Is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Right for Your Nerdy Book? with BlackNES Guy - Interview 11

What can people really make if they do this right? That's a good question. And to kind of show you where I evolved from. So the very first black in the sky book I did, it was $80 to cost me to write it. What? $80? That book, in four months, made me over $10,000. Welcome to Nerdpreneur, where we have fun conversations with people making money from their nerdy passion. And my name is Chris. As always, I am joined by my co host, Frank. Hey there. And today we have a very special guest.

His name is Ameka. Welcome to the show. What's going on? Well, we're about to have an amazing nerdpreneur conversation. I'm excited to dig into your business because we've known each other for a long time, and I know a little bit of your story, but I think more people need to know your story. So, Omecca, what is your nerdy passion? So my nerdy passion is turning video game guide books into a prophet, and that's what I love to do. That's awesome.

So when you say video game, your brand is like the black nes guy, is that correct? Blackness guy. Okay, you're right. How did I come up with that? Is that, like, Loch Ness monster kind of. Cause it's black. And then capital n e s, and then guy, man. What was the story I came up with? Well, one, I'm black, so that's where the black part. And then the very first book I produced was when the mini Nintendo came out, the Nintendo classic. So it was the NES so black Ness, and I'm guy guy.

So that was the name. That's how I came up with the name. It's all fallen into place for me. Right. I love it. Well, tell me a little bit about why NES games. So it kind of just fell into my lap. I was living in Mexico at the time, and I had to find a job. I wasn't gonna start

flipping tacos or anything like that. And so I ended up stumbling onto the whole, like, how to make money online space and went through the rabbit hole and found how to make money with Amazon, but not by doing any physical products, by doing books and ebooks and stuff like that through their KDP or Kindle direct publishing leg. And I was watching a video on YouTube of somebody who was being in the space for a while and kind of knew what he was doing, and it was just reviewing different things.

And being a avid video game gamer myself, you know, I knew the, the nas classic was coming up, and that was something I was, like, absolutely stoked to buy. And so I was like, man, this is so cool. And then it just occurred to me, I'm like, what if I made a video game guidebook for that, right? And it wasn't, it's not like it was anything new. These games were, like,

2030 years old, right, right. So. But I was like, what if I just make a book that has tips, tricks, and cheats for all 30 games that are in are in it? So this is sounding much like the video game guidebooks that used to exist that you could get in the catalog. That's exactly it. They just, they don't really exist anymore, and they definitely weren't gonna bring them

back for these games. Right, right. Because I think from Nintendo standpoint, it was like, how can we profit off stuff we've made already without increasing costs? So printing more books would increase costs. Right. And the rule of sellers on Amazon is make sure you find there's a market first. Right. And there was no market for this, but the rule of an entrepreneur is understand your audience, understand your market. And I was like, oh, these are gamers. There's gonna be a market for this.

And that book did, like, $600 its first week in profit. What was your first game that you did? No. Well, I did. I did all 30 games for the NES classic. So I just did one book, 30 with all, all 30 games. So some pages, and keep in mind, NES games are simple, right? Like, there's not a lot to them, right? So some pages, some, some games are like one or two pages of, like, either cheats, codes, passwords, I guess, like, tips and tricks, like, very basics.

And keep in mind, it's all stuff that's freely available and has to be available on the Internet. But I created a book that could now go on somebody's shelf that could go on somebody's video game collection or whatever, whatever the case is. And so that book absolutely blew up. And so the natural thing to do is, well, let's produce one for every single video game.

And that's exactly what we did next. We came out with Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Legend of Zelda, Two Mega man, and so on. And we just started producing every single one we could for the most popular games. We weren't gonna. I don't. We didn't produce one for bubble. Bubble or whatever, that game. Right. Like, you know, we did the mainstream games, and that turned into a full fledged business for me.

I was able to quit my job and work on the books full time, and, yeah, so it was pretty awesome. So logistically, were you playing the games and learning all the secrets from doing research online at the same time, or did you have somebody else help you and do it? Did you make these books, write them? That's a really good question. No, I hire out, so I hired somebody. Like, we call them ghostwriters.

So basically they help you write the book, although you're paying them so they don't expect credit in the book or anything like that, if that makes sense. And so I went on to upwork, and I was like, hey, I need somebody who's into video games and who knows how to put a couple sentences on paper. And I interviewed them, and I found this girl, Rebecca, and she made the first one. And. And like I said, we had everything to our advantage because these games have been out for so long.

So it's not like we had to wait by the system then play it and figure out all the cheats. Right? Like, we just had to. She just did the research, and I went in through and formatted and, like, designed the pages and designed the layout of the book. And my wife actually designed all covers for all of the books. Whoa. She did all the covers and what we did basically the box art of the game, and that was the COVID for the books. Right. Okay, so it's recognizable, too, right?

Well, it's instantly recognizable because it's what you've been staring at for years. Like I said, as gamers, you want to add stuff to your collection and. And, you know, and I wanted to make sure they were the highest quality possible. And some of them were a little, you know, you know, hit or miss I wasn't too happy with.

But some of them, like, they're on Amazon, and, like, they have glowing reviews, people taking pictures and sending in their reviews, like, it was, it definitely blew up a lot bigger than I was expecting. What does that mean, bigger than you were expecting? Were you expecting to kind of just make a couple hundred bucks and then this made you a lot more? You know what? I have no idea what I was expecting. I just, I didn't think I was going to see the same type of passion for people

buying them that I had created them. Like, I had people reaching out to me saying, like, I had grandmas reaching out to me, like writing emails saying, thank you, you know, I wanted to play this. This book has helped me. Like, just insane. Like, it was insane. Like, I didn't expect any of that. I wish I could have done more with it. However, I don't know how much you know about Nintendo and their intellectual property department. Oh, that, yeah, very fucking. Nintendo's the worst company in the

world when it comes to their fans. The worst. Oh my God, they're horrible. They hate you. They hate your fans creating anything that they've created. They shut down the greatest ideas that fans have had that they make out of pure passion. Nintendo will come and give them a cease and desist and destroy their project. I've heard about that with you. So my whole fear was I can't make too much money off this because Nintendo's around. And I even had conversations with a guy in the UK.

He created a Nintendo coffee table book. So all pure artwork of Nintendo stuff. He did a Kickstarter, raised almost a quarter of a million dollars on Kickstarter for it. Obviously Nintendo came knocking at his door, said, hey, what do you think you're doing? And he was able to tell me what he was allowed to do. Like he had to sign an NDA with Nintendo. But Nintendo ended up giving him permission to go ahead and keep producing the book, but he couldn't disclose any of the terms of the deals.

And so like, that was always, that was like the, I don't know if achilles heel is the right term, but that was always the kind of thing in the back of my mind, how far can I push this without being noticed? I knew I had something, so I wanted to push it, but it was like, that was a risk and I. Well, how far could you push it? Yeah, no, I pushed it. Nintendo legal department contacted me. I pushed it to the limits. Remember Super Mario,

run the mobile phone game? Yes. It was Nintendo's first mobile phone game, right? I was like, alright, that's awesome. What I did is I created so Super Mario Brothers, the first, the very first game I created. A fiction story for kids for it. And what we did was we played the game and turned it into a story for kids. So each level, one, one. And we created a backstory and whatnot of how they got, and we had, like, screen captures for pictures and stuff like that.

Nintendo was like, wait a minute, we don't like this idea, or whatever it was. And they asked me to stop, but they didn't put a stop towards anything else. So they were okay with everything else I was doing except for the fiction story. And I purely believe it was because we started using the characters that Nintendo had just come out with for Super Mario Brothers run, or at least the artwork. So that was what we were using as the covers and stuff like that.

And that was such a hot thing at the time. So I have a feeling it might have just been like we were a little too close. Yeah. To their bread and butter at that point. But they were okay with everything else I was doing. I could see them being uncomfortable with the use of newer assets as opposed to, like, their older, retro style games. I could definitely

see that being the case. I mean, I've seen, I've heard stories about youtubers that try to make channels and some that make successful YouTube channels around Nintendo games. And then Nintendo comes along and says, stop, we're taking down your whole channel unless you change. It can be a simple thing that it's like, it was okay today, but in twelve months, Nintendo makes some sort of legal change, and it doesn't really care about you.

So they've made that. They've made the change internally and that now says, you cannot do this anymore. Right. So you had started making these books, right? And. Yeah. How many? Like, how, like, can I want to get a bit of a timeline on this. So you got the idea and then how long till you made the first book and launched it? Probably within four weeks. We. I got the idea to launch in the first book. The reason being is I had to launch it the

same weekend that Nintendo came out. I hurried, found a writer, and we got to work. What did you learn through that process of just getting it done in those first four weeks? Because I'm imagining that when you start down that path, you learn a tremendous amount, but you also realize there's a lot of mistakes that get made the first time around. Would you agree? Oh, yeah, 100%, man. You know, that first book is still one of my favorite books I have.

So my office at home, I'm an wick right now, but my office at home, I have all the books framed on my wall. Nice. Nice. You know, that first book, it's, you know, when I think of mistakes, well, I guess the only mistake I made was, and this will sound trivial, the only mistake I made was I made. I made it only for an ebook. I didn't make it for a paperback in the beginning. So in the publishing space, you have ebooks and you have paperbacks and audiobooks.

And at the time, I was brand new to the self publishing game. And so at the time, I was like, okay, I'll make an ebook. And the ebook is the one that blew up right away as soon as I created the paperback. And to create the paperback, it's like three extra steps. It's not a whole lot of work. Like, sales tripled because everybody wanted a paperback, not an EBAc version of. Yeah. And so I left. I missed out on thousands of dollars worth of sales because I didn't create ebook and paperback.

I only did ebook, if that makes sense. That's the biggest mistake. Looking back. Logistically, though, wouldn't it have taken a considerable amount of time to get those physical copies? No. So Amazon uses what's called a print on demand method. When you buy a book from Amazon, more than. More likely than not, the book doesn't exist. They have to print it and then ship it. Unless you're buying it from a large publishing house that has already printed the books.

Ship them to Amazon, and then Amazon handles the shipping. But books that self publishers do, they're not produced. Amazon prints them when they get ordered. Yeah. There's a similar model, so that we know of in the tabletop role playing world, which is called drive thru rpg. They do the exact same thing. If you want to get a book, they'll print it for you on demand. So that's. That's really interesting that. That's how. How Amazon or Kindle Publishing does that.

Yeah. Now, you weren't really writing any of the books. You weren't really designing any of the front pages or anything. What were you doing? You're the big picture guy. What is your job? I was playing the video games, man. I was playing the video games. No, that's it. Like, I had the idea. I had it in my head, but then I hired the right people to take the idea from my head and create it. You know, it's working with your strengths. Right. Like,

so I had the vision I had. I had, like, I knew how I wanted the pages laid out, whereas I'd go back and forth with my writer, and I went through a couple different writers. I went back and forth with my. I was like, no, I need this. I need this. Like, I need these two lines split up with a picture in there and then two more lines, and then we're having that second picture, all right? She's like, why? Cuz that's what I want.

Cuz it's just for me as the gamer that talks to me better than how you have it set up. And so it was just about those fine details, if that makes sense. And that totally makes sense, right? And that's why they had higher, like, that's why they had good reviews, because I was just, I was. I was coming. I was the audience. I was making this the exact way I want it. You were applying your gamer filter to the actual creation of it and saying, like, I would hate this and I would love this.

So do it the way that I want because I know my market. You are the avatar for your people. Right? That's so true. And keep in mind, I would only hire gamers. I would only work with writers who liked video games. And one of the writers, he's like, yo, your covers. You're using a matte cover. These need to be glossy. They're gonna look better, and they're gonna look better on my. And so I was like, oh, my God, I totally missed that. And, yeah, we did glossy covers from there on in. That's awesome.

I love it when people give those points and you're just like, oh, my God, thank you. That light, you're like, how did I miss that? Yeah, yeah. Love those moments. Can you talk a little bit about how you found a good ghostwriter and what you were looking for? Because I feel like that's gotta be a process because

you said you went through a few of them. If, let's say someone wants to do the same thing you were doing, but say in a completely different niche, wants to pick a ghostwriter for their niche, what would you encourage them to look for in that hiring process and picking a good team around them? So I think if you can find people who have a genuine interest or a passion into what you're doing, start with those people versus a generic writer, or generic. Whatever it is.

The reason I didn't care so much if the person was a good writer is because you could always just hire an editor and a proofreader later to fix their writing. But the passion and the interest and all of that, the writers, Rebecca and Michelle, I had two writers that they put into the books came from their personal experience with. With it. That. That was absolutely key, because I would have people I remember on upwork, this, this one chap, he sends me a message.

And so this is somebody coming from, not a video game standpoint, okay? He's like, so I paid about $100 to get the book produced. He wanted something like $1,300 to produce it. And he's like, I'll need like three months. I'll need to play the video games once it's released. I'll need you to get me the system. I'll need to do all this. And I'm like, bro, the games have been out for 30 bloody years. Like, you are, like, you're so far, like, you're so disengaged from, from what I'm looking for.

And so that's the difference between you get somebody who's in it and somebody who's not, but might be an amazing writer. Like, I could tell he was very, he was the academic type. He had his process, and you were. Gonna, yeah, he could probably write it better, or. But he could probably write it like, not like video game guidebook style, but he could, he was very, you know, but I'm like, bro, but you're, you're missing the entire point here because you're not in the space.

He could have written tale of two NES games, you know, like, instead of. Nice. Yeah. Instead of it just being a practical guidebook, which is all you really needed to get it started. And, and was, and it sounds to me like it was more important. It was done by the time the system came out. Then it took three months and be perfect. So here's the beauty thing about KDP and Amazon. You can adjust or change the manuscript, the book file anytime you want. So any errors.

And there were errors in there, errors we find. We would just edit them, upload and save. Next time somebody orders, they just print the new copy. I gotta, I gotta ask on that. So if people have an ebook version, for example, is their ebook static or will it be updated live? So that's a really good question. One, I hate ebooks. I think they're dumb. So just throwing that up. I like a real book, so I'm not 100% sure if they can update it like that.

I do know that if you make a significant amount of changes to your book, like, say you go from version one to version two, because you made, you just updated it and revised or whatever the case is, right. Amazon will send a notice out to anybody who's bought the ebook saying, hey, you can get the new updated ebook. I just don't know where that number is.

That makes sense. I mean, I'm just curious because nowadays with video games, for example, you make a small change and that's immediately updated in your computer. And it's crazy. Like, it's not, you know? Yeah. Well, you know what's nuts is video game companies actually just made the game good and then released it right back in the day. Back. Oh, man. No updates needed. Oh gosh, I hear that, man. Yeah.

We could go down such a rabbit hole. And I really wanted to, though, ask you about, we've talked a little bit already about the reviews and the feedback that you've gotten and the people that have reached out to you. And I was watching on your YouTube channel, my self publishing blueprint that you have, and I was noticing that your welcome video, it's something about nine things to do if you wanted to do KDP.

And one of the things you said, which I think is so important for anybody who is trying to get anything started, is reviews. And you were talking about this in one of your slides and how reviews are so important. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on why people leave reviews, because you had a unique a perspective that made it very concise. People leave reviews for one reason, whether it's a good or a bad review, they'll leave it for one reason, they got emotionally triggered.

So they'll leave a good review. If you emotionally move them in a positive way, they have to tell their friends, they have to tell others. They will leave a review. If you pissed them off or they hated it or whatever the case is, or it was just a really bad book or whatever, and you emotionally affected them, they're going to leave you a negative review. And negative emotions are always easier to move the needle than positive ones. So that's why you see more negative reviews

on stuff than you do positive. Because when you get pissed off about something, you want to tell everybody about it right away, and it doesn't have to piss you off that much, but something you love, you're amazed about it. It really has to move you to start telling people about it. That's how I view reviews. Now. Was that the same? Was it similar there? Yeah, it was. That totally makes sense. And I think it's super important because you get a lot of people who start up their own thing.

I'm just thinking of one of the people we had that they would make physical products and they get reviews on Etsy or. Yeah, I forget the other platforms, but those reviews are so important. And in my day job, I know how important reviews are on Amazon, for example? Yes. The reviews you get on Amazon will rock at you or they will hold you back. And I think the number one thing, and I learned that it's, like, I'll be honest about it. Like, it's.

If you have a quality product, like, reviews come down to a quality product, if you're not putting out the best of its kind, don't get out of bed. My first books did great. I was so meticulous about quality, quality, quality. This is what my customer wants. This is what I want. And then what happened? Nintendo releases the SNES, the Super Nintendo classic system. And I know. I know how much money I'm about to make. Like, I knew it. Like, I had, like, I had this machine on lock.

I was literally ready to print money. And so what happened? That book, quality control. I had a new writer, and I dropped the quality control. I got overconfident. And so what happens? Book shoots up. It's number one. And then all of a sudden, people get it and they open it, and, like, I could refresh the page. And the amount of one star reviews coming in was insane. Wow. Like, it was nuts. I had never seen anything like this in the space before. Like, I was refreshing the page.

I'm just getting destroyed on Amazon. Holy. And so I went into all panic mode. I was like, shit, we got a full rewrite. Like, I, you know, called up a girl. Michelle is like, yo, stop what you're doing. Stop the next book. We need to rewrite this one right now. We need a new copy on Amazon, like, three days ago, right? And so we did our absolute best to read, to try to fix it and whatnot. And it's much better than it was Originally, but the damage that it caused was irreversible.

So I learned such, such a valuable lesson from going through all of that. You can't get cocky. You gotta. You gotta make sure your product is the best of its kind. Cause if it's not your customers, the marketplace will eat you alive. Isn't that crazy that you're. And when I look through it, can I swear, I was like, this is horrible. This book sucks. Who, like, how did I release this? This is God awful. Like, I was just dumbfounded that I could have been so stupid.

So was it, like, was it full of typing errors or was it full. Of just lazy content? It was just lazy. It was just like, here are the cheat codes for this game. Here is this for this game. And remember, we're in the Super Nintendo era. Games are now what? 16 bit. They're double. That means they have a lot more in them. There's a lot more you can do. It was just like. It was just. It was just lazy. It was just lazy. It wasn't that there were errors or anything like that. The material. Correct.

It was just really lazy. Lazily done. And that's what I felt so bad about. So if you were gonna go back and do that again now, what would you have told yourself at this point and say, you know, a mecca. Here's what you should. You need to do now. Oh. The book would have been double the size because of the information we would have put in it. Like, we would have given the games. And it was a couple years ago, so I'm trying to remember which. You know, that's the one book

I don't like picking up anymore. Right. Like, because it hurts. It hurts to look at it. Yeah. Like, I. Like, it was about five or $6,000 I missed out on over the. Over the launch weekend or so, you know, so. But it was just like Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy tactics, Final Fantasy three. Right. With the airship. Like, I think we gave that book that. That thing, like, three pages, maybe.

I see what I mean. Yeah, we covered the basics, and I think when we expanded it, we gave it seven, but even seven was too small, probably. Right. And, like, street fighter. I think Street Fighter was on there. I don't know what we did, but we should have had a freaking a player bio with all super moves, all combinations and everything. For every single one, we get it for whatever reason. And there were other. Other games in there. We look at. We're like, what was I thinking?

And now I could blame. I could blame the writer, right? We had it. I had a new writer for that, but I can't. I overlooked it. I got overconfident. So, yeah, that was. I'm glad it happened because it was a good lesson. There's a couple things I want to say. First off, you know what you just said about who you could blame? I really want to commend you for that. That owning up to the fact, as you said earlier, being the visionary, like, your stake in this

is the visionary. And realizing, like, man, I really dropped the ball. And then the second thing on top of that, that's really kind of. That comes out of this is, I feel like a lot of successful people have that story that you've just told us, that thing that they look at that's, like, on their wall or stuck to their monitor or whatever that is. Like, I'm not. I've learned from that. I'm not doing that again because it hurts to look at.

And I'm sure that that has been a lesson for you in so many, so many times that it's come up. It has. Like, after that, we looked at every single book differently. You know, we weren't going to make that mistake ever again. You know, because when the marketplace says we don't like something, they don't just, oh, my gosh, the reviews, it was just, they're probably still all on Amazon. Because it's Amazon. Right. But, man, oh, man. Like, it was, it was such

a valuable lesson. But, you know. Yeah. Like, what Chris was saying, it's like, what do you do? You have writers and we're designers. I take the responsibility. Right. Like, I wasn't about to blame writers or anything. Like, I was like, ah, shit, I screwed up. Right. And so you took all the risk, too. So the one losing money in the end of that mistake was you. Right? All the writers, I'm sure, got paid all the. Yeah. The only person who doesn't in the end,

if this product doesn't work out is you. Right? So that's the CEO, the owner situation. I wanted to ask, though, just for context, because this is one, say, book that you put out. That was the snes one. But how many books have you created in total? Like, just give an idea of perspective for this. I'd say probably a ten to 1510 to 15 now. Ten to 15 Nintendo books in the publishing space, I have about a hundred under, but they're different topics and, and stuff like that. But ten to 15 under the.

The blackness guy or name. So this was just one identifiable niche that you found and were like, oh, I could totally crush this niche. Was it the first niche that you discovered you could crush, or was it just like a gateway or had you already been doing this other places? So, and this is, this kind of really ties into the whole nerdpreneur thing, and that's why I wanted to come on here. So I did. My first book was on emotional habits. Oh. Second book was on weight loss.

Third book was how to write a book. I don't care about any of those three topics, but I just, like, I don't care about emotional habits. I don't care about weight loss in the terms of how I wrote the book or how I had somebody write the book. And I definitely don't care about how to write a book. I was just trying to find something that was making money. But then when I found one that I loved, and I was tied into the video games. Everything changed. I got tied into it. I wanted to build it.

I got more obsessed with it. And there's a reason why that made money and the other ones didn't. And I, it wasn't the market because keep in mind, I went into a market that didn't exist at the time. There was no retro, like, except for the official Nintendo ones. There was nothing for the NES classic, right? And like we said earlier, Nintendo wasn't going to make anything.

And so I was getting, I broke all the rules that you, when you start selling something on Amazon, you always want to make sure there's a market first. There was no market. There was nothing. So I broke all the rules. I took all the risk because I knew the market off of Amazon. And I'm like, they're coming to Amazon for this. They have to, because what I would do, right? Like, I just knew it. And so we came there.

But if I couldn't have that passion, I saw other people try to copy me and I'd look through. I'm like, oh, no. What? It's just, it's a wall of text. What gave us a wall of text, right? I'm like, you totally crap the ban on that. And so that's why nobody could, could really come after that niche because they didn't get the customer. And that was a big, big thing for me to, you know, understand and see what happens.

You're touching on a lot of great points that you did in the video I mentioned on your YouTube channel. And I just want to commend, but also call out, like, that video is super great for anyone who's interested in, you know, kindle direct publishing. Like, definitely check out your YouTube channel, the, my self publishing blueprint channel. Like that.

Super useful information on that for anyone who wants to do this, because it's crazy that Amazon now is, has provided a way, or maybe, I don't know how long this has been around, but there's a way for anybody who wants to publish something, they can publish it self published. It's crazy. There's a spider. Spider man. You had. I don't think he's called Spider man, but the translated that you had on your podcast, like a little while ago. Oh, yeah, tarantulas. Yeah, urban tarantulas.

Oh, yeah. We had urban tarantula. He was a tarantula man. There you go. Urban tarantulas. If you're looking for him anywhere. But that's episode three, I think. Yeah, three. Yeah. And so, like, like, you could take that, you could create a book on caring for your tarantulas. You can take any nerdy passion and turn it into an ebook and create additional revenue streams from that. And those are customers that are coming in that.

I don't know what their other businesses are like the translate man's business, but it's just, it's, it's, Amazon is such a great way to, to grow your business for so many different reasons. And that's one of the reasons I love it. Can I ask a little? Because this leads a little bit into what is client acquisition?

And you were in a unique space for that. Most of the people that we talked to are like, say, building Instagram followings of tens of thousands of people, and then they're sort of through that, creating content and getting paid to make money that way or to like, bring people in and get clients. Some people are doing Patreon and then following their passion, encouraging people to buy content from them, all that kind of thing. And so client acquisition is very much around content driven.

How does client acquisition work in the self publishing business that you've clearly got a lot of experience in? Well, it's Amazon. So Amazon handles all the client acquisition because you people go to Amazon not to look for information. They're going to Amazon to go buy something. And so the only caveat you need is you have to be in something that's just not, like, it can't be so small, like so unique to you that nobody else, like the marketplace is just so tiny. Right.

And that's why, like, you know, video games, there were not a ton of guidebooks on there, but I knew there was, there was going to be people looking for that system. Right. When I go back to tarantula, man, there's a lot of, like, there's tarantula aquariums, food. Like, there's a lot of different reasons why people are going to be buying tarantula stuff on Amazon. And there's dozens of types of tarantulas, too. So you could be like breeding this specific type of tarantula.

Like when we got into that, one of the cool things about the episode was like, well, there's asian style tarantulas and then there's more north american style tarantulas versus new world versus new world. And so we have different styles. Like you could have a whole publishing business just around, like how to raise old world tarantulas, for example. Exactly. And that's the thing. And so Amazon takes care of the advertising, and it's like, come shop on Amazon for everything you need.

So Amazon takes care of the client acquisition for you. You're just getting a small piece of the pie. So does that mean that it's kind of like SEO, essentially like search engine optimization? People are typing in hundred percent what I'm looking for into Amazon. And if I happen to name my book or my book has these certain tags, it will show up. Is that how it works? That's exactly how it works. It works just like Google, just like Facebook, just like YouTube, just like Instagram. It's all SEO.

So that's one of the things we teach our students. So, like, for example, we're talking keywords. The only keyword I used for my NES classic books was NES classic. I didn't use link to the past. I didn't use Legend of Zelda, I didn't use Super Mario. I just used to NES classic because that was the only thing people were typing into Amazon. And so they would see the system, and then they would see a list of books. Huh? What are all these? So it works exactly how you're talking.

How did you know what they were typing into Amazon? I was looking for an NES classic, and that's what I typed in. So. So you just really need your avatar. If you're your customer, you've already, like, if you are, your people don't understand that if you are your customer, you've done so much of the hard work. Already, so it's actually harder to go into a niche that you don't know super well. Right? Like, this is the. This is almost like a cautionary tale to not follow your non passions.

Well, yeah, like, it's 100% man like. And that was one of the things that neuropreneur. I loved it so much because I've known you for years, and you're definitely a nerd. And I'm like, this is so cool that Chris is doing something like that, right? Because I knew there was going to be passion behind it. I tried to do books on computer programming. I know nothing about it. I was so hands off,

and it was the worst experience ever. Yes, they made some money, but, oh, my gosh, I hated everything about it. And so that's why I couldn't do anything else with them, because I just hated it. One of the things that comes to mind is I've worked at a couple companies that have educational ebooks that they'll do for getting emails, for example, and they'll be free. So how does that differ from what you're talking about. Could you give me a little bit more context?

Yeah, sure. So for my current job, we have made a ebook. It's not terribly long, you know, less than 30 pages and it goes into depth explaining. In our case, we're talking about how to prepare someone's listing for Amazon. So here's the criteria you need. These are the things you can do. Here's some steps about how to do them best. And it's free. And all you need to do is give us your email, which we would then add to a newsletter list.

And that is different in the obvious fact that it's free versus the KDP kind of publishing that you're talking about, which is paid for. But what, in that context, is it just the same thing but like blown up and multiplied? Or is there something else? So when you're saying an ebook, you're just giving them the PDF, right? Correct. Yeah, you call it an ebook, it's a PDF. But aren't all PDF's.

Ebooks aren't all ebooks. Just right now you can actually list free books on Amazon as well and give them away for free. I did an interview with somebody who actually gives his books away for free because he funnels them into his, he takes the customer, they subscribe to his newsletter or whatever because they got the free ebook and they wanted something else. And so they subscribe and he ends up selling stuff down the road to them.

After nurturing the relationship, your company is doing something similar. They're giving away a free ebook for whatever, but at some point they're expecting to sell something to the customer that they got through that free ebook. Right. It's kind of that introductory value offering. Yeah, some people call it a tripwire, but yeah, it's basically. Yeah, like the triple. But I think digital marketing way of doing that. But I think the trip wire, I think that's like, it happens right away.

Oh, yeah, but that's where, like if you. Right, well, it's like they opt in for a free plus shipping book and then they sell you immediately to the next thing where it's like, oh, you're interested in this thing. Well, we also have this package and it's severely discount if you buy right now. And then they do another one after that if you, if you were there. So they'll keep upselling you until you basically decide

not to give them any more money. And email marketing is all based around the idea of one initial free thing that you're getting. It's not free. You're giving them the email. The email is way more valuable than the thing that they're getting. But what they're doing is self identifying themselves as someone who's interested or committed in some way to this topic.

And so what that means is down the road, if I'm an expert on that topic, I can upsell you to a course or to some other membership site or something else that's going to make me money down the road. That's email marketing. Digital marketing 101 is get the emails with some sort of value offer. I mean, what we've done dove into right here are strategies around how to use these.

And one of the things I wanted to touch on though was the difference of making these two things and the, the amount of effort that goes into making the books that you made, for example. I mean, I feel like that is more. So what I'm asking essentially is, is that so much more work like it, it doesn't sound like it from what you're saying. It's, you make it almost sound really easy, which is a, you know, a testament to your success. I think the ebooks that I was talking about, you know,

they're not that hard. They just, you just use a publisher or a slides program, for example, and change the orientation. Is that almost the same thing? It all depends on the type of ebooks, right? We are currently working on a book right now that we've been working on since January. It's almost done. It's a kids book for road trip, Pacific Coast highway. And it's just designed to educate and entertain kids while they're on a road trip.

So they're going to learn about all, all the things you're going to see along the Pacific coast from Seattle all the way down to San Diego, and it's been four months way longer than we were expecting. I thought it was going to be much easier, but it's just the amount of detail and everything and the pictures and the designing and it's insane the amount of work that's going into it. This has been completely different than anything else I've ever published before.

Having said that, the amount of work and everything we're putting into it, I know this book's going to be a big success. Like it has to. Like, there's no way I'm nothing, there's no way I'm giving up four months of my life for this book not to do well, like force it to do well. Like, you know, if you just take a regular book though, or I guess the short answer, publishing ebooks or publishing books on Amazon. It is a simple process. You don't have to be a writer. You can hire people

to help write the book. But researching, coming up with the idea and everything, that's where the work is. Like, anybody can do it. It's the easiest way to. If you like, if somebody was like, how do I make money online today? It's like, you go publish a book on Amazon. Everything else is just ridiculous. Just go publish a book on Amazon and you can make some money online. Like, it's the easiest way to make money online hands down.

How do you know if a niche is good? Like how do you do that research and pick it out? So all niches can make money. However, the keyword. So the thing that the person types into Amazon, not all of those are in high demand. So that's where finding out what keywords make more sense than other keywords. And this kind of comes behind the passion. So this is going to be a great example. So the road trip book we're doing right now, if I was to look at it from like, is there a big enough market?

Do the numbers on Amazon make sense? Everything says no. Everything says no. It's like, no, this book shouldn't make money on Amazon. However, knowing the market, being a parent, right. And liking road trips and having kids who we've driven, like, we drove from Canada to Mexico, we're gonna have to go back from Mexico to Canada. It's like, we've done this a couple times.

So keeping the kids entertained and everything and doing the research off Amazon, reading through blogs and all that, what we was like, people would do this like, there's a demand. It might not be on Amazon yet, but there, there is a demand. That's why we're putting so much into it, because we want this book to really be like, holy, this is insane. Now the only thing I'm scared of is we're focused on one highway, the Pacific coast island.

We're focused on one road trip that american families take. Is there going to be enough american families that take that road trip to make this book successful? We don't know yet. Yeah, so I can't even remember your original question. How do you know if a niche is going to be successful? The easy way is there's already people selling and making money in that niche online. On Amazon, you don't need the full pie, you just need one, one slice. So there's already people doing it.

That's how you know you're guaranteed to make money because there's people making money already. The example I gave, we saw there's a need for this product. Is the product we created gonna match up with their need? We don't know yet. We'll find out in a few weeks. Like, I'm curious. I don't know if you'll want to go into this, but let's say if you wanted to, like, in the blackness space, you had to upfront the money for all the book to be made, for it to get published, to do the research.

That's your time investment. So there's an initial investment that you're doing. Like any business, you're going to put your money in upfront, and then you're going to get your return. I'm curious, how much of an investment is that? And also, like, what can people really make if they do this right? That's a good question. And to kind of show you where I evolved from. So the very first blackness guy book I did, it was $80 to cost me to write it. What?

$80? I drastically underpaid my writer, like, because I didn't know how much work and effort was gonna. I had no idea. She had no idea. I don't know if she did another one after that with me. I can't remember. Probably not, because it was, like, $80. That book, in four months, made me over $10,000. That was a good return on investment, right? When I left publishing the blackness guys, I was paying about $700 a book to produce. I sure hope you went back to that first writer.

I know I. You know what? I did reach out to her. In my defense, I did reach out multiple times to say, hey, things changed. Right? We know these books do. Well, I have a much larger budget, but she never responded. So that's fine, whatever, but, like, so things change. So from 80 to 700, the book that I'm writing on right now, it's gonna be. Be around the $2,500 mark to produce. But, like, the amount of money you can make it, that is going to depend a lot on the niche that you're in. Right?

There's some that are more seasonal. There are some that are all around. But, like, you know, I have students that work with me that make five grand a month, some ten grand a month. There's some that do between $20 to $30,000 a month publishing different books on Amazon. It's like anything. It's. It's what you put in is what you can get out of it with a little bit of brain power. And it's kind of a numbers game. Because many of these are evergreen.

So the more you have, the more books you have out there, there's more points of income for you. Those, the Nintendo books, like, I haven't touched them in years and we haven't even talked. I sold, I sold the majority of them. Right. We haven't even touched on that yet. But, like, they were still making me thousands of dollars a month. Like, they were not at the forefront of my memory anymore. Like, Amazon just keeps sending me money for them every single month.

That's the great thing about selling something on Amazon. If you do find something that is evergreen, like you said, literally, people are just going to keep buying it. You just get it there once and then Amazon just keeps sending you money every month. That's the power of a search engine for sure. I mean, like, you were talking about YouTube, Amazon, they're both driven by search engines. Yeah. If your keywords are good and it's a relevant thing, you're going to keep getting that traffic.

It's good quality because I've had books that are not good quality. They die off quickly. My top, the top sellers are the nas classic, both legend. So all three legend of zeldas link to the past. Zelda one, Zelda two. Like, those are, those are the four that probably do 80% of the income. But they were the ones that are, like, I'm most proud of because they have the most effort and everything. So they're also my favorite games.

So you touched on it. What, what happened? You, you sold a bunch of them? We sold, we sold the, I sold the whole Amazon account in 2020, 2021, just for change. Like, just, it was just, you know, it's like, all right, cool. I've done the thing. Let's sell the business now. Right? Let's go through that experience. I found a buyer and he bought the whole account. That was it. It was, it was emotional because I was, like, saying goodbye to them. Right.

It was like, it was a, you know, there was a lot of an emotional connection to them. Yeah. Like, I sold the account. So now, like, I get very, very little, if anything, from them, right. Just from other platforms and whatnot. That wasn't included in the sale. I sold it. And probably the highest demand for the, for a KDP Amazon business. It was, like, ridiculous. So it's like, probably a good time to sell it, like cars right now, right? Used car market, really good time to sell your car.

Not a good time to buy a new car. Can you tell me a little bit about, like, you got into this space a while ago. How long have you been doing it again, roughly? So, 2016, August 2016. I published my very first book. Okay. And so what was life like at that moment that you decided to go into this new market? You said you were living in Mexico, probably or bro. So I was like, I was dead broke, lots of debt. I had a job, but I hated it. And it wasn't really paying.

It was paying like maybe 1200 bucks a month. It was like nothing. And so we just needed a job. And it was funny. It was Gary V. I saw a video and he was like, just buy stuff on Am or buy stuff on eBay and sell it on Amazon because Amazon's the prime or the premium version of. Right. That doesn't work. Like the garage sale and Amazon the retail store. Yeah. So I researched three products. I was like, okay, if I buy this right now off eBay, how

much would I get for it on Amazon? I was like, what the fuck? Those are there. It's like, I swear. Yeah, yeah. And then I looked at another one. I was like, nah. I was like, what the hell? No, really? So I do three products and I was like, oh, what the hell is this online world about? Right? That was the first moment I realized I can make money online. And so I started looking into selling physical products on Amazon.

And you need a couple thousand dollars to get started to do that because you have to buy the product from China, ship it over, brokers, customs, whole bunch of stuff. And I was fine with all of that. The only issue was I had no money, so we couldn't do that. And so we literally started with $300 was our savings. And I paid $80. Oh, no. I paid Michelle. No, Rebecca, $80 for the next guy.

I can't remember how much I paid for the very first book, but I tell you, between August and November, like, it was like no more than $400 went into investing in this business. And the NAS book was $60 or $80. And that book did like, in a week and a half, it did 600. The other books made like maybe $20 a month, if that. Like nothing. But it was like that book literally changed everything. The following month, we did almost $2,000 and we're like, well,

we have money, right? You know, it was like, what the heck, you know? And in January we did like four grand or something like that. And we're like, oh, my God, we have money again. And it just started like that and never really looked back. So you must have had some. I mean, that's four weeks of very intense work. You must have felt pretty burnt out. Did you have your day job at the same time? No, like, my day job was like, when I say day job, it was like, I don't know how many hours a week

I was working or hours a day. Like, no, more than four. Like, I would have put a bullet if I had to work more than four at that job. So it was. Yeah, it was, yes, I do that. And then I would do the book stuff and I wake up early and do it and stay up late and do it. When you actually enjoy the stuff you're doing, you don't count hours anymore. You just count the dolls you're making. And that's really it. Milestones. Yeah, right? Like, yeah, the milestones.

You almost become obsessed with it. And I saw something that I was like. I was like, ah, I'm becoming good at this. I really enjoy it. Like, let this be the thing that, like, kind of turns everything around for us. And it was, you mentioned already a few people, but who do you follow that really inspires you? Okay, so right now, Alex Hermosi. But everyone follows Alex, it seems like. Now. Do you guys know Alex? I don't know. Send me some stuff, man.

So. Okay. Alex Hermosi and his wife. I started following his wife late lately as well. So Alex runs 100 million dollar company. He has nothing to sell you. And he basically just buys and invests in businesses that are doing between three to $10 million a year. And he'll buy a chunk in them, give them advice, help them scale even larger. Everything he has on YouTube is free. He has no courses, no masterminds or anything like that to sell you. He just helps, wants you to do well.

I know him because of two of my best friends work with him. They bought into his company, so they do the same thing I'm doing. They're just better. And so they bought into his company and they, or he bought into their company and is working with them as they scale to their freaking billions. So I follow him and a lot of his stuff. That's who I'm listening to right now. Grant Cardone had such an important time in my life, though. He's like, no B's. Go after the money, take no prisoners.

Get as much of his attention as you can. I had my most successful times in my life following that mantra. And I probably could get back to it because I've kind of reverted a little bit. Um, Gary Vee. Like, I met him. I gave him my book. I gave him the first book. I signed it and everything. And gave it to him when I met him in LA. And I'm like, bro, I like you. Literally. He made a video. He's like, stop watching my shit and go out and, like, go and take action. Change your life.

Stop watching my videos. And that was a video I watched. And then I didn't watch a video of his for, like, a year and a half until I met him. I was like, bro, I haven't watched your stuff in a year and a half because I've been working on my business and, like, I'm doing like, 20 grand a month now because, like, you said, stop watching videos. And it's like. And I told him the story I've shared with you guys. Like, I stuck backstage to go

talk to him and everything like that. Like, it's like one of those things I have to get back there. And I got back there. Walk with confidence, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Did you just. You just walked by just like, yeah, that's it. Or, yeah, I walked by, like, as soon as he finished his keynote, I was like, all right, they're gonna be taking him backstage. They must be using some sort of freight elevator at a hotel, right? Like the elevator the staff's use. So I was like, all right,

I gotta get to the hallways and security. Sarah just kind of walking, you know, and, you know, he was at the elevator home now. Snuck into the elevator with them and. Yeah, pulled the book out and gave it to him. And, yeah, it was awesome. Wow. That was just such a. Such a. Because, like, he gave me that idea. Like, not the idea idea, but, like, he is a gamer, for one. But he gave me that whole Amazon idea. And so, like, it was just.

It really was kind of full circle, meeting him there and whatnot. But other people, like, right now I'm on the Alex boat. He'll recommend a book and I'll just download it right away on my audible app. And, like, so I'm listening to atomic habits right now. I totally listen to that one. It's great. Okay, cool. So I'm really. I'm trying to get back into the whole personal growth thing and everything because I've been. I've been slacking on the last year and a half, honestly.

And that kind of leads into my next question is working hard on your own business. You're an entrepreneurial guy. You've always been an entrepreneurial guy, it seems. And things move. When you move, right? You're moving. You're pushing it forward. You even said, like, I'm going force this thing to be successful, right? But I also know, as you know, we've both been entrepreneurs before. That leads to sometimes burnout, stress, fatigue, and all of those things that come around.

Can you talk a little bit about how you handle those moments in your life and keep yourself going or get back at it to get to your dreams? Yeah, no, that's really good, man. That's crazy. Like, burnout and stress. I don't. Like. I don't know if I've been burnt out of. I don't know if I've been burnt out. I've been stressed a lot. Right? Yeah. Right. But burnt out, no, no, that's a lie. Maybe define burnout in your mind, because I think everyone's got a slightly different definition of burnout.

So what does that mean to you? You don't enjoy it anymore? And, like, on the publishing channel, I haven't done a video in months. I don't know if it's been a while. It just. I cringe thinking about doing that. I want to work with students. I don't want to produce videos on YouTube, though, for them. I want to work with them one on one. Right. Where I can actually have a really good impact on somebody versus just a whole bunch of. Right. And so I got burnt out from doing YouTube.

I guess that would be the first burnout, right? Yeah, because I just. I was like, hi. No, like, even to this day, thinking about trying to create a YouTube video, like, at the level it needs, I'm like, oh, God, kill me now. Right? So I guess that's a form of burnt out. But, like, you know, I take a call from a student, like, there's anything but burnt out. Walking them through, like, the simplest problem, you know, to help them grow their business or whatever. Like, that's exciting. Stress.

I think we're all stressed, some of us more than others, you know, I think stress is just. If you don't want any stress, you could just go and die, right? Like, it's just, like, life is going to be stressful. Life is going to be hard, right? There's always going to be those. Like, right now, we're stressing, like, do we want to move back to Mexico, stay in Canada? Like, what would help us hit our financial goals faster? Moving to Mexico would

save us 50 grand a year, almost. So it's like, do we want to do that to get our life faster in, like. So, like, those are the stresses of life right now we're dealing with. And it's like, you just deal with it. I feel like your definition of stress is maybe a little different, too, because, really. Well, I don't get the sense that you feel like it's a bad thing. And I think a lot of people say that stress

is bad and they don't want it. They say, like, how do I get rid of all the stress in my life? But you have a surrender to it. Isn't it what you make of it or what you interpret it as? I think not knowing how to deal with stress and handle stress can be bad for you. But the only people who are not gonna go through stress are dead. Like, people who are like, oh, I'm so stressed out. Well, okay, kill yourself. No more stresses. Right? Like, I. And I, like, trigger people, because

day and age triggering people. But, like, if you don't want stress, you can die, or you can live an amazing life and just learn how to handle stresses. Good and the bad, we're gonna get both. And trust me, there are times where, like, this last week has been very stressful. The bad stress. Like, I just didn't want to do things. Things were not working. It was just that where. And I would hate. I hate all of it. But it's like, it's also, like. It's like, well, but you survived through it, too.

Okay? So, like, it's kind of like working out, and it's like, weight is heavy. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, there. It's like you're going to the gym to lift weights, right? Like, if you're going to the gym and complaining of the fact that it's heavy, you missed the point of going to the gym. Yeah, Chris, this is perfect. Yeah. It feels to me, at least the way you're talking, it's that, you know, you acknowledge stress as not necessarily say a bad thing. It's just something

that everybody has to handle. And, yeah, it can get overwhelming. It can get challenging and be a thing. But realize that your capacity to handle stress is usually a lot bigger than you think it is and that it's not gonna kill you as long as you don't let it kill you. You know? I mean, like, yeah, I think people don't give themselves enough credit that they can handle way more than they think. Yeah. Even myself. Right? It's like, I can have a way. My wife constantly reminds me, oh,

you can add a way more. I'm like, no, I can't. I can't handle anything right now. Right? I'm crying like a little baby. In reality, it's like, odd eye. Of course I could add all this. There's nothing right. Like, compared to the real stresses, like your kid being sick. Right. Like, the actual stress, like, actual bad shit happening to you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Chris was just talking to me about that recently. What is it? What did you call it? Chris problem? Quality of problems.

Yeah. I was like, you, you know, this is a higher quality problem than what you might have been dealing with in the past. Yeah, but that's a good, good problem compared to a shitty problem. Like, you could have a problem paying the rent on your, you know, shared bedroom apartment with five other people, or you can have a problem paying for your one bedroom, con ocean facing condo that you pay for on your own.

And it's a different quality of problem, right, to be paying for the higher quality place. And so if you're complaining about the fact that you have that problem, a lot of people who are dealing with their problems are thinking like, well, if I could just get to a new level, well, then I won't have problems. And it's like, no, actually, when you get to a new level, you just have a different level of problem that you're dealing with. The problems don't go away.

So never complain about your problems. Never can say, like, I wish I had no problems. Change the perspective on the fact that your problems are just at a higher quality now than they were maybe a year ago or two years ago. And that touches on what you were saying about, you know, the different kinds of stressors, the really bad ones. But I did want to ask, because I've heard a couple recurring values of yours, and without me labeling them, I was hoping you might touch on three core values.

Three is a rough number, and we'll shoot for that. But some values that you have that help you go from project to project day to day. Okay. Like, I know the things that I need to be doing to make sure I'm at my best. Is that kind of what you're talking. About, or, like, love to hear about that? Yeah. Like, working out, exercising. Right? Like, if I skip a day, that's not like a yemenite off day. Um, the day screwed. Like, I'm just not. It's just not a good day. That's just me.

Part of your ritual, right? It's just part of the ritual, right? Let me ask you, if you had a million followers, what advice would you give them? Hmm. Million followers? It sounds so cliche, but it's like, people just don't do enough of what they love. Like, they settle for. Like, they settle for a job, career. I don't think they're like, I don't think people understand in the year 2022, like, we have more opportunity in this day and age than we've ever had in the. In human history.

And so when people are complaining about, I can't do this or I can't do that, or can't do this, or can't do that, or I don't have money, or whatever the case is, it's like, okay, but that's just how you've decided to live your life. The one thing I've learned from the online space is just how. And I want to use easy, but I guess they don't. Air quotes. Don't. Right? Like, air quotes. Easy it is to make money in this day and age, if you have an Internet access.

I have literally seen, like, one of my students, like, he. He had to write his own book, and it took him 18 months because English was a second language to him. And he was in butthole, India living at his mom's place when he started in 2016. This little kid, he makes $50,000 us a month now, a month selling music books on Amazon. He had to write his own book for 18 months because he didn't have money to make it to pay somebody else. And it took him that long to learn proper English.

So if Suraj can fucking do that, please don't tell me that you don't have money or you can't afford something or whatever. The world is hard. That's such a good one. It's just I have no pity for people like that anymore. And especially, like, with everything that's gone on in the world, it's like, oh, my God, they're taking away my freedom. Fuck you. You don't even know what freedom is. You live in America, you live in Canada, you live in, like, no, they're not. Just go on with your life.

Go focus on something else. I don't think people really, really appreciate how good they actually have it. We could be living in North Korea. That could actually be a reality for us. We could live in a country like North Korea. Those people don't have freedoms. And if you're wondering what it's like to live in North Korea, I suggest you looking to Yeon Mi park, who wrote a book about it, and she is. If you want to know what it's like to live in any sort of situation, that's not America.

You want to know what real, say, oppression or any of that kind of stuff. She escaped from North Korea. And her story, it's a great book, but also so is the audiobook. But she's also done amazing interviews on various various podcasts, Joe Rogan being one of them, but also, like, Jordan Peterson and a number of other people who have big podcasts out there. And I would recommend that for anybody to listen to just to give you a little perspective.

If you're ever feeling like you don't have what it takes, or if you're ever feeling like, oh, man, life sucks right now, go listen to Yanmi Park's story and you will know. Never, ever think that your life sucked again. Perfectly put, that. Yeah, no, it's hundred percent. Like, so I think, like, going back to your thing. Like, so I have a driven heart. The car channel. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Well, this is a good question. Can I just ask this quick?

Is what's one thing you're nerdy about outside of your core business and what you're doing? Dude, cars. I know you're super nerdy about cars. And not even just any car, your specific car. Can you talk about your Range Rover for a bit? Yeah, I'm a big Range Rover Land Rover fan. Massive. Like, I got the whole YouTube channel. We're blown. We're doing, like, a million views a day right now. Wow. Albeit, it's one of the short videos that just blew up because it was, like, crossing

the border into Mexico. And, like, it's just. So it's taking a whole political thing. Like, it's just like, YouTube's just going after it, but it's like, it's just like, the last 48 hours, 2.6 million views. Oh, my God. I. And so it's like, oh, what's the. Title of that video? What happens when you cross into Mexico with guns, drugs, and no papers? And it's literally me just driving through the border. Like, that's it. That's SEO right there.

But people are going nuts. But the thing that triggers me or not triggers me, but the thing that really upsets me is when. When people are on my videos and they're like, I'll never be able to afford a car like that. Oh, I wish I could do that. Or like, oh, that's my dream. Like, it breaks my heart when they use that language and they're like, I'll never be able to. Why will you never. Are you gonna die today? Do you not have

any other bit? Like. And so, like, in 2022, helping people understand, no. Making 40 grand a year is. Is a choice. Making 40 grand a month is another choice you can make, and you can have it. It's on the table. Like, there are ways to do this. So it just. It breaks my heart when I see people comment like that. Because in high school, I used to think my dream was making 100 grand a year.

If I made 100 grand a year right now, my family would go hungry, and that was what 18 year old Ameka would think or 17 year old Mecca would think, right? Probably 29 year old Emeka would think that, too. Wow. Right? Like, once again, I can't remember your original question, but, like, it just, when I see comments like that, I'm like, I just. I just want to help all of those people open their eyes and just show them, oh, my God. Let me show you this thing. Lava's not.

Let me show you this thing called eBay. Let me show you this thing called the Internet that connects the entire world, that allows you to take your dirty passion, allows you to take your non nerdy passion, allows you to take whatever and profit from it and help other people in the. In the meantime, if you want or not. Like, who cares? But you don't have to settle for the life you think you need to settle for.

One of the great things that I'm hearing through the common thread, through all of this, which is so much, you know, correct me if I'm wrong here, but what I'm hearing so much about you is your perspective on people's mindset and the power of mindset. And I. I mean, that is something I personally believe. And is that kind of what for you? I'm hearing anything is possible if a person has the correct mindset, whatever that might mean for them.

Yeah, no. And, like, that's constantly changing and evolving. I'm very materialistic. I'm driven by income and driven by fancy toys. Like, just straight up. Okay, judge me all you want. Yeah. That's a good thing to recognize with one. Right. That's almost easier, because if you care about it, then you can reward your brain that way. Right? Like, if it's like, man, if I do this and I get it, another Land Rover. Awesome. Well, that makes it easier to motivate yourself if you know that.

Yes. It's actually, I'm. I'm not always super materialistic. I find it very hard sometimes to motivate myself of, like, oh, I'll buy this because, like, I just. It doesn't motivate me that way, but other things do. So I had to find that out in my own way. Yeah, a nice review. Yes, a nice review. And not just a nice review, a nice review than the people in my life it's like, I'm competitive. It's. I'm a competitive person. Okay? And so when I see other people doing better than me.

But there's two ways. You can tear everyone else down, or you can build a bigger building. Okay. And I'm not a teardown person, okay. Which a lot of people who are competitive take the tear down route, and that's the wrong route. Always wrong. You have to think about, how do. How are they building it? And can I get deeper roots, better foundation so I can build a bigger skyscraper than that person?

That's the way you want to channel that competitive drive, because a lot of nerds, especially, don't know how to channel that negative competition vibe, and they do it in this tear down way. So, yeah, try to build something bigger rather than tear everyone else down around. You know, I'm still learning about the whole not tear down, like, tear down. Like, I think social media has taught me a lot about that because nobody will come at you,

who's doing more than you. Like, nobody will say negative comment, who's doing more than you, because that's not what they do. Because they're more successful. And when you learn that and then you read some hate comments and stuff like that that you get, because Internet, like, you almost feel sorry for them. This person's hurting right now. Why would. Yeah. Like, they said that to me. Ouch. I would hate to see how their day is going. Right? Like, it's like,

it kind of shifts. Whereas before, I would take so much stuff personally because they didn't know how to handle it. I was like, oh, my God, people are horrible. Right? It is. It is mindset, man. That's the one thing that I think I've learned a ton. It's just understanding that if you don't get around people who are doing more than you or bigger than you, like, you can't expand your mind, and it's great to get around some friends who are all just killing it, and because that.

That forces you to level up or, like, oh, you're gonna be dropped, you know? But it's. Where do you learn that? I don't know. I think it's just. You just kind of. It comes to you when it comes to you, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, you learned through doing, and that's definitely what you've done. Well, what I'm hearing is there's a lot of mindset shifts that you've made throughout your time being an entrepreneur.

Is there anything in your mind that was, like, a big mindset shift you had to make to get yourself out there as an entrepreneur that maybe if someone is thinking about doing it for their first time, you would tell them. To do somebody thinking about doing it for their first time. Yeah. Let's say going out there into the wild unknown of the Internet, what's the mindset that you need to do to start, say, asking people to pay you for what you do? Just don't have fear.

Just accept that you're probably going to screw it up the first couple times, but that's okay because that's part of the learning process.

You know, even with, you know, with. With new ventures and business, I'm doing, like, it's been a while since I've tried something new, and I'm, like, terrified because I'm so used to being, like, the person in the space or whatever that now I'm gonna get into it and I'm, like, gonna be, like, the newbie who's just gonna look like an idiot and it's gonna screw things up because I'm the newbie. Because we all have to be the newbie at some point before we can become great.

And so just being okay with that because the new space is so small compared to the grand scheme of things, of what you'll end up doing, that it's like, who cares, right? You're not going to think about this in a year. You're going to be, like, so focused on everything else that you're growing. So be okay with that. Yeah, that's great. If you're going to go somewhere, the first few steps are so small, you're probably not going to make a big splash enough for it to haunt you down the road.

Right? Exactly. That's a really good boom right there. I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's go ahead and. Yeah, let's transition into the random rolls and D 100 questions. Now, big question. Do you have. Do you even know what a D 100 is? Yeah, no, don't. See? All right. That's why I thought, dude, well, we. Gotta stop it now. We can't keep going. I thought you were a nerd, man. You're cutting. I have no idea what a D 100 would be. Wait, dungeon master 100? No, it's close. It's just. It's

just a 100 side dice. That's it. 100 dimes. They're not actually 100 sided is. You take two d ten s, two ten sided dice, and you roll them and one's the ten digit. One's the one digit. That's all. So just click d 100 and let us know what number you got. Roll 98. Damn. That's probably the highest number yet. All right. If you had a monster or fantasy creature as a pet, what would it be and why? Okay. It definitely be one that could fly. Honestly, I'd probably be a dragon. Yeah. Yeah.

I want something to burn down things. I want something that I could ride on, that I could fly, honestly. Like, okay, what are you gonna bring up to a dragon? Like, it's a dragon. Yeah. Land Rover versus dragon, which was gonna be better. Yeah, it would definitely be a dragon. Right. So, yeah. Nice. All right, go ahead and roll. One more. Okay. 100. Oh, that's our choice. I got one. All right. It's a little word association here. If you.

If I say the terminal hustle culture, what are the first three words that come to your mind? Gary Vandershuck. Gary van. That's two. Gary v. Life. Oh, yeah. Damn, dude. Gary v. In life. That's just what popped in my head. When you say hustle culture, that's so interesting. Yeah. You're for the hustle culture, and I think some of the people we've talked to have been very, like, the opposite. Of that, which is very. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I. I put

myself into the camp of. I'm cautious. I probably in the last, like, six to twelve months have come into this mindset, but I'm cautious around hustle culture. I think there's some stuff you've said that make hustle culture. There is a branch of hustle culture that is, if it is your passion, like you've said, I believe this is what I've been saying today, which, if you love this, you breathe and bleed it, then. Then this is. You are hustling in a direction that you love, and it's okay.

But if it's something that you hate, and like you said, if you had to do more than 4 hours of your job, you'd put a bullet in your head. Like, that is the hustle culture that is toxic and dangerous. Hundred percent. I'm fully with you on that, man. 100%. I think another thing that's come up in our podcast around hustle culture is just that. A lot.

There are people that are wary of never taking a break, because it's very easy in the social media age or in the age where it's, like, all content creation to never take a break or to always blame yourself for not working or not continuing to make progress. And I agree that there is a healthy amount of stress that we have to lay upon ourselves to make progress. And if you're not hustling in any part of your life, you probably need a little bit of that hustle culture. But if.

If you are always on the hustle ground, which I get the sense you are omega, like, I feel like you're a hustle guy. Ever since I've known you, you've been, like, on it, and, you know, how. Do you feel about taking breaks, honestly? Okay. For most of last year, I didn't work, you know, and so, like, I just took a big break. But that's a totally different level of break, too, right? Like, some people, it's like, I'm gonna take a day off. I'm gonna take a few hours off instagram, right?

And it's like, I've created the space to give myself a break. That's a year long. No. Well, no, I didn't. I just didn't do enough. It wasn't the best decision. No. Breaks are important. Like, if you don't take breaks, that's where the burnout really happens. And, like, the burnout, that's not, like, I'm, like, the burnout that affects you physically. Like, the bad burnout. One thing I'd really,

really love to strive for is work more. Like, increase my productivity more Monday to Friday and really just have the weekend to chill. I'm not the best at that, you know? And a lot of it is because I don't feel like I'm working hard enough or I'm not productive enough during the week or something like that. That's interesting. Thanks, man. It was a bit of a different tangent for us to go down on these questions, but that was also very interesting. For the sake of this,

let's do one final rule. Hopefully, you'll get below 90. Yeah. 54. Would you be a Jedi or a Sith? And what color is your lightsaber? Okay. It's red, so let's get that first. That feels very Sith. Yeah. Just right off the bat. Jedi or Sith? I'd love. No, I'd be a Jedi. Who am I kidding? I'm for the good. I'm for the good. I'll fight the good fight. I love their. I love the idea of just the mentoring and, well, I guess the fists, the Siths.

They do mentor their own way, but, no, man, the Jedi and Jedi knights. And there's so much that it just aligns with the values I have on their teaching, their beliefs and everything. I just. I really. That's something I would really be a part of. Wherever the dark side. We all know it's way more fun, but. The anger drive you, Chris. You got a little Arnold Schwarzenegger there with your sith. You know what? Arnold should be a Sith.

If Arnold came up in the next Star wars movie, as it says I would be, I would watch that. Quick, get to the hate. That's awesome. Be my lightsaber. Well, now, the last section we're going to go to is called just rapid fire. We're going to shoot some short questions, and the answers you give can be one word, they can be five words. And maybe we'll realize you're right or wrong in some of your answers and

we'll go a little more in depth. All right, so first off here, since on the same vein of Star wars, would it be Yoda or Obi Wan? Probably Yoda. It's a classic answer. We've had a hundred. Yoda is the 100% winner. Right now I'm curious if the new Obi Wan series changes that for people. So when we films, when we do season two, we'll have to keep that answer in there and see if it changes. I just connect. Like, I just know more about Yoda than I do Obi Wan.

Alright, what superpower would you get if you could have a super power? I'd fly. Classic. That is classic. Yeah. You can save on airfare, man. Fly or ride a dragon. One of those two, right? Yeah. Yeah. If I have a dragon that I wouldn't want to fly, so. But yeah. Favorite nonfiction book, the Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly. Three favorites. Pizza toppings. Oh, pepperoni, mushroom and green peppers. Coffee or tea? Coffee. How many cats is too many cats? Two. No, no, three. Three.

Two cats is awesome. Three. Is there. What Hogwarts house would you be in? Oh, shit. Um, honestly, I'd probably pick. Okay. Okay, hopefully. What house was that blonde chick from? Oh, hufflepuff. No, no. Yeah. Luna was in Ravenclaw. Oh, really? Okay, well, Hufflepuff were. I'd have to scout them out. Yeah, Huffle, what was Ravenclaw's? My personal definition. And I'm sure we'll get some people who correct me, but is Ravenclaw's very like book smart? They're super studious. They're not Ravenclaw.

Hufflepuff is much more like we take everybody like we're super friendly and supportive and feelings and such. Oh, yeah. No, I probably do some damage in there, but yeah. Yeah. Tupac or biggie? Tupac. Wrong, but. Okay. I'm not gonna get an argument over it, but. All right. Star Trek or Star Wars? Star Wars. I kind of saw the light going that way. We haven't watched, I haven't actually watched Star Trek before. That's one of the things we want to watch as on our list. Big Trekkie over here.

I can give you some direction if you want it. We were just going to start with the Star Trek the next generation. Isn't that the beginning? No, no, it's not the beginning. It's the first show. No. But. Now there's the question. As all things like this go, do you want chronological or do you want the first thing to be made? Production. What's the right way to do this, Frank? So I would actually say you're, you were,

you were in the right track. I think, in my opinion, the original series will turn anybody nowadays off of it unless they lived when the show was made. Why? The production value is so low. It's so misogynistic. The injust things are so from the sixties and seventies, really.

But the next generation takes some of the production value and the love of the Sci-Fi world that it builds into the first season or two, and then by the end of the next generation, their production value is miles ahead of where they started. And it's just very good. If I started with the Next Generation, would I be missing, would I have unanswered questions from not seeing the first stuff? No, not at all. No. No. Okay, cool.

There's very little that they, that they reference in the original series and otherwise, Star Trek is very much the kind of show where they mention something and you're like, okay, I'm taking a leap of faith and they'll fill me in with what I need to know later. They always do that. Without a doubt, they fill in gaps because they expect anyone watching will not know. It's episodic. And I'll tell you this,

like a couple things. One, telling someone to start with the original series is like someone who's never seen Batman before and telling them to start with the series that was in the sixties where it would like people like, bang. Wow. That'S the level that you're going to be getting with the original series versus the next generation. And two, if you're not, for whatever reason, feeling the next generation, you should jump to DSD. Deep space nine it is. Okay. I remember that one as a kid.

Yeah, I love Deep Space nines and a different style. I actually think that's my favorite series out of all of them is deep space nine. Yeah, because so but I think the next generation is very worthy of, like, watching. It's great. And it really establishes so many Star Trek tropes get established in it that it's good to watch. So. And the aliens are great in that. Exactly. Exactly. So I'd start there, but if you're not feeling it and you're like, ah, jump to DS nine, because it is great.

Nerd stuff is awesome. Last thing I'll say is just that deep Space Nine started when next generation was finishing as a show. So there's a really good handoff from the actors and the production. And both of them, excellent captains. Excellent actors, excellent captains as people. Really well written. So it'll. I'm very excited for you and your family if they're all going to join you on this journey. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. And if you really like all of that, I encourage you to try.

There we go. Babylon five. Really? No, honestly, it's the best Sci-Fi series ever made. And I will die on that hill. No, but not enough people have watched it. And I will say this. If you can just get past the first season, which is like 22 episodes, and it's a little rough. It's a little rough. It's 22 episodes. Okay. But you only need to watch, like, six of them. All right.

But if you watch, like, those six episodes, then jump into season two, it is by far the best Sci-Fi series for the next, like, four seasons. Highly awesome, super addictive. It was doing stuff, you know how everything right now is. Everything back then in Star Trek was episodic. So you can jump into the next generation in season five, episode six, and you won't be lost because it is episodic. All right. Or you can do any of that kind of stuff and you. Same with DS nine.

Everything is episodic. Babylon five, if you do that, you're lost. Every show you watch nowadays is exactly like that. You can't jump in really well. You can't jump into the middle of, say, better call Saul without having seen the five other ones beforehand. Right? All of them. Yeah. I mean, literally, Babylon five is episodic for the first season, which is why it kind of sucks. And then they get into it. It's not that way. You have to watch it in order there.

Each episode builds on the next and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and they run this balance between episodic to, like, the new version, the way tv is done now. Highly recommend. Bell in law five down the ride. So. Okay, cool. I feel like it's kind of hard to top any question now, but if Chris, if you've got a dying one. Dune or Mad Max? Mad Max. Never seen Dune. Ah, you gotta watch dune, too. Missing out on Dune. Now. There's a new one. Just watch the new one.

Yeah. Okay. The only one exists. It's the only one that exists. We don't talk about the other one. Maybe I can watch that tonight. Yeah, if you've got a few extra hours, definitely dig in. It is awesome. And, like, beautifully shot, beautifully done. And you see Frank rolling his eyes right now because I try to squeeze my dune plug in every single episode. If I can, so every time. Yeah, I thought he was going to bring that up before he brought up the other thing that I'm blanking on.

Anyway, how can people find you, support you? Or is there any place that people should go to support you or find out more about what you do? Like, if they want. If they want to find out more about, like, Amazon and publishing? On Amazon, there's the YouTube channel, my self publishing blueprint. And from there, like, they can email me or contact me, like, Instagram. I'm on my car driven hard official. That's like, the Instagram I'm really active on.

I'm not really active on my personal one, but, yeah, like, those would be the places. And, like, I'm always happy to connect with people and answer questions or help out or whatever. So, yeah, I'm friendly. You also talked about being a mentor in it. And you have students. Is that something that's open? Yeah, so I teach people how to build businesses on Amazon through publishing. That's what I've been doing since 2017. So, yeah, so that's open. I just opened up a new program for that to work

with people one on one more directly. Like, kind of what we were talking about earlier. People who have. They have something they're passionate about, and they want to turn that into a full on business. So those are the type of people I want to be working with now, so. Well, and thank you so much for coming on Emeka. It's been awesome. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, this was fantastic. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I'd say the one takeaway, because one of the things I'm trying to do now is a takeaway here at the end of our episodes. The takeaway for me from everything that you've shared with us is the power of mindset and the power of finding what it is that motivates and what it is that people really want to do. So thank you, man. Yeah. And we're gonna keep it nerdy. Yes. Always, always. Keep it nerdy. Keep it nerdy. Keep it nerdy. Keep it real. Thank you for listening to Nerdpreneur.

Be sure to subscribe wherever you found us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Every review helps our show grow. You can follow and chat with us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Renew podcast Nerdpreneur is a labor of passion, and Chris and I would love to keep this thing going. So if you want us to continue making content, you can support us by going to patreon.com forward slash Nerdpreneur and become a member of the board. Members of the board get shoutouts.

They can submit rapid fire questions, they get behind the scenes peeks, and we record super fun and valuable content exclusive to our board members. We love all of you nerds. Keep it nerdy. Nerdpreneur. You know I love my work. Life's a game, so I'm gonna take my turn. Nerds deserve to put the passion first, so let them rapid first so they can all be heard.