Below is the transcription for this episode:
Dave: What's going on, my friends, this is Dave Sharpe welcome to Wake Up Legendary. I'm just going to bring this guy in you may, you may have seen his face you may know his name, AJ rants what's going on my brother, welcome to the show.
AJ: What's going on Dave Good morning everybody.
Dave: You know you are, as they say, a return guest right not a first time caller, so this is your second time on the show the first time you talk to Matt. Now, now I have the the honor and the privilege to get to know you, this is our first time talking in, we didn't even talk for any time before so even getting to know hey how you doing a, you know, good to see, that's all happening live in front of everybody right now so kind of exciting, at least on my end.
AJ: Yeah, I'm pretty excited.
Dave: So are you in Oregon, are you in Seattle, or are you in Oregon. I'm in Seattle, okay you're in Seattle. Nice. Are you, are you a native?
AJ: I am a native here. I have lived all over the state, kind of, north, south, east and west but Seattle's kind of that, that home base that I always go back to.
Dave: And so that is where you did a lot of your bartending at where you were, you kind of in the city and working in bars or the same bar or whatever for basically up until either 2019 or 2020?
AJ: I started, believe it or not, there's a place called the Gorge in Washington, it's like one of the best music festivals in the country, or music venues, and I started bartending there. Because I'm like 21 years old and they're like, We need anyone who can serve beer. So it started there but yeah, once I started to get into the actual, real bartending. It was pretty much all around Seattle. I've probably worked through eight or nine different restaurants. I think just like anything, you got to move up, you know, through the tiers of your business and it started beginner level restaurants which I hate to say are out there but they're out there, and you can go into more higher tier restaurants where you start getting good pay, good customers, you know, less of the headaches, better tips, all that good jazz, right, less of the sloppy drunks and more of just the kind of people who can handle their liquor, a little bit and less of the you know the kitchen, you know, messing up your orders and things like making drinks is a small part of it. The rest of it it's like there's a lot that goes on.
Dave: So that's your pass man you did that you got online in the beginning of 2020 is that right?
AJ: Actually, yeah, a little bit so it was more like 2019. I started to get into this but I wasn't doing affiliate marketing, I wasn't doing, I guess, legitimate business type stuff, I was just trying any way to make money online so I went down all those get rich quick rabbit holes that were out there so that was a tough year, I'll be honest, that was a tough, tough starting point. And what happened after that, pretty much at the beginning of 2020, I decided that maybe this just wasn't gonna work for me. So I started job hunting and looking for jobs, and I ended up actually getting one job almost lined up like they were completely working your butt off, you've been trying to learn this marketing thing. We have kind of a beginning position for you down the street. They were in the travel luggage industry, seemed like a really cool company. I'm like okay cool, and they're like, we're not ready for like a month for you to come on board, so I'm like cool I'm going to go on vacation, and then come back. And, well, I went on vacation. At the end of February, early March, and came back to a pandemic and they were like yeah that job's not around anymore. And I'm like, oh, so I started looking at bartending jobs, and then the restaurant industry got hit hard. So here it was at rock bottom, like, holy crap, I have no money saved up now. I've spent this whole year trying to do something, and had to get real serious real fast. And I just like, I'm like you know what, I've been seeing people start affiliate marketing businesses takes time to build those foundations, and that scared me the time part at this point because things were kind of at a crucial point. But I just said, Forget it, let's do it. And I've been through the 15 day challenge before so it was just part of my interest, but I just wasn't sure if I was committed on that time yet, and went back through it got on TikTok, and we're heavy on that for three months and I guess the rest is history from there.
Dave: So you started. Are you kind of full time doing the cocktail cards now I want to talk about that in a second but, but, AJ has created a personal his own branded cocktail cards. I guess it's a game, is that right.
AJ: it's a, it's kind of like instructional flashcards
Dave: Okay, yeah, so good. Well, on how to make drinks and stuff?
AJ: Exactly. Yeah.
Dave: I got it. So that's something that you did. In mid, 2020 is that right after you had been going hard on TikTok doing affiliate marketing exclusively for, what about six months or so you then ventured into saying hey, How can I take this knowledge and you had a bit more confidence and so forth, and you created your own physical product and that's gone crazy is that right.
AJ: Yeah, exactly. Affiliate marketing was my full focus for at least three to five months. That's, That's all I was working on, and then growing on tick tock, I mean when you guys actually start grinding on social media and putting the hard work out there. People tend to notice, and they'll see you, and I did have one guy kind of reach out to me who was a, he's a pretty big Amazon seller, And he was seeing the hustle and he was like, I really think you could do really well if you did something within your knowledge, something you were passionate about and do that type of marketing. And for me, I guess, since the year before that I couldn't find a job or anything I was so scared to rely on one single income again. I'm like let's do it like, let's get as many streams of revenue rockin and rollin ‘here so. And then, that was a long process. That was like a year for cocktail cars to come to market with zero money coming in so that was more of a passion product thing while affiliate marketing was still the full time.
Dave: But now, it has your cocktail card side of the business in it. I mean, your TikTok and YouTube channel cocktail cards are bigger than your personally branded marketing channels, has that become a bigger source of income for you now or is affiliate marketing a larger stream of income for you?
AJ: Affiliate marketing is still 100% of my income. And the reason why is because the cocktail cards, the marketing, I'm telling you guys tick tock, oh my gosh, the kidding on cocktail cards are so crazy, I keep selling out of my product within hours. And my number one issue I have with cocktail cards is inventory, it's my number one problem. So, every single dollar I make I pour right back in. I do have another smaller investor in the business as well who's like he just wants me to just go all in. But it's a lot of money, it's a lot of money for production and shipping right now is really expensive. There's a lot of costs so, pretty much every penny I spent goes right back into the business.
Dave: Wow. So, affiliate marketing right now for you has not only kind of saved your ass when you were at rock bottom, as you put it, but it's also funding a passion project but what also has the promise to be potentially a pretty huge business in the future. If you can get the inventory, you know stocked up and actually sell supply the demand, but maybe there's even a chance that you get them into stores or you are acquired by some other company if you can ramp that up so I find that fascinating that affiliate marketing being such a low overhead business something that doesn't require you to constantly put money back in. Once you have the knowledge to do it initially, whether you figure it out because you're so broke you can't afford to pay attention, or whether you invest in training and get the knowledge a little bit quicker. Either way, once you have the knowledge, if you're taking advantage of all these amazing free marketing strategies that are available right now you don't really have to reinvest back into the business, it just is kind of sweat equity event, you build up these passive real estate, kind of like I like to think of like YouTube videos and some TikTok videos it's kind of like a it's like a it's like a rental property right if it really takes off and it continues to get views it's almost like passive income. You don't have to keep making that same video, you make new ones and add new streams of traffic that turn it into income. I just find that cool that affiliate marketing has funding has funded, you getting on your feet and it's also funding this other business that is really exciting may not be profitable right now, it is if you took the profits but it's got so much promise and it looks like you're really having a lot of fun doing
AJ: Yeah, I kind of think affiliate marketing is kind of like my nine to five, right, it pays the bills, and then the cocktail car business is kind of like my 401k. You know it's gonna be, it's not a long term investment that could pay off really, really big. But affiliate marketing, yeah it's the overhead, the lack of distribution, the, you know, the fact that you can get an audience of hundreds of 1000s of people with a single tick tock or YouTube video. It's incredible how much easier it is. Affiliate marketing is to earn a profit versus a physical, physical product, but they're totally,
Dave: Can I ask that question, I'm having this, like, I'm having this coming up for me right now and I just got to get it out before I forget it or I lose it. What, why are you not packaging this bartending restaurant, drink making this expert knowledge, this expertise, why are you not packaging this in an information product, versus a physical product?
AJ: I am. So the whole goal is to get this on Amazon for Amazon to do all the, all the work, you know, getting the customer service, all that stuff. And then what I'm working on is a monthly, almost like a Patreon thing but it's going to be an information course. It's going to be 10 bucks a month, four times a month I jump on. We do private bartending courses with people that are on, you get specialized videos and then I'm also going to hire bartenders from around the world to come in and also train in specialized videos as well. And it's pretty low cost for something like that. I'm going to have want to set up a feature where the viewers can tip the bartender, right so I can get people, I don't have to pay them 1000 bucks to do a video they can jump in for 100 bucks and make an additional $200 or 3$00 tips that will help bartenders around the world right now. And then at 10 bucks a month, or maybe higher we can scale to whatever price by the end of the year to get a thousand people in this course. So that's an additional $10,000 of revenue coming into the business. And all I gotta do is just show up a couple times a month.
Dave: Because ultimately when we say we're doing affiliate marketing, there's different ways that you can do affiliate marketing, Just in case you guys are new and affiliate marketing is not just selling information products or courses I mean affiliate marketing can be I'm an affiliate for any product on Amazon. Amazon has an affiliate program you guys could be an affiliate for a Jays cocktail card. Unfortunately he doesn't have enough cards for even him to sell so probably you're not going to make much money as an affiliate for his cards, or get your stocks up that maybe you could get some, some, you know your your inventory of you could get some affiliates but Amazon will does have an affiliate program, and that would be an example of being an affiliate selling a physical product. We teach basically selling information here at legendary. And the reason about that packaging your information is because when you do information, in to, I mean I, you could easily do create an E, like a, like a course to where for, You know 10 bucks or 30 bucks or whatever you wanted to charge on the front end just for that front end product you would send an email every day with a recipe basically a card like you have, and you wouldn't even have to have a membership site. You just literally once they bought you put them on an email autoresponder, and they just automatically get an email every day with the recipe, you could link to a video if you wanted of you making the drink, but in that video could be on a private Wistia or a private YouTube right you can hide or make certain videos on YouTube, private, and you wouldn't even have to set up a membership site you just would literally every day for 30 days and you could just have a brief video at the beginning that just shows them how to create a folder in Gmail so they could save all of them in a folder and print them out if they want to if they wanted that right so you got my juices flowing now because what the challenge that you're running into although I think that it's probably the path that you're on. I don't want to get in the way of it and I love when people, Blaze their own trail. But the thing that concerns me so much about physical products in your experience in this right now is the is the, the, exactly what you're going through, you got to buy inventory you get investors involved, all of this stuff, where there are people who are telling you, dude I'll buy your shit right now, I'll buy what you're selling, I want what you're selling your channels are taking off. And if you had something that was say, you know, $1 a day. Right, so each day for $1 I'm going to send you a, you know, a drink recipe. And for that $1 that you spend on that recipe that's going to probably be worth six figures multiple six figures who knows you in the future it's but it's one, somebody give you 30 of those, and then once they come on, they buy that you invite them onto a webinar where then four on that webinar, you pitch them your coaching for 100 bucks a month, or a one, two, or $1,000 a year or something like that, your high ticket comes into play if they want that more personalized hey if you want to know more than just how to drink, how to make drinks if you want to know how to how to upsell customers at the bar if you want to know how to start these, these know if you want to know my, my presentation, tricks or approaches, whatever value you could add all your knowledge and experience that makes you bad asset what you do and give you know how to choose the right bars and restaurants to work at which can mean the difference between, you know, making making 50,000 a year or 150,000 a year would that be worth you investing $1,000 For to work with me personally for a year, how to take your, how to also take your drink, making in create a content channel like I've done and take advantage of platforms like tick tock and so forth, to where you can become build a reputation to where people travel from different cities to come in. See you, personally, how to also build a reputation fame and a brand on social media so people invite you out to private parties to where you can generate 1000s of dollars for me just being present, take in example salt Bay, started out with Joe content, and now has scaled his simple little branding content, dripping salt on stakes, too.
I mean he's working on several I know he's got at least two or three locations Dubai, New York, Miami, he's got a multi million dollar empire that started out with a social media channel this is what's possible. Would that be worth $1,000 a year too. So, AJ I'm ranting. What's coming up for you. Are these new things that are, you know I mean information selling guys so these are why I'm, I'm, I'm, kind of, you know why this is bubbling up for me but anyways what's coming up for you as I'm going through some of this stuff?
AJ: Yeah, it's funny, I think there's a lot of similarities in what I've learned over the last year and what you're saying is, the more digital you can go the easier it is, the easier it is to sell there's less limitations so that's why I want to get into figuring out digital things to sell within this business. I've also made quite a bit of money in this business through affiliate marketing to, like, when people go to Amazon to buy Cocteau cards, they're clicking my affiliate link, and I get damn near like probably a quarter of whatever I made through the sales, I'm getting through affiliate commissions as well, when they purchase other things and, And going into it all that so I love those those are more ideas because I'm always trying to brainstorm how can I go digital, how can I go digital, but still be around the Octocat like the box is sexy, the box is offline the boxes, it's always gonna be available and, you know, I want it to be in stores and stuff like that. But the real money could be in the digital background. And I think that's where a lot of businesses lack the knowledge, and it also goes to show how awesome if you learn the basics of marketing and digital marketing, how you can sell anything. Like, when, when this, when the guy first originally came to me, he's like do you do like a cocktail product I'm like are you serious, like no one's gonna care about learning how to make drink like in my brain, who has been a bartender for 10 years. They wanna have it made for them, they don’t want to go and make them. But I was proven wrong.
Dave: So, so there's a magician named Julian something and he's a young guy, he's got kind of a little, like, like white guy afro, like, I'm talking about he's from the, from the UK, And he has taken his magic skills that he used to just create videos, and basically just generate revenue from like YouTube, you know, like, because his videos got a lot of views and those of you who don't know, as your channels grow. Actually, Instagram just rolled it out yesterday to where they're going to start paying you for being able to run ads on your, on your ID videos, exactly like YouTube does for their content creator so these platforms, come up with all these ideas to try to get you to create content on their platform and pay you for it. Because platforms like YouTube have already proven that it works but he went from just creating content on YouTube and making money that way and doing offline shows to then he packed his information, how to do magic tricks just for the average dude, or chick right to be. It wasn't because you want to learn how to be a magician. It was because you might want some of these tricks to be the life of the party, or to have something cool to do in a social setting to get chicks or whatever, just to be a cool dude and have something do magic tricks are really cool if you can pull them off. But for you, bro. I think that if, which I'm not a drinker, but if I was a drinker, and I had a lot of social stuff around drinking and parties and entertaining and stuff at my house, I would buy your recipes and cards and any tips or tricks that you can give, because I would like to make be able to make drinks to just be able to entertain in social settings in, so I think that there's an opportunity and that's the reason why I said that, that because your channels are exploding and your stuff is, is going kind of bonkers right now. I think the market, if I was to guess, is not just bartenders, it's also regular dudes and chicks maybe, but I'm just speaking for dudes who want to who would want to know how to have 30 drink recipes as well as a tutorial video to show me how to make that drain, so I could just be cooler at my little parties that I had, you know what I mean.
AJ: Yeah, and it's been, it's been really shocking. I looked at the analytics and we made this thing to be as masculine as possible right, I'm thinking dudes with old fashioned Manhattan's if girls by great that'll be an added bonus, it's like, 80% women buying.
Dave: Woe are you serious?
AJ: They want it for themselves. They think it looks really, really beautiful, but it's the perfect gift for the husband, the dad, and the brother's 21 year old son. Yeah, I'm like, wow, that was not at all what I thought was gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's, it's been incredible and I've been, I've been lucky at IndieGogo. It's like a Kickstarter platform where you can be on there as long as you want, because they take the fees they don't care, they're like I'm going off my platform. Indiegogo is just like Kickstarter, you're trying to do a crowdfunding thing to try to build, to buy more inventory.Yeah, so it worked out really, it worked out really well. We actually just crossed $100,000 in sales. This week alone.
Dave: How long has it taken you to raise that 100,000?
AJ: About six months.
Dave: And have you done that all from your audience has that, or has Indiegogo kind of promoted that?
AJ: Indiegogo has provided 4% of the sales.
Dave: So most of the sales are also coming from the channels that you've built, for example your cocktail cards, TikTok channel to where you're sending people over there telling them what's going on I got these cards, I need help, but also if you invest, you're going to get the product, because that's how it works right?
AJ: So I would say probably 80 to 85% of the sales have come from my Tiktok, and probably half of them have come from like five different TikToks I want to talk about. When we went live on Amazon, and we sold out on Amazon in two hours like it was bonkers how fast we sold out, and I'm like I don't want to lose, lose out on this momentum right now so I re set up the reopen the IndieGoGo and redirected everyone there and we ended up doing an additional about $45,000 in sales from that one single Tiktok that were on Amazon. They go to the profile, and I have a big giant thing like we sold out in two hours the pre order, and you'll get them when they're available, and people flooded, it was almost like the scarcity helped.
Dave: I think it does. I mean it's definitely a proven strategy when you create something that is, is scarce, when you have urgency there when, you know, There's limited supplies like all of those kinds of little things definitely and but most of all, they've built a relationship with you, right they five in so I'd like you to talk just briefly about how you have built such deep relationships bonds with your audience, not ever shaking a hand or giving a hug or talking to any of these people face to face, how you've come onto the scene and used the what you've learned both here legendary of course watching other people in our community and of course on Tik Tok, just being a learner and a modeler, what have you learned that has helped you to be so effective with growing audiences.
AJ: Well, I think, when I first started getting into affiliate marketing, I think one of the first things that came present to me when I started having success was the people want to buy from a person, not from a company, so I was very much a company at the beginning when I started Cocteau cards. I was rehashing old YouTube videos, I was just putting the product up there. And I think once I started having so much success with my personal account, and taking what I've learned through legendary and just doing affiliate marketing just learning about relationships. I was like what am I doing, I should try this with cocktail cards, you know like, I don't need to be the big business I don't need them to think that I'm just some, some, some corporation out there so I started doing more personal stuff, and it almost immediately took off like I went from 45 followers on my account to, like, 100,000, in less than a week. And it was all about sharing my story, which for a business I was scared to do, honestly I was scared to be like, do I want to do I want people to know my story, do I want people to know how hard it is to build this business right now, do I want people to know that, like, I need to crowdsource as I don't have money like, you know, like I'm like, Is this even a good idea to share with people. And then it just was like, Dude, how many reminders, do you need, is it worth with with affiliate marketing and now it's worked with Cocteau cards and at this point I'm like, Dude, that's how you do business nowadays, you know like, and it's been also a lot more off my shoulders as well because my audience now has this expectation and they know kind of what I'm going through, and the content, the followers are more supportive now than ever. It's wild like they seek out buyers for me, they seek out like the shank. Shark Tank guys gladly comment on my videos like they reach out to all these popular people and get them looking at my content, and you know it's wild because they, they now feel like they're on your team versus in your sales room, right, so it's like a total nightmare.
Dave: Right, they feel like they're on your team versus just being targeted, targeted lead you're just trying to sell something to Right, exactly. Yeah, so give us, can you give us a nutshell, an example of how you use your story in the cocktail cards like what was this, what was the story that you were afraid to say so we can have a bit of context and so people could get maybe an example of how they could do the same thing.
AJ: Yeah, so like I said, you know, a year ago I was, I couldn't even get a job as a bartender because money was tight, and affiliate marketing was making me money like it saved my butt. But, man, when you're paying off credit cards and doing all that type of stuff like you're, it's not like you're swimming in cash, even if, even if I was getting commissions at the time, so I have very, very little money to put into this business I was going to literally start as small as ordering 100 putting them on Amazon, sell those order 200 like very small incremental steps. And I shared with people that I couldn't find bartending work. I didn't have money to invest in this business. So I pulled out I basically got blank flashcards, started drawing on them I created a Facebook group with people that like cocktails, mostly friends and family at first, and started designing them and putting them up with my little sharpie drawn cards and getting feedback from people that would be cool to put on them, and then basically be like hey if I decided to make this a project. Would you guys be willing to invest in, like Kickstarter, and they're all like heck yeah we will let's do it so we're not Kickstarter, my goal is 1500 bucks right to be able to hire a designer to at least make the cards look cool and then I'll do more funding under that. That went really well because the YouTube channel was doing okay at that time. And so I got more than just friends and family in there, and it started to be spread a little bit more, I got five, five grand for it so I got a designer, and I could hire a manufacturer to make me a sample, and I basically I'm just sharing the story like, I don't have more money to do anything else, but here we go, I got this product and I'm pretty pumped. And that's where I, I, that's, that was the entire first story that I told. And people were like, I want that and I want it right frickin now. And when I went to Indiegogo, and in less than 24 hours. I raised an additional $22,000
Dave: Congrats on that so what they really wanted. If I was to put myself in their shoes, yeah, they wanted the cocktail cart. But really, they wanted to support you on your kind of heroic journey right, you're kind of journey from the bottom. Everybody loves a hero's story, and they love to people love to support people who are just working hard, and who they feel are just, we're not given something we're not, you know, we're not been handed a silver spoon but are just working their ass off, being real about it being humble, telling the truth about where they're coming from and even where they're at right now, and that gives people a sense of feeling like they can make a difference, right, and I think that so many people when they deal with companies feel like they have jobs feel like they don't matter, and what they say what they contribute their vote, just doesn't matter. Right. And so, if you give a person an opportunity to feel like what they do. If they take an action if they donate $1 If they vote if they can make them feel like it really is going to matter and make an impact. Then, they feel excited to do it, versus if they feel like or they're just one of millions who, and you're so big that you know you don't need their money or you, they start to get skeptical like, like you're not, you know like, like their contribution is not going to make a difference, I think that we underestimate that and especially when we come into using our personal brands to sell any product or service, which as you said works well in anything, not just in affiliate marketing guys so this is we don't we don't talk about the hero script and 10 story selling and all that because it's just something that works exclusively with affiliate marketing and selling courses or coaching, it works with everything, and you've just proven that. But I think people are really hesitant to reveal that kind of beat in the first chapter of their store. They want to wait to talk about it until they're in that third or fourth or fifth chapter and things are looking a little bit better and they're a little bit more successful right and they can. People are not going to be as supportive as they're going to buy from you for different reasons at that point. I think a lot of people really miss out on what you took the risk to do, which was to capitalize on that first chapter. I'm at the bottom and your contribution and your support or your like or your comment, even if you don't have $1 You're on that helps me, and I think we all miss out on that and so many, so many people miss out on that because we're afraid to not be the successful perfect person, and we want to wait to tell the story until we're in that fourth or fifth chapter, and you took that leap of faith and it paid off big time, am I right?
AJ: Yeah, and that's something I learned probably had to correct myself from getting into affiliate marketing in the beginning, right, we all have that imposter syndrome and it's like, who am I to talk about, especially you know something like legendary like who am I to tell people how to make money online, but I'm still learning, and I'm still trying to figure all this stuff out. And it was probably once I got on tick tock where I finally realized it's not telling people how to make money, it's sharing what I'm learning, it's sharing my journey, and, and bringing it out to them it's like hey, I'm trying to affiliate marketing for the first time and guess what I made 87 cents, and you guys don't know how pumped I am to make 87 cents. Like, I put a video out there. They went to Amazon and bought something. I got paid 87 cents for that like that's crazy. Imagine what, what I could do if I knew what the hell I was even doing like, you know so that's when things took off for the personal business, and all that was. And this this is what I try and tell people who who come to me for help is is like don't try to pretend like like you're anyone you're not like embrace, where you are because it's the most valuable thing you have is rising from the ashes right like people love that because it's more relatable. And if anyone else, especially in like the affiliate marketing niche. That's the only thing they want is something that's relatable. It's like a date and you teach me something that I can do, because I have no clue what I'm doing. If you're driving Lambos and depositing $100,000 checks that are not relatable at all, right. So, maybe for some people that's relatable because there are people out there that want to jump up to that next level but I agree with you 100% It's one of the most valuable points of any business, and I think doing it for a second time with Cocktail cards was like so much validation for me and the strategies that we're learning. And it's like, okay, to hear, like, maybe there's something to these types of strategies in this digital marketing thing because, like, how many times do I have to do this before I prove it to myself and others. And I'm not out here claiming to make a million dollars or anything. It's like, Dude, I've been able to replace my nine to five, how awesome is that, like, I don't have to go work till two in the morning every night now. Yeah, I get to set my own hours, I get to be excited to wake up on Mondays for the first time, probably in my entire life.
Dave: Yeah, it's crazy. And that's awesome. I think we also just underestimate the power and the attractiveness of just, if you're doing something, and you're just excited about it. And just put the money aside, it just, if, if we were all just to pretend that money didn't exist and none of us were doing any of this stuff for money, and just the payoff was just that you got to love what you were doing and actually be excited about life and feel like you had more of a purpose and you were making more of an impact, and you're filling your spirit more. I think we underestimate just the attractiveness of just that message for people, because, again, the money, most people if you say you're making a bunch of money they're skeptical and don't believe you anyways. So, you know, it's like, I've, yeah I just think that that just sharing and being excited energy, like, I think we underestimate just how attractive and magnetic it is just to come across somebody who's just really excited about what they do. I mean, sometimes that's the most I've had people who are not even interested in marketing dudes at all. Come in, in courses that I've, I've, I've had events that I've put on, just because they want to be in the environment of positive people who are super excited about, like life and honest about life, but really, problem solving and trying to come up in just having a positive attitude in trying to grow personally, you know, I think we underestimate that most people are surrounded by people in their life who are absolutely just doing the bare minimum, and are pessimistic about most things and skeptical about most things, and in when somebody comes across somebody like yourself who's positive who, who's, who's honest who's striving to make something out of themselves and rise up from the artists, it really is just attractive, and it's magnetic, and people just want to follow you, even if they're not interested specifically in the topic. It's so exciting to see somebody be on that journey, and get that energy. And I think a lot of us just miss out on that because we put too much emphasis on materialistic things.
AJ: Yeah. And it's kind of, kind of funny when you're, you're mentioning all that it's like I remember, I worked a million jobs, I, I have, I've only maybe slightly enjoyed bartending, it's like the only job I've ever enjoyed waking up to go do. And I used to think, why are some people so obsessed with their jobs, why do they wake up and they're just like, they want to go do what they're doing. Like it never even clicked to me once. Why would anyone be pumped to go to work and then to be where we're at now? Like you said, You learn the skills you can apply and do things you're passionate about. And it's like, I keep waking up earlier and earlier and earlier, not out of fear, not out of like panic, but out of excitement, like, I want to go check on the business I want to go see what I can do today I want to go, think of new content I can put up today like it's, it's finally fun to wake up and go to work, and the best part about all of it as well, is the second I'm done, like the second I'm like, I need a break. I can just go take a break. Like, Whenever I want for as long as I want, I can go Golf I can go to Mexico for the week and do whatever I want, right, and the business is still going to turn, as long as I come back to it, and it's like my mental health, like you said money is one thing, and I don't even really like the money's not even hasn't even been that much of a reward, I mean it's nice not stressing over bills, but it's got to be more the mental health of everything, waking up and dreading getting out of bed, versus waking up. Can't wait to get you meant. Your life is crazy.
Dave: It's a huge man, it's huge. I think a lot of us just kind of don't even realize how stressful some of the things that we do, whether it be the jobs that we have or the people that were around or the things that we're consuming sport, and how much of a toll that takes on our mental health and just kind of deteriorates. So it's not, you know it's it's that stuff is important and I put just as much of an emphasis on that here within our internal team at legendary and try to talk about that. I'm glad you mentioned that. So if somebody was on a checkout page to go through the challenge in, in get involved in our community and were skeptical or at the bottom and feeling like, Hey, I don't know if I can make this happen, what would you say to that person
if they're on the edge, and they're not quite sure?
AJ: I always leave an open invite for anyone to contact me. So that's kind of how I really started in this whole thing. You go to my profile and say, go check or chat with me one on one, and I answered all messages 100% of them. And in chat with them and figure out if they're not going to force someone to do something they don't want to do, I just think that's going to be counterproductive, maybe we can figure something out, but if they're looking for a way to acquire new skills and new abilities to market and be universal, I mean it could literally eliminate marketing now has given me like I have companies like big companies reaching out to me to join their marketing teams like, you can even get a good job, if that's your goal like it's you're learning a skill set that's so coveted that if you can go through for seven bucks and invest a few months of your time, you can go in any direction you want. And I think $7 is a low risk, especially healing seven but I mean, the cost of running a business, especially a physical products business I'm like seven bucks that's like, it's like flipping a penny in the air, you know, but simple acts of low risk, learn a skill. And I think what's even more important is going out there and starting a TikTok or a YouTube or a Facebook group, learn marketing learn how to put your emotions, your story and explain products to people where your grandma could understand, right, like these are all skills that you can apply anywhere in your life whether it's relationships, whether it's going to get a better job. Starting your own business. There's a lot to gain. Very, very little to risk, and that's one thing I do love about affiliate marketing in particular, overall other businesses is, you know, if, if I go all out and I buy high end software and I do all that stuff, my monthly expenses are 150 bucks a month like that is stupid. And it's so low risk like I can figure I can go mow lawns one day a month, and pay for that like, that's not a high risk thing. And, but the thing that you can gain from it is. It's incredible. It's incredible. So I think when you weigh the pros and cons, it's like what do you want to accomplish, and is it worth that little risk, you know, and time has value if you have a newborn child, for instance, do all these things it's like time is so valuable. And okay. Come back to me in a couple months when I won't have a little bit more time. And then let's take that risk a little bit because you're not you got another mouth to feed it's worth taking that risk where you can bring an additional source of revenue.
Dave: Well, but you’re talking about a year later, I mean, there was a time to where your back was against the wall and you and you now you got a little bit more breathing room, but it didn't go back what I think is really cool is if you want, if you if you if you've got to quit. If you've got to do it, and you're willing to apply and learn, and figure things out, not just expect that they're going to be, if you buy a training course, go through it right through it if you get into our Blueprints, go through it show up. If you have questions you're confused about, show up to our Thursday blueprint coaching calls, ask questions, ask clear questions. Right. Ask clear questions. The quality of your questions is going to be dependent upon the quality of your answers, not everybody's gonna understand everything right away. Don't. I mean some people go to college for four and six years to get jobs. This is a training program. If you bought everything that we had sent for our Blueprints, you could go, you could learn everything in 30 days, you know, don't expect to be an expert after 30 days, you can apply that information and then continue to have questions and learn. But if you're willing to do that, then you can achieve a lot and a little bit of time. It's not a guarantee of income, it's not a guarantee that your journey is gonna look like ages. I just, I just find it really inspiring. And really, I find, I find it really an excuse, and it limits, it just annihilating. When I see a story like yours of somebody whose back was against the wall and you literally correct remember pandemic broke, no jobs, remember that. Life's a little bit different for you but remember that. And you had your back against the wall, dude. You went to work, and you made it happen. And that's what's possible. And that's the takeaway for me: all this other cool shit you're doing now is awesome. And I'm so stoked for you that you're able to train, use these transferable skills as you were just mentioning to you know to get into cocktail cards and teaching and training and adding value but man, your back was against the wall, and you made it happen. And, and you did it relatively quickly compared to, say, other paths out there. Other schooling and so forth. And that man, then that is really, really inspirational ha man and I hope that you're able to take a moment to smell the roses. Amongst all your chaos and success nowadays to just really remember and give yourself a pat on the back of how awesome of a job you've done to get to where you're at, man. Yeah, it's
amazing when your backs against the wall, where you're capable of figuring out how clear your mind can get on a goal, because there's no other path, there's no, I'll do this later, there's no feeling like it. There's no excuses. It's only forward.
AJ: So, it's amazing. And a lot of a lot of what we do a lot of building wealth, building a business, learning a skill a lot of what we do. It's just creating habits over anything else, it's, I'm going to do this before I go have dinner I'm going to finish, I'm going to come, I'm going to commit to three TikToks a day I'm going right, it's all forming habits, and that is something you have to do when your back is against the wall, there is no cheating, there's no shortcuts, and you go through it and then you realize, holy crap, this has been waiting for me the whole time, like, what have I been doing, you know.
Dave: Well, Brother, keep up the fantastic work man, and, and, you know if there's anything I can do to help you out please let me know and I hope you'll come back. Maybe we can get you to come back for a third time in a few months, just give us another update on how things are going.
AJ: Sounds great. Love to be back.
Dave: Alright AJ, take care of my brother, keep up the good work. Stay Legendary my brother and I'll talk to you soon.
AJ: Thanks guys.
Dave: Alright guys, you guys can follow him as I've put it up here a couple of times at cocktail cards on TikTok, as well @aj.rantz, he's a really really cool dude fun content, awesome human being and somebody who has, I think, really, kind of, it is quite an inspiration about what's possible of not an overnight success. But, as you heard his story, he's an overnight success that's been in the making for a few years. But how quickly things can change how quickly your life can change how quickly your, your, Your, your mental health can change. I love that it's not always about money. Money is great money does money does money does equal happiness in some respects, if you can gain some more mental health, right, from it less stress, not having to go to an environment that you hate. Right, so go follow AJ and I'm thrilled about the conversation and love to hear about his journey, and you guys make sure you never miss an episode because every single day of the week, we're here, you can text WUL to 813-296-8553 And we'll send a little text reminder in the morning, get the hell outta here go do something with your day. Have a fantastic day and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.
