lot in depth in actually going through real live tests in case studies and such for monetizing GMB assets. We’re gonna be doing a lot of outreach stuff in the Mastermind coming up over the next several weeks. In fact, that was supposed to be started this week. I’m a little bit delayed, but I’m gonna be working on that a lot next week. I’ve got several assets that I need to start doing outreach for too.

But to answer your question, what I found and I spent a lot of time last year, in 2018, doing prospecting and trying to do sales for traditional agency services. I got really good at prospecting, getting the conversation started. As far as sales, I failed miserably. I think we spent like $18,000 between our salesperson and our VA staff which was handling the cold email outreach and all that stuff. I think we made like $6,000 in sales. It was ridiculous. That in part is just because I think that the local business market is so saturated with solicitation calls from marketing and advertising agency.

So long story short, that’s part of the reason we shifted back to the lead generation model because it changes the dynamic entirely, and I know that’s what you’re asking about. But when it came to prospecting, I found the easiest thing to do is, are quick question type emails.

There’s a great book by the guy that the developer of quickmail.io. If you go to quickmail.io, it’s a service that you can subscribe to, it’s like an email tracking service and all that. I personally like gmass.co better as an email marketing platform, but I started out with using quickmail.io. There’s a book by the developer. It’s a real short book. You can get it on Amazon, Kindle. I think you can get in paperback too, but I got it on Kindle. It’s a real short book, it’s only like 30-some pages I think, really inexpensive. I think it might only be $1 or $2.99 or something like that.

Go get it. Go to quickmail.io and probably click through some of the links and you’ll find the guy’s name, the developer’s name, and then you can find the book on Amazon. Pick that book up. Guys, I tested last year multiple types of cold email outreach methods for prospecting. Out of everything that I tested, and I tested David Sprague stuff, David Sprague’s got some really good tools, guys, there’s no question, but as far as his cold email outreach programs and stuff, I just had miserable success and we gave it full on effort.

I mean, for months, not just his program but all different types of outreach methods. What I found that produced the most success, especially dealing with contractors, was the quick question type emails. That strategy is outlaid perfectly in that short little book by the developer quickmail.io. His name is Jeremy something, I think. Anyways, just go pick it up, read through that book, and then start testing. That’s what I did and it worked really, really, really well.

We’re actually gonna be testing in the Mastermind. I’m gonna be using a combination of the more mass email approach, which is what I was talking about with the quick question type emails, which all you’re trying to do is solicit a response, a reply, that’s it. No, you’re not asking them to click through any links, you’re not getting diarrhea of the mouth and dumping a whole bunch of information and doing an email. You just ask them a simple question that’s kind of disguised like a lead for them. It’s a little bit misleading, but not so, because you’re gonna present them with an opportunity.

Again, it’s not unethical. Like I said, it’s just a way to ask questions. For example, maybe if I got a tree service site or assets that I need to monetize, I might contact 10 or 15 different … When I was doing the mass prospect, I would contact 50, 60 tree service contractors with these quick question type emails. Now I’m going to be doing a hybrid model that it incorporates the video email process, which is, we have a training program that I developed that I’ve used for years to get results for prospecting and sales and that’s called the video lead gen system.

It’s how to use video emails to get people’s attention. It’s a bit time-consuming because you got to record videos that are personalized to each person you reach out to. I’m trying to templatize that now to where it’s going to be a lot easier and more efficient and have a team that does the video editing and all that kind of stuff so that we can turn it into more of a process. Like an assembly line to where we can do 10 or 15 videos in a short period of time and then targeted emails out.

But I’m still going to be using those quick question type emails where I might say like, “Quick question, are you guys accepting or are you guys providing estimates for tree removal right now?” When they reply yes, that’s the conversation starter. “Okay, great. Would you mind if I sent you a video explaining what it is that I’ve got?” Then if they reply yes again, now you they’ve given you permission to send them a video. Then you send them the damn video, which is a personalized video explaining what you got.

“Hey, look, I got these leads coming in right now.” You don’t show your assets, guys. You show call volume or you show the fact that you’re generating leads. Show proof. Say, “Look, I really need somebody who can take these leads. If you’re interested, let me know I’ll send a few of them to you for the next week, or I’ll send you five leads or 10 leads or whatever, whatever your business model is good for. You say to them, “I’ll send you five leads for free,” and then, “I’ll follow up with you after that to find out if you’re if you like them. If they were good genuine valid leads that you’d like to continue that service, we can talk then,” stuff like that. Just real simple little questions, guys.

I’ve tested all kinds of processes and what I found was those quick questions where you don’t drop a link in it, you don’t ask them to click, you don’t ask them to go to a landing page and fill out a survey, or watch a video on the first email, none of that, you just ask them to reply. That’s a conversation starter. That starts the dialogue. Once the dialogue starts, then you ask permission to send them a link for them to click, which is just a video essentially. You say, “Can I send you a video to explain what I’ve got?” If they say yes, now they’re giving you permission.

Then you send them the video link, and then they’ll click on it, and now watch the video. Then sometimes they will reply, sometimes they won’t. But that’s really the whole point. Again, video lead-gen system was the course that we did on how to use video email. Then I’m going to be kind of mixing that with the more … I’m trying to templatize that and make it towards a process to where it’s not so time-consuming to do those emails, although they’re very, very effective. Okay?

Again, this is stuff that in the Mastermind, guys, were gonna be covering over the next several weeks. Okay. Those were great questions, Jeff.

Does anybody else have-

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second.

Bradley: I’m sorry?

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second. I already got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On WebFire 3.0 Tool?

Bradley: Okay. Cool. Yeah, it’s a great little book. All right, moving on. Martin says, “Have you any experience with the WebFire 3.0 tool?” No, Martin. When you said that, I clicked on it and I looked, I don’t, so I can’t really comment on that. I don’t have time to look through it right now. Perhaps, if you remind me, next week I will take a look at that before. I might look through that thing when we’re off this webinar today.

Marco: Hey Bradley, those are all like, those are click … Well, what do you call that, the auto traffic-

Bradley: It’s like a click-through spambot?

Marco: Yeah. Tons of websites like that.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: The problem that I’m seeing, and by the way, they’re working. Some are working better than others. I’m not gonna say which one because then everyone will run there and ruin it for me. I don’t want you guys messing with my money. At any rate, they are working, go and test them out. But interestingly enough, what I found works the best is … You did a course on it, it’s only available in the Mastermind.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: The way that you teach it becomes actually cheaper than most of these click-through spams or spam traffic networks, which is really interesting because you’re targeting real people to come and visit your stuff. These real people have a genuine interest in whatever it is that you’re doing right and they’re going to ask way-, they’re going to act, excuse me, way differently than the people that have to click on your link. Does that make sense? They pay for it. Well, you paid for it, they go, they click, then they get credit. It just becomes crazy because they’re not really interested in your stuff, they’re only interested in theirs.

Now since we’re targeting real people with the real interest, through Bradley’s training, it becomes that much better. Guys, activity, relevance, trust and authority. We’re in trusted and authoritative to the max because were inside Google.

Bradley: That’s right.

Marco: Relevance because we’re targeting whatever it is that we’re targeting. I’m not gonna say anything because it’s something that’s right now only available in the Mastermind. Then, activity on that link. It’s relevant activity. People clicking on that link going and acting the way that real people do. Some might not like it and bounce back, many will. But that’s what real people do and that’s what we’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m not gonna reveal the method here either, but exactly what Marco was saying, because that is real genuine traffic that Google knows has an interest in what you’re sending them to. So guys, when you’re talking about activity and engagement, which is one of the primary ranking signals now, is engagement, it’s not just blind engagement.

Again, if you are trying to rank something locally and you’re getting clicks from China and Russia and Korea and UK, and I’m talking about in the US, I’m just using this as an example, guys. But if you’re getting a bunch of clicks from things that are non-relevant either geographically especially for local stuff or non-topically relevant, in other words it’s just kind of like random traffic coming, do you think Google counts that traffic as an engagement signal, the same type, and gives it the same amount of weight as somebody that is in the local area that’s clicking from a local IP, likely from a mobile device that is intimately connected to them at all times, that they have a history of being interested in that particular type of content or service or product? Think about that guys, which click, which engagement signal is gonna be given more weight by Google? You already know the answer to that.

It’s not that these kind of tools and stuff can’t produce some nominal results, they can, but if you wanna get really good results and do it within terms of service, there are alternative ways to do it and it’s super, super effective. I mean, super effective. So it’s absolutely true.

Marco: I just want to be clear, Fiverr geeks, Fiverr traffic geeks, they get some results. These types of websites, the spam traffic, they get some results. But when you compare them all and compare them to the course that we have, it’s night and day. it’s just totally different because it’s just targeted traffic, people that are targeted to the geolocation so that they interact with whatever it is that you’re doing at that level, if that’s necessary. If not, then you can adjust to whatever it is that you’re doing and get traffic for pennies on the dollar, guys. That’s what it’s all about.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, topical relevance and geographic relevance, and you can combine both and get super, super good results. It doesn’t take a lot of traffic to get good results when you have heavily weighted engagement signals, which is what that is. It only takes a few engagements to get significant results when you have a really targeted audience that Google knows about. All right.

Anyways, we’re gonna keep moving. Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer on that. Bryan says, “What is the backlog on GMB listings in MGYB purchases. I’m out about four weeks.” Bryan, you’d have to contact support. I don’t manage any of that stuff, I’m sorry. Just contact support or send us ticket to support@mgyb.co and we’ll get it answered for you. Okay?

Marco: I was just talking to Rob about this to make sure. We have to deal with whatever it is that Google decides. I mean, they were on the show, we don’t control them. So we can’t say it’s definitely this or definitely that, or we’ll have it in a day, in seven days or whatever. It takes however long it takes. Some of them are nearly impossible. I believe that Bryan has already contacted Support and gotten an answer.

Now my thing is if you go through Support and then you come here, it just slows the process because then I have to go reach back to support, ask what’s going on, track it down, and then they all go and track it down and try to see what’s going on when it has already been answered.

The only thing that I can add to this is, guys, we’re not in control of this. We’re trying to do what we can. Bryan, you’re welcome to request a refund. If it gets too long, you’re welcome to request a refund and try to find someone who stands behind the product like we do 60-day guarantee replacement. If it gets suspended within those 60 days, we offer a legitimate guarantee. Now how long it takes to get it for you, that’s another question altogether.

Bradley: What’s up, Daniel? Hey man, the question you asked two weeks ago on Mastermind that we didn’t get to because the training went so long, please repost that for tomorrow because the Mastermind webinar is tomorrow and I didn’t want to spend some time on that. It was about a GMB question you had. We’re gonna have time. I’m gonna be covering specific training tomorrow, but it will be a lot shorter because I just did the Mastermind newsletter entry specifically about that. So that we’re gonna do some video training on it tomorrow, but you guys will have the written process.

You guys know how I do my process stocks. Well, you’re gonna have the written processes, the newsletter entry that you’re gonna get in about two or three weeks, whenever you get the next newsletter. That means my training tomorrow, the video training, will be a bit more streamlined so I should be able to get to your question. All right. I apologize I didn’t get to that, man, and it’s been weighing on me for almost two weeks now.

Is It A Good Idea To Leverage A Popular Family Name Or Brand To Get Press And Media Attention?

Anyways, Quentin’s up. He says, “Hello my name is Quentin Ravenel. I’m a full-time musician based in Charleston, South Carolina. Arthur Ravenel Jr. is a staple here. We’ve named a bridge after him that gathers 25,000 people every year in April to run or walk on the Ravenel Bridge. Is there any way to use my last name as leverage?”

That’s a really good question. Yeah. I would think Press Releases would probably be a great way to kind of piggyback off of that name recognition because that’s essentially … It’s a brand, right? Ravenel is a brand, right? If you can use that … There’s a strategy called newsjacking. Look into that, Quentin. Look in the newsjacking. In fact, you could just do a Google search for newsjacking and find plenty of resources, Amazon books, whatever that can teach you the strategy of newsjacking that I think would be perfect for that, for what you’re saying here because you have the same last name-, excuse me, as a brand that’s well-known in that area. I would use that newsjacking strategy as a way to get some press and some media. It’s almost like click bait but in a proper way, in an ethical way.

Again, I don’t do a lot of that stuff, I just haven’t had the opportunity to, but I’m familiar with that strategy. That’s something that I think you could implement here.

Marco, do you have any suggestions for that?

Marco: Entity relationship, man. That’s what he’d have to do. Relate his name to the Ravenel Bridge name so that when it comes in the, what they call, the Google auto predict, autosuggest, so when people go looking for the Ravenel Bridge walk, or a Ravenel Bridge run, Ravenel Bridge weekend, all of that stuff, your name comes up in there too. I mean, we’ve done that, right? Social conditioning?

Bradley: Yeah, social engineering.

Marco: Yep.

Bradley: Newsjacking, go check it out. There’s tons of information about it. There’s the book, David Meerman Scott, I think is the pioneer of that or whatever, at least the most well-known, but you can find all kinds of information about this free and paid. Just spend some time researching that newsjacking because it’s something that I think you could implement and get some significant results that way. Okay. By the way, go to mgyb.co to purchase Press Releases and we’ll publish them for you, they’re really, really nicely done. Okay.

Gregg. What’s up, Greg? You and I got a Mastermind call tomorrow, Gregg. Looking forward to it. We got a lot to catch up on.

Urban Towing says, “Does SerpClix work well for traffic to RYS or is there something else you would recommend?” Again, I’m not familiar with SerpClix. If it’s another CT spambot or crowd search, click-through thing-

Marco: It is.

Bradley: -which I imagine it would be. Yeah, I would probably produce some results, I don’t know how much. But I would recommend finding some better methods where you can actually buy or get real targeted traffic from real people that may have a genuine interest in your potential product or service. Guys, paid traffic is a good way to do that kind of stuff.

Marco: I actually went to SerpClix and did the math. It’s 14 cents per click. We can beat that through your method, can’t we, Bradley?

Bradley: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Marco: And this is real people. Real people targeted, remember that. Activity, relevance, trust, authority, that’s what you’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. Guys, we did … for years, Dan Anton had a product called crowdsearch.me. It works like gangbusters for a long time. Click-through spam was an engagement signal … I call it click-through spam. But that’s when somebody does a search on Google for example, keyword search, it could be a brand search, which is called a navigational search.

Guys, you can go to our YouTube channel. You can just go to Google and search crowdsearch.me and you’re gonna find this Semantic Mastery webinars. I’ve done two of them because we did one webinar and I think two years later we did another webinar because it was still working so well. I explained in that webinar, and both of those webinars and great length what click-through spam is and why it works so well.

It was actually a method that I learned way back in 2011 from Ivan Budimir, who was my most influential mentor in the local marketing, digital marketing space. It was Ivan Budimir. He’s no longer in the space, but he was absolutely amazing. I learned so much from that guy. He actually introduced that method to me back in 2011 and showed the Google patent. It’s not the actual official name of the Google patent, but he always called it site weight.

Site weight. In other words, if all things being equal, if there were two sites that were identical, which we know is impossible, pretty much, but theoretically, if two sites were equally authoritative, like they had the same amount of on-page optimization, the same amount of off-page optimization but one site got navigational search queries, which now in the semantic web is incredibly important, what is a navigational search query?

That’s a brand search or a variation of a brand search, like brand plus keyword, or brand a plus phone, like for somebody looking for the phone number of a company, or brand plus location, or brand plus map so that people looking for how to get to that location or get to that company or that store or whatever the case may be. Those are called navigational queries. If all things being equal, there were two identical sites competing brands and one had navigational queries and the other did not, the navigational query site would outrank the other, one hands down, two to one every time. Every time and it was tested over and over and over again. That was because of the site weight algorithm, or filter, or whatever you call that shit. Again, I’m not the patent nerd like Marco. Marco, that’s a term of endearment, by the way.

He introduced that way back in 2011 and the strategy then was to hire microtask workers to set up these little gigs. You would pay microtask workers two or three cents or something like that to go do a particular search, preferably with the brand dimension. Then find the link that you told them to find, click through, and then you would tell them, “Go find copy and paste the third word of the seventh paragraph on that page into the answer box,” and the answer box was their proof that they did the task that you assigned.

The reason why you wouldn’t just tell him to go click the link and copy because you want them to dwell on the page. That dwell time counted as an engagement signal, right? They would land on the page and then they’d have a hunt for that specific word or phrase or whatever it was that you told them to do that would make the answer. That would be the answer that means they solved the task that you gave them to do. That would create the dwell time, potentially scroll, you might ask them to click through to another page, whatever the task might be, click through to the link, then click through to the contact page, and then leave a message or whatever the case may be. You could set it up multiple different ways, but those were engagement signals way back in 2011 guys and it moved the needle like almost overnight.

The problem was as soon as you would stop paying in microtasks workers within just a few days your rank positioning start falling again because it was all about those engagement signals. Guys, again, this was eight years ago. Well, now, we’ve just been talking on this webinar alone about how important engagement signals are. So engagement signals are weighted even more now than they were back then.

Now the engagement signals are weighted more because Google can track and knows its users and the users’ behavior and their history. That’s what I was talking about. If you can get engagement signals from people that are locally and/or topically relevant to the content that you’re having them engage with, then that’s going to be weighted so much more.

What I’m saying is, again on a local level, if you can get people from a local geographic area that have a history for having an interest in that topic or that product or service as well as being local, a handful of clicks from them can produce better results than dozens or hundreds of click from non-relevant and non-non topically and non-geographically relevant clicks. Does that make sense?

So the click-through spam, and that’s what I called it because we were literally spamming click-throughs, isn’t as effective as it is when you can get relevant audience to engage because Google understands its audience, guys. Google knows its audience because everybody’s connected to Google all the time, right? So it knows what their history is and what their interests are and where they’re located and all that kind of stuff.

So that’s what I’m getting at. As far as the click-through spam stuff, for a long time it was working really well. Dan Anton’s, I think the best bot that came out, which was crowdsearch.me and for I think three, four years, I mean, I used it heavily. I was getting 50,000 credits per month and I was using every bit of them. It worked like gangbusters. But over time, it slowly started to stop working as well. I know that service is still out there. There are potential uses for it but it’s not something that I would do to direct to money site anymore. There are better alternatives now in my opinion, which is what we we’ve been talking about. We did some training about that in the Mastermind a few weeks ago.

It was a good question though. I was worried we’re not gonna have enough to talk about today, man, and look, we’re almost up. It’s awesome. Let’s see. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” That should actually be how stupid the median person is, right? It’s awesome. Thanks, Greg.

Okay. Grant says, “It might be easier to just close/delete designed junk email accounts ThAn unsubscribe endlessly.” Yeah. I know what you’re saying, Grant, but this is an email account that I’ve had for, God, 15 years, so it’s not something I wanna get rid of. But, yeah, I know what you mean.

By the way, I did all the heavy lifting. Now it’s just a daily maintenance thing. If I see an email come in, if that’s from something that was unsolicited, I open it, unsubscribe, and then as soon as the unsubscribe is successful, I go back and hit the spam button. Again, most days now guys, I might only get one or two spam emails. There are some days where I’ll get five or six or whatever, but almost every day now it’s just a bare minimum. So it’s manageable now. It just took a little bit of time.

Also, there’s a service called unroll.me. Guys, go check it out. Go to unroll.me, especially any of you suffering from shiny object syndrome. Type in your email and it’ll take a few minutes to run and it’ll come back and show you how many lists you’re subscribe to, and tell me it doesn’t take your breath away. It’s like, holy shit, how did I get subscribed … It’s just over the years, you accumulate, you get added to so many subscription lists either voluntarily or involuntarily, a combination of both really.

If you go to unroll.me, it’s amazing. It’ll just take your breath away when you see how many email lists you’re on, and you can start to systematically unsubscribe. Okay.

Chris: You’re the nightmare of every email marketer.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, now, I am, yeah. But trust me, a lot of email marketers made a lot of money from me too. All right. Let’s see, Walt says, “Not an affiliate link.” Okay. This is the quick, probably the quick … There you go, Grow Your Business With Cold Emails, Jeremy Chatelaine. That’s correct. He’s got an accent or whatever. It’s awesome, guys. Really short book. Look at that, it used to be cheaper, but 10 bucks, buy it, guys, it’s worth it. 100% worth it, buy it, and read it. It’s a great book for anybody’s doing prospecting. Guys, hands down, that has been the best strategy for me that I’ve ever found. Okay.

I’ll keep moving. Grow Your Business With Cold Emails: Everything You Need to Know. Go, perfect. Thanks, guys. I appreciate that.

Daniel, awesome. “Guys, I’m not whining about the GMB question, and I do have faith in SM.” Bryan, I think he took offense to which you said, Marco. Just looking to start implementing building out the local strategy and certainly anxious to get moving.” I totally get it, Bryan. I totally get it.

Marco: Yeah, so do we. I didn’t expect or intend again to offend. I just come across that way. I was just explaining that it just takes time. We try to get as quickly as possible. We know all you guys were anxious, but there’s only so much we could do when the beast keeps changing shit around.

Bradley: Correct. Yeah. That’s one of the issues, guys. Again, we all have to keep changing our methods to get these things done verified and such. I don’t even know what they’re doing to do it. I don’t care. Bryan, I’m just like you. I placed my orders too. I’m not kidding. Guys, I placed my orders just like you do now. I do have a little bit of pull sometimes, most of my orders are in queue still now because they’re not critical. But sometimes, for clients, for example, that have requested maps expansion, then I pull some strings to get them pushed forward a little bit. So that’s one of the benefits I guess of the CEO.

But for the most part, guys, I’m in queue just like you guys. It’s not you guys aren’t waiting because I’m getting all mine done. Trust me. I’m waiting too. Awesome. Unroll.me, You’re welcome, Grant

All right, guys. We gotta wrap it up. “Marco, you didn’t drop an F-bomb on me so I was unsure about the love.” It was Bryan again.

Chris: It’s coming.

Bradley: Marco, you got to say fuck just to make everybody happy once.

Marco: Yeah. Let me just close this off with this: fuck Google.

Bradley: All right, there you go. ‘Nuff said. All right everybody. Thanks for being here. Mastermind webinar tomorrow, don’t forget. If you did not check out the Syndication Academy update webinar from last week, do it, guys. Super, super powerful stuff. I showed you how to use RSS feeds there with geo-tagging.

By the way, I’m doing a lot of testing with I have it … No, I must already closed it down. No, there it is, RankFeedr. I’ve got it open. I’m not gonna show my projects. But Lisa Allen’s RankFeedr, guys. I know the coupon has expired now. She actually extended it because of the Syndication Academy update webinar that I did last week. I talked about it in there. Although the method that I showed was how to use Feedburner feeds to create local geotag feeds and they’re super powerful too, not as powerful as the RankFeedr feeds though because RankFeedr you can splice together and create static or sticky items and you can add the geotag and not just a specific geo coordinate but you can add what’s called a geo box, which is like a service area business. Super powerful stuff, guys.

I’ve been testing really hard for the last week now with the RankFeedr stuff and I’m seeing good results. Again, I know the coupon that she gave is expired, but it’s still totally worth it. It’s super inexpensive guys for the elite subscription, which I think allows you to create eleven hundred RankFeedr feeds.

Guys, it’s a set and forget. You set up a RankFeedr feed one time and you let it go. It just runs for as long as you keep your subscription active and you don’t have to do anything else. It will help to create co-citation geographic and topical relevancy on autopilot, guys. I’m telling you and for the elite service the elite subscription level, which again I think is 1,100 feeds, it’s $47 a month. It’s a no-brainer.

So if you haven’t already picked it up, guys, go watch the Syndication Academy update webinar, and go pick up the RankFeedr subscription service, which is how you create those things. I’m only telling you guys, we don’t pimp other people’s products unless we truly believe in them and I’m endorsing this because it’s such a good product and you can go to our website SemanticMastery.com I think it’s RSS-authority-sniper-3 I think. You could find the webinar replay and go through that process, if you want to watch the webinar where she talks about it.

But honestly, you don’t even need to watch the webinar, just go pick up the damn service because it’s really powerful. All right. With that, we’re gonna close it out. See you all next week. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Marco. Thanks, Chris.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Click on the video above to watch Episode 224 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

  Announcement

Bradley: Okay. Now we’re live. This is screwing me up. Hey everybody! This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts Episode 224. It is February 20th, 2019. I’m sorry I don’t have my camera today. For some reason Google Hangouts decided it did not wanna recognize my camera at the last minute. You guys would probably appreciate the fact you don’t have to look at my face. I’ve only got two people on with me today because Adam and Hernan are out at the Funnel Hacking Live event. They’re out having fun while we’re hard at work.

Let me say hi to Chris. What’s up, Chris? How are you?

Chris: Doing good. Great to be here.

Bradley: Marco.

Marco: I made it, man. I’m here.

Bradley: Good. I don’t really have any announcements specifically, except that we’ve got a Mastermind webinar tomorrow, for those of you that are in the Mastermind. We’re gonna be covering several things that I’ve been tracking for the last few weeks now as far as doing some off-page tests for ranking GMBs, doing a whole bunch of different types of off-page tests and isolation.

In fact, let me se, for one moment, I’ve got pause the screen for a minute. Marco, do you have any announcements while I do that?

Marco: No. But I’m so glad you’re gonna talk about this because my write-up for the Mastermind, which I’m finishing up today by the way, is about that, testing, whether it’s single variable testing or whether it’s testing in isolation, or what it actually is that you’re trying to do.

What you’re trying to do is gauge whether there’s an effect. You’re not trying to show that something doesn’t work. It’s crazy going in and trying to test that something doesn’t work. The test should be, what does it do? You should get the data. The data should speak for what the tests. You’re testing a variable, but does the variable move the needle? No, it doesn’t. Okay, onto the next thing, which is what you’re doing, you’re testing all of these different variables and you’re isolating so that you can do whatever it is that you’re doing to each one.

I’m really glad that you’re talking about this. I’m gonna go a little bit more in-depth in the Mastermind newsletter about testing and how people are being misled by so-called, all of these are expert testers that don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So I’ll just leave it at that.

Bradley: Yeah. I’ve been tracking, well, about a month ago was. It was around January 21st when I started setting these tests up. I’m testing every one of these methods and isolation. In other words, they’re GMB or Google My Business profiles that had the initial on-page stuff done and what my standard operating procedure is for optimizing a new profile, and then from there, all I’m doing is specifically one of these methods.

I’m testing across multiple properties per methods so that I can see if we get positive results or negative results or no results on any one method, I want to see if that occurs across more than one property for the same type of method. Because if we get positive results on two properties, if I’m only doing two tests or testing on two locations per method and they’re both positive, then that’s a really good indication that that’s a viable method or something that moves the needle.

Like he says, that’s actually funny you said that because that’s the title or the subtitle of the actual test that I’m doing Which Method Moves the Needle the Most? These different tests that I’m doing, and like I said, if a positive result occurs on two properties, two separate locations, then I know that it’s a good method to use and that it will continue … It will be duplicatable, in other words.

I will obviously set it up and see if I can repeat it again across other properties. If I get two no changes, or two negative changes, then it’s probably the case also. But if we get one that’s positive and one it’s neutral, or one that’s positive, one is negative, then it’s obviously gonna have to require further investigation.

So that’s essentially what I’m doing. I’ve tried several these things and I’ve got some really super good results back with one of these methods in particular. I’m not gonna tell which one here, guys, you got to join a Mastermind for that. But I’m gonna be covering it tomorrow because I’ve got really, really good results from one method in particular. It’s actually one of the easiest methods and that’s what I love about. I’m pleasantly surprised. Actually, I was not surprised that the method works because of what I know about that method, but I’m glad that it’s one of the easier methods for any one of us to achieve, or to implement, I should say.

Again, I’m gonna be covering that in the Mastermind webinar tomorrow as well as I’m also gonna be covering some questions about PR stacking from some of our members. I’m also gonna be talking about setting up display ads for remarketing using the Google Display Network because it’s a much, much easier process now and it’s very, very effective.

So that’s what I’ve got to tease with for tomorrow. It looks like we don’t have that many questions. But I’m gonna get right into it.

Chris: I got a question, man.

Bradley: Go ahead.

Chris: I scrolled through my Facebook feed today, people are literally scared of GMB and Google all of a sudden. You just were talking about, yeah, which method is the most potent or the biggest needle move of them. Anybody, you wanna share your insights on that, Marco or Bradley?

Bradley: I’ll start. Yeah. Armageddon is coming, right? The sky is always falling, Chicken Little type stuff. By the way, that screenshot that you’re looking at there, guys, that’s the tease for tomorrow’s webinar in Mastermind because those are the movements that I’ve seen occur just in the last few days from that one particular method I’m gonna be covering.

Anyways, Marco and I, well, we’ve been around long enough to know that shit changes all the time. It’s SEO. For the last several months we’ve been pushing really hard on GMB stuff because it’s been working so well and I’ve been saying all along it at some point Google’s gonna shut it down. I don’t necessarily think that existing properties are gonna be taken down. What I think is gonna happen, and this is just my assumption, guys, my educated opinion about this or my educated guess, prediction I should say, is that it’s gonna become damn near impossible to register new GMB profiles. I think that’s how it’s gonna be shut down.

That’s why I’ve been pushing for people to build, build, build for the last several months, and to build your ass off and to build a team for scaling your build processes so that you can secure as many location as possible prior to what I think is going to happen, which is going to be damn near impossible to register new businesses.

I don’t know exactly what they’re gonna do to shut it down, but it’s likely going to be something like having to take photographs at a storefront or at the business location. It could also be requiring … Again, guys, just speculation, but it could also require you to send corporate documents in or something that shows proof of address with the business name on it, so like a utility bill or something. I know because I’ve actually had to call Google Support before to get help moving a legit business for a client of mine to get the Maps listing updated. That was one of the things required, was a bank statement, the account details and everything could be blurred, but it had to show the company name and the mailing address and all that.

Those are things that I assume or that I predict are going to happen. But we always find workarounds and we always find ways to continue to make money. That’s really the name of the game, guys. Don’t freak out. Don’t go into panic mode. Relax. Know that you’re gonna have other options. We’re gonna figure them out eventually and other people will figure them out as well, and you can too. But it’s about keeping your head cool and realizing that this is a cat-and-mouse game that we play and that’s the business that we’re in.

Marco, what are your thoughts?

Marco: I get a little bit more basic, man. Yeah, I don’t care. Why? I say basic because there’s basic web principles. The foundational stuff that we teach is based on web principles, right? We’re in the semantic web. We all know that, right? We talked about ART, activity, relevance, trust and authority, and how to generate all that. But there’s foundation of principles. You can only code one way. If you write spaghetti code, you’re writing garbage that nobody’s ever going to be able to tell what it is if someone needs to come and take over. So there’s international standards that are set.

There are basic principles where the guidelines are not set by Google. Google’s Terms of Service and Google’s guidelines are determined by Google, but coding standards are set by other people. In order for Google to mess with that, Google has to go and push at a higher level where there’s a bunch of other people pushing back. I’ve been talking about this since Semantic Mastery began. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Correct, but there’s others on the web. Google can’t just go and do whatever the fuck they want to do. There’s some stuff that they just can’t touch.

While that goes on we’ll just keep going and getting the results that we get. That’s what you saw. The test that you’re shown, which is beautiful because it’s based on basic foundational principles, that’s what we work from. Now all of these other stuff, yes, they’re hacks, guys. We manipulate. That’s our job. We’re in this to make money. We’re not here to make people happy. We’re not here to make Google happy. I’m in this to make money. I don’t care. They can’t tell me that it’s wrong to do what I’m doing, well then, Google should go and change their whole scheme for making money online because it’s all based on lies and it’s all based on moving people into their funnel and keeping them there as long as possible; they don’t care how they do it, they just want to do it. Well, that’s fine. That’s their business model. I have mine.

Just to get back to this, basic principles, they still work. Why? Because everyone has to adhere to the same standards no matter what. That’s my rant for today – well, hopefully.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree with that. Let’s get into questions, guys. Not a whole lot of questions and I’m surprised. Maybe it’s this new platform that’s scaring people off, the discus platform. All right.

Chris: The sky is always falling.

Bradley: What’s that?

Chris: The sky is always falling. Some people say it’s …

Bradley: Chicken Little, yeah. Okay. Ben’s up. He says, “Hey Bradley, thanks for our call last Thursday.” Okay. Ben’s one of our Mastermind members and I’d been doing Mastermind calls. I opened up an opportunity for our Mastermind members to schedule a 30-minute call with me. It started the first week in January and this is the seventh week that I’ve been doing those calls. Next week, I’ll wrap it up and then it’ll be closed down until June. In June, I’m gonna open it back up again.

I encourage our Mastermind members that even scheduled to call with me in this first round to call schedule a second call with me in June because in six months you will have hopefully overcome some of the issues that we discussed on our call, and hopefully you have a new set of issues. I really want to continue to find out what’s going on with our members. It’s been super insightful for me to learn more about what’s going …

Well, first, to get to know our members on a more personal level. It’s been great. It really has been. I’ve really enjoyed the calls. Number two, it’s given us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, and in our Mastermind, which is our top level program, what’s going on in our members’ businesses, so that we can develop better tools and resources and training to help them overcome their obstacles. It really has been beneficial to me as well as, hopefully, to others.

Is Local GMB Pro Included In The MasterMind?

That’s what Ben is referring to here. He says, “Thanks for our call last Thursday. It was good to talk to you and I got a lot out of it.” Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that. He says, “A couple of questions. Number one, is Local GMB Pro included in the Mastermind? Not that I need it. Local Lease Pro is looking pretty comprehensive as I go through it. I’m just curious as it doesn’t recognize my username.”

Yeah, I know. We had Rob Beale collaborate on that with us and so there is an additional charge for that. But as a Mastermind member you get it at a silly ridiculous discount from what the advertised price is, if you look at the sales page publicly. Just contact Support when you’re ready for that, Ben. But since I did talk with you, trust me, you’re not ready for that yet. Go through Local Lease Pro, start implementing those strategies, provided that they’re still going to work, depending on what happens with the GMB stuff going forward.

As it stands right now, it’s still working just fine. But just keep in mind that you should be implementing that right now and then the Local GMB Pro training would really be more about assets that need the additional push, or if you’re in super competitive areas, that’s where you’re going to want to implement Local GMB Pro. But again, that’s not something that I would recommend you start with right now, you’re gonna be overwhelmed. I know you and I talked about that. Do not overwhelm yourself with too much training. I’d rather you take action and Local Lease Pro is set up with actionable data, actionable information for you to go out and implement immediately to start building, and that’s the most important thing. Okay.

Good question. But, yeah, as a Mastermind member, you’ll get a significant discount on that when you’re ready. But I can tell you right now you’re not ready for that. Okay.

How Do You Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome?

Number two, he says, “You said you were a former shiny object syndrome sufferer.” Yes, I was. That’s absolutely true. I think most of us in this industry or in this space are or have suffered from that, and maybe still do at this point. As SOS is so clearly at the root of my lack of progress to this point, I was wondering what it was that helped you turn the corner. You are clearly totally recovered and in control today.”

Yeah. You know what it was, honestly, it was kind of a perfect storm in that I was trying to do too many things and trying to not only teach on too many different topics as far as digital marketing, but I was trying to do too many things for my agency and provide too many services. What happens is I became overwhelmed with chasing different methods and trying to implement every method that I could learn about. So every time I saw a marketing email come through, and you guys know, I’m sure you are all on a million email list too, I would get the same type of emails, you guys would about new methods, about new tools and processes and things like that and I would get sucked in. The grass is always greener, right? I would see the opportunity that I thought, as an entrepreneur, I would see opportunity and I’m want to go after it, I want to chase it.

But what happened was over time things started to accumulate and accrue to the point where I had 15 projects going on and none of them were really progressing because I was spread too thin across too much. We, as a corporation, Semantic Mastery kind of suffered that for a period of time too and in part, I’m the face of the company, I should say, not to discredit my partners or anything, but in part because I was doing that in my own business as well. So we were kind of going that way with Semantic Mastery, trying to be too many things to too many people.

Really what happened was, and fortunately, my partner Adam, he’s not here today, but he introduced us to a book by Gino Wickman, I think it is, called Traction. It’s a program for really zeroing in on a singular focus and purpose for a company, for any organization. We’ve been working through that now, guys. What are we, over a year now into that, Traction? Are we on our fifth quarter now? Somebody would comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what quarter we’re on.

Bradley: I think we’re on our fifth quarter now. Anyways, we do everything now. It’s kind of a combination of various methods, but the 12-week year is one of the books that we provide to our Mastermind members when they come join. Another one is That One Thing. That’s another book that where it teaches you how to really focus in on one thing to get results and find out what is the most important thing, the one thing that I can do such that everything else becomes irrelevant or less important or irrelevant, or something like that. It’s a great book. Then there’s the 12-week year, which is about taking 12-month goals and boiling them down into 12 weeks, which is a 90-day period. What we call them 12-week Sprints. It’s a quarter every year.

We started implementing these strategies and then traction really kind of started giving us the organizational structure as a corporation to start developing our goals, figuring out what our primary focus was going to be, zeroing in on that, and then building out our processes and systems to achieve those goals. Like I said. I think we’re on our fifth quarter of that process now. That’s why over the last probably six months or so, you guys have been following us and probably noticed we’ve really shifted to just local marketing stuff. Not that we don’t still talk about and teach and share and present information in the Mastermind about all types of marketing, but our primary push is local.

That’s because I needed to do that in my own business in order for me to get better results for my clients to increase my own income and to get some of my time and my sanity back because I was just all over the place and it was overwhelming and, honestly, it was exhausting. Also, as you guys know, shit’s changing all the time in the digital marketing space, so having to stay on the cutting edge of everything is incredibly difficult.

So I really wanted to shift my focus into something that I preferred, which was local marketing. I also feel that that’s one of the quickest ways to earn revenue, is local marketing. So I kind of shifted to that. We took several surveys of you guys, our members, to find out that that’s what the vast majority of our audience was doing, was local marketing or lead generation, that kind of stuff. So we really shifted all of our focus to that.

Again, Ben, to answer your question, how I got over it was kind of a combination of recognizing the fact that I was really spinning my wheels and not making any progress in a lot of different areas because I was going after too many things, my attention was spread too thin, and then also, again, when the student is ready the teacher appears.

Adam kind of presented us or brought to our attention like this, Gino Wickman’s Traction program and they call the EOS, I guess the employee operating system, and all this stuff. Just get the book, guys, it’s inexpensive, and go through it. It’s a lot of work. We’ve been at it for five months now-, or excuse me, five quarters now, I think five quarters, and it’s a lot of work. But it’s totally worth it because we’re seeing the benefits and the fruits of the work that we’re putting in.

So a combination of those two things for me really kind of got me to stop … Guys, I’m not kidding, I’ve unsubscribed from just about every single email list. I got one specific email that I would always sign up for stuff and now, because over the years I’ve subscribed to so many lists, I’ve unsubscribed from just about everything. But yeah, I still get emails for internet marketing products and stuff all the time, from stuff that I’ve never even subscribed from. You guys know how that goes, people sell lists and your name gets passed, your email gets passed around from one list to another, whether you subscribed or not.

I’m not gonna lie, every single day now when I get a marketing email unless it’s from somebody that I want to be on their list, I go find the unsubscribe button. as soon as I open an email, hit the unsubscribe button, and then I come back and hit the spam button. I do it every fucking day every single day. Some days I might only get one email now, other days I might get five or six spam type marketing emails. But I do the same thing. I open them up, I don’t even read them, I just go right find an Unsubscribe button, click Unsubscribe, and then I come back it’s hit the Spam button. What it’s done is it’s really reduced the amount of junk that I see on a daily basis.

I was telling this to Ben when we had our call, our Mastermind call, it’s like being an alcoholic and going to a bar. Right? When you open your email account, if you know you have shiny object syndrome and you’re not getting any traction in any one area of your business because you keep chasing opportunity, stop, stop going in your email box and reading these emails, guys. Stop. It’s like get yourself out of the bar if you’re a recovering alcoholic, right? It’s the same principle. You need to avoid the shit that’s detracting from you being able to get make progress in your business.

So for me, it was just eliminating the marketing messages. I’m a marketer so I’m susceptible to marketing messages, right? For me, it was just avoiding them. Out of sight, out of mind. Putting blinders on. Putting my nose down. Working through what I knew I needed to do and that was local marketing. Right now it’s about building a lead gen business and developing processes but I’m not doing all the work and then teaching our members about what I’m doing and how we’re doing it. So that’s what’s worked for me.

Any of you guys have comments on that?

Chris: Yeah. You probably should read the latest Mastermind issue, for February, because what I wrote about was pretty much what you’ve just talked about, but in steroids. It’s like if you’re struggling with that there’s something really, really valuable in there for this month.

Bradley: It’s awesome.

Chris: Not to reveal everything, so from Masterminding members, you can be looking forward to some really sweet stuff. I recommend you check it out as well, Bradley.

Bradley: I sure will. Marco?

Marco: Well, the way that I stopped is I realized that we’re producing better shit than most people out there. So I focus on our own things and I know that you focus, we, the Mastermind’s focus is local. But I’m still in the lab looking at manipulation methods for national, global, just whatever, because that’s just how my mind works. I can’t just do the local thing and be happy. I have to be able to see where all of the algorithms are going, where Google is going, where it’s taking us and why, and then try to intercept at the right time, which is kind of like how RYS Academy was born, then RYS Reloaded, Local GMB Pro, as a matter of fact, came through because of that. It was just looking to see where Google was going and why. So I’m constantly after that, where is Google going, why?

As long as I’m on that, I don’t care about somebody else’s shit because I’m too busy with my own shit. That’s how I was able to overcome. We’ve all been there. If you’ve been online for any length of time, it could be a week, you bought something. Yeah. That’s just the way it is.

Are Both G+ Personal And Business Profiles Be Shut Down By Google?

Bradley: Yeah. That’s a great question, Ben. I really appreciated that question. Hopefully, that was helpful. Ken. What’s up, Ken? He says, “Are both G Plus personal and business profiles going away or is it just personal?” I believe it’s all Google Plus. I think the only Google Plus that’s going to remain, and I could be wrong about this guys, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all being killed off unless you’re what they call Google Plus Enterprise, which is only for like, it’s like internal Google Plus for large organizations. I don’t even know anything about it. I just read somewhere about it.

So as far as I know, Google Plus is being completely killed. I think in April it’s gonna be down completely. You won’t be able to access even your old stuff. I got notifications, dozens and dozens of notifications about it where they say if you got any photos in Google Plus, the notifications, you got to download the photos and all that kind of stuff because in April they’re gone. That’s it. They’re extinct. Whatever. Good riddance. No big deal. Move on.

Which, by the way, guys, we covered the Google Plus … Oh, yeah, guys, if you’re in the Syndication Academy and you didn’t watch the update webinar from last week, go back and watch it. I mean, literally, as soon as Hump Day Hangouts is over, go watch it because it’s super, super powerful what I was talking about, because one of the things I was covering was Google Plus being shut down. We had a lot of people comment and question about, “What’s going to happen? Because Google Plus is down and that’s one of our main social hubs.” Yeah. So what? We find others.

I shared exactly what I’m using now, which is so much more effective anyways, and it’s really, really powerful. If you’re in Syndication Academy, guys, go watch the update webinar that was just recorded last week. It’s in the archives area, the updates area along with all the notes and everything in there. Super powerful and it’s easy to do. Okay. AlL right. I’m gonna keep on moving.

What Photo Selection In GMB Is It That Dictates Which Image Is Displayed In Google Maps?

Jay says, what’s up, Jay? “Inside the GMB, what photo selection option is it that the dictates which image is displayed in Google Maps? I’ve tried several options there but it won’t change.” Yeah. I’ve had that issue in the past too, Jay. I don’t know, maybe Marco has an answer. I’ve tried in some cases to get an image to change too and not been able to get it to change. I just don’t even care at this point. I know some clients do, but it’s not been a major issue for me so I haven’t dug into it that much.

Marco, do you have an idea as to what you can do to get Google to display what you want?

Marco: No. I don’t have an answer for that. It sometimes displays the latest one, it sometimes displays what it wants to, I don’t know. If you have GMB that is legit, that is tied to a company or whatever, you might wanna get in touch with a Google rep and see if they can help you out. If you act really ignorant, if you act really stupid, like you don’t know what’s going on, they’ll really help you out. They’ll go out of their way to help you out. I found that the more ignorant you act and the more that they … “I don’t know …” “Oh, you mean like Chrome?” I mean they go that deep into … Just totally being blissfully ignorant about everything online.

Because you’re a business owner who doesn’t have time for all of this. The only people who have time for this are marketers who are in there trying to manipulate every day, who are the first ones that find out what doesn’t work and what does. So you wanna try to avoid being that know-it-all marketer because if you do that you’re gonna get nuked, your IP is gonna get tagged, and you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree. If it’s a legit business, man, just contact the Google My Business Support. Again, if it’s legit verifiable business, guys, I don’t have any problem contacting Support anymore. I found them to be quite helpful when needed. Again, don’t be afraid to do that. I remember years ago it was damn near impossible to get support help from Google and it was only via email and it would be sometimes days or even weeks before they would reply and it was just a bitch. But now it’s a lot easier to get in touch with Google Support. Again, if it’s for legit business, don’t be afraid of trying.

What Are Your Most Successful Tactics In Getting Client Response From Cold Emails?

Okay. Jeff says, a minute, I still got to get used to this platform, guys. Jeff says, what’s up, Jeff? He says, “Two questions. What is the record for most F-bombs dropped by Marco in one rant?” Well, apparently, Ken’s been counting, he says 87.

Chris: Did you see the RYS Academy sales video, the webinar, the very first one? I bet it goes higher.

Marco: Guys, listen, I don’t do it purposely. It’s just when I get excited I get really animated and it just flows. Please excuse me, I don’t mean to offend. Well, I have meant to offend people in the past, let me change that. You guys, in general, I don’t intend to offend you. If you are, please excuse me. Please understand that that’s just … My partners know that that’s me because they have to deal with me on a daily basis, so they know. They know Marco.

So you guys, just please excuse me. Next time if you come to my webinars or whatever, please put the kids away and you might not want the wife, girlfriend, boyfriend or whatever around while you’re listening to me talk.

Bradley: Yeah. I remember we had a Mastermind webinar about three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago, and Marco and I, we’re a little loose with our lips as far as some of the things we were saying. One of the members posted like “I’ve got kids in the room.” It was so funny because immediately after that I put a parental guidance suggested explicit language, image, or whatever, graphic on the bottom of the header image for the page that we were hosting the webinars on. In that point forward, we always kept it to be like, hey, keep your kids out. It’s not safe for work-type stuff. I think it was really funny. I think Carolyn was her name.

Anyway, so to carry on with the real stuff here, guys. Jeff says, “I know you mentioned this previously, but I couldn’t find it when researching out-, or excuse me when reaching out to business owners. In an effort to sell them the leads we were generating, what has been your more successful tactics for getting them to respond? This is primarily a cold email question.” Jeff, that’s a great question. That’s something we’re going to be covering a lot in depth in actually going through real live tests in case studies and such for monetizing GMB assets. We’re gonna be doing a lot of outreach stuff in the Mastermind coming up over the next several weeks. In fact, that was supposed to be started this week. I’m a little bit delayed, but I’m gonna be working on that a lot next week. I’ve got several assets that I need to start doing outreach for too.

But to answer your question, what I found and I spent a lot of time last year, in 2018, doing prospecting and trying to do sales for traditional agency services. I got really good at prospecting, getting the conversation started. As far as sales, I failed miserably. I think we spent like $18,000 between our salesperson and our VA staff which was handling the cold email outreach and all that stuff. I think we made like $6,000 in sales. It was ridiculous. That in part is just because I think that the local business market is so saturated with solicitation calls from marketing and advertising agency.

So long story short, that’s part of the reason we shifted back to the lead generation model because it changes the dynamic entirely, and I know that’s what you’re asking about. But when it came to prospecting, I found the easiest thing to do is, are quick question type emails.

There’s a great book by the guy that the developer of quickmail.io. If you go to quickmail.io, it’s a service that you can subscribe to, it’s like an email tracking service and all that. I personally like gmass.co better as an email marketing platform, but I started out with using quickmail.io. There’s a book by the developer. It’s a real short book. You can get it on Amazon, Kindle. I think you can get in paperback too, but I got it on Kindle. It’s a real short book, it’s only like 30-some pages I think, really inexpensive. I think it might only be $1 or $2.99 or something like that.

Go get it. Go to quickmail.io and probably click through some of the links and you’ll find the guy’s name, the developer’s name, and then you can find the book on Amazon. Pick that book up. Guys, I tested last year multiple types of cold email outreach methods for prospecting. Out of everything that I tested, and I tested David Sprague stuff, David Sprague’s got some really good tools, guys, there’s no question, but as far as his cold email outreach programs and stuff, I just had miserable success and we gave it full on effort.

I mean, for months, not just his program but all different types of outreach methods. What I found that produced the most success, especially dealing with contractors, was the quick question type emails. That strategy is outlaid perfectly in that short little book by the developer quickmail.io. His name is Jeremy something, I think. Anyways, just go pick it up, read through that book, and then start testing. That’s what I did and it worked really, really, really well.

We’re actually gonna be testing in the Mastermind. I’m gonna be using a combination of the more mass email approach, which is what I was talking about with the quick question type emails, which all you’re trying to do is solicit a response, a reply, that’s it. No, you’re not asking them to click through any links, you’re not getting diarrhea of the mouth and dumping a whole bunch of information and doing an email. You just ask them a simple question that’s kind of disguised like a lead for them. It’s a little bit misleading, but not so, because you’re gonna present them with an opportunity.

Again, it’s not unethical. Like I said, it’s just a way to ask questions. For example, maybe if I got a tree service site or assets that I need to monetize, I might contact 10 or 15 different … When I was doing the mass prospect, I would contact 50, 60 tree service contractors with these quick question type emails. Now I’m going to be doing a hybrid model that it incorporates the video email process, which is, we have a training program that I developed that I’ve used for years to get results for prospecting and sales and that’s called the video lead gen system.

It’s how to use video emails to get people’s attention. It’s a bit time-consuming because you got to record videos that are personalized to each person you reach out to. I’m trying to templatize that now to where it’s going to be a lot easier and more efficient and have a team that does the video editing and all that kind of stuff so that we can turn it into more of a process. Like an assembly line to where we can do 10 or 15 videos in a short period of time and then targeted emails out.

But I’m still going to be using those quick question type emails where I might say like, “Quick question, are you guys accepting or are you guys providing estimates for tree removal right now?” When they reply yes, that’s the conversation starter. “Okay, great. Would you mind if I sent you a video explaining what it is that I’ve got?” Then if they reply yes again, now you they’ve given you permission to send them a video. Then you send them the damn video, which is a personalized video explaining what you got.

“Hey, look, I got these leads coming in right now.” You don’t show your assets, guys. You show call volume or you show the fact that you’re generating leads. Show proof. Say, “Look, I really need somebody who can take these leads. If you’re interested, let me know I’ll send a few of them to you for the next week, or I’ll send you five leads or 10 leads or whatever, whatever your business model is good for. You say to them, “I’ll send you five leads for free,” and then, “I’ll follow up with you after that to find out if you’re if you like them. If they were good genuine valid leads that you’d like to continue that service, we can talk then,” stuff like that. Just real simple little questions, guys.

I’ve tested all kinds of processes and what I found was those quick questions where you don’t drop a link in it, you don’t ask them to click, you don’t ask them to go to a landing page and fill out a survey, or watch a video on the first email, none of that, you just ask them to reply. That’s a conversation starter. That starts the dialogue. Once the dialogue starts, then you ask permission to send them a link for them to click, which is just a video essentially. You say, “Can I send you a video to explain what I’ve got?” If they say yes, now they’re giving you permission.

Then you send them the video link, and then they’ll click on it, and now watch the video. Then sometimes they will reply, sometimes they won’t. But that’s really the whole point. Again, video lead-gen system was the course that we did on how to use video email. Then I’m going to be kind of mixing that with the more … I’m trying to templatize that and make it towards a process to where it’s not so time-consuming to do those emails, although they’re very, very effective. Okay?

Again, this is stuff that in the Mastermind, guys, were gonna be covering over the next several weeks. Okay. Those were great questions, Jeff.

Does anybody else have-

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second.

Bradley: I’m sorry?

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second. I already got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On WebFire 3.0 Tool?

Bradley: Okay. Cool. Yeah, it’s a great little book. All right, moving on. Martin says, “Have you any experience with the WebFire 3.0 tool?” No, Martin. When you said that, I clicked on it and I looked, I don’t, so I can’t really comment on that. I don’t have time to look through it right now. Perhaps, if you remind me, next week I will take a look at that before. I might look through that thing when we’re off this webinar today.

Marco: Hey Bradley, those are all like, those are click … Well, what do you call that, the auto traffic-

Bradley: It’s like a click-through spambot?

Marco: Yeah. Tons of websites like that.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: The problem that I’m seeing, and by the way, they’re working. Some are working better than others. I’m not gonna say which one because then everyone will run there and ruin it for me. I don’t want you guys messing with my money. At any rate, they are working, go and test them out. But interestingly enough, what I found works the best is … You did a course on it, it’s only available in the Mastermind.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: The way that you teach it becomes actually cheaper than most of these click-through spams or spam traffic networks, which is really interesting because you’re targeting real people to come and visit your stuff. These real people have a genuine interest in whatever it is that you’re doing right and they’re going to ask way-, they’re going to act, excuse me, way differently than the people that have to click on your link. Does that make sense? They pay for it. Well, you paid for it, they go, they click, then they get credit. It just becomes crazy because they’re not really interested in your stuff, they’re only interested in theirs.

Now since we’re targeting real people with the real interest, through Bradley’s training, it becomes that much better. Guys, activity, relevance, trust and authority. We’re in trusted and authoritative to the max because were inside Google.

Bradley: That’s right.

Marco: Relevance because we’re targeting whatever it is that we’re targeting. I’m not gonna say anything because it’s something that’s right now only available in the Mastermind. Then, activity on that link. It’s relevant activity. People clicking on that link going and acting the way that real people do. Some might not like it and bounce back, many will. But that’s what real people do and that’s what we’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m not gonna reveal the method here either, but exactly what Marco was saying, because that is real genuine traffic that Google knows has an interest in what you’re sending them to. So guys, when you’re talking about activity and engagement, which is one of the primary ranking signals now, is engagement, it’s not just blind engagement.

Again, if you are trying to rank something locally and you’re getting clicks from China and Russia and Korea and UK, and I’m talking about in the US, I’m just using this as an example, guys. But if you’re getting a bunch of clicks from things that are non-relevant either geographically especially for local stuff or non-topically relevant, in other words it’s just kind of like random traffic coming, do you think Google counts that traffic as an engagement signal, the same type, and gives it the same amount of weight as somebody that is in the local area that’s clicking from a local IP, likely from a mobile device that is intimately connected to them at all times, that they have a history of being interested in that particular type of content or service or product? Think about that guys, which click, which engagement signal is gonna be given more weight by Google? You already know the answer to that.

It’s not that these kind of tools and stuff can’t produce some nominal results, they can, but if you wanna get really good results and do it within terms of service, there are alternative ways to do it and it’s super, super effective. I mean, super effective. So it’s absolutely true.

Marco: I just want to be clear, Fiverr geeks, Fiverr traffic geeks, they get some results. These types of websites, the spam traffic, they get some results. But when you compare them all and compare them to the course that we have, it’s night and day. it’s just totally different because it’s just targeted traffic, people that are targeted to the geolocation so that they interact with whatever it is that you’re doing at that level, if that’s necessary. If not, then you can adjust to whatever it is that you’re doing and get traffic for pennies on the dollar, guys. That’s what it’s all about.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, topical relevance and geographic relevance, and you can combine both and get super, super good results. It doesn’t take a lot of traffic to get good results when you have heavily weighted engagement signals, which is what that is. It only takes a few engagements to get significant results when you have a really targeted audience that Google knows about. All right.

Anyways, we’re gonna keep moving. Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer on that. Bryan says, “What is the backlog on GMB listings in MGYB purchases. I’m out about four weeks.” Bryan, you’d have to contact support. I don’t manage any of that stuff, I’m sorry. Just contact support or send us ticket to support@mgyb.co and we’ll get it answered for you. Okay?

Marco: I was just talking to Rob about this to make sure. We have to deal with whatever it is that Google decides. I mean, they were on the show, we don’t control them. So we can’t say it’s definitely this or definitely that, or we’ll have it in a day, in seven days or whatever. It takes however long it takes. Some of them are nearly impossible. I believe that Bryan has already contacted Support and gotten an answer.

Now my thing is if you go through Support and then you come here, it just slows the process because then I have to go reach back to support, ask what’s going on, track it down, and then they all go and track it down and try to see what’s going on when it has already been answered.

The only thing that I can add to this is, guys, we’re not in control of this. We’re trying to do what we can. Bryan, you’re welcome to request a refund. If it gets too long, you’re welcome to request a refund and try to find someone who stands behind the product like we do 60-day guarantee replacement. If it gets suspended within those 60 days, we offer a legitimate guarantee. Now how long it takes to get it for you, that’s another question altogether.

Bradley: What’s up, Daniel? Hey man, the question you asked two weeks ago on Mastermind that we didn’t get to because the training went so long, please repost that for tomorrow because the Mastermind webinar is tomorrow and I didn’t want to spend some time on that. It was about a GMB question you had. We’re gonna have time. I’m gonna be covering specific training tomorrow, but it will be a lot shorter because I just did the Mastermind newsletter entry specifically about that. So that we’re gonna do some video training on it tomorrow, but you guys will have the written process.

You guys know how I do my process stocks. Well, you’re gonna have the written processes, the newsletter entry that you’re gonna get in about two or three weeks, whenever you get the next newsletter. That means my training tomorrow, the video training, will be a bit more streamlined so I should be able to get to your question. All right. I apologize I didn’t get to that, man, and it’s been weighing on me for almost two weeks now.

Is It A Good Idea To Leverage A Popular Family Name Or Brand To Get Press And Media Attention?

Anyways, Quentin’s up. He says, “Hello my name is Quentin Ravenel. I’m a full-time musician based in Charleston, South Carolina. Arthur Ravenel Jr. is a staple here. We’ve named a bridge after him that gathers 25,000 people every year in April to run or walk on the Ravenel Bridge. Is there any way to use my last name as leverage?”

That’s a really good question. Yeah. I would think Press Releases would probably be a great way to kind of piggyback off of that name recognition because that’s essentially … It’s a brand, right? Ravenel is a brand, right? If you can use that … There’s a strategy called newsjacking. Look into that, Quentin. Look in the newsjacking. In fact, you could just do a Google search for newsjacking and find plenty of resources, Amazon books, whatever that can teach you the strategy of newsjacking that I think would be perfect for that, for what you’re saying here because you have the same last name-, excuse me, as a brand that’s well-known in that area. I would use that newsjacking strategy as a way to get some press and some media. It’s almost like click bait but in a proper way, in an ethical way.

Again, I don’t do a lot of that stuff, I just haven’t had the opportunity to, but I’m familiar with that strategy. That’s something that I think you could implement here.

Marco, do you have any suggestions for that?

Marco: Entity relationship, man. That’s what he’d have to do. Relate his name to the Ravenel Bridge name so that when it comes in the, what they call, the Google auto predict, autosuggest, so when people go looking for the Ravenel Bridge walk, or a Ravenel Bridge run, Ravenel Bridge weekend, all of that stuff, your name comes up in there too. I mean, we’ve done that, right? Social conditioning?

Bradley: Yeah, social engineering.

Marco: Yep.

Bradley: Newsjacking, go check it out. There’s tons of information about it. There’s the book, David Meerman Scott, I think is the pioneer of that or whatever, at least the most well-known, but you can find all kinds of information about this free and paid. Just spend some time researching that newsjacking because it’s something that I think you could implement and get some significant results that way. Okay. By the way, go to mgyb.co to purchase Press Releases and we’ll publish them for you, they’re really, really nicely done. Okay.

Gregg. What’s up, Greg? You and I got a Mastermind call tomorrow, Gregg. Looking forward to it. We got a lot to catch up on.

Urban Towing says, “Does SerpClix work well for traffic to RYS or is there something else you would recommend?” Again, I’m not familiar with SerpClix. If it’s another CT spambot or crowd search, click-through thing-

Marco: It is.

Bradley: -which I imagine it would be. Yeah, I would probably produce some results, I don’t know how much. But I would recommend finding some better methods where you can actually buy or get real targeted traffic from real people that may have a genuine interest in your potential product or service. Guys, paid traffic is a good way to do that kind of stuff.

Marco: I actually went to SerpClix and did the math. It’s 14 cents per click. We can beat that through your method, can’t we, Bradley?

Bradley: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Marco: And this is real people. Real people targeted, remember that. Activity, relevance, trust, authority, that’s what you’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. Guys, we did … for years, Dan Anton had a product called crowdsearch.me. It works like gangbusters for a long time. Click-through spam was an engagement signal … I call it click-through spam. But that’s when somebody does a search on Google for example, keyword search, it could be a brand search, which is called a navigational search.

Guys, you can go to our YouTube channel. You can just go to Google and search crowdsearch.me and you’re gonna find this Semantic Mastery webinars. I’ve done two of them because we did one webinar and I think two years later we did another webinar because it was still working so well. I explained in that webinar, and both of those webinars and great length what click-through spam is and why it works so well.

It was actually a method that I learned way back in 2011 from Ivan Budimir, who was my most influential mentor in the local marketing, digital marketing space. It was Ivan Budimir. He’s no longer in the space, but he was absolutely amazing. I learned so much from that guy. He actually introduced that method to me back in 2011 and showed the Google patent. It’s not the actual official name of the Google patent, but he always called it site weight.

Site weight. In other words, if all things being equal, if there were two sites that were identical, which we know is impossible, pretty much, but theoretically, if two sites were equally authoritative, like they had the same amount of on-page optimization, the same amount of off-page optimization but one site got navigational search queries, which now in the semantic web is incredibly important, what is a navigational search query?

That’s a brand search or a variation of a brand search, like brand plus keyword, or brand a plus phone, like for somebody looking for the phone number of a company, or brand plus location, or brand plus map so that people looking for how to get to that location or get to that company or that store or whatever the case may be. Those are called navigational queries. If all things being equal, there were two identical sites competing brands and one had navigational queries and the other did not, the navigational query site would outrank the other, one hands down, two to one every time. Every time and it was tested over and over and over again. That was because of the site weight algorithm, or filter, or whatever you call that shit. Again, I’m not the patent nerd like Marco. Marco, that’s a term of endearment, by the way.

He introduced that way back in 2011 and the strategy then was to hire microtask workers to set up these little gigs. You would pay microtask workers two or three cents or something like that to go do a particular search, preferably with the brand dimension. Then find the link that you told them to find, click through, and then you would tell them, “Go find copy and paste the third word of the seventh paragraph on that page into the answer box,” and the answer box was their proof that they did the task that you assigned.

The reason why you wouldn’t just tell him to go click the link and copy because you want them to dwell on the page. That dwell time counted as an engagement signal, right? They would land on the page and then they’d have a hunt for that specific word or phrase or whatever it was that you told them to do that would make the answer. That would be the answer that means they solved the task that you gave them to do. That would create the dwell time, potentially scroll, you might ask them to click through to another page, whatever the task might be, click through to the link, then click through to the contact page, and then leave a message or whatever the case may be. You could set it up multiple different ways, but those were engagement signals way back in 2011 guys and it moved the needle like almost overnight.

The problem was as soon as you would stop paying in microtasks workers within just a few days your rank positioning start falling again because it was all about those engagement signals. Guys, again, this was eight years ago. Well, now, we’ve just been talking on this webinar alone about how important engagement signals are. So engagement signals are weighted even more now than they were back then.

Now the engagement signals are weighted more because Google can track and knows its users and the users’ behavior and their history. That’s what I was talking about. If you can get engagement signals from people that are locally and/or topically relevant to the content that you’re having them engage with, then that’s going to be weighted so much more.

What I’m saying is, again on a local level, if you can get people from a local geographic area that have a history for having an interest in that topic or that product or service as well as being local, a handful of clicks from them can produce better results than dozens or hundreds of click from non-relevant and non-non topically and non-geographically relevant clicks. Does that make sense?

So the click-through spam, and that’s what I called it because we were literally spamming click-throughs, isn’t as effective as it is when you can get relevant audience to engage because Google understands its audience, guys. Google knows its audience because everybody’s connected to Google all the time, right? So it knows what their history is and what their interests are and where they’re located and all that kind of stuff.

So that’s what I’m getting at. As far as the click-through spam stuff, for a long time it was working really well. Dan Anton’s, I think the best bot that came out, which was crowdsearch.me and for I think three, four years, I mean, I used it heavily. I was getting 50,000 credits per month and I was using every bit of them. It worked like gangbusters. But over time, it slowly started to stop working as well. I know that service is still out there. There are potential uses for it but it’s not something that I would do to direct to money site anymore. There are better alternatives now in my opinion, which is what we we’ve been talking about. We did some training about that in the Mastermind a few weeks ago.

It was a good question though. I was worried we’re not gonna have enough to talk about today, man, and look, we’re almost up. It’s awesome. Let’s see. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” That should actually be how stupid the median person is, right? It’s awesome. Thanks, Greg.

Okay. Grant says, “It might be easier to just close/delete designed junk email accounts ThAn unsubscribe endlessly.” Yeah. I know what you’re saying, Grant, but this is an email account that I’ve had for, God, 15 years, so it’s not something I wanna get rid of. But, yeah, I know what you mean.

By the way, I did all the heavy lifting. Now it’s just a daily maintenance thing. If I see an email come in, if that’s from something that was unsolicited, I open it, unsubscribe, and then as soon as the unsubscribe is successful, I go back and hit the spam button. Again, most days now guys, I might only get one or two spam emails. There are some days where I’ll get five or six or whatever, but almost every day now it’s just a bare minimum. So it’s manageable now. It just took a little bit of time.

Also, there’s a service called unroll.me. Guys, go check it out. Go to unroll.me, especially any of you suffering from shiny object syndrome. Type in your email and it’ll take a few minutes to run and it’ll come back and show you how many lists you’re subscribe to, and tell me it doesn’t take your breath away. It’s like, holy shit, how did I get subscribed … It’s just over the years, you accumulate, you get added to so many subscription lists either voluntarily or involuntarily, a combination of both really.

If you go to unroll.me, it’s amazing. It’ll just take your breath away when you see how many email lists you’re on, and you can start to systematically unsubscribe. Okay.

Chris: You’re the nightmare of every email marketer.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, now, I am, yeah. But trust me, a lot of email marketers made a lot of money from me too. All right. Let’s see, Walt says, “Not an affiliate link.” Okay. This is the quick, probably the quick … There you go, Grow Your Business With Cold Emails, Jeremy Chatelaine. That’s correct. He’s got an accent or whatever. It’s awesome, guys. Really short book. Look at that, it used to be cheaper, but 10 bucks, buy it, guys, it’s worth it. 100% worth it, buy it, and read it. It’s a great book for anybody’s doing prospecting. Guys, hands down, that has been the best strategy for me that I’ve ever found. Okay.

I’ll keep moving. Grow Your Business With Cold Emails: Everything You Need to Know. Go, perfect. Thanks, guys. I appreciate that.

Daniel, awesome. “Guys, I’m not whining about the GMB question, and I do have faith in SM.” Bryan, I think he took offense to which you said, Marco. Just looking to start implementing building out the local strategy and certainly anxious to get moving.” I totally get it, Bryan. I totally get it.

Marco: Yeah, so do we. I didn’t expect or intend again to offend. I just come across that way. I was just explaining that it just takes time. We try to get as quickly as possible. We know all you guys were anxious, but there’s only so much we could do when the beast keeps changing shit around.

Bradley: Correct. Yeah. That’s one of the issues, guys. Again, we all have to keep changing our methods to get these things done verified and such. I don’t even know what they’re doing to do it. I don’t care. Bryan, I’m just like you. I placed my orders too. I’m not kidding. Guys, I placed my orders just like you do now. I do have a little bit of pull sometimes, most of my orders are in queue still now because they’re not critical. But sometimes, for clients, for example, that have requested maps expansion, then I pull some strings to get them pushed forward a little bit. So that’s one of the benefits I guess of the CEO.

But for the most part, guys, I’m in queue just like you guys. It’s not you guys aren’t waiting because I’m getting all mine done. Trust me. I’m waiting too. Awesome. Unroll.me, You’re welcome, Grant

All right, guys. We gotta wrap it up. “Marco, you didn’t drop an F-bomb on me so I was unsure about the love.” It was Bryan again.

Chris: It’s coming.

Bradley: Marco, you got to say fuck just to make everybody happy once.

Marco: Yeah. Let me just close this off with this: fuck Google.

Bradley: All right, there you go. ‘Nuff said. All right everybody. Thanks for being here. Mastermind webinar tomorrow, don’t forget. If you did not check out the Syndication Academy update webinar from last week, do it, guys. Super, super powerful stuff. I showed you how to use RSS feeds there with geo-tagging.

By the way, I’m doing a lot of testing with I have it … No, I must already closed it down. No, there it is, RankFeedr. I’ve got it open. I’m not gonna show my projects. But Lisa Allen’s RankFeedr, guys. I know the coupon has expired now. She actually extended it because of the Syndication Academy update webinar that I did last week. I talked about it in there. Although the method that I showed was how to use Feedburner feeds to create local geotag feeds and they’re super powerful too, not as powerful as the RankFeedr feeds though because RankFeedr you can splice together and create static or sticky items and you can add the geotag and not just a specific geo coordinate but you can add what’s called a geo box, which is like a service area business. Super powerful stuff, guys.

I’ve been testing really hard for the last week now with the RankFeedr stuff and I’m seeing good results. Again, I know the coupon that she gave is expired, but it’s still totally worth it. It’s super inexpensive guys for the elite subscription, which I think allows you to create eleven hundred RankFeedr feeds.

Guys, it’s a set and forget. You set up a RankFeedr feed one time and you let it go. It just runs for as long as you keep your subscription active and you don’t have to do anything else. It will help to create co-citation geographic and topical relevancy on autopilot, guys. I’m telling you and for the elite service the elite subscription level, which again I think is 1,100 feeds, it’s $47 a month. It’s a no-brainer.

So if you haven’t already picked it up, guys, go watch the Syndication Academy update webinar, and go pick up the RankFeedr subscription service, which is how you create those things. I’m only telling you guys, we don’t pimp other people’s products unless we truly believe in them and I’m endorsing this because it’s such a good product and you can go to our website SemanticMastery.com I think it’s RSS-authority-sniper-3 I think. You could find the webinar replay and go through that process, if you want to watch the webinar where she talks about it.

But honestly, you don’t even need to watch the webinar, just go pick up the damn service because it’s really powerful. All right. With that, we’re gonna close it out. See you all next week. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Marco. Thanks, Chris.

Marco: Bye everybody.

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Click on the video above to watch Episode 224 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

  Announcement

Bradley: Okay. Now we’re live. This is screwing me up. Hey everybody! This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts Episode 224. It is February 20th, 2019. I’m sorry I don’t have my camera today. For some reason Google Hangouts decided it did not wanna recognize my camera at the last minute. You guys would probably appreciate the fact you don’t have to look at my face. I’ve only got two people on with me today because Adam and Hernan are out at the Funnel Hacking Live event. They’re out having fun while we’re hard at work.

Let me say hi to Chris. What’s up, Chris? How are you?

Chris: Doing good. Great to be here.

Bradley: Marco.

Marco: I made it, man. I’m here.

Bradley: Good. I don’t really have any announcements specifically, except that we’ve got a Mastermind webinar tomorrow, for those of you that are in the Mastermind. We’re gonna be covering several things that I’ve been tracking for the last few weeks now as far as doing some off-page tests for ranking GMBs, doing a whole bunch of different types of off-page tests and isolation.

In fact, let me se, for one moment, I’ve got pause the screen for a minute. Marco, do you have any announcements while I do that?

Marco: No. But I’m so glad you’re gonna talk about this because my write-up for the Mastermind, which I’m finishing up today by the way, is about that, testing, whether it’s single variable testing or whether it’s testing in isolation, or what it actually is that you’re trying to do.

What you’re trying to do is gauge whether there’s an effect. You’re not trying to show that something doesn’t work. It’s crazy going in and trying to test that something doesn’t work. The test should be, what does it do? You should get the data. The data should speak for what the tests. You’re testing a variable, but does the variable move the needle? No, it doesn’t. Okay, onto the next thing, which is what you’re doing, you’re testing all of these different variables and you’re isolating so that you can do whatever it is that you’re doing to each one.

I’m really glad that you’re talking about this. I’m gonna go a little bit more in-depth in the Mastermind newsletter about testing and how people are being misled by so-called, all of these are expert testers that don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So I’ll just leave it at that.

Bradley: Yeah. I’ve been tracking, well, about a month ago was. It was around January 21st when I started setting these tests up. I’m testing every one of these methods and isolation. In other words, they’re GMB or Google My Business profiles that had the initial on-page stuff done and what my standard operating procedure is for optimizing a new profile, and then from there, all I’m doing is specifically one of these methods.

I’m testing across multiple properties per methods so that I can see if we get positive results or negative results or no results on any one method, I want to see if that occurs across more than one property for the same type of method. Because if we get positive results on two properties, if I’m only doing two tests or testing on two locations per method and they’re both positive, then that’s a really good indication that that’s a viable method or something that moves the needle.

Like he says, that’s actually funny you said that because that’s the title or the subtitle of the actual test that I’m doing Which Method Moves the Needle the Most? These different tests that I’m doing, and like I said, if a positive result occurs on two properties, two separate locations, then I know that it’s a good method to use and that it will continue … It will be duplicatable, in other words.

I will obviously set it up and see if I can repeat it again across other properties. If I get two no changes, or two negative changes, then it’s probably the case also. But if we get one that’s positive and one it’s neutral, or one that’s positive, one is negative, then it’s obviously gonna have to require further investigation.

So that’s essentially what I’m doing. I’ve tried several these things and I’ve got some really super good results back with one of these methods in particular. I’m not gonna tell which one here, guys, you got to join a Mastermind for that. But I’m gonna be covering it tomorrow because I’ve got really, really good results from one method in particular. It’s actually one of the easiest methods and that’s what I love about. I’m pleasantly surprised. Actually, I was not surprised that the method works because of what I know about that method, but I’m glad that it’s one of the easier methods for any one of us to achieve, or to implement, I should say.

Again, I’m gonna be covering that in the Mastermind webinar tomorrow as well as I’m also gonna be covering some questions about PR stacking from some of our members. I’m also gonna be talking about setting up display ads for remarketing using the Google Display Network because it’s a much, much easier process now and it’s very, very effective.

So that’s what I’ve got to tease with for tomorrow. It looks like we don’t have that many questions. But I’m gonna get right into it.

Chris: I got a question, man.

Bradley: Go ahead.

Chris: I scrolled through my Facebook feed today, people are literally scared of GMB and Google all of a sudden. You just were talking about, yeah, which method is the most potent or the biggest needle move of them. Anybody, you wanna share your insights on that, Marco or Bradley?

Bradley: I’ll start. Yeah. Armageddon is coming, right? The sky is always falling, Chicken Little type stuff. By the way, that screenshot that you’re looking at there, guys, that’s the tease for tomorrow’s webinar in Mastermind because those are the movements that I’ve seen occur just in the last few days from that one particular method I’m gonna be covering.

Anyways, Marco and I, well, we’ve been around long enough to know that shit changes all the time. It’s SEO. For the last several months we’ve been pushing really hard on GMB stuff because it’s been working so well and I’ve been saying all along it at some point Google’s gonna shut it down. I don’t necessarily think that existing properties are gonna be taken down. What I think is gonna happen, and this is just my assumption, guys, my educated opinion about this or my educated guess, prediction I should say, is that it’s gonna become damn near impossible to register new GMB profiles. I think that’s how it’s gonna be shut down.

That’s why I’ve been pushing for people to build, build, build for the last several months, and to build your ass off and to build a team for scaling your build processes so that you can secure as many location as possible prior to what I think is going to happen, which is going to be damn near impossible to register new businesses.

I don’t know exactly what they’re gonna do to shut it down, but it’s likely going to be something like having to take photographs at a storefront or at the business location. It could also be requiring … Again, guys, just speculation, but it could also require you to send corporate documents in or something that shows proof of address with the business name on it, so like a utility bill or something. I know because I’ve actually had to call Google Support before to get help moving a legit business for a client of mine to get the Maps listing updated. That was one of the things required, was a bank statement, the account details and everything could be blurred, but it had to show the company name and the mailing address and all that.

Those are things that I assume or that I predict are going to happen. But we always find workarounds and we always find ways to continue to make money. That’s really the name of the game, guys. Don’t freak out. Don’t go into panic mode. Relax. Know that you’re gonna have other options. We’re gonna figure them out eventually and other people will figure them out as well, and you can too. But it’s about keeping your head cool and realizing that this is a cat-and-mouse game that we play and that’s the business that we’re in.

Marco, what are your thoughts?

Marco: I get a little bit more basic, man. Yeah, I don’t care. Why? I say basic because there’s basic web principles. The foundational stuff that we teach is based on web principles, right? We’re in the semantic web. We all know that, right? We talked about ART, activity, relevance, trust and authority, and how to generate all that. But there’s foundation of principles. You can only code one way. If you write spaghetti code, you’re writing garbage that nobody’s ever going to be able to tell what it is if someone needs to come and take over. So there’s international standards that are set.

There are basic principles where the guidelines are not set by Google. Google’s Terms of Service and Google’s guidelines are determined by Google, but coding standards are set by other people. In order for Google to mess with that, Google has to go and push at a higher level where there’s a bunch of other people pushing back. I’ve been talking about this since Semantic Mastery began. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Correct, but there’s others on the web. Google can’t just go and do whatever the fuck they want to do. There’s some stuff that they just can’t touch.

While that goes on we’ll just keep going and getting the results that we get. That’s what you saw. The test that you’re shown, which is beautiful because it’s based on basic foundational principles, that’s what we work from. Now all of these other stuff, yes, they’re hacks, guys. We manipulate. That’s our job. We’re in this to make money. We’re not here to make people happy. We’re not here to make Google happy. I’m in this to make money. I don’t care. They can’t tell me that it’s wrong to do what I’m doing, well then, Google should go and change their whole scheme for making money online because it’s all based on lies and it’s all based on moving people into their funnel and keeping them there as long as possible; they don’t care how they do it, they just want to do it. Well, that’s fine. That’s their business model. I have mine.

Just to get back to this, basic principles, they still work. Why? Because everyone has to adhere to the same standards no matter what. That’s my rant for today – well, hopefully.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree with that. Let’s get into questions, guys. Not a whole lot of questions and I’m surprised. Maybe it’s this new platform that’s scaring people off, the discus platform. All right.

Chris: The sky is always falling.

Bradley: What’s that?

Chris: The sky is always falling. Some people say it’s …

Bradley: Chicken Little, yeah. Okay. Ben’s up. He says, “Hey Bradley, thanks for our call last Thursday.” Okay. Ben’s one of our Mastermind members and I’d been doing Mastermind calls. I opened up an opportunity for our Mastermind members to schedule a 30-minute call with me. It started the first week in January and this is the seventh week that I’ve been doing those calls. Next week, I’ll wrap it up and then it’ll be closed down until June. In June, I’m gonna open it back up again.

I encourage our Mastermind members that even scheduled to call with me in this first round to call schedule a second call with me in June because in six months you will have hopefully overcome some of the issues that we discussed on our call, and hopefully you have a new set of issues. I really want to continue to find out what’s going on with our members. It’s been super insightful for me to learn more about what’s going …

Well, first, to get to know our members on a more personal level. It’s been great. It really has been. I’ve really enjoyed the calls. Number two, it’s given us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, and in our Mastermind, which is our top level program, what’s going on in our members’ businesses, so that we can develop better tools and resources and training to help them overcome their obstacles. It really has been beneficial to me as well as, hopefully, to others.

Is Local GMB Pro Included In The MasterMind?

That’s what Ben is referring to here. He says, “Thanks for our call last Thursday. It was good to talk to you and I got a lot out of it.” Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that. He says, “A couple of questions. Number one, is Local GMB Pro included in the Mastermind? Not that I need it. Local Lease Pro is looking pretty comprehensive as I go through it. I’m just curious as it doesn’t recognize my username.”

Yeah, I know. We had Rob Beale collaborate on that with us and so there is an additional charge for that. But as a Mastermind member you get it at a silly ridiculous discount from what the advertised price is, if you look at the sales page publicly. Just contact Support when you’re ready for that, Ben. But since I did talk with you, trust me, you’re not ready for that yet. Go through Local Lease Pro, start implementing those strategies, provided that they’re still going to work, depending on what happens with the GMB stuff going forward.

As it stands right now, it’s still working just fine. But just keep in mind that you should be implementing that right now and then the Local GMB Pro training would really be more about assets that need the additional push, or if you’re in super competitive areas, that’s where you’re going to want to implement Local GMB Pro. But again, that’s not something that I would recommend you start with right now, you’re gonna be overwhelmed. I know you and I talked about that. Do not overwhelm yourself with too much training. I’d rather you take action and Local Lease Pro is set up with actionable data, actionable information for you to go out and implement immediately to start building, and that’s the most important thing. Okay.

Good question. But, yeah, as a Mastermind member, you’ll get a significant discount on that when you’re ready. But I can tell you right now you’re not ready for that. Okay.

How Do You Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome?

Number two, he says, “You said you were a former shiny object syndrome sufferer.” Yes, I was. That’s absolutely true. I think most of us in this industry or in this space are or have suffered from that, and maybe still do at this point. As SOS is so clearly at the root of my lack of progress to this point, I was wondering what it was that helped you turn the corner. You are clearly totally recovered and in control today.”

Yeah. You know what it was, honestly, it was kind of a perfect storm in that I was trying to do too many things and trying to not only teach on too many different topics as far as digital marketing, but I was trying to do too many things for my agency and provide too many services. What happens is I became overwhelmed with chasing different methods and trying to implement every method that I could learn about. So every time I saw a marketing email come through, and you guys know, I’m sure you are all on a million email list too, I would get the same type of emails, you guys would about new methods, about new tools and processes and things like that and I would get sucked in. The grass is always greener, right? I would see the opportunity that I thought, as an entrepreneur, I would see opportunity and I’m want to go after it, I want to chase it.

But what happened was over time things started to accumulate and accrue to the point where I had 15 projects going on and none of them were really progressing because I was spread too thin across too much. We, as a corporation, Semantic Mastery kind of suffered that for a period of time too and in part, I’m the face of the company, I should say, not to discredit my partners or anything, but in part because I was doing that in my own business as well. So we were kind of going that way with Semantic Mastery, trying to be too many things to too many people.

Really what happened was, and fortunately, my partner Adam, he’s not here today, but he introduced us to a book by Gino Wickman, I think it is, called Traction. It’s a program for really zeroing in on a singular focus and purpose for a company, for any organization. We’ve been working through that now, guys. What are we, over a year now into that, Traction? Are we on our fifth quarter now? Somebody would comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what quarter we’re on.

Bradley: I think we’re on our fifth quarter now. Anyways, we do everything now. It’s kind of a combination of various methods, but the 12-week year is one of the books that we provide to our Mastermind members when they come join. Another one is That One Thing. That’s another book that where it teaches you how to really focus in on one thing to get results and find out what is the most important thing, the one thing that I can do such that everything else becomes irrelevant or less important or irrelevant, or something like that. It’s a great book. Then there’s the 12-week year, which is about taking 12-month goals and boiling them down into 12 weeks, which is a 90-day period. What we call them 12-week Sprints. It’s a quarter every year.

We started implementing these strategies and then traction really kind of started giving us the organizational structure as a corporation to start developing our goals, figuring out what our primary focus was going to be, zeroing in on that, and then building out our processes and systems to achieve those goals. Like I said. I think we’re on our fifth quarter of that process now. That’s why over the last probably six months or so, you guys have been following us and probably noticed we’ve really shifted to just local marketing stuff. Not that we don’t still talk about and teach and share and present information in the Mastermind about all types of marketing, but our primary push is local.

That’s because I needed to do that in my own business in order for me to get better results for my clients to increase my own income and to get some of my time and my sanity back because I was just all over the place and it was overwhelming and, honestly, it was exhausting. Also, as you guys know, shit’s changing all the time in the digital marketing space, so having to stay on the cutting edge of everything is incredibly difficult.

So I really wanted to shift my focus into something that I preferred, which was local marketing. I also feel that that’s one of the quickest ways to earn revenue, is local marketing. So I kind of shifted to that. We took several surveys of you guys, our members, to find out that that’s what the vast majority of our audience was doing, was local marketing or lead generation, that kind of stuff. So we really shifted all of our focus to that.

Again, Ben, to answer your question, how I got over it was kind of a combination of recognizing the fact that I was really spinning my wheels and not making any progress in a lot of different areas because I was going after too many things, my attention was spread too thin, and then also, again, when the student is ready the teacher appears.

Adam kind of presented us or brought to our attention like this, Gino Wickman’s Traction program and they call the EOS, I guess the employee operating system, and all this stuff. Just get the book, guys, it’s inexpensive, and go through it. It’s a lot of work. We’ve been at it for five months now-, or excuse me, five quarters now, I think five quarters, and it’s a lot of work. But it’s totally worth it because we’re seeing the benefits and the fruits of the work that we’re putting in.

So a combination of those two things for me really kind of got me to stop … Guys, I’m not kidding, I’ve unsubscribed from just about every single email list. I got one specific email that I would always sign up for stuff and now, because over the years I’ve subscribed to so many lists, I’ve unsubscribed from just about everything. But yeah, I still get emails for internet marketing products and stuff all the time, from stuff that I’ve never even subscribed from. You guys know how that goes, people sell lists and your name gets passed, your email gets passed around from one list to another, whether you subscribed or not.

I’m not gonna lie, every single day now when I get a marketing email unless it’s from somebody that I want to be on their list, I go find the unsubscribe button. as soon as I open an email, hit the unsubscribe button, and then I come back and hit the spam button. I do it every fucking day every single day. Some days I might only get one email now, other days I might get five or six spam type marketing emails. But I do the same thing. I open them up, I don’t even read them, I just go right find an Unsubscribe button, click Unsubscribe, and then I come back it’s hit the Spam button. What it’s done is it’s really reduced the amount of junk that I see on a daily basis.

I was telling this to Ben when we had our call, our Mastermind call, it’s like being an alcoholic and going to a bar. Right? When you open your email account, if you know you have shiny object syndrome and you’re not getting any traction in any one area of your business because you keep chasing opportunity, stop, stop going in your email box and reading these emails, guys. Stop. It’s like get yourself out of the bar if you’re a recovering alcoholic, right? It’s the same principle. You need to avoid the shit that’s detracting from you being able to get make progress in your business.

So for me, it was just eliminating the marketing messages. I’m a marketer so I’m susceptible to marketing messages, right? For me, it was just avoiding them. Out of sight, out of mind. Putting blinders on. Putting my nose down. Working through what I knew I needed to do and that was local marketing. Right now it’s about building a lead gen business and developing processes but I’m not doing all the work and then teaching our members about what I’m doing and how we’re doing it. So that’s what’s worked for me.

Any of you guys have comments on that?

Chris: Yeah. You probably should read the latest Mastermind issue, for February, because what I wrote about was pretty much what you’ve just talked about, but in steroids. It’s like if you’re struggling with that there’s something really, really valuable in there for this month.

Bradley: It’s awesome.

Chris: Not to reveal everything, so from Masterminding members, you can be looking forward to some really sweet stuff. I recommend you check it out as well, Bradley.

Bradley: I sure will. Marco?

Marco: Well, the way that I stopped is I realized that we’re producing better shit than most people out there. So I focus on our own things and I know that you focus, we, the Mastermind’s focus is local. But I’m still in the lab looking at manipulation methods for national, global, just whatever, because that’s just how my mind works. I can’t just do the local thing and be happy. I have to be able to see where all of the algorithms are going, where Google is going, where it’s taking us and why, and then try to intercept at the right time, which is kind of like how RYS Academy was born, then RYS Reloaded, Local GMB Pro, as a matter of fact, came through because of that. It was just looking to see where Google was going and why. So I’m constantly after that, where is Google going, why?

As long as I’m on that, I don’t care about somebody else’s shit because I’m too busy with my own shit. That’s how I was able to overcome. We’ve all been there. If you’ve been online for any length of time, it could be a week, you bought something. Yeah. That’s just the way it is.

Are Both G+ Personal And Business Profiles Be Shut Down By Google?

Bradley: Yeah. That’s a great question, Ben. I really appreciated that question. Hopefully, that was helpful. Ken. What’s up, Ken? He says, “Are both G Plus personal and business profiles going away or is it just personal?” I believe it’s all Google Plus. I think the only Google Plus that’s going to remain, and I could be wrong about this guys, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all being killed off unless you’re what they call Google Plus Enterprise, which is only for like, it’s like internal Google Plus for large organizations. I don’t even know anything about it. I just read somewhere about it.

So as far as I know, Google Plus is being completely killed. I think in April it’s gonna be down completely. You won’t be able to access even your old stuff. I got notifications, dozens and dozens of notifications about it where they say if you got any photos in Google Plus, the notifications, you got to download the photos and all that kind of stuff because in April they’re gone. That’s it. They’re extinct. Whatever. Good riddance. No big deal. Move on.

Which, by the way, guys, we covered the Google Plus … Oh, yeah, guys, if you’re in the Syndication Academy and you didn’t watch the update webinar from last week, go back and watch it. I mean, literally, as soon as Hump Day Hangouts is over, go watch it because it’s super, super powerful what I was talking about, because one of the things I was covering was Google Plus being shut down. We had a lot of people comment and question about, “What’s going to happen? Because Google Plus is down and that’s one of our main social hubs.” Yeah. So what? We find others.

I shared exactly what I’m using now, which is so much more effective anyways, and it’s really, really powerful. If you’re in Syndication Academy, guys, go watch the update webinar that was just recorded last week. It’s in the archives area, the updates area along with all the notes and everything in there. Super powerful and it’s easy to do. Okay. AlL right. I’m gonna keep on moving.

What Photo Selection In GMB Is It That Dictates Which Image Is Displayed In Google Maps?

Jay says, what’s up, Jay? “Inside the GMB, what photo selection option is it that the dictates which image is displayed in Google Maps? I’ve tried several options there but it won’t change.” Yeah. I’ve had that issue in the past too, Jay. I don’t know, maybe Marco has an answer. I’ve tried in some cases to get an image to change too and not been able to get it to change. I just don’t even care at this point. I know some clients do, but it’s not been a major issue for me so I haven’t dug into it that much.

Marco, do you have an idea as to what you can do to get Google to display what you want?

Marco: No. I don’t have an answer for that. It sometimes displays the latest one, it sometimes displays what it wants to, I don’t know. If you have GMB that is legit, that is tied to a company or whatever, you might wanna get in touch with a Google rep and see if they can help you out. If you act really ignorant, if you act really stupid, like you don’t know what’s going on, they’ll really help you out. They’ll go out of their way to help you out. I found that the more ignorant you act and the more that they … “I don’t know …” “Oh, you mean like Chrome?” I mean they go that deep into … Just totally being blissfully ignorant about everything online.

Because you’re a business owner who doesn’t have time for all of this. The only people who have time for this are marketers who are in there trying to manipulate every day, who are the first ones that find out what doesn’t work and what does. So you wanna try to avoid being that know-it-all marketer because if you do that you’re gonna get nuked, your IP is gonna get tagged, and you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree. If it’s a legit business, man, just contact the Google My Business Support. Again, if it’s legit verifiable business, guys, I don’t have any problem contacting Support anymore. I found them to be quite helpful when needed. Again, don’t be afraid to do that. I remember years ago it was damn near impossible to get support help from Google and it was only via email and it would be sometimes days or even weeks before they would reply and it was just a bitch. But now it’s a lot easier to get in touch with Google Support. Again, if it’s for legit business, don’t be afraid of trying.

What Are Your Most Successful Tactics In Getting Client Response From Cold Emails?

Okay. Jeff says, a minute, I still got to get used to this platform, guys. Jeff says, what’s up, Jeff? He says, “Two questions. What is the record for most F-bombs dropped by Marco in one rant?” Well, apparently, Ken’s been counting, he says 87.

Chris: Did you see the RYS Academy sales video, the webinar, the very first one? I bet it goes higher.

Marco: Guys, listen, I don’t do it purposely. It’s just when I get excited I get really animated and it just flows. Please excuse me, I don’t mean to offend. Well, I have meant to offend people in the past, let me change that. You guys, in general, I don’t intend to offend you. If you are, please excuse me. Please understand that that’s just … My partners know that that’s me because they have to deal with me on a daily basis, so they know. They know Marco.

So you guys, just please excuse me. Next time if you come to my webinars or whatever, please put the kids away and you might not want the wife, girlfriend, boyfriend or whatever around while you’re listening to me talk.

Bradley: Yeah. I remember we had a Mastermind webinar about three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago, and Marco and I, we’re a little loose with our lips as far as some of the things we were saying. One of the members posted like “I’ve got kids in the room.” It was so funny because immediately after that I put a parental guidance suggested explicit language, image, or whatever, graphic on the bottom of the header image for the page that we were hosting the webinars on. In that point forward, we always kept it to be like, hey, keep your kids out. It’s not safe for work-type stuff. I think it was really funny. I think Carolyn was her name.

Anyway, so to carry on with the real stuff here, guys. Jeff says, “I know you mentioned this previously, but I couldn’t find it when researching out-, or excuse me when reaching out to business owners. In an effort to sell them the leads we were generating, what has been your more successful tactics for getting them to respond? This is primarily a cold email question.” Jeff, that’s a great question. That’s something we’re going to be covering a lot in depth in actually going through real live tests in case studies and such for monetizing GMB assets. We’re gonna be doing a lot of outreach stuff in the Mastermind coming up over the next several weeks. In fact, that was supposed to be started this week. I’m a little bit delayed, but I’m gonna be working on that a lot next week. I’ve got several assets that I need to start doing outreach for too.

But to answer your question, what I found and I spent a lot of time last year, in 2018, doing prospecting and trying to do sales for traditional agency services. I got really good at prospecting, getting the conversation started. As far as sales, I failed miserably. I think we spent like $18,000 between our salesperson and our VA staff which was handling the cold email outreach and all that stuff. I think we made like $6,000 in sales. It was ridiculous. That in part is just because I think that the local business market is so saturated with solicitation calls from marketing and advertising agency.

So long story short, that’s part of the reason we shifted back to the lead generation model because it changes the dynamic entirely, and I know that’s what you’re asking about. But when it came to prospecting, I found the easiest thing to do is, are quick question type emails.

There’s a great book by the guy that the developer of quickmail.io. If you go to quickmail.io, it’s a service that you can subscribe to, it’s like an email tracking service and all that. I personally like gmass.co better as an email marketing platform, but I started out with using quickmail.io. There’s a book by the developer. It’s a real short book. You can get it on Amazon, Kindle. I think you can get in paperback too, but I got it on Kindle. It’s a real short book, it’s only like 30-some pages I think, really inexpensive. I think it might only be $1 or $2.99 or something like that.

Go get it. Go to quickmail.io and probably click through some of the links and you’ll find the guy’s name, the developer’s name, and then you can find the book on Amazon. Pick that book up. Guys, I tested last year multiple types of cold email outreach methods for prospecting. Out of everything that I tested, and I tested David Sprague stuff, David Sprague’s got some really good tools, guys, there’s no question, but as far as his cold email outreach programs and stuff, I just had miserable success and we gave it full on effort.

I mean, for months, not just his program but all different types of outreach methods. What I found that produced the most success, especially dealing with contractors, was the quick question type emails. That strategy is outlaid perfectly in that short little book by the developer quickmail.io. His name is Jeremy something, I think. Anyways, just go pick it up, read through that book, and then start testing. That’s what I did and it worked really, really, really well.

We’re actually gonna be testing in the Mastermind. I’m gonna be using a combination of the more mass email approach, which is what I was talking about with the quick question type emails, which all you’re trying to do is solicit a response, a reply, that’s it. No, you’re not asking them to click through any links, you’re not getting diarrhea of the mouth and dumping a whole bunch of information and doing an email. You just ask them a simple question that’s kind of disguised like a lead for them. It’s a little bit misleading, but not so, because you’re gonna present them with an opportunity.

Again, it’s not unethical. Like I said, it’s just a way to ask questions. For example, maybe if I got a tree service site or assets that I need to monetize, I might contact 10 or 15 different … When I was doing the mass prospect, I would contact 50, 60 tree service contractors with these quick question type emails. Now I’m going to be doing a hybrid model that it incorporates the video email process, which is, we have a training program that I developed that I’ve used for years to get results for prospecting and sales and that’s called the video lead gen system.

It’s how to use video emails to get people’s attention. It’s a bit time-consuming because you got to record videos that are personalized to each person you reach out to. I’m trying to templatize that now to where it’s going to be a lot easier and more efficient and have a team that does the video editing and all that kind of stuff so that we can turn it into more of a process. Like an assembly line to where we can do 10 or 15 videos in a short period of time and then targeted emails out.

But I’m still going to be using those quick question type emails where I might say like, “Quick question, are you guys accepting or are you guys providing estimates for tree removal right now?” When they reply yes, that’s the conversation starter. “Okay, great. Would you mind if I sent you a video explaining what it is that I’ve got?” Then if they reply yes again, now you they’ve given you permission to send them a video. Then you send them the damn video, which is a personalized video explaining what you got.

“Hey, look, I got these leads coming in right now.” You don’t show your assets, guys. You show call volume or you show the fact that you’re generating leads. Show proof. Say, “Look, I really need somebody who can take these leads. If you’re interested, let me know I’ll send a few of them to you for the next week, or I’ll send you five leads or 10 leads or whatever, whatever your business model is good for. You say to them, “I’ll send you five leads for free,” and then, “I’ll follow up with you after that to find out if you’re if you like them. If they were good genuine valid leads that you’d like to continue that service, we can talk then,” stuff like that. Just real simple little questions, guys.

I’ve tested all kinds of processes and what I found was those quick questions where you don’t drop a link in it, you don’t ask them to click, you don’t ask them to go to a landing page and fill out a survey, or watch a video on the first email, none of that, you just ask them to reply. That’s a conversation starter. That starts the dialogue. Once the dialogue starts, then you ask permission to send them a link for them to click, which is just a video essentially. You say, “Can I send you a video to explain what I’ve got?” If they say yes, now they’re giving you permission.

Then you send them the video link, and then they’ll click on it, and now watch the video. Then sometimes they will reply, sometimes they won’t. But that’s really the whole point. Again, video lead-gen system was the course that we did on how to use video email. Then I’m going to be kind of mixing that with the more … I’m trying to templatize that and make it towards a process to where it’s not so time-consuming to do those emails, although they’re very, very effective. Okay?

Again, this is stuff that in the Mastermind, guys, were gonna be covering over the next several weeks. Okay. Those were great questions, Jeff.

Does anybody else have-

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second.

Bradley: I’m sorry?

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second. I already got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On WebFire 3.0 Tool?

Bradley: Okay. Cool. Yeah, it’s a great little book. All right, moving on. Martin says, “Have you any experience with the WebFire 3.0 tool?” No, Martin. When you said that, I clicked on it and I looked, I don’t, so I can’t really comment on that. I don’t have time to look through it right now. Perhaps, if you remind me, next week I will take a look at that before. I might look through that thing when we’re off this webinar today.

Marco: Hey Bradley, those are all like, those are click … Well, what do you call that, the auto traffic-

Bradley: It’s like a click-through spambot?

Marco: Yeah. Tons of websites like that.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: The problem that I’m seeing, and by the way, they’re working. Some are working better than others. I’m not gonna say which one because then everyone will run there and ruin it for me. I don’t want you guys messing with my money. At any rate, they are working, go and test them out. But interestingly enough, what I found works the best is … You did a course on it, it’s only available in the Mastermind.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: The way that you teach it becomes actually cheaper than most of these click-through spams or spam traffic networks, which is really interesting because you’re targeting real people to come and visit your stuff. These real people have a genuine interest in whatever it is that you’re doing right and they’re going to ask way-, they’re going to act, excuse me, way differently than the people that have to click on your link. Does that make sense? They pay for it. Well, you paid for it, they go, they click, then they get credit. It just becomes crazy because they’re not really interested in your stuff, they’re only interested in theirs.

Now since we’re targeting real people with the real interest, through Bradley’s training, it becomes that much better. Guys, activity, relevance, trust and authority. We’re in trusted and authoritative to the max because were inside Google.

Bradley: That’s right.

Marco: Relevance because we’re targeting whatever it is that we’re targeting. I’m not gonna say anything because it’s something that’s right now only available in the Mastermind. Then, activity on that link. It’s relevant activity. People clicking on that link going and acting the way that real people do. Some might not like it and bounce back, many will. But that’s what real people do and that’s what we’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m not gonna reveal the method here either, but exactly what Marco was saying, because that is real genuine traffic that Google knows has an interest in what you’re sending them to. So guys, when you’re talking about activity and engagement, which is one of the primary ranking signals now, is engagement, it’s not just blind engagement.

Again, if you are trying to rank something locally and you’re getting clicks from China and Russia and Korea and UK, and I’m talking about in the US, I’m just using this as an example, guys. But if you’re getting a bunch of clicks from things that are non-relevant either geographically especially for local stuff or non-topically relevant, in other words it’s just kind of like random traffic coming, do you think Google counts that traffic as an engagement signal, the same type, and gives it the same amount of weight as somebody that is in the local area that’s clicking from a local IP, likely from a mobile device that is intimately connected to them at all times, that they have a history of being interested in that particular type of content or service or product? Think about that guys, which click, which engagement signal is gonna be given more weight by Google? You already know the answer to that.

It’s not that these kind of tools and stuff can’t produce some nominal results, they can, but if you wanna get really good results and do it within terms of service, there are alternative ways to do it and it’s super, super effective. I mean, super effective. So it’s absolutely true.

Marco: I just want to be clear, Fiverr geeks, Fiverr traffic geeks, they get some results. These types of websites, the spam traffic, they get some results. But when you compare them all and compare them to the course that we have, it’s night and day. it’s just totally different because it’s just targeted traffic, people that are targeted to the geolocation so that they interact with whatever it is that you’re doing at that level, if that’s necessary. If not, then you can adjust to whatever it is that you’re doing and get traffic for pennies on the dollar, guys. That’s what it’s all about.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, topical relevance and geographic relevance, and you can combine both and get super, super good results. It doesn’t take a lot of traffic to get good results when you have heavily weighted engagement signals, which is what that is. It only takes a few engagements to get significant results when you have a really targeted audience that Google knows about. All right.

Anyways, we’re gonna keep moving. Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer on that. Bryan says, “What is the backlog on GMB listings in MGYB purchases. I’m out about four weeks.” Bryan, you’d have to contact support. I don’t manage any of that stuff, I’m sorry. Just contact support or send us ticket to support@mgyb.co and we’ll get it answered for you. Okay?

Marco: I was just talking to Rob about this to make sure. We have to deal with whatever it is that Google decides. I mean, they were on the show, we don’t control them. So we can’t say it’s definitely this or definitely that, or we’ll have it in a day, in seven days or whatever. It takes however long it takes. Some of them are nearly impossible. I believe that Bryan has already contacted Support and gotten an answer.

Now my thing is if you go through Support and then you come here, it just slows the process because then I have to go reach back to support, ask what’s going on, track it down, and then they all go and track it down and try to see what’s going on when it has already been answered.

The only thing that I can add to this is, guys, we’re not in control of this. We’re trying to do what we can. Bryan, you’re welcome to request a refund. If it gets too long, you’re welcome to request a refund and try to find someone who stands behind the product like we do 60-day guarantee replacement. If it gets suspended within those 60 days, we offer a legitimate guarantee. Now how long it takes to get it for you, that’s another question altogether.

Bradley: What’s up, Daniel? Hey man, the question you asked two weeks ago on Mastermind that we didn’t get to because the training went so long, please repost that for tomorrow because the Mastermind webinar is tomorrow and I didn’t want to spend some time on that. It was about a GMB question you had. We’re gonna have time. I’m gonna be covering specific training tomorrow, but it will be a lot shorter because I just did the Mastermind newsletter entry specifically about that. So that we’re gonna do some video training on it tomorrow, but you guys will have the written process.

You guys know how I do my process stocks. Well, you’re gonna have the written processes, the newsletter entry that you’re gonna get in about two or three weeks, whenever you get the next newsletter. That means my training tomorrow, the video training, will be a bit more streamlined so I should be able to get to your question. All right. I apologize I didn’t get to that, man, and it’s been weighing on me for almost two weeks now.

Is It A Good Idea To Leverage A Popular Family Name Or Brand To Get Press And Media Attention?

Anyways, Quentin’s up. He says, “Hello my name is Quentin Ravenel. I’m a full-time musician based in Charleston, South Carolina. Arthur Ravenel Jr. is a staple here. We’ve named a bridge after him that gathers 25,000 people every year in April to run or walk on the Ravenel Bridge. Is there any way to use my last name as leverage?”

That’s a really good question. Yeah. I would think Press Releases would probably be a great way to kind of piggyback off of that name recognition because that’s essentially … It’s a brand, right? Ravenel is a brand, right? If you can use that … There’s a strategy called newsjacking. Look into that, Quentin. Look in the newsjacking. In fact, you could just do a Google search for newsjacking and find plenty of resources, Amazon books, whatever that can teach you the strategy of newsjacking that I think would be perfect for that, for what you’re saying here because you have the same last name-, excuse me, as a brand that’s well-known in that area. I would use that newsjacking strategy as a way to get some press and some media. It’s almost like click bait but in a proper way, in an ethical way.

Again, I don’t do a lot of that stuff, I just haven’t had the opportunity to, but I’m familiar with that strategy. That’s something that I think you could implement here.

Marco, do you have any suggestions for that?

Marco: Entity relationship, man. That’s what he’d have to do. Relate his name to the Ravenel Bridge name so that when it comes in the, what they call, the Google auto predict, autosuggest, so when people go looking for the Ravenel Bridge walk, or a Ravenel Bridge run, Ravenel Bridge weekend, all of that stuff, your name comes up in there too. I mean, we’ve done that, right? Social conditioning?

Bradley: Yeah, social engineering.

Marco: Yep.

Bradley: Newsjacking, go check it out. There’s tons of information about it. There’s the book, David Meerman Scott, I think is the pioneer of that or whatever, at least the most well-known, but you can find all kinds of information about this free and paid. Just spend some time researching that newsjacking because it’s something that I think you could implement and get some significant results that way. Okay. By the way, go to mgyb.co to purchase Press Releases and we’ll publish them for you, they’re really, really nicely done. Okay.

Gregg. What’s up, Greg? You and I got a Mastermind call tomorrow, Gregg. Looking forward to it. We got a lot to catch up on.

Urban Towing says, “Does SerpClix work well for traffic to RYS or is there something else you would recommend?” Again, I’m not familiar with SerpClix. If it’s another CT spambot or crowd search, click-through thing-

Marco: It is.

Bradley: -which I imagine it would be. Yeah, I would probably produce some results, I don’t know how much. But I would recommend finding some better methods where you can actually buy or get real targeted traffic from real people that may have a genuine interest in your potential product or service. Guys, paid traffic is a good way to do that kind of stuff.

Marco: I actually went to SerpClix and did the math. It’s 14 cents per click. We can beat that through your method, can’t we, Bradley?

Bradley: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Marco: And this is real people. Real people targeted, remember that. Activity, relevance, trust, authority, that’s what you’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. Guys, we did … for years, Dan Anton had a product called crowdsearch.me. It works like gangbusters for a long time. Click-through spam was an engagement signal … I call it click-through spam. But that’s when somebody does a search on Google for example, keyword search, it could be a brand search, which is called a navigational search.

Guys, you can go to our YouTube channel. You can just go to Google and search crowdsearch.me and you’re gonna find this Semantic Mastery webinars. I’ve done two of them because we did one webinar and I think two years later we did another webinar because it was still working so well. I explained in that webinar, and both of those webinars and great length what click-through spam is and why it works so well.

It was actually a method that I learned way back in 2011 from Ivan Budimir, who was my most influential mentor in the local marketing, digital marketing space. It was Ivan Budimir. He’s no longer in the space, but he was absolutely amazing. I learned so much from that guy. He actually introduced that method to me back in 2011 and showed the Google patent. It’s not the actual official name of the Google patent, but he always called it site weight.

Site weight. In other words, if all things being equal, if there were two sites that were identical, which we know is impossible, pretty much, but theoretically, if two sites were equally authoritative, like they had the same amount of on-page optimization, the same amount of off-page optimization but one site got navigational search queries, which now in the semantic web is incredibly important, what is a navigational search query?

That’s a brand search or a variation of a brand search, like brand plus keyword, or brand a plus phone, like for somebody looking for the phone number of a company, or brand plus location, or brand plus map so that people looking for how to get to that location or get to that company or that store or whatever the case may be. Those are called navigational queries. If all things being equal, there were two identical sites competing brands and one had navigational queries and the other did not, the navigational query site would outrank the other, one hands down, two to one every time. Every time and it was tested over and over and over again. That was because of the site weight algorithm, or filter, or whatever you call that shit. Again, I’m not the patent nerd like Marco. Marco, that’s a term of endearment, by the way.

He introduced that way back in 2011 and the strategy then was to hire microtask workers to set up these little gigs. You would pay microtask workers two or three cents or something like that to go do a particular search, preferably with the brand dimension. Then find the link that you told them to find, click through, and then you would tell them, “Go find copy and paste the third word of the seventh paragraph on that page into the answer box,” and the answer box was their proof that they did the task that you assigned.

The reason why you wouldn’t just tell him to go click the link and copy because you want them to dwell on the page. That dwell time counted as an engagement signal, right? They would land on the page and then they’d have a hunt for that specific word or phrase or whatever it was that you told them to do that would make the answer. That would be the answer that means they solved the task that you gave them to do. That would create the dwell time, potentially scroll, you might ask them to click through to another page, whatever the task might be, click through to the link, then click through to the contact page, and then leave a message or whatever the case may be. You could set it up multiple different ways, but those were engagement signals way back in 2011 guys and it moved the needle like almost overnight.

The problem was as soon as you would stop paying in microtasks workers within just a few days your rank positioning start falling again because it was all about those engagement signals. Guys, again, this was eight years ago. Well, now, we’ve just been talking on this webinar alone about how important engagement signals are. So engagement signals are weighted even more now than they were back then.

Now the engagement signals are weighted more because Google can track and knows its users and the users’ behavior and their history. That’s what I was talking about. If you can get engagement signals from people that are locally and/or topically relevant to the content that you’re having them engage with, then that’s going to be weighted so much more.

What I’m saying is, again on a local level, if you can get people from a local geographic area that have a history for having an interest in that topic or that product or service as well as being local, a handful of clicks from them can produce better results than dozens or hundreds of click from non-relevant and non-non topically and non-geographically relevant clicks. Does that make sense?

So the click-through spam, and that’s what I called it because we were literally spamming click-throughs, isn’t as effective as it is when you can get relevant audience to engage because Google understands its audience, guys. Google knows its audience because everybody’s connected to Google all the time, right? So it knows what their history is and what their interests are and where they’re located and all that kind of stuff.

So that’s what I’m getting at. As far as the click-through spam stuff, for a long time it was working really well. Dan Anton’s, I think the best bot that came out, which was crowdsearch.me and for I think three, four years, I mean, I used it heavily. I was getting 50,000 credits per month and I was using every bit of them. It worked like gangbusters. But over time, it slowly started to stop working as well. I know that service is still out there. There are potential uses for it but it’s not something that I would do to direct to money site anymore. There are better alternatives now in my opinion, which is what we we’ve been talking about. We did some training about that in the Mastermind a few weeks ago.

It was a good question though. I was worried we’re not gonna have enough to talk about today, man, and look, we’re almost up. It’s awesome. Let’s see. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” That should actually be how stupid the median person is, right? It’s awesome. Thanks, Greg.

Okay. Grant says, “It might be easier to just close/delete designed junk email accounts ThAn unsubscribe endlessly.” Yeah. I know what you’re saying, Grant, but this is an email account that I’ve had for, God, 15 years, so it’s not something I wanna get rid of. But, yeah, I know what you mean.

By the way, I did all the heavy lifting. Now it’s just a daily maintenance thing. If I see an email come in, if that’s from something that was unsolicited, I open it, unsubscribe, and then as soon as the unsubscribe is successful, I go back and hit the spam button. Again, most days now guys, I might only get one or two spam emails. There are some days where I’ll get five or six or whatever, but almost every day now it’s just a bare minimum. So it’s manageable now. It just took a little bit of time.

Also, there’s a service called unroll.me. Guys, go check it out. Go to unroll.me, especially any of you suffering from shiny object syndrome. Type in your email and it’ll take a few minutes to run and it’ll come back and show you how many lists you’re subscribe to, and tell me it doesn’t take your breath away. It’s like, holy shit, how did I get subscribed … It’s just over the years, you accumulate, you get added to so many subscription lists either voluntarily or involuntarily, a combination of both really.

If you go to unroll.me, it’s amazing. It’ll just take your breath away when you see how many email lists you’re on, and you can start to systematically unsubscribe. Okay.

Chris: You’re the nightmare of every email marketer.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, now, I am, yeah. But trust me, a lot of email marketers made a lot of money from me too. All right. Let’s see, Walt says, “Not an affiliate link.” Okay. This is the quick, probably the quick … There you go, Grow Your Business With Cold Emails, Jeremy Chatelaine. That’s correct. He’s got an accent or whatever. It’s awesome, guys. Really short book. Look at that, it used to be cheaper, but 10 bucks, buy it, guys, it’s worth it. 100% worth it, buy it, and read it. It’s a great book for anybody’s doing prospecting. Guys, hands down, that has been the best strategy for me that I’ve ever found. Okay.

I’ll keep moving. Grow Your Business With Cold Emails: Everything You Need to Know. Go, perfect. Thanks, guys. I appreciate that.

Daniel, awesome. “Guys, I’m not whining about the GMB question, and I do have faith in SM.” Bryan, I think he took offense to which you said, Marco. Just looking to start implementing building out the local strategy and certainly anxious to get moving.” I totally get it, Bryan. I totally get it.

Marco: Yeah, so do we. I didn’t expect or intend again to offend. I just come across that way. I was just explaining that it just takes time. We try to get as quickly as possible. We know all you guys were anxious, but there’s only so much we could do when the beast keeps changing shit around.

Bradley: Correct. Yeah. That’s one of the issues, guys. Again, we all have to keep changing our methods to get these things done verified and such. I don’t even know what they’re doing to do it. I don’t care. Bryan, I’m just like you. I placed my orders too. I’m not kidding. Guys, I placed my orders just like you do now. I do have a little bit of pull sometimes, most of my orders are in queue still now because they’re not critical. But sometimes, for clients, for example, that have requested maps expansion, then I pull some strings to get them pushed forward a little bit. So that’s one of the benefits I guess of the CEO.

But for the most part, guys, I’m in queue just like you guys. It’s not you guys aren’t waiting because I’m getting all mine done. Trust me. I’m waiting too. Awesome. Unroll.me, You’re welcome, Grant

All right, guys. We gotta wrap it up. “Marco, you didn’t drop an F-bomb on me so I was unsure about the love.” It was Bryan again.

Chris: It’s coming.

Bradley: Marco, you got to say fuck just to make everybody happy once.

Marco: Yeah. Let me just close this off with this: fuck Google.

Bradley: All right, there you go. ‘Nuff said. All right everybody. Thanks for being here. Mastermind webinar tomorrow, don’t forget. If you did not check out the Syndication Academy update webinar from last week, do it, guys. Super, super powerful stuff. I showed you how to use RSS feeds there with geo-tagging.

By the way, I’m doing a lot of testing with I have it … No, I must already closed it down. No, there it is, RankFeedr. I’ve got it open. I’m not gonna show my projects. But Lisa Allen’s RankFeedr, guys. I know the coupon has expired now. She actually extended it because of the Syndication Academy update webinar that I did last week. I talked about it in there. Although the method that I showed was how to use Feedburner feeds to create local geotag feeds and they’re super powerful too, not as powerful as the RankFeedr feeds though because RankFeedr you can splice together and create static or sticky items and you can add the geotag and not just a specific geo coordinate but you can add what’s called a geo box, which is like a service area business. Super powerful stuff, guys.

I’ve been testing really hard for the last week now with the RankFeedr stuff and I’m seeing good results. Again, I know the coupon that she gave is expired, but it’s still totally worth it. It’s super inexpensive guys for the elite subscription, which I think allows you to create eleven hundred RankFeedr feeds.

Guys, it’s a set and forget. You set up a RankFeedr feed one time and you let it go. It just runs for as long as you keep your subscription active and you don’t have to do anything else. It will help to create co-citation geographic and topical relevancy on autopilot, guys. I’m telling you and for the elite service the elite subscription level, which again I think is 1,100 feeds, it’s $47 a month. It’s a no-brainer.

So if you haven’t already picked it up, guys, go watch the Syndication Academy update webinar, and go pick up the RankFeedr subscription service, which is how you create those things. I’m only telling you guys, we don’t pimp other people’s products unless we truly believe in them and I’m endorsing this because it’s such a good product and you can go to our website SemanticMastery.com I think it’s RSS-authority-sniper-3 I think. You could find the webinar replay and go through that process, if you want to watch the webinar where she talks about it.

But honestly, you don’t even need to watch the webinar, just go pick up the damn service because it’s really powerful. All right. With that, we’re gonna close it out. See you all next week. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Marco. Thanks, Chris.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[fadingpersoncollectorstuff-blog]

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

"Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

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Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

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Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

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10 points

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moving out of the city, and I am gonna need to buy a car for my Suburban life!!""

Where can i get health insurance?

i've been on the pc for about two hours now looking for health coverage that does not cost me an arm and a leg and a foot. This is gonna sound like a personal ad, but i dont care,lol I am 20 and i just finished getting my aa this past december, (so i am no longer a college student), i live on my own, my parents do not supplement my income in any way(and they no longer want me on their coverage so thats a no). i have no children, i make about 30,000 (two partime jobs, niether give health coverage for part time employees) I am female, i've never smoked anything, (ciggarette, marijuana, etc) i work out 5 times a weeks( about 140lbs, 5'3), and most of all i live in that crap bowl known as new york. I need some type type of vision dental, medical, etc coverage that is affordable, im not looking for free, but something i can afford (around 0-$75 a month if possible), please help""

Globe life insurance?

how reliable is globe life term life insurance.. and just what are the terms ..

Do I have to pay more for my 16 yr old to drive?

Do I have to pay for a different auto insurance policy (that costs alot more)here in Oregon to allow my 16 year old son to drive our vehicles? I was told by a former ins agent, this is a scam to get more in premiums, when it is not required by law.""

How can I get affordable health insurance because of obama care?

I work but i have 2 kids to support and I Make Minimum Wage.. plus rent and bills.. Does anyone have any suggestions about how i could possibly get health care or what will happen if I just simply cant afford it? And no smart *** remarks like get a better paying job. Jobs are hard to find where I Live and i am making it with what i have. But obama forcing us to have health insurance is making me wonder what Options i have. Medicare? or some kind of afforable health insurance? would love to hear people who are in the same boat i am. and any POSITIVE Suggestion would be helpful. Thanks

Does my dad lose his no claims if I'm added to his car insurance?

I have a query about car insurance. When I passed my test last May, I was told that if I was to have my dad as the main driver, and me as the named driver, and my dad has 9 years or more no claims, then they would have to be reset to 0 years when i am added to the insurance, is this true? if it is, then i'm going to have to stick with the ridiculous insurance quotes... if not, then i've just realised that i could be saving myself 1000! Any opinions appreciated! :)""

Need Health Insurance!?

My husbands company doesnt provide benefits. We have three kids and need health insurance. We have been looking but all the insurance you can find is like $10000, $5000, $3000 deductible, 20% co-insurance, pay nothing AFTER deductible for office visit and $500~$1000 premium.unbelievable!. We cant get states insurance because our income is little high (middle class). What can we do to get regular insurance for my family?""

Insurance and pregnancy?

I had a baby 4 months ago and had insurance from November 2011 until September 2012 ( I canceled as I could no longer afford it.) My husband got a new job and as of January 5th 2013 I will be covered under his plan ( a bit more affordable). The issue is I am pregnant ( very early). Will they consider this pre existing? This was not planned! I has an apt for birth control but my baby got ill and had to pay 3000.00 in medical so I had to push it back and now, I'm pregnant again.""

How much does insurance cost for a gas station in NH?

If I was to open up a gas station in NH how much would the insurance cost per month or year? Assuming I had an average amount of coverage and was running it as an LLC.

What's an average for tax and insurance cost for commercial property of very low rent?

I need to know what I'm at least getting into before I jump in headfirst. before starting all you need to know is that this is the space I'm looking at http://commercial.exitrealestategallery.com/homes/1738-Kings-Ave/17576657/?index=17 And probably be using it as a non-alcohol club/ rental and recording space for musicians.

Insurance companies taking advantage?

is there a chance that insurance companies are taking advantage of obama-care and increasing costs more than they really needed? looks like a % of insured are getting hit but what is the % of uninsured or insurance denials that are now covered? any good stories?

What insurance is the cheapest a month?

for a 16 year old that drives a 98 ford explorer 4 door 4wd. 4.0L V 6. it has a lift on it i dunno if that effects it at all. i;ve looked around but all it shows is like 2 grand. and i know it aint 2 grand cause my cousins 17 and she has an 05 mustang gt. by the way i live in tn. dunno if that helps. and i have 230,000 miles. no wrecks or sitations.""

Is Mitsubishi Lancer Coupe considered a Sports Car in Insurance?

Hi, im in australia planning to get a lancer coupe, not the sedan. they range in late 90 models. I cant tell if theyre a sports car or not by insurance companies. (sports car are more expensive). a small low budget economical 1.8L car wouldnt be classified as a sports. But then lancers were originally used in rally races. Can anyone tell me if this lancer would have higher insurance costs than a 4 door sedan version.""

How much will my insurance go up if I am at 100% fault ?

I was in a car accident that was found to be 100% my fault. Accident itself was not too bad -- other car's front bumper( one side) dent.. so how much should I expect my insurance to increase ?

Automotive Insurance?

Insurance designed to protect an insured driver or owner from the claims of others is called: collision insurance financial responsibility insurance liability insurance comprehensive insurance

Auto Insurance ? Never had it. Can anybody help.?

I have called for quotes.. to many auto insurance companies. But since this my first time purchase I am confused, Can someone break down the features of a policy, what am i to have, what is reccomended. thanks , any details will help.""

Convertible insurance?

I'm a new driver and have been browsing car dealerships for an affordable car. Right now I'm interested in a 1998 Chrysler Sebring Convertible LX. I was just wondering on average how much more insurance is for a convertible than a non-convertible?

Estimate for car insurance for 18 year old?

I live in Houston tx, like the top said I am a 18 year old male, I have a 2012 ford mustang v6. It is paid off, and I want to sign over the car from my parents name to mine cause they live in a diffrent city but that means I would have to start paying for insurance. Which is fine but do any of y'all know about how much I would be paying. I will only want liability, or if I can afford it full coverage. I don't want to get quotes from the insurance companies themselves because after that they constantly email call and mail you stuff and its annoying. Anyways thanks for the help""

Affordable health insurance??

I asked before but i am looking for a health insurance that covers meds, eye checks, dentist, womens problems, in the united states.""

What is the average cost of mobile home insurance in California?

What is the average cost of mobile home insurance in California?

Does my car insurance help me get another car if my car is totalled?

I was in a car accident last week, which wasn't my fault. The auto body shop said my car is totalled because of the damages, it can't get fixed. The other person's insurance is going to pay it off because of the loss, I have full coverage and my question is, can my insurance get my another car or do I have to get it myself? I got it in April, gave a down payment, and have only made one payment. I need a car badly for work!!""

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

How can I put my girlfriend (8 1/2 years and still going strong) on my health/dental insurance?

Hi guys, so I have asked my job and it seems the only way I can add her to my health/dental insurance is if 1) we are married or 2) if i provide proof of living with her for a certain amount of years. There has to be some loophole because I really think it is ridiculous that we have been to together since we were 16 and I cant add her or help her in such a way. There is no possible way, in timeline, for us to qualify for such rules. 16-18 years old (in high school and lived with parents), 18-23 years old (Attended separate universities and lived in different cities), 23- 24 1/2 years old, (both living with parents back home, we alternate and stay at each others place, so have no set home or bills in our name, such as direct tv, electricity, internet, you name it. we are blessed with awesome parents) and yes we have though about just getting married, but no way... we are waiting until we are established and can fend for ourselves to make a decision like that, but yes we do want to get married some day, but not over screwing the government or other reasons. Also we live in california if that helps, since i know every state varies, thank s guys!! ^_^""

Insurance for second car?

hello i ma a taxi driver with psv insurance my son has recently bought a car and wants me to put me down as the main driver to keep the premium as low as possible. what i want to know is can i have two policies one private and one psv???

Would it be a good idea for insurers to give a % of income they give out in claims?

We all look for the cheapest premium, but we have no idea how they would perform if you had to claim. I heard somewhere that car insurers give out much more that household insurance (or vice versa) and can't understand why.""

""Would this health insurance be accepted in my ares ,lubbock and shallowater texas?""

i need to know if this health insurance would be accepted in my area,lubbock and shallowater texas?""

How Much is a car note usually for a 2006 Chevy cobalt or any 2006 model? and car insurance for a 20 year old?

How Much is a car note usually for a 2006 Chevy cobalt or any 2006 model? and car insurance for a 20 year old?

Arizona Law on insurance pulling your driver record ?

does anyone how long (in term of years) can an insurance company pull your driver record? i know here in Arizona i can pull my record from servicearizona.com for 39month. but some people tell me they can pull up to 5 years from your record.

""I need some cheap car insurance. I have a 2005 suburvan, a 97 chev pickup and a 97 mercury tracer.?""

I need some cheap car insurance. I have a 2005 suburvan, a 97 chev pickup and a 97 mercury tracer.?""

Poll: How much do you pay for auto insurance per year?

could you do me a favour and also tell me what kind of car you drive, age, and gender? don't worry not trying to stalk anyone or something, I just want to see what do most people pay for insurance. I don't know much about what's a good or bad price, all I know is the rate for the car I want and I want to see what it is compared to other people's rates. if you don't want to answer you don't have to because I know some people might not be comfortable saying this stuff to strangers. also any offences? thanks!""

Found a nice place for those who need free auto quotes?

Hey there just wanted to let everyone know i found this great site for free auto insurance quotes, its saved me $32 off of my montly policy. Read some of the auto insurance articles to help you save more. Http://www.free-auto-quote.com""

What is the best life insurance for seniors?

age 53, will retire in 2010 - federal employee""

Are there any Uk car insurance sites whose multiple car insurance quotes actually do work out cheaper than?

separate for each car

Insurance cost for Corvette?

Hey I'm 16 and have quite a bit of money saved for a car so im gonna get a decent one nd i was thinking a corvette. I was wondering about (I know no one knows exactly) how much the insurance is going to be on like a 00 or 01 model. Also if you know insurance cost of a 350z too that would be great. Thanks for the help

If i cancel my car insurance will the rate later go up?

If I cancel my current monthly car insurance plan for my car, will getting a new play later down the line increase its premiums? i am wondering a few months down the line, or other time frames. i will not drive my car after this cancellation. currently my annual insurance is around $5,600.00 I am 24, male, live in toronto.""

How much is it to include your teenage child in your car insurance plan?

My daughter is going to get her license soon and will be driving the family car with us.. how much will it cost to add her to our insurance plan?

How can I find out what my employer pays for my health insurance?

My employer tells me that they pay 70% of my health insurance premiums, but looking at the amount my 30% portion is and calculating the total, it would be a ridiculous total premium. So I think that my employer is lying to me about the percentage they pay. I tried calling the insurance company to find out what the total premiums are, but they would not tell me. Is there a way that I can find out what what the total premiums are on my health insurance plan?""

Cheap Car Insurance For Young Adult?

I am 19. I just bought a car that needs to be plated. Its a 2002 Daewoo. (model name Lanos). I need to know the cheapest insurance I can put on the car. Ive never had any tickets or violations or trouble with the law. Ive never even been pulled over. I live in Indiana. Any suggestions please let me know. Also, I just moved to Lake Station from Elkhart. I guess you have to go through emissions to get plates but since its an 02 I dont believe I need to do it this year. However, I may plan on going back to Elkhart & thats where my lincence is from. Could I tell the BMV that and they plate it as Elkhart? & I wont even have to go through emissions?""

Self Employed Health Insurance?

My father just quit his old job, he couldn't work there anymore (Too long commute and we lost a parent, so he had to stay closer home for the family) So now he is self employed. We are trying to find insurance that will cover him, 4 children, vision (we all wear glasses) + dental. Does anyone have any suggestions? (We live in PA)""

Where can I find a comparative listing for auto insurance rates?

Where can I find a comparative listing for auto insurance rates?

I am 19 and own a 1978 camaro in Michigan what would be the cheapest insurance company?

I am 19 and own a 1978 camaro in Michigan what would be the cheapest insurance company?

Insurance and juniors lisence?

My son just got his Jr's license will my insurance go up? Or does he need a Senior license for that

What is the best but most cost-efficient insurance for a 22year old male driver who just got his license?

Used, older car (either 1990 honda or 1995 toyota). Just got his license. Want decent insurance but not outrageously price. Any help greatly appreciated - thanks!""

Can any body tell me what is the lowest online car insurance company?

i have an old car and sometimes i use it but i think i pay too much to insure it $55 a month and it is just liablity insurance and i am looking for an online insurance company that can give me a very low rate

Car insurance?

my car insurance is $1537 i dont know why im 18 years old have a kia spectra 03 drive 2 hours to school everyday can anyone pls help me

Does not paying car insurance affect Credit score?

I haven't paid my car insurance on time. But I haven't gotten mail saying last notice or the company hasn't even bothered me about it. Will this make my credit score horrible? how do i go about fixing it? thanks!

Is there affordable private health coverage available?

My husband lost his job and my autistic son takes strattera($640) and abilify($220) a month. Is there any programs that help with cost or a good private insurance plan out there?

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

Evanston Illinois Cheap car insurance quotes zip 60209

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-cheapestreliable-car-insurance-company-miami-florida-williams/"

[askpet-archive]

PET Ep 9

Ari sat up slightly, a bad feeling in her gut. She pulled out her phone and dialed Arthurs number as fast as she could move, grabbing Eras book.. WHy does Arthur only have one life, oh my god oh my god Ari flipped through the pages, letting out a squeak when noticing the others also only have one life, what the fuck was going on "Fuck! ANgy, Arthur- Vincent! whoever this is! Why the fuck are you all at only one life!" she screamed into the phone, worry in her voice Era wakes up, looking over to Ari in confusion "Wha." "ARTHURS GONNA WHAT?!" She screamed, panic in her tone "I DIDNT SET UP ANYTHING WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO KILL ARTHUR?! HE WAS AT OVER A HUNDRE DLIVES JUST A SECOND AGO!" Era shifts away from Ari slightly, deciding to just listen to her "Cre-creepy woman!?" Ari was starting to tear up not, shaking obvious "How is she holding him up that high? mgic? wings?? Why is my brother going to die please save him he cant die- why is she holding him up?!" her voice sounded kind of choked, she obviously had no part of this "My little brother cant die- you guys c-cant either- sa-save him and g-get away-" Era is so confused right now, the only thing she knows is that Arthur is probably going to die. She lightly pats Ari on the shoulder "Hey- hey- calm down, count to ten, and try to focus on breathing. What's going on?" She'd hug Ari right now but wants to make sure she's okay first Ari took a deep breath "what is she t-telling you t-to do? l-listen to her- if s-s-shes just gon-gonna-- d-dont-- just-- try-try and c-catch him-" she stopped, taking a deep breath and holding the phone away from her ear to stare at Era "i have to go back right now we wont be able to get there in time my little brother is going to die an-and-" she choked on a sob, tears now going down her cheeks. Era pauses, "Wait- Okay, okay," She softly hugs her "Shh, calm down, I'll go try and see if there's any way to leave before the barrier is gone okay?" She lets go of Ari, standing up "Try and calm down, okay?" Era heads inside of the Acachalla house to go ask anyone if there's a way to leave Ari put the phone back to her ear "p-please dont l-let my brother die- please..i- ill try and..ill...I cant get there in time- oh my god- Arthur--..Angy just, listen to the woman if shes saying something- dont. let. her. k-kill. him. Ill...Billy! E-Era! ask Billy!" she yelled slightly, her angry-sad tone more obvious when screaming Era proceeds to loudly ask, while inside of the house, "BILLY ARE YOU AWAKE??" Max heard all the yelling and finally took her hood off. "I-Is someone dying?" "AcTUALLY, you are correct," "Oh. Whos dying??" She began to shake Billy to wake him up, as he indeed was fast asleep. "Uhm, Arthur, maybe everyone else. Billy wake up." "Oh gosh, what are they doing back there??" Billy blinked open his eyes "mmph?? what? dying?? what did i hear bout Dying?" he mumbled, looking at the two people around him "I need to know if there's any way to leave the barrier before 8AM. We need to leave now, everyone else is going to die, they only have a few lives left." "Wait were leaving? I wanna stay here..." Max frowned, it was nice here, oddly Ari choked on a sob hearing Angy say something "Arthur- is he okay- is-- where is he- Phone- give to him--" she stred at the book as all their names joined one page, number switching to five "..H-HOW ARE YOU Sh-SHARING LIVES?!" Billy jolted when hearing that "theres no way to leave the barrier no. wait, sharing lives? what the dang?" he got to his feet and ran over to Ari to look at the book "..that shouldnt be able to happen, someones messing with their life count.." Max stood up, stretching. There goes her happy party. Era follows Billy "Okay okay, so there is absolutely, no way, at all, to leave?" "No way, at all. no." Billy sighed "I would fly one of you over there but i dont know if the barrier will let you leave tonight. only im able to get out, from what ive learned. anytime ive tried bringing someone they lost a life." he muttered Max followed, "Isnt there anyone around here who can make a portal out or something? Plus that would be much faster for us to get there.." "Arthur? Arthur??" she heard her brothers voice, and is trying to take deep breaths now "what happened. Why did you almost die, why were you at one life, why re you sharing lives!? nonono, forget all that, are you okay, are you hurt at all? i mean i understand you're probably scared to death but hurt? and if not to calm yourself down take deep b-breaths- and- and- if you a-are hu-hurt- t-try just- pressing on the wounds- an-and-" she choked on a sob "i thought id lost you Arth- oh my god--" she murmured "do you have any med packs??" shes concerned, shes just so fuc king w orr ied "Im guessing no one in this insane city can make portals? Or am I just getting ignored here?" Billy looked over "not portals out of the city." "Laaame" "Well, this is going great." "I didnt do an-anythign i swear!" she sobbed into the mic angrily "i dont kno-know whats g-going on- im just w-w-worried about y-you because a-apparently you a-almost died-" "i forgot Arthur- i f-forgot i- i didnt want a-anything t-to happen-- i-- i- Im trying to find a way to get there now- ill come find you alright? j-just- stay away f-from the crazy wo-woman- try a-and hide- and im a-atleast 80% s-sure the call w-w-was lying so- you- you shouldnt encounter a-anything- i s-swear i had n-no clue t-this would happen- i just-- i thought it was a normal call y-you and Ang co-could handle.." "..ill b-be there asap. If yo-you have to. and h-have a gun. Show n-no mercy to anything you find." she sighed quietly "...d-dont c-cry anymore, alright? y-you've got Vincent and Angy to pr-protect you and ill be there soon." she heard his voice. She didnt give a chance to respond before hanging up, stumbling to her feet "I need to go home- Now." she muttered, glaring at Billy, who just sighed "theres no way of gettin out kiddo." "Wheres the barrier at anyways, like can we just go.....right up to it right now?" Max looked at the sky, it looked weird compared to the sky anywhere shes been before.... -------- Update on Spop. She is currently trying to stitch Klondike back up, but is poking herself with the needle than Klondike Update on Ari, she sat with Billy trying to comfort her for awhile until she fricking passed the fuck out on the grass from exhaustion and tears Era pauses, having been waiting for the barrier to disappear since she couldn't fall back asleep. After a moment, she blinks, checking the time. "Ah!" Era shuffles over to where Ari was currently passed out, shaking her slightly "Arrriii wake up." Ari shot awake in an instant. She looked up at the sky and jolted, stumbling to her feet "ge-get Max and Spop-- Home- now-" she stammered, holding her head from gettin up way too fast. Billy came out of the house, looking over "...? Oh, i was gonna come tell you, its, its 8:30. but i guess you know that." he chuckled slightly "choices are car, or i can try carrying one or two of you at a time, though the second option might be a bit dizzying." Ari looked at Era with a pleading look. She had to get to Arthur as fast as she possibly could "Okay- Okay- Uhm, is the second option faster?" Billy nodded "i mean yea, i can fly pretty fast" Ari kind of just, put out an arm, so Billy, from instinct, grabbed it, gesturing so he could grab Eras"im gonna, hope neither of you are too afraid of going to high." "Haha, I'm terrified of it." She holds out her own arm "I just won't look down and I'll probably be fine. BUT, don't, go to high. Billy nodded, grabbing Era's arm "i can put you down at anytime if you wanna ditch this.. so." wings kinda just, appeared on his back, hello spawning "Max! Spop! ill be back to carry you guys soon, got it?" and up they went, high up but not to high. Ari looked down at the ground, making an inhumane noise Spop was leaning on the wall, asleep with Klondike in her arms An alarm went off, it was Maxs phone. She woke up and went to go turn it off, even though she knew she had to get up. She really didnt want to leave. Era proceeds to stare ahead, not looking down despite her curiosity Billy sped up..pretty fast. the ground was like, pretty much just a rapid blur, Ari screeched and grabbed Eras free hand for comfort, she hates this, she hates this,,, Era is trying so hard to not scream right now, gripping onto Ari's hand ------------ billy just casually drops off two females outside the building then goes back to get the other two females Ari got to her feet quickly, holding her head and looking up..it was..still night here. She checked her phone, how the fuck was it still only around 9:30 here? So Arthur would've called...15? 20 minutes ago?? okay, whatever "Okay, in...in here." she muttered, running around to one of the windows and grabbing at the boards, trying to pull it off "Era, come help me out with this!" she called, not caring a crazy lady was probably watching them Era runs over to Ari, proceeding to try and pull off the boards with her Ari heard a tiny crack and pulled on it harder, watching the wood come off and quickly hopping inside, pulling Era in before the board reappeared Era stumbles a bit when being pulled in, blinking and pulling out her flashlight when realizing it was a lot darker then expected "Okay so.. what are we expecting to see here?" Arthur's probably still just. Walking around in the darkness, pulling Angy along so he has something to cling to. His eyes have gotten used to the darkness at this point, but he's still scared to death and wants to make sure he's not left by himself. "Arthur, for one." Ari took a flashlight out of her quiver, flicking it on, keeping her hand over the light so it wasnt too bright. "Angy for two. and..maybe Vincent." "Nono, like, evil demon things. What are we expecting with that?" "Nothing. besides the crazy lady, which.. uh, we see that?..haha, we can just say goodbye" she moved a finger across her neck to show what she meant, giving a soft grin "but i doubt that'll happen." Era pauses, getting her crossbow ready as well "Well, let's hope it won't. Lets go look for them now. Since there's supposedly a crazy lady we.. probably shouldn't yell for them." Angy, her wrist still in Arthur's grip, stopped for a second for what she thought were two faint voices. "Do you hear that..?" Ari's werecat ears were useful in this situation, and she grabbed Eras arm, darting out of the room they were in and moving her flashlight around to see around "Angy?" she called quietly, worry in her tone Era follows along with Ari's movements, trying not to fall from all of the sudden being dragged around "What, the random creaking every now in then? All the other sounds my head likes to make up? Because yeah, yeah I d- oh that." He wasn't sure who that was, and didn't CARE who that was, he was just. scared. So the voice makes him cling to Angy even harder. The young girl heard a voice calling out her name, she debated to reply back, thinking it might be a trick but decided in the end to call out as well "Hello? Who's there..?" Era pauses, whispering over to Ari "I think that's them." Ari pulled Era towards the sound, not calling again. After a few minutes, they had light, from Ari shining the flashlight on them...oh, thats Ari releasing Era and throwing her arms around her brother in a hug "oh thank god your okay-" she muttered, no escape Arth, this is overly protective sister, she kind of, looked at Angy with a grateful, and worried smile, making sure to remember getting out med packs Angy sighed with relief "Thank god it was actually you, I thought we were dead.." Era walks over to them as quietly as possible "What's- what's even been happening?" He'd sCREAm AT FiRst Because holy Shit he didn't expect that, but soon just hugging back whoever this was because Shit it's still dark. Ari shined the light enough on both her and Arthur so he could see her and she could see him "Sorry for scaring you, i was just really fricking worried-" she muttered "We got tricked by that.. woman thing.. she told us to give up our stuff for the "test" Ari had made for us." Angy went up to Era "We refused and that's when she took Arthur way high up.." "Oh god, that sounds terrifying." "i had nothing to do w-with making the test. i got a call, i answered. common business curtesy. Everything she did was all her. I would never try to get Arthur killed." she kind of, thought about Arthur being high up, and just, shivered "..god i shouldnt have made you guys go on this alone, i shouldn't have left.." she mumbled He's not even respondent enough to say anything back, he's just. hug. helo. His eyes are puffy from tears too haha. Era blinks, shining her flashlight down the hallway "We should get out of here now.." Angy turned back to Ari and placed a hand of her shoulder "It's alright, we knew you wouldn't be capable to do this to Arthur, it was just.." She shook her head before continuing "The good thing is that he's okay and you're here now. Era is right, we need to leave" Ari not letting go of her brother until hes okay with it so, as far as she knows they might just hug for awhile. Shes fine with that. "Im not moving from this spot until Arthur decides to just cling to my arm or back or something." she muttered towards Era, then looked back at Arthur, oh, puff eyes. Uh. um. Shes just gonna, pick him up actually, hopefully hes okay with this. Im still questioning how this girl can lift up someone only one inch smaller then her but okay. Casually tries to give her flashlight to Arthur so she just sticks it in his pocket. "alright, ye, okay. lets go. Arth, tell me if you want me to put you down." shes ready to follow™ Era stares at the group for a moment before turning around, heading back to where they got in from "Yes please put me down-" He doesn't like this o boy it's like the whole 'getting-carried-15-feet-in-the-air' situation all over again, except it's not risking his life or at a far enough height to kill him but he still doesn't like being picked u p. He's definitely gonna use the flashlight though. Ari puts Arthur down, but refuses to let him go, so she just softly holds his arm, if he wants to cling then he can. "Era we arent getting out that way, i hope you know. Board resealed. Angy, mind catchin me up on this weird lady?I mean i know she almost killed Arthur but, is she doin anything else right now? and..wheres Vincent?" Angy quickly followed behind Era, already wanting to get away from anything having to deal with this building. Era passes by where they came out from "I know, but I kinda wanna stay in this general area considering how huge this place is." She stopped for a moment, thinking to herself "Oh no.. Vincent god dammit! He was with us and then he walked away for no reason and we couldn't go for him because it was so dark" "We'll find hiiiim." Ari nodded "Era, we cant. we barely know how much time we have to the woman does..something. So spending to long trying to find this new idiot addition to the team is a pretty bad idea." "I meant, "We'll find him while trying to find a way out on accident" because apparently that's how logic works these days." "..right, okay. anyone have any ideas? we could try bombing it from in here..but, i dont..know if that would work. like, blast the door open." "Ehhhhhhh." The boy is silent. He just wants to hide now. He's also wearing his hood over his head, probably to muffle random sounds. "I mean.. as long as you don't bring the whole building down, I think it's a pretty good idea" "alright.." she just, takes out one of her grenades, flicks off the pin, and throws it at the door, hopefully far enough away from Angy and Era "Heck-" Era proceeds to j u M P™ away from the grenade, wanting to be as far away from it as possible Oh, there goes the explosion.. they out? "Uh..cant see." softly grabs Arthurs other arm to direct the flashlight toward the smoke from the explosion, the door is open.. "out, bolt down the road." she muttered, already hearing footsteps behind them. "Stay away from us crazy lady!" she growled, pulling Arthur out of the building and tryin to run as far away from it as possible, god damn good thing its night, vampire speed. Hope the boyo isnt dizzy Luckily this time Angy didn't get crushed or nearly killed by the explosion and did a little happy dance once she saw the door open. She didn't need to be told to run, the footsteps she heard behind her motivated  her to start running like a mad man. Era paused for a moment from confusion before speeding out the door, she does not want to stay in here any longer then 0 seconds Ari probabl picked Arth up again halfway,, yea. def did. After they were a really good distance away from the building Era just, stops, heavily breathing "Okay, one, I hate running. Two, I hate running. Three, I hate running." Ari set him down once she felt far enough away "s-sorry about that, i just wanted to get you away from there as fast as possible.." she was, kinda concerned by his look, but decided not to question it "Okay, we're heading home like, right away." Aris going to go out to get Arthur more snacks and let himself lock himself in his room probably "Can I nuke the place first?" "no" "I'm gunna nuke it." Era looks over to the building in the distance "Okay guys it's gunna be nuked." "what" b OO O MM M "My job here is done." His eye twitched. He's probably just sitting on the ground now. The boy is Shook. ".....We.. should go home now." Angy took a moment to catch her breath, seeing as she was way out of shape. "Good job guys, thank you Era for blowing up that.. thing But yeah, let's go home.." Era stares at the destroyed building off in the distance for a moment before turning around "Uh-huh. Max and Spop are probably going to be back soon." "How do we get home if we have no form of trasnportation." He'd mumble, realizing they probably knew and he we just asking that question for no reason, mumbling a barely even coherent 'nevermind sorry'. Ari looked at Arthur "nono its fine, its a good question. I dont wanna torture you with my vampire speed though so, we're probably just gonna walk- if you dont want to walk i can carry you but you said you didnt want that-" "Let's just hope that lady got roasted with the building and doesn't decide to catch up to us" Angy said while starting to walk. Era stands in her place, waiting for Ari and Athur to start walking too "Yeah.." The boy gets up and just follows after Angy. Out of everyone else to trust right now, she was the only one, even if all she did was make sure he didn't start screaming and crying in the dark. Era stares at Ari, waiting for her to go as well. She wants to make sure no one is accidentally left behind Ari went in, another direction "ill meet you guys at home okay? i- im gonna go somewhere. Ill be like 5 minutes, probably will meet you there- hopefully-" Era pauses, continuing to stare at her "Be safe," she quietly says before following the others

[sunnyvaiprion]

Hi! I have a question (two actually) So how do you use Mr Dark Prince in battle? And is there a 4th mysterious member along your Julius/Reinhardt/Child!Azura team? (I love these interactions of them you draw btw~)

Oh, thanks!! 

About the team: yes! Since it’s a primarily AR team, there are two more! One of them is basically defaulted to Eir, but more often than not she stays as far away as she possibly can from any action (she has a nice heal though. Also she can throw Julius into enemies if he cant walk there fast himself). And second is a wildcard that varies from team to team (it was supposed to be a bonus unit, but it seems like Eir will stay for quite a long time), but my “main” now uses Bride Ninian for… no apparent reson besides being a dancer and me liking her. I will most likely change her for someone else/heavily alter her build because it’s actually pretty wacky with this team, but for now she stays (because she can fulfill her main purpose which is assisting trap removal in tight spaces). 

And now, About Julius: Ranged units can be a major pain. Sometimes (more like nearly always) you cant initiate on one and run without the rest of them scattering like dust particles if you blow on them all across the map with their dancers (especially now with Lazura), and to bait them you need someone who can take entire triangle and probably physical damage too, all at once. Use a dragon? Yes… a dragon.

Due to it being a somewhat lenghty text, I am putting it under the cut. 

If someone else thought about using him but was afraid that he isnt “a good unit” or “not favoured by meta” - I’d recommend you read into this too!

I have my Julius with Loptous, Reposition, Iceberg, Distant Defence, Guard, Attack Ploy, and another Distant Defence. which is - a wall. I place him in a space where he can be targeted by units I want (nearly any ranged, tbh. IF there’s a melee frontiline unit - Reinhardt has a message for them.) so he can kill them or hold them in place, and make sure my team can give him maximum amount of drives without putting anyone in danger. (oftenmost it’s just Azura and that’s it but still). 

Pros:

It’s VERY hard to kill him during EP. Even blue mages and bows/daggers with high attack struggle to deal non-zero damage to him, especially pre-dance. TA blue mage dancers included, as they usually dont break 50 attack mark by much.

No specials. Unless a special is pre-charged on turn 1 (or 2CD with Heavy/Flashing blade after dance), no luck trying to damage him with one either while guard is up and have fun offing it. Glimmer still deals a 0. Moonbow most likely a single digit.

He has high attack but without QR he will unlikely kill a unit coming at him on their first initiation (unless its low res green OR Reinhardt)…. which will waste a dancer’s turn to dance them instead of dancing some out-of-range thing you DONT want to attack, like a melee fast sword in that far-off corner.

On second initiation (if danced, alternatively someone else if the first unit died or didnt get a dance) that unit is guaranteed dead, though, because Iceberg hits like a truck especially with his already nice attack and STUPIDLY HIGH RES especially on EP. If they somehow survive this (Aversa with res wave on comes to mind) - its not a crazy PP unit so their damage is definitely a hard 0, so no biggie. Also works with a fast dazzle staff or if first enemy fails to double, since CD is 3.

With his res he can atk ploy virtually any unit of his choice, making the most dangerous unit to him (usually a physical or Ophelia) less dangerous at least pre-dance (when they have a chance to land more attacks).

His speed is actually not THAT bad. He usually doesnt mind getting doubled, but still. If you throw some speed buffs on him he can deny even some fast units their doubles. This might come in handy when fighting aforementioned units.

He is a lot easier to actually obtain and merge than similar units (Micaiah, Deirdre, Kliff maybe?) due to not being a 5-star locked or even limited unit. Unless you are a whale, and I dont judge, but for me it’s a big plus right there. Skills I have on him are also all widely available (I got DD off Garon).

Ranged anti-dragon weapons are all green (= normal blue for Julius, multiplier-wise). After Nagas got refines I actually started seeing them on defence maps. Guess what, still 0 damage. Daggers are trickier but a lot rarer and still manageable. They added an inheritable one just now but… why would anyone actually use it on heroes except it’s native user (who is also green) ?? Either way you wont see much of that.

See that Surtr? Julius will take care of him for you, too, with his high attack. In a single hit, if you pre-charge his Iceberg on something else. I know that almost any red mage can do it, but I heared some people still struggle. He can take a DC-hit from him too, if he runs one.

He can tank Ophelia, but be careful. For her he needs res buffs, especially the visible one, because of her initial AoE. Atk ploy her. If she can get an attack buff, It’d be great for you to have panic ploy too (right now there’s a lot of options, including Panic Manor). On a positive note, there should be plenty of mages on the same team as her, probably red and green, which wont really bother him afterwards.  

That’s Julius. We love our possessed lord.

Cons:    

While he takes little to no damage from any ranged source, Poison Strike-esque damage will get him good. Pain+ healers arent particulary dangerous because they cant deal any more damage to him no matter what, but units like firesweep bow double poison lyn are not very nice for him to face head-on (yes, I hate her in particular with burning passion), especially if she gets danced, receive a buff and attacks again, while there are other non-zero damage units in the back. But unlike a melee unit in the front line, it’s not always an option to snipe her (or any other unit like her) prior to Julius getting in range. This is, honestly, your worst nightmare. Be very careful with things like that and calculate damage dealt to make sure he wont die. … even though I think it’s not just his problem. But he doesnt easily solve it.  

He is reliant on team support to fight ranged physicals. Not going to lie about it. Def Tactic (or a wave if you’re into them) and 1-2 drive defs (ideally distant guard) should do, which is by no means too much investment, but it should be done.

His player phase leaves a lot to be desired. But like… what’s new? He’s enemy phase per advertisement. He still can Iceberg someone to the ground should he have it ready, or finish off someone previously mangled in EP, though.

He’s likely to deal more than 50% HP in one hit to PP heroes, especially ones that dump res or run LnD, which will activate wings of mercy, and a WoM melee unit can warp to his face and smack him. BUT usually dancers run WoM, and those have lower-end stats, so he should be okay at the very least. The only lancer dancer in the game is OG Azura, but …when was the last time I’ve seen her…  anyway, be careful with WoM.

He’s going to get Chill Res’d. He will get Chill Res’d every time every day of the week cause you wont find any ally with more res than him to “bait” chill res. It’s not like he will die from it though.

He’s infantry, so unfortunately, no easy fortify/wards for him. But if he was any other movtype - it’d bring it’s own problems, so… maybe it’s for the best. Also distant guard is a thing now.

He wants to stay above 80% hp and it’s very easy until he starts taking 5+ damage per hit. If it’s the case - you need to start paying attention to enemy specials again, especially longer CD ones.

Alternatives: While I am happy with how he does his job for now, I am planning make one adjustment, which is - give him Steady Stance 4. (once I get the fodder Surtr, which is not so soon). It will allow him to use his entire HP pool more effectively, and will give him extra survivability against physical threats, even if by a little bit. Additionally, it will protect him againt melee units too (like a WoM dancer teleporting to him) for safety measures and it will open up B slot! Losing 6 res (and 3 Iceberg damage) is not a big deal compared to all those benifits, ESPECIALLY since staying above 80% would be no longer needed.    

I .. dont really have a plan what to put in B slot then, because I intentionally want to avoid QR for a reason I explained above. But hey, I’ll figure something out when the time comes. However QR is also a viable option if you want him to kill everything in one go.

Iceberg is also, in theory, could be replaced by Glacies, if you want more damage. But I personally decided against it, because Iceberg’s cooldown is easier to manage and it’s damage is already enough in most cases. Also Iceberg is a lot better with QR should you want to use him for insta-kills.

And for the love of Loptyr himself, dont try to build him player phase or give him Fury. There are heroes with a lot better stat spreads for PP (yes, I’ve seen a PP Julius), and Fury is a fastest way to turn off Guard/QR and ruin his excellent ability to take zeros from most things. I tried it while I didnt have DD to fodder, and I didnt get much out of it. 

Now, he fits on virtually any map, but here are some examples of AR maps which he absolutely murdered.

I rely on my dragon! I’m very glad I decided to pick him up, even if he’s not that popular of a unit. 

[bearrigan37]

Mind Vomit, Mind Laundry and Mind Garbage

Hey everyone.

Its been about a year and a half since my last real post. A lot of things have happened since that last post. I am not going to talk about a good chunk of it, because I just plain don't want to. The gist is that I lost a friend, I lost my job and lost my place to live. Thankfully my mother is tolerant of our shenanigans and is letting us stay with her. It's been rough, to say the least. The good things are that my sons are healthy and happy, and get to play around with their cousins and grandparents almost every day. The older one is almost done with his Pre-K, and even has a little ceremony coming up for it.

The thought that this child has grown so much is mind boggling. He's a little cutout of me (unfortunately, but thank the abyss that he also has his mothers genes). He'll start actual Kindergarten soon. His little brother is growing in his teeth, crawling, standing, and damn near walking already. The older one is the young ones favorite person in the world, and that's a big ray of happiness in my otherwise bleak worldview.

My wife has had her ups and downs as well. The school she used to go to that caused her tons of grief is going down for being generally shady and terrible, but the school she is going to now can no longer offer the classes for the degree program she is on. She did, however, get into some classes that will lead to a job with an old folks home, and will make her a CNA. Hopefully that acts as a foot in the door for her to get closer to her career of choice, labor and delivery nursing.

My mom and stepdad are slowly starting to do all the alterations to their house that they have been wanting to do, and seeing them out there painting and cutting wood and doing all their little projects makes my super happy for them. It took them both a long time to finally be in a place that allows that kind of stuff, and they're both finally in a place mentally where they are actually very happy. My sons adore my mom and stepdad, so that's a bonus.

My dad got his shop/cave set up and has a bunch of cool things in there. Amazon Echo turns on his air conditioning and that will always be novel to me. My boys got to spend some time with him recently too. My oldest preferred to play outside, but the younger one had a bit of a fascination with him. His laptop, his beard, the dog, all very exciting to the little guy. Being closer to my parents has brought a good amount of peace to my mind.

In the past year and change, I've done lots of thinking. Lots of anxiety, depression and dysphoria have rushed through me at breakneck speeds. I read an article from Transgender Universe lately that was pretty spot on, I'll link it at the end of this post.

Basically, it talks about the anxiety and mental acrobatics that a person goes through when even thinking about transitioning. It hit all the marks, and I recommend that you all read it. Funny that at the moment I type this paragraph, “Wired Wrong” by Steam Powered Giraffe started playing on my computer.

Anyway.

I lay awake a lot at night. I wake up at all hours in blind panic, or crushing anxiety. I think and think and overthink. The me that is now and the past me, have all laid the foundation for my current life. They've laid down the building blocks for what I have to deal with later on. I did a lot of things wrong, and a few things totally right, but they are both things that keep me up. Does the future me, the correct me, even have the strength to figure out how to deal with all that later on, when I'll be forced to? My decisions and lifestyle now have basically doomed me, lets breakdown how so that everyone has an idea of whats going on in my head.

First off, the two big things that are doing things to my general mental and physical health are my diabetes and my gender dysphoria. Because of the diabetes, I can’t take the pills for transitioning, because the pills are bad for your kidney and liver. The other options are injections or cream/ointment/patches. The injections are the most effective way of taking the hormones, and the cream is the least effective way. The injections are on a national shortage, and there is no real sign of that shortage coming to an end. I'm not sure how the cream would play out for me, honestly. I've been too in my own head to actually call my doctor and find out. More on that later.

Everything that has happened in the past year and change has stopped me dead in my tracks in doing whats best for me. I haven't called doctors, I haven't taken medicine, I haven't gone to school, I've done nothing. Well, I did finally get to go camping, and took a few trips into the desert with my brother in law, those always helped clear my head, but now its spring and my allergies would literally kill me if I stayed outside for too long. I got pericarditis last spring, every time I sneezed or coughed, it would create too much pressure on my heart and stop it momentarily because of a build up of fluid in the pericardium, or something like that. This happened because of viral infection, because allergies.

I worry about everything. I don't sleep, because I think of what is going to happen in the future. When I finally find work again, how far into my transition can I go before things get awkward, or violent for me? How long before someone finds a reason to fire me that allows them to claim that it wasn't discrimination? How do I explain myself to my sons teachers? What do I do if one of the parents of my sons friends decides my son can’t play with their child because of who I am? What do I do when faced with all that? How can I even justify going through with my transition, using all that money when it could be used to pay bills, pay for food, pay for doctors, or even just buying toys for my babies? This whole thing terrifies me. I'm scared to exist, merely because existing the way I want to exist could mean no job, no house, no life if I'm not careful, as in I could be killed because of what I am. The thing that scares me more than that is what will happen to my kids and my wife if I start presenting and people make the connection. Everything that could happen to them keeps me awake.  

I can't justify putting myself first at all. I need to put other people before me. I have a compulsion to do small things for myself to keep myself sane, like archery or hiking, but in the long run, I will never allow myself to put myself first. This leads to more problems.

Like my steadily declining health.

In that regard, I am purposefully putting off everything because of stupid reasons. Its like those fetch quest strings. Go get this, so that you can get this thing from that guy, who'll give you a thing to give to that guy over there who needs this other thing because blah blah blah. I put off working out because my back and feet wont allow me to work out in the ways I want/need to, but I dont go to the doctors to fix those things because [reasons], [bullshit], and [nonsense].

My diabetes is uncontrolled. I have had plenty of opportunities to go to doctors of all kinds of different fields to get me healthy. Doctors for my feet, my organs, my eyes, my back, doctors to get my weight down, start meal planning for a gastric sleeve, therapists, etc, etc, etc. I don't go. I never go. I know I should. I need to get myself into shape. I need to get the fatty tumor on my liver taken care of. I need to get insoles for my feet. I need to stay alive, but I hardly want to.

Because its inconvenient for everyone else.

I have to go to the doctor, well then I need to use the car to go way out to the outskirts of town to see her. I have to see another doctor later, and another later, well I've already used a ton of gas to do that, and I cant forget about how last time I went out to see my doctor, the tire went flat so we had to pay for new ones. Cant let that happen again. Doctors appointments at weird times? Cant try to get someone to babysit, they might be doing something else, I don't want to bother them. I'll just not go. It's easier that way.

That's how it goes.

Hell, even right now I feel terrible writing this instead of searching for a job. I mean, I know there isn't much more I can do to find one, short of getting out and going to places instead of applying online. I just feel bad. I don't really even play games anymore, because I feel guilty enjoying myself instead of providing, or even just trying to provide. I play strictly mobile games now, and the ones I play I just play because I'm part of groups and don't want to let them down. I'm playing a tabletop Fallout game with my wife that I created, mostly because she has been wanting to play D&D for a long time. My game is unpolished and rough, but she's enjoying it, so that's what matters.

I'm not writing this to complain, mostly. I'm going to complain anyway, because I try not to in real life, so I'm writing this on the off chance that more than five people read this. I'm writing this so that if there are any people that feel the same thing, they know that they aren't alone. The only reason I am comfortable typing this out in the first place is because I think only five to ten people read these when I put them out. Some of my dearest, closest friends have no idea who I am, even though I laid it out plain in the past posts. I guess that in a sense, it is a bit of a cry for help, but I'm allowed at least one, right?

Anyone?

*Ahem*.

Losing my job is the worst thing. I had started working at Sportsman's Warehouse, at the archery counter. It was great. Talk about bows, shoot bows, fix bows, and when I'm not doing that, head over to the gun counter and talk about guns, or do some minor work on scopes, sighting in rifles or whatever. Stock the shelves and clean when there is downtime. It was a fun, easy job. I lost the job because I fucked up an interaction with a customer, and mistakenly thought he wouldn't fire the air rifle I just cocked. Well he did, it was loud, and some people thought it was loaded. Corporate HR and Corporate LP decided I had to go. The managers did what they could for me but, I don't think they could even do much. I loved that job, I enjoyed the company of all the people I worked with. My bosses were cool.

All gone now.

Since I am living with my mom, there have been more troubles. My mom and step dad really like everything to be clean and neat, but I'm very lethargic most of the time. I try to help with cleaning and whatnot, but I just don't have the motivation. I know in my head that I shouldn't need motivation, I should just do it because I’m a god damn adult and that's what adults are supposed to do but... eh. Granted, I'm cleaning more here than I did when I was on my own.

My oldest son keeps telling us that he wants to go home, or go to the new house. Having to tell him that we are home, that there is no new house, and watching his little heart break is just the worst thing.

Living with my mom and step dad is great. We all get along great, we have fun and things aren't bad. I just know that we are a bit of an inconvenience. We dirty the house, eat the food, use the water, and don't really do much to help other than cleaning or occasionally buying beer. I wish there was more we could do, but I don't even know what there could be, without income anyway. We have money, but we need to use it to get a place, if there even is a place that will take us with no income, even if we can pay 6 months all at once.

Another thing is that my uncle was supposed to move down a while back, but the only place he can stay is here at my moms. We're still here, so he cant move down. I don't think he will move down until he knows we are back on our feet and stable. He's just like that, he likes to make sure everyone else is comfortable. He doesn't want to impose, I guess. Something like that. We create more inconveniences. So I'm a huge ball of anxiety and guilt and awful. This all contributes to the decline of my mental health. Dysphoria itself is bad enough but damn, just add everything else up and there's just a massive shitstorm on the horizon and I don't know whats going to happen when it hits. I don't know.

Additionally, I don't talk to anyone anymore. I don't know if I don't talk to them because of whats happening, or I just don't, or anything. I don't anymore. I would like to. I would, but I just don't. I guess its that motivation thing from before.

I mean, at this point I feel like I'm just rambling, but this is an important thing for people to know. Contact with humans outside of family is important. Having friends is important. I talk to a few of them online, but rarely.Plus I need to say all this stuff and not actually say it.

Point is, I don't know what my point is. I've got issues.

Everyone has issues, I know. I know that this is also my outlet, my way of letting people know how I feel about things and letting people know stuff about my life. It started out as my Daddy Blog thing and man did that go downhill fast. I feel the need to apologize for the content of these posts, though I know I have no reason to. Should be a little gateway into my head. I open myself to the public for that reason, to give people that gateway. Maybe something I type out and ramble about helps someone. Who knows?

God I hate posting these things, but I have to do it. I have to let it be known. Even if it makes me want to throw up because of nervousness. It’ll all just get worse if I don't.

Thanks for reading.

Links for more reading (Better reading)

My dads Amazon page! He has a ton of books.

https://www.amazon.com/Ron-Washburn/e/B008MN7D2U

My friends blog, she has adventures and ideas!

http://nearlyeloquent.com/

Transgender Universe article, and really just check out the site.

http://transgenderuniverse.com/2017/04/03/the-darkest-moments-in-a-transgender-existence/