198 – He flunked out of high school and college: Tom interviews Rob Garcia

Episode 198 – Rob Garcia
[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 one hundred and ninety eight of Screw the Commute podcast. I got Rob Garcia with us now. This guy flunked out of both high school and college. I am not exactly sure how you do that because I thought you had to go to high school to get to college. But I don't know. You must be a really high achiever to do such a thing. So. So we're going to hear his story in a minute. But he did not flunk out of a PhD program. So wait till you hear his story. All right. Hope you didn't miss Episode 197. Joshua Lee. He's a prolific online marketer and he believes balance is B.S. And I agreed with him, but for different reasons. So if you didn't hear that one, go back to Episode 197. Now our podcast app's in the App Store. You can do lots of cool stuff conveniently from your mobile devices, like if you're in the car on listen to a podcast and and you're listening to screw the commute and a phone rings that pauses the podcast. Do your call and it starts playing right again. So and you can save your favorite episodes, all kinds of stuff so you can get it at screwthecommute.com/app. And we also have complete instructions there to show you step by step how to use all the cool features. And as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Make sure you grab a copy of our e-book, How to Automate Your Business. And just one of the tips in this book has saved me over seven and a half million keystrokes and allowed me to handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and forty thousand customers without pulling my hair out. And we sell this book for 27 bucks, but it's years free. As my thanks for listening. And when you're on the download page, you might want to check out another little surprise gift I have for you. It's a white paper with some of the people were charging four five and six thousand bucks for the same information you'll see right in that white paper. So you can grab both of those over at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. All right. Our sponsor's the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia Distance Learning School, which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own online business or both. And we got approved by the Department of Defense to participate in the My CAA program. This is a scholarship program for military spouses. And we also, just as a thank you to all veterans out there and active duty. We give a ninety five hundred dollar partial scholarship to the school in addition to the 4000 the spouses can get. So we're really behind our veterans and thank them for doing what they do so that we can do what we do safely. So I'll tell you more about that later.

[00:03:28] Now let's get to our main event. Rob Garcia grew up in a low income household despite failing out of high school and college. And he's got to tell me how he did that, because I thought you had to graduate high school to get to college. So I want to hear about about that. He taught himself how to speed, learn concepts and eventually finished his PhD program. And he founded Shift Magazine. And today, he's a successful business strategist out of San Diego that teaches high visibility and growth techniques. Rob, are you ready to screw. The commute.

[00:04:14] I absolutely am, Tom. It's great to be here.

[00:04:17] Oh, man. So I'm so glad to have met you. I met you through Steven Kuhn and the vetrepreneur tribe. And up in D.C. and it was so great to meet you and see the great things you're doing. So tell everybody about what you're doing with this high visibility and growth strategies for businesses and then we'll take you back to see how you flunked out of everything.

[00:04:41] I love it. That's a journey of pain.

[00:04:44] Like I said, you're a high achiever to be able to flunk out of both high school and college. That's you know, don't hear that every day.

[00:04:52] Absolutely. So. So right now, Tom, I live in San Diego. And what I do is I teach experts how to make the transition from expert to celebrity expert. So a person that has high visibility, not out fighting against every other person in the. Industry like a person that's a cut above. They're getting media. They're doing strategic social media. They're recruiting influencers. They're teaching their industry. But they are positioning themselves as industry leaders. So those are my clients.

[00:05:19] And great. So how do you work with them? Is it the online these programs or one on one? How does. What options do they have to figure this stuff out?

[00:05:29] So my at my flagship courses called Tactical CEQ and CEQ stands for celebrity expert quotient. And all that means is do people recognize you for what you do? Because every person out there is an expert at something and they're taken out the Facebook ads and they're competing. It's everyone and just chasing the same clients. But when you establish yourself as a celebrity expert, people come to you like, I don't have the cold pitched people ever. They find me kind of like the A-Team. I'm kind of I'm kind of hidden away. If the search me, you know, I don't have to go into people's inboxes that are strangers and, you know, try and cold call them or anything people hear about me and they and they find me. It's a great thing.

[00:06:06] Yeah. Yeah. The A-Team. I love love it when a plan comes together. Yeah. So but the. But they work with you one on one. Or do you have other options for them.

[00:06:19] So I do one on ones on occasion. But the majority of people that come to me enroll in the tactical CEQ course with me for six weeks. Every week we learn a powerful technique. And then I actually challenge them to go out and do some specific to exercise learning and map mastery of that technique.

[00:06:37] How often do you run these?

[00:06:39] I run them every single six weeks. So we're in week five right now and we're this week we're teaching audience building and creating power. And it's a lot easier than you would think. Tom, it doesn't cost anything.

[00:06:50] Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and give them some business tips out there that they would learn if they were in your program.

[00:06:57] Absolutely. So, for example, creating power when I was three years ago, I was in a dark apartment in North Park. I had no money. Nobody knew who I was. And I was just trying to get out there. And so what I did is I interned free for two weeks to the biggest people I could find online. I introduced myself properly, very short video call to say, hey, this is what I'm good at. I love what you doing. And I sincerely like look them up and checked out their stuff to show personalization.

[00:07:25] Well, that can't possibly be true because at the time I weighed 350 pounds. So I technically was probably one of the biggest. And I didn't hear crap from you.

[00:07:39] I didn't know you. But yeah. So I essentially what I did is I established myself.

[00:07:46] You gave before you got is what you did.

[00:07:46] Yeah. It's called demonstration of power. And so you show off your skill set your aptitude. And a lot of those people went on to hire me for for, you know, pretty good sized contracts later on. So that's one way you can build power for someone and build that report.

[00:08:04] Yeah. So the the longer somebody would have to wait is about five or so weeks if they want given your program or could be as little as a week going on.

[00:08:12] Yeah. Yeah I. So every five, every six weeks it opens up and then I'm always available for consulting calls in one on ones as well. Anytime.

[00:08:19] So as each each week spots specific on a certain topic or how do you run the program.

[00:08:26] Yeah. So every week has as a different topic, it's all very structured. So they learn audience building, celebrity recruiting, media strategies for interviews, how to do at a create an audience and power. And then how to teach their industry. And that's a big one Tom specially for your audience because teach your industry, we roll over into creating a course.

[00:08:47] Yeah. And but you need one more module because you teach them to be this big shot. You need to teach them how to handle groupies because you're going to get. I mean, if you do what Rob's telling you, you will get opportunities from whatever sex you're interested in that you never had before. So you go. You better tell him. Teach him how to handle it.

[00:09:15] You have to after 100 interviews in four years. I definitely have gotten a lot more attention than.

[00:09:21] Exactly. So. All right. So let's go back and see how a person is such a high achiever that they can flunk out of both high school and college. I don't get that. Tell me tell me how you came up. You said you came up through a poor family. So were you entrepreneurial as a kid or what was it like as a kid?

[00:09:43] No, I was completely different. I was a skateboarding 14 year old in Eureka, California. And almost everyone in my family was on drugs or a serious alcohol. And so I had no hope. I was living in my grandmother's hoarder house, and it's full of cockroaches and mice. I just wasn't a very happy person and had a learning disability and at the time. I'm back in the day they didn't have IEPs or drugs, so I couldn't I couldn't modify my my attention span. And so I failed at a high school. I ended up going I ended up going to the alternate school with the real bad kids and made up my credits and then graduated with my class. But I'd leave for a while just to go to that awful school. And then I.

[00:10:32] So. So when you say was were you actually bad or you just had a learning disability?

[00:10:38] No, I was academically, I just wasn't turning into my stuff and I didn't understand math.

[00:10:42] You weren't robbing banks and stuff. Right.

[00:10:46] No, I was never a hoodlum. You know, the leather jacket in the white T-shirt. Knocking off, banks. Good kid. Just couldn't focus. And so I enrolled in a junior college and I was trying to learn electronics. And once again, I I I had the desire, but I didn't have like the discipline and I didn't understand how to how to really implement high end learning strategies. And so I failed at that college and I moved to Phoenix and I went to a second college and a failed out of that one.

[00:11:21] I mean, that's really a high achiever there. Yeah.

[00:11:25] So one high school, two colleges and sleeping on the floor. And I couldn't afford meat. It was the worst time in my life. So twenty one I joined the Air Force and I almost failed out of my tech school. I was very, very close. Nine months learning bomber avionics, electronics. It was very, very challenging, but I made it. And from then I worked on B-52s.

[00:11:50] That's good because you know, we have a lot of airplanes. Military planes where I live. Norfolk, Virginia Beach. I'd hate for you to have failed your bomber avionics course and dropped some on my house. Yeah, right there is a good place to drop the bomb.

[00:12:08] But that the plane didn't fall apart. Tom, that's where I really got serious. And that's when I really. I I gained a work ethic in the Air Force. I was going to school full time.

[00:12:23] You gained it or they forced it on you? Which was it?

[00:12:27] No, I gained it because you can. You can go through your enlistment. Just have your eight hour a day job. I was working a full my full time job. I was either in school full time or working an outside job. And I was volunteering at Shriners and Muscular Dystrophy Association as well. So, you know, I was like twenty two. So I you have energy for stuff. But that was when I really understood that in order to have equality in my life that had been taken away from me, from poverty. I needed to work as hard as three guys. And I did it in one enlistment. I finished with a bachelors, two associates and a minor, and I applied for both the FBI and officer school. Neither of them took me because my math scores were too low. But that's when I really started understand about achievement.

[00:13:12] So the CIA and the FBI need the high math score like the count bullets. How many rounds you got left?

[00:13:20] The FBI, an Air Force officer school, both require a lot of algebra, too, because you have to manipulate variables and they assume that that's going to make you a good decision maker. That's clearly incorrect because standardized tests, as I've come to learn, don't measure emotional intelligence. Your ethical decisions or your if you're evil.

[00:13:39] I'm sure there's some FBI agents right now that the news probably good at math but nothing else.

[00:13:48] Yeah. And so I have a creative brain, not an analytical brain. So it's a blessing in disguise because if I did become an FBI agent, I would've made like sixty thousand a year, but I'd be moving city to city. I'd be on long stakeouts, doing paperwork, drinking coffee and just hating my life. So moved San Diego enrolled immediately in an MBA program. And then after I was done with that, I taught high school for a little bit and then started bouncing around in tech writer jobs. And that's when I started to get the commute. So I became became one of those guys driving to work and an hour each way.

[00:14:25] You're cussing now. The dreaded J-O-B.

[00:14:30] Yeah. Yeah. So I was I was feeling the misery. And so I remember I was working for this turbine company and I had it down to a science. I would listen to a business podcast on the way over at lunch. I would read business books. I wouldn't eat to like two o'clock. And then I was listening to podcasts on the way back. And so essentially for that two years I was there, I was building my business brain. I read a lot about Napoleon. I read a lot about just business concepts, management, things like that. And I finally finished my doctorate. And then a few years ago, I ended up going full time entrepreneur. So I knew this about four years full time. I taught myself speed learning. I wrote a book on it. My last book, The Next Level Supercharged Start a magazine. And then I ended up teaching myself how to self-published. So I'm an eight time author.

[00:15:26] What's the. Well, the first question is, is why did you really want to go for the PhD? Was it just an achievement kind of thing? And then second thing tell us about the magazine.

[00:15:38] I did it because it was really hard. It's something that not everyone can do. You know, 50 percent dropout rate. And at the time, I was a high school teacher and I want to inspire my kids to push themselves to be great. And it took six and a half years. It was it was on a level of challenging. I've never known it took complete discipline, but I never quit. I just kept at it.

[00:15:56] Did you tell the kids that you were a high school dropout?

[00:16:00] Oh, yeah. Yeah. They love me. And we had a really rapport. And then I was writing a lot and I figured, what if what if I created a magazine for business owners that was different about entrepreneurship? That was like kind of if Tim Ferriss wrote a magazine and that's who I kind of emulate. I want to be Tim Ferriss for the military. And so I said, OK, I'm going to make shift the life design. And I had no journalism experience. I had no English degree. I'd just been freelance writing for ever. And, you know, I taught myself how to make a magazine. Tom, it's not the easiest thing in the world.

[00:16:34] Is this a print magazine.

[00:16:37] No, it's straight digital for free hosting site. And I figured out the technique for it. And I was really proud of myself because it's I just didn't turn anybody. I just did it. And by issue two I was profitable. And I pull in ad money for most issues. And then by issue 2, I was still kind of in that phase of, is this a real thing? Can this be a viable project? A lot of people told me not to do it. And then by Issue 2, I had interviewed a guy from SEAL Team 6 that fight in Mogadishu. And that was my that was my big win. He was a giant author and he gave me an exclusive interview. The pictures were amazing. And so in the end, the three of. For years I've had Scheft, I've interviewed Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, Gin Skelley, just seven-figure coach, doctor, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, 28, team author Dave Dealy, The Master Motivator, Kuhn, all these different people. And I'm really proud of the magazine and the level at which I've been able to score interviews.

[00:17:37] Oh, that's great. Hey, maybe you can get Colonel Dave Grossman. You know him? No, I don't. You know, he's the author of On Killing and the puts out the thing about, you know, people like us or sheep dogs and, you know, we protect others. You know, we're gonna be the ones that run, you know. So just look him up when you get a chance. He's a he's really great motivational speaker. And just the books are just awesome. What are the other books about?

[00:18:03] I wrote one on charter schools when I was a teacher. And I was just talking about how charter schools should take the flexibility that they're given and really focus on STEM careers and helping girls lean more in the STEM careers because, you know, females are only about, I'd say 15 percent, 20 percent of the STEM industry.

[00:18:21] What's the STEM career?

[00:18:23] STEM is science, technology, engineering and math.

[00:18:25] Oh, okay. I thought it might have been cannabis or something.

[00:18:31] So I wrote one to charter schools. I wrote the last one was on speed learning. I wrote one on before Keto dieting was popular. I wrote one called The Skinny Dragon Diet and then a few others on teen success. And what was interesting, Tom, is that almost every time I wrote a book, something cool happened. So my very second book was called Teen Juggernaut. And I got on the San Diego Morning News for that one. And I was really surprised at putting cartoons inside it and had an anime cover in it. It's a good looking book and it talked about my life as a teenager and how I overcame, like all these issues and problems. But it got me in the news. It was downloaded at 11 countries by teachers. It's probably my favorite books as the highest emotional connection. A lot of times if you write a book, you can leverage it in a lot of different ways. So, for example, when I wrote the next novel Supercharged, I get to interview like five celebrities. And that's something that people forget, is that when you write a book, you can reach out to famous people and they'd love to tell you about their, you know, their life.

[00:19:34] That's what I just did on this podcast I reached out to the famous Rob Garcia. You know, you're hard to get to and telling you it's like 3000 miles from here. Yeah, but that is a great method to cut through because they're both trying to get through the the what they call them the secretaries when they are the gatekeepers. And this cuts right through.

[00:20:01] I I'm telling you, Tom, I did a training the other day because part of tactical CEQ recruited celebrities. And so I was given some real inside stuff. And I told everybody, I'm like, look, if you don't want to go to all the trouble of writing a paperback book, you don't start a magazine. But you do want celebs to promote your business. Just write an e-book and pick like five high level people and you'd be surprised at who you can get. And then once you created that favorite, you promoted them. Have them shoot a quick testimonial video for your Web site. One thing that that I did was I interviewed Mike Michalowicz. And then I had him shoot a 30 second testimonial video. And this is a multiple New York Times best selling author. He starred a couple seven-figure companies. And he's he's a 30 second video telling people to read my magazine.

[00:20:44] Oh, that's great.

[00:20:46] That's the power of testimonials and creating that value.

[00:20:49] Crazy great. Yeah. So we got to take a brief sponsor break. And when we come back, we're going to ask Rob, what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated.

[00:21:00] So so, folks, I'm kind of down on my hands and knees begging you to check out a particular webinar or pass it on to someone else who could use it. It has to do with higher education. I know we got a PhD on here right now, but for the most part, it's pretty rough world out there. A lot of people are paying a fortune for educations and getting kind of paid to protest. They're not learning anything. The fees keep going up and the quality education keeps going down. So if you, you know, have aspirations for retraining yourself, for you want a better life for yourself and your family or maybe good kids, nephews, nieces or even neighbors who are wondering if they should burn up hundreds of thousands of dollars, then end up broke with mountains of debt and no marketable skills. I mean, I've really seen MBAs is competing for jobs at Starbucks. Right? So so it's not for everybody. You just got to watch this webinar is only 90 minutes. But and it's not me just hawking my vocational school, my Internet marketing school. It's high level education people talking about the bad things that are being done to kids in the educational system and the. Big mountains of debt. Everybody's getting over it. And some of it's going to make you really, really mad because there's actually a site called the G.P.A. Forget what it is. You'll see it on the webinar. But they're altering GPA averages to make it look like they're given better educations when in fact the students are by all testing are dumber. They think they're smarter, but they're dumb. So so it's really going to make you mad when you see the. I think it's called gradeinflation.com. And it chronicles this over many years how the grade point averages are going up. But the test scores are going down. So I just don't want that to happen to you and I wanted you to see alternatives. So check out IMTCVA.org. That is our school. But if you just want to watch the webinar, go to screwthecommute.com and click on webinars and you can either download it as an audio or watch the actual webinar with all the examples. And then if I can help you out. Great. Give us a call.

[00:23:20] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Rob Garcia's here. He is had a what we would nicely say, humble beginnings and actually tough beginnings. And he is a perfect example of how determination and going with the right people and used the military to help him with this endeavor, that no matter where you're starting, you don't have to finish up that way. So, so very inspiring, Rob. So tell us, so what a typical day like is for you're in your entrepreneurial endeavors now.

[00:23:53] Wake up about 5:00 a.m. trying to do some kind of fitness early on the morning while you got energy. So I'll go work out at San Diego State or I'll go run around the neighborhood for about 40 minutes. And then after that, I jump in to some client work and then. Usually my schedule's actually pretty blocked off. I have it planned out by Sunday because at any given time, I'm a little bit more involved than most people. I have a magazine, a blog, YouTube channel, regular Facebook lives, one Facebook group I run for free. Success Engineers with Dr. Rob. I'm running two digital courses. So one is tactical CEQ and then the Destiny Project, which is kind of what you do, Tom, where I teach people how to monetize their courses or ebooks. And in between that, I also post on LinkedIn and Twitter and I have a weekly e-mail that goes out called The Compendium.

[00:24:48] Sounds like you're kind of slacking to me, man.

[00:24:51] I really got to pick it up. Kind of underachiever. But it's I do all this stuff using posting software called Buffer. So that helps me to preload a lot of stuff for my Facebook group and for for LinkedIn. And then I'm constantly developing ebooks. I'm at the point now where I can safely develop about one a week to give away. I really like the fact Tom that you give away high quality content, and I think that's something that really helps you to stand out credibility wise.

[00:25:25] Well, you give before you get so many people. That's coming up now think, okay, I want maximum money with the least amount of effort of the least amount of helping people and that's not going to last for them.

[00:25:38] Exactly. And I want to build relationships with people for the rest of my life and watch them grow. And so that's why I spend so much time like writing and creating content. And the people that want to work with me, they find me and they work with me. And I'm not really about. I always say impact, not income, because I take the most pleasure not out of a paycheck, but seeing somebody whose life change because I worked with them.

[00:26:02] Yeah. did you get a chance to download that automate book.

[00:26:07] I got at the sixty five pager.

[00:26:09] I don't know how. Yeah.

[00:26:11] There's one I got from you. There's a sixty five pager and I put it in my my read soon file.

[00:26:17] Yeah. Yeah. That's that's probably it if if you went to automate free and then the other one is a is a podcast thing so. So how do you find time to stay motivated and all that stuff. Or how do you do. How do you keep motivated. Because business is always up and down and all over the place. Entrepreneurs have to realize that. So how do you fight through the downtimes?

[00:26:44] That's such a good question because I have the, you know, just like everybody else, I have my my good times, my bad times, and ultimately working at the gym helps. And then I try and do stuff to be around people because I live alone, single, no kids, no pets. And so to get out of my own brain, I usually go work in coffee shops or I go lift weights or I do something, I go pet people's dogs. And that really kind of calms me down and helps me to just de-stress a lot because it's important. Your mental health Tom is so important and entrepreneurs are just so wonderfully creative, but they're their own worst enemies if they don't take charge of their mental health.

[00:27:22] Do you think your your mind is different than it was when you were 14 years old, or is this the same mind that a better environment?

[00:27:30] No, I feel like I'm a completely different person. I had a I had a burst of intelligence at about twenty seven and I had another one around the middle of my PhD at around 34 where I really started to understand things in a in a in a different. Like more enlightened way, I think.

[00:27:48] So the people that listened to this show, we call them screwballs. So what kind of parting thoughts would you have for them if they're starting a business or trying to run a business? What's a big bird's eye view from your your history doing it?

[00:28:05] The biggest bird's eye view is to make sure you get advice from the right people. Everybody's going to have opinion on what you do, but you only have to listen to the rational ones. Don't ever take advice from someone that has not done what they are giving you advice on. And I just always believe in yourself and focus on your network. Focus on everyone around you.

[00:28:26] Yeah, that's that's good advice. Trying to think this one guy said. Take advice from people who are where you want to be because exactly what you said there. Yeah, because so many people were trying to tell you to get rich. They drive a broken down car and can't make a rent payment.

[00:28:48] Yeah, it's like it's like the gym trainer who clearly hasn't lifted a weight in a long time, he's chain smoking and smells like Jack Daniels.

[00:28:57] So. So thanks, man. It's very inspirational here in your story. I didn't know what the beginnings. I know you now, but I never knew where you came from and what you overcame to get there. I want to tell everybody that's quite a pass this around because you have anybody that's struggling. Let them know. That doesn't have to be that. They don't have to end up the way they are now. That's for sure. So thanks so much for coming on it. Oh, tell them your website where to find all the course and all that stuff.

[00:29:30] Yeah, absolutely. My main Web site is yournextlevelofsuccess.com. And I offer free 20 minute consults if you're a new friend and you could join my free free Facebook group Success Engineers with Dr. Rob and for my course, tactical ceq. You all learn how to be a high vis business expert tacticalceqcourse.com.

[00:29:53] Okay. And we'll have all those in the show notes for you so you can just click on them and and you get how long you get free consultation.

[00:30:03] I'll give a 20 minute consultation anyone that reaches out to me.

[00:30:06] Yeah. So he says 20 minutes for a friend. How much for an enemy?

[00:30:12] I'll send them to Tai Lopez. Oh, there you go.

[00:30:17] That's a good one. Thanks so much for coming on. I understand you got a freebie for everybody, right?

[00:30:24] Yeah. Tom, I'm excited to offer my 16 page digital guide on income streams. It's called The Invisible Paycheck. And what it is, is it teaches you how to monetize your skill sets into various active and passive income streams. And the most important part is I went over the biggest mistakes I made in the first two years, which is where I was releasing e-book after e-book and course after course getting zero sales for two years. And I outline exactly why people weren't buying from me. So I'll make this available for free for all your audience in the show notes.

[00:30:58] Perfect. Great. Everybody hustle over there and get those after the soon as you can get their computer or your cell phone. Because, you know, that's part of what we do here is you learn from our mistakes and you can accelerate your success when you keep up with what everybody else is messed up and anybody successful is messed up more than anybody on Earth. All right. Because that's that's how they got successful as they kept going. When when they messed up and learned from those mistakes with having something like that can accelerate your success. So so thanks so much, Rob. And we will catch you on the next episode. See ya later.

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