From Car Dealer to Digital Leader – Opt Out

From Car Dealer to Digital Leader

5 years ago · 1:00:12

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Mike Kamo is a still-young professional who started his career on a pre-set path to take over his family’s car dealership. Mike started in the business right out of school had worked his way up to managing the operation over 8 years when he hit the existential crisis we just described.  Was this for him?  7 days a week, selling cars? Mike switched course. He has leveraged an unlikely friendship with famed internet marketer Neil Patel into a new “Opt Out” career in digital marketing.

Transcript

0:00
I just love when people do stuff like that. Like if they try hard enough, you gotta at least try to find an opportunity for them. You may not always have one. You may not have one today and maybe you have one tomorrow, but like, you gotta, you gotta at least hear them out.

0:13
This episode of The opt out life podcast from the opt out media network was recorded here in San Diego the opt out life story of my camera

0:25
Welcome to the opt out life podcast the no BS guide to living in the modern good life hosted by subversive millionaires Dana Robertson and Nate broaden the opt out like podcast explains exactly how creative hustlers are turning sidekicks into real income and taking back control of their time from their studio in sunny San Diego, the opt out life welcomes guests who are solo printers, entrepreneurs, travelers, and creatives who are proof that you can choose a lifestyle over money, but still make money to if you feel like you’ve been chasing your tail running the rat race or stuck in a system that’s rigged against you. We’d like to offer you an alternative here on the opt out life podcast.

1:07
Imagine you’re the heir to the family business that is worth millions of dollars and makes great money every year. And imagine that you even like working with your family.

1:16
But in the face of a future doing what you don’t want to do. You have a crisis to take the easy path or to take the opt out path which would you choose.

1:24
It’s not far different than most people and take the path of moderate misery in a safe job with good benefits.

1:30
Our guest today is my camel a still young professionals who started his career on a preset path to take over the family’s car dealership. Mike started in the business right out of school. And it worked his way up to managing the operation over eight years when he hit the existential crisis that we just described. Was it for him seven days a week selling cars. So he sat down with his father and had a talk, what did dad say?

1:53
Well, it was just have to listen to find out. What we will tell you now is that Mike set his sights on becoming an internet marketer. He leveraged and unlikely friendship with famed internet marketer Neil Patel and approached Neil with a proposal for them to work together. Neil agreed, and Mike jumped in with both feet working for free while he learned the business.

2:12
Over the last few years, Mike has navigated through a side hustle selling infographics to starting partnerships with agencies to launching a wildly successful online course that sold itself on autopilot to the tune of $5 million a year in sales. He’s traveled the world the conferences and even moved into a hotel with his newfound business partner in Las Vegas. You got certified as a personal trainer and grew a site to 220,000 visits per month and the nutrition space

2:38
because well, somehow they said it couldn’t be pulled off Mike stop by the studio in a recent Friday in route to a company retreat for the agency he and Neil have built over the last year or so and now has 40 employees. Let’s hear how this former car dealership man has taken to his own version of the opt out. Let

2:57
opt out. Life is back today we are joined. Hello Dana. First of all Hello name into a practice of welcoming us so people know that you’re here even though you’re always by my side. And we are joined today by my cam Oh a fellow San Diego in fellow opt out life liver. What else would be on the opt out life we’re going to talk a lot about digital marketing which is cool because we haven’t talked a lot of nitty gritty digital marketing stuff on the podcast itself. Even though it kind of permeates into many of the stories that we tell and is very much a part of what people can do to launch side gigs and get their own opt out. So that’ll be fun. But

3:29
welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here and glad I was a five minute drive for more.

3:34
Yes, yes. And we always make it nice and easy finding so many people here in San Diego that fit the opt out life thing. Imagine that San Diego draws them in. Yes. So actually I don’t actually know this. Are you a native San Diego or did you come to our sunny shores from elsewhere? I am a native San Diego

3:50
Barrington, one of very few. I don’t mean I don’t come across many other native San Diego but I was born and raised here. And I’ve only lived outside of San Diego for about nine months when I moved to Vegas with Neil Oh, and it was fun. Amy we did it for the for the tax climate. But right. It was fun while it lasted. And then I came right back.

4:10
Are you staying in the Mandarin? oriental? Yeah. Yes. That

4:13
that’s a good place. To me. It’s a great place to live. It does not feel like Las Vegas. I mean, you’re pretty much indoors and blasted by Eric and writing right all the time.

4:21
That’s fair. That’s fair. Well, yes. Neil Neil Patel digital, your co founder, co CEO of that business digital side. And I know there’s a lot of stories there that will get into, but I want to ask when you hear the term opt out life, not necessarily. What does it mean to you. But thinking back throughout your professional career, your life as person here as San Diego native? Is there a point in your life where you feel like you made a decision to to opt out or go down a certain path?

4:46
Yeah, I mean, I can pinpoint that exact time in my life. So I was actually I was in the car business and was working with my dad, he owns Mazda dealerships, and San Diego, now he is he’s down to one he sold his others. And I had been doing it for about eight years, I was running one of his dealerships. And it was a grind like, I mean, not and grinding it out. I actually, you know, it’s, it’s fun if you like what you’re doing, but grinding for something that you know, you’re not passionate about. It gets tough, and it really wears you down. So kind of like a, like an old car. Like, I felt like I had just too many miles on me. And I was just, yeah, ready to get out of there. So I actually kind of talked to him about it and said, I feel like this isn’t for me, I don’t, I don’t know if I want to do this for the rest of my life. And so I was I was a little bit afraid to have that conversation with him. Because I didn’t want to, like, you know, like, let him down. And, but he was surprisingly supportive. And he was like, You know what, I’m in my 60s. And I hate the car business, this is the most miserable like thing that you can possibly do. Like, you don’t want to be my age, doing what I’m doing, like having to go into work and get up at 6am every day leave work at 10pm, seven days a week, weekends are you have to be there like there is no weekend vacations. That’s the most important time to be there. Because that’s when people buy cars. And so he’s like, you got to get out of here. I just don’t know how to do it. So I was already you know, I was thinking about a way out that was kind of like, my, my, like, Okay, once I had his blessing that was at least where the thought had gone through my mind to opt out. But it was a very tough, very tough thing to do. Because that was essentially walking away from a business that was worth a couple million dollars to me. So you know, when you’re in your mid 20s early, I was like, like 24 years old. It’s hard to walk away from that, you know, two and a half $3 million inheritance. Like it’s

6:39
not easy. So I was friends with Neil at the time. And that kind of transitions into the story about how Neil and I went from friends to business partners, and how that was basically the way that I that I was able to exit the the car business and get into marketing.

6:53
Talk about the transition just for a minute, then, like, so you just kind of touched on you were friends with Neil, he’s an internet marketer, that’s awesome. The path you went down, but did you have it figured out when you walked out the door that one day and you were done with the car business? Or was there a period of figuring it out?

7:08
Yeah, so there was a period of figuring it out. I actually Neil and I didn’t even specify exactly what I was going to do. Like, we hadn’t defined much other than I had pitched him. That was really how we became business partners with him. I said to him, like, Hey, you know, we’re good friends. And, and I look at what my dad’s lifestyle is, versus yours. Because you guys are both business owners and entrepreneurs. And yours is a lot more attractive. And I think that’s the path that I want to take. I just don’t know exactly how to do it. But I know what I’m good at, and I’m good at monetizing. I’m good at running businesses. And when I look at you and I look at you what you have going on, you’re basically a personal brand that has a huge following a ton of traffic to your website. And you don’t want to ties it at all. So I can figure out a way to make money using your brand. I just don’t know what it’s going to be at. And he’s like, Okay, well, I mean, at first, he wasn’t really sold on it. It really did. It took about a year of having conversations like that before we actually pulled the trigger, but eventually came around. And he’s like, Well, the first thing you need to do is you need to learn marketing and learn the space. And so I was like, cool. I’ll travel with you for six months. Because he was doing conferences like multiple times a month, and I was like, and then we’ll go from there. And he’s like, okay, and I think it was just perfect timing. Because we were good friends. We were neither of us were in a relationship. So Neil was kind of like, you know, it was, it sounded fun to him, you know, I’ll have a friend to hang out with, to travel with.

8:32
And Robin

8:33
Yeah, and I’ll take this guy under my wing. And hopefully this turns into a business partnership. That’s, that’s lucrative that makes both of us money, and that strengthens our relationship. So he took a chance and so did I. And that’s exactly what we did. Like, we started traveling to conferences. We first went to like Poland. And then we went to Dominican Republic. And we went to all these different places. And I, I remember, like, being super nervous and listening to him, talk to people at dinners and being an I’m thinking that it was a foreign language like, I they didn’t sound like they’re speaking English to me when they’re talking about marketing. What the hell are these guys saying? And I was I would read tons of content because I wanted to educate myself, but it’s just so much different to read about SEO and paid and just all kinds of digital marketing advice and and then go and listen to people have conversations about how they applied it to business. So

9:22
I think it’s worth having a conversation right now about Neil Patel, then because our listeners are like, this is cool, but maybe don’t understand this is a little bit like being good friends with Tony Robbins and saying like, well, I just asked him if I could become a marketing person. And suddenly you’re like, thrown into that. I mean, Neil Patel is a big brand name. And I met him maybe 1012 years ago, the first meeting Nate and I had met the day before for the first time, right. The next day, we were at an event called Think Tank. Thank you. dk, where we connected with Neil. And we’re both like, Who is this guy? Right? He’s cool, smart, kind of able to speak the nerd talk of like, pro grammars, which was about half the SEO sem guys at that group, but also a great communicator.

10:06
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I actually first seen him a couple years before Is this the young kid on the scene who clearly had the chops. And I think he started to become a personal brand by speaking first and foremost. And it was like, Man, this 23 year old is like, dropping knowledge up on stage that a lot of people are either too scared to share. He was always like, very open about what he was doing. Yeah, like it come from a world that was very nascent at the time. And he became one of the figureheads, by being very open sharing about his tactics. Speaking a lot blogging a ton. And as like, content marketing became more and more the thing. He just invested a ton of content to write. And he’s just,

10:41
yeah, 10, 1215

10:43
years on. He’s one of the top couple figureheads and all of Internet Marketing.

10:47
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Neil, I think the he has the ability that a lot of people don’t have, which is to be fearless in any situation. Like, I don’t think I’ve seen very many people go on stage. Just have no like, they’re not nervous at all. They don’t get any stage fright. That is Neil. I’ve watched Neil go on stage. I mean, after we flew to Israel, and it was a long red eye, and we had barely gotten any sleep the night before. And he walked up on stage and he started yawning. And he was like, Oh, I’m sorry, guys. Like, I just didn’t sleep much last night. And he just sounds so casual. When he’s on stage talking to he sounds like he’s sitting in the living room, or like how we are right now. Just having a regular conversation with somebody. And that’s what makes him so appealing. That’s why I think people resonate with him so well, because he talks to you like you’re a real person, he blogs like, you feel like he’s speaking to you. When he blogs. He speaks from this perspective of like, Hey, we’re just friends shooting the shit and I’m just giving you advice. This is what I’ve learned. This is what I know. And he

11:49
also does a lot of the legwork and has for years to put out a ton of content. So people do find who don’t know who he is. And then when they do engage with them. I think that personality comes across and then also boarding all those flights and speaking and all those events. He was actually business partners with Cameron who was one of our previous guests early on, and they both I think establish themselves pretty quickly. And Neil’s gone me on on too much further heights with being a figurehead internet marketing, but he does a lot of dirty work too. Yeah, yeah,

12:15
I mean, and another thing that’s I think really accelerated. Neil’s brand is a lot of people when they make money they’re good they’re fine they’re happy and then they’ll get to a comfortable place in life and then they become complacent and they’re like okay I’m cool I’m making enough money I’m good I don’t really need to work harder or less hard I’m chillin Neil is not like that at all. Anytime that Neil makes money he tries to end this is tough as his business partner because sometimes you know you you want to keep some of the money that you make right like you work so hard so that you can take vacation so that you have money to spend so you can live a nice lifestyle Neil makes money and the first thing on his mind is how can I spend all of this money to make my brand even bigger I don’t want to make a million dollars today I want to make a hundred million dollars in 10 years that’s how he’s always thinking so I think that’s really helped skyrocket his brand Case in point that Instagram thing that who is Neil Patel, how much money did you spend thing and a lot of money? Yeah, he did. And I don’t even know if people know why he did that. Actually, there’s a story behind that. It’s not, you know, people thought he was just trying to do something controversial by paying models to say who at to hold up a sign saying who is Neil Patel there? But it was actually a Google Play. really sure if people know that. Yeah,

13:29
what was the play?

13:29
Is it

13:32
let’s get the tactics. Let’s do it. So Google, one of the ranking factors is brand mentions. It’s actually a pretty important one. So that’s why when you’re, you know, a brand that competes with like a Home Depot, for example, if you’re a local store, and you sell hammers or something like that, and you’re trying to compete on a national level with Home Depot, you’re gonna lose because so many people know who Home Depot is their brand mentions people search Home Depot, way more than your company. So Neil was thinking, all right, there’s all these marketing blogs and websites out there and not enough people are searching Neil Patel. So I got to get people to type my name. So I can do that. Because by doing this, because basically, if you look at these Instagram models, followers, they’re all guys it’s all guys following them. And then when they’re these girls hold up the sign. Who is Neil Patel? What do they do? They go online. They’re like the hell is this guy. They go search for Neil Patel. And then it just gets Neil a ton of brand mentions. And Google

14:26
that’s really smart. I figured it out about halfway through the story. I was like, I know where this is going now. But you’re right. Like,

14:33
well, the book and the Neil stuff. I guess a little bit. Neil was one of the first people I met that lived in a hotel, basically, when he was living in that place in Seattle, right? If he’s still in there, but it was like he was living in like, a pseudo penthouse place. And that’s like hotels, less residency. And he had a wall where they like all the brands that have helped pay for his place where I like sponsors on as well. And like to get picture of it. There’s like nine logos on it. I remember, like we would meet, we invested in a couple things together back in the day. And it was like, go meet up with me. He’s like, well, we just hang out in the lobby and my place. And now one of my goals is to live in hotels,

15:06
I didn’t realize you were infected by Neil Patel subliminally

15:09
subconsciously and maybe even a little overtly. I was like, This dude can just have meetings in the lobby, and then come back down and will be up again for a drink in the afternoon. Like, what a great life. Yeah. And he ended the Mandarin basically to right. Yeah,

15:22
same thing. He loves a hotel condo life. He was at the Hyatt in in Seattle, and then we move to Mandarin and in Vegas.

15:28
Well done. Well done. Yeah.

15:29
Yeah. Okay. Nate, I think we got a break in here. And I’m going to ask you a question because I think you know, the internet marketing space better. I met Neil Patel and I knew who was a big deal. But is it pretty audacious for a guy who’s maybe been helping dad run a car dealer to walk up to a pretty well known internet marketer and say, I want to be a marketer for you. I want to make you money. Yeah, it’s

15:54
definitely audacious and it’s not something that, you know, just anyone could do or anyone could make works. There’s something special about Mike, whether it was how he struck up a friendship with Neil, or how they just kind of seem to get along or maybe on the ideas that Mike ended up pitching him to kind of make this work. I think he saw something that was there that other people might just have been enamored with who Neil was and would just be like, if I hang around him, I’m going to get rich. I think Mike was like, there’s a lot of untapped potential in your brand dude. And let’s do something about that I’m a hustler. I’m a salesperson I’m hungry we’re both kind of single and let’s let’s partner up and make this work so I think their personal stories the line and I think the tent of his pitch is what made it unique as I reflect on it because a lot of people would probably come up to Neil and want something from him but I think Mike wanted to any explicitly says he was always working to make Neil’s life easier and so we understood the man and cool story we talk a lot about Neil in this episode because there’s a thing around Neil that is just a brand it’s a personal brand but it’s more like you know Mike is still a full partner in this sees the engine behind a lot of what’s happening he’s just leveraging a brand just happens to be an Indian dude who’s good internet marketing makes kind of funny

17:08
Yeah, and and maybe there’s something that people can take out of the fact that he kind of did this for the family dealership, right? I mean, family dealership was already selling cars. And he came in and looked around and said, How can I make this better? And while it’s audacious, maybe for him, it just felt natural to look at something that was working and say, I think I can find those unexploited opportunities

17:31
Yeah, I think he had a confidence from going into the car dealership not really knowing anything about how to operate that business and then going eight years I mean that’s a pretty long run in there learning it improving it moving up to the point where he was operating it I think that gave him some confidence even if he doesn’t explicitly state what skills transferred from one to the other yet I know we’re going to ask him about that here in a minute but but yeah he’d been through that run eight years is a long time to work inside a car dealership long enough to realize that it’s not something you want to do for the rest of your life kudos to him for for making the jump and opting out and going a different way because he did walk away from the the easy button will say we’re a future was more or less guaranteed but I like the gutsy had to change pass and make this work. So yeah, let’s hear a little bit more about some of the things that transpired from the car dealership experience in the making the thing with Neil work and some of the things that didn’t. So you

18:23
stepped up to a guy with some big shoes and said, I’ve helped run a car dealership and we’re bros so can I help you run and make money in your business?

18:33
So was it from the sorry to cut you off a little bit there, my friend. But what was it from your experience running the car dealership that made you confident that you could turn the opportunities that maybe existed around Neil’s brand into more of a business and an operation?

18:46
It’s hard to answer I I don’t know if I have like a specific what it was. But I will say that when I went into the car business, I was 18 and I didn’t go to college. And so at that time, I was extremely nervous risk going into it. And I did not believe in myself. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get to where I did in the car business. I thought I would maybe do some sales, some finance and gain some experience and then go figure something else out to do with my life. And because I got to a point where I was running the entire company, I think that gave me a lot of confidence. That’s what made me feel like shit. Eight years ago, I thought that I was going to just be like a salesperson. And that was it for me. And today I’m running a multimillion dollar company. So I can do anything if I just work hard enough at it.

19:34
So where the skills you got from the car dealership portable? Or was it just that you’ve got confidence?

19:40
Yeah, so there were transferable skills. And it was mostly with people, I would say that one of the best skills that I brought over to working with Neil was being able to manage people, because we’ve been through a few businesses since, you know, before we launched the agency, and every business that we did start I had to manage a lot of contractors are different people. And I had to find them, hire them, train them, manage them. So I was always working with a lot of people at the same time.

20:07
So give me a few tips that you figured out over the years, both in running the car business, and then also on the stuff in your current iteration about managing people. Because a lot we’ve talked about recently, with guests, they’ve reached points where they’ve struggled turning a side gig into a business, because usually, to scale you need capital and people the capital is one thing that we can always try to help them figure out and talk about, but the people is another I don’t want to lead you on too much. But what are your principles in growing and managing teams at this point, now that you’ve done it for so long?

20:38
Yeah, sure. So and it really depends on what you’re trying to do. So if you’re trying to build a company really fast, and you’re trying to grow fast, you have to hire people who already have the skills otherwise, they’re going to be learning and being trained at the same time that you’re expecting them to get results. And it just takes a lot longer. So I’ve made that that mistake already in the agency. In every endeavor, I’ve always I’ve made the mistakes, I think it’s really hard to have a flawless hiring record. So you’ll make hires and you’ll, you’ll feel good about them when you hire them. And then, you know, after working with them for a little bit, you realize that they’re not gonna work out. So if you’re trying to grow really fast, it’s about finding the right person in the right seat, it’s really important. So what I mean by that is, sometimes you can find an A player and you’re like this person, super hard working, they’re very smart, they went to a great college, they have a great track record. But let’s say they’ve never worked in an agency before a digital marketing agency, before they came from, like law firms or something else, they’re probably not going to do very well in your industry. So you have to not just find people who are smart, talented, hard working, you also have to make sure that they have experience doing exactly what you’re trying to do. And that’s a lot of what we’ve been doing now at our agency. So when we go ahead hunting, and we’re trying to find the right person, we first list out like, what are the goals? What are the objectives for this role? What do they need to accomplish in the next 12 months, in the next two years, three years, what is the vision and then once we have all of those things, we go, and we speak to people and find out if they have relevant experience to that. So for example, if you’re trying to find somebody to run your paid marketing team, and you don’t have a paid marketing team will, then you can’t just find somebody who’s a great individual contributor who can go into Facebook and Google AdWords and, and execute on campaigns really well, you need to find somebody who’s actually built a team from scratch, before somebody who’s process oriented, somebody who can do sales pitches, because without getting the customers in the first place, you don’t have money to run that department. So when it comes to hiring, it really is about finding the person who’s the right fit. And obviously, the more money that you have, the easier it is to do that, because you’re then less limited, you can even go outside of the city that you’re in. But when you’re working on a budget, you’re just really trying to get as close as you can do that. And I’d say the way you do that is by finding somebody who is going to become that. So you look at them, and you say, you know, in a few years from now, they will be that person, there may be a director level person right now, but in two years, there’ll be a VP, you can tell they’re on tribe, you’ve looked at their LinkedIn. And you can see that in every company that they continue to move up in positions every year. So they get our promotion they get, they get a raise. And so that’s, that’s kind of how, you know, like, Okay, this person’s good, they’ve worked, they keep working their way up. I like that.

23:22
It’s a good way to frame it. Maybe it’s something that people don’t think about as much when they’re going out to find someone is that perfect fit. You mentioned sometimes having the budget for him to do it. I mean, I patients and money are definitely going to help in finding that perfect fit. But at the same time, it costs you a lot of money to hire the wrong person. So you kind of look at like, both buckets and be like, yeah, we may be paying more for a person B, but person is gonna end up costing us yeah, and a time and hassle and headache.

23:49
Yeah, they say the amount of money it costs making a bad hire is taking their annual salary, and I think it’s like 1.5 axing it it’s really expensive to make the wrong hire, especially the higher up position they’re in, you know, if you make a bad hire an intern Sana as big of a deal as making combative up level higher,

24:06
right, and then good hires, good employees should make your life easier and bad hires and make your way harder. So that Yeah, the nonfinancial the emotional stress and frustration is huge, especially when you’re an entrepreneur or someone who’s running a business trying to grow business, the people who we’ve talked to who have had businesses that at points where I mean, no matter what, when you’re building a business, there are times where you’re working a lot, and it’s a grind. But the people have gotten to a point where they’ve kind of OPT it out, and they’ve got a machine that kind of helps them get back to that point where they’re a little more relaxed. It’s all been down to finding great people and having them take the reins, so

24:38
yeah, good. And working your way out and putting smart people in what’s good process. Right, right.

24:43
Yeah, I mean, anyone you hire for a specific position, they should be able to do their job way better than you can do their job. So and if that’s the case, then you don’t have to focus on that area as much anymore. All you now have to do is accountability. You got to make sure that they’re doing their job.

24:57
Do you learn that at the car dealership?

24:59
Yeah, I’m mean, that was definitely one of the things that I learned accountability was a big thing, because every company has guidelines and policies and, and, you know, procedures, but not everyone follows them, right. And so you can’t it’s one thing to tell somebody from now on this is, you know, how we do things around here. But it’s a whole nother thing to get them to actually do it. And so having accountability systems in place, really make sure that people stay on track.

25:22
Yeah, I was going to ask, like, how are you managing the team today, as you said, 30 something in San Diego? Yeah, right. And then also some remote offices as well. So you’ve got a you got 3040 something people that you’re overseeing right now. And it sounds like you kind of a fun culture to you talking about doing a beach party thing this weekend? I don’t know, how do you guys manage to nurture the team, both from like, procedure standpoint, and on the culture side today,

25:43
yeah, we’ve got pretty strong operational people in the company in every department. And so they’re the ones who are helping out with building those processes and procedures. And then as far as, like, the culture and management and accountability, we recently started using a new software that’s been extremely helpful, I almost don’t want a plug these guys because they wouldn’t give me a discount. But I will just because it’s, it isn’t good software. And it’s called 15 five. So it lets you do your one on ones with your employees. It lets them set objectives, you can hold them to those objectives, you can comment back and forth. And the other cool thing about it too, is that you can recognize people for their work. So you can high five people, somebody and anyone on the team can for the public thing. So somebody could post like, Oh, this person just had a huge one with a client, here’s what happened. And then like the whole team, or each individual person on the team can go in and high five than me, like, That’s awesome, great job. And I think it promotes that like that culture of like, recognizing people for their accomplishments. But at the same time, it also helps you manage people way easier. So this is a your version of like a slack or a base camp or whatever, that you’re using them to manage all that stuff in turn now, so it doesn’t manage. It’s not like a project management system. It doesn’t manage any client work. This is just for internal communications for managing your people.

26:56
Yeah, so I missed a app in your resume. And since I’ve got the gap, I’m sure some of our listeners might have had this gap as well. So you helped grow and manage the car dealership, you got your sea legs and then realize your ambitions were being channeled in a way that she didn’t want to you make the leap with this audacious move to ask Neil Patel if you can just become his main man. Advantages monetization? How did you go from the position of I’m going to monetize Neil Patel help this business make money, obviously. So you could make money to to an agency?

27:35
Great question. So there’s a lot to the answer. We How do I start?

27:41
So the first thing I did, like I said, was traveled with Neil and I did that until I felt like I was equipped with enough knowledge to start actually doing work. And I would say about five months in we had traveled to Poland and we spoke to a company called get response and email marketing company and they wanted help with infographics, which is what Neil was doing on his website at the time, which got a lot of backlinks helped get a lot of traffic. And so Neil was like, Hey, you should help these guys with infographics. Like this is a way for you to make money, mind you, like Neil and I hadn’t started doing any work together yet.

28:19
You’re just learning at this point. Yeah,

28:20
just learning. And so I started doing that like learning in the process, and then I kind of took over Neal’s as well. So I started doing all of Neil’s infographics. I started doing them for get response. And then once Neil saw the work and he was happy with it, he’s like, this is pretty cool. Like, I’m going to tell more people to do infographics with you. So then we got another company called skilled up and then another company. And before I knew it, I was charging like $5,000 a month for these companies to do for infographics a month. And I had like, contractors that I had found using like, I think you Lance at the time, it’s not work now. Yeah. And so I had found a good designer to do the infographics. I even found a research person to do the reading. It got to the point where I was doing nothing. And the it was like, why am I paying you? You’re not even doing anything. And I’m like, but it’s getting done, isn’t it? Yeah, I’m like, Okay, well, then that’s, that’s why you’re paying me as long as I make sure that it gets done. Doesn’t matter how I do it. He’s like, Okay, he’s like, as long as I work as good quality, then it’s fine. And so I did that with him with get response with all these other companies. And then before I knew it, I was making over $20,000 a month. And I was like, This is way easier than the car business. So I was stoked. And that was like a really short short run. So I basically had this temporary high and then all of a sudden I lost one client. And then I lost another one because they wanted to start doing it internally. It was easier for them, they could do a better job, it was cheaper. And then I was like, holy shit. I just went, I just lost half of my income overnight, like in one month, I went from 20 to like eight. And then I’m like, No, this is miserable. This I’ve never had this kind of instability before, you know, like I’m so used to making pretty consistent steady money. And so I went through the whole like ups and downs of like, what that’s like when you’re doing consulting stuff. And so I did the infographics for that was a first way that I started to make money, because I needed to make money for myself, too, because I had to figure out how to pay for them for my own bills. While I was while I was doing this with Neil. And then I told Neil, he was actually farming leads out to his cousin’s SEO agency, Susan, and I believe Susan was, was trying to sell at the time to Eric, Eric Sue, who does a podcast with Neil. And so because they were going through that I was like, Neil, this is an opportunity for you to take the leads that you’re giving them and to let me take them on and find agencies, and I’ll get a way bigger cut one than what these guys were paying you out. And so he’s like, Yes, that sounds like a pretty good idea. So I went invented a handful of agencies, I picked three because I wanted to know, I wanted to make sure that when we gave them that they were good enough to actually close deals before I started giving more leads, right. And I didn’t want to go with one and then wait six months to find out that they sucked and then have wasted six months. So I did the at the same time, one agency was far superior to the others. And they closed really well. And we were charging way too much money, like we were charging so much that now looking back on it like and being an agency owner, I realized that like, I don’t know how there was any profit margins for the agency. So that’s not a good thing. By the way, it’s cool, like, because you’re happy that you’re making money, but at the same time, you’re not giving the agency enough money to help service the clients. Well, so we scaled back a little bit on what our fees were. But ultimately, even though we were making great money by doing almost absolutely nothing like, you know, we just had to keep blogging because it bring traffic your referrals, yes, they’re just referring leads, right. But ultimately, we were like, it’s not working, because Neil is super protective over his brand. And one complaint is one too many. And we got a few of them. And he was, I was like, Dude, this is expected, like, I don’t manage the fulfillment, you know, like, I can’t do anything, they’re all I can do is get the deals and hope that these guys service well. And so he’s like, I don’t know how I feel about this. Like, I don’t want my name to go down the drain. And so we eventually agreed to just stop doing that entirely. And I had another idea in mind.

32:12
All right, a quick break in here, Nate, because this is a little something people might have missed. Mike’s talking about something he did to survive while he was learning, just good for people to understand that he had to hustle and prove himself when he said, I’m going to come in and help you make money. He’s not making money right away. And so doesn’t sound like he’s getting paid money right away. So he’s hustling ways to pay his own bills and pay his way. And he stumbles across infographics which are still popular, but they hit a certain stride when he first discovered them. He created one and then people wanted to pay him for additional ones. So what did he do? He could have just made more than he would have spent all week every week in front of the computer, creating infographics. He outsourced it and a lot of people who come to us and they’re like, I need an idea. What do I do as a side gig there? They feel like they can’t do something. You don’t have to do anything other than find something people want, and then find someone who can do that. And then you broker, you middleman the economy. There are even people right now that are on Ilana selling a service that they don’t offer. They get that service done by another Ilana contractor. Who does it cheaper, what do they do? Well, they’re better communication. They’re better project management. They’re better with English language. And so I love this little thing that my camera did that made 10s of thousands of dollars that helped him survive and flourish and enable them to survive the season in order to start making money with Neil.

33:42
Yeah, we call it middleman in the gig economy. We started working into some of our educational material on side hustlers, partially because of Mike’s example here. But we’ve also seen it and other stories too. And it’s cool. He talks about having a designer and a researcher. And he’s just, you know, the place where people come to get this stuff. It’s got high value, high perceived value and selling it for $5,000 a month. And it’s he’s making some high margin and Neil even comes back to them. It’s like, dude, you’re not even doing anything. Like, why do you get to share and things profits. And he’s like, it’s getting done, isn’t it. So it’s a, it’s kudos to him for figuring this out. And it is a great example that’s replicable for just about anyone small or big, who wants to kind of start a side hustle. And I’m going to foreshadow a little bit where we’ve gone through this story with as Mike’s going through this path with Neil and figuring out different ways to monetize the inbound leads that they have, and the referring them out to some agencies. And now they’re starting to talk about how they turned Neil site into a legion platform for an online course that taught online marketing, a hugely comprehensive online course, that they ended up selling to the tune of several million dollars a year off of an automated webinar. And it’s pretty much 100% profit when you’re getting organic traffic into a website. And all the marketing is happening for itself in the courses already bought. So a very sexy and cool model that many people have tried to follow and replicate and smaller scales and you could to where you’re selling this knowledge that you have tied up in an online course, we talked a lot about this, and I think Episode 13 of the podcast with David garland from rise to the top who teaches people how to do this stuff. But listen along as kind of the nuts and bolts behind how they created this course, how profitable it was, and how very opt out it was, because Mike’s talking about I’m just sitting on my couch all day long. And this thing selling itself not a bad thing. In the end,

35:26
I had seen somebody else, I think it was digital marketer, they were doing info products. And I was like, Neil, you’ve got this huge following. And we don’t want to do consulting. So the next thing, the next best thing is, why don’t we at least give people a marketing course that teaches them how to do it? And he’s like, okay, yeah, that sounds good. How will we make money doing that, and I’m like, we’ll do a webinar and we’ll make it evergreen so that you only have to record it once, like everything, keep in mind like the I think part of why Neil liked working with me so much is because I would always figure out a way to make meals like he easier, not harder. So I mean, I know this is I’m kind of going off track here a little bit. But like, when Neil and I first started working together, he was selling a product on Quick Sprout for like $47 or $97. And he offered a 30 minute phone consultation with that product. And he was selling like, he was on the phone for like, eight to 10 hours a week for this product. And I was like, Neil, is your time really worth $200 an hour, like, this is one of his friends, even jokes. He’s like, I’m gonna buy $10,000 worth of that product. So cheap to get your time. And I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense. You know, you got to can you got to stop offering the consulting for this because it’s taking up all of your time. And he’s like, well, I don’t know how it’s gonna how it’s gonna affect the conversions. And I’m like, we’ll just test it out and see what happens. So he removed the consulting and of course, it stayed the same, he didn’t lose any sales, right? So again, like everything that I did, was trying to figure out how can I make it so that Neil has to do absolutely nothing, and he makes more money than he was making before. Like, if I can do that, then I’m providing a lot of value to him. And I can see this partnership being a real long term thing, right. So when we went into the info product business, I said, you just have to do one webinar, just record a one time a webinar and we’ll make it evergreen, I’ll have everything automated through Infusionsoft. And we ended up selling this course for $997, one time price. And then you also get access to a Facebook group. And there, there’s a community where our team was there, me and a few other marketers that I’d met along the way that helped them infographics and stuff like that. And we were just providing feedback and helping people and that that info product just absolutely killed it. We did, I remember, we launched January 16 of

37:47
and the first there was only because there were only like, what, 15 days left in the month. And we did like $75,000 in sales. And I was like, wow, this is pretty good. And then the next month, we did like $180,000 in sales. And then I’ll like, this is insane. Like this is this doesn’t require any work. After you build the funnel, it took us It took me like six months to build this product. By the way, I went way overboard. It was 45 modules. And 220 videos for this course, it was just it was it was crazy, I’ve never seen a product, I still haven’t seen a product on the market that has this much content. But again, like I wanted to over deliver, I wanted to give people everything. So I try to cover as many marketing topics as I could. And it wasn’t like a follow this course in this order. It was here’s your marketing encyclopedia, just digested all or just go and click and focus on what areas you really want to learn about. You want to learn how to build a webinar like this one go to this, if you want to learn how to just do like email marketing, go to this section, you want to learn how to be a better copywriter go to this section. So it was pretty cool because it gave people everything for only $1,000. Whereas if you go and look at what a lot of other courses are doing, they’re just pitching you that one specific, like, here’s how you do Facebook ads for like coaching business, you know, and so it kind of gave people everything and let them choose their own path. So we did that it got to the point where just from organic traffic, it was probably doing around $300,000 a month in sales. And it kind of kept out. And so I started thinking of ways to make it bigger. And I’m like, well, we could do more products. But you know, Neil’s not going to want to do that. Like, he doesn’t want to keep recording more webinars and then go down that route. So what I did was I offered people a free trial for everyone who didn’t sign up. So anyone who didn’t buy it, after the whole campaign was over, I’d send an email out saying, Hey, you know, and we would get tons of emails from people saying, like, Can I please join, like, give me a discount or give it to me for free, like anything, I’ll do anything to get in there. So I sent out an email to people saying, Hey, we got a ton of feedback from people that they really want to join. But they just can’t afford it. So what we’re doing is we’re doing a $1 trial for for everyone. So they can at least get this many modules for only $1, that can hopefully get you jumpstart because our goal is to just try to get as many businesses as we can to be more successful. So without just going after your money, like here’s for $1, you can have all this. And if you find it valuable, if your business grows from it, if things are going really well for you, then you can go into our program. And you can pay a monthly installment, which is a lot less expensive, it still comes out to the same amount, but it’s cheaper per month, right. And just that alone products, like another $80,000 a month and sounds like Okay, cool. This is starting to pick up again. So I kept coming up with different ways to optimize the funnel, looking at tons of objections from people via email, and creating FAQ videos and different things to address all of their their concerns. And we got it to a point where we were pretty happy, it was maybe doing five or $6 million a year. But again, we kind of plateaued and that’s when Neil and I were just sitting down one day. And we’re like, it’s cool, we feel good about what we’ve done. But I’m sure a lot of entrepreneurs have this conversation where they’re just like, it’s not enough. You know, we got to figure out how to make a bigger business in this. And it’s not meaningful, we don’t feel like we’re doing anything. Like we just launched this one. And people loved it that we have, like, we have probably 150 or more testimonials from businesses, business owners who are like, this has changed my life. Like they get belt breakdown case studies of how much it’s helped grow their business. So like, we’re happy that it helped people. But when I say it didn’t feel meaningful, I mean, like, I was working from home, sitting on the couch, like just doing nothing, you know, it was boring, it was boring work. It wasn’t fulfilling. And so that was when I was like, you know, what, we still get requests all the time from pretty big companies that are asking for help with marketing. I think this might be the time where we need to do a real business where we have we have to grow up like, we gotta gotta go into an office. And we got to show

41:46
the art then.

41:48
Yeah,

41:49
yeah, yeah, the opt out, right? We have the auto Yeah, but I will say this, though. So. So we did it. You know, that’s, that’s kind of how he transitioned into the agency. And one, it’s more fulfilling, but to it’s a lot of what you guys said, like, as a business owner, I am already trying to figure out ways to opt out. But I like it. It’s fun, right? It’s, it’s fun to have other people running your business, but to have a real company and have a culture and have all these people that you can say, are like, your own, like your family. It’s, it’s pretty cool. It’s a good feeling. But yeah, you try to hire the best talent so that you don’t have to, you’re not tied to the business. You don’t have to be there at seven o’clock in the morning, every day.

42:28
Is the course and the webinar still running? Or do you guys turn it off?

42:31
Now? We turn them off? Well, yeah,

42:34
yeah, I mean, did you do that, because of this certain cost of keeping a funnel open and keeping the program I mean, the tech stack, the some HR has got to go into it.

42:43
Yeah, costs were low, the margins for info were really, really high. But the reason we did it was because we don’t like to split the offer on your site. Like he only has one site. And so when you do, like, you try to divide the traffic and say, you know, like, if you’re a small business, go here, if you’re, you can afford that go here. It just doesn’t work well. So we’re like, all right, if we’re going to do it, we got to take the plunge. Like we’re going to move, we’re going to put all of the traffic and all the leads towards agency and just know that 99% of them won’t be qualified. They won’t have the money to work with us. But that 1% will be worth it. What do

43:15
you guys do with the other 99%? Just throw them away? Do you refer them out when you nothing right now?

43:19
Yeah,

43:20
nothing interesting. Yeah, there’s room for young hustler to call my camera, right?

43:25
Yeah, there’s always in my heart. I’m like, I have a place for people who do that, you know, like, we had a guy recently who sent us three bottled waters, and he mailed it to us. And he’s like, hey, Neal, he wrote a personal letter I heard in your podcast that you love water. Well, here’s a few different bottled water does for you. And by the way, like, I have my own blog, I got 100,000 visitors a month. I would love to work for your company, I’ll do anything to work for you guys. And I was like, I told my VP of sales on my call that guy and talk to him and let’s figure out how to get him a job here. Because I just love when people do stuff like that. Like, if they try hard enough, you gotta at least try to find an opportunity for them. You may not always have one. You may not have one today. And maybe you have one tomorrow. But like, you gotta, you gotta at least hear them out.

44:10
Okay, Dan, I had to break in one more time just to highlight this great story that Mike told us about someone sending bottles of water to Neil Patel digital their agency. And with a note that’s like, heard you like water. Here’s some. And oh, by the way, I have a website that’s doing all right. I’m into internet marketing. And I would do anything to work for you guys. And Mike talks about how he loves receiving stuff like that, because it’s personal, it shows they’re paying attention and he’s immediate instruction to their like VP, was find that kid and hire him. I love that because we talked about the audacity to reach out which this is an example of encouraging people to do it. And to do it in this way, right? Like the Podesta reach out, doesn’t just mean blasting people on DMS on Instagram, or sending water to someone, it means sending water to someone who is expressed publicly that they like bottles of water as a two says that may be

45:03
Yeah, yeah. It’s the listening to the details you’re trying to get in the ear of somebody that’s very busy. That has a lot of noise. And, you know, we talked about that, actually, we have an entire section of the blueprint that talks about that we repeat it online. We’ve got videos on Facebook, right? This is a theme if you if you’re not listening to this, you’re missing something from us. best advice we can give you if you’re looking for how do I get into that business? How do I learn something new? How do I leverage what I have into something bigger, you’re going to need to get into this audacity to reach out and it’s not something we’re selling. We’re just telling you find the right way to approach somebody, impress them, learn from them. And that’s going to change your life.

45:47
Yeah, it’s going to make all the difference in the world. So if this guy does end up getting hired by Neil Patel digital, he’s going to come in under a good shining light for even how he got the gig. And it’s going to change his life. And the same whether it’s changed Mike’s like Mike’s whole story as an example of this. And here’s an example of Mike paying it back to someone who is in his position. So that’s another reason for you to feel encouraged to have the audacity to reach out is the people on the other end can be people who have all kinds of different reasons to say yes to you or to be open to conversing with you, you’d be surprised at how positive the feedback can be, and how you can get in front of people. If you do something a little bit like this. If this kid had just sent an email, it wouldn’t be happening. But he did something specific. So remember that and let’s keep hearing from Mike

46:31
Basically, there were people challenging Neil saying that he can only get a lot of traffic in the marketing space because he’s been doing it for 10 years. And you know, Neil is always like on video or podcasts or just anywhere just ranting and raving about how anyone can do it. You know, if you work hard enough if you know it a niche really well like anybody can start a blog and get traffic and so people started to challenge that thought and they wanted to know if Neil could do it in another niche so we did a post on on his blood this at the time he was on Quick Sprout was before Neil Patel. So it’s probably like three years ago or a little bit more. And we asked people, we said, Hey, we’re going to create a new blog. And we’re going to do it in a niche that we don’t have a lot of experience. And so we’ll let you guys choose the niche. And we gave them like four different options there was like, I don’t even remember them. But one of them happened to be nutrition and everyone’s like, Yeah, I’d love I’d love to see Neil talk about nutrition, like fitness and nutrition. This guy doesn’t mean going to the gym. So we ended up doing a site called nutrition secrets to show people that you could generate a lot of traffic and revenue from from a business that you start from scratch. And it was pretty successful. We actually got it to about 220,000 visitors a month in less than a year and a half. And then our buddies who own a website called muscle for life, they sell products, like protein powders and supplements through their company called Legion. They bought us out nice. Yeah, they ended up acquiring the blog from us because they wanted the traffic.

47:59
Yeah, I think I, I like it as a story. Because it’s approachable. Answering the challenge is cool. But it illustrates the point like, and when you went to that side, especially as you guys were building it up, it just had this like, you know, the personal face to it. Like, here’s what we’re doing. And it really came out of nowhere, you chose a nice name, you use the playbook of content marketing, consistent content publishing, and you built a legit business. So

48:20
yeah, and it was a good excuse for me to get in shape. Yeah, I was the face of the company. So I had to go and get certified as a personal trainer. And then I also went to the gym a lot just to take pictures.

48:31
You don’t need to tell me how much the sale was both in a ballpark sense for our listeners. What is a site? Like? What’s the monthly revenue of a blog like that? That’s got 200,000 visitors a month coming kind of money? Can you make monthly?

48:44
Well, they say, if you’re doing really well that rather than looking at the traffic, you look, you can look at the emails and that you can make up to $1 per month per email subscriber. Okay. Yeah, like all nutrition secrets, I think we are collecting or 50 emails a day or something like that. So what is that like 1500 a month? Yeah,

49:06
so you got at least 1500 dollars a month in revenue. Yeah. Which it was, I mean, not including AdSense or not including any affiliate offers? Correct.

49:14
Correct. And, but the other thing too is when you’re selling, it really just depends on what it’s worth to who you’re selling it to, you know, like if we sold nutrition secrets to a company that just wanted to monetize through AdSense, they would not have acquired it for nearly as much money because they would have looked at the numbers and been like, oh, cool, we can make an extra three grand a month from this traffic or whatever. But when you sell it to a company that they’ve built their business on blogging, and all they talk about is nutrition and fitness. And their supplements tie into that really well they know what visitors worth to them. So they look at their average revenue per visitor and they say Holy shit, like here’s how much we can make from this and then you know, that way your valuation goes up. So it’s really about finding the right buyer.

49:56
Let’s walk through a little example of what content marketing is because I think a lot of clients will come in the door and say, they sell mattresses, right? They’re like, I want to rank for San Diego mattress, I want to rank for cheap mattress, everyone’s always got these top tail keywords that, you know, they think are the money money keywords, and it’s not that they’re not, but walk me through what the process is to sell that client on investing in content. Because in my mind, it’s like, well, what can we say about mattresses? What are all these like secondary keyword phrases that you can rank for? If you invest in content that I’ll grab awareness grab eyeballs that you can re target or capture someone in a less competitive search result?

50:32
Sure, sure. So there’s two ways to write content, you can write content for the purpose of getting better rankings. And so when you do that, you’re just focusing on what keywords you want to rank for. And that works really well. Like you kind of have to do that you got to have that in in your campaign. But then there’s another type of content where you’re writing content that doesn’t just matter to Google, it matters to the searcher to the person who’s doing research. And the easiest way to think about how to create that content or whatever right about is to just go and ask the person who’s buying what are their questions, go to the mattress store and talk to the salesperson on the floor and say, like, what do people ask you when they come here? What’s the difference between like foam and this? Or are people asking like about a pillow that like the pillow they have hurts their neck? What’s a pill that doesn’t hurt your neck? Any questions that people are looking for answers to that needs to be turned into blog content, and you can’t just write it 200 word piece of content. Like it can’t be like a q amp, a like a core response. Like it needs to be a detailed hey, we’ve done the research. And this is what we know that there’s really only 10 different types of pillow. I’m making this up. By the way, there’s only 10 different types of pillows on the market. And here’s how each one of them differentiate themselves a little bit. So if you’re this type of sleeper, like if you sleep on your back, this is probably going to be the best kind of pillow for you. If you’re someone who sleeps. And then somebody reads that. And they’re like, yeah, that’s me. I’m the person who sleeps on their stomach. And I always have this weird thing in my neck. Every morning, when I wake up, I need that pillow. And then there’s a little to it. And then they click on it. And they buy like, that’s that’s kind of what you do.

52:03
Yeah. And Google has been rewarding that content for some time now, right, the comprehensive content that addresses all the FAQs in and around a topic topic modeling and content depth and all that stuff. It makes a lot of sense. Because it used to be, anyone could hire a freelance writer that doesn’t even know anything about mattress pillows, they write 200 words. Yay, we have it. Yeah, exactly how many people can do it. So the people that are going to spend the time to do the market research to write something that’s 2000 words that address the related facts are going to climb up in the rankings?

52:30
Yeah, the, the quality of the content is crucial. And that’s another thing you see, like when people do say, All right, I’m going to do content marketing, I’m going to do blogging, they go to up work, or they go to some freelance site and find somebody to write a piece of content for $45. And I mean, I’ve worked with writers I know good versus bad writers. And if you want a good quality, 1500 to 2000 word blog post, you’re going to pay a writer 200 to 250 bucks for that.

52:54
And it’s just any better outline at to like me, what, what tools do you guys use for content modeling? Do you guys use market news or sem rush or both or other?

53:02
Well, we’re trying to start using our own tool. Nice. Neil. Neil has recently launched a tool called Uber suggest, I mean, it was on the market before, but he he bought the company and he’s been making a lot of edits to it sounds about right. Yeah. So it’s basically a mini sem rush. I mean, it’s creeping up there. And so we’re trying to add more features. We’re working on it right now. And eventually, it’s going to be like your free version of an SEM rush. But stripping out all of the features that we don’t feel are important for SEO right. Oh,

53:31
yeah. I love sem rush. I love market use. These are all like different content modeling tools that have different price points, a free one to answer the public, not necessarily a kind of modeling tool. But it can feed you all these questions that you can pick and choose from when you’re trying to write on a topic. So you can go to answer the public Comm. You can type in business podcast, and it’ll give you all kinds of different permutations of questions that people ask about business podcasts. And then you can piece together an outline for your writer to write.

53:55
Yeah, early on. We talked about a point in your life where you feel like you opted out and got down to your current path. Let’s talk a little bit about lifestyle. I mean, you’re a native San Diego and see you know, a bit about lifestyle, at least you’ve talked about how you’re kind of in the throes of starting a business like kind of just finishing up your one. So that’s always a time where you’re working a lot, but what has this pivot in your life away from the car dealership before? Did you lifestyle wise? How do you kind of approach balancing lifestyle and business right now all tied under the opt out life topic for sure. So here’s the interesting thing. Even though I’m back in an office, I still feel like I’ve opted out. And the reason why is because when I was in the car business, here’s how it works. Whatever environment you’re in, if you’re really happy in that environment, you do, you are opted out like you feel like you’re not working, right. I know, people say that cliche all the time. Like, if you love your work, it’s not work. Like, it is true though. Like, I go to my office every day. And like, there’s not a single day where I go in, and I’m like, dreading that I have to go there. I also don’t have to go if I don’t want to. But I like it. I really enjoy going there. So to me, this is opting out, I opted out of the life where again, I was in the car business, it was shitty hours, I had to work every single weekend. And, you know, it’s just wasn’t fun. And so regardless of what my schedule looks like, or where I am, whether it’s in an office or at home, or on vacation, or on the beach, that doesn’t matter to me all that I care about. And for me to feel like I’ve opted out, is that like, I’m good, I’m happy things are good. And so that’s, that’s really how I feel now. Like that

55:29
lovey answer. Yeah,

55:31
got it all figured out.

55:33
That was maybe

55:34
the most succinct and legitimate answer in a bit of a different way. Like we’ve interviewed a former intern of mine who works for zen, I don’t know, big ass company, right? And he’s opted in if you look at his job description, but he feels like he’s opted out because he moved to the west coast, he can walk to work, they have kind of unlimited PTO, which she takes advantage of and travels a lot. And I thought it was an interesting way to say that this book is opt out, I think, is not just about quitting your job moving to Bali. It’s a mindset thing. And a lot of ways it’s a life that you kind of have to build with balance more than anything else.

56:07
Yeah, can control over your time, if you choose for that time to be in an office, it’s still a choice you’re making. And you’re whether you’re in a job you hate, you don’t control your time or a dealership you technically own are going to inherit or could take over, you’re not in control of your time. I mean, that’s ultimately you’re in the place where we want to see people get

56:29
in control over income to self employed in some way, having a side gig even if you have a regular job we talked to recently with someone who was on the police force for a long time, a lot of those people have side gigs, and they can balance it to the point where he actually ended up quitting. But a lot of people can, like have that secure job that they can kind of do on autopilot. Yeah, I’m not saying police officers can do that. But we’ve had some other people that we’ve talked to, but then they can hustle a side gig and they kind of scratch an entrepreneurial itch there. And that allows them to have a chance to significantly increase their income or have control over their incomes that kind of get the best of both worlds. Yeah, there’s so many different ways.

57:03
Yes, there’s a story of like, what exactly what you’re saying in our in r amp D group, the info product that we sold, there’s a guy who, who lives in the UK, and he was a police officer. And he was learned he wanted to become a consultant and help people with marketing online because he had dabbled in it. After going through our course. And learning enough, he started doing it more and more. And it took time. I think it took him like a year. But eventually, he posted on the Facebook group and was like, I just want to let everybody know, I’m, I’ve quit my job as a police officer. I’m full time digital marketing now. And I love it.

57:33
Nice. That’s awesome. I love it. Great story.

57:36
Well, you’ve given us a nice tidbit about people having the audacity to reach out and you love being on the other end of that, because you want to kind of pay it back. Any other advice tips for the aspiring for the young for, for whatever

57:47
else? Sure, yeah. So here’s one, don’t take forever to get something done. Whatever you’re trying to do, you have to just throw yourself in there, and then figure out work out the kinks later on. And it’s something to this day that I still have to remind my team, sometimes I’ve got both the agency and hello bar, my software company in the same office. And, you know, especially in software, you know, development takes a long time. And so I’ll tell these guys go launch that. And they’re like, Oh, we can’t, we’ve got, you know, like, the support person is not ready to handle that many messages. And, and I’m like, you don’t even know how many messages we’re going to get. We don’t even know if what we’re trying to do is going to work. So go and do it and see if there’s any traction. And if there is if you feel like there’s something there, then you start figuring things out afterwards. But I see it happen so often, especially with people who are perfectionist, they they were trying to launch a website, for example. And they’re like, I can’t do it yet. Because, like, my opt in is just like a little bit unaligned and it’s like it doesn’t matter. Just go out there and just launch your shit and figure it out later.

58:49
Good advice. I think we did that. Yeah, started opt out on a whim and opt out Live podcast. The

58:54
first one we put out was shitty audio. We’re sorry, we fix it for the second one.

59:00
Yeah, yeah. And we keep going. because it keeps working. We keep getting people writing in telling us Thank you. And they like content. And here we are. That’s awesome.

59:08
Good advice for people like thank you. Thank you, sir. Yeah, lets you run on. Oh, cool. Alright, that was fun.

59:15
If you like what Dana and I are doing these stories of cool people sprinkled with our insights are valuable to you. Do me a favor. Wherever you get your podcasts, go and click the subscribe button right now. Our goal is to spread these stories to as many people as possible and change lives. Let’s do that we need subscribers. Hopefully we’ve helped you to start to see things differently. And there’s more to come after you subscribe to the podcast. Go over to opt out live. com, get on our email list and join the opt out life movement. Being on that list will get you early access to our course which is called the opt out life blueprint as well as our tribe membership and upcoming events hosted by the opt out life. I promise you. I am sitting watching my inbox right now waiting for you to sign up. So come say hi.

Our Guest

Name Mike Kamo
Website neilpateldigital.com
Instagram mikekamo

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