432 – From homeless to a doctorate: Tom interviews Dr. Ty Belknap

Episode 432 – Dr Ty Belknap
[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 thirty two of Screw the podcast. I'm here with Dr. Ty Belknap. And I'll tell you what, becoming a doctor and having multiple degrees is a long way from being homeless as a teenager. So we're going to hear his inspiring story. And he's been on line doing stuff just almost as long as me. So we were having laughing about some of the stuff that we went through in the in the old days and in the beginning. So we'll bring him on in a minute. Hope you didn't miss Episode 431. Warren Carlyle is one of the most brilliant people I know. I mean, he is just brilliant at Facebook, consults with him. He's a community builder and he has he has the largest octopus. I laugh about this, that he's got 600000 people in all the social media for Octonation, which is a 501c3, I think whatever they call it, non-profit to save the ocean and based around octopuses. So and octopuses is the right plural. I thought it was octopi, but no, it's octopuses. So, so but he's brilliant on community leading and he has a new community leaders association.

[00:01:50] And guess what? You don't have to be a bikini model to have hundreds of thousands of people following you if you follow his directions. So don't miss Episode 431. And if you want to find a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com and then slash the episode number, which is 431. How would 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 giving you ideas to help you start a business. We want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com. Look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talking to your phone or computer. Tell me how the shows helped you. And hey, put your website in there, too, because you'll get a big shout out in your own voice in front of thousands of people on Screw the Commute on a future episode and pick up a copy of our Automation eBook. This literally we figured it out a couple of years ago. Just one of the tips in this book has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. OK, and that's no exaggeration. We kind of estimate it. So pick that up. We sell it for 27 bucks, but it is free for listening to the show at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. So you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Also, you know, I've been harping on this for a long time, that if you have the skill to sell from home, which is what our guest Ty is about and what I'm about. You won't be affected by the craziness that's happening in the world. I mean, people call me up and said, hey, Tom here OK, you OK with the pandemic? I'm like, what? I've been sitting in this house last 27 years and they really didn't even notice. My business has not noticed this trouble with the pandemic. But I do see and I feel for all the people that are hurting because of it. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. So about 13 years ago, I formalized my training in the form of a licensed school. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. And it's licensed by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia.

[00:04:10] But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's good quality distance learning, unlike these traditional colleges, that all of a sudden have a distance learning course so they can rip you off remotely instead of in person. And you're still competing for jobs at Starbucks after they teach you how to protest. So forget that. This is IMTCVA.org that teaches all the hard core skills that every business on Earth needs. We got students making money before a couple of months into the school because the skills are in such high demand. And a little later I'll tell you how you can get a full scholarship to the school, which you can gift to somebody or use yourself for further training if you're in my high end mentor program.

[00:04:57] All right, let's get to the main event. After working as a network engineer at companies like Compaq, HP and Microsoft, those are all dreaded jobs, folks. Dr. Ty Belnap started his own Web design and online marketing company called Port Bell SEO, and he now lives in Seattle, Washington. He has four employees, but guess what? The closest one to him lives in England. So so we're going to hear from him. And Ty, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:05:35] Hey, Tom, I'm definitely ready to be on the show.

[00:05:38] Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah, we were originally going to fight it out over whether SEO's worth it or not. But when I found out about your your great skill in remote workers and handling them and recruiting them and how you evolve them over the course of time to see if they're if they're really going to help your business out, I thought that's that's a more helpful thing for for folks. So. So tell us about that, how you are. Well, first of all, tell us about your business and what you're doing for people and then tell us how these remote folks work into it.

[00:06:15] Yeah, definitely. It's funny how you talked about the whole COBRA thing and how it affected business with the the big thing it did for me was that we're busy. Yeah. The downside to it was everybody wanted my help, but of course, most people that wanted my help were affected so bad, but they didn't have a lot of money. Yeah. And so we did a lot of what we could to help with restaurants. We actually did a workshop middle of the year last year to help restaurants, local restaurants get online more. So that was that was one thing that we were able to do to kind of give back that I was glad to be with you. But but yeah, we've been doing online I to the remote working for I won't say twenty or twenty or two is when I officially started my business. I was working for companies. Before that I started with local employees and the funny thing was with the local employees were just I couldn't get people to stay working for me. And so rather than keep hiring local people as employees and then go through all the hassle of hiring an employee and then firing an employee, I should forget I'm going to start hiring freelancers that way. If they don't do the job, I don't have to worry about firing them. I just don't pay them.

[00:07:27] Right. Exactly.

[00:07:28] Yeah, you worked a lot simpler. And so I started going through places like work or fiverr.com, places like that. And the way that I would do it, I've learned this over the last 20 years is I'll take a freelancer and I'll give them one job and see how they do. And the good and the bad news is that generally the first job a freelancer does is usually amazing. It's what is the third or fourth job that they do, it's a few months down the road, are they still doing things on time? Are they still doing high quality work? That's where you can really tell what their job, what their work ethic is like. And like I said, I've learned this the hard way. I'd have to do a great job the first time. And it's a hard one to hire you. And it didn't work out. And so now what I do, it's a lot like a freelancer. And they will they will freelance for me over the freelancer site for about a year. Wow. And yeah,

[00:08:27] I'd give it some time now. And if they do a good job over the year, then I'll say, hey, I want to hire you part time. You can still freelance part time, but I'm going to hire you part time and give you a wage. And then you work for me part time and we see how it goes. I usually do that another three to six months. And then if that works, well, then I hire them as a full time employee and I tell them they can still do the freelance work on the side if they want to, but the work they do for me has to come first.

[00:08:55] Yeah. Now, what's interesting is, you know, I've been pushing for years the Philippines, there's a lot of you know, they speak English very better than I did. But yeah. But you you have a little different bent on that. Tell them about the way you choose one person.

[00:09:13] Yeah, definitely. Actually, my employees have one in England, one in Macedonia and one. And I thought I didn't have one in Serbia, but there was there's been a lot of unrest in Serbia. She actually had to leave the country because it was going on there. So I just hired another person that is in India, a person from India. Now, I have nobody from the Philippines right now, but I don't I don't hire based on where they are. I hire based on the person. I look for the skills that I need. And I try to find the best person on the free sites that has those skills. And then if they prove that they can do the skills and work on their own, work well on their own, that's when I decide to hire them and go through the process of all that.

[00:10:00] Are they all highly fluent in English?

[00:10:03] Yeah, that is one thing that I don't speak any other languages. I don't even speak Klingon well. So yeah, I definitely need to speak English.

[00:10:11] So what other criteria do you use in in, in the course of a year. What are you watching for?

[00:10:18] The big things I'm watching for and this is the big things of freelancers, is that generally if they if they're advertising that they generally know how to do that thing. But a freelancer really is an independent businessperson, which means they're running their own business as well. And so I look for things like time management and communication. Those are those are the two big things. I'll contact them. And look, I'm going to have a Macedonia staff. It's literally a 12 hour time difference when it's noon my time. It's midnight this time. Yeah.

[00:10:49] I don't even know where that is. Where where where is that?

[00:10:53] The middle of Europe. Okay. All right, guys. It's a tiny country in the middle of Europe, and yet it is literally a 12 hour time difference. So it's kind of tough. I don't expect him to contact me back at midnight. But if he hasn't contacted me back by eight a.m. this time, I'm wondering what's going on, you know, because I expect him to have a good work ethic

[00:11:16] And you make them clear that the expectations clear to them up front, right?

[00:11:21] Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Oh, yeah. By the time I've hired them, I mean, I've been working with them usually for a year before I hired them. So they know my expectations and I do go through them as they work as a freelancer. I'll tell them. I'll say, you know what I usually do up even with the project. They'll say, here's the project, here's the scope of work that we have. Can you do this by X day? And they'll tell me yes or no or my main web webdesign or not. I love him. He just said, well, here you go. It's done. So he's he's really good. I wrote I've got I got very lucky in finding him and and that's what I look for. But it's not easy either. Working with remote people. I've probably gone through all C40 Web designers, and I used to be a designer myself, so maybe I'm more picky than some other people might be. I stopped doing the Web design when WordPress got more popular simply because of the younger people that know where I variety. And yet it's been forty people I've gone through to find one really good one. But that's the that's the positive of having freelancers is what I hired them. The money I pay them goes into an escrow account so they know it's there but they don't get to touch it until I approve what they've done. Mm. And so it gives them an incentive. And so if they don't have a great work ethic and they are doing a great job, even though they know the money is there and I know someone is not actually going to hire.

[00:12:52] Exactly. Yeah. Now, you you setting up the escrow or is it through one of the sites?

[00:12:58] I used to do it myself, but that was actually a lot more expensive and less expensive to do it through one of the sites.

[00:13:06] I think I would tell the people, even if we bomb your country, you better get in touch with me by 8:00 a.m..

[00:13:13] Yeah, exactly. The one girl in Serbia, I mean, she was actually in the middle of a project and she told me she said she felt really bad. She said, I'm sorry, but there's some things going on we may need to leave. And then unfortunately, she just disappeared. So she's pretty that she got into a refugee camp with the hope she did. Oh, my goodness. It's like that. I understand. And I feel really bad for her, and I'm really hoping she'll contact me someday. But, you know, other than that, I tried to contact you right away,

[00:13:45] So I shouldn't be laughing about as bad. But so so it really takes you a year to figure out if somebody else's is going to be OK or not.

[00:13:59] Well, it's I wouldn't say it takes a year, but I give it a year and I'm giving them work for a couple years, working for me the whole time, they're just working as a freelancer on my end. It really doesn't change the pricing or really anything else between them being a freelancer by hiring them. It helps them out because the freelancers charge them a lot of money. And so the advantage really is to them much more than it is to me. That's another part of the reason why I take my time. I don't even tell them what I'm thinking of hiring them. I'll wait until until I'm extremely comfortable working with them and then I'll approach them with it.

[00:14:41] Now, what would be an average rate and would you pay for somebody and then would that escalate as they were with you longer?

[00:14:50] Definitely. Is there with the longer? As a freelancer, they generally set the price and it's usually by project, what I'll do is I'll find out what the average wage is for that kind of person or the kind of job title in their country, like the guy in Macedonia. They make an average of five dollars an hour. And so when I first hired him, I said, OK, how about I pay you ten dollars an hour as a part time employee and then as a full time employee? I paid a fifteen dollars an hour. So it three times what you would normally make. But it's still a deal for the US.

[00:15:26] Right. Right.

[00:15:28] Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's happy he goes on vacations all the time, you

[00:15:32] Know, I'll bet. All right. So let's take you back. So I understand you were homeless as a teenager. Tell us about that and how that came to be and how you overcame that to get multiple degrees and certifications and everything and get to be a doctor.

[00:15:52] That was not my as a as a teenager, I was about 15 years old when I found myself homeless and lived on the streets for almost three years.

[00:16:02] How did you find yourself homeless at 15?

[00:16:10] I was going down the wrong path and my parents decided that they wanted to move to a new place and I didn't want to move, so I ran away.

[00:16:19] Ok.

[00:16:20] And so I thought that I was going to be moving in with a person.

[00:16:24] So it wasn't it wasn't they were bad and abusing you and stuff. It was just it was more on you.

[00:16:31] Well, it was kind of a little bit of both that wasn't abuse, but it was I was neglected also. OK. And so, yeah, well, my parents decided to move and I said no. They said, OK, if I'm right, you know, so so later on, my father actually apologized to me for doing it because he felt really bad about it. So it was one of those things where it was just a bad decision on everybody's part at the time. And I found myself homeless, I lived on the streets for almost three years and

[00:17:03] Would really hit me was one day I was talking with with an older, older guy. He must have been at least 30 or 35 years old. Yes, you know, when you're 17, it's your time and I'm sorry, you, the 35 year old homeless man, as we look like you, was probably 60 or 70, the streets age. You bet. And we're sitting there one day and he's talking he's looking at his shoes and he says, you know, we are so rich. He says, you know, the average homeless person in America lives better than the average person in India. This is back to the 80s. You know, they didn't have the industry there at the time. And it dawned on me when he said that that this was the person who resigned to being homeless for the rest of his life, right. He had no other expectations. And then I realized that I had to and I was only 17. And that was the day that that I decided I couldn't live like this, I'm either going to die or I'm going to change, which is going to be. And that was the day I decided to start changing, and I it's funny, I, I do believe that God put things into my life to help me to change, even though I wasn't a Christ hauler at the time. But but the right people started coming into my life at the right time to help me get out of that. And I went from being homeless to being a beach bum and surfer and dive master in Hawaii.

[00:18:34] All right. So so hold on. So you're 17. I'm not much resources. How did you get out of that? How did you get to Hawaii? Yeah, I

[00:18:44] When I realized that and and talking with friends, I actually I contacted my parents. I just thought I just got in contact with the get to get out of what I was there. I just contacted them and just to see how they were doing. And my mother immediately said, hey, we're in Hawaii now. I want you to come here.

[00:19:02] And so they bought me a ticket. All right, so my mom never wanted me to leave home, she she was a little bit different than my father. And so she was very happy to have me back. And so they helped me get in the way. They helped me get situated and everything there. And I say beach bum. But I wasn't really a beach bum, always had a place to live and I always had a job there. And but it was it was it was a great place to to finally grow up and learn what it's like to to live, you know, when you're homeless, really all you ever do is stressed out about everything. And in Hawaii, you kind of don't stress about anything. Know, you wake up in the morning, it's 80 degrees. When you get stressed about if you're if you're hungry, you go on a dive, you catch some fish, maybe a lobster, too. You know, the poor people in Hawaii. Lobster, right. So it was it was a huge difference. I went from from living a life full of stress to learning what it's like to live without stress no matter what. OK. And that that really helps. Where are you living

[00:20:09] At home or where you are with your parents?

[00:20:12] I had my I have my whole place very quickly. Okay. I immediately went to work, got jobs because I did not want to be homeless again. I did not want to have to be reliant on other people either. And so I turned 18 shortly after I got there. So I was able to work. And there was one point where I had three jobs at one time. And also even did my own thing on the side, I did landscaping when I became a dive master, I was doing that on my own, more of an entrepreneurial type of thing. I didn't do it very well. I was a good dive master, but I was a terrible business person. I didn't know how to do that kind of stuff that time. So that was my first experience, really running my own business and not doing very well at all. But what I realized after being in Hawaii for five years, that it's a very small place.

[00:21:06] And you're on an island not very far, you can go right, and there's no such thing as snow or or any weather other than hot. So that's why I decided to move back to the Pacific Northwest. I'd actually saved up enough money to live for about three months in Hawaii. And I moved back to the Seattle area and I was actually able to live for about a year off of that. But, of course, after the year need to get a job again, and so the only job I could find was selling computers and I knew nothing about computers at the time, I learned really quickly. And that's that's how I that's how I got to be a techie. It really was. I was doing that was when I moved back to here and really got into it. And I really I found a passion in it. And I had a job for for quite a while. I was a network engineer for over ten years, working for many different companies. And I had actually designed several websites for Microsoft, internal ones, and I loved doing the Web design stuff, which is why when I had the opportunity, I started my own business. And again, I didn't I didn't have a lot of training on doing my own business, and so I was basically going down the same path I did when I was doing the dive master, which I knew how to do web design, but I didn't know how to run a business. And my first year in business, I think I made a total of almost 10 percent of what I made my last year at Microsoft. So it was a real eye opener and I really had the choice. Do I want to go back to another job and make money or do I want to learn how to actually make money having my own business?

[00:22:51] Yeah, a lot of people are in that situation, they they you know, the check is going to come if they go in and sacrifice to make Bill Gates rich or or they got to get in and out of their comfort zone to make it work in the in their own business.

[00:23:09] Exactly. Exactly. And that's what I realized I had to do, was another eye opener for me. And that's when I really started learning about what it is to be an entrepreneur, what it is to be a small business.

[00:23:22] And what year was this? Roughly 20 until 2002. So you started your own business. Now, how did you improve your skills, that business, not what you were selling the people?

[00:23:34] I started taking classes, the things that I didn't know. Well, I. I learned how to do enough to get by. I think one of the biggest things I learned where I heard this, but you hear a lot where you you do a skills assessment and you find the things that you're not very good at and then you learn more about those things. And either a herd somewhere or someone told me that if you're not good at those things and let's say you get a three in bookkeeping and so you study really hard and you get to a five out of 10, but someone else is a ten out of ten. Hire them.

[00:24:14] Know do what you're good at, hire other people to do what they're good at, and that to me was about the best piece of advice I ever got. So and bookkeeping was a big one for me. So I hired a CPA and yeah, cost me some money. I just had to go out and sell more to pay for it.

[00:24:30] Well, yeah. Now the only thing people in here have heard me really rag on delegate and everything. And and it's not that I don't think it's a good idea. It's the way people do it that I don't like is that, you know, if you don't have an understanding of what you're delegating, it's too easy to get ripped off. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, I actually it cracks you up your web design. I own the website. Killyourwebdesigner.com.

[00:25:02] I love it.

[00:25:03] Because because I always ask people, OK, if you're an expert on, let's say, neurology or something. And so I say, how long would it take you to know that I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about? If it came to neurology and they'd say, oh, five seconds, I said, well, how long do you think it takes a web designer to know that you or anybody that comes to talking about websites, they say, yeah, I get it now so they can tell you anything and then you would know any person. So so I'm not in favor of delegating any everything unless you understand what you're delegating so you don't get ripped off.

[00:25:42] I agree. One hundred percent. Which is why I actually took classes, you know, so that I know a basic undergrad. Yeah. That's perfect for doing it. Yeah. Yeah. It is funny that you say that about web designers too, because 90 percent of my clients are people that have had a bad. Oh. Another Web designer.

[00:26:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I've lived that life for, you know, twenty, twenty seven years now. People coming to me. Oh, God, I wish we would have come to you first, Tom. And and I'm not a web designer. It's just that I know how to make a world class website for one hundred and fifty bucks with word press, a good quality theme that's responsive and a good professional level, you know, architect for making web pages and nineteen dollars a month for thrive themes and they throw in quiz builders and all this other stuff, you know. So we got eighty year old women make it Web sites. I mean I tell people hey if you have any trouble, go down to the local preschool and wake a kid up from his nap to help.

[00:26:46] Yeah, most of what we do now with websites is helping people with the more advanced stuff. By setting up e-commerce, there's still more difficult things like that. Our work now is much more the online marketing industry helping people advertise and get the ads done right, especially with everything that's going on these days, not the covid stuff, but the other stuff that's going on with making sure you're diverse and inclusive and all that Facebook, Google, Twitter, everybody is just just pounding down on ads. You put an ad out there that you think is just fine, like I did an ad for a chiropractor and it showed someone's back and Facebook denied it, saying someone with a bad back may look on that negatively.

[00:27:31] That's the point. I need to go to a chiropractor. I get it fixed.

[00:27:36] But but they denied the ad. I had to do an ad of just a smiling family.

[00:27:41] Oh, it cracks. Yeah. I mean, I would love to get some of those people by the neck that never did a thing in their entire life. And they're in charge of my business when it comes to that kind of stuff. And they're they're clueless. I got it. I got something. What was it the other day? Oh, somebody mentioned an article I wrote which was a consumer advocate article that's been seen hundreds of thousands of times saved. Had to have saved millions and millions of dollars by people getting ripped off at seminars. It was the top twenty seminar scams it got. It says this doesn't comply with our community standards. And and we're sorry. You can you know, you can click this button to to have us read check it. But because of covid, it'll be a long time, like in some idiot that never did anything in their entire life is sitting there making a decision on something that I just saved thousands of people, millions of dollars in. This idiot that's making seventy five thousand dollars a year is in charge, man.

[00:28:49] Either that or he's got a side

[00:28:51] Hustle scamming seminars.

[00:28:52] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, probably.

[00:28:57] I agree. And that's that's the biggest thing that we're especially with Facebook is we're battling it in people's posts are being tweeted out. We just say one wrong word or or they talk about a person with too light or too dark with the skin. Yeah, it's just getting ridiculous.

[00:29:15] Yeah, and, you know, that's massive complaints of censorship and bias and things like that. So something I'll give one of these days. I don't know what it'll be, but something something will give on that. But but I'm still in favor of paid ads, you know. Yeah. I told you and we talked about this because you've been an SEO guy and I was a SEO guy up until about five years ago. And there's too much hassle. You know, it's easier to put an ad in because my stuff's mostly not controversial. So so I don't really have many things disapproved, although I have a crazy tennis site. I don't know if you know this, but I have the dubious distinction of being the largest person ever to produce and star in a tennis training video. So it's called Fatso Tennis for the people that love tennis, but they're overweight and hopelessly out of shape. So. So I had these series of cartoon ads of fat people playing tennis. Nope. No way. Oh, my. They all got disapproved because though you're you're shaming people and it's not I'm just, you know, so to that whole that whole ad campaign, nothing. They didn't let any of it path.

[00:30:36] But that's that's about how ridiculous it's getting. Yeah.

[00:30:40] Yeah. So so yeah.

[00:30:42] I am an overweight person. I play tennis but I can't talk to people about it.

[00:30:47] Well I'm all out there. I got a two DVD set on tennis and and a lot of it's really hysterically funny because it's some of the gadgets. I don't know if you ever saw that movie Tin Cup with Kevin Costner where he was a golf guy and he was losing his mojo. And so he's trying all these weird gadgets to help him with his golf game.

[00:31:08] So I did, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:10] So so part of this DVD set that I made was all the stuff that fat people can use to help them out. So one of them, one of them were on the butt of your tennis racket. You can put this suction cup so that you never have to bend over to pick the ball up. You can just push it down.

[00:31:29] Oh, that's bloody good.

[00:31:33] And but a lot of it was true is like all the angles of the court and the types of shots and everything to make the other guy run like crazy and drop dead before you do, you know, and it's and it's and it's some dirty tricks like, you know, pick a middle court to play and don't play near the fences, the side fences, because when you bend over to pick a ball up, you can accidentally kick it. And then it goes clear to the fence. And then you have to just take your time and breathe real heavy while you're going

[00:32:05] To give yourself a breather. Yeah. So what what type of clients are you working with nowadays?

[00:32:15] Well, we've always specialized in just working with small but small, and we like working with local businesses as well.

[00:32:21] So you're right to worry in Washington, right?

[00:32:24] Yeah, we're in Tacoma, Wash.

[00:32:25] I was going to say you got a lot of people in Macedonia.

[00:32:30] We're actually working on I'm working with my guy on actually setting up a shop in Macedonia because

[00:32:36] It's a hotbed for Internet marketing.

[00:32:39] Well, we're going to get some great tax breaks.

[00:32:42] Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[00:32:44] That would be nice. But, well, we don't just work with Tacoma companies. We work with with companies all over the US. We've got a couple in Australia. We've had one in UK. Mostly US.

[00:32:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:32:56] Most of our big thing is smaller companies, usually 50 employees or less. And the whole point is to help smaller companies get higher in the search engine so they can go against the national guys, which.

[00:33:09] Yes, yeah. If they got 50 employees and they have people that can handle, you know, a lot of the the stuff I'm all for it my my business, mostly five employees or less, you know, solopreneurs will and things like that. But yeah. And I was I think I told you before I was taught by one of the best of the best, you know, his name was Michael Campbell. I don't know if you knew him or not, but but back in the day he could get, you know, and it was AltaVista and Ask Jeeves and all these crazy places. Earth pretty easy to manipulate back in those days.

[00:33:44] That was what Yahoo! First came out.

[00:33:46] Yeah. So so, yeah, I still teach the basics, the very basics of title tags and usage and the blog post titles and all. That's the basic stuff. But but I really slaid towards paid traffic now because I have the money to do it. But there's a lot of good bargains for paid traffic like YouTube and stream ads are a big bargain. That's where you can click the skip button, you know. So I mean I can get two to six cent video views where the same keyword would have cost me a buck and a half to to five bucks on on main search. And so so you can mess up pretty bad, not burn up a lot of money.

[00:34:30] And and you're right, there are some ways

[00:34:32] The paid ads can help out. The big thing to me about gay dads is as soon as you stop paying them, they stop working.

[00:34:40] Yeah, there's no question about that. I just you know, they're a really good way to test things back back before the Internet, when you wanted to do a like a split test on oh, my gosh, it take months to do. We're literally in a day you can do a split test on headlines or, you know, sales letters and stuff like that. So, so, so both of them have their place is what I say. But I kind of gave up on really killing me because I used to teach, you know, keyword density and keyword proximity and all that stuff. And it was like

[00:35:14] You get into the real techie nerdy stuff. Yeah.

[00:35:17] Yeah, I know we did it all. I mean, I was on a major keyword. I was one, two or three first page of Google for twelve years straight. So yeah, I knew how to do it but yeah it just, you know, any time what, what irked me was Google would turn one little dial and then you disappear off the face of the earth until you figure out what happened, you know.

[00:35:39] So like their new update that's coming another month and a half.

[00:35:43] Yeah. I don't even know about it because I don't care much anymore. We paid ads, but but a lot of the stuff that I do I think you wrote a book on this then is like the the long term stuff that always works. Then you would.

[00:35:57] Yeah. Timeless. Timeless.

[00:35:59] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What are some of those things.

[00:36:03] In fact actually that's, that's one of the things I think it's funny about this new update. The Google thing is the calling it the page experience update. I was originally supposed to come out in March and backed off the June. And the whole premise of it is they want people to get relevant search results from the type in what they want, but.

[00:36:23] Well, yeah, yeah.

[00:36:24] Which is kind of what people are supposed to have been doing for the last twenty years.

[00:36:27] Right. That's how Google that's how Google came to prominence was AltaVista. You get 15 pages of garbage before you figure out

[00:36:36] You want it. Yeah, I remember that. So really it's the number one thing that is timeless is content and content is is you do good relevant content about your business, about what you do about your products, and you will get higher in the search engines. And the Google page experience is coming out in June is what I love about it, is they're trying to highlight more local businesses to help local businesses get higher in the search engines. And that's one thing I think that they're doing very well, but it really is about content. If you don't have the content there that tells Google what you do in a way that Google will understand, then Google isn't going to put you hiring the search engines.

[00:37:25] Yeah, and then there was a period when people were arguing about, well, how many words per page is best. Yeah. And and it really, as far as I remember, it varied by industry and so forth. So some were 7000 words, some were 2000 or 3000. So to try to give a number to somebody was ridiculous.

[00:37:48] Yeah. No, for me it's it's it's more about keywords than it is about words per page because you only want a certain percentage of your words to be keywords if you do too many of those going to say you spamming right or nothing, Google, Google is going to pay attention to you.

[00:38:04] Yeah. The number that's the number one mistake in my whole entire career when people have come to me for help is keyword research. And that's why the number one episode of my podcast is about keyword research. And then in no episode 130, I updated it based on voice search because it's different, you know. So how are you addressing that?

[00:38:31] Your voice search is different and even mobile phone searches. Yeah. For for instance, I'm going to go back to the car, the car park that we help out. We just

[00:38:41] Know he's out of business because he couldn't show actual chiropractic,

[00:38:45] You know.

[00:38:46] Yeah, but we change part of his website because we found out that 60 percent of the people coming to his website were coming from mobile phones. We added in Tyrepac near me. Mm hmm. And it skyrocketed. Yeah. And I mean, it wasn't even a factor in Tacoma, Seattle. Didn't you have a city name? It was just near me. Yeah. So Google knows where you are. You're on your cell phone and of course, Apple to the iPhones, you know, they got the location based. And so it doesn't even matter anymore. You put something simple like that and it just it skyrockets for people on mobile phones.

[00:39:20] Yeah, that's and we used to use the geographic qualifiers as a big deal a long time ago, but it's just not necessary. Or if, you know, the average person wouldn't even know how to turn off their location on their phone, you know. Right.

[00:39:35] So but that's also one where you talked about this a bit ago, how it depends on industry. So for my industry, people don't really look for SEO on their cell phone. Right. Right now. They do it when they're at their computer. So I couldn't do SEO near me. I've done it, but it doesn't do much. You know, I still need to do the location more like a chiropractor, someone that has a local office.

[00:39:57] Yep. So so we've got to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we'll ask Ty what's a typical day look like for him handling people all over the world, both clients and employees. So, folks, about twenty three years ago, it kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head and that people at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to to help him. And I knew a lot of these guys. They'd be hiding out in Macedonia if you came fifty grand up front. You never help you. So so I said, yeah, that's too risky and it's not good for small business people. So I, I just said I'm going to fix this. So I just charge an entry fee, which is about ten times less than what they charging. And then I tied my success to your success. So for me to get my fifty grand you had to make two hundred grand. Well people love this because they knew I wouldn't disappear on them in seventeen hundred students later in 23 years. It's still going strong. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful Internet and digital marketing mentor program ever. And I have no trouble saying that because I've I've begged people to put their programs up against mine on a comparison and nobody will do it because I'm just a crazy fanatic where I have this big ass state where you actually live in the house with me for an immersion weekend.

[00:41:19] You have my success tied to your success. You have only one on one training. We don't lump you in with more advanced people or less advanced people because that's inefficient. So you get one on one with me and my entire staff and then you also get the scholarship to my school, which is another unique thing. It's the only one licensed facility of its kind in the world, so very unique and very powerful. We have a lot of people, like I said, 7500 people over 23 years and it's still going strong. So. So I'd be glad to help you out. Check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:41:59] All right. Let's get back to the main event. We got Ty Belnap here. He went from homeless the multiple degrees and is a doctor and he's quit the. Dreaded jobs and running his own business since 2002, and so what's a typical day look like for you to.

[00:42:17] Well, you should try to get up now.

[00:42:19] That's a good idea now.

[00:42:20] Yeah, that's a start every day.

[00:42:23] Well, one thing that I learned with having a job was when things were tough. I love this at Microsoft more than anything. When something bad happened, you were expected to stay there until it got fixed. And there were many times where I was there, very long days. There was at least once where I was actually there for 24 hours straight. Wow. And so I now believe that if I'm working more than six hours, it's time to hire another person

[00:42:53] That a week, six hours a week,

[00:42:57] Six hours a day,

[00:42:58] That that four hour a week work, work week guys works 80 hours a week trying to teach out of work for

[00:43:05] The gym. Doesn't do for our work except for. But but but I do believe that life is too short. And, you know, it's yeah, you can work 90 or a hundred hours a week and try to make yourself a millionaire, or you can work six hours a day and maybe find a slightly smarter way of becoming a millionaire. Yeah, I believe I believe in that second tactic a lot more. And I also I like hiring people because I like helping other people get ahead. And so, yeah, it's for me, I probably actually work more than six hours a day, but I have no problem in the middle of the day. If it's a beautiful day, jumping on my motorcycle and going for a ride or four or going out and going to the mountain for a bit of the ocean, that's one thing I love about where I live is I've got both within an hour, hours and so, you know, go out, go out and enjoy life for a while. Even with covid, you can't go to restaurants quite as much, but you can still go out and do stuff.

[00:44:12] Well, yeah. I mean, I got my dogs. We got four or five times a day and it just is beautiful day. Let's go out and play ball, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a beautiful lifestyle business. Now, you had a lifestyle thing going on when you were homeless, but it wasn't exactly this.

[00:44:30] Not one that I would recommend.

[00:44:31] Yeah, but having those experiences, I bet you appreciate what you're doing now.

[00:44:37] A great deal. Yeah, that is probably because I look at that as what I don't want to do and I look at my time in Hawaii, at least the mental is the stress free living as what I like to do, because when you're in business, you can't it can be stress free. Yeah, there's always going to be some threats, but you can there's ways to alleviate a lot of it because a lot of stress is just worry and most worries about things that we can't control. And so we realized it's something that we can't control and that the stress and the worry goes away a it. And so that's one thing that I try to concentrate on a lot, especially when problems come up, is my first question is, is this a gravity issue or is it something I can't control or something I can't control?

[00:45:26] A lot of things you can. A lot of things you can't. But the the beauty that I like is that it's all up to me now. Some people want a whole bunch of people to support them because they're afraid of failing. But I got that out of my system a long time ago. You're going to fail. Just get up and keep keep going. So, hey, did you have you have something to give folks, right?

[00:45:49] Yeah. A lot of people listen to you. So are entrepreneurs and they're trying to do their own thing. It's like with your websites. What? I created a workbook to help people find out if Google actually even likes your website because you can hire an old person. But it also doesn't done right in the first place. It's not going to help. And so go to tysfreebook.com and download a quick workbook to go over some stuff and figure out whether or not your websites have been ready for steelwork.

[00:46:22] Yeah, yeah, it's it's beautiful, there's tools out there that'll evaluate the sites, and he's put it all in a book for it. So it's tysfreebook.com. And I'm thinking here a little bit and watch for his new book coming out on Hiring Remote Employees.

[00:46:42] Thank you for bringing that up before the show. I think of my creative workshop on that.

[00:46:46] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, he's been there hired in multiple countries and knows how to evaluate them and and move through the process and disqualify people and find the best ones. Yeah, because there's they're out there. The good ones are out there. But you just have to know how to sift through with the least amount of pain to get to the good ones.

[00:47:07] Yeah, exactly.

[00:47:08] So we'll watch for that book coming out. So thanks for coming on that day.

[00:47:12] Thank you so much. This has been awesome.

[00:47:14] Yeah, no problem. So next episode, folks were recording live from Macedonia.

[00:47:21] That's right. We're all millionaires there.

[00:47:25] There you go. All right. We'll catch everybody in the next episode. See you later.

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