Strategies & Energetics to Attract Clients, Market Your Meditations, and Grow on Insight Timer w/ Tom Evans
Tom Evans is an Insight Timer OG, and we have a wide-ranging conversation that discusses : -
Tom's ideas on how we are in an important time in the consciousness revolution
His background with Insight Timer - Creating meditations in an altered state of consciousness
Marketing your meditation on Insight Timer
Making the esoteric exoteric - Practices to attract positive outcomes and results
Lots more!
GIFT FOR YOU
If you’re a meditation teacher or coach who wants to create unique meditations people listen to over and over again, enroll in my free course Meditation Script Mastery
Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Lou: Welcome, friends, to another episode of the art and business of Meditation podcast. I am your host, Lou Redmond. And today we have Tom Evans. Tom is a storyteller, modern day mystic and ambient composer. He loves taking the esoteric, the unknown and the hidden, and making it exoteric, known and understood. Love that word, exoteric. He still doesn't know what he wants to be or do when he grows up. So we're going to have this conversation. Maybe we can help Tom out and get him on his way. Uh, so, Tom, welcome to the show.
Tom: Real honor to be here. Great pleasure. Thank you.
Lou: Tom, we were chatting before I hit record, and I want to start this podcast a different way than I start most podcasts. And that is just asking, what are you excited about right now?
Tom: I think it has to be the awakening of planet Earth to a new level of consciousness. And I don't mean humans to a new level of consciousness. I mean planet Earth, mother Earth, the biosphere that we're part of. We're just about to go into a new phase. It's been telegraphed for many, many years by mystics and sages down the centuries, and we're right on the cusp of doing that right now, which is just really, really exciting. And what's exciting about it is we don't quite know what it's going to be like, but we just know it's going to be better, you know, go faster stripe at the same time as being go slower stripes than the old way of doing things.
Lou: William, curious what for you are the signs that we are in that growth stage of consciousness? Or is it more of an intuition that you connect with, or is it what you see in what's happening in the world? Curious how you relate to the signs for that you get.
Tom: If you were to just watch the news, and this is in any country, you'd be forgiven by thinking we're going down some terrible slide and we're going to go into oblivion together. But the number of people that I find that are now meditating and being more mindful and taking having some me time without any guilt around and the amount of mindfulness in the world, there aren't news channels, sadly, talking about all the good things happening. So it's partly intuition, but also partly personal experience. The number of people I bump into doing some marvelous stuff is amazing. It's just sad that often in a news program they put a little bit of positive news right at the end of it. I think we'd have a great news channel if it's just all positive news. And by the way, a couple of little bad things happen today as well. I think it's intuition. Also, I've been active on insight timer for many years, and you just see the shift and you see the acceleration, you see the growth and you see the awakening and you see comments on meditations. And so someone said, I just gave this meditation to my daughter. She gave it to her daughter and you see it telegraphing and, and being passed down the chains.
Lou: So true. It's so crazy. The world we live in that's continually bombarded with the biggest issue of the day, and we take in so much of this negative information. I know I used to listen on Tim Ferriss podcast. I think he's talked a lot about this with the fact that we didn't evolve to know what's happening everywhere all the time and to hold what's happening everywhere all the time. Like all of the challenges. And obviously, we can open our hearts to compassion, but it's a lot to hold. And you're so right. I mean, I've been doing work in schools and bringing mindfulness into schools for years now and seeing how much people who I never thought would be open to meditation or to any sort of self care practice or to even questioning their own beliefs. I heard recently that if you question 5% of your beliefs on a day to day basis, that's like a good amount. Like, you're actually letting, like, that's a strong amount. Most people don't question the things that they believe or how life is. And I feel like maybe with some of that challenge or the media or the news cycle, that in some ways it might have people question their own reality and what else is true? What is really true about them? So I completely agree that when I think of what I see, not what I listen to from different sources, but my actual experience of people, and it's also us. So it's that weird thing. It's like, is it because we attract those people that we're seeing this? But I believe that we are seeing this. And speaking of media, that is for more of a conscious awareness. We were talking about Gaia before, and it sounds like you are embarking on something where you're going to be adding to this form of conscious media. So I'm curious if you want to maybe speak to some of that and what's going on with you? For you?
Tom: Yeah. Well, I was absolutely fortunate. I think it's 2015, 2016, when Insight Timer approached me and said, would you want to put one of your free meditations on the app, because at the time I was an author, just growing as an author. I think I published about six books. And to promote my books, they were talking about consciousness and awakening and creativity. I added some meditations to go with them. And the idea was that you wouldn't just read about changing consciousness, but you'd actually experience it in meditation together. I'd never been to a meditation school. I've done a little bit of hypnotherapy training and learned a bit about hypnotic language and that sort of stuff. Then insight timer discovered me, put a meditation up there, and within one month it had been listened to 6000 times. And they loved the british accent. The fact I didn't take it so seriously. And it was accessible, which I always pride myself in doing. The exoteric, the difficult stuff, the esoteric stuff. Exoteric. And then a similar thing just happened recently, a tv channel called Ethereal TV. I got introduced to them by some old friends of mine, and they are specifically wanting to broadcast on my subject, which is the esoteric being made into the eccentric. They want people to talk about metaphysical stuff and deep dives into it as well, which is great. Suits my, since we're down the ground. And so it's launching this month. I've just recorded the pilot just before I speak to you today, which is great, the introductory show, and I've entitled it solway, connecting the above to the below, and the idea that we're in the middle of the below, which is like the earth plane and all that kind of stuff, and even the underworld. And then we've got the higher realms above us where they're connected between the two of them. And when you get into that connecting point, when you're bringing the heaven down to earth, and we're not trying to ascend to heaven, but bringing heaven down to this lovely spaceship that we all share together, amazing things. So what happens? First thing is that the above say, hey, we've got someone that's awakened here, I'll give them some help. And the earth plane says, oh, we need to sustain this person. So Mother Earth says, this person and all the people that they're awakening can help me awaken. So you're bringing these two places together. So the show's all about that. Solways is a book I wrote back in 2019, which is a metaphysical, fictional journey. And the idea is the soul waves of the missing dark energy the scientists can't find. That's what bonds us together, and it brings the right people together just at the perfect time. So me being on this show, for example, our paths colliding is an example of soul waves in action. And then the guys at ethereal tv, our paths have collided as well. Then the more of these collisions that we get, and they're nice, soft collisions, they're not like a big crash. The more we bring the right people together at the most perfect time. What's good about it? The main thing that's good about it is that when they said, can you do a show a week? The first thing you do is they go, how am I going to manage that? And how am I going to get all these guests? But then what happens? I just write down a list of all the subjects I want to talk about. And one of the subjects was meditation. And then an email comes in from this guy called Lou Revan saying, will you come on my show? And all of a sudden, I found my meditation guests. So by magic, the people just rock up just at the perfect time. So, oh, we've got to put the hour in like we're doing now to record it in about an hour or so of post production. But the actual sourcing of the perfect person at the right time is just easy. And you got, you work on intuition and trust. So, you know, I'm fortunate I could actually pick any of the great meditation teachers on insight timer, and I will have other meditation teachers on, but if you're available at the time, I want to record it. I'd love to have you on that show to talk about meditation from a metaphysical perspective, how it helps us tune into the above and connect with the below.
Lou: I really appreciate the ways that you allow life, the universe source, to bring you the opportunities at the right time. And I'm curious whether it was back when insight Timer reached out or more recently, how do you think about the difference between and I've been thinking about this recently. I don't know if you're familiar with typology or the typing system, human design, but I've been thinking about that with different human design types. There's certain types that are more inclined to wait for the invitation. Certain types, like myself, are inclined to make things happen and go out there, not wait for things to come to me. So I'm curious how you think of the balance between, if you engage with this in some ways, the balance between going out into the world, putting yourself out there, sharing stuff, or making things happen, versus doing the inner work of attuning and trusting that it will unfold or that person will find me. So I don't know if you're able to kind of speak to that at all.
Tom: Well, the first thing I'll say is there may be a lady who doesn't know that she's going to be a guest on the show. And there's another insight timer teacher called Kirsten Pancras, who our souls collided recently, and if you listen to this, this might be the first time to hear, Kirsten, that I want to have you on the show to talk about human design. But the other thing is, I don't think it's. I used to be a tv broadcast tv engineer, then I got into it and that sort of stuff, but I got a background in computing and technology and stuff like that, and so I know about logical gates and how computers are structured, and I don't think it's a question of either or, where you've got to choose between one or. I think it's and both. So you're both of those things at the same time. Now, this is kind of interesting, because there's two types of magic in the world. And when all this stuff switched on in me, I started to meditate because I was a bit stressed out in my mid forties. And then lots of magical things died down. So as an engineer and a scientist, I started to research them. And I enrolled with two schools of essence. Eric study. One was a western mystery school in California, all done by remote, and that tended to look at male magic. And I also enrolled in an angelic school in Germany that was mainly female magic. And so the female approach tends to be intuitive and allowing, and the male approach tends to be directive. And I totally got into the study of tarot as part of this stuff, mainly with the western mystery school, but the tarot, not from a tarot reading perspective, but understanding the esoteric glyphs and how they act as keys. There's two keys in the tarot. One is the magician, who commands the above to the below, and the other is the high priestess, and she allows the above to come to the below and the below to come up to the above. And so neither are right. But when you merge, merge the two into a state I call the synthesis, where you're dispelling and allowing female magic and male magic to come through at the same time. That's why I say it's the and both, not either or. I don't know whether there's an archetype in human design for the male and female synthesis, but that's kind of what I am and why I love teaching.
Lou: It's a little bit of a different take. So yeah, I'd be curious if you have her on to listen to that. I actually had someone on recently in the podcast talking about some high level human design stuff. So I've spoken to a few insight timer teachers that were, I guess I would call it around our time, which is 2016. I think you are a little bit earlier than I, maybe by like a month or two if you look at, like when you, when you were on Insight timer. And it's funny because most of the teachers back then, when I talk to, talk to them on the show or separately, they say, yeah, insight timer reached out to me. They saw what I was doing. They saw the blog that I had. They saw I was creating meditations here. And they reached out and asked me to come to the app. And it's funny, I don't know how I did it or what happened, but that didn't happen to me. I was using insight timer as a, as a meditator, using the timer feature. And then I don't know what happened, but I, I had recently gotten a recording, little Lavalier mic, and I made my first meditation for a friend. And I saw that you can upload. I saw that you were allowed to, like, create a profile. And I just like, did it on my own. So I got really lucky. And being able to just, just up to start myself back then without getting the invitation. So you have, and this is like, you know, I think what I have said this before, if I can go back in time and just knowing what I know now, just completely focus on only insight timer creating content, because it would have just grown so much at that time. And by no means that I missed the boat or the wave that has grown. And so when you first uploaded that meditation, saw that over a month, you had 6000 plays, did you question like, oh, there's something here, I should put some more time now, this is long before we were going to make any revenue from it. Just. Yeah. Curious how you were thinking about insight timer in those early days.
Tom: Well, I think in the early days and actually a bit confusion over the time because it says on my profile September 16. But if you look at those early meditations, let's say August 2015. So I don't know whether time got a bit scrambled then or whatever. That's kind of academic in a way.
Lou: Well, you're a time guy too, so maybe there was a shifted thing.
Tom: Yeah, I love a bit of temporal alchemy. So I think this is kind of important is at the time, there was this model for how you do things. I was in the early days, the Internet was you. You sell something for ten pounds and you give something away. And then when you get the giveaway, then you send loads of emails to someone say, buy this product for 100 pounds or $100. That was the kind of email marketing and I've always been uncomfortable with that one is selling your own stuff. We always feel a bit uncomfortable. So when instead of timer rocked up, all of a sudden I went, hang on, this is it. This is the same intuition. I don't have to do anything but create content and content marketing. I was into it back then. People are into it big time now. But I was into content marketing, so there's no, no interruption based on how to. I've never paid for a cent for a Google Ad, a Facebook ad, a LinkedIn ad, or anything like that. It's always content, content, content, and the content does the talking. Which is why I was very pleased to, I think, before insight time, I had any revenue coming in. I had about 4 million listings, and my other half said, if you had just a cent for each one of those 4 million listens, then I said, don't worry, we open this 4 million karma points there, it'll come in, it'll all come back to us, and it has big time. And so, for me, insight timer gave me two things. One, it gave me access to millions of people back then, and there's even more millions of people on it. But specifically, they were my target demographic. The people that seem to like my stuff are the people that are on the cusp of awakening from semi dormant state into a fall awake state. They've already done some work themselves, already done some preparatory work, but they want to go to the next level. And that was. I found those people on insight timer, but the way I accessed them was by putting in real low level. I don't mean that in a draw, because really simple meditation, my first meditation that got the 6000 list is called so it does what it says on the tin. And then the other thing you got to do with insight timer is I've always answered every, every review, although I didn't realize there was a back end until Maddie Jared told me, you need to look at all these reviews and stuff like that. So I very quickly tried to answer as many as I could, but since then, I've always handed 100% of them, and I take feedback on board. Now, the first thing I thought is, who's got more than ten minutes to listen to a meditation? And who wants to listen to Tom for more than ten minutes? You know, we all have that imposter syndrome. And then the first feedback was, it's not long enough. Can you make it longer? So I just edited it, spread out a bit. So there's also a version called be calm for longer. So since then, I listen to what people say, and if someone says it's.
Lou: Called be calm for longer, that's the title of it.
Tom: And again, it does what it says on the tin. So I've got a meditation called just relax. Guess what that's about. And I got one. The one that's had the most listed is called the perfect way to get to sleep. So it does what it says on the tin.
Lou: Yeah, sleep is a big one for sure. So I think it's.
Tom: I think it's ironic, actually, that an app which is all about awakening, the most popular meditations are all about good quality sleep.
Lou: So you talk about how you record in a trance, and I feel like. I wouldn't say that I do. I guess in some ways I do. Like, I definitely wanting to feel into the experience where it doesn't feel. I'm not reciting words, even though I might be reading. I do script out meditations, but there is a sense of I'm in the experience or I'm feeling what I'm trying to convey. And so how do you think about the actual recording process with you mentioning, like, recording in trance, is there some kind of ritual you do before recording? Or is it just through your own practice you're able to drop in and then go into recording the practice?
Tom: First of all, that's a great question. Thanks for that. So it's a bit like riding a bike. So when you first learn to meditate, it feels like a bit of a slight uphill struggle. And you might think, hang on, I can't make my mind go quiet. And one of the first things I say is that it's not about making your mind go quiet. It's just about having a different relationship with your thoughts. But after meditating for a while, it doesn't take too long. You find that you're in the meditative state all the time. So you're in a more in the meditative state than you are not in the meditative state. Meditation is a natural thing for us to do. You go for dogs, go for a dog walk, or you paint a fence, or you do some washing up or some ironing or some repetitive task, you will drop into a natural meditative state. But some of the meditations that I do are specifically about tapping you into other states of consciousness. So, for example, I wrote a book ages ago about light bulb moments, how you tap into those splashes of inspiration. So if I'm recording a meditation specifically about lightful moments, I will get into the state of consciousness where I can have light bulb moments. And while I'm doing the recording, come in that I'll just enter into the meditation, although I do script most of my meditations anyway. And so it's all about mirroring state of consciousness. We've got these things called mirror neurons. So let's say you've had a stroke. What they do with someone who's had a stroke is they might show a video over and over again of someone just picking up a glass of water, and slowly that rewires the plasticity, the plastic neurons. So you get those pathways forged again. But taking it into a spiritual context, if you're listening to someone that is in that state, that different state of consciousness, I don't want to make it elitist and say it's heightened or it's just a different state of consciousness, you will naturally fall into that state. But if you then, as I do, I write my own music these days as well. So in lockdown, I learned how to compose my own ambient music. I'm in the same state of consciousness when I'm composing music. So the music is written in that state of slight trance. The words are written in the state of trance. They're recorded in the state of trance. And here's the real magic in between. My old guitar teacher used to say to me, tom, it's not about the notes. It's about the gaps in between notes. So it's not about the words. It's about the gaps between the words. And this is true of spoken words and written words on page. And because of some of the work that I did studying with esoteric schools, I learned how to put magic into the white space in a book between the words. So just picking up the book is enough for the magic to leech out of the book. And the same true is true of my meditation. So you will naturally listen to one of my meditations, get into the same state that I'm in. And it makes. That makes it easy not only just to follow the guidance in the meditation, but also to get into that elevated state. Now, a lot of the times now, I'm putting more and more gaps, and I tend to speak quite quickly. So one of the first things I do is a little techie thing in audacity, which I use. I slow everything down by 2%. It still doesn't sound too. It's a great little trick to do it. Just slow spaces everything up, put lots more spaces in as well, and what have you, and just allow people to go into that state. And I've done meditations now that are an hour long thinking, who want to listen to an hour I spent, though I just put two up this week, which are four minutes, 44 seconds long, but I then do one, which is twelve minutes, one is 20 minutes, one and a half an hour, whatever. And again, I've got two lovely meditations called hypnagogia and hypnopompia. Hypnagogia is that state between being awake and being asleep, and hypnopompia is the opposite when you're in the sleep mode to waking up. And they've got two extended versions where there's nothing to be told. It's just my ambient music background, hypnogogia extended and hypnopompia extended. And so this lovely mix of stuff will attract different people, because different people have got different amounts of linear time, and different people want to get into different experiences. So if something is very esoteric, I would label it as such. So if I've got a meditation called accessing super consciousness, which is a thing that if you're only interested in accessing super consciousness, you do it, however, if you just want to relax or be calm. So it's the state that's often in the title is the state that I'm in when I record it.
Lou: I think this is so important to double click on, because you're so right. The felt sense of receiving someone's energy being in that state. As I think about why my meditations resonate. And I also have studied and I've led breath work, and when I'm doing that, I don't feel. It feels forced for me, and it's. I don't connect with it. And I realize, like, this is not really where I want to play, but with meditation, there's something where I'm able to drop in and really be in a state that is different, and I think that is transmitted. And so another reminder that who you are being is mattering more than what you are saying. And I'm wondering, in the space in between for you, Tom, are you consciously? Because I can imagine potentially if there's space in between, there might be. I don't know. And I'm thinking about this, maybe adding this as we speak to almost like a prayer to the person listening right where you're almost like sending energy without while the silence is happening, right. Kind of sending it through. Is that how you think about in the between space, or is it something? Is it just having that space while you're in that state?
Tom: It's a little bit more meta than that. So meta being the Greek is above and beyond. So let's take a meditation, like just relax, whatever. So it does what it says on the tiny. So if somebody relaxes as a result of listening to a meditation of mine or using the timer and timer, then result. However, what happens after they listen to it? What do they do after listening to it? So they might go listen to another meditation, or they might go out into the world and their relaxed state leeches out from them and makes people around them relaxed. They then make people around them relax as well. And then what happens is we've got a number of people that are more relaxed than they would have been had they not listened to the meditation. Then what happens is we get a general awakening and it multiplies, spreads. So you drop one little pebble in the pond and all the ripples go out, and then they bounce off the edges of the pond, then bounce, ripple back again. So it's more meta than just a one to one. Here's a meditation. Have a listen. Experience.
Lou: Love that. Do you have, do you still answer your reviews, like every single on free tracks, too?
Tom: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
Lou: Amazing. I wish I had the fortitude to continue that. I did it for a long time when there wasn't any compensation for it, but for some reason, I've fallen off the free track reviews as much as I'd like to get back on it. So that's amazing that you're still doing that. And I know it's great. It's such great feed. I do read them. I read all of them, but haven't spent the time to. I don't spend as much time to go through them anymore. You have a lot of courses on some various topics. What is your favorite course you created?
Tom: I think I have to say it's the one that most, well, there's two courses that have gotten the most listens, and one is the art of timefulness, and that is a distillation of a much bigger course I had that I was going to upload as a video course to inside time. They pulled the plug on video courses, and that was an eight week mindfulness course called mindfulness based time management. MBTM. And I think I'm only person to do one of those things in the world haven't trademarked it at all, that sort of thing. So I just, I distilled it down to a smaller course called the art of timefulness, which helps you stretch time. So for me, the time to answer all those reviews come naturally because I do it in what would it be? Dead time, you know, where other people might be on social media or something like that. So I might pick up the. I might do it first thing in the morning, I might do it midday, and then something in the evening, something like that. And to me, it's marketing time. So in answering those things, you don't have to sell anything at all. I don't very rarely sell something, but if someone says something, I wish you could have more of that. I say, well, actually go and listen to that course there. So the art of timefulness course, 16,000 or more students, is the most popular one, but the one that's dearest to my heart is the one that's got the second number of students, over 10,000, called the soulful path, because soulful path is bringing all those souls together at this pivotal, pivotal time. And it's about how soul attracts soul. And I've had the most amazing story, two story I'm going to share with. One is this lady I mentioned. She came to see me on the last new moon because she doesn't live very far away and I very rarely meet a meditative cytometer. I'll explain why she came to see me, and I'll explain that first. So on Saul path, there's one of the tracks is called serendipity in Sol. And I woke up at 444 in the morning the day before I recorded it, the morning I was going to record it, so I went back to sleep. I got the idea for the whole meditation at that time that I kind of hypnotic time, went back to sleep, got up, recorded it. And I mentioned in the meditation, by the way, I came up with the idea for this at 444 in the morning. Sophie, this lady, Sophie Warner, has just become on inside time as a teacher. She listens to it. The morning before she listened to it, she woke up at 444 and then listened to it. And then she reached out and I said, well, you only live about 20 miles away. Why don't we just have a coffee, you know? So we had a coffee, and then it turns out she wants to be a meditation. She didn't know she was a meditation teacher on inside Time. That was a new moon ago, literally on the last new moon. It's a new moon at the time of this recording. And she just published her first meditation on Inside Time. But the weirdest thing is, as she left the coffee shop to drive home, I got another message in from a lady in Oregon. Now, I don't think we're gonna have a coffee, because from the sides of the pond. And she did exactly the same thing. She woke up at 444 and then listened to my meditation that mentions woken up at 444. So it's lovely when you get those, those souls paths just converging on each other. And now I feel with all the people who are on that course, then we'd be walking this path together. So it's not like the souls bump and then branch off again. And I know, and that's what I like about all the student comments, is you get students commenting on other students questions, which is great. And, you know, you've made other souls collide as well, which is wonderful. In fact, there's another lady, Hannah Raymond. She's an amazing pianist, and I think she lives in New York. And she. She listened to soulpath, got in touch with me, and now she's a meditation teacher on inside time as well. But she's much, much more than that. She runs these concerts about pianos with smaller keys. She's running a series of concerts at the moment in New York, stretcho pianos, which is amazing. And she interviewed me. And the title of the interview is when Souls Collide, which is just a wonderful title.
Lou: What's funny is 444 is one of those numbers for me in the last, for a while now, a year, year and a half, that is always. That pops up a lot. It's like the most kind of consecutive number that's been popping up. So. Love that little knot.
Tom: I'll just give you a little esoteric aside, that it's because four, four and four equal twelve.
Lou: Tell me more.
Tom: Okay, so twelve is a really important number. You see, twelve come off again by human history for aeons, you know, the twelve apostles and the twelve. I think there's twelve pantheons in the greek gods and demigods and all that sort of stuff. And I came across these characters recently through an interview that I did with somebody ages ago called the twelve counsellors of the light. And the idea is that I embedded this into my novels because it's all a bit bonkers. So I thought, you can't write about this in non fiction. You've got to write it about it in fiction. And the idea is that there's twelve counselors, six female energy, six male energy, and they've been pulling strings down on planet Earth and all the planets across the cosmos for aeons. And they are the ones that are controlling things on the Earth plane. But when we imagine that they're real again, we become super lucky, which is amazing. So the twelve is quite an important number for me. And obviously I got interviewed the other week by somebody for the ethereal tv channel. It's just a half hour interview. And we mentioned about the number twelve in the interview about this lady, Louisa Tana Munchin. She's an astrologer and I got her on as a guest next week. And we're going to talk about the twelve houses. Number twelve is important. As soon as we finished the interview, I went downstairs to change because I had some do it yourself jobs to do it. So I changed up and I shirt and trousers into gardening gear and it was 1212 o'clock at that very time. And it's almost like these things are meant to grab our attention. And when we imagine that the twelve counselors of the light are real, even though I write about them very fictitiously, we become super lucky again. They seem to bring things to us at the right time.
Lou: You're reminding me that twelve was like my number growing up too, for basketball. And it was my favorite number. So you're relying on all cylinders here. So you mentioned some new people joining inside timer. You're also involved in different insight timer communities and seeing a lot of new teachers on their journey or working on growing on their, growing their business out of there. And so I don't know if you. How you're. The question is. I know for me sometimes I can feel like I'm like the old head of grandpa and like things were different back then and things are different now. And there seems, if you see a difference thing, I'd love to hear your opinion. But there seems to me more of people coming to insight timer with expectations than there was in back in the day. There seems like back in the day it was. This is an opportunity to just give and if we receive anything. Right, the karma points, right? Yes. 4 million plays. Amazing. And we're getting out there. Obviously there was way more attention that we were getting back then. But what I've noticed is it seems like people are coming to insight timer with more of expectations, like asking for it to do something for them. Right. I need like asking for it to make a certain amount of income asking for it to do something. And I just, I've been thinking of this. I had a, I recorded a podcast that will be out by this time around, the difference between an offer and an offering. An offer, there's an expectation. Hey, here's my coaching package, here's my album, here's this, um, it's, you know, this amount of money, will you like it? Yes. No. There's an expectation, an offering. There's this giving. There's a giving. It's from the soul and it's fulfilling and giving it. And if it does receive some compensation or it receives something great, but it's like, it's like an art in some ways. And I see inside timer, I think, in the people that have become really, really successful that I know have used it like an offering, like they're not, they don't put their expectations on it being their breadwinner. And the paradox of that, because they're unattached to it, is that they end up making the most revenue from it. So I don't know, I'd be curious to hear and if, and if you don't have any thoughts on what I shared to at least maybe speak to, if I'm listening to this and I'm coming to inside time or trying to grow or trying to figure things out, like how you engage with people now earlier on in their journey or advice you have. Yeah. So take that wherever you want to take it.
Tom: Well, firstly, unfortunately, I want you might class as an elder now. I've actually come to pension age in the UK, but I'm also very fortunate that I make 100% of my living. True inside timer?
Lou: 100%.
Tom: Absolutely. Wow.
Lou: Okay. Wow.
Tom: Amazing. So, and one of the reasons for that is I was in early, but the biggest reason is I put a lot of content up. I think I put a track up a week for seven years, put up a lot of content pre any revenue coming in. But I actually, I was one of the people that helped them design the revenue. They all came to the UK. Yeah, we had little awards all. And I said, look, you got to do the Kindle model, which is people buy kindles and then they spawn pages read and stuff like that. And then I was really surprised a year later when they actually implemented a lot of the things and I said, so my fault if you don't like it, and my fault if you do like it anyway, but last year I did a house up, so we did a big renovation on the house. I had to move out of my audio studio and I know a lot of people in the very early days, I was one of the first 50 guides. And within about, I don't know, six months I was in the top 30 guides there, they used to have a league table page with all the people on it, and I was right up in the top 30. Top.
Lou: I remember that, yeah.
Tom: But again, no expectation of any money. I just thought, it's great. What great exposure for me and my books as an author, it was fantastic. And then pretty much as soon as they brought courses out, I put that art of timefulness course up there and download since then. But last year, I didn't do a lot at all, and my revenue went down half. But that's counter calculated. And this year I put some more courses on and it's back up to where it needs to be. So if you don't keep spinning the plate, you'll drop off. And I know a lot of those original 150 people in the early days have dropped off. They haven't got it. Life gets in the way. They might have a day job, other things happen. But I was pretty fortunate that I had the space and time capacity. And I use my. I don't do any time for money anytime I used to. So I can only build up to that by earning other ways and then let inside time take over. And they say it takes all your life to be an overnight success, if you know what I mean. So one of the things I recommend to new people coming in, don't give up. But I specifically said, keep going and keep putting a balance of new stuff up, doing the inside timer lives, putting the courses. And if you don't do courses, you'll really struggle to make any serious money inside time, because that's where the revenue. That's where the revenue lies. But I don't do it for the revenue. The revenue, as you say, just pops in. And it seems to be the right amount of revenue that I need at the right time. Now, bearing in mind I'm an alchemist and a mystic, and I know about generation of abundance. Not in a secret kind of way, not in, like, the secret. I know some other alchemical techniques to bring in just what you need at the right time, which is nothing to do with inside timer. But I did put some of that material on a course. I uploaded this earlier this year, specifically because I was in one of these support groups on Facebook, and I could see that people were struggling, and I could see that when they were being sold these get rich quick schemes by other inside timer guides that were a bit sort of unethical. And so I put a course up specifically to help people. It's called purposeful living. And one of the exercises in there is setting a meta strategy. And once you've got a meta strategy, so you might start out with my strategy is to make $5,000 a month out of inside timer. It's not a bank meta strategy or $1,000 or $100, but then you then take, well, but if I achieve that, what is then going to be the result of that? So it may be that you've actually awakened or helped 5000 souls, and then as a result of you helped 5000 souls, what's the strategy above that? And so once you've got your meta strategy, that's what drives you. So my metastrategy, which I share in this module on the course, is to help awaken planet Earth to the next level of consciousness. That's it. It's pretty simple, but it's not simple, it's simply that's it. And I don't expect to get paid for that. I do know as a result of doing that, all the resources that I need to serve in that way will be delivered to me. Some of these are financial, others, people like you rocking up saying, when you come and have a chat for an hour, just at the right time.
Lou: So what I'm hearing from you is really in some ways goal setting 101. But goal setting connected to the mission, connected to the deeper vision or the deeper why, right? For you, it's awakening the planet or I forget a million souls or whatever it might be. But connecting to what your why is letting your why drive you. And yes, have those structural goals, like have the goal of it would be amazing. I had this goal for years. I would do a year financial forecast, I'd do a three year financial forecast, and I would have $3,000 a month on my three year financial forecast for insight timer as one of my revenue streams. And that was like an incredible dream. Like, wow, could I actually make $3,000 a month on it? And it wasn't that I was doing everything I can to make that tomorrow, but it was just, I put it out there, I let my mind work on it, and pretty much now I'm at that give or take on a normal month. So for people listening, they would have heard me talk all the time about slow, juicy growth. Yes, ten years to overnight success, that if you want to be doing this work, create the space in the container for you to be able to do it and not the pressure. I think where people can go sour is that they put so much pressure on something, whether it's inside timer or whether it's their new business, that it needs to make this amount in the first year, like you kind of give yourself some energy to build that foundation. So yeah, I 100% agree with that. You mentioned these alchemical secrets for the people to appear at the right time or clients to appear at the right time. I know there are people that work in coaching and have a one on one practice that are listening. And so any thoughts, any insights or things you want to share? Someone's like, yeah, I could really go for a new client or bringing in more clients to my work. How any, any esoteric into exoteric insight do you have for them?
Tom: Well, absolutely esoteric in this case, and it's distilled into another module on the same course. Ages ago I met a shimanka, an english lady who's a female shaman. And at the time I'd done a bit of NLP and I was introduced to smart goals and I always felt slightly uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable a lot of NLP, but it was helpful in some other ways. But I felt uncomfortable with smart goals. I noticed that 50% of my smart goals manifested in 50% didn't. And I like better stats than that, really. And I learned why smart goals are not so smart from this female shame Chimanga. And she said what you're going to do is do learning based goals. Right now the smart goal is specifically measured, achievable, realistic and time. So if anyone wants to do a smart goal around insight timer, $3,000 a month is very, very cheapable on insight timer by save you starting now, set that as a goal for about three years from now. You'll achieve it easily. But go sort of 501,000, 2000, 3000. Don't try it. You find, I know some people have gone to 3000 very quickly, but they find it very hard to sustain it because you need the following. You need the growth, you need a lot of stuff around you to be able to do that stuff. You need the energetic status to keep it all going as well. So learning based goals, and there's a module on this on that same course called purposeful living. As you set goals based on what you want to learn. So you say, right, in a month, I'd like to learn this. In another month, in three months I'd like to learn this. In a year, I'd like to learn this. Then in three years I'd like to learn this. What happens then is what you set for your three month learning goal happens within a month. What you set for your one year learning goal happens within three months. And what you set for your three year goal tends to happen within a year because you're setting up the conditions for the universe and the cosmos to come to you and show you what it is that you don't know. So with a smart goal, I might say smart goal is $3,000 a month within three years. But the Universe might have a way of making $10,000 in a year within a month, within a year, for example. But it just tells you you've just got to go about it a slightly different way. So goals are what you want to learn is the secret. It's amazing. Easy way to do it. And I can give that information out freely without you charging for it. So make that massive program and this sort of stuff. So say, well, here it is. It's $9.99 for you, but you can have it for $9 today and that sort of stuff. We can all fear based marketing by stuffing throwing stuff out there freely with unconditional love. Then everything that comes back into your world that you need to keep that site $20.
Lou: $20 for that answer, put it in the tom's donation and make sure he gets it first. So then what would be. I love. I love this. Thinking about learning based goals. I don't think I've heard that said. That's amazing. I love doing these podcasts because I'm always learning new things. It's awesome. So what would be an example if someone, let's use clients specifically and not inside timer, so they want to, um, get a certain amount or certain new clients. And so the smart goal would be, and you want two new clients a month for the next year. What might a learning base goal be for them?
Tom: Well, let's just back to refer to that. I want to learn how to get clients to come to me without saying a smart base goal. First place.
Lou: I want to learn how. So you asked me, can the universe.
Tom: Show me how to do this without me having to set a goal?
Lou: Interesting. So how would one. Okay, I hear this and it sounds awesome. What would one do on a day to day basis to connect with that? Is it just keep asking the question because I think the smart goals, I think it's popular because it gives us a sense of control. We can do things and we can measure it, and there's a place that we're active. What do I need to learn? Feels like it's more of a receptive energy, more of maybe the female for using that as what we talked about before. And so what would that person do on a day to day basis? Just keep asking the question and waiting.
Tom: Not even that? No. So let's imagine someone's listening to this right now and said, I'm now listening to this and I'm willing to learn. How about if the person speaking right now, which is me, was about to show you? So the very answer that you just asked, I'm going to show you how to do this. We'd like to do a bit of alchemy on here, which is a bit of meditation. So. So what you do is you put your. Your thumb and your middle fingers together and the. This is connecting our conscious mind with the super consciousness. And you put your palms up like that. I'll just hold my palms up. So my palms are now up and you imagine that you're breathing through your palms. So on the in breath that the breath comes up through the middle of the palm and on the out breath, it goes back down. Let's just do that together three times. I'll do this quite quickly. And the point is, this is all you have to do every morning. If you haven't got ten minutes to meditate, just do this and you'll be amazed at the magic that's going to come your way. There's two parts of this. So the first is the breathing in and out through your palms.
Tom: We're going to do it again. We're going to do it again. And now I don't want you to focus on the in breath coming up through your palm and the out breath coming back down your palm. I want you to focus on the gap between the in where the breath gets to the top and before the out starts. And then as the breath comes back down your palms focus on the gap between the out and the in. So just do that three times.
Tom: Now, what I'd like you to do is three times recite this mantra. The mantra is Monar. Ohar. That's m o n a o h a. It's two words. It means I trust in the lom like language. Now recite the words into inside your head. Mona. Oha. Mona. On the in breast. And ohar.
Tom: You just say it with me. So we're going. Mona and then ohar.
Lou: Mona, oha.
Lou: Oha. Mona, oha.
Tom: That's it. So do that every day. You can do it while you're driving along. You can imagine you don't have to hold your fingers together. You don't have to imagine you can be driving along and do it as well. And just by setting that up, you're setting some cosmic magic into motion and you're collecting. You're connecting with the above. And then the cosmic forces start to stir. And just what you need coming now, some people on insight timer. Some people, it's not the right place for them. It really isn't the right place for them. There's other apps. Like, there's an app called Aura, which I've got, invites you in around when inside time was starting to become successful. I must have had a. An approach from a different app every month, and I did a few of them, and then I found I just couldn't sustain it. And I found also the. The audience in aura isn't my demographic, so it's not quite my demographic, so I'll let Aura disappear and what have you. I've gone right back to inside right now. So there are other places other than insight timer for some of us to earn that $3,000, $5,000 a month, there's other ways of doing it. Some people. I don't want to do clients anymore, don't want to spend any one to one time with clients doesn't suit me. And so I want to do one to many as much as I can. And so other people would crave that one to one contact, and then that's fine, too. But. And sometimes what you have to do, and this is the whole point of that sole path course, it's on inside timer. Your sole path course on its own timer is sometimes you've got to allow the path to be shown to you, which is why the learning based goals are perfect. Because it may be that you could learn from me or from you how to get this $3,000 a month, but that might not be your path. There might be another way of getting that $3,000 a month to allow you to do deliver against your meta strategy. That's better than being clone of Lou or Tom on Saitama.
Lou: Yeah, I love that because it's important, I think, to open to the how or how it might show up. There's a great line. I'm going to see if, as I speak to it, if I can find the line from one of my favorite artists, not go in medicine for the people where I realize many dreams, I'm blanking on the line, but it's something like it never came how I imagined. Right? It's. It's always. There's always a little, you know, the dream is realized, but if I would have drawn it up, it wouldn't have looked like this. So that's where I think the actual specific goals can be limiting. Maybe that's what you're getting with, too, and keeping that more openness, trusting, and really trying to stay in your gifts, in your service, and trusting that there's something greater that knows the right path for you. And we're all just figuring how to stay in alignment with, with that so that we can do this work and share our gifts and make an impact. Because I think that's why we're all here and why I know if you're listening to this, that's what you share, and that's the big intention with this podcast. So, Tom, this has been such an amazing conversation. Is there any. And we'll have a chance to, for you to kind of send people to different things. But any last words that might be helpful to an emerging meditation or spiritual guide that might be listening.
Tom: That'S good. I think it's really, really important that people have fun with it. It's not a serious, worthy thing. Be cheeky, have fun. I love playing with words, and I love having titles that there's a thing in NLP, in hypnotic language called phonological ambiguities, and I use them a lot. I love playing with words. I've got loads of my new words on the urban dictionary. So the word timefulness is on the urban dictionary. But in lockdown, I also produced a meditation called the art of mindfulness as well, which I got the word mindfulness on, on urban dictionary, too. And so, you know, if you go to my profile on inside time, you'll find the art of winefulness. Now, it doesn't matter if you drink or don't drink or you drink 0% wine or whatever. You can do this meditation and just enjoy it, because it's all about the journey of from grape to wine and then back to liquid again, sort of stuff. And so it takes you on a journey using the metaphor of a grape being converted into wine. And so, one, that was, that was fun to do, and two, it makes meditation fun for other people, and if you like a glass of wine, it makes it relevant as well. So it's sort of ticking about three boxes at the same time. So just. And I'm mentioning, but nothing I'm mentioning about two or three people at the moment, and they're just coming up with amazing titles. This lady Sophie's come up with a title. Just saying, you are incredible is her first meditation. You know, it's not about just breathe or, you know, the meditation on the breath, blah, blah. It's called you are incredible. What a great title. And she is incredible. So it's self serving in its own right. So, so it's really, really important that we, we don't one, we don't take ourselves seriously because, you know, I make all this stuff up as I go along. I'm the first to every, I've still got imposter syndrome. So every single course, the new course I put, I think they're going to reject that one. I've gone too far with it now, stuff like that. Oh, I'm sorry. So just have fun with it. Make it a joy. Make it something you want to get up in the morning, say, you know what? I'm just going to push the envelope today and see what happens.
Lou: That's amazing advice. Have fun with it. Go check out Tom on insight Timer. Follow him if you aren't yet anywhere else you want to send people to.
Tom: Yeah, my website, which actually will just refer you to insight timers because we've got my books on it as well. There's is www. Dot Tomevans dot co. And on there you'll find my books, which kind of started this journey off for me. My books got me into meditation. Meditation's got me to be a composer. You know, all these things I didn't know was going to be these things. Well, and I know in your reference, in your introduction, you said he still doesn't want know what he wants to regret. I know there's still some more incarnations within this incarnation to go through, but I'm open for them to be shown because I trust in the light languages of Mona and R. That's what I'm here for. And also I do feel if I was shown what I was supposed to do, I'd probably be so scared I'd run off the other direction. So I think sometimes we're just giving a little bit of the secret at one time. Otherwise we'd say, listen, this is too much, guys. I can't go with this.
Lou: That's so true. That's so true. Well, Tom, thank you so much for taking the time. This was a pleasure and I hope to connect again with you soon.
Tom: Absolutely. Will do. Thank you, Lou. It's been a great honor.
Lou: All right, take care, everyone.