026 Getting Your Business Stuff Right with Bobby Klinck

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there and welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. This one's a special one. This one's a little longer than the rest, but you'll understand why, because it's full of heart, it's full of soul. It is full of value. It's with my dear, dear friend, Bobby Klenk. He's this enigma you're gonna find out of a Harvard trained attorney turned entrepreneur that came out of a drugstore chain and does marketing and copy and all kinds of things. But we had some really great conversations about how he made the transition to entrepreneurship after going through Harvard Law, working with what turned out to be a Supreme Court judge as his mentor and that type of thing. And what it was like to make that transition, but also how he, the mistakes he made, the things that he was reckless about in making that transition financially, but also how to protect what you have. What are the couple of things that you need to do to make sure that you're protected when you build your wealth, when you build your money, when you build your business. So I'll see you in the episode. It's a good one. Stay tuned.

This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

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All right, Bobby, welcome aboard, man. It's so good to have you on the show. We've been on a journey together for a number of years, and you've always been such. So gracious, but more importantly, you've been such a friend to me. So I, I'm honored to have you here.

Hey, it's my pleasure. We're gonna, you know, let's think about it. An accountant, a lawyer. Who else do we need to add to the mix to really bore the living heck out of everybody?

Well, I mean, I'm sure there's someone we could add, but we could probably either an engine, an actuary.

There we go. I like. Why not Both.

Y' all are good. Y' all are in for a treat. Bobby is, Is, as I said in the introduction, he's. He's an enigma. Let's just put it that way. He's. He's got. He's got such a vast amount of experience, but he's got a different perspective. And I wanted to bring this to you because I think in these times, we need to think differently. We need to approach things differently. We need to be open minded and not have the tunnel vision that maybe we have had in the past or we've thought about in the past. And so for those that don't know, kind of your backstory, hey, can you kind of give them a. Give them an idea of where you came from other than a. Other than a lab test.

Wow. So that, you know, spinning up a lawyer with that broad of a question, you know, I guess you don't want to ask any More questions, Mel.

But okay, so, you know, I probably should caveat that we have no idea where this show is going to go with Bobby and I.

But, but, but actually, like, I do have to go back early because I think it's an to understand. So I grew up in McAllen, Texas, which most people have never heard of until recently. Anytime there is any story about what's happening at the border of Texas, CNN and all the big networks are down there. So literally, it's a town five miles from the Mexican border, all the way at the southern tip. If you think you've gone south far enough, you haven't. You're still not there. Like literally four hours south of San Antonio, Texas. So that's where I grew up. And I was the son of, of a guy. My dad ran a chain of drugstores. But calling them drugstores is kind of underselling it. It was, you know, think cvs, but really nice. Like the store that was the first store they had downtown had really nice electronics. It was one of the only stores in town that had really nice perfume and I'd like a perfume and cosmetics section like you'd have in a, a department store. And so it had all of that. And my dad's story is funny. His dad had started the store and his dad had told his kids that if they wanted to be part of the business, they had to become pharmacists. That was like his requirement. So my dad goes, gets a degree as a pharmacist, starts in the business, and the story gets changed every time I hear it. My dad tells stories in an interesting way. But before my dad turned 30, he goes into my grandfather's office and asks him, how will I get to the point that I can be kind of somewhat an owner of the business? To which my grandfather says, what? You want to buy me out? Let's call your brothers and get them down here from college. Literally calls the brothers down from college and makes a deal with them for the son. So my dad and his brothers to buy out my grandfather for a million dollars in like 1970 ish. And my dad's not even 30, and all of a sudden he is the CEO, president, whatever you want to call it, of this business, which at the time I think was two stores. At its peak, it went up to about 15. So that's what I grew up with. And I grew up watching my dad. He was the first one into the office and the last one to leave. He was, he believed that, you know, being the boss didn't Mean, you take it easy. I mean, it didn't mean you work too hard, but it meant you're the leader. You're not there telling people what to do, you're showing them what to do. And so you're leading from the front. And so this is the history. And the only thing, like there were a couple things he told me. Like he'd gone to the University of Texas. He said he'd pay for me to go to college anywhere other than Texas A and M, which I went to Texas. I followed his things. But also like the one profession, if he could have picked one profession for me not to pick, it would have been lawyer. Because his experience with lawyers were the lawyers who sued the business for Slip and fall and for all of these other things. And so he didn't love the idea. But anyway, I go, I become a lawyer and go to Harvard Law School, get a degree, but I actually missed a point there. I was Mel. Would you say that I'm a compliant fellow?

Well, what's the definition of compliant? Any definition.

Would you say that I'm compliant?

The fact that when we are in the same mastermind together, in the same room together, they try to separate us probably means that neither one of us are compliant.

Yeah. So I mean, I'm not like, if I, if you take the disc assessment, like my compliance is literally a zero. I mean, it just doesn't even show up. But I'm, I'm a rebel, basically, is what it comes down to. I played in a punk rock band in college, had a long bleach blonde ponytail. And then I go to Harvard freaking Law School, which was a little bit of a different experience. And I kind of lost myself is the best way to explain it. I suited up, I thought I had to be lawyer man, like serious, you know, just kind of all of that. And I did that for a long time. And I had jobs that would make almost every lawyer in the world jealous. Straight outta law school, I clerked for a court of appeals judge on the Federal Court of Appeals. He was one of the most well thought of liberal judges. President Clinton thought of him both times. He was on the short list for the Supreme Court each time he had an appointment. Then I go to prestigious firms here in D.C. including one where my mentor was this guy named Neil. We now have to call him Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. So, like, that was. Yeah, I mean, this is the legal world I lived in. And then I became a federal prosecutor, which meant I got to get up every day and say, I'm Robert Clink. I'm here on behalf of the United States of America, which. It's kind of weird, and maybe it sounds dorky, but getting to say that was pretty stinking cool.

It is kind of cool, but at.

The same time, I wasn't happy doing any of it, Mel. I just. I was living a life that wasn't suited for me. Although I'm not compliant, one of the things that I'm not is I don't like fighting about stupid stuff. Yeah. And being a lawyer, I fought about a lot of stupid stuff. And so I kind of continued that. And in 2016, I was going through, I don't know, malaise. Something wasn't midlife crisis, but I was, you know, late 30s, I guess, and maybe it is midlife crisis, but start working with a life coach, and we work about relationship life, all that crap. And then she says, finally, after six months, do you like what you do for a living?

Oh.

And I stammered. And for the first time I ever. I admitted to someone other than my wife. I didn't. And so, shit, okay, what are we gonna do about that? I was like, dang, dang life coaches make me actually do stuff about it. And so this was 2017, early 2017, when that question came up and we talked about it, and she was the one who said, who. Who planted the seed of an idea. She said, I could see you going onto podcasts and radio shows and giving legal tips to entrepreneurs. I said, interesting. Well, I meet with her every two weeks. By the time I had the next call, I had booked a podcast booking agent to book me on 40 podcasts. I don't remember how many or whatever. I had no product, had no website, had no plan, had no way to build a list. But I'm like, you know, whatever. I'll do it.

And so this is something that I know, that I know about you, is that you are one of those ready, aim, shoot, kind of ready, shoot, aim kind of guys that will go out and execute. We'll go out and say, what's the worst can happen?

Right? And that's. That is one of my superpowers, I admit. One of my superpowers. I just execute. And it is like. It is messy. Like, I throw spaghetti up against the wall. And part of it is I'm like, hey, if it fails, what's the worst that can happen? And so I did that. But so 2017, I started doing that. And the funny thing is, like, for people who know me now, the headshot that I had back then was still My lawyer headshot in a suit, off to the side with my arms, you know, in the classic lawyer pose. Like, that was like. If you go to. Like, I had an episode on EO Fire. If you go and find that one, it's that headshot. And I mean, it's just. It's. It's comical to look at it. But. So, like, I didn't really know, but that year, I'm like, you know what? So I'm thinking about, well, how am I gonna money? I said, you know what? I'm gonna create an online course. That's what everybody does. I'm surely. I'm gonna make millions doing this, because that's what everybody tells me, you know, in the space. And so I. I set up to do that. I start to create it over the summer. I hire a Facebook ad agency. At the time, it was the time it was this woman and like, a va. Now she actually runs one of the bigger agencies in our space, which is kind of funny, but I was one of her early people. But I don't know how much I spent on. On those ads. But by the time I get to my launch in November, I probably put in about 50 grand that year.

Wow.

And I know I'm going to rock it because, look, I've been public speaking forever. I was in high school debates. I've been doing this forever. So I know I'm gonna do it. I do the webinar. I'm like, man, I killed it. I crushed it. And then I log into my clickfunnels account waiting to see it. No dollars, just raining from the sky, right? Because again, this is what I'm led to believe. And, I mean, I did the perfect webinar script using the Russell Brunson style and all that. And I just knew. And by the end of my launch, when I closed the card, I'd made one sale. It was a629,649. I don't remember what the price was, but around their product. So good investment, right? 50 grand. 649. And then that woman asked for a refund on day 29. No 30 day, no questions asked refund policy. So this was my inauspicious year as an entrepreneur. And. And I can laugh at it now, but I honestly have to say, I mean, it was pretty scary at the time because I had started, like, I had kind of decided I didn't want to practice law anymore. So I had quit marketing. I didn't have new cases. I let my associate go in, like, September. So it Was like, this was it. I was counting on this to make me money. And whoa, you know, and it was like the end of 2017, I was in the dumps. I mean, I was in despair. My wife didn't know like how, you know, how bad things were, like, you know, that I had kind of in some sense, you know, not truly mortgaged our future, but kind of mortgaged our future on this idea that hadn't really worked out. And I'll never forget, like one of the pivotal moments of my journey was December 31st of 2017, going to church. It happened to be a Sunday and the pastor was talking about giving and the impact on, of giving on you, not on other people, but on you. And again, in my fire ready aim way, I said, you know what? Giving is going to be my word of the year for 2018. And so I did. I just started giving, giving freely of stuff, not as a tactic, not knowing what was going to happen from it. And ultimately that made a difference and I kind of rose. 2018 was my breakthrough year where I, I had not sold anything online to that point. Cause I don't count my 629 where she got a refund really made my first sales in April. And by the end of the year I'd sold over $250,000 that year. All by basically kind of, in a lot of ways, throwing out the rule book and saying I'm going to market how I want to market. And what I was really doing is I was taking what I had learned by osmosis from watching my dad and applying it to the online world. And that was kind of my key thing. And it made all the difference for me. And since then, I mean, now I sell legal templates, I sell business coaching and marketing stuff. But that's my journey again. You know, that's as short as I can tell it, Mel. You know, you spin me up, you're going to get a long answer.

I get it, I get it. But I think that it, it sets, it sets a context for who you are, how you've approached things. And the realization that as entrepreneurs, as those that are striving to be affluent entrepreneurs, there isn't just one well worn path. And in fact some of the well worn paths probably won't work for us. I found myself in the same situation following the three part video series sequence and all those things coming from a very traditional profession just like yourselves, the financial world versus the legal world, you know, and.

It was a slog for me. It just, it wasn't Working. And I think that there's something to be said for. If we're truly trying to live a rich life, if we're truly trying to be affluent, it isn't just money. It isn't just going through that. It's about us finding our way. Our way. If that makes sense.

Yeah. And what I would say is, like, look, I would have made more money if I had stayed the traditional path. So, like, the moment when I really shift, it was 2010. So 2010, I come out of being a federal prosecutor, and I had an option to go back to the prestigious firm where I was before. That was where Neil Gorsuch had been my mentor or whatever. So I could have gone back to that firm. And if I'd done that by. I don't know, by 2013, I would have been comfortably making half a million dollars a year as a salary. Not. Not revenue, like salary. Right. You know, that would have been my paycheck. But I didn't like it. And so, you know, part of it was I was willing to give up some of the money if that is what it took to live a life that I really did. And part of why I didn't want to be a lawyer again, even after I had my own firm was I'll never forget this year, like, my parents were getting older. Like, they were in their. I guess they were in their 70s at that point still. But my dad said, look, I want to just fly the whole family out to Colorado for a ski trip. I will pay for everything. Everything on us. Let's go to go skiing. I said, I'd love to, but I can't because we're going to go in March. I had a trial scheduled for April. And you know this, Mel, from your experience in legal world. If I got a trial scheduled in April, I can't be gone for a week in March. Especially at that point, it's me and, like, one associate. And so I was like, yeah, I can't. Then that same year, the case did settle, but it was too late at that point, so we couldn't. We couldn't go. Then later that year, it was my daughter's pre K graduation again. Maybe that's kind of dumb, but I was traveling somewhere, so I couldn't be there for it because of court or some kind of deposition or something. Then the beginning of the year. Well, my parents then said, well, let's go to California in August for the Silver Oak wine release. And we. I'll pay for it. I couldn't. I had a trial scheduled the end of August. And so I couldn't go for that either. And so, like, at some point I said, I don't want this life anymore where everybody besides me controls my life. And that was a big part of it for me too. I mean, that was a big part of what was gnawing at me, aside from the fact that I fundamentally, I picked the worst kind of law to practice where I was fighting with people all the time. But yeah, I just didn't want to live that life anymore. And so again, to me, affluence is partly about me being happy. And for my wife, it's worth it. Yes, I make less money, but I'm happy and I'm here and I'm present in my daughter's life. And a lot of our friends who are lawyers, like, they're not. They're just not there.

I'm with you. One of the core critical outcomes for an affluent entrepreneur that we talk about is this element of complete freedom. And not just. And that includes financial freedom, but that financial freedom is the most elementary fundamental freedom, but above that is time freedom. And that it doesn't matter how much you make, it doesn't matter what your revenues are, what your salary is, what, you know, if you don't control your time. To me, we're living a poor life. There's no other way.

And so again, it depends. Like, for people listening and, or watching, whatever, what I'll tell you is it's also very hard when you're in these worlds. So, like when I graduated from law school, the first year, I'm working for a judge. So I didn't live high on the hog because, you know, I'm living in Arkansas. But again, ironically, working for a judge, working for the federal government, I was actually the high one of the highest paid first year lawyers in the state there because it was Arkansas. But then I moved to Washington D.C. and I start getting paid $135,000 my first year at a law firm. And you know, I'd never made more than $45,000 a year in my life up to that point. So I'm like, oh, but I didn't feel rich. You know why? Because I'm around all these people who convinced me I should be buying Brooks Brothers suits. So I go and I buy five Brooks Brothers suits at 1,000 bucks a pop. And you know, and you just start spending money. And again, I'm buying those suits even though I don't even like suits.

Like, you know, I can't imagine you in a suit, man.

Well, and again, like, at this point, I have one. Like, I have my charcoal suit. At this point, that's all I got. I'm like, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to wear a suit. But, but I'm just saying, like, you just start, you find ways to spend the money and it doesn't make you happier if you're not living the life you want. And I found that over and over again. And this is an interesting thing. Like, my dad has this argument, I don't have to commute now, so it's not a big deal. But he doesn't understand why I live where I live. I live in Washington D.C. in the city. And he's like, you could move out 5, 10 miles out and have a much bigger house for the same price. I'm like, yeah, but I want to be able to walk to stuff. I want to be able to do this. And I'll never forget, I read this study that for the most part, if you make more money, you just get used to making more money. If you have a bigger house, you just get used to it. Maybe you have a slight moment where you're happy, but then it comes back. There are a few things that actually, like, people never get used to. And one of them is losing time. And the perfect example of this is a commute. People who have a long commute, like, who move out to the Exurbs so that they can have a bigger house but then have a 45 minute commute, they are cursing during that 45 minutes every single day because they're realizing how much of their life they're losing. And it's an important point that time is one of those things that you can't get back. And so I'm not willing to trade.

It personally, which is great. And I hope that everyone's hearing this and it's not about being reckless. And I'd love to kind of go back to the moment where. Because first off, dad didn't want you to be an attorney in the first place. Then you go through this whole thing at Harvard, you're doing well, and then you turn around. This is a lot like when I quit my job and moved to Japan. You know, I'm at the top consulting firm downtown la, I'm on partner track. I go, yeah, not happy. I'm out of here and I quit, you know, and how was it for you to make that decision?

Because we get pushed by, look, I've invested all this time, I've invested all this money. The Expectations of society, the expectations of the firm, the expectations of the loved ones who. All of those things that are pulling at you to not make the decision that's actually going to drive your happiness and bring the richness back into your life. How was that for you to try and make that. That choice?

Yeah. And, I mean, it's tough because, again, a big part of what. What stopped me was that. And again, it's. It's effectively. It's the sunk cost fallacy. But I'm like, I've put in this time and again. Like, at the time, I had my own law firm, but I was. And it's hard to explain to people who are not in the legal world because they may not understand it truly, but it was me and one associate, so it was just two people. We didn't even. We didn't even have, like, my wife would come in and do some admin work from time to time, but we didn't have anybody else. But I would be going up against some of the biggest firms in the country, against, like, people who had been doing the. The same area of law that we were doing that I'd only, like, started doing in 2010, like, six or seven years earlier. And I'm going against people who are the head of their firm with 4,000 attorneys, entire practice in this area, and I'm kicking their ass up and down the court. And so I was good at what I did, but at the same time, like, I was. Didn't like it. And so there was this thing. But, I mean, I worried about, what the heck is my dad gonna say? And it is ironic he didn't say anything at the time, but I don't know, in, like, maybe 2019, when luckily at that point, I'm, you know, already successful. He says something to me like, well, so was that. Was all that money was spent on Harvard? Was that a waste? And I say, no, it wasn't. I mean, again, to me, I don't have regrets, right? Because I'm happy in my life where I am today. And I recognize that if I had done anything differently at any point in my life, I wouldn't be here in this moment.

I agree.

And so because of that, I don't have regrets. But, I mean, I can honestly say that having gone to Harvard Law School opened doors to me, gave me these opportunities. But look, let's be honest. It also gives me immediate credibility because, like, in the online marketing space, you know, there are other lawyers, but I can tell you, I'm the only one. I don't know, maybe there's another one. But I would say I'm 99.999% certain I am the only Harvard Law grad offering legal templates. The online marketing world, you know, and so it's an immediate credibility factor. But listeners, let me be very clear. Me having gone to Harvard Law School has zero to do with my preparation to do that work. But it simply says to people, okay, this guy probably knows what he'.

Right.

Probably knows what he's talking about. He's probably a smart guy. And so it does that for me. But no, that was a big part of the fear. But. But actually, I didn't even talk about this. I mean, clearly there was something going on in my life before that I wasn't all that happy, because back in, I don't know, probably was about 2012 or 13. I don't remember exactly when I started home brewing and I got very serious and people loved the beer I brewed and, like, it was my recipes. I did all those things at the time. It was my creative release. It was my release from. From being a lawyer. And I was working at a different firm at the time. But, I mean, I was this close to starting a beer company.

Wow.

And that, that kind of was a sign that maybe I needed something else, that maybe there was an entrepreneurial itch there. Maybe there was something else going on. And, you know, it's funny, like, nowadays I look back, I mean, the marketing perspective, my marketing perspective, I had some things that I clearly got. Like, one of the things I got that a lot of craft breweries don't get was I was like, hey, the design of every one of our cans is going to be the same. Different colors, different. But that way everybody knows it's ours.

Yeah.

But the name I came up with was this German word that no one would be able to pronounce, which I'm just saying, like, you want people to be able to pronounce your, your, your product if you want them to order it at a bar.

Yeah.

Otherwise they probably won't order it because they'll be ashamed. They're going to say it wrong. But like I said, I had started exploring business at that point of really thinking about marketing. And I'd been doing digital marketing for my law firm. I mean, heck, I'm an Amazon bestseller with the most boring book ever that no one should ever read. I think. I think I've made it so you can't buy it anymore. But I've been played the game. I played the games. Right. I played the game of being a bestseller and doing all that stuff. So I got it, and I'd been dabbling. The biggest fear I had was what you said. It was. What were people gonna say?

Yeah. Now, at the time, you were married.

Yeah.

Where you're a dad then, too.

Yep.

So you got to have a family financially, did you. Did you? Because I know with me, I did a stupid thing I talked about on an episode where I. I basically cashed in my 401k and said, I'm out of here. And I left to Japan. And, you know, I pissed away half. Half the money on taxes and penalties, and then the rest was in Japan and. And said, oh, okay. And I. I just did the calculation that $17,000 cost me almost $300,000 in additional wealth that we could have had.

Had.

I just left it there. But did you have the conversations? Did you look at it financially? Did you have. I mean, I'm shudder to even say, did you have a plan? Because I kind of know your nature.

I didn't. And that was. That was the mistake again. So I had some things going on. Like, in 2017, I had a couple of cases that were going on. Like, one of them was paying me. Like, it was paying. It was like a. I was on the plaintiff side, but it was kind.

Of a mixed fee.

I was getting a reduced hourly fee, and if we had gotten a judgment, we would have gotten some money.

But we ended up.

We ended up settling it. We didn't get any money, but still. So that had brought me some money. And then I had another case that was all pure contingency fee that luckily settled in, like, September Ish of that year and gave me a little bit of an influx of cash. But, no, I didn't have a plan, and I certainly didn't plan to cash in my 401k. But, I mean, I've talked about this. Like, I've talked about this on stage. By 2018, before I actually hit my success, I was at the point that I did have to. I had to cash in 401k money. It was either that or we're gonna have to sell our house. I mean, that. That was kind of where we were, and so I did it. Do I regret it? Of course I do. I mean, you know, I should have been way smarter. But again, I don't truly regret it because it led me to where I am now.

I get it. But.

But, yeah, no, I didn't plan for it. But again, part of my story is also I'm privileged among privileged I mean, I knew I wasn't going to be in the poor house. I mean, you know, if everything went completely to hell. First of all, I had a house that I bought that we built up equity in, but I had a backstop of a family that, again, was not going to leave me in the poor house, you know, and so that probably made me more reckless than it should have.

Right.

But, you know, I don't recommend what I do. I definitely don't recommend spending $50,000, you know, your first year before you have a plan to make money. That's not the way to go. But I. That's the kind of person I am, and I've learned that now. And part of what I do now is, like, in my business, I have other people that are basically my. My safety check.

Yeah.

I have other people who look at the finances, and it's almost like I know if they see that they're going to. You know, I don't want to have that conversation. And so that can help that.

It's like, when I. When I first started going on my healing journey with the cancer, they had me tracking everything I ate, and I was. And I would look at it, and I go, I got to put that in the app. Yeah, I don't. I don't think I'm going to eat that.

Yep. Right. I mean, and there's. There's an incredible power in that.

Yeah.

And again, like, part of it is, like, so up till the end of 2019, like, I had contracts. I had all that, but I was just, you know, I was just a sole proprietor llc, so I just could take money or whatever, but. But then starting 2020, I had employees, and, like, there's some visibility, and they're looking and they're seeing. And that puts some constraints on you because, like I said, all of a sudden, like, you know, I can't just like, hey, if I run out of money personally, and I say, well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a $15,000 distribution just because I want some money. I mean, you know, they're like, what was that about? And again, like, part of that is now what we're doing. And I was talking with you before we hit record, like, we're working through right now putting a plan in place about, you know, like, really being conscientious about setting a profit target, and then half that I'll take, and then half that'll stay in reserved earnings for the business. And so we're doing that now, and it's an ever evolving process.

Yeah, yeah. But I think that a lot of folks will start that way. In a sense, they have an idea and they move through. I mean, that's what entrepreneurs do. I get it. The beautiful thing is that in today's world there is much lower barriers to entry depending on the business you want to start, the path you want to take, but also there's much greater ability to compete and that type of thing.

Can I rephrase that? The good news is there's low barriers to entry. The bad news is there's low barriers to entry.

Exactly.

In other words, basically it means that anybody in the world can come and compete with you. And I think honestly, that's the big shift that our market is going through right now, Mel. And with, I think the notion of selling information has a very limited, I mean, very limited shelf life in the way it's happened in the last, I don't know, five to 10 years in the online space. I think we'll always sell information, but it'll be more brought down to earth, like prices of books and lower priced stuff, not the higher priced things. Just because at some point it's like, you know, anybody can create the course. And again, you have like the difference. You and I, we have some barriers to entry because we have some expertise from a professional experience which sets us apart. But like, when I hear people like, you know, teaching other people, oh, you know, if you're one step ahead of your, your, your potential customers in, in, you know, in some random esoteric thing, you can create a course and make a ton of money. I'm like, okay, but probably not. You know, I don't want to be the, I don't want to be the bad guy, but I'm like, you better have a plan. So one of the most profound things I've heard is something that you said at my event last year, Mel, where you were talking about like expertise versus marketing. And you didn't say it exactly this way, but basically you said, step one, become a freaking expert. Before you start marketing and doing all that, become an expert in something. And I think listeners, like, if you want some advice on how to make sure you have a profitable business over the long term, you know, there's this guy, Mel, who taught this idea of being a thought leader. And I don't love that word. I know, I don't want to call myself a thought leader, but I do say we have to create thought leadership and you darn well better do that. And it's real expertise. It's not. I'm just going to call something expertise. It's like really going deep and knowing stuff. And that is what I think we need. Or otherwise we're just.

Well, you get lost. You, you. In that case, you start to create true intellectual property. True.

Right.

Something that's solid, something that my knowledge, although could be replicated, my unique perspective cannot. It can only be plagiarized.

And when I've thought about this, because I, like, for a long time, I was trying to say, how do I capture the kind of people that you and I talk to? Like, how do we describe what they are? And what I've come up with is knowledge brands. Like, we are a knowledge brand. And what I've come up with is there's really kind of. It's not a new concept, but the way I look at it, there. There are three really silos of it. You have the people who are true information sellers, and that's it. That's been around forever. But the economics of it have been books. I mean, it's relatively inexpensive. Okay. Yeah. Then you have. And I don't know what to call them, but. But call them journeyman. It's. There is a skill set there, but it's commoditized. And the things, you know, push it down. You know, a lot of the trades. But people in our space like VAs, like people who are the doers, there is some skill involved, there's some knowledge. But guess what, you got a ton of, you know, a ton of competition. And then you have the true experts and you have the people who have an expertise in something that other people can't really replicate, who help people get results. And we've had consultants, we've had lawyers, we've had all of those types of experts forever. We need to adapt that in the online world. And I'm just going to tell you, either you got to be a knowledge like selling information and get to scale, like with books where you sell tens of thousands, or you need to be an expert. Being in that middle category isn't where you want to be because you're constantly on a treadmill of having to try, you know, to market and deal with some other competitor coming in who's just going to undercut you. And what is your value proposition?

Well, and I think so one of the things that I say, experts know stuff.

Yeah.

Okay. There's a lot of experts out there and there's a lot of pseudo experts out there, but thought leaders. And I know you don't like this term, but it's one of the ways I Differentiate are known for the stuff they know, and the stuff they know makes a difference.

Right.

And so that's what you're saying, is that we need to step up the game. If we truly want to build wealth, if we truly want to build affluence, and we truly want to do it with our knowledge, our experience, our journey, if you will, then we need to take it deeper. We need to do the work, we need to run the miles that no one else is running, and then give it back to the world in a way that's digestible, usable and valuable.

Right, exactly. And again, like, what I say is, and again, we all. We all hear this in our space, like, we have to give a transformation. We don't sell information, we sell a transformation. But I take it a bit deeper and say we need to stop thinking we sell information. Say we sell implementation, like whatever we sell to people. If again, there is that information, literally just selling information, that's. That's going to be cheap. And the reason why I say that's going to be cheap. Let's be clear. At some point, someone like Google or Facebook or some huge company is going to come in there and replace you. And I use this example like we have some friends, Mel, you and I have friends who teach people how to build an online course, for example. Well, at some point, it seems to me that Kajabi is going to figure out, you know, what it would make sense for us to create an amazing course on how to create an online course and give it to people for free.

Right.

And when that happens, all of a sudden, what happens to the people who are trying to sell a course about doing it? Well, you can do it, but only if the pitch is. It's not the information. It's truly the implementation work, the access to me and my expertise and coaches or whatever, that's what's going to change things. And that's where I look at the shift that I think is coming that we have to be willing to do. And like I said, when I've looked at part of my problem, I don't know if it's a problem, but part of my insight, if you will, Mel, is I look outside of our space all the time, and I look at history and I look at econ, I look at economic theory and all that, and I think about it, and what I see is, before the Internets, when you had a book or an information or something like that, what was the purpose of it? If it was nonfiction, what was it? What? What? What was it?

It was to learn.

Well, no, I'm saying if you wrote it.

Oh, if I wrote it, yeah. It was positioning. It was authority.

It wasn't to make money. You weren't trying to make money by selling information.

No.

Your idea was that that will establish my expertise and position me as the person. And then I have something else, some other offer that is a more high touch, working with me or something like that that I actually make my money off of.

It's exactly how I built my practice.

Exactly. And I'm saying that, that I think the people who are just in the online space need to understand the same thing that your, Your course, you're selling of information largely. If you're doing that, you need to say that's about establishing me as the person. And, and you and I both understand positioning. A lot of people get that wrong. Like, they think positioning means having a cute name. I'm like, no, no. Positioning is like, again, I am positioned as the legal guy. There's nothing cute about that. But it's like people think I need legal stuff, Bobby. Like, it's just, boom. It's that natural thing. It's like, it's like saying, we've all got our plumber, we've all got our electrician. We've all got those people. If you're a homeowner and that's what you need to be doing with, with the information you're putting out there. And then figure out, how do I monetize and create a scalable thing? Ideally, I mean, again, if you want to do just one on one, great. But how do I create something that's scal. That gets people results. That's higher touch. I think that's the future. And again, like you, Mel, I'm looking, well, I might be looking a little longer horizon than you.

I'm old in the space, but I'm not. Mel.

Old.

We'll put it that way.

Wow. Mel, old. I'm just looking at the date. I'm like going, I'm like 12 days away from my birthday.

Yeah, but I mean, I think you and I, we're thinking decades. Yeah. We're not thinking months, years. And that's the timeframe that I tell people in business. But wealth especially. But I mean, if you're thinking your business, I think you ought to be thinking, am I building a business that's going to make sense? Ten years.

Yeah, I. I gotta tell. I mean, this is, this is part confession. I know. I came into the online space coming from the. The hey, swap hours for dollars game and started to think, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create this course, I'm gonna put a website up and they're all going to flock to it. And I'm going to be on the beach just like those covers on the books are, and I'm going to just be this laptop entrepreneur traveling the world.

You're going to have that four hour work week thing, right?

Yeah, yeah, I think you think about four hours and then the rest of the hours you're working. But it never happened.

No.

And the funny thing is I'm glad it didn't because the fulfillment came through the journey, the fulfillment came through the process, the growth, the, you know, getting your hands dirty, implementing and seeing the lights go on and seeing people all of a sudden start reaching their dreams, start getting their financial freedom, start getting their business off the ground. You know, all those things become so, so important and that. But, but yeah, I had one of those, those moments where I thought, I just got to create a course and I'm free.

So I mean, here's the thing. The whole like, trading hours for dollars, like, I chafe at that. Okay. And I chafe at it because the problem isn't that you're trading hours for dollars. The problem is that you're not getting paid enough for hour and you're working with the wrong people. Because here's what I hear, like when people say, I don't want to trade hours for hours, okay, what if they would pay you $100,000 an hour and it was someone you love to work with? Oh, well, of course I would. Okay. So it's not the model, it's who your clients are that is the problem. And so, like, that's the thing, like that I always want to push people. Like when I push the people who are in my coaching program, I said, look, the quickest way to get, like to some level of success is to start with one on one, do one on one practice, and then figure out a way to scale it. Because the promise of, oh, you're going to build a course, you're going to build a membership, and you're going to make, you know, big bucks from it. Good luck. I mean, again, some people do it.

Yeah.

But I know a lot more people who've gone broke trying than who've really gotten success with it. And you know, I always joke that passive income is one of, you know, if you want passive income, don't build a business. Invest.

Exactly, exactly. But I think that that goes back to this whole thing of, of doing Enough to become the expert, doing enough to be real, doing enough to have the depth that other people can't speak to.

Well, and, and what I'll say is like, so, like now I have income that people would look at and think of as passive, right? Because I haven't looked, I haven't looked in the last, say, three months, but last December when I looked. And so it's been this year, but last December, when I looked at my legal template sales, okay, 65% of the sales of my thousand dollar all access pass, they were not on my list. They didn't come from a funnel. They landed on my website and bought, which, that looks like passive income, right? But it's not. I mean, it's. I am reaping the benefits of the work that I had sewn from 2018 on of establishing myself, of building that presence, of becoming known as the expert. And so then what happens is people have interacted with me or asking a group, where do I do it? And they say, go to Bobby Klink. And so like we could see it in my Google Analytics, my search console, that the most common thing after just Bobby Clank of traffic to my site is Bobby Clank legal templates. So people know that and positioning, you know, I'm positioned as that solution for people. And so now I've done it. But it's not passive. No, it's just, it took three years to, you know, for it to happen.

You know, the, the metaphor I use is the how bamboo grows. It just states under the ground for two to three years. You don't see it, it doesn't, nothing happens. And then literally once it pokes through the ground, it's the reason they call it a bamboo shoot. 60, 90 days, it becomes fully grown. And so too often we have this especially, and it can be in business and it's also in money and wealth, is that we have the short term view. We hear about these Internet millionaires, billionaires and all these people and we think that we should be able to do it overnight. Wealth, financial independence, business is a consistent application of principles and prescriptions over time. And that's it. And there's no shortcut. And if, look, I tried a shortcut and it turned into a Ponzi scheme. There is no shortcut.

Well, no, no, look, Mel, that's not a fair statement. There are shortcuts, there are arbitrage opportunities, but guess what? They close quickly. And if you miss them, you end up losing money. So they're high risk. I have a friend, I have a friend who he went to law school with me, but he never practiced. He's at a hedge fund. I don't understand exactly what he does. It's event R, that's all I know. But basically he's looking for what his models tell him are misprices between certain things. And there are those opportunities. And what I'll tell you is in marketing there are too. And for example, and I don't know that this is true, but I'm sure there was an arbitrage opportunity for people who got onto Clubhouse at the perfect moment. I'm sure there was an arbitrage opportunity for people who started doing reels at the perfect moment. But you know what? That's not gonna last.

No.

And chasing those types of faddish things over and over again is not a recipe for long term success. The people who are successful long term are the people who, like you said, they take the principles. And marketing principles have been true and have been true and have been true. And that's what I'm saying. We can apply the same rules that my dad was applying in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, building a drugstore chain in our online business. And it'll work.

Yeah.

It's not going to be, you know, I can't get you six figures in six months like you might want. I can't do that. But I can tell you I can build you a business that'll be sustainable and I'll be here three years from now, five years from now, six years from now. And by the way, it might not work the first time. You might try some things that don't.

Work, which both of us have. So.

Right.

So interesting. And I know that we're getting close to time, but I want to, I want to touch on it, on one or two things and make sure that people know where to find you and what you're working on. Because there's so many different facets of Bobby Klink and everything. So we build this business. I know that you built yours. If there were two or three things for people that are out there looking to build their online business or build their business that you think are being missed, that you want people to know, what would they be?

So I'm going to leave the legal stuff because maybe you'll ask me that in a second to the side now, because like, you know, that is what it is. But, but what I would say is fundamentally business. Like, if you want to learn how to build business, I think a big thing that's missed is people. People stop following their gut. And what I mean by that is like, I've heard this over and over again that they're like, well, people tell me, well, I thought I had to do this because it's what everybody said, but it didn't feel right to me. And I've said, well, that's not always the case. It might be that you're just not comfortable because of something, but it could be that that's a sign. And what I mean is like, I always ask a question in the online space when I hear like a tech tactic being used online. I say, does Apple do that? And if, if not, why? And I use Apple as just a, whatever example. If you don't like Apple, I don't care. But my point is, is this something that, that people outside of the online marketing world are doing? And if not, why. And if I can't come up with a good reason, a principled reason, I'm like, okay, I'm not going to do it. Because again, again, this is going to sound harsh, but a lot of what we're being taught in the online marketing world is to be the most obnoxious infomercial pitch men there are. I don't want to be, I'm with you, the person pitching, like Scoop It. I want to be KitchenAid because I'm building a business that is established. And so that's my big suggestion to people. But again, I think the big piece is, I'll give you a couple of things. Number one, if anybody promises you results over the short term run, because there is no shortcut that's guaranteed that's going to win. If someone says it's either or that should be assigned to you, that maybe it's not. And what I mean by that is like, we all do this. And Mel, you know where this comes from. Like, we learn from someone who taught us to use superlative statements. Yeah, Email marketing is the best way to. Okay. And so I see these questions, well, which is better, email or social media? I'm like, neither, they're different. Yeah, you know, you should be using both. And so it's things like that that I would key in on. But, but I just want you to. The fundamental thing is slow and steady is going to win the race and be willing to recognize you're a marketer. If you're building an online business, you're a marketer. And you need to learn fundamental marketing principles and understand the why behind it. Not just what someone's telling you to do, but why.

Not the mechanics, but the underneath it Yep.

Right. And like, I teach people this with, like, launches. Like, once you understand why you're doing things in a launch, you can launch however you want.

Yes.

It's just you have to do this, and you've got to accomplish that, and you've got to accomplish that, and that's the thing that help people. And like, even, like with webinars is like a little subset of that. When you understand the messaging principles you need to accomplish to convert someone, that's when people can actually deliver webinars that work, work. And too few people are teaching you what that middle teaching part's about, which I say is the key part of a webinar.

Yeah.

And you've got to get that stuff. So.

And this is great, and I totally agree with you on all this. Now we create stuff and we start to build business. There is this risk out there. And one of the elements of the affluence blueprint is insulate. Unfortunately, we live in a litigious society. Unfortunately, we live in a society where there can be attacks or lawsuits or things. And too often entrepreneurs especially, we give the legal stuff a backseat, and it's too late, and it's too late when we need it in the front seat. So for a moment, I know you got legal templates, but I also know that you can put your attorney hat on and say to those out there that are either entrepreneurs or not entrepreneurs, they have wealth, they have something worthwhile protecting. And too often we think that, well, I don't have enough to protect you.

So, yeah, let me give you a few things you should do.

Okay.

Number one, if you have an agreement or a relationship that matters to your business, you should have a written agreement about it, period, full stop. And some of this, like I want to tell you, there's a couple of types of relationships that are high risk. And I'll just say, I'm telling you this even though I have no templates for it, because I don't believe I can templatize this. If you're going to do any kind of partnership or joint venture that that is joint ownership of anything, you need to hire an attorney, work with an attorney, and get an agreement worked out. You and I both know people from our mastermind that we were in together who went through this over and over again. They didn't have things or they had an agreement, but it didn't address what happens if one person wants out. You've got to have that in place or otherwise ish is going to hit the fan and you've Got to have that in place. And we know stories like for some people, ish hit the fan because things were really working out. And then sometimes it's because things aren't working out. So that you've got to do. And like I said that I don't practice law. I can't help you with that. But you got to get a lawyer on that. If you're doing any kind of joint ownership there. There is no exceptions there.

In my book, I tell people there's an agreement whether you like it or not. It can be by choice. Yeah. Or it can buy legality.

Yeah.

Because.

Right.

I mean, you're going to, you're going to submit yourself to whatever state provisions are there or federal provisions, depending what applies, and you're at the mercy of that. Or you can define it on your own.

Right. I mean, look, if you do nothing, if you don't do anything, don't set up an LLC with any of that. But if you don't do nothing but have a partnership with people, guess what? You have what's called a partnership. I think it's a de facto partnership, basically a partnership, in fact. And here's the thing you need to understand about that. Anything that that other person does, you're liable for. If they sign a contract without talking to you, you and your personal assets are 1,100% liable for that. And again, that's what I'm saying. People just don't think about that. But, but separate from that, like, even if you do the thing of setting up an llc, a limited liability company, but don't deal with what happens if one person wants out. And the traditional way that most lawyers will draft it up is what's called a Russian roulette model, where one person sets the price and then the other person gets to decide, am I buying you out or do you have to buy me out at that valuation? So it kind of forces people to act reasonably. But I don't care how you do it, you got to have that set up. But separate from that, you need to have set up. What if they just like, they go off, you know, they just start like drinking all the time, doing drugs, not working, like what happens. It really is working out all of those things that the time to work those out is when you're hunky dory and you're still loving each other and do that, you work it out. It's not a problem. So that, again, I'm just saying do that. No matter what I am with you.

100%, I've made a lot of money as an expert witness in cases that went south.

Yeah. Okay, so next thing, create an llc. I always want to be clear. An LLC is not about a tax advantage. Just creating a normal LLC gives you zero tax advantage. I don't know. Now, Mel, maybe, you know, there are some random things, but basically it's not very little. Yeah, there can be some if you create an S corp and some things, but that's not the reason to create your llc. The reason is to shield yourself from liability. But I want to be very clear about this, because a lot of people have a misunderstanding. An LLC does not shield you from things you do in the business. So, like, someone could still sue me, Bobby Clink, for whatever I did. They could also sue my business. Like, I use my law firm as an example. I had Clink llc, but if I committed malpractice, guess what? There was going to be a lawsuit naming Clink LLC and Bobby Clink personally. And that will always be the case. But what an LLC does is it lets you sign contracts that you're not personally liable for. Like, I did that every time my law firm. I started my LLC and went out and immediately, immediately signed a lease. I didn't sign it personally. That meant if. If my law firm went belly up, I could walk that lease and they couldn't come after me. They could just take the money out of my LLC bank account, and that would be it. Same thing if you have employees. Once employees are on board, if they do something wrong, you personally can't be sued for that. Only the business can. So you just want to set this LLC up and get in the practice of doing that for. For liability reasons. And again, Mel and I both, like, I had to do it. I had two different LLCs because I had my law firm under one and then my online business, because I wanted to be absolutely clear that in my online business, I was not providing any legal advice. I just wanted to separate the two. But that's kind of the next big piece that everybody should do, because otherwise, you know, you're going to get yourself into hot water. Or you could. The last thing I'll mention is, like, in every agreement you have, you're going to have a dispute resolution clause. Now, sometimes I've seen this, like, back to my almost starting a beer company. One of the people I worked with, they had their standard contract that said, we'll sit down over a beer and talk about it. That's not what I'm talking about. That's dumb. I don't know that it's even enforceable, but forget that. But you're going to have a dispute resolution agreement, the purpose of which is really to avoid disputes at all. Among other things, they're going to have to come to you. You get to write the contract wherever you're located. That's where the disputes are going to be resolved. But also, and again, this is not legal advice, so don't take it as such. But you can choose between arbitration and court. If it's a one on one relationship, either one is fine. But if you're doing something at scale, an arbitration clause has a ton of value. And here's why. Maybe you've heard of class actions. A class action is where like, you know, I could for example, sue a company and say I'm representing all of your customers and if we win, you got to pay all of us. In an arbitration clause, you can have people waive the right to class arbitration, which means the only way that anyone would ever bring anything against you is if their claim by itself would be worth the, the cost of bringing that claim. Yeah, so that's, that's the reason why for scaled programs, if you hope, you know, if you get to the point of selling thousands, tens of thousands of things, having an arbitration clause with that waiver of class arbitration can be very powerful. Now that could always change, but as of right now, that is the law of the land here in the United States. And it is, you know, again, hopefully it never comes to it.

Right.

But why not put that in there to protect yourself?

So this brings up a question. When someone orders, say online, and I know this tactical, can we have that arbitration clause in the terms of service?

It's in your terms and conditions. Yeah, it's in your terms and conditions. And, and again, look, I haven't looked closely at these things, but yeah, I mean the famous case that this came up was it was Concepcion, but it was against one of the cell phone companies. And again, you think about it, I mean it's like big old, it's a click wrap. Someone clicks to accept those terms and the court said that is enforceable. The reason why is here in the US we have the Federal Arbitration act, which basically says an agreement to arbitrate is to be honored and is to be given credence. And so that's why those clauses, they withstand in an arbitration, but like in a court, they generally don't. Like there's things you can say, they're unconscionable, etc. But in an arbitration clause, you can generally have that in there. Again, that's the law at present.

So.

Look, I could talk to you for days, but you want to do it.

We can just turn this into a marathon.

We can. Like a telethon. So here's the thing. You do a lot of things, and I want to make sure that folks know the kind of resource, valuable resource and fun resource you are. So you've got your podcast, and we're going to hook all of this stuff up in the show notes, but you've got your podcast. Badass Online Marketing Certified.

It's the certified Badass Online Marketing Podcast.

Yep.

Which I. On Tuesdays, I put out a solo episode, which is sometimes you could think of it as Bobby Ruins Marketing. It's kind of me like, you know, it's giving a lesson, but also often a belief shift. I'm kind of shifting beliefs about something that's happening or that maybe you're thinking about or give you a different perspective often. Basically bringing professional marketing concepts into the online world. World. And then we're introducing a new Friday episode, which Mel has graciously accepted. Come on. That, like, it's bringing people to talk expertise, but also to share their struggle. And I think that's important because I think one of the biggest problems in our space is the, like, everybody's curated success is all we see. And so people think that it's easy, and then they feel like crap when it doesn't work for them. So the first part of each of those episodes is gonna be talking about the struggles in a real way and then their expertise. So that's my podcast. That's my thing. We're actually gonna launch a private podcast for people who want some other information. We're calling it what Is Marketing? It's literally each episode's gonna be five to ten minutes of me literally answering a question. What is blank and how does it apply to your online business? Like, things like barriers to entry and, like, all those things. And really helping people understand. That's not published yet, but it will be. It'll be a freebie. We have that you can sign up for at some point.

Awesome. Now, you also, keeping your legal hat on, have legal templates, which, you know, I have. I have posted out about and sent out about because too often we don't know where to start with a blank page, and we don't even know who to trust. And so this is. This is a library, basically, that you have access to.

Yeah. So, I mean, we sell templates individually, but candidly, you should just buy the whole thing if you're coming. And I'm not saying that just because it makes me more money, but because it gives you peace of mind. We have what I call the online genius template library, where it's a thousand bucks is the standard price for it. You get access to every template I have now, and every template I introduce in the future gets added. You don't have to pay anything more. You're, you know, in it forever. And so you have that peace of mind. Like right now, I think we're at 24, maybe 25 or we. This month of August, we. We were introducing a new one each Tuesday, but we do that from time to time. Plus, we did something cool. Talking about barriers to entry. We created these generators like most of the people that I'm competing with. I mean, you just get like, what we had is like a Google Doc with instructions on how to custom it, which is pretty easy to do. But I had used LegalZoom in the past, and I like the way that, like, you answer a series of questions and it does the customization for you. And so we paid our web developer to help us create this technology where now we have that built in. Literally, you answer a series of questions, you click Submit, and then it spits out the thing that you copy and then paste into whether it's a Google Doc, a Word Doc, whatever you do. And that will be your template. We just wanted to make it simple and from a marketing perspective, like I said, it's a barrier to entry. Now if someone wants to compete with me and they want to offer the same thing, they've got that, that maybe they have to develop that technology to have a comparable product to mine.

So good, so good. Where else can. Can people find you, Bobby?

So I'm Bobby Klink everywhere. So I've got Facebook page. That's my Facebook profile. You know, I accept. You know, tell me how you heard about me. If you just want to connect with me personally. But I'm happy to do that on Instagram too. And then I'll make one last plug for something that again, you heard me earlier say that I think the age of selling information is limited. And so I put a stake in the ground. Last December, we introduced something called Badass Online Marketing university, which is 100% free. It is meant to be a program that will basically. Look, I'm never going to teach you Instagram because that's not my area of expertise. I'm never going to teach you Pinterest. But the idea is that it becomes the place that has courses that can Help you set up the basics. So right now there are six courses. Online marketing foundations, Online legal foundations, Online financial foundations, Badass messaging, Badass list building, and badass email marketing. Which, by the way, that email marketing program was my signature email program that I sold for a thousand dollars. And I said, forget that. We're just gonna put it in here for free. We also have a branding course being put or that has been put together by someone in my community who's like a professional, like person who worked professionally as a designer. We have a course coming out about content marketing. We're going to have a course coming out about how to pick the right kind of digital product and then how to create it, how to do a beta launch, how to do sales page, how to do a webinar. We're doing all of that. And it's 100% free. Yes, you heard me right. Free.

That's F R E E, right?

Yeah, that's free. Because again, my view is I, I put that out there.

And that's the giving side that you got from your, your dad and the marketing side, not the attorney side.

Well, yeah, so it's, it's like. And again, this is part of my story. And we're going to keep talking, Mel, because I never keep these things under an hour. So when I enter the online space, it was when I was in my law firm and I joked about this with you before we hit record, but I didn't start my law firm because I intended to. It was kind of a. I'd made the mistake of not having a written agreement with my partner. So that's why I'm passionate about it. So I started Clink LLC when my daughter was three months old with no real plan. And I had one client who came with me. I got a settlement. So that, you know, tied me over for a while. But I'm trying to figure out marketing. So I started by reading books about legal marketing. That's the dumbest stuff.

Oh, God.

So then I go searching and I find this thing called HubSpot. And a lot of people in our space don't know of HubSpot, but HubSpot, it's software that's not really intended for us because it's too expensive for most of our needs. But they talk about inbound marketing and I went and I dove in because they have the HubSpot Academy that is free. And so in some sense I'm kind of coming back to my roots of saying, why can't I do the same thing? But really hyper targeted for Our knowledge, expert brands. And that's what Bomb U is meant to be. And, you know, how am I going to monetize? Yeah, we figured out, you know, I've got a coaching program. But honestly, what I found and from a marketing lesson here, people who are BOM U students, they don't unsubscribe from my list. They're sticky.

Yeah.

So they stay in my world. Which means at some point, maybe it's a year from now, maybe it's two years from now, they're going to buy from me. And I'm willing to have faith in that.

So good. So good. And I think we ought to think about that. How can we serve? How can we connect? How can connect deeper? How can we deepen those relationships? When it comes down to it, all business is built on relationships. All business is about people. All business is about improving the human condition. And when we start to focus on that, the byproduct becomes our profit. The byproduct becomes our freedom, the byproduct becomes our wealth.

Yep. Right. I mean, one of my company's core values is that we are radical givers. And it started like my first year in a Mastermind with you, Mel. And I don't remember where you fell on this. This. Actually, I think may. It was. No, I guess it was before. Before your diagnosis. But I had this crazy idea that instead of giving a website guide which told people about the things they needed to protect themselves, that I would just give my privacy policy away for free. And I remember introducing this at the Mastermind and people saying, you're dumb, you're crazy, you can't do that. And there were a couple of people who said, I think it's a great idea. And so again, ignoring most of the people, I said, I'm going to do it. Since then, we've given away right around 20,000 of those. And by comparison, my competing lawyers tend to charge $300 a pop for those. So when you do the math there, that works out, I think, to $6 million that I've just given away. But I look at it not as giving away money, but looking at it as I've helped almost 20,000 entrepreneurs get their website legal. It's pretty cool in my book. Yeah. And so I keep doing that, and I've. What I found is the more I serve, the more I focus on service and giving and putting my audience first, and the less I think about making money, the more money I make.

I agree. I mean, I think this is. Goes back to playing the long term. Game.

Yeah. And. And by the way, one of the things is, I talked about my dad. He got me a copy of this. He had this rock on his. On his desk when I was growing up. It's by Stu Leonard, which is like, it's a grocery chain in the New York area.

I know when Stephanie lived in Connecticut, it's like part amusement park plus part, you know, grocery store. Yeah.

And so I didn't realize that it was that. Whatever. I just thought it was a saying. But. But it says our policy, rule number one, the customer is always right. Rule number two, if the customer is ever wrong, reread rule number one. And literally that gives you some sense of, like, the things that my dad was teaching me growing up. Again, like by osmosis. And now let me be clear, Mel. I'm sure you know this. There are many times where our customers are wrong.

Yeah.

But I view it as the customer is always right, and I'm there to serve them and to find ways. And I think if you bring that attitude, it works out. And like, I don't know about you, Mel, I don't worry about people stealing my content. I don't. I mean, I don't want them to do it, but it's going to happen. I don't worry about people getting into my program, binging it, and then getting a refund. They're gonna do it. Yeah, it's gonna happen. I worry about serving the, you know, 4 or 5% of my audience who are all in, and I serve the heck out of them. And, you know, things work out.

I'm with you 100%. I think that. And that's it. If we keep chasing the little things in the long term really don't matter. Like you said, you were fighting thing over stuff that didn't matter. In the legal profession, I think it's the same thing. If we think long term, if we think bigger picture, there will be those, but they're not the majority. And we come from a place of generosity, a place of service, and we'll see that that pays in spades in the long run.

Yeah. And the problem with worrying about those people, this small minority, is you don't put your stuff out there. Like, I hear so many people who don't put stuff out because they're worried someone's going to steal it. I'm like, well, what good's it doing if you never put it out? You know, I mean, well, and my.

Argument with them, when they, When I hear that, I said, here's your. Here's Your solution, Be so damn prolific with what you got that it is absolutely, unequivocally yours. And then don't care.

Like I tell, I want people to steal from me because, like, to me, that's a sign I've arrived. Yeah, right. It's a sign that people like, whoa, what he's doing is so good. We should do it, too. And you're right. But again, I don't think about it. I mean, if you're prolific, if you do that, like you said, I don't worry for one second that someone could, could.

Could be me.

Because, no, I mean, there's. There is nobody who has my particular mix of. Of snark and. And, you know, whatever it is, you know, and so I don't.

If your team ever thought there was another Bobby out there, they would freak.

Well, if you're correct, I mean, the world couldn't possibly take more than one. That.

That.

That. No one may be too much.

There you go. So, all right, my friend, thank you so much for taking the time. I know this is going to be the longest episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show, but it's full of gold, it's full of heart, it's full of everything. And I appreciate you, my. I appreciate for what you do, how you show up, and most importantly, for the friend you are to me. So thank you, man.

It's been my pleasure, man. I love you. And getting to know you has been one of the true joys of my journey as an entrepreneur. So. Right back at you.

Thanks, bud. We'll touch base soon. Thank you for listening to the Affluent Entrepreneurship with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of Building youg Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial perspective, freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.