Andrew: Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com. It’s the place where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses.
And pretty much since I got started here at Mixergy, I’ve done interviews with this guy who you’re about to see today. And every time I talk to him, it feels like his business is growing. The business is largely growing using social media. That’s where I first found out about him. He was a blogger and then he became a guy who you saw on Facebook kind of taunting people with how well he was doing and showing his Lamborghini. Then he became an Instagram celebrity and then I see him on Twitter, of course, and now Snapchat and all that stuff. He says he’s building up his business using it.
He’s got a collection of different companies. I’m not sure which one to talk about. But why don’t we introduce him as Tim Sykes, the founder of Profit.ly, which is a community of traders who share their performance and trades openly to help each other learn and improve, but he’s got other businesses, all involving trading and the stock market.
And this interview is sponsored by two great companies. The first is going to help you hire your next great developer. It’s called Toptal. The second one will make sure that if you want to meet someone that you will meet them, get them on the phone, see them in person, anywhere you want to meet them, it’s such a great company. I’ll tell you more about them. I’ll tell you more about Acuity Scheduling later. First, Tim, welcome.
Tim: Thanks for having me, man.
Andrew: Before we get into the details of it, if you’re saying you built your business using social media, what kind of revenue are we talking about now?
Tim: Yeah. So we’re doing roughly $20 million a year in revenue. I know you say that there’s a lot of growth. We’ve kind of calmed down with the growth and focused more on just building key products that will probably have hockey stick-like growth in the coming years once we actually build out the products. But it’s weird how you want to grow as fast as you can every single year, but some years you actually have to plan like two, three, five years out.
Andrew: I remember the first time I interviewed you and asked you what your revenues were and you said something like half a million dollars as a blogger. I thought, “Bloggers actually making half a million dollars? Something doesn’t seem right here. Is it really true?” I even checked in afterwards to make sure I had the numbers right with other people, with one other person, Adarsh, who you were splitting some of your revenue with at the time. Now it seems like a joke, especially compared to where you are today.
So, give me an example. If we’re seeing social media is what helped get you here, give me an example of one thing you’ve done with social media that actually increased your sales that wasn’t just about just posting a photo.
Tim: Sure. By the way, Adarsh has done very well. He’s Director of Acquisitions at Hootsuite last time I checked with him.
Andrew: Is that right?
Tim: It’s crazy. Yeah. He was like, “I’m tired of your little brand.” He started a mobile coupon company that didn’t do well, but it attracted a few thousand leads. He got acquired by Hootsuite. He worked his way up in Hootsuite and Hootsuite is this multi-billion dollar company.
Andrew: I think he’s got another thing. Now he’s running Trippeo.
Tim: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: Trippeo, he comes to town sometimes.
Tim: He started another startup too. It was just funny the way things worked out. So, it was pretty crazy.
Andrew: Yeah.
Tim: For me, first, I’ve got to quantify what you say about social media and blogging. There’s so much manipulation and hype and BS out there about this. You were saying, “How is it possible that a blogger makes half a million or a million or two million?” Because most bloggers and most social media people think that the only way to make money is selling ads. So, you get a bunch of followers. You get a bunch of readers and you’re like this mini little New York Times, mini letter content machine.
And that’s just not true. What you need to be thinking about is developing your own personal brand. Ads are a very, very small part of the money that I make. I would say like less than 1%.
Andrew: I wonder why you even keep ads.
Tim: There’s renovations going on in the background too.
Andrew: Why do you even keep ads on your site?
Tim: I mean I probably shouldn’t. I probably should have my own ads and have like my own face on the ads. It’s on my to-do list, but for now, I can’t say no to a few like extra thousand dollars. It doesn’t matter how much money I make. I’m still like this cheap Jew at heart.
Andrew: That is one of the big things I learned, that running ads is not the answer. When I see now all these content sites are battling all the ad blockers trying to find a way around them, I wish they would see this instead of as a challenge, as an opportunity to find new revenue streams and not be so dependent on advertising, which forces you to be dependent on getting a lot of clicks, which forces you to really do some pretty crappy content for it.
But let’s give people an example of how much you can do using social media. What’s one big thing you’ve done that actually translated to money?
Tim: Okay. So, for example, I just tried my first Facebook Live Q&A session I guess like two weeks ago, never done it, just tried it. I hyped it up a little. I posted some photos saying, “Look, you can talk with me on Facebook Live on my Facebook fan page,” which has like I think like 190,000 followers. I posted on Instagram a few times. I posted on Twitter a few times. I posted on Snapchat. I told pretty much everybody. I didn’t even do like an email blast, but I just told my social media followers, “Here’s what I’m doing with Q&A.”
For one hour I did Q&A. We got over 8,000 comments and what my team has done–that’s nice. That’s good interaction. But what my team has done is looked at all the comments and the question and now we are contacting all of those individuals. So, that one Q&A, totally free, it has brought in sales because now I have my sales guys and team going after the people with questions saying, “Hey, here’s a DVD that can answer your question. Here’s software that can help you.” We’ve pulled in roughly $125,000 from that one event.
Andrew: Messaging each person individually who asks the question?
Tim: Correct.
Andrew: That’s incredible.
Tim: It’s no different than Twitter. I’m behind on direct messages on Twitter and Instagram, but when people have questions, that’s how I built my business. I built it all on creating educational products that answer the questions that I get.
Andrew: So I actually posted something today and I see a bunch of people ask questions, including–here’s one where I said, “Here’s my office.” No one else at Mixergy team shows up at the office even though I’ve encouraged them to because they all like to work from where they are. This guy Trevor Paige commented like four times. He must be really obsessed with this question. I can see now because he’s saying that he was thinking of getting an office for himself. What do I do with that? I just go in and find his email address and send him a message?
Tim: Well, the problem is you posted that and I saw that. It was thought-provoking. That’s cool. We live in a virtual world. But you don’t have a product that actually solves that question. Maybe if you were–
Andrew: I’m actually linking to a product that solves that question.
Tim: There you go. For me, I don’t even want to promote other things because I want to sell my own products and I want to shove those products down people’s throat so they have the answers. What is that big company that leases out office space?
Andrew: Regus.
Tim: No.
Andrew: Oh, WeWork.
Tim: Yeah. So, if you’re WeWork and they’ve used your photo and then we say, “Hey, we have an office that we can do this,” you’re tailoring your social media content to basically getting people to ask the right questions so you can give them the answers and sell it to them.
Andrew: I see. You’re saying this is a little off message for me.
Tim: A little bit, but it’s it bad. For you, I would probably do a lot more photos. I would like screen shot this of me in the corner and you and just have photos be like, “How did this guy make millions of dollars? Check out the interview here.” They try and check out the interview. Oh, it’s a freemium. You have to upgrade. But it’s like so little money for Mixergy, so it’s a good deal versus the information you’re getting.
Andrew: Take me to what you do. I do see that a lot of social media will respond to every comment. But I haven’t seen anyone who says, “I’m going to take it a step further and go message the person beyond the commenting system to show that I see they have a problem that I could help out with. You guys are actually going in and finding each individual person and you’re sending them a message saying, “Here’s what I think I could help you?”
Tim: Yeah. I mean, this was a test, this was our first time. We just wanted to see if it was worth it, but it was good. It’s very similar. I’ve done webinars in the in the past where I’ tell all my different social media networks like, “Sign up for this webinar. And we get like 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people on the webinar and the webinar is a fantastic webinar. We plan it for weeks.
I did one my birthday with 35 tips that I’ve learned in the stock market over my 35 years. And an hour of 35 tips and then I said, “Hey, if you enjoyed this, I’m actually doing a live trading event where I’m going to be doing basically a live seven-hour webinar where you can see basically everything I do in the stock market.” So, we did that. Again, I made roughly $120,000. It’s weird. So, you pull in a big audience. You give a lot of value and then you sell something that can be even more valuable for a little money.
Andrew: How much of your selling happens in that one on one way where you’re messaging individuals versus–actually, how much of that do you do?
Tim: I don’t do it. This is why we built a team.
Andrew: How much of that does your team do?
Tim: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. We really don’t even have the stats. We just try different stuff.
Andrew: But it’s part of your process, messaging people individually.
Tim: Correct.
Andrew: So, if somebody goes into–
Tim: It’s now part of our process as we just learned. This was a total test. With social media, you have to constantly try and test. It could have bombed. We might not have any sales. But you don’t know until you try.
Andrew: So, if someone comments on this interview–I’ve seen you engage people in the comments with past interviews that we’ve done. Do you then go and email them directly somehow or have someone on your team do that or is that just a comment and response and that’s it?
Tim: In the beginning, it was more just getting attention and getting my name out there and not focusing so much on sales because frankly, I didn’t have enough products. I hadn’t developed it. But now I’ve been teaching for nearly ten years. We have software. We have these live events. We have tons of different newsletters with video lessons and webinars.
So, we have lots of options. Now I’ve gotten my name out there. I’ve made a lot of friends and a lot of enemies along the way. Now it’s just okay, there’s a problem. This person has a question. What do I have that can answer it?
Everyone, they’ll talk your ear off all day if you let them. They’ll say, “I have one question. Oh, I have one more, I have one more, I have one more.” No. Don’t ask me one-off questions. That’s not really going to help you. That’s not going to make you successful. That would be me like spoiling you like you’re a little baby and you want one more piece of candy. Instead, I’m want to give you a comprehensive guide because now I see your kind of mindset and where you are.
Andrew: All right. You said you made a list of different things that we should be doing that have worked for you. What’s another item on the list?
Tim: So number one is be consistent. I see a lot of people when they have like this launch internet marketing, they do all these tweets, they do all these Facebook updates and it’s like, “Three days left, two days left, one day left,” for this big event and then they make whatever their launch does and then they disappear for like a week, two weeks or three weeks because their launch is theoretically over.
For me, we have some launches. We do some webinars. I have some upcoming books and guides. But I’m always wanting to share every single day. Obviously I’m in the stock market. So, there’s new news every single day, so that’s different for me. No matter what platform you’re on, at least post one or two things a day. So many people in our internet field and in the passive income field, they take too much time off. That includes you when you go to Bali and you don’t post.
Andrew: Yeah. You’re upset that I went to Bali and I didn’t post.
Tim: It really pisses me off. I’m going to Bali in a few weeks and you’ll see me posting. I’m going to tag you in some of my posts.
Andrew: It was stunning. But here’s the reason I didn’t post. I feel like when I’m at work, I want to be fully in it at work. I’m here sitting, working hard. I’m not getting distracted from other stuff. When I’m away on vacation, shouldn’t I just be enjoying the vacation? I feel like your lip just quivered as I said that.
Tim: No. It’s an argument that I’ve heard before. For me, I take so much pride in my business that I’m thinking about it. I try and like stop, but I still can’t help it. Now that I’ve seen so many people and met so many people, it’s kind of my duty and I think it’s your duty as like the social media emissaries that we are to be like, “Look, we’re still working. We’re still making money in these far off places.”
People just need to understand that it’s even possible and they need that visual inspiration. When you’re in one of the most beautiful places in the world like Bali, even if you’re not working, share some of that beauty. Share some of that inspiration. It’s not even about work. It’s not even about money. It’s about being a little positive and giving people a daily reminder. There’s so much negativity in the world and we’re very fortunate to experience a lot of the positives.
Andrew: Have you ever been with your fiancé doing something, wanted to take a photo and then she goes, “Put that freaking thing away already?”
Tim: So, yes. But the answer is also you don’t have to post it in real time. That’s the beauty of social media. You’re in control. A lot of people think, “Oh, I have to post.” I was getting my haircut the other day and the guy stopped my haircut in the middle and he’s like, “6:00 p.m., I’ve got to do my post.” I’m like, “But. . .”
It took him like 30 seconds, but they have these assumptions that you have to do this at certain times and stuff like that and you don’t. You can post a freaking Wayback Wednesday, a Throwback Thursday, a Flashback Friday, a Saturday Sentimental. Monday Memories–every single day of the week you can do a past photos, but at least still share it with your audience.
Andrew: All right. So, I can go back and get the photos that I took on my own and post them up.
Tim: Exactly. And you should. And tag me and I’ll tag you in real time just to piss you off.
Andrew: What else? What’s number two?
Tim: Number two–use all social networks. I know that we all have biases. I wasn’t on Snapchat for a while. I wasn’t on Instagram for a while. But you don’t know what social media network is really going to take off for you, your audience, your business, so try them all. Social media as I mentioned is a great big science experiment.
So, you can see based on views, likes, comments what’s doing well with you and your audience. So, you might personally like–I personally love Twitter the most. But I think out of all my social media networks, Twitter has the least followers. So, I try it all. I try and interact with everyone.
Andrew: I wonder how. The first time that I interviewed you, I was so surprised that in the middle of the day you were willing to do an interview because you’re a trader. I didn’t know anything about you really except that you were a trader who had done well for yourself and now you’re talking about it. And you did it in the middle of the day.
How do you find the time? In addition to doing your regular work–forget about you, how do I find time in the middle of doing an interview to also take a photo and post it up and try Snapchat and to do Facebook and Twitter and to also spend time with my customers? That seems like it’s just not tenable.
Tim: It’s an art form. For me as a stock trader, it’s actually a good thing. Most stock traders lose money. It’s because there are so many stocks to play. There are so many different ways to play them every single second. You have to kind of control your addiction.
So, for me, I used to watch a ton of movies and travel a lot and that would prevent me from over-trading. Then I got into teaching and I specifically tried to busy myself so I wouldn’t over-trade. So, I’m like the alcoholic bartender and I’m serving everyone else drinks but I’m trying to be like, “No drinks for me.” But if you’re in the middle of something, you try and multitask.
That’s the future of our society. There’s nothing better than getting some real time content. If you’re interviewing me and you’re snapchatting it too and being like, “I’m going to tease this interview and post it later but now all your Snapchat audience is kind of like awaiting the interview because now they’ve felt a small slice of it in real time.
Andrew: You know what? I recorded a course with Justin Kan, the guy who founded Justin.tv and Twitch.tv and sold that to Amazon. I wanted to know how he was coming up with these different things to post on Snapchat, his obsession now. And he hired a guy. He had a guy named Tiger whose whole job was to come up with creative things for him to do. You don’t do that. It feels like it’s a whole job. If you don’t hire anyone–you’ve given me the face that says no, you don’t. You must have some shortcuts to getting all this in.
Tim: We’re renovating in the background too if you hear some drills. We’re multitasking. So, I hire people to help basically my business between programmers, video people, sales guys, customer support, stuff that I can’t necessarily do or with like the customer support, I give them a list of 200 answer so that it’s rinse and repeat. With me, I’m kind of a creative guy. I know exactly the message that I want to send. I’m not going to hire somebody to Snapchat for me.
Andrew: So then what are some of your shortcuts to getting it all done and still doing that full-day webinar that you did and still working on your business and still spending time with your fiancé?
Tim: Yeah. It’s just not a perfect science. Sometimes stuff goes by the wayside. When I did that all-day webinar, I planned my Instagrams right before and right after. So, there was a space. So, I don’t want to interrupt where people are paying to learn the stock market, I’m going to be like, “I’ve got to Instagram.” That’s disrespectful.
If I have something, you have to priorities it if someone’s paying for your time. But if it’s like stock trading, it’s in the middle of the day, I don’t trade much from like 11:00 to 1:00 p.m. Eastern. So, I have like two hours in between where I do a video lesson or a blog post or something. I schedule this after hours. I always thought about trading throughout college, I missed my college graduation for a stock trade. So, I’m not the best person to ask for how to manage everything.
Andrew: But are you using any software that auto posts for you?
Tim: On Twitter I have SocialOomph, which is kind of like a Hootsuite. I schedule tweets ahead of time. Instagram–I don’t even think you can do that. I post it all myself. Snapchat is real time. Facebook, I post. So, sometimes I guess with Twitter, again, I love Twitter, I have like 8, sometimes 10, 12 tweets a day. I have a lot to say. I link to old blog posts and Q&A and stuff like that.
Andrew: Okay. All right. Okay. Let me do a quick sponsorship message, then come back and ask you more questions.
Tim: Number three we’re coming up on?
Andrew: Number three. Would it have been weird if in the middle of that conversation I would have just pulled out my Snapchat and snapped that?
Tim: No. You should have. You should do it right now.
Andrew: Let’s do it right now. Hang on. There we go.
Tim: It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It’s Snapchat.
Andrew: This is Tim Sykes. He’s telling me that I should be posting more on social media. There. It’s part of my story for today.
Tim: Except that was just a bullshit Snapchat. Be like, “I’m interviewing Tim Sykes here and guess what, we had this great interview, so check my blog. It’s going to be up in a little bit.
Andrew: All right. Hang on. Tim says that last one was a bullshit snap. Let’s post that. All right. Then what should I be saying, Tim?
Tim: Tease the interview. Hype the interview up. Get people excited about this. I’m going to teach you how to make millions of dollars.
Andrew: That’s what you’re going to do.
Tim: Yes.
Andrew: All right. My sponsor is–the guy who’s selling sponsorship messages, Sachit Gupta, is messaging me to tell me that I should be asking you a certain question. I don’t know what it is. I’ll ping him and see if he wants to come on here and ask you that question. “Want to come on and ask?” He wants me apparently to ask you about some post somewhere.
All right. My sponsor is a company called HostGator. Is there still money in–yeah, you believe there’s still money in blogging, right?
Tim: Of course.
Andrew: Your message is find a topic that you really care about, write about it and that’s what your blog is supposed to be about. And don’t sell ads, sell your own product.
Tim: Build your own product. Learn what product to build based on your social media. You don’t have to come in as an expert. You can learn from your audience what are the topics that they want to learn about. What are their top questions? How can you help solve them?
Andrew: How do you know that? By just going to social media, posting and seeing what they respond in the comment with?
Tim: When I first started, I didn’t have a chatroom. I just had DVDs and I was like, “Okay, here are the lessons that I want to teach and then people were like, “Hey, we want to see this in real time.” I’m like, “I guess I can make a chatroom. Let me do that.” So, I made the chatroom. Then they had more questions. I was like, “I’ll make a follow-up DVD answering these questions.” So, you need to get like a little group and see what they have questions and then really see what works.
Andrew: All right. If anyone wants to do that, they should go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. The reason I’m suggesting that last part of it, the /Mixergy is because they’re going to give Mixergy listeners 30% off just for using that URL. And of course, what you’re going to get is great hosting for WordPress but for other platforms too. It means unmetered disk space. It means you can just experiment with lots of ideas.
If you don’t like it, it’s so easy to take it down and start a brand new one. HostGator makes it super, super simple to do experiments like that. So many people from the Mixergy audience have signed up that these guys just keep re-upping their ad buy here at Mixergy. I want you to go check them out at HostGator.com/Mixergy. I’m glad that they’re sponsoring. Let’s see if Sachit will actually come on here and let me call him on speaker.
Tim: Sachit. . .
Andrew: Sachit, do it. Ask this question. All right. What’s number–wait, we’re only on number three?
Tim: We’re on number three. I only have eight.
Andrew: Okay. Good. What’s number three?
Tim: Number three–format all of you content to optimize for the platform. I see a lot of lazy people out there. They post something on Twitter. Then they post the exact same thing on Facebook. It’s good for Twitter because it’s under 140 characters of text. But Facebook is very visual.
You don’t want to post 138 characters that you posted on Twitter for Facebook. Add a photo. Add a video. Make it good for the platform. And a lot of people don’t want to do that. They just copy and paste the same content across all their social media. That’s lazy. Don’t be lazy.
Andrew: I see you’re also really good at tagging up all your Instagram posts. You hit the hashtag a lot. Do you just make it up as you go along?
Tim: Yeah. I always have one funny hashtag at the end. I do like #JewsWithViews or like a do a #Jew every time, like #JewsInTheNews, #IndianaJewns.
Andrew: I see it. Here’s one of you in a Porsche, I guess. The last hashtag is #Jewrari.
Tim: Yeah. Jewrari, that’s my Ferrari.
Andrew: Ferrari. I see.
Tim: I changed different stuff. So I make some funny hashtags and then I do some exotic cars or like #TheGoodLife where I’m you know, trying to get people, “Hey, who wants a Ferrari or who wants the good life?” So, they’re getting interested in my photo.
Andrew: What has worked for you beyond the ones that we all know about–Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat–what else is out there?
Tim: I should actually do this. I need to create a Periscope account. I haven’t done that yet. Snapchat is good, Twitter, Facebook.
Andrew: Not much else, huh? You’re not using Blab?
Tim: No.
Andrew: No.
Tim: No. I’m sure that there’s more that I can use. I’m talking about use all the major ones. Try the major ones. There are a million little ones. Maybe they’ll do well. Maybe they won’t. I want to fish in a big pond in the ocean. So, that’s where I go.
Andrew: So, you’re not like some of these people who just want to try even the smaller ones hoping that one of them will pop. You just want the one to pop and then you bring your people to it.
Tim: Yeah. Instagram has popped the most now. I have over 700,000 followers. The other ones I have 100,000 or 200,000. I never–I was late to the game with Instagram. Some people think, “You can’t grow your social following unless you’re early in a platform. That’s bullshit. I was so late to Instagram and it’s gone up three, four, five times bigger than any of my other social networks.
Andrew: What did you do to get people to come on to your Instagram account?
Tim: I mean, I’ve done so many crazy things. I’ve done a lot of giveaways. I say, “Hey, follow me, like this photo, tag three people.” I post obnoxious photos of cash and I have guessing games. Those do surprisingly–
Andrew: You mean guess how much money is here?
Tim: Yeah. Exactly. I’ve gone crazy with that. Did you see my Business Insider video yet where they actually followed me to the bank?
Andrew: Yeah. We’ve talked about that, where you went to the bank. You got $1.2 million, I think. You brought it home into a hotel room. I’m looking at another one, which was pretty badass to have $1+ million in cash.
Tim: And risky and stupid, whatever you want to call it.
Andrew: I kind of like it. “It’s been a long week, so I’m going to take a nap on top of this cash.” You actually have wads of hundred dollar bills there. “Tag three friends. Like this picture and leave your guess in the comments below,” meaning guess how much it is. “Screw giving away my DVD. Today I’m going to give away some of this money to the first person who guesses the correct amount and follows my instructions to the tee.”
Tim: Yes. So, I’ve given away DVDs, some cash, trips. I have an Oculus Rift giveaway right now. I have to go through all these comments and look it up. So, little giveaways and stuff like that. That helps.
Andrew: I remember one of the first things you said when we were in SXSW, you bought everyone a drink and I said, “That’s nice of you to buy people a drink.” You said, “All these people are in tech and they’re so freaking excited about getting a free drink here.” There was something that you were pointing about how everyone is talking a big game but they frankly can even afford the flight to SXSW or just barely.
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: I’m wondering. You call people out like that. What about the idea that anyone who’s going to enter a contest like this to try to win some money is not really a great person, not that they’re a bad person, that if you need that kind of money, you’re a different kind of person that’s doing especially well that you’re going to sit and enter a contest like this.
Tim: But you also have to understand is I teach people how to grow a small amount in the stock market. Most of my students start with $1,000 or $2,000. I’m looking for people who aren’t doing that well who want to learn how to grow in finance. None of my students started out as like millionaires. I’m trading with very speculative, low-priced stocks. You have to know your audience, what you’re going after.
Andrew: All right. Makes sense. Let’s go to the next one and then I’m going to call Sachit up and see if he could confront us with whatever he thinks I should be asking.
Tim: All right. Number four is push and really press on those networks and tactics when they’re working really well. I’ve tried so many different photos and videos. I did not know that–I think how many years ago, but one of my cash photos did really well and I was like, “This stupid thing?” So, I was like, “Let me add more cash and a little more.”
So, the tactic grew. Now it’s my main tactic and it’s all because I focused on whatever was working with comments nod likes. So, you can test out different stuff and see what you’re audience will like and test out different theories and who knows?
Don’t come in with any bias and say, “This post has to do well.” It’s not that surprising that my cash–but it’s just kind of funny that this has taken off. Now it’s so elaborate that I go to the bank and I take out all this money. I think it might have started with me posting a few hundred dollars. Now it’s grown to like millions of dollars. So, find what works and then press.
Andrew: Is there anything that you did that made you feel so uncomfortable–I’d like you to turn the camera around later to see what that is. But did you ever do anything that felt so uncomfortable that you regretted it or deleted it?
Tim: Yeah. I’ve done some stupid stuff.
Andrew: Like what?
Tim: I’d go a little too far. I posted a bad photo in Dubai, which I probably shouldn’t have done.
Andrew: What happened?
Tim: There are just rules in Dubai and you can’t break some of them.
Andrew: You’re out of it. What did you do?
Tim: Don’t worry about it. I didn’t do it.
Andrew: Come on, you really can’t say what it is?
Tim: It’s deleted.
Andrew: All right. A friend of yours also did something weird in Dubai. What did your friend do, your “friend. . .”
Tim: No. Just stuff like that and like in our last interview, I’ll talk about it. I just go off with my own little mindset and perspective and it’s just not exactly where I want to be.
Andrew: So, you just delete it and move on.
Tim: I just roll with it. Yeah, exactly. Some things I just don’t want to be known for. With social media, I know Snapchat, it disappears in a day or something, but for me, all of this is a platform to grow my business, to grow my brand. I’m trying different stuff. I’m pushing it. I’m not really thinking about all the consequences. You have to think about that. But the good news is you can delete it pretty quickly and you can apologize. I’ve gone after people a little too aggressively on social media.
Andrew: Like who?
Tim: What?
Andrew: Like who?
Tim: Just people. I called them out, like rappers, like The Game.
Andrew: He’s not there. You’ve called out rappers? Calling out rappers seems okay.
Tim: Text this guy. See what he wants.
Andrew: I did. I’m texting him. Maybe he took his phone off.
Tim: I called out some musicians who might not be the safest people to call out about taking my cash photos.
Andrew: Ah, yes. There was a musician who used your cash photo as his own.
Tim: Some musicians are okay. Some gangbangers are not okay.
Andrew: Did you ever take anything down that you sent to a gangbanger?
Tim: Oh, of course. I apologize all the time. I’m not looking to make enemies. I try to call out what I see as unjust. But I’m a blogger. I’m not like a gangbanger. I don’t have like a tear tattoo under my eye or something.
Andrew: Hey, Sachit, can you hear us?
Sachit: Yes. I can hear you.
Andrew: Okay. Can you hear Sachit, Tim?
Tim: Yeah. What up, Sachit?
Andrew: I guess you can’t hear him so much. I’ll pass on the message. Hey, Sachit, before we get into the question that you were texting me I should be asking Tim, Leadpages was supposed to be a sponsor in this interview. What’s going on with them? Are they sending the stuff over?
Sachit: Did you get my email?
Andrew: I’m doing the interview?
Sachit: Am I on live in the interview.
Tim: Yes. It’s real, Sachit. This is the beauty of social media.
Andrew: Leadpages, I’m going to be doing an ad–they paid to sponsor Mixergy so that I could tell everyone that I’m going to go to their conference, right?
Sachit: It’s not the conference in here. They filled out the form. It’s in your email.
Andrew: Oh, I must not have seen it. All right. I’ll include it in the future.
Sachit: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. Good. I’m looking forward to talking to them. What’s your question that you have for Tim? He can hear you. I didn’t read this article. You want to read this article about. . .
Sachit: It wasn’t a question. It was more interesting. I saw his appearance on this TV show.
Andrew: “Below Deck.”
Sachit: Yes. I was curious to hear his perspective. I’m sure they like chopped up everything and made it look worse. I was just curious what his thoughts were and then what happened after it..
Andrew: Did they make you look worse on “Below Deck.”
Tim: This is actually perfect as to what we were talking about. I throw content out there. I have ideas of how it’s going to be perceived and how it’s going to come out. “Below Deck,” really excited, I treated six of my students to this $12 million yacht, flew them down to the British Virgin Islands, all expense trip for each of them, roughly like $60,000 and was going to be on this TV show on the yacht. We’re going to be stock trading. I was like, “This is going to be amazing.” I made them all wear TimothySykes.com t-shirts. It was a going to be a great advertising opportunity.
As it turned out, the show just ripped on me hardcore. They made me seem like a real ass. Maybe I am a little bit, but not as much as they edited it.
Andrew: Did it work for you?
Tim: It was huge.
Andrew: It was good.
Tim: So not only did the show give me a lot of exposure because of the t-shirts, which thankfully they used, but they didn’t show any of our stock trading. They just made it looked like we couldn’t trade. I actually made $70,000 on a trade. So, the whole yacht trip is free. Plus I made $10,000 and only bet big because I knew it was going to be on TV and I thought they were going to show it, which they didn’t. It was a free yacht trip but then thanks to the shirts, we might have done maybe $500,000 in business because of people finding it.
So, even if you’re not necessarily liked and–if I could go back and take it back, I would, but at the same time, it was great for business. You throw stuff out there and I guess it’s karma that I teach. That’s why it was free.
Andrew: All right. Sachit, good call. It came in at a good time. We were just talking about that.
Sachit: Awesome. I think it also applies to entrepreneurs. Why I thought about it because a lot of people get opportunities on TV, but it’s always like they need to know what they’re going to do. I don’t know if you saw what happened with Manish’s episode of “Shark Tank.”
Andrew: I didn’t.
Sachit: That’s why I was curious.
Andrew: All right. I’ll check it out. What happened? Did he make a fool of himself on “Shark Tank?”
Sachit: He rejected a deal from Kevin.
Andrew: Okay.
Sachit: At the end. Kevin wasn’t very happy about that.
Andrew: All right. I’ve got to check it out. It’s Manish, the guy who creates Pavlok, the wristband that will shock you if you do something you’re not supposed to.
Tim: Yeah. If you have like a tech company or VC or investors or something, I’m talking about for like personal branding. It’s very tough to go wrong with personal branding, unless you’re like promoting hate or violence, even if you look like a dick. I’m not here teaching how to be polite and how to make friends and influence people. I’m teaching stock trading.
So, a lot of my top students, we’re not good friends. We don’t have the same personalities. They don’t like half the stuff I do in order to get students like promoting the Lamborghini, but I don’t even like my Lamborghini. You do what you can to try and grow your business. You have to try and find the balance. This is actually my number seven.
Andrew: All right. Sachit, I’m going to let you go. We’re going to keep going here. Thanks. Congratulations on Leadpages. I’m glad that they’re going to be sponsoring. I’ll talk to you later. Thanks, man.
Sachit: All right. Thank you. Bye.
Andrew: Bye.
Tim: Before we get to number seven, let me get to number five. So, it’s not just about likes and follows. This is actually perfect with what we were talking about. Make sure your content aligns with your message. “Below Deck” did not necessarily align with who I am as a real person. It’s highly edited.
But at the same time, it aligned with my message. I’m bringing students on this ridiculous yacht and we’re trading. So, it just proves you can make money and you can stock trade from anywhere. You’re living the high life. So, what if you’re a dick? If you have money, you can be a dick. It’s not the end of the world.
Andrew: That’s your message.
Tim: Yeah. This was before I got into being a little less aggressive, before I got into really starting my own charity. I’ve matured a little bit since then. But at the same time, it was really good for my business and not so great personally.
Andrew: When you take all these trips now, can you write them off because you’re showing them on social media?
Tim: You can ask my accountant. There are all these different rules and stuff. I just give it to him and he says what I can and can’t do. I don’t even pretend to be an expert in that.
Andrew: You actually came here to do a course on Mixergy on how to blog, which is actually public. Anyone can go watch it. One of the things you said you were going to do is create a whole site of all the things you’re buying for yourself and doing for yourself just so you can write it off.
Tim: I’m sure my accountant nixed that idea. I have a lot of ideas. This is why I hire people. I’m the idea guy and then I get brought back in line by people who are realists.
Andrew: All right. Next sponsor and then we’re going to come back to the list. The next sponsor is a company called Toptal. I’ve asked you if you know them and you said, “No, I’ve never heard of these guys,” and then someone over your shoulder the last time we talked said, “We worked with them. We hired them.”
Toptal is a phenomenal company. Anyone who’s looking to hire a developer or a designer, who wants the right person, not someone who’s going to work on the cheap but someone who’s going to work great has got to check out Toptal. These guys have a network of top developers. Let me ask you this, Tim, within this commercial–if there was one piece of software that you could code up right now, you go to Toptal and say, “Guys, I need you to build it for me,” what would that be? Is there a business idea you have right now that you can’t do because you’re too busy?
Tim: I have so many programmers who are working on a few different ideas. I’m trying to think of an idea that I want to work on but we’re not working on it. I would try it, but it was my partner, Zach, who found one of our programmers using this service. They were good service.
I’ve got to say, I don’t know where we found that programmer. I don’t know a lot about like my accounting or stuff like that. I’ve learned to pass projects off to other people, but I’ll tell you that the programmer that we got from Toptal, fantastic. So, I’m very happy. I don’t care where we found him, but it worked.
Andrew: Toptal is a phenomenal company for that. There’s a guy in my audience, a guy named Yed. I guess he’s a religious person. I had no idea. But I’ve only been looking at his emails about startups. One day he sends me this email saying, “I hired a guy from Toptal.” I read it and I said, “What are you going to do?” He has an idea–you know the seven-minute workout thing that was going big for a while that I think still it?
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: He said, “How about seven-minute prayer?” So, he created an app called 7-Minute Prayer Challenge. The name of his company, I’m now on his iTunes preview page, it’s Christian Apps LLC, so he’s definitely religious or he plays one really well. It’s going well. It’s a $4 app. It ended up at the top of the paid apps for the lifestyle category.
I check in with him from time to time and the thing is still doing well. It’s a Toptal developer who built it for him. Usually what I recommend is somebody go to Toptal when they have a business when it’s already up and running, when they’re just looking for more developers, Toptal is phenomenal for that. But this is a guy that had a brand new thing, couldn’t develop it on his own, went to Toptal, hired someone and they built it for him.
Anyone out there who’s listening to me who wants to check our Toptal should go to Toptal.com/Mixergy. What you’re going to get there is 80 hours of Toptal developer credit when you pay for your first 80 hours and that’s in addition to the no risk trial period of up to two weeks.
People ask me if they could give this to other people. Of course you can. There’s no way I could police it. Frankly, if you do give it to other people, it’s going to look better for me with Toptal. So, tell your friends that if they want to hire someone, they should go check out not just Toptal, but Toptal.com/Mixergy. Of course, they’re going to get the 80 hours of developer credit when they pay for 80 hours too. Cool. Good sponsor, Toptal.
What’s the next one?
Tim: So, the next one–we’ve got an alert. Hold on one second.
Andrew: What is going on in your house? Can you spin things around? It looks like you’re in bed, but I can’t fully tell. Are you in bed?
Tim: I’m in bed. This is what I do. I’ve got my puppy here. Miley, say hi.
Andrew: Hey, Miley. You had Miley before you got the girlfriend, right?
Tim: What?
Andrew: You had Miley before the girlfriend?
Tim: No. This is–
Andrew: Package deal.
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: I see. Okay.
Tim: My next step was going to be all about how some important content isn’t going to be as popular. You know that going in but you still have to talk about it in terms of your brand, your business and stuff like that. A lot of people, like you said, if you’re all about ads and you’re all about clicks, you’re going to just post junk, junk all the time because sadly on social media, junk is what really spreads like little clips, little celebrity photos, stuff like that. That’s what really works. But if you do that all the time, you’re not going to have nay brand. You’re going to end up like Gawker and you’re going to be bankrupt.
So, for me, I want to deal with some stuff that’s real. So, I post my students and I on the $12 million yacht. But then I also post the trade that I did. The trade that I did on the yacht, its’ not going to be popular, look I’m telling you about a stock trade versus a yacht. But at the same time, I’m only on the yacht because of the stock trade. You have to always remember what is your purpose, what is your brand and what do you want to come across as doing for the right reasons.
Andrew: Actually I’m seeing one of your stock trades here. It’s got 58,000 views on it. I see another one here of I can’t tell how many views. I’m wondering if maybe you’re buying ads to promote some of these.
Tim: No.
Andrew: No ad buys?
Tim: Nope. Are you talking about on YouTube?
Andrew: Sorry, on Instagram.
Tim: No. We’ve never done any Instagram ad buys. Can you do that? I thought that was only big brands.
Andrew: No. You can do it now. But you haven’t done it?
Tim: No. We haven’t done it. I’m not a big fan of ads on Instagram. I guess I probably should look into it, put it on my to-do list. The way to really grow is organically. I love these contests, tagging three, tagging five friends. I think it creates much more dedicated followers than if you get them through ads.
Andrew: What’s the deal with tagging? You said earlier that you’re going to tag me when you’re in Bali and it then gets my attention and then I do what?
Tim: Yeah. It should show up if you have your settings in your phone, like Timothy Sykes just tagged you in this photo, you click the photo and you see theoretically it applies to you. So, if I’m doing like one of my cash photos and Jason tags his friend Ed. Ed picks up the phone and sees this cash flow to him, he’s like, “I like cash and it follows me.” It’s how you spread. Me tagging you is not how I spread. It’s just for fun because I’m going to show you how beautify Bali is and how you should be posting that too.
Andrew: Who’s taking your photo? When you’re out there on these trips, is this your fiancé taking it?
Tim: Yeah. She’s an amazing photographer. She’s right here. Either she does it or I do it. Sometimes we have like the hotel staff. My latest photo that I just did in this pool in Puerto Fino a few months ago, I actually paid the pool attendant lady to take the photo and I paid each of the people in the pool to get out of the pool so I could have a good pool shot. Now it’s iconic. You can see it. It’s my latest Instagram photo.
Andrew: I see. It’s just you in a pool overlooking. . .
Tim: Yeah. There were like ten other people and I gave them like €10 each, maybe like €8 or eight people. I get a little crazy with my content these days. But I know what works.
Andrew: But you know what? I can take good shots. I try to get other people to take shots of me and they’re pretty crappy photographers. Like they don’t know if you take a picture of something really bright, it’s going to get dark on camera. How are you getting this woman for a couple of euros to take a good shot?
Tim: The pool attendant lady there knew what she was doing. Sometimes you get bad people. My fiancé and I, last time we were in Bali, we hired a whole photo team and they were supposedly like the best. I paid them like $5,000 and we had this whole team of like everything and they sucked. They totally sucked. They were out of focus, just stupid.
Andrew: Right.
Tim: What I’ve learned is not to really worry about production or quality. This is why I want like beautiful backgrounds. If you go to Bali, it’s pretty tough to take a bad photo. The Bali photographers still managed to do it, but it’s tough.
Andrew: Will you turn the camera around? I want to ask your fiancé a question.
Tim: You want to be on camera?
Bianca: Sorry, I’m like in costume. Hi.
Andrew: Costume is even better. Hey, what are you up to today?
Bianca: Auditions. Many, many auditions.
Andrew: What are you auditioning for?
Bianca: I can’t tell you. It’s my little like secret. I am like superstitious about it, but if I get the job, I’ll definitely tell you.
Andrew: When he’s going and taking pictures with money or sitting down with a nice meal and going, “I’ve got to take a picture of this first,” do you ever feel like, “This is a little too much?”
Bianca: Oh, all the time.
Andrew: All the time.
Bianca: Yeah.
Andrew: But he still does it anyway.
Bianca: Of course. What do you think, Tim Sykes is going to say no? He’s not going to back down.
Andrew: Do you ever feel like he’s used you in a photo to show, “Look at how my beautiful my girlfriend is,” and you felt used by the whole process?
Bianca: I mean, I’m never going to say I feel used. I think that’s the most flattering thing anybody can do. I love it. It does get a little crazy though when we he’s like 3,000 picture like 3 hours later. I’ll like, “Babe, you got that picture like a long time ago.”
Andrew: So, he does take 3,000 pictures to get the perfect picture. How about when you guys are having dinner? Does he ever just like you’re mid-sentence or talking about this new audition you’re going on and then he’s texting to see if he can do something or messaging someone who will message him on Facebook, does that ever happen?
Bianca: I mean, yeah, he’s attached to his computer.
Andrew: All the time, right?
Bianca: All the time.
Andrew: And that’s okay? This is the life that you signed up for with him?
Bianca: Yeah, I think you know what you’re getting into when you start dating somebody. I absolutely knew because he’s life was all over the internet. It wasn’t too hard to figure out. But I love him to death and that’s what makes him him and the same reason you adore somebody is usually the same reason they drive you insane.
Andrew: He looks better and he’s eating better ever since he saw you. I think he was heavier before you.
Bianca: Well, he was heavier before me and then he was like his skinniest when he met me and then we had the honeymoon period like two years too long and now he’s getting back. He’s looking good. I’m proud of him.
Andrew: Are you guys signing a pre-nup? I know you’re doing well for yourself. Is that too much?
Tim: We have to pull the plug on this interview. You’re turning this interview–
Andrew: Is that inappropriate? Let her answer the question. Even if she says no, she’s going to be asked harsher questions than this being married to you. You guys are engaged. What do you think about a pre-nup?
Bianca: We haven’t really talked about it. You bring up interesting things that we haven’t even really discussed. I don’t know. I mean I think it’s a smart thing for any business man to do. But I think it’s definitely a private thing that we’re going to discuss.
Andrew: You’re not going to talk on Mixergy about it. I think it was Larry Ellison who on his wedding day introduced a pre-nup to his fiancé and said, “Do you want to sign this or do we call the day over?”
Bianca: What?
Andrew: You’ve got to talk about this stuff early, right?
Bianca: You can’t do that. You’ve got to have like other lawyers. It’s like a whole process. You can’t do the day of. Who is this person?
Andrew: Right. Then it invalidates it. She needs representation. I like how you know that stuff. All right. Thanks for being such a good sport.
Bianca: I’m going to go. Thank you.
Andrew: All right.
Bianca: Bye.
Tim: Damn, son.
Andrew: Let me ask you something. I just like the way she talks. I feel like she talks like someone who comes from a good background. You talk like someone who’s like a Jew-Yorker.
Tim: What’s a Jew-Yorker. I’m from Connecticut.
Andrew: Are you?
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: Same thing. Like a little bit aggressive, a little bit in your face, very determined, right?
Tim: Yes. I agree. She’s much nicer than me.
Andrew: When you were growing up, did you get to date–I was going to say women like her, but I’m going to ask did you get to date at all? I didn’t.
Tim: No. I was a nerd. I was playing tennis all the time. No. I was trading straight out of high school. I got started really young. I count my lucky stars that I get to be with Bianca now.
Andrew: Any part of your motivation about like breaking free of that nerdy past? Like is that one of the reasons why you work so hard?
Tim: Like “Revenge of the Nerds?”
Andrew: Yes.
Tim: I don’t know. I mean I’d have to ask my therapists.
Andrew: You’re not that in touch? What did she say?
Tim: She said I’m not a nerd.
Bianca: He was never like that kind of nerd though. He was like the kind of nerd that like paid people to do his homework.
Andrew: Those are the kinds of nerds who are kind of cool in the movie, but they’re not fully loved, right?
Bianca: He was cool, but he was a nerd. Like I was too. I was in [inaudible 00:49:20]. I was like still a cool chick but I wasn’t like a cheerleader cool chick. I was a little bit of an outcast but I wasn’t like a dork. I think he was the same, right?
Tim: Yeah.
Andrew: If you saw him back when he was a kid, a high school kid, would you have dated him?
Bianca: I dated some weird guys in high school that nobody probably would have dated, so probably, yeah.
Andrew: I see. Should would have yes because she dated some weird guys in high school too.
Tim: I don’t know if I would have had my puppy in high school.
Andrew: Let me ask you one other personal question before we get back to the list. I once asked you about your biological father. You brushed it off in the interview. I feel like you’ve got some connection to that. You talk about your father all the time, like your dad is the one who’s supporting this business, but it’s your mom’s second husband, right?
Tim: Correct. He’s my stepdad.
Andrew: He’s your stepdad, but he’s more of a dad than your real dad.
Tim: Correct. He raised me. Yeah. My stepdad is like my dad, you know?
Andrew: Is this like therapy for me to ask you–are you fired up by that, like do you want to show your dad what he missed out on?
Tim: No. It’s beautiful that it’s a family business, but it’s not like my life is determined by vengeance like you want to suggest.
Andrew: Come one, I’ve known you for a few years. There are some real vengeful things you’ve felt over the years
Tim: Not in terms of my nerdiness or my family. I’m very vengeful in terms of like the stock market, where my strategy isn’t accepted. I’m not accepted. That you’re damn right I’m going to be angry about. But my family? No. We’re good.
Andrew: No issues with your dad. All right. I’m trying to figure out how to dig in a little bit deeper. I feel like there’s something there but you’re not ready to talk about it yet.
Tim: There’s literally nothing there. We have a family business. My mom and dad both work for me. It’s fine.
Andrew: All right. One last question–
Tim: Let me go to the next one. What were you going to say?
Andrew: Is your fiancé Jewish?
Tim: No.
Andrew: Are you okay with that?
Tim: It’s a big problem. No.
Andrew: It’s not an issue for you? Part of your personality is that you’re the Jew with the Jew car.
Tim: Yeah. I post about it. It’s a Jewrari. It’s not a Jew car.
Andrew: A Jewrrari. I can’t remember Ferrari. I can’t believe I called it a Porsche. Now that I look at it, of course it’s not a Porsche, but that shows how little I know about cars.
Tim: It’s fine.
Andrew: I feel like it is a softer you.
Tim: I’m not very religious. I started with my bar mitzvah money. But the most Jewish stuff that I do is the Jewish hashtags.
Bianca: It’s bad because he’s not really Jewish. I tell him that it’s not good to do that because you’re like kind of making fun–it’s like if I were to make fun of Jews and he’s like, “I actually am.” I’m like, “You’re not a practicing one?”
Andrew: I don’t know. If he had a bar mitzvah, that’s pretty intense. That makes you Jewish enough to make the jokes.
Bianca: I had communion and I’m not Catholic. I’m pretty much Buddhist but I had a communion because you’re kind of forced to do that when you’re eight years old.
Andrew: I get it. I was looking for a funny angle on that. There isn’t one. He should stick with the Jew Part. It is part of the shtick.
Tim: You saw me in Texas where I dressed like a Jindian, the Jewish Indian and people were like walking out of my speech.
Andrew: I liked that. You came out with an Indian outfit that your genuinely Indian friend had, I think, and gave you and a yarmulke and a couple of other things.
Tim: I had the curls too. I took it a little too far as I sometimes do.
Andrew: All right. Next one on the list, hit me.
Tim: Let’s get to number six or number seven. So, you have to find the balance between popularity and business and your goals. What are your goals? Everyone has different goals, whether it’s growing their business and having no revenues whatsoever.
I know a lot of internet startups like that or some people that are like, “We don’t want to have no revenues. We’re a real business. Let’s build our revenues and profits now. So, let’s try and get as many sales as we can.” Or some people are like, “I just want to be as popular as possible because I never was popular in high school.” So, what are your goals and how can each piece of content get your closer to one of those goals.
So, for me, it’s always a balancing act, like I try to post a student testimonial because that shows I’m a real teacher and my students are doing well. But that’s not going to get half the likes that me swimming in a pool in Puerto Fino, Italy gets. For me, I want to showcase anything and I can’t have one without the other.
The only reason I’m swimming in Puerto Fino at this $3,000 a night hotel is because I know what I’m doing in the stock market and I have to show that off too. I’m not going to just show living the life when I don’t show what I’m actually doing businesswise with my students. There are a lot of people that just show off their lifestyle but they have nothing to back it up. For me it’s always one and the other together.
Andrew: I’m here because I did that. If you want to know how to get that too and get here too, go to my site.
Tim: Exactly. I really don’t respect the people that just post about their life and they do nothing. They have no product. They have no business. They’re hollow. They’re soulless.
Andrew: What is it, RichKidsOfInstagram.tumblr.com. I don’t know if that’s still–
Tim: Yeah. Rich Kids of Instagram, they came out with a book that bombed. They have like 1,000 likes per photo. They didn’t really grow because there’s nothing behind it. It’s just rich kids showing off what their parents had gotten them and that’s not interesting after a while.
Andrew: All right. What’s the final one?
Tim: So number eight is use social media to amplify all of your efforts. It’s cheap as shit and realty misunderstood and underutilized for now. In the future, if we do this interview five, seven, ten years from now, the game is going to be totally different.
Who knows what network will actually be the most popular, but it will not probably be as cheap because there will be more billion or multi-billion dollar companies or even $100 million companies that have been built using this stuff. It is so cheap right now to create content and to post it and I don’t know how long that’s going to last.
To really go viral, you need to put more and more time into your blog posts, your photos, your videos, not necessarily being elaborate and hiring your production grew, but just being different. We keep posting more and more original content, people are like, “I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that. So, stuff starts to get old and it’s not going to be as popular. You have to keep taking it to the next level. So, five years form now it’s going to be a lot more difficult. That’s why I want people to learn and get into this stuff now.
Andrew: I get that. I feel like blogging for a while was really easy and then it became hard. Then Twitter was really easy. If you just followed someone, they would automatically follow you back and then it became hard.
Tim: Yeah. It goes in and out. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s hard. Then new tools come about. Taking photos was hard. Editing the photos was hard and then Instagram came and it became really easy Doing videos was really hard and a lot of bandwidth and expensive and then Snapchat and Periscope came along and then it became easy.
So, tools wise, I think you’ll always go back and forth. I’m talking about really growing your business and getting it huge. There are a lot of small businesses out there. People make $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 a year and that’s fine. But how do you get to millions, tens of millions or hundreds of millions? That’s my question and that’s my quest.
Andrew: And that’s the next thing for you, tens of millions–actually, tens of millions you’ve hit, hundreds of millions next. What’s the software that you’re coming out with that’s going to help you get there?
Tim: Yeah. So StocksToTrade, we’ve built it, StocksToTrade. Com. It’s already doing roughly like a quarter million a month, which is cool. When I talk about revenues, it’s not just like, “Oh, we succeeded, we achieved the revenues. If we’re going to the revenues then that means we have the users. If we have the users, that means we have the students. How can we get the students studying to prepare for their trades and investments rather than just wanting hot picks or tip sand stuff like that?
For me, every new student, every new piece of revenue is changing that’s person’s life with education which is why I’m so proud of it, not just that I’m selling it like a little piece of shit, piece of plastic made in China, hyping it up that it’s the next virtual reality thin and selling it for like $1,000. There’s meaning behind my revenue and that’s why I’m so proud of it.
Andrew: You know what? StocksToTrade.com is your domain. Stocks2Trade.com is available. I can hit the add button right now.
Tim: Take it.
Andrew: You’ve got to get it.
Tim: No. It’s not even about domain names anymore. It’s where we and my team and I send traffic. Domain squatting, that’s old school, go back to 2003, man. You had a greeting card company when that was popular.
Andrew: Yeah. We were sending traffic to it too. It wasn’t a domain. But I do feel like of course it matters because here you are telling people to go to StocksToTrade.com and some of the them are going to hit the number two.
Tim: I guess. I wouldn’t want those people if they’re that inept. Go to the their stocks and trade. I have limited patience and tolerance for people, like if they’re really going to do that there are these impersonators on Instagram all the time and they’re like, “Timothy Skye,” with no S- at the end. People are like, “Is that you?” I’m like, “Why would I spell my name differently? I have a verified button on my name.” And they’re like, “This person said you’ve got too many messages so you created a second.
It’s crazy. They tell people to send money to Walmart. Never send money to Walmart. I didn’t know there was a way to pay people via Walmart, but apparently there is. My impersonators try and get people on Walmart and Western Union because I guess that’s; untraceable. So there are crazy impersonators and crazy shit all the time.
Andrew: What happened.
Tim: She got something on Western Union before.
Andrew: Yeah. Western Union is a big one, I see.
Tim: I’ve never used Western Union in my life.
Andrew: All right.
Tim: I don’t encourage any interest users to pay for any product or service using Western Union. It’s a little sketchy.
Andrew: I don’t really see the reason. I get if you’re sending money back home to another country and you know who you’re sending it too. Western Union might be the way to do it.
Tim: Apparently you can go to Walmart. Walmart has their own payments.
Andrew: The Western Union version?
Tim: No. People send me these impersonator messages that the impersonator has sent them. They’ll go to Walmart deposit it under this name. I’m like ,”Are you serious?” That’s crazy. We’ve tracked several of my, 14 year old kid in South Carolina. His parents didn’t even know. His parents are doctors. We went hard on them.
Andrew: What did you do?
Tim: He impersonated me. He pretended to ne me. “My name is Tim Sykes. I’m going to teach you personally. Anyone just send me money here.” They never get any money because they’re so stupid. It’s just annoying that they hit up all of my followers. This is why I’m so proud.
Andrew: That happened to me with someone. I do love find them. I can’t believe that you actually got this person.
Tim: We dig. I’ve probably had like 26 or 15, like serious impersonators, not where they’re spending their confusing people. Just adds more annoyed to my life. I’m already trying or have them watch this video and this stuff. Here’s the proper information. Then I have an impersonator giving driftnet directions.
Andrew: I would love to catch one of my impersonators.
Tim: What would do to your impersonator?
Andrew: I hate to say it, interview them on Mixergy. I just want to know what he’s thinking.
Tim: You understand someone who’s watching this who wants to be interviewed by you is going to impersonate you.
Andrew: I don’t think that’s a really good introduction to the world to say, “I’m the guy who impersonated Andrew.”
Tim: I’ll tell you this. I just got an internet marketer guy. I respond in my equal, we list lie, “Hey, why did you cancel?” And I read every person why they cancelled. This person just lied. They had like seven lies. I had to reply. I couldn’t myself. He’s like good, I’m glad I got your attention. I couldn’t get through to you any other way. I’m an internet marketer. I want to work with you. I was like, “No, you just lost your chance. You just riled me up with your bullets Friday. I was thinking outside the box. . .
Andrew: Yeah. He got through, but it doesn’t always work. The two sponsors of course are Toptal and HostGator. If you use either one of them, just email me let know me. I always want to hear what you guys are up to. Thanks so much, Tim.
Tim: Awesome. Thank you.
Andrew: Bye, everyone.
