After some deliberation as to what program to start with, I decided to go with Emperor. I managed to get my credit card locked during my first attempt to purchase due to letting autofill enter the shortened version of my name rather than the full legal name which is on the card, so not the most auspicious start to the program. Oh well, called Visa and got it sorted the next day and my journey begins!
I started listening on Nov 5th, masked V3 on repeat with the VLC app on my phone. The first thing I noticed was that I was antsy about sitting at my desk. I have a motorized standing desk, which is usually lowered and used with a chair. I kept getting up and pacing back and forth, and finally realized that I need to be doing something while listening to this program. I also bought Sanguine at the same time, but didn’t listen to that until just before bedtime. I got 3 loops of Emperor that day, plus 1x Sanguine.
The next morning I woke up and went about my normal routine. Stretches, deep breathing, 20 mins of meditation. During the meditation, I did an Ideal Day visualization about the upcoming meeting, in which I imagined the other company agreeing to every major ask we had. After finishing the meditation, I reached for my phone and started up Emperor. I got 1 play in before I noticed my wife was up, and I went to make coffee. More on the meditation after…
Normally in the mornings we sit quietly on the couch and read books or something on our phones.
Not that day.
My wife was snuggling up against me, and kept asking what I was reading, and I told her I was catching up on some discussions on a forum (this one, of course). She hasn’t been that… snuggly? in the mornings since early on in our dating, so that was new. I had some documents to read before I left for a business trip, so I stayed in the living room on the couch instead of going into my office. I’m glad I did, as a few minutes later she came out of the bedroom in yoga pants and a tank top, and set up her mat right in front of the couch…
Goodbye focus and productivity! 
After a few minutes, I was glad I wasn’t wearing jeans, as that would have been uncomfortable.
I stood up and um. pointed at her… she just raised her eyebrows and smiled. I decided to be funny, and thrust my pelvis toward her a couple of times and just raised an eyebrow as I nodded toward the bedroom.
She laughed and said “what, now?” (normally she would roll her eyes and say maybe later or something like that)
I said “yep, now.”
she laughed again, and said no… but I said “yes?”
I stepped over and picked her up with one arm (I’m not terribly strong, she’s just tiny) and carried her into the bedroom while pulling off her shirt with the other hand. She was laughing and said “hey, I was doing pilates!” I replied “now we’re doing you!”
And we did. Twice. That’s happened lots of times before, but not on a weekday morning just because I got hard after seeing her do pilates!
After I showered, I read for a while longer while listening to more Emperor, and then got a text from my EA that she was coming to pick me up for the flight.
The meeting was with the CEO of a lab company that I’ve been trying to put together a deal with. (I work in the biotech sector) There were a couple of sticking points on the deal that my business partner was firm on, and it was my job to make sure we won those points in the negotiation. I went over the talking points for the meeting with my EA before the flight, and then listened to Emperor during the flight. It was my business partner’s private plane, so we skipped all of the TSA crap, which was nice. Plus, I felt like a bit of a baller… 
We got to the meeting, and my EA still had no idea how we’d convince the lab to agree to our terms. They wanted to put their logo on the product (powered by X), but my business partner said no. “We don’t co-brand.” full stop. But that was ok.
I had such a feeling of “f*** yeah, we got this.” going into the meeting, that I didn’t even worry about it… when the meeting started, I launched into all the details about what we were looking for, what kinds of sequencing, etc. I just plowed ahead, and finally they had to get their head of microbiology on the phone too, just to see if they could do what we wanted.
They ended up asking us if we’d be ok designing the product and just letting them do the back-end lab services. I nearly had to restrain myself from high fiving my EA, but instead I acted as if that was a burden for us, so they knocked the project quote down in price! We were initially expecting nearly $50k in setup cost for this project, and they came back with a quote of about 1/3 of that for the setup and billing the rest per user. They even agreed to move the launch date to January, whereas before they said there was no way to get it out the door before March. The rest of the meeting was effortless, and everything just felt natural. I was negotiating a deal that will be worth a ton of money, but I was calm and self assure. More so than usual.
We not only got the project at a fraction of the cost we were expecting, they were fully on board with every major point we raised, in our favor. It was counter to our previous call, but was EXACTLY what I’d visualized hours before.
On the way back to the hotel, I received word that I’d been approved for an additional $20k in a business line of credit… not something I applied for, they just offered it, and I accepted. It hit my account this morning.
I got back from the business trip last night, and took (most of) today off. I’ve had Emperor playing since just after lunch, and my head is spinning with new business ideas. My wife also told me today that I seem “bossier”, but in a good way. I think that’s her way of saying I feel more alpha… I certainly have no hesitation about expressing myself now, and asking for what I want. And getting it, apparently.
Damn this was a long first post, but I gotta say, I really like Emperor so far.
