Episode 098 Part 2 – Russell Nohelty

Russell Nohelty 0:01
What it does is marketing and sales are two different components. And people have argued with me when I tell people what I believe marketing is, what I believe sales is. But I’m going to do it again and maybe we can have a moment, we can have a discussion about it. Sales are immediate drivers of money. If you’re like you were sending someone to a landing page to buy that. Marketing is about lowering the cost of the sale later. And so when you are on all of these podcasts, or doing these guest blog posts or doing in these Facebook groups, doing group takeovers or whatever the thing you’re doing, doing joint ventures, what you’re doing is not necessarily making a sale per day, what you’re doing is driving people into your mailing list or just getting the exposure so that the 10th time they see you. They now, the next time they see you with a sales driver in front of them, they will buy.

Richard Matthews 0:57
…

This has been a really fascinating discussion, but we spend all of our time just on the first question. So I do want to move on a little bit. I got a couple of other questions I want to ask you just in relation to your story. Right. So my next question for you is sort of your superpower in business right? What you do or build or offer this world that really helps solve problems for people and the way I’ve been framing this for my guests over the past couple of months, has been like you look at all the skill sets that you’ve built, you know, over the course of your business career, what’s the sort of the one skill that’s the common thread that sort of empowers everything else that you do? That sort of lets you know, show off your skills I guess.

Russell Nohelty 2:34
… a part of that, the main part of that building hype for a product before it launches and like build the building the community that’s strong and engaged and, and ready to buy the products that we have is, is definitely the superpower it goes back to the build the rabid fan base course and why I’ve had success with Kickstarter. Why, like, why I have a pretty good name in the creative community as far as like being creator first and but yeah, it’s definitely that building a community portion of it, which is weird because like my community isn’t so engaged like I don’t get a ton of replies to my to like emails that I’ve done that I put out. But I do get that when I like to put out a product or when I’m like when I’m about to launch a product and I’m putting out free stuff or when I’m when I’m doing blog posts. I just feel it and then like it kind of coalesces for me right around like a product launch.

Richard Matthews 3:33
Absolutely. So my question for you is a superpower like that is that do you think that it’s something that you can develop? Right? Like, you know, Batman developed his ninja skills, or is that something that is just built-in like, you know, Clark Kent and his superpowers that that just came with him?

Russell Nohelty 5:02
Absolutely.

Oh, no, I definitely think it’s, it’s learnable because I was wholly unlikable for many, many years of my life. I was very polarizing. People will love me or really hate me. So I had to learn how to sort of tamp down that and how to find those people. And I think that it’s something that literally anybody can develop. And you have a part of it in you, that’s a that’s, that’s even the easier part is like you have all of this ability to like, create resonance and, and, and build a community that that that like really connects with you. It’s all in there now. It just takes honing and carving out and there’s a book called The Attractive Character or concept called the attractive character which really helped me know like, what I have to be like, in my in when I present myself so that the right people would resonate with me and then they take a chance with me in the creative or they take a chance on my books. You know, I write like I talk, I write I talk like I teach. And so my goal then is to be the most not over the top but kind of over the top example of myself when I do these because I want –

Richard Matthews 5:02
We call that having a distinct personality, right we call it having your distinct personality. So like in your comic book, your comic book realm, right? Every superhero has their distinct personality, the way that they act and present themselves to the world and you accentuate the good parts, right accentuate or not, not even necessarily the good parts, the parts that you want to accentuate. So like in the marketing world, just one of the examples that I know a lot of my audience will resonate with is a guy by the name of Dan Kennedy. Right. So Dan Kennedy is sort of like the father, father of modern direct response marketing. And he’s famous for his no-bullshit, right? That’s him, all of his books are the no bullshit, you know, whatever. And that’s what he … and he taught that way. And he comes across when he speaks and teaches as almost kind of gruff right gruff no bullshit, this is the way it is, you know, and that’s his distinct personality. But if you meet him in person, like that’s, that you realize that he’s pushing that right he’s accentuating that part of his personality because it’s part of the brand. Right? So it’s figuring out what is your distinct personality. And how do you, you emphasize that when you communicate with your audience.

Yeah, so the flip side then of your superpower is your fatal flaw, right? So just like Superman had his Kryptonite. Or Batman was, you know, not actually a superhero, he was just rich and dedicated. What are what is something that you have struggled with in growing your business over the years that you’ve had to sort of fight against? Right And more importantly, how would you sort of overcome that for people in our audience who might struggle with the same thing you did?

Russell Nohelty 6:31
I’m gonna do it. Well, last year, I was suicidal because I tied myself too much to my self-worth of how my company did. So I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety since I was a kid. And it got really bad right around this time last year and God it was really bad, I was having some product launches that were going very, very fast. Products I’d developed for years that were like I would I spent 14-15 thousand dollars on this product and I made two grand on it back. And like the first six months, it was like I was … I had – it was a bloodbath. And so I I really had to learn that my self-worth that I had self-worth that was intrinsic to myself, even when I even outside of the success or failure of a product like I still deserve to exist and I still have value and people still like me even if my product blew up, which is very hard for me.

I put a lot of myself into my products. And I know I do a lot of market testing and to have products that didn’t do well just really like gassed me on a personal level. Because of how much I put into it like I think is like of myself and of what I think my audience will like. And so I had to learn. So it, it came down to something really simple like I would call myself a success or a failure. And it’s really hard because you think that if you start at zero and you go up to 50, and then back to 49, like you will have succeeded and at the aggregate, and your brain would think that, like you were a success now, but that’s not how it works your brain if you go to 50, that becomes the new baseline. And if you go even the 49, like suddenly you’re a failure. And so your brain shorts out. It’s very hard to short your brain out in that respect, and it’s really fun to tie its self-worth to, to your product as you’re on the way up. But for every up, there is a down. And so I really had to learn how to separate and how I did that. Because I started thinking of myself like I am not a failure or a success. I am a person who succeeds or a person who fails. I am also a person who writes and a person who eats and a person who walks and a person that does all of these things. And if suddenly, I could no longer walk, I would still have value as a person. So if I stopped being a success, I would still have value as a person and it would exist outside of this realm. And it really, that helped. I can say that the last couple of launches that we’ve had have been successful. We ended up breaking even on that book series after relaunching it on Kickstarter. And actually paying not just for that, but for a whole nother series of books. So but that was easily the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. And it’s something that has really helped me in this time of that we’re going through now because I know that like if this was a year ago, I probably would have killed myself already. But because of what I’ve done in the past year, I’ve been able to maybe not enjoy it. I don’t think anyone’s enjoying it, but to at least be able to weather it with a more positive mental outlook. Sorry –

Richard Matthews 10:08
Well I for one am I for one, I’m very glad that you chose to continue your story and have you here. But on it, it reminds me of something I just read a book by Jordan Peterson called the 12 Rules for Life. And the first chapter of that book, he tells a story about lobsters. And lobsters have, they had the same sort of serotonin-dopamine receptors that we do, but their brain chemistry is obviously significantly less advanced, right? Their brains are like the size of a pinwheel. But the dopamine and the serotonin receptors work very similarly. And he was talking about how with regard to the whole success and failure thing, right, where, you know, if you get to 50, and you feel good, but you got to 49, you feel like you failed. And it’s really, there’s actually some physiological reasons for that. And they actually, he showed the way that the lobsters work. That they get into battles, right, and they battle with each other, and if you lose a battle, they immediately dropped to the very bottom of the food chain, right? So it’s like you could be the king lobster, and you’re like, you win this battle, you win the next battle, even the next battle, even the next battle, even the next battle. But the moment that they lose a battle, they never win a battle again in the rest of their lives. Right? And they just go in, they become a shell of their former selves. Because the way the chemicals work in their brains went out, they just shut down. Right, and we work and operate very similarly on you know, instinctual level. So it’s like, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re winning and you’re winning, you’re winning, and the first time you have a loss, it’s like, it feels like everything is ended, right, like you haven’t gotten anywhere. So there’s actual there’s like some actual, like the science behind that feeling. We have more advanced, you know, brain chemistry and whatnot that allows us to overcome that. But it’s really fascinating to just sort of know how that works. And anyway, on that whole thing, I’m really glad that you chose to, you know, to choose life and to choose to continue sharing your stories because, you know, people get a lot of value probably out of what you do and what you put out into the world and the stories that you share.

Russell Nohelty 12:16
That story is like one of the most powerful stories that I have, has turned into one of the most powerful stories that I have. Because after that book, not only is this story of like, just brought openness, but after that happened, I made the decision – three decisions. First, I was going to bring back Ichobad Jones Monster Hunter, and that ended up being our most successful launch of last year. It raised 10 times more than the other like 8 launches that I had that year. So it showed that there was a success. I then did the took the Godsverse Chronicles and I relaunched them on Kickstarter and they even made 10 grand in like 10 days, which is quadruple or something what they made all the entire 2019 and then we launched our second Cthulhu is Hard to Spell book. And that made $31,000. And that just finished about a month and a half ago. So between after those like that make making two grand in six months, I went and I made 26 to 50 thousand dollars in the next three launches, because I went back to our first principles, I went back to the products that like made us successful in the first place. And I really decided that that I was going to decide what I was going to have to figure out like if the books were broken, or if my audience suddenly hated everything that I did, or if it was a platform and like what the real process was, and it turns out that you know, we turned it around pretty good like from that first launch started in September and so roughly about three months ago, three months from from from now last year, I went from my lowest point to one of my highest points of my career, being able to bring back one of my most beloved properties.

Richard Matthews 14:05
That’s a really cool story. So my my next question for you has to do with your common enemy. I would like to frame this in the creative academy, that you have – The Complete Creative is that right?

Russell Nohelty 14:16
Yes.

Richard Matthews 14:17
And this, the common enemy is the thing that you constantly sort of fighting against with your clients, right? You know, the thing that you’re banging your head against the wall. If you had your magic wand and every client who came through your academy, you could just tap them on the head and fix that, like sort of mindset or problem that you’re running into? What is that thing that you that that you, you know, your clients could get better, cheaper, faster, a higher degree of results, if they could just change this one thing or changes on one understanding? What would that sort of being for creatives who are trying to become successful?

Russell Nohelty 14:48
Well, I mean, I always try and tell them to go through my build a rabid fan base course but the thing that they don’t understand is that they have to keep finding new people forever. Because people will churn. You know, even in the best business, even in the best-run business in the world, there’s a 10% churn. I mean, I know it’s a little bit less than that. But you can expect a 10% churn in any business that you start, even if you’re doing everything perfectly. And so even if you have 1000 fans, now, you’re only gonna have 900 and then you’re gonna have a 10. And then you’re gonna have like, it’s gonna go down every year. So you have to fill up at least 12 to 15 percent of new rabid fans consistently. So that means filling up, finding a bunch of people finding hundreds of thousands maybe of people that you talk to who are nobody and making them and turning them into like 100 or 200 new fans because they will churn, especially your casual fans. The rabid fans, the ones that really love your work, they probably aren’t going to churn nearly as much as as as as like 10%. But overall, you’re going to get a 10% churn in your company. And so people like to believe that they can do one marketing activity one time, and then they will be and then that’s it. In fact, I’ve got a lot of people who –

Richard Matthews 16:14
And then they ride on the coattails of their success forever.

Russell Nohelty 16:16
Yeah, and we’ve talked about a lot of people who build mailing lists and social media accounts for people and you would be amazed at the percentage of people who get that list for me at the end, once we’ve done all the work to build it. And they literally never use it. And I know they never use it cause I joined every mailing list just to see if they ever use it and at least 50% and probably more like 70% of people literally never sent an email through it. And then I never see them again. And then when I talk to them, they say it didn’t work. I’m like, you didn’t work because you literally never sent an email. I know you didn’t send an email and the ones who do –

Richard Matthews 16:50
I know it. I’m on your list, I never got one.

Russell Nohelty 16:54
The advantage of doing any marketing activity, no matter what that marketing activity, is over time to find new people. It could be doing new podcast appearances. It could be doing guest blog posts, it could be whatever the thing is, is going to have such a magnitude impact over time. That’s the second part of this. Because like these things compound on top of each other, they don’t work like one podcast appearance does nothing. But one podcast appearance, or two a week over the course of a year does a huge amount of good for your business. And what it does is not drive sales.

Richard Matthews 17:33
I can see that in my own business too.

Russell Nohelty 17:35
Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t. It doesn’t drive sales in the way that you think. What it does is marketing and sales are two different components. And people have argued with me when I told people what I believe marketing is and what I believe sales is but I’m going to do it again and maybe we can have a discussion about it. Sales are immediate drivers of money. If you’re like, like yourself, sending someone to a landing page to buy that moment. Marketing is about lowering the cost of the sale later. And so when you are on all of these podcasts or doing these guest blog posts or doing in these Facebook groups, doing group takeovers or whatever the thing you’re doing joint ventures, what you’re doing is not necessarily making a sale per day. What you’re doing is driving people into your mailing list or just getting the exposure so that the 10th time they see you, they now the next time they see you with a sales driver in front of them, they will buy instead of – Russell Brunson talked about this a couple of years ago where he made some video with Dan Harmon – the Harmon brothers, not Dan Harmon – the Harmon brothers, the guys who did the squatty potty or the unicorn … and they – he drove his his his cost of a trial from $150 to $50 on that one singular video so he cut the cost of his acquisition by $100 a person. And that is what for me, that is what consistent marketing is about. It’s about driving the cost down the cost of an acquisition over time and wearing people down so that you do eventually, after a year or two years or two months or two days, they go, alright, I trust that Russell is the authority in this space, and I am ready to go buy from him now, or at least consider buying from him. And it was the same process I used that shows, I would do shows for years and I would never get a sale from a person. But eventually after six months, or a year or 10 shows or whatever it was, I had wearing down that person enough that it seemed me enough that suddenly selling them was easy. And then selling them the next time was very easy. So it took time to wear down and you have to be in front of people for a long time. A bunch of times in a bunch of different ways. You can’t just do it once. I see all of these ads that are sent to me, because I track these and like you probably wouldn’t be but like, people, I am amazed at how often people send me emails, or send me Facebook ads just long enough for me to consider them and then they suddenly go away. So two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months, whatever it is, and then I never hear from them again. Whereas there are people like Frank Kern who like I will never buy a Frank Kern product just because like I like I just won’t do it. Not because I don’t like him or anything. I just like, I’ve never found a product that resonate with me. But I dang sure know who Frank Kern is and I will never forget who Russell Brunson is because they are constantly in front of me forever. And I know exactly the product that they sell. And if ever I wanted to spend $200 a month on like undoing funnels, if that ever became a part of my business, they will be the first person that I went to. And so that is the thing that I wish more people knew that marketing is about consistently reaching out to people over months, years, decades, because McDonald’s didn’t get to be McDonald’s overnight, and they don’t stay McDonald’s, because they’re not out there marketing. They have been, even when they became successful, they’ve just made marketing a part of their life and a part of their business because they knew they had to keep being out there so they wouldn’t be forgotten. And so many of my clients end up being forgotten or never found because they don’t even do the work of doing it consistently.

Richard Matthews 21:37
Yeah, so a couple of thoughts on that. One, I completely agree with you. We have a lot of campaigns that we actually tell our clients to run, I got one of … I call it … funnel, which is entirely based on getting just showing up on someone’s feed on a regular basis. And in all of the various places that you can be in their feeds, whatever, whatever that feed is, whether it’s billboards, on the street, or you know, the Facebook newsfeed, whatever you want to be there constantly and I tell people all the time, that you the biggest thing that you’re fighting in the sales of people who would buy from you at some point, right? Of your potential customers, right? Because there are our people are never going to buy from you for no matter what they’re not your customers. But in the group of people who are potentially your customers, the biggest thing that you’re fighting against is getting them at the right time. Right? And it’s like, they might know you, they might like you, they might trust you. But getting them to sit down and actually pull out their credit card and spend money with you. Right is is is like getting all the stars to line up right? There has to not be an entertaining cat video and not some political scandal that they’re watching and, you know, not a big COVID crisis that’s shutting down the world. And you know, the kid has to not be screaming and like all these things have to sort of line up into the right time for them to want to buy from you. So the way that that’s gonna happen is by you constantly being there. So when the right time happens, you’re there, right because if you know, we tell people all the time, like in the direct response world of marketing, right, we’ll use something like Google ads to run someone to a landing page. And you know, we’re we’ll talk at the average really good landing page from a Google Ad will convert 8% to 10% of people, right? So that means you send 100 people to that page that they went to the went to Google and said, My tooth hurts Find me a dentist, and you’re one of the dentists that shows up there and you, they click on to your landing page, only eight people out of those hundred will actually call your office, the other 91 people, right, they are still, like, their tooth still hurts. Right? There’s still a problem in their life. Right? But maybe it doesn’t hurt enough right now. Or maybe when they got to the landing page, you know, something happened, or maybe they got there and they don’t have enough money right now. Or maybe you know, there’s all these things that could happen. So the question is, what do you do with those other 91 people? Right, who you know, are potentially your audience. And that’s where you have to come in and start being creative with your marketing and doing things like retargeting and doing things like showing up at the events and showing up online and doing podcast appearances. So everywhere they go, they’re seeing you, right? And they’re like, Oh, yeah, my tooth hurts. And that guy knows how to fix my toothache. Right? You want to be top of mind. So when they get to the point where they’re like, okay, I really have to take care of this tooth. I can’t handle it anymore. They’re gonna be like, Oh, you know what, I need to call that guy because he fixes teeth. And that’s how marketing is done.

Russell Nohelty 24:22
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s, it’s so simple. And I’ll give you an example of a friend of mine. So a friend of mine runs a company called Buño Books. … don’t know if it’s Buno or Buño. Pretty sure it’s Buño cause it’s in enye. And he’s been releasing this book called Warm Blood for a couple of months. He’s been talking about it and talking about it and talking about it and talking about it, how much he liked and I’ve just been seeing this image in my feed like every few days. Now my panda looks really good. Looks really good. Looks really good. And yesterday is like, hey, it just released yesterday. And I was like, and he’s like, it’s only 10 bucks. I was like, oh, All right, man, like and I went and I bought it like that time at that moment because like, the messaging was right and like it was out, it wasn’t in preorder and like it, and like I’m gonna deliver it, it’s gonna be delivered in a couple of days. And I’m like, really excited to like, get this book because I’ve seen it a bunch of times, and I’ve gotten I’ve grown. I’ve grown my affinity towards it over time. And, but that only happened because he didn’t stop targeting me and getting stuff to my feed. And so often, there’s another one I’m just gonna I’m just gonna go with another one because I just thought of it. It’s like, people think that marketing is disgusting. Like, even the people that do it but aren’t like committed to it. Like they’re like, I don’t want to be like spam to them. Like I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be like, like, like the thing and I’m like, look like here’s the thing, like, you might not like target ads, or target like stuff, but I guarantee you there are people out there like that wait all week to see what Target has on sale like that is their like holy grail of thing like they want to – they are waiting for that Sunday paper –

Richard Matthews 26:08
My mom loves Target.

Russell Nohelty 26:09
Yeah, my mom would like would get the paper just to get the ad for Safeway or it’s Ralph’s over here or Bonds or whatever it is like the food store like she would wait. To me that’s garbage. But to her, it was like the reason to get the paper because she would then see what the sales were on that for that week. You know, it could be clothes, it could be books, whatever the thing is, it might be trash to you, but every single person I’ve ever met has some email that they’re happy to get that they’re excited to get every week because it like is it might be … and maybe like an inspirational thing and might be like a Groupon ad thing but whatever it is, they are excited to get it. And I wish people would start thinking about not that their stuff is spam. But how do they find the people who are going to treat their ad their email like a like the treasure that that is.

Richard Matthews 27:15
Yeah, that’s just understanding who your people are. Right? And realizing so because it’s a mistake I think a lot of entrepreneurs make is they try to think that their business is for everyone, right? And if someone doesn’t like it, … your business isn’t likable, right, or your product isn’t likable, and that’s not true, right. Your – doesn’t matter what you do. Somebody hates your business, right? There are people who would not eat at McDonald’s if you paid them handsomely to do so. Right. But there’s a lot of people that love McDonald’s, right?

Russell Nohelty 27:43
I’ll give you another example of something that happened to me this week. I ran a big promotion for like a big Star Wars giveaway. A lot of the stuff that I did in the past was like, giveaways, targeted giveaways for like two brands, and someone I did, I’ve added them to my main email list and some I’m about to release a new book, Kickstarter in a couple of weeks. And so I sent out like the fantasy sampler of like all the books in like the first couple of chapters of each book and like they’re quite good. But someone emailed me back and said, I only collect Star Wars stuff and I went in I unsubscribed them and I deleted their email and I said, you’re in luck. Like, that’s, that’s great, you’re in the wrong place. So like I went in and I unsubscribed you because like, I don’t want you to be getting these emails. If all you’re looking for Star Wars stuff. This is nothing against you. Like you get to do I didn’t say all of this like there’s nothing against that person. It’s just if you want Star Wars memorabilia like I am not the right person to give it to him. And so I would rather have him gone. Even if it could maybe in three years. Like I could wear him down he would try one of my books. There is almost no chance he would ever become a real fan of my work because like he wants Star Wars stuff and he works hard, like, let him have his Star Wars stuff. But I don’t want him on my mailing list because the last thing that I want is to be spam to anyone because this work is hard. This work is so hard when you have an audience that loves you. It’s hard enough to be out there every week, like basically bleeding to find new people and like, and like showing that like in showing yourself and like these ads, there’s so bad a lot of these ads for like micro-targeting offers, and like, I just roll my eyes at all of them because they’re all done. Like, they look the same. And they’re all terrible. But at the same time, I have to be like, man, but you’re trying to be out here and like it must be so hard to know you have a product that’s good. And just be trying to figure out how to make it work and how to make it resonate and how to make it resonate with the right people and all of that stuff. Like, must be it’s really hard to do that. And if I have to then go and say, oh, ad people think my thing is spam. I would frickin just walk away now. Cause like, it’s hard enough to communicate with people that I think that they love my work if I had to now think that they didn’t love my work because the truth is they do. I talk to artists all the time work down on their work, artists who I like, and they’re like, and I tell them when they’re like when they’re insulting their work or saying it’s not good. It’s like, it’s like that is really insulting to me, man. They’re, they always get taken back. And I’m like, like, What are you talking about? And it’s all for them. It’s like, No, I think your work is good. And if you’re saying your work is bad, then you’re saying that my taste is bad. And I know my taste is friggin stellar. So either you have two choices, you can either stop insulting me or you can insult me and I’m not gonna buy from you again. So like what are you what is your intention to insult your best fans. So yeah,

Unknown Speaker 30:47
that’s brilliant.

Richard Matthews 30:51
that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. If you take nothing else from this, this thing that’s a whole in fascinating conversation takes that, right because I so many people, I talk to they don’t like their own things. And that’s a great way to frame it in your head realize that, hey, you have people who love your work Don’t insult them by saying your work isn’t good or worthwhile.

Russell Nohelty 31:10
I’ll be honest though. So people really do need to work on their work and like it’s not good and like those people, but those people tend to be way too confident in their work and think it’s amazing. So this is not if you’re like still working on your stuff and like you’re not sure that you’re but like, once you have fans who actually buy your stuff and enjoy it, like it is absolutely insulting to say it’s not insulting to them to say I really want to get better. I want to make this even better for you and like way more intense like in like, buy better gear or like, try a better artist or I have a different story or like I think this store you’re gonna love also all of that stuff is like absolutely valid to like and grow. But you can’t then be like, Oh, well like this stunk.

Richard Matthews 31:56
Yeah, it’s part of the – people talk about the imposter syndrome all the time. Right? So, you know, I always tell people like there are two parts to the imposter syndrome, you’re either an imposter, in which case you have to improve, or you have imposter syndrome, which means your stuff is good and you just think it isn’t.

Russell Nohelty 32:14
Well, there’s a thing where, like, look, there’s a lot of artists who have a very niche style. And they can then reach out and try a more mainstream style. I particularly like a couple of my friends’ styles. But like, I look at them and I’m like, this is never gonna catch on. Like, it’s just never gonna catch on. Like, it’s just it’s like it’s too – It’s, it’s beautiful, but it is too niche. And you will have to do too much. It’s not that it can catch on, it’s you will have to do too much work to get it to catch on that I think you will give up before then, or you or you’re going to like run out of money to continue on this runway. So there is that. there are some people … some people who need to like make a more mainstream thing. But for the most, the majority of people who are professionals, just need to objectively understand that like, they can’t be bad if a bunch of people buys and enjoy their stuff, because if they are, then they’re insulting the people that buy those things.

Richard Matthews 33:12
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So this has been a really fascinating conversation. I do want to bring it home for our listeners a little bit. One more question for you top one or two principles or actions that you put in place every single day that you think contribute to Your Success and the influence you have in your space. maybe something you wish you had known when you started out all those years ago.

Russell Nohelty 35:07
Alright, I’m not going to do the one that I normally do, because I got that in the middle of the show about the self-worth and the treatment.

So I will say, every, every day, I try to do one action, at least, that will move me forward in some way. I believe very deeply into one thing, and, and having one big, overall overarching principle that has many, many little pieces underneath it that you can work towards. And my goal is to do a podcast record or to write pages or to do a blog post or to find a strategic partnership or to do something not read or like research but like something actionable that I can put forward in that day. I can’t say whether five people or 5 million people will listen to this interview. But I can say that Like I did this interview, and I don’t know if one person or a billion people will read a blog post or a book that I write, but I can do those, those those those pieces with intention. And it is the intention that I think so many people don’t follow up on. They are just scattershot. I’m very intentional.

Why I came to this show? A) It’s about comics. And B) it’s about business. And like, if there are two things that I am known for, it is comics and business. So like, it’s very intentional of me being on this show. Because I think there’s going to be a lot of people who, including the host, hopefully, who resonates with the message that I have.

It’s not just going on mommy blogs. Because like, the propensity for that for someone that like listening to a show about parenting to why do businesses low or want to talk about comics is low unless there was one that was about like that thing. So I’m trying to intentionally move my business forward with little actions that can then compound over time.

You know, for podcasts, it takes roughly 8 to 12 weeks from the record for you to actually be on the air generally like that’s usually the backlog of like a podcast. So you have to kind of, and then it takes a kind of a month to schedule that podcast. So like, you could start doing something today. And it won’t pay off for four months. But you have to do it with the intention of that it’s gonna pay off and then it’s going to keep compounding because once those shows then start coming out in earnest. And you can do then have a pipeline of like the next shows and the next shows and the next shows that are coming out. And I worked in sales. So I know that the thing that you do today is predictive of what happens eight weeks from now, I used to be a sales manager and I would train this into my people as often as possible. The reason why you’re having these big fluctuations is because when you’re at a high you take your foot off the gas when you’re … low, you work triple or quadruple. And so you have these like feast or famine months, if you just did not take your foot off the gas, you could go 40 instead of 80. And you could be doing 40 for every month, and you would get further than doing 40 and then 20 and then zero and then 80. And then so, you know you would have you would be able to do –

Richard Matthews 38:27
Tortoise and the hare right?

Russell Nohelty 38:29
Exactly. And you can then go if you’re doing 40, you can then go 45 or 50, you can sort of inch up over time. But you know, it’s very hard to go from zero to 80 and then from 80 to something higher. So I just know that if I can do some thought – I have two businesses, and if I can do something for both of them in a day, that’s great, but if I can do something for one of them in a day, then that’s awesome too. And it could be before we got on this call I told you that I did a bunch of ads for – I set a bunch of ads for one of my book series. Yesterday I was, it was a writing day. So I did a blog post for The Complete Creative and I did. And I did 5000 words of writing. Today I did a little bit of work for the Wannabe Press. And I’m going to be on record basically from now until six o’clock of different types, talking about The Complete Creative. So my goal is to do one thing, at least one thing every day that can compound over time. The second thing that I try to do every day is learn something. So the podcast is a great example I was floundering on what to do to get booked on a podcast or do anything until I went to Podcast Movement in February. And they kind of put all of the pieces in place. They told me where to go, told me the Facebook groups to join, told me the websites to try and I tried one and then I found another one and now I was found 2 and then I found like two Facebook groups and I found four and I like kind of built out and then and now every morning I kind of have a process where like, I checked three or four podcast sites to see what’s new, the new on the platform, I check my messages, I then go to a couple of Facebook groups and I just do it like, sort of, it’s an ingrained part of my day once I have a habit. But I try and learn a thing, read a thing, and then implement something new, you know, once a week overall. And if I can just keep adding, again, on aggregate one thing a week, two things a week, little by little suddenly like people, people say like, How can you be so productive? Like I don’t feel productive. I just feel like now but now when I look back even a couple of months ago, I couldn’t have had six podcasts booked in one day before. I couldn’t have done any of that stuff. Because I wasn’t in a position to understand the mechanics of it. But little by little over the last few months, I’ve been able to build up, you know, knowledge about how all of this works, and I’ve been able to figure out how to pitch somebody better. I’ve been able to – because I’ve been on so many podcasts that zero that one to 10 to 100 to 1000 was literally all built from like doing a bunch of podcasts interviews and figuring and like the process sort of started making sense because when you’re a guest, it’s different than being a host, you’ve got to like have the process, you’ve got to have the systems, you’ve got to have the value. And so those two things end up then compounding on top of each other. So you’re doing this, do it you’re trying to do one thing a day, or a couple of things a day, hopefully, but one thing a day, and then you’re trying to learn something and implement something new. And suddenly like they’re compounding on top of each other and all of them are moving in one direction. And that is the most important part because so often when I talk to businesses, they are doing everything scattershot and like they’re they have six different plans and like they’re all going in different directions and like they have no idea like what each thing is driving to the same so they’re not able to compound those things and Make five or one thing work for five or six different things. So the most important thing you can do is that one thing and learn that thing, but then focus it into one point or in my case, since I have a publishing company and a creative Academy, two points, but they all kind of work together. Because when I find someone for The Complete Creative, they often tend to read my books. And if a creator reads my novels, and then it will almost always come over to The Complete Creative.

Richard Matthews 42:34
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a really important point, too, is learning how to just stack wins. Right. And I. It’s one of the things that like I learned a long time ago, and now, I remember in my business being at a place where I thought it was like in order to succeed, I needed to put in 18 hour days, right. And that’s not that’s hard to do. Right. So I was like, I can work 12 hours a day and I would do 12 hours a day all the time, and I was like, I hadn’t earned freedom, right? I hadn’t earned freedom. So I just like I would work. And I would eat and I would sleep and that was it and realize that it’s actually holding me back. Because you know, you’re doing all the scattershot stuff, and you’re just trying everything, you’re doing all the things. And I realized that once you sort of put, I tell people creativity thrives with restrictions, right? And so if you give yourself like, Hey, you need, you know, I’m only going to work four hours a day, or I’m only going to work six hours a day, or I’m only going to work four days a week, or I’m only going to do these kinds of things. And you have to be prioritized, what’s the thing that I can fit into that time, like the stuff that’s really good? And then you start working on stuff that’s better now. Now, nowadays, my work week is I work four hours a day, four days a week, right? And my businesses are four times bigger than they were three years ago. And because you’re working on important things. And you stack those things up over time, and they really, really grow for you. And you know, the podcasting is fascinating, right? Because we just I just started my podcast, I call it a Podcast Tour, right where we started going on on podcasts every week. Earlier, when was when we start it was been like November of this last year. And we bumped it up to like once a month for like all like half of last year. And then we’ve bumped it up to once a week, this year. And it’s amazing what that does over the course of time. Now, like people all over the place knew who I am and what I’m doing and what I stand for. And it’s helping our businesses grow. And like I’m getting to a point now where it’s like, those are some of the most important things I do in my business is like, I got my podcasts that I got this week and I got the guest interviews that I got on my show. And like if I do nothing else in my business, my business will grow because of those things.

Russell Nohelty 44:45
So there’s an article that I put on my website a couple of weeks ago. Well, it’s it was today now but by this time it’s called You Can’t Plug the Holes in Your Business with Tape and Gum Forever – and it sorry – with Gum and Tape Forever. It literally goes through the process of how you can figure out the things that are the most impactful for your business. And the most fun for your business like your zones of genius, and which things you can cut, which things you should outsource. It is it is kind of my guide to making sure that you’re going in the right direction. But you’re you really do in my book, how to become a successful author, I talk about the one thing and it’s like, if you have this thing up here that is guiding you, then you know that everything has to go into one direction and the things that don’t help you go in that direction. They get cut, and the things that don’t go in that direction profitably, they get cut and the things that go into the business and don’t see return and take a lot of time. But don’t see a lot of they get cut and on suddenly you’re moving everything in one very, very, very easy direction. And it’s very easy to say when someone comes to you with an offer. Does this move my company forward in The way I want it to move. And if you if the answer is no, you say thank you and No. And if it does, then you have to decide if you’re underleveraged, which it sounds like you are. So you can take that time. I try and be underleveraged, too, so that when some opportunity comes up, I can very, I can very easily say, Yes, I will spend the next month doing this thing. And it might take an extra two hours a day, but I have that time. And then and then if something is not moving that forward, or I don’t think there’ll be a big return, or it will take me too much time. I say absolutely not. But it’s because I have that guiding light of what is the goal that allows me to focus everything so easily.

Richard Matthews 46:42
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a really important point too, right? It’s like knowing exactly what you need to do and whether it fits and right I have my litmus test that I use my business like this has helped me, you know, get to this goal or not, and if it doesn’t, I don’t even consider it anymore. And it’s really helpful for finding that shiny object syndrome that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with earlier on in their careers. So that basically wraps up our interview. But I do have one last thing we do on at the end of all of our interviews, something I call The HERO Challenge. It’s pretty simple. It’s basically this. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? first names are fine, and why do you think they should come on The HERO Show and share their story?

Russell Nohelty 47:25
Sure. So I’ve talked about Sheri Fink a couple of times, so I’m going to go with her. She and her husband, Derek, run a website called the Whimsical World. They do children’s books, and young reader books and middle-grade fiction books. And she’s got to be the most inspirational human I’ve ever met. She is incredibly hard working. She does like 100 School appearances a year, her and her husband, and they built this amazing, amazing brand based on like this book called The Little Rose, which was on the top of the children’s book chart for 50 weeks straight. And so they, especially because you want to do children’s books, your wife does, I think they are would be a perfect person to have on this show. Plus she is just filled with amazing entrepreneurial knowledge.

Richard Matthews 48:13
Awesome. Yeah, we’ll reach out and see if we can get her on to the show. So thank you so much for coming on the show Russell really appreciate it’s been a fascinating conversation, to talk through all of these things and the creative aspects of a business. Last thing, where can people find you, and who are the right types of people to reach out?

Russell Nohelty 48:32
Alright, so I’m going to – I have 2 because I’m a writer, and a creator – creative trainer. So if you are a creative human, or you just want to learn how to do your business better, then https://thecompletecreative.com/ has a podcast, Epic blog posts like the five ways to build your audience without breaking the bank, free courses. You can get to my audience building course if you’d like to learn more about that 1-10-100-1000 strategy we’re talking about at https://thecompletecreative.com/audience/ So who should come and over there if you’ve been struggling with your business and you don’t know how to break to the next level if you’re great at making content already, but you’re just not building an audience, you’re not making money, you’re not able to scale, you feel like you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re banging your head against the wall. Those are the people that I can help really well, if you have even a little bit of an audience, if you even got an inkling of a product that’s sold a couple of books that sold a couple of times, this is the kind of thing for you, especially if you’re making products. It’s not that I can’t help services. But I really, really, really can help people that are trying to build a product-based business that can scale and that they can use to do a whole bunch of other stuff, whether that’s through movies and TV, or sticky engagements, or anything else. My most popular product is called Build a Rabid Fan Base, which is not even available on my site right now. But it shows you basically how to go from zero to a bevy of rabid fans. Okay, so that is the thing that I do. The thing that I am most identified with is as a writer, it is the closest thing to my personal heart. I’m a USA Today best-selling author, so I’m pretty good at it, especially when it involves magic, mythology, and monsters. If you love comics, I recommend you checking out Ichabod Jones Monster Hunter. It’s about a psychopath that escapes a mental asylum and becomes a monster hunter but doesn’t know if he’s killing monsters, humans, or it’s all in his head the whole time. It’s very much like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac or The Max or, or Legion, but with like, it’s quite funny, very violent, and it does have that mind-screwy effect. A few like, anthologies then my Cthulhu is Hard to Spell anthology is a great anthology about Lovecraft. Lovecraft believes that if you looked upon the eyes of the monsters in his universe, you would go insane. And maybe that’s why everything’s so crazy now because I came up with this book a few years ago and it’s just exploded on the chart because it is is all about the Gods and Monsters themselves. You don’t see that a lot. And so I really wanted to make something that was sort of about the Gods and Monsters. And finally, if you’re a novel person, this is where I’ve done the most work in the past couple of years on a product called or a book series called The Godsverse Chronicles, it is all gods are real, they’re just kind of dicks. It’s full of mythology, monsters and magic. The first book, And Demons Followed Behind Her, is absolutely free right now on all platforms, and you can get it anywhere that books are sold and try it out. So those are my two, go pick up And Demons Followed Behind Her or one of my other books at https://www.russellnohelty.com/books/ with an s. Book will take you to somewhere else, or just https://www.russellnohelty.com/ And you can sign up for my mailing list to get a bunch of additional free books like Ichabod, the original graphic novel for Katrina, some stories about Cthulhu is Hard to Spell and a whole bunch more at https://www.russellnohelty.com/ and then https://thecompletecreative.com/ has my podcasts archives, which where I interview successful creators about how they built and sustain their careers. Epic blog posts, free courses and a whole lot more at https://thecompletecreative.com/

Richard Matthews 52:15
Awesome. Thank you so much for all of that, Russel. It has been like a really cool conversation to talk to someone who is doing creative work at your level, right. And we know we mentioned this early an interview, there’s not a lot of people who are best-selling authors and going direct to consumer. Right. That is it’s very rare. So it was really cool to sort of peek behind the curtain and see how you’re doing that. So again, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing as much as you did. Before we finish this up. Do you have any final words of wisdom before I hit this little stop record button?

Russell Nohelty 52:44
Yes. I’m going to go back to the self-worth thing, just like remember that all you have is the work that you’ve done. And if you can be proud of the work then that’s everything.

Richard Matthews 53:01
I completely agree. Thank you very much, Russel.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai