532 – Now’s the time to get better: Tom talks Improvement Over the Holidays

Episode 532 – Holiday Improvement
[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 five hundred and thirty two of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about how to improve your business or personal skills over the holidays now. If you're a Christmas season business, this may not apply to you, but I really don't understand how like Christmas stores stay open year round. All right, you have to have a lot of people dedicated to Christmas to keep those doors open. But this is how I've been doing it for years and years and years to make improvements over the holidays. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 531. That's whether you should do single promotions or have a catalog of products, so make sure you listen to that. And then also 530. Episode 530 was on shopping cart abandonment. I mean, this really sucks and cost you a lot of sales, and that episode told you a bunch of reasons people leave without buying and what you can do about it. Now, pick up a copy of our automation e-book it. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. This is what allows me to to handle as much as one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and sixty five thousand customers without pulling my hair out and with a minimal staff which are all working remotely now.

[00:01:41] So all kinds of automation techniques and we sell this book for twenty seven bucks, but it's years free for listening to the show and also today's episode. We're going to talk a little bit about cell phones, but. It also has cell phone automation techniques in it, and I've done several episodes on using your cell phone to really accelerate your success, so check that out. And you should also pick up a copy of our podcast app and put it on your cell phone or tablet and or your tablet. And you can take us with you on the road, has all kinds of features, it'll reduce the the volume and pauses the podcast when you get a phone call and then pick right back up and keep your favorite episodes and all kinds of stuff like that. So pick up that copy at screwthecommute.com/app and we have complete training for it with video and screen captures, so you're not lost trying to figure out how to use it. All right, you still have a chance to help out before the end of the year and get involved in a tax deduction program where you get a triple whammy. I call it, you get good training from me, you get a tax deduction for it and you help out persons with disabilities with their ARE scholarship program. Now, I'm not an accountant or attorney, but I've had hundreds of them in my in my programs over the years and they all say, yep, business training is tax deductible, so we're pretty sure we can get you a good tax deduction out of it.

[00:03:16] Get your good training and you can help these people in the scholarship program for persons with disabilities. So email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. Or you can always phone at 310 364 7403. Leave me a voicemail or send me a text to that number. Make sure you identify yourself because I get, you know, so many robo calls and and, you know, spam texts and everything. And even with good text, people text me and they say, Hey, Tom, did you look at my website and have no idea who it is? It's just a phone number, you know, so. So get in touch me however you can. Carrier pigeon. I don't care, and we'll get this triple whammy going to help you and your business out and to help the persons with disabilities.

[00:04:07] Let's get to the main event. How to improve over the holidays. Well, I've done at least one thing to improve my business or my personal business skills over holidays, as long as I can remember. And in many holiday seasons, I did more than one improvement. Maybe I wrote an e-book. Maybe I researched a list of affiliates to contact after the holiday. This holiday, I'm going to complete an audio book, and I'm improving my backup plan for all the websites and computers that I got going, so those are my goals for this holiday season. Listen, I know I don't have a family and family obligations, I do have dogs that keep me busy, but I even have methods I've taught to many entrepreneurs that have families and a very busy social life to fit the improvement I'm talking about in without shirking or missing any of the great family experiences you can have over the holidays. So don't worry about that. Oh, and check this out. All right, this is an admission I disliked my mother so much. I didn't want to go home over Christmas, so when I have my entertainment company, I actually went to Santa School. This is true. I'm not making this up. I went to Santa School, so I would make more money in my entertainment business and I didn't have to go home. I said, Well, I got to do the parties for the kids where I can't come home. So I also did the naughty saying I put do the kids' parties and the date there, and then the kids would go to bed and then I would do the naughty Santa for or for the evening time. But it was a lot of fun, had a lot of cool experiences then, and I don't want to brag, OK, I don't want to brag, but I was the Santa for National Geographic's D.C.

[00:06:15] Christmas party three years in a row and one one thing that actually made it into Washington Post was so cute this little, you know, everybody in D.C. is a lawyer. I think one out of 20 people is a lawyer, right? So this little girl, I think she must have been, I don't know, four or five. I don't know what she was. So so I was giving her the old Santa spiel, you know? Oh, you got to go to bed early. You're Santa can come, you know, all that stuff. And she's looking at me. And she says, is that some kind of federal law? And a reporter for the post was there, overheard it and put it, put it in the paper. Oh, and this is true, and this is on a sad note. I'm not making any jokes here, but I was listening to the radio and there was a guy that had a Santa booking agency. And he said actually, three hundred and thirty five Santas died from Cova the COVID last year, and that there's a 10 percent shortage in Santas. So it's a little bit late for you to learn how to be a Santa right now, but it's an opportunity for the future. Therefore, it but it is kind of sad that I can think of a three hundred and thirty five.

[00:07:37] A lot of people I'd rather see go bye bye because of COVID than Santas. All right, so the key to accomplishing something positive for your business over the holidays is to find some quiet amid the chaos, and I know there's lots of chaos, so one thing you could do? Get up an hour early, let's say. Maybe you could stay up late after everybody's exhausting goes to bed wherever you work best. You can work around family gatherings. Maybe you take your family to the mall. And you hold back for a half an hour in the car and make audio notes about, let's say, your new e-book, maybe you give them money and just send the rest of the family to the mall and you've got several hours of quiet time at home. Episode 529, I got to mention that one. It's called why you should add digital products to your business, you must listen to this. And by the way, the way you hear any back episode is to go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number. But listen to this episode if you haven't already, because unless you're living under some kind of time warp before there was ebooks and online courses and all that stuff, you might not realize the fact that there is no downside to creating digital products. The cost and time to do so are tiny, and the returns are massive. So get episode five twenty nine ingrained in your head.

[00:09:17] Now your audio app on your phone is your best friend to do the stuff I'm talking about today, especially when you're out and sitting in the car in a parking lot at the mall or you're sitting on a bench at the mall because you're exhausted and they're still shopping. You know that kind of stuff. Your audio app is your best friend, locate it and get it working on your phone if you don't happen to have one or you accidentally deleted it, there's loads of free ones. I don't know any better ones than any other, as long as you can get a quick note of an idea in your head. And here's the thing since I'm talking about audio notes, I got a heavily, heavily, heavily emphasized the need to capture ideas immediately. I can have the best idea I ever had in my life in my car when I pull up to my driveway and I forgot it by the time I hit the front door. All right, so, so really, you got to grab the phone, hit the button, make sure it's easy so you don't crash while you're driving. I used to. I've been doing this so long. It used to be many cassettes, many cassettes, those little cassettes, if you're old enough to even remember such a thing. And then I went to a just a digital recorder. Now it's handy to use a digital recorder, which are dirt cheap.

[00:10:43] Nowadays, if you're going to have somebody else type up the stuff so you can just hand them your digital recorder and you don't have to hand them your phone. But if you're doing this, this yourself, you always want to make these quick notes as immediately. And I'm saying with a capital M. immediately. Ok, because you will forget them and then you'll say, Oh darn, what the heck was I thinking about? And then, you know, you can't be as efficient that way. So do that. I mean, I use this idea all the time in writing books and developing other products. Now the next thing I'm going to say, all right, I understand it's going to be tough for you sports fanatics out there right now. Have you ever considered? And I've got a duck here in case you start throwing things at me, right? Have you ever considered giving up watching a football game or two in no wait before you, you turn off this podcast. Hear me out on this, but I got to give you a little background. I played first team offensive guard for a top 20 school. And I've seen lots of the nastiness that goes on behind the scenes. I've seen football and basketball machines. I'll call these machines, not just programs chew through young adults that had no business being in school. Other than the fact that they were nine feet tall or they could run a four point six 40 yard dash.

[00:12:15] Now, listen to this, there were thirty one people in my freshman scholarship picture and only six of us graduated. The rest flunked out, got thrown out, got arrested or even died. I mean, I saw the politics of large donors getting their kids to play when they weren't as good as the other kids, I saw shots into the knees of top players so they could get shoved out on the field when they should have been rehabilitating their knee for another six weeks. I saw top athletes abusing other students and getting away with it. And I saw them watching TV and smoking dope and even even shoplifting when they were supposed to be in class. But I just want you to think about this. All right. So that's a pretty negative look of the behind the scenes of sports. I understand they're going to start paying them to be morons now. So I don't think that's a bad idea, since the coaches are making millions and the school is making millions, see the football and basketball financed all the other sports in the school. One bowl appearance when I played, which was Jesus, that was nineteen seventy five. So that's twenty five. Forty five years ago was a half a million dollars. Imagine what it is today. So it was big, big money. It wasn't any sports anymore. It was money. It was a money machine. But what I want you to think about is that $40 million athlete that you so adore.

[00:13:50] Are they ever going to send you any money to support your family? I doubt it. All right. Again, I know I'm swimming upstream here, but but please just think about it. Is it more valuable to me and my family to scream at the TV for 20 to 30 hours this holiday season? Or maybe I could take five or 10 of those hours and improve myself or my business, which is going to pay off well into the future for my family and myself. That's just something to think about. So think about this, what could I create or improve, let's say, between now and January 5th? My experience is that the world goes brain dead from the day before Thanksgiving until the middle of January, when it comes to improvements and business and buying information products like this, you know, they'll buy books for gifts, but we're talking about the stuff that that you and I create. Not, not a lot of sales during Christmas time. So if you get something created between now and January 5th, it'll be ready to roll out to the world when the world wakes up, which is about the middle of January and maybe, just maybe your business will get a great start to next year. So let's give these folks that I'm helping in this program I have for persons with disabilities a great start to the new year because.

[00:15:23] I got this triple whammy program going where you can probably, I mean, probably 99 percent for sure. You can get a good tax deduction, you can get good training and I'm happy to deliver the training after the year if that is better for you. But if you get it in before the end of the year, you'll get a big tax deduction. You'll help these folks out. All the money is going to the scholarship program for the persons with disabilities. And I'm going to do all the work personally to train you and whatever will help you in either online business, professional speaking entrepreneurship. I even have brutal self defense. I have protection dogs. So if you want to talk about those, that's fine too. But most of the time people come to me for professional speaking and internet marketing for small business. So. So check that out. Email me at Tom@Screwthecommute.com and we'll go over what makes sense for you, and we'll really get started in a great new year here. And that's that's my whole goal is to help you see the things that have worked for me over many, many, many years and put me where I am today, and I'm pretty sure they'll help put you where you want to be in the future. All right, that's my story. And I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.

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