Have you ever wanted to work from home?  How about sharing & teaching something fun you do like a hobby for a little extra money?  This is a discussion from The Survival Podcast about creating on online business.

Jack: This is Jack Spirko with another edition of The Survival Podcast. There's always one man's view of a changing world, the changing times and the things we can all do to live a better life if times get tough or even if they don't.

Today is April 1, 2020; generally on or about tax day. Tax day this year of course is July 15th because of the pandemic 2020. They moved the day that you have to file your taxes. We're filing a little bit late this year ourselves because there's just a lot of other things to be doing other than getting the final paperwork ready for the government.

I probably should have filed a little bit faster though because they're going to owe me money once again this year because we manage our finances well. But that's just a good thing for people to know; that you get a little longer to pay the man any extra money you owe him without interest or penalties unless you would've otherwise not had them is the only key there.

If you would have otherwise had to pay a penalty by the 15th of this month, you will still have to pay that penalty in July. A little side note there.

Anyway, what are we going to talk about today? Instead of giving the government money, we're going to talk about making money as an entrepreneur, which is a great way to keep more of the money that you do make when it comes to taxes. And it's also a great way to make money independent of what someone else says you have to do. There are rules of business and laws of life and in business you have to follow them or you will not prosper. But you are free to pick exactly how you follow them and what schedule you set and things like that. You don't have somebody else telling you when you can take a vacation. You don't have anybody else telling you when you have to work and when you can get off and you have independence of autonomy and boy, that's a pretty good place to be right now. I can promise you that.

We're going to talk about it with a guy who's been on the show before. His name is Daniel Allen. If you have a good memory, you might think back and remember that Daniel was on the air with us a long time ago and we talked about aircrete construction. How to build a house very, very affordably that's almost indestructible and highly insulated using a technique called aircrete. He's taken that and many other things that he's put together over the years of listening to the show. He was listening back to the time when I was in the Jetta. So, he's a long-term listener, a long-term community member of TSP and he's built a variety of e-courses that he sells on his website. He's going to be on to talk to us about that today.

This is a real servant to the community type of interview. It's the kind of interview I love. You won't hear much about what he does himself as far as what he sells until the very end. You're going to hear the process by which you can do it no matter what it is you want to sell and how you can develop that. We'll have him on in just a moment but before we do, let's start out with the quote of the day today. This is about being successful and I   would say this is in the world of business and the world of life in general that this quote makes sense from David Brinkley. He said, "a successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him". In other words, the things that other people throw at you, you're actually able to use those to build a successful foundation in your life. And I think that that can be true when it is the way that David Brinkley was talking about here; what really is the slings and arrows hurled at you by other people. But I think if you really want to be successful, you have to broaden that. That's just an easy one to understand because we've all had things hurled at us by other people. But the thing that throws the most that you, the most curveballs and the most be in balls is life itself. It's not always directly connected to another individual. It can be that you put your garden in and the day after you got all the plants set out that you worked so hard to get set out, a hailstorm hits you. You can take that and say, this year's ruined. You can replant and be late or if you've already been through it or already had the forethought about it, you can have more plants ready to go that you don't give away or sell to others until you get through that part of the season. Or maybe you figured out a way to take some of your crops and put them in something like an aviary or wicking beds like I do. I did that because it made sense. I also did that because I've had my plants torn up by hail before. 

If you can take the slings and arrows hurled at you by life and/or people and use them to build your foundation; whether it be a foundation that you're specifically using or a foundation that becomes immune or resistant to those things in the future, you can truly have success. That's what we're going to be talking about today in the world of online business. You have to do the same thing. Trust me, if you're going to go into content creation you better get your thin pretty thick, pretty fast. The criticisms that I have taken since I started the show, some valid and many just completely divorced from reality are such that if you knew them, you might actually worry about me. I don't really care. Sometimes I point them out once in a while to have fun with them or to mock the person from which they're coming. But all I do is take a look at over the years, all of the success stories that come out of this audience and the snipers just don't seem to be very important. That's motivated me to long-term continue to produce content. That is taking what others have thrown at me and using it to build a foundation and we're going to be talking about that and a lot of other things with our special guest today. Again, his name is Daniel Allen. His area of expertise is construction, lifestyle design, changing your life for the better and being able to deal with the things that come along with that. Aircrete construction and more. He's been a listener since the days of the Jetta. With that, hey Daniel man. Welcome back to The Survival Podcast.

Daniel: Thanks a lot. It's good to be here.

Jack: If I remember right, we had you on quite a while when we talked about aircrete.

Daniel: That's right.

Jack: That's what I thought. I mean, my memory ain't what it used to be but it's still decent I guess. That was a while ago. I bet there are some people listening that didn't hear that show so, they probably don't know who the heck you are. So, could we start out, before we get into today's topic which is going to be starting in e-course business. Just kind of give people a background. Who the heck is Daniel? Take us back to when you were trying to figure out what to do with your life and how you ended up where you are.

Daniel: Well, as you say it's a very crooked road. We went and did the conventional life thing and enjoyed a nice layoff in the great recession and moved on forward to start doing my own business, creating my own value and some stability and not depending upon other jobs and other people's permission to make money. And in the process of learning things I discovered aircrete which we talked about in another episode and I've started teaching people how to build their own houses for $26 a square foot or so. And of course you know we ran across you back in the Jetta days and I've kind of always been a little bit of a prepper, survivalist and outdoor type person, so it's just really nice to look back and see that maybe this crazy, wine be journey actually had a purpose. It started with confusion and ended with the purpose I suppose.

Jack: Awesome man. You know me. I'm big on entrepreneurship. I'm big on the freedom that comes with having an income source let's independent of what someone else tells you you have to do. There's a lot of ways to do that, especially in the digital age with content creation one way or another would be a great one. Any courses certainly in that realm as a content creation type of product. But when we look at something that is in an industry that is a $280 billion industry, a lot of people say that that's really a competitive space if it's that big. What made you settle on the industry you did? What industry is it and what made you maybe shoot at something that big?

Daniel: Well, it actually started attending some workshops and other people that went with me, they attended and they're trying to learn how to build their homes. I've had 30 years real-world experience but when people were done with their courses they were asking, well how do I do this? How do I do that? And they didn't understand how to actually get it done. So, I started helping them learn and understand the process and then I realized that there is so much missing and it just kind of evolved into a business. I really wasn't looking for this one per se but then it just dawned on me after going down the YouTube rabbit hole that you actually can make a living without working hard. I was raised, work hard to earn a living, pay your dues. So, it was a paradigm shift to realize that it's possible to help people, bring value and make money at the same time without the physical work and through an online business; because after all we kind of were leaving the industrial age and were in the information age.

Yeah, and I think one of the things people do is they may be shy away from large sectors and I think that's maybe foolish because in the end, all content businesses online today, especially when it's a small town person like you or myself and no matter how big we get compared to something like Lockheed Martin or something of that size, we're tiny. Or Walmart or an Amazon, we're tiny so everything we do is a niche and whatever that niche is of is going to be a reflection of that market. So, it actually makes a lot of sense to niche out a place within a massive market wouldn't you think?

Daniel: Oh absolutely. Look at the weight loss industry. And I want to use an example, it's not mine, it's from a course I took. Look at weight loss, it's this massive behemoth of confusion and stuff out there. Well, you start doing searches and you realize that there are a whole bunch of people not just looking for weight loss, they're looking for weight loss over 40 years old or how to lose belly fat over 40. So, that's an example of how you can find a niche in a very large market but something that's not being served.

Jack: I remember listening to a podcast, I don't remember what it was. It was one of the ones on business and they had this gal on and she had become incredibly successful using Instagram and she was developing, you mentioned weight loss, more of a fitness routine type thing; she was developing fitness routines for women that were petite, not necessarily skinny but small. And it had kind of tied that into clothing and everything else because apparently if you're a 5 foot tall chick, it's hard to find clothes that fit you that aren't in the girls section, like exercises or different things like that. I don't really understand that because I'm not a 5 foot tall female. But that was an example of a niche that you never even think of and people would ask, well, how did you think of a niche? She just said, well, it's me. It wasn't like she went out and whiteboard it out like, I'm going to go into this niche because... She did what she was and it was so genuine that it worked. And she had built a lot of success in the market again, fitness, fashion. You're talking about multibillion-dollar markets that people would say, that's too big for you to break into. Well, she just did it because no one told her it was too hard.

Daniel: Precisely. You know, it's about finding your unfair advantage if you will. It's often centered around what you already do. It could involve creating some new content or finding something you'd like to do but almost everybody has something that they've done. And if you have a need for it, there's a very good chance a lot of other people are also going to have a need for it.

Jack: Absolutely. And then you're never talking out of your ass because you know what you're talking about [laughs]. That's the other side of it.

When we do this though, we've got to look at... I've often said that you do have to spend some money if you want to make money. So, if you're going to put together a digital education product, talk to us about some of the concepts of the startup cost to doing that. What's the investment look like?

Daniel: Well, first of all that depends on if you are going to be the do-it-yourself guy and get things started or if you're going to pay a web development team to do it. But as I heard you say, you could program your own webpage but at the same time you could just throw WordPress down and get it done. So, you start with your 14+ dollar name on a website, you set up all your social media stuff like YouTube, that's all free. And then on the website specifically, if you are going to do an education system then, I know there's a lot of products out there but I found something called Thrive themes 

that allows you to visually create your own Thrive theme in addition to visually edit your pages and they have a digital online course marketing plug-in that allows you to serve your own inventory without using something like Udemy which charges for example, there's a course for $100 that I have on there. And I get $24.22 out of that hundred dollar charge. So, they get the bulk of it and it's still up to you to promote it. So, when you can move that onto your own platform and you spend probably $350 on this little suit of software then you can host it yourself and you don't have an ongoing monthly expense that you might have and all of the profit is yours. So, you may choose to buy some artwork, you may go out to Fiverr, things that you can't do yourself you can get done really cheaply. You can get images, music, videos made for you. So, the basic startup expense is actually about $500 and that it's just a matter of promotion. And that's where if you're not careful you could spend the bulk of your money if you're just doing ad spends because most of these companies, that's what they're doing. They're making money off ads, so they just try to make you spend constantly on everything. So, that is the necessity to really, really focus on the language of your niche and the people you're trying to reach and to do some research. And then of course, to that end there's a way to start a startup business instantly within days, try it out and see if there is a response to it and then take the response you do get and really ask these people questions and drill down to get the language and the need. And then of course if there's no response to it you can walk away from it having not spent a great deal of money.

Jack: You know, you've got a really good point there and it makes me think back to one of the best books that I've ever read even though a lot of it is not going to ever work that the guy claimed it would and that's The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. One of the things he says and there, probably the most valuable marketing tip he gives in there is using something like Google ad word or Google AdSense to advertise a product that you haven't even developed yet. Write a reasonable copy, a reasonable sales copy as though the product exists, point the ad at it and then when somebody tries to buy it say, we have a shortage or whatever BS excuse you come up with, click here to be on the waiting list. And run that for a week, then shut it off. And then you have a real world, this would've been micelles conversion or at least some factor of my sales conversion. And if that number is zero, you need to redefine your product, your marketing etc. before you spend money to develop it. I'm not going to say that that's always the way to go but that is always the way to think.

Daniel: It really is. There's a lady on YouTube who teaches people to write books for example and they do basically the same thing except they sell the book before it's even written. They're actually taking the money and there's just a delay for release or it's scheduled; starting such and such date we're going to have one chapter a week. And it's amazing how motivated a person can get when the money is already flowing.

Jack: Yeah, that's another approach as well and I've definitely seen that work out for people. It's the same approach that is taken on let's say, a kick starter except much like when you were talking about a platform to sell in e-course, you're not paying someone else to basically take some of your money away from you. You're just pre-selling on your own and I think that's a good thing but I've also seen people get in trouble with that. I think you should kind of have it started at least and know your timeline I think you could kind of have it started at least and know your timeline because people I've seen pre-sell things and then well, maybe it doesn't actually and up created you know what I mean?

Daniel: Yeah, I believe it's better to have already done the work myself. At least have all the material outlined and sketched out where you know exactly what you're going to do. A really important part of marketing is being very, very specific and clear on what it is you're offering. For example, when you're making these initial offerings and a]you're doing this market research, because that's what this is, it's like getting paid to do your market research. You need to specify exactly what it is your offering, what they're going to get and you yourself need to be clear and clear in your language so that there is not confusion and that when they buy into your product they're like, wait a minute, this isn't at all what you said. Of course, it's all a growing process. It's a learning process but you can go to the local community college and take a course in business and like for example here, the guy locally, he's never successfully run a business so he teaches. And you could spend a lot of money doing that or you can get out here and just start doing it while you're working. You can do it beside your job instead of watching TV in the evenings or early in the morning before you get going, you can create this and you can test this and find out if you've got a market or not.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things you mentioned spending a lot of money there, I want to kind of backup, so people kind of get this in their head. You started talking about web design, somebody else doing marketing development for you and stuff like that. People get in their head that if you spend money, a lot of money, that must mean you've got a good product. You can have the same website built for $500 that another company will build for you for $5,000, another company will build for $15,000.

In my time as a consultant, one of the companies I worked for was primarily a design company and they brought me in to basically build a marketing arm. It was very difficult to build a marketing arm for them because almost all their initial clients were design clients who also wanted marketing. Well, that design client showed up and had a $20,000 budget. Guess how much that website was going to cost to build.

Daniel: [Laughs] Every bit.

Jack: $20,000. And if that same guy showed up and said his budget was $10,000, I'm telling you, they would have built him the same website. It's part of why I only worked for that company for a year. You know, I got tired of basically my job being impossible with anybody that walked in the door and the dishonesty. I knew full well that guy could've shown up with $7,200, you would have built him the same website that you just charged him $20,000 for. And that's sad. It doesn't change because you contract with somebody to do it online.

Daniel: No, it really doesn't and there's no guarantee that it's even of any quality. I've seen some really bad stuff that cost a lot of money. And I will say this; it's worth being familiar with the process even if you don't ultimately do it. It's kind of like knowing how to work on your car and what the parts cost. When you go to pay someone to do it you already kind of know what's under the hood and at the very least you can negotiate and say, c'mon man, I know there's not that much effort in that. And then back to what you said about these people just putting the same website out. They literally do. They just have a theme and no matter how much you're paying, they just basically plug the same information into everything and it's just kind of like a cookie cutter approach. There's literally no work behind it. And just because you pay more, it truly doesn't mean you're actually getting more. And marketing companies are very much the same way.

Jack: Yeah. The minute somebody says they're going to put you on top of Google or submit you to the search engines or anything like that just run. That was a very effective strategy in 1999 [laughs]. It really was and I was doing it! So, I understand how it worked back then and today, the only thing you need to get indexed into a search engine is a link and a good site map. There's so much bull out there and I get emails all the time and it's like, boy I wish I had time to write this person back and tell them how stupid they are, but I don't and just be careful with that and focus on understanding that you're buiding a store and you're building a billboard at the same time and it needs to be effective. And then your job once you do that is to drive traffic down the road that connects to your store. That's the totality of the thing on the product side I guess or the website side.

Let's talk a little bit about the equipment and the software that you need here. You kind of mentioned that already but you kind of want to go back through it so people understand like, what do they need or where should they go, what should they be using in your opinion?

Daniel: You know, you don't have to spend a lot of money. There's a good chance that if you're listening to this podcast, you already have the equipment for the most part. Most of us have a cell phone and actually for example, a video educational product, I've seen some really good ones and they're made just with the cell phone. Something like, Powerdirector is now available on the cell phone and you can edit video right there on the spot. If you have Google Chrome and a bluetooth keyboard you can literally hook your phone up, use your TV and a keyboard and you can create your website, you can create your content, you can even plug a mouse into your phone, believe it or not. So, it doesn't have to take a lot and you don't have to have the best equipment. So, you don't need to go out there and look on the tech channel and find out what's the best camera that cost $2,000 because you could probably use a donated cell phone for something like this. A step up from that of course would be a home computer or a laptop. And it just doesn't take a lot of power to design websites or edit photos. And you're not needing a complicated website. The truth is, the majority of the traffic often comes to one page so, you're just putting up one sales page basically. A place of people to come and find out what you have. So, if you have... again, of course there's going to be some variation. If you're making a physical product that you want to sell then you're going to have to deal with the logistics of getting that manufactured, packaged and shipped or put it on fulfilled by Amazon or something.

Jack: Absolutely. So, two things that I'll give people as tips. Number one, people often think that a cell phone video is not a good enough quality for something like this. My experience with cell phone videos much to the chagrin of a lot of my audience, with walk around the property videos is; if you're moving the phone, because of the frame rate, there's a lot of vertigo that goes on in peoples' brains. If you have a stationary thing like you would for an e-course in front of a cell phone video, the average cell phone today is taking a video that's better than the best camera from 3 years ago. It just doesn't do well with kind of like the tracking of motion if you're moving the phone versus the object moving. So, go nuts with it. The other thing is that doing stuff on a cell phone or a tablet or whatever, you can totally do that. And one of the things we've learned when Dorothy started running Instagram for me was, you can't do Instagram worth a damn from a computer. They won't let you upload, you can't do all your hashtags and all that stuff. I was sitting there going, man this sucks on a phone because you're sitting there pecking these little numbers and I was like, I wonder if you can get a keyboard for an iPhone. And as I was looking up keyboards for iPhones I'm thinking, I have a bluetooth keyboard for my iMac that's an extra keyboard because they screwed up the first one and when I went to get a new one they just gave it to me and told me they didn't need the old one back so, I got two keyboards. I'm like, I wonder if a keyboard for an iMac connects to an iPhone. Guess what, it does. So, anything you're doing on a phone or something like that, if you want a keyboard to speed up your time you can take just about any bluetooth keyboard that's compatible with Macintosh and attach to an iPhone. I'm sure a lot of Galaxy or whatever the hell the other one is does the same type of thing so, that's a little add-on there.

What are your thoughts on sites like Udemy? You mentioned that. I kind of look at them personally like I do a kickstarter. The only reason I would go to kickstarter with a project is because I think their community might be able to help me. The problem is, if all I'm doing is driving my own traffic there's a cannibalization point where if I'm responsible for 90% and I could've done it without them and I only get 10% pull through and they take 7%, I've lost. So, do you think that there's value to platforms like that for the community effect or are you better off just ignoring them?

Daniel: Honestly I think you're better off ignoring them. I started using Udemy because I needed a place to host a bunch of videos and the truth is they take the lion's share. They take almost all of it, they don't promote your videos and everything they want to do, they really want to drive $4, $5, $10 and $20 courses. Now, if you're just creating something you can throw out there and you want to get your $1 off your course and it's no effort to produce. But you know, you put your heart and soul into this thing and you get $1 back, it's just not really worth it. And it's so little effort. I mean, even if you didn't have the money to pay, you can upload videos to YouTube and leave them unlisted but shareable and then you just use those links within your course and you can host your videos for free. And even though there could be some sharing amongst friends with that, it still basically keeps it invisible from the public and I just don't see any reason to give away the majority of your work. I mean, that's like working for an architect where you've got an intern that's working for nothing or minimum wage and they're charging $150 an hour for access. So, why would you give your work away? The whole point is to maximize your efficiency and your income and be free from that. That's usually the driving motive behind a lot of this working from home, working from the internet is to be free from the normal 9 - 5 job so, why give away all your effort?

Jack: My thing with a lot of these platforms is, I don't have a problem with the concept, I have a problem with the numbers. So, why would somebody sell on Amazon? And the answer is because you will sell a shitload more if you sell a widget on Amazon than if you sell it on like widgets.com, that's why. I don't see that happening with things like Udemy and then I see them taking too big of a piece of the pie in return for what they're providing you. And it seems like they're basically marketing to the undereducated. I almost said stupid but that's not the right word because they're smart enough to be in the game doing something ang getting it done but they're lacking just enough education to figure out how to host their own stuff which, if they're smart enough to make an e-course, they're smart enough to learn. They just didn't do it.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. And Udemy, they're such competition like, if there's one person that makes a course on how to make nachos then there's going to be 1,000 more of them on there. And after that, you're still responsible for driving your own traffic which means, you've got to spend money and like I said, with $100 that I listed on there and I'm getting less than $25. If you're paying for advertising there's just no ways that the numbers practically work.

Jack: That's exactly what I'm saying, the numbers don't work, not the concept doesn't work. You have a thing in your notes here for the show called imposter syndrome. I like the sound of that. What do you mean by it and how do people get the hell past it?

Daniel: What most normal, decent humans are going to feel when you start putting out a course. You're going to start saying, who am I to tell somebody else something? You feel like maybe you're getting away with something or you feel guilty that you have received money for doing this. And I see that happen all the time on the internet where people are putting out really good content and then they wind up dropping their channel because they've got to go work their job because they won't ask for money. You've got to overcome those beliefs and be willing to just put it out there. If for example, you've potty trained a dog and you know you're not the best expert in the world you know, you've got the dog whisperer on a cable show who's making millions of dollars and he's perfect and knows everything. You don't have to be that perfect person. All you've got to do is know more than the thousand people that are starting out behind you and you can help them up to your level and maybe they move beyond. But you have to believe that you're giving value and there's people that need that. So, you can't feel like you're cheating somebody by charging for it. You also have to not... I don't know, I guess the flip side of the imposter syndrome is just dumping too much content. People want to know one thing and then you dump a ton of stuff hoping to give value but you end up confusing everybody or losing people in the process because you don't feel like you're offering enough value. Sometimes what you think is simple and easy to do winds up being very valuable to other people.

Jack: Back to Tim Ferris and one of his things in that book was how to become an expert in 30 days. And what he meant was, how to be identified as an expert in 30 days. He was like, you read three books on the subject by different authors from different viewpoints and then it was like, you do three talks and then you try to make sure at least one of them is at the name of some place that people would recognize even if you were out on the doorstep when you did it and then you put that on your speaker CV and all of a sudden you sound like an expert. There was some more to it than that. Which is okay and it's okay for marketing but I like where you're going more with this because an expert is not just someone who knows more than you do. There are plenty of people we can call experts that have incredible credentials that not just know more than you, they know a lot more than you. An expert in this world is someone that has the ability to format that information so that you understand it and can act on it. And that's what the key is. There's tons of people that know more than I do about how to train a dog but I'm really good at actually getting you to understand how to train your dog for instance. And that is where the value in some sort of education product lies. I see some of these martial arts courses where this guy spends half of his course demonstrating what a badass he is. Now, maybe you were born that way and just because you're good doesn't mean you're going to make me good. If you can teach me how to do the things that I need to be able to do and how to train so that I can become better, if you're not anywhere near as good as the next trainer but you're a better teacher, you're more useful to me if that makes sense.

Daniel: Oh, absolutely. And you have to realize that everybody identifies with people differently. So, for example, in my courses, I have some people like, I want my money back. I can't stand your stupid redneck accent. Then I have other students who say, I can't stand this other guy's stupid accent and I love your stuff. You can't be offended by that. The fact is that we each are going to identify with a different teacher, with a different style of presenting it, with a different method of teaching with different vocabulary words. So, you could add that to infinity what people have a preference or a pickiness over but ultimately, you're going to bring value to somebody because you're going to wind up presenting the same topic that that super expert, he may not be able to reach those people that have the same heart that you do or that you present in such a actionable way.

Jack: Absolutely man. So, what about a person that kind of has this feeling but they're not an expert? So, why would anybody want to buy their product?

Daniel: You need to be able to demonstrate that you're bringing value and you're accomplishing something. If you can give somebody the information they need to achieve an item or a task or learn a new skill, then you've done what you set out to do and anytime you offer value, it's just [00:34:05] that someone returns value. That's really it in a nutshell. You just have to be able to bring people up to where you are. Somebody that's never had a dog before for example, learning how to not get their carpet peed on is a value. And maybe they don't want to spend the $100 for the superhero expert in the field but can purchase your material.

Jack: If you're not an expert, become one. And again, become one in the context of making people be able to do things. So, I think that actually in a lot of situations, someone who doesn't know how to do something has an advantage. Because when I do talks, I did my talk at [00:32:54] on hydroponics and I was very honest with people down there that 60 days prior to that talk, the only thing I knew about hydroponics is what I had inferred from doing [00:35:05] which was not much. I had done it for a couple months but it was one of the better presentations I ever gave because I absolutely wasn't above the heads of my audience. There were people that didn't know that wanted to learn how. Well, that's what I had spent 60 days teaching myself to do. If you pick something that you're okay at, you have general knowledge of, you know some things about and you've been doing it, you've been through the struggles of getting off the ground; that's the best time to build your first product, before you forget what you didn't know. So, you build that product right. Now you have a market and you have people that appreciate you and they value you and they say, Daniel taught me how to do this stuff. And then they say, I want to know how to do this other stuff that's a more advanced version thereof. Well, what's the best thing that you can do to grow your market? It's not making a completely new product for a completely new group of people and try to get more people. It's making a new product for your existing market and some segment of the customers you already have and are already getting will want to. That's like advanced level or second-level. You did a one-on-one, now you do a two-on-one, a three-on-one and a four-on-one and if only 25% people buy all the products it's still easier to grow your revenue that way than four products to four totally different markets. And so, if you build that foundation that way, long after, it's weird but you will forget how to make a beginners product. When I tried to do a show on something I haven't done for 10 years now it's very hard for me to go, you have to pretend that you don't know anything. And you have to pretend you're learning as much as you can over the last two weeks and what did you learn, they'll let you start. It's very hard to dial it back. It's really easy for me to do an entry-level show on a skill that I've just started to apply or have only played around with a little bit. You see what I'm saying?

Daniel: Yeah, you're basically taking the hero's journey; hey, this is the mountain I've climbed. This is the discovery I have. Let me help you up here. And as you teach those people below you, you wind up learning more than they do and you continue to grow and maybe you develop the greater product. You know, it's okay. Go ahead and make crap 1.0, get it out there and then improve. You don't have to be perfect.

Jack: Absolutely man. Once you find a topic to teach, how do you find a group with it where you can really start to get this thing up and moving and get some momentum behind it?

Daniel: The biggest shortcut period would be an example of your podcast. Guests come on, you already have an audience and by sharing something of value with your audience then maybe some of those people want to come over to my site for example and they look at that. So, you look for influencers on YouTube, you look for podcasts and you find some way that you can participate in what they're doing and bring value to them and in exchange you get a little more friendly of an audience to view what you're doing. And then beyond that, you've got paid advertising, you've got social groups of basic topics. You can look on Facebook and find related topics. You can put out articles.On your website you do search engine optimization and there's plug-ins for that but that takes six months to a year to get rolling. So, really what you've got to do is you've got to get out there in front of the people. So, that means at the very least it means placing ads that are so highly targeted with the Google ad words that is popping up just on top of your competitors ads or very related subjects for people that are highly interested and then managing that so that you're not spending too much money and you're only putting your money where you're getting the result.

Jack: Let's talk about finding a way to rapidly develop that product. How do people go from, I have this idea to actually have a product? We kind of talked about this in the beginning but maybe a little bit more about how we test that product to see if it's going to work out for us.

Daniel: It's kinda like the saying, how do you eat a camel? One bite at a time. So, you start with an idea and you need to outline it and you need to build the flow until you have your idea clearly presented. And with your idea clearly presented now, if you're starting from Ground Zero, you don't have an audience. So, that means for example on YouTube?, Because they get 80% of the search traffic for the entire Internet, just start making little videos and giving helpful information or reviews discussing things. But start drawing attention and you have to get in the habit of producing a video at least every week if not every day so that the algorithm starts presenting you to other people. Beyond that, if you're going to test market an idea, the best way to do it is to just find the keywords. You do a keyword search with the Google ad words tool and it's a free tool, you find what people are searching for and you try to find language that they're using and then you use those keywords so that when people are searching on Google or YouTube, they'll be presented with your ad. And then you're going to get a certain number of clicks and out of those clicks you're going to get a lower percentage of people that will actually click through to the buy page which might just simply be, coming soon. Sign up for my email list. And now that brings me to another very important point is, building an email list. You need access to your customers because if you just depend upon subscribers to a YouTube channel or ad words or Facebook you know, those things with censorship going on these days you could lose for no apparent reason and you won't be able to reach out to the people without paying for more advertising. So, often you could sit down, if it's something you're passionate about just turn on your audio recorder and just tell your best friend all about this idea and what's going on in the details of it and then have that transcribed at Fiverr or something, convert that to text, make a PDF. This is just one example. I know it's kind of an old way of doing things but make a PDF that people can sign up for and get free. Another way that you can drawing the business, which is probably the most helpful but it takes more time is to present your offer out there and say, but we're only presenting this to people who are qualified. And so you schedule a time to talk to them on the phone and that's really great because then you can kind of pick their brain and look at what they're wanting. Whether you're doing that just and direct sales and or through phone sales then once you know what people are asking for, you specifically asked them the questions, well, out of this product what do you expect to get? In the answers you get, allow you to immediately go in and tailor the course to fulfill their needs. And what you have is a very happy customer and it also can create your product. If you're doing the instant start where you don't even have a product yet, you're literally doing your market research, you're getting these people on the email list and you're talking to them and then you go create the content that they're asking for and that way you're not kind of swimming in, oh I've got 1000 ideas of what I could put in there. Instead you're taking your ideal customer and you're designing a product around them and the content that they want. And if you don't have an answer for them, it's quite possible you can reach out, do a podcast and even pay someone for some of their time to do the presentation of that information that maybe you don't know and then you can roll that into your course. So, it's a very dynamic, evolving process that allows you to quickly get a start.

Jack: I think we kind of alluded to this in the beginning but there are some ways to maybe start working money before a product is finished right?

Daniel: Absolutely. For example, I have a little survive and thrive blueprint course which is something from my life. Again, I'm drawing from my experience but a way that you can move completely off grid and sustain yourself 80%, you know the 80/20 rule but as quickly and as cheaply as possible without all the massive preps. Well, the course is a complete yet but you can put an outline of their and then you can sell the course at for example, a 50% discount and those customers that come in they get a good deal and you get some capital to then finish up your product as well as again the market research because you're talking to these people and finding out what it is that they really want to know. So, you generate money right away. And also, get used to the idea of monetizing your life. You do the affiliate links Amazon. That's a great thing, if you're telling a friend about this awesome thing or their asking a question, monetize your life. Don't send them the link pop over into the affiliate program, make a link and send it to them. It doesn't cost them anything and you make a little bit of money. Why wouldn't you? Why would you pass free money? You can also do affiliate sales for other related products or just sure things that you use. But get used to monetizing your entire life. Think, how can I monetize this. Because a lot of people feel bad, you know, back to the imposter syndrome again, they feel bad about making money because somebody followed the link. Well, you just have to get over that and you have to generate money any and every way that you can.

Jack: I would look at it this way too. There are a couple different ways, will there actually 1000 different ways to build something like an email list. An email list is customer based. Even if they've ever bought anything from you yet they are customer based. When one company buys another company, I'm talking big million, billion dollar companies; they're not buying that company's ability to make widgets, they're not buying that company's software, they're buying that company's customer base. Any of the other stuff, you can get it somewhere else. Unless it's some sort of a patent or some sort of a thing that you can actually build unless you own it. When you buy another company you're buying their customer base. And that should be in all of our minds. Always reinforce how valuable that customer base is. Well, if I do lead generation by giving away a free PDF, and there's nothing wrong with that but what I'm going to build is a fairly large list of people that like to look at stuff. Some portion of them are going to be buyers. But if I build my initial list selling a $9.95 product, I'm building a list of buyers. There's a very big difference to the responsiveness in a group of lookers and a group of buyers. Now, that doesn't mean not to do the PDF thing but what it does mean maybe is that I start out doing a simple PDF thing. And then while I'm developing my $99 course, I develop my $9.95 low-level product and I start moving people in my broad market, my list of lookers into my list of buyers. And I promise you, targeted marketing to that second group will way out produced targeted marketing to the first group.

Then the other thing I'm doing is now I'm developing an upsell, down sell, cross sell platform. So, when I go to start selling my product, my $99 e-course let's say, the first thing I actually do is I lead to generate. So, I put somebody in that PDF that I already have. I already built it in my early stages for lead generation. So, I push it through there to sell to them. Once they get it I say, hey, guess what? Also there's a $149 product for $99 right now and if they say no, well, do you want this $9.95 product? And now I've created a funnel of multiple positive outcomes. And any time you enter anywhere I can take parts of it and put it back in front of you and you've given me your permission to communicate. So, I'm making money upfront, I'm building a customer base upfront but I'm also building a process funnel the entire time and that is not what most people do. And you can see it's not what most people do because they try to sell their thing and if you say no what do they do? Okay. Well what you want to be able to do is when they say no go, well, what about this? What about that? Hey, you should check us out on Instagram if nothing else and follow us there.

I heard a guy describe it one time a long time ago. We were at a marketing seminar and he was like, it's like there's people in a cave and your job is to shoot them. And you're like Rambo and you've got a machine gun and you've got a bazooka and a grenade [makes shooting noises]. I got one. [Laughs] That's the way you've got to look at it you just keep mass spread shooting until somebody falls over and then you drag them out and throw them in the heap and then that heap is what you put most of your real marketing to. I know that sounds kind of brutal but it's just an analogy and it's just to get the mind in the right place.

Daniel: Right. And also as you're building an email list, you create an automated mailing list so that you're in regular contact with them and they get used to hearing from them. You try to give them valuable information, you can make offers and like you said you can upsell, you can down sell and that's a much more responsive market because most likely if they bought something from you in the past, they're much more likely to buy something from you in the future. So, you build that list. If you haven't got an e-book even, you can do webinars like hey, enter your email address and I'll send you a link to the live webinar and we can just talk. I've even seen people build products like that. They will literally just get on webinars with people with no real plan and just talk to people and then they have a library of information so, they'll screen share and they'll pop up pictures and videos and they'll teach people that way and that actually becomes a low dollar, bottom entry-level course for example that gets sold to other people later get and the more you can offer, the more ways you can find to sell something, the better. And really the email list is still one of the most important ways for a lot of businesses to get going and you don't want to neglect that either. Always be improving and always be adding to that list the contents and and once you're up and running and you've got something that's making money and you see that whole process and what's working, now you go back to the beginning of those first emails and you go through any update everything to make it more relevant and more to the point. And also in that, you'll see that some people are just going to respond to certain things better than others. So, you want to put some tracking in there and watch her numbers or they get on your ebook and just sign up for your email list. A lot of people just really want to hear more and also, don't forget in the world or the Internet is kind of like everybody just wants to give everything away for free and they feel guilty about asking for money, sometimes one of the best things you can do to drive people in is say, no you can have it. By saying no, now you've actually got attention [laughs]. It's on but it's true like we were saying with the calls, no, you can't just have this you need to qualify yourself. It's odd to, sometimes you can literally just say the word stop and you put a positive there, it interrupts the process of what they're doing long enough to actually consider the offer but you always want to be generating leads because that's what it's all about is your traffic. You can set up a lemonade stand in the middle of a suburb at the end of a dead-end street but nobody knows you're there. You've got to bring them in to look at your offers and once you've got them then you keep making additional offers.

Jack: I agree with that too. The other rule I always have is, you've got to give before you take. So, I've always been a big fan of the concept of,I want to touch you somewhere between 4 and 7 times with content that is free before I ask you for money. Now, I don't mean before I ever ask you for money. I mean, once you go into my email list, once I've gotten you in there some way. I fired all the shots at the cave and you fell over and I dragged you out and there and through you in a pile so, now I've got you in the pile. Once you're in that pile I want to sort you. If you've already bought my $99 course I don't want to keep hitting you with, buy my $99 course because you already did that. But whatever I'm hitting you with I want to be like, here's a ten-day drip campaign that's how to get yourself up and running or whatever before I ask you for another penny. Even if you don't read it, as long as you don't unsubscribe, I have become a source of information. A lot of the times I'm sure you get emails where you're like, I'm actually interested in this. I just don't have time today. And you kind of maybe put it in another folder for follow-up or something and you never get to it but you remember where from. And then one day you happen to get something that asks you for money or tries to sell you something and it's from that same source and you're like, you may or may not buy it but you know what you're not thinking. You're not thinking, this parasite just wants my money. You're thinking, that's from so-and-so and I really like what they're doing. I don't want to buy this right now or I do want to buy this right now or maybe later or whatever but you have a positive viewpoint because that is the source of value versus a source of trying to take your money from you.

Daniel: Yeah, you want to provide real value in these emails and like you said, touch them 7 to 8 times. That really is a minimum you want to send 7 to 8 emails without asking for anything and be as helpful and useful and as informative as you can, give as much value as you can and then from then on continue to present that value but then always be closing. Always be selling. In other words, shape the email to highlight for example, a problem that you have a solution for and then make an offer and make a call to action. I know that sounds funny but when you tell people to take an action, the action goes up substantially [laughs].

Jack: Absolutely. It's funny, we used to say that if you ask people to do something, sometimes they'll do it [laughs]. And they tend not to do it if you don't ask them to do it for sure. If you are interested in something the odds are there are tens of thousands of other people out there that are interested in it too. That's what I've talked about. There actually is no reason not to follow your passion or at least do things that you love or do things that you actually believe in or you want to work with because there's got to be people out there that care, right? They care about the same things that you do. The odds that you are the only person that cares is pretty low in a world with billions of people and billions connected. What are some ways that you can think of to find those people though?

Daniel: Well, you know, It's interesting. First of all, look around your own life. What are the needs that you're saying, I wish I could do this or I wish I could do that? Listen to the people around you and then of course, online in communities along related subjects. Often you'll start hearing reoccurring themes of a problem or a lack or something. If you're selling a physical product a lot of times you can find the solution to finding those people by looking at the comments. Like there was, I don't even remember where I heard this example but there was a respirator or oxygen concentrated product that a lot of the elderly were carrying and they were like, oh my arms are worn out. So, someone else was like, let's put a light battery in there and just sell to that crowd that's looking for light batteries. Basically, since it's the internet, you're kind of looking for the terminology that they use to find the solution for what they're looking for. So, really it's amazing what you can sell; almost anything you can imagine, you can find a use for and you can present it in a way that's going to solve somebody's problem. That's really ultimately what you're doing is you're solving problems and you're giving solutions, so you know, finding that crowd is really just being alert to it. Always be paying attention to what's going on around you and online. And spend time reading forums and looking at videos in the related niches or topics and you'll often find very quickly, the terminology you need that you can put some paid advertising into or create a blog for, or create a video series for that will draw in those people.

Jack: What is your thought about what you would call value based marketing versus paid advertising?

Daniel: You really want to give the value. The paid advertising honestly has pretty low returns and it's getting lower all the time. Unless of course you're super hyper specific and you're really good with your keywords. So, your value based marketing really is something like giving away the PDF or giving away a little bit of your time to consult or talk with someone or offering a sample of a free product. You just have to ask for your niche that you're doing, how can you give value to people? I know it's like really popular, everywhere you go somebody's like, sign up for my list, get a free ebook but you really do need to find a way to bring value to people. One of the biggest ways that I've found to bring value is to do webinars where they can literally just come talk to you.Like you said, you present yourself as the expert. Preferably you do know something about it and you're not just trying to pull one over on somebody but you can actually give them value. Some of the greatest value is just that one-on-one touch with them and sometimes that's just email. You'd be surprised how many people actually believe the automated email list is a personal email that's sent out to them and they really value that little touch and that connection and even just that good feeling is a value. So, you've got to think of value beyond just money as well. You've got to think of, how do you improve someone's life? How do you help them have a better day? How do you help them solve a problem? Value comes in many forms and so you give that value upfront and then eventually you begin to ask for things or offer something of more value but for a fee of course.

Jack: How would someone really go about differentiating themselves or getting people to kind of listen to them versus a competitor here? If we do go into a market that's fairly large, there's probably lots of e-courses and products and information in that world. What is the thing that makes someone listen to you versus all your competitors?

Daniel: First of all, you're going to present things and understand and explain things in a way that will resonate with a certain group of people. Secondly, I would say, go in to your competitors and look in the review section. Read every review, especially the three star and under reviews on everything that you can find and you'll see an emergence of something they're not doing right and then you can either use that against the competitor directly by using the dissatisfaction of their customers on an ad placed on top of their sales pages and videos or you can use that to say, hey, unlike these other guys, we're doing this and we're doing it better.

Jack: I think for instance, in a totally different world, the concept of workshops. On site workshops like we do here at my farm. One of the things I did is I went to a lot of other bushcrafting, outdoors and permaculture workshops. When I went, I didn't go to be a dick about it but I kind of went with the attitude of, let me figure out all the stuff that as a paying customer, even if I got to go for free for promoting it, if I paid for this, what would I be pissed off about? What would I be like, that shouldn't have been that way? And then let me build my product and just make sure that stuff just never, ever under any circumstances happens to my customers. And if it does, then I am in front of it, on top of it and apologizing for it before they're pissed off about it.

I think we've done like 25 workshops now in 7 years and we've sold out all but one. 60% of the people that come spend half a week or the better part of a week here are repeat customers and it's directly because of that. So, I would go as far as to say, as long as you're not talking about $1,000 courses or something, buying a few of the ones that look like the best, taking them yourself and saying, here's all the holes. Here's all the stuff that I am unhappy about and I'm going to make sure my course doesn't have those problems. And if you add to it, if you can get honest reviews or real world critiques and you put those together. You can build a product that's just a better product. I know that formula works. We've done it with other courses with other people that I've helped build courses and stuff. It's one of those places that might be the best money you spend is actually buying a couple competing courses and really putting them through the rigmarole. Don't be a plagiarizer but you know, you do learn things from it. You learn what works and what doesn't work.

Daniel: Absolutely. That's a great way to go. And not only do you look for reviews but usually while you're taking one of these courses they often have some kind of community aspect and you can talk to the other people. I'm sure some of you have noticed that on the Internet, people love to be negative and chime in on something negative so, if you point out those issues which could actually help the person who you are taking the course under improve if they choose to but it also gives all the other community there a chance to chime in on the negative things and it just starts flowing out and you can see where everyone else is seeing a shortcoming and you can rise to the occasion with a solution, with a value to bring.

Jack: What do you think about kind of building fan based support versus product based income and which way is better to go about that?

Daniel: If you're a content producer, I know a lot of people, they love to use Patreon in such services to just get people to donate money and that seems to work for a lot of people. I am of the personal mindset that I actually want to... like selling a product, you're giving them something, they're learning something. If it's a service like entertainment or feeling goods about telling jokes, just whatever it happens to be, a fan-based model is very effective. But it actually takes longer to build up a good fan base. For example, I don't know, I'm sure you've heard this one before but, you find your thousand true fans and you sell them a T-shirt every quarter and you make $60,000. Well, that's an example of being supported by followers who just love what you're doing. There are always going to be people who kind of fall on the cold bandwagon and that develops over time. But depending on that when you're starting a business is a bit shaky whereas if you have a product you can get out there and when you find what's working you can kind of scale it and you can increase your income, you can improve it, you can make more offers. So, in my opinion it stands a greater chance of generating a greater income. 

Jack: What does it mean to you to find a specific dismarket? We've talked about that quite a bit but what does that mean for you?

Daniel: You have to find an under or unserved area of a market or something that's totally new and of course to make multi millions of dollars you've got to be the guy that makes click fun else when everyone else is trying to figure out how do I make my email program automatically email a bunch of people? How do I put together marketing funnels for people that don't understand what they are and just have a package where you just fill it out and it's done for you? Otherwise you've got to find just areas that are being underserved or areas that you can do better and solve problems in. Look at the self-help and growth industry. It's just a behemoth and yet people get in there and they do these little niche products that focus on this one aspect of something and it's often something that everyone else overlooks but yet they can build an entire industry around this idea. Again, kind of like the weight loss for belly fat on men over 40. Okay, that's very specific versus your broad weight loss market where, you know, nobody knows anything, there's too many offers. But people have a very specific issue they want to solve and you're trying to fill that niche. You can find those in a lot of ways but again it's about finding something that you know, if there's too much competition you're just not going to get in there. You don't want to get into a situation where you're just trying to spend money to get someone else's money to just play the odds of getting that one or 2% conversion. You want to find something where you can actually offer value basically without the competition. You want to find your unfair advantage that you can really bring. One unfair advantage for example, doing a small business versus someone like Tony Robbins is you can actually hop on a Skype call with somebody and talk with your customer. He can do that. And so very often your level of customer service can be nice that no one else can fulfill. A lot of other companies, they have a lot of hired help and you talk to people. I'm sure you've called people1 and you're asking, and the people you're talking to, they don't even really know the answer or they give you a generic answer that clearly demonstrates that they don't care or understand where you're at.

Jack: Exactly. If I wanted to cut and paste the FAQ page of your website, I could've done that myself [laughs].

Daniel: Exactly. A niche is a niche. It's a self defining thing. You have to find a way to get in there on a specific thing. There are so many examples of that but you have to find something preferably related to something you love to do and find that underserved market, somewhere you can bring value. And just like you said you know, go attend events and find out what really makes you mad about it and make sure that doesn't happen. And therein, you created your own community, you've created your own niche product and you also be creating the following of loyal followers who may choose to donate on a regular basis. Or, if you start to offer subscription to multiple things you do they may do that just to support what you're doing.

Jack: I think a big part of it is like finding your superpower and what you want to do with it. Like you mentioned, Tony Robbins can't get on a Skype call with you individually. Well, he can. He's just going to charge you $10,000 to do it for two hours. Now, whether or not he wants to do that are not is a direct reflection on how many people are willing to do it and how much of his life he has to give up to do it and how it’s going to work out in the end. He can do that. An example would be, if I started Jack's Safari Hunting in South Texas and I went and bought a ranch and said you know what, screw this. I'm only doing a podcast two days a week and I'm going to run my ranch. You can only have so many people come hunt at that ranch. I'm only doing so many other things. So, basically when you come hunt at Jack's Ranch, Jack's there with you and hangs out with you when you hunt. I can do that.

Ted Nugent has a ranch in South Texas called Sunrise Safaris. He does the exact same thing but Ted Nugent has other stuff to be doing, like concerts all over the world or what have you. So, he only does the whole thing where he hunts and hangs out with you like twice a year. Now, I got an email that said that I could go hunt with Ted Nugent. I was interested. When I found out it was $12,000 to do a hunt that would normally cost me $2000 I stopped being interested. But that doesn't matter. All that matters is that there are some people that will spend that 12 grand to go hang out with Ted Nugent for a week and shoot an axis deer or whatever. I thought about it. I just didn't think about it very hard for very long but that's an example of two guys that are really big, they can do what you're talking about they just charge a lot of money for it to limit the response and on the other side, someone can be very, very responsive all the time if that's really kind of their main bread-and-butter in what they do. And they can build not just 1000 true fans but a couple hundred superfans to go with it.

Daniel: Right, because there's going to be that guy that goes, $12,000 no problem, done. And don't forget, whatever your offering, you got the free PDF, you got the video course, you got the advanced course. Maybe you sell courses where you got some webinar time and then maybe you just literally go out to a resort and do that one-on-one. Always have that high ticket offer version of the same thing because some people can read the text, oh I got this. And then other people are like, what I would really feel more confident if I watched the video course. And then there are some people who are like, well I really need to get my hands on this and do it and I want somebody there beside me to make sure I'm doing it right. So, there's all these different levels that you can serve in pricing that is going to be filled by the people who have that specific need. Some people are going to want to read the dog training book, some people are going to want to watch the video course. Other people are like, man I've got a job, I've got a life, come train my dog for me. So, you make those offers and if nothing else people hate to be sold what they love to shop. So, when you've got three and four choices people can kind of choose where they feel comfortable buying in.

Jack: Then be sure you want to say yes no matter how much money you can get for it. I get people all the time want me to consult on their business and I'm like, I don't do that. And I've had people push me like, well, just give me a number and finally I'm like, I'll have to do it on site. You'll have to pay all my expenses and it's $10,000 a day with a four day minimum because that's how long I need to minimally understand your business. Then I'm going to give you a two-page recommendation of what you should be doing and I'm going to walk away and if you don't do this it's not my problem. And every time I said that, it's only been a couple of times I've actually been pushed far enough to do it. I'm thinking, don't say yes, don't say yes. I don't want to do this. And the minute somebody says yes it's going to $20,000 a day because I don't want to do it. Because I know that no matter how hard I work on it from the years that I did that type of consulting, that most companies won't actually do what you recommend and I'm just not comfortable taking somebody's money when I know already that that's going to be the case. And most of what I'm going to tell you is already out there in the open air for free from me if you go gather it and use it. So, be willing to take all that money but also, you're building a lifestyle business so build the lifestyle that you want to go with it. And if doing something makes you miserable, don't do that. Just find another way to capitalize on it because I can't go to that place. I don't want to go in that place and sooner or later somebody's gonna throw enough money at me to get me to do it once and I don't know how much money that really is [laughs]. I don't want to do it.

Let's talk a little bit here about optimizing your content, your website, your marketing. What are some tips on optimizing things?

Daniel: Well, if you are doing it yourself of course you know if you're using WordPress and you get Yoast SEO, make sure your basic structure, your language and your keywords are all in place. When you put videos on YouTube make sure you've got your keywords in there and check those keywords. There's uber suggests, it's a website where you can type in a keyword and it'll give you everything on the Internet related to that and sometimes you need to optimize your keywords. Search engines like to see you doing regular content and new updates on there. You also need to pay attention to what's going on and when you have something that's working, that is converting well like with Thrive themes you can do an AB test and you make a new version and then see which one is actually performing better. If you're doing something and it's not working, don't keep doing it. That's just stupid. Find what works and improve upon it. In other words, look at what you're doing, improve and change it. And then go back and measure the results, see where you can improve and change it. It seems like a lot and it can be overwhelming all at once but as long as you keep the process as each little piece has come into your attention, see where people are clicking in and buying. To see how they are responding better and do more of what works. Don't ever,on your ad spend, don't ever just take the default models that they give you because all they're going to do is maximize the spending of your money and it's not to your interest. So, track everything and always be monitoring how what you do affects the bottom line because ultimately that your real measurement of success is how many sales you have been making. And also, if you're marketing something and you're getting an incredibly high refund rate, you really have to go back and look at that too. You're not delivering what you're saying or there is a disconnect there. There's something going on. So again, take an action, measure the results, make improvements and return back to measuring the action. It's really just a process of that. You know, honestly marketing funnels, a lot of people, they sell these ridiculously expensive courses on marketing funnels. Well, a marketing funnel is nothing more than, how are you driving traffic? Collecting their email. What content are you sending them and how can they buy your product? It can be as simple as an email list and a single webpage and an ad campaign.

Jack: As we wrap up here, you spend a lot of time helping people figure out what to do from the standpoint of developing their own content, picking a niche and marketing it. Tell us a little bit about yours. Tell us a little bit about your website and the things that you are selling on your site and where people can buy them.

Daniel: Alright, well you can find us at tinygiantlife.biz and of course we have a 10% discount for your listeners. All you have to do is type in TSP in the discount box and what we do is we start out teaching people how to build their own houses and we got off on a track of teaching people how specifically to inflate aircrete to be insulating. So, we have an introductory video product where you can learn how to make aircrete, cast blocks, make a dome. We've got the survive and thrive product that's in prerelease right now to help people that literally just want to check out and be off the grid. There seems to be a growing interest in that. And then we have a video course for people is kind of like a midrange. Where you can watch a video course that shows you how to hook up an electric wire, how to level the dirt, how to put down your foundation, wire your house, build your solar system and assemble your battery packs. Just everything that goes into actually having a move-in ready, finished, off-grid tiny cabin or bug out location. And then on the high ticket sales, we offer workshops where people can come out to either our Terlingua site or our Tyler site and they can actually get hands-on experience in building what they want to. And then at perhaps a little bit more of a premium, we have customized learning where people come and pay by the day and told me what it is they want to learn. Because ultimately it's not about a specific building material like aircrete or dirt. It's about getting people into their own homes where they can live debt-free, where they can live a retirement lifestyle early. There's just a whole lot of people contacting me that they've lived in the city, they're tired of the noise, the crime, the pollution, the police and they just want a more peaceful, more simplified life. So, they're selling their homes, they want to move off grid and so that's when they come out and they take these little one-on-one customized courses.

So, that's basically what we're doing. We're just educating people, we're helping them be able to build their own homes and do so without debt and to be honest, that's pretty much it.

Jack: Dude, I appreciate you being with us today ensuring all of this with us. I hope it gets people thinking in the right direction. I just kind of want to point out here at the end, I'm sure you'd reinforce it. This is a great time to be doing this because no matter how quickly you can spin this up, this does take time. There's going to be a lot of people looking for different choices in their life going forward and no matter what that is, that means learning something new and that's the type of product that you were talking about today. It doesn't really matter what the niche is. You have your niche, there's a billion niches out there to go into and this would just be a great time to get started on this.

Daniel: Absolutely. It is the best time ever and with this little epidemic that we've had in China's not shipping any more goods and maybe a lot of these dropship orient things are going to fall back and in this age of information, this is going to continue to grow. Now is a great time, while people have felt a little bit of pain and they're looking around. There kind of waking up from their slumber a little bit like, huh, what was that? Now you can begin to build businesses and people can begin to look for alternatives to just make their life better. So, maybe you have that solution. Maybe you can help somebody achieve that. Maybe you have the magic product that's not available from China anymore.

Jack: Absolutely. Well, again I appreciate you being with us today and again, I'll make sure all of your resources are in the show notes.

Great stuff there from Daniel Allen and I really do recommend to check out his website and what have you. And again, I'll have everything you guys need to be able to do that in the show notes today.

With that, let's talk about a couple of different ways you can help support this show in the work that we do. One is, to become a member of the site. If you become a member of my member sport brigade you will get a bunch of discounts and if you use a handful of those discounts every year, whatever money you gave me you will get back. So, it costs you nothing. However, if you use more than a handful you make money at my expense by being a member which works out just fine for me and I'm okay with it. Because it doesn't cost me anything if you do that. That's why I built the program the way that I did, so do consider becoming a member. Just go to thesurvivalpodcast.com and click on members to learn more. Now here's the thing, everything I just said is true. If you pay the full price of $50 a year to be a member but while this Covid lockdown is going on, until such time as a national recommendation for lockdown is removed, I'm selling it for half price. That's $25 a year and yes it applies to recurring. The discount code to get that special rate is amazingly, 25bucks, because it cost 25 bucks. And that's the numbers 2 and 5 and the word bucks, all is one word with all lowercase, 25bucks will get you $25 off the membership. Occasionally people go, it didn't work. If it doesn't work, email me at jack@thesurvivalpodcast.com. Make sure TSP is in the subject line. Eventually I'll find your email and get out of the spam folders once you put TSP in the subject line and I will help you get signed up. When I make a commitment to a price I always honor it. That's a business tip on top of the business tips you got today.

If you want to help support us by just doing your online shopping at tspaz.com is the Winchester 51 piece gunsmith screwdriver set. This thing is 16 bucks, it has a ton of different little bits in the first time you use one that's not either a Philips or a Strait screwdriver and you needed it and wouldn't have had otherwise you're going to be like, that's the best 16 bucks ever spent in my life. Now, it's not a high-end toolkit but it's a good toolkit. I've never had one slip to handle or one of the bits strip when it shouldn't or something like that. It's a good little toolkit. I keep one in my range bad for my guns. That's kind of how it's marketed since it's from Winchester. But I've got one of my tackle box for my fishing. I've got one in the glove box in my truck. I've got one of the glove box in my boat. I've got an extra one out in my shop because all of a sudden you need this one weird little freaking bit that you don't have and most of them are going to be in there; for your smaller sizes anyway. Totally worth the 16 bucks, it makes a great gift as well. Check it out, the Winchester 51 piece gunsmith screwdriver set. Remember, you can always help us out in a matter what you buy. All you've got to do is when you're going to shop online, start at tspaz.com.

With that, let's get to her song of the day. This is five songs by Jimmy Buffett that you probably, and I say probably to [01:21:21] never heard. This will probably be the most well-known one of the week. I don't think I ever played it for you before so you probably still didn't hear it unless you're as big a Jimmy Buffett fan is me. It's called Treat Her like a Lady. And in this song, the her he's talking about treating like a lady is the ocean itself, the sea. But it's a really deep song that goes deeper than that. For instance, in one part of the song it talks about the whales and has he relates to the plight of the whales he also says that he is in danger of extinction too. He himself, Jimmy is in danger of extinction too. Now, what is he talking about? Is this some kind of grand, you know green world thing that humans are in danger of extinction? He's not talking about that at all and I promise you he's not talking about it from how long ago this song is. He's talking about the type of person he is. The person who's kind of the old man when they're young. The person that sees life as an adventure. The person who's willing to get on a ship and just see where it goes. The true Explorer is in danger of extinction in our modern world. It's crazy too, I mean the song was written in '78. I think that's when it was written. It was written in the 70s it might've been released in the early 80s but it was written in the 70s. We're now in a world where you can explore from your own home. You can look inside the permits from a computer screen and you would think that that would actually encourage more adventure in the world. That if you looked at enough things through your screen you'd eventually say, some of these things, I want to go see for real. And I think there is some sense of adventure that’s still there but the type of adventure he's talking about, the one that will make their life an adventure. The one that won't forget. From another one of his songs, The Captain and The Kid in the tales of adventure from the grandfather who sailed the world and still wanted to be that way.

The world I grew up in was where little boys... like when I was a little kid one of the biggest things kids wanted to be when they grew up was an astronaut to step on the face of the moon or Mars. That is in danger of extinction. That doesn't mean it's gone, that doesn't mean it will go extinct but it's in danger of extinction because we've been so conditioned to follow rather than lead. 

With that, this has been Jack Spirko with another edition of The Survival Podcast.

[Music Outro]