A lot of people struggle to find connection. How can a Mark Group help?
Dan Powers from BeyondTheBedroomEvents.com and Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Reid: Wahahaha! Hello, Dan.
Dan: Do I have to have a laugh like that?
Reid: No, you don’t have to laugh.
Dan: Okay, good.
Reid: This is Dan Powers from Beyond the Bedroom, Dan Powers. Tell them, thank you for coming in to my [inaudible 00:00:13].
Dan: Yeah. The famous Reid Mihalko studio.
Reid: I’m Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com if you don’t already know that and tell us about Beyond the Bedroom.
Dan: I’m Dan Powers from Beyond the Bedroom. We are sex, intimacy and relationship education events. We used to do conferences but we’re now starting to focus on internet based things.
Reid: Like videos that exist on things like YouTube?
Dan: Yeah, exactly.
Reid: I like your trace of shirts today, by the way.
Dan: Thank you, yeah. It was fun walking through Los Gatos yesterday and getting the faces that I did from [inaudible 00:00:44].
Reid: When we were setting up what are we going to talk about because Dan’s crashing at my place for a little bit, you were saying Mark Groups? This might be interesting to folks. What’s a Mark Group and how do you explain that?
Dan: Sure. Mark Group’s… well I’d like to say is that in adult conversation where normally what we get on the parties and such situations, we’ve truly talked a kind of superficial level. With a Mark Group, there are 3 games designed to really get you out of your discomfort in having conversations with people and then your comfort was asking really penetrating questions. We start off with an ice breaker that can be kind of fun. The meat of it is really the hot seat. Somebody’s get an opportunity to volunteer to sit on the hot seat and then everybody focuses their attention solely on that person without the tennis match back and forth kind of thing and you can ask them any question and then that person can answer the question in any way they should choose. Tell the truth, refuse to answer, or lie. Premise like what we do on our everyday life.
Reid: Okay
Dan: Really. But when people are sitting there, they’re really… I mean, it’s amazing some of the questions that have been asked and some of the answers that we’ve gotten, we have no idea…
Reid: Oh, so the audience is asking the questions?
Dan: Yeah
Reid: Okay
Dan: So you would be the focus of attention and everybody have their attention focus on you, somebody would raise their hands and Elizabeth and myself would say, “Okay. You ask her a question.” They would ask it and that person has that choice to answer.
Reid: How long do you stay on the hot seat?
Dan: It depends. We really go with the energy on how it’s flowing but generally between 5 and 10 minutes.
Reid: Okay. So there’s ice breaking stuff then hot seat and this everybody in the group go or is it just kind of a…
Dan: It depends if we have time and it’s always a choice. Nobody has to do anything. It’s completely voluntary. We’ve had such a large groups recently that we really had a chance to go through everybody.
Reid: What’s the smallest group you’ve ever had and what’s the largest group you have so far?
Dan: Well, the smallest group that I’ve been a part of was 4.
Reid: Okay
Dan: But then when I started running them, we have a little bit bigger audience and the people who were running before. We’ve had a minimum as many about 12.
Reid: Oh, wow.
Dan: Yeah. So 12 to 25
Reid: Okay. Where did you run your Mark Groups?
Dan: In Boulder, Colorado also in Longmont and were trying to some out in the Nevada area.
Reid: Okay. The Mark Groups existed in other parts of the country too?
Dan: They do. This is all based on Lafayette Morehouse.
Reid: Okay
Dan: Lafayette Morehouse created this back in the ‘60s and a guy name Vic Baranco and I’ll get all the details on a lot of stuff but they’re pretty much identical anywhere in United States that they’re held. I know there’s some at Atlanta, New York, Colorado, obviously here in California where Lafayette Morehouse is based and I don’t know where else but they’re all a good place.
Reid: Okay. So how do people find out more about you and what you’re doing and if they’re in Colorado, how do they research you?
Dan: BedEvents.com
Reid: BedEvents.com
Dan: We also have Facebook page. We also have a YouTube channel.
Reid: Wooo…
Dan: Beyond the Bedroom YouTube channel. So that’s what the other things is really going on for us as I kind of came to an epiphany during the last Sex Geek Summer Camp and realized that my videos was just way too long. I was doing kind of live interviews. They were 16 minutes and like and then 30 minutes and like and I didn’t realized how long people are actually watching them. I found the way to actually check that out. They were only watching the first couple of minutes of it. There one with the most popular had several thousand views was a sex chair furniture that’s actually based out here in the Bay Area.
Reid: Oh, wow.
Dan: I finally thought, “Wow, this is really great. I’ve got 2000+ views of this.”
Reid: But they’re only watching…
Dan: The first 2 minutes of it. The cover photo that I put on there is from their website which is really a sexy couple looking like they’re getting ready to get down to business and I’m sure that’s probably what people watching in. So that’s it like, “Wait, they’re just talking heads here.”
Reid: So is this your way of telling us we keep this video short?
Dan: Yes, we need to keep it short.
Reid: Alright. BedroomEvents.com?
Dan: BeyondTheBedroomEvents.com
Reid: BeyondTheBedroomEvents.com
Dan: Or BedEvents.com
Reid: BedEvents.com. Awesome. Alright, thanks Dan.
Dan: Thank you. Bye.
Reid: Bye.