Are you looking for a simple, yet effective method to getting more press coverage?

Would you like to hear from an entrepreneur who’s been on the home page of Yahoo as well as CNN?

To discover how to one entrepreneur has done exactly that, I interview Jaime Tardy in this episode of the Bright Ideas podcast.

More About This Episode

The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.

It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.

In this episode, I interview Jaime Tardy of Eventual Millionaire.

Watch Now

Transcript

An Interview with Jamie TardyTrent Dyrsmid: Coming up in today’s episode, how do you make a 6 figure income by the age of 22 and then be $70,000 in debt by the age of 24 and then go on to have your story featured on CNN and on the homepage of Yahoo!? I guess she’s gonna share with us exactly how she did that. Imagine not being well-known, not having many contacts yet wanting to start a mastermind group with millionaires that wanted to participate in. Well, my guest did that as well. Or how about this? Have you wondered how to start building those really pivotal or powerful relationships that are gonna help you to succeed faster? Well, my guest did that as well. All of these and more so stay tuned.Hey everyone! My name is Trent Dyrsmid and I’m the founder of BrightIdeas.co and on the show with me today is a blogger, interviewer, business coach, succeeding in all three, and a mom and a wife and her name is Jamie Tardy. And I got to tell you this has been one of the more fun interviews I’ve done in a long time so you’re really in for a treat. Please join me in welcoming Jamie to the show.Hi Jamie! Thank you so much for making some time to come on and do this interview with me. I’m really excited about our interview today because you’re an interviewer and I’m an interviewer and I’m sure that we’re gonna get to compare some interesting notes and hopefully the audience is gonna enjoy that process. So welcome to the show.Jamie Tardy: Thanks so much for having me Trent.T: So in my research on you, I made a couple of bullet points. I’m gonna throw this up so the audience has some idea of who you are and how you came to be an interviewer. So you did the college path, made 6 figures by 22, racked up a whole lot of debt I think about $70,000 in debt by 24, quit your job in 2007 and nearly failed as a blogger in the first 6 months I think. How am I doing?J: Well you tell me all that crappy stuff. Yes! Oh yeah, exactly right, perfect. Good research.T: So I wanna dive a little bit deeper into the psyche of Jamie because for me this interview like all the interviews that I do is the study of success. You have become a very successful online marketer. You got a lot of press for yourself. You’ve had speaking engagements. You’re building a solid reputation and we’re gonna dive in to how you did all of that. But before we get into that let’s just talk a little bit about so you went to college, you got the career thing and then you went “this isn’t working for me”. Kind of what happened back then?J: Yeah. Hopefully people will take this too because I know I felt really alone when I was in that point. And I know now of course I hear from tons of other people saying “oh I’m going to be that few things” but now it’s not a big deal. Now we’re lucky enough to have the people online telling their stories and stuff but then I did everything I was supposed to. I had a goal to be a millionaire, that was my whole thing since I was 8. I went to school. I know that’s kind of weird for me, a little girl, but I went to school and made lots of money, thought I was a success, I travelled around the US, had a really nice title, expense account, got really fat coz I ate out all the time.And so thereafter a few years of doing like “yeah I don’t like being called at 2:00 in the morning saying ‘oh this is broken, can you fix this right now?'” And I was like “oh this is all there is?” Actually one of the key turning points was a lot of my co-workers, I worked in a video on demand, so like when you go on TV you can order movies, right? And so we’re working I think like 40 hours in a row or something ridiculous where we were up for days. And one of my co-workers just like “you know, Jamie, you shouldn’t be so stressed. It’s not like we’re curing people.” I was like “yeah I’m helping people who don’t have to go to the video store to get real CDs.” Like yeah this was so sort of that whole like “what is my purpose here?” Was it really to help people get more movies online which don’t get me wrong, it was great but that wasn’t really what it was about.So that’s where the turning point of going “okay what am I actually doing with my life?” It’s not about the money so why am I here? And that was sort of the thing that I tipped.T: Okay so at that point in time you had this decision that is I would say the pivotal decision for so many people who make the transition to becoming an entrepreneur and most that don’t make it as the quitting. I mean some of them get a boot, they get laid off, they get fired and so the decision gets made for them which seems really crappy at the time but those that make the transition in hindsight always go “hey that was awesome and best thing that ever happened” like our good buddy, Pat Flynn.J: Exactly. I was thinking exactly as Pat too. I was like sometimes it’s easier, just kicked out and you have to do it.T: Yeah. So in your situation much like mine you made the decision, if I did my research correctly, to quit. So there’s a whole lot of psychological stuff, and for those folks who are listening to this interview, yes we are gonna get to the online marketing techniques and strategies don’t worry but so much as I’ve become older I’ve realized that so much of successes is really what’s happening, it’s your belief systems. So can you talk a little bit about what was happening in your head around this thought of quitting your job and I guess was your original vision you’re just gonna become a blogger and magically somehow you’ll turn that into money? What was the plan back then?J: Okay so I mean the hard thing is that when I had that realization I thought I was successful and really noticing the $70,000 in debt was like oh maybe I’m not actually, maybe I made really bad choices so I couldn’t even just quit. So it took me a good, and my husband is a performer, he does like juggling and contortion and crazy stuff and always worked for himself and so quitting my stable job, my husband hates it and I’m always like, and my husband was juggler like I’m gonna quit a 6 figure job, my husband is a juggler. No offense to my husband. He’s wonderful. Really great at what he does. Makes really good money now but still back then it was sort of like “hhmmm yeah” like good idea Jamie.

So it was more of about like what are we gonna do? Like how can we do this? So it was a good that year of paying up over $70,000 in debt even before I could figure this out. And then I had that realization of going even if I have to sell my house, even if I have to go to extremes I’m gonna figure out a way to do this no matter what. And this worked on my mind, right? No matter what. So it wasn’t this whole thing of “yehey, let’s quit and I’m gonna know exactly what I’m gonna do.”Actually what I did I don’t recommend for other people which was I quit, actually one of the catalyst also was I wanted to have a baby and I couldn’t when I was travelling, you know, no time. So I was pregnant through most of the paying off all that debt and so my goal at first was just to have 3-6 months at home with my son. And then I was gonna figure out business stuff. I’ll figure out what I wanted to do which isn’t really a good idea. We had a good year and a half of expenses so that was great. We took that ton of money so that way it would be possible but yeah it was like “hhmmm now what do I wanna do after I quit my job? I don’t know.” And then it took over a year to even have general idea of what I wanted to do which was really bad.That’s why I don’t really suggest it. I suggest sort of struggling in your job and figuring out what you want to do. That way if it doesn’t work you don’t have to worry about it. Coz I tried, I have an iphone app, I have a provisional patent, I tried like all these different things just because I was curious and I wanted to learn it, figure out business stuff. And so that sort of why I started. I didn’t even start blogging. I mean I started it but it wasn’t even the thing. I’d started the blog almost 2 years before when I started paying off my debt and stuff like that and that was just a whim coz I wanted to start a blog. It didn’t have anything to do with it.T: Okay.

J: That was all over the place.

T: Okay so it wasn’t so much the decision of “hey I’m gonna be quitting and become an entrepreneur.” It’s “hey I’m gonna quit, I’m gonna spend some time, I’m gonna get my life back in order to balance, or whatever word you would like to use. I will spend some time with my new baby and then we’ll figure out the business thing afterwards.”

J: Yeah. Not a good idea but yes. Coz I knew I was gonna be an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know exactly what I was gonna do.

T: Yeah not entirely dissimilar to mine. Quit at $20,000 a year job, sold my house, put all the money in the bank, went back to school and had a plan to get a job. But I came up with a business idea while I was in school, draw out a business plan, got some funding, graduated from school, but the business didn’t succeed because it was a .flop a .com and then in the ashes of that, coz now I’m at zero, everything’s up from zero. I decided to start what ultimately the company that I had last and I built into a couple of million dollar a year company and sold it but again I don’t recommend for that transition or that path to anyone either.

J: You know what’s funny. It makes perfect sense to us now but of course you don’t know that at that time anyway, You’re just looking to do what you need to do and so while I know that now I don’t know if I’ll necessary would have changed it. And you probably wouldn’t do it. Like probably that failure was probably huge for you.

T: Yeah after selling that business it had a really profound impact on what type of business that I wanted to do next. And that’s why I’m online because and I think it’s such a great way for so many people to start because it doesn’t cost a lot of money, because you don’t have to quit your job to do it although it’s definitely helpful. There’s a whole bunch of really good reasons. So and this isn’t my interview, this is yours.

J: Right, sorry.

T: I read somewhere that at about month six of blogging you were ready to give up, I think. Have I got that right?

J: Yap. They say like do your blog for 6 months until you can find your voice and figure out your audience. And so I was like working my butt off trying to do the best blogging job I could ever do and I was a business coach at that time. So I have been a business coach for a couple of years before I started my blog back up. And I was going “this is wasting so much time and now I’m not making any money. Why am I doing this?” Right? Travelling is kind of important and blogging seems kind of them. And then the next week I couldn’t pull the trigger. I had a business coach and he was like “then just send an email to all your subscribers and say that we’re gonna stop this and that sort of thing.” I couldn’t pull the trigger. And shocking short days later I got an email from CNN saying that they wanna feature my site. And then from there it just started going kinda crazy.

T: Out of the blue. You didn’t pitch CNN beforehand, nothing?

J: Nope. The reason I found, I think I found out the way that they found me. I had a guest post on get rich slowly on my story and apparently, quite a few actually, writers for big publications got to read that blog and that’s where they got my story. But yeah I hadn’t pitched them at all.

T: Okay so that’s an important, very important point that you just mentioned and it piggy backs on an interview that I did with Ryan Holiday just not so long ago. So for those who’re listening who don’t know who Ryan Holiday is, he just published a book called Trust Me, I’m Lying… Confessions of a Media Manipulator. And in my interview and in his book, one of the things and we’re gonna talking much more about getting press in your and my interview, but one of the things he really stressed was important is don’t pitch the reporters of CNN, pitch the blogs that those reporters read. And so in your case did you know that get rich slowly was read by so many reporters or was that just a fortune smiling down on you?

J: I was like “hey that’s really big blog.” It took me a while to even go like I was big enough to guest post. Now I know JV well and we met and he’s super cool but at that time I was like scared. And so the funny thing is now I know a lot of reporters that actually read get rich slowly. I have a friend, Lorie Amandacamp that actually featured me in fortune.com coz she writes there too. And she reads get rich slowly too. So it’s kinda simple, yeah it’s just kinda driven. I just did a conference where I talked about how I think people should guest post on bigger blogs, you know, not necessarily star blogs but bigger blogs coz you really don’t know who’s been reading it.

T: Well let’s divert, I mean coz that’s a very interesting topic, I’m gonna see which questions here in my questions that I wanna skip. Coz I was gonna talk about interviewing but before we get to that let’s sidebar on to guest posting because it is something that I have had some success with and something that I think I need to do more of. I’m sure many people who are listening to this would also greatly benefit from it. So Jamie’s crash course on guest blogging in 10 minutes or less. Go.

J: Okay ready? Well it’s funny. So I guest post in get rich slowly. I guest posted a few times since. The first time I did it it was awesome like 400 subscribers especially when I was a brand new blog I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I haven’t gotten that much fun then except way later someone who kept lingers for slow finance found the article. Even though it wasn’t new, even though it’s not big of a deal I think when people are searching which is one thing that we don’t really think about, when you write a guest post for someone else’s site that is a high ranking site especially with the SEO, when somebody searches for that free or something like that, that has a lot more chance of ranking especially if you’re a newer site. So that’s where I think it’s also very valuable that we don’t really think about stuff so when you’re writing guest post start thinking what the press might be putting in for search terms or when they’re trying to look at blogs, what would they really be looking for. I think that’s really important point for you.

But I might be distinct for guest posting in general in bigger blogs is to build relationships and you probably know that too. It takes a while. Sometimes people will, like JV, except when they’re trying to accept guest post which is great but some of the other people that are harder like Pat Flynn, I’ve known Pat for almost 3 years and I go “Pat, please give me guest post.” Well, I’m finally gonna have one coming up really soon. But in general I now have really good relationship for all the people so it’s really easy to get guest posts in other places because of that. So that I think is one of the big keys.

T: So how does someone begin to build a relationship with whomever at whatever blog? How should they start?

J: Interview them, not.

T: That’s one of my secrets. That’s why I’m an interviewer. It’s the best networking tool in the world coz nobody hardly ever says no.

J: Exactly. Okay I’ve interviewed over 70 millionaires so yeah. I have millionaire friends. I’ve been invited to Greece, to Fiji, and then for Maine. Like come on, so random come over to Maine and there’s like 2,000 people in it. Anyway, so I think you’re right. I think that’s huge. That’s not actually how I’ve gotten most of my relationships because my online marketing buddies and friends like most of them are millionaires and it’s kinda funny. So that’s not actually how I got that. I mean I never tell Michael Hyatt that I’m actually gonna be guest posting in Michael Hyatt’s too but that wasn’t really how I did it.

A lot was when I very first started online at all I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing but I have a lot of video background but I didn’t really know that much about blogging and internet marketing so what I ended up doing was going I need a mastermind group of people that know what they’re doing and I’m just kinda ask them. Coz there is so much stuff online, it’s so overwhelming. I have been online for 3 months going “I don’t know what the right stuff is.” And so I asked Pat Flynn and Mary Kate who actually used to work, well it’s a nice company now but she used to be just a blogger. Now I have millioinaires in the mastermind group too. But I decided that I thought it would be a great idea to start this mastermind group with a ton of really good people.

T: Wait a minute. Let me interject here for a minute and pardon my crass description, you were a blogging nobody who knew nothing and you went to Pat Flynn and said you wanna be in my mastermind group and he said yes?

J: I did. Now I remember this was 3 years ago so he wasn’t as huge as he is now, right? So I looked for people that were pretty big but not too big and I’ll give you one tip on how I got him to say yes. He’s gonna love that I’m talking about him now. Oh I talk to him all the time so it’s no big deal. So the way that I got him was I said what I was good at so I had been part of the viral video sensation called eepy bird who did diet coke and mentos online and so I knew a lot about viral video and I did a whole bunch of stuff to do that. So I’m short of said “you know I’m just getting online but I have a lot of experience and all that stuff.” And then I was like I wanna get really good people so I went on and found, tried to find as many other really amazing bloggers as I could.

So once you get lots of amazing bloggers then the other amazing bloggers want to come in on it, right? And Pat Flynn and I had a bunch of other people say yes that are pretty big. And so that was really cool. And then I set it up so it was very structured. A lot of people are like “hey, let’s start a mastermind group.” Yeah I don’t know, when do you wanna meet? My whole thing was very structured. I had pdf documents. So I had to actually ask Pat twice before he said yes but he said yes.

And so that was huge for me online in general so when I went out to blog world my first time I knew a whole bunch of successful bloggers who introduced me to a whole much other successful bloggers which made me cool, right? I’m now that cool blogger. I didn’t have to speak my first time even though speaking was great. I was sort of to be on the same level as them even though I had an itty bitty blog.

T: Yeah very nice. So you talked about structure and you talked about a pdf can you just give us a little bit more details on what you meant by that?

J: So I have run mastermind groups before and so I had sort of an outline of structure of like okay the first 10-15 minutes were going over the accountability from the week before we’re doing our wins, this is the same thing that we do every single week right now. And then we do a hot seat so every week there’s one person in the hot seat where we really talk about their issues and what they’re going through. And then we’ll do a resource or two so if there’s anything online that you’ve been really using that you really love we share resources. And then we talk about goals for the upcoming week and then we call each other accountable the next week. So that’s sort of the structure and that was laid out in the pdf and also people can’t skip more than 2 meetings. They have to really be dedicated and that sort of stuff.

T: Okay terrific. I like that. It’s nice to talk about wins, put someone in the hot seat, talk about tools and resources, talk about goals and then hold each other accountable.

J: Exactly.

T: Interesting.

J: Pretty simple.

T: So going back to my second tangent, I don’t know if people noticed, my first tangent was guest posting. So you talked about building relationships. You’ve mentioned that several things here that I hope people have noticed. Attend conferences, preceeding those conferences by doing the mastermind and reaching out to people, obviously interviewing is a fantastic way to do that but not everybody maybe wants to be an interviewer. What about in the social networks, did you retweet people’s stuff? Did you tweet at them? Did you comment on their walls? Were you doing anything like that to get on the radar screen of people that did not know you existed?

J :I didn’t do too much of that. It’s hard because if you’re not very big, like I did a lot, you probably too, I did a lot of messages like “oh my gosh, I love you. You’re awesome.” That were just some sort of laughed in the same thing. Like “oh thank you. Thank you so much, it’s awesome.” But it’s not, what you really wanna do is be on the same level with them to make sure that you’re not going “oh my gosh, you’re awesome. Thank you so much for what you do.” That’s it. They’re like “oh thank you.” But make it so that they know that you might be wanna set someone that they wanna know too. So what I actually did when I was first starting is that I emailed a lot of people and sort of what I always look for whenever I build any relationship whatsoever is connection. So what can we connect on? I remember there was a blogger and he used to write about lots of different stuff but one of the things that he liked was buddhism and a couple of other things that I really connected with him on so I sent him an email and I was like “wow, you like this which is the same thing. I did karate.” He was into karate. So I was like “we like all these things. That’s awesome.” Thanks for going over here. And so that makes someone go “oh they like the same stuff as me. That’s pretty cool.” That’s putting me on the same level. That’s not necessarily going “oh my gosh, that’s great. Thank you so much.” So that’s sort of what I try and do too. Even when I meet people now, even when I go to conferences, it’s really interesting to go “oh you like pasta?” Ah I love people. You know what I mean? Coz I all like all that stuff too so it’s pretty easy for me. But I love being able to connect with people and stuff like that so that’s usually the way I try that to start building a relationship with people.

T: Okay so you just email them, here’s what we have in common, do you wanna talk, some of them say yes some of them say no, great, and the ball begins to roll from that point.

J: As a name dropped in times too by the way. So like if I know they’re good friends with someone that I know I’m like “oh I’m friends with so and so. I just looked at your stuff.” And then start building connections and stuff like that.

T: Okay so now when you’ve done this, when you’ve planted these seeds, when you go to a conference it’s gonna be quite a bit easier coz now you’re not walking up to strangers and saying “hey what do you do? What do I do?” Which most people really don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of or on the initiating end of. But this way you’re up to say “hey man, nice to meet you in person first time blah blah blah.”

J: Yeah finally. Exactly, that’s exactly it. From the very first time, the very first blog world or any conference that I’ve ever been to I try and do my research on who’s gonna be there ahead of time and then connect with them beforehand and say “oh we should meet up. Oh I should see you.” So when I message them on twitter or when I see them it’s like “oh I’m supposed to be talking to you.” Not who is this random person coming up to me say trying to touch me when I’m trying to do something else. So definitely, from that very first one. And I’m trying to convince you to go to new me expo, I’m speaking there. Actually I’ll do the interviewing in January. But everytime I’ve gone, I went and spoke at the world domination summit you know I just love doing conferences. There’s actually a conference in Maine, so excited. Gerry Hepburn was there and Amy Porterfield and Chris Brown and then we all got to hang out this past weekend and just conferences are just super fun. I know nobody knows about that conference.

T: No and I tried, it’s late. Derrick, keynoting that, didn’t he? Coz he and I just traded an email coz I’m gonna interview him shortly and he’s like “hey dude, sorry coz I was just on the plane from keynoting something.”

J: He was hanging out with me. I have a picture of him with a big old lobster with his girlfriend eating lobster.

T: Nice. So which conference was that?

J: It’s called agents of change and my friend Rich Brooks put it on. I think Rich usually speaks at new media expo and blog world auction too.

T: Okay.

J: That’s actually how I met him. We’re both from Maine. I met him on the plane kind of I knew him a little bit but we sat together and the thing right down to blog world and he was speaking and I was speaking. I was like “hey wow, that’s really weird.” And we started a relationship that way so.

T: So new media expo, agents of change, blog world and there was another one that you mentioned.

J: World domination summit which is Chris Guillebeau’s. That was the best conference I think I’ve ever been to.

T: Really?

J: That was a very very good.

T: Have you ever been to Ryan Dice’s traffic and conversion summit?

J: I haven’t. Was it good?

T: I haven’t been but a good buddy of mine who had the same kind of company that I had and hands down he said best conference he’s ever been to.

J: Really?

T: Yeah.

J: Oh I love finding out what the best conference people have ever been to. Like that to me that’s what I wanna go to. I think I’m going to south by southwest this year too coz I’ve heard so many things about that so we’ll see.

T: Yeah that’s one on my list. And I attended Yanik’s underground in DC.

J: Oh yeah?

T: Last fall I guess it was now, earlier this year. Man I don’t even remember. It was pretty cool. There was a lot of people there.

J: Was it the best conference you’ve ever been to?

T: I think I might have said that. Hopefully Yanik is listening to this. I did get to meet him. He’s a super cool guy. Kinda short though.

J: I need to interview him. Really? That’s why we were just laughing about that in this last conference how short people are. I’m really tall. Nobody realizes how tall.

T: You’re tall?

J: Like I’m not that tall. But I’m 5’9″ but when I wear heels.

T: Yeah you’re 6 foot.

J: I’m really tall. And so like Derrick, not very tall.

T: Not so tall.

J: That’s very funny. Pat Flynn also. Sorry I’m giving away all these secrets of all these people but when you meet them in person.

T: The blogosphere is filled with short people.

J: Yes. It is.

T: I’m tall. I’m 6’1″. And not even, when I put my heels on I’m even taller than that.

J: I need to see that. Come with me to the expo out.

T: I will. Wow! Okay our tangents are really good and off track.

J: I know. So bad.

T: So this interview was supposed to be about, alright, let’s try and see if we can get this back on track. Hopefully our audience is having a laugh but they’re still listening.

J: I was gonna say one another thing. I interviewed Dane Maxwell just like you did and I’m friends with Dane. It was really bad. So this is not so bad. That was like an hour and a half of I don’t know what to say.

T: All over the place.

J: Everyone loved it. There were people even out, got lots of emails, people obviously were loving it. I was like yeah. He was like hiding the food that he was eating and goes I’m not gonna tell you what I’m eating.

T: Okay wait now I wanna really run and get my cat and just hold him up in front of the camera. I said to Jamie off here that I think my cat was gonna try and sit on my lap for the interview but I had to shoosh him away coz he purrs really loudly and the mic would actually probably pick it up.

J: I love the background stuff, you know what I mean? I love that stuff. I think it’s great.

T: Alright so you’ve had a lot of success getting press. Now so where you talked about how you got to CNN. But you were on the, and I learned all this in our pre-interview call, you’re on the homepage of Yahoo for 48 hours, sadly 46 of those hours ended up being a waste but I’ll let you tell that story. First of all, how did you get on to the homepage of yahoo?

J: Well I was already featured there twice in 3 months. So the first time was because of that CNN article. They had me listed in CNN then they asked me to be on the TV show within the next day or two. So Adam Baker from Man vs. Debt was actually in that same article. I didn’t realized I was the only one that there was about 6 other people talking about getting on the deck. I was the only one that they asked to go on CNN. So I went on CNN with Tony Harris on TV. And then from that a couple of days later they featured the story on yahoo and my face was on Yahoo’s homepage. So part of me was like maybe it’s coz I’m a girl, that kind of thing, that’s why they featured me up or something. I don’t know but that was the first one.

T: That was my next question, why do you think they picked you out of the whole crowd?

J: I don’t know. Yeah I mean there were 6 of them and I looked at the photos of the 6 of them and maybe I had a professional headshot so maybe that was why. I mean I don’t know.

T: Was there any other girls?

J: There were girls and guys but there was not one just girl so. I mean I know it happened again so that was a different picture of me so I mean that might be it too when the second one came about shortly after and watched it. I was in October, it wasn’t 3 months and then in March I was featured again because I was in Kiplinger’s personal finance magazine. And yahoo, the reason why I was in yahoo is coz they were syndicated so they syndicate CNN and they syndicate Kiplinger’s personal finance. And so it was the same of very similar story, dude pays of $70,000 of debt and a whole much other stuff.

T: So it was a good human interest story that obviously many people in the audience especially, and what year was this?

J: Well 2, well yeah.

T: Okay.

J: A while ago. When I first started. So a year after blogging. I’ve been blogging for just about 3 years now so about 2 years ago.

T: So during this current recession so lots of people could relate to being $70,000 in debt and in particular for you to be a young woman who was successful at getting herself out of debt and you’re not exactly hurt on the eyes, all of those things together I’m sure contributed to.

J: Can I quote you on this? A quote from Trent.

T: I told you yesterday I look like John Hem and I go to her and I go “who’s John Hem?”

J: I think I know who that is.

T: It’s the guy from Mad Men, Don Draper. I knew his character name but I didn’t know his real name. So she was laughing at me coz I had no idea coz I’ve been told quite a few times actually that I look like him.

J: I bet you should have a code.

T: A code, yeah maybe. Maybe I can call myself the Don Draper of blogging. Oh I’m gonna get some hate mail. Do not send me a nasty email. Jamie started this.

J: I know. Send him a nasty email, that’s fine.

T: Okay so you should probably tell what happened for 46 of those 48 hours or whatever the number is. Why it didn’t do you any good because while it’s not marketing related at all it’s a pretty important thing for people to understand if they’re going out to get press.

J: Yap. And this is what I tell, and I hate telling it everytime coz I feel stupid but let me tell it again. So both times my server crashed. So the first time it wasn’t that big of a deal, I had about a 1,000 people come because there was no link. Second time I was on the homepage of yahoo for 48 hours and there was a link.

T: Did you have control over whether there was a link or no link or is that up to them?

J: So the second time, everytime now I ask and so with Kiplinger’s personal finance I asked her to put a link online. I didn’t know it was gonna go to yahoo but I asked her to make sure there was a link and she said okay. So yeah, always ask, always always ask for a link. It’s really good for SEO anyway but also nobody, another issue. So the very first time I didn’t have, so I was on yahoo’s home page. When you googled my name my site came up. When you yahoo’d my name, which nobody says yahoo’d I think, someone else’s site came up and then my facebook page came up and I wasn’t even to like the bugs. So even when my site was up when there was no link it was just bad. There was really facebook fan request but that was about it.

T: I think you got a marriage proposal too, didn’t you?

J :I did. I’ve gotten a few more since then. I’m very proud of those.

T: And when you were on the homepage did you by chance dance around your office and say “yahoo!”.

J: No I didn’t. I should have. Maybe I can do it again. So that was the thing. Really, really ask for links and also if there is no link make sure when you google your name just in case they don’t have your website and google or yahoo or bing your name make sure it comes up in search results. So for 2 hours the second time works from going back and forth, the second time I was up in 2 hours, I got 8,000 visitors to my site in 2 hours.

T: That’s a lot.

J: Yeah. And then it crashed. So 4,000 times 46 hours, yeah I know it hurts a lot. So make sure that your site can handle it. I had a hosting site, a hosting company and it’s just a shared server and I’m a geek. I have a degree in IT, I know this, I saw work in the server room at a place and I was just dumb.

T: And you were on a $10 a month cheap skate hosting plan back then?

J: Yes I was. Till I see someone dumb. Yeah really dumb. Don’t do that.

T: Two thumbs up.

J: For me, yeah. Learn from me, don’t do that.

T: Okay so let me go back to my notes here coz we are eventually gonna get, I want people to learn more about this interview business coz it really is such a terrific business but I also wanted to make sure that we keep talking about press. Alright can you summarize for us then just like you did with guest posting the Jamie’s 10 minute crash course on how to get some press?

J: Alright I just did a snitch on this, it was a lot longer than 10 minutes so we’ll see if I can do this.

T: Maybe you’ll do a master class for me hopefully, hopefully.

J: Nice shot.

T: Maybe.

J: I don’t know. I’m kidding. So the first thing that I say is to start with like helpareporter.com. I don’t know if you guys know too much about it already but it connects journalists with people that are potential sources. I’ve gotten quite a bit of press from them. I’ve gotten fox business, success magazine, like a bunch of kinda cool places from there.

T: Say that url, Jamie please say that url again because I think they missed it.

J: Helpareporter.com.

T: Isn’t it helpareporterout.com?

J: No.

T: No, oh my bad.

J: The name of the service is help a reporter out. The website url is helpareporter.com. Not very smart but that’s what’s written.

T: No yeah.

J: So I would do that and try and practice right pitching coz you need to get better at pitching before you get bigger stuff. So you can do some of the lower stuff that’s good for backlinking anyway. And then try and get the bigger stuff. And then the reason why that’s good is because when you’ve already had some press it’s much easier to get more of it. So on my site when it says I have all these press, people that come to my site go “oh I already know. She’s okay with the media.” Especially like TV stations and stuff like that don’t want you if you’re not very good on camera. So they wanna know that you’ve done stuff ahead of time or a good resource. So that just makes you a little more credible so that’s also why I say to start up with that and then move forward.

T: Okay so help a reporter out resource no. 1. Try and get some of the low hanging fruit, get some social proof, hone your pitch skills, build relationships with those reporters and over time you’re snowball will get bigger as it rolls down the hill.

J: Yeah. Just like I said with Laura Bandecamp who actually reads get rich slowly but that’s not how I met her. I met her because I was using help a reporter out. She needed a source for her book. I didn’t even know who she was. I became a source for her book. Later she emailed and was like “Oh my fifth for this fortune.com article I’m doing.” And we’ve since build a relationship again going like “Oh I should take you out for coffee. You’re great.” You know that sort of stuff. So definitely start building relationships even when you don’t necessarily know where they’re gonna go.

T: Okay. Thank you for that. Now you have, I know you’ve talked about other ways we’re only gonna have so much time in this interview. So when we get to the end of this interview or the heck you can even say it now. You know people how can they reach to get more of you to get more of these stuff.

J: My blog is eventualmillionaire.com.

T: There you go.

J: Yeah. I have a whole thing on press and stuff like that too.

T: Okay. So let’s talk about the interview business for a bit. It’s one that obviously we’re both actively involved in. And it’s your interview so you get to give answer to all the questions. Why is this such a good business to be in? And does it work in any niche?

J: It’s so funny because usually I am on the other side. I love talking. It’s so hard being an interviewer and going and I don’t say anything.

T: I’ve had people write me to tell me to shut up. They say let your guest talk so and here I am talking. So shut me up. Start talking.

J: I had that too. I just sent out a survey and someone said you talk too much and you just need more pictures of yourself on the site. So I’m like “oh you want me to shut up and then you want more pictures of me.” Yeah okay that’s funny. And it’s hard. There’s a fine balance coz you really want your audience to know who you are and there’s people that listen to my interviews love me which is great. I mean not all of them of course, right? But most of the interviews are from millionaires but a lot of them really like me too. So I love interjecting but you really have to make sure they haven’t heard this before because hearing the same story more than once is so annoying but you also wanna be able to build the relationship with like the millionaire. So when I’m talking a millionaire I want the millionaire to know all about me too.

T: Exactly.

J: So that way we can start building a relationship. So I try and look for like those connection points with the millionaire that I haven’t you know same old same old for my audience and not talk too much at the same time. So there’s a lot of different things going on. But yeah I absolutely love interviewing because almost no one, even millionaires, say no.

T: Yap.

J: Coz they’re flattered. You can start building relationship big time because there’s a lot of prep work before he enters the whole interview. You have to tell them later you know when it comes live you’re a lot of different touch points as you go. And you can continue the conversation and go “oh I love to have you on the show again in a little while”. That sort of stuff. So I think it’s huge for building relationships even if you didn’t get any traffic from this. You should interview. My mentor who taught me business coaching, I’m like you need to interview people because it’s the best way for him to get infront of even prospects or people that might be good relationships for him locally, he should do it too. So I think it’s huge.

And I think you can pretty much do it in just about any niche. I have a friend who’s a performer and I was like go interview all of the venues that you wanna be booked at because it’d be great. You’d have a podcast talking about like what they look for, you know maybe how they market so that way other venues can listen to them. And then you’re getting an email. It just makes sense.

T: Yeah it does. I just can’t say enough about all of the perks. I’ll be honest with you I started interviewing on my internet marketing blog called onlineincomelab.com because I was looking for an easy way to produce more content. I knew that people were getting sick of hearing my stuff all the time and so I thought well coz I haven’t been successful at everything obviously. I’ve only had at that point in time I had a limited amount of success and so I thought well I wanna get free lessons, no. 1, I’d like to expand my network and I don’t wanna have to type all the damn content all the time.

J: Thank you for saying that.

T: Voila! The interview business was born and in my case it ended up spawning an entirely new business brightideas.co where this interview will be posted and I think that the potential for that business is just so much more than the internet marketing audience.

J: Yeah.

T: And I gonna give props to you because I took your advice for the people listening to this, in the pre-call Jamie told me about how she’d attracted all these millionaires to be as interview guests for her and some of them opted in to her mastermind and again you know what? I’m not gonna tell the story. It’s your interview. You’re gonna tell us, right?

J: Well what I was gonna say before, the reason why I started interviewing was I never saw myself as a writer. I can write and that’s great but to me, it took me a while and my mastermind group thanking this for them was like you’re really good at communicating and that sort of stuff. And so I was like I should do a podcast coz both Pat and Murin had a podcast already. That’s a great idea why wouldn’t I do that. And Murin was like you shouldn’t interview only millionaires. And I was like that’s a good idea I should totally do that. And it sort of came about from that. So because it’s so much easier to produce content this way too. You get new and interesting. You can have people that specifically know hard core all about that specific thing is huge. It’s awesome for content definitely.

T: And you know we all get transcripts done so this is just a little take away for anyone listening to this. If you still want to have written articles when you do an interview like this you end up with 10-12,000 words of content that you didn’t have to pay for. If you’ve asked your questions in such a way you can just get your VA to go and take the transcript and strip out one question and answer and wala! blog post.

J: Yeah it can be a huge thing. So yeah it’s huge. The transcripts, now I’m writing a book proposal right now who actually found me from my blog because I had all that press on there. Was like oh she must know what she’s talking then. And I looked at how many transcripts I have and each of them are 15 pages and I have 70 of them. Like that’s a lot of content. That’s so much content and it’s crazy. So definitely.

T: You and I are on similar paths.

J: Well you meet me in person.

T: I think I told you I’m doing a book as well.

J: Oh are you really?

T: Yap. And this is again I was attempting to give you props I meant in the go so I wanted to get some, people who’d made the million dollars online. And so I took your advice and I went and put a thing up on haro which was free by the way. And I said looking for people who have an expertise in online marketing and sales automation who are millionaires and would like to be featured in a book. And my book is tentatively titled, I don’t know if I wanna give the title away, somebody might turn off the registry so I’m not gonna give the title yet.

And I got a lot of responses and I did a pre-interview this morning before this interview of this guy, he’s got a $7,000,000 a year business that makes this hot sauce and he was jazzed to talk to me. And he was a really cool guy and he’s gonna do 2 interviews and he’s gonna be in the book and he’s gonna blah blah blah. You wanna make it bad, he’s probably got a mailing list for his $7,000,000 a year company and when my interview goes live it’s just promotion for him. If I have rapport with him, I’m thinking it’s fairly good chance he’s gonna tell his list about my site, his interview on my site which creates all sorts of opportunity for additional opt ins and traction and traffic and all these wonderful things.

And again I’m totally hijacking the interview but I wanted people to understand that this is it. It’s really such an awesome business to be in.

J: It is. It totally is. Congratulations on taking my advice now.

T: Yeah thank you.

J: That’s one of the biggest question I always get from everyone is how do you find millionaires. And as I responded to it, Trent, the very first time I put it out at haro. I thought I was gonna get 2 and I got 30. And I was like oh I should make this once a week instead of I was gonna do once every while, maybe once a month. I didn’t think it’d be that easy to find them.

T: Yeah and now a question that I haven’t asked yet and I’ve been thinking about, do you validate that they’re millionaire in any way, shape or form or do you just take their word for it?

J: I did that a lot. So I specifically asked them if they have a net worth of at least a million dollars or more and I need them to say yes. So I don’t go in a look at stuff. If I do the interview and I feel like they’re not telling me the truth or that they’re sort of shady then I’m just don’t post the interview.

T: Yeah.

J: But in general like if they usually seem really genuine and stuff like that I think it’s good. And I’ll look for stuff. Maybe when the book comes out that’s actually what I’m talking to my agent about. When the book comes out I think there’s gonna have to be more validation, more verification.

T: Yeah.

J: It’s like go through a publisher.

T: Absolutely.

J: Definitely.

T: And we could do, and we should do a whole other interview about publishing a book but we don’t have time for that one today. Maybe if you’ll be kind enough to come back on we’d do that.

J: Yeah.

T: We can maybe share our learning experiences. And a friend of mine who is been a marketer for quite a while, she’s written a number of books and just swears by the kindle platform. She said you know you don’t need traditional publishing around.

J: I know.

T: So there’s just a huge debate of which way to go and honestly I don’t know which way to go yet. I need to talk to more people who are smarter than me.

J: I was gonna say have you ever interviewed Johnny Andrews?

T: No.

J: Okay, Pat interviewed him, he’s a friend of mine and he’s been yelling at me too like don’t do it, don’t go to traditional publishing. You should totally have him on because he’ll give you his opinion. Now it’s just an opinion but he’s hard core.

T: I’d love to.

J: He’s got a lot of really good stories.

T: Can you make an email introduction?

J: I can.

T: Thank you.

J: Send me a note later.

T: I will. So it’s Johnny?

J: Andrews.

T: So if that’s not evidence of the awesome networking of interviewing people I don’t know what is. Alright.

J: And he did interview me way back so I didn’t even interview him.

T: Let’s talk about the interviewing business model for a minute coz I know that when I meet people and they ask me what I do for a living I tell them I have an online talk show coz it’s easy to understand.

J: It’s better. I should do that. I say I interview millionaires.

T: Well that’s cool too. But then they go the very first question is they go you can make money at that? And so there is a business model and not everyone’s is the same. Would you like to talk about yours?

J: Yeah mine’s? It’s fine coz we’re talking about this before. Mine’s a little different than yours. Well I mean not different. What I primarily was before and became online as a business sketch. So I have businesses locally, I have businesses all over the world now that I help. Usually they’re doing less than a million it depends on where they are now. So that’s what I love to do. That’s my passion. But I only work 20 hours a week so there’s always too much coaching that I can’t do. So I’m starting moving on to more sort of internet marketing types of things. So I have a membership site and I’m doing the book. And so doing a little bit more stuff that’s gonna be a lot more passive. And 20 hours a week it’s kind of difficult to do that much.

T: Yeah tough.

J: So it’s a slow process and I’m trying to make it be okay. But in general I’ve got my business coaching practice and then I also have the membership site and the marketing.

T: Okay so let’s just walk through this really simple. The interviews provide the content. You make the interviews available for free, correct?

J: Correct.

T: Are they always available for free or do you do like Andrew at Mixergy and put them behind the wall after 30 days?

J: I don’t but iTunes only shows the last I think 15 or so. You can get the rest if you come to my site.

T: Yeah. Andrew only shows the last 5 as and I decided to take a page out of his book on that one.

J: I just interviewed him and we talked all about interviewing so he care about interviewing. I just interviewed Andrew Warner from Mixergy and he gave really good tips that I have to implement also.

T: Yeah.

J: And so is this stuff.

J: The same thing that people talk about when you start a business like having your ideal customer. Well when you’re first starting you’re like I can’t, I’m gonna take anybody. Anyone that’s willing to pay me I’ll take them. And as a business coach, exactly. You wanna be working with the ideal customers. You wanna be working with the people that aren’t complainers. You know and that sort of thing. You’re gonna be so much happier. It just creates so much less stress with them also. So for your regular business make sure you’re listening to them.

T: And I wanted to take an opportunity to plug Mike’s book, The Pumpkin Plan. If you’re listening to this show and you’re running a business or your business is running you, and you just can’t figure out how to make the thing grow anymore but you’ve got a good product or a good service and you have some customers that really love you, you need to go buy Mike’s book, The Pumpkin Plan. You absolutely must buy this book and then you need to follow what the advice that he gives you because it’s really really awesome advice. And he gives evidence of how it impacted his own business and people he’s coached. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the book and that’s why I wanted to get him on the show.

J: I need to write it down too. Make sure you remind me. I don’t have a pen near me. Make sure to remind me to write that down later.

T: Alright I will. So I think we’re like way off topic now.

J: Yeah.

T: If somebody is still listening to this at the end and hopefully they’re fist pumping in their car and going yeah yeah yeah, you guys thanks for rumbling on for a while because I think it’s important stuff. So is there any other questions that I wanted to ask you? There was one tip you gave and we’ll close on this one on using haro to get press. And it was about response time.

J: Oh yeah. I actually ended up talking to somebody at haro because I wanted to find out what the real people did. I actually interviewed a bunch of PR people to try and find out what they do to get it. And it’s the same with enough 15 minute window. So when you sign for haro you’ll get an email 3 times a day which is a lot. And some people just delete them coz it’s really annoying. But if you can actually take a couple seconds to scan through and try to find exactly one that works for you and then within 15 minutes do your reply and send it back. There’s 2 reasons for this. The first is because you get a buzzillion replies and at first you’re like oh look can you read them? Especially somebody who’s a reporter, a bigger reporter. They’ll get a couple and then there’s just so many you have to start moving them into a folder and you don’t have the time. And the other reason is that a lot of times there’s bigger people like the bigger national media are on deadlines and they need to know something fast. So not only respond as quick as you can. You also include a phone number so that way they can call you and follow up too. So those are definitely good tips. I’ve gotten a lot more because of that.

T: And I took your advice on that and the first email for me comes in coz I’m on the pacific coast or pacific coast time it comes like at 3 in the morning so I just ignore that one.

J: What? Come on. Aren’t you dedicated?

T: That’s a lot for right now. The other 2 they come in at the same time everyday within a couple of minutes so I just set an alarm in my google calendar peep peep peep and I flip over to the gmail account that I use for that. Soon as they come in I scan it. It takes me 30 seconds and I’m only on 2 so I get 2 emails twice a day. Well 3 times a day but I don’t even look at the first one. And it doesn’t take very long. Like today for example somebody, they wanted someone with significant start up experience. Well you know hello, I’ve started a couple of companies, sold one. So I thought yeah okay so again I took your advice, I wrote them back , hi my name is, here’s the press I’ve been featured in, here’s my about page, here’s my relevant thing, here’s my phone number, here’s my email, I’m ready to go, if there’s anyway I can help you please let me know.

J: Perfect. Now in my speech if I do that again I’m gonna tell people to set an alarm. Do what Trent did.

T: Yeah.

J: That’s a really good idea. Awesome.

T: And I’m looking actually at my email inbox right now to see if I got a reply and I don’t think I did on this one but it’s a numbers game.

J: Well that’s the thing. It depends, right? So it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gonna use it right away either. And that’s the thing that’s hard. The success magazine one I didn’t hear back for weeks. I thought I would just assume they didn’t get it. And then she’s like oh you’re in. And I’m like okay good, thanks.

T: Yeah actually now that’s a really good point and I’m gonna hijack you one more time because it’s relevant. So I got myself on Fox 5 news here a couple of times. And the first time that I did it so I met someone who knew the producer. In the subject line I said so and so referred me. She told me exactly how to write the pitch. It was 3 bullet points, you know, my name is blah, I think your audience will be interested in this because point no. 1, point no. 2, point no. 3. It’s the hook. I didn’t hear back from them for like 6 weeks. And then they had a slow news day presumably, a slow news day. And I get an email like 3:00 in the afternoon can you be at the studio tomorrow morning at 5:45 am? Absolutely I can. And once they have you on once then what do they think they did? They invited to come on again.

J: That’s a possibility.

T: And you know what? The funny thing was, this is before my online business and I get to talk about some failure here, this is awesome. In the time between selling my technology services company and going online I spent about a year learning everything I could about real estate coz I wanted to become a real estate investor and I was gonna buy all these foreclosures and flip them. And so here’s a guy who’s I’d never done a real estate deal. I think coz I just was a horrible failure. I just didn’t understand the price these people wanted to pay for these deals. I couldn’t see any profit so my offers never got accepted. But I got myself on TV as a real estate expert because I asked and I knew what I was talking about. I’ve been reading, I’ve been studying these stuff big time. So I bring that up only to say that don’t let your limiting beliefs like my buddy who’s been a realtor for 10 years, he’s a top producer, he looked at me and he goes are you out of your mind? He says you’re going on TV as some supposed real estate expert? And I said I know how to answer the questions. I know the answers.

J: Exactly.

T: And so my point is don’t let any kind of limiting belief get in your way. If you know your material, you know your stuff don’t be afraid to tell people that you are an expert coz the interview was easy and good and it’s not like they’re doing investigative reporting and trying to trip you off.

J: Yeah definitely.

T: It’s not what it’s like. Alright we need to wind this up coz I think I’ve got other interviews to do today but yeah it’s been a really good time. Jamie thank you so much for making the time. Obviously I’d love to have you come back on. You know I’m gonna ask you to come back on. I’m also asking you to do a master class for me on maybe starting a mastermind actually. Wouldn’t mind doing coz you seem to be like that’s something some people might like to do. I’m not gonna put you on the spot on air and ask you to come.

J: You have to ask me when you’re in Vegas when you go to the new media expo.

T: Absolutely I think that’s what I’ll do. Alright so that wraps up this episode. Thanks very much Jamie for being on. Last thing, if people want to get a hold of you, the best way to do it is…

J: Just go to eventualmillionaire.com. You can shoot me an email there if you ever need anything or you can find the podcasts on itunes which is eventual millionaire podcast. That’s it.

T: And if you’re in a hurry to become a millionaire I think I’m gonna start a new plight inside that says become a millionaire faster than jamie can teaching you .com.

J: Oh I am a brown belt on karate. We will get started on that one.

T: No we’re just gonna stick with Bright Ideas I think.

J: Awesome Trent.

T: Alright folks that’s it. Thanks very much. That is a wrap for this episode. Thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you in another one.

J: Thanks so much.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this episode:

Media Attention Made Easy

Jaime’s Crash Course on How to Get Free Press

Jaime is a rock star at getting press coverage.  She’s been on tons of media outlets, including heavy hitters like CNN.  She was also on the front page of

Press coverage has been key to Jaime’s success.
Image Source: 123rf.com

Yahoo, free coverage which at first she was unable to take full advantage of.

In fact, when Jaime got on Yahoo, she realized she wasn’t prepared to be on Yahoo.  Hear her openly share the mistakes she made.  She also shares

one thing to ask for every time you get press coverage, whether it’s Yahoo or something smaller.

Listen to the interview to hear Jaime share her mistakes so you don’t have to make them.

Jaime’s Crash Course on How to Get Attention from Other Bloggers

Jaime is a master at building relationships with others.  She has leveraged these relationships to get tons of additional free press coverage.  She is a big proponent of guest posts, and sees this as a major component of what helped her grow her site quickly.

Hear Jaime share her tips on getting guest posts.

Jaime’s Crash Course on Interview Sites

I’m obviously a big fan of interviewing and interview sites.

Interviewing is an excellent tool to leverage for business growth.
Image Source: 123rf.com

If you like Bright Ideas, you’ll definitely want to head over to Eventual Millionaire and check out Jaime’s site too.  She’s an engaging interviewer and her site is an inspiring example of how to leverage interview sites for your business.

Hear Jaime talk about why interview sites work so well.

All the Extras

Now, I have to admit that Jaime and I had mad tangents all over the place during our conversation.  I guess that’s what you get when you interview an interviewer!

But that also leads to some great content for you.  Jaime shares all sorts of hidden gems.  She even provides a crash course on mastermind groups.  And this interviewer of millionaires has formed some stellar groups full of millionaire, so you know this is good stuff!

Listen to the interview to hear Jaime share all her best secrets.

About Jaime Tardy

Ever since Jamie was little she’s had this weird feeling that she would someday have a million dollars. While she’s not quite to a million yet, she’s always been intrigued by how to do it.

She started out thinking the only way she could do it was to get a good job with a great salary.  So she went to a great (expensive!) school, and began working full time while still in school. By the age of 22 she was making six figures, and had an expense account. By the age of 24 she was in over $70,000 in debt.

Unfortunately, she hated her work. She had worked so hard, and had some cool stuff. But she was stuck in airports all the time. She dreaded Sunday nights because they marked the beginning of yet another long work week.

Jamie determined that living an enjoyable life was worth far more than a million dollars. So she updated my goal. Instead of just a million dollars, she wanted to find work she loved and the life she loved, and THEN make her million. She took time off to find out what work excited her.

And, she found it. Now she helps entrepreneurs focus their money and their strengths to create an amazing life while they build their net worth.

Jamie’s still learning too, so she interviews millionaires to get their best tips, tactics and advice from their successes and failures.