The past few months have been an absolute whirlwind. It’s been one of the craziest, fun, and exhausting times of my life, but in the end, it will all be worth it. Today, I’m sharing some of the lessons, highlights, and lowlights from my three-month book tour.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
The Untold Stories from Turn Your Passions Into Profits (Behind The Scenes Peek at My Book)
Ten Resolutions for Affiliate Marketers and Affiliate Managers
2023 Affiliate Marketing Predictions
Creating Your Ideal Customer Avatar: How to Get Crystal Clear on Your Audience Part 2
How to Get Crystal Clear on Your Audience Part One
The Proven Path for Building a Rewarding Online Business
Special Episode: Highlights from My Whirlwind Book Tour
The past few months have been an absolute whirlwind.
It’s been one of the craziest, fun, most exhausting times of my life.
But in the end, it will all be worth it.
Today, I’m sharing some of the lessons, the highlights and lowlights from my nearly three month book tour.
So welcome to this very special episode.
I wanted to do an interesting episode, something that’s a little bit different.
And because it’s different, I didn’t want to, quote, unquote, take up one of the precious 52 spots that we have for my regular podcast episodes throughout the year.
So because of what this is, I just felt like the best way to do this was to do a special episode, kind of one between episodes here before my book launch.
We’re just a few days away from my book actually launching.
In fact, by the time this goes live, the book will be two days away from shipping, two or three days away from shipping, and it will be in people’s hands in three or four days.
I know for me, thankfully, when I order from Amazon, at least I get them.
If I order early enough in the day, I get it same day. Usually I get it next day, next morning, and that just blows me away.
It’s just insane to think about how fast things get around now it’s crazy.
But I thought it would be fun to share some of the highlights from the past three months.
I’ve been on a almost 90 day book tour.
I think it’s 87 days officially from start to finish.
Thankfully, it was all virtual.
If I’d had to do, you know, like, what we did even just 10-15 years ago, 15 years ago especially, but even 10 years ago, it was mostly travel.
I mean, that would have done your killed me. I couldn’t have done that.
I did more than 125 interviews in less than 90 days. So many days.
Here we are running a growing business.
Just since I started the book tour, we’ve hired two new people.
Two or three? Two.
We’ve hired two new people since I started the book tour, two new full time affiliate managers.
Since we set the date about a year ago, we’ve brought on five team members, I think five or six.
So growing company, things are crazy.
We’ve added tons of new clients that we’re excited about, and I’ll be talking a lot about those in the next few months.
So much going on in our business.
And then to add on this book tour and so I’ve got busy days, and then we’re adding on two, three, sometimes even five interviews in a single day.
Those days are crazy because basically from noon till five, I’m unavailable.
And can I tell you how many times I’ve had to apologize to our team?
It’s just been crazy again.
Running our business as normal, hiring people, growing our agency, growing our company, growing profits to new records, leading our team countless other promotions and webinars as normal.
Even took a week vacation with my wife for our anniversary and was still able to take a lot of time off over the Christmas holiday as we do as a company.
We shut down this year from December 23 through January 3.
So almost two weeks there.
I wasn’t able to take that whole time off, but I was able to only work about 12 hours in that entire stretch.
Coach soccer, did all those things, all while doing this book launch.
And here we are just a few days from the release.
So I thought it’d be fun to share some of the lessons I learned as well as some of the highlights and even some of the lowlights.
And yeah, do all that.
So before we jump in, reminder, Turn Your Passions Into Profits.
You can get the book plus nearly $1,000 in exclusive bonuses.
passionsintoprofitsbook.com We will put that in the show notes.
I’m going to share some clips from some different interviews I did, just different people that my team found were really some good highlights and some of my thoughts on this whole process.
So we’re going to cut right in.
I’m going to jump to some of the first few clips and then periodically here, I’ll share some of my thoughts and just some of the different lessons that I learned and all that fun stuff.
So as we jump in here we go.
I’m going to jump in.
I got a clip here.
I just thought this was so fun.
My team found this one.
A quick clip from my friend John Nemo.
John Nemo: It’s Matt McWilliam, ladies, and gentlemen, The Affiliate Guy.
He is probably the single most accomplished and knowledgeable guy about affiliate marketing, but that’s not even really what we’re here to talk about today.
You’ve got a new book that’s fantastic and kind of perfect for our audience of entrepreneurs and coaches and consultants and business owners because your new book is called Turn Your Passions into Profits.
So welcome back to Nemo Radio, my friend.
Matt: Man, Thanks for having me, John. What an intro?
Can you travel with me?
John Nemo: I’ll be your hype man.
And ladies and gentlemen, you’re starting blowing up.
============================================
Matt: The entire premise of the book hinges on one belief, and that’s that the world needs your message.
John Nemo: So good.
Matt: The world needs your message.
But it’s not going to wait passively for it.
It’s not going to wait patiently for it.
Like, we need your message, ladies.
We need your message, but we’re going to move on without it.
Yeah. So good.
Matt: There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people in the world right now.
They are desperately waiting for your message, but if you don’t give it to them, they’re going to find somebody who will.
============================================
Jeffrey: Well, I’m telling you before the show, the fifth book is just fantastic.
And to me, it’s almost rare nowadays to get the chance to read an opportunity.
I mean, this is an opportunity to read a book that delivers so much content in a very linear way that you can grasp it just really well done.
I’m excited to share so much of the information that’s in this book.
Matt: That means a lot. Seriously.
I mean, I’m not going to understand that.
That means, like, anytime I get from feedback from people like you that say that, it’s kind of weird, I guess you could say, because I know I poured my heart and soul into it and it makes sense to me, but like, is anybody else going to actually get it? So it really yeah,
Jeffrey: You fulfilled, I think, one of the core responsibilities of leadership, and that is and you talk about leadership in your book as well, but one of the core responsibilities of leadership is to actually deliver what you have to say in a way that people can grasp it. Right?
And that’s often an overlooked core principle of leadership, in my opinion.
Like, actually help people, actually help them by giving them the information they can use, they can understand.
Don’t try to impress people by making them feel lost.
It doesn’t help. Right?
So you’ve done just the right thing.
You’ve held up to that core responsibility of leadership and have written a book that’s going to really help people.
So one of the things, I think what really sets the stage for the book, but also your work and who you are as a person is a quote from your book, which is, messengers are defining the New economy.
I love that.
So where is that thought coming from?
Matt: Well, I mean, it comes from the idea.
I mean, the economy is just it’s so different than it was 20 years ago.
I mean, I guess I grew up in an era, and I know we’re roughly the same age.
I grew up in the era that saw the Berlin Wallfall.
We grew up as kids, and it was like, the Soviet Union bad and the next day, no Soviet Union.
How does that happen?
Like, that did not happen 500 years ago.
I don’t know if you’re a student of history, but like, you read about the American Revolution.
It was eight years long.
If we had an eight-year revolution today, people would just like, we’re good, let’s just go back to the way it was.
Nobody would last that long anymore.
Nobody would last an eight-year revolution.
So the world is changing and it’s moving faster and it’s noisier.
And just advertising and the way businesses are, like, it’s so different.
It’s so drastically different.
So our economy is based on messengers.
You mentioned one of the lines of the book.
I wrote it.
And sometimes you forget it is like, we’re all messengers now.
We are all messengers.
You’re a messenger.
I am a messenger.
Messengers are defining this new economy that we’re in.
So the entire premise of the book really hinges on the core belief that the world needs your message.
Jeffrey: And I love that there’s a line in your book, actually.
It says, the world needs your message, but it will move on without it.
Matt: It’s not going to wait for you.
Jeffrey: No and I love that it’s such an important part.
It’s like, yeah, you and I can give all the raw we want that you’re a message, or the world needs your message.
And the reason why you need to get your crap together regarding your business is because the world will move on without you.
And Matt McWilliams is here to teach you how to get your stuff together.
I mean, that’s what I love about your book.
Like, you brought so much information together in a way that people can actually implement it.
===================================================
So I was blown away by the comment that Jeffrey said there.
I meant what I said when I was live with him so much, and I’m blown away by the positive feedback.
Absolutely blown away by the positive feedback.
I mean, so many people who are established in their businesses were like, man, I kind of expected to skip the first few chapters and jump to get to, like, chapter four or five, the good stuff, right?
But I read the first chapter and I was like, Whoa, I have one guy.
I think I mentioned this in the next episode because we recorded that before this one.
A guy said, Madam, he’s probably about doing about a million and a half to $2 million a year.
And he’s like, Dude, I figured that I would skip step one, but I read it because we were doing an interview, and I kind of was just like, I have to read this so I can interview correctly.
And he said that he took the chapter on the avatar, and he’s like, oh, my goodness.
I went back to the drawing board and I established my avatar and who my stuff’s for, and I got clear on that, and then I got through step four, which I also kind of thought I wouldn’t need, about how to put together a lead magnet.
Basically, it was one of the big lessons in there, how to get your first few hundred to 1000 subscribers.
He’s like, Man, I’ve got 50,000 subscribers.
I don’t need to know that stuff.
He’s like, I took what you took in there.
I took the story of your dad and the simplicity of.
How you put together a lead magnet, and I took it and went back to the drawing board, and we increased our opt in rate by something like 50% or more.
I don’t remember the exact number, but it was insane what they did.
I mean, he’s getting 50% more leads per day.
That could be the difference in a year between having 55,000 people on his list and 70,000 people on his list.
That could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So I’ve just been blown away by the feedback that we’ve had on the book and just really been humbled is not the right word.
I don’t really know the word I’m looking for, but I’ve really been blown away by who it’s been impacted.
And the next person you’re going to hear from here, Charlie Mack.
This had a different impact on her, one that I was not expecting.
===================================================
Charlie Mack: One of the things that really blew me away about this book is I know you’re known as the affiliate guy or what have you, but I have to say, after reading the book, I really feel like you’re the get up off your a** and start your business step by step guy.
I have to say, if I could go back five years and I never say this, I generally have no regrets in life, just I have a tattoo on my shoulder that says that.
But I really wish I would have had this book in my hands five years ago.
It would have made such a huge difference in my business.
And so for those of you all listening, you must pre-order now.
Like now?
Because………!
Matt: I agree.
Charlie Mack: Yeah, right.
Those first eight chapters, I feel like that’s at least a $1,200 course right there, just in those first eight chapters.
In fact, I know because I took that $1,200 course two or three years into running my business, and I have to say those eight chapters are better done and more down to earth and more where I was connecting to it and understanding what you had to say.
And in fact, one of the things that you said, if you don’t mind me kind of getting into that, is what it felt like to be years into being an entrepreneur and thinking like, yeah, this is my thing.
And I’m doing this and I’m all in and I’ve spent this and I’ve taken that and done all the things and all the things and all the things and I think I want to quit.
I can’t take it anymore.
I’m broke.
How the h*** am I going to pay my next whatever?
So if you don’t mind, if you talk a little bit about that, because I know there’s people listening who can vibe with that.
Matt: I mean, it’s a central part of my journey.
So it’s a central part of the book because we wrap a lot of others, a lot of other stories in there.
I mean, just off the top of my head.
Carrie Wilkerson, Jonathan Milligan, Alan Thomas, Ray Edwards, Holly Homer, probably.
I’m forgetting 95% of the people that stories I tell in the book, but a lot of it’s wrapped in mine.
There are ten steps in the book.
I’m gonna tell you right now, I have massively screwed up all ten steps.
And the only way that I came to figure out any of the ten steps was through trial and error.
And that’s what I love about books and courses and things like that, is they take all of that trial and error out, because the reality is this guy didn’t exist 20 years ago.
When I got started, it wasn’t there.
There was no roadmap.
You had to kind of make it up.
So fast forward.
I started my first online business in 2002.
Fast forward to 2011 when I started my blog.
Same domain, mattmcwilliams.com, but I was talking about personal development and leadership, and so you sort of touched on it.
But, I mean, basically, I was waking up every day, 5:30 in the morning, pounding out content.
Loved what I was doing.
I was passionate about it.
I was impacting people.
I was helping people slowly but surely.
Like, I didn’t have a massive list and a huge following, but I had about 1500 people that regularly followed me, and I do a blog post and get, like, 40 or 50 blog comments back when that was still a thing.
And it was cool.
And I woke up every day and I was super excited.
And finally, about two years in, I realized, oh, my gosh, I spent $12,000, maybe a little bit more on this.
I poured in 15, 20 hours a week while running my business at the time, full time.
I mean, how many hours?
You know, thousands of hours. Ten to $15,000,
I have nothing to show for it financially.
And I was just like, okay, this has to change.
And I started slowly just getting burned out because I didn’t see the financial rewards.
It’s not all about financial rewards.
Like, if you have a hobby, this thing, if you have a hobby blog and you’re doing it just for fun, then you blog once every two weeks or maybe every 17 days, or you get sick and you don’t like, I didn’t miss a day.
I would get sick and I would still write.
I would have vacations, and I would get ahead.
When I would go out of town, I made sure I had guest posters where I was ahead on content.
I remember one day my kids are on the beach and I’m writing a blog post for something that’s not even making any money.
I’m not going to judge somebody.
If your kids are on the beach and you’re writing a blog post and it’s part of your business, I’m not going to judge you.
Because I hope with the book is that it sets you up to not have to do that.
Like, I’ve reached the point with my business where I don’t have to do that, and I’m thankful for that, but I’m not going to judge somebody, but I’m doing it because I’m passionate about it.
But it’s costing me money.
For me, that was the side I was on, Charlie.
The flip side, and we see a lot of entrepreneurs on the flip side is the complete opposite.
They are making good money, maybe even seven figures.
They’re making millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They’re living the life outside of work that they want to live, but they are not passionate about what they’re doing.
===================================
Yeah, so with Charlie, we had one of those off-air experiences.
When we finished up the interview, Charlie said to me, matt, I just got to say thank you for this book.
Like?
Oh, yeah.
Great.
Like, I’m thinking, cool, you read the book, you got some good stuff, whatever.
But she had not finished reading all of it.
She’d read just enough, and she said, I just want to let you know I was at a point in my business when I got this book that I was ready to give up.
And she ended up reading the book.
And she said that she had a choice between paying her auto insurance or renewing her business license.
And she said, after reading this book, I decided I can just walk.
And that really proved to me once and for all whatever doubts I had about the impact this book was going to have.
That proved to me right there, this book was the right book to write.
This book was the book that I was meant to write as my first book.
And yes, I said the first book because there’s more coming.
But that was the one that made me absolutely confident in the type of impact this book was going to have.
==============================================
Michael: All right, I’m here with Matt McWilliams, and we’re talking to the pre-game about his skill set.
And I want to talk about the origin story first, as usual.
And I love this kind because this is applicable to a lot of people.
So let’s get into the origin, let’s get into where you’re from, what your mom and dad do for a living.
I want to know what built you, and let’s go on from the business downfalls and then the successes from there.
Matt: Gosh mom and dad. Wow!
So kind of the prototypical American story. Sadly.
My parents divorced when I was two.
I don’t remember much before the age of nine.
It’s actually full transparency.
Like, there’s apparently some trauma that I don’t remember, and I think it’s like, okay, whoa, we’re going into that.
We’re going on for, like, 20 seconds.
I think everybody’s had those things.
Maybe it wasn’t the same trauma that I had.
Maybe it was different, maybe it was worse.
Millions of people have had much worse trauma.
So actually, one of the things kind of interesting about me is that I had childhood epilepsy.
I am one of the few people on record who remember their seizures and actually was able to pull themselves out of them.
So it’s led to all kinds of good and bad things in my life.
My doctor said my synapses and my brain fires seven times faster than the average human being, which is great.
So I’m able to process things really fast.
But also, dude, there will be multiple times in this conversation I will forget what we were talking about.
You will ask me a question.
I’ll end up over here, and then we got to come back.
So I’m glad that I got that out of the way really fast.
Like, okay, childhood epilepsy, great ADHD.
Diagnosed very early with that.
Never went on medication.
I was considered to be my superpower parent.
Divorced when I was two.
Lived with a single mom till I was nine.
My mom worked three jobs to keep us on the right side of the tracks, but I could see the tracks from my bedroom window.
Moved to live with my dad right before his career rear as a golf instructor and golf professional took off.
And so one of the very unique things about me is I’ve seen both extremes of the socioeconomic spectrum.
I went from a single mom.
As I said, working three jobs never made.
I helped her do her taxes back a couple of years before she retired.
I know for a fact that in her life we’re recording this.
In 2022, the average American makes close to $60,000 a year.
That the most my mom ever made in a given year was $38,000, right?
That was the most and that was towards the end.
So I know what that side of life is like.
And I moved to live with my dad right before his career as a golf pro took off.
And so all of a sudden, I’m exposed to things like my dad worked at a country club of south and Alfaretta, Georgia, where the football players lived and the baseball players played it.
And next thing you know, I’m playing golf with the Atlanta Braves.
And my dad and I were like, hanging out at pretty cool places.
We had seats.
We went to all the Braves games.
Now, there was only 5000 people there back then because they sucked.
They went to the Falcons games.
The only Falcons games that ever sold out were when the Giants or Bears were in town.
Because basically, know Atlanta, it’s mostly translated Yankees.
And so it’s like, this is my life, right?
And I’m like, well, this is different.
And then his career took off and we moved to Nashville, and he ran a golf course in Nashville where all the country music stars and actors and all that, they were members there.
It was nothing for me to just be like, I’d go out with one of the assistants, we go out to number I remember one day we went out to number 14 on the north course at my dad’s course, and it’s like, oh, we’re going to play with this guy.
And it’s been skill.
It was one like 15 Grammys, right?
The other day, I’m just hitting balls and Clint Black comes up.
I’m out there playing with the Nashville Predators in the Tennessee Titans.
It was nothing.
And I was exposed to not only them but also very successful businessmen.
And so having those two very different experiences in my life, I think it’s not only unique but it’s shaped who I am.
And it should be like, okay, I saw what was possible on the one end.
I also saw what I didn’t want, and I saw what that struggle was like.
And when you fast forward to when I started, what was my second business, my first business, we don’t even have time to get into how much of an unmitigated disaster that became.
But my second business, like going through the stretch where we ended up later on building it into a success, and we can talk about that, but being there when we were struggling, and I’m literally paying ourselves less than $1,000 a month, dude, it was nothing.
I’d already been through worse.
Like living off Totino’s pizzas and living in my mom’s wood.
Like sleeping on the couch where you had to sleep in the form of an S because the springs from the fold-out couch are coming up and you have to kind of sleep around them.
Dude, I’d already done that, like, struggling business and we’re not making much money.
What was that compared to what I grew up with?
So seeing both experiences, but I knew what was possible really left kind of a lasting impact on my life Michael I think, like I said, it’s shaped who I am.
Michael: This is why we ask this question, man, because with that, we’re going to talk about skill set.
You have a nice little underdog story there and that is beautiful.
And all those things create an algorithm of what built you.
=========================================================
Person: He’s the author of the book coming out real soon.
You see it if you’re watching on the YouTube channel in his backdrop.
It’s called Turn Your Passions Into Profits.
The proven path for building a rewarding online business.
You may also know him as The Affiliate Guy.
He’s got a podcast by that name and he’s really one of the best affiliate marketers in the industry I think.
I’ve got the chance to work with Matt over the years in a lot of different capacities.
In the early days, he ran all of our affiliate stuff, which is a huge part of the reason why we were even able to get on the map and get to our first million and a few million dollars in sales for self-publishing school and then fast forward to today.
It’s kind of full circle that’s working and training our affiliate and business development team at SDS so that we can scale to multimillions per year from affiliates.
So affiliates are something that I really believe in.
Matt McWilliams is something that I really believe in.
So we’re going to merge the two here today and give a little behind-the-scenes on his new book in this interview.
So, Matt, welcome.
Great to have you here, man.
Good to be here.
Matt: Thanks so much for having me, bud.
Person: So talk to me about why is this book, how does this fit in with your business goals?
Why did you decide to do this book?
And you’re obviously spending a lot of time on it, a lot of energy on it, while at the same time having this big business and it’s a lot to manage.
So why do this and how does this fit in with your goals?
Matt: Yeah, you know, as much as anything, it’s a passion project.
I mean, certainly, there’s business goals, please don’t misunderstand, but it probably would have been easier to write a book that’s more towards seven-figure entrepreneurs who could become clients.
Like you talked about working with your team or working like we did in the past, running your stuff.
But for me, it was just this.
I talked to so many entrepreneurs and I keep just hearing from them over and over again, like, these lies, these misconceptions.
Like, the world doesn’t need my voice.
There’s somebody saying the same thing.
I would say there’s enough messengers in the world.
I love what I’m doing, but I’m not making any money.
And then I hear people say, in the reverse of that, like, dude, my business is succeeding, but I hate it.
I’m not passionate about it.
And so that was kind of the genesis of the title, right?
Passions into profits.
Right?
How do you turn your passions into profits?
Was I see so many entrepreneurs that are on those two extremes.
They’re passionate, but they’re not making any money.
They’re making money, but they’re not passionate.
And I wanted to come up with, like, how do we merge those two together, this idea of leadership, like, we feel like we have to be so far ahead of our audience.
We feel like we have to be 2 miles down the road.
And this is one of the examples that really resonated with people in the book that I’ve heard.
People who’ve read an advanced copy have been like, oh, my gosh.
That finally made sense to me.
As I say, like, imagine you’ve got this friend, like, your super fit friend.
This is, like, the friend.
He’s always been in shape.
He wears bike shorts everywhere, even, like, you do a cookout.
No one he knows why jogs in place.
He’s really annoying.
Smells like soup, mix all the time.
And so you’re on a hike with him, a dangerous hike, and he’s 2 miles up ahead, and he’s yelling back, you, hey, hurry up and watch out.
Watch out for what?
Dude, I’ve never been on this hike before.
I’ve never been on this journey.
I’ve never started an online business.
I’ve never started a community.
What am I supposed to watch out for?
That’s not leadership.
We think we have to be 2 miles up ahead.
So Tony Robbins is 2 miles ahead of me.
Now, can he leave me from there?
Absolutely, if he knows how.
But we think we have to be there.
The reality is, you only have to be one step ahead.
That same superfic friend who’s still kind of learning the way, who’s one step ahead, reaches back and grabs my hand and says, hey, there’s a hole here.
Watch out for it, and you’ll die.
That’s leadership.
I’d rather have that than somebody yelling at me from 2 miles ahead.
And so when we realize we’ve only got to be one step ahead and then we make a commitment to leadership, like in the book at the end of chapter two about leadership, there’s a commitment.
My daughter stole my other copy of the book.
That’s why I don’t have it.
I’m like, where’s my books?
My daughter’s backpack right now.
She stole my prop.
You’re like, she stole the prop.
She’s, like, trying to read her book.
Well, she is.
She was reading.
She’s actually sold some books.
Believe her.
I should give her an affiliate link.
I’m being serious.
She sold books.
Like, she’ll be reading.
And people ask me, I’m like, yeah, my dad wrote it.
And I’m like, oh, I’ll go buy a copy anyway.
But at the end of chapter two is a leadership commitment.
It’s a full page.
You fill it out, and you’re committing to just be the leader.
You only got to be one step ahead.
You’re committing to the whole process that we walk you through in the book to committing to be leader.
If I could, you said just one thing, make that commitment.
Like, be a leader.
Realize you already are a leader.
Leadership is a choice.
Like, making the choice to be a leader.
That’s all it is.
It requires a willful commitment because there are literally somebody out there.
I don’t know who it is.
It could be one person, could be ten people, could be thousands, potentially millions of people out there right now are waiting for you to guide them.
Your followers need you to guide them.
They are waiting for you to reach out your hand to grab theirs and show them where to go.
So be that person.
===========================
Person: All right, step number three, and you very carefully refer to it as capturing attention.
Not getting attention, not waiting for attention, or not giving attention.
You’re talking about capturing attention.
So why the word capture?
And how is that different?
Matt: Like you said, nobody’s going to give you attention.
It’s a noisy, noisy world.
You got to reach out and grab it by the throat.
And I get it, that’s uncomfortable for some people, but the reality is like, getting noticed.
You can create a blog, every social media profile and a podcast up and running by the end of today, 4 hours.
That’s about how long it would take you to set up a halfway decent website if you use the right theme.
Halfway decent website, all your social media profiles.
You can go create graphics in Canva in five minutes and have a podcast set up by the end of the day.
You can get out there.
Getting noticed is easier ever.
But standing out, and actually getting attention is harder than it’s ever been.
Because getting what would it be here?
======================================
Person: Championing a cause.
I mean, that really adds a completely different level to the work you do.
Matt: It’s an eight.
We all want a champion to fight for us, right?
We all want somebody who stands up for us.
We all want somebody who affirms our beliefs and defends our cause.
Joseph Campbell right?
The hero’s journey.
Every story needs a hero.
And to everybody, listen, you have an opportunity to be the hero.
I mentioned, like, the accountants early, right?
There are a lot of people who think this is great.
Matt, I love what you’re saying.
Every story needs a hero.
I have an opportunity to be a hero.
Matt, you talk about leading and committing to being a leader.
And in the book, I give the example of the better place to lead because a lot of people think I’m not a leader, Matt.
I’m not far enough ahead of my audience.
I can’t be this leader.
And I was like, still a story in the book.
Imagine you’re on a hike, and it’s a dangerous hike.
I’ve got this visual.
There’s a particular place where I’ve hiked one time that I mean, every ten steps, I’m thinking I’m going to fall and die.
It’s 2000ft down is a rocky kind of thing.
And your friend, we all have that super fit friend who’s just like, he’s been fit for 20 years.
He jogs in place for no reason whatsoever.
He wears biker swords to cook out, smells like soup mix all the time.
He is just, like, super fit.
And now his version of leading is he’s 2 miles up ahead on this trail going, hey, hurry up.
And by the way, watch out for the watch out for oh, and then I die.
A better way to lead.
Same super fit friend wearing biker shorts, jogging.
The place smells like suit mix.
But he’s one step ahead, and he reaches back and grabs your hand and he says, hey, I’m gonna go this way.
Watch out for this thing up here.
It’s a little slippery.
I’ve been here before.
He, you know, I have to have been there five years ago to be a leader.
And so we talked about that, and then so when I share that, like that right there.
A lot of people are like, dude, I’m an accountant.
I help accountants.
This does not apply to my business.
How on is that heroic?
How am I champion a cause?
Why don’t you ask their children who, because of the work you do, get to spend more time with Mommy or Daddy?
What about, like, the accountant who hasn’t missed a family meal in years?
We have a client, Adam Lee.
That’s exactly what he does for his clients, right?
They’re all accountants who are just or bookkeepers who are overwhelmed and overworked, and he helps his clients earn more while actually they cut more than 10 hours from their work week.
How is that not heroic?
That’s championing a cause.
That is the definition of being a hero, somebody who saves an entrepreneur 10 hours a week of work.
But we think, I’m not doing anything.
Like, I’m not helping families of autistic children.
I’m not helping, you know, people like, oh, those people who, like, help people get over cancer, people who save marriages, people who help kids get through college.
Those are heroic things.
Now you can do heroic things.
And the craziest things, like, yeah, I mentioned the example earlier, how can I grow tomatoes in my environment?
You think, how is that heroic to the person who’s always wanted to do that?
That is heroic.
For all you know, that’s the thing that brings her and her daughter together.
And they do that as a hobby.
Or maybe it’s just that they’re going to eat healthier because they’re able to grow vegetables in their own garden.
I don’t know what it is, but anything can be heroic.
And so it’s innate.
And so we walk through the book, like, how to actually champion their cause, step by step in the book.
How to become that person that is a hero to every member of your audience.
========================================
Well, it’s wonderful.
My favorite part of the book, it’s been my favorite part of our conversation because it’s just so inspirational and it’s something that I think needs talked about more.
So I’m glad you’re talking about that.
=====================================
Some of the interesting things that a lot of the podcast hosts and just people, in general, have asked me after they’ve listened to multiple interviews, because I’ve got people, some of you listening.
You’ve probably listened to two, three, four of my interviews.
And people say, how do you keep track of all of it?
How do you keep track of all the steps, all the acronyms, all the lessons, all the stories, and tie this story into that story?
And I tell them it’s because I learned how not to do it.
And how not to do it is to try to remember it all, because you’re not going to remember it all.
It’s impossible to remember everything.
The other thing was I was like, well, I’ll keep the manuscript open.
I started the podcast tour before I had physical books because of the paper shortage in America, which is kind of weird.
Those are a paper shortage. So everything was delayed.
I ended up getting it, like, weeks before they said I would.
But when I started, I’m like, I’ll start with this digital copy, and I’ll just have the whole book in front of me if I need something.
And that was a really bad idea.
So then what I did was I actually took the key lessons from the book, the key headers, and I created a Google Doc that had on the left side, it’s got each chapter and each concept.
It’s not just the chapter, like, step one, step two.
No, it’s like, what’s the concept?
What are the three to five concepts in this chapter?
The key stories, the key things that I think people are going to ask about.
And then if I noticed that something wasn’t there, and then people asked me about it more than once, I would go at it.
But that way, if anybody says, like, hey, Matt, blah blah blah, the thing you say in this, I could go straight there and I would remember, okay, that’s right here, there’s six points.
Because the reality is, yes, I wrote the book, but I forget some of this stuff.
I got on one interview very early on in the tour, and I’ll admit this.
Somebody said what’s the acronym?
And I don’t remember what acronym they said, and I could only remember four of the five letters in my brain.
I’m going, oh my gosh, I don’t remember the fourth letter.
What does the fourth letter stand for?
And I’m like, no, it’s not that.
And I’m trying to remember.
So while I’m talking and I’ve gotten really good at this, I’m like, I know it’s in step nine.
Let me get to that point and try to scroll and all that.
I’m like, command F.
And I’m trying to type, but it’s harder to type than this, to scroll.
And I finally found it and like, oh, that’s right.
It was leverage.
The acronym was SCALE.
And I remember the S, the C, the A, and the E, but I couldn’t remember the L.
And I’m on this podcast, I’m doing it live, basically, and I can’t remember what the L is, and they’re telling me to do it.
So I typed all those up into notes I took let’s see, I think this is about 300 pages.
Let’s see, how many pages is my book?
276 Okay, so I took this 276 page book and I condensed it down into what amounts to about a 20 page Google document.
So everything’s real easy to find.
It’s just bullet points.
There’s no sentences.
It’s just bullet points.
And that allowed me to be able to capture everything in an easy to find format.
So somebody asked me about something, I know exactly where to go.
I remember the stories.
I’m like, oh, that’s right.
I tell the stories of Mike Allen and Carrie in that chapter.
So then I can remember the gist of the story to tell, but I just need to remember, what are the stories in the chapter?
=============================================================
Person: But how would you encourage someone that’s thinking about, hey, you know what?
I have this talent, I have this passion, I have this gift.
I think I could really do something with it.
So you kind of talked about how they can choose one of those areas, but then that next step to either starting a podcast or if they’re thinking about monetizing it.
Can you just briefly speak to how affiliate marketing could help in that area?
Matt: Well, the thing is, like, so they start the podcast or they start the blog, whatever it is, when you are starting out with a small audience, nobody’s paying attention to you.
That’s the beauty of it, actually.
You can take advantage of that.
The reality is you don’t have a massive audience.
So if you screw something up, it’s like, well, it affected 13 people. Who cares?
I love that about starting out.
It’s the perfect time to start.
Monetizing this is the key.
This is the key thing.
Sherry if I could get through everybody listening is, like, so many people, and I don’t know how else to say it, they’re lies.
They say you got to have X number of followers, they got to have 100 episodes, y number of years.
It’s like an algebra equation.
Like, what is X?
What is y. Right?
Ultimately, it’s all about mindset.
How your view?
Making money from your passion is what determines how much you make and how much of an impact you’re going to have.
And there’s so many people out there, and this drives me nuts.
They say you start a platform, you got to give, give, you got to release so much content, content, content, content.
Never ask for a financial transaction.
What did I say earlier?
You asked what happens when that happens.
Burnout.
It sets you up for burnout.
I know, like I said earlier, because I’ve been there, so don’t get me wrong, I won’t you to give, like, a ton of awesome value for free.
So this podcast episode you’re listening for free.
In the next year alone, we are going to give away more than 340 hours of free content.
If you take the podcast episode, the blog post, everything.
I mean, that’s one almost a full hour a day.
Almost a full hour a day.
You could listen and read my material for free, no charge whatsoever.
I am not saying you have to give away that much, but creating value for free is a great way to attract followers.
Like, my podcast episodes are free.
That’s where most of our clients come from.
It also is a way for me to serve people who potentially can’t afford my paid offers.
We have almost 10% of all of my audience is in effectively SubSaharan africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, places like that.
Most of them can’t afford what we sell, so we give them tons of free value.
But the thing about this is, like, when you start the podcast, I want you in the money making mindset.
There’s two types of people in the world.
People who have more money than time and people who have more time than money.
The people who have more time than money will spend 50 hours on YouTube going through every video, listen to every podcast episode, and they’ll piece things together.
The people who have more money than time say, give me the system.
They just want to pay $1,000 for the system.
I’m not never going to sell to that second group.
They have more time than money.
It’s never going to happen.
But I can sell to the group that has more money than time.
===============================================================
Person: I think on surface value, it would be easy to say, hey, you’re the affiliate guy.
Why not just write an affiliate book?
And like I said, maybe you have some of those components within this building, your online business piece.
But how do you decide on this topic versus just like, straight in the pocket, let’s write an affiliate management book, that sort of thing.
Matt: So I’m going to answer that question, but let me just say this.
There are ten steps in a book, right?
Step nine is commit to monetize.
So we go all the way from clarify who you help to create consistent content.
Well, the step before that is commit to monetizing.
That’s a mindset thing.
We talk a lot about the mindset, not surprisingly.
I’m talking about monetization in that chapter.
So I talk about affiliate marketing.
I talk about how to start affiliate marketing, not surprisingly, being the affiliate guy, guess what chapter is the longest in the book?
Because guess which chapter got the most cut from it.
When I had to edit it, it was definitely chapter nine.
We cut half the chapter because it was like 50,000 words long.
It was a book in and of itself.
Now, here’s a little hint.
The next book will be all about that.
It’ll be a lot of the stuff that we had to cut, plus some elaboration there.
That’s a whole different thing.
So this is step one.
This is step one.
This is like, okay, how do you even clarify who you help?
How do you clarify who your audience is?
How do you learn how to leave them?
How do you learn how to capture their attention in a noisy world?
How do you create a community?
Step two will be more more into that Monetization piece.
So think of this book as how do you go from zero to maybe even six figures, low six figures.
But that’s about as far as this book is going to take you.
So I’ll just say this.
If you’re a seven figure entrepreneur, book is probably not for you.
Go buy it for somebody who needs it, though.
I just say that, but it’s probably not $8 million business.
Don’t buy the book.
It is not going to serve you.
Buy it for somebody else.
The next book, of course, will be more on that, like, okay, how do you now go into more of the affiliate side?
How do you go from making $100,000 a year into making a million dollars a year?
The next book will be the okay, how do you now rapidly scale.
We touch on it a little bit in step ten, start your own affiliate program.
And I share some of the benefits.
But if all I wrote was the seven pages, I write about running an affiliate program in this book, and that was my life’s message about affiliate management, I’m leaving a few things out.
Your team gets more than that in five minutes of coaching with me.
To answer your question, that’s how it ties in.
There is a lot of that in the book because, again, there’s a lot about Monetization to answer your question about how this ties into kind of my bigger business goals.
Yeah. Our business is primarily coaching people on affiliate marketing and coaching people on affiliate management.
Most people in the world, 99.9% of the world is not ready for me.
So this book helps them get there.
If I can get them to start a blog, to start a YouTube channel, to start a podcast, to grow an audience, to get their first thousand or two subscribers, chapter four, step four in the book, if you read it and follow what I teach in that, by the time you finish the book, you’ll have 500 subscribers.
Are you going to have 10,000?
Probably not.
But you can go full time with the business with a couple of thousand subscribers.
There’s a lie out there that says you need 100,000 people.
No, you don’t.
I know people who make six figures with 3000 people on their list. Right?
So you can go full time with a few thousand people.
You can have that within a couple of months of reading this book.
And so if I take you to that, naturally you’re going to want to take the next level.
Nobody goes, I’m running a $60,000 business and making a little bit of an impact on the world.
I want to stop now.
No, you go.
I want to have more impact.
I want to make more money.
I want to have more influence.
So you’re going to go to the next level, and hopefully subsequent books will take you along there.
Person: That’s cool.
That makes sense.
The sequential kind of way of you’ve got the big Passion Impact book that will also accelerate people towards the next book or working with you further.
===============================================================
Person: So affiliate marketing, this is what you do.
But what exactly, other than doing affiliate marketing yourself, are you teaching it?
I know you have your podcast, like, where you are now, and how did you become so deeply entrenched in this world?
I mean, there had to be a moment where you knew nothing about affiliate marketing, and then there was this journey, and now you are known as like, the expert guy.
So how did that journey look for you?
Matt: Kind of indirect.
The reality is, I thought when I got into kind of the online blogging podcasting world, I thought that my passion was leadership and personal development.
So I had a blog, same website, mattmcwilliams.com, for a few years.
What I realized was my passion was really helping people start and grow their online businesses.
And I had people for years saying, matt, you got to teach this affiliate stuff.
You got to teach people all the stuff you know about how to run affiliate programs.
And you’ve run all these big launches.
And like you said at the beginning, we’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the world Brian Tracy, Lewis Howes, Jeff Walker, Tony Robbins, Michael Hyatt. I mean, the list goes on and on.
You got to teach this stuff now.
You got to teach people how to run their affiliate programs.
Because I built my first affiliate program from nothing out of desperation into a million dollar a month affiliate program in less than 18 months.
You got teacher people how to do that.
You got to teach people how to do the affiliate marketing.
These people, there’s so many people out there.
This is what the book is all about.
There are so many people out there.
They are passionate.
Every day when they wake up, they’re like, Matt, I’m changing the world.
I’m having an impact on people, but I’m not making any money, so
I can’t keep doing it.
And so we see so many people, like, the world is losing out on their message.
Whatever it is, it’s an important message, but if you’re not making any money, you can’t sustain it so that they’re, Matt, you got to teach people.
When I said, I don’t want to be the affiliate guy, I don’t want to be the affiliate guy.
No, man, I got bigger plans.
I’m going to be Tony Robbins.
I want to change the world.
I can’t change the world doing affiliate stuff.
I don’t want to be the affiliate guy.
So I said it over and over.
There’s a reason why my podcast is named the Affiliate guy, because one evening I was walking down the stairs and I had helped my friend Dana Abraham.
She’s in the parenting niche.
She had a course called Calm the Chaos.
A couple of weeks before her launch, I said, Dana, do you need help with this thing?
Like, it sounds like you’re kind of struggling with your affiliate.
She’s like, yes.
I said, okay, and this is a couple of weeks before the program.
You normally don’t work with a client inside of eight months.
Okay?
But I said your friend.
Can I just help you?
Maybe I can help optimize this thing.
Your last launch was $125,000.
Maybe I can get you to, like, 175, and I’ll help you out a little bit.
And so I came in, and I helped her out, coached her affiliates, did some training meetings with them, had some calls with them, did what we do.
This is my jam.
This is same stuff we’ve done for all these other people.
And I helped her out.
And yes, she went from $125,000 launched over $300,000 launch.
And I’m like, man, that’s great impact.
I helped all these people.
We helped one affiliate.
She had a goal of five sales.
She made over 40.
Helped an affiliate who the previous launch had made zero sales, made 17, helped another affiliate go from 30 to over 70. We helped all these entrepreneurs, people who had made two sales before they made ten, things like that.
And I helped her go from 125 to 300,000.
So my mind went to, like, who did I help?
I helped entrepreneurs.
I helped my people.
I helped her.
I helped these other entrepreneurs.
And then I was walking down the stairs one night.
We’d had one of those bedtimes flavia, was, like, one of the dream bedtimes for parents where both kids were nice to each other.
It was peaceful.
It didn’t take forever, but still, we had those moments.
And both kids gave me a big hug, and I left my daughter’s room, and I got halfway down the stairs, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I said, oh, my gosh, there are other parents tonight having this same feeling.
Because of what I did.
I don’t teach parenting.
I’m not a parenting expert.
I just helped a bunch of entrepreneurs do better at affiliate marketing.
Can you think of anything that could impact the world less than teaching affiliate marketing and helping someone run an affiliate program?
I can’t.
It was what I did is not that monumental.
It wasn’t even hard for me.
I could have done it in my sleep.
I only spent, like, an hour and a half a day helping her out for four weeks.
I didn’t even spend the eight, nine months, the year that we usually spend with clients.
I barely scratched the surface of what I can do, and it completely changed the lives of hundreds of parents.
Potentially thousands of children.
And I was like, oh my gosh.
That’s what being the affiliate guy is.
So that name, the affiliate guy, that podcast, it’s actually has nothing to do with branding.
It’s become a brand.
People introduce me all the time.
They send emails like, you got to know Matt.
He’s the affiliate guy.
I didn’t I wish I could say I was really smart and did that on purpose.
It was actually I named it that because it’s a reminder every single day of what when all those years that I said, I don’t want to be the affiliate guy, I can’t make an impact doing this little thing.
That’s why I named it.
That was it was a reminder to me.
And so that’s how I ended up getting here, was I developed a skill.
I developed some systems and some ideas and some strategies around how to build and grow, start, grow and build an affiliate program, how to help affiliates, how to teach affiliates.
And then it became a business.
Person: That’s amazing.
What a great story.
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So I thought it’d be fun real quick to share a little hack from all of this.
It’s a very simple one.
On average, I was doing one and a half podcast interviews per day, per weekday.
That’s one and a half.
Not a big deal if that’s all you’re doing.
But there are days where I was doing three.
I said earlier I did five.
I think I did five once, maybe twice, but I had a lot of days with three.
And these are mostly 45 minutes to 1 hour podcast, with the exception of one, which actually we took almost 3 hours because we record three separate episodes.
And it’s really cool what he does.
Kevin Miller with the self helpful podcast by Ziggler.
So we did all these interviews.
I do two, three in a day, but that’s not all I was doing.
I would have client meetings, I would have team meetings, I would have leadership meetings.
I might be talking, I might be doing a webinar, I might be recording a couple of videos.
And I would have sometimes 5 hours, five and a half hours of talking in a day and it’s exhausting.
And for me, unfortunately, this all hit right when my allergies were really getting bad.
I’ve had seasonal allergies worse than I’ve ever had in my life.
I got a couple of sinus infections that thankfully didn’t turn into anything worse, and my sinuses were inflamed.
I was having a hard time breathing through my nose, so I was breathing through my mouth.
I’m actually having one right now where I’m just having a real hard time breathing through my nose.
And so it’s stressful on my throat and my vocal cords.
So one of my little hacks that’s really helped me is a Throat Cote.
Now, I recommend I’m not a medical expert on this, but I was backstage with my favorite band one time Chandler Bolt, actually, who you heard from earlier.
His brother is the bassist for the band need to Breathe.
And I was backstage with him, and I saw this stuff called Throat Cote.
This is eight years ago, seven years ago.
I was like, does that stuff actually work?
And I’m like, yes, but you got to make sure to get the kind of slippery elm.
Now, I’m not a medical expert, but it says don’t drink more than four cups a day.
I think that’s probably accurate based on what I looked up.
I’ll just let you do the research on your own and not talk about it here.
It can be kind of ugly, but two cups of that in a day?
And what I would do is I would make a big old thing of it, and then I would dissolve a Luten’s throat drop in it while it was still hot.
It gave it a little bit of that lemon. It had just enough of that stuff.
I’m telling you, I’ve never in my life been able to talk that much and not had any issues. It was amazing.
But the big key is just have everything right there when you’re doing all these interviews, have everything at the flip of a switch.
Like, I made it to where my lights in the studio, all I did was press one button, and they all came on.
So they were all connected to the same thing.
I just flipped that one button.
All my studio lights came on.
I got new monitor arm that made it real easy just to move my monitor with my camera right there where it was easy for me to see all my notes.
Like I said from before.
But I’ve got a box of tissues right here, some extra recall of throat drops for in between I can suck on those.
I got the Throat Coat tee and then a big bottle of water, and I would just sip on that Throat Coat tea anytime I was talking.
I would drink water in between, but just sip on that Throat Coat tea with the slippery Elm.
I forget the name of the brand, but I think it’s in an orange kind of container, at least as now.
It’s the only kind that has slippery elm.
This all one of those recallos or Ludin’s throat drops in it, the lemon kind.
And I’m telling you, it makes a huge difference.
If you’re like me at all and you’ve had any issues with talking a lot that’ll get you through it.
So that’s my tip of the day right there for getting through all these podcast interviews.
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Matt: Your message, your story, your unique combination of your personality, your manner of talking, your manner of writing, your manner of communicating, your style, your age, your life experiences, your work experiences.
Like, I come at it from so many different angles, you know, the way that I am, like I’m the only person on earth that can reach some number of people.
Just like you are, Jan.
Just like everyone listening, there’s somebody that only you can reach.
And for some of us, it might be hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people.
For some of you, it might be 10,000 people, which I might remind you, is not a small number of people that is larger than the average NCAA Division One college basketball game draws in terms of fans, it’s a pretty massive amount of people.
So I just think it’s super important for people to understand that that no matter what your experiences are, your lack of experience, the lack of credentials that use the things that you think you don’t have, no, the world needs it.
So get out there.
Jan: Yeah, absolutely.
=========================================================================
So the last thing here real quick, had a lot of the hosts just say, man, they would say it to their audience or to me.
Like the endorsements you got.
The people who are back in this book, unbelievable, Matt. Unbelievable.
Pat Flynn.
Susie Moore.
Shark Tanks.
Kevin Harrington.
Dori Clark.
Michael Hyatt.
John Lee Dumas.
Carrie Wilkerson.
John Acoff.
Dan Miller.
Ryan Moran.
Holly Homer.
Marcus Whitney.
Rachel Miller.
Jonathan Milligan.
Ray Edwards.
Ritchie Norton.
Bob Bly.
John Jenkins.
Julie Solomon.
Grant Baldwin.
Like, the list goes on.
The people who endorse this book and like, how did you do it?
I said, number one, ask them.
That’s it.
Ask them and ask them early.
I started asking while I was still writing the book.
I actually started asking 18 months ago.
I then followed up with them about three months later, and then I forgot to follow up three months later and following up another three months later.
Oops.
But still, I was nine months out, so I just followed up and followed up and followed up.
Most of the people said yes right away, but there were some that just required a second or third reach out.
I had to shoot a text to some of them and a Facebook message to others and an email to somebody’s assistant, and I was able to get them.
That’s the thing, you just have to ask.
You have to ask.
So another lesson.
We do a book club as a team, and we’re reading the book influenced by Robert Childeni.
And in that book, then we talk about it as a team, and something came up and we realized, I don’t remember the exact lesson, but I was like, oh my gosh, guys, we don’t have any, quote unquote, regular people on the website for the book.
We don’t have any people who have the results that most of the people reading the book are looking to get.
All we have is those amazing people that I just named.
Wow, Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington got his worth almost a billion dollars.
That’s a great endorsement, but is he the target audience?
And we went, oh my gosh, we need to have some regular people.
So we went and got the manuscript to some regular people.
We got people who’ve been through other stuff of ours and achieved results and got them to write some regular stuff, like Kelly Pomeran.
Thanks to Matt, I increased my list by about 30%.
Not I went from 10,000 to 10,0000.
No, she increased her list by about 30%.
So those are examples.
Anna Willis just said, hey, I’ve learned a lot in the last two years.
Her results, yeah, they’re typical.
These are not results atypical.
These are asterisk results.
Pretty typical.
You can run a high five figure business.
And so we were like, we have to add those.
So that was one of the lessons that we learned in this process.
That definitely, when you put together, get some great endorsements, get the Pat Flynns of your world, the Michael Hyatts, the Kevin Harrington’s, the Julie Solomons, and the Carrie Wilkerson’s get those people.
Those are great.
The Rachel Millers, get those people.
But also make sure you get some of the average people, the people that maybe your book is more targeted towards.
=======================================================
Matt: So I think about everybody you know, with your people.
Amber I’m thinking, oh, yeah, there’s other people out there saying the same thing.
Yeah, but maybe it’s a man, maybe it’s a dude.
You got some dude, and he’s been fit since he was the age of 16.
But you’re a woman who knows what it’s like to struggle with fitness or whatever.
Okay, so that’s your angle.
Or maybe there’s another woman saying it, but she’s married with four kids and you’re a single mom.
That’s your angle but we find that differentiator.
And that’s our angle.
And her angle was like, I’m going to be the person who says upfront.
I am not a medical expert, and I don’t know what medicine your kids need to be on or any of that stuff, and I don’t know what a cerebellum even is.
Oh, my gosh, I’ve raised two successful autistic children, and I’m here to share how I’ve done it with you.
And so, like I said, the world needs your message.
So you’ve just got to get out there, and this book will show you how to get that out into the world, how to overcome.
There’s so much mindset in this book.
I was really hesitant to delve into the psychology of a lot of things, but I got told by a lot of people that was some of the most powerful stuff.
Amber and so we talked about how to get over those mindset, blocks that are keeping people from getting their message out in the world, because there are so many messengers out there that have been silent, and it’s time to stop being silent.
Amber: I’ve been in this game again for a decade, and I still have to address, you know, I call her, she sits right here, tells me that I can’t and I won’t.
Not worthy and all that, or you’re too much or, you know, all those things.
And I tell my audiences, the only difference between me and you is
I tell Gertrude to shut up.
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Michael: I’m going to be talking to you about your business afterwards for Jack team up with you because I like Matt McWilliams style.
I like what he’s doing here.
Where are you at right now today?
Where’s your business?
Tell us that and then I want to get into your five to ten what you have planned.
Matt: So, Matt, where I’m at right now, I mean, business has just grown.
Our agency’s has grown.
We’re hiring people left and right.
It’s kind of like the year after what I talked about, my other company, right?
It just feels the same way.
The difference is I own all of this when my wife and I do.
So I am not going to get tired of my business partners and leave.
So we’re good there.
This one’s going to stick it out.
Might I sell in ten years, maybe.
But I plan on doing this until the day I die.
This is what I’m passionate about.
It’s my dream job.
My high school guidance counselor, if he had any idea that something like this even exists, it would be like, would have just told me when I was 17, just do this when you grow up.
And I could have saved all the other stuff.
No, I wouldn’t have the cool story.
So it’s totally worth it.
I got the scars.
It’s totally worth that.
But the reality is I love what I’m doing.
We’re growing like crazy.
We’re kind of in that phase where we’re like, every year revenues doubling or if we go up 80%, we’re like, what do we do wrong? And we’re loving it.
I love our team.
I love our people.
I love our clients.
I really do.
It’s not meant to be like, one of those weirdos, like, we pick our clients.
So there’s a reason why I love our clients, because I picked them and if I don’t like them, then we stopped working together.
It’s very simple.
So love what I’m doing.
Doing the book launch right now.
Turn your passions into profits.
This came about from eight years of talking about, like, I’ve worked with hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs.
How do we distill the lessons down into something that is coherent for people to be able to actually implement?
And the entire premise of the book, Michael, hinges on the one belief that the world needs your message.
The world needs your message, but it’s not going to wait passively or patiently for it.
It needs your message.
The world needs your message, but it’s going to move on without it.
And there are hundreds or potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, thousands, millions of people out there right now who are desperately waiting for you to share your message with them.
And so what we found after working with, again, hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs is typically there’s two types of entrepreneurs they’re on the one side, they’re like, I love what I’m doing.
I’m passionate about I’m waking up early, I’m producing content, I’ve got my podcast, I’ve got whatever.
I love what I’m doing.
I’m not making any money.
So they burn out after a year or two because they’re broke.
The flip side is like, man, money is good.
Making a lot of money, building team, hate what I’m doing.
Not real passionate about it.
Rather just go on vacation for a couple of months.
And how do we get both?
Can you have both?
The whole book hinges on the belief that the world needs your message and you should make money from your message.
And if you can do both, then you’ve got that fire in your belly that’s wakes you up going, oh, my gosh, I’m making an impact on the world.
I’m changing people’s lives.
Which I was doing that in my own business.
I was doing that.
I just wasn’t making money.
I’ve been there, done this.
That’s why I ended up writing the book.
And I’m like, okay, how do we take both of those?
How do we turn the passions into an actual profitable business?
So it walks you through all the steps to get from there to there.
I ended up getting my dream publisher.
If you look at my bookshelf, if you’re a Gino Witman fan from the Traction Series and Rocket fuel and all that stuff, my bookshelf is full of Bin Bella books.
That’s my dream publisher.
We ended up getting them.
It’s being distributed by Penguin Random House, which I learned is the largest distributor in the entire world.
I thought it was kind of cool.
So ended up being a passion project, ironically, that hopefully will turn into profits.
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So I hope you enjoyed this kind of look behind the scenes of the book tour.
It has been amazing.
I highly recommend, not if, but when you write your book, that you do something similar, that you go on a book tour, that you get on as many podcasts and videos, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook,lives, whatever, as you can.
Most people are open to it.
I would say we had about a 75% success rate.
Maybe you won’t have quite that high, but what if you have a 50 or 60% success rate?
Are you willing to hear no.
From 150 people to have 125, 150 great podcast interviews, great whatever types of interviews?
I hope so.
I hope so, because it’s totally worth it.
I’m telling you right now, it’s one of the best things you can do.
We’ve sold a lot of books, thousands of books this way, and it was a lot of fun.
I enjoyed it and it really helped me to craft the message.
So that one of the things that I learned, was like, hey, when you do get on bigger media, and we will, we’ve got some bigger media lined up now the message is honed the message is crafted.
Now, I really don’t, quite frankly, need those notes in front of me that I mentioned earlier.
I haven’t really used them in the last 50 or so, but for those 1st 75, I did need them.
And now that I’ve said the same thing, quite frankly, a lot in many cases, I have to lean on those a lot less now.
And so when we do get on major media, I don’t need to have those right in front of me.
So hopefully you can take what you’ve learned here and put it to practice, because I know you’ve got a book launch in you.
If you want to see our book launch kind of behind the scenes, turn your Passions into profits at passionsintoprofitsbook.com, you can actually look through what we’re doing there.
One of the bonuses we’re doing is that we’ll take you behind the scenes of our book launch and then make sure well, first of all, make sure you grab a copy of the book right now, passionsintoprofitsbook.com.com
Go, click on the link in the show notes as well.
Then make sure you come back for the next episode because I’m getting interviewed.
I haven’t done this in about a year or so, maybe a little bit over a year.
Our operations manager, Robbie Miles, is interviewing me for our book launch party.
We’re going to release it on the day of the book launch, january 10, 2023
We’re going to be celebrating the book launch that day.
So make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss that.
And if you got questions about this or anything else, you can text me anytime 260-217-4619.
So with that, we’ll wrap up and I’ll see you in that next episode.
We’re going to be celebrating the book launch.
See you then.
Questions?
Text me anytime at (260) 217-4619.
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