Jim uses an idea of Stew’s for this podcast.
Stew Smith has a podcast segment called To, Through, and After https://www.stewsmithfitness.com/blogs/news/check-out-the-to-through-and-after-podcasts-with-stew-smith-and-others where he interviews people about their military special ops journey – what they did before the military getting TO the training, getting THROUGH the training, and After the training as an active duty member.
Jim takes this concept and applies it to business and product / book / service launch. Check out how Jim discusses the process of building a foundation of business concepts and daily habits, specific skills and tasks, and staying relevant by maintaining your business through communicating with hot and cold traffic regularly.
Check out the Facebook Group – Sales Copy and Content Marketing Hacks at https://www.facebook.com/groups/copywritingandcontenthacks/ and for more information on the wizards used to make outstanding sales copy check out https://copyandcontent.ai.
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Transcript…
Jim Edwards: Hey guys, Jim Edwards here and welcome back to Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks
This is episode 42 with Jim and…
Stew Smith: Stew.
Jim Edwards: It rhymes.
I’ll tell you what, we’re going to get this number stuff figured out…
Stew Smith: We’re good.
Jim Edwards: So welcome Stew…
How you been man?
Stew Smith: All as well, sir. All as well.
Jim Edwards: My legs are quivering in your presence…
Stew Smith: I did the leg today…
Jim Edwards: Because today was leg day…
Stew Smith: Today is leg day.
You can’t skip leg day.
Jim Edwards: That’s right.
Stew Smith: Number one rule…
Jim Edwards: Otherwise, you look like a weird T.
So what are we talking about today Stew?
We are talking about a subject that I learned from you that is near and dear to your heart, and that is the topic of your podcast, but we’re going to apply it to the world of business.
So what is your favorite thing to talk about in the world of spec ops?
Stew Smith: Yeah, when I interview people, especially guys that have done some really neat things…
We have this one podcast segment that I call “to, through, and after.”
So what did they do to get to the military?
Who they were before they joined the military.
What did they do while they were there, and what are they doing now afterward?
And that’s just shows a nice little progression of their lives through this journey.
And I think today we’re going to discuss it and kind of change it a little bit to apply towards business.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: Cause that’s really a past, present future type framework.
That is a really easy way to you grab your head around it and figure it out…
Jim Edwards: Right. The reason that I wanted to talk about this, the way I wanted to talk about it was because as you guys may or may not know, but we have launched copywriting secrets, the book.
And what do you mean, sh? Oh, that may have been a mistake, man…
It’s like,
“Hey, buy my book, but don’t tell nobody.”
I mean, maybe that wasn’t the brightest thing.
Stew Smith: hahah!
Jim Edwards: There you go…
I got to admit that I’m tired, and my team is tired, and we’ve been just bust in it to get this thing out, to get the funnel set up, to get everything finalized, all those little tiny detailed things…
And there’s always that just one thing.
That holds it all up, and you’re like crap.
And we launched it out, and we’ve been launched for like 18 hours, and we’re already almost 40% sold out of what we…
I’m going to announce it to the internet.
I hadn’t gone out to the internet, just the sales copy around content marketing hacks group and a list of people who said…
Hey, I want to know when the book is ready…
So that’s pretty cool to sell close to 400 books in 18 hours is pretty good.
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: So I was outside making a Chickens with Jim video and…
I guess that was…
I was looking for my rubber chicken, but it’s hiding somewhere, I guess…
Oh, there it is.
And I said, you know, now’s when the real work begins.
And then the little voice in the back of my head and not the schizophrenia voice, but the one that I take counsel from said,
“No, this is not one of the real work begins. This is when the work changes.”
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: And, and then I thought, yeah, this is kind of like when Stew talks about to through and after…
Cause everybody looks at when you launch your book when you launch a product when you see people like Russell Brunson that comes out with something, and they make $1 million in a day, you’re like,
“Man, they treat it almost like it’s a lottery ticket.”
You know what I mean?
Like that dude won the lottery.
Stew Smith: Right…
Jim Edwards: And that’s not the case at all…
Just like you would look at a guy like you or Marcus Luttrell or these other guys that are all famous and they never really find out about the fact that these guys were laying in some mud flat somewhere after being up for four days eaten mud, being in their own poop and just hating life.
Paying the price is really what that first stage is about paying the price…
Would you agree?
Stew Smith: Yeah, I see where you’re going with this.
That’s a really good way to explain it.
Jim Edwards: So how does someone pay…
…we’ll bring this back over to the world of business…
But how does someone pay the price in the world of the military spec, ups, seals, all that stuff.
What is paying the price on that front end?
Stew Smith: To, though, and after is really, you got to think of it as three phases.
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: So what I do with the to…
Is the number one…
Most important thing is that you are preparing, right?
How well you prepare is going to help you with the next two phases.
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: This is the writing process.
This is the setting up everything process.
You are really getting prepared and then now the during.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: Let’s just talk about the two…
I just want to talk about the to phases right now in the world of the internet…
The to-phase to me is learning how to write copy.
Learning how to create a product,
Learning how to get a funnel set up,
Learning how to build an audience,
How to run ads,
How to do all the basic skills.
Just like in your world, somebody has to pay the price.
I mean that’s paying the price.
You have to pay the price in the terms of reps and learning and building mental toughness and all those things.
Stew Smith: It takes time to…
It takes time in the saddle, and you got to put in the work, and whatever weakness you may have, you have to make it less of a weakness…
whether that is you go seek help for someone to help you with that weakness or you just work on it so much yourself that you have now turned it into a strength.
That is how you prepare for the next phase.
Jim Edwards: Right, and that’s exactly what you have to do in an online business.
If you don’t know Jack, despite what anybody promises you in their headlines, you’re going to have to pay the price.
You’re going to have to get the knowledge, you’re going to have to get the reps, you’re going to have to get the experience…
You’re going to have to put in the time to get to a level where you can perform…
That’s just how it works.
Despite the headlines to the contrary in JVzoo and the WarriorForum and all these places where they promise you can get rich with no experience and all that stuff,
It’s BS
You’ve got to pay the price to a certain level…
You can’t hire out someone to do pushups for you, but you can hire somebody to set up your website…
You can hire somebody to help you edit your product, you can hire somebody to help you do a lot of things…
So in a lot of ways, it’s a lot easier.
Now through.
We’re ready, we’ve built that foundation, ready now getting through…
Let’s talk about in your world, Stew getting through the training, how does the world change?
How does the mindset change?
How does the objectives, the goals, and the way what you’re doing, how does that change when you’re in the through stage?
Stew Smith: Well, the “through” stage is the test that is basically the test…
This is, going through a selection program, going through Bootcamp, going through a Police Academy or fire Academy…
That is the challenge.
And it’s a long term test.
These things take months to complete, and you gotta have that durability be able to handle it…
You gotta be able to meet the standards…
You gotta have pretty sharp mind to be able to learn things on a pretty steep learning curve.
Things that you’ve been introduced to for the first time, and you got master it quickly.
So there are all those little challenges there.
So think of the through stage as a longterm test.
And it may be in business it would be your longterm setting up, writing a book for instance…
That would be one of those things, and you have to really kind of suffer to get that thing done…
There is some suffering involved in that…
Jim Edwards: There can be, absolutely.
Stew Smith: Yeah, you work, you stay up late, and you get things done, and fine-tune it…
I mean, yes, you have the easy way to write an ebook too, but there’s some work involved even in that.
Jim Edwards: Absolutely.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: Yeah, absolutely.
I would say the big thing for, in “through,” if we’re thinking about it in those same terms when we’re talking about business now you know about something, you know how to get something done.
Now you have to do it.
And a lot of people never get out of the to stage, the learning, the info gathering.
And then when it gets to the through that middle stage, you got to put it in action…
This is where you create the funnel…
You write the sales letter, you set up the email followup sequences…
You gotta learn, you gotta set up and run ads.
You have to create your product.
You have to publish your product.
You have to get everything together so that you can deliver the product.
You have to build your audience.
You set up your opt-in pages, you set up your group in Facebook, you’re setting up all your social media, you’re getting those habits built of delivering content on a regular basis.
All of these things…
Just like you said, that’s the test…
That is the test you have to get passed in order to be the marketer or the author or the product infopreneur or whatever it is you say you’re going to be…
If you’re going to be the person with the brick and mortar business who’s selling more online than your competitor in the next strip mall…
Whatever it is, this is the part where you have to pass the test to become the person who is capable of doing these things.
And it comes with time and effort and stubbing your toe and making mistakes and not giving up.
And you see that…
I was talking with a buddy of mine who’s a coach in the 2CCX club, which is the people that are trying to get to their first million dollars through a funnel.
And we were talking about how that first one it’s the hardest, but it’s also the simplest…
It’s the hardest because you’re doing things you’ve never done before, and so you don’t have the frame of reference that says,
“Okay, once I’m done with this, then this will come, then this will come, then this will come.”
And I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s the hardest because you don’t know, you don’t have a frame of reference.
But it’s also the simplest because you don’t have anything else going on as far as online business.
So you can have tunnel vision…
“Like this is my next thing to work on…
I’m going to work on this…
When this is done, I can work on the next thing on the next thing on the next thing.”
And all you have to do is just trust that you’re in the right lane and that you’re on the right path and that you’re taking the right steps.
As long as you trust that, then it’s simple.
You just run one step to the next, to the next, to the next.
What do you call them?
That one event to the next and just one event to the next to the next.
Stew Smith: Yeah, then another way to look at it too is kind of general and specific with phase one and phase two.
You have to acquire some general abilities during the to phase, right?
You need to learn how to swim…
And you learn how to run, you need to get a little stronger…
And all these little general elements of fitness will build that foundation you need to really get specific in the test that’s in your future or in your present.
Because those miles have to be four miles and they have to be fast.
They have to be two miles with swimming in the ocean with scuba fins fast, right…
You gotta have to be prepared for logs and boats carrying those on your shoulders all day.
So there’s some durability issues that occurred specifically through that test.
And I guess what you just mentioned when you had a laundry list of things that you have to do in this through phase for the test…
As those are the specifics that you have to do every day as you go through in this phase.
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Or, you have to manage someone else to do for you…
Stew Smith: Yes…
You can outsource if you need…
Jim Edwards: You can outsource it, but when you outsource something, you may be offloading the task…
But you’re on loading the task of manager and quality control, which I think nobody ever really talks about that and that’s when you really can get screwed.
I know somebody that’s been trying to launch funnel for two months because the person she hired to format her funnel took her money and then has just been having delay after delay after delay after delay…
Stew Smith: Ouch…
Jim Edwards: And you hear that…
So there’s this Nirvana of outsourcing, but nobody talks about how you’re just becoming a manager at that point…
Stew Smith: Sure.
Jim Edwards: So the big thing to understand is that you definitely have to build those skills and you will have to put in the time.
And then the after part is, that’s the part where (I just as a knee jerk said) “this is where the real work starts.”
No, this is where the ongoing work of keeping it going…
Stew Smith: Maintenance.
Jim Edwards: Maintenance every single day.
And, that changes.
But don’t you guys have a saying,
“You gotta earn your Trident every day.”
When you’re in the Seals.
Stew Smith: Yeah, for me, the after phases to through and after, like after your training, what did you do on active duty?
Right?
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: And so you can actually yeah, move that over to the right or left however you feel like.
But what I mean by that is you are now in phase three of tactical fitness world, and you have to focus on maintenance, strengthen the job skills.
Jim Edwards: When you say maintenance, you mean maintaining a certain standard of fitness?
Stew Smith: Absolutely.
Jim Edwards: No matter what is going on in your life.
Stew Smith: Terribly sorry… Yes.
And maintaining all your job skills that you are having to do one day at a moment’s notice…
And also stress mitigation.
A lot of people don’t really think about it that way, but you’re missing out on sleep.
You are deployed, you see things that are hard to see and experience, and dealing with that kind of stress mitigation is also part of that after phase.
In my world.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: But we just talked about with Dr. Kelly…
Entrepreneurial burnout…
Jim Edwards: Yes…
Stew Smith: That is stress…
Stress is stress…
It doesn’t matter if bullets are flying over your head or you can’t pay that bill that in a month hormonally speaking.
That is stress.
And you have to also consider that in your world if you want to maintain a good high standard.
Jim Edwards: I agree.
And the big thing to remember is that a lot of people think that the world of online marketing revolves around just launching products.
And so that creates these big humps of income and stuff…
But in order to launch a product and live that lifestyle, you gotta have a strong stomach and a strong heart…
Because what if the next one doesn’t work?
You also got to have a whole big list of friends and affiliates, and you gotta have the people waiting to buy from you.
Just because you’re on the launch cycle doesn’t mean you’re not always on the list building cycle, the affiliate recruitment cycle, there’s all these things that have to be done.
You can’t just decide one day.
Hey, I made it because the incident you decide,
“Hey, I made it.”
That’s like you’re zooming down the information super highway…
Hey, I made, it means you pulled into a rest stop and you think that the world owes you something.
And I’ve seen people like this for the last 22 years.
Huge names that no one’s heard of anymore.
No one knows who they are because they thought they had made it and could ride their laurels or rest on their laurels or whatever.
And that’s not how the world works.
Especially world of the internet where just moves so fast.
So now your job in the after is to keep the traffic steady,
Keep your product up to date…
Make sure that all of your technology is up to date…
Just a simple example is making sure your websites are mobile-optimized…
With so many people doing stuff on mobile phones, I’ve seen people’s sales start going down, and they’re like, what the hell?
I’m getting the same amount of traffic and sales are going through the roof…
We look at their stats, we look at their analytics and realize huge percentage of people are looking at it on mobile, you go look on mobile, and I wouldn’t buy it…
So it’s just all these things where you have to maintain situational awareness, the changes in the market, getting into new markets, finding markets that can use your product or you can adapt it, all these different things…
That becomes your job being a professional.
And if you’re not willing to do that, then all you’re going to do is just have problems.
Stew Smith: And in a nutshell, staying relevant.
Jim Edwards: Yes, that is good point.
Stew Smith: Is really difficult today.
But at the same time, technology has made it easy if you have evolved into technology.
Jim Edwards: But…
Stew Smith: Five years ago, Jim and I weren’t doing podcasts.
Jim Edwards: No, because you could do them, but it was a total pain in the ass.
Stew Smith: Right…
Jim Edwards: And then Steve decided one day, you know what, I need to do a podcast.
Let me find the easy button for all this.
And I said…
“Hey, you first, you go ahead and figure this out.”
But you just said something, and I think I want to end with this…
You got to stay relevant…
A lot of people think that…
…And I was guilty of this at one time…
Think that, okay,
“I’m going to write a book or I’m going to create a product, and it’s going to sell, and it’s going to sell forever, and I can retire on this thing.”
That ain’t how it works.
Unless you have a way to put up a bunch of money and then live on not much money and treat that money you got kind of as an annuity, and maybe it’ll last you the rest of your life…
That’s not how it works.
Stew Smith: Yeah,
Jim Edwards: So staying relevant means if you’re teaching other people how to do stuff if you’re in the info-marketing business, info publishing business like we are where we’re teaching people how to do things, you better still be doing it for yourself.
There’s two parts of your business.
There’s the doing of the business and the teaching other people what you’re doing in your business.
If you’re just selling supplements or something like that or selling physical products, then you’re sourcing the next thing and then waiting for people to rip you off from China.
Then you race to the bottom for pricing, and you’re just repeating that cycle over and over.
But like Stew…
Stew’s in better shape than most of the guys that he trains.
If Stew was fat and had like a greasy sandwich hanging out of his mouth and a in a cigarette and beer stains on the front of his shirt…
How many people any age range would be paying attention to what Stew had to say?
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: Nobody.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: I mean, you’d have to use clip art as who you were, like representation of stuff, right?
The story doesn’t jive, and so the way you stay relevant is to do what you’re teaching other people to do.
And Stew is smart because he’s expanding his audience into the 40 and now 50s range.
And so he’s bringing his audience along with him…
It’s a funny email a couple of weeks ago we were talking about mobility days and Stew’s like.
“Do you need two mobility days, or how’d that go?”
And I was like,
“Nah, I felt like I was screwing off.”
He said,
“Yeah, maybe we’ll do that when we turned 60.”
I said, “Okay, that’s cool.”
But that’s planning ahead…
But it’s like me, I’m always trying to figure out and synthesize, and that’s what Stew does too
Synthesizing past experience with current circumstances and technology to intuit what’s coming down the road.
And doing it, experimenting, trying, figuring out what works in the majority of stuff you try…
…I don’t know about you Stew, but for me…
The majority of the stuff that I try doesn’t really work all that great, but I don’t worry about that.
I’m trying to find those things that work great…
And then I add them to my toolbox, and I’m like, okay, this is what we’re doing.
This is how we do it right now, and this is how we’re getting the results.
And we had a conversation about that before we got on this morning…
I was like,
“Dude, you gotta try this. I got the numbers to back it up.”
It’s blowing me out…
You got to try this…
And so Stew may or may not try it…
He probably will…
Stew Smith: I’m going to do…
Jim Edwards: The point though as you go…
I know you are…
He’s, what’s your title?
Stew Smith: Let’s do this officer!
Jim Edwards: That’s right.
That was a great tidbit that you brought up is staying relevant is the key in the after phase.
No matter what you’re doing, you got to stay relevant.
You got to stay current.
You can’t rest on your laurels.
You can’t think that yesterday is going to propel you into the future because it’s not.
And that’s a key.
All of you guys hopefully are hearing what we’re saying and understand that despite what people will tell you.
There’s a price to be paid…
I’ve always said this, there’s a price to be paid to get to the level you want to get to…
But if you’re smart, if you get the right training, you get the right people, and you think it through,
You can get there a lot faster than someone who just wants to bang their head against a wall and hope that something good is going to happen.
But at some point, you do have to pay the price.
You have to gain the knowledge.
The to.
You have to put that knowledge into practice, which is the through…
You can make the distinctions,
And then you need to maintain and stay relevant in the after phase.
Stew Smith: So like it…
Jim Edwards: Any final thoughts do, I’ll let you close this out…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
You know what?
You’ve we have tide my fitness world into the business world several times…
I’m probably one of the best things you’ve ever said a while back ago was you have to have abs, right?
An abs is A B S Always Be Selling.
There was another tie in.
Jim Edwards: That’s right.
Stew Smith: You’re going to work on your abs…
You got to always be selling…
Jim Edwards: That’s right.
And no one wants to do abs.
It’s the least sexy thing.
It’s the least happy thing that anybody wants to do.
But it’s the most important cause.
It connects everything together.
Stew Smith: There you go.
Jim Edwards: Cool.
So hey guys, if you are not a member of the Sales Copywriting Content Marketing Hacks Facebook group, you should be!
If you have not gotten a copy of copywriting secrets yet, you need to go to copywritingsecrets.com and grab one.
I don’t know whether we’ll have the waiting list up there or not.
Cause we’ve been selling these bad boys out quick.
I actually wrote in my workout journal that I need to go order a few more thousand copies…
But who knows where we are on the cycle and all this stuff…
Stew you read this book, do you like it?
Stew Smith: I did.
And I’ve had you read it to me.
Jim Edwards: That is true.
Yeah…
You cheated, you didn’t read this book, and you heard this book.
So that’s true.
That’s true.
So Stew liked it.
He sat through the whole thing, and we actually added some really cool extra interview stuff, some insights, and thoughts, and some other things that really make the audiobook version of this thing massively cool.
So go check it out.
And you guys have a great day, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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