How To Turn Your Hobbies Into Businesses With Gary Leland

Podcaster, Videographer, Blab User, Blogger, and Softball Junkie?- Gary Leland

How to really nail it at closing the sale. Spotting technology trends. Should you focus on only one thing? What is Blab and why you should care?

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

Lelands.org

Check out GaryLeland.com for more info!

Find Gary on Twitter | Facebook | Blab | Instagram

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy, and I'm really excited to have Gary Leland on the show. He's amazing. I've known him for a really long time, and he has so many businesses you can't even name them all. So I'm going to give one website which is lelands.org, and he can spell that for you in just a second, and that way you can see every single thing he does because he has so many I cannot name them all. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Gary.

Gary Leland: Oh thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to see your bright, smiling face this early in the morning.

Jaime: Aw. Give us lelands.org so that way everybody can check it out because seriously, it's ridiculous.

Gary Leland: Yeah, I have a really hard time because people say, "What do you do for a living?" when I meet them, and I can't say e-commerce and I can't say brick and mortar stores and I can't say I'm in the sports business or I can't say I'm in the wallpaper business, because I have the largest wallpaper store in Texas, and I do all these things, so I made lelands.org just as a place that I can say, "Hey, you want to see what I do, go here," and I've divided it up from e-commerce sites to informational sites, which really informational sites are sites that I use for advertising, basically. You know, like I have usafastpitch.com which has all the people who played in the Olympics for softball for the USA and their bios and stuff like that. Informational site, but it's full of my ads. And books and apps and blah blah blah, but that's what that is for, just so I can say, "Hey, you want to see what I do, go here."

Jaime: Well I remember asking people, I remember just hanging out with you and you were really cool, and I don't ask people normally what they do at the very very beginning, and they were like, "Oh, you're the sports guy." And then I was like, but I didn't even know you owned a wallpaper store and everything. How do you get into all these different niches? Because you do so many things.

Gary Leland: Well I think it's two things. Number one is, I'll try anything. We got a new website going up right now because I thought of it the other day and I said, "Okay, here's our new website going up," and so that'll probably be finished today or tomorrow. And the other thing is, I really never quit doing anything if I can still make money, if it's still making me money. Like the wallpaper store, for instance, that was one of my - I probably started that in 1980, and like I said, it's the largest wallpaper store in Texas, and back in the '80s, do you remember, you know what mini blinds are, right?

Jaime: Yeah.

Gary Leland: That started off my business empire, is I bought a $5.00 mini blind sample deck, a $10.00 step ladder, and a $15.00 drill, so I spent $28.00, which is really about most of the money I had at the time, because I was a partyer as a young man. I was not a planner. I'd go out at night and spend all my money on booze and partying. My paycheck was for partying, and if I made it through life that was fine, as long as I got to party at night when I was young. I'm 60 now, so I can admit that in my early 20s. But I started going door to door with this mini blind deck on weekends. My wife and I would go out and look for sheets on people's windows, because people in brand new neighborhoods move in, and if they have sheets on their windows, one or two things is going on. Either they've ordered their mini blinds and they haven't arrived, or they've just moved in and they haven't ordered them yet, so you've got a pretty good shot of making some money. And we would go door to door on the weekends, and we were making really pretty good money.

We'd walk up and down the street and make four or five sales, back in the early '80s, and they'd be $500.00 profit per sale, and we'd do this on the weekends. And then one day I got a flyer, I made a flyer, and back then we didn't have a computer, so I cut out pictures out of magazines and typed some stuff and I taped it all together and she ran copies at her work to save money. She was a schoolteacher and we were using the school's office supplies, and I went and left flyers one day when I was at her brother-in-law's house for dinner or something. They were watching TV and I said, "I'm going to go leave some of these flyers." So I just went and left them through new neighborhoods, and that Saturday we had bought an answering machine with the tape in it, and we had a big discussion on this answering machine. "Should we invest the $79.00?" "I don't know. I don't think we should spend that much money. We're not doing that well yet." And I said, "Yeah, we're going to spend $79.00 on this Radio Shack answering machine." Set it up, I went and left the flyers on Sunday, and Monday when we came home from work we had, like, 20 phone calls from people wanting to buy mini blinds.

Oh my gosh, within a month we were just rolling in it, it seemed like as a kid. We were renting limos to go out partying at night and going to Europe. We thought it would never end. And then I started hiring people, and I would give them territories, because Dallas Fort Worth is a big area, and the housing boom was going crazy. So I had people in north Dallas that had everything above 635. Fort Worth they had this area, and this was their territory. They would go through all the brand new neighborhoods in their areas selling mini blinds, and I gave them 60 percent of the profits. So I still got 40 percent of the profits, plus I did the installs so I made all the money off the installs, the profit off there, because I hired those guys by the hour and we charged by the window, and this was never going to end. But here's what happened. And this is my first tip to anyone who's not going to spend much money for a startup, when you spend less than $100.00 for a startup, you'd better be ready for your employees to go, "You know it only cost $100.00 and we can keep all the money."

And three of them got together that represented 70 percent of the sales, so it killed us. So I said, "That's not happening again." So we transitioned into wallpaper, because those wallpaper books, most people don't realize it, when you walk into a wallpaper store like mine and you see 1,000 wallpaper books, those books cost $75.00 to $100.00 per book.

Jaime: Really?

Gary Leland: Yeah. They don't give you those free. You have to buy those books. You might be able to get a few free. They might have a special book or something, or if you're a really good customer they might throw you a bone. Most part though, you're paying $75.00 to $100.00 a book, and high end books $150.00 like Ralph Lauren or something like that. So no one's going to go, "I'm going to open a wallpaper store down the street and compete against them tomorrow." It's going to take them a while to get these books, and they only make like 100 books a year. So it takes you a while to get the library. So that's why we merged into a wallpaper business, is because everybody loved, I said, "I can't do this again, start it all up, and they'll all leave sooner or later." But the wallpaper business has been very good, but I don't go in there now but maybe once every two weeks to take them their paychecks.

Jaime: That's insane though. But that had a lot more overhead, so how did you transition from when your business was tanking I the mini blinds to, you know what I mean, to doing the whole store?

Gary Leland: Well we had already moved into a store setup for the door to door salesmen, because we were making a lot of money at the time and, it seemed like a lot of money leastways when we were young and went from nothing, and we moved to a storefront and that's where they would come in to turn their sales and all the deliveries would be made there and they could even meet clients there because we got into draperies, and a lot of times we had a few decorators, I guess we'll call them, or designers that worked for us, they would work with the customers on draperies. They needed a table and a location. You can't take all those fabric books out there. It's kind of hard to do. You can do it, it's just hard. So that was easy to transition at that point. "Okay, we're going to do blinds, but that's not our main emphasis anymore. We're getting in the wallpaper business." And it's funny though, before I did blinds I did storm windows door to door, and everybody would always say, "What are you going to do when everybody has storm windows?" And I said, "I don't know."

So I transitioned to blinds and then I transitioned to wallpaper, so I've sold a lot of almost everything, almost every type of sale, but I really liked door to door sales. That's why the mini blinds were so easy. I love door to door sales. It's fun, it's exciting, it's interesting, you meet great people, you meet a lot of jerks, but you meet a lot of great people that will teach you a lot of stuff if you're open, just with the information they give.

Jaime: Give us some tips because nowadays, everybody just wants easy, online, Facebook ads, whatever, and nobody is willing to go knock on doors anymore, which is so rare, and can still work. So give us some tips on that.

Gary Leland: It can still work great. You know, door to door sales, to me, is closing. It's all about closing. And you're closing the sale way before you've asked for the order, and I find most people are even scared to ask for the order, and they don't even comprehend if you're scared to ask for the order, which I don't have a problem going, until we raise this up, but I always tell people, I always teach people that work for me, okay, if you're going to go for the order, you're for some reason scared they're going to jump up and hit you if you ask for the order, I mean, they're expecting you to say it. You've been there an hour showing them this stuff. Just use the assumptive close. Just start writing up the order. And when they go, "Why are you writing up the order?" You just go, "Oh, I thought you wanted it. You want it, don't you?" And I'm telling you, 25 percent of them will go, "Yeah, I do," and you'll just finish writing up the order. But just assume they want to buy your product. Why wouldn't you assume it? I mean, you're probably not selling a piece of junk. I mean you may be, but I think most people that are going to be watching this show are selling something that they think is worth the customer's value. So just assume they're going to buy it, but ask them the closing questions way before you ask for the order, so when they go, "Ah." One of the first things that we used to ask is, "Do you own your home?" They don't own the home; I don't have time to talk to them. They're not going to buy my product because they're going to go, "Well let me get in touch with my landlord and see if they'll pay for these." You don't have any way to get around that, so you've got to close that door right then, right? "Do you own the home?" Number two, "Can you make a decision without the other spouse here?" If they say no, you know, if you want to make a one day sale, if you want to walk down the street making sale after sale after sale, you've got to have that question.

You go, "You know, this is great Gary. You've done a great job presenting it to me. I really want this product, but I've got to talk to Suzy." You can't overcome that one either. So you've got to close these doors early. But when I was in sales, we didn't go back. We made our sale right there. That was it. And when I did storm windows I made the sale right there, and I couldn't go back. If they called back the next day, it was a house sale, so you really had to be a closer. Not a sales person, not an order taker, but you had to close to get the sales.

Jaime: And you're really darned good at them. Then how did you get into sports? Like, if that was working so well, where the heck did the sports stuff come from?

Gary Leland: Well sports came from my daughters played softball, or they wanted to play softball, and they did. They played recreational softball, and one of my daughters really just loved it more than the other. She just had a passion for it. Every day at 8:00 p.m. she was like, "Can we go outside and throw the ball?" So I wanted her to play, and she wasn't good enough to play, so I started a team. Right? Your daughter isn't good enough to play, build your own team and put them where you want them to play. They call it "Daddy ball," but that's what it is, and everybody who joined my team pretty much knew the scoop. My daughter was playing short stop, that's why I spent all this time coaching this team, because my daughter wants to be a short stop. And we got really good, and we got really good and we won state championships for Texas, which is a big state and big in softball, 14 under we won the state championship, 15 under we won the state championship again, and then we were favored to win the National World Series at at 14, and we blew the first game, and made it all the way back to third place with 45 teams, which you know how hard that is to do, and at a seven day tournament lose the first game and made it back.

So we made it back pretty good, but when you have success Jaime, and you know this already and probably a lot of people you've talked to, when you're successful, our people want to get on that success and be part of it. So I had all these people contacting me. Well, not all these people, but I had quite a few people contacting me wanting to have their team join my league or be with me or be part of my organization that was the Debomb Softball Organization, and our logo had a bomb in it. It was so exciting at the time. So I let these other teams, and I had already made a website in 1996 for the wallpaper store, and I said, "You know, if I make a softball website, all these people will sell me softball equipment cheap, and I can help my parents out." I really did it to help people out. I can get them equipment cheaper, I can get uniforms for the kids cheaper, because I had like five teams now, and I kind of supervised the five. I didn't coach all five. I coached mine and supervised the other and told them how to have an effective team. And the next thing I knew, I had quite a few people while I was building this site at home, and my wife is giving me a hard time.

"You do softball all the time. You need time for me. You coach the kids three nights a week. You play every weekend. You do too much softball." And I said, "I'm just going to do this and I'll do it in my off time," and I'd call old people that sold things out of their garage, like training aids, because I couldn't buy from any manufacturers, national companies, and I'd call them up and say, "Hey, you've got this training aid. Can I place orders with you and have you ship it to my customer?" "What? Ship it to your customer? I've never heard of such craziness." Yeah, yeah, but I'd have to explain it to them. So I started carrying quite a few things, and then I went to manufacturers and they still wouldn't sell to me, but they gave me the name of distributors. Back then, they were really big in softball and sporting goods. Now, they've all been replaced by online people. There aren't distributors anymore. But I got a few products I can add to it, and since I had a shopping cart already for Leland's Wallpaper, I just used the shopping cart. So when they checked out, it said, "Leland's Wallpaper," but they didn't seem to mind.

And I looked one month, we were shipping a little bit of stuff here and there, and I go, "Gosh, guys," I had all these high school kids that would come and do my website for Leland's Wallpaper after school. I could pay them $7.50 an hour and they were high school kids that were like third year computer at school. They could do it fine. And I spread out a lot of info, by the way, and jump around. I hope that's okay. But anyway, I decided to use the Leland's Wallpaper website, and I looked one day and I said, "Gosh guys, we did $5,000.00 off this junk, off softball junk." And I said, "You know what? Let's quit working on that wallpaper website. Everybody, we're just working on the softball website. That's it. We're going to give the wallpaper website a rest." And realistically this is how it happened. The next month we did $10,000.00, the next month we did $20,000.00, the next month we did $40,000.00, the next month we did $60,000.00, and it kept going like that to $120,000.00, and it kept going. And I kept telling my wife, when it was at $20,000.00, I said, "This thing has started. I'm getting out of this wallpaper store. You better figure out how to run this thing."

And we hit $30,000.00, and I go, "If this thing hits $40,000.00 a month, I'm getting out of this wallpaper store," and at $50,000.00 finally, she goes, "Okay, you can get out of the wallpaper store. I'll come in and work it." She works it two days a week, kind of like as the manager. Well, she is the manager. I don't know why it's kind of like. That's demeaning to her, and she's a very good person and been very nice to me and been a great wife. But the business grew like that overnight, and it turned out, here's the crazy tip for you, and you know you're on the right track when you're making a website. If you make a website and within the first three months this happens to you, you know, you know you're on the right track. And what it is, you get a phone call five times a day with people going, "This is the greatest website I've ever seen in my life. I've never seen anything like this ever. I'm going to tell everyone I know about this great website." When you get four or five calls like that a day, you know, and it turns out, which I didn't know, but it turns out that I had made the first website for girls fast pitch softball equipment. The rest of them were men's slow pitch websites or baseball websites.

Jaime: What year was this, by the way?

Gary Leland: This was in 2000.

Jaime: Oh wow, I was a geek. I was in computers in 2000. That's crazy.

Gary Leland: Yeah, it was the first website for girls? fast pitch softball. There were softball websites, but none of them catered to girls. Like in the fall -

Jaime: Well I can ask you this, because what you're really good at, and I need to make sure that people know this, which I'm really impressed, you also had a podcast in 2004, and now you're doing Blab. Like you seem like you pay attention to the trends in technology. You knew all these things and how they went. How the heck do you do that?

Gary Leland: A lot of things are accidental. In 2004 I saw this blip about, in an advertising newsletter I got, there was this new thing coming out called podcasting, and I said to one of my guys, I said, "Hey, figure out what this podcasting is. I think we need to get into that." And next thing you know, he had built one of the top podcast directories. In 2006 we were in Time Magazine's 50 coolest websites as one of the top 50 websites.

Jaime: You're just like, "And then I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to do that."

Gary Leland: Yeah, I don't spend, that's what I'm kind of known for. People joke about it, "Don't tell Gary. He'll have a site doing it tomorrow." But some of my websites make millions of dollars or, I don't have any one that makes millions. $1 million a year, and then some of them only make $2,000.00 or $3,000.00 a year. So it's all of them adding up that makes me a living, really.

Jaime: So let me ask you this though, because this is the thing that I think is really important, and I'll get back to the technology piece in just a second. You hear about this all the time. There's book called The One Thing, Essentialism, like, Focus and how much we have, and yet you sound like you're doing the opposite. What I've heard from other millionaires is as serial entrepreneurs you do something, you do it to a certain degree, and then you do another thing to a certain degree, instead of, "And then I'm going to do this, and this, and this." It sounds like you have so many things going on, do you believe in the one thing? I mean, that doesn't sound like you.

Gary Leland: Oh I obviously don't believe in the one thing. Obviously I don't, and I think that's a great thing to do and it would probably be kind of boring for me. I do something and I really get hyper focused on it and I really just do, I like working. So I do it because it gives me enjoyment, I get enjoyment out of learning Blab, and we've already got a book coming out called The Blab Handbook.

Jaime: Do you really?

Gary Leland: Yeah, so that's a project we're doing right now, and now, right now, though, you see, all my other stuff that's not sports related is right over here. Kind of doing its own deal. I don't spend much time with it, but it makes me money so I can't get rid of it, and I don't do any work on it really. But all my softball, all my sports stuff, really all mixes and it's like a big wagon wheel, and my stores are the hub of the wagon wheel inside the spokes and then outside it's everything else I do pointing to the inner circle of the wagon wheel, and so it's all connected somehow even though when you first look at it you go, "Wow, that's a lot of websites." Well they are, but they're all connected and they're all promoting each other and they're all helping each other and they're all selling each other, so, but I'm not into one thing. I do something until I kind of get bored with it, but by the time I get bored with it, it's doing pretty good and it's making money, so then I move on but I maintain it from that point on.

Jaime: Well how many people do you have on your team though? Because it's one thing to, because if it was just you, I'm sure it'd be difficult to maintain all of this yourself.

Gary Leland: Well if you count my team though, you have to count my people who work in the store, people who do shipping, people who work in the wallpaper store decorating, installers, things like that. I'd say we probably have 20 people total, but as far as website building and social media and blabs and all that, it was just me up until two months ago, and I hired someone to work full time to help me, and now he does all of the new site creation. We had a real issue. All our sites were built so early, because I got into this kind of early in '96, and they had been updated, but we weren't completely rebuilding sites, that when Google came out and said, "Hey, your sites have got to be mobile friendly," none of our sites were mobile friendly. They were all built before there was mobile. So for the last four months, we've been just remaking existing websites and throwing a new little one in here and there, because we had to remake all our websites. So I did hire someone at that point to come in and start helping me, but up till that point, I pretty much did it.

Jaime: How many hours a week do you work?

Gary Leland: I work a lot of hours a week. I like what I do. I mean, I really do.

Jaime: Of course. I can tell.

Gary Leland: Yeah, I get up at 6:00 a.m. and start working and I do my first Blab at 8:00 a.m., and I usually go home at 6:00 p.m. but then I take my laptop and I sit on the couch. I think I can do more than one thing at a time. Maybe I do a bad job at everything I do, but I can watch TV, sit on one couch while my wife lays on the other couch, and I can be working on stuff, and I can enjoy the show. And I know some people can't do that, but I probably don't focus that much on either one, but I can absorb both. So I work -

Jaime: So that's a good question. Do you have ADD? And I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs are like this.

Gary Leland: My wife says I do. I never knew that, but she says, "Oh yeah, you're the worst case of it I've ever seen," and she wants me, she keeps wanting me to go to the doctor because I'm getting worse the older I am, and, "You need to go to the doctor," and I'm going, "Man, I'm scared I'll lose my creativity." You know? Because I've heard that, and so I'm going, "I'd rather be jumping from thing to thing and have my creativity," because that's a big part of who I am. So I think I am, but I don't know. I've never been diagnosed for it.

Jaime: That's what's so funny. With so many people I've interviewed, they say the same, either somebody tells them that they must have ADD and most of them have not been to the doctor, because it's an amazing thing. It's an opportunity, not a bad thing, normally. At least that's what most of the millionaires I've interviewed are. Even though sometimes it's a little hard to handle, right?

Gary Leland: Yeah, I'll be doing something and I'll be getting into something else and I'll be like, "What was I working on here?" I have that problem a lot, but maybe because I put so many hours in. But I think from the fact that I just like everything I do, or I wouldn't do it. And I have a whole thing, and I don't play golf, because to play golf and be good at it, you've got to play three, it takes three hours to play a game of golf, let's say. To be good, you've got to play three days a week, right? I don't have the time to play golf, and I'm not going to play if I'm not good. And I don't want to do anything I'm not good at, and I think I'm good at most of the stuff I do, so it's fun. So it's my way of doing golf is like, starting a new project, I guess.

Jaime: So what do you see coming up? So Blab, because you were doing Periscope and then you switched to Blab. And I know not everybody knows what they are, but they're live streaming platforms. And I love seeing, because you have such a history of getting on the new, cool thing. So if you see what's coming, tell me what you predict with live streaming and what's going to work and not work and all that.

Gary Leland: Well this live streaming stuff is just starting to take off. I think Blab, this is just my opinion, but I think with their purchase of Podclear, they want to be a major, major podcast player. I had an email from Sean, who is the CEO, last night, wanting to do some stuff with Podcast Movement, as you know is the world's biggest podcast convention. So he's contacted me and we've talked, just starting to talk, so I can't say we've talked. The conversation is starting about doing some stuff with Podcast Movement, but I think Blab is fantastic. I've really jumped on board on probably four things in a major way. One was websites, when I first started that, another one was podcasting, I first started that, Second Life. That didn't take off like I thought, but I made a ton of money in Second Life.

Jaime: Really?

Gary Leland: Yeah, for having a good time. I learned how to build stuff. While everybody else was in there partying and having sex and drinking in Second Life, I was in there building stuff. If you look at Gary's avatar, he was in there building stuff to make money all the time. And I was buying and selling land. I had a great time in Second Life. And this is my fourth thing. I really think Blab is going to, I think Blab is really going to take off for some reason. I really feel that way. I think you need to get in there. For instance, I bought fastpitchblab.com, softballblab.com, I don't want anyone else having those, so we're talking a Blab book, I do a Blab every morning at 8:00 a.m., every other week I do another one with Paul Culligan and Rob Walsh, Today in Podcasting every other Wednesday at 3:00 p.m., and then I'm starting to sell stuff on my softball Blab, which I'm just experimenting at is item of the day, and I get on there and I go, "Hey, for the next 24 hours these shoes, normally $79.95," it probably sounds pretty corny, doesn't it? "Your price, $39.95. 24 hours only." And I'm selling stuff though, and I have very few people who watch the show.

So that's another thing where it's trying to make money at it. Because I like doing stuff, but I really like making money. I don't like making money as much as I do making sales. I like making sales. I used to work for a company where I was expected to make two or three sales a year, Canteen Food and Vending Corporation, where one of my customers would be General Motors, and we did their food cafeterias. Because they lose a lot of money and have bad food when they do it. We lose less money, but they still lose money, it would happen, and the food was better. So that was when I actually quit work to go to the mini blind business. That's when I quit and it was January and I'd just closed my hospital account, that I got a sale and I had already met my quota for the whole year, so that was kind of hard to quit. I wanted my wife to quit, because I'm going, "I've already made my quota for the year and I've got a car and I've got all this stuff," and she was like, "No, no, I can't quit," so I quit. But I didn't like that job because I only made one or two sales a year.

I like making sales. I like going down the street. I tell you, there's nothing better than going down the street or walking out of that house with $1,000.00 check in your pocket. I mean there's nothing better.

Jaime: You've even messaged me going, "Oh by the way, there's a deal on podcasting equipment." I was like, "Oh, well I already have my stuff," but that's so amazing that you would do, you know what I mean? I mean, like, you love that stuff. Is that just innate, or do you think that you can cultivate that?

Gary Leland: I don't know if you can cultivate it. I don't know, I've never thought about that. I know I personally love it. I think a lot of people are scared of work and they think their time is too valuable. So I talk to a lot of people and say, "Hey, why don't you do this?" And they go, "Oh, my time is too valuable for doing that." You haven't ever heard that from somebody, that their time is too valuable to do this little thing? I go, "Gosh, you're sitting on the couch over there watching TV. You could be doing it while you're watching TV." I mean, that's my thoughts. You have plenty of free time, but some people need what you call down time. Like my daughter was dating a guy, and he needed down time when he got off work. I don't know what he needed down time from. He was an attorney. He sat at a desk all day just sitting there pushing paper. I don't know what he needed this down time from, but he'd get off work and he had to sit on the couch and have his down time for an hour. I don't understand.

I don't go to lunch because I don't want that down time. You go to lunch, you've got 15 minutes of cranking down to go to lunch, drive to lunch, eat lunch, get in the car, drive back, and then you've got 15 minutes of gearing back up. I don't need all this down time. I like working.

Jaime: Do you have hobbies? That's the thing, is it working all the time, or do you have hobbies too?

Gary Leland: I think my work is my hobby. Or let me rephrase that. I think I end up finding a way to make money out of my hobbies. I think my hobbies keep turning into businesses. The softball was a hobby, and podcasting kind of was a hobby when I first started it, so most of my hobbies turn into work because I just work at things I like to do. If that makes any sense. So a hobby is something you like to do, because when I started my first website, people asked me the same question as when I started my first podcast. "I want to do one of those," whichever one it was. "What should I do it on?" And I would always go, "What do you really like?" Because to me, if you're going to be like me and you're not turning things over, a lot of people start businesses to get rid of. That's a whole different mentality than I have, and that's a very good mentality and probably makes people more money than I make, but that's not my mentality. So I always tell them, "Do something you like, because no matter what you do, I don't care website, podcast, what you do, after five years it's work."

You might love it starting out, and if you love it, maybe in five years you'll still like that niche, but if you don't like it at all and you plan on keeping it forever, I guarantee in five to 10 years, you're going to hate it.

Jaime: What do people do in that? Because I feel like I have friends that are in that space right now where they've been doing it for five to seven years and they're like, "I'm getting kind of burnt out on it," and I'm like, I don't feel that way, so I'm like, "I don't relate." But what do you give them for advice on those things? Because if they're like, "Eh, I'm not really feeling it," start something else or try and give that away or sell it or what would you do? Because you don't sell anything, I shouldn't say that. So what would you do?

Gary Leland: No I don't sell anything, so that wouldn't be one of my options. You know, I've never had anything that I've done that I didn't really like, because I don't start doing anything I don't really like.

Jaime: So even after five years you still love doing it?

Gary Leland: I don't like wallpaper anymore. I can admit that, so I would say yeah, get rid of it. In my case, I got someone else to take it over and I just go over to give them their paychecks. I don't work in there anymore, but yeah, if you can turn it big enough so that it's making enough money that you don't need to be there and you can have someone take it over, then that's the key on that. If you hate it, start another thing on the side here and let it grow because I think your excitement will probably help the other thing grow to surpass what you hate, and then it's just like leaving a job. You're going, "Gosh, I've got this thing over here that I only have 20 hours to do because I have to spend 40 hours here. I sure would like to be able to spend 60 hours over here," and that's what I would do, is I would start doing something else. But like I said, if you can sell it, I've never been able to sell anything and I've never tried. So I don't know much about that. What I know I know pretty well, but there's a lot of things I don't know, and that's one.

Jaime: So give me some tips, because I know we have to start wrapping up in a minute. Give me some tips on Blab. Because number one, I think the name of the company is just kind of weird. I feel weird saying "Blab" all the time, and so, but you really see this as a thing, so give me some tips.

Gary Leland: Well number one, if you're on Blab, change your topic as your thing changes. I notice a lot of people don't do that. Change your topic, because when you start out, like this morning our conversation, I have the same cohost every Tuesday, another cohost Wednesday, and another cohost Thursday, and it's their shows. They tell me what the topic is going to be and they do the shows. I just provide the space, and I'm kind of like the cohost with them. So it's their show. So this morning's show was just about WordPress with a great guy I've gotten to know, and I can't think of his name. I feel terrible now. But anyway, as the show started progressing, we went from talking about WordPress themes to plugins. So I changed the topic, "WordPress Plugins, which one should you have?" And then told everybody to hit that up on Twitter. Then 20 minutes later, or five minutes later, whatever I change it to, "WordPress Plugins, what are your favorite ones?" And I told everybody to hit the little bird and Twitter that out. And then later it was - Someone made a comment, we were talking about security, and he said, "Those lessons are killing me."

And I said, "Lessons, are they killing WordPress?" And hit that up. So you want to keep the topic going out, because you don't know what topic is going to appeal to somebody who's on there.

Jaime: Oh, and then you ask them to Tweet it all. Interesting.

Gary Leland: Yeah, so the topic is the same, but you know, you could start that on WordPress and 45 minutes later, with the way Blab goes, you might be talking about barbeque. I mean, you know, "I was at a WordPress party and they had the greatest barbeque. Let me give you this recipe."

Jaime: Well that's what's so - I've done a bunch of Blabs and what's so funny is I talk, and I go over the place too, right? So we went from talking business to talking comic book movies, and I'm like, "Do people even care about this?"

Gary Leland: But that's the thing, you had a whole different audience for business than comic books, so that title should have been changed and sent out.

Jaime: Yeah, because people were coming in, and they were like, "So now we're talking about comic books apparently. Okay, interesting." Yeah, and it's not good.

Gary Leland: Another tip that I picked up last night, which I knew but I wasn't taking advantage of, is if you're going to talk and you know during your Blab you're going to have these discussions about a website or an offer and you're going to have a special link, go ahead and put that on a piece of paper so you can hold it up.

Jaime: Because otherwise you can't.

Gary Leland: Right, right. Say, "Hey, make sure and enter for my free book or my free whatever at Jaime Tardy's Free Book," and you hold it up so people can read it, because sometimes they don't catch it, so that was a good idea I thought on that, personally. But you know, who was the first person to tell you to come on Blab?

Jaime: You did. I know, you were like, "You need to come on Blab," and I was like, "Okay, yeah, I need to." Because I was doing a lot of Periscope and what I've been doing lately is I go from Periscope to Blab, but there's way more people on Periscope. I have like 2,500 or 3,000 followers on Periscope, and like 500 on Blab, so it's hard for me to go back and forth. Do you know what I mean?

Gary Leland: But you've got to realize that on Blab, 30 days ago, this is the number I got. I know I was told this number at, we do Podcast Dallas. That's one of the things I do every month. I do a Meetup group, and last month's Podcast Dallas I had someone that somehow had gotten the stats from one of the guys there, and they had approximately 2,500 people on Blab last month, so I'm sure it's grown quite a bit since then, so 500 followers is not a small percentage. So as this percentage grows, as this number grows, if you can maintain the percentage you have now, oh my gosh, you're going to have a ton of followers. And that's the thing about getting in early. You know, getting in early, it's easy to get established. There are people right now established as authorities on social media I never even heard of before because until everybody comes on Blab, "Oh, I know everything," and some go, "I don't know a thing about social media, so to me you really do know everything," they're becoming social media expert even though they really don't know that much.

Jaime: That's what's so crazy, like even on Periscope, I'd get on Periscope and people would ask me Periscope questions. I'm in a Mastermind group on Periscope with Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker and they've been really doing a lot of cool stuff and we just share tips and stuff, and what's so funny though is there's so many people on Periscope asking about how to Periscope, and on Blab too, they're like, so I feel like it's this weird, incestuous like, "Oh, tell me more about Periscope," and that's what every Periscope is about, or every Blab is talking about how we do more Blabs. You know what I mean? It's so weird.

Gary Leland: I think I'm going to start a Blab Mastermind. You know, I told you about three months ago I wanted to get a Mastermind going, and you sent me your information about how to do one, and I just haven't really been able - I've been going out. But I didn't think about getting one going for Blab, and when you said Periscope, see, that's how easy an idea comes. Ideas aren't hard. They're everywhere. Everybody gives you great ideas, you just have to listen and put them into -

Jaime: But you actually do them. That's the thing, most people will go, "That's a good idea," and then not do anything with it, but you're probably actually going to do it, right?

Gary Leland: Yeah, I definitely will do this. Yeah, I definitely will do this. You know, one time I was making this thing for iPods when they came out. You remember iPods? My iPod got kind of scratched, and I said, "You know what we need is a cover for these things." So I had vinyl, cut vinyl, and I was laying it on my table cutting it because I thought you could just wrap it in a covering and leave the window and cut a separate wheel thing for that wheel you touch, and my wife goes, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm going to make a case. I think people would buy these for iPods." She said, "That's your stupidest idea I ever heard of." That's one of the few things I didn't do because she was so - and then everybody was making things like that for iPods at one time. So I was kind of going - and every time we saw one I'd show my wife, going, "Remember?" "No, I don't remember me telling you that was stupid."

Jaime: Of course now, after the fact. Oh man, that's awesome. I know, I really need to do a Blab with you too, and the funny thing is is on Periscope and on Blab, so many of my friends that are millionaires that have been on the show are doing it too. So I'm like, "There must be something to this," because you're on it. I mean, you're the one that was like, "Jaime, get on this." I'm like, "Yes." Looking at what you've done in the past and the trends, if you think it's cool, that makes me really excited about it too.

Gary Leland: You know the thing about it though, I've interviewed, for my softball niche, I have another show which is Softball on Blab. Yeah, they gave me that name Softball. That was cool. Someone else had it on Twitter, and they gave it to me. So that was kind of cool. If you search Softball now, you come to my Blab, not the list of them. So that's kind of cool, but I've been interviewing a lot of people and one of the women I interviewed in softball was the greatest female athlete of all time, as I believe, and she's like 70, and I've never been able to really get her to Skype me and stuff, and here she's going, "Am I on? Am I on?" And I'm going, "Yeah," and she goes, "Wow, that was easy," and we did like an hour and a half video and she's going, "Oh, I could talk all day. We don't have to go," and I never could get her on before, but it's so easy for interviews that it's just fantastic.

Jaime: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, so we will do a Blab together. Actually I'm going, like, "How much time do you have? Do you have another 10 minutes? Maybe we'll just do a 10 minute Blab after this." But it's Blab.im. Make sure, what is your - how do we follow you on Blab so everyone can take a look?

Gary Leland: I'm Gary Leland on Blab.

Jaime: Okay, we'll try and link that somewhere.

Gary Leland: You go to garyleland.com/blab, or you can go to blab.im/garyleland. Either way.

Jaime: Perfect. So I'm going to ask the same last question because we have to start wrapping up. What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million? I know you can only pick one Gary, just one.

Gary Leland: I would say, my action is always the same for people, and this isn't going to be very complicated for you to understand. You probably can guess this. Mine is just start. Go ahead and do it. If you want to do it and you're planning on doing it, just start. Even if you start out part time. I don't wait until everything's perfect. Most of my stuff, how Blab is right now in beta, most everything I do starts in beta. I just go ahead and start it. So whether you start it full time, part time, just go ahead, even if you're just building the WordPress blog, start. There's lots of ways to start, because the chances are you have more free time than you think to start. And that's what I find most people are scared to start. They just never start. They've got good plans, they've got great ideas, but they never take that first step. They hold up that podcast because they don't have their outro ready. Who cares? Outro, show's over, or they don't have their intro perfect, or they don't have a sponsor. I'm just putting it into one medium as podcasting, but just go ahead and start the show.

No matter what you do, I don't care what you do, whether it's a site, whether it's a Blab, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a business, when you look at it five years down the road you're going to go, "Gosh, that was terrible. I'm surprised I made it." And chances are that's what you're going to say, so go ahead and face the facts. It's not going to be perfect, and let's get going. Get the ball rolling.

Jaime: I love that. Where can we find you online? Give us your Twitter and all that fun stuff so we can make sure we're up to date on everything?

Gary Leland: Twitter is garyleland, Instagram, gosh, I messed up there. I didn't get my personal Instagram quick, I got softball one, but it's gary-leland or something. Everything is Gary Leland except for Instagram is gary_leland, and I don't even know how would have that name Gary Leland, but somebody does.

Jaime: That's awesome. So we will make sure to link everything up because I know you're very prolific and you've got tons of stuff and you can check him out on Blab and chat with him. You're so personable, so it's so cool to be able to go, "Oh, we can just chat with you." It makes it so easy, instead of it being one of these -

Gary Leland: As you know, Jaime, I'm real big on chatting on Facebook. That's my medium of communication. I hate email. I'm trying to be email free. I'm not into all these boxes for email. I don't want email at all. I don't like them at all. I barely saw yours this morning. I don't like email. I hate email. It takes up too much time. Everybody says, "Oh no, I can put it all together." No, it's a time waste.

Jaime: But Facebook message, so I get like 20 Facebook messages a day from random people I don't know, and then it just -

Gary Leland: Well you should get rid of them. You should block them.

Jaime: Well no, they're people that like my show, so it's not like they're bad. They're not spammers or anything, they're like, "Thank you Jaime, you're awesome," which is really fun, don't get me wrong, but so it's worse than my email inbox. I don't clear it out.

Gary Leland: But that's not what I'm saying though. I'm taking messenger.

Jaime: Yeah, I'm talking messenger.

Gary Leland: When I go message you and you go, "No, you didn't tell me that," I can scroll through the whole conversation and go, "Yeah you did. Three months ago you told me that," where I can't do that on my - and you say, "Oh yeah, they're both together." No they don't if they're different topics. I search Jaime Tardy in my email, I've got 30 emails I've got to open up and look at, but not if you chat me on my phone which I love, it's the same thing. Text on my phone. Text on Facebook is the same thing, and I'm on Facebook 24 hours a day, so that's why I like it.

Jaime: Of course you are. Oh my gosh, I can't believe how much stuff you do. I think that's awesome, but I definitely will get on Blab with you so we can do that.

Gary Leland: One more thing for you that this is a good one. Do you realize I have over 450 Facebook groups?

Jaime: Of course you do.

Gary Leland: I thought I'd leave you with that one, and I work them heavily. I thought I'd leave you with that one.

Jaime: I think there are 17 of you running around like crazy people and we just don't know. You've figured out a cloning device. That's how come you can do so many things.

Gary Leland: I think I just do a terrible job at everything I do. I probably do 80 percent on everything I do that the average person would do, but in reality all you need to do is 80 percent.

Jaime: That is so perfect. I love that. That's perfect closing advice, because that's what everybody needs to know. So go take action people. If Gary can do it at 80 percent, go do it at 75 percent and go kick some butt.

Gary Leland: We didn't even have computers when I went to school. We didn't have them. I don't even know if they had the ones that you stuck paper in when I was in school.

Jaime: And you're the guy doing the live stream Blab and telling us how to do that too, which I adore. Thank you so much for coming on the show today Gary. I really appreciate it.

Gary Leland: I enjoyed it completely.

Jaime: Take care. Bye.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 51 minutes

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: Blab, Ecommerce, Focus, Gary Leland, millionaire interview, Online Marketing, Online Sales, productivity, social media, Social Media Marketing, technology trend

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Millionaire Interviews

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