Kevin talks about how to get started in an author career when you have no money and very few resources. Learn how to get the basics—cover, ebook layout, print layout, and distribution—for free. And learn how to tackle some of the business aspects, such as tracking sales and royalties, building a website, and marketing your books, plus investing back into your business and your future.

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TRANSCRIPT

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 Kevin Tumlinson:          00:01                Hey slingers, welcome back to another week of the Wordslinger Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about bootstrapping your writing career. So stick around and hear what I have had to say next,

Announcer:                   00:15                It's the Wordslinger Podcast, where story matters. Build your brand, write your book, redefine who you are. It's all about the story here. What's yours? Now here's the guy who invented pants, optional Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordslinger!

Singer:                          00:37                Wordslinger!

Kevin Tumlinson:          00:59                I don't know. We'll come up with something. I'm gonna, I'm probably going to be working on that for awhile. The whole name of the, uh, the episodes till I get the right thing, it's gotta be the right thing. Um, so anyway, on today's Solo slinger, we are a, we're going to be talking about bootstrapping your writing cruise. A favorite topic of mine really, because bootstrapping is a kind of at the core of everything I love about entrepreneurship, about startups, about, you know, all the, all these, uh, all these, uh, enterprises out there that started with basically nothing and built, built their way up. I highly recommend. By the way, just as a side note, there is a podcast, but on my MBA, NPR, a guy, Roz is the host, it's called how I built that. And it is a fantastic, it's, it's in some ways it's similar to this show.

Kevin Tumlinson:          01:52                Uh, the interview, um, episodes of this show. It's a lot more highly polished then, uh, the words on your podcast, but he talks to the people behind the brands that you know in love. So He's talked to folks who founded companies like I'm listening to the one about Zappos, the shoe retailer online. Uh, he did, uh, an interview with the guy who started honest tea. Um, and a whole bunch of others. I mean, just some really fascinating stories. I'm going through them one by one, even the ones that I, that normally wouldn't appeal to me. I listened to the interview with the, the woman who started dry bar, which is about the blow drying places that actually helped a women, uh, style their hair or you buy blow drying. Um, so listening to these things, it's been incredible to me how much I'm able to learn from these like case studies of startups in most of these people started with absolutely nothing.

Kevin Tumlinson:          02:50                Uh, if you've listened to words on your podcast for a while, I am a, I kind of have a similar approach. I don't just interview authors, interview really anybody, uh, would the idea of we can learn from all these different entrepreneurs and industries. It's, it's, there's, there are resources out there that we may not know about, uh, but that may be useful to us as indie authors. So, um, that is, that's kind of what this episode is about. The, well, it's sort of what it's about. So the idea of bootstrapping is, um, you build your business from the ground up using just the resources. You have a, you, you do it yourself. You're, you're this plucky entrepreneur who basically goes out and, you know, figures out what they need to know, what they need to have and you achieved that. Um, that has always appealed to me.

Kevin Tumlinson:          03:43                It's very, it's very individual approach, individualized approach to a building. Any sort of business I think is authors though. It's just, it just fit. It's just oddly appropriate for authors to, uh, to think about how they can bootstrap their careers. Um, now I did this and I gotta tell you, I, I don't think I still operate. Like I'm bootstrapping my career even though now these days I make, I make plenty of money, I make really good money doing this. Um, I still operate as if I don't have any money, is if everything is dependent on me. Um, and I think that works to my advantage now where I bootstrap, uh, I kinda came in so early on. Let me just walk you through, uh, Kevin Tomlinson's writing career. So I mean I'd been writing my whole life writing is actually kind of the easy part for me.

Kevin Tumlinson:          04:38                Um, that's the thing that I never really had that much trouble with. I didn't have some trouble early on with, um, writing long format stuff. I had to develop a bit of a discipline around that so that I could write full length books. But you know, the actual writing was never, um, was never all that much of a burden for me. Um, it just, you know, I, I learned a few skills early on and I applied those skills and learn a few more skills, applied those skills and just kept going. So, so, uh, we're bootstrapping came in for me was when I decided I wanted to start publishing fulltime or well, I wanted to start publishing long format stuff. I pulled together enough discipline, we'll say to write that first book. Uh, well let's, let's skip ahead. Because I had a traditional contract and that didn't work out so hot.

Kevin Tumlinson:          05:32                I didn't like the deal is going to cost me money out of pocket that I didn't really didn't have. Um, so, uh, I ditched that and I eventually, I fast forward a little bit to 2008. I D publish. Okay. So we're going to talk about indie publishing as a career and uh, and how I bootstrapped my own indie publishing career that sets this, that sets the stage. Okay. Uh, so two, eight, I write another book and, um, let's start looking around to find out what it's going to take them to publish this thing. I had encountered early versions of CreateSpace and KDP, whatever they were called at the time. They were called something different. I didn't care. I been, I had encountered those. I started hearing stories about folks like Amanda hocking and, uh, you know, people who were making a lot of money, uh, publishing as indie publishers.

Kevin Tumlinson:          06:26                Um, so I knew I knew some of what I needed. I knew that I needed, um, a cover designer. I knew that I needed someone to do my layout. I knew that I needed someone to build a website. Uh, you know, there were all these elements to the career. Now before this, I had done a lot of web design, um, even had a small business doing web design. Uh, so I had that as a skillset and as a part of that, I had gotten into graphic design. So I had that. I had photography skills and video skills. So, uh, right away I was able to utilize some of my existing skillset to, uh, to get started. Uh, so let's just focus on the website for a second. I built a website. I, um, you know, for awhile it was hosting, I was paying for a server and then a whole bunch of other stuff and I was hosting everything myself.

Kevin Tumlinson:          07:18                Uh, I don't do that now. I use Squarespace. Now. I'm not an affiliate Squarespace. Maybe I should be, but I like Squarespace. I like how secure it is. And I like how simple the interface is, how easy it is to build a stunning website. And if you go to Kevin [inaudible] dot com or words slinger, podcast.com, you'll get to see one of the websites I've built on that platform. So that'll give you kind of an idea of what you can do there. Um, so I built a site, I created graphics for it. I created copy for it. Things that I do thinks they were part of my career. So I'm using my skills, um, I needed to cover. So I went and I looked at other covers that were in the same genre. This is something I tell, I tell authors to do this. Even if you're aren't going to build your own covers, go, go into bookstores, go on to Amazon, find covers that are, that are, uh, for books in the same genre as what you write and uh, try to get your cover to look like those.

Kevin Tumlinson:          08:20                You don't have to mimic that design exactly, but you should spend some time making sure your book fits in on the shelf beside those books that it resembles those books enough that, uh, someone looking at them might say, okay, this is a professionally printed book. I'm going to buy it. Um, so I did all of that. I did the research, I had designed to cover, used my skills. Now I had to learn a few new skills because of this, you know, which is now, now we're getting into the real meat of, uh, this idea of bootstrapping. Um, it's not just about using the resources you have. It's about being willing to go out and find and cultivate new resources and new skills. So that you can fill in any gaps that you have. A, that includes meeting people who might be able to help you out, um, night if you don't have design skills, uh, web design or graphic design.

Kevin Tumlinson:          09:17                And if you're not a good copywriter, a don't fret, there are services out there, but what we're talking about right now is how to basically do this for free, um, or with the cost of time. So I would recommend that, uh, you know, once you've kind of done your research, let's just start with the cover. Once you've done your research, I found out what kind of cover you need, what it needs to look like. Um, and if you can't afford to hire a designer, then I would start looking around for ways to build that cover a yourself. Now I've talked about Canva in the past. A Canva has a, uh, uh, design, a cover design template that you can use for free. I do recommend that, uh, it gives you a lot of control. You can, you can, uh, choose from a photo library that they have on the site.

Kevin Tumlinson:          10:06                They've got some free photos. You can use stock photos, uh, you know, that keeps you from having to fall back on things like Microsoft paint, which I think paints around anymore. But they know using like a cheesy graphic editing suite of some kind or drawing program probably is not going to be the best bet for you. It's also not a good bet to just take a photo of a, of something on your, on your camera phone and just use that raw as your cover photo. Um, you're gonna want to, you're going to want a little more professionalism will say you're going to a little more finesse. Uh, I say that because just recently I was looking over someones covers. They literally took a picture. They took a picture of their front yard. There's like this White Pole, uh, in their front yard with this crappy looking light, just sort of dangling off of it, like it's been damaged in high wind or something.

Kevin Tumlinson:          11:05                Uh, their grass hadn't been moan in awhile. Apparently. Uh, the house looked pretty bad in pretty bad shape. So you know, now that maybe that's perfectly fine for whatever it is you're trying to do with this guy was writing a fantasy story. So, uh, it just didn't fit, I don't even know what he was going for there, I guess because there were trees don't know. I don't know, which makes me wonder if there's this sort of blind spot when it comes to this sort of thing. And I think to sort of compensate for that blind spot, you might want to consider bringing some folks in to, uh, to critique your work, you know? Um, so okay, you can, you can pick stock photos and, and you have techs treatments and things in Canva. There are other applications out there that let you do this as well.

Kevin Tumlinson:          11:59                If you happen to have access to Photoshop, that's great. If not, there are free graphics editing suites out there like gimp and gimp shop, g I m p Shop, uh, is one. It's very similar to Photoshop and the way it operates. Uh, there are tutorials online for all of these things. And so that brings me to another aspect of this. If there is a skill you need and you can't afford to pay someone else to do it, it's just down to you or nothing. Um, that is a perfect time to hop on youtube and a and start looking for tutorials on how to do certain things. Um, maybe you won't find a tutorial for how to build a book cover in gimp shop. You might not find that, but search for it anyway. A book cover design search for you know, base, you know, basic tutorials on how you use gimp or Photoshop or Canva or whatever.

Kevin Tumlinson:          12:51                Uh, they're out there. And so the, the idea here is that you are reaching out, learning a new skill, reaching young, adding something to your repertoire of resources that will allow you to, uh, to step up your game later, if that makes sense. Um, so there is that, there is a, the, so that's the cover design aspect of this. Uh, I'm going to say, by the way, and May, and I'll try to remember to get to the news story about this, uh, later. But, uh, you might consider focusing at first on ebooks because first of all, there's very little overhead involved with ebooks. Uh, you know, aside from things like cover, design, layout, all that, which, you know, we're, we're gonna talk about how you can, uh, do that stuff for free. But, uh, you know, the, right now there's a, there's a paper shortage, which I'll talk about a little later, but print is expensive in that there is overhead.

Kevin Tumlinson:          13:54                Uh, in order to get a proof copy, you have to pay, you know, a certain amount, like three or four bucks. Usually. Some people don't, don't have that kind of cash. I mean, honestly, some people don't have just random cash to throw at things like that, you know, to pay for it. Cause it's not going to be like three bucks. It's going to be like three bucks plus $15 in shipping, you know, or whatever. Um, if you can't afford that, it's completely fine with an ebook. You don't have those costs. Um, so I would say if you're in the position where you really just legitimately don't have the resources to uh, to spend on anything, uh, focus first on ebooks. Uh, you know, the writing part of this is a discipline, something you're going to have to come back to your everyday. We talked, I think last episode about the idea of, you know, writing anywhere with whatever resources you have available.

Kevin Tumlinson:          14:46                Um, you can write with pen and paper and that sort of thing. Libraries will give you access to computers. So you know, you really don't have any limitations here. You can find a way to write your book. Uh, and if you find a way to write your book you're going to have a way to publish it. And using a tool like drafted digital makes that a lot easier cause you can do your, your conversion, your ebook conversion, print layout, uh, all that stuff for free. Uh, so if you've used the free cover designer on Canva and use the free Ebook, lay out and print layout on draft to digital and then you use the free distribution on draft to digital. I mean your investment is really just been time. And that's, that's a big key component, uh, to bootstrapping. Um, so those are, those are some major things for the actual book, for the actual generation of the book.

Kevin Tumlinson:          15:40                And we've talked about that kind of thing before. So this is almost more of a review of that. Uh, but now we want to talk a little bit more about once you've, uh, once you've written the book, once you've managed to design a cover, uh, I didn't quite throw in web design specifically, but you know, there are a lot of free tools out there for web design, wordpress blog spot. Uh, you know, half a dozen of them. So if you can't afford to pay for a website, there are plenty of free web options out there. Uh, I think wix may have a free option. So look into those. Uh, but you might also look into drafted. Digital's a books to read platform, which has, um, like our author pages, um, book tabs, reading lists, you know, these are, you know, this is a way for you to have a web presence without having to pay a dime for it.

Kevin Tumlinson:          16:34                Um, I'd advice is going to come at you from all over the place about, you know, whether or not you should own your content, which you should. Uh, but we don't, we don't claim your rights over anything you put up there, so you're, you're free to do, use our stuff anyway you want. It didn't cost you any money and you might consider using a platform like blogspot or, uh, a wordpress to build a blog and another side, uh, you might also consider making sure you have a presence on medium, which has a lot of, um, there are a lot of people who visit that site and read content on it as I can share content on that site. So if you're putting your content there, it can help with your discoverability. So these are some ways for you to have a web presence. And, uh, I think, I think right now, where are our total, uh, money output for our overhead is a zero, right?

Kevin Tumlinson:          17:29                It's zero to some undefined number. You can put throw as much money as you want this. Um, but I love getting as close to zero as possible. So, uh, so okay, so far we've discussed, um, writing the book doesn't cost you anything. You can do that, you know, by hand, you can do it in a library. Uh, so you don't even have to have the investment of equipment if you happen to have an iPhone or an iPad or a small laptop or desktop computer, you know, and that you're covered, you can write on those things and publish from those things. But the library will, will allow you to, uh, publish from there, you know, from their computers. You can do it from there. Um, Dropbox is a free, you can have a free account on Dropbox, so you can store your book in Dropbox or Google drive is also free.

Kevin Tumlinson:          18:16                A Google drive has a, you know, it's attached to the Google docs and the, the whole Google office suite. And that's all free software. So love free. Um, okay. So now let's talk a bit, a little bit more our, let's get into a different aspect of a bootstrapping your career and that's going to be, um, we're going to talk a little bit about marketing and a little bit about how to run your, the business aspect of your writing career. Um, let's talk about business a little. So, uh, you wanna, you know, you're going to be making money hopefully from the sale, the sale of books. So you're going to want to track this stuff. Now there are tools out there. Uh, they'll let you do all kinds of things, check your reports and all that. What I like about, um, recently, uh, Ktp, um, has introduced a Beta for a new sort of book report.

Kevin Tumlinson:          19:14                You know, there was book report, which was a plugin that will let you sort of slice and dice the, uh, the data from a Amazon's reporting, uh, into something readable and digestible. Uh, but they, uh, they just raised the price on that to like 20 bucks a month. Um, of course, it's free up until you make your first thousand dollars in a, in sales and once you hit thousand dollars, I f I kind of feel like, you know, 10 or 20 bucks a for something like that is, it shouldn't be that big a deal. But I can understand why people don't want to pay that. Um, well, the good news is that, you know, you don't have to anymore KTP has introduced this a reporting tool. It's in Beta when you go to your KDP account and you click on reports, um, there's a little thing right now at the top that says, try out the Beta.

Kevin Tumlinson:          20:02                You can click on that. And I've been playing with it now for a couple of weeks and I am really impressed. I'm really impressed with how it works. There's some things I wish it did that it doesn't do, but it's, it's, it's really up there. Uh, it's really quite powerful. So, and it makes it very easy to read your, uh, you know, your figures. You can see your sales, uh, sales of unit, sales of Patriots. You can see an estimated a royalty. Do, um, you know, you can even a move around day by day and see what you made, you know, yesterday, day before, et cetera. See what your current day sales are. A so there's a lot to that. And that's a free tool for being in the, uh, the kindle direct publishing a ecosystem drafted digital has a very similar report reporting tool that tells you all your sales and all your, all the different platforms that you distribute to through draft two digital.

Kevin Tumlinson:          20:56                So you can see all your reports, you can see royalties do, you can see royalties, pain, um, and there's a whole bunch of little prebuilt charts that you can pull up, uh, to see how things are going. You can check sales by storefront in sales by country and things like that. So, uh, that is very handy and that's part of running your business to, so there's no overhead to that either if you do it this way. Uh, and if you use something like Google sheets or if you happen to have Microsoft Excel or whatever, you can, you know, you can throw this stuff into a spreadsheet and generate charts. And what have you. It's not really my bag. Uh, but you can, you can do all that. Um, I ride, I do highly recommend, by the way, the Google office stuff. Uh, just, it works very well.

Kevin Tumlinson:          21:41                It's universally compatible no matter what device you're on. A, I do like the word processor. I mean the fact is it's just a great office suite for no money. It's compatible with practically everything. Uh, it has, it has its downsides. There are, there are always going to be things that are not perfect. Um, let, Microsoft Office doesn't, isn't perfect either. So, uh, so there's all of that. And then, um, okay, so that's, you know, more of the business size. You want to also manage your accounting and, and things. Um, I recommend, you know, having a, a getting one of the, there, there you can, whatever your bank is. I use an online bank called simple bank is now owned by Bba compass. Uh, they merged about two years ago when I got it. It wasn't, it was an independent. Um, I like it because it's a, for one, it's, it pays me sort of a dividend or we'll just call it interest, pays me interest on whatever is in there like once a quarter.

Kevin Tumlinson:          22:48                And it's not much. It's like, it's like 0.002% or something, but, uh, you know, it's good for a quarter every now and then. Uh, but that's not, that's not really why I like it. I like it cause it is just like the name of Claude is very simple, very straightforward. Uh, everything's accessible online. I can do transfers. Uh, it's got a great app. It's well designed. Okay. I like well-designed. Uh, and there are no fees for having it. So, uh, I don't like banks. Go figure. I'm not a big fan of the banking system. Uh, I have bank accounts, but I like to use services like USAA. We have USAA accounts. Uh, I used to have a Texas Dao, a credit union account. Um, I now I use simple. So you know, I like alternatives to the banks because banks tend to do things like charge fees, you know, charge you a fee for having an account if your balance is lower than what they like.

Kevin Tumlinson:          23:44                They charge you a, if you want to transfer money out, they charge you a fee. A S, uh, simple really doesn't have those fees. Uh, so I would, I would encourage you to find a banking solution like that, even if it's only for your author business. And I encourage you to have an account, a separate from your personal account for your author business, pay yourself a salary if you must. Um, I would actually try, I would, I would advise you to here's financial advice from someone who, by the way, not a financial advisor and not all that great with money historically, uh, getting much better with money. But here's the, here's some words linger financial advice. Um, use an APP called Acorn, which I will give you a code for that actually, uh, if I can find it real quick. But, um, if you use acorn, you can, there's acorns.com.

Kevin Tumlinson:          24:43                Um, don't go there. I'm going to give you a code, but if you use acorn, you can actually, um, half money rolled over into this account based on your spending. So it does this roundup thing. So, uh, you use your debit card for example, and you go off and you pay a dollar 50 for something and Acorn, we'll, we'll round that up to $2 and put the 50 cents into an investment for you on your, on your behalf. Um, and then you can also add money to this, right? You can have a recurring, uh, amount of income go into it, or you can, um, just do one time, uh, uh, you know, one time investments and that sort of thing. But what happens is you can choose how you want this money invested. Uh, and just, I just let them do everything on autopilot and that allows that money to grow fairly quickly over time.

Kevin Tumlinson:          25:41                Um, it's, it's, it's pretty remarkable how well it's done for me. Uh, so here's what I'm going to do. I've got a, uh, I've got a URL. It's acorns.com/invite/, h, r, h, t, y, F, and those, those letters are all upper case. So acorns.com/invite/h, r, h, o, t, y. F. If you go and you do that, I get some money, uh, and you get some money, I think it's like five bucks for me and five bucks for you. Uh, so, uh, go, go sign up for that. I'm going to put that on the show notes so that you've got it. Um, that way you can start investing your money. So my recommendation is, you know, uh, have a separate banking account for your, your business. Uh, and then if you're, you know, if this is side money for awhile, take all that side money, put it back into the business.

Kevin Tumlinson:          26:43                So take a big chunk of it and put it in something that invests in grows. And then I use the rest for things like, as you get enough to pay someone to do your covers, stop making your own covers and start paying someone to do a stop painting. You know, you the lay on all that stuff's for free, but the things that you really should be paying someone for things like book covers and maybe some other graphic design, web design, copywriting, uh, to help market your work. And then you can start, you know, as it really grows, you can start investing in things like promotions and PR and that sort of thing. There are a lot of promotions out there you can do as part of your business. This is the marketing side. Start looking for ways you can share, um, you know, trade a mailing list and things with a newsletters rather with, uh, with other authors in your genre.

Kevin Tumlinson:          27:32                A, you do want to build a newsletter and the way you, uh, the way you do this, by the way, start with the people you know and email them and ask them. You're going to want to set something up where they can download this. And I, I think, uh, you can, uh, book funnel as a way to do this, but there is some overhead with book funnel. Uh, maybe at first is just offered to give someone a book. You will email them a link or a file or whatever if they will, uh, give you permission, add them to a mailing list and then use, I used to recommend a MailChimp, but I can't do that anymore since they, they're switching gears, making, uh, making it much more expensive to use them. Um, mailer lite is a good one. So may go to mailer lights, set up an account and s and just start asking people permission to add them to your mailing list and then ask them to, you know, start sending them emails.

Kevin Tumlinson:          28:26                But in every email, ask if they'll share your email with someone who might be interested. That's a way to start growing. And then go on Facebook, Twitter, everywhere you have a following and you want to offer something, offer some Freebie. I recommend writing an original short story. If you're a fiction writer or an original article or something. If you're a nonfiction writer, something that is related to your book but is not necessarily your book. Maybe it's the first chapter, you know, maybe some bonus content. Um, but offer what we call a top of funnel offer. You want to offer something for free that gets people interested in and gets them on your mailing list and then why when they're on your mailing list, don't spam them with buying my book all the time, but instead, uh, email them with some personable content as I call it, content that is engaging on a more personal level.

Kevin Tumlinson:          29:19                You don't have to share personal details about your life. You don't have to, you can. Um, I kind of recommend getting too personal or get your recommended against getting too personal, but, um, you can share things like, you know, hey, I was just in St Louis for example, I was just in St Louis with my wife and we went to the zoo. Did you know the disease is free? Is the Saint Louis, did you know that they also have other really cool free staff? Uh, it was very inspiring. Are probably right about that by the way. Speaking of writing or, uh, thanks to everybody for being such a great, uh, you know, presence in my life, being a friend. Um, I have my book. Kevin's adventures in Saint Louis is available right now. Uh, if you get a chance, go pick up a copy. If you've already read it, I'd appreciate a review, uh, until, until next time, you know, and then you, uh, you write to them with some frequency, either once a month.

Kevin Tumlinson:          30:20                I do it once a week, but some people advise against that and I can see why, uh, but you know, keep up with them and treat every email you write to them as if it's a personal email, as if it's you're emailing a friend. Okay. Uh, and then invite them to write back saying, Hey, what's your favorite travel destination? Where's the last place you went? Have you ever been the Saint Louis? What would you do in St Louis if you were back there? Um, and then when they respond to you respond to them, every email, every time you get an email from somebody on your mailing list, you write back, you'd be kind and you are profusely thankful and grateful. And, uh, you know, you treat them like, you know, like the heavenly angel that they are.

Kevin Tumlinson:          31:07                Uh, so that's part of the marketing. Um, so I think we've covered a lot here and a, um, I mean where we're at time. So I want to go ahead and wrap up, but, uh, I hope that this was coherent and a hope that it was useful, but it just kind of in closing, let's see if we can wrap it up and I don't have notes so bear with me here. But the idea here to bootstrap your writing career, um, is to first figure out what resources you have that can go into this Gaba hose up. Make a list, okay. Um, if you don't, if there's something you don't have or don't know and you need it, the neither. Go out and cultivate the skill. Learn the skill you use. Use tools like youtube. Ask Your friends, ask anybody. You can think of a, if you happen to know somebody who does this stuff, ask them to teach you or give you some advice.

Kevin Tumlinson:          31:58                They may offer to do it for you for free. Um, offered to make a meal or buy drinks or uh, take care of someone's dog or whatever to get them to do something you need for free. Okay. You give something in exchange for word, but a whatever it takes, go off and figure out how do I get what I need to do, what I need to do. Um, so learn new skills, meet new people, go off and, and research things as deeply as you can. So you know how to, you know how to do the as much of this yourself as possible or you know what's going to go into it so you know what to expect. You know what to look for, that sort of thing. Um, get your business in, get a separate account for your author money. Uh, you know, the old adage is pay yourself first.

Kevin Tumlinson:          32:47                That's, that's great. I think in this case, paying yourself first is putting every dime you make from your writing career back into your writing career as much as possible. Take 10% of it and put it into acorn. Uh, and, uh, I would appreciate it if you'd use my link. And let me give you that to you again. acorns.com/invite/all caps, h, r, h, t, y, f, you's Acorn, a wheel. I think you get five bucks and I get five bucks. And I like that deal. Uh, but the reason I say you use that is one, it's safe. I've been using it now for a couple of years. Uh, I've really watched my money grow. Uh, in fact, I've, every quarter I up the amount that I have going in on a recurring basis, but the roundups alone have netted me probably a few thousand dollars. So a really worthwhile to put your money in there and it's a, it's FDI, ca, uh, backed and everything, so your money is safe.

Kevin Tumlinson:          33:46                Um, anyway, that's my plug. That's the only sort of sponsorship thing. Uh, but, but you know, do well, put your money to work for you is what I'm saying. And then, uh, you know, use, um, the free resources that are out there. Drafted digital has got a ton of free resources. There's no obligations involved there. Uh, the, uh, Google drive and Google docs and Google, you know, Google office, that's all free for you. Use Dropbox has a free Dropbox account. You can use Google drive and Dropbox. Pretty much the same. So, uh, take a look at both and uh, just you know, what you need to do is make, uh, make yourself a list of everything you need and put it up against your list of everything you have and everything that you're capable of and where there are deficiencies, makeup plan right now to go off and build up against those deficiencies, find, find resources.

Kevin Tumlinson:          34:40                So, um, I think that's it. And A, and I'll talk about this more of course in the future. This is one of my favorite topics, so, but if you need a little more advice, a little more guidance, a, if this was not quite enough to, uh, to help you out, reach out to me. Go to a ward slinging. I'll be one of your resources. How's that go towards on your podcast.com this show and other shows like it, by the way, are definitely resources. You can learn a lot from podcasts. And that's where I think a go to word singer, podcast.com. Hit the contact button, email me with any questions you have or if you can leave a question on the comments on this, uh, on this episode and I think this is episode one 86 maybe. Let me check that. I'm going to double check that real quick.

Kevin Tumlinson:          35:28                But, um, the point here is, uh, you can leave a comment onwards, slinger podcast.com on the show notes for this specific episode and a and I will get it and I will, uh, answer your questions and it is going to be in fact episode one 86. Um, but otherwise that's going to do it. Uh, we are, we're out of time. Hope you got a lot out of this episode. Let me know and I'm going to have more stuff like this and if there are specific things you'd like to learn about in the future, uh, you can, you can let me know about that stuff too. I'm happy to try to, uh, I'll, I'll, you know, if it's something that can be an entire episode, I'm happy to try and make that happen. Um, but otherwise I'm here for you and, uh, I hope, uh, I hope,

Kevin Tumlinson:          36:14                I hope so. God bless you. Thanks for tuning in to another. We can words on your podcast. I'll be around and I make sure you tune in Friday for our interview this week and I'll see you then.

Singer:                          36:37                Wordslinger!