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Becoming an entrepreneur takes grit.
Deciding to do it solo takes courage.
This is 1,000 Routes, the podcast where we explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode you'll hear about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Tommy Walker [00:00:00]:
There were plenty of times where I was saying to myself, like, I am a known quantity, like, I've got these big logos, like, this should be a no-brainer for people to want to buy a thing. Because it's me! Doesn't make a difference. Doesn’t make a difference.
Nick Bennett [00:00:11]:
Hey, it's Nick, and welcome to 1000 Routes, the podcast where I explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode you'll hear all about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Tommy Walker [00:00:36]:
So I'm Tommy Walker. I'm the founder of The Content Studio, and I develop content programs for high growth startups and Fortune 1000 enterprises.
Nick Bennett [00:00:43]:
Dude, we have a lot of things in common. And I was having like a blast researching you to have this chat today. And we have one thing in common. We have a bunch of stuff, but one of the things that we, most people don't share is that we both used to sell cell phones. You were like one generation ahead of me. I think you were there around like zero eight selling cell phones. I was like, 2012. I saw, like, smartphones tip.
Nick Bennett [00:01:12]:
You saw smartphones get introduced into humanity and the insanity that that was like. But we both used to sell phones. And back then, if you were halfway decent at it, you could make a. Yeah, shit ton of money. It was a good place to be. I know a ton of people now who still feel the golden handcuffs keeping them there. And you got out, and I know you've told this story before, but I think it's good context. Like, I didn't get out because of a pair of pants.
Nick Bennett [00:01:41]:
I got out because of a pizza.
Tommy Walker [00:01:44]:
Okay.
Nick Bennett [00:01:45]:
All right. But that's a conversation for another day. Maybe on our sandwich tour we'll talk about it. But I want to know a little bit about this silly incident. Not because the pants matter, but because this incident changed your life in a legendary way.
Tommy Walker [00:02:03]:
The way the story goes is that it was winter 2008. The Wii was the big hot selling console at the time. Nobody had them in stores in the span of 24 hours. I had gotten into a car accident. I had locked myself out of my house, which means I had left my work uniform at home. We were also like, pretty deep recession at that point in time. And New England was right in the middle of an ice storm, worse one they had seen in 20 years. So it was like, overall conditions were just a bad time all around.
Tommy Walker [00:02:35]:
So I had gone to work. I had a friend drive me into work, and I had told the manager everything that had just happened, the manager on duty, and they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, that's fine. By the way, we have the Wii's in stock, and like, it was impossible to get those in stock. So he wasn't paying attention to what I was saying at all. So I said, I need to borrow a work uniform off the clothes, which were khaki pants and a black sweater. I ended up buying the sweater at the end of the day and forgot the pants. Like, I forgot my cell phone in the pants. Outsold a ton of people in the district, sold a ton of stuff, went back to get my phone later on, and I had to get my phone from HR, so I should have known something was up.
Tommy Walker [00:03:12]:
And then two weeks after that, essentially my manager and the district manager came up and they were like, give us your keys and walk. You talk and you're fired. So here's the thing. I have been working since I was 13 years old. I've always had a job. As soon as I was legally able to have a job, I've been working. I've made my own money. I have never been fired over anything.
Tommy Walker [00:03:32]:
And at that point I had said, you know what? I'm going to start working for myself and I'm never going to put myself in a position to get fired over something stupid ever again. That was the dumbest reason in the world that I could have ever possibly gotten fired. And when I asked them like, hey, what's the deal? They were like, well, we know you didn't steal anything. It just looks sketchy. When I said, well, the manager knew that I had, you know, I had to borrow the outfit. You were like, oh, they even remember having the conversation. I'm like, okay, that's enough. I'm never going to put myself in this situation again.
Tommy Walker [00:04:01]:
I had had a brief stint working for online company before that. I was one of three people on a marketing team over there. The company had gone from 1 million to 5 million in that year. They ended up getting to a pretty big point. Later on, they got acquired by Vrbo. I had gotten out of that for completely, totally unrelated reasons to that, just sticking to my own principles. So I said, you know what? If I'm never going to put myself in this position again, I'm going to work for myself. If I don't make my own money, it's my own damn fault.
Tommy Walker [00:04:30]:
And one of the main mentalities that I had going into it was not just that, but it was also, we were deep recession, so everybody was telling me like, oh, that's a really bad idea. I was like, people are still spending money. Just because it's hard to come by doesn't mean people aren't still spending it. It's not like all the money just evaporated out of the world. It's just harder to come by and people are spending it a little bit more wisely. So all I have to do is position myself as somebody who is able to help with that. So I had a dollar 600 a month rent. I was living in a boarding house because I was super broke.
Tommy Walker [00:05:05]:
I had a dollar 600 a month rent. My first client was $750. And I got to work with my, I had a laptop with a crack from corner to corner in the screen. And I said, this is it. I got to make this work because I'm not putting myself in that situation ever again.
Nick Bennett [00:05:21]:
Your story resonates deeply for a whole bunch of reasons, but I think the turning point moment that you had is one that I've felt and one that a bunch of people have felt, which is like, never again.
Tommy Walker [00:05:35]:
Right.
Nick Bennett [00:05:35]:
Like, I'm not gonna put myself in this situation. Like the stage of life that you were in. Like, when this happened to me, I had a one year old son and I'm like, oh, you had that moment happen to you? And this was even pre all of that stuff?
Tommy Walker [00:05:51]:
No, no, no. There's a little b plot that I don't talk about very often, but there was a kid on the wing that.
Nick Bennett [00:05:57]:
Will light a fire in you for certain. You're like, okay, that's an important piece of context. Cause it's like the things that you're willing to do are so different. Or like the risk that you're willing to take in order to provide total is completely recalibrated.
Tommy Walker [00:06:16]:
Yep. Yeah. I mean, you find out what's the, what's most important to you. Right. So when, when that happened to you, like, what was, uh, what was. So you had a kid on the way or you had a kid. You already had a kid.
Nick Bennett [00:06:26]:
Yeah.
Tommy Walker [00:06:26]:
And a mortgage. So what was that for you?
Nick Bennett [00:06:29]:
My wife was full time mom and it was the summer of 2023. I mean, I looked at that moment and said, there's no choice. I don't have time to screw around and try to like, find a culture fit, try to find a director of marketing jobs somewhere. And you go and look, it took 2 seconds to realize that there's 2000 people applying to every job.
Tommy Walker [00:06:54]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:06:55]:
And it's just not the way that I wanted to live. I was like, I'm not going to compete against 2000. Other people try to explain that I know something about marketing that somebody else doesn't or like, it's just not the way that I want to operate. And so it also just seemed like the longest possible path to providing for my family.
Tommy Walker [00:07:11]:
Absolutely. And so, like, you're coming into this place where people are dropping like flies in the marketing field anyways, over the last few years, it's been a bloodbath. So like, I. Yeah, that totally makes sense. There's a lot of parallels there.
Nick Bennett [00:07:25]:
Yeah, most certainly. And I think that meter, right, like recalibrating your risk tolerance and all of those types of things. Kids rewire everything about you and your entire life. Oh, yeah, you said that it took you two weeks staring at a crack laptop to close your first client. And I know that the time between when you make this proclamation that you are going into business for yourself and closing that first client, whether it's 20 minutes or two weeks, it feels like an eternity. So how did you land that first client?
Tommy Walker [00:07:58]:
The majority of the big breaks that I've ever had were pure luck. I worked my ass off, of course. So pure, pure luck in happenstance. So after that, I worked in, I didn't realize this, but when I was in marketing before, I was a glorified link builder and I thought I was a hotshot marketer, like I was, I was a lake builder. So a lot of things had changed in the couple of years that I had taken off from there. So, like, Facebook had just opened up to, you know, non college students and pages were a thing that were right on the horizon. They had just opened their ad platform. Content marketing was starting to be a thing.
Tommy Walker [00:08:33]:
So I was spending 16 hours, days just absorbing as much as I could, right? So I came across cocktail blogger, right? I ended up finding them binge on their stuff. Learned a lot from Brian Clark and John Morrow when Sonia Simone. So like legends in the space now, I had at one point desperately looked up how to become an overnight success. Chris Brogan was the first video that came up. And in that video, and I highly recommend anybody check it out. He's like, overnight success doesn't have a lot of time for parties. Overnight success doesn't have a lot of time for friends, right? And he's just talking about what it takes for him to become an overnight success because he was on that verge right there. And at the end of the video he says, you want to know what it looks like to be an overnight success? And he pans the camera out.
Tommy Walker [00:09:20]:
And it's an empty parking lot. Like, 04:00 in the morning. He's getting ready to go to a conference and that let me know, like, okay, this is, like, this is actually really hard work. So I'd spend 16 hours days absorbing as much as I could until I would literally fall asleep with my head on the keyboard. Like, drool coming out of my mouth, not showering, like, not taking care of myself at all, just to, you know, find opportunities. And a friend of mine was like, hey, look, dude, you stink. You need to get out of the house. I'm gonna give you a reason to shower, and you're coming to the Super bowl party with me.
Tommy Walker [00:09:55]:
Like, no questions. Like, there was no options for me in this case. And I did. And I knew that the pants story. Like, the pants story is ridiculous, right? Like, there's. There's a lot more to it. It's a ridiculous notion. And I know going into situations where you don't know anybody, the inevitable question that comes up is, so what do you do? That's, you know, social grace is, you know, social rules 101.
Tommy Walker [00:10:22]:
So I told the pants story. Not in a, like, poor me. Look at what just happened. I'm in a bad situation right now. Like, none of that. I just told it with the level of comedic value that it really had when you take an objective look at it. And there was a guy there, his name was Hans. And he said, well, I know a guy who does websites.
Tommy Walker [00:10:42]:
And anybody who works in digital marketing knows that knowing a guy who does websites is, like, kind of a dubious thing.
Nick Bennett [00:10:51]:
It can mean anything.
Tommy Walker [00:10:52]:
It can mean anything. It can mean all sorts of stuff. So I said, sure, I have nothing to lose here. Turns out the guy that he introduced me to, Tom Biggins of Atlantis Technology. If anybody wants to check out these guys, he didn't make websites. He does technology. He was one of the early adopters to geofencing and one of the key technology builder guy. And they have this little boutique firm.
Tommy Walker [00:11:19]:
And one of the things that they needed help with was link building for their Ruby on Rails recruiting site. And that was it. We talked. He saw something in me that I don't know if I really saw in myself at the time. I was completely faking it. And yeah, that's where I got the first client. I built up a little bit over time. I started working with this other company.
Tommy Walker [00:11:40]:
I won't name names because it didn't end up going well. But they introduced me to my first real client, Kent Dean, over at Rosa's Cafe, I ended up leaving the company for very toxic, because it became a very toxic environment and took Rosa's Cafe with me and we worked together quite a bit. First real success I had seen, they wanted to start their Facebook page, and because ads were a thing and because I have this acting background, I was able to read between the lines of what was going on in the market and stuff. We grew that Facebook page from zero to 54,000 fans in a month. Between the way that I was approaching how we communicated with the market, but also having the very targeted Facebook ads, bringing the right people in the door, that was super cool. That was like my first real big success. And then I was hooked.
Nick Bennett [00:12:28]:
So along the way, I know that there's a ton of things that make you second guess whether or not this is the right thing to do. What were some of those things for you?
Tommy Walker [00:12:37]:
I had no marketing background, not really. Once I started really getting into it, what I would do to build links was go to the last page of Google for a key phrase, cold call people who had websites that might have been a good match and said, hey, can I buy a link from you? Let me just give you money, and you put a link on the website. Most of the people didn't even realize that their websites had value like that. So it was a pretty easy job.
Nick Bennett [00:13:00]:
The sign of the times. That's a. Yeah, exactly.
Tommy Walker [00:13:04]:
Not everybody was trying to monetize everything all the time. It was wonderful. The biggest thing was just my background now, from, like, age ten to, right, about 20, I was an actor, right. I had done a lot of stage performances. I had done some movies, I'd done some commercials and stuff. I graduated from a film conservatory in New York. Now, conservatory training, a lot of people don't realize just how intense conservatory training is, but we were drilled. So 15,000 kids auditioned to get into my year.
Tommy Walker [00:13:34]:
90, got accepted, and then I was one of 60 who graduated. Right? So it was an incredibly competitive process. And most people either didn't get invited back for the second year or they cut themselves, because, I mean, it was rigorous, rigorous training. Like, you become very emotionally vulnerable. And one of the things they would say is, if we catch you acting, you suck. Right? Like, acting is not a performative art, as though it would seem that way. You don't watch Johnny Depp do Jack Sparrow. You watch Jack Sparrow, like, be a fully embodied character.
Tommy Walker [00:14:08]:
And that takes a lot. That takes a lot to get to that point. So when I got into marketing, like, when I started working for myself, I was like, what do I do to orient myself? Because I don't have any skills, like traditional skills in this space. And I said, well, take a step back. You know how to analyze scripts, you know how to build characters, you know how to improv, right? You know these skills. And when I started looking at, okay, Twitter was becoming popular. I was like, you have a script that's building itself in real time. So what is brand building but character development? What is customer service but improv? What is? So I started to draw all of these parallels, and now I'm looking at the industry and going, oh, I can do this.
Tommy Walker [00:14:52]:
Because it was the first time in marketing history, too. So I was early in this part of the game. It was the first time in marketing history where, like, fictional beings, right, brands, fictional beings, were able to interact with real people in real time. So what I would look at, and this screen that you and I are talking on right now, my whole ideology behind it, and it still is, is like, people don't view this screen very differently than they view movie screens or tv screens of the past. There's just a little bit more of an interactivity involved. So if I can build a character that not only can I embody, but other, like, build principles, that other people can start to embody it later on, you can create an entity that's memorable. So people get more invested in seeing your name and headshot than they do necessarily, even in the text that's involved. So you show up and they have an idea that this is going to be a good time.
Tommy Walker [00:15:47]:
Right. My whole idea is like, when I was in acting conservatory, it was like, can I build in character that will chew the scenery anytime that they're on screen? And then that whole principle, that whole mindset was just the same. Right? Can I build a character that's going to chew the scenery anytime you see it on your screen and whatever your feeds. And I only more recently started to embrace that full, like, the totality of that, what that actually means. That was the biggest mindset shift for me at the time was going like, I don't actually know, Mark, Katie, I know how to act. And then at a certain point just realizing like, hey, it's actually pretty much all the same.
Nick Bennett [00:16:27]:
So what year is this? Around what time?
Tommy Walker [00:16:30]:
This was 2008. This was 2008. 2009. Really? More 2009. But, yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:16:35]:
What was the first moment that you realized like, hey, this could actually work?
Tommy Walker [00:16:41]:
2024?
Nick Bennett [00:16:45]:
No, I'm still trying to figure that out.
Tommy Walker [00:16:47]:
Yeah, no, I mean, realistically, it was just like, for a very long time and, you know, what this, like, for a very long time, it felt like it was swinging from vine to vinede, you know, there was a period of time about four years into it, I never really felt like, I don't know if I ever really felt like this would work. I just kept going, oh, my God, this is still working, right? There was a big moment. I'm like, I really, like, I am legitimately saying, like, I'm only more really confident in all of the skills, like, now, but for a very long time, it was like, I can't believe that worked every single time. But about four years into it, I. I had a bad client that paid on time once. And then that second payment kept going a little bit further and a little bit further further out, and I had to fire them. And shortly after I fired them, the engine in my car had blown. We were in a situation like our housing situation had gotten really wonky, so we now ended up living in this like, it was an all right house, but it was needed a lot of work, and it was about miles away from everybody else.
Tommy Walker [00:17:51]:
And my second son was on the way. And I was, like, in a situation just mentally where I was like, I'm not taking money from anybody. Like, I'm doing this on my own. I'm not taking money from anybody. I'm not going to trust anybody. It's totally on me. And there was a point where I was ready to give up because I was like, I tried to get a lead setting job at Home Depot. Can I get a job that's just going to pay the bills? And I couldn't get one because I had been working for myself for so long.
Tommy Walker [00:18:21]:
A lot of companies like that just in the regular retail space, gas stations, too. They were like, well, you play nice because you've been working for yourself for so long. So I wasn't getting even jobs that I thought were going to be easy to get because they didn't know if I would play well with management. So I'm like, okay, I guess that's a sign, right? I guess I got to double down. So I started looking at the pro blogger job board, and I found this website called Conversion XL, run by this guy with a funny name. I thought it was Peep Laja. Everybody knows Peep Laja now. And I started writing for him.
Tommy Walker [00:18:56]:
$200 an article. And the way that I was looking at it was, okay, so three articles this week gets me this much money so I can pay this bill, and four articles is going to pay me this much money. So I'm going to get this bill. And on the outside, and I know what this looks like now that I have a more objective stance on other people, and I'm watching them rise in the space. On the outside, it looked like, man, this guy's just trying to build his brand out. And like, you're everywhere, dude. And I'm like, I needed to pay my oil bill. So I built this body of work that started to really speak for itself.
Tommy Walker [00:19:29]:
And at the end of that year, it said, congratulations, you have the number one and number six most trafficked articles on the site. And I said, congratulations, you have yourself a full time editor now. Like, you pay me a steady salary and I'll be the arbiter of, like, I know better than anybody quality of that you hold everybody to. So I'll be the arbiter of that and you can go do other parts and build a business. And he did amazing things. Like, we did some really amazing things together. And then I got recruited into Shopify. After that, I had gotten a few offers, but Shopify was the one that really stood out the most.
Tommy Walker [00:20:01]:
Not the biggest money offer, but the one that seemed like the coolest opportunity. And then from there, it was just, it was really cool. Had a really great time with the rest of that.
Nick Bennett [00:20:10]:
So you crushed it for CXL. You turn it into a full time role. So you're in house now?
Tommy Walker [00:20:19]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was still technically a contractor, but, yeah, and I was still freelancing on the side, but yes.
Nick Bennett [00:20:24]:
Okay, got it, got it. So basically CXL is taking up like a massive part chunk of your portfolio. Your capacity as a solo then, and that becomes Shopify. And I mean, you've already mentioned you've written for like a thousand different publications at this point.
Tommy Walker [00:20:41]:
So, yeah, the first article, the first article, by the way, at CXL, they, he rejected. I was like, no, I don't have any. I don't have any. Like, this is. You're my only shot, man. But he had referred me over to the team over at HubSpot. So that initial article got put over on HubSpot. So that was a really cool opportunity.
Tommy Walker [00:21:02]:
But yeah, it turned into a lot of other, you know, a lot of other places started to, like, pick up and notice.
Nick Bennett [00:21:07]:
Did HubSpot pay for articles? I feel like they're always like, oh, guest on our blog. Like, we're not going to pay you, but you can guess. Get a byline.
Tommy Walker [00:21:13]:
I can't remember. I can't remember. I don't think they did, because they were, they were on their come up, too, right? Like, they were in the, that was the golden age of hump splat taking over, and they started on Inbound. But what I do remember about that, whether or not they paid, they had a very rigorous editorial process.
Nick Bennett [00:21:32]:
They still do.
Tommy Walker [00:21:33]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:21:33]:
Yeah.
Tommy Walker [00:21:33]:
Like, you had to go through, like, three rounds of editorial, like, three rounds of editors, not just editorial in general, but they had a council that people would look at like, it was crazy, but it was a great experience because I'm like, as I'm guest blogging for people and seeing what the standards are across the board, and when I ended up having the opportunity to run the like, and I'm actually writing a book about all this right now, too, but I got to see what everybody's editorial standards were. And then when I was the person who ended up getting to set them, when I started running the Shopify plus book, I was like, I had the opportunity to go, what did I like about what everybody else did? And what did I really not like? And now, how can I make that my own thing? And that started to become, like, the foundation for how I approach this work today and stuff that I teach and stuff that's been really transformative for the people I've taught it to. It's really cool.
Nick Bennett [00:22:25]:
So crack laptop, legendary logos. At what point do you start putting shape to The Content Studio through all of this? When did that really become a thing and the stuff that you're doing there?
Tommy Walker [00:22:37]:
Yeah, there's another little turning point. So Shopify was fun until it wasn't anymore. There were lots of things that happened. As a company grows, things change. And I was consulting on the side of, I had done a speaking engagement down in New Orleans, where I met somebody who worked at QuickBooks, and they really liked what I had to say. Subina Desai, by the way, if anybody wants to check her out, amazing. Go to market strategist. We started chatting.
Tommy Walker [00:23:04]:
You know, I was consulting with them on the side. I actually. And we built out, we rebuilt their content program on the resource center. I had installed Jimmy Daly, who's now over at Superpath. He was at Vero at the time, and we built some really cool stuff. We hired some really great people. And then at a certain point, he wanted to go agency side again. So he went over to animals, and I was looking for his replacement initially.
Tommy Walker [00:23:27]:
But it kind of occurred to me, like, why don't I just do it? Because I helped build the program. So I went over there, and I did that shortly after I got there. We went from us based program to me now running content for 16 markets, moving over to the global brand team. So building out, there's this whole, like, through line of building out operations as well here, and basically now being able to manage content at a massive scale. Then QuickBooks and Intuit as a whole company, right? They laid off 8% of their entire portfolio in 2020. So people from Turbotax and Mint and, like QuickBooks, I was one of lucky 800 and something people who got laid off. And this was, again, this was the only other time in my career that I had gotten fired, so to speak. And as far as layoff goes, like, layoffs go, QuickBooks had a really good way of going about it.
Tommy Walker [00:24:18]:
They had transitionary services and, like, resume writing services and job placement and all of that. And I knew at that point that this was just the opportunity to go at it on my own again. Right? So I cried for about 30 minutes, and then I registered my own business. We're actually just about to hit the four year mark on The Content Studio. And again, it was only a few weeks until I put my flag up on LinkedIn, said, hey, I'm back on the market. Had a handful of inquiries, and it was only a couple of weeks until one of my contacts said, hey, let's get you in touch with GoDaddy. They had needed some stuff. They were looking to do some stuff.
Tommy Walker [00:24:55]:
And actually, a lot of people will end this space crap on Neil Patel, but you will never hear me say a bad word about him. He was the first person to reach out and give me my very first client. So you will never hear me say a bad word about that guy. Incredibly generous dude. Despite whatever reputation he might have. He's a very generous and giving guy. So, like, I got my first client from him and then started working the deal with GoDaddy. And then since then, in the last four years, I've worked with GoDaddy, I've worked with Twitch, I've worked with Vimeo, I've worked with LinkedIn, and, like, a bunch of other companies that are of that caliber.
Tommy Walker [00:25:29]:
I mean, laying the foundation for The Content Studio was everything that's leading up to, you know, everything else that led up to it. And then even more recently, I said, okay, there's, there's somebody who is a big fan of the work that I was doing on The Cutting Room. And she said, why don't you build a course? She does courses in her full time job. And she was like, why don't you build a course? Because I think I could help you really sell that. And I was like, okay, let me think about all the different things that have gone into everything that I built, and then I've put everything together now in this, like, week long summit that has been very, very helpful to folks, but that's been like, that's been the entire duration of it all, really.
Nick Bennett [00:26:11]:
It's interesting. I always try to understand the order at which people try to build stuff, because conventional solopreneur wisdom today says, make a course, make a course, make a course, make a course, make a course.
Tommy Walker [00:26:22]:
Right?
Nick Bennett [00:26:23]:
And for the vast majority of people, it's cut your teeth, build a service, sell that service, grow it, improve it, refine it, expand it, charge more for it, and then after you do all of that and it actually works, make a course. So I like the way that you went about it. That's just like. It's just personally how I choose to build, how I suggest people build, because not many people have the means to launch a course or market a course effectively to promote it enough to get enough people to, like, earn a reasonable amount of income from that in its entirety. So how did the launch, like, how many times have you run The Cutting Room course? How did the launch of all that go, like, as your first jump into courses compared to you running professional private services?
Tommy Walker [00:27:13]:
Yeah. So The Cutting Room is totally different. Right. That's its own media property that built up some audience. Right. Which is really great.
Nick Bennett [00:27:21]:
And then you have the podcast, right?
Tommy Walker [00:27:22]:
Well, yeah. I mean, The Cutting Room is a live stream first, a YouTube channel second, and the podcast third. Right. The only reason it ever became a podcast was because people were telling me, hey, I want to take this with me a little bit. I want it to be more portable. But that was the case, and it built. It built up some audience, which is really great. I put it on a pause for right now because I need to focus on some other things.
Tommy Walker [00:27:40]:
But that basically built up an audience course itself is how I've arrived to all of these bigger ips that I built. Because I've got my studio insider newsletter, I've got The Cutting Room. I've done other creative development things with something like, there was a thing that we did with Unbounce when I was at Conversion XL called Page Fights. So I've developed these really unique premises for some ips over the years. And what my core is now, the underlying the stuff that I didn't. That I don't talk about. Right. It's the stuff where it's like, how do we do market research.
Tommy Walker [00:28:19]:
How do we use that to go into creative development? How do we use that to execute and create things that nobody else is creating? So it's this underpinning of all of that. And when I say it's everything I know, it really is everything I know. But the first launch of it, I've run it twice now. The first launch of it did not go the way that I wanted it to, and there were a bunch of different reasons for that. So the first and foremost was, I thought I gotten a little ahead of myself in the way that I was building out my email list before, because I thought initially, just because I'm selling a thing, people will want to buy it. I built an audience. A lot of people were engaged. People in The Cutting Room or fans of The Cutting Room were saying, you know, stuff to the effect of, like, all this change.
Tommy Walker [00:29:01]:
You know, I've gotten better clients as a result of this. I've learned from people that I never got to learn from before. Our program has improved since we've seen how other people who are just like me running their programs are doing better. I've got a lot of praise for the show. But what I didn't realize when I launched the program, I went from zero to 60 because the program's expensive. It's like $1,500, right, for a week in like four or 5 hours a day for a week. So it's intense. And I went from zero to 60.
Tommy Walker [00:29:29]:
There was no intermediary like offer. So when I put it out there and people weren't biting as much as I thought they would, I asked, like, hey, what's the deal? And a lot of people citing price, a lot of people citing time. I do it as a live, a live event. I don't do it broken down because the material is so eddy that I would be doing a disservice to anybody who would be taking it, to not do it live. So it didn't, it didn't do anything. And I realized afterwards, because I wrote my own post mortem, right. I worked with corporate America, so I know the process of how all these things are done. I documented, hey, why did this thing not work? Once I got past the ego hit of it not working, I went through and I looked at it all objectively, and I said, what it really came down to was, dude, you didn't do any of the things you teach.
Tommy Walker [00:30:17]:
You didn't do any of this. So how could you possibly expect for that to do well, and this was months ago, I think we launched in March initially. And I've gone through the process now over the last few months that I teach. And one of the things that we arrived at, and this is something that's actively running right now, is the state of discontent report. So now I've gone through the process, my creative development process, I've done my market research. I've got my distribution touch points set up where one of the things that I try to teach is secure your distribution before you ever go into production, which intuitively makes sense, but a lot of us will. You know, a lot of businesses in particular will create the lead gen material and then put it out there to market. Like, hey, will you take this? Will you promote it? And it's actually the other way around that it needs to be done.
Tommy Walker [00:31:06]:
So I secured a bunch of distribution types. Like, I validated the idea on my LinkedIn. There's like two months out there where I'm teasing the idea, playing with the idea. I asked a bunch of people who, when I thought, okay, we're going to start to put this into production, hey, would you be willing to share this? They said, yeah, let's do it. And then, only then did I start to invest any money into the thing, because then I knew that it was going to pay off, right? There was going to be a big bet that was going to pay off. So we're in the middle of it right now. So I just got a comment on it today saying this was the first time I ever felt like a survey actually cared about what I had to say, which was a big deal for me going into it as we were designing the questions and creating the flow of the survey, that was a big, big deal for me. And the premise of the survey itself is something that has gotten it to take off quite a bit.
Tommy Walker [00:31:56]:
And all of this stuff was like, as a result of the process that I've run through with it. And then it is the beginning part of a longer funnel that will go into the next part of that, which will be into the course, because I was like, I need to be my own case study in that case. Like, how am I going to sell this idea of building out these content programs for these large organizations? And this is the process that I've done it and then nothing have any sort of physical, tangible evidence of like, hey, this thing works because I felt it going into it. You know what I mean?
Nick Bennett [00:32:29]:
Yeah. Drinking our own whiskey is something we're all still, we're all working on all the time.
Tommy Walker [00:32:34]:
I love you. Say that instead of like, some of the other grosser ways that people put that out there.
Nick Bennett [00:32:41]:
Well, yeah, it's something that we're all always working on. So you're definitely not alone on that front. But just make sure I got this right. You run the course and it didn't hit the way that you wanted it to, and you realized you skipped steps in your own process. So in one of those steps is validate the idea, conduct market research. Yeah, the whole idea was like, oh, I need to go out and do this part of this thing. You secure distribution beforehand.
Tommy Walker [00:33:10]:
That was for the report. Specifically for the report.
Nick Bennett [00:33:12]:
Right, right. Not to promote the course, but to promote the survey. I think the survey and the response that you received to the survey. One is awesome, but two, it says more about surveys than it does about anything else. The fact that people are like surveys don't care. But the idea that the survey has taken off the way that it has, I mean, I see it in scrolling, LinkedIn scrolling in for two minutes and you're going to see this thing show up because you've struck a chord. But I think the reason you were able to do it was because you missed it the first time around. The feeling, the visceral feeling that you got about like, I got to make this right and I got, it's got to hit.
Nick Bennett [00:33:49]:
It needs to resonate with people. I think that just the fact that you came into it with that much like, intensity to make it right is the reason why it is gaining the traction that it is.
Tommy Walker [00:34:01]:
Well, and let's be real, too. Like I'm a solopreneur, right? Like I have people that I work with. I've got some people that I work with on a pretty regular basis. But at the end of the day, this is my show. I'm responsible for my revenue streams and I make a pretty healthy living off my consulting income. But I need to diversify those revenue streams. If a client decides because I work with the level of client that I work with, if one of those revenue streams dries up, then that's a good portion of my overall revenue. So I need to safeguard against that and have another more reliable or more predictable revenue stream that I am completely in control of.
Tommy Walker [00:34:40]:
And one of the things, after the report failed, I think this is important or not the report, once the first launch failed, I think I spent the last. I mean, since March, I've been booking calls with people who might be in market, not in market in the sense that they're actively buying, trying to buy something right now, but going through the course itself, because I was like, part of it is positioning. When I surveyed my list and put it out there, part of it was definitely the positioning of it where it's like, is this really for me? And I'm like, I know this stuff is game changing. And the feedback that I've gotten on both the first and second round. On the second round, I got some amazing feedback. One of them sent me an email afterwards and they were, I have no doubt that in five to ten years I will look back and this course will be a turning point for my career. Someone else said, this has ruined all other courses for me because I know I've been doing this for, in some way, shape or form for 19 years, right? There was a whole thing where I did music videos before I ever got really into online marketing. So I know this stuff.
Tommy Walker [00:35:45]:
Nobody else is talking about it. Nobody else has talked about it the way that I'm talking about it. I know that to be true. But when someone says, I didn't think that this was for me, I'm like, oh, that's a me problem. That's not a them problem. That's not them not understanding. It's me not communicating the value of it the right way. So I went through, and I've had probably 60 something conversations over the last few months with people just talking about what the program is and everything to re figure out the positioning on how it works.
Tommy Walker [00:36:14]:
And one of the things that I did because Erica Schneider, she was part of the first round, she started doing the ‘content sparring’ thing, which is great because then I was like, okay, now let's her and I work together on figuring out the positioning of this thing based on what we've talked about, and it did a little bit better. Now, the last round that I did, too was a little bit more stealth. It was purely cold outreach that I was doing with people. But again, it just gives me more feedback to work with. And now when I go to reposition it again, I'm like, have a better idea of what I'm going to do. But yeah, it's about drinking my own whiskey. I love that. To get to that point where it's like, okay, now this is going to be something that I believe, I truly believe, and now other people believe that it will be the case.
Tommy Walker [00:36:55]:
Somebody else in the first round, too, and I'm going to stop talking. And there's video evidence, there's written evidence of this and there's video evidence of this. So I'm not just like saying it because other people said it. To me, someone in the first round said, this is if Google was the last 25 years of where the conversation was, this is where the next 25 years of the conversation needs to be. And I'm like, okay, this stuff is powerful. This is stuff that I would love to say about myself, but I'm completely like, I'm still not as confident in that as I could be. But every piece of feedback you get like that is really emboldening.
Nick Bennett [00:37:27]:
Yeah, I've seen some of the social proof and the testimonials coming from this thing. You've shared that, and it's like, it's wild, the stuff that people are feeling from this. So, yeah, I'm eager to see what it like, how you more formally relaunch it. There's like, two things that I think are going on here in that, like, you're aerating right now, which is one, making a course is really fucking hard. Like, making a thing that people give a shit about is harder than, like, if you build it, they will come. And it requires refinement and iteration over time. Two years, and you're a known quantity. Like, just like I have.
Nick Bennett [00:38:05]:
A lot of people are like, oh, I'm gonna make a $47 course and I'm gonna try and sell that thing. And I'm like, how many $47 courses you gotta sell to make a living here? So no matter how known of a quantity you are and you, your name has been attached to big logos, so you have the credibility that people look for and stuff like this. And it's still hard.
Tommy Walker [00:38:22]:
I whiffed. That was a really hard thing to, like, the ego part of that was a really big thing to deal with. Right. And there were plenty of times where I was saying to myself, like, I have a known quantity. Like, I've got these big logos. This should be a no brainer for people to want to buy a thing because it's me. Doesn't make a difference. Doesn't make a difference.
Nick Bennett [00:38:42]:
It turns out it doesn't make a difference because positioning and messaging, all that stuff still matters. Oftentimes I find it's less about what is the thing and it's more about, like, what problem does this thing help me solve? And is that problem valuable? Is it visceral? Is it urgent? Things like that? And then on the other side of this, I think you've struck a chord in kind of just saying the quiet part out loud, especially with the way that you've positioned this survey, like, the whole state of discontent.
Tommy Walker [00:39:13]:
Discontent?
Nick Bennett [00:39:13]:
Yeah, yeah, right. Discontent. Like the fact that people are not happy with what content is like. I think the whole positioning of that has, in one sentence, said the quiet part out loud. And I think that is why it has resonated the way that it has. So can you walk me through, how did you get to this premise, and how does this premise fuel the other stuff that you're doing?
Tommy Walker [00:39:40]:
The reality is it's a lot of keeping your ears to the ground. I have systems in place where I have market research that's coming to me in real time. One of the things I'm seeing in the survey right now is a good majority of the people. When I ask, how often do you do market research or audience research? I say, yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, and then not nearly enough. Which is a nice way of saying, I don't know. And the majority of folks are saying, not nearly enough. And what I've seen, what I know to be true because of my consulting experience, is that the I don't or the rarely is because it takes so many resources to conduct an audience research thing, right?
Nick Bennett [00:40:23]:
Just getting people to take it, just.
Tommy Walker [00:40:25]:
Getting, well, getting people to take surveys, watching what's going on in your space, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the things that I have, I have an eight layer market research project process, and ultimately, what ends up happening when I'm monitoring the space, I identify the key players in the space. Right? Like, in any given space, where it's like, okay, who are my search competitors? Who are agencies that are in there? What are apps that are targeting the same types of customers, who are the news? What's the influencers? Like, all of that. And then I have a method of keeping track of all of that in real time, where basically it's a zap that sends to a slack the different method or the different pieces. So I'll spend ten to 15 minutes a day just keeping track of what's going on in the space and through regular conversations with folks and seeing just how much that discontent is actually happening and then going, okay, well, let's quantify this, because there are a lot of people right now, like, did you hear about ‘golden hour’? So audience plus put out golden hour. And a big theme of that whole conference was the playbook is dead. Right? And you see that all the time on LinkedIn right now. Anyways, the playbook is dead, which is leading to some of this discontent.
Tommy Walker [00:41:34]:
So I said, okay, well, let's quantify this. Really, when I say it this way, it sounds really intuitive, right? But getting to that point of going like, okay, what's the premise of this thing that I know is going to stand out right now? It was like, let's look at the discontent. We've got a clever play on words here. When we put disks in the brackets of content, we're taking a format that's nothing, you know, incredibly unfamiliar. And now can I put a lot of thought into the design of the survey? Because it's not just the premise. The premise will get people there. We do have a pretty high drop. I mean, not high drop off, but we have a drop off in the beginning.
Tommy Walker [00:42:11]:
Right?
Nick Bennett [00:42:11]:
It's a long survey.
Tommy Walker [00:42:12]:
Yeah, it's a long survey. I mean, the average completion time, and this is the other part. So the average completion time when I look at it, is like 20 minutes. You can go through it in ten if you want, but if you really getting into the flow of it, you go through it in about 20 minutes. We have a 41.5% completion rate, which is like looking at the benchmarks. And I don't like looking at benchmarks overall. A lot of the benchmarks will say, if you have a 20% completion rate, you're doing good. If you have a 30% completion rate, you're doing fantastic.
Tommy Walker [00:42:40]:
The other thing that went into that is not just the survey itself, but design of the survey. So I put a lot of thought into the questions, and I was working with the people who said that they were going to distribute it first. So we had a whole bunch of questions. So we kind of figured out what the key points there. A lot of people were saying that even the people that I was working with are like 15 Max. And I'm like, I can't get the information I need in 15. Right. Like, there's certain things we're going to miss.
Tommy Walker [00:43:07]:
So I said, okay, can we, with the questions that we're asking and how we ask them, in what order can we start to build up a little bit of trust and confidence? And then we hit. We have a hard hitting question. Right. I mean, one of the questions in there is, are you satisfied with where you're at in your career? That's a big, hairy, confronting question. But to get to that point, we have to start with basic demographic questions, like stuff that's expected and ease into that big, hairy question. And then by the time you get to that big, hairy question, it's like, okay, well, I'm already in. Right. And as we continue to go through the survey, it's not just the questions that I'm asking in the order that I'm asking them in because, because what I'm trying to do, what I'm thinking of as it relates to this, is what's the narrative that somebody's telling themselves as they're going through this? Because I'm asking big questions, what's the story that they're telling themselves? And if I can get them to continue telling that story in their head of where they're at in their career and how they feel about content and all of this other stuff, I can keep the momentum of on the survey.
Tommy Walker [00:44:11]:
So the questions are to really keep going from narrative point to narrative point in somebody's head to then get them to basically be comfortable putting this stuff out there. And that's why one of the feedback, like I said, one of the pieces of feedback we got today, like right before we got on this call, was this was the first time I felt like a survey, really cared about what it was. I had to say, like, this was all very intentional. And I told people, I told my partners, I kind of want people to have a bit of an existential crisis by the time they're done with it, which is a funny thing to say, but, like, that's how we're going to get the types of insights that we need to. So it wasn't just coming up with the premise. The premise is one thing, and one of my axioms of content marketing is a solid premise, will get you 80% of the way there. But, like, the execution of that and the almost invisible details make a huge deal, too. So there are other parts to it, too.
Tommy Walker [00:45:00]:
I have branching logic, so I get different questions being asked to different groups of people depending on how they sell, identify with their job role and stuff like that. So I can keep it relevant to the different segments of people who are there to get the best results out of it. And I wouldn't be able to do it without Typeform, by the way, because if you just saw like a list of questions and they were all the same questions, everybody would get, that wouldn't work. So you have to have the conditional logic and all sorts of other stuff that goes on there.
Nick Bennett [00:45:26]:
If it was just a Google form, it'd be like, nope.
Tommy Walker [00:45:28]:
Yeah, exactly. And it looks like everybody else. And one of the other things that I did, I wanted to make careful and take a careful point to do this right. It's not just what questions, but how we can answer them. At the very beginning of the survey, I have a short video that kind of talks about the importance of this that's gotten quite a few views off of the people who have watched it. There's a higher completion rate among people who watched it than hadn't. And at the end, I have another video that says, like, thank you for doing it. This is where we're going to go with it.
Tommy Walker [00:45:57]:
Da da da da da. And then throughout the survey itself, I wanted to make sure that people didn't get board by just clicking yes, no, yes, no. You know, like, different click marks. So it was like, there are some questions in there where you have to reorder things, the interactivity of it, right. You've got people you can reorder. You can do a star rating. You can do a drop down at each of the big question points, which would be, you know, normally a long form answer. I give the opportunity to do a video response to keep your timing out there so it becomes this very interactive back and forth experience.
Tommy Walker [00:46:29]:
Someone said it felt very conversational as they were going through it, and that was all very much on purpose. Like, one of the things that I found throughout my entire career is that a lot of stuff that we do isn't intentional. It's not done with a lot of intentionality. So a lot of us will sleepwalk through the work because we have to keep a cadence to get stuff out the door so we can get paid. But if we can pay attention to, like, craft of it all and how it all really goes together and look at those tiny, little invisible details, that makes a huge difference in the execution of how people respond to the work, whether it's written, survey, video, whatever.
Nick Bennett [00:47:08]:
You took the words right out of my mouth. The word I was thinking was intentional. Like, you're incredibly intentional with all of the little details of this survey and really all of the. Just hearing you talk about all of this, it's like everything is very intentional. Why is this work so meaningful to you?
Tommy Walker [00:47:26]:
I'm not good at anything else. I'm just not good at anything else. I don't have any sort of carpentry skills. I'm not a very good salesperson. There's a lot of stuff where it's like that. And like I said, I was an actor when I was ten and did that for the first part of my, a good portion of my life. So I'm going to be turning 40 in a year and a half, but it might as well be tomorrow. It doesn't matter.
Nick Bennett [00:47:49]:
The wrong side of 30 is.
Tommy Walker [00:47:51]:
Yeah, yeah, I'm on the wrong side of 30. I was turning 40 as soon as I turned 36, right?
Nick Bennett [00:47:55]:
Yeah, I'm close. I'm close to the wrong side of 30, so don't worry.
Tommy Walker [00:47:59]:
But for me, it's been, you know, when I look at this screen, it goes back to what I was saying in the very first part of my career, where it's like, the intentionality of it all is because what we're all doing, and let's be real, we're all being performative. We're all putting on a performance for each other to seem more impressive, to seem whatever, right? We have to make our money either for ourselves or for our businesses. So the intentionality behind it comes from a lot of. It's from my acting training. One of my teachers, his name was John Tyrell. He was, like, open, vulnerable, penetrable. There are no small choices. Everything you do when you are in acting mode is a choice.
Tommy Walker [00:48:38]:
It is a very specific choice. And you have to make choices as you go through the scenes because you can't dictate. You can't tell what your audience feels, or you can't dictate to your audience what to feel any more than you can ask them what they have for breakfast. And I think a lot of what I see in the business space in general is, what do you want people to know, think and feel afterwards, by the time they're done? And it's like, you can't dictate that. But what you can do is know your audience so well that the choices that you make at least might bring in some sort of that. But when I think about the choices that I'm making, these very small, intentional choices, it's about committing to those choices so I can get those points, those narrative points, whatever it is. I think in narratives all the time, right? And, I mean, you heard me say this. What narrative was somebody telling themselves as they're going through the survey? I'm thinking about that and making choices about how I, you know, the questions that I'm asking and how I'm asking them and how the person interacts with the survey itself.
Tommy Walker [00:49:41]:
But that's applied to blog posts, that's applied to videos, that's applied to everything, because it's really easy to just fall into a groove. But we're all pattern guessing machine. Like, we're all pattern guessing machines. So if you can break those patterns, then you get. You keep people wanting more. Right.
Nick Bennett [00:49:57]:
You said early on in this conversation that the early days of your. Of you. Of you being a solopreneur was luck. Like, getting these clients was luck. But after hearing all this, I think that you are much more capable of creating your own luck than you think, because the level of intentionality that you operate at seems like it would. It probably has grown over time.
Tommy Walker [00:50:23]:
Oh, yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:50:24]:
But it's like, none of this is luck.
Tommy Walker [00:50:28]:
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Take a step back for a second. Hold on. So, LinkedIn is one of my big clients, right? We've done some really cool things together. All of that that came from a single tweet? Not my tweet.
Nick Bennett [00:50:44]:
The irony.
Tommy Walker [00:50:44]:
Not my tweet. Yeah, exactly. Aaron Orendorff, who is my homie and was one of my best collaborators. Like, I've loved to see where. I've loved watching where his career has gone since we've worked together. He put out a tweet that was like, these are the five people I enjoy working with the most complete throat. Like, I appreciate the tweet, but you get those tweets every now and again where someone's like, these are the greatest people I've worked with, and da da da da da. It wasn't until months later that somebody from LinkedIn contacted me and said, hey, would you like to work? Like, write for us on this glossary project that we're putting together? And I thought it was spam, so I ignored the first one.
Tommy Walker [00:51:22]:
So when I say luck, like, I mean, like, that was extremely lucky, because I was also, like, near the end of my Runway, too. Like, the cash was. The cash reserves are starting to run a little low, and that came at the exact right time. On a tweet that went out months before.
Nick Bennett [00:51:39]:
Yeah. What you're still calling luck is the fact that I see someone who worked really hard and was really intentional with the things that they're doing, delivers for their clients, and that client was really happy about it. Or that person who you've worked with, like, identifies that developed your reputation to a point where a company that has a lot of money, a lot of recognition, was like, that's somebody that we want to work with. That's not luck, dude. I think this is the byproduct of doing all the things, all the simple, the basics, really well over a long period of time. So I'm not trying to gas you up, dude.
Tommy Walker [00:52:19]:
I mean, no, no, no.
Nick Bennett [00:52:20]:
Sure, there's a little bit of luck here. Who cares? But, like, the reality of the situation is, like, you make your own luck.
Tommy Walker [00:52:26]:
You have to be prepared for it. Right?
Nick Bennett [00:52:28]:
I think reputation. This is why I'm so, like, people out here trying to build a personal brand, and I think that's misguided. I think people should be out here trying to build a reputation, because reputation is what gets you those types of opportunities that you can. You called luck. I call that like, you did, you delivered. Like, you generated exponential outcomes for the people that. Who were working with you, and you delivered. You make good on your promises.
Nick Bennett [00:52:53]:
That level of reputation is the. Is what we're all after here, and it pays off. I mean, it wasn't like LinkedIn contacted you in January of 2009 when you started. It took them ten, over ten years to get to that point. So, like, anyway, I can go on the reputation soapbox for all time. So looking back on all of the stuff, what's something you would have done differently?
Tommy Walker [00:53:20]:
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Nick Bennett [00:53:22]:
That's the best answer I've ever gotten to that question.
Tommy Walker [00:53:26]:
Yeah, because I'm now, like, since I've run to the cohort a couple times now and seen what people have said as a result of going through that, this is some really game changing stuff for these people. I'm like, okay, now it's time to write the book. But it has been very intentional choices throughout the course of an entire career, and I am very lucky to have had these opportunities and then to have delivered on them in a way.
Nick Bennett [00:53:48]:
All right, then the last thing here for us then is looking forward. You had alluded to wanting to write a book, or you're in the process of writing a book. What does the future of the business look like? What is something that you want to build that you haven't built yet?
Tommy Walker [00:54:04]:
Yeah, so, actually, that's where that was going. I wouldn't change a damn thing because it has led to all of these different turning points. Pressure. The pressure of a certain situation has always led to an adaptation and a reliance on something that I already knew that I didn't realize I knew. And, like, drawing that stuff forward, what comes next is really riding the wheels or taking the riding until the wheels fall off on the course, on the book, on the consulting stuff, and really doing what I can to scale, not my personal brand because of ego, but to scale my personal brand to help more people. If I keep getting this sort of, this was really transformational to my life and my career. I know that I had people that I looked up to when I came up. I really want to scale, not to inflate my ego, but to resonate with more people and help scale that impact.
Tommy Walker [00:55:08]:
So that's what's next.
Nick Bennett [00:55:10]:
Yeah, I totally get that. Like, your ability to make an impact and just help more people. Like, that's a lot of the people that I interview that's a similar ambition. It's like I want to grow this thing so that it's not just so close, like closed room, like it one to one private stuff. I want to be able to help as many people as possible with the stuff that I'm doing, and I think you're well positioned to do it, man.
Tommy Walker [00:55:38]:
Thank you.
Nick Bennett [00:55:39]:
I appreciate it. If there's anyone out there who is working really hard to do that, it's you. So I'm excited for what you're building. I'm excited to be. To go along with it, go along this journey with you, man. This is fun to watch, and I'm definitely going to be a part of it.
Tommy Walker [00:55:53]:
Thank you, man. I really appreciate that.
Nick Bennett [00:55:55]:
This has been fun, dude, thanks for coming on and sharing your story. I know for a fact more people feel seen on their own journey because of it. So I thank you for just sharing all the nooks and crannies of what you're trying to do. And it's just. It's cool to watch it unfold in real time, man.
Tommy Walker [00:56:12]:
Thank you. I really appreciate that. It means a lot.
Nick Bennett [00:56:19]:
Hey, Nick, again, and thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can sign up for the 1000 Routes newsletter where I process the insights and stories you hear on this show into frameworks and lessons to help you build a new and different future for your own business. You can sign up at 10.com or check the link in the show notes. All right, dude, this is the hardest question I'll ask. What would be your last meal on earth?
Tommy Walker [00:56:50]:
I'm a big fan of burgers. You know, given the amount of cheeseburgers I have, that actually probably wouldn't be my last meal on earth.
Nick Bennett [00:56:57]:
Like, just the odds of it being your last meal are very high.
Tommy Walker [00:57:00]:
The odds of it being my last meal are very, very high.
Nick Bennett [00:57:04]:
Would you make a cheeseburger or would you buy it?
Tommy Walker [00:57:06]:
I make a damn good cheeseburger. So, yeah, no, I make it make a pretty good cheeseburger, but I would buy it. I would go all out and buy, like, a super expensive cheeseburger and see what they did that I don't and see if it was better than mine or not.
I make a damn good cheeseburger. So yeah, no, I make a pretty good cheeseburger, but I would buy it. I I would go all out and buy, like, a super expensive cheeseburger. And see what they did that I don't. And see if it was better than mine or not.
you know, I get to travel a lot for my business, right? I've had like a lot of really good experiences, and one of the things I will do is I will measure a new restaurant by its cheeseburger.
Nick Bennett [00:57:31]:
I feel that I have this, a similar litmus test, except I do it with the Reuben. you're
Tommy Walker [00:57:37]:
yeah, hell yeah, I love a good Reuben.
Nick Bennett [00:57:39]:
a solid Reuben. Like it can,
Tommy Walker [00:57:42]:
Makes your day better.
Nick Bennett [00:57:43]:
well, yeah, it definitely makes you feel better, but also it's like, I go on like this Reuben tour where you go somewhere and you eat the Reuben and you're like, all right, bread's a little soggy. Like could have been toasted. Could have been grilled a little longer, this or that. So I get what you're saying on, you go there, you judge a place by its cheeseburger. very much on the same wavelength with, the way I go on my Reuben tour, so I feel that
Tommy Walker [00:58:03]:
Yep, I got you.
Nick Bennett [00:58:04]:
We will combine tours one day and we'll do like a whole East coast, maybe we'll just travel the East coast, make a documentary .
Tommy Walker [00:58:14]:
Let’s do it.