Below is the transcription for this episode:

Dave:  Hey, what is going on My friends I am Dave Sharpe this is Wake Up Legendary. Let me turn my music down in the background unless you guys want to. Okay, we'll leave it on the low, low background. I think we need to be fully focused here on this message from Michael this morning. I'm excited. I'm excited to hear from this gentleman he was on before okay with Matt so once again we have another guest who you can go back in time and you can see their journey and kind of track their progress. I think that is one of the coolest things. So anyways, help me welcome Michael to the show. Hey, brother. How are you?

Michael:  Hey, man, I'm good. Thank you for having me here

Dave:  again. Absolutely. Man. You met with Matt last time. And now you're meeting with me? How long ago was that that you were on before with Matt?

Michael:  I think it was in January.

Dave:  Okay. Okay. And how long have you actually been involved with legendary?

Michael:  I found it for the first time in August last year. And but really take action in November, December. 

Dave:  So what were you looking for when you were looking for legendary what was missing from your life and what attracted you to want to start going through our challenge and learning these skills?

Michael:  For me, it was probably the way I found it legendary. I found legendary through Andrei German, Jewish and we kind of have the same background. I'm a restaurant manager here too. And I'm missing the time with my family, my kids. And this is my main reason to give everything I have to get more time with them. Yeah, and

Dave:  you're aware right now you're living in Germany.

Michael: Yeah, in Germany.

Dave:  Okay. Wow. Wow. That's a really really cool man to end you look like you've your dress just like a lot of guys in America. You got a cap on New York. I mean, I wouldn't have thought this I mean, I had to get a haircut because I was so great. I thought my God my wife said I'm getting grandpa vibes from you over there. So. So what happened when you started going through the challenge and then you actually started picking up the skills in real life? I mean, did you think hey, I can do this or what were your initial thoughts when you started going through the challenge?

Michael: At first I was not sure what I could expect. But after a few days, weeks for exit as I started in November, completely, I understand that it's not. You don't have to be a professor or doctor to understand everything that's going on. And that I can do this pretty well 

Dave:  Yeah, Andre is a great example and also somebody who's from a different country than America which I'm American I'm I'm speaking clearly I'm you know, when you watch a video of me, you can tell I'm probably from America. I don't have a you know, I don't have a German accent or peruvian accent or anything like that. So I would think that if you're from a different country like Germany, the first thing you might think is can I actually do this if I'm not American? Is

Michael:  That thought that went through your head? It was the biggest problem. Also for many people I spoke to is the language barrier. Yeah. For me in Germany, I have in the radius of 1000 kilometers, eight different languages. So many people I talk to, not sure if they can do it in English or in America as well. Wherever it is because it is clear for me, if I do it in English, I will reach more people and I will do it in German, because it's limited by the language barrier. So it's kind of the first step to take them.

Dave:  Now, do you think that's also true in every niche though? Do you think that that, that working in the English market, let's say if you were doing something in weight loss, or you're doing something in you know, diabetes, you had some sort of an e book or a course or something that you were selling to people to help them with something in the health niche Do you think that would also be true to target the English market versus the German market?

Michael:  Not really, because I think the educational part is understanding. If you don't understand it right, on your own in English, you can not translate it into your own language. And that's the big problem. I think, if you work in the MMO niche, so many people don't get that right and

Dave:  Yeah, and then make money online is what Michaels refers to when he says MMO so you know some of the jargon, the industry jargon in it, but this was your first kind of online business that you've you've done or was it? It was it was your first

Michael:  It was my first time seeing everything. As I scroll on tick tock and I Yeah, though everybody knows the last two years weren't good for the hospitality guys. In Germany, for example, we got closed many months or restaurants. And so I took the step and go all in on it.

Dave:  So what's different now as a result, or let me ask this, where do you think you would be if you hadn't enrolled in our challenge, gotten this education, developed the skills and started the business that you have now?

Michael:  It helped me a lot in paying debts really fast, because they got bigger sets and the pandemic and that's the reason why I started this everything. So I have no clear way to get out of it all and it hits me a lot. And potentially the next step would be to replace my nine to five and to have more time ignored and for my family

Dave:  Do you have any regrets over the last six months? No regrets? No.

Michael:  Absolutely not sure in the beginning it was sometimes pretty hard because you don't get the results. Sure, as a beginner, you compare yourself to every big guy out there and we'll help get those results there and I'm not getting the same results. But if you've got over these days, weeks for some time, and it will compound in the end your artwork will be spent off and the reason why I love legendary you got so many people who are happy to hear and the educational part is extremely high.

Dave:  So what would you say to somebody who's listening to this who's on the fence right now with either further committing in any way to their business to their skills into really doing this with all their heart and their mind?

Michael:  For me it was to take action and be consistent. Take it consistent, otherwise it won't work and don't take it if you have to take it seriously. And that's the part many people don't get if you enroll in something you have to take action to don't magically happen. Only because you buy something you have to do the work for it to make it happen. 

Dave:  What was the biggest place that you put the work in when you first started when you started marketing and now where are you putting the most work? Where's your focus?

Michael:  First, copywriting was my initial biggest problem. I think the biggest problem I have to learn and that's the biggest part of the blueprints for example, that helped me so much to get all together and find my own way into my marketing in that place.

Dave:  He was really working on copywriting and working on that written word.

Michael:  Yeah, yeah, exactly. For me it isn't a problem to make a five second video on Tiktok or anything that's not the problem for me. For me it was written books, how to storytelling and how I can resonate with people with my story and get it older. It's my biggest problem.

Dave:  Was the copywriters playbook helpful for you?

Michael:  Yeah, it's for me the biggest part of everything you have to give there helped me so much. That was my top one section.

Dave:  Wonderful. If anybody is wondering where that is, it's the last or second to last section. I think. I think it's elapsed, though, in the affiliate marketing business blueprint. You know, why is it in the affiliate marketing business blueprint because even if you want to start your own course coaching program or event eventually down the road, we suggest that you start with affiliate marketing because it's easier to sell somebody else's product first and only focus on what Michael is talking about which Yeah, is copy it's it's it's it's that's the most important part of your business. So what would you say to people Michael, who are spending you know, all their time focusing on setting up their funnel and spending no little to no time focusing on the copy in the words that go on the page.

Michael:  As I started, I took the freedom of finance from you and only concentrated on my copy. My emails are sent out daily to my leads where it gets a reasonable question from them back how I can improve in everything and that's how I work. 

Dave: yeah you gotta focus on the skills not the commodity, you know, the funnel in setting up a funnel. It's, obviously , sort of like unpackaging a chainsaw. It is a tool you do need to get it out and open it up and make sure you know how to work it. But it's not the thing that you need to sit there and obsess on, it's not your entire business. You can be you can be you can be an app, you can be an arborist you can you can cut down trees and you know are you going to sit there and just, you know, fumble with your chainsaw all day? Are you going to go out and sell and market you know, I mean, the chainsaw doesn't even come into play until you've got people who are wanting to look at you and listen to you. You know what I mean? So that's why a lot of people will will focus on audience first before funnel, you know, but it's it's it's fine to just set up a simple funnel and in transition, to start learning the psychology of how to persuade people and the beautiful thing about the written word I think in copy, which is again, we're using some jargon here for those of you who are new, Michael earlier said MMO niche that means the make money online niche I'm saying right now I'm using the word you know, copy well what is copy it's it's, it's, it's words that are written to sell, not words that are written to entertain. words that are written to entertain would be more creative writing or novel writing or things of that nature. This is a sales copy and why they call it a copy. I don't know but that's the word that we write that we as marketers, we don't really need to bother too much with creative writing and too much with any of that other stuff. The majority of all of your content if you only focus on writing, copy and learning how to hook people's attention and get them to, you know, continue down, click, you know, that's enough that will spill over into your videos, you'll suddenly start understanding how to get people's attention more in your video because a video is important to a headline on a sales page. Right? Let's look at it Michael. If you go if you go to our if you go to any landing page out there okay. Well, the thing about the landing page or even the sales page, right, if you look at the copy on this page, just like any other page, and I'll share my screen here All right, let's look at this. There's a headline right here, right? Okay, that's the first thing that's the headline. That's the hook. That's the thing that even in my tic tac videos or even in any other video, I have to have something that I say that catches people's attention and that also communicates my big idea. That's the hook you know. And then, you know, usually in landing pages or whatever, you've got some content, some story or some teaching and then you give a call to action, right? So if you learn how to write a copy, like you're talking about, and you learn how to be persuasive in the written word, that approach translates over so wonderfully to video. And as we're talking about it right now, I think one of the reasons why I was decent on video early in my career, Michael, was because I focused on learning how to write copy early the same way that you're doing.

Michael:  That's the biggest key for me. But the biggest tip I can give everyone who starts

Dave:  It's a beautiful, wonderful, powerful tip. And the beautiful thing is that you know the training that you are talking about and that you went through is back there and available to anybody. So what is on your goal list? I mean, here you are really about seven months into you're really starting your business. You've talked to us a little bit about the strategy. It looks like you've got TikTok going on. You've got Instagram, you've also got a YouTube channel. So tell us about kind of your strategy and kind of what you're up to from from a high level so we can understand sort of what you're up to soon.

Michael: Yeah, first I started with tiktok which is for me, the easiest way to make videos to go live there. And the easiest part for me then was to leverage these videos I found there with apps like synaptic deletes watermark from my created videos on Tiktok and repurpose those on other different platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook reads, I now and YouTube shots for example, these five on my platforms I'm working on and it's pretty simple. You do one video and get five out of it. And that's the easiest part to do for me and the way now, I started my YouTube channel. The first long form content is two weeks ago because I wasn't as I said, not the biggest fan of speaking English in law form or something because I learned English only a little bit from school interest came from watching TV shows I couldn't wait for in Germany so I learned English and it's got stackless But now I got as I said in my first appearance here is always something to overcome your fears and it's a step to take action and you will never know what's around the corner if you don't take the step.

Dave:  I think about you. I think about your journey and being German and that being your first language and how much harder you've had to work than I did in the beginning. Everything is English and I really want to. My hat's off to you, brother and anybody else who's put in that extra work to have to work inside of something that's not your first language.

Michael:  Thank you very much.

Dave:  It's really honorable and it's really, you know, I my barber just left he's a he's, well he says he's an American. Now he just got his citizenship but he's from Cuba. And it's just it's a wonderful thing for me to meet people and see people from different countries and different walks of life who have had very different and in some cases more difficult challenges than I have and I've had tough challenges man there's no doubt in my life but but I've really seen some people overcome some amazing things to be successful in this business, both language barriers, massive fears of getting in front of camera. You know, the commitment that it takes to really stop being so self obsessed with how you look and everything like that and just all about you and be more focused on just serving your clients and what's best for people and how you can help people like what sort of internal struggles have you gone through that you could say that you're now you've now conquered or you are conquering that maybe people wouldn't know about you by just watching your videos. 

Michael:  yeah The biggest part was to reframe my mindset. Got a little bit difficult to size. I lost my mom as I was struggling and that's why I made a pretty friend to get these. Work hard. Get your job, do your thing. And then you will get a reward for it. And that's something I needed to learn to retrain as I got into the challenge, the biggest part for me was it would get me my first click. And from there on I got to read my books now about the same topic and everything. And I started to realize that I do something that I have to do something different. If I want to start this and get this point conquered, I would say choose the levels that I don't fear the biggest things that were for in the beginning. On tiktok you do a little video about what's going on at the start you stress out about creating content or something else. It's a process that will come with time and as I started I was on one video per day. And in the meantime, It's only a learning curve you have to accept and then that's your goal you want to achieve and that's the part you I consider myself it's gonna it's it shows.

Dave:  It really shows that your work shows that you've conquered that and I also have talked to so many people over the years who have had, who English was not their first language and who had to overcome a lot more. Getting comfortable on camera and all that because not only are you dealing with the same fears that all of us have in the uncomfortability but you're also dealing with the insecurity of your accent, or feeling like maybe your English is not clear enough for whatever and I just want to tell you right now as an American and if my opinion is valued by you or anybody else that as an American, it's interesting to listen to you talk and talk in English, because it just it's just different man. It's just so different. You know what I mean? So when I hear like Andrea from Peru, she spoke at our man there's so many people man there's so many people I mean, obviously Andre, you know as well from but there's so many people from different countries who have accents and I think the accent and our differences I would imagine it once once you they feel like right now there are at the beginning like they're a huge liability like they're a bad thing but what will happen if you this is what's happened with me. My struggles have all turned into my great strengths. You know my mess has turned into my message. It was my mess. When I first got started I was obviously ashamed and embarrassed about my history with drug addiction and homelessness. And I was a high school dropout and all this shit teenage father, and I'm like, Oh God, you know, I'm the last person you know that anybody's gonna want to listen to. And you know, I just have learned how to turn those struggles into strength because I've learned that being vulnerable even though I might feel small. It makes me look big. versus trying to love versus trying to look bad that really makes you look small, you know? And so I wanted to ask you this, I thought it was a good question. Did you find it hard to reach a US audience on Tiktok and Instagram being in Germany?

Michael:  Yes, I had some problems at the beginning. But after some testing, I've got myself a card from America. And since then I broke this VPN connection and it's made it easier for me to reach the US audience.

Dave:  Yeah, so you use the VPN on your computer to block the fact that you were in Germany. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's called Cat and Mouse, baby. It's really what it's called, you know? And you gotta you know, these, I've said this before, these platforms don't have feelings. They don't, they don't, they don't have feelings. They're not hurt that you're trying to gain them. They're just like, oh, you know, whatever. They're just, they're robots. They're trying to catch you doing something and they're gonna flag your account, whatever. So, you know, a lot of people I think have used VPNs. I'm not sure if you can use a mobile VPN. Can you use a VPN? On mobile as well? Okay. Now what company are you using for that? Express VPN from VPN? From the one format I think I got one. Of those videos. Just holding a mobile app and it worked pretty perfectly fine for me. Yeah, I used one. And I think I still have a subscription to hide my ass, is what it's called. Hide my  ass. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, man. But it's yeah, it's what it's called hardmeyer. And it's a VPN service. A virtual private network is what VPN stands for. But yeah, hide my ass, or express VPN, as you said, Yeah. For those of you who are in different countries, here's the bottom line. There's no guru out there that's going to tell you like I'm about to tell you. Okay, and right in front of Michael. All right. You're gonna have it harder, man. You're just gonna have it harder. You know what, if you're from Germany or you're from some of these other countries, you're used to that. You're used to being harder, aren't you? You're used to working harder. You're gonna work hard and you can do it. And so what when you get to the top of the mountain, it'll feel that much better man. And I think your story is a great example of that. And I can't. I can't imagine or I can't imagine that there's a whole lot of Germans for you to network with, or are there other internet marketers in Germany for you to network with?

Michael:  Yeah, for example. Christian, you got him last week. Or something? He's not far away from me.

Dave:  Yes, I think I saw him actually in the comments.  Well, you know, I'm just blown away. By how, how global this can be, and how, really at the end of the day, you know, there may be your own ins you know, your own thoughts about your accent or your or whatever. You might have to use a VPN to reach an audience with a little bit more money or who speaks English or whatever, whatever. But I'll tell you what, the ease and simplicity of getting this business set up and started in any place around the world is really something and I think that when I think about the reason why people do not want to really go back to work like they did before, everything happened, at least here in America. We're all realizing that things like this exist to where we actually can stay home and have a legitimate business that we feel proud of. That we can run completely from our home office. On the internet. We don't have to chase friends and family. We don't have to knock door to door, we don't have to go out and host home and hotel meetings. None of that. Stuff. We can work exclusively from our home office in the safety and privacy of our own home and at our own pace. And we can work as hard as we want if we only want to make a small income. Well, we can put forth a small effort but as you said, if you want to scale and you want to make more, we've got people in our community. The numbers that I see on a regular basis are insane. So if you want those larger numbers, then you work hard. You put in the work, you know what the beautiful thing is? Is your fridges right, you know 20 feet tall, be you just go take a nap. Do you want to take a shower once a week? You go take a shower? When I here's the truth, I'm a lot wealthier now than I was when I started and I'm a lot more. I have a lot. You know I have a more organized life now. It's more scheduled. I got you know, I'm over a decade into this man but when I started I had a computer on a desk in my living room. It was on the other side. My dining room patient was right there and my couch was right there. And I just went all the time. One moment it's my living. Thank you  I'm still working in a living room. Yeah, another house that is my other house that I live around is around the corner and I just come over here and work but you know hey, here's here's the deal, man. At the beginning. What else do you have to do? This business can change your life. It can compete in the skills that can change your life. The truth is, I got there by pouring every extra second that I had into this at the beginning. Sometimes I still do . I read the business plan class recently. I told my wife I got to work late. I got to stay at the office. I gotta sleep on the couch, whatever I do, whatever I have to do if I get to work a 20 hour day, but then what medication and I can just do whatever I want. So that extra responsibility comes with responsibility. Everybody wants freedom but doesn't want responsibility. Take responsibility for it like you're doing at the beginning. And just work your ass off and learn everything you can learn and just fully immerse yourself totally focus on these skills. And this business. Man, it'll be the best investment you'll ever make in your entire life. You'll never Bitcoin real estate, I don't give a shit. It'll never even touch the returns that you'll make on the skills.

Michael: Yep, that's it

Dave:  So everyone's Brother, what words what, what, what other wisdom would you leave for our audience today? What else? What should people know about you and your journey before we end today?

Michael: My biggest part is to put in the book and stay consistent. That's my key sentence I always give because nothing happens overnight. Nothing. Nothing good comes overnight and That's my biggest statement. 

Dave:  Couldn't have said it. Better. And if you listen to a lot of old, very old, successful people like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, they're really interesting guys. You know, they own Berkshire Hathaway, which is a company in Omaha, Nebraska, here in the United States. And, you know, they just talk about the same things that you're talking about right now. Is focus consistency, man, you know, they were all Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Were sitting at the dinner table one time with Billy's father, in all the guys he said, What do you think? What do you think's the number one thing that you would credit to your success? Now here's three of the most successful wealthy people in the world. And they all immediately said the same word. They dropped the F bomb. They said Focus. Focus is the number one thing that I could credit to all my sickness and all three of them at the same time, said that word. And you did too and you said it too. And so those timeless principles of focus and being consistent are so much more powerful than trying to be the best or trying to be trying to think that you gotta be so good at something or whatever. No, no, no. All the cute hot dog tricks. All the people who look like they go straight up. Well guess what? They come straight down to the grass just as hard as they go up. It's so much better to just focus over time and just have a steady business that just grows and just keeps growing and keeps growing and keeps paying you month after month. It's so much better than any other thing and it comes from those principles you're talking about. And they did to focus, focus, focus, man. She said, Well, brother, man, I hope you'll come back for a third time because it sure is inspiring to talk to you. Always open for it. Again. Well, we'll share your Instagram link as well. When we close and keep up the great work brother be legendary and I'll talk Thank you YouTube. Everybody All right, my friends, man. Oh man. Oh my god. You know, I got to stop doing these shows in the morning. I get too fired up. You know I really do. You can catch Michael on instagram @michaelvanlieshout and I'm an American completely butchering that but you can read it on the screen. @michaelvanlieshout that's him on Instagram. And over on Tik Tok. You can find them with the same spelling without the dots. Well, here we are. We're at the close of another show at the beginning of another day, you know, so at least if you're in America, if you're in Germany, your day is already in full swing. It's over. It's almost over actually. But yeah, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another episode. Another guest, another story and more that we can learn from whoever we're going to talk to tomorrow. Who is it? I have no idea what I'll find out tomorrow.

Comments

comments