Episode 67: How You Be Influences What You Do With Townsend Wardlaw

 

Have you ever considered how you “be” directly influences all that you “do”?

It’s an interesting concept – one that requires some serious brain yoga to wrap your head around.

See, if you follow today’s guest’s approach, you have the capacity to create every moment in your life. How you show up in life (how you “be”) influences everything.

In this episode, Stu is joined by Life Transformation Architect, Townsend Wardlaw, to share how the book, The Ultimate Coach, inspired him.

Extending that to others, Townsend shares his experiences undergoing some of the transformative thinking he has created for himself and those with whom he works over time.

Find inspiration from this conversation and witness as you realize how each of us holds within the power to experience Peace, Freedom, and Connection.

Join Townsend to not miss out!

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Listen to the podcast here:

How You Be Influences What You Do With Townsend Wardlaw

How Everyone Has The Capacity For Infinite Creation

My guest today is Townsend Wardlaw. He and I go way back. I’ve worked with him as well  and he is an amazing human being. Townsend’s approach to life is to take everything from the position of “being” and how you “be” is what you can create.

This is a different episode for sure and I’m excited for you to have access to it. If you have one takeaway from this show, it is to purchase a book called The Ultimate Coach, and read it from the perspective of how it relates to you and your “being” than just as another biography.

I have an offer at the end for all of you who are interested and Townsend does as well but if you were to take away one thing, it’s to read this book and approach it from a different perspective that it’s not just a biography or history of some guy who does some amazing things. If you come at it from the perspective of being who you need to be to engage with this different way of thinking, it can change your life.

I encourage you to absorb this episode in full. It’s an amazing story. It’s one of the thousands of amazing stories that Townsend has shared with me over the years.

Go get that book.

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Townsend, how are you?

I’m amazing.

As always, it’s so great to talk with you and have you on the show. I know you’ve got a lot going on and I’m super excited to share all of that with my audience.

I could spend the next hour getting a partial catch-up, all the amazing stuff that has happened and miracles that have been created. Things are moving fast.

It’s always like that when I talk with you. You’re always on the move and have some new, amazing things brewing. I’m super excited to hear about it. Tell me a little bit about it.

I don’t know if I can do that in abstraction. I probably should back up and start from the baseline of November 11th, 2021. It was the date that I formally launched PFC. It’s an acronym that stands for Peace, Freedom and Connection. Those three words have been in my mind and consciousness for a while.

I started working with a coach that’s in Mesa, Arizona. His name is Steve Hardison. I mentioned his name because he put out a book. It’s not just any book. I want to talk about the book a little bit. Hopefully, your audience will get some paper and a pen out and start drawing lines. Maybe, we’ll get a Venn diagram going on here.

On Thanksgiving 2021, a book came out. It’s called The Ultimate Coach. Steve Hardison, out of Mesa, Arizona, has the website and is known as The Ultimate Coach. Coaching gets a lot of air time. There are lots of coaches out there. Talking about what’s Steve Hardison in life coaching would be like saying, “Michael Jordan plays basketball.” It’s a whole different level. I’ve been working with Steve for months.

We have an obsession as a culture of the world with doing.

Back in 2013, a gentleman by the name of Alan Thompson was working with Steve Hardison. He said, “You should write a book.” Steve Hardison said, “I’m not writing nor interested in writing a book.” Alan asks, “Why?” He goes, “The world doesn’t need a book on Steve Hardison. The only book I would ever write is a book on being and you can’t write a book on being.” Your audience is going, “Here’s another concept I got to write down.”

Steve Hardison coaches on and lives in the world of being. There are a lot of folks in the world that coach on or consult on doing. “What do we need to do? What’s the right process? What’s the right diet? What’s the right set of pickup lines?” Those are all things that occur in the world of doing. Steve Hardison exists in the world of our being creates our doing. Being is a way of talking about everything that creates Townsend, Stu or anybody. It’s who we are being in a certain situation.

You know how two people go see a movie and one of them goes, “That one sucked. That was sad. I was crying.” The other one goes, “It was amazing. It was a comedy.” It’s the same reality but two different beings went to see that movie. Somebody would say, “They have different tastes.” That can be part of being too. It could also be culture, upbringing, multigenerational things or DNA but fundamentally, the most powerful level of transformation occurs when we shift our being.

Most of us go around life asking the question, “What do we need to do differently here? What do we need to do more or do less of?” Steve asked the question, “Who would you need to be to do these things you say you want to do? How could you shift your being?” This is all going to culminate in imitation for your audience because there’s something powerful here that what’s interesting has nothing to do with Townsend Wardlaw. People are going to freak out like, “Why is he promoting this thing that’s not even him?” I’m not promoting anything.

In 2013, Alan D. Thompson was working with Steve and said, “Let’s do a book.” For the next five years, he bugged Steve because the work he got to experience with Steve was incredible. If you look up Alan D. Thompson, he’s an incredible dude that lives in Australia. He’s a researcher and also coaches exceptionally talented individuals like geniuses, savants and world-class athletes, people who are in the top 10% of intellect or physical ability.

He has this specialty practice from adults down to children. You got a ten-year-old kid who’s on the level of Einstein. That person needs somebody to help him exist in the world because they don’t relate to the world. That’s what he does. He’s saying, “We’ve got to have this book.” Steve’s saying, “We’re not going to have a book.”

In 2019, Alan called Steve up. They’d been interacting all along. He says, “I had a dream that the universe spoke to me and said, ‘You got to write this book. You need to talk Steve into it.’ That’s why I’m calling.” Steve’s like, “I told you. We’re not doing a book. We don’t get being.” Alan said, “I got an idea. Here’s the plan. I’m going to write the book. I’ll do all the work and invest all the time. If in the end, it doesn’t meet your needs or you don’t like it, we’ll throw it away. I’ll give you the thumb drives. We’ll be done.”

Pause there for a second. Some dude is willing to write a book and invest thousands of hours to create something that may never see the light of day. Right away, there’s like, “This is a book I might want to read.” He spends the next two years, thousands of hours, doing research, interviewing all of Steve’s clients, collecting these stories, going through memorabilia and childhood records.

Somewhere along the way, Steve’s wife gets involved. She’s not just any old schlub. Amy Hardison herself is a published author. She has put together a couple of books. She’s an Old Testament scholar. She stops what she’s doing and says, “I’m going to spend all my energy to help write this book.” It’s 2020 and Alan and Amy are working on this book.

I got to meet Alan, so this is fresh and special for me. Alan is this chill guy with an Australian accent who’s a genius already and works with geniuses. He spent two years of his life for free, no pay and no guarantee of anything on the other side, to bring this book into the world about this guy, Steve Hardison. Something’s going on. I encourage anybody reading to go to TheUltimateCoach.com and start reading about Steve Hardison. Look at his testimonial page and what is required to work with this guy. This will blow your mind.

He’s not a coach that you get on a Zoom call and chat for a little bit. He’s a coach where you sign up, write a big check for a year commitment or more and fly to Arizona every two weeks. He only coaches in person in his home. Every two weeks, I get on a plane and fly to Arizona. There’s something about this guy. He doesn’t want a book written about him. You can’t find stuff on social media about him. He doesn’t advertise or do any of that stuff. He’s coaching some of the most famous people in the world. Alan wants to write a book, so Steve goes, “Fine but if I don’t like it, we’re throwing it away.”

On Thanksgiving 2021, the world was treated to the release of The Ultimate Coach. It’s a book about being. It is the most extraordinary book I’ve ever read. I’ve read advanced copies of the book when I was getting some of the manuscripts along the way. I have a little small quote there. I was interviewed for the book. My wife, Luisa, has a vignette in the book. There’s a story she tells. The book is a collection of stories about his life, his clients, client experiences and quotes about him. There’s so much stuff in this book. It’s about 500 pages. The original manuscript was 1,000 pages.

The truth is if you go after peace, freedom, and connection, all the other stuff flows.

When you get the book, there are no endorsements. You know how when you get a book, it’s like, “You got to read this book,” it’s some famous person? They don’t exist on this. People are going to get something out of this. There are no convincing people to do it. It is not a book about Steve Hardison. That’s going to sound strange because when you go check it out, it’s a biography of Steve Hardison and there’s a guy in the book called Steve Hardison.

There’s a foreword by Iyanla Vanzant, who’s a very prominent author, speaker and spiritual leader in the African American community and then there’s another foreword from Steve. Steve says, “I want you to read this book like you’ve never read a book before. Don’t read this book about me. Read this book about yourself. Read this book and ask the question, ‘Who would I need to be doing the things that this guy Steve Hardison’s doing in the book and having people saying what they’re saying about Steve Hardison in the book?’”

This book has been only in the world and the stuff that’s coming in from all over the world like people getting this book, being gifted this book and encouraged to read this book from a place of, “Who would I need to be,” not by the story and be impressed by Steve Hardison but see about themselves and how the book is creating miracles in people’s lives. There’s a Facebook group out there about this. There are all sorts of chatter on socials. I’ve probably recommended and enrolled about 100 people into reading this book. It’s not about selling books. It’s about helping people see a fundamentally different way of approaching the world.

My favorite review of all the reviews on Amazon is a one-star review of some guys out there going, “What is this junk? I read the book and not a single thing in here tells me what I should do.” It’s like, “There is nothing there that tells you what to do. This is about being.” Most people can’t even understand the concept of being versus doing. I promise you that when you read this book, you’ll understand being. This book will help you distinguish being from everything else. I say distinguish to not teach you about it because being is already within us.

It’s not something I can say, “Let me teach you about being,” because that would be doing. Being is so powerful yet so seemingly elusive. It must be discovered from within. You can’t go find it without. This book will help and allow anybody who reads it to distinguish being and then apply being in their life to create change however they want.

The changes and growth that can be created with being will blow people’s minds. More and more, you’ll see stories out there when you go on the Facebook page of people that have read this book and what’s occurred for them. It’s blowing my mind. That’s not even what happened. That’s Steve Hardison’s being and setting up the fact that I fly to Phoenix every two weeks.

It sounds to me that the book almost exists in this space of being as well, where if it’s not telling you what to do, it’s framing this ability that we all have. I’m being. You’re being. Everything around us is being. We have the opportunity to influence, change or accept the way that we’re being but there’s a relationship there. It’s cool how the book sits in that existence as well. There is that default that most people fall into, which is, “What do I need to do next?” I fall into it all the time and I’ve worked with you on this stuff. The first step, as you’ve so kindly shared with me, is noticing how you’re being and who you’re being.

 

We have an obsession as a culture of the world with doing. If you go to a bookstore and it’s all about somebody’s idea regurgitating what they did to get what they want, you’re like, “If I buy the book and do what they did, I’ll get what they have.” What we forget is it’s not what they were doing. It’s who they were being that was doing it. If we could do our way to success, go get Richard Branson’s book and follow him. Diet and exercise books would work. It’s wild.

I got a call from a venture group that I work with. They’ve done work with me in the past. They said, “We’ve got this company. They’re selling this software, except the salespeople aren’t selling it.” They remember the work I did from back when I used to teach sales, sales process, consulting process, systems and methodology, so they’re like, “Why don’t you teach these guys to do the Townsend dance?”

A couple of years ago, I would have said, “Let me come in and I’ll teach them to dance the way I dance. You got to say this, call this many times, face this direction, flap your arms a certain way and then you’ll get the sale.” What I’ve come to see is that doesn’t work. I said, “I’m happy to help you. Where can I connect with these guys?” It gets interesting.

Two guys in Bangalore, India are selling an $80,000 software. They weren’t selling anything. Two months later, I got a call from the CEO. He says, “You’re killing it. These guys are hitting it out of the park. They’re starting to close deals. We’re so appreciative. What’d you teach them?” I said, “I didn’t teach them at all.” He’s like, “What’d you train them on?”

I’m like, “I didn’t spend a minute training them.” The guys are confused. He’s like, “What do you mean? What’d you do?” I said, “We talked about being.” He’s really confused. I said, “Here’s the deal. These two guys come from a different world, culture and way of thinking about everything. If I say what I say and do what I do, they’re trying to do the Townsend dance.”

Your audience maybe doesn’t know me but I’m a tall old White boy who comes from Connecticut. I dance pretty well for how I dance but if I teach you to dance the way I dance, you’re going to look funny and vice versa. I had gotten away from this idea of, “I’m going to teach you how to do what I do. Instead, we’re going to look at how the world occurs for you. We’re going to look at how you see things.”

We spend so much time committed to our smallness and limitations.

We spent two months talking about things like money, power, authority, politeness and manners. We just talked. They shared how the world occurred for them. I gave them ideas and let them look at how the world occurred for me. How do I ask a prospect of this? I would ask the question this way. “There’s no way you would say it that way because you’re not me. You don’t have my being.”

Somebody who comes from that socioeconomic status is probably making $45,000 a year, that’s doing pretty good in India. $100,000 is a lot of money to them but it’s not a lot of money to me. I’ve been selling for a lot of years. I go close $100 million deals. It’s not a lot of money. I have a different relationship with money and power. India is a very stratified society. You can’t ask certain questions, so many levels above you or you don’t even talk to so many levels below you. Following this process doesn’t work, so we worked on being and they figured out the doing.

They also found my videos. I never sent them my video on scheduling their conversations. They found it. They found the resources. They watched it themselves and then they customized it to how they needed it for their being. That’s the thing that’s amazing with being. When you work at the level of being, a change could happen incredibly quickly. I would have told you a couple of years ago, “With the two guys from India, I need eighteen months with them forking with the needle.” This was two months and they’re closing deals. Everybody’s blown away. That’s what happens when you work at the level of being.

I started working with Steve. As part of my work with Steve, we created what we call a declaration, which is a way to create your being. The book talks about a declaration in more detail so you can read about that in the book. The words that have been pinging in my brain are Peace, Freedom and Connection. PFC, for me, is everything. It is a value and an ethos.

PFC is ultimately what we’re all here trying to get a piece of. We chase money, power, relationships, sex and entertainment. At the end of the day, what we want is to feel peace and be free. I work with very successful, mostly men but people in the business world. They got lots of money but what they’re still chasing is freedom, peace or even connection with their wives and kids.

What has been clear to me for a long time is we got life backward. We’re out here doing all this stuff to hopefully someday get peace, freedom and connection. What we don’t realize is those are the things we’re born with. The essence of life are already here. I’ve been minding my own business, living my own PFC life and doing my own thing. I have my one-on-one coaching. My life is all nice and peaceful. Nobody’s bothering me. I’m making great money and working with Steve Hardison.

One day, I’m in his office. He goes, “You like to wear tracksuits, don’t you?” I’m like, “That’s all I wear.” Your audience may or may not know who I am but if they search me out on social media and watch a bunch of videos, they’ll notice that I am wearing a lot of tracksuits. Here’s a quick aside on the tracksuits. I grew up in a suburb of New Haven, Connecticut. It was a fairly affluent town. We were not affluent but we had everything we needed. We never wanted anything. There was a lot of wealth around us but we didn’t have that.

When I was fifteen, a neighbor moved in from New York City. Everybody else in the summer would go off to their summer camps or summer houses, so I’m wandering the neighborhood alone by myself. I ran into this guy, Rob Leonard, who moved in from New York City. I was into BMX bikes and freestyling. He was into break dancing. We made a little agreement that I would teach him how to ride BMX and do some tricks. He would teach me to breakdance. We got into break dancing. This was back in 1985 or 1984. It was the era of Run-DMC and Adidas tracksuit.

We got into it. It’s this image of two little suburban White boys loading up my car with the boom box and the cardboard going down to New Haven to battle with the other crews. It’s a funny image but that’s what we did. We went to New York City and competitions. I was into it. I never had an Adidas tracksuit. We didn’t have the money. I had a pair of Stan Smiths. I get one per year. I keep them nice and white, iron the fat laces. I had some Marshall’s brand tracksuit that’s hot and sweaty. It wasn’t very cool but I did a good backspin, so I was fine.

 

Fast forward to 2013, I’m in Las Vegas, Nevada for the weekend visiting my friend, Vladimir, who’s Russian. We had a nice weekend. We’d both flown in. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He was at some trade show. I said, “There’s an Adidas store here. Let’s go get some tracksuits.” I’d never owned any Adidas tracksuit and at that moment, I was like, “I need one.” There was an Adidas store. We walk in and walk out. He’s wearing one and I’m wearing one. He had a red one and I wore a blue one.

I spent the rest of the weekend in my blue Adidas tracksuit and him on his red one. We went out to the clubs and casinos. We were two guys in tracksuits. We didn’t have sneakers with us, so we were wearing them with dress shoes. We looked like a couple of mobsters. It was so much fun. We were out partying in the clubs in our tracksuits.

I wake up and we go to breakfast. I put on my Adidas tracksuit suit again. I didn’t even wash it. I was like, “I’m wearing this again.” During that day, I was like, “I want to wear tracksuits for the rest of my life.” That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to wear Adidas tracksuits. That’s it. I don’t know why I came up with this idea but it was in my head that this is what’s going to happen. It took me about two years to get the collection, so I wouldn’t wear the same one every day.

I started wearing tracksuits for my clients. The first time I did it, I wasn’t confident about it. I was like, “It’s going to be weird. How do I make this happen?” I was running a sales team, so I engineered Tracksuit Friday. I’m like, “We’re going to have Tracksuit Friday.” It’s some stupid corporate thingy where there are prizes and people wanted a tracksuit. Everybody thought it was this big hoot. Friday gets there and everybody’s in a tracksuit. It’s all fun and people love it. Monday comes and I show up in a tracksuit. People are like, “It’s not Friday.” I’m like, “I’m wearing these all the time.” That was it. I was done. I’m like, “I’m wearing tracksuits all the time.”

For most people, commitment is what happens close to the end when you got it all figured out.

It took the world a little while to get used to it but people get it. I’m reasonably certain I have the largest collection of Adidas tracksuits in the world. They are well over 250. I’ve got a storage unit in Denver with lots of tracksuits. There are so many available and I get them from a bunch of insights. The ones I get rarely show up in stores. I got collector’s editions. I’ve gone a little crazy with it but I’m a big tracksuit fan.

To put the tracksuit on a little bit of a bow, you’re encouraging everyone to engage in Tracksuit Thursday.

Tracksuit Thursday is an offshoot of PFC. In Steve Hardison’s office, he figures out I wear tracksuits all the time. He is a genius. His mind is incredible. He starts going on and on about, “We need to go call Adidas and get this thing going. You’ll be the ambassador for Adidas and tracksuits.” I’m like, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not interested. Leave me alone. I’ll keep wearing my tracksuits.” He’s like, “You’re missing out. This can be big.” Steve is all about creating from commitment and taking an idea and running with it. It’s out of nowhere from an idea and then creating. I wasn’t ready for it.

Two weeks before November 11th, 2021, I’m in his office. I thought he’d forgotten about this silly little tracksuit idea but he didn’t. He says, “We should do this Adidas thing.” I could feel this heat in my body like this was the last thing I wanted to do. What I’ve come to see is usually that’s the universe telling me I’m scared of something because it’s going to be cool.

I had a different relationship with it. It wasn’t like a slap the idea down. I could see myself rejecting it. I was like, “Let me take a look. Let’s play a game.” I looked at my calendar and was like, “I’ll be here in two weeks on November 11th, 2021. I’m launching Adidas something. We’ll call it Adidas X PFC. It’ll be a worldwide collaboration between Adidas and this PFC thing,” which I don’t even know what it is.

We started creating and Steve does some wild stuff. His whole idea is you get committed to something and then you create with it. You figure out all the ideas, angles, what’s going to work and then you’re committed. Commitment is like, “I’m doing it.” There was nothing more in PFC. He goes, “Cool.” He whips out his phone and starts scrolling through.

Steve’s got a Rolodex that’s going to blow your mind. He says, “We’re calling so-and-so.” He starts calling somebody. I’m like, “What are we doing?” He goes, “You’re going to tell them what you’re up to with PFC and Adidas. You’re going to create that for them.” I’m like, “I haven’t thought about it yet.” He goes, “It’s still ringing.”

Fortunately, it was a voicemail but he goes, “We’re going to send you a memo. Look for that.” We hang up. He goes, “We got to get it going.” He has his recorder. The stuff that started coming out of my mouth was out of nowhere. I had never spent a moment thinking about this but I was witnessing the power of creating with commitment.

I got committed to something that’s going to happen. I didn’t know what it was yet but we’ll see. Words started coming out. Everything that I’m going to tell you that I haven’t even told you yet about what PFC even is didn’t exist before that moment. It was inside of me. It was somewhere but it didn’t exist until I started creating with it.

This idea of PFC has already spawned all this incredible stuff in the world that will change the course of the world. I’m not going to try to do all the fancy vernacular or explanation but I’ll give the people a simple way that I think about this. I am grateful and blessed to have an incredible practice where for the most part, older, very successful men write me a giant check to work with me. We get through life and a place that most people can’t even imagine. These are people who’ve made all the money, houses and divorces they need. I get to work with them to transform the quality of their life and then they go on to do incredible things that serve the world. I’m truly blessed.

However, the irony is not lost on me that people have to go through hell and high water to get to the point where they can work with me to get the things that they want, which is peace, freedom and connection. I help wealthy, powerful and inspiring men access peace, freedom and connection but you got to be at a certain point in life to even consider that. That kept nagging at me like, “Why can’t more people have it? This is important. Why do they need to go through all that?”

For me, PFC as a brand is the idea that’s available to all of us. It’s included with our life. It’s not something we have to go chase. PFC is about bringing this concept or idea that we can have what we want. We don’t have to wait and suffer for it. Here’s the kicker. Most people think I got to chase money, power, fame or all these other things to get PFC.

The truth is if you go after peace, freedom and connection, all the other stuff flows. If I start from peace, freedom and connection and I’ve proven this again and again with people, the bank account and love bank fills up. It’s all the things we care about. The relationships happen. You don’t have to chase a relationship to feel a connection. When you get connected to connection, relationships deepen or are created from that. This is all about how do I propagate this idea? How do I create more of this in the world? I’ve been going around with this idea of PFC and talking about it. The things that have spun out of it from an idea are mind-blowing. One of those things is Tracksuit Thursday.

 

January 13th, 2022, will be the first edition of worldwide Tracksuit Thursday. On the second Thursday of every month, we will show up in our workplaces wearing tracksuits. People all over the world got it on their calendars. They will do that every month. It will be a reminder to us that PFC is our birthright. The tracksuit is a humble, simple symbol of PFC. What’s more peaceful than chilling in your tracksuit? What’s the greatest symbol of freedom than choosing your uniform to work? You’re like, “I’m going to show up in a tracksuit to corporate clients who pay me a lot of money.” That’s freedom. “Do you want to know if you made it? Wear a tracksuit to work. Wear what you want.”

The best fun I have is strutting through an airport in one of my cool tracksuits and I see somebody else wearing one. It’s like a secret society. We are connected. We know we’re rocking the tracksuit and everybody else is wishing they could. That’s the idea. It’ll be fun. It’ll be a way to get people introduced to the idea of something fun that creates community.

I have launched what I’m calling the PFC curriculum. As you know, you are part of what’s called creating your extraordinary life experience. I have a community called the Extraordinary Creators Community. That’s an incredible experience, as you know, but it’s limited to people who know me and who have known me for a while and have the in on that. It’s never going to be scaled. What I’ve done is I’ve taken the same curriculum for creating an extraordinary life. I’ve spawned that into the PFC curriculum to teach people about being and help them distinguish being so they can access peace, freedom and connection.

I’m launching that into my first corporate client and I’ve got another client that we’re in conversations with. It could be thousands of seats in 2022. I want this everywhere. It’s not going to be everywhere like towns that are going to have a business selling PFC. I am leveraging my Extraordinary Creators Community and in 2022, starting to work with some of the folks in that community so that they can go out and teach this as part of their own company anywhere. I’m giving the technology and curriculum away.

I’ve already talked to several coaches who are going to integrate this into their practice. They’re like, “I don’t have to pay you for it?” I’m like, “No. There’s no franchise model. You have the curriculum. You can use it and share it.” I’ve got a guy who’s part of the community in Japan. He has taken PFC into Japan. He called me up one day and said, “I got PFC Japan covered. You don’t need to worry about it. It’ll be all over the place.” He’s already out there creating, teaching and talking about it. This brings us to another story of something incredible that has only manifested. It has to do with a guy named Steve Bacon.

In a lot of cases, fear is an indicator that there is something wonderful, powerful, and transformational that’s going to happen.

We haven’t gotten to the fun part yet. All this other stuff is cool but we’re getting the cool stuff. As I’m heading to Steve’s office on November 11, 2021, for our coaching session, I’m picked up in the lift by a beautiful woman in a Mercedes with who I start chatting. I ask the same question whenever I get into rideshare. It was like, “What do you have when you’re not schlepping people like me around?” She says, “I’m a therapist.” She proceeds to tell me how she’s creating all this amazing stuff around couples retreat and using art therapy for couples. I’m like, “This is fascinating.”

We’re chatting it up and she’s about to drop me off. I ask, “Do you have a couple of minutes?” We spent some time talking. I created this other possibility that I would support her journey. I was like, “How can I help? Who can I introduce you to? How can I help you further what you’re doing? I’d love to help. Let me tell you who I am. I’m a coach. I help people make a lot of money. This would all be for free. I’m not trying to get you as a client. I’m here to see Steve Hardison.” She goes, “My husband knows Steve Hardison.” I say, “Maybe I should meet your husband too.” A week later, I’m at a video conference. PFC is running. I’ve already launched PFC. It’s doing its thing. What I didn’t know is it has launched a whole another arm that I won’t even know about, which I’ll unpack for you.

I get on a Zoom call with her and her husband. Her husband’s name is Steve Bacon. He’s a very good-looking and charismatic Black man. We’re all chatting and making the introductions. He tells me his incredible story. He grew up in very adverse conditions. His mom was addicted to crack. He did some time in jail. I can’t tell this story and do it justice. It’s not the Townsend Wardlaw story. Let’s put it that way. He talks about how in the past few years, he’s gotten into coaching and is committed to eliminating struggle and the pain that the Black and Brown community feels largely related to their identification with victimhood.

I’ll probably get his words wrong but you get the idea. He wants to help them transform out of that by teaching them being. I’m like, “You got to be kidding me.” How is that possible? I don’t talk to any coaches that talk about being and here’s this guy I met because his wife dropped me off in a lift which is a Black man going to teach Black and Brown people all over the world about being and help them lift out of the struggle. I said, “This is blowing my mind.” I said to his wife, “It’s nice to meet you but I know why I’m here. I’m here to help him. That’s why we met.” I started to unpack PFC, my mission and the curriculum.

I said, “Steve Bacon, here’s the deal. For some time, it’s been going through my mind like, how could I do something?” I’m not sure what the proper monikers are but he refers to it as the Black and Brown community, so that’s what I’ll use. I said to him, “How can I support Black and Brown people? That’s not a world I’m ever going to go help.” He goes, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Look at me. I’m an old privileged White dude. I’m not going to stand up and tell you and your people it’s in their head. It’s your thinking that’s the problem. You can, though, so I’m going to help you. Whatever you need, I’m going to help you do that.” He’s like, “I don’t understand. What’s in it for you?” I’m like, “Nothing. PFC.”

I unpacked PFC for him, how this is going to change the world and this is what the world needs. I was like, “You don’t need to call it PFC. It’s the PFC curriculum. You can have it. It’s yours. You don’t need to pay me for it. You can call it Belief Theory.” That’s his company. I was like, “You can have it. I will support you and we’re off to the races.” He’s like, “I don’t understand.” I was completely mind blown. We don’t have time if we spend the next four hours talking to tell you all the miracles that have occurred.

Here’s what I’m going to fast forward to, though. Next Thursday, December 16th, 2021, I’ll be in Steve Hardison’s office. Steve Bacon will be in that office with me. I introduced Steve Bacon to Steve Hardison. Steve Hardison has already put the world on blast about this man named Steve Bacon, who’s going to alleviate struggle and suffering in the Black and Brown community and teach being all over the world. Steve Bacon and my wife, Luisa Molano, will be there. We are going to create some miracles in that room that are going to spin this stuff that started as a little PFC idea wearing tracksuits all over the world. People all over the world will be taught being and learn to distinguish being to transform their lives with.

It’s amazing how many threads there are to this story.

I’m glossing over it. There are hundreds of threads in here and it isn’t stopping. It’s fantastic.

Your approach to this is that everybody can experience PFC and adjust or create their way of being at any given moment. I expect that the challenge is how people should get in touch with this and these opportunities?

The universe is giving me the greatest gift in the world through Steve’s book. It’s almost like I’m having my cognitive dissonance because when people are like, “How should I connect with you?” I’m like, “Go read this book.” They’re like, “You wrote a book?” I’m like, “It’s not my book and it’s not about me but go read it because that will be the gateway.” It’s not the only gateway but it’s a very powerful one. I put videos up. I’ve got stuff on Instagram. People can follow me there but those are little droplets of stuff.

What I want for people is to experience the power of their being. When they get a taste of that or see what that can create in their lives, it’s like they’ve been banging the nails with some Fisher-Price little hammer and somebody came up with an industrial multi-nail gun. It’s like you’ve been trying to work on your lawn. You got one of those little hand trowels and somebody rolls up in a backhoe. The rest takes care of itself.

You can’t talk about being because that’s not being anymore. That’s doing. It’s very difficult because we’re so immersed that this is the way it is. Reality is very unconvincing. I’m not talking about a simulation or multiverses. I’m saying that everybody experiences the world the way it occurs for them. To say to somebody, “That’s not right. You’re looking at it the wrong way,” we’re vested in it.

The way that I work with folks, I’m very clear with them like, “I can’t teach you anything. You can only teach yourself but I can point and guide.” That’s very labor-intensive. I have a three-month program that’s the fastest way I can do stuff with people. I have one-on-one coaching but that’s not very accessible. This book is accessible and entertaining. You can go buy this book for $30 or $40. it will transform you if you read it from the perspective of who would I need to be that would be me. If you read it like an autobiography, it’ll just be another book. It’s amazing to me that I have this tool to point people at and say, “Go check this out.”

There’s another thing out there, which is the only video out there about my coach Steve Hardison. If you do a search for TBOLITNFL or Steve Hardison’s video, you’ll find it. It’s about a 2.5, 3-hour video. You could be mistaken and think it’s a video about a football player named Deuce Lutui. It’s not. It’s a video about being and creating with our being and commitment. When I say watch it, I don’t mean stream it while you’re at the gym. I mean, sit down and watch it at normal speed, take notes and commit your full attention to it. If you watch it from that place, you’ll have some miracles happen on the other side of the video.

You will see the world differently in two and a half hours. That’s not an idea. That’s a promise. People come back to me and be like, “I didn’t get it.” I can promise you that you didn’t watch the video. You had it in the background. You had it on 2X speed. You were trying to get through it. There’s so much in this video that speaks to parts of us that we’re not tapped into. We are so much more powerful than we realize. That’s the dirty little secret.

We spend so much time committed to our smallness and limitations. My purpose on this planet is to show as many people before I die their power as infinite creators and I mean that literally. We are infinite creators. There’s nothing we can’t create but here’s the deal. When you say to somebody, “How about we do this? You should do that,” the next thing out of their mouth is they start listing off reasons why it’s not possible.

I’m not saying that to fault people. I’m pointing out a fact. Listen to how people speak. They’re like, “What about this? What about that?” You start a conversation and immediately, it’s like, “Let’s come up with a list of all the reasons it won’t work.” We’re not programmed to think of all the reasons why it could work or what it would be like if it did work. That’s our being.

Our beingness is, “What could go wrong? How I will look bad? What’s going to get in the way? Where am I going to screw it up?” Poor little old me was programmed wrong at birth. I don’t think or be that way. I’m very fortunate and I mean that genuinely. My mind has always been wired towards if I can concede of it, it’ll happen. I don’t worry about how. There is no how problem to me, if I can come up with where, I’ll figure it out.

I don’t worry about it. I had no idea what PFC was going to be. I just said it’s happening and that was edgy for me because that was bigger than I’d ever done. That’s what’s at play here. We’ve got an entire planet of people who are wired from a being perspective to take a stand for the limitations like why they can’t do things and what’s going to get in their way. What if we were able to see the world from a different angle like with the dudes from India?

I didn’t need to teach them anything. I just needed to get a different vantage point. I want to be clear. Nobody’s looking at the world wrong. If you got a bunch of people in the stadium and they’re looking at it from one side and they saw it as a foul ball and the other people over here looked at it and they saw it as a fair ball, they’re not necessarily wrong. They see it differently.

 

All I’m saying is you got 1/2 of the stadium who goes, “What could go wrong? What’s going to get in the way? How will I look bad?” There’s another section here where you could get out of your seat and go look someplace else. That section would be, “Can you imagine if? I’ll figure it out as I go. Wouldn’t that be interesting?” Imagine areas of your life that if the shift in being could occur, what could you create with it? I go out and create miracles for people. It’s not a miracle like a burning bush. What it is, is like, “How did that happen so fast?”

This is going to blow people’s minds. Steve Bacon knew who Steve Hardison was. He had heard of Steve Hardison as people had heard of the Easter Bunny or the Loch Ness monster. He was the coach’s coach’s coach and knew he lived in Phoenix. Steve Bacon had a dream that he wanted to serve the world and do this with the African-American community but had no idea how to get there. What was interesting was he shared with me something he wrote to himself a week before we met. He wrote this long thing about what he wanted to create in the world and what he’s committed to. The universe was like, “Here’s Townsend Wardlaw and Steve Hardison.”

He’s going to be sitting in Steve Hardison’s office, who he had only heard of as you’d heard of Santa Claus, creating with Steve Hardison, who’s the most desirable sought-after coach in the world. All his dreams are going to come through the number of people that Steve Hardison has already introduced Steve Bacon to. Some of the audience here might know or might not but there’s a woman named Iyanla Vanzant.

This will sound a little strange, but she’s like the Black and Brown people’s Oprah. Oprah is African-American, and she has a very diverse audience. Iyanla Vanzant was a prodigy of Oprah’s and is very well-known. She’s an influential speaker and spiritual leader in the African-American community. Everyone knows who she is. She did the foreword for Steve’s book. Steve coached her. She’s an incredible and powerful woman.

Steve Hardison sent an email to a whole bunch of people he was tapping on saying, “This man, Steve Bacon, is going to be in the office in two weeks. You need and got to know who he is. You’re going to be helping him.” About 40 or 50 people he tapped in, some of the top coaches and influencers in the world. This guy, Steve Bacon, who was sitting in his house going, “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” is front row with the biggest thought leaders in the world, including Iyanla Vanzant, who wrote the foreword for Steve’s book and has a massive community and reach. Iyanla replies to the email, “Welcome, Steve Bacon. I’m glad to have you on this mission. You may be is the answer to my prayers.” Steve Bacon’s head melted.

I was talking to Steve Bacon and he goes, “I got to send something to you.” He sent me a photograph of the vision board that he had created. People do vision boards with all the stuff they want. I’m checking it out and I’m like, “That’s cool.” He goes and says, “Did you see it?” I said, “Did I see what?” He goes, “Look in the lower left-hand corner.”

I zoom in and I’m like, “That’s Iyanla Vanzant. You had her on your vision board. She sent you an email. She’s sharing about you in the world. She’s going to be arm and arm with you on stage serving your Black and Brown brothers and sisters. That’s what’s going to happen.” He’s like, “I can’t believe it.” That’s in a week. We haven’t even gotten started yet but that’s how this works. That’s what happens to the level of being.

That’s what happens when you don’t start every sentence with, “Let me get a pad of paper and write all the ways it can’t work and what’s going to go wrong.” Go get and read the book. Commit yourself to the book and things will show up on the other side. Those things could be calling Stu or me. Whatever it is the universe is going to put in front of you with what you’re supposed to do next, you have to pay attention to it.

I want to remind everybody to don’t read the book like it’s a cool story about some tall White dude who happens to be a coach. Read it like this is everybody in the world. This is you going through a life of who would you need to be to have that impact and have people say those kinds of things about you to pull off the stuff Steve pulls off.

Steve’s not a superhero. He doesn’t have any DNA that everybody else doesn’t have. Certainly, he doesn’t have an upbringing, an education or a background that set him up for success. He’s just a dude who’s creating an incredible impact in the world through some very simple tools. One of them is being and the other is commitment. Commitment at a level that most people can’t even imagine.

For most people, commitment is what happens close to the end when you got it all figured out. I didn’t get a commitment until I got committed to PFC. I thought I needed to figure the messaging, plan and then I’ll get committed to it but no. You got to get committed and then the road builds itself. That’s the analogy I use a lot. It’s like you’re driving and if you could see the road ahead of you, that’s no commitment. Commitment is we’re going over there and no road’s being built while we’re driving at 105 miles an hour.

There’s nothing to get upset, angry, frustrated, or pissed off about because it’s the world being the world.

No way Steve Bacon could have told you the world would be where it is. It’s unpredictable and impossible. If somebody said, “Steve Bacon, Iyanla Vanzant is going to know who you are and is going to be talking about you,” he’d be like, “That’s funny. She’s on my vision board.” Yet, here we are and that’s everywhere in life.

Aside from reading the book, which is what I’m guessing is your best recommendation for everyone reading this episode and that book is called The Ultimate Coach, I believe the author is his wife, Amy Hardison.

Yes. Alan D. Thompson is the co-author. He’s the researcher.

Is there a better place to find that than Amazon?

No. Get it on Amazon. It’ll be in your Kindle immediately. Whatever they do, they do it pretty quickly. There’s a Facebook group for The Ultimate Coach. I don’t do Facebook anymore but that’s out there. You could follow Steve Hardison. You could follow me on Instagram. I put a lot of videos out there. I do a lot of 2 to 3-minute videos on stuff. I’m always trying to share my ideas, what has shown up for me and what’s going on. Almost all of it’s from the concept of being, even though I don’t call it out.

It seems to me that most of the things that get in people’s way are very fear-based. As people are approaching the idea of buying this book, committing to reading and experiencing it from a place of being, a lot of the readers and everyone out there is going to experience some fear-based responses or that little voice in their head is going to be telling them that this can’t possibly be true or it can’t work for them. Do you have any thoughts on how people can change their way of being concerning that voice to make sure that they get through that commitment?

There are a couple of thoughts that pop into my mind, and I’ve talked about them on lots of occasions. I come from a truth that everything occurs exactly what it’s supposed to. Lots of people talk to me but very few people work with me. I don’t have the thought, “They should be working with me.” If they’re not working with me, they weren’t supposed to work with me. That’s okay.

They’ll find what they’re supposed to find. Whatever happened, happened the way it’s supposed to happen. If somebody goes, “That’s ridiculous,” I’ll be like, “Don’t fight that. Go do something else. Don’t worry about it. When you’re ready, you’re ready.” There’s a Chinese proverb. When the student is ready, the teacher appears and that’s not a literal teacher. It’s whatever’s there to teach you to appear.

I truly believe everybody’s exactly where they’re supposed to be. Nobody’s behind and ahead. You’ll know what you’re supposed to know when you’re supposed to know it. That’s one thing. With that said, I’ll offer something else and that is, we have this idea that fear is something that I need to deal with before I do something. That’s part of how we’re being. Our being is like, “Fear is here. Let me deal with the fear and then I can get on with doing.” That’s one way to do it. The other way is, “I can do it with fear.” Fear doesn’t need to be gone. I don’t go to the gym and say, “I want to work out but I don’t want to be in pain.”

I go and I’ll feel pain. I feel pain from working out. I’m old. My body isn’t what it used to be. You’ve led an active life. I’ve led an active life. There are aches and pains. If I waited to feel good to go to the gym, I’d never go to the gym, so I go and it hurts. It’s going to hurt. It might hurt a little bit more but I’ve stopped worrying about, “I’ll go when it doesn’t hurt.” It’s like, “I don’t need to hurt too much or want to break anything.” Over time, we let go of this idea that we need the right conditions for things.

Fear is part of that. When Steve first said we’re going to do this thing and get committed to Adidas, I was like, “No way.” I had a lot of reasons why we wouldn’t. What was hiding behind that was fear and I figured I needed to process all this. If you asked me a year later, what I saw was I was scared but I’ll do it anyway. I don’t need to not be scared to do it. I’ll do it scared and that’ll be fine. Let’s see how that works. I’m not saying to jump in the deep end of the pool or put yourself at risk but we can all start to play with this idea of where I am using fear to move away from.

I could shift it to maybe it means proceed with caution. Maybe fear is another gauge on the instrument panel that means there’s something cool here. What I got to see more and more is past a certain point, like saber-tooth tigers, wild animals are going to kill you or dark alleys in New York City. You don’t go to that fear but there’s a lot of room in between no fear and there’s danger. What I’ve come to see is in a lot of cases, fear is an indicator that there is something wonderful, powerful and transformational that’s going to happen. If I move towards it, I get the reward but I got to move towards something that I’ve been trained and taught to run away from. We’ve got to work with that.

I’m not perfect at this. I’m not some enlightened being sitting on a mountain and burning incense in a robe. I confront my fear and sometimes, it backs me off. More and more, it goes, “I’ll keep walking and I’ll be afraid for a little bit. Maybe I’ll stop being afraid or I won’t and I’ll share that.” Everybody on this episode can notice that I’m terrified at what PFC is going to create and what that’s going to mean for me. I don’t mean for my life but what that’s going to be in terms of exposure. It’s uncomfortable for me. I’ve never wanted that and there is fear around that. I’m not hiding it and I’m doing it anyway. We’ll see where it goes.

Sometimes I’m like, “I sound crazy but we’ll see.” I worry about it less and less. The less I worry about it, the less I see I need to worry about it. It’s like anything. People are so funny. Whenever I’m coaching them, they always want to say, “I’m not good at that. That was hard.” I’m like, “Time out. How’s your Brazilian jiu-jitsu doing?” They’re like, “What?” I’m like, “How’s your Brazilian jiu-jitsu?” They’re like, “I don’t know Brazilian jiu-jitsu.” I’m like, “Exactly. You don’t say it’s hard or you suck at it. You say, ‘I don’t do it or train it.’” I trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for five years. It’s an incredible sport. It’s work.

I would show up 3 or 4 times a week, get on the mat and work. It was hard and I loved it. That’s why I did it because it was hard. When people say that’s hard or, “I suck at it,” you don’t. You just haven’t practiced it. If you practice, it wouldn’t be hard, so stop calling things that you haven’t practiced hard. It’s not hard. You haven’t tried yet. If you’re doing it, it’s supposed to be hard. It’s like going to the gym and saying, “That’s hard,” but that’s why I go to the gym. What if all of life is like that? There’s an interesting thought.

You’ve touched on the silver bullet approach. Everyone thinks that there’s something that they can follow or this one thing that they can do. We get that a lot where people are looking for some magic formula to improve their ability to make connections online or influence people to purchase what they’re selling. The answer to that is if there were a silver bullet, then everyone would do that and then there’d be something else that you’d have to do. The fact of the matter is that all this takes work, commitment, the ability to show up every day and do the thing that helps you engage in life.

When you work at the level of being, you can see that easier. This idea of, “I want to make it easier. I don’t want it to hurt,” those are all a function of our being. If somebody simply says, “Move towards fear. Fear is bad,” they think I’m an idiot. That sounds crazy to them. Learning to distinguish being and see how you’re being is creating something as something.

There is nothing in life that is inherently good, bad, fun, boring, scary, pleasant or funny. There’s nothing objectively anything. That’s a disruptive idea for people. There is nothing objectively funny, meaning it’s funny to everybody. There’s nothing objectively scary or sad, up to including death. Death isn’t sad for everybody. Some cultures celebrate it. It tends to be scary for us but death is not scary. Our thoughts about death are scary. Movies aren’t funny. We think the movie is funny or sad. People aren’t jerks. We think they’re jerks. People aren’t awesome. We think they’re awesome too. It’s all a function of our being.

If you’re out here trying to get the world to look a certain way so you can experience it, that’s a lot of work because the world’s big. There are nine billion people in the world. Some of them are going to not be people that agree with you and do things that you’re being thinks are the right things to do. If you work at the level of being, I don’t need to worry about the world. I just shift my being in any situation and the world works fine.

There’s nothing to get upset, angry, frustrated or pissed off about because it’s the world being the world. I see that from my being. When something in the world isn’t working for me, I can go and try to make the world do something different with a lot of effort or I can shift my being and the world magically transforms.

To me, that’s fun and powerful. It applies to everything. It applies to relationships and clients. This will sound radical for people but if people aren’t buying from you, how are you creating it that they don’t buy? People go, “I need a better technique or product.” Maybe, you need to create them differently. I’m selling something that’s about as intangible as you can get.

I’m selling high-dollar coaching. Trust me. Nobody lines up to buy what I do or has a budget for this. I work with people that show up in the world. I create them to coach and not to manipulate them. Nobody’s Googling what I do and trying to try to find it like, “You do what? You charge what?” Even something we take for granted as objective like selling, that’s being too.

There’s a great book out there that’s called Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play. It has been around for maybe years. It is written by a guy named Mahan Khalsa. It’s the best sales book ever written, in my humble opinion. I recommended it thousands, if not tens of thousands of times. I’ve read it hundreds of times. It has always puzzled me why people don’t do what’s in the book and get it. What I finally got to see a few years ago is you have to come from a certain being to do what’s in the book.

You can’t just read the book and do the things in the book. It’s a sales book about being and who you would need to be to work with people and for them to want to work with you. People pick it up and they try the techniques in the book and it doesn’t work. It’s like the Indians doing the Townsend dance. It wouldn’t work. They would need to be the person that would have that conversation and say those things to a customer. They would need to be that honest, vulnerable, transparent and powerful. That’s a shift in being.

It’s always amazing to chat with you. I appreciate you taking the time to be on the show. I’m going to ask these questions because they’re worthy of asking. They’re a little off based upon our conversation in terms of being but how can people find out more about you, what you’re doing and how to become part of the PFC movement?

I have an email list that I send out emails to. My website is TownsendWardlaw.com. We’ll soon also have TracksuitThursday.com and PFCCoaching.com. There are some forms there and you could at least get emails from me. My Instagram is @TownsendWardlaw. There are not too many Townsend Wardlaw on LinkedIn. I respond to all requests, meaning people can get my cell phone number and call me.

I subscribe to the belief that the people that reach out to me, I’m supposed to work with them, so I don’t have an assistant or layers. My cell phone number is on my LinkedIn profile. There couldn’t be an easier guy to find that. It’s not John Smith and I make it easy for people to find me, so search for Townsend Wardlaw.

I like to end every episode with the idea that talking about things is amazing. Being able to share experiences and listen to all of the great things that people have to say is one of my favorite things. However, I do want to spawn action. I do not want people to go, “That was a cool conversation,” and move on. I know the answer to this but if you were to ask people to take one action after reading this episode, what would that be?

Go to Amazon, get The Ultimate Coach and commit to reading it. Read it from who you’re being. Read it like it’s a book about you. You never need to hear my name again or look up anything of mine for the rest of your life but if you do that, the course of your life will be altered. I promise that. It is that powerful. I’ve never read a book like this. That’s the best I could give somebody.

I can give 100 different other examples and recommendations but if I’m like, “Here’s one thing where if I dropped dead tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter,” you do that and the course of your life will alter. To discern and distinguish being for yourself, nothing in your life, no job, no relationship with a spouse or with your family or the self-talk the voice in your head, none of that will ever be the same. That’s a big promise for something I don’t get royalties on.

I’d encourage everyone to go do that. I’m going to put out a little bit of a challenge here. I haven’t done this before but if you truly do not believe that you can afford The Ultimate Coach book, for the first five people who reach out to me and say that they need some help getting a copy of this, I will buy them a copy.

I love who you’re being to make that offer. For number six through infinity, you call me and I’ll pay for it.

Thank you, Townsend. I loved our conversation. Everybody, go check out The Ultimate Coach. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Townsend Wardlaw
• The Ultimate Coach
• Steve Hardison
• Alan Thompson
• Facebook – The Ultimate Coach Facebook Group
• Steve Bacon – LinkedIn
• Belief Theory
• TBOLITNFL – YouTube
• Steve Hardison – Facebook
• Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play
• TracksuitThursday.com
• PFCCoaching.com
• @TownsendWardlaw – Instagram
• Townsend Wardlaw – LinkedIn
• Amazon – The Ultimate Coach

About Townsend Wardlaw

I know some things about you nobody else knows.

– You are successful (but rarely acknowledge it)
– You have enough money (but still worry about it)
– You are always “doing great” (at least on the surface)
– You have attained every goal you set (but are secretly bored)
– You are surrounded by others (but often feel alone)
– You are living the life you once dreamed about (but wonder, “Is this it?”)

I’m NOT your coach if you are looking for…

– a therapist
– a sounding board
– an accountability partner
– someone to motivate you
– a few tweaks here and there

We should speak if you are committed to creating a life filled with…

– Lasting Peace
– Complete and total Freedom
– Deep Connection with your partner, children, and friends

You will never meet someone more committed to your journey than me.

Most are not ready for the kind of work I do.

Clients often experience me through my writing and videos for years before we work together.

Use the form below to join my community or follow me on Instagram.

connect(at)townsendwardlaw(dot)com

Serious inquiries only, please.