RPF0290-Kimanzi_Constable_Interview
00:00:00.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we're going to talk about how to stop chasing influencers
00:00:05.560 | and how to become one.
00:00:08.200 | My guest is Kamonzi Constable.
00:00:10.480 | He used to deliver bread for a living.
00:00:12.720 | Now he travels the world and gets paid thousands of dollars to encourage, teach, motivate,
00:00:21.860 | and inspire others.
00:00:23.200 | Today, sit back, relax, and let him inspire you.
00:00:42.240 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.
00:00:44.240 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:00:46.020 | Thank you for being with me today.
00:00:47.360 | This is the show where we talk about how to live a rich life now and how to build a plan
00:00:53.080 | for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:55.600 | My guest today has done exactly that.
00:00:58.440 | He started off exactly like I said, delivering bread, paid his dues, worked his tail off,
00:01:05.480 | and is enjoying a degree of financial freedom that most people would dream of today.
00:01:14.400 | My guest is Kamonzi Constable.
00:01:15.400 | I met him at, what was it, podcast movement and saw his table of books and started talking
00:01:20.600 | to him and then he just turned out to have a really remarkable story.
00:01:24.520 | When I connected with him, I was just very impressed by his story and really enjoyed
00:01:27.800 | getting to know him.
00:01:29.240 | You'll hear in the interview, I've learned a lot from Kamonzi.
00:01:32.480 | He's really a great guy.
00:01:33.480 | I think you're going to enjoy this.
00:01:34.480 | Before I play the interview for you, I want to share with you our sponsor of today's show.
00:01:39.120 | Sponsor of the day today is Trade King.
00:01:41.680 | Trade King is the official brokerage provider of Radical Personal Finance.
00:01:44.760 | I reached out to Trade King after connecting with them at a conference.
00:01:49.960 | I was really impressed by them.
00:01:50.960 | I was looking for sponsors for the show and I said, "Hey, listen.
00:01:53.600 | You guys are a company that's rooted in values, big enough to provide all of the services
00:01:59.240 | and all of the things that your customers need to produce an effective trading platform,
00:02:08.240 | but you're small enough to where I can actually talk to you."
00:02:10.840 | I did my homework, did my due diligence, reached out to all the different traders that I know
00:02:14.600 | before bringing them on the show and just asked them, "Hey, do you know of any bad
00:02:19.280 | press?"
00:02:20.280 | All the press was good.
00:02:21.280 | I drove down to Fort Lauderdale, checked them out.
00:02:24.000 | If you would like to open a trading account this year, Trade King is the company for you
00:02:28.040 | to connect with.
00:02:29.040 | If you go to TradeKing.com/radical and use that referral link, you'll get an extra $100
00:02:33.200 | credited to your account.
00:02:34.200 | It could be an easy little rate of return, a little pop in your portfolio, so to speak.
00:02:42.120 | TradeKing.com/radical and set up your account today.
00:02:45.280 | Kamonzi, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:47.760 | Hey, Joshua.
00:02:48.760 | Thanks for having me.
00:02:50.040 | I'm a big fan of the show ever since I heard your longer critique of Tony Robbins' book.
00:02:56.520 | I remember that.
00:02:59.680 | We met at Podcast Movement 2015 and I had never known you or your name or your work
00:03:06.320 | and you had a table there with your books and I was recording interviews at a table
00:03:10.560 | I had, let's just say stolen, next door to you to do interviews for the show.
00:03:15.880 | We got to talking and you asked me what I thought of Tony Robbins.
00:03:17.800 | I sent you my three-hour intro to him and to the book and I appreciate you checking
00:03:23.120 | it out.
00:03:24.120 | It's hard for me to answer questions of, "Hey, what do you think about the book?"
00:03:27.400 | in about 10 seconds.
00:03:28.400 | So it's nice to be able to send people a podcast interview.
00:03:31.240 | Yeah, that was good.
00:03:32.720 | So I've been excited about bringing you on because since we met, I went back and read
00:03:38.080 | your books and went through two of your books anyway and I went through and just started
00:03:45.760 | watching you and watching your work and I have been seriously impressed by your story
00:03:50.240 | and I've been excited to bring you to my audience.
00:03:53.120 | So let's kick it off with, would you be willing to share a little bit of your background and
00:03:58.480 | especially your background in business, where you came from and the type of work that you
00:04:02.440 | do now?
00:04:03.440 | Yeah, at 19 years old, I had the opportunity to become an entrepreneur.
00:04:08.960 | I had worked for Sarah Lee Bakery delivering bread and every day I would see this guy delivering
00:04:15.480 | bread who wasn't wearing a uniform.
00:04:18.000 | So I asked this guy one day, I'm like, "How come you guys don't have to wear uniforms?"
00:04:21.520 | And he said that he was an independent contractor and I'd never heard of that.
00:04:26.880 | I didn't have any entrepreneurial people in my family, so I didn't know what that was,
00:04:33.000 | but he kind of broke it down for me what it was.
00:04:35.960 | He was a franchise owner for this bread company.
00:04:39.840 | They gave him 20% but he was responsible for all his own stuff.
00:04:44.120 | And out of that conversation, he said one thing that piqued my interest.
00:04:47.840 | He said, "The problem with being an independent contractor is you always have to have your
00:04:53.000 | route covered no matter what."
00:04:55.160 | And so there are some of us that have been doing this that haven't been on vacation in
00:04:59.820 | like seven years.
00:05:01.840 | And I thought, "Well, it sucks not to go on vacation seven years," but I thought, "Hmm,
00:05:06.360 | that's interesting."
00:05:07.360 | And I asked him, I'm like, "Well, what would happen if you had a vacation guy?"
00:05:10.920 | And he said, "The vacation guy would have work all day long."
00:05:15.680 | So I said, "Hey, would you be willing to train me for free and get me set up in this?"
00:05:20.800 | So that's what happened.
00:05:21.800 | He started training me on their systems and all their stuff.
00:05:26.200 | And I put out a schedule for the rest of that year saying that I was available to run vacation
00:05:32.720 | routes for these independent operators.
00:05:34.600 | This was my business under my name and they would pay me directly.
00:05:40.360 | And when I put that schedule out, it was filled up in a couple of days.
00:05:45.360 | That schedule was full.
00:05:47.160 | And at that point, I had enough confidence to say, "Look, I got a full schedule.
00:05:51.760 | I got a little bit of money in the bank.
00:05:53.120 | I'm going to go ahead and quit Sara Lee."
00:05:55.160 | And so that's what I did.
00:05:56.960 | And that service business in the bread industry, it grew very fast.
00:06:02.880 | I was full not only that year, which would have been, oh man, this was when I was 19
00:06:08.800 | years old, so this would have been like 2009-ish.
00:06:11.520 | 2008, 2009-ish.
00:06:12.520 | And the schedule filled up very quickly that year and the whole following year to the point
00:06:21.760 | where I said I had to bring somebody else on.
00:06:24.300 | So six years into this business, just to cut this story short, I had a business that did
00:06:30.280 | vacation routes for these independent guys in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
00:06:36.200 | I had five guys working for me doing this as well, and the business was bringing in
00:06:41.160 | half a million dollars a year.
00:06:43.280 | The problem was that because I didn't know anything about business, I didn't read any
00:06:49.880 | books or anything like that, I completely mismanaged the finances.
00:06:55.520 | So money would come in and-
00:06:56.880 | You did that too, huh?
00:06:57.880 | Yeah.
00:06:58.880 | It's strange how we have to go through this difficult road sometimes.
00:07:01.600 | Well, that first year when I got to the end of the year and I had a good year, made something
00:07:06.960 | like $100,000, and then I got that tax bill.
00:07:11.400 | I didn't pay quarter lease throughout the year.
00:07:14.160 | I didn't know anything about that.
00:07:15.760 | And I got that bill for like, I don't know, $20,000, $30,000, just some crazy amount of
00:07:19.840 | money.
00:07:20.840 | And I'm like, "Who's supposed to pay this?
00:07:22.320 | Who's supposed to pay this?"
00:07:25.360 | And that's pretty much what happened for six years is I would get the bills and I wouldn't
00:07:31.640 | pay them.
00:07:32.640 | I would file my taxes, of course, and all that.
00:07:34.600 | But I didn't have the money to pay them because I blew all the money throughout the year.
00:07:39.360 | And so 12 years into this business, 12 years in this business, it'd be 2011.
00:07:45.120 | I was $180,000 in debt from the business.
00:07:50.640 | I was down to just me.
00:07:52.400 | I got rid of all the employees.
00:07:53.920 | I realized that having employees was something that I never wanted and will never ever in
00:07:59.040 | my life ever repeat.
00:08:00.440 | It's just not for me.
00:08:02.040 | So it was just me at this point.
00:08:04.640 | I had all this debt.
00:08:06.240 | I was overweight because working at this job, I was always in the business.
00:08:11.520 | I never managed a business, meaning I always had to be on the bread truck.
00:08:15.400 | So I was always eating Taco Bell and McDonald's and blah, blah, blah at midnight.
00:08:21.160 | And so it led to weight gain.
00:08:22.480 | I was 170 pounds heavier than I am now.
00:08:25.720 | And life was falling apart because once the finances were messed up and we were stressing
00:08:32.280 | about money and we couldn't even open a bank account in our name because the IRS was coming
00:08:37.920 | to take all the money in them, it led to a lot of problems in my marriage.
00:08:42.100 | Money problems usually equal marriage problems.
00:08:45.680 | And so there was a lot of problems there.
00:08:48.160 | And that year I just sat on the ground, Joshua, and I was just crying.
00:08:52.880 | I sat on the living room floor, I can remember, of my friend's couch and some commercial came
00:09:00.520 | on for, it could have been like dentures, but it was like a happy family and they were
00:09:05.960 | smiling and blah, blah, blah.
00:09:07.240 | And I'm like, "That used to be my family and I just lost it.
00:09:10.160 | I broke down at that point."
00:09:12.280 | And after a good cry, I got back up and I realized that if something was going to change,
00:09:18.080 | I had to be the one to do it.
00:09:20.120 | This isn't a movie.
00:09:21.840 | I wasn't going to win the lottery.
00:09:23.300 | There wasn't going to be some magical thing that happened.
00:09:26.240 | If there was going to be change, I had to get off my butt and I had to make that change
00:09:30.240 | happen.
00:09:31.240 | And so that's what I did.
00:09:32.320 | The first thing I did was I journaled everything that was going on because I just had to get
00:09:37.960 | this stuff out of my head.
00:09:39.920 | And when I looked down on this journal after a couple of months of journaling, I had filled
00:09:44.040 | like this little 90 page notebook.
00:09:46.240 | I'd filled this thing all the way up with everything that had just come out.
00:09:52.080 | And at that point, it was end of 2011, self-publishing was becoming a thing that I had been hearing
00:09:59.560 | about more and more in the news.
00:10:02.240 | And I thought, "Man, maybe I could take this journal and self-publish a book."
00:10:07.400 | And so that's what I did.
00:10:08.400 | I paid some professionals, paid to have a website done, paid to have the book put out
00:10:12.480 | there.
00:10:13.480 | But the problem was I had no audience, Joshua.
00:10:15.880 | Nobody was listening.
00:10:16.880 | Nobody even knew that I was alive.
00:10:18.840 | So I put this book out there and in the first six months, it sold five copies in the first
00:10:23.360 | six months.
00:10:24.720 | And it was pretty depressing.
00:10:26.960 | But by that point, I was determined that I was not going to give up.
00:10:31.760 | So I spent 2012 learning how to build an audience, how to connect with people.
00:10:37.720 | And what I did that year, to make a long story short, was I just went out there and I tried
00:10:41.880 | to get massive exposure.
00:10:43.600 | I guest posted for 80 different blogs that year.
00:10:47.880 | I was a guest on 60 different podcasts that year.
00:10:52.880 | Wherever I could get exposure, I was out there filling out horror requests.
00:10:58.320 | I was kind of all over the place just to really try to build my audience.
00:11:02.280 | And the result was by the end of that year, I had, by the end of 2012, I had sold something
00:11:07.560 | like 40,000 books.
00:11:10.120 | I had some coaching clients.
00:11:12.400 | I had a few opportunities to come speak at different conferences and they weren't paying
00:11:18.320 | a lot but they paid a couple bucks here and there.
00:11:22.400 | And so the money at that point was good.
00:11:25.040 | We used most of that book money.
00:11:27.720 | The money that came in from royalties from books all went to pay down that debt.
00:11:31.960 | It wasn't paid off by the end of 2012 but we paid off a good chunk of that.
00:11:36.000 | And I felt confident at that point with a business that was consistently bringing in
00:11:40.600 | $5,000 a year, I felt confident that I could, a month, sorry, $5,000 a month, I felt confident
00:11:47.800 | that I could go ahead and quit the day job and build upon this thing.
00:11:52.080 | So 2013, 2014 were years where I just continued to get the exposure, continued to go after
00:12:00.640 | it, I started proactively seeking out opportunities and the business just, it built and it's continued
00:12:06.880 | to build until today.
00:12:09.440 | We moved our family from Maui, Hawaii, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin in April of 2014.
00:12:18.560 | We paid off all the debt with the money from the book sales and other monies and now I
00:12:24.040 | operate a business that allows me to do some traveling and speaking.
00:12:28.800 | I'm the author now of four books which is pretty cool.
00:12:32.480 | I work with the full schedule coaching clients and do some consulting and life is drastically
00:12:38.240 | different than it was back then, Joshua.
00:12:40.720 | So you obviously got lucky because you're an overnight success.
00:12:46.240 | So you got a lucky break.
00:12:47.320 | What was the lucky break, Kamonze, that just opened all the doors to the floodgates for
00:12:51.080 | you that, what was that one lucky break that completely did it for you?
00:12:55.880 | It was Oprah.
00:12:56.880 | Oprah.
00:12:57.880 | Oprah.
00:12:58.880 | Oprah changed your life.
00:12:59.880 | She tweeted about my website.
00:13:00.880 | That's a lie.
00:13:01.880 | Don't take that seriously.
00:13:02.880 | Yeah, right.
00:13:03.880 | Sarcasm heavily implied there.
00:13:04.880 | And that was why I wanted to bring you on because I get so sick and tired of being involved
00:13:15.320 | in this building an entrepreneurial endeavor of my own and having consumed a lot of advice
00:13:21.520 | of other people, watching people with web businesses.
00:13:23.920 | I get sick and tired of the lies that people tell.
00:13:28.520 | And as I've built Radical Personal Finance over the last year and a half, it has been
00:13:32.560 | probably one of the much more difficult things I've ever done.
00:13:37.320 | And people look and often say, "Well, look, Joshua, it's easy.
00:13:40.280 | You got all these listeners and the show has been so good.
00:13:43.120 | And look, you've got this great Patreon campaign."
00:13:45.440 | I was like, "Do you understand the amount of work behind it?"
00:13:48.840 | And so I really appreciate it when people do a good job of identifying the great things
00:13:54.760 | about this type of business but also the challenges.
00:13:58.400 | And I have a lot of respect for people who balance those things and I believe you do
00:14:02.480 | that very well.
00:14:04.160 | Thank you.
00:14:06.760 | Question I want to ask though about your story.
00:14:10.600 | So you are really good at sharing some ideas, sharing tips and sharing things like that.
00:14:16.640 | But your background that you often say in your bio is you talk about, "Well, I'm
00:14:23.120 | a bread delivery guy."
00:14:25.280 | And in my mind, that immediately puts an image of you driving around in a truck and it's
00:14:32.240 | like, "What does the bread delivery guy had to offer?"
00:14:34.800 | And if you juxtapose that with the fact that here you are writing about success, writing
00:14:40.360 | about things that entrepreneurs should do and sharing all these great wins, getting
00:14:45.120 | paid 20,000 bucks to come and give a speech for a day and traveling all over the world
00:14:48.600 | in first class as you've shared some of your experiences, at least for me, it makes
00:14:54.320 | me think, "What on earth does this guy, he's a bread guy, have to offer?"
00:14:58.480 | And I'm interested to know what gives you the right as a bread delivery guy to give
00:15:04.880 | other people advice about their life and business?
00:15:08.080 | Well, life experience.
00:15:11.960 | I'm definitely not sharing anything like advanced SEO strategies or even maybe some
00:15:20.600 | of the stuff you talked about in the Tony Robbins book on finances or this, that.
00:15:24.800 | I'm only sharing what I've experienced in my life and my journey.
00:15:30.160 | And so I can speak about my experiences with authority because I lived them.
00:15:35.400 | I didn't get that lucky break.
00:15:37.080 | I didn't get that tweet from Oprah.
00:15:40.360 | I had to hustle.
00:15:41.760 | My very first speaking gig, I still have a picture of it.
00:15:45.720 | I got a check for $125 to come and speak.
00:15:53.440 | So it wasn't a lot, but you know what?
00:15:55.040 | It was a lot to me back then.
00:15:57.080 | And then since then, since that first $125, I've spoken over 60 times.
00:16:05.800 | It took 60 times before I got that gig that eventually did pay $10,000.
00:16:11.880 | So when I share that, I've done a lot to get to that point where I got the bigger dollar
00:16:18.760 | gigs.
00:16:19.760 | So for me, I have the authority to speak about these things because all I'm sharing is what
00:16:26.640 | I've gone through, my experiences, how I've overcome them and anybody else who is in the
00:16:31.800 | position that I was in.
00:16:34.920 | So me, my audience is going to be the everyday working man and woman.
00:16:39.040 | If you come to my website, that's what you're going to see.
00:16:41.840 | It says so that everyday work in person, how they can create a life of freedom for themselves.
00:16:49.360 | So that's what I focus on.
00:16:51.320 | I focus on the experience and I believe I can speak with the authority because I've
00:16:55.880 | lived it.
00:16:56.880 | This isn't just, I didn't leave some six figure corporate job, pay a bunch of money to hire
00:17:01.960 | some of the top coaches and get all the strategies and buy all the Facebook ads and all that.
00:17:07.520 | I built this thing living less than paycheck to paycheck.
00:17:11.000 | Tyler Litchenberger Yeah.
00:17:12.000 | If the tone of that question sounded sharp to a listener, I intended it to sound sharp
00:17:17.480 | and perhaps it came across as unfriendly.
00:17:20.160 | But the reason was I wanted to develop this theme during the course of our interview because
00:17:24.040 | I feel that this is one of the major things that holds many of us back and I've struggled
00:17:29.320 | with it.
00:17:30.320 | I can imagine that you've struggled with it.
00:17:32.000 | You probably have not always just brimmed with confidence in the things you had to share.
00:17:36.080 | In many ways, we often look to external sources for validation.
00:17:41.360 | Many people, I get so tired of it sometimes when I was working as a personal financial
00:17:45.520 | advisor and people would say, "Well, I want to do this so I'm going to go back to school."
00:17:48.360 | I would say, "Well, why do you want to go back to school?"
00:17:50.160 | "Well, because I need that certification."
00:17:52.080 | Well, certifications have their place.
00:17:53.640 | School has its place.
00:17:54.920 | But the reality is in many ways, life is waiting for you to write your own ticket.
00:18:00.840 | You can sit around and just wait and wait and wait for other people to approve you or
00:18:07.400 | you can get busy and start the hustle, start working.
00:18:11.560 | Over time, let the marketplace approve you.
00:18:16.160 | After meeting you and looking at your books and looking at your blog and all that, I found
00:18:20.880 | that part of your story super inspirational.
00:18:24.560 | Did that come easily to you as far as the idea of, "I'm just going to start"?
00:18:28.880 | Did you struggle with that?
00:18:29.880 | What was your background on that topic?
00:18:30.880 | Yeah.
00:18:31.880 | It's always been – I had a post go live on my blog today called, "Four Ways to Beat
00:18:36.560 | Imposter Syndrome."
00:18:39.120 | I can remember when I self-published my first book, there was some attention but there wasn't
00:18:46.040 | a lot of attention.
00:18:47.040 | When I put the second book out there after I built an audience, the very first review
00:18:51.720 | I have on that book and it's still on Amazon is this long tirade from somebody that was
00:18:57.800 | actually on my book launch team, by the way, Joshua.
00:19:01.120 | They said, "This guy is…"
00:19:02.760 | Enemies within the camp.
00:19:04.760 | They said, "This guy is an imposter.
00:19:09.000 | This guy can't – I don't know what authority he has to speak to us.
00:19:12.640 | He hasn't even done any of the things that he's writing about in the book."
00:19:15.600 | They're right because I wrote about moving to Hawaii.
00:19:17.960 | I wrote about losing weight.
00:19:19.480 | I wrote about paying off debt.
00:19:21.360 | I had this book and I hadn't even done those things but I had tried to make it clear in
00:19:25.840 | the book that this is the journey that I'm on and I want you to come on with this journey
00:19:31.240 | with me.
00:19:32.240 | Now, today I have done all those things but back then I didn't.
00:19:35.280 | So for me, I had to get to the point where I realized that I'm not doing this and I'm
00:19:40.800 | not writing this and I'm not in this journey to prove myself to that person, that person
00:19:46.440 | that left that review or anybody that thinks that like that person.
00:19:51.120 | I'm in this journey to help people, to help the everyday working man, to help the person
00:19:56.280 | that feels like they're stuck.
00:19:58.880 | So if I'm going to do that, I have to focus on creating value and content and being there
00:20:04.600 | for that person.
00:20:05.640 | I can't focus on myself and my feelings and my feelings of being an imposter.
00:20:11.840 | I just have to keep my eyes on the prize and I have to keep going.
00:20:16.120 | Those who this is meant for are going to get it.
00:20:19.080 | They're going to appreciate it.
00:20:20.160 | Those who are not, they're not part of my tribe anyways.
00:20:23.240 | So peace out.
00:20:24.880 | You do you.
00:20:25.880 | I just had to shift my focus from me to them and then I had to do everything I can to A,
00:20:32.320 | learn about this kind of stuff.
00:20:34.280 | So do the research and then B, be a man of action.
00:20:37.720 | Yeah.
00:20:38.840 | And the amazing thing is that if you apply yourself to education and action, you can
00:20:45.000 | transform and become someone who's able to deliver an amazing amount of value.
00:20:49.800 | And there's no gatekeeper.
00:20:50.800 | In today's world, you don't have to impress the gatekeeper.
00:20:55.680 | You just got to simply create the message and share it and start helping people and
00:20:59.240 | over time, you can reach the right people.
00:21:02.840 | And I want to thank you for the work that you've done.
00:21:05.560 | Since I met you, I've watched your information and I've admired and in some ways modeled
00:21:10.160 | a lot of what you've done because I've appreciated the very authentic tone that you take when
00:21:14.960 | you speak with things even as I've watched your social media, the way that you interact
00:21:19.040 | with your friends and readers on social media and different things like that.
00:21:24.280 | I've watched that and I've really admired it and I've modeled some of it and it's been
00:21:27.280 | really helpful to me because I've often struggled with maintaining the glittering facade.
00:21:32.440 | We're often taught don't look weak, don't share how things are.
00:21:35.240 | But yet, I was attracted to your message because you shared the difficult things and I found
00:21:40.760 | it much more accessible than a lot of people.
00:21:43.120 | I want to be able to encourage other people in an accessible way.
00:21:46.560 | I don't want to be the type of person who stands up on the hill and says, "Look at me.
00:21:51.240 | I've got it all together," because that's not me.
00:21:53.920 | So just a public thank you to you for the work that you've done.
00:21:56.840 | So if it's not helped anybody else, it's certainly helped me in watching you.
00:22:00.600 | So thank you for that work.
00:22:04.480 | One of the themes that I explore a lot on Radical Personal Finance is how people can
00:22:08.760 | build their brand and build their own income by building their own brand.
00:22:16.640 | You are an expert at building and leveraging authority and influence in different areas
00:22:21.980 | of life.
00:22:23.240 | If you were giving advice to somebody who's sitting down and kind of looking and saying,
00:22:27.480 | "I need to start to build my brand, build my authority in the marketplace," how would
00:22:33.720 | you encourage that person to build a plan and what would you encourage them to do in
00:22:38.560 | order to enhance their career, which can ultimately enhance their income?
00:22:42.920 | So this is not going to be a surprise to Joshua because he's read my books, but I would tell
00:22:49.000 | you not to build it in the places that we're typically taught.
00:22:54.260 | I would tell you to go after the larger exposure, the more exposure.
00:23:00.240 | What I mean by that is all of the places that have name recognition for people.
00:23:06.360 | So we're taught that one way to do it is to connect with an influencer.
00:23:10.960 | So that's why we had joked about the Oprah tweet.
00:23:14.520 | We're told that if we can connect with an influencer, add value to them somehow.
00:23:19.080 | I think we've all heard the story of somebody who saw a widget that was missing on somebody's
00:23:24.760 | website and this person pointed it out and became big, best friends with this influencer.
00:23:30.200 | They got the shout out and they became famous, right?
00:23:33.200 | It's like the Cinderella story.
00:23:35.680 | But that is the exception.
00:23:37.600 | That's not the rule.
00:23:39.080 | And so like building influencers or going to like what's new and hot.
00:23:43.800 | So no offense to anybody who's blabbing or periscoping or stuff like that, but that's
00:23:48.920 | the new and hot thing.
00:23:50.040 | That's where you're told you should be.
00:23:51.920 | You should connect with your audience.
00:23:54.000 | All that kind of stuff is great, but day in and day out, that's not the best place to
00:23:59.480 | build.
00:24:00.480 | You want to go where the people are.
00:24:02.000 | So like large publications such as like the Huffington Post and Entrepreneur Magazine
00:24:06.360 | and Forbes and Inc and all these places that literally get millions of captive readers
00:24:13.720 | every day, every month, you have the opportunity to get exposure in these places and get exposure
00:24:20.800 | to these millions of people.
00:24:22.480 | And the cool thing is, is most of the people, most of the advice that we see like in the
00:24:26.080 | quote unquote online/lifestyle entrepreneurship space, they're all building in the same places.
00:24:32.680 | They're all going after the same audience.
00:24:35.440 | And that audience is being converted and capitalized by the people that are on the top of the food
00:24:40.440 | chain by the influencers.
00:24:42.740 | So when you're just starting out, you're trying to get the same people that the big names
00:24:47.680 | are going after.
00:24:48.680 | So instead of chasing being in that pond, think a little bit outside of that pond and
00:24:53.720 | go to these larger media publications which anybody listening to this can totally get
00:24:58.840 | exposure on, get that exposure there and build a brand that's outside of this space.
00:25:05.280 | It's an untapped field.
00:25:07.040 | All the things that we would take for granted, all the knowledge that we have in this space,
00:25:11.160 | it's new and it's untapped in more of the mainstream space.
00:25:17.240 | In my mind, that's one of the keys just is visibility.
00:25:21.080 | There's a balance for people in terms of what they can do and what they should be doing
00:25:25.800 | that you can be doing great work but if nobody knows about your great work, it's not benefiting
00:25:31.440 | you as much as it could be.
00:25:34.760 | No matter where you are, whether you're building an online business, whether you're an employee
00:25:39.440 | of a company or whether you're in a brick and mortar traditional brick and mortar business,
00:25:45.560 | you've got to take charge of your brand.
00:25:48.000 | You've got to take charge of your image, your persona and you've got to take charge of going
00:25:54.120 | out and sharing that with people.
00:25:55.960 | That's what separates those who are continually influenced by the latest economic changes
00:26:01.320 | from those who are able to, to mix metaphors here, who are able to surf the waves no matter
00:26:07.440 | when they get big and turbulent because it's that skill and they can slide right through.
00:26:12.680 | Your expertise in the area of writing and sharing that with people is valuable.
00:26:19.560 | Do you come- - Yeah, because at the end of the day, if
00:26:22.640 | you don't have an audience or you don't have customers, you're not going to make any money.
00:26:29.880 | - With regard to your entrepreneurial journey, many people struggle to figure out how can
00:26:34.480 | I work and earn a job, keep my job and take care of my family and do all these things
00:26:40.760 | and you've been through that journey.
00:26:42.640 | You had kids when you were working the job and then you're trying to build your business
00:26:45.480 | on the side.
00:26:47.000 | What was that period of your life like and do you have any advice for people who feel
00:26:50.600 | like they're stuck in the crunch?
00:26:52.800 | - Yeah, for me, it wasn't good.
00:26:55.640 | I'll tell you right now, I did not keep a proper balance.
00:27:01.520 | I was obsessed with leaving the job that I hated, leaving this business.
00:27:06.040 | I was obsessed with getting out of it.
00:27:08.600 | For me, I would work 60 to 80 hours a week in this business.
00:27:14.400 | I would get home and then I would work another crazy amount of hours, two, three hours a
00:27:18.880 | day writing, doing podcast interviews, doing anything I could to get that exposure and
00:27:24.340 | also promoting my stuff.
00:27:26.320 | Yeah, there was a lot of time that should have been spent with family, should have had
00:27:31.000 | the proper balance that wasn't.
00:27:33.360 | I'll be the first to admit that.
00:27:35.280 | If I were to give advice looking back on it now and from just what I've seen now with
00:27:40.720 | people that I've worked with and stuff like that, it's a matter of finding time where
00:27:47.160 | you can get some things done but you're not sacrificing that time with your family because
00:27:52.960 | that is important.
00:27:55.840 | Life is short.
00:27:56.840 | We don't know how much time we have.
00:27:58.420 | All of us are guaranteed one thing and that's we're guaranteed to die.
00:28:02.480 | That's the one thing we're all guaranteed and we don't know when that is.
00:28:06.840 | That time with your family is greatly important.
00:28:09.680 | If that means waking up a little early, if that means staying up a little later, if that
00:28:14.120 | means working on something at your lunch break at work but just finding let's say an hour
00:28:19.440 | a day.
00:28:20.440 | If you found an hour a day to work on your thing and build it on your side five hours
00:28:25.080 | a week, maybe add a little bit of extra time on the weekend.
00:28:28.240 | If you're using that time wisely, how you're using that time is the most important thing.
00:28:32.520 | It's not actually the amount of time.
00:28:34.480 | But if you're using that time wisely, you can build this thing on the side and you can
00:28:38.320 | do it in a reasonable amount of time.
00:28:40.120 | You've written in your published work that there was a shift that happened.
00:28:47.440 | And again, your newest book, or your second to newest book, Stop Chasing Influencers,
00:28:52.040 | where you talk about, "Okay, we chase big people but then I just switched and said,
00:28:55.360 | I've got to build it myself."
00:28:56.640 | And you specifically talked about learning how to build your own social media presence.
00:29:01.800 | What was the transition that you faced where you went from selling four copies of your
00:29:05.320 | book to selling 40,000?
00:29:07.400 | And what did you do differently with regard to social media to be able to engage with
00:29:12.900 | your readers such that they bought your books?
00:29:14.920 | Yeah, it was for me and self-publishing, I did this in 2011, 2012, which everybody says,
00:29:23.280 | "Well, how do you do that now?"
00:29:24.680 | It's a little bit different ballgame because back then there was something like 300,000
00:29:29.720 | books on Amazon in the Kindle store.
00:29:32.040 | Now there's like 4 million books in the Kindle store.
00:29:35.000 | So there was far less competition back then.
00:29:38.480 | Back then also there was more reach on social media.
00:29:43.220 | So back then Facebook wasn't a publicly traded company or they were just becoming one, but
00:29:48.240 | they didn't limit the amount of research you have or they didn't limit as severely as they
00:29:52.920 | do today.
00:29:54.220 | So you had more reach organically on social media.
00:29:57.460 | So it was just kind of a number of factors.
00:29:59.840 | But I think the biggest thing was shifting the focus to I have to promote this thing
00:30:05.760 | to let me add value first.
00:30:08.700 | So instead of posting links to my book and stuff like that and heading people up all
00:30:13.720 | the time and coming on strong, what I did was I focused on coming on strong with the
00:30:19.080 | content.
00:30:20.160 | So whether it was a blog post that I wrote related to the book or a video I made or some
00:30:24.800 | form of content, I would give them the content, that's what I would post, and then in that
00:30:29.440 | content I would reference the book.
00:30:32.320 | So I've shifted the focus where it's not promotional, this is I'm adding value, and if you want
00:30:37.140 | even more value you can buy the book.
00:30:40.080 | And that to me was kind of the game changer when I came from that perspective because
00:30:44.260 | when people felt like they got the value, they would not only buy the book but buy other
00:30:48.440 | things that I was selling.
00:30:51.320 | Here's a follow on to that with a question that I personally struggle with so I'm going
00:30:55.160 | to take advantage of you with some free coaching here.
00:30:59.760 | Thinking about the amount of time that you should spend creating versus the amount of
00:31:03.360 | time promoting, I have wanted to, so I built Radical Personal Finance exclusively on creating.
00:31:10.240 | I did no marketing, I did nothing.
00:31:11.760 | My theory was that if I create good stuff, the internet should work.
00:31:15.280 | And my only marketing has been satisfied listeners telling other people about the show.
00:31:20.720 | And that worked extremely well for the first year.
00:31:24.240 | After about a year I've started to feel more comfortable with what I was doing.
00:31:27.280 | I felt like I'd made a lot of progress as a broadcaster to be able to create better
00:31:31.760 | content and I felt like I could afford to shift my focus over and do more marketing.
00:31:37.240 | And so I've intended to do more writing, write more guest posts, share with more, write for
00:31:42.800 | large publications, etc. like you teach.
00:31:45.640 | But what I've found is that that aspect is very difficult for me.
00:31:49.880 | Writing is very difficult for me and it doesn't come as smoothly and as well as creating good
00:31:56.760 | content.
00:31:58.200 | And my content has suffered due to the desire to be over there marketing.
00:32:02.960 | How would you think through the business problem of should I just continue what worked in the
00:32:08.440 | beginning and continue creating much more valuable content that people are going to
00:32:13.160 | find useful and share with one another and reference because I've got plenty of that
00:32:16.720 | that I could create or should I focus on marketing the content that I'm already creating even
00:32:21.560 | to the point where it makes my content suffer?
00:32:23.160 | How would you think through that problem?
00:32:25.320 | I would stick with your strong suit.
00:32:27.680 | So if writing, writing is going to be difficult for a lot of people.
00:32:32.240 | You can either A, you can use like a speak to text program, you know, dragon dictator
00:32:37.640 | or something like that where you're not actually sitting out and writing the articles, but
00:32:43.400 | you're speaking the articles because what writing is at its core is your ability to
00:32:49.520 | express, express a thought.
00:32:52.240 | The thought is what people are going to connect with, not the actual words.
00:32:56.320 | They want to know, you know, what is this about?
00:32:58.440 | What's that thought?
00:32:59.680 | So you can use a program like, like dragon dictator.
00:33:03.280 | And I know authors that I've written, I know an author who wrote 17 books and he did it
00:33:07.720 | all through dictation.
00:33:09.360 | He didn't actually sit down and write any of it.
00:33:11.840 | So that's a possibility today.
00:33:14.240 | But more than that, the thing that I love about some large publications and the reason
00:33:19.400 | why I talk about it so much is because large publications today, they want to be with the
00:33:25.560 | times.
00:33:26.560 | They want to be very, they want to be, they want to be multimedia.
00:33:33.280 | They really want multimedia content is what they're looking for.
00:33:37.280 | So not only do you have the written word, but like entrepreneur magazine, for example,
00:33:43.120 | they have bloggers or bloggers do video posts and that's become really popular over there.
00:33:48.960 | Several people that I know, several clients, several people that I just connected with
00:33:53.280 | are now vloggers for entrepreneur magazine where they're on there making videos for entrepreneur.
00:33:59.320 | Several of my podcaster friends are on the Huffington post and what they'll do is pretty
00:34:04.000 | much what they'll post is their show notes.
00:34:06.440 | They'll post a good title for the article, their show notes, and then they'll embed the,
00:34:11.320 | the whatever SoundCloud, Libsyn, whatever it is that you're using, they'll embed that
00:34:15.920 | in the post.
00:34:17.180 | So you have written content, you have podcasts, you have videos, it's all multimedia content
00:34:22.880 | and that's what these publications are looking for.
00:34:25.640 | They want to mix it up so you don't have to write.
00:34:28.560 | You can put your podcasts on there.
00:34:30.080 | So like if I was to advise you, that's what I would tell you to do is I would tell you
00:34:34.360 | to get into some of these places and start posting your podcast episodes over there.
00:34:39.140 | And that's a whole nother, you get, if you look at somebody like a Lewis house, go to
00:34:44.360 | entrepreneur magazine, look up Lewis house and look at all the articles he's posted.
00:34:49.960 | It's all his podcast episodes.
00:34:51.960 | It's just his show notes with the SoundCloud feed and he's getting his podcasts exposed
00:34:56.840 | to millions of people and his numbers are crazy because of it.
00:35:00.920 | So that, that's what I would tell you is I'd focus on your strength.
00:35:03.720 | If you're a podcaster, get your podcast exposure.
00:35:06.840 | If you're a vlogger, go ahead and start making some videos for these places and there's a,
00:35:12.080 | there's a lot of opportunity.
00:35:13.080 | You wrote a book called, are you living or existing?
00:35:16.600 | And in many ways the, the, you know, the, the blurb as far as your author profile is
00:35:24.280 | very compelling.
00:35:25.280 | You know, bread guy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin goes from delivering bread for a living to
00:35:29.600 | moving his family to Hawaii, losing 170 pounds and paying off $180,000 in debt.
00:35:35.760 | It's a very compelling, succinct description.
00:35:39.920 | But I have many listeners who write to me a lot of times and say, well, I just not sure
00:35:43.680 | what I want to do.
00:35:44.680 | And I know I'm not fully satisfied.
00:35:46.640 | I know I'm just existing, but I'm not sure what to do.
00:35:50.800 | How would you talk through somebody, a process of transition and identifying how they should
00:35:55.640 | create a plan to go from existing to living?
00:35:59.840 | Yeah, that is not an easy one.
00:36:02.600 | I know a lot of people that do struggle with that.
00:36:06.080 | Um, it's, and there's no easy answer for that.
00:36:09.640 | What I would tell you is you have to take some time, maybe talk it over with family
00:36:15.320 | or friends or a mastermind group, but really take some time and think about what, what
00:36:20.080 | do you want from your life?
00:36:22.000 | What is it that you enjoy doing?
00:36:24.240 | What are you passionate about?
00:36:26.240 | I've heard a lot of people say that passion is overrated and they've, they've taken shots
00:36:32.020 | at passion.
00:36:33.520 | And I, I sure think that, yeah, there's, there is a lot of garbage out there about passion,
00:36:38.420 | but at the end of the day, like if I told you, Joshua, you were coaching client, I told
00:36:42.080 | you, um, you have to write for these publications.
00:36:45.280 | You could do it and you could probably do it for a month, but if writing is not something
00:36:49.360 | you're not passionate about, guess what?
00:36:51.560 | It's going to be like pulling teeth and you're not going to do it and you're not going to
00:36:56.320 | continue doing it.
00:36:58.040 | So if you don't have a passion for something, you can try it and maybe even experience success,
00:37:03.320 | but that's only going to be for a little while.
00:37:05.760 | That's why, that's why passion is important.
00:37:07.760 | So what, what are you passionate about?
00:37:09.540 | What gets you excited?
00:37:11.180 | What could you see yourself doing?
00:37:12.620 | What did you always want to do when you were a kid?
00:37:15.400 | Like really tap into what it is that you want to do with your life because truly living
00:37:21.820 | doesn't mean you're traveling the world to speak.
00:37:25.020 | It doesn't mean you're bungee jumping.
00:37:26.420 | It doesn't mean you're running with the bulls in Spain.
00:37:28.940 | It means that you're living what living means to you.
00:37:33.080 | So for all of us, each of us, that's going to be different.
00:37:35.900 | Josh, you know, has the Joshua has a radical personal finance.
00:37:39.960 | I'd write and speak.
00:37:41.880 | Somebody else might want to like a client that I helped.
00:37:44.680 | He wanted a job in construction.
00:37:46.200 | He wanted to be a construction manager.
00:37:47.840 | He got the job and he's living life and he's loving it.
00:37:50.560 | You know, that's what truly living is to him.
00:37:52.400 | So each of us, it's going to be different.
00:37:54.320 | There's no cookie cutter answer, but it's up to you to sit down, take some time, figure
00:37:59.160 | out what are you passionate about?
00:38:00.640 | What is it that you always want to do?
00:38:02.560 | And it might take a few tries.
00:38:05.120 | When I started out in this journey to leave bread, I didn't start out with writing.
00:38:09.760 | The very first thing that I did was I thought that I wanted to be an event planner and I
00:38:15.440 | had seen some TV show somewhere where an event planner was bossing people around and they
00:38:21.680 | seem very important.
00:38:22.680 | I thought that's what I want to do.
00:38:24.280 | I even had, I had business cards made for this Joshua and I got the Bluetooth and I
00:38:29.640 | got the clipboard and I actually had the signal of power.
00:38:33.760 | You need the Bluetooth, the clipboard and you got to be able to boss people around.
00:38:43.520 | And right away, like a month after I told everybody, family and friends is going to
00:38:47.680 | be event planner.
00:38:48.960 | My stepsister asked me to plan her wedding, like seriously asked me, like hired me to
00:38:54.080 | plan her wedding.
00:38:56.040 | And I thought, okay, I'm going to get a chance to put this to the test.
00:38:59.560 | So one week into the wedding, it was a disaster.
00:39:03.920 | None of the family members were listening to me.
00:39:06.440 | Nobody was listening to what I was saying.
00:39:08.080 | Two weeks in the wedding, I had vendors like, is this guy an idiot?
00:39:11.600 | Like what is this guy doing?
00:39:13.560 | And like three weeks into it, my family was ready to disown me.
00:39:17.440 | And that experience, not because I failed at it, but just going through the experience
00:39:21.640 | and seeing what you have to deal with with event planning showed me that, hey, this isn't
00:39:26.360 | the thing for me.
00:39:28.080 | And it really wasn't.
00:39:29.520 | So it might take you a few tries at something to figure it out, but getting out there and
00:39:35.640 | testing and figuring it out for yourself, that's what's important.
00:39:38.840 | So I know you got the book coming out.
00:39:40.520 | I got a review copy, which is very exciting.
00:39:42.200 | It was kind of fun to buy a review copy of Podcast Movement, Stop Chasing Influencers.
00:39:49.720 | So it's coming out soon here.
00:39:51.800 | Last question here, share with us the theme of the book, some of the major lessons learned
00:39:57.280 | from it so that my listeners can have a little bit more information about it and can go and
00:40:03.000 | check it out if it's right for them.
00:40:04.320 | Yeah, I think the most important thing is just this idea of, it's not to say you'll
00:40:09.960 | never have heroes because each of us has heroes.
00:40:14.120 | Dan Miller's a hero of mine.
00:40:15.880 | If he called and wanted to talk to me, I'd be a fanboy and I'd be like, "Oh, it's Dan
00:40:20.720 | Miller."
00:40:21.720 | So it's not to say that you can't have heroes.
00:40:23.840 | It just says don't chase when you could be using that time to build.
00:40:29.200 | And then the second half of that book is all strategies on how, if you want to build a
00:40:33.680 | "online/lifestyle business," something that allows you freedom of location, freedom of
00:40:40.400 | time, it allows you flexibility, it lays out how you can do that.
00:40:44.380 | So we talked about large publications.
00:40:46.560 | It breaks that down.
00:40:47.920 | How to build a successful podcast.
00:40:49.520 | Jared Easley is the co-author of that book.
00:40:52.160 | He's the co-founder of the conference that Josh and I met called Podcast Movement, where
00:40:57.920 | it was the first time I ever went, Josh, when I thought that conference was absolutely well
00:41:01.600 | done.
00:41:02.600 | It was.
00:41:03.600 | I thought it was beautiful and it was amazing.
00:41:04.760 | So Jared knows a little bit about podcasting, but things like getting on TV or getting paid
00:41:10.240 | consulting.
00:41:11.240 | So if you want to build this kind of a business, it lays out the exact how-to strategy you
00:41:15.280 | can use.
00:41:16.280 | But more than that, this overall message of don't chase.
00:41:20.040 | You have everything you need to build.
00:41:22.460 | Work on building on your own and here's a strategy.
00:41:25.160 | That's what that message of this book is.
00:41:27.280 | That's what Jared and I are passionate about.
00:41:29.400 | And I don't think, Joshua, I'll ever write another book that's like that.
00:41:33.960 | I don't think I'll ever write another book about lifestyle entrepreneurship or anything
00:41:38.440 | like that.
00:41:39.440 | So this is like a one-time deal for me.
00:41:41.560 | But to be able to write it with one of my best friends, it was a very special experience.
00:41:46.440 | And I'm a little biased.
00:41:48.000 | But I thought the book came out really well.
00:41:50.080 | Yeah, it's very good.
00:41:52.000 | And it's refreshingly frank and it's refreshingly clear and it's refreshingly realistic.
00:41:59.480 | But I think just even the title itself, I'll share my experience in building this type
00:42:03.820 | of business.
00:42:08.160 | If you start to apply yourself to the work, that's what will ultimately grab the notice
00:42:15.660 | of the influencers.
00:42:17.720 | And I've experienced it with Radical Personal Finance.
00:42:19.640 | I had no name recognition.
00:42:21.840 | Nobody knew me.
00:42:22.840 | Nobody knew what I was doing.
00:42:23.840 | I didn't have any brand.
00:42:30.840 | And so I just simply started doing the work.
00:42:33.840 | And even just in observing in our little niche industry, the personal finance online space
00:42:39.360 | and whatnot, in the beginning, I didn't go after anybody.
00:42:44.960 | I just simply focused on doing the work and trying to create something useful.
00:42:48.240 | What I've noticed is, number one, I've started to make a little bit of a transition of people
00:42:52.360 | looking up to me and reaching out to me, which is very flattering.
00:42:55.760 | But it's become – it's harder to keep current with all of the requests.
00:43:00.080 | And so in many ways, if people are looking to me for help, it's just simply I try to
00:43:06.240 | help as much as I can.
00:43:07.240 | But in many ways, I can't do much because it's just name.
00:43:10.160 | But as I've just simply focused on working, I have a lot of the leaders in the personal
00:43:14.480 | finance industry have admired the work that I've done and that has brought me to their
00:43:18.840 | attention without me ever having to chase them.
00:43:21.520 | And so the whole idea of just simply do the work, don't chase the influencer, become
00:43:26.780 | the influencer, I think is a powerful idea.
00:43:30.360 | You've got to ultimately have people who are – people who are ultimately going to
00:43:34.800 | help you out.
00:43:35.800 | If nobody shared my show or a well-known guest didn't agree to come on, all those things
00:43:41.200 | help.
00:43:42.200 | But at the end of the day, you can't control those things.
00:43:43.840 | You can control what you actually do and I thought it was a brilliantly titled book if
00:43:47.880 | nothing else.
00:43:48.880 | Ryan Neuhofeldt Yeah, and one thing that really stuck out
00:43:51.720 | to me and that I've seen as I built this is you think about influencers such as like
00:43:57.800 | let's say Dan Miller, Michael Hyatt, Dave Ramsey.
00:44:00.800 | You think about those guys.
00:44:02.620 | Those guys didn't start out where they were.
00:44:05.160 | They started out from the beginning, humble beginnings, but they did it together.
00:44:09.840 | They had a mastermind and they did it together.
00:44:12.840 | They built this together.
00:44:14.720 | That kind of connection where you reach out to people that are similar to you and that
00:44:18.960 | are on the same journey with you and you build that relationship and you help each other
00:44:22.520 | out and you're there for each other, that is a strong connection that you can take with
00:44:27.680 | you all the way to the top.
00:44:29.640 | I've heard somebody call it like the third circle theory.
00:44:33.600 | Instead of building up like the first tier – sorry, it's called the third tier theory.
00:44:39.400 | Instead of building at the top tier, you're connecting with people on the second or third
00:44:42.480 | tier and you're just building this thing together.
00:44:44.880 | I think that's a great way to build.
00:44:46.880 | But would you – so do you think that even just the whole concept of mastermind is becoming
00:44:53.360 | a little bit overblown?
00:44:55.360 | In the sense that I've not found – I've not joined any paid masterminds or anything
00:44:59.600 | like that.
00:45:00.600 | There are a couple of people, a listener of the show and a couple of listeners of the
00:45:04.560 | show and a couple of friends who have for me have been instrumental.
00:45:08.760 | But it wasn't – I didn't go out and buy some mastermind program to get a bunch of
00:45:12.600 | people to like my stuff.
00:45:14.880 | Do you think even just the whole mastermind concept has become a little bit oversold these
00:45:18.640 | days?
00:45:19.640 | It depends on the mastermind.
00:45:20.640 | Yeah, there's the paid ones.
00:45:22.560 | Yeah, there's some question there about the paid ones.
00:45:25.080 | I've never joined a paid one so I won't speak to that.
00:45:28.480 | But if you get one where it's a good solid group of people, it's free, it's people
00:45:33.440 | that are doing what you're doing, you're all kind of on the same level, I think it
00:45:37.320 | could be so solid for you.
00:45:40.040 | My mastermind is the best friends that I had when I started building this.
00:45:45.320 | My two friends are still in Wisconsin.
00:45:47.320 | That's who my mastermind is.
00:45:48.920 | We talk every day.
00:45:50.360 | We share things with each other.
00:45:51.360 | We give each other ideas and that has been invaluable to me.
00:45:55.440 | But it all depends on who the people are that are in there.
00:45:58.880 | Awesome.
00:45:59.880 | Kmanzi, K-I-M-A-N-Z-I, Konstable.com.
00:46:04.420 | Your blogs are there and let's see, the newest book is Stop Chasing Influencers.
00:46:09.320 | Anywhere else you want people to be aware of your work or you just want to point them
00:46:11.600 | to your blog?
00:46:12.600 | Nope.
00:46:13.600 | Go to the blog.
00:46:14.600 | You'll see everything there.
00:46:15.600 | Well, Kmanzi, keep doing what you're doing.
00:46:17.640 | I appreciate your voice.
00:46:18.960 | I appreciate the content and the information that you share.
00:46:22.040 | It's been a help to me personally and I know to many other people and I wish you ever increasing
00:46:27.960 | and increasing amounts of success.
00:46:29.840 | Thank you so much for having me.
00:46:33.080 | Today I urge you to please take the name and the meaning of the title of this book to heart.
00:46:40.920 | Frankly, I wondered, I was like, "Do I need to do anything except just read the title
00:46:44.680 | of this book and have that be the whole show?"
00:46:46.400 | I decided to go ahead and play the interview for you because a 20-second podcast would
00:46:51.840 | be a little out of character for Radical Personal Finance.
00:46:56.320 | But it really says it all.
00:46:57.600 | Stop chasing influencers.
00:46:58.600 | Here's my go-to thing is how can you stop chasing influencers and become one?
00:47:05.520 | Well, in order to do that, you've got to become a person who's worthy of influence.
00:47:12.880 | Are you that person?
00:47:14.120 | That's not a trick question of like a Mr. Motivational Guru for you to say, "Yes, I'm
00:47:19.880 | that person.
00:47:20.880 | Of course I am."
00:47:21.880 | No, you have to ask yourself, "Honestly, am I that person?"
00:47:23.200 | Because frankly, some of you are not and there's no reason trying to market something that
00:47:27.280 | you don't have.
00:47:28.280 | There's no reason trying to market knowledge that you don't have.
00:47:29.760 | You just wind up embarrassing yourself.
00:47:32.240 | But you can become a person worthy of influence if you're not already.
00:47:37.320 | Now if you are a person who's worthy of influence, if you're a person who's done your homework,
00:47:40.440 | who's studied, who's put in the hard work and the effort, who has something of value
00:47:43.960 | to share, then go ahead and start exercising that influence because it's never been easier
00:47:49.240 | than it is today to spread the message that you have that's uniquely yours.
00:47:55.120 | I don't know how you're going to do it.
00:47:57.280 | Start up a podcast.
00:47:58.280 | I don't know.
00:47:59.280 | Start a blog.
00:48:00.280 | Go down and talk to people on the street.
00:48:01.280 | However it works for you, get busy because we need people to do it.
00:48:06.080 | So stop chasing influencers and become one.
00:48:08.240 | You know the cool thing?
00:48:09.520 | If you do that, the influencers will chase you.
00:48:15.120 | Proven it.
00:48:16.120 | Believed it a few years ago.
00:48:17.120 | I've proven it myself and you've heard the whole process.
00:48:19.560 | That's it.
00:48:22.120 | So thank you all for listening to the show today.
00:48:24.740 | Thank you for your support.
00:48:25.840 | If you would like to support me and Radical Personal Finance directly, please consider
00:48:29.320 | going to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron, signing up to support the show.
00:48:32.560 | I would be deeply grateful to you for that financial support.
00:48:36.760 | RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.
00:48:37.760 | Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day
00:48:57.820 | presented by Pear Deck.
00:48:59.220 | Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits.
00:49:02.600 | Get your tickets now at LAKings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little