Don’t worry if your kids don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, it probably hasn’t been invented yet. So I have no idea which you know that the technology is going so fast, I have no idea. I know that people ask me when you’re going to retire and I’m thinking from what I sit at home, I play with my dogs, I can play tennis, I can do whatever I want. Why would I not do this? And I get the satisfaction of helping all these entrepreneurs. So what am I gonna do? You know, just sit here and watch netflix all day. No, so that I don’t really have any goals other than to keep helping people. And um and also I also, another mind trick I played on myself that that I think your folks could use is that I’ve never reached the goal of my whole life because as soon as I get anywhere near it it disappears and another one comes past it and it keeps me always moving forward clawing forward all the time.
Thomas Green here with ethical marketing service on the episode today we have Tom Antion, Tom welcome. Hey, hey, how you doing? I am thrilled to be talking to someone in the UK because it’s been a while since I’ve been there and I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but I have the longest running internet and digital marketing seminar ever and it’s got a crazy name because I’m sitting on my rear end making money all the time and everybody wanted me to do a boot camp and I said I come from a comic background, I’m not going to do a bootcamp, I’m sitting here making money and I said I’ll call it but camp And I’ve done them in 11 countries around the world, but what’s interesting is in London they made me call it bum camp instead of but camp, That is, that is comical. I mean just to answer your question, I did obviously I prepared beforehand so I checked out some of the content and one of the things I noticed, but there’s, a there’s a video out there from 2008 um and it’s regarding being being careful about getting scammed on the internet and it was the kind of the kind of thing that I wish, you know you could, I don’t know that video needs to be seen by more people in a way because it’s even many years after that, it’s obviously still still a thing is still going on and yeah, I just wanted to highlight that because you’ve been talking about something which is very important.
Well I wrote an article also and I have a tv show in development in Hollywood called scam brigade and it was originally called seminar scammers but the Hollywood people said ah it’s too narrow of a field and I’m thinking are you, they just didn’t understand that people are getting robbed all over the world at seminars and so I wrote an article called the top 20 seminar scan And it’s been seen hundreds of thousands of times and I know I cost these scammers millions of dollars and I’m just thrilled about it. So it’s a top 20 seminar scams. So if for someone who asks like what do you do? So you come across someone who you who you just met, what do you tell them? Well, I tell them I’ve never had a job, I don’t want one, I’m not hirable, nobody would ever have me as an employer. And uh and uh for the past 28 years since the commercial internet started, I have been selling on the commercial internet and teaching others to do it after I got really good at it, they started begging me to teach him and that’s where but camp came along and and I have the retreat center in Virginia beach Virginia where people actually live in the house with me while I mentor them and we have a tv studio here.
So basically I help people have their websites make money instead of eat money. That’s a very very good thing to do it because you’ve been on the internet for a long time and I’m very interested to know what would you say has changed the most and what’s the same. Well what has changed the most is the availability of of small, extremely powerful utilities that internet marketers and digital marketers can use. And uh in the middle of it came social media now back in the beginning for for instance, I had a shopping cart that cost me $2,000 and if it accidentally took the order correctly, we would have a big office party because that’s all I would do. And then we had an affiliate module, There was an $1,100 to with a different company that was supposed to work together with the shopping cart never did work and each company would blame each other about it.
So, so nowadays there’s more systems where things work together and are integrated and then the middle came social media. Now the way I look at social media is it’s a necessary evil to get people on your email list. So I have as many as 150,000 subscribers and 65,000 customers. But if you looked at my social media and say, Oh he’s no, he’s not nobody, you know, he’s not any big influencer because I knew after having seen all the craziness like my space was the end. All big, all be all you may never even heard of it. It was supposed to, it was the initial facebook and then it disappeared off the face of the earth. So I don’t, I use what I call dull edge technology that means the cutting edge is the most expensive, The most glitches the most trouble. Uh, so I wait until all the glitches are out and then I zoom in and make the money with the technology that’s proven to work.
I didn’t even get on facebook until they had a billion users because I’ve seen the people come and go and so forth. But the darn thing is about social media, they can turn a dial just like google and you disappear off the face of the earth and they could take all the people that you killed yourself to accumulate. So my thing is, is I do everything I can to get them off of their onto an email list and that’s where everybody at my level, that’s where the money is because I can reach out to people over and over and over again. And it’s not under Mark Zuckerberg’s or anybody else’s control. So, so email is, is the key still to this day. I think it is a good principle, a good business principle anyway, because as you say, if some, if there’s someone between you and your customer, you really want to try and mitigate that as much as possible. Right? Absolutely. Yeah, I can reach out. And I saw one of your other guests was about ethical email market. You don’t have to be obnoxious about it to help people, I have a rule of thumb, no matter how they get into my system, they get the series of emails that helps them.
So they get used to getting emails from me that helped them. And then when I do a solo advertisement for something, then nobody cares because they’ve gotten so much value already. So you don’t have to be obnoxious about it to to really make a fortune with this, but you do have to promote yourself. And that’s basically copyrighting, which I think that I guess there was a lady talked about, which that’s the number one skill in my entire business career since I’m 10 years old is being able to write words that make people want to buy your stuff. But it doesn’t, it has to be ethical. You know, you can overhype something and that in which is very common. People write these sales letters that make you think dog poop is the most important thing you ever have to have. And here’s what I say, thomas. You can pour sugar on dog poop all day long, but it will not turn into candy. All right. So, so you gotta be careful with who you deal with and you know, look at all those seminar scams that we talked about and, and um, but copyrighting, you do need to learn that skill so that you can make people want your stuff and show them the benefits and all that.
Well, it was something that I was going to speak to you about because it was kind of a kind of a funny comment on your profile, which is you’re not an obnoxious seller. In fact you hate them. Um yeah, if you want to elaborate on that at all. Yeah, because people, you know, a lot of people that have terrible products, terrible services are willing to scam you without even blinking an eye. Our great copywriters, they’re able to push your emotional buttons and they know all the psychological techniques to get you to pull your wallet out. But then as soon as they get your money, it’s like you don’t, you disappear off the face of the earth. So so you can now, some markets need pushed more than others. So you have to learn your market and learn the proper technique. So the principles are the same, but the actual text and words that you use could turn somebody off like instant, so that’s where a little experience with the copy helps you learn that.
But so I’ve, I want a good quality reputation, Which I have gained over 45 years in business and I don’t want to mess it up by uh, you know, being obnoxious with my group of people. So you, you have to really get some experience with it and see where the limits are. And if you get too many unsubscribed and complaints you back off a little bit, if you nobody ever complains and nobody ever yells at you, hey, you’re probably not pushing it hard. So, so you have to find that balance. I was going to ask you about um 1000 appearances in in sort of various different formats, but also how it ties into based on what you said about being on particular platforms or particular media’s UR podcasting. So can you tell me about your 1000 appearances and also what your opinion is on the concept of podcasting? Yeah, sure. So long before the internet was around I built my entire speaking business with what I call media marketing.
So I was on radio and tv all over the world, Australian broadcast network, Canadian broadcast, but when I was even on the Tokyo Today show, so and um and so that that was the credibility builder that helped build my business because when I got into the speaking business, people started saying, well you have to make 100 calls and you’ll get 10 leads and then one, so I’m like I made one call, I was ready to throw up. I said it seems like I’m begging for business. So when you do media marketing and you’re seeing people start calling you and that changes the entire power struggle of the call. You know, they’re kind of call, can they afford me? And am I available? That’s a whole different thing that oh do you have a budget? And do you hire speakers man? Oh my God, it makes me sick. Uh and so so I did the media marketing and that’s where there was 1000 appearances have come in between hundreds of podcasts and and that’s one thing I, one of my episodes of my podcast is number 2 11, which is how to be a great podcast guest and that doesn’t mean a podcast cast.
That doesn’t mean okay podcast cast. That means a great podcast guest. What are the things you do? And that’s the on the performance during your podcast and all the things you do around the podcast to make the host think, wow that that person was great. So yeah, now now podcasting, if you’re gonna do a podcast, I I I poo pooed it for a long time because it was mostly people with egos that just wanted to hear themselves talk, nobody’s making any money. But then 3, 4 years, five years ago, maybe four years ago, new cars are able to play podcast right from the dashboard and the listener ship has exceeded XM radio, which is a paid thing, satellite radio. So I thought there’s hundreds of millions of more potential listeners and then all the in home devices like the google assistant and the amazon echo, that’s a billion other devices out in the world that you can just say, hey play screw the commute podcast.
That’s my podcast because I never had a job. And if he starts playing, you know, so when I heard that I thought you know what now is the time because you can make a lot of money with this. Now. One of the mistakes that I feel that most podcasters make is they want to get advertisers rather than being your own sponsors. So I have a product mix anywhere from like $17 to $58,000. And so I don’t want $12 from a sponsor per 1000 downloads per episode. It’s hard to get 1000 downloads perhaps. So you might be waiting a couple of years if you’re really good to get 1000 downloads for episode. So I say if you’re gonna do a podcast, you be your own sponsor and you have your own products and services where you get all the money. So that’s my thoughts on park. Thank you for that. It is, I mean correct me if I’m wrong, it is pretty clear that you are, you stay up to date with all the latest tech maybe or trends in doing that.
I don’t use them until they’re proven. That’s, that’s the whole thing about dull edge technology. I need to know about them. But do I teach them to my students? No, not until they’re proven to work because I don’t want to be known as somebody that teaches stuff that doesn’t work, you know? So I always hold back a little bit, It’s a little conservative attitude, but it’s like I said, it’s much less expensive, much less glitches, much less headache to have something proven even though WordPress is the gold standard of sites, my guy, myself and my guys don’t update until a little after the the newest update comes out because it’s always something wrong with it so they wouldn’t experience isn’t Exactly, yeah, so, so that’s my thing, I hold back from the cutting edge or bleeding edge they call, which is true because I, I want the things to work with the least amount of hassle you mentioned a couple of times about never having a job.
Um, why is that? Well, my dad came from, uh, those of, you can see behind me, there’s a, A poster with a baby with a pillow in front of us. My dad came from Syria on a cattle boat in the early 1900s and I became an entrepreneur. He put the first electric light bulb in Carnegie pennsylvania, which is near Pittsburgh pennsylvania And by 13 years old he had his own electrical contracting firm. So That’s all I saw in my whole life. I’m the baby of six boys. And Yeah, so it was, it was just like, there was no way I was going to work for anybody after since 10 years old, doing my own side hustles and I sold my first used car when I was 15 years old and I didn’t even have a learner’s permit, that’s what they call it over. So uh there was just no way that I was going to work for somebody else who may have been put there because of nepotism and they’re an idiot and I’m supposed to listen to that, I just wasn’t gonna fly, so I always found a way to make it For myself.
And yes, there’s been ups and downs, the worst down was I had a nightclub for six years and I was in over 100 violent encounters, I had bikers trying to kill me, and And then eventually the drinking age went up, I was on my way to being a millionaire before I was 30, and the drinking age went from 18 to 21 and wiped me out. And so I had to start all over again. But I was young and tough, you know, after you live through 100 bikers trying to kill you, you’re pretty tough. So, so I was able to to regroup and, and I had a, when I got out of that I decided you know what, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do something that’s fun for me and fun for everybody else. I’m not gonna get hit with beer bottles anymore. So I started a crazy entertainment company called Crank Masters. We custom designed practical jokes, I don’t know if they’ve had candid camera in the UK or not, but it was very famous here, but you couldn’t participate unless you got caught by the candid camera.
So this way you could hire me to do these jokes and I ended up having 35 people working for me and and uh and it kicked off my speaking career because it got worldwide publicity for all these crazy, things were so there’s always a way you can make it if you can entertain or give a good service to people, you don’t have to be in traffic, making somebody else rich all the time. That’s, that’s how I came about. So would you say it’s almost the opposite um, from what most people have. So most people see and are encouraged to be employees, whereas you were the opposite in the sense that would you say that you were encouraged to be a business owner or is it just all that you knew? No, that’s, I was encouraged because my dad, you know, I said that’s all I saw in my whole life. Um, and some of my brothers went traditional and some of my brothers went to business and, and so I was a baby. And uh, and it was just inevitable. I owned, owned five apartment buildings in a hotel, starting with nothing before I graduated from college.
And it was all studying and learning because you can do amazing things, studying what other people have done. So I was studying a book called how, how you turn $1000 into a million dollars in real estate. This is long before the no money down phrase. And so I ended up doing the techniques and I had no money at all as a college student. And uh, I had five apartment buildings in a hotel before I graduated. The hotel was the most interesting maybe lesson for your listeners in that my dad always taught me give before you get and be persistent, Don’t quit. And so I was charging more to the students that in the college town where I was renting apartments, then I was paying for rent. So I was renting off with somebody else. And at the end of this and the guy would come over to work on the house and I’d say, hey frank, I’ll help you put those gutters up. But you know, you teach me what you’re doing. And so, okay, I did it. So at the end of the semester, he came over and said, tom, I want to talk to you.
I thought, uh, oh, what did I do wrong? He says, I own a, I want to retire and go to Florida and I own a hotel about 20 minutes from here in a different town. I want you to have it. And I’m like, what? He says, he says, I’ve been renting apartments for 25 years to students here. And in this town, not once ever, ever has one of them asked to help me, let alone want to learn something about. So you’re a special guy. And if you can come up with the first mortgage, I’ll hold back the second mortgage, which basically means it’s no money down. He says, I’ll teach you how to run the place. And so, uh, so that’s the first thing give before you get. So I helped him all semester. And then he rewarded me with. But the persistence came as I had to go to 50 lending institutions to before I could land the first mortgage because they all shoot me away like, oh you got a couple apartments, you little punk, you know, just get lost. And so I wouldn’t quit because my dad saying don’t quit, don’t quit.
And so I landed the first mortgage. He held back the second mortgage. He taught me how to run the place. I only had to go back, go down once a week to pick up the rent checks and make small repairs. And I made about $65,000 a year. Just from that one place in the 70s while I was still in college and the city ended up buying it for a couple 100 grand. So I made a half a million dollars because I gave before I get and I was persistent and I wouldn’t give up to get that first mortgage. So, so persistence and give before you get. It’s a great lesson. Thank you for sharing it. You’ve been in loads of different businesses. And I mean from my perspective, I think of that as in I’m testing the various different things that maybe I like, I might like to spend a lot of my time on um a new, again, from my perspective, you’ve settled on the internet a little bit. So would you say that you found that thing that I mean some people call it a passion, would you, you found that thing that you’re, you’re happy to do from here on in.
And what was it about that that appealed to you? Well, that’s partially correct because one of the things I’ve been teaching for years is how to make your hobbies tax deductible, legitimately tax deductible. All modern countries have the same idea that business expenses are tax deductible. And so, but there’s never any laws that says, you don’t have to really love what you’re doing. So the internet is kind of the vehicle for me to have these other hobbies that I love and charities and so forth. I know you, you take care of Children, I take care of animals. Um, so for instance, I’m a tennis nut. So I have the dubious distinction of being the largest person ever to create and star in a tennis training video. It’s called Fatso Tennis. So then I, you can go to fatso Tennis dot com and you can see me playing tennis and eating pizza at the same time because, because uh, Andy Murray’s not at my club.
Let me tell you that he’s he’s all fat boys like me trying to beat the younger guys. And so part of it is funny, but part of it is all the angles of the cord and the shots too, that the young people aren’t used to seeing, so you can run them to death before you drop. So, so that made, uh, the DVD that I sell, makes all my tennis stuff tax deductible because I’m bringing in money from tennis and so rackets and balls and ball machines and tennis, you know, all that stuff is tax deduction. I also have, hopefully nobody comes at the door because I have a protection dog company on the side because I love dogs. And so I’ve got a $50,000 protection dog in there, another $20,000 1 and then a rescue dog sitting in the living room in there. Hopefully like I said, uh, they don’t make noise during our, our thing here, but all the expenses for them is tax deductible because I have a protection dog company called Protection dogs Elite.
And so people find the site, I take the order for the protection dog passed it off to professional trainers who train the dog and deliver it, you know, so that makes all my, these model dogs tax deductible, all their expenses, you know, so uh any family interest or things, you know, people just pay through the nose for all those things. And if they would just put up a simple wordpress site with a responsive theme responsive means it looks good on a cell phone or tablet. You can make a world class website for $150. So, and then, and you don’t have to make a product, you can use an affiliate product, which means somebody else made the product and then you recommend it on your site and you get a commission when somebody buys it. So again, you’re having income coming in on that topic, which makes a lot of the things you do on that topic, tax deduction now in the US, you have to at least pull in some money or they will call it a hobby. But for, I’ve taught hundreds and hundreds of people this and it’s a beautiful way to live life.
So yeah, I love the internet, but the internet allows me to do all this other stuff I love and that’s just two of the things that I do. I got a bunch of them. How many different businesses would you say you’re in? Probably four or 5 and then plus the charitable things like I raised $24,000 for be sean freezes. A little white dog looks like a poodle. So I made a website says I am not a poodle And raised $24,000 for them. The best, I think one of the best things I ever did was kids. I raised $78,000 in about five minutes. I auctioned myself off To help homeless kids. I was able to feed 288 homeless Children for a year with that money. So, so those are the kinds of things I can do because of the power of this having lots of people that know me and and good, you know, good intention. Well congratulations for all that stuff. That’s great. Would you say you’re an entrepreneur?
I think so yeah the they’re the Hollywood is doing a documentary about me called the american entrepreneur. It’s supposed to come out this summer and based on the fact that my dad came and became an entrepreneur made me into an entrepreneur and then I’ve helped thousands of entrepreneurs. So uh the only thing about that, I thought you had to be dead to have a documentary. So I wasn’t sure if they were predicting something coming soon. Well you’ve kind of done your own one in a way on your on your Youtube channel is like a trailer of a day in the life of right enjoyed doing that. Yeah, I I enjoy videos, I sure do. And and speaking of videos, you know, you know, I don’t know if you’ve had S. E. O. Experts on here. I mean I was one of the best of the best for years but we kind of gave up on S. C. O. About four or five years ago because it’s just too much work and and maybe six months later you get some results and then google turns the dial and you disappear off the face of the earth.
So we do a paid traffic now but but youtube in stream ads are one of the best bargains that you can ever find on advertising. That’s the ads that you can press the skip button And a lot of people don’t know if they press the skip button before 30 seconds. You don’t pay anything. So you can get a lot of branding for totally for free. And also after the ads over, if they do click skip up in the top, there’s a banner that stays there for a while to help you potentially get the click. So we’ve had as low as four cent video views. Uh One time I got two cents but that’s been a while but as low as four cents for a video ad, I mean, so the same keywords that I was targeting on the main google search could have cost me a buck and a half to five bucks per click. And so this is of course this is an interrupter kinda add, you know, they’re searching on the main search but still, you know, you can get lots and lots of of traffic for dirt cheap if you play your game right on the Youtube industry match.
Mhm. You mentioned affiliate marketing previously and one of the things which I think you’re happy to talk about is passive income. Um I think there’s a lot of debate online about whether or not um things which are claimed to be passive are actually passive. So would you mind sharing what the things are that you referenced that a passive income? Yeah. So so you know passive, it doesn’t mean you you don’t do anything. I mean you could just sit here and hope for money to fall from the ceiling. But it’s you know you have to do something. So but some of the things are just amazing that are available to you. And I make the comment all the time. It sounds like Bs is I couldn’t stop the money coming into my checking account. If I tried I couldn’t stop. Well that sounds like Bs. But let me explain the mechanism. So I wrote an e book in four hours at a layover in Las Vegas one time. And as of this morning it’s brought in $3.6, $8 million dollars us And anywhere from 5 to $15,000 a month ongoing.
And you say, well how could that be? And it’s a free e book that’s that makes it even more bizarre. Right? Well here’s the mechanism. So the book teaches you how to do something but you can’t do it unless you have the tool that’s in the book. So when they buy the tool that’s in the book, then I get an affiliate commission off of. Now the basic affiliate marketing is usually a one shot deal where I recommend something, they buy it and I get a commission that’s a one shot deal. But residual affiliate programs mean that I recommend something and as long as they keep buying it for instance a membership to something or supplements that they vitamins or some service and they keep buying it, I keep getting paid. So thomas, I only recommended it once but I keep getting paid forever. And some of these things that From that one book People have been paying 15 years and keeping the service and so I keep getting paid.
And so this is a, I call it like an insurance policy for you because I mean I got hurt in a hunting accident and it would have been such a great story had I got shot but no I fell on a log and hurt myself and so I was in intensive care for two weeks and six months. I couldn’t lift anything. I had to sit in a chair. Um money was just pouring in the whole time from these types of of mechanisms. So the one that we, I just described is called residual affiliate program. In other words you recommend it once and it keeps paying forever. So did I do something. Yeah I did something. But did I do three and a $30.68 million worth of work for this. No, not at all. But I keep giving the book out and this is also uh turns into what I wanted to tell you about with Kindle, the amazon’s e book format. The reason that I only use either pdf which I sell off my website or amazon Kindle and I don’t waste my time on Barnes and noble nook or ibooks or any of that other crap because amazon got their act together a long time ago.
And they figured, okay, we’re gonna make a deal with you. If you agree not to give your book away or sell your book and any other digital format on any of these other services, We will give it away for five days out of every 90. It’s a little contract you make with them. It’s called the Kindle KDP select program. KDP is Kindle direct Publishing and then the selective program and you say, well, how do you make any money with people giving stuff away? Well, They gave away 2500 copies of that book in five days. Well, I’m good. But I ain’t that good. I’m not Amazon. So 2500 copies, any one person that that does what the book says. I make between $600 and $720 per year. So I don’t want to sell the book and make my, you know, 88 cents of commission. I want the $6-$700 a year from him. So that’s why I stick with Kindle because nobody else has that program.
And I don’t want to jeopardize my amazon ability to give away enormous amounts of books and all books, books are the most hassle least profitable thing you’ll ever do. It’s what the book leads to is where the money is. So that’s an example of it right there and why don’t bother with anything but Kindle and then make sure your book is embedded with stuff that people would give you bigger money, they join your ethical marketing service. So you can help those kids where they join my mentor program where they get, you know, hire you to speak or whatever. So so that’s, that’s the progression there. So is it passive? Not totally. I mean I had to go to uploaded the amazon and all my finger was so sore from that, you know, so so so is it true? You know, I guess guess what if they say it’s not truly passive, I say you know what, I’ll still take that 3.68 million. It’s kind of an example of one of my questions though because it’s, it’s very specific knowledge like that.
I don’t, I would guess that not many people have that kind of knowledge. So you know how how did you, how do you stay up to date with these kind of, well you, you study, I go with the japanese concept of kaizen which is continuous learning, continuous improvement. And this is my, my dad, my dad only went to the second grade and he was one of the smartest guys. I knew I actually saw him when he retired, sit down and read the entire world book encyclopedia this Now a lot of people never even heard of such thing. It’s on a disk now It’s probably not even a disk now, but it was 26 volumes this thick, he read the whole thing and so the more knowledge you get, the more powerful that you can get so you have to be serious about this and learn as much as you can because again some of those scammers we were talking about as soon as you, they hear you talk they know you don’t know what you’re doing so they can sell you anything but so the more you know the cheaper you can get your services and the less money you have to make to be profitable in your business.
So Yeah, I I tell people yeah if you spend $5,000 on a website you gotta make $5000 just to get back to being broke, you know, so you have, you have to sell a lot more, but if you only have $150 in a world class website because you took the time to buy a $97 WordPress course and learn how to do it and you can be profitable right from the get go. So knowledge is is where the key is and so I study like crazy, you know I’m I sign up for lots of email magazines and I get, I’ve watched the subject lines that come in and so I need to know about that somebody else has spent their whole life working on that some geek propeller head, you know I just figured it out and so I swoop in figure it out and then uh make the money with, so that’s why you gotta keep keep the knowledge of, it’s probably, I would suppose where a lot of the value that you provide comes in because most people don’t act that way.
I would, I would guess so if you’re always on the leading edge of learning things, then people are going to want to be drawn to you because you’ll be teaching them, right? Yeah, it’s, it knocks their learning curve down and you know, the enormous investment that they could blow and that’s why a lot of people fizzle out in the online space is because they’ve been sucked in by sales letters that say things are great and they aren’t so they spend the money and then there’s disappointed, they spend another money, they’re disappointed. And then they say, you know what, this internet stuff doesn’t work. No, you just didn’t study enough to see what’s credible and keep your costs really low. And and the beauty of the digital arena is uh, it’s 97% profit, you know, so you can make a lot of mistakes and, and you can create e books for nothing. You know, that word Microsoft word convert to pdf convert to Kindle all for free. All right. And then you have something that that sells for as much as a physical book, but you don’t have a basement full of books, you don’t have any of that, the design trouble and the printing and all that stuff and then with print on demand if you do want to have a physical book then you still don’t have a basement full of books.
It doesn’t exist until it’s purchased and then they print it and ship it for you. So there’s just all these opportunities. But you have to take the time to learn or you’ll spend a lot of money that you didn’t need to spend. Mm hmm. You do have a team though, don’t you? Because you’re, I think you’re very efficient in reducing costs. But at the same time I think a lot of people on the online world kind of they make the sales pitch of, you know, you don’t have to have a team and all this kind of stuff. Do you know what your thoughts on that topic? Well, I only, I got the $1.2 million dollars a year with one part time temp person long time ago. But then it got to the point my my my accountant called me and he said tom you have too much retained earnings and I’m like, I’m not the best bean counter in the world. I’m like, what do you mean since I’ve kept my nose clean. I didn’t buy yachts and airplanes and hookers and everything else. Now I got to pay more taxes. He said, yeah, it’s kind of so I got mad. I said, alright I’d rather hire people than to buy bombs or something, you know, with the government money.
So, so that’s when I started hiring people, you know, you don’t have to, but it’s best to know what you’re doing before you do because even if you hire somebody that’s a techie, a tech person, well, they don’t know the marketing aspect. So they will talk you into stuff from their perspective who never made a nickel in their life online. Just they love the technology of it, you know, so, so the more, you know, the better you can hire people and then they know they can’t get over on you because, you know, it should only take an hour to do something that they take all week if they knew you didn’t know anything. So, so I have both employees and remote workers and I don’t have a lot of them. Um, I don’t need a lot of them because of the powerful tools. And one of the things I’d love to give your folks is how to automate your business. It’s an e book that I wrote, we sell it. But um, it’s, there’s just all these little inexpensive and free tools That allow allow me to handle 150,000 subscribers with one part time tempers.
One of them is called short keys. It’s a, and that’s for pcs, there’s one for max called keyboard maestro and short keys. I was complaining to one of the young kids here that I have to type this. You know, people asking me the same stuff all the time and I’m getting tired of typing the same crap over and over again. And so he’s he was a little smart Alec kid, he said, shut up. And he came back in 10 minutes and he said, here’s short keys. So it’s a macro program, it’s called a fancy name for basically I can hit two keys and it’ll type war and peace and if I wanted to. And so anytime I get a question in more than once, I make the answer short key that way when somebody asked me something, I can go, boom, boom. And I took care of them lightning fast, which is impressive nowadays because some people, their voicemail says we’ll get back to you within 48 hours, like You could be dead in 48 hours, are you talking about 48 hours? So I get back to them really fast and help them.
And it only took me two keystrokes. We actually estimated it a couple of years ago that I’ve saved 7.5 million keystrokes just with that one program that costs $30.01 time short keys dot com keyboard maestro will do even more. I don’t know, it’s a Mac. I’m not a Mac guy. So I don’t know. Um so, so these are all tools that are available to people so they can get a copy of that book and screw the commute dot com slash automate free. And that is my uh my gift to the small business world. But even I got big business people using it because they have the same problems and you should make your employees use. Why should you pay to have them making typos and doing, you know, wasting time copying and pasting when you could just boom hit two keys. Okay. So so there’s loads of these things that could really give you more time to spend with your customers and prospects, which is where the money. Thank you for that. Um saving seven million keystrokes.
I think you said that’s that’s very appealing. That was a couple of years ago. There’s probably eight. Um One of the things the topics that you don’t mind talking about is become a millionaire but not act like it. Um can you elaborate on that? Yeah. Yeah. So I hit multi millionaire status about 22 years ago. I could have quit years and years and years ago. But it’s again and I love it and it makes my hobbies tax deductible. I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I love seeing the people’s success and everything, But you don’t have to act like a jerk. I mean there used to be a guy that the Internet jerk and that was his stick. But no, I grew up in the small town we had 500 people. It’s named Clay’s ville pennsylvania was named after the U. S. Statesman, Henry Clay, who, I don’t think he slept there. I think his horse took a dump there on the way through and that was good enough for us. So, so, uh, it was a town that they say you can raise a village, you know, it takes a village, you know, So if you messed up, the neighbor could correct you and not get sued over it.
So it was, everybody had common sense. Lots of farmers. We weren’t really farmers, but, but you did what you said, you’re gonna do your handshake meant something. So those are the kind of values that have become lost quite a bit nowadays in the United States at least. And, and so I value those things. I’m on time for things. You imagine that being on time and it’s um, share that you, well, I, I logged on three minutes earlier and you were there, which means, and that’s, that’s very rare. I’ve interviewed a lot of people and very few people are rare. So I can well, yeah, and I was talking to, I interviewed some millennials on on there and, and I was asking about this, you know, they’re late and everything and they said, well, tom, you know, time is flexible with us and I’m thinking, okay, I have a shop, It says open at nine a.m. Or maybe not, maybe 9, 20 depending on how the employee feels that day.
I mean, and they were defending this, I’m saying crazy. Uh, but the one thing, especially for the younger people listening, it doesn’t take much. The bar is low for you to stand out in the crowd for your brethren because of the younger generation entitled and, and guys like me that’s got the money that can and the connections to make really help you. We don’t want to use them. If you’re gonna embarrass us, right, if you’re not gonna show up, if you’re gonna take forever to do stuff and complain all the time. So if you can rise above your peers and show us that you’ll be on time and you’re dependable and so forth. We were desperate to find you. We love these young people that have those traits because you know, I’m, when I had, I’m so old, I’m so over the hill, I can’t remember going up the hill, you know, so the tech stuff I depend on the young people for, but I don’t want to wait a week for an answer from somebody see, so I love the young people that that are rising above and willing to use those old school principals because we will give you breaks and well the one kid that I started the one that was giving me crap, I told you a minute ago, the young kid, he just sold his third, I started him in business, he wrote an article in Forbes magazine, which is a big deal here in the States.
Um given me the credit for starting him in business. He just sold Pluto dot tv. It’s kind of like a netflix or hulu kind of place $340 million. I said next time I come to L. A. You’re buying dinner, you little punk. Yeah. So but he was great. The time he spent here, he’s the one that found short keys. He’s the one that did all this teaching me of shortcuts on the keyboards and all kinds of things because he was total computer savvy. But he showed up on time. He was reliable. He was a smart alec but I said you know abused me all you want if I can self save save 107 and a half million keystrokes. So so yeah, you young people, if you can rise up a little bit above your peers boy, you can open up big doors for you. So what are your goals then? What have you got in mind? Well, I don’t plan too far ahead. Tell you the truth. I mean I think one of the guys that wrote in search of excellence said, you know if you don’t worry if your kids don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.
It probably hasn’t been invented yet. So I have no idea which you know that the technology is going so fast. I have no idea. I know that people ask me when you’re going to retire and I’m thinking from what, where I sit at home, I play with my dogs, I can play tennis, I can do whatever I want. Why would I not do this? And I get the satisfaction of helping all these entrepreneurs. So what am I going to do? Just sit here and watch netflix all day. No, so that I don’t really have any goals other than to keep helping people. And, and also I also, another mind trick I’ve played on myself that that I think your folks could use is that I’ve never reached a goal in my whole lifetime, because as soon as I get anywhere near it, it disappears and another one comes past it and it keeps me always moving forward, clawing forward all the time. So, so what’s my goals? No idea. I think you’re the do good in the world, that’s about it.
Second person who said that they don’t have any goals I’m very interested in in the answers to these questions. Is there anything that I should have asked you about today? Well, um, probably how I keep my boyish good looks at this age and you know, uh, what I want to impart is that, you know, overall, I’m talking about a lifestyle business, a business that can support you and your family to any lengths that you want to take it to and especially nowadays that, you know, I highly, now I love all the engineers and stuff that figured out this microphone and all this stuff that physical products. But I never encouraged my own students to do this because what you have in front of you is the digital revolution that’s been going on for 20 some years where you can create information products and digital products that people will give you money for at extremely low risk, Massively high returns, 97% profit.
There isn’t anything but the drug business that’s you know, any better than that. So ah so I encourage people, they want to change their lifestyle, learn to create digital products and high profit, learn how to market them online and create the lifestyle you want you here all the time about the coffee shop millionaires. Well it’s it’s a real thing, but only a small percentage of people are willing to take that first step and if you don’t know what you’re doing, get help credible help. But there’s an old saying by somebody quote that take that first step and the solutions will appear to you. So if you don’t ever take the first step and just dream about it while you’re sitting at your cubicle making somebody else rich, it’s not gonna happen for you. So take the first step, you can do it part time and build it up to the point where I try to get my people that are working a job, I want to make it too expensive for them to go to work anymore because the time they’re putting into their own digital information business is more valuable than going to the work anymore.
And then they can tell the uh the boss to take this job and shove it screw the commute right. I was going to ask you at one stage about why why you didn’t go down the big office route and you know, expand with hundreds or thousands of people or whatever. But if you if if your perception of it is that it’s a lifestyle business. Is that the answer? Yeah, it’s uh I’m a small business advocate. So when I get people all the time pitching me to be on my podcast and they yes, we worked with Fortune 100 companies and we did this and we won the award for best salesman at Microsoft. They don’t know what the heck they’re talking about when it comes to a, You know, for a long time, I was employee of the month every month. And my picture was on the wall like 12 times. Alright, so they don’t understand The small business world and what we’re thinking about when they can just snap their fingers and 20 people will get them coffee and and they don’t even know how to operate the copy machine, you know?
So, um so it’s more credible for me to help small business people when I live in, I live it every day in my life for 45, years now or something. Uh so so it and and and also I just can’t imagine I would have got arrested, probably would have been hired in a big company because I would have killed somebody that was an idiot saved the world from their idiocy, you know, So it’s better that I just stay here and do what I’m doing. Well, I think if you’ve been in business that long, I think that there is an obvious cause which produces the effect that some of the effects that you’ve been talking about. So I guess just well done. Congratulations on everything that you’ve done. I’m still going, man. Thank you so much for having me on. Have you got any closing thoughts for us today? Yeah, I want to make sure that they get that automation book so they get some instant value that they can really spend less time fighting with their computer and more time helping customers and prospects and uh be persistent.
Be consistent beyond time. And uh get into the digital product world. It’s uh it’s a beautiful place to be and uh can change the course of your life. And where should they go if they want to connect with you? Well, my mentor site is great internet marketing training dot com. It’s the longest running ever in this field. And it’s a very unique program and that my success is tied to their success. So all the people, the the guru world wants the big money upfront. Well I I said no I’m not going to get my big money unless you make big money. So that’s been 1700 students over 20 something years. So Great internet marketing dot com. And then I think they’re gonna hear you one of these days on screw the commute right. We haven’t talked about it. But you know, you’re the type of person that I would want to spend more time in conversation with. So I reckon that’s I reckon that’s probable. Yeah. So like screw the commute dot com and I just grabbed that automation book and then check out great internet marketing training dot com. So everyone who’s listening, please review the links in the description and tom thank you for your contribution and for being a great guest.