456 – This guy does what he loves and writes about it: Tom interviews Hovey Smith

Episode 456 – Hovey Smith
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody. It's Tom here with episode four hundred and fifty six of screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Hovey Smith, and I'll tell you what, this guy does all kinds of cool stuff. And he's also going to tell you how to make your own job. How perfect is that for screw the commute? So we'll have him on in a minute. Then I want to lerche it to an upcoming episode. Next episode is 457. That's email marketing part two. So 454 was email marketing, part one last Monday. So you want to check that out because that's where the money is for all of us online. Guys, all this social media is just designed to get him the heck off of there onto an email list. All right. How'd you like me to send you big checks? Well, my affiliate program has been in full force for many, many, many years. You can get commissions on small products as much as little as eight dollars and fifty cents, but helps sell hundred of them. And you got eight hundred fifty bucks from me or one speaking engagement could get you a 5000 dollar commission. So anything in between. So email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com if you'd like more details on that and grab a copy of our automation ebook. It's at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And this is where you can get a book that we sell for twenty seven bucks. But it's yours free for listening to the show. But it has saved me millions of keystrokes and allows me to get my work done way faster and to ethically steal customers off of people that are too slow to get back to, to prospects and all that. So grab that at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and then grab a copy of our podcast app to put on your cell phone and tablet at screwthecommute.com/app.

[00:02:17] All right. I usually tell you about my school now, but I want to tell you about something way bigger than my school and what my school is doing. You know, for years I've preached that people with mobility problems, you know, have a heck of a time, just something that takes us ten minutes to do to travel somewhere. It takes them a couple hours sometimes. So I said, you know, my school is perfect for people with disabilities where they can not only study from home, they can legitimately be hired from home. And every business on Earth needs these skills. This are Internet marketing skills that I've been living since the Internet started commercial internet started in 1994. So I want to get these people hired. We're doing five people to put them through the program and I'm hiring two folks with disabilities to help run the program. And we're doing a big Go Fund Me campaign to finance the whole deal. But I'm going to change these people's lives for the better. And hopefully you can give me some help on that. So check the website out at IMTCVA.org. It'll be in the show, notes, disabilities and anything you can contribute or share of the Go Fund Me campaign will really be appreciated.

[00:03:34] All right, let's bring on the main event. Today's guest is author and outdoorsman William Hovey Smith. Hovey's most recent business book is Make Your Own Job Any Time and Anywhere at Any Age. And he advocates conceive your own job, have fun, make money and experience the most exciting life you can imagine, which is perfect for screw the commute. Hovey, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:06] Yes, sir, I know. Let's have at it.

[00:04:09] Yeah. Boy, I just love you. And the things you've done that just reminds me of me, but some of the things I tell you for I think you're going to think how pitiful I am. And one of them has to do with I bought a muzzle loading gun. I couldn't tell you what brand it is. Some guy got it for Christmas and didn't want it. I got it fairly cheap. It's very nice. And I bought all the stuff and then I've never shot it, you know, I don't even know how to load it. So. So tell everybody about what you're doing now then. We want to take you back because you got a colorful life that we want to hear about.

[00:04:47] Yeah, well, first off to the point of the meeting that is helping you folks create your own. You have a lot of people decide, well, I want to do something else, but trying to figure out what that something else is is the real trick in the whole business. So what I outlined in my book is a way you list a whole series of Tom. Things you might have done in the past. OK, something you've seen somebody else to do is that, you know, I could do that. Or. Something you haven't perhaps even conceived of yet, it's not in your can. But as you develop and think about these things, you write them down, you take a list. And then you check them off and say, yeah, I can do this one right now. I need to make next month's rent. I won't have to pay rent next month. I need some cash. So, OK, you go on eBay and you sell something you've already got that's easy and simple. But the job making part of it is you set yourself up as an eBay seller for your whole apartment complex or your whole neighborhood or your whole city. So you become the person to go to see if anybody else has something they want to sell on eBay. You handle that for that money. You make a one time style into the business and then maybe you say, well, I always wanted to do X, but I need to have state certification to do it. I need to take some courses online or whatever, get some practical experience through an apprenticeship, pass the state exams. OK, that takes a little longer. So you plan on doing that later in life. And finally, at the very end of life, well, you plan something that you can make a little money and that's really just plain fun to do. And you go back and we'll get into that a little bit later. Yeah.

[00:06:47] So all of those are great ideas for money fast. And it's not hocus pocus either. It's all stuff that's right there in front of your face, especially that eBay thing. So you have made a living doing a whole bunch of fun stuff. I mean, you write you write for a lot of magazines and you write your own books doing the stuff you love, right?

[00:07:09] Well, yes, sir. I've been writing and selling materials for outdoor magazines since the 1970s. And since then I had done podcasts, radio. I've written some 20 odd books and I'm starting on my first novel screenplay and movie project and well into that at the moment.

[00:07:30] And where do you where do you live?

[00:07:32] I live in rural central Georgia. I'm well away in the middle of nothing.

[00:07:38] Yeah. Do you have this? I know you're into hunting and that's another thing that you'll think how pitiful I am. I think I'm closer than the deer killing me than me killing a deer. Although I got a freezer full of deer meat that my buddy felt sorry for me and helped me process it and take it so. So do you have your own land to hunt on or do you just go all over the place and hunt?

[00:08:03] Well, the answer to that is both. All I have to do to hunt is just walk out my back door. But this is something I've been planning on really for decades. I was fortunate early in high school. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do either archaeology or geology. And at the time, there was no market for archaeologist's except in state museums and such place. So I chose geology and after I pulled my military career, which all able bodied men had to do during that era, I got my degree in geology and then did exploration geology all over the world. Wow. Have you written about that? Well, I have one one book on the geology of Bartow County. I haven't done much on exploration geology per say, although I did incorporate considerable geologic content in my new novel, which is based in part in Sicily, which is one of the most geologically exciting places on Earth. Not too good for the people who live there, but from a geological point of view, very exciting indeed.

[00:09:18] I just saw happened to see I get these this email from the good news network. You know, it's no bad news on this place. And this guy had all his life wanted to dig up a diamond that he would use to for an engagement ring for his wife. And apparently is a place, I think in Arkansas or somewhere, which is a 37 acre diamond bed. And they find a couple diamonds a day. You have to pay to get in. And he found a two point two carat diamond for his. Is that considered geology, that kind of stuff?

[00:09:49] Wow. Yeah, that certainly is. I've been to that pit in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, as I read it, and I was not lucky. He he yeah. In Murfreesboro, it's the only diamond mine in the continental U.S. Now there are also some diamond mines in north, but these are only very recent discoveries indeed in the past decade or so. But yeah, you can go and splash around in the mud, Murphysboro, and you can pick up a real genuine. Wow. But two plus carats. Yeah. That's a big one for Murphysboro. Yeah.

[00:10:25] And so anything in particular that you discovered in your going around the world doing geology.

[00:10:31] Well, nothing really spectacular. Like, uh, I was in metallic mineral deposits, copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver, tungsten, uranium, lead, cetera, etc. Nothing so really exciting. Yeah, I did tromp over some huge undeveloped mineral deposits in Alaska and elsewhere and help with those. And we did make some major discoveries. But mines are things that oftentimes take a decade to develop. These are not small endeavors these days and they require a lot of exploration and a lot of development work. Well, now

[00:11:12] Another topic, and this is what I love because you've done so many different things. The one that bug this question has been bugging me forever. And I think you're going to help me out here. Bo fishing. You've written a book about it? Yes, sir, you do it, but what I'm wondering about is when you're looking through the water, isn't there some kind of refraction that means you got a name someplace to be able to hit the fish? Because it doesn't it's not it's not where it looks like it is.

[00:11:43] Well, that's exactly right. You have to aim actually below the fish, below the fish. But that comes in below the fish. But that comes exactly unless the fish is actually breaching the water on the surface, which oftentimes they do, particularly carp and guar, which is the main boat fish species. And by the way, both of these very edible and good problem to bear. So the key to learning how to both ensure that there's no other way to do it. But it's an interesting and exciting sport. The best I ever did go fishing was in the Truman Reservoir below the dam there. And the car were running at the surface and I was shot with power back in two hours, you know.

[00:12:37] Three hundred pounds of it, every one of those fish. What happened so far is that in two hours and gave everyone I'm away except when I was out. And these fish are fine eating, by the way.

[00:12:50] Well, I say that leads into another.

[00:12:52] I have recipes for them. And yeah, that's what

[00:12:54] I was going to say that leads into you. You also have writing and and books on the cooking game. Right.

[00:13:01] Right. And all of my outdoor books. I have a chapter on the rear quarter of the book or so is filled with recipes on my bottom fishing book. I have recipes for things like carp salad course, a good car. He's yeah, he's shot and he's kept cool and cool, just like you would any other fish you were going to scale and back and what you don't eat or the bait fish, you take it out of bounds and you make the equivalent of a tuna fish salad and it's better than any tuna fish salad you ever had. It's not greasy and it doesn't have the tinny face, the take a taste that you get from candombe. Amazing.

[00:13:49] Amazing. Now, ways to tenderize deer steaks. Well.

[00:13:55] Yeah, gear is a very lean meat markets nature, so if you just take it and try to cook it like you would have sirloin steak or rib eye that has all this interstitial fat on your phone up on you, and it'll get harder as a shingle. So you need to cook it more. And so you so you take your deer, say, can you just brown it on the grill? Yes, sir. And then you put it in a pan with all four onions and peppers and whatever else you care. I put peppers on mine and onions on it, lots of mushrooms and just sit there and let it simmer. And then it comes out as tender as you would like to have. Wow. Just keep it at a low. He just let it sit there and cook. But if you try to cook it fast, it'll go hard, but cook it slow and with patience and you'll come up with a very nice piece of meat that you can eat even if you don't have. Yes.

[00:15:05] Going to try that tomorrow. My patience.

[00:15:07] Of course. You're on your way to get tender to me.

[00:15:09] There you go. All right. So let's get back to the the job stuff now. What is your favorite of all the you have such a thing of the things you've done?

[00:15:18] Well, the favorite of all is what I'm doing now. It's always been that way, I guess. And this is including making my own knives, which I have done. Oh, but now I'm doing a a novel screenplay and movie project. So this is how it started off with a project called Father of the Grooms. And it's now morphed into a book which is Until Death Do You Part, which will be out shortly as an audio book and then perhaps in another month as a softcover book. And this is a novel that takes place in California, Louisiana and Sicily. And I conceived of this from the chance meeting of a Louisiana family of Sicilian origin who went back to Sicily and found, unknown to them, that they were deeply related to the Mafia. And in my in my fictional treatment, I give that family two sons, a gay hairdresser, uncle and a daughter, and they tour around Sicily. However, the cake is, is that when the two guys arrive on Monday, they are informed that they will be married to two women they have never even heard of on Friday or none will leave the island alive. Boy, wow. And they're also being pursued by a rival mob from Naples. The FBI and the Italian Antion Mafia Association and in cahoots with an Irish priest thrown in the mix. So we have quite a cast of characters and Megan and some good, interesting, entertaining and visually striking message.

[00:17:14] Is it I mean, is it considered a comedy?

[00:17:17] It would be considered a dark, dark

[00:17:20] Comedy, right? Yeah. Wow. Well, again, when you're not going to work every day, you can think of stuff like that. So, yeah. So you've got how many books have

[00:17:35] More than 20, depending on how you count more

[00:17:37] Than 20. Right. And you've been writing for outdoors magazines for a long, long time. Did you ever pursue endorsements or sponsorships from any any of the equipment, people or stores?

[00:17:51] No, I never did. You'd be perfect for that. Well, and the fact is that and a writer who gives impartial reviews of what he tests, that's something that's a step too far. Yeah, it's part promote say, one maker's guns. Then I have to say those are the guns of the best in the world. And they may or may not be, but if I give equal treatment to all, I don't get the endorsements. I don't get the income from the companies themselves. But I give my readers. A more believable and usable product that's fairly based, not I don't give an opinion because somebody pays me,

[00:18:35] You know, you've got a busy YouTube channel. How long have you had that?

[00:18:40] That channel has been up for a little more than seven years.

[00:18:44] Yeah, he got almost 9000 subscribers. And I watched a bunch of the videos. It's just the information is great. What kind of equipment used to record?

[00:18:55] Just a simple Sony camera, a little handheld camera. And I also have a separate Sony microphone. You know, like, where's that? When I was still doing a lot of I still do that where I'm doing a lot of reporting. I used to go to the Chacho every year and report from that, but I'm not doing that anymore.

[00:19:20] Well, you're such a, you know, man of my own heart. I tell you, just do stuff you really love and make money at it. It's screwing the commute, that's for sure. So. So how do they get a hold of you? How do they see all this stuff that you have?

[00:19:34] Well, the best place to start is with my own page HoveySmith.com

[00:19:45] Exactly right. What would they find there.

[00:19:52] Well they'll find my main page which will scroll down through it, will tell them about my books, about my novel. I got a very good Kirkus Review on the business book, by the way, and they called it a worthy book for Beginning Entrepreneurs, which is indeed high praise from them. They are very rigorous about their reviews. And one poor author, they told it to burn a book.

[00:20:25] Ok, what else are they say?

[00:20:26] So my website is well, we have pictures of all my books. We have a review page where you can see reviews of our past works. We have an action page where you can connect with some of my videos and well, it's just a pathway to just about everything I have in private.

[00:20:47] I saw somewhere you had an eight part e-book series, or is that a series of just eight different e-book?

[00:20:54] Well, I do have an eight part e-book series on muzzle loading guns.

[00:20:58] Oh, yeah. That's the one.

[00:20:59] The reason I did this and I did this as a series on muzzle loading, because muzzle loading is such a small part of the general outdoor market that it just didn't warrant publishing these books and soft covers. But a lot of people like you want or they needed the information and this was putting it out there and the most inexpensive and available source, right?

[00:21:23] Yeah, no, I love e-books. Yeah. Because you can get them instantly. And and from the writer's point of view, you don't have the shipping and all the other stuff. So on your books, would you prefer if they bought them from your website or Amazon or what.

[00:21:37] Oh actually from Amazon. So I don't have to worry about shipping. Yeah.

[00:21:41] There you go. There you go. Wow. So, well, I'll tell you what I'm taking out of this, I got I'm going to be eating nice tender dear me tomorrow after I thought steaks. Steaks.

[00:21:55] Yeah, yeah. He is right here on the grill. You're not doing right. Yep. There you go and grab a copy of that, that latest book. Folks, make your own job. Like I said, it's absolutely perfect for this show because I want you making your own bed, not not having to make somebody else rich all the time. So thanks so much for coming on, Hovey.

[00:22:18] Well, thanks very much for having me.

[00:22:21] You're welcome. So check out HoveySmith.com. We'll have that in the show notes and then also take a look at that, helping us out on that program for the disabled. All right, everybody, we'll get you on the next episode. See you later.

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