407 – Content is King: Tom interviews Jeff Herring

Episode 407 – Jeff Herring
[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 four hundred and seven of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with old friend Jeff Herring. And listen to this, folks. Many people believe Jeff Herring is a living legend of traffic generation. But, you know, many people also believe in the Easter Bunny.

[00:00:45] So I was waiting for the next one on that. How are you doing, sir?

[00:00:50] I'm good.

[00:00:51] So hope you didn't miss Episode 406, everybody. It's about hashtags. It was one of my Monday training sessions on hashtags. So I introduced you to the use of them and why they're good and what not to do, what to do. And they're using them all over the place now. And it can really help you and it costs nothing to do it. Just a little bit of knowledge. So check out Episode 406. Every time you want to get to an old episode of Screw the Commute, go to Screwthecommute.com and then the episode number slash 406. Right. How'd you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the show's helped you out at all in your business or help you have an idea to improve your business, whatever. We want to hear about it, so check out screwthecommute.com, look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk in your phone or computer. Tell me how the shows helped you put your website in there so you can get a future episode or a shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. Now pick up a copy of our Automation eBook. We sell this for twenty seven bucks, but it's used for listening to the show and it saved me millions. I mean, literally we estimated at seven and a half million keystrokes as of a couple of years ago. So even more than that now. And it's got all kinds of automation techniques for both your computers, tablets, your cell phones. You will be amazed. screwthecommute.com/automatefree And I'll go ahead and say you're welcome right now, because you will thank me if you use the stuff in his book and pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app where you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right. Many of you know I've got the longest running, most unique, most successful ever mentor program in the field of Internet and digital marketing. So that's a very unique program, which I'll tell you about later. But as a spinoff to that and so that I can handle more people. About 13 years ago, I formalized the training and went through three years of hell with the educational system getting licensed to have a school on this topic. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world. It's IMTCVA.org, but you don't have to be in Virginia to do it. It's licensed by the state of Virginia, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But it's distance learning and it's good quality distance learning. It's not like these four year schools have been ripping people off. And then and then all of a sudden they got a distance learning program. As soon as covid comes around, it's like two days old where ours is 13 years old and it gets high marks from all of our students and graduates. So it'd be a great legacy gift for anybody in your family, young people, you know, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, your own kids. And from a selfish standpoint, they'll have their own money because we teach skills that are in demand by every business on Earth. So they'll have a career and they won't come home and live in your basement. How about so? So check that out and I'll tell you a little later how you can get a scholarship to the school if you're in my mentor program.

[00:04:10] All right. Let's get to the main event. Jeff Herring is the creator of Content Creation Nation and Smart Content Income. His students and members discover how to create repurpose profit with all kinds of content. And he's a single dad of two sons, two large dogs. And guess what? All of them are housebroken. How do you like that? And he may be a grandfather here shortly. So, Jeff, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:42] Let's do it, sir.

[00:04:44] What's going on, man?

[00:04:45] Well, as you said, you know, any day now I'll be a grandfather. They her due date was last week. And so great stories already around this day. And John got covid over the summer and had it pretty bad. And one of the strange side effects was Caroline got pregnant, you know, and so they went early on to one of those gender reveal places, you know, that were they started fires and they said, you know, the cannon does shoot off the smoke and the pink stuff or the blue stuff. And I've been I was certain from the beginning it was a boy. Well, they shoot things off at the gender reveal party and it's pink like, oh, all right. I guess I was wrong, but I still don't think I am. And several weeks later, I got a phone call from John after their 20 week checkup and dad said, we were looking at the picture and the doctor goes, Your daughter has. So, man, he's he's due any day now, but if you think about it, you know, what's the hurry, right? It's warm and comfortable in there, right?

[00:05:57] That's what I hear. Yeah. Well, then why spend the rest of their life trying to get back in? Exactly. Take your time, buddy.

[00:06:06] So and just think I think they did that on purpose. The people that you know, I think the doctors have a stake in selling pink paint and pink furniture and all that stuff. And then it's past the refund period now. So now you're stuck with all that pink stuff and now you got to switch to blue and buy twice as much stuff or have another kid or that you can save it. Yeah, that's my conspiracy theory on reveal parties. So they didn't like it and said any thousands of acres on fire. Did they like to hear that. One couple did.

[00:06:43] I did. I heard about that a lot about it while they were doing the stuff. Fortunately they did it in her grandparents backyard so.

[00:06:49] Yeah.

[00:06:51] So so hey so you got a you know, you've been on here a couple of times over the years, so you got new stuff here. This is I haven't heard about this content creation nation and smart content and profit funnels and all this other stuff. So tell us what you've been up to.

[00:07:06] Well, it comes out of Tom, something you taught me because one of the one of the things that a lot of people have done with the pandemic shutdown stuff is, you know, babies some time to think that maybe the story you told about having a billionaire over who told you that you needed to spend time out by the pool. In deep thought. So I did some of that for about a minute so I can and then really a lot over the holidays. And I kept thinking, all right, what's a 15 years of doing this? And even more years, 26 years of creating content for my businesses. What are the bottom lines? How how far can I simplify this and still make it useful and powerful? And that's where I came up with the three steps create repurpose and profit content creation, content repurposing and content profit. Right. And and we'll talk about that when we get to the content profit funnels and the and the chunk templates. And from that came a soon to be launched Web site called SmartContentIncome.com. And then what we already have out there is the Content Creation Nation, a mentor program, much like the one I went through with you. And this is a good time to get in because we just finished the foundational training of, you know, Schepper training on content creation, a separate training on content repurposing, a separate training on content profit. And now we're moving into the the content profit funnels.

[00:08:42] That's that's great. You're always moving forward, man. But kind of it kind of reminds me, I don't know if I ever told you the story about this. This guy I know long time, very credible guy and he was all excited, had spent all this money on, you know, he was teaching people how to license their intellectual property to bigger companies. And he came up to me at an event and he was all proud of all the stuff he had developed. And I started like laughing. I thought he was kidding me. He got real mad at me because he he came up with the website, IP Money, his website, my gosh, intellectual property, money. And I thought, yeah, I mean, technically it makes sense. But I mean, there's loads of things on on the Internet. You can see where your website just doesn't read. Right. Like therapist says the rapist.

[00:09:34] Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:35] Those kinds of things that when I do that kind of work, that reminds me of the story you told about the airplane. I gave you a shout out in a recent medium column. Did you see it? I don't know, because the picture I was using for some reason, I needed a picture of a of an airplane. And the one I found on the side had a. Oh, right. A and and I wrote the little shout out. I said at Tom Antion. I said almost.

[00:10:03] Yeah, yeah. Because it was Thai air.

[00:10:07] No Japan Air. Luckily they had a U.S. advisory because they it was All Nippon Airlines which is a and a well how'd you like to see that.

[00:10:21] A 747 coming at 500 miles. You know. So yeah.

[00:10:28] So so anyway are these membership sites or trainings or what are these things.

[00:10:33] The first one smart content income is it's, you know everybody skate all skate blog or or website. With links to all kinds of stuff, it's got links to my blog, to my webinars, to my coming podcast, to my live cast and then all my other stuff, bootcamps masterclasses this program.

[00:10:57] Your coming podcast, though, you live in Cummings Georgia. So you're coming and coming. But so so now is this the actual website smartcontentincome.com. Is that what that is.

[00:11:16] It'll be there. Yeah. Oh that's upcoming. Folks could go there now and there's a few links active. It's going to launch formally on May 1st. OK, well as the podcast will, I like to do things, launch things on my birthday and then the and then the Content Creation Nation is a mentor program so people can come in monthly or yearly. And we have you know, you get in there and you pretty much get everything I've got. And we do weekly training for an hour on Tuesday all along.

[00:11:51] You don't have covid, do ya?

[00:11:55] Why would I have covid?

[00:11:56] Well, you said they they get everything you've got.

[00:11:59] Oh, no. Actually, you know what I'm really pleased to have with my son has had it both. My son's a lot of my friends.

[00:12:08] Yeah. We don't we don't want everything you've got. That's right.

[00:12:11] You know, it's more like your ex-wives, you know, because there's not enough penicillin for that.

[00:12:18] But that reminds me of the Barbie divorce doll that you hear about that. Oh yeah. It came with everything Ken had.

[00:12:27] Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:29] That's like Lewis Grizzard old line about I'm never going to get married again. I'm just going to find a woman I hate and give her my house.

[00:12:39] That's my favorite one of my favorites of all time that you couldn't ever get away with. This guy was like 85. He was still speaker. I can't think of his name right now. But but he said his his his mother in law was a test pilot at a broom factory.

[00:13:00] Oh, my. Yeah. Yeah. So have you ever seen the Eagles in concert? No, they have a little little stick. They do. And I can't remember which one it does. It does it. But they're introducing a song and he, he talks about he got a letter from his from his ex-wife and the dog plaintiff.

[00:13:24] What is it. Said Plaintiff. Oh yeah.

[00:13:30] So you heard the dog said, hey, I don't want any X's around here. I don't want any divorces. I don't want to get you know, people fight over animals on divorces big time. No, that's crazy. Yeah.

[00:13:43] You didn't get a horse from your last one or anything, you know, no horse. They rode in it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:52] All right. So I kept the dogs I came in with and then we added something.

[00:13:58] So so content creation nation.

[00:14:00] Is that also dot com.

[00:14:03] Yes, it's a dot com that's ready to go now. Right over there, you can see a good video replay of a webinar we did.

[00:14:10] And find out all about about the program. One of the one of the things we're teaching in both the blog and the free level and then at the deeper mentor level is something I've been calling chunk templates. Now, you helped me create and package my original article, writing templates way back. And what was that, 2005?

[00:14:31] A long time ago. But now these new ones, are they named after me again, like Antion documents?

[00:14:38] Is that what it is?

[00:14:39] I didn't think about that when I named them.

[00:14:42] But from now on, you won't be able to get out of your head.

[00:14:45] I won't know and I'll always say it. I'll say you are named after my mentor guide. And so think about it. Think about the different chunks of content that are out there. Mistakes, miss tips, suggestions, step secrets. Right, OK, those are all small chunks of content and we've got dozens of them. And you can do three, five, seven, whatever number you want. And it makes your content creation super easy. And it's not just for articles, folks, it's for anything, any kind of content. You can use these for videos, podcast, Meems, webinars, columns, anything you want to create content with. You can use these chunk templates and what I found Tom is as I show them to people, they keep suggesting other. So it keeps growing and growing.

[00:15:47] Yeah, and yes, you mentioned Meems boy, your deep, deep, deep in the meems more than anybody ever heard of.

[00:15:54] Well, they're just so fun and they and they market well, people think of them as as just, you know, humorous stuff and they are. But you can use them to get attention and then teach. They're great on places like Pinterest and Instagram, other, you know, visual dominated, visual content dominated sites. And so it allows you to create a lot of content. And we've talked about this before. One of the the places I recommend and this is actually a content profit funnel is the simplest of them all, is getting your content, whether it's text, audio or video over on medium.com. Now, side note, next time you're out shopping for clothes and they ask what size you want to tell them, you want extra medium. Hello. It's so funny because people take two steps away to go get it and turn around and look at you funny. I mean, if there's extra small or large, why not make that say, hey, let's talk about these profiteroles a little more?

[00:17:00] Because I actually sat through like a three hour thing. This guy, one of the big names, I won't mention them, but they did come down, sit in on my class, the three hours outlining this crazy final thing that looked like it was a a schematic off of an airliner, you know, is just this is I'm sitting there thinking I don't want to insult this guy, but that was just crazy.

[00:17:27] So so you've, like, streamlined these things because everybody's talking about funnel funnel funnel funnel.

[00:17:33] Yeah. I mean, and I did it kind of as a lark and I thought, wait a minute, content profit funnels. I kind of like the way that sounds. And so I've simplified it because if I'm doing it, it's got to be simple because I'm simple. And so the simplest one is you create a piece of content and you publish it over one medium, OK? And when you're in their partner program, which you can get into for free, you get paid by medium for the time that people are on your content, whether it's an article, video or audio, like a podcast or whatever, you're in there on one of the podcasts ride together. And and so that's the simplest funnel I can think of. You create a piece of content, usually an article or a column over there, publish it, and that creates residual income. It's a residual profit funnel in that, you know, you'll get paid when it first comes out. But I'm getting paid for stuff I did years ago, you know, and the more you put in there, the more you get.

[00:18:38] Yes, so I kind of like funnel cakes. That's my favorite thing at the fair.

[00:18:45] But but yeah, so I've never done any complicated funnels. I put out an email that sends them to a sales letter or sends them to a freebie that introduces them to some products. And there we go.

[00:19:00] This is that's about the most complicated I get because with these junk templates, you can use them for promotion. Right, to to join webinars, to join your list for products. And the funny thing is, Tom, with the exception of you, most people I've seen out there that do content marketing, they make it their model is really hard. They make it a two step where, you know, you create the content for promotion. Right. And then you go to make your products and you sit down and you're starting from scratch. Well, that's nuts. And that's why I call what I do direct response content marketing, because I want to result from every piece of content I put out there. I want my students to have a result from every piece of content they put out there. And so in my model, when you're creating your promotional content, you're also creating your profit content because you can take an article like all of these junk articles. Let's say you did, you know, three steps to a great subject line, right? Yeah. OK, and so that's a good article. It's also a good webinar. It's also a good anything. It's also a good many course work or a good Ecorse. And each step becomes a module. You end up with five modules because the first one is to get started pre training and then module one module to module three. And then I mean, yeah. And then module five is, you know, the wrapping it all up, put it all together and your next steps. So, you know, think about that on a visualized one of those word clouds Tom and it's got all these red, white and blue chunk templates on there. And so if you took a topic and you know, did all 15 of those chunked templates, that's a lot of material turn into a course. Mm hmm. And three simple steps, you know, content webinar product boom.

[00:21:03] Yeah, I love it. Love it. Love it. All right. So I want to take you back, you know, because a lot of people listen to the show or, you know, wishing they were out of the dreaded job and they're sitting in the cubicle. And so it's been a while. But you were a therapist for a family therapist for a long time and then talk about the the actual transition period to get out of doing that, to get into doing something where you didn't have to, you know, go in there and listen to those people's problems all.

[00:21:38] Well, you know, I that's what I always wanted to be growing up, was a counseling psychologist. And I remember my junior year of high schools when they start putting pressure on you to, you know, to commit to a major in college. And I thought, gosh, 17 is awful young to know what you want to do. Right. And so I was just kind of watching and playing with stuff. And this is a true story somehow, even if I ever told you this part. Yeah.

[00:22:01] Monday, everything we said up to this point is lies not true.

[00:22:05] That's Monday night. I'm not making any of this up. Monday night we're watching the old Bob Newhart Show. You know, the one where he was the psychologist there. They're on there or. Yeah, no, that was the second one that oh, the my my brother Dale and my other brother. That was when he was the innkeeper. All right. Psychologist and I remember thinking. Wow, huh? He gets paid for that, huh? And the next day, sitting outside the lunch room with my buddy Rick and I've always been the person people come to with with problems and things to talk about. And Rick was talking to me about a girl problem. And I just seen Bob Newhart and I went. I could get paid for this and it was decided as simple as that. Give me your lunch money. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's what I charge them with. Yeah. You can buy me lunch. I spent six years helping run an adolescent drug treatment center and then opened a private practice in 86 and really thought I'd spend the rest of my life doing that. Found you through the speaking world. And then, OK, here's a guy doing what I've been playing with because I was trying to figure out the Internet to reach more people.

[00:23:16] And you had all the a bunch of articles at this point. Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:20] I started writing a call relationship column for the newspaper in which was hilarious because I never finished my PhD in counseling psychology because my professors told me I couldn't write and I believe them. And then a few years later, Dr. Mary Hicks, one of the professors who told me that she joined, she signed up for one of my contacts. Oh, isn't that beautiful? I was a pretty happy day. Yeah. So, you know, I played with it and everybody was telling me, Jeff, look, you're a good psychologist, you're you're good at this, but you're better at these columns you're writing because it was supposed to be only for six months to a year in the local newspaper, Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.

[00:24:04] It ended up going for over 10 and ended up, you know, making a lot of difference in my life because I still couldn't write academically if you held a gun to my head. But I can write like I talk and demonstrate how I uniquely approach problems and how I uniquely solve problems. And that that column took off. It got nationally syndicated, internationally syndicated, filled my practice. And what really cracked me up was back then, we didn't have there was no Tallahassee International Airport. It was Tallahassee Regional, you know, and it was a tiny little you know, you can walk everywhere place. And the column went all over the world. So I had the one that made me smile the most. Was this really to do physician flying down with his wife from LaGuardia to Tallahassee Regional Airport, living in a bed and breakfast I recommended for a week and we met every day. In my office, and then I did, you know, phone stuff with them afterwards, so, you know, everything we talk about here that worked in the newspaper offline, Tom, all these business lessons were great because they work like 100 times better online because your your reach is right.

[00:25:21] But so did you save up money and transition out of their therapy world or what?

[00:25:28] Know that that that really wasn't planned, at least the way it started. I had a very, very busy October of 2005. I had my first online course. This is another thing I don't think I told you my first domain name besides JeffHerring.com was the writingresultscoach.com. I know. I heard that. That's that's a terrible name. But the course article, writing and marketing secrets really did well. So that was October of 05. I also got the flu and got divorced in October. So it's a busy month. The divorce was not a surprise. It was a relief. And a lot of ways what was a surprise was the mom's decision to move from Tallahassee to north of Atlanta.

[00:26:18] So I thought, well, I could stop this, but why put the kids in the middle? So I decided I had to get mobile and spent all of 06, three days in Tallahassee seeing a week's worth of clients in three days. And the three days up here trying to get something going and seeing the kids. And what I did in between in the van between Tallahassee and Atlanta, as I listened to training cassettes, I'd tell you how long ago that was or my laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter. And a lot of those were you trainings from you. And, you know, I just made it a rule. I'm going to listen to this. And when I get where I'm going, whether it was Tallahassee and Atlanta, I implemented it and, you know, got up here full time in.

[00:27:02] February of '06, my tiny little seven hundred square foot apartment and built all this on a laptop thanks to your your teaching and mentoring.

[00:27:15] And you know, that first month I think I made about five hundred online and by May I was making 20K plus beautiful and you know, thanks to you. So you know, the transition was not what I expected but.

[00:27:33] You know, it quickly became a full time thing because so much in my lifetime, I've just I guess when you work hard and put yourself out there, you get lucky, because I had I was up here deciding between doing Internet or, you know, the relationship coaching stuff. And I was I had started a singles coaching business and went to was interviewed on a show rate relationship radio show in Atlanta. And the woman and I hit it off and I thought, OK, maybe once a quarter I'll go on here and, you know, promote the business. I'll be cool. And then I ran into her on a coaching meeting and she said, Hey, Jeff, listen, I don't want to do the show anymore. I gave the station your name and it's yours if you want. And dude, that was before I even moved up here. Right. And so that was fun. But here's the problem. The online business was taken off and it took an hour to prepare the show. It took an hour to get down there, an hour to get back in an hour to do it. Yeah, and you and I both know how much you can do online in four hours. Right, right. So I just did that for a year. But you know what? There's something I did that I learned from you. I had a a notebook, you know, with all my interviews. And I always interviewed somebody in the field because I knew a lot of people. But I also had my I'll clean this up. I had my oh my oh crap file, which was if somebody flaked or couldn't come or didn't show or whatever, I had an hour's worth of material I could do on my own. And I learned that from you, from the speaking stuff, and so, you know, I went full time online and it just took off from there, basically teaching people how to create, repurpose and profit with their content.

[00:29:25] Yeah, and 20 amongst great, especially when your child supports 30 K, you know.

[00:29:31] Yeah. It was it was good to get two thirds of it done. Yeah. The woman's got to eat, you know, so there's no way we've got to slow pitch.

[00:29:41] So, we got to take a response sponsor break and we come back, we will ask Jeff what a typical day looks like for him and how he stays motivated. And also, I whenever I talk to Jeff, I always think of the the old saying that I never met a therapist that didn't need one.

[00:30:00] Absolutely.

[00:30:02] So so, folks, I don't know, about 23 years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head. That's kind of stuff Jeff's talking about. He ran into me like 15 years ago and guys at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to teach him what they knew about Internet marketing for small business. And I thought, you know, I knew all of these guys rip offs, they be hiding out in Mexico if you 50 grand up front. So I said, I'm going to turn this on its head. And so I charged an entry fee, which was way lower, and then I tied myself to their success. So for me to get my 50 grand, they had to make 200 grand that well, people love this. And seventeen hundred plus students later in twenty three years, it's still going strong and it's the longest running, most unique, most successful program of its kind. And I have no trouble saying that because I triple dog dare people to put their program line for line up against mine and nobody will do it because they'll be embarrassed. I mean, it's all one on one will take over your computer.

[00:31:08] All my subject matter experts here plus me will will work with you one on one. I don't like group because if I'm talking to the advanced people, the beginners are lost. And if I'm talking to the beginners, the advanced people are bored. So I don't like that. Then you have an immersion weekend that the great Internet marketing retreat center and it's the only facility of its kind in the world. We actually live in the house here. We have a TV studio where we shoot marketing videos for you and plus you get a scholarship to my school, which you can either use yourself for extra training or gift to someone. So and plus there's all kinds of other perks. So that's the nature of it. And you can find the details at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and give me a call. A very accessible is no high pressure machine gun. That's the twist in your arm. So once we show you the value here, people think it's kind of a no brainer. And we've we're so proud to have helped Jeff along his his pathway to I didn't have anything to do with his marriages, though. I might want to.

[00:32:13] I want to tell you that up front. So, Jeff, what's what's a typical day look like for you nowadays?

[00:32:20] Well, before I answer that question, I just want to underscore, folks, everything Tom here said, I owe a lot of my success Tom because it simplified it made it easy in the training and in the time you spend is at his house at the retreat center. And, you know, if you're thinking about it, stop thinking and do it. Just do it. So, you know, people ask all the time, am I a night person or a morning person? And my answer is yes, because I like both. I like being up late. I like being up early. And so, you know, I'm usually up five, six a.m. The first task is getting the dogs outside and feed them. The two big ones you can buddy on the way to do that. I turn on the computer and then usually what I'll do is I'll create some piece of content first thing in the morning, either a short video or a short article or column. And I call these Tom my dogs daily revenue generating rituals that I do every day. And the first one is great in that piece of content. And publishing it in one of my rules is when you create a piece of content and publish it, you're not done, you're not done until you repurposed it in at least one way.

[00:33:29] I've got one up on my third screen right now that'll go out after after we do this. And then there's usually an email or two to send and then the rest of the day is working on my projects, building out products, building out sites, doing videos and working with folks, working with students. You know, and one of the things I've learned, although I still do occasional one on ones, this this is going to make me sound so old. But I've been working with people and groups in May. It'll be fifty years. Oh, I started when I was thirteen. I was like, Joe, good kid. All the way up till then in Miami-Dade County, I won the citizenship trophy in third grade and all this stuff and, you know, then we went from Miami to Kansas to Virginia to D.C. to Winter Park, Orlando for schools. And in one year and by the fall of next year, I was ready to blow it out. So I did pretty much everything you could do wrong at 13 in nineteen seventy one. And when I got caught, part of my consequence.

[00:34:40] Was I had to join the Boy Scouts, right, and ended up quickly becoming a patrol leader, the youngest one ever in that county. And so, you know, I've been doing stuff in groups for 50 years in the drug rehab center in my private practice. Now, in the volunteer work I do at church and I have just found that people just grow faster in groups, you know, because they not only get to learn, they get to encourage each other and other people get to give them ideas. So I do a lot of group coaching, even even on a free webinar. I call it a workshop at webinar where we will accomplish something. I know that's radical for webinars, but it works. And, you know, the rest of the day has been that way. I'm usually done by late afternoon, you know, because I've got a lot of volunteer projects and two dogs to take care of. And my youngest son is soon to be 19. And, you know, amazingly, they both still want to be around their dad. So we do stuff. And that's that's a basic day.

[00:35:46] Wow. How do you stay motivated because you live by yourself only with the is that the dog's in the background there scraping on the floor or what?

[00:35:55] Yeah, he needs that. He needs a good nail trim.

[00:35:57] Yeah. I've been here in that hole through the thing like what the hell is going on.

[00:36:01] But and then the next house we're going to do rugs.

[00:36:04] Yeah.

[00:36:06] Until they pee on the part of what part of what keeps me motivated. You know, I've got one son that still lives at home, one that's married and the dogs and tons of friends and stuff. But what keeps me motivated are two things. Hey, I've got I've still got Tom a note from a woman back in. My first mental health job was at a place called We Care. It was a suicide hotline. I also worked that year in college at a at an athletic store called Athletic Attic. So my friends told me I worked it. Who cares? And apathetic at it.

[00:36:45] The other, not too long ago, one of my buddies from back then came through here on the way back from somewhere with his wife, and they stayed a night here. And we were telling stories. And I told the story of one night when Jay called up, called me up when I was at the suicide hotline and did a prank call. He acted like an old man and some girl problem. And I was 99 percent sure it was Jay. Right. But that's one thing. All right. And then finally, he said her name and laughed. And I knew what it was. I told that story and I didn't know Tricia never heard it. And it was so funny because she sat there for a half hour going.

[00:37:25] You prank called a suicide hotline, Jay. And every time she said it, she emphasized a different word that was hilarious.

[00:37:36] And so I did those two things in college and at the suicide hotline one night, I got a call from a woman who had taken enough pills to take herself out and she was on the way out. And this was 1978. Right. So, you know, you couldn't find people as quick as you can now. And so she wouldn't give me your phone number and she wouldn't give me her phone number. And she kept dropping the phone as she was fading out. And on one drop, I said, hey, listen, one of these times you're going to drop the phone and accidentally hang up, give me your number so I can call you back. And she did. And so I tricked her. But we got the you know, the EMTs over there. And she was almost gone. She was very, very turned out, very, very heavyset woman. It took like four inches to get her out of bed. But I've still got the note thanking me for tricking her. Wow. And so it's the results that keep me motivated and seeing the change in people's lives like I just did a boot camp for folks on onlies building and on the boot camp, we created a lead magnet and they're opt in page and got it online. And just seeing people Tom that that's where they'd been stuck. I mean, one woman told me she'd created it, took her months to create one, you know, lead magnet, other people that have never had an op ed page because the technology scared them. It's the results. Yeah. You know, change lives to do it for me.

[00:39:06] Absolutely. I know the feeling. So thanks for coming on, man. How to how do people get hold of you?

[00:39:13] Well, the best thing to do is go to 21freshcontentideas.com, where you'll get what do you think, Tom? Oh, three fresh ideas. That's right. And all the rest of them are repeated 21 fresh content, ideas that you can use anywhere. It is an ebook Tom a a guidebook that's going to become an ebook. You'll get all kinds of suggestions that you can create all kinds of content.

[00:39:51] They can get the whole idea that way to it.

[00:39:53] Yeah, absolutely. You're awesome man. Glad you're still moving forward after all these years.

[00:39:59] Hey, I learned a lot about work ethic from you and pass that on. John, when he got hired at eighteen on staff at church, he jumped by people that, you know, been there for years and were older. And Caleb works for the Holy Chicken place, you know, Chick fil A. And you're supposed to be there for six months before you can be a team leader. And he was a team leader at three months. So, yeah, yeah. You you're the grandfather of those guys. You passed it on.

[00:40:29] Well, that that's that's the thing. That's why I was a little concerned when you said you get your work done in the afternoon because, you know, that's kind of lame.

[00:40:40] I know. I know. I'm working 12 hour days. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:43] I mean, jeez. Well, I won't give up on you put it that way.

[00:40:48] So I appreciate that you never have yet. I don't expect you to.

[00:40:52] All right. So everybody go to 21freshcontentideas.com and we'll catch you on the next episode. See ya later.

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