EP 436 – School For Startups with Jim Beach

Foreign this is the no Closers show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close notes Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the no Closers Show. I hope you're doing all well today. I'm excited to have my fellow podcast and buddy Jim beach join us today. From Jim just does an amazing job out there. He's been known to be called the Simon Cowell of small business. He's got his radio show that's syndicated across 24 radio networks across the country. He's been featured in CNN and all sorts across the country, been in commercials. He speaks to large companies like FedEx, Wells Fargo, Toshiba. And so we're just excited to have you today, man. How's it going?

I'm well, thank you. I appreciate it. Good to see you.

You too, man. So one of the things that you do a lot with your show and I absolutely love listening to it, it's become one of my binge worthy ones that I listen to on a regular basis since we met back at the original New Media Summit. I love that you provide a lot of great advice for entrepreneurs out there. So do you want to give everybody kind of a short story, kind of what your show's all about and things like that?

Jim, we talk about anything related to entrepreneurship at all. So you're going to be on my show and we're going to talk about your cool entrepreneurial business. All the way from that to the 14 year old kid who's making $3,000 here in the neighborhood selling smoked salmon every weekend that he delivers. It's delicious. I wish I could send you something, but we cover billionaires. We've had Shark Tank judges, Shark Tank contestants. We have venture capitalists, famous marketers, the, you know, the funnel people, those famous people, all of them. We try to have three or four guests per show because we're an hour show. So we have to fill up a lot of time. And we usually try to have a really great entrepreneurial story. This guy is doing this woman is doing this. Here's the story. How'd they get started? Where'd they get the idea? Where'd they get the marketing? Where'd they get the money? And then our second guest is usually a skill improvement person, a thought Leader. Someone who has come out with a new book on Facebook marketing that we need to know about, someone who's an expert on Instagram posts. And so we're going to learn something from that. So we've got a little bit of motivation going, a little bit of education going. And then our third guest is a complete crapshoot. Sometimes it's a corporate guest who's going to give us some education. Sometimes it's the guy who, the other day I had, the guy who climbed Mount Everest, went to the South Pole and went to the North Pole and has a world record. He has so many world records, he doesn't even know how many he has. You know, we have that guy on because that's just a cool story that I enjoy talking about in terms of topics. Marketing, the hr, the finance, leadership skill improvement, how to get money, anything that I think could be related to an entrepreneur.

Yeah, absolutely. Love it. And I just love the fun Friday episodes too. Cause you always have something weird, crazy in there. It's just kind of offbeat, but it's great because it keeps it fresh. And you're like, I always kind of like, wow, that was interesting.

Well, those are the fun guests. We try to get a really wide spectrum. We had a guy recently who he and three or four of his friends crashed in the Amazon and his friends died and he was the only one to make it out alive. And now they're making that into a feature movie. So there's all sorts of angles to talk to him about. We can talk about how did you survive the Amazon and then, well, how'd you get yourself turned into a feature movie? You know, that's kind of interesting. And we have TV stars on. We've had quite a few TV stars that are of note. We do those on Friday too. Just anything that's going to be a little bit lighter than the normal load.

Let's face it, entrepreneurship is not always the most friendliest or funnest of roads travel. It's never straight and narrow, stuff like that.

Right. It is an up and down roller coaster. Yes.

And another thing that's exciting is people don't know that a lot of times that you're also a very well known best selling author. You grew with the number top 10 on McGraw Hill's bestseller list for a while. Is that correct?

Yeah. You know, the words bestseller don't mean anything anymore because of there's so many services that can guarantee you a bestseller in three categories. But we were proud that our book went to number nine on the like the big list right up there with Hillary Clinton and, you know, those sort of people, the big books. So, yeah, we were really proud of that.

Not the. I published an ebook, and it's the bestseller between 1 and 1:05am, right.

Which is exactly what people do. You know, for $4,000, I can guarantee you that, you know, that's what people sell. I know the guy who sells that. You do, too. And all that means is that 12 people bought the book and he knew all 12. All 12 are his employees. And now you're a bestseller. And it's ridiculous.

Yeah, exactly. So one of the great things I love is you've got a lot of advice and you've talked and I've got some great stuff from you. Just recently, too, since we've known each other, talking about the radio issues, marketing. What would you say as you were talking to somebody who's a new entrepreneur, maybe looking at leaving their job as we kind of transition here a little bit? Any nuggets that you would give them to look at where maybe you've seen people make mistakes on a regular basis? Maybe something they don't think about?

Well, you know, I have three sort of tenant beliefs that I surround myself in, and they're all designed to be controversial, but that's why they're fun. But I also happen to believe all of them. And so very simply, I say that entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. And I think that if we were to ask 99 people on the street, what is an entrepreneur, they would say, you know, entrepreneur is a creative guy who takes some risks doing something they're passionate about. Start a business. I just find that all three of those are true. So. All right. False. Completely false. 93% of businesses are copies of other businesses. And that data comes from the London School of Economics and Babson University. So it's good data. But that's really encouraging to me because that means that if I want to be an entrepreneur, I don't have to be creative. All I have to do is find something that someone is doing and do it well somewhere else. Right. So that's really simple. Inc Magazine is very good at that. Right. Here's what some dude in Austin is doing, and that's far away. I can do that in Atlanta. And so that's very simple. And it changes the whole way we look at entrepreneurship. I don't have to be out there waiting for this creativity lightning bolt from God, which of course will never come. And I always remind people, how many hotels do we have? Hyatt Hilton, Marriott. Right? But if I were to open a new hotel, everyone would call me an entrepreneur, right? So whatever. Creativity. Another big thing is risk. I hate risk. I don't take risk anymore. I believe that any business can be started for under $5,000. And if you can't figure out how to do it for under 5,000, you're not ready to start that business yet. I've had 4,000 guests on my radio show, and the spectrum of bootstrap stories is just overwhelming. And, you know, my favorite story is, Joey Tatum wanted a bar. You know, everyone loves a bar. You and I have had a nice meal at a bar before, and I love a good bar. He wanted his own bar where everyone knew his name, saved up $4,000, and that's all he could do. And he's like, hell, I'm going to start. So he rented an abandoned barber shop. It had the exposed metal rafters, the linoleum floor, and the big rings where the chairs used to be were still there. The first weekend he opened, he spent most of his money renovating the bathroom. The weekend he opened, he couldn't afford a kegulator or kegs, so he only had cases. And you know what? He made enough money the first weekend to stay open until the second weekend. Now, 22 years later, he has 14 bars and restaurants. The first one was a dive. It's still his most profitable one, too, of course. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of risk. And then the whole passion thing. I reserve passion for the church, the synagogue, the mosque, and occasionally the living room, the bedroom. I am passionate about my family and doing things with them. I'm an entrepreneur so that I make more money so I can do more things that I'm passionate about outside of my family. I love woodworking. There's a piece of furniture right over there that I built that I'm really proud of, but I'm still not very good at it. And I would never make a living doing what I'm passionate about. Taking woodworking classes and going to Disney is not a profession that I have found yet. So I look at passion as. I'm not passionate about the junk that I sell. I'm passionate about the lifestyle. You're wearing a T shirt. I'm wearing a T shirt. This is actually my house that I'm in. I don't go anywhere. I love that some people commute 45 minutes a day one way. I commute six seconds. I save an hour and a half. I'm already an hour and a half More productive than you are, Mr. Commuter. I'm passionate about the fact if I want to make more money, I work harder. That's cool. Passionate about the freedom, the lifestyle. I get to go to ballet tomorrow at 4 o' clock so I can watch my daughter do ballet and then soccer practice right after that with my son. It's the lifestyle. That's what I want people to be passionate about. So when you change those three things, look at creativity different, look at risk different, look at passion different, it changes the entire bucket. And now anyone can be an entrepreneur. And so I sort of wanted to prove this and I bought my wife a book on to be an Entrepreneur. And it's one of those system. And I know that you have an incredible class that I would love to come and take some time for your system. And she wasn't interested in real estate that we didn't know about this, but we bought one of the systems. We bought the Amazon thing. Yep, it worked. 500 bucks in, $78,000 out. So don't tell me that everyone can't be an entrepreneur. I believe that anyone, anyone can go out there and make $100,000 as an entrepreneur. I'm not going to make you a billionaire. But you know what? We can teach anyone to go out there and make $100,000. And if they go into your class and do your industry, they can make three or four hundred thousand dollars in a year. And so I just love that. That's our message, the core belief that anyone can do this. And I've had a lot of bets over the years where I've bet people that I could do it and prove it. I made a bet with a bunch of graduate students one time that they could choose the country and the industry that I would start a business in. And I had three months to make it profitable, repay all my startup capital and be cash flow positive. And they chose Pakistan and furniture. So I had three months to build a profitable Pakistani furniture company. Well, I want you to go on my LinkedIn profile. And all of you, I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn, but scroll to the very bottom of my LinkedIn profile and you'll see the chairs, timeless chairs that we developed out of that. I won the bet under $5,000. The product was not creative. You'll look at it and go, that's beautiful. Boo. Who the hell thought of that? I copied it from a Santa Barbara flea market thing I saw five years before that. It was a blatant steal. So that's my shtick.

That's awesome. But you're totally right. Putting those three things into place, figuring something out that's working in other market and see if it'll work and you use it in your market, avoid as much risk as possible, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they think talk to somebody else that doesn't have any experience and they over buy or they over borrow versus using the basic, a lot of the free activities and the free resources around them. And then third, they try to dive in something to their passion, which is not profitable. You know, I think that's. We see that a lot with people. They get very passionate about something. They try to put a round peg in a square hole. Well, nobody's buying it because they're passionate. You got to save your passions, like you said, for using the money you're making as an entrepreneur to develop those passions, but using what you're selling or what your business is to help finance those versus the other way around, right?

Yeah. I love what I do, but I would rather be with my family doing 100 different things. And so I have to realize what I'm passionate about is what I want to do the most, which is be with the family. And so once you realize that though, it opens up a big billion different industries. I used to sell purses for a living, and I'm not a purse guy. I know there's that rumor out there, but it wasn't true. And so are you one of these.

Guys in the corner of the big overcoat? I got a Chanel with two Cs.

Yeah, you know, so I'll sell anything if it gets me more woodworking classes.

There you go. So my dad was a woodworker as well. So what do you prefer? What do you like being on a lathe? You got anything specifically that you really enjoy tool that you really like?

Well, I'm building big things right now. My goal is to have all of the wooden pieces in my house built by me. So I'm working on dining room tables and china cabinets and stuff like that. I mean, there's my desk right there. Do you want to see it?

Yeah, sure. Listening will be able to see this. We can go back and check out the replay of the video on YouTube or Vimeo, which is always awesome. I love that, man. It's awesome.

So that desk.

Oh, nice.

Okay, you see the joinery right there?

Yeah. Very nice.

We're not fooling around. So it's some nice pieces of furniture that I'm very proud of that are things that you will pass down for generations and generations, we're not talking about building an Ikea.

Mm, that question for you kind of bring back to the entrepreneur side of things. And besides those three things we talked about, what's probably one of the biggest things that you see that you've helped people out with or talk with people about? That was probably the biggest surprise and there was something simpler than they thought.

Well, it's all about marketing. I believe that you have to market first every day. My rule is the first 30 minutes of every day should be spent marketing. That means doing a podcast, producing a blog, posting on social media, calling 35 people. Whatever it is you do to market, sending out 25 personalized emails. Whatever your marketing shtick is, you've got to do it first. Otherwise you're going to get into a boom and bust, you're really busy, you don't market, you finish those projects and all of a sudden you have no work and you have a lot of time. And so I think the number one thing that I would like to encourage people to do is do consistent daily, or maybe it's just weekly, two hours every Monday. Whatever it is, the consistency of the marketing is one of the biggest issues that I see. People who just aren't thinking long term enough. I've got income for the next three months. This project keeps me busy for the next three months. Well, what about month five and stuff like that? That's one of my obsessions and one of my big rules. With some of the software out there now and some of the packages, you really can schedule an entire week or month of social media in an hour at one time. I'm using a new product now that I love because for so long you would do a social media say on hootsuite or something like that. And the same thing had to go to Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm using a product now called Loomly L O O M L Y which will specialize the Twitter one. And so you can have a generic post that goes out to five different social media in five different correct formats. Boom, there's your. You know, I do it on. I hate to admit this, but Saturday night after the kids are in bed. Saturday night is not date night for us. The kids are in bed at 8. I've got three or four hours of work time there. I try to do my social media Saturday night and get it set up for the week. That's my number one big obsession. I got a lot of others too, but that's my biggest.

Such a great Great tip there. And that's one of the things we always tell people, like, listen, if you got to work full time job, you've got 7pm to 2am oftentimes that you can do if you're coming home or carving out that hour to loomly is a great tool. I've just been messing around that a little bit. Just came across it as well too. You talked about hootsuite or buffer or there's sprout social, which is also the thing that a lot of people are using. But yeah, that's a valuable time that sets up the rest of your week and your month for you, right, Jim?

Yeah. That way you don't have to remember to post things and to. You were very polite to have me on your show. So now it is my obligation to tweet and post about this to my audience so that they can learn about you. That's how the deal works. And if people don't understand that deal, they need to learn that deal. And we should sit here and teach that to them is by promising to tweet and tell your world about it. Right? So yes, I'm going to set it up, get that carried out. So the worst thing that would happen is you drop the episode, I forget to promote it, and then you're like, hey, what the hell, Beach? You didn't do anything. You know, so, you know, those are the sort of things that we can get taken care of, you know. So my radio show, it's a daily show. We produce six shows a week. I produce every single one of those usually on Saturday or Sunday, so that the rest of the week is empty and I'm not worrying about it.

So you go basically six hours on Saturday then?

Yeah, well, I do a lot of the interviews during the week and then Saturday I put them all together and drop in the bumper music and the introduction and all that kind of stuff.

And then roll it out the following week. Okay, nice. That's good. Yeah. Cause you're pre scheduling using your workday on Saturday to knock it off. That's awesome. That's really smart. Now, what's been probably the most surprising tip that you've received from one of your thousands of guests that was kind of of twisted your head a little bit. I know I threw a curveball there at you.

You know, I always run across guests who have come up with new ways of using what I'm also using. So the most recent example, and this is the one that, you know, it's not a great example, but it's one came to mind. I'm also addicted to upwork.com I outsource every single thing I can and sometimes I'll outsource it two or three times and average, if I'm designing a book cover, I'll have three people take a whack at it and see which one I like the most. Right. But I was interviewing someone who is an advanced Amazon person. So my wife, her Amazon system is buy something local, wholesale, send it to Amazon and Amazon retails it for you. But my guest, he has come up with his own brands, just like you with the note closers, and he's come up with his own product. So instead of a cooler by yeti, he has his own version of the exact same thing. And so you make a lot more money because you're the manufacturer and the middleman, Right? Well, he needed someone in China to help do that for him. So he went on upwork and posted. I need someone in China who can help me negotiate local purchasing agreements from factories in China. And boom, all of a sudden he had a employee in China who he's never met, who has no long term expense with no benefit cost, who he can say, I'll pay you $25 to find someone who can make 300 koozies for me. And so that was a tip that just blew me away that I had never thought of that I'm using upwork to get my taxes done and to get logos designed and proofreading. And here's someone who's got an employee now on the other side of the world that blew me away how smart that was.

Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. And I think so many people get so bogged down thinking that I don't know anybody. And yeah, you may not know anybody who does exactly that, but you can jump online a lot cheaper than you would here domestically. Find somebody who can do that job often better, but even better, help you with your bootstrap, with your limited budget to get things rock and roll a lot of times, right?

Yes.

Now, for local resources, you mentioned a couple to me when we were talking about because you were very integral, helped me get the show on the radio and do a variety of things there. You gave me some amazing tips here for local people, for experts in entrepreneurship and things like that. Would you mind sharing that with the audience?

What are you referring to? From my memory, I've given you like 700 master tips, each one smart enough to build a career upon which one.

But you talked about small business, especially going to the sba Small Business Administration. I think a lot of people don't utilize those. Share that one of 700, my friend.

Well, okay. Yeah. So number 12. I love the SBA for a lot of different reasons. One is the great advice, right? And if you want an SBA loan, they are a lot easier than you think. I have been able to get some really aggressive loans done through the sba. The way I do that is I go in the back door, which is to go in through the attached sbdc, the Small Business Development center, which are usually run at a university, which are usually in the same city as the SBA office, and they have a very close relationship. And if you can go into the SBA and say, this business plan was written by my friend at the sbdc, your chances of getting a loan there are just double doubled. So I've used them for great resources. They do provide great information. Another thing that I think is fantastic about them is they give out awards every year, and they do it in almost every category. And you know, who they give the awards to are the people who have come through their office and asked for help. And there's nothing cooler than being able to say, you know, my government, our government, your government, your federal government gave me an entrepreneurship award. You know, that's a great thing to be able to say. You want to get into Entrepreneur magazine, Win a Small Business Administration award. Entrepreneur Magazine is going to cover that. It increases your coolness, your cachet considerably, and it's one of the easier awards to get. And I'll take that to. I'll take it a step further. At a point in my career, I wanted to be 40 under 40. So I figured out who was in charge of that, and I found a publicist that he knew, and for $3,000, I got, number one my year, 40 under 40. And that was because I knew the publicist to do it. All of these awards are bought. I don't want to go that far. But a good publicist will get you the award that you want to get, right? And so the same thing is true with the sba. I wanted an award for my podcast. The SBA has a media award that they give to whoever does the best small business coverage. I told the guy, hey, I want that award. You know, And a year later, I got it right? And so the federal government has blessed my radio show, Scott. It's federally approved, for God's sakes. You know, and so. But that goes a long way now. You know, there's not a real body for podcast awards yet. That guy Tried to set it up and he joined for $1,000 and you won an AW. And I respect that model, but not, you know, it didn't last. Right. And so. But now I can say my podcast radio show is award winning by the federal government. And then 100 other people got awards that year too, across the country. Your business should be one of them, right? Because it makes a difference. Do McGraw Hill, are they more likely to publish you if you won an award? Yes, it's. I like to think of it as stair steps like this. Right. And you've got like 30 different things. Right. And if I can get my radio show on one more, I'm twice as likely to get this publishing deal. And then if I'm published, then I'm more likely to get this speaking gig and then that's going to make it more likely to get this radio show. And they all build together in a stair step fashion, one pulling the other up and going after the award industry is a good way to help all of them, right?

No, I totally agree with that. That's exactly the tip that I was talking about. I just love that and I wanted to bring it up because we are, we're not just centralized here in Austin, Texas, where home is. We have students all across the country in most of the major markets. We also have Obviously listeners in 78 different countries besides all over the market, stuff like that. And I think that's an integral tip. I can remember hearing about SBAs and stuff like that in college and especially graduate school and things like that. Working on my masters then I've dealt with some people from SCORE as well as helped advise me early on with a variety different things. But I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it. I was like, oh my gosh, it's such a brilliant nugget for those that are out there. And there's not a lot of competition for it as well too, for the most part, no.

And for you, you could go get the media award out of Texas now. If you make that your goal in the next year, you should be able to do it. And every listener out there should be able to get an award this way too. They're looking for cool stories to talk about. Think about it from their perspective. They're a government employee who has to send a report to someone that says, we worked with 37 businesses in the last quarter and 34 of them grew because of our efforts. So now they don't get fired. They're not going to get fired anyway. They're a government budget for the next. Right. You know, it's all budget mindset, it's all perpetuating. And so you help them achieve their goal. And so it's actually a win win. When you go in there, that leads.

To a lot of other things and other periodicals and things like that. Helping to get the word out to getting the name out there and attracting clients, things like that. Because they're like, oh, award winning. I want to talk with you, I want to hear about what you're doing. Let's hear the stories behind the stories.

Right, exactly.

Who's been the guest that you like because you had so many interesting people. Simon Sinek, the founder of Barefoot Wines. Just so many people on there who's probably your, who's been your favorite guest on your show that really kind of like just, oh man, it stands out when you think of them. They're just top two, top three.

Well, I'll say this first. Some of the people that you would think are great guests are actually horrible guests because they're there on a script. They're not going to deviate. So you know, some of the A guests I've had I would not want back. They're not very good. I love that 14 year old salmon kid. He just blows me away.

And the guest brings food on the show.

That's always a good thing. Yes. So all of those cool stories that you hear, I just finished up a whole month of African American entrepreneurs that we did for Black History Month and some of those stories were amazing. A 60 year old woman who retired from federal government and started a company supplying the federal government and did $20 million in her first year at 60 years old. Things like that. Just amazing stories. And these are the people that you just never hear of. They're not famous, you know, they're not Zuckerbergs and people like that. But they're out there discovering cool little niches. Like your niche. You know, when I met you, I never heard of your industry and there are people out there just like you that blow me away with a knowledge set that I don't have. Right. I had a guest on the other day that will come in. The reason I thought of this is your real estate. Their business will come in and buy 20% of your house. So think about it. If you want to remodel the kitchen but don't want to take out a loan, you sell 20% of your house. And no one's ever done that before. You sell a house, you sell 100% of it, but they're willing to hold on to 20% forever for 30 years. They don't care because they're appreciating now with you.

Wow.

And they like the idea that you remodeled the kitchen. You know, you remodeled the kitchen, you improved their asset, and so you can buy it back eventually if you want to. The guy who thought of that for the first time, Absolutely genius. Another real estate guy. And I know that, you know, Roger Blankenship flipped 800 houses, has blown me away with his knowledge of his industry. And I got six houses that I'm flipping out because of him. You know, the guest that can come in and change my life is the amazing guest, the one I remember. Oh, honey, you're not going to believe who I interviewed today. What they're doing is so cool. You know, we need to try it, you know, and so Roger blew me away, and I've got six houses that we're flipping just to experiment with that. It's a cool thing. And, you know, if Chip and Joanna Gaines can do it, hell, I can do it too. I'm smarter than Chip, I think, you know, they can do that. I think a lot of people are smarter than Chip. Yeah, exactly. You know, so I love those guests, the guests that come in and blow me away. So I had one. I've interviewed a hundred, two hundred SEO experts and I've never hired one of them. And one guy came in and his package made sense. The reason I liked him so much was this is search engine optimization. It's going to take a year or two. I was like, finally, someone who's honest. You came in and blew me away with the honesty. You're hired. That's the guy I have doing my SEO now, the one who had been. Who's just the most honest. And he was also the one who said, you know, you're gonna have to pay me for two years. Everyone else is like, oh, give me three months, I'll get you to the top. Oh, you're a liar is what you are. The guy who came in and said, I want a two year commitment from you. That blew me away. That level of honesty. And then he was able to back it up with, here's what we're going to do, week one, and here's what we're going to do, week two. Those sort of really cool guests. A guest who's making industry or making money in selling airline tickets. I thought I was 100% sure that the travel industry was dead. This is an amazing story. He went out and raised $5 million and told his investors I have no idea what I'm going to do with your money, but I will be better at it because I already have the money and won't need to be scrambling to get the money when I do find the perfect idea. And then he went and bought travel agencies, which blew my mind away. And now, though, they're making tons of money because there is still a niche, you know, the corporate. There's still that niche there. So I'm constantly getting amazing stories that blow you away. And it's not the Simon Sinek and the Brian Tracy's My April Fool's show I'm particularly excited about. My guest is named Ben. So, you know, that's going to be fun.

Oh yeah.

The story gets even cooler. Ben Gay's first job was also Zig Ziglar's first job and the two of them competed for 30 years as salespeople. And it turns out that Ben Gay was always the winner and Zig Ziglar was always second. Right? And imagine a story that starts like this. Me, Zig Ziglar and Napoleon Hill walk into a bar. You know, I mean, where the hell do you come up with stuff like that? You know, someone who's hanging out with Napoleon Hill and Zig Ziglar as their friends, you know, those are just fun interviews to have.

Oh, yeah.

A lot of great stories and people.

That is awesome. That is awesome. You're doing stuff on the radio, you're also doing stuff on podcasts. And where do you see kind of marketing going? I mean, I'm excited about what podcasting is doing for our business and things like that. Where do you see it kind of evolving to over here in the next 12 to 24 months?

Well, it's getting more and more and more personal. Right. So it's no longer. Is it okay to say I've got a great resort in the Caribbean? You now need to come in and say, I've got a great resort at the Caribbean. It's got a great play place for your three year old girl and your eight year old boy is going to really like this particular activity. Right? The people like that who market. So I am building a business right now that involves email marketing and I engage some email marketing companies and I told them I'm willing to create an individual video for every single email because that's what I think that is going to sell. Right? And they were blown away. They're like, great, we haven't even gone that far yet. And I was, I'm willing to do it. If you think about it, it's only 200 videos. Boom. Your head explodes. Okay, if I do one video every 45 seconds, that's 200 minutes, right? That's called three, four hours of work with a pee break in the middle. Right. I have three or four people who are pulling cameras back and forth. So it's not one camera recording. It's actually three cameras recording. And what's my close rate going to be when I all of a sudden send you a personalized video? And it gets even better. Your webpage is in the background over my shoulder in the video. So I'm looking at your webpage while I'm talking to you. And then it gets even better. I'm going to quote you to you. I loved on the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that person's gonna buy from you. Right. So I really believe that marketing has to use the data that we have available. Right. Too many people know that I have kids. There's too many pictures of them out there. If you're really good, you're gonna hit me up through the kids and come at me that way if you're trying to sell me a vacation. Right. You know, because we all have these footprints. We all have this stuff out there. If in 10 seconds I can hit your Facebook page and see that you were in Cancun last week, I go out, I know for a fact this person likes beach vacations. This person's going to the ocean. I'm trying to sell a museum package in Iceland. It ain't going to happen. That kind of thing. And it works in every industry. Don't tell me that it. That it doesn't. It's all about the personal service. It's all about the personal service. I went into a new bar, actually an old bar that I hadn't been to in 10 years. And the bartender remembered my name and drink. So what am I going to tip that guy?

Huge.

Huge.

Yeah, huge.

And you know what? For the last two weeks, I've been talking about it nonstop all over town. You got to go to Meehans. The guy Patty is. He's great. And so those are the things that I always remember and I buy because of that.

Yeah. Anytime you can have that personal touch to things like that. One of the things that we've been doing, is there anybody that opts into a specific list or stuff that we use with our website? I'm taking the time literally just pulling out my smartphone and doing a short 30 to 45 second little video and shooting them a text message with it just to say hey, thanks for opting in. I'm going to shoot you a link with a schedule that's get on a phone call, let's just talk.

Yeah, exactly.

It's all about I like what you say because I don't know if people are seeing this come together. You spend 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes an hour doing the marketing, you're doing that out to the masses to then turn around and engage in those one off conversations, those personal conversations from those that have said hey, I'm interested in finding more information out or things like that. Right, Jim?

Yeah. The big data allows us to do it better in bulk. Yeah. Right. So you know, it would be inconceivable to do that research five years ago to send out 200 personalized emails. But then let's go back to another thing we talked about. I paid Someone in Manila $3 an hour to do the research. I hired them off of upwork. Right. And so I got the research done that I needed for $17. And so for $17 I'll be able to have 17 time better email because it's going to say hey, I'm on your website and I love what you're doing right here and this is really cool. I wanted to talk to you about this. You're going to call me back, you're going to email me back. So I noticed you're doing a lot better with the phone than I am. I'm not a phone person yet all of these things, you know, the texts, I don't like to text. I think that texts are for your wife and your children and other that send me an email. But that's because I'm old and I'm a curmudgeon. But I don't have the system that you did. Right. Here is a text reminder. Get your stupid ass on the Internet because we're talking real estate in five minutes. Right. And so I don't do this, but here you are right there. That's your message that you sent me to remind me and I got like three of those today. And I bet your absentee rate's half of what mine is.

I don't have that. Rarely I'll have actually I think I'm more absent on other people's shows because I don't get those reminders. But that's the thing is anyone reach out to and honestly that was a simple tool through calendly that we've used to help really maximize my schedule and help squeeze those times and I can Time block. You know that I'm talking to people between two and four o'clock in the afternoon if I'm not on a podcast or I'm speaking to people between 10 and noon and really maximizing that schedule so that I get a lot more stuff done. But I also can live a lot more. I can do the fun things that I want to when I. I want to. You're going to the ballet for your daughter at 4 o' clock to watch her. Steph and I are going to the ballet Friday night for something. I don't know what the show is, we're going, but we are able to do those kind of things. Also. Why I'm also able to work out with my trainer, usually most days from noon to one, because you put it in the schedule, you work around it, and you still get as much stuff done because you're organized, right, Jim?

Well, you've got the freedom because you've chosen the right lifestyle, right? And that's huge. I don't know that your boss would let you go work out every day from 12 to 1. Right? And so that's again, the passion of being an entrepreneur. That's why we have to in today's society with all of the big companies, right? Sizing, downsizing, offshoring, near shoring, firing people, whatever the euphemism is. Your best, safest play is the entrepreneurial one. And that sounds crazy, but I'm not going to get fired from my job because a robot replaced me, because I'm not going to buy the robot, you know, and so I at least don't worry about that. I worry more about the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger taking over the world than me losing my job because a machine can flip a burger better than I can flip a burger. And so I think that entrepreneurship is now in this century becoming the safe route, the best lifestyle in terms of quality of life and safety and financial opportunity. I thought my life was going to be working for Coca Cola at 24. They decided to escort me to the door and my entire life dream ended at 24. Imagine how horrible that would have been if it had been at 44 with three kids in private school, 2.6 mortgages and four car payments.

Yeah, not a good time at that point then, but it's likely happening earlier on.

That's right. So, you know, entrepreneurship, when done right, is I think, the best alternative. And the great thing is, is that there's a thousand people like you teaching a thousand different cool verticals for us to go and explore and it's like the golden age of entrepreneurship right now, the golden age of television entrepreneurship. Because there are so many people teaching how to be successful. You know, a lot of them are full of bs, but a lot of them are really actually successful and willing to throw the crackers down for you to follow you pick up the pieces. My goodness, you can learn an entire industry for free on YouTube these days if you just watch all the videos. My wife and I wanted a tile floor and we got a $6,000 quote for the labor and we said, for $6,000 I will learn how to tile. And we did. And we had actually an enjoyable time together tiling for three weekends in a row, but we saved $6,000 and YouTube taught us to do it for free.

That's right. I mean, that's the beautiful thing. I'm actually speaking tonight at a self directed IRA company about due diligence on assets abroad. YouTube is one of the things we talk about. You can find anything just about on there. If you can, then you can usually find it somebody who's an expert at that and go there a lot cheaper for things. But I love the fact that you're talking about using the YouTube to learn something new, using upwork to find the people that need to get those things done. Those are so many. So many entrepreneurs are struggling, trying to overpay it or not figure it out or give up personally. Just give up on what they're doing because they just won't take that little extra step to go search it, Right?

Yeah. And another one more little thing that I'm really finding useful. I'm a bad procrastinator because the thing is big, right? And instead of doing the big thing, what I'm trying to do is make it into 42 little things. And 42 little things can be done one little thing at a time, right? And all of a sudden that's called progress and then called momentum and then called finished. And for me, as a procrastinator, that's an important thing too. And also I use calendar, also I build those things into the calendar. I've got today to open all of the tax information and put it in one pile. That's one little step. That's not that bad. That's not like doing my taxes. Doing my taxes is an onerous job I could never conceive of doing. But just getting everything in one pile, I can do that today.

Yeah, that's the thing. I think so many people get so scared of the big thing, they procrastinate to do other things. I'm not, not the biggest fan of to do lists, but I do like, hey, what's the biggest rocks that I've got to focus on to get done today? What are the three big rocks? All the other stuff can fill in as we need to get done, but I need to focus on the three biggest things that's going to generate income or generate revenue for the day and everything else will fit in around it. But I love the point is, yeah, most of your big rocks are made up of little small interconnecting. You're like the transformer coming together to take down that big item, that big task that you've got to get done. There's a million little steps along the way. Just most people don't take the time to see those little steps. Right?

Well, it's easier to do a little step than the big step. So even if it just means putting your briefcase somewhere where you'll find it and remember to get something out of it, that's easier than doing my taxes.

That is the truth. It reminds me, I've got to take some things out and get notarized. Thank you for the reminder. I forgot about like the last two days. That's such a great, great lesson for most people. That's why I did the whole idea there for everybody out there. Plus, if you're also looking at some of the things that's also making the money on things so many people start looking into, okay, oh, I can never do this big thing. Well, you don't have to do the big thing. Figure out what this is. Figure out what this is. Figure out the little things. Talk to people. Surround yourself with people that can help you identify those things. If you don't know Anybody, jump on YouTube and you'll find somebody that expert at what they're doing. And most people are glad to spend time with you to give you some advice and counsel. And before too long, that impossible idea is really just a series of small ones. Foot in front of the other steps it is. What's the best way for people to get more information on what you're doing, Jim?

Is it the there's jimbeach.com sort of an overview. There's school4startups, radio.com if you want to learn a little entrepreneurship, there's some books to buy over on that Amazon place. Already let you know that if you follow me on Twitter. All your following is something that I did on Saturday night, so I'm not sure that there's any value. And even telling you that Twitter handle, but it's entrepreneur Jim Ntrepreneur Jim. And you can always email me. Can I give out an email?

Yeah, please do.

Please do. It's James beach t.net James beach att.net and hit me up on LinkedIn. Can I give your audience a gift?

Yeah, that'd be great. Sure.

I think it might be a gift that I owe you as well, but I have a book out called Free Radio and podcast marketing in 30 minutes. It's part of the in 30 minutes series. So you know the Dummies series. If that's too complicated for you, you then move to the end 30 minutes series. And I wrote a book for them. I've done hundreds of interviews to promote various products that have sold my products for free. I don't pay to be on the podcast and then my products sell. So I call it free marketing. And I wrote a little book that you can read in 30 minutes on how to do that and how to become a podcast super guest. And then the free gift. So you have to buy the book for seven bucks or whatever on Kindle. The free gift that I'd like to offer, though, is I have eight or nine lists that have somewhere between four to five thousand contacts per list of podcast hosts. So if you are a small business and want to get on two or three thousand podcasts, I have the emails and the everything you need to contact them. If you're a spirituality show or a relationship show or a sports show or a real estate show, or a big business stock show or a politics show, I have lists of thousands of podcasts that would like to have you as a guest. You send me an email and tell me what list you want and I'll hook you up with the list. It's got everything you need on it.

That's awesome, Jim. That's a huge give. And thank you so much because I know you have been working on that quite a bit. We've talked about that as well for you, which is awesome. Such a huge, huge give to our audience out there. Thank you so much on behalf of notenation.

Well, if they use it right, they can get a million dollars of free marketing with it. You know, just learn how to create a pitch and then go out there and start pitching 100 people a week. Remember that 30 minutes of marketing that we were talking about? Now I've given you the list of people to send emails to every day.

Yep, that's a huge, huge thing. Love it, love it, love it. Jim, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy hectic schedule there. It's almost. It's almost ballet time there, isn't it?

Yes, it is. We gotta go get the tights on. You should see me in tights. I want to see you in tights.

Neither one of those are images anybody wants to see.

All right. The first day of San Diego. If we're both in San Diego. I'll wear tights if you do.

Okay. That would be funny. We come in and dance for the whole new movie.

Yes. I'm sure Steve would appreciate it for.

Us to wear too. That's awesome, Jim. Once again everybody, check them out jimbeach.com or the school for startup radio as well out there in a market next year. You've got a big goal getting on 100 new radio channels this year as well too. Looking forward to that and helping contribute there. But once again, Jim, thanks so much. Great knowledge, great fun and just a fun interview today. I appreciate it.

Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Thanks bud. Alright guys, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Nook closing show. Like Jim said, check out his books, check out his website. That's an amazing gift that he's giving away as well for everybody out there. Great, great nuggets to help you as a new or existing entrepreneur to really take your business to the next level. So go out, take action and we'll see you all at the top. Everybody by.