MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

 

People love discounts. Who wouldn’t want to get something for free or something that was priced less than it originally should be? But there is a thin line between enjoying these freebies and being manipulated by discounts and free offers. Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen discuss the impact of marketing psychology and toxic capitalism, especially to content creators like them, as well as the effects on general consumers. They touch on the subject of bundle sales and online summits, which both of them have taken part of originally as a way to market their services but eventually led them to disappointmentYou might have had these very same experiences without knowing it, so tune in to learn more! 

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Are We Being Manipulated By Discounts And Free Offers?

This episode is inspired by an experience that Jason and I are having. On the first day of May 2021, you’ll be reading. I say that for context because one of the things we’re going to talk about is a bit not time-sensitive but it probably has already ended and might not fully apply to you. We’re going to use it as an example. It’s something also that we’ve talked a bit about on our show before in other episodes but I want to look at it from a different angle, lens and perspective that shifted over time. That is marketing and psychology especially when it comes to buying and selling. As of May 1st, 2021, Jason and I are in a bundle sale, which we’ve referenced on at least one other episode and the experience. I know I’ve also talked about my experiences on my own in bundle sales. 

For those of you who might not have read those episodes, you can go and read them. They will be linked in our show notes at Wellevatr.com. Every single episode of our show has a transcript. Most of them have a YouTube video and all of them have a resource list. Any time we reference something, we want to make it easy for you to find. Click on the button at the top and you can find any episode. There’s even a search bar. If you have trouble finding an episode like this, type in a keyword like bundle and this will come up along with some of the other episodes. Throughout the transcript, there are hyperlinks and then at the bottom of our show notes, there’s a list of everything that we talked about. 

It feels good to have a lot of followers. Followers equal validation. Followers equal fame and money. Click To Tweet

If you ever have feedback on how we can make the whole show more beneficial and helpful for you, please let us know. We do things like that to support you and make the overall discovery process easier. A bundle sale is when a number of people, authors, course creators, influencers who create products online offer usually digital products. It’s rarely physical products. Sometimes, people will include physical products as part of a bonus. Jason, off the top of your head, do you know how many people are part of this bundle that we’re in now? 

I don’t know how many people because certain people are offering multiple products. It’s over 98 products and at least 90 people. There are a couple of content creators that are offering multiple-tiered offerings in there. Let’s say 90plus. 

That’s a lot of people. All of us virtually came together. Most of us don’t know each other. We know a few people. Some people, we have “known” since the first time we did this bundle. It’s called the plant-based bundle. We did it for the first time in November 2020. It has given us the option to participate again. This is our third time doing it in the past few months. These approximately 90 people contributed all their products together to offer them at a low price. The one that we’re in is worth over $4,000 and it’s being sold for $50. It’s an incredible deal. When you sign up for $50, you get access to all of those eBooks, online courses and digital resources including our program, The Consistency Code 

Jason and I have experimented with these bundle sales off-and-on for years. The first one we were officially part of was the No Meat Athlete bundle. Jason and I used to do these separately with completely separate products. Once we started our company, Wellevatr and this show, we found it more beneficial to combine forces and do it with one offer. We’ve had interesting successes. There are different reasons for us as creators to do these bundle sales. 

The primary reason and more of like a superficial reason that someone like us would do this is for money. The way it works financially is that you get paid a commission similar to an affiliate structure or a referral program if any of you have ever done that. You get paid when somebody clicks on your specific link. You get a commission based on that sale. All the digital resources are available for $50. Jason and I only get paid when somebody uses our link. We get paid $30. The organizer of the bundle sale gets $20 of that commission. We don’t make any other money from the sale.  

Some bundle sales, which moving forward I would much prefer to do, is they will give you a percentage of the total sales at the end. That makes a lot more sense because as we’ve been evaluating this experience, there aren’t a lot of benefits aside from two things. One would be the money, which supports our business as business owners. Two would be being connected to people that we might not have known previously. That comes with its own set of challenges, which we might get into this episode. I’m sharing all of this because we like to be transparent about our business. We like to talk about our experiences and if you are a content creator or a business owner that has been considering a bundle, maybe our insight would help you decide if this makes sense for you. After doing at least ten of these bundles over the years, we have been reevaluating whether or not we want to do this. 

Also, the core reason why. A big part of this conversation is as somebody who’s centered on the question of why and passionate about raising my awareness and being mindful about my decision, I also want to inspire you, our audience, to reflect on your purchasing choices and understand what’s going on behind the scenes. To wrap up all of this, we make a little bit of money. Honestly, we don’t make that much. To give you some perspective, the first time we did this bundle, we had approximately 2,000 people signed up for our course, The Consistency Code. Our Consistency Code when it’s not on sale is $195 times 2,000 people. If we had been paid in full price, you and I would have made close to $400,000 selling it that way. 

If we were paid $50 for each of those 2,000 people who signed up, Jason, we would have made $100,000. If we had made the full commission of $30 through those approximately 2,000 people, we would have made $60,000. The truth is for those 2,000 people that enrolled in our course, we made $400. That’s 2,000 students divided by 400. It means that approximately we made $5 per person. That’s the perspective. You might wonder, “This is interesting.” It’s like Groupon in a way. Remember when the Groupon boom was happening, businesses were participating in Groupon. Either they’re not making money or spending more than they were making for the exposure. That’s one of the big reasons that you will do a bundle sale. 

One of the elements of this that I want to discuss in this episode is I’m starting to take more issue with marketing and how influencers, content creators and online entrepreneurs are taken advantage of. First of all, the people that benefit the most from these sales is the organizer. All they have to do is get those 90 people involved and put up the sales page. Granted that is a lot of work. They have to organize it and communicate. There’s a significant amount of work in this, but they are benefiting as much, if not more than the other content creators. In this case, they’re getting $20 every time somebody buys. 

MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

Discounts And Free Offers: There’s so much in our lives that we keep around because we’re afraid to let them go, because we paid for them. But if we’re not putting them to use, what’s the point?

 

I don’t know exactly how many people have bought the program. I would be willing to guess at least 5,000, so $20 times 5,000 is $100,000 that they make by bringing in all these people. The amount of work that it takes them to accomplish this, they probably put in a month’s worth of work. For a month, you make $100,000. That’s pretty awesome. Someone like me could live for years off of that money. Maybe you and I should consider doing a bundle, Jason. I never considered it. It would be a lot of work. It would probably be miserable for a month. If I could make that much money in that short amount of time, I might do it. I would like to do it differently. Maybe that’s part of the conclusion we’re going to have here, Jason. 

One of the reasons I would like to do it is not just because of the money but because I’d like to see bundles and projects like this being done differently. It’s important that the creators are deeply valued and the customers put to use what they purchase. That’s part of this conversation too. This ties into the consumer here and you, our audience, likely being a consumer. Somebody that has perhaps purchased a bundle maybe through us or someone else. Maybe you found our show through that. That’s wonderful. We want to encourage you to reflect on your purchases. 

One of the reasons that the bundles can be so successful is because $50 is generally a pretty small investment. This is where the marketing comes in. If you look at the sales pages, they say, “Look at everything you can get for such a small amount of money.” Some of the bundles are more like $100. If you’re getting $2,000plus worth of services and products for $100. That’s quite a deal. What Jason and I discovered is that 90% of people who bought the bundle sale and enrolled in The Consistency Code in the past few months have never even started the program. The stats are probably similar for Wellness Warrior Training, our other course. 

They probably bought the products through someone else in that bundle, one of those 90-ish people, and they went through the list of 90 products or so and clicked on every single one of them, entered in their email address, downloaded it or enrolled, in the case with our course, and never looked at it since. I know this for a fact because the software that we use was called Kajabi shows you progress reports. This is not meant to be an invasion of privacy. It’s simply to give you or us as the course creators a perspective on how people are doing so that we can improve. 

I looked at these progress reports to see statistically, were we doing the best work that we could in helping our students? We can’t help somebody if they’re not willing to take these steps. The first step would be buying something. The second step is enrolling in it. The third step is the most important one which is beginning, and 90% of the people never clicked play on our video lessons. They never clicked the complete button at the end. That blows my mind. Statistically, I bet that’s true of most courses. I have found this, aside from my hands-on live courses. I remember one of the first courses I did. There were two in the early days of my course creation. My first course is in 2014. I did another one or two in 2015. I remember back then I would have twenty students in my courses and at least 15 to 18 of them were hands-on. It was the opposite, 90% of people were engaged. Part of that is because it was a live offer and they were paying full price for it. 

Part of the psychology of a bundle sale is when you can download something and say, “I’ll do it later,” you’re unlikely to do it. Psychologically, when you pay a discount for something, most people value it less so they won’t put in the effort. One of my big questions for you Jason and also for the reader, in case you want to give us feedback or reflect on this in your own life, does that dilute the value and the impact of something when it’s part of a bunch of other things? It’s about the bigger numbers game and the psychology around numbers. You and I talked about what’s called compassion-fade, Jason. When there’s a large number of people involved, you start to have less compassion for a larger group.  

The same is true when you get a bunch of things. It could be a subscription box. It could be Halloween candy. It could be whatever bunch of things at once. You probably look through to find one thing that you love and then disregard the rest of them. Maybe you want to believe that they’re all equally important but they’re not unless you’re prioritizing them. Thus, they get pushed aside. It makes me think about there’s so much in our lives that’s becoming clutter. We keep it around because we’re afraid to let it go. We keep it around because we paid for it in some way or another. If we’re not putting it to use, what’s the point? It’s a responsibility for us simultaneously as consumers and creators to examine this. There’s so much waste that goes on and I don’t want to contribute to more waste in my personal or professional life. 

I have a lot of thoughts on this. To use a couple of analogies that you already alluded to such as a subscription box or what I immediately thought of was a goodie bag that we would sometimes receive. As an example, it no longer exists, but we were part of the New Hope, which is the organization that puts on the natural products expos. We were part of their Influencer Co-op. It was quarterly or twice a year. They would send a giant box full of sample products from a smattering of different brands in the natural products industry. I can attest to the fact that if I go into my kitchen or my bathroom, the products that I am using consistently are the ones I have paid for. If I look at the products that are in my food cabinet or my medicine cabinet in my bathroom, some have been hanging out there for years. I’m one of those people who need to go into the dark crevices of my fridge and find shit back there that’s been there for years. It’s the same thing in my bathroom. I can almost feel like certain readers are relating. I feel like everyone can relate to this. 

People tend to de-value things that are free, low cost or packaged with a bunch of other things. Click To Tweet

To back up your point about how we as humans tend to devalue things that are free, low cost or packaged with a bunch of other things, these are the direct examples from my life. The stuff that hangs out that I never use are the stuff I got for free. This stuff that I consume, use frequently and I’m brand-loyal to is stuff I pay for out of my pocket. This is a perfect mirror and a perfect analogy for what you’re discussing with the consolidating type of promotions, whether that’s something like we’re doing with this plant-based bundle sale, or a lot of the online summits you and I have done where we’re one of the 50 speakers. We’re lumped in with Marianne WilliamsonBrendon Burchard and Tony Robbins. I’m saying this because we have been participating and we’ve been grateful to participate with some incredible people.  

The phrase getting lost in the shuffle is appropriate here because for a large part, I’m using many analogies in one but the big fish eat first. The big fish being the content creators, authors, influencers and course creators that have big mailing lists, that have big social media numbers. They’re the ones that are converting the most over and over again. I say this because I’ve also been part of launches with Kris CarrDavid Wolf and Hay House and you see that the big fish are the ones that eat the most food in these promotions. 

Since we’re not a “big fish” as standard measurability would go, we have to work that much harder to convert. We do need to reevaluate whether or not we want to participate in these kinds of things moving forward because we do spend a lot of energy. We put out the social posts. We do the live stories. We send out multiple newsletters. We put a lot of heart and energy and effort into this. I agree with you that the value and the level of engagement are diluted because we get lost in the shuffle because there’s too much. It overwhelms the crap out of people and when they’re paying a low discounted price for a lot of stuff, a goodie bag or a virtual goodie bag, they tend not to respect and use what’s in there. I agree with that. 

That’s one of the big things that we change this time around because I realize this. When Jason and I were thinking about this in the past few months, we did see value in getting those approximately 2,000 people enrolled in our course. I thought, “Great, I would love more feedback. I’d love testimonials,” but most of those people do not give feedback or testimonials especially that 90%. If they’re not going through the course, how the heck can they review it? That’s useless to us. 

Their email addresses are valuable. As a consumer, if you’re not an online creator of any type, you may not realize this but even when you get something for free, if you give your email address, that’s part of your data. People often want your email address because they want you to do something else, ourselves included in full transparency. Whether it’s to pay them for something, to listen to their podcast, to watch a summit, to watch a YouTube video, on and on. You are giving them more value. It’s a value exchange. Usually, they’ll give you something for free.  

This is important too whenever you give your email address away. These days, people are savvy that most people don’t want to simply give their email. They want something in exchange. You, the readers, have probably experienced this many times where you give your email address in exchange for something. Maybe it’s a discount code, a free PDF or a free video. Jason and I have several of these. If you go to Wellevatr.com, you can click on free resources. We have PDFs and eBooks. We have videos. Those are two categories. You can have those “for free” if you give us our email address. 

Full transparency, when you do that, you’re on our list. We can tell you about our show. When you listen to our podcast, that might financially benefit us when we get sponsors, when we might run some sort of ad, when we’re part of an affiliate campaign. You may not be spending money but as a number, you collectively add up to another source of income. It’s incredibly important to be transparent about this because I don’t want anyone to do something without them realizing what’s happening. 

I don’t think enough people online talk about this fully because they’re nervous. They’re afraid if they’re transparent with you about what happens with your information, that you’re not going to give it away. That in itself is a timely topic because, in Spring 2021, there was a huge change with iOS devices where Apple changed their operating system and requires apps like Facebook, which is the big one people are talking about, to ask for permission to track your privacy. 

This messed with Facebook’s structure. If you didn’t realize this already, a lot of the time you’re unknowingly agreeing to give away some of your digital privacy and your information to companies like Facebook so that they can use it to make money off of you. They either want to learn more about you so that they can better advertise to you. They want to have access to you so that they can present ads to you. They want to sell your data to other people because other people want that data. There’s a lot of this stuff going on. Most of us are aware of this but not everybody. That’s why it’s incredibly important to talk about it clearly and transparently. 

Each of us needs to step back and ask if we’re okay. There’s this culture especially with younger generations, that’s a big assumption but I know like my dad who is classified as a Boomer. He’s careful about privacy. He’s uncomfortable giving away any information. He does little online. My sister and I would laugh at him, even my mom who’s not that much younger than him. She would be like, “Why don’t you do that online? Why don’t you pay this bill online? Once you shop online, it’s so convenient.” My dad’s like, “I don’t feel comfortable doing that. What if somebody steals my identity? What if somebody does something with my data that I don’t want them to?” I’m reflecting on that and it makes a lot of sense. I respect him for being savvy. I’ve spent most of my life agreeing to those things because they’re convenient and I’ve been ignorant. 

MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

Discounts And Free Offers: Do what somebody else is doing, follow their strategy. There’s nothing wrong with it but if it doesn’t match up your integrity, that’s where the issue is.

 

We touched upon this a little with Paul Jarvis who’s a great source for anyone who wants to learn more about this. In the episode with him, which he did a little while back, we didn’t get fully into all of this. Paul Jarvis in general talks a lot about this on his Twitter account. He’s knowledgeable and if he doesn’t have the answer, he’ll connect it to somebody else who does. One thing I would like to learn and encourage you, the reader, to learn more about is what is happening with your data. That’s a side of this bundle sale if we look at this. “Who’s benefiting here?” That is the big question to ask. 

With the online summits you were talking about, Jason, it’s usually the organizer who benefits at the cost of the contributor. The contributor gets some sort of perk. They get either a monetary perk or an exposure perk. Usually, the money and the exposure are nowhere worth the time that you’re putting into it. To Jason’s point, the amount of work that we have put into bundles and we’ve reduced it, but there have been years or periods of time over the year where we have spent weeks prepping and preparing all of this work. We spend all of this time working hard on our newsletters and our social media marketing. We’re spending energy reflecting on it. We’re working on their sales pages. All of these things thinking, “How can we support people? How can we convert them? How can we generate the return on investment from this?” 

A lot of the times, we’re making maybe $400 to $1,000 total and then split between the two of us. That’s the way we run our business. It’s not no money but it’s not a lot of money if you add up all the hours. That’s something that everybody can relate to if we’re thinking about our time spent in terms of hoursWe want a fair wage. Most people want at least $15 an hour for the work that they’re doing, if not $50 or more. If you divide up all the hours that we’ve spent, we’re certainly not making that much money. If you divide up the value of our course, if it’s worth only $5, when you break it down for all that work it’s like, “Yikes.” 

Going back to the organizers who are profiting, they need to have taken more responsibility for this and be clear about it because without somebody like you and me, Jason, they don’t have a business. They need us as creators and influencers to contribute products and to market that. Without us, they’re not going to make nearly as much money. Yet, they are making much more than us. If you and I were to do a bundle in the future, I would want it to be equalized. Wouldn’t it be neat if everybody made the same amount of money regardless of how many conversions they made? It’s like working at a restaurant when people pool tips. Everybody’s contributing something. It is a cog in the machine that makes it work collectively. If we weren’t valuable, we wouldn’t be invited in. They are seeking us out and inviting us in but then they’re not paying us equally. 

If you think about what psychology makes that business model work, whether it’s an affiliate promotion, which this bundle is a type of affiliate promotion, competition and the psychological cues of competition drive people to promote it more. A lot of these bundles and affiliate programs have leaderboards where they will email you every single day and go, “Look who’s in the top five. Look who’s in the top ten and use messaging. I’ve had this like, “Jason, you’re about to crack the top five. You should send out five more posts this week so you can get into the top five.” I’ve done that in the past.  

For the Longevity Now Conference that I spoke at eight times. You were at several of them, Whitney. After the conferences would end, they would have for all of their speakers an affiliate promo push on social and through newsletters to watch the replays of the conference. If you weren’t at the conference, you can get the whole conference in an HD video for a discounted price. They would have a leaderboard if you crack the top three, they were giving away a MacBook Pro, a TV, an iPhone and all that kind of stuff. I’ve seen different online marketers give away cars to their affiliates. Brendon Burchard and Shanda Sumpter talk about this. Some people have given away cars to their top affiliates.  

Competition and manipulating the comparison trap gets people to work and do more. Click To Tweet

Why would we do this? Because competition and manipulating the comparison trap get people to work and do more, “Derek’s in number one. Fuck Derek, I want that car.” You can’t tell me this is not part of it. It’s part of it especially if a human being is wired to be competitive. Not everyone but a lot of people are wired to try and outdo each other in a more egalitarian system as you’re proposing, Whitney, where we pool all of the revenues and split them equally. Guess what that doesn’t do? It doesn’t motivate people to do more, post more, promote more, keep putting it out there, send one more email, do one more social post. What creates that? Competition and comparison create that. That’s why you have leaderboards. That’s why you give away cars and MacBook Pros. That’s why you try and drive people to outdo one another because it’s good for the people who are organizing it.  

Speaking at a lot of conferences like the Longevity Now Conference, it reminds me that in many cases, the house always wins. You hear this in gambling. As a speaker, I never got paid directly to be a speaker and I spoke there eight times. I was a mainstage speaker. I’m proud. I put a lot of heart and comedy. I tried to do it like a stand-up comedy meets educational show. I put a lot into that and I never got paid directly and never got a speaker’s fee nor did they ever offer me one. The only way I made money was to set up a booth and sell product, books and T-shirts. Have other people’s products and all that. They took 40% of it. You might think, “That’s good. They give you 60/40?” It’s not, because here’s the thing. When you are buying wholesale products whether that’s me buying books from my publisher, buying T-shirts wholesale for my printer or buying protein powder, supplements or whatever it is. The exact profit margin between wholesale and retail being what I would charge at these conferences was right around 30% to 40%. Meaning that after I paid out the 40% to the house. After I paid the hotel room fees, my assistants at the conference and all those stuff, I was lucky to break even. It’s so much work. You walk away and go, “You did well. You broke even.” 

With all due respect in my world, to put in that much time, energy, blood, sweat and tears, and it’s a lot to do a conference like that, I do not consider breaking even a success. The point is if a lot of these business agreements are set up so that the house is always winning, for the most part, and I’ve talked to other speakers and other vendors there and they had the same issue. People would do it and pull out like Daniel Vitalis and Surthrival. He’s like, “We pulled out because we’d fly from Maine, sell all these products.” He would crush it on stage. Daniel’s a great speaker. He’s like, “We would lose money or break even.” 

We got to a point where it’s like, “Why would we do this?” It’s the exposure. That’s the thing that they dangle over us all the time, “Your product, courses, podcast and brand are going to be exposed to so many more people. If they’re on our list and they’re on our social, and they don’t even watch the video, do the course or buy the product, then it’s vanity metrics. We got 100,000 more people. Are they doing anything? We got 500,000 people on your list. It’s not even, are they convertingDo they care? To me, this dangle we get of the exposure is a lead into vanity metrics, mostly. The point heris we’re reevaluating big time what kind of business agreements we’re getting into.  

I’m not saying that the people who organize these things, these conferences, these bundle sales or these summits are malicious. I don’t believe that they’re malicious. I believe that the agreements and the contracts and the system is to make sure that the house is always winning whether or not they’re doing more work than us. It’s not about work ethic. It’s not about effort. It’s about people structuring things where they’re reaping the most benefit. I’m getting pissed off because as we’re talking about this, I’m starting to get fired up. I feel a little bit sad and a little bit angry, Whitney, to be honest with you. Maybe because we’ve continued to agree to things that don’t serve us. Maybe that’s the internal anger. How do you and I engage in a system that there’s a lot of inequity? There’s a lot of bullshit. There’s a lot of manipulative tactics going on. This is a much bigger question of how do you and I go forth as content creators, as teachers, as people wanting to have these raw conversations and change a system that’s benefiting a few at the top? I’m not saying it’s like an MLM but it is where the people at the top of the pyramid are feasting. Everyone else at the bottom is scrambling to get the money to pay the rent. Let’s be real. That’s what this is set up to do. 

I agree with a lot of that. I was thinking it does feel MLM-ish. We talked about that in a previous episode. Not that my awareness is heightened. We were talking about MLMs. That got brought up in our discussion around the HBO series, Generation Hustle. If you haven’t read that episode, that’s a good one to read after this one. It’s similar in the sense of the marketing messages that the organizers put out. I’ve noticed this a lot in the bundle sales. They have that energy. I was even part of a bundle sale that somebody I know personally organized. It was fascinating because it felt like they were having these cookie-cutter emails to me as a contributor. They were saying the same things that other people in other bundle sales said. I was like, “This is formulaic.” When something’s formulaic, that puts up a red flag for me because it feels like somebody is trying to copy the success of somebody else. It’s not truly authentic, in my opinion. It’s like, “I saw this work for somebody else. I’m going to try it. I’m going to do it their way.” 

I have tried to do things other people’s way a lot and it rarely serves me. Sometimes, success leaves clues, as they say, “Go do what somebody else is doing. Follow their strategy, their formula.” There’s nothing wrong with it. If that doesn’t match up with your integrity, that’s where this issue is. If it doesn’t benefit everybody or if it somehow manipulates or takes advantage of other people, I take issue with it. What we’re seeing here with these bundles sales is a part of a huge problem I’m seeing across influencer marketing. This has been coming out a lot on TikTok. Gen Z is starting to pay attention to how fake social media is. It’s building towards a movement.  

My prediction is that when Gen Z people turn 25 to 30, I don’t know the math of exactly how old they are. A lot of Gen Zs I believe are teenagers and in their 20s. When they get older, they’re going to start to have this greater awareness that Millennials did because Millennials have been at the core of influencer marketing and social media. It’s the same with you, Jason, you’re Gen X. We’re so in it that we don’t have as much perspective. It’s affected us differently than the younger generations who are suddenly examining their relationship to it from a different lens than us. That’s why my prediction is the combination of Gen X and Millennials like you and me, Jason, we’re waking up. As we’re getting older, we’re more on this fuck-the-status-quo mentality. 

The Gen Zs are coming up at the same pace. The time is going to line up in the next few years. There’s going to be this big wake up and shift. The shift has started to happen but it’s a slow rise. We’re going to all say, “How is our data being used? How are we being used as content creators? How are people taking advantage of us?” Because influencer marketing is so relatively young, lot of us have given up our rights. A lot of us have given away our value. A lot of us have made compromises because of these vague long-term promises that we’ve had that we think we’re all collectively working towards. 

A lot of the companies who are using influencer marketers are like, “Look at all this free labor we get. Look at all this free content. Look at all this free marketing or inexpensive. Especially given that speaking of value, the amount of money that companies do or used to spend on traditional advertising. I don’t know the figures but I’m fairly confident that it is a hell of a lot less to work with influencers because you can get them to be on affiliate programs, which don’t generate that much money for most of us, the smaller creator. Unless you’re at the top of that “pyramid” in terms of your following size at a certain level. Also, even the big people don’t convert necessarily with affiliate programs. 

All these companies that say, “If you convert this amount of people, you’ll make this amount of money,” but like in MLM that has similar languaging, most people don’t make that much money. It’s possible. The math makes sense on paper but it doesn’t usually happen. Yet, people use those examples over and over again like, “If you convert 10% of your audience, that’s easy. You’ll make this amount of money.” People that aren’t super aware or experienced see those numbers and goes, “I have these many followers. That’s true. If I can get X amount of people to convert, I’ll make this much money.” You and I know darn well, Jason. It’s rare that the conversions happen.  

MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

Discounts And Free Offers: If everyone’s a winner, everyone’s a leader. That goes against the very nature of how the system works.

 

We’ve been gas-lit in a way because they keep showing us examples of other people who have made that much money. Honestly, I don’t even know how much of that is true. How do we know that the leaderboards are true? They could be fake. They could be inflated. Maybe that’s why bundle sales have so many people because the organizers realize that all they need are 5 or 10 people out of that 90 to be successful. They then can use them as examples. The other 80 to 85 people go, “So and so’s making this much money. I must not be trying hard enough. Let me work harder. Let me promote this more.” Who does that benefit? The organizers.  

At the end of the day like for me, the number of bundle sales that I’ve done, I keep thinking I can do better next time. I keep trying and trying again. I know this isn’t just my experience or your experience, Jason, but I know from other friends of ours, their numbers have gone down over the years, not up. The amount of work that you put into something does not necessarily equate to more. That’s what I’m saying. When people start to recognize this collectively, there’s going to be a huge shift and people are going to start to protest. They already are. It’s going to start happening to the masses. Creators like us who are working hard and spending much money just to maybe break even, maybe make enough money to pay their bills, there’s going to be a reckoning at some point or I hope there is, at least.  

This begs a question of, What is the reckoning now? Is the reckoning something like you and I have discussed for probably close to ten years, Whitney? When you and I even first started hanging out, I remember you and I had early conversations about the idea of some unionized structure for content creators. There’s been talk in different arenas over the years about this subject for the reasons you’re discussing which is, can we organize as a union of digital online content creators for equal pay and equal rights? There was an interesting series of articles that came out in 2020 about the inequity between black and white female content creators. In these articles and the social posts, there were black and white female content creators posting what they’ve made with brand deals. Almost across the board for similar deals, structure, type of content, etc., white young female content creators were consistently paid exponentially more than their black female counterparts. 

It’s not about inequality of pay, there’s equality of pay based on gender and race. Influencer marketing as a microcosm of the capitalist structure is no different. The thing is, the way we have our capitalist system set up in the United States of America is that the promise in the marketing, a lot of this stuff is if you just follow the formula, work hard, make the right connections, network, put in hustle. All these messages. You too can be at the top. That’s not how capitalism works the way we have it structured, if everyone can be at the top, that’s not going to work for our capitalism. Because if everyone’s a winner, leader and millionaire, that goes against the nature of how the system works. 

People can think what they want like, “Jason, you’re being so negative and defeatist.” I’m not. I’m being real. The way capitalism works, the way we have it set up is there are a few winners at the top and a whole lot of people scrambling to survive at the bottom usually working for the people at the top. “That doesn’t mean you can’t put the work inWhat about the people that came from nothing? That’s a small percentage of humanity. The point I’m making is in the marketing, they try and make it seem like you can be one of those people, “If you work hard enough, do the right steps, take my thing and do this. You’ll be in the secret club too. 

Nothing’s guaranteed but they act on the promise of the possibility you could be one of those people to sell you on things. It’s the same reason you and I went to T Harv Eker and his Millionaire Mind courseWe could be a millionaire too, T Harv? It’s not that you and I can’t be millionaires or anyone can’t be a millionaire, Whitney, but the way it’s marketed and promised is that everyone in the room can join the club. We can all do it together. They damn well know there’s an infinitesimal percentage of that 2,000-person crowd that’s going to take the action, be consistent and don’t get anywhere near that echelon. “You can be a Super Bowl champion and go to Disney World.” Statistically speaking, sorry to break it to you, you’re not going to Disney World after you win the Super Bowl. 

That’s where the gaslighting comes in. That’s the right term to use for this. That’s the energy. Part of where this resentful energy or this frustrated energy comes from is the number of years that I’ve spent business-wise thinking that I was doing something wrong. If I got more followers then I would make that amount of money. If I learned to be a better marketer, tweak my sales page and my website or made more content, I would make that much money. Part of the reckoning is that it’s going to turn out that none of that was true and that the system was rigged like the casino. Because who’s benefiting all of that time? People say, “Why do my numbers go up and down? It’s unpredictable.” People are obsessed with going viral. 

I see it so much on TikTok. People want their videos to go viral so badly. TikTok knows that. I don’t know if they set it up this way or organically or some combination of the two. I love TikTok. If you haven’t tuned in to the show much, I love watching it. I also have to step back sometimes and ask myself, why do I love watching it? What’s going on psychologically? How am I being used? As a creator, I’ve taken a step back because I don’t always have the energy to create. I’m at a point where making videos is too exhausting. I rarely make videos. TikTok has this, anybody can go viral. You have to keep creating videos until you go viral. I’ve seen it happen where eventually somebody will get some sort of viral video. Viral can be relative. Maybe it’s not technically viral, whatever that number is these days. They’ll have a hit like at the lottery in a slot machine. You play a slot machine, you get that hit, you keep playing. You then never get the hit again until you run out of money or you stop. That happens on TikTok. Time and time again. People keep making content in hopes that they will get more views and more followers. For what? The average person is not getting benefit out of it. The people who benefit tend to be the big creators who either are savvy or have the resources to get support. They then become the product.  

People are wired to be competitive and try and outdo each other. Click To Tweet

I was thinking about this around Britney Spears. I see a lot of content about her on TikTok and people reflecting on her life. Britney Spears is a fascinating product because for me growing up, she was such a big deal. Many girls my age aspired to be her. She had the body that many girls wanted. She had the face, the makeup, the hair. She had the talent. She had the fame, the money, the power. All of these things that most human beings want. As a young girl, I was looking up to her thinking, “I want that too.” What happens is, I feel like if I want to be like Britney Spears, I need to wear certain makeup. Britney Spears is part of the marketing industry. Inadvertently, she may not realize this but the makeup industry certainly does. They hire her to be in their commercials or they use the fact that girls want to look like Britney Spears. You’ve got makeup tutorials. Here’s how to look like Britney Spears. They’re using a YouTuber to make tutorials to look like Britney Spears to sell you makeup. The makeup industry benefits.  

The hair industry then benefits. You want your hair to look like it. The diet culture then benefitsIf you want to be attractive, Britney Spears is one of the most attractive people, at least at the time. You should start working out, so gym memberships benefit. All the other at-home tools that you could use to work out, benefit weights and whatever else mechanisms. The DVDs that you buy or right back then, VHS tapes, online videos benefit because you want to work out to get the abs like Britney Spears. The diet companies then benefit because you want to lose the weight to look like Britney Spears. 

All of these industries benefit from Britney Spears being famous. The reason that ties into now is because the influencers are the Britney Spears. We all know Kim Kardashian. We talked about it on the Khloe Kardashian episode. Khloe, Kim, that whole family benefits because all these girls want to look like them. They’re getting the surgery to get their butts to look wide. They’re buying the clothes to look a certain way. They’re doing the makeup, the hair, the dieting and whatever else. They’re using the filters. They’re spending all of their time. When they spend time using these apps to take photos. Instagram has their data and Instagram can market to that. This whole system, I hope there’s a reckoning because if there isn’t, we’re heading in a scary direction. 

One of my big points here is I’m stepping back to say, “I’ve inadvertently contributed to this system as a content creator.” I’ve inadvertently contributed as an influencer. Why? It feels good to have a lot of followers. Because followers equal validation. Followers equal fame. Followers equal money. We do all of these things. I then also take part in that whole industry. I’m not making as much money as so and so is. Maybe if I look like so and so, I’ll make as much money. Maybe if I do the same things as so and so, I’ll make as much money or I’ll get more followers. At least, I’ll get that exposure. All of these things are psychological triggers for us to get these things that we all want at the core as human beings, but then recognize that they aren’t even that great, to begin with. We’ve continued and contributed to the system. We’re perpetuating all of this. That to me is incredibly disturbing. More and more, I’m feeling like I don’t think I want to be part of this. 

I have an idea in real-time before I share the idea, Whitney. Have you ever looked at a magazine or read a magazine that’s been around, I remember first being introduced to it in the late ’90s? It’s called Adbusters. I haven’t picked up an issue in quite a while. Their ethos was creatively calling out advertising campaigns, marketing tactics, toxic capitalism to show us as consumers and citizens how we’re being manipulated and fucked with. Beyond that, also showing child labor, slavery, human rights violations. They’re trying to educate people of like, “This is how you’re being psychologically manipulated. This is what goes into the creation of the products you consume,” in cool and artistic ways. Adbusters is great. 

As you and I go forward selling people things, courses, etc., what if we start to examine the possibility of creating content and having a community that is dedicated to waking up to all of this stuff? I’m sure, not just Gen Z, there’s a lot of people who are looking at this entire system going, “This feels disgusting and I don’t want to participate anymore.” Where I’m at as a content creator not just individually but also with our brand, Wellevatr, is coming at this from a sense of like, “Why are we doing all of this?” That’s your favorite question. I’m endearing myself to that question too. Why? Do we want people to wake up? Do we want people that have a higher sense of self-awareness? We talk about that word all the time. What does that mean?  

To me, in the context of this discussion, if I feel like I’m waking up and I’m becoming more aware of how I’m being manipulated, coerced and molded to behave and act in a certain way in our societal structure. You’re becoming aware of that and other people are waking up. Maybe then there is a sense of support of like, “I’m not insane.” We look at this whole world that’s operating in this hierarchical, racist, sexist capitalist thing that is benefiting few people at the top and fucking everyone else to a degree. How do we navigate this? I’m not saying you and I do this but in the past to take creditI’ve sold people on things that I knew they didn’t need. Why? I needed to make money. I needed to get popular. I needed the followers and newsletters subscribers. 

I feel like the more that you and I blow this out and the more you and I dig into this collective wound, Whitney, the more that I want to think about maybe we shift the focus of what we’re doing to help ourselves and others navigate this gauntlet of manipulation because it’s not going away. If anything, we as human beings need to be more skillful at navigating it, realizing we’re being manipulated and being sold to. Also, realizing that our greatest fears and desires are being dangled in front of us to sell things. The question is, are we going to change the system of marketing? Part of my tack in this world, I don’t think it’s to change marketing. The real question is when we start waking up and realizing we don’t need most of the things we’ve been convinced we need, where do we go from there? 

A big part of this is recognizing that this is a work in progress. We don’t need to have it all figured out. I have my community, Beyond Measure, which I’ve been working on live. I started testing out Beyond Measure as this private invite-only community. I’ve felt so much pressure over that time that it’s been free to start charging for it. I recognize and I felt this before that I want to charge for it to cover my time and expenses. I will charge for it at some point. At least that’s my intention. The reward of Beyond Measure and the reason I’ve been running it for free for so long is it deeply satisfies me. I’ve lost track of how many live calls we do because I do them every week.  

The whole point of Beyond Measure is similar to what you’re describing, Jason. It’s giving people a safe place to discuss these things and recognize that their measurements do not matter. One of my members was talking about the struggle of eating. We’re having a discussion around consistency and I asked them what do you want to be more consistent with and why? This person said, “I want to be more consistent about eating well because I feel like I keep falling off and going in the cycle where I don’t eat as well as I want.” I thought, “That’s interesting. What if we examine that from a capitalist perspective? Why do you feel like the way that you’re eating is not right?” 

Many of us have been conditioned through marketing to believe that we’re not eating good enough, we’re not healthy enough and that whole idea of not-enoughness. If you consistently keep eating a certain way, feeling bad about it, change your eating habits and then go back to the way that you were before, maybe that’s just how you live. What if there’s nothing wrong with that cycle? Marketing has continued that we have to constantly strive to get better and then they convince us that if we don’t hit whatever that better standard is then we have to try again, then we’re a failure. 

MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

Discounts And Free Offers: The way capitalism works, there are very few winners at the top and a lot of people scrambling to survive at the bottom, usually working for the people at the top.

 

If I eat processed food, I failed and I have to try again and eat healthier. What if eating processed food is part of your life? Who is to say that eating processed food is that bad for you? If you are alive, then you’re probably eating good enough. That is a statement that will trigger a lot of people because you and I, Jason, have worked in the health and wellness field. I’m starting to examine all of that and thinking, what is with this cultural obsession for eating healthy? For what reason? 

It’s important for us to be aware of the ingredients that we’re putting in our body, but then it’s up to us as individuals to make the choice of what we put into our bodies. That is our choice. Marketing has convinced us that our choices are not good. When I’m examining somebody who’s continuously coming back to a choice that doesn’t align with all the health marketing, then I start to have these flags go up in my head. Maybe this person does not want to eat the way that marketing has told them they should be eating. Isn’t that okay if that person makes that decision to eat whatever the hell they want? Honestly, it’s their body. 

Marketing and our government have taken away our rights to decide what goes into our body. That’s scary to me too. We become slaves to the system if we’re always believing that what we’re choosing is not good enough. This is not about all of these definitions of health but I’m feeling more uncomfortable with that word healthy. Those words like clean eating are fucked up, to be honest. Labeling food as clean is bizarre but healthy means something different to almost every single person. Every individual has a different relationship to food and yet, most individuals feel like they’re not eating good enough. If they do feel like they’re eating good enough, a lot of those people think they’re up on their high horse and they’re bright and everybody else who doesn’t eat the way that they’re eating is wrong. That goes back to this pyramid we’re talking about here. 

It’s incredibly important that we examine marketing’s influence and the government’s influence on our eating choices, and come back to that concept of intuitive eating, and allowing ourselves, specifically from a mental health standpoint to eat whatever we want to eat. What is with this obsessive control and judgment over our food choices? It’s disturbing to me, specifically because I see people like my Beyond Measure member think that they’re a screw-up. After that person shared their feelings about food, they move somebody to tears who ended up having this breakdown in our group because they were triggered thinking about their own food issues. 

I started to look around in my membership group and recognized, “Holy shit. Everybody here feels like a screw-up because they’re not eating what is perceived to be the right way.” That makes me upset. Eat whatever the hell you want to eat, ultimately. It’s simple like that. You don’t have to defend your food choices. Sure, from a vegan and an environmentalist, that might seem completely anti to my belief systems. Who am I to say, what somebody else should eat? 

This goes back to the virtue conversation in some ways. We talked a lot in previous episodes about purity culture. We talked about this specifically with Nick Jaworski in our Shame Rules! episode. If you haven’t read yet, it’s a great one talking about the mechanics and the psychological manipulation tactics and some of the benefits of shame, sociologically speaking. In this context, it’s interesting because when you talk about clean eating or healthy, there’s subtle, subconscious implantation that implies that if this is clean food, then the other things you’re eating that are not clean are what then? Are they dirty foods? “I don’t want to be eating dirty foods because if I eat dirty foods then I’m polluting my body temple. If my body temple is polluted, I’m not going to be sexy and radiant and not attract the person I wanted. If I don’t attract the person I want, I’m going to be alone and I’m going to be this lonely old person who’s going to die alone.” 

This is a common thought pattern because if you insinuate something is healthy, clean or high vibe, that automatically implies the other stuff you’re consuming isn’t. We go back to the comparison and qualifying things in terms of their virtue and their value. Also, that these externalized things are who you are“So and so shops at Erewhon, they’re vegan, paleo, carnivore diet, they’re this or they’re that.” It’s feeding in the mentality that these externalized choices, these titles and the things we label ourselves reflect who we are as beings. 

It breaks my heart to hear about these experiences in your Beyond Measure group and it also isn’t surprising though. If you have had the messaging your entire life that what you’re doing is bad, it takes a long time to undo that level of programming. You can’t just flip a switch and be like, “I’m going to eat a pint of Haagen-Dazs and not feel guilty.” That takes time to undo decades of programming, telling you you’re a bad person because you sat on the couch and you ate a pint of Haagen-Dazs“You should have been doing something. You should have been working harder. You should have been building your business.” Eating that pint of ice cream, am I going to gain more weight? Therefore, if I gain more weight, I’m going to feel bad about myself because I don’t fit up to society’s beauty standards. 

It’s nefarious. The depth, level and multiple ways we are all being manipulated are frightening. We’re being manipulated, sold to, conditioned and indoctrinated. The question is what do we do about it? That getting into the psychological dynamics of how long we’ve been manipulated and the ways we’ve been manipulated is a good starting point. You can’t do anything unless you realize that you’re being manipulated. You’re being forced into a system that makes you feel not good enough so you keep buying things. If you have that realization then it’s like, “Wow.” 

As an example from my own lifeI’m obsessed with cars. Whitney knows this. I don’t find myself to be an obsessive and materialistic person but I love cars. It’s my thing. It’s my one materialistic vice. Why does that matter so much to me? Growing up, my father was obsessed with cars and my family was obsessed with cars. Whenever somebody brought a new car home, it was like, “Grandpa got his new Convertible. My dad got his new Cobra,” or whatever it was. It was a way to get attention, love and validation from my family. My obsession with wanting a new car all the time and getting cool cars, why is that? Because I have a psychological association of that’s how I got love, validation and attention in my family. 

We live in a society where breaking even is not considered success. Click To Tweet

Do I need those things to get love, attention and validation? I know I don’t but I’m still undoing that for myself. The car that I have is fine. I don’t need to run out and get a new car. I’m saying that once we’re aware of the reason this thing is motivating me and I’ve made myself on this hamster wheel trying to get, “It’s because I want love, validation, attention and acceptance.” How do I receive those things without thinking that I need an external thing to give to me? That’s the core of the work here. It’s not all the work but it’s the core of it. It’s chasing all these outside things, trying to get the love, attention, validation and significance we crave, when on a deep soul level, we know it’s bullshit. On a human materialist level, we’ve got to deal with years of programming and indoctrination and it is not easy work. 

There’s a lot to reflect on. You and I are still part of the system. Most people are. We are part of the system as influencers and content creators. We’re part of the systems as consumers, watchers, listeners and viewers. All of that is part of it. We benefit from you reading our show because then we can use you as a collective number to get sponsors so that we can monetize the show. The reason we monetize the show is because we love this show. We don’t do this show for money but money helps us invest in quality. You do need to have great microphones if you want to sound great. You do need to have great webcams. The money that Jason I have invested in far exceeds how much we’ve received and I would like to break even if not make more so that we can justify the time and energy that goes into this. I don’t think it takes you out of integrity with your work. We see this with nonprofit organizations. They still need to make some money to keep going even if they’re doing great work for the world. Money is not the problem. Awareness is the key here and coming down to motivation. 

I received a big compliment from this woman who interviewed me on her podcast. She said that she could tell from my content that I’m passionate about it. She could tell that I was doing it for the passion. That was nice to be reflected back to me because there’s the root reason why I have a podcast and I post online. I have also gone through phases of being swayed out of that passion and focus more on the external benefits. The validation, money and all of that stuff that you’re describing. It’s a natural human desire to want those things or at least it’s natural in our culture and has been for quite some time, historically. We shouldn’t feel shame in that behavior especially when we’re in a system that makes it easy for us to participate in that behavior. I don’t feel shame as an influencer. I know that I don’t want to be considered an influencer anymore because that word to me feels too associated with these things that we’re describing. It feels associated with manipulation, the need for external validation, money and all of those things. I don’t want to be motivated by that. 

What’s interesting is when I examine how uncomfortable it is for me to show up without makeup, edit our YouTube videos, look at myself and feel like I’m not pretty because I’m not wearing makeup or certain clothes or whatever. To fear other people’s judgments around my appearance is all uncomfortable. I continue doing it because I want it to become comfortable. I want to feel more comfortable and confident to show up as I am, however I am that day. I want to feel more comfortable and confident looking however I want to look and not how I feel like other people want me to look or how the status quo wants me to look. It is uncomfortable. The status quo often dominates because as human beings, it’s hard to do things differently outside of the majority. 

Being in the minority in general, we associate that with disadvantages and danger. We see examples of “minorities” all the time being judged, ostracized, hurt or even killed. As human beings, as a survival mechanism, we fit into the status quo to survive. That is a human experience. Deep down, some of us feel this pull and wonder, “Are we being in integrity with ourselves just to fit in?” That’s a big question to ask myself, yourself, Jason, and you as the reader. 

Also, defining integrity. This came up on this other podcast that I was on. We were discussing how people have different definitions of integrity. It’s not up to me to decide what’s integrity for you too. That’s the big thing. I’ve noticed myself judging other people and saying, “You’re out of integrity,” but who am I to know? Like with the food, who am I to know what feels good to you and what works well for your body? Who am I to judge your food choices? Honestly, I want to step back and not judge that anymore. It’s a big desire to control and ultimately be in power. 

MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

Discounts And Free Offers: In marketing, they try and make it seem like you can be one of those people if you work hard enough and do the right thing.

 

The reason that we’re judgmental is because other people’s decisions scare us. Other people’s decisions feel competitive and it sometimes shakes our sense of power. We want to be in power because we feel like that’s somehow tied to our survival but we can survive inequality. That’s more what I’m striving for. I don’t want to be perceived as better or worse than other people. I want to be seen as equal to others and I want others to feel equal to me. That’s another thing I’m examining in all of this. I’m not interested in positioning myself as better than somebody else and I don’t want them to feel better than me and thus, be worse than them. That’s messed up. Let’s just be equal. 

Coming back to this bundle thing, ultimately, the answer is moving forward, I want to do my best to be put in positions where people are equal and it’s not this like, “Who’s going to get more out of the situation?” If I can strive for equality, I might not always get it but I will do my best to champion myself and others. Equality is a core value of mine. It’s not like you can just snap your fingers and suddenly everything’s equal. It’s a work in progress and we may never fully get there like world peace. Not all of life is going to feel equal all of the time but we can set boundaries and be aware of when things don’t feel equal. If we have the opportunity, we can say no to things that don’t feel equal or we can ask for equality and maybe get it. When we have the opportunity, we can champion equality and we can create things with equality. 

What do we do moving forward? That’s going to be a work in progress for us to decide with projects like Beyond Measure for me and any great business that usually comes out of a need for something. What I see a need for through this conversation and our experiences is I would like to see a bundle sale that does two things. One, it honors, respects and holds every contributor in equality. If everybody makes the same amount of money and contributes relatively the same amount, awesome. Maybe the organizer gets a little bit more because they’re organizing it. That seems fair. That is to be expected. Two, the marketing of that sale is not about competition, judgment, making people feel better or worse than each other and manipulating the consumer to feel like they need to buy this to fix themselves. That’s another big thing I take issue with. 

I don’t believe anybody needs to fix themselves. People are inherently worthy. They might want to make adjustments and experiment. They might want some support, guidance and community. If that’s what they want, here it is for them. It’d be neat, Jason, if you and I curated a different experience to see how it went. Maybe it wouldn’t go that well. Oftentimes, what we imagined something to be is not the reality. You and I could certainly work on a bundle sale and recognize, “This is incredibly hard.” There’s always going to be some compromise. Who knows if we’ll move forward with that but I would certainly be willing to try. 

Doing something like that would reveal a lot about the people who would choose to participate. Not judging or saying anyone’s better or worse than another, but I have to assume that a lot of people are probably motivated by the competition. They’re motivated by the idea of making $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 and being at the top of the leaderboard. If that possibility is there, I bet we wouldn’t see those types of people. The question becomes, as we evolve and grow as individuals and business owners, do we even want those types of people to collaborate with? At this point, my answer is no. 

Gen Z is starting to really pay attention to how fake social media is. Click To Tweet

When you draw a line in the sand and you create a more equitable compensation structure, certain people will be like, “I’ve been waiting for this,” and probably other people that are like, “If I can’t be the winner or the leader, I’m not interested.” In summary, there is a title change coming with the level of awareness of people and how they’re being manipulated and have been manipulated. I would hope that there will be changes to the system that we’re in. In conclusion, I’m not an anti-capitalist and I’m not a socialist. There was a lot of room for people to shift from a greed and hoarding mentality to a generous supportive mentality in society. Part of the comparison trap is a scarcity of like, “There’s not enough to go around. There are only 100 of these left.” That’s another marketing tactic. “There are only 50 of these. You better get them all you can.” Why? Because that manipulation tactic works. Scarcity works but it’s also an illusion. It’s important to realize the illusions that are being created to sell us on things. This is an ongoing conversation. I’m sure there’s going to be more discussions around this in various permutations as we go on. 

In the meantime, we are always curious to know what you think, dear reader, so you can always shoot us a direct email at [email protected]. Whitney and I will respond directly to you. We always love to know your perspectives and thoughts on all of these subjects. You can follow us on all of the social media platforms. We post audio clips from our episodes, quotes and anything we’re up to. We’re especially active on our Instagram, which is @Wellevatr. We also have a great YouTube channel where you can see us, see our reactions to things and maybe some cameos. Whitney and I have a tradition. I feel we haven’t talked about this. When we wrap the episode, I open the door to my office and it’s always the same two animals that rush in. Whitney, why don’t we do this and give the readers a peek as to what happens when we wrap an episode. 

Do it now. What are you waiting for? 

Who do you think is going to be the first one? 

I don’t need to say it. You already know what I’m going to say. 

Here we go. 

I’ll say for the reader that it’s going to be his cat, Figaro, who’s black and white. He’s usually waiting right by the door. If not, he comes around the corner, which is not happening in real-time much to my surprise. Jason, maybe Figaro has an auditory cue. Maybe he knows your voice at the end of an episode. What if he knew the words that you use at the end and he’s confused? He’s sitting there thinking, “Dad hasn’t said bye for now,” or whatever else you say. 

Thanks for reading and bye for now. 

It’s a surprise. 

It’s the Rhino Cub. It’s usually not Bella. Usually, Bella’s the second but you jumped the line now. 

Where do you think Figaro is? That’s my big question. Is he lazy? 

MGU 223 | Discounts And Free Offers

Discounts And Free Offers: People in marketing act on the promise of the possibility that you can be one of those people at the top to sell you on things.

 

I made him a new nest in the guest bedroom and he’s probably in his nest. 

What exactly is the nest comprised of? 

It’s an old cat bed with a grama blanket on top of the cat bed. It’s tucked in the corner so he’s probably in his nest. 

This calls for one thing, Jason, which is that we end the show. You take a picture of him in the said nest and then we put it on our Instagram. How about we do that? I like that idea. Let’s make a visual for this to encourage people to come to our Instagram, @Wellevatr. It’s not because we want you to follow us for more numbers but simply because we want you to see what’s there and decide if it is something you want to follow. 

Until next time, signing off from Bella, Whitney and Jason. Thanks for reading. We always appreciate your love, comments and emails. We will be back with more episodes. We’ve got them every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Fridays are our guests. Take care!

 

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