Charles Harper Interview

Editor:

Today, I'm going to be chatting with a former commercial banker, who decided to leave the corporate world behind to become a full-time internet entrepreneur. In early 2008, he set up GainMindshare, which provides consultancy to marketing professionals who want to have their own book, but who don't have the time to write it themselves. Then, in 2015, he started another company, which has become something of a calling card in its own right. And ever since, The PLR Show has created rebrandable marketing training and technical content for online marketers. We really are just scratching the surface here. So let's meet the man behind all of that. Charles T. Harper, welcome to the show.

Charles T Harper:

Hi.

Editor:

Now, you've been around the internet for many, many years, but when did your journey start?

Charles T Harper:

I really started in 2007. Both my wife and I, we were working at a boarding school. What we were doing at that time is we had just finished actually a doctoral programme in instructional technology and we'd done everything except the dissertation. We really were focused in on, well, how do we use this in ways that would not necessarily be directed toward children, but how could we'd be using our own light. We really started our first blog and all that other stuff around about 2006, and we really just took to it and dived in at that point. So, it was really all around based on the fact that we were doing educational programme that was directed toward teaching people how to use technology, and that's where we got immersed.

Editor:

Wow. I mean, so did you have an idea that the internet was going to be a great way to reach people, or was that something that you stumbled upon?

Charles T Harper:

It was all intuitive because we just liked it. I wouldn't even classify myself as a big picture person in that way. We just liked doing this stuff. It was more of a hobby than it was doing anything else, but it really was part of our educational process. So it was sort of like we were forced into having to focus on it and then having to do something with it in order to do what we were doing in education.

Editor:

Wow. Okay. And then in 2008, you set up GainMindshare. Can you maybe just tell us a little bit about that and how you decided that that was the direction for you and your wife?

Charles T Harper:

Well, sort of interesting, I was saying we were working at a boarding school and we were in the process of getting fired for the boarding school. It was kind of like we'd been working there for 13 years and it really had come to a head. We wanted to homeschool. We wanted to do all these things. They wanted us to be more involved and we just had nothing left to give. And so, when that time came, we were really heavily invested in the boarding school. We had really decided, "Hey, this is where we're going to retire." Round by the end of 2008 and into 2009, they were saying, "Well, if you don't do it this way, we don't really want you to be here." And so, we took what little severance that we had, and we just had to get involved in whatever you call, whether you call it information marketing, internet marketing, and we had to make it work. I have to say, at the beginning, I don't know if it worked all that well. So the name, which I thought we was really clever, GainMindshare, that was really the genesis. Really, at that point, GainMindshare was just a way to capture, I'll do just about anything I have to that that involves internet business to make it work. So really, it was what I thought was a clever name, but it was really just we had to get out and make something work because we were no longer working full time.

Editor:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Did you find that the first thing that you did, Charles, was that a success, or did it take a few attempts for you to find the thing that really worked for GainMindshare?

Charles T Harper:

Well, for GainMindshare, I would say it worked. It didn't work phenomenally well. I knew I could write. Looking back on that, I'm not really sure if I was a great writer, but I could do it, and my wife was good at proofreading. And so, we were able to get people to give us money per se to write, and it was the easiest thing to do. There were people who wanted to write books. We had the ability to write. We were not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination, but it was paying bills. And so, can I say it worked well? It worked well enough to be at survival mode.

Editor:

Fair enough. I guess with everything, there's always that ramp-up process, isn't there, where you start to do something, you start to see some success, and then you reinvest in that success. When did you have the biggest breakthrough, would you say, with what you were doing?

Charles T Harper:

Yeah, I would say it really does come back to training, right? And that's been a theme in my life, in the theme that we've been doing ever since we've been on the internet. We were working with another marketer, or I was working with another marketer. He was doing what people call offline marketing. Basically, what I did is I ran a technical side of his membership. And so, at that point in time, I started training the members on technical aspects of what it is they were trying to do, how to do things with the membership, how to do things with creating content. It was really at that point, I can't really say that the breakthrough came income-wise, but it was a breakthrough that people wanted what we had and we could deliver. And so, that was really the biggest breakthroughs. Right around about 2011, I was really focused in on this membership, but I recognised that I had something that I could bring to the table, and that was really the genesis of starting to create content that other people could use.

Editor:

As I mentioned in the introduction, GainMindshare was really set up to try and help professionals have their own book, but they didn't have the time to write it. Could you just walk us through that process and how you struck upon that idea and how successful was that when you first launched it?

Charles T Harper:

Again, it was all survival mode. We tried a number of different things. I mean, we tried network marketing. We tried local marketing. Unfortunately, I am not a cold caller, right? I don't really know how to call on people very well. And so, doing a book for someone was something that we struck upon that. I mean, they were multilevel marketers that we were in contact with. These guys had a lot of money, but they didn't know how to write, and we knew how to write business. I mean, I came up through commercial banking, so I understood business well enough to be able to write business from anyone's perspective. We just pitched it. I pitched it to someone that we knew, and he said, "Oh, can you do this? I mean, can you really do this?" And we did it, right? It was really just that simple. It was a universe of other multilevel marketers that we knew they had money. They wanted to write a book and we just pitched the service to them and they said yes, much to our surprise. Now, we'll say this, there were at least two instances, where, of course, we didn't get paid, right? I mean, we did the work. The guy said great. We never did really get it paid back, and that really got us moving toward working with other marketers to do some of their other work.

Editor:

Got you. And that's what led on maybe to The PLR Show, which, of course, is, as I said, in the intro, perhaps your calling card these days. So, you transitioned. GainMindshare is still around, I guess. You're still offering those services to people that would like their own book to be written for them.

Charles T Harper:

I probably don't do it as much, and I'm not looking for customers in that way. Really, what I use GainMindshare for is to catchall for my brand. If somebody stumbles upon that and they come and they ask me, I'll think about it, but for the most part, I don't really advertise that anymore because I'm really immersed in learning technical objects and trying to teach them for other people to use. But what I will say is that I have learned how to get people to those resources, and then being a good information marketer, I will connect you to somebody. If I connect that person to someone, I'm going to go to that other person and I'm going to look for a little handout, right? Yeah. So, it's really working that way more than anything else these days.

Editor:

Got you. Okay. So, now, moving towards The PLR Show, which you launched in 2015, so by this point, you've got a little bit of experience under your belt, or quite a bit of experience under your belt in terms of internet marketing, information marketing. What drove you in that direction, Charles? Was there a time where you just said, "Okay, I've had enough of writing books for other people. I'm now going to do The PLR Show," which I guess is writing books, but to a wider market? Instead of it being just for one person, you're writing it for many people.

Charles T Harper:

Well, I'd done a lot of freelancing work with people over the years. Maybe about 2013, I did some freelancing work with a gentleman who really just wanted over-the-shoulder video tutorials created for his business. Again, I mean, I was looking for a fee. I was looking for a way to create basically a salary to construct every month a way for me to get paid. It was really that simple. And so, I don't really know if I really figured out that this was something I could do until had to do it. And so, the guy I was working for, he said, "Man, can you do more of these?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I can do them, I mean, if you need them." I just really kept doing them for this one gentleman. Interesting thing happened, right about 2015, what happened was this gentleman, another multilevel marketer, we all launched a software product together. And so, this was a pretty big launch and the whole thing happened. But then as things go, that dried out and I was really back to figuring out, "Okay. Am I going to go back to freelancing, looking for people to do these courses for or maybe this is something I can do for myself?" I was doing these courses for a gentleman who was selling PLR and I thought, "Well, man, if this guy can do this and he's able to make sales, maybe this is something that I can do for myself." Thankfully, the gentleman I was working with, he was not really adverse to me launching on my own. It was really, all of that was a process, right? From 2013, all the way up to 2015, I was in this process of doing other people. And then in 2015, after I'd seen a big launch happen, I said, "Well, man, can I do this for myself?" And that was really the genesis of it. It was also a way for me to put myself in front of people and to train. That's another thing that I've really seen myself doing. I wanted to teach the people how to do internet marketing who were buying the software, right? And so, I was the trainer. And so, every week I was doing the training and I just decided to call, "Okay. I'm going to call this The PLR Show." Again, it was all intuitive. I wish I could say there was this big grand plan that I called it The PLR Show because it was all intuition. I called it that because I didn't know whatever else to call it, and it just stuck.

Editor:

I love the fact that you spotted the opportunity though. I mean, that speaks volumes in many ways. But also, for anybody who is listening now or reading this, who hasn't come across The PLR Show, could you just maybe explain a little bit about what it is and what's involved in The PLR Show?

Charles T Harper:

Yeah. We create over-the-shoulder technical videos and internet marketing videos for people who want to have video content, whether they want to use it in a membership, whether they want to create their own product, or even if they just want to learn the content. So for example, one of the courses we did was Anchor.fm. We did a set of 20 videos that shows the basics of getting started on the Anchor platform and how people could use it in their business or how they could use it. And so, you have these two groups of people, you have people who want to teach their customers how to use a platform like that. I mean, you have people who just want to learn how to use a platform. And so, every course we're doing, what we're trying to do is we're trying to help those people who want to know how to use these platforms, how to get started on them, and then how to teach their customers. What we're really using ironically is we're using all the training that we learned back in 2004 in the doctoral programme. Again, I wish I could say that I was doctor right now, but all that training that we learned, how to create a course that flows and how to create a course that makes sense is pretty much what we use and what we put together in our courses.

Editor:

I mean, in terms of the content that you've created over the last few years, Charles, I mean, it's been immense. You've done pretty much every platform known to man, or at least that's the way it seems from the outside looking in. Where do you find the inspiration from to look for the different platforms?

Charles T Harper:

Well, what I try to do is try to figure out what do people really want to and need to learn to do information marketing. And so, I try to keep close to people who are going to be doing information marketing and try to figure out, well, what do people need to learn? Because I mean, we have teachers and we have learners among us. If someone has to teach their customers, a lot of people often do have to teach their customers, I try to think about what do their customers really need to know in order to execute some of these things? Because I think if you get inside of any membership or any product, there are always these cases where a product creator in their making a good effort to satisfy their customer, they will say, "I don't have time to teach you how to do WordPress. You need to go get a WordPress site. You need to put up a WordPress theme." And so, there are lots of little processes like that, that in the course where people are trying to explain strategy, well, they don't have time to explain all the technical issues. And so, what we try to do is we try to fill that gap, right? We try to explain all of those technical issues that a person who is good explaining strategy may not fully have time to put together everything they need to know. And so, we put together those things for them to fill that in so their customer will actually know how to use all those things. Of course, some people will just sell it as it is just to sell a technical process as is, but we try to satisfy both sets of people.

Editor:

So effectively, what can happen is somebody can buy one of your courses. They can watch it. They can learn from it themselves. So, that's number one. Number two is that they could take it and they can resell it to any of their lists, I guess, or they could remake it themselves because they have the PLR rights in order to be able to do that.

Charles T Harper:

Yeah, that's right.

Editor:

And then number four, I guess, is one of the ways that I've used your content before, which is as training for an outsourcer, which is obviously if I want to get a task done and I don't want to do it myself, I could go to an outsource, so let's say on Fiverr or Upwork or one of the many freelancer websites and say, "Here's the course that will show you what I need you to do." Again, it means that you are not having to create those videos yourself to send out to that outsourcer. I mean, this is what I love about out The PLR Show. It can be used in so many ways. I guess the benefit for you, Charles, is that it means you have a bigger marketplace because of that.

Charles T Harper:

It's always changing. It's always evolving. I mean, right now, there are lots of AI platforms and I know I've got to tackle those. I've got to learn them. I've got to learn how they're being used. I've got to learn the benefits of them. I've got to explain them to the people that need to, again, explain them to outsourcers, as you said, or explain them to their customers. It's always going to go grow, right? I mean, it's always going to grow, because right now, we're just in the information age and everybody is got to get their message out, but not everybody is going to have to learn all these platforms. Some of them, they're just going to have to teach a staff. Some people are going to have to teach their customers how to receive what they're doing. Some people are just going to have to just learn it. So we know that there's always going to be new platforms. Now, the challenge, of course, is that I've got to spend what is my free time learning these things. Right now, I'm relearning Shopify, right? And so, I've got to relearn it so that I've got to then figure out what the changes are and I've got to be able to communicate to people who want to teach their customers, teach, as you were saying, their staff, and then to teach to just learn it.

Editor:

My next question was going to be, which course are you working on at the moment? But I think you've just revealed that. So, we can expect a Shopify course [crosstalk 00:19:12].

Charles T Harper:

Oh, no, no, for sure. For sure. The thing is I've done Shopify before, but the interface has changed. They've changed things since I did it. I think I did it back in 2018, 2019, but obviously, it's changed. And so, this is another part now, having done so many of these things, people are coming back to me and saying, "Charles, is this all up to date?" In many cases, it isn't. We just redid MailChimp this year, because again, the interface changed and MailChimp changed. All of these things are constantly changing. And so, we've got to try to keep up with them and we've got to keep delivering them to the people that need them.

Editor:

How do you find the content that you are going to put into one of your courses? Do you just decide, "Okay. This platform seems to be popular, so we'll choose this platform," or is it more of a granular process, whereby you think, "Okay. We've done Anchor FM as the platform for podcasting. We're now going to do something based on internet marketing or email marketing"? Is there a process behind that, or is it really just you make a decision and that's it, you'll just go for it?

Charles T Harper:

It's both. We have people that will come to us and they'll say, "Can you do things?" We take suggestions all the time. What we try to do is try to weigh, is this something that's going to have mass appeals? Is this something that people really need? But at the same time though, I know that all the work that I've done in the past, all that's going to have to be redone. Now, I don't know how I'm going to do it all or whether or not I'm going to have somebody else do it, but I do know that just about everything that I've done since 2018, it's all got to be redone. I mean, all of it. I mean, it's not going to be up to date and I've got to bring it up to date. In addition to that, I've learned more. I would not approach a course the same way I did in 2018 as I would today. I would approach it totally different today just based on what people are trying to really accomplish in their information marketing business. People are trying to do less of the technical. They're trying to hand off more of it, and they're trying to combine a lot of different things. And so, really, some of the courses we have, and we've been telling people this, in some cases, it makes more sense for you to take maybe three videos from one of our courses, maybe four videos from another course, and to combine that into either another course or in a membership or something that you're trying to do. So we're creating videos with the understanding that not all of them will be in one course. We know that some people are going to take them and put in different courses, where they're going to be combined with different ideas, not just based on the subject that we taught.

Editor:

Sure. Sure. Do you encourage people to take your content and then reversion it, remake it for themselves? So, it's in their own voice. Are you comfortable with them taking your own content, Charles, and putting that into their memberships, but obviously as you say, cherry-picking the best videos from each of the courses so they can create something that's unique to them?

Charles T Harper:

Yeah. I recommend people don't revoice it. Some people, if they want to position themself as a technical educator, then obviously then they've got to revoice it. They've got to redo it. In general, I suggest people that they would not revoice it, that they would focus on communicating and connecting with their customer on the strategy level, and then to really use our content as infrastructure and as a way to bulk up or to communicate those technical concepts and to be a trainer inside of their course. Because again, everything now is really going to be, how can I streamline a process for my customer? Streamlining a process, that really means that I think our customers should really be focusing on connecting, focusing on marketing, focusing on customer service, focusing on all those things, and then focusing on strategy because the strategy is what people remember you for. They're not necessarily going to remember you for all the step-by-step processes that we normally do. They want to connect with you because they know you've got knowledge. And so, we tell people, focus on the strategy, communicate the strategy, and then build around the training that we've done.

Editor:

I think that's really good advice. For anyone who's looking to achieve success online, Charles, after your many years now of experience, do you have any tips, any strategies that you could share with us?

Charles T Harper:

Yeah. When it comes to information marketing, I think it's really you have to be prolific and you've got to be consistent. That's how you start. When things start to when things start to decline, that's the thing that I think people have to go back to. It's the one thing that I heard back in 2009 that has stuck with me, that if things are not going the way that I like, then that's the thing that you've got to put in place. How can I be more consistent, whether it is delivering a launch, whether it's delivering training, whether it's delivering some kind of email communication? It's being consistent and then being prolific to the best of your ability, and that's going to mean different things for different people. For some people, that might mean, "Hey, every single month, you got to come up with something twice a month." Right? For some people, it's going to mean, "You need to be going live for five minutes every day." But whatever it means for a particular person market, being prolific and being consistent, generating activity really does tend to bring you up when you've got to go up.

Editor:

Makes sense. How many launches do you typically do every year, Charles? Is there a set number that you aim for and do you always achieve that, or is it kind of fluid?

Charles T Harper:

Yeah, it's a little fluid. Now, we have a membership, where at least once a month, we're going to put together at least two courses or one funnel. So at minimum, I'm going to produce one funnel. I typically produce two, but I'm typically going to make sure that I'm doing at least two subjects that I can give to the people that are inside of our membership. So they'll have that content and they can continue to use it. I'm really, right now, doing a lot of training, because what I am finding is that the real message of building a sustainable business is one that does... I mean, I'm pretty sure you know, it has to come back to some kind of continuity. One of those things that I wish I had known when I got started and some of those things that if you focus on it, it doesn't happen. And so, I'm really outside of doing the courses not only training the members, but also training the people in our community. "Hey, you know what, take our videos. And if you don't do anything else, not only should you sell them, not only should you create courses, but you need to start building an asset, something that is a continuity offer." And so, this year we've been focusing in on telling not only our members, but telling the community, whether you use our content or not, which I hope they are, start building a continuity offer, start building up video learning centre, start doing something, where you can go to people and say, "This is something that's growing in value every single month as you add content," and then make and give people the opportunity to pay you monthly, right? And so, that's really been a focus that we've been on in addition to creating the courses every single month. So, whereas I would typically maybe create a course every week, I've been taking those other two weeks to really teach not only how to do that, create a continuity offer, but teach the fact that this is something that's going to be the key to being sustainable in online market.

Editor:

How long would it take you typically to create a course or a PLR product that you would either put into the membership site or make available on the marketplaces? How long would it take typically?

Charles T Harper:

I'm always researching. I've got so many instructional platforms, where I'm watching videos on a platform. So right now, I've been watching Spotify videos for a long time. And so, if you think about the research process, I mean, it could take a month for me to immerse myself in the process, but the actual video recordings are going to take about seven to 10 days. But again, see, my process is I've got to be immersed in the subject. Before I can approach doing the videos, I have to be saturated in it. If I'm saturated in a subject, then I can sit down and I can work out that video content in about seven to 10 days, because again, I'm not narrating and I'm not reading. I'm doing this extemporaneously while I'm looking at the screen. So I'm explaining to someone in on-screen process as if they were sitting in front of me. I can't do that obviously, unless I'm immersed in the subject matter. So as of right now, we're teaching. We're going to do a course on product creation. And so, I'm basically going to explain this process to someone as if they were sitting in front of me, but that subject is something that I'm already immersed in, right? But Shopify, I've got to make sure I've taken in everything, and that takes time, right? It takes a while to make sure I've got everything in me before I can sit down in front of me and do it in seven to 10 days.

Editor:

Yeah. I mean, I guess it's easy to think that you can put a course like this together in just a few hours, but actually the reality is that, particularly with the courses that you are creating, Charles, you have to have that depth of knowledge before you start the training, because otherwise it's just not going to look very good, is it?

Charles T Harper:

No. Right. And it's going to be evident, right? It's going to be evident that I'm just going to the menus and I'm just picking stuff out. It doesn't make for a good experience for our customer's customer. It doesn't even make a good experience for the customer.

Editor:

That's right. Don't wing it, I think, is the advice that you should share.

Charles T Harper:

Oh, no. No. Right. Yeah. You get found out real quick when you're just winging it.

Editor:

What if you were starting out now, what do you think you would do slightly differently?

Charles T Harper:

If I was starting out now, like I said, I would definitely start by generating activity by doing something on a regular basis, teaching what I know. Again, this is just so that the customers will know that I can be trustworthy. Some of that has to do with showing up, whether it is on a weekly basis or if it's a daily basis. That is something that I would do and be consistent at. So right now, we're doing a weekly workshop and that's what we teach people to do. But when I first got started, had I had the intuition, I would've done that every single week. I would've shown up every a week at the same time, every time. And then what happens is I think that when you do that... Or it can be a podcast, right? I mean, people who are podcasters are very good at this, and it's a matter of building trust. And so, whatever it is, whether it's a podcast, whether it is a training, whether it is a blog post, it's got to be consistent and it's got to be every single whatever, every single week, every single day. That is what I would do differently. I would establish those things and do them rain or shine. It does come back to product creation too. When you can establish a schedule, it becomes something that the market expects. One of the things that, again, will push a person to do that is a continuity programme, right? Because when you have to deliver something on a regular basis, you were then motivated to keep those members satisfied. So to recap and to answer your question, I would make sure from the beginning that I was building a continuity programme, which is almost counterintuitive, but what it does, it forces you to get the other things in motion. Secondly, in terms of marketing, I would be doing something on a regular basis, podcast, training, blog post, and making sure that happens rain or shine, that whatever the level of engagement I would do, I would do that every single week and it would be the same throughout the years. In some years, you can look at my YouTube channel, you'll see that on Tuesdays and Saturdays, I did a training and I only recently returned to that this year because I understand what that means to the people that not only are buying our content, but the people who want to buy it. I should have learned that. I should have continued to do that, but that is really key, I would say, for anyone that wants to get started, excuse me, is to establish those things, that connection to the market, whatever it is, and to do it regardless, every single month or every single day, every single week.

Editor:

So what you're saying is it should be content, it should be consistent and it should be continuity. There's the three Cs.

Charles T Harper:

That's right.

Editor:

And then that equals cash. So. There's another C. There we are, four Cs.

Charles T Harper:

Oh, that's right. That's really good.

Editor:

You've obviously worked extremely hard, Charles, to achieve your success. Do you think you've changed along the way? Has this process changed you in any way?

Charles T Harper:

It has. I think I've really looked at this now as a way... You go from survival mode to putting things in place and things are happening. I think right now, I look at it as a way to create margin in my life. It's not that I'm not looking to get rich. I mean, I'll make as much as I can, but I'm looking at it now as a way to create more time with my wife in more ways that I can do some of the things that I really wanted to do. See, because early in my life, we gave a lot of our time to the boarding school. And so, we did things backwards, right? We gave our expertise and gave it away, right? But I still do want to do some of those things to be, I'd say, as a blessing to society and you need time in order to do that. We've got things that we really believe in. We obviously believe in education for teenagers. I mean, our hearts are still with the kids that came to us as boarding school house parents. It's still with them. And so, we want to be able to do some of those things, but you got to be able to create both income margin and time margin to be able to do those things. And so, I think what's changed about the way I look at life now is I now know that if I run the business right, I can create margin and I can give myself to those people, right? I can give myself to my church. I can give myself to these other causes. I can give myself in a lot of ways if I create margins successfully enough. And so, that's really what's changed. It's not just surviving to get the money. It's really running this so that I can create margin so I can do some of these things and help people. The other thing has probably changed, too, is really not business related. My kids have moved on. They're now gone to college and graduate school or whatever. People say that my wife and I were empty nesters. It's just now their feathers are still in the nest, right? They're not quite out of the house. But it does, the fact that they've moved on, I've got the head space now that I can say, "Okay. Well..." I don't like using, I mean, words like legacy and all that stuff. It's overused, but the concept is there. I do want to give myself, my wife and I to things that we care about. And so, that's sort of where I am now.

Editor:

That's amazing. It's lovely. Charles, how can we find out more about you and the great work that you are doing.

Charles T Harper:

Well, it's The PLR Show, right? I mean, that's where we keep all of our present projects. On the page there, there's a place that we call... There's a PLR Show Academy, where we show people how to use the PLR videos. They can get a free download there. And then that puts people on our daily newsletter. Again, we talk about PLR every day. Also, our YouTube channel. People go to theplrshow.com or they can go to our YouTube channel or youtube.com/gainmindshare. We are pretty much every day doing something there, whether it's an interview, whether it's a game plan, whether it's a training. Those are two places where folks can get connected with us.

Editor:

Great stuff. Thank you so much, Charles. We really appreciate your time and wish you all the best with your latest releases.

Charles T Harper:

Thank you. Bye-bye, everybody.