400 - You learn a lot in 44 years of business: Tom talks What I've Learned - Screw The Commute

400 – You learn a lot in 44 years of business: Tom talks What I’ve Learned

These are some things I've learned after 44 years in business. That's formal business, and as I was jotting these down, I was thinking, what order should I present these things? And I figured that that would take me longer to figure out than actually telling you about the ideas. So they're not going to be in any particular order here. Now, if I had to pick one of the most important things I've learned not only in business, but in life, it's persistence and consistency.

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Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 400

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

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Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

[05:47] Tom's introduction to What I've Learned

[07:24] Don't compare yourself to others

[08:17] Pay attention to your insurance

[09:20] Being fair with people

[11:38] Guard your reputation

[13:34] Be early or be on time

[14:07] Challenging employment ads

[15:55] Get a payroll service

[17:39] Be frugal but not cheap

[19:49] Be careful with delegation

[21:49] Profit margins

[23:14] Partnerships

[25:01] Give a unique experience to somebody

[26:39] Use publicity

[27:52] Be fun and pleasant to work with

[28:57] They lie!

[29:32] Keep your quality up and your fees reasonable

[31:25] Use automation techniques… up to a point

[32:45] Talk to people

[33:23] The most important business skill

[36:34] Sponsor message

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

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Dr. April Brown – https://screwthecommute.com/399/

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Episode 400 – What I’ve Learned
[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 four hundred of Screw the Commute podcast. This is quite a milestone. Four hundred episodes. That's a lot of talking and guests and editing and thousands of tips to help you start your business and help you in your entrepreneurial journey. So. So what I thought I would do in this episode is to go over some of the bigger principles. In other words, now I'm not going to get into minutia. I have lots of episodes that go deep into particular topics. But I want to give you some big principles of what I've learned and 44 years of formal business and really since I was 10 years old as a kid doing side hustles.

[00:01:13] All right, and we'll get into that in a minute. Hope you didn't miss Episode 399. Oh, my goodness, Dr. April was here and she's a sex therapist. She does couples intimacy vacations. And she also has something to do with service dogs. I don't know how those two things mix. Listen to this. I venture to say she's the only, only ever accountant who quit being an accountant to become a sex therapist.

[00:01:45] So I got to warn you, this is one of my very few explicit episodes. So you have been warned that was episode 399. And of course, if you want to go to one of the back episodes, you go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number, that was 399. So how would you like to hear your own voice here on screw the commute? Well if the show has helped you out at all in any of your business endeavors or giving your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the show has helped you. And also put your website in there so I can give you a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. And we got a couple of things for you. One is this twenty seven dollar ebook which you get free for listening to the show. It's how to automate your business.

[00:02:40] It's all the tools and techniques I used over the years to handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and 40000 customers. OK, without pulling my hair out, I mean, most of this stuff is either free or cheap and right in front of your very eyes. And you will thank me a thousand times. And you could probably automate that if you had the book. Right. So go download it at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's at screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right, one of the best things you could ever do for yourself, your own business or for young people in your life is get a good education in the field of Internet marketing for small business. I have been living and breathing this since the commercial Internet started in 1994, been teaching it for going on 23 years now and have been.

[00:03:51] Formalizing the training in the form of an actual licensed school, I have the only licensed dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world, at IMTCVA.org. It's licensed to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to live in Virginia because it's good quality distance learning. It's not like these four year colleges that are all of a sudden over distance learning now, you know, to try to keep sucking money out of you and then teaching you how to protest. And then you get out and get a, you know, compete for jobs at Starbucks. So check out IMTCVA.org and a little later, I'll tell you how you can get a scholarship to the school if you're in my mentor program. But this would be one of the best things for your business or to start a business online, even if it's a side hustle, if you're still doing the dreaded job, it's very low cost, high return type of business when you get into the information products that are 97 percent profit. But you have to know what you're doing because you can easily get ripped off doing Internet stuff, too. But if you gave a scholarship to a young person in your life, it would be one of the best legacy I guess you could ever give them, because we have people making money before they even graduate. And it's not for years either. The average person is between six months in a year when they graduate and we have people making money within a couple months of starting. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. And that way they'll have a real career that's in high demand. All the skills are in high demand by every business on Earth. All the things we teach are the things I've been living and breathing for all these years that people actually need in their business. So you can either start your own business work for somebody else or both.

[00:05:49] All right, let's get to the main event. Well, these are some things I've learned after 44 years in business. All right. That's formal business. And as I was jotting these down, I was thinking, what order should I present these things? And I figured that that would take me longer to figure out than actually telling you about the ideas. So they're not going to be in any particular order here. Now, if I had to pick one of the most important things I've learned not only in business, but in life, it's persistence and consistency. Most people quit things far too quickly. And if they would just have the guts to hang in there longer, many would probably be successful in what they were trying to achieve and.

[00:06:37] When they aren't consistent, that was persistency, when they aren't consistent, people don't know what to expect from them and most people want to do business with someone they can depend on. Now, if you aren't consistent in your quality, your customer service, your availability and all the other factors surrounding your business, you'll appear scatterbrained and probably attract scatterbrained customers. All right. So both you and the customer being scatterbrained like Scatterbrain is squared times two is probably not going to end very well when it comes to your business transactions. So persistency and consistency, big overriding principle, all right. Next thing is comparing yourself to others. Try not to do that. I mean, I've got a student right now is always comparing himself to people that have been doing what he wants to do at least twice as long as he has in. And they have certain strengths that he doesn't have. All this does is frustrate and discourage you. And also, you really don't know what they have done to get where they are. I mean, it's far better to analyze. As best you can, your own strengths and maximize them to get the same results that you shoot for and maybe yours will be even better. All right, here's another thing, this, like I said, I was just brainstorming all the kinds of things I've learned over the years as insurance. OK, this is really sexy part. Pay attention to your insurance. I mean, I got my retreat center hit by lightning so hard one time it blasted through all the surge protectors.

[00:08:28] I mean, just really knocked the heck out of the whole building and six thousand dollars in damage to TVs and computers and all kinds of stuff. Well, so I called Jennifer, I said, which is is my bookkeeper, I said, Jen, get the insurance policy, I'll call the insurance company and let's, you know, put a claim in. So she got the insurance policy out and she said, hey, Tom, I got bad news for you. I said, What do you mean? She said, you got a six thousand dollar deductible. I said, What? I had not paid attention, I never went more than 500 or a thousand dollar deductibles, I didn't pay attention, I signed off on it and boom, so I had to pull the 6000 out of my pocket to replace all those things that should have been covered by insurance. Totally my fault. All right. All right, next thing is fairness. Now, I found that just being fair with people can do wonders for your business. Now, let's say you messed something up in your business and we don't do that very often, but, you know, any company that does a lot of business is going to make mistakes. It's what you do about it that shows what kind of good company you are. So I have a thing and you can steal this from me, but if you mess up, just own up to it to the customer.

[00:09:54] No matter how irate they are and you say this and then you shut up, what you say is, I know we messed up, I'm really sorry, what can I do to make it right? And then just shut up, just shut up.

[00:10:10] Let them scream, let them moan, whatever is going on, I mean, you know, my kind of business usually is not life or death stuff, but but just shut up, just say what can I do to make it right and shut up.

[00:10:24] Not once in the 44 years I've been in business. Has anybody ever ask for more than what I was willing to give them to make it right? Generally, people are fair, so you just be fair and own up to it.

[00:10:41] I remember this one idiot that I've chased around for being a fraud criminal. He told his assistant, you know, don't check the voicemail that way. They're there. If they're looking for a refund, the time for the refund will run out before we ever hear the voicemail.

[00:10:58] I mean, can you believe that? What a piece of crap that guy is. So just be fair with people. That was another thing where he he he took a better job and a mother and daughter team were coming supposed to come in and fly in to consult with them. He found a better job that day and just told him, no, I can't do it anymore. And they had already booked their airfare and they had to pay these big change fees and he wouldn't he wouldn't do anything about it. He said, oh, it's too bad. I just I'm busy at day.

[00:11:30] And until they called me and I called him up and shamed him before he went over the deep end so far that he's just pretty much a criminal. But, you know, that's the kind of reputation which is the next thing that I'm going to talk about here is you can either do things that create a good reputation or a bad reputation. Well, that guy is a criminal. He's got a reputation of doing criminal things and fraudulent things. So you don't want that. You got to be a sociopath to be able to sleep at night when you got that kind of reputation and you keep doing things to make that kind of reputation.

[00:12:06] So when we talk about reputation, guard yours unless it's bad and then then work towards fixing it then and don't just put a Band-Aid on bad things being said about you.

[00:12:20] You know, try to hide them, especially when you deserve them. If you deserve them, fix whatever you're doing. I mean, you're short term profits are not worth the super long term profits you can enjoy by having a good reputation.

[00:12:38] I'm on this new clubhouse app, you know, boy, it's seems like it's going to be really great. And people come out of nowhere and say things about me when they see me in a room like, man, I just want to tell everybody Tom Antion is the real deal and stuff like that. Just wonderful things. And some of them I never even heard of the people, but they heard of me. And people are going to hear about you the more business you do. What are they going to say about you? OK, what are they going to say about you? Are they going to say nothing at all in public? But then they're going to tell people, hey, don't do business with that person. You know, they really suck. You don't want that. I mean, I really humbly appreciate when they say those things, but I know inside I've worked hard to achieve that reputation.

[00:13:27] And you also have to avoid dealing with others with a bad reputation because it'll run off, rub off on you.

[00:13:35] All right, switch gears again. Be on time or early, we have a saying around here, if you're not early, you're late. Leave fashionably late to the fashion industry. How about that? And if you're in the fashion industry, don't listen to me telling you to be fashionably late. You're now getting into that inconsistent mode I mentioned earlier consistency. It may seem cool to be late, but I assure you it's not be early or be on time. All right. Here's another thing. Challenging employment ads, who I put in really mean employment ads you have now. You have to have guts to do this is to do it as far as I go. But it works like a charm. And I can only get away with the rotten ads that I write on Craigslist. But I write my ads to disqualify people, so only the best targeted people apply. I mean, I might say thing if you're a worthless slug, don't even bother applying, because if I don't throw you out of here in five minutes, the good employees that work here will. And then everybody that I've hired has been here for many years because I only get the people that say, I'll show this guy I'm good, I'm not going to, you know, get thrown out of there. They're here for years, so you can't get away with that in most other places, I've got to tell you.

[00:15:03] And here's another tip with regard to hiring, I use the phrase, I made this up and it worked beautifully paid internships. Now, why do I do that?

[00:15:14] Well, you know, I get a lot of people applying that are, you know, got their MBA in 1948 and they can't even, you know, turn on their computer and they want to work at an Internet marketing firm.

[00:15:28] And so I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want to discriminate against people, but I don't want to you know, I can't waste the time on these folks because they're dinosaurs. So nobody like that applies for an internship. They're too good for that. So beautiful. They don't bother applying. I get younger people that are more tech savvy and there we go. So, so paid internships is a good way if you need tech savvy people. All right. Get a payroll service. Speaking of employment, now, if you have employees, don't try to do this yourself.

[00:16:04] I mean, I did it for years, but it's a big time suck. And you got to, you know, do everything right when there's places like paychecks. And I hear this thing on the radio all the time, I forget what the name of it is like ten dollars a month to start.

[00:16:19] So, I mean, you just don't want trouble with the IRS. And now if you decide to use contractors, which I'm all for, you got to make sure they are actually contractors and you can't kind of fudge it, you know, that they're not, you know, and say they're contractors.

[00:16:36] And then and I'll tell you why I was in them. Luckily, I'm a packrat of sorts.

[00:16:42] And I saved all these magazines when I worked up in D.C., the Washingtonian magazine, and I got the state. Some real snooty lady from the state of Maryland came over and made an appointment with me and came in and tried to hit me up for payroll taxes, claiming that all these people working for me were not contractors. Well, I just shoved it up her butt when I showed ads that my people that were working for me were also running their own business. And so I had all these magazines with ads and boy, was she mad with a snooty bitch. She was she left without driving me for any money. But you got to be careful because I think, you know, the rules are crazy and you got to make sure they're actually contractors and not.

[00:17:36] You're just saying that to get out of paying payroll taxes, OK, be frugal, but not cheap. I invest all kinds of money in my business. I buy programs, training programs, all kinds of stuff. I'm in mastermind's with other people, all kinds of things like that. But on things that don't need to be brand new for the for my business, I usually buy used on Facebook marketplace or offer up.

[00:18:06] These are all places where you can buy stuff locally and you know, if you want to get murdered, you can buy them off of Craigslist now.

[00:18:14] But I have to tell you, be careful when you when you do this, you know, try to do it daylight in public places and there take somebody with you or something like that.

[00:18:23] But I'll bet I have easily, easily with without even adding stuff up. Saved fifty thousand dollars buying stuff for my business just by buying used. And I recently closed my my school building because everybody I was 7500 bucks a month and everybody's working from home, I'm just paying for dead air.

[00:18:46] And so my lease was up. So I said, I'm out of here. But it was packed full of furniture and tables and file cabinets and two floors. I mean, 3500 square feet where the stuff. So so.

[00:19:02] I had a lot of stuff in there that I had bought used when I opened the school 13 years ago. Well, check this out. I started selling off a bunch of this stuff instead of putting it in storage. And I was selling it for more than I had paid for 13 years ago had I paid and bought new stuff. Now, I did know it was mostly commercial grade stuff of other companies going out of business. So I bought it up cheap. I sold it for more than I paid for it after 13 years of using it. OK, so had I bought it new, I mean, I would have lost my shirt trying to sell it off you say, but selling it use when I paid little for it to start with. Hey, I made out say so. Be frugal but not cheap.

[00:19:51] All right, next. Be careful with delegation.

[00:19:56] You got to know what things should cost. I mean, if you refuse to get your hands dirty and understand what's involved in the services you buy. You may as well put a big target on your chest, you'll be like a duck in a shooting gallery. OK. Every time you get hit and turn the other way, you get hit again and you get hit and go back the other way and get hit.

[00:20:20] Most people delegate themselves into the poorhouse. I get so sick of these people that can't make their car payment. And they're telling everybody, delegate only do what you're good at. Well, if what you're good at is making you broke, maybe you should rethink that. All right. At least learn enough about it. I'm not expecting you to be an expert in all the kinds of things that you need, but I am expecting you to know what it takes.

[00:20:50] And there's a really good I forget where I learned this is years ago. I learned this. But there's a really good saying. Whenever you're getting any services, you use the phrase, here it is. This should be easy for somebody that knows what they're doing.

[00:21:07] And that means that it implies that you know what the job entails. So you don't look like a big dummy and they don't overcharge you. All right. In the bids say so.

[00:21:21] However, I'm not in favor of you being a big dummy. I want you to learn about the things that run your business. So when you do farm them out, you know, you're not getting ripped off and it shouldn't take a month to get something that should take a week. It shouldn't take a week or something and should take a couple hours, say.

[00:21:40] But these people, if they see you coming, they will take you for a ride and you'll just blow tons and tons of money. So be careful with delegates. All right. Profit margins. Now, if you stick with high profit margin products, you can make a lot of mistakes in your business and still survive with low profit products.

[00:22:03] One mistake can put you out of business.

[00:22:06] Now, probably one of the lowest profit margin businesses I've been in was my nightclub restaurant. And you'd think markup on drinks was enormous and you'd be right, but the food is not that much and you got waste and spoilage and liability and all of those things can eat you up.

[00:22:28] And even if you're in a low profit margin business already, you can add high profit margin products to your mix. And I'm talking about information products that are 97 percent profit. And they can not only give you a good cash flow, they can stimulate the sale of your other products.

[00:22:49] You really can't stump me if you come to me and say, well, I've got this kind of business and, you know, that wouldn't work for me.

[00:22:58] I'm calling B.S. on that there's always a way to work and information, just because you don't know about it doesn't mean that it's not there. And that's where you get with me and I figure it out for you.

[00:23:12] And then you make them and you make more money, say, OK, next thing is partnerships. Oh, my goodness. I generally avoid actual legal partnerships. See, it's easy to get into one, but getting out is usually where the danger is. There's so many variables and dangers.

[00:23:33] But instead of me trying to to lay them out here, just Google sample partnership agreements and see all the kinds of issues that need to be addressed up front. I'll go ahead and give you one, though. Let's say your partner dies in a car accident, heaven forbid. But let's say that happens.

[00:23:53] What happens now, what happens when they're crazy, incompetent spouse or son or daughter wants to take their place and all they're doing is ruining your business and you're stuck with them? No, no, no. All right. These things are worked out in advance with buyout agreements and insurance and stuff like that in place or whatever your lawyer or accountant tells you to do.

[00:24:19] All right. But I'm in favor of doing, you know, keeping control yourself, if at all possible, because you can lose a lot of friendships and get in a lot of legal crap by getting into a partnership because you're all excited in the beginning. And then maybe you have different work ethics. And one person promised to do something and then they didn't come through. Now you're fighting with them and you're doing all the work. No, avoid them unless absolutely necessary and make sure you have ironclad partnership agreement and nothing's ironclad. You know, if you if you get in bed with an idiot. But but just be careful with partnerships.

[00:25:03] All right, here's another thing.

[00:25:05] Give a unique experience to somebody any time you can give a unique experience to your customer, they'll pay more for it and generally refer you more.

[00:25:17] Now and it'll be an easier sell to see what this means for your particular business.

[00:25:22] I don't really know unless we discussed it in my mentor program. But for me, you know, let's say it's it's two trips to my retreat center where you get an immersion weekend as part of my mentor program. You get in my TV studio where we shoot high quality videos, marketing videos for an editor for you and put the graphics on two separate trips. You come here, you live in the in the state house with me, of course, when the pandemic's over. Yeah, you get a scholarship to my school, nobody on Earth has gone through the scrutiny that I have in the field of Internet marketing, background checks and criminal checks for me and everybody that involved in the school. And every year I got to recertify and they do spot checks and I get a fine of a thousand dollars per infraction per day or something.

[00:26:15] You know, I keep my nose clean air because I don't want those fines, but nobody has gone through that kind of scrutiny. So these are unique experiences that I provide and unique services I provide. People can't get anywhere else. You have to figure it out was for your business. But I will tell you, people will spend more money and it will be an easier sell because they can't get what you have anywhere else.

[00:26:41] Ok, next is used publicity now before the Internet was even around, I built my business by being on radio and TV and in print publications all around the world.

[00:26:53] I call this media marketing. Now you have I mean, all all that plus podcasts and social media where you can get publicity.

[00:27:02] I was fortunate to have some of the best media training in the world with Joel Roberts and Starlee Murray. And and it paid off big time in my career. So whatever you spend with those two or with me, because I also pass on media training to my students who can pay back with millions of dollars of publicity that virtually no one could afford to pay for.

[00:27:29] And and also being on shows and in publications has more credibility than advertising on shows and in those public and advertising and either on shows or in print publications.

[00:27:42] So get good at publicity. I have a book on it, How to be a kick butt publicity hound that tells you how I did it on radio and TV all around the world.

[00:27:53] Ok, next is something I try, this is I don't have to try very hard, but I'll be fun and pleasant to work with.

[00:28:03] I mean, I've had people join my full mentor program and the deciding factor after they knew that I knew what I was doing is that I'm easy going now. It's up to a point. You know, I'm tough and I hold your feet to the fire because that's what you pay me for.

[00:28:22] But I'm fun and pleasant to work with, I mean, nobody wants to give their money to a jerk, and unless they're coerced, like I've seen so many times that speaking events.

[00:28:31] But I'll tell you, though, that I haven't been beaten by anyone in the last 20 years at the back of the room sales, no matter how big their name was. And I'm not obnoxious about it.

[00:28:45] And besides giving better value than pretty much everyone in the in my field, my entertainment background shows through and I'm pretty much a joke around and have fun with all my mentees say, OK, now the next thing is I'm just sitting here looking at my printer for four.

[00:29:04] I got on this podcast, so they lie. This is a business tip, folks. They lie. They lie, they lie when they tell you why five printers are easy to set up, even if you do get them set up. The connection fails and then you got to set them up all over again. So I just was thinking about that. Threw it in there because they lie to you.

[00:29:34] All right, next thing, keep your quality up and your fees reasonable.

[00:29:40] Now, I wrote a whole book called The One Sentence Business Plan. I'm going to give you the sentence right here. I create quality products that people actually want at a reasonable price. And I service the customer after the sale. If every company on earth would just live by that.

[00:29:59] I mean, it took me 60 page book to tell you how to do those four things.

[00:30:03] Ok, but if people would just do that simple thing, they could make enormous amounts of money, you know, because some people charge, you know, exorbitant rates, but then they they have trouble getting business at all and then people expect more from them.

[00:30:21] Hey, I paid you all this money and you're not doing crap for me, you know? And so they get refunds and they get chargebacks on the credit cards and, you know, so all this stuff where I can't hardly even remember how to do refunds. Because I just give quality products at a reasonable price. People actually want them or I wouldn't have created in the first place, and then if they have trouble, I service them after the sale. It's so simple. But, you know, I came from a small town in western Pennsylvania. And, you know, with all the craziness in politics, I make the bold statement.

[00:30:56] I could take a farmer for any farmer from my hometown, put them in any government position, and they would do a better job than the person there because we all work on common sense and fair play. So I wish somebody take me up on that. I go, you know, go back to my hometown and grab all these farmers. That would be quite a sight. It'd be almost like Crocodile Dundee coming to Washington.

[00:31:26] Ok, now use here's an excellent use, automation techniques up to a point. Now, the free book I gave away for listening to this podcast really has saved me literally millions of keystrokes and allowed me to ethically steal customers away from other people because they take too long to get back. People want things now. So when I say automation up to a point, though, there are times when you just have to get on the phone to resolve something quickly. See, the faster you can take care of problems, the problems don't get a chance to escalate and you will grab more customers because they want what they want now. And the first person to take care of them gets the sale. And maybe a customer for life say so. Get that download that darn book and take one thing. Implement it, learn how to use shortkeys.com. Take this other thing with your signature files. You learn how to do that, implement it and you do. You know, by the end of a month it will save you so much time and effort and keystrokes and all. You just you will be thanking me at ten thousand times a.

[00:32:47] All right, let's see. Almost to the end there, talk to people.

[00:32:52] I don't care how important you think you are, you're not too good to talk to people, especially if you're in business, you got to talk to people. They don't want some hidden thing, you know, some crap that the bank put out that says, well, we give great customer service. Well, you didn't tell the tellers that today. You know, they don't want some ivory tower crap. They want to talk to you and, feel like they're important and though they'll do business with you. So talk to people.

[00:33:24] Now, the most important of all, I've coined this, the most important business skill in my entire business career is advertising copywriter.

[00:33:35] It is so important to your to your success, it's the number one scale in my entire 44 years in formal business and even since I was 10 years old, making fliers the sell stuff when I was a kid. The number one skill, so I made a reasonably priced course on at Copywriting901.com by the darn thing, now my mentees get it free. And if you want to get in my mentor mentee program or mentor program, that's at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. It shows you all the unique features of it, including getting the scholarship to the school, including two trips to the retreat center, including one on one tutoring. We take over your computer. You're not lumped in with a bunch of people more advanced or less advanced with you. You know, I'm a crazy, crazy fanatic for servicing my students and you can't find one of them anywhere. That didn't say I wasn't there for them when they needed me. That doesn't mean they did all the work. All right. But they knew I was here if they needed me.

[00:34:43] And my success is tied to their success and my success will be tied to your success. When people at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front and then a lot of them were rip offs like the guy I was telling you about earlier and. Then they wouldn't help you and they would just ignore you and dare you to sue them, you know, no, that's not the way. So I charge the way lower entry fee and then a percentage of profits that's capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. So for me to get my fifty thousand, you got to make a two hundred thousand while people love this and seventeen hundred plus students later, the program is still going strong.

[00:35:24] So I'm a fanatic, you know, I help people evenings, weekends, holidays not matters to me. I'm only interested in your success because and you got to have a leap of faith here.

[00:35:37] Hey, I don't get my big money unless you make big money so you can be darn sure I want to make my big money.

[00:35:43] So I'm going to stick with you.

[00:35:46] So anyway, that's a little bit of what I've learned over the 44 years of business. I'm just some of the big principles here. I'm sure there's if I sat and thought about it for a week, there'd be five hundred more. But but if you just did those things and concentrated on one a month in the next year, your business would be totally transformed in some of these things, could transform it overnight like copywriting and. Oh, jeez, you know, you heard the stuff I talked to you about today. So if you like to print this out, go to the show notes for episode 400. So screwthecommute.com/400, get the show notes and then use it as a template for improving your business this year. You know, we got a whole year ahead of us to to do that. And I swear to you will help transform. And if you want help, if you want to really fast track all this stuff and you want somebody on your team that's, you know, got skin in the game, then check out the mentor program. If you have kids, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, it's the school was the best legacy gift you could ever give them. I mean, I see grandparents giving them a car and then the car is junk in a in a couple of years and it's all down the drain. I see them paying their college tuition and the kids out of the workforce for four years is right. There is a bare minimum is two hundred thousand dollars down a drain, plus all the expenses of college and everything.

[00:37:17] And they're not getting usable skills. I mean, it's pretty much a joke. And, you know, I have this show in Hollywood that I'm working on called Scam Brigade. These college people in my not so humble opinion would be in jail for the things they're doing. I have a quiz on the school site. IMTCVA.org/quiz that shows seven different ways. Colleges are totally ripping off families and students. So, you know, I'm a big fan of education, but it has to be worth something and not just teaching you how to protest. So check all that out and get in touch with me. There's no high pressure here. I'd be glad to talk to you about your future online and your your business, whatever you need. I said I've been on both online and offline business. I mean, the my all my offline businesses were long before the Internet started. So I've had both offline and online experience. So I put that experience up. I guess most people do so. But it's all small business. If you're asking me for help on some initial public offerings for some big corporation, I ain't the guy, I am not the guy. But anyway, thanks so much for sticking with us for four hundred episodes were I guess starting with four or one will be heading for four hundred more. So appreciate it. I'm sure we have some big sale going on. So check the show notes for episode 400 and we'll probably have some big deal going on to give you a big discount.

[00:38:49] There's a celebration of four hundred episodes. All right everybody. We'll catch you at 401. See ya later.

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