75 – Spunky Old Broad: Tom interviews Gayle Carson

Episode 075 – Gayle Carson
[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 75 of screw the commute podcast we've got an old friend of mine here Gayle Carson. And now listen I don't want any cards and letters here nasty cards and letters she calls herself the spunky old broad. You'll hear about her in a minute. I hope you didn't miss episode 74 we had the prolific John Lee Dumas from entrepreneur on fire. I was on his show. I think it just came out a little while ago and he was on my show. So I don't want to miss him. And a quick announcement. Our podcast app is now in the app store and you can go to iTunes and download that and we'll do a lot of cool stuff right on your cell phone or tablet. And we'll have instructions on how to use all the cool features also at screwthecommute.com. All right. Our sponsor this week is the internet marketing retreat and joint venture program where myself and my staff work with you for a year to get to get you started in an Internet business or use the Internet to take your existing business to the next level and I'll tell you more about that later. And the details are going to be at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and we'll of course have that in the show notes at screwthecommute.com.

[00:01:52] All right let's get to the main event. Gayle Carson was selected as the 2007 legend of the speaking profession. She hosted entrepreneurs women in business radio show she wrote for them and had articles in more magazine. Currently she hosts over a dozen radio shows per month and is the founder of the S O B Radio Network. Cracks me up. She is also the only woman in the world. You hear this only woman in the world who has a doctorate a CSP that's a certified speaking professional from the National Speakers Association. She's the CMC certified management consultant and an F I M C which is the fellow to the Institute of Management Consultants. But she left out. She's also an SOB. Spunky old broad. Gail, Are you ready to screw. The commute.

[00:02:57] Oh boy. We go back two three hundred years. It's been great knowing you all this time but I haven't been catching up with you lately. So what do you been up to lately.

[00:03:08] Well most of the time when I'm doing My radio shows and like you say screw the commute. So most of the stuff is online now and I do a lot of training online both for women who are 50 plus and also people who want to know how to get on radio and TV. So I have training programs for them I have online programs for them. So I'm trying to screw the commute as much as I can but of course I'm still. Back and forth between Florida and California so that's hard to do.

[00:03:35] Well you have homes in both places right.

[00:03:38] I do. But I'm moving permanently to Palm Desert at the end of the year and hopefully we'll be able to stay in California for a while.

[00:03:47] I thought everybody was leaving California.

[00:03:49] Well not this one. This is going to get you know me I'm always opposite everybody.

[00:03:54] Aren't you going to catch on fire. I mean from back east will all we hear is like the whole place is on fire.

[00:03:59] Well I'm really fortunate my San Diego home is downtown so. Oh that won't happen there. And Palm Desert is just not in a situation where it's going to be in the fire zone. So I'm very very fortunate.

[00:04:12] It's scary when you hear all those people losing their homes. So. So take us back to. I don't really know. Did you ever have a job.

[00:04:23] Well not really because of my first time I had to earn money was when I had broken twenty two pair of glasses. I was like 13 years old and I brought. My aunt. My father said if you break one more pair. You are paying for them. So I went to the optometrist went up got my glasses came down the stairs got into my father's car. He was waiting for me by the curb and promptly sat on the glasses and broke them. So he said you know what you're going to have to do and of course at 13 the only thing available was babysitting. And I just am never very good at that. So I said to him Can I get a job. And he said Well if anybody will hire you. So I went through the newspapers it was the 50s people were home and I decided I would make a perfect Avon lady. So I started selling Avon Cosmetics door to door at the age of 13 and became the top salesperson in the area. So in reality I guess I had a job but I really didn't because it was my own time and effort and everything I did from that point on I created in other words I I got a job in a radio station for the summer but I created it. I worked in a summer camp teaching music and dance and drama but I created it. So and then at 17 I went off to school and created my own jobs and I was in business at twenty one a real business. So no in my mind have never had a job because I could never do what people told me to do. If I thought it was stupid.

[00:05:50] So that's that makes sense to me. Here's where it gets cracking me up is like Who on earth would hire a babysitter that can't see enough to do me to break her classes.

[00:06:02] Well I have the glasses but I just I'm just not really good with kids even though.

[00:06:07] How do you do. How did you break 13 pairs of glasses. I don't think I've done that my entire 60 some years of life.

[00:06:15] Because I'm a very destructive person. I was always so active and so busy that you know I sat on them I misplaced them. Well you know it was just one of those things.

[00:06:27] I were you at a about the insurance policy or maybe you could have been better off. Did you run some big businesses.

[00:06:38] Well my first business was I started out with a very small model a small modeling school and I developed it into chain of Career Schools which included of course the modeling and personal development but also real estate court reporting travel fashion merchandising that kind of thing. And then I had a SAG after talent agency we did the movies and TV commercials and print jobs that came into South Florida. And then I had a convention service company. So they were all together. And I did did industrial shows and theme parties and spouse programs and tours for the conventions that came to South Florida.

[00:07:15] Well what's the most number of employees you ever had at once.

[00:07:18] Well I manage three hundred and fifty people some. Yeah. I never want to do that again.

[00:07:26] Three hundred fifty. What's the smallest. I mean I guess other than being a solopreneur what's the smallest.

[00:07:33] The smallest would be one or two. And again one was like full time and the others were on contract.

[00:07:41] Wow. So if you had to a lot of the people that listen to this we call them our screwballs. By the way that are either thinking about starting a business or want to improve their business. After all this business experience you've had. What would you boil it down to a few tips for them to to pay attention to.

[00:08:02] Well I think the first thing is whatever you expect to happen won't. And whatever you don't expect to happen will because. I was in business remember I was 21 years old and I was in business for two weeks when my chief competitor who was very very successful stuck me with a cease and desist order. I do not know what it was. I had to hire an attorney. I couldn't believe she was so scared of me surpassing her that she did this.

[00:08:29] She heard about your Avon sales and she was definitely scared.

[00:08:35] But I can tell you that. Yeah. What you expect doesn't happen and vice versa.

[00:08:40] Wow. And so how did that culminate.

[00:08:44] Well what we did was we put everybody on I couldn't qualify for it even getting the license that she was saying I needed because I didn't have the residency requirement which was three years. So we put everybody on as employees. All my models all my talent went us and I had to do FICA withholding all of that. I had to have workman's comp I wasn't thrilled about it. The talent wasn't thrilled about it but we got through the three years and then I went to the regular agency route of commission only.

[00:09:15] Yeah because that adds the 30 some percent or more to your expenses. The accounting and the lawyer and all that stuff.

[00:09:25] Well but still a lesson learned.

[00:09:28] That's for sure. So anything funny or bizarre happened besides that. That's a rotten have. Anything funny or bizarre happened over the years.

[00:09:39] Well I don't know how funny this is but I went into an advertising agency right off Madison Avenue. No appointment. And I went in and I sold them the miss Model Pageant. And believe it or not my board of directors because I was president of the modeling Association of America and they would not support my decision even though they were going to each have a girl in the. In the contest and I had Barbara McNair and George Hamilton as my host and hostess. It was on the wide world of entertainment and they wouldn't approve it because it was going to be my own personal glory trip. And I said I'm going to be on there for maybe 30 seconds. No one's paying attention to me. But they would not approve it. So I said fine I have the contract. I'm signing the contract. I will put all my own talent in there. And then I really will be a celebrity and then of course they say OK. OK. And my girl did not even come in anywhere. But you know. Then we sold it to Eileen Ford. And that's where the Miss Model Pageant originated.

[00:10:42] Well so there was a there is a good lesson there for everybody. You have to play your angles right. So you you identified what what would make them back off and get them to go along with you.

[00:10:54] Absolutely and I would never have Done that. I really had no intention. I mean I was really doing this for the goodness of the group. But you know there were it was paranoia there and that's what happens when people are paranoid I think and I know you practice this too Tom and that is you know if you go in things with the right spirit and the right mindset the positive is going to happen. But it's always somebody who wants to put a monkey wrench in there and they'll do whatever they can to mess things up. That should be going well for you.

[00:11:25] Well you were an SYB spunky young broad.

[00:11:30] I guess so. I guess so.

[00:11:33] So what do you like best about working for yourself and what's the worst.

[00:11:37] Well the best is I get to do what I want when I want how I want. So that's the best the worst is of course. There are highs and their lows. You don't get any of the things that I never even knew about like benefits. I never knew people got benefits. And. I didn't know about paid vacations and I didn't know that when you went off to conferences and things like that that the company paid for it because I had always paid for everything myself. So I think it's the you know it's probably the benefits mostly that that. I did not get. But I really don't care that I didn't get them.

[00:12:15] All right so what's the what's life look like now. What are you actually doing now I know you're doing all these radio shows is that is that it.

[00:12:24] Well I do the radio shows and then I train people how to get on radio and how to get on TV because unfortunately people don't know how to do the proposals and contact the producers and all of that kind of thing. And then the women the women over 50 who really believe that it's over. I try to show them because I'm much more ancient than they are. So. I try to show them it's not over till it's over. I mean this is the best time of your life.

[00:12:50] Well 50 is the new twelve. Right.

[00:12:52] Well supposedly.

[00:12:55] All right so you have programs for both of these or how do people work with you.

[00:13:00] I do. Well there's a couple of ways. Number one I coach them. So they want coaching we do private or we do group. And if they want to do it online there's an online program for each of those. So there's a couple of different ways that they can go about doing it.

[00:13:15] Well how do they find out the details.

[00:13:18] Well for the media program if they go to sob6tips.com. There's a little thing on six secrets you should know. And if it's for the women and they want to know about. Well I'm a very positive thinker it's sobmindset.com.

[00:13:49] We'll have these in the show notes so people can just click on them too. So is there a structured program or is it all individual coaching.

[00:14:01] Well if they if it's if it's individual coaching I kind of put it together as we go along as everybody is different. But if it's a group program then there is there are modules that we have. And it runs anywhere from three months to nine months depending on what program they take.

[00:14:18] All right. But they could. They don't have to wait till the end of nine months to get on the radio right.

[00:14:24] No no. In fact if they know if they if they do you know as you always say Tom you have to do the work. If they do the work they can get on in 30 days. But in reality most of them will not. So it will be anywhere from three months on before they really see this taking form because it's a whole process you need to go through. But people can get on sooner than that especially if their topic is timely.

[00:14:52] Right. And that's probably part of your training is to tie this to something that's already in the news. Ok. We have to take a brief message from our sponsor but when we come back we're going to ask Gayle what a typical day looks like for her and how she stays motivated. Now folks I kind of turned the Internet marketing training world on its head around the year 2000 people like me were charging 50 or 100 thousand dollars upfront to teach what we knew to clueless business people who kind of refused to learn it on their own. Now I'm a small business advocate and I knew many small businesses could never afford that kind of upfront money. So I made all those gurus kind of mad by charging a relatively small entry fee to my program and then I also got a percentage of profits that was capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. So for me to get my big money you had to make way bigger money and then you also know I'm not going to disappear on you because I won't get my money right. So. So also we went one step further in that I have a big estate home and a TV studio where my students and Gayle's been here she knows what it's like for a year part of the yearlong training program they actually stay in the house for an immersion weekend and that's just one of the unique features of the joint venture and mentor program. You could check out the full details at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and we'll have that in the show notes.

[00:16:26] So let's get back to our spectacular guest the spunky old broad Gayle Carson. Dale what's what's a typical day look like for you like pick two when you're in Florida and when you're in California are they different. What do you get up. What do you do.

[00:16:43] First thing I do when I get up is workout. So I'm a real gym rat. So I workout either at a gym if it if it's got the classes I want or somewhere else if they're not if I work out at home or if I work out in the building depending on where I am.

[00:16:58] What time you get up you early bird or what.

[00:17:01] Well I'm up by 7:00 Sometimes I'm up at 6:00 it depends on you know the day before. But somewhere between 6:00 or 7:00 and the first thing I do as I say is workout when I come back. After showering and depending on time frame lunch or whatever I then check my email. And that's a horrible thing because I get so many of them anyway. I check my email and then I either It depends. I may go to a meeting I may coach I may do a radio show I may be interviewed by someone for a print thing or I write. So it's a combination of things during the day. My day is probably calmer in California only because at this point my main office is in Florida so I don't have all the distractions and all the things that I could be doing. Whereas I'm limited to one or two or three things that I do. But basically my whole day is spent working. You know after I workout and so forth and I take breaks I have cats. So I play with my cats who are constantly constantly on my lap or behind my back or somewhere in fact my my producer on my radio shows calls and my assistant producers because you always hear meow in the background. And basically that's it. And then of course I'm very active. I serve on the ambassador's board for Nova Southeastern University.

[00:18:30] So I'm very active with them and I have a lot of different meetings for that. I run a mastermind for TCI which is the Commonwealth Institute I have 10 not for profits who are in my mastermind group I have like Girl Scouts I have Habitat for Humanity and I facilitate a mastermind once a month for them. So I keep pretty busy.

[00:18:52] You do 10 times more than most 20 year olds I've interviewed.

[00:18:57] And I've got the energy.

[00:18:59] Well I'm just picturing you that you call yourself a gym rat. I'm just picturing you with all these muscle guys in Venice Beach and high fiving them and and pumping iron everybody's applauding you and watching.

[00:19:12] Well I won't go that far I can tell you that I I do keep. I do keep active.

[00:19:17] Good for you. No. How do you stay motivated. I mean I don't know how you have a chance to get demotivated as busy as you are but how do you keep your motivation up.

[00:19:25] Well I don't know it's very hard for me to get depressed. Tom I might get depressed for like 30 seconds and that's it. I'm back. Yeah I'm back. I'm back. I don't know what it is. I just am not that kind of a person.

[00:19:39] Always been an upbeat person right.

[00:19:41] Yeah basically and I will tell your listeners now in fact I don't even know if you know this but I'm now going through my fourth case of breast cancer I'm on chemo. I'm on medication and I still don't miss a day.

[00:19:58] Unbelievable most people in chemo are like dead for days and days afterwards.

[00:20:04] No I very often get my chemo shot and then I get on a plane if I'm going to California or somewhere else.

[00:20:09] You're a machine. You're an SOM spunky old machine you should go get the sponsorship from AARP and I'm serious about that. You ever try that.

[00:20:21] Well they're very protective. I was I was a speaker at their very first Foundation event and it was very well received. But believe it or not they would not let you talk to anybody you couldn't collect anybody's business card. It was very closed. And so it has continued to be that.

[00:20:42] Wow I would think they would love people like you to be out there on the cover of the magazine.

[00:20:46] And I'm a member. A dedicated member so I don't know what it is. But that's the way they operate.

[00:20:53] Well I'm sure there's the anti aging companies out there. I'm serious. I don't wanna say there's a funeral.

[00:21:01] Silver Sneakers is a program for the insurance pays for and they've just named me an ambassador. So I am an ambassador for the Silver Sneakers program.

[00:21:13] I swear somebody would give you 100 hundred grand just to go around you know at their trade shows and things. It's amazing. Yeah. So you have more energy than when we were working together even gee you're getting better. You're like wine.

[00:21:31] I say women 50 plus are like good wine they get better with age.

[00:21:37] Oh man. No. No question about it for sure. So. Well thanks so much for taking time to talk to us any final parting tips for those people out there wanting to be in business that set their own schedule doing their thing like you do.

[00:21:52] Well now go to my Website which is spunkyoldbroad.com. Sign up for my newsletter. You'll keep in touch with me that way you have missives from me I don't bombard you I do a newsletter once a week and I think that you'll be happy with the information that I provide.

[00:22:08] Well I'll tell you what folks I've known this lady for a long long time and everything she does is quality that's for sure. So all right. Well thanks so much Gayle for checking in with us and the folks the next episode is 76. It's going to be all about chatbots. These are the tools that automate sales and service for your customers and prospects. And my little chatbot guy is named Screwy in honor of the Screw the Commute podcast. So don't miss that and please leave us a review and a star rating at iTunes and subscribe over there and if you don't know how to do it we have instructions at screwthecommute.com. We'll see everybody on the next episode.

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