180 – The visual entrepreneur: Tom interviews Eric Bakey

Episode 180 – Eric Bakey
[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 180 of Screw the Commute podcast. Eric Bakey is here now. This guy is a dangerous man. I'm almost afraid to interview him. I'm going to introduce you to him in a minute. But you better be careful because I told you, he's a dangerous man and a spoiler alert here. It's got something to do with a special kind of dynamite. All right. We'll bring him on in a minute. Hope you didn't miss Episode 179, our special Patriot episode with Steven Kuhn, the leader of the Vetpreneur Tribe, on Facebook with thirteen thousand five hundred members, and his story is more than inspiring. And of course, this all is part of Vetrepreneurs month at Screw the Commute podcast all September. Other than the Monday trainings that I do, we'll be interviewing great entrepreneurs like Eric. So please tell your friends about the podcast too, or any other aspiring vetrepreneurs out there. Lots of great info here and lots of great inspiration for people in business. I'll also tell them that grab our podcast app. It's in the Apple store or you go to screwthecommute.com/app where we have complete instructions to show you how to use all the fancy features so you can take us with you on the road, on your cell phone or your tablet. Also, I've got a big freebie to thank you for listening to this podcast is my twenty seven dollar e-book, How to Automate Your Business. And just one of the tips in this e-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 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. And if you go to the download page at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And of course, that'll be in the show notes. If you scroll down a little past the automation book, I've got a special surprise for you there that some people are charging four or five six thousand dollars for. So you want to check that out. All right. Our sponsor's, the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia, we're approved by the Department of Defense to participate in the my CAA military spouse scholarship program. Now we give a ninety five hundred dollar scholarship to military spouses and veterans and law enforcement and first responders, just as a thank you for all that service that they give. So that's ninety five hundred bucks for any of those folks right there. But the my CAA program gives military spouses an additional four thousand dollars so they can get a total of thirteen thousand five hundred towards their education that they can take with them anywhere they happen to be deployed and still keep a great job. I'm going to tell you more about that later. But you can check that out at IMTCVA.org/military. And again, that'll be in the show notes this is episode 180. And the way you always get to a direct episode is screwthecommute.com slash and then the number. So screwthecommute.com/180 will be for Eric Bakey if we survive. I'm not positive we'll survive because this guy deals with dynamite.

[00:04:00] All right. Let's bring him on. Eric Bakey might be the most dangerous man in direct response. He's the chief combat imagineer of his visual strategy firm, combining copywriting and cartooning with lessons learned in the military for more fun on the frontlines of capitalism. I love it. If you're sick of marketing that doesn't make sales, he can show you how to blow your client's mind. Listen to this. With mental dynamite. Eric, are you ready to screw? The commute.

[00:04:41] Well, good. Good to meet you, man. Yeah. You come highly recommended by my buddy Steven from the Vetpreneur Tribe. But he says this guy's intense. He's gonna blow you away. So. So tell us what you're up to with this unique concept. I've been around a long time. Haven't heard this. So tell us what you're up to now and then we'll take you back and bring you up through the ranks, see how you got here.

[00:05:05] Well, I found that, you know, talk is cheap. As a copywriter, you've got to show people what you're actually trying to tell them and convince them of and vision drives decision. So instead of actually just trying to write a 40 page sales letter that convince you of something, I can grab you by the eyeballs, by standing in front of a whiteboard and kind of get on the same page with you. So that has been the effective strategy to simplify things with actual visuals and to to really just solve problems with you instead of trying to convince you of stuff you don't need.

[00:05:45] Is this an advanced form of infographics? Or is this a live thing? What is it?

[00:05:51] Yeah, it's actual it's it's a combination of the two. I can do live visuals. Which is it really you can't look away. You see, it's kind of even programmed into you from a very early age. Your teacher stands up in front of the classroom and you're forced to sit there and watch her draw on the board. And you've got to pay attention because you feel that the test is coming.

[00:06:18] Or shoot spitballs at her.

[00:06:18] Blatant disregard for authority has been my secret sauce. I do it live and then if we like the the information, the taking these abstract concepts and boiling boiling them down and you know, are visual artifacts, we can take them and turn them into know full on infographics, video sales letters, whatever have you. But it's really like I was sick of the the long winded webinars with death by PowerPoint. And I said, look, just like this, the pitch deck and grab a piece of paper and close one hundred twenty five percent of the room because once you see it, you've got to sell not just yourself. You got tell the people in your life. And when you can show them how simple the solution really is with like a boiled down little image that you can't get out of your head, that has been like the secret weapon.

[00:07:13] All right. Is this just a service you do for others or you teach them how to do it? And do you have to be a good artist to do that?

[00:07:21] It is. It is not about art whatsoever. I realize when I do teach people how to do this, it is it's ultimately teaching them to teach their their clients to draw. It is I draw them a very, very simple illustration of what I'm like. I here's what I hear you saying. I'll I'll draw it out for them. But they need to be able to understand it and teach their prospects to draw it. So it's like teaching them a back of the napkin kind of close and it's completely individual. But I need to make sure that I understand what they're even saying first and break it down into very, very simple doodles that have nothing to do with with art. It's all about to that mental dynamite.

[00:08:03] All right. So I heard you say you're kind of sick of the 40 page sales letter, but how did you really get into this? What was the turning point that you said, hey, I'm going to make a business out of this?

[00:08:12] Well, I really have no formal education or any reason for having to get into this one. When I got out of the army, I had learned that I learn how to blow stuff up and dig ditches, and neither of them are lucrative whatsoever. And so I got out and I got to the elevator trade and pun intended, I came off in the elevator business and became a superintendent and specialized in escalator modernization.

[00:08:39] Every little kid wants to get into it. And that's how the elevator pitch started.

[00:08:48] Otis, the guy who. That's that's a whole another. He was an incredible marketer, but that's a whole different story. I really I wanted to get into the sales side of the business, but because I had no formal education, they didn't really say they weren't gonna give me a shot because I was running big construction work in D.C. So I was like, well, no one's gonna give me a shot. I need to figure out how to. I've been I've been studying like all my marketing and sales and marketing direct response stuff like we know what I mean. Let me see what I could do. So I walked into a gym. So give me a hundred bucks for Facebook ads. Well. I'll do my best. We ended up doing very well with it, to say the least, and ended up getting recruited by Agora Financial and learn.

[00:09:36] That's big time there.

[00:09:37] Yeah, you need you need a 40 pages of copy and all kinds of hype to sell broke people stuff that they don't need. But when you simplify it and assist smart people in understanding the problem, you really don't need all that much hype or copy in order to to really to help them become an assistant buyer of something that they actually need.

[00:10:05] All right. So this is. This is an audio only podcast. So we're going to want to make sure that people can see examples of what you're talking about. Where can they do that?

[00:10:14] On my website, there are cartoons, but they can also opt into my list. I I try to send out a direct response doodle at least once a week. But I've got all kinds of a one page visual summaries boiled down business books like Extreme Ownership, The Art of War, Influence, all the cult classics of copywriting because I'm really not all that smart. So I have to rethink a bunch of times and draw them out so I can remember them. And they're kind of like fun month mind maps to stimulate ideas. And, you know, it's it's essential education for any entrepreneur to understand this.

[00:10:52] And all this stuff on your website.

[00:10:54] The way to opt in is just this EricBakey.com or if you have got any kind of special request for a business book that you love, you could just shoot me a note eric@ericbakey.com and I'd be happy to visually summarize it if it's worth reading and I probably have already read it.

[00:11:17] So that's very cool. Nobody ever did that for us before on this podcast. We'll have all that in the show notes if you didn't catch the spelling and all that. Folks will have everything for Eric. There is the episode where they say it was 180. Yep, episode 180. So let's take you back. I mean, were you an entrepreneurial kid?

[00:11:38] I have always been playfully difficult, but I've never did not know what entrepreneurship was. And it actually caused a lot of problems because no one in my life. No. I can't even convince them that this thing I'm doing is even a worthwhile pursuit. Like what? When I write a copy, I love you, Mom, but I'm writing to my skeptical mother who thinks I'm scamming people on the Internet.

[00:12:03] Well, you know, when people tell you you're crazy and it's no good that you got something good.

[00:12:11] So it's really just trying to to justify my existence and explain things in a very simple way. And ultimately, when I decided that, I just I see things differently.

[00:12:23] You should draw her picture.

[00:12:25] I have to because this is what this stuff is very abstract. And it really is when it's a good idea. It really is very simple. And you can draw it out. And when you completely understand a concept, you can boil it down into very simple images.

[00:12:44] If it's if it's confusing and long now, like I guess I think Warren Buffett said that if you can't explain the business model on the back of an envelope, it's not worth a damn.

[00:12:57] I'll tell you what, I don't care what it is. You give me one hundred twenty five percent closing rate. You're my buddy. So anyway you as a kid, you're coming up through the ranks. How'd you end up in the service.

[00:13:12] I really did not know want I wanted to be when I grew up and then continued to be the case even when I got out of the army, but I just to I saw. I was like, there's no way I'm going to college. I was not a very good student.

[00:13:25] And so you literally blew things up in the service?

[00:13:29] Yeah, I was an engineer and the recruiter had a grenade on his desk. I went there with my little brother and that was what I just saw. This. This guy just they know exactly how to get troubled youth and to get themselves signed up for stuff. And so, you know, you learn to patriotism and pride and all that kind of stuff. Kind of. Well, I did. Anyway, after joining. But it was not really a any kind of patriotic duty I would just like. Well, join the army or go to jail.

[00:13:59] Yeah, let me think about that. Yeah. So you go to the army and then things started to change. They shaped you up?

[00:14:09] Yeah, I was actually I I deployed to Ramadi during the bloodiest battles in the entire Iraq war, and I had the privilege of serving with some incredible men and women, and I actually had a hard time when I I won the sign up for all the special forces stuff, jumped out of airplanes and, you know, do all that, the high speed stuff. And it was. There was a bigger commitment than I was really prepared to make. Like I I knew I wanted to go be a G.I. Joe and I got to do that stuff. But then once I I wasn't really willing to pay the 20 year price to really be a career Army guy. So when presented with the opportunity to fulfill my enlistment and move on, I said, you know what? I don't know what. I still don't know what I'll be when I grow up. But I don't think it's it's that I'm not willing to pay that ultimate price out at that level of dedication that is required. It's just it's the one thing isn't I like one percent of the United States population joins the military and state. The one percent of the 1 percent are the ones doing this stuff. That's that, really. I am a hardcore guy, but I wasn't willing to pay that price.

[00:15:23] People on the outside, myself included, just, you know, even though I'm kind of immersed with a lot of friends, still they just don't understand the commitment and the. The things you're going to see and go through the experience and so many people when they come home, it never leaves them. And then that's that can create a lot of problems.

[00:15:49] And it's romanticized. And it is it's it's an incredible thing. But you watch a couple movies and it looks like these Navy SEALs are our super bad asses. But it's 99 percent training and boredom. And then you get to do something cool every once in a while, but it never leaves you. And I just saw that kind of like, man. I have utmost respect for these guys, but I'm not willing to pay that price. And they they they are. And they're I'm not taking anything away from it. I just there there's more that I want to do with my life than just train all the time and for like a moment of glory that nobody will ever really see or appreciate. So just like that, time to go.

[00:16:31] All right. So so you got out then when?

[00:16:36] This is in to the end of 2009 at three months paid vacation where I decided that I was going to drink as much of my my pay as possible.

[00:16:50] I'm sure there's lots of people out there that could relate to this.

[00:16:53] I had turned 19 through twenty three in like wearing a combat uniform, like wearing my duty uniform. And like, I didn't get to have my young adulthood. So I decided to get it back. And I definitely had a chip on my shoulder because I was this hard ass and I had no real direction. I had no actual skills that translated, even though I knew how to lead men towards the sound of gunfire. I knew how to build fighting positions under direct contact from the enemy. But that doesn't really translate into any marketable skill when you get out. Other than construction. And so that's where I love the way it is. Allows you to a construction allows you to be a drinker and a hard ass that rewards being, you know, a pipe swinging and knuckle dragging tough guy. And I definitely double down on that whole image for a long time. And it helped me be like exceed at that. That skill, you know, leading end up becoming a superintendent and running a massive modernization project in the D.C. metro and sixty five elevator mechanics as like subcontractor those it definitely it taught me how to lead and how to suffer long hours and, you know, of put up with miserable conditions. But it didn't. No one ever asked me what I really wanted to do with my life. It's just like, well, this is the next step. So do that. And I just kind of went with the what were the motions. And yeah. I mean, did not really have a clear direction. So I just ended up doing whatever else society told me I'm supposed to do.

[00:18:44] Ok, so then how long did that last?

[00:18:49] I worked in the elevator trade from 2010 and until 2016, that's when I was able to to replace my very healthy six figure income with all my marketing businesses. Essentially, as long as we know a copywriter and a direct response marketer selling all kinds of good stuff on the Internet.

[00:19:12] All right. So tell it. Tell everybody how that transition went. So you've been a soldier and a and an employee all the way up till now. So there must have been a crossover. You know, you're still in the construction and starting your online business. You know, you just didn't stop construction and start online, did you? There was a crossover there, wasn't it.

[00:19:38] Yeah. There I when I realized that I was. Like making more money on my bike in a couple hours. Right. Something that I don't know is spin wrenches. I don't need to deal with people who are too drunk to come to work and are screwing my construction schedule up. I'm getting yelled at from bosses who are completely incompetent, just like Man, this middle management thing vs. writing a few emails that make a lot more money than what I'm doing here. It's time. It's time to make the transition. And it was not long after once I figured out how to actually know that the. I found that the message on the paper made all the difference. I was like the difference between a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill was simply what I wrote on these emails and Facebook ads and stuff like that. And I was like, man, I can just sell more expensive stuff and I can stop trading my time for dollars. And it was it was just like, I have to. I had to quit. I go just like that. I gave up. I was twenty nine and I was like, I'm not going to work for somebody else. By the time I'm 30. And I just said, hey, boss, I'm going to go do my own thing. Here's three weeks notice. And they're like, well what are they? They try to keep me, but it's like you can't you can't pay me, you and I can pay myself. And they they didn't understand it. I couldn't quite. You know, hindsight's 20 20. I couldn't articulate it. So neither. I got this this this thing where I write words on a Google Docs and it makes me more money than I make running this hundred million dollar construction project. So we don't get it. That's just the way it is.

[00:21:19] You should have got down in the dirt. Draw a picture. So you say if you have money saved up or did it just got to that point, you just can't take anymore.

[00:21:33] Fortunately, I I had a couple of houses that I had owned and I'm a single guy with virtually no overhead. And the same thing with an online business. I had I had no actual cost of fulfillment other than that growing hours without work. So it was as simple as I'm going to quit my job, sell off my house is I had a couple of houses in Baltimore and really just just do this rather than trying to build the thing part time on someone else's dime where I really felt like I was stealing from them because they really did the job required ten and twelve hours a day, six and seven days a week in order to do well. I mean, that was that is what's expected. And I was paid I was compensated that way. So I really felt like I was stealing from them when I was working on this thing. And ultimately I was not working. I was not doing the job I had committed to. And I just whole asked this one thing, which was building a copywriting business, which I guess I didn't know at the time. That's what it was. It was just a glorified freelance work. And I figured out how to get paid on royalties and all that kind of stuff afterwards. So that's why I just I needed to commit to doing the same. And it was through that commitment, I developed the capabilities and know built out a real business around this. This here copywriting thing.

[00:22:53] Yeah. Do you just have to outsource anything or do you have any of employees?

[00:23:00] When when I started, actually, I did I hired I hired a couple of different people. And then the funny thing is, the less you do, the more money you make. Once I I started partnering with my clients to say, hey, look, this is what I do. I can I can give you this. I can give you a Google doc that would make you millions of dollars or the same Google doc to someone else. But make them nothing. So it's like, how about we just you go ahead and hire some kind of little programmer. You need a copy and paste this thing into click funnels or you need to do whatever kind of placing pixels. This B.S. I knew how to do, I could speak to it because I had done it. I said I don't want to be managing people and Web site builders and all this kind of stuff and you seem pretty capable at this thing. So while I just focus on the highest and best use of my time, you focus on the best of yours and let's partner on. Like what does sell on this thing actually look like what's let's create a program together, whatever it like. We like let's let's. What does this make sense together to build? And since you don't really want to do that in order to be an effective copywriter, you need to go interview not just to the the business owner, but you need to interview people who bought, people who didn't buy to do all this legwork to be good at this thing. And like you don't look you don't like making sales calls, you don't like doing this writing thing. You don't like doing all this stuff if you just want to like. Build the website and collect paychecks and do the infrastructure. And pay me. That's cool, because I don't really want to hire. I don't want to keep. He's got these sales guys going. I don't want to build a whole entire agency. I don't want to keep this agency thing going. So I played with that for a little while. But I really don't want to be an agency or be on a retainer model because it really just felt like it was a collar around the success because it's it's adversarial, because I have an hour, an effective hourly rate that I want to make. And if I'm doing stuff that's not that, then I'm going get what I want to do it. And so let's just get clear on what what are the results that we want to achieve. And if I can achieve them without having to manage a whole bunch of people, then let's do that.

[00:25:19] So you're basically collaborating with them and you get paid on in perpetuity, right. Rather than just paid and then work. Then paid work.

[00:25:29] Yeah. It's because I took things from different industries. I was working in a number of different industries. I started in the fitness world. I went to the finance world. And then I started working in actually the fine arts world and started looking at different ways that you can get compensated for different kinds of work. And intellectual property is a thing. And I was like, well, how do you like this? This guy was selling a print that he turned into a postcard and it had been mailed five million times. And so he got a dollar for every time this postcard got mailed. And I was just one postcard. So looking I'm like, how how are cartoonists pay? They get syndicated these images. Who cares how long it took them to draw. People want to buy them their syndicated across all these channels. And you've got to pay every time that thing works. So what? Why am I going to. Going to fight with this person to to like pay me some kind of right that he doesn't want to pay me. Like if I go to store as they are, it's fifty thousand dollars to have me write your copy. They're gonna like what? How are you even talking? OK, so let's not have that conversation, let's say. Well, how big of a business do you want it to be? How. How much? What kind of conversion rate do you want to get on this? What is that lifetime value of this? What is it? What's the day zero LTV. Let's have a conversation about the impact of what this copy is going to do and as well as create profit margins and at how do we scale this thing without having to spend a whole bunch of money on advertising? How do we do this stuff? Do you want to do it all offline? Online? It's a much different conversation than, hey, I wanted you to. I want it. You're a good copywriter. Let me hire you for a sales letter. I'm like it ain't that easy. So it was just like, how do I have a conversation where I'm I'm getting compensated for what, long term, rather than just like what's the sales that are worth? Well, what's a cartoon worth? That that little doodle that that life is good? Well, I think it's done like 300 million dollars now. You know, all this stuff. And anybody could do that. But did you license it? Did you get that? I call it kind of scrapple marketing. Did you get everything you can out of what you got and got? Every, like, put the right kind of eyeballs and been compensated appropriately because this is intellectual property. And so it's just like people. They're not really special when you can go up work and find some somebody who's going to bleed on the page for five dollars an hour. I'm like, I'm not haven't I'm not competing with that. But that person is going to outwork me. He might even be a better copywriter than me. But I like how do I play a game that I want to win? And it's just a much different conversation than trying to compete with some Indian who's going to work way harder than me and might even have better writing ability than a natural English speaker. Let's play a different game.

[00:28:31] Yeah, I totally get it than exactly what I did 20 years ago. And you heard me. Maybe you've heard me on another podcast talking about how I kind of turned the Internet world on its head because everybody at my level was wanting to charge 50 or 100 grand up front and then they probably wouldn't come through anyway to help you learn this Internet stuff. So I said, oh, you know what? I'm going to switch this. And so I turned it upside down where somebody pays a relatively small entry fee, but then I get a percentage of their profits. And it's it's even more fair in that it's eventually capped at fifty thousand. So I get paid for doing that. They get in with low risk and we collaborate. So it's it's kind of similar thing. I mean, they don't get paid forever, but it's still helping them create intellectual property, online stuff, shopping carts, e-mail marketing, the whole bit. So so basically we did the same thing. We turned the world upside down for everybody's good. So that's that's awesome. So. So you quit the construction and you got this go. What year did you get this going?

[00:29:42] I had been dabbling for for a while before I went full time. So I went full time calling myself a copywriter and beginning in 2016 but I've been dabbling and downloading free ebooks on my hard drive and spending money on courses I've never opened or applied for a long time before that. So, you know, they always been interested in it. But I I went I really committed in 2016.

[00:30:12] You know, they call that shelf-help instead of self help. I'll tell you what. Got to take a brief sponsor break and we come back. We're going to ask Eric what's a typical day look like for him? And this is not the typical day that was in that three months of drinking. All right. That's a pretty good gig if you can get it. And then the how he stays motivated to keep helping.

[00:30:36] So the folks this is vetrepreneurs month at screw the commute. So I want to tell you a little bit more about how my school supports military families and how our training can help them. First of all, we gave a 50 percent or ninety five hundred dollar scholarship to thank them for their service. And this applies to active duty or veterans. And then for eligible military spouses, the Department of Defense gives them an additional 4000. And the reason this is perfect for military families and I know this firsthand because I live in Virginia Beach, which is right outside. They call it Nahfolk, Virginia. And we got probably the biggest collection of military in the world. The spouses around here normally have to take crappy jobs at lower than average pay because employers know they're gonna get deployed, and so employers don't want to invest a lot of money in people, they know are going to be leaving. So then the spouse has to get deployed and find another crappy job in their new location. This really sucks. So with Internet marketing companies, they don't care where you live. I mean, you can work legitimately from home and you can get deployed somewhere else. That doesn't matter. You can still be handling social media, e-mail marketing, shopping cart stuff, customer service and all the other things. Every business on earth needs. And not only that, you can study at home with no expenses for books, travel or childcare. I mean, it's really perfect for military families. And one more thing. You can also sell your own stuff and services just like Eric's doing with the same skills that you learn. So check it all out at IMTCVA.org/military and then give me a call. I'd be thrilled to support your military family even if you're single like Eric I don't know if he still is or not. I'll still support you even though you still get paid for three months of drinking. I think that's a pretty good deal to start. All right. So this is episode 180. So check it. Screwthecommute.com/180 to get all the details there. In case you missed those links.

[00:32:57] All right. Let's get back to Eric Bakey. He is. They got a unique business and take on copy and get it into the public and getting the high returns for people. So. So, Eric, what's a typical day look like for you right now?

[00:33:12] Oh, I quit drinking so much. So getting up at 5:00 in the morning is pretty standard issue for me. And I get up early and I I write for three hours typically. I try to write more on my stuff than for clients stuff, but I try to be my best client nowadays. But it's still depending I take on six clients a year.

[00:33:35] What's there to write if you're drawing pictures.

[00:33:38] Well, it's it's a I never start from a blank page. So it's a combination of taking the the interviews I do with them. Like I I I've been having conversations with the founder, the business owner, as well as they're like SVP of sales, marketing, whatever. And I call them my my commander's intent interviews. And then I also record and transcribe conversations with their customers. All that kind of stuff. So I I am editing more it's more copy editing than a a brilliant sense of creation. It's a lot less creative. I can be the more effective my copy actually is. So it's a by most. I write mostly webinars and sales presentations or like one of the many sales presentations build on the conversations that I have with the stakeholders. And then there being a champion for their customers. So it's you know, that's why I go. I get super deep and I only take on a handful of clients a year because I'm doing a lot more consulting and cartooning nowadays and creating my own content and courses and stuff like that. So I write for at least three hours a day. Then I go. I wrote a body weight strength training book, which is the fastest way to get unbelievably strong without going to the gym. So I go get a hard core workout in and then break. I do this intermittent fasting thing. I'll eat around ten thirty or eleven o'clock and then do some more kind of consulting client interviews. But I have a three to one approach. I write for three hours, two hours of some kind of training and then one hour of like one on one consulting with a client in some capacity. So that's like I give it I give it a hard six for the day. And that's the rest is kind of playing around.

[00:35:38] So what does that consistent of, playing around.

[00:35:41] I am insatiable curious. I'm a big reader and learner and I've been learning how to paint to compliment my cartooning ability because I actually I met this incredible portrait painter and I was asking for some tips. And he's like, oh yeah, like you need to build up a real foundation of art, like your cartoons are cute and everything. But I can't help you because you have no foundational art ability. You need to learn the basics if you want to build on anything. So he really humbled me. I mean, the foundations of art and to get away from the computer, I'm learning how to paint like with physical oil paint and go outside and do that. So yeah, I use my mornings and early afternoons for work and then I have a nice balanced afternoon of art and socializing. Since if you want to be an effective writer, you need to actually talk to people. And I think that's where a lot of copywriters kind of lose it because they just kind of think that they can read reviews on Amazon and think that's all it's gonna take. People talk much differently than how they review books. So you need to go and actually get on out of your shell and talk to people, walk around. So that's pretty much a typical day. I don't get too crazy.

[00:36:56] When's the mental dynamite when are we going to blow something up. Come on. You're a veteran.

[00:37:04] That's the best part is that when I'm doing my my training and my one on one calls with people, I'm drawing in front of them. It's all it's whiteboard and it's really sweet with Zoom and your iPad. While I'm doing a zoom call. I'm visually recording and visually facilitating these conversations. So I'm like I'm drawing these like cartoons as they're speaking to me. And it is I guess that's it. That's or that's not it or whatever. And then that's it. That's a typical day or I'll do. I've got. I do workshops called Moving Targets workshops where I will visually facilitate for a good two days, typically for the stakeholders for a a real a real business. Now that's one of our online marketing businesses. I really I'd like championing specifically better known businesses, but they typically it's not it's not always veteran in businesses. I really like taking under under appreciated blue collar businesses specifically and helping them become bricks and clicks businesses. So helping teach direct response principles to. Boring old like the consulting day with a high end flooring company and how to help them do joint ventures and dead database into cash flow. All kinds of fun stuff that gets the CEO's attention. So it depends on whether I'm shifting more to a visual strategy firm building that as a real business and as a productized service business rather than just a one off copywriting business. But that's that is the evolution of Eric.

[00:38:52] That says sounds good. That's so. So I really appreciate you coming on and I'm sure is going to be inspiring for a lot of people out there about how you came up through through the ranks, blowing stuff up and now you're blowing people's minds.

[00:39:09] So that's what's my whole encouragement if my dumb ass can figure this stuff out. I promise you that there's a lot of motivated, highly intelligent people who just need to figure out who they want to be the hero to and and get out their own way like they need to get. That's the biggest problem I see, is that people overcomplicate stuff and they come up with all kinds of excuses for why they cannot help somebody. That's ultimately all there is. Just go ahead and figure it out. Who can you uniquely help and who do you want to make an impact on and go help them? If you can use the internet to help them use the internet. But if you if you can't make money in your own backyard helping people that you care about, then you're never gonna make it online. So that would be my biggest advice for anyone who's probably a lot smarter than me, more capable, because I've just been able to figure this stuff out as I go out of pain and misdirection. And I would just encourage somebody who is sitting on the fence to just go ahead and do it, just go ahead and get started because it's not going to be perfect and just get after it.

[00:40:09] Very well said. So thanks so much. Make sure you visit the show notes and click on ericbakey.com over there. And he's got lots of resources, examples and freebie stuff for you. And then. Hey, if you need him, it sounds like you better get get busy, because if you're in a big company out there, then he only takes on so many clients. So you better get it after it if you want to get the chance to close, as he said. One hundred and twenty five percent. I love that. I'm gonna remember that. Thanks, Eric, for coming on.

[00:40:45] Thanks for having me.

[00:40:46] All right, catch everybody on the next episode. This is Vetrepreneurs Month at Screw the Commute podcast. See you later.
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