How To Earn Money Quickly

We are excited to chat with Tom Antion with Antion & Associates and Screw the Commute Podcast. He's an Internet Multimillionaire "guy next door" and founder of the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. He is going to share a ton of his experience with us today so we can learn from his successes and failures.

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How To Earn Money Quickly

Tim Fitzpatrick: Our guest today has never had a job. He's an Internet multimillionaire guy next door and founder of the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. He's going to share a lot of his experience with us today that I know is going to help you grow your business and give you some tips you can implement immediately to improve your situation. So you do not want to miss this. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have Tom Antion with Antion & Associates with me today. Tom, thanks for joining me, man, I really appreciate it.

Tom Antion: Oh, yeah, it's great. Tim and I got to correct one thing. I did apply for a job one time. Yeah. I saw it said 401k. And I thought, man, that's a great starting salary 401 thousand. I didn't get that job.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. Well, you know, for those of us that got started on our entrepreneurial journey early, we either have not had too many jobs or had none. So, yeah, I, I'm with you, man. Once you get the bug, it's hard to go back to doing anything else.

Tom Antion: I'm only at 44 years in formal business at this point and really since I was 10 years old. I know you can't believe with my baby face here, but you know if you keep your weight up it knocks the wrinkles out. So, just saying.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So before we jump into things, I got some rapid-fire questions. Help us get to know you a little bit better. You ready to rock and roll?

Tom Antion: Yeah, do it man.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, when you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Tom Antion: Oh, with my dogs. I'm a dog nut. They've rescued tons of dogs and I have a dog company on the side which is part of my make your hobbies tax-deductible routine and yeah. Just spending time with them. They're just the joy that's for sure, except when they run away and get on the other side of the fence and you got to chase them around. Other than that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. Before we jumped on air, you were telling me about your husky and I was talking about my beagle. They're both runners. What's your hidden talent?

Tom Antion: Hidden talent, it was hidden for a long time, and recently it's I'll say it's come out of the dojo, so it's I'm kind of a self-defense expert in that. I've been in two gunfights, knife fights, over 100 violent encounters with bikers trying to kill me and shot up my car with a shotgun blast and and never said much about my skills until I started to see all these carjackings and these games where they're knocking people out, old people. And I thought, know I should come out with this. And so I, I put a 14-hour seminar together called Brutal Self-defense. And so I guess that's my hidden talent. But since I got to the nightclub business, not one person has hit me with a beer bottle.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, that's good. That's a step in the right direction. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Tom Antion: Well, if it's business-wise, it would be the most recent one would have been Cory Rudel, who was kind of the 30-year-old grandfather of Internet marketing for small business. He, unfortunately, died in a tragic racing accident. But he was my first Internet teacher in 1996. And I think it might surprise you. He told me to hide my products, hide my products more. That's more for expensive products because he says if you show an expensive product on your Web page, people scroll to the bottom and then see the price and then leave. He said, get rid of the picture and everything and just show them all the benefits and use what we call advertorial. So you don't even know there's a product. The sales letter looks like a big article and then it transitions after they see all the benefits with no sales resistance. So I have one page for one product that's made over a million dollars, just not a whole website, just one page on a website based on that concept. So he said hide your products and lead people to it, seeing benefits. So that would be a more modern one. Now, the original one would be my dad, which his picture behind me, that's not him. But he taught me when he could just when I could just crawl, he would put my toys. You can see the ball there on the other side of a pillow and to teach me how to overcome obstacles. And so to this day, I'm unstoppable. I won't cheat anybody or step on him to get where I'm going. But if you tell me I can't do something, you better get out of the way while I blow by doing it. And the thing is that the tip for your listeners is that when somebody tells you you can't do something, it has nothing to do with you. It means they can't do it. It has nothing to do with you. So, he told me he taught me to be excellent and overcome obstacles. And that was my dad.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Tom Antion: Well, that I cry at America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent videos, when some underdog makes it, makes it. I'm just so happy that they do it. So I kind of get teary-eyed and choked up. So I'm always for the underdog.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What does success mean to you?

Tom Antion: Well, success is keeping going when you realize you're never going to realize your dreams. For instance, I'm pretty sure at my age I'm not going to realize my dream of being an international playboy. So, but I keep fighting. I keep trying. So so but, you know, I've heard a lot of your other guests, and it's a very typical for people like me. It's like, you know, I make my world is helping other people. So, I got rich in many ways, not just money, but helping other people. So that's a pretty common one. But anyway, you do have to keep going when you know you're not going to be an international playboy.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Life must go on. Where's your happy place?

Tom Antion: Happy place. Oh, boy. I can think of so many things that would make this an explicit episode, but I'll refrain from that to my happy place would be when I see the underdogs succeeding. So it's a combination with the AGT. But when I see it for real with people that maybe I've helped, I really get it because I've rescued hundreds and hundreds of dogs. And the best one of the best things I ever did was I auctioned myself off, in about 5minutes, I raised $78,000 and that would feed 288 homeless children for a year. So that's a very happy place. But I'm trying to beat that record with the program I'm doing now. I have a school, the school that you mentioned, we're doing a big campaign for people with mobility problems and sight problems to put them through my school so they can legitimately learn from home and legitimately be hired from home and not have you know, it takes them 3 hours to do it. You and I can do in 10 minutes, you know, when traveling. So that program is in play right now. We're doing a big Go Fund Me thing and I'm going to hire disabled people to help run the program. So that means, you know, the thing with the children, I was really proud of that. But it's a Band-Aid. What happens when the year's up? This, I'm changing these people's lives and asking for people to help me with the Go Fund Me to do it, but they're going to get hired. And, you know, the depression is 4 times the normal. The suicide rate is 4 times the normal. So I have the ability to do something about it. And if it kills me, I'm going to do something about it. That's a happy place.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What about qualities, what qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Tom Antion: I've got to be able to depend on what they say, and that's one thing, and I'm doing a book on the crowdfunding on how to do it properly. And one of the common things I've been teaching for years is some of the nicest and best people will tell you, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to do this tonight." And then they don't do it with me. If there was a nuclear attack and I told you I was going to do something, I'm going to do it, or else I'll call you and tell you why not. So they have to be able, have to be able to depend on what they say. I'd rather they say no than say yes and then not do it.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I agree 100%. So tell us a little bit more about just, you know, your background and what you're doing. You know, it seems like you got your hands in a lot of different pots.

Tom Antion: Well, the thing is, is, you know, my podcast is called Screw The Commute based on the fact I never had a job. And, you know, and my resume kind of looks like B.S. because when you're not sitting in a car, sitting in traffic for hours a day, plus all the other time, it takes to be ready to go to work and come home and all that. You can live 2 or 3 lives, so I'm a charter pilot on the second biggest nightclub in the state, you know, became a martial arts expert, you know, Internet marketing expert. I've done 3000 speeches in 12 countries, I mean it's just it's hard to believe somebody could do all this stuff. But if you added up all that time, you're just making other people rich and all work is honorable. I'm not saying you should just quit and take this job and shove it. I want you to eventually do that. My job when I teach people is to make it too expensive for you to go to work anymore because the time you're spending on your own stuff is equaling or exceeding what you're making at work. And it doesn't even have to exceed or equal because the stuff you make at work is W-2 income. Taxes are taken out. So you can make less and have a bunch of tax deductions. Totally legitimate. No scam, no, no IRS troubles and make less money and equal your job and then you have more time. So there's all kinds of benefits from it.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it. So let's jump into this. What are your favorite ways to turn money quickly?

Tom Antion: Well, you know, I never preach get rich quick. All right. But but, you know, a lot of people do come to me and they're in a position that they need. And I think this is going to surprise you, because I've heard some of your other episodes, big experts on email marketing, only about DKIM settings. This I think this will surprise you. If somebody comes to me and wants to make money, quick eBay. eBay is where I send them. Why? Because you don't have to have a website, you could literally have money coming in tomorrow with a PayPal account and clean your basement out at the same time. So, yeah, you know, I grew up very frugal. My dad came from Syria on a cattle boat in the early 1900s. When I grew up, he would buy used lumber, make us kids, pull the nails out, straighten him out so we could reuse them. That's the kind of guy he was. And I can't even let the water run while I'm brushing my teeth. Now, to this day at 66 years old, because I hear my dad, you're wasting water, don't waste it. So I buy stuff used a lot. So I bought this thing off of eBay and the guy happened to be local and so I go over to his house. It's beautiful house. There's a tool because I'm really into tools. Blue-collar. My dad grew up, teach me how to make stuff. And so a half a million-dollar motor home out front like he's dressed nicely. He invites me in to go down to his shop. And so we go down the hall, down the stairs, heading back to his shop. And Tim, everything to this point was normal, ok. I'm going down towards his shop and I look over and the whole ceiling of his basement, there were hundreds, hundreds of ladies bras hanging from the ceiling. Oh, my God. I'm thinking, "Oh, my God, he sucks people in on eBay and then kills them and hangs their underwear up." I'm thinking of all these things. So I'm watching him like a hawk as I buy the tool and everything is normal. I'm just talking to him. So we go head to out. And of course, I walk behind him, I don't want him behind me. And I finally said, you know, "Hey, what's the deal with all these bras hanging here?" And he says, "Oh, my daughter goes to the thrift store. She knows all the thrift stores. She knows all the sizes that are hard to get. She gets them cheap. She cleans them up, repairs them, sells them on eBay." I said, "Oh, no kidding." $200,000 a year, she makes selling used bras on eBay.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Oh, my God.

Tom Antion: So I'm thinking, "Oh, man. You know, if I hang around the bra apartment at thrift stores, I'm going to get arrested." for me. But I have another friend, single mom, you know, trying to make ends meet. She take 80 to 100 bucks every Saturday to yard sales. And now if you know anything about eBay, you have the search box at eBay. But right next to the search box, there's a little link that says Advanced Search. If you click on it, whatever you're searching for, you can click another box. It says completed listings only and it'll bring up all the auctions or Buy It Now for the last 90 days for that product and tells you if it's sold and how much it's sold for. So she would go to a yard sale and let's say maybe she'd see one of those real nice quality Tonka dump trucks, kids toy, you know, and she'd say, "Oh, they're going five bucks at the yard sale." She'd go on her Advanced Search is, "Oh, it's going for 50 on eBay." So she would buy it. If it was selling for 50 at the yard sale and selling for five on eBay, she wouldn't buy it. So she do this every 80 to 100 bucks. She'd invest every Saturday. Then during the week, she put the auctions up. She was clear in 1000 to $1100 a week as a single mom from home with 1 day at the yard sales, you know, so this is a way to make money fast. No website, just the PayPal account. And using that little trick, you can get stuff free off of Craigslist. People moving. I got this air conditioner wasn't free, but it was a $559 air conditioner and I bought it for 175 bucks because the people were moving and they didn't want to haul it and it was still in the box, you know. So, so there's all kinds of stuff out there that you can buy and resell. But, you know, I like nowadays to do everything from in-house, which just means I sell digital products. So you can do that on places like Cafe Press and Zazzle, that actually their physical products where you just upload graphics on to one of a million products and then you can get a 17% commission royalty. If somebody buys one, it's other. It's print on demand for tee shirts and golf shirts and tote bags and baby clothes. And they have over a million different products that you can make a store for free. And all you do is upload graphics like you. If you can think of funny sayings for t shirts, you can have a T-shirt store with no inventory, no shipping, no nothing, just uploading graphics, you know, so there's all kinds of things like that that you can do with no money, no investment, no nothing.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So those are easy ways to get to get started. Do you see a lot of people doing that as kind of a side hustle to start to make money and then they take that money and they're investing that and starting a business or does it?

Tom Antion: Yeah, it's something you can do with no risk on the side. You don't have to quit your job to do it. You know, I don't tell people just to quit and be irresponsible, but it's something that a lot of people are afraid because there's so many scams out there. In fact, I have a TV show and developed in Hollywood called Scam Brigade to go after bad people. I've seen so many bad things happen to people during, you know, the 27 years I've been, you know, selling on the Internet. So yeah, you don't have. What I want to do is keep your risk very low and your profits high. And that's where digital products kick in because they're 97% profit and only a percentage credit card fee percentage, you know. So, so we, we do. I've sold my first e-book 21 years ago and I have one e-book. This kind of leads into one of the other things. I think we're going to talk about. I have one book I wrote in 4 hours in a layover at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, I remember it vividly and it's a free e-book. This is going to sound like total B.S. to you, but to explain how it works. As of this morning, it's brought in 3.64 million dollars and every month 15 or 5 to $15,000 a month and it's free. Well, how does that work? That sounds like B.S., right? Well, any book, any book you ever do should lead to something bigger that people buy. The book is the least profitable, most hassel thing you'll ever do. So in this book, I taught people how to do something and how wonderful it is to do it, but they can't do it unless they buy the tool necessary to do it. And then I get a commission and that's a basic affiliate relationship where you recommend something and you get a commission once. Well, the reason this thing pays and pays and pays is it's called a residual affiliate program. So the thing I'm recommending you have to keep paying for as long as you use it, either yearly or monthly. And so some people have had it 16 years. So I keep so the beauty is I promoted it once to them in that ebook and I'm getting paid 16 years later from each person.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So I want to dig into this a little bit, with the e-book and with digital products. Are you promoting these, you know, a specific way? Do you have do you already have a large following that you're promoting these too or how did you take that ebook and get it out to the world?

Tom Antion: Well, your guest from a couple weeks ago or love me, Matt Rouse. The email guy. I had as many as 150000 subscribers right off the bat. Well, see, there was when I started, there was no social media there was no distractions. People would sign up or email, you know, for no problem. You didn't worry about them unsubscribe because they didn't have anywhere else to go. Right. So I had about 150000 subscribers, about 100000 now and all the social media stuff totally agreement with Mr. Rouse is to get him the heck off of there onto an email list. So when you look at my social media following, you say, "Man, what a punk this guy is, he's got nothing." Well, yeah, but I got this email this where the money actually. So I look at the social media as a necessary evil, but it didn't exist when I first got started. So I started getting an engrain with just with email, giving this book away for free. And of course it was on my website. And at the time I was an SEO fanatic too, which now I blew that off 5 years ago. We used all paid traffic now. But at the time I was taught by Michael Campbell, who was the best of the best in the day, and I was for 12 years straight on major keywords, number 1, 2, or 3 on the first page of Google. But I like said about 5 years ago, I said, this is too much work when there's bargain's of paid traffic that you can create enormous traffic and not have to do all the content creation and all the hoping crossing that cross your fingers google doesn't turn one dial and you disappear off the face of the earth, you know.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So a lot of that was initially built from your email list.

Tom Antion: Email. Yeah. Email and SEO at the time. Nowadays in good faith other than simple SEO, so you don't do stupid things. I don't, I don't teach SEO anymore. It's just a waste of time, and it takes you forever.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So most of what you're doing today is all paid traffic.

Tom Antion: Either paid traffic, which I don't even run that many ads anymore. When you have this big email list, you can you know, it kind of begets what it begets. And just with my podcast, we've done 450 episodes. So that gives a lot of promotion nowadays. But that's only been going about 3 years now. But the bulk of it is email and I don't know anybody at my level that didn't make their fortune on email.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, yeah. So.

Tom Antion: Emails not dead. According to your last episode.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, it is not dead. Here's another person telling you how important your email list is. If you need to keep hearing it, then keep hearing it. Otherwise, jump in and start building your email list. So you can attest on this one. You've got multiple streams of income that are feeding into your bank account. You touched on the ebook. You know, what else is there for us to learn from this, you know, so that we can start doing some of the same things?

Tom Antion: Well, this is one thing that I can't think of one person or one family that couldn't do pretty much immediately and end up being further ahead before it. And I've taught this for many, many years. It's how to make your hobbies tax deductible and family interest tax deductible. And I have I've been doing it for so long, but I do some crazy stuff that's perfectly legitimate. For instance, I have the dubious distinction of being the largest person ever to create and star in a tennis training video because I'm a tennis nut, but it's called Fatso Tennis. You can go see the trailer to the DVD I produced where I'm playing tennis and eating pizza at the same time. And , you know, everything's so expensive. The rackets, the balls, the ball machine. I got a tennis court. All this stuff is legitimately tax deductible because I made a tennis training video. And part of it's funny, but part of it is really the angles of the court and how to make the younger people run to death before you drop dead and you know all kinds of stuff like that. And even all the gadgets you remember that the movie with Kevin Costner called Tin Cup where he wasand golfer he was losing his mojo. So he's trying all these gadgets. Well, there's a bunch of gadgets for fat people at tennis. For instance, like, you know, there's the racket. You got the head of the racket up there. But this is the butt of the racket, right? So there's a suction cup you can put on there so that you can just go down and you don't have to bend over to pick the ball up, you can just push. It's really pitiful, but it's hysterical, but it's a 40 dollar DVD set, so when I sell that, you know, it makes all my tennis stuff tax-deductible.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Interesting, so it's creating a product of some kind based around your hobby.

Tom Antion: Or getting affiliate product, you do not have to create a product. An affiliate product bringing in money is just as good tax-wise and with no product production. I did it because I'm crazy and I have the video people and all that stuff. But all you have to do is have affiliate products on there and then it could be on anything. Like I say, if you were a soccer mom or soccer dad, you could interview a bunch of high school soccer coaches on how your kid can do better at soccer. And now this and your kids are the models, you know, and their clothes. And if you get big enough with this stuff, sponsors will start giving you soccer balls and clothes and everything. And to have your review them. Camping, any kind of stuff that you're just paying through the nose for, you will at least break even or do better when you make them tax-deductible.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it. So in that case, like, have you set up do you have multiple companies where it's do you know?

Tom Antion: No, it's just DBAs under the same corporation. Yeah. I don't spend a lot on legal or. Well, I don't I never get sued because I treat people right. And I actually started my corporation with a book, an information product for 50 bucks and did it myself. So like I said, I'm very frugal because the less money you start with to get your business going, the less you have to make to get at least back to broke. So when people get sucked into a $5000 website, when we can make a world-class website for 150 bucks, with a WordPress website with a responsive theme for 100 bucks, you're in business with a gorgeous thing and somebody would have charged you 5000. So the point is you need to learn and get some skills under your belt or get go down to the local preschool and wake a kid up from his nap to help you because they came out of the womb swiping screens, you know? SO.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I want to I want to circle back to something that you said earlier that I think people can benefit from. You talked about hiding your products, right? As and not showing pricing. So I'm assuming I know what you're going to how you're going to answer this question. But how do you feel about people posting? So, you know, a lot of the people that we work with, are coaches, consultants, professional service providers, how do you feel about people publishing their pricing on their website?

Tom Antion: Well, I'm OK with that. Yeah, I'm it's a testing. Anything you do is a testing process. There's no right or wrong on any of that stuff. But one thing I did not say that I hit my pricing. All I said was, is that they didn't even know there was a product yet until they got down to the bottom of what they thought was an article. So so the pricing was there, but it wasn't a giant thing with a big bonus splashing at you.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it.

Tom Antion: Paragraph text. That's what advertorial is. So yeah, I'm fine with people promoting their or putting their prices on because on one hand maybe they're doing well and they want to discourage tire kickers. On the other hand, if you read Cellini's book, The Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, some people are influenced the more expensive something and it must be better whether it is or not, totally, totally different. But they feel that it is. So, it's just a testing process to see what works best for you. You have no trouble with it at all.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. You know, because it's interesting. People seem to you know, the people that I've come across that feel like you shouldn't post pricing, it all seems to be focused around being able to have that conversation about value. You know, where hey, I don't want somebody to see that this is 10,000 bucks or 5,000 or whatever it is, because I haven't had the opportunity to communicate the value to them yet. And until I do that, I maybe if I posted I may lose business because I haven't had the opportunity to communicate that value. So I just thought that was that it's interesting because part of me also feels like, yeah, you can communicate the value, but if somebody doesn't have $10,000, they don't have $10,000.

Tom Antion: Yeah, that's the thing. You can spend a lot of time with people that have no chance of doing business with you. Now I'm all for helping people. True. But there's only so much time in a day and I do have to fulfill my obligations to the people that have spent money. So you have to, you know, just depends on where you're at in your career. In the beginning, I might have thought that's a good idea. But now where I sit now, it's not a good idea because I don't have the time to deal with people that are not qualified. Yeah. And then, like I said, I do benevolent things to that, to so that I'm helping those people. But I can't spend my professional time on people that have no chance on Earth at this point. And I still treat everybody nice. That's the one thing why I clean up at these when I speak. I'm always the top seller, I'm usually the headliner. But these divas that are speaking at the same event, they blow in with their entourage and they're too good to talk to anybody. And then I'm sitting there because I always watch every speech and I'm sitting there just chuckling to myself, I'm going to take all the money. I'm going to take it all, because you're you think you're better than you are. And then they're on stage like, yeah, well, you got to buy now because I've got to be on a plane because I'm more important to you and so I sit back there and take all the money. I'm the first one there, the last one to leave. You wouldn't believe the people that you wouldn't think had 2 nickels to rub together. I've just treated them nice. And like I said, I'm introduced as the guy next door because I'm the small-town kid that's made it good. But I'm still the small-town kid that treats people nice. And that has made me a fortune because nobody else would even talk to these people. And they and I would. And I had no I didn't twist their arm to buy and they bought, you know, so so just be good to people. It's pretty simple concept.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Being kind will never backfire on you, that's for sure. So what suggestions do you have to help business owners, you know, finding good people and saving money while they're getting things done in their business? I mean, we're we can all feel overwhelmed at times. A lot of things going on. What suggestions do you have here for us?

Tom Antion: Well, I've got an interesting I'll say is a nice way to put it, a way to hire people. All right. And you got to have the stomach for this because you might note that I'm a little bit unconventional.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes.

Tom Antion: So the first part of this is that I do not you know, I love everybody, but I do not want to take the time for a 55-year-old MBA who can't even turn their computer on correctly to bother to apply for a job here, because I just don't have the time to deal with them. I don't want to hurt their feelings, but they're clueless, most of them. So I don't want them to even show up. So how do I get out of that? My ads always say Paid Internship, Paid Internship, this and no 55 year old MBA is going to apply for an internship. They're too good for that. Right? So it eliminates that whole problem off my back. I only get younger people that are tech-savvy, which is what I need and want because I'm oh, I'm an old fart. There was no computers when I grew up. I want these young people around and I know a lot now from doing it 7 days a week for 27 years. But still, I'm no techie. All right. Now, the next thing is this will also probably surprise you. The only place we hire from is Craigslist. And the reason it's the only place we hire from is because it's the only place I can get away with the really rotten, idiotic ads that I put up nobody else does.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK.

Tom Antion: So here's how it works. I, I entice them paid internship. I entice them with all the benefits like Corey Rudel told me. Right? So you'll learn from an internationally known Internet guru guy. I don't call myself that, but I put it in the ad and I say, you're going to learn all about all these things and as you're working here. But then I get suck them in with that. And then I get to the point where I say and on the other side of the coin, if you're a worthless slug that doesn't show up on time and care about your work, if I don't throw you out of here in 5 minutes, the other good people that work here will. It scares the hell out of all the losers. I used to get all these people asking me where their bonus was the first 3 hours they worked there. So now it scares off all the people that know that they're losers. And I say that, you know, lovingly.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, well, it's that you've structured the ad in such a way that it discourages people that they aren't really interested in working hard.

Tom Antion: Right. Yeah. The entitled and so forth. So I only get the people that in their mind, they're saying, "I'll show this guy I'm top notch, I do my job and I care about it." And that's all who shows up. And then they're here for years because I keep, you know, with being around me, they meet great people. They learn so much. And eventually they might it go up. But I've had people here 12, 13 years. And the first kid I started. Where do you hear this, Tim? His name is Ilya Pozin. Anybody can look this up on Forbes magazine POZIN and he I grabbed him out of Comp USA, which I don't think exists anymore. He was answering all these questions. He's in 10th grade. I slipped them a piece of paper and I said, "Hey, I'll pay you double if you come work for me." So he called me up. He started working for me. I taught him how to be an entrepreneur. He was just going to be a corporate slug like his, you know, that's all he knew from his family, get a corporate job. So I got him out of that, taught him how to start his own business. He worked for me for several years. I actually bought him a house to live in while he worked for me because he was so valuable to me. But I was valuable to him, too. So fast forward, he just sold his third startup. Cludo dot TV was his baby, Cludo. I don't know if you heard.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I heard of Cludo.

Tom Antion: That's Ilya Pozin started that, just sold it for 340 million dollars to Viacom and wrote an article in Forbes giving me credit for starting him as an entrepreneur. So that gives me goose pimples, pimples still that taken a kid and changed in the course of his life. And I told him, next time I come to L.A., you're buying dinner you little. He called me from a yacht and in Greece with supermodels, I said, "Don't you get all that money, man." So it's a very strange hiring technique that has worked for many, many years, like a charm.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Interesting. So you're only posting you're using the Craigslist job section to post.

Tom Antion: Yep. And some cities, you have to pay, but, you know, I do it locally. If I'm looking for a local person, then you can only put one ad in one place at a time. But in many places, and another tip for everybody is do not pay by the hour if they're not sitting right next to you because they'll be playing on Facebook for 99% of the hour and you'll get 1% of the hour and they'll be charging you hourly if they're remote. So we pay them by the job. So if they're supposed to put 10 Web pages up, oh, I can see them online. And if they're acceptable, then they get paid. So I'm not here like, "Oh, man, I know they're fooling around on Facebook." Not even in this book anymore. Tiktok or whatever.

Tim Fitzpatrick: When you're hiring these people, are you hiring them as 1099 contractors?

Tom Antion: I am. I am doing that now. I was hiring them as employees, but once they're here for a while, I offer them the idea that I will teach you how to start your own business and then you will work for me and for others as a 1099 person. So some of them took me up on that. Some of them are just straight employees. So I offer that because I've got so much business experience I can teach them like I taught Ilya how to be a business person. And so it's both basically.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, got it. Awesome. That's good stuff went. Any last-minute words of wisdom or ideas you want to share with us before we close things out here, Tom.

Tom Antion: Well, I implore people to to think about the digital world because the risk of getting in this kind of business is so low now because of being able to make as much money on a digital book as you can on a physical book that has all the problems of printing and shipping and layout and damaged books and returns and all that stuff. Where wtih digital stuff that's all wiped off the table. I get as much for a PDF book that's 60 to 150 pages as I would going through all the hassle and I've got one of the top books ever on public speaking. There it is. But it's a hassle, you know, to print this thing up and you know, and then I got update this. There's still some stuff in here about overhead projectors. So I got a lot harder to update this than it is now. The eBook version, though, I wiped all that stuff out at 2 seconds. So I implore them to get into the digital world and they can make a fortune with membership sites, online courses, e-books. And remember, everything should lead to something more expensive. So your ebook could lead to a membership where you start get recurring income. They so you're always leading people to something else. But that doesn't mean you put out crappy stuff. That's just a sales letter. You give them good quality and then they trust you when you recommend something else. And, you know, I've had I asked one person on a webinar, I didn't I mean, I put it out on a webinar not too long ago. How long have you been doing business with me, folks? There was hundreds of people on air. I was getting 20 years, 24 years. So that's they just keep spending as long as you keep giving good quality and help them.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I love that. So everything you offer should lead to something else, that next step. And that's how you can continue to get people to just step up and continue to work with you.

Tom Antion: And they refer you especially the ones that can't afford you when you're nice to them. That's a I've gotten so many referrals by people that in a million years couldn't afford me. But they said, :Hey, that Tom's really good." You know, and and all I did was be nice and help them a little bit. And apparently that's in the in great demand. Now they wouldn't .

Tim Fitzpatrick: You never. You know what? You never know what's going to happen with people. People situations change. You know, I mean, I remember when I was in the distribution business, some of our largest customers started out doing hardly any business with us. And we just continued to serve, continued to help them. And something shifted and all of a sudden they just shot up and become really great customers. So I totally agree with you. I don't think it's ever writing people off is probably not the best business decision.

Tom Antion: I remember this vividly, too. I was at the back of the room like I always am, just hanging out at every seminar. It was three days. I'm there every session and this guy was next to me. He was dressed really bad. Looked kind of homeless. Lobo's teeth were bad, terrible, weird-looking feathers hanging off of him. And he's asking me questions and I just, you know, telling him, you know, just treat them just like everybody. He plunks down 8000 bucks, he's a best-selling author in his field multiple times over a real bestseller, not an Amazon thing. And he said nobody else would answer any of his questions or talk to. So he and he's put more people into my program without even taking a commission over time. Yeah. So so, yeah. You can't just treat everybody nicely. You don't have to worry about this kind of stuff. It will take care of itslef.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So Tom, where can people learn more about you if they're interested in some of the stuff we've talked about today?

Tom Antion: Well, they might be discouraged and knowing more about me, seeing how crazy I am to start with. But anyway, I do have something that I think will really help them if it's OK to give it to them because.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Absolutely.

Tom Antion: Because I've long before I had employees, I was handling up to 150,000 subscribers. And nowadays it's like 65000 customers by myself with one part-time temp person who didn't handle a customer. And I compiled all the techniques I used in an ebook that we sell for 27 bucks. But it's it's how to automate your business. And we actually figured it out a couple of years ago. Just one of the tips in the book has saved me 7.5 million keystrokes, just one of the techniques and it cost 20 bucks to implement one time. So these are the kinds of things, tools that are free or cheap that can really make you lightning-fast so that you can get your work done faster or it's helped me ethically steal a bunch of customers from other people who, you know, the other voice mail says, "We'll get back to you within 48 hours." I could be dead in 45 hours. Are you crazy? You know, so I get back to people immediately, and that gives you an infinitely greater chance of getting the money. Yeah. So all these tools are in this book and nothing costs a lot to implement. Some of it's free so they can get that. You can see it if they're watching this scrolling on the screen and screw the commute, dot com slash automate free, screw the commute, dot com slash, automate free. And it'll tell you about all the other stuff, the documentary they're doing and my mentor program and all that other stuff.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to to chat today, Tom. I really appreciate it. Thank you for those of you that are tuning in, watching, listening again, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now to get the best return, hop on over to our website. Rialto marketing dot com. That's R-I-A-L-T-O marketing dot com. Click on the get a free consult and be happy to chat with you and guarantee your walk away with some clarity on where to focus right now. Til next time. Take care.

Connect With Tom Antion

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Links From The Episode

• How to Automate Your Business

About the Host Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.