Accelerating Business and Awesome Collaboration with Dan Morris

I need to make sure they get what their heart needs in order for me to get to the end, that that concept of humbleness has always stuck with me just like, maybe I am not the most important person in every collaboration, maybe I really need to realize that as long as I get to the end, if I let you be the most important person, then you win, too. So I've lived with that since then, and I was driving with the kids at that, and I was just telling you about that as maybe, you know, when you guys are dealing with other kids at school and teachers, is maybe you need to make sure that being a smart aleck isn't always as good as letting the teacher know that she's the smartest. And she's doing things that need to be done. And, and when she's happy, you'll be happy.

Hey Chuck here, and I'm so glad that you're listening to this episode. And I just want to take this quick moment right now to let you know about our free collaborators toolkit. And this episode is all about partnership and collaboration. And our guests share many resources, tools, and things that you can use to make collaboration and partnership easier in your business. So if you're looking for better ways to grow, and scale your business, through collaborations, and strategic partnerships, this free collaborators toolkit is going to contain the best resources from our workshops, as well as contributions from our guests. And these tools could be the missing link that you've been looking for. And they're going to help you to solve everyday business challenges, and access, highly effective ideas that can help and grow your business exponentially. I know they've helped me and I know they're going to help you as well. And the best part about these tools is that they're completely free. And our gift to you for being a valued member of our community, and a subscriber to the show. So you can get access to all of the resources contained inside the collaborators toolkit today by visiting the website at WWW.collaboratorsunite.com/toolkit. That address again is www.collaboratorsunite.com/toolkit. Go ahead and register today get access to all the resources, and I'm gonna see you on the inside. Now. Here's the episode.

Hello, everybody. And welcome back to the show. Chuck Anderson here. This is the creative collaboration show. And I have for you another amazing guest, who is all about collaboration and CO creating programs and products and just really, really cool ideas. And he's got some great stories here for you as well. So please welcome to the show. Dan Morris. Welcome, Sam.

Yes, I was waiting for the stadium sound like the cheer. Yeah, it was waiting for that. The crowd goes wild. I see all the people out there. It's just the saw the eyeballs looking at me, it's just fantastic. I feel the love, I feel it.

And if this is one of those super, you know, high tech, geeky podcasts, I would have the buttons that I could push. And you know, the that's a great idea. Maybe, maybe we'll aspire to that one day. So Dan, thank you so much for being here. And look, I always butcher people's introduction. So I don't even try anymore. So I am going to let you introduce yourself introduces, you know, who you are, what you do, we're gonna get into some of your really cool stories, whatever you want to tell people so so so Dan, introduce yourself to the world of our collaborative entrepreneur audience.

You know, I really like to introduce myself when I don't remember the other person's name. And so I don't know how to introduce them to that person. So I always like to say, Hey, I'm Dan, as if you know, they didn't know me and then hopefully they say their name. And then the person I'm with here's the name as my as my tactic. I have to find out someone's name. Especially if it's difficult to pronounce. Yes, exactly. Because I have learned that everyone in my life, their name is either hay or dude. That's just the way it is. My wife's always like, to the neighbor's name like, yeah, it's dude. Every time I call him that, he says, he says,

Yeah, answers do it.

So it's good. So anyway, introduce myself. That's interesting. Got you. So sometimes when I get tripped up on that, because I think to myself, again, I Come on military brat, I was growing up. And I've lived in, I don't know, 17 states and three countries. And I always think does that make me something does is that? Is that interesting? Does that add any knowledge to how I can be the way that I am. And I would say that I'm living in Nashville, Tennessee. So I don't have a southern accent that I know of. But some people say, Well, you have a weird accent. And I told them that they're like, Well, I've lived all over the place. So it's probably from everywhere. My wife and I, my wife is Rachel Marie Martin, she runs finding joy.net, which is the giant motherhood blog, she's got a book deal out of it, and did the today's show circuit and all that stuff. And together, we run the finding joy.net for the moms of the world. And then we also do a couple of projects a year for digital markers for vloggers, podcasters bloggers, people have a website that are looking to get more out of it and small business owners. So we kind of do those three things. And in any marriage, I guess, there's a division of labor. So she's kind of in charge of writing the content for the motherhood site. And it's become as big as it has, it's got almost a million fans, because she's really good at taking what's in her heart and somehow putting on paper in a way that most people can't do that most people can't write like that. And then I work mostly on the digital marketing stuff. And then she's kind of like, the, she's kind of like the back end person for me on that. And I'm the backend person for her on hers. And then oftentimes, we get up on stage. And then we talk collaboratively about the kinds of things that we do together. For instance, we haven't spent a dime Facebook, and yet, with finding joy.net, you know, we reach millions of people a week, and one of her goals is to get 1000 likes in the first hour on some of her posts. So we talked about, you know, how do you? How do you get reached on Facebook without paying, like, what is that process, and then we combine that, which is the finding joy motherhood site and combine that with my side, which is affiliate marketing and products, and copywriting. And then we've, we put those together when we do stage shows. And before COVID hit, I think we did maybe 104, eight hour workshops around the world, which I can talk about in a little bit more in a little bit. But that combined with having 11 Kids is that's pretty much what would

Wow. So your whole life is about collaborating, right? So you have 11 kids, you have a business partner, who is also your wife, you have two amazing collaborative businesses. So everything that I just heard is all about collaborations,

I will tell you that the most difficult collaboration is blending families, I will say that it's the most difficult thing that I've ever had to do. And I didn't know I didn't, I think that's maybe what makes it hard is that you just are unaware of the areas in which you'll have to collaborate and compromise and find the space where everybody fits. It is a very interesting chapter, if you ever get to that part in life, it's it's, it's something that I was totally not expecting.

Well, and, you know, the old saying what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. But it also teaches us really cool skills that, you know, you don't even know that you need, but there are useful in other ways and, and so that difficulty I'm sure has led to some, you know, some aha or some takeaways that do carry forward into your other relationships.

You know, one of those that interesting you say that as I was, I was driving it today with one of one of my children, because that's the only way to put that. One of my children. I can't say one of the boys is so many there's so many girls like me now how do you know? And we were talking about humbleness, like what is humble mean? And I was telling him I used to wear my my previous life, my non digital marketing life. I was a real estate developer and I built 65 Walgreens pharmacies in all over United States. And I worked with this guy, who's a super super rich guy, the kind of rich where he he didn't even consider himself rich until he had like $50 million liquid like that he could just use not tied up in investments because that's what he considered to be rich. And I just don't know Under thinking, wondering when your definitions change over time, like that kind of stuff. But in many of our dealings, we'd go out and meet with a property owner. I was young chomping at the bit, just wanting to make awesome things happen. And my, my boss was much wiser than me and had this humble sense that I struggled for the years that I worked with him to even understand. But now, as I'm older, and I can look back, I totally get it. But there were many times when he would let the sellers win. And not necessarily. Not necessarily, necessarily win, but he would let them feel like they want. You know, they wanted to sell us property, and they wanted to get a particular number. And we didn't want to pay that amount, you know, and so he would throw out a couple of different ideas. And for us, he would be throwing out ideas, that would, for them be a compromise, but would make it seem like they're not going to do our compromise. And instead, they're going to stick to their number. And somehow, in the end, every deal would get done. And he would, we would make the money that he would make on the store, maybe we would make 50,000 less, right. But on a $3 million profit margin or something. Did it matter in the end. So I came away with this six years of working with him realizing that that whole concept of the Pyrrhic victory where you know, everybody's fighting to win something, and in the end, you win, but you don't really win. Because somehow you like ruin the relationship or something like something else happened. Every single time he was willing to sacrifice something, knowing that the end was his only goal. And if you had to lose some ego, if you had to lose smarts, if you had to look silly, in a meeting, we had the mob dominant meeting, if a guy at the end, it was the collaboration that he needed. And it was like, if that's what it takes, I need to make sure they get what their heart needs, in order for me to get to the end, that that concept of humbleness is always stuck with me just to like, maybe I am not the most important person in every collaboration, maybe I really need to realize that as long as I get to the end, if I let you be the most important person, then you went to. So I've lived with that since then. And I was driving with the kids in it. And I was just telling you about that as maybe, you know, when you guys are dealing with other kids at school and teachers, is maybe you need to make sure that being a smart aleck isn't always as good as letting the teacher know that she's the smartest. And she's doing things that needed to be done. And, and when she's happy, you'll be happy. Anyway,

You know, it reminds me of how long it took me to learn that lesson. Because as a student and as a guy in his 20s It was so ego driven. You know, I had a, you know, plaque on my wall that said success is the greatest form of revenge. And it was all about, you know, how big can I make myself look? And I really resonate with what you're saying, because that that was the that was the pivot point. That was the turning point is like, Well, wait a minute, what if in order for me to win, someone else has to win first, or at least feel like they've won, right? And so that's where you don't, you're not getting over on someone, but you're actually working together, you're collaborating, so you for both feel great about the outcome?

Yeah, it's interesting how long it takes to learn some things in life. Mm hmm.

And, you know, and that's a key thing about, you know, creating collaborations and partnerships that, you know, are not just sort of like a one and done sort of thing, but, but are, you know, something that can stand the test of time. And, and, and, and where everyone is involved is getting something out of it. And so, so that I know, you have a lot of stories about collaborating. This is it's something that you do so naturally in your business. You know, can you recall, either a time or a project or something that you've done that, you know, was, you know, a collaboration, maybe that really stands out to you that might inspire our listeners in in hearing that story, to go out and look for their own ways of partnering and collaborating?

Well, we did had 104 You know, workshops around the world. And we only paid for a venue twice. But they were in person, you know, like 30 to 50 people in a room. And I don't remember, I don't really remember how the idea came to us. And I don't even think I had the idea. Actually, I think it was Rebecca Kuro, who has a, who now has a podcast for for rowers, you know, Scotland, and in the water. She was a contact in New Zealand, and she wanted to, we had been doing these workshops in the United States, mostly, and in Canada, and Vancouver, and Toronto. And, and my original idea was, what if I call up Twitter. And I say, I would like to do a workshop. And I'd like to bring 40 bloggers, to your offices. And we like to put on an eto workshop at Twitter itself. And then, at lunch, if you guys would like, I would love for you guys to give a tour of the place to the people who come talk about Twitter, have somebody come and talk about, you know, all that's great. And the first time that we did that, it was a weather, our email marketing company in Philadelphia. And they said, they said, that sounds great. Bring them in, because you know, they wanted to sell anyway. So they have a facility in Philadelphia, and they have a training room that's got about room for 50. It's a really modern looking place. So we did that there. And then we did Constant Contact in North Carolina. And then we did Twitter and come from you. And for us, I mean, now that you bought the tickets on our website to come to the event. And they pretty much had no, they had nothing to do with it. Other than the fact that I gave their dress and they had somebody there on a Saturday, he would let us in. And then the boss would show up and talk about stuff or something like that. So we did that quite a few times. And it worked out pretty good. And it gave us two things. One, I became more important at Aweber. Because now I knew the players, I sat down with the boss, I was actually in the office. We had many phone calls about what was going on. And then a constant contact and a Twitter and like we became like it really expanded our view of who was on the playing field. But then Rebecca karo called. And she said, Do you guys want to come to New Zealand to do this? And I was like, Great, we'll, we'll start working on that. And this is where the entire model for us changed. Because Rebecca, who was a mover and shaker in New Zealand, knew all kinds of people big into the entrepreneurship, big into helping entrepreneurs probably into different groups like BNI networking groups, she said, she said, why already know the places that we can hold it. And it's going to be my event. And I'm going to be bringing you to New Zealand. So instead of a blog and concentrated, which was our business team at the time, sort of a blogging, concentrated event, it was a Rebecca's event. And then Rebecca said, I'm bringing these people in from United States, and we're going to be talking here is the store we're talking about. And you can go to their site, and you can sign up for it. And then they'll come back on a particular Saturday. So we did two different tours in New Zealand, two different years to seven cities.

But we realized that was a method we could do anywhere. Like we could find a mover and shaker in any city and say, hey, look, I see that you're, you're all over the place in Philadelphia, like you're, you're at this event, and you're at this event, and you do local marketing, and you're trying to do all these things. Would you be interested in bringing, you know, putting on a workshop of your own, and we'll come we'll do we'll, we'll do the workshop, we'll do the eight hours we bring the curriculum we bring stuff will teach. But then you can introduce us. You can bring you can tell all your people about it, you can bring a couple of free people that you want, because it's your event. You can speak at lunch about all this going on, you could highlight people in the room that are local that are important. But for us, it ended up being like, you know, a revenue stream it was that one it was again, a time where wasn't ego driven because it wasn't our event. It was their event. But for us it was a chance to meet people to teach what we teach, to get out and see stuff to grow the list to make the revenue but at the same time, make somebody else look pretty awesome. They're bringing the thing they're doing an event in town for all the business leaders. So we did that for a couple of years and It was almost like, where do you want to go on vacation? Like, let's find somebody there will sell enough tickets to pay for the whole thing to make us money, we'll go there, we'll do an event, we'll see all the sights, and then we'll come back. And for a couple of years, that ended up being pretty awesome collaboration. And it was different people all over the place. But it ended up that we really didn't have to pay for venues hardly ever, and that we got to see all kinds of people in person. So I thought, that would probably be a good example.

It's a pretty good example. And I gotta say, there's so many things about that story that I love. The first thing that comes to mind is how many people would have the the idea or even the courage to say, All right, I'm going to do this event, I'm going to call up Twitter, and see if they would like to, you know, provide some space for us to do this event. And I've been doing events for 20 years, and I have not known anybody that have done that, like I know lots that have done corporate training, you go in and you talk in corporations, or, you know, in you they have the space or you go talk at schools or universities or whatever. So much of it is done in hotel conference rooms. Yeah. 10s of 1000s, sometimes even over $100,000, for bigger, bigger events. By the time you rent the venue by the coffee, it's like $100 per cup per person that they charge for coffee and catering. You've got your AV and everything that you bring in. And like I just think about all the money we've spent on events in the last 20 years. And then here's this amazing idea. Hmm, I wonder if Twitter would like to co host an event with us?

Yeah, so I mean, to some degree, I never ever want to do hotel. It's so cold. It's just, I mean, it's to me, it's a horrible experience the carpet, like just the, the little table in the back with the water and the coffee, this the whole thing is just so Oh, I just feel like life is over when you walk into a hotel. But like even in Milwaukee, the guy that we collaborate with knew of a coffee shop, stone door coffee, I think it was called, they had a meeting upstairs had fed like 30. And but it was a coffee shop. And it was a cool atmosphere. You know, there's so many places that you probably know, in your own city. All you have to do is find you in every city. Because every city somebody knows Oh, there's actually a hack who forgot about this. There's a hack. We like hacks, Eventbrite. If you search, if you go search a particular city, and you just search for the letter E, like, everything has an E and so so everything comes up in that city. And all of a sudden, you can start scrolling down and you see the venues that all these things are at. So you can almost like suggest like to to somebody that you're going to collaborate with, like, Hey, I saw that there's these, these different places that people are meeting in your town. And even just the mention of that, a local person will say, Oh, yeah, I totally know about those. And this place, and this place over here. And this coffee shop loves to do as long as you buy the coffee, they give you the meeting room for free. And like, like the hack enables you to speak somebody's language locally. And then it gets their juices thinking like flowing and all of a sudden, they're like, I totally remember some spots. I'll call you back. I know some ideas. And then that's it. That was awesome.

Wow, great idea to like, if you've got idea of oh, I want to vacation in this particular city. I want an event. Where can I do it? Well, you go to Eventbrite type in the letter E, apparently, I'm going to try that as soon as we're done here. That's pretty amazing. Because, you know, we've had that idea yourself ourselves. But we always end up doing like the things the way we usually do them is, you know, conference centers and, and hotels and all of that. And we've spent a fortune on those things I love on so many levels, everything that you're talking about,

Oh, even in Denver, the public library is there's a there's a city just south. I can't remember the name of the city. So there's an A Aurora, just south of Denver that has like a state of the art library. And the library has a conference little area. And as long as a local person signs up for it, you get to use the thing for free and you can bring in catering and I mean it was really beautiful. You have to pay for anything. It's unbelievably beautiful place like Who has a pond in the backyard? You can your people can eat out at the pond? I don't know, there's just so many places you never have to go to hotel.

Wow. Great idea. And I love the hack. And that might have to be my new question that I asked on all my interviews. It's like, do I share? Because I mean, I love the hacks because I mean, people come up with all sorts of creative stuff. I mean, you know, you wouldn't normally just come up with that on your own. But by hearing a story like yours, it's like, ah, that's amazing.

Yes.

And so, great idea, we might have to do a new, I've got a new idea for a new show. Right? Not that I need one. But, so So that's great. I mean, that's when you said prior, like, you know, I've, uh, because I know with your businesses, you you're all about collaborations and partnerships with other with other business owners and content contributors and all of that, but this story, you weren't wrong, like it was, it blew me away in terms of, and what it does, I think is it's inspirational. It kind of gets your thinking well, hmm, you know, what, what else could I do differently? Like, how else could I look at something that maybe I'm spending a lot of money for? Or maybe that's been really, really difficult? And you know, who, you know, who, or what could I combine with to make this so much easier?

So, so we're in New Zealand? And we mentioned, Gary Vaynerchuk. And I'm thinking, like, who doesn't know Gary Vaynerchuk? He's in our world, you know, in our digital world, like, who doesn't? But several people in the room do not. And then, on the way home, I'm talking to Rachel, and I'm thinking, how do people not know? Like, how isn't the internet the great equalizer? Like isn't Facebook account? How do you not know? So then we got to talking. And it occurred to me that I also found out while I was there, because we do website reviews, sometimes, that people use different plugins, like everyone who interviews the Owston, swish it, you know, all these just the normal stuff. But they had different plugins that I'd never heard before. And then some of the, the gurus that they spoke about, I also didn't know like, I didn't know who Natalie Cutler Wells was at the time. So we got back, and we thought we'd do an event where we introduce our people to that audience and their people to our audience. But it needs to be collaborative was the idea. So you were saying in our other business, it's, it's all collaboration, this is what we came up with. We decided, and now I don't like summits. And and I don't have anything against summits, other than the moment that a summit is over. Like you don't have a lot of assets. If you took notes, because you were an attendee Great. Did you write down the person's name, maybe maybe wrote down, maybe you came in a little bit late? And you just took notes on the nuggets that you got the really good information? Do you go to get the thing the speaker says that they have for free for you to get you know, maybe, but and then have a speaker at it at a summit? When you hang up? You end the call? Like, then it's just like, are they going to sign up? Like their work that I say enough to get them to sign up front on my website? Like did did it produce any value for me? So we decided, what if we did a product Summit, where the contributors give a product. Now a product is basically an example of your knowledge. So contributors provide product, which means everybody who goes to it walks away with a product, they have an acid. But in order to get it, we send them to the websites of the contributors to sign up for it. Which means when the contributors are, are done, like they walk away with a new audience. So now you've got an audience walking products, and you've got contributors walking away with new audience. And then we added a third component, which was the affiliates, because people pay for people pay for the product. So that means we had money to pay affiliates. So affiliates make the money. So it's like a project that is three parts. Three, three things have to work together. First is they have to get contributors to give a product. The second thing is you have to have affiliates to bring buyers to the table. And the third thing is you have to have buyers who want to learn so everybody wins. You know in the end on this on the thing, our main business which we which we call BC stack, which is like this In his courses, stack stack of business courses. And, and for us, I mean, I put it together, I do all the cold calling, and I try to do as much cold calling as I can. Because if I already know you as a contributor, then we probably have some overlap in audiences. And that it's that's not how we introduce new people to new audiences, like I try to find people who we don't have any common friends. Yeah, that's like the best when I find you on Facebook. And it says like to, you know, one of them's my mom, then I'm like, This is awesome.

So, so we cold call, and then I have to, like, we have the opportunity with the stack to provide income for families, like Jennifer maker who's this big YouTuber, she ended up telling her audience about VC stack a couple of years ago, and walked away with $20,000 in affiliate commissions, and then build a studio for her YouTube channel, which she just won an award. And I think she just launched a million dollar pot, like she made a million dollars in a day or something, some crazy thing. So for us, it's like this, we get to interact with all of these affiliates, all these people who have built an audience who like to bring unbelievable products, the audience, and in return, they get paid, which, which is what Monday used for their family. And then we get to interact with all these experts, which, you know, leads us to new experts in and you know, we get to be, kind of be in the, in the niche, you know, we get to know all the people in the niche. And then we finally get to get to grow this audience of all kinds of people who want to be really good at digital marketing. And in kind of like Larry King, they come and say, Who does this and who does that. And sometimes we help, sometimes we do it, but most of the time, it gives us a chance to say, Well, this guy every year, he's that's the guy that's that does that. So go learn from that guy. You know, and then, you know, come back next year, buy it again, please. But that's kind of the idea. But yeah, like you said, our entire world then, is collaboration. Because I I have, I mean, I don't, I don't do the bulk of the work, I do some work. But all the other people have to do their job or, or the whole thing doesn't work. And then when everybody does their job, it everything works, which is great.

Amazing, amazing. And on, again, so many levels. And I love how you describe that you need that three components, you need an audience that wants to buy, you need to have contributors that want to contribute content, and you want to have and you need affiliates who can promote the thing. And just so happens in our audience, we have all three of those. So we're gonna make sure that we connect the dots to you in in BC stack. And I know you have some other programs that you're working on as well.

Oh, yeah.

All the links to that here as well. We want to tell them about that real quick. And then I want to we're going to turn the tables to the bit of a, you know, we'll we'll kind of bring this in for landing, but to tell them what else you got going on?

Well, let me Can I add one more thing about stack? Yeah, sure. I think this if you're an affiliate, if you're a contributor, and you're trying to figure out how to turn what you're doing into a career, but not just not just a career that you tell people, but that you can rely on an income going forward. Because we have the hardest job, there's no retirement, there's no security, there's no, there's no thing to fall back, like we we have to figure out how do we make money long enough, so that we don't have to worry about going to get some other job? Well, one of the ancillary benefits of stack that I have learned in the last couple of years is that we have a two tier affiliate system, which is which is fine, lots of people have to tear, right? Which means if you refer if you if you bring someone to the table and they buy the stack, but then they also become an affiliate, well, that becomes your second tier. So that person if they make some money, you get 10%. And for me, I thought that was just like a I felt like that was a cool frosting on the top thing to offer affiliates as a way to help them make a little bit more money. And that was my my head like that's like this would be cool. It'd be frosting, though, can make a little bit more money. But it's more than that. And it's way cool. So do you know Ricky Shetty from Vancouver?

I do I know him very well. Yes. Okay.

So Ricky is a connector. And he is an unbelievable connector. That's like that's his thing is people like people is his thing. So for awhile. One of the things that he would do was he would bring me affiliates just by Hey, I met this guy at a conference. He'd be great affiliate for BC stack. So I would sign in The guy up after talking email, and then I would sign him up and I would put him manually put him underneath Ricky. So it'd be Ricky second tier affiliate. Well, over time, those second tiers because it's a lifetime commission, every June now, Ricki Shetty gets money from me, because his affiliates, people that he brought to the table are promoting it. And then he makes 10%, of whatever they make. So when he is thinking about his year of income, 12 months, he's thinking, okay, in June, I'm going to make some months for money from Dan, from BC stack. And in October, I'm going to make some from his other product podcasters kit, if I can, every single month, find for myself a way to make a second tier passive income, then I have this underlining income of my business, that just comes to me because of little things that I do. But I can sort of rely on every month while I go out and do my normal thing, do workshops, write content, do YouTube videos, do all these other things that you normally do. And then hope, you know, some things get viral, and some things make money and you'd have good launches. But underneath, you know, at some point, little money is coming in each month, and maybe that little money is enough at some point to pay the mortgage to pay the rent. Like maybe that is the security blanket that some of us need in order to quit our jobs or to do this full time, right? Or order to actually risk and instead of doing your website, redesign yourself, you decide I'm gonna hire someone to deal with because I got a little money coming in, I can afford to take a little bit more risk. So in your business, when you're thinking about how do you make more money, think about some of those. Some of those, and I would say truly passive income, most passive income things people talk about really aren't like a membership, like you got to work, you got to make PDFs, you gotta there's no passive income with memberships, you got to produce. Absolutely, but but a lifetime second tier commission that has a passive side. And if you can think and find them all year, then it's very possible, you could pay your mortgage or your rent or your biggest bills, by just an underlying passive income source, that takes away fear takes away stress, and lets you be more creative.

Amazing. And I mean, lifetime commissions, there's not a lot of affiliate programs that that actually do lifetime commissions. And so the fact that you're doing that, I think on two levels, one very generous to it helps with the loyalty as well. I mean, there's a high degree of incentive for others to, to spread the word about you and to let everyone else know that. Look, there's this opportunity here.

Yeah, oh, definitely. In fact, one of the ways that we make money with the SEC is, I know, marketers who have lifetime commission products. So while I tried to keep 80% of all of the contributors and stack new every year, there are some that are in it every year, because I need them to be in it. Because that ends up being my income source. So they produce a product for the stack. And then you when you go get it, it's my affiliate link that you go get it. And then because they have lifetime commissions, and you buy more stuff from those experts over time, I get checks over time, from 2014, from our first PCs tech, from our first time that that happened, when when I had, there was a product in it, where I was an affiliate for the product. And then I still get checks from 2014 from that one person who was in at once. And I decide, okay, every year, I have to find some people that have a lifetime commission thing, they're going to put a product of theirs in the stack. And that's going to cookie those people to me forever. So that we have recurring income over time, not just stack. But the back end of it actually makes us money.

And such an amazing business model. I mean, really, I think that's it's super inspiring. And I think if any, if nothing else, I mean it's a great opportunity, and we're gonna make sure that we link to this and so people know about this and we're gonna help you spread the word about it as well. But just even just to think about so anyone listening in like how do you think about your project differently? So that you know, like you've created this win win win here between the people who buy the product and the people who contribute to the product and and And, and then, you know, the affiliate commissions. And I think there's this other level to where it wasn't your original intent, but there's this is how you get paid as well as the embedding in those other affiliate links, the lifetime commission links into the program. So, you know, super smart. I know, we could spend all day unpacking this probably sounds like another topic for an eight hour workshop where,

but yes, we've been thinking about that.

Well, let me know. And I would definitely love to get on board with contributing or promoting or whatever. So please do let us know about that. So you know, before we wrap up, Dan, you know, on the entrepreneurial journey is not an easy one for a lot of folks. And, you know, there's a lot of growth, that and leadership that has to come along the way, and none of us really accomplish it as anything by ourselves. And this whole time, we've been talking about how we do stuff with others. So two questions I have for you, before we kind of wrap things up. One is, if there is a leader or a mentor, or someone who has been the most, you know, it's your go to place for, you know, information or information or, you know, just, you know, guidance on how to do do more or be more whatever, you know, who is that? And then what's one must read book that you recommend our audience gets their hands on?

Well, for me, the go to guy. This is gonna sound weird, is Jeff Bezos, I know it's gonna sound strange. But is there a better internet marketer on the planet? That Jeff, like? Is your is your list as big as Jeff's? So already, are you bringing in the income that he's bringing in? I don't think so. What, for me, what is amazing is, is the constant, constant AV testing, they do on the page, like, headlines here and pictures, they're different things, but even more, he came up with the idea of letting other people sell products on Amazon, it's not just the source their own products. But now Nike can sell shoes, and you can sell your shoe right next to the Nike shoe. So he for his, I mean, millions of people now make their income from Amazon because he had this idea. So it's a little bit like much you know, Elon Musk is I like Idea Factory. But for me, even even stack everything that we do, I always think like, what would Jeff do? Like, how do you make this a million times bigger? How do you? How do we, why are we so limited? Like, why is my brain so limited to the thinking that I have at the moment like, like, I shouldn't be able to sell a million units is my head. And then I think if Jeff Bezos was in the room, he would tell me oh, well, you could you just need to do these eight things. So I'm always constantly trying to listen to his interviews and read the stuff like what other insights does he have about how things work? Because what I don't need is to copy Jeff, what I do need is to be inspired the same way he does, and then try to think that big, like, we're not gonna make any money for 11 years, I'm gonna borrow millions and millions of dollars until that moment in time when we make millions of dollars, like, how do you? How do you do that? Like, how do you have that mindset. But I do have a guy in Italy, Craig, Craig, sonny, that I call everyone somehow, because Craig's genius exceeds mine in different ways. He does very odd things. And I'm always interested in his odd things. So like for one of them, in this little town in Italy, he is the marketer for a festival, a festival, just like a renaissance type festival. And he was telling me how every single piece of information that was put out was trackable. Like even the banners on the light poles, you know, in the town, he wanted to know, like, which light pole actually caught the people's attention in which message in which picture like, so every time I'm thinking through a project, I just call Craig, I'm like, Dude, I'm going to tell you about what I'm doing. Because, I mean, he thinks that I'm just telling you about what I'm doing. But what's really happening is, Greg can't get out of his own head. And then he's like, Oh, dude, you know what you should do? You should do this. And you should do this. And you should do this. And you should do this way, a different way. Because then you could, and for me that that is just fantastic. You need people who think totally different than you do. If you don't have people who think totally different than you do, then I would suggest that you You join the plumbers union, or you, you've joined some group on meetup that has Mart has a marketing in the masthead, but is something totally different out of market and advertising agency, how to market dental offices, and just go, like, listen in like something is going to be so different, you're gonna think, Oh, that would totally work for me. I've never really thought about that before. But then the other the book, I guess, going along the same concept is a book called UNbuilding, the World Trade Center. And it's written by William Lang Bosch. And I actually read the first chapter. And that magazine Atlantic Monthly, which I've always thought was a brilliant idea, like, put the chapter in the magazine, and then all of a sudden people buy the book. Well, that's exactly what happened. I read the first chapter and I bought the book.

And it was the detailed account of what happened after 911. How did they clean it up? And for me, it's amazing book, because so many people had to be involved. And so many rules had to be broken, in order for that to happen. And then it was almost a book about, it's easier to get forgiveness than permission kind of concept. You know, like in New York City, you have to, you have to put things out for bid, you know, but how do they have a three month process to put things out for bid to clean up the debris from 911, like, you can't wait three months to go through the process of bidding, and you follow the steps. So they had to basically talk about, it's not only UNbuilding, the World Trade Center, but it's like UNbuilding, everything that we've ever thought about how we do business lawfully in New York in order to get something done? And then how do we hire this guy without making that guy mad? Like the whole thing? And who's in charge? Like, do you know, the sidewalk department was actually in charge of, of cleaning up 911? It was the only group they could pin it on. Like nobody else was like, That's not our job. You know, it's like, it's not our job. But two guys from the sidewalk department basically stood up and said, We'll take it. And so the whole book is leadership. And it's all about who did this and how did they get it done? And how, like, how do they dredge the river in order for boats to big enough to get up the river to get the breed, take it out of there, like, who was in charge of thinking to all of these little pieces and parts. And I just loved the leadership part of it the entire time. I've read it a couple of times. Every time I buy a new copy, I end up giving it away against my will. But I feel compelled, like if somebody comes over and just like you should take this book, but inside I don't want to give it to them. But I still do. So anyway, that's my book.

It sounds like there's a lot of great takeaways. And you know, the title almost doesn't do it justice in terms of, you know, the takeaways that you just described, because Oh, yeah, in your mind, you might make up that all okay. It's a book about 911. But it isn't it isn't. Right. It's it's a book about getting things done. It's a book about leadership. It's about think, you know, how do we do things differently? When the existing rules won't work?

What do we got? Yeah, it was an eat, there was an equalization pipe that went underneath the World Trade Center from the water on both sides. And the building collapsed on the pipe. So they knew they didn't know exactly how much debris to lift off before that would flood. That even like, every piece of information, like somebody had to configure it out. Logistically, it was just crazy to me. Crazy.

Amazing, well, great recommendation, we're going to make sure we link to that book here. And I have not read it. And it is now on my must read list. So I'll let you know when I get when I get out of it. Dan, I know we're going to be talking, you know, again in the future. And there's definitely things that we can do together in the future. So first of all, I want to thank you so much for your time. And if anyone was inspired by this episode and wants to find out more about you, or what you're doing, where's the best place for them to reach out to you?

twitter.com/danrmorris I am a Twitter guy. I've been at Twitter guys since 2007 or something. Otherwise, we're at audienceindustries.com But and then on Facebook slash down or you know, Dan R Morris everywhere, but I would say Twitter's probably the best place.

Awesome. Well, we're gonna make sure that we link to all of your applicable profiles and website. And just one final Thank you, Dan. So amazing. And I mean, there's so many takeaways, there isn't just one from this episode. There's so much to unpack. But if you are going to leave our audience with just one final word The wisdom for them to go out and be inspired and, and, you know, take things on in their own businesses, what would you say to them?

I would say there's no reason you can't. That would be it. There is no reason you can't make a million dollars. There's no reason you can't get that done. Everything can be done.

There's just that needs to be a poster on the wall somewhere, right? Like.

So there's no worries,

There's a new product for you. So Dan, thank you so much. And to our audience, thank you so much for listening in. And if you were inspired by anything Dan had to say today, please reach out to him and learn more about BC stack. Learn more about podcasters kit and all other you know, Dan's amazing projects. I know. I'm sure there's going to be others. And then I know that you and I will be talking again real soon. So this is this has been amazing. And to everyone listening in, keep moving forward, keep being inspired. Keep removing those obstacles and make your big dreams a reality in your business. And until next time, we'll see you this is Chuck Anderson with the creative collaboration show with Dan Morris. Thank you so much.