Tom Antion, My Mentor On Podcasting and More!

Michael Stewart
Hello, everybody, welcome. Welcome. Welcome to Mike Stewart dot live. The online TV show that’s all about q&a and, and discussions about online marketing was especially focused on audio and video. And I am so excited today to have my mentor, the guy that I have to give credit to got me started, I’ll never forget. I don’t remember how many years ago it was, it’s probably been 17 or 18 years ago, I got in touch with this guy. And he got me started in more ways than one and we’ll probably talk about that throughout the show. So I’m gonna bring him on here in a second. But his name is Tom Antion. And what’s what’s so amazing about Tom, he’s one of the most giving knowledgeable people I’ve ever met in my life. And I remember the day he said, Mike, you need to get an email list together and I go, I don’t know what to do. He says put an ebook together. And I’ll send people over to it to sign up. And it was because of Tom I got my first 50 people on my email list, and I have never forgotten man, of course. I can sit here and probably take up the whole hour telling you all the great things that Tom’s done for me, but I’m not going to do that. More importantly, I’m going to bring on my mentor, my friend, the man himself. Here is Tom Antion.

Tom Antion
Hey, Mike, how you doing?

Michael Stewart
Oh, you know what, I’m just so tickled to having you here. And I’m so tickled to talk about some things that are Audio Video Marketing. I know one of the things that you’re doing is podcasting. And I’m going to throw up

Tom Antion
throw up, man. I’m going to start talking yet

Michael Stewart
Oh, always the comedian. Oh

Tom Antion
wow, slow I am.

Folks, listen, listen. Oh, no, he’s I don’t know where his mind is at. But it’s been more than 17 years since we’ve known each other so. So he was the one that got me doing quality audio. So I’m Not gonna talk about any quality audio today. He’s the one that got me to do it but 20 years ago, he said, Tom, you got to get a compressor limiter. Well, two years ago I got a compressor limiter there 18 years. He says Tommy, you got to get an interface for your condenser mic to go into your computer. Alright, so there it is. says you got to get phantom power Okay, there’s phantom power after 18 years. Can they gotta get a condenser mic that mic you guys crappy Okay, there it is. After

all that stuff. I’m just slow. That’s all.

Michael Stewart
No, no, no, I and the thing that you did for me that was so dumb about AI and whatever year it was, I’m sorry, my memory fails me. But you said I told you and I rattled off like an audio engineer. I said you need a compressor limiter. You need some sort of USB audio mixer. You need to be sure you have some EQ, you need to be sure you have You know, a software that will make mp3 and you said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, dumb it down my. That’s not all I was dumbing it down. And you said no, I tell you what, go give me what I need and ship it to me. I said, Okay, and he says And I’ll never forget this folks, this is how generous this guy is and it just floored me. I’d never heard of people doing CES tech a couple hundred dollars on the credit card bill for yourself. And I said well, why would you pay me to just help you? He said because what your information has value I’ll never forget he said that your don’t ever devalue your information. Enemy and to me, you know, I’m a guy who back in those days was happy to get $75 playing a game for four hours to make $200 just to go shop at the music store for a buddy was like, I’m never I don’t know if you remember this. I said Are there any more people out there like the guy there You know how many years ago it was? Tom Antion. You are You are an inspiration. And that’s why I am glad to have you here on my little streaming TV show that I’m trying to build some momentum. Obviously, if you can watch this over and over again, it’ll be archived for life at Mike Stewart dot live got a whole strategy on that. But you know, a few years ago, you called me and you said you’re going to get into podcasting. Which, you know, I have been a proponent of podcasting for a long, long time, because it’s an internet audio strategy,

Tom Antion
let’s say and I poo pooed it for a long time because now that doesn’t mean I poo pooed audio. I’ve got hundreds of audio products that are good because of you and what you taught me, but I was poopoo in podcasting because it appeared to me that nobody was making any money. It was all a big ego trip. But guess what, that has changed significantly and I’ll get into that then in a minute, but

Michael Stewart
I couldn’t agree more and I think one of the problems with podcasting and I want to hear your your spin on it is that most people feel like well, I got to do like radio I got to get advertisers advertisers supported. And and and the truth is, is there are some podcasters out there that have millions of listeners. But you the the advertiser the model like traditional radio that is build a big audience and sell advertising to advertisers. It just is almost impossible with a podcast in my opinion. But

Tom Antion
here’s the problem with that. First of all, and these figures are rough, but they’re pretty accurate. A sponsor and this isn’t a sponsor, like a big brand sponsor. We’re Pepsi sponsors. This is the sponsor as it applies to podcasting. The sponsors pay between $12 and $25 per thousand downloads per episode 25 is for the big kahuna is big well known that they’re begging to get on there for you start now, it’s your lucky if you get $12 per thousand downloads, but guess what? It’s hard to get 1000 downloads per episode. So you’re gonna go months and months and months with zero income. That’s just ridiculous. So the method I teach is you are your own sponsor. You are the sponsor for each episode. So my podcast, the first episode made money because in the podcast I talked about products that I have. Now, some of you might say, Well, I don’t have any products yet and don’t get dirty here. But if you got a mouth, you got a product. Okay. You could consult and coach for topics right off the bat on something that you know if you have enough expertise to do a podcast you got an enough expertise to coach on it. So be your own sponsor is my take on it. So you can start making money right off the bat. If you do happen to hit a Grand Slam and start getting millions of downloads, then you could tap in as an extra 30 seconds, you get an extra eight or hundred or thousand dollars. Take it all right, but that ain’t gonna happen in the beginning until you really build up to enormous numbers of listeners. But you don’t have to do that if you’re your own sponsor for each episode.

Michael Stewart
All right, well, let me ask you some things about your podcast because because that was a revelation that I you know, I love podcasting because it was the use of a microphone. It was the use of music. It is radio, it is a form of on demand radio, but the radio model was broadcasting this is narrow casting. So what have been the things you’ve done, I remember when you said I’m going to create the screw the commute podcast at screw the commute.com you can You’re everywhere podcasts are the podcasts are now in Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts. And And nowadays, I don’t know, I’m sure you saw it. Amazon, Alexa, audible and amazon music are adding all podcasts 55 million new potential listeners worldwide. So the reach is there, the content has got to be, this is why I’m doing this today. You need great content, you need to consistently make great content. So tell me, I remember the day you said I’m going to start a podcast. I said, Well, good for you. And you’re going to you’re gonna laugh at my mic. I’m going to buy a good microphone and a compressor and all those things you told me years ago, I’m getting them and I’m gonna I’m gonna make a high quality high. And I’m going to be consistent now you’re tell me all the episodes you’ve done. And what’s been some of the results. What is the dedication, you know, it’s not the technical, it’s the dedication that you’ve made to a commitment to never stop doing it even when no one was listening.

Tom Antion
Yeah. All right. So a couple things. First of all, the figures on like Amazon’s echo that you just held up there is over 100 million of those now. So and there’s another 55 million Google assistance in people’s homes. These are some of the decisions of why I started the podcast. The other really big one is that new cars are being set up. So you can just talk to the dashboard and say play screw the commute podcast and it starts playing out of your dashboard. So it’s the listenership has exceeded XM Radio which you have to pay for. And people are just going crazy listening to the podcast. So that was one of the reasons why I started. And then the name of the podcast I think, is pretty important. Mine is very clear. It’s not cutesy. Where because there’s so many people starting podcasts, they can’t, you know, you don’t want to be slumped over because they couldn’t tell what it was about. They can go look at 300 other ones. So screw the commute is pretty clear. Basically In fact, I never had a job and it’s entrepreneurial. So get out of you know, get out of your job and get a start a business kind of thing. So that’s the naming is important of it. But from the results, see, you know, I have an enormous product mix, I have anything from $17 up to $58,000 of products and services that I sell. So in my school, one person joined my school and they were military. So they got a 50% scholarship that was 90 $500 just for one person. So I could go for months and months and have nobody buy anything that’s still be ahead that most most podcasters but it’s not that way pretty much every episode brings in some kind of sales, and then occasionally a really big sale and my mentor program or my school. So that’s why I just hard for people to be their own sponsor and and learn product. Creation of digital product creation is so low risk because it’s 97% profit. So you’re kind of crazy not to get your stuff into digital formats where people can buy them and download them instantly money goes into your checking account. And but it’s stimulated, the markets are stimulated through the podcast. So you have young people are listening to podcasts, male and female. You got middle aged people listening, you got elderly people, listen this, are you reaching a market way bigger than you probably have in the past?

Michael Stewart
Well, you know, this is where I think a lot of people have got to be honest with themselves. And I and a lot of people I work with, I say you’ve got to have I call a digital backhand. On other words, one of the things that you’ve always taught me You taught me and I jumped back in was digital. I could take off a few electrons.

Well, what a back end to me was a litany of things that make money online. And, and most people, you know, the only thing they have if they’re lucky, maybe is a book, you know, and a book to me has always been such a low ticket item, you got to sell a lot of books to make any significant money. But But when you have information products, and affiliate products, I mean one of my most profit generating things, and in fact, I’m gonna throw the domain name up here and I’ll tell you about it. I had I sell domains and hosting at domains, you control.com and basically, I’m just a representative for GoDaddy, but we’ve we’ve sold thousands of domains have over 11 I think about 1020 customers in there. And that’s just residual income. And because a lot of my courses require people to set up we’re either WordPress or a hosting account. So you know, everything feeds everything else, but the lead generator for me and all my businesses, is this content marketing. podcasting is a word For what Gary Vaynerchuk I don’t know if you like or follow Gary, but I think he’s pretty, pretty smart. He says, you need pillar content and then you break that pillar content into micro content and be everywhere. And you just it’s it’s not something that happens instantly. But if you you build this big audience, and you don’t have a back end of things to sell them like you do, I mean, you’ve got probably 100 things to my one but I’m still making a wonderful comfortable residual income off of what I have. And I meet with people I go, what do you what are you selling? I don’t know. Well, I don’t know. Not a good answer. Right. So so the podcast is generating leads for all the things you sales what I’m hearing, right, exactly, exactly. And

Tom Antion
and some of the things are even giveaways. Like for instance, you talk about ebooks. I wrote an ebook in four hours at on a layover at McCarran airport in Las Vegas. I vividly remember it. It’s brought in 3.6 million dollars so far. And it’s a free giveaway. And people say, Oh, that sounds like BS. Well, let me explain to you what what this is. And when Mike talked about a book being you have to sell a lot of books. Well, a book should is the is the biggest hassle, least profitable thing you’ll ever do in your life. But a book should always lead to something else that is much higher profit. So if somebody reads this book, they learn how to do something, but they can’t do it unless they purchased the tool that’s in the book. And I get a $600 a year commission, and some of them have had it 1516 years, say so that’s how the 3.6 million and it still keeps coming in anywhere from six to $15,000 a month from that for our investment. So yeah, my whole thing is work get paid pay, pay, pay pay.

Michael Stewart
Well, where do you get that book? Let’s let’s give that book away to my list.

Tom Antion
You just email me at orders at Antion calm and I’ll send you a copy.

Michael Stewart
Let me roll that up on the screen

Tom Antion
orders. I’m pretty accessible folks.

Michael Stewart
That the E book on shopping carts,

Tom Antion
yes on shopping carts, so it teaches you all the things you should know about a shopping cart and a checklist. And I know I’m pushing my shopping cart, but it gives you a checklist to see what you should have in a shopping cart. Because when I first started Mike in 1994, it was 2000 bucks for a shopping cart. It would if if it actually took the order, we’d have an office party. It was just crazy. And then I bought an affiliate module 1100 dollars from another company to mess with it so I could have an affiliate program. It never worked and each company blamed the other one that why wouldn’t work so so I had 32 dollars 30 $100 tied up inside there wouldn’t even work nowadays. Your shopping is the lifeblood of my whole system. It’s it’s selling things right now while I’m talking to you, and autoresponders and all that stuff. We could do that on another episode. I mean, we,

Michael Stewart
you, you are such a library of marketing information. So let’s get back. Let’s get back to podcasting. Your podcasting is how often do you do your podcast?

Tom Antion
I have three a week. So we’re around Episode 340. Right now

Michael Stewart
you’re doing 12 shows a month 12

Tom Antion
shows a month. Usually a Monday is what you know, I don’t do anything half baked. If I tell you how to do it, I do it. And by the way, I’ve got some killer killer killer marketing tips for people on their podcast. In fact, Mike and and everybody knows you probably trust you greatly that I’m going to tell you something that the Last thing I say today is going to be one of the best marketing tips I’ve ever given out in my 44 years of business 26 on the internet it’s gonna blow people away and you know me I don’t hype stuff and then not come through no standby for that one but but yeah, I got tons of good marketing says But yeah, I do 12 episodes usually a Monday is an in depth training session on something that’s either made me a lot of money or save me a lot of money. And then Wednesdays and Fridays are normally interviews of other great entrepreneurs and you’ve been on twice and you’re gonna be on again next month. So So telling all the new stuff you’ve been doing so so that’s been I only missed one week in in the past since June of 2018. Where I was just swamped with moving my school. So I said instead of half baked now i’m gonna i’m going to you know, just take a week hiatus week off but, but anyway, it’s been continuous since then.

Michael Stewart
Well, so So here’s what I’m hearing. You made a commitment to three shows a week. The first week, you probably were just getting a ripple, you had an email list you could send and get people to, but it’s the consistency and the you know, and one of the things that people don’t think about, but it’s I call it the Netflix phenomenon. People make discover your podcast today. And they can binge listen 300 other amazing episodes,

Tom Antion
a lot of them go back to number one and start and go go straight forward. But you know what, I when I first started my I plan, here’s what’s my plan. And then here’s what actually happened. I planned on getting 20 episodes done are in the can before I launched, and I ended up with 50. So I did 50 episodes before I launched and then people said, Well, why in the heck would you do that? Well, here’s the reason. One of the best ways to market your podcast is to Be on other people’s podcast. Right? So because you know the people on the podcast listening to you know how to listen to podcasts and they like podcasts. So it’s a great way to get on. So I wanted with those 50 in the can, it gave me four months, where I could not have to worry about recording the darn thing. And I could totally concentrate on being on other people’s podcasts. And that’s what besides my email list, that’s what kicked off a lot of my early subscribers was being on other people. And today I got another tip for you. Oh, man, on how to get you’ve heard of a podcast agency, right where people pay them to get them booked on podcast.

Michael Stewart
Yeah, right.

Tom Antion
So I have a method for your listeners to get that service for free. You want to hear it?

Michael Stewart
Yeah. You better

Tom Antion
Alright. So as a podcast, producer, these agencies take you out and start pitching their clients to you, their clients have paid them a load of money to get them on podcast, right? That’s the way it works. Right? So I started, I have a little thing I cut and paste as soon as they pitch me somebody, a new agency, I send them this email back that says, We’re currently only accepting reciprocal appearances. So if one of your clients has a podcast, and it makes sense for me to be on it, we’ll make a deal and that person can be on my podcast and I get to be on their podcast. Right? That agency is now working for me for free.

Unknown Speaker
I love

Tom Antion
it. See that? So I’ve been doing that mostly lately is as soon as they pitch me, I pitch I say, Okay, here’s my credentials. If we trade that’s great. And so they go out and hustle to get me on for free.

Michael Stewart
Well, I want to recap here and then we’re going to have a word from my sponsor. Okay, but you got good equipment. That was one of the things you did. Yep. You made a dedication to do six times more shows a month and I’m and and that’s my choice. But the thing is consistency is the message there. And if Tom, who is a busy entrepreneur, he’s not a guy just sitting around twiddling his thumbs going, Oh, I got nothing to do, or do and he can shake a stick at. But he, you know, like he said, when he goes in, he goes all in. So he made a commitment to X amount of shows a month. That’s another thing people do. I’ve seen people say I want a podcast. They do two shows. And they get the hit wall and they stop. And then they say, well, it didn’t work. Yeah. You know, you were 50 shows in before if you knew anything works, right. So there’s a lesson there. So good equipment, good content. You needed somebody to get you a theme interest. took his keyboard right here and and wrote you some music, which I think you’re still running you should play the into when you get a chance to play the

Tom Antion
opening to one of my episodes. I have to

Michael Stewart
hook up all this music so we’ll have a whole music jingle search term live show and I’ll have you on it

Tom Antion
was just go to the web and play went off my website

Michael Stewart
and stream yard I should have uploaded the theme and I don’t know if I’ve got it but you want to hear the theme go to screw the commute.com go to Apple. You need to subscribe to Tom’s podcast. I’m telling you. It is a what’s that big place in Washington. In fact, fact that’s a great picture to show here. We need to show some of these pictures and we need to

Tom Antion
and that’s the last tip I show you got me invited to the White House and it’s all podcast related.

Michael Stewart
Well I want to hear that story. But but anyway Let me keep the recap going here. You consistent and now you don’t regret doing it at all. Do you

Tom Antion
know hell? No, no. When episodes making money, you know, it makes you want to do more.

Michael Stewart
Well, you know, that’s one of the things about Nashville, I have been trying to get the music community here in Nashville. That’s one of the reason I moved to Nashville. And I mean, I’ve actually had music people. So just what is a podcast? And the next objection was, well, why would I do it? And then we don’t have time. You know, you made the time. That’s the lesson here. Here’s a busy, successful, multi millionaire entrepreneur friend of mine, who I respect and trust completely, and he said, Okay, I get it. I see the path. And I’m consistent and that’s the lesson you folks need to really pay attention about. You know, if Tom Antion made this a priority, you don’t have to learn all the nuts and bolts. Have it the nuts and bolts of making this happen. That’s the easy part. The hard part is fitment and all the things that you did so we’ll be back here. We’ve got some images here that I want you to give us some information. And then if you can stay long enough, um, we I want you to the tips for you So, okay, and I got some people here some questions, and I and Tom This is let’s let’s give a shout out here. This is Wayne moss. Hey, Wayne. Wayne, let me chase him he’s a Nashville hero to me. This is the guy that played guitar on more hits. If you Google this guy you’re gonna be blown away he played lead guitar on pretty woman and oh my god. I mean this this guy is my buddy and he’s a sweetheart. And hopefully he’s feeling better. He’s had a little little bit of unweathered things going on. But when you comment let us know you’re doing okay but thanks Wayne for you know you got a you’re a legend in internet marketing Wayne. Deal. He’s one of the national played on Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan played guitar. So anyway, so nice to have you here. And oh, hey, there’s somebody in the other room.

Tom Antion
I can hear you. Okay, so

Michael Stewart
here’s a word from our sponsor. We’ll be right back, Tom. So good to have you on the show today. This is just, I don’t want you to go golly, this is just too much fun anywhere. I hope you can get that jingle out of your hand. I

Tom Antion
can’t. It’s stuck in there right now.

Michael Stewart
Do you want to talk about some of these pictures? You got some other things you want to talk about first?

Tom Antion
Yes. So yes, I want to I got some hardcore tips for people more than what we’ve talked about now. So show the podcast app.

Yeah, no, that’s not the one.

That’s the one. Yeah. So

that app would have cost me if I just developed it from scratch anywhere from two to $5,000. This is my podcast app. Now, I know Mike kinda likes blueberry as a hosting service now right Mike?

Michael Stewart
Now I use the blueberry plugin. with Amazon s3, there’s a way. Okay. Are you using libsyn

Tom Antion
Lipson? And Lipson is one of the oldest biggest, and it’s so cost effective. I mean, for 12 episodes a month, I only pay 20 bucks a month for his high quality very, you know, and it distributes it to all the other major places, you know that you can hear podcasts. But anyway, they have a service where for $99 a year, they created this podcast app for me. All I had to do was provide the graphics. So I’m sure it’s a it’s a boilerplate podcast app, but nobody knows because your graphics would look different than mine. So I have this killer podcast app. You can get it at screw the commute comm slash app and we have instructions on how to use it and everything. And you know, like if somebody calls you on the phone It’ll pause your podcast and then when the phone call hangs up, it’ll start right back up where it was and you can save your favorite episodes and it really brands you as being serious. And now what I have paid two to 5000 bucks to do it Nope. But for like 10 bucks a month you’d be crazy not to brand yourself and have this you know something this high quality and you can start with lips and I think as little as $5 a month or so for podcast hosting so so that’s that’s what I wanted to talk about a podcast app. And and your experience has been that having the podcast app is is helped you build more audience build more audience and make them more loyal and it’s, you know, the the episodes are shoved to them. I mean, there’s probably other ways that they could get to do it but but now they’re kind of tied to me with you know, there’s right on their phone every day is the screw the commute podcast. Yeah.

Michael Stewart
Well, I’m telling you right now I’m going to investigate a way to implement that with mine. Because at the time when I was teaching people to put up podcasts, I mean, you know, they were lucky that they would, you know, get a URL a domain name, right? You know, but like I said, I these I’m learning here too. So you want to show the other

Tom Antion
image here, let’s say so yeah, show the one with the speakpipe. Yeah, so this is just a little portion of the homepage of screw the commute calm. And at the bottom, you see a little thing I’ve got an expanded there with those you know, too big. It says send voicemail. This is a program called our widget called speak, pipe, SP aka p IP. And it allows people and I invite anybody listening to click on it and just send me a voice message. And I get an email that says, hey, you got a voicemail on your website. And then I can click my cell phone and send you one back. Say Hey, thanks for checking in. The screw the community Yeah, you can you can do this and the other I can answer your question all right there they have a free version. So this is totally free. So you know, you know, it’s just crazy not to do it. And it’s cool. And you know they have paid versions that give longer messages and so forth and then what you can use this for on your podcast, besides just having it on your website, it’s great. But what you can use it for on your podcast is to request that people that like your podcast to leave a testimonial on your voicemail and also they can give themselves a shout out with their website and everything. And then you can edit that into your podcast as social proof and a voice testimonial. So this is perfect for podcasters and everybody else

Michael Stewart
You know, I told you you don’t have to come back.

Tom Antion
We get into the good ones yet. We in a hurry.

Michael Stewart
You know, I tried to keep this a half an hour show, but I’m not going to do that today. We still got a good amount of people here live and I want you to use your time.

Tom Antion
No, I this is you know me I give more than I bargained for. So let me get into some of the other tips I want to tell people about. One is I already told you about being your own sponsor. Next thing is, is if you’re selling any kind of products, giving a shout out on your podcast can be used as a bonus to help sell your main product. So I might say, among the middle of my podcast, hey, I want to give a shout out to my buddy Mike Stewart. He’s responsible for teaching me all this great audio stuff. He’s the internet audio guy. You gotta check his stuff out. Hey, if you heard my opening, he’s the one that did the music for my opening. You got to check Mike out at the Internet audio guy calm So there’s that’s a shout out, okay. And so that can be used as a bonus for other products that you’re selling because it’s got great value to put you in front of thousands of people. So that’s another great, great tip to use when you’re doing podcasts. Okay, any questions on that one?

Michael Stewart
Well, you know, we’re gonna put up here in the comments. We’re getting people making. In fact, I want you to see guesses here. One of your buddies.

Tom Antion
You got a mouth you got a product.

Michael Stewart
This is a good coaching client of mine have

Tom Antion
a brilliant read him around. Yeah,

Michael Stewart
yeah, he’s, he I met him at NSA probably 25 years ago, is still doing coaching with me and he is a brilliant marketer and he’s just a PhD of speaking. I mean, it’s so he’s here. And then we get I’m putting comments but I want people. Here’s Ian, he said He just showing you that we got people here live this is this is one of my marketing buddies and he’s also a bug fella bug marketer I love this Tom that jingle will be with me till next week’s show this is my sweetheart coaching client out in Sedona Arizona yeah and and and she has a podcast and she is brilliant you got to you got to check her first name no roof

Tom Antion
the roof I almost bought there’s a geodesic or not a geodesic there’s a concrete dome on the way into Sedona I almost bought that as a place to live I’m sure she knows it’s a it’s like a tourist attraction on it.

Michael Stewart
So if people know this is a chance you know Tom’s charges a lot of money. So if you if you got a question, don’t be bashful, answer a question. Otherwise, Tom’s got plenty information. In fact, to quote this other gentleman up here, I like what he said, Tom. He said, this is William Singleton. But William here has a lot of always worth the listen. Well, you better believe it. You better appreciate it. All right.

Tom Antion
So what do you want to talk about? So the next thing, a tip for podcasting is to highlight certain groups for maybe a week or a month like right now as I’m talking to you. It’s vetra pinares month on screw the commute podcast. So everybody I interview is a veteran because we love our veterans. We couldn’t be doing what we do now if they hadn’t been keeping us safe. And there’s too many idiots out there ragging on him. So it’s veteran runners month so that so besides me loving my veterans. They will take their recording and put it out and their social media and spread the word to Marcus that I would have never reached in a million years. say so. highlight certain groups each week or every month or you know once in a while and that will really expand your market to lots of other places. Okay. Now, most of the people at my level make the bulk of their money with email. So anything you can do to build your list is a good thing. I mean, people could hear you on Apple podcast but you don’t have their emails no way to reach them again. So you want to give things away and I’m going to give something away to your crowd right now. It’s my automation ebook we sell it for 27 bucks, but you get it free for listening to Mikey live and you go to screw the commute comm slash automate free screw the commute.com slash automate free and just one of the tips in this ebook saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. No kidding we figured it out ruff ruff did out and It allows me to handle up to 150,000 subscribers and 40,000 customers without pulling my hair out. And so you’re crazy if you don’t implement this stuff in this book so there’s a thing but you’re gonna go opt in to get it say so this is a list building device. Now another list building device is the transcriptions and show notes. You can require an opt in for people to get the transcription of your podcast so that’s a list building device to so so there’s a bunch of tips so you’re ready for my big finale tip.

Michael Stewart
I can hear it I am.

Tom Antion
Come on bring up the picture of the White House up there again.

Michael Stewart
Okay. Your wish is my command, sir.

Tom Antion
This tip got me invited to the White House to speak to the office of the second lady whose platform is military spouse employment. See I live in the Norfolk, Virginia in your area of Virginia Beach, and all the military spouses around here have to take lousy jobs because everybody knows they’re going to move. Yeah, you can get rid of the picture now. And so then they move to a new station, and then they got to take another crappy jobs. So this my school is really great. Because it’s portable. In fact, we’re covered by the Department of Defense, to give military spouse scholarships so that they don’t have to just suffer with pitiful jobs all the time. Alright, so that’s kind of the setup here. So I wanted to get in with more military spouses. And in the in the past,

I would have taught you to go to a Facebook group. Hey, how you doing very nice to see you. I would have taught you this is what I would would have taught you in the past and then I’m going to give you the modern method that’s gonna blow you away. So in the past, I’d have said you find a Facebook group that you want to, I don’t want to be mean and say infiltrate, but you want to get in there and get your message across. Well, you can’t go in there and just start advertising yourself, they’ll kick you out really fast, say, so you have to go in there. Get known make nice comments and, and over time people start maybe going and checking out your profile to see what you have. Well, this is a long, drawn out process that maybe they would come maybe get some business but you’d spend months doing this. All right. All right, wipe that off the plate like that out of here. If you have a podcast, you go to the admin of the group and sometimes there’s multiple admins, and you interview them on your podcast. Guess what they’re going to do with that interview? Once it’s done, they’re gonna share it. Where are they going to share it you The girl in the group that you want to get into. So you just went to the top of the list, like, oh, like that. So let me tell you what this meant for me. I don’t know if this is making too much noise. So, I did this with this veteran printers group, I interviewed the admin. He’s a Bronze Star recipients, we hit it off like crazy. We’re in the guns, self defense, and we just hit it off. So then from that, he put it in his group, and then he invited me to do a series of events for his group. He even made me an admin of this veterans group, so we have to deal with it. I do this series of events. I don’t charge him anything because I love our veterans and I just do it for free. Well, I met a military spouse, military spouse of the year at Fort Bragg. Also, she is a marine veteran. So she’s both a veteran and military. spouse, we hit it off. I had her on the podcast, she had a direct connection to the White House, the second lady’s office and got me invited there. So she took me up there and walk me right into the White House to talk to the second lady. And also, I spoke at a big military conference in DC, all within one month of interviewing the admin of that group. That’s your marketing tip that should if you know if you’re thinking person should blow you away.

Michael Stewart
Okay, I got a quick question. All right. Facebook, how did you What did you do to find that group to know you hit the search button for whatever your topic is? You just searched Facebook groups for something and you felt that

Tom Antion
connection when you do when you do a search in Facebook? You’ll get a list of stuff and if it says like that somebody is in Individual business page if it says join, that’s a group. Ryan, I just looked for groups and I said, look at that 14,000 military entrepreneurs, so not only does entrepreneur fit me, they all got, you know, spouses, many of them military spouses. And so that’s, I just hit that one and, and bam, and then I interviewed the other admin, and they promote me and put it on their social media. So that tip is one of the best ways to to reach enormous numbers of people with a warm introduction. And so that got me invited to the White House.

Michael Stewart
Well, you know, that’s kind of what I call virtual networking. Probably the most important thing for me building my business over the years is is you just can’t be a secret in your room. You have to, you have to be proactively, you can do things like to call out your old buddy, Tom Antion, and getting to be on your TV Show. Today I can do what you did with a drink. You didn’t know these people in this Facebook group. You befriended them you had you found some common ground, and you didn’t. I don’t know if you had an expectation you just knew that I just

Tom Antion
knew I could do a lot. Well, first of all, if I never made a nickel, I owe these people you owe him everybody owes them for what they sacrifice. If you saw some of the stories I’m here and adventure printers month of what they went through, and what they’re suffering with when they come home. I mean, you should live in gratitude that they’re out there sacrifice in their life, so you can have a nice life. So

Michael Stewart
I thank you for your service on many a time.

Tom Antion
Yeah, absolutely. And I even found out that sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I was asking this lady she says, Don’t expect everybody to hug you when you say that because it memories, some of it Yeah, but she said do it. But don’t expect the some of them just it’s hard for the expectations. exam. So I went and did it with no expectations at all other than, hey, I’m paying back for my ability to sit here safely. I mean, so far nobody’s writing outside yet, but I’m watching for. But, but yeah, so but anyway great things can happen to it and then you can replicate it group after group after group and another spin off of that is I asked like I did did an insurance podcast one time on business insurance so I went to major insurance groups. This is another good sidebar tip. I guess I lied about being my last word here, but, but this is another great one. So I used my speakpipe and I said, Hey, I went to the admin of a big Insurance Group. I said, Hey, I need a comment for my podcast on business insurance and you can promote yourself and your website and everything. And so I got two major insurance. Exactly. Give leaders of these groups to leave business tips on my podcast. Well guess who guess where those podcasts ended up on those groups in their Facebook groups. And they didn’t even do a whole episode. They just left like a three minute con comment with a tip on business insurance promoting themselves and then they put it in their group.

Michael Stewart
Tom, you’ve been all you’re just here the Energizer Bunny. That’s what you are. You know, my good friend here. Bill laughed and had to say this, this is what this is his comment. You can take that testimonial what an info pack show I taking careful notes and I will listen again with pannon and

Tom Antion
Good, good,

Michael Stewart
valuable folks. Go to antion.com see what this man has created. See how you can get get in his world because you know if you want to screw the commute, if you want Business. This is the guy who kick started me when I’m going, you know, I’m just a musician. I’m a guitar player, keyboard player. And and I thought I was doing good if I can make 50 bucks a night. And he taught me so much so we come back and do some more with me.

Tom Antion
Yeah, I got I got I’m just getting warmed up, man. I mean, jeez, yeah, let’s roll.

Michael Stewart
You know, I folks, do you have any burning questions? Yeah. Because I like to respect people’s time. This is just a service to my community. And I’m using the model of television. It’s brought to you by dot live secrets calm. It’s brought to you by Antion calm. The way we’re able to continue doing this is when you learn what we have. And you see that there’s a fit, then you know act upon it. But you know, givers get his thing I’ve heard for you. You No we give and when you give you receive and more importantly you need to you know you need to take action you know you can’t you can I used to we used to call it shelf help you know people wouldn’t shelf help they put it on the shelf and never you if you know the tools are there and the mentors are there and the teacher will appear when you’re ready, but you’ve got to make a commitment. And that’s why I want to keep doing these live shows to build this will live on youtube and facebook forever. It’ll live at Mike Stewart dot live forever. It’ll be distributed to all the podcast channels. So I want people that if you don’t know Tom Antion hopefully you will go check him out@antioch.com how he has been your email address and your

Tom Antion
yeah just use screw the commute that’ll lead him to everything. Yes. Now

Michael Stewart
both of them you know the screwed me so newer Antion calm A and T IO n has been around since I met you so yeah, that

Tom Antion
was 94 when I started Yeah. Oh my goodness.

Michael Stewart
I guess people don’t have any burning questions. I guess they’re just so busy writing things down. Oh, you have any any closing comments before we close?

Tom Antion
Yeah, I just, I just, you know, I live and breathe this. I’m a fanatic at this. And you know you you get a lot of tips if you’ve been doing this day and night for seven days a week for 20 What is it 26 years online, not counting those in business before that. So. So it’s a great lifestyle business. I do even talk about my school where it would be a great legacy gift for your kids or grandchildren. I really get sick of these people spending a fortune on four year colleges and the kids are learning how to protest and they get out there work, you know, competing for jobs at Starbucks so so we have a school that puts these hard school hard core skills into practice that every business needs so, so we have anybody who wants to talk about it for their kids or grandchildren, nephews or nieces get in touch with me or if you have any questions on anything that I’m qualified, I’ll be happy to do it. As a friend of mine, that’s for sure.

Michael Stewart
Well, Tom, I am definitely going to have you back. I think people really enjoyed the show today. So this is a Tom Antion from screw the commute.com and antion.com. I’m Mike Stewart and I you you hopefully are at Mike Stewart dot live. There is my cell phone 770-826-3662 I do answer my phone. And if you are serious about doing things on the internet, especially when it comes to audio and video marketing, I hope you’ll reach out to me I hope you reach out to Tom. What an amazing show. I’m gonna go back and watch this show again today. This was amazing. So into for two weeks, four days, the second Monday, first, second Monday and fourth Monday of the month is when I do Mike Stewart dot live. And we’ll have another guest in two weeks. So thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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