Below is the transcription of this episode:
Dave: Hey what's going on my friends this is Dave Sharpe. Welcome to Wake Up Legendary. We have an amazing story today. I think many of you guys are going to appreciate it and relate to it. As you can see, the title of the show is how passion, persistence and community sparked success. But this gentleman has, you know, some, some, some, some other ways in which this business has benefited him. He's gotten his passion re sparked, it seems, once again for entrepreneurship as well. So let's hear a story. James, welcome to the show, buddy.
James: Thanks for having me.
Dave: You're welcome, man where are you calling in from?
James: I'm calling in from Hamilton near Toronto, Ontario.
Dave: Okay, okay, nice man. Nice. Well, I thought it was cold down here, as you know, it is like 55 degrees 5055 degrees. So I throw on a sweatshirt but that's probably summer weather to you huh?
James: Yeah, absolutely.
Dave: You'd love that.
James: Yeah, I would. Yeah, it's time for a change.
Dave: So, what brought you online? Tell us a little bit about your story. In essence, what led you to Legendary and what were you looking for? And were you looking for nothing at all, and something appeared just to tell us a little bit about how you found us?
James: Yes. So it started. I was working as a financial analyst in Toronto. And it's a little bit of a backstory. It started about six years ago and so I was working as a financial analyst. And I was looking at the time before tic toc for ways of making money online. So I went into the foreign exchange industry to try to make money and I found a guy through Instagram at the time, who was flaunting it and had a completely different mindset about money and wealth, but he was he had he was doing like wealth marketing. So he's like flashing his cars in his mansion and everything and he positioned himself as like a best forex trader online on Instagram and so he started a program where he was charging $97 a month to teach people how to trade Forex. And so long story short, I reached out to him and he ended up hiring me to be a financial analyst to help run his company. So I ended up moving to his mansion and we had about 10 Guys for about three months running his company. And that awkward like that opportunity really opened my eyes to how you can actually make money online. So you gotta get a different perspective. I witnessed him making a lot of money he had between 3005 1000 monthly active users paying for a subscription so I use making between 305 100,000 a month from his kitchen counter when I was like in the same house with him, right so really revolutionized my mindset on how to make money and so I stopped pursuing the CPA at the time and dove headfirst into digital marketing tried to bend to learn everything that I possibly can. And that was six years ago, I registered and I paid 1000s of dollars for training all over the internet. I ended up getting burned a couple times trying to figure this all out and I came across Russell Brunson and learned everything about ClickFunnels. And, then ultimately, I was hit with a mental diet, a mental illness two years ago, and I ultimately thought I was crazy with trying to make money online because my friends and family couldn't understand it and the same experiences I did. So they couldn't understand what I was trying to achieve. I was having this mental illness so I was like, give up on my dreams like I just like I thought I was crazy. So I was like I can't. I don't have the guidance to keep getting ripped off online. So it's gonna happen so fast forward to November of last year. I'm just on TikTok. I just randomly downloaded TikTok for the first time and I came across it. I'm not I can't remember who it was. But I came across someone promoting the 15 day challenge and I was like, okay, like, it's $7 it's a no brainer, like, what do I have to lose? So I got into this 15 Day Challenge and as soon as you start talking about ClickFunnels, I was just like, everything that I tried to put together in the last five years and failed. I knew that what you guys were doing was legit, and I needed to know more because you had laid it all out step by step in a way that made sense to me. So I immediately knew that the value of the blueprints so that like my first thing, I couldn't afford it, but I found a means to I was resourceful and I found a means to get my hand printed, because I knew that I didn't want to spend another five years trying to figure it out on my own. So I got the blueprints and I implemented one hour of learning to three hours of implementing and I quickly grew my TikTok channel to over a third and upset almost 40,000 followers in under 75 days. And I have over 1200 email subscribers and commissions like crazy with Legendary and I'm so thankful that I found Legendary and the community here that you have built online. So thank you.
Dave: Wow. Hey, man, you're welcome. You're welcome. That's that's incredible, really incredible story. How does that feel to be where you're at right now you seem grateful you seem happy, but tell us what your what's coming up for you and how this all feels.
James: It feels completely natural to me like I got 1000 followers on TikTok and I started going live immediately and not now I don't like it's kind of similar to being in an MLM. I tried MLM to sell lotions, potions and pills to your friends and family. Like if you want to clear a room just join an MLM. Right? And so, yeah, now I've I've, I've turned I don't have to bother my friends. And family. I've just turned to tic toc. And I found an audience of people that are interested in what I have to say so I don't want to bother anyone anymore. And I can just talk about what I'm passionate about and continue to grow and document my journey online and help others do the same. And implement for their online business as well.
Dave: So was that a big source of stress, anxiety and tension for you was previous business models that you were trying were directing you to market to your friends and family and that's where you were getting all that feedback from them.
James: Yeah, I was getting feedback from them. I was not only trying to market them but I was also trying to like them. I really see the end goal in mind of like making money online but like just trying to getting in the trenches and trying to actually make that happen. I was trying to explain to people the vision, but they were looking at like where I was and then because my vision wasn't aligned with where I was they weren't really taking me seriously. So I was like
Dave: That's the challenge of every visionary, isn't it? Yeah. The hardest people to sell and convince about division are always going to be family then friends. And then the general public, you know.
James: Yeah, so I did what I learned with the blueprints, and I started posting a tic toc on November 26 was my first video and I started posting then I realized I was like, well I know how the chances of going viral on Tik Tok are pretty high. So in the case that one of my videos does go viral I'm gonna need my landing page ready, my ebook set up and like my life, everything lined up so that I can capitalize on that traffic. So I took some time off and I took about 10 days off on tick tock and I built my e book by Cisco. My affiliate links everything lined up to a tee and then as soon as I got 1000 followers, I dropped the link in there. And then literally like a day after I did that my first video went viral, which now has over a million views and I was able to capitalize on all that traffic. So I saw these. I have a video of me waking up and I just have a phone that just says every time I get a lead in Aweber it notifies me that a new person has been subscribed. I just have a whole list of leads coming in so you're feeling and wouldn't have been possible without the blueprints. I truly believe that and without the community to be able to bounce ideas off of Yeah.
Dave: Oh, that's fantastic. As if it was yesterday, and I still have this challenge with various different autoresponder lists in sale notifications and this and that, that go off I've got an email inbox with 109,000 unread emails. You know, just because you know, I passed an email from many years ago, this one particular email and it's just just signed up for all of our accounts. And it just gets sale notifications and email notifications. I mean, there was a time in my career that those lead notifications like every time somebody opted into an opt in page and those were welcomed emails into my inbox because there wasn't much else activity happening. So it was like, Oh, wow, yeah, it's it's exciting to see those emails come in from a company that I you know, just a few days or weeks or months by I had no knowledge even who they were Aweber whoever it is that I'm getting notifications from who's ever sending me stuff? Right? It's usually me sending other stuff, you know, to get other people's attention sending them customer support tickets. Oh shit, now I got you know, so I know that feeling when my first check was $2.50 or something like that. And it was as if it was 2.5 million. But I think for many of us who you know, whether it be and I also just want to mention all the family feedback in conflict combined with mental illness challenges, and then you start to question yourself, you know, maybe I just belong you know what, I don't know. I mean, the things that we say to ourselves are horrific. I've been through it with various various things in my life, whether it be addiction or mental illness, and I've got anxiety and depression and all kinds of, but with with what you mentioned there about, I think the journey to entrepreneurship, whether you when you're listening to what James said, matches exactly to your journey, your journey you can identify because I could with that point at which you just really say, am I crazy for doing this? I mean, and I know that you were, you know, aligning that with specific medical feedback you got, but I mean, I could relate to that just because of this business, I think entrepreneurship will break you down before you break through. I just thought that your particular breakthrough was interesting because it was combined with an actual medical experience. That validated in a way right, maybe I am crazy. Well, what do you feel now about all that? I mean, do you feel that Oh, I may still be on the brink of total breakdown any moment or do you feel that hey, here's a business model I can do and I can manage my, you know, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health outside of this and this can fit I can balance these pieces with this particular business model versus other things that you've tried.
James: So now I've been in recovery now for about over two years, and I've done a lot of my blood work. I've been taking a lot of natural medicine. And I've been able to wean off the hard like antipsychotics that I was on so I was able to really do a lot of work on myself and because I was actually on disability for some time. So I was in a position where I just had nothing but just time just just to recover. And so I've been able to really like hone in on my online business in the spare time that I have and really start to see some results for myself.
Dave: Yeah. Good. Good, man. Good. Well, I think a business that we can run from home that doesn't have too much risk, but gives us the ability to be able to stay home and work, where we can still have balance in our life, and thank God the internet's a gift and a curse. You know? It's a curse because we can be on it 24/7 And then that creates a work life imbalance but besides that, let's imagine back in the day before all this existed, James we would be forced to go out and pound the pavement and hand out business cards and sell out of the backs of our trunks. So nowadays, we've got this tool, this internet, this phone, this laptop, we can if we find the right business model, and here's what I mean by I think this business has less risk and more upside than any other business model. Here's why. Because really is all you're paying for if you really think about it is education in a bit of software, versus other business in look, you can go on educated or you can go educated, it's kind of like you can go out there and you know sow your seeds protected or unprotected. It's a choice right? You go educated, you go on educated. I'm not saying some people don't go on education, you fail your way forward. If you have no money, you have zero, you hang out in the community, you watch Wake Up Legendary every day, you be resourceful. Right? Right. Yeah. So a bit of education is in your door versus some of these drop shipping various different FBA, various different ECOM, various different branded, physical products, ecommerce products, even MLM where you have to buy up front merchandise, indoor products. This requires you to store no product, it requires the only thing you have to watch out for and I'll be just straight up with everybody here especially if you're new is when you join legendary. Because we have such a big community. You have to be cautious of people hitting you up in the DMS in pitching you on their coaching and then all the sudden, you know, somebody got you for five or 10,000 because they promised you the world in the DMS you've got to be careful of the endless guru cycle. Look, I'm not trying to say buy or don't buy or don't explore but with this business model, James My opinion is it's so simple, that oftentimes we can overlook, like we actually can get set up and started in a weekend. So we can actually overlook and over complicate it. So now all the sudden we're looking at other things, we're getting frustrated, we're now paying attention to other webinars, ads, people pinging us in the DM so we're susceptible to now being distracted or pitched by some other thing. How have you overcome overcomplicating things? Is it a battle for you? I don't know. I said How have you overcome it as if it was an issue? I don't know. I just know most people overcomplicate the tack and over complicate the plan is not the case at all with you.
James: Yes. So like I said, I spent five years five whole years trying to figure out on my own, like YouTube videos, reading books, listening to podcasts, not having expert guidance, like I spent the internet jungle just taking over. There's so many different things that you can like like oh, you learn about a new software package that you can like, figure out and apply to your business in some way. And then you find another one and then another one and then another one and you get constantly in this loop of learning and it's very difficult but with a bear, it's really like it's everything. So if you're new, it is all it's gonna it's gonna be a lot of hard work in the beginning to wrap your mind around the concepts but once you understand that and you follow the steps that legendary and the blueprints has laid out for you then it's it's really a matter of just executing on each step until you see success. Really, it's all laid out for you. And I also got to tell you about education. Like before I found legendary during my recovery, I actually went back to college here in Ontario, for marketing, and so I spent more money than the blueprints and I spent more time in college and they didn't even mention affiliate marketing. It didn't even mention TikTok. So you learn, you'll learn a hell of a lot more with the blueprints in less time.
Dave: You don't have the perspective of what to compare this to until you do Yeah, you know, and so if you're somebody who doesn't have any other experience shopping around at other options, and you're just sitting at your job or you're just sitting on the couch and you're just saying, pointing 500 racks, that's a dead GM rip off, you know, the truth is, you likely don't have anything to compare it to, you know what I mean? Because the fact is, is that it is a freckle on the pimple of a gnat's ass compared to some of the things that we can we can choose some of the paths that we can choose and oh, by the way, college, two years, you know, cheers in some cases, depending on what you want to do. So, you've got the perspective there. Gosh, you've got a ton of experience man. You definitely have a very unique experience. I mean, that
story that you were telling about going and in actually living with that person and I mean, wow. I mean, you've really gone to great lengths to pursue entrepreneurship. I mean, after all of the years and in the miles that you've traveled in the places that you've gone to be where you're at now, which really is executing on a simple business model. Right it really is, it's just connecting an audience with products. I mean, and ultimately if you wanted to do your own course or coaching program, that would be another conversation but how does it feel to be here? where you're at right now, do you feel like you're finally on the road that you've been trying to be on for a long time? Or, or tell us where you feel with where you're at right now?
James: Yeah, I feel like I've come full circle like I've put in the work already in the past like with with failing forward the number of corporations that I tried, MLM Lead Generation, building a website, real estate, all these different ventures I went in I realized that the fundamentals of digital marketing apply to any niche like anywhere you you're at, and that's that's exactly what legendary offers is. That is the building blocks of being able to go out there and start your online business in whatever niche that you're in and just just having that confirmation from all the past work that I put in seeing that all be reflected in in a step by step form. And a step by step process with Legendary was just, it's just it just made me feel at home. In a way like I wasn't, I knew that I wasn't crazy after years of thinking that I was crazy. You know, like, I was reassured with myself. And it was very, it was very good. So I have I have no problem going on TikTok and talking about this program to anyone and everyone because I know for a fact that it's like the best training that you can find in my opinion on the internet like in five years of buying training and being ripped off and all this stuff like legendary is is the best that I found and I found results in literally 60 days and not only that, but just by learning with with the blueprints on just how to grow a TikTok account if I just took that section of blueprints and apply that now I have now I have a TikTok channel with 39,000 followers, I'm able to charge $1,000 For one branded Partnership deal. They'll say I do like however many in the rest of the year like that. That alone is worth the blueprint. So it's just amazing to me that the value and I'm just so so grateful that I've come across the program and I am here where I am now. It's great.
Well, in you just mentioned the strategy we don't even teach so I mean, you're there's so many things that you can do with this particular vertical you know, which again, why do we stick to what we stick to and why do we not get into all of these other you know, guys there's so many different shiny objects and multiple this we could get into E commerce. We could get into Forex, we could get into you know, Legendary because we have so many entrepreneurs. I mean gosh, we could do a new training and have a new business model class coming out every other week. But the truth is, that this is the simplest thing that you can do with the least amount of risk and if you invest in some education, invest in some good, a good support system. I call it the right information from the right people in the right environment. Those three ingredients, what we'll bake out of that is in our community anyways. If you take the advice as an asset, you'll begin to build assets for yourself. The asset that you'll build will be an email list. The assets that you'll build will be a tick tock channel and or Instagram and or a YouTube channel. These are assets. These are pieces of digital real estate, and it's the closest thing that I could. I guess they're like mining Bitcoin or something because you're literally creating them out of thin air. And what makes these so valuable is like you said, you now have a tick tock channel of 33,000 and a list of 1200 or whatever that you can email to in market to over and over again in some folks if you continue to deliver half decent value will stay on your list for 10 years. Some won't even buy for a year, they'll just get your emails. The business is not even warmed up for six months. So now you have an email list. You have a TikTok channel, you have a YouTube channel. My buddy just bought a YouTube channel from an individual a guy literally a college kid from over a million dollars and that is now kicking off over six figures per month in net revenue over six figures per month. He's had it for a couple years. He's got back his investment. It's all pure profit. So the guy who didn't know that was an asset that started cost nothing to open. But guess what? There's still hundreds if not billions of Facebook accounts, billions of tick tock accounts, billions of YouTube but guess what? There's a small percentage of accounts that are worth a lot of money. It's just like watches, right? There's billions of watches but there's only a small percentage that are worth money. You have to know in this business, just like you have to know in real estate, how to buy low and sell high. It's all about buying, it's not about selling so there's tricks to the trade. And with all the ease of getting involved, the low cost out of pocket, the low risk, the biggest thing you're risking is your ego in most cases. Do you agree with that, James?
Yeah, it's humbling to get into a new industry where you don't know much or anything at all. If you're a complete beginner try to learn everything. It's definitely, yeah, you have to be able to ask questions and really, yeah, work with others and let your ego go for sure.
I mean, because now as an entrepreneur, you're in a service based position. Oh, shit, way time out. I said I wanted to get rich and be the boss of people, not serve people and learn to be a good steward of money. Am I signing up for the wrong class? Yeah, with great freedom comes great responsibility. And the richer you get, the more responsibility you'll have. And, and, and so that'll be a conversation for another day. But James, I'm incredibly happy for your success, your turnaround story. I'm grateful that we were able to be a part of it. I'm grateful that you're taking care of yourself. It sounds like you're doing good self care. And now you've got this financial peace. That's a lot more hopeful than it was some time ago. You know, that makes life a lot easier. A lot of people say money doesn't make you happy, but you know, I'll tell you what, I'd rather cry in my penthouse apartment than my you know, cardboard box out under a bridge that's for damn sure I'd rather be depressed and sleep Number bed than a milk crate. You know what I mean? Yep. I mean, just personally, that's just my style. That's just how I roll. I'd rather I'd rather camp in a hotel than in a tent. I mean, I'm sorry. You know, guys get rich for long enough, right? Why do we can't most of the time because it's the cheaper option. Let's just be honest. I mean, there's a very small percentage of us that want to go out there. And, you know, basically kind of, go Commando out there. Funny story. I was traveling to a men's group men's recovery. And you know, I'm a knight. So my vocabulary sometimes can be a little a little bit limited, kind of like how I just used commando in that sentence, and it was just kind of like what are you talking about? Commando of course means not wearing underwear, right? going commando, right. So anyways, so I was, I was joining this new men's group, and it's kind of like a mastermind where we travel around the country and stuff and stay at each other's houses. And a lot of these guys make any of any success I've achieved look like a drop in the bucket. So it's a good group, and I had never met any of them. But it was my first weekend. This was five years ago and I emailed you. They had sent out an email to the guy whose house we were staying at had sent out an email saying, hey, you know, we're gonna have a lot of beds. It's a big house, but some of you might need to sleep on an air mattress on a sleeping bag or on the floor or something like that. And so, in the reply, get serious 16 guys or something, you know, successful guys, great guys, guys in recovery, you know, you know, addiction recovery and stuff like that. And I replied in the email, oh, I don't have any problem. I'm good at going commando or sleeping on the floor or whatever. Right? It was just me not knowing what that word was. You know, this is five years ago or so. And I'm thinking that the word means just, you know, sleeping on the floor. You know what I mean? Not walking around with no underwear.
James: They give you a bed?
Dave: No, I slept. I slept on an air mattress. But here's this group, email back from this guy who's just joining the group none of them have ever met. And who's saying that he's gonna go Command? It's just funny his life in the time of Dave Sharpe. So anyways, now I know the definition of Commando. One of the things that I said with my wife back many years ago when I first got started in this industry. She makes fun of me about these. A couple of other things that I said ends meet. I thought the ends meet when people said this is just me, you know how you can be really smart at one thing but totally like, lacking common sense and other shit. You know? That's like me like I'm, I can I'm brilliant at like one thing and everything else. I'm a complete savant, right? You're like an idiot savant. Isn't that almost kind of what that is like, you're really good at one thing. are here. Am I misusing another word? Hold on. Let me look it up. This is like Google is.
James: So we had the CFO of one of the companies that I worked for when I was a financial analyst. He's like a genius with Excel and can like program companies like no other like I've seen anyone work like him. And when they were in the kitchen, and he pulled out he's looking for food and he pulls out a can of soup and he just asks how do you prepare this?
Dave: All day long. All day long. I walk into the kitchen and my eyes just glaze over. But yeah, so anyways, going back to a couple of the things I miss said, misused and by the way, yeah, I don't know if I'm an idiot savant. I just think I'm an idiot. But the ends meet thing was I thought that making ends meet. Now this was like 12 years ago. So this wasn't just five years ago. I was that you? You were so poor. You could only afford the ends of the meat at the grocery store.
You've come a long way. And you should be proud of yourself. And I know we are, we'll send some folks here in the community, your way to follow you there on tick tock and try to support you and thanks for supporting us by sharing your knowledge or experience today. Absolutely. I hope you'll come back and keep us posted my brother.
James: Absolutely will do for sure. Thanks for having me again today.
All right, James. Take it easy, man. Stay warm up there in, the north of North America and we'll talk to you soon Okay, brother. All right. Take care Dave. All right. Alright, my friend. You can follow him on TikTok at @sidehustleswithjames.com See, he got sneaky there with that.com and went on ahead and put his whole calm right in the handle. Like that. Like that. Kind of reminds me I mean, like that's it. I don't know if any of you guys ever saw wicked tuna. But it's a show on. It's a show on. One of those stations on Discovery, Nat Geo, something like that. And the wicked tuna in the show is about them going out and catching tuna you know, big ass tuna like, like 1000 pound tuna like when they go out. I used to love the show. I still do but I used to like watching it back in 2014 time frame a lot. But look at this. There were, you know, all these different names. There's, you know, they're what the show did was attract like four or five votes as they went out. But then there's the f v tuna.com. So ever. So here's a guy who's just like all the rest of the guys on the show and every single time that he got any airtime any screen time any mention of tuna.com You know, he was getting airtime for his website. So it was just a kind of creative little way. I'm not saying everybody should go and change their handle on TikTok to do what James did. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that if you can make the name of your company, or that your name, something that directs people automatically to your website, kind of like the 100 Ask Gary, I don't know if any of you guys have ever seen or heard of that service. It's a lawyer referral service. So if you get in an auto accident, you can call one 800 Ask Gary, and they'll refer you to a lawyer and then if the lawyer wins your case, I'm sure they'll kick back, Gary. It's like an affiliate business will only have 100 Ask Gary is basically like affiliate marketing. But you know, the name of the company is the phone number. So when you say the name of the company, you're saying the phone number, so it's easy, you know, one 800 411 Pay and that's another one down here in Florida anyways. So I don't know, neat little thing just to point out so go and support James and lift him up, comment on his stuff, like his stuff, and that's a great way for us to support each other in this community. Make sure that you text w l only if of course you would like a text message reminder in the morning on your phone. I got mine right here. Just come in right at about 10am right when we get started with what we're doing, with a link to join the show. Every morning. So if you text W L to the phone number 813-296-8553 You'll get a text message reminder in the morning when we go live. Get outta here, my friends. We'll see you back here for another episode tomorrow. All right, Wednesday be Legendary. And have a kick ass day.
