Ancient Wisdom And Modern Hacks With Pedram Shojai

Founder of Well.org, documentary filmmaker, author – Pedram Shojai

How do you generate 125,000 email opt-ins in two weeks? The proper way to do news jacking and traffic jacking. The one strategy that pays off big time when asking people to promote your stuff. What to do when you feel that there’s too much competition and “it’s too late for me.” The difference between guided and mindful meditation. How to fix your calendar management issues.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• The Urban Monk

Check out Well.org for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire.  I'm Jamie Tardy and today on the show we have Pedram Shojai, hope I got that right.  All right, he has so many accreditations.  He's the founder of well.org, he also has produced two documentaries, one called Vitality and one called Origins.  He has an upcoming book called The Urban Monk.  I am so excited to have him on the show because he's friends with a thousand of my other friends.  Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Pedram:	Hey, great to be here.  Great to hang out with you.

Jaime:	Your lighting looks - we were just talking about this a second ago.  You're a movie guy.  Your background looks amazing, everything looks amazing.  Do you really pay attention to every single time you do video?

Pedram:	I don't pay attention to much, but my team does.  I kind of just stumble in the room and grab some tea and say, "Okay, what are we doing?"  Which is really working for me because my personality is that way.  But I have people that are great and have attention to detail and are there that help support that.  

Jaime:	See, I was really impressed.  You had your editor guy here and he was setting everything up and then you just sort of nonchalantly walked in.  So how big is your team and how did you even start in this industry?  Because I know you have so many businesses and things going on it's insane.

Pedram:	Yeah, you know, it's fun because I learned through Kung Fu to not freak out, right?  I learned - I was a monk for four years so I learned how to keep calm and stay collected and do what I'm doing one thing at a time.  So you know, I get about a dozen people over here and we got tons of contractors and all sorts of other people that show up during launch parties and all that.  We're fast and light, we got a great team.  Every single one of them knows my family and knows my baby and my baby knows them.  You know, we like to keep a family vibe around here and if it's worth doing it's worth doing right.  And it's worth spending time and investing in the people that you work with.  

	So it's great.  I haven't gotten to the point where this thing's gotten out of hand and we got a lot of capital kind of getting waved at us right now.  We've turned down a lot of money just to keep this the way we want it for now because it's fun.

Jaime:	I love that.  How do you go from monk to creating documentaries and bad ass business owner?

Pedram:	Well, you know, it was one of those things where I kind of got called out and I knew they were right, where they were like, "You don't belong up here."  I was in the Himalayas hanging out with some cool peeps and they were like, "You know this isn't home for you.  You gotta take this down to the world you come from and translate it into language that your people that you grew up with would understand because really the solutions are gonna come from the cities, the solutions are gonna come from the polluters, not the people that have run up to the Himalayas to hide in [inaudible]."  And so I knew they were right and I said, "All right, well, giddy up."  

	I came back - I was a doctor, so I came back, got into practice and saw how terrible it was.  And as I was trying to fix the world one person at a time I realized that the world would slide faster than I could fix it in that capacity and that's why I got into film and television and just the propulsion of message to help people really not need me as a physician and just get out ahead of it.  And now, man, I'm all over the place.  We're doing stuff on conscious capitalism, we're doing stuff on environmental topics.  I'm just going after anything that will make the world a better place.

Jaime:	How do you take on something so huge like that to go from doctor one-to-one to producer of huge documentaries that - did you have experience in that beforehand?  That's a huge vision to sort of start down.

Pedram:	Yeah, I kind of followed the bread crumbs, right?  I mean, it was still just like a cold plunge and it was scary at the time, but the way the circumstances lined up made it way less scary because I had done this three DVD set with this group and in that editing - because it was this stuff called Qigong, which is Chinese energy work.  And in the editing process - because they didn't know what the hell I was doing, right?  And they were like, "Okay, so what is this and when do you cut out?"  I sat in the edit suites for a long time.  And so I just picked it up and then they said, "Hey, we'd like to do a documentary and what would you do?  We like you as a personality."  

	And so we came up with an idea and we started shooting it.  And then we decided to part ways because we disagreed on the direction of the movie.  They kind of wanted to go conspiracy theory stuff and I'm like, "Man, I just need people to eat vegetables.  You don't get what this healthcare crisis is about.  It's a lifestyle thing."  And so I bought the rights and I had a movie on my hands and I didn't know how to make a movie.  So I started making some phone calls and you get pretty resourceful when it's on the line.  And so it was a steep learning curve with the first movie, but we did it and it did really well and it's still doing well and it's all over the world.  

	And then by the second go round, I knew who to call and knew how to work with the right people and I got out of the habit of trying to do everything myself.  And the second movie is incredible and it's just gone live this month all over the U.S.  And the next one's gonna be even better, right?  So you just pay attention and you get good at what you're doing and you are methodical enough to make sure that what you do is worth doing.

Jaime:	Now is the - are the documentaries mostly just for legacy?  Or do you have a business model around those too?

Pedram:	Oh, no, we have a great business model.  We've monetized really well around it.  My first documentary, it was designed to help change healthcare, but that's not like a distribution place.  Everyone's like, "Get out of here kid."  And so I said, "All right.  I'm gonna go learn how to do the internet."  And so in the first two weeks I got 125,000 emails that subscribed and a few hundred thousand - yeah, welcome to my life, right?  Suddenly I had this huge email list because I did a free screening model and I had all these people opting in to see the movie and once they've seen the movie they're like, "Hey, wow, what else do you got?"  

	So we had all sorts of programs and supportive stuff that was built well and built with integrity to support the people that were motivated by the movie and then money starts raining, right?  And so then in two weeks we had, I think about 400,000 opt-ins, emails that came in on our second movie.  And, yeah, so I've been teaching filmmakers how to do this because the middle man doesn't really do much anymore.  And so you could be the master of your own universe and have your own huge online platform that's based on the message that you are willing to tell in your movie.

Jaime:	That's where always the disconnect has been.  You're like, "Oh, I can create a movie but no one will ever see it."  Or you sell your soul and you have somebody with distribution and then that works out.  How the heck do you get 125,000 - I get the free model, but where did the traffic come from?  Was it paid?  Like how did that work?

Pedram:	Great question.  Affiliate.  So make a lot of friends and support them back and it helps to make a good movie.  And so you make a good movie and people are like, "Yeah, okay, I'll support that."  And we had optimized the landing page, I don't know how internet?

Jaime:	Oh, super.

Pedram:	"savvy.  Yeah, yeah, so we optimized the landing page.  We were 68 percent opt-in rate on the page.  And everyone's looking at me like they thought I was lying.  I'm like, "Dude, I know math.  Look at this thing."  And so it was just a really simple opt-in page for an awesome movie and then a bunch of people who had just seen that free movie bought DVDs of that movie and then bought the Deeper Dive kit and the Lifestyle Program and all the wonderful things that I created that came flying out of me because I've been doing this for years to support that.  And people started sharing.  

	I mean, for my second movie we had - in those two weeks we had 260,000 shares and we optimized - and I put like 30, 40 grand into ads by the second movie, but we optimized for social action for shares.  And it just - boom.  I had people from all walks of life calling me saying, "Dude, I was just recommended your movie by like nine people I know."  And I'm like, "All right.  All right.  That's a win in my book.  Yeah, that totally works."

Jaime:	So let's talk about that because I have friends that had viral videos on YouTube.  They wrote a book called The Viral Video Manifesto.  Because this sounds quite viral, right?  If people wanna share it that much that's amazing.  Did you know what you had before then?  Because, no offense, a lot of documentaries are like eh, not that great of either USP or premise or something.  Most documentaries would not do 125,000 emails.

Pedram:	Nope.  Nope, let alone 400,000.  And our next one's gonna do over a million because I already - I've got a model down.  We're actually teaching this.  I got together with Jeff Hayes and Nick Polizzi to teach because so many people are like, "What the hell are you guys doing?"  

Jaime:	Tell me more.  I wanna know.
Pedram:	Well, so the first thing is, is it a conversation that is timely enough and important enough to have?  And then at that point start looking.  What's the global search rank on this topic?  What kind of eyeballs are already searching for these subjects?  Where is the conversation at?  What can you do to add to the conversation?  Don't waste your time or anyone else's time.  So bring that to the party.  Understand who's looking, why they're looking, and what you can do about it.  

	And then it helps to include people that have very large mailing lists in the movie.  Don't be a complete sellout, but bring people that have large mailing lists.  I made a lot of partnerships with dot orgs and was very brand aligned with a lot of the initiatives that they were behind and I supported them.  And so it's a lot of horse trading, right?  It's a lot of making sure that enough fire power comes to the party and making sure that you are talking about topics that are interesting and people are - that you check the sentiment cloud in the universe.  

	And then you stay agile and make sure that your conversation stays timely and relevant.  Then when it's time to release you do so by watching what else is trending and make sure that your news jacking and traffic jacking anywhere you can.  So there's a lot of tactics that go into it.  It's not like, "Oh, what a lucky asshole, right?"  That's just not how that works.  But look, I got a very large email list, a very respectable business out of making movies that are designed to make the world a better place.  So I get to be a good guy and feed my family, right?  It's great.  It's a really good feeling.

Jaime:	How do you ask people, especially like affiliate stuff, was it just the affiliate on selling the movie?  Because that ask is really hard for people in general to go like, "Okay, how do I ask someone to promote this even though they might not get a lot out of it?"  Especially with large email lists.

Pedram:	Yeah, there's two ways around that - not around that, but going about that.  The first one is, my strategy in everything is always pay it forward.  Before this movie launched I had sent clicks into pretty much anything that was supportable to wholeheartedly support my friends and their initiatives.  So people just owed me back.  So it's nice to be in a position where that's the case because you've paid it forward.  And that helps.  The other part of that that helps is learning and testing and getting some good EPCs so that you know your affiliates can at least clear $1.00 EPC.  But for this next project we're already testing on cold traffic at about $2.00 EPC for a movie that's amazing, right?  

	For a make money thing you gotta do way better for people, but for a movie that isn't a list burner it's great.  And so that's really what it boils down to is no one's gonna be like, "I hate you so-and-so for recommending this movie to me."  It's like, "Wow, thank you.  That was a really great" - I got so many thank you's to my affiliates.  My affiliates kept saying, "Hey, dude, I'll send again.  That's fine because my list loves this."  It's like content marketing for them and it's value.  Yeah, yeah.  And so it goes back to make good content, right?

Jaime:	It's a win-win for everybody and everybody will wanna share.

Pedram:	That's it.

Jaime:	Okay, what about news jacking and stuff like that too?  Because everybody gets excited over that, it sounds really awesome, but it seems harder to do.  So do you have any tactics on doing this?

Pedram:	Well, you could look at the big calendar items and go about that.  We strategically looked at - so when we released this movie last November, we very specifically had our Green Friday initiative to take back Black Friday and really went in and started then finding all these Walmart stampede stories and all this idiotic stuff that happens and being like, everything that's wrong with the world solution, right?  And so just look at the big calendar.  It's really hard to news jack on a once a year movie launch, right?  But you can kind of time it around something and then use that to kind of stoke a fire.

Jaime:	Okay, and does it work really well for you?  I mean, I know a lot of people - I've gotten a lot of press and it doesn't convert nearly as well as you would hope.  Like I remember being on CNN going like, "Oh."  And then I was like, "Oh."  Yeah.

Pedram:	No, you know, it's more tapping into the sentiment cloud of the Facebook universe and the blogosphere more than - look, right now I gotta say I have some really good press happening for my next book and so I'm lucky because a lot of my friends say, "It's never worked and there's never been ROI on PR," or any of this for a lot of people I know.  But so far, so good.  I have some really good PR.  Lucky me, right?  But I wasn't banking on that.  That was just kind of like play money to see if anything came of it.  But on Facebook - you know what's trending on Facebook.  You know the stuff that's showing up on all your friend's pages and the stuff that people are talking about and sharing where the sentiment is there.  

	So that's much more of what I'm talking about than press releases and getting media because, look, media is an interesting place, and it's a dying behemoth, and it is changing and struggling and finding all sorts of pain points for it can't even monetize.  And so it's - I wouldn't put too many of your eggs in that basket because the new world is already here and it's about you having your own videos on your own platform to get your own mailing lists and create your own online business that is lucrative and the middle men are not necessarily gate guarding your stuff.  

	So I'm very much a free internet guy and I really think that the internet is the way forward and the set-top boxes and all the cool stuff that's happening right now.  Man, it's changed the game.  It's way bigger than the printing press and all the things that innovated back in the day.  I don't think we're - the magnitude of what's happening right now is so big that it's hard to recognize it, but we're in the middle of a very big renaissance.

Jaime:	See, I agree a thousand times over.  Tell me, though, a lot of people will be like, "Isn't it too late for me?"  There's so much information out there, there's so many movies, there's so many whatever, isn't it too much competition now?  Is it too late?

Pedram:	I mean, I just got in a couple years ago and I never went to film school, right?  What it's too late for is what happened yesterday, so stay ahead.  Stay ahead of the curve, understand what is being said and understand where the conversation has stopped and what you can contribute to the ongoing dialogue that will never stop and contribute to this kind of moving, intellectual stimulation that is caressing humanity along and you're never gonna be outdated, right?  So I just don't like - I like innovation and I like creativity and I think a lot of people get stuck there are just trying to emulate what Brendon Burchard did last year type of thing and that's not - yeah, it might be too late for that.  But Brendon's not doing what he did last year either.

Jaime:	Exactly.  See, this is what I think.  That's why I like having you on, or somebody that's doing it right now on, to be like, "Oh, by the way, this is sort of the thing," instead of listening to the guy from a long time ago going, "This my method and this is what I teach."  Not saying it's Brendon, but you know what I mean.  One of those things of going, "No, no, no, what is working right now for people because we change so ridiculously fast and none of that even matters anymore."  No offense, but, you know what I mean?

Pedram:	Well, yeah, you got - what is it?  Salvador Dali said know the rules of the - like a pro so you could break them, right?  And so, look, Brendon innovates all the time, that's why I like Brendon, right?  And so you need to understand.  You need to understand what EPCs are, you need to understand how funnels work and all that kind of stuff that makes this machinery work.  But then rethink your pages, but then rethink your language, but then long form sales letters were for people that were sick and were buying things back in the day and things have changed dramatically.  

	And so you should go see what millennial sites look like right now.  And millennials are gonna be more than 50 percent of the workforce in the next few years and they could give a damn about long form sales letters.  And so there's just a lot of people making a lot of money teaching antiquated stuff and because newbies don't know the difference.  They're just writing checks to these people that are, I think, out of integrity.

Jaime:	Yeah, I agree a thousand times over.  And that's the hard thing, though, is that when you don't know that and you're new, you don't know that people are out of integrity or not.  They just put on a happy face as if everything is wonderful.  And you need to really learn to trust people online, but can you really trust anyone online anyway because they only show you what they wanna show you, right?

Pedram:	That's it.

Jaime:	I think with the livestream and stuff like that - and we only go live when we're ready to go live, but still with livestreaming stuff it might show us a little bit more behind the scenes what you're really like instead of then this cut 183 looks perfect and then that's it.

Pedram:	Yep.  And it's a big thing.  I mean, we're seeing this with, what is it?  That Instagram star that just got?

Jaime:	Oh, yeah.

Pedram:	Yeah, there's just all sorts of crap happening because it's like this snapshot of my life that I need you to see is so inconsistent with the rest of my life that I'm a complete phony.  That's how a lot of these people feel, right?  And so the challenge of the new internet is gonna be transparency.  And that's why people like reality TV, but that's not actually reality either, right.

Jaime:	Yeah, exactly.  Oh, my god.  I know that.

Pedram:	So people just want authentic connection.  People want people to relate to and be with.  And so is that ever too late to connect with another human being'  I think that's the point is if you can be yourself and serve people in a way that brings value to their lives, that will never expire because people are lonely and people are needing connection and people want to relate to something.  

	And let's face it, the TV's crap.  You go home and people are like channel surfing or fighting about what to watch on Netflix with their spouse every night.  It just gets to the point where it's like what's the answer?  And the answer is, I wanna learn about what I wanna learn about.  I wanna be entertained the way I wanna be entertained and so where is that for them on YouTube?  Where is that for them on Vimeo?  Where is that for them on even Hulu and some of these other channels that are starting to swap up content because they need more and more for people that are looking for it?

Jaime:	I think it's gonna change so much in the next ten years, which I'm really excited about.  I really hope that the - when we're looking at the people that aren't in integrity, the ones that are, are the ones that rise to the top so that way we do have a different kind of industry in the next ten years instead of what we have now.

Pedram:	Well, I think the - I don't know if you can cuss on this, but I think the douchebags are always gonna be there, right?  

Jaime:	Of course.

Pedram:	They always follow greatness, they always follow what good people are doing so you always have to be aware of parasites.  That's just the way the world - and I don't make the rules.  So you just have to have a good filter to understand who's talking the right stuff, who's coming from the heart, who's doing real stuff and wants to just have an honest business, right?  The Buddha calls it right livelihood, right?  And being able to see that and trust that person versus someone that's just like a little too polished and saying all the right things and hitting you on your emotional pain points, but there's something creepy about them.  

	And so that's a skill that we all need to learn.  Man, I've spent so much money on these consultants that wasted my time and money because I just didn't know how to be discerning enough yet, right? 

Jaime:	So I've been told that I'm not discerning enough.  So how did you become better?  Because I'm like, "I love everyone."  And [inaudible] you're not discerning enough and I was like, "I know."

Pedram:	Yeah, it's tough.  It's tough.  Yeah, I'm like a Labrador.  I just walk up and wag my tail at everyone.  In a cocktail party or something it's just when people are way to self-referential or if you just feel like they just wanna keep angling back to what they want from you or drive the conversation.  If you can't relax with somebody and just enjoy a good time, that to me is a - if I can't hang out with someone socially there's something wrong, right?  It's like, "Dude, relax.  What do you want from me?"  

	And then when you just start looking at people's sales pages and stuff like that and just reading their text and just kind of watching their style, you just gotta step back for a second and be like, "What is that?"  Or the person that creates this artificial scarcity to push you into buying their stuff and be like, "I've only got one of these left."  You're like, "Come on.  It's an online digital program."

Jaime:	Exactly.

Pedram:	Right?

Jaime:	Exactly.  Okay, that was actually really helpful.  I was chatting with Able, our mutual friend, about this too and he was trying to give me tactics and - I'm like, "It's so sad that in this day and age, oh, I have to learn how to be more discerning."  I guess you had to way back then, too, I can't really say anything having to do with that.

Pedram:	It's just different.

Jaime:	But I wanna circle it around because I wanna talk about your book because I know we only have so much time left.  The fact that you were a monk beforehand is amazing and so tell me a little bit about this upcoming book and what's in it.

Pedram:	So when I came back down - I was a monk for four years, I came back, I started practicing in oriental medicine.  And I spent a lot of time working with really busy Angelenos in Los Angeles and just trying to get them to go do what I did.  And I realized very quickly that that's impossible.  No one has time to do what I did.  They're late for soccer practice and their conference went late and their stupid car didn't start this morning and all this stuff that happens in life, right?  

	And so I quickly realized that the aspirational stuff that people want out of their spirituality and personal growth is inconsistent with the lifestyle they live.  And so the more I looked at it, the more I realized that the stuff that I studied was under an [inaudible] lineage, right?  So it's like, "Hey, move up to the mountains, contemplate your navel, pray to God, shave your head, hang out, and there's food at noon."  Right?  That's like vacation.  That's decadent.  It's like Disneyland compared to most of our lives down here.  I run multiple companies and I got kids and it's busy, right?  

	And so I realized that there was a whole different set of rules for householders and had I elected to become a householder to live in the world, to be of the world.  And so how do I stop and just catch my breath and chill out in between meetings?  How do I stretch at my standing desk and not get crunchy all day?  How do I hack my sleep so tomorrow's better and I don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking about all the to-dos I didn't get to do.  

	And so that became the birth of The Urban Monk.  So this book's been writing for ten years in my head and it's great.  It's been really fun because it's really a practical guide to living in the modern world and applying ancient wisdom and modern hacks in a way that can be supportive of someone who doesn't have the luxury of running for the hills, right?  Because we don't.  We have a life here.  We gotta live in it.

Jaime:	I remember starting to learn about meditation when I had a small baby and I was like, "This is not meant for me.  I'm pretty sure that I can't get away.  There's no quiet."  I had a colicky baby I should say, too, like super colicky.  And I remember being like, "Okay, this sounds amazing and I really wanna go down this path."  And I did it anyway or I tried to do it.  But it is, it's really difficult to manage it all and the fact that you can actually give us things that are tried and true around here.  What's one thing - if you had to just say one thing that people could shift from this interview before your book comes out, what would it be?

Pedram:	Yeah, well, I think a lot of people in the West also have calendar management issues.  So if I don't put in my self-care into my calendar and then the guys call and they're like, "Hey, you wanna go get a drink and do X, Y, and Z?" you're like, "Oh, sure.  Tuesday's open."  You forgot that you actually said you were going to the gym, you forgot that you had actually told your wife that you were gonna go to a movie with her.  You don't put those things in, you're in trouble.  Let alone the yoga, let alone the stuff that you need to do for yourself.  

	So what I like to tell people to do is put in a timer every 25 minutes for a five minute break.  And then take a few breaths, do ten pushups, ten jumping jacks, ten something, stretch out, get some water, run to the bathroom, then get back in it.  And then throughout the day you've had plenty of movement and plenty of little meditation breaks to bring in awareness and mindfulness.  Because I just think meditation's been taught all wrong in the West, too.  It's like, "I'm gonna wait until I have 100 open windows and then I'm gonna double click on the meditation icon and I'm gonna chill out."  And that's just not how that works, right?  

	What you need to do is put meditation in the operating system to be like, "Dude, you've got too many open windows.  Save, close, save, close, save, close.  This is what we're working on right now.  Why did you just open that window?  Come back.  Finish this.  Great.  Now go play"  Right?  And so the entire orientation has been scrambled and misunderstood and so I'm taking a stand for correcting that because I've seen hundreds of thousands of people suffering with this in the West and that's not what meditation is.  Meditation is like a mindfulness virus checker that should be running all the time so when your baby's crying, you're breathing and soothing her, and not thinking, "I should be cross-legged and wearing my lululemon or else this isn't gonna work."  Right?

Jaime:	Exactly.  But it's so hard to actually bring that up while - thinking about when my baby was colicky.  I mean, I remember trying to be like, "Hmm, hmm, hmm," you know what I mean?  And try and get into the zone or whatever you wanna say.  And it's so hard in daily life because everything is all over the place.  How do you cultivate that constant reminder?

Pedram:	Two pieces to that.  One is build in some time every day, five, 10, 20, minutes, whatever you can afford, take TV out of your life and you'll get a lot back, right, to actually practice meditation, to build that cushion, so that you actually have the capacity to do that when it hits the fan.  Because when you need the meditation is when it's too late to practice oftentimes.  And so getting a little bit of cushion built in so you have some vitality, you have some reserves to be able to then have a force field and be like, "Okay, the baby's crying.  I'm not gonna freak out.  Let's go outside, let's do what we do and do that."  That's part of it.  

	And then the other part of it is to remember to breathe when you're in that moment and to remind yourself because that mindfulness picks up and you're like, "Oh, oh, this is the part where I am feeling sorry for myself and blaming my spouse or blaming the kid and ba, ba, ba, ba, ba."  Just go down the line turning it into a blame game, anger, bitch fest in your mind, when what you really need to do is just give that baby love and maybe some Gripe Water or soothe her or whatever it is, right?  

	And so again, she pulls you out of that moment, but she is your trigger and so when she cries, what you do is you create that as a trigger to remember that this is my meditation.  This is my challenge, this is my work, this is my experience, and this is my learning lesson for right now.  

Jaime:	I love that.  So both kids were colicky.  First kid didn't do that, second kid got way better.  Had to, right?  Otherwise I would have gone insane.  Quick question about meditation.  I do a lot of guided meditations, is that worse?  I guess I don't wanna rank them, but you know what I mean?  Should doing mindfulness meditation or whatever those five or ten minutes are, be without the guided meditation walking you through it?  Should it be silence?  Tell us what the most bang for out buck we can get in those five to ten minutes.

Pedram:	Yeah, well, I think that it's like working on your free throw versus your three point shot and they're all different skills.  So guided meditation will help build out a reserve so that you can focus in on things and get way more clarity.  I think guided meditation helps you manifest things in life and if you have like a financial plan and you see it through, the guided meditation really helps with that.  The mindfulness meditation also is a very different skill set, which allows for you to perceive what's happening and then your responses to those stimuli so that then you then can kind of create some agility and realize that you don't necessarily need to react every time.  

	So I think working on the different types - I like mantra meditation, I like prayer, I like a lot of different things and I teach a variety of them because I think that they're all skills, like could you just eat with a fork or do you also know how to eat with a spoon or a knife?  And so the answer is you should probably know how to use all of them so you have the versatility when you sit down at the table.  So I guess my not so easy answer to that question is learn them all so that you can call on the right tool when it's time for the right job.

Jaime:	Yeah, best answer ever.  I was always thinking like prioritizing which one is better and now you just answered that perfectly.  Thank you so much.  I really appreciate that.

Pedram:	You're very welcome, yeah.

Jaime:	I know we have to start wrapping up because I know you have a brand new baby, 11 days old, that you need to get back to also, but what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forwards toward their goal of a million?

Pedram:	If your goal is a million bucks then you've gotta look at where your biggest bang for your buck is and look at your calendar and look at all of the items and ask, "Is this moving me towards this goal?  Or is this wasting my time?"  Because most of us will spend a majority of our time doing other things that don't necessarily move us to the goal.  So time is like your most valuable asset and tapping into time and using it for creativity, to use your guided visualization and all these types of things to actually manifest that goal and take the actionable steps to get there.  That is easy enough to do when you haven't filled your dance card with a bunch of BS, right?  

	So really reconcile your calendar and ask every single item whether it's moving you in the right direction or distracting you.  And that in and of itself is a very powerful means to getting to the promised land.

Jaime:	The promised land, I love that.  So tell us more where we can find you.  I know you said you had a media academy and stuff like that and also your upcoming book, give us all the goods on that.

Pedram:	Yeah, cool.  Cool.  So my home is well.org.  That's the baby I founded a few years ago and it's great.  It's fun.  We do media training for people who wanna get their businesses going and kind of get out of this, I'm gonna pay a million consultants to do stuff for me.  You need to know the game.  So that's media.well.org.  And then the new book is called The Urban Monk, theurbanmonk.com and I have a bunch of awesome meditations and Tai Chi and a bunch of free giveaways just because it's what I do.  Go check it out, help yourself.  Get out of your own way because the world needs you to shine.  I love what I do.  It's really fun.

Jaime:	I can tell.  Oh, my gosh.  Thank you so much.  It's so nice to finally meet you because I know I've heard your name about a thousand times before this interview.  Thank you so much for coming on today.

Pedram:	Thanks for having me.  This has been great.  Thank you.

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: Calendar Management, Email List, email marketing, email marketing tip, Email Optin, millionaire interview, News Jacking, Pedram Shojai, Time Management, Traffic Jacking

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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