Transcript
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends Show. What's up,
my Bloggy Friends? Famous Ashley Grant here,
and I just want to welcome you to the Bloggy
Friends Show. We're so excited to have you join
us on this journey of sharing our knowledge and
experiences with you. Whether you're a blogger,
a content creator, or just someone who's interested
in learning more about the digital world, we've
got something for you. So grab your notebook
and a pen to take some notes, or just sit back
and take in all the amazing information and ideas
we're about to share with you. Let's get into
it. So Justin, welcome to the show. I am so excited
you could be here. Like I told you before we
hit record, I'm kind of fangirling a little bit.
Can you do us a favor and tell us what it is
you do? Yeah, absolutely. So thanks for having
me on. First of all, Justin Popovich, I'm from
a website called toolsformotivation .com. So
you might hear these kinds of products that we
sell referred to as private label rights or PLR.
It's essentially just licensed content. So we
make products in the self -improvement, self
-help space that other business owners, bloggers,
authors, whoever can purchase a license and then
basically treat it like they created it themselves.
So it's really cool because somebody else's like
our team has already done all the heavy lifting
for you've got a digital product or you've got
content that you can share on social media or
blogs. And you haven't had to write it from scratch,
but you also have the permission to change it,
edit it, customize it. So it does sound like
you, but it just saves you an incredible amount
of time and a lot of frustration because when
you sit down to write content on a blank page,
it's a lot harder. And so we give people a kind
of a headstart. But you can also just take our
stuff and publish it right as is. It's completely
up to you how you want to go ahead with it with
your brand. That's what we've been doing here
at Tools Motivation for about 10 years. We actually
had another private label rights business before
that as well. So my business partner, Ted Payne,
and myself have been at this for quite some time.
And we just keep evolving and growing with it
and have a lot of fun. And it seems to be something
that people really like using. So we're still
doing it as long as people see value. Now, I'm
curious, what on earth made you suddenly decide
we're going to start selling white label content?
Yeah, that's a good question. Like a lot of people,
I was an entrepreneur doing services -based revenue
generation. So we were building websites for
people at the time, doing a lot of tech kind
of work. It was kind of a weird backstory. I
was actually in the corporate world way back
in the day, from 2000 to 2008. I was a corporate
guy and I worked at IBM and I did a lot of just
corporate stuff and I just really couldn't stand
it. I didn't like the feeling of being in a big
company. I didn't like feeling like I was a number.
I didn't like that I wasn't in control of my
schedule. And so I really got into just my own
mindset and kind of realizing what got me here.
And I kind of really started investigating the
philosophy of success and how people set their
assumptions and beliefs and all those kind of
things. A lot of the self -help books, the classical
stuff. And once I got into it, I realized I really
like this. I'd love to be able to do this kind
of stuff and share these messages with other
people as a business. So I originally got into
entrepreneurship to be a coach and a speaker
and couldn't really get that many clients, but
built up a great website. So and we ranked really
high on Google and all this stuff. So people
started hiring us, asking us to build websites
for them. And so we did that for a couple of
years because that was the only way I was making
money as an entrepreneur. And I got really tired
of it. So one day. I was on this marketing forum
and I saw that people were selling their own
content, but with a license attached to it. And
I thought I could do that. So I literally just
went to a coffee shop one morning when I was
in between client work and wrote a book, a mini
ebook on how to get out of your comfort zone
because it's something I'd been doing for two
years as an entrepreneur and decided instead
of just selling it as an ebook, I'd sell it as
a licensed piece of content. And it worked. I
started making these $17 sales. same day not
a ton of money a few hundred bucks but it made
it gave me that belief like oh i can actually
make money selling a digital product that i spent
the time creating once but kept making money
over and over and over again so i had a little
sale that ended made a few hundred bucks but
then i kept using that product in other projects
and i made thousands of dollars off of that one
unit of work about three hours that morning and
it blew my mind so i was like i want to do more
of this and we just kept offering similar kind
of products to that same audience. It kept selling
and it eventually grew into a membership site
that it grew into a brand. And here we are many
years later and we just kept evolving it. So
it's like a lot of digital businesses start with
one little idea where something just worked a
bit and we just kept going at it, innovating
and getting better and better and better. And
yeah, here we are today. Okay. So you said that
one of the reasons that it was like self -help
stuff is because you were wanting to be a speaker
and a coach. So do you think the fact that you
guys have reached down in the PLR business has
been beneficial to you or does it kind of hold
you back a little bit from making more money?
Great question. No, it definitely helped out
a lot in the sense that it gave us a very clear
talking point to our perfect customers, right?
So if you, and that's another good lesson in
business in general, if you try to spread yourself
too thin and have too many messages and too wide
of an audience, you're not really speaking to
anybody. And so. And that's what we originally
did in our first PLR company was we were just
creating whatever our customers asked for. So
do something on anti -aging, do something on
home workouts and do all these. So we did it.
We were hiring content creators to do it, but
then we would only sell little pockets of licenses
because there was only so many people that wanted
each one. And we found when we laser focused
on self -help, which is the niche we called it
at the time, there's a number of different names
for it. Was there was a huge audience. So that
was important. It was still a big enough market
that we could niche down into the self -help
space. And so it just gave us a clear mess, basically
message to market. And it gave us a consistent
audience that kept coming back because they need
a lot of content in that space. So I think that
to answer your question in kind of a longer winded
way is that it did help us because we picked
a niche that did have. a market and had a lot
of people in it and there was money being made.
And we didn't niche it down too much to kind
of rule out being able to scale a business. So
I think there's a fine line there. I don't think
you want to niche it down too much because then
you'd only, you maybe only have a hundred people
in the world that want this thing. But then again,
if you go too far the other way, you'll, you'll
be speaking to too many people. So you have to
find that kind of careful balance. I think if
you, if you, you can't really go wrong in the
self -help or wellness or finance world's business,
those kinds of things seem to sell. And as long
as you can create a brand in those, you should
do fine. Well, one of the things that fascinates
me about y 'all's marketplace is it's not just
blog posts. It's not just e -books. You also
have courses. You have podcasts. You have videos.
So tell me a little bit about that and how you
kind of expanded to more than just, I guess,
the written word. Yeah, absolutely. Like anything
else, we kind of evolved. It started off as we
were just creating blog posts and mini e -books
and little reports so people could use either
as, you know, think something they could sell
or something they could use as a lead magnet
to build their list or something like that. And
then, like any good company, we talked to our
customers a lot. You know, we sent direct emails
to people. We did follow -up campaigns, literally
thanking people for buying our product. It was
one -to -one conversations. In those conversations,
there was a lot of themes coming out. Oh, do
you have something to help me build up my Twitter
profile? Do you have something to help me get
my LinkedIn profile going? Or do you have anything
to help me either brainstorm or publish to YouTube
or do audio or whatever? And as these questions
came in and they became more and more common,
we just started to think, well, yeah, we could
totally do that. Would you be willing to pay
a premium for those kind of things? And more
people that said yes, we just took it as an indication
to do it. Yeah, so now we're doing, we do audios,
we do video, do a lot of graphics -related content,
makes it very easy to share on Instagram, Pinterest,
those kind of things. But it all, yeah, it all
basically all came down to what the audience,
what the customers wanted, and then what made
sense for their marketing. Now, for digital marketers,
anybody selling online, there's basically three
buckets, right? You're either publishing things
that you're going to monetize, so sellable content,
lead generation content to build your list or
your influence, And then traffic in general,
content to just get the word out there that you
exist and that you have good things to share
and that you have a website that people should
visit and all that good stuff. So those three
buckets need lots of content poured into them
all the time if you want to do really well in
an online business. So we just started innovating
and figuring out as many as we could build in
each one of those three buckets. So that's how
our platform sort of evolved. Okay. Well, so.
Basically, I started researching PLR a while
back because I was writing an article for GoDaddy
about using PLR to kind of make more money from
the blog content you're already creating. Now,
one of the pushbacks that I kept getting from
people whenever I was trying to discuss it as
a plausible thing to use for a blog is they're
like, okay, well, that means I'm going to have
the same content as everybody else. So what do
you say to those people who are scared to buy
it for that reason? It's a great point. It really
comes down to the target of your content publishing.
Where is this going to go? So if you if your
goal is to create a blog post for your brand
that will be ranked highly high in the search
engines and get you all kinds of clicks organically,
then you need to have a fairly unique piece of
content because search engines these days are
very advanced and they can see if this piece
of content has been published in 100 other places.
It may not give you the search engine juice that
you want. It still may rank because there isn't
a rule against duplicate content, so to speak.
I'm not a search engine optimization expert,
but I think, again, it comes down to what is
your goal. So if your goal is to just get somebody
to join your list by giving them a really cool
gift, I'd like you to sign up for my list today.
I'm going to send you my four -part mini course
on whatever. Well, that mini course, you don't
have to write it from scratch. You could use
a piece of PLR content where it's already been
written for you. And maybe just take five, 10
minutes to inject a little creativity or a little
bit of your own voice at the beginning, at the
end, so that people, your readers or whoever
can see that it's coming from you. That whole
middle section can just be generic lessons that
come from a piece of private label rights content.
As long as what's being shared in there resonates
with you and what you want to share with the
world. Do you think people are really going to
remember? Oh, I read this passage in another
book on another website four years ago. It just
doesn't happen, right? These kinds of things
don't happen. I've read thousands of books. They
could have had identical chapters in them. I
wouldn't have recalled that. So it's very often
an unfounded worry that really has no basis in
reality. But again, it comes down to your intentions.
So yeah, if you are trying to rank on Google
with like 100 different blog posts, then yeah,
you're going to want to tear that piece of PLR
article down, break it into sections, add some
of your own voice into it or your messages into
it so that in the end, it is a unique piece of
content. Nowadays, we've got all these AI tools
out there that can do. A friend of mine just
released a rewriting tool based on AI. So you
could plug in a PLR article and it'll literally
rewrite it. Same concept, different output. And
that guarantees that it's unique. So again, it
comes down to how you want to use it. Nine times
out of 10, you could use it out of box and it
would be perfectly acceptable and nobody would
have a clue that you're doing it. Again, make
sure that it resonates with you, your voice,
the message that you want to put out there. But
most of the PLR, if it's good quality, Probably
will. A lot of these lessons are, you know, universal
life lessons, right? If you're talking about
confidence or how to build yourself a team or
leadership principles, what we put in our product
is probably going to be similar to what you would
put in yours. If you wrote it from scratch, you
just made to make a few tweaks. That's such a
good point. And the reality is, you know, there
are 80 million plus WordPress blogs alone. So
what are the odds that, you know, if you purchase
this particular product that you're going to
be competing with someone else that is like in
your niche? Yeah, exactly. I mean, the odds are
low. Yes. And one of the things that I found
kind of fascinating, you mentioned duplicate
content, and that's been like a buzzword that
freaks people out. But in the research I've done,
the big thing that I have found is that duplicate
content was really written as like a thing to
be concerned about if you were putting it on
your own website multiple times. Because, you
know, in the black hat SEO days when people were
doing things they weren't supposed to be doing,
they were putting the same content over and over
again on their own website. Yeah. So if you're
if you're creating content with PLR, I don't
see I don't see how it could really hurt you.
No, absolutely. And you can you can test it quite
easily. If you go if you run a search for any
kind of popular news story, a lot of these like
news websites will just syndicate an article
from a source like like AP or Reuters or whatever.
But they're literally just. syndicating that
article on their blog and it ranks so you can
see with your own eyes proof that duplicate content
doesn't hurt search engine rankings at least
for some websites so uh i don't really worry
about that kind of thing if i kind of just focus
on does this message that i'm putting out whether
it's publicly whether it's behind a paywall whether
it's privately to my email list does it reflect
the kind of message that I want to share with
my audience? And does it reflect our brand in
general? And if it does, I'll put it out there
as long as they're inherent value for the reader.
So would you say the big thing is to make sure
that your brand overall is what's being put out
there and just use the PLR to kind of help enhance
it? Absolutely. You still have to have a brand.
You still have to have a unique message or a
unique product or something that you're bringing
to the world. You are the unique thing. It doesn't
have to be your personal brand, but your creativity,
your team work that goes into whatever product
or service you're creating here, that has to
be there. The PLR is just helping you get your
messages out there more quickly in a more creative,
unique way. And really, for a lot of people,
it just helps them overcome the writer's block
or the worry that goes into what the heck am
I going to write today? Well, don't start with
a blank piece of paper. Start with a word doc
that already has an article. And if you like
what the article says, roll with it. If you disagree
with one of the points, pull it out, rewrite
that one point. But you've just saved yourself
still probably 90 % of the work time. And now
you're pumping out 10 times more content than
your competitor. So I'd roll with that because
content is king. That's not going away. So the
more content you can put out, the better. Wait,
so you mean I can't just buy everything that
you posted and just post it myself? I mean, you
could. Technically, it's not against the rules.
But I would definitely add a little bit of your
flair to it. Make sure that your crew know that
it's you. Yes. That way, if you actually want
to build a brand that people can know, like and
trust, it will just be regurgitated. Exactly.
Exactly right. Well, I kind of want to switch
gears for just a second because, you know, you've
mentioned AI and we've been we've kind of been
talking in the in the background. My husband
and I, he's my partner. We've been talking about
blogging and how things are shifting and changing.
So people are starting to look for ways that
they can earn more income and kind of bust that
income gap that are not income gap, but that
income ceiling. of trading dollars for hours.
So let's say I'm a blogger and I'm producing
all kinds of content on my own. Can I sell my
own PLR, my own white label content? Absolutely.
Yeah. There's really no stopping anyone from
getting into this space or into this market.
In my experience, the best way to do it would
be as long as you have some points of contact.
So you and I are chatting right now. I'm connected
to most of the PLR sellers. That's pretty much
it. You just need to know somebody that's in
that world And even then, if you don't, there's
nothing stopping you from putting out a piece
of or a package basically saying, you know, here
are 10 of my best pieces that I've written. It's
published in my works or in my blog or whatever.
I'm giving you a license to, you know, use it
or publish it as your own. And then your license
just stipulates whatever you want it to say.
Your customers can do with that content what
you specify in your license. So you could tell
them. you're not allowed to use this on your
blog you can only use it internally for your
email list to nurture that list and create engagement
so if you send an email newsletter to your list
that uses my written content that's fine but
please don't publish it on my blog i'm just giving
examples here so um yeah you could totally do
something like that and you could totally make
it run the way you want it to run so that you
feel comfortable with it as well uh it's still
i mean PLR is still a fairly unknown term, private
label rights, in the grand scheme of things.
Most people that I talk to in my day -to -day
life have no clue what it is. Online marketers
tend to know, but even then, if they do know,
there's only a handful of providers that they
trust or would even consider buying from. So
I still think it's a market right for getting
into. I'd certainly endorse somebody getting
into it if it's good quality and there's a market
for it. I'd say go for it, yeah. I completely
agree. Whenever I was researching this a couple
of years ago for that GoDaddy piece, one of the
big things that some of the PLR providers that
I spoke to said is the best way to get into it
is to start being an affiliate first for PLR
providers that already exist. Would you agree
with that? I don't know if that would be the
only or the best way to do it. I think if you
had a really good piece of content or offer that
you brought to the market and you just were.
transparent, at least among the other PLR sellers,
if you wanted them to help share it or promote
it. Because doing it with advertising or doing
it without a list would be very hard. You would
really need someone who has a name in that space
to at least a few people to recommend them over
your product. But if it's a good product, I've
had people come into it and I've never heard
of them before. And they say, hey, I'm entering,
I've got this health package. I take a look,
the content's really good. I consider promoting
it if it makes sense for my list. Getting started
as an affiliate would certainly work. I would
probably do it the other way around. I'd create
a really good product and try to get in front
of some PLR sellers with some influence and make
it really super, super appealing for them to
promote it. You know, huge commissions, make
sure you have a good funnel in place so they
could earn decent amount of money, make them
look good to their list. So make sure the content's
really well written and well supported. All those,
you know, standard things that any business owner,
if they're going to refer their hard earned customers
over to you. that they can feel confident in
doing it. I would actually, yeah. So I would
start the other way around. Now you've got a
bit of influence in a list, then get into the
affiliate side of things and then kind of keep
doing both of those. Now you have an affiliate
program yourself. Would you say that that has
helped you like reach more people or is it kind
of inhibiting how much income you can make? I'm
very curious. So no, it definitely helps all
of our original traffic. So to give you a bit
of history, when I talked about my original PLR
company. That was called Best Quality PLR. We
sold that business. I don't even think the website
runs anymore. But at the time, we were publishing
self -help content under that brand. Then we
decided to create Tools Motivation as its own
brand to just sell the PLR or the self -help
PLR content. And we didn't really have a traffic
source for this new website other than our list
from that first business. But that list was fairly
small at the time. It was a pretty small company.
How we built Tools for Motivation, how we got
our first thousand orders basically was all through
affiliates, through people we had met at conferences
and done business with over the years, telling
them, hey, we're launching this new brand. We've
got these new suite of products coming out. If
you're interested, we offer really healthy commissions,
in some cases like 100 % front end commission
because it was like a loss leader for us. And
so our top 20 or 30 referral partners were basically
the reason we were able to build Tools for Motivation
at the beginning. before we had cash flow and
other ways to get traffic. So it's been huge
for us and we still run it to this day. We've
put many hundreds of affiliates through that
affiliate program. They promote us all the time
now. That's awesome. I mean, and like I said,
I'm a customer myself and the content you guys
produce is pretty awesome. I mean, you can tell
a lot of work and energy goes into it. So do
you ever find yourself getting stuck for what
you're going to create or what kind of products
you're going to put out next? Good question.
Sometimes it's actually funny you ask. Today
we're doing, my business partner and I are doing
a brainstorming session on basically going through,
we get a lot of requests right now. So we're
at the point now where we have fairly large customer
base. We're getting requests for content all
the time. So we go through those requests and
we also go through older products that we maybe
need some updating as well. But to answer your
question, yeah, it can get a bit tricky to come
up with new angles and new slants on products,
but at the same time. We've never run out of
ideas in doing this for a decade now with eight
new products coming out a month. That's a lot
of content. And I think the reason that we'll
never run out of ideas is just the world changes
and topics and concepts change and new leaders
emerge, new speakers and books come out. And
now it's like podcasts everywhere. So there's
podcasters that talk about certain things and
they come up with their own culture. You know,
before, you know, when we first started, you
might just have a product on meditation. Well,
now meditation could be like five subtopics when
you get into things like mindfulness and cold
plunges and deep breathing and all these different
things. They could be their own subtopics that
have a whole product built around them now. So
what we're finding is that as the self -help
niche itself grows and expands, which it's just,
it's exploding now with podcasts and courses
and things like that, that we'd never really.
run out we just get maybe a little bit more uh
we can go deeper on subjects and we could create
more products that go deep really okay so i'm
gonna shift gears again on you i'm say i'm purchasing
plr how can i tell what's crap plr versus really
good stuff it can be tough because you know people
are really good at creating fancy sales pages
and really nice splashy graphics and you can
go to fiverr and have a You know, for 15, 20
bucks, get a really cool sales video built only
to find out after all of that, the product is
a piece of junk. It's horribly written or whatever.
So there really isn't any way to know other than
testing it out. So if you're first getting into
buying PLR, I would say, see if anybody else
is already recommending them that you already
trust. That's the easiest one. If you can't do
that, let's say you come across something that
looks great and you just don't know what their
reputation is in the space. Nobody's heard of
them. Can you purchase something on the lower
end? Can you get onto their list for free and
get some samples and just kind of see how they
run their business? So, you know, how do even
on a first glance, do they have a support page?
What's their contact page look like? Who's behind
the company? Do they hide? Do they have like
a face and a name? Is there a CEO? Is there somebody
that's willing to put their name out there? Do
they have a phone number? Those kinds of things
are pretty good place to start before I would
give anybody too much of my money, not just in
the PLR space, but. Period. So am I am I going
to be taken care of as a customer is is a good
indication whether or not they put the if they
put quality into that, they're probably put some
quality into their actual products as well. But
usually you can get some kind of feel through
cheap or free means by getting some samples and
just seeing how that looks. And if you get a
few samples and it looks good, it's probably
worth investing a little bit more into maybe
a middle ticket product. And if that looks good,
I think you're fine at that point. That's awesome.
So what would be your advice for taking the products
that people are purchasing and kind of repurposing
them to make it more unique for their own brand?
I know you have an awesome class that you often
will put out there to your email list teaching
how to take a piece, but just kind of give me
the Reader's Digest version for our listeners.
Sure. So again, similar to your question about
duplicate content or the confidence to publish.
It really depends on what you're trying to do,
right? So earlier we talked about the three buckets.
I'll say them again. So you need content that's
premium that you're going to sell or monetize.
You need content that's going to help you grow
your list or engage that list. And you need content
that's going to drive traffic to your website
or to your offers. So what is your current project
or your initiative? Are you creating a product
or a course that you intend to monetize? Maybe
it's a coaching program or a mastermind group
you're going to charge an annual fee for. Right.
So let's take that example. Let's say it's a
course. That's a big thing. A lot of people are
trying to create courses around their knowledge
and their skills and expertise. So what goes
into a course? Well, usually it's, you know,
three, four, five, six modules where you're going
to go through top to bottom your topic, whatever
it may be. And in each one of those modules,
you're going to need lessons, maybe some handouts
and checklists of things they need to be doing.
Maybe there's breakouts that they do with students
and they share their ideas. They're going to
need a form to fill in for that. So there's all
this kind of content you need to keep your students
engaged if you're publishing a course. So if
you're using PLR, let's say it is a four -module
course on, let's pick a common topic I see, you
know, building self -esteem. It could be as an
entrepreneur, it could be as a middle -aged woman,
middle -aged man, it could be building self -esteem
for teenagers and leaving high school and entering
university, something like that, right? all the
principles and concepts and ideas behind developing
self -esteem and confidence are pretty much going
to be the same regardless of where you are in
life right you know you know who you are create
habits that make you feel successful there's
going to be a lot of things common lessons that
go into developing confidence so if you go to
tools for motivation we have several different
products and packages that get into how to have
a confident mindset how to present yourself confidently
we have a product on speaking with confidence
so it gets into like You know, speaking in boardrooms,
speaking at the front of the room, speaking one
-to -one like you and I are right now on a live
stream or a podcast. That may be four, five,
six different PLR products that talk about confidence,
self -esteem, and the mindset behind it from
four, five, six different angles. Each one of
those would have enough content to pull into
a module. Again, you're still doing the work.
You're the course creator. You're crafting this
to look like a presentable piece of content that
you sell, but you don't have to write it. All
of those lessons. are already in that PLR product.
You just pull that text out, or maybe there's
worksheets that already have the tables and the
fillable sections, and you're just putting your
branding or your logo on it. And then you're
plugging it into your course delivery platform,
whether it's teachable or whatever you're using.
And then you have your course built. So that
would be a really good example. If you want to
go into like monetizing your content through
a course, pulling pieces out of different PLR,
there's only have to be from one vendor, right?
You can find four or five, six different vendors
that all have great stuff. And you're pulling,
you know, uh, an ebook from tools for motivation.
And I have a friend, uh, Sharon Sheldon content
sparks. Maybe you're pulling one of her, uh,
guidebooks. She has like these really cool, like,
uh, like workbooks that people can actually fill
out to learn the topic. So maybe you pull her
content for that and you go to a third vendor
for their graphics. And that's really cool because
now you're like an artist. You've got like this,
uh, this canvas and then the PLR becomes your
paint and you're just kind of putting it all
together. Wow. I mean, that all sounds amazing,
but you did mention Teachable and I'm curious,
have you ever had any issues with your clients
not being able to post their content into a course
for like any rules that they may be violating?
We haven't had anybody come to us explicitly
saying that. There are people that come and ask
us, you know, am I allowed to take your, we have
audio, for example, can I take your audio and
publish that to Audible? And my answer is always,
well, you have to ask Audible because you go
to their terms of service and read it. But I've
read it. Most of those sites say you're not allowed
to use PLR. So if you're going to do that, you
will need to make significant customizations
so that the end product is unique work by you.
You can still use the PLR, but again, you have
to look at the platform that you're looking to
distribute on and make sure that you're abiding
by their terms of service. So you don't get your
account closed or banned or paused or whatever.
And most of them are fairly flexible, but at
the same time, they won't. They don't want you
just taking PLR out of box and publishing it.
So I think if you do enough work to make it unique,
it'll pass sort of that uniqueness test and you'll
be fine. So from the teachable side of things,
no, I haven't had anybody say, I tried to plug
this in verbatim and it didn't work. I haven't
had that happen yet. Well, that's at least good
news. Well, before I let you go, is there anything
else that you want to tell people about either
selling, creating, or buying PLR? I think the
biggest thing is just, it's a recurring thing
that I see both in our membership and even just
customers that come to us and buy one -offs or
even we have freebies we do every week as well.
It often comes down to, you got to use the stuff.
Like we put out a lot of content, a lot of good
ideas and people get all excited. You know, I'm
going to create my first course this year. I'm
going to finally launch my coaching program or
I'm going to do my membership site because I
really want that recurring revenue. And I'm excited.
I'm like, that sounds awesome. Like, let me know
how I can help or let us, you know, let me know
if there's some training I can send you. And
then I just don't see anything happening. You
really, PLR or otherwise, action is the key.
And you can't really be in action if you don't
have an offer out there. So yeah, you can do
blogging and create short form content, long
form content, do podcasting, and you can build
your list and have cool emails that like engage
your list and tell great stories and build a
brand. But where are you sending them? What's
your offer? Where's the buy button? Can I actually
physically click on it and try to order it for
you? That's the thing that I feel like a lot
of people are maybe imposter syndrome or I don't
know what it is. They're putting it off till
the end. Put it first. What is your offer going
to be? You need something that people can purchase
from you in order to have an online business.
Could be a digital download. Could be a course.
Could be some service or specialty that you're
offering one -to -one in like a coaching or a
consulting fashion. Whatever it may be for you
and whatever feels right to you at your current
level of business. That offer needs to be out
there for other people like myself to evaluate
and go, that looks great. I'd buy it. Or I wouldn't
buy it. Here's why. You need a better headline.
You need a sales video. You need your buy button
doesn't stand out. You don't have a good enough
guarantee, right? So if you're kind of stuck
at that point, my final piece of advice would
be work on your offer so that other people like
Ashley or like myself could take a look and say,
hey, that looks cool. I'd love to share it. Or
I know people that could use something like that.
Or I would never buy that. Here's why. And now
you can change your approach. Until you get that,
really, there isn't any point in doing any of
the other stuff, the content marketing, all these
different things. You've got to have some offers
in place. God, that sounds so good. My money
mentor, Denise Steffield -Thomas, of the Lucky
Bitch Money Manifestation stuff, she always has
this thing that she says that all roads lead
to boot camp. That's her thing. That's her big
offer that she sells is her boot camp. And so
every bit of her offerings of everything that
she's doing, whatever it is, whether it's a challenge
or a blog post or whatever, all roads lead to
boot camp. So it sounds like what you're saying
is we need to figure out what our bootcamp is,
what our main offer is, and have that be the
end of the funnel, and then take everything else
we're creating and make it all go there. Absolutely.
And for many people, it's not even just the product
or the offer. It's a mindset thing. They don't
have the belief, or they're afraid, or again,
I talked about imposter syndrome, or they're
confused. So it's very often... an inner issue
that needs to be resolved here is like why you
don't have that offer out here. Maybe you're
worried about getting it right. Your first offer
is probably not going to be the offer you roll
with for years and years and years. So you need
to have a couple of bad offers or offers that
don't go amazing to know what you want to do.
But until you do that, so I love that message,
you know, all roads lead to bootcamp. All roads
need to lead to your first offer so that you
can figure out where it is you're going to go
next in the evolution of your business. So until
you're at that point. I'd say put everything
else aside, nail that down, and then you'll be
rocking and rolling. Well, it sounds like with
you, it's all roads lead to your membership.
Our membership or even just getting on our list
so I can give you free stuff. And then eventually
you'll probably want to buy something from us
and then we can talk at that point. And I can
attest to it. Even your free stuff's amazing.
Like it's not like you put out just blah, blah,
blah content. You put out really good stuff for
the freebies. Thank you. Yeah, we do. We definitely
put it. We invest a lot of time, a lot of money
into it. It's like I talked about earlier. It's
an investment into the brand. You can't cheap
out at any level of your business from how you
support people. How do they get in touch with
you on your website? We have an 800 number. You
can text us. You can call us on the phone. Don't
be shy. The more you are transparent and make
people feel like real people when they buy from
you, the better off you'll be. And again, once
you get them into your ecosystem, they have lots
of good offers that are good quality that improve
the lives or the businesses of the people. that
are interacting with you. And yeah, do that consistently
for a long period of time. Can't go wrong. Okay.
Well, there's one more question I have for you.
And if I need to cut it out, I totally will.
Cause I'm just very curious. And this could just
be for my own knowledge. I'm curious if you outsource
and I'm curious if, oh goodness, if you outsource
and I had another one, but I'll, I'll, I'll ask
that one first. Yeah. So yeah, so the amount
of, we put out eight PLR packages a month. We
have three different styles of products. So four
times a month, we're doing tips reports. Two
times a month, we do content bundles, which is
very much geared around blogging and public content.
And then twice a month, we do what's called a
full product, which has everything, e -book,
audio book, workbook, things you can sell. And
so each one of those, just to give you an example,
each one of those full product packages that
come out twice a month take several dozen man
hours or woman hours or person hours. uh and
many thousands of dollars in outsourcing costs
so yeah these are very very in -depth products
think about what it takes for you as a person
to sit down and write a six seven eight thousand
word ebook then edit that then rewrite it again
and then do all the graphics for it then do a
workbook for it then record it in your own voice
with high quality audio it's you know it's many
weeks of work from it for what happens later
right so so definitely outsource um My business
partner, Ted, runs the whole side of the business
in terms of content production. That's a full
-time job for him. He just runs that whole team.
And we have writers, editors, designers, voiceover
actors, and he just runs that whole team. And
on my side of the business, I do these kind of
things. I get the word out about what we do.
I run the sales team and all that. So we have
many different people working for us to run this
operation. It took many years to get here. I'd
like to say the margins are huge. They're not
because we do spend a lot of money on, like you
mentioned, you said the quality was good. It's
for a purpose. We hire good quality workers to
put the work in. But in my opinion, that's the
only way to run a business. You can't really
cut any corners if you want to be in business
for the long run because your customers will
see it, then they'll stop doing business with
you. So take smaller margins if you need to and
dig in for the long run and just work on the
relationship side of things. A hundred percent.
Lots of outsourcing. And, uh, we have people
that count. We have one guy that's been doing,
we're working for us for 10 years and, uh, he
was able to, you know, he, you know, he's his
family and, uh, he doesn't, he's the only one
working for them. So I feel great about it. It's,
uh, you know, we have a lot of people that work
for us and do well. So. Awesome. So is it okay
if I keep that in? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Very
cool. And I remembered the other question. The
other question I had for you is, do you guys
ever use your own content on your own websites?
Oh, like a tool, some motivation content on our
websites. Yeah. So yeah, for quite a while, my
sales manager, Trevor was doing some social media
content, just taking the poster and images that
we have in our packages and just sharing it out
on Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that.
Sometimes if I'm doing, if I'm doing webinars
or training content, and I want to add a little
bit of, you know, you know, personal skill stuff,
mindset, talk a little bit about, you know, the
thinking behind success as an entrepreneur. I'll
go right into some of our products and even if
I'm just reading it for inspiration, I'll do
it because I need that. I don't always have the
ideas off the top of my head. I might need to
borrow some inspiration from a written word,
let's say. And so, yeah, I'll go right to our
products to do that as well as external sources
as well. So we definitely use our own material,
not as often as our customers do because our
customers are selling a self -help. Whereas we're
selling the content. So there is a bit of a disconnect
in some of it, but for branding, absolutely.
That's awesome. I think that's just amazing.
I really do. Where can people find you online?
The easiest spot is just go to tools for motivation
.com. And if you click around the website or
in the homepage, I'd suggest you join our mailing
list so you can get some free samples and see
for your own eyes what we've been talking about
here today. Every week we send out some free
content. So even if you don't like the idea of
paying for content. Get on the list and try it
out for a few weeks. You might get annoyed. I
send a lot of emails out, but they're pretty
good value in my humble opinion. And you can
download and try some of these concepts out.
Plus, we have some great training as well. So
I would just stick to toolsmotivation .com and
click around on all the free training, the lists
and all that. And if you want to learn more,
then just dive in from there. Honestly, in my
opinion, even if you're just getting it just
to read the content, the content's really good.
I've said that like 4 ,000 times in this episode,
I think, but it's just, it's really good and
I enjoy reading it. Yeah, well, the preview we
have coming out today is called Seven Ways to
Attack Fear with Mindfulness. It's like, well,
that's a good lesson. That's a good lesson. Yeah,
everybody needs to remind themselves how to overcome
their fears. Maybe if this was my first time
ever appearing on a podcast, which I remember
back in the day, I was nervous. So, you know,
the attacking fear of mindfulness would have
come in handy, right? So yeah, there's always
great little life lessons in all the material
we share, plus the added bonus of you can keep
it and publish it as your own. So that's a nice
little second layer of value there. I like that.
I think what I'll have to do is I'll dig through
some of my archives and like plug in some of
y 'all's stuff so that people can hear just how
awesome it is. Cool. Thank you. I'd love, I'd
love if you did that. Thanks. Well, Justin, I
just want to say. Thank you so much for being
here today. I think everything you shared is
really awesome. And I hope people will take this
and just kind of open their minds a little bit
to possibilities. Yeah, no, thanks so much for
having me on. It's been a blast. And let me know
when you want me back. I definitely will. Absolutely.
To close out this episode, here's an example
of what the audio sounds like from the Tools
for Motivation PLR library. Having a creative
mindset can propel you forward in both your career
and your personal life. This reason is why it
can be so disheartening when you struggle to
develop your creativity. Below are six ways you
can develop your creativity to be more successful
in life. 1. Build your confidence. Often, creativity
is stifled when you're afraid or embarrassed
to tell others what you're thinking. A huge part
of creativity is sharing and further developing
your ideas with others. This is why you should
work to build your self -confidence if you want
to develop your creativity. 2. Have creative
time. If your schedule is so full of activities
that you don't have time to sit and think or
time to create, of course you won't be creative.
Help develop your creativity by setting aside
time each day to be creative. 3. Brainstorm.
Brainstorming is a great idea to get your creative
juices flowing. You can brainstorm anything from
new ideas for your free time, new date ideas,
or even how you want your dream home to look.
The sky is the limit. Sit down and start filling
that paper with ideas. 4. Try new things. Nothing
gets creative juices flowing quite like trying
something new. Is there a class at the gym you've
always wanted to take? Go for it. Or maybe you
want a vacation somewhere new. That's an idea
too. Anything that'll make you step out of your
comfort zone is great for your creativity. 5.
Spend time in nature. Nature is one of the best
ways to get inspired and start feeling creative
for free. Take some time each week and sit in
nature or go for a walk after work each day.
You'll be surprised at the ideas you come up
with just while being outside. 6. Journal. If
you want to develop your creativity, you should
consider journaling regularly. Keeping a journal
helps your thoughts to flow and helps you overcome
problems and think more creatively. Try to journal
for 5 -10 minutes each day. Wherever you may
be in life with your creative journey, there's
bound to be something on this list that sparks
your creativity. You don't have to use all these
things to help your creativity develop, but if
you manage to incorporate them all into your
life, you may just be surprised at how easy being
creative is. So don't hesitate and start developing
your creativity today. Well, my bloggy friends,
I hope you enjoyed all the insights our guests
had to share with you. To get the show notes
for this and all episodes, go over to famousashleygrant
.com backslash podcast. And until next time,
may your page views be high and your bounce rate
be low.