Interview With Shawn Swinigan

Interview With Shawn Swinigan – Creator of ExtraIncomeForAll.com

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Note: I’ve tried my best to summarize the main parts of the interview (note, this is not word-for-word, so you may want to still listen to the audio interview above).

Paul: This is Paul Schlegel, founder of WorkAtHomeTruth.  I’m here with Shawn Swinigan who runs an interesting membership site called “Extra Income For All”. I’ve enjoyed knowing him because his approach to showing people how to earn extra income and run home businesses is quite a bit different than what I’ve generally seen.

So Shawn, tell us a little bit about your background.

Shawn: I’ve had the drive to be an entrepreneur since I was 16. Neither of my parents ran their own business and they had traditional jobs. What I did gain from them that helped in my entrepreneurial pursuits was their work ethic. Work had – work smart – and do whatever it takes to be successful.

I learned much about business from other men and women who owned their own businesses. I was attracted to their sense of freedom and the fact that their direct efforts were rewarded.

At first I still took the traditional path of going to college, grad school, and finding a job.

But during that time I was always working towards finding a way to use my business mindset. My experiences have exposed me to thousands of people in different settings that allowed me to study what separates a successful person and a person who has the talent but will never succeed.

At one time I was in a position where I was managing over 400 eople at a university. That allowed me to work with a variety of people causing me to create a diverse environment allowing all types of people to succeed. After those 10 years of working at the university I was able to consistently identify a successful path for a person based on what type of person they were.

Eventually I wanted to spend more time with my family and I started my real estate career and produced over a milloin dollars in sales in the first 7 months. My success was driven by three things – drive, knowledge, and resources - and by resources I mean other successful people that helped me learn what it was going to take to be successful in that market.

I was also faced with a challenge and an opportunity when my son’s corporate childcare center was closing. I wanted what was best for my son – so myself and the director paired up to create a new childcare community. Over the next two years we created a new community that grossed over 2 million dollars in 3 years. Again, the success of that venture was due to drive, knowledge and resources.

As I continue in my own home business I know the experiences that I have utilized over the last 15 years with comes down to what I thought was important to include in ExtraIncomeForAll.com.

Paul: Sounds like you’ve accomplished a lot and you’ve helped a lot of people along the way. …what do you look for? Are there people just flat-out refuse to help?

Shawn: Yeh. Lazy people. People who want something for nothing. I just have no time for them.

Here’s what I mean.

I have a friend who is constantly finding new – and sometimes unusual – ways to generate extra income fast. Now, we’re not talking about large sums of money here, but certainly enough to help out with things like car payments, groceries, and things like that. Sometimes it can be much more than that, but generally we’re talking about smaller amounts – although  if you put a lot of them together you could have a nice little windfall.

But here’s the thing.

Even when I show people the really easy ways to generate small amounts of extra cash…there are a certain number of them that just don’t do anything at all. Nothing.

Paul: So what do you think is stopping them?

Shawn: Honestly I’m not sure, but I do have a few guesses.

There are three big problems I see. And I’m sorry if this comes across as harsh, but I’ve got to tell it like it is.

I think a lot of people just don’t believe it’s possible – even the people who are constantly looking for ways to

First of all, people need to see at least SOME results fairly quickly – make at least SOME cash early on. It’s one thing to BELIEVE you can do something. It’s quite another to actually experience DOING it.

That’s why in ExtraIncomeForAll.com we have an entire section showing people simple ways to generate cash quickly. I’m not talking about huge sums of money, but a lot of those ideas can help people put money in their pocket in under a week.

Paul: That’s impressive, though. What are the other two problems you see people have when trying to create their own income?

Shawn: Well, people expect too much too fast. Then when they don’t get it – when they don’t wake up with a bank full of money while they sleep – they give up.

Again, almost anybody can generate SOME cash pretty fast, but you are NOT going to wake up tomorrow with thousands of dollars in your bank account while you sleep.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate seeing people falling for the same old get-rich-quick schemes over and over again. And part of it isn’t their fault. Everywhere you look – on T.V, on the Internet – you constantly see so-called “gurus” claiming they can teach you how to “get rich quick” doing “little or no work at all”.

Now, let’s think about that for a minute.

I know of NO other area where people expect to accomplish everything instantly. NONE. Do you?

You don’t study Martial Arts and expect to become a blackbelt in two days. You don’t take piano lessons and expect to play at Carnegie Hall next week.

Yet, when it comes to making money online or at home, people have this strange idea that common sense no longer applies. That’s a HUGE mistake.

No matter what you do – whether it’s going to the movies, learning how to drive, or making the money you want – there’s only ONE way to get there – and that’s ONE step at a time.

Paul: That’s a great way of looking at things. I really hope that people take time to think about what you’re saying.

Shawn: Thanks.

Paul: OK. So, you’ve said you can show people how to make some cash quickly, but they shouldn’t expect to get rich overnight, is that about right?

Shawn: Yep.

Paul: You also mentioned a third stumbling block people have when trying to make money online or at home . Can you tell me more about that?

Shawn: Sure, it’s a little thing called “opportunity hopping”…lack of focus.

Again, it’s common sense.

Let’s say you want to learn to play tennis and you want to learn to play the guitar. Obviously you’re going to learn to play tennis much faster if you take tennis lessons 4 weeks in a row as compared to say taking tennis for 3 weeks, then taking piano lessons for 2 weeks, doing something else for 5 weeks, and then coming back and taking 6 more weeks of tennis lessons.

It’s the same with money making opportunities or home businesses, though most people never seem to really “get” that.

Paul: Yeh. It sounds like complete lunacy to jump from one opportunity to another like that.
But I’m sure people are thinking “what if I waste all my time on something that doesn’t work?

Shawn: That’s a good point. And there’s a really easy answer for that.

First of all, you have to have a set of rules to figure out whether or not an opportunity worth pursuing.

That’s something we cover at ExtraIncomeForAll.com. We give people a step-by-step system to help them eliminate time-wasters and money-drainers in 45 minutes or less.

Paul: What do you think about affiliate marketing? Do you think that’s a good place for people to start.

Shawn: Well, really that depends on the person.

But again I would say that people should start with something where they can see SOME results. For some people that will be affiliate marketing. For others it might be writing or posting comments at the growing number of websites that share their revenue with their users.

There are also quite a few sites set up to make it easier for people to sell their expertise in just about any area.

And as I mentioned before I have a friend who is constantly feeding me new and sometimes unusual ways to make cash fairly quickly. Again, you may not earn “quit your job” type money but you will certainly walk away with more than you would have had just sitting around.

Paul: And I understand you’ve also put together an entire database of business ideas organized by people’s skills and interests?

Shawn: Yes, that’s right.

Paul: Is there anything different about it than all of those other “101 business ideas” books out there already?

Shawn: Yes. Definitely. In fact that’s why I created this database.

Well, first of all the database is organized by skills and interests. So writers can find writing opportunities. Animal lovers can find opportunities having to do with animals and so forth.

But I think the most important difference is that almost all of the “101 business ideas” books just didn’t give enough details. They basically said “here are some ideas…good luck!

At ExtraIncomeForAll.com there is a lot of important information that is provided that almost every “business ideas” book leaves out.

Paul: Such as?

Shawn: Such as specific marketplaces geared toward selling the particular product or service the idea covers. Such as examples of other businesses in the marketplace.

I also made sure to include suggestions for suppliers when possible as well as important associations, organizations, forums, or magazines having to do with the idea.

And of course places to get even more information about the ideas.

Paul: That definitely sounds a lot different than most of the business idea books I’ve seen.

Shawn: Yes. And also we provide an entire marketing section with training to specifically help people market their businesses.

Paul: So it sounds like you have everything covered from A-Z

Shawn: Well, I wouldn’t say everything, but I did set out of course to try to help people by including important things that I saw missing in other money making, home business, and internet marketing courses.

Paul: Right. So what about affiliate marketing – getting paid to sell other companies’ products or generate leads for them? We talked about that earlier.

Shawn: We have two full step-by-step courses covering affiliate marketing.

Paul: And why did you pick those two courses?

Shawn: The first one was included because it shows people how to do affiliate marketing without spending money. Like you, I’m a big believer in people bootstrapping their business when possible. And this course shows people how to generate income from affiliate marketing without spending money.

Paul: And the other affiliate marketing course? Why did you include that?

Shawn: The other one shows people how to sell physical products on Amazon as an affiliate. And I’m not just talking about books. I’m talking about T.V.s, stereo systems, home appliances, and just about anything else you can think of.

I think it’s important for people to understand the enormous potential that is available for affiliate marketers. I think a lot of people think affiliate marketers just sell eBooks or ClickBank products.

But those are actually an incredibly small portion of the types of products affiliates are selling.

They sell pool tables, porch swings, golf equipment, gardening tools, office supplies. Again, almost anything you can think of you can almost always find an affiliate program for.

Paul: So much, much bigger than  just eBooks and ClickBank products.

Shawn: Right. Much bigger. I want people to see the entire affiliate marketing picture – which is something most online marketers haven’t done a very good job of showing them.

Paul: Right, even products like marshmallow guns.

Shawn: Yes – a great example of an item that the average new affiliate might not think about if all they do is look at scammy get-rich-quick sites all day long.

Paul: True. But what are you going to do? There are just a certain number of people who don’t really want to learn how to make money. They say they do. But their actions tell a different story.
Those are the people who keep falling for every get-rich-quick scam under the sun.

Shawn: I wish I could help those people, but it doesn’t seem possible. Or at least it seems like they have to lose a huge amount of money before they finally wake up and realize that all the people telling them they can make huge amounts of money fast are actually causing them to LOSE huge amounts of money.

Paul: Right. I think that’s a topic for a different time. Right now I just want to thank for taking the time to do this interview with me.

Shawn: My pleasure. And I hope I didn’t sound too harsh in that last statement. I just really love to see people succeed, so when I see that kind of stuff it drives me a bit nuts.

Paul: I understand. Thanks for talking to me.

Shawn: Thanks for having me. Hope we can do it again soon.

Paul: You bet.

End of Interview With Shawn Swinigan – Creator of ExtraIncomeForAll.com