How to build a consulting business into a product business

In 2005, Tim Grahl founded a consulting group called Out:Think Group to help authors build their platforms, connect with readers and sell more books.

Earlier this year, he sold the company. Now he’s focusing on his own site, TimGrahl.com, where he teaches authors how to promote their books.

At his consulting company, he did it for authors. Now on his personal site, he teaches authors how to do it for themselves.

Tim Grahl

Tim Grahl

TimGrahl.com

Tim Grahl is the founder of Out:think, a platform that helps to develop web strategy and development for authors.

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Full Interview Transcript

Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the guy who has to talk into the mic, so I’ll bring it in a little bit closer. I’m also the founder of Mixergy.com, which is home of the ambitious upstart.

In this interview, we’re going to find out how do you build a consulting business where you trade your time for money, but how do you build it into a successful business and then how do you turn it into a product-based business where you actually have a product you get to sell over and over again?

In 2005, Tim Grahl founded a consulting group called the Out:think group to help authors build their platforms, connect with readers and sell more books. You’ll see he got incredible clients over there and I want to learn from him how he did it. Earlier this year, he sold that company. Now he’s focused on his own website, TimGrahl.com, where he teaches authors how to promote their books. So, at his consulting company, he did it for authors. Now on his own personal site, he teaches authors how to do it for themselves.

I invited him here to talk about how he built the consulting company and now how he’s teaching and more specifically with teaching, how he created and sold course and made it into one of the successful products that I’ve got to learn from.

This whole thing is sponsored by a company called Toptal. If, as you’re listening to my interviews, you come up with a great idea for a new product and you turn to your development team and you see that they just don’t have enough time to do it, what do you do?

Many people will go online and look for those freelance websites and see if they can find someone who can work on it in their spare time. Ratings on those sites are so-so and sometimes you work with someone for a month or two until you realize that not only is the product bad but they kind of disappear on you. You don’t want that when you have a great idea. You want someone who you can work with like an employee, like a partner in the business.

That’s why so many people go to my sponsor Toptal. They’re a network of top developers. You tell them what your product idea is. You tell them what you’re working on, what language your team works on, what you want. They will go out to their network of developers and they’ll find someone who has been tested, vetted, proven to be a great developer but also a good fit for you and the way that you like to work. They’ll introduce you to that developer. If you hit it off, it’s kind of like dating. You get to start working with them right away. In fact, I got to work with our guy, I think it was within 24 hours. He was phenomenal.

Go to Toptal.com. In fact, don’t even tell them that you heard it on Mixergy as an advertiser. I want you to tell them that you’re a friend of Andrew’s. In fact, whenever you work with anyone that I tell you about, tell them you’re a friend of mine, they always will take good care of you. Toptal.com. I’m grateful to them for sponsoring Mixergy.

Tim, so good to see you here.

Tim: Yeah, you too. I’ve been looking forward to it.

Andrew: Me too. You and I connected at SXSW years and years ago, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: You came out to the one Mixergy event that I did, I think. It was fantastic.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: I didn’t realize it was such a pivotal moment for you, as we’ll hear in this interview. Before that, you started this business that we’re going to talk about with Ramit Sethi, right?

Tim: Well, I started the business and I worked with him for a long time, yeah.

Andrew: Okay. You were helping him with his book. He was a first-time author. He needed some promotion. You helped him out and this turned into this huge business that we’ll talk about. What were you doing just before then that you and Ramit connected on?

Tim: Well, I was just reading a bunch of blogs and I was a fan of Ramit and I was doing development. I was pretty good with WordPress. So, he just put on his blog that he needed some help. So, I got to help him the whole year leading up to his launch. That was the first time I really got a taste in what it meant to have a platform and see behind the scenes because he was able to launch that book as a bestseller.

Everything I assumed about that is you had to have like major media coverage or already be a famous author and here’s this guy younger than me that didn’t get any traditional promotion and he launched his book just from his platform. So, that’s what kind of got me hungry to learn how this actually works and how authors can do this.

Andrew: Yeah. He was a 24-year old guy, hardly known by anyone. His traffic was really low. I remember when his book came out, even after he was a bestseller I said, “Is this guy for real or is he just another guy with a book?” That’s how little I knew about him. He turned it into a bestseller. Your focus before that–in fact, it wasn’t a focus–you were doing web development for what kind of clients?

Tim: Anybody that would give me money. So, literally anybody that was willing to pay me to do development, that’s who I do development for. It was driving me insane.

Andrew: Why did it drive you insane? It seems like that could be a really creative job. You get to work for one client one day, completely different industry the next day. But it was frustrating. Why?

Tim: Well, you never get good at anything. So, when you get hired to build a new ecommerce platform in this environment for this type of company and then later, you’re just like tweaking somebody’s blog and then you’re building some kind of backend database system, you couldn’t kind of keep building and getting better at one thing. You kept getting shifted around. And then for me, I was just getting sick of working for bigger companies because I don’t like eight different people having an opinion on what I should be doing with my time.

Andrew: Do you remember a project where you had eight different people giving you different directions?

Tim: Yeah. That’s actually one of the moments that I look back on as like me realizing something has got to change. It was a local company. It was a bigger company. It was just me and one other guy at my company. So, we got this contract that should have been a dream contract because it was a big contract and this big project.

And then here I am sitting in their conference room, this long, oak table in this dark room and we’re all just sitting around there. It’s literally me and my developer and at least eight other people at the table. They’re showing the website and they’re arguing over the shade of orange on one of the buttons. I’m just like, “I cannot do this. This is why I quit my job in the first place, to not have to deal with this stuff.”

So, that was right around the time I was working with Ramit and I had worked with a couple other authors too and was just realizing how much more fun that was and interesting to work on that kind of stuff.

Andrew: Were you volunteering for Ramit because you responded to his blog post or did he hire you?

Tim: I started out volunteering and then he was paying me as a freelancer by the end.

Andrew: Okay. And as you got to see behind the scenes, you were just looking at, I think at the time, just a WordPress blog and an Aweber email mailing list–nothing more complicated than that, less complicated than your other client work.

Tim: Oh, yeah. Even still, the platforms that I build for authors that we’ve been building over the last couple years, it’s usually a WordPress site and MailChimp. So, it’s not that complicated. But yeah, mainly on his, I wasn’t the idea guy. He was the idea guy and I was building it. That was when I first got to really see behind the scenes on some of this stuff.

I had built up my own kind of blog network before this that I had sold off. That’s where I really got into the marketing side too, which is why I enjoyed it so much. Most people either understand marketing or they understand development. This was eight years ago. So, I understood both. So, it was really nice for people to be able to have a conversation with me about marketing and then I could just build whatever they needed.

Andrew: I see. When I looked at your website for Out:think, I thought, “Huh… everything here is the same kind of stuff that any other web design company could do.” But what amazed me is that you didn’t do it for everyone. It was just for authors. I thought, “Ah, that’s the brilliance of this business.” If I just walk in here like an amateur who’s looking at the business and saying, “This is just another WordPross dev shopper with a little bit of marketing.” I’d be missing out on the power of the business that you’ve built.

Alright. So, you got Ramit Sethi as a client. You were building and you said, “There’s a new opportunity for me.” There’s one more thing I want to talk about before we go into the new opportunity. You felt at the time that you were on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Do you mean literally? Did you have a panic attack? Did you have any kind of breakdown?

Tim: Yeah. There was one particular day where I was up in my bedroom and I was just freaking out. When I came down, all the blood vessels across my forehead had like burst. It looked like I had a weird sunburn. It was just this pressure. I felt like no matter how much I worked, I wasn’t getting ahead. The whole idea was that the more you work on something, the easier it gets. I was getting further and further behind and I was really at this point where I’m like, “Something’s got to give or I’m just going to go back and get a job or something because I can’t do this the rest of my life.”

Andrew: I’m glad that you’re willing to talk about that publicly. I had a scotch night here a few weeks ago. One of the entrepreneurs said that he had a panic attack and that he’s had several of them. He said that now that he’s talking about openly but in private, he’s noticing that a lot of other entrepreneurs had panic attacks. I never had one. I never knew anyone that had one until that conversation. But I’m recognizing that this is a huge issue. I want to start talking about publicly and understanding what it feels like. So, for you, it’s like burst blood vessels in your forehead and this feeling of, “I can’t continue like this anymore.”

Tim: Yeah. I had one kid at the time that was a baby. My wife was staying home with him. That was our decision. I had an employee. He expected to get paid every two weeks. Again, it was like I kept having this feeling of however much money the company was making, it cost like ten percent more than that to actually run the company.

Andrew: Right. I know the feeling. Yes.

Tim: And again, it was just so much pressure I was putting on myself. It just wasn’t getting anywhere. So, actually that’s when I reached out to Josh Kaufman. Have you had him on?

Andrew: I have. We’re good friends. He taught a course on Mixergy. He did an interview here. He’s the guy who decided that he was going to get his own MBA online where he was just going read the books that he wanted to read, learn from them and blog about it.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: So, what was it about him that made you say, “I’m going to reach out to Josh and get some help?”

Tim: Well, I had found his list of books. I had been reading through that list. I had met him on one of my trips to New York. I just really liked him. He was doing business coaching at the time. So, I just hired him to be my business coach.

Andrew: It was just that you liked him and you read the books that he was recommending and you said, “This is a guy who can teach me.” Teach you what?

Tim: So, I have trouble with that–what’s that thing where you look at the past and then try to tell the story that makes sense? So, I don’t want to do that. I just knew I needed somebody to tell me what I was doing wrong. I went to school to be a programmer. I was trained to sit in a cubicle and churn out code. My dad and my father-in-law, they’re entrepreneurs but they run a very traditional sales-type business. So, I really had nobody in my life that was trying to run one of these new types of businesses. So, I had no idea what I was doing. I just needed somebody that could give me advice.

Andrew: Someone who was in the space.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: Over the years, people who were in the space actually gave you incredibly tremendously valuable advice. You mentioned your dad. Something really interesting about your dad is he was a Little Debbie distributor since the time that you were six years old. When I was a kid, and I was looking for, “What kind of business could I get into?” I remember reading in some newspaper about these guys who owned the distribution of packaged food to stores.

I used to think it was Frito-Lay that used to take their chips and put it in local stores, but it wasn’t. They would sell it to a distributor. A distributor who owned his own van would drive out to the local bodegas in New York and convince them to carry the chips and then put the chips on the shelves and then position them well. That’s what your dad did for Little Debbie, the snacks?

Tim: Yeah. And he started taking me to work with him when I was six. This is in like downtown, ghetto Atlanta. I don’t know what they are now. But at the time, they were second, I think, in murders every year. Where those murders happened, we were delivering Little Debbies at 5:00 in the morning.

Andrew: Was there salesmanship involved in it or was it just, “At this point, we’re delivering it. The right number of people are going to buy Little Debbie. Let’s just set it and repeat?”

Tim: Well, he had to go in. He had control of an area. So, it was his job to go into the stores and negotiate with them, like bring them in what price, where the rack would be.

Andrew: Did you get to watch him as he negotiated and said, “I think the Little Debbie cookies should go a little higher. Why are you letting this Hostess company take over? They’re not good.”

Tim: Yeah. But it was more like he would just get really pissed at them and argue them into it. And then they’d give it to him, but he was really good at like how to position it and everything. He knew what he was doing. Because of the pricing, they actually made more per item off of Little Debbies, especially at the volume that you can move them–I’m like selling Little Debbies now–because they’re cheaper than anything else. So, he basically would just like argue with them and get really pissy with them.

Andrew: You mean he’d walk in and go, “What the hell are you doing moving the Little Debbies down here? Don’t you understand you’d make more money from Little Debbie? Would you let the other guy boss you around? You’re smarter than that.” Is it that kind of salesmanship?

Tim: It wasn’t that abrasive. But he would get really frustrated with them and I watch them be like, “Fine, just leave me alone. Do whatever you want.” Sure enough, they’d leave them there because they were making more money off of it. He could show them on paper.

But at the same time, he was like really trustworthy. Most of the delivery guys, they would make them open up every box and they’d count everything. My dad, he’d just come in and give them the invoice and they would just let him go. I saw so many times where he could have cheated people and he didn’t. If he realized later that he had accidentally cheated somebody, he’d drive back and make it right.

Andrew: I see.

Tim: So, he was really hard with them, but always fair, always looking out for their best and always above board with money. I don’t know where he’s at now. But when I was like in high school and stuff, he was the number two Little Debbie distributor in the US. He was the only one in the top 100 that didn’t have somebody helping him full-time. He did it all by himself.

Andrew: Really?

Tim: Yeah. They had like managers flying in from all over the country to ride around with him to figure out how he was selling so many Little Debbies.

Andrew: Would it be funny if because of that there were Little Debbie distributors all over the country just arguing and yelling?

Tim: I’d like to see it.

Andrew: I would too. But it’s a really interesting business. If your dad is up for doing an interview here, I would love to have him come on here to talk about it. There was an article in Investor’s Business Daily, I think, that got my eyes open to it. You own the distributorship. It’s called a route, right? You own it and you get to pass it on and sell it.

Tim: With Little Debbie, you don’t own the distributorship. It’s a little different. But I think, what are the cookies? It’s like a woman’s name. I don’t know. They sell like oatmeal cookies and stuff.

Andrew: I can’t remember.

Tim: That route is. I don’t think Frito-Lay is. It’s changed a lot too, just like everything else.

Andrew: Okay. Alright. So, that’s the background that you had. It wasn’t an online background. It wasn’t a background in this kind of consulting work. That’s why you went to Josh. What’s one thing that Josh taught you that allowed you to build the next step of your life?

Tim: Well, the first thing is to systematize things as much as possible. When he first told me that, I thought, “I’m like a two-man shop. Why do I need systems?” He taught me about anytime you do something twice, you need to systematize it. Like your whole setup for getting somebody on your interview is completely systematized so you’re not sending eight emails and all this other stuff, those kinds of things.

Andrew: I’m sorry, go ahead and then I’ll follow-up. What were you going to say?

Tim: Yeah. He helped me make the decision about switching to working with authors full-time just by asking me a bunch of questions. Also, I feel like when I talk to new entrepreneurs, I tell them to just get somebody who’s not–Josh is super smart–but just get somebody that’s not dumb to talk to because it’s just like a therapist. It’s like you want a good therapist, but at least like half of the value is actually just talking to somebody about your problems.

So, with the business coach, as I’m saying everything out loud that’s just churning in my head and then getting one person to give me advice on my specific situation, you can read business books, you can listen to podcasts and those are all super helpful, but getting one person that knows what they’re talking about to give you advice is a huge win.

Andrew: I see. Okay. So, he helped you think that through and I can see that. You were talking about systemizing. What I wanted to know was with a two-man shop, can you give me an example of something that you systemized?

Tim: So, when we would launch a website, we’d inevitably forget something. We’d leave it hidden from search engines or we wouldn’t upload the pictures in the right place or whatever. So, we just sat down one day and made a list of every single thing you have to do to launch a website. And then every time we’d put a website up, we’d just go through that checklist. Sure enough, we stopped making mistakes.

And then one thing I do now is I use this service called YouCanBook.me. I just bought a URL that points to it. So, if somebody needs to meet with me, there are no more emails back and forth, “Well, can you meet Thursday at 2:00?” “No.” “What about Friday at 1:00?” “No.” “Okay, Monday.” You just send them a link and they sign up for whatever time works for them and it pops in my calendar.

Andrew: We use one of those too. It’s so freaking helpful.

Tim: We’re actually selling our house right now and we’re using it to setup house showings. Anything to either get a computer to do it for you, get somebody else to do it for you or just have a checklist so you do it the same way every time so you don’t forget something. Those things just make your life so much easier and it frees you up so you can actually use your focus on actual creative things.

Andrew: Can I tell you if anyone out there is going back and forth to schedule meetings more than once a month, you’re a dope. There’s software out there that will do it for free. There’s YouCanBook.me. There’s ScheduleOnce. There are five other pieces of software that will do it.

Tim: And then the first time you try to setup a meeting with four different people–the first time somebody reached out to me and three other people to setup one phone call, I’m like, “Here’s my calendar, you people figure it out.” And I didn’t get another email.

Andrew: It’s frustrating for everybody. It’s not productive. It’s one little thing that you can easily systematize. You can do it for so many others. I can see what you’re talking about. If you’re building a website, it almost seems like, “I’ve built websites for years. I can do it in my sleep. Why do I need to systemize it? Why do I need to document my process?” But like you said, because you know it, you inevitably forget things because you just are moving fast and moving by instinct.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: Alright. So, you decided to work with authors. You decided that you were going to do more the same kind of work, have it all structured. Ramit was one of the models. Dan Pink was one of your first clients. How did you get Dan Pink?

Tim: So, do you know Charlie Hoehn?

Andrew: I do. He was the director of everything or something for Tim Ferriss. I forget the actual title.

Tim: Well, I originally met him before he worked for Tim Ferriss, when we were both working for Ramit. He ended up writing this little eBook. You should totally have him on the show too. So, he wrote this little eBook called “Recession-Proof Graduate,” and now he’s turned it into a book. It outlined this really simple way to get business. He wrote it for graduates. I was not a graduate. It’s basically a step-by-step way to get new clients in a new industry. It’s a way to do free work, but in a very particular kind of way to show that you’re an expert and to turn it into client-based work.

So, I watched Dan Pink’s TED talk. I’m like, “This is a cool guy.” I read his book. Then I went to his website and I came up with like three things that were wrong with it and I sent him an email and said, “I’m a fan of yours. Here are three things. I’ll do them for free. The only payment I want is you’ll look at a proposal when we’re done.” I’m still working with him. That was like six years ago or something like that. It was literally just a cold email. I worked with Guy Kawasaki. I got him that way.

Andrew: I’m going to ask you about Guy Kawasaki in a moment. Go ahead, throw out some other names too.

Tim: I got Pamela Slim that way. I got Tim Sanders, I think, that way, Hugh Macleod that way–a lot of my big-name early clients. What was really cool is most of the time, you kind of have to ratchet. So, you’ve got to work with the D-listers and you kind of move that to the C-listers. I just went right to the top.

Andrew: That’s what’s impressive about you. Dan Pink is the bestselling author of books like, “Drive,” “To Sell is Human.” What was the book that he was promoting at the time?

Tim: It was right before “Drive” came out.

Andrew: Just before. I see. And “Drive” was his huge bestseller, right, the biggest hit?

Tim: That was the big one. I worked with him on drive, but it was too early for me to really do the launch. But I ran the launch on “To Sell is Human.” We debuted at number one, which was higher than drive.

Andrew: I didn’t realize that.

Tim: Yeah. It debuted at number one on Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Andrew: And that’s what you started doing with clients?

Tim: Yeah. Basically, my idea was, “Okay, if I can get these clients to hire me, they need help. But at the same time, I have all these ideas on how I think marketing works. But I have like three people paying attention to me. I can’t tell if it will work.” But when I got Dan Pink and we make a change, it makes a noticeable impact. So, working with all these authors, I just used them as ways to try out new things. That’s how I really was able to get in the trenches and learn what worked and what didn’t.

Andrew: How did you find the ideas that you were going to test on these big clients?

Tim: I don’t know, from the ether. I read a ton of books. I read a ton of blogs. I talk to people.

Andrew: So, you were just coming up with a bunch of ideas and you said, “Look, my way in is to give them free help,” or we’ll talk about some other ways that you connected to them. “That will get them to look at my proposal. Then once they look at my proposal, the thing that I’m offering them is great web services. I’ll create their websites. I’ll do the basic stuff that other people can do but because I’m focused on authors, I can do it in a way that’s more directly related to what they’re doing and I’ll bring experience form having worked with other authors.”

And then you said, “I will test some of my marketing ideas so I’m not just a web developer for them. I’m the guy that helps them become bestsellers and that’s much more valuable than just being a guy who can put them on WordPress.”

Tim: Yeah. Out:think now sells platforms. I think they start at like $8,500. You can hire somebody to build you a WordPress site for like $200. So, why would somebody pay so much money to us when you can get that? That’s because we know authors and we know author marketing.

I read this really great blog post–this was years and years ago–by Scott Adams. He was talking about how like, “One way to be successful is to be in the top,” I’m going to butcher what he actually said, but this is the idea, “The top like 0.1 percent in your field, the best in your field.” He’s like, “Or you can be pretty good at two kind of different things and put them together in interesting ways and you can be successful.”

So, I’m not the best developer, but I’m pretty good. And I’m not the best marketing mind in the world, but I’m pretty good. But because I could do both–and again, at the time, now I see more and more people that can do both because programming is becoming just a skill that more people know, but like at the time, nobody was doing that.

If you found a developer, their first question was, “What do you need?” When I talk to people, I would ask them what they needed and not in just a, “Well, what do you need?” It’s like, “Well, here’s what I saw. I was looking at your platform. I think you need to build your email list. That’s not front and center.”

Andrew: I see. You’re not asking them what they need. You’re telling them what they need. As a result, you’re bringing more value to somebody who’s less sure of what goes into a website.

Tim: Yeah. I can glue pipes together, but I’m not going to do my own plumbing. You hire somebody that knows where the pipes are supposed to go and how they’re supposed to be fit together because the actual work is not that complicated.

Andrew: Okay.

Tim: It’s the knowledge that’s actually helpful. So, the fact that you’re a good designer–great. Who cares? What can you do for somebody that gets them closer to their goals?

Andrew: Alright. Let me dig further into this. I want whoever is listening to us who wants to create a consulting business the way that you did to learn from your experience. So, it starts with getting top clients. You don’t want to start with the wannabe authors. You want to go to the top, the guys that are already successful. So, that means Dan Pink. You told us how you got him. Guy Kawasaki is another one. How did you get Guy Kawasaki?

Tim: It was the same thing. I’m blanking on what.

Andrew: It was something about a conference. He was speaking. This is the big SXSW conference that you went to?

Tim: That was Dan Ariely.

Andrew: Okay.

Tim: I met him–I’m trying to figure out what story you’re talking about.

Andrew: Don’t figure out what I have in my notes here. Just try to think about how you got your early clients here.

Tim: So, Dan Ariely, I did the same thing where I looked at his platform, I’m like, “Here are a bunch of issues that are wrong.” I had done my research ahead of time, so I knew he was speaking at SXSW. So, I said, “Hey, here are some things you could be doing differently. I’d love to just meet you at SXSW. Maybe we can talk about some things that you could be doing to make your platform better.” I met him at SXSW. He gave me the most interesting business card ever because it was a condom. I still have it. So, then he hired me.

Andrew: What’s the reason that his business card is a condom?

Tim: I think it was just to stand out from the crowd. I think I have it here. You want me to grab it?

Andrew: Yeah. Do it. And we’re talking about the author of “Predictably Irrational,” right?

Tim: Yeah, “Predictably Irrational,” “The Upside of Irrationality,” and another one about lying, “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty.”

Andrew: Yeah.

Tim: So, this was when “Predictably Irrational” was out. On the back, it has like blurbs for the book by different people. And then on the inside…

Andrew: A condom. An orange condom.

Tim: So, I’ve literally carried this around with me because it was just the most interesting business card I had ever gotten.

Andrew: I would think that Dan wouldn’t need a business card that helps him stand out, that people would really be eager to connect with him. But maybe that’s why people are so eager to connect with him, he’s spent a lot of time standing out.

Tim: Yeah. This was right around “Predictably Irrational.” So, he wasn’t the well-established success that he is now.

Andrew: Got it. So, that’s how you met him. Here’s another thing that you said. This is from my pre-interview notes. You said, “Hey, I know how to meet people at conferences. What you do is you go to the session, you watch the whole session and then you don’t wait until after and then you tweet them and you say, ‘I’d love to meet you for five minutes.'” That doesn’t seem like enough of a plan.

Tim: So, that’s like five percent of the plan. So, the first thing is when you’re going to a conference that people are going to be at that you want to meet, you do your freaking research like two months before the event and you find out who’s going to be there, who’s speaking, who’s going and who you want to connect with. And then you email them ahead of time to setup meetings. I would skip any kind of session to meet with somebody one-on-one.

I don’t thankfully have to do this anymore, but when I was in the hustle years, when I’d go to a conference, when my plane touched down, I had my entire day scheduled. I would like be splitting rooms with people and I would be the first one out of the room in the morning for a 7:00 a.m. coffee meeting with somebody and then I’d have a meeting set at 10:00 that night. And then I’d come back in at midnight and get up at 6:30 the next morning and head out. So, I set meetings ahead of time.

Then there’s always this group of people that you didn’t get to set meetings with or they didn’t respond to you or whatever. So, I would literally make a document. I would put a picture of them and their name under it and I would carry that with me and I’d kind of study it so I would recognize them. How I first met Guy Kawasaki is I recognized him. So, I stopped him in the hallway and talked to him.

So, if you are not able to set something up ahead of time and you want to meet a speaker, this is how I’ve done it. I actually just shared this online and a guy emailed me two weeks later and was like, “I just did this and it worked nine out of ten times.”

So, what you do is you go to whatever session they are and you go to the whole session and you listen and whatever. You do not go wait in line to talk to them after that session is over because you’re going to be one of 30 people. You’re just going to be a blur.

Andrew: And they have to hustle you through because there are so many other people there. Frankly, at the end of giving a presentation, my head is spinning. It’s hard to focus on what’s happening afterwards.

Tim: Yeah. And all you need is three minutes of focused time for your to follow-up later. You’re not trying to sell anything. You meet somebody, shake their hand, get to know them for five minutes, three minutes, you’ll establish enough of a connection you can follow-up on after the conference. So, what I do is after it’s over I leave. And then about like 30 minutes later–when you give a talk, what’s the first thing you do when you get by yourself?

Andrew: I don’t know. I take a breath and I check in to see how I did.

Tim: Yeah. And do you check Twitter and see what people are saying about it?

Andrew: I do, actually. Yeah. When I sat down at World Domination Summit, I had a moment while I was listening to the next presenter get introduced, I checked to see what was happening on Twitter.

Tim: That’s what most speakers do. So, you go on to Twitter and you say, “Hey, @AndrewWarner, loved your talk. Had to leave right after. Is there anywhere you’re going to be this afternoon or tomorrow? I’d love to come by and meet you for five minutes?” And they’ll say, “Sure, I’m going to be in the bloggers lounge this afternoon. Just come by.”

There were so many times I ended up getting five minutes. I ended up with one guy getting to talk to them for like an hour. It’s like you get these connections and they’ll remember you. So, even if you get five minutes and it’s a much more relaxed environment, they’re going to remember who you are. So, later when you want to follow-up, you have that connection.

Andrew: Okay. So, here’s what we’ve got. We got watch the presentation, tweet at them and ask them if you can meet up afterward. Email someone and give them some free advice and offer to do it for them for free if they’ll take a look at your proposal. And frankly, you don’t even have to say if. They will take a look at your proposal after you’ve given something for free. It’s basic reciprocation.

You also said that you do some research on people you’d like to meet and you walk around the conference with photos of them and notes. So, that’s what you did with Guy Kawasaki. Once you have that, how do you start a conversation that eventually leads to him entertaining the idea that he’s going to hire you?

Tim: Well, what I’ve found is in most of these environments, people are going to ask you what you do. So, I try to focus on in these meetings, all I want to do is get to know them and see if there’s any way I can help them. What’s funny is Guy Kawasaki, I did the free work and he actually never hired me to do anything after that, but he referred me a ton of work. It just wasn’t a good fit for us to work together, but he referred me a ton of work.

What’s great is you’re getting to help somebody. So, all you’re doing is trying to look for ways and ask them questions that you can be helpful. Then, once you’re helpful to them, you’re able to follow-up and say, “Hey, this is what I do. Is there anything we can keep doing together? Can I send you a proposal? Here’s how I can keep helping you.”

Andrew: Okay.

Tim: So, I would just start the conversation by telling them I’m a fan of theirs. Everyone loves to hear that. Make sure it’s true. Before I go to these conferences, I buy everybody that I want to meet, if I haven’t already read their latest book, I buy their latest book and I read it. If they don’t have a book, I go to their blog and I read the last six months of posts. I want to know–

Andrew: Are you a speed reader that you can read so much?

Tim: Actually, I thought I was and then my wife, who we always thought was slow at reading, we read the same book and I was like two thirds of the way through when she finished. So, I think I’m actually kind of slow.

Andrew: You know what I’ve found? I have to kind of be a speed reader for Mixergy. If I’m interviewing someone about their book, I have to get the book read fast. What I’ve discovered is we’re all kind of speed readers when it comes to Wikipedia. So, for example, if I was going to look up a country that I was flying into, I go to Wikipedia and I do a bunch of research by just scanning it and reading the parts that are important and continuing.

I wouldn’t read every part of it. I wouldn’t read about what their major export was necessarily or some random thing that someone decided to stick in there. I’d just read the parts that I need and absorb it. When it comes to books, we feel like we need to read every single word or else we are disqualifying ourselves from being able to say we read it. So, I could flip through a book, read the parts that are important and be sitting here ready to go.

Tim: Yeah. My whole thing is this. If you just do some work at something, you’re going to be in the top one percent of people that are like sitting around wishing things would happen. So, the example that we were talking about was SXSW. So, if I’ve got this ticket to SXSW, I’m going to end up spending $1,500 by the time the whole trip is over or whatever. I want my money back for that.

So, I’m not just going to go and sit in some sessions. Okay. I can watch stuff online. I can read books. Yeah. They’re nice. But I’m going to get my money’s worth. So, I want to meet these people. Well, everybody wants to meet them. So, how can you stand apart? Well, you can do some things to make sure that you’re not just a crowd of people that want to meet them and you do a little bit of research so when you’re talking to them, it shows you actually know what you’re talking about and you’re not just hoping they give you money because you seem nice.

Andrew: Okay. Let me continue with the story. There are two more things. There’s so much more, actually, that we have to cover. We still haven’t gotten to the product. The product happened soon after you launched your own book, the book that you have behind you right now. Over your shoulder we can see “Your First 1000 Copies.” That’s the book that you launched, right?

Tim: Uh-huh.

Andrew: You talk a little bit about your experience with Ramit. You talk about what you learned about building community. You then at some point decided, “I want to not just do a book. I also want to teach a course,” right?

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: And in figuring out how to teach a course, you did the same thing you told us you did when you figured out how to build your company. You found people who were especially smart, especially helpful. You contacted them and you asked them for advice. Why was Noah Kagan one of those people?

Tim: This is all on the record, right?

Andrew: It’s all on the record. He’ll be okay with anything you say. I promise.

Tim: Ramit recommended I talk to him, basically.

Andrew: Okay. Why did you say, “Is this on the record?” That’s not shocking enough. There’s something you’re holding back and if you hold back, you’re not going to be as interesting a guest.

Tim: Yeah. I can’t go all the way in. Yeah.

Andrew: I promise you you can go all the way.

Tim: I promise you I can’t.

Andrew: Put it in the Skype chat. Go ahead. I’m going to sit and wait. You can do it. I won’t say anything. I’ll just tell you if it’s okay. I promise. I’ve known Noah for about ten years.

Tim: No.

Andrew: Go on. I like that you’ve elevated your computer, by the way. The fact that you’re having a hard time typing means you’ve elevated your computer so people can look you in the eye.

Tim: I know. I’ve got my mic here so I can’t type. I switched keyboards recently, so I’m still learning to type on it.

Andrew: Is this Josh getting you to type on–what’s the keyboard that he’s into. Not Dvorak, it’s the other one.

Tim: Colemak.

Andrew: Colemak–the wacky layout that helps you increase your speed. Is it helping you? Not so far. But it will.

Tim: Yeah. It is. I’m getting faster.

Andrew: I heard Matt Mullenweg talk about how–I guess he’s talked about this for a long time–if you switch over to Dvorak, you’re going to get a much faster typing speed. And then he says there’s one other one that’s even faster, which is Colemak. For some reason, he hasn’t switched to Colemak. I see you typing here on Skype. This is going to be so interesting. I wonder what it is.

Tim: It’s not horrible. But it’s just not…

Andrew: Did you sleep with Noah? Is that how you decided? Is that inappropriate for me to say?

Tim: I would tell you that.

Andrew: That’s not such a big deal. But there’s nothing to learn from that either. So, basically you said, “Look, I need to get some help from somebody. Noah is the guy.” But what is it about Noah? He didn’t create courses at that point.

Tim: So, I had known Noah for a while. I hadn’t talked to him in a while. But this was AppSumo. If somebody knows how to build an email list, it’s him. So, I had been building my email list, but I really wanted to kind of go faster. So, I called Noah and said, “How can I build my list faster?” This is where you know you’re asking the right person for advice when they tell you you’re asking the wrong question.

Andrew: Interesting. Okay.

Tim: So, I think it was the day before Thanksgiving and I’m at the grocery store. I think he was at the grocery store with his dad. So, we’re talking. I’m in the chip aisle. I’m just like, “Hey, I’m really struggling. I want to build my list faster.” He’s like, “Why do you want to build your list?” I’m like, “I want to sell them stuff.” He’s like, “What do you want to sell them?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” He’s like, “Why do you think they want to buy anything from you?” I’m like, “I don’t know.”

He’s like, “Don’t build your list if you don’t have anything to sell and you don’t know if they want to buy anything from you.” He’s like, “So, here’s what you do. You come up with a product, you email them and say, ‘Look, I’ve got ten spots available. They’re X-amount of dollars. It’s going to be two times X when it finally comes out. But you can get one of the ten spots for beta.'”

So, I wrote one 1,000-word email. I sent it out to my list. So, since that was Thanksgiving, I waited until the following Monday. So, I wrote the email. I’m nervous. I’ve never really sold a product to my list before. My list was at like 2,000 at the time or something like that. I’m like, “They’re not going to buy it.” So, just so I could get out of my head, I hit send on the email and I went to work out.

So, I went to the gym. I didn’t put a cap on the shopping cart. I didn’t think I’d sell ten. At the end, an hour later when I was done working out, I checked my phone and I had sold 17. I was like, “Oh no!” I wanted to only sell ten. I thought I wanted to stick to that. So, I shut it down. I sold 17. I’m like, “I think I’ve got something here.” Noah is like, “Well, build the product and see if you can sell it now.”

Andrew: That’s why Noah wanted you to do it. Noah has said this for a long time. If you couldn’t even get a single order, if you only got three orders, it’s not worth building this thing out because it’s not what people want. Cut your losses, don’t waste time creating it and think you’re going to sell it.

Now that you have validation, you can focus on the rest of the business because you had something that worked. If you only have three, people worry about, “What happens if I get three and that means I’m a failure?” I think fine, you’re a failure to only three people. It’s not a big failure, right? Just email them back and say, “I’m not doing this.”

Tim: Refund their money.

Andrew: Yeah.

Tim: And then try something new. I was talking to somebody. A friend of theirs launched a product. It went horribly. They stopped it, redid the marketing on it to position it differently, relaunched a few weeks later and then sold a ton of them.

Andrew: Right. You know what? If you do refund their money–frankly, chances are good that you won’t have to–but if you do have to, refund their money and here’s a good move, say, “But I still care about you. I know you need some help. Here’s a link to my calendar. Schedule some time for me and I’ll give you free consultation.”

The reason you want to do free consultation is to help them because you really care about them, but also, it helps you understand why did they buy? What did these people see that others didn’t that you could then amplify in your future marketing? Maybe you didn’t talk about enough. Maybe you didn’t talk about it all and they understood something that you were going to sell that you should be explaining to other people. Noah is absolutely right.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: Let me just say one other thing. Anyone else who’s doing this should do this. But also, what you wrote in the Skype chat, I’m going to say you should say that publicly. I don’t think anyone is going to be hurt by that. One of the reasons why I say it is I think that if we’re on camera, if we’re on mic and we’re not being fully open, people can see that. When I express something like an argument I had with my wife or an insecurity I have, people don’t feel disconnected. They relate more to it.

I want you to feel like you can talk like that. Ramit talks like that. Noah talks like that. The people you admire talk like that. The only exception to that example is Tim Ferris. I’ve never seen him really be especially open like that. But on Mixergy he was. I asked him about his insecurities in a Mixergy 1000 interview, he let it rip. You’ve got to be able to let it rip.

Tim: Well, what I say is I will share anything about myself, but I don’t want to share something about somebody I know and get to see behind the scenes on that would put any kind of bad light on anybody else.

Andrew: Alright. Fair enough. I don’t think anyone would consider it a bad light. It’s such an insignificant thing or else I wouldn’t be harping on it. No one is missing anything out.

Tim: It’s a personal thing. I will never say anything remotely bad about anybody publicly. It’s a rule on social media too for me. I never put any negativity, even if it’s like, “I hate my sandwich for lunch.” No negativity.

Andrew: Why? Why won’t you go negative?

Tim: One, there’s plenty out there. I don’t need to add to it. Two, I have so much to be thankful for. Why am I going to put negativity out into the world? If I have something negative to say about somebody, I need to have a conversation with them first.

Andrew: Instead of just going half-cocked online.

Tim: Yeah. And think about it. There’s just too much out there. If we hung out, you’d hear me say negative things. But I really try to be careful about it. I’ll talk negatively about myself, but not about other people. You ever do anything to me, we’re the only ones that will ever know that.

Andrew: I’m going to tell you, I’m going to give you a blanket, open invitation, that if you see anything negative about me, I want you to say it. Don’t even hold back.

Tim: I’ll say it to you.

Andrew: No, say it publicly. I’ll tell you why. We did this post where we took a bunch of Y Combinator interviews, put it into one package that we were going to email people. If they wanted it, they just had to go to this landing page we created, add their email address and every day they’d get a new interview. We thought this made total sense.

Some guy on Hacker News started ripping into this, “These guys are holding back. Why aren’t they opening it all up all at once? Why do I have to even give my email address?” If he had to email me personally and say, “Andrew, here’s how I’m feeling,” chances are it’s an extra barrier. He wouldn’t have done it. Maybe he would have felt too embarrassed to do it. Maybe he had other things going on. But the comment box was right there on Hacker News and he could go and start ripping into me.

You know what? His feedback was actually logical. I went back and I looked at the page and I said, “Why is he upset by that?” I said, “Oh, the language on the page seems to say that you get it all at once. The language on the page isn’t explaining why we want to give you one at a time so that you have enough time to absorb it and listen.” We didn’t explain why we’re doing it via email because there’s no other format that works just as well. We considered podcasting. Some of it can go back into the next landing page we create and make it better. Some of it is just too much to include and let him be pissed for it and we can accept it.

But none of the feedback would have made it to me if I said, “Tell you what, the only way you can give me feedback is if you give it to me directly.” It’s just not the way I want it. Now, I’m not telling you not to do it this way, I’m telling you why I want the open feedback.

Tim: I get that. But you go to Hacker News and 99.999 percent of the negativity on there is just worthless and doesn’t help anybody except the angry public.

Andrew: So, toughen up. I’m not saying you should toughen up. I’m saying everyone else who’s reading it should toughen up. We’re all becoming too big babies. We’re calling people trolls before we even analyze what they’re saying. Yes, there’s some hostility in the way they’re saying it. But you know what? If there’s any bit of value, I’m so grateful to somebody for doing it.

How many people will go past a store and not even walk into it and the store owner doesn’t know why he’s not getting any business? We’re so lucky online that people will walk through our store, the virtual store, and yell insults at us about why it’s not working so we can at least improve it, right? I’ve seen coffee shops and restaurants on Valencia Street in Santa Monica shut down and nobody understood why. Well, I’m glad that people would tell me. I don’t call them trolls. I call them some of my best fans.

If you look in my comments, I sometimes say, “I love you.” And I think, “Does that come across as disingenuous that I’m saying to some stranger that I love you? Does it sound like I’m being too nice?” Then I realize, no screw it. There’s a real love here for someone who’s willing to sit down and type into a box what they’re angry about so that I can then go and use it. Thank you for giving me that feedback.

Alright. I’ve got to go on here because we only have a few more minutes and I haven’t even gotten to enough substance. Let’s go rapid fire here. First, why? Why did you decide that you were going to do a course when you had this consulting business that was already working?

Tim: A couple of different reasons. One is I was getting kind of burnt out on saying the same thing over and over and over to clients. I have my big name clients that people know me about, but I would have new clients all the time. And then the other is like because we were becoming more and more successful, we kept having to raise our prices, which means these small time authors, who I had just as much love for, there was no way they could hire us.

Andrew: What about this? Did you also say, “You know what? I see a lot of people doing courses. I’m helping some of my authors create courses. There’s money here. I’m going to create my own course too.”

Tim: Yeah. There was this thing of like yeah, I see other people doing this and I want to know how to do it and I want to make some money on this stuff and see if it’s actually possible. So, it’s nothing earth-shattering. But that was it.

Andrew: Okay. You guys did Charles Duhigg’s book too, his website. I love that guy. That guy’s so good. Now I’m noticing your name on the bottom of a lot of authors’ websites. I never looked at it before because I was just looking at the book. Alright. So, you get your first 17 customers. How did you know what to charge them?

Tim: Noah just pulled a number. He’s like, “Do like $250.” I’m like, “Okay.” So, I just put “$250 on it.”

Andrew: Alright. So, $250 gets you 17. That’s not a business on its own. You wouldn’t be on Mixergy if that’s all you did. What’s the next step that allowed you to get–sorry, I’m not a very nice person, apparently, I don’t allow anyone in here. But you did grow it way bigger than that. What’s the next thing that you did that allowed you to get even more customers?

Tim: Well, the next thing I did, actually, was I sold like 50 seats to it to a publisher. So, Wiley Publishing, a division of Wiley, wanted to let all of their authors into it. So, they bought 50 seats.

Andrew: How did they know?

Tim: I was talking to them. I talk to publishers all the time through my consulting. So, I told them about this course. He was just saying, “Oh, all my authors have access to this.” I was like, “Well, I’m working on this thing. I’m almost done with it. We can do this.” So, that was good because I got a check for 50 spots.

Andrew: How much? How much did you sell it to them for?

Tim: I think it was like $350 apiece.

Andrew: Whoa. That’s fantastic. Publishers don’t shell out money a lot.

Tim: Yeah. Every other publisher told me no. So, they were kind of the only ones that said yes. So, then I did my first launch like to my list and everything. So, it was Thanksgiving. So, November, I sold those seats in late December. And then I did the first launch of the product in March.

Andrew: Did you build your mailing list before the first launch of the product?

Tim: Yeah. When I got to the first launch, I had gone from 2,500, I think, around November, to about 4,500 at large.

Andrew: How did you grow your list by another 2,000 people?

Tim: The best thing that I found for growing lists is to do webinars where I put up a page, I do the webinar and somebody else promotes the webinar and then all those people end up on my email list.

Andrew: And then what do they get for promoting your webinar and helping you grow your mailing list?

Tim: Well, the first few I did–well, most of the ones I do, we just do it because they’re friends. I actually don’t promote anything on the webinar.

Andrew: Even if you’re not promoting, why would someone want to do it? You and I are now friends. I’d like to help you out. But I wouldn’t email my audience about a webinar unless there was a reason for it. What’s the reason?

Tim: Well, one of the sites, all he did was talk about writing. He didn’t talk anything about marketing. But he was always getting questions about how to do book marketing. So, I said, “Look, I’ll just do a free hour training for anybody that wants to sign up and you won’t have to do anything. Just send out an email to your list, put it on your blog.” Then he gets a lot of great feedback that, “Oh, this training was so great.”

Andrew: And you get another group of people on your mailing list. What else helped you out beyond the webinars?

Tim: So, I didn’t do this in that time frame, but one thing I did last year I came up with this Hacking Amazon course. It’s like how to setup your Amazon page. I just put it out there for free. It’s an email drip campaign. But I tried to integrate sharing in it as much as possible. So, that was like four or five months ago. It’s still just steadily bringing in more people. One of the things I want to do more of–this is the dream, right? Set things up and they just run. I want to build more assets. If I can build one thing that gets me 30 new subscribers a week and then build another thing that gets me 30 new subscribers a week–

Andrew: What are some of those things you can put online that you know on a consistent basis will bring in more and more subscribers?

Tim: The things that work the best are extremely specific advice. So, like the Hacking Amazon was perfect because it was like everybody in the author space wants to know how to setup their Amazon page. How do you use keywords, all this kind of stuff that’s all kind of out there but it’s hard to find it all in one place. So, I just brought it all together. I did another one called conquering fear. While it still brings in some people, it’s not nearly as popular because it’s more of kind of a soft topic.

Andrew: This is a “How to Hack the Amazon.com Bestseller List?”

Tim: No. That’s a post I did, I think.

Andrew: Oh, and at the top of it you have a button that says, “Click here to access Hacking Amazon.” I’m going to click on that and takes me to a free course, “Hacking Amazon: Learn the Secrets Behind Making Your Book an Amazon Bestseller.” There’s some information here about what’s in the course, including how to design a stellar book page, how to launch your book with 25-plus reviews or more reviews, how to get many of your one-start reviews removed. Wow, I can see people wanting to sign up. So, they click access now. I see you’ve got a LeadPages.net system here to collect email addresses. Do you drip the information out via email?

Tim: Yeah. It’s every two days for two weeks.

Andrew: And then after that they’re on your main mailing list and you have the ability to tell them about whatever future course you have. So, all that you did got you to only–I think that’s okay for me to say–only 8,000-9,000 people on your mailing list.

Tim: Right now at I’m at like 10,131.

Andrew: And then you started selling your course to them. The course was what format?

Tim: It’s an online video course with modules, pretty typical-type online course. The one thing I want to mention here–it was funny because again, I was bugging Noah a few weeks ago. We were talking and I was like, “I need to build my list bigger.” He’s like, “No, you don’t.” What’s so great about my list–and actually, I’ve done a couple of promotions for people and they said my list is generating more conversions or whatever than lists that are three and four and five times my size.

It’s because I have a very specific list. If you are not interested in book marketing, you will unsubscribe because it will be very boring to you. But if you’re interested in book marketing, I’m going to have some of the best stuff you’ve ever read. So, it’s a small list. But I have a much higher overall conversion rate than most people do with their list.

Andrew: I can see that.

Tim: So, being very specific, very niche is really helpful. Even I forget that sometimes and have to be reminded. But it makes life easier on a lot of different levels.

Andrew: So, what you did was you took a lot of what you learned on your own by doing for your clients and you created a course where you teach that to other people. You went to your mailing list. You started selling. How much revenue did you make from what you had at the time you sold the course, 9,000 people on the list at the time?

Tim: So, the first time I launched it to my list, I had 4,500. I really flubbed the launch. It’s embarrassing.

Andrew: Good. Tell me.

Tim: So, here’s an example. A week after, I was talking to some people on Facebook that are on my list. I mentioned the course. They’re like, “Oh, we didn’t know that you had anything for sale.” I’m like, “Okay.” So, people that I know are fans of mine, that I know are on my email list didn’t even know I had something for sale. That’s a problem.

Andrew: Okay.

Tim: Basically, I tried to do a webinar launch and then I only promoted it to people that had signed up for the webinar, which is always going to be a lower number of people. Then I didn’t even promote that well. I only left it open for like two and a half days. So, I had people who were interested but they were on vacation or whatever.

Andrew: So, you only opened it up for two and a half days. That was a problem. You only promoted to people who watched your webinar as opposed to your whole mailing list. That was a problem because you didn’t want to bombard people who didn’t express interest. What’s one other mistake that you made?

Tim: So, copywriting is hard. So, I had been working on it for a long time. But I tend to, when I get scared about writing copy, I tend to try to be somebody else. So, I was like, “I’m going to write like Ramit.” Nobody can write like Ramit. Anybody who tries, they just come off like an asshole. So, my copy was just horrible. I had this whole voice I had been building up, emailing people.

Andrew: Suddenly you changed it because you wanted to have a Ramit voice.

Tim: It was just a disaster.

Andrew: So, how much money did you make with that first launch?

Tim: I think like $30,000 on that one.

Andrew: Dude, for a flub, that was fantastic. Let me have a little bit of a comparison. How much was the consulting business, the one where you built sites and helped authors promote? How much revenue was that doing a year?

Tim: $250,000.

Andrew: And how many employees full-time?

Tim: Two.

Andrew: Two. Okay.

Tim: We just added one, but now I don’t own it anymore.

Andrew: Okay. So, basically it was roughly break even, it seems like, right?

Tim: No. I did okay. I brought home most of the money.

Andrew: Oh, really. So, the majority of the $250,000 went to your pocket, was profit.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: Alright. So, I can see how $30,000 wouldn’t seem like an outrageous success. But it seems to me like that’s a hell of a good first launch. That’s fantastic. I was wondering why you weren’t more excited.

Tim: Well, I don’t know I wasn’t. So, Andrew, around this same time last year, I was dealing with a lot of other like personal stuff.

Andrew: What? Now we’re talking about yourself. We’re not talking about Ramit or Noah. You can tell me.

Tim: So, one of the big things that I struggle with is I set a goal and when I’m about ten yards from that goal, I just move it further away.

Andrew: “Like that goal doesn’t even matter. I’m a loser for having only hit that goal and not this other one that’s ten yards away.”

Tim: Right. So, when I did the “To Sell Is Human” launch and we debuted at number one, I was mostly just depressed about it because I was signed on to help the Heath Brothers launch their book and I was just concerned that I wasn’t going to be able to do it twice. And then I launched their book and it only debuted at number two. So, I was, once again, all upset about it.

Andrew: I see. So, why is that a problem? Doesn’t it drive you and get you to produce more if you keep thinking, “I’m not good enough” and you keep working harder? Isn’t that better?

Tim: Well, do you want to produce more or do you want to enjoy your life?

Andrew: I want to produce more. I have to say it. I’ll enjoy later on when I look back.

Tim: Yeah. So, that’s not good enough for me.

Andrew: I see. You want both. You want to produce more and be happy.

Tim: I would rather be happy than produce more.

Andrew: I can’t understand that.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: If I want to be happy, I could sit–I used to live right on the beach in Venice Beach. I used to see these people selling crap on the street. They were so happy. They would sit. I remember one guy was just taking a nap in the middle of the day in his chair. I’d love to be selling something and not be so obsessed with hitting all my numbers that I could fall asleep in the middle of the day. That guy is really happy. Then I realize, “I don’t want to be him.”

Tim: You know what I was doing at 9:30 this morning?

Andrew: What?

Tim: Homeschooling my kids.

Andrew: I see. So, you’re thinking, “You know what? I want to have a full life where I take care of my kids and at the same time I’m happy and I love my work.” To me that sounds like hippie thinking. I can’t get to that point.

Tim: Well, when nothing is ever good enough, you never enjoy anything. So, I did this launch. I told people what I made on it. They were like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” I’m like, “It sucks.” And then I’m like, “Here I am getting what I’ve been wanting, which is a product business,” and yeah, it’s not paying all my bills yet. Most people come out with a product and make like $12 their first time.

Andrew: Right. They’re happy they made their first dollar.

Tim: So, here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve changed a lot over the last year. I was already kind of in the midst of that then. I used to have this fear that if I didn’t put this enormous pressure on myself, I just wouldn’t work. When I wasn’t 22, I wasn’t working. I was playing “World of Warcraft” or whatever. What I found is that now that I’ve released myself of all of that pressure, I work just as hard. I get just as much done. But I actually enjoy it. I end up doing things because I want to do them, not because of this kind of like, “This is what I should be doing with my life.”

Andrew: Now you’re speaking something that I can relate to. I want to be happy as I work, not because happiness is the end result, even though Aristotle would say it is. It’s because when I’m happier about it and I’m feeling more confident, I do produce better. You can see that today on this conversation, I’m a happy guy. I’m excited about what we’re getting out there. I’m confident about my abilities as an interviewer.

Because I’m confident doesn’t mean I’m leaning back. I don’t think I’ve ever touched the back of this seat here. It’s not because I’m happy and confident here that I’m resting on my laurels. I’m confident I’m pushing myself further and I’m pushing you further and I’m trusting when having confidence, the interview will be good. I can see that my productivity is better and the audience can sense it in everything from the way I talk to the way I correct a mistake instead of getting sucked into thinking I suck because of the mistake. That’s why I want to feel the way that you do.

So, I’m not putting down the way you’re feeling it. I’m coming to the same conclusion, but from a more despicable point of view. I’m willing to sacrifice my happiness, but I’m going to be happy because that’s the only way to really get what I want.

Tim: I want to decide that if I stop today, I’ve done enough. I’ve still got more I’d like to do and I’m going to keep working, but if I stop today, I’ve done enough. What I’ve found is having that viewpoint frees me up. Again, I used to do all of these things because I felt like I should from all these kind of outside–what I thought people thought of me or what I saw of things or what I saw other people doing and I should have their life and not my life and all that kind of stuff.

Now everything I do–it’s like I was telling my wife the other day. I’m like, “It’s really weird because I get up and all day I just work on things that I enjoy working on. It’s not this constant pressure to do things because I feel like this is the way it should be done or this is what success looks like.”

Andrew: Were you a little nervous before this interview started?

Tim: Oh yeah. I was nervous. Yeah.

Andrew: Now I’m sensing that you’re a whole other person than the person before we started. Before we started, I actually was thinking, “Maybe he doesn’t even want to do this interview.”

Tim: Oh, no.

Andrew: I’m glad that I didn’t get into that frame of mind. Now I see what it is. It’s because you probably were feeling a little unsure of where I was going to take it, what I was going to ask you, where I would hit you.

Tim: I’ve been listening. I remember like mowing my grass five or six years ago listening to your stuff. This is a big deal for me. So, I was excited, but I was nervous. I was like, “Keep the kids quiet.” They’re upstairs.

Andrew: They should be as loud as they want to be. I think that adds more realism to the interview. We are going over. You can see I’m obviously enjoying this conversation. But let’s go into the next one. Peter Thiel says don’t spend too much time–in fact, I think he says don’t spend any time thinking about and overanalyzing your failures because there are too many reasons why something didn’t work out. Spend more time thinking about what you want, which is success. In your case, what you wanted was to have a more successful launch. So, launch number two, how much revenue did it do and what did we learn from that that was successful?

Tim: So, what I did is I took my first launch to two different people that do successful launches and I said, “What did I do wrong?” And they pointed out a couple of things that I did wrong. So, I did another launch. I doubled that revenue with my next launch.

Andrew: Okay. So, now you’re doing $60,000.

Tim: Yeah. I did $60,000 and my list had grown to about 6,000. So, it was a lot more.

Andrew: Smarter launch, bigger group of people. What’s the one thing that you did especially well beyond going and asking people who had done launches before? What’s one thing we can take away from that launch?

Tim: So, the biggest thing that was different is it’s a very tactical thing, but just put lots of bonuses in. Do you know Danny Iny? Do you know him? The advice he gave me is everybody wants your product. He’s like, “If it’s a decent product and they’re on your email list, they want it. If you gave it to them, they’d take it.” He’s like, “But they justify it with the bonuses.”

So, I took that back and I asked–I still was in contact with all my beta people–I asked one of them. He’s like my success story. He’s taken everything I’ve done. He’s gone from like 1,500 subscribers to 7,000. He got a new book deal based on a bunch of the marketing he’s doing, like my success story.

I was like, “What’s the one thing you remember?” Because now it’s been eight months since he went through. “What’s the one thing that stands out to you?” He’s like, “Man, you gave me that copy for my auto-responders.” He’s like, “That was really helpful.” I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Come on. Of all the stuff I taught you in that course. And I know all the stuff you’ve done, all the systems, the website you built, all this stuff.” He’s like, “Yeah, but I kept trying to write those things and I didn’t know, so I just copied and pasted what you gave me and switched out my name.

I’m like, “Oh…” And then I started thinking through the courses I’ve bought. It’s like I wanted the course but they’re like, “Hey, you’re going to get my checklist,” or, “Hey, you’re going to get my step-by-step list,” or, “I’m going to show you my blueprint.” And I’m like, “That does trigger sales.”

So, it was the same course, same course, I just took everything that was already in it that was not video and I made it a bonus. So, I’m like, “I’ll give you my checklist for this, my copy for this, my spreadsheet I use for outreach. It’s all in there.” That is what I think impacted the sales the most. And then I wrote the copy in my own voice, which I think made a difference. But the bonuses, I think, made the biggest difference.

Andrew: Overall in the first year, how much money did you make with the course?

Tim: $150,000.

Andrew: $150,000. That’s impressive as hell.

Tim: Yeah. And I’m on track to beat that this year too.

Andrew: That’s within a year. Why did you sell the business? Why didn’t you continue with Out:think as you were doing this?

Tim: You know, what hit a nerve finally–this was early that November that I asked Noah for advice–I had a day that I had nine phone calls. Nine phone calls. I will never do anything creative in my life ever again if I’m on the phone that much. That’s because I’m running a client business. A client business means you’re talking to current clients and you’re talking to future clients. That’s what a client business is.

And then people are hiring me to coach them. I just don’t care. I’m on the phone with them and I feel like, “If I have to say this again, I’m going to shoot myself and you.” It’s like I was just really getting burnt out on the client thing. And then that has just a snowball effect, where then like everything about it starts to bug you.

And then as I started this product side of the business, I started turning over more and more of the day-to-day responsibilities to Joseph, the guy that worked with me the longest. Every time I did that, I was so excited. Every time I gave him something new, I was so excited. He took it and he did it better. So, he basically ran the business for ten months. After about six months or five months or something, he sat me down and just asked me to take it over. It was perfect timing because I’m moving. I’m moving to Nashville.

So, it’s like everything just kind of lined up. I was kind of getting tired of the client business. He is going to take it and do better things with it because he actually cares about it now. So, it was like I could let this thing die or I could sell it to somebody that’s going to do amazing things with it.

Andrew: I can see that the business is in capable hands. How much did you sell it to him for?

Tim: I’m not saying that.

Andrew: It’s an earn-out, though, right? That’s the way these deals tend to work.

Tim: Yeah. It’s like he has like a mortgage now.

Andrew: Alright. Here’s the thing. Let me ask anyone who’s listening to us–I’m about to say what website people should go to–it’s TimGrahl.com. So, I’m not going to say how to spell it for a second. Whoever is listening to us should just, in their minds, think about how to spell TimGrahl.com. Just think about it.

Tim: Yeah. It’s brutal.

Andrew: That’s a problem. Here’s how to spell it: TimGrahl.com. Did you guys get it right? TimGrahl.com. I think that you only have it on your personal domain because you’re just getting started with this thing on your own, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: If I go to this, here’s what I can see–first of all, the only reason that I think everyone should go check this out even if they’re not authors is I really like your layout. You think through what you want the number one goal that you have for your reader and you make it very clear. If I just pull back–let me see… Can I do this? I’m right over here. I can see instantly what you want me to do and I can see instantly what you’re about and where I can go and hunt down more information.

It’s really a well-designed website. If I read more carefully it says, “I’ll show you how to sell more books.” Yeah. Great. It’s a really well done site. Am I wrong that you’re thinking of changing the domain?

Tim: Yeah. I’ve been playing around with it. I had to pick something because I didn’t own the other website anymore. So, I just threw it up on my name.

Andrew: I think it makes 100 percent sense to do it. I’d suggest not keeping it on your name. Your last name is a little tough for people to talk about and spell and you might eventually want to outgrow yourself in this business too.

Tim: Well, what do you think I should call it? I’m thinking of Mixergy. That’s a really cool name.

Andrew: Yeah. Do it without the Y, MixerG. A lot of people seem to type in MixerG.com. I think actually something that doesn’t button hole you. So, I wouldn’t even do like SellALotofBooks.com or anything that forced you to just do one topic. I can see that there are lots of different topics that could be spun off of this. I can see that it can potentially be about more than just Tim. What do you think?

Tim: Yeah. I’m in this space where for the first time, I can do whatever I want. I’ve been doing Out:think for so long. I feel like a dog that’s been cooped up in a New York apartment and he’s like taken to a farm and he’s like, “I can do anything.” But for now, this is what I’m doing. Really, I’m just enjoying the fact that like I get up and all day I work on it. I did a blog post. Last Monday, all I did all day was this one blog post. And that was a good day. So, yeah, I’m probably going to keep changing and shifting. But I’m not too worried about it.

Andrew: Yeah. I know what you mean. I had that same feeling when I decided that I was just going to focus on interviews and I could do anything that I want and I felt great.

Tim: Yeah.

Andrew: Alright. Tim, thank you so much for being here on Mixergy. Congratulations on all your success. I think we covered a lot here in this interview. If anyone got anything of value, they should go to your website and hunt down how you do this in more detail and frankly, they should find a way. Here. It’s easy. Just hit the contact link and do what I always do. Just say thank you. If you get anything of value online, you should go to the author, you should go to the person who you got the value from and just say, “Thank you.” It’s a good introduction to a relationship.

Number two, if you think I’m not too much of a jerk, or maybe you identify with my desire to be more successful than happy and with my interview style and you want more of it, you should know that every single new interview is available for free in whatever podcast program you like.

If you’re one of these guys that like the built-in Apple podcast player in your iPhone, first of all, go check the App Store, there are better apps. But if you like it, you can still search for Mixergy.com. You can subscribe and get Mixergy. If you’re an Android person, love you too. I think DC Catcher is a great app for that or whatever app you like. Type in Mixergy. Subscribe. You will get every single new interview that I come up with directly on your phone like magic, except not really.

Thank you so much, Tim, for doing this interview. Thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Bye everyone.

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