Unlock the power of writing to build authority and generate passive income. Join host Bronson Hill and co-host Nate Hambrick, author of The 18 Laws of Leverage, for an inspiring conversation with Marc Guberti, a prolific writer for Forbes, CNBC, and other major publications. Starting as a middle school blogger about the Boston Red Sox, Marc transitioned to finance and content marketing, leveraging his writing to attract high-paying clients and create passive income streams through book sales and PR opportunities. With practical strategies like Parkinson’s Law to boost productivity, targeting smaller publications to build credibility, and using podcasts to network with industry leaders, Marc shares how anyone can become a top writer.
Whether you’re an aspiring author or a professional seeking to elevate your brand, this episode offers actionable insights to overcome resistance, find your “third door,” and turn writing into a tool for financial freedom.
Get my new book: https://bronsonequity.com/fireyourself
Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: Hi, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I’m super excited today, and I feel like a bit of a nerd today, right? Because all these things we do, and I’m just kind of a nerd in a lot of different ways. And I love, love, love learning, talking, even being challenged by being a writer, right?
To say you’re a writer is a big deal. And a lot of people, they say, I’m going to get kind of nerdy here, about 85% of people say they have a book in them to write, but only 0.5% of people actually write a book. And our guest today has been super successful at not only writing in different contexts, but using it to be able to get clients.
I would say now for me, about half of my clients, my new clients, come from my book I wrote, Fire Yourself, which has become a bestseller, over 1,000 reviews on Amazon. If you’re a writer, the word authority has the word author in it, right? So if you want to be an authority on any topic, being an author is great.
And there’s also some real benefits we’re going to get into, about even if you’re not considering doing this professionally, or you don’t need clients, or your total retirement, this is the Mailbox Money Show. So we do lots of different things here, a lot of the different things that we’re doing, we’re kind of passive income. But just the cathartic process of writing and getting your thoughts down is so valuable.
Nate, I wanted to ask you, welcome Nate Hambrick, our co-host here for the Mailbox Money Show. Good to see you brother, how are you doing? I’m doing well.
Awesome, I want to ask you, so you are a writer, you’ve written two best-selling books. I guess, what is it about writing that you get most excited about?
Nate Hambrick: I think ultimately writing for me, and this is why I’m so excited to chat with Mark today, writing is a tool, right? Writing is leverage for everything else that you’re doing. And so what I’m excited to chat with Mark about is how he leverages book, leverages his books, his articles, his publications for clients, for prospecting.
I know myself, my income almost quadrupled within 12 months of publishing my first book, just because I finally had leverage, right? When people googled me, right? They were finally seeing credible backlinks.
So that helps me close business. Then there’s the book funnel, then there’s the paid speaking, like most of the amazing things I’ve had the privilege of doing in business came because I put out a few bucks. And so I know Mark’s done it in a few different ways.
So I’m excited to learn from him. And this is going to be an awesome show.
Bronson Hill: Awesome. Awesome.
Well, we’ll introduce him now. We got Mark Guberti. Is that how you say it, Mark? Sorry.
Marc Guberti: Got it. Yeah.
Bronson Hill: And he is a writer extraordinaire. He’s been writing for many years, writes on publications such as Forbes, CSNBC, all kinds of different things. And he actually gets passive income and clients through this writing.
And so we wanted to have him on here just to be able to talk. I was on his show recently, just an awesome guy.
But Mark, welcome.
Give us a little bit of your backstory, how you got here, and what you’re doing with your writing.
Marc Guberti: Sure. So I started blogging in middle school. This is about the Boston Red Sox because I am a New Yorker, and there aren’t many Red Sox fans around me.
So I decided to write about the Red Sox. Now, I don’t do sports at all now, from a writing perspective. I still run.
But from a writing perspective, not much about sports. But the important thing about blogging middle school is that led me into writing about content marketing, and now led me into writing finance.
So I do a lot of finance content now.
I’ve written for some of the publications. Bronson mentioned some of them. There are a lot of others that I write for as well.
And each of those publications, each article I write, it puts me in front of more people, further establishes my authority in the industry, and makes it a lot easier to get clients compared to if I didn’t write at all.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it is. I think it’s really interesting how things have changed a bit. You know, it used to be, to write, you had to be like, sign and have a book deal, or had to be like a professional journalist or something.
Like the barrier to entry is not as high as it was. Not to put any shade on what you’re doing, but just saying like, it’s possible. You and I have podcasts, right?
This is kind of the golden age of podcasts. There are millions of podcasts. But we can have amazing quality conversations with amazing guests, and then people can listen in as if they were like, in the room, like listen to this really great conversation.
So I’d love to know a little bit just from you about, for you, what does it take to be a top writer? I mean, how do you, how does someone go being like, I’m going to start writing for Forbes, right? That’s a pretty prestigious thing to do.
So how do you kind of, from one step to another, just take us behind the curtain on how someone’s like, hey, I want to do this. How do I actually get started doing it?
Marc Guberti: So there are the boring but important things you have to do. You have to write every day. You have to do prospecting, but we all know this already.
So when it comes to getting into these big publications, you don’t approach them right away. Instead, you have to build up your own writing samples. So that could be starting your own website.
You could also do a few blog posts on Medium, just to demonstrate that you’re not just publishing on your website. You’ve got multiple sources. You may even have to do a guest blog or two, just to say that you’re basically proving that, hey, I can write on other websites.
It’s a little more credibility versus writing on your own website, because all of your pieces are going to be approved for your website, whereas you have to have an editor and other people review it before it gets approved on another website. So once you have those writing samples, instead of going for like the Forbes or the US News right away, go for publications in your industry that are smaller. So look for who’s ranking on like page five of Google or page 10 of Google, because those are going to be, in some cases, overlooked publications.
And if they don’t have as many people coming to them, it’s easier to get approved as a freelance writer and start building out your samples. Like the fact that you mentioned Forbes, like every freelance writer who’s writing in industries that Forbes covers or that US News covers, everyone knows about those publications. So those editors are going to be swamped with more requests.
Start with like the page fives and the page tens on Google in your industry and build up, because as you show that you write for these publications, it’ll be easier to score bigger clients.
Nate Hambrick: So give us an idea of scale, right? Because I don’t know if you follow Alex from OZ, but he always talks about how find a good thing and then go do it 10,000 times in a row. Give us an idea of how many publications, if I was getting started in the industry, should I shoot for 100 publications, 500?
What kind of scale, what kind of repetitions do you feel like you need to get to your level?
Marc Guberti: So the more articles you write, it’s just going to be easier to write for publications because you get better as a writer. You’re not able to write for 100 plus publications simultaneously because then your time can get spread a little too thin. It’s different if you go like the writer agency route, where you have clients, they know you’re an agency, but for places like Forbes and US News, like they fully expect you to write the content.
They don’t want agencies to write the content for them. They want a true like a face instead of a brand. But when it comes to writing articles, you should be writing as many of them as possible.
I’ll easily write five in a given day, usually a lot more than that based on the content length and how much research goes to the articles and other things like that. But you always want to, it’s like if you could do four articles and then you could start the fifth article and then you can like you could, if you really wanted to do like one of the headers or two of the headers, so you build up how much you can write each day and that makes it easier to reach out to publications. If you’re first getting started and you have some samples already, I would just say send 20 to 50 emails every single day to different publications because it is a number scheme.
The more emails you send, you’re going to get more conversation. And even if it’s no, you’re just figuring out like, what do I have to do differently to adjust my pitch? Because if you’re only sending three emails a day for your marketing, that’s not how you become a top writer in the industry.
You have to send out a lot of emails per day, especially in the beginning when that’s your really like only option to scale and get in front of potential customers.
Bronson Hill: I want to ask you more about, you’ve generally let a passive income from this, but I want to ask Nate as well. Nate, I know I’ve noticed and we talked about too, there’s a big discrepancy from people that would like to say, hey, I want to write a book or I want to be a writer, but like very few people do it, right? I mean, it’s like the numbers are like 20 to one, right?
Like most people, yeah, I want to write, but I don’t do it. So what do you think is, and Nate, I know you’ve literally coached and met with hundreds of people through this process. So what is it that separates people that actually do it and those that don’t?
Is there something like a mindset piece? Do you think it shifts for people? Or like what happens?
How do people get there?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, I have a theory that applies to most areas of business on procrastination. So whether it’s publishing a book or an article or anything, although there’s lots to be said on the mindset and overcoming mental blocks and all that, I’m a big believer that if you can’t get something done, you said you were going to do, it’s probably because you don’t have the right process or the right person to help you, right? Even just what Mark said of, try to write four to five articles a day.
Go email 25 to 50 people. That’s really helpful for someone, right? If they’ve never heard that before and they were trying to create one article and they were going to email one person at Forbes and they were just grinding themselves into the ground and then they heard someone like Mark say that, that is a process they didn’t know.
That is a key that could unlock a door they didn’t know they needed to unlock. And so with publishing a book, I really do think, although you do need a work ethic and you just need to do it, ultimately, I think getting the right process is really, really important and then getting a team of people to help. And I’ll use myself as an example.
I’m a go big or go home kind of guy. My last book, The 18 Laws of Leverage, just my launch team for that one book was 832 people, not including you, Bronson. So if we include people like you, it might be close to a thousand, right?
So I didn’t do it by myself, right? I had so many people helping me. And so it’s really easy.
I had a guy the other day, they’re like, oh, I mean, you just wake up and your book is, you know, in the top 8% in the first four. No, that did not happen. I had a massive support team of people that helped me.
So get the right process, get the right people to help and then just go do it. And it’s not easy. It is not easy to be in the top 1% or the top 1% of the top 1%.
But you can do it. If you set your mind to it, you have the right prices and the right people. Almost anything is achievable.
Bronson Hill: I love it. Yeah, I think what you said a couple of you guys both are saying and this is what people ask me as well. How did you ever find the time or how do you whatever?
But like you make the decision, right? But I love what you shared. It’s like it’s either you don’t know how or you don’t have the people.
Like it’s not like a willpower thing. It’s like getting in the… What else would you say about that, Mark?
Just as far as like being so like… Because when I hear from you, your superpower is like you just, you do the work. There’s a guy named Steven Pressfield.
If you ever had The War of Art or Going Pro, and he’s just like, talks about like resistance. He’s like, if you don’t know what you don’t get out, you don’t make this, like resistance is going to kick your ass. It’s going to just totally destroy you, because your house is going to be so clean, and all these things are going to happen, except for you sitting and writing, and you actually sitting in the seat and doing it.
So how do you set up, like… And this can be applicable to anything in life, you know you should do as a listener, right? Like, I should be at the gym.
I should be doing this. But how do you, like, set goals for yourself around this? And do you give yourself rewards, or like, what’s the… Like, is it just every day I do it, seven days a week? Or is it some days a week, and I do this in the morning, and I try to get it done by lunch, and then I can go for a run? Or what do you do to kind of like help reward yourself?
Marc Guberti: So the way I go about it is, I am an advocate of Parkinson’s law, which basically is… If you give yourself a week to do it, you will always get it done the day before that. That’s basically how it goes.
So I will take as much work for my clients as possible. I always follow them, like, hey, do you have like an extra article that I can get, and I’m always prospecting to get even more articles. And the idea is that if you, like, flood your schedule with articles, you will find a way to make it happen. When there are times when some clients, at the end of the month, like they recalibrate, and then they give you articles to lead up to the month.
So there’s some moments that are like not as much going on, other moments where I’m doing like five plus articles a day. But what I’ve learned is that, especially in the early days, is if I have one article throughout the whole week, it takes me that whole week at the article. But if I have 20 articles in a week, I do those 20, 30, sometimes even 40 plus articles a week, without really… like, I could do it because of Parkinson’s law.
Like, you’re not going to waste time if you have that many articles in one week, because it’s very hard for you to waste time. Whereas if you don’t give yourself as much, you’re going to just… you don’t have the sense of urgency, or that incentive to press forward with the articles. I’ll say one thing about the books as well.
Most people think of this book as this big, gargantuan thing. But if you think of it more as in like, depending on your font and spacing, some books are 20,000 words, or 30,000 words, or 40,000 words, depending on like, you know, you want a short 80-page book, or 200-page book. But the idea is that if you think of it like a word count, like, let’s just say 30,000 words, and you just commit to 1,000 words per day, you have a full book in a month. If you actually commit to, like, if you do it from a words standpoint instead of, oh, like a gargantuan book, it’s less intimidating to write.
Bronson Hill: Well, that’s what I did too. I did love in the conversation here. So that’s what I did.
I basically had made the day I went to a Tony Robbins event, and like he says, your moment’s the decision, your destiny shapes. I’m like, I’m gonna write this book, I’m gonna do it. And then I was like, well, how am I gonna write that? I don’t know.
And it was like I read somewhere, or saw it online, just write 60 minutes a day, like for the next, you know, until it’s done, right. And so I wrote like five days a week for 60. I scheduled as an appointment on my calendar where I would, just at that time, I literally set the alarm, and I’d write about 1200 words a day, sometimes less and more. But it was like, within a couple months I basically had the book mostly done, and that’s the hardest part, just getting it on a page.
But it’s super clarifying to just… again, we have these things that we make these really big things, but again, that only really took me… it took me a little longer to launch it, but it only took me a couple months. And again, I think for a lot of things that we’re putting off, it’s just actually taking the time. I love the Parkinson’s law thing, you know, time, tasks fill the time allotted to them, and so giving yourself goals and just saying, this is what’s going to get done, I think it’s great.
And I want to ask you another question. I know Nate has probably a million more questions, but I want to ask you a question on… you’re doing this, and you’re getting passive income. We love talking about passive income on this show. So you’re not only writing, but you’re writing and you’re getting thousands of dollars a month from these articles that you wrote months and years ago, and they bring you clients, right? So you’re getting passive residuals from the advertising, is that right?
Marc Guberti: I get passive from book sales. Like, an article I write is just a flat one-off, but the articles do translate into clients. There are a lot of people who, they see my work in other publications, like, okay, this person’s written for U.S. News and other publications, we know that this person can reliably write in those areas. But one of the interesting things is, you never really know who’s seeing your content. It can be a client who becomes your top-paying client, who you don’t know them, but they know you, because your content’s floating around. And I’ve gotten some good PR opportunities because of writing for all these publications.
So just as an example, I was able to cover the 10-year anniversary of the Jets ETF. The Jets ETF, it’s not to do with the New York Jets, it’s more of like airplanes and aviation, and there’s a whole ETF that revolves around that industry. So they were ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and I was able to be a part of that, I was able to cover the event.
You never know who is reading your content, and when you’re writing for these types of publications, there are millions of people seeing your content every now. Nnot only do we have, like, the big numbers, but we also have… we don’t know who’s within those big numbers, and that can create a lot of opportunities for you.
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, it’s amazing how often you get lucky when you just play the play the field. I am curious though, you know, how do you… I don’t even know how to ask this question. But knowing that you’re putting out all these publications, knowing that a tiny fraction of them will then go on to millions of people, and one random person that you could never know about in advance will eventually hire you, reach out to you for that… how do you prioritize which publications you say yes to? How do you say no? Do you say no? Or do you say yes to literally everybody that will hire you? Do you prioritize in a certain way, or how do you best use your done?
Marc Guberti: So I say yes to a lot of publications, but also the ones that are reaching out, and the ones I’m reaching out to, I’ve done my research, and I want to work with them. If the rate is low, I’m not going to work with them. I don’t write for free anymore, so the money element is definitely in play when it comes to choosing which publications. But I’m also looking at how much traffic they bring in. This is like a household name, because that’s going to put me in front of more people.
Now, I know that if someone sees like one of my Binsenga articles, let’s say, not everyone’s going to be like, oh, like Mark Guberti wrote that article. Not everyone’s going to make that connection. But I only need some people to make the connection. I only need a few high-paying clients to make that connection.
So you’re writing for a lot of big publications, but you don’t need all 50,000 of your readers to have this high-ticket offer, or to want to work with you as a writer. So I write for as many of them as possible, as many as I can handle. And with the Parkinson’s law, as I mentioned earlier, it’s easier for me to handle high volumes of work, which in turn makes me more desirable, because the editors I work with know that if they need like a 24 to 48-hour turnaround, I’m their guy.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that’s amazing what you become. You’ve developed a reputation in that space. I know a lot of our listeners, what would you say to someone who’s like, yeah, I’d love to be a writer, or, you know, I’d love to… I mean, I just see you operating at a very high level in this. And a lot of times, a lot of us think that we’re just not creative people, or, oh, I’m not a writer, I’m not a this.
But, you know, when we’re kids, everybody writes. All the kids are like content producers, like crazy. Like, they, you know, they like color the picture of the unicorn, and they do this, whatever. And then they kind of start looking when they’re like 10, 11, 12, like, oh, mine’s not as good as Sally’s, or whatever, they stop doing it.
As you become an adult, you almost got to, like, continue to try to put your creative gifts out there. And it’s vulnerable. It’s vulnerable to put yourself out there. But Brandy Brown would say, one of my favorite authors would say, like, there’s not creative people, non-creative people. It’s people that put their creative gifts out to the world, and those that don’t.
So what would you say to someone who’s like, hey, I’ve had my job, I’ve been an attorney, a doctor, or a business owner, and yeah, I’d love to write, but, like, it just feels like pretty vulnerable. And it also feels like a lot to actually, like, shove my chips in the middle. Like, I’m actually going to do this, or I’m actually going to, like, put things out there and start, like, presenting myself to the world again.
Marc Guberti: I mean, it just boils down to getting the reps. Your first article that you write in your life, it’s not going to be good. But let’s not sugarcoat it, even though your first few… but as you write more, you get more comfortable with the craft.
So I’m a runner, and a lot of goals that runners have when they’re out of college, especially if they’re doing distance, they want to run the Boston Marathon. And you can’t just go from, like, the couch to the Boston Marathon. You have to run for, like, a few years in order to qualify for that event. And it’s the same concept with writing, because you can’t just get up from the couch and, like, all of a sudden you’re writing high-quality content, and you’ve got a lot of freelance writing clients.
If you commit to it for one month, I can’t really make any promises for you. But if you commit to it for three to five years, you’re willing to write a little bit each day, even if it’s a hundred words some days. But if you commit to it for three to five years, and you also know the marketing side, that’s when, at the end of that stretch, you can feel a lot more confident about your writing and get results.
The issues come when people think of this three to five-year commitment goal as a one-month commitment, and they’re wondering why they’re not where they are in one month, where they would like to be in three to five years.
Bronson Hill: There’s a book out there by Hal Elrod, who wrote The Miracle Morning. He wrote another book called The Miracle Equation, and it says that if you have unstoppable effort and unwavering faith, then whatever your goals are, you can achieve whatever. And he said it’s not as you take the… how long it takes, like it could take months, it could take years, it could take tens, whatever it takes. But, like, as long as you’ve really committed to it, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes, because you’re committed to the process. If you have that unstoppable effort and unwavering faith.
Nate, I know you have some of the things you want to contribute on the writing process, or just the goal setting and kind of getting to where you want to go. Or maybe it’s something else, you want to take it.
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, well actually I was going to ask you, Mark, because I’m curious. Because we’ve talked a lot with you about the writing process, but I was curious about the marketing and advertising side. Do you primarily just focus on the writing, and you let other publications do most of the advertising? Facebook ads, Amazon ads? Or do you run advertising, do you do launches for the stuff, or tell us about the business side of the writing.
Marc Guberti: The business side, I’ll do some ads for my books, for my articles. I mostly trust that on the clients. The idea behind the marketing for getting freelance writing clients, I do a lot of outreach. So, I will email the decision maker instead of going on the contact page of the website and basically asking if you’re looking for freelance writers. The only way I’ll do that on the contact page is I’ll just basically say, who’s the best person to contact for freelance writing opportunities.
So that it’s easier for someone to say, oh, so-and-so is the best person to contact. It doesn’t feel like I’m just submitting a message into the void. But when it comes to marketing and getting freelance writing clients, I go to the decision makers. The decision makers are editors, content marketing managers, sometimes just content manager, growth marketer, SEO lead. Those are some of the titles that people have, and I’ll find them along LinkedIn based on the publications that I’m focusing on, and I’ll reach out to them individually and start conversations. Not everybody responds, but you just need a few responses to get into a few good publications, and then other people see your work as they’re looking for more writers.
Nate Hambrick: I’m curious, so if you have any hacks for people that are doing LinkedIn reach out. They’re trying to find the decision maker. A lot of times, the bigger corporations, the decision makers have firewalls, they have barriers, they have people between them and you. One of the hacks, and I want to ask for your hacks, one of the hacks that I learned many, many years ago, and it’s so simple, but you literally just take their first name at the company, and then you just send an email and hope it gets to them. Or their first name and their first initial, their last name. Do you have any sort of hacks for people who are already doing that, on ways to get around the barriers to the decision makers?
Marc Guberti: Yeah, the email is a great one, especially if you follow up, because there have been so many clients where I’ve had to follow up with the client for like, no, I’m not even joking, six months, and then it turns into a long-term opportunity. Some of those have really panned out, so if I had stopped, that’s a lot of money that isn’t coming to me because I stopped. So sometimes it is going to take six months of outreach in order to get some clients out. Some of them, they’re a lot more smoother, like you reach out, the person responds the next day, and you’ve got a test article in a week. Those are great, but sometimes they do take a genuine six months to do.
So I mean, I don’t, I wouldn’t really say I have much hacks, it would just be a matter of sending out a lot of outreach, especially when you don’t have many clients. It’s like the best time to do outreach, because you got to get your clients, and then it’s just contact as many editors and SEO managers and content managers as possible. If one of the people doesn’t respond to you, you reach out to another person in the same company within like one to two weeks.
I use the, this is the best thing I could call a hack, I use the reminders app to notify me when I’m supposed to follow up with someone. A lot of people will be like, okay, we don’t need writers now, but in three months reach out, we may have something for you. Instead of trusting myself to remember that, I go into reminders, I’m saying okay, email this person three months from now about this writing opportunity. So being really due with those reminders that you set on your phone or your computer, that’s a good app.
Bronson Hill: I got a few, this is gold right here. I just hope the listeners, you guys are taking notes. This applies to a lot of things. So a great way, if you want to reach anybody, there’s a way you can do it through LinkedIn. There’s an extension through Google Chrome, and it’s called getemail.io. You can literally plug it in, it’s free, you get 100 free a month or something, but you can get anybody’s email.
So you can literally just go in and get their email, and it works almost like right, 99% of the time it works. So you get somebody’s email and you can send just, that’s how we get guests for all kinds of things. We’re just going and we find them, find out whether they, we get it, that’s free, right? So getemail.io. And then also, like I want to share this, this also works in dating. Are you single Mark? Are you in a relationship?
Marc Guberti: Yeah, I’m single
Bronson Hill: You’re single, so as a single guy, what I’ve realized, I’m single, 44 years old. A lot of people use online dating, it’s like kind of what everybody does, right? Everybody kind of does online dating, whatever. But if you’re a guy and you’re a good guy and you’re out in the community, you’re just kind of meeting, and you go to hang out at a coffee shop and you just say hello, it feels uncomfortable.
Like I don’t know how it is in the Northeast, but like in LA, people don’t talk. You talk to strangers in LA, you’re a weirdo. Where in Texas, like everyone talks to everybody, so like that’s like a Texas thing. But my whole point in this is, if you do something that other people are not doing, so when you talk about writing and following up, most people don’t follow up. If you kind of find a way to get their email that most people don’t, and you’re doing something other people are not doing.
And there’s a wonderful book out there called The Third Door by Alex Benign, and it basically is about this 18-year-old kid who wanted to interview Warren Buffett and Lady Gaga and Bill Gates, and also how they made a change, whatever. And he said that he described that, and there’s a point to all this, that life is like, it’s if life is like a nightclub, right? So you have these lines outside the nightclub where most people stand in line for the big long line. You live in New York, you know about this, there’s people standing up, like the better the club, the longer the line outside, right? So I’m not a big nightclub guy, but people stand up and the line’s a mile long and people just kind of wait and wait and wait.
Then you have the VIP entrance where people pull up, they get out of their limo, they get right in, they go straight in. And then there’s the third door, and that’s the name of the book, The Third Door. He said you get out of line, you run down the alleyway, you pound on the kitchen door, you crawl through the window, you find another way in. And a lot of times the creative approach is, and this guy basically went, he went on an interview with Bill Gates, he went on an interview with Lady Gaga, he went on all these amazing things at 18 or 19 years old. But he said it was always, he found that people always had this kind of third door that they found a way to approach.
So I guess my question, actually I’d love to ask Nate first and then turn it over to you. But what do you think about that concept of the third door, Nate? Are you familiar with that?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah so I wrote about this in my first book Crusher Kryptonite. I realized as a 20-something year old that you know, you email these big tech companies for a job, you’re gonna get shut down because they get a thousand resumes every single day, everybody looks the same. And what I realized is, hang on, the wealthiest business people in the world don’t drive themselves, who is driving them? So what did I do? I got an Uber, and every single morning, Monday through Friday, I would go to downtown Dallas, and yes, people are fairly friendly here, and I would go drive all these business executives and just talk to them.
And you would be shocked at how many interviews I got, because those CEOs are so busy, they do not drive themselves, they hop in your car, they open their laptop, and they are working at 6:45 in the morning, and all it takes is a good conversation and you’re in there, right? Then they can reach out to their HR manager, and the kinds of referrals and the kinds of opportunities that you get when you go straight to the source, because you were the coolest Uber driver they’ve had in 10 years, it’s amazing, right?
And so that would be a great example of the third door. It’s so easy, and you just, you know, I’d always, if they’d ever take me outside of the city, I’d turn off the app, drive straight back to downtown, and then turn the app back on, because I wanted those business execs.
Bronson Hill: Well, so much application. Real quick, you actually brought this up to me recently. We’re both authors, and you say, you know, we should do, we’ve interviewed Dr. Benjamin Hardy on this show. He’s wrote 10x Is Easier Than 2x, The Gap and The Gain, just amazing. You said we should, I should write, I should start doing video reviews for these top books and then have Fire Yourself in the background. And you’re like, if a tenth of a percent see that, that actually do it, like it’s a huge way as well. Yeah, I mean, I just, I love that concept. But Mark, give us some other ideas, like outside-the-box things that you’re doing that are making you successful.
Marc Guberti: So one of the things I do is I host the Breakthrough Success Podcast, just as you host the show. It’s you get conversations with people who you normally would not get conversations with. Like, the podcast allows you to have those conversations where, without, other people wouldn’t really want to talk with you for that long, or at all. So the podcast, you create content that allows you to grow both of your brands. You are getting in front of potential clients, or collaborators, or partners, and there’s a lot of ways you can take those relationships in the future. So that’s my third door that I use.
Bronson Hill: I love it, I love it. Yeah, I think honestly the more creative we can be. I asked Nate earlier, I was like, how did you come up with that idea to do those reviews? And he’s like, I use this. Would you like me to walk him through the whole process, Bronson, would that be? Yeah, walk him through. Okay, well, I think people are listening, people are listening. I want to get this.
This is not just about writing, this is not just about putting reviews or promoting yourself. This is about anything you want in life, like there is another way to do it. And that’s why Henry Ford, he like was, he’s questioning, like why don’t you normally answer all this stuff and you’re not the smartest guy. He’s like, I’ve got a button on my thing, I can hit a button, I can ask somebody and they can help me. But he’s like thinking, like just the process of thinking is hard work, which is why so few people do it, right. So we need to schedule time for thinking. So in your thinking time, tell us what you came up with there, Nate.
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, so the worst part about this is I realized once I came up with my genius idea, there were already people doing this and I just didn’t realize it. I was like, “Oh shoot.” So here’s the idea, right? In the author world, it’s no secret that a lot of famous authors review their friends’ books. That’s no secret. You go to a famous book, you see some other famous author. But what I didn’t realize is that some people were doing it before they became famous, and that’s how they became famous.
And so my version of that is: take any random book that’s about to come out, that you know is going to be huge, that you know they’re putting millions of dollars into ads, and you say, “Hi, my name’s Nate Hambrick, International Best-Selling Author. I’m the International Best-Selling Author of Crash Your Kryptonite, and this book changed my life, and I want to tell you about it.” Then you give them a whole review on this book. Well, now they know that you’re an International Best-Selling Author. They see it in the back, and if one percent of one percent of one percent buy your book, that’s a huge win.
And you can’t just do it once. You have to do it 50 times or 150 times in a row. But when I had that epiphany, I realized, “Oh shoot, there’s this guy named Mike Michalowicz. He’s the author of Profit First, super successful guy. I’ve seen like 200 reviews of him doing this. He has been doing this the whole time, and I didn’t understand that’s what he was doing.”
So I felt a little embarrassed after my epiphany that somebody had already figured this out, and I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out three years ago when I saw him doing this. So that’s my spiel. I’ll get off my soapbox.
Bronson Hill: Well, I think it’s really good to admit that, because you know, admit, this is the first step on the road to recovery. I’m kidding. Basically, it’s, you know, that we’re not the smartest. It’s, you know, like some people get stuff, and I’m like, hey, it’s a great idea, and then he’s like been doing it for 20. But like, I feel like life is like that, right? And so Tony Robbins, I love Tony Robbins. He talks about the first thing is pattern recognition, right? We have to, like, see the patterns, and then eventually you get to pattern creation.
So it’s not only like you’re identifying those things people are doing, like Mark has created an incredible path of how to become a great writer, and he’s doing it, he’s doing it consistently, whatever. And then, like he said, he’s got these creative things he’s doing that no one else is. He’s following up in a way, and he’s doing these, he’s doing other things other people are not doing. And then he can actually create his own patterns, right? So maybe eventually we’ll find some other way. It’s like an adaptation of that, Nate. We’ll do something else.
Nate Hambrick: So instead of me learning the hard way, Mark, I may as well just ask you. Instead of me reinventing the wheel, and then reaching out to you three years later with all the epiphanies that you already knew. How do you walk us through some of the ways that you monetize everything that you’re doing? Right, so we’ve heard the general concepts, but get a little bit more granular. Get a little bit more practical. What are some things I could do as an author? What are some things I could do as a freelancer to increase the revenue I generate, to get more clients? Like, give us some practical steps on how we could grow the pie for ourselves.
Marc Guberti: Well, if we go the podcasting route, what you can do is contact authors in your industry and interview them on your shows. Because every author wants to promote their book, and it’s especially easy to do this right when they have published the books. So, authors that are like New York Times bestsellers get hundreds, or even more than a thousand reviews for each of their books. Those people become very accessible when they are doing a book launch, and they need to appear on as many podcasts as possible.
So, interview as many authors as you can, that’s going to build up your network. And then promote their book and let them know that you did, because that’s building up reciprocity. So that when you have your book, not every guest you’ve ever had on your show is going to promote your book, but you are building up more people like partners, who you promote their book, in an exchange they help you out. Again, it’s not going to work with everyone. Someone who has like millions of followers, they may not want to do this with you. But if you’re targeting a lot of authors, who they’re getting anywhere from like 20 to 50 reviews for their books, maybe a little fewer, those are the people who are going to be a lot more responsive, and a lot more eager to engage in those types of partnerships.
The freelance writing route, you could take a similar path where you are interviewing other freelance writers, so that you can share connections later. You could also interview agency owners who hire the freelance writers, and build up a good conversation with them, and then do a follow-up to build the relationship even more. So, there are a lot of ways you can use a podcast, but for authors and freelancers, those are the best methods, just getting in front of the people who you want to partner with in the future.
Nate Hambrick: I have experience, going back to what you’re saying about how authors are very accessible when they launch books. I’ve experienced that. You would be amazed at some pretty famous people who will respond personally to you when they’re launching a book, because it’s their baby. A lot of these people put a thousand or two thousand hours into it.
A lot of these people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions of dollars, on it. They want you to reach out, they really do. And so, these people that normally wouldn’t be accessible at any other point in the year, are extremely accessible if you just send them a quick video saying, “Hey, I really loved your book. Here’s a few things I implemented, and here’s what I loved about it.” I’m always amazed, it’s almost like a hundred percent response rate, specifically when they’re launching the book. So I love that tidbit, but sorry, go ahead Bronson.
Bronson Hill: No, no, that’s great. I think one thing I was sharing, most of the successful people we have in here have done something significant in their life. They’ve just found a way to provide more value, and I think that, and just even how you and I met, you know Mark, you know I basically, we had a thing, we’re doing a pitch to get on podcasts, and instead of just like, hey I want to be on your podcast, I was like, hey let’s do a podcast swap, right? So I’m offering something of value.
So I think really good sales, I have 10 years of sales experience, I sold medical devices, and of course we raised capital, raised about 50 million dollars, and a lot of times people show up and they’re like, hey buy my thing or do my whatever, whatever. Versus like, really when we put ourselves in people’s shoes, we ask questions, we try to be of service, it’s just amazing the doors that open. And when people, like when it’s genuine, sometimes you give a lot of things away, but if you can just try to find a way to be a likable person that adds value, sometimes that’s the difference.
I have so many people that just refer me to different people. Actually Nate, you’ve referred me to a couple people that have invested in our stuff, and it’s been amazing, right? It’s amazing relationship. I just had a call recently with Nick, and he’s just like, I’m so glad I met you. He’s like, you told me, he said, my income has doubled in the last 12 months I met you, Ron. So I’m like, that’s awesome, I was like, give me that testimony, that’s great. But like, those are the kind of transformations that, when we can create transformation in people’s lives, we can help them and get them to the next level.
And I’ve always been blown away, like you said Nate, somebody who’s at a much higher level is willing to have those conversations because they want to. Like, people want to help other people, and people that are really good at this are really all about it. Mark, this has been an awesome interview. Just love what you’re doing, love what you’re creating. Again, if you’re a writer or you’re not a writer, incredible principles about, you know, not how to get, you know, the Parkinson’s law, just setting, you know, kind of almost way more in your day and getting it done.
I also love rewards of that as well. So if I get this down, I get to have the ice cream, or do the fun thing later or something, but doing those things for you. But Mark, why don’t you, any last wisdom you’d like to leave with us before we say anything else, that you haven’t shared, that’s just like, here’s something that everybody should know when it comes to being successful, because you’ve obviously been very successful at this.
Marc Guberti: I would just say, think of it as a multi-year goal. You can’t go into it expecting results in one month. Which sounds obvious, but a lot of people, they just want the instant gratification. And they feel like instant gratification is just a day, so like, “Oh, if I do it for a month, that’s not instant gratification.” It still is instant gratification. A lot of freelance writers, it takes multiple years for them to be successful.
One tip, the freelance writer is still good. You’re not the only freelance writer in town. There are a lot of freelance writers who have written for other publications. So if you want to write for, let’s say, U.S. News, you look at writers who have written for U.S. News and you research them. What are the other publications they have written for in the past? What are the ones they write for now? What are the ones they’ve written for in the past? Because you get a lot of client ideas from that.
And there are some writers who, they’ll move on from one publication to another because of higher paying opportunities, more visibility, etc. So if you research individual freelance writers in your industry, you’ll see what publications they write for, and those are more potential client ideas. You can see how they scaled up and became successful.
One of the writers I did this on, it helped me pursue another path because I realized the importance of having a certification in the finance space. I wasn’t going to become a Certified Financial Planner, because that takes so much work. But what I did become is, I became a Certified Personal Finance Counselor. And it’s a valuable enough certification that it puts you at a higher level than a lot of other freelance writers.
I only knew that because I looked at a lot of freelance writers. I saw one of them had that certification, I looked into it. It’s not hard, relatively speaking, compared to the other finance certifications. But if you really look at not just the publications, but the individual freelance writers who are writing articles for those publications, you can find a lot of great opportunities.
Bronson Hill: Love it, Mark. Well, Mark, you’ve been super successful, and celebrate your success. You’re writing, you’re obviously strong work ethic, you’re going for it. So just things we can obviously get behind, and also creating passive income for yourself. So the Mailbox Money salutes you. How can people, they’re listening, how can they reach out to you, follow you, get in touch, and find your articles, your books, your podcast, all the things that you’re doing. What’s one way they can reach out?
Marc Guberti: My website is markguberti.com. I host the Breakthrough Success podcast, and I’m also working on a guide on how to write five thousand words per day. Because if you go write five thousand words per day, you have that capacity, you can make so much more money as a writer. Because if you think about these freelance writing opportunities, some are ten cents a word, twenty cents a word, some get thirty, fifty cents a word. But if you have the capacity to write a lot of words, your income potential goes up, and you can write more books as well. So if anyone wants that guide, just shoot me an email, [email protected], and I will send them that guide that details how they can write five thousand words per day.
Bronson Hill: Awesome put that in the show notes as well thanks so much Mark appreciate you thanks for being here with us today
Marc Guberti: it was a pleasure thank you
Bronson Hill: Wow Nate, awesome stuff man. I mean, I tell you, being a writer, it was really inspiring to see the guy writes all the time. And I had a season of my life where I was writing every day. I would set a timer of just free writing for like five or ten minutes a day, just to write. And then, when I would write for 60 minutes to write my book, I think it is that, like, it’s a discipline to do it.
But it’s like, there’s type one and type two fun, you know. Have you heard about this? Type one fun is, it’s fun while you’re doing it. It’s fun when you were thinking about doing it. But type two fun was not fun while you were doing it, but when you look back, like, man, wasn’t that kind of fun? It’s like this a bit with writing. Anything that really matters, it’s like, it’s not always fun in the moment, but it’s so beneficial when you actually get it done.
Nate Hambrick: I’d 100% agree. I had a bunch of great takeaways from Mark, but I think the top two are number one, Parkinson’s law, which applies to so many different things. Right, if you believe your goal is going to take 10 years, it’s going to take 11. If you believe it’s going to take one year, it’s going to take one year. We talked about this with Dr. Benjamin already. Right, yeah, totally. That impossible goal, and then once you’ve created the impossible three-year goal, ask yourself, what would it take to do that in a year? Right, it is so helpful. That concept has been radically changing my life.
And then one of just the practical and tactical takeaways from Mark, that I really, really want to apply to my life, is just how he replicates greatness. So the example he gave is the hypothetical of, I want to write for Forbes. Well, who’s writing for Forbes, and then find those writers, and then what did they write before Forbes? All of that stuff is on the internet. And so you might not have the opportunity to interview these writers or these authors, but you can look at what they’re currently doing, and then look 10 steps, 20 steps behind that, and then figure out, okay, what was their path to greatness, and then just replicate that.
I thought that was absolutely genius, and I’m currently racking my brain to think through applications of how I can apply that to my own life.
Bronson Hill: Well, the idea to the Third Door is just trying the things that other people are not doing, because there’s always a way. And this in sales, like we do this, like I’ve got to sell this new product in this hospital, which feels impossible, but I’ve got to find all these different avenues. And it’s just like, as an entrepreneur, which is if you’re a freelance anything, a writer or anything else, you’re an entrepreneur. You’re looking at trying to generate something that doesn’t exist, and you can’t go traditional routes typically. That’s why I tell people, don’t just apply for a job. Go on LinkedIn, do some networking. You know, hey, can you give me a referral, or can I ask you for five minutes about this job, and then say at the end, would you send this to your manager.
So I think it’s great. Anyway, I really appreciate you Nate, thanks for being here. Awesome interview with Mark Guberty, and I’d love to have you share this around. And we have some authors in the crowd, would love to know what you got most valuable out of this. And this is The Mailbox Money Show. We talk about all things related to passive income. If you want to grow your wealth, this is the place to do it.
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