Andrew Warner 0:04
Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs for an audience of entrepreneurs. And my goal has always been for people who are listening to learn something to build something and then to come back on here and talk about what they’re building to do an interview themselves. Joining me as someone who listened and actually did more than that he sent me this thank you note, which I when we talked about it before the interview started, I said, I bet I got it and I had it in Evernote, and I pulled it out. This is a note from 2014 that he sent to me as part of a well, we’ll talk about why he did that. We’ve stayed in touch over the years when he lived in San Francisco. We connected in person, and I’ve watched him go from being solid but not exactly figuring the path to suddenly like knocking it out of the park with the path his company I should save. You know what I should introduce you and not just talk about you right Chandler His name is Chandler Bolt is the founder of self publishing school. It’s an online education company that helps people write and publish books that help them grow their businesses. And I remember when I said to myself, this guy’s like, he’s nailed it. He’s figured it out. It was at, I guess it’s called traffic and conversion was the name of the conference, right? Yeah. Chandler’s up on, I guess you can call it a stage but it’s not exactly a stage is where all these always that the unplugged stage? Yeah, it was never mind. With that, did you even have a mic or was literally I
Chandler Bolt 1:36
had a mic I jokingly referred to it as the peewee stage.
It totally was. But I mean, it was awesome. It was packed
Andrew Warner 1:45
with good people. It was packed. I think a lot of people had a hard time maintaining the audience. A lot of speakers were talking and they just couldn’t shout over the cacophony of people who are at the booths talking. And so they couldn’t get an audience. You not only had an audience big audience. But at one point you said, if you want this thing and you made it sound so magical, that everybody wanted the thing and instantly, a pack of people who work for you came out with cards with postcards, and everybody filled out the postcards and then the pack of people came and got the postcard back. And that’s when I said, Oh my god, Chandler has got this operation working. This guy who was like listening to make sure you’re gonna be sending thank you notes working so hard. He’s got it all dialed in. So I invited him here to talk about how he how he did it to find out how, where sales with sales numbers are, how he grew his business. And also since we’re, I believe we’re in a recession, I want to find out how his business is doing and what I’m calling the COVID recession. We can do it all thanks to two phenomenal sponsors. The first is a company that he and I both use. It’s called Click Funnels, we use it to turn leads into customers and Click Funnels doesn’t want me to tell you about how good their software is. Instead, they want me to tell you that if you’re listening to this podcast, you’ll probably like their podcasts. It’s called Traffic Secrets. And the second sponsor is a company that I use anytime I have an idea that I want to bring to life. It’s called hostgator. And I’m going to recommend that you go to them and sign up using my link for a website with them. But first Chandler Good to have you here.
Chandler Bolt 3:10
Good to be here, Andrew. So fun seeing this come full circle.
Andrew Warner 3:14
What’s your revenue right now? This last year 2019. We’ll get into this year soon.
Chandler Bolt 3:18
2019 we did 6.3 million net revenue. What it means is your rabbit net revenue, like top line minus refunds.
Andrew Warner 3:27
Got it. Okay.
Chandler Bolt 3:28
Yeah, it’s not not false revenue, Real Net real revenue and the bottom line.
Unknown Speaker 3:33
Bottom line? About 2,000,002 million and you’re the only owner in the business. Yes.
Andrew Warner 3:40
Unbelievable dude.
Chandler Bolt 3:43
It’s been a wild ride full of a lot of turns.
Andrew Warner 3:47
Wow. We so this card. When we talked before the interview started about the the note that you sent me You said it was part of a campaign. What was the camp? Like a personal project? What was that personal project?
Chandler Bolt 4:00
I need to bring this back. I, I like challenges. I am borderline challenger on the inia gram. But I think I’m actually if you did, are you familiar with any Grimm at all? Okay, so it’s like, you know, there’s achiever, there’s challenger, there’s a bunch of other ones. I love challenges. And so that was one year I did 100 push ups a day for the year. And then the next year, I did a thank you card every single day for the year. So 365 thank yous. And that is, and this is so funny. We were just looking at your thank you card. And what I mentioned before that mention here is just like I remember you sending a thank you card back, and it just rocked my world. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, this guy that I listen to, sent me a thank you card back and just I think it instilled in me the power of like Zig when other people zag and go analog when everyone’s digital, and I could have emailed you and said, Hey man, love the show, but just the fact of like, and that’s when I fell in that hole. You’d be shocked how many people sent me thank you cards for sending them a thank you card. Like the most bizarre thing ever What? I’ve been wanting to
Andrew Warner 5:07
do it only because there’s so many people who have helped me and I just have the sense, this need to say thank you in a more meaningful way than Hey, thank you. I’ve been wondering, like, I’ve been thinking about doing something like that. I’ve been wondering, what did you get out of that? Did you get that spiritual wellness that I imagine will come from doing it every single day? Did something else happen? Did you get business out of it?
Chandler Bolt 5:30
Oh, so so much so much. I mean, I think for me, there was a couple of things. One of the biggest things was every day, I had to think about how am I going to write a thank you card today. So naturally, you’re on the search for things to be thankful for. Because if you don’t have something you got to keep thinking. So it’s like so naturally like there was that and then there was all kinds of things like this. We didn’t really know each other before that. Same with people like how override and a bunch of other people who became So publishing schools biggest affiliates, biggest supporters, they promoted us I would speak on their stage like I can play so many things back to that year and a lot of the deep meaningful relationships that I have that are because of that and yeah man it’s funny as we talk about it a lot I’m like I got to at least bring this back in some capacity because it’s just this feeling I think of people all around you saying Oh, Chandler appreciates me and his life which is I think something I do a relatively poor job of communicating on a consistent basis so it’s just like a way to more consistently communicate that
Andrew Warner 6:37
and this was before self publishing school was up and running, right?
Chandler Bolt 6:40
Yeah, ish. I mean, we had we had best selling books system, which is ultimately what we came self publishing school, but it self No, it was definitely not a selfish school. It was kind of the this kernel of an idea.
Andrew Warner 6:55
I was able to send you a thank you know back so fast, because I had free Yours right here, a stack of thank you cards. And I knew that if I had it handy, I’d be able to pull one out and write it to anybody as it came up. And truthfully over the last couple years, I just got out of the habit of doing it and it collected dust. So I got rid of it. But I’ve been thinking of getting it back and starting it up again. And it’s interesting that you that you did that. You told me before we got started that you were listening to mixergy just before you was it quit school? Yeah, yeah. Why did you quit school?
Chandler Bolt 7:33
Oh, man, I got tired of learning how to run a business from professors who had never ran a business. That didn’t make too much sense to me. And I was learning more by actually running businesses. So
Andrew Warner 7:43
I did you know, I ran.
Chandler Bolt 7:44
Yeah, I had a couple in high school. One was a canteen through my entrepreneurship class school. Second was a landscaping laying landscaping lawn care and pressure washing business. And that was like 10 grand in profit. I saved before going to school. And then the third one was in college was through student painters. So college pro painters, college work student painters, kind of all similar companies, they teach you how to run a business by running a house to an exterior house painting business. And so I was the number one in the company number one in the country, my rookie year. So that business in and that gave me the confidence. And then I trained three people the next year, and that really gave me the confidence to say, Hey, I don’t need this anymore. But yeah, it’s circle full circle. It was the interview with Dain. Maxwell, way back in the day, then I joined the foundation. And then Dan was one of the people I went to for counsel. And he was like, Yeah, I’d probably dropped out. I really recommend that to anyone. And that was the common thing that people kept saying to me is I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone else. But I think this makes sense for you. What was it about entrepreneurship that drew you Why would you a guy who’s smart, a guy who’s you already accomplished? Why Why would you want to do that instead of get a job or even family? wait to start a company. What were you looking for is my parents probably. I mean, it’s probably nurture. Not so much nature. I think my dad runs at, like a small town construction company. My mom’s a realtor. And so I think subconsciously, I grew up seeing him. He could come to my T ball practices, we could take a vacation or like, whatever when my friends and my friend’s parents couldn’t. And so I think I saw that and, and just this bullheaded determination they used to call me My mom used to call me Boss Man ball.
because growing up, I just like boss kids around and it was super annoying. I’m sure for everyone involved, but
Andrew Warner 9:40
like, part of you were seeing your dad do it and all the upside of doing it and you just had to get out there. It’s not about the money.
Chandler Bolt 9:47
I mean, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like that’s, that’s that’s not the motivator, but I think it’s a scoreboard and in some sense, right? Like it’s not the scoreboard. It’s one of the numbers honestly scoreboard. But yeah, I mean, there was there’s definitely like I wanted to make disproportionate economic impact. I want to create something so that long after I’m off this earth, like the world’s a better place, like all those things are awesome. And it was listening to shows like this and hearing people’s stories like Dane, and then Hollis, which is so funny. We were just talking about that before the interviews. It’s like, I was like, Oh, I could write a book. That’s crazy, hosted it. And then, you know, listen today and like, oh, maybe I could do that. And so one of my early books, we talked about this concept of many, like a lot ma ny Mini, like small m i n i many, many successes and how that builds confidence. And I think I’m a by byproduct of that is like trying a bunch of things and failing a ton, but having a bunch of little wins along the way. And each time you have that little win. It’s like, oh, what else can I do? What else can I do? What else can give me an example of a failure that you had one in the early days. That was panic. Oh man one that’s tough. It’s really tough to narrow down. Honestly, so many. I dropped out of school and I thought I was gonna be the next Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. You know, I’m like, looking at all these people dropping out of school and hey, I mean, nevermind, they dropped out of Harvard, not like, small college I went to. But about 16 months later, all my bank accounts were negative. And I was about to fail at dropping out of school. And that was a big moment. Did you did why
Andrew Warner 11:32
would the money go? I bet on myself
Unknown Speaker 11:35
paying off
Andrew Warner 11:36
the bet that you’ve made or what’s one of them that failed?
Chandler Bolt 11:39
Oh, man, I mean, it was the early days of self publishing school, but I had about six months of runway when I dropped out. And then in 2014, that same year, I’m writing a thank you card every day. I think I probably made 16 grand total. And so not so little that the government’s like, Hey, dude, you don’t have to pay us taxes. You’re good.
Andrew Warner 12:00
That point, by the way, this is around the time in my right where you wrote the book on.
Unknown Speaker 12:05
person. Yeah,
Andrew Warner 12:06
the productive person here it is right on my, my iPhone. In this book, your guy who was like what? 24 at the time who’s telling?
Chandler Bolt 12:15
I wrote that book night
Andrew Warner 12:16
at 1919 telling everyone how to be more productive. Right? Yeah, you go off with I got the answers for you. Meanwhile, you’re not making much money. You’re not making much progress. Why didn’t you say I am such a fraud or a failure? I better go back. Why? Yeah.
Chandler Bolt 12:34
I mean, I think I certainly consider that. I mean, like, I wrote that book of like, Hey, I ran the most successful company in the country and in the company for student painters, while being a full time college student, a young life leader, all this stuff like, here, it was just really for my friends that wanted to be entrepreneurs. But there were more entrepreneurs, like, Hey, here’s how I did this. And then you go out in the world to do something else and you just get your butt kicked. Because there’s a difference between like student painters is it’s a franchisee type thing. And so it’s like, here’s the model. If you can work ridiculously hard, you’ll succeed because we have the model, but then the difference is you go out in the world and it’s like, okay, there’s no model, but I still can work hard, but I got to figure it all out. Right? So that took longer than I thought it would. And so there were a lot of times where like, maybe I should just get a job as a number two, for an entrepreneur that’s really doing well or like all those thoughts in my head.
I think I just believe man, I
Andrew Warner 13:32
believe there was it momentum that you just had to keep going?
Chandler Bolt 13:37
I think there’s probably an irrational belief you still believed in yourself was always around the corner. You know, um, my, my brother, I don’t know if you knew this actually. My brother plays in a Grammy nominated rock and roll band called need to breed I think rock band and I’m right in my memory that yeah, I mean, dependent. They wouldn’t label themselves as that because it’s not like it exclusively Christian music, but a lot of other people would label them as that. And it’s kind of like a hybrid, like the fray i think is the closest model two that I could think of. But anyways, one of their songs is called more time. And it’s the hook is I need more time, just a few more months in, and we’ll be fine. And it’s about, you know, kind of about one of the guys arguing with his wife, I think is what the premise of the song is like. So think entrepreneur, society, a musician, significant other, same thing, right? Like, Hey, I just need a little bit more time. I just need a little bit more time. And I think we’ve all felt that at times, but that was truly just around the corner. It’s just if I can just keep and so I borrowed money from my parents, my brother, and yeah, and a friend. And that was it. And so I was like, we bought 15 grand and all my bank accounts were negative. So there’s that. I mean, I bought out my business partner like that was a huge SharePoint mistake. Oh, no, no, that was a year later.
Andrew Warner 14:59
We’ll get We’ll get to that. Why then did you decide I’m going to help people write books? I was the
Chandler Bolt 15:06
was the one thing in my life that I felt was meaningful. And so I, you know, I talked about this in my TEDx talk a little bit, tell the story about my friend Kindle, and basically just he tragically passed away right in front of me on a cruise. And it was a rewards cruise for student painters. And that just changed everything for me, like my grandma also passed away that same weekend. And so I’m coming back from this cruise and my buddy just passed away right in front of me, and then I’m getting texts and my grandma passed away that weekend as well. And that just rocked me. And the night before he passed away, we talked about his five year goals, his next year goal like his dreams, all those things and just kind of this realization of like, he was 20 years old. I was 21 at the time. He’s never going to get to accomplishing those goals. Now I’m living for two because I definitely felt a lot of guilt and responsibility because we bless Standing in the spot talking Yeah, it was like I’m standing in a spot that we weren’t supposed to be. And it was an accident. And like, I fell for a long time. Like it was my fault, because I was like, we did it every year. But it was like, I was the one that was just rallying the troops, like, hey, let’s go up there. And we were on the mast at the front of the ship. So it’s like, was it a Sunday? crew only what’s okay? And then what was it that hit him? The sonar things started spinning while we were up there and swept around, hit him in the chest swept over the railing. And he fell two stories. It’s that for me, man that was like, that rocked me. And I realized there was a whole lot of things that I cared about. That didn’t matter. And there was only a handful of things that actually mattered. So I felt like I was living for too. And the big thing was when I had a conversation with his, his dad, and he said, You know, he said, Hey, Kindle is my only son. He’s the family name. I’m old. I can’t have more kids. The only good that can come out of this is if other people’s lives are positively impacted by the fact that this happened in in my mind, and in the space that I was in, especially at that time, I was like, that’s the cue. That’s me. Like, it’s my, I’m responsible for this. And so that’s like, you know, on the video, you can see this audio, you can obviously get this bracelet says, make him proud on one side, and the other sides is WW, Katie, his name is Kendall. So what we can do, and it’s just a daily reminder for me, so that was where and kind of bringing this full circle. Kendall had attended one of my random webinars and wrote the rough draft of the book. I didn’t even know it,
Andrew Warner 17:38
because at the time you you’d written a book. This is one this, this was the book that I just mentioned earlier, where you said, I’m productive. I’m doing well in this painting business. I want to share with other people what I’ve done, that actually was so impactful for you that you said I’m going to teach other people to do it. He went to one of the webinars he learned he had this idea that he was going to write a book in fact, he made a lot of progress on it. Right exactly. So you save
Chandler Bolt 18:00
draft basically done
Andrew Warner 18:02
god, I can’t solve the problem of malaria, you might have said to yourself or starvation all over the world, but what I could do is help get his book into the world and help other people leave their books behind. So when they die, just like when he’s passed, their lives have meaning beyond them. That’s it right?
Chandler Bolt 18:22
100% and, and his friends help publish it. And actually, one of our good friend like is now my right hand guy at self publishing school, and, and at the same time, like I had already worked with a cohort of, I think, is 44 people and a bunch of them already published. So I’m looking around in life like, hey, what am I doing that’s meaningful here. Like if I were to die tomorrow, what is left behind and so that was when I really keyed on, okay, helping people with books like this is the one thing that’s meaningful. I’m going to trim pretty much everything else. Focus on my family, focus on my friends focus on my face. focus on helping people write and publish books. That that was it.
Andrew Warner 19:04
You smile when you said faith. One of the things that stands out for me in addition to everything I said in the intro, which was fairly long was You’re such a smiling person. I remember See, I you were giving me a ride to tam fams. home in in South Bay. Yeah. And giving nevel Madura the copywriter guy a ride and Neville said this the most happy go lucky person. I saw him and his dad like hugging and like I don’t know, like loving.
Unknown Speaker 19:35
don’t ride scooters through San Francisco. Yeah.
Andrew Warner 19:39
And then we’ve talked about your brother a little bit talking behind your back quite a bit. I wonder like how much does your faith I don’t want to get into a place where you feel uncomfortably personal but sure how much of your faith makes you into this person who I see who’s smiling all the time who believes even when he has no right to believe because he only made $60,000 after quitting school to become Microsoft
Chandler Bolt 20:00
Yeah, it’s it’s a big part man and it’s To be honest, it’s something I don’t talk about a ton. It’s one of those things where my I feel like I’m always self conscious about making people feel uncomfortable or like I’m judging them because they don’t have the same beliefs that I do. And so I’ve always tried to create a space or environment where it’s like people feel like they can come as they are with me as a friend or me as a human not feel judged. And I feel like that’s what’s a lot of what’s wrong with with with religion and stuff like that is it feels very judgment oriented. But 100% man it’s been a big part of my life and it’s definitely helped me through tough times five
Andrew Warner 20:40
God has something big in store for you or because you believe Yeah, is that that’s,
Chandler Bolt 20:45
I believe my god given gift on this on this earth is to run and scale companies that make the world a better place. And so I don’t want to be on my deathbed and look back on my life into like, I found it in I didn’t use these gifts that I was given for good. So that’s like the through line. I think Like it’s my life, okay, then there’s also like, there’s, you know, when the going gets tough, it’s like, okay, like, I’m gonna leave this up to him and actually carry me. Uh, I mean, as someone who’s a type a like, Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten fully to that point. Can I lean on that spectrum? Got it?
Andrew Warner 21:20
Yeah, you should. God can’t like take full control. It’s like, I got the responsibility.
Chandler Bolt 21:25
I would like to get into a place where that is where I’m at. But it’s very hard for me.
Andrew Warner 21:30
Okay. Well, because I do believe that. Yeah. No, Kagan says some of the filthiest things I’ve ever heard people say I couldn’t ever repeat them. And still, when we talk in private, he tells me about this personal, spiritual religious practice that he has in his head that I don’t think I could do justice and it’s his thing to talk about, but it’s like a sense of gratitude and receive requests for power. Do you do something like that a practice that’s unconventional that we can learn from that helps you
Unknown Speaker 22:00
That’s a great question. I don’t I wouldn’t say it’s
Chandler Bolt 22:05
I wouldn’t say it’s untraditional across the board. I mean, I meditate I pray I you know, there’s like things like that where it’s either it’s only non traditional, if you’re not a Christian or if you don’t meditate, like I wouldn’t say it’s like, oh, this is unique to me is meditation and reading and, and prayer, probably like three lines
Andrew Warner 22:24
reading a spiritual book.
Chandler Bolt 22:26
No, sometimes Yeah, like sometimes the Bible, sometimes faith based books or things like that. But just reading in general, it’s very centering for me. And
Unknown Speaker 22:35
as
Andrew Warner 22:37
I’ve been thinking about starting my day with what you do every day, you start with emotion.
Chandler Bolt 22:41
So I’m a big Miracle Morning guy. So how Elrod is, I think one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met, and he’s one of the biggest supporters of self publishing school. He sent us more customers than anyone ever. And that book changed my life. So I’m actually in Europe. The morning changed your life. Oh 100%. And so that that I started my Miracle Morning beginning of 2014 2014 was the hardest year of my life. And I’ve done it pretty much every single weekday. Since then, I’d be hard pressed to find a weekday that I haven’t done at least an abbreviated version of the Miracle Morning. And so there’s, there’s the reading, there’s meditation, there’s some some form of exercise. There’s, I mean, he has a couple other things that I don’t do as much. But yeah, it’s, it’s what I have mentioned, I’ve listened to my affirmation, okay, that’s probably unique. I listen to affirmations every single morning, you’re only recording to your phone. I recorded my own version, and then my brother recorded a version for me. So I listened to myself, telling myself how awesome I am. And now listen to my brother telling how awesome is this dangerous move here?
Andrew Warner 23:49
Yeah, hit play on that for us. Mike, he played would you do that? All right. Yeah, sure. All right. Well, he
Unknown Speaker 23:57
does that. I’m gonna tell everything.
Andrew Warner 23:57
Everyone who’s listening to me. If you’re out there and you want to start a business, if you want to start a website, I urge you to go to hostgator.com slash mixergy. I had this guy who taught my kids about zoo animals. I said, Do you want to start this thing where you charge students, we charge parents actually, to let their kids come into your class. He said, I would love it. I said, You know what, I’m going to set it up for you. I went to hostgator.com. Within minutes, I was able to set up a whole website for him. Now, not only can he teach students in this class that he does online, where we’re parents are paying just a few bucks to let their kids come in and get direct questions and answers, see his animals and so on. But he has the ability because so website to put up a page that says, if you need birthday parties under lockdown, I could do it if your girl scout needs somebody to come in and teach about animals I could do it. And the reason we know that that those are two interesting things for him to create is because people followed up and said, Hey, I like what you’re doing for these classes. Can you do my kid’s birthday party via zoom? So anyway, opportunities come his way he can build web he can will add to his website with more and more pages. That’s the beauty of having Hostgator as a hosting company, super inexpensive, easy to get up and running. It doesn’t have to be the most dramatic business on the planet. Like, you don’t have to be the next Zuckerberg you can just get started and then build and build and build. If you use my URL, you’ll get the lowest price they have possible you get a simple, easy, fast way of getting up and running. And you’ll be tagged as a mixergy customer, which means I’ll appreciate you and we’ll always have your back so all you have to do is go to hostgator.com slash mixergy. I saw you hit mute because you’re hitting play Chandler’s. Let’s, let’s hear I’m really
Chandler Bolt 25:30
Alright, and I’m going to give just a disclaimer. This is gonna be very embarrassing. And this was recorded in May of 2017. And I’ve been meaning to re record it for probably at least nine months. So this is my, my personal affirmations to myself. Okay, here he goes. I’m going to make a million dollars in 2017. God gives me blessing and favor and everything I do. I make everyone’s life around me better because they’re in a relationship. With me, I’m confident and decisive in all situations. I’m a great leader. Girls love me and are lucky to date me. I can get any girl I want and my wife is going to be a 10 out of 10 in all areas, challenging me to be the best version of myself. I live life on my terms and have fun along the way. I stay positive in all situations. I take time to stop and smell the roses traveling and spending time with people I love. I trust and empower my employees. I love giving and it’s a huge part of what I do. I remember everyone’s name after the first time they tell me I’m making Kindle proud every day. Today is gonna be a great day. That’s it.
Unknown Speaker 26:45
Wow, do you do you feel?
Chandler Bolt 26:50
Do you feel like you’ve crossed off some of those items and so it makes the rest feel more powerful thing? That’s a great question. Probably subconsciously. I think that’s the big thing, right? If we’re talking law of attraction, yeah, get a little woowoo for a second. Like you know, the theory there is that your subconscious is the most impressionable right before right before you go to bed and right when you wake up that’s I think that’s thinking grow rich and it’s that combined with I think I got the the record your affirmations thing from the ultimate sales machine by Chet Holmes. And so for me, I listened to that right when I get up while I’m taking my retainers out brushing my teeth, like the first thing I hear. And so it’s every morning and it’s I am statements, and it’s affirmative statements. So there’s the cognitive dissonance in your brain.
Andrew Warner 27:40
Did you ever feel like when things weren’t working out for you? It’s like, Ah, this is such a fake, it doesn’t work. Did you get cynical and pessimistic about it? I don’t think I ever got cynical or pessimistic. There’s
Chandler Bolt 27:51
definitely your brain is like fighting that right. It’s not true. But I think that’s the whole theory. From like law of attraction like you That’s the whole theory is like the cognitive dissonance like your brain will work to make it true. Out of some sort of disbelief and feeling of like, like, and all of these almost, without exception were things I was actively working on and actually wasn’t good at. So like, I remember everyone’s name after the first time they tell me like I like. I mean, it’s still That one’s a work in progress. But for me, it was like, I was bad at remembering people’s names,
Andrew Warner 28:26
often enough that that is fairly true now. It’s really helped.
Unknown Speaker 28:29
I think it’s definitely helped. Yeah.
Andrew Warner 28:32
You know what, I like you more now that I’ve heard that. I don’t know what it is. I think I’ve gotten purse like in, in your body in your soul somehow.
Chandler Bolt 28:42
You’re like, people that have ever heard that. That’s so funny. I think I’ve only ever played that for maybe like a friend and my girlfriend. And now here we go.
Andrew Warner 28:52
And now everybody. austerity. All right. So you did this first version of teaching people how To publish books every time I ask you about that you almost dismiss it that that’s not the real thing that’s not self publishing school. What worked about it and what didn’t work about it?
Chandler Bolt 29:10
Oh, me, I think a lot worked about it except for the business partnership. And so I mean, the success rate was really high. We had 44 people I think over 60% of them wrote and published a book within six months how what was your process for getting people to actually take to get to take action to do the work? Yeah, we it’s funny, it’s I think I probably learned this on mixergy on the day maximum, I guess, itself and build and so we sold before we had the product because I made that mistake previously, and I sunk a bunch of money. I built the thing that no one wanted to close them. It was a productivity course on the back of the productive person. Okay, like 10 grand you know, did build the funnel for you kind of done for you thing, we did this? We went in a studio record all the videos, we never asked customers if they actually wanted it and they didn’t turns out. We’ve sold a single copy of that.
Andrew Warner 29:59
So the beginning You said if you’re going to be in this program I want you to reach out to whatever audience you’ve got and sell some books. Oh, sorry.
Chandler Bolt 30:06
Sorry. Sorry, that was confusing. No, I sold the program before creating any audit and you created
Andrew Warner 30:11
Yeah. Who do you sell it to?
Chandler Bolt 30:14
I was 44 individuals that said and it was clear Yeah, we did a weekly webinar for three four weeks. I had two partners I think like affiliates okay um, Jamie tardy and James Schramko I will forever owe them
Andrew Warner 30:30
they’re really impressive people Jamie tardy, especially it’s got a really good big audience at the time. She was like one of the few people who had the weight the ability to convince people to do this everything. How did you get her to say yes to you?
Chandler Bolt 30:46
Yeah, this gets to the oh geez of the internet where all right. And I met them at events and probably wrote them a thank you card or multiple Actually, I was just I just interviewed on Jamie’s podcast. Finally Um, like a few weeks ago, and the one thing she said is like, She’s like, I remember you kept sending me gifts. And she’s like, my kids still have like some of the gifts and it was like that gift guy. And so I like I would send her a thank you note or like some sort of gift. And I did that a lot. I’m
Andrew Warner 31:20
intentionally trying to get to some dealer,
Chandler Bolt 31:23
I think probably in the back of my head, but it was never quid pro quo or whatever. Like, it was never tit for tat. I that’s not how I roll. Or at least that’s not how I try to roll inevitably, like, I’m human, like that’s gonna come up. But it was very much like, Hey, I’m just gonna build this relationship. And this is someone I really respect and at the end of the day, it was take a chance on me. And worst case scenario, I’m gonna knock the socks off of everyone who shows up to this webinar, and you don’t make money, but like they’re pumped and they appreciate you. God bless you.
Andrew Warner 31:55
Also here, I just happen to know her better than some of the other people we’ve talked about. But I happen to know that she said Just really, she’s honest, she wants to make sure that she’s only partnering with the right people. She’s Yes, she’s anal about the details in a way that I’ve seen you being all about the details, too. Okay. So that’s how you got customers. What happened with this partnership? We brought it up a few times, but I didn’t delve in.
Chandler Bolt 32:16
Yeah. So the three became two and the two became one. And so it was, really there was a bunch of lessons learned there. For me, it was there was there was three of us. And two of us felt like hey, we’re bringing the light here and the other person isn’t. We need to buy out like buyout, renegotiate equity, any of those things, but this isn’t working. We were unable to come to an agreement. So we just said like
Andrew Warner 32:44
you were doing a lot but no one.
Chandler Bolt 32:47
No, there were two of us and I just don’t want to name names because people under the bus but there were two of us that said hey, we we feel like we’re bringing a lot of value to the table. You’re not so much so either perform or Just equity. Okay, super simple right in theory, but when you have pm emotions involved, it’s a lot less than what you do the other person who
Unknown Speaker 33:08
leads so. Ah,
Chandler Bolt 33:11
yeah, so we said we said Finally we reach irreconcilable differences we split the money and we said you keep the the name of the business that I created the logo that I created, blah blah blah you can’t keep the content you got to recreate the content will go recreate this. So that’s what we did. We recreated self publishing school. And then that was when we you know, we did about 1.1 in the first year and we were off to a really strong start and then, you know, about a year after forming that showed up to my my company off site and found out from one of my employees that my business partner was trying to kick me out of the business.
Unknown Speaker 33:49
Wow, why?
Chandler Bolt 33:52
I can only theorize looking backwards. I think it’s he was my boss is student painters. And I think that’s really tough. When I was the CEO of the company, and I was the face of the company, I think naturally, and I was probably hard to work with because just like very hard charging very much Well, we had just different values. I wanted to scale a big company, and he wanted to have more of a lifestyle business. And so naturally, I’m like, Hey, dude, like, I brought some of them. I brought the money to start this business.
And I am working, like way harder than you.
Andrew Warner 34:30
Well said, so he wanted to push you out. You eventually ended up owning the business because you bought him out?
Chandler Bolt 34:35
Yes. So I found out that he wanted to kick me out. We went through me, I confronted him. We went through mediation, we negotiated a buyout. I went multiple six figures in debt. I borrowed money from my parents retirement, my brother and howl ride actually, wow. And and it was like, I cannot fail. My parents retirement online. So there’s no option I had to turn on the company had to fire a bunch of people like we were hemorrhaging money. Like it was a very tumultuous and tough time. But most of the money don’t. We just we overstaffed too fast. And we Yeah, it’s like the classic early entrepreneurial problem. I feel like we’re, you get attached to the vanity metric, which is you go to a thing with other entrepreneurs, like, oh, cool, how many employees you have? That is such a really an option. Right? really ask you this, how much money are you making, but they don’t have the guts to ask you how much money you’re making. So they say how many employees you got, and they kind of like do some rough math and say, all right, and so we employees were representation representative of growth. And so we just we got, as my parents would say, growing up in the south, we got too big for our britches, and and we were just hemorrhaging money.
Andrew Warner 35:52
Okay, I The other thing that I’m curious about with you is all I see is a relaxed, smiling person from you. I don’t Don’t pick up on a little shred of stress or anger or anything. But I’ve interviewed people for jobs who interviewed with you or worked with you, and
Chandler Bolt 36:16
it’s very intense, probably right?
Andrew Warner 36:19
On, there’s a sense of admiration for your orders. If you if it was intense, or like a pain, I would have brought it up. I have no issues with that. But there it’s like you and Brian Harris are the two people who I know who have structure down to it like the bottom detail. I love that guy. You right? It’s amazing. I feel like you have the same thing but with him I have more insight into his process with you. I wonder what is this? How, how do you operate? How are you doing things functioning So, so systemized.
Chandler Bolt 36:50
Yeah, and I i think that’s very jarring for a lot of people because they see my personality and they it normally does not match up with somebody. And who cares about systems it’s like, oh, this happy go lucky, like, more face visionary, whatever this company is not going to be like your ops guy. But I think and I 100% wasn’t because I’m, you know, I’m like the guy who has ADHD and was on Adderall at one point and like, dropped out of school and like all that. So I definitely lean that way. But I think early on I realized if if I do not figure this out, it’s gonna be the bottleneck for my ability to grow. So I had to learn to love systems learn to love playbooks learn to love process, what
Andrew Warner 37:32
it is, it’s systems, that’s why people say he’s so organized, everything is done just right. And do you actually live by these systems? I’ve sent
Chandler Bolt 37:41
1,000% Yeah. 1,000%. So I have this. The thing is a podcast and it’s a YouTube channel. That’s kind of just like a fun little side project, but it’s called seven figure principles. So there’s like the seven figure principles podcast and seven figure principles show. And that’s like, the goal of that is to train up my internal employees. Number one is to Answer entrepreneur buddy questions that people always ask me. And then it’s to recruit new talent. That’s really there’s nothing to sell. They’re showing on process people understand and work with you. Okay? So it’s like how to hire your first sales person, or a player hiring process, how to create an org chart? How like, how to hire an assistant, like all these things that people would just ask me about because they know that we do them well, or we have a system or playbook or process or whatever. I just started recording them. And it’s been a lot of fun. It’s it’s kind of fun to work on. content that’s not like Oh, cool. Here’s how to write a book. Now sign up for self publishing school. It’s like everything is like geared to that. It’s kind of fun to just have this side thing. It’s like a look. Yeah, there’s nothing to buy here. Just watch. So when I saw
Andrew Warner 38:46
you a traffic and conversions with those people were handing out postcards. That was all based on some checklist that they were following the
Chandler Bolt 38:53
Yeah, that was early days. So I learned that from Pete Vargas, and he’s been a huge part of teaching me the speaking side of things. So funny hearing you say that man, because I think there’s a big lesson in there for people, which is the story that you’re telling yourself versus the how people were perceiving it. Because in my mind, that was one of the first times I ever gave a talk. I stared out at the audience, which was freaking packed. And I looked out and it was all people I’ve looked up to and learn from for the last few years, and I felt like I just bombed. And, and then, I mean, we did like, there are a bunch of contact cards and all that, but it’s just so funny. It’s like, there’s always someone on the other side, that’s,
Andrew Warner 39:33
we took a video of you doing that. I remember that. I think he said, I tell you that I did that. Yeah, cuz it was amazing for you. So tell the audience that I do what?
Chandler Bolt 39:42
I think you sent the video to your wife and we’re like, you can’t make this and then you send it to me or something. I was
Andrew Warner 39:48
Yeah, because it was so it was such a tough room and no one paid attention. It was the worst. I don’t know what they did. The only thing I can think of is that the Ryan deiss had an extra corner. He figured I’m going to bring my people and give them some space. Let’s see what they do with it. Who cares if it doesn’t work out? He’s not charged to be charging for being for speaking there. It was a sponsor benefit. But okay, yeah, so I had the sense that it was just a let’s just add it. But it wasn’t a really good room. You made that room work. But your people also gave a sense of I don’t know the way that they the sense of order that they had didn’t have T shirts to the day they write
Chandler Bolt 40:27
bright yellow t shirts. Let’s talk about your book.
Andrew Warner 40:30
Yeah, and might have inspired you guys later on, like, huddling together. So is that a process that you then systemized for the next time? Even absolute vices? It does?
Chandler Bolt 40:40
Oh, yeah. Now we are very dialed in. And so we have our event. Yes. 100%. So that year is the year that we went from zero to we did a little over a million dollars, as in revenue from speaking and before that I’d really done pretty much no speaking because you’re selling at this at this engagement when you say a million dollars because people who feel those cards ended up coming to you to get it to get Yeah, they’ll sit down with my team at the event, they’ll talk about their book, their strategy for their book, if it makes sense. They’ll sign up for self publishing school. And that’s how I think that year was like, I want to average, like 32 grand per event, and revenue. And none of that was speaking fees, pretty much. It was all is not pitch from stage. So it wasn’t like, it’s not really like, I’ll do it, and I have done it. But that’s not my bread and butter. It’s more like, hey, if you like this, fill out this card, talk to my team book a time sit down and talk about your book. We’ll talk about self publishing school. And so that’s that’s kind of the model. But I think if we were to pull a lesson within a lesson, and this is I think a three line for why we’ve been so successful at self publishing school, is me personally, is one of our core values is fail fast, fail forward fail often. So our goal and pretty much anything is just fail as fast as possible, and learn and iterate and improve. So that Like that stage was like a failure, but it was like definitely a lot of it’s like, okay, cool the slides. Like I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I got stage fright, like, and a bunch of other things. But we learned how do
Andrew Warner 42:14
you how do you iterate on that? What’s your process? Do you go back to checklist and
Chandler Bolt 42:18
fix it? Or do you just talk with your team? And you say, Okay, now we have a better understanding. Yeah, I mean, for me, that was a that was a unique presentation that I’ve never given before, which I pretty much had not never do that. But I want to practice it as a webinar first, because that’s a lower risk environment. And he’s saying next time you new don’t start off with something random, do it at least as a webinar. Let’s get it out there and build confidence, right? Like I’m doing this like it was like a 20 minute speaking slot in our super noisy room, and I am blocking the slides. Like the projector is projecting on me and the wall behind me and so I was just like, and I look out in the audience, and it’s like all people I’ve admired for years. So I was just a bit shook. And so that there’s that then there, but there’s all these little things like that same event, we spoke, my main talk was afternoon of day three, and a bunch of people laughed, and didn’t attend the afternoon of day three session. So every other session was packed leading up to all the sessions at that time. So now part of recipe is if we’re going to go speaking event it needs preferably morning of day one, because it’s my team, the maximum amount of time to meet with people while at the event. I’m fresher in the morning. We preferably need a break immediately after so that they can hand in their cards, get free books, book times with my team, all that stuff. Like there’s just like a check. Yeah, to make sure that like we can get this this this, this and this. It’s a minimum of 3045 minutes slide. It’s is there’s a name of X number of attendees. How much did they pay to be there? What’s the overall goal of the event is the goal to sell Some other products, there’s
Andrew Warner 44:00
all those things in your in your checklist. 100% Yeah, for sure. Let me talk about I want to come back and ask how did you get people to to write a book when you were just getting started? Do you have extra time I know we started getting a second sponsor is a company called Click Funnels, how to use Click Funnels.
Chandler Bolt 44:16
It’s so funny. That’s what the talk was about, is the little talk was about free plus shipping book funnels. And that’s exactly how we use it is for our free plus shipping funnel. It’s why the highest standard WordPress or any other thing, because they do a really good job of making it super easy and simple. And oh, and a two step order form, which really helps a conversion rate. And so there’s a cart abandon sequence that we can send people in bunches.
Andrew Warner 44:43
One is, give me your contact information. Step two is no pay. If they don’t pay, there’s a sequence and your exact email to do the follow up.
Chandler Bolt 44:50
We don’t use their email, we integrate it with everything that we do. Yep. But just the two step order form is really hard to execute off of clickfunnels It’s really good. And the out of the box template it just looks great man like it’s a well formatted page again first well and from a two step or like it’s very easy the sales pages is slick, it’s clean. You’ve got the Oto which is also hard to do on other software’s like the Oto sorry so the one time offer but I actually misspoke or bump Yes, yes, exactly what you just said that’s what I meant to say. We get the order bump, right it’s like that smooth and you got the Oto the one time offer on the thank you page like yeah, the free plus shipping funnel, it’s just it’s legit and it’s one of our that’s one of our highest converting funnels that’s why I believe in writing books and using it as a free plus shipping. Excuse me the free plus shipping funnel is because it’s it just converts to anyone out
Andrew Warner 45:46
there who wants to give it a shot. It get clickfunnels does does that too for for Russell Brunson, the founders books. If you’re out there listening and you want to try Click Funnels, go to Click Funnels comm slash mixergy and you’ll get to use their software for free. That’s Click Funnels comm slash mixergy. And the podcast that they actually paid me to talk about not the software is it’s called Traffic Secrets. And if you’re looking to learn how to get traffic to your site for free or paid, Russell’s a great storyteller and he’ll teach you how to do it. Just look for Traffic Secrets, the podcast. So how did you get people when you were starting out? You had 44 people how did you get them to actually write their books?
Chandler Bolt 46:26
Yeah, great, good, good follow up. So we it was the Selden build, and then teach them exactly what they need help with. So the whole concept is we were very candid is hey, I’ve done this before myself, never taught it successfully and other people. If you purchase, you’re going to get the highest touch, like highest attention, highest, you’ll get my personal cell phone number, we’ll do weekly coaching calls, we’ll do weekly group coaching and we’ll do the content and then we just ask them like, Hey, what do you need help with? And I had my VIP students who had more access And pay a little bit more out ahead. Like, they were usually two weeks ahead of everyone else. And so I just said, any video, you need any training you need anything you you’re stuck on, just tell me and I’ll create it. Well, it worked out that we dripped out the lessons one week at a time, over 12 weeks, and they were usually ahead so they tell me what to create. And then I just roll it out to the rest of the class, like a week or two later. So we did that. I did one on one coaching 30 minutes per week for 12 weeks. And with everyone who’s gone through the program, with our VIP, VIP, me and one of the other business partners split the calls. And so I block off Monday and it’d be like 12 calls back to back 30 minutes, or whatever the number was and and you know, I do that. And then we had a group call, which was like part inspiration part q&a. So we’d bring in a student and we’d say, Hey, what’s one thing you’re struggling with and like, what’s a win? And so it’s like, they there’s this feeling of camaraderie and like, oh, they’re doing it, I can do it and then we answered their questions. Want to see and answer everyone else’s questions? What about
Andrew Warner 48:03
life gets busy sitting in front of a blank page is and I know you’ve written about this but sitting in front of blank pages is a challenge when life is busy What did you do to overcome that you can’t just reach over the computer and help them type.
Chandler Bolt 48:16
I think there was a feeling of community and external accountability which that’s part of what people I feel like even to this day people pay us for its I always joke that it’s a mix between Indiana Jones and Jillian Michaels. It’s like Indiana Jones we blazed the trail and show them what to do and then Jillian Michaels like we went there button gear and like hold them accountable to actually do the work. So I think it
Unknown Speaker 48:39
was that how do you hold them accountable?
Chandler Bolt 48:41
I’m coaching calls the community. We I think we’ve sent you one of these at some point like a long SPS box. Yeah. And maybe you notice in there, it’s like my rough there’s one page it’s like my rough draft will be finished by date. So it’s like write that in, take a picture with it, share it so kind of forced external accountability. So now they’re, they’re all their friends are holding them accountable. And accountability buddy like pairing systems and just like a bunch of stuff like that. But also it was like I said, for the 12 weeks, I’m like, Hey, I don’t want to deal with scheduling calls with all these people. So we’re gonna find a time that works. And we’re going to do that exact time every every week for 12 weeks. And you show it, you’ve got questions and and I think it was a mediocre coaching best because I’ve very hard to people. I don’t think I was as loving or nurturing as
Unknown Speaker 49:32
like many of them needed.
Chandler Bolt 49:34
But you know, just as hold people accountable. And honestly, it was it was following a lot of the systems coming back to that theme that I learned from student painters. We just implemented a bunch of that but for this type of business model, because it’s like we figured if you can get a 17 year or not 17 I guess more like you can get an 18 to 22 year olds to run a 50 to $100,000 painting, business and assembly And not just go get drunk all the time, then, you know you really honestly. Right? And so we just took a lot of those accountability rhythms and expectations setting and, you know, a spreadsheet where they have to report green or red whether they hit their goal for the last week and like just a bunch of simple stuff. But frameworks and systems that were taught to us that we just said, hey, let’s let’s apply this for something like this.
Andrew Warner 50:24
One of the things that I admired about you as as an entrepreneur is, you don’t just do online sales. You also do phone sales. And you hear about that all the time. I just interviewed a woman from who runs fat merchant, and they do credit card processing. They’re grown phenomenally well. I said, How fast do I get a phone call if I fill out one of your forms? She says within minutes, there’s a human way. And I said, I’m realizing a lot of the more advanced companies have actual sales people. I never saw anyone online education who does that sound like? Skillshare has got a salesperson calm What’s your process for finding figuring this out? Where’d that come from?
Unknown Speaker 51:05
failing a lot
Andrew Warner 51:09
of the story of how you got a sales team?
Chandler Bolt 51:12
Yeah, so, man, my process is always like, who versus how so who’s figured this out? Now? How do I figure it out? And if I can figure out the who then they know the how. And so when I first got started, I’m like, Alright, who’s done this? All right. Tony Robbins Jhansi Maxwell, Dave Ramsey. So like, what do they call their salespeople? How do they comp their salespeople? What is their process look like? And then I just called a bunch of people and asked about them, or I think maybe a couple times asked about them, but then everyone I knew who ran sales teams, I was just like, hey, how do you do this? How do you say this? And so I do that and then I read every sales book that I could get my hands on, and then hire two sales reps because that was advice I got is don’t hire one. You got to hire two witnesses us and because they’ll compete and you just Know what the bar is if you if you if you just hire one because you might think that’s amazing and it sucks. Or you might think that sucks. And it’s amazing. Right? So just you have kind of a, you know, it’s like one’s a data point two’s the start of a trend kind of, and he was like, do you um hard experience people or new salespeople? I hired experience and I actually hired one from Jhansi Maxwell and I hired one from Jim Jim sales, and the one from Jim sales just killed it like, and what I didn’t realize at the time, this is kind of like the classic. This is why this is a core value, fail fast fail forward rise because you learn stuff and your failures and your successes is I didn’t realize at the time that gym sales is your selling transformation. What we’re selling is transformation through the form of a book, they’re selling transformation through exercise. So it was actually a very similar sale, even though it doesn’t seem like it at all. And because that person was used to Like, oh, I’m slinging $50 a month gym memberships. Like they have to have a high velocity high motor, which works well in an environment for us because we get so many leads we get so many, like so many calls. Oh my gosh it’s just it’s ridiculous it what’s the process then? How does somebody end up on a call with one of your salespeople? Yeah, it’s, it’s it’s kind of a lot, but we’ll get upwards of 600 leads a day. And 600 a day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean different channels. But yeah, and it’s, it’s a lot and, uh, you know, only a hand a small percentage of those folks will book on a calendar themselves. About 40% of those folks will automatically what we call dq or disqualify and pull off the sales calendar and reroute through what we call an SDR sales development Rep. We have four of them. Currently, they do about 50 to 70 outbound calls per day. And so they’re calling the people who got cancelled as well as our hottest leads that don’t book a call by themselves. And we bubble up to the top, the hottest leads for them so that they can just call through a lot of which are the free plus shipping funnel officers, because those are some of the hottest leads, webinar watchers, things like that. And then the reps they have about usually their calendar is about 80% full when they wake up. So they wake up, they take one hour phone calls that are paced for 45 minutes, so that preferably they have a buffer to either between calls or to objection handle things like that. And Dell Yeah, so we have probably, I don’t know 4040 or so qualified appointments booked per day, and I saw a bunch of appointments completed and it’s a machine that is probably about I’d say about a seven and a half out of 10 currently, and we’re continually trying to make better.
Andrew Warner 55:06
That’s how really far advanced system that you’ve come up with.
Chandler Bolt 55:10
So far just keeps evolving. And that’s one of our other core values is hard work and continuous improvement. And so we believe in working hard and continuously making things better. And so we just started with something that was very basic and we just continue iterating so why
Andrew Warner 55:25
would somebody want to go to self publishing school calm and and write a book? I looked at my notes from when we started and I asked you how can I describe self publishing school in a sentence? And everything was expected online education company helped people write and publish books that and the last part was not that helped them grow their businesses. How’s the book can help someone grow their business? What’s like, what’s the point here?
Chandler Bolt 55:51
Yeah, I get really fired up about this. So I mean, I believe I believe that book is one of the best things you can do for your business, and we focus specifically on three things Using a book to get more leads, more sales and more referrals. And so what I mean by that is like more leads so these are more people that heard of you because of your book. Right? So let’s let’s use Russell Brunson, for example, right traffic, secrets.com secrets, expert secrets, whatever. Like that’s a whole group of people that would have no clue that clickfunnels if he wouldn’t have written those books, right, so more leads more sales. So we, we use the book as part of the sales process, so that you the higher percentage of people who already know about, you end up doing business with you. So we use it as part of the sales process. And so I give them I give them away like they’re candy. And so you use all this at work at a speaking event. So we’ll go and it’s a value prop to the, the, the event host because we’ll say hey, we’re gonna give away $5,000 worth of books, and like 300 bucks or whatever, and we give them away so when people handed in those cards, that’s why they all handed in their card, his physical book, and they got
Andrew Warner 56:59
it. Yeah. Right away right there. Yeah, yeah, right to giveaway book,
Chandler Bolt 57:03
it’s about its cost just recently went up, but I think it was about $3 and 15 cents, or three or 350 will cost four bucks landed. And so it’s it’s a huge value prop but like that’s but then in the online space like oh register for the webinar, you’ll get a free copy of the book. All we put the book everywhere because the book is like, it’s I mean, it’s mostly this book my book published. This is like the 10,000 foot view of what we teach, right? And so that helps whether they read it or not. And in any sales mechanism goes up, because you’re the perceived authority on that thing, because you have that book. And then the third thing referrals, I believe, and we do this is we give, it’s like, what if you gave two copies of your book to every new customer, or if you wanted to take it a step further, every new prospect and you say, Hey, here’s one book for you in here. Here’s one book for a friend who struggles with XYZ or who needs help with writing And so now all of a sudden, like, if I give you a business card, you’re gonna throw it away, probably within 24 hours. If I give you a book, you keep it, it’s on your desk, in your office in your home, whatever. You might not even read it. But someone comes to your office. Hey, what’s that? That looks interesting. You’re like, I’ve never read it here you want it like, and so you’re just like, enabling people turning I have so much over
Andrew Warner 58:21
the year, and I feel guilty about it. But you’re saying that’s part of the plan. I will have a person will send me their book. I can’t throw away a book. So I leave it on my desk for years. It’ll just sit there in a pile right? And, and occasionally, people will come and say, Why do you have this one book? And if it’s a few books, I might display it kind of nicely. It doesn’t look like it’s trashed, sitting on the desk, and I get it.
Chandler Bolt 58:42
Yeah. So that that’s that’s how we look at it. It’s like a book is a business card. And really a book is the start of the conversation. So we have people all the time. I mean, just to use the events as an example. Under that’s not totally relevant for everyone, but it’s just easy example then as what we’re already talking about. When people will give them the book they’ll read it on the plane ride home they’ll book a call when they get home with my team they’ll sign up for suppose happens just about every event we go to so it’s you know it’s it’s just a way to start the conversation bring more leads sales referrals
Andrew Warner 59:17
alright anyone who wants to go check out the site itself here I’m going to give you one negative piece of feedback it’s the site removal bash yeah itself dash we own both but I get an error if I go to self publishing school calm without the dash
Unknown Speaker 59:31
if you do that needs to be fixed
Andrew Warner 59:37
look on your face as I said that was like such a you know we gotta fix it. You want to
Chandler Bolt 59:42
so we so we own we own self publishing COMM And we redirect that dash for SEO purposes. We also own self publishing calm. You do that’s it? Yeah. That’s a different property. Yeah.
That’s it. That’s a totally different That’s a totally different property.
Andrew Warner 1:00:02
Got it self publishing by self publishing school and I’m wondering exactly, but if anyone wants to really see your stuff, oh, yeah, it’s self publishing. school.com. Right. Yeah. What I like about you is school self publishing there it is self publishing. school.com What am I gonna do is I just like your style. Like, I look at pages all day long of people who I’m interviewing, who I’m going to interview, it’s just a little too crowded and overwhelming. There’s a sense of simplicity, but completion that comes from your work.
Chandler Bolt 1:00:32
Does that make sense? I appreciate that, man. I feel like our brand used to suck because I’m not a low aesthetic person.
Andrew Warner 1:00:41
Like a lot of you because you have bad aesthetic tastes bad taste,
Chandler Bolt 1:00:45
bad aesthetic taste. I think it’s not something that I care about that much. So like, in the end, when I’m prioritizing. I’m not like, spend five hours to make the website look great. It’s like that’s, that’s not like I’m more an X’s and O’s kind of guy.
Andrew Warner 1:00:58
I want to be the owner. Because I’m looking over your shoulder and exactly over one shoulder there’s a nice logo frame of self publishing school with with Well, it just looks good with the cat with the graduation care I was trying to say on the other side that there’s a definition of impact also nicely framed the mic is in the right position, you’re centered on camera and the camera height is properly adjusted. How many people do I talk to who are looking down at their computer which question that they’re not fully there. But you’re saying that’s not you always have your shirt really nicely iron john your own shirts? No, absolutely not.
Chandler Bolt 1:01:36
Okay, so I think a big lesson here. Andrew is like, and and not to insinuate that I’m above doing that, by any means. But I think a big lesson here Andrew is like hire for your weaknesses. And and so this is like I knew if it were me, I would be in a white room with one poster on the wall, right? But I paid someone and I said hey, decorate My office then it looks good. So she did all this stuff. And same thing with a website. It’s just like, I find
Andrew Warner 1:02:05
somebody to do your house like that to make your office look good.
Chandler Bolt 1:02:09
Is the friend’s wife who loves doing that? And she’s like, Yeah, she loved it. And so it was perfect. And it makes sense. She was a huge help. And interesting, right? It’s like, I don’t know, she, she was like, hey, do you want me to do this or this? And I’m like, I have no idea. Like, I suck at this. Oh, yeah, she she came up with this leveraged impact that I talked about that my TEDx talk, that’s like a big concept that we talked about. So it’s like, Alright, you got a core concept. You got this. If I move out of the way, you’ve got focus, follow one course until success that’s like a big thing I’m passionate about and then just like kind of nice looking picture. And then when that animal on the other side of you, Cheetah so she has spirit animal, like fast. So they Yeah, so that was like that was the inspiration but I mean, I think the big thing is, know your weaknesses and hire your weaknesses and And I was just listening to an interview yesterday, so good with the CEO of Shopify. And he was telling the story about how an early investor said, Hey, I like you. I like your company. But everyone here is just like you. You need to learn to hire people that are different than you. And I think there’s areas where I still need to improve on that. And I think that was also like, it’s kind of one of those weird things where like, I feel like I’ve done that pretty well. But I also still have a good bit of room for improvement. I felt like early on it was I recognized that it’s like, I’ve got a bunch of people that are different than me that you wouldn’t think like, Oh, that’s not Chandler. And so there’s different perspectives and stuff like that.
Andrew Warner 1:03:40
What’s gonna be the guy who set this interview up? I tell him I know, I know, Chandler. We can do this together, but I don’t think a good fit. Yeah. What is it name? Pedro. Pedro Mattos, he was so good. I said, I don’t think it’s a good fit. I got this thing going on. And he came back was totally fine. By the way, here’s this thing, how it connects to this other thing? I said, Yeah, I just can’t do it. Ready to go? Totally fine. Nothing’s changing. There’s nothing fancy. You know what? This actually would be stupid for me not to do it he I Oh, that’s the thing I forgot about it. I was so busy, like focused on you. We got to end this interview. But the Kobe thing you guys have done better after COVID recession hit than before Why?
Unknown Speaker 1:04:19
Mmm hmm.
Chandler Bolt 1:04:22
There’s so much. I mean, I think it’s the fundamentals like we’re a business built on fundamentals. Therefore, we haven’t been we you know, we keep solid cash reserves. We we don’t over hire. We like all the mistakes I’ve learned.
Andrew Warner 1:04:39
He said even sales got went Oh, yeah.
Chandler Bolt 1:04:42
I mean, we had a record month last month. And we’re about to have maybe not a record month, but very, very solid month this month. And is that because
Andrew Warner 1:04:49
advertising rates have gone down or because people are now going online for education much more.
Chandler Bolt 1:04:56
I think it’s combination of two or three things. Really good people. Really good team, they are just kicking butt and my team is this very much responded like my big my big challenge to them. When all this started going down as I said, Hey guys, months years from now we’re gonna look at this and it’s gonna be the best thing ever happened to us. My question for you is how do we get better because this happened not in spite of this happening. And so we’re going to get more disciplined. And so we came up with a theme for the quarter it was back to the basics. And so it was if it doesn’t have to do with getting customers signed up or getting customers results, we’re not doing it. It’s and that’s really what
Andrew Warner 1:05:36
went away. I thought that’s all you did.
Chandler Bolt 1:05:39
Well, I mean, that’s like the two fundamentals of business. But like there’s all this other stuff that you like, it’s just a focusing question, right? Like so we stripped out a bunch of non essential tasks we just asked is like, is this the highest leverage thing that we could get? do to get new customers or to get customers results? And if the answer’s no, then we just kept stripping. So I think there was really good people focus on student results and focus on like the fundamentals blocking and tackling. We we cut a lot of non people, non essential expenses. So my goal is we’re going to trim as far as we can nine people, and then the people will be the last thing to cut if we have to get to that. So we contingency planned, we said, and I think that’s where a lot of people got caught is they didn’t contingency plan. So it’s called greater black planning. So it’s like, you have to look at like, Okay, if we hit if we missed this, then we’re going to do this. If we drop revenue by this, we’re going to do this. So we did that. And then I would say the last thing is all of our content marketing efforts that we were building for years, just popped off. People were at home and they’re writing a book. So they’re googling and they’re ending up on self publishing, calm on self publishing school, the self publishing, school, podcast, YouTube channel, like all all those metrics went up. That combined with our biggest objection, for all time has been I don’t have time to write a book and so my sales Seemed like really leaned in and like, Hey, you know what actually you do?
Andrew Warner 1:07:05
time you got nothing but time. And so that’s that obviously that we were very fortunate with that that we were able to just lean in. I’ve known you now for so many years not super well, but better than most it is impressive to see how far you’ve come. I will consume your little Facebook posts when they come up. I don’t always hit the light because I’m just kind of lost in this thing. It’s just amazing to watch it stay focus. You keep improving. Yes, you stay this like nice guy who’s gonna send people thank you cards like to this day. He’s still smiling as I’m saying this almost like a 14 year old smile, right? Like, please, I’m here. I’m good. I got this. Right.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:44
Not every day, but most days and I mean, I’m an intense guy like I don’t.
Andrew Warner 1:07:49
I haven’t seen I still just see a times I see a glimmer of it. here’s here’s my I would love at some point to do an interview with you on the intense systems that you have operating Your company, from what I’ve heard, you have become a really frickin good manager of like you organize your company in a way that just makes sense. There’s some people who just you know, you know who it is the first time that I knew that Tim Ferriss over a decade ago that that I got Tim Ferriss was I asked him random questions. He had organized, thoughtful responses. And I realized this is a person who I understand why people turn to him for guidance. He’s an organized thinker, the same thing with your company, I understand why people come to you for guidance. You’re an organized manager, and I’ve seen this throughout. Alright, I gotta shut up. I get no commission from doing this. And from doing this, frankly, there’s no benefit to me other than just I just have to talk openly. I’d said something really painful to one of my past guests. Or it doesn’t matter. I won’t get into it. So people don’t know. He sent me a thank you note this morning. He said, You know what, this thing actually really helped me change the way that I think about about life. I said, I’ve been pained that I said that to you in the interview. I’m glad that you took it well, but I Try when I get in my interviews, to just let go of any restrictions on myself and be open as possible. I’m glad that that came out in a positive way, this time not negative, so I don’t have to feel guilty about it. Anyone who’s listening should go check out self publishing school.com. And my two sponsors, really, I’m grateful to them. If you’re looking to build a website, inexpensive and really effectively, go check out hostgator.com slash mixergy. And finally, clickfunnels has a fantastic podcast. You should listen to it the follow up to this. It’s called Traffic Secrets. Go get it and whatever podcast app you’re listening to me. Thank you so much for doing this. Chandler
Chandler Bolt 1:09:32
Andrew, thanks so much, man. This has been a blast. So cool seeing this come full circle. Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
