329 - Backup Backup Backup!: Tom interviews Andrew Darlow - Screw The Commute

329 – Backup Backup Backup!: Tom interviews Andrew Darlow

Andrew Darlow is a New Jersey based photographer, author and digital workflow coach. And for more than two decades, he's helped people capture, edit and print their photographs and other artwork. Lately, he's been focusing on helping business people preserve, protect and backup their irreplaceable photos, videos and other digital files. After having too many of his framed prints get damaged, he invented the GalleryPouch, which is a custom made heavyweight bubble bag.

Subscribe at:

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Google Podcasts

NOTE: Complete transcript available at the bottom of the page.

Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 329

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

[05:12] Tom's introduction to Andrew Darlow

[08:44] All media won't last forever

[12:38] Hosting service backups aren't always reliable

[15:03] Making copies of data as you work on it

[16:59] Backing up Facebook and other social media

[18:57] Using a battery backup to preserve your data and computer

[24:29] Sponsor message

[27:50] The help Andrew has gotten and his invention (The GalleryPouch)

Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

Screw The Commutehttps://screwthecommute.com/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Screw The Commute Podcast Apphttps://screwthecommute.com/app/

College Ripoff Quizhttps://imtcva.org/quiz

Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! – orders@antion.com

Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there!https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Programhttps://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/

Free Backup Course for Mac Users podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/free-backup-course-for-mac-users-podcast/id1528871249

GalleryPouchhttps://gallerypouch.com/

Special Offer for Tom's Listenershttps://backup.fm/tom/

Andrew's Photo and Printing Tips websitehttps://imagingbuffet.com

Andrew's books on Amazonhttps://amzn.to/3hT2CMN

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Related Episodes

Pop Up Boxes – https://screwthecommute.com/328/

More Entrepreneurial Resources for Home Based Business, Lifestyle Business, Passive Income, Professional Speaking and Online Business

I discovered a great new headline / subject line / subheading generator that will actually analyze which headlines and subject lines are best for your market. I negotiated a deal with the developer of this revolutionary and inexpensive software. Oh, and it's good on Mac and PC. Go here: http://jvz1.com/c/41743/183906

The WordPress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://screwthecommute.com/wordpressecourse/

Build a website, wordpress training, wordpress website, web design

Entrepreneurial Facebook Group

Join our Private Facebook Group! One week trial for only a buck and then $37 a month, or save a ton with one payment of $297 for a year. Click the image to see all the details and sign up or go to https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/

After you sign up, check your email for instructions on getting in the group.

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Want The Transcript for this episode?

Read Full Transcript

Episode 329 – Andrew Darlow
[00:00:08] 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 twenty nine of Screw the Commute podcast. We're here with Andrew Darlow and he's going to tell us about something that one of the most important things in your entire business. But almost nobody does it. That's the problem. And at least it's the last thing they think about doing.

[00:00:48] So I'm not going to tell you what it is yet, but I guarantee most of you listening, including myself, aren't doing a good enough job at what he's going to talk about. Plus, he's been making money on a cool invention is in his industry, too. So we'll get to him in a minute. So hope you didn't miss Episode 328 on pop up boxes. Now, whether you like them or not, they work. And there's no doubt about that. They work. Now, of course, I'm not suggesting you use them in an annoying fashion like some crazed online idiot. I'm saying used judiciously, they can increase your sales in email sign ups significantly. All right. And also on that episode, I told you how I doubled my subscribers with one simple pop up box. So make sure you check that out. Episode 328. And if you don't know how to find episodes, you go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number. This is 329. And you are going to want to keep this one handy because Andrew's got some great information that I never even knew about. So don't miss that. All right. How would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the show's helped you out at all in your business or giving your ideas that help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send a voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the show's helped you.

[00:02:23] And also put your website in there so you can get a big shout out in front of thousands of people on a future episode. Now we give you a freebie for listening to the show, too. And this freebie has helped me handle up to 150000 subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. It's called How to Automate Your Business and you can get it free. We sell it for 27 bucks, so go get it for free. And besides that, implement the darn stuff and you'll start stealing customers from your competitors because you'll you'll handle them faster. You'll get your work done way faster. It's just amazing. And actually, one of the tips, just one of the tips has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes, OK? And that's not made up. We estimated it a couple of years ago, so it's probably more than that now. But you grab that at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, grab a copy of our podcast app where you can do lots of cool things on your cell phone and tablet with our app at screwthecommute.com/app.

[00:03:37] Now I know people are still freaking out about the pandemic. They don't know if the schools are going to open. But you know what? Myself and my students don't worry about that. And even though we do know it's a horrible situation and a lot of misery has come from this, but I don't want that misery for you ever again if you're going through it now and the people and my students aren't going through it because we know how to sell online. And that's why I've devoted the last 26 years of my life to this, to live a wonderful lifestyle business for myself and my students. And we don't worry about it because we're home anyway, selling stuff so so you can make a great living. And I've formalized my training in a school. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. It's certified to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia to attend. It's a distance learning school and not the kind of distance learning for little kids that people are bragging about how bad it is. No, this is great. It gives you skills that are in super high demand and people are making money in the school within a couple months of starting, not from graduating from starting. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. Of course that'll be in the show notes and I'll show you a little bit later that you can get a scholarship to that school if you're in one of my other programs. So we'll get to that in a minute.

[00:05:12] All right. Let's get to the main event. Andrew Darlow is here and here's what he's going to talk about. He's a New Jersey based photographer, author and digital workflow coach. And for two decades or more than that, he's helped people capture, edit and print their photographs and other artwork. Now, even though his tips have been featured in People magazine, Animal Planet, Reader's Digest and Pro Photographer magazine, along with many others, and even though he's the author of four award winning books, including his newest book, Focus and Filter Professional Techniques for Mastering Digital Photography and Capturing the Perfect Shot. Guess what, he's not going to be talking about taking pictures today. Lately, he's been focusing on helping business people preserve, protect and back up their irreplaceable photos, videos and other digital files. And after having too many of his framed prints get damaged, he invented and co-developed the GalleryPouch, which is a custom made heavyweight bubble bag made in Dallas, Texas.

[00:06:34] So, anyway, let's bring him on. Andrew, what's up, man?

[00:06:39] Hey, Tom, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you.

[00:06:42] Oh, it's my pleasure. Yeah, I'm really excited because it's rare that I have somebody on that I don't know a lot about what they're going to be talking about already. But and I have been good at backing up because I got to tell you, one of the the most depressing things to me is to do something or create something and then lose it and then have to start over again. And some of them you can't replace, especially in the photographs and and maybe recordings with real important people that are never going to come back. So tell us how you got interested in this. It must have been some disaster in the past that made you want to get into this field.

[00:07:23] Well, yes, actually, multiple disasters. I don't know how many things I've lost until it finally dawned on me that I should be focusing more on this because I've had hard drives go bad. I've had SD cards that go into my cameras, get corrupted. I've had all types of things happen. And each one has taught me to be much more careful and to learn the strategies that I needed to make everything work as automated as possible. So there were a number of issues. One that happened to me was I had a hard drive plugged into a wall that was then on a desk. And by the way, never do this. And this is quite a long time ago. And my son was was walking around and he ended up walking between the desk and the wall socket. And there went my hard drive. And luckily, I was smart enough to have most of it on another drive. But this just cemented in my mind I really need to do something else. And that just led to me maybe being a little overprotective. But that's OK, because this data is so important to me and I know it's really important to my clients and to the other people I get to help with this.

[00:08:44] Yeah. And I kind of remember going through a period with my video cameras because I've been doing video for 35 years plus.

[00:08:52] And when it was changing from tapes to digital medium, It was a little rough period. You really couldn't trust at the time they had these little miniature hard drives. You could stick in a video camera. And I never trusted those things. And then now it's pretty, pretty reliable. But still, I was reading the other day that these SD cards actually deteriorate. You know, I don't know if you know anything about that or not, but over time you can only just, you know, record on them so many times.

[00:09:26] Yes. And this is a tricky thing because all media deteriorates over time.

[00:09:30] CDs, DVDs, tape generally is the most stable, but it has the most headaches as far as retrieval. But yes, SD cards can definitely go bad over time, and that's why you always have to have multiples. I put dates on each one and in fact, I'll share on a special page that I set up later an article that I wrote all about SD cards. And you can see the back of my SD cards. It has the data in which it went into service. So it at least gives me some hint as to how old it is.

[00:10:01] Well, is it the time or is it the number of uses?

[00:10:06] It's both. And also there's like the Earth's gravity and there's all kinds of how you store it and where you store it. And it goes on and on and on. And there's one guy who I really trust. The software that he makes is called Carbon Copy Cloner. And he says that you should exercise your hard drives every year, take them out of storage if you have them stacked up, for example, and give them a spin like you're taking them for a walk. So I thought that was fascinating.

[00:10:43] Now, these are the mechanical ones like but now, you know, like my laptop has solid state ones in there, so there's no mechanics in it.

[00:10:51] Yes, that is true. But so many of us have hard drives. Yes, there are people who have stacks and stacks and stacks of them. So every. It's a moving target, and that's why as soon as possible, when I help people, I have them bring all of their data into one pile and then we put it all on one new, very large drive because media is very inexpensive now and then I generally have them move that off site. So they're in a separate place.

[00:11:22] Ok, but so are you not a believer in cloud backups?

[00:11:27] Well, that's another part of the strategy. There's multi tiers. The cloud is fantastic for a lot of things and I personally use back plays for that. And that's just another backup option. It's just one spoke on the wheel. What's it called back plays.

[00:11:44] Is that is that like a Dropbox or is it different or what?

[00:11:49] It's similar, but it's unlimited. It's only about five or six dollars a month for unlimited storage, meaning you can attach a ten terabyte hard drive, for example, and it will slowly slurp your data, slurp depending on your upload bandwidth. It will get it there faster. And then what I like about their system, and this happened to one of my clients recently, is if you do have a problem, you can just go on to their website. You can order a hard drive, they'll send it to you, you'll pay in advance, but then you get everything right away. You don't have to wait sometimes months if you have multiple terabytes. And once you are done and you get that data back into your system, you can then send it back to them. They'll give you a full refund for the drive that's called.

[00:12:38] Now, something happened to me a long time ago. This is a perfect time to bring it up is don't people shouldn't get sucked into hearing that their hosting service makes automatic backups for them. That's true.

[00:12:52] It's just the dumbest thing I ever heard of. If that hosting service gets hacked, you know, you just lost everything again. And and the other thing that happened one time, then this is way back. Yeah. They were bragging about yeah. We got a battery backup for ten days in case the hurricanes and all this stuff. And then so somehow the my website went down. It took them 10 days to get it back because they had millions of sites to restore.

[00:13:23] Had I had a local backup, I would have been able to restore myself as soon as they got the system back running. But I had to wait for them to find it and restore it. So so don't don't get sucked into that.

[00:13:38] Well, there's a great, great piece of software if you happen to use WordPress, which is run so much of the Internet. So and I have to say, as one of your mentees, I've learned so much from from your folks there. And UpdraftPlus is the name of a piece of software that happens to be free for just about everything you would need.

[00:14:00] It's a plugin?

[00:14:01] Yeah, exactly. It's a really wonderful plugin that allows you to link your WordPress site to, let's say, Google Drive or Dropbox or it doesn't matter, some other storage account. And by the way, Google Drive, I believe it's still free up to 15 gigabytes. So that's amazing that you can just link any of your WordPress websites to a Google Drive account with just a few clicks. And then you can set it so that you just want the database, which tends to be smaller, or you could set it to do the database, plus all of your files and everything. And you can choose whether you want it to be like every day or every week. So I generally do the database every day and some of my more busy sites and then I'll do my plug ins and my extra data and my images like once a week backing up to the Google Drive. And it's so nice when things are automated. That's happening in the background like at 4:00 a.m. I don't even have to think about it.

[00:15:04] Well, yeah, that's like I said in the intro, that it's something that even if people do try to do it, it's the last thing on their mind. And if they get busy, it's the first thing will get forgotten about. Now, one thing that I do all the time and I'd like to automate this better is if I'm working on that. I just released a new ebook the other day, but as I was working on it, you know, I hate the thought of losing anything, so I'll work on it for an hour or so and then I will go to the file in my file manager, copy it, go over to Dropbox, open Dropbox, find the place where I'm keeping it, copy it, and overwrites the old version. But I would like things, anything I do on my computer just to be automatically sent there.

[00:15:56] Well, that's easy. All you do is you determine which folder you would like Dropbox to look at and then you keep the file in there.

[00:16:04] And as you work on the file, it's always sending the data to Dropbox continually.

[00:16:10] No, I'm talking about everything I do on my computer, not working on the one book.

[00:16:17] You can do that, too. But of course, it depends on how much data you want to allow to sync. But if you have Google Drive, you can get a 200 gigabyte account for about twenty to thirty dollars a year. So you can do the same thing. And what it does is you can allocate a huge portion of your, let's say, your documents folder. And then that document folder can always be in sync with your Google Drive account.

[00:16:47] And you specifically, you just know it'll work with Google Drive or those Dropbox is the same thing.

[00:16:54] They both do the same thing. They both can keep in sync if you if you tell them to.

[00:16:58] Ok, yeah. So that's, that's, that's what I want to do because it just breaks my train of thought and some things.

[00:17:06] Is it worth me going over and going through this process. I'm in a hurry and so some things don't get back up. And so I'd like to just not have to worry about that. But there's something other cool that I know you know about that I never, never thought of.

[00:17:21] And and I've always been worried about having loads of stuff on Facebook and then Facebook making some change or who knows what might happen. And then you lose all of it. But you say you're saying you can back up from Facebook, right?

[00:17:35] Yes. I learned about this not too long ago. I don't know if this is because Mark Zuckerberg kept going to Congress and maybe they added this to make them appear more friendly. And I think it's a wonderful, wonderful feature. And essentially, you can go in to your account and you can download everything you've ever done on Facebook, including the activity that you've done in groups that you've created. And you can do it either in HTML format or a format called JSON. Supposedly you may actually be able to move into another service. I kind of doubt that. But regardless, I'm backing up both. There's no reason not to.

[00:18:17] How does somebody figure out how to do that?

[00:18:21] You just go into Facebook you can go to Google first and just search for Facebook Back up how to backup your Facebook data and as usual, with things like this, do not click on anything that has the letters AD or ad, because people sometimes try to game the system and get you to click on things that you shouldn't like. That's the best.

[00:18:46] How long ago was this become available?

[00:18:49] I don't know. I just know that it was there at least. Two months ago.

[00:18:55] Ok. All right, perfect. Now, a lot of people, like, for instance, I have a whole house generator here.

[00:19:02] But you know what, it doesn't kick in for 15 seconds, minimum and no, luckily I work on my laptop and night, but you kind of recommend that people do use these battery backups, right?

[00:19:15] Absolutely. This is one of my favorite tips. And this is actually the the first real episode of my podcast that's all about backups. And I'm so excited about this.

[00:19:24] That's the name of your podcast of the podcast.

[00:19:27] It's called The Free Backup Course for Mac Users. But I start with battery backups, which applies to everybody.

[00:19:34] So the free backup course for Mac users. Hmm. OK.

[00:19:41] And so so battery backup, this battery backup thing, not just Mac related.

[00:19:46] No, that's why it's for everyone. I wanted to start the first few episodes because for everyone. But I just happened to really focus on Mac related things.

[00:19:55] But this particular actually the first two episodes, I had so much content and I was learning so much about battery backup that I made two episodes and the key with battery backup and you hit it right on the head. You need to have something that's. Able to pick up without a blip and run like at least a hundred options out there, starting at as little as about 60 dollars, which you can find at Staples, and there are a number of things you have to be concerned about. But the key first is just to know what it is. And it's called a UPS or uninterruptible power supply. And it's generally a box. Sometimes it's a flat box, sometimes it looks like a computer tower. But the key is that you put whatever is super important to you that if the power went out, it would be a bad day. And the perfect example would be like an iMac or a PC tower or anything like that. Or if you have a power dock, a lot of people say, oh, I just use a laptop. OK, but what about that dock that has like 12 things plugged into it? That's all that's then plugged into your wall or power surge strip. So you need to know that anything that is plugged into what they call mains or like wall power needs to be protected, in my opinion, with the UPS, because if you have a blip, if you have an under power situation, which they call a brownout, if you have surges, anything like that, even for one second, can destroy your data. And it's so sad when I hear people say that their computer just got knocked out because of lightning. And I have to say, though, I'm so scared of lightning, even though I have everything on the UPS here, if I'm home and I see lightning, I shut everything down and I pull the plug out of the wall. So I turn off the ups. Every couple has a power button and I take the plug out of the wall when there's like heavy duty light.

[00:21:59] And that makes a lot of sense, Andrew, because I got hit so hard one time, it blew through all the surge protectors and the battery backup things and knocked out six thousand dollars worth of equipment. And I have this on one of my episodes on insurance.

[00:22:16] Pay attention to your darn and insurance policy. I had a six thousand dollar deductible. Wow. Yeah. So I didn't do anything. I had to replace all that stuff, but yeah I got hit so hard it blew through all those things.

[00:22:30] So you're right, if I'm around, which mostly am now I unplug stuff because that's the last thing you want.

[00:22:37] Yes. I've had family members lose things like big TVs and things like that. And the thing about these UPS devices, you don't just gingerly walk over or drive over to Staples and just pick one and start plugging in everything in your house. You need to be very careful. And I'm not going to give specific advice here, but you could actually call the companies. You can go over some of the types of things that you would like to plug in. Certainly, you do not want to plug in things like some pumps and laser printers because they have a spike when they first come on, you you really need to be careful. There's a bit of math that goes into it so that you add up the total wattage that your devices can possibly create. And what's nice about a lot of these devices is they have one side that is just like a power strip. It only provides search protection and the other side has both the battery backup and the surge.

[00:23:32] So if you don't want to spend too much, you can be judicious and just put the items that are of critical importance on the side. That's battery plus surge. And on the other side, you can dedicate those to things that may not be as important, maybe monitors and things that are not going to create a disaster if you lose power.

[00:23:54] Right. And I even have on my podcast system here another thing called a conditioner. So after it comes through the battery backup surge protector, it goes through a piece of hardware that just smooths out the electricity, you know, so that is like a mixer board. And all of this computer and compressor limiter, it gets a nice, smooth electrical signal, which is not quite as smooth as it comes right out of the wall. So that's even another level in between.

[00:24:28] So, yeah. So we've got to take a short sponsor break here. We come back. We're going to have Andrew tell us about his invention and his books. And he's got a freebie offer for you and a special Web page to go to. So so we'll be back in a moment with that. But want to tell everybody about my mentor program. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique program ever on the Internet. About 20 years ago, people at my level were charging 50 or 100 thousand bucks up front to teach you this stuff.

[00:25:02] And I'm thinking I know a lot of these guys, you give them 50 grand, you'll be chasing around Mexico trying to get to actually help you. So.

[00:25:11] That's too risky and too, you know, just not right and too risky for small business to put that much money up front. So so I kind of flip the world on its head and put an entry fee involved.

[00:25:25] But then I take a percentage of your profits that's capped. So for me to get my 50000 thousand, you have to to net 200000. Well, people love this idea because they knew I wouldn't disappear on them. And here I am 20 years later, and the program is still going strong after seventeen hundred plus students. So the reason I say it's so unique is there's a couple factors to it.

[00:25:49] That's one you can get in and work with somebody at my level much cheaper and my whole team, Andrew, will attest to the the team that I have that helps that it's all trained by me.

[00:26:01] But but it's all one on one. See, most everybody else wants as much money as they can from you.

[00:26:07] They throw you into big groups and you're bored half the time and lost the other half of the time. So we're all one on one.

[00:26:15] We'll even take over your computer screen and and show you.

[00:26:19] Click here. Don't click there and how to do stuff. And and it's nobody will do that. And nobody at my level even talk to you will help you or anything. So it's very, very powerful.

[00:26:32] And then you have after the pandemic, of course, you have a immersion trip to the great Internet marketing retreat center in Virginia Beach, where you actually live in the house with me and see all this stuff. You get video shot in our TV studio, which is next door. So just very unique and very successful. That's why when I triple dog dare people to bring any other program to me and I'll show them, I'll just blow it out of the water.

[00:27:00] So that's how we roll around here. Plus you get a scholarship when you're in the mentor program to buy Internet marketing school, which some people have gifted to their kids and grandkids and nephews and nieces, and and gives them a chance to have a highly marketable skill. I mean, every business on Earth needs Internet marketing, email, marketing, blogs, websites, all the kinds of things that we teach around here, which are much better than spending a fortune.

[00:27:31] You know, all these kids are trillion dollars in debt going to colleges that just teach them how to protest, you know, so so we don't want that. And then they get out and they're competing for jobs at Starbucks. Well, that's not the way we roll around here. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:27:50] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Maybe Andrew will say a few words about the help he's gotten from my team and then tell us about his freebie and his invention.

[00:27:59] Well, absolutely. I can definitely attest to the quality of the mentorship program. I have learned so much. I mean, just on the training I received from my WordPress sites, I am so proud of my sites and they are responsive so they anyone can go on any device and they work well. I could not have done that by myself and that's just one part of it. And then I learned so much about YouTube. And if you like the screw the commute podcast, you really get a feel for what it would be like to work with Tom.

[00:28:33] And like just I was thinking to myself, I have to mention, like, you have one specific podcast on this show, number three, eighteen on webinars. I mean, I've been studying how to do webinars for years. That's like solid gold. And you really get a feeling for how much information, you know, and the fact that you've done so many of them. You understand what helps people to learn and also it helps them to stay listening. So I appreciate everything you've done to help.

[00:29:04] Oh, it's my pleasure. And you've worked with our team a lot. And I've trained everybody. And like I said, they help you one on one. So you're not always, like, bored because you already know this or you're not falling asleep half the time or or you're not lost because we're talking above your heads. It's always directly to what you need. So, so great. So glad the glad you're in the program.

[00:29:29] Tell us about this invention. How did you get the idea for an invention? And, you know, a lot of inventors get sucked into these things that just robbed them blind in the invention has no chance of success. But you somehow beat that system.

[00:29:44] Yes. I did not go to one of those invention companies that you see on TV. Not that I'm speaking about any specific ones, but in general, I've I've heard what you've heard about them. I I was fortunate in that I was part of a community of people who loved inkjet printing, loved making digital art. And one of the people who was on that list was a gentleman named Mark Rogers. He was president of the company. And still is president of a company called Frame Destination, and he saw a need in the market when these inkjet printers came out, they were like 13 by 19 inches. Yet the world of photography for the last hundred years has never seen a 13 by nine print. So he said, I'm going to make frames that are perfect for for these types of prints. And so that was sort of in the background. And I was moderating a list with about eight thousand people. And I just started showing my work more and more. And I noticed how much of a headache it was to protect my work, to get it to the place where it was going to be shown. And then hopefully, if they take it down, you know, you don't know what they are going to do to it. So it was such a headache and I was using rolls of bubble. I was using tape, which is never good, especially if you do these gallery wraps which have no glass. So imagine putting rolled bubble wrap and then adding tape. Imagine what could happen to your art. So after all those headaches, the real thing that broke the camel's back, as they say, was a show I did in New York City and they had to take the pieces down.

[00:31:29] And I had just invested at least fifteen hundred dollars on these beautiful white frames. They had glass. And when they came down and I got there, most artwork that is framed has hardware on the back that is for hanging on the wall. So you see it has screw eyes and if you put the the screw eyes part up against the front of a wood frame, well, you can imagine I was horrified by what I saw. So this this told me, OK, I have to come up with something. So it's not like it's the most revolutionary solution, but it was something I needed. So I talked to Mark and I said, can you just make me custom bags out of some bubble material? And he said, sure, I'll try. So he used whatever machinery he had and I gave him some of the sizes. And lo and behold, when I put my artwork in it, it was like, wow, everything just went right in. It was quick. I could then if I wanted to put it into cardboard after that. But just the amount of time savings and the ease of having custom bags that were just a little bit bigger than my artwork was a revelation. So then we worked together to find a really nice heavyweight bubble that was laminated on both sides. It doesn't have any of the exposed bubble, which I'm sure you and everyone knows about with a lot of bubble wrap. And so that it's nice and smooth on both sides. It's heavy weight. It even stands up by itself when you want to put something in. And so I was able to take down a large show I did with like 20 pieces, some as big as four by six feet with my friend in maybe 15 minutes, which which would be unheard of. I just had him hold the bags for me. They came right off the wall, right into the bags protected and into the back of my car.

[00:33:27] But all the other artists were like, oh, man, that's good marketing for you.

[00:33:33] We do have a little label and each one and it says GalleryPouch so that people can find them at gallerypouch.com and that has links over to framedestination.com. But just seeing the quotes that people have sent and all the great reviews, it makes me feel so good that something I needed for my own work has been able to help so many people. And it's funny sometimes when you hear the things that people are using it for, like mannequin parts, and because you can have them made in almost any size, like I use them for my tripods, because if you've ever bought a tripod, sometimes this is just a joke.

[00:34:14] The bag that they make for it is so hard to use with the tripod. So I just I just have the bags made for me that are just a little bit bigger than my tripods. And then I can even put them in my suitcase, I can bring them out and then it's just open and done and so they can order custom sizes from you.

[00:34:33] Right. That's the beauty of the product. Each one's made by hand to to size up to about 50 by one hundred fifty inches.

[00:34:41] Wow. You could put a body in there.

[00:34:49] Yes, you're right. But that's where it really becomes something that stands out because you just try to protect something that's like four feet by six feet and being able to do it in literally seconds. And I was at a show and someone had just sold a panorama. It was about seven feet long by about one and a half feet tall. They had sold it, I think, for fifteen thousand dollars and they had the worst protection for it. So I happened to have some gallery parts, material side. I fashioned a protective bag for them and they were so happy.

[00:35:27] Oh, but yeah, I mean, you could probably put one on each end if you had to, right? Absolutely. You can meet in the middle. Yeah. There's so many different ways to use it, but that is one option.

[00:35:36] You can have two made and then you can use them like, like those envelopes that you buy in the post office.

[00:35:44] It says amazing, amazing that yeah. Just something fill in need and the people will beg you for.

[00:35:51] I mean, it's kind of like the way my whole life has been.

[00:35:54] I wanted to learn how to be a professional speaker. So I started speaking like crazy and then people started begging me to to help them with it. And the same thing with the Internet. I started studying Internet to sell my public speaking stuff. I just got so good at it. People started begging me to teach them. So it was like doing something for yourself and then people see the success of it. Then you can turn it into another side business. So that started out beautiful. So you got the freebie for everybody, huh?

[00:36:25] Yes. I created a special page for your listeners at backup.fm/tom, and there you can see a couple quick tips, but also if you'd like to add your name and email, you'll get some excerpts from a few of my books. You'll get some tips. You'll get my back up blueprint, which is a visual way to see how you can lay out your hard drives and your clone drives and all types of things related to that, and there's a lot of other things. Plus, if you'd like to have a chat about your backup strategy, I have a way that we can connect. I like to set aside some time each week to speak with people about that, because I also have a mentorship program and in many ways it's modeled on yours, although it is a little different. But I've learned so much from being part of your program that I want to help people in a similar way.

[00:37:29] Beautiful, beautiful. So everybody, it's backup.fm/tom that'll be in the show notes and this is episode 329. So you go to screwthecommute.com/329 if you want to hear the whole thing again. But if you want to go directly to Andrew's stuff, it's backup.fm/Tom.

[00:37:56] Well thanks so much for coming on Andrew. We're going to I know people need to jump on a lot of those points, like right away to protect their stuff or they're going to be sorry one of these days is hurricane season. Just think of all those poor folks down in Louisiana and east Texas.

[00:38:13] And I know a lot of them probably didn't do this and probably going to suffer because of it. So don't let that happen to you.

[00:38:19] So thanks for coming on, man.

[00:38:21] Thank you so much, Tom. It was great.

[00:38:22] All right. We'll catch you on the next episode, everybody. See ya later.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com