John Tesh joins Jason Hartman in this episode. John gives information about his chosen profession and shares how he started his new venture. He also talks about his show, Intelligence for Your Life TV, which he co-hosts with his wife, Connie Sellecca. They also talk about reaching your market directly through self-syndication and using “against all odds” biographies of others as a blueprint for your life.
Announcer 0:00
This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:13
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution. For real estate investors,
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome to the creating wealth show. This is your host Jason Hartman episode number 656 50. This is a landmark 650 before you know it will be at 1600 and 50. And then we’ll be at 20 650. And it goes on from there. Thank you so much for listening. We so much appreciate our listeners and and we appreciate your reviews and kind words and telling your friends about the show. And of course your business because so many of you are investing in properties in select proven, linear, conservative prudent markets around the US the markets we like and we recommend, and like I always say, there are markets that we’d like to be in that we are not in because we do not have a good team in those markets. You may see other people out there promoting these markets and those may be good markets. But if you do not have a good team, and you do not have quality rehab and quality property management and quality warranties, you are going to experience trouble. I’ve been doing this for many, many years, we have thousands and thousands of transactions under our belt. And believe me, that is the advice you want to go with. It’s not just about the market. It’s also about the team.
And speaking of which, I just wanted to share a kind note here before we get to our guest today who by the way, is the famous john Tesh? Yes, you’ve heard of john Tesh, the actor, the musician, the guy who got lucky enough to marry the very glamorous Connie Celica, the actress remember from hotel and all of her other days in show business. He’s just a great guy, super gracious, and really shares a lot of good thoughts in his interview. Remember, this is a 10th episode show today. So we go off topic and we don’t just talk about real estate. We have a guest That’s of general life interest in life success. And john Tesh definitely has an amazing story. So we’ll get to that in a moment. But you know, a few times a week, I receive what I guess you’d call fan mail. And I so much appreciate getting these and I just thought I’d share this one with you real quickly, because I think it’s instructive on a couple ways about investing, but also about something I promise to stop talking about so much.
We’ll get to that in a moment. Well, you know what I’m gonna say, it’s that dog on autonomous self driving car thing. Yes, I’m gonna shut up about that. Remember, listeners, for those of you who’ve been with us for the last 649 episodes, remember when I got on that kick about precious metals, and I kept talking about gold and silver, and they were reaching, you know, these big, glorious highs and all of the gold bugs and the silver bugs were out there saying, oh, by metals, the world’s coming to an end. And I told you not to and I was right. I was right, at least thus far, you could buy all of those metals much cheaper today than you could back them. And I was talking about how income property is the most historically proven asset class in the world, and how really post Great Recession. It was the best performing asset class on the planet. I mean, even in bad times, because it’s a multi dimensional asset class. And I was talking about that and people thought I was crazy. I would get the most vociferous arguments. Hartman, you’re a fool. You know, gold is the thing and you got to buy some silver coins and some gold coins and all of this, and I debunked that a whole bunch of different ways. And I admit that I got on a bit of a kick about it. Maybe some of you thought it was a little bit obsessive, but hopefully I drove the point home and you followed my advice because if you did, you won big. I saved you from losing lot of money.
So I’m gonna reach over, pat myself on the back here. And I think this autonomous vehicle thing is a big thing, but I promise I’m not gonna bore you with it so much. Okay. That’s why I have been stressing it and talking about it so much on on prior episodes, but we’re gonna change the focus. Anyway, there’s a little bit about that in this in this very nice email I got. So this email comes from john and Kristen. They asked me not to mention their last name on the show. But again, thank you so much, john, Kristen, for the nice note. I think this will be instructive to you as well. So before we get to john Tesh, I’ll just read this I it’s fairly long, so I might have to paraphrase it a little bit to just move up move the show along here.
But first of all, the subject line is heartfelt thanks, dear Jason. This is a note of thanks a shared story and an offer of a gift. First, Kristin and I would like to extend multiple thanks to you and your team. For all the inspiration and guidance provided over the past six plus months. We We started listening to your creating wealth podcast about a year ago as we stepped into our first solo buy and hold investment. Needless to say, we quickly learned that while we were moving in the right direction, the first investment was driven more by appreciate and appreciation target, then stable cash flow. We gained knowledge and understanding from the podcast. Kristin got more excited about running the business of acquiring buy and hold properties. She attended your course in San Diego in August. That was the jQ Jason Hartman university course. We just did one of those in Salt Lake City two, I think you can tell when I’m not reading, right. That’s just my comment, and later joined your meet the Masters in January. in between. She bought for single family residences in Memphis through two of your local market specialists. Thank you, number one for the great events in San Diego and thank you number two for helping us get on the right track. Safe or linear markets carry by the way you heard Kerry on the show recently a couple of times, and she’s one of our investment counselors. And so they’re working with Kerry. Kerry has been a great adviser staying in touch and being available for the random question from time to time. It really is nice to know there is someone we can reach out to when needed, and who acts as an advocate on our behalf. Thank you. Number three. We had the great pleasure of having lunch with Fernando earlier this week. A wonderful 90 minutes of learning, sharing and brainstorming. I was inspired by his story through the podcast, as I also work far too many hours and travel far too much for a similar Silicon Valley giant. So another Silicon Valley guy here. Fernando has genuine kindness and willingness to share experiences and advice is of itself inspiring. Thank you number four, for being the catalyst to our meeting for Nando you know, folks, I gotta tell you, you’ve heard our different investment counselors on the show before, whether it be Sarah or all of her carrier Fernando. And I mean, we have such a great team of people. They really care and I know you hear that crap all the time in the marketplace, but it is really true. I know it is. That’s, that’s our first priority of our investment counselors is to take good care of our clients. Okay, on with email here, then there is your comprehensive perspective on the world. I have listened to many different podcasts. Oh, why are you listening to any other podcasts? I’ve listened to many different podcasts and have learned over the past year that you are not really a quote guru unquote. There are many in real estate certainly, but guru in this business usually connotes something negative. Instead, you share tremendous insights about the world politics, economics, etc. That goes Far beyond real estate, which demonstrates a dedication to lifelong learning, and sharing across a broad spectrum of topics. See folks, I go on those tangents. At least we know a couple of people like it. Okay, back to the email. This simply reinforces that your intentions are sincere versus the many guru types who seem more singular in thought and purpose. We had the opportunity to live in Frankfurt for five years, see my home country, Germany, that’s where I was born. And I have been traveling intercontinental Li to Asia in Europe for most of my professional career, and feel we know something about our world. However, our knowledge pales in comparison to what we learn from your show and guests. Thank you number five for the inspired teaching. Now for a shared story. I agree it may be prudent to reduce references to the autonomous vehicle for general listeners, but it is real and it will be disruptive. We were one of the early adopters of the Tesla, purchasing ours in August of 2013. Just when we returned from Germany, two and a half years later, I still really enjoy driving the car. Although being an early adopter did have its penalty, since the Model S built before November of 14 do not have autopilot capability. Nonetheless, the autonomous vehicle world will reduce borders, free up time, add flexibility to our lives and improve quality of life, at least for those who hate sitting in traffic. Not me Of course, since I drive a Tesla and listen to your podcast. Well, thank you can I can make traffic a little more bearable for all of you? Or maybe working out if you don’t like getting yourself to the gym. I’ve heard a lot of people listen to my show at the gym as well. I also see this as a significant disrupter to the established auto manufacturers in the automobile industry. Just imagine that we can drive to work then send our cars Home to be used by our family members. Or as you have pointed out, we jump into the nearest available autonomous car and go where we want. Even if people travel more by car as a result of the increased convenience, the number of assets can be drastically reduced. It is all about utilization. And the two car or three car family has a horrible, horrible utilization of their four wheeled assets. Not to mention that they also rapidly decrease in value. By the way, a little side note on that, folks, and I may have mentioned this on the show before, but I’ve heard that the typical car is unused 96% of the time, literally, out of that asset. You’re only getting 4% utilization. That’s amazing. This is all about to change. Right. Okay, back to the email. Perhaps you recently heard the rumor that Uber ordered one Hundred Thousand autonomous vehicles for $10 billion from Mercedes for first deliveries in 2020. If this is true, and I’m sure it is many caveats, but it represents a glimpse into the future. It is a great time to be alive, folks. You know, I mean, this is coming so fast 2020 is only four years away. And if Uber gets a hold of 100,000 autonomous vehicles, if it really arrives that quickly, that’s all you know, caveats mentioned by by john here in the email, it is going to be a massive, massive game changer for real estate. Of course, you know, the two the three primary rules since the beginning of time for real estate are location, location, location. All right, I just have to say that for newer listeners that may not have heard us talk about this before. Okay, we’re wrapping this email and lastly, we would like to offer a gift after buying Tesla and getting sucked into the form discussions at Tesla Motors calm or Tesla Motors club calm. I designed a wall bracket to support the weight of the charging cable controller, which we sell on the forum. Now this is interesting folks, Okay, listen to this email because it’s also a glimpse into the future right here that this is all done with a 3d printer. Okay, so here we go. Although it started out as a fun project, with another very cool technology toy, the 3d printer, we turned it into a little business for our son he receives manufacturers and fulfill fulfills and does the accounting on all the orders. Isn’t this amazing folks, you can put your kid to work in this little side business. It’s an amazing time to be alive. We could never do that before. Okay, back to the email. It is not the most efficient business takes about nine hours to print one bracket, okay, so you know, but with industrial 3d printers, you can do it faster, obviously and The thing is, you can totally customize him. Okay, back to the email Jason stop talking. Okay, read the email. But it provides him business experience while earning a little money. We would like to give you one of our brackets as another way of saying thank you. Here’s a quick link to the post showing our bracket. So just let us know which design you like lightning bolt or diamond design, and what color you would prefer. If the color exists in 3d filament. We can make it and there’s the link Tesla Motors club, and that’s the wall bracket. Anyway, he concludes with saying, Jason, thank you again for all the inspiration. We’re still learning miles to go but excited to be on the journey all the best, john and Kristen.
John and Kristen, thank you so much for the kind words I really appreciate it. I love to get these emails of course it it gets me out of bed and keeps me working and doing this stuff. This game is long ago not about money anymore. It’s just about that. Doing something and and helping people get away from the wall street modern version of organized crime, right. I appreciate it. And we love all of you listeners and clients. And thank you so much for your continued support. So I appreciate the note and just listeners though, isn’t that interesting? That little 3d printing side business where the it’s made to order, by the way, I got back to john and i said, Hey, I’d love one of those wall brackets for my Tesla charger. And I would like read with the lightning bolt pattern. And he said, Oh, it’s already being made. On Demand, artisan quality manufacturing, just in time delivery. I mean, think of how that is going to change the world. We talk all about these other technologies, but 3d printing is a game changer. That may well bring a lot of jobs back to America. The artisan type jobs I read the book that I absolutely love by Chris Anderson, who I love all his books. So far as I know, he’s only got three, one called the long tail, the other called free. That’s just the name of the book. It’s called free, and the other called makers. And the makers book is his last one. He owns the TED conference, by the way, he was also I don’t think he still is the editor of Wired Magazine. And the guy is just brilliant. He’s so interesting. I want to get him on the show. We haven’t done that yet. We need to, but really fascinating guy. And in makers, he talks all about the 3d printing revolution. I read that when I was in Europe a couple years ago and talked about it on the show right after that trip. So you might go to Jason Hartman, calm and find the episode about makers just search makers in the search bar on our website, and that’ll be great.
Okay, we’ve got to get to our guests. But again, we’ve got our Jekyll Island venture Alliance trip coming up. So join us for that. That’s where the Federal Reserve was created. And by the way, I just finished a documentary that you will love. I think we should invite the director onto the show, maybe some of the people who commented on there, but that is money for nothing money for nothing documentary. It’s free on Netflix. Check it out. I think you’ll really enjoy it talks all about the Federal Reserve. And we are going to the birthplace of that creature from Jekyll Island.
By the way, G. Edward Griffin is coming back on the show again, he’s the author of that book he’s been on a couple of times. We are going to have our next venture Alliance meeting there on Jekyll Island. So you can join us as a guest. Go to venture Alliance mastermind calm for more info on that, of course, be sure you check out property tracker software, you can get that through the Jason Hartman website on the resources page, and the property evaluator app in the iTunes App Store for iPad and iPhone. Some good stuff there to help you be a better investor. Okay, let’s get to our guest john Tesh.
It’s my pleasure to welcome a name you are certainly familiar with and that is Mr. JOHN Tesh. He is host of intelligence for your life TV and the john Tesh radio show. It’s heard by over 15 million people across the US and Canada. He’s former host of Entertainment Tonight, the Olympic Games Wimbledon, US Open tennis Tour de France and the Iron Man triathlon, and writer of the NBA and NBC basketball theme, round ball rock, which is regarded as one of the most memorable sports themes of all time. He’s winner of six Emmys, and two time Grammy nominee, recipient of the Associated Press award for Investigative Journalism. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of intelligence for your life, powerful lessons for personal growth. John, welcome. Is there anything you don’t do? You’re a renaissance man.
John Tesh 19:04
Yeah, I appreciate I think my dad, you know, often said, you know, why don’t you just pick a lane. But I’ve always been sort of an add personality. So I love doing different things. And a lot of them are connected to you know, a lot of the music that I was writing was the sports themes were when I was a sports announcer for CBS.
Jason Hartman 19:21
Right, right. But you know, it’s very rare that you’ll have a sports announcer doing the music, right? And and then acting in different things. And you’ve got your media company, and then you’re writing books, too.
John Tesh 19:33
I think the most ridiculous thing is that I went to, I went to North Carolina State and studied physics and chemistry. Because my parents were convinced that I would starve to death as a musician. So that was a yeah. But about you know, in my in my junior year, I was right when the courses started getting getting really complicated and difficult with organic chemistry and quantitative analysis. I found Television and Radio One on One I was like, I think
Jason Hartman 19:57
That’s easier and more glamorous, right?
John Tesh 20:00
Well, it’s it’s also one of those things where you can you start at the beginning of the day, and then you can have a finished product at the end of the day. Now with software, you can have a finished product in an hour. But, but but back then it was, I enjoyed that it really fit my lifestyle.
Jason Hartman 20:14
Yeah, yeah, good stuff. So if you had to answer the question nowadays, what is your main thing? What would what would you say to that question?
John Tesh 20:22
I think our our fans and friends would say that our main thing is radio because we’ve been doing it for 15 years. And we were on for you know, Connie and I both are on for 36 hours a week. And so a lot of people hear that. We just started television a couple years ago, but I would say you know, if you asked if it was the Newlywed Game and us as my wife, what what lights your husband up the most, you know, professionally would be sitting behind the grand piano playing, playing to an audience that’s a that’s a it’s a real opportunity. And when people actually show up to listen to your music, and it was the thing I was doing when I was a little kid, I was always making little, little little Broadway shows in my basement. So that’s really that’s and that’s that’s actually something I would love to do between now and the time I’m six feet under is I’d love to write a Broadway musical by the that’s probably the most difficult thing you could possibly do.
Jason Hartman 21:15
I figured you’d probably get in there some of you back to your college days and do an addendum to the theory of relativity or something to you know,
John Tesh 21:25
Yeah, I watched that I watched that movie. That’s about as far as I got. But but it is. It is interesting, though, that you know, that that kind of work when you having that kind of homework. It’s a good lesson for you and anything you do. You need to do the research and do the homework. And I think that’s why the radio show became a success early on is that we were just we we started with 10 researchers and we just, we sort of ferret out all the great information that people need to live their lives better and, and I think the listeners appreciate the fact that we did the homework for them.
Jason Hartman 21:59
Well, tell us. Tell us about that, I mean, what are you doing on the radio show? Is that all investigative journalism type stuff?
John Tesh 22:05
No, it’s really all lifestyle. So it’s, it’s, it’s the, you know, it’s sort of like you give us two minutes. And we’ll we’ll find something that you can use to enhance your life to enhance the lives of those around you or just broadcast it on your Facebook page. So it’s, you know, it’s the three ways to a fair proof your marriage, it’s the two ways to shrink your waistline, the five ways to find your purpose in life. And it’s really people call it bite-size intelligence. Some people will tell us that they’ll they’ll stay in their car, you know, when they’re driving home from work, and they’ll sit in there because they want to hear the other
Jason Hartman 22:37
For an extra two minutes. Yeah. Well, six minutes in that case. Yeah.
John Tesh 22:40
We don’t, and we don’t ever go. I’m a big fan of podcast listening, which is, of course, very, very popular now. But they’re the way our show is it’s about two minutes of information and then and then it’s surrounded by music. And in all formats, to so it’s, it’s it’s on Christian stations. It’s on Classical stations, it’s on talk stations, hard rock, how to see all that stuff.
Jason Hartman 23:04
So is that a new model for media? I mean, it’s a new concept. Well, I guess in terms of the programming, you’ve got this bite size information, perfect for our Attention, attention restricted generation in which we live or time in which we live. Everything’s got to be bite sized. So that two minute idea is great. But is there a model to the the media or the syndication model that makes that different?
John Tesh 23:27
I think that, you know, the tough thing about syndication, especially in the television world, and we found this early on radio world too, is that you know, it’s the big companies that have seven or eight shows and they’ll come in they’ll go and block booking as it’s called, is not is not legal, but they’ll come in, they’ll go, Hey, you know, you should, you should take your Dr. Phil renewal and we’ll give you a break on whatever Arsenio Hall is going back too far. But it’s it those guys are really, really powerful. So self syndication can can be can be tough and we self syndicate the radio show, and also So the TV show, but it’s all about personal relationships. You know, the beauty of of syndicated TV versus network or cable is that we could have a bad ratings book in, in Omaha. And we could we could switch stations that go someplace else or, or when Dallas doesn’t really care about about what’s going on in Omaha. So we treat each market as a as a separate business. I also think that this show, I think we got in early on the curation model, where you know, there’s so much information there now that you’re seeing more and more people, and you see it on podcast, to curating the information, you know, here, follow us as we curate it, you know, and BuzzFeed doesn’t does it too, although it’s a little crazier there is, you know, here are the five things that we found today for you. So I think that, that that that ultra curation model is something that you’re seeing more and more today.
Jason Hartman 24:52
What’s interested me, John, is that we’ve got all these people that all call nowadays out there, you know, everybody’s kind of their own little Mini media company in a way, certainly on social media, at least they are but then you’ve got the podcasting thing. So it goes up from there up to the big time like you and Connie. Right. And and everything in between. But we have all these sort of unlikely experts nowadays, where we’ve got people talking about, say, for example, health is so much and there are tons of podcasters out there that do that, for example, yet they have no actual academic background in credentials. You know, it’s Yeah, and it’s just a it’s just a different world and I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. Because a lot of the credential people have led us wrong. We know that it’s hidden Miss probably right.
John Tesh 25:41
Yeah, I mean, it is there’s a. You have to be really careful with that stuff. And even people with credentials, sometimes they’ll come out really, you know, too strong to stridently and say Hey, take this or take that and it’ll help you because they’re there. You know, what we found is, is we can we can interview a gastroenterologist on a Monday. And then interview another one on a on a Wednesday and they have a completely different feeling about about what’s happening and you know, inside your body. But one of the things
Jason Hartman 26:09
That that’s the reason I picked health. Because it’s a site
John Tesh 26:12
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, one of the things we’re most careful about is not getting anything quote unquote, off the internet. We make sure that we’re either coming out of the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic and Harvard wellness review and interviewing, you know, credentialed PhDs and MDs and since we’ve been doing it for long enough, and people know that they’ll like your podcast, you reach a lot of people. So people you’re gonna get some with President present company, excepted you’re gonna get some people who, who are, you know, who know have something to say, and who also have the credentials behind it, and they’ve and they’ve studied it. So that’s, that’s, that’s the model that we use.
Jason Hartman 26:51
Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. So where are you? Where are you going with that? Like, what are your What are your plans with your media company? You know, it’s kind of interesting and as I asked you that, I, I’m thinking of these people that have really changed from what we’ll call the mainstream media to alternative things like glenn beck with his own company and Howard Stern leaving terrestrial radio to do XM, and, gosh, you know, Oprah did it too. And it’s, it’s pretty surprising. Really. I mean, these are, these are big people with huge audiences. Not doing the mainstream thing necessarily anymore.
John Tesh 27:27
Yeah, I think if you had this if you asked me Hey, what is what are your top three mistakes? You know, I’d say it’s the same, the same mistake One, two and three. And that is, you know, you I think this is sort of a human condition too, for people who are not enlightened and I and I’ve gotten better at this. But, you know, you get to a certain level and no matter what it is, whether you’re okay, let’s let’s use me as an example, whether you’re playing in front of 10,000 people in a concert or you’re hosting Entertainment Tonight. You know, or your Doing a, you know, a backyard a theater show for the rest of the nine year olds on your block. You always want something bigger and you get tend to get the board and there’s what I’ve really learned is that is that you have to certainly for me, you really need to pick a lane and figure out what makes you happy. And, and what’s fulfilling and what’s purpose driven, and forget about the other stuff because people always come to you and they say, hey, it happened to me when I was doing Entertainment Tonight, and I was doing my music at the same time. And it was a great place for me to be right because he opened doors for me and I really enjoyed the rest of my day writing music and doing film scores. And they came to me they said, Hey, would you like to do a talk show with Lisa Givens you know, at the time was also working with Mary harness like, it threw some money. I mean, I’m like, yeah, and it was just the wrong decision. I think a lot of us make decisions and we get, you just get you get lured into doing more stuff. And the most successful people I think, are the ones that stay focused and that’s why books like Al Reese’s focus and differentiate or die are so popular, but I mean, what you’re really talking about is Hey, listen stern. He made howard stern made a decision that was really right for the time. And, and I know that I know him. So I know that he agonized over that. And it was the it was the right decision for him because he already had a massive following. But we’ve seen, I think she would, she would admit it, too. We’ve seen people like, like Katie correct, who’s also a friend who, you know, may maybe got lowered for. I mean, he’s the first female anchor solo anchor, you know, a television anchor that may have lured her in and, and Gosh, I loved her on the Today Show, I would have watched her you know, forever. But it’s what happens to us is we get like, I want to make a difference. I want to I want to I want to make a change, and sometimes it’s not the right career move.
Jason Hartman 29:46
Right. Wait, we have to temper that and yeah, that’s it’s always
John Tesh 29:50
Good luck with that.
Jason Hartman 29:51
Yeah, exactly. But it’s interesting because I have the same sort of entrepreneurial add that I guess you have You do a lot of things I do a lot of things too and have these different businesses that sort of tie together but not completely. And you think in a way Gosh, that’s bad The old saying to follow you know without halt one aim that is the road to success. We’ve all certainly know the concept of focus. I’ll reset who I’m a huge student of he’s been on the show before. I love his work. He and jack trout. You look at someone like Richard Branson’s got like 400 companies, right? I don’t know. Maybe focus is overrated. Maybe it’s not I’m really just being with a question. I’m not sure.
John Tesh 30:34
Well, yeah, he has the stomach for that. I think if you if you’ve read his book, like a virgin, you know, he actually makes the point of how many of those businesses failed. But, but he I think he also picks great people, you know, you have to you have to be that guy. That and so he picks great people run those companies. And then he goes off and you know, and gets into space. You know, there’s a guy there’s a guy who is a he’s a 30 year 34 35 year old kid. I’ve known since he was 26, who is really just sort of tearing up the the hip hop and Broadway and Broadway musical world. His name is Lin Manuel Miranda. And he he wrote the musical by himself, and with orchestration and arrangement help from Alex l’amour, called Hamilton. And it’s based on Ron Chernow, his book, but he was interviewed on CBS. And you’re like, how could one person it’s 46 songs this musical you know, and it’s and it’s the hottest ticket and will be forever? Probably, how does one person do this? You know, and his thing was, I you know, to the trolley roses, I picked a lane, and I stayed in that lane until I got what I wanted and distractions came about, you know, all over me. You know,
Jason Hartman 31:44
John, so I mean, you’re obviously a very seasoned person in the world of media and so forth. Do you see that there’s this big change of like with agents and managers and record labels and production companies and that the sort of do your self self syndication self promotion model and and how much are you doing that like, for example, does a guy like you have an agent nowadays?
John Tesh 32:09
I don’t. Not anymore. I did for for a while. But we sort of in this is not like Taylor Swift or somebody saying, Okay, I’m not going to have she hasn’t done this but I’m not going to have an agent or, or Macklemore saying we’re not going to release my album through a record company because these guys while especially Taylor Swift, are already very, very successful. The only reason I started my own record company and the only reason I started, you know, my family and I started our own radio syndication company was that we couldn’t get anybody to hire us. You know, I have all of the, that’s the other reason people do this, you know, I had, you know, six or seven really good rejection letters, including from Clive Davis and Arizona record, say I’m sorry, you know, it’s we’re just not we’re not going to be releasing this type of music. And so you find another path, you know, and then my path was through Through PBS for the music thing and then for radio was just calling getting on the phone and calling up general managers and saying hey, you can have the show free for three months. I also think as you know that that you know, YouTube has opened up a lot of channels for for people to and and the voice and American Idol Of course to showcase their talents and so you don’t you don’t it the agent thing is not it’s not totally necessary.
Jason Hartman 33:25
Right. Right. It’s great though I mean, I love that the fact that there really is no gatekeeper anymore, you can go direct to the marketplace, and the marketplace can decide if they if they want to buy your content or you know not that seems like a great model to me. It’s very democratic.
John Tesh 33:42
It is and we’re and we’re also seeing it with with Indiegogo and now seed invest where you know people can make make investments in your company and actually actually get instead of just a you know, a key chain they can actually get equity in your company now, right
Jason Hartman 33:57
Right. A key chain that Burke for this The backers on Kickstarter. Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing how things are changing. I mean, we are really living at an amazing time. Who would have thought it would have worked out this way? You know, it’s really amazing how different it is.
John Tesh 34:12
Yeah, I mean, it’s all it’s also as as my as my songwriting composition teachers taught me. It’s also it can be garbage in garbage out, you know, one of the things with computers is allowed us is, is you can you can write a whole symphony of nonsense if you if you want so it’s you know, the rules still apply. I think writing a good book writing writing a good song writing a musical whatever, you still have to you still have to get to that that place that was established many years ago.
Jason Hartman 34:41
No question. You got to put out quality but you can get it to the marketplace now. And it can go viral for for better or worse. There’s a lot of stuff that’s junk out there that still goes viral. But yeah, any any tips you want to share with people about that do it yourself thing. I mean, you had to be just very motivated to do that out. After this very successful career that you’ve had to sort of start this new business that’s go out there and what were you making sales calls? I mean,
John Tesh 35:09
Yeah, yeah, for sure. We and and and and we still do I you know, I think you mentioned you know, I’ll, I’ll reach right he’s been on the show you’ve interviewed interviewed jack trout. And jack Canfield wrote a great book called success principles. He’s, of course the guy from chicken soup and this were so I when I was when I was a kid, I was very much into reading biographies. And I highly recommend that whether it’s whether it’s Benjamin Franklin or or Houdini, or anything that you’re you’re interested in. I I’m the I’m a big fight if you said okay, what’s your, if you could watch any movie right now be the last movie you’d watch in your life it would be it would be Gladiator, you know, I love that against all odds, type of story. There are some great biographies out there and you can you can just use them to set up a template for you. Your life, you know, I mean, maybe you won’t do everything that Benjamin Franklin did, but you’ll, you’ll be inspired. And I still I still use that as as a tool. It was. It was Pete Docter, who on the most recent Oscars, who came up and said, Hey, listen, and when he was holding his Oscar in his hand, and he said, he said, he said, Listen out there, you know, you might not make money doing it right away, but just make something make something every day, create something, write something, build something, and it got a huge huge applause because that’s really what if you’re a creative person and even if you just want to be a creative person, you know, make a movie, or you know, write it like Diane Warren says, write a song every day even if it’s a piece of crap. I think that that would be my advice would be just to get busy because I think we consume so much information about how to books and I’m guilty of this too, how to do this, how to manage your time, whatever, just you know, pick a goal and and accomplish it in one week and make it something you’re truly interested in.
Jason Hartman 36:58
That’s that is great. Advice. And you know, it ties in with a book I’m reading now called the original Earth just called originals by Adam Grant, you probably know about this, you’re obviously a very well read guy. But he, he talks about all these famous people, including Einstein, who just put a lot of volume of work out there that really wasn’t renowned at all. I mean, I never knew that about Einstein. You know, he put a lot of junk out there, frankly or not, I don’t want to say it was total junk, but it was just a lot of stuff that no one was interested in. And then if you put a big volume of work out of out there, there will be those few things that really get some play and really get some attention. So I think part of it is definitely volume and and not becoming the the consumer of content always you got to be the creator right, not just learning. Yeah, reading the How to books. Yeah,
John Tesh 37:46
For sure. And I think it was I’ll mess up his quote, but I think it was a you know, Wayne Gretzky there, you know, asking him about the same type of question. And he said that, you know, he went back and looked at what his how many shots on goal he had. Taken, you know, for the for the record breaking, you know, goalscoring that he had done. It was like, it’s like 70% of the shots didn’t go in. You know, your, your point on Einstein it, you know, it makes sense. By the way I just wrote down the originals. That’s why I haven’t read. There’s Elisabeth Gilbert’s just wrote a book called Magic. I think it’s called Magic. I’m about halfway through it. And it’s, it’s about good ones. It. It is because it’s a it’s a little New Agey for me, but it but it is about it’s about how to let create a magic into your life, how to recognize it, how to put yourself in a position to, you know, to receive that sort of meditative energy that did that. It’s, it’s around you. Again, I’m not I’m not a new age guy, but ya know, you gotta sort of take what you want to leave the rest.
Jason Hartman 38:46
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s, that’s very good. Good advice. Is Connie, Connie Celica by the way, for those who don’t know, that’s John’s wife, is she involved, you know, deeply in what you’re doing now? She busy doing family stuff or what like what’s her main thing? I’m just curious.
John Tesh 39:04
Connie is really the she’s sort of the the not even sort of she is the the gatekeeper for what what goes on the air. Not so much on my radio show but certainly for hers, hers is called intelligence for your health, which is a weekend show. But as far as a television show, there’s nothing that gets on the air without her approval. And, and she’s really good at Does this make sense? Can it be said in fewer words? And will it be will it be inspiring because that’s the type of person she is? So she’s, it’s and she is that she’s the reason the radio show exists? Because she’s such a news junkie and she consumes so much information that when I was trying to get back into the radio world, that’s how I started years ago. Where am I going to college? She I noticed it on her side of the bed and we were married for a couple years was a doozy stacks of magazines. And they were all had sticky notes in there. I said well what’s all this madness over here? She goes, Well, these are the ones The articles that I’m going to get to I put my sticky notes, but I have I haven’t had times. I said, Well, why don’t we create a show for that person who really wants that intelligence? That’s really where intelligence for life came from. Because, you know, at the time she was a 34 year old woman that’s right, in our, in our sweet spot of the of the audience that advertisers want from us.
Jason Hartman 40:16
Yeah, that’s great. That’s excellent, excellent stuff. I’m curious. How did how did you two meet? Do you share that story?
John Tesh 40:23
Sure. We met we met in a I was doing a project with with leeza Gibbons in for IBM. And we were in Palm Springs, which for people who don’t know is about two and a half hours outside of Los Angeles in the desert. And, and so I was I was doing an event there. She was shooting a show. Yes, called PS I love you, where she played a an ex convict who was who was helping Greg elegant catch thieves. And it was it was a great role. And I was on CBS primetime and so on I walked into the gym at the hotel where these where she was shooting and where my event was and she was on the bicycle and you know, sort of, you know, deck that I go into into a gym, and I had my white t shirt on with mustard stains on it and really bad socks and I went over
Jason Hartman 41:18
You’re probably
John Tesh 41:21
six foot six, just a really geeky with glasses that have gaffer tape on them. And I would like to look like a coder. And, and so I went in there and I pretended I saw her at the core of my eye. I’m never gonna talk to her way out of my league. And as I was walking out, she said, john, john Tesh, is that you? And I sort of looked around, I said, Oh, Connie Selleck. I didn’t see you there in your typical Bronx fashion. She She says, well, we’re the only two people in the gym. How did you know? And we started it is it’s a it’s a long story because we were married for 24 years, but that’s how it that’s how it got started going. If she hadn’t, you know, if she hadn’t said something to me. I would have walked Without a real life that would have been the enemy.
Jason Hartman 42:01
Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s a great story. Glad glad it worked out. And she took the she took the initiative there. That’s great.
John Tesh 42:08
Well, that’s what you Yeah. and beautiful women run and wonder why, you know, How come nobody asked me? Oh, that’s the reason. Yeah, right. Well, we’re scared. We’re scared out of our minds.
Jason Hartman 42:16
So there’s a lot to that, you know, it’s Yeah, there’s a lot to that. No question about it. No question. Well, good stuff. John, what else would you like people to know, as we wrap up?
John Tesh 42:25
Yeah. I mean, I think that, that, you know, one of the one of the things I love to talk about is that is the fact that you know, yeah, I’ve spent so much of my life doing stuff and just sort of jumping out of the airplane without a parachute, and then sort of building it on the on the way down. I think that’s, I think that’s a, you know, a fun approach to things. But what I’ve really learned and whether it’s, um, it’s from doing the radio show every day, right, it’s like five hours of radio day is whether it’s your relationship or whether it’s whether it’s your waistline, or Where you’re parenting, whatever the value of really good research, you know, and and and surrounding yourself with people that are much better. Like if you see me in concert, everybody, there’s like 12 people on stage and 11 of them are a lot better than me. I remember I’ll leave you with this. I remember when when I was covering ski racing for, for CBS Sports, and I spent most I got paid to follow the US ski team around the world and Billy kid who was the was a silver medalist, downhiller. He was my color commentator, and we’re on these amazing mountains, you know, in this in the Swiss Alps and battalion outside everywhere and I said, Billy, you got to teach me how to ski. And he goes, I’ll do that. And I said, Come on, we’re on these, you know, I can ski but you got to teach me how to be a better skier. He goes, I’ll tell you what, you just follow me everywhere I go, just do what I do and follow me everywhere I go. And I became, you know, a much, much, much better skier. So I think that there’s a you know, there’s something in there about, pick somebody that you quote unquote in the field Do you want to be and study everything that they do and you know what that is? That’s apprenticeship and that was so popular back in the 1600s 1700s we we don’t do that anymore and and i think that now you can do it you can do it by reading a book you can do it by watching a YouTube video you can do it by going on lynda.com and learning how to work run runs run software, so that would be my advice would would what I’d love to leave you with is just, I think the more of that that you can do the better you can be at anything I think that is that is great advice ski behind somebody
Jason Hartman 44:33
Yeah, ski behind someone. Yeah, definitely model, model someone. So your website’s tesh.com. T E S H dot com and then teshmusic.com? Are those the two you want to share?
John Tesh 44:44
Well I mean the site that we’ve we’ve just built it where we take it all because we have like 2600 videos that we’ve that we’ve made with with our experts and with Connie. It’s IFYL which stands for Intelligence for your for your Life. Can’t even say it. IFYLondemand.com. That’s where all on demand videos are.
Jason Hartman 45:01
Excellent. Yeah, you’ve got tons of material there. I’m looking at that site now. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. Great. Well, John Tesh, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. And we so much appreciate you sharing some of this with us. And I just wish you the best.
John Tesh 45:16
Thanks, Jason. It’s been it’s been cathartic for me. You know, sometimes you don’t know how you feel about about something until so. You know, you don’t walk around going, how do you feel about do you like you don’t do that to yourself. So when somebody asks you, it’s it opens up, opens up to your own mind. Thank you.
Jason Hartman 45:32
Well, next time you come on, I’ll have you sit back on the couch and I’ll ask you about your childhood. Okay.
John Tesh 45:38
My childhood is very similar to what I’m doing now. So it would be more be without it.
Jason Hartman 45:42
That’s great. Good stuff. JohnTesh, thanks for joining us.
John Tesh 45:44
Thanks, Jason.
Announcer 45:47
I’ve never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found out that’s what Wall Street considers him to be. Really now How is that possible at all? Simple. Wall Street believes that Real Estate Investors are dangerous to their schemes. Because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life. I know I mean, how many people do you know not including insiders who created wealth with stocks, bonds and mutual funds? those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead. Stocks and other non direct traded assets are a losing game for most people. The typical scenario is you make a little you lose a little and spin your wheels for decades. That’s because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win. This means unless you’re one of them, you will not win. And unluckily for wall street. Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be. He shows them a world where anything less than than a 26% annual return is disappointing. Yep. And that’s why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes With 20 digital download audios, he shows us how we can be excited about these scary times and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us. We can pick local markets untouched by the economic downturn exploited packaged commodities investing, and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely. I like how he teaches you how to protect the equity in your home before it disappears and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government. And this set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered for only $197. To get you’re creating wealth encyclopedia book one complete with over 20 hours of audio go to Jason hartman.com forward slash store. If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker. Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.
This show is produced by the Hartman media company All rights reserved for distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www dot Hartman media.com or email media at Hartman media.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax legal real estate or business professional for individualized advice. opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor network, Inc, exclusively.