Tyrone: Hi everyone, it’s Tyrone from Tyroneshum.com. Today I’ve got really special guest on the call today and his name’s James Schramko. And, I wanted to get James on the call today because I’ve been speaking to James previously and he’s got a really, really interesting story that I wanted to share with you and with my business here and also his business, we all like to look at creating a lifestyle and also looking at generating different types of passive income so I thought why not get James who’s also an Aussie, from Australia and also I wanted to share with you his story so welcome onto the call James.

James: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Tyrone: I know we’ve met previously in the past in a conference and also sort of chatting over FaceBook and Skype a few times as well, I want to let the audience know for people who don’t know who you are, maybe just give them a background story where you started from and how you got into Internet Marketing and where you are now?

James: Sure well I’ve…I started part-time like pretty much everyone else and I found it very, very difficult like everyone else. And, the fact was I was running Mercedes Benz dealerships in my dayjob. It was lots of stuff and it was quite intense job and I figured that I should be going to apply my business skills to the Internet Marketing side of things realizing that the Internet gives you a lot more opportunity for automation and for leverage, I just found it so hard and I tripped away with it for several years until finally I could break free for full-time work. My goal was to match my income which since I was on $300,000 a year which was quite objective…

Tyrone: Yes.

James: And that was about 2 years ago, I quit my job then. And, ever since then the Internet business has been growing and sort of led to other opportunities as well. As you know, hardly any business understand Internet Marketing so I’ve got myself in a position now where pretty much anyone I want to work with is happy to collaborate or give me equity in their business, or profit share that’s why I joined forces with them. So that’s a bulk on my business now, it’s getting involved with businesses and turn them into more profitable business using especially Internet Marketing skills.

Tyrone: Nice, so what led you to create what you’ve created right now because obviously you’re on a pretty good income back in working at Mercedez and I think a lot of people would probably envious of you because you get to drive nice cars too and show nice cars as well. So what was the reason for the change?

James: Well, ahh you know if you rate any of these cashflow type you’d realize that having a job is…pretty much just stalling your life. You know, I was kept at $300,000 I couldn’t make million dollars a year doing that job. I was…I had no equity in the business and it didn’t work for me when I was working for the business. The day comes that you stop working for the company, your income stops and that’s not a good solution for anybody so I would suggest that the only true freedom comes from having your own business. I wanted to have more income, I wanted to have more freedom and I wanted to be in control because you’re not in control when someone else is telling you what to do and when you have to work for other people and there’s no way can possibly automate it and leverage it unless you get some form of equity or become a business owner. So that was my driving course.

Tyrone: Absolutely. Well that’s really amazing. I just wanted to ask you maybe make a quick comparison so as for people out there, how many hours a week were you working in…or in your job at Mercedez Benz? How many hours are you currently doing right now?

James: Well towards the end, I was doing a…probably about 50-60 hours a week in my full-time job because I was in the general management role so I’ve managed to widdle it down a bit from 70 and I was doing about 3-4 hours a day on my Internet Marketing business on top of that, 7 days a week.

Tyrone: Wow.

James: So I was probably pulling some pretty hefty hours but I could see the light in the tunnel. And if you fast forward that to now, when you consider things like sleeping in…

Tyrone: We love that.

James: And you know, doing things like writing and biking and non-work activities, I’ll probably be pulling in about 4 hours a day on my Internet business. So the main change was I dropped my full-time job and became a lot more productive with my Internet marketing.

Tyrone: And a lot of people will probably go wow, how did you do that? And I know it’s probably going to be more than an hour long to be able to talk about that and get into details. But I think you’ll be really cool just to maybe share with them how briefly in your story leading up to becoming where you are right now to be able to go from 60 hour a week down to 4 hours a day at most. I mean that’s something that you choose to do. Can you not…can you do after work in your business now?

James: Yeah because of the business model and the strategy that I’m using, I am working more than I would have to do and it also comes back to what sort of income level you want to grow your business. So if I was happy just to make 3 or 4, $500,000 a year, I could probably work for 30 minutes a day because I have about 12 different businesses that I’m operating at the same time and each one of them is a 6-figure business. So if I wanted to pay it down to some of the more active ones, then it would reduce my work. For example, I have a mastermind group, it takes me 2 hours per week and it generates in excess of $150,000 a year. So if I just wanted to do that, I could work no more than 2 hours a week. The reality is I’m building a 7-figure empire here that’s on its way to 8 figures so I’m well into the ones now for the million dollar plus turnover, and my goal is to get to $10M a year. For now, I’m prepared to pour in to 4 hours a day. Ah, how did I get to that scenario? I’ll give you the very shortest version.

Tyrone: Nice.

James: I became an affiliate, I built websites selling software and I got very good at the whole affiliate thing offering bonuses, creating free newsletters, getting traffic to it from forums and blogs and articles, and PayPerClick and search engine optimization. And then I created products that helped people do those things and then I became I guess an Information Marketer and built up my customer base slowly and steadily full of buyers. So I just always focused on buyers and after I got that, you know every step of the way I was able to lock in that sort of profit and then add extra services and extra pricing levels. So I built a membership community which is one of the staple businesses I have, and that’s very, very profitable business. And from there I was able to leverage into masterminds, mentoring and then finally building a sort of doing business deals where I can assume companies and do them over and sell them basically. It’s been an escalating hierarchy.

Tyrone: And you said that it’s taken you roughly…how long ago? Was that you said since you left job, it’s about 2 years, how long has it taken you to get to where you are now?

James: I think I’m up to about 5…5 probably coming up to my 6th year now.

Tyrone: 6th year on this. That’s great. I just wanted to ask you as well, if we take a step back, you said you started off with affiliate marketing and you started to also promote different affiliates something like that for anyone who’s really just looking to start out and who’s wanting to create like a lifestyle that you’ve created for yourself, what would you say something that you could recommend them start off with this like…obviously because you’ve done quite a lot there and there’s quite a lot of things that you’ve got in your business, something just starting out would like to know what would I do first?

James: I think every single person watching this should learn how to sell. If you look at all of the most successful marketers and business people, they are able to sell. And for us we’ve called it copywriting but if you can learn how to sell if you can compel people to take action, regardless whether it’s your product or someone else’s you can make it attractive for people to move forward, then that is skill that is going to translate in everything you do whether it’s on your sales letter or your blog…excuse me.

Tyrone: All right.

James: Never answered the phone…and that’s probably a fundamental skill.

Tyrone: Okay, and on top of that obviously you haven’t done all this yourself have you? I mean have you got a team that’s back and behind you to help you do all these stuff as well?

James: Yep, like most people I started by myself and there’s only so far you can get. One of the first things I outsourced was article writing because I really don’t like writing articles, I’m a very slow typist and it’s not my core skill…

Tyrone: Me too.

James: And that’s it so you know as soon as I need that out, I did the numbers in my head. I thought well if I get, if I pay extra to have them written then I can make more than that in commission I should be doing that. And that’s where I really started to grow my business and then from there, I outsourced a help desk which allowed me to provide more services because service-related businesses require more support but they’re also more profitable. Then I started outsourcing design, because I’m not a good artist that can’t use Photoshop and it was ridiculous for me to spend this time trying to learn how to create banners and stuff when I can just pay someone to do it. Then, I eventually moved into having other people build my websites and run my PayPerClick and now I have teams all around the world. I’ve got…a whole team in India who do just traffic and search engine optimization, I have a team in the Philippines who do everything from transcriptions, design, website construction, content, traffic, backlinks, optimization conversions, analytics, videos, and account creation, they do everything. And, I have a designer in the UK and I have an article writer in Australia and I have an event manager as well who helps me prepare workshops because there are high-profit items right for product creation and also for customer appreciation. And, that…that into the business, you just need to have support unless you plan on working 22 hours a day.

Tyrone: Absolutely and no one likes that right?

James: No I think… I think most. You know even if you’re passionate about it and you love it and you happened to do the work, you still want to leverage the work that you do. You wanted to be the highest value activity at all times. I know you write about that, you talk about the 80/20 rule and Parkinson’s Law and it’s always that same thing. Jay Abraham talks about it too. The best and last purpose for my time is to…is to be the strategist and the marketing guy, thinking of how I can leverage all of my resources in better.

Tyrone: Exactly, I totally agree with you on that one because I think we all have the potential to do it. It’s just the question is, no one really likes to sit back and think about things at times to be able to get other people do it and once you can leverage that and take out what’s in your mind because that’s the biggest challenge I think. It’s getting whatever is in your mind, putting it down on a computer, or mind map whatever you want to do and finding a team to be able to execute basically to be able to get the work done for you.

James: Yeah I think there’s two parts to that Tyrone. One is for new people, they say what would I outsource because they don’t actually know what the right things are. That’s one of the big challenges, it took me a long time to figure out what the right things are. And, once you know what you’re supposed to be doing, once you figured out a way to convert and make profit then you feel like a frustrated artist like how can I get more of this out? How can I be doing ten times of this you know. Once you know the trick that makes the money come in, you want to…you want to do as much as you can like for example yesterday, I bought 34 domains from somebody that are all around the same product and topic, now I can’t wait to have these developed and up there and getting the traffic design. Now I can make money from them, there’s no question because I already half a dozen websites in that exact same market so the big tipping point is knowing how it works. And for some people, they might have to it themselves originally to get that profit. As soon as you get to a point where you can make $1 turning to $1 plus something, you know a dollar ten or $2, that’s when you should outsource like crazy. Because for most people, the big is the chicken and an egg. You know, I’m not going to outsource so that I make big profit but you want to make big profit until you outsource.

Tyrone: Exactly.

James: If you want to get into the high, high income bracket, you’re going to have to get someone else to do some heavy lifting for you especially if you can do some other trials, if you can get a high income back from a low investment in what it cost to get it done, you should be doing it as much as you can.

Tyrone: Absolutely, and I totally agree with you on that one. If…a lot of people do struggle with starting to outsource which is what I talk a lot about. And, I think the thing is, is that I always have it like look, if I start it all over again and I was to run my business from scratch again, the first thing I do is to find teams around me to get the work done because I know I’m lazy and I know that I have always wanted just to sit back, and just look and enjoy. But when you want the work to be done, you’ve got these teams around you where they can allow you to sit back and just all you have to do is thinking and strategizing everything in mind which I can see what’s happened for you quite, quite very fast and leveraged very, very quickly as well, too.

James: Well, I’ve more or less recreated my old job but with all the good bits and not the bad bits. You know, the bad bits were not having control and having to drive off to work everyday in a suit and…

Tyrone: Well, look at you now.

James: Yeah that’s right. You know so I’ve recreated that leverage of having a team but I do it on my own terms and that’s probably the most important element of freedom it’s doing something because you’re driven to do it, because you’re passionate about it and because you enjoy it and it gives you the choice to do that.

Tyrone: That’s fantastic. I also wanted to find out as well, with the lifestyle you’ve created not that you’ve got a leveraged business and you’ve successfully outsourced a lot of things that you’ve got and also living a lifestyle, what are some of the things that you enjoy in life at this point in time?

James: Well quite simple. I’m collecting moutain bikes for some reason. I try and ride everyday or every second day at a 9.3km track around my area here that I like to ride on and I go with friends, and you know that’s something that I just didn’t, I didn’t get to do that before. I was really trapped in the office. The other things that I like, I like to sleep in and I wake up for 9:30 or 10 o’clock and I like to walk down to my local coffee shop, and a t-shirt and just sit there when all the Russians gone and I just skim through the paper and enjoy just skimming through my iPhone just having a look what’s going on and then plan my day.

Tyrone: Nice.

James: Then I just come home and I do something that I want to work on and the other thing is you know, you can stay up as late as you want. If you’re in zone or if you want to do a project or something or whatever, you know there is no start or finish time so it’s completely up to you. I particularly enjoy that flexibility because you know what it’s like sometimes you’re on…you’re on and if you’re not on you’re not so I also like to just pull up on that couch behind me and grab a book and just read the book. I get books delivered from Amazon and I’m trying to read a book everyday or two at the moment and again, it’s something I have a passion for that I just didn’t have the opportunity to do before.

Tyrone: Hmm, by the way talking about books, with the new iPad that’s come out, it’s been out for a few months quite a lot and also the Amazon Kindle. Do you use any of those tools for reading or do you use it for business as well?

James: Ah, I do use an iPad for business but I don’t use it for reading a book. We’ve got a couple for them here. I think we’ve got more Apple here than a local Apple shop.

Tyrone: Tell me about it, I’m looking at it right now.

James: Basically I…I will take my iPad out to…I’m thinking if I’m doing a business for somebody, I’ll just use it to just go through Basecamp because it’s a bit bigger than the iPhone and it’s a little more convenient than taking the Macbook Pro and you know, setting up the dongle and all that sort of junk. I think the iPad for me as a business tool is most useful just for Basecamp and also for skimming through my forum and just checking emails. The other thing, if I want to take one of my children to horseriding or to piano or whatever after school then I can just use it in the car for half an hour while I wait. It’s sort of my portable device just to look in. You know, I check FaceBook or Twitter but I’m not really connected to the Internet for the whole day anymore. People, they know me they’ll know when I log in to FaceBook or Twitter once a day or twice a day, I’m not, I’m just not sitting on it the whole time looking to utilizing my whole time there. I’m sort of switching off more than I’ve ever switched off before which is the other great thing. So just by having these portable devices, it doesn’t mean you have to…have them grafted to your body.

Tyrone: Absolutely. I think also too, creating a lifestyle is it’s great to have these tools and also the communication with people but it’s going to be limited to a certain extent. Like for me, a lot of guys ask me where am I on Skype and I’m not on Skype. People was messaging me and say “Tyrone, are you there?” And most people know that I’m invisible when I’m actually on Skype because I don’t want to be chitchatting or anything unless I need to have a meeting like with yourself. But, I try to stay connected through FaceBook and Twitter and all those other forms but still focus on productivity because once you get on to play around with those things, it’s very,very distracting if you don’t control yourself but it’s a very, very good tool to use for those things. Also too, I wanted to find out a little bit more about any upcoming projects that you might have as well, too. Ah, you know you’ve been very successful for setting up a lot of businesses there. Have you got any new projects besides the one that you said 32 domains that you bought? Any new upcoming seminars and…

James: I have a million projects. Ah, just at the top of my head I have let’s see…well a little bit of my affiliate at the moment is directly to training my Filipino team when moving into local business market, a little bit more detail. I’ve been doing that for oh gee, four years. And, you know a lot of people have an outcoming to the market saying it’s hot in this and that. I mean I really know how it works and I’m automating the whole thing having them approach clients in a special way, get the business and then fulfill it automatically so I think it’s doable and that will be a big part of their growth. I’m also developing a probably close to a thousand websites at the moment for domains that I’ve bought in the last six months and some of them are very premium domains and we’re building out the websites and turning those into businesses. So we’ll pick the best ones and we’ll collaborate with the offline business and probably sell the entity so that’s another project. I have a live event coming up in a week and a half which is very exciting because I’ve got my best sort of friends and experts who are collaborating and flying from overseas to share information about that and I’m very excited because I’ve got experts like John Carlton, Ed Dale, and you know people who supplied the products that I use like the guy that runs my shopping cart called Josh Anderson…

Tyrone: Oh yes, yes.

James: And Mike Rhodes who’s a PPC expert so we’ve got a…some really good people coming to that. We’ll record those events and my next project after that would be to manage the launch of the day to days from it. I’ve also got my mastermind groups going very well. It’s in second phase now and I think we all wrapped that up, it’s called Silver Circle. And, people are getting astounding results from it, that’s where we do our weekly calls and I think the basically tapping straight into my experience and I’m having to live through their businesses as well so I’m quite enjoying that. And…well we’ve got an SEO business that’s growing quite rapidly and we have a web development company and the affiliate marketing, I’ve got a few sort of surprises there too. I’ve got a number of products and a strategy around developing that out as well trying to automate and leverage that as much as we possibly can.

Tyrone: Wow.

James: So the first test of that went really well. I think we’ve made $1500 in the first few days of launching and it was pretty much completely done by my team so where I could go and make a lot of money myself. My whole goal is trying to get it done by someone else and when I can spin a few plates at once, then it works. At the moment, my Filipino team is sitting at some around 15 people so I’ve got enough depth there to continue that and to grow it now in a sort of measurable rate because they’re getting very skilled.

Tyrone: That’s awesome. Can I…I know you’ve got so much going on there, it’s unbelievable how some people can…like some people who’s starting out and even thinking “How does James juggle all these things all at once?”

James: Basecamp.

Tyrone: That’s what I thought.

James: That’s…that’s a very good tool for organizing these sort of things because you can segment the projects and you can invite in people who relate to that project only and you can set tasks. I mean at the same time, I have 5 one on one mentoring clients and we’re using exactly the same process. We set action steps and we do weekly review points and…you know, business growth is automatic when you decide on the objective, you set the action steps and then you measure them. It’s easy to manage that with an iPad and Basecamp, you can pretty much run a business these days from anyway.

Tyrone: I’ve heard about that. I think some people I try to do that all show that they can do and I think it’s possible very, very much so right nowadays with so much technology that’s available. It’s really amazing. I’m blown away by how many projects you’re able to do at this point in time. I mean some people like to focus and I can see that you like to have a spread of things going on at the same time, it’s just awesome.

James: Yeah I would say I’m a generalist and it’s not for everybody but bear in mind in my last job I have 72 staff and I’ve been managing people and a business for at least the last 15 years. So it’s definitely skill set that I possessed that not too many brand new Internet marketers seem to share. Most of the people that I helped struggle with systems and growth and especially when they’re trying to outsource, a lot of people who have had no management experience really struggle to…have good relations with their team or with their support group. Sorry, the dog’s there.

Tyrone: That’s okay.

James: So I think that’s definitely for me it’s just sort of…it’s just as easy as riding a bike. Yeah.

Tyrone: That’s a pretty good dog.

James: Well, we don’t need a dog all around here.

Tyrone: Ah, before we finish off James, is there anything you’d like to share with the audience as well like how can people get in contact with you and as you mentioned you’ve got seminars coming up. Is that still open for people to join in or is that closed right now?

James: Ah yeah we actually reached the limit about two days ago. Ah if someone…sorry hang on second. If someone wants to come and they might want to contact me maybe on FaceBook, but it’s out capacity. We only hold about I think it’s 220 seats in the open and I think we’re on 219 so you know I’ve closed it off. We always sell out our events, we’re not trying to get 600 people and so the end of thing and with 20 experts, we actually have there’s 1 expert and 10 guests which is very rare and they stick around for the whole event. You know we didn’t make this call to talk about the event but yeah, it is only run once or twice a year now because they take a bit of effort to put together and I also want to make them valuable.

Tyrone: Absolutely. Well, you’ve definitely provided a lot of value in this call. For me, I’ve even learnt something as well from you so I’m keen to take on some more ideas as well down the track. All right well James, thank you so much for coming onto the call today. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be able to find out a lot more about what you do and also talk about your lifestyle as well. And, if anyone wants to get in contact with James, what’s the best place to get you on?

James: I’ll get to InternetMarketingSpeed.com, that’s one of my primary blogs. Jump on that list there because that’s where I would send out my new projects or new products. There are no autoresponders on that thing, you’re not going to get belted every 5 seconds in the inbox. You’ll probably hear from me once every couple of weeks or once a month. Ah, the other place of course is FaceBook. I’ve got a page up at fbjames.com that will take people straight to my FaceBook page. I post information there and I’ve got a fanpage as well for the Silver Circle where I’m posting tips each week after our calls. I’m just getting some of the good, little golden nuggets and putting on that page for people and from what I get, people are enjoying that content.

Tyrone: I know I am. Everytime I listen to one of your postings, and also check out your newsletters I’m blown away by the amount of information you’re able to provide so thanks very much for that.

James: Yeah, it’s awesome to catch up and I’m pretty sure my dog’s enjoyed it too.

Tyrone: Definitely. What was your dog’s name by the way?

James: Ah we got a few here, there’s Pronto, Barney and Reece, and Max. Actually we’re reminding someone else so that’s what the fact was about, territorial wars going on. We learn a lot about animal behavior with few having more than one dog.

Tyrone: Yeah, I know. Well my partner and I have been talking about getting a dog so we’re considering it right now.

James: Oh at least you have a chat with my wife, she knows a lot about them.

Tyrone: I’ll definitely get it onto it. Awesome. All right well thanks very much again James. If you guys want to find out any more about any more about this awesome podcast as well and I’ve got more of these great podcasts for you out there too. Well that’s it for today, my name is Tyrone from Tyroneshum.com. See you guys soon.