How to Make 5-Figures per Month Writing on Medium with Ayo the Author

Sneak Peek:

Kristin:    00:00:00    They don't wanna be told no, they don't wanna be told no because then they wasted the other, or they think they wasted the 97 times they, they read and they tried and they pitched and they failed. But then they don't know that you don't know which three people are gonna say yes. It could be the first one and the 99th one, and the 100th one, you know, or it could be like the 50th one. You just have to do it no matter what. And then eventually you'll get there.  

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:  Before we get into today's show, thank you everyone who has been leaving five star reviews and the Apple Podcast store. Today's shout out goes to Ello who says, unbelievably insightful. Kristin has a way of explaining complex topics in an insightful, easy to digest way. I listened to her on my commute to work, and I've learned so much about entrepreneurship and becoming a digital nomad. Highly recommend. Thanks Ello.  

Kristin:    00:01:18    Hey everybody. Welcome to an episode of Badass Digital Nomads Live. We're hanging out in my apartment in Miami. I've got Ayo the author here with me down from Minnesota. We have Instagram live happening, we have YouTube live. There's like five, six, so I don't know how many cameras are happening right now, but it's a beautiful day and we really wanted to sit outside even though it's a little bit windy. So bear with us. Ayo is my friend from Medium, but we just met in person today, but I think we've known each other for at least a year, right? Yeah, just about. Yeah. So we both write on Medium, and I don't remember how we met, but Medium is a really cool place to meet people because there's people writing about topics from all different industries and backgrounds and anybody can publish on there. So, um, Ayo has been pretty much a dominating Medium.  

Kristin:    00:02:15    He's got like 50 something thousand followers there. He is the author of Real Help, which is his third book. And this is a book that I have fully digested and read and marked up a lot. I read it in just a couple days and I took a lot of notes. So we're gonna talk about his book, his story, and how he makes $10,000 plus per month online. And really you have a, a hero's journey story. It's pretty incredible. So we'll talk about how he got to where he is today and how you guys can do it too. And also how you can kind of get out from under the thumbprint of society as far as the status quo, like the average life, so that you can live the life that you want, that you enjoy. Welcome Ayo.  

Ayo:    00:03:13    Thank you for having me.  

Kristin:    00:03:14    <laugh>. So you like this, uh, nice backyard on the canal here. We have manatees and sharks and alligators behind us.  

Ayo:    00:03:22    Yeah, Miami is cool. I've been here for a couple of days and, you know, getting outta Minnesota where the weather is like 20 degrees to a negative 10 degrees, depending on which day it is, is definitely nice and bounced around town a lot. Been trying to record some footage. Have a nice backdrop here. So I'm definitely looking forward to the interview, like this whole setup, it's very professional. I've never done anything to this extent and I'm just excited to be here.  

Kristin:    00:03:48    Yeah, this is just actually a really cool example of two people who started creating content and didn't really have a plan. No, but no plan. But over the years we've learned a lot and came together today to just like talk about how we did it. Let's start with your pre-writing, content creation, entrepreneurial life. Can you give us like a, a summary or, or like a background of what you were doing before you started writing? Like what was your day-to-day life like, and where were you working? You know, what were you doing?  

Ayo:    00:04:25    Absolutely. So I went to college and I grew up in, I grew up in a middle class family, you know, my parents wanted me to do well in school, you know, I had a lot of potential. I was always, you know, smart, intelligent kid, kind of coasted through high school, got into college, really didn't take everything seriously whatsoever. So I got heavily into partying, heavily into drinking, doing drugs, selling drugs, all kinds of bad stuff in, I basically ended up a college dropout. I was stuck in the college town where I lived in, like all my friends had moved away. I had been arrested. So basically I was kind of that kid who had a ton of potential, but as soon as I got into an environment where I was kind of left to my own devices and had to fend for myself and be responsible, I totally screwed it up.  

Ayo:    00:05:10    And I was in a position where I had nothing going for me. Like really didn't have a whole lot of hope. I was working at an electronics factory for $10 an hour, working 12 hour shifts from 2:45 PM to 2:45 to am I was, you know, stumbling around doing that. Eventually ended up quitting and I walked to this video store that was a couple of blocks from the apartment I lived in just to get a random job. I just needed a $8 an hour job so that I could pay the bills and have some food to eat, right. So I walked in and, you know, I was still pretty smart, articulate, presented myself well, walked up to the manager, talked to her, and she was like, you know what? You should, you should train to be a manager at the store instead of just being a clerk.  

Ayo:    00:05:55    And I'm like, okay. And for me, like after having messed up so much in my life after being fired from every job, for me that managerial role at a video store was like a big deal for me at the time. Mm-Hmm. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna take this opportunity to get my life back on track. Like let me just not screw this up. So I started watching a lot of YouTube videos, Ted Talks, reading books, and getting into personal development so that I could just get better at my job and start to like get back on my feet and live a better life. And at the same time, I started sharing kind of the things I was learning on social media. So I'd be, I'd read a new book, I'd watch a video, I'd kind of talk about how that was impacting me on my, in my life and try to share some inspiration with other people.  

Ayo:    00:06:35    And these Facebook statuses that I was putting out, they're really long Hmm. They're like essay length type of statuses, right? So I was writing, and in the back of my mind, I had known that I wanted to be a writer for a while, but, you know, we all have those dreams, things that we wanted to do when we were a kid, they just kind of sit in the back of our mind until they're like brought up. So kind of fortunately for me, a friend of mine noticed my pension for writing and he was like, Hey man, I'm coming up with this new website. You should write articles through my website. And I'm like, okay, what can I write about? And he said, you can write about whatever you want. So I wrote one article, um, posted on the website, they posted on Facebook, and it got like a couple dozen likes on it. And I'm like, okay, wow. Like that felt amazing to me and I haven't stopped writing since then.  

Kristin:    00:07:25    What year was that?  

Ayo:    00:07:26    2015.  

Kristin:    00:07:28    Okay. And that seems like just yesterday, but no, five years ago. It's been a while. And at the time, so you're making $8 an hour, you were married with a kid, right.  

Ayo:    00:07:40    So yeah, I got, I was single when I got into that job, and then I eventually met my wife at the time. And then, yeah, we did get married throughout that process. And we were, we, we were married for pretty much almost the entire duration of my writing career up until like, uh, six to eight months ago.  

Kristin:    00:08:01    Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. There was a, a moment that you write about in the story. Well, a few times, like during that time, a few different scenarios that you paint. Uh, you talked about not having any, did you have your electricity cut off?  

Ayo:    00:08:16    So the story, yeah. So the story goes, we, um, we were going to buy some fish for my daughter. And so like, she had gotten a free fish tank from someone at her school. And so we needed to get some fish for it, right? And we were going out, you know, to get these fish. And at the time, like my writing career was going pretty well. I had, you know, a couple thousand bucks coming in a month, but we had a bunch of debt. We had like debt from the marriage, the honeymoon, put that stuff on credit cards. I had like medical bills, student loans, like all this stuff was piling up. So even though I was making more money, there were just more and more bills and it was getting, just getting sucked up into these bills, right? Yeah. And we're going out to this, uh, pet store or whatever to get the fish, and we're looking around at the fish. I only had like $35 in my bank account, 35, 33, something like that. So we're walking around and, you know, my wife at the time, she's like looking at different stuff, like all these little accessories and I'm just kind of like trying to nudge her in the right direction. I'm like, oh, you know, like these, you know, like these fish over here are cool, like the little cheap  

Kristin:    00:09:16    One. It's the $1 fish.  

Ayo:    00:09:17    The little cheap was like, oh, this one's cool, like it has stripes on it, blah, blah, blah. Trying to like convince. So we, we got the fish, I think I had like a credit card that had like a little bit of bounce on that, like 20 bucks or something like that, maxed that out. Then we ended up going to like Chick-fil-A to get some food. And after that I had like $3 left in my account. And so we go home and I had more bills that came in and my bank account went negative. So my bank account was negative for a couple days until I got paid again for my job. And, you know, even though things were going like, you know, upward spiral with my writing career, you know, it was still like a struggling moment. And I was kind of like, damn. Like when is like, I'd already been writing for a couple years.  

Ayo:    00:09:57    I'm like, when is this gonna pop? Like, when is this finally gonna be, you know, getting the traction I wanted? 'cause I've been working really hard. And then about like six months later, I had my first five figure month and things had been going up since then. And like, I go look in my bank account from like a year ago, two years ago, and I see the amounts and like to see the head space I was at at the time and my bank account at the time, compared to what it is now, it's like insane that when you finally hit that inflection point, that point where most people quit. Like you can really get exponential results after that. But you have to, you have to stay focused and you have to like not get to turn. 'cause shit is gonna be hard. Like if you're, if you're trying to get onto this jungle of like content creation, like doing what you're doing, like travel blogging, podcast, like it's not for the week of heart. You are not going to earn a bunch of money up front. Like the work is front loaded up front and the money, the views, the audience, that stuff comes later. You like gotta keep your head straight, you know, I definitely wanted to quit tons of times, but after a couple years I knew it was riding or bus, like I was gonna figure it out regardless of however long it  

Kristin:    00:11:06    Took. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. That's the dip, right? That Seth Godin talks about where it's like right before you succeed or sometimes before you don't succeed, right? But there's always at some point, like a really hard dip. And that's when most people quit. I don't think I realized what that felt like until I started doing this <laugh>. Yep. And you just have to make the decision. I think when you made the decision to start writing and not stop it makes it easier. Yeah. Because you're like, I'm gonna do this until I die. So like, if it takes 10 years or 20 years or people never watch it, like, I'm just gonna do it because I like it and I'm gonna keep improving and keep trying. And then eventually, yeah, maybe you make money at it, right? Maybe something else gives, but in the meantime you could be like, in that situation you described where you're going to the library to use the free internet and use the computer and like putting stuff on your credit card. Oh. Because you can't pay it.  

Ayo:    00:12:06    <laugh> that story. Yeah. So that's, that is, that is another story I talk about in the book. So when I was in college, or not in college, still just in my bum college town or whatever, broke, um, yeah, I didn't pay my electric bill, so my electricity got cut off. So I couldn't, I couldn't, I literally couldn't do anything at home, like work on any writing related stuff. So I go to the public library at my college town, I'm just using the computer there, writing articles in there, working on stuff. So there's no, there's no excuses not to do the things where everyone's like, oh, I don't have any money. Go to the library. They have free computers. Like, I actually thought about a mat like imaginary scenarios with like people in the most dire straits. Like let's say even you were like a homeless person or something, and you had your wits about you, you weren't like crazy, but you had no access to anything.  

Ayo:    00:12:53    You could go to the library, you know, use free computers, you know, you know, go panhandle, save you know, 3 95 to get some blue host hosting for your free word plus blog and do like affiliate marketing and like SEO and like still make money. So like there's yeah's infinite ways to do it and you just have to be resourceful. And like with the internet, there's no excuses. I mean, most people can't afford, most people can't afford a laptop. Most people have smart phones. Yeah. You can run people, I know people who run entire businesses straight from their phones. So there's, with technology available, there's, there's no excuses, and people just gotta get in their right head space so that they understand that  

Kristin:    00:13:33    There's even, um, a girl on Medium who like writes from her phone. I think I read one of her articles, she is babysitting her kid at the park or the playground and she's like typing a Medium article from her phone. Right. Um, you crossed through the dip, you made it from $3 or a negative bank account to having like five figure months. Um, how did that happen? Like at what point did you start to get momentum and start to make money online? And where was your income coming from? Was it just freelance writing?  

Ayo:    00:14:08    So it was almost primarily due to the Medium Partner program. So for those of you who don't know, Medium is a website where anyone is allowed to publish articles on there. Both Kristin and I write on there, and there's people who pay five bucks a month to be members of Medium.com and any member who engages with your content or reads your content, like you get a portion of their five bucks a month that goes towards your earnings. And I had been on Medium for a while prior to the partner program coming in. So when Medium made that switch where they allowed writers to start earning, I already had a pretty decent follower count by that time. Mm-Hmm. So things started to like exponentially grow, like as like I, the first month, the media partner program, I kind of tested out, like I thought like, all right, well they're gonna pay us.  

Ayo:    00:14:59    Like, I had no idea. So I posted a couple articles on there and they, they did, did Decent and I had like a couple hundred bucks. I'm like, okay, like this could be a thing. So I kept doing it and I kept doing it and I kept going. It kept going. I'm like, oh, okay. Like I can make some money with this. So I started, like, I started writing articles like a madman. I was posting like 30 to 50 articles a month, and I was, I was just ramping it up, ramping it up, and then eventually it just popped and like asymmetrical distribution, like I was plateaued at a similar view count for like months and months and months at a time. And then one month, five x 10 x,  

Kristin:    00:15:38    15  

Ayo:    00:15:38    X 20 x. And it just goes to show like, same, like same thing with like YouTube podcasts, writing all these different platforms you have to hit like, like Malcolm Gladwell talks, like the tipping point. You have to hit the tipping point. I just kept writing and stuck on that platform of Medium and hit the tipping point. And the crazy thing is like a lot of people are, oh, you, you early adopted on Medium and that's why you're successful is like, yeah, that's partially true. But the other partial truth to that is I got started writing years before Medium in that partner program came out. So I was able to take advantage. So people always like to talk about, you know, early adoption, late stage, late stage adoption. I just started a YouTube channel and YouTube's been around for forever. I'm a very late adopter of YouTube and my channel is growing. So mostly people are full of excuses.  

Kristin:    00:16:27    Yeah. You look at the girl who did that Van Life video, she got like 15 million views on her first video and she, she started a few months ago. Yeah. So it really, that's just an excuse and it's something that people tell themselves so that they don't start or they don't do something that they're afraid of. So I want, I wanna talk about that next. But first, just to clarify again, what Medium is, it's basically a platform for all different writers to come together and write about whatever they want. And people can publish on their personal profile. They can publish for, they could submit their work to publications. You don't have to be a trained writer. Like you are not a trained writer. You didn't go to, uh, get a PhD in English literature or something like that. No.  

Ayo:    00:17:12    Most MFA grads are broke, by the way.  

Kristin:    00:17:14    <laugh>, yeah. The industry. I started writing on Medium because I, I read so much useful content on Medium, and I thought it would be a good way to practice writing because that's another thing that I always wanted to do and that I didn't do for a long time because I was working and I thought I was too busy and I wasn't like a writer, so I just didn't do it. And then at one point I realized I had to start because I had a travel blog in 2007, and then I thought no one was reading it, which actually I didn't even know how to look at my analytics, so probably people were reading it and, uh, I wish I kept going. So I think at, at some point I just made the decision to start over no matter what, and then just keep going. And so I haven't had as much monetary success on Medium because I haven't been as consistent as you.  

Kristin:    00:18:01    I haven't written as long as you, and there's a lot of other, I'm, I'm sure things that go into it from your, the images you choose to, like your titles, the content Yeah. The structure of the article. We could talk a little bit about that too. But, um, the moral of the story is just to write consistently, get better over time and, and then the payoff will come in some way, whether it's making money on Medium or getting writing clients, freelance clients through Medium or business opportunities through publishing your work online. So yeah, that's super inspiring to see how you can go from posting long Facebook posts and status updates to making five figures a month on Medium. And then once you write that, those articles, like do you have articles that you wrote two years ago that still make money that people read?  

Ayo:    00:18:58    Yeah, so the, the way that it works is like, sometimes you're more popular articles, like some of 'em, they tend to stick and it's almost like you get a recurring royalty off of those articles. So it's, I have a bunch of articles. I think the, the longest, I guess like tenured one I've had is probably like 18 months old and that one still consistently earns like a couple hundred bucks a month. So you just Yeah. Build up that catalog on there. And so many other opportunities come from just putting your work out there. So I put my work on Medium and that has gotten me like freelance writing jobs, ghost writing jobs, copywriting jobs. Like people will just see my writing and they think it's good and like they wanna hire me for stuff. Yeah. And people will reach out to me like syndicate my work, like Business Insiders syndicated some of my articles, couple different, like bigger websites.  

Ayo:    00:19:44    People, people come to me and they ask me to like coach them and like offer for to pay me money to coach them. Like I don't, I don't even openly advertise like any coaching services right now and I will in the future. It's like, the point being is like, it's not to brag, but it's to show that like demonstrating your knowledge and putting it online. Once people see that you're knowledgeable and they think you can help 'em, things will come your way. It's like the people do it backwards. They want the money, they want the audience, they want the success, but it's kind of like, kind of like dealing with people. If you're really needy with people, they don't wanna be around you. Mm-Hmm. But if you're just doing your own thing and they see that you're living a cool life, then they want to hang out with you. Same concept goes with creating stuff like, don't be needy for audience and fans right away. Put your content out there and once people realize it's good, then they'll come to you.  

Kristin:    00:20:31    Yeah. Likewise. Be happy that everyone's ignoring what you're doing at the beginning because it's probably gonna suck <laugh>. No, not probably. Like it is going to suck <laugh>. So yeah, hindsight's 2020 and, uh, your, your first writing your first podcast, like anything is so bad. Like you can, I think you can still go back and see like Joe Rogan's first podcast or, or listen to it. So Mm-Hmm. I like leaving that stuff up because it shows, it shows the journey. There's all these reasons not to start something. There's like legitimate reasons why people don't wanna start things. Sure. Like, they're busy, they're broke, they don't have time. Like, like they don't live in the right place. They don't know how to use equipment, like whatever it is that they wanna do. There's a, there's a lot of reasons not to do it. So can you speak a little bit to how society is designed for us to essentially fail? And what are the things that people have to do to overcome this kind of invisible pressure to keep you in your, like nine to five or whatever kind of drudgery this, um, modern day lifestyle is cropping up for us?  

Ayo:    00:21:43    Yeah, I mean, where do I start? Yeah. I think that I opened the book talking about why society doesn't want you to succeed. And the, the way that I frame it, I think is a, a helpful tool to understand and like not get upset about it. So there is no, there is no society, there is no like secret cabal of like Monty Burns type people who are like actively trying to make your life bad. But there's so many incentive structures in place that ends up leading to a life that you don't wanna live. So what are some of the different incentives structures? Take the media. The media has incentives for them to put out like the worst and most, you know, outrageous and kind of, what's the word, scandalized content as they possibly can. So you have that running in the background of your mind all the time, like media manipulation, advertisement, political pundit, all trying to paint this narrative that the sky is falling.  

Ayo:    00:22:40    And then you have things like consumer culture. We're in a ton of debt. Everyone is, you know, they have the mortgage and then you have the car note, and then you have the student loans, and then you have the credit card. So you have all of these hooks put into you. And then you're put in a situation with your employer where you have many incentives to stay at your job. You, you have healthcare, you know, that's a big thing for a lot of people. You know, you can't just up and quit your job. You have to take care of your family, put a roof over your head. So you have all these different kind of elements of society swirling, like they have, they make terrible food. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:23:13    It's  

Ayo:    00:23:13    Cheaper to produce terrible food. And it's not conducive for these companies to keep you healthy. And you know, they kind of are in a winking non campaign with pharmaceutical companies. Like it's more profitable to keep you sick and dependent on drugs than it is for you to just eat healthy food that comes from the earth. So you have like all of these things that, you know, individual incentives for people in these companies, in these institutions where they're looking out for number one, they're not trying to actively screw you over, but they got to eat. They gotta keep, they gotta take care of their families too. And it just goes, it goes up and down the chain. It leads to a situation where the average person is just a product of like all of the stimulus and brainwashing and, you know, so much so that I almost say that people have like Stockholm syndrome, like they identify it with their captors.  

Ayo:    00:24:04    You know, like there's that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo, he's like, these people do not wanna be unplugged. Like they'll actively like fight you and hate you from trying to remove the social conditioning from their mind. And it, it runs deep. That's the one thing has to understand like the social conditioning and societal narratives, they run so deep and they're super duper hard to overcome. And you know, your perception is reality. Whatever you believe to to be true is true. Which is why, you know, when some people you try to tell 'em about these things, you try to tell 'em that they could go online and make money or that they don't have to be doing what they're doing. Their brain is so imprinted that you might as well be talking to a brick wall because it's not just that they disagree with you, they literally cannot perceive that form of reality whatsoever. And, you know, it's a, it's kind of a deep trap that it takes a lot of work and, you know, effort to get out of For sure.  

Kristin:    00:24:59    Totally. I think I stumbled onto this self-development journey in 2007, but I think that's when I started like really reading a lot of books about it and kind of unlearning a lot of past habits and programming and then replacing that with information that I felt like was very valuable. So philosophy and like, I probably did read a lot of self-help type of like guru books that maybe weren't super practical, but I think it just took years of repeatedly exposing myself to these other concepts before it started to really take root in my subconscious and kind of replace those old negative patterns. And I've had to do it actually in all different ways. Like you mentioned, like I've had to do it with food. Like we're so addicted to different chemicals and things and food, whether it's sugar or preservatives and the stuff that you don't even know is in there.  

Kristin:    00:25:55    Um, and then if it's, uh, even just daily habits. Like I remember going to college and thinking like, oh, I'm an adult now, so I have to watch the news every day, <laugh> and I have to read the Wall Street Journal. And like, if you're filling your psyche with all of these other stories that you are basically helpless against, like there's not that much you can do about the shooting that happened yesterday down the street or whatever. It just like is taking up a lot of time and energy. And then when this propagates for so many years or decades, like people just feel like giving up and like, rightly so, because it takes a lot of intention and energy to like dig yourself out of that hole. And then you have family and friends and people who are like looking out for you and looking  

Ayo:    00:26:42    Out.  

Kristin:    00:26:43    Right. And so kind of like what can people do if they kind of wake up one day and they're like, I am in the matrix, and like, this isn't working for me. I'm not living to my potential. I'm like wasting my life at this job. Um, and they say something about it to their friends and family and then those people who care about them, like talk them out of making a change. Can you speak to what that's about and how can people start to chip away at these chains and like distance themselves from this mindset?  

Ayo:    00:27:16    First of all, you gotta like keep your mouth shut about your big dreams. Don't, like, don't go tell everybody about your big dreams. Like, you know, I, I had told people that I was working on writing stuff, but I never really made all these big announcements. Like when I worked in my first book, I announced the book when it was done. Mm-Hmm. when I worked in my second book, I announced it when I was done. I didn't, I didn't even try to talk to anybody about the things I was doing. Like half the time hell, I used to like buy online courses and like, not even tell my wife, which, you know, <laugh> communication, maybe that was an issue. But like, I just didn't want, I just didn't want to hear, I have to hear from anyone because I knew people thought I was gonna be crazy.  

Ayo:    00:27:51    You know, I knew people thought I was ridiculous and I just kind of kept, I just kind of kept a lot of that worked to myself and just did the work. And I just understood a couple things like, I'm gonna die someday. I, I focus on my mortality quite a bit. And even back then, like I, I just looked at my life and I just got deeply frustrated. And I think that's one thing that kind of helps you create that emotional leverage to change. Like, you have to, you have to get extremely frustrated with your life if you wanna do something about it. Like, there's a lot of motivational, inspirational stuff. And I like inspirational stuff. Like I'm an inspirational guy. I like giving people that positive energy, but from my experience, that kind of lighthearted inspiration is not as effective as like deep frustration.  

Ayo:    00:28:39    You have to make the pain cut deep. And like, what happens to people is they don't, they don't let the, they don't feel the pain acutely enough. They kind of hum along at this low level anxiety where they're going through this like monotonous loop of life and it hurts, but it doesn't hurt bad enough. 'cause they have Netflix and you know, they have a flat screen TV and they have a Mercedes and you know, they can go out and have some drinks on the weekend and you can kind of do enough and kind of numb yourself enough to where it's okay. Like, I make this joke that, you know, if companies had it their way, they would make you work seven days a week. But they know that if you kept doing it consistently, you'd catch onto what's going on. So they give you two days to like rewrite the software and wipe your like clean and like numb you for a little bit so then you can come back, you know, do five days.  

Ayo:    00:29:28    Right. So people go through that and go through that and then when do people realize what happened too late? They're 50, they're 60 and they're like, holy shit, what was I doing? You know, people have these epiphanies. I it's disheartening. I get emails constantly from people who are in their forties and their fifties and their sixties, seventies, eighties even. And they send me emails, they're like, Ayo, I, I wasted my life. I worked at this terrible job. I stuck in this marriage for two decades. Like me and my partner, we hate each other. We hate our jobs. I hate my life. I don't know how I could have done this to myself. So like, when I was younger, I tried to extrapolate out when I, what that would look like. So when I was working at an electronics factory when I was 25 years old, Deb broke, I looked at the people who were 50, 60 still working there, and they were, they were done for it.  

Ayo:    00:30:21    And so even that, at the time, I wasn't doing anything about it at the time. I was still kind of humming along, but I started to slowly get like more pissed off and more worried and more concerned. I'm like looking around at these people and like, no, absolutely not. And you know, it's kind of, you know, some people might call it cruel, but I juxtapose myself against people. I don't wanna be like, you know, there's this idea of inversion comes from, um, Charlie Munger and Naim <inaudible> talks about this. Don't, don't focus on what success looks like, focus on people who are failures and just don't act like those people. And you know, unfortunately we have a lot of evidence, there's a lot of evidence in society of what not to do. So I just look, I just look around, you know, little things like going to the grocery store, you see, you see some old old lady arguing with the manager about like some 69 cents off coupon. And it's like, you can see it in her eyes that she's doing it because that's like the only sense of control she feels over her entire life. So she's arguing about these coupons and you see people walking around deadpan, like soulless eyes and like part of me for being dramatic. But that, that kind of stuff motivates me. Seeing people like that, that's enough for me. That's enough to keep me working for the rest of my life.  

Kristin:    00:31:35    Yeah. And I think that it also keeps people stuck and confused if they haven't had someone say it flat out to them like that because they're like, I feel like this life isn't working for me. I feel like I'm different from the people around me, but I'm not getting any confirmation from my environment that like what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling is good or is right. And so they kind of get lulled back into like that five other five days of the work week or whatever, and then maybe they read an inspirational blog article or something online, or they talk to a friend about it and they like get the hint that maybe they're gonna do something about it or they're gonna figure it out at some point. But then all too often the time just passes by super quickly and the longer you wait, like the harder it is.  

Kristin:    00:32:26    So, uh, what can people do tangibly if they find themselves at let's say even 60, 70 years old and they're like, I don't have have much time left, but I can't keep living this way, but I don't know if anything that happened from my past is going to help me change. Like if they literally feel like they're starting over Yeah. But they don't know what to do or they don't know what skills they can have, like what can, where can people start by like figuring out their strengths or, or taking like that first step? Because I, I definitely find that with the people who write me messages and comments. They're like, I just have no idea where to start. Like, I know I want my life to be different, but I don't know what to do. Like legitimately have no clue, you know? And I've been there too. <laugh>.  

Ayo:    00:33:18    Yeah. You know, there's a couple things. Like sometimes people say that and they're hiding. Sometimes people know what they wanna do. Like it's, I've had a lot of conversations with people, it's funny, they're like, oh, I kind of don't know. I don't know what I wanna do. And I just kind of, I kind of talk to 'em, I ask 'em questions and then all of a sudden, you know, actually it was funny, I was talking to this woman when I was on LA Uber driver and she was talking about all these problems that she had. Like, she was in debt, she was looking for a way out. Like she was driving Uber to make extra money. Like she said, she didn't know what she was gonna do, you know, she thought maybe she wanted to start a business, blah, blah, blah. And then as I get out of the car, she was like, oh yeah, I have like 10 years of experience in this certain form of like contracting and consulting and I've had, uh, people reach out to me and you know, wanna work with me.  

Ayo:    00:34:03    Like, maybe I should just do that. I'm like, yeah, lady <laugh>, maybe, maybe you should just do that, right? So that, there's one thing, sometimes people, they know what they wanna do and they're just kind of hiding from it because they're scared. But other things, like if you really don't, if you really don't have a good handle on your strengths, then you can do some of the things I talked about in the book, like personality tests, you can start with those. They're okay. Like I don't actually believe that they're scientifically accurate in any shape or form to where like your destined to live a certain life based on your strengths. But if you have no idea what to do, there are resources like G StrengthsFinder where you can go take a test, it'll give you suggestions and you can look through, it'll suggest like maybe 10 to 20 different things and you could pick out the three that you know, look good to you.  

Ayo:    00:34:43    And then you can like reach out and ask people who are in those three things and like, see maybe one that, you know, speaks to you. Um, just look back at like the feedback from people around you. Um, you know, people always said, you know, you have, you have a really good voice. You should be, you should be on radio, you should be on, you know, be on camera. Like you're very articulate. There was always that theme running through of words of me. Always had a good vocabulary, always. I was always somewhat good at writing. Teachers would make comments on my papers. Like, you just have to be, you know, people will tell you what you're good at, but you have to listen. Like people, we have blind spots to like our own, our own talents, but other people can kind of clearly see it. So, you know, people might say, oh, like you're very, you know, fashionable. Like, how do you put your clothes together? Oh, you know, this is, you know, I just, you know,  

Kristin:    00:35:27    Comes naturally,  

Ayo:    00:35:28    Comes naturally. You know, there's whole, there's a whole business of like fashion design and consultants. Oh wow, your apartment is, your apartment is so well put together, interior, all kind, all kinds of stuff. Like, there's this feedback there, you know, thinking back to when you were young, like the age of 14 when you were starting to think about a future, but you weren't corrupted by society and you didn't have all those mental hooks in your mind yet, and you still had like, some self-esteem. Like what, what are the things that you like to do back then? So there are a lot of signs. And then once you find the signs, you have to pick something and stick with it. So like, I make suggestions of 90 days, like, try something for 90 days. Go try to go relatively hardcore at something for 90 days. See how you feel after that.  

Ayo:    00:36:12    And then you can make a decision if you wanna keep going on. You know, so if you're gonna record a podcast, record your podcast for 90 days. Maybe if you, even if you don't do it every day, if you don't put something out every day, at least be recording, researching, like working on your sound, like actively focusing on your project for 90 days, then you can see how you feel after that. The next thing you know, it's like six months, a year, two years, and then it doesn't, it doesn't feel like I've been doing it for five years. Right. So yeah, it's people, it's people having that shiny object syndrome, which gets in the way. Like you have to, you have to be willing to do something a certain amount of time before you know whether or not it's gonna work.  

Kristin:    00:36:49    I think that's really good advice because as you were telling that story, like I was thinking of how I did that as well during this kind of self-exploration journey. There were so many times that I felt frustrated because I wasn't sure what to do with my life. Right. And I know everyone's been there. Like, if you haven't been there, you're not alive. Right, right. Like, everybody's felt that. And so I took I think every personality test that there was. Yeah. I think I took some of them twice. Yeah. Um, read a bunch of books and then I actually did the uncomfortable work of asking people what they thought I was good at. That's good. And what they thought I was bad at <laugh>, which is really hard. Um, and people don't wanna tell you what you're, what you're bad at or I think I phrased it as like, you know, what are my weaknesses or what are some areas of improvement?  

Kristin:    00:37:44    And then when I went back and looked at childhood, I was like, okay, I always made straight A's, but I made B's and C's and C minuses in math. Yeah. Clearly math doesn't come naturally. It's me. I'm not gonna become like a physicist. But my English teacher in 11th grade asked me to teach grammar to my classmates. Right. 'cause I was really good at writing and grammar. Like, these things have been with me since I could write at five years old. You know, so if you have natural talents and abilities, like, and, and you notice these hints, like people used to always say, you should have your own travel show, blah, blah, blah. And I would just blow them off because I felt like, who am I to have a travel show or be on tv? And I don't, I'm not, maybe I'm not good enough. Or like, where I was like waiting for permission to do that. And it's like, after enough people say it, you've gotta be like, okay, maybe I can stop being like negative on myself or too humble or something and just try it and see what happens. And at least at the very least, even if your passion doesn't become a source of income for you, it will at least make you happier. Exactly. In your day-to-day life. So  

Ayo:    00:38:58    Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to see. It's hard to see yourself as that person. Like, I remember when I first started writing, I looked up to people like, uh, Ryan Holiday, he's one of my favorite writers. Love him. I, James Altucher, one of my favorite writers, uh, even I was writing on this website called Thought Catalog, like one of the first kind of major websites that I was publishing on. And there was this woman, uh, Brianna, we, and she's like a really big writer on that platform. And she's also like big, really big on Medium right now. And I kind of looked up to her as kinda like, uh, you know, internet celebrity or whatever. Like, she was really good and she was like far ahead of me and I was, you know, just working my way up. And then recently this year, uh, she quoted me in one of her articles and then I reached out to her and I think she mentioned that, I don't know what draft, if I made it through the final draft, but she had even like, quoted me in her book.  

Ayo:    00:39:43    So like five years later, like I knew, I knew that I could be good, but I, I still had that cap on my mind of like how good I could be. And now I'm not saying that I'm, you know, as good or like better than some of these writers I looked up to, but like, they no longer like, intimidate me. I, they, I can see myself being at eye level with them or like being able to have my own thing and like, really like make something major out of it. So don't, you can't imagine yourself being that person in the future. It's just too far away. It's too far away to imagine yourself having 50,000 followers on Medium or even 10,000 on YouTube a hundred. It's too far away to like, even don't try to fathom that stuff because you know it's not gonna work.  

Ayo:    00:40:28    And people, it's almost, there's almost something like having too big of a dream sometimes. Like some people, oh, I'm gonna start a, I'm gonna start a billion dollar company. Like, no, you're not, bro. Like, you're no <laugh>, just go find a customer. Oh, I'm gonna have all these fans. Like, no, you're not. Write a blog post <laugh>, keep all that stuff in the background. Like all that stuff's not gonna happen unless you just keep your mouth shut and do the work. And then over time, like when you get better at your craft, you will start to see yourself differently. Like there's this concept of the taste gap, uh, from Ire Glass. And the way he puts it is since like, people who are into, especially like creating content, creating art, we have, we have a very refined taste. Like we know what's good. So we know when our shit's not good.  

Ayo:    00:41:10    And it frustrates us because we know, we know how quality work looks like and we look at ours and we're like, yeah, this is it. <laugh>. So you have to close that taste gap where eventually, like this book, this book is the first book where I can like, bring myself to look at it. My first two books, like, I'm proud of them, people love them, but like, it's hard for me to bring myself to like look at 'em and read 'em. Okay. Because like as a writer, you like call, you are always like beating yourself up. Like think you could get better. You look at your old work and you like think it's, at least for me, I don't know. Yeah. And you think it's like, oh, this is trash. Like this one, you know, five years of writing. I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm a good writer now. And I, I believe in myself fully now, but I didn't wait for myself to believe in myself a hundred percent before I put anything out there. Of course. Yeah. Or else I would've never done it. You know,  

Kristin:    00:41:54    How do we explain to people that what a company is paying them is just a fraction of their value?  

Ayo:    00:42:03    Not, it's not even close to the value. It is crazy. I used to work at a digital marketing company and as their project manager, like I would get, I would get to read the actual contracts and I'm like, oh wow. They're, they're, they're putting, uh, they're putting like a 10 x vig on your services. At least. At least. And if you are in like a corporate environment, well it's just like, it's the same thing as a supply chain. Like, the same way that a pair of Nike Jordan shoes only costs $5 to make by the time they get to you. If you're in a corporate environment and you have bosses who have bosses, who have bosses, who have bosses, like every single person that goes through, you lose a little bit of that value. And the further you are disconnect, like the further away you are from the products.  

Ayo:    00:42:47    Like if I was, if I was a designer, like when I was working at that, that agency with the designers, if I was a designer, I knew how to do that stuff, I would just quit. I would quit. And like, it's like instantly get a couple jobs and you'd replace your salary right away. But yeah, people don't, people don't wanna learn marketing. Oh, I'm, I'm not a marketer. It's so hard. I don't wanna sell myself. But sales is the number one, sales is the number one tool in the world. Like, if I could make college or make high school students a, I wouldn't even have 'em go to college. I've had 'em do three things. I'd have 'em go to use car lot and try to sell cars to other humans. I'd give them some copywriting books and I would make them go do little online business experiments, you know, affiliate marketing, little drop shipping stores, just, just for them to like learn this stuff.  

Ayo:    00:43:35    Like psychologically, if you learn how to sell yourself and you learn how to interact with people and like persuade them, you have the keys to the entire kingdom. Like it's, that's, that's the number one thing. If people, oh, I'm not a marketer. Marketing and learning those kind of sales skills is learnable by anyone because humans, the way that our brains work, the way that we're evolutionary wired, there's certain things that you can literally do to kind of pull people's like emotional levers without their permission in marketing. So if you learn how to do that stuff, like when I write a, when I write a, uh, article, I know that if I write this headline a certain way, more people are guaranteed to click on it. Yeah. It's just, it's just psychology. So you gotta learn that stuff and you can just implement it. You get clients, there's, you know, there's clients, there's clients everywhere. If you wanna start a business, you can find clients wherever. You just have to have to do it.  

Kristin:    00:44:28    Yeah. And in an ethical way, it's like Exactly. You want people to read or consume what you create 'cause you know that you're delivering value. Once they open that box, once they open that present, and yeah, that is a big lie that people are told that they are capped out at a certain salary or that salary and your income is linear. Like you have to work for a certain number of years at this company to work your way up to get a little bit more money and to get a bonus and whatever. And really the, the, the jig is up like so bad. You're worth at least what your salary is in the freelancing market, but you're actually worth maybe 10 x more, who knows how much more. It's like unlimited potential. Yeah. And so what are some tips that you have for people to get those first clients?  

Kristin:    00:45:16    Because I get a lot of my clients that I'm like, okay, you have all of these skills, uh, you just need to offer them to people who need them. And it's a win-win. They need help with that thing. You know how to do it. You do it for them, they give you money. Like it's pretty, it's pretty simple. But they're afraid to ask. They're afraid to reach out to people. And uh, yeah. What, what are some tips for like cold outreach? But by the way, I do agree that the most important skills are probably copywriting and sales psychology. Yeah. I think that the rest of it we can just, that's not the priority, but  

Ayo:    00:45:56    Well, I mean, if you wanna be, if you wanna cold pitch just like a a don't, don't totally suck at it. What do I mean? I like if you, I I get cold pitched stuff all the time and it's very obvious that it's a copy and pasted message that they didn't take any time to look at what I'm doing. Yeah. Step one, actually look at who you are talking to and in your mind, figure out the way you can actually help them before you talk to them. Mm-Hmm. actually look at what their business is like. Yes. This might mean you have to spend time researching companies who might not hire you. You might have to waste some time getting to, you know, actually understand the businesses of people who are potentially going to pay you money. Yeah. You might have to look into them a little bit.  

Ayo:    00:46:45    And that's the number one thing people, people don't want to do. They don't want to because they are taught that linear exchange for money that they must get paid upfront for their efforts upfront. They become slaves to money. It's like Robert Kiyosaki talks about in Rich Dad, rich Dad, poor Dad, don't work for money, work for skills. You will get more financial reward on the backend, researching a hundred companies and only getting three clients than you would if you would have gotten paid whatever rate you wanted for that research time. You'd get way more money on the backend because of what you learned over time. Pitching those 100 clients. Yes. So that you could, you know, your failures to get 97 clients. You might have some skills and insights that you got from that that could help you land a big fish. But it might not happen until 18 months from now. You might not, you might not get your little ego strokes right away. You might have to delay your gratification right away. You might not have to like get your, get your little paycheck, like a fricking hamster like waiting for like the water to come out of the freaking droplet thing. You might have to wait. Right. And that's what people don't wanna do. They don't wanna wait. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:47:58    And they don't wanna be told no, they  

Ayo:    00:48:00    Don't wanna be told no  

Kristin:    00:48:01    Because then they wasted the other or they think they wasted the 97 times they, they read and they tried and they pitched and they failed. But then they don't know that you don't know which three people are gonna say yes. It could be the first one and the 99th one and the 100th one, you know, or it could be like the 50th one. You just have to do it no matter what and then eventually you'll get there.  

Ayo:    00:48:26    Yeah. You mean it's like how many businesses are out there? Thousands. Let's say you, let's say you got point, let's say you got 0.0, zero, zero 1% of all the companies in the world, that's still like 10,000 times the amount of clients you would need to be successful. Like, you have to go out and you have to go out. If you wanna be a freelancer, you have to go talk to people. Yeah. You, it's easy to get outside of your, I mean, the way I look at it's like, alright, get outside of your shell or don't and live the rest of your life doing bullshit. Like, I don't, like half the time some people will, they'll reach out to me and they'll be like, I, you don't understand. You don't understand like, I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm ugly, I'm left footed, <laugh>, uh, you know, I just, I can't do it.  

Ayo:    00:49:12    And I'm just like, all right man, what do you want? What do you want me to tell you? Okay. I guess you're screwed then I guess it's over for you buddy. Like, what, what do you, I don't know what these people want me to tell them. You can't. You can't have that, you just can't succeed with that attitude. There's nothing, there's nowhere to go from. I can't, like, there's no, there's no moves you can make from the position of I can't, you know, there's, you can't do anything about it if you have that belief in your mind. So it's tough. That's why I wrote the book. Like, I do not want to paint this sugarcoated narrative that like, if you just, if you just believe in yourself, Johnny, and just you go out there and it is gonna work out. Like, no, it's rough. It is rough.  

Ayo:    00:49:52    If you want to make it in this, in this world, you have to develop some level of mental toughness. Like, there's no way around it. And, you know, the way that you get to that answer is different for everyone. But it goes back to creating that emotional leverage. You gotta just get, you gotta get fed up enough and pissed off enough to like, you know what? Fuck it. Like, this is the time I'm actually doing it. Yeah. You know, and you, and the good thing about it is you can bullshit yourself 99 times, but then the hundred time you could say, fuck it, and it could work. 'cause I fumbled and stumbled and pretended like I was gonna do shit. I tried, I tried all sorts of little random marketing schemes. I joined like, you know, MLM companies, all that stuff. I tried and failed out a lot of stuff, but then there was one point I was like, all right, I'm done. Bullshit. So it happens.  

Kristin:    00:50:39    And I think I wasted, well, I wasted, but I spent a lot of time over the years reading and journaling. Yeah. Brainstorming and pondering and thinking. And there was one day where I came across like an old journal, and I found some of my ideas that I hadn't done yet. And I had this just epiphany where I was like, oh my God, like I'm never gonna do it. Right. Like, if I don't do it, I'm never gonna do it. Right. And I, I lost trust in myself for like a hot minute. Right. And that scared me so much because I always thought I really was gonna try at some point, or I was actually gonna take the first step. Right. And then I was afraid that I actually wasn't going to, and that I scared myself into, into action <laugh>. Yep. Yep. Because I didn't wanna be like 93 years old and be like, I didn't do it. So I wanna read something from your, um, from your book, your, I marked a few pages, but I, I wrote a lot of stuff. Sure. And I know you have to go to, um, okay. Well I think we already covered ev every, not everything, but like this says, when it comes to your life, you'll truly never know your future. So you have two choices. Try, try to force the world into your cookie cutter mentality and suffer the downside for it. Or become anti-fragile and increase your odds of random magic. I mean, is that those are, are those basically the choices? You know, we either accept the cookie cutter life or do something. I mean, that's, that's the question, right? Yeah. Or that's the decision.  

Ayo:    00:52:19    That's the, that's what people try to do. They like, there is such a thing as kind of an objective reality about the way that the world works. And, you know, I don't have it pinned down a hundred percent, but there's just certain things that are like, fairly obvious. And what people will try to do is they will, they will create this narrative in their head of how they think things should be. They think life should be fair. They think that, you know, following this, you know, magical, traditional corporate life path is supposed to work out and that the fairytale is supposed to work out. And you know that the things your teacher told you when you were five, if you just just be a good boy, Johnny, go to school, get your, get your degree, everything's gonna work out. No. Like, it's not gonna work. If you do it that way, it's not gonna work. And you have to, you just have to accept that at a certain point that you lied to. And if you can continue to fall live in that delusion, you're just, you're gonna stay trapped there.  

Kristin:    00:53:15    Alright, well let's, let's get into, um, the lightning round and then where people can, can buy your book and where they can, where they can follow you. Sweet. So I like to start the lightning round with my favorite question, which is, what is your morning beverage?  

Ayo:    00:53:33    I drink, uh, two cups of espresso with ice and just regular plain oil cream. Okay. And a glass of water for my hydration.  

Kristin:    00:53:46    Oh, iced espresso. Yeah. And what is your morning routine like working from home?  

Ayo:    00:53:52    Um, so I actually wake up, drink my coffee, take a shower, meditate for 20 minutes every day. And then I actually head out to coffee shops where I go to work and write. And then what I'll do is do a little journal journaling routine where I'll write down three things I'm grateful for. And I write down 10 ideas, usually for new articles. Sometimes not every day. I'll do a couple morning pages if I'm feeling kind of creatively blocked, I wanna process some emotional things and get focused mental clarity, then I usually write for anywhere from two to four hours. And that's how my mornings tend to go.  

Kristin:    00:54:33    How many hours do you work a day?  

Ayo:    00:54:35    Anywhere from four to like 18. Depends on like what day it is. Right. So, I mean, for the most part I stick into like a pretty narrow window, about four hours of like fully immersive creative work. But, you know, if I'm working on a project, like when I was working on, you know, deadlines for the book and shooting a bunch of videos, uh, like for the courses I was making stuff, you know, those days can like run into way we into the morning, you know, so it just depends. And like, the way I usually look at it, I always wanna get that creative block done. And then anything after that is kind of like house money. Like, I don't put too much pressure on myself to get more done after that point. But yeah, sometimes when you get into a group, like you've been there, you, you get into a groove and then you had a 12, 14, 16 hour day, like these things happen. But yeah, usually four to six hours is the range that it tends to stick in.  

Kristin:    00:55:26    Cool.  

Ayo:    00:55:26    Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:55:27    And, um, do you have any productivity tools or hacks or like any kind of remote work tools or work at home tools that you use frequently?  

Ayo:    00:55:39    Yeah, for me it's like just my laptop. Um, I'm actually, I'm actually like very analog with my, like, I spend a lot of time like writing stuff in notebooks. Ah. So like when I put an article together, I'll kind of write it out and like, I'll scribble it out on my notebook, kind of like, you know, have a little bubble in the middle. Then I have like, all right, this is idea 1, 2, 3, have kind of bubbles coming out from that. And I just kind of write the articles and go like WordPress, like I use WordPress for my blog and there's kind of like a, like a grader that talks about different things that you can do well on your content, um, like readability, you know, making sure that you know, your sentences aren't too long. Things like that. And actually one tool I used a lot is, uh, Grammarly. I use Grammarly for all of of my articles. I don't have like a full-time editor. Like maybe one day I will, but I use Grammarly, which is a really, really good tool for writers where it doesn't just proofread like, like, like word. It actually like checks your syntax and like, makes sure goes above and beyond to like, make sure that you're writing is quality. So definitely one tool I use every day. Uh, Grammarly for my writing.  

Kristin:    00:56:43    I love that one. I have like the pro version now. I think I paid for it. Yeah. I don't remember how much it is. And then do you use Hemingway app too?  

Ayo:    00:56:51    I haven't, I've dabbled around with Hemingway, but I've noticed like if I use too many of 'em then it kind of takes me outta my zone. And I kind of like, I kind of like breaking rules a little bit with my writing. Like sometimes, you know, I, I don't use like, I don't have very great good grammar at all. Um, and I break rules. Like I'll start, I'll start sentences with the word, but, or like do things I'm not supposed to do starting with. And I just like doing those things. Like for me, writing is about kind of the concepts and the emotions behind the words. Like, I'm the last one to say I'm the most technically precise or, you know, gifted writer in the world, but I just like to write my stuff. So I, I wanna make sure that it's, you know, readable and that I'm not just like writing crazy, you know, poor grammar. But yeah, I don't, I don't need too much, you know, oversight in my writing. I kind of just like to go  

Kristin:    00:57:43    Write how you talk as they say. Yes. Much more readable, especially in this age of attention. Short attention spans. Right. And where can people get your books or books? You have three books?  

Ayo:    00:57:56    Yeah, so all my books are on Amazon. I know there's some floating around elsewhere, like on Barnes and Noble and stuff, but primarily Amazon.  

Kristin:    00:58:07    And do you have any, uh, recommendations for books? I know that you and I were talking on Twitter the other day that we've reread a few books quite a few times. So being that you are a writer and an author yourself, what are a couple of books that you would recommend that everyone read regardless of their path in life?  

Ayo:    00:58:27    Sure. Well definitely, uh, the Concerto series by our sensei Grandma Master Naim Tale is just a series of books. I really, it would take me like 10 hours to explain why those books are so valuable. The concepts in those books are so deep and rich and it doesn't matter what profession you're in, the concepts in those books are insane. So just go online, look up Naim Tale, have all of his books read all of his books cover to cover. You could actually just read those books alone and you would be fine. Um, poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger is a really good book and it talks about a lot of, like, one of the main things he talks about is all the different, uh, cognitive biases we have and how they kind of messed up our life. That's the whole thing. We didn't even touch on all the different kind of cognitive biases and mental mismatches that mess you up. So  

Kristin:    00:59:21    I think there's some of that in your book  too.

Ayo:    00:59:22    Yeah, some of that stuff. So I, I draw from like Nasem and Charlie Munger quite a bit. Um, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I love the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad because it's kind of like intro to re rewiring your brain on how to think about money and to get out of that corporate work for a paycheck mindset. And it teaches you how to think like an entrepreneur, so a rich dad, poor dad. And then, um, Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. Very good intro to marketing, intro to the psychology of persuasion and the things that go on kind of at the lower levels of our mind that kind of advertisers and marketers use to get you to buy stuff. But also when you learn marketing and persuasion, power is not even to be manipulative. It's because you have something valuable that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get people to have access to unless you persuaded them to do it. So that's a good book that talks about that. It's like if you just read those four books alone and like acted on that, maybe throw in a little How to Win Friends and Influence People for your social skills and like, you'd be good to  

Kristin:    01:00:28    Go. Yeah, read those books and then read them again. Yeah. And then read them again. Like, I think that you would get a lot more out of it than reading a thousand different books and not applying what you've read. So, and those are kind of those foundational books that are good for everything. Yes. So really good. We'll link to those in the show notes. And where can people read your work and connect with you on social and where can we find you?  

Ayo:    01:00:53    So ayotheauthor.com is the name of my websites. Most of my handles are I the author, so my Twitter, Twitter handles I the author, my Instagram handle is also Ayo, the author. And then you could just google like my full name and a bunch of stuff kind of pops up.  

Kristin:    01:01:10    And then is your YouTube channel the same?  

Ayo:    01:01:13    I think my YouTube channel is the same. It might be my full first and last name. I forget exactly what that one is, but you can just Google that too. My full name, Ayo, Ay-O-D-E-J-I, Awosika. Just look that up. We'll  

Kristin:    01:01:27    Write it out and copy  

Ayo:    01:01:29    And paste it from the show notes, <laugh>, and then put it into Google and then you'll uh, you'll be able to find us.

Kristin:    01:01:34    I don't think anyone else has your name, so that's good. Right? Like I, I have you ever met anyone with your name? I know a million Kristin.  

Ayo:    01:01:42    Yeah. Actually the funny thing is like the first half of my name Ayo it's like John in Nigeria is super common, but like the ending there, there are a lot of different varieties of it. Okay. But yeah, I don't, I don't definitely don't know anyone prominent with my full name. Like when Yeah, you type it into Google, like it's  

Kristin:    01:02:00    All you own Google <laugh>.  

Ayo:    01:02:01    I'm the number one ranked  

Kristin:    01:02:04    Person  

Ayo:    01:02:05    With my name, page one and page two, bitches. I'm all on top of that. So yeah.  

Kristin:    01:02:11    So lucky. Yeah,  

Ayo:    01:02:13    A little, a little less, uh, lower degree of difficulty than Kristin Wilson for sure.  

Kristin:    01:02:19    Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting there though. I'm starting to cut. Are you, are you, are you out there for your name? Yeah, I finally started understanding SEO. Right. I'm applying that shit. Right. So thanks so much for coming on Badass Digital Nomads, which is not just digital nomads, it's just badass people who are living life on their own terms. And you my friend, are doing it being a good example and a good role model for everybody. So thanks for just sharing your work and helping all of the silent readers out there and the commenters and uh, hope we get to cross paths again soon. Cheers.  

Ayo:    01:02:55    Yeah, thanks for having me. I had a blast.  

Kristin:    01:03:07    Thank you all so much for listening to episode 53 of Badass Digital Nomads. Remember to leave a review in the Apple Podcast store and you can grab a copy of Ayo’s book, Real Help in the link in this episode's show notes. You can also watch this episode in video format at youtube.com/digitalnomad. See you there.