5 – Content Creation: Tom interviews Jeff Herring

Jeff Herring

[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:26] Hey everybody it's Episode 5 of screw the commute and we've got a great guest here today. Name is Jeff Herring. I'll tell you about him in a second. Right now, I wonder if you would like to lose anywhere from 85000 to three hundred forty thousand dollars. Maybe not. Well if you're looking at any higher education for yourself or your children or nephews or nieces or anybody you know your neighbors that's very likely what might happen to you. So I'm on my hands and knees here begging you to listen to the webinar on higher education at screwthecommute.com you can hear it. It will be in the show notes for today's show and we'll have several places on the site. But don't spend a nickel on higher education until you listen to this webinar.

[00:01:22] So let's get to the main event. Jeff Herring is the content marketing guy. His students discover how to create and market their content for more prospects publicity and profits. As a former counseling psychologist Jeff began to write a syndicated relationship column.

[00:01:42] And he's got dogs and we love dogs and this is perfect for screw the commute you work where you it's your home and you enjoy your animals and your kids and sometimes your animals and kids are like one in the same.

[00:01:58] So then he decided to trade his counseling couch for a marketing mouse. Jeff teaches his system to his students around the world so they can get their life changing message to people who can only hear it from them. Now why does he do all this so you can make a difference and a profit. And we're so glad that Jeff was able to take a break from his Dancing With The Stars routine that he could visit with us today.

[00:02:28] Thanks Jeff. I tried to keep that quiet but I guess it got out. It did. You have to tell us about it. I got one important question for you. Yes. Are you ready to screw the commute. Absolutely. We've been doing it for years. Let's keep doing it. All right. So tell me about that first momentous occasion in your life.

[00:02:56] Absolutely. Just recently my oldest son got married to his girlfriend of six years ago just recently.

[00:03:02] Like yeah it was very quickly when we were recording this but you sore from all the dancing.

[00:03:10] I don't think I danced that much in one night. Ever. Yeah. Today is kind of today it's kind of a rest day. You know this turning 60 stuff kind of

[00:03:22] Gets to you with the dancing. You're still wet behind the ears I'm going to be 63.

[00:03:29] I knew I would get no sympathy. So tell us about what you what you do.

[00:03:35] Well what I do is I help people that are experts just regular people like you and I take their message and turn it into content that they can promote and market and then turn into information products to make a difference in the world and to make a profit as well.

[00:03:51] Well I mean I don't think you're just a regular person. You're an extraordinary individual.

[00:03:57] Don't argue with me don't argue with the same with you.

[00:04:01] So now I know personally. But tell everybody else that you used to have a job.

[00:04:08] Yes sure did. Even though technically it was working for myself it was a job because it was hour after hour as a counselling psychologist I had a full time private practice for 25 years and it was great helping people and it was great making you know upwards of 150 dollars an hour. But guess what. I was locked into that hour. I couldn't figure out how to get people to pay me if I wasn't there. And so you know it was a nice return on investment but I had to be there hour after hour after hour and after a few years of it you know people used to tell ask me all the time how do you listen to people all day. And my answer was always who listens. But when you do you go home with your with your ears and your face sore from talking and listening all day.

[00:04:57] Tell me the truth. Did you ever fall asleep during a session?

[00:05:01] You know what I never did. And I had a plan for that because if I ever did when I woke up I was going to tell my client that I was a new technique called dream therapy. Having a dream about how to solve their problem.

[00:05:19] Well you remember the moment or was there a moment when you decided you know what this is over I'm going to go out on my own.

[00:05:28] There were really two and one of them was my son's mom divorcing me and moving from Florida to Georgia with the boys and I had to get mobile. And so this Internet thing that I was playing with had to become the main thing.

[00:05:44] And what was driving that beforehand and what really drove it with this was that I realized that the Internet was a way to get the message I was delivering you know one on one or a family at a time or a couple of the time hour to hour in my office out to thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people in a whole lot less time.

[00:06:05] So would you suggest that method of getting divorced for people that want to start a business?

[00:06:10] Well you know that's one way. I mean you were a marriage and family counselor. Yeah yeah. You know what was funny about that is when that happened I thought Man What happens if my patients find out.

[00:06:20] So I just decided to take the direct approach and told them and everyone said Well now you really did it. All right fine. So while getting a divorce and having to move is a good motivator. It is not a necessary set of criteria for doing this.

[00:06:39] So what advice would you have for people that are thinking about oh I'd really want to get out of what I'm doing. I want to start my own business. I want to be like Jeff what advice would you give to somebody that's stuck in that in that other setting with the J O B.

[00:06:54] Stop thinking and start doing. Simple as that. Stop thinking and start doing and start by doing. I mean making plans to make that switch. Now I'm not saying drop everything and start a business although that can work. But start doing this stuff. There comes a point when you've taken enough courses you've been to enough classes you've done enough. What we say here in the south "fixin' to". It's time to do and so start doing and do it part time.

[00:07:23] You know people say all the time while I work full time I don't have time. Well you know how many many reruns Do you have to watch other people living life before you decide to go build your own. Right.

[00:07:34] Speaking of reruns I was just doing some research on this and people watch thirty five point six hours of TV a week which is 77 days out of a year.

[00:07:48] All right so thirty six point five hours a week yeah.

[00:07:52] Thirty thirty five point six was the figures from Nielsen. That's a day and a half. Exactly.

[00:07:57] And it's even worse with teenagers doing anything and I ask them Are any of those shows doing anything to build your financial security or get you out of the rat race for other than maybe Shark Tank inspiring you, no it's not so turn the darn TV off and you have more than enough time to start a part time business. Absolutely. Give us some tips on if people wanted to do what you do?

[00:08:26] In my system, Tom thanks to you I keep it simple. And it's three things the first one is create content. Every day they create a value piece of your message everyday and I'm not talking about a book or a webinar or a big large thing it can be small parts you know a Facebook update. Two to five minute talking head video a Facebook Live video blog post do that every day. And the second one a lot of people forget they've created that content that they don't put it out there.

[00:08:58] You started with articles right. I mean short articles right. They weren't like 3000 word articles. No no I was.

[00:09:06] I'd been doing for the newspaper for years and years a 650 word relationship article and then when I found out you could do like 200 to 400 words online I thought OK I can do that and so can everybody else. And the good news folks in step 2 is there are so many places including some new ones where you can place that content now to get traffic to get visibility and to build your list and then the third thing in my system part of what happens is when you're creating content you're also creating your information products. So instead of sitting down to create an information product starting from scratch you go find that content you've already created and enlarge it make it bigger say more about it compile it. There's many things you can do to it you know to create information products that make a difference in the world and make a profit for you.

[00:09:59] Now you're still selling those templates that you had that get stimulate ideas. I mean I still use them if I'm hard up for an idea I just go and look at those templates that I got from years and years ago.

[00:10:11] Yep I remember you helped me create those years and years ago and it's still one of my best selling products and within the last couple of years we turned it into a set of software too to make it even easier.

[00:10:21] Ok so we'll put a link to that in the show notes for this show because folks you just sit down and it just boom stimulates and gives you an ABC on what to do and you fill in the blanks and boom you got a piece of content. I mean without hardly even blinking it's really fantabulous.

[00:10:42] And with the software you got to do is answer a few questions and just answer the questions makes you a better expert in your niche. And you know you whack a button and then there's your content.

[00:10:52] Yeah. And this isn't like it's going to be something that's plagiarized or something that's an exact duplicate of what somebody else did with the template. It's going to be your words and a unique piece of content that belongs to you and this is called intellectual property. This is what can really make you rich. And it's kind of an insurance policy. Jeff I think having all this intellectual property where you create it once and it works for you forever unless it's going obsolete but a lot of things are evergreen we call them so they last for a long time.

[00:11:26] So over and over and over again. So have you ever gotten screwed no hold it in business.

[00:11:36] You know one of the things that you know to be true and I found to be true is the deeper you get into this and the higher you go and the more people you reach the more people that want to copy you. And you know the first time that ever happened somebody took actually the templates we're talking about and put them on their own site with a sales letter pretty much like mine or was mine in many many ways. So fortunately I knew someone who knew the guy that was in charge of that guy. And so we just called a little meeting and had a conversation and that got stopped.

[00:12:14] And his name was Vinny and he had a baseball bat.

[00:12:17] That's right. And two or three big guys with their arms folded.

[00:12:22] So that's good. You got that taken care of. But you do have to be careful in business because the more successful you are the all kinds of people you attract.

[00:12:31] So anything crazy funny happened to? You know when my son who got married last night is 23 was one year old. I was thinking about a way to write a column about that for the newspaper and talk about the first year parenting. And I was looking for the hook to do that. And that hook came at 3:00 a.m. one morning and you'll appreciate this I told this story at his rehearsal dinner. He woke up screaming and crying. It was my turn to get him and all the tricks to getting to sleep weren't working. And I remember that recently I've been driving him around in the car to get him to nod off to sleep so we went for our drive. The only problem was I was in T-shirt and underwear figuring nobody would see us right. So we went for the drive a route we take in every night or morning we'd done this before and that worked. And so this time it wasn't working. I pulled up to a stoplight and turned onto another road and went faster in frustration and John started to nod off and I thought OK I just need to go faster. Well some of you can see where this is going. But the time I thought I either need to go home or out to the interstate.

[00:13:37] The flashing light started you know and the Tallahassee police department was pulling me over. And so I'm praying for a couple of things as I pull over one let it be a cop that's got kids maybe even a grandfather. Have some understanding of what's going on here. And please God don't let it be somebody that reads my column because I don't want to be recognized. Right. So up walks twenty five year old officer Bradshaw with acne still on his face.

[00:14:02] Oh boy. You know shining a light into John's face which is the perfect cure for a screaming crying child. And the first question was you know me see your driver's license and proof of registration I said well officer we got a problem. It's about a mile down this road to the right. Be glad to have you follow me and I'll show it to you. It's too late for that. I never cracked a smile. And then came the question I was dreading.

[00:14:24] Got an idea what that was Tom? anything dangerous in the car please get out of the car.

[00:14:30] Yes. Would you step out of the car please. Yeah. And I looked down I said well officer we got another problem.

[00:14:35] Now mind you he was being a smart cop. He was back from the door checking me out, he stepped forward and all he sees are these two skinny pale legs sticking out of a T-shirt. And I swear to you I'm not making this up. It was part of a men's group I was in at the time and my T-shirt said Tallahassee man of integrity. So he calls me in after asking me if I was naked and told him I got on underwear I'll show you. But he declined. And he calls me in and finds out I'm one of the good guys comes back tells me all the things he can charge me with. And he's only going to charge me with driving without pants. Yeah. Yeah and he leaves me with these words of wisdom at 4 am he said next time sir you may want to wear your pants. Right.

[00:15:22] And so that was a crazy thing. And that story goes on and on and on in lots of ways. Many times when I spoke around town and told this story somebody would come up to me and the best one was Officer Bradshaw's mom came up to me once and said I'm Officer Bradshaw's mom and I said you've heard this story haven't you.

[00:15:43] The neat thing through some of what I've learned from you is I turned that story into a keynote talk called Life Lessons learned in my underwear.

[00:15:51] Yeah and that's the thing that's especially you know we'll be doing episodes on speaking and getting paid to speak and making a business out of it and these unique things that happen to you that are kind of a disaster at the time end up making you millions of dollars over time so any time something's bad happen to you if you lived through it, turn it into a story and make money on it. Yeah awesome. So of course what's the best thing about working for yourself and the worst thing?

[00:16:22] There's so many best things Tom. I mean the best best thing is the freedom and up there with that is the difference you get to make in helping people and helping other people get their message out there.

[00:16:35] And my youngest son and I volunteer for an organization called White House family tree. And they work with kids and families living through childhood cancer and they serve them by taking them on a beach retreat for a week. They just get to be a family and don't have to fool with any of these things. And recently I launched a new information product. 100 percent of which went to as a fundraiser to that group for the summer. So you get to do stuff like that.

[00:17:03] Weren't you hiking or something or doing the Appalachian Trail?

[00:17:07] No that's one that's coming up. OK. Yeah that's going to be another one this was just sold information product for a discount. And you know with the notion that 100 percent of it went to Light House.

[00:17:20] Right. That's beautiful. But there's that Appalachian thing I'm thinking you know how many people could just tell her boss you know I need to take a week off and go hike the Appalachian Trail. Go ahead take the rest of your life off because you're fired.

[00:17:36] Make it a long walk. Now coming up and I'm currently negotiating with my boss to do that. Yeah right.

[00:17:46] So what's coming up. What do you promote now. What are some things people can get off you that would help them.

[00:17:51] Well one of my I see one of my jobs is to always be looking around for the best ways and new ways to get your content out there. I check them all out and some most you know are not going to be that great but I check them out and then every now and then you come across one that you know this can work. And so we've been conditioned by cartoons and comics to pay attention to all these names you see on line right there. And we get to laugh at him and one day I thought what if you could market with these things so I've created a course called magnetic meme marketing. It shows you how to take those and use them for marketing both to build your list and to sell information products and we've come up with a term called whack it, bracket and stack it.

[00:18:41] I heard you say whack it. I thought you might be going a certain way. Certainly not. This is a family show.

[00:18:49] And so that's what's going on right now. And the students that are in there are now saying oh my goodness this is the most fun and effective way to market my business.

[00:18:58] I love hearing that.

[00:18:59] This will be a course that somebody can take any time?

[00:19:03] Absolutely.

[00:19:05] Yeah perfect. We're going to have a link in the show notes for everybody to check that out because Jeff is right on the cutting edge of all the interesting ways to cut through. There's so much noise out there that you have to continually find ways to cut through it for your business so that sounds like a great one. We got to take a brief break from a message from our sponsor. And when we come back we'll get Jeff to tell us what a typical day looks like and how he stays motivated. We'll be right back.

[00:19:35] Today, almost two billion of you will go online retrieving over 100 billion searches for information, goods and services, and 6 million of you will view a page on the internet before this commercial is over. The world has changed and so is the way we do business. At the Internet Marketing Training Center, you can study online at your pace to fit your schedule, and you can graduate with the skills and knowledge to compete in the global marketplace or start your own home based business. Call us today or go online at IMTCVA.org. Because, it's about time. Yours.

[00:20:06] All right. We're back with super duper Jeff Herring the content marketing guy. Jeff what's a typical day look like for you?

[00:20:16] Well I'm one of those early risers I'm usually up by four thirty five o'clock now. And you know exercise and then dive into my day creating and publishing content so I've usually worked out and created content and shipped it and taken my youngest son to school by 9. And then the rest of the day is creating information products you know doing webinars.

[00:20:41] You're a webinar maniac, aren't you.

[00:20:45] I love those things and all these Facebook Live things too. And then working with you know working with my clients either in groups or selling my private clients one on one and usually other than nighttime events like webinars and others usually by the time I pick up my son from high school I'm done. And then you know he and I either work it out again or doing some kind of stuff.

[00:21:07] That's great now you really have a diverse following. I heard that a dog has a blog because of you. Is that true?

[00:21:15] That's right. That's right. There's three at the house right now.

[00:21:19] I heard some jingling I didn't know if you were belly dancing while we were talking or that was a leash or collar.

[00:21:27] One of the dogs who dealt with John in order to get married that's Paisley we call her Paisley.

[00:21:31] Was that like a dowry, you had to give up a dog? Yeah.

[00:21:36] He's right by me right now. And then the youngest one is Duke the giant puppy he's a big Shepherd Husky Wolf. But the one you're talking about is my first dog Buddy the Internet dog. We found him on the Internet as a rescue. And he lays at my feet when I'm working on the Internet. So yeah he's got his own blog and his own Facebook page.

[00:21:56] So what kind of stuff they talk about like nutrition nutritional bones and how to get your own and do what you want. Thoughts from buddy. Or you know that kind of thing and an occasional dog stuff as well.

[00:22:10] And what's the name of that? Buddy the Internet dog. So how do you stay motivated when you're working by yourself?

[00:22:20] My goodness you assume I do. And we all struggle with that. But here's what keeps me going is the results.

[00:22:29] The results of course income for me and the freedom and lifestyle that brings in the results of income for my students. That brings in and even over and above that.

[00:22:42] When somebody changes their life because of something I've taught or they get to go change some lives because of something I taught. That's what keeps me going. And just I did not expect this at my son's wedding.

[00:22:56] Of course it was a emotional moment a very very proud of him and he's married a great girl. One of his groomsmen is one of his friends forever who basically grew up at our house. Over the years from middle school on out. And he walked up to me shook my hand and this is not a guy who's serious most of the time and he looked me in the face and said I just want to thank you for everything and you know my pleasure.

[00:23:24] So when you get that kind of feedback from students and clients and get to do that pretty much every day. That'll keep you motivated. The other thing that this lifestyle business allows me to do.

[00:23:37] I've been leading this group of now high school guys at church since sixth grade group of about 40 guys. And watching them grow up and you know be a mentor to them and then I get to co-lead a group for them for grown men that we meet every Friday for breakfast and just watching those guys grow and doing something that allows you to have that time. You know if that doesn't get you up with a smile on your face and send you to bed happily exhausted then something's wrong.

[00:24:08] Awesome that's great advice. So do you have any parting thoughts for all us screwballs that listen to this on starting a business or taking their business to the next level with content marketing.

[00:24:20] I love that screwballs. That's vintage Tom Antion. Yeah and I would say to develop your DRGRs. DRGR is your daily revenue generating routines. We all get so busy and the Internet can be so distracting. Take the time to figure out what are the things you're doing that are making a difference and what are the things you're doing that are making you a profit and make darn sure those things get done every day. And then if you get some extra time that you want to get lost on Facebook go ahead. But don't do that first, thinking you've accomplished something and then comes the end of the day going what I really do.

[00:25:04] I just watched eight hours of youtube videos and didn't make any money. About cats and baking.

[00:25:13] So how do people reach you if they want to connect? Best thing to do is just go to Jeffherring.com. Find out more about what I do and there's ways to get yourself some cool sample templates and some other things over there.

[00:25:28] Yeah we'll have that in the show notes for everybody this is episode number 5. Of course we want Jeff on early because he's a guy that can really really help you. So, thank you Jeff for taking time out and congratulations on the wedding, getting rid of one of the kids. Got a raise this weekend.

[00:25:51] And for everybody out there make sure you visit the screwthecommute.com for the show notes for this show, the webinars, all the things we have over there for you and make sure you don't spend any money on higher education until you watch our Webinar on higher education. It could save you literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. So check that out. And everybody, we'll see you next episode. Catch ya later.

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