685 – Get your name out there: Tom interviews Rob Garcia

Episode 685 – Rob Garcia
[00:00:08] 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, is Tom here with episode 685 of Screw the Commute Podcast. I'm here with a guy that's been on the show several times, and this guy is the highest achiever I know in my entire life. There is nobody I know that actually flunked out of both high school and college, even though how you do such a thing. Anyway, he's quite an inspirational guy. He's a visibility guy for your business show. You get your name out everywhere. And that's how I pretty much built my career before the Internet as I was on radio and TV all over the place. And and that really ups your credibility and it makes people call you rather than you call in begging for work. So he's going to talk to us today specifically about press releases, and then he's going to be doing a master class on our upcoming summit. Screw the commute summit in online summit in January, mid January. So make sure you keep an eye out for that. So we'll bring him on in a minute. His name is Rob Garcia and he also he's a member of the veterans group that I love so much and that's how I met him. So bring him on the minute. I hope you didn't miss episode 684. That was a copyrighting technique called cost comparisons. I've been doing a lot of individual copyrighting technique episodes. The one before that was 683, which was the reason why technique really, really important. So you want to you don't want to miss these. This is the most important skill in my entire business career. 40 I don't know how many. 46 seven years I lost count. So any time you want to get to a back episode you go to screwthecommute.com and then the episode number. 684 was cost comparison. 683 was the reason why technique. All right. I want to thank everybody for our support in our new Patreon. The the all the proceeds are going less the patron fees. I'm not taking a nickel for myself to support our scholarship program for persons with disabilities, so check that out. It's screwthecommute.com/patreon and then you've heard that I'm really hitting it hard on TikTok and I want you to follow me there. Leave comments like stuff and I've got tons, probably 150 little short videos up there for you now. So check that out at TikTok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and you'll get directly to my channel.

[00:03:07] All right. Let's get to the main event. We've got Doctor Rob Garcia and he's been here before. We love him and we love all his service for us in the Air Force. And and he's a great visibility expert, but he's a former high school dropout turned PhD. Now, where do you see that? I don't even know how that happens. He's a serial entrepreneur that teaches business visibility and he's founder of and I'm going to say this carefully Shift magazine. Right. And an Air Force veteran. And he still serves in the Reserves and he's also the director of strategy. This is something new. I didn't know about him for San Diego's IQ media. I don't know what that is. And it says it's the largest independent media company in Southern California. So, Rob, are you ready to screw? The commute again?

[00:04:01] I am absolutely ready to screw the commute, Tom.

[00:04:04] All right. How you been, man?

[00:04:07] Oh, really good. Just a lot of amazing things happening in my life and a lot of new strategies to share with the listeners.

[00:04:15] Awesome. What's the weather like there today in San Diego?

[00:04:18] It's rain for two days straight. The sun is starting to peak out and starting to start to improve a little bit.

[00:04:23] But what's the temperature? What's the temperature?

[00:04:26] It's probably in the seventies.

[00:04:28] Oh. Oh, I feel so bad for you. Yeah, you suck. That's 70. Well, it is not too bad in Virginia Beach, but it's still pretty chilly. So. So since I've I don't know about this IQ media thing. Tell me about that. It's a new since I last talked to you.

[00:04:47] All right, So. So I'd linked up with a guy named Brett Davis, some incredible San Diego legend. And the guy's a radio station host. He's got nine podcasts under his umbrella, and he recently got a radio station in LA. And then he also has a magazine, like a premium magazine. And he liked we met through a mutual friend. He kind of liked what I did. And because I do press releases specifically besides other visibility stuff, he thought I'd be a good addition to his umbrella. And he said, Hey, we need a director of strategy. You want to come on board? And we we announced it about a year ago. And it's just been incredible working with this guy. He's he's he's like you, Tom. He's very smart. He's a natural leader and just really cares about education for for business owners and entrepreneurs. And he's really big on just being a strong community leader. And that's why I like most.

[00:05:38] About what's what's his podcast about nine different podcasts. Holy.

[00:05:43] Yes. So he teaches business owners how to start their own podcast, and he kind of has an incubator where he does the production for them and he teaches them how to monetize and stuff. So his main podcast is the Brett Davis podcast and he just he interviews all kinds of interesting people, just anyone that's got a really crazy story or a community founder or something. And he just recently hosted his own event for teachers at Saquon Casino, so he gave awards out to San Diego educators and support staff. It was great.

[00:06:14] Wow. Wow. Well, yeah, I want to thank you so much, Rob, for referring me to him. I'm not good enough for his part, I guess.

[00:06:24] I guess I'm sure we get some air time. He'd probably love your stuff.

[00:06:28] I think he would. Yeah. It's crazy talking about crazy stories. I had the practical joke coming for a long time. I was on radio and TV all over the world because of it. That's. That's right. Really hit the publicity home run. Well, first of all, I want people to know this. This guy has been there and done that. I mean, he's written eight books. He's done 135. I know this might be old figures, 135 interviews. That's probably old. He started a magazine and won business awards. So. So but come on, just give him a brief on the the the rough beginnings, though. I mean, flunking out of high school and college is like I said, you're a high achiever.

[00:07:11] Yeah, I had I had a tremendous amount of trouble focusing in the classroom. So I had what we would call today. And I couldn't sit still. I couldn't. I couldn't after about 7 minutes, I just start tuning out my teachers or thinking about video games or something. And it just I just had so many problems with learning. And then when I got, I joined the Air Force at 21 and I was able to have that structure and food and some hope. And I got out of I had a bad family situation to.

[00:07:41] Yeah, you said structure and food. I mean, so you had a tough childhood, huh?

[00:07:46] Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was. I moved. I figured this out. I don't even know if I talked about this last time I was on the show, but I moved 16 times in my childhood and I didn't realize that was a normal until I was in my twenties.

[00:07:58] And it was. That was your your parents were you like an Army brat or Air Force brat or is that just outside of military moving?

[00:08:07] Oh, no, There was no military in my family until I joined.

[00:08:10] Did you hear that on military kids? A lot of times, but. Oh, boy.

[00:08:14] Yeah, I just I just my my I was raised by a single parent and they had a drug addiction and it was just very unstable. And so we were all just packing up and moving.

[00:08:23] Yikes. How did you. Well, you said. Are you crediting the Air Force for getting you on the straight and narrow?

[00:08:31] Yeah. It gave me a taste of the finer things in life, like caviar and lobster, and also gave me a chance to go to college and. And learn how to wear a uniform and discipline, all that good stuff. I worked on B-52 bombers and. And I came to San Diego in oh two with a bachelor's degree in hand. And then I just started kind of veering to entrepreneurship and started doing these small things that added up. And I'll tell you, Tom, I played the long game, so I started entrepreneur stuff when I was about 30 and I enrolled my my PhD in education. I started writing books. I started like thinking, okay, I hate being in a cubicle. I hate working for somebody. I hate not making the money that I'm that I'm worth. And so all of this stuff over time. All panned out. And so the early seeds that I planted at 30 yielded amazing fruit. You know, I'm 46 now and I've got like nine income streams. I've got eight books published. I've got a magazine that comes out every two months. We actually featured you in the new one in the Ask the Prose section.

[00:09:41] We always interview a very high, high ranking entrepreneur, and we asked them a good business question. But the things that I did at 30 made my life very easy at 46. But it takes time. And that's the biggest thing I want to share with the listeners. It's okay to not be successful in a year or two. Like, don't don't feel guilty. Don't feel bad. Some things take time to develop. I have to take time to learn how to write properly and how to get results for clients and how to get people in the news and all the visibility stuff. And I had to learn how to optimize my business model. And it took a while. And I've been my own boss for about six years hardcore, like, like not working for anybody, completely doing it on my own. And but I'm going to say, like the first couple of years are going to be brutal. They just are. And you've got to find a mentor. You've got to develop your systems and processes and you got to get out of a poverty business model. That's a big one.

[00:10:48] Yeah. And and that's a tough message for a lot of today's youth that want to be entrepreneurs because they they go on TikTok or something and they get a million views and they think, Oh, I'm the greatest business person on earth. And then that million views doesn't necessarily turn into money. So to support yourself.

[00:11:11] No, you're completely right, Tom. And there's there's a big difference. And I've created content about this very topic. There's a big difference between being popular and being skilled. And so and so these I admire these younger people that are doing TikToks and Instagram and having giant followings, but they need to take that next step and realize, Oh, I need to be selling something and I need to connect more with my audience versus marketing at them and just throwing content at them and hoping they like it. You know, I need to talk to these people. I need to connect with them. I need to find out what they like. You know, when I go on Facebook and I start talking to people and people start commenting on my stuff, I know what they do. I know where they live. I know who's having a baby today. You know all this stuff.

[00:11:58] Yeah. I'm usually afraid when I find out if they're having a baby, I want to make sure it's not mine. So. But yeah, and yeah, that's this. TikTok. The way it's grown so fast for me is every comment. You know, as we speak, I have like a a tick tock video going viral. When I talk to you, it was 85,000. I don't know. By the time we're done, I don't know how how big it'll be. But but every comment that comes in, I respond to, you know, because I'm talking to the people, not just throwing stuff at them. And that's one of the ways you grow on any kind of medium faster. In fact, when I first started my business online, that was 1994, when an order would come in, I would actually call each person. I can possibly do it now, but I call each person and thank them personally, and they just couldn't believe it, you know, because you're and some of them are still customers today after all these years. So. All right. So how did you get into the publicity and visibility aspect of your work?

[00:13:07] So it was a natural transition. I started just telling my story and I started getting podcast interviews and this is the early days of podcasts. After I I'd gotten about 20 interviews, I realized there's, you know, there's some skill here. A lot of people didn't know how to how to get on interviews. And I got on TV a few times and I started racking up interviews. This is probably my 215th interview. And it's not it's not Antion numbers, but it's it's pretty good.

[00:13:34] It's pretty good. Pretty darn good.

[00:13:38] But that was that was what really got me interested. And I started really delving into it and I started working with people and teaching them, okay, this is how you create your angle. This is what would be most interesting to a producer or reporter. And then I got into, okay, this is how you check a news station's website. The two ways you can apply to get a news story on the difference between pitching a station versus pitching a reporter and then. And then visibility. Everything I learned after that just went under the visibility umbrella. So I founded the magazine so that I could give coverage to the things I cared about and sell advertising. At the same time, I bartered a lot of interviews by cross promoting people that wanted to be featured, and then they would interview me. And then I added press releases a few years ago, and that was the unbelievable part of my business. That was a great traffic driver for clients. It got them featured in specialized publications, and it's a very easy process for me as a writer to to learn. But the thing is, press releases specifically. A lot of people don't know this time, but they have to be formatted. So you can't just write an article and submit it and hope that it's going to work. They have they have word limits. They have about seven different sections that have to be specific. And then you have to know what hosting sites to upload them to. And so these are all the things I had to kind of self learn, and it's worked out well. And I've also added business articles. So I'm a writer for LinkedIn Newsbreak and Medium.

[00:15:12] Yeah. And with the press releases they a lot of people well, I just got some one of my students sent me one the other day and I said, This is not even even close to being a press release. This doesn't have a headline. It doesn't have the who, what, where, when and why stuff nothing. So I sent it back to them. Also, one of the things that for a while and a few years ago it was more than a few years ago it was pretty big. There was like these sites coming up that says, Oh yeah, we'll submit your press release to 10 million places, you know, for $0.25. That's not going to work. What do you think about that?

[00:15:55] So there's a lot of there's a lot of gray areas in press releases. And there's there's two ways that you can use them effectively for business. And you're right, there are a lot of people on Facebook ads that are really leveraging that. It's a very big gray area because they say, Oh, we'll get your business on WNBC and Fox and CBS by tomorrow for 97 bucks. And so. What they really mean. What those ads really do is they submit the press release, it'll get hung on a hosting site, an affiliate for Fox or CBS, but they're marketing it like you're going to be interviewed on these.

[00:16:31] Yeah, that's very that's fraudulent. That's the Federal Trade Commission has mentioned that. That's fraudulent.

[00:16:37] Yeah. And these people, you know, God bless them. I mean, these people fall for this and they think, oh, my God, I can get on all these amazing sites and blah, blah, blah. But it's it's two different sides of the coin. So whenever I always I'm like you, Tom. I really believe in ethics. I really believe in be honest, I never want to lead anybody down a path. And I'm always very honest about if you buy a press release with me, you are going to get hosted on the sites. I will send you the screenshots, You will get visibility and traffic. I mean, it happens all the time. You will get specialized stuff. So I just did one for a guy and he's in health care. And so he appeared in all these health care sites, which is great, but. I will never, ever tell someone, Oh, this is going to lead to media interviews because journalists do use press releases to select interviewees. But this is the big but it doesn't happen nearly as much as these Facebook advertisers would have you believe.

[00:17:31] Right.

[00:17:33] And so just know what you're getting into. Do press releases have value? Absolutely. But just understand they're going to do a certain thing and you can use them one of two ways. You can hire a guy like me who will pop them out to hosting sites. I'm on about six of them. And yes, they do go out to thousands of sites. I get a PDF that lists every single place with a clickable link. I can send screenshots to clients. But the second strategy is to create the press release and then send them to local news agencies and hope it gets either hosted on their site or picked up for a story. And so that's that's the real that's increases. Your chance is to send a press release to a reporter and ask them if they have an interest in running the story.

[00:18:12] Now, do you do you do they have to the clients have to come up with the hook and the story or do you assist them with that?

[00:18:20] No, I'm completely done for you. I see. So if client comes to me, I get on a call with them. I ask them the strategy of the release. I'm like, okay, what do you want to happen? Because there's a few things some people just want. They just want to be affiliated with those brands CBS, Fox, ABC Digital Journal, blah, blah, blah. Other people want just some traffic sent to their site and then other people just need something written about their business. They're starting off. They have no internet presence. They have no idea like how to get the message out to their audience. And another thing that's cool about press releases, though, is that they last a long time online and you can actually send them as a sale page to potential clients. And a lot of people don't know this as a strategy. So a press release allows you one wink, Tom and in your marketing world that link can be a sale page. That link can be your website, that link can be your freebie, and a press release can have many strategies. It can be used as an announcement for a business. It can be used as a promotion. It can be used for a book launch. It could be used for Hey Tom Antion featured in veteran owned Shift magazine. So it can be a lot of different things depending on how you want to corral the strategy now.

[00:19:40] Are using video and audio in them nowadays.

[00:19:44] For press releases? No. Let me scratch that. No. It depends on which service. So for one service? No, for the nice service that I use. Eoin We can embed YouTube videos within them. Mm hmm.

[00:20:00] Yeah. There are some services that that.

[00:20:02] Allow.

[00:20:03] That, but get to the base, some of the basics. And what do people need to bring to you when they work with you? Because you can't just start with nothing. You interview them to pull the stuff out of them or tell us how it works if a client comes to you.

[00:20:21] So the first thing is, is like I said, we developed the strategy first, and I just ask them a very simple question. I'm like, okay, what do you want to happen? And I give them three choices of things we can do. And then I asked for their social media links because I have to look at how they're communicating with the audience and I have to make sure the customer journey is very clear. So this is something you're great at teaching Tom, in the marketing world is know can the customer buy from you? Can the customer figure out what you're selling quickly and can they make a sale without a slow loading web page or with a dead link or going to somebody's Facebook personal page? And it has nothing to do with what they're selling? Right. And so so I want to look at their social media links. I want to look at the ease of purchase. You know, Tom, what's the industry standard like two clicks for a purchase, right?

[00:21:16] I like to get them to like no clicks. They just throw money at me. But yeah, you got to make them click a little bit.

[00:21:23] Yeah. Because if you have too many, you know, obviously you've got about 8 seconds to capture some of these attention. And once they lose interest in the sale, it's gone forever.

[00:21:31] And so 3 seconds on tick.

[00:21:34] Oh, yeah, Yeah, absolutely. And so, yeah, the biggest thing is just finding out what their social media is, what their intent is, and then figuring out the angle at which they want the release written. Because, you know, I've written press releases for all kinds of stuff for fundraisers. I did one of my more recent ones was Health, a Chinese health clinic that doesn't use drugs in San Mateo County. We did the announcement and it went out to a lot of places. So it just depends on what the intent is for the client.

[00:22:04] So if I came to you and I said, Rob, my intent for my press release is I want. Supermodels beating down my front door to get to me. You probably turn me down as a client. That's impossible, right?

[00:22:22] I wouldn't say impossible. I like when people give me outlandish, yet reasonable requests.

[00:22:28] And so that one might have been outlandish, but the reasonable part, I think, came through.

[00:22:34] So in this hypothetical, I know you're joking, but I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to actually give you an answer in this hypothetical. You want supermodels beating down your door? The first thing I would do is make the attractive offer. So what are you offering them? And the attractive offer is, Hey, I'm going to look at your career. I'm going to help you develop a passive income stream based on your modeling career. And so you'll have a sale page up. I know you can generate those pretty easy. We would release a press release saying, you know, Digital multimillionaire Tom Antion announces the Specialized Income Income Program for models and former models. So once.

[00:23:13] That I got to put supermodel.

[00:23:15] Supermodels and then I am dead serious, I would go on Twitter. Once that press release is out, I would go on Twitter and I would start mentioning your hit list of ten supermodels. And then I would send the press release to their agencies. You might be surprised.

[00:23:33] I would probably be surprised and shot by my girlfriend when they got here. I'm laying there in a pool of blood. What happened? Oh, well, he was working with Rob Garcia. So? So what kind of mistakes do you think people make when they when they do when they try to do press releases on their own?

[00:23:57] Try is such a great word. The first thing they do is they ramble. They don't understand the format of a press release. Believe it or not, there's an industry standard for press releases and they have to be formatted a certain way. And just right off the bat, I mean, you can find these on the Internet templates and stuff. I had to read about five books before I really got to hang of it, but its headline subheadline, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraph four Announcement Industry Statistics Quote Call to Action Link Headshot. So.

[00:24:32] Now, do you do any reviews when people have? In other words, is it all or nothing to hire you? Or if somebody has written one, do you do any coaching or reviews of press releases?

[00:24:46] That's a good question. Nobody's brought me a partial. They've given me. They've. I write my own with stuff that they supply sometimes. So I do kind of Frankenstein's monster. It if they send me like a previous article or Hey, can you pull some info, extract and then create something out of it. So I do do that, but I don't I usually won't rewrite somebody else's work. I have to start from scratch the entire time because the uploading sites, the hosting sites, some of them have word counts that are very strict and plus the word count. And also you have to optimize for SEO. You have to make it easy to read and you have to make sure that it flows cleanly.

[00:25:25] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to take a responsive break. When we come back, we'll ask Rob what a typical day looks like for him in paradise there in San Diego. And. How he stays motivated. And and I also I want to hear the story about how he flunked out of both high school and college. How do you do that? I don't get that. So. So, folks. Oh, a couple of things here. I want to remind you about the Patreon to help their scholarship students with disabilities. It's really, really heartening. And and they're so inspirational. Two of the people were blind. One of them has started his own business already online, and the one is a disabled school teacher. And they are making great progress. And I just so inspirational. So we're we're making it so they can not only get hired from home or start their own business, they could do both if they wanted to without having to travel. So. So anything you can help with that. We'd love it. We have a go fund me for like one time contributions and the Patreon starts as little as $3 a month and you get Geez, we have over 300 episodes of Screw the Commute that are just training. It's $1,000,000 worth of training. If I did it with you one on one and we have over 400 episodes with great entrepreneurs like Rob, so check that out at screwthecommute.com/patreon and help out folks, especially this holiday season. Everybody needs a lift up and it'll be something you can really be proud to be a part of.

[00:27:06] All right, let's get back to the main event. We've got Rob Garcia here. He's not only flunked out of high school, he like I said, as a high achiever, he flunked out of college, too. I still don't understand that. So tell us that story and then tell us what a typical day looks like for you now.

[00:27:23] Yeah. So basically I just couldn't focus in the classroom and after about 7 minutes I start just zoning out pretty hard. And rote memorization never did anything for me. And so as I got older, I started to realize that my learning style was different and asymmetrical. And I started realizing that I learned better when I could draw diagrams of stuff, when I could use shapes and colors and just draw goofy pictures of stuff. And once I was able to once I was able to to start drawing diagrams, I had a lot more academic success. And then as I got older and I started getting into some of these really complicated Air Force classes, I mean, I did stuff that was like Datalink engineering, and I passed three out of four of my schools. I passed every test academically, but I had to changed the way that I learned. So I started using study groups. I studied 8 hours a day on the weekends when everyone was out partying. I made a lot of flashcards. I found the smartest kid in class and like, ask them a lot of questions. And that's what I credit to, to better academic results.

[00:28:35] And what I don't understand is how to how do you get into a college? To flunk out of it.

[00:28:42] I didn't know.

[00:28:44] School?

[00:28:44] Yeah, the sequence. Okay, So I failed at a high school, and I ended up going to continuation school with the bad kids. And continuation school allows you to get a credit every seven days for just showing up pretty much in breathing, not stabbing anybody. And so I had enough credit. I've always been a speed reader and I have a very good vocabulary. And so I was able to get credits really fast and I ended up failing out of high school. And then a semester later, I was actually able to go back and graduate my senior year and get a diploma with my class, graduating my class.

[00:29:18] All right, now. Sidebar question Were you a bad kid or you just had these learning difficulties?

[00:29:24] I was never a discipline problem. I just I couldn't focus. I talked a little bit in class, but I never got in trouble for.

[00:29:32] Stabbing shootings or beating the I just saw on TV last night. They're beating the hell out of the teachers and no consequences for it.

[00:29:41] Yeah, I was. I was even with a bad family, I was always kind of kind of well behaved. I was always a nice kid. I was real quiet. Good.

[00:29:49] All right, So. So you got to graduate now. Okay, then you went to college and flunked out?

[00:29:56] Yeah, I went to junior college. I flunked out one semester, and then I went to Phoenix, and I went to dry my second college, and I made it about a year and a half, and I failed out of that 202 times.

[00:30:06] God, you're such a high achiever. I didn't realize flunked out of two colleges.

[00:30:11] I had problems then. I almost failed out of my Air Force tech school and I made it. It was nine months of school, be 52 electronics training. And then once it got out of the Air Force and I started building up these learning styles and I even wrote a book on speed learning different learning styles and how to how to incorporate when you're not working well in a classroom for kids with like dyslexia or A.D.D.. And it really just helped me to to figure out like what I was doing wrong and how other kids, asymmetrical learners like myself can can be creative and do their stuff.

[00:30:47] Beautiful. Beautiful. So. And then you went on to PhD level. Wow. Amazing story. So what's a typical day look like for you nowadays?

[00:30:59] So I work from home in my decadent Air Force loft in San Diego. And I wake up. I usually do some kind of exercise in the morning. So I go for a jog or I lift weights. Here, I will usually spend Mondays strategizing. It's my light day on Mondays, so I draw out my social media plan, what I want to do, what I'm promoting. Do I have to do any magazine stuff? Do I have interviews lined up that week? And then so Mondays is planning and then four days of execution. And so it's a mixture. Tuesday through Friday is a mixture of client work, project creation, social media creation, media outreach, and then just kind of mapping out future feature stuff. So it just depends on my mood. And then I usually have some lunch and then about 530 I do a knock off and pour a nice cocktail.

[00:31:56] And knock off. So it's a lifestyle business, right? Got beautiful place there in San Diego and living the life and very inspirational coming from the beginnings you came from, that's for sure. So so how do people get a hold of you and if they need help with this.

[00:32:15] So if they want to reach out to me, they can find me on Facebook. Robert Garcia Or they can Google Rob, the warrior strategist. And if they want to read my magazine for free, it's shiftlifedesign.com.

[00:32:26] Okay, we'll get all that in the show notes. So people were scrambling trying to write stuff down. What was it shift one.

[00:32:33] Shiftlifedesign.com. Okay. And also, folks, Rob is going to be featured on our summit with a totally cool topic that that he's actually helping me with right this moment. So we'll make it a surprise for you. But make sure you watch for the screw the commute summit online summit totally free. There will be probably at least 20 sessions. Rob will be a very unique session. I can tell you that nobody will duplicate what he's going to talk about. So thanks for coming on, man.

[00:33:11] Yeah. Thanks for having me, Tom. It's great to catch up.

[00:33:13] Awesome. So, folks, check out all Rob stuff. It'll all be in the show notes, all those different things he talked about. And we will catch you on the next episode. Get publicity and visibility. Rob will help you. Catch you later.