Shontavia Johnson (00:00):

What’s up, y’all. Welcome to The Shontavia Show, where my goal is to help you start a business based on your life’s vision. This ain’t gonna be your daddy’s business advice. I’m laser focused on entrepreneurship in the 21st century, vision and breaking the traditional mold. If you can get with that, you can get with me, be sure to visit shontavia.com for more episodes, blog posts, and other content. Thank you for listening. The show starts now.

New Speaker (00:28):

So what’s up everybody. This is Shontavia and it’s another episode of The Shontavia Show. I am here with Miles Beckler, who I’ve never met in real life. We connected on Twitter and just so excited for you to be here with me today, virtually Miles. So thank you very much.

Miles Beckler (00:45):

Absolutely. Shontavia thanks for having me on and I look forward to this.

Shontavia Johnson (00:48):

Yeah. So, so let me just talk a little bit about you and your work, and then you can fill in the gaps with things that I’ve missed. So Miles is an entrepreneur who went from $50,000 in student loan debt to the co-creator of a multimillion dollar website from scratch for free on YouTube. Miles is a digital marketing expert. And one of the things I love about his YouTube channel is he actually shares the step by step, how to strategies and tools so that other people can do the same thing.

Shontavia Johnson (01:22):

I think one of the things I really respect about your work, Miles, you know, there are some internet marketers who just sell you the sauce and not the step by step and so, I just so respect that you’re peeling back all those layers and sharing the real steps of how other people can grow their businesses online. So thank you so much for that work that you do.

Miles Beckler (01:44):

For sure. It’s my pleasure. My wife called it. She was like, you know what you’re doing? You’re making the videos that you wish you had when you were 18, 19, 20 years old. When I knew I had this kind of like entrepreneurial thing and I just had no guidance and I didn’t know what to do with those energies. So my wife nailed it. And that’s, that’s kinda what I’m doing. You hit a certain point in life where you just want to start to give back to the people who you know, regardless of financial situation, they’re, they’re committed. They know they’re going to do it one way or another. So I might as well just lay the path forth for them. That’s kinda what I’ve been trying to do recently.

Shontavia Johnson (02:17):

Thats awesome. So let’s talk a little about that. Because you did this thing where you went 90 days and did you go live on YouTube for 90 days or did you post videos 90 days? Once a day for 90 days? How did you do that?

Miles Beckler (02:33):

Yeah. And so like it started from a personal development seminar at the end of a two day seminar, the guy leading it challenged me to do something that scared the shit out of me every day for 90 days. And I hope s-bombs are okay, cause that just happened. And I’ve wanted to teach. So my wife and I started a website together in 2009 and this, this experience happened in 2016. So I had all this experience. There’s a bunch of people selling courses that I thought were underdelivering and overpriced. And that moment it just clicked. It was like I gotta make a video every day for 90 days. So that was the commitment. And I prerecorded them. Most of them were done on my cell phone that I already had. I bought like a $40 like clip on microphone that just plugged into my phone and like a little selfie stick holder on tripod.

Miles Beckler (03:16):

Or the webcam on my laptop I already had. So I didn’t like go buy new equipment. I didn’t go get new fancy stuff. I just started like the process of how do I get everything I know about this world I’ve been engaged in since 2003 is when I made my first money online. How do I get it out? Right? How do I become a content creator? So the 90 day challenge kind of forced me to go through repetitions. Like if you go to a gym and you want to make bigger biceps, what do you do? You go every day or there’s rest days involved, but you work the muscle over and over and over and over and over for long periods of time. So it’s that philosophy applied here. And at the end of 90 days, I was communicating a lot more clearly. My videos were getting better.

Miles Beckler (03:56):

I was able to kind of get in and, and deliver the how to, and get out more efficiently. And my audience started to grow. And at that point I was addicted. Like I loved it. I felt good. It felt like living in purpose. Like, like this is what I’m here to do on this earth. Like I’m supposed to get this stuff out for the world I’m supposed like, I don’t know why nobody else created a library of free how to, until me, but I was like, I guess I get, thank you. Okay. That’s what I’ll go forth and do. And now today, so we’re about three and a half years later, I’ve made like 600 videos at this point in time. Most are prerecorded. Some are done live. I, I maintain a lot of flexibility in my life because I honor the lifestyle side, but I do wake up just about every morning, and I think to myself, like, what does my audience need today? What can I create for my audience today? How can I help my audience go one step in the right direction today? And if I can get an answer to that and if I could do something to make a video or do some little step in that direction every day, that’s a good day. And you do that enough times and you look back eventually like, damn, I just, I just wandered a very long path and you know, 130,000 subscribers at this point. And it still feels like I’m just some random dude chatting. Like I don’t, I don’t feel it on my end. I’m just trying to be helpful. And the numbers are really stacking up in an interesting way.

Shontavia Johnson (05:09):

No, that’s awesome. So you went from, I think what I read was 75 subscribers the day you started to 35,000 in a year?

Miles Beckler (05:18):

Yeah. So I started with zero. I started at zero just like everybody else was zero videos. Zero a month one, I had done 30 videos. I did like 55 subscribers at the end of the 90 day challenge. I had like 180 subscribers did 120 videos. So the next month I did a video every day too. So the end of four months, every single day, putting out a video, I had 450 subscribers. And most people look at that and they’re like this, it didn’t work like that. That just doesn’t work. That those numbers are not big enough. And they’re all looking at the numbers that Miles has now, it’s really important to look at those numbers that Miles had then, and I did 30 day updates. So you can go watch all these old updates. I show my exact analytics through the process but the power of compounding takes over. So it was 450 and then it went to like 1500. Then it went to 3,500. Then it was a 9,000 and boom, boom, boom. And now just that growth curve just got bigger and bigger. So 30,000 at the end of year one about 70,000 end of year two. And I crossed a hundred thousand subscriber mark about nine months into the third year.

Shontavia Johnson (06:20):

That is incredible. That’s really, really awesome. So you started out, you said in 2003, you started this work in 2003. What was that? What’d you start with in 2003?

Miles Beckler (06:30):

So I was at community college in the East San Francisco Bay area and I worked for the college radio station and my program director, who was another student was like, Miles, I need you to cover more shifts. I’m like, man, I got to work, right? Life is expensive and busy in the Bay area. And I was crossing bridges multiple times a day. And he’s like, let me show you this little thing. This little side hustle it’s called affiliate marketing. So he taught me how to essentially do affiliate marketing on MySpace, which some people might know as a predecessor to Facebook early social media. And it started working. I started making money. I was making two, three grand a month with it. They shut it all down. So the platform shut me down. They banned my links overnight. So my income went from, I thought I was doing really good in life.

Miles Beckler (07:08):

Then all of a sudden went to zero overnight. And I learned a lot about that, about kind of relying on third party platforms and relying on social media because social media is a lot more finicky, whereas YouTube and Google, if you’re a blogger and podcasting, you know, you kind of own your content and they’re more, it’s more of a search engine, right? People go to YouTube and they say how to do video marketing, how to do YouTube SEO, how to, how to, and I get to show up with my videos that say how to do that thing. Right? so I started in 2003 that fell apart in late 2004, I tried a dozen or more businesses network marketing. I bounced around from idea to idea real estate investing and nothing ever clicked until 2009. My wife and I co-founded a website in the meditation and spirituality space.

Miles Beckler (07:56):

And we went all in on that. We, it was in the depths of the global financial crisis. We started that business in the worst economy of my life at that point. And we just kinda, we had no money. I was broke. We had to move back in with my parents because I couldn’t even afford rent anymore. And we just went all in on content and the idea was my wife and I meditated a lot. It was the only thing that felt good in our life. And we were like, man, I bet other people would feel good if they tuned into this. So we started sharing the information and free meditations through a blog through just writing content. So about a $95 investment. And then, you know, 10 years of work and it’s generated multiple millions of dollars. And that’s, that’s what I’m teaching on my YouTube channel is what we did to grow that website my wife and I co-founded. That’s still super successful. It’s still our main thing today. That’s when I’m, when I’m teaching on YouTube, I’m teaching everything I learned, you know, from doing it right that time and all the other times doing it wrong before that.

Shontavia Johnson (08:52):

Yes. I’m curious about the doing it wrong. Cause I feel like so many of us like do things wrong and you do one wrong thing and then you just quit. So like what were the best mistakes you made in this whole journey?

Miles Beckler (09:06):

Yeah, so in, in the early days that, that MySpace one. So if you think about what I was doing, I was, I was playing middleman, okay. That’s what affiliate does. If a listener doesn’t understand affiliate marketing is, you know, if I recommend a specific book on Amazon and you click on my link and you go buy that book, I would earn a commission. So it’s kind of like a recommendation way for Amazon or millions of companies to gain customer ac– it’s a customer acquisition channel. So I was on MySpace meeting with people, interested in what the product was and I was linking them over to the product and it worked for a while, but what I wasn’t doing, here’s the mistake that I learned from I wasn’t building a brand, right. I wasn’t becoming the go to source for information. I wasn’t building an email list and that’s probably the biggest one because it had, I been building an email list, I would have a list of a hundred thousand, 60,000 people. And they could have turned off my links from the platform and I could have just kept emailing every single day or every other day or once a week or whatever I wanted, I would have had control. Okay. And that’s, it is the realization of a lot of people are marketing. They’re all in on Instagram right now. They’re all in on Facebook right now. And that’s a very precarious marketing approach versus like we’re on a podcast right now. You own this MP3 file, this MP3 files on your hosted plat–, but like no one can turn you off. Right? So you own the race course. You’re not a horse running in someone else’s race. We’re not sharecropping here. You own the farm land in this scenario. And that’s like the biggest thing. So when my wife and I went to rebuild it the next time, and the challenge with that is you start at zero because on, you know, Facebook’s got billions of daily active users.

Miles Beckler (10:42):

Yeah. But Zuckerberg is pretty well known for like making it more difficult and more difficult. Pay me more and I’ll give you the same reach you had pay me more and I’ll give you the same reach you had is their approach. Whereas YouTube, for example, or the Apple iTunes like Apple iTunes, wants podcasts listeners to find great podcasts, Spotify, Spotify wants podcasts listeners to find great podcasts. So they become partners of yours versus pay me. And then I’ll give you a little bit of reach and engagement. So it’s kind of like partnering with those kinds of platforms and then giving lots of great value that makes you the brand, right? Like You, Inc. You are the brand and then build an email list because that is the ultimate asset that you own. And when you’re in that position that people search for you. So if the listener ever, when you’re on YouTube next, go to YouTube type in Miles Beckler in the top search bar and hit space.

Miles Beckler (11:34):

And you’ll see autocomplete comes up and there’s gonna be like 10 different things. And these are the most common phrases people search a long with my name. And that means I built a brand. I’m a trusted individual on YouTube for search engine optimization, Facebook ads, marketing, et cetera. And YouTube is picking up on that YouTube’s like when people search Miles Beckler, comma, this, he does really well. Maybe when people just search for that phrase without a name, maybe we should show Miles Beckler because his people keep coming back time and time again. And I’ve, I’ve been able to leverage those platforms to kind of work with me, for me, with me, I think partnership is a good way. But in all honesty, YouTube could turn me off, right. I’m sharecropping right now on that platform. So they could, so I know that, which is why I’m building my blog. That’s something you own blogs and podcasts are the only two things we actually own. And I’m growing my email list, which is that other thing. So how, how did we do, did we cover the answer?

Shontavia Johnson (12:25):

Oh, I love that. So I’m an IP lawyer by training. So anytime people talking about owning the brand, owning their platform, my audience knows, I talk about this all the time. So I love that you mentioned that ownership piece because it’s critical. So many people think, Oh, let me just start the Facebook page, the Twitter account, the Instagram account. And that’s what I need to do, but it’s like, no, you need to do the opposite of that. Like share your stuff on those platforms, but own the platform, right?

Miles Beckler (12:53):

Yeah. So, and this is the idea of like content syndication or content distribution versus the content itself. So what I found for me, my wife started a blog. We started that co-founded that blog she wrote, she did all the writing. I did all the behind the scenes geeky stuff. I tried to force myself to blog from like 2012, 20– like multiple times. I was like, I’m going to be a blogger. Wife did it… She’s cranked. She, her blogs reached 40 million human beings. It’s incredible. So I see the success and I’m like, obviously I need to blog to create that success. But I hate writing. It’s actually that I don’t hate writing. I’m pretty good at writing. I really don’t like editing and proofreading and like, like, like drafting things like that. Me I’m a stream of consciousness person. So it wasn’t until I figured out that my medium, my method of communication is this kind of verbal thing, right?

Miles Beckler (13:43):

Video, video, audio that’s me. So then I went all in on that. So the reason I went to YouTube is because it’s an easier process for me to get these ideas out of my head and communicate them. I did some radio stuff in college. It’s just my personality type. And then I’ve got a team of people who come behind me and they turn my video content into blog content. So I’m reinvesting in professional editors and copy editors to make sure that we’re not just putting my content out on their platform where I could get shut off, but we’re also putting it on my content. And then it took years for me to build these systems. So I put out a video, it goes out on YouTube. That’s what I do. I have a teammate in the Philippines who puts it on my podcast feed.

Miles Beckler (14:24):

So she downloads, makes the MP3 gets it on podcast. So that’s there. Another teammate makes it in the written word and that’s on the blog. Perfect. And then I got people who come by and they pull out bits and pieces to get it on social media. And I’m pretty bad at social media, but social media, the actual point I was trying to get at is social media that you made already effectively, social media is a support system for your core content strategy. It never should be a core strategy in and of itself because it’s just going to set you up for failure at some point, because at some point we’re not going to be using Facebook anymore, probably a long way out from that. But at some point that’s the way it’s going to be. I see no reality where YouTube and Google aren’t a thing yet. Right?

Shontavia Johnson (15:04):

Same, same though. I probably felt the same way about MySpace too, right.

Miles Beckler (15:10):

Very true. That’s very true.

Shontavia Johnson (15:13):

Oh my gosh. I just love so many of the points you made. And I’m curious about one in particular. So you mentioned turning yourself into a brand like you had all this knowledge, but you were behind the scenes when your wife was blogging. And I visited the blog recently. I’ve visited a couple of times because I meditate almost every day and you’re the behind the scenes person. So how did you go from the behind the scenes person to turning yourself into a brand? What was that process?

Miles Beckler (15:42):

It’s tough. A lot of mental chatter, right? We all tell ourselves stories. We’ve got stories in our head and like, so that story of, I’m not a good writer. Like if I really went back therapeutically, I guarantee I had some teacher in like middle school or something. Like you’re a terrible writer. And I’m like, “you’re right, I am,” and I’m still owning that. So I just, I had myself convinced I was behind the scenes guy. And like, you, you know, I’m talking about like, I’m pretty animated. Like I talk to people all the time. I’ve got kind of the gift of gab, if you will. So it was breaking through that negative self talk was the first step and then mix that with the willingness to put out whatever came out, right? Like the, the willingness to ignore perfectionism, the willingness to say that incremental improvement step by step by step a little bit better next time, a little bit better next time.

Miles Beckler (16:34):

As long as I keep getting up, keep taking a step and I’m a little bit better that next time that’s the victory, right? Putting out something that’s magic and shiny and everybody oogles over it. That’s not the victory because that’s never going to happen. It’s probably never going to, I’ve never had a video go viral. I will never have a video go viral, but I’m gonna keep showing up for my people. And I’m gonna keep incrementally trying to get better and better and better. And that, so it was somewhere mixed in all of that, right? It was, I was frustrated because there’s a lot, I call them fake gurus. There’s a lot of people who didn’t know as much as we were charging a lot of money for old information. What used to work stuff didn’t even work anymore. They’re charging two grand for a course–still goes on a lot today.

Miles Beckler (17:09):

So I was, I was frustrated at that. I felt this calling. I feel like every human being has a call, like we’re all on this earth to make this world a better place and to make humanity better. And when we tap into that calling a magic can happen, but it’s a little scary. I was, I was drowning that in, I used to smoke a bunch of weed and I used to drink a bunch of alcohol to be perfectly honest. I was mood altering myself to try and not hear the calling for a long period of time. So when I tapped into this whole like, okay, I know how to do it. I know there’s people taking advantage of other people. I feel this calling and it was just like, Oh, I guess I gotta do it. Like you just hit that point sometimes, where it’s like, I had to.

Miles Beckler (17:50):

And I made the first one and it was my first video is still live. I recommend people if they’re about to make their first videos. It’s so common to look at YouTube and be like, damn, they’re so good at what they do. Click on video sort my oldest, watch their first videos. Everybody’s got humble beginnings. And then it’s just that whole like, when you start and you put up number one, you’re on the path, because then you can put up number two and you can try to make number two a little better and then you can try to make number three a little better and on and on and on. That’s why I love the 90 day challenge. Is it compresses the learning curve because if you’re doing one video a week and let’s say it takes you 90 videos to get competent, it’s going to take you 90 weeks.

Miles Beckler (18:30):

That’s almost two years. That’s like a year and 10 months. Like no one wants to be bad at something for a year and 10 months. So I decided to just be really bad at it for like three months. And honestly, by the, by the second month I was like, I’m pretty proud of that. Like nobody saw it, but I’m just…

Shontavia Johnson (18:47):

It’s good.

Miles Beckler (18:48):

Yeah. And you know, I didn’t share anything on social media cause I, I was not mentally ready for like feedback. You know, old friends, people who don’t know what I’m doing and be like, Oh yeah, look at you a little mister make money online guy. Like I just, I wasn’t ready for that. So I just didn’t, I didn’t tell anybody I was, it was in secret for sure when I was doing until I kind of developed my thick skin. And I was like, you know what, I’m doing this.

Miles Beckler (19:10):

Like, I am like, this is me. And with my wife’s brand too, like if I look back like disgust can be a powerful emotion, you know? And if you’re feeling disgusted with your life and with what’s going on in the world and with seeing other people take it, like just getting emotion and you’ll be amazed at what you can create, we’re all divinely guided in some way with whatever you believe in this. And what I mean by that is if you put a carrot seed in fertile soil and you make sure that deer don’t eat it, you’re gonna get a carrot, like magic happens. And that is the same for like us and humans, right? Like every person is an apple tree. And if you aren’t producing your apples, which is that thing you came on this earth to do an apple tree that doesn’t produce apples, it’s kind of dying. Right. So it’s yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s layers to that, but somewhere in the middle of all of that is kinda my belief, I guess.

Shontavia Johnson (19:59):

No, that’s awesome. And I love that you’re transparent about the mental stuff that goes on. So before I started, yeah, it is before I started doing video, I had to force myself into video. Before I started doing video, I did a TEDx talk and the comments on YouTube were the things that made me think, Oh, well maybe I shouldn’t pursue this thing. And I just had to push through. It takes time, like you mentioned, but it’s good that you mentioned that. Cause I think someone could look at you and say, Oh, well, his content is really good. There’s no way I could get 130 YouTube subscribers and blah, blah, blah, but I loved that you mentioned that.

Miles Beckler (20:36):

Watch my first videos. I was on, at an Airbnb in Hollywood on this red leather couch. It was awkward. I was like rigid. And like, you could just how uncomfortable I was in that moment. But it was literally like F it, I have to do it and I’m gonna do it tomorrow. And there was something in that commitment to like, I’m gonna do this for 90 days. At the end of the 90 day challenge, actually, he was like he had us write down an amount of money on a card. And he was like, look, if you don’t do your 90 day challenge, you’re going to have to donate that to, and I’ll figure out what political side you would hate most. And I’m going to make you donate that to the political side. You hate most. So I’m like, look, and I kept that card and I’m like, I ain’t spending that money on that guy, that is not happening. I’m gonna show up again. I’ll put up another rubbish video and it’ll be a little better. And at some point, you know, there’s the habits like we form new habits, right? And you get to the point where, where the habit’s there. Now, if I go like a full week without making a video, I’ve never missed. I’ve never done more than a week without doing a vide, in the three and half years. But if I go off a full week and I don’t do a video, it gets more difficult. Right. So the more we do things, the more you flex the muscle, the easier it is. You stop going to the gym for a month and you go back and you’re going to try to bench press, what you were bench pressing, your body’s gonna be like, what are you doing right now? So there there’s, this is the truth in the kind of mental sport that we’re playing here as content creators.

Shontavia Johnson (21:56):

Right? Right. No. So, so very true. You mentioned earlier money and purpose. And I think a lot of the folks who I talk to struggle with passion and purpose and helping people and money. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about how to balance, like doing things to help people and also making money while doing so.

Miles Beckler (22:17):

Right. our culture has, our culture has a lot of subsets and each subset has their own kind of like relationship and story to money. Really I’ve took time to study wealth. I grew up in a working class, poor neighborhood. My parents used to have to go to the pawn shop to pawn their valuables, to pay rent on a regular basis. So I grew— and I was in kind of a decent neighborhood. And there were, I went to a school that had some rich kids at it too. So growing up in my teens, my tweens, my early twenties, it was like, what did their families do that my families didn’t? So number one, I think like taking time to learn what is money? What, how, why, why, where does it come from? How does it work? Right? Like you don’t have to go all the way to the craziness of the fed and all, but just understanding.

Miles Beckler (23:01):

And when you realize that, that it’s kind of a, in some sense, it’s a store of value, right? Like we can go give enough value to enough people and we can store up this lot. Another way to think about business is, successful businesses help people solve problems. Okay. So someone who’s making hundreds of dollars is either reaching a few people or helping a handful of people with pretty small problems. Somebody be making a hundred thousand dollars is either helping more people or they’re helping people with bigger problems. Somebody who’s making a million dollars is either helping more people or they’re helping people with bigger problems. And usually it’s both, right. We not only help more people because our brand grows, but we also start to help people with larger problems with more valuable problems. And it becomes this thing where it’s like, man, do I want to go help people?

Miles Beckler (23:48):

Do I want to help the world be a better place? Or another way to ask it is, are there more people today who need some help than there were three months ago? Absolutely. Right. So that’s the real opportunity. And then like, what are you going to do with your money? That’s up to you, right? There’s a lot of people who they want to donate to their food banks. I donate money every single month. I look at causes. So just last week I donate a thousand dollars to this one company. That’s,uthey’re buying face masks for doctors cause we’re going through the whole pandemic thing right now. And somehow there’s doctors in our first world country who don’t have basic,uN95 surgical face masks. Like I was able to just give $1000 to that because like I do, every month I donate someone and like, it was like, that’s where it should go this month.

Miles Beckler (24:30):

And if I was broke and barely could take care of my damn self, I couldn’t do that for other people. I’ve got dreams of protecting forest land. I live in the forest, I got 20 acres. And I’m learning forestry management as kind of like a hobby because ultimately I want to protect hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. I want to put it in a land trust and lock it up to where it like no one can hunt on it. No one can log it. Know what you can’t touch it. It’s just trees. Cause we need trees. Like they breathe in what we breathe out and we breathe in what they breathe out. I think it’s good to protect some trees. So I need to grow as a human and I need to help more people solve bigger problems to generate the cashflow I need to go do that kind of thing.

Miles Beckler (25:13):

And when people get those bigger whys, it could be to fund a church in your community. It could be to fund a food bank in your community. Honestly, it could be to live in a big ass house and to have that car you want, like, it can be whatever you want it to be, but money is just a mechanism towards whatever it is that you, you want to be. And I think when I really started to study like wealth, there’s a book called The Millionaire Next Door. It completely changed my mind. And oftentimes I think people get confused and they think that the folks living in that neighborhood with three car garage, the big house and the two Beamers and the brand new truck and that $120,000 boat or 250– boats are ridiculous, I’ve learned anyways. They look at that and they’re like, wow, they got it going on–.

Miles Beckler (25:56):

They’re wealthy. They got it going on. No, they don’t. They’re poor. They are cashflow poor. Wealthy people drive ten-year-old trucks. They live in normal neighborhoods and they’ve got assets. They shop at JCPenney. They shop at basic stuff. They don’t spend their money. They save their money. They know the difference between an asset and a liability. And these are the things I learned by like, you know, my parents for some reason, decided like they, they raised me with love and I couldn’t have asked for anything more than that, but they didn’t play the money game. So I was like, well, let me figure that game out. And once I learned the rules of it and I’m like, man, so I can go make a lot of money and do cool things with my money. And I make that money by helping other people solve their problems.

Miles Beckler (26:35):

That’s sounds pretty. It sounds a lot better punching a clock, answering a phone, doing customer support stuff I hated. Right. And driving two hours, every single commuting in the Bay. Like so it actually kind of empowered me and it was because I changed the conversation. I changed, you know, we all, there’s a, a study of thought called epigenetics, I believe it’s called. And the idea is that we’re all programmed by the age of six, our subconscious mind gets programmed by what our parents thought. So what did my parents think? Money is hard to, hard to come by money doesn’t grow on trees. We can’t afford that. Those were the default things they said until I was six years old. So everything that was going on in your life it’d be up to the age of six is what you were kind of preprogrammed with.

Miles Beckler (27:14):

And if we want a different reality than what our family came up with, we gotta get into that, that head space. And we gotta rewire that conversation. And for me learning about it, going into it versus I’m not even gonna play that money game, nope the man’s fucking with me Nope. I’m just gonna ignore it. I’m just gonna smoke my weed. Like whatever F it I’m okay. And I took that route for a long time. But then I just realized that was that wasn’t fulfilling. And I was like, I’m going to figure this out. And I jumped in and boy I’m glad I did.

Shontavia Johnson (27:43):

Oh, I am too. That is beautiful. I love that. That is awesome advice. So what other advice? So I love that so much. And I know so many people who are listening to this show in particular are where you were in 2003, right? Like just getting started. You’ve learned so much, you’ve seen so many different social media platforms and technology come and go. What should people be doing right now? So shifting your mindset about money certainly is one. What other things can you suggest to folks who are thinking about starting a brand, starting a business, building something online, what should they be doing?

Miles Beckler (28:19):

Create content, like simply stated create more than you consume. So if you’ve been watching YouTube video after YouTube video about how the game works, if you’re listening to podcasts after podcast, trying to understand how it works, you have to create more than you consume because the winners in the new economy today are those who create content and, and like content is, is like the currency of the internet. So until you step into that role of the creator and know you’re going to create pretty bad content at first, because everybody does, that’s just normal and you make that okay. And you’re like, I’m going to create enough bad content to where I get kind of okay at it. And then I’m a create some kind of okay, content until I’m almost good. And then I’ma keep creating content. And eventually I might be, pretty good.

Miles Beckler (29:03):

And that’s, that’s just a normal path. Whether you learning surfing, snowboarding anything in this world, chess, games, like we start at bad and we work our way through the levels of the learning curve to get to competence of it. But really just start creating. Cause we live in this age, that’s miraculous. We’re all geeking out on our like super nerdy, interesting little passions. So I’ve got a friend a couple in New Zealand, they run a website that is focused on fitness for dressage horseback riding. Now dressage is like horse dancing. It’s actually in the Olympics. It’s really weird, you can watch the videos. Don’t watch it. It’s it’s, it’s literally like horse ballet and she’s not teaching people how to do that. She’s teaching them fitness for dressage riders. I got like a 65 year old lady in my, in my inner circle.

Miles Beckler (29:53):

She teaches quilting. She lives in Montana. It’s incredibly cold where she lives. She quilts to stay warm and she’s just started blogging about her quilting. She’s getting like a million views a month on Pinterest right now, she’s getting a thousand visitors to our website every single day from Pinterest, because she started taking pictures of her quilt stuff and putting it on Pinterest. And what I’m getting at is there like every person has these things we’re interested in, we geek out about. And when we start to share our thoughts and create content around the things we are interested in, we love we’re passionate about then the audience forms and there are no new messages. I’m not teaching anything new. Shontavia, you’re not teaching anything new. There are new messengers, right? And our world needs more messengers and we need more people to create. Cause when you’re creating with a focus of helping others, imagine a world where everybody wakes up and everyone’s like, Hmm, how can I help somebody today?

Miles Beckler (30:46):

Let me go create something. That’s going to help somebody today. And everyone in our country, our world is literally their dominant thought is how can I help other people today. We’ll live in a better world. And most people will be a lot more abundant. And just through the tools we have through the cell phone and look around from a cell phone you know, like everybody’s on two or three apps all day, every day and you just start to create through those, give value, share what you know, help, be funny if you’re funny and it doesn’t have to be tactical stuff, it could be art. It could be comedy. It can be anything. It could be just random musings on hip hop or like it can be literally anything. And the audience will grow. I got a dude I grew up in the Bay area.

Miles Beckler (31:27):

He, he started a channel around just talking about San Francisco Giants baseball. No name guy, not on the radio. He’s got major radio competitors. He’s got ESPN as his competitors within like three months, he’s got almost 10,000 subscribers and he loves the Giants and he loves baseball. And he’s just rapping about baseball and giants like every day. And he is growing massively. Now, does he exactly see how to monetize the tournament? No. He doesn’t know how to exactly do that yet, but that’s easy when you have tens of thousands of people who are waiting for you to publish every single day. And the only way you get there is by starting and pushing through and it gets addicting. It’s fun. It’s great to help people.

Shontavia Johnson (32:05):

Oh man, amen Miles. I’m giving you a high five from the East Coast. So that was incredible. I love your message. I love the way that you are breaking it down for people and making it digestible and relatable. And I know folks will want to know how they can find you. So where can people find you? Where can people find your work?

Miles Beckler (32:28):

Totally. So I was blessed with a very unique name. So you can literally just search Miles Beckler anywhere. And I will show up. I’m most active on YouTube. That’s where my content goes out first. So if you want to find me on YouTube to search my name subscribe there, I’m kind of active on Twitter from time to time. But I do a lot more on, on YouTube than socials. And if you got questions, pop in the comments, I’m always in the comments I’m on Twitter. You can tweet me @milesbeckler, cause that’s my name and I’m happy to converse. I just, I, I really, I do believe our world would be a better place if more people step into their role as a creator, I think we were created in the image and likeness of the creator. So we’re here to create, so let’s all go create stuff. And if you need help ask me and I’ll do what I can to try to help you create stuff for your audience.

Shontavia Johnson (33:11):

Thank you again, Miles. I really appreciate it. This is great.

Miles Beckler (33:14):

Cheers. Thank you.

Shontavia Johnson (33:16):

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Shontavia Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment wherever you’re listening. You can find me on social media everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and wherever else @ShontaviaJEsq. You can also visit me at shontavia.com to find a transcript of this episode along with other show notes. While you’re there, please be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter.

Shontavia Johnson (33:47):

The information shared in this podcast and through my other platforms is designed to educate you about business and entrepreneurship and I love to do this work. While I am a lawyer, though, the information I provide is not legal advice and does not create or constitute an attorney client relationship.

Shontavia Johnson (34:05):

The Shontavia Show is a LVRG Incorporated original. The show is recorded on site in South Carolina and produced at Sit N Spin Studio in Greenville, South Carolina. Original music and sound design is by Matt Morgan and Daniel Gregory. Mixing and mastering is by Daniel Gregory and the video is by GVL Media.