YEAR VLOG CHALLENGE DAY 14 | How to build your success in the Digital Edge

Alright, another day, another vlog. Let's go! Off to a little bit of a late start today. Son had croup and was up all night hacking up his lung and oh my gosh, it was torturous for him and for us. I never really understood how just the level of suck, how bad it is when you have a kid that is sick. And I like, you know, my parents, I don't know how they did it, man. I don't know how they did it with all those kids so close together. It was crazy. So anyways, I'm off to the office a lot later than I would have enjoyed or would have wanted to be, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. But I got some thoughts on the way to the office this morning. Got some good things planned today. But I wanted to talk about Making money. Okay, let's talk about making money, 'cause everybody wants to make money, but money, in my opinion, is a tool. It's a resource that allows us to do the things that we want to do. Money might not make you happy. I don't believe you can buy happiness, and that, you know, you get to a certain level of net worth and you become happy all of a sudden. But it can make your life easier, and so everyone that I know, myself included, wants to make more money, because once again, it just makes life easier. Here. And there's a saying from a guy that I, I know, uh, he said, anyone that says that money can't solve problems must not have enough money to solve the problem. And I mean, I'm pretty sure it's probably a well-known quote, but I just thought that was interesting. So if you have problems in your life that you've got right now, I mean, within reason speaking, it's kind of a joke, but you know, money can just make your life easier. So what do you do then? I mean, because a lot of people are working W-2 jobs, they're um, you know, working 9 to 5, they're paycheck to paycheck, they're struggling to meet ends, you know, to meet ends meet. Uh, it's, it's, it's tough out there. Prices are going up, there's inflation. So, so what do you do? Well, you can try to get rich doing something that you're completely not in control of, whatever, aka throw a bunch of money at crypto, which I've done that, and, uh, ask me how it went— horribly. Um, or what What you can do is you can develop a skill and learn a skill that can allow you to charge more for your time, charge more for your services, and ultimately allow you to stop trading your time for money because that's what a lot of people are doing right now. And you gotta do, you gotta start somewhere. You have to start trading time for money. And oftentimes when you start out, that time doesn't equate to a lot of money. You're maybe working, you know, job at a fast food restaurant, maybe you're working construction, maybe you're doing something that doesn't necessarily equate time to a lot of money, but you gotta start somewhere. In my professional opinion, the best way and the best place to trade time for money and the easiest way to stop trading time for money and a skill to learn is how to sell and make money online. I mean, people talk about real estate. I want to create passive real estate, become a real estate investor, all that stuff. That's fantastic, but guess what that requires? A lot a lot of money. And, you know, I know a ton of people that have significant real estate investment portfolios. And I mean significant, like significant. And that becomes a place to park your money in terms of a long-term storage of wealth and to protect your wealth and to continue to make a little bit of money on that as well. But you don't just start out there. And I think one of the challenges that people see is they're like, oh, I see all these real estate investors like, you know, I'm trading my time for money, how do I get into real estate? You get into real estate by learning how to not trade your time for money, do it at an incredible level, create wealth, create income, and you can then use that as a vehicle to protect that wealth. But you got to learn how to make it first. And in my opinion, like I say, that's through selling stuff online. There's no other place or no other thing that can create the wealth for you like learning how to make money online can. So, okay, Tanner, make money online, what does that mean? Well, it's pretty vague and it's pretty broad, and there's a million ways to to do it. But you can think about it this way. There's two main ways to make money online legally. And I'm not— and there's also some gray area there. I mean, there's been recent things like OnlyFans where people are essentially selling their bodies. I'm not about that. I don't believe in that. These are legitimate businesses that don't require you to trade your time for money. These are information products, info products. If you're really good at something, you can actually sell yourself and your education and your knowledge. This includes e-commerce, selling physical products online. Between these two areas or disciplines, you can make more money than you ever thought possible. I mean, this is what you do. There's info products and there's e-commerce products. Now under these two disciplines, there are of course a lot of different things to consider. It's not like, you know, it's not the exact same thing. There are a little bit of differences between creating and selling and packaging an information product and learning how to sell an e-commerce product. But here's the beautiful thing about it. If you know how to do one, you can do the other. And they're both built off of the same fundamentals. The same, you know, disciplines and the same foundational elements that allow you to learn how to sell an e-commerce product online is the exact same thing that you would need to sell an info product online at scale and vice versa. Awesome. So that's why a lot of people that are online coaches or course creators, they've learned how to sell really well like that. They've got multiple things going for them. I mean, let's just take Iman Gadzhi. Okay, I don't know if you know who he is. Started out in the SMMA space, stands for social media marketing agency. Started an agency, scaled that to a 7-figure a year agency plus. And then what he started to do was he started his own e-commerce brands. Selling his own e-commerce brands now. And he also is selling like info products to agencies, agency owners online. And between those 3 things that he did, he obviously had the marketing agency, which is a service-based business, which once again isn't selling stuff online, but it's kind of related 'cause you're packaging and monetizing your expertise, but we'll get into that later. But then between the e-commerce products and then his coaching and his info products, I mean, he amassed a net worth of like $40 million by age like 23, 24, something crazy, right? That's a perfect example and it's one of these things where if you learn how to do it well, the sky's the limit because you can take the same understanding, the same tools, the same principles, the same, like I say, the skills that you've developed and you can literally go and apply that to another vehicle or another just angle or another product online. So, why am I talking about this? Well, the reason I'm talking about it is because I'm passionate about this. I'm seeing a lot of people that are struggling. I'm seeing a lot of people that are having a hard time out there. But I'm also seeing the fact that it's never getting easier to do this. I mean, even 10 years ago to start an info product or to sell something online, there wasn't really Shopify. There wasn't these tools like ClickFunnels. There weren't these resources at our fingertips, these very low price technologies that can create a massive amount of output if you can just learn how to use them. There wasn't ChatGPT. ChatGPT. I mean, let's talk about that one just for one second. When I started selling stuff online, we didn't even have AI. So all of the copy, all of the headlines, all of the product descriptions, all of the, you know, sales letter, the scripts, video ad scripts, everything I had to come up with. Now, if you have the right prompt, you can have ChatGPT basically, you have the world's best copywriter, the world's best marketer, the world's best direct response, you know, marketing analyst, at your fingertips with everything that you're doing in your business. So why am I talking about this? Because now is the time for you to learn how to sell something online. There's no more excuses. And there's honestly never been a better time to do this. If you are in a place, in a position where you have a W-2 income or something that you're like, "Ah, I can't quite become my own business owner. I can't leave the thing that's paying me." Don't. Stay where you're at but take an hour a day, 2 hours a day, maybe wake up an hour earlier, go to bed an hour later. And just learn how to become an online marketer. Learn about the fundamentals of copywriting, of direct response marketing. Learn about how to run a Facebook ad. Learn about how to launch ads online. Learn about KPIs, tracking and reporting. Learn about user-generated content. We're gonna dive deep into ad creative. Dive deep into conversion rate optimization, sales funnels, landing pages, websites. I promise you, in like 6 months to a year, if you actually do that, you will be able to start generating your first dollars online, and those dollars will compound and build and build and build and build until eventually you'll be able to get to a place where now you're not trading your time for money anymore. So anyways, that's what I've dedicated my life to. That's what I'm all about. I am focused on helping people learn how to make money money online. And not just make money online, but learn how to stop trading their time for money. Learn how to pull these levers where you can leverage tools to do the heavy lifting for you. You can just be the master orchestrator behind the scenes, and you're creating businesses online that are selling. You're scaling your ad spend to a point where you're getting your product or service in front of millions of people, and you don't have to do anything extra. It takes the same amount of work to get your ad or your product in front of one person as it does a $10 million, $100 million, relatively speaking. The same amount of work. You just need to know what you're doing. So, everything that I'm gonna start doing moving forward is gonna be focused around those areas. How to help people sell things online. How to make more money online. And here's the beautiful thing about this. This is something that changes and fluctuates on the daily. There's never gonna be a point in time where it's like, you know everything there is to know. About selling stuff online or making money online. There's gonna continue to be new technologies. There's gonna continue to be new tech, new information out there, new strategies out there that are gonna give you a competitive advantage. And so, for me, I'm also learning it as well. I'm getting better at it every single day. And that's the thing. The people that I really look up to in the space, the people that are my mentors, people that are my, you know, role models, so to speak, from a marketing perspective, they're the people that are constantly learning and constantly tweaking and constantly developing as well. As well. So join me, join me in this and decide for yourself right now that you want to become an online marketer. You're gonna figure out how to stop trading your time for money and you're gonna start making money online. And with that together, let's get into it. Got a lot of good stuff today. Hopefully there's some takeaways that you guys can glean from my conversations, glean from what I'm doing today. And I'm just about ready to pull up to the office. So let's dive into it. Alright.

Feeling caffeinated, feeling great. Just went through all of my emails this morning, responded to all of them. That took a little bit longer than I expected. Also, I'm ready to freakin' rock and roll.

Let's get into it. It's only, what is it?

It's 11:57 AM right now and I'm already gonna be cracking my second Spill of the day. Listen, if you like milk and you like caffeine, you heard it here first. Spilt caffeinated milk, chocolate milk. They got vanilla milkshake, strawberry milk, chocolate milk. They also got a chocolate milk max with 160 milligrams of caffeine for those of you that might have had a late night last night. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm freaking loving these things. I'm already gonna be too deep and it's not even noon yet.

I've got at least 2 or 3 more in me. Let's go! You have to keep in mind though, as this gets momentum and as you create success there, um, and this is down the path, but it's good to begin with the end in mind.

You're going to be speaking to 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds, all the way up to 24-year-olds. But hopefully you can create transformation for each one of these guys. And the more you can do that, the better your opportunity to create monetization is, right? So I would be thinking, um, as you're building this community, obviously Obviously the goal is to acquire the customer that you're trying to speak to with your niche right now in the moment, but think of ways to, once that person graduates past that 24-year-old mark, how do I continue to provide value to them? How do I continue to grow and mature with my audience? And if you have that laser focus of, no, I'm gonna be building on school, I'm gonna get people on school, it's gonna be a paid membership, paid community with different levels of tiers of membership pricing, giving them courses and access to information, like that's how I wanna monetize it. And if you dedicate yourself to that, bro, I think that you'll be successful.

Gotcha.

In school, in the school community, kind of the way I'm thinking about it is it's a modern take of an email list, right? If you get people to your school community, it's like what an email list was 5 years ago in terms of being able to email them and nurture that audience and build that community. It's kind of that same thing on steroids. And so that's my approach, that's how I'm thinking about it. Um, but the key is on the organic content side, right? Being able to create that content that's got the angle, the right approach, the right type of value that has a strong call to action to then encourage somebody to DM you to start that automation to then get them into the group. Once they're in the school community, then it's about how do I continue to provide value, value, value. If we're talking about specific platforms like YouTube, yes, absolutely. Um, but in terms of like a TikTok or in terms of even an Instagram, the right type of content and with the right type of value that you're creating, I mean, you could really accelerate and build a pretty large following there quickly. I mean, people are doing it. There's content growth coaches out there that are showing, you know, 0 to 100K followers in 6 months, in 3 months, etc. It's a little bit of just understanding that algorithm. Now, as relates to paid ads, that's my specialty, and you're absolutely right. There's a way to really shorten the amount of eyeballs that you're getting in front of, 'cause at the end of the day, all you're looking to do is get in front of the right eyeballs. All marketing is, is, in my opinion, is creating an offer and a message and getting it in front of the right person at the right time. And if that person resonates with what you say or what you're trying to sell them, they buy it. And that's good marketing.

Time flew today. Uh, it usually does when you're productive and you're trying to get stuff done. Seems like, you know, when you're like in a flow state, in a rhythm, that, man, just stuff just flies. And that was definitely the case today. Had some really good calls, had a really great meeting with an event that we're doing next week. It's a club pickleball mastermind. We actually are hosting a special mastermind of people that are starting— yes, a pickleball club. How niche is that? One of our clients actually owns and operates 2 pickleball clubs here and has done it at a very high level over the last couple of years.

We've helped him with all of his marketing.

And like, I think since April 2021, we spent just shy of about $200,000 in ads, uh, in ad spend just locally in his little community. We've generated— I don't know how many purchases, uh, it's been, it's been significant. But you know, the ads have just absolutely crushed. So we've got this really kind of cool system that we've perfected, the ability to create a, a buyer, a lead for an Intro to Pickleball offer, sending them to landing pages also local sponsors and corporate memberships, birthday parties and events. And so we basically packaged up all of this information, everything that we've learned over the last, you know, 2 and a half years, going on 3 years now actually.

And we sell it for $3,000 a person at this mastermind.

This will be the 4th one that we've done. And Yeah, it's been really successful so far. So you're talking about how to kind of package some different services and offerings there. We have definitely upsells at the mastermind. So people come, they pay $3,000. We of course lead with value. It's incredibly impactful. We are going to show them how to do everything on their own if they want to, you know, at the event. But then of course, what do people pay for? Pay for speed, they pay for convenience. So at the event, we're actually going to offer them the opportunity to work with us, and we would actually build them out the exact same systems, the pages, the assets, the website, the ads, the framework, the copy, everything. Just kind of a complete total turnkey solution for them to take with their own, uh, take to their own, uh, pickleball facility that they open up. So anyways, we had a really great meeting on All coming days, be releasing some information and vlogs on that. I'll actually probably record that whole presentation, and that could be really valuable, really beneficial for you guys if you're looking for, hey, how do I get leads and customers for a local business? Maybe it's a pickleball facility or a gym, something of that nature. It's kind of a similar marketing strategy for really really any type of local, you know, business or local service there. So should be good. I also heard a quote today that I loved. I cannot take credit for that, for this quote. It came from a mentor of mine. I won't say his name, but he said, "It's the start that stops." It's the start that stops. And I was like, wow, not only is that kind of cool and it's like a play on words, but it's really true in the sense that oftentimes just the hardest part is getting started with something. And it's much harder to go 0 to 1 step than it might be to 1 step to 10 steps. You know, in a similar fashion, I heard Kevin O'Leary talking about this as well. He said, you know, making your first million dollars is definitely the hardest. You know, once you make one, it's easier to make five. That next $5 million, the next $4 million, $1 million is easier than the first. And then, you know, it's easier to make $10 million and then the $50 million and then $100 million. I mean, technically that's what he says. I can't speak from personal experience because I haven't made $100 million yet. I hope to. But it's just kind of interesting. I've noticed that in my business. I've noticed that in my life. And as it relates to marketing, it's kind of the same thing too. People get so overwhelmed with, man, how do I get started with marketing? How do I get started How do I get started with my paid ads? How do I get started generating leads consistently? How do I get started running ads on Google? How do I get started building a landing page? How do I get started making my website better? How do I get started, you know, emailing my database? And it's the start that overwhelms. And there's almost like this fear of the unknown, fear of exactly what's ahead of you. And that fear of what's unknown and not getting started keeps you from taking action. And when you actually do take action, you realize that it's not as hard as you thought, and it's just a matter of being consistent. So I thought that was really kind of an interesting phrase. It's the start that stops. And I've definitely seen that as it relates to marketing. So what does that mean for you with your business, with getting more online sales, more leads, more customers? Well, it means that you should set a date in your calendar at a future point in time, and no matter what, at that date, you're going to have X goal set, X goal met. You're going to have your Facebook ads launched. You're going to have your funnel built and driving traffic to it. You're going to, you know, send the email that you wanna send. You're going to do whatever it is that you you are trying to get across the finish line. And then what you're going to do is you're going to get a friend or an accountability partner or a business partner, and you are going to make a deal with them that if you do not do that thing by that date, you're going to have to pay them a large sum of money that is uncomfortable to you, that is very uncomfortable for you. So I'll give you a perfect example of this. This very vlog right here that I'm shooting right now, I promised my business partner that I was going to shoot a vlog every single day. I was gonna document my life no matter how stupid it is, no matter how dumb I feel. I'm gonna pull out the camera and I'm gonna talk to the camera about marketing, about my life. I'm gonna document my day Monday through Friday for an entire year. Every day that I miss, I pay him $1,000 cash. Every day that I miss, I'm paying, I'm going to have to pay him $1,000. Now, it might sound crazy, right? But for me, that's something that I'm not willing to do. And if I go and I miss a week, that's $5,000. If I go and I miss, you know, a month, $22,000. I don't have that money right now in my life to afford to pay my friend, my business partner, $5,000 a week just for me being complacent. It's a goal that I really want to accomplish. I'm not saying go pay $1,000 a day for something that— don't put that type of pressure on yourself, but put pressure on yourself that's going to make you feel uncomfortable to get your butt up and get going. If it's, you know, a friend, a spouse, a family member, business partner, whoever it is that can hold you accountable. Because once you realize that you get started, it's not as hard as you think it is. And to be completely honest with you, you actually will find that you kind of enjoy it. And the more you do something that seems intimidating and scary, you kind of do it, the more confidence you build, the easier it gets. The better you get at it. And because you get better at something, then the easier it is to do it over and over and over to continue to do it, and the less of a burden it is. So anyways, some food for thought on the drive home. Really great day. Tomorrow's Friday. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to finish the week strong. I've got a lot on my plate. In particular, there's a really awesome meet meeting that I'm gonna have with this prospect that we've been working with for a long time. I can't tell you anything about it yet, but it could be really big. It could be really big for the business, could be big for the program, and I'm pumped on that. And if it goes well, you'll find out about it, and I'll, uh, obviously fill you guys in more there later. So with that being said, let's go freaking crush it. And if you guys are enjoying this content, enjoying these videos, please let me know. Subscribe to the channel if you're not already. Give me a thumbs up, hit that bell notification to be able to get all of the other updates of all the other videos that I'm creating. Creating a video every single day, uh, posting a video every single day. And it's going to be about marketing, it's going to be about everything that is involved and related to generating more sales online, whether you have an info product or an e-commerce product, I'm your guy. And hopefully you're learning a lot from these videos. I'm kind of making these videos for myself. Back in the day, if I could make myself a video that would teach me and help portray these things and help teach myself at an earlier age what I know now, that would have helped save time time and frustration and money. That's the point of these videos. So anyways, hope you guys enjoy it. I'll see you on the next one.