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Listen to my episode with persuasion & copywriting expert Spencer Lum:

Spencer
Hey, it’s good to be here.

Pete 
Thank you for coming. I appreciate the time, I received a pitch from your wife just to set up the context for everybody listening to this. And I’m going to dive in. I’m going to like, tell everybody what this podcast episode is going to be about. Are you ready? I’m going to read something.

“My superpower is taking Uber complex marketing ideas and turning them down to foolproof instructions.”

I think I stole that from your homepage or your about page. But I thought that summed up nicely kind of what you and your wife were talking about what you guys have been able to do on the blog, go extra bowl.com. By the way, FYI, I decided spoil that for you, Spencer, and everybody listening. We’re going to be talking about well, marketing, but specifically some of the launches you guys have had and some of the “strategies.” I thought, let us let me read this. Sorry, Spencer, I just thought this is too funny to leave out.

“Lately, we’ve been spending a lot of time studying the strategies behind weaponized influence campaigns, like the Russian Facebook ads, but also things like Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and so on.”

I don’t know if it was you or your wife that came up with that. But that looks like okay, well, that was too interesting. So we’re going to talk about that a little bit later.

Spencer, let’s start with something even more important, way more important, I would argue, your favorite food to cook is an egg. My favorite food to cook is also an egg. So why? What’s your specialty? What got you into eggs or breakfast food?

Spencer
I totally I mean, I’m going to tell you, I grew up in a household where we didn’t have a whole lot of eggs at school. Most of my life. I didn’t eat that many eggs and eggs for breakfast wasn’t a thing. But I don’t know, you know, that restaurant? I don’t know, if you What is it Momofuku?

Like, you know, the guy, David Chang, he had a restaurant. And his big thing was this egg. And I went there and I saw the egg. I just kind of freaked out because he has this egg where it’s kind of like it’s cooked, but it’s not cooked.

And so it’s like, really woozy and runny, but it’s still kind of retains its shape. And I was like, What the hell is this thing and I was just blown away. And I realized it is the easiest thing in the world to cook like you just stick it in hot water. And you let it sit there for 45 minutes, and you’ve got this perfect egg.

Pete 
45 minutes. Wow.

Spencer
Yeah, but it’s like I’m like, whoa. And so it you know, you gotta try it. If you haven’t tried it, you get your water up to I don’t know, like something like I’m trying to remember like hundred and 40 degrees, and then you just let it sit there. Come back 45 minutes later, and then you crack that thing open. And it’s going to come out. And it’s just amazing.

And so I started doing this, and I started serving it to people and people would be blown away because they’re like, Oh my god, this is fancy restaurant food. How did you do this? And you know, I think Yeah, you know, really tricky, really complicated. I can’t share the recipe because it’s just too hard. It was nothing. And then I started getting really into it. I just start playing with all sorts of different ways to cook exit, because I realized it’s like, oh, they don’t have to be like my mom’s idea of eggs.

Basically, she’s gonna scramble it up, and she’s gonna do it on super high heat. So it’s gonna be really dry. Sorry, mom. I hope my mom’s not listening to this.

But anyway, that was what I grew up with. And suddenly I realized, like, eggs are amazing. So that’s my story. That’s how I got into eggs. Okay.

Pete 
So for anybody thinking that I’m going to magically whip this into some digital marketing or blogging metaphor, you’re out of luck. Like I literally just wanted to talk about x for a minute.

Spencer
Oh, thank God, you said that, because I was thinking like, what’s the marketing angle here?

Pete 
No, I literally, I’m not joking when I say eggs are my favorite political as well. I love eggs in general. And I consider a personal challenge to make them a little bit better each time I do it. Like I have figured out how to make the perfect scrambled egg, scrambled eggs or top if you get dry, too runny is really, really hard.

I figured out the process over the past seven or eight years. I’m index. That’s all I want to say,

Spencer
Oh, wait, wait, wait, you can’t leave me hanging here. You’ve opened the loop. I’ve got to know. What is it you do with your eggs?

Pete 
Okay, it’s super simple, very low heat lots of patience.

That sounds a little silly. But that’s true. A lot of us when we are making eggs specifically for breakfast, we’re generally in a hurry before work before kids go to school or whatever. And we tend to rush it. The key to good scrambled eggs.

First of all, quality ingredients. I guess that goes without saying. But other than that low heat, lots of butter. and patience. It takes a lot of patience to sit there and watch the egg and stir it constantly and scramble it evenly and constantly over several several several several minutes on low heat. And without saying anything more. I think that’s the recipe that most people can take away.

Spencer
I think that’s kind of the recipe for life. low heat, lots of butter, lots of patients. Perfect.

Pete 
Look what we did there spend

Spencer
Solved life right there. All done.

Pete 
good podcasting here. Okay, so we learned how you got into eggs really quick. Before we dive into anything specific. I’d actually just love the general backstory from Extra Bold. Actually do you call it extra bold? Or do you call it go extra bold?

Spencer
Yeah, it’s funny. Everyone calls it go extra bold, because that was the URL that I managed to get. It’s actually it’s called extra bold. That’s hot friends. But sometimes I even I say yeah, it’s go extra bowl, because I’m so used to everyone saying that because that’s the domain name. So you know, all is good. Whatever you want to call it, it works.

Pete 
So you had started this probably four or five years ago. forget my timing, right. And as I understand it, you were actually coming from running a separate business, I think I read or something like that.

So why don’t you give us a quick backstory, pre online business pre blogging, like what is your background? And and how did you eventually transition your way into this whole online business thing?

Spencer
Yeah, definitely, I’m going to give you the super accelerated version, because I have so much jobs started off, I went from lawyer, graphic designer, brand person, then I did video photography.

Then I did a photography blog, which is the first time I’m finally starting to do online stuff. And then I started extra bold, which is kind of it’s similar to my photography blog, obviously, you’re still using the same strategies, but different audience and different subject matter.

So that’s kind of the big arc without any of the drama that happens in between. But really, I mean, the big thing is like the job that I had before I was doing any blogging as a photographer, and I still do that on the side, but that was my primary source of income, all that and specifically, I shot weddings. And I will tell you, it doesn’t sound like it because you think you’re just hanging out in the wedding. But it really kind of burns through your body because you’re on your feet, like for 12 hours.

Pete 
And it’s stressful, by the way for anybody who hasn’t done it.

Spencer
Yeah, absolutely. And so I’m like, you know, I need a weight out. Because I’m getting older, I can’t do this forever. And you know, at a certain point, you realize that you’ve hit the ceiling, you can only go so far, and the things I’d have to do to kind of bring it up a level, they weren’t things that I wanted to do.

And so you know, like everyone else, you kind of run across, I don’t know, probably like a Facebook ad or something like that, like, I can get rich instantly, it’s only gonna take me 60 days, and I’m set for life. And that 60 days took like, from I’d say what, late 2010 or 2011 until about maybe 2016 to kind of like fully materialize.

So it was a long, 60 days. But but that’s what happened. I naturally since I was doing the photography business, I figured, okay, let’s start a blog that’s meant for photographers that teaches them how to run their business. And I’m going to sell online courses. And eventually I kind of fell into coaching along with it. And those two things kind of happened hand in hand.

So that’s kind of like the backstory about what happens before I start blogging.

Pete 
Okay, really quickly, only because I’m super curious, doesn’t have anything to do with blogging. But when you were, I’m going to say burn out. But I think you know what I mean, when you were starting to get burnt out on photography, specifically photographing weddings.

You mentioned just a second ago, there was something you could have done to like, take it to the next level or whatnot, you mentioned so yeah. And why did you want to do that? What was it and why didn’t you want to do it?

Spencer
Well, okay, so we have to go a little further back here. So we’re going to go back in time, way, way back to when I had my brand agency, by brand agency. I mean, it wasn’t a huge group, like we had 10 people at the peak. So it wasn’t really, really big. But you know, it’s enough that we did a decent amount of business.

Yeah, it’s small business, and you deal with all the managerial stuff and things like that. And it was one of those jobs where I kind of promoted myself to a level where I just wasn’t enjoying anything I was doing, I started off, like I was saying, as a designer, and I love that.

And that kind of kept moving up, up, up. And pretty soon, I’m just managing, I’m not doing any design, I’m not doing any of the fun thinking stuff. I’m just managing everybody. And so again, you know, I’ve had many, many burnouts in my life, and that was one of them. So with my photography, business, like photography is one of those fields where, you know, typically you’re going to start off on your own, and you hit the ceiling pretty fast, if you’re successful with it. And you really can’t, it’s just time for dollars, right? You can’t do anything to get any further because the market has a certain cap on how much is likely to pay. And you’re like you’re stuck there.

So the only way you can move forward is to completely change your structure and bring in like, expand and bring in multiple teams and kind of move yourself into management, which is doable, but it’s almost a completely different type of business at that point.

And I was thinking, you know, I really don’t want to go back into that position again, like I did, way back when.

So that’s, that’s exactly, that’s what I was kind of looking at. I’m like, either I start something new, where I can do it on my own. And you know, I do this business with my wife, but that’s between the two of us. So it’s a small thing that’s personal. And it was that option or kind of expanding. So I’m like, I want to keep it simple.

So I thought I mean, there. There’s nothing simple about birthdays. But that’s how you know, that’s how I thought of it my head at the time.

Pete 
Okay, well put a bookmark right here or going to come back to the story and how that led to extra bold. But just for my own fitness. And again, I had to like tell everybody out there in podcast land. I didn’t actually tell Spencer what I was going to be asking him. So I am putting I don’t do this. No, excuse me, I do do this with every interview. I like never tell anybody what I’m going to talk about, by the way. So the question about the aspects are, he has no idea. So if he like flow mixes for a second, it’s not Spencer’s fault. It’s my fault. They go.

Here’s a question now that I’ve like, hyped it up so much.

What about now this is what may 2019? What about now going forward in your own business? Are you going to try and keep things simple? Are you looking at specifically not scaling in terms of human leverage?

That is like, you know, what I’ve been taking on employees and doing more management oversight, working on the businesses that have in it. What are your thoughts on that going forward?

Spencer
That’s a good question. Yes, actually, I still want to keep it simple.

I think I want to take on I mean, I do have people kind of who helped me remotely, but I don’t have any one full time. And I want to keep it that way. I think kind of the thing is, I want to make a decent income. I want something that generates reliable income, that not only pays my bills, but kind of gives me like, a little bit of breathing room and gives me some luxury to kind of do the things I want. I figure that’s what most people want.

Pete 
That’s what everybody listening to this podcast wants for sure.

Spencer
Yeah, exactly. But I think you know, there was this time where I’m like, okay, it is all about like, Well, actually, there’s this line, there’s this movie called other people’s money with Danny Vito. And there’s this joke in the movie. And so there, Dan and Vito is talking with this other person, he’s saying, you know, basically, it’s all about money and stuff like that. And the person says, Well, what is the point of this? I mean, what are you going to do with all that money? and Danny Vito shoots back, it’s like, No, you don’t, you don’t get it. It’s like, here’s how life works. It’s like, whoever has the most money when they die, they win.

And you know that I always go back to that.

And I think there was this time where that was, my thought is like, okay, I want to get as far as I can, as fast as I can. And I want to think about, okay, how do you know, I want to see my name in lights and stuff like that.

But you get to a point and you realize, well, it’s a lot of work, and what are you really going to do with it. Like my brand business, even though burnt me out. I mean, there was this period, it was making a ton of money, it was doing really, really well.

But I didn’t enjoy any of it as just working all the time. And mostly all the things I did for entertainment, they weren’t because I really wanted to do it, because I wanted to escape all the work that I was doing that was burning you out. So this time around. Really what I’ve done is I’m very careful about kind of my time structure and trying to protect my time, and make sure that I’m working on things that are going to be useful.

And there are plenty of times I slept in that and I work more than I think I should or I do things I think I shouldn’t, because who doesn’t, but I still want to try to use people kind of like less as I less, it’s less than I want like kind of a full time staff and kind of an official like the “overhead.” And I want to keep it nimble.

So the people I work with are typically like right now, it’s always it’s remote. And it’s usually kind of like, okay, they’re doing these basic activities. Or maybe if I need some extra people, all kind of kind of, you know, reach out to my network, or who knows if it’s basic production, maybe I’m even on Fiverr. But whatever it is, I like to keep it simple.

So that way, my wife and I, we can sit around and we can focus on the kids, we can focus on enjoying life, and you know, using the time that we have, I like this.

Pete 
About two weeks ago, I was on a mastermind call, maybe a month ago now who knows. And it was my turn for the “hot seat.”

I’m not sure if you know what that is. Right. So one of the things that I keep bringing up this personal weakness and flaw of Pete By the way, probably said this, like multiple times on the show. So everybody listen to this for a while already knows that.

But I tend to get a little bit lost in the weeds and have trouble pulling back and looking at things objectively, right, a top down perspective, or inside view, so to speak. And so I am like working in my business, and I’m just working and working, I’m doing hard, I’m getting a little burnt out and get a little stressed, not going anywhere. I’m not doing what I want to I don’t have the income to do what I want to I don’t have the time to do what I want to I need to hire, I need to like do all these things just like a typical solo entrepreneur story for where I’m at right now.

And I told some of my close friends us. And they immediately came back with the question. Okay, exactly. What do you need in order to do what you want in order to spend your time doing the things that you want? etc?

Like, how much income do you need?

What employee do you need? Like, specifically, like the details? What do you need in order to live like this?

And I sat there for a minute, I was like up the damn it. I already have all that. No, I’m not making as much as I want to know the business isn’t where I want to. But in terms of what I actually need, at the bare minimum, in order to kind of do the things I want, I already have it to some degree and I was like crap, this forces me to like sit back and audit where I spend my time what I’m doing, what my goals are, and my personal weakness.

Not that you necessarily care about this answer. But I know a lot of people listen to this do my personal weakness is that that’ll last me a good week or two. And then I kind of fall back into the same routines have a little bit lost, and thinking I need more. In order to accomplish more in order to have more free time to spend with my kids. I got free time right now I could literally just take the rest of the day off and go spend time my kids if I wanted to, and my business probably wouldn’t actually suffer all that much on like a day to day week to week thing.

I don’t know, I know a bunch of people out there listening probably fall into the same traps. So I have no answers for you. I just I just thought it was right with you.

Spencer
Well, it makes me think, are you familiar with the term scope creep? Like, like with design firms like this is what always happens or brand agent seems like typically, you know, marketing agencies, etc, etc. But every time you have a project, invariably like it takes way more time than you think. And the trick is always finding a way to get compensated for that.

Because it just like the scope just kind of keeps creeping and creeping and moving along. And pretty soon, like everything starts going off the rails and going in all sorts of different directions that you didn’t plan to. And it becomes like this big time suck. And I feel like the same thing happens, like someone needs to invent the term. I don’t know. I don’t, you know, it’s not popping up in my head like business. Entrepreneurship create something, because it’s like this or entrepreneurial scope, creep, whatever. I’m kind of sucking at the term thing right now.

Pete 
But I think we get you. We get you.

Spencer
the same thing, right? I mean, that’s exactly what happens. And I go through that to all the time. And it’s like, it’s a constant battle.

But I feel like you know, if you keep coming back to it, and kind of keep stepping back every so often and realigning, then you’re going to be able to kind of go wherever you need to go.

Pete 
Yeah, no, I’m totally with you. It’s especially bad. I would argue, I get this question every now and then, like in the Facebook groups or whatnot. I had been blogging for three months. And I just discovered, like, 50 of the things that I didn’t know, that I needed to know and learn about. And it just like, never ends. People like it gets easier, right? It gets better, right? And I’m like, No, no, you just deal with it.

You do it in different ways, and you learn how to suck. What’s the word I’m looking for? You learn how to segment the shiny object syndrome for the experiments, you probably should focus on and do next, or the strategies you’re going to learn next and etc, etc. So yeah, like that.

Spencer
That’s right. Good answer.

Pete 
Okay, Spencer. So let’s go back. That was good. That was a good little side note. That’s good. Yeah. Okay.

So before I really hit you up on this paragraph about studying Russian Facebook ads, which I’m just super intrigued by, let’s do, let’s complete the extra bold story.

You’re in photography, you kind of wanted to get out, you decide to start a photography blog, talk about the business side of photography, and so on. What happened there, obviously, the first six months, you made millions of dollars, and you retired.

Spencer
That was, of course, that I’m still I’m in that retirement phase right now. It’s like, it’s great. I don’t have to lift a finger.

Pete 
Okay, so what happened with that? And how did it end up as extra bowl?

Spencer
Yeah, here, this is the story. And really, I mean, I have so many stories of failure to pick from that sometimes I struggle with like, which failure story do I want to tell, but this is how it goes. So I’m thinking I’m going to launch this big workshop, because that’s the thing in the photography world, you sit around and you run workshops. And at that point, I didn’t have a course ready. And so like, I’m like, Well, okay, I’m not ready to do that. So let’s have this big workshop that’s going to kick things off, that’s going to start my new life running my business, as like an as kind of a blogger, entrepreneur, etc.

Okay, I’m running this webinar, and this is one of those things where you’re like, this isn’t gonna work. I’m an imposter. I feel like a fraud is fake. I don’t really know anything about webinars. But I ask everyone I know, to come on to this webinar, I invite the people on my like my small list to come on to the webinar.

And back then webinars are still a lot newer. Like, if you did the same thing, now it’s like zero, people would show up, like 2000, 10,011, you’re talking about, this is probably like, I’m trying to remember the date, I don’t know, maybe like 2000, we’re, we’ve moved on to maybe 2013 ish, something around then.

And so I mean, webinars aren’t new, but they’re, they’re still they still have like kind of an era of novelty, especially in the photography field, which trails a little bit from, let’s say, information marketing.

So anyway, I run this webinar, and you know, you click the button and the things going, and suddenly, people are actually going in there. And I’m thinking, yes, this is working, this is amazing, I’m going to go and I’m going to launch this workshop, it’s going to be sold out, and I’m going to be set. In fact, I’m just going to keep doing this all year long, like you know, run a workshop twice, and that’s going to pay for everything in life.

So there I am, I’m talking, I’m giving all my best stuff. People are chatting, I am super jazzed about this. And then you get to that point, right, there’s always that little part in the webinar where you switch over to the pitch.

And, you know, in my head, I’m thinking, you know, I really don’t know how to do this, like, I don’t actually know how to go into the pitch, I know I’m supposed to because that’s what everyone does. But I don’t know what to do. And literally, like, you can see those little numbers, like you’re staring at the numbers, and you’re watching this drop, drop, drop, drop, and everyone’s like, bailing out, I’m so awkward, and I’m doing such a bad job with it. And I didn’t set it up, right. And we get to the end of my favorite part is exactly one person stuck around.

And, you know, you know, I’m like selling my heart out trying to say like, I’ve got this great program thinking maybe this at least this one person is going to sign up. And then they’re like, Hey, I don’t you know, I don’t mean to bother you.

But you mentioned I can get a free PDF, what what’s the link for that?

And that that was that. And so it just tanked.

And so I mean, that’s kind of way that’s really actually what sets me off, because that’s the first time I start thinking, like up to then I had been growing, if you want to call it growing, really just by pumping out lots and lots of content. And you know, writing is a great skill to build, if you don’t know what you’re doing with it, it’s not going to do a whole lot for your business.

And so, finally, at that point, I’m like, Okay, I gotta learn how this stuff works, I can understand why it is that some people run these webinars, and they just fill up their programs and why I’m sitting around, and everyone’s bailing on me.

And that’s basically what I go, you know what I go back to, and I kind of realize there’s this big divide between the idea of telling people stuff and giving information and making people actually want what you sell. And that’s kind of where, to me, that’s kind of the dividing line. Because from there on out, with all my marketing with all my content, I’m thinking, How do I get people to a point where they want what I’ve got, and it completely changes my whole approach to everything.

And so the next time I run a webinar, I fill up the program, and that’s the first time I actually get a course that’s kind of running and going, and things are actually working.

Pete 
Okay, so hang on –hit pause on the story. How I literally typed this up a second ago is taking notes, how do I get people to want what I’ve got?

If you don’t mind sharing? What were the I’m assuming you do what all human beings probably did after that first weapon heart in between the first webinar and you having the course set up and then doing it again.

What were the resources that you went to, to? To get the answers to that question, to learn how to do that, right, I’m assuming you went and did some research and looked around you found your own courses and other blogs or videos or podcasts or whatever, or books you do or not?

Spencer
Yeah, I mean, I’m a course junkie. So I went through a ton of different things.

But I think the first place that started to click, well, this isn’t the first I mean, this actually became a little bit later. But it was really a big, big moment. I went through one of the city’s courses on writing. And that was kind of the first time I didn’t know what I was learning. As a stranger. It was even though I’m sitting around thinking, Okay, how do I create want, I didn’t really know what I did, the thing I was learning was copywriting. I just kind of was doing stuff that people would say to do. And I’d hear about here and there.

Like I went through Derek Halpern ins course on launching. And he talks a lot about different things that apply to copywriting. But he doesn’t position at it as this is a copywriting course. And so I got a lot out of it. And it led to a lot of good stuff.

But I think the one that kind of made it crystallized in my mind was when I took Ramit Sethi’s course, which made me realize it’s all about the words and the structure of the words and the way you use them. And that’s kind of that’s the device, and that’s the tool that creates the wand. And I think until then, like I was saying it was kind of this value thing I’d always until I started focusing on what I’d always thought if you just give people lots of really good information they’re going to buy from you.

Pete 
Right? They’re gonna pay you back.

Spencer
Yeah. And, you know, I think there was kind of this time where that was true, like when the markets not hyper saturated in competitive, you can build a following pretty effectively that way, but we’re not in that time. We haven’t been in that time for a long time.

So that was kind of that was the dividing line to me. And that’s always the course that sticks in my mind, because that’s where it was kind of like the aha moment. Okay, this is what I’m trying to do.

Pete 
Okay. So please don’t rip off Ramit’s course or share with us insider info, however, that and help runs course, or whatever courses you took during that timeframe. If I had to make Spencer Lum, write a blog post that is called, I’m gonna make this up right on the spot. The top three ways are the top three things to say. Or something like that, whether it’s copywriting, or talking on a podcast or webinar or whatever, the top three things to do to get people to want what you’re selling, what would be those top three things will be the bullet points of that post?

And again, give me a stall for a second.

Spencer
That is a great question. Okay, so let’s hit number one, I’m just going to say number one, because this is what pops into my head. So I don’t know if this is really number one or not. But this is what’s coming to mind.

The big one, I would say my number one thing is understanding how to tease the right way.

And so it’s really I mean, you can call it opening a loop or whatever else. I like to call it teasing. Because what I find is that a lot of people, they just hate selling. And you know I did for ever, but now I actually love selling.

But the big thing that really changed it is I realized that not giving people all the information and kind of giving them a taste test, but keeping them hungry. I mean, that’s huge, right. And so if you give away everything you’ve got, and you kind of quell whatever hunger people have, then they don’t want to buy. And all the time I started to discover along the way, for example, that you can actually like, never give a piece of value. But if you write an entertaining piece where people feel connected with it, and they like what you’re talking about, and you kind of just give a little bit to help crystallize their thoughts and give them some clarity. Without even supplying the actual, let’s say, the strategy or the tactic. People, they eat it up, and they love it.

But the reason I use the word tease is because there’s this mindset shift, where you have to be able to come in and say, I’m not doing this to torture people. Or if you aren’t, you’re torturing like, in a playful way like you would with a sibling, not with something you really hate. And where you really want to torture them.

So, you know, it’s like, when you’re teasing people, I mean, the key is you have to come in, and you have to own it. And you have to say, I’m going to have some fun, and people have to feel it, they have to feel like you are playing around, and that you’re holding this thing out and you’re saying, Hey, I got this thing. It’s awesome. And, you know, I’m not gonna give it to you right now. But let me talk about some stuff that you got to know about.

And when you open this loop, what starts to happen is that people I mean, you know, people will tell me, they start hunting. I mean, I’ve had this like, have you ever had where you hear about something? But you don’t know the answer.

And you start like, pretty soon you’re stalking someone, and you’re looking at every little thing trying to figure out like, what is this thing they’re talking about. And along, you wind up learning all this stuff about them. And pretty soon, like you’re reading their stuff and get really connected, and you almost forget what you’re trying to find. And you just start to build this connection.

And so, number one thing that pops into my head is that tease is that ability to say, hey, I’ve got something for you. And I’m going to talk a little bit about what it’s about. But I’m not going to give away the whole thing.

Instead, just going to kind of I’m going to talk and I’m going to open up and I’m gonna you know, and just going to like be real.

But owning it is is the thing that kind of makes that work in my mind. And so, I mean, actually, that could also kind of be number one and two, in a sense, because I would say like the other thing is like a lot of people they kind of sell from their heels.

And so in other words, they get really uncomfortable, the moment they sell, and the moment they feel any sense of pushback from somebody, which is usually in their head, I might add not because anyone said anything mean or anyone’s doing it, but because they just imagine this pushback, suddenly they pull back.

And the thing is, if you want to be someone to be enthusiastic about what you’ve got, and think Oh my God, I’ve got to get this. If you come at it with this feeling of Hey, you know, you maybe you want to check out this thing, and it might be kind, I don’t know, see if it’s good for you. I don’t know. No one’s gonna get excited about that, right? It’s going to kill, it just decimates your ability to sell.

And so I think of this is like kind of like, you know, I always hesitate to use the word sell, because I know people hate it. And yet at the very same time, I think if you come at it the right way and understand it is about kind of getting your viewpoint out there and kind of owning your shit, then it’s a completely different ballgame.

And so coming in and saying, hey, I’ve got this thing, you’re going to love it. It’s amazing. And really having this mindset that you’re actually doing something good for the world, because that is why you create hopefully, right the products or the products that you create in the world is to kind of give some someone something useful.

If you push that out there and let that guide the way people are going to feel it. They’re going to see it. And so I would say kind of it’s a mindset thing, but I think it’s a huge mindset thing. And so I would put that kind of as secret number two.

Pete 
I’m sorry, I was going to interrupt.

Spencer
Oh, yeah, interrupt is good. Go ahead. What do you got?

Pete 
Two really, really cool examples of actually number one, and number two, the first two bullet points you laid out. This is awesome. By the way, I’m not gonna make this the title of the episode, I think,

Number one teasing the right way. Glen Allsopp. So I had Glen on the podcast is the old Viper chill guy. He now runs detailed, calm, etc. Glen is brilliant.

First of all, a little bit of a hermit. He’s not super out there on the internet. In fact, there are still a bunch of people who actually don’t even know that name, even though he was like, guest number two on Pat Flynn’s podcast.

And he’s just been all over the place. But he pretty records his webinars he has to because he doesn’t like doing things live. And he’s not very good at it. And he tells people that on the webinar, by the way, he is the master of your bullet point number one, like he’s doing things the right way.

That guy I have no patience for webinars, by the way, only because I’ve seen a million of them at this point. That guy helped me on that webinar for like 45 minutes, which was saying a lot.

He is so so so so good at that opening the loop keeping them hungry to metaphors you threw out there, he’s the master at that. The bad part is that are super hard to find the webinars for people to go like look at this. And look how he does this. They’re incredibly difficult to find all I will say if you’re interested in this at all right? I would argue if you’re interested in SEO at all, go join his email list. Go into the detail calm thing about once a quarter, he’ll do another webinar. It will only be available for like a week. Literally like when Glen says this is only up for a week, he actually means it and then it’s available. Yeah, I like that.

By the way. His webinars are fantastic for that number to Bobby Hoyt from millennial money. man.com. Friend of mine, I don’t know where he got his confidence in life. But it’s absolutely absurd. Nobody. And he told me this one time when we first met, he was like, one of the things that I do really well is I showcase my own enthusiasm, his passion, his excitement.

And that carries over to what I talked about in the blog that carries over to all my selling things. He runs a seven figure blog now.

He’s the master at this, like his things he is so excited about. And he does not care if you don’t agree, people who it’s for people who it’s not for, it doesn’t matter. He knows that he’s going to turn some people on some people off with whatever he’s offering. And he just doesn’t let that faze him. He’s incredibly confident, incredibly committed to this idea behind his products. He’s the master that anybody wants to study that. Go look at Bobby Hoyt, MillennialMoneyMan.com. He’s awesome. But that’s it. So Spencer, do you have a third bullet point, as well?

Spencer
Oh, yeah, I gotta come up. The third. I did. I actually I did. And then it just vaporized on me. So you know, it’s like, you know what I’m going to say?

This is actually a perfect segue, because I don’t just want to say storytelling, because it drives me nuts. Every time someone says storytelling is the secret to everything. And this isn’t because I don’t believe in stories.

I think anyone who creates any content, I mean, they know that stories matter and telling them the right way matters. But saying, okay, it’s just about stories, I feel like kind of misses the heart of the issue, and also kind of it’s just become so it’s like the response has become it’s been blunted by this point, because it’s been said to death.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take that idea for number three. And maybe Actually, I can give a little bit of context to that. And something I see that happens with a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of content creators.

And so if, if you don’t mind, so I’m gonna go on. And, and, and kind of dive into this, but it kind of relates to that whole thing about weaponization.

So it’s a nice tie in. But this is something that I see all the time, like, people go through these experiences, experiences in life, and they develop these beliefs because of it.

And so for example, everyone has this best way of, let’s say, influencing people of building their business or whatever, right? They develop these opinions. And in their mind, it is stored as this belief, like the best way to do something is blank, or I believe that the right way to do something is blank. And what people usually don’t get is the thing that shapes that belief and leads them to that conclusion is some form of emotional experience in their life.

Like, for example, someone, maybe they want to become a life coach. And they heard this inspirational story from someone when they were down now, and it moved them. And they said, I want to do that I want to help people that way. And they don’t realize that the thing that pushed them that way, it wasn’t this logical thing where someone explained like, if you’re a life coach, you can do behavior that is going to lead to lots of impact in the world. And I’m going to give you lots of clarity.

I mean, if someone walked up to them at this down and out point and said that they would not come around and say, “My God, I’ve seen the light! This is it.” what it was, is they saw something that produced some emotional response, that move them in a direction to start to believe, hey, this is a good path. And this is something that I think is really valuable. And so we all have that, right? We all learn by these experiences that shape us.

But usually, we have no idea what those experiences are. So we get to this place where we think, Okay, this is like in Rational terms, these are the things that work, these are the things that I believe in. But we don’t remember that it was that little story we heard, or it was a time I got mad at someone or it was the time I was inspired by someone that kind of nudged us there.

And so the thing is, if we just share, like the logic, we learned at the end of it, like, life coaching is really good because you help people.

But we don’t deliver those same experiences to our audience, they’re not going to respond, they’re not going to change their opinion, they’re not going to change their minds, they’re not going to react, and they’re not going to take action. In the end, it would kind of like be it’s kind of like the difference between the moral of the story and the story, right?

The moral of the story is the point of the story. The story itself is the whole experience you have that leads you to believe in the moral.

And people all the time I see people when they’re giving value and tips, and they’re talking about like the best thing to do, they get stuck in what I call logic land, where they’re talking about all the reasons, but they don’t deliver the emotional payload that goes along with it. In other words, here’s the moral, but not the story, or it’s like, here, you know, watch the last 10 minutes of this movie, because this movie is awesome, but skip the other hour and 15 minutes, that leads up to it.

And if you do that people aren’t going to respond, and nothing’s going to happen, and nothing’s going to change.

And so when I think of storytelling, right, at the end of the day, what I’m thinking is it’s understanding how to produce that emotional payload that influences people and leads them to change their lives and take action. It’s not like the conclusion, which is what we tend to remember once we become experts, and once we go to the other side.

And so kind of when we go back to that weaponization idea, that’s exactly what happened, right? Like, when you look at what I mean, that’s not the only thing that happened, tons of stuff happened. But when you look at this idea of weaponized social media, what they’re kind of decoding is how to produce all those emotional experiences that lead people to form their rational beliefs.

And so in their mind, people are thinking, This is what I believe, because this is good. But what they don’t know is the along the way, there have been all these pieces of content put out in the world that have kind of pushed and prodded them to head a certain direction and feel a certain way.

And so when I say storytelling, I mean, that is, I mean, I could stick that in as my third thing, and I would feel pretty good about it. But only if it If only if you kind of attach it with the bigger message, which is that you have to understand not just how to tell a story.

But really, you have to kind of understand kind of the influence undertones about really what changes people and what makes them respond to your story.

Pete 
Okay, so this is good, but also relatively incredibly deep.

So I was sitting there thinking in my head, I, this is me, oh, you’re talking about your superpower of taking the Uber complex marketing ideas and turning them into full proof. So Spencer, why don’t we do that right now? And like five minutes flat?

Why don’t we turn that idea I wrote down “share the experiences that shaped us.”

How could we turn that into like a very small, bite-sized first step for anybody who is writing copy for an opt-in page or a sales page or making notes for the webinar where they’re going to sell something, anything for people out there launching products, doing affiliate marketing campaigns, anything? And they’re thinking about your bullet point number three, I’m gonna use the word storytelling as well, just because it’s a good one words, yes.

Spencer
Well, let’s go with it. That’s now become the official point number three.

Pete 
Right. Okay. So what’s the what’s the most logical, simple first step that people can do? Or ask themselves in order to start coming up with the “right,” sort of story? Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Spencer
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the first thing I’m going to hit up. And as always, you know, I just go, you know, I’m going to tell you my superpower is I’m great at taking these really weird ideas and making them usable. My big weakness is I’m great at taking something useless and turning it into a one hour. You know, it’s like, it cuts both ways. But first thing that pops in my mind, I’m gonna say proof, like, Okay, are you familiar with the Amish heater ads?

Pete 
No.

Spencer
Okay, so they have these products, Amish heaters, it’s ridiculous.

They’re basically these electrical space heaters, but they’re called Amish heaters. Because the frames are built by the Amish, I mean, obviously, Amish, they don’t use things made it, like they don’t use electrical devices, right.

So it’s kind of funny that they have that. But they had these space heaters, they’re just like, I don’t know, manufactured in China, or whatever, really, really cheap. And they just have these nice wooden frames that were built by the Amish. And they were wildly popular for a little while. I don’t know how they’re doing right now.

But if you haven’t heard of it, I guess probably not that well. But they were really, really popular for a while. And when you think about it, I mean, the whole reason they’re popular is because they named it Amish heaters.

And if you looked at the ads, what you would see is like they show this picture of these Amish people kind of working like doing some woodwork or something. And they talk about this amazing miracle invention, created by the Amish that, you know, saves all this energy and heats up your room in this incredible way. and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And all they’re describing at the end of the day is what any heater is going to do for you.

Like when they say it saves a ton of power. It’s like, Well, yeah, that’s because if you only heat up one room and like a 20 room house, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than like heating up 20 rooms. Right? Right.

So you know, when they talk about this stuff, obviously, they’re kind of towing the line here. But the point is, the thing that makes it work is the fact that they called it an Amish heater. And so you hear that and right away, you think craftsmanship, and you think that this thing must be trustworthy, and you believe it. And it also elevates the value. It’s like, Oh, it’s this handcrafted thing by the Amish. So this is worth 200 300 bucks. And that’s how much these things cost. Or use the cost.

Even though you could buy like the same thing on Amazon for I don’t know what, like 20 bucks or something like that?

And so I think the other thing to understand about proof is that proof tends to go backwards in the modern world.

In other words, no one actually and I’m not saying like sit around and lie to people and make up stuff. That is the exact opposite of what I believe. So I want to be clear, I mean, because people will use this all the time, and they’ll use it the wrong way. But it’s still you have to understand that the way proof is the way proof is formed in people’s minds, is from seeing cues that suggest value, not from let’s say logic and explanation or some study or something like that.

And so the first thing I think about is like it’s kind of that classic thing, you judge a book by its cover, or you think about how you dress, right? It’s people have it backwards, they think that you need to show kind of authority with like, all the things you like all these really kind of all the things you’ve accomplished. And they think that you have to kind of bring in I don’t know maybe like studies and numbers and everything else.

But the truth is, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, people just assume it’s a duck and this Amish haters campaign, they built the whole campaign off that one idea. And it’s just kind of this is what it becomes is again, like I’m not saying to make stuff up.

But you want to think you want to say to yourself, okay, who like so many people they never bothered to ask Like, who do I want to be for my audience to believe in me? Like if you’re speaking to a certain type of person, right? If I sit around and say the word Patriot, like I’ll bet automatically, you’re going to think you’re going to think that you can imagine, without giving a second thought, a ton of things that are going to make you trustworthy to someone who would say I am a patriot.

Pete 
I thought about Mel Gibson, by the way, but yeah.

Spencer
There ya go. Now you’ve got Mel Gibson. And so I say like, let’s say I flip it around, let’s say I mean, no one uses the term bleeding heart liberal anymore. But you can you know, let’s say, but let’s just throw that out there. Like automatically, you can think of things that you can do to be instantly trustworthy to that audience, you can probably think of things you’d want to talk about how you’d want to dress, what type of look you want to have.

And the first question I tell people to ask themselves when they’re creating content and when they’re talking to people is who does your audience want you to be? And if you think about that, it’s not that hard to engineer exactly who you need to be. And instead of sitting around, and I’m not saying don’t provide like screen capture proof elements, or whatever else, but what I’m saying is people treat it like this barrier. It’s like, Oh, my God, I’m not legitimate. I’m an imposter. I can’t do anything.

And there’s no way for me to prove I’m successful. And the thing is, every person who’s successful in the world was at some point where they had no proof themselves, and they didn’t have a gazillion followers and a bajillion dollars and stuff like that. And they made it work.

And the thing is, if you understand, people believe what they see, that’s the starting point, and you figure out, okay, who do I need to be? How do I need things? Look, what type of things do I need to say to people to make them believe?

And even though it’s an abstract question, you can see like, as soon as I said, like, as soon as I said, like, bleeding heart liberal, or Patriot, I’ll bet boom, instantly, images pop in your head, and you just know, it’s like, oh, this is what I need to be, this is what I need to do. So you define your audience, and then you kind of reverse engineer that.

And automatically, people start to believe and, you know, the reason that I mean, the reason this popped into my head is if you look at the way like the like all the West weaponization worked, like they have these sock puppets, right, you know, sock puppets are these fake accounts. And so the way that they would do things, is the people who would create these fake accounts, there were three types of fake accounts they would create, they would create fake accounts that either number one, where they pretended to represent an organization, number two, where they pretended to be part of some authority group, like, let’s say, a publication or something like that.

Or number three, they would assume the role of some sort of archetype that people are super familiar with, like, like, as a patriot, or maybe a grandma or whatever.

But something where people can relate to that type of person and where it’s kind of like there, there’s this whole all sorts of baggage where it kind of brings in a very stereotypical in typical image. And so you know, you got to ask like, well, what are all the three of these about and what they’re all about is this idea of looking like a duck and quacks like a duck.

And you do that. And pretty soon you realize, like, you don’t sit around, need to sit around and convince people that, hey, this is the best thing for you. And if you kind of look at what most people do, when they begin, they spend a lot of time trying to convince their audience. This is really the best way and they explain things and they get into lots of little details. You don’t need to you Just like if you just act the right way and say the right things.

People just think, Oh, you’ve got to be legit. And they just trust you.

Pete 
Wow, super interesting. Okay. I won’t lie. Spencer, I’m sitting over here. Like, I want more examples. I want more examples. Do you have any? Well, I’ll just leave it to you. Yeah. Do you have any more examples I was going to specify?

But other than creating social media campaigns, weaponized social media, so to speak, which is fascinating. By the way. Are there any other very specific examples you can think of, of people who have said the right things or people who have put down the right things, put out an image that would make people feel or think, or trust them in a certain way? You know what I mean?

Spencer
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, let me give a really easy example. I mean, we see this all over all over the place, right? Like the meme look, like whenever people stick those bars at the top and bottom of a video they put on social media. And if you think about,

Pete 
I’m an idiot old man. What do you mean by that?

Spencer
You know, when you see those videos, and it’s got like black bars, like it’s a square video like you’re in Facebook, or something like that, you got the video in the in the middle? And then on the top, it says something like, “you won’t believe the three things that were going to boost your conversions right now” or something like that.

Okay. I mean, you know, it kind of it looks basically, it’s the same look, as all those memes that people would put out, right.

Okay. So I call it the meme look, I don’t know if other people call it the name, like, that’s what I call it.

Pete 
I gotcha. Now, I understand I’m with you.

Spencer
So you create this look. And if you think about it, like when you create a video, like for example, if I’m creating a video for Facebook, what I’m thinking to myself is I want it to look really amateur. And usually I’m going to do something similar to that mean, look.

And the reason I’m doing that, I mean, yes, you want to be able to put a headline there to get people interested and stuff like that, and blah, blah, blah. But that’s actually not the only motivation. The reason I’m trying to make it look amateur.

And the reason I’m trying to kind of put that bar at the top and bottom is because that’s the type of content that people share, like regular people, not added fertilizers. I mean, now advertisers do too. But originally, that’s the type of content that regular people shared. And so when people see this in their Facebook feed, there’s a higher level of trust, because they look at it, and they say, Oh, this is the type of stuff that my friend might have put up. So it might be interesting to me. So I’m going to take a look at this.

If you flip it around, and let’s say you produce this super slick video, and you know, I mean, keep in mind, I come from like a video background and a photography background. So, you know, I kind of have to fight my natural urge to make things look really, really nice. Yeah. But when you put out something that looks really, really nice.

What does it scream to people like right away, they think, oh, advertising, professional production, something to sell me.

And of course, no one wants to be sold, right? And so automatically, I call it kind of the envelope principle, because you know, way back in the day, when you get those envelopes in the like, you know, through mail, remember that stuff? Like where you actually use paper and all that all those things? Right? Yeah, I mean, I still sometimes I get them.

And every once in a while, I’ll see these ones that look so legitimate, then, you know, I strongly suspect this junk mail, I can’t toss it. And it gets me to open it. And you know, in the back of my head, I’m sure other people get annoyed.

But I always think well done. Right?

So I call this the envelope principle, because marketing. Yeah, totally. So what most people do, like when you look at most junk mail, they try to put like this big ad in there, like this is a super important piece of mail. So you got to open it. And what’s it really saying to you, this is a piece of junk mail. So go ahead and throw it away.

If on the other hand, you create something that looks like mail native, so it blends in, then you think this couldn’t be real. So let me open it. And then you open it and you take a look at the letter and you read what it says. And so that gets you through the first step. And so an example. And this applies all over the place, right?

This applies anytime you create, like any form of content, whether you’re sending out something by mail or putting up a video, if you want to figure out like what is the native content that people regularly look at. And what you want to do is not kind of try to convince people you are like really successful and professional and awesome, which is kind of the mindset, most people come into their marketing with the beginning, right?

They think if I make my stuff look slick, people gonna think Whoa, you’re really slick. So I got to trust you and buy your stuff. But that’s not what happens. What people think is they treat it like junk mail, they think, ooh, your stuff is trying to sell me something. So I can ignore you. You’ve just given me permission to pay no attention to you whatsoever. And so that would be I mean, I’m always thinking to myself, like how do you make content look native? How do you make it fit in? And so I’m usually doing the opposite of what I see a lot of people doing instead of trying to make it look good. I’m always trying to find ways to make things like worse.

Pete 
That Okay, I have a question and an example for you.

So I am in the process right now of setting up. By the way, I actually create sales pages to help me work through ideas. This is how lame I am. I generally start with creating the sales page. And trying to do it as quickly as humanly possible. And that actual creation process will give me lots of ideas and help me solidify like this offering in my own head. I don’t know, statue that would people. But so I’ve been in the process of this, I have my own personal swipe file.

I’m also not a designer, but I am like a design snob somehow. I don’t know how that worked out. I’m not a designer, but I’m a design snob. And so I like building sales pages that look like sales pages you want I mean?

Yeah, so I’ve been looking at some examples and my own personal swipe file. I won’t mention their names, but I have like five or six that I’ve found over the past couple of months, I saved them. I was like, ooh, I want to like copy this little aspect. I want to do this, I want to do this, etc. And now I’m thinking, does this apply? I know it applies at least a little bit.

Would I actually have a better chance at influencing somebody persuading somebody that they need my product that they want my product, whatever that is, if it looked like a normal blog post your enemy? What do you think about that?

Spencer
I just read this thing. Yesterday actually–kind of fits with the whole Russian weaponization thing as well as what you just said.

So there was this fake story in the Atlantic. And actually, the Atlantic just wrote about this fake story in the Atlantic. And they talked about the fact that what someone did was they created this article that was referenced through social media, like through a bunch of bots. So it’s, you know, it’s kind of this fake campaign designed to influence people through a bunch of bots, and etc, etc.

But the core of it was they built this article to look just like a real Atlantic article to the point that even though it’s on this big website, it’s got like links to subscribe to the Atlantic that actually takes you to the real subscription page. It’s got it’s kind of like those fishing campaigns, right? If they do really well, sometimes you gotta pause and say, Wait, is this like a real thing? Or is this a fake thing?

And so they had, like, you know, other articles you might be interested in and just kind of the whole thing, and they just so they just kind of copied it from top to bottom. And it worked? And so I would say, Yes, exactly. That is that. I think if you create content that looks like what people normally want to read, it’s just ingrained into you, right, there’s a certain every person, every audience, and it’s different for different types of audiences, like a liberal intellectual group is going to respond to a different look, than let’s say, a conservative is like someone like the conservative patriot example that we just use, there’s something like that, right?

Every audience out there, and within that, you have subcategories too. And so every audience, they have certain looks that they’re going to respond to.

And they don’t think about it, they don’t sit around, say, Oh, this is kind of nicely. I mean, they might notice it’s nicely designed or not. But really, I mean, that you just feel it, you say this is the type of thing I trust, like when someone looks like if I see red, white, and blue, either you love it, or you hate it, depending on who you are.

But it creates a reaction.

And so when you create stuff looks native that looks familiar to people, they’re going to read, and if your content is good, and you talk about like, let’s say the big thing that they’re craving, and you kind of create curiosity and UTM, once they start reading, they won’t be able to stop. And so I would say the number one thing is to get people going and get people into it.

And so yeah, I mean, I guess that you know that. Yeah, my answer is I would sit around. And the first thing I would think is, how do I make this look like what other people are going to read?

Pete 
This is good. I love this. Spencer, this is great. Okay,

Spencer
Year, this is great , I’m going to tell you, you’re the first person. I mean, I have been reading up on this stuff forever. And I’ve just been following because I didn’t like kind of a geek like that. And you’re the first person really had a chance to talk about it in any public forum.

You’re the first person that had had the chance to talk about this stuff with so this is awesome.

Pete 
Okay, let me ask you this.

And if you have, I don’t actually know what you sell, by the way, Spencer, maybe you can, I’ll let you totally pitch whatever you want at the end of this podcast. Or maybe we should just like keep we’ve been in conversation, like we’ve been talking about for the past 10 minutes. We’ll just casually keep mentioning Oh, buy this buy this…No,

Spencer
I’m joking. And if you really want to know how.

Pete 
No, no. The thing I like, by the way, I like what you said in there about knowing your audience.

First and foremost, I probably say that in every little talk I’ve given a few talks recently, the only reason I say that any presentation or whatever, I generally bring that up, like the most important thing is to know your audience and what they expect, what they want, what they need, that sort of stuff. I like that you mentioned that.

So kudos.

But I can also tell you part of my audience, or what I’ve come to figure out over the past couple years is that they actually just love transparency and honesty, it’s kind of a breath of fresh air and digital marketing.

A lot of times, I’ve actually built my brand around that. So I like I like being able to say to my audience, like you know what, at the end of this podcast episode, Spencer is going to pitch you something straight up, he can try and sell you, he’s gonna try and get your money. And you need to find out what he’s going to do. Like, I have no qualms saying that sort of stuff.

Because I know the people that are had been attracted to my own brand that kind of appreciate that. Like they like yeah, that’s that. So no live audience no violence. God wasn’t even gonna say, suppressor. Oh, I remember. Sorry.

I was opening the door for you to pitch your own products or services, if you want to totally cool.

But resources.

So for winding down the podcast and let you go here in a few minutes. And then you gotta go. What resources would you point people to for? I’m going to say the words copywriting. But this is a little bit broader than that a little bit bigger than that selling persuasion influence all those great things, psychology?

What would be your top books, your top courses, your top resources? If you were making a roundup post Spencer, what would be some of the things that you include for people to go check out?

Spencer
Yeah, number one thing is an easy one. It’s the Gene Schwartz book. So “breakthrough advertising.” I mean, that’s my top go to thing.

And I just want to put a little extra plug in there. Because I think so many people, this is kind of one of my pet peeves. Because I also believe a lot in kind of being open and just being honest about stuff.

And, you know, I find like, I’ve never had anyone Oh, let me take it back. I’m sure people have been turned off. But never anyone who was a fit for who I wanted to wanted to talk to. Right.

So you know, I figured you know, save, say things like you say things and tell people what you got and just be open about it. But there are all these people out there who are basically teaching the same thing as what Gene Schwartz taught. And it’s great that I mean, I have nothing against kind of putting it out there and simplifying it for people so that it’s a little easier to digest, because that book is really, really dense.

But still, with that said, I feel like everyone should study it.

Because a lot of times people don’t realize where the information they’re getting is coming from. And to this day, I think Schwartz still he goes deeper into it, then the vast majority of people out there. And if you don’t know it, then you’re not going to get the full picture on what’s going on kind of out and about and all over the world. So like, I almost like anyone who I work with a decent bit like when I’m coaching people and stuff like that, I mean, I actually go out, and I forced them to sit around and go through that whole process or not to the whole process, but to really kind of read through the book and understand that whole process, because I think it should be mandatory for everybody.

And yeah, you know, it’s like, what, how much does it run like 234 500 bucks sometimes?

But it’s way worth it. So that’s number one.

A second one is this book by Dan Kennedy, “the ultimate sales letter.”

And so there are you know, I mean, you know about sales pages, obviously, I mean, you know, your stuff. But I think the thing about the Dan Kennedy book that I love is it’s dirt cheap. And so, you know, you can sign up for like, for example, John Carlton was one of my mentors, and I went through his program, and I think his information is great.

And what I got out of it was just I mean, the value is imminent, miserable. And so I loved it.

But the thing is, not everyone is kind of ready for that and ready to go through a program like that.

And I think everyone needs to understand how to write a sales letter. And so you can spend 10 bucks, and you can get the ultimate sales letter. And Dan Kennedy does a great job kind of breaking down a bunch of the, you know, the primary concerns and the things you need to think about.

So I’m going to put that number two, because I think it’s such a good deal.

Next thing, okay, so this is, this is where I start to have to think a little bit more. So I’m just going to throw out. Let’s see, what am I going to say?

I love Stephen King’s book on writing. And so it’s not about like marketing, writing or anything else. But I still love his book on writing. Because I feel like, like, my big thing is, I think it’s so much more important to develop the skills and understanding than just to kind of go around chasing the latest shiny object thing.

Because my feeling is like, if you have the skills and you’re directing them the right way, then the results are going to follow. But if you sit around and kind of learn like this latest and greatest trick, invariably, if you don’t understand why it’s working, it’s going to stop working, and you’re not going to know what to do. So my idea of the world is it’s all about kind of getting strong. And by strong, I mean having the skills and having good and having the not having good, being good at what you’re doing. And having that understanding.

Because then you know, you’re going to sit around and you’re gonna say I gotta write this blog post. But you know what, I’m fluent at writing blog posts, so I don’t have a bunch of resistance in my head, and I don’t stall for half the day before I get started, I just do it. And 20 minutes later, I’m done. And it’s out there. And I’ve done a little bit of marketing that goes into the world or something like that.

And so I think kind of the core tool is understanding how to work with words. And so I love the Stephen King book for that reason. And kind of along those lines, I just the whole idea of getting out there and constantly practicing is I think kind of core and so kind of, you know, off the top of my head, gotten you know, I’m literally trying to think like, I read so many books, and I can remember the books I read.

But I mean, I would say those are the top three things I think of like straight, like, straight out of the gate.

Pete 
Okay. Let me also throw out two suggestions, one recent one old.

Before I do those, I’ll actually agree with you, by the way, I think this deeper skill of, I’m just going to say persuasion, quite frankly, persuading people to do things. So it could be buying something or it could be not buying something, it could be selling people on an idea or trying to change the way people think about parenting about money or whatever, like this idea of selling an idea, whatever that may be.

I feel like that is an underlying skill that you can use all throughout your life, like blogging, getting people to join a newsletter, selling things over the internet, whatever that may be running a small business, opening a restaurant, dealing with your kids getting a promotion, quitting a job, like whatever that is, I feel like it’s such a superpower, like a superhuman thing.

You could learn and spend time stuff. I feel like almost anything I invest in a copywriting book course etc. Almost always will pay dividends and all parts of my life.

It’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. two things. One would be the boron letters. Have you heard of these?

Spencer
Oh, great. Yes, yes.Yes. They’re a great book.

Pete 
So it’s, it’s literally his letters. This guy. I can’t remember that. That the guy’s name quite frankly.

Spencer
Halbert.

Pete 
Yeah, yes, that’s right. letters he wrote to his kids or a son, I believe while he was in prison, on some sort of marketing, direct mail fraud, some sort of it’s, it’s absolutely fascinating.

You have to sift through a little bit of personal letter writing or whatnot. But they’re like little golden nuggets sprinkled throughout that and you can download it for free. You just google search. The boron letters, as in boron was the name of the prison, I believe b o. n. You can search it pull it up, you can print it from your printer, like 30, 40 pages, or whatever, at least. It was longer than that. But there’s one section specifically, that’s like really good on direct mail and advertising and copywriting.

That’s really good, the boron letters.

And then the second thing is interesting. I love, love, love the thought of going deep on some of these subjects and skills like breakthrough advertising.

I’m totally, totally down for that. I also like the flip side, which is not a book that’s like 200 300 pages that it’s actually mostly fluff.

Like, it probably could have been just a blog post. I feel like I read a lot of that and 2019 marketing and business books, I can’t stand those. I like the flip side. And there’s one I just listened to on Audible called “exactly what to say.

Have you heard of this one? Spencer?

Spencer
Oh, I don’t know that one. I’ve got look that up,

Pete 
Literally less than an hour in Audible, the entire, I don’t know how many pages that would be in the physical copy. But I didn’t listen to thing. So it was less than an hour.

And there’s literally no difference wrote to the book. Like the author is also the one reading it, I believe. And he was just like, “Hey, welcome to exactly what to say, here’s number one. Here’s number two. Here’s number three.”

And the entire book is 21 phrases that you could use in both text format, like copywriting as well as selling in person or over the phone or whatever.

And so he literally just list off these 21 phrases, words, and then false it up with five minutes or so of talking about it. And he’s on to the next one. And he’s on to the next one. And there’s a little bit of an intro, but it’s so concise, and it’s so specific, and scalable. I don’t know what that word is, but you could totally like steal these ideas. And it was just great. Exactly what to say. It’s very, very, very short. And totally awesome if you sell things. So

Spencer
Nice. You just made me think of something. Have you read the book “obvious Adams?”

Pete 
No, I haven’t.

Spencer
Okay, so Gary Bencivenga. Right, greatest living copywriter life is, I guess its greatest living copywriter alive is kind of redundant. It’s like, I guess you’re alive. You’re living anyway.

So he always one of the books that he always gave away to people was called obvious Adams super fast read it, like you can read it. Probably like an hour. I mean, maybe less. But it’s really simple. And the whole premise is that really successful business is about learning to see the obvious kind of like what you’re saying, like if you know your audience, you don’t have to get really fancy with stuff, you just got to say what they really want to hear.

But it’s really hard to see the obvious.

And so I really love the because it just kind of distilled this whole idea down. And it says it in a very quick way that kind of hits home where you kind of say, Oh, I get it. And it’s one of those things where it kind of it shifts your perspective.

And it makes you seem like what you really want to do. Anyway, super quick read. I don’t actually remember who it’s written by. But, but yeah, I really liked that book. It’s a nice one. And, and kind of, you know, I gotta admit, like, I’m pretty time-starved, between family and everything else. So even though I love deeper stuff, too, I get, you know, most days, I’m sitting around, trying to figure out like, how do I use my time efficiently? And when things are short? I’m like, Yes, you know, you get paid for that. Totally, totally.

Pete 
Well, Spencer, this has been absolutely lovely. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this, we’re gonna have to catch up again, and just nerd out over the phone or on Skype or something about some of these other interesting marketing things that are going on in the real world outside of digital marketing, I find this fascinating.

So before I let you go, where what’s your pitch, give us the offer could be to where they can best follow you obviously, go extra bowl.com. And on a social channel, people can go there, obviously join the email list, you have a special link, maybe you want to point people to?

Spencer
Yes, the link is the way to go. That’s where everything happens.

So in fact, I’m going to give a two part instruction, just head over to this link.

So goextrabold.com/dyeb.

And first thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to get a full, I think it’s eight parts, I keep changing it. Sometimes it’s like seven, sometimes it’s eight, sometimes of nine.

But anyway, you’re going to get a full course that kind of goes over the principles of influence and how to do it in a way that’s like, where you can actually still be like an honest person and feel good about yourself. And so head over there, and the one plug I have is that the first email that you get, it’s going to talk about this special guide called the Dark Arts version.

And so it’s basically it’s long, but I really I give wholly in there. It’s not one of those things where you kind of go in and you say, Oh, you know, I knew that. And so I really get into it. And it’s like it’s it does what I tell nobody all have nobody to do, which is it is a ridiculously long lead magnet. But people who read it have just like they have any they really I mean, they have used this to kind of power certain parts of their businesses and stuff like that.

So anyway, go click on that, all you got to do is like shared and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I can’t even remember, I’m trying to remember the tool I used. But anyway, for everyone who clicks on the link, they’ll see how it goes.

Really simple. There’s not a lot you got to do. You just click on it, and then you go and you get that download, but well worth it.

A lot of people don’t know about it, because sometimes people don’t read the intro email. But you want to get that because I’m telling you.

Yeah, you know, they people read like half of it, they get through the part like oh, you know, if you don’t like me unsubscribe and here’s your free download, right. But I’ve noticed a lot of people, I have to keep reminding them.

That was one of the changes I had to make, because I realized, you know, people don’t see the promo for that. Anyway, with that said, like, really, I love it. And it’s one of those things, I’m constantly thinking, maybe I should take that down and just turn it into one of my bonuses and stuff like that. So grab it by you can.

So anyway, that’s the plug, go goextrabold.com/dyeb, you’ll get the free course and you’ll be you’ll get the link that’s going to take you to that free PDF.

Pete 
So strong, literally opting in right after we finish this call. I’m excited.

And by the way, let me let me brag This is 110% bragging on my audience here. One of the things that I love every single day and working on my own business right now. It’s going bad. And lots of ways. There’s totally weaknesses that I have. I’m totally struggling in a lot of areas of my business, but this is not one.

My audience is like loyal. I this is totally bragging, totally bragging. And so I’m going to tell people right now like goextrabold.com/dyeb and open the first email, and they’ll do it. You’re watching this or you’ll get like emails after this. All right, I’m watching. Yeah, at least a few. I’m guessing you’ll probably get some emails tribe. Go unite. I love this idea. I think this is definitely valuable information for sure. I’m going to go up in right now. Myself, by the way. And I believe that’ll about do it.

So Spencer. Thanks again for coming on. This has been awesome. I really appreciate your time.

Spencer
Thank you it was areally good talk!

Important Note!

This blog post is a mash-up of a 4-part series I did on the podcast! If you’re viewing this in July 2019–it’s still in progress!

You can come back soon and get the full blog post 🙂 🙂

You can listen to part one here:

or listen on Apple Podcasts \\ Google Podcasts

Jump to…

• What people mean when they say “tell stories.”
• The 10 “Story Legos” you can use over and over again
• How to use “brand stories” in your marketing & sales
• My easy formulas for creating metaphors & examples

Pretend we’re buddies who work together, and I wanted to warn you about a busy street. I could say…

“The street just outside our building is really busy today. Be careful when you cross it.” 

You might find that data useful. But what if we attach some form of story to it?

“Did you hear Joe went for coffee this morning and was hit by a car just outside? Broke his leg. That street is busy today. Be careful when you cross it.”

Not only is there now more emotion involved, but you might actually be able to “put yourself in the shoes” or our poor friend who was hit.

Storytelling works.

Super important Note:

You do NOT need every block to make a story (except maybe the first three)!

Pick and choose from these Story Legos to tell the story you need to tell.

Important marketing tip:

All heros actually want TWO things (and so do your customers):

1. The obvious thing
2. The internal thing

The obvious thing = Luke wants to defeat the empire.

The internal thing = Luke wants to overcome his self-doubt and prove to himself that he has what it takes.

Your customers might want to make more money, or get a better job, or pay off student loan debt…

…but what they actually want is to feel comfy, secure, and stress-free about their money.

Marketing Takeaway…

Here’s a quote from StoryBrand:

If we want our customer’s ears to perk up when we talk about our products and services, we should position those products as WEAPONS they can use to defeat a villain. And the villain should be dastardly.

What the heck do you mean by “brand story?”

This is a single, huge, overarching story that emcompasses EVERYTHING you communicate from your brand.

Your customer is the hero. You are the guide. Your product/service/brand helps your customers cross their chasms and progress on their journey!

Example: Help people budget better.

• Plan = using a tool like YNAB to make things easier
• Happy Ending = stress-free budgeting that actually ends up with you having more money!

The end result from our budgeting post example:

I can’t STAND remembering to charge my phone.

My wife is constantly borrowing it (and moving it around the house), and I never remember to charge it at night. I’m also never at home during the day to charge it.

So I bought a portable charger. It was only $30, 100% portable, and has completed changed my happiness levels relating to charge my phone.

That’s what YNEB does for your budgeting.

Listen to my episode with Rachel from Joyful Derivatives

What is a sponsored post on a blog?

A “sponsored post” is simple when a company pays a blogger to publish a very specific piece of content, which usually promotes or reviews the company’s product.

Btw, I have a CONCISE YouTube video on getting sponsorships (the first few are more podcasting related, but 90% of the video also totally applies to blogging.

FAQ: Where should you literally put your media kit?

On your blog about page? Somewhere else?

Rachel’s vote is to treat your media kit like a resume–and tailor it slightly for each pitch!

This requires that you NOT keep it public on your about page.

How much do blog sponsors pay?

The average sponsored blog post can vary between $100 and $5,000.

The amount of money you get from a sponsored blog post largely depends on the size of your audience (and website traffic), as well as what else you’re including in your sponsorship package.

For example, if you also includes mentions in your email newsletter or social media shares (in addition to a sponsored article), you might be able to charge more money.

Listen to my episode with Tom Drake from Maple Money

Pete McPherson 4:03
Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom 4:04
Thanks for having me on.

Pete McPherson 4:05
It’s an absolute pleasure of course, Maple Money, MapleMoney.com is where folks can find you, of course. And I have some I have a bunch of questions for you, Tom. In fact, actually, now that I think about it, this is easily the most questions I’ve written down for any podcast guests usually have like some bullet points, but I have I’m trying to count at least like nine questions, like literally bullet point nine questions for your job. So this would be really fun.

Before we get to all those questions, most of which kind of sit around this idea of hiring VAs specifically, like overseas VAs, before we get to that I do kind of want to just like jump into your backstory and learn a little bit more about you and the blog, which you’ve been doing for apparently over a decade. I hear. Yeah, actually confirm this for us, Tom. You’re in Canada. Does Canadian money actually smell like maple syrup?

Tom 5:01
I’ve never taken a good enough to know for sure. But it is drives me a little crazy because I rebranded to make more money about two years ago now. And I’ll get these mixed search results when I google myself, where I get all these things about Maple smelling money kind of thing. And yeah, it’s driving me a little crazy, but I can’t say I’ve actually smelt it closely enough to know. But ultimately, I gotta think, no, I can’t see them going out of their way to do that.

Pete McPherson 5:32
Well, actually, I thought that’s where your name came from. I thought that’s why you said a good it looks good, by the way. But I specifically thought you were kind of utilizing that in your brand name. So apparently, that’s not the case.

Tom 5:44
No, I didn’t think of that at all. So go way back to the beginning. For for most of the time, I was Canadian finance blog. It, it made sense back in 2009 it then I hit a point where I didn’t like the word blog. I thought blog was going to become a little outdated sounding Sorry, I know it’s in your name too but

Pete McPherson 6:08
I’ve already feel that too so Yeah, go ahead.

Tom 6:10
Okay. So as a little concerned about blogging and the name and then Canadian finance blog was just a little generic anyway it’s certainly got the point across but so when I was kind of brainstorming how to rebrand I wanted to replace Canadian and finance so I thought going with maple and money was a cute way to kind of replace that name and still sort of mean the same thing. But but much better branding and just just a nice a real brand that like it feels like something I can kind of do anything with. I could go beyond just blogging and I have I purposely waited on the podcast because I have Maple money show I didn’t want to have Canadian finance podcast and just get get further into that.

So I literally I delayed having a pocket by good year, just because I wanted to wait till I had a better name.

Pete McPherson 7:04
Okay, that makes total sense. I’m glad you sort that out for us. All those actually kind of hoping for a yes. I’m hoping that I could get my hands on some Canadian dollars and like, smell them anyways, neither here nor there, Tom.

So we will get to the Filipino VA stuff. But I think in order to properly set that up, I have a few like pre qualifying questions about the blog and podcast.

So when did you discover that you needed help?

And by help I mean like leverage in terms of like a higher part time full time virtual assistant anything like at one point, there’s like strike your brain is like, Oh, I need some help with this.

Tom 7:44
Well, there’s there’s different levels to that, that. So starting 2009 it was probably about 2010 or 11. Whereas I realized I needed some form of help and that came in, in staff writers at the time is probably what most bloggers hire first is a lot more content, I’m going to hire a staff writer.

So I had quite a few staff writers 2010 to 2012. But then, I was actually listening to Derek Halpern and at FinCon, and he was talking about how you should spend more time promoting content, then producing it. And somewhere in my head, I, I sort of recalculated that to mean I should get rid of all my staff writers and start just focusing on my content and promoting that just just the idea that I didn’t need to do five posts a week anymore. It was basically what I took from that.

So in 2012, I kind of went down to one or two posts a week and and focusing more energy on on actually promoting that content. So that was sort of my first real, needing help now know, sort of, as we know, there’s there’s all sorts of behind the scenes, blog tasks and stuff. It was probably 2000, If I get this right 2017 maybe 2016 when I first really wanted to try to get someone to help me out with sort of doing the the publishing part, taking a post from Google Drive and putting it into WordPress and and adding an image to it and maybe a little bit of social media, at least the promotion stuff, not nothing overboard, like not not pretending to be me or something, but just just promoting the latest blog posts.

So a couple times I hired someone to different people, but I hired Canadian vas for five hours a week.

And both times I failed miserably.

I found, I think it was on on me, I think it was just sort of a lack of organization that that caused this problem, where it’s like I hired them, but I didn’t quite have it clear what I wanted them to do.

Pete McPherson 9:56
That big. Hang on one second. Pause, push, push up a sticker here. Let’s go back for just a second.

I have one more question about your staff writer experience. Yes. Actually, I have two questions now that I think about it.

One, fast forward to today. 2019. Do you still have any staff writers or you only producing your own content?

Tom 10:15
Great question. I don’t have them right now. I’m looking to add them. Now, to fast forward to today. Everything we’ll talk about in between is has got me so much more organized. And now I’ve offloaded some stuff. So now I’m to the point where I’m like, Well, on top of my posts, I could add extra writers were where I’m able to assign them actual things and they’re not just writing about whatever they want to write about kind of thing.

So the the organization that we’ll get to is actually led to, I’m looking to hire probably two staff writers to fill in the the Tuesday Thursday and give me a full five weeks again, but but now it’s going to be five weeks of really targeted stuff, things that will do well in SEO, things that will do well on social like the podcast does. So it’ll be a lot more purposeful than it was in the past.

Pete McPherson 11:07
Okay, anybody five weeks just to clarify you mean five days a week?

Tom 11:10
Oh, sorry. Yes. But five days in a week very now I do. I do a new post on Monday, roughly. It’s a new post on Monday, a repurpose post on on Friday. Were the contents been updated in some way? Sometimes a massive recall. Sometimes it’s just a couple new paragraphs on a on a on a software that’s added something new or whatever. And then the podcast on Wednesday.

Pete McPherson 11:35
Okay, I like that. Okay, that actually, I was super curious. I was like, wait a minute. Did you ever use like double dip come back to this and Okay, I like that.

Tom 11:44
Just about you. I haven’t yet. I didn’t go a long time just doing the it before the podcast is basically doing one post a week for probably a couple years and a lot of that was was repurposing that content, sort of improving it and republishing. So there was a times were like in a month I wasn’t even writing new piece of content. I was I was just improving everything.

Pete McPherson 12:06
I actually think this is like a huge event for anybody listening to this and I’ve said this before, a dozen times.

That repurposing, refurbish, refurbishing, revamping republishing all that old content, all the worries, it’s actually incredible valuable for a few different reasons. One, it’s generally thought of to be good SEO practice, just kind of keeping all the content fresh and updated or whatnot to it takes way less time than a brand new blog post, usually, most times, way less time and it continues to help out your audience like I know Robert from the College Investor. He and his team do this I believe under his publishing schedule, but it was something like if it’s five times a week, it’s like three new posts and to repurpose the posts or something like that. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but I’ve heard from a lot of people they are starting to do if not already. What you’re doing so.

Tom 13:01
yeah, Robert Farrington is a perfect example. I think we both go back to like 2012. With that, where, where we were kind of chatting and, and just this idea that that Yeah, let’s let’s start reusing content, we both go back to 2009. And like so many bloggers, you start off and you’re writing, especially back then maybe less now you’re writing like 300 words of kind of shallow content and so that that idea can be a 1500 word deep post, by by going back to it.

Pete McPherson 13:33
I’m totally with you. Okay, so let’s talk about organization for just a second.

I actually had this down as one of my questions on this process of hiring a VA but you actually kind of brought it up. You don’t let me put words in your mouth. But you said you probably are way more organized now about your content production systems, or I’m assuming that the admin stuff as well.

Is there anything that sticks out in your head as incredibly helpful like a light bulb moment anytime over the past like several years, that helped you get like way more organized. And to give you a second to think about that, mainly what I’m looking for is a lot of times when people think about making their first hire, whether that’s a $7 an hour, Filipino VA or jumping right into like full time work, a lot of times I hear this again and again, again, I wasn’t organized enough. It’s not necessarily that I made a bad hire. It’s just that I was organized. I wasn’t specific enough x, y, z, you know what I mean?

So if you could, if anything stands out at all the over the past few years like what helped you get to that organized point set Make sense?

Tom 14:47
Yeah, for sure. I was I was trying everything. My email is just a dumpster fire still is that that will have to get to at some point.

But I tried to Asana tried Trello now I am back with the Asana but we’ll get to that. Okay, so I was trying these things I was kind of a little bit lost.

So one thing I did, and it’s not really an option for a new blogger, but I hired project manager, Lori Mercer she’s she sort of hangs out in the digital collab success incubator circles. She, I hired her for three months. And basically what we did was we we went through and got it got sort of the standard operating practices where where it’s like, tell me what you do, let’s let’s document everything. So we have standard operating practices for how a blog post gets set up in WordPress. There’s writing guides on on sort of we want h2 is here and then h3 is below and all that kind of stuff. How long the paragraph should be, we’ve got everything documented.

That that was a big step. And then The other half of that to go with those standard operating practices, and those are literally just documents in Google Drive.

Pete McPherson 16:05
Okay, I was gonna ask that.

Tom 16:06
Yeah, the other half to go go with that is is Asana. And so now we have tasks set up around every blog posts, there’s every blog post becomes a task and then the sub tasks of researching, writing, setting it up getting images, all that and then those tasks and Asana include a link back to the standard operating practices. So there’s always a chance to, to an easy way to link back to that and and see if you’ve ever got a question as a employee kind of thing you can you can see what the goal is there.

And if something’s not answered by the standard operating practice, then it becomes well bring it to my attention let’s let’s see what we can add there because we want that to be the the complete thing where where someone could kind of dive in and, and and go with it. Like if something ever happened to my employees. The Hacker gets someone else and it shouldn’t be as brutal of a startup.

Pete McPherson 17:04
I think that’s huge for one thing, and you said the, I mean, I’m sure you go back and change it up. But the initial project of creating project management, when you hired this person, you said it took roughly three months with her help. Is that right?

Tom 17:21
Yeah. So she did a few things in that three months, that there was setting this base up, which was probably the first half. The second half she did was was helped me with with the hiring process. So we went through and sort of detailed Well, again, it’s like, tell me what you need, and then we’ll get that written down as well. And that what was written down became sort of the job posting and, and little tricks that we can get into about about sort of how to find the right people in a huge haystack full of employees that’ll, that’ll come to you when you post an ad.

Pete McPherson 17:58
Well, let’s jump into that. First of all, let’s make that the the jumping off point. You just let me know if you want to be more specific to hiring a VA in the Philippines, which, by the way context, I just finished listening yesterday to Nick Lopers, I don’t think it’s his most recent show, but the recent show, Nick Loper did for the side hustle show on hiring a Filipino VA. He literally talked to the founder of I think it’s a Freeeup, with three E’s in there.

And onlinejobs.ph.

She had the two founders on the podcast, and this is all they talked about. So there’s actually like, incredibly fresh in my mind is something I’ve been thinking about for years. I’ve never actually taken the dive and made it happen, which I have so many questions for a time.

But let’s let’s actually start with that after the job posting. You’re going to get people reach up or want to apply. I love to hear just a breakdown of that process of how to sort of through that. And we’ll come back to the very first step a little bit later, maybe knowing exactly what you need help with. I actually think that’s a longer discussion, we can actually talk about that first, I guess. But, you know, I could just take this opportunity to confuse everybody listening. And we’ll start with the, the sorting through people trying to find the person that’s going to “work” so walk us through like a step by step if you can.

Tom 19:29
so that there’s a few tricks and I think this was huge for me, and maybe where where I’ve gone wrong in the past was, is just simply a new job posting asked for certain things. And when those get ignored, you ignore them. If I think of the examples, but like we’d say, certainly send your resume but also send three past examples of work you’ve done in this in this job. Send A very quick sample task, it was it was, it was something like, create a create a quick little image was one when we were looking for a graphic designer.

And by asking for these things, you’ll filter out at least half the people.

Because there’s people I don’t know if they’re, if they’re using bots to do this, or they’re just not paying attention either way, you’re not interested in them, but they’ll just send like, here’s my resume. And like nothing else written in the, in the reply or anything. And so, ability to filter through that just becomes so fast.

And it’s just so simple. Like if they’re not giving you what you’re asking for now. They’re going to be someone that you have to follow up with way too much in the future to like, I’m, I’m very happy with the VA I have because she’s, she’s very great at understanding what I want. Like if I asked her something, most of the time she’s gonna get it right. If she doesn’t all sort of fine tune that. I’ll just point out like the one little thing She’s pretty good.

From there, it’s very rare I’d ever have to point something out a third time kind of thing. Which is exactly what I know I needed. Aaron chase once told me, which basically led to me getting rid of one of the VA. So at 1.1 of the Canadian ones, she told me, I need a babysitter, I don’t need to babysit someone else. And that was that was pretty huge for me, because it became, in the past, it was almost like I was spending way too much time, making sure that they were able to do their work. And now it’s some days I don’t need to contact this person at all, because they can just go to town and do what they know they need to do.

Pete McPherson 21:16
I like that. So you What do you assign your current VA, if you could just walk us through some of the tasks that you’re currently like offloading and that this this person does? I’m always curious.

Tom 21:50
So this this is something that that I kind of came up with that I think worked really well so we have the obvious things were And I call them priority tasks where if there’s a new blog post new podcast anything like that like part of the regular publishing schedule, that’s the priority so it’s it’s take it from Google Drive put it into WordPress, make sure it’s formatted properly with the h2 is with the right title case that we use, both on the title and the subtitles, add three internal links to other posts, she does that. Pick the category right the meta description, right three different tweets.

So those are pre written sitting sitting in Google Drive, three different tweets plus the Facebook, which is like four or five words just a nice short little Facebook piece and, and a LinkedIn sentence. So all this social is pre written based on the post. And I should point out with with this VA, Yes, she’s from the Philippines.

I hired English first.

It was less about like, do you know how to use a sauna or something like that? It was was looking at the the written work and how good is her English both both in provided work and just in the initial emails, we want someone that’s great English I, I wouldn’t have her become a staff writer and write a blog post. But for meta descriptions and tweets, it’s pretty simple to get that many characters that kind of thing and, and and again, it’s all sort of part of our standard operating procedures where even a meta description is roughly two thirds description and one third call to action. So so that when people see that in Google they’ll they’ll want to click through so so everything’s very template but but setting up a blog post or podcast is is definitely a priority task.

Where where I think and that’s all an Asana so she’s doing her tasks, but I think we’re things got much easier for me is having the secondary tasks or sorry, I should hop back. One other thing we consider priority is just there’s some daily tasks, doing some Facebook group moderation like checking the new members making sure they’re decent quality and copying their answers into a Google Doc. We do that just to keep the answers because we’re asking for their email if they want to provide it. We’re asking what their biggest money issue is. So there’s some possible post generation ideas there.

So she copies all that from Facebook and approves them or denies them. She wants a week show welcome all the members using a template and welcome.

So there’s a lot of social tasks that are also sort of priority in that it’s a sauna and she’s doing them when she’s supposed to do them.

To get to the secondary items, though, this is where I no longer have to tell her what to do every day. Because when she’s done priority stuff, or if there’s no priority stuff that day, she she goes to the secondary tasks so I have what I call a content database. I exported every single post out of WordPress. I exported some some stats out of Ahrefs and export it, or not experts sorry, but there’s some manual columns after that, partially me doing content audit, which is a constant job for me. And then there’s tasks for her like the writing the the three tweets, the Facebook and the LinkedIn.

She does that for all past articles or is working on that. So it’s this something where, okay, and she’s making sure images are added to past articles. So she’s constantly improving the past content. And that’s sort of one of her biggest things. And then there’s there’s things like making sure the Pinterest tailwind queue is full. What else has she been doing something else and not thinking of, but it’s this idea that like when she’s not doing the priority stuff, there’s always something for her to do.

There’s there’s no shortage.

Pete McPherson 25:46
I love that. I want to hint at one thing you just said about language in English. And then I actually want to come back to the structure that you initially requested, like when you were hiring somebody how many hours Week, what pay range? Are we looking at? Like, I want to ask about that we’ll come back to that.

But this is actually probably like the one thing from Nick Loper his podcast with the the guys from free up and onlinejobs.ph. That’s the one thing that they really really harped on and agreed on. And it was English can be just like a huge shining beacon of someone who’s awesome if they just have good English, not necessarily that you’re going to have them write a blog post, but it just shows that they took the time to learn it, the care to learn it or that they’re smart enough to have already learned the language and enough grammar to get by and enough spelling to get by.

They actually took that as like a really great sign. Like you said, like they looked at that first, that and timeliness and responses they specifically asked for, you know, send us three examples of your works and this, this and this that and that Very first interaction they said is just like a huge, what’s the word I’m looking for here…sign, they got a huge sign of whether the person is going to be timely or not one case, they said they’ve they’ve hired like thousands of these people by the way. And a lot of times, they’ll be like, three days will go by before we hear anything. Or in one case, like three weeks will go by even though I know this person is really smart. They came recommended to me by another like rock star person that we have on our team. Like this person was highly recommended. We reached out we asked him for stuff. It took him three weeks to get back.

And we were like, No, no, thank you. Like what are the chances of you doing that sort of stuff once you’re hired as well?

So English, exactly and timeliness were like their two big things that they handed out on that podcast. I thought that was interesting.

Tom 27:48
Yeah, I found that exactly. Like there’s that there’s that saying hire slow fire fast. We kind of did hire fast and if we had to fire fast because because of that timeliness. Yeah. Like if if we’re We’re asking, we put up an ad, you get 100 people reply. And, and they’re all within a couple days as it is anyways. I think probably the newest ad probably just shows towards the top right but and then we asked for something else we’re asking for one further task and and yeah, the the ones that reply within within a day or two kind of thing are the ones we want and someone that reply at all maybe they found some other job or whatever, that’s fine but it it becomes very, very obvious.

So yeah, timeliness and English and certainly the just the fact that they’re Replying to Your request fully is sort of that attention to detail I I’d say is sort of just as important.

Pete McPherson 28:41
Okay, I love it. So let’s go back to the the actually what site did you use? That’s the first thing what platforms have you used so far?

Tom 28:49
So for this, I used online.jobs.ph. and and it was great. I’ve also tried to Freeeup I didn’t like free up for me because I really wanted to hire someone directly and Freeeup’s a bit more like, like up work? Well, maybe I think you can still get them directly but it’s just a little. It’s a little more contained. It’s like good. They they send you three people say I think it is right.

You say what you want they send you three people and the three people I got sent didn’t really work out for me. So I much rather sleep go to that fire hose of online jobs pH and you get those hundred replies or more and but it’s so quick to get down to like 10 maybe maybe five really like it. It’s night and day sometimes some of the different replies you get interesting.

Pete McPherson 29:38
So walk us through like how you figured out how many hours a week Am I hiring for before this work or what is the budget I need for like the specific task all those like format and structure.

I don’t really know the right words here Tom. But, How did you think about those things before you actually made your your first hire here?

Tom 30:04
So hiring someone from the Philippines, I kind of worked it backwards. I knew to get a decent employee in the Philippines that had sort of that that complete loyalty to you. You should hire full time.

I don’t I don’t want to say that people though listening to this show that that you you can’t hire part time you certainly can. I just found that hiring full time and making sure they have enough work to do sort of it just makes them this well, full time employee they’re gonna they’re going to care about all every every female you send you that you’re not just one of many requests kind of thing. You’re, you’re the sole person.

So for me, it was sort of let’s hire full time. And and part of the planning ahead of that was certainly how do we take advantage of these these 40 hours a week?

I should mention so this this VA has been working on a few sites. I’ve got Maple money, but I also have a partner in return. Happy here in Canada and I’m also a partner with JD Roth I get rich slowly so between these these three sites alone and I still have other stuff I could get to if I was ever looking for work for but these three sites alone It’s probably about six or 7000 posts between the three sites. Oh my god so when it comes to that that content content database idea right where she’s going into old posts and making sure that they have h2’s instead of some bold, italicized underlined subtitles. She’s She’s doing all that to old posts out in the images and stuff.

It’s…there’s there’s no shortage of work. In my case. I get that if, if someone’s a smaller blog, they’ve got 500 posts and and the and maybe they publish only once a week. Yeah, they might. It might be hard to hire full time then.

Pete McPherson 31:52
Well, for that specific role, yes. In my case, I don’t need that person at all because I have like 50, blog posts and 100 podcast episodes, I just don’t need that. But I do need a lot of other things like, at the moment, I’m just sharing my own needs here. But I need like a graphic designer who can work really well with cross platform stuff like I need a constant barrage of Facebook ad creative, like different things to test like every single week. And same thing with like Google ads and Pinterest ads as well as pins for content and random stuff like that. Like, that’s kind of what I’m looking to hire next, personally, as well as outsourcing some of the podcasts editing for the first time. I’m actually debating. I really enjoy podcast audience.

So it’s hard for me to give up. But yeah, it depends on if you have enough work for the person.

Tom 32:43
So yeah, one thing I just want to add to that was, um, so if, if you’re looking for enough different work for someone full time, it might be hard because then you’re looking for that unicorn that can do everything right.

So there’s certainly some value in being able to find separate tasks.

We should get into at some point here. I I’ve hired graphic designers twice through online jobs pH and failed miserably. So I I’m not sure why that didn’t work out and the blog manager role worked out fine. Maybe just a bit of bad luck. I don’t know.

I agree with you completely like the idea of hiring a graphic designer that could not just do blog images, but yeah, Facebook ads infographics, whatever, even a bonus that they’re slightly interested not not great at it, but at least slightly interested in in some video editing.

I found a lot of people that are graphic designers will kind of do the whole Adobe Suite kind of thing. So I was looking for that at the time just as a as a tiebreaker bonus, that graphic designer could also do some video editing.

Pete McPherson 33:47
That’s interesting. Okay, so you knew you wanted to hire full time for not only just loyalty purposes, some of the benefits there that they are kind of deep in your brand and your Working on those great stuff. So how did you find a budget for your block manager?

Tom 34:05
I think I, if I remember, I think I just kind of looked at what there was a part part of it was just putting the ad up and seeing what comes back.

With online jobs, pH, they were I can’t remember it was a weekly or a monthly number that they they would quote kind of thing, but they were giving their rates so you could kind of kind of play the field there a little and see, it’s certainly not about getting the cheapest person but not getting the most expensive person either.

By finding kind of a happy place in the middle there where you’re getting a great employee for a great price. I kind of knew just reading around online, sort of what prices could be from the Philippines. And I was able to hire full time for about the same price as what I was paying someone in Canada to do five hours a week.

So, there’s there’s a huge discount to hiring someone from the Philippines for this kind of work. Right?

Pete McPherson 35:05
Can you share that number? Do you mind sharing? Or is that off limits?

Tom 35:08
Not off limits. Um, so I pay for a full week I have I have her invoice me at the end of the week for $130. us. I think that’s $3 25 cents an hour. There’s, there’s, like a hint to that there’s, there’s, there’s people that will do it for less, but they’re not great.

There’s people that’ll do it for more, and there’s no need for that. But yeah, I found someone for three 25 an hour but but call it $5 even as it may be a maximum for that kind of role.

When I hired a graphic designer, I think it was a little bit more. I can’t remember exactly. It might have been maybe 150 a week. But since they didn’t work out, maybe, maybe a I went to cheap on that and then maybe maybe you need to go one one. Your level higher kind of thing and the price you’re willing to pay, right?

Pete McPherson 36:03
Yeah, that’s, that’s roughly what the guys from this other podcast episode I keep referencing. That’s pretty much what they were saying to they were saying ballpark. It used to be like, people would come out like the old school Pat Flynn’s, like when he first started out, and all of the , I can’t remember the guys name… he talks a lot about VS. What is his name? Nevermind.

Tom 36:28
Chris Ducker.

Pete McPherson 36:29
That’s it. Yeah. It used to be like, Oh, 200 bucks a month, 300 bucks a month. 400 bucks a month. That’s like a full time living. For these people. You shouldn’t feel bad about paying them that’s full time living. And it’s increased a little bit these guys were saying. Also, like you said, like just depending on the role, like if I hire a video editor like specifically or a podcast editor specifically, it’s going to cost me a little bit more than just hiring straight up administrative tasks that don’t require any specific technical skills that they’ve been trained for in the past or whatnot.

Yeah, it’s gonna cost a lot more. So, yeah, I like that. I like that ballpark as well. That’s something else I want to get across. I think most people probably understand this by now. But just in case you don’t, people out there listening, that’s actually really good pay for most of these people in the Philippines, not only because of placement, lifestyle, adjustments, right, but also that it’s a very family oriented culture. And this means they get to work from home, instead of different places outside of the home or factories or whatnot. This is actually like three or four really big wins for most people who do this sort of virtual assistant work, at least so I’ve been told.

So there’s that.

Tom 37:46
Yeah, the the point you just brought up to about family. It’s, it’s something I really went out of my way to get our original thought working with the project manager was let’s get someone that’s willing to work nighttime so that they’re working during our day.

But what I found in a lot of the replies you’re getting back, it was younger people that that wanted that wanted to work and they were willing to work overnight. And the more we started to set up the system where it’s like, I don’t even need to talk to them in a day at any point.

So why make them work overnight, so that we sort of reposted that at one point to to say you can work anytime you want. And as long as we start to have it somewhat scheduled, though, it’s like anytime you want, just tell us what that time is.

So we started getting a lot more like work at home moms in the Philippines where Yeah, they want to work during during their day, which is roughly evening for us, anywhere from like five to seven depending on your time zone in the evening.

So there’s enough crossover there that if I want to send her an email at the beginning of her day kind of thing. And by day, then I can I can just say like, oh, let’s make sure we do this. Today and are here something totally random and new, I’m hoping you can kind of help with that there’s enough communication there anyways, I didn’t need someone that worked during my hours, at least not for this kind of task.

Pete McPherson 39:12
Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And also just know from my own personal experiences, the more organized and systematized one for me, I’m specifically thinking I have my own. SOPs in Google Drive as well. As well as a very short like loom video, over looking or going over the process or the task or what not like the more organized and systematized and specific you can be, the better and the less need that you’re going to be like, literally interacting with these people over Skype or slack on a real time basis.

Right?

Tom 39:52
So yeah, being organized is just one of those things that’s going to give them a sense of security as well like just so not rocket science. Like if just imagine yourself in a in a regular day job like if you’re heading into a corporation and it looks like it’s a complete mess and nobody knows what they’re doing and when they’re doing it and stuff, it’s it’s, it doesn’t give you the best sense of like job satisfaction or job security, right?

So it’s no different here like you You want to give them this is the job this is what you’ll be doing. Here’s all the information you need. I’ve got links to some courses that they can look at, that I’ve taken kind of thing they can kind of just log in and have a peek.

So everything’s there for them that they feel very, it’s a legit job, they want to see that you’re not just some blogger that kind of doesn’t know what they want. And so it helps.

Pete McPherson 40:43
Totally.

Tom 40:44
Another thing I should mention, actually with that about about this idea of satisfaction and security. I also pay one week vacation, and all 10 of the Filipino staff holidays and this might be a way…which is kind of sad that most people aren’t doing this, that they, they hire people and they don’t have to because they’re not bound by that country’s sort of labor laws on what what stat days get paid and stuff. But it was just a simple Google search of what it would be if I was a company operating out of the Philippines. So I offered that so interesting.

And at this price, what’s what’s 10 stat days in a week, it’s a vacation. It’s it’s, it’s not a big deal and the way we work, where we’re basically a minimum of two weeks ahead on our publishing schedule, so by the time she takes the stat day or even the week off, we’re so far ahead. I really shouldn’t even miss her. Really. The machine keeps going on everything scheduled out.

Pete McPherson 41:48
Right. I like that. That’s actually a great tip. Thanks for that time. No problem. So let’s backtrack one second.

Confusing my audience enough here. I love to go out of order. I really do.By the way, this is just how my brain works.

So let’s go back to the I think I might be interested in what Tom has been doing. I’m not sure if my blog revenue is high enough to justify, but maybe I could look at part time work.

How do I know what tasks to offload?

So let’s go back to the like the whole time audit task audit. Can you give any tips for people who aren’t that organized? They don’t have any standard operating procedures? Nothing like that yet. What would you tell them to do any exercises or hacks that they could go through to kind of figure out, Oh, you know what, maybe I should outsource this or how should they go throughout that process?

Tom 42:45
Great idea. But one thing I found that worked really well for me, and that kind of started this, at least a year before I hired is I whenever I hit sort of a roadblock, whether it’s something I didn’t want to do is just procrastination or anything like that if if if I was getting in my own way I wrote it down that this is something to outsource.

I can be terrible at procrastinating so so it’s it was common for me to sort of do that final setup and edit of a blog post the night before it was publishing so I was getting in my own way so just hire this off to someone else they’ll do it will get two weeks ahead you even up to a month now we’re really starting to get a the system moving a little better, but I just found it was any anytime when I was getting my own way.

Something like creating graphics.

So yes, I failed a couple times at hiring a graphic designer but throughout all that I’ve been using design pickle for probably two years now. I they produce good work, I just don’t like that they’re not in my system kind of thing. I want someone that’s in a Asana and doesn’t need me to fill their queue and because again, I’d rather have that secondary task of Just look at the old posts if they don’t have an image create an image so that’s what I really want.

So I’ve been using design pickle but that’s another great example like I I used to make what I thought were Pinterest images, but it looked like a guy creating a terrible image for Pinterest. Bad the font selection bad bad sizing, even at the time, it was less less known back in the day, like what the perfect Pinterest ratio was right.

But so yeah, so it was something I it definitely wasn’t my my kind of genius zone kind of thing. I think it’s a different type of creative needed to create like a nice Pinterest image. So that that was another case where it’s like in that case, I’d say hire someone better than you.

So there’s so there’s that first one just hire for the roadblocks but there’s also just hire someone better than you not. I hear this advice a lot where it’s like if if someone’s 80% as good as you then then it’s worth hiring. I found more success hiring people that were 200 times better than just just because then that bringing some expertise in.

And even if it’s not expertise sometimes it’s just natural gift like when it comes to being able to pick the right images for Facebook ads or for Pinterest images.

So those were two for sure is yeah…hire what I’m just putting off and not doing a good organized job and then and then hire people that are better than you in some cases to hired Monica Louis at one point. She was doing my Facebook ads or coaching you through it.

And her ability to find the right way to word an ad and pick an image. It was something I was I was never really catching on to. There’s just something that certain people might have that skill better than others.

Pete McPherson 45:58
Interesting. I like especially what you said And this has actually worked for me to Tom, I tried to do at the advice of my mastermind group buddies. I tried to do like a bulk exercise, I set aside like two hours to do like, a full time audit, like here’s exactly where I’m spending all my time for the podcast for the blog for email marketing for for everything, and it was OK.

And then I kind of like then get any value of that, but the next hour the next day, but since then, I’ve actually had like kind of a living document in Google Drive, just a spreadsheet that is incredibly accessible.

I actually took the link to the spreadsheet and made it a shortcut on my phone like it looks like an app. I don’t remember how I did that. It’s It was super easy though.

So I have it like a one click away whenever I think about something that I want put on there. Like God, I hate this. I really need to add this to my to outsource list here. And I mean, so I like the idea of having this like living document whether it’s a spreadsheet or a note or anything that you can just kind of keep in the back of your head for you know what, I keep procrastinating this you know what, I stink at this etc etc so that’s actually been really helpful for me to just not a chair.

Tom 47:13
Yeah, it’s a perfect idea I found a few cases now still, like we’ve already got people hired and certainly yell hit something. It’s like, I’m not doing this as good as I could be either. I’m not kind of getting that hundred percent quality to something I’m doing or I’m just putting it off to last minute it’s kind of starting to break our whole nice system.

So then yeah, I’m looking to offload that.

Sometimes I come up with new ideas, something I’ve never done before. And and that can go on that kind of list to where it’s like, oh, we should be doing this. And let’s like something uh, I was just talking about last night I guess, was with with my podcast episodes.

I really want to start doing the downloadable with every episode kind of thing. And I have another person I hired actually a is an editor on on Maple money. And he’s going to be doing get rich slowly as well soon. We hired him in Canada here to 10 hours a week, we just started doing this. And he writes my show notes for the podcast.

And I was thinking, again, just last night, we just kind of came up with this idea is let’s do the whole have a unique download with every episode. So just as part of doing the show notes is the plan will be, well, why not just find a thing like if it’s, maybe towards the end, they break out like five steps to whatever we were talking about. It’s like turn that into a quick little checklist. And then we’ll get design pickle to make a nice PDF out of it.

So it’s just random ideas come and it’s so it’s not always offloading what you’re doing. It could be also finding new things that you wouldn’t have had the time to take on ever. So now that you’ve got this extra time let’s let’s use it.

Pete McPherson 48:55
I like that. report back to me, by the way about the download with every episode thing.

That’s actually something I’ve always shied away from just because the time investment I might do people really need this. And it actually takes a lot of time to manually personally create like this little checklist or whatnot. Like, I gotta learn how to do design now and I got to learn PowerPoint or whatever it may be. So I’m like, No, I’m not gonna do that.

So I’m curious to hear how yours goes.

Tom 49:19
Exactly. It’s the perfect task for when you have a VA and and or an editor in my case and and do you come up with an idea, but you don’t want to follow through on it yourself at all. It’s something where Yeah, like, in my case, the this guy’s already writing the show notes.

So it’s a very small extra step. It’s like just just kick out a little checklist or something that depending on the episode, mix it up a little, I think with with podcasts, we all tell people to go to our show notes and most people won’t.

So it’s just a little bit more enticing to get over to those show notes and subscribe to the newsletter.

Pete McPherson 49:59
Okay, so this is kind of a last question here. Tom,

Actually have two more last question on this topic though. If you had to do it all over again, you can feel free to just spit ball here. I know I didn’t tell you these questions in advance any part of this process whether it’s like getting organized or whether it’s actually what to put in a job posting to help filter people around the hiring process anything.

Out of all this process, if you have or if you had the opportunity to go back and do it again, what would you do differently?

Tom 50:32
I probably do what I’m doing. Now. I just would have did it a lot sooner.

So start starting in 2009. Like there is no reason I think I started hit a what I would consider successful point in 2011. I easily could have had a full time VA from the Philippines then. And I would have needed to be so much more organized. Start operating Like a legit business and not just a blogger, that stumbling forward kind of thing, right. But to get that organization back then and hire back then the amount of stuff we would have done would have been huge.

And maybe that same employee would have been with me for the what’s been eight years kind of thing. And we just have such a system of things like Asana probably didn’t exist back then. Google Drive may not have, but so how that organization to get to the closest value, that’s my Google Home. As far as being a key value, it will take about six months.

Sorry about that.

Pete McPherson 51:39
I’m leaving that and by the way, I’m not editing this out. That’s fantastic.

Tom 51:43
Thanks. I want to go somewhere. I don’t know. Oh, it’s because I said the G word.

Pete McPherson 51:50
I was about to say don’t say it again.

Tom 51:52
Yeah, so yeah, I don’t know one of the things I want to do but

so so yeah, a lot of these these online services.

That probably didn’t exist back well definitely didn’t exist back then. Sure, it would have made things harder I probably would have had to just use email or something like that. But Evernote might have existed back then. Maybe that could at least be used but yeah, yeah just doing this a lot sooner to go a decade and kind of never really be structured like a legit enough business like I’ve been a corporation for years but that’s more about about taxes and income.

It wasn’t about about setting up a truly operating like a proper business with with employees and processes.

Pete McPherson 52:30
Leverage scale growth.

Yeah, actually. Nope. I like one more question has said you switch between Asana, Trello, etc. Why do you finally land on Asana or just using a free Asana version? By the way?

Tom 52:45
I am using a free version but it seems like by having by by being an Asana earlier, I get a few things like I hear that like the if you were to get a free version right now I think you get maybe it’s 15 years or something like that. Maybe it’s last I can’t remember. But I have 33 people I can put on there. So I know I can kind of grow the team.

There’s a few things in the paid version that would be nice, but I’m cheap. You wouldn’t know it was some of the services I buy and stuff but it find value out of them.

I don’t find value out of paying per user per month and and especially when we’re looking at like multiple staff writers or maybe we have a writer that only writes like once a quarter like what to pay for all these people to be set up in asana, in with my frugal side.

If I saw more value, certainly I pay for all sorts of things like I use a higher level of hrs and I consider the best payment I make a month every month kind of thing. So it just depends but with the sauna, the free version is pretty awesome.

Pete McPherson 53:51
Okay, why do you switch to and from Trello?

Tom 53:55
It might have just been me part partially that maybe I wasn’t using it right but I find that that Trello format of like the left to right thing, just and I know Asana can do that now too, but go the whole left to right tasks wasn’t as useful to me as more of a to do list look that Asana will give you.

So it’s probably more mental than anything else, just sort of what works for you. I get some people really like the Trello thing like with a blog post going, you got one column for writing it and then you move it over to editing and you move it over to publishing and all that and that Yeah, I just I preferred here’s a blog posts, here’s like our probably roughly 15 tasks within that and and let’s just check them off.

Pete McPherson 54:44
That’s fair enough. Alright, well, let me wind down here. Tom, why don’t you tell everybody where they can follow you see what you’re up to, as well as follow the blog and podcast. Where would you like to point people?

Tom 54:58
Well, yeah, the blogs MapleMoney.com, and we have Maple money show for the podcast. You can find me on Twitter at what is it Maple money com which is really awkward just because Maple money was taken.

And I’m also on Twitter at Tom Drake, Canada more just have a personal Twitter depending on what you want to talk about. normally talk SEO and such on entendre Canada and then make money columns more the polished business view on Twitter.

Pete McPherson 55:29
And you can also be found at all these conferences you seem to go to a lot so I’m sure folks could come up and find you FinCon, Flynnco, Podcast Movement, etc.

Tom 55:39
Yes, FinCon especially I’m quite I know a lot of your listeners are FinCon based. I’m quite proud that I’m one of the very small group of people that have been to all of them now.

So I think it’s down to like the low 20s that can say they’ve actually been to all of them. And part of that’s just luck. I didn’t have any weddings or deaths or be He’s come up to close. Nothing’s messed with my schedule too much.

Pete McPherson 56:05
Okay. Well, Tom, thanks so much for coming on I, as I think about hiring my own VA is and kind of expanding this team even more. It constantly, like kind of overwhelming and stresses me out. So conversations like this are like incredibly helpful for me hope they are to my audience as well. So thanks for coming on. Let me know if there’s anything else I could do for you, of course, and I appreciate you. That’s all I got.

Thanks!

Important Takeaway #1

Always keep an eye out for what’s working, even if it’s only a small win.

This–as opposed to constantly searching for why things did NOT work, and making reasons NOT do try something again.

Do things. Look for small wins and opportunities. Do things again, but better.

Repeat.

Important Takeaway #2

There can be “lessons learned” from EVERY project–that you can apply to other, different projects.

I had three people in the MPME program ask to keep going–and I said no. I didn’t want to run that model again, as it was quite taxing on my time…

…but there was actually a MUCH bigger question that I failed to ask myself:

Why was this such a succuessful program?

• What were the contributing factors?
• How could I replicate this in Blogger U–or other models besides the “constantly call you and nag you” model?

Important Takeaway #3

Launching products is simple, but hard (and sometimes stressful).

In fact, launching any worthwhile endeavor is likely hard (and sometimes stressful).

Just the fact of KNOWING that made subsequent launches way easier. I knew what to expect.

Important Takeaway #4

DON’T LAUNCH PRODUCTS OVER HOLIDAYS.

Engagement is at an all-time low, and people are spending money on travel and vacations.

DON’T LAUNCH PRODUCTS WHILE TRAVELING.

Lol. For both the July and November 2018 launches, I was traveling in Michigan with limited Wi-Fi.

It would STILL take me an additional launch in 2019 to eventually figure this out…

Let’s sum up the progress so far:

1. DYEB is 18 months old in a tough niche.
2. DYEB is growing–slowly but surely
3. Blogger U (the main product consisting of online courses and a small membership component) has launched 4-5 times and grossed around $30k total
4. Blogger U is starting to become a better product.

Important takeaway #5:

Passive income requires a critical mass.

If I had 350,000 pages views a month–this model would’ve been fantastic. That’s enough of a critical mass to implement a passive funnel.

Important takeaway #6:

If you’re always selling, you’re never selling.

Urgency is powerful in sales, and it dies when your offers are available 24/7. You could run periodic discounts and promotions, but it’s NOT the same–especially in crowded niches.

Important takeaway #7-10:

Do not confuse your audience.

We only have limited brain cells to make it through our day. The more confusing our offers and products are–the less our audience listens.

Important takeaway #7-10

Don’t confuse your audience.

Blogger U. Blog School. The Affiliate Workshop. MPME.

Teachable. Learndash. LifterLMS. Now on Thinkific.

Membership community, then course library (what does that actually mean?), then a la carte courses, then workshops.

SEO. Monetization. Productivity. Newbie technical setups. Podcasting. Copywriting.

Important Takeaway #11

Super important note!

I had previously dreamed about what Do You Even Blog and Blogger U would look like as a business–but those visions were always rooted in reality.

It’s important to be rooted in reality–sometimes.

This was the first time I actually detailed exactly what my business would look like in an IDEAL world. Reality aside.

Important Takeaway #11

Stick with one product you can gradually roll downhill–rather than pushing multiple products uphill with the HOPE that they’ll magically be the ones that roll downhill super fast.

No product is great at first.

It’s in the constant improving that pushes the ball downhill.

Online Impact Feature Breakdown (I.e. my “dream business”)

1 – Curated and organized online courses.

• SEO
• Podcasting
• Funnels
• Productivity
• Launching products.

Continously updated and curated.

2 – Quarterly 1-on-1’s for strategy and focus.

Sometimes you do need to get better at everything–and it’s overwhelming.

• We’ll lay out where you want to go in life (using your online biz)
• Break down the steps to get there
• Plan what courses to take and when
• Connect you to the right people to help you on your journey

3 – Unlimited access to premium tools for free.

• All StudioPress WordPress themes ($499 value)
• WP-rocket ($49/yr value)
• Unlimited ShortPixel credits
• Elementor Pro ($49/yr value)

All included in your membership.

4 – Monthly Themed “GSD” Calls

These calls are NOT for learning. They’re for work. Taking action.

(Get Stuff Done = GSD)

You’ll show up on the group call, work in complete silence, and raise your hand if you need help.

Implement with instant feedback and support.

5 – For ALL content creators.

Podcasters, bloggers, YouTubers, and snail-mail enthusaists.

If you create content and want to build a income-generating business–Online Impact is for you.

6 – Goal Groups

You might really need to get your opt-ins functioning and figure out how the heck to get email subscribers.

Or you might be finally working on your first product launch.

Either way, we’ll connect you (and organize you) with others in the crew who have similar goals.

7 – Quarterly pizza party workshop 🍕

Every few months, we’ll meet online for a longer learning and work session, and I’ll order a pizza and have it delivered to your house during the session.

8 – Live Event

???????????

Important Takeaway #12

Every single action you take on your platform should be intentional.

It took me a while to learn this–as I’m REALLY good at having an idea for a post, episode, or product–and then having it live the next day.

That’s bad.

Going forward, every Instagram Story, blog post, and podcast interview will be intentional, working towards a greater purpose (which is to tee up Online Impact).

Be intentional with every piece of content you product. That requires a strategy.

Listen to my episode with Anthony

Anthony 3:05
Great to be here, Pete.

Pete McPherson 3:07
So it’s been a little while. It’s been a hot minute since we caught up in Nashville at the tribe conference. And then last year on the podcast. First, let me just start off like totally casual podcast style, like, how’s it been going? And you and your writing business? We’re gonna talk about the book in just a minute for sure you got a book coming out? But in general, like how things go and give us like a like a two minute little catch up? What’s happening in your, your blogging business world since last year?

Anthony 3:34
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on. Thanks, listeners for tuning in. Honestly, Pete, things have been going so well. And I say that with so much gratitude, because I mean, I’ve come from telemarketing and awful nine to five jobs and Horrible Bosses. So it’s so great to be working from home as a writer of the book coming out not worrying about am I going to get fired every single day, my whole job. So it’s great.

So I finished my book. They gave me three months to write and I was like, there’s no way I can do that. And I did it, which is what happens when you give yourself deadlines.

I been launching a lot of courses have a new or new ish writing course called wealthy writers with a matching kind of like books guide to that physical copy. So have that kind of growing, growing. I’m partnering up with a few other writers to make a course on how to launch a side business, more personal growth course. So lots of kind of online products, meeting with a lot of top tier writers talking about guys like Ryan Holliday, David Gaddafi, I’ve sent James Clear a few hundred letters. He hasn’t got back to me. So James, you’ve got their me back. How’s it been? Great.

Pete McPherson 4:39
James out there. He should do the Do You Even Blog podcast as well

Anthony 4:43
“get on his podcast because Pete awesome.” So it’s going really well. I write a lot on medium calm, which if you don’t know what that is, listeners, it’s a big kind of writing hub. Last last topics there, you get paid for your writing, as well. So have 10s of thousands of followers, they’re making decent income, they’re getting a lot of good connections. So really, the writing is a great platform for all these other things like videos and courses and coaching and whatnot. And like that book. So it’s going great.

Pete McPherson 5:08
Aawesome, man, you have a ton going on for one thing. depressed. So without, let me do like a little 22nd catch up. Last time you were on the show. We did talk a lot about medium specifically as a platform. And we also shared your backstory, which I’m not going to go into right now people go listen to that, because I feel like that was awesome. Like with the travel and you know, you and your wife coming back and then working with college students, high school students. I can’t remember now.

Anthony 5:35
Kind of both high school. Yeah.

Pete McPherson 5:38
Yeah. Well, people go back and listen to that. What I thought was cool. I want to start off with the pitch email you sent me was like a hard sell. I try to sell Pete… And we were we’ve met in real life, quote, unquote, we’re friends now, like 10.

So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a hard pitch email, but it was a pitch email.

So I wanted to point out what I liked about it. I don’t get like, I’m not one of those people who like, Oh, I get 100 pitch emails a day, I get 100 guests, but I’m not like super huge. I don’t get that much yet. But I do get a fair amount of like really bad stuff. Specifically, everybody just wants to come on the podcast. Really.

That’s all I get, like are no one wants to write me amazing content. Everybody wants to come on the podcast.

But yours was good. And so I want to point out why.

And then I thought we might dive into your strategy for the book launch right after that. But But here’s the context for people listening. So I think you sent me an email. First of all, there’s a lot of things going on correctly. Like you gave me some ego bait as well. Like, hey, my publicist said like, oh, talk to that, Do You Even Blog dude, some ego beta side, I like that you were very upfront about what you’re doing.

Here’s like, I got a new book coming out, I want to talk about it. But it wasn’t just about that you were like, here is what the book is going to cover. And you haven’t sent me some bullet points, you sent me two emails, one of which had strict bullet points. The other was still like, we could talk about this. And this and this, all of which were directly related to my audience, writers, creators, bloggers, that sort of stuff. I was like, this is like a perfect combo. I don’t like that you’re trying to like, sneak your way in by pretending that I’m just doing this to provide value for it.

No, Anthony has a book coming out and wants to talk about it. And it’s good. He wants to promote it. And he also has valued at that’s like a win win. And that’s a win win win. Good for my audience. Good for me. Good for Anthony. Right.

So I just want to point that out. Kudos to you.

Anthony 7:35
Thank you.

Pete McPherson 7:36
To turn this back on you now. Because I’m curious about the the book tour thing, right?

It used to be people launched a book. And then they got in a van like my friend grant spotted this best like six months, and literally toured the country and or world. And now it seems like it’s less physical travel more podcast tours. So Anthony, if you don’t mind sharing, you don’t have to give away anything secrets, you not to give away any explicit details. But…

Anthony 8:03
I’m giving all the secrets that’s later for.

Pete McPherson 8:06
So you’re gonna like release this book and to the wild that you’ve written? What’s the promotion strategy?

Anthony 8:13
Well, thanks so much. I’m glad you liked my email for listeners who didn’t read it, which is everybody. What I did is I emailed Pete and I was pretty forthright with but what I wanted to do, I said, hey, I’ve been on the podcast before I have a book coming out.

And I told him, I think I wrote up I said, Hey, like, I don’t want to be that guy that just takes takes takes, you know, and like, because, frankly, I was that guy, and it never worked. And I was saying like, hey, like, Can I help you out in some way? Like, I know, I’m trying to promote this. I don’t want to just take from you like what can I do as well to maybe help you out because I understand that, you know, people come to the podcast, people like you and just like want to get on there and just kind of say their two cents and leave.

So my biggest lesson I’ve learned recently for this book tour thing as I’m talking to talk to your authors, podcasters speakers, bloggers, whatever, is that they don’t like takers.

I took this great email course by a guy named Zack slay back really cool about like how to email very busy people, basically. And one of the most important lessons there was saying that you should just make the email very, very simple. And almost like a yes or no answer for them. Because they’re like he said, just like imagine that these people who you’re trying to connect with, almost like they’re, like running between terminals at an airport with their phone in their like, wrong hand like, like right handed, like left handed.

They’re busy. It’s like it’s so like, and like, how can they respond in that context, positively?

And if you break it down, it’s like, well, make sure it’s not long, make sure you’re not trying to take because people can scan and see like, hey, this guy’s trying to scam me or like just just wants my free publicity.

So I have really focused be on focusing on what the people I’m contacting what they want, what they need, how I can help them in the process. Because really, the point isn’t just to like, blow in. Now it’s my book to everyone in like, leave I want to have a relationship. I want to you know, like learn from them. I want to help them if I can.

I love Adam Grant’s whole book about given take, you know, like the world takes on the takers but gives to the givers. I think that’s that’s really important. And that’s not what I did at first. And so for like the first four or five years my writing journey, never had any success with guest posting or like getting connection because I was always like, take take take How can I get from you?

Now I’m focusing on what do you need? And how can I help with that knowing like in like saying, Hey, I have stuff that I would like to do as well I have a book or you know, for you listeners, if you have a podcast, you want your product or services or whatever, you can be honest about that. But when you’re doing that, you can also say, hey, by the way, I know that you give us these kind of contacts a lot or you you might get like all these requests, how can I help with that I don’t want to take from you. I want to give you your your people value. But I also know that you know, there’s a lot of takers out there. So how can I help that?

So I just focus on a very simple like, how, how can they skin this when they’re busy at the airport? And and say yes to me. And I can do that by being generous, being kind being serving and kind of putting their needs first along with mine to see how we can like I said, have a win win win for everyone involved?

Pete McPherson 11:15
Yeah, I think that’s what I liked about it is the fact that most people who receive any sort of decent inbound, I’m just gonna say like those influential busy people you’re talking about.

Most of them can see right through BS, way more than we even think they can. Like, a lot of times, they’ll look at those emails that seem like oh, here’s a give, give, give, give, give, but they don’t actually make a direct ask or they don’t actually come straight out and say like, Hey, I’m having a book tour, I thought this would be a great opportunity to yada yada yada, right?

So I think it has to be both and your email did that I thought was great. Like not only you just kicked it off with like, yeah, I’m, you know, good to catch up. I’m doing a book. Like here’s some other things like it was, it was truly a win win win. And the win win win was actually expressed in the email very quickly, which I thought was great.

A lot of people don’t do that.

A lot of people, we get the gift thing like, Oh, you gotta figure out what they want. Most people do, at least some people don’t. But a lot of times they’ll kind of forget, like, I’ll just be like, super clear and crisp and quick. imagining that they’re running through the airport, like you said, holding their phone, just like browsing through their emails really quick. Yeah, I like that. And I thought you did it. So kudos.

Anthony 12:26
Thank you. I’m glad it worked out.

Pete McPherson 12:29
By the way, this is totally related. I promise. I have a book in front of me right now by Dan Kennedy called the ultimate sales letter book on copywriting. For the most part. And I just read this yesterday.

Pretty much the exact same advice. I’m pretty sure it came from Gary Halbert, maybe I’m not sure it was this good. This. He’s talking about direct mail marketers, by the way, like people who send physical mail back in the old snail mail, snail mail, man, he’s like, imagine that everybody is opening your mail or diving through their mail and seeing your envelope for the first time, as they’re standing over there wastebasket about things away.

Like that’s the moment you’re catching people. And when you’re emailing anybody, they’re not like sitting at their computer just waiting to receive an email and excited to dive in the inbox and knocked up know, they’re like on their phone, or they’re trying to crush email as quick as humanly possible, because they hate doing it. And yada yada.

So I like that approach to it. Thanks for mentioning that. There was no question there I just want to share.

Anthony 13:29
No, great, that’s a great I mean, I love the always back a picture of that is a very powerful analogy.

Pete McPherson 13:34
So two things, really the only kind of chats on this episode here Anthony, actually three things, why don’t we kick it off with I want to talk about the actual content and the book last will give people like a strong call to action, the dates where where they can find it, etc, etc. How they can grab that when it comes out. I also want talk a little bit about writing and publishing the book, especially the three month deadline thing. I’m super curious about that.

Actually, let’s do that. First. That’s what I’m most curious about.

I also want to talk about kind of networking and meeting up and, you know, building these relationships with the the writers and influencers you’re talking about. I will talk about that too. But I’m not as excited about that.

So Anthony, walk me through this, like whole writing consistently. And you even mentioned in one of your emails, I believe staying disciplined with your own actually want to sit down and work. Right. Right. I found this evidence by your three month book deadline.

So what did you first thing when you heard about that? three month? Oh, after write a book deadline? Were like no screw that or like, we got this? How’d you feel?

Anthony 14:38
I feel nervous. I mean, I I feel the nerves coming back just thinking to that that month. Like first month?

Yeah, so I’ve signed my book deal. And I December, and my publisher was like, yeah, we need it by March. And I was like, Holy moly, you know, and I talk with a lot of other traditionally published authors, and I heard one of these afraid is that it’s called jumping on a moving train. So if you’re getting into the book publishing industry, and you want to publish a book, you have to realize that these publishers, they have a lot of plates, they’re spinning, and a lot of authors and that not all of them are gonna be successful, unfortunately, I was even talking with with my publicist, and my publisher, they’re saying that, you know, they have about 20 authors that they’re working with, right, right then and they kind of each given them like a minimum advance, you know, and like, they’re kind of just like seeing what works.

And they’re, it’s, it’s in their best interest to have the book finished ASAP. And from experience authors can write a book in three months or less if they really kind of feel that tension. So I was thinking I would have like a year to like just kind of ruminates and go on a hike in the woods and reflect on the deep principles and they’re like, nope, March quickly, you might have a few weeks of you know, grace period, but let’s go.

And I loved reading Ryan holidays, “perennial seller”, he talks about how to just have like a very strong powerful like focused project and how that can be successful and he says he had to cut everything else out around that.

You can’t be doing you know, social media and coaching and conference tours and stuff. You’d have to focus on your thing while you’re doing it. And that’s how that works. Also a great book on that is is “essentialism” by Greg Mckeon I’m reading that right now. And he’s he’s even saying that when he’s writing that book, which is a huge bestseller, he just had like an automated email saying, Hey, I’m busy. I’m writing my book.

I only have like two months to do this, right? Like, I think he also finished in two or three months, this this huge, big bestseller.

So when I saw that, I just kind of was in disbelief. And I kind of played along. I was like, Yeah, I can do that. But mentally, I was like, there’s no freaking way I can do this, you know. But I also just love a thought by my colleague, David Gaddafi, he wrote, designed for hackers, great author as well, he had a quote from his book. She’s hard to start, I believe he’s, he said, basically, like, like, you take as long as you give yourself, you know, and so if you say I have 10 years write this, you’ll probably finish it in about 10 years, but you say you have six months or three months, you could probably do that.

So I think that people, writers in particular, and bloggers, you guys listening right now you are more powerful than you know. And you’re you can be more focused and precise and discipline that then you might even expect you might surprise yourself. So take it from me, I had no belief myself that could finish in three months.

But I said no to everything else. I stopped doing coaching stopped doing my usual blogging wrote the book, day in day out is stressful. So waking up early, staying up late kind of worrying all throughout the day about my content and editing it. And my publisher is talking me every week, say Hey, are you finished yet? It’s like hell, man. And I’m not you know, but I did it.

And I surprised myself. And here I am, you know, like a while later with this great finished book. And I hope it can be a best seller.

Hopefully it is by the time you listen to this. But it’s possible. And I think that you just take as long as you give yourself. I love the whole idea of like, like mastery and like finishing takes only as long as you want it to take.

Because you control your level of focus and effort that you put in. You might have a busy schedule, I work a nine to five and like I was there too. I was working, you know, a full time job and full time grad school in the past trying to blog, it’s hard. But you can be as disciplined as you want to be. And you can take very, it can go very quickly if you give yourself a very quick timeline. And that’s how a lot of authors start out. They don’t think they can do it. And hey, the rest later have a great book, you know?

Pete McPherson 18:34
So we’ve already talked about like a whole bunch of resource. I’m pretty sure there’s like seven or eight books and people’s names that we mentioned.

Anthony 18:40
Oh, yeah, no, I just mentioned that.

Pete McPherson 18:42
But let me let me throw out two more only because I’ve just encountered these things recently. Actually, one’s not recent.

So I read the four hour workweek. And here’s here’s years ago, and that’s where I first learned about this. It’s called Parkinson’s Law. By the way people can go Wikipedia, it or something. That’s where we want to accomplish a task. And whatever time frame we got lined to accomplish this task. And I was reading No, excuse me, I was watching Tim Urban–Wait But Why. Amazing writer, bloggers just crushing it.

One of the best TED talks of the past few years was his inside the mind of a master procrastinator highly recommended, it’s like 15 minutes long, everybody should go watch it. But part of what he talks about in there is what separates people who just naturally don’t procrastinate at all, like who would hear three months to write a book. Totally. And they would just like crush it without any stress or anxiety. Like that’s the extreme. And the other extreme is somebody who would literally wait to like the last week, and that’s, you know, not at all. Yeah.

And part of what he talks about in the TED Talk is the psychology and science behind it, which I found fascinating. I was like, it was it was refreshing to hear that if somebody gives you a deadline, on three months to write a book, it’s all coming down to willpower.

In fact there’s something in our brain that starts to trigger panic, when we realize that deadline is coming. And that’s what actually moves us and motivates us to act, whether that’s writing a paper at the last minute in college, or reading a book in three months else’s publisher might walk away or you know, I might not have a book deal or whatever that is.

So people go look that up. Tim urban, Wait But Why just incredible blog, by the way. Totally cool. Yeah, that was really great. So Anthony, walk me back, right at the beginning of that, did you already have I’m assuming you already had the idea for the book, like the content and the concepts in there? Did you actually have any of it at all written before you got that deadline?

Anthony 20:43
I had nothing written.

Pete McPherson 20:45
No outline? No, anything like that?

Anthony 20:47
No, no. So I was found by my publisher, which is, I think, a pretty uncommon way of doing it. They found me and asked me to sign the deal. I was like, Yeah, sure.

So I wasn’t trying to write a book. They said, Hey, we like your writing your content, kind of, you know, growing in and blowing up a little bit here. We’ll do a one on one write a book for us. So I said, Sure. And all I had was like maybe some vague idea for a title, which we didn’t even end up using. So no, I mean, in December until March, I did not have anything, and I was able to finish it by then. So again, it just goes to show that that deadline really kind of pulls it out of you. I mean, I love the whole idea of you know, National Retail National Novel Writing Month, if you guys don’t know, it’s like every November 10s of thousands of writers around the world, write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days in the month of November, and people do all the time, like first time authors and like, Hey, I finished it only took 30 days.

Pete McPherson 21:41
What’s the name of this?

Anthony 21:43
It’s called nano remote, national November Writing Month, it’s kind of a popular, trendy writing thing where you know, you write your huge novel in 30 days, and I’ve had friends do it who’ve never written consistently, but that deadline really just kind of pulls out of them.

And they finished this huge novel and what 30 days, while they’re friends, it’s been 10 years on the same, you know, draft over and over again. Yeah

Pete McPherson 22:04
That’s awesome.

Okay. So anyway, what I really want to dive into is the actual step by step, what you did first, did you create an outline first to do create, like titles of chapters, this is what I do, whenever I write like a longer blog post, I will have to physically go through and create the bullet points, not like an outline of the actual post, even though that’s really what it is, I have to think about it as headlines. Like I literally write the headlines for each section.

And then I redo it and redo it, and then only then do I actually go in and start writing the content. So that’s my example. But when it came down to writing this book, what extraordinary people know, by the way, is the official title, when it came down to this, and you’re like, Okay, I don’t have anything written. so far. I got three months, how did you structure that you’re like, I’m gonna do this and week, one, this week, to this month, one this a month to or I just need to do this part of the project.

First, I would actually love to hear how you started thinking about the structure of nailing that project. Does that make sense?

Anthony 23:08
Yeah, definitely.

So I didn’t really know the direction the book was going to go. And since I wrote that book, I’ve actually done a lot of other really huge projects like 40 to 50 plus video courses, you know, like huge coaching packages, and like, reading another kind of mini book.

So big projects, things I never thought I could do, you know, and I just love the whole idea of how do you eat an elephant? Well, either one bite at a time. So my strategy, I think it’s a pretty similar to yours, Pete,

Pete McPherson 23:34
I like that by the way, that’s really see all these things, all these places. I love this.

Anthony 23:38
Yeah, one bite at a time. So starting from nothing. I mean, I think most writers and bloggers and people who are going to start a big thing like a book or a podcast or a blog, they think man, like, like, I have to be just like so and so author, he has hundred thousand followers, how can I right, just as well as he is like right now starting right now.

And that’s impossible. And of course, they fall off after a few weeks, just like they usually do.

So when I was kind of staring down the deep dark abyss of that writing deadline, I broke it down. And that’s what really made it manageable. It’s a small little bites. And that’s how it kind of ate this metaphorical elephant.

So I like just wrote everything down and had like three main chunks and with with those main chunks, kind of like the beginning, middle after of the book, I broke each one down, it’s about five chapters. So there’s like, it’s like 15-16 chapters in a whole book, each chapter, there’s about five sections within that, and then I just would wake up and just just knock out another section of that. So like what’s like five times three times five, I can’t do math right now.

So I knew it was like a lot of these like things, you know, and it wasn’t linear. It was just kind of what inspired me to do. I mean, like, just like you’re saying, like, that doesn’t excite me, this excites me, let’s let’s let’s do this.

So by the end, I had, you know, kind of written all these chunks. And by the end I had like the not as exciting things are going to crank out the end. But I would just wake up and say what can I do today? And for me even just like writing one of those sections, like I kind of did the I used to be one of those each day, I would do it on time with time to spare.

So whenever I was focusing on a deadline, and like, I think I tried to do the whole like week that week, like 500 words a day kind of thing that didn’t work for me. What did work was like, kind of like not the like logical, like structure. I was just like I how do I feel? How can I just kind of keep this momentum going, what can I do today to do this, and so Sunday’s out, right, like 200 words and like, that’s like all I could do, but I kind of checked off a box of writing.

So I kind of kept that like emotional momentum going. And other days I would write like 2000 words, and just be just be stoked about that. But what really made it possible was just having a very, very small win, which was just like writing this little section.

And if I could do that I could do it again and again and again. I spent a lot of time in like therapy and like counseling, I’ve masters in psychology, I’ve had a chance to work with a lot of like addicts, especially alcoholics and one of them to talk with a long time ago in some studies, he was saying that the best kind of like, like most sober you know, I call it was like people who can like last and be consistent.

They’re only really good at doing one thing was just stringing on one more day of like, sobriety, you know, like that’s like all they’re good at. They don’t have like huge timelines. They’re like, well versed in anything, but they’re just really good at doing it one day, just one more day.

And for writers writing a book and kind of fitting into this, like huge structured schedule, if you think about this, like end result, you know, that’s just so hard. It’s like so impossible, like how am I gonna eat this like whole elephant, right.

But if just tack on one more day of just doing a little bit that day, that’s that’s, that’s the important part, keeping that momentum going. being consistent, being disciplined, just taking another bite of the elephant, you might not feel like you’re going anywhere. But when I favorite quotes by Darren Hardy, he wrote the compound effect really great book on consistency.

He talks a lot about how like, successful people do what unsuccessful people aren’t willing to do anything, just just just willing to just do it one more time. Even when you feel like you’re not you just kind of just go go and go. And and those small, seemingly insignificant steps that will create a radical difference over time.

So I just did one last section every day. And and that’s kind of tacked on one more day after another. And eventually, the book was written. So.

Pete McPherson 27:14
I like that. Well, I think you’ve written some good points. And the funny thing is, I’ve actually heard part of that little story from several podcast guests before Todd Henry.

I don’t know if you know, Todd, or nice. Yeah, I met him. Right? That’s right. Yeah, that’s where I met have to talk to Henry said this.

Some other people have said this as well. And I’ve heard it on other people’s podcast to it’s it’s great advice. But I feel like we ignore it half the time, actually lowering the bar, and not lowering it, just to make it easier on yourself one time.

But lowering the bar of whatever it is writing x amount of words a day, or doing this one task every single day, working out once a week or whatever, lowering the bar that’s so you will do it consistently. which I find very interesting and helpful and practical, only sometimes. Like, I feel like as much as I hear that, I still arrive to work most days.

And I’m like, Okay, I’m going to do this and this and this and this and this crush it I gotta write, you know, this 10,000 word blog post this week, and I got a question like a yada, yada, yada. And I think your advice when I think back on the days and weeks where I’ve done that, I thought, you know what, I’m just, I’m just gonna lower the bar.

I just want to do this one tiny thing every day this week. Like if I could do those one tiny thing every day. This would be like a win, and I will feel good about myself.

The weeks where I’ve done that I’m happier, and I get more done. Is that weird? Now I don’t think it’s fair. I guess, you know, Neil Gaiman wrote a book and 50 words a day, not 500, not 250…50.

Yeah, literally, by his bedside, pick up a journal with a fountain pen. Neil Gaiman writes and felt Yeah, which I also just find interesting. And he literally did it over the course of years. Like he was writing other projects that he had these other things going on, but he wrote one book, I can’t remember which one it was maybe in the graveyard book in 50 words a day, which was just blown away by just super interesting to hear about that.

So. Alright, well, that’s cool.

So let’s go I gotta go in a few minutes but want to get out to really quick things. Let’s talk about connecting with these these top tier writers that you’re talking about. Ryan Holliday, and uh, like, how did this How did this happen?

Just give us a broad overview like how you found yourself not just with Brian but anybody else you were throughout your name drop other people go for it. Yeah, well, I mean, how do you how do you approach this sort of contact building networking, relationship building, yada yada.

Anthony 29:51
I want to be very honest with a very kind of unfair lesson I learned recently so I’m writing for six years and I’ve been reached out to these authors since day one basically.

I recall reaching out to you a quitter was the john aka him Michael Hyatt also big leadership guy. I love those two authors. And like my like, first year I like had I was emailing them I like wrote john a couple hundred letters.

And I hey, can you mentor me like I’ve been trying for a long time and it never worked. Johnny kept emailing back. He’s like, Hey, I’m busy. But thanks. So maybe later, Danica, maybe we can talk later. But uh, I’ve been trying for a long time.

And frankly, I just have to be totally honest here. Pete what I’ve learned is that after I kind of got big as a writer and like I had more clout and like I was on a bigger places, people kind of recognize that. And I think that senior round, and I email Ryan Holliday, just like a few months ago, and I was like, Hey, man, I like like, like, the title was like, like, Hi, I’m a huge fan.

I was like, Hey, I’m like a big fan. It’s like one of like, say hello.

And just, you know, maybe like, just chat for like, a few minutes and email you back. Because I hey, yeah, I’ve seen you around before.

And that would have never happened before I actually kind of got that influence like actually did get featured all over the place. So I think that you unfair truth is getting that kind of like following and like the views and just like that level of publicity, where like, people kind of see you on blogs. That’s huge. If you can just like show them like, Hey, I’m feature here, here, here. Instead of just like, Hey, I’m so and so with a personal blog that you’d never heard of, I get like hundred views a day, want to get coffee, I think I just think that those people get so many contact requests a day and getting big, getting followers getting your book deal, whatever, like that really helps.

So I was trying for a long time Pete and it never really worked out till I kind of got that like clouds and like weight of like, Hey, I’m also kind of a decent writer like I have x y&z kind of like you do.

And that’s really what helped out.

But I love this whole idea of like, the law of the harvest that kind of talks about, like, if you have a farm, you can’t force like fruit and vegetables grow overnight, right?

Because all the time we like reach a point where like an entrepreneur, launch our product, whatever. And we like want to get help with that. You can say hey, by the way, like want to connect, can you tell all of your friends about this, and without even knowing me, like that’s, that’s not how like food vessels work like that, I don’t know, just grow overnight can’t just like plant the seed very early, kind of like do what farmers do whatever they do, and like make them grow over months and months and months until finally the harvest comes and then you can make the ads successfully.

So I think it takes a long time. It takes a lot of just you becoming a good writer to kind of get on that level. And once you do that, I mean I’ve invested a lot in like how to email people like how to connect with them and in a way that’s like not going to spammy or scam me or trying to like take from them.

And someone has a cold email works like the ryan Holliday like definitely author cold email works. Other times like at a tribe conference. So we went to Nashville last year with Jeff Goins, one of my closer writing friends down named David cadaver you I mentioned, he’s a great author and writer, he was at Tribe and I was like, Hey, I have to meet this guy, you know, so I invested in it. I kind of like saw where they were going because that face to face interaction. so important.

Now he likes sent me a kind of like a few copies of his book. I mentioned him on my blog, like on the podcast. So good way to building.

But I think just making that investment is really important, like learning how to talk with them how to email people how to kind of cold email them or approach them going to where they are researching on their topics, because that’s really what they’re looking for.

And if you don’t show that if you kind of come off as like a scam me, kind of like one hit wonder like, Hey, can you blast my thing for free? Okay, thanks. Bye, that’s not going to work. So for me, it’s taken a long time of like, you know, playing the seeds and like harvesting them and like waiting a long time, like doing it well and doing correctly. And that’s what really got me huge results. That’s that.

Pete McPherson 33:38
I like that. I also find it interesting how I’ve heard this in other people’s podcast, they will say things like, Don’t send the email that’s like, Hey, I’m sorry, yada, yada, yada, yada. I wonder grab coffee sometime. They say don’t send those emails, what they really mean is, don’t send those emails to people who are just, quite frankly, like out of your leage a levels.

Like for example, if I sent that email, like, Hey, I’m a huge fan. I love Fight Club, and all the oceans movies to George Clooney. I’m like, Can we grab coffee sometime? That that’s going to go on answered. Right? But right, pretend that Brad Pitt, what if I’m Brad Pitt, emailing George Clooney and and be like, hey, you want to grab coffee? He’s gonna say yes.

Because we’re friends are on the same level. And we’re both like, a list celebrities, right? That’s an extreme extreme example.

But you know what I’m saying? I’d like to are upfront candid about like, Hey, I sent these emails and never would have worked. Now that I have now that I’m almost on these top tier players level, or I’m on this level, whatever that may be, that’s different for all of us, right? We’re all at different levels.

It’ll work. Or it’s more likely to work, you’re more likely to gain attention, I guess you could say, I don’t know. There’s something there. That’s good. I like it. Okay, I gotta go in a minute. But let’s conclude I will talk about the book.

So we’re gonna start off, what’s the book about “What extraordinary people know?” Just give us like the, you know, the little elevator pitch? Like, why should we read it?

Anthony 35:12
Yeah, what’s “What extraordinary people know how to cut the busy Bs and live your kick ass life.”

And I think this cuts right to the point of cutting out the business that keeps people stuck where they are, I think a lot of people are living in the kind of like, level of mediocrity in their relationships, their health, their income, their career.

They’re kind of stuck in this cycle of like, it’s, it’s just kind of good enough. It’s bearable, but it’s not great. It’s kind of just ordinary, in average, and Seth Godin, great author, number one best selling author, awesome guy.

He said that is there a difference between average and mediocre, and not so much. So this book helps you break out of that kind of average, mediocre, ordinary lifestyle, and teach you how to become consistent focus is discipline and breakthrough to become extraordinary talks a lot about what extraordinary people know, their mindset, their behaviors, routines, their disciplines, how they kind of got to where they are, there’s a case studies like a ton of quotes and research on how these people, you know, athletes, actors, CEOs, entrepreneurs, politicians, how they got to where they are, what keeps them there, and how any Joe Schmo can look at their ordinary average, maybe even mediocre parts of their life and say, hey, how can I change this?

How can I get from point A to point B? simply and easily in a way that that that lasts? So that’s what the book teaches you.

Pete McPherson 36:37
Okay? Do you have any favorite parts?

Like for example, you mentioned athletes, CEOs, celebrities, etc? Do you have any one person or one example or anything like that, that comes to mind? That’s like your that’s like one of your favorites to like, throw out to people you know what I mean?

Anthony 36:52
Yeah, I think my favorite one is a bio kind of a controversial guy. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a checkered past by read his autobiography really fascinating story of an immigrant coming to America, dominating all these industries, like real estate, he, like kind of gotten Santa Monica really quickly before it happens. And you know, obviously acting and bodybuilding.

He said basically that how do you like, if you want to become a leading man, you know, or leading women, if you want become a leading name, they had to treat yourself like a leading man, and work your ass off. He said. So that’s a huge mindset shift.

You know, like one of my articles, I recently got to be the number one article on meetup com, out of like, hundreds of thousands of authors. And it was called want to make millions then act like a millionaire. And it was all about this, this idea of treat yourself the way that you want to become basically if you want to be a millionaire, a leading man or woman or whatever it is, treat yourself like that.

And that’s what’s going to get you to be extraordinary, because there’s a great old classic book as a man thinking by James Allen, bold premises as you think.

So you are and as you continue to think that’s how you’re going to remain. So I love just the idea of treat yourself like fill in the blank, a leading man, a politician, an entrepreneur, like a badass author, whatever it is, treat yourself like that. And you’ll start trending in that direction before you even know it.

Pete McPherson 38:13
So I one more thing, and then I gotta go.

But you mentioned James clear, earlier, atomic havoc habits, excuse me. I actually saw the book when it first came out. I was like, Yeah, I don’t know. That’s kinda that’s whatever, right how to build extraordinary I was like, okay, like another book like this. And then person after person sort of recommending it more and more and more and more, so eventually bought it, read it. It’s great. I totally stand by I loved it. By the way, I totally want James on the podcast.

But he talks a lot about that in his book as well just like how to, almost like trick ourselves, like duped ourselves into thinking and behaving a certain way. I love that. I just want to point that out. So that’s totally like, I’m assuming that’s kind of gonna be in your book as well. What’s up? Let’s go. Yeah. Well, Anthony, where can we find it, what is the exact date? We’re recording this a little bit early to have time to come out? There’s a book launch but what day is it available? And where can people find it?

Anthony 39:11
Yeah, it’s couple months out right now but you listen to this in August sometime probably.

Which is the launch date so it comes out middle of August you can find the book at Anthony more CO or just Amazon type in what extraordinary people know it’ll be there. So yeah, either of those two places my website AnthonyMoore.co or Amazon where they have everything.

Pete McPherson 39:31
What’s your when your medium handle?

Anthony 39:33
and the media handle is medium.com/Anthony_Moore.

Pete McPherson 39:37
Okay,great. Well, Anthony, thanks for coming on, man. I’m going to promote the book on it comes out, grab me a copy as well. And what can I do something? I’m gonna go ahead. This is totally selfish. Go grab. Do you have copies of the book? Or like, are you gonna have copies of the book beforehand? There you go.

Anthony 39:54
Yeah, nothing. Yeah, they’re actually being created as we speak right now. So yes, I’m going to send you a copy over there, man. It’s all good.

Pete McPherson 40:00
You know I would feel if like somebody sent me a book. That’d be awesome.

Anthony 40:04
I’m gonna send you a book and it’s gonna be great. I’m gonna get your address right now.

Pete McPherson 40:07
I’m gonna read it and review it. I’m excited. Now, no one’s ever done that I’ve never actually received like a book from the author. Let me say, I’m excited.

Anthony 40:14
Well, get ready because it’s coming.

Pete McPherson 40:17
Oh, man. That’s awesome. All right, what external people know, out in August when this comes out, and say thanks for coming on, man. Hopefully we’ll catch up soon.

Anthony 40:25
Thanks, Pete. You guys take care.

Listen to my episode with Ross from Podcast Insights

Ross, welcome to the show.

Ross 6:48
Hey, thank you, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete 6:50
No problem. It’s my pleasure to have you. So Ross, we’ve actually met at podcast movement, I believe, last year for the actual the one and only time we’ve met.

But I’ve seen you around on the internet, on Twitter, Facebook, and the like, pretty much everywhere. And you will have quickly become one of two or three like the podcast guy here. I mean, like I think of Steve Stewart. He’s a podcast guy. And now whenever I see your it’s actually your profile picture, by the way, that’s like your brand to me, at least. So Ross, whenever I see you with the blue shirt, the blue shirt. That’s right. So whenever I see you, I’m like this the podcast dude. But I’ve already said but three times. This is a great podcast so far. But Ross, I don’t actually know your backstory.

So why don’t we just kick it off in old school chronological format here.

The Ross Backstory – He’s a blogger!

What did you do before podcasting, before starting the blog? Give us the Ross Story.

Ross 7:46
Definitely. So I guess we can go go back. I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and I moved to Colorado to go to school, went to the UN, University of Northern Colorado, and got a degree in Business Marketing. So somewhat in the realm of that even though I don’t work for anyone else. And then I actually got a job in in PPC, so doing Google AdWords management, and then that kind of evolved into Facebook ads and was doing kind of took over SEO and email marketing for a franchise 500 company, so kind of did everything marketing related, okay, for them.

So yeah, PPC turned into SEO and I just sort of became more interested in that I’m sort of on the technical side of taught myself, PHP and some of that stuff that applies to WordPress. So,

Pete 8:40
okay, so part of the reason I–this clicked in my head, we’ve been chatting back and forth over the internet for a while and I was like, wait, on the show, view, you are in my head, like a podcast guy now. But I just want to point out for everybody listening like you’re a, you’re a blogger, through and through, right?

I’m looking at your site, and you even told me I believe it podcast movement. You’re like UIOU podcast about blogging, I blog about podcasting. I was like, Okay, there you go. And since then, I’ve learned that you know what you’re talking about, let’s say the least when it comes to all the stuff you just mentioned, SEO, marketing, promotion, that sort of stuff.

So I just want to spoil that for the audience listening and say, like Ross was actually a superb blogger from everything I’ve seen looking at your site. So kudos to you. And thanks for coming on to share what you know. So,

Ross 9:31
yeah, oh, can I just just real quick–I am.

Before I left my, my job, I actually had a co worker who the reason I even started the site to give a little more background is he wanted to start a podcast. And, you know, yeah, he had for three or four other people who aren’t a podcast with and he asked, he asked me what he needed, because he knew I had started a podcast about AdWords previously, and I did some research, and there’s really nothing out there, they kind of laid out what you needed, what gear kind of how to get started, at least not in a clear manner for for a multiple person podcast, at least.

So that was kind of my kicking off point. And it sort of took off pretty fairly quickly. So what year was that? When you first started this 2017. Maybe march was my first article and I published about once a week, I don’t go crazy.

What do beginner podcasters need to know to start?

Pete 10:23
So let’s actually start off talking about podcasting.

I want to give like a beginner, not overview. I mean, people kind of people kind of get it at this point. And there’s tons of resources on your own site that we could actually just point people to, as far as equipment, like you literally have a whole equipment category, I’m pretty sure on your site.

But in terms of bloggers, or other creators on the internet, who are looking to, I’m just gonna say the word dabble. I don’t really like that word. But I think you get what I’m talking about people who have been thinking about podcasting, or have said, You know what, I think I can actually do that and do it fairly well. I think that could be another great medium for me, my brand, my business, my blog, etc. For those people, they know what podcasting is, they’ve, they’ve listened to some podcasts once or twice, but they’re primarily in another medium, that those are the people that I want to talk to today. And Ross, I thought I might compose a make believe blog post, like right now on three to five, like bullet points that those people need to know, in order to quick as quick as possible. And as simple and easy as possible, get into podcasting.

So Ross, if you were writing that make believe blog post right now, talking to those people trying to get them into a published recurring, “good podcast,” what would be those three to five bullet points that you think they should know? And or do?

What podcast equipment do beginners need?

Ross 11:50
Definitely, so kind of talk a little bit about what I do. But I guess first of all, you don’t need to spend a ton of money, I do recommend getting an external mic, don’t use your built in lap top mic to record because that will, they’ll turn people off pretty quickly.

But there, there are some excellent, excellent microphones for under, under $70. I would say that will sound just as good as a $400 mic, at least to the average person. Totally.

Repurpose your blog posts into podcast episodes!

So if you’re, I guess for blogging, a great a great way to get started is to actually repurpose your, your blog posts, but just talk about them, you know, use don’t just read the blog post, but you know, add your own your own, take your own words, to what you’ve written. And you actually reach a different, totally different audience because people, a lot of people like to either listen or read and there might be a little bit of overlap, but there’s not as much as I think people think that it would be.

Pete 12:46
I agree with this, by the way. 100% I actually had somebody told me last week, it’s like, oh, yeah, I’ve been following you for like a year or two. And, oh, you have a podcast. I was like, wait, yeah, I totally have a podcast. And she’s like, I don’t listen to podcasts. I’d watched it if it were repurposed on YouTube, but it was a podcast. I was like, Wait, what? Really? Is that a thing?

Ross 13:06
Yeah, and actually, I, I think of podcasting, at least as a compliment to a blog, kind of like, like a YouTube channel. Like you embed we can talk about this, but you just like you embed a YouTube video, you embed your, your podcast episode, so people can listen right on, right on the page. That’s a good idea.

Pete 13:24
So I think that’s a fantastic place for people to start, by the way, like so they don’t have to keep coming up with content ideas, or, you know, get the stuck in their head. They’re like, Oh, I gotta find interviews, how do I reach out and get these, you know, big celebrity people in my industry or niche on the podcast, they can actually just start really small, just kind of talking about their blog post.

What about podcasting software? Editing, mixing, etc?

So other than a mic, what are How can people get started with the the software but from a recording standpoint, and or post production, what would be like your total newbie beginner, keep it stupid, simple. Software recommendations?

Ross 14:01
Yeah, definitely. And for recording, we’re going to keep stick with the free option to make this as easy as possible.

So if you’re on a Mac, Garage Band comes with your computer. And it works great. But you will need we’ll talk about this in the next step a little bit, a different software to kind of process it at the end. Another one is Audacity.

And it’s available for Mac or Windows and also free and regularly updated, and tons of podcasters. Use it. But at every level, really, those are the reporting programs, I actually recommend you create a template, so maybe record an intro or have Intro music. And then maybe you have our intro. And you save that, that template.

So every time you go to create a new post, you just open that template, save it as your new episode file, and then you’re you’re ready to go, you can just record and then export it, like quickly,

Pete 14:58
totally. And as long as you can keep things consistent on the recording aspect, as well, I try to do this as much as possible for my own stuff, you can actually leave a bunch of those, like if you use plugins to reduce noise, or to level audio or to, I don’t know mix and master.

If you do any of that effects, plugins, etc, you can actually leave those on the template as well. And if you’re somewhat consistent, like you’re always just the same Mike, or you’re always in the same environment, your house or your room or whatever, you can actually just kind of like rinse and repeat that stuff as well. And it’d be like, super, super quick.

How to not feel awkward when you start talking in front of a microphone 🙂

So Ross, let me get your opinion on this. Speaking of effects in plugins, or whatnot, I think this is where a bunch of people kind of get stuck in the weeds like they’re, they’re like “cool, I got a garage, fine, cool, I got audacity, I’m gonna do this,” and they can’t figure out how to hit the record button. And then they start talking…

I have two questions where you were going to come back to effects and plugins, like the minimum stuff that people need to know. But even before that, I want to get your thoughts on what to say? And specifically, how to not feel awkward and get the content done.

Does that make any sense?

I, I know that when I first started out, I would get, I would hit record. And then I just go I would like freeze. Like I’d be blank. And I start talking and it just be like utter garbage and crap. And it would take me like 70 tries, in order to get something I was even remotely happy with.

Do you have any suggestions for people who find themselves in that situation? They’re like, cool, I’m going to read my blog post. I’m gonna do this. I got audacity? How do I actually deliver on that content and not spend hours and hours and hours doing it? Does that make sense?

Ross 16:41
Yeah, no, it makes it makes sense. And actually, I remember you know, if you if you listen to Pat Flynn, he talked about how he redid his first podcast, I don’t know at least three times and then still didn’t publish it for a year. So it’s not not uncommon. Yeah. Hey, I think it’s kind of like, like, I don’t do video but you hear people say, you know, try to be over over animated, you know, more excited. And also, maybe Imagine you’re you’re talking with a friend, you know, so instead of staring at your computer, pretend you’re you’re talking with someone and having having a chat, but it it is difficult to do a podcast so I’m not gonna like sugarcoat that one.

You just something you have to kind of kind of keep doing and you’ll get kind of get familiar with it.

Pete 17:26
I think that’s great advice. And actually, Ross, you just reminded me of something that Derek silvers once said, He is always a lot of things people can go look him up on the Tim Ferriss podcast is one of my favorite episodes.

But he used to be a ringmaster for a traveling circus like a real circus. He was like the ringmaster. And when he first started, the director of elephants and said again,

Ross 17:52
I said with elephants and lions and everything?

Pete 17:54
Oh, yeah. Yeah, like a traveling the real deal. And the person who ran it. After a couple weeks, she was just like, Derek, I don’t think you’re, I think you’re delivering i think i think you’re holding back like, I think you could do more. And the insight that she shared with him was, it feels like people are judging you. And maybe they are maybe they’re not. But no one actually cares about that as much.

They’re there at the circus for a show. So give them the show. That’s what they’re there to see.

And I think the same thing about people who do YouTube and podcasting and stuff like that, who are just starting to sit down and record their own voice, it can be super awkward, they can get tripped up and etc. But I think those people need to learn, learn the same lesson.

And that is, it’s actually not about you. People are listening to your podcast, they expect you to be 110% of yourself, they expect you to be like a little bit more animated a little silly, a little bit more serious, like whatever you are times 1.1 right, like 10% more of you they kind of expect that something so you were kind of getting up just into so I like that story.

Ross 19:02
There’s just with audio to you know, people can’t see you. So a lot of your, your kind of voice tone inflection, you know, that’s all they get.

So it just makes makes that part more that much more important?

Pete 19:15
No, I like that was great. Thanks for let me take that little aside. But going back to the actual production, like the software, okay, I think I want to start reading some my blog post and just talk about it. I want to talk about these subjects. I’ve got audacity Garage Band, etc. I’m hitting record of critical I just talked for like 10 minutes, I’m actually pretty happy with it. Now what?

How do I translate that right there into something that I can get into iTunes or etc, etc, down the RSS feed, which we’ll talk about later.

But effects plugins, what’s the bare minimum that I need to do? And by the way, tell me if you use any other software you would recommend for beginners at the stage as well? How could they conquer that little step?

Ross 19:57
Yeah, I know, there’s tons of things like come oppression and loudness and leveling, I actually, just to make this as easy as possible, I recommend Auphonic. And it’s a, it’s an online based service, or they have a desktop app as well. But what it does is it adds for one ID three tags, which are basically metadata. So your title, the year publisher, things like that into your actual mp3 file.

And then it’ll also export it for you into different different formats that you need all even the output a YouTube video, or video that you can post on Facebook with little little waveform. So makes sharing easy. But the big thing that that I think is important is it does loudness, loudness normalization, which is just a, a target for how loud your audio is on on a podcast.

So TV broadcast has one level podcasts have one and rate you have another but on on podcast, it’s minus 16 LUFS.

We don’t need to get into how all that works.

But the basic thing is that this program does that for us. People don’t have to crank up the volume or turn it down when they’re listening to your show. Yes, absolutely. Just one more thing, they there’s a, they call it an adaptive leveler. And so if you have two people talking and there, there’s different volumes, or if you have music, that’s really loud, but you’re a little softer, it’ll it’ll just adjust those, those audio files and kind of push them to be the same level, which just makes your, your podcast sound 10 times better if you don’t have kind of really loud and really soft parts.

Pete 21:43
Totally. Yep. And for people who I’m going to like try and like paint this picture for those of you listening, which is 99.9% of you. It actually not only it doesn’t do all this for you, but it’s actually an incredibly easy user interface, user experience and my opinion, you’ll literally go there, you’ll sign up for an account, I believe you get like two free hours of audio a month or something like that you can pay for more, it’s three, three, okay.

But you you’ll hit like new production or something, it’ll ask you to upload an audio file, which by the way, I think you should cut first, like if you’re going to edit out silence or, or you’re going to do any of that stuff, like cut it down first, and then export that file that you’ve cut down as a WAV file. I guess the probably the easiest thing to do. I use logic protons. I do that in a garage band, same way. I’m assuming it’s probably like a one click Export to WAV file and audacity as well.

I don’t know, you can set some money on that. But it will upload that and just check like adaptive leveler. Yes, please check background noise reduction, and extra does that too. Okay, cool. Check. You’ll enter in, like some tile on defense, stuff like that. And it was an expert. And it’s like magic. It will give you a file to download that’s like, Oh, cool. You could toss that back in to audacity if you want and, you know, put your your intro before it and your intro after it and music underneath or you can do all sorts of cool stuff.

Ross 23:08
Yeah, now you can. You can do multiple files if you want or just one. It’ll actually export to a few different podcast hosting platforms automatically. They don’t support all of them. But if you’re on certain ones, Libsyn and Blubrry I think are are supported for sure.

So it just makes it super easy. And you don’t need to know all the technical way around your your audio program.

What about podcast hosting? Anchor for free? Podbean? 

Pete 23:33
By the way you spell that Auphonic–hard trying to say that right? So Ross, you just brought this up–hosting.

People don’t want to pay? Like, is there free hosting? How do I host my podcast for free? And even if they don’t do it for free? Like what would you suggest? Give me like, maybe just two, do you think beginners should choose from in terms of podcast hosting? What do you think people should go with?

Ross 24:03
Ya know, so I can talk about the there’s the big free one is anchor. And there’s not bad.

But the main kind of downside is that, well, it’s a pro and a con, they submit your your RSS feed, which is how the iTunes and Google find your podcast, they submit that for you with their email address, so you won’t have access to your podcast stats, specifically in iTunes or on speaker or on specific platforms.

And I know you might be able to like email them and transfer. But that’s just a big pain. So interesting. And their stats are kind of less than less than ideal. So you can do it for free. It’s just an option I recommend for beginners, but sprout makes it super easy.

For one, I kind of touched on it three tags, they will automatically handle that part for you. So you don’t even need to worry about it. They started at $12 a month, and you just it, you can upload it to three hours. And then they have some kind of upper upper tiers. But what I like about that pricing is it’s by hours instead of megabytes. So you don’t need to figure out kind of how long your episode is and how many megabytes that is and do all this math just kind of kind of makes it straightforward. For beginners, at least totally. Okay.

Yeah, I believe they’re the only ones who have that pricing structure, this couple other simplecast is is a popular one. And actually, with with both of those, they have a really good looking player. So when you go to embedded on your website, they just look great. You can customize the colors to match your branding. And I think that kind of adds to the overall package.

Pete 25:41
That’s actually one thing I wish I’d been my current host. I’ve actually been with them since the beginning, I haven’t really felt compelled to switch. But their their players are not like the best you can customize a little bit, but it’s not. It’s not quite as fancy. As SimpleCast for sure. So what guys look amazing, it looks really good.

Ross 25:58
Yeah, they have some really some really cool sharing features as well. So you or your listeners can actually go in and, and it’s called recast and they can like take a clip from your episode and share it and some pretty, pretty cool stuff that that other people don’t do.

But actually side note about podbean is I have an article about embed players. And they reached out to me and said, You know, they’re missing a couple of features. And they said, Hey, we added these because you you said we were missing them. So they’re they’re definitely working on it.

Pete 26:26
I like that. Oh man, now I need to like go publish an article about them to like get all the get all my fixes fixed for what I want them to be like.

No, I’m not actually gonna do that. But that’d be cool. I like that. So let’s, let’s get back into the q amp a, I think I’m gonna like title this episode q amp A. So just thinking question after question for you, Ross. And I kind of like our format so far. Yeah, later, and just a few minutes, I do want to get into promotion a little bit. And by the way, this is going to be free consulting for me, because I actually, I self identify as somebody who does not know how to grow a podcast. I don’t. My podcast has grown very, very, mostly organically. But what I really mean is, I haven’t really known what to do I know to grow it outside of blogging.

So I want to get your thoughts on that. But before we do, I thought we might wrap up with a few more questions onto Okay, I’ve got my software. I ran it through auphonic and I took it back or edit my intros in a phonic or whatever, I have an mp3 file now sweet.

And I’m going to go to bus route or pod bean or whatever, sign up for their cheapest plan. Well, I think most people should start on, by the way, unless you’re doing like 90 minute long interviews once a week. Cool. I uploaded there.

Getting into iTunes (Apple Podcasts) and other directories (Spotify!)

How on earth do I get it to iTunes? And you know what, Spotify? And you know, what, Google podcasts? And you know what, this other place overcast, etc, etc, etc?

What do we need to know about getting our pockets on those platforms?

Ross 28:02
Yeah, so we touched on the RSS feed portion, which is how you get your podcast on those platforms. And an RSS feed is basically just, it just points. So let’s say your iTunes they read the RSS feed, and they see hey, the the mp3 files actually stored over here. And here’s the title and description. So it’s just all the info about your show. They pull that in and display it in their in their directory. So each each platform has their own process.

And I have actually have a podcast directory article that links to all the all the instructions if that’s helpful for people. Yeah. But also within the podcast hosting companies, though, they’ll usually help you as well. So they’ll have instructions for for Apple podcasts and Stitcher and Google. It’s kind of automatic. But yeah, there’s different different ways. So I guess with the main one you want to be on though, is Apple podcasts. The reason is because, well, at least 60% of people listen there. But also, a lot of the podcast apps actually pull their their directory of podcasts from Apple. So you’ll automatically be listed on overcast, which is a popular podcast app and a ton of other other places. Well, that’s where I start. Okay,

Pete 29:21
totally. I use overcast By the way, and absolutely love it. It’s just such a breath of fresh air when they first came out with that, like a few years back, and then moved over from Apple podcast.

So Oh, actually, another question. Another question. I got up.

Where else should they be on? So Apple podcast is like mandatory, and people should do that first. And that pushes out to several other ones. But what other ones do you think are “mandatory?” They might not actually be mandatory, but what which are the ones if you were going to launch a new show tomorrow?

Would you go and hook your RSS up? RSS feed up to Does that make sense? Stitcher, Google podcasts? Any other ones?

Ross 29:59
Yeah, so Spotify is a big one they’ve been, they’ve been really pushing into the podcast space. they renamed their app, music and podcasts, they bought gimlet media and actually bought anchor, too. So they’re huge, and they’re only going to keep investing in podcasting.

So there’s actually two different ways to get into Spotify, though. You can have your podcast host submit for you. Or you can there’s a website on Spotify, I think it’s podcasters dot Spotify calm, and you can submit your RSS feed manually that way, just make sure you don’t do it both ways or might run into some conflicts.

Pete 30:37
Yeah, I know. Podbean, Libsyn. I think those are the only two that I have direct experience. But But those are actually pretty straightforward in their dashboards, like applying it.

I don’t know if it’s still application based or not, do you know, like, just don’t do “apply for it?” And then maybe they’ll let you enter? Maybe they reject you. It’s still like that, or is it a pretty direct hookup?

Ross 30:58
I think it’s pretty direct. I mean, I guess they could deny you if you’re using a bunch of copyrighted content or something, but I don’t know if they actually check.

Pete 31:06
Okay, back in the day, I when I did it, it was like, we just announced podcasts.

And now you can like, apply. And then literally, I didn’t hear anything for like three months. And then they got back to me and said, Oh, you’re on Spotify. Now. I was like, Okay, cool. So apparently not like that anymore. So that’s good.

Ross 31:20
Yeah, I think that was when they first first were testing I’m pretty sure you get in get in pretty easily. But in other other platforms, Google Play Music is kind of going away. But that’s another one that is is easy to get into and then stitcher and tune in, or the other top podcast directories.

Pete 31:39
I don’t even think I’m on Tunein. Thats a good one Okay, I gotta write that down.

Ross 31:43
Yeah, and there’s what else I have a list here, speaker, blueberry is a podcast host, but they also have a directory that you can submit to separately. And then I think that’s, that’s the main ones.

Initial Podcast Set-up stuff…

Pete 31:55
So Ross, before we move on to promotion, and my What else do people know? Do we miss anything? And this conversation of going from, I think, I would like to start a podcast to actually having a show online. In some of those apps.

Did we miss anything? Do you think in that conversation,

Ross 32:16
just kind of the initial setup stuff.

So you know, you want to you want to choose a name, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be the same name as your as your blog, mine’s completely different. I don’t have a good reason. I just, I just felt like having something different.

But a name maybe a format. So if you want to have a q&a segment in in your show, or you want to read testimonials or something those you know, have that be consistent in your show. I like that blank could be part of it. But I just some things to think about style, whether you want to do you know, interviews or not or, and then also kind of in the preparation stage cover arts, you’ll need to create cover art.

And there’s some specific guidelines the size that supposed to be in the in the format. But you can you can create it in something like Canada for free or use 99 designs or have a designer, whatever you want to do.

Pete 33:10
You can put somebody on Fiverr, like 10 bucks to do one. Yeah, they’re all over the place. I think that’s just about all I gots from that little stage. I can’t think of anything else at least.

Podcast Marketing – how to grow downloads!

So why don’t we talk about? Well, I think first of all, you can generally get an embed code, a little iframe or HTML or something that you can copy and paste into your blog, WordPress, just toss it in the HTML, whatever. And that’s pretty straightforward.

I feel like but other than just immediately embedding it in blog posts that you might already get traffic to or whatnot. Let’s talk a little bit more about how to grow downloads.

And right off the bat. Ross, I’m just straight up tell you. I don’t know, I don’t have the questions. I’ve got it on you to kind of break out some bullet points on how people might actually grow their downloads. So what do you got for me? I’m gonna blink here. I don’t know enough about this.

Ross 34:09
Yeah, no, I just, I just wrote an article about this and did a ton of research. So I think I might have a couple ideas. So I guess the first one is on top of embedding your episode, which allows people to play it right on, on your blog post, what I do is add a call to action below that.

So I say, want to listen while you’re browsing the site, because if you leave the page, it’ll stop playing. So I direct people to subscribe on Apple or Spotify or Google.

That way they can listen, and keep, you know, keep keep it on the on the site, but also, hopefully subscribe, and I use that specific language, subscribe on Apple so that it kind of aligns with what they’re need to do.

Pete 34:50
Gotcha. Can I ask a question about that? There’s not actually a way to have a one click link that subscribes them corrected just leads them to the show pages. Is that true? Yeah.

Ross 35:02
Yeah, that’s, that’s correct. Like, kinda like, Twitter has a link where people can go right to the follow page, or something like that.

Pete 35:12
They still have to actually hit the subscribe button and stuff like that. Okay, I’m with it.

Ross 35:16
Right. And then I think most people know this, but you know, podcasting still still sort of young, subscribing is free.

I know, there’s been some kind of debate about that word, but on YouTube subscribing is is free, but I know, not everyone realizes that. So it might be helpful to actually mention that to people.

Pete 35:34
It’s funny, you mentioned that. It’s like totally Well, duh, as free for us, but not for everybody. It’s interesting to think about, you’re right, by the way. Okay, continue.

How to ask people for reviews/ratings.

Ross 35:43
Yeah, yeah. So we already talked about submitting to podcast directories, you just want to be everywhere that people are searching for shows. So that one, that one seems fairly obvious.

And I want to I really like it kind of ties into that segment, part I was talking about earlier, is how having a segment where you, you share reviews or testimonials, and it kind of has a nice virtuous cycle, because you, you know, you ask for podcasts review, let’s say, and then you read it out loud, and people will just like to hear their their names read online, it kind of gives them a little, little high, almost, there’s something so they they’re more likely to share it and tell their friends and it kind of it’s a slow, slow growth, but it’s a nice natural way to grow.

And then, kind of at the same time, you also, you know, people are sharing on social media, you’re more likely to grow those those channels that people are sharing on as well. So I think it’s just a real easy way to get more engagement and listeners,

Pete 36:40
almost like the little you can position it as thank you just like an honest shout out. And thank you. Like, I just want to thank Ross from podcast insights.

He says, literally, Do You Even Blog makes my morning every morning. You’re literally the best podcast or ever slash hashtag Ross. And then you could ask people for a review just like that. I’ve never actually done that before. So I’m going through this in my head like, Oh, I need to actually implement something like this. That’d be smart.

Ross 37:07
Yeah, no, it’s fun.

I’m people, people like it like you did there, give people a shout out. That’s actually how I kind of encourage people to leave reviews and say, I’ll give you a shout out to to your podcast, if you leave a review. So I like that. I like it a lot.

Pete 37:22
What else we got?

Let’s let’s continue on this line of thinking. And you’re welcome. Just like pull from that post. By the way, I did pull it up about 10 minutes ago in my browser, because I knew I was gonna like, go back to here.

But what else we got share reviews and testimonial, create a website. It’s also in your post, but I think most people listening to us could probably skip that part. They already have the site there. What is an “apple smart banner?”

Ross 37:47
Yeah, so I think this was actually designed for apps, you know, like, from the App Store. But it also works with podcasts. And what it is, is a little banner that pops up on the top of your website, but the catches it only shows up on the mobile version of Safari. So it just little shows your your podcast cover are and it’s it literally says subscribe and have a podcast. And so people can click over right to the podcast app. Or if they hit the X, they’ll never see it again, it doesn’t, you know, keep showing up over and over again.

And what you do is you just add a little meta tags, just like just like you have a title tag on your website, you just had one line of code that basically tells Safari to pull up your your show when people visit.

Pete 38:30
I love that, by the way. And Wait, can you confirm? It doesn’t show on anything? But Safari? Right? Like it’ll automatically not be there?

Ross 38:39
Yep. Yeah, that’s correct. And just just mobile, mobile Safari.

Pete 38:42
Gotcha. Okay. One thing you can do for this may not apply to everybody, but will apply to most people who have a podcast, you can actually there’s a great plugin for header codes and footer codes, etc. One that I use? Well, there’s two of them.

Insert headers and footers is one that actually doesn’t give you quite as much control. There’s another one. I’m actually trying to look it up Cameron, it’s called, it’s HFCM. I don’t actually know it’s called header footer code manager maybe.

And this will allow you to only put that code for the little show in Apple podcast, or subscribe an apple podcast or whatever, it’ll allow you to only put that code on your podcast pages, if you wanted to, you could put it everywhere if you want to, I suppose.

But it’ll actually give you the option to Oh, I want to put it on these pages, pages under the podcast category or pages that have a podcast tag or something like that. So you could only insert that JavaScript code on those pages. So that’s one thing. header, footer code manager, I believe is what it’s called. So people can check that out. I like that.

Ross 39:53
I like that. Keeps it relevant to you know, people interested in, in the photo of your podcast episodes.

Pete 39:59
Okay, so two things here, Ross. I don’t want to keep you forever.

By the way. I only have like a limited time. But I have so many questions for you. Let’s talk about a launch giveaway. I feel like this is done a lot. But I’ve never, I’ve never turned off by it. Like I like it. I like when I see people like we’re launching this new show.

We’re going to build it up a little bit to our existing email list or existing followers, subscribers, etc. And then they do like a little giveaway to make this happen. Because this is something you have experienced with IC a little bit on your promotion posts. But have you ever ran a giveaway in connection with the podcast?

Ross 40:38
Yeah, when I first launched, the set sail podcast is my my podcast that goes with podcast insights, I did a giveaway, asking people to subscribe. And instead of asking for reviews, and the reason is, that’s actually how Apple podcasts ranking system works. It’s based on how many people subscribe. It’s, it’s waited for how how recently, they subscribe.

So there’s more weight to the last 24 hours and a little less week to 48 hours and kind of goes down from there. So if anyone didn’t know how that system works, that’s the that’s the trick.

Pete 41:15
I didn’t know that. So you ask them to subscribe. And then in the Do what? Like they enter the giveaway?

Ross 41:22
Yeah, no, I just asked him to take a screenshot after they subscribe. And then I could confirm that they did. Because there’s not really another way for that to happen. And just tag me on Twitter, Instagram, and then I would just really, you know, put everyone in kind of a random number generator and pick someone or pick a couple of people.

And what’s what’s cool is you can you can ask, you know, ask companies that are associated with your, your brand to give stuff away because they want to get in front of your audience and a lot of people are more than happy to give you a microphone or I actually had been sprout gave me six months of hosting the giveaway and I don’t know.

Pete 42:00
Okay, I like that’s, how did it work for you, by the way, when you launched Set Sail?

Ross 42:06
My audience was a lot smaller, but I did get a good. I don’t know, I feel like I had 2030 people subscribe or something. So it gives you a good a good boost and a good base of subscribers. And then you know, every time you come out with an episode, they will automatically download it. So it gives you a good base of listeners.

Pete 42:23
Okay, I got I got three more questions here for you, Ross. Number one, let’s talk about how to how to take advantage of sharing your episodes on social media.

Specifically, I’m thinking about, like the little videos with audio wavelength, like little animations, and then an audio people can hit play and then it shows like the the text underneath that sort of stuff. And then I’m gonna come back and ask you about getting guests.

But we’ll start with the social media thing. And you have some lyst on your blog. I can point people to that. But in your experience, what is the the best software that new folks could use to create LIKE, SHARE worthy little snippets of audio? You know what I mean? audiograms. That’s what they’re called? audiograms.

Ross 43:09
Yeah, yeah. So I mentioned SimpleCast, they have that built in sharing system. And then also, Buzz sprout has a feature where they’ll create a an audio gram for you as well, that you can then download and publish wherever. But then for standalone apps–headliner is by far the best one is really powerful. And you can kind of do anything with it. It just takes a little more time than some of those automated systems. And there’s another one called wave and I think it has like two, two V’s in it. There’s a there’s a few.

Pete 43:46
I actually didn’t know this until I landed on your, your blog post that has all this stuff in it, by the way, actually, can I just pitch that I’ll link to in the show notes, of course, but podcast insights.com slash podcast promotion, with a hyphen in there. So podcast, hyphen, promotion, podcast, com slash podcast, dash promotion, they can find all this stuff. That’s like a really good blog post, nice little format, lyrical, almost very helpful. But I didn’t realize until I landed on there, that overcast actually has a clip sharing feature built into the app, which I did not know, it’s really, really interesting. I will check that out.

After we’re done recording.

Ross 44:26
It just added that just like a few weeks ago, as we’re as we’re recording this, so it’s it’s really

Pete 44:31
interesting, I gotta go look at that. Okay, so the last two questions, very, very similar, probably conclude the desk.

I want to talk about how to best reach out to get people as guest on your show, if people want to do that, when I have guests will have interviews, as well as and you can tackle these together. Or separately, if you want to hear Ross, how to be a guest on other people show like how to actually make that happen?

Because I know that’s really good marketing as well, a lot of let’s start with some outrage how, what are some, like two or three best practices for starting to book? podcast guest on your show? If that makes any sense?

Ross 45:11
On Yeah, on your show. So I guess, well, this, this would apply to, to both being guest and having guests. But there’s, as there’s a feature in iTunes, where you can click, you know, pull up your, your podcast, and then there’s a there’s a little tab that says related and you can find shows that are related to yours. So you can you can actually pitch to be on on their shows or have, you know, reach out to have a host to be on your show.

So that’s great ways to kind of have cross promotion and and iTunes basis this based on the listeners, you know, there’s overlap. As far as reaching out and how to how to do it I I just, I don’t know, be authentic and genuine. Don’t try to, you know, lie to and say you have a giant show you don’t but right.

Pete 46:03
Yeah, no need for like a super fancy. I’ve read 17 articles on outrage on my craft this elegant pitch email. He little just be a human, every job and be like, hey, I’d love to have you on. I’m curious in what you do. I’ve read your book. I’ve read your blog. I’ve listened to your show, have watched your YouTube channel. And I love it. And Could you spare an hour? And I’ll promote you to my office or something like that.

That’s all I got. I just made that up my head, Ross.

Ross 46:26
Yeah, no, it’s I mean, it’s when when, like you if you have, you’re reaching out to people in your same industry like both of you, you kind of benefit by by doing that.

And actually, one thing I did years ago is I wrote a guest post for someone for for a blog. And they had a podcast as well. So after that was published, I reached out to them and said, Hey, can I come on the podcast and talk about something similar so that and that works out worked out great.

Pete 46:53
I like this idea. This is this is only somewhat related. By the way, I love this idea of reaching out for potential collaborations and or partnerships, or just posts for you someone think about it that way, but also offering a different format, or medium.

For example, I would love to do a guest post on your site, I’m also willing to record a short audio just for your followers. Or I’m also willing to make like a little YouTube video, just like it doesn’t have to be a long, full out like 15 minute YouTube video, it could literally just be like a, I’m more than willing to make like a two or three minute video to accompany it only for your followers or only for your audience or something like that. I haven’t done a whole lot of this yet.

But in my planning to do outreach, which I’m planning on doing a little bit more of for my recent SEO efforts. I’m actually thinking about doing a whole lot more of that. I know I appreciate it when people do that for me. And so I am hoping to utilize that in my own outreach too. So just an idea for people to think about.

Ross 47:56
Yeah, there’s a there’s a great example.

Someone someone did that HubSpot, I want to say it was like the backlink go or video for it. One of those one of those guys did a guest post and also a guest video at the same time. So maybe a cool, cool example.

Pete 48:11
Well, Ross, unless you go here in just a few minutes. But I would be remiss without asking you my little blog around question. I know you’ve heard it before, you had mentioned this to me, I think on slack the other day, but I’m gonna ask you anyways, what is one thing you think other bloggers should stop doing immediately?

Ross 48:31
Yeah, so I think people should stop learning from too many people.

So I think, you know, it’s okay, if if someone’s like a specialist, and maybe Pinterest or SEO or something, but don’t don’t try to learn from three different people that are experts in Pinterest, try to stick with one. Especially if you’re buying or investing in a course, you know, you’ll you’re gonna have a little bit different instructions and you follow 20 people, you just kind of don’t get lost. And you need to follow I think just one person system or process, get success from it.

And then when you’re when that happens, you can kind of move on to the next thing.

Pete 49:11
I would not have guessed that. Okay.

So kind of like a, I’m gonna learn this from this person and actually go try it out, go implement and see what happens. make notes, did this work to this network? What worked? What didn’t analyze a little bit and then go out? Learn from somebody different? I don’t know. I’m just trying to put two and two together.

Ross 49:30
Yeah. So I would say follow Pete for blogging and then follow someone else for I don’t know, Pinterest or something. Try not to follow too many people that are teaching the same, same things because the instructions are you know, the process or just different

Pete 49:45
insights. That’s better about Ross, you’re about insights.

Ross 49:49
Sometimes!

Pete 49:50
all right, well, speaking of insights, that’s a good segue for a podcaster of Eros. Not really, podcastinsights.com is where people can connect with you. And set sail podcast, is that correct? And then what it’s called in?

Ross 50:06
Yeah, for now, iTunes, it’s done.

Pete 50:07
Okay, set sail, a podcast about podcasting by Ross. anywhere else on social that you would like to point people to primarily?

Ross 50:17
No, my personal accounts are @paidinsights. And that was just from my PPC days. So if you want to connect with me there,

Pete 50:29
podcasts insights paid insights, payments. com, is that right?

Ross 50:32
Yeah, I haven’t updated that in years. But you can, you can learn a little bit about AdWords there.

Pete 50:38
Alright, fair enough. Well, Ross, Thanks, buddy. Thank you for coming on and sharing some of your wisdom I especially the this will be great. Like a great refer back to resource for people looking to double, so to speak. So I appreciate your time today. And thanks for coming on.

Ross 50:54
Yeah, thank you. I hope I just hope this was was helpful to people and excited to started here.

Listen to my PM19 takeaways here:

Super side note here…I’m whispering to get some emotion across. Did you know the Spotify acquired gimlet media last year is one of the bigger podcast production companies. Did you know that they actually acquired Anchor.fm as well? It was the largest acquisition for podcasting in the history of podcasting. What are they going to do with it? I don’t know. I asked the reps and the reps would not tell me. I was like, What is Spotify doing for podcasting? This is super exciting, but no one knows. And the reps told me, we don’t know either. They keep everything a secret from us.

Listen to my episode with Eric Holland from High Five Dad

Pete McPherson 0:00
Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric 2:59
Thank you. Glad to be on your show, finally.

Pete McPherson 3:02
So this is going to be a little bit of an experimental episode. And to kick that off a why it’s going to be a little bit experimental and what we’re going to talk about, Eric, I’m wondering if you might share with us how you felt a few weeks ago, or maybe in a month or two ago? I’m not exactly sure when you actually got promoted in your job, is that correct?

Eric 3:23
Yeah, I did couple about a month ago, just got promoted. And it was one of those weird, awkward type of feelings. Because in the back of my mind, when I got, you know, noticed, I was being promoted. And I had a conversation with my supervisor at the time, in the back of my head, was this idea that I may not be at that job for much longer, the the idea of quitting my job. And trying something online, has been there for a little while.

So it was, it’s kind of like this weird mix reaction where men your entire career trying to get promoted, get promoted. And then you get promoted. And then in the back your heads like, I don’t know if I’m going to be here much longer.

Pete McPherson 4:06
Sure. So you don’t have to share the name of the company you work for, but give us like a just a 32nd overview of what you did.

Eric 4:14
If I go into details, it may give a little bit too much. And you hit enter

Pete McPherson 4:20
Can we just say education,

Eric 4:21
Education. So education, and I actually worked in a department that had a number of things that got put under us.

So as I moved up through the ladder, more and more things got put in there. So it was like the learning management system, the gradebook platform, the assessment platform for the state. And then, in this most recent transition to more departments got added to us that would just, you know, add to the different elements, but it wasn’t a clear cut Job had more work.

Pete McPherson 4:55
Yeah. Okay.

All right, we’re going to come back and discuss this overall transition, and just a second. But fast forward to today, today’s Monday, when recording this, by the way, Friday, was actually your last job. So today is technically your first like week day, I normally would have been at work, but now I’m free. Or now I’m petrified. Or now I’m unemployed or whatever.

So I gotta ask you like, how are you feeling today? What did you feel when you woke up this morning?

Eric 5:21
It’s weird, because I guess you don’t know what you’re going to feel on that day, can read about it, you hear other people’s stories about it. And you don’t know how you’re going to feel when you wake up.

For me, like the morning routine was identical to what it was on a normal work day. I have two kids and a wife. So you know, got up at 530 took a shower, got got the boys lunch ready for school, help my wife out the door brought my one year old to daycare.

And then at that moment, it was because the daycare is like two minutes away from where I work. So it was kind of like, do I take the left? Or do I take the right.

And for me, it was the first time that I didn’t go that the other Street and I and I turned around and headed home. And it still hasn’t hit me quite yet.

I still are getting notifications on my calendar on my phone that you know, I have a meeting that I’m supposed to be at or people are at work just still texting me. They’re like, Hey, I didn’t see you. And I’m just like, I’m not there anymore.

Pete McPherson 6:22
Oh, gosh.

Eric 6:23
But it’s, you know, for me, it’s been in the back of my head for a while that I was going to make this transition. So I feel like it wasn’t one of those, you know, rash quick decisions, which I feel like if I did that I would have woke up like in night terrors. But I think right now, it’s just kind of like, I wouldn’t call it a vacation mode.

But I don’t think the reality is hitting yet that I don’t have a real job.

Pete McPherson 6:51
Interesting. So let’s backtrack a little bit. And why don’t you tell us about your blog, specifically, like two or three things I’m looking for here, Eric? Number one, just introduce it like, Who are you? Where can we find you to? I’d love to know when you started precisely. I think I know. But I know the listeners don’t. And then we’re actually going to transition into the transition, the transition of quitting the job but then, you know, moving this on, but really quick.

Why don’t you give us the lowdown on who you are? Where can people find you like what do you blog about? When did you start?

Eric 7:24
Yep, so my blog is highfivedad.com. And we really blog a lot about like personal finance and family and family tips. Really trying to give people dad’s family families a way to make money, save money, and just some helpful family tips out there.

As I was going through the blog today, because I don’t think I’d have done like a blog audit. And no while I was like, Man, this is a really crappy blog. Which is it’s funny because I’m, you know, it was getting prepared for the podcast going.

Alright, let’s look to see how great I am. And then Oh, man, I got some work to do. So the blog started back in, I think august of 2017. Okay, or maybe July 2017. So about two years ago.

And really, the story is funny, because it just goes to the the idea of the power behind Facebook and Facebook ads and Facebook ad targeting, you know, my two year old or three year old at the time, didn’t like to go to bed by himself. So you know, I would lay down next to his bed, you know, he would lay in his bed, and I lay on the floor, just kind of, you know, talking to them. And then well, he was going to sleep, I would be laying on the floor, scrolling through Facebook, and then getting hit with all these ads. And Bobby from millennial money man must have been targeting, you know, guys in the middle age, you know, looking to save money, make money.

And I would land on his blog, probably once a week, once every other week about how this music teacher, you know, quit his job, made this blog and started making money. And this is before Millennium money man like blew up to what it is today.

So this is before his courses and all that where he was still making, you know, decent 810 thousand dollars a month. And I was like, Man, what is this blogging world?

Right? And fast forward…talk to my wife is like, I think I’m going to start a blog. She’s like, what is a blog? Like?

Yeah, like, I guess when you’re not in the blogging world, you don’t realize that half the things that you search on the internet is a blog?

That’s like, No, no, it’s fine that, you know, I’ll do this, you know, maybe I’ll make a little bit of money and who knows where we’ll end up, right? And then fast forward two years, like, he just quit your job. Now you’re playing online, blogging.

How Eric has grown (and monetized) his blog so far.

Pete McPherson 9:48
Okay, so this is a great transition. Two questions for you, Eric.

The second one–tell you the second one first, just to keep myself accountable for actually coming back to it. I want to hear about the the pre planning, not necessarily what you’re going to do now that you’ve quit your job in order to grow the blog, or to do more freelancing or to make more money or to start your own business or whatever that looks like.

Not that.

But everything you did before actually turning in your notice, I want to hear kind of like what that planning look like, Okay, I’m going to need this amount of money in order to quit my job, or I need to have these things in place before I quit my job.

That’s actually bullet point number two. I’m going to ask you about that in a second. But right now, I want to hear how you grew the income because as I understand it, you’re making more than 1000 less than $5,000 a month from just the blog. Is that correct?

Eric 10:44
Yep.

Pete McPherson 10:44
Okay, tell me a little bit about how you’ve grown that the best two years.

Eric 10:48
So I may be one of the worst bloggers that you’ve ever interviewed.

As as, as doing you know, the site audit, I was like, you always end up comparing yourself to like other people out there. He’s got their things together. And I look at my blog, I’m like, man, I don’t have my things together like everyone else, which I think is is good for, you know, some of your listeners, because I think people who are, have their blogs polished and perfect. And I don’t think that’s real for some of those brand new bloggers out there.

Or people in year one or year two who think, man, I’m never going to make it. Yeah. So like, in reality, like, if you go back and look at like my blogging, I basically do everything wrong. You know, the idea that you you need the blog, you know, once a week, once or twice a week to get engagement. I don’t think the last article I posted on there, I think it was in like July.

And when you look back at how many articles I’ve done this year, I think it’s like six or seven. It’s not like I’m not the typical, like, Hey, I’m going to go write two articles a week, I’m going to blast my email list, I’m going to do this. If you look at like, the way that my blog has kind of grown, it’s like in Sprint’s, like, I’ll work two or three months, try a technique really, you know, intense, whether that’s writing two or three articles, whether that’s, you know, focus in SEO, whether that’s focused on Pinterest, and then for whatever reason, you know, blogger burnout, or life gets in the way, like I take the foot off the accelerator, but then I always come back and kind of like reflect like, did this work?

Or did this not work?

Pete McPherson 12:30
Okay, so you’re a terrible blogger, literally the worst I’ve ever interviewed. Totally joking. And you have done these little sprints you call it where you try these strategies out every now and then how, how specifically, has it monetize them?

Eric 12:46
Yep. So I was one of the early members of Pete 30 Day Challenge.

And you know, I, a lot of bloggers out there you jump in the first course or the second course that you see. And I was like, Oh, yeah, one of the first challenges that you had on there was, you know, ask someone for $1. So, you know, of course, I think everyone in the group like email J money is like, “Hey, I’m doing this challenge. Hey, can I get $1?”

Apparently, I was one of the first ones. And I sent him a message through I think face or rock star forum as like, “Hey, this is my idea. You have a dollars your logo with your face on it, would you give me $1?”

Pete McPherson 13:26
And I’ll put them on my Facebook or on my, on my website?

Eric 13:30
And he’s like, Sure.

So I made my first dollar there.

And then from there, I was like, once you get past the idea of asking people for money. It’s like this, like mental barrier, like, Oh, yeah, it’s $1.

So then, you know, over the next, you know, two months, it was like, All right, let’s try to find some other sponsors. So that was like my first, you know, adventure into making money on the blog was trying to get sponsors. So I worked a couple different companies, and you know, I landed a $500 sponsor, I was like, oh, man, this is really good.

Well, then you get to the point where, like, I’m not tired again. So you know, there are things that work, and then all sudden, like, I would get tired. And I’d be like, Oh, let me try this other thing. So I think in January of 2018, maybe February, I taken, you know, two or three months off, I hadn’t blogged at all had even logged into my, my Google Analytics hadn’t done anything. And then I came back to blogging, I looked at my Google Analytics, and there was a post in that was getting all this organic traffic from Google.

And I’m like, wait, I’m just getting free traffic, like, I’m not doing anything, I haven’t done anything. In three months, I haven’t promoted and on Twitter haven’t done all of this.

Now sudden, I’ve gotten at that point, three 4000 page views just for nothing. So I really began to, like, optimize that, that one post, and kind of play around a little bit with some SEO, just kind of see where it was going to go. In that one post, you know, went from 3000 a month to like 15,000 a month.

And I I knew just by being in that in the blog world, that media mind you needed, you know, 30,000 sessions or 25,000 sessions, something around there.

So I knew if I could get my my stats up that high, that I could start making money on on traffic, which is, it’s nice to have money just rolling in for not doing anything. So I spent about a month using Facebook ads to target and this, the the post I can point people to the posted is a dumb post, but because it has nothing to do with personal finance, but it’s about fast past it at Disney, you know, we live in just outside of Orlando. So we go to Disney.

So I have this, this hack that I call it that allows people to get a lot of fast passes, which if you’re Disney fan, and you want to get the most of your money, like it’s beneficial.

So I start targeting people who like Disney with this ad, and I’m getting, you know, half a penny to one penny sent a click. So I knew Yeah, Disney fans are crazy. Like literally, like, if you want to start a blog, do Disney blog, and just start targeting people on Facebook, they share it with everyone they know.

And there’s a ton of Facebook groups that they’ll share to like, I would go on to my Google Analytics. And I would have a spike of like 2000 people because they would drop it in a in a Facebook group. And all of a sudden, you know, everyone’s clicking, clicking, clicking, and then it would die. Because like the the post, the admin as a group would like kill it or something.

But just by using Facebook ads, I was able to grow my traffic to over the threshold needed for media vine. And then I pulled back Facebook ads, because I the whole goal was just to get to that, you know, 25 or 30,000 sessions, so that I can qualify for mediavine, and then I would start working on things that were more personal finance ish. Okay, so traffic right now.

And then I have a couple affiliate posts that are on the site that are using some SEO in some back linking that really kind of flush it out. So it’s about right now the income is about 70% traffic. So through media, vine and about 30% affiliate income.

What did the planning look like before his quit his job?

Pete McPherson 17:39
Okay, that’s awesome. Kudos to you, by the way. Well done, Eric.

So that second bullet point I spoke of earlier, as you’re you got a promotion, right. And you kind of have that weird feeling of like, Oh, this is awesome. I’m glad. But I don’t know if I actually want to be doing this forever, let alone the next two months, apparently. So what did the planning look like? When you’re giving the person you’re starting to sit down?

Maybe with your family and talking it through? What did the planning look like before you could quit?

Eric 18:09
Yeah, so you know, being in the personal finance space, we’re like Excel junkies.

And so I think, you know, over the last three or four months, I’ve created so many Excel charts with so many different scenarios of like, what could be what couldn’t be that, I think I was driving my wife crazy, like, you know, we would take our current level of income and say, well, we reduce it to this, and we cut out our savings, you know, what is the minimum that we need. And, you know, we’ve been blessed, that we’ve had the opportunity to, through the blogging income, and just through good budgeting skills, put away, you know, 20 or 30% of our income every month into savings.

So our entire idea, you know, what, before we got married, you know, we did the Dave Ramsey thing. Now, we still need both, that Dave Ramsey, you know, didn’t necessarily get my wife and I on this on the same page, in finances, but we’re at least in the same book, because she is a spender, and I’m a saver.

But being able to have those open conversations prepared us for all right, we need a savings, we need an emergency emergency fund. Because at any day, you know, you quit, or you can lose your job. And you’d want an opportunity to find the job that you want. Without just taking the first thing that pops up, or in this case, it’s given us the opportunity, you know, take a risk and take the you know, I call it an adventure to see what, what’s possible out there.

Pete McPherson 19:42
So just to clarify, and you don’t have to share your exact numbers, of course, but you’re not completely, like totally financially independent.

“I don’t, I don’t care ever again, if I make a single dime, like I’m set up.” You’re probably not there yet. Is that correct? You just have like a really good situation going from saving, you’re able to have an adventure, so to speak?

Eric 20:03
Yeah, definitely not fire whatsoever.

I mean, maybe the leanest of lean fires, that that’s out there. But no, I think we were in a good spot where, let’s say the blog crashed and the internet went down for the rest of the year, we’d be fine. And then you know, I’d go out looking for a real job.

Pete McPherson 20:27
Okay. So before I move on to going forward, like what does that plan strategy?

So obviously, worst case scenario is probably not going to have the internet’s not going to go down, you’re probably going to continue to make money and hopefully grow and make more money from the blog. Before that, though, Did I miss anything on the planning? So you guys saved? Obviously, having a, you know, I don’t care what you call an emergency fund, freedom fund, saving up to have a mini retirement or whatever, that is almost impossible to quit your job.

Without that, wouldn’t you say?

Eric 20:58
Yeah, I honestly, I think the two years leading up to this, the, because I think if you would have asked me two years ago, Eric, would you be willing to quit your job?

Just right then and there…And I would say no, you’re crazy.

But I think over two years of learning and realizing that, you know, the nine to five, the job, the career that people you know, you go to school, you go to college. And it’s like this idea that you have to have this job, you have to go down this career. Like, I don’t think I was ready at that point two years ago, just to say, No, I’m done with that. Right?

I think over two years, you just mentally prepare yourself for, hey, there are there are other things you can do in this world. There’s other other jobs you can do. There’s other ways to make money than what you’ve always traditionally thought we had just went on vacation for Fourth of July. And I looked at my wife, I said, you know, all these people around here, you know, they look generally pretty happy.

And they’re not doing what I’m doing. And I think it was that realization that if you’re not happy with where you are in your job, you can build a way out of that. And I think it just took me two years to one, save up and have finances, the finances to do it.

But then really that mental peace, like getting in your own head like now I can’t do this. I’ve, I’ve worked my entire career to get to this point.

Because the position that I’m stepping down from like, I’m at the top of where I’ve always wanted to be. And then sometimes you realize when you’re at the top, like the view, isn’t that great? Yeah, totally. I mean,

Pete McPherson 22:42
that’s like a good soundbite. I’m gonna put that at the top of the show there. I love that.

Before I talk about the plan. I this just came up not in my notes. I’m curious, though, will say that are other people out there listening who are at the top or not, they think they want to quit their jobs, like corporate job, their full gig and do other stuff with us blogging, freelance and starting a small business or all the above, like whatever that looks like, and will say there, they don’t have the freedom fund, so to speak.

How can YOU prepare to go full-time?

Can you give like a tip or two on how they might start today in preparation for like, two to three years from now?

Like, is there anything they can do in the next, like, 24 hours to just take that first baby step to getting to that point? Either financially or mentally? By the way?

Eric 23:27
Yeah, the simplest advice is start.

And what if one of the things I don’t know if I’ve shared with you is tried different things. Like blogging isn’t the first thing that I tried to do to make money off online. Like before, before blogging, like I had run Facebook ads, I was, I don’t know if you know, t spring where you can design t shirts.

And then you know, people buy them.

So before my blog, like I was outsourcing to for a specific niche, and then targeting that niche in with Facebook ads.

So making some profit there. But it was one of those things where it’s like, you know, I wasn’t, it didn’t really push me. And then before that I was trying something else and before, like, you start so that person who’s looking, they’re in a career right now, think about, you know, when you’re doing a side hustle, like, It’s alright, if you fail, just fail fast. And then try something new.

Like, don’t just give up because you failed on your first adventure. Now think of you know, whether it be blogging, whether it be you know, Amazon affiliate, whether it be Facebook, side, hustle, you know, doing ads, or podcasting, I mean, there are a lot of different ways to make money, try a couple until you get good at one of them like that.

Pete McPherson 24:47
And one more note from Pete here, lest anybody with shiny object syndrome, I.e. me, I’m your homeboy, Pete, by the way, all those out there with shiny object syndrome.

Yes, Eric is coming, try new things, but don’t do what I did, which is always look for a reason something failed, I would always look for now the sudden that that didn’t make a whole lot of money.

Even when I like had like, some real successes and my own online business adventures, I was always really quick to say, Oh, no, that wasn’t good enough, let me try something completely different.

And I think that’s actually a bad way to go about it, I think that a better way to go about it, is to try a bunch of different things.

But always be on the lookout for, oh, wait, there’s something here, this is a positive sign, there could be an opportunity here, look for small ways in which something does work. Rather than doesn’t work. I’m just gonna throw that in there. I wrote about this in a past blog post.

But there you go. Thank you, Eric.

What’s Eric’s current blog monetization strategy for making this work?

Switching gears a little bit, I’d love to hear a little bit more about your current strategy, the current plan now that you, you’re officially quit, today’s day number one of the the first day of the rest of your life, Eric, not to be too corny there. So what’s the plan? Give me the overall strategy now.

Eric 26:02
So like, really trying to be strategic in in one aspect, but then also trying to think, you know, big picture. So when you have a, you know, a real job, quote, unquote, real job, and then you’re doing a side hustle, you know, you have some income coming in from this.

And then you have your side hustle income. He, you mentioned that the internet may not crash and die, I completely agree. But what might happen is Pinterest stops loving you or Google stops loving your competitor comes in and takes your keywords and then your ranking goes down, and then your one income, cash flow is completely gone.

Pete McPherson 26:45
Right.

Eric 26:45
So I’m going to try to spread out and create multiple cash flows.

Because if one of those cash flows, you know, crashes and burns, it’s alright, because I have three other ones or I have four other ones, it’s coming that same mentality of you know, I have this real job, and I have this side income job, you know, you have to cash flows, if one of them were to go away, you still have the other one coming in.

So, you know, I kind of like bucket it out of different things that I want to do, to kind of bring in some of those. So, you know, high five dad is is like the one big project that, you know, if I, if I’m thinking about it in terms of my my job, like that’s my my main job now.

And so that’s, you know, increasing article output, obviously, researching keywords, and being able to find the affiliates that match my message.

And my group, because affiliate income will help, you know, not just focus on the traffic piece, and then really redefine the site to tell my story more, which you know, involves quitting my job and using the income, they based upon saving and budgeting that I was able to take this adventure, and then using that kind of that story, through email marketing, to really start segmenting my list to groups that want to make money, and then groups that want to save money.

Okay, from there, you can then use, you know, whether I’m creating a digital product, or creating a printable or, or some sort of other cash flow opportunity within there.

So now, you know, let’s say that there’s a group on my list that are all about making money. Well, you know, I can either pitch them all the different side hustle affiliates out there, so whether that’s one of your courses, whether that’s Bobby’s courses, or whether that’s whoever’s courses out there, you know, targeting there, or do I bring them in and kind of nurture them and, you know, help them create their own blog and do coaching.

So that that’s one like half, that’s one revenue source.

And then for the other group, you know, who said money, they, you know, they want principles, they want budget, guys, they want booklets they want, you know, maybe one on one coaching on how to save money.

So that’s one of those, you know, income flow, so that that’s where I’m going with high five dad. But then also, I think it’s important to have, you know, other sources of income. So like, these are my side hustlers for my blog now.

So that’s, you know, creating a traffic site, you know, something that may be that, you know, super passionate about, but I know will do really well in traffic, so that I can just, you know, just basically, you know, working on trying to get income from traffic. So it’s not super passionate, but I know it would work. So just outsourcing some article creation and being able to get some income there. And then also working on Facebook advertising.

So that’s been big.

For me, just personally, you know, some of the ways that made money early, and then some of the ways I was able to grow my blog, like, I know how to do that. And I know I can help you there, whether it’s bloggers or other local businesses, use Facebook advertising to grow their business.

Pete McPherson 30:15
Okay, so answer me this. Eric, are you planning to work on all these things full time now?

Like, are you going to be working roughly like eight hours a day going forward on this business?

Eric 30:27
I mean, since this is the only source of income of them bringing in, it will probably be the same amount of time that I would be at a regular job.

You know, so I, I’ve kind of sketched out a small idea of like, what my day would look like, just to make sure that I’m accountable. Because, you know, my wife is taking the adventure with me too. And I don’t want her to think that I’m just sitting on the couch all day. So really being passionate and really being focused on growing these different projects forward. I think, you know, working on it from nine to five, and then when the kids go to bed doing the same sort of hustle that was doing, growing, growing the blog, you know, once the kids go to bed, then continuing working on on that business until it is successful.

Pete McPherson 31:12
Okay, that’s awesome. I think we had responded to this. I’m gonna wrap this up here, Eric.

But do you want to do like a follow up call to just kind of discuss how like, how things are going show off? What an awesome blogger you became, since you were a terrible blogger, apparently, the worst of the interview, and now you can be an awesome blogger.

You want to do one of those? And if so, when do you think would be a great time to like schedule that in?

Eric 31:34
Yeah, I think that would be great.

I’m trying to think what would be a good time frame, whether we do in six months, or what we do in three months? But just kind of checking in on me to see, you know, did I think I made the worst decision of my career, and I’m regretting it now.

Or if things are all roses, and I’m out there, you know, making a million dollars, or I think it’ll probably be somewhere in the middle where it’s a struggle. But I’m seeing I’m beginning to start seeing sciences success. I’m down.

Pete McPherson 32:05
Yeah, let’s do like four months, four months, not quarterly. That’s like, a little bit too soon. But six months is a little bit too far. Let’s try like four months. I’ll pencil that in. Well, Eric, first of all, kudos to you, brother like this.

This is awesome.

I just love this story. In general, I’m really glad that you and your wife have kind of done a great job setting this up even before you, you really knew you were setting it up. So kudos to you. I think it’s super exciting. I know you’re probably going to get like some nervous breakdown, maybe like a week from now or something like that. But you’ll bounce back.

And I just also want to thank you for you know, being vulnerable, sharing where you’re at sharing how this went down. And looking forward to see where this goes.

Eric 32:45
Thank you.

Pete McPherson 32:45
Thanks for coming on.

Listen to my episode with Bethany Bayless

Pete
So, Bethany, right here, podcast movement. 2019 in Orlando, Florida. I have the lovely Bethany Bayless. Bethany. Welcome. Thank you, Pete. And thank you also for calling me lovely. I was very nice. Well, you are as are you? You’re right. Very lovely. Okay, so let me start with a story about you. Okay. Before we even met, actually, I saw you on stage. This was maybe fin con two years ago, maybe three years ago. I think it’s two years ago, kind of hosting the Plutus awards. And you were vibrant. You brought like humor, even like, not humiliating.

Bethany 5:14
Self deprication. It’s my specialty. Oh, yeah.

Pete McPherson 5:18
So much energy to the stage. I couldn’t help it be blown away. And the more people I talked to afterwards, they were like, just, like, crushed it. Like she was so good. So I gotta ask, like, Where did your presence on stage like come from is naturally amazing at this?

Or do you have lots of experience with that? Give me your like, I’m awesome. I have a presence background. Where’d this come from?

Bethany 5:42
I feel like it’s a much longer story. And like part of it is one that I like a conversation I have with my therapist as well, because it goes so deep. It goes so deep. But I, as a child, even my parents make a joke that I was born out of the womb with jazz hands.

And like, I was just like, “I’m here!”

And like, even at the age of two, I would be a toddler walking around. And once my parents tell the story all the time. And they were like, we’re missing Bethany. We don’t know where she is. Where did she go. And they went into this other room of the restaurant. And they see me going from table to table to table making them smile. And then I when I was done, my face just went from a smile to All right, I’m done here. Let’s go.

Like completely, that’s just always been who I am.

I also grew up in a military family. So we moved around quite a bit. And so it required me to make friends with people. So I feel like that developed my personality and a lot of ways of being comfortable in new situations of being comfortable in something that might be out of my comfort zone because I was frequently being ripped from my comfort zone.

And I when I was younger, I started getting into acting and getting into theatre and like that was my dream, right? Like, I wanted to be on Broadway, I wanted to be like the scene like my, I had like an Ethel Merman like Google, like voice. And I would always try to be the comedic relief, because I also found that the way for me to make friends is to make them laugh.

And making them laugh is something that always just connects you with someone. It’s like this humor that you share. And I always noticed that I had the ability to do that to make people laugh.

And so getting into the the humor roles was like I was typecast. Okay, in that, right? Like, that was always who I was. But that was also where I got a presence on stage.

Okay, fast forward many, many years, I wanted to be in radio, I wanted to do these things. And I had been working in a job that ended very abruptly and I had to go home. And I had to live with my family again, and my mom at the time, she’s been in this space longer than I have, for over 25 years. She’s done financial education, all of these things. And so I learned so much of what I know from her.

And we started these events together, where we would go onto military bases, and we would teach them financial education. And so she asked me like, hey, I need someone who’s been high energy to be an MC. Can you do this?

Because they had an event…I wasn’t there. I had to like go somewhere. And the US local talent, and the ladies are like, “okay, yeah, well, everybody, welcome. We’re really excited…”

She’s like, I need not that, like, I need high energy. These are military service members, they don’t want to be here. They are not having fun and financial education. Not the most exciting Disney World topic, right? Like, it’s not something that’s going to be exciting. So the very first time that I went on stage, I was like manic I was like I said, amazing, probably five, literally 500 times, like, it’s gonna be amazing, amazing. Amazing!!

it was just like, all the things I did horribly wrong,

right. But the energy was there, right. And so after doing a few of them, I kept I was able to start reading my audience, I was able to connect with them in like, a conversation of like, harkening back to the making people laugh and having this conversation and being able to make jokes and feeling like they’re on my side, you know, like, my audience is on my side, they want me to do well, they don’t, I don’t think audiences want to see someone get up there and bomb, like, that’s not a fun thing for anyone, you know, like, being nervous or being uncomfortable, they feel that energy from you.

And so I started we did about 52 events in the course of a few years. And it was just a lot of work, a lot of practice. And when the opportunity came up, I was like, You know what, this is way out of my comfort zone, like this is going to be the scariest thing that I think I’ve done up into this point. And which, which also includes having to speak in front of fully armed, like military members, which is a whole other story for another day.

But it was one of those things that I felt in my element I felt in my space. My audience were my friends, they were on my side, and I just had so much fun with it, you know, so much fun with it.

And I love it. That’s where my happy place is.

Pete McPherson 10:09
Okay. So I love this. Thank you so much.

Bethany 10:12
There’s a lot of backstory.

Pete McPherson 10:13
No, that’s perfect. Yeah, part of what I really wanted to talk to you about is, first of all, you’re a natural. I think anybody who’s seen you on stage and or interacted with you at these conferences in person has realized, you’re probably a natural at this.

You’re a funny person. You’re beyond comedy and making people laugh. You’re also an interesting person. If there’s anything we can say about Bethany is that she is not boring.

Bethany 10:38
Thank you so much.

Pete McPherson 10:40
Okay, so hang on. Oh, okay. No, no, I’m about to get serious here.

You are an Instagram three zone type? Yeah, yes, we are the performer is what they call us.

So part of what I wanted to get out of you and just talk about I don’t know, you don’t have to have any specific answers because I don’t either, but I want to talk it through how we met might be able to help other people listening to this who go to fin con or go to podcast movement, like the conference we’re at right now.

How they can be better at meeting. Like I said, like, be more funny be more interesting, but how can they? How they could do better at meeting people standing out being memorable?

Yeah, maybe Yeah. Or just otherwise making an impression. In person specifically, I think most people can kind of put on the show, when they’re behind the microphone there podcasting, or in their writing, they have time to think it through and kind of make things engaging or interesting in person is like, kind of a hold of a ballgame, right?

Bethany 11:36
Yes.

Pete McPherson 11:36
And you were excellent in person. So right off the bat, no questions. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of other people out there who might need to…

Who wants to stand out more at events, meet people easier? Make impressions with brands? Like Connect there? What are some of your initial thoughts here?

Unknown Speaker 11:53
My very first thought when you said that, because I I have had conversations with people who will come up to me and say, “Oh, my gosh, I want to have as much energy as you are. I want to be as funny as you are. I want to be you or like you or whatever.”

Pete McPherson 12:08
To be you…

Unknown Speaker 12:12
We’re gonna see like a bunch of people wearing red glasses. They like

Pete McPherson 12:17
her multicolored glasses. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 12:20
It’s one of my secrets. But

Pete McPherson 12:22
I have a secret to this called birthmark.

I didn’t realize until later in life, but that’s like one instant way to kind of stand out to people when they first meet me. They see a birthmark on my left cheek, which you’ve known me for well, an hour. It’s kind of invisible.

Bethany 12:34
You forget that it’s there.

Pete McPherson 12:36
But people stands out. Just like red glasses. You’re the only person here with a glass. Yeah. little secret sauce.

Bethany 12:41
Yeah, it’s a it’s a secret sauce, for sure. But I wasn’t born with these unfortunately.

Like a baby that and then he like with red glasses. Gonna be my T shirts one day. She’s like the red classes coming out of the womb with jazz hands. I can see it now.

But the very first thing that I think about, I remember going through this phase, not phase my life really of me trying to figure out like who I am, right?

I have had so many people come up to me and say like, you’re too much. You’re too this, you’re to that. And I’ve always just like, but that’s like, that’s always been who I am. I’m not being anyone but me. And you’re telling me that I as an individual. And as a person, I am wrong somehow. Right? And so it’s started this like identity crisis of like, well, then if I can’t be me, like, Who should I be? Like, who should I be like, who do I want to be like, What? What?

Where should I cut back? Where should I trim? Where should I edit and post?

Pete McPherson 13:44
Like, to appeal to more people…

Bethany 13:45
To appeal to more people? Exactly.

And it got to a point where I got so emotionally tied up with that identity of who? Who am I like the famous Zoo lander quote, and he’s staring into a pedal. And I’m like, really? Who am I and what makes me me and give myself permission to be that, like, if everybody in these this world were a bunch of Bethany’s, we wouldn’t have no voices.

As you can tell. We’d be running around like crazy people, and we’d all probably be over sensitive and getting mad at everyone. Because the thing is, I don’t want anyone to be like me. I want people to be like them. Yes. And I have had people come up to me there is a gentleman that’s in my Toastmasters group, I go to Toastmasters. It’s a realist speaking club, where it’s

Pete McPherson 14:32
podcast for another day. Oh my gosh.

Bethany 14:36
I highly recommend it.

Like cut to the chase. I highly recommend it. And my Toastmaster group is like a family. Right? We have like the weird and we have like the grandfatherly figures like my mom is like everyone’s mom, like my mom, I go to the same Toastmasters group.

And there’s a gentleman who I highly respect, and I highly revere, and he’s a very quiet, very reserved man. And that’s his personality. That’s who he is. But he is the most beautiful storyteller I have ever met in my life. And when he speaks, every single time, I get emotional, and I get moved, and I get touched by his stories and and the things that He is survived. He is an African American man who lived during segregation he lived during the everything that went down, he lived in Florida, look at the south where things were not.

He moved out to California and one of the one of the very first NASA New Yorkers who worked at NASA and even their encounter discrimination. He’s mentioned in the Hidden Figures book, like because of who he is. Could you imagine and he comes up he goes, I need your energy. I need your, your, your vibrancy. And I was like, please don’t do not be me be the best version of you and use those strengths. What are you good at? Are you good at storytelling? Are you good at connecting? Are you like a total nerd that if you see a dude wearing a Star Wars shirt, you are now best friends? Like Is that who you are? embrace that? Be confident in who you are? And then work it? Yes, work it however it is.

Pete McPherson 16:16
You know, you’re not actually the only person to ever have this conversation with me. I just remembered this last year. I think on Jillian from Montana. many adventures, my really good friend. Hello, Jillian..

Bethany 16:27
Hi, Jillian.

Pete McPherson 16:29
Thank you for listening to the podcast.

No, she told me this last year. I don’t even remember how we started talking about it. But she’s like, you know who I really like? I like the people who are just themselves. But more. So yeah, I use that, that I use that phrase a lot. Be yourself. But only more so yeah. And she was specifically talking about meeting some, some quieter people, some more introspective people and she had one person in mind. I have no idea who she was even referring to.

But this one dude was not only like a little shy, a little quiet. But he was really shy and really quiet. But for whatever reason, like when they talked and they like met each other and said hello and introduced each other. He was like, really confident in it. He wasn’t like shy, like scared and fearful. It was he was just a quiet, introspective. Yeah, slow to speak person, very nonverbal, intentional, which was like right up Julian’s alley. And she’s like, you know what, I just love reading people who are just themselves, but only only more, so I love it in themselves.

Bethany 17:29
I want to have a T shirt that says that, can we make those t shirts? That’d be awesome. That would be because I think that’s a beautiful way of putting it. And I think it also has to do with confidence and not letting others dictate what you should be doing.

You know, like, when people tell me I’m too much, or I have too much energy, or I’m too whatever. It’s like, according to your standards. Right? Like, I’m sorry, whose standards? Are we judging here? Because it’s not everyone’s standards. And my I had to also realize I am not everyone’s cup of tea. And that is just fine. Yeah.

Pete McPherson 18:06
Well, it takes courage to get past that point. Yes, by the way, especially as enneagram threes…

Bethany 18:10
Oh, my gosh, this is the conversation of my therapist, too. Okay.

Pete McPherson 18:17
Me too. Yeah, we are. We don’t like to be disliked and judged and feel like failures. Three is we don’t like that. But I do think that applies to just about everybody else in some degree. Absolutely. Especially introvert podcasters. And bloggers who come to these conferences, start meeting people.

Bethany 18:35
And here’s the thing, if you…one–it requires a lot of self awareness. Right. So I’m one of these people that I love learning about personality tests. I love learning about introverts and extroverts, and what makes us us and what I’m like and what, what I can do and how I can analyze those things about myself so that I know myself better, right DNA or Graham was a great tool for that. And I don’t want this to become an Instagram podcast, because I can very quickly look it up because I can just nerd on it all day long.

I love it because it has so helped me unlock why I do the things that I do.

And it gives me a little bit more perspective about who I am and how I can be the best me that I can be. And something else is like if you know that you are an introvert and like you’re going to this conference and you need your downtime, you need your recharging, don’t feel like you “should,” should be doing fill in the blank, I just want us to take that out of our vocabulary, like you should be doing what according to who, yeah, don’t think that you should be hate meeting people going on the exhibit floor, I think I should do this, I’m going to do that.

That’s not the best for you. If you feel like one day, you want to check the piece out. Like just just check out do nothing and go to a coffee shop or sit in your room, take a nap do whatever you need to do. So that you can be your best self and your you that you can be the do that and be strategic about it, plan it out in the future, you know ahead of time, this is the day these are not the sessions I want to go to this is a day for the time I need as who I am.

Pete McPherson 20:13
And let me just actually, that’s just such an important point in general, I want to underscore that for a second. A lot of people, they they understand, oh, I need to be meeting people, oh, I need to be social. And that’s fine.

And then they kind of reach that breaking point. As an introvert, I know exactly where my breaking point is and what it starts to feel like because I literally have trouble smiling at people who are talking to me anymore. I’m just like, you can’t see me right now I’m drowning. That’s why like, I get to that point. And it took me a long time to realize this, I am doing myself a huge disadvantage by staying out there. By out there. I mean, like walking around conferences, meeting people, or even attending sessions for that matter in two different ways.

One, I look like more of an a-hole, not smiling and engaging and talking with people the way I can when I’m on my game. And then number two, I’m not setting myself for future success. After I go and get my rest time.

Now I’m in this like extended period of half fastness. Yes, if that makes the sound, I would guess I should go back, I should map for an hour or just stare at the wall for an hour, which is usually what I end up doing. And when I come back, I’m like so much more refreshed and extra get on my game again.

Bethany 21:20
100% there have been times that even I like I look at conferences.

Let me just tell everybody, what I love to do is go out, drink with my friends hang out to wild, crazy things end up not going to bed till three or four o’clock in the morning. It’s a very common conference thing, especially when you make really great connections. And especially I have started to realize, you know what, I probably shouldn’t do that if I’m working at a conference.

And it’s not it’s not because I don’t want people to judge me or things like oh my gosh, that girl. It’s more like if I want to be the best that I can be. I need to plan like, okay this night. Totally. Let’s do it. This night. I am I have accountability. And they are saying Bethany, it is time for you to go to bed.

We’re over, we’re done. Go do what you need to do. Because again, it’s the same thing. I want to be the best that I can be.

Pete McPherson 22:12
I like that. Let me ask you this, then let’s this will start to transition. One thing you said I don’t even remember what you said was like 10 minutes ago now. But I made a mental bookmark to come back to it. And that was kind of he didn’t say the words intentional, but kind of be intentional about what it is you’re after from these conferences. I said exactly like that, but you’re kind of hinting at it. So let me actually just start with you. from a personal standpoint, you well now you do some more speaking and emceeing and or hosting, if you will.

But outside of that specifically, what are some of your goals to be for Justin con, or just podcast movement or conferences in general? Like why do you come to these things? What are you aiming to get out of it? Well, search term and long term.

Bethany 22:55
This is a great question because conferences are my favorite.

Like they are the best best thing ever. And I’ve my I feel like my conference, culture, my conference, attitude etiquette, whatever has evolved over time, the very first conference I ever went to, is a fun story. There’s a press conference I ever went to I was 12 years old.

My mom took me on a business trip. She wanted me to act as like her personal assistant, but also as a way for me to kind of like interact in this world. Spend time with her and see. And she goes alright, Bethany, I have a book signing on Friday at noon. Your one job, this entire conference is to get people in line for that books. I mean, I had a job ahead of time though, right?

I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. And then I like hit the floor. And I just made friends with everyone.

Like I walked around the exhibition hall. And like, every single booth, I stopped, I talked to them. I told them about what my little 12 year old life was like, and I just became best friends. I was like, by the way, my mom is having a book signing, will you come to that book signing. And she kept telling me that was the one of the longest lines out of any book signing in the entire conference that that year.

And every other person goes, “Oh, I met Bethany. Bethany was here. She’s the one who told me to come to this. She’s the one who be here.”

And so that was like my first my first realization of a conferences, you are there to connect with people.

And that is something you cannot do anywhere else.

Like I can’t do that at a coffee shop. Like Could you imagine like, if I went up to a stranger sitting in a coffee shop? Oh my gosh, tell me all about you, please. I want to do everything. Like that might be a little. But yeah, a little. What is my word stalker eat like it’s a little too much. But in this environment, everyone is waiting for that. Everyone wants that they want to connect with people want to see where things can lead. That’s my number one thing when I go to a conference is connecting with people is my number one goal.

My number two goal is learning things. So things like at fin con or podcast movement. I love learning about this craft that I do. I love how I can get better. But you know what I learned through meeting people to Yes, so it’s two goals. And if I miss a session that I really wanted to go to that is okay. Because either one, I can watch it later, or two, I don’t need it anyway. And I’m going to find that out through these relationships that I’m having through connecting with people. And the thing is that I wanted to add really quickly is that when I meet people, is very rarely that thing where I go up to them and just like Tell me everything which happens.

But I think some of the most relationships.

I’m really bad at that sometimes, especially if I’m alone, I usually have I have a friend with me to be that outgoing, no lie.

Um, but I also realize that the times that I meet people are the stupidest silliest, little ways. And those become some of my best relationships that I’ve ever had.

One, I mean, like, maybe I’m standing in line to get a drink at the bar. And like the person in front of me, I’m just like, oh, man, this line is taking forever, like, whatever, and just strike up that conversation, and then develop a friendship have that genuine connection. And then don’t talk about work right away. Like, I want to know you as a person, like you have value as a person, besides anything that you do, because I want that for me.

You know, I don’t want people to go look at my numbers and be like, Oh, well, she’s not worth my time. Right.

Like I one of my my biggest annoyances is when people meet me ahead of time, discount me, if they don’t know who I am, or whatever, like, look at a place like think on, they discount me they ignore me, they blow me off or whatever, because I can’t do anything for them.

Then they say me emcee. And then they’re my best friend afterwards, that’s not going to be my friend.

The person who’s going to be my friend is the girl that I met in the tea line today, when we both had a thing of tea, and just connected because this like, stupid is like little like, Oh my gosh, this honey is too sticky or like something like that.

Those are the people I love connecting with. And those are the people that I will talk to you afterwards. Because you have value, apart from what you do. You have value as a person who you are, despite how many followers you have on Instagram, despite how many podcast downloads that you have, you are valued for who you are. And I want to treat other people that way.

Because that’s how I want to be treated. And that’s, you know, a very old rule that people have. And ultimately, that’s my biggest goal, going to conferences is connecting with people learning from them developing relationships that are not only good for now. But those relationships I’ve made have helped me grow in my business. They’ve helped me grow as a person, they’ve helped me mature, to become just the best version that I can be even more.

Pete McPherson 28:04
Okay, can I chime in? You said like three things that like, I don’t have any notes in front of me, which is usually a bad thing, because I’ll forget things like

Bethany 28:15
Just write on the table. They don’t need it. Like a white linen tablecloth,

Pete McPherson 28:22
No. So I I’m gonna try to get to these three bullet points, because I think they’re pretty low hanging fruit for most people who don’t consider themselves rock star like connectors, right? Either super extroverted or super good at when, when people are.

Three things. One, all these conferences, you’re going to get the question like, tell me about your blog. What do you do about your business, whatever, that’s great. That’s fine.

If you’re not a super Rockstar connector, if you don’t really want to talk for like 10 minutes about your thing. So a lot of people don’t, they’ll start off and then pretty quickly, they’ll be like, a little introverted, or I don’t know this is going Am I just randomly my babbling? Yeah,

yeah. One thing you can do is just ask questions. No one does it. Okay. Everybody knows this. This is like the most blatantly “thanks Pete. I’m glad I’m listening to this podcast. Learn about other people ask questions to other people curious and other people.”

And yet, it’s funny how we catch ourselves. Like, I’ve been babbling for seven and a half minutes now. And oh, this is awkward now, because I just realized it. And now I don’t know what to do. And now just coming to these conversations, new people, especially like new connections, especially old friends, you know, I have to do it as much, but new people especially ask questions.

Listen. Let me say that again. Listen, like actually, listen, not like checking out looking for Pat Flynn walking around the dance floor, because you want to get as like selfie all around,

Bethany 29:49
which I want. I’m looking for Guy Raz right now.

Pete McPherson 29:51
I’m looking for Guy Raz too. Is he supposed to speak like tomorrow or today?

But ask questions. So easy, but people just go to and by the way, you don’t ask questions about their business, you can ask questions about their tea, or their red glasses or their gum. And you know what? It’s not weird. No, it’s not weird. In fact, it’s interesting.

Bethany 30:09
So I love this because this is a classic art of conversation tip. Yes, it is an art of conversation. And my mom has this role. And I’m totally outing her right now.

So everyone’s going to know, but we’ve talked about on her own podcast, so that’s okay. But she has this thing that she calls the 20 question game. And so it’s the 10 question game. But sometimes she gives a lot of grace and extends it to a 20 question games before. I mean, every once while she’s like, extended to the 50 question game, and they still failed.

But the 10 question game, if she’s having a conversation with someone, and she has asked them 10 questions about themselves. And they have not asked her one question about her to realize is that might not necessarily be an interaction or a connection that she’s interested in having. Because they, they can come get out of themselves and ask about someone else.

Does that make sense?

Pete McPherson 31:04
I think so.

Bethany 31:05
And so I’ve always noticed that I’m asking a lot of questions. I’m, you know, I’m interested. But are they paying me the same respect? Right? are they paying me the same interest and, and the curiosity in order because relationships are a two way street?

And if we can’t do this at the very beginning, then I don’t know if there are some people who never asked question about me. Yes. And it’s okay, I’m not self absorbed, maybe I don’t know. But it’s one of those things that is a given a take. And if we can’t give and take even in that, it’s just then it’s not a good sign for the future.

Pete McPherson 31:39
And it’s also one of those things where you don’t want to spend the entire conferences one person that’s like an extreme, but you also don’t want to spend like 45 minutes with one person. If you feel that’s the vibe.

You have a tip, I ready for this. I’m so ready for this is not even so, I actually don’t know if I would encourage people to do this. This is my secret sauce. Gonna be open to the public. I don’t really want to share.

Bethany 32:00
We’re spilling all the tea. You know, my guts.

Pete McPherson 32:02
This is my conference hack. Okay, this is for introverts, mostly, but extroverts could use this as well.

You will find yourself undoubtedly, in a conversation with somebody who you do not want to be in a conversation. Maybe you need to go to the men’s room. Maybe you see Bethany walking across the floor. Say hey, what or maybe it’s just super awkward. And you’re done. You’ve asked your 10 questions this person’s like rambling on about the grandmothers podcast started in 1982. Anyway, get away. You ready for the tip?

Bethany 32:32
So ready.

Pete McPherson 32:34
If you grab anybody nearby and introduce them and then back away slowly.

Bethany 32:39
Oh my gosh, I’ve done this so much. I did it to my friend Lacey three times the same person. Okay, well, that’s just so mad at me. Like you’ve already introduced.

Pete McPherson 32:50
Yes.

Bethany 32:51
So, but it is so good. That’s a great tip.

Pete McPherson 32:55
You will be known as a connector. Yeah, a whole who just walked away slowly backwards. But introduce people and connect people. It’s, it’s actually, it seems like a little bit of a whole thing to do when I present it like that. Like, if you don’t talk to this person. just introduce them to somebody else and back away, but it’s actually still a good thing. It’s beneficial for all parties involved.

Bethany 33:13
So is that what happened when you pulled over you know that one guy that one time and you’re like, “All right, bye.” I’m sorry.

No, that wasn’t?

Pete McPherson 33:26
Oh, actually, I gotta wrap up the talk show guy who’s letting me podcast he just gave me the the wrap up saying Okay, so I know it’s a little weird. Let’s do a round two sometimes soon.

Yeah, I think I should get this podcast episode up before I thought this would be super beneficial for people. I need to do that. I want to make that happen. Bethany, where can people find you? Besides on the expo hall?

Where can they find you on the internet and connect with you?

Bethany 33:52
I absolutely love connected with my people. Again, it’s my favorite thing so please find me at The Money Milhouse is our podcast, but if you want to connect to my personal brand, is that ways if you want to connect with my personal page, go to at Bethany Bayless on Instagram. That’s the number one way I love connecting with you.

Pete McPherson 34:10
Okay, at Bethany Bayless on Instagram. That’s right, The Money Milhouse podcast. go download it.

Bethany 34:15
Thank you so much, Pete.

Listen to my episode with Krissy Eliot

Krissy 3:35
Thanks, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete 3:37
I am happy to have you on as well. So is it okay, if I just start off by reading a little bit of your backstory?

Krissy 3:45
Oh, my God, of course.

Pete 3:46
Okay. So you had sent me a few emails quite regularly. It would be like I think like, a whole couple of hours by itself. Just me being curious about some of the writing gigs and journalism gets you’ve helped in the past. And we probably won’t have time to discuss all that. But I do, bro. Throw it out there only because I find it fascinating. I’m fairly certain I’ll find you fascinating. Everybody else will as well. So I’m just gonna read some of these out.

First of all, Bigfoot. You have a Bigfoot blog slash obsession, which I’ll let you give us some, some details about and we can rant on a little bit. You have also kind of gotten into journalism. Almost by mistake, I think you said like you, you studied Film and Media.

But you went to be a sex columnist at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Bay Area reporter if I remember correctly, and some other gigs.

And you have since moved on to working for a company which we don’t really want to name here on this podcast for just confidentiality reasons, but you now do even more journalism, I guess, but also a little bit of marketing and copywriting. And I don’t know if you’ve done a lot. That’s what I really wanted to say here.

My first question is just want to like warm everybody up Bigfoot. Where did this obsession come from? And how did you end up like writing about this? A lot.

Krissy 5:08
Okay, so my Bigfoot origin story is okay, so it started when I saw a film festival sign at the Balboa Theatre in San Francisco Bigfoot Film Festival, Bigfoot Bonanza, actually, and my boyfriend is super into the X Files and all this stuff.

And he’s like, Oh, we should totally go and check out this Bigfoot saying, I’m like, All right, let’s go. So I didn’t particularly believe in Bigfoot. When I went in. I thought it was kind of a bunch of crap.

But when I went in, and I listened to the speakers talk before their films, and all these people who are enthusiastic about Bigfoot being a possibility. When I left, I believed even less.

Pete 6:02
That was unexpected there. Okay. Yeah.

Krissy 6:06
Yeah, so for a while, I was just like, this is ridiculous. But something about it hooked me. And at the time, I was an editor, California magazine, which is UC Berkeley’s mag.

And so my beat was kind of UC Berkeley. Well, while googling Bigfoot, I figured out that Grover Krantz who graduated from Berkeley and his anthropologist, well known anthropologist, stead now, but he was the first scientist to come out in support of the search for Sasquatch. And he was an amazing character. And I just absolutely fell in love with him. He, he had sympathy for the believers. And he really got into it. And he just dedicated his life to it.

So I got obsessed with him. But then I started going down this rabbit hole, I started talking to these other scientists who are saying, actually, it’s not that crazy that Bigfoot could be a thing, which just blew my mind. I just kept going and going and going. And I had written four articles in California magazine on Bigfoot.

And it just blew up online.

I think, actually, probably to date. These are published, maybe a year and a half ago, they’re still some of the top articles for California magazine on the site, people are interested. And they started getting all this fan mail. From all these people who believed in believe went to Berkeley, you know, academics, not academics, and they were like, your writing is really amazing.

We’ve never seen Bigfoot covered in this way, you know, you should do something with this. You should write about this more, you should write a book.

And I was like, You know what, I think I’m going to do that.

So I started this blog. I called it hotalien.com The reasons for that I won’t go into now, but I’m just really into, like, strange things. And I just wanted away to be able to write about this stuff, without an editor somewhere telling me “Oh, no, this is ridiculous. You shouldn’t write about this,” which is something I ran into a lot.

Also, I just want no filter. I want to write about Bigfoot, filter less,

Pete 8:23
Actually have a takeaway, based on what you just said.

And I told this to a lot of people that feel like constraints somehow, when it comes to like, their own blog, and like the topics they write about, because they’re thinking about SEO, and like, oh, Google’s gonna don’t like me, if I don’t talk about this, or, oh, you know, I’m not gonna be able to attract people, it’ll niche down or do whatever, which is fine.

And maybe those things are true. But more often than not, I’m like, this is your website and your blog, and you actually get to run it however the heck you want.

That’s like, incredibly freeing, liberating, I don’t know. But what I was gonna say, and I’m talking to the audience, now, look up to the camera here.

One of the reasons I will wanted you to come on when I read those emails, and I learned about the booklet content, as well as just your background in journalism, something you said stuck out. And you actually said it right before we start recording as well. Hang on, I wrote it down here.

“Talking about more complicated stuff, and making it less complicated and less boring.”

And the tagline to hotalien.com, I’m gonna curse here. Serious writing weird ship. Something I was intrigued by was all of the almost like crazy topics was not crazy. But it’s just not what you would normally think of when you think of just normal journalism, or even, you know, the people listens podcast, who run their own blogs, more complicated stuff. In your current day job. Again, we will discuss what that is. But it’s like, it’s, it’s not Bigfoot.

You’re writing about very serious things, in my opinion, but a very technical things for that matter, as well as, as well as sex as well as that other stuff. And writing about it in such a way that like appeals to people and appeals to the masses, and a lot of cases. I think that’s an incredible talent. And that’s part of the reason I have you on.

So just want to tell the audience that and share it with you as well.

Krissy 10:14
Well, I appreciate that. But also, we can say I am writing for an aerospace company. Okay, so I write about aerospace and rocket science,

Pete 10:25
rocket science, I like that.

So Krissy, where do I want to start, this is really fun. You also sent me like a bunch of things you could talk about on the podcast, which I literally just copied and pasted, because they were all pretty good.

There’s like five bullet points I kind of wanna talk about, all related to that idea of like, translating stuff that people may not care about, or may not even want to read about, etc, or might feel intimidated or overwhelmed by, and then making that something cool and entertaining and engaging. I just wanna let you know, that’s the theme of this podcast episode here.

So I’m going to read what you said. And then this is bullet point number one here, you wrote “but I could talk about journalism, and how to write about weird topics and strange subcultures and a credible way that will earn you respect,” as you said, and how to do the exact opposite of what your mother and elders tell you to do, and to succeed.

I like that said, it’s but let’s, let’s get back to the first part here.

So how, if you had to write us a little blog posts live right here on the podcast, how to take weird topics, or strange subcultures or even Southern like, super complicated stuff, and write the right about them in a credible way that will earn your respect. What would be the couple of tips that you would give us for that?

Krissy 11:37
Well, number one, leave your opinion out of whatever you’re writing.

And for the sake of journalism, so journalism is supposed to be I know, it doesn’t happen a lot. Now, the way things are going, but journalism, supposed to be facts.

And that’s it. And learning the difference between opinion in fact, is something extremely crucial to conveying the truth. If you show any little bit of your opinion, in a subject that might be considered, “ridiculous,” like Bigfoot, people are going to automatically think that you are an unreliable narrator. So what you want to do is make sure that if you are inserting an opinion, it’s an expert opinion. For example, a folklorist who’s trained, and you know, an example for Bigfoot.

Or a scientist that has actually tested some suppose the Yeti hairs that didn’t turn out to be Yeti, you know, make sure they’re speaking, they’re being quoted, they’re saying the opinions, not you. That’s one piece of advice I would give so that you can stay credible.

The other thing is, you would be really surprised how many studies have been done, that are scientific, or academic about the craziest stuff, you would just never even imagine, there, you can find support for pretty much anything.

You know, it’s just, it’s not. So I would say, do your research, make sure that anything that you’re saying can be linked back to another source? and preferably a credible source? of question?

Pete 13:29
I have a question. Do you also translate both of those things?

Actually, now that I think about it, both using research and other people who are authorities on their subjects or expert opinions or whatever, on your own blog as well? Like, I understand the journalism bit of it, especially if it’s not public information, but you know, what I mean, it’s, you’re expected to give the whole truth to facts and that sort of stuff.

But do you do that on your own blog as well?

Krissy 13:54
I have pieces that are explicitly journals and pieces on my blog, I have made three of those up right now. That, and then, but there are others that are more like a, you know, an opinion column. That’s a different, that’s a completely different thing.

When you’re when you’re reading a newspaper, and you’re reading, you know, you see an opinion column, that’s not necessarily the most journalistic if they’re trying to convince you to do something, then that’s not objectivity. Right?

You know what I mean? That’s just not the what I like about the blog is that I can put my opinion in if I want to, but in terms of, of getting people to trust you as a credible source, just on that subject alone, if you want to start writing about something strange, or you want to, or if you want to write about something really complicated, you know, you have to kind of hold yourself back a little bit.

Pete 14:55
Which is funny, by the way, for all the people out there listening who are trying to be influencers, I don’t really like that word. But what I really mean is they have their personal brand involved and their platforms, whatever the heck it is they’re doing.

It’s funny how like, authority works.

In fact, I think I saw somebody who actually referred to this topic as authority leaching in quotation marks, mainly saying that when you cite reputable sources, when you share research from other people, you know, anything to do with, as long as it’s like, you know, good stuff, and not completely full of crap and fabricated, it actually gives you more authority as well.

So if I were to write a blog post on ABC topic, and I literally did no original research on my own, I literally shared none of my own, like, original advice, or life lessons, or technical values or whatever. I can actually leech authority from other people.

By the way, that’s how I’m, like, super famous for the Do You Even Blog podcast because I interview cool people? And then that authority is like, leached on me. Just something for everybody to think about. That’s all I wanted to say.

But going back to more complicated technical subjects specifically, what about that? Because I feel like that’s probably like a completely different question.

By the way, Krissy, but when it comes to translating super complicated stuff, technical topics, and making it not boring, or readable, do you have any tips for that as well?

Krissy 16:24
Yeah. So in my time, as a journalist, I’ve interviewed a lot of scientists, I’ve written about, you know, things with biology, psychology, aerospace, all this stuff.

And what I found that helps me write in a way that’s palatable to a general audience is when I, when I listened to a scientist talk, they’ll use a lot of jargon, usually, stuff that the general public just doesn’t understand.

But I kind of get it because I read a study before I interviewed them, or whatever, I did some bad background research. When they’re talking to me, they’ll use all this jargon, I’ll take, I’ll take the notes. And when I go and sit down to write a piece, it’s very tempting to just take what they say, take their jargon, and move it over into my piece.

Because this type of jargon isn’t used in everyday life. Okay. But what helps me is sometimes I’ll speak aloud, me explaining it. How would I explain this to myself in my own voice? And then that way, I’m able to sort of say, okay, actually, mine’s better.

What I did what I just said was better. They may sound smarter than me. But nobody else is going to get it. If I write it the way that they do. So there’s that. And I’m not afraid…

Pete 17:48
By the way, My takeaway there is that probably applies to just about every industry and niche and topic and measurable By the way, even even parenting. I was on a yes, I was on apparently blog. Yesterday, the day before.

And I was reading about some disorders, not disease disorders, or whatever. And there was, like so many acronyms in there. I was like, I gotta Google all of these, because I have no idea what this person is talking about, just as an example. But yeah, you’re right, not just aerospace either. Like, that’s just super scientific stuff. That’s pretty much everywhere blogging included. I’ve been accused of that myself in the past on my own stuff. So I’m sorry, keep going. I interrupted.

Krissy 18:27
No, um, the other thing that I was gonna say is, I’m not afraid to ask really dumb questions.

You read a study, and you think, Oh, I understand this. But you don’t. You, you talk to them and you realize, but you’ve completely misunderstood the whole thing. And you realize that by asking them really basic questions to make sure that you understand, and that you understand it thoroughly. It’s not your job.

As a journalist, it’s not your job as a non expert, to sound like the smartest person in the room. In fact, people will be super flattered that you’re taking the time to be thorough, and making sure that everything is accurate.

Scientists get misquoted and misrepresented all the time. It is extremely frustrating for them. And the way that the news is set up now, do you know about the Cuban cricket crisis?

Pete 19:22
I do not. I don’t know anything about the news like whatsoever? Because I like I have to tune it out in 2019. So I don’t I don’t watch us anymore.

Krissy 19:30
No, I don’t blame you.

Pete 19:31
Tell me about the Cuban cricket crisis.

Krissy 19:34
So basically, there was this crisis where a bunch of officials in Cuba claimed that they were victims of what could possibly be a sonic attack.

And they recorded the sounds that they heard. And for a while the news blew up with this is possibly a sonic attack, blah, blah, blah, which it could possibly be, but we don’t know. But it was crickets. So here comes the kicker.

So a scientist at Berkeley, he looked into it, because he’s cricket expert. And he listened to the sounds and he was like, This sound, they heard his crickets, he’s like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t victims of a sonic attack, because they all had these strange symptoms that lasted for like weeks, months, whatever.

Some had headaches, some had memory loss, they did test and there were brain, there’s brain damage. There’s all this crazy stuff.

So just because some of them heard crickets, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a sonic attack, right. But there were a bunch of headlines in “reputable,” news sources that said the sonic attacks were crickets.

But he was pissed. Because and rightfully so. Because that was they were taking what he said and misrepresenting it for their names.

Pete 20:58
You mentioned headlines, which one come back to? That’s one of my questions below because I found your your prompt for this interesting.

But going back one second, do you have any questions that you find yourself asking a lot? Or is it? I know some questions could be very specific, like follow up questions or whatnot, but and all of your, I guess interviewing experience, do you have like a set of questions that are kind of like some go tues just in case you need to, like, dive in and learn a little bit more, or even make the guests feel like they’re being heard, like, do kind of develop like report or empathy or whatnot?

Do you have any, like, favorite questions that you find coming up again, and again and again?

Krissy 21:43
So I have one question that I always ask at the end of every interview. And that is, is there something that I should have asked you, they didn’t ask you, like down?

And usually, and this is also a test, not just the person I’m interviewing, but it’s a test of how good journalists, they say you are very thorough. And that’s, that’s probably because I don’t generally have general questions. I am somebody who over prepares for everything. Sometimes it can be good. Sometimes it can be really horrible. Just spend way too much time on something that I didn’t need to spend that much time on.

But it allows them to also put themselves put themselves into my position. It’s like, what would a what would somebody who’s not an expert want to know?

Pete 22:36
That’s a good question.

Krissy 22:37
Yeah, I feel like it that works really well for me.

Pete 22:39
Okay.

So I didn’t write this down beforehand. But I just kind of thought of it. So you have been a journalist, columnist, writing and a whole bunch of different aspects and blogging or whatnot. I’m curious now. And if you don’t have an answer, that’s totally cool.

What do you want to be when you grow up? You it sounds like you’ve sounds like you want to be like a journalist to your core. Is this correct? Like, what do you want to do in the future?

Sorry, if that’s like a weird question to ask,

Krissy 23:10
no, no. So I’ve done, I worked in production right out of college, because that’s what I went to school for. I thought I wanted to be a screenwriter.

And I did that a little bit. But then I was like it now. And then I was a model for two years. That was my like, professional, like runway and stuff. That was awful, would not recommend to anybody did that just to make some money for a little bit wasn’t worth it. Then after that, I just decided I was going to be a journalist. And I moved across the country from Maryland. And it’s like, I’m going to write a sex column and happened and then then I was a serious side.

Pete 24:04
Hang on what triggered that? Like what in your head and Maryland was like, you know, what? journalism, dear to me was a specific event, school class, anything?

Krissy 24:14
Well, it’s specifically sex journalism.

And the reason for that, oh, there’s so many reasons. so complicated the human mind and the interest in sex. But I had somewhat of a conservative upbringing. And I thought I was a lesbian for a while. It’s all very, very exciting stuff.

But I was just like, sort of confused or whatever, about the whole thing. And I had a really odd relationship with sex because of some religious aspects of my upbringing and all of that. And I also had really bad sexual experiences. And I was like, Is this it? Because I’m, oh, I would listen to you. These “sex experts,” people who know all about sex, sexologist, whatever, and they will sometimes talk about sex like it was a Shangri La.

It’s just like, it’s where you’re going to find all the secrets to life?

Well, let me tell you, it’s not. It’s just not.

As somebody who wrote about kink and all these freaky sex stuff for two years in the Bay Area, I can tell you, it’s not. But yeah, I got really interested in it. And I just got really into subculture, like the subculture of sex, and the king people and everything because they were so different than what I had grown up around. And I wrote one piece, one long form piece for a small publication.

When I went to the orgasmic meditation conference, run by one taste, the name of the company, one taste, called by many of the people who worked at one taste and participated in one taste shenanigans. They call it a cult, basically, it was called the cult by many of them.

Anyway, so I went to a conference for three days, and I participated in this, “orgasmic meditation.” It was not to go into it. I’m trying not to go beyond pG 13. Let me just say, right. I wrote a piece about this.

And I had no previous journalism experience. And I decided to reach out to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, because I thought that they were really awesome. I said, I noticed you haven’t been writing about sex lately. Do you want me to maybe cover some events?

And the editor said, yeah, this is great. Do you want your own column after reading my one piece, and I said, that would be fantastic.

And so then I just got a sex column. And that was great. But then I kind of burned out on that after a couple of years. writing about kink and sex can be saucing, especially if you’re participating it, participating in it and writing about it from a first person perspective. Every week, you’re seeing something crazy, that you’ve never expected before. Again, won’t go too deeply into it. You everybody who’s listening can look them up all the articles.

But beware, you can’t read some of the things you’ll read.

Pete 27:22
I love this. This is fascinating. I’m sorry I keep going.

Krissy 27:25
Yeah, yeah. So after I did this next column, I was like, well, I’ve never worked for a publication before maybe I should like actually be on staff somewhere.

So I got an internship at California mag, which is UC Berkeley’s mag, as I said before, and I was such a horrible intern that they hired me as an editor instead. So that worked out that I read about science, and all this, like really politics, you know, serious journals and stuff, and of course, Bigfoot.

And then that, and now, I’m doing copywriting journalism, adjacent stuff, which means that I’m applying all of my scientific journalism skills to communicating to broader audiences in aerospace, which I think is very important, just because nobody knows anything about aerospace. I certainly didn’t, before I got this job.

So to answer your question, this is long winded. Okay. But my next journey is hopefully book writing and turning my weird blog into something that I can make some sort of money off of, I don’t expect it to be a huge moneymaker.

Because people don’t need to know about Bigfoot the way they need to know about blogging, and how to blog, sort of a fringe topic. It’s not going to pay the bills, generally.

But if I could figure out a way to make that work, that would be amazing. I want to write memoir, want to write fiction? I still want to do journalism. I’m going to tell you something, though.

I’m struggling to figure out how to do journalism, serious journalism, well researched on a blog, and have it not take for fucking ever. I like, yeah, it’s these a lot of people don’t realize that. If somebody is turned around a piece, and you see, you see a byline, right, like New York Times somebody’s name, you’re like, wow, you know, this thing just happened yesterday.

And they’ve already written 3000 words. It’s like, okay, maybe they did, but probably not.

It was probably with the help of two editors who are also doing the reporting. And like maybe another for people who have, like, you know, copy edited and did all this other stuff, other journalists who may have reported on it, and then somebody named gets on it. It’s a lot of work.

I don’t know if it’s a sustainable thing, while I have a full time job to be able to be doing that on my blog. So I’m in a transition period right now, where I’m figuring out, I’m trying to figure out where to go.

Pete 30:14
Okay, that’s–side note for everybody is I had my good friend, Desirae Odjick on the show, who is a blogger, freelance writer, currently on staff at Shopify, writing about e commerce sort of stuff.

And I asked her something to the effect of like, you guys put a lot into your content. And like, it just looks so good. And a lot of it’s like really thorough and properly not properly formatted. But like overly formatted for like a great user experience on my head. You guys like do all that? Like, what does that process look like?

What’s the process?

And she’s like, well, we have like three managers and three editors on our content team alone, and we have like 10 writers and for each post, where all in there on like a Skype call or a zoom call or something like that.

And we’re like spit ball and like at the speed of light, throwing ideas out and organizing the piece, like together and then I go write it.

And then I ship it off. And then like three people away in like the same bit like it’s this crazy, wild, collaborative process that could I can see where it could result in like a 3000 word post, and like 24 hours, or something like that, like a really well done post too. So we’ll sign up. So let me ask you this. I don’t have any answers for you.

By the way. I don’t know if you were looking for answers. But don’t think I have any.

As a solo show, it just takes a long time.

Krissy 31:36
You know what? I trust you because you say you don’t know when you don’t know?

Pete 31:41
Yeah, I could pretend to have answers. But that would be awkward, because I’m not a very good lawyer

Krissy 31:45
It would be.

Pete 31:48
So okay, so I have a few questions here. I want to ask, like, kind of an obvious question, which is, what did you learn from, I could have probably answered one a few different things here could be in a couple of years that you did, the second column could be in doing more, you know, formal journalism on politics, or science or whatever, UC Berkeley, maybe you can just pick a choose either of those.

But when it comes to, I’m just gonna, I’m just sorry, I’m just gonna keep this like super bland. Chris, just forgive me, when it comes to producing…

Krissy 32:23
vanilla.

Pete 32:24
Vanilla, when it comes to producing content…

What’s the one thing you learned from your years as a sex columnist? I know, that’s a hard question. To ask it like that, though, that makes most sense.

Krissy 32:39
When to move on from a subject.

Pete 32:42
what do you mean by that?

Krissy 32:43
So in terms of producing content, like I was producing sex content, right.

And it was actually difficult when I just had a body of work that was all about sex to get taken seriously. In other beats, people would be like, Oh, well, you know, if you write about sex, it’s going to be the only thing that you can write about.

And it was super offensive.

Because, I mean, obviously, you know, now I have this really big portfolio of all this different stuff. But people like to pigeonhole you, you do something good ones, and that’s all they want from you. And I just, I think that having a diverse portfolio was what allowed me to be in the place that I am now and be doing well.

But is that does that answer your question?

Pete 33:41
I think that a little bit, I actually have something more specific that I just thought I saw it in your last thought in my notes from your email. I have no idea what the words in this sentence means. I have no idea what these words mean.

But I’m gonna I’m gonna read it anyways–this is from in your email to me, by the way, “I could give some insight on how to write a good nutgraf, lede, head and dec, the capture people’s attention, while also being truthful AF,” which means “as f—” but the word the way those words are spelled like lede and head HAD Deck DK. Did you make these words up? Or do these words mean something?

Krissy 34:23
This is journalism lingo!

Pete 34:25
Yeah. Okay. That’s what I thought, Okay. And then maybe we’ll dive into the actual subject that you could help us with, like, some good insights on how to write these things, whatever they may be.

So let’s, uh, we’ll start with nutgraf. What is that?

Krissy 34:42
So a nutgraf is the nut of your story, basically, it’s um, so there are different ways that you can write a story, you can either have a, you can do a hard news story, which is going to have your lead, which was like the first intro sentence that says, who, what, where, when, why that’s the lead.

That’s like a lead.

Yes. And then the net graph, the net graph, so you have your lead, and then the net graph is usually comes maybe two or three paragraphs down, and it says, why they should care. What this article is going to tell you about. So it’s just like the crux of the piece. So it’s like, intro, not graph.

Pete 35:25
Okay, hang on. Okay, let’s define the rest of them. And then I’m going to come back and ask you kind of what this will do for us. Like, is there other some benefits to thinking about this as like a framework for producing content or what I’m gonna ask you about that. But

Krissy 35:38
I forgot to say the other one you can do is the soft news lead, which is like four paragraphs down, and then you have a nut graph. So it’s more of like a narrative intro.

Pete 35:46
Okay. This is my first time hearing about us. I’m like, Wait, what? Okay, so, lead, very first sentence. You said like the who, who, what, when, where, why, or whatever? Or who, what, when, where I got that the nutgraf? What is the head?

Krissy 36:01
So the head is just the headline.

Pete 36:03
Okay. Okay. All right. And the dec?

Krissy 36:06
the description, the thing that, you know, underneath the headline explains why people shouldn’t even begin to read the article.

Pete 36:14
Did you? Where did you learn these things? The street of hard knocks of journalism. This wasn’t introductory, right?

Krissy 36:22
No. Okay. I actually took a couple of journalism classes in college before I decided that that wasn’t the way I was going to go. And then it turned out, it was the way I was gonna go. It was just an intro journalism class.

They just told us about it. Okay, that’s it. I mean, if you Google, if you google journalism terms, you’ll find them. But I don’t know how I don’t know if they’re used across the board anymore. Because there are so many hybrid publications. Now, who knows?

Pete 36:54
The reason I even like wrote this down, I kind of figured it would be something like that, even though I didn’t actually know what those words meant.

I’ve heard lede before. By the way, I don’t know what a headline is, obviously, but I hadn’t heard of not graph and deck.

Anyways. The reason I brought it up is specifically for two things that every single person listening this podcast has experienced with and they do all the time, which I’m super into. This is my favorite thing about copywriting headlines, and or subject lines.

For my super nerdy email marketers out there headlines and intros, I’m just gonna say intros. But what I really mean is something you put at the top of a piece of content that makes people stick around to get said content.

So when I think about selling anything, you got to have people’s attention, and you got to hold people’s attention, whether that’s a product or sales page, or a blog post, where you’re trying to teach somebody something they really need to know about Bigfoot, they’re never going to learn it unless you can get them with the headline, and like the intro, or the the head and the lead, and the deck and the nut graph. So all that said, I want to ask you some tips for both of those.

‘m gonna take them one by one. We’ll start with headlines first.

And in fact, when you actually said something about this in your email to Didn’t you did. Maybe that I think you you’d said something.

Krissy 38:18
I don’t even remember.

Pete 38:21
I see far too many headlines out there. Now that make me want to turn off my computer and never read the news again.

We all know what clickbait is. Give us your like, top five tips on writing headlines that don’t suck, aren’t super, you know, newsy clickbait that makes, you might turn off your computer never read the news again.

But we can still use to like, grab people and hook them in. Do you have any tips for some headlines?

Krissy 38:48
I would say enthusiasm is good. Again, opinion is not the but that’s that’s for journalism. If you’re writing a blog, that’s an opinion blog, yeah. Then do whatever you want cares, that’s different. Totally different. Um, I would say, whenever I’m deciding what to write for a headline, I find the most interesting piece of information in the in the whole article, whether I, whether it’s the actual story that I’m leading with or not, what I’ll do is I’ll try to put that up at the top.

And also, I always asked myself, why should anybody care? Anybody, if the headline isn’t going to appeal to, you know, grandma walking her dog, and you know, some guy who’s like, 16, smoking weed in his basement, then it’s like, it’s not a good headline, it has to appeal to both of them. I want both of them to read the story.

And I want you the relevance to them. So that I mean, that’s what runs through my head. The problem is, so you actually have to be a good writer to do it. You know, it’s like, I mean, I guess people can, you know, they can get better at writing as time goes on. But I mean, I’ve I’ve written quite a fruit quite a few turds.

Pete 40:29
Totally. You gotta write the church for you get the good stuff.

Krissy 40:32
I’m writer now. But yes, you gotta write the turns before you get the gold. So I would say, I guess my number one advice would be be a good writer. Well,

Pete 40:44
that is horrible. First of all, and the worst podcast guests I’ve ever had.

No, I’m joking.

No, no, there’s something that there’s a truth to that though. And it’s not just be a good writer know, it’s right. More. I tell people this all the time. Like, this is my, one of my things. Whenever somebody forces me to write every day, I don’t write every day, by the way, I probably should.

Even it was a little bit. They always say like, “Oh, you need to write 200 words a day, 250 words a day, even if it’s bad.”

I actually still think that’s great advice. Whenever I do that, for any length of time, like more than a week, I will find it. So much of a better process. And I will look at what I produce. This totally applies to like headlines, and like subject lines as well, by the way, like when I have a post I care about person not very often anymore. But when I do, I will write like 50 headlines, really 50 headlines, and the first one was utterly garbage.

And then I’ll come back to it. And I’ll make it better. And then the second one, the same thing. And then the third and the fifth. By the time I do that, I’ll like be able to combine like three of them. I don’t have something I’m super happy about. It’s not just clickbait, but it’s a little bit like intriguing and might get people to click, but it’s also relevant and informative. It’s perfect headline.

And I think the only way to get there was the headline or blog content, whatever is right, more. So I think that’s what you think that’s what you were going for with be a good writer, write more, the only way to be a good writer is write more, right?

Krissy 42:09
Yes. So I will say I will say this, writing more is important.

And you have to practice you have to do it regularly.

One thing I will say and this is a problem I was having, I listened to these productivity podcasts, and people are like, get up every morning at 5am. Don’t drink any coffee, work out, make sure you write for five hours before you have a full time job somehow, like all this stuff, and it was stressing me out. You know, I’ve learned that it’s okay, to not be as productive. Just as long as you’re being productive. You don’t have to be top tier, whatever.

And then the other thing too, is that people’s lives don’t allow for that. I don’t know how these people have these like charmed lives, where they can get up every morning and pray their Muse and all of that stuff. I don’t have that.

Okay. I just can’t do it.

Like so. I mean, I recently got this job, this new job and it takes me an hour and a half to get to work in the morning. Okay, so that hour so that I would be usually taking before I you know, I got this job to write fun stuff. Bigfoot stuff, for example, that was gone. Okay.

So what I did was, you know, I have a desktop. I love working on the desktop. Well, tough shit. I ordered a little laptop. And now every morning I write for 45 minutes on the train. Do what did I have the two hours that I had before? No.

But so what you know, your life is going to look way different than anybody else’s. So don’t get like down on yourself for not writing every day. Because fuck it, you know, they don’t know you

Pete 43:54
I am going to spare you and everybody listen to this my 25 a minute long rant on this subject.

It’s not really a rant. It really is. Let’s just say that it took me a lot longer than most people. Not just productivity either, by the way, but like, what tools I use for my own, like blog and business.

I kept looking to other people like this person who just loves this tool. I’ve tried so hard to use it. I’ve spent like 50 hours like googling how to use this tool for me like Wait, why not just go with what I was already using? That was free? And I already know. And it’s like, 20 times more effective. Like, why can’t I let it go?

Right? That you know what somebody else is doing? Is what I should be doing. Spare by the rant, I could talk a lot. I don’t wake up at 5am. I tried. It wasn’t for me. So kudos to you. By the way, at least you get to ride on the train.

Krissy 44:46
It’s true.

Pete 44:47
You live in like LA or Atlanta or Chicago is a lot better. So here but man, I was commuting for three hours a day like in the car driving, like all I have are like podcast anyways. Right? All this brutal. We’re I’m sorry, I got distracted out my head is like in rant space. No, it’s not your fault. I’m in rant space now.

Let me ask you this.

I didn’t forget what I was gonna say that I’m seriously thinking about waking up at 5am now and how mad it makes me when I see other people like destroying their own lives trying to like conform to some sort of like ideal that they see on Instagram,

Krissy 45:24
it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to like, get up, it’s okay to have a day where you don’t write at all, because your car broke down or whatever it is, you don’t have to feel this pressure from these people you’ll never meet who don’t care about you, because they don’t know about you.

Pete 45:44
You’re right.

Krissy 45:44
Who cares?

Pete 45:45
Okay, well, hang on. I’m gonna put you on the spot. What do you do personally, when you find yourself facing one of those days, where you look at the watch, and it’s like, wow, it’s already noon, and I haven’t done anything.

And I have like a frown on my face and just not feeling motivated. And, you know, I don’t actually think anything productive is going to happen today. That might be an extreme. But on days like that, what do you do to either a get back on the horse? Or be like, be comfortable? Not being on the horse? If that makes sense?

What do you what do you do on those days? I’m super curious now.

Krissy 46:21
So actually looked into this bet. There’s a lot of studies around the psychology of mantras, right. And by mantras, I don’t mean necessarily like spiritual mantras or anything like that, right? If I feel like I’ve spent a day not doing what is important to me, or is leading me towards, like an ultimate goal of say, writing a book, or we’re making the blog successful. to myself, in my head, I just say, I am a writer.

And today doesn’t change that. The more that I’ve done that, the more I believe it and feel it and I’m comfortable missing it.

Cuz I’m somebody who’s hypercritical in my head. And I have a subconscious running voice that says you’re not a writer, you’re not committed to this. So it’s just creating a replacement for that kind of thought. You are consciously replacing those bad thoughts that are holding back.

Pete 47:22
I like that. This is possibly going back on the waking up at 5am. Right for five our influence or Instagram train that’s possibly going back there. But have you read the book atomic habits?

Krissy 47:35
Have not

Pete 47:36
okay. It’s actually pretty good. I am pretty critical of like business books and self improvement, productivity books at this point in time, because I’ve read a lot and a lot of them really don’t need to be written.

But atomic habits is actually really good. And what you just said is actually one of the the larger points in that book.

So as this mindset shift, which is not when people say mindset, that kind of like puts me off immediately, I don’t know about you, but when people start talking about mindset, I’m like, okay, like, what, like, what does that actually mean?

But in the real sense of the word, having this mantra or mindset, or whatever the heck you want. For me, it’s actually like, taking about a minute to like meditate, just like mini meditation sessions and getting back into it. I am this sort of person.

That’s like a game changer. The examples from the book, this totally, like, somewhat relevant. Apologies to everybody.

But the examples in the book was somebody trying to quit smoking. And if somebody like offered them a cigarette, there’s like a huge difference. In the two responses, one could be like, Oh, no, thanks. I’m trying to quit smoking. vs. I’m not a smoker. Even if there’s like just trying to quit, like trying to self identify yourself as a certain type of person can actually make you do things.

This is why the book is about atomic habits can actually form habits that will make you quit smoking or write on days where you don’t feel like writing or work on these. You don’t feel like working anyway, I found that fascinating.

That’s actually a pretty good book.

Krissy 49:17
Yes, I’ve heard I’ve heard some of the things not from that book. But I’ve heard heard about that. Another thing that I found useful for myself, that’s kind of a fad right now, but I actually think kind of works. It’s called productive procrastination.

So yeah, so the the idea behind it is that you find a bunch of different creative projects at one time, so that when you get tired of working on, say, an article, you can switch over to the book you’re working on. So like, you’re still actually doing things that are productive, and you’re satisfying that need to procrastinate.

But you’re getting shit done in the process. I found that to be very helpful to me, because sometimes after I’ve worked on an article for, you know, three hours, I’m kind of burnout on that subject for the day.

But then I can move over to something else and still feel good about myself. feel good about the fact that I’m doing

Pete 50:15
Oh, wow, you just blew my mind in a way that you do not even realize.

I’ve been doing this on accident.

Yeah, can you hear it?

Krissy 50:23
Yeah!

Pete 50:24
I just read an a review on iTunes of my own podcast, which by the way, is like a dangerous game. For anybody who struggles with like, self confidence.

Don’t go read the reviews. But anyways, most of mine are like, really great. So thank you, for everybody listening out there. Go drop me a review wherever you listen to your podcast now.

But this person was like, I love this podcast, I enjoy the heck out of Pete’s guest, whatever, I just put Pete with talk less. And I was like, dang it. But at the risk of offending that one person out of the several thousand people listen to this podcast, my own venture, and what you’re talking about is planning, organizing, and working on software tools that enhance my business.

Those three things do not feel like work to me. Whenever I when people tell me like Pete, you need to get a little bit more organized. Or Pete you know, you really need to like nail down a very clear plan for your business over the next six months. I hear those people and I’m like, I don’t want to do that.

Part of the reason I don’t want to do that it’s not because I don’t think it’s valuable is because that doesn’t feel like work. And if I spend eight hours, like planning and organizing, and, you know, optimizing software and my business, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten any work done. And I’m angry at myself, which is stupid, stupid.

So for me, it’s been recently, kind of like allowing myself to do that when I don’t feel like working. And it turns out that those people, right, and it’s actually super valuable. What do you know? They’re not, it’s not

Krissy 51:55
I thought, like, I thought it was kind of stupid. But then I started doing it. And I was like, Oh, fuck, got so much done today. You know,

Pete 52:03
Was this–Where did you hear about this?

Krissy 52:06
I want to say I heard about it on a podcast with two comedians. It’s been like six or seven months. They’ve mentioned it briefly. And then I looked it up online. And then I saw, apparently, some guys theory.

Who’s to say?

Pete 52:26
So I want to kind of wind down, I want to let you like to do your morning in or day, maybe just one or two more questions, though. And I had to do this, since you mentioned it earlier.

And we’re talking about interviewing and journalism or whatnot. You know, I have to ask this. Is there anything that you wish I had asked to you so far throughout this podcast?

Krissy 52:46
Such a good question. I guess–I guess I wish you had asked me, or think maybe it would be cool. You had asked me about I guess what have I What am I learned from being a writer who has written about strange things?

And maybe like, what it’s taught me about pursuing writing?

That is important, I guess, what would the question be? I’m trying to figure out how to frame it into the question.

Pete 53:25
So I don’t know. But I definitely saw a lot of that when you were going back to your sex columnist, origin story. Like, kind of the reason you got involved with that is because you were, I guess, like scratching your own itch, so to speak, like you were you were looking at what’s already out there in the world, and then you wanted it to be better, in some way.

At least, that’s what you were kind of hinting at. I did that with my own podcast. By the way, I wanted more weird, rambling long form conversational topics with interesting people on the subject of blogging, and it wasn’t out there. So that’s why I started this podcast. But I don’t know the exact question, but

Krissy 54:04
I know the question. I’ve got it now.

Pete 54:06
Okay.

Krissy 54:08
Why Or what do you do? when everybody is telling you not to pursue the thing you want to do?

Pete 54:16
That is not what I expected this to go. Okay. Krissy, are you ready? How do you feel about and what do you do? When you feel the overwhelming presence from everybody else around you, family, friends, bosses, co workers, society culture, when they’re telling you not to do the thing that you really want to do? Or feel you need to do? What do you do at times like that?

Krissy 54:41
As we’ve talked about a little bit, I tend to pursue strange subjects in my writing. And I’ve had life experiences that most people haven’t.

And while exploring these avenues, and doing well in them, others couldn’t wait to critique me and tell me what I was doing wrong. Don’t write a sex column. Don’t write about Bigfoot, don’t cuss? You know, stop wearing band t shirts and combat boots.

You know, no one’s gonna ever take you seriously as a writer if you don’t button up or whatever.

Well, guess what? They were wrong.

Okay, like, I’m doing fucking great. Believe it or not. There’s no correlation between combat boots and writing ability. Just to clear the air on that myth right now.

I know. Shocking.

Pete 55:26
common myth!

Krissy 55:30
But yeah, so it like, even though it It, it, you know, hurt to hear from people that I respected that I that they thought I was going to fail or that I shouldn’t do it. It felt better to pursue the writing that I want to do.

So it made it may have felt bad to hear what they had to say. But it felt better to do it anyway. So as a writer, I think, I think you should listen to your intuition. Many great inventor, inventors, writers, don’t listen to what anyone else is telling them to do, like great writers, they have a uniqueness in them that they recognize, and they don’t try to hold back.

And they know they’re going to make something new. That’s style. Right. And when I read a truly great writer, I feel myself being pulled along a path with them their specific path, and it moves me to stand my own path.

Because I want to feel what they’re feeling but in my own way. So I think it’s important to find what kind of writing or what subjects speak to you like, you may not be a great writer, if you’re covering politics, because that’s not that’s not what’s pulling you forward in life.

Okay, maybe you’re stifling the fact that you want to write about witchcraft, or the tumultuous history of the American bake sale? I don’t know. I’m just making stuff up. Okay.

Pete 56:50
That one saw the way plan like you could not have been done. I’m sorry.

Krissy 56:53
Keep going. But what the American bake sale? Yeah. I mean, I think that bake sales are kind of sinister, but we won’t go into that now.

Pete 57:02
I have no idea. Okay.

Krissy 57:04
It’s not to bake sale itself, it’s to be able to put it together anyway.

So people are going to crap on your dreams, okay, because they’re afraid of pursuing their dreams, and failing. And they want you to be afraid to so they’re not alone. But it’s better to be alone and connected to your purpose, and to be satisfied with your creative output, than to be a miserable troll, you know, underneath someone else’s bridge to happiness, you know, it’s, it’s just like, not good.

So, I guess the best part about me writing about what I want to write is that if people don’t like my work, they don’t have to read it.

And I guarantee that no matter what subject that anybody chooses, like, there will be people out there who will want to read your stuff, and they’ll love it. And they will, you know, reach up their hands to catch you as you crowd surf to glory. But it’s like, it’s like up to you to jump. When people tell me not to write about strange things, it’s because they’re afraid.

And I recognize that in them.

It’s more a reflection of who they are., than who I am.

Pete 58:25
A little vulnerable.

Krissy 58:26
Did I answer the question even? Sorry?

Pete 58:30
I don’t even remember the question now. But yes!

Krissy 58:33
sounds good.

Pete 58:34
I think you did. So something interesting about that. You actually said the words “alone.”

The funny thing is, and you’ve alluded to this, at the end there is that you’re never alone. for very long, it seems like especially I’m specifically talking about people who produce content on the internet now specifically, like bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, craters like this, like, Listen to the show.

It’s fine.

You think you may be alone, because your parents don’t want you to write a blog, or they think it’s stupid, and it’s never going to amount to anything. And maybe they’re right. And maybe they’re not.

I quit my first blog on my podcast a decade ago, because my, I’m using air quotations here. Friends made fun of me. And they thought it was stupid. And they told me as such every time I saw them, so I quit. And then I quit those friends and came back.

But I eventually discovered this white talk about community, a lot, so much on this podcast to discover that, Oh, I’m not actually alone. There just doesn’t happen to be anybody in my immediate vicinity. Like in my hometown, my small town that cares about what I care about, and wants to do what I’m doing.

I just had to go find those people. And it took me like, I don’t know, 30 years to realize that but I’m so glad I found that now. There’s, there’s there’s weird people out there ended up with a whole bunch of interest. That was a good question.

Krissy 1:00:00
Was it?

Pete 1:00:01
There was no, it really was. Even if people aren’t moving to San Francisco, and like starting a second column. That might be I’m not gonna say extreme.

But that might be like, on the extreme end of people would judge that. You know, I mean, I still think there’s a lot smaller. I still think there’s a lot smaller versions of that. Whenever the people listen to the show, start talking about their creative projects.

Because if you walk up the 30 people and your local Starbucks, and you start talking about, oh, I run a personal finance podcast. 29 of those people are going to glaze over, within the first minute. anything, any creative endeavor over the internet is still in catch up mode.

For like mainstream society. It’s when you say you run a blog called hot alien. Some people are just like, they have no idea where they’re getting into like, Oh, that sounds weird. And I know what a blog is, I think and hot alien. I don’t get it. And when I say, Oh, I run a podcast called Do You Even Blog people are like, glazed over. Talk about?

So I think it was a good question. I think everybody listen to this show can identify with least some part of that. So kudos to you.

Okay, last question. And then we’ll let you go Chrissy. What’s one thing you wish other bloggers or in your case, I will admit it to say, what’s the one thing you wish other bloggers or journalists would stop doing immediately?

Krissy 1:01:31
I guess I would say, in the vein of what we were just discussing, stop critiquing other people’s work when you’re not even happy with your own.

You know, it’s just like, if if you have a problem with something that was written by somebody else, then go do it better. If you can do it better, do it better. Put yourself up on the chopping block. And see how that feels. I do my best to never have to publicly critique anyone. I have written a couple of journalistic reviews in the past, and it just felt gross. Like reviews of well, granted, it was a review of a porn premiere. But you know, that’s neither here nor there. I love it. Yeah.

So I would say support other writers. I think that we we need more of that and stop, stop acting. Like there is a hierarchy of writers. You know, there’s, there’s also I will say this, you know, there’s not very many journalism jobs now. And there’s a lot of freelancers. And it’s really hard to get your stuff published as a freelancer.

There’s, you know, these gatekeepers at these publications, and not all of them, but some of them think that they’re God’s gift, be they happened to look into a job. And so they don’t treat their freelancers very well. And they also don’t work with them on ideas in ways that I think they should. So I think I think a lack of elitism would be nice.

Pete 1:03:15
I like it. Krissy, thank you so much for coming on. This has been all over the place and the best possible way.

I love it is just my type of conversation.

Where do you have people connect with you? Where would you point them to? First and foremost, to kind of see what you’ve written in the past lots of fascinating stuff. By the way, I can go ahead and vouch for that. Or connect with Haley calm, obviously set the number one choice for where to point people.

Krissy 1:03:44
KrissyEliot.com or hotalien.com. That would be great. I don’t I’m trying to tweet more. I just created a Twitter just this past year. I really I should probably be doing it more. But anyway,

Pete 1:04:01
You can also be waking up at 5am I writing for three hours.

Krissy 1:04:06
Writing tweets for three hours at 5am!

Pete 1:04:09
I was up at 5am to tweet every morning.

Krissy 1:04:13
It’s Yes. So but honestly, I’m very Google-able. If you look up Krissy Eliot , you’ll find me–last name E-L-I-O-T–fun fact about me. I’m related to TS Eliot. If anybody knows who that is, famous poet.

Pete 1:04:30
Yes, we’re destined for this

Krissy 1:04:32
destined for writing glory. So if you can’t remember how to spell my last name was one L and one T, know Eliot is very exhausting name to spell. But remember, TS Eliot. Add Another fun fact. My mom’s name is Missy. So I just thought everybody should know that as well. Very important. But not

Pete 1:04:54
the Missy Elliot different not?

Krissy 1:04:56
Well, I mean, she is the Missy Elliott to me, mom.

Pete 1:05:02
Krissy. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I wish you the best of luck in your current aerospace endeavors and journalism and let me know when the book comes out. Obviously, I want an advanced copy of it. And I will read it. By the way

Krissy 1:05:16
You will have a book for me mark my words.

Pete 1:05:19
That’s great. I’ll hold you to it. I love it. Well, thanks for coming on Krissy. Appreciate it.

Krissy 1:05:23
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.

Pete 1:05:28
Already blog tribe. I hope you enjoyed that awesome episode with Chrissy here are my takeaways. One big one that’s got staring me in the face is something that almost all creators face at some point. Maybe you’re not feeling this right now in your own blogging journey, because you’ve been doing it a while maybe or you just never had this problem to begin with. But a lot of people doubt themselves. At some point. A lot of people have family, friends, other creators around them that for whatever reason might actually hold them back from being who they need to be from being who they want to be. I know this sounds like a little bit whoo, whoo, a little bit corny. But I for one, listen to Chrissy story and admire the fact that she has no judgments on herself right now. She has no fear right now about blogging about Bigfoot. She’s doing the things that she wants to do. And it didn’t happen immediately. Right. She had to learn how to be herself and be confident and comfortable being herself not the little. Again, not all of you are experiencing this frustration or this pain, like right now. But how many of us tend to like fall back into talking about topics that we’re comfortable with dialing back our sales because we don’t want to appear too salesy, even though we believe in the product, even though we believe in our message, whatever, that maybe a lot of creators, myself included, have had this issue in the past. We’re not 100% confident and comfortable with who we are. And so we hold back, we do a little bit of copycatting what other people have done. We’re not our full selves. We’re not our true selves, hashtag whatever you want to call it. We’re afraid, sometimes not all the time, but we’re afraid. Okay. I just want to remind you, this is the big takeaway reading. It’s okay. It’s okay to be fearful of what other people think you just have to fight through that. Please do yourself and the world of favor. In growing that confidence, whatever it takes to say the things you want to say, to say what needs to be said in order to change your audience’s lives. Please do that. It may take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. But use Chrissy as inspiration, as an example, right? To blog, the way you need to blog to run your business, the way you think your business should be run to help your customers the way they need to be helped tell people what they need to hear today, people what they want to hear, don’t be afraid. Actually, you will be afraid. But move through the fear. There you go. That’s my one big takeaway. Actually, I have one more takeaway. Now that I think about it. The takeaway is to have a mindset. This is like a mindset takeaway. I’m really sorry, I wish you go like implement this ASAP, and grow your blog traffic. But you can’t do that right away. It’s a mindset thing, the mindset of clearly communicating complicated subjects. A lot of you are into travel hacking, and you do with a bunch of numbers or personal finance research, like investing strategy, and you talk about where the economy is going. And like, we can bring all sorts of data and numbers and complicated strategies about blogging and SEO and every topic under the sun. It’s always good to have this mindset of did I communicate this clearly enough? I think of Chrissy talking to rocket scientist and trying to tell their story to media. I think of me taking technical element or tutorials on Do You Even Blog and trying to make it digestible so you can follow it so you can understand it so you can engage with it again, I know this isn’t super hashtag actionable. But I think this is an important mindset for us, as content creators to keep in mind and the back of our heads at all times. communicate clearly always have this mindset of did I present this in the best way possible, so that people can understand it, so that people can actually learn what I’m trying to teach them? How can I simplify? How can I communicate better? There you go. There’s a big mindset thing. Not hashtag actionable, but still awesome.

And I do believe that’s going to do it. If you enjoyed this episode of the Do You Even Blog show? Do You Even Blog show if you enjoyed this episode? All I ask is that you tell a friend, there you go be my word of mouth marketing system. Hashtag word of mouth. I love it. I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot of coffee this afternoon. If you enjoyed this episode telepresence, and thank you so much for being a part of my audience. I love you guys, man. creators, bloggers, podcasters online entrepreneur, digital folk. I love you guys. Go out there and make an impact. publish something awesome. Don’t hold back. Be your hashtag, best self or some other corny buzzword? I don’t know. Get out there. Make a ruckus as Seth Godin might say go do good. Thanks, man. I love you guys. Hit me up on Twitter at Do You Even Blog email me, Pete at Do You Even blog.com if you need anything or just want to say hello. I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next time. Adios

Table of Contents.

• A very short pre-requisite HTML & CSS introduction
• How to style intro paragraphs (and why you might want to do this).
• Coding a simple Table of Contents
• How to interlink different parts of your page using CSS IDs.

Important note: What is that “p” doing before “.fancy-intro?”

Sadly, just copying and pasting what I have might not work for you–because every WordPress theme can act a bit differently!

You may have overriding CSS elsewhere in your theme, and will, therefore, have to “target” the intro paragraph a bit differently.

This could take a bit of trial and error, but try targeting with some of these first (where “name” is the name of your CSS class):

• .name
• p.name
• .entry-content p.name
• .single .entry-content p.name

A huge word of warning:

If you’re not familiar with mobile-first CSS, I would NOT recommend setting a specific width and float value.

If you’re not careful, you could end up with this for your mobile readers:

Here’s your call to action:

If you enjoy this post, all I ask is that you share and tell a friend!

Also, drop me a comment if you’re going to try this with your blog.

Bonus points if you get it working and drop your URL below!