Welcome to invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host Phil Benner as your special guest today on Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast.

Welcome back entrepreneurs, to another amazing episode of Investing Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I am, of course, your host, Phil Better. And today's guest is one of, if you want, the smartest, author alive. If you will, a little play on words there. I have Chris Benetti here, founder of the, where is it? I had it here. SmartAuthor Media. Chris, thank you so much for being here. I apologize.

Usually, I'm a little more, organized, but I just came out of an another episode, so I'm a little flabbergasted, if you will. But, Chris, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Phil. Thanks. So we're gonna jump right into it, Chris. Why did you wanna become an entrepreneur? What what was it? Why didn't you wanna follow the traditional 9 to 5 grind that most people follow? What what bit your bit you to make you become an entrepreneur?

Well, my grind was actually like 4 am till 6 pm. And, I was working away in the iron ore mines for 2 weeks at a time, like literally 14 days straight of work. And then I would have, like, 6 and a half days off and then go back into that. So for me, the grind was pretty intense and it was very labor intensive. And there were some circumstances where I looked like, was able to use my brain, but it was just a very manual job. And to me that like, kind of just was not worth the money that I was earning and it just, it really left a lack of desire in my life. You know, it, it made my relationships with friends hard. It made my relationship with my wife now, wife hard.

And ultimately entrepreneurship to me was not in a way to get out of that and into something better. But secondly, you know, we all talk about financial freedom and things like that. Like that was just a shortcut for me to be able to look after my family and my future, without having to work in that kind of job for decades. Like most of my colleagues were.

And obviously saved your body from the arduous work of mining 24 14 days on, 60 6 and a half days off. Not much rest, as an iron ore apparently, minor. But, so what was your first venture, if you will, into the entrepreneurial space? Was it smart, author media?

Well, no. Technically my first venture was a funnel development and CRO conversion rate optimization agency, And that kind of transitioned into smart author media. I took that skillset, leveraged it into what I'm doing now, and then just kinda tacked on, you know, advertising as well. But I would say, you know, even before that I was kind of an intrapreneur with a digital marketing agency in Perth who basically did ads and funnels, like what I do now, but wasn't niched. So I got a lot of rapid experience working with, you know, their multimillion dollar clients and things like that on the oldest right out of the mining industry. So, yeah, it was kind of a transition of like work for someone really rapidly gain the skills. And then after about a year, a year and a half, I ended up partnering with the owner of that company and started the funnel agency.

I like that. I like how, your first venture outside of, 9 to 5 grind, if you will, or the or grind, if you will, was an entrepreneur. As you said, you were helping an entrepreneur and then they invested in you to partner up and create that additional business. And now you're you took that skill set and 10xed it into your own business. How did you decide? Because I know, like you mentioned before, they weren't niched. How did you decide that you wanted to be a niche for authors specifically? What, what called you to being helping authors?