April 15, 2025 • 38 mins
In this engaging episode of the "Beyond Fulfillment Podcast," we dive into an inspiring conversation with Susan Bratton ( @BetterLover ) a successful entrepreneur who pivoted from the tech industry to the sexual wellness space. Discover actionable insights and strategies for modern entrepreneurs, small business owners, and startup founders who seek to overcome challenges and flourish in their ventures. Learn from Susan as she shares her journey, reflecting on valuable lessons about building a sustainable business in a stigmatized industry.
🔍 Key Moments:
[00:00:36] Susan's Transition from Tech to Sexual Wellness
[00:01:20] Building a Business from Personal Experience
[00:06:54] Overcoming Stigmas and Challenges
[00:14:00] Sustaining Energy & Passion for Longevity
[00:21:08] The Courage to be Disliked
[00:33:07] Advice for Young Entrepreneurs
Through her story, Susan emphasizes the importance of resilience, creativity, and community in driving success. If you're eager to implement effective strategies into your business, this episode is a must-watch!
If you found value in our conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the "Beyond Fulfillment Podcast" for more inspiring stories and insights from successful entrepreneurs. Hit that Like button, share with fellow entrepreneurs, and leave a comment with your thoughts!
Connect with Susan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanbratton/
Learn more here: http://betterlover.com/
Our sponsor information: www.ezdc3pl.com
#Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #StartupSuccess #EntrepreneurInsights #SmallBusiness #BusinessStrategies #BeyondFulfillmentPodcast #Entrepreneur #businesssuccess #advice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today we sit down withintimacy expert to millions, Susan
Bratton.
Susan is a serial entrepreneurwho made a bold shift transitioning
from the tech space to thesexual wellness industry 20 years
ago.
She shares her personaljourney, which was driven by her
desire to save her marriage bygaining a proper education on intimacy
(00:24):
and lovemaking.
Susan discusses how hergreatest challenge in her personal
life turned into a lucrativebusiness, allowing her to help people
worldwide through herpublishing company, Personal Life
Media.
Her work provides couples withvaluable information on lovemaking
techniques and intimacy thatare often stigmatized or misunderstood
(00:47):
in society.
Susan also recounts thechallenges and stigmas associated
with working in the sexualwellness industry, particularly with
increasing censorship fromsocial media platforms and search
engines.
The strong emphasis onpersonal development, longevity,
and empowerment.
(01:08):
She highlights thesignificance of understanding and
utilizing your strengths toachieve both personal and professional
fulfillment.
As always, if you found valuefrom this content, please like and
subscribe.
All right, Susan Bratton,welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
Hey, Dave.
I'm all about fulfillment ofall kinds, so I'm happy to be here,
(01:30):
and it's so nice to meet youand be introduced to you.
Thanks for the connection.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We appreciate you taking thetime to be here.
Okay, so you made quite aradical shift from the tech space
to the sexual wellness spacealmost 20 years ago, and that was
due to a personal pain point.
(01:51):
Can you just talk more, Talkmore about how that happened and
what it was like?
Yeah, I remember that.
So I launched a publishingcompany 20 years ago because I'd
almost lost my marriage due to.
Honestly, Dave, neither of usknew what we were doing, and our
intimate relations just kindof fell apart after about 12 years.
And we thought, gosh, we loveeach other, we're great together,
(02:13):
but we've got this issue.
Let's just figure it out.
And when we figured out whatto do by learning and getting kind
of an education aboutlovemaking, we'd gone to workshops
and things like that becausewe were in the Silicon Valley.
And so we were, you know,close to this kind of, like, the
intersection of personaltransformation and sexuality and
(02:38):
personal growth.
And so there were a lot ofworkshops and.
And we're like, wow, it was soeasy to get good in bed together
and heal our marriage.
And we know all our friendsare getting divorced, and we know
it's not money because we'reall making tons of dough in Silicon
Valley, so maybe we shouldbring all of these kind of workshop
experiences online.
And so I started publishingthe work of my mentors, and that's
(03:01):
when we launched Personal Life Media.
And one of the programs Ipublished was a program by a wonderful
man named Jim Benson.
And he said a phrase to meonce that really, really resonated.
And I think it can for so many people.
And that is your greatestwound becomes your greatest gift
if you allow it.
(03:22):
And that's really whathappened for me was my greatest wound
almost losing my marriage andyou know, messing up my daughter's
childhood and all of thosekinds of things due to just a lack
of knowledge, a lack ofknowing what to do because we're
not taught these things.
That became the gift of my business.
And helping people all overthe world access information to have
(03:42):
really rich and pleasurableintimate lives in their marriages.
That's what people it became.
And so it was the gift I begwas, you know, able to give.
So that that was what was happening.
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(04:25):
Your greatest, your greatestgift, your greatest wound can become
your greatest gift if youallow it.
Yeah, but making a shift into,you know, such a highly stigmatized
industry.
Right, I'm sure was very challenging.
I mean what when you had thisexperience and you realized what
learning what to do did foryour marriage and now you wanted
(04:47):
to share with the world.
I mean, what was that like,you know, starting out in, in an
industry like sexual wellness?
Well, it's become harder andharder and harder over time.
Even though what I teach arepassionate lovemaking techniques,
bedroom communication skillsand intimate wellness information
(05:08):
so that you can extend yoursex span to have a longer, healthier,
happier health span.
And everything that I'mteaching is, you know, for couples
it's loving, it's, it's nonpornograph traffic.
It's actually the antidote toporn because that's really some,
in some ways where peoplethink they should learn about sex
and, and that's not, you know,positive toward women and things
(05:31):
like that.
And so things were easier inthe past because traffic was a lot
cheaper to buy because we werean online entity, digital entity.
It was digital directdownloads of audios, videos and ebooks.
It still is.
And we had a lot of affiliatepartners and they could really get
traffic and they built bigemail lists and we cross promoted
(05:53):
each other and that kept goingfor, you know, 12 or 15 years, but
it hit the skids and more andmore now the big search engines and
social media are censoringcontent of all kinds.
The algorithms are running things.
There's no real appeals.
So I could be talking aboutpassionate marriage and get flagged.
(06:15):
And then I'm shadow banned andI can't grow my.
Can't grow my, you know, mysocial media.
And so it's gotten harder andharder and harder.
My friend Perry Belcher callsit a bad neighborhood business.
And it's funny because Irecently also launched a longevity
newsletter on Substack.
It's Longevity Wins.
And I decided to just try outbecause so much of what I do is intimate
(06:39):
wellness.
I'm also a big biohacker and Iget a lot of stage opportunities
to speak about sexual biohacking.
And so I really talk not justabout intimate wellness and longevity,
but overall longevity.
And when I launched thatnewsletter, I was like, oh my God,
this is so much easier.
Why am I in this business?
And I'm in the business 20years later because it's my passion
(07:03):
is passion.
I love helping people have apart of their lives that's so important.
I think, you know, pleasureand connection are one of the jewels
in the crown of what makes alife well lived with the love of
family, your faith, if that'simportant to you, nature, food, music,
(07:24):
you know, poetry, all of themost beautiful things include the
connection to our humanity andto our love and to our heart and
to each other.
And so it, it's very appealingin that way where the quality of
my fans and followers and howmuch they love me and appreciate
me, you can't get that with alot of businesses.
(07:46):
You, right now with the marketthe way it is, I'd like to be in
the commodities business, butfrankly, it wouldn't be as interesting
to me.
You know, this is my path, butit is a hard, hard path.
And we have to work 10, 100times harder to drive traffic and
conversions in our businessthan almost any other business owner
(08:10):
I've ever met.
Yeah.
And do you find too, becausecertainly in recent years, right,
you've seen that there's beenthis kind of focus, I guess you could
call it like the porn epidemicand like you said, a lot more censorship
in trying to solve for that.
Do you find just because ofthe nature of your business that
you get lumped into that category?
(08:31):
Yes.
Yeah, the algorithms.
Just look at anything.
I could be talking aboutpassionate marriage and I'm lumped
in with porn yeah.
Okay.
And then so what, what are.
Clearly you've had to becreative to, to overcome that and
continue to, to grow your business.
Like what are some, some waysthat you've, you've done that?
Well, what I do is I look forways to drive traffic.
(08:53):
You know, I have over 30 freegift funnels where I give a lot away
for free because I have toearn people's trust.
Because sexuality is such ashame ridden business, people are
worried.
They don't trust, they don'tknow if you know, they don't know
what my flavor is, if you will.
So I have a lot of free gift funnels.
(09:14):
And really my, my business isthat I publish these online programs
that solve problems and createopportunities for people in their
relationships.
And so I teach passionatelovemaking techniques and bedroom
communication skills.
But I also have a supplementcompany that has really high quality,
(09:35):
very nice sexual vitality supplements.
And that's about a third of my revenue.
And then a third of my revenueis affiliate marketing for other
people's products because Ican't make everything and there's
a lot of great stuff out there.
So I'm also a recommender.
I wouldn't call myself aninfluencer, I would call myself influential.
And I think that's very different.
(09:56):
I've built a body of work.
I've written over 30, I'vewritten 34 books and programs myself
and I've published the work ofmy mentors, so 10 other online programs.
And because of that, I have awide and vast knowledge of essentially,
you know, heart connected,passionate lovemaking and pleasure
(10:17):
techniques.
And so I like to recommendother people's products.
And people trust me, trust,you know, they have to get to know
me, then they have to trust meand then they begin to like me.
And I am not the kind ofperson who's just trying to get you
to buy something from me.
I have a long 20 year company.
I'm very patient, I'm verygiving, and so I give a lot of free
(10:40):
things to people to earn their trust.
And so what I found is thatthere are some places that are really
good for me for getting thetraffic to the systems that I've
built.
So I've got all these booksand programs.
I've got this newsletterthat's my engine for telling you,
giving you great ideas,teaching you things, and you feel
(11:01):
like God.
I got to stay on thisnewsletter because every single one
of these teaches me something new.
I love it.
But I also make offers inthose newsletters.
And so for me, it's aboutGetting traffic into my newsletter
so that people are like, damn,I didn't even know there was all
this great stuff out there.
I love this.
I want to try that toy.
I want to get that book.
I want to, you know, do these.
I want to expand.
(11:21):
Like, my customers are peoplewho are personal development oriented,
which is why I was so happythat you asked me on your show, because
your, your viewers andlisteners want to get better, and
not everybody does.
A lot of people are like, I'm good.
Everything's good.
I don't need.
I'm good.
There's nothing to learn.
You know, they're like,against learning.
(11:43):
And your entrepreneurs arelike, the more I know, the better
I get.
And that has the same effectin your intimate life.
So I found that gettingtraffic is the number one thing that
I need to do.
And podcasts have been aterrific source of traffic for me
because generally I go on alot of the kind of, like, I go on
(12:04):
comedy shows, I go on personalgrowth, and I go on a lot of entrepreneur
shows.
I go on a lot of, you know,like, I've been on Diary of a CEO.
I've been, you know, on a lotof different shows.
And sex cuts across everything.
You know, it's, It's.
It's interesting to almosteveryone, but only the people who
want to learn and realize theycan learn something are my customers.
(12:26):
And so podcasting has driven alot of traffic into my newsletter.
For me, another thing that Ihave done recently is I've started
something called the Intimacyalliance, because I'm in my 60s now,
and I've done very well in mybusiness, and I'm unusual in that
way that I am a business thathas done well.
(12:47):
I'm what I call a 21st centurymom and pop shop.
I, My husband and I run thebusiness together with our team in
the Philippines.
Primarily in the Philippines.
We've got some people in.
Got a person in Japan, we'vegot a person in India, you know,
but.
But a global distributed teamof people who've been with us for
over a decade, many of them,and we're just really, really good
(13:09):
at running our business together.
But for me, it's.
I built the whole, you know, infrastructure.
It's for me, always gettingtraffic in.
And luckily, podcasting is afairly uncensored medium right now
still where social media is not.
So I can't really grow thatwell on social media.
(13:30):
I mean, I'm still very activeon it.
I.
I promote everything on socialmedia, but I, I don't get a lot of
traffic from social media.
It tends to be more of aninsular kind of an experience where
podcasters, they're eager tolearn, they want to be up to date
and they want to learn new things.
And so I've used that as wellas speaking from stage a lot.
(13:53):
I've, I've done those twothings to get a lot of traffic.
But then my intimacy allianceis me with 40 other sexperts.
I'm teaching them everything Iknow about monetizing their business.
It's all about revenuegeneration, using traffic and conversion,
what they need to do, what'sworked for me and they've become.
(14:14):
I'm slowly working with themon all of their offers so that I
can grow the number of offersthat I have to promote to my fans
and followers.
I'm helping them learn how toconversion optimize their sales pages
and build out their funnelsand things like that so that I can
have more things to offer tomy own followers.
And we cross promote for eachother to generate our revenue.
(14:39):
So I'm very much a teamoriented, collaborative CEO.
And you have to be when you'rein a business like mine, you can't
exist by yourself.
You must have the support of others.
You can't do it alone.
And so that's one of thethings that I've done most recently
to replace the affiliatebusiness that dropped out from the
loss of traffic.
(15:00):
It was to build my own newaffiliate group of people who have
great business offers butdon't know how to market them.
Okay, wow.
So a lot, a lot to get intowith what you just broke down there.
Appreciate that answer.
Okay, so you're in your 60sand you're so passionate about what
(15:24):
you do.
You're constantly running new promotion.
I mean, it's very atypicalwhen I think about the people I know
that are that age in businessper se.
Like.
Yeah, what, what I guessdrives you to just continue being
so, so creative after all theyears and success that you've had
in business?
(15:45):
Well, a couple of things.
One, I really practice what Ipreach around longevity.
So I have a lot of energy.
I work out three to five timesa week.
I ride my mountain bikeinstead of drive my car wherever
possible.
My current goal for my 64thbirthday is to lift my body weight.
I'm a tall woman and I' I'vegot a lot of good muscle.
(16:07):
You can't see it in my, my, myjacket, but it's solid as a rock
because I want to sail into my80s and 90s and hundreds just, like,
flexible with balance, withenergy, with stability, with, you
know, just firepower.
And so I'm trying to lift mybody weight 160lbs by my sick by
(16:28):
my 64th birthday.
So I always have, like,physical goals.
I also really look.
I cook really healthy.
I cook at home.
Most of the time.
I really focus on my sleep,and I think that those things are
very, very, very important.
But generally, to keep megoing, I'm focused on mitochondrial
(16:52):
energy.
I'm focused on having a lot ofcognitive function and mental and
physical energy.
So everything that I do aroundmy longevity stack is to support
just the vitality, the lustfor life that I have, because my
brain is always just like, youknow, wow.
Just I want to do so many things.
(17:13):
I have so many ideas that Ineed the stamina and the, you know,
the energy to get everythingdone that I want to do.
And I'm lucky because myteam's been with me for so long,
and we just keep learning newthings together.
Like, the hallmark for me ofhiring someone is, are they loyal,
are they smart, and do theywant to learn new things?
(17:35):
And if they have those threethings, they tend to be great employees.
I bring people in, andsometimes I'll hire two or three
people at one time, and I'llgive them a bunch of different jobs
and see who does well, see whokeeps showing up and wants to learn
new systems and functions.
Because over the last 20years, we've moved from platform
to platform to platform, andwe have to build our own tech internally.
(17:58):
We don't use any SaaS us,because the minute a company wants
to get institutionalinvestors, they're like, we got to
get rid of you.
You can't be on our platform anymore.
We can't have any sex.
People on our platform, like,only Fans was an example of that,
where they were trying to gopublic, and they're like, we got
to get rid of all the, youknow, the sex workers.
Like, well, that's literallyyour business, you know, and they
(18:18):
had to backpedal on that, right?
They realized, oh, you know,we have to.
We have to keep these peopleon here.
And so I think right now, whatI'm doing with my Filipino team is
we're all learning how tooptimize and automate our business
using AI.
So we're all, like, thick intoleveraging every aspect of our business
(18:42):
so it runs itself.
Nobody's going to be out of a job.
There's always things to do,and humans use the tools.
But for us, it's about, how dowe harness the Power of the tools
to continue to excel, expandour business and do well together
at the same time.
Because we've been togetherfor so long, we've had lots of babies,
(19:04):
we've put lots of kids through college.
Like one of my, my headwriters, she's getting her master's
degree right now.
And we, because we are like afault tolerant system, we always
are able.
If someone needs to like go,you know, defend their master thesis,
you know, their master'sthesis, that we're like, she has
(19:26):
as much time as she needs todo that.
We're all gonna work to.
We're all gonna do her work.
I have a guy who's beenworking for me.
He's kind of like a, he'll doanything in my company.
He's so cross functional.
And he was like, I need 90days off.
I've got.
My, My son is not thriving.
They had a new baby.
My son is not thriving.
We're not doing well.
We're having struggles gettinga good nanny.
(19:46):
My wife is exhausted.
I just need some time.
And I'm like, take a, take athree month sabbatical and see how
you do and let us know.
And then Paul and MJ took overhis two big buckets of tasks.
They already kind of 98% knewhow to do them because we cross trained.
And Christian will come backand if he doesn't, if something doesn't
work out, it's okay becausenothing happened.
(20:09):
Like he could literally cometo us and say, I need three months
off.
And a week later he wrote upthings and parsed out his stuff to
the other parts of the teamand he gets three months off.
And if he needs more, he needs more.
We'll take him back when he'sready to come back.
So we, you know, we just arereally good at supporting each other
like a big family in ittogether for the long run.
(20:32):
That's our mentality is we'rea family.
We're a group of families thatare living our lives together, learning
new things and continuing togrow our business together.
And it's so lovely to be inthat kind of a, just that kind of
a business, you know, and, andI honestly feel like our customers
feel that too.
(20:53):
They feel the love.
My customer care team's withbeen with me for 15 years.
Like, they feel that they'retaken care of because when you're
dealing with something wherethere's shame and fear, which is
what sexuality is for a lot ofpeople, you need to have a very loving
heart.
So whether it's me Giving allof my knowledge to the Intimacy alliance
(21:13):
to help them make money and toenjoy that part of the wisdom of
my 60s, or knowing that I'mgetting one of my head writers, and
when I hired, I'm like, we'regetting you a PhD, little girl.
This is not just the end of itfor you.
We're in this for the long term.
We want you to be Dr.
Basya.
Right.
And so I think when you enteryour business that way you get a
(21:37):
loyal, loving team, and itjust builds on itself.
You know, every.
Everybody feels like they'rein that web of love together.
And also technical chops,like, we're a little company, but
we do some really gnarly tech together.
And I love that too.
Yeah.
(21:58):
And, you know, you mentionedthat the challenges earlier with
being in a, quote, badneighborhood business.
Yeah.
Do you think the fact thateverything was so much harder has
kind of galvanized your team to.
To create that type of, like,the synergy you just mentioned?
Yeah, I.
I think some people don't evenrealize how hard it is because they're
only doing the parts of it.
(22:19):
I think Tim and I feel thehardness compared to other people.
And, boy, launching thatlongevity list and seeing how easy
it is, it's like, damn, I am in.
It gave me, like, the perspective.
Wow.
I am in a really hardbusiness, but I'm also up for the
challenge.
I'm a warrior.
I'm a lionhearted, you know,courageous fighter for what is right.
(22:44):
It's just part of my person.
I've been like that since Iwas a little kid.
This little pendant I'mwearing is a lion.
I am a lion.
Wow.
Okay.
And so you mentioned, ofcourse, you go on a lot of podcasts,
and you mentioned your.
Your appearance recently onthe Diary of a CEO.
Yeah, that was a good one.
(23:04):
So you.
You did a post right afterthat on LinkedIn that I saw, and
it was.
It was titled the Courage toBe Disliked.
And you talked about how yourappearance there was polarizing,
and with all the comments, yougot so much hate from so many people.
And I think the quote was, youhaven't really made it till half
(23:24):
the market hates you.
Can you just talk more aboutwhere that.
That courage comes from tojust continue to do what you do despite
the, you know, the backlashthat you get from.
From various groups?
Well, it's interesting because the.
The backlash that I get fromthat particular group is people who
(23:46):
are quite conservative andvery religious, and I understand
their perspective, and it justmoves me into a compassionate heart
where what I realize is thattheir anger is actually fear.
And I understand that fearbecause I've dealt with so many people
(24:07):
who've come to me and said,you know, I grew up in a purity culture,
or my wife was ab.
Or my husband was abused.
What do we do to have theintimacy and connection that we need?
There is a lot of trauma inthis area.
And so when people call me a,you know, a slide or a Jezebel, you
know, all of those kinds ofthings for teaching lovemaking, for
(24:29):
teaching heart connected loveme, I realize that that's nothing
to do with me.
And it makes me feel not sadfor them.
Yes.
I mean, sad, but like, I get it.
You know, it's.
It's just beyond where you areright now.
And that's okay, too.
You're not hurting me.
I'm.
I'm fine.
(24:50):
My gosh, I'm fine.
I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'mloved, I'm appreciated.
I'm, I make great money in my business.
I could always make more.
Like, I am always working myass off.
Just, I don't grow much, but Ihold my own, you know, like, you
can do what you can do, right?
(25:11):
So I just look at that and go,okay, well, I've hit a level of exposure
where there are going to bepeople who don't.
They're not there.
They're not where I am.
And that's okay.
I'm fine with that.
Okay.
And so where do you, you'vebeen in this industry, like you said,
almost 20 years.
(25:31):
And you know, the, what you'reteaching, like you said, heart, heart
connected lovemaking andhelping people, which it's, it's
interesting too, because Idon't know if you, like, studied
Napoleon Hill, but like oneof, like the, the basic human needs
he said was sex, right?
And it's such an integral partof everyone's life.
And you're teaching people howto do it better and how to have success
(25:54):
and how to learn and all thesepositive things.
I mean, where do you see thisindustry going, you know, in, in
the next, you know, in thecoming years with, with, with what
you see in the market right now?
Well, with Project 2025 beingcompletely against sexuality, I think
that there's going to be a lotmore censorship, there's going to
(26:15):
be a lot more difficulty.
I think it's going to beharder to get traffic.
I think we are targets.
And so I'm concerned about it.
I'm very concerned about it.
And I'm also concerned aboutthe, you know, the economic fears
that our country is havingright now with regard to getting
supplies for their, and whatthe stock market's doing and loss
(26:38):
of things like potential lossof things like Social Security and
Medicaid.
And you know, I understandtrimming a fat government, but there,
you know, there are probablyways to go about it that may be a
little more methodicallydriven that could potentially have
been a little easier on our system.
(26:59):
So I'm, I literally just gotdone with my executive staff meeting
and the three of us, my cto,my COO and I, we were talking about
what's happening now in the USand what our concerns are this year
from a revenue perspective andwhat we're going to focus on and
(27:21):
how we're going to.
For an example, one of thethings that we talked about is that,
you know, there's, there'seither the move, move away or move
toward.
There's either the, you know,fix the PA or provide the inspiration.
And I've always been anaspirational brand and I've always
(27:42):
been like, did you know thebody can have 20 kinds of orgasms
and you can learn how to havethem all?
You know, those kinds of things.
Here are 48 erotic play datesto, to get rid of that monotony of
monogamy and give you guys allkinds of fun things you can do together
in the bedroom to create newrelationship energy.
You know, like those areplatforms of mine.
And one of the things thatwe're doing is we're subtly altering
(28:08):
our, our market positioning tobe more about calming stress and
getting out of anxiety andwhat you can do to slow down and
relax and, you know, moremindset oriented types of things
and just, just being awarethat people are a lot of people,
(28:29):
some people are blissfully happy.
They're not paying attentionto anything.
They're totally fine.
But if you're an entrepreneur,you're freaking looking at the markets,
you're, you're payingattention to what's going on, right?
You know, you see it, you'relooking at the market, you're looking
at your stock market, you'relooking at your 401ks, you're looking
at your Roth IRAs, you'relooking at everything.
You're wondering what the taxlaws are going to be.
You know, you're putting yourattention on that you're probably
(28:50):
buying some gold in a SwissEft, you know, whatever you're doing.
And so we're thinking aboutthat as entrepreneurs right now.
And one of the things thatwe're thinking about in our company
is continuing to hold peoplein our hearts and meeting them where
they are and where they are isprobably unnerved and anxious.
And so we're not talking about the.
(29:10):
The aspiration.
We're talking about, like, getthe getting by.
How are you going to get.
How are we going to getcollectively through these, you know,
tumultuous times?
So that's one thing we'redoing, and another thing we're doing
is we're looking at the nextgeneration of SEO and looking at
how we need to build our.
(29:31):
Rebuild our websites to appealto AI and lms.
So we're looking at that.
We're also increasing.
We're doubling down onpodcast, you know, being on podcasts
for me, because, number one, Ilove doing it.
Thank you again for having me.
(29:53):
I'm glad Luke Introductintroduced us.
It's my joy.
I like to talk about thisstuff, and I love the opportunity
to talk about the businessside of what I do.
I mean, it's, you know, I amequally a CEO and an intimacy expert,
but I probably spend 80% of mytime in the intimacy expert hat.
And so getting the CEO hat onis really fun for me to talk out
loud to you about, about thisand share my thoughts.
(30:16):
And so we're kind of doublingdown on podcasting because it's been
a great source of leads.
When someone can get yourflavor, they're either going to not
like you at all, which I'm, aswe've noticed, I'm fine with, or
they're going to be like, Ilike her.
You know, I want to find outmore about that.
And then they come into myfunnels and they're like, wow, this
is incredible.
(30:36):
I didn't even know all these things.
This is delightful.
Delightful.
I can, I can learn more.
And so we're doing podcasting more.
Focus on bookings in that.
I've got two publicity firmsthat are working on that with me.
I've written a bunch of newpodcast pitches that my publicist
can send out that are the nextgeneration of my thinking.
(30:57):
I've used AI to do that.
They don't write the pitchesfor me.
I give them everything, and Ihave them write them in the formats
that I want better that Icould do it myself.
I don't use AI to generate anycontent for me.
One of the other things that Ido is I get a lot of emails from
my fans and followers withquestions, because I've always said,
(31:17):
you can get on my newsletterand you can ask me anything if you're
on my Newsletter.
You hit reply to anynewsletter you get from me and you
ask me anything.
It doesn't have to be aboutwhat that newsletter is about.
You can ask me anything and Iwill answer you personally.
And my newsletter isbetterlover.com so if you want, if
you have a question aboutanything, even my CEO stuff, I'm
(31:39):
happy to answer.
And when I get to reply topeople, it's what makes me so good
at what I do.
I know what everybody.
I know what people are doingbehind closed doors.
I know it all.
And decades of answeringquestions has helped me get better
and better at the answers.
But it is tedious to write itall out.
(32:00):
And so because I'm anarticulator, I think by speaking
out loud.
When I have to think throughsomething, I need somebody to be
my sounding board.
That's how I process my thoughts.
That's just the way I pullfrom my subconscious to my conscious
thinking is by saying things.
We're all different in the waywe do things, but that's one of the
(32:22):
things that I think makes megood a good person as a podcast guest
that I love when I get a hostand they ask me a great question
and I get to think about itand it makes me a better person.
So it's part of my evolutionand growth is being here with you
today and what I've been doing.
Yesterday with ChatGPT I juststarted, I put my earbuds in and
(32:46):
I turned Chat GPT on and Iread the e.
I had seven emails in my inboxI owed people answers to.
I read the email to ChatGPTand I said here's what I want to
tell them.
I'm going to free flow myinformation and I want you to sort
of it organize it into step bystep instructions and put the links
(33:07):
to all of the things that Imention in the email.
And then I cop and then I justliterally sent it, I copied it and
pasted it into the reply andthat person got such a better response
than I could have gotten bywriting it down, which would have
taken me forever.
(33:28):
This took me 15 minutesinstead of 40, 45 minutes to do.
And if I start doing thosethings in a notebook lm, which would
be a really nice way to do it,I've got to figure that out and not
just use chat GPT but importall those into a notebook lm then
it starts to get my latest andgreatest thinking about the top problems
that people are having right now.
(33:49):
And I can query that for evenbetter answers.
So I did know I Did load a notebook.
LM up with all of my books andprograms and the top 20 of the best
podcasts that I've been on asfar as has things I've said that
I've loved, where the host hasreally brought the best out in me
(34:10):
and they're all in there and Ican query my own knowledge all the
time, which I love as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again, AI is developing sorapidly and, and evolving so quickly,
but it's great you can sharethose types of real world examples
as far as, like, how you canuse it to, to become a better version
(34:30):
of yourself and provide morevalue to others, because that's really
what it's about.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, Susan, with such a longand successful career and you still
going strong even into your60s, what's one piece of advice that
you would give to your younger self?
(34:52):
I think that when I firstbecame a CEO, I, I was always a natural
born leader and I'd had a lotof executive positions in Silicon
Valley, but once I hit CEO ofmy own company, I was like, well,
I had a little imposter syndrome.
Maybe because it's my owncompany, I don't really deserve to
(35:13):
be CEO, but my husband was sosupportive of me.
He was the one who was like,well, you're the CEO, you're the
strategy mind.
My husband is the financeanalytics tech.
He's in the weeds.
I'm the one who's like, big picture.
I'm the rainmaker, I'm the onewho does the deals.
(35:34):
We're perfect together.
You couldn't pick two people.
And honestly, I am so lucky toget to work with him.
He is a brilliant man, like, unbelievable.
The level of throughput, thelevel of the quality of his work,
the quality of his thinking.
He's a genius.
(35:55):
I get to be in business with a genius.
And when he would encourage meand acknowledge my gifts, I really
appreciated that.
And it made me become a moreconfident CEO and to trust my instincts.
(36:17):
And one of the things thatreally helped me was when I did The
Strengths Finder 2.0 quiz thatMarcus Buckingham did with the Gallup
Organization, you can stillbuy the book.
Target almost always sells itat a discount.
And take the quiz and get youranswers and find out what your top
(36:37):
strengths are.
And when I did that, and I didthat in my 40s, I realized that my
strengths were things like strategy.
I'd sit in meetings and go,why aren't we talking about all these
tactics?
Let's get to the big picture.
And I realized, oh, well,they're not strategists.
They're tactic.
They're tactical people.
And I didn't realize thatuntil I got that book.
(36:58):
So knowing what your skillsare, I can have someone tell me they
can talk to me for half anhour, and I'll spit back to them
like a human AI.
I'll spit back to them thethree sentences, Sentences that literally
encapsulated everything theyjust said in the most simplistic
and understandable way with apowerful hook.
There's a prompt for you usethat in your AI.
And that's because I am a born communicator.
(37:22):
And so once I began tounderstand that I had these strengths
that were better than most ofthe people that I was dealing with,
I leaned into those strengths.
I went with those strengths,and that made me better.
So the combination of gettingencouragement from someone that I
respected so much andunderstanding what my strengths were
(37:45):
made me focus more and more onthose and really hone them.
And that's one of the thingsthat I love about mentoring others,
is I can see the strengths inothers and help them see them, too.
Love that.
All right, well, Susan, thankyou so much for taking the time to
be here and sharing all this.
This valuable wisdom from yourjourney with our audience.
(38:06):
We greatly appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate it, too.
It's great to meet you, andthanks for having me on your show.
I hope I created some valuefor you today.
Absolutely.
And one more time, if peoplewant to get in touch with you, learn
more about what you do orreach out for any other reason, what's
the best way people can reachout to you?
Yeah.
Betterlover.com reply to any email.
(38:26):
I will answer you.
All right, we'll link all thatin the show.
Notes for everyone.
1.
All right, thanks so much, Susan.
Take care.
Thanks, Steve.
Today we sit down withintimacy expert to millions, Susan
Bratton.
Susan is a serial entrepreneurwho made a bold shift transitioning
from the tech space to thesexual wellness industry 20 years
ago.
She shares her personaljourney, which was driven by her
desire to save her marriage bygaining a proper education on intimacy
(00:24):
and lovemaking.
Susan discusses how hergreatest challenge in her personal
life turned into a lucrativebusiness, allowing her to help people
worldwide through herpublishing company, Personal Life
Media.
Her work provides couples withvaluable information on lovemaking
techniques and intimacy thatare often stigmatized or misunderstood
(00:47):
in society.
Susan also recounts thechallenges and stigmas associated
with working in the sexualwellness industry, particularly with
increasing censorship fromsocial media platforms and search
engines.
The strong emphasis onpersonal development, longevity,
and empowerment.
(01:08):
She highlights thesignificance of understanding and
utilizing your strengths toachieve both personal and professional
fulfillment.
As always, if you found valuefrom this content, please like and
subscribe.
All right, Susan Bratton,welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
Hey, Dave.
I'm all about fulfillment ofall kinds, so I'm happy to be here,
(01:30):
and it's so nice to meet youand be introduced to you.
Thanks for the connection.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We appreciate you taking thetime to be here.
Okay, so you made quite aradical shift from the tech space
to the sexual wellness spacealmost 20 years ago, and that was
due to a personal pain point.
(01:51):
Can you just talk more, Talkmore about how that happened and
what it was like?
Yeah, I remember that.
So I launched a publishingcompany 20 years ago because I'd
almost lost my marriage due to.
Honestly, Dave, neither of usknew what we were doing, and our
intimate relations just kindof fell apart after about 12 years.
And we thought, gosh, we loveeach other, we're great together,
(02:13):
but we've got this issue.
Let's just figure it out.
And when we figured out whatto do by learning and getting kind
of an education aboutlovemaking, we'd gone to workshops
and things like that becausewe were in the Silicon Valley.
And so we were, you know,close to this kind of, like, the
intersection of personaltransformation and sexuality and
(02:38):
personal growth.
And so there were a lot ofworkshops and.
And we're like, wow, it was soeasy to get good in bed together
and heal our marriage.
And we know all our friendsare getting divorced, and we know
it's not money because we'reall making tons of dough in Silicon
Valley, so maybe we shouldbring all of these kind of workshop
experiences online.
And so I started publishingthe work of my mentors, and that's
(03:01):
when we launched Personal Life Media.
And one of the programs Ipublished was a program by a wonderful
man named Jim Benson.
And he said a phrase to meonce that really, really resonated.
And I think it can for so many people.
And that is your greatestwound becomes your greatest gift
if you allow it.
(03:22):
And that's really whathappened for me was my greatest wound
almost losing my marriage andyou know, messing up my daughter's
childhood and all of thosekinds of things due to just a lack
of knowledge, a lack ofknowing what to do because we're
not taught these things.
That became the gift of my business.
And helping people all overthe world access information to have
(03:42):
really rich and pleasurableintimate lives in their marriages.
That's what people it became.
And so it was the gift I begwas, you know, able to give.
So that that was what was happening.
Attention E commerce sellersis fulfillment a headache for you?
(04:03):
Whether you're fulfilling inhouse and you know you need to outsource
or you're with another 3PL andyou know, you deserve better service.
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We offer personal service,fast response time and we're flexible
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Get in touc today and find outhow we can help you.
And I love that quote, by the way.
(04:25):
Your greatest, your greatestgift, your greatest wound can become
your greatest gift if youallow it.
Yeah, but making a shift into,you know, such a highly stigmatized
industry.
Right, I'm sure was very challenging.
I mean what when you had thisexperience and you realized what
learning what to do did foryour marriage and now you wanted
(04:47):
to share with the world.
I mean, what was that like,you know, starting out in, in an
industry like sexual wellness?
Well, it's become harder andharder and harder over time.
Even though what I teach arepassionate lovemaking techniques,
bedroom communication skillsand intimate wellness information
(05:08):
so that you can extend yoursex span to have a longer, healthier,
happier health span.
And everything that I'mteaching is, you know, for couples
it's loving, it's, it's nonpornograph traffic.
It's actually the antidote toporn because that's really some,
in some ways where peoplethink they should learn about sex
and, and that's not, you know,positive toward women and things
(05:31):
like that.
And so things were easier inthe past because traffic was a lot
cheaper to buy because we werean online entity, digital entity.
It was digital directdownloads of audios, videos and ebooks.
It still is.
And we had a lot of affiliatepartners and they could really get
traffic and they built bigemail lists and we cross promoted
(05:53):
each other and that kept goingfor, you know, 12 or 15 years, but
it hit the skids and more andmore now the big search engines and
social media are censoringcontent of all kinds.
The algorithms are running things.
There's no real appeals.
So I could be talking aboutpassionate marriage and get flagged.
(06:15):
And then I'm shadow banned andI can't grow my.
Can't grow my, you know, mysocial media.
And so it's gotten harder andharder and harder.
My friend Perry Belcher callsit a bad neighborhood business.
And it's funny because Irecently also launched a longevity
newsletter on Substack.
It's Longevity Wins.
And I decided to just try outbecause so much of what I do is intimate
(06:39):
wellness.
I'm also a big biohacker and Iget a lot of stage opportunities
to speak about sexual biohacking.
And so I really talk not justabout intimate wellness and longevity,
but overall longevity.
And when I launched thatnewsletter, I was like, oh my God,
this is so much easier.
Why am I in this business?
And I'm in the business 20years later because it's my passion
(07:03):
is passion.
I love helping people have apart of their lives that's so important.
I think, you know, pleasureand connection are one of the jewels
in the crown of what makes alife well lived with the love of
family, your faith, if that'simportant to you, nature, food, music,
(07:24):
you know, poetry, all of themost beautiful things include the
connection to our humanity andto our love and to our heart and
to each other.
And so it, it's very appealingin that way where the quality of
my fans and followers and howmuch they love me and appreciate
me, you can't get that with alot of businesses.
(07:46):
You, right now with the marketthe way it is, I'd like to be in
the commodities business, butfrankly, it wouldn't be as interesting
to me.
You know, this is my path, butit is a hard, hard path.
And we have to work 10, 100times harder to drive traffic and
conversions in our businessthan almost any other business owner
(08:10):
I've ever met.
Yeah.
And do you find too, becausecertainly in recent years, right,
you've seen that there's beenthis kind of focus, I guess you could
call it like the porn epidemicand like you said, a lot more censorship
in trying to solve for that.
Do you find just because ofthe nature of your business that
you get lumped into that category?
(08:31):
Yes.
Yeah, the algorithms.
Just look at anything.
I could be talking aboutpassionate marriage and I'm lumped
in with porn yeah.
Okay.
And then so what, what are.
Clearly you've had to becreative to, to overcome that and
continue to, to grow your business.
Like what are some, some waysthat you've, you've done that?
Well, what I do is I look forways to drive traffic.
(08:53):
You know, I have over 30 freegift funnels where I give a lot away
for free because I have toearn people's trust.
Because sexuality is such ashame ridden business, people are
worried.
They don't trust, they don'tknow if you know, they don't know
what my flavor is, if you will.
So I have a lot of free gift funnels.
(09:14):
And really my, my business isthat I publish these online programs
that solve problems and createopportunities for people in their
relationships.
And so I teach passionatelovemaking techniques and bedroom
communication skills.
But I also have a supplementcompany that has really high quality,
(09:35):
very nice sexual vitality supplements.
And that's about a third of my revenue.
And then a third of my revenueis affiliate marketing for other
people's products because Ican't make everything and there's
a lot of great stuff out there.
So I'm also a recommender.
I wouldn't call myself aninfluencer, I would call myself influential.
And I think that's very different.
(09:56):
I've built a body of work.
I've written over 30, I'vewritten 34 books and programs myself
and I've published the work ofmy mentors, so 10 other online programs.
And because of that, I have awide and vast knowledge of essentially,
you know, heart connected,passionate lovemaking and pleasure
(10:17):
techniques.
And so I like to recommendother people's products.
And people trust me, trust,you know, they have to get to know
me, then they have to trust meand then they begin to like me.
And I am not the kind ofperson who's just trying to get you
to buy something from me.
I have a long 20 year company.
I'm very patient, I'm verygiving, and so I give a lot of free
(10:40):
things to people to earn their trust.
And so what I found is thatthere are some places that are really
good for me for getting thetraffic to the systems that I've
built.
So I've got all these booksand programs.
I've got this newsletterthat's my engine for telling you,
giving you great ideas,teaching you things, and you feel
(11:01):
like God.
I got to stay on thisnewsletter because every single one
of these teaches me something new.
I love it.
But I also make offers inthose newsletters.
And so for me, it's aboutGetting traffic into my newsletter
so that people are like, damn,I didn't even know there was all
this great stuff out there.
I love this.
I want to try that toy.
I want to get that book.
I want to, you know, do these.
I want to expand.
(11:21):
Like, my customers are peoplewho are personal development oriented,
which is why I was so happythat you asked me on your show, because
your, your viewers andlisteners want to get better, and
not everybody does.
A lot of people are like, I'm good.
Everything's good.
I don't need.
I'm good.
There's nothing to learn.
You know, they're like,against learning.
(11:43):
And your entrepreneurs arelike, the more I know, the better
I get.
And that has the same effectin your intimate life.
So I found that gettingtraffic is the number one thing that
I need to do.
And podcasts have been aterrific source of traffic for me
because generally I go on alot of the kind of, like, I go on
(12:04):
comedy shows, I go on personalgrowth, and I go on a lot of entrepreneur
shows.
I go on a lot of, you know,like, I've been on Diary of a CEO.
I've been, you know, on a lotof different shows.
And sex cuts across everything.
You know, it's, It's.
It's interesting to almosteveryone, but only the people who
want to learn and realize theycan learn something are my customers.
(12:26):
And so podcasting has driven alot of traffic into my newsletter.
For me, another thing that Ihave done recently is I've started
something called the Intimacyalliance, because I'm in my 60s now,
and I've done very well in mybusiness, and I'm unusual in that
way that I am a business thathas done well.
(12:47):
I'm what I call a 21st centurymom and pop shop.
I, My husband and I run thebusiness together with our team in
the Philippines.
Primarily in the Philippines.
We've got some people in.
Got a person in Japan, we'vegot a person in India, you know,
but.
But a global distributed teamof people who've been with us for
over a decade, many of them,and we're just really, really good
(13:09):
at running our business together.
But for me, it's.
I built the whole, you know, infrastructure.
It's for me, always gettingtraffic in.
And luckily, podcasting is afairly uncensored medium right now
still where social media is not.
So I can't really grow thatwell on social media.
(13:30):
I mean, I'm still very activeon it.
I.
I promote everything on socialmedia, but I, I don't get a lot of
traffic from social media.
It tends to be more of aninsular kind of an experience where
podcasters, they're eager tolearn, they want to be up to date
and they want to learn new things.
And so I've used that as wellas speaking from stage a lot.
(13:53):
I've, I've done those twothings to get a lot of traffic.
But then my intimacy allianceis me with 40 other sexperts.
I'm teaching them everything Iknow about monetizing their business.
It's all about revenuegeneration, using traffic and conversion,
what they need to do, what'sworked for me and they've become.
(14:14):
I'm slowly working with themon all of their offers so that I
can grow the number of offersthat I have to promote to my fans
and followers.
I'm helping them learn how toconversion optimize their sales pages
and build out their funnelsand things like that so that I can
have more things to offer tomy own followers.
And we cross promote for eachother to generate our revenue.
(14:39):
So I'm very much a teamoriented, collaborative CEO.
And you have to be when you'rein a business like mine, you can't
exist by yourself.
You must have the support of others.
You can't do it alone.
And so that's one of thethings that I've done most recently
to replace the affiliatebusiness that dropped out from the
loss of traffic.
(15:00):
It was to build my own newaffiliate group of people who have
great business offers butdon't know how to market them.
Okay, wow.
So a lot, a lot to get intowith what you just broke down there.
Appreciate that answer.
Okay, so you're in your 60sand you're so passionate about what
(15:24):
you do.
You're constantly running new promotion.
I mean, it's very atypicalwhen I think about the people I know
that are that age in businessper se.
Like.
Yeah, what, what I guessdrives you to just continue being
so, so creative after all theyears and success that you've had
in business?
(15:45):
Well, a couple of things.
One, I really practice what Ipreach around longevity.
So I have a lot of energy.
I work out three to five timesa week.
I ride my mountain bikeinstead of drive my car wherever
possible.
My current goal for my 64thbirthday is to lift my body weight.
I'm a tall woman and I' I'vegot a lot of good muscle.
(16:07):
You can't see it in my, my, myjacket, but it's solid as a rock
because I want to sail into my80s and 90s and hundreds just, like,
flexible with balance, withenergy, with stability, with, you
know, just firepower.
And so I'm trying to lift mybody weight 160lbs by my sick by
(16:28):
my 64th birthday.
So I always have, like,physical goals.
I also really look.
I cook really healthy.
I cook at home.
Most of the time.
I really focus on my sleep,and I think that those things are
very, very, very important.
But generally, to keep megoing, I'm focused on mitochondrial
(16:52):
energy.
I'm focused on having a lot ofcognitive function and mental and
physical energy.
So everything that I do aroundmy longevity stack is to support
just the vitality, the lustfor life that I have, because my
brain is always just like, youknow, wow.
Just I want to do so many things.
(17:13):
I have so many ideas that Ineed the stamina and the, you know,
the energy to get everythingdone that I want to do.
And I'm lucky because myteam's been with me for so long,
and we just keep learning newthings together.
Like, the hallmark for me ofhiring someone is, are they loyal,
are they smart, and do theywant to learn new things?
(17:35):
And if they have those threethings, they tend to be great employees.
I bring people in, andsometimes I'll hire two or three
people at one time, and I'llgive them a bunch of different jobs
and see who does well, see whokeeps showing up and wants to learn
new systems and functions.
Because over the last 20years, we've moved from platform
to platform to platform, andwe have to build our own tech internally.
(17:58):
We don't use any SaaS us,because the minute a company wants
to get institutionalinvestors, they're like, we got to
get rid of you.
You can't be on our platform anymore.
We can't have any sex.
People on our platform, like,only Fans was an example of that,
where they were trying to gopublic, and they're like, we got
to get rid of all the, youknow, the sex workers.
Like, well, that's literallyyour business, you know, and they
(18:18):
had to backpedal on that, right?
They realized, oh, you know,we have to.
We have to keep these peopleon here.
And so I think right now, whatI'm doing with my Filipino team is
we're all learning how tooptimize and automate our business
using AI.
So we're all, like, thick intoleveraging every aspect of our business
(18:42):
so it runs itself.
Nobody's going to be out of a job.
There's always things to do,and humans use the tools.
But for us, it's about, how dowe harness the Power of the tools
to continue to excel, expandour business and do well together
at the same time.
Because we've been togetherfor so long, we've had lots of babies,
(19:04):
we've put lots of kids through college.
Like one of my, my headwriters, she's getting her master's
degree right now.
And we, because we are like afault tolerant system, we always
are able.
If someone needs to like go,you know, defend their master thesis,
you know, their master'sthesis, that we're like, she has
(19:26):
as much time as she needs todo that.
We're all gonna work to.
We're all gonna do her work.
I have a guy who's beenworking for me.
He's kind of like a, he'll doanything in my company.
He's so cross functional.
And he was like, I need 90days off.
I've got.
My, My son is not thriving.
They had a new baby.
My son is not thriving.
We're not doing well.
We're having struggles gettinga good nanny.
(19:46):
My wife is exhausted.
I just need some time.
And I'm like, take a, take athree month sabbatical and see how
you do and let us know.
And then Paul and MJ took overhis two big buckets of tasks.
They already kind of 98% knewhow to do them because we cross trained.
And Christian will come backand if he doesn't, if something doesn't
work out, it's okay becausenothing happened.
(20:09):
Like he could literally cometo us and say, I need three months
off.
And a week later he wrote upthings and parsed out his stuff to
the other parts of the teamand he gets three months off.
And if he needs more, he needs more.
We'll take him back when he'sready to come back.
So we, you know, we just arereally good at supporting each other
like a big family in ittogether for the long run.
(20:32):
That's our mentality is we'rea family.
We're a group of families thatare living our lives together, learning
new things and continuing togrow our business together.
And it's so lovely to be inthat kind of a, just that kind of
a business, you know, and, andI honestly feel like our customers
feel that too.
(20:53):
They feel the love.
My customer care team's withbeen with me for 15 years.
Like, they feel that they'retaken care of because when you're
dealing with something wherethere's shame and fear, which is
what sexuality is for a lot ofpeople, you need to have a very loving
heart.
So whether it's me Giving allof my knowledge to the Intimacy alliance
(21:13):
to help them make money and toenjoy that part of the wisdom of
my 60s, or knowing that I'mgetting one of my head writers, and
when I hired, I'm like, we'regetting you a PhD, little girl.
This is not just the end of itfor you.
We're in this for the long term.
We want you to be Dr.
Basya.
Right.
And so I think when you enteryour business that way you get a
(21:37):
loyal, loving team, and itjust builds on itself.
You know, every.
Everybody feels like they'rein that web of love together.
And also technical chops,like, we're a little company, but
we do some really gnarly tech together.
And I love that too.
Yeah.
(21:58):
And, you know, you mentionedthat the challenges earlier with
being in a, quote, badneighborhood business.
Yeah.
Do you think the fact thateverything was so much harder has
kind of galvanized your team to.
To create that type of, like,the synergy you just mentioned?
Yeah, I.
I think some people don't evenrealize how hard it is because they're
only doing the parts of it.
(22:19):
I think Tim and I feel thehardness compared to other people.
And, boy, launching thatlongevity list and seeing how easy
it is, it's like, damn, I am in.
It gave me, like, the perspective.
Wow.
I am in a really hardbusiness, but I'm also up for the
challenge.
I'm a warrior.
I'm a lionhearted, you know,courageous fighter for what is right.
(22:44):
It's just part of my person.
I've been like that since Iwas a little kid.
This little pendant I'mwearing is a lion.
I am a lion.
Wow.
Okay.
And so you mentioned, ofcourse, you go on a lot of podcasts,
and you mentioned your.
Your appearance recently onthe Diary of a CEO.
Yeah, that was a good one.
(23:04):
So you.
You did a post right afterthat on LinkedIn that I saw, and
it was.
It was titled the Courage toBe Disliked.
And you talked about how yourappearance there was polarizing,
and with all the comments, yougot so much hate from so many people.
And I think the quote was, youhaven't really made it till half
(23:24):
the market hates you.
Can you just talk more aboutwhere that.
That courage comes from tojust continue to do what you do despite
the, you know, the backlashthat you get from.
From various groups?
Well, it's interesting because the.
The backlash that I get fromthat particular group is people who
(23:46):
are quite conservative andvery religious, and I understand
their perspective, and it justmoves me into a compassionate heart
where what I realize is thattheir anger is actually fear.
And I understand that fearbecause I've dealt with so many people
(24:07):
who've come to me and said,you know, I grew up in a purity culture,
or my wife was ab.
Or my husband was abused.
What do we do to have theintimacy and connection that we need?
There is a lot of trauma inthis area.
And so when people call me a,you know, a slide or a Jezebel, you
know, all of those kinds ofthings for teaching lovemaking, for
(24:29):
teaching heart connected loveme, I realize that that's nothing
to do with me.
And it makes me feel not sadfor them.
Yes.
I mean, sad, but like, I get it.
You know, it's.
It's just beyond where you areright now.
And that's okay, too.
You're not hurting me.
I'm.
I'm fine.
(24:50):
My gosh, I'm fine.
I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'mloved, I'm appreciated.
I'm, I make great money in my business.
I could always make more.
Like, I am always working myass off.
Just, I don't grow much, but Ihold my own, you know, like, you
can do what you can do, right?
(25:11):
So I just look at that and go,okay, well, I've hit a level of exposure
where there are going to bepeople who don't.
They're not there.
They're not where I am.
And that's okay.
I'm fine with that.
Okay.
And so where do you, you'vebeen in this industry, like you said,
almost 20 years.
(25:31):
And you know, the, what you'reteaching, like you said, heart, heart
connected lovemaking andhelping people, which it's, it's
interesting too, because Idon't know if you, like, studied
Napoleon Hill, but like oneof, like the, the basic human needs
he said was sex, right?
And it's such an integral partof everyone's life.
And you're teaching people howto do it better and how to have success
(25:54):
and how to learn and all thesepositive things.
I mean, where do you see thisindustry going, you know, in, in
the next, you know, in thecoming years with, with, with what
you see in the market right now?
Well, with Project 2025 beingcompletely against sexuality, I think
that there's going to be a lotmore censorship, there's going to
(26:15):
be a lot more difficulty.
I think it's going to beharder to get traffic.
I think we are targets.
And so I'm concerned about it.
I'm very concerned about it.
And I'm also concerned aboutthe, you know, the economic fears
that our country is havingright now with regard to getting
supplies for their, and whatthe stock market's doing and loss
(26:38):
of things like potential lossof things like Social Security and
Medicaid.
And you know, I understandtrimming a fat government, but there,
you know, there are probablyways to go about it that may be a
little more methodicallydriven that could potentially have
been a little easier on our system.
(26:59):
So I'm, I literally just gotdone with my executive staff meeting
and the three of us, my cto,my COO and I, we were talking about
what's happening now in the USand what our concerns are this year
from a revenue perspective andwhat we're going to focus on and
(27:21):
how we're going to.
For an example, one of thethings that we talked about is that,
you know, there's, there'seither the move, move away or move
toward.
There's either the, you know,fix the PA or provide the inspiration.
And I've always been anaspirational brand and I've always
(27:42):
been like, did you know thebody can have 20 kinds of orgasms
and you can learn how to havethem all?
You know, those kinds of things.
Here are 48 erotic play datesto, to get rid of that monotony of
monogamy and give you guys allkinds of fun things you can do together
in the bedroom to create newrelationship energy.
You know, like those areplatforms of mine.
And one of the things thatwe're doing is we're subtly altering
(28:08):
our, our market positioning tobe more about calming stress and
getting out of anxiety andwhat you can do to slow down and
relax and, you know, moremindset oriented types of things
and just, just being awarethat people are a lot of people,
(28:29):
some people are blissfully happy.
They're not paying attentionto anything.
They're totally fine.
But if you're an entrepreneur,you're freaking looking at the markets,
you're, you're payingattention to what's going on, right?
You know, you see it, you'relooking at the market, you're looking
at your stock market, you'relooking at your 401ks, you're looking
at your Roth IRAs, you'relooking at everything.
You're wondering what the taxlaws are going to be.
You know, you're putting yourattention on that you're probably
(28:50):
buying some gold in a SwissEft, you know, whatever you're doing.
And so we're thinking aboutthat as entrepreneurs right now.
And one of the things thatwe're thinking about in our company
is continuing to hold peoplein our hearts and meeting them where
they are and where they are isprobably unnerved and anxious.
And so we're not talking about the.
(29:10):
The aspiration.
We're talking about, like, getthe getting by.
How are you going to get.
How are we going to getcollectively through these, you know,
tumultuous times?
So that's one thing we'redoing, and another thing we're doing
is we're looking at the nextgeneration of SEO and looking at
how we need to build our.
(29:31):
Rebuild our websites to appealto AI and lms.
So we're looking at that.
We're also increasing.
We're doubling down onpodcast, you know, being on podcasts
for me, because, number one, Ilove doing it.
Thank you again for having me.
(29:53):
I'm glad Luke Introductintroduced us.
It's my joy.
I like to talk about thisstuff, and I love the opportunity
to talk about the businessside of what I do.
I mean, it's, you know, I amequally a CEO and an intimacy expert,
but I probably spend 80% of mytime in the intimacy expert hat.
And so getting the CEO hat onis really fun for me to talk out
loud to you about, about thisand share my thoughts.
(30:16):
And so we're kind of doublingdown on podcasting because it's been
a great source of leads.
When someone can get yourflavor, they're either going to not
like you at all, which I'm, aswe've noticed, I'm fine with, or
they're going to be like, Ilike her.
You know, I want to find outmore about that.
And then they come into myfunnels and they're like, wow, this
is incredible.
(30:36):
I didn't even know all these things.
This is delightful.
Delightful.
I can, I can learn more.
And so we're doing podcasting more.
Focus on bookings in that.
I've got two publicity firmsthat are working on that with me.
I've written a bunch of newpodcast pitches that my publicist
can send out that are the nextgeneration of my thinking.
(30:57):
I've used AI to do that.
They don't write the pitchesfor me.
I give them everything, and Ihave them write them in the formats
that I want better that Icould do it myself.
I don't use AI to generate anycontent for me.
One of the other things that Ido is I get a lot of emails from
my fans and followers withquestions, because I've always said,
(31:17):
you can get on my newsletterand you can ask me anything if you're
on my Newsletter.
You hit reply to anynewsletter you get from me and you
ask me anything.
It doesn't have to be aboutwhat that newsletter is about.
You can ask me anything and Iwill answer you personally.
And my newsletter isbetterlover.com so if you want, if
you have a question aboutanything, even my CEO stuff, I'm
(31:39):
happy to answer.
And when I get to reply topeople, it's what makes me so good
at what I do.
I know what everybody.
I know what people are doingbehind closed doors.
I know it all.
And decades of answeringquestions has helped me get better
and better at the answers.
But it is tedious to write itall out.
(32:00):
And so because I'm anarticulator, I think by speaking
out loud.
When I have to think throughsomething, I need somebody to be
my sounding board.
That's how I process my thoughts.
That's just the way I pullfrom my subconscious to my conscious
thinking is by saying things.
We're all different in the waywe do things, but that's one of the
(32:22):
things that I think makes megood a good person as a podcast guest
that I love when I get a hostand they ask me a great question
and I get to think about itand it makes me a better person.
So it's part of my evolutionand growth is being here with you
today and what I've been doing.
Yesterday with ChatGPT I juststarted, I put my earbuds in and
(32:46):
I turned Chat GPT on and Iread the e.
I had seven emails in my inboxI owed people answers to.
I read the email to ChatGPTand I said here's what I want to
tell them.
I'm going to free flow myinformation and I want you to sort
of it organize it into step bystep instructions and put the links
(33:07):
to all of the things that Imention in the email.
And then I cop and then I justliterally sent it, I copied it and
pasted it into the reply andthat person got such a better response
than I could have gotten bywriting it down, which would have
taken me forever.
(33:28):
This took me 15 minutesinstead of 40, 45 minutes to do.
And if I start doing thosethings in a notebook lm, which would
be a really nice way to do it,I've got to figure that out and not
just use chat GPT but importall those into a notebook lm then
it starts to get my latest andgreatest thinking about the top problems
that people are having right now.
(33:49):
And I can query that for evenbetter answers.
So I did know I Did load a notebook.
LM up with all of my books andprograms and the top 20 of the best
podcasts that I've been on asfar as has things I've said that
I've loved, where the host hasreally brought the best out in me
(34:10):
and they're all in there and Ican query my own knowledge all the
time, which I love as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again, AI is developing sorapidly and, and evolving so quickly,
but it's great you can sharethose types of real world examples
as far as, like, how you canuse it to, to become a better version
(34:30):
of yourself and provide morevalue to others, because that's really
what it's about.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, Susan, with such a longand successful career and you still
going strong even into your60s, what's one piece of advice that
you would give to your younger self?
(34:52):
I think that when I firstbecame a CEO, I, I was always a natural
born leader and I'd had a lotof executive positions in Silicon
Valley, but once I hit CEO ofmy own company, I was like, well,
I had a little imposter syndrome.
Maybe because it's my owncompany, I don't really deserve to
(35:13):
be CEO, but my husband was sosupportive of me.
He was the one who was like,well, you're the CEO, you're the
strategy mind.
My husband is the financeanalytics tech.
He's in the weeds.
I'm the one who's like, big picture.
I'm the rainmaker, I'm the onewho does the deals.
(35:34):
We're perfect together.
You couldn't pick two people.
And honestly, I am so lucky toget to work with him.
He is a brilliant man, like, unbelievable.
The level of throughput, thelevel of the quality of his work,
the quality of his thinking.
He's a genius.
(35:55):
I get to be in business with a genius.
And when he would encourage meand acknowledge my gifts, I really
appreciated that.
And it made me become a moreconfident CEO and to trust my instincts.
(36:17):
And one of the things thatreally helped me was when I did The
Strengths Finder 2.0 quiz thatMarcus Buckingham did with the Gallup
Organization, you can stillbuy the book.
Target almost always sells itat a discount.
And take the quiz and get youranswers and find out what your top
(36:37):
strengths are.
And when I did that, and I didthat in my 40s, I realized that my
strengths were things like strategy.
I'd sit in meetings and go,why aren't we talking about all these
tactics?
Let's get to the big picture.
And I realized, oh, well,they're not strategists.
They're tactic.
They're tactical people.
And I didn't realize thatuntil I got that book.
(36:58):
So knowing what your skillsare, I can have someone tell me they
can talk to me for half anhour, and I'll spit back to them
like a human AI.
I'll spit back to them thethree sentences, Sentences that literally
encapsulated everything theyjust said in the most simplistic
and understandable way with apowerful hook.
There's a prompt for you usethat in your AI.
And that's because I am a born communicator.
(37:22):
And so once I began tounderstand that I had these strengths
that were better than most ofthe people that I was dealing with,
I leaned into those strengths.
I went with those strengths,and that made me better.
So the combination of gettingencouragement from someone that I
respected so much andunderstanding what my strengths were
(37:45):
made me focus more and more onthose and really hone them.
And that's one of the thingsthat I love about mentoring others,
is I can see the strengths inothers and help them see them, too.
Love that.
All right, well, Susan, thankyou so much for taking the time to
be here and sharing all this.
This valuable wisdom from yourjourney with our audience.
(38:06):
We greatly appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate it, too.
It's great to meet you, andthanks for having me on your show.
I hope I created some valuefor you today.
Absolutely.
And one more time, if peoplewant to get in touch with you, learn
more about what you do orreach out for any other reason, what's
the best way people can reachout to you?
Yeah.
Betterlover.com reply to any email.
(38:26):
I will answer you.
All right, we'll link all thatin the show.
Notes for everyone.
1.
All right, thanks so much, Susan.
Take care.
Thanks, Steve.
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