Inside the Mind of Affiliate Marketer and Event Producer: Carl Broadbent (#286)

Had a great chat with Carl.  He's a nice guy and very passionate and knowledgeable about affiliate marketing and building teams.  
You can find links to link up with Carl in this article:  https://www.brooksconkle.com/top-online-business-owners/

Want 100 Money-Making Ideas?  Get them here:  
https://www.brooksconkle.com/100ideas

Transcript

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And they were throwing their arms around me and, and I was like, hello? And they were like, oh, it's fantastic. And then it all kind of went quiet. And then I looked at them and they looked at me and they went, you don't know who we are do you? I'm like, no. They were like, we're three of you are writers. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, I love it. So I've got Carl Broadbent. That's how I say your last name, right? Carl Broadband. It is, yep. Definitely. Okay. All right. I love it cause I've been saying it that way to myself out loud for the last like, about year that I've kind of hanging out with you on YouTube. So Good. I'm glad, I'm glad I've got that right man. And we didn't talk a lot before this cuz I told you I just wanna go live and chat. My goal is to make at least 25 new connections online. with people that are doing the same stuff. we're all building these businesses online and we interact sometimes maybe on YouTube or on Twitter or whatever. And to me this is just a fun way to actually connect with people. So people that are in the space. So my first question is this, I'm sure you went to school for this, right? To build websites and to, and to run an event. Right? I mean that's everyone's background, so I'm sure it's your background. We absolutely taught that when I went to school, 40 odd years ago. Yeah. That, that was the number one class, you know, website design and building. Exactly. I think it was chalkboard and slate. Yeah, exactly. So, okay from what I know, no one has a background in this stuff. So like, how did you get into it? Like how did you actually get into the, the website space? So I was doing the corporate job, trying to climb that corporate ladder and it all just came crashing down. Literally a big corporation that I worked for, suddenly said, we've sold the UK division of this branch. It was a big fast food restaurant. And they said, we've sold it, and you go with the company. And I was like, what? And they're like, who am I going with? And they were like, you're going with whoever buys the company. I was like, well I'm, you know, I've been building my career up with you guys cuz you're such a big company. I thought it could lead to something bigger, but it looked like it was gonna kind of backpedal a bit. And I'd be ending up, you know, working for a very small company. And which didn't have all the benefits that this, blue chip company had. So I kind of thought to myself, okay, I don't wanna do this. So they just said, well, you know, you can resign or go with a company. I said, okay, well I'll resign then. So I just kind of find myself looking for another job. And then I found another job pretty quickly and within a week I came home and I just sat there and I just thought, here we go again. You know, 7, 8, 9 years climbing the corporate ladder. There must be something different out there. And I got a laptop out on kitchen table and I just searched how to make money from home and I was one of the lucky ones. I fell into a group of people online on YouTube that were really helpful, kind of honest, you know, and realistic more than anything. I didn't fall into that trap of, you know, click this button and you learn$500 a day for S E L I. I didn't fall into that trap, so I was lucky enough to fall into the right kind of space and, it was really exciting. Almost four and a half years ago now, it was really buzzing the space that was in, which was niche website building and just kind of got hooked almost. almost from day one. As soon as I built the website and I showed it to my wife and proved that it was possible that somebody like me, yeah, an absolute techno fool can do it. I was hooked. I just thought, if I can do it, wow, there's something in this. Okay. Okay. So when you were doing the research, make money from home, so, so funny that that's like so many people. Search. Right? Like, how can I make money online? Yeah. Or how can I start a side hustle? Or how can I make money from home or whatever. And then they, they go into the land of opportunity, right. And like find all these options that are out there. I mean, I'm assuming you probably saw a bunch of different things, I guess, like how did you, how did you feel good about or land on,, the website thing and is that the only thing that you tried or did you like try other stuff too? Yeah, no, I, I got hooked straight away on kind of building a website and the affiliated income Cool. Displayed revenue that could make, the only reason that I did it is because like I said, the first thing that came up was somebody on YouTube saying, I'll show you step by step how to build a website. It was a gentleman called Alex over WP Eagle on YouTube. And how about four? It had about four and a half hour tutorial and I just followed it step by. and within, well, not four hours, but about seven hours. Pause in the video doing something, Pausing it, doing it, playing just like that on and off. By the end of the night I had a website. It was fully functioning up and running and it didn't get much traffic and then I just carried on and carried on. And then eventually, yeah, started to get a little bit of traffic to it. And it was a kind of a, something I've always been interested in. It was film related, Monty Python, that's where it was. Huge mon Python time. And I built a, I thought I'd built like a, a fan website and, I started to list a few t-shirts on Amazon on there and a few mugs and things. And I started to get a few sales and a few clicks and, and I kind of thought, okay, this is actually possible. You can actually make money online. Although the first month, just looking back, was, I was on a podcast the other day and. I, I, I looked at my accounts before I went on that, and kind of four and a half years later I looked at my revenue now and way back four and a half years ago now, my first month was$1.26 ah, and I can remember how buzzing I was to get that. I was thrilled and that's what clicks. I thought it's, this is possible. You can do it. I was gonna a, I was gonna ask you if, when you made that first sale or those first couple of sales, like was that really exciting for you? And obviously it was. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mentioned it to my wife and my wife's like, how much is that? Said, it's$1 26. She's like, what is that name? British Pounds? I'm like, about, about 80 pounds. She was like, You know, you're not gonna make a living off of that. Oh yeah. And I was like no but if I can make that dollar, I can make more dollars. Surely, exact Exactly, exactly. That belief for you and, and for someone like me or or whoever's getting started, that belief it, yeah, it's much more powerful for you than it is for others that you tell obviously, because it's like, you did the thing and you built, you built a site, and you're like, okay, great. Step one, I actually accomplished that. And that's an accomplishment in itself if you've never done that before. Right. Like actually putting a, putting site together, together, getting, it's like, it's like getting your first bit of traffic. You're also excited about, like looking at maybe like Google Search Console and seeing the first clicks come in, you're like, this is awesome. Like people are actually. finding this website. And then, you know, another step, I feel like after that is, you know, kind of making your first whatever, making your first dollar online or some sort of sale, and, there's steps to be, celebrated, I think, you know, like that's hundred percent, a hundred percent. I, I wish I'd have got that payout in kind of a check or something that I could have framed because, you know, it'd be here now on my wall. Be like, yeah. You know, I remember it was January, 2017, I think it was. It's a$1.26 and I, I'd be, you know, that's where it started. I love it. Okay, so go ahead. Fast forward for me to today. I'm just curious, like, what's you're working on today? Are you working on are you working on multiple sites? I know you're running an event. We're gonna talk about that too, because I have mad respect for event production. I don't know if you remember this, but I, I commented on YouTube last year and I was. Really excited for you because I've done this, I've created a, a local event in my city for, like, for businesses and entrepreneurs, and I know how much hard work that takes. So let's let's circle back to that event, but what does your business look like in the sense of like websites? Do you work on one multiple? What does that look like? Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I've been document journey on YouTube and I've always had multiple websites. I always thought it was the safest option, but only recently I've, I've always done public case studies. Mm-hmm. I've always done income reports. I've. honest and open. I've shared everything on YouTube. In my accountant, thinks I'm crazy. She's like, you put your accounts on YouTube? And I'm like, yeah. She's like, every Penny. I'm like, yep. She's like, oh my God, yeah, with this, this is cr, this is reckless. And I'm like, well, what, what kind of, what can I happen? You know? I'm just being honest and show you what you can make, what you can't. Yeah. I, I've, I've built websites where I've lost, I've built one where I called it my mega website. It was gonna be a huge website, so broad, I was gonna rank for every keyword under the sun. And it was an absolute failure. And it, and it, it zapped about$20,000 in about eight months. I just threw about$20,000 of content onto it, thinking I could rank for everything and just fill, feel hardy. I got a bit above my status, I think thinking, you know, I know this system. I, I know how to do it. And yeah. So question on that one. At that point, did you say completely it's done or is it sitting on the sidelines and maybe over time it could still grow or is it a completely scrap project? Yeah, I, I'd recently just sold it. I, I publicized on YouTube. I've said, listen, this is where it is. I've showed the progress and it actually started to get a bit of traffic, but it was so slow. I mean, most websites can get to a reasonable position in about 12 to 14 months. This one was almost two years down the line, and it was getting around 10 or 11,000 page views, something like that. So, you know, I'd expect that after a month, seven or eight, nine, something like that. So it was just such a slow burner, but it started to take off. And I've always said that I'd never sell a website that was on a downward decline. I'd always wait. And it never dropped, it never dropped off a cliff. He just slowly, he was just so painfully slow. So I, I just said, you know what, I've gotta focus more. And it was a, an event I recently went to that I spoke to some top level publishers. I mean, we are talking crazy, crazy numbers and, Every single one of them had one factor that they all kept saying, and that just caught me. They'd all worked on one project, it might have been for 10 years, it might have been for 20 years. They had all worked on one website. They all put that down to their success, that there wasn't sidetracks, there wasn't watering or diluting their time. It was all pure focus. And that kind. I came home, it was in America. I came home and I just thought, I've gotta do that. So one of the reasons why I got rid of that mega site that failed I just said to somebody, listen, it's, it's on the upward trajectory now. Do you want to take it over? They purchased it and they're doing great things with it. So I'll, I'll wait and see what happens with that in the future. I'll be, you know, excited to keep an eye on that. But yeah, so I've had multiple websites and decided now now's the time to kind of really, really focus on one. So I've started a new website case study on YouTube and, and I'm not gonna reveal the domain, but I am going to tell the niche and show the story and see how we go. But it's, it's a big, big project for me. I'm gonna really focus on it for a year. That's, that, that's really exciting. Okay, so you kind of you're kind of shedding the, let's call it whatever other projects you wanna full on, focus on a single brand because that's what you just learned. And, and that was actually, that's interesting for me. And I love asking people that too, like, cuz I feel like people have big different opinions on that rather to focus on multiple sites to diversify or like one single brand. People look very passionate about that on either, on either side. I feel like there's a lot of chatter, you know, about that. I don't know if there's a right answer, but I love what you're doing. Like to, to focus on one I think is really cool. So, I mean, there are, there are people that manage multiples. There's lady called Anne. She has like 27 websites, 60 writers, you know, her management system for running. That is a full-time job. Exactly. And so I also got to, I also got to that point as well where I, I just couldn't stop my brain. It was constantly thinking about every single one website. Let's say I had seven at one point, I think I had 15, but I think I had seven at one point. And, and even with seven, I just, every day I would think, oh, I'll do a little bit on that, and then a little bit on that, and he just, I just wasn't getting anywhere the role. but I won't say hugely successful. So yeah, I mean, so in the website space, definitely focusing on one project, but I have multiple projects as an affiliate market, I'm doing all sorts of stuff, but on the websites really focusing on one, I I like that. So, so I, I'm facing some of that myself in, in, in websites. I have probably a handful of brands two that I really focus on. I think you talked about that on YouTube as well, about, you know, sharing the domains. As a case study, it's very interesting and a lot of people will say, it's not worth the downside, you know, of doing that. You know, everyone's very secretive about domains. I like that you are open about it. I think it's cool. What are, what are your thoughts now? Just curious, like the pros and cons of that. If you are just building websites, that is your primary day-to-day job. That's what you do. Do not share your domains. Yeah. There is, there is no return. Absolutely not. If you are like me, you're Affiliate Marketter, YouTuber. For me, it was about getting kind of me as a brand out there to people. Yeah. I want to be open, trustworthy you know, just where I can really help people without having a, an ulterior motive. So I've, I've always said I'll, I'll never bring a course out or anything like outreach. Nothing against them, but I just wanted to just build my brand up, showing people what I do publicly. Yeah. Naively, you know, I thought, you know, even if I'm mentioning a few videos, please do not copy this article or this keyword. You know, people wouldn't do it, but they. It's, and, and, and if you are doing that as you're living, they, your website will be copied within hours of being on YouTube. Literally hours. That's, that is so interesting. I, I guess the, I guess the other part of that, that I find here's, he, he, here's been my question on why, why does it matter or why should it be secretive? Cause I'm like, if the top people are using tools, then they're already, you know, you're already doing research on competitors and who's out there or whatever. I, but I guess if you specifically. Mention your domain. I guess what you're doing is kind of, I guess you're amplifying that. So instead of someone maybe finding you eventually and going, oh, okay, cool, let's see what they rank for. I guess you're, you're putting a spotlight on yourself and saying, this is who I am and Yeah, please go check me out. And Well, if you're doing YouTube, but if you're doing YouTube and you're showing keyword research and things like that. Yeah, and I've done, when I think back, I've done, I've done screenshots of, you know, inside your WordPress dashboard and you got to post and it'll show maybe 15 of your articles. And when I think back, you know, I've done screenshots of that where I've said, Hey, I've just published this article and I've screenshotted, I've showed it in a video. And when I think back, that's the 15 articles that I've just published that's not had time to rank. That's not game back links. So literally it's like, you know, if they write and publish them at the same time, I've just done, yeah, we're fighting against each other, you know? So it's not as if I'm saying, I've had six months to rank this key, you won't beat me. You know, they were vulnerable. So, yeah. But it did the purpose, you know, it. it showed people that you can build websites. It shows people how to find keywords. It got me out there, got my face known. So it's opened a lot of doors as an affiliate. Martin, like you said, the event now that I run, I would not be able to do that without people knowing who I was. Yeah, good point. That's a vital, vital factor for me. Let's actually switch to that because I think that's a really neat thing. The, the event. So it is it's in, it's in the uk, right? It's not, it's not on my side. I'm in, I'm in what we call la, which is not the. not the la you know, it's lower Alabama. I'm in that LA That's where I live. But the event is it's in, it's in May, is that right? Yeah, it's 19th for Maine York. We class kind of York and this UK event is our main base a lot. Hopefully there'll always be one here, but we are trying to expand and go further a field. we've, now got socials that we're holding little meetups where we can go further a field and get people interested in holding one. So like for instance, you could say, yeah, I'm in la I'll hold an affiliate gathering social for you and you could arrange an a meet 20, 30 people. Under our banner where we can promote you, we can get it out there. We can, we've got a, a much broader reach than just you may have on your own. So I thought the worst night while we're chatting. Yeah, that's a neat idea actually. I'm gonna riff on that with you and just, so affiliate gathering.com is where people would go, right? Yeah. Yeah, sure. That's the main event. We've got speakers coming. Last year was the first one we ever did. Like I say, huge gamble just in the midst of covid coming outta covid lockdown. Hu huge financial risk for me alone to put that event on. But I just, with everything going on with Google updates and, you know, AI technology and all this stuff, it is vital that we connect and talk and have a support group. And I just wanted somewhere where I could just, like we've just said, meet people and, and have that rock that we all turn to it. I've got it. I've got my own little network of people where if I wake up in the morning, my site's been hit, I pick up the phone or I jump on a Skype chat with someone else. Say, Hey, has this happened to you yet? It's the same Cal we're all experiencing. you know, you're not on your own. And it's kind of just gives you that support to go, okay, well I'm, I'm not gonna rip my website apart then I've not done anything wrong. It's just, you know, it's just an update. Yeah. So when I saw you announced in that last year, for the first year, I mean, I, I thought, I thought it was great. So it, yeah, the event that I did in my city was for entrepreneurs, and then our year two was going into the covid year and we were marketing and we actually, we canceled. And then, so I've now scrapped the idea relate related to you of kind of cleaning your websites off the side. That's something that I've spent the last year doing is kind of, so I had a local brick and mortar business and event-based business. This, the online business has just been. Interesting to me like for a long time. But I said, man, I've really gotta be able to focus, even if it's a few different brands or websites. I'm like, everything I do has to be able to like connect and relate. And so I, you know, I've spent the last year kind of getting rid of some of my other businesses it took the whole year to like clean up stuff and be able to get to the point where I can focus but I'm, yeah, I'm, it's what's allowing me to be able to do stuff like this in 2023, be able to reach out to people and say, cool. I wanna, you know, make 25 videos with people in the online space and be able to, you know, build more connections. And so I feel like that's what you're doing with affiliate gathering. Bravo from Bravo to from last year, I thought was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, you know, some of the best feedback we got was from people who still tell me, oh, I've just had a chat with Sunset. I met him at the Philip gathering. I've just gone for a coffee with this guy or this lady. And it, there's those connections that were made last year are still there. Yeah. And what's great is that everybody's already contacting me, saying the guy who I met there last year, I'm meeting, hi. I'm meeting up with him at the train station. We're going in together and we've got fringe events the night before where everybody can socialize and have a drink and meet each other. So if they're a little bit worried about going to the event on their own, hopefully they'll meet some friends the night before. So we, we've kind of got all these things in place, but it, it's, Called affiliate gathering for that reason. It's a gathering of people, friends, colleagues, businesses. It's just a gathering. It's not like a hard core SEO mastermind. If you are experienced, you can come along if you even haven't even got a website come along. I mean, to give you an example, and I always say this in any interview I ever do a, a good friend of mine, Sean Mar, who's a very, very experienced, you know, website builder, s e o guy he came and on the first. Person he met in the corridor was somebody that spotted him from YouTube. And he came to me and he said, you will not believe this car. I've just got the best keyword research tip I've ever heard of this technique that this guy's using has blown my mind. And he's been doing it for like 20 years. Something he said, and this guy's a newbie. He, he, he's his first website, he said, and he is just giving this tip and I'm blown away by it. And that was the first person he spoke to. How cool. how cool. Can you, can you share the. Or do you know if it He didn't tell me. Me He said he kept that one to himself? Yeah, he just, he just said it. He said, he said it's, it's really simple, but I never thought about it. He said, and yeah, he said, I'll meet you to get home. I said, you've already just come. He said, I wanna, I wanna get home and get it in a practice. But that was amazing for somebody so experienced as him to say. And newbie had given this top this tip within minutes of being in, and that was what I always call kind of the, the, the corridor chats, you know, where you just Exactly. Ex Exactly. Yeah. What you take away. Always. The best thing is, is the small little side groups or someone that you bump into with some serendipity and just have a conversation that's always the coolest things about an event, and that makes them all worth it. Hundred percent. And, and, and then what you just said about the keyword thing is really exciting to me. It's one of the reasons I like to just get together with other entrepreneurs and just have a, like a br a brainstorm and we're chatting. I, I know that if I have other creative people with me and I bring an idea, it's only gonna get amplified by whoever I'm kind of pinging it with. Yeah. And it, it sounds like that's what he got, right? He, he's been in his lane for a long time. He's an expert, but he got a new, fresh idea from a, a, a new perspective and yeah. also the, I mean like q and a panel we had should have gone on for about an hour. Went on for almost like two hours. Cuz everybody just wanted to get them burning questions off the chest and ask somebody, because it's very difficult in YouTube to ask a question because you can't show examples, you can't share your domains or anything. So for them to be able to say it, listen, I've got a, you know, problem and this is happening. Most of the experts and people that were there were like, come to the side afterwards, show me and people getting the phones out and say, look at this. I remember we were in the midst of a Google. And everybody were getting, you know, really hit hard with traffic. And there was one lady there in particular, and she knew she was crying. She was like, multiple sights gone. And I remember talking to one gentleman from Ezoic who's John, one of the co-founders of his Ezoic, and he took her aside and he just, you know, really calmed her down and give us some inspiration, advice and motivation. And it was like, you know, just relax. It'll come back. I, I've seen this before, you know, then we're about, about eight weeks later, she just emailed me and said it was right. It's all back. Life's good. Great. You know, so yeah. That support she got was, incredible. That, that's really interesting. I feel, I feel like just as entrepreneurs, we kinda need that from each other in general as well because it, it can be a very, it can be a very emotional rollercoaster. I mean, when you're, when your sites are booming and ramping up, that's amazing. But then if you get, if you get hit with some core update or you're just dramatic decrease in, in some site traffic. Like I, I have that happen. A friend of mine that I, I, I do kind of a mastermind, call a little group. He just had that happen and it's very interesting. It's good to have people that you can connect with and talk with, you know, to, to, to try to be level-headed and look at things and kind of give you some, give you some ideas or assurance or whatever. Yeah. I, I'm thinking even for your successes, ev, everybody always says, you know, you need that support for when things are going. What about when things are going good? Sometimes you just need to say, Hey Brooke, I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing, mate? Yeah, me too. Yeah, my one of, one of my best friends has a website and it's, yeah, I love to hear when he is doing good. I'm like, don't always text me when things are bad, you know? Yeah. Give, gimme some good news. And here, and he texted me and said, had record month on a Amazon, or my traffic's just my PM's. Good. Just tell, yeah. That support is good cuz spurs you on knowing that others are good, doing good. Even maybe if you are not, it might just give you that mo motivation. Good. You know what, I'm gonna carry on. I'm gonna carry on a great, that's a great takeaway actually, Carl. That's a good point. Le yeah. Don't just share the downs. Share the, share the wins too and let's celebrate, let's celebrate each other. What's going on? Hundred percent. Yeah. It's really cool. So, and, and, and just so people know, this isn't like a, it's not like a pitch for affiliate gathering, although like I want everyone that I chat with, I want them to tell me everything that they're working on, whether it's courses or events mm-hmm. or your websites or if you have products. Like the reason why is because I like. I'm that fellow entrepreneur, and I think our listeners are gonna be people that are maybe think thinking of their own creative ideas and things that they wanna create as well. I actually, Carl, earlier you said something about you not being a a course guy, I'm like, man, I think you should totally, eventually create some sort of educational product. I, I don't, I don't know if you're like a never, or, or if you're a never say never kind of guy. I'm not sure. Yeah. I, I would, I, I'd create a course to like build my email list or something like that. You know, I, yeah, I, I've always said that I'll try and give as much value as I can for free. Yeah. So, you know, but if it means, you know, I'll create a course and gimme your email address and I might send you the odd email with an affiliate linking, then, you know, that's, that's the world we're living in. So, yeah. You know, that I, could do that and I say I have nothing against whether you do a course, it's the same as affiliate links. You know, people say, you know, you know, you send another email with an affiliate linking, that's how I met my living That's, yeah. Exactly. And, and, and part of my selfish reason for that is cuz I, like, I have this thing about, I, I'm not against traditional education, but I'm like, there's clearly a disruption and there's different ways and it's not the path for everyone. So I'm like, hey, as many people that can create additional educational products for people, yeah, I'm all about it you know? On, on a, on a personal level, because you did that same thing, right? You googled how to make money from home. You, you, you found someone and you found your way. And so, yeah. I, I guess from my standpoint, I'm just like, man, as many, as many ways that we can give people that are, that are seeking that kind of information that's a win. Yeah. I mean, just, just, just having the options out there. It's, I was thinking about this before we came on, you know, that, like I say, I've done a lot of things in this space, but there's so much I haven't done. And there's, you know, YouTube, I've done a bit of YouTube. I've not really gone. You know, full heartedly email lists and funnels and have not even gone into that wholeheartedly e-commerce, dropshipping, there's all sorts. So I, I thought about that today. I thought, you know, if if I wasn't doing the affiliate gallery and I wasn't doing websites, what would I do? And I just thought I'd have lots of time to do other stuff So there's always something to do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We're def definitely controlled by our time, but no, you're YouTube. It's funny because you, if I look at it this way, your channel is five times the size of mine. If I wanna look at it like that in the sense of subscribers, right? So you have like close to 10,000 subscribers. And that can seem like our channels can seem tiny and small compared to the big channels out there. But we're actually like in a top tier of, of YouTube people that create content. And I have to remind myself of that actually sometimes that like, oh I forget what the stats are, but it is pretty staggering that like your, like your channels and definitely in the top 5%. Of yeah. If, if you look, if you look at interaction and kind of user, user experience data and stuff, then my channel does really well. You can compare that to somebody who's, a friend of mine's got 70-80 Thousand subscribers. Hardly gets any comments, hardly any thumbs up, you know, so the interaction, if you look at all my videos is always 30-40 thumbs up or comments or, so it's quite an active community. And I, I suppose that's probably like an email list. You can have a very small targeted, what I call a clean list. Yeah. Where everybody is interested in it. Or you can have only 20,000 people in it and nobody opens it, nobody reads it, or, you know. So I think it just depends on your target audience. And it does, it does. When you build a YouTube, it is a little disappointing to see the numbers going up so slowly. Yep. But as long as it's a true growth and like I say a true follower base on YouTube, then I'm, I'm okay with that. For me, it's funny, so there's a, there's a guy like Roberto Blake, I actually met him recently at, I, I saw him at FinCon. I, I stopped the at, I was like, are you Roberto? He said, yeah. I was like, oh, okay, cool. Anyway, he's probably like, whatever, half half a million subscribers, you know, talks about YouTube. He talks about, you know, like what it actually takes, Like, you're like, no one's gonna watch when you first get started or whatever. Like, you need to make a hundred videos just to even realize. What you're about or like what your voice is even gonna be, and like, yeah, like me, me hearing that from other people is the only reason probably, like, I'm still going, I'm like, well, I kinda have two options in YouTube. It's, it's really simple. It's like you just, you just quit and you just stop making content. Or you just keep improving and keep making content and keep figuring out how to get better. And the way I see it is like over time I have, I have no choice but to eventually have a, you know, six figure income stream from YouTube if I stay on that trajectory. So it's kind. You can kind of just keep it simple, you know, you can kind of create content and just keep improving. Yeah, I mean, I al I always treat YouTube. I with a, if like a double edge sword with me because I, I really do like, say I want to focus on my one website now, my one website case study. And, and then I, you know, every day I think to myself, right, okay, I'm gonna publish a lot of more content and then I end up spending three hours filming a YouTube video. And when you look at you, when you look at, I speak to some people, you know, they're really successful in the industry, you know, they don't publicize it, but they, they look at me and they just go. Why are you wasting a day on YouTube when you could have published four articles or whatever? And I'm just like, I know. But you know, I think over the long term, I think it gives me a platform to do other things. Yeah. So I think that's why I, I stick to it. Plus, I just like sharing, I like sharing and stuff. I, yeah. When, when I get a thought, you know, I just, I just, I just jump on camera and just share it. Not very well edited or anything. I'm just like, I'm just gonna tell you if I'm doing it in my day-to-day life, you might be interested in it, so I'll, yeah. No yeah, I am with you. I hear, I hear what those, what those people are saying for sure. But like, at the end of the day you also have to choose to do things that bring you joy and that you enjoy, you know, that, that, that you like. Yeah. In, in addition to money, obviously, like we're trying to grow businesses and pay our bills and stuff and grow stuff, like, to me, just growing stuff is fun. But one of my parameters. Am I having fun doing this? Like, am I enjoying it? And if my answer is, if my answer is no, then I wanna do less of that. If my answer is yes, I wanna do more of that, and you know, whatever money or revenue may be a secondary thing below that question for me. And that's just how I, that, you know, that's how I operate. Yeah, I, I just think there's not clear cut answers for everything when, you know, when people are giving us that advice, you know? Yeah. I, I mean, I like, I like, for me, I like the interaction that we YouTube af you know, I, if I've got a comment or a thought, I can make a video about it, and I know hundreds of people are gonna see it within minutes. Yeah. It's just, it's a, a really good feeling. And if it's something that can help somebody out, or my videos tend to either be not, not so, so much tutorials, but basically I've done this on my website, this is just work, get on it. Or I'll say, Hey guys, don't be worried. And I know you're panicking about this. Just relax all. It's kind of just, you know, easing people's minds often. And it's just, like I say, if it was a financial thing, if that was my only income, I don't think I'd be doing the content and the stuff I'm sharing. I think I'd be doing more evergreen content's gonna be around on YouTube for years, and that, that watch time builds up and stuff. I've been doing more of that, but it's not, it's not my, my, my main income stream. So by any means, I mean, YouTube is, oh, goodness. I mean, not just talking to revenue from YouTube, it's probably 1% of my business. Yeah. But you know, still can't stop thinking about YouTube being the number two search engine in the world. And that's not you know, I just, I'm like, man, there's just long term, huge opportunity there. Even if currently maybe it's a small percentage, it, it is same, same for me as well, like small, very small, you know, fraction of income. But I'm like, long term, I think this can actually be a, you know, a big, a big fraction of income and search. So I continue to build there using YouTube as a, you know, as a second search engine. And, and, and tying all that together with your website or your brand is phenomenal. You know, I say I, I just published a video this morning and I just searched, I didn't search on YouTube, see where it was, but I went on Google to see where it was and it popped up straight away in the search results. And within minutes, you know, so that shows you the power of, of that. Cause I couldn't get an article in the top position within minutes like that, but I got, you know, I got a video there. So Yeah. As part of your business and strategy, I, it can't be, YouTube can't be underestimated for that. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great point. It, you were, you said something earlier, you were like, speaking of worry or apprehension. It was something I was like, okay, speaking of that, I wanna talk about I wanna talk about AI a little bit because like, you can't, you can't have a chat today without oh chat. That's ironic. Chat G p t you can't, you can't have a, you can't have a talker coffee chat and not talk about AI or tools or, or, or like what, you know, what we think's going on for the industry and changes and all that. That was, that was my video this morning, I love it at Google's bar beat rdi. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well then, then, then you've got some fresh, you've got some fresh thoughts. Obviously we could, we could go for, we could go for just hours on AI and tools and what we think or whatever, but like, I just wanna get your, yeah. What are your thoughts? You just put out that video, so like what, what are your thoughts like for the industry in the next, I don't know, 12 or 24 months or, or whatever. I think, I think in the short term, not, not a lot's gonna change. I think, I think certainly in a year we're not gonna see everything totally change. We're gonna see some search results displayed differently. Mm-hmm. in Google. We'll, we've seen that all year. Whether it be the loss of snippet, snippet bands, whether it be videos in the top search bar. We've had e-commerce in the top search bar of the written. We've seen all those changes and you know, like I say, the Google's latest announcement, how they brought out their AI tool to rival chat G P T. Then you know, we're gonna see they're gonna play around with it and we're gonna see some difference in the search results a long term. I think it, there's lots of opportunities there. I think a lot of people will bow out the system and the game. I think a lot of people will just go, I'm not into ai, I'm not into this. It's not why I got in into this business. I can't compete. There will be a lot of people jump ship and try something different and there's, yeah, nothing wrong with that. Each of their own, I think some people will embrace it and really run with it and do very well with it. as a blogger and this, this is what we always seem to talk about, chat, G P T and these AI tools. In blogging terms, remember the, I mean, these tools wasn't designed for bloggers. The, you know, Google didn't sit there and say, let's create an AI tool that everybody can use to write rubbish a content. Exactly. Well flood the SES with, you know, millions of content that we can't index. We can't. It wasn't made for that, you know, but it's a tool that can help you. For sure. I use Chap G P T, particularly with the extensions. I use the chrome extensions that people have kindly built and put out there. And I use those for things like I'm even using for keyword research now. The, I'll, I'll ask for a structure of an article, a metadata description. You know, I did calculators. I'm, I, I keep creating calculators for everything. I'd just go chat, g p t, create me a calculator for taxi fairs in London and it just, boom. There you go. Hitch mill code. Done So, so like, so like, did that calculator not already exist? Like if you googled that calculator, was there not one and chat G p T just created it or There probably is one. Yeah, there probably is one. But I just thought, you know, I have an article, I had an article about taxi fairs and I just thought, what a great way to boost the user experience by giving them an inbuilt calculator. It got, it took, took 10 seconds. Hgm, l curd it, it did it and he didn't look pretty. And I even said, can you make this look prettier? Put a box around it, create a blue head in, and it just does it. It's crazy. Now for me, that's a tool that can enhance that blog post. Mm-hmm. So I like using it for things like that. Give me a chart, gimme a list, gimme a pie. Chart, a listical. I'll use it for all kinds of things like that. What I'm not doing, which is where I'm think people are getting it wrong, is telling it, write me a thousand words on can this do that? That's the kind of content we need to stay away from. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm definitely with you on that. Like, yeah, it's probably not the right way to do it. Yeah. I feel like for me it's been useful for definitely for getting like creative, creative titles and things like that. Yeah, definitely some structure stuff, like I'm treating it I'm treating it like a junior, kinda like a junior marketing person. Like I have a marketing person beside me and I'm like, Hey instead of my brain starting from scratch, I, I, I give it an idea and then I want. Person or brain to give me some more creative ideas. And I'm like, oh wow, that one's better than mine. You know? So, yeah, I, I, I did my, my first video was exactly that using chat g PT to create headline titles. So my, like I say, if you search on my YouTube playlist, my first one related to chat, G p t was exactly that. And I was typing in, you know, create me a blog title for this post. And then I, then I changed it and Benton said, keep it under 60 characters. Did that. And then I'd say create it so it gets clicks. See what it come up with. And then eventually, ah, I created this lovely little prompt that was kinda like, give me a click bait title under 60 characters that will outran the number one. It was brilliant and it gave me like 10 varieties of it and some of the ones it comes up with, I would've never have thought of Exactly. Yeah, it's just kinda like an extension. Right? Yeah, I think those are some definitely smart ways to do it Well, okay, so what about what about when G P T four comes, or what about when it's, you know, and, and obviously you and I can't read the feature, we don't know what's gonna actually happen, but I'm just curious, does, does any of it, does any of it worry you in, in in your brands that you're creating? And if it, if it does, like what do you think things are that we can do that are, you know, that are smart or, or, or whatever? Again, it doesn't worry me as such ex excites me. It's gonna be fantastic compared to what it currently is. You know when it's, when it's gone out there again and read every piece of content that it can openly read. And that's what it's gonna do apart from I think, I believe private membership groups and Facebook groups. It can't get inside those, but anything that's publicly shared on the internet can read and that's where it's gonna go out. It's gonna go out and read all that and get fresh content. It's gonna be more real time content. It'll be very, very interesting. I'm sure there's gonna make some big improvements on it. I think it'll hit information content quite hard. If you want to ask the question, I always revert to this cuz my first ever successful website was a pet website. You know, if you wanna say, can rabbits eat lettuce? The informational content, it's anybody's gonna be able to do it. Yeah. Now you know, is that going to mean if you plow a thousand articles like that on your website, you're gonna be successful? No. Cuz everybody else could do the exact same thing. But if you had. a pet rabbit and you had several different types of lettuces and you was doing a video where you tested your rabbit, see which one it liked, and did it leave that one and did it eat the stalk of that one? That's the kind of real interesting data that will outrank it and you can say, you know, Hey, the can, but my rabbit prefers this and it just will not heat eat this rabbit because it's 90% water and blah, blah, blah. You know, that's the kind of. that we're gonna want. I'm totally with you. And then actually, while you're giving that example, I just thought about like just the branding aspect of building a brand. I'm like, man, what if your pet rabbit's kind of cool and it's got a little necklace or a little t-shirt, it's got a personality and then people are coming back to follow your rabbit because your rabbit is cool. Or there is there is one, there's a rabbit on YouTube that's got something like 3 million followers. Oh, this is crazy. She basically texts the rabbit to the beach everywhere. That is great. And people followed just for the, for the rabbit, but she's got a website, so she writes some helpful information, but it's mainly a YouTube channel with like 3 million subscribers. She does all the all the sound stuff, you know, where like the rabbit's just crunching lettuce and she recalls the sound. Oh yeah, yeah. As smr ASMR stuff. Oh yeah, she does. She does all that. It's crazy. It's got something like, you know, 14 million views for a rabbit eating lettuces for a minute. Funny, I'm actually, of all the things for me to write down and make notes of while we're talking, I just wrote down Rabbit YouTube channel. I was like, I'm gonna find send. I'll send you the link. Yeah, I'll send you the link. It's actually, some of it's quite good. I have I just have crazy respect for anyone that creates a brand around unique things or interesting things and honestly what, what, what she's doing or what she's done. I would argue kind of Phil Safes against being you know, swallowed up by some, by some ai. Maybe she can use tools to actually enhance what she's doing. And I don't even know if her goal is to create a brand. I have no idea. I don't know. But obviously she has millions of, she has millions of YouTube followers, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it's like you said, I mean the opportunities are out there with anything, you know, whether it be written blog post, whether it be using AI to do that, whether it be YouTube, you know, you, you, you go into chat jpt on say, you know, gimme 10 ideas of setting up a YouTube channel where I don't have to show my face and it's gonna come up with one's where you're like, oh wow, I never even realize that. And I do know a couple of crazy YouTube channels that's out there. I won't mention'em cuz a couple of them, the niches are really, really unusual and they, but yeah, and just things that you just would not realize. People watch it's crazy. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's wild. Let's see. Alright, so I think we talked about the, yeah, we talked about your str Oh, what, so what does your, so with your website, you're gonna focus on your one main brim. What does your kind of structure look like? Do you have any sort of, any sort of team or anyone that helps you consistently or is it mainly you and some like freelance writers? Like, like what does that look like for you? Yeah, it's, it's mainly me not doing a lot It's the team I've built team over about four years now. So it's consists of two editors 11 writers and myself really? So, yeah, that's sound distracting. I have two VAs Can one's a full-time vi, does all the editing and controls and manages lady is a, I have to say she's a va, but she does more proofreading. So she will, if we are hiring a new writer, she's the one who will check them out, see if they're doing a good job. And we're running through Copyscape, we're running through plagiarism checks and we just do a lot of background checks for the first few months until we know that writer is kind of, you know, trustworthy Right. And writing good quality content. And then we pretty much assign them onto the website. And that's it. So my role basically is each month I do the keyword research. I give 25 keywords or article titles to each writer, and they have as long as it takes within that month to do that. 25. often they will come back to me and say, I've done it, and I'll you some more. And then every Monday I pay the bills, which is a hard task. And there's a lot, a lot of money goes out on a Monday and that's it. Basically. My editor does the majority of the work. I'll, he'll, he'll be watching this back, so I'll give you a hundred percent credit. He literally does about 10 hours a day editing creating infographics, adding charts, everything. Literally does everything. So, but it's taken a long while to get, it's took four years to get team like I've got now. And I do feel like we're at a really good position with the team. Yeah. Does how. How do you guys communicate? Like, or, or how do you structure all the work? Do you use a, a tool, like, like what software do you use for that? I, we, we have a quite a simple spreadsheet and it may sound very, you know, un techy, but it's just works. And the reason why we've tried Upwork, we've tried click up and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, we tried all the tools and the feedback I got from the writers was if you imagine like in these tools, you create a, a massive workflow. So it's. One tab for keyword research done. Another tab for assigned it to the writer. Another one for undergo, you know, un started writing another one for in draft and another one for proof. There were like 15 tabs where we spent more time moving things about. The writers came back to me and said, I spent more time in that tool than actually do write in your articles. Yeah, it's, it's just before you just gave me a keyword. I put it to draft the editor, the VA would proofread it, the editor would edit it and you would click Publish Cal and then you pay me. It was like a five step process. Why have we met this so complicated? So we've got back to just a spreadsheet. It's a colored, nicely colored, very organized spreadsheet, but it's just a spreadsheet. Well, you'll be so we talked about. I think before we started recording, I just mentioned MUFI, Sarker cuz I had interviewed him or, or like whatever. We had a chat. And that is what basically he uses. He, he used to use Trello as a project management tool and then he was like, actually we use Google Sheets. I was like, interesting. I was like, why'd you stop using, you know, why'd you stop using Trello? And for him it had to do with like, Partnering with people on websites, and he was like, well, I didn't wanna force the partner to do, you know, what we were using. And so that's what they wanted to use. They had kind of a simple system in inside of spreadsheets. And yeah. I I, I think it's interesting to ask people, I'm gonna try to make sure I always ask the people that, because I, I, I feel like the answer is there's, there's no perfect solution. It's kinda like whatever works best for the system that you've created, you know? Yeah. I mean, there must be a level where you need, you know, a system. Yeah. Like, you know, I went to this event in America recently and the lady showed a, a, a chat on the screen and she had like faulty writers, about 10 editors. And I was like, she was like, we couldn't manage all that without some system like this. And I get that, but, you know, three 11 writers, I've got 11 writers. And for anybody just outsourcing a bit of content, you know, I did start with just outsourcing all my content just to content writing services. That's how I started. I did everything, I think. Then my first one was First hire was a regular writer, and then maybe two. I only got a v year after three years I think it was. And that was only really just to help out with a, a little bit of proof. My English and spelling and grammar's terrible. So that was my first literally like, can you help me out? But a full-time editor that's only just recently happened, got. Yeah. V Very cool. I feel like, I feel like processes are always like adjusting and changing in, in motion and I, I think that's normal. Light. Light mine has been as well over the last couple of years. Does your team connect? Like are they connected with each other or not at all? No, the only thing we do is email. I, I try doing kind of, I thought about doing a WhatsApp group, but they're all over particular parts of the world, so Yeah. So for the, because it is the, my main website that I'm working on now is a travel website. Okay. And it's a global, it doesn't, it covers everywhere. So what I've tried to do is hire writers from particular regions. To have a writer based in Canada. She writes all the Canadian content, have a writer in, you know, Spain, and they'll do all the Spanish content. So we try and get a writer all over the place. Makes, so we've got some sense, somebody who does each region. So they're, they're more knowledgeable so, You know, if I want to write any content around where I live here in York, nobody's gonna know it better than me. So I would try and get a writer who, who lives around here. So trying to get all them in a WhatsApp group at the same time zone around the world, it's literally impossible. So the only thing I do now is we have a once a month we'll have a, a, a newsletter that goes out or an email copies everybody into it. And that's it really. That's, that's the group communication and then the editor basically contacts them on a one-to-one basis pretty much every day, but it is always a email. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I was just curious like, you know, like we're in this interesting space of. you know, it's kind of a micro company, right? Like a number of people that o over time when you form it, they become, you know, they're, they're, they stay with you and they want to, they wanna be there and they're a part of the team. And so that, that's like, that's like something I'm trying to figure out. Like, we had a few actually monthly calls as, so my folks are connected on Slack. Like we're kind of, as things move kind of through a process, people kind of ping each other and they're like, oh, this is now here. So, so we kind of move things through some steps. And we did a couple of calls that were like, real low key. I was like, Hey, just, just show up. We'll just chat, just kind of whatever, get to know each other. If you have questions about what's going on that you can bring'em. And we did it for a few months and, and it, and it was cool, but, you know, definitely not necessary and, and definitely don't wanna force any type of like, team building or anything like that. Yeah. But, but, but that's just something that I'm kind of figuring out is as we go forward, how can this work? Can we build like a culture, you know? Yeah. I, I, I just think for me, most people are in this industry, especially when you are hiring writers, they're often, majority of them are doing it in their spare time, and they're doing it because it's a no pressure way of making some money. You know, they're, they've built time commitments. As long as you say, listen, get, get that article back to me in the next seven days. They can write when the one, they'd have to speak to anybody, they can just quietly go away and do it. Yeah. I think putting them pressures on them of, you know, you gotta jump on a conference call at six o'clock. I, I hate that. I mean, it takes me a lot, believe it or not, even though I'm on YouTube, even though I'm on a stage at, for the gallery, it takes me a lot to jump on the camera with somebody and you start doing that, giving'em instructions and Yeah. You know, it feels, it feels like I've gone back to the corporate world. Totally as Lance as possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great feedback. That's a good point. Yeah, because for me, locally, like in my city lunch so many people do lunches and they do like business lunches and stuff, and that is the wor I'm like, for me, I'm like, that is the worst. I'm like, first of all, I have to go somewhere and then it's like right in the middle of my workday. For me, a business lunch is like the most unproductive meeting or connection I can do and I don't know if that's just my attitude, but I just feel, like, I can do so much better in, in, in, you know, how we can kind of chat or work together or whatever. So duly noted. I, I take, I take your note with my team and Yeah. And, and, and, and, and I want them to give me feedback and like what they want and you know, I just want everyone to a, a as we kind of grow in what we're doing, I just want people to feel, you know, involved and feel a part of the team. Yeah. And if, you know, if they want be, if they want to work with us, like long term, I want them to do that as well. But I, I hear, I hear what you're saying about Yeah, writers, like a lot of'em being part-time. Which I mean, some might, some might do it, you know, I mean, if you've got, you know, if I sent an email out, email out and said, Hey, you know, 11 writers, I'm gonna jump on a call. If anyone wants to jump on, come and meet me, say hi. That's absolutely fine. You know, that's, and if they wanna do that, you know, that's fine. But I, I have some that are just like, you know, yeah. I ju I just, just wanna, just wanna write for you, Cal and just, just pay me and I'll write and that's it. Fine. Totally. That's what you wanna do, you know. But I have one writer, my first ever writer was It was really weird, really random story. But my first write after about a year said to me, cuz I started doing YouTube, so she was writing for me and she was like are you on YouTube? I was like, yeah. She was like, Do you live near so-and-so place? And I said, yeah, do you live at the house on the corner with the like white dog? Like, yeah, she, wow. She was like, I know where you are. And I was like, oh, she's stalking me. And she was like, I literally live across the street from your. No way. And that hired her on, I think it was on Upwork or something like that. Just really, really random. Yeah. And she was, it was for a, a, a tropical fish website that I had, and she'd been writing all this content about garden ponds, and she was like, do you know a reason I'm doing it? I was like, well, I'm, she's like, I, you know, I built my own ponds and it's my pride and joy. And I was like, I wondered why your contacted sales good. She said, yeah, if you walk over the street, you'll see it. You were literally next door neighbors, like Lynn across each other. Yeah, literally about a hundred yards away from my house. Yeah. That is up for me for a couple of years until she Yeah. Did a different job and, and, and stopped writing. Yeah. But how crazy is that? Yeah. People say small world, that kind of gives it a whole new meaning, right? So, yeah. Absolutely. Well, also at the affiliate gallery, I, I jumped off the stage after doing a slot on stage, and these three ladies walked up to me and they were like, Hey. And they were throwing their arms around me and, and I was like, hello? And they were like, oh, it's fantastic. And then it all kind of went quiet. And then I looked at them and they looked at me and they went, you don't know who we are do you? I'm like, no. They were like, we're three of you are writers. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Oh, that's so good. But you know, yeah, that's the thing that takes the virtual world and makes it, and makes it real, right? When you're so, so, so that's another reason why I appreciate what you're doing, because everyone that's there that maybe has met and knows each other at like affiliate gathering, they've all connected online. So when you get to like, be be in person, in a, in a, in a room and, and hanging out, it's just it takes a, it takes those relationships to a different level too. Yeah. I, I think even, even, even just that, you know, even I, when some people walked in YouTube was that I knew and. Philip marketers and I'd seen and heard of, you know, even I was a bit awestruck with some of them. I'm like, oh my goodness, that's that so and so from YouTube. And I, you know, I didn't want to go across and say hi and yeah. You know, so even I was a bit starstruck with some people, so sometimes people just wanna go meet, meet their favorites, meet people that see on YouTube, you know, so you for sure get that, you get that the fringe events, cuz we often, the fringe events are held by either speakers or YouTubers or people who have a community. And you can usually tell cuz like the favorite ones sell out like really quick. But it's amazing to go around and see that everybody's got their own little audience and people just, you know, they all have the favorites, so it's nice to see. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's great. Alright, I, I've got a, a couple, couple more thoughts before I let you go. Are there any tools that you use that you feel like you can't live without? I wanna make sure I ask you that. Ooh, tools well, if I split it down for YouTube I got, I, I have to use the most basic YouTube editing tool on the planet. Just iMovie, I must, I bought, I bought like Adobe pr. I've bought all of Da Vinci. I've tried them all. And I always go back to that simple, simple editing tool. I don't wanna need to, to learn how to do something for three months before I can get a video up. So, simple editing tool on YouTube. For websites I probably use just images. So Canva, just in images and making, in, you know, featured images. Better use Canva quite a bit. But I'm a big believer in keeping the tools to the minimum. I, I really, one thing I don't like is, is paid tools. I. I just hate monthly fees going out every month. And you realize, you know, I haven't used that tool for four months and I've just paid a subscription. One happened to me recently. I, I just got, suddenly got a, a bill for like$450 and I was like, add it on auto renew, you know, and I, I haven't even used it for a year and it's just charged me$400, you know. So I try not to use as paid tools if possible. I use a lot of the free tools, so keyword research, you know, and, and competition analysis. Use Uber suggest, use Sem rush free, get, you know, you get like so many searches per day and it's enough to get what you need for, certainly for one or two websites and EHS or anything like that. I, you know, I can usually do a lot of manual keyword research. I use tools inside Ezoic, you know, like Niche IQ that's got keyword research tools he's built inside of it. Chat GT's got keyword facilities you can use. I try and just stay away from as many paid tools as a camera on it. I like that. I like your I like your thoughts there. Yeah. Canva is one of my favorites. I actually have the paid Canva. I like Camba Pro, whatever. But yeah, that it's like$10, isn't it? That's, it's so affordable. Affordable, yeah. I think, I think it's like 130 bucks a year or something, or whatever. And, and, and funny on your annual subscription thing, I, I lit, I, that's another business too. I found a website that was like, to help you track those. And I have a note of it. It's actually on my list of to-dos, to go in and like plug in things because I find myself putting subscriptions literally on like my Google calendar like a month before, and I'm like, Go check on this, decide if, if you still want it. And I'm like, there's gotta be a better way than than that for my business. You know what I mean? To, to be looking at these tools or subscriptions. So, all right, cool. I looked inside PayPal because if you're going into PayPal, majority of them, when you sign up, it's usually a PayPal payment. Then it says recurring subscription. Yeah. And I went PayPal on it. I think it's something like manage my automatic payments. And I had a list of about 30 things that were automatically going out and I couldn't recognize, like, oh my gosh. I would just like, stop, stop, stop, stop. If it's important, they'll email me. I just glitchy cancel them all. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's yeah. And, and I've heard of people doing that. Who, who is it? I think authority Hackers yeah, gay. Anyways, recently I heard him on something. He was like, we have a quarterly meeting where part of that meeting is we review what software, what subscriptions we have, and he's like, we typically. Cancel a percentage of them, like at that quarterly meeting and, you know, make the decision not using this. Yep. Using this. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So yeah, as you grow, as you grow your business and tools, like, yeah, you have to have, you have to have management for your, you know, for the tools that you're, that you're using, which is really, really interesting. So. Yeah. Alright. So I, I wanted to ask you this too. Is there anything, is there anything that you wish people would ask you but they don't? Oh, that is an interesting one. Yeah. You like that one? For me, it would probably be, if I was gonna ask how would I do this all over again, how would I start? You know, would I, would I do what's I've done? That's a great, great question. Yeah. Would you, Carl, I came up with that question. Would you if you were to do this all over again, Yeah. I, I honestly, I. as you get a little bit su successful, you start making money to go back. The thought process of going back and starting a website from scratch and waiting that 7, 8, 9 month period before you get a dollar, that scares me. Just the thought of doing all that again yeah, would scare me. But it is one, you know, is a solid proven track of getting to somewhere where you can make reliable income. So, you know, I would always probably recommend people try that, you know, as a solid way of making money online. Would've tried something else. I think I'd have probably hit YouTube a lot harder and across multiple channels doing different things rather than sticking to one. I think I've narrowed myself into a little tiny bubble and I wish I'd have maybe done some other channels as well. Maybe even totally different random channels might not be anything to do with making income online and I wish maybe I'd tried that a little bit sooner than, than I got into it. So, yeah, I think that's what I'd do. Interesting. No, that's, that's good feedback. That's a good maybe I'll just borrow your question and I'll ask future people that and then yeah, cuz that's, it's a great question. Because you, you, you always start somewhere, but you never, you think about, would I go back and start there again? That's that. You know, that's interesting because like you said, we all, we're not taught this at school, would just fall into this industry usually somehow you know, would I fall into it the same way? Would I, you know, would I encourage somebody else to do it the same way? You know, it is quite a painful, slow process. So would, I don't know if I'd wanna put somebody else through that, so no, I might suggest another way of them for doing it. It's, it's really interesting because people have to there's a lot of learning. Like I feel like I'm still crazy learning so much after like years into it. There's always so. like a, there's always something new, but then there's always, as you level up and get to the next level, there's like different things to focus on, I guess. Yeah. I just feel like there's so much in like maybe people have to kind of scrape their, scrape their knees the first time. I, I'm not sure. I mean, that's a great question that you ask. I'm doing it with my son already. My, I have, I have three boys and two of them are into one, into kind of the graphic design, the editing side of it. So he's really interested in that. And the other one's into building websites. So he started building a website and he was like, you know, let me have one of your websites. And I was like, no, you build it on your own from scratch. And you know, he's super excited. Yesterday he had his biggest day ever, he had$3 in ad revenue and sold a product to Amazon. So it's kinda a$5. That's awesome. It's like a$5 day. And it was, It's just, again, it's just planted the seed of this is possible, you know, so he, he, he's like, I've wrote 18 articles this month. I am, I am, I'm beating. I wanna get to$10. You know, so, yeah, I, I met him. Start from scratch. Just, that is awesome. How, how old, how old are your sons? So he's 25. So I've got a 15 year old, a 21 year old, and a 25 year old. I love it. I I love that you're I love that training that you're giving them. I think it's amazing, especially, especially since they're showing, they're showing interest and you, you can kind of guide them through, through the process. I think it's awesome. I think the only, the only thing I did to give him a helping hand was I give him an demand to start with. Cause Yeah. It wasn't right from scratch cuz I, I honestly knew. after four months, if he didn't have one click on his website or something, he would've, he would've given up you. I just know, I think the Asian men give him a little bit of a, a boost, but it wasn't a fortune. You know what I mean? It wasn't a lot. Yeah. So what it was just, it was just, I remember how hard it is and it takes a really strong person after six months to sit there day and night writing content, and after six months only being a couple of dollars, it takes a strong, strong person to do that. And I, I think, did think it might not be up to that Yeah. I'm, I'm definitely with you. It takes a lot of like, faith in the process to be like, this works or it will work. Other people, it's work for them. Age, age domains. Real quick, what are your, just, just kind of general, general thoughts, I guess. Obviously you, you got your son one, so you have some, some belief in him. I guess, yeah. I, I mean I, some of them work, some of them don't least, I'm not saying every age domain works. I've, you know, I've been burnt with a couple that didn't work, but I've also seen I purchased warm. and built an aged I built a public case study on it and it grew faster than anything I'd ever seen before. So that definitely works. But I also build them on fresh domains. I think, you know, but even then you can get burn. I, I, we, I, we had a fresh domain that we did all the background checks on. We went to wear back machine, we did everything search for YouTube channels and Facebook groups were the same name, couldn't find anything. It was as if this was as clean as, as anything. It was a really good name. So I'm very surprised somebody hasn't used it. And we tried building on that and for about a year and a half, it just wouldn't move. Google hated it, wouldn't index it. It just didn't like it. And when we did further, further investigation, we eventually found that it had been used before and not for very good things, which was really weird because the name of it didn't. it being used for what? It was interesting. Interesting. How were you able to, in the, like, like what was it that you uncovered in the future that, so it, it was, it was, it was a friend of mine Phil, over a, a hosting company called spiderweb.co uk. He, he found it and it was basically he found some history on the demands. So we were doing way back machine looking for snapshot of pages and we're looking for u. And we couldn't find anything. But he found on a domain registry search that went back maybe 20 years. Okay. He found it on that like way back in the beginning, you know, probably some of the first websites out there. It had been used picked up then it just got, I don't think it'd been used for anything really, really bad, but just being hit with so many spammy links as time went on that it was just like a directory for the worst links you could imagine. So we thought that was fresh and clean and it was, you know,$10 on good idea or whatever. But yeah, we got built with that. So, you know, you can have the same success with age domains and fresh domains. Sometimes it is. Yeah. And, and imagine your average business person that's going out and, oh, I have this domain idea and I just grab, and they don't know to do e even half of the research that you did way back machine. They're just like, oh, that's a cool name. I'll buy it. I'll build my business on it. And if, if one of their strategies becomes, you know, maybe articles and SEO and then like, they can never, I mean, I mean, that's so crazy to think that it can have that effect. Just a long term, just sometimes Google just hates it. Yeah. You know, I've, I've had, I've had domains where Google just will not index your content. It just doesn't show it. I. Say, show it any love. It just literally doesn't show it any love. No matter what you do, you can do, you know, as much as you can add, you know, a, a correct address, you can do all the citations, you can do everything, and it just doesn't like it for whatever reason. Yeah, something's happened to it in the past and it just does not like it. And, and that can happen like, say, on Asian domains as well, but I'd say kind of one out of every three or four, sometimes you have a little bit of an issue with, but if I had the funds to do it, I would probably always go with the age domains because I, I do think it gives you a boost out of the box and definitely a fresh domain. If it is a totally clean, never been used domain, it is gonna take time for Google to understand what you are, who you are, what you're trying to get over, what the message is. So, yeah, it's a, it's a longer road, but if it is totally clean, totally fresh, it's the safest option. Definitely. Good point. Very good point. That's good. Okay. If, if, if people wanna link up with you actually, and like connect and reach out, what's the what's the best way for people to, to, to find you? Search on YouTube Cal Robin, you'll, you'll find me on YouTube. Have my website, cal bra.com. Anything to do with the event Philip gathering Jills head over to affiliate gathering.com. Check out all the social meetings we're doing. We're I dunno when this is going out, but we've got some big announcements coming out. We're having some social events that are not here in the uk so we had a few people saying, you know, it's always in the UK so we've gone fe a field. So hopefully there'll be one in your area and hopefully the next few years there'll be one right around your corner, hopefully. Ooh, juicy. I like that. I like that. Okay, cool. Well guys that are watching, stick around and watch this next video and then Carl hang out with me for a few seconds after. We'll do a quick, quick debrief and I appreciate you coming on today. Will do. Really enjoyed it. Thanks very much for the invite.