341 – He flunked out three times and now he’s a Ph.D: Tom interviews Rob Garcia

Episode 341 – Rob Garcia
[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 and forty one of Screw the commute podcast.

[00:00:29] I'm here with Rob Garcia. He's a repeat guest and this is part of Vetrepreneur's Month on Screw the Commute podcast. Listen, this guy has eight books, one hundred and thirty five interviews and more than that really by now he started a magazine. He's winning business awards. And, you know, he had a silver spoon in his mouth. You hear all about that later. So you know that none of that stuff's a big deal. You'll hear about that a little bit later. So check out episode 340 if you missed it. I talked all about lead magnets and ethical bribes for list building. I have a brand new e-book out on this building, The Ultimate Guide to List Building. And that's what I talked about in episode 340. And of course, for all Rob stuff and all the links, anything we talk about, you can find the episode at ScrewtheCommute.com/341. Anything you ever want to find episode wise, that's how you do it. All right. How would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the shows helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says, send the voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you. And hey, don't forget to put your website in there and you'll get a big shout out in front of thousands of people in a future episode of Screw the Commute.

[00:01:58] Also, you got to get a copy and you got to do more than get a copy. You got to actually use the darn thing. I'm giving away a 27 dollar ebook for you. Listen to the show called How to Automate Your Business. It's how I handled up to 150000 subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. You can get it at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. The darn thing I'm telling you, it's been the lifeblood of my business allows me to steal business from other customers or companies because they're too slow to get back to people and all kinds of good stuff like that. I actually save me seven and a half million keystrokes, just one of the tips in there. So grab a copy of that book. Also grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app where you can put it on your cell phone and tablets and take us with you on the road. It does all kinds of cool stuff. Now, everybody's freaking out, folks, about this pandemic. But I'm not Rob's not his students aren't my students. Are it because we know how to sell online and do things OK? We're not just sitting around doing nothing and crying in our, you know, crying because of this pandemic. You got to take the bull by the horns and do something about it. And that's what he's going to talk about. That's what I talk about.

[00:03:25] And I formalized my training in two ways, one over twenty years ago, and my mentor program, which I'll tell you about later. And twelve years ago, I took three years of scrutiny to get the only license dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. Nobody on Earth has gone through the scrutiny that I have with background checks and all this bonding and all this stuff to get the license. So check that out at IMTCVA.org. It's a great thing for you or a great legacy gift for a young person in your life, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, because, you know, they're spending all this money going to four year colleges now. And and, hey, our guest is a Ph.D. So, you know, both of us believe in higher education, but right now it's changed. People are just, you know, going to school, paying 80000 bucks to get indoctrinated and learn how to protest. So and then they're competing for jobs at Starbucks because they have no marketable skills. So this school gives you hard core skills. And we had some one girls making six thousand dollars a month on the side. And her dad had spent eighty thousand bucks on her college education and she was working a crappy job and he gifted the scholarship to her and bam, she took right off with it. So because these skills are needed by every business on Earth. So we'll tell you about how you can get a full scholarship later if you're in my mentor program.

[00:04:54] All right. Let's get to the main event. Rob is the warrior strategist. He quit his job as a technical writer to follow his passion of being a business educator. He founded Shift. Make sure you know, you can hear that clearly what you know, because shift happens, you know, Advanced Life Design magazine and then created that Design your paycheck group to teach experts how to monetize their skills by making ebooks, consult, doing consulting calls and courses and a lot more after that.

[00:05:28] So, Rob, you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:05:33] I absolutely am Tom.

[00:05:35] All right, so glad to have you back, man, then been about a year since we had Vetrepreneur's Month in September. And on behalf of everybody that listens and myself, we want to thank you for your service and all the service you're doing for a regular folk and invest now. So tell everybody what you're doing now and then we'll we'll take you back a little bit, see how you got where you're where you are now.

[00:05:58] Yeah, absolutely. So as you mentioned, the morning shift events, Life Design magazine, we just released our new issue with Steve Sims had a very good year. We actually scored an interview with Scott Old-World right before the pandemic hit. So I've been interviewing some pretty heavy hitters that's been doing a lot of fun. So that's one thing I do. And then I started a group called Design Your Paycheck, which is a membership site. And basically I teach people how to monetize their skill set using 20 plus techniques so it could be courses, ebooks, virtual events, consulting packages, all the stuff. So that's what I've been up to.

[00:06:35] You teach them. I mean, you've gotten some really good publicity as part of their teaching them that.

[00:06:43] No, because what happened was Tom is that I started a course a couple of years ago called Tactical CPQ That was so that's the one with the publicity stuff.

[00:06:52] Yeah. So I started that and and after I'd landed at back then, you know, I was still starting off and I'd had about 120 interviews. And these days I think I'm up to about 170. And I after I'd had that many interviews, I put it into this course and ended up breaking 25000 in sales. And I mean organically. I've never taken out Facebook ads for it. So just the demand was there. I had some good results. And so after I created this course and got it out there and made those results, I was like, well, why am I not teaching other people how to do this? Because this isn't really that hard. And people have a lot of different skill sets they could turn into, you know, monetize the income. They just need a medium of transmission.

[00:07:35] So they you start concentrating on the event market or did you go right to the mainstream?

[00:07:42] It's about it's about 50/50 with veterans and civilians.

[00:07:46] But how did you start when you started? First started still same 50 50?

[00:07:51] Yeah, pretty much. I just focus on like you. I just try to be visible across a couple different channels and really, like, convey strong messaging.

[00:07:58] Got it. Got it. Now I want to read something from an interview you did with the San Diego Voyager. And, you know, I was teasing folks in the beginning and it's OK with Robbie. He's he tells this story himself. But this was something you said in the Voyager, and I quote, After being raised in a family of alcoholics and drug addicts, I failed high school and I failed to colleges due to a learning disability. I joined the Air Force and finally had structure and food. And I was able to complete my education, learned about leadership and teamwork, and moved to my dream city, San Diego.

[00:08:40] And he now is a Ph.D. that teaches other people and is a professor.

[00:08:45] So how the heck does a person that comes from that background get the heck out of there?

[00:08:55] The million dollar question, it all comes with a desire for success, Tom and not understand, not a desire for money, a desire for success, like balance happiness.

[00:09:06] I just how can you learn that when you came from that background? I mean, you see, when your seems like you're surrounded with failure.

[00:09:15] Yeah, there there are three different phases of my life, and so that first phase was kind of a kind of a rough one. But what I did, I literally moved fifteen hundred miles away and I never, ever went back. And once they join the military, it did give me that stability in chicken and for you, that's what I wanted to go to school at night and I worked really, really hard. I was able to finish my bachelor's and two and a half years.

[00:09:44] And this is after after flunking out of high school and flunking out of two colleges.

[00:09:50] Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:51] And then the Air Force straightened you up. Is that what it looked like?

[00:09:55] Yeah, I, I they're very good at taking care. You know, everybody knows it's quality of life for the Air Force and it's very true. And I lucked out because I had a job that was conducive with night school. And so I was fixing b 52 bombers during the day. And then at night I would go to college.

[00:10:10] And then they probably need a lot of fixing, too, because they're all right.

[00:10:15] Yeah, most of it from the 50s.

[00:10:20] But yeah. So so with that with that schedule, I was able to to finish stuff up.

[00:10:26] And then I moved to San Diego and immediately became a tow truck driver and enrolled in grad school same time.

[00:10:32] Wow. Did you get in really crazy situations in the tow truck thing?

[00:10:39] I'll tell you, most people have no idea how dangerous it is. I was terrified half the time. I'm not mechanically inclined.

[00:10:45] And when you're fixing a flat tire with cars speeding by next to your head like a couple of feet away, it's pretty scary.

[00:10:52] Wait, wait, hold on a second. You're not mechanically inclined, but you are working on airplanes.

[00:11:01] Well, when I was an electronics guy on airplanes.

[00:11:04] OK, all right.

[00:11:05] So, yeah, I couldn't do anything to an engine except pointon and.

[00:11:10] All right, that's good. But I mean, did you have to do the repossessions and stuff?

[00:11:16] We did do a couple of repossessions, but the police were always there. Oh, okay. Thank God. Because I've heard stories people do come out with guns.

[00:11:24] Yeah, really.

[00:11:26] So tow truck driver to the professor of business. Wow. That's that's a there's a title for a book right there. Right. And speaking of books, you have eight books out. Tell us about that.

[00:11:38] Yeah. So I started I learned the process is self publishing, just like with the magazine. It kind of just taught myself how to do it.

[00:11:44] And so once the technology changed and we were able to to self publish completely changed the game. So I started writing books about things that were in my wheelhouse. So I wrote about charter schools and about technical jobs. And and the latest one I did a few years ago was called The Next Level Supercharged. And I taught speed learning because when I my 20s, you know, I had this problem is learning disability. And I realized that other people probably have learning disabilities as well. And so why not show them the things I did to overcome it and to be able to learn on a level of my peers. And I for me personally, Tom because I'm a kinesthetic, tactile learner, I work better with diagrams and colors. And so that's one of the techniques is diagrams. And so I outline 16 different learning techniques in this book and teaching people how to speed learn things.

[00:12:32] Wow, wow. That's that's crazy.

[00:12:34] Now, how do you where they find your books, you can you can Google, you can Google them or you can go on Lulu.com, Lulu and most of them are on there. Google search will probably bring them most of them up.

[00:12:50] Yeah, and so which ones which one are you most proud of, the current one, the next level supercharged.

[00:12:56] It's got interactive worksheets, a lot of diagrams, and I had pretty good sales on it.

[00:13:02] All right. How did you come up with this moniker, the warrior strategist? And how do you define a warrior? Because I've heard other people talk about warriors, but what's it mean to you and the people you help?

[00:13:16] So the warrior strategies came from the need for planning and execution, pretty much a military concept I feel more entrepreneurs should embrace. So let me ask you, Tom you you have all these processes going. You have all these things, social media interviews, all this stuff. Do you spend a day strategizing and planning?

[00:13:33] No, I'm just I just get my fire extinguisher out every morning and a lot of people do that.

[00:13:44] And and what I like to encourage, like you apparently figured it out very well.

[00:13:49] I'm a fanatic, though, remember, no family, no know anything, just some dogs here. And I work seven days a week. You know, I just immersed, you know, so you can overcome a lot of hassles if you decide not to have a regular life.

[00:14:02] I'm the exact same way I'm sitting alone in a giant apartment in San Diego. That's great. But so what I tell people is to spend a day. I have a method called one five one.

[00:14:15] And what that means is spend one day planning out your social media, planning out your you know, your interviews like what you're going to do in business, your income streams, your income goals, all the stuff one day of planning, five days of execution, actually, you know, doing the actions and then one day off. And I feel that brings a lot more structure to people. And I feel that it takes a lot off their plate.

[00:14:37] You know what? You're destined to be a billionaire.

[00:14:40] You know how I know how well I was sitting in a billionaire's house at dinner, just me and his wife and myself, and he said after dinner he took me aside and he said, you know, Tom.

[00:14:55] And he'd known me for a while prior to that. But he said, Tom, you should be sitting by the pool just thinking.

[00:15:05] That's like an abbreviated what you just said is I should be thinking instead of doing so.

[00:15:13] I came from blue collar and I like my hands and everything and the wires. And if something breaks in the house or the state, I go fix it myself. And I love that kind of stuff, you know? So I said, no, no. He says you should be sitting by the pool thinking, that's all he said. And and what he meant was exactly what you just said. So you apparently have the mind of a billionaire. That's interesting, yeah, yeah, because you're right, most people get up and, you know, look for the fire extinguisher and they go downstairs, you go, you know, go to work, the dreaded job. And that's that's pretty much your goal, right, is to get them out of the job.

[00:15:53] Yeah, that was actually my goal is to help them find what makes them happy. And for some people, some people like working, but other people want to be their own boss. And that's that's where really drives.

[00:16:04] Yeah.

[00:16:04] And you know what boss spells backwards out, you know, double SLB be so so I tell people, yeah, if you really, you know, really enjoyed going to work and socialise and just get a water fountain for your home or else start to smoke and go stand out in front of your house and just talk to yourself and pretend like you're back at the job, get the experience. Now again, it just amazes me. There's something else I read from one of your interviews. My mom was an alcoholic and was addicted to crack for a year to a point where she had to give me away. I mean, I almost got tears in my eyes when I read that to relatives while she got clean. How old were you? How did you feel at that time?

[00:16:56] On I was 12 or 13, and to be honest, I didn't find out about this until I think I was 33. I just knew that I went to steal my grandparents for a while and I never knew why. I know sometime sometime later, my mom and I were on the phone and we just talked about it. And she, you know, she let that one slip in. And I asked a couple questions. I probably got pretty angry. And then I was at. Wow.

[00:17:24] That's amazing that you were just maybe it's better. I don't know. But it just you're such an inspiration to people coming from that kind of background and overcoming it and reaching the pinnacles of education and spending your time helping others. It's just it's really something to be proud of, Buddy.

[00:17:45] But I appreciate that Tom in coming from you especially. I, i it means a lot.

[00:17:51] Well, you know, you said I had I had a nice family. I was like I said, we were the small town blue collar.

[00:17:57] But, you know, my mom and dad and and couldn't really stand my mother that much. My dad was pretty good.

[00:18:05] But, you know, it's similar, though, that once I graduated, I left and I swore I would never come back. Now, I even listen to this rock. You know, I hated my mother so much.

[00:18:18] I went to Santa school so that over Christmas I wouldn't have to come home advantage of it. You don't know anybody that's been gone that far.

[00:18:30] So, yeah, I went to Santa school and that way I can say I can't make it home, you know, like we got jobs for the kids, you know.

[00:18:38] Yes, that's amazing. Yeah, I was.

[00:18:42] And I don't want to brag, but I was the Santa for National Geographic's Christmas party in D.C., three years running.

[00:18:49] So, you know, there. But again, you don't know anybody that's done that.

[00:18:55] But I was you know, I was a little bit of a bad Santa, too. I had we after I did the kids' parties, I did a late night bad Santa, you know, Santa.

[00:19:04] And I'd go up to after the kids went to bed, I did the regular Santa and then the kids would go to bed and everybody else is still there. So then I would say, hey, sin has been known to lay a few dolls under the Christmas tree.

[00:19:20] And I'd say, like, sit on Santa's face and tell them what you want for Christmas.

[00:19:26] This is probably going to end up explicit.

[00:19:28] This is so, so. So anyway. Yeah.

[00:19:33] So I won't say I had it rough because I always had what I needed, but my dad just put a big work ethic in me and so that's, that's the way I made it. But still it was a two horse town. And where were you from originally to say Eureka, California, your eureka. That's on the mean streets. That's a cool, cool name. And now is San Diego still the the love of your life or things change in there? I mean, all we hear back east is like the whole place is exploding and blowing up and there's poop on the ground.

[00:20:08] And so what's San Diego? Still pretty, pretty nice. Beaches are amazing. We don't have a ton of restrictions. You know, we have homeless like everybody else, but it's not nearly as out of control as like L.A. And you do have a magazine restriction to ten rounds.

[00:20:28] Yeah, yeah. I'd think about that for me. Yeah. Oh, you were thinking about your magazine, right? Yeah. You know, you can have as many copies of that as you want.

[00:20:41] I'm but I'm still very happy here. I don't know if I'll ever move. I've been here 18 years now, and it was my dream. And I guess I got to make some new dreams now. But it's been amazing.

[00:20:51] Well, the crazy thing is, is that I mean, you hear that statistic about like U-Haul trucks.

[00:20:58] Oh, yeah, yeah, that's like it cost a fortune to get one in L.A. to come to Vegas, but Vegas is cheap to go back, you know.

[00:21:07] So, I mean, literally, like 10 times more. So people are leaving like crazy. I mean, it's scary. And then the fires. Well, you don't have anything to do with that. Were you are right.

[00:21:18] We had one about 25 miles east. That was that was a problem. And then I think I think they got it under control now. But once in a while it gets yeah. It gets a little crazy. We had we have a couple of days where we woke up and there's smoke in the air.

[00:21:31] Wow. Yeah. But I've got students up in Northern California that the sky is falling. I mean, the sky is like weird. It's like, you know, crazy apocalypse. Oh yeah. Yes. And the fires go on everywhere.

[00:21:44] And then some dumb arse, let's say, you know, set it up, set the whole place on fire with a reveal like a smoke machine or something, set the whole place on fire when they were doing a reveal party on what, you know, sex their baby was. And yeah, that's kind of set the whole thing on fire. Jus so now in this design your paycheck, what do you get into in that when you're helping people, what do you what kind of things you teach them.

[00:22:12] So they have we've covered about 20 different subjects now, and so there's a giant archive, so every week I put out an ebook based on the training and we've covered the first three.

[00:22:25] I tell everybody is design an e-book, a mini course and a consultant call. And once they master those three, then they can move on to the more complex stuff. Because even I didn't realize Tom that there's differences in complexity. So the difference between a group coaching a one on one, you know, a do it yourself evergreen course, consulting packages and and so we have all these different ways of monetizing. And I'm going to tell you something interesting, Tom the listeners are going to love this. People some people don't have skill sets, they just don't have let's say they've been taking care of their kids for 20 years, they never got to go to school. They never developed any skill set. And they come to me and they're like, well, how do I make money? Even if I if I don't want to do anything?

[00:23:08] And I say, you know, what sort of media platform? An interview, famous people, boom, just like it with my magazine and then sell advertising.

[00:23:16] Yeah, absolutely, that's that's the way right there, but I tend to believe that they don't have any skills. I mean, they probably had hobbies and they could I mean, there's an embroidery site that's got like 20000 members at ten dollars a month.

[00:23:31] Oh, yeah. Yeah. There are amazing business models. You would never think. Exactly. You just have to get popular is the thing.

[00:23:39] Yeah, but but a lot of the people that don't think they have anything to sell really do when you sit down and, you know, explore with them. But the what you just said is an easy way to, you know, just jump right in there doing it.

[00:23:53] Oh, absolutely. And you know what the latest one is, Tom that I've had the most demand for what's called success is sponsorship packages for podcast's. So let's say I have I have four members now that have podcast's and they haven't quite monetized yet. So altogether we ended up making these sponsorship packages. We meteor's I taught them how to promote the sponsors, all this different stuff. And I can happily say that three people have now sold packages, recurring revenue every month from their podcast they did not have before.

[00:24:22] That's beautiful. Yeah, and recurring is even better.

[00:24:25] It's so I tell people it's like an insurance policy for your for your family because the money keeps coming, you know, so. Exactly.

[00:24:32] Beautiful. Great. Ah, we got to take a brief sponsor break. When we get back we'll have Rob tell us what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated. So folks, about twenty years ago I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head and that people at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to to teach this stuff.

[00:24:56] And I and I knew a lot of these people. You give them fifty grand, they'd be hiding out in Taiwan, you know, waving the robe across the border. They're not doing anything for you. So I said, you know what, that's too risky for small business and puts them in a bad position. I'm going to just charge him an entry fee and then I'm going to tie my success to theirs. So for me to get my fifty thousand, they'd have to make 200000. Oh, man. Well, people love this. And seventeen hundred students later, it's still going strong and it's the most unique, most successful program ever in this arena.

[00:25:34] It's unique in that, one, you have an immersion weekend, of course, when the pandemic's over in the great Internet marketing retreat center, we shoot high level videos for you and edit them and put the graphics on in our TV studio next door. It's everything is one on one, no group, anything. So you other than the trip, the retreat center, you get about four or five people. But everything else, me and all the people I've train work with you one on one will take over your computer will teach you where to click. We're not the click and how to do this stuff. So it's like I said, the longest running, most successful, most unique program of its kind. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:26:19] And when you get in this program, you get a scholarship to my school that you can gift to someone else in your life if you'd like, which was an example I gave you earlier. The one guy got in the program gifted the thing to his daughter, and she just took off with it because these young people, you know, they're not fighting with the computers like us old farts, you know. So she just took off and she had clients in no time and she's was only in school for months and still has, you know, like six months to go. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com, give me a call. I'm glad to talk to you about it. No high pressure. Just wanted to show you the value of this and what it can mean to you and your family.

[00:27:04] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Rob Garcia, Dr. Rob Garcia, I might add, is with us today. And he has overcome some just unimaginable things to from my life and probably for most of our lives to get where he is today. And he's turned it around helping other people. So so, Rob, what's what's a typical day look like for you?

[00:27:29] Typical day pop awake at about 6:30, and I usually go for a run or started doing resistance band training, which has helped out a lot because my gym completely closed after that's done and make some really strong coffee. And then I usually do a inspirational Facebook, live in the morning, try and do one every morning and just motivate people to build that mindset, start their day off right.

[00:27:56] And then a couple hours will do client work and then maybe an hour of project work.

[00:28:02] And then I'll usually have something to work on as far as social media or monitoring my design, your paycheck group. And that's that's about a day. And then I end it like everybody else. Glass a glass of red wine and forensic files.

[00:28:16] Forensic Files. So.

[00:28:18] So how do you stay motivated? You just heard you say, yeah, I'm in this big estate by myself. You're in a big house or apartment by yourself. So how do you how do you stay motivated? How do you keep getting up and doing this every day and working?

[00:28:36] It's exciting to see the change in people's lives. And I know you've experienced this with your when you see a crazy client result. So like one of my clients just sold a seventy five hundred dollar package the other day and he was thrilled. We had two calls and he just, you know, we put the package together, he put it out there to it, to somebody, and they bought it. And so when I see the effect of my training on somebody that wouldn't have had it on their own, that's really what inspires me, just showing them the stuff that I've done, really resetting their mindset and teaching them that they can create the life that that they've always wanted, you know, freedom.

[00:29:10] That's for sure. Yeah. It's a lifestyle like, like our friend Steven Kuhn says, quality of life, you know.

[00:29:19] So yeah. It's a lifestyle business you really can create when you do what Rob teaches and I teach, you really can create whatever you want. There's nobody stopping you for, for doing what you want to do. And that's that's one of the things I've preached for years is I only deal with people I like. If I don't like it, just take a hike, you know, just get out of it. I don't have to deal with you or like a job where you got to you got to see him every day.

[00:29:46] No, it's not that way. So thanks for coming on. How did they find all this stuff? Here's Rob.

[00:29:53] They want to reach out to me, they could find all this stuff on my main site at yournextlevelofsuccess.com.

[00:30:06] Ok, we'll have that in the show notes and they can learn about the design your paycheck. And does that lead to your books at all or that's all going to be on Amazon or Lulu?

[00:30:17] The books are separate, but they can learn about design your paycheck or tactical CPQ and there are some free training videos on the site as well.

[00:30:24] You know, tactical CPQ is the same as the other six week group course. Right.

[00:30:30] So. So thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Thanks for your service again.

[00:30:36] Again, you're such an inspiration to to all our listeners and me too, because like I said, I had a pretty good and and you didn't and you overcame it, which is, you know, it makes it makes a rare individual.

[00:30:51] Thanks, Tom. I really had a good time and I appreciate you and all you do.

[00:30:55] All right, man. So everybody will catch y'all on the next episode. This is Vetrepreneur's Month at Screw the Commute. See ya later.

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