0:00

My name is Gary Henderson, and I built a creator studio to show you what's possible. When I finished recording today's episode, I walked out to my front balcony and I asked my wife what she thought. And she turned around and she said, I cried twice. She said he got me twice, two moments. I had tears going down my face. Look, this episode was impactful. I can't wait to share this with you. So go ahead and hit the follow button. Make sure you never miss one of our episodes. And let's go ahead and jump straight into the studio with Tom.

Gary: 0:31

I became a fan of Tom's at a distance. I was cruising Instagram one day and I saw, I don't even remember the interview that I saw, but I saw an interview and Tom was interviewing, I don't know, some celebrity, it could have been Paris Hilton. It could have been, oh, I don't know who, one of the celebrities that he interviewed. And I was like, man, sitting down here, and I was writing in my journals and. I want to be interviewed by Tom one day. I want to be a guest on the Tom Ward show, and I reached out and I built a bit of a relationship with Tom, and I started watching Tom from a distance. And I watched you go through your journey a little bit of leaving your job, moving into full-time creator. I've watched you from a distance and I'm just honored as hell to bring you into the studio. Our goal here is to really help creators see what's possible. And when I hear your story, when I see what you're going through, Tom, I think you're like the definition of what's possible. Like you were selling kitchen equipment to restaurants. Yes. And now you're a creator. That's like living, like going from probably, I don't know, maybe an exciting enough job. I don't wanna talk about your job, but definitely not, it was not exciting at all. Like not creator lifestyle at all. And now you're living it. And living it. Not at the top, not at the bottom, but living what it's like to be a creator. So Tom, welcome into the studio.

Tom Ward: 1:54

Hey buddy. First, can you hear me? Gary, I've got you loud and clear. Oh, okay. Perfect. First of all, I'm honored that you have me on your show. You've got a great audience. I've been watching you for a while too, and it's just incredible kind of the com like the community you've built, being a creator, it's all about building a community and, I think I could learn a thing or two from you. You've done a great job of it.

Gary: 2:16

I was I posted a tweet about this today and. Eight years ago I went through a divorce and every, I don't know, week, two weeks I was on an airplane and I was flying to a different event or a different mastermind. I was around people just like me multiple times a month. I was like being stimulated mentally. I was like making a ton of money. I was doing all this epic stuff. And then I went through this divorce and I stopped traveling. I focused on the kids. My mom got cancer. I focused on my mom. The pandemic hit, nobody could travel. And I said, I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of not getting to have really cool conversations with people. I'm tired of all of this. Luckily, I stumbled on Clubhouse, absolutely fell in love with live social audio, and decided to create a community here to curate that to curate some really good conversations with some really cool people. I show up on Instagram and YouTube and I see all these creators out here creating so much. And then I watch, some videos go viral and some don't, and I'm like, man, everybody wants that. That kind of core community that shows up for them. The ones that'll go like their YouTube videos or Yep. Retweet their stuff. That's what we all want. So let's create it here together. Let's support each other and show up. Because I don't think there's a community like this for creators that exist

3:31

anywhere

Tom Ward: 3:31

else. No, I don't think so. I think, I think you do a great job of it.

Gary: 3:37

So that's what we created here. The studio here is new though. I have access to some really cool people like you. And I found that creators like to learn from people like you. They like to hear the journey. They like to hear the mission, they like to hear the struggles, they like to hear the successes. And not everybody has time to go get access. Not everybody has time to build relationships. So I wanted to record a podcast. I wanted to keep it audio only. I decided to do it here and I decided to do it with a live audience. So all of our members of Gary Club Air Community, they're here, live with us, or they can be if they choose to be. We record this and we'll release it for the podcast soon. So thanks for coming in. Tom. I'd love to start off today though, like I looked on your YouTube channel and I saw you started it in 2017. So that's about six years ago, right? So why did you step into YouTube then? What was going on in your life? What drew you to YouTube? You're not a young guy. You're not old, but you're not young. You're not like 18. Like why YouTube? How dare

Tom Ward: 4:34

you, Gary? No, I am not young. I'm 45 years old. So at the time I was 39, a 39 year old starting a YouTube channel. When I didn't watch YouTube, I didn't know what a YouTuber was. I didn't know when an influencer was on the surface. It was pretty ridiculous. So

Gary: 4:56

why YouTube?

Tom Ward: 4:57

You gotta take a step back. I started that six years ago, but I think about probably about nine years ago, I. I was stuck in this 9, 8, 9 years ago. I was stuck in this job that I just hated. I was, like Gary said, before, I was selling kitchen equipment to grocery stores. I was selling like dishwashers and ovens and just anything that goes in a kitchen to, it was a national account guy for a Fortune 500 company and I had two, big accounts and I sold, six, 7 million in kitchen equipment a year. But I didn't give a fuck about kitchen equipment at all. And that was, you know what I would do? I'd go to these trade shows and every trade show I'd go to, and you gotta stand in the booth and you gotta ask questions about your latest oven or whatever. And every single one of those I went to, I thought, I told myself I'm never going to a trade show again. I gotta do something else. But the next year would come around and I'd be still at the tra same trade show and still at the same job. And then, I decided to finally take some action and I read a book, which I recommend everyone check out. It's called Reinventing You by Dory Clarke. She's like a Harvard thought leader kind of person. And her whole thing was, even me now at 45, or you guys in the audience, you may be forties, fifties, sixties. It's not too late to change careers and pivot and change your narrative. And her thing was you can do that, but you need evidence in the new thing, whatever that is. So I could say today, Hey, I'm Tom Ward and I'm a hip hop expert. I know everything about hip hop. I'm your hip hop guy. If you were gonna look at me and they go, you're a bald 45 year old white guy, what could you possibly know about hip hop that's going on right now? The answer is not that much. But if I went on podcast talking about it, if I started a blog about it if I started showing up at events and speaking on panels all of a sudden I've got evidence. And then it makes sense. Oh, okay, this guy really is a hip hop expert. Look at all the stuff he's done. And her thing was the cheapest and fastest way you can get evidence is right. You could start a blog for free. No one writes anymore. You start a blog, you can start a newsletter on LinkedIn, you could reach out to an existing blog. And people always want free content so you can go write for them. And that's what I did. And I had a bunch of interest, and I still do have a bunch of different interests. I like, I'm into health and fitness. I work out all the time. I meditate. I like, I'm music nuts. I'm way into music, and I like branding and marketing too. So I'm, I was interested in all these things and I'm just I don't know what to choose. So I just start writing about whatever. So the blog was not successful because one week I'd write about, my, five favorite albums from the year. And then the next week I'd write about why the Kardashians are such great marketers. This is all over the place. But one day I'm si I'm going to a business trip. I used to have to travel a lot for work and I'm sitting at the kitchen table at four in the morning. Everybody's asleep in the house and I'm eating breakfast. And like any blogger or anybody on social media, you're constantly looking at your numbers. You're constantly refreshing and checking your analytics. So I look at my analytics in the morning and usually it was, 15 people went to the website, 20 people went to the website. That morning, 250,000 people went to the website and I was like, I've no one read this thing. Oh, no one knew it was out. My mom would read an article, a couple of friends and a couple people will just stumble upon my blog, Tom moore.com. But somehow, and I still don't know how, and I, if I meet her someday day I really gotta know this story, but Jessica Alba, the actress, somehow saw one of my posts. And posted it on, shared it on LinkedIn, and she like never even posts on LinkedIn. So she saw it, she posted on LinkedIn and it went viral. And because of that the person, Dory Clark, who wrote the book I reached out to her and said, Hey, thanks so much for, every, I list I did what you said to do. And I don't know where this is going, but it's pretty cool. I just had this article go viral and she said, Hey, it's pretty good. You should write for Forbes. And I'm a sales and marketing guy. I was a business major in college. I never wrote anything. I didn't write for my high school paper. I was always like a voracious reader, I never really wrote anything until I had this little blog. So I'm, she said, you should write for Forbes. And it seemed crazy to me, when opportunities present themselves, you gotta run with it. So I said, of course. Yeah. Why wouldn't I write for Forbes? Sure. And she put me in touch with an editor and I had a little phone interview with them, and that was it. Then all of a sudden I got a blog, and now I'm writing for Forbes and I'm still selling kitchen equipment during the day. Wow. But to answer your question, how did I get to YouTube? So I'm still grinding now, years are going by maybe a year and a half. I'm doing the Forbes thing and I'm starting to get some followers from it. People, read an article, maybe they'll go to the blog, but nothing's really happening. Forbes doesn't really pay you that much it's just a bunch of work. So I'm just grinding, crank, cranking out content. And then it dawned on me, I go, I could probably use the Forbes thing to get in front of anybody, cuz everyone wants press. I want to be interviewed, that's why I'm here. I'm a ham every, all of you want to be interviewed and get promoted. So celebrities are the same way, especially Forbes, because that's a credible source, right? So people would want to. Get in there. So I interviewed I did an interview with the Bella Twins and if there's any wrestling fans out there, I'm not even a wrestling fan, but they have this reality show, and they're twin sisters. They were wrestlers, but they had all these businesses and they built this community. And I just thought their story was interesting. So I said, Hey, I just reached out to them and said, Hey, can I interview you for Forbes? And they said, sure. So then I reached out to Forbes and I said, Hey, can we film? These people wanna sit down with me, they've got a good following. I think it'll do well, can we, let's film it. And the they told me, no, we don't let contributors do video only, we have our own content team for that. No. So I was like, so I was like, all so I said, fuck it, I'll film it myself. Fuck them people. People will wanna see that. If I wanna see it, I'm sure somebody else does. I paid for my own camera guys. I set up a YouTube channel and. Posted the video and it got five or 6,000 views, but which is a lot for a first video, I think. So that kind of gave me a little taste for, all right, I like this, I like doing it on camera because otherwise it's a waste of content. You sit down with somebody for an hour, especially a celebrity, and what do you get? An 800 word article? Guess what? I just had an amazing conversation, or I hope I did for an hour. Where's all that go? No one sees that. Guess what? People would rather watch the video or listen to the audio from the whole interview than they would read a 800 page ar, 800 word article. So that was my, that's how I stepped into YouTube.

Gary: 12:14

That's such a cool story. You were in a job that was, you didn't really fucking enjoy. You grab a book and read a book. Which I shared the link here in our chat for everybody that's live, I'll put it in the show notes for everybody that's listening to the recording. You read this book and took action on what the book said. And unlike a book is one of the cheapest ways to get information. They're 20 bucks or 30 bucks, and authors put a ton of resources into their books. It's some of their best work, but very few people actually read the books. Like I've got a whole, I'm looking back at my bookshelf right now and I've got a ton of books on my shelf that I haven't even read yet. So you actually read the book. You took the action and then you implemented what the book said and you started writing. And even though it wasn't like, you weren't like making millions of dollars, you didn't give up and you had something go viral, how long did it take? You said what? About a year and a half or so

Tom Ward: 13:07

for the J until Jessica Albo posted it. Yeah. It's, I surprisingly not that long. Maybe three months.

Gary: 13:15

Oh wow. So you got a lucky break early. For sure. How were you feeling then? Do you remember back there? Were you feeling man, this is gonna work and I'm gonna make it? Or were you getting frustrated like a couple months in?

Tom Ward: 13:26

No I never thought I would make it. I didn't, I guess I didn't really think in the future or what the possibilities. It just seemed like where my head was I hate my job. I want to do something else, but I'm not really sure what that is. But I know I've always had that feeling like inside, like I know I have something, I know there's something different. It's special about me, but I don't know what it is. And it wasn't evident. And I always say this LeBron James at 14 in the gym, him the coach and everyone in the gym knew he was gonna play in the NBA and basketball was his thing. I unfortunately did not have that gift. Why? I wish I could play in the N B A, but it wasn't evident to me until really, I was in my late thirties. Like my only gift, I can't do anything around the house. I can't hang a picture frame. I don't know how to unclog a sink. The only thing I know how to do is talk to people. That's it. So it took me a while.

Gary: 14:28

I was gonna say, you and I are the same. Like I don't have pictures. I don't put any Ys in a wall. I'd tell my wife, I said, we've gotta call the maintenance guy, but I can talk just like

Tom Ward: 14:37

you, Tom. Yeah, and I think, you asked, how long did it take and was it pretty quick? I guess it was, but you had to answer your question, like where my head was at. It was just, I don't know. It was just, I'm miserable what I'm doing now. I want to do something else. I didn't have that LeBron James moment at 14. I was, in my mid thirties at the time, and I didn't know what my thing was, but I'm like, you know what? This lady seems like she fig got it figured out what she's saying. Seems like it makes sense. So let me write, that'll separate me. I know, I don't know anyone else. None of my friends or coworkers or anyone I know is writing a blog, so that alone's gonna set me apart from them and who knows where it goes. I think my only goal at the time was to figure out what my thing was and go get a job doing that thing. That was it. And I thought it would maybe be a marketing job, I, the probably the dream at the time was to be like a marketing guy at a cool brand, whatever that was.

Gary: 15:40

It makes total sense. It really does. It's like, life isn't great. I don't love what I do. Let me go learn something new. Let me start writing about it so I can learn about it. And let me hopefully find the next thing, the next piece of my passion. So you start this YouTube channel in 2017, you do two things, right? You keep your full-time job and you write for Forbes and you create on YouTube. How did you juggle all this For what, it was like five years, right?

Tom Ward: 16:05

Yeah, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. The one thing I had my favor as I worked remotely. So my boss was in Chicago, I'm in la I did travel a lot, but I used time on planes to write when I was home, the headquarters was, is it is in Ohio. So I've got kind of time on my side. A lot of times I'd have early conference calls, but after two, two o'clock, no one's bothering me. So then I would use that time, I'd start my work early, get everything done, and then from two till five, till it was, family time, I would just, work on this stuff. Just grind.

Gary: 16:43

That's really cool. It's, I find a lot of people that talk about they, they're not happy where they're at, but I don't find a lot of people that will go by the book and read the book and take the action and then put in the extra couple hours a day on top of it. A lot of people would say, look, my job's over at two in the afternoon, I'm gonna take the rest of the afternoon and watch Netflix or Lay on the couch and all that stuff. I think it's really cool you, that you put in the effort, like I really do. So you're going up to 2022 you're leading up to this. What were you building towards? Like what gave you that confidence that it was time to leave the job?

Tom Ward: 17:20

I had, I made money at it. So that was point you gotta, having money would be good, if you're thinking about quitting your job. So the first two, I wanna point this out. First, first two years, I lost$40,000. So shout out to my wife for letting me do this cuz it was insane. I say, okay. Each video is gonna cost me between one and$2,000 to rent a plate, rent a place to film, to get a camera person to shoot it, to get somebody to edit it. Because like I said before, I don't know how to do anything, nor do I wanna learn video editing. I had enough, I wanted to worry about cranking out content. So each interview, I'm spending this money and there's no nothing coming in. And not only is there no money coming in, there's no plan or, light at the end of the tunnel where this is going to make money. My whole thing was I just, it's gotta work. I don't know, it just gotta work sometime. And so the first two years I lost money and it was not a good feeling, but of course we live within our means and we had savings and we didn't go into debt or anything like that, so we were smart about it, but at the end of the day, that's$20,000, which is a shitload of money to me now. That's a ton of money that I could have done a million other things with, right? Could have took a vacation, could have, could have done, could have bought a car, could have done a million things with it. Then in the third year I started getting brand deals and then that was like, okay, the views are getting good, the brand deals are coming in. Okay, this is, it's gonna pay off. So in that third year I made, more than$40,000. I made the 40 grand back plus more. And then in year four I made more. In year five, I made more, et cetera.

Gary: 19:10

That's really cool. I have. I've helped people make a lot of money. I haven't done a lot with brand deals. Most of the folks that I've worked with they've monetized their information or, some sponsorship a little bit, but not a ton of like true brand deals. So you were able to build relationships. I would imagine that the credibility of Forbes helped tremendously. And you were interviewing everyone, like what's what's the coolest interview? And I know this may be hard, so if you wanna name like two, but what is like what is some of the coolest interviews that you've done? Because I've seen I saw you did this interview and I forget who it was with, but shoes they were like painting or doing shoes, like custom shoes. And I was like, oh, that's insane.

Tom Ward: 19:45

That was, yeah, that was my man Dom Dominic Chambon. He's the known as the shoe surgeon on Instagram. His office was sick cuz I'm a sneakerhead. Yeah, he's, every sneaker you could imagine, he's, he was fun. I actually got the form relationship with him after some of these you do and it's all through the PR person and, you meet them right before the interview and you sit down, you talk for an hour, then you never hear from'em again or see'em again or that was it. But some you get to form a relationship with. But to answer your question, probably the coolest one I did was Paris Hilton just because of the circumstances. So I'm selling ovens and, kitchen equipment, like I said before. So I'm on the phone li for four to five hours an oven at a grocery store breaks. So the custom, the store's pissed off. They go up to corporate's pissed off. It's new, we gotta get this fixed, we're not able to cook the food. Anyway, I'm on conference calls about this for five hours with corporate people, regional people, the store people, then our team, our oven team, all this is going on. Then I literally go at three o'clock, go and drive to Paris, Hilton's house and interviewer and not interviewer about like celebrity stuff. We talked about the metaverse NFTs. Just Roblox, we were just talk, just having really interesting, just talking about business. We just had a really interesting conversation and then when we were done, we just hung out for an hour as the camera guys were breaking everything down and stuff and just shot the shit. And she's g she's giving me tea on people and we're just talking like just two normal people and I'm driving home, I go, in what world does this make sense? I'm talking about a bakery oven all day, and then I drive to Paris Hilton's house. Like it was just it. That moment made it real clear to me how I was really living in two very different worlds. So that one for sure stood out.

Gary: 21:57

I could see that and I. I got some time to interact with Paris Hilton on Clubhouse. She was a pretty big fan of Clubhouse when it was going and I was writing a book, so I was on most of the stages. And I remember this one night, it was the wildest thing in the world. B Simone and Paris Hilton were on stage and they were talking and they were giving relationship advice. I was up there. So I started chiming in from a guy's perspective and point of view, and one of my first mentors, Suzanne Evans, she was in the audience, so I brought her up on stage to talk because she's a lady and she's got really cool advice. So Suzanne and I are texting each other kind of in the same surreal moment as you like, what the fuck are we doing? We're giving relationship advice to Paris Hilton and Beat Simone. And we're just like, what world is this that we're living in?

Tom Ward: 22:43

It's wild. The one of the, it's some, I did some cool ones I was invited to I did this guy Rui, he's mostly, you probably don't know, but he's the founder of Rud. It's his premium street wear brand. Just a real cool guy and interviewed him like four years ago and then he's a really blown up since then. He's a creative de director for this fashion brand in Europe called BA Bailey. He's the creative director for the Phoenix Coyotes hockey team, which is random. He does collabs with Puma and all these, Zara and all these other brands. Anyway, I got an, I get an email one day and asking me to interview him at his summer fashion show. This is I don't, they call it a summer fashion show, but it was like in March. But it was pretty wild. It was such a cool event. I'm looking around at all these beautiful people and the production, this thing must have cost. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on. I got to talk with him for 25 minutes. It was real cool. And then I just got to go hang out at the fashion show, watch a fashion show and I'm like, this is pretty cool. I definitely don't belong here, but this is a pretty cool experience. Like I wouldn't have had if I just stuck at my other job and didn't do anything. So that was cool. And I just did one recently and everyone would go check this one out with Rob Deer Deck. That probably impacted me more than any interview that I've done in whatever, six years. Just an incredible conversation.

Gary: 24:09

That one is on my list to check out. I'm gonna grab the link really quickly here and put it for everyone that's here live so you can check it out when we're done here as well. And I know that one meant a lot to you because. I watched one of your other videos that you did where you shared, that Rob shared that how he tracks his time every single day. Like tracks time. And you started doing that.

Tom Ward: 24:28

I'm tracking my time right now that I'm in an interview. I'm timing this.

Gary: 24:32

So see I'm not just bringing you in, Tom, I'm your fan. I listen to your videos. I like what you're doing.

Tom Ward: 24:38

I appreciate it. But he is, and I'm not a, I wasn't a fan of I like that show Robin Big, but I didn't really watch any of his other shows and I'm not a skater. I just knew he was a good entrepreneur and just wanted to talk to him about business and that was my intention. But we didn't talk about business at all. All we talked about was like, his whole thing is life optimization and he's got these systems in place. Gary said, he's tracking every minute of his day. And the reason he does that is at the end of the week, he looks at where he spent his time and is it being spent in the right places and. As soon as I got done the interview, I downloaded a nap and started doing it. And then all of a sudden I was like, shit, I watched TV for 13 hours this week. Are you kidding me? Like I love TV and I don't think there's anything wrong with tv, but I'm like, I could have been doing a lot of other things. It's like I only spent an hour and a half writing this week. That's not good. That's not enough time. That was just that. Just for that alone. It was worth it. But just so many more systems and how he just structures his day and what he prioritizes in life. And just a, he's got a really interesting, great way of looking at the world. And that's the other benefit of doing what I'm doing now. That video did not do well. I didn't get a bunch of views. I didn't have a brand deal for the video, so I actually lost money doing that one, but, It was a thousand percent worth it because I learned so much in that hour and it's, that's what's really the most beneficial. Sure. Money's nice and Sure, going to Paris Hilton's house is cool. But for me, the most valuable thing is learning from the best in the world. Like I've sat down with so many people, so I learned time optimization from Rob Deer Deck. I interview Charlie d Emilio she's an influencer if you don't know Charlie d Emilio. And at the end of the interview I go, Charlie, check out my TikTok. What am I doing wrong? Advise me on my TikTok. And then I thought about it. I'm like, how much is. A Charlie d Emilio, TikTok consulting session worth, I don't know, but way more than I could afford. So those, that is the real joy. And that not getting the selfie, not having them tag you or getting their cell phone number, all that stuff's great, but forming relationships and learning from the peak performers in their industry, whatever that is.

Gary: 27:11

I really like that. I'm a lot like you as well. I like to learn from the best in the industry. I like to learn from multiple people because I'm a bit stubborn and I'm a bit set in my own way. So I like to learn and then I like to take it in, and then I like to process it, and then I like to put it into action and see what works for me. But I don't just like to learn from one person. So you're interviewing these influencers. You're progressing, you've got all these great brand deals. You're moving into summer of 2022 you're ready to go full-time, but you also make a pretty big content shift. Yep. What was the move? Why did you decide to shift your content?

Tom Ward: 27:48

First let me explain what my content was, how I got started. I, I was doing influencers. I was like the influencer, interviewer guy, and it just came about. So randomly when I was started writing for Forbes, a PR guy pitched me, Jake Paul. Now this is seven years ago. I had no idea who Jake Paul was. I didn't know what a YouTuber an influencer was, but I go, I check him out, and I, cuz it was Kate Hudson's publicist. So once, when he recommends somebody, you go, okay, lemme check him out. So I look him up, I'm go, who is this kid with 20 million followers that I've never even heard of? What is an influencer? I don't even understand this. So I said, of course, let me interview him. And I did. And. I was really impressed. We did it at his house. He living with these guys and it was crazy. And all these fans were on the front lawn and it was just a wild scene. But we just went in his office and we talked about business for two hours. I didn't film it or anything. I was just really just impressed by just, how these kids, looked at the world and I treated them seriously like a real entrepreneur. Because to me, even though I was in my thirties, and I'm sure like my p my friends and stuff didn't get it. They thought it was ridiculous. Like, why would you want to interview an 18 year old? What could you, what's the point? What do they have to say? And I didn't, I never looked at it like that. I looked at it like, Hey, this kid that's making these silly videos has got a 10 person staff and is running a multi-million dollar business. He's a real entrepreneur. Like I, I wanna do that. I want a multimillion dollar business and a bunch of employees doing something cool. So I interviewed him and the difference between him and Kate Hudson, who I interviewed before Jake and I exchanged cell phone numbers. So when I post the Forbes article, I text Jake and text him the link and he said, what's your Twitter handles? I gave it to him and my phone blew up. Jake. All he did was the tweet was hey everybody, check out this article. It's super lit with three fire emojis. Thanks Tom. And he tags me. And then it was just a link to the article and it got a hundred thousand views in 10 minutes. Now a normal Forbes article, the one you just, you know, scrolling through and you see it may get a hundred or 200 views. So like to get a hundred thousand in five minutes, blew me away. And it really showed me the power of the influencers. And no one was taking them seriously. Business Insider wasn't covering them. The only person, Taylor Lorenz, who was bounced around, she was at the New York Times. She was, but it was like me and her and taking them seriously. And all the other press they were getting was like gossip stuff. So everyone, Jake told me, put me in touch with somebody and they put me in touch with somebody else. And I literally, interviewed every influencer you could possibly imagine. And then, like you said, in 2022, I go, I've probably done a hundred of these. I've talked to every big one out there. A lot of it is the same story. I'm just tired of it, I was always interested, more interested in the business things and, I wanna sit down with a Gary V or a, a Paris Hilton or a Forbes 30 under 30 per founder. And I can't really do that. Doing what I'm doing. I need to branch out and I just wanted to pivot to successful people. That's my thing is I just want to interview successful people from all walks of life, from all industries. And that's what my whole show's about my catchphrase is it's time to level up. Like we're gonna learn, me and the listener or viewer together. Every week we're gonna learn from the best, most successful people in the world how to elevate our business and our life. And that's what I set out to do every single week. I

Gary: 31:43

love that. I like the learning together. I like the fact that you chose your passion when it's not necessarily the easiest choice. You had the introduction to anyone in the world that you would want to meet. You were on this big path, but you found that you liked. A different type of conversation. You desired something different and you wanted to craft around that, you wanted to create around that and you wanted to bring that back to your audience. Just absolutely selfish plug, but if you probably have the contacts to do this, and I would be a big fan and listen to this interview, but you should if you haven't and if you do, then I will go watch it right away. But you should interview Summer Ray. I don't know if you, I

Tom Ward: 32:22

interviewed Summer Ray. Oh, course. Did you? I interviewed everybody. Gary, I've gotta go check out that Summer Ray. We didn't video it. We, but when I wrote an article for Forbes,

Gary: 32:31

like that's when I look at, when I hear you talking about the people you're talking about, that's the people that I look at and I'm like, she's a DJ because it's fun, but gorgeous person. But now building like this huge mega brand in like retail stores and building this creator empire that I think anyone would be proud to have, like the Paul Brothers or these creators that start to build a brand around them rather than just. Being an influencer, and I think that's a little nuance that you started to find as well, that you quite enjoyed.

Tom Ward: 33:04

Oh, for sure. And like I still have great connections and in that industry, and it's so wild because on paper I don't have anything in common with these people, right? They're young, they're beautiful usually, right? They've got millions of followers. These are all things that I'm not, but I think for some, and for some odd reason it worked, I. I think because I just, like I said, I took them seriously and they respected that because I was giving'em credibility. I was putting them, in a, in, in Forbes a, a magazine that their parents read. So to them it was like a big deal. But even though I don't do influencers that much anymore, like I'm going on vacation next week and then the week after I got tight with the D Emilio family and they invited me to their shoe launch party. So I'm gonna interview Charlie and Dixie, d Emilio in two weeks. So I still do them once in a while, but they've gotta be big and they've gotta have something interesting going on.

Gary: 34:01

Yeah. And I think that's it. I listened to an interview this summer. Ray had one time, and she said that I guess one of her early managers only would allow her to post pictures of her

Tom Ward: 34:08

ass. That's how she started. She was mask, basically. Said, I'm

Gary: 34:12

more than that. And she said, I want to be more than that, and I wanna build something different. And this was just on some odd podcast. And the moment I heard that, I became a fan of hers. There's gorgeous people everywhere in the world, but I became a fan when she said, I want to be something more than just a nice ass. Yep. And that I just a ton of respect for that. So you made this transition. What are you you're helping people level up. Who's the ideal? What are you creating content for right now? What's the, who's your ideal guest? What are you trying, what journey are you taking your listeners on? What are you doing

Tom Ward: 34:41

right now? So who's, who am I creating content for? What demo? Yeah.

Gary: 34:47

Like you made, you were interviewing. Yes. All of these big celebrities and they have their own super fans. Sure. That will go listen or watch anything in the world. And some of those became a Tom Ward fan and they liked your interview style and they liked what you're building and what you were creating. And they subscribe to your show and they like your show. And now you've transitioned to more entrepreneurs. We don't get as it's not, there's like few people like a Gary V or somebody like that, but it's not as cool to be a fan of an entrepreneur as it is to be a fan of a musician or a fan of a, of an NBA star or something like that. So you don't get that core loyal following a people that show up. No,

Tom Ward: 35:25

and my tr my transition has not been successful. So I'm here, I made a video about it a couple weeks ago and the title of the video was, I failed. Like I Am Failing right Now. And I share that because, on Instagram, and I'm guilty of this too, just like anybody else on, on Instagram, we want to show the best version of ourselves. So you'll see me with a celebrity, or you'll see me at a cool fashion show or something like that, but you don't see me not getting brand deals for three weeks, and going and, looking at the Balance and the business bank account and going, shit, I gotta turn this around. Or, posting, four interviews in a row, that bomb. And you go, what am I doing? So the pivot there's a bunch of different reasons for why the Pivot hasn't been successful so far. But yeah, but to me, I just, I couldn't just cra it. I could go interview whatever hot Toker is today, whoever the big toker is, right? And it'll automatically get hundreds of thousands of views. But it doesn't do anything for me because the 18 year old kid watching that interview only cares about the person I'm talking to. They don't care about me. They don't wanna follow me. I look like they're dad. They're not interested in my personal story. They come, they watch the interview and they go, so there was no community there. I just had viewers and listeners. When I pivoted, I really had to start at zero because I had to carve out a new identity because I was the influencer interview guy that was who I was for, four or five years and did well doing that. Now I basically am. Posting content that my current audience didn't ask for and don't necessarily want to see. So it was it's been very challenging, but in the video and everyone would check out the video I made about it. I wouldn't change anything. Now, maybe by the end of the year I'll have to go get a job again and do this on the side. Maybe not do'em as frequently, but I wouldn't change it at all. At first I, it beat myself up and, he thought I was a piece of shit and so stupid and a huge failure and all of this, this is something I deal with when I go to therapy about right. Just constantly that internal critic just beating myself up. But when I really thought about it, I go, what did have I really learned in the last year? I learned a ton about audio and video production. I learned how to book celebrity guests. I learned how to do an incredible interview. I'm going to give myself a shout out. I don't think there's many people who do a better interview than me. I spend hours and hours of prep doing this. I've done over 200. I've gotten pretty good at it. I now know everything there is to know about social media, and I learned it from, the biggest influencers in the world. So I learned something. I've built incredible connections, which you can't even really put a price on the people that I could text. And if I do need to get a job, I've got a much better network now than I did when I started, and I'm not gonna have to go sell ovens. Ever again. I'm gonna be able to do something interesting and cool that stimulates me. And I've just learned, business and life lessons like that really changed who I am and how I operate. Like I said, that Rob Deer Deck interview before, okay, I lost money on it. Didn't get a lot of views, easy for me to beat myself up and, think I'm a piece of shit and it was a waste of time and all this. It really changed that interview probably had a bigger impact on me than any I've done. So it was a hundred percent worth quitting and devoting, a year to this. So who knows? I don't know where it'll go or how it'll turn out, but I'm really glad I did what I did.

Gary: 39:23

Yeah, I think that at the end of the day, you making the choice to follow your passion and create what you want to create is the best thing you could ever do. Creating what you don't love creating will put you right back, just like you're selling kitchen equipment again, you'll end up hating it and it won't be fun. I've been there, I've done that. I've been there and done that a couple times actually. And it's not fun. You get yourself in this weird situation where you almost feel obligated to do it because you're good at it and people are expecting it, but you're sitting there and you're like, man, this isn't what I want to do. I'm miserable. I know people like it and I know they enjoy it, but I'm not having fun and I don't wanna live my life like that. So I think whatever happens whether you get a job or you crush it and you get, huge brand deals or whatever happens, I think that you made the right decision. I really do. So what's in the future? Let's imagine you had this blank canvas. All of the plans, all the visions, all the dreams, whenever you made this pivot came true. What does that look like for you? What's the Tom Ward show look like? What kinds of brands are you working with? What kinds of guests are you interviewing? What kind of results are your listeners getting? What's it look like? What's the vision of the Tom Ward show?

Tom Ward: 40:30

The real vision was this was never to make, to make a living. And, I like nice things and I live in California, so I need money. You wanna make a good living. But, the vision was never making millions of dollars a year or anything like that. And the goal was never really to get, huge brand deals or build my own online course or, so my own e ebook or whatever I didn't want to do, or, make money affiliate marketing. That was, that's not me. That's not who I am. The thing I like to do, most of all, is to sit down with interesting people and talk to'em for an hour, and that's it. It's as simple as that. So the vision, if the stars aligned and you know everything worked out, would be to have. Someone, a bigger platform, distribute the show now. It, would it be an interview show on Netflix or Snapchat actually is syndicating my show and follow me on go to tom ward.com and it's got links to all my socials and content and everything. But Snapchat is actually syndicating my show. We just did our first episode last week. But, to do it, they're small, like three minute snippets of the, of a full interview. But, the vision would be, yeah, to be on Netflix or Hulu or, somewhere serious, I don't know. And to just do that, to not worry about the next brand deal, to get a check, and do what I love.

Gary: 42:00

That's it. I can see it. I really can. How comfortable are you being you? I. Like really being you, like your opinions, your thoughts, your point of view, your perspective, all those things.

Tom Ward: 42:16

Not, I'm not a hundred percent yet, but I just admitted to everyone here and everyone who watched my YouTube VI video that I'm failing. Which is about as honest and as raw as you can get. And that was a big turning point for me because, when you're interviewing somebody, you can only insert yourself so much now. It you, if you don't insert yourself in the interview, then you're not doing a good job either, cuz you're not building followers. Right? Why would somebody follow just the host who doesn't say anything? So you gotta get your stories in there. And in my interview world and philosophy, I think it should be like maybe 70% guest, 30% hose, 35, 65, something like that. So I can always kind of hide behind the guest and not be real or authentic or, show myself in a negative light or, share my failures or any of that. I could have went that way forever and I did. I made that video and I wanted to get more honest and raw because I. One, every influencer I ever interviewed, when they, when you ask for tips on, how do you succeed on YouTube or social media, it's always the same answer, right? Be consistent and be authentic. And I was consistent, but I really wasn't really authentic. And what I didn't want to do is to close this down, go get a job, and then, 20 years down the road go, I should have been honest and shared, my multiple suicide attempts or my struggles to get sober, right? Or, quitting your job and having brand deals dry up and not know what's next. To share those kind of things. I didn't want to go. Man, if I only did that, maybe it would've succeeded. So for me, I was super scared to do it and I am always scared to do that. But I want to lay everything on the table and really gi give it my all. It reminds me of the story when I was in high school. I always love basketball. I'm a huge Phoenix Suns and Warriors fans. The Warriors are fucking done. And hopefully the suns win tonight. But I was always a huge basketball fan and played in grade school, but I was never that good. So freshman year I go out for the basketball team, think I'm just gonna make it. I don't make the team. So that next year, the summer before the next year, I go to every open gym that the coaches are at. I'm jumping rope in the backyard, I'm practicing for hours every day and I don't make the team again. But you know what? I didn't cry. I didn't feel bad. I didn't. Beat myself up because I know there was nothing else I could have done. And that's how I think now, I want to make sure before I decide to pivot to something else, that I really gave it my all and did everything I could to make it a success. And part of that, being a creator is you gotta be authentic. As much as it sucks, as much as you feel like an idiot, you know you are gonna get mean comments. Maybe friends and family are gonna make fun of you. My friends made fun of me when I was interviewing influencers. But you've really gotta do it. You do

Gary: 45:51

you. It's the part we connect to. And that's what, that's why I asked the question, because when I've watched some of the interviews, I saw you as an interviewer. I didn't get to build the connection that I wanted to with you. I didn't feel that as much of the emotional side. You great interview and you put your guests at the absolute top of the pedestal. But I wanted more Tom, I wanted more of your personality, more of your opinions, because I started to become a fan of you, not of your guests. So when I come and listen to your show and watch your show, I'm not there to, because I'm a fan of ever who your guest is. I'm there because I'm your fan and I wanna see your take and your perspective on that guest. And I think the more you get comfortable with finding your space there, the more you find your language there. I think that we, your fans will show up to anyone you interview, because we'll wanna know what Tom and Blank are gonna talk about.

Tom Ward: 46:49

And that's the goal is to give him more of me, is to share, people I interviewed this guy, I really do learn something from every one of these. The guy I mentioned before, Rui, the fashion guy, he said something that really stuck with me. He said, more people need to share their sorrows because not everyone knows what it feels like to win, but everybody knows what it feels like to lose. And that's what inspired me to make that video a couple weeks ago. And that's what's inspiring me to, to do that in the future. To show more of me, the good stuff, the cool stuff, the bad stuff, the struggles. Cuz that's what people want to know, right? They don't wanna just see you. I follow, I used to follow this girl on Instagram cuz she was super hot. She wasn't a girl, she was in her late twenties, early thirties. And I followed her for, I don't know, six months. Cuz you know I'm a guy. It's nice to see a pretty face when you're scrolling once in a while. But I ended up unfollowing her because she got so annoying because she wasn't real. Every picture I know what goes on behind the scenes cause I do this now for a living. All these pictures, I know there's a lighting guy, you know there's a professional photographer. They probably took 200 pictures to get the one she posted. You never see her being real. So I unfollowed her, and I think people don't want that. People want see you, cuz you can relate to somebody who's failed. I can, but I can't relate to that person who looks beautiful in every one of their pictures. I dunno if you can Gary, but I can't relate to that. Look, I think you might

Gary: 48:34

have more hair than I do, Tom. Like I think you really might have more hair than I do. And I know the struggle comes with do I share the tough moments? Do I share the moments that, I maybe have some thoughts that, that I don't really feel comfortable sharing with the world? Do I share the moments when, it's not going well. And I think you do in containers and I don't think you do everywhere. I don't think you open up every show and say, hi, I'm interviewing Tom Ward today. Did you know I thought about this yesterday? I don't think that's your opening of your show, but I think your community your tribe, your fans, I think that's why they'll keep showing up for you. I think that's what will take your videos from getting a couple hundred views or a couple thousand views to your videos, no matter who you interview, getting weekends or fifties or hundreds of thousands of views because we fall in love with you and we fall in love with your journey and we wanna watch you win.

Tom Ward: 49:30

We're sharing one. That's why I do interviews like this. I try to, do'em wherever possible to really give the full story. And you're right. I'm not going to share, every, failure and it's more than just sharing the failure, it's sharing the struggle, but then sharing the lesson learned, because that's what it's about, right? Yeah. You want to show yourself not always in the best light, you want to be honest, but like the purpose of that I failed video was. I don't regret it. And it's never too late to chase your dreams. And, I didn't start a YouTube channel until I was like 38 or 39, and I don't regret it for a second. It was the best thing I ever did. Way happier for doing it, even if it's maybe not working out How I thought I was would, I've learned so much and it was worth doing. So that's that's where my head's at when I want to open up more is, to share the lesson and the hope for the person going through a similar situation. I think

Gary: 50:31

it's absolutely wonderful. We have a couple questions. My wife asked, she's in the audience listening, and she said, when, like when the mental outlook isn't great, when you're, when you're not feeling like a hundred what do you lean to? Do you go to meditation? Do you go to family? Do you go to exercise? What's the the thing that keeps that light going that keeps you moving forward?

Tom Ward: 50:50

There's been some dark days without getting into too much. I'm diagnosed bipolar too, and part of that, you spend a lot more time in the depression than you do in the manic side. The manic side's kind of fun, you get a lot done, you're in a good mood. The depression is not so good, so sometimes. Mrs. Henderson, to answer your question, sometimes I can't get out of it. Sometimes I just, I don't drink or use drugs or anything anymore. And when I'm feeling like that, I can't work out, I can't meditate, I'm just like, I can't do really much of anything. I'll take a nap in the middle of the day and just, as an escape, as like a healthy escape, if I can, if I can't I'll force myself to exercise. I meditate every day. I meditate every morning. Just part of my routine. I work out four to five times a week. Not really for the vanity of, looking a certain way. I really just do it for the effects, the endorphins or just how it makes me feel. Just feels good to sweat a lot, and be out of breath. And then, I don't know, I just feel better afterwards. Yeah. Exercise, meditation, and sometimes you just. Gotta accept it. And those days I just accept that's how the day is and I try to shift my schedule around, if possible, to only do the, the things I have to absolutely get done that day. And I try to move the other things, later in the week when hopefully I'm feeling better. Yeah, it makes

Gary: 52:15

sense. Learning your body, learning how to adjust and learning how to keep your schedule fluid to do that. Fuzzy had a question as well, and I think this is a really good one. And probably a lot of people here in our audience and listening would relate to this. If you wanna start doing interviews, but you don't have any connections at all, where do you start? How do you start building those relationships and making those connections?

Tom Ward: 52:34

One, be realistic. Start small. Don't reach out to Paris Hilton. She's not gonna respond, she's not gonna do your interview, but guess what? You know the local person. In whatever genre you're in, if you're interview, if business is your content, I wanna create business content. Don't ask Mark Cuban to come on, or Gary V, but maybe you interview the, the person who owns. 15 car dealerships in town, or, you're, you want to cover influencers. Guess what? Wherever you live in Ohio or Florida or Maine, wherever you are, guess what? There's probably someone in your town that has a couple hundred thousand followers. So sit down with them. And the other thing you can do too, is you can align just like I did with Forbes, right? People don't sit down with me to come on the Tom Ward show, the big guests don't. Now I don't have to do a Forbes article every time, but Paris Hilton wouldn't come on just the Tom Ward show, but you'll sit down for an article for Forbes. So what I did, I aligned myself with the bigger brand, a bigger, that has a wider reach and you can do the same thing, find maybe a blog and ask them if you could interview people for them and check, guess what? You'd be surprised how many people will say yes cuz everyone wants more content and especially free content. Use other people's platforms to be able to get you in front of some bigger guests that you wanna sit down with. I love that

Gary: 54:07

it's, start, my wife and I were just having this this talk because she's doing some outreach for me for shows and she was saying like she was coming back and she's oh, this show would be great and this show would be great. And I said, yes it would. And I know you think I'm amazing, baby, but those people don't know me yet. So if we're gonna reach out to like that show and they don't have a clue who I am, we're not gonna get an opportunity there. And you're gonna set yourself up for failure really quickly. But if we go down here and we go to this level of show, damn it, I got a chance. Let's go do that one.

Tom Ward: 54:37

Exactly. Be realistic.

Gary: 54:40

Exactly right. I think that's the best advice you could give. So Tom thank you so much. Anything else you wanna add today? Anything else you wanna share with our audience today?

Tom Ward: 54:48

Nothing really. Go check out the Tom Ward Show audio podcast and YouTube channel and I've got a hundred interviews up there from, people of all walks of life. So someone that you'd probably want to see and check out my website, my blog, tom ward.com. It has links to everywhere you can find me. And finally, the only message I have to, whoever's still listening, is it's never too late. It's never too late to pivot and change the narrative. But guess what? It's gonna take a ton of work. So you gotta be willing to put in the work, but if you're willing to work at it and work smart and do your homework, and really put in the consistent effort, it's not about, it's not about working 14 hours on Monday and then taking off Tuesday through Friday. It's about putting in that hour or two on a Saturday when you'd rather be outside doing something else. It's about, being consistent in, pushing towards your goal so it's never too late. Give it a shot. What's the worst that can happen? Tom, thank you so

Gary: 55:56

much for coming into the studio. I've learned a ton today. I can't thank you enough. And, keep. Keep going. Whatever you do and whatever, wherever your career path takes you, don't stop the Tom Ward Show. I'm a fan and I'd be really sad if I showed up on a, what is it? A Tuesday at 10? Tuesday at 10:00 AM Tuesday at 10:00 AM If I showed up at Tuesday at 10:00 AM I showed up today. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie. I watched your video last week, where you said you felled and you were raw. And then I showed up today and it was about Tuesday at 1230 my time. And I watched that video again from last week and it said, you do a new video every day, every Tuesday at 10:00 AM And I didn't hear Pacific. And I looked and I said, there's no new video. And I looked at my clock and I said, but I know Tom's on the West coast, so maybe he means 10:00 AM his time and he's not miraculously converting the time to my time. Like it would be so convenient for me. So I waited and then I saw your new video at one and I was like, yes, there's another one. He didn't give up this week. He's still doing it. Don't give up. I know it gets tough and I know it gets No, I,

Tom Ward: 56:55

I won't. And this show will always, I'll always do this just cuz I love doing it. And the, maybe it goes down to, once a month or twice a month or maybe we stop video and just do an audio podcast or something. But, some guys like to play golf, some people like to, hang in the garden like, this is what I love to do. So this will be my hobby or job forever.

Gary: 57:20

What a great session with Tom ward. A couple of my key takeaways. If you don't love it. Then don't do it. I really liked how that multiple times Tom made some choices because he didn't love what he was doing. And he chose to find something that he loved. Rather than to keep doing stuff that he didn't love. It's never too late to make a pivot. So even at 39, he started a YouTube channel. He started writing a blog later in life when it wasn't his primary career. So it's never too late to make a pivot. And then look, this is a big one for me. I shared, I've got a whole bookshelf full of books. But read the damn book and take action. This all started with Tom. Buying a book. Reading the book. And taking action on the book. That's all it was. He bought the book, he read the book and he took action on the book. So I had an insane session with Tom. I hope you did. As well. Every time we run one of these sessions, we run them live inside of our community. We have a live audience. There was 39 people in the audience listening. Our live audience gets to interact and engage and meet Tom. They also know all of our other sessions that are coming up. So they get to see the full calendar. They get to see everything about that. If you want to join the community and you want to be part of what we're building. If you think there's a better path as an entrepreneur, if you want to be surrounded by other people like Tom, or, you want to be surrounded by other creators that are really trying to build something different, trying to change the world, trying to make a ton of money, trying to build a different life for themselves. They go to gary.club/join. So it's gary.club/join. And when you go there, you'll read all about our community and you'll be able to put in your name and your email and join our community right away. And when you do that, when you put in your name and your email, I'll send you out a, an email every week. And I'll let you know who our upcoming guests are and what's going on in our community and give you all the updates and everything you need. All you have to do is go to gary.club/join. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode today, go ahead and give the show a follow and. I'd love for you to leave a review. Let go to the bottom, hit the review, rate it, give us a real review. We've had a couple episodes where a couple of episodes in now tell me what you think. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you think we could do different. Let me know some of the guests, tag me on Twitter. I'm always on Twitter. Tag me on Twitter. Let me know some of the guests that you think we should bring in getting engaged with what we're building. I want to show you what's possible. And the only way I can do that is if you and I start to build a relationship together, So jump into the community, leave a review, jump on Twitter, do something. But get engaged in what we're building.