101 – This guy will expand your brain: Tom interviews Rick Raddatz

Episode 101 – Rick Raddatz
[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 101 of screw the commute podcast. I got Rick Raddatz here. This guy is the brilliant Internet pioneer who built businesses that allow him now to pursue his real passions. You're going to hear about that. This is a very unique guest. We don't have guys like this on too often. Last episode was our special edition of our one hundredth episode and it was the leadership principles based on the eulogy I did for my dad in the year 2000. I mean they just poured out of me and many people said I should have made a keynote speech out of it except I start crying every time when I think about it. So I didn't do that. So don't miss that episode our one hundredth episode when you get a chance. Our podcast app is now in the iTunes store. You can go to screwthecommute.com/app and there's all kinds of instructions there it'll do all kinds of cool things on your tablets and your cell phone so you can take us with you. Now we just rolled out our first channel on On Demand TV on Roku TV the public speaking channel. We'll also be on Amazon Fire shortly and I'll be rolling out channels on brutal self-defense and protection dogs elite and internet marketing stuff. So watch for those coming up now 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. You can check that out at IMTCVA.org and that will also be in the show notes like everything that we talk about today. And I also I don't want you to get robbed and you and your family's Higher Education quest. So be sure to watch the Higher Education webinar at screwthecommute.com click on webinars. Keep in mind just because our school is in Virginia it's distance learning so you can be anywhere in the world and take classes.

[00:02:27] All right let's get to our main event. Rick Raddatz is a bona fide Internet pioneer. He's the political philosopher and a political activist. He began his career at Microsoft in the 90s and then starting in 2003 he launched four. I'm talking four multimillion dollar businesses. And I'm sure that I sent him some money to help them make them multi million dollar businesses over time. In just four years in 2007 Rick put his employees in charge of his business and became a full time political philosopher searching for a solution to our country's political divide and I can say that boy he's got his work cut out for him and he'll never never have any problem being being out of work in that line of work. That's for sure. So Rick are you ready to screw the commute.

[00:03:23] All right. Well good. So yes. So bring us up to speed. I mean this is very interesting because we don't do anything political on here and people are use dangerous to walk down the street and be political nowadays until it is. Tell us what you're doing with that and then we'll back it up to see you. Talk about your jobs and your entrepreneurial journey and how you made those companies and all that but what do you do now. I haven't talked to anybody who's doing this.

[00:03:50] Yeah well that's kind of why I'm doing it is because back in 2006 I got frustrated by the political divide. Even back then and I do have a degree in philosophy as well as computer science.

[00:04:05] But now there's another thing you don't see every day right.

[00:04:08] Yeah. The philosopher and me knew that you know our political divide is actually not a political problem. It's a philosophy problem because we have these two different world views as primary sources here in our divide left and right. And they don't get along well together they clash and conflict and nobody credibly has the solution. And so it was the lack of progress that made me think that maybe I could give it a shot and see what I could do and when I began my effort I didn't I didn't know what the breakthrough would be or where it would lead me but where it led me eventually over the years it has 12 years now I've been doing this and that would be a good screw your commute kind of goal for people is to not just screw the commute but but screw the business. Yeah. I'm have the business work for you so that you're doing whatever it is as important to you. Family philanthropy whatever. And so I've been doing that now for twelve years. But anyway to wrap up the philosophy segment here where the where the philosophy work lead me is really to economics but a different way of looking at economics. You see economics helps us understand the laws that govern the private economy. You know that the private action but there's more to society than just private action. There's public action political action foreign action and the action we take to govern all this action governing action. And so what I've done Is I've used pure logic to show how the fundamental laws of economics are actually universal and they can help us understand the proper way to structure all of society.

[00:06:14] So what you end up with is the single simple beautiful elegant political world view that's based entirely on logic and yet has also been proved in the real world over centuries of time wherever it's been tried and really we're just kind of finishing what our founding fathers began our founding fathers got the private economy right they got the political economy right and they got the foreign economy right with our strong national defense and now we're trying to figure out our our public spending or our public economy and we're trying to figure out what the right thing to do is relative to the future you know sustainability and the limits we want to live within. And so really my work is showing how the laws of economics can help us understand how all of this fits together.

[00:07:05] Well I think you said the nobody credibly has the solution but I think I have it right here. We're going to build a wall but not our southern border. We're going to build it between the left and the right. So they don't kill each other until you get to your pentanomics.

[00:07:23] Yeah. Pentanomics the five economy model of society. It's all I kind of just explained how we were going to apply the laws of economics or under use the laws of economics to understand all five economic spheres but you know the idea of splitting the country up you know is a serious topic.

[00:07:45] We did have a civil war at one time in the past.

[00:07:49] Yeah yeah and there have been examples of like like Scotland and England or the U.K. having their issues and Spain. And so maybe California and New York and a few other states could could become the left united states and the rest of America could become the right United States and we could just go our separate ways and see how it works.

[00:08:20] It's too bad you can't like shuffle them around like on a shuffleboard like move one over next to each other.

[00:08:27] Yeah well you know a lot of right leaning people like to point to left leaning failures like like Illinois's government is in debt so is California. However there are exceptions. I live in here in Colorado and Boulder is a very left leaning city but they're so far left that the left then has to govern. They can't blame it on the Republicans. And so in Boulder for example they've ended up in this kind of neat mix where they're actually fiscally conservative but within those limits they're very socially progressive and that's actually what my work and philosophy suggests is the right answer is we need fiscally conservative limits and basically conservative limits across the board. But then within those limits we let competition play out so that we can find better better ways to help people and so on. So it's that combination that I think is what's going to be the the ultimate end point of our of our current political era.

[00:09:39] Well you know it's just kind of like the globe if you go far enough east your West so far enough left you're right. A little bit. So what do you think about all these them. Everybody's hitting up some far left people about how you're going to pay for all this stuff. It sounds great but you know you're talking about economics you know they're saying like you could tax the rich you know and it wouldn't even pay for a zillienth of these things you're proposing. So that's economics, isn't it.

[00:10:09] Well it's there certainly. Well economics is really two different things in my mind there. There is what's called Economic Analysis which is using the tools of economics to understand how people make decisions. And and then there's more kind of a philosophical economics and that's what I'm focusing on. That's what helps you understand the the laws that govern society that we have no choice about. And so what you're talking about I think is a little bit more along the lines of Economic Analysis understanding you know the the world that we are deciding about right now. Now what my philosophy work suggests is taxing the rich is not the answer unless the rich got rich by true theft. And in which case the theft should be taken away and it should be and they should be in jail. But it's the there's a philosopher named John Rawls. And what he argued he argued many things but one of the things he argued is that inequality is justified if. I think he would say only if. The inequality is an unavoidable side effect of whatever system ends up making the poorest among us best off. Or as best as they can be. So. One of the things about capitalism where the free market in the private economy is that. It doesn't matter how greedy you are as long as you don't lie cheat steal kidnap rape kill coerce dominate etc. so as long as you stay within the line of harm as philosophers call it your greed is OK. Because if a hurricane comes along and the price of ice would normally go sky high we might say hey that that seller is being greedy because he is charging two hundred dollars for a bag of ice. Well yeah but. What does that do that encourages people from all around to truck ice in. So so by allowing the price to go to where it wherever it goes that creates the incentive for even greedy people to start helping out. And so it's this alignment of interests that's that's most interesting to me in the private economy now.

[00:12:56] Now currently the view is illegal.

[00:12:59] In most states. Yes. You're not allowed to do what's called price gouging which is when there's an emergency. You're not allowed to have your price be like two times higher or more than than it normally is and then I'm not sure if there's ever been any successful lawsuit done there. Maybe there have been I don't know but my point is if you want to accomplish that same goal some other way like buy by keeping the price low. Well what's gonna happen the hurricane is to come in and all those goofy guys who want to watch the hurricane come in and drink beer they're gonna come in and buy ice to keep their beer cold. And if you're keeping the price low they're going to buy up all the ice and then when you come along and you need ice because your family needs to keep food cold or your your mother needs to keep her medicine cold the ice isn't going to be there because you've artificially kept the price low and the guy is drinking beer on the beach have bought all of it. OK. And so if you wanted to do it by dictation by dictating the price you'd actually have to have a an ice inquisitor staff who would stand in front of every store that sells ice. It'd be a jobs program and they'd have to say wait a minute why are you buying ice to keep your beer cold or is it for a good purpose like medicine or food and. Well of course everyone would say Oh it's for my sick grandmother you know. And so the Inquisitor staff would have to not only ask the questions they'd have to research the private lives of everyone.

[00:14:43] And we have a seven year waiting period to get in front of a judge.

[00:14:47] Yeah so you're right. Yes. What's interesting about the free market is that greed is no longer a problem. We are accepting it as part of reality and we are now incentivizing it to do good things. So in my model and this is not new. I mean this has been debated for centuries but in my model it's not greed that's good or bad. Greed is unavoidable. It's neither good or bad. It's just part of life. And so it's not greed is good or bad it's It's aligning the incentives so that greedy people do good things. That's what's good. In other words in my model and many others it's capitalism that's good.

[00:15:34] It makes sense to me and you also laid out a good argument we're beer drinkers rule the world.

[00:15:42] Yeah. So. So. And then I take it one step further and I say that this dynamic could be put into place in all aspects of society. So right now government spending the incentives are all wrong. Politicians are rewarded for making promises that they can't deliver on that are way too big way too expensive. So you've got to raise taxes to pay for them. And then they still spend more. But no matter how much money they take in they want to spend more. Which is really stealing from the future. And and any program they create they never ever kill. There's no incentive to kill a bad program even if you have a better idea. You can't kill the old program you just end up with two government programs. So what's interesting about my work here is that when you apply this model to government spending what you end up with is a requirement to prioritize. You have to rank the budget from top to bottom. And when you do that suddenly the competition becomes aligned. Everyone who has a good idea for government spending has to compete with every other idea for government spending in a prioritized budget and the prioritize budget forces some things off the cliff. Now every year we'll be throwing away a better idea As the competition improves. The prioritizing and now there's only it's done a little bit backwards.

[00:17:08] Why would you want to throw away a better and better idea every year. Well the only good reason to do that is because you're funding even better ideas. And so what this is is a structural reform that aligns incentives and it forces government to become better and better every year at helping people that I say is the proper way to pursue social justice and it's compatible with a free market economy. In fact the better the free market economy is the more money you'll have and the less need you have. I mean the less needy people they'll be because there's more opportunity for them. So not look nothing's perfect but our conceptual model can be perfect Just like two plus two equals four can be perfect right. So we can now start to understand the laws of economics as they apply to all human action and we can start coming up with some really really interesting solutions.

[00:18:08] You mentioned this as work a little while now is there is there work is there paid work for someone doing what you're doing you call yourself a political activist. So are you a lobbyist or are you. How does one or do you just because you made so much money in the businesses you were successful when you're able to do these kinds of things without having to make money.

[00:18:32] Yeah well I design my businesses largely to work on their own and so I didn't have a whole lot of cash on hand but I want to have a really good cash flow. So so every month I got my money came in from the business and I was able to keep things going. Actually three of my four businesses died from my neglect and then one quadrupled in size. So even though I think I got lucky I got lucky and it kind of evened out so I'm not recommending people do this but it can be done. I did it and you know with maybe just a little bit more oversight on my part I could have had four businesses that quadrupled by outsourcing even the management of the businesses and but still keeping oversight on them all but more than I did.

[00:19:22] I don't want to get into this business a little bit but for your current thing is what you're doing is your passion. Is there a way to monetize that.

[00:19:32] I think there is. If it becomes wildly popular you see the way people make money with ideas is they sell those ideas to people who already agree with the ideas.

[00:19:48] Think tanks isn't this what they do in these think tanks.

[00:19:53] Yeah. Yeah but they don't make a whole lot of money. Those are mostly non-profit organizations and they pay their people as little as they can and they're in it for more more more for the purpose and the passion. But like Jordan Peterson. So he's making like millions of dollars a year. At this point I believe something. Something like that. I mean he's making really good money now and and he did it because his YouTube videos just took off. He was able to turn that into a book and turn it into speaking gigs. And he's getting all these people donating money to him through patreon which is his money to keep. It's not a non-profit thing it's a for profit running. But why is it happening. It's happening not because he's saying something new. OK. He's just saying something old. Better than anyone else is. And so the people who agree with him they're like Yeah he's our champion. Go go Jordan. You know and here have some money you know and. And whereas what I'm doing is very different. I'm saying wait a minute the political right has part of the answer. They're right about the morality of capitalism they're right about the the limits we need to place on government they're right about the strong national defense they're right about fiscal sustainability and but also the left is correct about some things especially that the need for a better approach for social justice. And it's only by taking a step back and really thinking deep that you come to the conclusions I have about the universal laws of economics. So now now what. How do I make money on this. Well it's hard to make money by telling everyone you're wrong. They don't want to hear that. And even if you say you're mostly right but you're just a little bit wrong over here they don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear that. And so I am not expecting to make any money from this. I haven't. So far I've had some people donate some money and some people donate some time but I'm a I'm actually working on what I'm considering the final video series right now. And and so maybe in a month or two I'll have that up and published and then I'll turn that into a book and then I'm largely done. I'm going to keep on doing PR and I'll keep speaking when I'm invited but I'm not going to do kind of the political activism as it's commonly understood because you do that if you have a popular policy to push.

[00:22:53] I am trying to launch really an intellectual revolution an awakening and enlightenment.

[00:22:59] In a place that there's not a lot of intellectuals I might add. Percentage wise in this country.

[00:23:07] Yes yes. I'll give you that. But my point is I think it's just a guess. I think the way for me to get this to become a big thing is for me to get my content down in a very consumable format. So a series of videos and a book. OK. And then a blog. OK I'll do a blog. I did a daily blog on the news and then I'm going to combine that with a whole lot of PR because the news changes every day. So I can do a press release every single day. All right. And so look the left says this The right says this Pentanomics says who or whatever. And so I can keep on producing my press releases and then I can get interviewed on on the podcasts on the blogs on the talk radio shows and and whatever else and I can start making news maybe because no one else agrees me because I'm the contrarian because I have an opinion and kind of like this show right now. You know it's it's it's something people haven't heard before so it's a hopefully a little bit more interesting than the same old thing. But I think by having the content in video and book form in a blog form and by doing PR that's going to be my main focus. Now if it takes off and if it enters a national debate if people like Joe Rogan suddenly flip and they become pentanomic OK. And then it forces everyone to wonder what is this pentanomic thing and they all discuss it they all buy the book. If all of that happens let's say 20 years from now I don't know. I have no idea. Well by historical standards the best guess is 50 years after I die if I'm lucky enough. So if I could have this happen in my lifetime even better. And we do live in an era in the Internet age.

[00:25:01] It could happen overnight really. The right people get behind it and and you'd never do this show again. All right so let's take it back. Let's take it back to the early Microsoft days. It was right out of college.

[00:25:18] Yeah. And in fact they offered me a job as a sophomore and I turned them down.

[00:25:22] Now did you have any of these thoughts at that time in your life about politics philosophy.

[00:25:29] I was I was actually anti entrepreneurial. And I was anti political or non-political. When I was 18 I actually told my dad that I would never be an entrepreneur because he was an entrepreneur. And I saw how hard he worked. It was like I want to work that hard. You know I just want to show up get my paycheck go home have a barbeque have a nice life and there there's nothing wrong with that. So yeah. So I actually said I wouldn't be entrepreneur when I was 18 but then I went to Microsoft because hey I'm not gonna be an entrepreneur and work at Microsoft. Right. And I made millions at Microsoft. I gave them all my ex-wife. But you know. But anyway I guess I went to Microsoft and I was just focused on being a good employee and and doing a good job there. Then I didn't get political until 2006 when I was 38 years old.

[00:26:27] All right so how did you transition out of the Microsoft to building these four massive companies.

[00:26:35] Well I don't they're massive but they're good enough for me. The first thing I did after Microsoft is I my dad had a business fundraising.com. Good domain name. So he sold your products to school and school groups to help them raise money. Right. So lollipops and cookie dough pizza catalogs all kind of good stuff. So I came to work for him doing his Internet strategy and it also happened to be when I was getting divorced I just gave all my money to my to my ex wife because I knew I could I could always earn money and make it over again or whatever. I wasn't too worried about it. And so I did that for a couple of years like two years and then I was out on a walk with my wife my new wife Amanda My second and forever wife. And and we were just talking about what I wanted to do because I wasn't making much money working for my dad you know. And she she was actually the one who said it she said you know why don't you start a business. So she gets credit for all that. And I thought about a little bit and you know at the time I was having a lot of painful discussions with my ex-wife because you know we had kids and we had to keep on talking and planning things. So I came up with a business idea. I called it extalk.com. The best way to talk to your ex and what it was it was a universal inbox for all of your all of your communications with your ex spouse.

[00:28:16] So in a combined e-mail and voice mail all in one place. It was a universal inbox. And it was kind of cool because I had things like a psychology checker. See in normal email you might have a have a spell checker. But I had a psychology checker so it would catch things like you know those common phrases you hear in a divorce like you money grubbing. Or whatever you know. So it would catch those kind of things and flag them for you so you could kind of you know consider alternate phrasing. And when you left a voicemail on the system you either person would pick up their voicemails you know who'd be notified that they had a voicemail ready but it wouldn't alert the other person for a half an hour So they could have a half hour to take back whatever thing you said. Ok. The same for email e-mail was it was sending was delayed by half an hour. They give you a chance to take it back. And I thought that was a kind of a cool service. extalk.com.

[00:29:18] So I at the time I was a Dan Kennedy silver member I paid a hundred nineteen dollars ever to get his subscription for a year and and. And that came with a Dan Kennedy critique of my sales letter. So I know Dan Kennedy is funny you know. He wants to fax back his answer. Really so that you know you can't easily send a reply probably but so I submit my sales letter and give him my fax number in like a month a month and a half goes by. I actually forgot I forgot that I even did that. Then suddenly I got a fax. It's one paragraph from Dan Kennedy. OK. And I remember what he said. It said Well Rick you have a very good sales letter I have to say like wow I love my myself better. Yeah. And then and then he said but. But they said I'm you know Dan Kennedy was going through a divorce at the time too apparently. So I'm going through a divorce right now. So I would be candidate for your service but you know I don't really think I need your service. And even people who do need your service know they're gonna get better and so they're not going to need your service for very long. And these people you're trying to sell to their consumers not businesses. So then you're not going to want to pay you a lot of money. And how are you going to find these people who aren't going to pay you a lot of money for not very long. Is that the only people who could be your affiliates are like you know divorce lawyers and psychologists both of whom are not used to being affiliates. And they may have real or perceived reasons why they ethically or legally can't promote services. So. Really fascinating idea here Rick and good sales letter but I don't think you have a business so thank you Dan. So now I was faced with the classic entrepreneurial question. Do I listen to my mentor or do I ignore my mentor and confidently go forward and launch the business that will change the world.

[00:31:37] And I decided to listen to my mentor which is why no one has ever heard of extalk.com.

[00:31:42] You still own the domain name.

[00:31:44] I still on the domain in fact back then the security certificates the SSL certificates as they were and were very expensive and I didn't have any money. So for the last 10 years when I've been building people on my other services I don't know if you ever noticed it. But the order page was actually on extalk.com. Because I didn't want to spend the money. I didn't want to spend the money for another SSL certificate. So anyway. And then once I had done that I had to kind of keep on doing that. So I just I just kept doing it. But yeah. So then what happened is I was on because I was I'm Dan Kennedy's list. I was also on. So Ken McCarthy sent another e-mail saying the future of the web is voice testimonials. And I'm thinking of for my for my for my sales page. I should have voiced testimonials that make sense. And and he said so click on this link to see some examples of voice testimonials. And I clicked on that on the link and it took me of course to the system seminar three sales letter. I don't know if you really believe that voice testimonials for the future of the Internet or not. He just wanted me to go to this sales letter right course. But He got me thinking how would I collect voice testimonials. I don't even know how to do that. And I'm a programmer but then I'm thinking wait a minute I just built this voice mail system I could reconfigure that and people could call up and leave testimonials on the system and they'd be automatically instantly on the web.

[00:33:33] So that became the basis for my actual first business which was instantaudio.com which you got private labeled as audiogenerator.com which is I think I think is how you and I met.

[00:33:44] I used it for years and years and years and I hated it when it went away.

[00:33:51] Yeah. So it went away just eleven months ago. It was amazing. I also eventually added the video business and web page hosting and so on. But I had someone sign up for my video hosting service a week before it closed in 2018. Now you know in the intervening decade five years from killing it or more than that even 16 years the world had progressed in video. When I launched we still had to worry about modem like dial up. So I wanted my video to work on a 56 kilobit per second modem. So there is very very tiny videos. So you know by the time I killed the product finally it was it was only servicing people who still had you know legacy videos but somebody actually signed up for the thing a week before I closed. I couldn't believe it. But but yeah. So that's I haven't told that story very often but it was actually a combination of my wife saying hey I want to start a business. Me currently being in the moment of this you know tough communication with my ex-wife creating the technology but then having Dan Kennedy poopoo my business idea and he was right to do so and then luckily someone else on then some other e-mail list I was on. So I want to stay on all these e-mails. Give me the idea to transform the technology I built and make a real product and we made 20 million dollars on it.

[00:35:29] But you mentioned four businesses what are the other ones.

[00:35:33] I had the audio hosting business the video hosting business kind of a mini web page hosting business. It was called marketing make over generator. It was the thing where you fill in the blanks and you get a squeeze page. So kind of like what click funnels is doing only only they did it right and they did it more and more dramatically. And then there was the conference called business called Instantteleseminar.com And that's the business that quadrupled in size and is still going today making millions of dollars.

[00:36:04] You'll get my 60 bucks every month or whenever it is.

[00:36:07] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you I appreciate it. And I'm happy to provide the service to you. And. And so in just a few I'm not sure when this will air but So it's a spring late summer or early 2019. We should finally finally finally launch my video conferencing business and it'll be audio plus video plus screen sharing the whole web. Live web cam video and streaming live streaming all the bells and whistles that you want but even more beautiful and elegant of an experience than than you've ever had.

[00:36:50] And stable I hope.

[00:36:54] Yeah. Yep. So we're targeting Zoom. We're trying to out zoom zoom. That's our goal.

[00:37:02] Well this has been crazy. We never had a call like this. I tell you that talking economics I talk about it. OK. How many thousands did you make of that e-mail promotion. That's my country bumpkin attitude about it. You're you're a big thinker. So what do you what are you like best about working for yourself. What's the worst part.

[00:37:26] Let's see. Well the best part is absolutely the freedom. I mean it is kind of a cliche but but but it's it's it's real. And you know a lot of my peers who were up on stage talking at marketing conferences and so on back in the day when I was doing that you know they talk about the lifestyle they talk about walking the beaches of the earth. And and for some of them it's true But the vast majority of them were working their butts off. And so I think the funny thing is I actually bought into their rhetoric and but I actually wanted to live that life. And so again that is why in 2006 when I started to catch this political philosophy bug I kind of went halftime at that time into political philosophy. And then in 2009 when I made my first big breakthrough and I realized how big the breakthrough was. That's when I went full time into the philosophy but I could do that because I set up my businesses in a way where they largely ran on their own.

[00:38:37] There's some staff involved right for any glitches.

[00:38:41] Yeah. I have eleven employees right now. We have a customer service person. We have a product designer and then nine developers while well among the nine or the tester and a graphic designer.

[00:38:57] Yeah. And it's it's the life the true lifestyle business. I mean I love I don't have to do this anymore but I kind of love it. I'm single. No family got twenty five dogs here. Right this moment.

[00:39:09] We have one golden doodle. I think the energy for my golden doodle can match up against your twenty five dogs or whatever. Yeah I'm pretty sure that's going to be an equal.

[00:39:24] So I got to take a brief sponsor message when we come back we're gonna ask Rick in this lifestyle business what's a typical day look like for a guy that set himself up like this and how he stays motivated.

[00:39:36] So folks I'm down on my knees begging you to check out a particular webinar or pass it on to someone who could use it but it has to do with higher education. If you're considering getting retrained because you hate what you're doing or you want a better life for yourself and your family or if you have kids or nephews nieces and neighbors who are wondering if they should burn up hundreds of thousands of dollars and then end up broke with mountains of debt and no marketable skills. And I paint a bad picture for you folks. Well you just got to watch this webinar. You have got nothing to lose and everything to gain from picking a little time out and visiting screwthecommute.com and click on webinars and watch the one on higher education. I got to tell you. Be prepared to be mad because a lot of these colleges and universities are inflating grade point averages to make people think they're smart when they're actually Dumber and There's plenty of proof for that. So I don't want to see you wasting money on stuff like that. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/webinars or you can click on webinars in the NAV button.

[00:40:42] All right let's get back to our very unique guest. Never had anybody on like this before didn't even know about. I always thought of Rick as the big tech guy and that's true. But he's taken it through a level that none of us could imagine. We call people listen to this screwballs. This is the highest level conversation we've ever had. All right you built this business. You're in this philosophy and political activism. What's a typical day look like for you.

[00:41:14] I don't know that I have a typical day. You know I am at various times in this effort. I've had an office And know there are some good things about an office. The thing I like about him office is it creates kind of a place for the team to gel as a team. But you know there is all kinds of of money flying out the window when you have an office. First of all there is the rent but then you know there's all the equipment that you got to buy. And and the insurance and the commitment for three years to have the office typically and all like can. And so like whenever I closed an office and you know went virtual I was always I always say I'm never gonna have an office again but I know that there are advantages both ways. And so I'm not going to say that there's one or at it right answer there but a typical day for me now I get up whenever.

[00:42:16] You a night owl or early.

[00:42:20] I used to be back back in my 20s maybe but but now I go to bed shortly after my kids go to bed around 9:00 10:00 And so I wake up let's say 6:00 because I've had like nine hours of sleep. Right. And so I'll get up and maybe I'll work on my philosophy a little bit. Maybe there's some little issue I was thinking about there. I kind of like lay in bed thinking about the philosophy often. Maybe I'll make some coffee with my Keurig to destroy the environment. Maybe I'll go go in the hot tub so I'll get long about nine o'clock my employees arrive because they work in my basement. And the two of them do the of the development team has outsourced the in-house as the product designer and the tech support guy. So I'll have my morning meeting with my development lead at nine thirty and that's about half an hour and then I will discuss whatever designs the product designer had done the day before and approve them or say hey do this differently or whatever so I will have that discussion.

[00:43:45] Is this working on this new project.

[00:43:47] Yeah yeah yeah. Your new project is called meetn.com. And if you go to meetn.com/Tom. I'll give you the top name Tom. Yeah but if you're meetn.com/Tom when it finally shows up I don't know what it will show up but you can actually join Tom's meeting room there and and all that kind of good stuff. So. So they're now not after they're after and I'll take him with my tech support guys see see what's going on because there's always a flurry of of built up pent up support each morning so I'll stop in with tech support guy. Going to see if there's any issues he wants to escalate or to talk about there. But then it's about 10 o'clock 10 15 or so and I'm done for the day. So the rest of the day is whatever I'm doing that day. So it could be watching Netflix. It could be the philosophy stuff and or lunch with my wife. Pretty much every day. You know whatever. So I mean I don't really have any hobbies because my hobby became my life's purpose and so it's either that or I am escaping the world through Netflix or or the hot tub you know. So it's really you know total immersion into the reality of life and philosophy or total escape by watching Battlestar Galactica the remake again.

[00:45:40] I know I watched 88 episodes of The Equalizer from the 80s. I got it through Roku and then NBC Roku and then I watched the seven seasons of Burn Notice. I'm always for the underdog. OK. Tell him about instant teleseminar how they can give you some money because you know so you can eat this week.

[00:46:05] Well look if you want to do video conferences then you want to use gotomeeting zoom or whatever you want to do but a lot of people don't want to do video because they have to get dressed up and they have to put on makeup or they have to just look good in front of a camera.

[00:46:20] I talked somebody into it because they're all there they're people are real estate agents on the road they're not going to stop and watch a video but they can listen in. They're driving around.

[00:46:33] Exactly. So. So even in this age of video there is a business need just to have an audio conference. Now we're actually on audio right now. It's a good example. And so what instant teleseminar is is basically a webinar platform for an audio conference. And so you can schedule events you can have replays you can have what we call autopilot which is like an evergreen webinar where it constantly replays at a particular time or date or time like every Tuesday at three o'clock. And so you can have your replays to make live events. And it's a conference call system with a with a web entry as well you can listen in or talk via the web or you can listen in or talk via the phone. We do have slide sharing so you can upload your slide deck and you can step through your slides if you want to. And you can record the event and replay the event and all that kind of good stuff. So it's everything you want in a in a webinar sales platform but it's it's an audio conference based technology not not video. Now we are going be launching the video. That's what the meetn room is we're calling it meetn because it's good for your small group team meetings and it's good for your giant sales meetings and everything in between. So it's we're going to try to corner the entire meeting market. We will see but. Yeah. So if our service is very popular especially with with female consultants. Because I'm not trying to be a sexist here but on average it seems like the female consultants are the ones that they hate video.

[00:48:33] They worry about bad hair days. I get it.

[00:48:39] Yeah. And I think I think guys just just don't care as much about it as a whole lot of social dynamics in there that there's kind of a feedback loop. But but the point is there is a need for the simplicity and the ease of use of an audio medium to use as your sales tool. So in fact I heard a stat from from an ex employee of of freeconferencecall.com. And they were telling me that when they added the video onto their system you know free video only about 2 percent of their of their call times are video calls And so even though video gets all the attention and it's very dramatic and sexy and marketable and the whole thing when people have a choice they still stick with the audio just because it's easier.

[00:49:43] Yeah and it's the only medium where you can learn and do stuff while you're doing something else.

[00:49:48] Yeah it is very you know what. We aren't marketing that enough. I thank you for that. I think that's a very important point we have to add that to our sales pitch. That when you listen to a podcast or a recording or even a live event you can do that if it's audio and do and drive or something else you can't do that really at all. With if video is it that's part of it.

[00:50:12] Yeah. And Rick I was doing took some consultation from you know when I started my school it's you know it's a licensed school by the state of Virginia vocational school technically the consultants you know saying well I've never really got students I've gotten like coaching clients and mentees and all that stuff but going after students and they said hey forget the webinars if you're going after the younger market. Nobody does webinars at any of these big distance learning schools because the kids won't won't sit down and watch it but they'll download a podcast or a a or an audio recording to their iPhones and listen to it on the run and that's how they make their decision to go to that school though never sit for a webinar. Just another thing for audio is gonna be around till they start embedding it in your head.

[00:51:03] Well I mean I think that's got to be the reason why I still have a business all these years. Even though the marketplace has moved towards video the the actual content creation is there's still enough people to have me have a real nice business just do an audio.

[00:51:22] Well I mean listen look at the name of this thing. Screw the commute. There's millions of people stuck in traffic every single day. And turning those cars into what they call rolling universities. And then another thing when webinars first came out I was totally against them because when you have a market that's not tech savvy and in the old days they had to download software and install and do all this crap.

[00:51:47] Nobody on earth messes up dial on a phone. So they took her out. All of that. So it is easy and it's the only medium that they can still learn with. So. So Rick this has been really interesting. It's been like that totally different from anything we'd normally do. So I want to thank you again for coming on and where do they. So they just go to instantteleseminar.com the site. And so we'll have that in the show notes for everybody I've been using the service forever hardly ever. I can't even remember a glitch in their support staff takes care of anything but I never had a glitch in all the years I've been using it.

[00:52:28] We've actually only had one downtime and it happened this week Monday. So in 12 years Yeah. Yeah we only 1 one downtime and twelve years it happens to be this week.

[00:52:45] Well how long it lasts you fixed that right. Yeah.

[00:52:48] Oh yeah yeah we fixed it and customers are fine. You know stuff happens and we've got a lot of people saying you know I've been with the eleven years is the first time I've ever had a problem.

[00:52:59] Yeah. And I'm hoping for for me. Yeah.

[00:53:02] What's it called meetn.com.

[00:53:06] There you go. All right. So thanks so much for coming on Rick. Good luck with the new project. Guy like you doesn't need luck but we'll throw some anyway.

[00:53:17] Our political divide are you kidding me. Oh my goodness.

[00:53:19] Oh yeah. It's like they built the wall between the left and right. You'll be safer. So thanks everybody for listening to this very unique episode. And don't forget to subscribe and review over at iTunes and download that app. It'll make it a lot easier for you to take us on the road and listen to audio listen to audio. The only thing you can do. Learn from while you're doing something else so catch y'all later on the next episode.

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