490 – More Question Grab Bag goodness: Tom talks Ask Me a Question

Episode 490 – Ask Me A Question
[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.

[00:00:23] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode four hundred and Ninety of Screw the commute Podcast. We're in Vetrepreneur Month. And this is our Monday training session. It's not vet related, but just want to remind you to make sure you listen to all our episodes to highlight our great veterans this month. But this is another ask me a question episode. So it's a potpourri of different things that I've just learned and known. It'll save you time and money and make you go faster and and give you some insights on things you probably never thought about, and it could help you. All right. How'd you like me to send you big affiliate commissions? Well, just join my affiliate program and email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com For details. And you can make big commissions. You can make a full time living, actually referring my stuff. I've got commissions all the way up to $5000 or more so and everything in between. So check it out by emailing me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. Now, while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app and put us on your cell phone and tablet.

[00:01:50] Take us with you on the road. And also you got to pick up a copy of my automation e-book. If you really want inexpensive and free ways to really knock your workload down, let you handle more customers. Make more money. Just download it. I'm giving it to you for free for listening to the show, and we charge people for this book, so check it out. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Now we're still going strong with our pilot program to help persons with disabilities in my school, so we're training people through distance, learning good quality distance learning. Not like they were shoving on kindergarteners for the past year, right? But but good quality distance learning where we're going to try to get these people hired or in their own business so that they don't have to travel anywhere because many of them have mobility and sight problems. And and I'm really, really excited about this because I'm going to help change people's lives and I need your help to do it so. We're financing the program with a Go Fund Me account, and you can check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. That's my school site and then at the top, click on Go Fund Me and you can see the updates and how things are going and and any little bit you can contribute. We appreciate it. And if you're really flush with cash, you can sponsor a person yourself and wow, how proud would you be to to do that? So check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities.

[00:03:37] All right, let's get to the main event. Ask me a question, well, these are just a potpourri of questions I get every week from people. And I guarantee you it'll help you and make you work faster, make you more money. All these ask me a question episodes I've been doing over the past few months. All right, first question our reciprocal links, OK? Well, let me tell you about this in the old days. This used to be a really, really good technique where I'd say, Hey, you linked to me and I'll link to you. And it made us both look better to the search engines. Well, folks, if anybody suggests that to you nowadays, that is old as the hills that does not work anymore, that does not look natural to the search engines that two sites would link to each other. And recently people have been wondering, Well, what if we're our sites are really related and they should link back and forth between each other? Now I'm talking about links to other people's sites, by the way. Guess what? It's still will not fly in the eyes of Google. They came out and said, So. No, it's just I mean, yeah, you can ask people to link to you, but don't offer to link back or don't pay them for a link. All this stuff is now obvious the search engines and will hurt you when you think it's supposed to help you.

[00:05:09] So if some. Web person tries to tell you this is a good idea. They do not know what they're talking about. You know, we always say you can swing a dead cat and find a web developer or or social media expert who you know so, so don't do it. Reciprocal links are not OK. They haven't been for years and into the future. Google says they're still not OK, so don't do it. No reciprocal links. All right, no. Last episode, I did ask me a question. You know, I got a tech question. Well, this is not Kim Comando, not a tech show, and it's not also a health show. But I still have opinions on things that that affect you. So the next question I got, I'm not laughing about what's going on with this person, but it says my wrist hurts when I'm using my mouse. What should I do? Well, well, first of all, I always have to say, See a doctor. Don't ask Tom for any medical advice. Oh my god. Good luck to you if you do. But but I will tell you, you know, I have done I don't know how many hundreds of millions of mouse clicks over my career. And I happened to sit in an easy chair. I don't I haven't sat at a desk for four years, and even when I did see sit at a desk, I had a armrest on my chair and it's harder to do with a desk chair, but and an easy chair, you know, I leaned back, I put my feet up a lot of times.

[00:06:52] So I'm not, you know, just pulling blood in my feet all the time. That's a different issue. But then the nice, beautiful arm rests on the chair, keeps my arm perfectly straight with my hand. And I use the end of the the armrest as my mouse pad, and if it's the surface isn't nice, I can sit a mouse pad there, but my arm is always perfectly straight. There's no bend in the wrist. And boy, when I really found out how important this was, I decided to make what I call an iPod. That's I have this treadmill where I put a desk across the handles and then I can stand there and walk while I'm watching TV and I got my laptop there. Well, when I first did it, oh my God. The laptop was way down low, and so my arm was bent at the wrist when I was trying to type on the laptop. Oh man, I didn't last five minutes. It was killing my wrist, so I had to get a whole bunch of old phone books and jack the laptop up way high so that I'm standing there in my arms are straight and my wrists are all straight. Everything's in a perfect alignment and then I could do it. That's and that's another episode that I applaud is really cool thing, and it's better than sitting all day.

[00:08:17] So you got to get your arm straight all the time and again. See your doctor, see what you need, see if you need an arm brace or whatever, but you've got to get in a position that does not irritate those, whatever nerves or whatever is causing that stuff. So but I've gone for how long now? Twenty seven years? No trouble at all with carpal tunnel, and I guarantee I go ten times more than any normal human being. Clicking the mouse, that is. Ok, next question, is it worth making DVDs anymore? Well, that's a yes and no question. I would say no if you're just making online courses, things like that. But there's still a theatrical need for DVDs. I see when I go to there's these Redbox machines at 7-Eleven and in the grocery store lobby and things like that, and people are still getting movies all the time, I think the thing is they. A lot of the movies are fairly new, so people will pay for them, but they're using DVDs, which tells me they have a DVD player at home because a lot of these laptops don't have those things anymore, so their home stereo must still have them. So if you have some type of theatrical thing, I would say yes, it's a good idea. Another thing is is I bought a DVD sets off of eBay for very specialized topics.

[00:09:52] You know, I do a lot of martial arts stuff, a lot of you know, shooting and things like that. And so I still buy DVDs. So if you have some really niche topic and you do want to sell on eBay, you have to sell a physical product. You have to jump through enormous numbers of hoops to sell digital products. But just you didn't hear it from me. A lot of times you have the physical product, and then as soon as somebody buys it, you can email them and say, Hey, would you really like the digital download right away? And a lot of times they'll say yes. So the answer is yes and no, depending on your topic. Dvds. All right, next. Now I have just tonight, as I'm recording this, we're starting an email mastermind. We had such good success with our e-book mastermind. I thought, Well, what's another topic that's enormously important for people that there's a lot of details too. And so we're doing an email mastermind. It's not too late to sign up for it, even if you missed the first session. It's all recorded and you have access to me for questions and so forth. And you have accountability partners and everything, but it's email related. It's reminded me of this because this question is about email, and it says, what are the best days of the week to send email? Well, this is another it depends kind of thing now in general, if you're just doing general business stuff.

[00:11:20] Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the main the where I get the most success on emails. Now I also have great success on Sundays, especially when I'm driving to a webinar on Sunday night. But that's me. See, that's the thing. You always have to test things and people hate that answer. But you know, let's say you were doing sports stuff for college football. Well, in the middle of the week is not going to be as good as maybe Saturday morning or Friday night. So you have to test with your market, depending on what you have. But in general, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for general stuff, Mondays are not as good because after the weekend, most people were, you know, have a bunch of spam to clear out and they're busy getting started on the week Friday. They're all thinking about the weekend. So Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in general, unless you have a topic that's weekend oriented. And then the other thing you got to think about is besides days of the week is time of day. So if it's a corporate type thing, business to business, corporate. Well, they shut everything off at night, most people that just worked, you know, just do a worker bees. So you're, you know, you're screwing yourself over, trying to do something in the evening. Unless, like in my market, I have people that work for a job, but they want to be an entrepreneur. So the evening is when they can attend stuff.

[00:12:53] So it all depends on your particular market, your time of day, your part where you are in the world. There's another thing you have to consider because the time zones say so. So I can't give you an exact answer, but in general, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for most business stuff. All right, now, there's another here's another email related one. Why do I have to pay for an email service, can't I just use my own email service and do a BCC, which is blind carbon copy? Yeah, you can if you want to look like a goofy goober of all goobers, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can also get kicked off your email service because if you start building a fairly big list, they only allow so many. And then here's the kiss of death, as if you're a dummy not calling you a dummy, but you are a dummy if you put everybody in the CC line. Carbon copy, you have just violated everybody's privacy that's on the list, and everybody else can see all the the everybody else's email addresses and you're you're lucky if you don't get sued by some of them. So CC is an absolute no no. And BCC is obvious to people that you know you don't have an email service and that you're not professional, you're just, you know, their name, you know, you can't customize it like you can a regular, you know, good quality email service. So yes, you can do it.

[00:14:35] And I do it for small quantities of small groups like, for instance, the email mastermind I'm doing tonight, they'll all be on a BCC thing so I can send out announcements to this small group of people to be 10 15 people at the most. Yeah, that's perfectly fine. But to do it, to make money and a bulk email fashion is just stupid. Don't do it. You're going to look stupid. You're going to possibly get shut down off your email service if you start having any success at all. So get the right tools. I would get so sick of people crying, the blues and the tiny amounts of money they have to invest compared to any other kind of business to do a quality online business. I just get sick. They have no chance of success with that mental attitude of I'm a cheapskate. No. And guess what? I'm a cheapskate. I'm frugal as heck, but I don't. I'm not frugal on things that are important for my reputation and my quality. If you just want to do everything free and think you're going to get rich, you're going to be working at, you know, go back to your job at Hardee's, you know, so I'm sorry to tell you that. Get the right attitude and invest in yourself with the proper tools. I usually say, like, it's like a carpenter. It says, Oh, well, after I get a bunch of jobs, I'm going to. I'm going to get some hammers and I'll get a good at tool belt.

[00:16:07] No, you look like an idiot. That's the idea. What is it? ID 10 T error. Write it down on a piece of paper and that's what that's what it is. It's an idiot error to do that kind of thing or like trying to be a a an airplane pilot and say, Well, I'm going to I'm going to get my license after I get a few jobs. This is just stupid. So don't do it. Invest in the tools that you need. All right. Multiple monitors, I want to set up multiple monitors I've heard you talk about at Tom. First of all, what's the big deal and then how do you do it? Well, first of all, the big deal is is that you will work infinitely faster if you just go to two monitors instead of one. You will be able to work so fast compared to what you're working now because you have extra screen real estate that you don't have to be close and windows to see what's behind it and opening them and all that stuff all day long. You can have one thing open on one monitor and something else open on the other monitor, and you can drag stuff between the monitors. I have four monitors in my lower office when we have retreats so I can have a web program open on one. I can have my email open on the other.

[00:17:36] I can have a word document, open on the other and a text document on the other and be copying and pasting between them. And it just so screamingly fast. But so yes, you should go to two monitors one way or the other. It will really help your productivity and listen. You can get a used monitor for 15 bucks at a pawnshop if you're hard up for cash. So I'd rather see you spend the 15 bucks and then work like three times as fast to make more money, say. So that's how you do it now in Windows 10. I'll give you the instructions here. Yes, you go start, settings, system and display. This will be in the show notes, start setting system and display. And then there's going to be a multiple display section. Well, select an option from the list on how you want your desktop to display. Sometimes you can spread it across multiple screens, your desktop. Sometimes you want separate screen, so just pick what you want. Now, of course, you have to hook up another monitor either HDMI. Probably you don't have VGA anymore or USB, you know, so you've got options there. And then, you know, just select keep changes and there you go, and you'll be, you'll just be amazed at this. I'll tell you now if you have a Mac, it's it's more complicated depending on what Mac you have. So in the show notes, I've put a link to the Apple support section on multiple monitors and it says, OK, if you have this, this is what you got to do.

[00:19:16] If you've got this, other thing is what you got to do. And you know what, folks, you can even do this if you have a cell phone or tablet that you work off of because you can have adapters, you can send it to your big screen TV with. I think it's called airplay, you know, so there's all kinds of ways to do this, but it really makes you work faster. And the most of the way, if I've done it is just with a regular desktop PC with multiple monitors and oh my god, it just changes your whole life and my students that have done this immediately get in touch with me and tell me, Oh my God, this changes everything. This is so great. So, so it's something you should do. Ok, next question should I advertise on Amazon? Well, if you have a Kindle ebook, I would say almost for sure. Yes, because it is so dirt cheap. I mean, pennies. I mean, I think I got a bill for two months of $13 or something from from Amazon. And and then I got a check this month for one hundred and thirty dollars and you say, Well, jeez, that's not much Tom. What's the big deal you're supposed to be Mr. Big Shot? Well. You got to remember, you know, if you haven't taken my e-book mastermind or any kind of book writing that I talk about, the books are always supposed to lead to something else.

[00:20:41] I do not care about the money from the sale of the book, ever. I care about the money that comes from what's in the book. And I mean, one of my books is free. That's brought in three point as of this morning, three point sixty five million dollars. It's free and you say, Well, that sounds like BS. Well, no, it's not, because the book teaches you how to do something, but you can't do it unless you go, purchase or lease the tool to do it. And I keep getting paid over and over again as long as you keep the tool. And some people have done it for 15 years. I keep getting paid. So anything you can do to increase your sales of your book on Amazon, especially when it's so cheap. I'm talking about at the top of a category or you search for a book, you always see sponsored ads at the top. Well, you could have your book right up there with the biggest business writers on Earth. Or I don't know if you know I'm not much of a fiction guy, but but the same thing you can be up there with John Grisham and Stephen King if you want to right at the top with your novel. Like I said, I'm not in any way any kind of fiction expert, but but anyway, it's dirt cheap. And so yes, you should if you have a Kindle book that leads to something else.

[00:21:59] That's the whole thing about this. You must go back. And if you've already got Kindle books up there, go back and redo them with things in them that lead to big money. You're consulting your speaking engagements, you know your big courses, whatever you got. So yes, I would advertise on Amazon. It's one of the best bargains out there, and I've got other information on the other, best bargains in other episodes. Ok, so that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. That's an ask me a question episode. And also, please don't forget to check out the or please remember to check out the pilot program we're doing for persons with disabilities. You can be so proud of yourself. I'm really inspired by the people in the program. So far, we still got two slots available for persons to apply, and we're going to use some of the money to hire persons with disabilities to help run the program. So check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities, and then you'll be able to click on the Go fund me and go over there and kick in a few bucks or kick in a lot of bucks. We really appreciate it, and you'll be doing something to help somebody change their life for the better. All right, that's my story. And I'm sticking to it. I'll catch you on the next episode. See you later. And this is Vetrepreneur Month.

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