#he’s so real for the gym membership card :’) my friend told me the very same thing to me sobs

[chuluoyi]

zayne’s chats are actually so mundane and relatable they feel like my chats with my best friend 🥹

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

Breakable Heaven (pt. II) - p.l. dubois

Part I

Part two is here! Things start to heat up in this chapter, exciting stuff’s happening! I hope you guys like reading it as much as I’m loving writing - please slide into my inbox, let me know what you think! Reblogs are amazing too, it’s how we know people are liking what we’re putting out and helps to reach more people! (Plus it’s one of the joys of my life to read the tags. Seriously, so much fun.)

Part II (7.2k)

June 18 (fri)

“If we’re going to do this, we’ve got to sell it,” Laurel said, running a hand through her hair. “The fewer people who know the truth, the better.” 

Pierre nodded. “Agreed.” He sat back in his chair. “What do you think your parents will say?” 

Laurel laughed. “Uh, they think I’m seeing someone, actually.”

 “Oh?” 

“Yeah,” she nodded, “it was easier to just say I had a boyfriend than deal with their endless pestering, you know?” 

“So they’d buy it if you just told them you were getting married?” 

She shrugged. “I think so. You know we’re not particularly close, they haven’t met any of my boyfriends since I was in high school. So if I told them I was engaged, I don’t think they’d bat an eye, if I’m honest.” Pierre could sense there was more to the story, more that she wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t want to press. “What about yours?” she asked. 

“Well, we’ve got a couple options,” Pierre said, cracking a smile and leaning back into the cushions. “It was a drunken mistake.” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Then they’d just tell us to get a divorce.” 

“We fell in love after the first date.”

“Even less believable,” Laurel said, the corner of her lip twitching. 

“Or…,” Pierre said, kicking his feet up on the ottoman, a wicked grin on his face, “I got you pregnant and want to do the right thing.” 

Laurel snorted. “Little issue there.” 

“What?” 

“I’m not pregnant.”

Pierre ducked his head, blushing. “Right. There’s that.”

She nodded. “There’s that.” She tapped her fingers on the coffee table. “I’ve got it.” Pierre looked up. “We’ve been friends for a long time, couple years or something. Madeline went to York, so we met when you and Patrice came to visit. We realized we had feelings for each other a few months ago, everything moved super quickly since we already knew each other and had that foundation.”

“So we thought ‘why wait,’” Pierre finished. 

“Exactly,” Laurel said. “Why wait, if we already knew.”

“It’s a classic friends-to-lovers story, a tale as old as time,” he sighed wistfully. 

Laurel slapped his shoulder. “This is serious,” she said, but she was smiling all the same. “Okay, so we’ve at least got that worked out. Madeline and Patrice will obviously know, but other than that…” She trailed off. 

He nodded, and an understanding passed between them. “It’s a need-to-know basis.”

“It is.” Laurel shifted her laptop on the coffee table, squeezing closer to Pierre so he could see the screen. “So, we have to go down to the courthouse for a meeting with the court clerk who will perform the ceremony, bring birth certificates and ID, and —”

He glanced over at Laurel, her tongue caught between her teeth. “And?”

“You have to publish a declaration of intent to marry twenty days before the wedding. Online. In public.” 

Pierre looked oblivious. “So?”

Laurel rolled her eyes. “So, it has the date of the wedding and our full names and our whole entire addresses. And in case you’ve forgotten, you’re kind of a professional hockey player.” 

He shrugged. “All due respect, Laurel, but,” he glanced at the website, “who actually checks these things?” He had a point there, she thought, but she wasn’t about to let him win. 

“But your address, you’re not worried about that getting out there?”

“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “But my building’s got a receptionist and I’ve got locks on my doors. And plus,” Pierre added, “I’ve really never had much of a problem flying under the radar here. When I go back home, back to the suburbs, sure. And a little bit in Columbus, obviously. But there’s what, two million people in Montréal? I’m not on the Habs, so even the hockey fans here really couldn’t care less.”

She laughed. “Fair enough. Also, uh, living situation. We should probably talk about that.” 

“You’re moving in with me?” He said it like a question, but not as if it was something that would surprise him, or something he was opposed to. He said it like it was something he already knew the answer to. “I’ve got three rooms, plenty of space, Phil and Georgia would love to have a new sister. You and Piper would fit right in,” he said, reaching down to scratch her behind the ears. “Plus it’s got a great gym in the lobby, you can cancel your membership to that seedy place downtown with that trainer who always stares at you when you do weights.” Laurel’s ears perked up; she was surprised he remembered. She did have a gym downtown that she tried to make it to a few times a week, and there was that one creepy trainer, but she had only mentioned it to him once in passing. “Plus it has hot yoga once a week, and I know you’ve been dying to try.” That much was true. 

“At least let me help pay for rent,” she tried to bargain.��

“Nope!” he said, wincing a second later. “I didn’t mean it in like a patronizing way, I know you’re perfectly capable of pulling your own weight. I meant like I bought it outright, so there’s no rent to be paid. I’ll let you pay the electricity bill if you want?”

Laurel grinned. “That would make me feel better, thank you.” After looking at her computer for a minute, she spoke again. “How long have you had the apartment for?”

Pierre scratched his chin. “Couple years? I bought it after signing the contract this year. Some guys buy a Lamborghini, I bought an apartment. I don’t own the place in Columbus though.”

“How come?” Laurel asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. 

“Even with the contract, so much is up in the air. I could get traded in the middle of the season, or in the summer or whenever, and I don’t want to have just bought a house when I’ve got to move to Vancouver or wherever when the ink hasn’t even dried on the papers.”

This time, it was Laurel’s turn to leave with an unsaid question. “Is tomorrow good? To go down and get everything squared away at the courthouse?”

He bobbed his head. “Yeah, I’ve got some off-ice training in the morning, but any time after noon or so is good for me.”

Laurel nodded, making a few taps on her computer. “Okay, I’ve got us booked in at one, that good?”

“Yeah,” Pierre said, nodding in affirmation. “Now I’ve got to come up with an excuse to drive to my parents’ and get my birth certificate.”

---

It didn’t actually turn out to be all that difficult for Pierre; he made the drive back to Saint-Agathe-des-Monts later that afternoon, telling his parents he needed it to renew his health insurance card. He wasn’t sure they actually believed him, but his mom didn’t bat an eye before handing it over. Pierre spent the rest of the evening at home, cooking pasta, petting the dogs, and wondering what in the hell he had agreed to. He wasn’t second-guessing himself, not by a long-shot, but when she clicked that button to book their appointment, the gravity of the situation finally started to hit him. In less than a month, he was going to be getting married. 

June 19 (sat) 

Laurel met Pierre on the steps of the Montréal courthouse at a quarter to one the next day, clutching the straps of her tote like a lifeline. “Woah, Laurel, you’re holding that like you’ve got a bomb in there,” Pierre said. 

She flashed him a nervous smile. “No bomb, just very official very legal documents. Don’t want to lose it.” 

He held out his hand. “You ready?” 

Laurel was surprised at the gesture. Not shocked that he was being kind, but that he was cognizant enough to recognize that she was nervous, and wanted to do something about it. She took his hand. “Ready.”

It only took a minute to find the office, and a few more before the receptionist called them back to the clerk’s office. She introduced herself as Juliette Bergeron, congratulated them on their engagement, and asked to see the paperwork. Passports and birth certificates were handed over, signatures were signed on dotted lines, and half an hour later, they walked out of the courthouse with an appointment for a wedding on July 10. 

“Well, there’s that crossed off the checklist,” Laurel said, leaning up against the handrails as they stood on the courthouse steps. They had actually made a real checklist, a series of tasks on a shared Notes page of everything that needed to be completed before the wedding. Book the ceremony and post the public notice were done, but there were still a dozen-odd tasks left before they actually could get married. Starting with telling their parents. While they had developed as airtight a cover story as she supposed one could when they were committing what would charitably be referred to as citizenship fraud, they had agreed it was going to be far less messy to “come clean” as fiancés than after the wedding. Laurel had wanted to text them the news, or call so early they’d still be asleep and she could just avoid the conversation altogether, but Pierre had convinced her to FaceTime. “I know you guys aren’t super close, but I think they deserve that much, Laurel,” he had said, and he was right. Deep down, she knew he was right. 

“Ready?” Pierre asked, rubbing her back soothingly. 

Laurel flashed him a tight smile before pressing her mom’s contact. “As I’ll ever be.” Three agonizingly long rings later, her mom picked up. 

“Laurel? What are you doing calling, honey? Is everything okay?”

She let out a nervous giggle. “Does something have to be wrong for me to call my parents?”

“No,” Cheryl clucked, “but to be fair, you don’t call often.”

Laurel rubbed the back of her neck in discomfort. “That’s true. Uh, anyways, is dad there?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” her mom said, starting to catch onto the fact that maybe this wasn’t quite your run-of-the-mill check-in call. “What’s this all about, pumpkin?” 

The old term of endearment, one she hadn’t heard in years, brought tears to the corners of her eyes. “Can you call him in? I’d rather tell you both at the same time.”

Cheryl nodded, worry crossing her brow. “Doug? Laurel’s on the phone, she’s got something to tell us. Sounds important.”

“Coming,” Laurel heard her dad say in the background. A moment later, he padded into view. “Hey, Laurel, Mom said you’ve got some news?” 

Laurel nodded. “Yeah, just something I thought you guys should know. It’s not bad, you’re just going to be surprised, so I need you to keep an open mind, okay?”

“Who is he?” Doug asked, rubbing his forehead with an exasperated expression. 

She blanched. “He? Who’s he?” There’s no way he guessed...right?

“The jackass who got you pregnant, who else?” 

Laurel almost choked on her own spit. “Pregnant? Who said I’m pregnant? I’m not pregnant!”

Both of her parents let out an audible sigh of relief. “Well, Laurel, what conclusion did you expect us to jump to when you called us out of the blue and said you had important news?”

Laurel bit her lip; they had a point. “Fair. But, uh, rest assured, I’m not pregnant. I’m smarter than that.” She paused, steeling her nerves. “Remember that guy I told you I was seeing a few months ago?”

Her mom squinted like she was looking into the sun. “Vaguely? You didn’t really tell us much about him. Just that he was tall, nice, you met through friends.” It was a believable enough explanation back then, and Laurel was beyond grateful it dovetailed perfectly into the story she and Pierre had conjured up. “You didn’t even tell us his name.”

Laurel reached out her free hand, the one that wasn’t holding the phone, and made a grabby motion for his hand. He interlaced his fingers with hers. “Well, his name’s Pierre-Luc Dubois—”

Doug interrupted. “Very French.”

She grimaced. “I do live in Québec, Dad. But anyways, his name’s Pierre-Luc Dubois and we’re getting married.”

They sat still on the other end of the call, so still that if it weren’t for her mom’s rapid blinking she would have thought the call had been dropped. “Married?” her mom asked softly. 

“Yes, married.”

“How long have you even been seeing each other?” Doug asked, dumbfounded. 

“A little under six months. I know it’s not long, and I know it seems sudden, but we’ve known each other for a long time, you know? We met when I was still back in Toronto at university, Madeline introduced us.” Her parents nodded; Madeline, they knew. Madeline, they had met. Madeline, they trusted. “And we finally realized a little bit after New Year’s that we had feelings for each other, and it’s sort of been zero to a hundred ever since. We thought, if we knew we loved each other and we knew we were done looking, then what was the point of waiting for a year or two for it to be a ‘socially acceptable’ time to get married.” Laurel finished. 

Cheryl wrapped her hands around her mug of tea, eyelids still shooting rapid-fire blinks at the screen. “But, Laurel, we haven’t even met this boy, we barely know anything about him!”

Pierre squeezed her hand. “Actually, he’s just off-camera. Want to say hi, P?” 

He walked into view, waving politely at the screen. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Klerken, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Laurel’s had nothing but wonderful things to say.” A little flattery never hurt anybody, he thought. 

“Lovely to meet you, Pierre-Luc,” Cheryl said. “Forgive us if we’re still a little shocked, Laurel’s not normally one to spring things on us like this.”

He laughed. “Perfectly fair. I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to meet until now, but we’ve been trying to get used to the idea ourselves.”

Her dad leaned forward from his spot in the couch, giving Pierre as much of a once-over as he could from nearly 1500 miles away. “I’m not able to give you the normal talking-to I have with any of the other boys Laurel or Maggie have introduced us to, so this is going to have to do.” Maggie? Laurel had primed Pierre for the inevitable grilling, telling him that if it was anything like it had been in the past, it would be all bark and no bite. “So what do you do for work, Pierre-Luc?”

“I’m a professional hockey player in the NHL, I play for the Columbus Blue Jackets.” 

Doug’s eyebrows went up. As much of a front as he tried to put up, he was still a middle-aged man from Minnesota, and there were few things that impressed middle-aged men from Minnesota more than their daughters being suddenly engaged to NHL players. “NHL, huh? That’s very impressive. So you’re from Québec, then?”

“Yes, sir,” Pierre answered. “My hometown’s a little outside of the city, but I live in Montréal now. My mom’s from Georgia, though, so I’ve got dual citizenship and some family still down there.” 

Her parents didn’t take too kindly to the news that the wedding was in three weeks, since it was too tight a fit to be able to get time off, but promised to visit later in the summer to make a proper introduction to their new son-in-law. Her father continued to pepper him with questions about his hobbies, family, and how he takes his steak — according to the Doug Klerken rules, any man who orders anything above medium is not to be trusted — until Laurel mercifully cut him off, telling her parents they were late to meet up with some friends. “That wasn’t so bad,” Pierre said as Laurel slipped her phone into her purse, immediately plugging it into her portable charger as the FaceTime had drained all but 18% of her battery. 

Laurel made a face. “They’re good people and they care about me, but…” She trailed off. “They never really understood why I’d want anything more than I was given. Anything more than the status quo. And it’s just caused a lot of friction between us.” Her eyes flashed as she remembered something. “One more thing.” Pierre’s ears perked up. “If and when you ever talk to my parents again, just...don’t bring up politics.” Laurel grimaced. 

“Republicans?” he asked sympathetically. 

She nodded. “Trump-supporting Republicans. It’s another one of the reasons we don’t talk much anymore. I’m liberal, I’d probably be NDP if I could vote here, and we just don’t share the same values on a lot of things.”

“That’s got to be pretty rough on you,” Pierre said.

“Yeah,” Laurel admitted. “Probably more than I want to let on, but I think it helps that I’m able to get some distance.”

Pierre took a deep breath in. “Your, uh, your dad mentioned something that I wanted to ask you about.” 

Shit. Laurel had been able to avoid the conversation for long enough, but she was beginning to push her luck, and she couldn’t run forever. “Maggie?”

He nodded. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but I thought I should ask.”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Laurel said. “Um, long story short, Maggie’s my sister. It’s July, so…” she did the mental math in her head, “she’d be almost 31. Total free spirit. She left town pretty soon after she graduated, came back every so often but not nearly enough. Last I heard, she was an au pair in Italy.”

“And when was that?”

“Two years ago.” Pierre figured that was as good a time as any to drop the subject, so he did. They had decided that, while they were still downtown, it would be a good opportunity to get the ring shopping out of the way. Pierre looked up the highest-rated jewelry store on Yelp, and they set off on foot. 

Pierre opened the door for her as they stepped inside, greeted by a slightly over-enthusiastic salesman. “You paid for the ceremony fee, so I’m paying for the rings, okay?”

Laurel scoffed. “Hardly a fair trade, don’t you think?”

“I’ll live,” he said, smirking. 

Laurel had been wandering around by the solitaires for a few minutes when Pierre walked up behind her. “I know this isn’t going to be the wedding you’ve always dreamed of,” Pierre said, “but we’re going to make it the best we can.” He looked down at the cases, Laurel’s fingers dancing over the edge of the glass cover. “When you were in high school, or university, did you ever think about what kind of wedding you wanted?” Laurel gave a small nod. “And what kind of ring did you have?”

“I’ve always liked halo cuts,” she said softly.

Pierre inched his hand towards hers, wrapping his fingers around hers. They tensed for a second, but then relaxed into his grip. “Then let’s go get you that halo cut.”

There was no one else in the store aside from the salesman, so the couple was enveloped in a comfortable silence as they browsed. Her eyes stopped on a beautiful floral halo ring with an oval diamond. Pierre nodded to the salesman, who carefully took it off of its stand and handed it to Pierre, who carefully wiggled it onto Laurel’s fourth finger. If she closed her eyes, she was almost able to pretend that it was a proposal. Laurel brought her thumb to the ring, delicately running it over the pavé band with the ghost of a smile on her face. “What do you think?” Pierre asked, as if he couldn’t already tell her answer from the look on her face. 

Laurel looked up at him. “I love it. It fits perfectly.”

“Like Cinderella’s slipper.” He turned to the salesman. “Combien ça coûte?” (How much does it cost?) Laurel heard a number that made her swallow hard, more than anything she’d ever have bought for herself, but Pierre insisted it was a non-issue as he handed his card over. “He said that they’ve got another sample one in the back, and you’re welcome to just wear that one out if it fits.”

“Sounds good.” The salesman handed over the bag with Pierre’s ring and her matching wedding band, thanking them for their purchase before opening the door back into the sunny Montréal afternoon. Laurel craned her neck to try and sneak a peek inside the bag. “Don’t I get to see yours?”

Pierre cracked a wry grin. “Gotta wait until the wedding, babe. Can’t a man have a little mystery?”

“Fair enough,” Laurel said, not missing his use of the pet name but brushing it off as simply a spur-of-the-moment choice. “Do you want to do the honors?” she asked, referring to the all-important checklist. 

Pierre opened his phone with his spare hand, deftly navigating to the app and tapping twice. “Four down, seven to go. We’re on a roll. 

June 24 (thurs)

Surprisingly, telling Pierre-Luc’s parents hadn’t been nearly as intimidating as breaking the news to her own, at least for Laurel. They were shocked — and confused, and had a lot of questions — but were welcoming nonetheless. Patrice was almost like a second son to them, and the fact that she already came with his stamp of approval went a long way into calming them down. “He’s always been quite the romantic, the type to wear his heart on his sleeve. And he cares deeply about the people in his life. That’s you, now,” his mom had said. They drove up to meet them that Sunday, having brunch in his childhood home. That was, in essence, their first real “test” as a couple. They had never had to sell their relationship to anyone before; even when going out with Madeline and Patrice after their “engagement,” nothing ever seemed like it had changed. This time was different. This time had to be different.

His mom fawned over her engagement ring, asking her to spare no details in retelling the story of the proposal. Lucky for her, however, Laurel was the former president of the University of Toronto improv club, and coming up with background stories with exactly zero minutes to prepare was something of a specialty for her. Laurel immediately gushed about how unexpected it was; she was just expecting an evening walk through downtown until they turned down one of the piers by the basilica, reached the end overlooking the river, and Pierre dropped down on one knee. “I think I knew that he was the one way sooner than that, but it’s nice to finally have it be official,” she had said. 

Laurel shook herself out of her memories, turning the door into the locker room. She grabbed a pair of scrubs out of her shared locker — she had never met Alice, the other nurse who used it, but they had made a habit of leaving each other Post-it note greetings — and stripped off her t-shirt and jeans. Shimmying on her scrub pants, she tied them, leaning back into the locker to get her bag as the door shut behind her. She glanced over to the door, waving to Claire. Claire was sweet, a transplant from Vancouver who had lived in Québec as a child and decided to come back to work. She was sweet, having just started working at the beginning of the summer, but she was young, even younger than Laurel. And while her perky and energetic nature lent itself well to the dynamics of the floor, it was a lot for her to get used to. “Hey!” Laurel said, waving as she pulled a chain out of her purse, trying to discreetly unhook it. 

“Hey!” Claire responded, perky as ever. “How has your week been?” She worked Mondays and Thursdays with Laurel, but had the Saturday night shift as well. 

Laurel threw her hair up into a bun. “Good, good, busy. Met up with some friends yesterday, so that was nice, but not much. Took Piper to the dog park.” With my fiancé, she neglected to add. She twisted her ring off, trying to slip it onto the chain without Claire noticing. Like most of her married colleagues, Laurel had taken to wearing her engagement ring on a chain around her neck while at work instead of on her finger. It was under her scrubs most of the time, keeping at bay the questions she wasn’t yet ready to answer, and made it much easier to pull on and off gloves when the occasion called for it. But Claire was eagle-eyed, catching the sparkle of the diamond just as she slid it onto the chain.

She audibly gasped. “Is that an engagement ring?” 

Laurel had to think fast; once again, her improv skills were called up to bat. “No? It’s, uh, it’s a family heirloom, it was my grandma’s. Guess I didn’t think too much about which finger I put it on.” She could tell Claire didn’t quite believe her side of the story, but thankfully, she didn’t press. 

“If you say so,” she said, giving a not-so-subtle wink. 

June 27 (sun)

Laurel was sat in her living room, her TV on in the background as she scrolled absent-mindedly through her phone, savoring her last few hours before she had to go to bed for her 5:30 wake-up call. On a whim, she opened her Twitter. It wasn’t an app she used all that often — mostly just to keep in contact with the handful of high school and college friends who didn’t use Instagram — and she was well aware that she’d probably have to limit her use for her own sanity when she and Pierre went “public” after the wedding, but she liked being able to keep up with everyone. She followed her friends, a handful of celebrities and a few journalists, but her timeline wasn’t flooded with updates. Then she saw the little blue alert on the bottom. One new message. Clicking to her inbox, Laurel saw that it had been sent by Madeline four minutes earlier, a link to a tweet that just had the caption: “you should probably see this.”

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Laurel pressed the link. What could be so important that Madeline would have sent a message with that kind of urgency? And why didn’t she just text it? God, I hate puckbunny blogs, Laurel thought as she read the handle. Her eyes raced across the screen. So I was looking up the address of my friend’s wedding earlier since I lost my invitation and didn’t want to tell her, and saw this under??? I know he can be a private guy, but tell me you guys don’t think this is for PLD. Her eyes froze as soon as she finished reading, praying that somehow they were talking about a different PLD, that they hadn’t been found out and their cover hadn’t been blown and she wasn’t about to have a panic attack for the first time since junior year  — and then she saw the screenshot. Of their wedding announcement. Their public wedding announcement that not only had their full names and places of birth, but the location of the ceremony, the time, and their addresses. God, this is exactly what Laurel had been worried about. She immediately reported the tweet for exposing personal information, then made the poor decision to look at the comments section. Some people insisted it was legitimate, some convinced it was just photoshop, some were convinced that it couldn’t be Pierre-Luc even it looked like him, because he was training in Columbus for the summer, right? Thank God, it didn’t seem like anyone had done a deep enough dive to figure out who she was; there weren’t any screenshots of her accounts or photos of her in the comments section. It was eight minutes from the time she reported it to when it was taken down, and while Laurel was grateful for the quick response, she felt like she was on a cliffside, one foot off of the edge, until it had been deleted. 

Her phone lit up with a text notification from Pierre. Funny thing happened today. 

Oh God, Laurel thought. Had he seen it? He hadn’t.

My mom asked what you were planning to do about flowers and got very upset when I said we didn’t have any plans. She let out a tense breath. Flowers, she could do. She wanted to get your number to send over the names of a few florists she knows in the area, but I thought I should check with you first to make sure that’s okay. 

Laurel smiled, her right hand draped over the side of the couch to scratch Piper behind the ears. That sounds great, P. 

As promised, his mom texted Laurel soon after, coming armed with recommendations of Montréal florists. She echoed her son’s words almost identically; You deserve to have the wedding you’ve always dreamed of even if the circumstances are different, she had written. Her eyes pricked with tears as she fell asleep. 

July 3 (sun)

It was a week before the wedding, and Laurel had started to pack up her apartment. It seemed much more practical to do it in stages then try to finish everything the weekend of the wedding. So she sat with Pierre on the floor of her bedroom, moving boxes between them as they packed away into the next season of her life. Some things, she obviously couldn’t put away yet — she still needed clothes and toothpaste, and they hadn’t been able to get all of her pots and pans down to the Goodwill yet. But books and keepsakes could be boxed up, and unless there was a snowstorm in July, she didn’t need her parka either. 

“Oh, what’s this?” Pierre asked as he pulled a few more volumes off of her bookshelf. Laurel groaned  when she saw what was in his hand. 

“The 2013 Cloquet Senior High School yearbook. My sophomore year.”

He burst out laughing. “This, I’ve got to see.” He opened the cover. “Your mascot was the Lumberjacks?”

Laurel ducked her head, her cheeks heating. “Regrettably, yes. That’s what happens when your whole area used to be milling towns.”

Pierre’s brows furrowed. “I thought you said everything was about the mines, doesn’t your dad work in the mines?”

“He does,” Laurel said. “They had to figure out something to do after all of the trees had been cut down, you know?”

Pierre got the feeling it was really more of a rhetorical question. “What was your school like?” 

She placed one of her old Harry Potter books into the box. “Small is the first word that comes to mind. My graduating class couldn’t have been much bigger than 150 or so? We’d get snow days a couple of times a year, most of the time if it wasn’t a blizzard everyone would end up going down to the school anyways, we’d all have big snowball fights on the football field. Actually,” she said, pulling out her phone from her back pocket, “I think I might still have a clip of one.” She pulled up her videos, scooting over to Pierre and leaning into his side so he could see the screen. Raucous laughter filtered through the speakers; the only things in sight were snow forts and the tiniest bits of beanies peeking over the top. 

“THIS. IS. WAR!” 

Laurel snickered. “I think that sounds like Nicholas, he was the varsity quarterback for a few years. Usually was the one leading the sieges.” She put her phone away a minute later after the clip ended. “But other than that? There were actually a lot of pretty interesting elective classes, I got to take photography, work in the preschool on campus, take a class on Anishinaabe studies.”

“Anishinaabe?” Pierre questioned. 

“There’s a Native American reservation in town, the tribe’s Ojibwe so that’s the language family we studied. A lot of kids at the school, including one of my best friends Kristen, live on the reservation, so I think they wanted to not only have the class available for Native students who maybe wanted to learn more about their culture, but also for non-Native kids like me, so we’re able to gain a respect for whose land we’re living on,” Laurel explained. 

“Makes sense,” he said, flipping through the pages. He snorted. “This photo might be the best thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Laurel peeked over his shoulder, cringing at her school picture. “I really couldn’t have dressed any more 2012 if I tried, Pierre. Aggressively off-the-shoulder top, one of those godforsaken hair feathers, I bet you’d find dark wash skinny jeans if you could see from the waist down.”

“Hey, don’t talk about my fiancée like that,” Pierre said. “I like the look, I swear. You were such a cute kid, oh my God.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know. What happened to me, right?”

He looked at her from the side. “Nope.”

 June 9 (fri)

 It was the day before the wedding, and Laurel was trying to find a dress. She had been planning on wearing one — even if it was a courthouse wedding, she still wanted to look nice — but then she had spilled red wine onto the light blue one she had been thinking of wearing as she ironed it in the living room, and she didn’t want to put all of her eggs in one basket if the Oxiclean didn’t end up working. She called Madeline in a panic, who promised to be over as soon as she could with a few dresses of her own to see what she could do. There was a knock on the door, and Laurel practically flew across the room to fling it open, gathering Madeline in a hug even before she had crossed the threshold. Madeline patted her clumsily on the back. “There, there, Laur. It’s going to be okay, we’re going to fix it.”

Laurel ran one hand through her hair, her curls as frazzled as her mind. “It’s got to be. Half of my stuff’s already over at P’s place, what, do you want me to wear a,” she opened up her dresser, eyeing its meager contents, “bralette and lacy thong to my own wedding?”

Madeline shrugged. “I doubt Pierre would mind,” she said casually. 

Laurel almost choked on her own spit. “What do you mean?”

“Men are visual creatures, and you’re hot as hell, Laurel,” she stated matter-of-factly. 

“Still,” Laurel said, opening her closet and grabbing every single left over dress from its hanger, trying to distract herself from Madeline’s words, “I’d rather not be arrested for public indecency. I’m trying to stay in the country, remember?”

Madeline rolled her eyes. “I remember.” She thumbed through the dresses on Laurel’s bed. “You’re not wearing a black dress to get married,” she said pointedly. 

“It’s pretty?” Laurel tried to reason.

“It is, but it’s a wedding, not a funeral.” She moved onto the next one. “Bright red bodycon is great for the club, but not sure coquettish seductress is the look you’re going for.” The next one was a striped sweater dress; it was the middle of summer, so according to Madeline, that meant it was out. There was a navy shift dress that “could work, but it’s a little too much work and not enough play,” her friend had said. Laurel tried on Madeline’s dresses, but seeing as how she had three inches on her, the hemlines weren’t exactly in her favor. Madeline pulled out the last of the stack, gasping softly. “This one’s beautiful, where’s it from?”

Madeline looked at it, a knee-length ivory lace dress, rolling her eyes good-naturedly at Madeline. “It was for Aurélie’s bachelorette party last year, probably explains. You were drunk off your ass that night.”

“I’m hurt by that characterization, but I don’t remember enough to correct you,” Madeline said. “It’s perfect though, why didn’t you choose this one in the first place?”

Laurel rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m not sure?” Madeline gave her a look. “Fine, it just seems...It seems too much like an actual wedding dress. It’s white, or close enough, anyways,” she noted, fingering one of the delicate straps, “and gorgeous, and formal, and I’m worried if I wear it it’ll seem too real, and I’ll start thinking this is more than it is. Because all it is at the end of the day is a friend doing me a really, really big favor,” she finished, huffing and falling back onto her mattress. 

“At the end of the day, it’s still a wedding,” Madeline corrected, laying down next to her. “And you’re still a bride and he’s still a groom and you deserve to feel beautiful and cherished and special on your wedding day, no matter its circumstances. And who knows? Maybe you two stay married, and fall in love, and you live happily ever after with your half-dozen dogs and 2.5 kids on some farm out in the suburbs.”

Laurel snorted. “As if.” But two hours later, long after Madeline had already left, she sat back on the bed, hand ghosting over the lace of her now-wedding dress, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Madeline had a point.  

June 10 (sat) 

It was the morning of the wedding, and Laurel was pacing her room in her sweatpants, Piper looking at her in confusion from the doorway. It was just past 7 and the appointment wasn’t until 10, but she still had to get dressed and do her hair and makeup and pick up the flowers and eat and — her internal monologue was interrupted by the doorbell. Still half-asleep, she ambled over to the door, pulling it open without even really checking to see who it was. 

“Surprise!!” Patrice shouted, walking through the door, followed by Madeline and Pierre. “Madeline mentioned that you seemed a bit overwhelmed yesterday, so we thought we’d come over and get ready over here!” 

Laurel shuffled out of the way as Piper jumped on Pierre, who laughed and calmed her down with a few scratches on her chin. She had really taken a liking to him and his two dogs, which had initially been a point of nervousness for Laurel. But they got along great, shared space well, and she seemed to love her new brother and sister. “That’s really nice of you guys, I appreciate it,” she said sincerely. “Um, I don’t have much food left because of the move, but I think there’s some cereal in the cupboard?” 

“Silly you,” Pierre said, holding out a paper bag. “Did you think I’d leave my bride hungry on our wedding day? I got you sourdough french toast, should be on the top.” They had gone out to brunch once and she had ordered it, audibly moaning at how incredible it tasted. He remembered. 

“And raspberry mochas!” Madeline said, presenting her with a cup. 

Laurel took it, wrapping her spare arm around Madeline and kissing Pierre on the cheek. “This is incredible, guys. Really. I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“Exactly!” Madeline said, a perky expression on her face. “It’s a surprise!” She drifted into the kitchen, pulling out plates from Laurel’s cabinet and forks from her drawers. “Breakfast is served!”

Laurel let out a laugh as she grabbed the box with her french toast, taking a sip of her mocha. “I think the credit goes to the chefs at the restaurant, but whatever you say, Madi.”

Madeline rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but we ordered it. 

By the time they had all inhaled their breakfasts and cleaned the kitchen — Laurel and Pierre tag-teamed the dishes — it was almost eight, and Madeline whisked her into her room to get ready. “There should be a couple beers in the fridge, help yourselves!” Laurel shouted out the door as Madeline tried to wrestle her into the ensuite. For the most part, Madeline was good at listening to Laurel’s pleas against a dramatic makeup look. Muted rose lipstick, filled in her eyebrows, delicately pulled back her hair into a twisted bun. “Where’s your setting spray?” Madeline asked, rooting through her makeup bag. 

“Top drawer on the left. Are you finally going to let me see?”

Madeline pulled the drawer out, uncapping the bottle and spritzing it over Laurel’s face. “Go for it.”

Laurel turned around, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. “Oh my God,” she said, turning her head so the glimmer of her highlighter caught in the early-morning sun streaming through the open window. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

“Don’t say that until you’ve put the dress on,” Madeline said, pulling it off of its hanger and draping it across the chair. Sweats came off and the dress went on, Madeline carefully pulling up the back zipper and straightening out her hem. Laurel bent down to put on her shoes, threading the silver straps through the tiny metal clasp before giving her leg a good shake. Madeline looked at her sceptically. 

“What?” Laurel asked innocently. “I don’t want it to fall off halfway down the aisle.” 

There was a knock on the bedroom door, Patrice’s voice floating in from the other side. “It’s 9:20, you two about ready to head out?”

“Coming!” Madeline called back, pulling Laurel up from the bed. “You ready, Laur?” Laurel gave a nervous nod. “Let’s go get you married.”

She stepped out into the living room, reaching up to her neck and fingering the silver filigree of her grandma’s wedding necklace, one of the only things she had left to remember her by. If she wasn’t able to complete the whole rhyme, at least she’d have her something old. “Who’s driving?” she asked. 

Pierre wheeled around, mouth gaping like a fish when he saw her. Laurel immediately looked down to her dress, wondering if she had spilled one of her pre-wedding mimosas. “What is it?” she asked frantically. “Is there something in my teeth?”

He shook his head, tugging at the sleeves of his navy blue suit. “No, there’s nothing in your teeth, it’s perfect. You look beautiful.” They were in the car five minutes later, picked up the bouquet from the florist five minutes after that, and were outside of the courthouse by 9:50. Laurel took a deep breath, looking up at the glass doors of the Palais de Justice. Pierre threaded his fingers between hers, giving a reassuring squeeze. “You good?”

Laurel nodded, nervous but determined, sure that she was making the right decision. “Ready.” She barely remembered signing in, barely remembered going back to the clerk’s office, barely remembered her reading the mandated articles of the civil code. She gripped Pierre’s hands, giving him as much of a reassuring smile as she could, as the vows were read. 

“Pierre-Luc Dubois, do you take Laurel Elizabeth Klerken, here present, to be your wife?” Juliette asked. 

“I do.”

“Laurel Elizabeth Klerken, do you take Pierre-Luc Dubois, here present, to be your husband?”

“I do,” Laurel said, voice steady. 

Juliette continued. “By virtue of the powers vested in me by law, I now declare you, Pierre-Luc Dubois, and you, Laurel Elizabeth Klerken, united in the bonds of marriage.” Patrice passed over the rings; Laurel slid Pierre’s onto his ring finger, he gently twisted hers to rest on top of her engagement ring. “You are now legally married. Allow me, on my own behalf and on behalf of all those present, to offer you our best wishes for your happiness. You may now kiss the bride.”

Laurel panicked for a moment, before looking up and meeting Pierre’s eyes. In the span of a second, she communicated her unspoken agreement with the tiniest nod of her head, and his lips were on hers. His arms were against the small of her back, hers wrapped around his neck, and even enough it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, it felt like hours. It felt like coming home.

[thesoulofinnocence]

Sweaty Hounds

“Well now. This is an interesting event.”

Najimi stood, in his workout clothing with a towel over his shoulder, in front of the benches at the gym down the street from him. Frozen, and standing only two feet from him, was someone who very much wanted him dead. Someone with red hair and a now unbound chest which confirmed Lycan’s previous thoughts long ago.

Vatten, was not flat as a board.

She wore a loose t-shirt and her rag pants that had been tied up to reach only her knees. Also her long crimson hair was tied back into a ponytail and tucked nicely on her neck.

“Y-You do not go to the gym. I have watched you for months, not once have you entered here. I-I thought... d-did you follow me?”

She had absolutely no idea how to handle this situation, should she make a move for his throat or run out embarrassed? Luckily for her, Lycan had absolutely no idea how to handle it either. He just stared at her for a moment and then sighed.

“How do you even know what a gym is, how do you even have a god damn membership here? There is so many things wrong, I’m sure you don’t even have a license! Let alone money and a credit card. Christ how did you even understand them, everyone here only speaks Japanese!”

“I-I have, wait I don’t have to answer that question! You’re my enemy! I won’t willingly give you information! Do you think I’m some type of fool?”

“You’re wearing a loose shirt near a bunch of gym equipment, yes you’re a fool. Everyone here, including me, wears tight shit because it makes it easier to move around. Also, you know, tight shit won’t get caught in a machine and get you hurt.”

“Ha! A human machine won’t do any real damage to me!”

“No, but it’ll reveal that you’re not human and make you unable to come here again. Why don’t you drop the high and mighty shit, chest balloons. I didn’t follow you here and I’ve no intention of starting anything. I live too close by.”

Only then did Vatten realize she was leaning down slightly and revealing a little too much. She quickly shot up, cheeks growing pink, and covered herself with her arms.

“W-WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE LOOKING?!”

“That tattoo but you can think I was checking you out if you want. Wasn’t. I still think you look, and smell like shit. Besides I knew the moment we fought that you were binding your chest. By a lot too. I could see the pressure that part of your body was under.”

Lycan turned and moved into the area next to where Vatten had been lifting weights. He dropped his towel onto the ground and started deciding how much to go with. It had been a long time since he had actually worked out, this was a strange thing to re-learn.

“Why couldn’t I sense you?”

“You were looking for a hound of flames, not a half-Soul. My powers are locked away by a seal my brother put on me. Don’t get excited though. Piss me off and I can easily burn through it.”

“..Even still why would you share that information?”

“I’m not afraid of you, and I can’t lie so. Unlike you who won’t even share truly pointless information like how you can go to a gym, I don’t give a shit. Longer my powers are locked away too the less shits I’ll give.”

Vatten looked away from him for a moment to check around them.

“What does that mean?”

Lycan just gave her a blank stare.

“Tell me how you can get into a gym, afford it, and then I’ll tell you.”

Vatten sighed.

“I have researched the mainland for a long time before I left, I knew money would be required for many things. Before I left I took with me many valuable gems that are common on our island. The first thing I did when I got here, even before finding you, was locate someone who could give me a fake identity. That way if I am stopped by anyone requesting such information I can present it. The same man who gave me my identity introduced me to a buyer for the gems. He gave me a large sum of money and that is how I am able to use this gym. Even on the mainland I must be in top physical shape, and there are no good hunting spots around here. I also know about gyms because.. I read a magazine.”

Lycan raised a brow.

“And who taught you how to use the machines?”

“The.. T-The nice man who works behind the counter showed me the basics and a few people have helped me out. A-As for how I can speak to anyone, learning languages is easy for our kind. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Not really, I studied my ass off to learn Japanese and English. So you went through all of this trouble even though you planned to just kill me? Why need a fake identity for a quick stab and run?”

“You’re a hound of Brann, I knew it would not be that simple. Besides, I did not seek your death in the beginning. I thought of doing things peacefully but you and that.. bitch, annoyed me. Always plan for a longer stay than expected.”

“You sent three people to kill me, how is that peacefully? The little runt and then the two little guards or whatever they were to you. Even if you wanted to see if I was who you think I am, not the best way. If you had just come to me, before all of that, and asked I would have showed you whatever. I desperately wanted to find out what I was. Now though, don’t give a fuck about my species.”

Lycan attached the weights he wanted and then sat down at the bench next to Vatten’s. He brought his arm up and started to stretch, making sure his body wasn’t going to immediately get sore.

“They were my personal guard, and my best friends. I sent them because they were the strongest men I knew.”

Vatten looked down to the ground and spoke quietly. Lycan looked over at her for a moment and then let out a sigh. He cracked his neck and then moved his hands to the bench.

“The longer I’m without my flames, the more my other energy becomes my primary. Its a cold, empty, energy and leaves me the same. No matter what I do I won’t be able to avoid the change so I’ll just have to fix myself by then. I don’t wish to be emotionless again, its a horrible feeling. Looking at someone you know you love and just feeling.. dead.”

The high hound blinked when he finally told her what she had asked before. A small smile forming but she quickly forced it away, hid it so he couldn’t notice. Though he already had. She turned to face where she had been working out and coughed.

“Perhaps I did make the worse choice when it comes to getting into contact with you. I cannot take it back though, and I doubt you’ll accept any apologies. After all I hurt the woman you seek to spend your time with, I’d think you won’t forgive that. However.. I’ve grown to like this gym. The people are nice.”

“I won’t forgive it, but I’ve been pretending to be a human here for a long time. I won’t let go of that just to make a move on you. I fight dirty, I’m ruthless, and I hate most people but I am selfish too. I won’t give up my human experience just to satisfy blood lust. You’re free to continue going here, but I won’t stop either.”

This time Vatten smiled and didn’t try to hide it.

“Why are you nice to someone like me?”

“I’m not nice, I just don’t care. Though if you do go after her again, after whatever I did to you last time, you won’t make it out again. Try to kill me as much as you like until I either end you or you give up. But only me.”

Vatten blinked, a bit annoyed that he valued that bitch’s life much more than his own.

“What do you mean, ‘whatever I did’, do you not remember?”

“Now. I won’t go sharing all my secrets.”

Lycan ended the conversation with that, he turned to his bench and laid back. Beginning to work out but it was clear that he was keeping an eye on her. Vatten could feel his gaze even though his eyes were locked on the bar being lifted above his head. All of the energy he held, flames or not, was focused on her. If her blood lust spiked or body moved in a dangerous way, he would be ready.

But..

Vatten did not make any such moves.

She simply returned to her station, and began lifting as well. Her mind now raced with curiosity though as she questioned if he remembered. The towering wolf of flames he had become.. the ultimate blessing, was it not in his mind? Why wouldn’t it be? She now held the same strength as him but now questions had to be answered. If she were to make a move, then they never would be.

Also, part of her still did want this to end peacefully.

[williambrooms]

1-100 unusual asks, please

Thank you or the ask and I'm sorry that I took so to reply. This will have to be on two posts, apparently, but I will get them all!1. Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora? Pandora because it's the only one that I've ever tried, lol.2. Is your room messy or clean?Messy. I really want it to be clean, but it seems like I never have time.3. What color are your eyes?Hazel.4. Do you like your name? Why?Eeeeeeeeh, depends on which name we're talking about. I hate my birth name with a passion, but I like my real one. As for why... it should be pretty obvious. XD5. What is your relationship status? I hate people who say "it's complicated," but it is. I recently had to cut things off with someone that I wasn't quite dating because it became obvious that she was going to cause my death and, in the process of that, discovered that I might still have feelings for a close friend who helped me through everything while the not quite girlfriend had all of my other friends helping tear into me about what a monster I was for not being happy 24/7.6. Describe your personality in 3 words or less.Hopeless, lonely romantic.7. What color hair do you have?Purple at the moment. I was planning on green next, but... then things changed. I might go blue next. 8. What kind of car do you drive? color?2008 olive green Honda Element.9. Where do you shop?Craft stores, mostly.10. How would you describe your style?Whatever fits, honestly. I'm not picky at all about clothing. 11. Favorite social media accountDespite everything that happened on there, it's still Facebook. 12. What size bed do you have? A queen. I dream of the day that I can have one of those massive, California King beds...13. Any siblings?I have a sister, but she's in an urn, so I don't know if she counts for this question. 14. If you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?Right now it would be Colorado. There's a beautiful woman out there eager to take me in, love me, and help me transition. She's a saint and I can't wait for her to finish school!15. Favorite snapchat filter? I don't use snapchat. 16. Favorite makeup brand(s)Don't use make-up, lol. 17. How many times a week do you shower?Be prepared to be grossed out. Usually about twice a week. Sometimes only once or not at all. 18. Favorite tv show?Snapped. I love listening to the stories of what pushed people to murder. 19. Shoe size?10, sometimes 10.5, it depends on the brand.20. How tall are you?*sighs* A little over six feet...21. Sandals or sneakers? Sneaker all the way! I HATE sandals or any other open toed shoe. 22. Do you go to the gym? I tried for a while, but I think I'm going to cancel my membership and drop the idea. I'm just wasting money.23. Describe your dream dateSnuggling and watching our favourite movies and TV shows together.24. How much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?$21, if you don't count the secret 20s that I stash for emergencies only. 25. What color socks are you wearing? One is red with penguins, the other is white with snowmen.26. How many pillows do you sleep with?Oh geez... a lot, lol. I think about... seven...?27. Do you have a job? What do you do? I do have a job, I work for a credit card company. I decide if companies lose money for their mistakes or not. I LOVE my job. 28. How many friends do you have? Because of how many picked my last ex over me... three... the number used to be way higher and I'm not entirely sure I want to fully count two of those people, but... I guess she was more likable than I was. 29. What's the worst thing you have ever done? Believed that people who knew me for over four years might care if I'm alive or dead...30. What's your favorite candle scent? I remember one called "Midnight Moon" that was really incredible, but I don't know who made it and I haven't seen in since that one candle.31. 3 favorite boy namesThaddeus, William, and Alexander.32. 3 favorite girl namesLynda, Genevieve, and Alexandria.33. Favorite actor? Adam Driver.34. Favorite actress? Meryl Streep.35. Who is your celebrity crush?Adam Driver. He's such a big, sweet, cutie!!36. Favorite movie?Changes often, but at the moment is "This is Where I Leave you."37. Do you read a lot? What's your favorite book?I don't read as much as I used too. Most of what I read now is slash fanfiction, but I could never pick a favourite in that. It's all so good...38. Money or brains? Uuuuuh... in a partner I would want brains because people with brains can usually find money or would be able to support me without it. For myself... I like the brains that I have, I want money.39. Do you have a nickname? What is it? I have a lot of nicknames, lol. My favorite is probably Teddy.40. How many times have you been to the hospital?I don't even know, Man. More times than I would ever want to count. 41. Top 10 favorite songsThis changes a lot, so I'll just give you the top ten most played songs on my iPod. Remedy by Jason Mraz, Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, I'm Yours by Jason Mraz, Mr. Brightside by The Killers, Little House by The Fray, Gives You Hell by All-American Rejects, Over My Head by The Fray, Strange Disease by Prozzak, How to Save A Life by The Fray, and For Reasons Unknown by The Killers.42. Do you take any medications daily? Just biotin for now, which is actually a vitamin.43. What is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)My skin is somehow oily and dry at the same time. It's fascinating. 44. What is your biggest fear? That I'll never be loved and my existence on the planet is pointless. I know you're not supposed to determine your worth by relationships and such, but... I'm always afraid that no one actually cares about me and the people that I love are only pretending to like me out of pity. 45. How many kids do you want? None. I don't even want kids near me. Ever. 46. What's your go to hair style?However my hair feels like falling that morning. I'm too lazy for actual styling.47. What type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc) I live in a big house because my mother owns the big house. If I picked a house, it would be a little one with a big garden.48. Who is your role model?I don't really have one. I just want to be myself without the fear of being rejected.49. What was the last compliment you received?My friend Lynda called me cute~ *purrs* She does that a lot when we start talking about living together and me getting to snuggle her.50. What was the last text you sent?"Ah, okay. ^ w ^ I figured people were kidnapping the almost birthday girl again~" 51. How old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?I don't remember, I just know that I was still young and most of my classmates still believed for a long time afterwards. I really wish my dad hadn't told me...52. What is your dream car? The car that I have. EV is my baby and I love her.53. Opinion on smoking?People wanting to kill themselves is none of my business unless they ask for help, but I don't hang out with smokers because I can't breathe around them.54. Do you go to college? I want an education and to seek out better jobs, but I want to have my body corrected first, which will be VERY expensive.55. What is your dream job?Professional house pet.56. Would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? Rural. I don't like being near other people.57. Do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?Always. It's not even good for my hair most of the time, I just like taking advantage of it. 58. Do you have freckles? Yes, but they're very faint.59. Do you smile for pictures?I don't let people take my picture. The few pictures that have been taken of me are destroyed if I get hold of them. 60. How many pictures do you have on your phone? Oh sweet Satan, probably a thousand... I save every Creek picture that I see and anything that could be used for role-play starters.61. Have you ever peed in the woods? Only once. I nearly peed on another person because it was late at night and I was half asleep. 62. Do you still watch cartoons? Whenever I can, yes. I love cartoons! 63. Do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?McDonald's has my favorite nuggets of all time, though whether they're chicken or not is... debatable at best. 64. Favorite dipping sauce? Either BBQ or honey mustard, depends on my mood.65. What do you wear to bed? Pajama pants and whatever shirt I had on that day. 66. Have you ever won a spelling bee?Kind of? It was just a little classroom game, but I won. 67. What are your hobbies?Writing, role-playing, and casual games. 68. Can you draw? Eh... Kind of. I was a pretty good artist when I was younger, but I haven't drawn much since my high school art class. I did really poorly in it...69. Do you play an instrument?I can kind of play the piano, but not very well.70. What was the last concert you saw?I think it was all the way back when 5FDP was in town, lol.71. Tea or coffee?Coffee. Coffee all the way.72. Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?Dunkin. Much cheaper and better pastries. 73. Do you want to get married?Eh... I want to be with someone for the rest of my life, but I don't see a point in getting married unless it's for taxes or healthcare. I might marry my friend when I go live with her, though... a job like hers should give good health insurance... 74. What is your crush’s first and last initial?LP75. Are you going to change your last name when you get married? Nope. One legal name change is enough for me. 76. What color looks best on you? Either purple or green. I'm not sure which because no one has ever told me. 77. Do you miss anyone right now? Well... I kind of miss Sarah. I know she didn't really love me, you don't rip someone apart like that when you love them, but now that I'm feeling better I constantly see cute things that I would have tagged her in, but I can't anymore. She's done with me and it's over... I keep having to remind myself of that...78. Do you sleep with your door open or closed?Closed and locked. Ever since my mother made a comment about checking on me at night, I make sure no one can get in. 79. Do you believe in ghosts?Yep. I've even encountered ghosts before.80. What is your biggest pet peeve? When people tell me that I'm not fat. Morbidly obese counts as fat and I HATE being lied to. 81. Last person you calledI avoid phone calls like a plague. It's been a LONG time. I think the last call was my hairdresser...

[yassinetop]

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There's no doubt that 2016 was the biggest year yet for Instagram sensation Kayla Itsines, who now has nearly 6 million followers. Known for her online fitness guides, Itsines hosted a massively successful '2016 Sweat Tour,' but it also made her second guess naming her guides "Bikini Body." She noted on Instagram: "I originally called it 'Bikini Body Guides' because when I asked my clients what their goals were, 99 percent said at some stage that they just wanted 'to feel comfortable in a bikini,' so I didn't think twice when I called it that." She told Bloomberg, however, that she now regrets the name since it's not only about looking and feeling good in a bikini, but it's about being strong. Regardless of the name, it's clear that this is only the beginning; just see how many hashtags #bbgprogress #sweatwithkayla there were this year for endless weight loss inspiration.

Khloé Kardashian Sheds Major Pounds

Kim Kardashian called Khloé her "weight loss idol" after the reality star shed a significant amount of weight. Unfortunately, she went from being body shamed for being "the fat Kardashian" to being body shamed for being "too skinny." Whatever your judgment may be, there's no denying her weight loss story has inspired many. She credits her drop in size to small tweaks in lifestyle and her diet, saying that her "biggest tip for starting off strong is to swap out some common foods you eat for healthier versions." Now that's a suggestion we can definitely get behind. Many of these 40 Ways to Lose Weight in 4 Seconds are along the same lines.

Revenge Body With Khloé Kardashian

She wouldn't be a Kardashian if she didn't capitalize on her media attention, so Khloé announced that she would have a new show on E!—Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian. The show has enlisted a number of A-list trainers including Simone de la Rue, Lacey Stone and Gunnar Peterson to work with the reality star to help contestants overcome traumatic life experiences through fitness.

Bride-To-Be Loses Over 100 Pounds

After seeing her engagement photos, Texas bride Haley J. Smith set off on a weight loss journey that resulted in a 100-plus pound weight loss in 15 months. How did she do it? She enlisted a workout buddy (her husband), tracked her progress, ordered smart at restaurants (and tracked her calories), cooked more, and ate a diet rich in protein (think salmon and chicken). Sounds do-able, right? For more on Haley's incredible transformation, check out The 5 Tricks One Woman Used to Lose 100 Pounds!

Megyn Kelly Swears by the F-Factor Diet

Megyn Kelly was in the spotlight for many things this year, not least of which was her reliance on a fiber-rich diet prescribed by celebrity dietitian Tanya Zuckerbrot to stay trim. In fact, the 40-something Fox News anchor not only praised Zuckerbrot's F-Factor diet and book on her show, she mentions it in her new book, Settle for More. Don't miss these 9 Ways Megyn Kelly Stays Slim at 45 for more insights into this star's slim figure.

Guordan Banks Drops 70 Pounds

Singer-songwriter Guordan Banks started his weight loss journey in 2015 and he's now down 70 pounds. Banks, who is behind the #1 single "Keep You In Mind," says he credits his weight loss with moving more (he's a fan of basketball), cutting out certain foods (like soda, bread, and fried foods), and opting for a diet full of water and lean protein (like fish and vegetables). Check out these 23 Ways to Accidentally Start Your Diet Today to see how you may be on a weight loss track you didn't even realize you were on!

Drew Barrymore Sheds 20 Pounds

As we age, losing those extra few pounds gets all the more challenging since our metabolism slows down. But Barrymore worked with celebrity nutritionist Kimberly Snyder to go from 144 to 124 pounds, and she did it all while filming her Netflix show, Santa Clarita Diet. Snyder, who is the author of several books and a proponent of a daily green smoothie, prescribes vegan or vegetarian with her weight loss plans; Barrymore, a carnivore, followed Snyder's methods but added some protein like fish and chicken. Barrymore kept it real, though, when she admitted that she "dreams of pizza."

Adrienne Bailon Reveals Pre-Wedding Weight Loss

After headlines declared she might be pregnant (she was not), Adrienne Bailon embarked on a 15-pound weight loss, which she revealed on Instagram. "Well folks, I've lost 15lbs & counting! Can't stop. Won't stop. Focused! Ha. It's always tea time in my dressing room! Loving my detox with @fittea! Have you joined me?! Um, it's November 1st! The perfect time to start! Stay classy lol. XO." This post was also captioned "#ad" so we might want to take it with a grain of salt when she credits her Fit Tea with this pre-wedding weight loss.

Gabourey Sidibe Sets Out To Get Healthy

Gabourey Sidibe showed off her weight loss—estimated by some to be as much as 100 pounds—on Instagram in a snap from Watch What Happens Live's red carpet. While the star has been vocal about how much she suffered because of her weight growing up, she has yet to reveal exactly how much she lost and how. For someone who was accustomed to being overweight, we wonder if her motivation was anything that might be on our list of 33 Reasons to Lose Weight Other Than Fitting Into Skinny Jeans.

Oprah Backs Weight Watchers

After buying a stake in Weight Watchers, the superstar influencer and media mogul once again set off on a weight loss journey. By mid-June, she showed off a 30-pound weight loss and wrote on Instagram, "Best Health report card ever! Total cholesterol 180. LDL 82. thanks to #wwsmartpoints #ClevelandClinic #AnnualCheckup."

John Goodman Is Almost Unrecognizable

A 2014 knee surgery caused by his unhealthy lifestyle served as a wake-up call for 10 Cloverfield Lane's John Goodman, who in March 2016 shocked fans when he showed up at LAX looking thinner than ever. It has been an ongoing journey for the actor; Goodman credits the tried and true method of diet and exercise for his newly svelte physique.

Lunch Lady Loses 100 Pounds

In the fall of 2015, 260-pound Tammy McRae, who works at Carver Elementary School, decided she was going to lose weight. Instead of eating donuts for breakfast and frequenting Wendy's and McDonald's, she started eating off her cafeteria menu—and the results were staggering. For breakfast, her diet typically includes fresh fruit and cereal; lunch has a menu of things like broccoli and cheese, a baked potato, and boneless chicken wings. At night, she says she has a little bit of fruit or a little yogurt. By September 2016, McRae weighed in at 160 pounds and garnered some much-deserved attention for her resourceful strategy. Speaking of lunch, get some smart tips with these 18 Lunch Rituals to Help You Lose Weight.

Widow Heals Emotional Wounds Through Weight Loss

After her husband took his life in 2015, Justine McCabe ballooned to 313 pounds. With the support of her friends and family, McCabe began documenting her 124-pound weight loss journey on her Tumblr page, taking daily selfies (she now updates via Instagram @HairStarGetsFit). How did she do it? Motivated by the daily selfies, she got a gym membership, worked out six days a week and ate clean. She also challenged herself and faced her fears by doing things like skydiving, traveling abroad alone, and climbing the Eiffel Tower. What made this story so great is that it's not only about weight loss but about emotional healing, which is why McCabe uses the hashtag "#Ichoosetolive." Now that's a weight loss mantra we love!

Penn Jillette Lost 100 Pounds Eating Potatoes

Comedian and magician Penn Jillette released his book Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear this year, in which he chronicles his weight loss journey. His efforts kicked off in a very unconventional way, though; he ate nothing except potatoes for two weeks. About five naked potatoes a day to be exact, which resulted in an 18-pound weight loss. After that, he ate nothing besides vegetables for three months. He now follows a diet with no animal products, processed grains, or added sugar or salt—and has kept the weight off. The lesson of story? Do what works for you, as long as you get to a healthy, sustainable place eventually!

Rob Kardashian Begins His Journey

In a recent episode of Rob & Chyna, Kardashian says, "I'm not comfortable in my skin. I'm not comfortable with this weight. So, I feel like I'm not happy with anything I do right now." The reality star was reportedly around 300 pounds at his heaviest, and my how things have changed! He recently posted the above snap on Instagram saying: "Oh yeah we snapping back lol,,, baby will be here in 4 weeks and I'm done with carrying this pregnancy weight me and my baby gonna be righttttttt ,,, MOTIVATION TIME‼️ we almost there Chy FAAAAACK Chy looks so bomb here aghhhh ." Moreover, his type 2 diabetes is in remission, thanks to a low-carb diet and doing cardio at least five times a week.

New Zealand Woman Gets Honest About Weight Loss

New Zealand woman Simone Anderson has been chronicling her weight loss journey on social media—and after some backlash that claimed her images were Photoshopped, she posted a very honest image showing the excess skin gathered around her torso. Then, months later, she shared an unforgettable "before and after" comparison of her dramatic skin removal surgery.

Jonah Hill Gets In Shape

The comedian has seen his weight fluctuate over the years (he lost weight for his roles in Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street, but soon gained it back); but this summer, Hill seemed to be thinner than ever. Dr. Philip Goglia, who worked with the star, revealed that Hill would send him pictures of his food to prove that he was on track and eating healthy things like protein-rich salmon and eggs. Speaking of, find out the 26 Things You Need To Know Before Buying A Carton of Eggs now!

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The REAL Truth about MLM & Network Marketing

So recently John Oliver who has his own show on HBO did a video on multilevel marketing and network marketing that prompted hundreds of emails and messages to be sent our way saying, "Pat, what do you think about what John Oliver said about network marketing?" And Mario and I went and watched the video and I went through. And one of the things I love about comedians, let me tell you what I love about comedians. Sometimes I enjoy watching a comedian's point of view about a political thing more than CNN, MSNBC and Fox. Here's why. A Jon Stewart, which I love. Jon Stewart would sit there and talk about how terrible Republicans were because of something they did. And all the Republicans would get upset at him. Then the next thing he would do a video on liberals, and Democrats. So you could always see that he would give both sides, which was great. Even though Jon leaned a little bit left, he still was willing to give both sides of his beliefs. And I like that. I think comedians have the opportunity to do that. They have the way to say things that are funny, which many people want to say, and they can get away with it because at the end of the day, they say what? I'm just a comedian! I didn't mean anything by it. I'm just a comedian. So it's cool. I was a bit disappointed with John Oliver because his method on how great he is on the comedian side, he could have taken this thing on multilevel marketing and network marketing to give both sides. But I thought he only gave one side of it. And today what I want to do with you is I want to completely break it down. I want to cover six things with you on today's video about network marketing. One is, what is network marketing? What is MLM? Why is it that everybody, somehow, some way at some point of their lives had some kind of an affiliation whether they're a client or joined or father or mother or brother, somehow, some way you've been touched by a network marketing company. So what is network marketing? We'll cover the comment criticisms. We'll cover the different types of compensation plans network marketing companies have, different types of products, the benefits of it, and if you're going to do it, which companies you should consider getting involved in. Not necessarily a company; I won't give a company. But I will give things that you ought to be thinking about. So first of all, what is network marketing? Let me tell you what is network marketing. Network marketing is not an industry. This is the one thing that most people don't know about. And before I get into explaining to you why I'm explaining network marketing and getting deep into it the way I am is I used to work at Bally Total Fitness, many years ago, when I got out of the Army at 20 years old. One thing MLMers and network marketers will do is they love targeting gym salesmen, because people who work at a gym know everybody. We know the nightclubs, we know the folks that sell the drugs. We know the girls. We know the. . . we know everybody. We know everybody. I mean, if you want to get into anything, talk to people that sell memberships at a gym. We are connected with everybody. Everyone comes to the gym and the best guys at the gym are connected with everybody. So everyone was trying to recruit me and everybody else to a network marketing company. So eventually, one of my friends told me about this one thing. And you know, back in the day it was VHS, video. And he gives me this video. I had no idea what network marketing was. Nothing. I had just come out of the Army. And in the Army, one of our sergeants who was an E-8 was making $150,000 per year in a legal network marketing company, meaning a legal, what do you call it? It was called pre-paid legal back in the day. And was making 150 and everybody knew about it. It was legit, he was making 150, so he was making 60 as a master sergeant, but he was making 150 as a network. . . So I knew there was something there, but I didn't fully know about it. Long story short, I get this video one day, I'm ticked off at my job, I go at night, it's 2:00 in the morning. I put the video in. I just came home from a nightclub and I'm so pissed off. I put the video in. An hour and a half into it, it was a one and a half hour video, I said, "I'm interested." I called the guy. I got started. It was $1500. I got involved. I put it on my credit card. And then I had a certain guy I was working with. They called it the upline. He changed seven different companies. So at that time, you just follow and you do whatever, because I was 20 and he was older than me. So hey, we're going to go to the next one, this one's going to be better. And we're going to go to the next one. This one's going to be better. So we went from selling these websites to all of a sudden it was this your own thing that people can click on and it was some dental plan benefits, and it was an online sales store that. . . all these things. And then finally I said, don't call me. Don't touch me. Don't talk to me. Don't approach me about anything to do with any of this stuff, because I'm so annoyed. Because friends thought of you as only selling something. I'm 20, 21 years old at this time. So I said, "I'm going back to pure, traditional business." And I went to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. That's when I got my Series 7, 66, 31, 26 life and health, all that stuff. I went purely financial. But what I did do during that time, when I left it, I said, there is something very attractive about this that turns people on. Why is that? And I investigated the entire industry to find out exactly what worked and what didn't work. And that's what I'm presenting to you here today. So what is network marketing? Here's what network marketing is. Network marketing is not an industry. Direct marketing is not an industry. Even MLM, multilevel marketing is not an industry. It's a philosophy of marketing. that's all it is. It's a philosophy of marketing. Marketing is a certain strategy you use to get the customer's attention that he eventually ends up buying your product. That is all network marketing is. Let me explain. There are about 150 different ways you can market your product. I'm just going to give you an example of about 14 of them here. You can go direct marketing. What is direct marketing? Direct marketing is for me to sell my product by going directly to Mario. So I'm going directly to consumer. Or I'm going directly to the business. I'm going direct. Mario, I have this product. Let me show it to you. Will you buy? Yes, $600. I exchange merchandise for product. I leave. I make $200 on the product. That is direct marketing and I make $200 on the sale I made. You have email marketing. For many years, oh my gosh, people who did email marketing were called the biggest con artists because you kept getting all these, "this is only an elite thing that I'm doing that only seven people are going to be a part of. And you have the opportunity to be part of the seven." And people are like, "Oh my gosh, I've got to be part of it." And I thought it was very effective. A lot of people said, "These are con artists." They're purely con artists. It's a marketing method. There's a creative part to it. Some do email marketing. Some do telemarketing. It's a philosophy of marketing where people are in a call center. They run big call centers of people that you know nothing about, and they make calls and have people buying. You throw enough against the wall, people. . . but it works. It's effective for some people, and it works. The other one is affiliate marketing. What's affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is hey, let us put this on your website. If somebody clicks on it, we'll give you $3. If somebody buys the product, we'll give you $25. That's affiliate marketing. Another one is network marketing. What is network marketing? I am marketing my product to who? To my network. That's all it is. I am marketing my product to my network. That's network marketing. Network marketing isn't all these juice and all these other companies. No it's not. Network marketing is marketing to my network. Multilevel marketing is what? So network marketing could be when ING Direct back in the days would say, "If you help somebody else open up an ING Direct account, we'll give you $25. That's network marketing. But, multi-level marketing says the following. If you find somebody else who refers ING and they open up an account, we'll pay him $25, and we'll pay you $5. Now it becomes a level. So it's multilevel. Multilevel marketing. We'll pay two generations, that's where the level comes in. Then you have guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is you know some guys would come out with their own CD and they want to go out there and do guerrilla marketing in the streets, just hitting a ton of people at the same time. It's effective. Some call that a very con and deceptive way of doing it. It's effective. Many major hip hop people that you respect in the world started with guerrilla marketing. Many movie guys that started off with their first short film, they started off with guerrilla marketing. Now the world respects them. Behavioral marketing. Let me study this person's behavior who goes here and sometimes people say, hey, you know what's the weirdest thing that happened today? I went on this website and just two days ago I clicked on a website to buy furniture and today every website I go to this furniture is coming. There's something weird going on. No, it's called behavioral marketing. Hey, that's a little bit deceptive. It's marketing! And people buy the product because they're simply seeing your fingerprints of where you touch and they're going to it. Next one is digital marketing. What's digital marketing? Social media. It's very, very effective. Now social media, some people could say, I am so sick and tired of seeing this video ad of you know, he keeps coming up. Every time I watch a video, this guy keeps coming up. This guy keeps coming up. This guy keeps coming up. It works. Digital marketing. Celebrity marketing. Hey, I used this product. It changed my life. And it's a celebrity. I am a famous, I use this thing. Athletes do it all the time. MJ, Hanes, LeBron, you know, shoes. Everybody, celebrity marketing. Shaq is doing cars. Shaq is doing cars he doesn't even fit in. That's celebrity marketing is that it is, right? Then you have cross marketing. Hey, real estate with accounting. Let me do you know, magazines and newspapers. Cross marketing. I'm going to find a product and team up with this guy and we cross market our products to each other. Next, tradeshow marketing. Some people go do tradeshows. That's all they talk about. I am very successful at tradeshows. And some people would say, "I would never do a tradeshow. It's so annoying." There are many successful tradeshow marketers. Then you have T.V. marketing. A lot of people do T.V. advertisement. If there's anything that's the highest level of manipulation, it's T.V. marketing. You know why? Hey, if you drink this beer, you're going to get laid. What do you think beer companies do? I mean, tell me there's anything lower than T.V. marketing on what some people do. Hey, take this pill, and erections may last for the rest of your life. And everybody in the world's going to want to see your erection. And you're going to be the man! And you're going to feel. . . and we're like, Oh my gosh, give me one of those things. I want an erection that lasts a lifetime. And at the end someone says, if your erection lasts a lifetime, go see your doctor. Give me a break! That is manipulative, but it works. Why are people buying Viagra so much? Because it's called T.V. marketing. How come no one's taking shots at T.V. marketing? I'd love to see somebody do that. And then you have radio. Which, radio nowadays, I think there's only three people that listen to the radio today. Is it three or is it four people that listen to the radio? Mario, how many people listen to the radio today? It's three people. Mario knows [laughing] - radio's not what it used to be. But people do radio marketing. I think the best people in radio marketing are those who sell radio. Because it is a dying industry and I have to tell you some of the best sales people in the world are those who sell radio time. You are good! And you've got me to spend some money. I spent $100,000 on radio in 2009, 2010, I think I did. And it didn't work. But I spent 100 grand on it. So now, all that said and done, network marketing and multilevel marketing and direct marketing is a philosophy of how you market your product. And do you know why companies do network marketing? Let me explain to you why companies do network marketing. Here's why. Because the cost, the cost acquisition to get the customer is cheaper. I don't have to do a T.V. ad and spend $400,000. I simply get it cheaper and have somebody else go sell it, and I can pay more to the field or whatever it is. There's still a problem there that I'm going to get into, that I don't like what they do in network marketing. But there's a reason why people do network marketing. Cost is cheaper to get the consumer. Now, this is network marketing. This is what we're talking about with network marketing. A lot of times people like to say, "It's another pyramid scheme." By the way, here's what a pyramid scheme is, so everybody understands and they stop saying it. Every time somebody says "pyramid scheme," you sound uneducated. And I'll tell you why. Because in a pyramid scheme, a product doesn't exist. There's a reason why Amway, Herbalife hasn't gone out of business yet, and they're still in business, and you know, you have Beckham who wears an Herbalife shirt, and you have the Orlando Magic that play in the Amway arena. There's a reason for that. That's not accidental. If they were a pyramid scheme, they would be closed down. In a pyramid scheme, I remember when I was working at Bally's, a guy approached me and he showed me this thing, and he said, hey, you pay $500 to me. I keep $200 of it, $100 of it goes to the guy above me, and $100 goes above me. But you go out there and get five other people that pay $500, and they get five other people, and then you get five other people, you're going to make $100,000 a month. I said, "What's the product?" There is no product! That's the great thing about it. There is no product!" You're a con artist! He was a con artist. Six months later, he went to prison. I think he did five years in prison for doing that. That's exactly what needs to happen to people that run pyramid schemes. Here's another one. When people say it's a Ponzi scheme. Most people don't even know the history of Ponzi scheme. Ponzi scheme came from a guy who's name was Charles Ponzi. Again, I'm trying to give you some history because I wanted to find out if this business is good or bad, I had to find out everything about this business. Charles Ponzi was a con artist who was an Italian businessman. I want to say in the '20s? Was it '20s or '30s? Something like that, in the '20s. And he did business in the U.S. and he did business in Canada. What he would do is he would come to you and tell you if you give me $100, I'll return it to you with $150 in 60 days, and I'll give you $200 within 90 days. He was the first original Bernie Madoff type of guy, who made I think $10 million during that time, which is a lot of money. Before there was Bernie Madoff, there was Charles Ponzi. So that's why people say, "This is a Ponzi scheme." But in a Ponzi scheme, there is no product. Money just moves. And when money only moves, with no products, you're going straight to prison. And by the way, you belong in prison when you do things like that and try to rip off people. There's nothing cool. If capitalism ever gets a bad name because people try to win in the game of capitalism with shortcuts, and they try to hurt people, those people belong in prison. That needs to happen. This is not something that you need to go out there and abuse. It needs to happen. If somebody goes out there and fights in UFC, and you go out there and in your gloves you put rocks in there, it used to happen back in the days in boxing so you can punch somebody and nobody feels the rock, the guy feels it, he breaks his jaw, hey man, that's cheating. You need to go out there and get out of the entire boxing world. So I'm not okay with that. So in today's message, I'm going to get very neutral. I'll give you both sides as well. So this is types of marketing. Products that we have. We have telecommunication. Back in the day there used to be a company called Excel. The founder of Excel, I believe started with calling cards. He eventually ended up having a horse that was in the Kentucky Derby that raced in the Derby. If you go find that about the founder of Excel. His net worth is somewhere around two to four billion dollars. I don't know the exact number, but it's around two to four billion dollars. Because calling cards were very, very big and guess who wanted calling cards? Everybody wanted calling cards in the '80s. But it didn't do well. Then in the '90s there was ACN. They were competing with Qwest, 499 service with I think it was 4.9 cents a minute type of thing and then that went away. And then you have some other companies. Technology is by far the worst type of company to even consider being a part of because it changes so quickly. There was a company called FutureNet that came out with a set top box. And they were selling it for $600. So people would come to your house and they would sit there. And they would sit this on top of the T.V. and say, "Watch this." While you're watching T.V. the next thing you know you chat on the bottom on AOL with anybody else. And people were amazed by it. Everybody was buying this for $600, this company called FutureNet came out. And they were selling so many of them. They were doing so well. Eventually, Sears came out and sold the same exact system for $99 and they went out of business like this [snap]. So technology, wasted time. Energy, it happens, if you've got a good story today, there's ways of doing it for gas and other things. Water. There's a lot of different water stories. I remember one time one water story guy came out to introduce his product to us. Great guy. Phenomenal guy. Very nice guy. But he took us to a restaurant with my dad, and my dad at that time was having heart problems, and he told my dad, he said, Look, you want to look younger? You want to look younger? Let me tell you how you ought to look younger. He starts spraying on my dad's face the water. My dad, he doesn't like it when people touch him, let alone spray water on his face, without asking permission. My dad, in Assyrian cursed him out in every single possible word you can think about in Assyrian. He said we are getting the f out of here right now. And I said look, we've got to go and I took my dad out. But there's water companies that they sell the machine for 4500 bucks. Skin. My wife, let me tell you about my wife. I said, "Babe, you want to buy MAC? No, babe. My wife likes three companies. ULTA, which is not a network, it's a traditional company, ULTA that competes with Sephora, they have these big 8,000 square foot places. They do a very good job, ULTA does. She likes ULTA, she likes Youngblood and she like Arbonne. I believe Youngblood and Arbonne are network marketing and she's never joined either one of them. But she loves their products. So it works very well on the skin side. Coffee, tea, berry - there's a lot of those Noni companies. And you have the coffee companies that are out there. Legal - I think it's Legal Shield, it used to be Pre-paid Legal. Nutritional, you have Amway, you have Shaklee, you have Melaleuca, you have Herbalife, you have many of them there. Travel, there used to be a big travel company back in the '80s and '90s that was doing because travel agencies where you used to buy your products nowadays it's all online. There's actually a good story for a travel company today that gives discounts. So you buy discounted rates and it's very effective. Now how you sell it is the problem. I went to a travel meeting one time with a friend, Diana, and we sat in the room, and the speaker gets up and he says, "Look, let me tell you why I love our company. I recently got a divorce a year ago, and when we go on these trips, in our company we have a divorce trip, and on these divorce trips that you go together, guess what happens on these divorce trips? You know what happens on these divorce trips. Everybody's divorced! Everybody's in the market. Hey. Talking about sex and all this and young guys are like, "I'm going to go to a divorce party." I'm like, first of all, great marketing effort to convince young guys to go out there for the sex part. It's like the military recruiters that would say, Hey, they moment you put your uniform on, everyone wants to have sex with you. It's effective. And it's actually somewhat true. It's a little. . . you know, I don't like that approach, but some people take that approach. That was a travel experience I had. Nevertheless, the industry, there's a lot of effective ways. There's weed. This one's funny. Where it's you know, we have a weed network marketing. Truly, it's a weed network marketing company. You have sex toys. Mario knew about one very, very well, back in the day. Sex toys company, and literally when I tell you sex toys, it is literally sex toys. So you get together and everybody shows the sex toys and then there's some extra-curricular activity that sometimes happens. Watch, how many people are going to search right now, sex toys MLM. [laughter] and you'll see a bunch of them. You'll send them a link, send a message to Mario and he'll send you a link. Mario, we're proud of you. And then the last one is financial products. And let me tell you one thing about financial products. Gary Keller wrote a book called The One Thing. Gary Keller, the founder of Keller Williams. He wrote the book called The One Thing. If you go online and type in Keller Williams and you type in MLM, you'll see a bunch of accusations of saying this is a network marketing company. Which, by the way, anybody that's been part of Keller Williams that I've worked with, and I asked them, is it a network marketing company? Yes, they're are components of us, they have 150,000 licensed agents in America, no real estate company has more licensed agents than Keller Williams. They got criticized for the longest time. No one cares today. They earned saint status. As a matter of fact, the multi-million dollar home that I just recently bought, is bought from an agent that works for Keller Williams, and she is absolutely the most ridiculous real estate agent I've ever bought a home from. And I've bought them from. . . she's the most amazing one I've ever bought a home from. She's with Keller Williams. And it's a network marketing company. And by the way, New York Life, a lot of people like to bash New York Life. You go online and you type in New York Life pyramid scheme and network marketing and MLM. All these negative things that have come up, and you'll see one thing about New York Life is New York Life last year did $27 billion in revenue. I think they got roughly 12,000 employees and they're net revenues last year was around $2 billion. This was New York Life. But today, nowadays anybody and everybody could bash anybody. But these are some of the things. And by the way, there's many out there as well on companies, philosophies. I run a financial firm myself, and I can tell you for myself, there is a component of network marketing that I LOVE, because it's so effective, because I can pay a higher comp to my guys if I choose to. Now with that being said, let me get into a few things when you think about network marketing that has the bad rep. What gives network marketing a bad rep. So let me go through the criticisms of network marketing, myself. So here's where it is. Let me pull this up. Okay. So, a few things about MLM and network marketing that you've got to think about that's a bad rep. One, people that join everything, it is extremely annoying. No one likes it. You lose friends. Every other day you want to sell a new product. Just so you know, people get tired of it. I experienced it at 20 years old. Every single one of my friends said, "Listen, I don't want to do anything with it." So from 20 to 21, there was a period when my friends said, I don't want to do anything. That's why I said I would never touch anything again that has to do anything with network marketing. I don't want to do it. I went straight to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and I chose the financial industry to be a part of. But originally, there are a lot of people that want to join everything and anything and they tell people, hey, you should join this. I found this thing. It's too much. It's like becoming a, you're prostituting products. You're becoming promiscuous with everybody. You want to sleep with everybody. It's a turn off. And there's a lot of that in network marketing that's a turn off. Second one. They have something new to sell every single month. Similar to the other one I told you about. One month they're selling you some travel product. The next month it's a Tahitian Noni that's going to change your life. The next day it's a water that you're going to drink that you're going to be younger, ten years. Every day there's something new to sell. Number three. inventory in garage. That's very problematic. Now let me tell you why it's problematic. Overselling a product that the person cannot afford and shouldn't buy. Hey, come buy five thousand dollars-worth of products. Why are you doing that? That person doesn't need it, and number two, if you don't have a track record of selling a lot of products, why would someone be doing that? Why would someone be doing that? I think a person, if you're going to sell a product, sell them on a product that someone's going to use. Get to like the product. You've got to like the product. Then they will tell you if they want to buy more products and you can show them other elements of the product that's effective. Saying go buy $5,000 worth of products to succeed that they never use that end up on eBay which they paid $5,000 for and they sell it on eBay for $600, that's a rip-off. That's not something you ought to be doing. And sometimes in network marketing that does happen which is a bad rep. The next one. This is the one that's very annoying to most people. Get rich quick message. This whole thing about you know, you're going to be a millionaire in no time, and we're going to go out there and become millionaires in the next six months and 12 months and all this stuff. People don't like that. It's deceptive. It's not something you ought to be doing. Misrepresentation, such as, this is the cure to cancer. We have the cure to aging. This makes you happy. If you eat this, you will have more energy. It will improve your sex life. It will improve this. That's great. It's too much. This whole cure thing of misrepresenting anything, it's way too much. And it happens a lot, a lot. Misrepresentation happens way too much in the world of network marketing. It gives it a bad product. Here's the other one that's very concerning. When a guy comes up to you and sells you the company like this, "Hey, who cares what the product is? We have the best compensation plan." Listen. Run away as far as possible. When they sell compensation plan first, product second, I have a problem. When they sell compensation plan first and product second, we have a very, very big problem. It's got to be product first, then compensation plan. You first got to buy into the product. But there are a lot of people that sell compensation plan first. As a matter of fact, you'll see a lot of videos and you'll see a lot of people present and they'll say, "We have this. . . " and you still don't know what the product is. "Here's how much money was made with this." No, no, no. It's not a good approach and it gives the industry a bad rep. Next, too many fake scripts. Look, I remember one of the reasons why I didn't like going to church, one of the reasons why I was an Atheist for 25 years. Let me tell you why I was an Atheist for 25 years. I was an Atheist and an agnostic, it would always change. And I wouldn't like going to church. Here's why. People had the best scripts in the world. Oh praise the Lord, my brother! God bless you! You know John 3:16? Oh my gosh! And I remember this one guy one time pulled me aside and he says, there's nothing more annoying than a Christian man who's learned the script but never lives it themselves. This one guy I met in Pasadena. And in the world of business and especially network marketing, there are people that know the script. It sounds the same, but there's no results and nothing going on. It's too much scripted without anything really happening in their lives. It's very obvious and people can read it. Next, red flags to pay attention to. You know I already told you about no real product. So there was a company called ZeekRewards was a company that came out that would tell you, and I remember one guy came and met with me at Maggiano's. Very, very smart guy. This guy came and met with me. He was a very open guy. Here's what he told me about ZekeRewards. They ended up going out of business, but not only going out of business; the owner owes people I think $600 million, the attorney general shut them down. If you go online and type them up you'll see it. It's companies like that that give bad rep to all these industries. I mean, people like that don't need to be in the business world, right? So you have ZekeRewards comes out and tells people you can bid, bid, bid and you put $1,000, you're going to make interest and it's going to be $2,000 and $5,000. And this guy's telling me in Maggiano's and he said, "Pat, I know this company's not going to last for another two years." He says, "But we can do this and maybe we can make a million dollars in the next six, 12 months. I don't have the desire to do anything like that. I have this next big business opportunity to share with you. This was. . . and it went out of business. Not effective. Not effective. So you've got to make sure there's a real product. And then last but not least, is the obvious one. If you just make money from recruiting, that's the pyramid scheme. There was a company back in the day, it was called 2x2.net and what it did was it allowed you to buy seven spots. Let me tell you what seven spots is. You literally would buy your own position, then you would buy two other positions and you would buy two other positions and it was $420 per position. I never got involved, but I studied it. I had to find out exactly what was going on in the marketplace. So one position. . . $2800. The Attorney General came. . . guys were rolling in Lamborghinis. Every single place you saw, there was a Lamborghini. Green Lamborghini, purple Lamborghini. Everywhere you saw Lamborghinis, with 2x2.net sticker on the side. They eventually went out of business. Why? Because you can't just buy multiple spots. That is not the real way of doing business. And their only product was a portal, and that's not how the money was being made. Eventually it got shut down. There's got to be real, tangible product, and you cannot make money from just recruiting people, when they pay $420 and make 200 bucks, that cannot happen if there's not a real product that's taking place. So now that being the common criticisms. So now let's talk about the truth about MLM and network marketing which is an area I would have liked for John Oliver to have touched up on, which we will hear in the video. Number one. Out of 100 people in network marketing, you know how many people make it? Is it 50? 40? 20? How many is it? How many people do you think make it in network marketing? One make it. One in a hundred make it in network marketing. No matter what anybody tells you, everybody wants to brag that in our company more people make it. And let's define what is making it. Making it is not making $17 an hour. Making it is not making $100 an hour. Making it is making a full-time salary where you can actually pay your bills and live off of it, etc. etc. That to me is making it. You're making 50, 60, 80, 100 thousand dollars a year income, you can survive off of. Now here's a challenge. A lot of people will watch and say, "Oh my gosh, why would I ever do it if it's only one in a hundred?" Here's the truth. In real estate, the famous Tom Ferry who's the real estate guy that trains everybody and people pay tens of thousands of dollars to go learn from Tom Ferry. He says it himself. In real estate, 87% of real estate agents fail within five years. Think about that. They put five years of their life in real estate and it fails. How much money do you think they lost in that five years? How much marketing dollars? Five years! Now here's a question. How about we go knock real estate? How about we go and do videos and knock real estate? Does that mean real estate doesn't work? No! Real estate is hard work. Real Estate is hard work. But it works. And even those 13% that make it, what part of the 13% do you think actually make decent money? You think all of them make six figures? No way. A small portion make six figures. Most of them make 20, 30, 40, 50,000 dollars per year. And some of them are cops and government workers that sell real estate part time. They sell two properties a year. The average real estate agent, the average real estate agent, do you know how many properties the average real estate agent sells per year? It's one to two, per year. One to two. There are a lot of rock stars that sell a hundred per year. I know a guy named Tom Hopkins who broke the record in Chatsworth and sold 365 in a year. He wrote a book called How to Master the Art of Selling. But most real estate agents sell one property per year. Are we going to say real estate doesn't work? Of course it works. But, there's a part of that that you hear with network marketing. Not many make it. Next one. It's a ton of work. This is what people in network marketing and MLM are afraid of saying. And if you want to change your reputation of your industry, stop saying that you're going to be a millionaire in two, three, four, five years, if you only do this, this that. It's a ton of work in network marketing. It's a TON of work. You're not going to work 40 hours a week. It's a lot of work in network marketing and MLM. But here's a challenge. Having kids is a lot of work. We got three kids right now. Our youngest one that's six months old, she turns six months this week. We're up two, three times per night. My wife was saying this morning, she says, "Pat, you know what I wish I had for Christmas?" "What?" "One night where I can sleep six hour straight." Now, are people going to stop having sex and making babies? No. But it's a lot of work. Network marketing is a lot of work. So whether you're watching this because you're considering it, or whether you're watching this because you hate it and you're a critic, or whether you're watching this because you're in it, the truth is, stop saying it's easy to become a millionaire, because it's a lot of work. If you're thinking about it, you want to do it, you need to work a lot, and if you're a critic, you're going to say whatever you want to say. But that's exactly what it is with the marketplace. Next, three, they oversell. It's too much overselling. It's way too much overselling. You know what it's like. It's like the guy that goes on a date with a girl and oversells himself. You know what you're doing for yourself? You're setting yourself up for failure. Why would you tell the girl you're the greatest thing since sliced bread and you know my second cousin was Jesus and the other side was Martin Luther King, and my father's related to Lincoln, Honest Abe, and I'm just this fantastic guy, it's who I am. And she's going to be like, "Oh my gosh. Honey, mom, you won't believe who I met." And then you're disappointing her the next day and there's a breakup. No, look, I got problems. Don't oversell it. If you're going to do network marketing, tell people it's hard work. It's this, it's that, it's this. However, if you make it, life could be this. Will you do it? Yes. Okay, then go ahead and do it. Presented that way, you will be amazed how much more approachable and open people would be versus giving this whole gimmick on how easy it is. Next, number four. Focus on your customers. I think the problem with network marketing is it's so focused on reps, selling, that no one focuses on the customers. That's a problem. It's a problem. Customers are extremely important to your business. So take care of your customers. Treat them right. Show them a good time. Actually get what's right for them. Somebody asked me the other day and they said, "Pat, why is sales so easy to you?" I have a very simple thing with sales. Sales is a piece of cake to me. Here's why sales is a piece of cake to me. Because in my mind, any time I sell, I ask the one question. One question. If I was that person, would I buy from this person. And if I can say yes, I can easily sell. If I can't say yes, I can't sell. That's the problem. This is why if you don't believe in your product you cannot sell that product. You've got to know your number one people are your customers. If you're in network marketing and you want to have an edge on everybody else, why don't you treat your customers a million times better than anybody else treats them. And look what will happen. Why don't you go to your company and say, "Let's focus on our customers a million times better than anybody else does it." Look at what happens to your company. Why don't you bring it up. Why don't you talk about it? Because they are right when they say no one focuses on the customers, because no one treats the customers right. All they're worried about is the next commission that's coming in. Not all the time. Those that grow, they are customer focused. Those that don't, they're not customer focused. They're purely on profit focused. Number five, the abusive way of marketing on social media. Remember that one kid that sent me a message on Facebook, and I responded back to him. I said, "Listen, I can tell you're in multilevel marketing." I said, copy pasting this script and sending it to everybody, without doing the research on the person doesn't work. And he responded back to me, this knucklehead, and you know what he said? He said, "Well, you have no clue what you're talking about because many people are saying yes to it. Just because you got it doesn't mean. . ." And I was like, wow, at least you're being honest about what you're telling me. You have that much audacity to tell me. But I can tell you, you've got to make sure you're not abusive and you're not the annoying marketer. You know, be a smooth operator. Be gentle about it. Don't be this overbearing, annoying salesperson that no one wants to do business with. You just don't want to be that person. And sometimes that happens in that world. Next, scams do exist. It's very important to know this. Scams do exist. ZekeRewards was a scam. They do exist. There are scams out there. Not everybody's a scam. Now here's the challenge. Do you remember back in the day, a guy in high school. We talked about this the other day. A guy in high school dates a girl. And the girl breaks up with him. Do you remember what the guy used to go tell everybody what she is? She's a [whisper]. Why? The guy had to say it because the guy has to justify why she left him, right? And you know what's crazy? Do you know what's crazy? Most people believed it. Most people believed it. And you know, today, if you think about high school right now, and right now make a list of three girls in high school that had a reputation of being a you know what, two of them are probably wrong. Maybe one of them is right. But the other two, an insecure boyfriend told everybody what's not true. You know that. I know that. You know how that works. Guys are the most insecure people in the world. They're going to go out there and say something like that and the next thing you know, boom, we have to adjust because we're so powerful. I'm a part of it. We're a part of this community. So that doesn't mean that's the case. So a lot of people like to say, "Oh real estate's a scam. Keller Williams is a scam. New York Life is a scam. This company's a scam. That company's a scam." That is like you being the insecure guy that a girl left you or you couldn't hack it because it was so hard but you called it that. But the truth is, there are some scams out there. There are some scams out there. Fortunately, eventually they get caught, and they get shut down. The government is not set up in a way to allow scams to last for a long time. They have a life span. A person cannot be a criminal all their lives, not finding a way in prison. Many criminals end up in prison. You can't just go on like that for the rest of your life. #8. I wish more people would talk about this. I wish more people would talk about number 8. I think I'm on #7 right now. I wish more people would talk about #7. It is this. If you are going to do network marketing, here's the timeline. It's a 10-year commitment. It's not six months, or I'm going to give it a shot for one year. Nope, not going to work. It's a 10-year commitment. Do you know why it's a 10-year commitment? Because anything you do is a 10-year commitment. Any business you do is a 10-year commitment. Working out doesn't happen overnight. People say, "Oh, Pat got swole." I've been working out since I was 14 years old. My body has a memory. My muscles have a memory. This didn't happen accidentally. I've been training since 14. That's 24 years. This didn't happen accidentally. So if you're going to do anything with network marketing, or MLM, 10 year rule. One year rule? Go to another business. As a matter of fact, if you want to follow one-year rule? Go get a job. Go get a job. Two year rule? Go get a job. Five year rule? Go get a job. 10-year rule? You can be an entrepreneur and a business owner. And if you want to give network marketing a shot, it's 10 years. #8, you need to understand that network marketing is a very easy target for comedians. For media, for everybody. Why? Think about it this way. Comedians and media, there are typically three different things that are very, very easy to target. And you can't be naive and fall for it. One of them is capitalism. It's very easy to bash capitalism. If you want to listen to any comedian or media, they love bashing capitalism. Why? Because almost everyone I know tried a business at a time and they failed. And they have to say, that girl's a you know what. It's their out. Capitalism is hard. Running a business is hard. It comes with anxiety attacks. It comes with panic attacks. It comes with challenges at times. It comes with you almost losing everything. It requires you work 80 hours a week. Most people don't want to do that. So why is it easy to knock capitalism? Because capitalism at times, people can fail and it doesn't work and they have to bash it. Now let's take capitalism out. You don't have this video to watch. You don't have Twitter. You don't have Facebook. You don't have anything to watch because an inventor invented capitalism. A capitalist invented all these products. Now another one that media likes to take shots at is church, religion. It's very easy. It's very easy to take shots at churches. Why? You know, churches, there's a part of it that I can see being annoying. You go to a church, you sit up there and the pastor gets up, "If you don't do this, you're going straight to hell. And if you do this, you're going straight to this," And I already know I'm going to hell, man. I just want to have a shot at heaven. You know, sometimes these pastors get up, "We're going to hell and let me tell you what hell looks like! Fire burning everywhere. You're skin's going to be burning!" Man, I know my skin's going to be burning. I just want a second chance. Can I get a second chance? Please. There's a reason why churches get bashed. They're a target. They're an easy target. And network marketing is also an easy target. You know why? Because anything you paint as perfect, is an easy target. Capitalism's not perfect. Church is not perfect. Network marketing's not perfect. You paint it perfect, you're an easy target. Stop painting it as perfect. Stop painting your business as being perfect. It's not perfect. There's problems. I can't go out on double dates with couples that say the following, " We have zero problems in our marriage." Awesome. We will never have dinner again. Because we do. My wife and I have problems. We fight regularly. We fought yesterday on Thanksgiving. And you know what's crazy? We're very comfortable about it. We're very comfortable about it. I don't care. I didn't marry you. I married my wife. I don't need to convince you my marriage is perfect. I have health issues sometimes. I have things I need to work on sometimes. I have issues I've got to work on with me sometimes. Paint it as real. If you paint it as perfect, people are annoyed by perfection. So network marketers, do yourself a favor and stop painting yourself as being perfect. Because you are not perfect. The more imperfections you talk about, the more people are willing to forgive you and listen to what you've got to talk about. You open up the door for people to want to listen to you. Next, there are tax benefits. There are tax benefits. But here's a problem sometimes with network marketers. They have no clue how to manage their money. And because they have no clue how to manage their money, the first thing they do is spend all their money and buy some nice things. The company goes out of business and they lose everything, and now they owe the IRS money, it takes 15 years to pay a lien, you can't get a decent job. You can't get financing on a house. Boom. So if you are in the world of network marketing, if you're a leader or CEO running a company, teach your people on how to manage their finances well. Be disciplined with them on them paying their quarterly taxes. Talk to them what to do with their savings and set some money aside. Don't just get them to buy stuff because the more stuff they buy, the more they're locked into your company. It's like, hey, the more people lease cars, they have to stick. It's our retention plan because they have to work hard. C'mon, man. Don't treat people like that. They have families. If you're going to do it, people perform better the more savings they have, the more valuable they are to your company. I want you to have a couple hundred thousand dollars in cash savings. Slow down before you buy that. You need to have some savings in place. Take that route with people that you're developing. #10, here's number 10. And this is the part that some people are going to like, and some people are going to hate. Network marketing actually works. It actually works. It is a 35 billion dollar a year business. It has created a lot of jobs. I'm down the street, every time I go home on this freeway here, I see Mary Kay to my left. You know how many women I've met that talk about Mary Kay and the way that she changed their lives? Do you know how many? Do you know how many men I've met that when they bring up the name Rich Devos and Jay Van Andel have never been part of Amway? Every time somebody's brought up the name of Rich Devos and Jay Van Andel, who actually had a chance to work with them directly - you should see what they talk about. People get emotional saying this man changed my life. You know how many times people bring up the name Art Williams, and they say, "This man completely changed my life." Who touched Art Williams, he changed my life. In a completely different way, how many people, endless amount of people have said this? So what's the point? What's the point? It works. I think the industry is an industry that can be very effective. I think the people in the industry are so competitive sometimes that they try to paint it too perfect, and it backfires on them. And I think the industry collectively, whether you guys are part of this organization called the DSN, collectively the industry needs to pivot a little bit and start deciding how they want to brand themselves for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. You've got a big opportunity to make adjustments today. There are some guys that are positively affecting the marketing place in a very good way, and I like the fact that that's taking place. So now, let me go into compensation plans, on what you have. Typically in the world of network marketing, you have three comps. You have linear, you have binary, you have a matrix. Let me give you my problems with a couple of these, and you'll see what it is. And you can be the judge of it. Remember, I didn't make this video to make you happy, because network marketers are not going to like this video. And people who don't like networking marketing are not going to like this video. And a part of this video, network marketers are going to like, and a part of this video, people who hate network marketing are going to like. I'm trying to give you both arguments, which is what you're supposed to do, as a talk show host or somebody that's teaching classes, not leaning to one side, which is what John Oliver did. Linear has the longest lifespan. Here's why. Because in linear you actually have to work. If in linear you don't work, you get passed up by somebody and someone can absolutely pass you up, and you can make no money in linear. You've got to work in linear. But guess what? Linear lasts. Amway's linear. Herbalife is linear. Many of these companies that last, Nu Skin is linear. Arbonne is linear. Avon, these are linear companies that they have. Amway I think last year did nine and a half billion dollars. Avon did 10 billion dollars or some number like that. Linear works. You can go get 50 recruits direct to you. That works. Binary, problematic. Most people that watch this, who are part of some binary companies, they will message me. And they'll say things. And you can say whatever you want. All good, because there's a lot of binary companies with decent products. Here's a problem with binary. Binary is where people will say, guess what you've got to do? All you've got to do is there's a breakaway leg. You'll hear some people brag about how many people they have on their team. I have 6,000 people on my team. They have 6,000 people on their team because they're upline is a killer, and that guy put 6,000 on one leg, and that leg took away, breakaway leg, and they forgot to match the other leg. So they have 6,000 on one side and they have three on the other side, three cousins. They don't have a big organization. They just know how to sell you on what they did, right? So binary is 1/3, 2/3 to get a check. So for instance, if you get two recruits on one side, and four recruits on the other side, you cycle a hundred dollars. 1/3, 2/3. So every time you get two, four, two, four, you get $100, $100. So you get 20, 40, $1,000. Two hundred, four hundred, $10,000. Two thousand, four thousand, $100,000. And then there are binaries that are 50/50. That you got to get three, three, even on both sides. As much as I'm not a fan of binary, because I'm a math guy, and I grew up being the kid that just was absolutely bored in the Army, I went and got a trigonometry math analysis book and all I did was mathematical formulas, because I love math, 50/50 has more of a shot of making it than 1/3, 2/3. Guys, if you call me and tell me to sit down with you again, I get so many requests from CEOs saying, I want you to sit down and break down our comp plan, I'm not doing it. I run a very, I'm happy with my business, I don't need your $100,000 to study your comp plan. Not right now, I'm running a financial firm for myself. 50/50 is more likely to make it than 1/3, 2/3. Then the last one is matrix. Matrix, you've got to be a little bit careful about, because matrix, this is how it goes. Hey, you get recruited and anybody that the company recruits next goes under you. So that's the first recruit. Recruit number two goes here. Number three here. Number four here. Number five here. Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, so this is how it goes. So they say, if you get recruited and anybody in the company recruits next, you get a check, Six dollars, eight dollars, 60 dollars, 80 dollars, 600 dollars, eight hundred dollars a month. Yes, it works. It only works, generally, if you're in the first four levels. After that, it's pretty much over with. Why? Because here's how math works. Math goes 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729, 2100, 6300, 18,900 - you get the idea. 55,000, 165,000, then you lose it. So then you have nothing else going on with your legs. So matrix is fine if you're above this level. After this level you've got nothing going on with matrix. So that's the problem that I have with matrix. If a company is linear, at least you have to work to make it. I am a fan of for any system that you have to work to make money. These two, they sell the lazy aspect of network marketing, I am not a fan when people sell the lazy aspect of network marketing. I'm a very big fan of a leader who's willing to tell the truth that you've got to work hard to make it in the business. That's how you get people with credibility that are actually willing to take a look at your business model to be a part of it. Now again, we've gone very deep into it. People ask me what company should I be a part of. Let me tell you what I haven't covered yet, Mario, tell me what I haven't covered yet. Benefits, that's the only thing I haven't covered, right? Common products, I covered that. I covered that, that. Okay. Let's see here, the good and bad. Okay, so now. Benefits of why people get involved in network marketing. Which I think, I think it's a very good thing. I think it's a very good thing, these 11 things. Again, I would like John to talk about this a little bit, because there is some good in network marketing as well. And here's what it is. #1:Any organization that gets people to read books, I'm all for. If I'm part of a speaking, what is that speaking thing that teaches people how to speak? What's it called? You know what I'm talking about, the speaking thing. Toastmasters! If they make you read, I'm all for it. If you go to a leadership martial arts guy, and you pay 200 bucks a month to learn martial arts, and the guy makes you read two books a month, I'm all for it. Okay, now what books? Obviously, I'm talking like elevating your mind. I'm not talking about go read 50 Shades of Gray. I'm not for it. I'm talking about books that really elevate your mind. If there's one thing I can tell you about a lot of people that become successful. . . by the way, there are a lot of celebrities and a lot of politicians that you know their names. If I give you their names, you will say, "no way." That at one point, were in network marketing. Many of them you would admire. They just don't advertise it. Many of them, you admire. Many, many of them are in Hollywood, they're in sports, they're in T.V., they're governors, they're senators, some even presidents, at one point they were part of network marketing. Whatever gets you to read books, and elevate your thinking, I'm for it. I support it. #2. Good people to be around. You know, sometimes people are down, you want to be around other people, it's good to be around other people that elevate you, they lift you up. It eliminates shyness. There are some people that are very shy around other people. It's good to be around other people, because it opens you up. You get some people that are very timid. Network marketing will open you up in the business. #3:Better positive attitude. There's a lot of people that are better positive attitude. Oh my gosh! I'm so excited! And it impacts every aspect of your life. #4: Audacity. It teaches audacity. You kind of have to talk to strangers, and I don't care what it is, anybody that's got the audacity to talk to strangers, it's going to benefit you in whatever other career you do. Let's just say you get involved in network marketing, and you never stick around. But you're in it for three to five years and you pick up some of these good habits. Your next company, you're going to excel. Someone's going to say, Oh my gosh, he's amazing! He's so great! Because at some point, you had to be in network marketing and learn audacity. Next, leads into other businesses. You know, if you fail in network marketing, you're going to at least say, if I want to make money, I've got to be an entrepreneur. You may just go become a realtor and make a lot of money as a real estate agent. You may go become a financial, you may go into a completely different business, but you learned the freedom aspect comes from entrepreneurship so you do it. Next, increased work ethic. I'm all about people working hard. I'm all about people increasing their work ethic, especially the younger generation. #7, helps with public speaking skills. If you want to move up, you've got to learn how to speak. I did a video once called, what is it? How to speak like Casanova? What was it called? Something about public speaking. What was the name of it? Different types of public speakers? Let's put the thumbnail here, whatever it is. Dennis, let's remember to put the thumbnail so you know what it is. Rebecca, let's put the link as well, so people can see it. Public speaking, if you're going to move up, you need to be a better public speaker. I used to be terrible. I used to be terrible. Eventually when you give many, you get good at it. Communication improves. Recognition is next, where you learn how to recognize other people, and you get recognized. There's a part of the recognition aspect that happens in a business. It instills a lot of confidence, #10. And then number 11 is the fact that there are a lot of people that either had a death in the family, or they got a divorce, or something bad happened in their lives and they need to be around a positive environment. Network marketing offers that. Simple as that. And, I would rather have somebody, let's just say churches are all a con. Let's just say every single church in the world is a con artist. Let's just buy that argument. Now let's take it from there. Let's just say that is what it is. And let's just call churches that God doesn't exist. It's just a non-profit organization. How many churches have saved marriages? How many millions of marriages have been saved by churches? How many millions of churches have given a person a place to live, while they didn't have a place to live? How many? I don't care what denomination we're talking about. How many churches have helped a man or a woman, a woman lost her husband to another younger girl that he left, and she was suicidal and went to a church and she didn't commit suicide. And she's still living. Sometimes network marketing attracts people and they come in and they stick around because it's positive. They say, "I've got a better life. I don't need to give up my life." So there's a lot of positive to it as well to keep in mind. And then, last but not least, Pat, if I'm going to get involved with a company, and I'm considering it, what should I be thinking about? Let's go through it. #1, find an industry and a product that's going to be around for 30 years. Because, my assumption is, you want to be a legitimate person, doing network marketing the right way, where you're not changing companies every other year. You don't want to do that. You don't want that reputation. The people that make the most money in network marketing typically chose one company and stayed in it the longest. That's the key. If I meet guys that say, "I made 10 million. I made seven million." Oh really what company? "I've been with this company for 22 years." Oh wow. And I've met a lot of them. Believe me, I know many of them that make five million plus, many of them. And they'll generally be with one company 20 years, 25 years, 22 years, 17 years, 16 years, 11 years, seven years. They've been with one for a long time. So if you're going to do it the right way, choose a product that's going to be around 30 years from now. This is why I don't recommend technology. Because it changes all the time. You've got to choose a product that's going to be around 30 years from now. Number two, avoid companies that have major markups. I have a problem with major markups in network marketing companies. Let me explain what I mean by this. Sometimes companies, to pay bigger bonuses, say this product costs $5 to make. They sell the product for $50, and they have to use that $45 to pay bonuses. You don't have to sell the product for $50. You can sell this product for $20, and you're going to be fine. You know, normally the product needs to be 40%. So if it's 10 bucks, $4. Makes sense? Not $40, which is what some network marketing companies do. And the market doesn't help you. I'll tell you why. There was a company a few years ago that was selling a Noni drink for $40 a bottle, and you would do an autoship. I know this because my sister was a part of it at some point. And you would do an autoship and you would buy 10 bottles a month, whatever the number was. But they sold $40 a bottle. And they were blowing up. And then all of a sudden Costco came out with identical same story, for $9.99. And you know what happened to them? They had to say, "Well, no, our noni berries come from a special place because. . ." C'mon. You really think you're going to convince me that your berries come from a different place? It's Tahitian. It's the same exact thing. $9.99, $40? And then all of a sudden, everybody started walking away. They took a big hit. Today, no one talks about that company. You haven't heard about that company since 2007, 2008. That's right. So markups, be very careful and find out what it cost to make the product. #3, choose the right group of people to be running with, because it's very important. When I say choose the right group of people to be running with, look at the top, on who it is. Do you share common values? Do you share common principles? What do they stand for? How stable are the people? Really, you've got to watch that, and is it a community that you can run with for a long time? Are they fun? Do you connect with them? Do you have commonalities? Do they stand for. . . look for that, because, look, I can tell you one thing. A lot of people are with their families on weekends. You're going to spend more time with the people you work with sometimes, than your own family. You may as well like the people you work with. So pay very close attention to the culture and the group of people that they have. # 4 is timing of the company. So timing's got four different levels. You've got survival, the first two years. Then you have formulation, which is two to five years, two to seven years, then you have explosion, which is seven years to fifteen. And then you have plateau, year 15 and on, then they come back up again. It depends on what you want to do. If you want an established company that's been around for a long time, and you don't want a lot of, you know, explosion is not going to happen, because the company after the fifteenth year, the explosion part's already gone. It's gone already, typically. But if you want a stable company, go with a company that's been around 20+ years. If you want a company that is about to go through an explosion, choose three to seven years, to be a part of. If you can be in seven to fifteen, you're in a good sweet spot. First two years, avoid. And I know, when I say this, the first two years to avoid because if you can hack it through the first two years, great, but the first two years is like 95% chance the company's not going to be around. So the first two years. And some people tell you other feedback. This is purely my feedback. I may be wrong. I'm giving you my feedback. This is my counsel. #5, a compensation plan with longevity. Not a compensation plan that's good for today. Longevity. Company needs to profit. Rule #1, company goes out of business, you lose reputation. Company needs to stick around long term. They've got to have a strong compensation plan. #6, a worthy cause. Like you know if somebody is, earlier today Mario and I were talking. Actually, last night we were talking during dinner and we mentioned three social media names. Remember that? I won't say the names right now. But I mentioned three names. And I said, Let me ask you a question. All of these three on social media. Tell me the most authentic person out of these three, that you believe. You don't have to like them. Who do you like the most? And everybody said the same name. I said, "Why?" He said, I believe him. I believe what he says is authentic. And a company that has a real cause, you will know, based on how authentic the people are at the top. If they overdo it in a way that's not, you will know it. By the way, it doesn't take a lot to figure people out. It's pretty easy. Just pay attention on how many times they talk about it. If they talk about it all the time, and there's deep rooted stories to back up why they believe in that, then there's some validity to it. Okay, so last but not least, if you can be part of a company, where you can own a piece of the company, because the one thing about network marketing, look, the guy who ran Excel, the company, many, many people made a lot of money. Amway's made many, many people a lot, a LOT of money. You got Keller - they made a lot of money. Lots of money. If you can find a way to be part of the company's equity plan, where you can own a piece of the company in case it goes public, or in case the company gets acquired or something, even better for you, because you participate in that. I'm not talking bonuses, I'm talking profit sharing, purely equity, those are two things I'd be looking for, if I were you. And at the end of the day, you've got to work your tail off or else none of this stuff exists. So today in this video, I probably said some things you don't like. And I probably said some things you agreed with. It's irrelevant. I wanted to give you both arguments, for you to be able to find out for yourself, whether you're a critic, whether you're in it, whether you're somebody that's thinking about getting in it, or whether you own and run the company or you're one of the leaders at the top, I hope something here you got to figure out a way to improve your game plan or change some of your beliefs and opinions about the industry of network marketing. With that being said, here's what I want you to do. This is the type of a video that you may know somebody that's either in network marketing, or somebody that's thinking about getting into network marketing, share this video with them. I would love for this video, purely out educational purposes spread like wildfire for people to change and adjust their ways in the network marketing world that's hurting a lot of people, and number two, for people that have put a "blanket" opinion about this industry to say, yes, you know what, that makes a lot of sense. I never saw the industry from this point of view. So both ways, I think there's a lot of ways the industry can make adjustments and improve in. And I'm doing something that I haven't done recent in the videos is, Mario suggested, he said, "Pat, I think we need to turn this one into a PDF so you can download and print out and read and do whatever you're going to do with it." So you need to visit PatrickBetDavid.com, okay you'll go to PatrickBetDavid.com, and if you find this video, you need to find this video, on the bottom of this video, there will be a PDF. Click on the PDF, download it, you'll need to subscribe your email to the newsletter that we send on a weekly basis, download the PDF, use it in any way you want, and if you want to share it with other people as well, tell them about the link. They can download it as well. And then they can train it any way they want to do it. Now if you saw this video on a complete different website, because it's going to be shared on many different websites, and you come back to PatrickBetDavid.com, there's a search side that you can go and click on, just type in the word, MLM or network marketing. This video will pop up and go to the bottom and you'll see the link. You can still get it. And if you haven't subscribed to this channel yet, please do so. We are going to get this channel, our goal is to get to a million subs by the end of 2017. There's a lot of different videos on this channel. This is purely an entrepreneurship channel. This is the only video we've ever done on network marketing or MLM. We have 350 videos on this channel, the only video we've ever done on network marketing, MLM is this video because this was highly requested after what John Oliver said, so we decided to do this video. So be sure to subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so. By the way, we're already getting a ton of people that are sending us new pillows because we have a new contest. We need a new pillow for 2017. So if you're somewhat competitive and you think you can send us a creative pillow to replace this pillow that we've made, if we use your pillow, we will give you love and say that you sent the pillow in the entire year of 2017, I'll be using your pillow in every single video that we have. You can send a new pillow to 5001 Spring Valley Road, Suite # 1155 East, Dallas, Texas, 75244. You see it on the screen as well. Send it our way before the end of the year, and we may possibly consider using your pillow on 2017's videos. With that being said, if you have any questions, thoughts, comment on the bottom. With that being said, have a great day everybody. Thank you, bye bye.

[thelowcarbrunner]

Stress Reaction & Marathon Training

It's likely you have been here, or, I hope not, someday you might. You have been training, you feel great. You stole some of those Strava segments, you set new PRs. The race you are training for seems like it's going to be your biggest success. Then comes the realization. That simple ache that you tried to let rest for 2 days has become pain, and it is not going away. It is getting worse. Here comes the stress, of the possibility of a stress fracture...

I FEEL GREAT! I had started to train for the Paris Marathon early. I was already running on a regular basis, but if I wanted to actually succeed in finishing my 1st marathon fast, I had to put in the work. I decided to start training 18 weeks before Paris.

On the second week in January, after putting in 40 miles, I started to feel something was off. In the past, I had experienced tendinitis, an ACL sprain, aches in the calves, ... but this was different. My tibia was hurting. It was a sharp pain, I could pinpoint it in the upper section, but at times, it seemed to travel and ache behind the bone and above the ankle in the inner section of the leg. What seemed peculiar was that it was bearable and not too noticeable when running, but it seemed to hurt more when resting. I gave it a week of rest, then went on a slow 5-mile run... The run was ok, some discomfort but no real pain, but after sitting down and resting, the pain was strong and sharp, especially when walking. I made an appointment with my Orthopedist for the next morning.

As a runner, he understood the urgency of the matter. I don't know what the injury is, and I have a marathon in 11 weeks. The window to fit recovery and resume marathon training is so tight, it is almost impossible to see any light shining through.

I booked an MRI on the same day, and a follow-up appointment for the next one.

You have edemas on your posterior tibialis which is typical of a stress reaction.

Say what now? He explained to me that it could be the first signs of a stress fracture, or not, but there was a good news. In such an early stage, 2 weeks of rest could heal it. 11 - 2 = 9 weeks. I can do that...

DON'T DO THIS We set up on cross-training only for 2 weeks, then resume running and come back after a week of running. If you have read my article "What's The Story Here?", you know that I have a tendency to go all-in, or not. As I am writing this, I am pulling my hair at how stupid I am...

Boom! That gym membership I had cancelled a while back would have come in handy now. Well, I found a gym by my work and got a membership, reopened my recreation center card to have access to a pool, and carried a backpack full of sports gear, foam rollers, bands, etc. Cross-training for two weeks, here I come.

HELLO DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND Here is where I messed up. After two weeks, I felt great. I would say, 90%. So I went running, as prescribed. I got too excited, and did hills repeat with speed drills like I would have done before my injury. My leg felt fine after that, so did my confidence, so I went to the gym the next day for some row session, and went for a fast 8-mile run on the following day. This is when it started to hurt again, a little bit. But I thought, "maybe I'm just sore", after all, I hadn't run for two weeks. Nope, after a rest day, I went for a 10K slow run, and it felt like it did before. Back to square 1.

“I am now less than 8 weeks away from Paris and I can't run. What do I do?”

Well, my PT clearly told me that I can't run it. My Orthopedist thinks that I can give it one last try in 7 weeks, 4 days of running with cross training, get some long runs in, but if it hurts too much, I must come back for a new MRI and figure out if I have a stress fracture. The reason is that it seems that the pain has subsided faster this time (5 days), and that it is more likely to be muscular pain. In any case, when I run Paris, I will run it slower than I wanted to. With the Brooklyn Half six weeks after Paris, I now aim at 3:40, with the possibility of quitting if I feel any strong pain. I can’t mess up BK, and I have 1 race a week in June. This is the big picture, and I will have another chance at breaking 3:20 at the NY Marathon.

SO, WHAT AM I DOING? Do not take any of this article as personal advice for whatever you are going through. After all, everyone is different, and only a doctor can tell you what to do. In my case, I see my Physical Therapist twice a week, and I have already seen my Orthopedist three times (let’s hope it stays that way.) With the current state of my leg, and the fact that I had already trained for 8 weeks before my injury, and that I could already run a half marathon easily, I decided to take my last chance, with a very slow training plan. I believe the right way for me is to follow the Warden, Davis, and Fredericson's return-to-running program described in this article by Running Writings, while continuing Physical Therapy, and stretch and foam roll my legs more than I like to.

I will report back in Paris.

[archiebwoollard]

Strategies You Need To Try in 2017, According to 13 Digital Marketing Experts

Image via Shutterstock.

Has anyone in the history of the world ever kept a New Year’s resolution?

I know I haven’t. But that doesn’t stop me from making them year after year and convincing myself that this will be the year for life-altering change. And then my credit card gets charged for my monthly gym membership and I realize I haven’t been in three months… (Where did the time go?)

The problem is, New Year’s resolutions are frequently impulse decisions — we take on ambitious goals without considering how they fit into our day to day lives.

Similarly, it’s easy to walk away from a marketing article with the intention of implementing X tactic. But without taking a step back and seeing how it fits into your overall strategy, you’re about as likely to actually do the work as I am to actually do my workout.

When we spoke to 13 of North America’s most influential digital marketing experts about their plans for 2017, a lot of them shared plans to take a step back and rethink their marketing strategy from a new perspective — rather than take on more tactics.

Here’s some of what they shared.

Scrutinize then optimize your current channels

You may be open to experimenting with new channels, but how often do you take stock of the ones you’ve been using forever? Why did you start using them in the first place?

The answer may be that you’re using them simply because you always have and don’t know anything else…

When we spoke to our digital marketing experts, many of them shared their plans to pull the plug completely on certain channels so they could focus on experimenting with new ones.

Larry Kim, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Wordstream and Inc columnist, spoke of his experiments with using LinkedIn Ads for lead generation:

Unfortunately it didn’t work because the cost per click was around $10 and very limited ad targeting options (e.g., no remarketing or custom list support).

But there were other channels that worked well:

There were many new channels that we tried out or doubled down on that worked spectacularly well for us – and I wrote them all up, including our approach and the results – the new channels included the use of RLSA, Facebook and Twitter Ads, posting content to Medium, changing our SEO tactics, and experimenting with off-topic content.

John Rampton, CEO of Due, was disappointed in the results from Facebook advertising campaigns, but it’s worth noting that he suspects it may have had more to do with targeting oversights:

In 2016, the most underwhelming marketing tactic we tried were Facebook ads, but I think this was because our target audience of small businesses was not on Facebook searching for business solutions.

Similarly, Moz last year experimented with pumping more money into paid advertising, according to co-founder Rand Fishkin. Moz nearly tripled its advertising budget with Facebook, AdWords and retargeting on various platforms.

Rand’s big takeaway from it all?

Broad targeted advertising is nearly useless. Unless someone has already been to our website, is familiar with our brand and/or is specifically searching for us or a handful of tightly connected search phrases, digital ads produce very little lift in new signups.

Moz has since cut back spend massively and is focused on optimizing its targeting instead.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert experimented with some free marketing channels in 2016 – notably, cross-posting from his blog to Medium. And while the effort for posting to Medium is minimal, so too have been the returns:

So far, the readership just hasn’t been there. Curiously, I have 53,000+ followers on Medium now, but generate just 3,000-4,000 views across four different posts per month.

These channels may or may not be effective for your audience, but the lesson here is to survey what’s working for you and what’s not.

And then don’t be afraid to kill your darlings (the channels that just aren’t working).

Out with the old, in with the new.

Build genuine relationships with a small group of influencers

It’s easy to get caught up in the dozens of tasks you have to do each day, but if you’re not currently making time to network and build relationships with your peers, 2017 is a great time to start.

It’s the secret sauce of Aaron Orendorff, prolific blogger and Forbes Top 25 Marketing Influencer. Here’s what he told us:

Marketing is not a single player sport. I dug deep on collaboration this year and combined it with unique story angles. This approach created Unbounce’s [highest traffic] post of the year: Clinton vs. Trump: 18 CROs Tear Down the Highest Stakes Marketing Campaigns in US History.

The key to this approach, Aaron explained, is twofold:

First, you have to have killer idea (and, no, “What’s the best blogging tip?” doesn’t count). Second, roll contributions into each other. What I mean is, start with who you know and once you get initial buy-in use their name to get the next one… or just ask if they’ll connect you.

While this personalized approach has worked for Aaron, many marketers are still taking a cold approach, without much success.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL explained that reaching out cold won’t cut it:

I myself get bombarded many times a day with all kinds of requests (“we linked to you/we mentioned you/give me feedback”), and I totally ignore them.

How do you avoid getting ignored? For starters, quit it with the canned messages.

Sujan Patel of digital marketing agency Web Profits explained that if you’re going to reach out to influencers, you should be doing it for the right reasons — to start relationships:

Begin with just five to ten people… choose people who appeal to you on a personal level – people you think you will genuinely get along with. Look for signs that you share the same interests (outside of your work) and sense of humor.

In other words, reach out only if your intention is to build genuine relationships. You wouldn’t ignore an email from an actual friend, would you?

Pair great content with great (dynamic) visuals

Since 2015, the content marketing world has been abuzz with Rand Fishkin’s concept of 10x content — the idea that you pick a topic and set out to create something 10x better than anything currently out there on the subject.

But with marketers everywhere striving to create 10x content, how then can you continue to stand out from the crowd?

For Sujan Patel, the marketers who will stand out in 2017 are those who pay special mind to design:

10x content isn’t new, but what will differentiate content in 2017 and beyond is content that directly incorporates design and formatting, instead of relying on great content in a long-form blog post.

As an example, Sujan shared a piece of content he created for a client: a guide to building a personal brand, where the content is inextricable from the design. He’s found that the time they spent on visuals is really paying off:

We see email optin rates over 25% and huge share numbers and backlinks from this type of content.

Ian Lurie of digital marketing agency Portent has similar plans to emphasize aesthetics in the New Year:

In 2017, I’ll be leaning more towards complex layouts and a greater emphasis on graphics. I’ll also be segmenting by screen resolution.

If the prospect of dialling up your visual content production feels daunting, Nadya Khoja of Venngage has some advice:

I recommend starting out by visiting your top performing content and repurposing it into engaging visuals. You can do this by pinpointing the main takeaways and tips that are highlighted in that content. Use a tool to create the animated graphics or finding a freelancer on a site like Upwork who can quickly transform that information into a compelling video or motion graphic.

Devote more time and tools to understanding your customers’ motives

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

Abe wasn’t a marketer, but he would have been an excellent one — in this blog post, Michael Aagaard, Senior Conversion Optimizer at Unbounce, explained why: you should never start a marketing campaign (chop down a tree) without doing your research (sharpening your axe).

That’s why Michael spends so much of his time conducting customer research and understanding the psychology of decision making. But this year, he took it a step further by socializing his findings to the team:

I spent a good deal of time sharing the insights and results internally so more of our employees could see the value in conducting real customer research rather than relying on assumptions or trends.

And Aagaard can’t stop, won’t stop:

In 2017, I’m going to ramp this up even more – both in terms of the hands-on CRO work I do at Unbounce and in relation to educating our employees and our customers.

Steve Olenski, Sr. Content Strategist at Oracle Marketing Cloud, urged marketers to look into mobile data management platforms (DMPs). He explained that they’re a critical part of the modern marketer’s stack because they enable us to better understand customer behavior:

With a mobile DMP, brands can harness and analyze the massive amount of customer data generated by mobile devices — including intent, geolocation, and purchase behavior to better target ads across multiple mobile devices and platforms, from in-app ads on smartphones to mobile web ads and tablet-specific campaigns.

In 2017, commit to collecting more customer information. Because at the end of the day, understanding your audience empowers you to give them more of what they want.

And that keeps them coming back for more.

Be part of the AI and AR conversations

Okay, this one’s a tall order, but it’s one that can’t be ignored for much longer.

Some of the digital marketing experts we spoke to emphasized the importance of keeping your finger on the pulse of cutting edge technology — notably, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Today, machine learning systems are being applied to everything from filtering spam emails, to making recommendations for what you should buy or watch (or who you should date).

Unbounce has been investing in applying machine learning to our product — here’s what CEO Rick Perrault had to say:

2016 marked the launch of our effort to apply machine learning to improving conversion results.  We’ve now built machine learning models that can predict conversion rates with reasonable accuracy, and our efforts to create models that provide actionable advice on improving conversion rates are coming along.

Jayson DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom, has been keeping a close watch on augmented reality, especially after the breakout success of Pokemon Go this year:

AR print ads are starting to catch on, with Macallan Whiskey in Esquire Magazine, and Vespa Scooter ads being standout examples here. Axe/Lynx even took things a step further with an interactive “fallen angel” ad in a busy public location. This is a technology in its infancy that’s finally starting to take off.

Whoever innovates here – and does so quickly, early in 2017 – stands to win big.

While you may not necessarily be able to invest in this cutting edge stuff, the least you can do is keep your finger on the pulse of what others are doing. As these technologies progress, they become increasingly affordable and accessible — and you don’t want to be playing catch up when they become ubiquitous.

Down with New Year’s resolutions

I’d like to encourage you to not make a New Year’s resolution this year.

In 2017, make strategic decisions that will actually bring you results.

Over to you — what new things will you test at work in the New Year?

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/campaign-strategy/expert-strategies-to-try-in-2017/

[racheltgibsau]

Strategies You Need To Try in 2017, According to 13 Digital Marketing Experts

Image via Shutterstock.

Has anyone in the history of the world ever kept a New Year’s resolution?

I know I haven’t. But that doesn’t stop me from making them year after year and convincing myself that this will be the year for life-altering change. And then my credit card gets charged for my monthly gym membership and I realize I haven’t been in three months… (Where did the time go?)

The problem is, New Year’s resolutions are frequently impulse decisions — we take on ambitious goals without considering how they fit into our day to day lives.

Similarly, it’s easy to walk away from a marketing article with the intention of implementing X tactic. But without taking a step back and seeing how it fits into your overall strategy, you’re about as likely to actually do the work as I am to actually do my workout.

When we spoke to 13 of North America’s most influential digital marketing experts about their plans for 2017, a lot of them shared plans to take a step back and rethink their marketing strategy from a new perspective — rather than take on more tactics.

Here’s some of what they shared.

Scrutinize then optimize your current channels

You may be open to experimenting with new channels, but how often do you take stock of the ones you’ve been using forever? Why did you start using them in the first place?

The answer may be that you’re using them simply because you always have and don’t know anything else…

When we spoke to our digital marketing experts, many of them shared their plans to pull the plug completely on certain channels so they could focus on experimenting with new ones.

Larry Kim, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Wordstream and Inc columnist, spoke of his experiments with using LinkedIn Ads for lead generation:

Unfortunately it didn’t work because the cost per click was around $10 and very limited ad targeting options (e.g., no remarketing or custom list support).

But there were other channels that worked well:

There were many new channels that we tried out or doubled down on that worked spectacularly well for us – and I wrote them all up, including our approach and the results – the new channels included the use of RLSA, Facebook and Twitter Ads, posting content to Medium, changing our SEO tactics, and experimenting with off-topic content.

John Rampton, CEO of Due, was disappointed in the results from Facebook advertising campaigns, but it’s worth noting that he suspects it may have had more to do with targeting oversights:

In 2016, the most underwhelming marketing tactic we tried were Facebook ads, but I think this was because our target audience of small businesses was not on Facebook searching for business solutions.

Similarly, Moz last year experimented with pumping more money into paid advertising, according to co-founder Rand Fishkin. Moz nearly tripled its advertising budget with Facebook, AdWords and retargeting on various platforms.

Rand’s big takeaway from it all?

Broad targeted advertising is nearly useless. Unless someone has already been to our website, is familiar with our brand and/or is specifically searching for us or a handful of tightly connected search phrases, digital ads produce very little lift in new signups.

Moz has since cut back spend massively and is focused on optimizing its targeting instead.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert experimented with some free marketing channels in 2016 – notably, cross-posting from his blog to Medium. And while the effort for posting to Medium is minimal, so too have been the returns:

So far, the readership just hasn’t been there. Curiously, I have 53,000+ followers on Medium now, but generate just 3,000-4,000 views across four different posts per month.

These channels may or may not be effective for your audience, but the lesson here is to survey what’s working for you and what’s not.

And then don’t be afraid to kill your darlings (the channels that just aren’t working).

Out with the old, in with the new.

Build genuine relationships with a small group of influencers

It’s easy to get caught up in the dozens of tasks you have to do each day, but if you’re not currently making time to network and build relationships with your peers, 2017 is a great time to start.

It’s the secret sauce of Aaron Orendorff, prolific blogger and Forbes Top 25 Marketing Influencer. Here’s what he told us:

Marketing is not a single player sport. I dug deep on collaboration this year and combined it with unique story angles. This approach created Unbounce’s [highest traffic] post of the year: Clinton vs. Trump: 18 CROs Tear Down the Highest Stakes Marketing Campaigns in US History.

The key to this approach, Aaron explained, is twofold:

First, you have to have killer idea (and, no, “What’s the best blogging tip?” doesn’t count). Second, roll contributions into each other. What I mean is, start with who you know and once you get initial buy-in use their name to get the next one… or just ask if they’ll connect you.

While this personalized approach has worked for Aaron, many marketers are still taking a cold approach, without much success.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL explained that reaching out cold won’t cut it:

I myself get bombarded many times a day with all kinds of requests (“we linked to you/we mentioned you/give me feedback”), and I totally ignore them.

How do you avoid getting ignored? For starters, quit it with the canned messages.

Sujan Patel of digital marketing agency Web Profits explained that if you’re going to reach out to influencers, you should be doing it for the right reasons — to start relationships:

Begin with just five to ten people… choose people who appeal to you on a personal level – people you think you will genuinely get along with. Look for signs that you share the same interests (outside of your work) and sense of humor.

In other words, reach out only if your intention is to build genuine relationships. You wouldn’t ignore an email from an actual friend, would you?

Pair great content with great (dynamic) visuals

Since 2015, the content marketing world has been abuzz with Rand Fishkin’s concept of 10x content — the idea that you pick a topic and set out to create something 10x better than anything currently out there on the subject.

But with marketers everywhere striving to create 10x content, how then can you continue to stand out from the crowd?

For Sujan Patel, the marketers who will stand out in 2017 are those who pay special mind to design:

10x content isn’t new, but what will differentiate content in 2017 and beyond is content that directly incorporates design and formatting, instead of relying on great content in a long-form blog post.

As an example, Sujan shared a piece of content he created for a client: a guide to building a personal brand, where the content is inextricable from the design. He’s found that the time they spent on visuals is really paying off:

We see email optin rates over 25% and huge share numbers and backlinks from this type of content.

Ian Lurie of digital marketing agency Portent has similar plans to emphasize aesthetics in the New Year:

In 2017, I’ll be leaning more towards complex layouts and a greater emphasis on graphics. I’ll also be segmenting by screen resolution.

If the prospect of dialling up your visual content production feels daunting, Nadya Khoja of Venngage has some advice:

I recommend starting out by visiting your top performing content and repurposing it into engaging visuals. You can do this by pinpointing the main takeaways and tips that are highlighted in that content. Use a tool to create the animated graphics or finding a freelancer on a site like Upwork who can quickly transform that information into a compelling video or motion graphic.

Devote more time and tools to understanding your customers’ motives

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

Abe wasn’t a marketer, but he would have been an excellent one — in this blog post, Michael Aagaard, Senior Conversion Optimizer at Unbounce, explained why: you should never start a marketing campaign (chop down a tree) without doing your research (sharpening your axe).

That’s why Michael spends so much of his time conducting customer research and understanding the psychology of decision making. But this year, he took it a step further by socializing his findings to the team:

I spent a good deal of time sharing the insights and results internally so more of our employees could see the value in conducting real customer research rather than relying on assumptions or trends.

And Aagaard can’t stop, won’t stop:

In 2017, I’m going to ramp this up even more – both in terms of the hands-on CRO work I do at Unbounce and in relation to educating our employees and our customers.

Steve Olenski, Sr. Content Strategist at Oracle Marketing Cloud, urged marketers to look into mobile data management platforms (DMPs). He explained that they’re a critical part of the modern marketer’s stack because they enable us to better understand customer behavior:

With a mobile DMP, brands can harness and analyze the massive amount of customer data generated by mobile devices — including intent, geolocation, and purchase behavior to better target ads across multiple mobile devices and platforms, from in-app ads on smartphones to mobile web ads and tablet-specific campaigns.

In 2017, commit to collecting more customer information. Because at the end of the day, understanding your audience empowers you to give them more of what they want.

And that keeps them coming back for more.

Be part of the AI and AR conversations

Okay, this one’s a tall order, but it’s one that can’t be ignored for much longer.

Some of the digital marketing experts we spoke to emphasized the importance of keeping your finger on the pulse of cutting edge technology — notably, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Today, machine learning systems are being applied to everything from filtering spam emails, to making recommendations for what you should buy or watch (or who you should date).

Unbounce has been investing in applying machine learning to our product — here’s what CEO Rick Perrault had to say:

2016 marked the launch of our effort to apply machine learning to improving conversion results.  We’ve now built machine learning models that can predict conversion rates with reasonable accuracy, and our efforts to create models that provide actionable advice on improving conversion rates are coming along.

Jayson DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom, has been keeping a close watch on augmented reality, especially after the breakout success of Pokemon Go this year:

AR print ads are starting to catch on, with Macallan Whiskey in Esquire Magazine, and Vespa Scooter ads being standout examples here. Axe/Lynx even took things a step further with an interactive “fallen angel” ad in a busy public location. This is a technology in its infancy that’s finally starting to take off.

Whoever innovates here – and does so quickly, early in 2017 – stands to win big.

While you may not necessarily be able to invest in this cutting edge stuff, the least you can do is keep your finger on the pulse of what others are doing. As these technologies progress, they become increasingly affordable and accessible — and you don’t want to be playing catch up when they become ubiquitous.

Down with New Year’s resolutions

I’d like to encourage you to not make a New Year’s resolution this year.

In 2017, make strategic decisions that will actually bring you results.

Over to you — what new things will you test at work in the New Year?

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/campaign-strategy/expert-strategies-to-try-in-2017/

[maxslogic25]

Strategies You Need To Try in 2017, According to 13 Digital Marketing Experts

Image via Shutterstock.

Has anyone in the history of the world ever kept a New Year’s resolution?

I know I haven’t. But that doesn’t stop me from making them year after year and convincing myself that this will be the year for life-altering change. And then my credit card gets charged for my monthly gym membership and I realize I haven’t been in three months… (Where did the time go?)

The problem is, New Year’s resolutions are frequently impulse decisions — we take on ambitious goals without considering how they fit into our day to day lives.

Similarly, it’s easy to walk away from a marketing article with the intention of implementing X tactic. But without taking a step back and seeing how it fits into your overall strategy, you’re about as likely to actually do the work as I am to actually do my workout.

When we spoke to 13 of North America’s most influential digital marketing experts about their plans for 2017, a lot of them shared plans to take a step back and rethink their marketing strategy from a new perspective — rather than take on more tactics.

Here’s some of what they shared.

Scrutinize then optimize your current channels

You may be open to experimenting with new channels, but how often do you take stock of the ones you’ve been using forever? Why did you start using them in the first place?

The answer may be that you’re using them simply because you always have and don’t know anything else…

When we spoke to our digital marketing experts, many of them shared their plans to pull the plug completely on certain channels so they could focus on experimenting with new ones.

Larry Kim, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Wordstream and Inc columnist, spoke of his experiments with using LinkedIn Ads for lead generation:

Unfortunately it didn’t work because the cost per click was around $10 and very limited ad targeting options (e.g., no remarketing or custom list support).

But there were other channels that worked well:

There were many new channels that we tried out or doubled down on that worked spectacularly well for us – and I wrote them all up, including our approach and the results – the new channels included the use of RLSA, Facebook and Twitter Ads, posting content to Medium, changing our SEO tactics, and experimenting with off-topic content.

John Rampton, CEO of Due, was disappointed in the results from Facebook advertising campaigns, but it’s worth noting that he suspects it may have had more to do with targeting oversights:

In 2016, the most underwhelming marketing tactic we tried were Facebook ads, but I think this was because our target audience of small businesses was not on Facebook searching for business solutions.

Similarly, Moz last year experimented with pumping more money into paid advertising, according to co-founder Rand Fishkin. Moz nearly tripled its advertising budget with Facebook, AdWords and retargeting on various platforms.

Rand’s big takeaway from it all?

Broad targeted advertising is nearly useless. Unless someone has already been to our website, is familiar with our brand and/or is specifically searching for us or a handful of tightly connected search phrases, digital ads produce very little lift in new signups.

Moz has since cut back spend massively and is focused on optimizing its targeting instead.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert experimented with some free marketing channels in 2016 – notably, cross-posting from his blog to Medium. And while the effort for posting to Medium is minimal, so too have been the returns:

So far, the readership just hasn’t been there. Curiously, I have 53,000+ followers on Medium now, but generate just 3,000-4,000 views across four different posts per month.

These channels may or may not be effective for your audience, but the lesson here is to survey what’s working for you and what’s not.

And then don’t be afraid to kill your darlings (the channels that just aren’t working).

Out with the old, in with the new.

Build genuine relationships with a small group of influencers

It’s easy to get caught up in the dozens of tasks you have to do each day, but if you’re not currently making time to network and build relationships with your peers, 2017 is a great time to start.

It’s the secret sauce of Aaron Orendorff, prolific blogger and Forbes Top 25 Marketing Influencer. Here’s what he told us:

Marketing is not a single player sport. I dug deep on collaboration this year and combined it with unique story angles. This approach created Unbounce’s [highest traffic] post of the year: Clinton vs. Trump: 18 CROs Tear Down the Highest Stakes Marketing Campaigns in US History.

The key to this approach, Aaron explained, is twofold:

First, you have to have killer idea (and, no, “What’s the best blogging tip?” doesn’t count). Second, roll contributions into each other. What I mean is, start with who you know and once you get initial buy-in use their name to get the next one… or just ask if they’ll connect you.

While this personalized approach has worked for Aaron, many marketers are still taking a cold approach, without much success.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL explained that reaching out cold won’t cut it:

I myself get bombarded many times a day with all kinds of requests (“we linked to you/we mentioned you/give me feedback”), and I totally ignore them.

How do you avoid getting ignored? For starters, quit it with the canned messages.

Sujan Patel of digital marketing agency Web Profits explained that if you’re going to reach out to influencers, you should be doing it for the right reasons — to start relationships:

Begin with just five to ten people… choose people who appeal to you on a personal level – people you think you will genuinely get along with. Look for signs that you share the same interests (outside of your work) and sense of humor.

In other words, reach out only if your intention is to build genuine relationships. You wouldn’t ignore an email from an actual friend, would you?

Pair great content with great (dynamic) visuals

Since 2015, the content marketing world has been abuzz with Rand Fishkin’s concept of 10x content — the idea that you pick a topic and set out to create something 10x better than anything currently out there on the subject.

But with marketers everywhere striving to create 10x content, how then can you continue to stand out from the crowd?

For Sujan Patel, the marketers who will stand out in 2017 are those who pay special mind to design:

10x content isn’t new, but what will differentiate content in 2017 and beyond is content that directly incorporates design and formatting, instead of relying on great content in a long-form blog post.

As an example, Sujan shared a piece of content he created for a client: a guide to building a personal brand, where the content is inextricable from the design. He’s found that the time they spent on visuals is really paying off:

We see email optin rates over 25% and huge share numbers and backlinks from this type of content.

Ian Lurie of digital marketing agency Portent has similar plans to emphasize aesthetics in the New Year:

In 2017, I’ll be leaning more towards complex layouts and a greater emphasis on graphics. I’ll also be segmenting by screen resolution.

If the prospect of dialling up your visual content production feels daunting, Nadya Khoja of Venngage has some advice:

I recommend starting out by visiting your top performing content and repurposing it into engaging visuals. You can do this by pinpointing the main takeaways and tips that are highlighted in that content. Use a tool to create the animated graphics or finding a freelancer on a site like Upwork who can quickly transform that information into a compelling video or motion graphic.

Devote more time and tools to understanding your customers’ motives

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

Abe wasn’t a marketer, but he would have been an excellent one — in this blog post, Michael Aagaard, Senior Conversion Optimizer at Unbounce, explained why: you should never start a marketing campaign (chop down a tree) without doing your research (sharpening your axe).

That’s why Michael spends so much of his time conducting customer research and understanding the psychology of decision making. But this year, he took it a step further by socializing his findings to the team:

I spent a good deal of time sharing the insights and results internally so more of our employees could see the value in conducting real customer research rather than relying on assumptions or trends.

And Aagaard can’t stop, won’t stop:

In 2017, I’m going to ramp this up even more – both in terms of the hands-on CRO work I do at Unbounce and in relation to educating our employees and our customers.

Steve Olenski, Sr. Content Strategist at Oracle Marketing Cloud, urged marketers to look into mobile data management platforms (DMPs). He explained that they’re a critical part of the modern marketer’s stack because they enable us to better understand customer behavior:

With a mobile DMP, brands can harness and analyze the massive amount of customer data generated by mobile devices — including intent, geolocation, and purchase behavior to better target ads across multiple mobile devices and platforms, from in-app ads on smartphones to mobile web ads and tablet-specific campaigns.

In 2017, commit to collecting more customer information. Because at the end of the day, understanding your audience empowers you to give them more of what they want.

And that keeps them coming back for more.

Be part of the AI and AR conversations

Okay, this one’s a tall order, but it’s one that can’t be ignored for much longer.

Some of the digital marketing experts we spoke to emphasized the importance of keeping your finger on the pulse of cutting edge technology — notably, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Today, machine learning systems are being applied to everything from filtering spam emails, to making recommendations for what you should buy or watch (or who you should date).

Unbounce has been investing in applying machine learning to our product — here’s what CEO Rick Perrault had to say:

2016 marked the launch of our effort to apply machine learning to improving conversion results.  We’ve now built machine learning models that can predict conversion rates with reasonable accuracy, and our efforts to create models that provide actionable advice on improving conversion rates are coming along.

Jayson DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom, has been keeping a close watch on augmented reality, especially after the breakout success of Pokemon Go this year:

AR print ads are starting to catch on, with Macallan Whiskey in Esquire Magazine, and Vespa Scooter ads being standout examples here. Axe/Lynx even took things a step further with an interactive “fallen angel” ad in a busy public location. This is a technology in its infancy that’s finally starting to take off.

Whoever innovates here – and does so quickly, early in 2017 – stands to win big.

While you may not necessarily be able to invest in this cutting edge stuff, the least you can do is keep your finger on the pulse of what others are doing. As these technologies progress, they become increasingly affordable and accessible — and you don’t want to be playing catch up when they become ubiquitous.

Down with New Year’s resolutions

I’d like to encourage you to not make a New Year’s resolution this year.

In 2017, make strategic decisions that will actually bring you results.

Over to you — what new things will you test at work in the New Year?

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/campaign-strategy/expert-strategies-to-try-in-2017/

[zacdhaenkeau]

Strategies You Need To Try in 2017, According to 13 Digital Marketing Experts

Image via Shutterstock.

Has anyone in the history of the world ever kept a New Year’s resolution?

I know I haven’t. But that doesn’t stop me from making them year after year and convincing myself that this will be the year for life-altering change. And then my credit card gets charged for my monthly gym membership and I realize I haven’t been in three months… (Where did the time go?)

The problem is, New Year’s resolutions are frequently impulse decisions — we take on ambitious goals without considering how they fit into our day to day lives.

Similarly, it’s easy to walk away from a marketing article with the intention of implementing X tactic. But without taking a step back and seeing how it fits into your overall strategy, you’re about as likely to actually do the work as I am to actually do my workout.

When we spoke to 13 of North America’s most influential digital marketing experts about their plans for 2017, a lot of them shared plans to take a step back and rethink their marketing strategy from a new perspective — rather than take on more tactics.

Here’s some of what they shared.

Scrutinize then optimize your current channels

You may be open to experimenting with new channels, but how often do you take stock of the ones you’ve been using forever? Why did you start using them in the first place?

The answer may be that you’re using them simply because you always have and don’t know anything else…

When we spoke to our digital marketing experts, many of them shared their plans to pull the plug completely on certain channels so they could focus on experimenting with new ones.

Larry Kim, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Wordstream and Inc columnist, spoke of his experiments with using LinkedIn Ads for lead generation:

Unfortunately it didn’t work because the cost per click was around $10 and very limited ad targeting options (e.g., no remarketing or custom list support).

But there were other channels that worked well:

There were many new channels that we tried out or doubled down on that worked spectacularly well for us – and I wrote them all up, including our approach and the results – the new channels included the use of RLSA, Facebook and Twitter Ads, posting content to Medium, changing our SEO tactics, and experimenting with off-topic content.

John Rampton, CEO of Due, was disappointed in the results from Facebook advertising campaigns, but it’s worth noting that he suspects it may have had more to do with targeting oversights:

In 2016, the most underwhelming marketing tactic we tried were Facebook ads, but I think this was because our target audience of small businesses was not on Facebook searching for business solutions.

Similarly, Moz last year experimented with pumping more money into paid advertising, according to co-founder Rand Fishkin. Moz nearly tripled its advertising budget with Facebook, AdWords and retargeting on various platforms.

Rand’s big takeaway from it all?

Broad targeted advertising is nearly useless. Unless someone has already been to our website, is familiar with our brand and/or is specifically searching for us or a handful of tightly connected search phrases, digital ads produce very little lift in new signups.

Moz has since cut back spend massively and is focused on optimizing its targeting instead.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert experimented with some free marketing channels in 2016 – notably, cross-posting from his blog to Medium. And while the effort for posting to Medium is minimal, so too have been the returns:

So far, the readership just hasn’t been there. Curiously, I have 53,000+ followers on Medium now, but generate just 3,000-4,000 views across four different posts per month.

These channels may or may not be effective for your audience, but the lesson here is to survey what’s working for you and what’s not.

And then don’t be afraid to kill your darlings (the channels that just aren’t working).

Out with the old, in with the new.

Build genuine relationships with a small group of influencers

It’s easy to get caught up in the dozens of tasks you have to do each day, but if you’re not currently making time to network and build relationships with your peers, 2017 is a great time to start.

It’s the secret sauce of Aaron Orendorff, prolific blogger and Forbes Top 25 Marketing Influencer. Here’s what he told us:

Marketing is not a single player sport. I dug deep on collaboration this year and combined it with unique story angles. This approach created Unbounce’s [highest traffic] post of the year: Clinton vs. Trump: 18 CROs Tear Down the Highest Stakes Marketing Campaigns in US History.

The key to this approach, Aaron explained, is twofold:

First, you have to have killer idea (and, no, “What’s the best blogging tip?” doesn’t count). Second, roll contributions into each other. What I mean is, start with who you know and once you get initial buy-in use their name to get the next one… or just ask if they’ll connect you.

While this personalized approach has worked for Aaron, many marketers are still taking a cold approach, without much success.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL explained that reaching out cold won’t cut it:

I myself get bombarded many times a day with all kinds of requests (“we linked to you/we mentioned you/give me feedback”), and I totally ignore them.

How do you avoid getting ignored? For starters, quit it with the canned messages.

Sujan Patel of digital marketing agency Web Profits explained that if you’re going to reach out to influencers, you should be doing it for the right reasons — to start relationships:

Begin with just five to ten people… choose people who appeal to you on a personal level – people you think you will genuinely get along with. Look for signs that you share the same interests (outside of your work) and sense of humor.

In other words, reach out only if your intention is to build genuine relationships. You wouldn’t ignore an email from an actual friend, would you?

Pair great content with great (dynamic) visuals

Since 2015, the content marketing world has been abuzz with Rand Fishkin’s concept of 10x content — the idea that you pick a topic and set out to create something 10x better than anything currently out there on the subject.

But with marketers everywhere striving to create 10x content, how then can you continue to stand out from the crowd?

For Sujan Patel, the marketers who will stand out in 2017 are those who pay special mind to design:

10x content isn’t new, but what will differentiate content in 2017 and beyond is content that directly incorporates design and formatting, instead of relying on great content in a long-form blog post.

As an example, Sujan shared a piece of content he created for a client: a guide to building a personal brand, where the content is inextricable from the design. He’s found that the time they spent on visuals is really paying off:

We see email optin rates over 25% and huge share numbers and backlinks from this type of content.

Ian Lurie of digital marketing agency Portent has similar plans to emphasize aesthetics in the New Year:

In 2017, I’ll be leaning more towards complex layouts and a greater emphasis on graphics. I’ll also be segmenting by screen resolution.

If the prospect of dialling up your visual content production feels daunting, Nadya Khoja of Venngage has some advice:

I recommend starting out by visiting your top performing content and repurposing it into engaging visuals. You can do this by pinpointing the main takeaways and tips that are highlighted in that content. Use a tool to create the animated graphics or finding a freelancer on a site like Upwork who can quickly transform that information into a compelling video or motion graphic.

Devote more time and tools to understanding your customers’ motives

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

Abe wasn’t a marketer, but he would have been an excellent one — in this blog post, Michael Aagaard, Senior Conversion Optimizer at Unbounce, explained why: you should never start a marketing campaign (chop down a tree) without doing your research (sharpening your axe).

That’s why Michael spends so much of his time conducting customer research and understanding the psychology of decision making. But this year, he took it a step further by socializing his findings to the team:

I spent a good deal of time sharing the insights and results internally so more of our employees could see the value in conducting real customer research rather than relying on assumptions or trends.

And Aagaard can’t stop, won’t stop:

In 2017, I’m going to ramp this up even more – both in terms of the hands-on CRO work I do at Unbounce and in relation to educating our employees and our customers.

Steve Olenski, Sr. Content Strategist at Oracle Marketing Cloud, urged marketers to look into mobile data management platforms (DMPs). He explained that they’re a critical part of the modern marketer’s stack because they enable us to better understand customer behavior:

With a mobile DMP, brands can harness and analyze the massive amount of customer data generated by mobile devices — including intent, geolocation, and purchase behavior to better target ads across multiple mobile devices and platforms, from in-app ads on smartphones to mobile web ads and tablet-specific campaigns.

In 2017, commit to collecting more customer information. Because at the end of the day, understanding your audience empowers you to give them more of what they want.

And that keeps them coming back for more.

Be part of the AI and AR conversations

Okay, this one’s a tall order, but it’s one that can’t be ignored for much longer.

Some of the digital marketing experts we spoke to emphasized the importance of keeping your finger on the pulse of cutting edge technology — notably, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Today, machine learning systems are being applied to everything from filtering spam emails, to making recommendations for what you should buy or watch (or who you should date).

Unbounce has been investing in applying machine learning to our product — here’s what CEO Rick Perrault had to say:

2016 marked the launch of our effort to apply machine learning to improving conversion results.  We’ve now built machine learning models that can predict conversion rates with reasonable accuracy, and our efforts to create models that provide actionable advice on improving conversion rates are coming along.

Jayson DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom, has been keeping a close watch on augmented reality, especially after the breakout success of Pokemon Go this year:

AR print ads are starting to catch on, with Macallan Whiskey in Esquire Magazine, and Vespa Scooter ads being standout examples here. Axe/Lynx even took things a step further with an interactive “fallen angel” ad in a busy public location. This is a technology in its infancy that’s finally starting to take off.

Whoever innovates here – and does so quickly, early in 2017 – stands to win big.

While you may not necessarily be able to invest in this cutting edge stuff, the least you can do is keep your finger on the pulse of what others are doing. As these technologies progress, they become increasingly affordable and accessible — and you don’t want to be playing catch up when they become ubiquitous.

Down with New Year’s resolutions

I’d like to encourage you to not make a New Year’s resolution this year.

In 2017, make strategic decisions that will actually bring you results.

Over to you — what new things will you test at work in the New Year?

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/campaign-strategy/expert-strategies-to-try-in-2017/

[berthastover]

Strategies You Need To Try in 2017, According to 13 Digital Marketing Experts

Image via Shutterstock.

Has anyone in the history of the world ever kept a New Year’s resolution?

I know I haven’t. But that doesn’t stop me from making them year after year and convincing myself that this will be the year for life-altering change. And then my credit card gets charged for my monthly gym membership and I realize I haven’t been in three months… (Where did the time go?)

The problem is, New Year’s resolutions are frequently impulse decisions — we take on ambitious goals without considering how they fit into our day to day lives.

Similarly, it’s easy to walk away from a marketing article with the intention of implementing X tactic. But without taking a step back and seeing how it fits into your overall strategy, you’re about as likely to actually do the work as I am to actually do my workout.

When we spoke to 13 of North America’s most influential digital marketing experts about their plans for 2017, a lot of them shared plans to take a step back and rethink their marketing strategy from a new perspective — rather than take on more tactics.

Here’s some of what they shared.

Scrutinize then optimize your current channels

You may be open to experimenting with new channels, but how often do you take stock of the ones you’ve been using forever? Why did you start using them in the first place?

The answer may be that you’re using them simply because you always have and don’t know anything else…

When we spoke to our digital marketing experts, many of them shared their plans to pull the plug completely on certain channels so they could focus on experimenting with new ones.

Larry Kim, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Wordstream and Inc columnist, spoke of his experiments with using LinkedIn Ads for lead generation:

Unfortunately it didn’t work because the cost per click was around $10 and very limited ad targeting options (e.g., no remarketing or custom list support).

But there were other channels that worked well:

There were many new channels that we tried out or doubled down on that worked spectacularly well for us – and I wrote them all up, including our approach and the results – the new channels included the use of RLSA, Facebook and Twitter Ads, posting content to Medium, changing our SEO tactics, and experimenting with off-topic content.

John Rampton, CEO of Due, was disappointed in the results from Facebook advertising campaigns, but it’s worth noting that he suspects it may have had more to do with targeting oversights:

In 2016, the most underwhelming marketing tactic we tried were Facebook ads, but I think this was because our target audience of small businesses was not on Facebook searching for business solutions.

Similarly, Moz last year experimented with pumping more money into paid advertising, according to co-founder Rand Fishkin. Moz nearly tripled its advertising budget with Facebook, AdWords and retargeting on various platforms.

Rand’s big takeaway from it all?

Broad targeted advertising is nearly useless. Unless someone has already been to our website, is familiar with our brand and/or is specifically searching for us or a handful of tightly connected search phrases, digital ads produce very little lift in new signups.

Moz has since cut back spend massively and is focused on optimizing its targeting instead.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert experimented with some free marketing channels in 2016 – notably, cross-posting from his blog to Medium. And while the effort for posting to Medium is minimal, so too have been the returns:

So far, the readership just hasn’t been there. Curiously, I have 53,000+ followers on Medium now, but generate just 3,000-4,000 views across four different posts per month.

These channels may or may not be effective for your audience, but the lesson here is to survey what’s working for you and what’s not.

And then don’t be afraid to kill your darlings (the channels that just aren’t working).

Out with the old, in with the new.

Build genuine relationships with a small group of influencers

It’s easy to get caught up in the dozens of tasks you have to do each day, but if you’re not currently making time to network and build relationships with your peers, 2017 is a great time to start.

It’s the secret sauce of Aaron Orendorff, prolific blogger and Forbes Top 25 Marketing Influencer. Here’s what he told us:

Marketing is not a single player sport. I dug deep on collaboration this year and combined it with unique story angles. This approach created Unbounce’s [highest traffic] post of the year: Clinton vs. Trump: 18 CROs Tear Down the Highest Stakes Marketing Campaigns in US History.

The key to this approach, Aaron explained, is twofold:

First, you have to have killer idea (and, no, “What’s the best blogging tip?” doesn’t count). Second, roll contributions into each other. What I mean is, start with who you know and once you get initial buy-in use their name to get the next one… or just ask if they’ll connect you.

While this personalized approach has worked for Aaron, many marketers are still taking a cold approach, without much success.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL explained that reaching out cold won’t cut it:

I myself get bombarded many times a day with all kinds of requests (“we linked to you/we mentioned you/give me feedback”), and I totally ignore them.

How do you avoid getting ignored? For starters, quit it with the canned messages.

Sujan Patel of digital marketing agency Web Profits explained that if you’re going to reach out to influencers, you should be doing it for the right reasons — to start relationships:

Begin with just five to ten people… choose people who appeal to you on a personal level – people you think you will genuinely get along with. Look for signs that you share the same interests (outside of your work) and sense of humor.

In other words, reach out only if your intention is to build genuine relationships. You wouldn’t ignore an email from an actual friend, would you?

Pair great content with great (dynamic) visuals

Since 2015, the content marketing world has been abuzz with Rand Fishkin’s concept of 10x content — the idea that you pick a topic and set out to create something 10x better than anything currently out there on the subject.

But with marketers everywhere striving to create 10x content, how then can you continue to stand out from the crowd?

For Sujan Patel, the marketers who will stand out in 2017 are those who pay special mind to design:

10x content isn’t new, but what will differentiate content in 2017 and beyond is content that directly incorporates design and formatting, instead of relying on great content in a long-form blog post.

As an example, Sujan shared a piece of content he created for a client: a guide to building a personal brand, where the content is inextricable from the design. He’s found that the time they spent on visuals is really paying off:

We see email optin rates over 25% and huge share numbers and backlinks from this type of content.

Ian Lurie of digital marketing agency Portent has similar plans to emphasize aesthetics in the New Year:

In 2017, I’ll be leaning more towards complex layouts and a greater emphasis on graphics. I’ll also be segmenting by screen resolution.

If the prospect of dialling up your visual content production feels daunting, Nadya Khoja of Venngage has some advice:

I recommend starting out by visiting your top performing content and repurposing it into engaging visuals. You can do this by pinpointing the main takeaways and tips that are highlighted in that content. Use a tool to create the animated graphics or finding a freelancer on a site like Upwork who can quickly transform that information into a compelling video or motion graphic.

Devote more time and tools to understanding your customers’ motives

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

Abe wasn’t a marketer, but he would have been an excellent one — in this blog post, Michael Aagaard, Senior Conversion Optimizer at Unbounce, explained why: you should never start a marketing campaign (chop down a tree) without doing your research (sharpening your axe).

That’s why Michael spends so much of his time conducting customer research and understanding the psychology of decision making. But this year, he took it a step further by socializing his findings to the team:

I spent a good deal of time sharing the insights and results internally so more of our employees could see the value in conducting real customer research rather than relying on assumptions or trends.

And Aagaard can’t stop, won’t stop:

In 2017, I’m going to ramp this up even more – both in terms of the hands-on CRO work I do at Unbounce and in relation to educating our employees and our customers.

Steve Olenski, Sr. Content Strategist at Oracle Marketing Cloud, urged marketers to look into mobile data management platforms (DMPs). He explained that they’re a critical part of the modern marketer’s stack because they enable us to better understand customer behavior:

With a mobile DMP, brands can harness and analyze the massive amount of customer data generated by mobile devices — including intent, geolocation, and purchase behavior to better target ads across multiple mobile devices and platforms, from in-app ads on smartphones to mobile web ads and tablet-specific campaigns.

In 2017, commit to collecting more customer information. Because at the end of the day, understanding your audience empowers you to give them more of what they want.

And that keeps them coming back for more.

Be part of the AI and AR conversations

Okay, this one’s a tall order, but it’s one that can’t be ignored for much longer.

Some of the digital marketing experts we spoke to emphasized the importance of keeping your finger on the pulse of cutting edge technology — notably, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Today, machine learning systems are being applied to everything from filtering spam emails, to making recommendations for what you should buy or watch (or who you should date).

Unbounce has been investing in applying machine learning to our product — here’s what CEO Rick Perrault had to say:

2016 marked the launch of our effort to apply machine learning to improving conversion results.  We’ve now built machine learning models that can predict conversion rates with reasonable accuracy, and our efforts to create models that provide actionable advice on improving conversion rates are coming along.

Jayson DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom, has been keeping a close watch on augmented reality, especially after the breakout success of Pokemon Go this year:

AR print ads are starting to catch on, with Macallan Whiskey in Esquire Magazine, and Vespa Scooter ads being standout examples here. Axe/Lynx even took things a step further with an interactive “fallen angel” ad in a busy public location. This is a technology in its infancy that’s finally starting to take off.

Whoever innovates here – and does so quickly, early in 2017 – stands to win big.

While you may not necessarily be able to invest in this cutting edge stuff, the least you can do is keep your finger on the pulse of what others are doing. As these technologies progress, they become increasingly affordable and accessible — and you don’t want to be playing catch up when they become ubiquitous.

Down with New Year’s resolutions

I’d like to encourage you to not make a New Year’s resolution this year.

In 2017, make strategic decisions that will actually bring you results.

Over to you — what new things will you test at work in the New Year?

Original Source: Strategies You Need To Try in 2017, According to 13 Digital Marketing Experts