301 – Increase your skills and increase your chances of success: Tom talks Self Reliance

Episode 301 – Self Reliance
[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 three hundred and one of Screw the Commute podcast. We're going to talk about self reliance. Wait a minute, Tom. Well, you think you're Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer. What's what's up? You're supposed to be talking about email marketing and stuff like that. Well, I'll tell you what, folks, you if you can improve on this self-reliance thing, you're going to make more money. You're going to work faster. You're going to steal customers off of your dumb competitors that are too slow to react to things. And it's going to mean a lot to your business. And it's going to actually be one of the main factors to help your business survive. So I don't want to hear this Deepak Chopra crap. It amazes me somebody can get so famous and I never even met anybody that knows what the heck he's talking about. Well, good for him. Now, hoping in this episode, 300 listeners, 300 episodes out was a pretty big milestone for us. And we had Patricia, No. One who's creating a global movement and how she's doing it. So you want to make sure you hear that if you're thinking really, really big like she is. How would you like to hear your own voice here on the committee? Well, the shows helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas the help you start a business. We want to hear about it. Check out screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue side bar that says send voicemail. Click on it. Talk into your phone or computer and tell us how the shows helped you and put your Web site on there, too, because you'll get a big shout out in your own voice in front of thousands of people.

[00:02:06] So there you go. And while you're over it, screw the commute. We've got lots of stuff for you. We got a free e-book called How to Automate Your Business. And this has allowed me to handle one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and and forty thousand customers without pulling my hair out. We charge twenty seven bucks for this book, but it's yours free for less than the screw the commute. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And of course everything, all the links and stuff will be in the show notes. This is episode three zero one while you're over there. Grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app where you can put it on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road has all kinds of fancy features and we have instructions. You know, a lot of people give you an app and you have no idea how to use it. But we've got video instructions and screen captures so you can use all these fancy functions.

[00:03:04] All right. People are still sitting here in this pandemic wondering what the heck hit them. And I haven't been. I've been doing the same kind of work I've been doing for 26 years. And I'm really upset about this, that more people haven't listened to me on what to do to work from home. That's what screw the commute. See, has the whole idea here is that you can live two or three lives if you'd learn the skills to work from home and with the Internet and the powerful tools that we have available that are cheap or free. There's no excuse for you not doing this. It's like an insurance policy for your family. So not only do I have a mentor program, which I'll tell you about later, I have formalized this training and the only license dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. It's IMTCVA.org. You can be anywhere in the world. You can get an Internet connection and go to this school. And I'll tell you what. These are hard core skills that are in high demand, say the traditional colleges. Now, you know, they charge you a fortune. They raise the fees. I mean, I have a thing at IMTCVA.org/quiz. It's called Seven College Rip Off. You know, I got a TV show in development called Scam Brigade. I'm very in tune with what fraud is. These college administrators would be in jail if they weren't colleges.

[00:04:31] All right. They just are ripping students and families off to the tune of trillions of dollars of debt. No marketable skills you get. Well, yeah, I guess yugi learn how to protest if that's what's your ambition is in life. And then you get out. You're competing for jobs at Starbucks. Well that's just ridiculous. So my school. We have people that are making money and the first couple months on the side as a side hustle and then went full time before they even graduated. So. So this is powerful skills that are in high demand. Every business on Earth needs this. So if you. Nor it. You're just getting what you deserve. I hate to say that, but that's the truth. I've been preaching this for twenty six years since the commercial Internet started. There's no reason that you shouldn't do this. It's low cost, high returns, and you actually have a marketable skill that's in high demand. Tell me anything that competes with that, please. I'm begging you. Let's hear it.

[00:05:29] All right. Well, let me get off my high horse here. Let's get to the main event. Let's talk about self-reliance. And again, Monday, Mondays was supposed to teach hard core skills like e-mail marketing and online advertising. Well, the skill of self-reliance is every bit as important as the skills the just just mentioned and and all the other skills I've been teaching on my Monday sessions.

[00:05:54] It can save you money and quadruple your speed of getting things done and reaching your market way faster than your competitors. And it also allows you to take better advantage of opportunities that arise at the last minute. And I'll just tell you about that right now. I'm known as a pretty good radio podcast guest. Well, sometimes people cancel and at the last minute somebody will call me and say, hey, can you fill in on our radio show or can you do this? And I say, absolutely, and I might have 10 minutes to get ready.

[00:06:29] And I can put a Web page up with their call sign and the name of their podcast up there and drive traffic to a site and give a freebie away customized to that event. Like snap in my fingers here. I'm going to switch my hand here just like that. Say so. People love that, that you can help them out and it's all customized.

[00:06:53] But if you had to wait for a Web designer, you'd be a week or two weeks before somebody would ever do that for you. Say so. That's not not acceptable anymore when these skills are so easy with a little bit of tutoring.

[00:07:06] Now, Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1841 wrote an article called Self-reliance and Emerson. I mean, he emphasized the importance of individualism and its effect on an individual's satisfaction in life.

[00:07:23] And he stresses that anyone is capable of achieving happiness simply if they change their mindset. And I'm asking for a mindset change applied to your business. I'm asking you to have a mindset of increasing your skills so you can reduce your cost and increase your chances of success and only turn projects over to others when it would be impossible for you to learn this skill. And also, when you understand what you're turning over and how much it should cost and how long it should take. So you're a sitting duck if you don't, to get ripped off for sometimes literally a hundred times what something should cost. And the same on how long it should take. You can't let that happen. So self-reliance. I think some of the definitions is the ability to do things and make decisions without needing other people to help you.

[00:08:23] And the old days, people learn self-reliance because they had to.

[00:08:28] In today's modern society, it's very easy to find people to turnover your your responsibilities to mean these people do freelance work or become employees. And the quality and cost of their work can vary considerably. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy those people exist. I just don't want you relying on them for everything and getting disappointed because your costs go up tremendously and the quality of the work you get could be questionable. And and I didn't even address the extra time involved. That makes you much slower than your competitors who could be grabbing your business. So I was fortunate that I got a serious self-reliance education before I could even walk. And I'm not kidding. So part of self-reliance is learning how to overcome obstacles. Well, let me tell you how my dad taught me to be self-reliant. My dad came on a cattle boat as a bay, as a young child in the steerage section from Syria in the early nineteen hundreds. And if you don't know what the steerage section is of a cattle boat was like, we'll look it up. It wasn't it was pretty nasty. But he was the smartest guy I know. I mean, he was went to second grade. Is this formal education. But he I remember him sitting down when he retired at about 73 years old and reading the entire World Book Encyclopedia. That was twenty six volumes, plus all the the extensions they always put on. So is guys brilliant? So some of you, you know, you younger people might not know this name, but.

[00:10:07] You know, the name Johnny Cash is a great country singer.

[00:10:11] Well, he wrote a song called A Boy named Sue because it was about an old drunk cowboy who knew he wouldn't be there for his son to grow up. So he named him Sue. So the kid would have to get scrappy and be fighting all the time and get tough because the old man figured he wouldn't be around. Well, my dad was 50 when he had me. He figured he wouldn't be around. So from the time and if you were watching this on video right behind me as a sign dedicated to him with a baby, which is the representative, me crawling with a pillow in front of me with my toys on the other side, because he and his second grade formal education, brilliant man, mind thought, I'm going to teach this kid to overcome obstacles. And so he would put pillows in front of me and my toys on the other side and teach me how to crawl and scratch and get through what I wanted. So. So to this day, I'm unstoppable. I won't cheat anybody or step on anybody or do bad things to get where I'm going. But if you tell me, you know, I can't do something, you better get out of the way as I blow by you doing it.

[00:11:19] And I've got no numerous examples we'll save for another day of me doing this. So that's part of being self-reliant, is you're going to run into obstacles and you sit there and moan about it. You sit there and say, oh, I better get some help with this. You know what? If it's on a Friday night and you've got to get something done by Monday and the employees aren't around and the freelancers aren't answering the phone, what are you going to do? All right. So that's what being self-reliant is all about, being being able to overcome obstacles. Now, I got a warning for you on the surface. It's wonderful to be independent and self-sufficient and, you know, be able to overcome obstacles. Great. But when you believe you must do everything yourself, well, now you're you're crossing a line where you can't expand your business because it's impossible to do everything that needs done in a business by yourself. If you really want to grow, I mean, if you want to limp along, sure you can. So in small doses, self-reliance is great. And he's very positive. But when it pervades your approach to the world, I mean, it can really hinder you from reaching higher levels. And I'm probably guilty of that in a certain way because I don't really like giant corporate stripe structures. So I've built my business. Still, it's a lifestyle business. I make loads of money. I'm happy with that. But I don't want to have a giant, giant business. I'm not. My mind is more blue collar, more handle things be involved and not some big thing. It's just not me. And at this age, I probably isn't going to be me. But the beauty of this is you get to pick what you want to do and how far you want to take things. So. So, yes, this whole thing is about self-reliance. But don't take it too far where you can't progress.

[00:13:20] But most of it is going to be great if you are self-reliant, you know, if don't take that warning and say, well, Tom said I shouldn't. No, no, that's this. The little piece of this whole thing is don't let it. You know, too much self-reliance hold you back.

[00:13:35] But the bulk of what I'm talking about today is you get some skills, keep improving your skills so you're not beholden to the people. So your costs are lower. So your speed to market is faster. And it can mean the difference between a business that fails and business that succeeds big time. Now what? What are my big pet peeves on this is the term delegation. People say you should delegate everything all you do what they good. That is the stupidest thing usually espoused by people that aren't really massively. Successful in business.

[00:14:15] Just running their mouth. They say, because it sounds so good. It's like the four hour workweek. And that guy is again, famous, but he works 80 hours a week, too, you know, to sell his four hour a week work.

[00:14:28] So you can't believe that stuff. That's ridiculous. But anyway, you can delegates yourself right into the poorhouse. I mean, far too many people attempting to start a small business. Listen to this ridiculous advice. And again, I'll go back to yes, you you delegate things that would be impossible. Like, I'm not trying to tell you to be a coder, which would take, you know, several years of practice to be any good at it. And, you know, it's. No, no, I don't want to do that. There's people in Pakistan that can do it with their eyes closed for two cents an hour. You know, so nothing against Pakistan. I'm just saying that's that's ridiculous for you to do that. But most things aren't. But regular startups usually need to watch their money very carefully.

[00:15:15] And I'm not talking about those crazy startups at the dot com bust where millions of dollars were given to wet behind the year. Nobody's that, you know, young kids that had an idea that sounded good to the investors. I'll bet you they wish they hadn't wasted their money on these crazy startups where where the money was spent more on pool tables for the employees than in free food than on getting the idea to the market.

[00:15:40] I'm not talking about that kind of startup. Regular startups need to watch their money. See if you throw away 5000 bucks on a Web site that you could have made for a couple hundred, you just threw forty eight hundred dollars down the drain. You have to work really hard to make up. Forty eight hundred dollars just to break even. Instead of being profitable by forty eight hundred dollars. And on your way to a successful business. And this is one of the things you need for your business. What if you don't know about business insurance that I covered in Episode one oh nine? All this will be shown us. What if you don't know about running your YouTube channel? That was episode 82. Business Graphics was episode ninety one. Email marketing was episode 34. And what if you don't know about legitimate business deductions, which I talk about all the time with making your hobbies tax deductible and all that stuff? Now, if the owner is filthy rich and I've run into these kinds where a clueless person is totally financed by their rich spouse, they frequently go out of business when they get bored with the pitiful business that they created. They had no skills in the beginning and they gain those skills to make the business succeed. They just had a rich spouse.

[00:16:59] They wanted to appease them. Well, that's not a real business. Now, every skill you gain gives your business a better chance of success. And that's for more than just not wasted money that you desperately need in the beginning. It's because your efforts to improve your skills mean you are paying way more attention to your business than you might if you just tried to farm everything out to employees and outsourcers. Now, that pretty much doubles your chance of success. You save money on one hand and you run your business better on the other hand. Well, let me give you some examples of some of the things that are saving me literally thousands of dollars just this past week. It has to do with moving my school since our lease is up. I've been there 12 years in this location. You know, all the employees are working at home. I got this enormous building that's just throwing money down the drain to keep this building. So I said, hey, okay, I'm leaving. Well, here's some of the things I would have faced had I not had skills. All right. So these are these are really down to earth things, folks. Holes in the wall. Not that it was a hole in the wall place. It was a very nice building.

[00:18:23] But over 12 years, we had a TV mounted on the wall. We had whiteboards, mounted projection screens, posters, a time clock and various other employee, you know, posters in the kitchen and all this stuff. They. So when they were taken down, there were holes in the wall from screws and bolts and ripped surfaces when the sticky stuff holding our posters damaged the walls.

[00:18:49] Well, no landlord, OK, especially one big enough to have a management company would put up with that. And the owner isn't going to fix them themselves. The management company is going to hire a professional and the management company doesn't care how much it costs. Typically, things can cost 20 to 30 times what it should cost. When a management company gets involved, they're not going to get their fingers dirty.

[00:19:16] They're just calling up whoever they know fixes walls and whatever the prices, they could care less if this doesn't matter. They don't go out and put bids out on this because you're paying for it.

[00:19:29] Now, I suspect also that they get kickbacks. But, of course, nobody is going to admit that. So anyway, in all the areas where the damage occurred, literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars would have been subtracted from my security deposit to repair all these places. Well, I have skills like that, Liam Neeson in Taken. I have skills, so I bought a five dollar can of spackling paste, some 120 grit sandpaper. And I already had a paint scraper. So by knowing how to do this, it only took me a few minutes and less than 10 bucks. And you can run your hand over with your eyes closed and you cannot tell there was ever a hole in the wall. OK. And that is just from skill gaining over time. Though, when it comes to the actual move, I can't tell you how many thousands of dollars it would have cost to move all our heavy, high quality office furniture and to pack it up and categorize all our files and paperwork and products and all this stuff. I just rented a big U-Haul. I bought a bunch of boxes and and also U-Haul lets you give the boxes back if you don't use them. So I bought way too many boxes. I had a hand truck and I moved many things easily and with more care than movers would have.

[00:20:53] In fact, it's hard to find positive comments and reviews about moving companies anywhere. All right.

[00:21:00] And probably I would have had more wall damage to fix as they bang things around during the move. Now, on anything that was too heavy for me, I got Mark or another kid that works for me part time to help. This saved many thousands of dollars. It kept us more organized than that. I know what's in every box.

[00:21:20] I made a log and wrote down and marked each box. So I know what's in it. I know where every piece of furniture is and what shape it's in. And also, I actually made money by selling off the office furniture that I had bought it at this to count off of Craigslist 12 years earlier. I made money on every piece of office furniture I sold because I bought low. I scoured all the Craigslist ads and got this dress stuff that was high quality. And I sold it 12 years later for more than I paid for it. OK, so that's the way you do things, folks.

[00:21:55] And the buyers had to move it out and all those sales were made on buying apps like Craigslist. Well, you got to watch out for scams. And I covered scams in episode two ninety nine. And and also episode two. Ninety nine had one of the funniest segments I've ever done on this podcast where I was messing with a scammer. It's hysterical. I also used Facebook Marketplace offer up and let go again, knowing about and using these apps as a skill. So let's look at this. I hang out at my school packing up my stuff in an orderly fashion and people are coming there to give me cash for stuff I don't use much.

[00:22:38] Right. And they're using their vehicles and sore backs to move it out. And I'm saving thousands of dollars on movers who would just slop stuff in boxes and leave me with a mess.

[00:22:49] That's a pretty good deal if you ask me. And also, when someone was buying some of my equipment, they bumped into an overhead exit sign and broke the mounting bracket. Well, there was no sense, me trying to hit them up about fixing it. Just get rid of them. Get out of there. So it would have cost a hundred bucks or more to get to replace that side. I fixed it with two screws I had in my little screw holder organizer that I kept with me. And it cost me maybe a nickel to fix it. OK. So here's one of my quotes. This is my personal quote. If you think you are too good to do the things to make your business great, it's doubtful your business will survive at all. I'll say that again, if you think you're too good to do the things to make your business great. It's doubtful your business will survive at all. You've got to get comfortable doing things when no one is around to help you. You can't let your progress be stymied by people who are not as gung ho about succeeding as you are. And many people fail in business because they aren't gung ho. So here's an example, I get people calling me up. Their business is failing. They're broke. And they tell me when they come back from vacation, they're going to really concentrate on their business. What? You're broke and you're going on vacation rather than fixing your business problems. Good luck with that. That attitude alone is going to make them not successful. So anyway, you have to be comfortable doing things yourself. And here's another example from my dad. I came home from school one day and he says, hey, Tom, go go down to the parts, the auto parts store.

[00:24:38] Get me some clear. I think it was 20 feet of clear gasoline tubing. Fuel, lying tubing. He wanted to clear and some Coke, Coca-Cola. I'm thinking, oh, man, he's lost that it was a hot day because he didn't drink Coke. Our car was running fine. And even if it wasn't, you never need 20 feet of tubing to fix it. All right. So. So I just dutifully go down and do it and I come back and say, what are you doing that?

[00:25:07] So he plugged one end of the clear tubing. He filled the whole thing up with Coca-Cola and then plugged the other end. And I'm thinking, man, this guy lost it. But if you remember, I told you how he sat down and read The World Book Encyclopedia. Well, he read a lot about physics and physical properties and remember, second grade formal education. And I said, Dad, what are you doing with this? He said, well, when you boys aren't around, I don't have anybody to hold this level and to hold these boards level when I'm building something. So I nail up one end of the tube on one end where the board is and they the board there. And then I can go as far as the tube will go and the Coca-Cola will show through the clear tubing and it will be exactly level with the other end. OK. I forget what the name of this is is. I don't think it's Archimedes principle. I figure it was called that. But talk about being brilliant. And there was no laser levels in those days and all that stuff. See, so that's what being self-sufficient is. You don't sit and wait for the kid to get home to school and blow for hours of the workday. You know, you you figure out a way to do things. And I do this all the time. I sit there and channel my dad. What would my dad do? And I've had some very bizarre situations when I'm by myself sweating like a pig and I can't get some screw or nail to do what I wanted to do or I can't fit in there.

[00:26:38] And I'm like, Dad, help me. And so and then I one time it went in within a second after I said, this is really bizarre. I had to sit down and take a break after that one. But another thing self-reliance will help you with is being able to take advantage of last minute opportunities, like I told you about with the radio interviews. So I've had literally hundreds of instances where people have ordered things on a weekend and they needed them right away. And none of my employees work on the weekends other than during retreats or my boot camp seminars. If you don't know what bootcamp is, you haven't been listening to the show enough. But by me getting notice on my cell phone and taking care of those people has literally, literally made me hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been lost had I said to myself. Heck with it. Let him wait till Monday. So bottom line, folks, is that you can save money, make more money and move way faster than your competitors. If you put the concept of self-reliance and skill building as a big priority in your business life. Now, if you want help learning these skills, check out my mentor program at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:28:01] It's the longest running, most successful ever Internet marketing mentor program running continuously since around the year 2000. I mean, I've been teaching this since nineteen ninety six ninety seven when I started making loads of money. And it's very unique in that you have an immersion weekend where you actually live in the house with me for an immersion weekend. That, of course, is after the pandemic is gone and we would do it right now. But we don't even allow people to come here for four months until they've had a bunch of training so that they don't come to the highest level access to a guy like me on Earth and be deer in the headlights. So average person takes about four months of training before they come to the retreat. And then there's all kinds of other unique things. See, guys at my level will never even talk to you. You know, they they get on stage and they sell you this program and then you never talk to them ever again as they put some two dollar an hour person, whoever they can grab off the street knowing that you don't know what you're doing. So they eat up all your time and money and you get nothing out of it. Well, that doesn't roll with me. We don't have any lawsuits, any chargebacks, any requests for refunds, nothing, because we take care of people. In fact, I wrote a book called The One Sentence Business Plan, where we create quality products at a reasonable price that people actually want and we service them after the sale. That's that's the if every company on Earth would use that business plan, they'd be further along. But anyway, so everything we do here is one on one. Except for the retreat visit, there's usually average about five people here.

[00:29:40] You get plenty of attention, but everything else is one on one with me, an entire my entire staff, who I think the shortest one that's worked here is five years. All right. So you have access to these people for tutoring through Zoom. They'll take over your screen if necessary and click for you and show you what to do. Nobody else will do this kind of service. And that's why I've been around for 20 years and seventeen hundred students. And another thing as they want to charge you 50 or 100 grand upfront. So I said that's I know these guys. If you gave me 50 or a hundred grand, you'd be chasten around Mexico. They disappear on you.

[00:30:18] So I set it so that I tied my success to your success. So you have a relatively low entry fee.

[00:30:27] And then a percentage of profits that I helped you create. That's capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. But currently it's fifty thousand dollars. So for me to get my fifty thousand, you have to make two hundred thousand. And people just love that idea. In seventeen hundred students later, the thing is still going strong. So anyway, I'd be glad to help you with that and also help you with this self-reliance, because I know a lot of the young people that the parents said, well, I don't want them to have to go through what I went through. And so maybe you didn't get pushed to increase your skills a lot as a young person, but we're going to teach you skills to make so you're self-reliant so you don't have to get ripped off. So you know how much things should cost if you do farm it out. You know, we're all for outsourcing when it makes sense. But I don't want to spend the money. In fact, we don't allow anybody to spend money unless they ask me first, because there's so many things that hit you, your shiny objects and rabbit holes to go down. I know which ones working with what doesn't. And so. I don't want you wasting money on things that are never there wrong for you. And they might be a good program, but not right for you. So you don't even know that. So check it out. Really, I've helped so many people in. And I'm still going strong. It's it's not a job to me. It's a life's mission. Let's put it that way. So anyway, that's my story on self-reliance. I'm sticking to it. So we will catch you on the next episode.

[00:32:00] We got a great week of guests coming up. All right. We'll catch you later.

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