Journey Of The Proudly Unemployable Solopreneur Michael O’Neal

All right, you're listening to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. And today I have got a fun episode because I'm turning the tables on a podcast host that I've been listening to for a long time. In fact, I was just on his show this past week, so we decided to do a tit for tat interview exchange. And the other day, he picked my brain on his show, the the Solopreneur Hour. And today I'm gonna pick his brain on bacon wrap business. His name, if that's not already obvious because you're probably a subscriber to Solopreneur Hour, is Michael o'. Neill. In fact, this show is one of the top business podcasts on all of itunes. This thing has about more than 6 million downloads. And he is interviewed. I know I was episode number 408. So Michael has talked to some of the top entrepreneurs, celebrities, solopreneurs in the business. He also co hosts the Heinz Ward show with Football Player. If you're not familiar with him, from the Pittsburgh Steelers, Heinz Ward. And the guy knows not only podcasting inside and out, but he much like myself. And one of the advantages to hosting a successful podcast is he's been privy to some amazing business models, ideas, strategies on how people can take things they're interested in, take their lives in a direction that they want to lead, as opposed to just being employed by the man. In fact, he's got a book coming out called Unemployable. This is one of his signature trademarks. And he, as you're about to find out, is a living example that you can do it yourself, that you want to work from home, you can do that. You want to work with a small team, you can do that. And there's so many opportunities out there. So this will be a very fun episode for you to listen to. Almost as much fun as for me to have, because, I mean, hell, I get to ask him questions, you don't. So. Neener, neener, neener. That being said, Michael, welcome to the show.

Mr. Costanzo, I'm honored. And I wanted you just to keep going with that. I was just going to mute, stay muted. Wasn't that fun when it's 10 more minutes? Yeah, just hang out.

Just like hearing about yourself, how cool.

You are doing that move where I was holding my hand up, you know, my right hand was saying, you know, stop it. And then my left hand was giving me that, like, keep going.

Don't stop, don't stop.

I'm embarrassed about this.

Exactly.

How you doing?

I'm Doing great, man. It's, it's fun to turn, kind of turn the tables.

Is it weird, is it weird that we're a six dollar Uber ride away from each other? But we're on Skype?

I know, right? Yeah, well, it was cool. I got to be in your, in your office the other day and see your sweet stereo system and kick ass podcast setup. But yeah, no, today we've got this long distance, 3 mile Skype commute living in San Diego. So tell my audience a little bit, a little bit about your show Solopreneur Hour, because I've got a hell of a lot of questions for you. Let's get this, let's get the.

The.

Basics out of the potatoes, out of the way.

Yeah. Solopreneur Hour. What's that all about? What's a solopreneur versus an entrepreneur?

Solopreneur is someone when you hire their business, you really get them. So that broad definition for me is it includes real estate people and it includes actors, and it includes athletes, and it includes online business people and authors and speakers and people that I find very interesting. But you find that they have a lot of commonalities with how they have to run their lives. Meaning there's always an element of you have to refine your craft. You have to learn to self promote in a very certain and specific way. You have to.

Constantly hustle and have marketing leading the way. You sort of market yourself in the same exact way. So when I discovered there was a common thread between all these different.

Kind of businesses, I thought, well, isn't that interesting? Like I get the excuse to talk to some of these cool, you know, comedians and actors and athletes and get a chance to dig into their psyches and the decisions they made as they came up. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool if this show was not necessarily about, you know, 10 ways to, you know, get more blog content? But, but it was really to have conversations with these real people behind the scenes and see how they manage their lives and how they do their relationships and how they, you know, what, what decisions they made as they came up. And, and if someone who listened to it could, could say, wait a second, I'm sort of in that same position right now. Here's the decision they made. So maybe I can do the same thing. Like, you know, it sounds to me like they're down to earth. They're, they're not in any, you know, they're not a 190 IQ genius. They just made this decision. I'm there now what if I made that decision? And that was kind of the concept of the show when it came out. And so far, so good.

Yeah, man. I mean, you've done well. I mean, I was number 408 and I'm the most recent episode on there. And are all your shows. They're pretty much all interviews. Do you do many of the solo casts?

Yeah, you know, I do lately. And I say lately, it's been about the last year and a half has been Mondays and Wednesdays have been interviews, and then Fridays, I've been doing free coaching Friday. So I. There was. I was getting tons of questions from listeners and I didn't have any. I didn't have an outlet for them. So I decided just to start doing these solo shows on Fridays where I'd answer questions. And every once in a while, when I have a topic or something that I'm really interested in, you know, I always sit down and go, I'll do a quick 20, quick 20 minutes show, bang it out. And then like one hour and 15 minutes later, I'm like, okay, I guess there's that show. Then I guess I'll just bang that 1 hour and 15 minutes show out. And that's. I think that's when you know you're on the right track in terms of, you know, what, what content you're creating and what platform you're doing. Because if you can just go and go and go, and as I say, if we had a couple of shots of tequila and you started talking, what would you bore me off my stool talking about? If that's the kind of content you can create, then you're on the right path.

Yeah. And I mean, you and I share a lot. We are very curious. We like to talk, we like to ask a lot of questions. I mean, I think that's been one of the coolest parts about having a podcast for me is the not only. Obviously the coolest thing is getting to meet people that you normally wouldn't get to meet. The second coolest thing is getting to. To get great insight and answers from people who are out there either doing what you want to do or doing it, you know, doing something else just slightly different that can offer some insight that helps you improve your life or that you can share with other people, help them improve their lives.

Speaking of that, hold on, I want to comment on that. Today I sent a DM to Brett Michaels from Poison asking for some guitar advice.

No way.

Because he was. Because he was a guest on. On. On the High towards show. So I was like, that was a little fascinating to me, just being like, that's an interesting access, you know, just. Hey, Brett, quick, quick, quick guitar question, you know, and. And just. He hasn't responded yet. But it was. It was interesting to send it and sort of. It. That was a normal part of my day.

Yeah. And, you know, because you've got your foot in the door, right? So you've already got to talk to him. You can reach back out to him. You can, you know, have a conversation with him that you never would have had that opportunity with had you not created a platform for yourself.

That's right. And Sunday, it was McDreamy. I was talking to Patrick Dempsey about Porsche stuff.

Really? You had him on the show?

No, we were walking around a car together on Sunday. I went to this big vintage Porsche event, and he's a huge vintage Porsche guy. And so we just were just. We were literally just checking out a car. Like a couple of dudes going, oh, dude, check out what they did there, you know, and it was cool. It was just normal.

So he was just up there and you just kind of randomly ran into him and then just started chatting.

I have a bunch of friends that. That are. You know, my buddy JJ Collier, and some of his folks are very familiar with him. Like, they're friends. So there was. I had an in, you know, and the point is, is that when you have a show, you have an in.

Oh, yeah.

You have an in that you wouldn't normally have. In fact, I just emailed Patrick Long, who's the other factory Porsche race driver that was one of the finalists, you know, top finishers at Le Mans. And I said, man, I'd love to have you in the show. I haven't had a race car driver yet. And he's like, yeah, man, give me two weeks to sort. I have a couple races coming up and blah, blah, blah. But, yeah, man, the access to it is, you know, I think, especially if you. If you put some focus on it and you're doing something interesting and creative, I think that you get a lot more respect from those people that you might consider, quote, unquote, a Listers. And when they have a good experience, they'll definitely recommend their friends, you know, and that's what's cool.

Yeah. Did you ask him if you'd want to be on the show?

Which one?

Patrick Dempsey?

Not I. You know, honestly, I was trying to find him after I chatted with him a bit, and then I was looking for a moment, but I didn't see him again. But I Wanted to.

Yeah. And you know, that's one of the things, like, I know with my show as well, where actually and Solopreneur hour works much better because an actor truly is a solopreneur.

That's right.

And with bacon wrap business, it gives me a lot of leeway because it's still kind of broad. I mean, business can really be anything.

Yeah.

But at the same time, I sometimes wish I just had an even more general show so I could just reach out to, you know, you name it, pretty much anybody, and just see how high the celebrity ladder I can reach.

Yeah. You know, and that's. I. We hear a lot, you know, niche down, niche down, niche down. And get. Get as laser focused as you can. I'm a little. I'm not saying that that's not a good idea. I think it's a good idea in some instances. But I also, I think if I focused on, you know, just online business people or, you know, just real estate agents or something, that wouldn't be the same show. Yeah. I wouldn't have the same access, so.

Right. Well, and the other thing is, you're not. It's not like you have a. Yeah. You've got a great coaching program. What's it called? The Solo Lab.

Yeah, Solo lab. Yeah.

And we'll talk about that in a second. But it's not like you just work with one specific type of person. So if you only worked with real estate agents, for instance, it probably would be a great idea for you just to niche down. But because the show is a much bigger platform for a lot of other opportunities and a lot of other relationships. Yeah. It makes more sense to go broad. That's why, you know, I didn't call mine bacon wrapped marketing, even though marketing is really my, my forte. It's business.

Awesome to hear that on my show.

Yeah.

Quite a marketer.

Thanks. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's business. It's. It's. How can I. Because I've got a lot of topics that, you know, you and I talked about on your show and offline here. You know, the whole idea of profit first, and that was, you know, one of my former episodes. You guys can go check that out. But that has to do with, you know, your, your business finances and then, you know, talking a lot about all different aspects. But the point being is, you know, I'm. I'm a huge proselytizer of the fact.

That you like that.

I know it's like a mic dropping order of, of the power of your platform and Having one and the. The relationships that it can bring to you who have been some of your. I mean, this is like, you know, really putting you on the spot. But if there been any real big standout interviews that you've done which were just like, this was so amazing. This made all the work. Sure. Go into it. I mean, and I know that episode number 408 was probably the pinnacle of your career. However, let's start with 408.

We'll start with that one which has like all the gold stars above it.

Right.

407 was also a mind blowing show with Mike Koenigs, who I never had on before, but God, is that guy a guru.

Yeah, I had Mike on one of my early shows and it was fantastic.

So for episode 400, I had a special show which was. I reached out to my audience and I said, which show for you has had the greatest impact? And I read almost every single one, actually, I think I read every single one that people had. I read out on the show as like, you need to listen to these. So I have. Not only do I. Is it hard? Easy to pick, but I have them like very accessible. So.

Really easy shows. Someone like Jack Canfield, you know, I said that you could flip him a grain of rice and you get jambalaya back with every answer. It's just this, you know, you literally say one question, you get about 12 minutes of awesomeness from him.

Right.

I have a really good friend of mine, this guy, Dr. Mark Costas. And if you are in the, I want to say, medical service industry, chiropractor, massage therapist, dentist, you know, doctor, anything like that, the interview with Mark and his whole platform is something that you need to dig into because he's managed to figure out how to scale Dentistry to $100,000 a month of passive income. Whoa. And more. I mean, he's really just annihilating in so many ways. But he was great at not only creating this licensing program, but doing it with two hours a night and like really just hustling and we'll see the guy in person.

Which episode was this?

What was it he's had? He's been on three times now.

Remind me his name.

His name is Dr. Mark Costas. C O S T E S. He has a podcast called Six Figure side Gig and my episode 311 and then the first one with him, which was 127 was awesome. So number 127 in the Solopreneur hour, then 311.

Well, one of the things you said one of my trigger words. So it's a. It's one of my expertises and one of my favorite business tools of all times is licensing. So you said that he is that, and so that makes sense. I can already kind of think how he's probably licensed his IP out to create that passive income.

Well, here's what he's done a couple things that he was just super ninja at. One was he got really, really systematized within his. He had six practices doing like a half million dollars each or something. At one point, he did that all by systematizing everything. So, like, he'd literally have an earpiece in and he'd have his girls. You know, he'd have five people in the chairs. And like, as he was walking to that room, his assistants would be saying, okay, this is Bonnie. Her husband is Jim. She has two kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The last time she saw you was blah, blah, blah. And here's what she's talking about. So he would walk in and say, bonnie, how you doing? How's Jim? Like, it just would make people feel amazing, right? It's very, you know, politician of him. And the second thing he did was he created a certification, essentially dental assistant hygienist school within his practice after hours. So at 5 o', clock, doors would open on the hygienist practice, which he had again fully systematized. And once he worked out the entire model of that, he started selling the model to other dentists for like 17 grand or 18 grand a piece. And then they'd pay him 200 bucks a month in essentially licensing fees as they would continue to update the software and the program. And now he's got hundreds of Dennis Den dental offices around the world that are running dental schools within their practice, and they're all paying him. That's just like beautiful, brilliant stuff. Anyway, so that's Dr. Mark Costas. I did have a whole episode on real estate ninja tactics that I did, which was great. And then a guy named Mike Johnston, who's another next level dude, professional drummer. And if you want to learn to scale a service business to the. This guy's a drum teacher. So any kind of teacher or coach or anything you feel like is unscalable. Like you're a designer or a, you know, I mean, you name it. This guy has figured out how to scale that whole thing. And he did it by modeling itunes. He gave away a ton of free content on YouTube to build a platform. You know, got a ton of views. He's a good drummer. And a great teacher, more importantly. And then created mikeslessons.com which he now does 100 grand a month in passive income by creating this thing where people could go on and either join mikeslessons.com for 20 bucks a month and get three free lessons a week, and then they could buy individual drum lessons for 99 cents or 2 bucks a piece.

Oh, wow.

So he does, you know.

These great. You know, he probably does 75k a month in. In subscriptions and then another 50 in purchases. And then he does these drum camps. Drum camps for like 10 weeks where he's doing. I don't know, I think he has eight campers that each paid like a grand a piece for the next 10 weeks. For more than that, 1400 bucks a piece or something then for the next 10 weeks. So he's just, he really understands scale at this point. Now he's doing TED talks and he's doing, you know, all kinds of amazing stuff. But he is an Amazing. Episode 20 was Mike with Mike Johnson. And then one called how to make your weakness your strength was 42. And then episode 226 was how to up level your solopreneur game. So.

I got to have so cool.

Like the people that you've had to chance to chat with.

Yeah, it's great. I love that I can have them on weekly. And then my worst. I shouldn't say my worst show, but my most challenging show was Michael Gerber.

Really?

From the E. Myth. So Michael is a very cantankerous, very, like, agenda driven dude who doesn't like the word solopreneur. He doesn't believe in it. He thinks everyone should be able to scale out. And my second definition of being a solopreneur is I don't. If you're not trying to build a business, you're trying to build just a life of time and financial freedom.

Yeah.

Like, my life is so kick ass right now. I only have one person that I outsource stuff to. I could outsource more. I feel like it would overcomplicate my life a little bit right now, but I'm sure I'll get there at some point. But even if I do, I'm not trying to like build a company out of the deal. Right. You know, I'm trying. I'm. I just like talking into a microphone and chatting. But he had this. He was episode 146. And if you want to hear at that time what I consider to be my biggest, like, it'd be like going toe to Toe. Toe to toe with Manny Pacquiao. And. And. And it was a draw. Right.

So he's giving you crap about the whole concept of a solopreneur.

Not even that. So as a. As a podcaster, you'll get this. And this is funny.

It was, you know, when you've got a tight guest and you've got to figure out, as the host, how to loosen them up a little bit, how to, like, get them talking and that kind of thing. So one of the reasons why my show's an hour, because I think it takes 20 minutes to get people talking.

Yeah, I agree.

You know, like, you just got to loosen them up. And so what I do often, like I did with you, and you may or may or not have realized it, we talked about, like, audio and shit for the first time. 10, 15 minutes. Nothing to do with business. Nothing to do. It was just a conversation about. That is a very intentional non sequitur that I do with every one of my guests. I like to just chat about something in general, and that gets people loose, and it gets people talking.

I agree.

So my initial. Now, this guy has been literally the most influential book I've ever read. It changed my life. So I was already honored to have him on the show. I could not wait for this interview. And I was a little nervous about it. Had a bunch of questions written down, which I don't normally do, but. Okay, here we go. And I said, michael, you've been going, you know this. You've been doing this thing since the 70s. You've traveled all over the world. Tell me, what has been your favorite food? Like, what would you travel to right now to go back to get that certain dish? That certain.

Good question.

Yeah, that certain thing, you know, that certain dish of the certain country. You'd go.

My wife is a good cook.

Oh, no.

And I'm like, okay, but so all your travels, blah, blah. He's like, I like my wife's cooking. We have a garden. And he. She picks fresh vegetables. Like, wow.

Like, not even. Like, it's almost like he's challenging you at all.

And I said, okay, well, okay, well, but. And I started moving on a little bit, and then I got about three more of those in a row. And you saw my office, you know, I'm sitting in my chair. I got my little boom mic here. And after about the third question, I don't know if you can hear this, but I'm standing up now. I'm standing, and I'm in this, like, aggressive. Like, I'm about To, like, take a swing kind of position. I did the whole show like that. I did the whole show like, all right, motherfucker, let's go. And I was like. And that was the. Like, I said, I can either let him run this thing, or I can step into my. What I have as a host right now, and I can do my best. And so the show, for the uninitiated, sounds fine. Like, sounds totally fine. But my buddy Chris Cerrone, who has the Cerrone show, listened to it, like, the next morning, calls me. We haven't talked to him in a couple months. Here's the conversation. Phone rings. Hello? Dude, Gerber. And I was like, gerber. And that was like. He could just tell. He could just tell that it was a. Like, as much as I was trying to be a swan in the episode, my feet were paddling like you wouldn't believe under that water to make it smooth. And I gotta say that I did. You know, I, like, I hit stop. And I said, I feel beat up, but I feel like I was. That was the peak of my skill set that he just challenged, you know, like, any more, and it would have been difficult for me to handle.

So. So it continued like that to where he was just.

The whole episode. The whole episode was brutal.

Wow.

From that standpoint. And he did challenge solopreneur. I don't believe in it. And, like, it was really, you know, but. But the difference was, at the beginning, I. You know, he. He hit me with a couple of clean shots at the beginning. And then once I realized what was happening, I was like, all right, let's do this. You know? And then it was.

Let me.

You know, let me be the best host that I could be. And I gotta tell you, for anybody that. That digs the interview, the art of the interview, like, I do a couple things. Listen to off camera with Sam Jones. It'll. It'll up your interview game like you wouldn't believe. I think he's the best on the market right now, personally. And then if you want to hear a master. A master craftsman at work, it is the Howard Stern interview of Dan Bilzerian. You know who Dan Bilzerian is?

Yeah, I do. So I haven't. I haven't heard him interview Dan, though.

Well, so Dan Bilzerian is a very famous, like, Instagram guy. He's got millions of followers.

The playboy of the Internet.

He is like. Like, he is almost the. Almost a parody of male chauvinism, right? It's just guns and cars and naked girls, like, that's his whole thing. Yeah. And it's like, I want. Simultaneously, I'm. I'm embarrassed to be a man with him, and then I also want to hang out with him for one day.

Exactly.

Just see how many. I'm gonna see how many STDs I can collect in one day. And so he. So. And this guy's background was. He was a poker player and a Navy seal, and neither of which are known for their, like, effusive long stories. Right. They're very. They're pretty tight group. So Howard, you know, his people said, you gotta have this guy on. It's all boobs and thongs and girls and whatever. And so he has him on. And Dan is the tightest guest you can imagine for about the first 30 minutes of this show, maybe 20. And Howard. Cause he's a master craftsman.

I don't remember the content of the show at all, but I remember.

The skeleton of the show, which was Howard with his notes. Baba Bowie does notes and notes and notes for these people. So he's got a lot to work with. And Howard keeps firing at him. He keeps poking him in all these different angles. He keeps taking different angles, and he just keeps going and going, going. Finally, with, like, one question I remember. I'll never forget this. I'm riding up Fifth Avenue on my bike, and I'm listening to it on my. You know, I got my iPhone to YouTube. That's where you can listen to this thing. And I'm riding my bike up to, like, kind of Hillcrest area, which is in San Diego, and he asked this question. I go, I think he cracked him. Like, I heard the answer. I go, oh, shit. I think he cracked him right there. And then you hear Howard, like, pour it on, and he will not let him go. He sees the crack. He hears the crack, and he just wails on it. He just opens up and pours all the ammo into that crack. And he totally cracks him. And after that, Dan just starts telling stories, and he's open. I was like, holy shit. That was a masterclass in interviewing right there. It was so cool. So see if you can listen to that show.

I just Googled it in here about two years ago.

Crack.

Yep.

It is so rad to listen to in person as someone like you and I that dig this format and dig the art of it. To me, it's. To me, it's like one of the. You know, it's one of the most impressive displays of interview badassery that I've ever heard.

That's awesome. Yeah, I love it. So the. Yeah. So Gerber was a pain. Yeah.

I'm trying to, I'm trying to think where I, where I was Just a.

Second ago you were asking me about like the top shows. It was like, I did Mike Johnson, I did Mark Costas, I did Gerber being the rough one.

Yeah.

But generally those are like some of my, you know, Heinz Ward was great when I had him on episode 338 was awesome. You know, it's like, I think you probably feel the same way. A lot of them are your babies.

Yeah.

And sometimes you just like hit stop and you go, wow, that was great. Like, I feel honored to be able to do that.

Nice. Who's on your dream list?

I like Chris. What's his face?

Chris.

Chris. Why am I blanking on his name? From, from Nerdist. Yeah. Chris Hardwick. Oh, yeah, Hardwick. Nerdist. I would like, I'd like Tony Hawk, I'd like Jerry Seinfeld and I friggin find out, found out that he was at that event on Sunday. I didn't even see him.

Oh, the Porsche one.

Yeah. I was such a bummer. I was so bummed out. Those are probably like my top three just because of again, what they've done outside of the realm of their expertise. Tony created this huge brand around, you know, Tony Hawk Enterprises and has done amazing video games and, you know, huge, huge things. Chris created Nerdist. You know, he was a stand up and an actor and. But he created Nerdist, which is a Titanic. And then Jerry's gone out and you know, really, truly, I think one of the most underrated interviewers ever.

Oh, yeah. For like comedians and cars with coffee.

Yeah. And if you haven't heard it yet, another masterclass of great, great, great conversation is Talking Funny. It was a one hour special on HBO with Jerry Seinfeld, Louis ck, Chris Rock and Ricky Gervais talking about the art of standup. And if you do any public speaking or any speaking on a microphone, it is required watching. I'm sure I've watched it 30 times. And you can get on YouTube, just look up Talking Funny and it's again, sort of a masterclass of these brilliant wordsmiths and the subtlety of being truly funny and how they think about their craft. It'll just change how you go about your day to day life, especially if you're a speaker or a podcaster.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I've been taking some good notes. I do have a friend here in town, a close Friend who used to be Tony Hawk's roommate and is another successful marketer. Do you know Rich Cook?

Is he. Does he do a running thing?

No.

Okay, then. No.

No. So I will see if I can make the Tony Hawk interview introduction or something of that nature happen.

Yeah. You know a guy.

Rich is one of the most connected mother effers I've ever met in my life. My claim to fame inside Rich's phone is that my name is directly like in the contacts is directly Underneath Bono from U2. Wow. Yeah, he used to be. He used to be the manager of the Killers.

Oh, wow. I have a drum. I have a Drum cover on YouTube of a killer song. Cool.

In fact, wow. The best thing I could do for you is make an introduction to Rich. You interview Rich, right? And now I do warn you, this may be the guy. I love Rich. He's a close friend. This may be the most difficult interview because Rich is like a meth addicted squirrel in conversation and he will take it at a million percent.

Even more than me.

Yeah, no, you have no clue. And I love him to death. However, he's got some of the most interesting stories you've ever heard. But it may be a four hour episode.

Okay, well, you know, I have a. I had a girl that I used to date that used to live in Philadelphia and at the turn of the aughts. So like, you know, 99 to 2000 kind of deal. There was a DJ out in the. Out in the scene named Josh Wink and he was from Philly. And so he used to be this dude that lived above her at a restaurant where she worked. And he then blew up and became a really big deal. And she did. He did a record signing in Denver, where I used to live. And he. She went to the event and he sees her, she's got this fiery red hair. So she sees his spot and he goes, mickey. And so she comes over and gives a big hug and he goes, you know, check this out. He tells her the story. So he's on a plane going from Australia back to Philadelphia and he's in first class and he's got his MacBook out and he's got his headphones on. He's doing his thing, he's, you know, mixing his producing, doing what he does and gets a tap on the shoulder. And I said, excuse me, are you Josh Wink? And he says, yes. And he says, the guy goes, I know. I just. I just got to tell you, you are so inspirational. I love your work. You. You do amazing stuff. I really have Been so influenced by the work you've done over the last few years. And so I just want to thank you in person for that and. And just say, you know, keep it up and keep. Keep doing your thing, man. I really appreciate it. And Josh couldn't really respond because it was Bono. Whoa. I go, that's. I feel like that's when, you know, you've made it in some respects. Yeah, that's a.

That's pretty damn cool.

Yeah. Pretty dope. I was like, all right, well, that's. Yeah, you got to feel pretty good about your day when Bono tells you've inspired him.

Yep.

You know.

Anyway, dude, have any of your interviews ever led to any other, like, side business opportunities, things like that yet, or.

Not per se?

What do you mean? Well, like, can you be more specific? Probably.

I'm just curious. I was just curious. I know I've had. I've had a handful of, you know, whether it's been introductions to some, you know, to somebody else that we did business with. Consulting clients, for sure.

Yeah.

Nice.

I mean. Yes. Yes. By a billion times. I mean, all the speaking gigs and all of the, you know, the people you meet at the event, it's different, I think, when you. When you get a little notoriety and, you know, when it. Like when you've got a bit of a platform and you don't have to kind of scratch and claw to just be like, hey, I'm doing this thing, and people know a bit about you, and maybe in your case, they've heard the show or, you know, whatever, they. They go, hey, you know, we'd love to involve you in this. And, you know, and then you get a chance to, you know, can you. Can you like how we met? How you and I met? Yeah, we met at this great dinner. And that's true, you know, and it was like this dinner of ballers and. And, you know, I. I've done all kinds of stuff with a bunch of people in the. And just even from that dinner, Dimitri. I saw Dimitri two days ago, and just. I mean, yeah, it's been really cool. I think this whole game is, I think, about, you know, networking and relationships and connecting, and. So if you get a chance to build a platform like we have, then you're, you know, it's game on.

Yeah. Speaking of. Speaking of that, so you have, obviously. When did you start your podcast?

When was it approximately, exactly? August 23, 2013.

Okay. So it's only. It's not even been three years, right. As this recording, and you and I talked a Little bit about the whole concept of Twitter bombing and blah, blah, blah. We won't really go into that. But for somebody new getting started or somebody who's already started a podcast and has a little bit of, you know, a little bit of traction, they've got a show. Maybe they got, I don't know, 10 episodes. I'm Justin. What do you recommend they do to promote their platform?

I just started doing this for the Heinz Ward show, like, two days ago.

Nice.

There is a new service called Tweet Jukebox.

Which is pretty cool. And so it will allow you to put a bunch of tweets in into just a randomizer, like as many as you. It's kind of like what Edgar does, but they charge you a billion dollars a month for it. This is free. Excuse me? This is free. And you can add more accounts and stuff like that to it. So people complained about Twitter bombing because you put a lot of. You could put direct download links into your tweets, and people would click on it, and that would register as a download, and then people would take those downloads and say, hey, I've got 40 billion downloads and I want advertisers. So then advertisers would do that. But in reality, you weren't getting that many actual listens, you know?

Right.

So. But so. So that's the negative connotation. The positive connotation to it is that a single new listener, in my case, could be worth 100 new downloads because they binge on it. Totally. They listen to it and they start, blah, blah, blah. So at the same time, I go, all right, well.

I get it. However, if I get new listeners from it and they listen to 100 episodes, then is the shotgun approach really so bad? Now, I've listened to the overall critics of it. Okay, fine. So what I started doing for the Heinz Ward show is I just link to itunes and I link to the Heinz Ward show show notes. So I link directly to the itunes page and directly to show notes. So every tweet I have loaded in has the image of that show. It has a little catchy headline, and it has a link either to itunes or to. Excuse me, the show notes. And then if I have space, I'll do a couple of hashtags. And I'm looking at that now, like, this is literally, like day two or three that I've been running it. But when I look at the.

Tweets from that show, I'm seeing that it's being retweeted, you know, 20, 30 times. It's being liked and favorited. It's being like it's getting out there, and that's exactly what I want this thing to do. That's the whole point of promoting. So, like, I'm looking right now at one I just did, which has, again, 49 likes. It's got six retweets. Just went a little while ago.

I'm on your. Is it the. At solo hour.

This is at MVP 86, Heinz Ward. Although I'm doing it now on solo hour as well. So I'm doing both.

Well, let's take a look at which is the better example.

You know what? Both of them will work just fine. Although obviously the Heinz word. Heinz has 423,000 followers. I have, like 5,000.

Well, I'm on solo hour right now.

Okay, so look at solo hour, why not? It's my show, not his.

And if you look at that, I don't have them all loaded up yet. But my strategy behind it was let me look at the episodes that people wrote to me on episode 400 and said, these are my favorite shows. And I'm loading each one of those shows in as the show notes and. And then as the itunes link just to randomly display every few. You know, every few hours. So you can see that I've got one with Mike Michalowicz.

Is that the one that says my favorite book on personal finance?

That's right, yeah. And it links right to the. Click on that. It goes right to the.

So it links to your episode.

Yep, links right to the episode.

And it links to it on.

On my show notes.

On your show notes, it links to Mike. Mentions him. Yeah, you got a couple hashtags in there, and then you got a photo.

That's right. And so what I've been seeing is people are engaging. People are retweeting. Like, Mike will retweet it to his audience. They will go, you know, I can get that. So that's something now I can just do. And that will just run. That'll just run indefinitely. And it'll do its thing. Yeah.

And then, as I think, as you mentioned, you have another one underneath him. How to find or relocate your passion. And then now you're linking to the actual iTunes page.

That's right. So those are the two I'm linking to now.

Okay, so you're not doing that in the same tweet. You're doing that in multiple ones, and then just kind of like, randomizing it up, right?

Yeah, it's. So it's totally randomized, and it will Just go and be automated at this point.

Okay. Now, if somebody doesn't have a whole lot of followers and like, I mean, I've neglected Twitter forever. I've got like 1200 followers. I don't know. It's just what I've neglected. So what I like is how, you know, when you do mention the guests, especially if you've had bigger guests on there, they're much more likely to get that and retweet it and whatnot. But is this still effective for somebody if they've got, you know, thousand followers?

Yeah, I mean, I think, again, I think that a listener is so valuable. A single listener is so valuable. So even if someone has 423, you know, followers, and they retweet it and one person goes, oh, this sounds interesting, and listen to one show, then it's like, boom, you know, let's go, let's do this.

Yeah. You do any paid ads for your show at all?

Nah, you know, I tried to do a little for episode 400, but.

Who was that?

It was. It was the. It was just the solo show that promoted all, you know, these different things.

I don't. I think I spent 50 bucks. I don't think it got me anywhere. I just. I don't see it right now. My. I'm gonna try to do some marketing around.

Reviews.

Okay. How so?

Because I feel like, you know, reviews, if you go and look at a current book or a current movie, they are all about the reviews, right? They take that movie poster, and after week one, that movie poster has, you know, 15 reviews from, you know, rolling. Peter Travers from Rolling Stone says, this is the best movie must see, blah, blah. They do that. No one's doing that in our space. Meanwhile, my show has 400 five star reviews on itunes. It's one of the top ranked business podcasts out there. I keep getting, you know, accolades from Inc. Magazine and from all this stuff. Like, this week has been a good week for that kind of thing. Why are we not promoting those things in this space?

So how you mentioned this either offline or maybe online on. When I was on your show the other day.

Yeah, but I wanted to work first, so that's why I'm not really.

Yeah.

Strategy behind it.

Totally. Way.

Right.

Yeah. Like, one of the things that I've done in the past is have some people. And this was really a poor. This was not me putting my effort, all my effort into it. But I got a handful of the more influential people that I've done. Create a quick little iPhone video or whatnot. Just saying, hey, I was on Brad's show and it's, it's awesome, blah, blah, blah. And I've gotten those videos and I've, I've run those videos to their fans if I can and whatnot. It's kind of cool. It's just like, you know when you hear on the radio that hey, this is Gwen Stefani and you're listening to K Rob.

I do that.

Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. I haven't, I've kind of half assed that to be honest.

But yeah, there's some social proof there. You know, I, I'll tell you one thing that I, that I've dropped the ball on, I would say is that I haven't done a lot of, you know, emails to the, to the guests. Hey, your show's live, here's all the links. Yeah, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I was talking to John Lee Dumas the other day about that and I said, honestly, how many people are actually, you know, you know, promoting? He goes about 60, 60%. I was like, oh wow, really? I'm leaving that on the table. Like I should be doing a lot more of that.

Yeah, I've had a handful of guests, which I love when they interview, when they get interviewed by me, where they'll do a broadcast out to their list.

That's what I mean.

I love that. And I'm not talking about a social mention, but yeah, like a broadcast. Here's one thing that I don't know if you've done this, but it's a fun little tweak and my listeners can take note on this too. Anytime you're trying to get somebody to help promote you, depending on what it is. I mean, a lot of people, if they have a big newsletter, they don't want to mail a dedicated mail for you because they want to either share their own stuff or they want to share something that's going to make them money. If there's no affiliate link, what's in it for them? Ask for the psych. Somebody's broadcast so they may have a content piece. Go out and say, hey, will you just give me the ps? Ps you can check them out. Yeah, that, that works gangbusters. And you can, you can even cue it up for them when you're, when you're sending it to them is to say, by the way, if you want to share this on social media, you know, and whatnot, here's this. Plus, I would love it if you could include this as a PS in a, in an upcoming broadcast here. Just write ps. I was featured on, you know, Michael o' Neill show. If you want to check it, here it is. I give away some great info.

You guys smell that out there in listener land? You know what that smells like?

Bacon.

Bacon. Oh, yeah, that's good.

That's good stuff right there.

Bacon right there. My goodness. That is. That is truly bacon wrap.

The PS hack.

Oh, I love that idea.

Yep. And then. And the best part is, if you know anything about copywriting, email marketing, etc. The PS is the most ready part next to the subject line. I love that because people will look at the email.

Yes.

They'll scroll down and they'll just see, okay, what's this guy about to sell me? There's a ps. What's he saying? That's why a PS is also a great place to recap the entire email in two or three sentences.

Give daddy a ps.

Yep.

Okay. All right. Well, see, that's why. That's why you're doing what you're doing, dude. That's why you land the.

Got all this smart.

That's why you got the stilettos coming your way.

It's a fact.

Huh. Okay, good. Thank you for that.

Yeah. Is there anything else that you have, you know, done that's particularly, you know.

No, nothing.

Genius on this. Yeah, I. I've played around.

Marketing wise, you mean?

Yeah, just as far as. As far as promoting the show and as far as getting it out there. I mean, a lot of the things about. I. I've noticed that the best ways to promote your podcast and to get downloads is a. Have a good show the. That people want to talk about. Cause word of mouth is still by far the best. When people say, oh, man, do you listen to bacon wrap business? It's a really good show. You should check it out.

Obviously, if you can get your guests and some of those people promoting.

Is another one I've played with. Doing Facebook ads to mobile traffic only to people using iOS devices only, who like things like the Tim Ferriss show or podcasts or itunes or whatnot. Just going mobile only and getting them over to my site. But the hard part about that is unless you really have this dire need to get listeners there, you're spending a lot of money on something that if you're not monetizing it right away, you're just trying to get a podcast listener, you can go broke really quickly as opposed to getting them in another way. You and I mentioned this the other day. I noticed that Mike Dillard, who has the Self Made man podcast has. I'll notice him running ads, but what he'll do is he may sum up the episode like, for instance, if I was going to do this, I would say I might create a landing page and an ad saying unique ways to promote your platform and to interview celebrities and awesome people. And I make it sound like, you know, it's like, oh, cool, I want to know that. And then they click on it and it takes them to a squeeze page with your picture on it and whatnot. Here Michael O' Neill reveal his secret way to, you know, stalk Mr. Dr. McDreamy, whatever. And then you opt in, and then he sends you to his episode. Like, he delivers the, he delivers the opt in bribe. That's the, you know, that's the opt in bribe. It's my podcast.

I mean, it's not his first day, you know.

No, exactly. And I've seen people do that. I haven't really done that.

He's. What's that?

But you can also do that where it's like you deliver. Hey, thanks for opting in, by the way. I'll be sending this to you in your email.

You know, click here to subscribe my podcast. But also, I've got this great deal for you. You know, he's got a $1 offer that he makes. $1 offer for his coaching program or whatever, which is 47amonth. But I don't know, it's just an interesting thing that I've kind of paid attention, I've kind of snooped what he's doing because I haven't seen as many people treat of their podcast like a sales funnel.

Yeah, right. Exactly. And, and I think maybe I'm, I'm, I'm very on the fence about this. I, I, I'm almost, I almost despise the marketing side of this business. I hear you. Although it's, it pays the bills. It's an, it pays the bills, and it's a necessarily necessary evil. And it is. I'm challenged by it. In fact, after Mike and I recorded for an hour and a half, it was like he had, he's like, I got 45 minutes. We recorded for an hour and a half and was, we Talked for another 30 minutes.

Is something that I need, I probably have some work to do around it where he's kind of like, dude, you have things that you can offer. You have like a gift that people can, can have if you just get it out of your brain and you can, you can help people. So it's, it's, you're actually doing a disservice your audience by not giving them the information. And I've got to get over that a little bit.

But not giving them what information?

Just. Just the stuff that I'm not, you know, marketing. You know what I mean? Like, I, I like the part where I talk into the microphone.

Yeah.

If I didn't do anything else and I got paid a bunch of money for that, that's what I would do. And, you know, someone else would do the rest if they wanted to. But. But I don't care. I wouldn't care if they did. I wouldn't care if I had nine listeners. I just like doing the show, you know, so it's the. So what? That's how, you know.

By the way, what advice did he give you then, specifically? Did he say. Because, I mean, you. You have your solo lab coaching program.

Yeah. Did he. And that's what I do. That's the. That's the part where I monetize my, my brain.

Did he suggest something either in addition or to put that much more up front?

Yeah, he wants to do, you know, he gave me a, you know, like a book strategy. He wants me to do the book strategy. I have a bit of an issue with the move where you, like, become a quote unquote, bestseller in a sub, sub, sub, sub, sub on Amazon. And it's a thing that is part of his package. Like, we can make a bestselling offer in a weekend. It's like, yeah, if I'm on you, New York Times, and I'll say yes. However, I would like to make the book and I would like to, you know, there's a lot of stuff that is within that. You know, it's the same thing for me when people do the movement. Like, my show was featured on a list this week, as was yours, by a woman that wrote an article for Inc. Magazine. And I feel like that's borderline. But I can say, hey, I was featured on Ink Online, right? Yeah. Versus I pay for a press release of my new thing, my new website.

To say that you were featured on whatever.

That's right. And so I can pay someone to do a press release which automatically gets sent out and it gets picked up by, you know, 200,000 RSS feeds, which will eventually. Yep. It'll be on Yahoo Business. It'll be on Inc. And then people turn around and go, as featured on Income. I'm like, no, you weren't.

Yeah.

At all. And. And I. That's the kind of stuff that I don't like, you know, dude, I'm the exact same.

Like, there's this. I know I'm leaving money on the table by not. And by the way, I'm, I'm a very big believer in proactive reputation management so that when people search your name, like, I think press releases, by the way, are amazing ways to season Google with things that you want to be found. I mean, when I sold my first company, I did a press release about it and I was like, yeah, Brad Costanzo sells company and offers his advice for entrepreneurs. And I did that specifically because I wanted people to know that if they're Googling me and there wasn't a ton of information out there, I was like, okay, I'm going to control that. But I'm also like, I didn't then go put on my website as featured in on abc, NBC, cbs, because they're these little crazy little blogs picked it up. So I agree with that. Right now there is a fine line as well, which is.

If it's not, you know, if it's not total bullshit, if it's a little bit gray and you know, you're not necessarily, you're not really lying. I mean, you were on the, you know, these various sides and depending on kind of how you're using it. But I do agree that a lot of people put that front and center. It's almost like as seen on Google.

Yeah, that's right. And you go, yeah, right. Well, really, you know, Joel Calm did a whole, A whole periscope about this, which was top five, like cheesy marketing techniques. And that was, you know, those are two of the five, which is the. As seen on and the, the first one we just talked about. Yeah. So it's like, it's. I just don't want like, you know, it's almost like being a dude. Remember, remember back in the day when you were single and you were walking around and I know you actually did a whole bunch of stuff around this. I remember when you were.

You, you felt like, hey, you know what? My, my. I know internally that I'm like a good guy. Like, I'm a nice guy. I'm, I'm respectful. I'm, you know, I, I've got chivalry and I, you know, I'm a, I mean, almost old school. And you don't want to get lumped in with the douche nozzle. So often you won't even talk to that girl because you don't want her to think, oh, I'm just hitting on her.

Oh, man, that is how I'm exactly like that.

Yeah, that's how that goes for me. So I'm the same exact way with this online business. Well, I don't want to be lumped in with these guys. Like, oh, that's what you do. So I kind of stay away from it. And I do agree.

And if you do that, if people start, there's this really conspicuous way to do that. And when people see that shit, they're like, nah. Like, what I think is the better way to do that is to have a press page on your website, like a media kit or media. And you can put, you know, there, like, you can put your press releases, because it really was. It was a press release. So put the press. But yeah, plastering where you were seen. And by the way, like, on my. On my page, baconritebusiness.com people go there right now. You will see after I was featured in the exact same article of Ink that you were.

That's right.

I put that one logo because I was like, cool, I'm gonna do that. That was legit. I put as featured in Ink. But now I didn't. I've got my stuff on from press releases all over the other place. I didn't put it on there yet, so. Dude, I totally get it. I wish we had less scruples.

We'd be richer.

We'd be much richer.

We'd be richer. Yeah, you know, it's. It's a whole thing. Yeah, it's a whole thing.

You know, I don't even like.

What do you think of Push Crew? I just was looking at it the other day.

I'm kind of liking it. Dude, did. You did. Were you looking at it because you saw it on my site?

Because I just installed it.

But the guy Martin, who's. Who's doing my show notes, saw it, and I installed it on my website as well.

I installed it on a client's website just the other day, and he's got 375 subscribers. And I did a test yesterday, and this is the first test I've done, so. I mean, because we literally just installed it the other day. 375 people have subscribed. I'm on the dashboard, by the way, for the listeners. Push Crew is an app. Push Crew is an app that you go to the website. Go to baconrampbusiness.com you'll see it. It'll say, would you like desktop notifications? And some people will say, yes. So now I can push out a notification that looks the same way as, like, when your computer says, hey, you have a new Facebook message, or whatever. So I just published a blog post of his. So it delivered 261 out of the 375 subscribers, because those are people who are probably online at the time. Yeah, 28% click through rate.

Wow.

Yeah, 71 clicks. And it just shows up on their desktop. And it's not obtrusive. I mean, it's obtrusive, but it's not terrible. But it just says alert. You know, as another real estate bubble developing. This is a client in the real estate niche. And as long as you're giving them good information and you're not just doing pitches and, you know, you can get annoying real quick. It's almost like text message marketing.

Right?

But, dude, I dig it because especially get notified of new episodes. So every time you do a new episode, you just do a push crew.

I like that. Okay.

And it's free up to, like, 500 members.

Like, I totally don't understand understand it yet. So it's just installed. I don't even know if it'll work. If you go to my website, see if it'll work. SoloHour.com.

Yeah, I'm actually there. Let me refresh. I'm not seeing it.

Did it not do anything?

No, I'm not seeing it show up, but it's cool. Especially if you just want to alert people that it's there. Like, and. Oh, I mean, alert people, hey, new episode is out. Go check it out.

I wonder if it's not like, I.

Wonder if it may not be configured correctly, but.

Yeah. All right.

Well, no, I mean, I recommend.

Actually, I got nine subscribers. Whoo. So that just happened. Hey. Hey. Oh, whatever that. But I don't know. Whatever that does. Yeah, so we'll see. Yeah.

Now you just go into your back end and you. You send a push notification.

Oh, I can. That's what I do. Yep. And it just sends to them.

And you can even segment your people, too. So based upon. I haven't even played with that. There's so much.

It's almost like a mailing list. Almost like a mailing list. But it pushes to their Chrome browser.

Yep, that's true.

Okay, so I can say I thought it was automatic. Like, I could connect it to my RSS feed, which would be sick. Where, like, I don't know if I can do that, but it would be rad if you can connect that. So when your new blog post comes out, your new episode, it automatically prompts them and says, hey, the new episode's out.

Right?

Yep, Exactly.

Okay. All right.

And once more like mine. Well, this says here, because I've got the free version, your business plan allows for 625 more. I guess you can get 2,000 subscribers for free.

Oh, mine says 491. I have like 5. 500.

I don't know. This is weird, people.

Anyway, I will put a. I will.

Put a link to Push crew in the show notes, so you'll want to check that out.

So we've covered who your. Who some of the people on your dream list is. Do you ever have the problem, like, thinking of new people that you want to have on the show? Like, sometimes I sit around going, yeah, like, I don't even know who I want to reach out to and interview today. Because I usually only interview people that I have a legitimate curiosity about either what they're doing or who they are. Something like that. So I sit around going, I don't really feel like talking to anybody today.

Well, I'll tell you one thing I. I do a lot of is I. I must turn down 90. Actually, almost literally 99.9% of people that write me and say, oh, I have a great guest for your show.

Right.

And I'm like, nuh, no you didn't. I just don't. I have to really often. It's kind of what my whim is at the time.

Yep.

You know, and there's also people that I know, like, I haven't had Lewis Howes yet. I haven't had James Schramko yet. I haven't. Like, just people that I know. I can just go to the well and go, you know what? It's time. Let me just get this guy on and we'll do the show. I've got a funny. Yeah, like, you know, I haven't had Gary Vee on yet. And we have a weird little. Weird little thing happening right now where he's not been on the show, but he's sort of been on everybody else's show. That's in my little spot.

Exactly.

And it's almost become a joke. It's almost become like the Jimmy Kimmel, Matt Damon thing. And so I don't know, maybe that'll go forever. But yeah, you know, I'm exactly the same. Like, I'll. I'll just find something that's interested, interesting. Right now I want the guys from Mighty Car Mods, who are an Australian YouTube channel where these two dudes fix up cars. And they do. They're hilarious. And they have. I don't know, 1.6 million subscribers or something, and they just seem like they'd be a blast to have on the show. And I like what they. I mean, they built this massive channel, and they're, they're, you know, paying their bills by. By working on cars. And so.

Right now they're on my radio. I haven't reached out to them yet, but I think things like that, it's not that hard, you know, when you really kind of. When you. When you put a little effort in and just reach out, you know, so I'll do that every once in a while where I'll. I'll write to a lot of connected past guests and say, hey, guys, I'm looking for great recommendations for the show you've been on. I appreciate, you know, how great you are. And then, you know, a guy named, like, John Corcoran has referred a million great guests to my show.

Nice.

And you find that when you're good at this and people actually enjoy being on your show, that you'll get good referrals.

Yeah.

You know. So was Pat Flynn on your show for Will It Fly?

Yeah, yeah, it just dropped Tuesday.

Yeah. So we. I had a. A guy that. That before that. So I can say this, who said, you know, I heard a bunch of interviews from Pat Flynn for Will It Fly. Yours was the best. Nice. You know, and Pat, even before we started recording, said, dude, I got to tell you that that yours is my favorite show to do after. Of everybody. And I was like, that's amazing. So that means that when people feel like that after they do the show, that means that when I reach out to them for something and, you know, in some cases, hey, I would love to get some great referrals, or can you introduce me to this guest that you had on your show that they're far more willing to do that. Yep. You know, and that's why I'm such a nerd about this, that the actual craft of what we're trying to do here now.

Well, I mean, you do an awesome job of it. Firsthand experience, having been on the show. And I can't. I can't thank you enough for that. I've already gotten some good feedback right for it.

The one of the. Like, have you ever created a Facebook group for either your listeners or your. Anything else? I'll tell you where I'm going with this, because I had kind of an idea recently.

Yeah. I have one called Proudly Unemployable. I have a Facebook group group. We've got about 20. I don't know, 25, 2500 people in there. Wow, this is crazy, right? As you said this, I got a notification on Instagram and it said.

Let'S see, he writes, blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, loved the episode with Brad Costanzo, especially part about the coffee business. It pumps me up. Thank you for what you do. Keep up the good work. How funny is that? I love it as it. Because he's a thing called the local roast is his Instagram. And so I guess he's into coffee.

I will have to go check him out. That's really cool. So here's the reason I ask, because I have. This is me thinking out loud. So I've not done this, but I thought about it, and I'm actually kicking myself in the butt for having not done it before. I'm thinking. And I don't even see this as being as something like really monetizing necessarily, but a lot of people will create Facebook groups just like you have, probably for a lot of your listeners, et cetera. I don't know, is yours a paid or a free one?

Yeah, I mean, I have. I have a paid one, obviously, that's part of solo Lab, that it's a private, you know, group, but then I have the public one, which is proudly unemployable.

Nice. Okay. So I was thinking about creating a Facebook group just for my past guests. Right. So it's gonna be a lot smaller. Let's say I've got 100 guests in there or whatever. To where? I mean, these are the. Obviously people who've got chops. These are the people you want to be in a. In a good room with, like a real mastermind.

Right, right, right. Interesting.

Right. And I was thinking about, huh, this would be kind of cool because it's a way for me to kind of stay top of mind of them. The nice part about Facebook groups is they show up really early in these, and you're. In a way, you're kind of honor. I mean, in a very real way, you're honoring the guests who've been on there to say, listen, I'm gonna let you into this private group. I'm gonna put you in there. If you don't. If you don't mind. You don't have to share anything. But only people in here are the cool kids, people I've interviewed.

I love that. And, you know, it's interesting, I've heard something very similar recently that I was also kicking myself for never even thinking, which was, do the same thing with your friends and the people you want to hang out with in your hometown?

Yeah, totally.

Like, just put a Facebook group, like.

A San Diego group that just, hey, guys, we're just in the group, going.

To grab a happy hour. If anybody wants to come, I'll be here, blah, blah, blah. You know, like, you just. I'll go. It's so killer.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I love that idea.

So I'm thinking about doing that. Although one of the things I hate is, like, I hate when people put me in groups that I didn't ask to be in.

Yeah, I just unsubscribed from one today.

Right.

I kept getting the notifications.

Yeah. So that's such a pet peeve of mine. Like, hey, we just threw you in this group. I may. I may have wanted to be in that group, but I would have much rather appreciated, you know, know, an invite to it. So the only reason I think I haven't gone ahead and done this is like, okay, if I put these people in a group, then I have to continuously.

Create content for that group to just at least keep them somewhat engaged. Not necessarily, but, you know, I can create a little bit anyway. It's something I probably will be doing. It doesn't affect any of my listeners necessarily, unless I, you know, as I'm doing this, and I've got a great group of people in there, maybe I charge a heck of a lot of money for people. You know, this won't be one of these, hey, pay $47 or whatever and get access to this group. It would be.

Right.

You know, I wonder if you could.

Put like a trap door in the. In. You know, you add people in, but then as you, you know, as they're. They're notified that they've been added, say, hey, guys, this is the group for the past guests on the show. If for any reason you don't. Would you rather not be there? Just opt out, no harm, no foul, like, no problem, you know, and then. Then you're sort of covered because at least then they know that you understand that it's a little, like, it's a little douchey that you just added them. But, you know, but I would also. I guess the one question would be the. What's in it for them?

Well, so my, My guess is that, I mean, I've got some pretty. Pretty ridiculously good guests on my show, if I say so myself. And, And I would think, like, I would love it if I was on. Like, if you had this and you had all your guests or, you know, like some of your top Guests in a private Facebook group. And I got to be in there. That's kind of cool because now I can, you know, I can pose higher end questions or whatnot in there about things. And I know that the only people who are gonna see those are gonna be influential, successful business people.

Right.

Not the unwashed masses.

That's right, The. The commoners.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's great again, if you can. If you can pull it off and. And they're okay with being in, you know, did that semi recently is Dan Martell has done something like that.

I love Dan. Dan was on an old show of mine. He was one of my favorite.

He sort of created a nice little group of. Of, you know, what you might consider upper. Upper tier people.

Nice.

You know. Are you in that group? I don't. I don't do commons either.

Are you in that group?

I am.

I'm gonna have to yell at Dan because he did not put me.

Again, I. I did say upper tier, so there's.

He did not put me in the group. Although I do have a conversation with Dan coming up.

We did talk about Tuesday, and we just. It was kind of decided within the group.

Yeah. I do have to give Dan. Dan and I are talking next week about his launch idea to exit. Right.

So again, no. No hard feelings. No, no, Brad. See, it's borderline. We don't like that.

Brad smells like bacon.

Yeah, a little borderline. So we thought, you know, maybe for. Just until we, you know, we start opening it up to everybody, then, you know, maybe you'll get it or something.

My. My brain, my. My wheels are just turning right now, trying to decide if I'm gonna do that.

I'm busting your balls. You're not even responding.

No, because I'm just thinking, okay, if I do this, I'm not even thinking about Dan. If I do this. I got so much shit going on, dude. You know what? It's like?

I do. I do. And I know exactly. I have had the busiest three weeks of my whole probably career. And I'm around a couple days ago at a stack of dishes going, what the. Like, why I can't wash a dish right now? And I almost called my friend Jenna just to come over, and I'm like, I'm paying 50 bucks, like, make my bed and do my dishes and take my laundry to the laundry room. Yeah, I didn't do that. But that's how I felt. Yeah.

Well, man, this has been. This has been really, really great. I have. I've enjoyed the heck out of our two conversations now.

Yeah, agreed. I'm in agreeance. That's not even a word.

No, you're in a agreements. So once more for my listeners, if you guys haven't figured this crap out yet, you're not paying attention. If you. You can listen to all of Michael's shows. He is a consummate professional in the art of the interview, so you can tell that he's not. He takes this very, very seriously. This is his primary gig. He's not just tossing up MP3s as a quick little podcast. And he's also got some amazing, amazing guests, especially number 408, best podcast ever, by the way.

It's the. Like I said, I like to say, it's the end of my funnel is the show.

Boom.

You know, that's the product.

I do, Yeah. I like that. It's the end of your funnel. The. You can just go to SoloHour.com that'll forward it to it. Because people can't pronounce Solo or Solopreneur hour. So Solo Hour. And you've also got. Tell me real quickly what this Solo Labs is or Solo Lab.

Yeah, it's the. It's the singular. Whenever I'm learning a new thing, and this. This space of online business and trying to do your own thing requires you. You learn so much stuff. You're learning WordPress and you're learning audio editing or YouTube or this is how you blog or Periscope or Snapchat or whatever, like Facebook ads. You just name it. And there's new things to learn every single day. And so when I have to discover a new technique or a new skill set, I always say that I'm in the lab, you know, and I'll go and I'll take, like, Amy Porterfield's Facebook ads course, and I'll just consume a bunch of YouTube channels and figure out how to do this. And that's me in the lab. And so after doing the show for a couple months, I started getting emails from people that were like, hey, do you, like, teach this stuff? And I didn't. I didn't have a formal way to do that. And after about 40 of those, I thought, okay, well, maybe I should start teaching this stuff. And I did. So I created this group called Solo Lab. And it's for other people that are attempting become proudly unemployable, like myself. And a lot of them are driving nine to five jobs, or they're just trying to do their first podcast or write their first book or do their first brick and mortar thing. And because of the commonalities of solopreneurs, I help them through their journey on the timeline. So I spent a lot of time on brand because that was my background and my wheelhouse. And we get them, you know, we do brand and we help them pick a platform and, you know, take them one step at a time through this crazy wacky world of solopreneurship.

Nice. Now, is that, is that group one on one? How does that.

It's, it's kind of the, what the tagline is. It's a unique kind of mastermind. I don't take a lot of people in it, but it is a, it's a bit of a hybrid. So everybody that joins gets, if they do the quarterly or yearly, they get two 30 minute, one on one coaching calls with me per quarter. And then every single Wednesday we do a Google hangout where everyone gets to participate and they get as much time as they need within reason to ask whatever questions they have. So that's another one on one coaching session with me. It's for everybody. And then I have a little free social media training course that they get. And then there's a private Facebook group where they get to banter about and knock ideas back and forth. So that's all@iwantsololab.com I love it.

Yeah, see that's. I've been thinking about, I've been getting, I've been getting those same emails.

You're the real deal, dude. And I'll tell you, I had this whole idea of how, I'll tell you how you, how to do it if you want.

Hit me. Hit me, girl.

I got those emails and I said, okay, I'll create this thing. And I had this whole idea of what I was gonna do and how I was gonna create it. And I had a little conversation with John Lee Dubas. He said, dude, just start a private Facebook Facebook group and just see who, see who gets in. So I did. I, I set up a landing page for anybody on the podcast and I said, just go to I want soul lab.com or whatever, and if you're interested, I'll do a little quick Skype session with you and we'll find out what, you know, what you're interested in. And I'll tell you what I'm, I've got in mind. And I did 40 of those. I took like three days and I did back to, back to back 40 calls.

Oh, nice.

40 Skype sessions. And I had this agenda, like, here's what I'm gonna do. And by the time I was done with those Skype sessions, the agenda was completely different. I actually had a chance to listen to what people needed versus, like, what I wanted to do. And I launched with literally just like a Facebook group. And for the first 10 people, I would do these two 30 minute coaching calls.

And that was the. That was the paid Facebook group.

That was. This was the. Yeah, this was what the lab was.

This is how it started.

Yeah, it was just gonna be a Facebook group. And so I did a landing page and I said after those calls, at the end of the call, I'd say, hey, if I started this thing next week, are you a definite yes? You definite no? Are you a definite maybe? And I got enough yeses. I got about 17 yeses out of the 40. And I said, okay, that's enough for me to, you know, let's see what happens. Right. So I built, you know, I. I did the membership platform on S2 member, and I did. Had a little, you know, basically set up for. For, you know, online, you know, payment. And so I did that. Launched like December 6th, and I got like 13 signups in the first hour. And then, because that was my. I said, if I can get 10, then I'll do it, and if I don't, I'll refund Everybody's money. Did 13. And then by the end of like three days, I had, I think, 23 people in the lab, and I'd made.

Gosh, I don't know, what is that? It was the first monetization. So 23 times 300 equals almost $7,000.

Nice.

And that was my first, like, monetization of the show was this like $7,000 December that I was like, holy shit, here we go.

Yeah.

And then that started. So now I've gone from. I've gone from that. I've had as high as like, 85, which was. Yeah, I didn't get enough. I did a price upgrade where I went from 300 to 500 a quarter. And I got like 23 people that signed up in that, you know, two day, three day span. And it was too much to manage. Too many people, too many new. Too many new faces.

Yep.

So I like to keep it at about 50 now for the group, and I have about 45 now. So I have a few spots that I like, you know, and 10 to 15 show up for the hangouts on Wednesdays. And it rotates through a little bit. So it's right in a perfect little sweet spot right now.

That is perfect. Yeah. Especially yeah, all 45 are never going to be there at the exact same time and then drown you in.

Everyone's in different places of the timeline. You know, you can only give so much, so much someone, so much coaching where they got to go out and execute for a while and they're going to, they're going to uplevel, they're going to come back and okay, now what? And that's kind of where how it rolls.

Yeah, no, I like it. As I said, I've been, I've been getting those questions and you know, my, where I get torn is I really like working with people who have really established businesses and whatnot and really working more one on one and in what I want to say, even live events, like I've got my boardroom mastermind and I like those. I really haven't wanted to go too low end for this, but I get so many people that I know I can help. And oftentimes it's with a resource, a connection, a piece of knowledge, a strategy. And I think I'm probably doing my listeners a disservice by not giving them that opportunity.

Right, right, right, right, right.

So bad me. Bad me.

Yeah, bad you.

So in the show notes, in the show notes, you guys may see a link to something like this by the time this gets out. So you heard it here first. They have had to have listened to this entire hour, point something to get that explanation.

But give them something juicy. Give the first 10 something super juicy. Like I did two 30 minute calls that they just got, which I eventually just decided to do. Like I enjoyed the call so much. But those, man, those people, you move the needle so hard when you get someone for 30 minutes and you can really just say, hey, look, don't do this, don't do this, do this. You're gonna have results. And when people get results, it's like, boom, baby.

That's a very good point, my brother. Yeah, well, man, I'm looking forward to grabbing beers with you sometime soon.

Great. I don't drink beer, but I'll grab vodka with you.

We'll grab some food. I like that better. I'm a tequila guy now though. I'm telling you, I love vodka, but I've become a tequila connoisseur lately since living in that. Since living in California.

Yeah, I mean, of course. Why don't I do that? That's a good point.

Yeah, no hangovers. It's good tequila.

By the way, is that true?

Because I do 100% true, man.

I'll tell you. Whiskey Just wrecks me.

No tequila. Good tequila. Like, it was maybe a couple months ago. I went out, I had five straight up, just shots, but it wasn't shot. It was like sipping right of some amazing, like, Don Julio, 1942. Cost me an arm and a leg, but woke up the next day, like 8am felt amazing.

I will give you a quick, I know we gotta go, but I'll tell you a tequila story.

My buddy Ryan, rest in peace. I was having drinks with him a few years ago in Denver, and on Valentine's Day, a couple of single dudes on Valentine's Day at an Italian restaurant in Denver. And he says, hey, I gotta go meet my sister in a little bit. Now, Ryan was overweight, curly hair. He looked like a fat Sammy Hagar, basically. And just like him, blonde, curly hair. So in my mind, I had a vision of his sister being the same thing, but, like, as a girl. And so I said, okay. So I follow him to this bar next door where his sister is. His sister is Mila Kunis. She's five' three, adorable, L.A. sassy girl.

Nice, beautiful.

And I walk in, she goes, hi, bright smile. She goes, we're doing. We're doing African rip. Snorts. Want one? And I said, yes, I do. Because, guys, when you hear a hot girl say, are we doing a shot? You go, yes, I am doing that shot. It doesn't matter what the shot is or what it's about. I'm doing the shot with this hot girl. And so they line up six, seven shots of tequila on the bar. And I go, okay, cool. I've done shots of tequila before. No big deal. We got the salt, we got the lime, you know, all good. And she goes, well, there's a twist on this one. An African rib snort is a very unique shot in that instead of, you know, licking the salt, doing the shot, you know, and squeezing the lime and eating lime, you snort the salt. Oh, you do the shot. You squirt the lime in your eye.

I've heard of that, but I've never heard. I've heard of that, but I've never heard the name.

Would someone do that ever in a million years? And the answer, gentlemen, is because a hot girl is doing it with you. And that's why you do dumb things.

And let me guess, she go. You go first.

And she's like, no, no, no. Everybody did it, and she did it. And the end of that shot always ends up with you, your hand over your eye like a pirate, going, why? Why would I do this? However. However, I Remember, three shots in my entire life that I've done, All three have been African rip snorts.

Oh, my God.

The first one was with this girl. The second one was when there was a little dicey situation with a buddy of mine and that was our, like, rebonding and another dicey situation with a girl that I was dating and that was our rebonding. So if your best friend sleeps with your wife and you're gonna work it out, you do an African rip snort to get it back together. Because that's the thing you do. It is worth a try when you need to reconnect and you need a like, almost like, you know when you, I don't know, the move where you cut your hand and shake hands together. Blood brothers. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's like that. But it's the shot.

If you've done that, you've been to war with that, you've been in the foxhole with that person.

It's a big deal. Like, you do this shot and then you, you'll never forget it. It literally will be something you never forget doing. So just know that you're timestamping that shot. So if you get engaged or something you're doing in African Ripstone, not that you'd forget getting engaged, but you get the idea. Anyway, enjoy.

Good stuff. Ladies, gentlemen, Bacon wrapped listeners, go to solohour.com subscribe to his show. Check out Solo Lab. Talk about bacon wrap business. Share this in social media. Tag me. Tell me you love me and how awesome the show is because that's what feeds my soul. And if you have any questions questions, if you have any desire to pick my brain and to get coached by me, I mean, you heard me talking about it first here with Michael, send me an email. AskBradaconWrappedBusiness.com Even if it's just an email to say, yo, dude, keep up the good work. I love it. But if you have a specific problem, marketing, branding, business growth, et cetera, that you think that my brain may have a solution for the. Just shoot me that email to ask bradaconrantbusiness.com plus, if you leave a review on itunes this week, between now and the next one, I am going to give you a free 30 minute call with me. And this is a test, Michael. We're going to see how many people actually have listened this long and get off their butts and leave me a review. I've never done that before, but let's try this out.

I love that idea, by the way.

Why not right. Hey, leave me a review. Leave you a free 30 minute Skype call. And yeah, we'll see where that goes. But keep listening to bacon wrapped business dot com. This is Brad Costanzo. Until the next time. Over and out.

Aboom chakalaka.