276 – Writer’s block never again: Tom interviews Tim Maudlin

Episode 276 – Tim Maudlin
[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 two hundred and seventy six of Screw the Commute podcast. We're here with Tim Maudlin and he is. He's a prolific kind of guy. I'll tell you more about him later. But he's. He has a thing called the Daily Doable. And I watched one recently on persistence. And it was very inspiring and touching message. And he talked about sunrises, you know, leading, looking towards the future. And and it was very touching. And, you know, I'm always gonna do the funny side of things. So and it's a good idea that you're able to do things. Get messages across both in a funny way and a and a serious way. So he had a very serious, beautiful video there called The Daily Doable. And so I thought, you know, I've heard that message before. But in a different way. So I looked through I actually have this in one of my books. It's a called Comic Verse. And so his message was that sunrise is to look forward to what's coming rather than looking backwards. So I found one that says the lightning bug is a brilliant thing, but the insect is so blind it goes on stumbling through the world with its headlights on behind. So here's a little comic version of the same idea. But check out, you know, I'm sure he'll tell you where to find the daily doable. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 275. That was Fred Berns. And if you check the show notes for episode 275, you will see me with his boy on my knee when I was playing Santa Claus about 27 years ago. All right. And he's a prolific marketer too. You want to catch his tips. How would you like to hear your own voice here on screw the commute? Well, if the show has helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas that help you start a business, we want to hear about it. So visit screwthecommute.com and look for the little blue sidebar that says send a voicemail. Click on it. Talk into your phone or your computer and tell me how the show has helped you and put your website on there, too. We'll give you a shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. All right. Make sure you grab a copy of your automation e-book. We charge 27 bucks for this, but you get it free for watching or listening to Screw the Commute podcast. And it saved me millions of keystrokes and that allows me to steal business from other people because they take three days to get back to you and I'm back to you lightning fast. So that's what I want for you to be able to make more business, take care of customers faster and with less hassle without pulling your hair out so you can grab that at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're at it, grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and you can put it on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. And of course, everything, all those links and stuff and all of Tim's great stuff will be in the show notes. This is episode two seventy six. So all you have to do is put screwthecommute.com/276 and they'll take your right there. Let's see. You know, we're in the middle of this pandemic. And people are stuck at home. And to me. I mean, everybody's talking to me like, hey, Tom here, you're doing OK. And it's like there's nothing different for me. I don't want to make light of this terrible thing that's happening in the world. But but when I've worked from home my entire life. Forty three years in business so far is no different for me and no work at home. Key-words are going crazy in Google and people are starting to think man, I should listened to Tom 20 some years ago when he was saying this because there's no difference for me. So that's what I want for you. So check out our school. We have both a a mentor program I'll tell you about later. And my school was the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. As distance learning, you can be anywhere in the world and and study legitimately from home and work from home. And in fact, the TV station and I are getting together at the end of this month. And I'm going to do free marketing classes for the Hampton Roads area. Anybody that's listening to this can check in to to keep people from going crazy while they're at home and get the message across to them that you can be a have a viable business lifestyle business from home. IMTCVA.org.

[00:05:01] All right. Let's get to the main event. Storyteller and template architect Tim Maudlin helps connect their content creators go from thoughts to words easier, faster and more efficiently. Now, within a framework of action steps that shortcut the writing process, Tim teaches how to use tools that produce fast results every time they're implemented. Tim, how you doing, man?

[00:05:28] I'm doing great. Tom, I'm so glad to be here with you this morning. How you doing?

[00:05:32] Good. It's been a been a while. You've been to the house, right? Long time. Oh, yeah. That that was quite an experience. I really enjoyed it. What year was that? That's been a while. Thousand sixteen, I think.

[00:05:44] Oh, OK. It's only been four years old. You know, again, I don't look backwards. You know, just like that. Paul, the beginning that the daily doable is really, really nice as summer inspiring messages you got there.

[00:05:57] Well, yeah. I appreciate you mentioning that. That that's something that I like to try to encourage people with. Because so many times we look at other people and we say, well, I can't do what you can do and I can't do what she can do. And when you do that, you just bottle yourself up and you don't do anything. And what I try to encourage people to do is to look within and just worry about number one and just do what you can do. And it just makes last so much easier because, you know, I can't do the things you can do and vice versa. But if we all do what we can do collectively, there are a lot of good can happen. I mean, I saw that years ago when a tornado hit our area. Just a quick story. I'm not a first responder. And I saw this tornado and I thought I just killed the boys and we got to our hiding place, you know, and fortunately, that tornado went away from us.

[00:06:53] But I just. Dad always taught me if you can't contribute to something, you stay out of the way. Don't get in the way. So I just let the first responders do all that they could do and they just sent it from everywhere. Well, later on, I was frustrated because I hadn't done anything. And so I designed a t shirt. And with the help of the community, we raised thousands of dollars to help out everybody out. But there was one story on that that that really touched me. A friend of mine, she was in her late 70s at the time and she was frustrated because she hadn't done anything. And she heard that we were doing the t shirts and she said, you know, I can buy a shirt. And then she thought a little more. She said, I can fold shirts. And she and bunch of other ladies came over to the house and follow the shirts. And so, you know, it just makes you feel really good when everybody pulls together and does what they can.

[00:07:45] And so that's that's kind of the genesis of that that idea. I love your light lightning bug story. I even got a daily deal with about lightning bugs. Right. Well, I was out one night just walking with my dogs and. I think it was June, and that's when they come out right in Indiana. And I just thought how peaceful it was. And so I just turned on a Facebook livens, just recorded my thoughts about that. So just how to appreciate the little things like lightning bugs of all things.

[00:08:13] Yeah. And, you know, they're just like you said, that's how this thing with the TV station cable came around. I'm sitting here actually watching another station.

[00:08:23] And I saw two ladies that didn't even know each other, met on Facebook, that we're just frustrated that they could they want to do something. And they started I don't even remember exactly what they were doing. Some gather and money and food and stuff for people.

[00:08:37] I said, well, shoot here. I said, What? I got to do something for my commute. So I go like my neighbor used to work for the TV station.

[00:08:46] I said, hey, get me to the right person over there. And they're having me on to talk about, you know, side hustles and being able to make some money. You know, when you're stuck at home and then I'm going to do free marketing classes for the Hampton Roads area course. Anybody that hears me is welcome to to listen in. But but again, it was the same thing. I was inspired to get up and do something to help out the situation. Tell about the tone. That's the sunrise story you told.

[00:09:16] Well, you know, that's that was one of the things that kind of I was thinking about during this pandemic. It was, you know, people are looking at the situation and it's dire. I mean, I really feel for the people who are losing loved ones. And, you know, my wife works in a pharmacy as a pharmacy tech, you know, and we feel like we're on the front lines. We don't know what she's bringing home. Right. And, you know, I'm just trying to encourage people to do something, to encourage others. Now, this particular story that I wrote. A friend of mine knew some challenges that our family was going through and he won a contest with. You saw that image on that story. Sunrises proclaimed the future, not the past. Well, this friend of mine knew I was going through some challenge.

[00:10:06] We could put this on if you want to.

[00:10:08] Oh, yeah. It's a great story. I mean. Well, it just a really quick idea about it. You know, I'd lost my job after 32 years. And so, you know, I've been working from home, but I'm now ramping it up with this online stuff. But this friend of mine knew my situation, knew some other challenges we've gone through. And so he he won this contest. And the winner of the contest got this signed digital print from the author.

[00:10:40] Andy Andrews was the author of this. And he told the he told the people at the companies said, you know, my friend needs this more than me. And so he had it sent to me, and when I got it, I said I couldn't believe it because he had been so selfless with this. And I just had it to tell that story because my friend had done what he could. Right. And so it inspired me like the daily double for that woman was when you see your next sunrise. Are you going to look to the past or the future? You know, and when someone did a gesture like that to me encouraged me to to look forward, not back.

[00:11:16] You know, you can't change the past, but you can sure change how you do the future and go toward that. And so I just tried to write that story and tell what he had done and then encourage other people, you know, don't let this time that we're going through get you down. And I've been writing more about that as well, because there's so many people trying to encourage other people. You know, I was watching a Facebook live last night. A musician just got on there and started playing man the other night. It was really cool because the the lead singer from Styx got on there and sang. And I thought he sang a song from the early set, her early 80s. I thought that's what we needed to hear today. And everybody doing that kind of thing. It helps us to persist. It helps us to to move forward. And so that's that's what I'm trying to convey with these.

[00:12:03] Yeah. And that that particular doable, the actual title of it was persistence. And the reason they grabbed my eye is because, you know, I do lots and lots of interviews and people usually ask me, well, what what's the main thing, Tom, that you can tell our folks about your success?

[00:12:20] And it was persistence and consistency and consistency to it. You know, so but it's the persistence, you know, most people just quit too early. Our generation was taught in general more to work hard and do stuff work. And most of the parents are trying to make things easier on their kids. You know, that's kind of their goal.

[00:12:42] I don't want my kids to have it like I had it when I say don't go too far with that idea. Because kids can't do anything.

[00:12:50] Yeah, persistence is the key. You just got to keep after it. No matter what happens in the. And how many times you get knocked down, the last person that gets up wins. So, yeah.

[00:13:02] And the thing with it, it's going to get tougher right before you have your success. Hmm. You think about all these stories of people who have have risen above what seemed to be the odds are just so stacked against them. But somehow they have persisted to the point where they've gotten beyond that. And when you look back on it and you know, this time that we're going through right now, it's difficult. But if we if we just hunker down and get back to it and really work hard, we can get through this.

[00:13:34] You know, and I don't know if you if you feel this way yet. I don't know how long ago this occurred when you lost your job. But most people say that it was one of the best things that ever happened to him.

[00:13:46] I don't know if you feel that way or whoever. Well, but that's very common.

[00:13:50] Well, I've got a story that I haven't written yet, but that's the title of the story. The best thing that ever happened to a good friend.

[00:13:57] You you fell right in that thing. So what are you doing now?

[00:14:02] Well, right now, I am working helping people create content. It's really it's interesting how this evolution has happened to me. When I was in high school, my English teacher, she said, well, you're really good at this. And at the time, I said, no, I'm not. I just kind of said, no, you're crazy. And I really didn't like that the way that we were structured into to teach writing. But, you know, that was the way they taught and that was one method. But anyway, I remember going back after I was in college, I would visit my school and said, you know, I can write 10 page paper in one evening and get an A. And she looked at me and she said, there is no way. I said, oh, I do it all the time. And I had just developed a system. And through the years now I've developed another system that I've started to use and it kind of ties in with where I came from, from an architectural background. But as a confession, I'm scared of a blank sheet of paper. I'm petrified of it or a blank computer screen, but with a writing system that I like to use. And it was in my bio that you read. I used that same system. It just makes bringing the words out of your head, mixing the getting out so much easier.

[00:15:21] And then you can just once you have something in front of you, you can just go crazy with some tip you can tell people to to get over that blank page.

[00:15:32] Well, what I like to do, I like to work with templates. And, you know, you had Jeff on recently. Jeff Herring. He loves templates as well. I think he cut his teeth on the Internet.

[00:15:43] Well, he sold a product. I still have it on my computer today. And if I get stuck, I go to those templates.

[00:15:49] Well, that's he and I, when we've come at this from different directions, different angles, but I love templates, too. And so I started thinking about how the template ties me when I was an architectural illustrator, I would template ties the drawing process. Now take it, take that to writing, I template ties the writing process and here's a real simple way to do it. And this will be something I'm going to give to all your little drew. It's called the acronym template. And what you do is you and I know you love key-words. So think of the key word in your niche. And I actually ask us to show you how easy this is. I was thinking about what I was going to talk with you today. And I said, well, I've got to share an acronym with Tom for him. So I wrote the acronym Speaker Dare because I know you like to talk about public speaking.

[00:16:45] Oh, we're going to make it an international playboy. Handsome guy.

[00:16:53] You can go there if you want to, but I try to keep the words rather short. OK. OK.

[00:17:00] But here here's here's what I came up with you for speaker. And what I do is I simply take the word speaker and then I try to think of words that relate to that topic. So for speaker, I thought the s would be the subject. You want to talk about. And here's the thing with you, Tom. I know that you could riff on either any one of these points and have something created in a matter of minutes. But Speaker R ask would be the subject you wanna talk about. Right. I've heard you talk about the preparation before the speech happens. Yeah. Now is kind of an interesting one because I know you have a eulogy speaking Morse or something about, you know, e-book books. You could talk about that. That eulogy a you need to know your audience. Right. OK. What if it's a keynote speech? What are the specifics to a keynote speech? I've heard you talk about this, too. What's your exit strategy? Should something go wrong during the speech? And then is your room set up? And I know you talked about going and visiting the room ahead of time. Sure. It's set up just right. So there are seven points right there that you could have seven different articles about a turn into an E course to produce a party course.

[00:18:13] It could be a seven part video. Yeah. Right.

[00:18:16] And see, the thing that's beautiful about this, that what I like is that, you know, Jeff was always taught us that as you create your content, Ukraine, your products. And so with the platform that we are teaching, you start right about these seven different topics. And when you're done, you bundle them. Emanuela, nothing to the course. You bundle them up into an e-book or whatever, but you see how easy it is when you start with that. That acronym, the key word acronym. And you start to build it out. There's something that happens to me when I start thinking it with that in acronyms. It activates something in my brain. And you know, some people think that templates make you less creative. I think it's just the opposite. I think that making more creative because you you start coming up with connections and solutions to two words and concepts that you wouldn't normally come come up with. And so that's those are seven points right there that I thought might be able to.

[00:19:15] Yeah, that that's beautiful. That's instantaneous. You have no blank page and you got something to work with instantly. That's beautiful, right.

[00:19:22] There's your outline. Yeah.

[00:19:23] And templates. You know, when people see me speak, they never realize that the whole thing is repeating template. The whole entire speech is point, illustration, point over and over and over again.

[00:19:40] It's just that I vary the illustrations so that it's one time it's a joke, one time it's a visual one time and stage movement. One time it's a story. One time it's a funny story. One time it's a sad story, you know. So it's it's a template over and over and over again. I can just go forever and nobody notices it.

[00:20:01] So. Yeah, so. All right. So we got to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we're going to talk about a thing that you and Jeff have been working on. And also, we've got a nice freebie for the audience. So we'll get that in a moment.

[00:20:15] So, folks, back, oh, about 20 years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing world on its head where guys at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand upfront for small businesses to learn the stuff that we do on the Internet. And I thought, you know, that's just too much money. And I know a lot of these guys, they wouldn't even come through if you gave them the money. So I said, I'm going to fix this. So so I started charging a relatively small entry fee to my program. But then a percentage of profits that was capped. So you weren't stuck with me forever. People just love this because they knew I wouldn't disappear on them because for me to get my big money, they had to make way bigger money. And so seventeen hundred students later is still going strong. And it's a very unique program. Nobody at my level even talked to you, let alone let you make appointments on unlimited basis for unlimited one on one tutoring with me and my entire staff. And if you joined the mentor program, you get a scholarship to my school that you can gift to another person.

[00:21:25] It's just them amazingly high value program, especially. And I've been preachiness for since 1996 when I started teaching this stuff, especially now people need to make money from home. Young people were coming up with massive debt from the traditional B.S. colleges that are I mean, I have a consumer advocate TV show and development also. I know fraud when I see it. These college people would be in jail if it wasn't for them being colleges because I actually have a quiz of the things, how they rip seven ways they're ripping people off so causing enormous debt. So check it out. Check out the mentor program at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and then give me a call. There's no obligation. There's no machine gun high pressure nest going to get you. But let's talk about your future online. And it's a great legacy gift for your grandchildren or children, too, you know, and plus, they'll help you in your business because when they learn all this stuff. So greatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:22:33] Let's get back to the main event. Tim Maudlin's here. He's a storyteller and template architect, and he just gave us a great one. Like instantly right there that you could just run with. Just in a few seconds. So. So tell tell us, Tim, what you're working on with Jeff Herring, who we had on recently, and then you got a great freebie for everybody, OK?

[00:22:56] Sure. There's a there's a backstory to this. I guess it was late last year or I guess in the fall. I was talking to Jeff and I mean a part of his mastermind group. And I was having a conversation with him. And I said, Jeff, I'm starting to write stories and post them on this platform called medium-.

[00:23:18] Now, I knew he was aware of the platform, but he hasn't been had been do anything on it, really. And I said, you know, this is really cool that you can connect with people all over the world. And they even compensates you or they pay you to write. And he says, you mean they're paying you to write? I said, Yeah. I mean, I'm not making a lot of money, but something I'm going to do anyway. Why not? Why not get compensated for it too? And so he said, well, can you demonstrate that to the group? And so we have a weekly meeting with our mastermind. And I just went on there and said, okay, here's what I'm doing. I show them how to set up a story and there's different ways you you can format the text and that graphics and everything. I didn't think anything of it. And after the meeting was over, someone commented to Jeff and they said, well, temp's should be teaching this. And Jeff came back to me and he said, Well, son, so-and-so said, you should teach this. I said, Really? And he said, Well, yes. Let me show you how serious I am. If you don't do it, I am.

[00:24:25] I said, well, I guess I'm going to do it. And then he came back to me a little later and said, what would you think of partnering up on this? And so I thought about it for a few seconds. Sure. Let's go. And so we've started a program to teach people how to train content and put them on this platform called medium.com.

[00:24:47] Yeah. And and we're going to have you're going to have a webinar coming up on this report. Put in the show notes. Yeah, it's.

[00:24:54] And I had the I had Jeff send me a log in to your two year program. And because I'm going to promote it for you. And so I went over to medium and I had already signed up like years ago her whenever they started. And I forgot. Yeah. So I got to get back into this, too, because besides just make I mean you can make a lot of money if you write a lot. I mean, a lot. But but the bigger thing is, is you've got a massive site promoting your stuff because you can link out of there. Right. You can link back to your stuff and put, you know, multimedia in there and and really get a presence on an enormous site. I think Jeff said, you know, last November they had one hundred and seventy eight million visitors or something, you know?

[00:25:41] Oh, yeah. It's it's crazy, the numbers. And here here's the really cool thing about it. I mean, the compensation. I mean, there are people who who are making a lot of money with it, but the majority are artists getting compensated. You know, a few dollars here, a few dollars there. But I I look at the capital in two different ways. There's capital is in money, but there's capital and relationships and connections. The other night, I posted a story before I went to bed. It had. I posted it to medium, I submitted it to a publication and just went to bed. No interaction or anything. I woke up the next morning, someone in India, Germany, Australia and Japan had read it, commented on it and shared it to people. And so you can connect with people all over the world on this platform. And the really cool thing about it is that there are targeted niches within this platform that you can focus your content toward or direct your content toward. And then when people start to like it, they read it. And then there are really easy ways to share it. You have people sharing your content for you. I mean, and again. You don't have you have $5 a month or $50 a year skin in the game as far as what it costs you. But then you're building all these relationships and people are freely sharing your content for you. And you're making these connections. You're building your list. There's ways to do that, too.

[00:27:16] You can sell products on you know, there's a direct link through to I mean, you sell one e-book. You made four times your investment for the month.

[00:27:25] Oh, yeah. And what I've been when teaching people is I've been writing a series of stories using my acronym template. And so when I get done with those. I've got an e-book and I can give that away as an opt in gift. Or I can sell it, too. So it's there's there's so many pluses to this platform and you always can direct people back to your Web site and we teach strategies for that as well. But it's so easy to create content on this platform. I actually my little work around is the editor is so easy to use. I will write a story on medium and I'll park it and I'll take that content, paste it into my on my Web site and then publish that and then come back and publish a story on medium later. Yeah.

[00:28:16] He says you want it to show up on your Web site first because whoever exactly Google sees first is the originator gets the brownie points. So you don't want them to think you're copying your own story off a medium. If they find it therefore so. So this is really great. I'm looking forward to to promote that webinar and listen in myself.

[00:28:36] So tell them how they get the daily doable and how they get the freebie template and how they get ahold of you.

[00:28:43] Ok. My Web site is dowhatyoucannow.com. And there I have now that's where all of my stories are posted. And you can there's an opt in there if you want to get at these daily Dubas sent to you. I have. My email is Tim, do what you can now become. And then this freebee I have for everyone and there's no opt in required for this. I want you to see if you lock me first. If you lock me, then you can opt in and we can become acquainted that way. But the freebie is this acronym template. And what it does. It walks you through these steps that I showed with Tom and the Speaker acronym, but it walks you through these simple steps to create content, and the address for that is Timsuggests.com/acronymSTC and we'll have that in the show notes.

[00:29:39] All you have to do is click on it. So yeah. So this is a been fantastic Tim though.

[00:29:44] I'm sure people that are used to seeing that blank piece of paper and now they don't have to see it anymore. They come up with one word and then they're off to the races. That's really amazing. I mean, it's like magic. Really. So. So everybody check out the daily double, grab your acronym freebie, check out all Tim's stuff and then watch for that webinar coming up. You don't want to miss it. Everything will be in the show notes. So thanks so much for coming on, Tim.

[00:30:12] Thank you, Tom. I really appreciate it.

[00:30:14] All right, everybody. We will catch you all on the next episode. See you later.

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