How To Turn A Selfie Into $250,000 With John Romaniello

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

John Romaniello is a New York Times bestselling author and one of the most highly regarded experts in the fitness industry today.

He has written for a myriad of publications, ranging from Men’s Health to Fast Company, and is also the author of hundreds of articles and dozens of digital products.

He’s also an angel investor and serves as an adviser to nearly a dozen fitness and tech companies.

Ever wondered how a first-time author could get a seven-figure book deal? Well, John is that kind of guy. In this episode, we discuss John’s first highly successful product launch and hear how he made $250,000 from a single selfie.

John also shares how he builds strong relationships with his audiences through his writing and storytelling process. We discover how John balances writing three books at one time and why talking about butt sex and Harry Potter has helped him grow a loyal following.

Lastly, we find out about his plan for a full immersion writing retreat workshop. And John shares why he decided to give up masturbating and buy a stuffed llama (and much more of course).

By the end of this entertaining episode, you will have a myriad of helpful tips to lead a more authentic business and life.

Key Points From This Episode:

• The 7-year-old selfie that landed John $250,000 in revenue.
• How John launched his first product from his mom’s dining room table.
• The power of the non-pitch and how it propelled John’s business.
• Why everyone wants a story – even when it’s written in the back of a cab.
• Learn more about John’s history as a Dungeons & Dragon and writing nerd.
• Don’t miss John’s upcoming writer’s retreat in the Hamptons.
• The article John wrote about Tim Ferris, that Tim Ferris loved.
• John’s secret to successfully building his audience.
• Butt sex, Harry Potter and the value of just being yourself.
• Interacting with your customers on the days of normality.
• Why John believes Voldemort could have crushed it on Tinder.
• Find out how John recommends keeping track of thoughts.
• Hear more about John’s upcoming three books.
• Why John decided to give up masturbation and pornography.
• Meet Carlos: The stuffed llama John travels with.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“Nobody knows that mama Roman was serving my buddy and I chicken cutlets as we’re about to bring in thousands of dollars.” — @JohnRomaniello

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“Storytelling is the thing that I’ve trained to do every single day my entire life.” — @JohnRomaniello

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“If there’s one rule you should try to apply to your life, it is to take pleasure in the violent exposure to your own ignorance.” — @JohnRomaniello

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[0:24:43].1]

“Let me tell you about butt sex and the Game of Thrones.” — @JohnRomaniello

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[0:36:35].1]

“The most interesting thing is when you zig when everyone else is zagging.” — @JohnRomaniello

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[0:37:25].1]

“I personally believe that it would be criminal to not share every half clever thing that tumbles into my head.” — @JohnRomaniello

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[0:43:17].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

The Perfect Day Formula by Craig Valentine – https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Day-Formula-Control-Your/dp/1619613557

How A First Time Author Got A Seven Figure Book Deal – https://tim.blog/2013/04/15/how-to-get-a-book-deal/

Neil Strauss’s book The Game – https://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society-Artists/dp/0060554738

Winning The Story Wars by Jonah Sachs – https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Story-Wars-Stories-Future/dp/1422143562

Everything by Joseph Campbell – https://www.amazon.com/joseph-campbell/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ajoseph%20campbell

Make Love not Porn by Cindy Gallop – https://blog.ted.com/cindy_gallop_ma/

John Romaniello Website – http://www.johnromaniello.com/

Roman Fitness Systems – http://romanfitnesssystems.com/

John Romaniello on Twitter – https://twitter.com/johnromaniello

John Romaniello on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/OfficialJohnRomaniello

Transcript Below:

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 037

“JR: I recently got a vape and I have no idea what the dosage is that I should be using and I just got blasted last night. Not realizing that I would not, it’s also like – it’s like a strain that affects your body and I sat and I just – I was glued to the couch watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows part two and I just found my mind wandering and for four hours, after the movie ended. I was just like, man, if Voldemort was born like 60 years later, probably wouldn’t have started this cult, probably just would like played a lot of X Box, maybe after high school he would have like gotten in good shape, crush it on Tinder.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:41.3] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:01:06.7] RN: Hey there and welcome to the show that believes leveraging failure is not only the fastest way to learn but is also the fastest way to grow your business and live a life of absolute freedom. In a world that only shares successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs and this is a platform for their stories.

And today’s story is of John Romaniello. John is a New York Times bestselling author and one of the most highly regarded experts in the fitness industry today. He has written for a myriad of publications ranging from Men’s Health to Fast Company and is also the author of hundreds of articles and dozens of digital products.

He’s also an angel investor and serves as an adviser to nearly a dozen fitness and tech companies. We’re going to be discussing John’s first highly successful product launch and the $250,000 selfie story that came as a byproduct years later. He’s also going to share how he builds strong relationships with his audiences through his writing and storytelling process. Finally, how John balances writing three books at one time and his plan for a full immersion writing retreat workshop and much more.

But first, luckily, all I travel with now is a backpack for one reason only, it’s clothing form an innovative Toronto apparel company called Unbound Merino, they have clothes made out of merino wool that you can wear for months on end without ever needing to have it washed. This means I can travel less since the clothes clean themselves.

Check out the show notes page for an exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t be able to get anywhere else and if you’d like to stay up to date on all the Fail On podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and signup for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:59.2] RN: Let’s talk about this $250,000 selfie.

[0:03:02.2] JR: Let’s talk about the $250,000 selfie. Okay, this is a story about a story and the story is that, I like money entrepreneurs, I’m not as responsible with certain things as I should be and creating content is one of those things, right? You get in your head and I’ve been really trying to be more diligent with Instagram and building my Instagram and I see what some of my friends are doing.

I don’t take a lot of selfies, I’m not good at it. And not because I don’t like – I’ve never met a mirror I didn’t like but for whatever – every time I take a selfie, I look at them, I’m like, my nose can’t be that fucking big. I don’t have the skillset and so there’s a folder in your iPhone titled selfies and it organizes them by date and I just went into that because selfies are like – if you want to build your Instagram, you got to post a lot of selfies, people want to see you.

I clicked on it and it brought me to the first selfie I ever took which was on February 20th, super early in the morning, 3:30 in the morning in 2010. I lived my entire life until 2010, never needing to take a selfie and then at some point, I’m being on the cusp of millennialism took over. I’m a story teller by nature and so I thought, “I’m going to post this selfie and tell this story.” The story of the selfie is that it was taken very late at night during the first product launch I ever did.

I had been in the internet marketing fitness world for a little while, I had been doing some online coaching and then it was time to launch my product and so the selfie is the frame where I essentially tell the story of this product launch where I had been working on it for months and everything’s coming to fruition.

You know, I launch what was then called Final Phase Fat Loss, it was a series of ebooks to help people lose the last 10 to 15 pounds and just right there, you know, it’s a really tight niche and the product had everything it needed. The copy was really great, the hook was good, the story was good, I’d spent a lot of time on it, I was very proud of it.

[0:05:08.2] RN: Did you write it?

[0:05:08.8] JR: I did, it was the first piece of copy I ever wrote and that was how I learned that I was a good copywriter because I saw what everyone else did, people sent me, my affiliates who were going to promote the product, sent me a lot of information and they’re just – there was a list of these 11 things that one needs to have in this order and I did it and I went in and I killed it.

It was a lot of very satisfying moments leading up to the launch where everyone was sort of nervous because I had never done this before and I sent the copy to Craig Ballantyne who was one of my mentors and then he sent it to another one of our affiliates. Mike Garry who – a very successful guy.

Had like a 900,000 person list in 2010. The subject line was “Holy shit.” I was CC’d and then the body was just “Read this” and a link to the sales page and I was like, “I guess I did well.” We got all these affiliates promoting, it’s going crazy, you know, I had been running a successful personal training business, blah-blah-blah, I don’t want to tell like the origin story of my business.

The launch went very well. And, you know, it’s this moment where your life is changing and you’re checking, you click bank account and it’s like $120,000, you check it again and it’s $125,000.

[0:06:19.5] RN: Kind of refresh game.

[0:06:20.1] JR: Yeah, the refresh game. But overall, the launch did like $465,000 in revenue, which was the biggest for a fitness ebook launch at that time. That was my goal, I really wanted to just come in and swing my dick around and be like, “I’m fucking here to party guys” and my buddy, Joe Marin who partnered with me on the launch had done the most prior to that like $330,000.

We came in and we broke that. At some point, you know, I realized how my life was changing and you know, the fact that –

[0:06:50.6] RN: This is a written story that you’ve written out?

[0:06:53.5] JR: Yeah, I’m in the cab, I flew to Mexico for my buddy’s wedding, my buddy Joey Persia who is in my Mastermind, he asked me to officiate his wedding. I’m driving to – from the Cancun airport in the back of a cab Tulum which is an hour and a half drive, looking for Instagram content because I don’t want to just start posting Mexico selfies and be an asshole.

I find the selfie and now, in the cab on my phone, I’m writing out the story, talking about the selfie which essentially is the story of the launch and how the online business bloomed around that.

Yeah, it wound up sort of leading me to talk about how coaching was very valuable and how – I just really want to tell the story because the main part of that story is this: People know the legend of Roman and they know that chubby kid, thick guy, they know, I came out swinging with Final Phase Fat Loss.

A lot of people don’t know is that I launched that product and this is the important part from my mother’s dining room table. I had been in a serious relationship, like why I got started in the online business and when it ended, we had lived together, I needed to move out and I was sort of –

In that like really crazy grind mode wherein I would get up at five in the morning, train clients at six, you know, I’d be out until nine PM and then I would get home and write content and work on the product.

Part of it was like I wanted to save a little bit of money but there was really this thing where I was like – I don’t need to – I’ll just move in with my mother, I moved back in at home and licked my wounds and you know –

[0:08:31.6] RN: How old were at this time?

[0:08:32.2] JR: I was 27.

[0:08:33.1] RN: That’s a tough ego hit, right?

[0:08:34.1] JR: It’s a tough ego hit but you know, now, telling everyone – that’s always the part of intentionally left out of...