238 – All kinds of marketing questions answered: Tom answers Questions

Episode 238 – Ask Tom
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with episode 238 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're gonna do something a little bit different. I solicited questions last week and so we're going to do. Question and answers from you, the listeners. And we'll be doing this every once in a while. So feel free to send your questions in and you get a shout out. If you send in a good question that we use on the podcast, which all the questions were very good. So we're using them all. I hope you did miss episode 237. That was Erin Tillman. She's a big dating coach in Los Angeles and does all kinds of cool stuff to make money in a city doing the things she loves and screwing the commute. So check that out, episode 237 and grab a copy of our Free Automation e-book. It's a $27 e-book that saved me a fortune in time and effort and keystrokes over many, many years. And it yours free for listening to screw the commute. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're there, you may as well grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and we have instructions on a how to use the app and all that stuff. A lot of times you get an app and you don't know what the heck to do while we gave you a complete screen captures and show you how to take us with you on the road. Now our sponsor's the great internet marketing retreat and joint venture program, where myself and my staff work with you for a year to either get you started in an Internet business or use the Internet to take your existing business to the next level. You can check that out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And of course, everything we talk about will be in the show notes. This is episode two thirty eight. So to go directly to an episode, you go to screwthecommute.com and then slash and then the episode number. This one is 238.

[00:02:27] All right. Let's get to the main event. Get to the questions here. Lee Mosler from ShapingAir.com. He's a great veteran friend of mine. He says, as an entrepreneur, why do I need to niche down and what is the best way for me to do so? And of course, if you are from the good side of the tracks, you'd say NEEche instead of niche. All right. Like us, you know, as country bumpkins here. So when I first got into the speaking business, all my elders were telling me Tom you need to niche down and go after one industry. And I was too stubborn to listen. And in the first five years of my speaking career, I went to eighty seven different industries. And I might say I never had a bad review in hundreds of speeches in those eighty seven different industries. But here's the problem. If I did a great job for the Pennsylvania dry-cleaning Association, well, they don't know anybody in the Nebraska Plumbing Association. So to get every job, I had to fight it out in those eighty seven different industries because no one had heard of me in that industry. So after five years of this. So I can be a little dense, I admit it. All right. When I picked an industry to concentrate on, everything changed immediately and dramatically. Every time I did a speech in that industry, people that heard it would tell other people in that industry. So when I went for the next job in that industry, there was a good chance they had already heard of me. And after a couple years of this, I wasn't fighting it out for any jobs. People in that industry were calling me to see if I was available and if they could afford me. That's a whole different animal. My fees rose dramatically and after a short while, the preparation time was cut down to a couple hours for each speech instead of the weeks of research I would have to do. Every time I went to a different industry. So the reason the niche down is so that your name spreads, your fees rise, and your preparation time for each job decreases because you already know the industry inside. Now, the reason you niche down a topic is so that you don't appear to be a jack of all trades. Sure, someone with a low bargain basement budget will hire the lowest price jack of all trades, but people with higher budgets or bigger budgets want the best person they can find on the problem they have. Having too many topics makes them reluctant to hire you. Another example this I have is that I could do the best presentation on an organization ever had on sales, and that same organization would not hire me to come back and do a customer service presentation. They saw me as a sales expert and it can happen the opposite way in another organization. They might bring me in and say I did the best customer service presentation they ever had, but they would not bring me in as the sales speaker. You want your persona to be the best they can possibly afford on a very specific topic. So yes, niche down your topic and industry. Now, once you reach celebrity status in your industry, then you can sell them anything you want because they're buying you the celebrity, not necessarily the topic.

[00:06:12] Ok. Here we are with two wonderful people who want to build a list. We've got Michael Pennison from PennistonEnterprises.com, and we've got my old friend Manny Nowak coachmanny.com, all of these links will be in the show notes, by the way, folks. So I won't spell 'em all for you. So Michael says, how can a small business build a list? Should they do some type of online paid advertising to get people to their site? And Manny says your podcast is really great. Thank you, Manny. His question is today's social media driven world email is still one of the top ways to sell. I totally agree. Can you tell me the three best methods today for building an effective e-mail list that generates business? All right. Thanks. He says. All right, so this is an answer for both Michael and Manny. Both of these gentlemen want to build a list and and many use the phrase generates business. They want a list that generates business. That means that the list must be targeted to people that have shown an interest in their topic. And I'm sure Mike meant the same thing. It's ridiculous to build a list of random people if you want to build your business. They must be targeted or at least interested in what you're selling. One of the best ways is to joint venture with other list owners who are complementary to what you do. It's pretty much a waste of time to try to joint venture with people who sell the same things that you do. You want people related to what you do, but not selling the same stuff. They're not going to help you out. One way to entice them to help you out is to make them an affiliate so that if someone buys something from you that came from their list, the person came from their list and bought something from you, you will pay them an affiliate commission. And you have to have affiliate tracking software in place or the list owner will not participate. They want to make sure they get paid for what they send you. And of course, we use and promote kick start cart for this. This is our complete shopping cart system. I think we covered that in episode 10. This can be done even if they're just giving away a freebie for you, as long as you have a good affiliate tracking, then all the people they send you could possibly get commissions for that list donor. So joint venturing and you could possibly get hundreds of people at one time if it was a big list. So joint venturing is one good way, especially because the list owner is introducing you to people that already know that list owner. So it's a good warm introduction for you. Another way, that's a paid way. But I feel is the best paid ad bargain online are in stream ads on Google. These are the ads where you have to click the skip button on the ad. If you don't want to watch it. I have some of these ads running for 2 and 3 cents a view and tens of thousands of them are running for free. Because you don't pay if they hit the skip button. But you still get the branding value of being seen. They have to watch for at least five seconds and up to twenty nine seconds. If they if they hit that skip button by twenty nine seconds, my pictures and names been all over their face. But I didn't have to pay. So continually branding in front of people for free is one of the best bargains plus that 2 and 3 cents per view because I really know how to do it. And I can teach you too. If you want to know the same keywords in the regular Google search would cost me anywhere from like a buck sixty or seventy to five dollars and fifty cents a click. So it's one of the best bargains. So I suggest you learn how to do that now. Third good way is social media promotions. Getting the people that follow you to opt in for a freebie. In other words, give him the heck off social media onto your email list and a fourth way, which is a viral promotion like quizzes and contests which you see me run regularly and they always bring in new subscribers and leads. And I got to push this one contest like crazy. Go to IMTCVA.org/quiz and take the seven college rip offs quiz. I mean, if you got kids in college, you're going to be really mad to look at this quiz. And if you know or if you're thinking about you're sending your kids to college or you go in yourself, you're still gonna be mad at these things. So so check it out.

[00:11:10] All right. Next question we have is from Greg Williams, he's a CSP and his nickname is the master negotiator and body language expert from themasternegotiator.com. He's also a graduate of my VIP video weekend. All right. He says, Tom, here's a question for you, it's about entrepreneurship before an entrepreneur begins to negotiate a deal. What should he or she do in social media to improve his or her negotiating position? All right. Well, here's my answer. See, any good negotiator on the opposing side is going to heavily research their competition or you. Now they'll use both Google and all the major social media platforms. And you should beat them to it. Now, before you ever even think of negotiating anything of business importance, you should review all your social media posts going back to the beginning and delete any posts. And there's a couple of me you should delete that could reveal your attitudes about certain business topics that the opposing negotiator could use against you. The second one is any post that could be embarrassing to you or your company that would weaken your relative status in the negotiations. Now I would also do the same thing checking out any one or business. You will be negotiating against to find out things about them before they delete their posts. Okay. Now you could also start adding post, you know, will strengthen your position in future negotiations. Now, it's best to start this early, like right away or like last month. OK. And often because those posts done too close to or after the negotiations are announced or started, we'll be pretty transparent and possibly embarrassing if the other side brings it up that you're trying to manipulate the current negotiation. Now, of course, as a smart negotiator like you are. Doing it well in advance is way better, so it can't be used against you. So start now. And also, Greg, in a management study done by Uberall, answering all your reviews that are both positive and negative has been shown to increase business and doing all these things well in advance and on an ongoing basis puts you in a much stronger position than waiting until the last minute and trying to answer reviews and do all kinds of social media posting that are that are. And remember, they're dated so people know when you did it. Bottom line is start a reputation management program immediately and you'll be automatically ready when negotiating events present themselves for your company in the future. And Greg says, Hope you're doing well. Thanks Greg.

[00:14:20] All right, so we've got two questions here from people I've known for a long time and somebody one of whom is in my program. Let's see. What do you feel this is Andrew Poletto from TopFitnessStrategies.com and Jim Barber from FindersSpeakers.com. So Andrew says, what do you feel is the three best ways to get traffic and the three best ways to get free traffic and the three best ways to get paid traffic to your Web site? And Jim says, What are some effective ways of promoting a web based service, such as a membership site, when you don't have a lot of money to spend? He says, of course there's a bunch of ways to spend lots of money, but what's the best way to market a new business or service on a limited budget? OK, answer is free or paid, whether it's free or paid. The best ways are the ones that work for your company and your audience. So the answer is the pain in the neck answer I give everybody is it's always a testing process. But there are places to start that I like and I think are good bargains. Now for free things, as I mentioned in a previous question, joint venturing where someone else promotes you to their list. Is a great way the more targeted and complementary to their list, the better. Another free place is Quora. It's a place where you can list yourself as an expert and answer questions and they get millions of questions a day. All right. So they're all categories and you can just be sent questions that apply to your field. So answering them, you can put links to your stuff and everything. Now, Reddit is another place with enormous amounts of traffic where you can siphon it off carefully to your site, and I say carefully with Reddit. Because people at Reddit eat their young. And if they don't like you or what you're doing, you will know about it and so will thousands of other people right now for paid. I mentioned before and I know you're starting this is Andrew is starting a YouTube in-stream ads and there's lots of other places to advertise again. There's no one that's best. The best one is where you have tested it and tracked it to be profitable for you. Now, if Google in-stream ads, no matter how cheap they are, if they're not profitable and don't turn into customers, well, then you gotta try something else. And here's some other places that now you can advertise and it's not a comprehensive list. Amazon Bing Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify Outbrain Taboola, Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, Google. And there's loads of other places. So each one needs total concentration for a while to you really learn the ins and outs because each one has quirks. And if you don't know about them and as Andrew found out very quickly, I trained him on how to do in stream ads. But he learned very quickly that there's loads of little details and they've on a new person putting the ads in. They've delayed him a week and half to two weeks before they approved his ads and there was nothing wrong with them. You know, so there's quirks to all the systems. So anyway, those are answers for Andrew from TopFitnessStrategies.com and Jim Barber from FindersSpeakers.com.

[00:18:05] All right, Patricia Noll, and she's with goodwithme.com and she had two questions. Question 1 What's the best format to give a written testimonial to another professional? Well, giving testimonials can be a marketing strategy. I will warn you, though, don't be just given testimonials on things you don't really believe in because nobody will trust you once they buy it on your behalf and then they find out it's garbage and then nobody is going to trust you anymore. So don't do that. But it can be a strategy to get your links out there and the better testimonial it is if it's real. The more prominent that vendor is going to show your testimonial. And so more people will be exposed to you. So I'm going to give you a basic formula that I'm going to give you a totally self-serving example. So first of all, you open up with who you are. Then you describe the problem you were having. Then you discuss the things you tried to fix it. You describe the troubles you had with those other methods, then you describe the solution you found and the great results it gave you. So I wrote this totally self-serving example for you. It's totally real, but it's. I could have picked another example but it's my podcast, so I didn't. All right. So here's an example of what I just said. For Patricia to use and she would agree with everything that's said in here and maybe even blow it up bigger. But but here's an example. Hi, I'm Patricia Noll, author of Good With Me A Simple Approach to Real Happiness from the Inside Out and founder of the Good with Me Movement. Now, my good with me event is the prototype for a major worldwide movement. And it's got hundreds of business and online related details that have to be done correctly, especially since we're partnering with major entities like the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, and other companies like, I don't know, like X Y Z gas and power. I was trying to use freelancers and watch YouTube videos and purchasing courses from everyone that claimed they can help me with my problems, but I had no coordinated attack on these problems and the various freelancers weren't really competent to help. I've known Tom Antion. Here is the self-serving part. I've known Tom Antion for many years as a top Internet marketer mentor, but I had no idea of the wide range of business knowledge he has. When we were discussing my event, he came up with a myriad of ideas I'm implementing to great success and I've taken him on as my main go to person on all aspects of the business of the good with me movement. He and his staff have been fabulous in advising me and tutoring me one on one and saving me a tremendous amount of money because Tom doesn't even allow me to buy anything unless I ask him first. And virtually every time I come to him with something, I'm thinking about purchasing. He teaches me how to do it cheaper than I was willing to pay or how to do it for free. And then there you go. So so that's that's your method there. And it's always about me. You know, this this whole podcast is about me, folks. Anyway, thanks, Patricia, for that question.

[00:21:54] Now, Patricia has another question. Question 2. What's the best way or process to get fake and fraudulent Google business reviews removed from my my reviews. And here's the deal. As it might be frustrating, but there is no guarantee that Google will remove any reviews that you attempt to have taken down. See if it was easy to have reviews removed, then people would start abusing the system in and cut out all their bad reviews and looks like they're all great. So so keep that in mind. There's no guarantee this a work. However, the first thing you gotta do is try to make sure it really is fake. And here's how you do that. See if the reviewers name is anywhere in your database as having done business with you or a subscriber of yours or whatever. If you can't find him, that's that's your first little clue. It's not a guarantee. It's just the clue that it's a fake review. Then you check to see if the reviewer has left lots of reviews for other businesses and and all these one star reviews. So that would be another potential clue. And you jot all this stuff down. Then maybe it was a mistaken identity if the review is something you know about, something you don't even sell, then maybe the reviewer mistook you for some other business. Jot that down. And let's say the reviewer just gives you one star, but no comment or two says anything about the experience. Jot that down. Or if the review contains totally lies and false information like that, you swore at them on the phone or something, you know, whatever it is. So , all those things are happening. That's a pretty good clue. It's a fake review. You still got to respond. I mentioned earlier, you know, responding to reviews makes you more money. So you could say something like thanks for in a review. We take this seriously, but we can't find you anywhere in our records. Please contact us and tell us who you are in your experience and what happened. Because we can't find you anywhere in our records. So you're sending a message that this is probably a fake review. So that's one thing now to get it removed. First thing you do is you flag it as inappropriate. There's a little flag next to some things. And sometimes it's three little dots. You click and you say flag is inappropriate. And they pay attention more if lots of people do this. So get all your friends and other customers, if they would, wouldn't mind to go ahead and do it also, because Google gives it more weight. If lots of people were saying, hey, this is fake. And then. You've got to give it about a week, you know. But once once the flag is inappropriate, then you have to say, tell them what's going on. You report the violation and give it about a week and it's still there. Then you can go to your Google My Business page, which you've all signed up for. Right? And that's where you can talk about your business and display how Google presents your business to the world. And then you go to the review section and follow their instructions about abusive reviews. All right. So there's your answer, Patricia, with the good with me worldwide movement and very self-serving to good old Tom.

[00:25:35] All right. Next is another student, mine, Andrew Darlow, and he's with workflowschool.com. This is a professional photographer place. So he says, hey there, Tom. Thanks for the opportunity. What are a few great ways to start a live talk if you are speaking to a like minded audience like professional photographers at a trade show. About 50 to 200 people. So there's many ways, Andrew, to open a talk and one that I like to use is a mention of something that everyone in the room knows about. If the room's too hot or too cold or, you know, it's if you're willing to put in a little effort, you can creep plan potential comments by visiting the room before the program to determine if it has any quirks that could be mentioned or if there's food, you might work up some jokes about it. All you have to do is find out what's on the menu. I did a luncheon program one time and they had tuna temptation as the main course. And all these people, everybody was commenting about the name of the main dish. Oh, tuna temptation. Oh, it's so wonderful. Is so good. So I got up and said, well, I generally don't like seafood, but that catfish convulsion is really good. So that went over good. Now, if the seating is funky, I show them I want them to be comfortable and I ask them to stand up and adjust their chairs so they're comfortable. See they appreciate that. And it's most important when half the people are facing away from you because maybe they're sitting at round tables. Now you can open with a quotation I'm giving you a bunch of ways here, Andrew. Either a famous one or one that you made up. I make it a point to say I'm going to give you more immediately usable information than you've ever gotten in one workshop. And another way I might put this is to tell them I'm gonna give you everything I possibly can in the time allotted. I always put that in. See, I always make time the enemy. So I want to be the wonderful giving speaker who is not going to hold back any secrets. I'm going to give them everything I can until that bad old clock tells me to stop. People love you for this. They hate it when you seem like you're holding back or you say, well, the answer to that question's in my book. Well, it might be in your book, but here's how I would say that you could say, well, there's 10 points to that answer and I only have time to give you three of them today and then again, time is the enemy. It's not me. And then you give them three great tips and then you're the hero. And then they still go by the book. So I don't really care what you say, Andrew, but say something that shows your concern for the audience and that you're going to make sure that they will get info that will help them. And if there is some quirk that you can mention that also helps you relate, that you're aware of what's going on and what they're going through. And Andrew said, let's say, here we go. So he says all the best. Oh, and yeah, he's really a great expert in his field and not that everybody else on here isn't, but he really listens and implements what he learns. And that's what all the students are mine. If they do, they get great success. So I'm thrilled about that.

[00:29:11] All right. An old friend of mine, Rosalind Sedacca, that came in with a question, do you have advice on frequency of social media posts, especially Facebook and LinkedIn? I've heard one must post several times a day. Others say just once a day will do the trick. Can you overdo your posts? All right. That's Rosalind Sedacca with provenresultswriting.com. Well, Rosalind, most studies agree that once per day is optimal with a maximum of 2 posts per day, but HubSpot did a study and they found that pages with under 10000 fans. In other words, you're not like a supreme popular influencer, experienced a 50 percent drop in engagement per post if that person posted more than once per day. So once you get super big, then you can post more times. But at a minimum, you should post to your Facebook pages three times per week. Now, I heard Mari Smith, one of the best known Facebook experts say recently that people are over posting and they're not getting enough engagement, which seems to support what I just mentioned, especially if you don't have ten thousand fans or followers. Ten thousand seems to be the magical number if you exceed that, you can do more stuff. But see, if you're posting like crazy and you aren't super popular, your engagement drops and you're hurting yourself rather than helping yourself. So if you're going to post, try to make sure you're shooting for engagement rather than just the number of posts. Now, I've also heard Mari say that you should experiment with evenings and weekends and if you're gonna miss some posting times, miss a few business days and add some weekends and evenings. And it's all a testing process. Like everything else with your audience. But for sure, don't over post until you hit that 10000 mark. And then even if you do still monitor the results of what you're doing carefully to make sure you don't backslide by over posting. So that's my buddy Rosalind Sedacca. And it's Provenresultswriting.com for Rosalind Sedacca.

[00:32:00] All right. Okey doke. Let's see, we got Mark Levit here from ProfessorLevit.com. He says the general question, what advice do you have for college students? Well, well, well. I'm not sure Mark is going to like the answer if he's a professor. But I think he's a pretty open minded. I think he just calls himself a professor anyway. I think he's pretty open minded about what's going on in colleges that rips off students and parents. So my first advice would be to get the heck out of college, save a fortune and go get some actual skills that employers want. And I realize that that won't work for everybody. And I'm going to address that. But I'm going to take this opportunity to have people listening, go to my IMTCVA.org/quiz and see the seven ways colleges and universities are robbing students and families. And I got to hammer that in because people are just getting robbed trillions and in debt and all that stuff. All right. So if you have to be in college for some professional reason, like you're going to be a doctor, lawyer, counselor or some field that required that you have a degree. My out of the box advice would be to seriously evaluate your friends and your own guts to go through college alone if necessary. See, from what I see and most studies show students are coasting through college, spending most of their time partying, shopping and eating. There's book complete books written on this with studies done with thousands of students in many, many universities. Then they get out and compete for jobs at Starbucks. So you have to have some guts and when your friends, acquaintances and roommates put pressure on you to go out drinking and partying, partying or protesting some stupid thing you have to say, no, I have to study. Or maybe you get an internship or apprenticeship with a company where you get on the job skills and then you say, no, I have to work. So if you don't have the guts to do this, you're going to be the same below average nobody when you graduate as all the other underachievers that colleges are spitting out onto the world. If you do it my way, you'll probably have your pick of high paying jobs when you graduate. And by the way, Google, Apple, IBM. Bank of America and hundreds of other major companies are not requiring a college degree to apply anymore. They want people with actual skills and work experience rather than a bunch of little worthless social justice warriors who can't do anything good for the company that's trying to hire. And hey, I just thought of a new college major, how how to be a worthless, entitled brat who can't do anything but carry protest signs, complain and cry if the wind blows the wrong way. Oh, wait, they don't need that, major, they're already turning those people out. And go watch that movie. No safe spaces that'll open your eyes. All right. If you're not forced to be in college because of your major try to get out and get some skills, go to a vocational school. And I'm not necessarily talking about plumbing school, although most plumbers make way more than the average college graduate. For sure. You go to something like my school, where you get a high demand skill and a matter of months, not years, and you can be in the workforce almost immediately, making your own money, buying your own car, boat or anything you want. So here's what many of you would be facing. Your parents have been brainwashed for a hundred years that a college education was an absolute must. And they've been brainwashing you. Not in a mean way, but since you were a baby talking about savings for college and all that stuff. Most of your parents haven't noticed times have changed. All their neighbors will think poorly of them if they don't send you to college like their kids, or you must be a bad or stupid parent. Well, you've got to fight this like crazy, or you'll be in the same trap as millions of other young people around the country. See the economy, yeah it's booming. But Ginni Rometty of IBM said they still can't find qualified people to fill the jobs. And I can assure you graduating and general studies or art history is not going to get you one of those jobs at IBM. Also, you have to consider entrepreneurship as an option. There are thousands of way to make money now because of the Internet that weren't available when I was growing up. So my advice is to get away from the college nightmare and get skills either by internship or apprenticeship. Vocational school. Hint. Hint. Like mine. Right. Or getting a low level job in your field. And I know of a top TV host is still a young man who started in the mailroom at the TV network. So get skills, not worthless knowledge coupled with mounds of debt. And that was for ProfessorLevit.com.

[00:37:31] OK. Next, this from Janice Meyers with the Web site makingtraxcamping.com and soon to be boondockercamping.com. So she says, Tom, as a self-defense expert, what are some tools you can suggest for staying safe while camping in the boondocks in a truck, camper, tent or RV? Campers in the back country can be vulnerable to people with evil intentions, but I would rather deal with bears than a robber or a rapist who may be emboldened by the seclusion that campers seek. I carry pepper spray. But taking a handgun across state lines seems very complicated. Cell phone reception is often not available in the wilderness. What are your thoughts? Well, the first thing Janice is early warning and that would be a totally legal way to be alerted if someone or something is getting close to your campsite. There are a couple ways you can do this. One is by using a tripwire to set off a loud signal signaling device. Spiderwire wire is a kind of fishing wire, which is good for this. And there are alarm devices you can get on Amazon that when the pin is pulled, it sets off an ear piercing, terrible, frightening noise. They're mostly designed to carry with you. And if someone grabs your purse and tries to run away with it, the pin gets pulled and the noise goes off. Now, if you're surrounded by trees, you can get small screw eyelets in and screw them into the trees and they're so small they won't hurt the trees and you mount your alarm on one tree and run the trip wire through the eyelets all the way around your campground. And the trip wires are virtually invisible. And if someone approaches and trips the wire, it pulls the pin and this piercing noise tells you someone or something, just approach your camp. The downside is that a fox or squirrel could set this off and then you'll be up all night resetting it. Another way would be to use a battery operated driveway alarm when someone or something crosses its beam. It sets off the alarm. This is nice because you could set it up higher above the ground. So most small animals wouldn't set it off. But a human or maybe a big bear would set it off and not bunch of a little critters will set it off. Now, I would also get an infrared trail cam and hide it somewhere so it will video record what happened even in darkness. So what critters or people were getting close to your camp. So this is all early warning stuff. Now, if it's someone really intent on doing you harm, you need to learn basic self-defense and basic legal weapon handling and you got to get mentally prepared to use it. I mean, it does you no good to stand there with a camping axe, which the bad guy takes off for you and chops you into little pieces. I mean, in my self-defense class, the number one target on a person is their eyes. So if they can't see you, they can't get you very easily. And in any violent encounter, if you scratch and poke all of their eyes, you will have a better chance of escaping or fighting back. You still need to learn how to protect your head so you don't get knocked unconscious. I would also get an emergency flare gun. Actually, several of them and I keep them loaded and ready and laws may vary on this and of course you should check, but it's doubtful you would be in trouble for having an emergency flare gun when camping in the boondocks. In fact, you're probably negligent not having one. And I've actually been in a nighttime fight with a bunch of attackers and I had a multi shot flare gun shooting it horizontally to them in the pitch darkness. Oh, man. I can still picture them just scrambling like little rats. I mean, it looked like I was the devil's shooting fireballs out of my fingertips. They jumped in their vehicle took off by. But keep in mind, in dry conditions, you could start a fire. But I'd rather have a fire than see you get raped, injured or killed. And speaking of fire, get a full sized fire extinguisher and keep it handy. You can shoot the fire retardant at them and when they're blinded, hit them over the head with the steel canister. Also, speak in fire, have her make some kind of long handled scooper and dip it in the hot coals of your fire and throw it at the person. I could teach her how to make napalm and stuff out of soap and other legal stuff, but I don't want this episode to become explicit. You can you can look those up online. And get used to thinking about every camping item you have and how it could be used as a weapon. I can think of about one hundred things off the top of my head. One obvious one would be a tent stake. But you have cooking supplies. You can put vinegar in a squirt bottle and be probably just as good as pepper spray. Axes, knives, hammers, screwdrivers. In other words, I teach an entire segment in my brutal self-defense class on improvised weapons. You also should have some constraints available. Jersey cuffs are a kind of zip tie and they're cheap and easy to carry. And you could just get some heavy duty zip ties at Home Depot or police supply store and they're perfectly legal and they don't raise any eyebrows like handcuffs do. See if you're way out the boondocks, whatever you do to the person short of killing them, we'll give them plenty of time to recover and continue the attack. So unless you really know what you're doing, don't just rely on tying someone up. Let's say you did incapacitate and tie up a bad guy with no cell phone. Now what are you going to do? You could just pour honey on him and leave him there. Just kidding. Don't do that. Because if there's fire ants around or coyotes. Don't do that. But you could leave and get to a place where you could get a signal and call for help. Or if you're flush with cash, you could get yourself a satphone or it's a satellite phone for her anywhere from three hundred to fifteen hundred bucks depending on the features, plus the cost of the service and with the right service, that will get you in touch with help anywhere on the planet. Now you're talking about your pepper spray. A couple of things. Remember, some people are not affected by pepper spray. So it's only partially dependable. Also, if they get inside where you are, you're likely to get yourself pepper sprayed and outside. You got wind to deal with. So we suggest pepper fog so you can make a wall of it between you and the bad guy, because with a spray, you could miss him or you could just cover his eyes and keep on coming. But overall, you know, we're not the biggest fans of pepper spray. And I'm sure he I can think up a bunch more things you could do. But for now, flare guns, fire extinguishers, early notice, video evidence. Improvised weaponry and most of all, most of all mental attitude work. So you can do unthinkable things to another human being to stop them from doing them to you. One of the mental trainings I give is to make people think about who would be crying hysterically at your funeral if you allowed somebody to kill you. Who might get put into foster care or be mentally or physically abused or sold into human trafficking. Because you refused to defend yourself or you froze up. I know these are really terribly hard things to think about. And I know everyone thinks it won't happen to them until it does. And you weren't ready. All right. So anyway, that's Janice Meyer at the Make Tracks Camping is now and then it's going to be boondockercamping.com. There we go. All right. Keep her safe.

[00:46:14] The next one. This lady I've known online and through e-mail for 100 years, but I still can't pronounce her name right. Ruth Deutsch. So it's kind of sounds like a German thing, but I've known her forever. So let's see what she has to say. So she this here's a quick one here. She's decided that I'm a coach who speaks instead of a speaker who coaches, because I understand one needs to be predominant on a website of calling yourself something. Am I presuming something that's not true? No, you're not. A while back, people went to being experts rather than the old style motivational speaker, which got you all excited about stuff and you're bouncing off the walls. And then two minutes out of the meeting room, you don't know what to do. So there wasn't much return on investment for people with that. So they started hiring experts. So I would be an expert coach that speaks rather than a speaker who, you know, they automatically think all your motivational speakers. So what? But now you're an expert coach. Oh, you speak also. Could you talk about that with us? So, yes, you're you're right there.

[00:47:29] OK. Next question is from Andy Sokol from copyscan.com. Hi, Tom. I currently have a well-seasoned site copyscan.com for about 20 years. We've recently rebranded our company Copy Scan Technologies. We've added additional software systems and technology services in addition to our original services. We've worked hard on our SEO search engine optimization over the years, YouTube videos and blogs, and I'm concerned about disrupting it. Our existing Web site needs a facelift. And I'm wondering whether it would be worth it to update it with the new branding as copyscan.com or basically leave that alone and build a new Web site with the new branding copyscantech.com. What are your thoughts on the best way to approach this from both an SEO and branding standpoint? Here's my answer. You should be concerned about disrupting all your hard work. I personally would never start a new site with a new domain name. If I had a 20 year well-seasoned site on roughly the same topic, the age of the site is a really, really important factor in the site being trusted by Google and all the other places. A new site would be pretty much starting over. I would leave the domain name as it is because it's easy to say and I'd make a new banner. When you when you give the site a facelift that says copy scan technologies, but it's still the domain name as the original copyscan.com. And I hope you bought the domain name copy scan technologies and copy scan tech. And point them both. What I would do is point them both to copy scan. That way, if people hear you talking about the new branding and they type copy scan technologies into their browser, they'll still end up at copyscan.com. And also, whoever does the facelift must be extremely careful not to destroy the many incoming links from other sites that you undoubtedly have in 20 years. You can modernize the site, but still keep pages that have lots of incoming links intact and a good geek will know how to do this. All right. So that's Andy Sokol from CopyScan.com. He's and his partner, Gina St. George, have all both been to brutal self-defense, speaking about self-defense. And they're often also have been mentees of mine. So it's awesome. OK. And they took my speaking course. Yeah, boy, they spend a lot of money with me. I got to find something new to get money out of old Andy.

[00:50:12] All right. Next is Roberta Guise from guisemarketing.com guise marketing and PR. She says, Hello, Tom. Last week, The Wall Street Journal had a short article on whether LinkedIn is worth the time. They buried their piece in the lifestyle section with only two voices, one pro using LinkedIn and one against. Any person in business today knows the value of LinkedIn for connecting and developing relationships. I met a patent attorney who uses it every day, launching discussions, posting articles, etc. He's disciplined. He made it a priority and figured out how to make it work for him. He's grown his connections to twenty thousand plus and gets business from LinkedIn. Could you recommend the top five most effective ways to reach the attorney's level of success with LinkedIn? Here's my answer, first of all. The key point in your question about the patent attorney that you mentioned and I'm quoting from you. He uses it every day launching discussions and posting articles. He's disciplined and made it a priority. OK. Now, as your Wall Street Journal article pointed out, most of the nearly 700 million people that have an account don't do much with it. And I got to admit, I'm one of them. I've always seen it as low on my priority list because I'm going after small business owners and I've always seen it as people in big businesses trying to get jobs. And I'm sure I'm incorrect in this attitude. And if I work it as hard as the patent attorney did on that platform, I'm sure I'd get some business out of it at this point. I just have our social media person keep a bare minimum presence and as far as I know, I've never gotten anything directly from it. The point here is that I can't think of any of the major social media platforms that couldn't produce business. If someone really concentrated on them and worked them every day, I'll even throw in sites like Reddit and Quora. If someone really took the time to work them properly and Reddit is vastly different than Quora. There is no doubt there is business there to be had. So the first thing I preach to people is that marketing has to be part of their everyday business activities, not a desperate adjunct. When no business is coming in the door. So the first part of your answer is to work it every single day. Take courses from people that do work it every day. See, all of these platforms have little tips that other people know that you don't. For instance, as I do this every day for the last 20, what is it? Twenty six years now. Okay. I'm taking an advanced Instagram course and I learned how much it cost and how to approach influencers to get shout-outs for a new Instagram channel I'm starting. So there's always somebody that's that's all they do that you can learn from. All right. Back to LinkedIn. First of all, LinkedIn is happy to tell you the basics, because a lot of people haven't even really done the basics either at all or very well. So they list 10 things. Get a good profile. And there's like I said, there's hundreds of articles on how to do that online. Make sure your company pages proper, define your goals, optimize for search, attract followers. All this will be in the show notes. If you want to go back, publish content, use rich media, sponsor your post, create ads, check your analytics now. Episode 197 of Screw The Commute podcast was Joshua Lee. He's a LinkedIn expert. He told me about something I had never even heard of. An SSI score, so I suggest you listen to that. Episode 197. But you should also go to linkedin.com/sales/ssi. So Joshua said you want to shoot for a score and it'll tell you what your score is, and he he said you want to shoot for a score of 70 or above, I forget even what SSI stands for now that I'm looking at. I don't have my notes here. They way you just go there and it'll tell you your score. I'm a sixty three but it's. And I didn't do much of anything like social media person keeps things there all the time. But personally I never visit it. I probably should change that. But I mean you got when you have a million things going on. That's just another one to mess with. But if you want the success of this patent attorney, you need to do this. But. It's with my score of sixty three, I'm still in the top 5 percent of Internet marketers. LinkedIn told me this, and I'm in the top 17 percent in my network of other people that's in my already in my network, so I haven't put any kind of emphasis on this at all. So to guess what you gotta do to get over that 70 mark. If you do see what happens is if you get over the 70 mark, LinkedIn thinks this person's really using our platform correctly, we're going to help them out and get them in front of even more people. What are the ways to get your score up, which shouldn't be any surprise, according to Joshua posting on a regular. It could be Joshua or your patent attorney. Either one of them could be saying this posting on a regular basis, engaging with others, commenting and connecting will raise your score. So there's your answer. Get your SSI score up and Joshua's company helps people do this. If you can't figure out how to do it yourself and and of course we highly recommend him. And it's episode screwthecommute.com/197. That's Roberta Guise from guisemarketing.com.

[00:56:33] All right. Well, now, before we get to the last one. I want to tell you about what happened. Oh, but 20 years ago, people like me were charged 50 or 100 grand up front. They're still doing it today. They're trying to anyway to teach what they knew about Internet marketing to clueless business people who refused to learn it themselves. I'm a small business advocate. I knew many small businesses could never afford that kind of upfront money. So I made all those gurus mad by charging a relatively small entry fee to my program that also got a percentage of profits that was capped so that you're not stuck with me forever.So for me to get my big money or my 50 grand, you have to make two hundred grand, and then by that time you're going to be a good expert and can take off on your own. I took another step further, I have the biggest estate home and TV studio called the Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And you as part of my program, you get an immersion weekend here with a small group and you see the orders coming in. You see how I work. You see all the staff members here. They're here to help you very customized and personalized. So check out all the details at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And, of course, that'll be in the show notes.

[00:57:50] All right. Let's get to the last question by Don Sturgill from roadturn.com. Tom, what are the key factors in ranking a local small business organically in Google and Bing search. You are appreciated. Don Sturgell. All right. Well, first of all, I got to mention that I am not a local search expert. First of all, if somebody tells you they know everything about Internet marketing, guard your wallet and run out the door as fast as you can. I've been in this 26 years, day and night. I'm the biggest fanatic you'll ever find, seven days a week and just go crazy with this helping people. Thousands of students, tens of thousands of people. In my speeches, I don't know even a fraction of things on the Internet. All right. There's a sign on the door of my school says, I don't know everything about Internet marketing. Just enough to make a fortune. Right. So. So, first of all, so I'm saying I'm not a local search expert. In fact, anybody comes to me for local search. I try to convince them to take that knowledge. Keep their local business, but then sell the knowledge of the local business around the world. So that's what I'm good at. But local search. I mean, folks, last the last figures I got, which was like about a year ago, Google made 3200 changes to their search algorithm in one year. And it's probably more this year. So this changes very rapidly. But there's some overriding principles you can do for local search. I checked with my resources for local search. And I can boil this down to a couple things that you need to think about. First of all, you always have to get your Google my business and fill it out beautifully, because that's the best place to say all the great things about your company is claim your Google my business thing. Now, here's the thing. When somebody searching locally here, here's an overriding principle. You know, a lot of times it'll say near me. Right. Well, that near me used to be from the post office in your zip code. That's where they would channel it from, so you could be 15 miles away. And so it didn't make any sense. So Google got more sophisticated. And now it's from the location where the person is making the search and they can especially if they're on a cell phone. A lot of that's easy for them to tell where the searcher is when they're making the search. It's from the location of the search or whenever possible. Now, there's three major things that you have to concentrate on. To be found in local search. The first, these aren't any particular or loses all three, but the first one I'm telling you about is relevance. Do you provide the service that they're looking for? And how would they know? Well, you Google my business list, things should tell all the things that you're doing and hook to your Web site that says the same thing. So that's where Google will say, OK, this person is searching for X, Y and Z. What are all the Web sites that sell that in this region? So that's the first thing. The next thing is they want to make sure the searcher gets a really good place to go to, to buy whatever they were looking for. So Google is trying to say, well, what's your prominence? So we had relevance first. Do you even have the stuff? How prominent are you? And that means how well-known are you? How well-regarded? How about your reviews? Do you have lots of good reviews? Which is you should get on a review program. Getting people to review you whenever possible. Are you on any of that city's best 100 lists? Do you have local media linking to you? Those are all the things that make you prominent and you need to work on. And then the last thing which is kind of cool is, I mean, it's cool in one way, but it's different than it used to be is called proximity. And you would think, OK, how far am I from that person? Well, guess what? This is a fluid thing. So let's say there was ten people that in 10 miles of that person that do what you do. Well, depending on what the person searches for is how the results come up. So let's say you are within three. Let's say you're the closest person to that person that searching. When they search for your product or service and they say near me, and then somebody, you're three miles away, let's say it lets somebody else that sells, which you sell is eight miles away. And the person searching said, I'm looking for the cheapest widget near me. So if you're not the cheapest, they're going to jump over to that person eight miles away and put that at the top of the results. So the proximity changes depending on what they're looking for. So you have to think and put in your Google my business place all the different things that they might be looking for to give you a chance to show up in that list depending on what they search. And that's your job is to find out those things, what people are searching for, which is basic keyword research that I've preached like a maniac for 20 some years. And I want you to listen to Episode 1 of this podcast and episode 130, because episode 130, updates you on what how voice search has changed the world of search. So you need episode 1 and episode 130. So the bottom line, Don, is relevant. Do you have what they are looking for? How prominent did you make yourself with reviews and top hundred lists than link in-bound lengths and all that and proximity is. Are you within shooting distance of the person and do you will you fall in what they're searching for? So if they're looking for the best. And and you are the cheapest, though, then they might go somewhere else if somebody else was considered the best, see. And when they put all these things together, that's how Google, you know, they're never going to tell you exactly their algorithm. But those are three major things that the people on the inside know that will get you higher results, relevance, prominence and proximity.

[01:04:29] All right, folks. Well, that's our Ask the Question episode went quite a ways here. I didn't think it would go this long, but and one person I tried to get a hold of because I didn't understand their question. So I put her on the next time we do this. But if you do have questions. You want to get a shout out on screw the commute, send them to me at orders@Antion.com and I'll save them to the next time we do this. And if possibly it's something that's urgent. I'll answer you directly. All right. There we go, folks. I'll catch y'all on the next episode. See ya later.

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