39 – Community Building: Tom interviews Warren Carlyle

Episode 039 – Warren Carlyle
[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 for Episode 39 of screw the commute podcast I've got Warren Carlyle here. Now this guy has a brilliant mind and you'll know it as soon as he starts talking. I hope you heard episode 38 with Caroline De Posada. I mean I've known this girl since she was in diapers. I might have even changed it once. I don't even remember. Maybe she remembers. But I love her and her dad and you'll hear about how he really brought a famous study on marshmallows I mean it was the study on marshmallows. But he made it famous around the world about delayed gratification and the success you can have if you are a person that delays your gratification. So anyway that's a really really cool episode with her. Also she tells you how he stayed in touch with her even when he was on the road. It changed her entire life. So don't miss episode 38. Our sponsor is the distance learning school the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia. Don't even think about retraining yourself or sending your kids to college until you check out our Webinar on higher education. I don't want you wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars and putting yourself and your kids under crushing debt. We'll have that Webinar in the show notes at screwthecommute.com.

[00:01:54] All right let's get to the main event. Warren Carlyle is the community building strategist and the CEO founder of, wait till you hear this, OctoNation. The largest octopus fan club with 250,000 plus members across various social platforms. This community was featured by Ellen DeGeneres the Cousteau family and multiple national and international nonprofit organization Warren helps brands and entrepreneurs leverage the connection they have with their existing clients to maximize profits by building a highly engaged following online. Warren, are you ready to screw... the commute. Hey Warren. Good to have you here and tell everybody what you've been doing.

[00:02:52] What have I been doing. so with OctoNation My octopus fan club I founded as a non-profit. About four months ago and so I've been working on creating a sustaining donor program managing influencer relationships we have a lot of cool people like Erica Jayne from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Dr. Evan Antin. He's known as America's hottest veterinarian. He's constantly featured in People magazine. So some work and a lot of fun.

[00:03:23] Well wait a minute wait a minute. Four months ago this has been around longer than four months.

[00:03:27] Oh yeah for sure. But as far as the not profit was concerned.

[00:03:32] All right now I got to back you up a little bit. When does a person as part of their life progression stop and look at themselves in the mirror and say you know what. I think I want to get behind octopus. I mean this is my life's calling. How did this come about?

[00:03:48] So when I was a kid all my family knew for my birthday or for any sort of holiday that I wanted alien stuff. So I was obsessed with aliens just the whole idea of them. I liked the way they looked. I like the idea that they were so mysterious and that people really couldn't ex`plain it.

[00:04:10] And they had a big head too.

[00:04:14] So I was just drawn to it and it was kind of like weird thing you know as a kid when I turned 7 I actually went to an aquarium saw an octopus for the first time and it was just like billowing out. And it was like stretching its arms and it was a giant Pacific octopus so it had you know close to 20 to 2200 suckers. So just watching just watching it I thought this is probably the closest to alien that I'm going to get. I immediately kind of latched onto it and then later on in my life it came back.

[00:04:45] With a vengeance I might add. Didn't know that many people in the world that could spell octopus.

[00:04:51] People ask me you know like with the whole community building strategy just like when did that whole thing start. You know I'm one of eight. You know I'm one of eight brothers and sisters. And I was the only one who really made great grades. They all kind of made Cs and Fs. And so I remember finding groups of friends that were geeks and I hung out with them and they kept my grades high. It was competitive with them. That's another kind of thing in my life for I always found communities of people my whole entire life to validate my motivations for doing things and to really you know have a conversation with people that actually cared about what I was saying. And I feel like people can do that with their business. It's just figuring out OK how do you build that community. And so that's that's what really got me in it being a community building strategist.

[00:05:42] It's not just I would say fringe topics. You've helped a lot of people and regular business topics.

[00:05:50] Yeah, medical professions. You know I'm working with someone now that helps people who suffer debilitating chronic migraines. And she's building a support community. So there's just a lot of different topics but it's finding a collective group of people that self identify as you know hurting or needing help or loving something and then bringing them all together.

[00:06:11] This could be either profit or non-profit. All right now I kind of know a little bit about your your background but what kind of jobs have you had in the past.

[00:06:21] Let's see. My first jobs was I worked at Fiesta Texas. I worked in a swim shop and that stopped really soon because I dyed my hair. And this was back when your hair had to be family friendly.

[00:06:38] Fiesta Texas. What was that.

[00:06:40] It's a theme park. It's like a huge family theme park and I worked there for about a year and a half two years and I worked in a swim shop there. And actually when I first working there I want to do stuff like increase revenue like you know how do we increase revenue how do we create multiple things like I was the one that came up with selling towels at the laser light show so people didn't have to sit on the ground for ten bucks a pop. I was out there slinging towels and created a new revenue stream. So when I went to go dye my hair I thought oh this will be you know whatever. You know it was just kind of like a surfer look and they said sorry your hair isn't family friendly and they said so you can either wear a hat or you can leave. And I kind of called their bluff and was like they're not going to fire me. And they fired me. They totally fired me.

[00:07:26] Yeah that happens with bluff calling sometimes.

[00:07:29] So I mean really after that it was a lot of sales jobs. I went to school for business real estate and financial development and I worked as a bartender. And then after that unfortunately my mom she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. I think I realized then and there that if you wanted to be there for your parents and you had a job it was kind of hard to do those things. And so that's when I got the itch for entrepreneurialism just that whole idea of being able to do what I want when I want. And there was nobody I was going to make me feel guilty about not coming into work. And just that whole entire entrepreneur dynamic.

[00:08:07] That whole thing happened to me to my mother kind of went south after living in our family home for 50 years. I took off three months and was able to go and help her transition to a safe place and do all that stuff. And I came back I had more money because I'm in this Internet business than when I left a lot of my friends were saying well we'd have been bankrupt. We'd have lost our home if we took off three months.

[00:08:32] I remember that was one of the things I really connected with you about just that whole entire idea. When shit hits the fan it's like you know what's going to happen. And so I started to learn OK how am I going to do this whole work for myself thing.

[00:08:48] All right so what was the first entree into that.

[00:08:51] First entree into that was After my mom passed away I went to Barnes and Noble. This was in San Antonio Texas. I was really curious about what it would be like to move to New York. You know I didn't have my mom there. So my family was there but I really wanted a change I was kind of having like a little crisis. And so I was like you know what I want to move I want to change. And so I went to the fashion section and I started getting all these magazines and I went back and Instagram had kind of just launched at that point and I started going through and I started adding the journalists that wrote stories about male fashion photography. And I started adding celebrity fashion photographers that typically took pictures of men in fashion. They started adding all of them and figuring out OK where did these people hang out. You know where's their attention on a daily basis. And I've always been this kind of strategic kind of thinker.

[00:09:48] I know your mind really is sharpen in figuring things out.

[00:09:54] I like to go places really fast. I know a community. I thought this is just a matter of me knowing the right people and knowing that and just creating this community around me and so I started adding all these people and then reaching out you know a week after and asking if they needed interns. You know do you need interns I'd really like to be a social media intern for you. And finally Chiun-Kai Shih he's a celebrity fashion photographer said. Yes I would love to have a intern. Fortunately the job that I was working at was they weren't laying people off but they were giving people what was packed just called wherever. Severance Yeah. And so I took them up on it and I took it and that I moved to New York realized very quickly that I could be of great use to him. He wasn't doing any sort of behind the scenes shots with his photography. He wasn't making sure that he was taking a picture with the model that with a celebrity behind the scenes and so I made sure that before that celebrity that talent left the room that they were going to take a picture with Chiun-Kai upload it to their Instagram account. And I think he went up close to like 7000 followers. That first photo shoot that we did because of being that person. And when I had a conversation with him later I said how many interns have you had before and he said Oh I've had a lot. And I said OK well what do you think they left for and she said I didn't know what to do with them and I said OK that's a good datapoint I'm going to really have to figure out how to really add value to this man's life so I stick around. And so from inter-urban I went to studio manager and from studio manager I went to managing all of his strategic partnerships and with every singer every single major global fashion brand so J Crew Calvin Klein Todd Snider unique low Mont Blanc there was just a bunch of brands he interfaced with and I was the person they spoke to.

[00:11:44] All right let me interrupt you here for a second though. Were you a paid inturn or free intern.

[00:11:50] I was free initially as soon as I got to a studio manager. Then I started making money on some of the contracts that I brought in but I quickly leveraged those relationships and this is where the entrepreneurship started. Leverage those relationships to kind of almost be a consultant for brands at a high level even though I had just gotten there for my friends back home I was learning a lot of insider information and I'm the sort of person where I want to bring my friends up so I said you know these big companies they're utilizing a lot of stuff that's free. You know they're not having to pay to post on Instagram. The strategies that they're using aren't really expensive. It was just another marketing channel. And so I started helping my friends and started charging my friends that were artists that were entrepreneurs on how to effectively grow their Instagram and grow their communities the right way. And that's when I started thinking hey wait a minute I can do this for myself. I can do this full time and then I met up with really cool mentors like you know with you and with Roberto to really teach me how to be an entrepreneur.

[00:13:03] Now we're talking about Roberto Candelaria.

[00:13:05] How to really charge for that. You know what the pricing model is because I wasn't charging nearly enough. And so I learned through all of that and then quickly. And that's when it started. That's when I when I started to go off on my own and just start working with people building their communities and building their tribes online.

[00:13:28] Ok a couple of things there. So pretty much from what I'm hearing you made your own breaks you just went in there and made this happen. Other people were there they just stood around and did nothing. You went in and saw opportunity and advantage of it. And then the second thing is this kind of what from my dad always taught me give. Before you get so you went in there as a free intern and turned into a studio manager led to all this other things. So great principles.

[00:13:56] And it was fast. Like you know with interns they think they have to be an intern for a year go in there and show them that you are completely invaluable you're irreplaceable you are part of the team that they know they're getting for free but it's just like they're making so much money as a result of you. I mean it didn't take but a week or two before I was a studio manager because of how much I was doing for him.

[00:14:21] Yeah. So people just want to go sit back and be quiet and just do the bare minimum so they can go pay them for their 15 bucks latte at work you know. But I didn't realize it was that fast a couple of weeks. One idea could propel you into a whole different life Avenue. I was going to ask you what are some of the things you can suggest to people thinking about quitting their job. Well there it is. You know go find an opportunity make something happen. Be aggressive about it because you know you could have sat back and been quiet. This is a big celebrity and he'd got rid of you too after a while because he didn't know what to do. And that's very typical with a lot of celebrities. They're great at what they do but they're clueless about all these other things. So great for you. We're missing out a big portion of your life in New York. You know what I'm talking about. So you were a model. I mean a seriously serious male model. Can you tell us a little bit about that life.

[00:15:23] So that was another thing. You know I guess another tip would be to leverage the talents that your have. And for me you know I was practicing self-awareness. I was very aware that there were a lot of a lot of the breaks that I got were because of how I looked. It was it was how I looked and it was also that I could provide value. And so the reason why I was looking you know at least initially at Barnes and Noble for these celebrity male fashion photographers and these journalists that censored them was because I knew that I could fit in that space. And I was already working out hardcore as my mom was going through chemotherapy. I was in the gym like a maniac try you know is the last thing that I wanted to think about was that my mom was going to be gone. And so the only thing that could stop my mind was working out 3 4 hours a day. I was just in the gym. And so that completely transformed my body. And so that when I went to New York there was a lot of people that were just like wow you should be the model and I was like oh no no. And then there were some opportunities that I got to actually be a male model. And my whole thing was there was a lot of men that would shave their chest and I was sure truly owning the fact that I was this very muscular hairy chested guy and there was really nobody in that market that was truly owning that. They were shaving. So I got a lot of jobs.

[00:16:45] I was going to say I wonder if I could. No I can't. I got the hair but what's behind it isn't so appealing.

[00:16:55] It was fun. But I realized you know for me the business owners that I like to work with and this is another thing that I talk about with community building is core values is you truly have to know what are you about. What do you stand for. And if anybody infringes upon your core values to a point where you feel like it's unethical you really have to shy away from them. And for me the industry that I was. Oh I don't feel right here. I would rather work with business owners that have some component of social impact sell them some soul to. Fortunately because I learned how to be an entrepreneur from mentors. I was able to do that and choose the people that I wanted to work with which is a really cool thing. But if you don't know your core values and what you stand for then you might just settle working for anybody even though you don't like them.

[00:17:42] There's quite a dark side to that business that we won't go into here but a lot of negativity there. I'm glad you got away from so in your business life have you ever gotten screwed over. What do you do about it.

[00:17:54] I would say that I have a lot of times it was me working as almost like a talent agency of sorts like I saw somebody that had a huge following and back before I call it vanity metrics where let's say you have a half a million followers or something like that. I would work for some individuals for free at length because I saw it you know there would be potential upside in really grooming them and putting them in the marketplace and then helping them create revenue streams. And I can't tell you how many times that I think it was two or three times actually that I started working with people and giving them really great information. Having calls with them thinking that I was part of the team and thinking that you know everything was great and then completely getting shafted at the end of the day and them as acting as if like I'm desperate or if I'm this I'm that it's just like no I'm just I guess there's like a huge misunderstanding with the value that I gave you that you're actually putting in place and the fact that you want nothing to do with me after me building your whole entire empire. So that won't ever happen again. But I would say that it's if somebody is out there and they look great and you feel like oh they'll be a great testimonial. There is power in charging people for your worth. You know I find that if they're essentially paying you so that they pay attention and that they follow the rules and that I learned that lesson you know early on with thinking Oh I'd be really cool to work with X Y Z and then completely them wanting nothing to do with you after you build something really spectacular for them.

[00:19:33] So yeah you need to get paid so they value it. And you really should whenever possible have things in writing because the first person that won't sign an agreement is the person that's going to screw you. So you can't feel bad. A lot of new entrepreneurs feel very iffy making a contract will scare all my customers away. Well you're probably scaring away the rip offs so you're better off in the long term.

[00:19:59] And there's a lot of relationships that you take for granted as an entrepreneur. If that doesn't make sense for you it makes sense for me in the sense where because I work with such high level influencers that are making good amounts of money per month doing what they do from an influencer standpoint. Oftentimes I'll introduce people to each other and they'll form business relationships so you really have to figure out how you're going to monetize that introduction and make sure that's a win win for you as well because there was a long time that I was just like yeah let's just connect these people let's just connect these people. But then they got to the point where they were creating businesses as a result of those connections from that and then completely leaving you in the dark. There has to be some point where you're just like Okay how am I. How am I going to refer people to each other. You know there's a lot you can do through through CRM software with affiliate software making sure that you can do that and then also just having things in writing. Reaching out to both their business managers and seeing how essentially we create something together and just drop mapping that out.

[00:21:04] Ok. All right. Anything funny bizarre happened to you during all of the business stuff.

[00:21:10] I would say that the the most bizarre or funny thing that happened has to be on the octonation side, the octopus fan club that I have. There's like over a quarter of a million people that follow it and some strange stuff that happens sometimes. And actually it was just recently happened that happened about five or so months ago when I started getting all these really bizarre calls on my phone because I've been trying all these different platforms out to share content like Imgur and Reddit and all of these sites that if you if you don't show up the right way on you'll get trolls and trolls are just people that. I guess they don't really have a life. They just there their whole sole purpose is to kind of mess with you. And so somebody had added my phone number my cell phone number as a place to source octopus for restaurant food. And I was like I don't know who would think to do that. So I kept getting calls from restaurants everywhere that were saying OK you know what sort of how how much quantity can I buy from you. And I couldn't figure it out because I thought Is it because my number is on the nonprofit. Is it because my numbers on you know I had my number on my Instagram for a while on Instagram on octoNation for a while and then finally I did some SEO and research and things like that and found out that I had been put as a reliable source for sourcing octopus for restaurants. And I contacted the site and deleted the thing off there. But I thought that was so extremely bizarre.

[00:22:44] Oh man you missed a big revenue stream you could have just bought some Chicken and cut it up and sell it to them.

[00:22:54] I'm telling you like 100 calls or so a week.

[00:22:58] Well I mean what were they trying to get with that were you make calamari or squid.

[00:23:05] No it is actually. I mean now that I mean it's more common you know than you would think now I'm like seeing it almost every restaurant they go to and they always ask me like every single time I'm just like hey you know what's really good here. They're like oh I love the octopus. I can't do that.

[00:23:23] Hey I just thought of something what's the difference between a squid and an octopus.

[00:23:27] So an octopus has eight arms squid as two tentacles and eight arms. And so the difference between a tentacle and an arm is essentially an arm has suckers all the way down to the very tip of the arm a sucker is kind of like this this long kind of arm and then you get to like a lily pad and they're suckers on the end of it. And so squid use that to gather food and bring it into their mouth. And so those are really the big difference.

[00:23:58] See folks you're on this for education you never know what you're going to learn.

[00:24:04] So the thing is with octonation what I've learned is to build a community that has the headspace to even entertain a fact like that. Like I'm not going to and you know this about me Tom I'm not going to like go into the conversation and start talking about the optical gland of an optical senescence in childbirth because I have a community that has a headspace to entertain that conversation. So a lot of people make the mistake of posting about their business every single day on their personal page. It would be time better spent you know having that conversation with a community that has the headspace to even entertain that sort of information.

[00:24:43] What's the thing you like best about working for yourself and the worst.

[00:24:47] The thing that I like best about working for myself is that I really get to at this point in time I really get to pick and choose the clients that I like to work with and that you know one of my things is if we couldn't go after working together all day or after you know a call if I didn't immediately let it go and invite you out to have a drink with you or get to have dinner with you then we're probably not the best fit to be clients because I really like to have that relationship really like that person to get it because if I'm helping them be the mouthpiece to this huge community I really want to really like what they're doing and that's all a lot of the projects that I work with are people that I'm like wow you know what you're doing is going to change and help the lives of so many people.

[00:25:32] And you're the perfect person to do it. You're talented. And I really like to grow those people into doing just that. And so I'd say that's my favorite part is that now I'm not just like oh you know. You know I have to do this because I have to make money and now I'm at the point where it's like I really don't like this person but they give me a paycheck and I never want to be in that position again. So that's a really cool thing about entrepreneurship. The thing that I would say I like the least is still goes back to the work life balance aspect of it is really trying to balance because I love what I do so much with octonation site is a very you know community building site it's a fun kind of group. I can kind of get lost in it being 2 o'clock in the morning. And me like either trying to find influencers or sourcing information or you know all these things that I have team members for now I just still love to do it. And so it's kind of like that balance of OK like turning it off and then walking Walt which is my German Shepherd.

[00:26:39] Why did you get Walt by the way.

[00:26:41] Because I mean that's really it. Walt He'll let you know. I wouldn't say he's Vocal to the point where he barks at you. But it's so funny that when he knows that we're about to go out and I go to look at my phone he immediately goes No you are not going to get on your phone. Like let's go and he comes and he like goes to my leg and he's like No let's go. So it's really interesting and he does it all the time it's so funny. And I know that he know it's because he's the smartest dog he knows that if I'm standing up and that we're about to go outside and I go to grab my phone to look at it for a second it could be five 10 20 minutes. And so he's gotten to the point where he's smart when he goes oh no you're not doing that and I go OK Walt okay and I leave. So it's good to have that person there that's like I say person walt's a person to me okay let's like come on like I know you're going to go into the black hole of your phone so you need to take me out. So that's really nice to have.

[00:27:37] All right now I'm sure some people were thinking because I know I did it in the beginning. Besides you helping other people learn to do the community building. My first question to you when you had I don't know 50,000 subscribers was how are you going to make money with this. And I was quite surprised myself in some of the answers one of which was underwater photographers were now wanting to showcase their work on your site and pay you and you sell t shirts with it what are the revenue streams from a community that's you know by all means off the wall. I mean it's not mainstream.

[00:28:13] Yeah. So the cool thing is once you have the attention span of a customer or somebody who likes the same thing they typically have a lot of different traits. So people that love octopus what we know about them is that there's a lot of them that like really like underwater photography they really like vacationing they're scuba divers. They really like just a lot of different things. So what happened was you can get sponsorship so GoPro is interested in doing giveaways their interest in sponsorship is an advertising agency that wanted to pilot a quiz on octopus and people that one would get a certificate to Oxford and they were willing to pay just to pilot the quiz so that they could sell that service to their other advertising clients is really amazing. I have the T-shirt line which is octonation apparel. If you think a promotional items you can put you know octopus on just about anything. And then with artists there's a lot of artists that they don't really have an octopus marketplace. And when you think about octonation there's a quarter of a million people self-identified as really loving and being interested in octopus. And so if they go to list something on Etsy they're lucky if they sell a couple to their friends whereas if I list it on octoNation on our Instagram or Facebook channels they're selling out. There's some artists that have told me hey would you mind taking that post down because I physically can't make the amount that I've sold now and I'm really backed up and I go I guess that's a good issue to have.

[00:29:45] When you build a community of people interested in one thing there's just all kinds of things that appear to make revenue.

[00:29:51] And then Kickstarter. I mean I wanted to launch something there is what I'm really interested in doing now is launching a coffee table book that's going to have essentially bring me back to my first love which is aliens. So it's going to be called something along the lines of octopus or aliens and every single image is going to be a really close up shot or a macro shot of octopus skin or octopus eye or something like that. It's going to look very cosmic and because I have a community I could launch that kickstarter and have it immediately funded by people that love the topic. And so when you have a community and I've worked with other people like Brian Kessinger who's a Disney animator who went off to do a Kickstarter campaign and immediately got two hundred thousand dollars from people because he had a community of people that watched him draw on Instagram live for an hour a night. So it's really amazing what you can do when you do that.

[00:30:45] All right so I heard you talk about your work with really big influencers but people don't have to be already a big shot to work with you or learn from you right. What do you have that can help them.

[00:30:56] So what I've been offering is I go around and I speak on community building and I talk about the six Cs of building a fanatical community for yourself or your business something that I created. was community building QuickStart which basically brings people through those six Cs of building that fanatical tribe and really getting people from a psychological point wanting to pay attention to your business your page on a daily basis. And so this QuickStart guide that I created the kind that will walk you through. Essentially it was the beginning of a process. The first is you know clarify so you can get some clarification around you know who it is that you're targeting you know what where is it that they are currently where do they hang out online. So they know how to effectively draw them to one place. So that's one you know one thing that I've been doing and then another thing is something about to be launching pretty soon that I'm excited about which is a membership community for community crushers that's what I'm calling it and community crushers are people that want to build highly engaged followings online and they don't want to just build followers they want to build a community like octoNation something that has a sustainable culture something that you can draw revenue from something that you can get sponsored something that you can have events for. This isn't for the person that wants to do an e-commerce store selling toothpicks and make you know 300,000 dollars in some weird fashion this is for somebody that truly cares and truly wants you to be that Spearhead. You know a huge issue and have fun and make money while doing it.

[00:32:35] Ok. We'll have links in the show notes to check those things out folks. If when you hear this the new one isn't ready. We'll update the show notes as soon as Warren rolls out the second project. But the first project is going to be ready.

[00:32:50] All right beautiful. We have to take a quick break from our sponsor we've been getting quite an education here and speaking in education. Do you know what colleges and universities are doing. Well according to gradeinflation.com they're raising grade point averages to make it look like they're doing a better job of teaching when there's a mountain of evidence that they aren't. So I want you to watch the eye opening higher education webinar at screwthecommute.com and potentially save yourself and possibly your loved ones friends and neighbors hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt when they go for higher education and we'll certainly be glad to help you at the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia a distance learning school.

[00:33:37] Let's get back to Warren and Warren what's a typical day look like for you. How do you stay motivated doing this working on your own.

[00:33:45] A typical day for me. It looks like you know I wake up and I walk Walt which is my German Shepherd and then I log into teamwork teamwork is a project management software that I personally use that I manage all my projects in. And so after I click community crushers all these communities pop up and I am working with a lot of I guess you'd call them community crushers or community leaders and I go and I see if they've completed the task I have for them. I look at their engagement on their social media channels and these are for people that I'm either mentoring with or coaching personally. And so I check up on them almost immediately and then I'll either text them or tweak some of the posts that they've put out online. And then I will typically go to octoNation and check on that community. It's just kind of like bouncing from different subject to different subject which is great for me because one thing is I'm one of my strengths is input. So I'm constantly liking to learn and taking information as I've just created a business for myself that I can do that on a daily basis and I have so much fun doing it. And so after that pretty much I'll hook up with Roberto we'll go eat lunch somewhere or he will cook. And then we go typically do something at night we hang out with friends fellow entrepreneurs. Drink some wine and start up all over again. If I'm not traveling which I've been doing a lot now actually moved out of my apartment the end of November to go on the speaking tour with Roberto and one of his new business partners and we've been traveling in and out of certain places different cities speaking. I've been speaking on community building he's been speaking on sponsorship and that's kind of been our life. As of right now is just doing a lot of speaking helping a lot of people and also me helping a lot of communities build a highly engaged following online.

[00:35:41] I think you need to take Walt, travel get one of those RVs and take Walt with you on all these things.

[00:35:48] He would love that. I mean when we first got him we started going on road trips and he loves them. Stay motivated by. I really is probably the best thing but seeing the success of the people that I work with and just I mean the communities that they're building and the responses they get that they get back. When I see it it's I mean it's social I call it social proof.

[00:36:12] I mean it's there and you see where we create this culture this community of people writing back on a daily basis like this is the best account you know on the planet or this person is really helping me helping me do this. That and the other whatever reason. I mean that just you can't really beat that is people really finding themselves and they're able to do what they love. I think the cool thing that I love about community building is once you it doesn't matter how weird the topic is. Obviously I'm doing it with octopus right. But if you can do something that you love or you have it passionate about something and you can build a sustainable culture and community around it and business from it. I mean it's just it's great. It's like you wake up every single day and you have all these friends that are interested in the topic that you love and you're essentially sharing information with them they're sharing information with each other. It's just I don't know. It's great.

[00:37:08] Obviously there's a system to it which you can find out more about in the show notes with community building QuickStart. But I mean that's truly how they motivate is just seeing all that unfold in front of me.

[00:37:20] And what's the best way if they have questions or want to work with you to a higher level what's the best way to get in touch with you.

[00:37:28] Through Facebook. I mean you can get me there at Warren K. Carlyle. A lot of times I'll be doing videos. I just did one on IGTV about you know all the newest updates there.

[00:37:41] Yeah that was great. I passed that on to Lakia.

[00:37:45] And there's a lot of things changing you know with algorithms and every single time something changes that I feel like I need to jump on Facebook live and tell people about this. That's probably the place that I'll do it. Other than that if there's any specific questions or you feel like hey I already have a community I've already have a million people you know then you can always e-mail me at Warran@WarrenCarlyle.com.

[00:38:08] If you just type in Warren Carlyle into Google there's somebody else that's not you.

[00:38:20] He's a Tony Award winning choreographer. Another funny thing is that I get messages all the time to this day I got one last week congratulating me on my Oscar congratulating me on my you know Tony Award winning choreography on the 20th century and stuff like that. Thanks.

[00:38:38] Oh my god I just had an idea. Have been award every year called the OscarPus. For The Best Oscar videos the best Oscar pictures. I mean octopus.

[00:38:58] Oh yeah. I get submissions like octonation that's another cool thing about creating communities. You get submissions from people all over the world people before they send stuff to National Geographic. Sometimes they test it with me. So I think that's a pretty cool situation to be in.

[00:39:14] And I still think I'm going to see you on Discovery channel one of these days because this seems like this is just perfect for this. I hope that happens one of these days but Warren thanks so much for visiting with us. This has been Episode 39 with Warren Carlyle. Make sure you check out the show notes for all the stuff about him and what he can help you with your community building. And next week's training is episode 40. That's the weekly training and I'm talking about CraigsList and buying apps and what they can do for your business. And please subscribe I want to build a community of people that listen to Screw the Commute. So let's do it. So subscribe and review and we'll catch y'all the next time. Catch ya later.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com