Below is the transcription for this episode:
Matt: It is Wednesday, June 19. You might be watching live with us. You might be watching this replay. Whether you're watching live or as a replay if you're here with us on Facebook, leave us a comment and let us know where you're tuning in from just people who tune in from all over the world and it's always fun to see where people are tuning in from, especially because we've got a guest today who's from a different part of the world. And, and I am and most of our community here is US based. So let us know in the context where you're tuning in from we've got Louisiana and Iowa in the house. We've got where else where else? Middle Tennessee what's happening. British Columbia I think that's British London, Texas. Houston. Alright, sweet. So every single Monday through Friday 10am Eastern, we go live and these comments are coming in here live. You can watch on Facebook Live and then the replays are made available on Spotify on Apple podcasts and then also on YouTube, so you can find us pretty or also on some other different podcast platforms too. But we bring on a new guest every single Monday through Friday. Doesn't matter if it's a holiday, it doesn't matter and today we've got an awesome guest, Michael, all the way from Germany. What's happening?
Michael: Hey, thanks for bringing me on.
Matt: I'm pumped that you're here and I'm excited to hear your story and a little bit of your journey. So you're over in Germany. You were doing full time work or food management and still are is that right?
Michael: Yeah.
Matt: Okay, cool. Awesome. And what kind of food?
Michael: It's a little restaurant with a little bit of everything.
Matt: Cool. Well, this is your little side hustle. You are a husband here. Tell us a little bit about here's what I want to know a little bit about how you found us. It’s a little more rare to have somebody who's from overseas because so much of our reach out to a United States or Canada based audience, North American audience and tell him about how you found us. Were you looking for us or what was the deal?
Michael: The deal was that you could raise up to the average guy, work hard and get a good job to get great. So I was living the last 10 years working in different hotels as a waiter and ironically at the end of 2019, I got a promotion to a restaurant manager. And a few months later, the first lockdown came here in Germany. So it was kind of hard to bring everything on with money. I was losing money and to provide for my family. I was scrolling through TikTok like everyone and came across Andre’s page in August/September, I joined Legendary and since then, my journey has taken off.
Matt: Cool. That's awesome. I love that. You just happen to find Andre like it just came across randomly?
Michael: Randomly. I didn't search anything like that and it popped off and yeah, I got interested.
Matt: It's crazy, right? It's crazy. This is this former restaurant manager because he is also. So it's just funny, right? I mean, think about how far away you are in the world. And you know, your paths have literally never once crossed 1000s and 1000s of miles away, and he uploads a video into his phone and somebody halfway across the world finds it and buys something because of his recommendation. It's still a little mind boggling, but Okay, so you find him and and what is there something inspiring about a story or what what caught your attention?
Michael: With the same background I think it was a bit of that, that inspired me to do it. And then I started to learn the things and stayed consistent because everything comes with time.
Matt: It's sort of like if he can do it, why can’t I? When I went to my first mastermind in 2011. I just looked around the room and it wasn't. I wasn't trying to put anybody down but I was like, really? Like, Oh, these guys aren't wearing capes, right? This isn't Superman, or something. They're just normal human beings just like me and that was a big takeaway for me. And so I totally get that I understand it very in a very real way. So you came online about August of last year?
Michael: I have struggled in August and September to start procrastinating more and more but then I thought about what would happen and I started through, staying consistent and doing my content, working on my copywriting. From day to day you will improve and that's the way to go.
Matt: Yep. And when you come online you start to think. Can you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you purchased our Blueprints and started creating content. So right now Brianne just commented, procrastination is my channel. So right now at least you're creating content on multiple different social platforms, Tik Tok, Instagram, Pinterest. What of those? Have you enjoyed them? Tell me just a bit about your content creation. How did you start and what's that better? Like?
Michael: At first I was like, one watch you and think about it, laugh about it or whatever. And now, I have really found every day to make simple 15 second or 10 second videos and it's not work. It's fun to me to make the content. And pretty simple to get out. And everything's going onto these multiple platforms.
Matt: Yep, when you first started was it easy? Or is it hard?
Michael: Yeah, yeah. My wife was the first commenter on every video and yeah, but she gives me the courage and pushes me more and more. And so I got the confidence to stand through and since then, I’ve never missed.
Matt: That’s cool we have such an interesting mix of people who, first time people they're like, oh, I'm never gonna tell my spouse about this till I start making a little bit of money until it starts working. And then there's other people with their spouses, you just said it's kind of their base here are their biggest sports. That's really cool. That's, it's really great to have so you're working all that content creation in and then also doing a restaurant manager job. I don't know if that's the same here in the US but in the US a restaurant manager works a lot.
Michael: Yes, me too. Yeah, I shifted a little bit because in the restaurant, I work now. It's from 8am to 20 PM. And before that, before my son was born, I worked in a hotel with a night shift and everything's so good in response to weddings. And this wasn't going to work for me as my two kids were born and I want to have the time and for my wife was the kind of switch in my life. And I luckily got into this restaurant where I can flex my time but most of the time I'm there from 6am to five 6pm. So today I was doing from six to three. Half an hour later I'm at home now and yeah, but that's the main goal.
Matt: So you're in the afternoon, right?
Michael: Yes, currently.
Matt: For restaurant workers, it's been a really interesting hard year or two. But I feel like I had a brother in law stationed in the military in Germany for a good portion of 2020 and it sounded like things were a bit more intense there with lock downs and stuff like that. Did that impact you? I'm guessing that had that effect on your restaurant. What happened?
Michael: In 2020 we were closed from March to July. We only got the work a little bit and only needed to take off and model also business a little bit. To make a little bit of money. Then the winter was kind of better. But after Christmas, there's a single lockdown in Germany. And that was to last until February.
Matt: Okay. So about a month, two months, till January and February last year.
Michael: I wanted to provide better for my family. And that was the kind of thinking for me to bring it on, and it was pretty hard with everything in the restaurant to manage and go on strike as well. But it worked. And happily it worked. It was a hard time. A few weeks, months and days, but it worked. I got so much from the blueprints or from the 15 Day Challenge. I haven't found anything in Germany that has the same value.
Matt: Yeah, cool. And it took a little while. I mean, a little while. Sometimes it takes people a long time, but it took you a little bit of time. First content creation to you know, let's say making your first 1000 You're talking August, September, October, November, December, almost six months to hit that to hit that kind of like a milestone I guess. And just so everybody who's on the show. We're not making wild outrageous income claims, given Michael's example. So I'm not saying that that's realistic or you should expect that. But in his case, it just took a little while and you know, I just wanted to say kudos to you for keeping after it and going after it because it's sort of like a little. The way it was described to me was like sometimes with an online business, it's like there's a little image of a really huge dam and there's a leak and there's just water dripping out of one side. But over time, if that water just keeps you know what's going to happen, it's going to start to get started to stream and then it's going to eventually break through right. And I thought that analogy was helpful for me you know, about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, when I first heard that because I was like hey, you know what? Yeah, I am getting a lead here and they're like there is a drip. Something's right. I just haven't quite broken through yet. So, you know, that's really cool. And I think you're just getting started I think the cool part about your story and journey and stuff is like you're just scratching the surface of your potential to you know, and sometimes people don't come on the show or they'll post in our groups or something and I finally got 20 leads you know, I've only made 100 bucks. I've only made 10 bucks, whatever. I've only made 1000 bucks, right? And everything is just everything. We talk a lot about mechanics and dynamics but everything is really how you put on the glasses that you put on right so how do you see that? Right? If you see it through a lens of like, wow, I suck and I'm not good enough or I can't do this. Or I'm still only here. You're gonna feel that all the time and it'll come through in your marketing to you. There's a totally different set of classes you can put on. And sometimes Dave in training to actually put sunglasses on he's like, Hey, I've got my marketing class. And and you can see it through a lens of like, wow, think of all of the growth and potential that's ahead of me because really that's that's what humans are wired to feel most engaged, happy alive when we are when we're constantly going after the next hurdle after the next thing to overcome, right so you got so much of that out in front of you, which is really cool.
Michael: Yeah, that's the point. Every video from you or Dave says to stay consistent and you will get their way. For example, this my first live ever. I learned in the last months, you have to overcome these steps to take a step forward.
Matt: Right. Exactly. And I you know, I sort of feel like you know, going live might be a little bit of a trick or a hack that you can start doing more often on your TikTok on Instagram, right. In fact, you can probably go live on multiple at once. I think. I think one big hack for people with a little bit of a smaller following is if you can get past the awkwardness of having only a couple people or zero people in your life, you know, grow in it, and then go live and really teach, like really bring some energy. I was just frequenting random people's lives or affiliates' lives and stuff. And you know, last night, this guy Calvin Hill, I don't know if you've heard of him. He was on live last night. He pulled out like 20 old songs like really old songs right and, and pulled out like, do you remember the old computer discs pulled out this old computer this and and you know I said the storage on it was two megabytes and and he starts going through all of these phones and stuff and then he just pulls out and pulls out the iPhone. And he just says look, all of that all of the decades of innovation has been put into one single device. And this one single device is a device where you can begin to build a totally separate side income using just this device. And he's good at his lives because he's done them for so long. Now, he keeps doing them every night. I think there's a little trick in that in terms of really nurturing that audience and people begin to really enjoy you. So I'm going to put out a challenge to you to try that live element right so you're not going to just go live once a week. I go live on Monday nights, right? And I think people underestimate that, for instance. Well, I think what people underestimate about that is the amount of engagement they can get and the bond you can build up with their audience. The other thing is on TikTok you can use green screen as your background right. Are you familiar with how to use a green screen as a background behind you? Yeah. So like, what I've been seeing works really well for a lot of people as they put a green screen behind. Well, you don't put a green screen, you only need a white background or something. But he is a green screen background and he actually likes a header above your head, right? Top three ways to make money in 2022 right top top three dog training courses in 2022 Right, something like that. Right? And so then, when people have, they're scrolling, they can get a quick headline, I know what we're talking about. Ooh, that's interesting. I want to dive in. Right. And you want to know a really powerful secret is we see a lot of people who bump up their versions of a lot just by doing that. There's my challenge to you this year. Because you're in Germany. I wanted to know if you have played around with posting at different times of the day. What have you learned about that? Give some advice or just maybe not advice but what have you learned because we have a lot of people in Europe and in the UK and Australia all over the world who are trying to figure that out.
Michael: I tried VPN to connect to other types of the word and try different times here as well without a VPN and come to notice it doesn't really work better for me. On TikTok for example. It's completely different. Not different to what time I post it, most of the time, I always get from my time, nine to 11pm is my time on TikTok and this doesn't change when I use it. And that's those of your spot and to get the most traffic there and that's not not at all different on Instagram or Pinterest. That's the same way for me.
Matt: Makes sense. Interesting. It's interesting from my perspective on that because I have such a wide range of people who email me every day and a lot of people are talking about that or people post in the groups. And there's just such a wide range of results. But sometimes the VPN works, sometimes it doesn't. But I do find one thing that seems to be a commonality across many different people and countries is finding a good time to post and staying consistent with that.
Michael: That was my thinking as well. And I can't change the algorithm or something. So do what's best for me. Or what's working best for me. So what I can change work on.
Matt: Totally. And, you know, what's one other little thing? I've had this conversation with people from the UK. I think I've had this conversation with people from the Netherlands too. they're always asking, Well, how do we tap into the American audience? And the first, the first thing that I asked the first thing that I say is, well, what's wrong with your audience? Right? It might take a little bit more time for the people who are on your email list to buy and take a little more time for them to be open to the idea because it's not as common there to learn and to be patient this way. So there might be a little bit more of a warming up period. But once people are warmed up to the idea, I don't think there's a huge difference between, say, a buyer in Germany and a buyer here in the US. In the world of stocks or investments, they would say there's less than market cap there, meaning there's just less capital going around in the marketplace and the market force but I think there's also less competition. And I think that there's very little competition in your geographical area. So the fact that maybe TikTok is more likely to show your stuff there in Europe than they are here. I don't know. I get that there's less people available and it might be in some way beneficial to tap into 300 million people in the US that also just think about the sheer amount of affiliate affiliate marketers content creators here in the US too. It's a different ballgame.
Michael: For people who messaged me, the biggest barrier is the language for them. It's a skill you learn on the way and my English isn't perfect, but I understand everything and try to keep it up. So working on your skills is something I would suggest to everyone day after day.
Matt: Yep, totally. I love that. And it's funny because when we talk about building your skills online, I don't really think of English as you know, like the language. It's so true.
Michael: So for here in Germany, okay, English is common sense for us. But for older people it may not be the case, but it’s important to just keep working on your skills and be consistent.
Matt: Yeah, makes sense. Makes perfect sense. So, with where you're at now, you're still content creators still building your content creation platforms. I mean, you're still creating content on TikTok, on Instagram or Pinterest. What do you feel like is what bit of advice would you give to someone who is newer to content creation? People who are just getting started creating content are nervous. I think you can remember back 6 months ago when you were about to hit post. What advice would you give to those people?
Michael: Don't be afraid to fail. Failure is a good teacher to you and you will make your own experience out of it. Do your thing. That's the point I want to suggest. The only way to make it is to start. The way is to improve and that’s the goal.
Matt: Cool Michael, I'm glad that we got to meet today. Thanks for taking time out of your day. Got a lot of things going on man. Thanks for taking time to hang out with us. I'm gonna put up your Instagram so people can go and give you a follow and connect with you.
Michael: Have a good rest of your day and have a good evening.
Matt: Thanks so much. Alright guys, so his Instagram is down below for those of you listening and not watching It's @michael.van.lieshout
So everybody go give him a follow the whole point of us putting up people's social profiles and saying you guys can go and follow and connect and let him know. Hey, here's, here's what was most valuable to me today. Here's what I found most impactful and you can also find him on TikTok. @michaelvanlieshout You can find him on TikTok as well. We're going to be back here same time, same place as always. Tomorrow 10am Eastern.I’ll be here and Friday, Dave will be hosting again. As usual, so 10am Eastern tune in. See you guys later. Peace out. Have a good rest your Wednesday.
