This unedited transcript is provided for your convenience...
One of the best ways to get time leverage is to create online courses and membership groups and things like that. And in today's episode of unleashed, the awesome, I'm thrilled to have my friend James Wedmore share some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they try to monetize their message online. James was born and raised in sunny Laguna beach, California, and our resides and runs his business in the beautiful red rocks of Sedona Arizona.
For the last 15 years, James has leveraged his expertise to help digital CEOs build and scale their online businesses through courses and trainings like his signature program business by design, as well as many other business building trainings inside of James's abundant course library. And you'll hear in our conversation, some of his history where I ran into him years ago and how he has mentored and coached me to help me build my online empire.
And he could do the same for you. So enjoy this conversation with Mr. James Wedmore. Welcome to unleashed the awesome with Dave Gambrill. All of us have unique skills, talents, and abilities that aren't being used to their full potential. Our mission is to share the people, tools, apps, and other resources that will help you unleash your awesome on the world.
All right. So James, thank you so much for joining us on unleash. The awesome I'm thrilled to have you here. And I thought maybe we'd jump in, you know, in your bio, it talked a little bit about, you know, you have this successful business by design program that you have, you have a bunch of other successful things online.
You've been doing this for close to 15 years now, but I think it might be helpful for people to understand a little bit of your background, because I think sometimes they see people online and they go, wow. Okay. That guy he's so awesome. He's so successful kind of like an overnight success, but I think it might be helpful for my audience to understand that this was not a straight path for you.
Like there were some definitely some detours along the way. So would you like to share some of that with the Audience? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously we, we, I won't belabor you with, with the whole story. It would be here for a couple hours, but from the cliff notes version of this straight out of college, I went to film school.
I really wanted to go into Hollywood and the film industry and then went to film school and I said, nevermind, it just was completely disenchanted. So I'm like graduating from this super expensive school that like my parents spent all their money on. And, and then of course I had debt accrued already by the time I'm 22 and graduated and no future in what I just spent four years doing.
So I did what you know, anyone would do. And I became a bartender. So that's what I was doing. I was, I was bartending the day shift at a restaurant called on the border, which is like the Mexican food version of chilies. So I was just pouring beers and margarita is at the day shift during the week. And I kind of hated my life,
but I was always entrepreneurial by nature. So I was always like willing to things. I was always a little crazy like that. So what I started doing was basically, it'd be like a guest to the bar and you get to know a few of them and then I'd say, well, why don't you hire me for your, oh, your birthday's coming up?
Like, why don't you hire me to Bart 10? And before I knew it, I was bartending at these like private events. And then one day, like I registered my business on Google. And then of course, you know, they're selling your information and stuff. So I get this phone call from this CEO guy. What's a C O O S E O oh,
search engine optimization. Okay. And this is circa like 2005, 2006. It was a long time ago. And this guy, this is so funny, he basically says like, well, you know, we see that you have your business. And it was called beach city bartending, where I was bartending at private events. And we can actually get you ranked at the top of Google.
So when people are searching for you, they'll find you I'm like, wait, what really? And so obviously this guy's calling me cause he's going to sell me a service on how to rank the website. So I just asked him, I said, well, what is it you guys are gonna do when I hire you? And he told me, he's like,
well, you know, put the title, the keywords here. And we put them in your titles. And we put them in the description. We optimize each of the pages for all these things. And he spent an hour explaining to me what he's going to do with the service. And he's like, so are you interested? And I was like,
let me think about it. And I went in and put keywords in my title and put them in the description and changed all the things. And within like a week or two, if you were to type in Laguna beach bartender, orange county, bartenders, Southern California, bartender, bam, my website popped up and I started getting phone calls every single day.
And before I knew it, I had a staff of 15 bartenders and cocktail waitresses and were doing bar rentals and you know, all these other services and stuff. And we were booked solid all the way up and down the coast. And I was in business and that's how it got started. And I was doing that and loving it. But also there was a part of me realizing like,
it requires me, it's taking up my weekends, you know, I was still young. So I was like, well, I don't want get a Friday or Saturday night. And there's still this like trading time for dollars thing. I was like, how do I get more? And I felt very like capped with like, I want, okay, this is working.
And then I hit a ceiling. I want to grow more. And I kept learning and learning and reading books and everything like that. And trying to figure out like, what's the next step evolution in duration. And it was November of 2007 when the light bulb hits and it was, oh, I bet I could make more money teaching people how to bartend the in Barton.
And that was the night I came up with the name of bartend for profit. And when I was living in my parent's house still, cause I wasn't making a lot of money bartending there, not enough to live on my own in Laguna beach, California, for sure. And I went down to my room, locked myself in there for about four months.
Did every mistake you could think of? But that when I came out, I had a business called bartend for profit and it was an online bartending school. And I got my first sale in April, 2008. And it was like April 18th to be exact. It was the greatest slake moment of my life because I was in business and it was the start of a journey.
And that's, that's how I got started. Now, everything I look at is a really interesting phenomenon because it's what I call the leapfrog effect is that everything is just preparing you for the next thing. You know, and a lot of people are waiting for the finished product before they can get started. Let me get the clearest plan of how this is all going to end up.
You know, that's like saying, let me watch the end of the movie first, before I start sit down and watch it. That's not how life works. It's not how movies work. And I realized everything was, I didn't realize this until much later in life, but everything was preparing me for the next thing. And so what happened is, is people started buying my bartending school and it wasn't,
it wasn't cheap as 200 bucks to learn how to bartend for me. And then, you know, you know, when you, when you buy something online, it says, how did you hear about us? Well, I had that on and people started answering and they said YouTube. And I was like, really? And I had that film degree and I was putting stuff on YouTube.
And this is 2008, 2009. And it air, it is all coming together. And I started going to events and talking to people and they were just like, they thought it was so funny and so neat that I was like this bartender guy. And then they're like, well, what are you doing with all these videos? This is amazing what you're doing,
the videos. And I remember I just asked the million dollar question. It's actually like the $10 million question because we ended up making a lot of money off that program. But this person was blown away by what I was doing with video and YouTube, more primarily YouTube. And I said, wow, you seem really impressed by this. You know, we take ourselves with us wherever we go.
So we take a lot of our knowledge and our skills for granted. So I was, I was taking it for granted. I wasn't valuing it. And when I saw the expression on this individual's face, I asked that question, really? That was valuable. Oh my gosh, I go, would you have paid for that? Are you kidding? And that's when I realized that was the next light bulb,
okay. Maybe this is, this is my next evolution. And we launched a product called video traffic academy in 2011, it did $400,000 in sales in the first 30 days with a $97 product. And we went on to be a multimillion-dollar business. I went on to become known as the YouTube guy, which I'm a proud alum, by the way. I know.
And that's crazy because that's, that's so long ago in internet years, that's like generations To give people some idea. You were teaching people how to do videos on a flip cam. Like we didn't even have iPhones. We didn't have phones that had video cameras in them. So we're using a flip cam. And I don't know if I ever told you this story,
but I was in that course. And you were basically saying, you know, get comfortable doing videos, just shoot videos for X amount days. I don't care what you talk about. Just do it. Get used to it, upload it and go through the process. And I actually did one that landed me on good morning, America for showing, showing people how to fold a bag of chips,
clothes without a chip clip. And it's like, I don't know. It only has like 60,000 views, but it's still out there on YouTube and somebody on good morning, America saw it and asked me to come on a couple of years ago and do it. It was all because you said, Hey, just go get comfortable with video. And I'm sitting there in a suit and tie on my back porch on break from work,
showing people how to do this. And that all started because of video traffic academy. Yeah, this is, this is amazing. And what's so beautiful too, is there's something about having that online course, being a creator, that course the teacher of that course, that, that puts you in another like level or Ashkelon in, in, in, in the ripple effect of opportunities that come from that.
Because if I fast forward to 2013 and I get a phone call from a gentleman by the name of Carl Dickler and for anyone who knows Carl Dickler is the, I don't know if he's a founder. I think he might be the founder, but CEO of beach body at the time of the phone call, it was a $500 million a year company. And he's on the phone with me and he's like,
dude, I mean your program, I got your stuff. And I'm calling you because with our $500 million or your company, we have 120,000 beach body coaches and I got to get them your stuff. How do we work together? And I started noticing all these opportunities coming my way from that speaking on stages and a lot of opportunities that I say no to,
because I want to keep my life as simple as I can. And I like to just stay focused, keep in my line and all that stuff. But a lot of opportunities you can keep falling on my lap from that. And the funny thing that like shifted all of that, the next evolution in, in just to say it in a nutshell was,
you know, like we built it to a million dollars is amazing. I'm like surf and half the day and making one video a week and then like playing and traveling and having a blast. And there was this individual who kept reaching out to me and is kind of, he's kind of like annoyingly bugging me and you just kinda have to ask him any way he could he'd get in a DM or a comment or a Facebook ad or an email like,
dude, will you help me? And I was just kind of saying, no, like I have my $97 course. I'm just, that's it. And I was like, no, I want to learn how you did and what you did. And then I, I, I felt I had a really great idea. I was like, I know what I'll scare them off.
I'll just put a price tag on it. I said, sure, I'll help you. It's 10,000. And he goes, oh, thank you. Okay, here you go. And then I had my first client right there. And so sure enough, he paid me the $10,000 and I started teaching him everything I was doing to build his business. And he had been going for like a year or so with nothing.
And in the first 45 days, we got him generate his first 30,000 with his digital product. You went on to do six figures that year. And two years later, he was at seven and watching that unfold, I was like, oh wow, like I'm helping this guy, like at a whole nother level before I was just kind of helping people make videos of how to,
how to roll up their potato chips in their back yard, you know? And that was wonderful. But this was like something bigger, something deeper, something more, and I was hooked. And so I started, I started teaching more of that and that's, that's what I'm doing today is, is helping people with that. And where I get most passionate and obsessed with today is,
is how to run it like a business. I think we've got a lot of people out there that are not running their business, like a business. And instead it's running them into the ground and yeah, that's, that's kind of the nutshell version. It's how do you condense 14 years, but I'm doing my best. Yeah. But that was amazing.
You did pretty much a year, a minute. So that was, that was good. And, but what I want people to understand though, for clarity, cause I say this a lot and I've heard you say it a little differently, but like you, you can't score if you're not in the game, right? You can't like none of this,
none of these epiphanies come to you or none of these people come out of the blue or opportunities. If you're not on the path, if you're not out there doing it, cause you can't see it. You're not aware of it. Like that stuff is probably happening all around you. If you're sitting on the sidelines, but you can't see it or feel it or touch it or be a part of it.
But because you are walking the path, all of these things kind of set themselves in front of you and you were able to recognize it. And I think that's one of the biggest things that people need to understand is this is you don't need to get it. Perfect. You don't need to wait for the, you know, the magical sign you just have to get in there and go It's.
I think a great metaphor is, is a to use a baseball analogy here. I I've been saying this for years. I called it at bat moments when you're up to the plate and you know, the pitcher, just getting ready to throw the ball. One of a few things is going to happen, right? You're either going to hit it or you're not basically to simplify it.
And most people don't step up to the plate. So that's great because if you don't step up, you won't, you won't strike out. Hey, that's probably why we're not stepping up to the plate, but you also, there's no way you're gonna hit the home run. And so life or business rather, and life, of course you could re you could apply this to dating.
You could apply this to many things, but you're going to invest and increase your odds of success. If you simply step up to the plate and have more of those at-bat moments in your life, the more, the more you step up to the plate, the more, the more you increase your odds of, of hitting a home run. Yeah. You might fail.
You might, you might hit, you know, strike out a few times. Of course that's not avoidable. That's a, that's inevitable. That's going to happen. And what really separates the successful from the Atlantic 6,000, you can't find someone who's successful today. That was like, oh no, no, I have a perfect record. I've never had a failure.
I've never had something that didn't work. It doesn't work that way. They all, we all have. It's just the differences as they keep going, they go, okay, let's try that. Didn't work. Let's try again. And when you look back at that story, like, what I didn't share is all the failures between my bartending stuff to video traffic academy is an innumerable amount of things that did not work.
But there was a level of commitment there that I was not messing around. Like I was, I'm going to make this happen one way or another. And I don't care how long it takes. That's what it requires. That's powerful place to be operating from. Most people don't have that. They get, they have one failure setback, you know, let down and they go,
oh, I guess it wasn't meant to be, you know? And then they give up. Yeah. So speaking of failures and giving up in your bartending thing, I know that you have learned since you went down and locked yourself in a room to create your bartending course, that you do it a little bit differently now. Cause I think a lot of people do it the way that you did initially,
right? Where they're like, I have this great idea, everybody in the world's going to want it, let me lock myself away and do this for 90 days and launch it to the world. And inevitably what happens is Nobody wants it. So Yeah. So could you share kind of what you've learned and kind of what you teach a little bit differently around that concept?
Yeah. My, my whole philosophy states too, is like, it took me a long time to get where I am. I made a lot of mistakes and if I could get you there faster than I got there, if I could get you to avoid some of the things that I did and I've done a great job, and this was one of the big ones,
there is only one person on the planet that has ever taught how to do mobile bartending. And that's me. There's a reason for that. Not a big niche, not a big marketplace for people that want to learn how to start their own bartending business. So it's only ever been made. And if anyone ever came to their like James, like now that you're not doing that,
is that like an open field of opportunity? I'm like, Nope, it's not, no I made sales. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I get two or three sales a month. I was making about $600 a month. Cameron really live off of that. But it was enough to practice. It was enough to learn and figure this all out.
Here's what I would have done differently. I would have tested it. And this is what people aren't doing. They're spending more time creating than selling. And you're really not in business until the sale is made. So let's start there. Stephen. Covey's seven habits of highly effective people have a number two is begin with the end in mind. So we created a process called monetize before you make it.
And people think I'm crazy. People think I'm nuts. People get upset. They go to like triggered. When I tell them the strategy and I don't understand why, but it is what it is, but let's use the metaphor of Kickstarter. I get stuff on Kickstarter all the time. And Kickstarter is a great example of this. It's brilliant. Someone comes up with an idea for a product.
One example is I bought a, an electric bike on there. They design it, they create a prototype and then they go to some manufacturer and the manufacturer says, we got to create the mold and we're going to need all the components of materials to get your first batch. It's going to be $200,000. And they say, I don't have $200,000. So they go to Kickstarter and they go to Kickstarter and they say,
Hey, we need $200,000 to get these bikes made. If you donate at least a minimum of this amount, we'll give you a bike. Boom, they're in business. Why? This is so brilliant is because they have mitigated risk from a time and financial standpoint. Like you wouldn't believe. And they validate that their product, obviously people aren't going to give them money.
If they don't want the bike, they don't want the product. So if no one wants to buy the product, then they just avoided a giant disaster of fronting all this money for something that doesn't sell. And so if you could take the philosophy of, of what these people, I mean, businesses, very successful businesses have been built off Kickstarter and it's either got out of the shark tank way,
right? You get someone to get a fraction of your company. I would rather go the Kickstarter out, but obviously with a digital product based business, you don't need capital. You just need, we, we, we, let me say this away. You don't need financial capital, but you do need time to capital. And time is more valuable than money.
You know that. So why invest six months of your time? Like I did to create a product in your basement or like me, my parents' basement to find out no one wants it. When you could actually get people to buy it before you make it. That's the Kickstarter approach applied to our business. We call this monetize before you make it. And it's as simple.
This is so simple. I can teach this right now and you can, you can run with this. You basically, it's embarrassingly simple. You go. Here's how I would do it. My newest business I've started as an Airbnb and real estate business. So in starting in may, wow. It's been 12 months, exactly. 12, 13 months.
So I could sit here and say for the past 13 months, I've been able to build a, a multiple, multiple six-figure business around a couple of Airbnbs. And a lot of my students and followers have been asking me how they too can get started profiting from Airbnb. I'm thinking about putting together a training class, helping those who are interested, launched their first profitable Airbnb business.
This is something I'm probably going to turn into an course or training program and probably charge around $2,000. But for my first iteration, I'm not going to charge anywhere near that. The price for the first 10 founding members is just 500 bucks. And that is the thing is I'm only taking on 10 founding members. If you want to be the founding members of the program and having me walk you through eight weeks of live coaching on zoom,
on how to set this up, it's just 500 bucks. But once I fill these 10 spots, it's done. If you're interested, send me a DM and we can talk about the details and get you signed up. But once I get my 10 people, I'm closing this thing down, that that's the founding members launch. That's the monetize. Before you make it,
we don't need a sales page. We don't need a product. We don't need anything. We just have that message. That's it. That's how I basically lovingly shove my students into the deep end of the pool and say, don't worry, you'll swim. Because people are going to start saying I'm in. I want money in. And you're like, oh my gosh,
people want to get, I've had to be at students that are like, people are trying to give me money. What do I do? I'm like take it and serve the crap out of him. And that's that. I wish I had that from the get-go because here's what happens. Three things happen when you do that. And these three things are vital to the future of your business.
Success. Number one, you get proof of concept. You've just proved it or not. What if James, what if no one wants it? What if no one wants to do this? Then you just saved yourself six months of hell of wasted time in the wrong direction. So you get proof of concept. You also get profit upfront. I don't know about you,
but I don't want to work for free in my business for six months. It's not how I roll you. Shouldn't be how you roll to a lot of people are just working for free in their business. That's, you know, we need to be selling more. We need to be marketing more and not just doing and creating a more, it's just a lot of people are doing.
And then number three, you get social proof. So you get proof of concept profit and social proof, which means you're going to walk away at the end of this with people that are saying it worked, here's my results. And it's testimonials and case studies that are going to sell the crap out of your program when you launch it again. And that's so amazing.
So amazing, powerful. I hope people paid attention to that. If you need to rewind it and listen to it, like that is so key because one of the stopping points I hear from a lot of people too, is like, I can't afford the tools necessary to get my course online or whatever. And I'm like, if you did what James just taught you,
you would have the seed capital that you would need to go get whatever platform it is. You're going to invest in to make it happen. Yes. Yeah. That's amazing. So this has been amazing, James, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. And I know that you have something coming up, a video series, we're going to teach some of this stuff and so much more.
So do you want to share that with people and I'll give them a link where they can access it? Yeah, totally. I wanted to create something years ago, you know, after I told that story of that first client and I was just, I was just telling him I was teaching him all this stuff one-on-one and like, here's okay. Here's what I do here.
And here's what I do here. And this is what I did here. And I'm the kind of person that like, I don't like to do something twice. So I started to say like, how could I systematize this and put this all together? And you know, teachers as a model and that's what we do. So in my free training, I just break down the entire model,
how we do it. I teach my students to look at their business, not as their baby. A lot of people look at their business and my business is my baby. Obviously the problem with that is a baby needs. You like 24 7. Otherwise it dies. And that's how a lot of people approach their business. It needs you 24 7 or else the business dies.
That's not a good business to work from. So we invite our students to look at their business like a machine and machine has gears. These are interlocking systems that work together. It's an input and an output. And we just show you how to put that business machine together. This, this creates more profitability. This creates more scalability. This increases performance of sales,
marketing performance in the series. The training is me live, which is walking you through how to do that. We have a lot of fun with that. The, you know, the goal, the aim is always every year. And the feedback is, you know, a common theme is that our free training is better than most paid trainings out there.
We love to bring it, but a big reason why we bring it and they get that feedback is I think the thing that gives me the most excited about it is it's a, there's like a personal transformation that happens. You know, you kind of come out the other side with a new perspective. So a lot of people are just focusing on here's what to do and not who to be.
I, I make a big emphasis on, we have to think differently about things. If we want things to change, you know, I say how you see business determines what's possible for you. And a lot of people see business through the eyes of a employee and they don't see the opportunities that are right in front of them. They don't see, we have a disability,
very counterintuitive approach. It's a very different way of thinking. And so I think people will experience if they're doing the work and exercises and paying attention, they'll, they'll have an opportunity to have an own personal transformation. Your business is a reflection of you. Okay? So when you change, those changes are reflected in the business because who's making the decisions.
Who's taking the actions, who's driving the ship as you. And when that becomes begins to shift and change that ripples out and affects everything in the business from bank account down to audience growth and all that type of stuff. And so we make a big emphasis on that. It's free. It's fun. And yeah, I've Been through it a couple of times,
myself and some people from my audience been through it and they love it. It's called rise of the digital CEO, right? And if people go to https://gambrill.com/dceo for digital CEO, they can get access to it. I'll make sure it's in the show notes wherever we happened to be catching this. So, James, I appreciate your time. Is there any other last requests or call to action for my audience before you go?
No, I think, I think that's it. I think one of the things that will help people too, is when you're registering for that, we created a really cool one sheet dashboard. I ask most people, Hey, do you have a dashboard in your business? And they're like, oh, and the metaphor I like to use there is like a pilot flying in a plane.
The pilot needs to know the dials and the, the important metrics. I know nothing about flying. So I wouldn't know how to go any further with that metaphor. But if the pilot didn't have all those dials and D odometers and all this widgets and things on there, the pilot would quite literally be flying blind. And most people are flying blind in their business.
They don't know what metrics matter. They don't know their KPIs. They don't know what they actually need to focus on improving that will improve their bottom line. And so we created a one sheet dashboard. We're gonna help you fill it out in the free training, but you can start to fill it out on your own now where I speak to the three core functions of your online business and the metrics associated with those funds,
with those three functions and the role that you need to be filling the responsibilities that are yours in the business. And it's very helpful just to give people clarity, simplicity on your business. So it's like, can you put your whole business model on one page paper, one piece of paper, and that's what we help you do when you do that. You're just,
there's a lot more simplicity and clarity that you're running in from. So you're going to get that for free as well, and that's going to help tremendously, James, thank you so much. Thank you so much for all. You do. Thank you so much for your time on tonight's podcast. And thank you so much for this amazing training series that you're doing.
I know the people that lean into it, we'll get a ton out of it if, if they take the actions that request them. So thanks again, my friend. Hey, thank you, Dave. And thanks everyone for listening and tuning in. Thanks for listening to unleash the awesome. Please be sure to subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts and please share us on your favorite social media platforms using hashtag unleash.
