thought, “Is there a way to monetize this but still give great value to the readers and still interact with them? So, I think one of the first things I did was to think about growing the email list, and selling affiliate products, doing Google Adsense, and seeing how it works. So, that’s how I first started monetizing it. And then I thought in 2008, 2009 “I wonder if I could do this as a full-time business?” just wasn’t making quite enough. That’s when the business ideas started around the blog. Melissa: Right. Because if you want to do what you’re passionate about you have to figure out a way to monetize it or it just stays a very small part of your life like a hobby. Because then you’re spending most of your time in your day job doing things you’re not as passionate about. It’s amazing how you’ve kind of merged those things together so you could be doing both which is what I love about being an entrepreneur and this online world… We have freedom. We can be anywhere in the world and share the things that we’re passionate about. So, one of the things I noticed about you was that you naturally freely share so much knowledge. People were asking you questions online like, “How are you successful with your blogging? How are you making this work? Because all of a sudden, you were being seen all over the place and you so generously offer your help. And then I heard you on one of your webinars 6

SHINING MENTOR

say that after a while, you were having so many people ask for help that you needed to figure out a way to help more people at once through a group program. And that’s where your YDF (Your Digital Formula) was born. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Steven: Yeah, so after the blog, I started a Facebook page but I’d never done anything with it at all. I just kind of posted my blog posts on Facebook. It was just a plugin I had and I just posted it organically. But then in 2013, I thought, “Right, I’m going to master Facebook. It’s getting more popular, it’s getting bigger. I’m going to master it before it just explodes.” So, I started doing that and I quickly got to half a million followers. It sounds like it was easy to do. But there was loads of work involved, reverse engineering, stuff like that. And then people were writing to me and saying, “How are you growing your page? Are you making any money from it? Are you getting money from your blog? And stuff like that. So, I wrote back to them and said, “This is how you do it. It’s dead easy. Follow these steps and you’ll be fine. You’ll be golden.” And just sent them on their way. But then literally I was getting hundreds of messages a month. “So, how are you growing your blog?” So then I wrote a PDF file. I just thought, “Okay, anybody that writes, I’m just