716 – More answers for you: Tom talks Q & A

Episode 716 – Q & A
[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, it's Tom here with episode 716 of Screw the Commute Podcast. I haven't done this kind of episode for a while. It's a Q&A. And I get lots of questions from subscribers and podcast listeners and and I usually answer them personally. But I collect the ones that are kind of more general, so I can recap them for you here, so everybody can get a little benefit from hearing about them. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 715. That was ten Email marketing tips, folks. Email is where the money is, so you better get at it. And the more emails you send out up to a point and I'll tell you about that point, the more money you'll make. So that was episode 715 and Hey, 714 was a really different one on the Tor browser. If you really want super high security for all your browsing stuff on online, anytime you want to get to it back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com and then forward slash then the episode number tor browser 714. Ten Email marketing tips was 715. And today is 716.

[00:01:31] All right, follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and there's a couple of hundred you know very very short training videos, one as short as 5 seconds and the longest one is 2 minutes and 59 seconds. So check that out and also pick up a copy of our automation e-book. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:01:58] All right. Let's get into some of the questions. All right.

[00:02:01] Tom A.I. that stands for Artificial Intelligence is all the rage. What do you think about it?

[00:02:08] Well, I'm using it. I'm just starting to play with it. And I don't think it's going to replace me anytime soon or replace you anytime soon. But it is a pretty handy gadget for now. I'm actually using it to outline in one of my new books coming out and we're doing some research with it on the new book and it's getting better. And if I were you, I'd start using it right away to get a feel for it. What it's all about, what it can do for you personally. And I Understand That the better you get at posting questions to it, the better results you'll get. So that's all I have to think about it at this point. I'm sure as I go along and it matures, I will have more thoughts on it.

[00:02:55] All right. Do you still Believe in value, in the Value of link building? Well, yes, I do. But it's different than it used to be. It used to be You could just get as many inbound links as possible. People were buying off of, you know, cheap websites. We'd get your 10,000 inbound links. Well, don't do that anymore, because they're all going to be from what we call bad neighborhoods or spammy websites. So if you have all these links coming in from spammy websites and bad neighborhoods, guess what Google and the other search engines think of you. They think you must be a bad neighborhood. So no, the the way now is the quality over quantity. So one good link from the Wall Street Journal could mean a, you know, worth a thousand links from dinky little nobody sites. So quality over quantity. Yes. I still believe in it for sure. And if you were going to spend any time on search engine optimization, this would be a worthwhile investment for you to do. I still don't want you paying for SEO stuff.

[00:04:02] All right, let's see. What do you think about low content books? Well, I did a whole episode on it. Episode 708. So screwthecommute.com/708 and yeah, I believe in them. And it's not like this is new, folks. Cindy Cashman is a friend of mine. She was a semi-literate single mom, totally broke. And she wrote the book What Men Know About Women. And it was totally blank inside. She sold, I think, 4 million of them and sold the company for millions. And it just had its 25th anniversary last year. So 26 years. So, yeah, I believe in them. There's so many things you can do with them. I and I said, Check episode 708 there. But I just to go through the process, I created the Screw the Commute log book so you can log your efforts either to get out of your job and screw the commute or if you're screwing the commute, what are you doing to make more money at it? Then it logs your activities every day. So. So I'll have a link to that in. It's only 699. It's on Amazon. I don't know. Think it's live yet, but. But anyway, it's a log book and you can make puzzle books, all kinds of stuff. So that's episode 708. I suggest you listen to that because it's it's really easy. We use a program called Book Bolt, but you don't have to use a program, but it just makes it so darn easy. Like it was 101 page book. I hit one button and boom, all 101 pages were laid out and all I had to do was customize the headings on the different things for the page. So amazing. Okay.

[00:05:53] Do you buy or lease your computers? Well. I do both. Now, for my laptop, which is a super high end and cost, I don't know, almost $5,000. And it's one I'm screamingly fast on. It's got massive amounts of memory and and hard drive size because I'm just really screaming fast to get all this work done. So I lease it because the lease payments are immediately tax deductible and and also I can get the finest computers with zero cash outlay. Now you've got to be in business in some fashion to take advantage of tax deductions. Make sure you talk to your tax advisor about this. And so anyway, that's why I leased the my main computer in France. I bought mine outright. My used iMac for my podcast. There's a company here in Portsmouth, which is just across the river from Virginia Beach, and you can get trade in value. So I had one for, I don't know, 700 and some episodes and it's I couldn't really update it much anymore. I took it back and I got a $500 credit for it towards this other used iMac. So they have a deal where you can get the value of it and trade in if you go upgrade to a newer computer. So that's why I do it. So but remember, it's not going to work. The tax deduction for personal computers, it's got to be some type of business entity.

[00:07:28] Tom, I heard you on a podcast say you don't use electronic calendars. Well, why not? Okay, well, the two times I ever got messed up and missed podcast interviews were because they made me use their online calendar and I won't name the name of it. There's some ones that are very well known, but it's just stupid. You know, they they gave me the time zone in Eastern and then the confirmation came in Pacific. But why would I check it that closely? You know, I just glanced at the time. Yeah, that's the time I said. But it was Pacific instead of Eastern or Eastern. Instead of, you know, what? One or the other. But that was the only two times I ever missed and messed up on podcasts. So, no, I don't believe in them. I guess they can be handy. But I have a paper calendar book I buy every year off Amazon, and it has never crashed once ever. And and and I'm always clear with the time zones, with people. I said, I'm in the Eastern time zone. What time zone are you in? And I make the adjustment right there and then never get messed up. So no, I don't use them. Yeah, people do. I don't. I don't care for them.

[00:08:49] All right, let's see. Why do you have protection dogs? Do you live in a bad neighborhood? Well, it's quite the opposite. I live in a really nice neighborhood. And I'll tell you how I got into this. Years ago, a big protection dog company came to me because they were kind of getting ripped off with their website and everything, and they wanted me to do a. A presentation, an all day presentation, telling the executives and everybody involved what they should be doing and how much it should cost and all that. And so I remember this because they said that the president would kind of stop in to say hello. He sat there the whole day and he was thrilled to death. And my deal was, you know, the deal was, is I was going to get a protection dog in exchange for this thing. And the way I got into it really is I, I heard some guys on a plane, three guys across the aisle from me talking about dogs. And I just struck up a conversation with them and they, you know, exchanged cards. They find out what I did. And a couple of weeks later, the marketing manager calls me and says, Hey, how much would it cost for you to do a whole day training for us on all this Web stuff? And I'm thinking to myself, Oh, man, it's like 20,000. They're a relatively small company. And I said. Now let me think about it. So I called back. I said, Hey, if you get me a fully. I hadn't had a big dog for years and years and years. And and I said, if you get me a fully trained protection dog. I'll do the full day training for you. I said. He said, I'll call you back. President says, Good deal. All right. So I went down to the training. They were thrilled to death. And the president says to the marketing director, Give him Rubik's. And and the marketing director turns white as a sheet. And then the president thanks me and leaves. And I said, Hey, John, what what is the Rubix? What is a Rubix? I think a Rubix cube, he said. He said, no, Rubix is the dog you're going to get. I said, Oh, that's nice. That's cute name. I said, Well, why? Why did you look so surprised? He said, Rubix is worth $50,000. I said, Oh.

[00:11:13] I must have done a pretty good job. So I had Rubik's for, I don't know, five years. And I actually created built his casket and had a funeral for him. I mean, he was just my buddy and he would lay his life down for you, but he would you know, he would you could a little three year old could play with him and it would be no danger. You know, he was really a special, special dog. So so. Once I kind of got into it, I got really interested in it. And then so that's when I started. Brutal, not brutal self-defense. I started protection dogs elite to so family. Protection Dogs. And so that's how I got into it. And so I've had them ever since. But it's again, it's just like the the other thing making at least in the computers needed to make things tax deductible because it was very expensive to take care of a dog like this because you can't board them just anywhere and they need high levels of training. So they're not killing all the kids in the neighborhood, you know, So so that's how I got into it. And I've been into it ever since.

[00:12:25] Okay, so let's see. I've been getting tons of emails from you about online summits. Why are you in so many? Well, I did an episode on. That episode 699. Screwthecommute.com/699. First of all, I don't have to get on an airplane. I make affiliate commissions from people who buy the videos of the event. I usually win the affiliate contest. And that gets me a cash bonus. I get email subscribers, which most of you know that listen to this regularly, that I'm totally fanatic on email and I get Sales of my Stuff, you know All in about an hour's time. I record an hour interview or a master class. Give it to them. They do everything else. Now, on My summit, I still gave it to somebody else and I spent 5 hours on that one because I did five master classes on my own summit. So I get sales of my stuff. So it's A really good investment of time from the standpoint of being on one. But also from the standpoint Of learning from one, because you don't have to buy The videos. You have 48 hours to watch any of the speakers for a particular day and you can get enormous amounts of training. You know, we try to avoid the pitch fest ones, but some speakers are, you know, will give less content than others. But I usually beat the pants off them because I get high content. But it's a really good investment of time and effort from why I am on them. And and I get a lot of subscribers and money and everything else without having to leave the house.

[00:14:09] All right. So there's a bunch of questions. That came in recently, so. So, hey, I got a new program that's a one on one program, and it teaches you how to be a great podcasting guest. And and I didn't say a podcast guest. I didn't say an okay podcast guest. I didn't say a good podcast guest. I said a great podcast guest. I teach you every little trick in the book to get you invited back and to get you on the better shows. And it's really, really powerful thing to be on them. And again, you don't have to leave the house and you can be in front of tens of thousands of people, get millions of dollars of publicity. So that's the story. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/greatpodcastguest. It's one on one plus you get a special edition feature on this podcast after I turn you into a great podcast guest. All right so check it out. Screwthecommute.com/greatpodcastguest.

[00:15:22] I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.