Making a Podcast: The 30 Tools & Resources That We Use Every Week

Behind The Scenes Of Making a Podcast – Episode Highlights:

  • The 30 tools & resources that we use every week to systemize the Inspiring Innovation Podcast
  • The system behind Inspiring Innovation – the actions we take, step by step, to go from “We should have James Schramko on the show”, to a released episode

I get asked very often what resources we use on Inspiring Innovation for creating our episodes, editing and post production, social media, and for managing all of our tasks and projects.

I feel it’s time for a behind-the-scenes look – where I will walk you step by step through all the steps included in our episode creation process. Basically, you’re about to see everything that happens from the second an Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode is created, to it being released, downloaded, and being played in your earbuds.

Setting Up The Podcast Interview

The first step, when we set up a podcast episode, is obviously to get an interviewee.

I often get pitched by people who want to be on the Inspiring Innovation Show. We also work with several media agents that pitch interviewees to us.

haro help a reporter out

We use resources like HARO (Help A Reporter Out), where people can pitch themselves to the Inspiring Innovation Show. But let’s pretend that for this episode that we’re talking about – I wanna get a real big name on the show.

While most people have a contact form on their website (and that’ll be the first place I would go to pitch for an interview), there are plenty who don’t.

So how do you contact these people?

And let’s say they do have a contact form on the site, but it goest to their VA or their gatekeeper…and you can’t get past them?

In these occasions, I will retreat to one of my secret weapons, which is called Rapportive.

Rapportive

rapportive

Rapportive is an add-on (or an extension) that you install for Gmail.

Once installed, whenever you start typing an email to someone and you put in theur email address, Rapportive will find and display their information inside the Gmail window:

Where do they live? What state? What country? What is their Twitter account? What is their LinkedIn account? What is their Facebook account? What do they look like?

Yes, it even pulls up a photo. It’s that cool!

Now, it doesn’t work for all emails in the world, but it works for a great percentage of them.

How I use Rapportive on a day-to-day basis:

  1. When I write a reply to an email, Rapportive will pull up their photo and personal details.

    This allows me to reply with a much more personal touch – because now I know what the person I’m emailing looks like, where they work, and where are they from.

    If you’ve received an email from me and wondered, “how the heck did he know I’m in Austin?!”… Rapportive is my secret 🙂

  2. But much more jedi-like, I’ve used this to find the emails of some really big entrepreneurs.

    How? I open Gmail, and click “Compose”. The I guess an email address based on the name of the target interviewee. If Rapportive updates and shows his personal details – I know I found his personal address. If Rapportive shows nothing, I try other variations ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. etc.). It doesn’t always work, but it works often enough! 🙂

In any case, wether I pitch someone, or someone pitches himself to me – the next step is to schedule the interview.

ScheduleOnce

scheduleonce

I was first introduced to this by Antonio Centeno from Real Men Real Style. It was love on first sight, and I since referred many of my friends to this service (including John Dumas, who now uses this tool to schedule all of his interviews!).

With ScheduleOnce, you define your blocks of availability – which times of which days are you willing to have interviews on. Then it integrates with your actual Google calendar. So everything that is already scheduled in your calendar is blocked out.

The available times that are left in the intersection between the times that you defined and the times when you don’t have any meetings in your calendars, are the times that ScheduleOnce will show to your guest when he comes to schedule an interview.

The cool thing is, that no matter where you are and where they are around the world – ScheduleOnce will only show them your actual availability in THEIR Timezone.

No more timezone miscalculations, no more confusion, and no more time
wasted! Your interviewee will just select the time that they want and — BAM — an appointment is added in their Google calendar to your Google calendar and you’re all set for an interview.

SWEET!

IFTTT and Asana

Previously discussed last week on my episode with Erin Smith, IFTTT (which stands for “If This Then That”) is a tool that allows you to define that if a specific trigger happens (example: you receive an email confirming an interview), then a specific action is automatically taken.

ifttt

So I have a trigger saying, if I receive a message from ScheduleOnce to my email saying that a podcast interview has been scheduled, then I have a task is created for me in Asana (the project management software that we use), with all the details of the interview:

  • When is it going to happen?
  • The name of the interviewee.
  • His Skype details
  • Etc.

This task is very simple: Create a project for this episode.

asana

Now, as I said, Asana is the project management system that we use. Once IFTTT creates a task in Asana, the next day – when I wake up and check out my “to-do” for the day – I will see this task saying “Create a Project for this interview”.

So I will click on my template “IIP episode” project, that has all the tasks that need to happen from the second the interview is scheduled to the second it released on iTunes or Stitcher (or whatever app you’re using to tune in with), including who’s in charge of each step — is it me, is it Rose (my VA) or is it the interviewee — and deadlines.

In one click I duplicate our template project, copy the details IFTTT forwarded, update the deadlines according to the actual interview date and the planned release date — and the project is ready to go.

From this moment on, me and my team will basically follow the Asana project, one task after the other, until the episode is ready. We don’t need to think about anything. We don’t need to plan anything. It’s all there, pre-planned and actionable.

If you think about it, the only manual action I needed to take to make all this possible, was pitching for the interview – because once the pitch was accepted, I send my ScheduleOnce link, they schedule, IFTTT automatically creates a task to set up the project in Asana, and from there onwards – everything is streamlined.

Here’s a screenshot showing a part of our Asana project template:

Asana project template - producing an IIP episode

Preparing For The Interview (& Making The Podcast Much Better!)

Background Research

Looking at my podcast episode project template above, you’ll see that the first step is defined for my VA and it’s called, “send interview briefing.”

So my VA will see this task and send my interviewee an interview briefing (based on a template that we have), that explains the format of the interview, what kind of questions are you gonna be asked, and some legal stuff.

The next day, again – as you can see in the screenshot above – she will send an email requesting them for a high resolution profile photo that we can use in the Inspiring Innovation Magazine and in the podcast show notes.

Then, she will conduct background research about the interviewee. We have a complete checklist for how we research an interviewee before he comes on the show, and she will simply start working through that.

Once she’s done with the background research, I will be triggered with a task of outlining the interview.

4MAT and SPIN Framework

Once I read the background research, I go ahead and outline the interview.

These days, I use two frameworks for my outlining, both recommended to my by James Schramko.

James Shramko, Internet Entrepreneur

First, I outline the interview using the 4MAT framework – breaking the interview down to 4 sections WHY (are we talking about this), WHAT (is the story / are we talking about), HOW (will you do it) and WHAT IF (answering questions).

For the WHY section, I actually dig deeper using another framework James has recommended, called SPIN. SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication and Need, and was developed by Neil Rackham.

I use SPIN to describe (at the beginning of the episode) today’s subject – why we are talking about it, and why should you listen.

spin selling by neil rackham

How? It’s quite simple.

I take a piece of paper and write:

  • Situation:
  • Problem:
  • Implications:
  • Need:

Then, next to each letter, I add some bullet points that I want to remember to talk about.

For example, for my interview with Erin Smith last week, where we discussed monetization, my SPIN was:

  • Situation:
    • You are an entrepreneur
    • / side hustler
    • / aspiring entrepreneur
  • Problem:
    • You have ideas, maybe even some products, but aren’t sure how to monetize well
  • Implications:
    • You cannot leave the 9-5
    • You cannot create the business of freedom that you want
    • You’re feeling stuck
  • Need:
    • A step by step plan on how to take an idea and turn it into a prosperous business.

As I mentioned, 4MAT includes WHY, WHAT, HOW, WHAT IF, and the SPIN framework covers my “WHY” for the episode. Then I’m left with making a few notes for:

  • WHAT
    What is the story? Here I add a few bullet points of interesting facts and important milestones from the background research I’ve read
  • HOW
    This is for the stage in the interview where I try to get a step by step action plan from my interviewee once we covered their background story. I write down all the points that are important for me to make sure my interviewee covers.
  • WHAT IF?
    This is for any questions I might have about the outlined process. Usually I leave this empty, and fill it in with the questions that pop into my head while the interviewee is talking (instead of interrupting him)

This entire outlining process takes me 15 minutes or less, can be done on a post-it notes, and makes the interview well structured and effective. Implementing this outline step has saved my 2-4 editing hours per episode!

Recording The Podcast Interview

Skype, eCamm Call Recorder (Mac) and Pamela Call Recorder (Windows)

When the day of the interview comes, I prepare all my gear. And yes, I have a task in Asana called “Prepare Gear” which has a checklist of all the knobs I need to turn!

Then, I conduct the interview, following the SPIN and 4MAT outline that I’ve made.

ecamm

Even though we use professional podcasting gear, I still have (on my Mac) installed eCamm Call Recorder for Skype that records the Skype call on the computer itself – just in case our digital recorder fails, and gives me an extra backup.

eCamm Call Recorder is what I recommend all of my students who are getting started as the best Skype recording software. If you are on Windows, you might want to be looking into Pamela Skype Recorder.

pamela call recorder

Once the interview has been recorded, I will take the raw file as it is and upload it into a task in Asana called “Upload Raw Interview.” (pretty self descriptive, huh?).

Once I upload the file, Asana will notify Rose automatically, and she in turn will listen to the entire raw episode, making a list of all the resources that were mentioned. That’s the “mentioned resources” list that you will find in all of my episodes.

Podcast Post Production: Creating Good Episodes and Great Show Notes

Google Keyword Planner, Market Samurai and Moonsy

Once Rose completes the mentioned resources section, the next task she has in our template is keyword research. She uses Google Keyword Planner and Market Samurai for that.

market-samurai

We use Market Samurai to find and choose the keywords that we actually have a good shot of ranking highly for.

If you don’t want to splurge on Market Samurai, you can do some of the research for free using a tool called Moonsy Domain Authority. It will let you know how authoritative are other websites that you are going to compete against for a given keyword.

(Of course, Domain Authority is only one of many SEO factors, but I thought you’d like to know about Moonsy 🙂 )

At the end of this process, Rose will post on Asana the results of her keyword research – the main keyword we will be targeting with this episode, as well as the long-tail or satellite keywords that are relevant.

All this is done so we can maximize the organic traffic that Google will give us for this podcast episode.

Audacity and Adobe Audition

Audacity

While Rose does her part, I will start editing the interview itself, using Audacity.

I used to use Adobe Audition, and I would say that it is a much better piece of software and it’s a lot more fun to use than Audacity. But Adobe wanted me to pay over $2400 for using it (instead of the US price which is $19 a month), so I went back to Audacity.

Adobe Audition

With the right plugins, Audacity can actually create some great sound even though it’s 100% free. And if you want to use Audacity to its full potential, check out PodcastIncubator.com – and I will be happy to show you how 🙂

Once I edit the interview, I sit down and define two episode titles.

Why two?

  1. First title is the title that will show on the podcast feed (in iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). This title has to be intriguing and make you want to listen to the show.
  2. Second title is the title that will show on our WordPress site. This title has to be optimized for SEO in order to increase the organic reach of the show.

Evernote

Evernote

Once I have the title and the general concept, I will sit down and outline the show notes for the episode:

I will define my sections, titles, subtitles, and add some bullet points for the key points I want to cover. I write this outline in Evernote, and you’ll see why in a second!

Here’s the thing:

I hate blogging.

I don’t enjoy writing.

In fact, when I have a task like “sit down and write”, I procrastinate on it like it’s nobody’s business.

When Srini Rao challenged me to write every day for 15 minutes first thing in the morning, those were the most un-productive days I have ever… ever had. It turns out that not liking to write poses a real problem for a blogger.

One day, my mentor from Australia said, “Just outline and then record yourself talking through the outline, and have your VA transcribe that.” So I thought, “Sure, sounds legit! Let’s try that.”

It didn’t work.

I would write the outline and then try to record in front of the computer. The whole situation was so awkward that I would just get stuck and quit.

Then, Julie pointed out that when my mobile phone rings, I start walking with it while on the call – whether it’s around the house, outside the garden or a 5-mile walk.

I ALWAYS walk when I talk on the phone. So Julie asked, “Why don’t you try that for your show notes?”

And THAT works BEAUTIFULLY for me!

So I outline on Evernote, take my iPhone (remember to charge it!) walk outside, open up the note, tap on the first section, click the record icon, and just start talking. Not from a dictation state of mind, but from a conversation one.

Then I finish a section, click stop, scroll down the note, read the key points, click on the next sub-section, and record again. Rinse and repeat… and 45 minutes later – I have a 2,500 words post done!

I get back home, click on share button, send the link it generates to Rose, my VA, and For me, the writing is DONE.

Rose will take the audio notes, transcribe them, patch them up, and convert them into show notes. She will fix my grammar, break stuff into shorter paragraphs, adds bolds and italics and make everything look nice and sharp.

Ginger

Ginger

We also use Ginger Grammar Check, which is a free online service that does an amazing work in checking your grammar. It puts me to shame very often 🙂

Unsplash, Deposit Photos and Fotolia

We love having photos in our posts, and Rose has 3 resources that she uses for Inspiring Innovation:

The first one is Unsplash. It’s a website that has beautiful photos that you can use 100% free. It doesn’t have search functionality; it’s not perfect, but it has beautiful photos that you can use right away without any Signup or anything.

DepositPhotosFotolia

If we can’t find suitable photos on Unsplash, we try DepositPhotos and Fotolia.

Libsyn

So far, we have an episode recorded and edited, we have show notes done, and all that’s left is uploading the MP3 file.

Libsyn

I export the file from Audcity, convert it to MP3 and add the tagging (the title, the description, the artwork — all of that) using iTunes and then upload it to our podcast hosting, which is Libsyn. There I copy in the show notes that Rose has created, and voilà – the episode is ready!

Canva

In order to great sharable artwork to promote the episode on social media, I go to Canva.com.

Canva

Canva is my graphic design tool of choice. It’s free and amazing. It comes with great templates for any type of graphics you’ll need online and allows literally anybody to become a genius graphic designer.

I simply LOVE it.

I also use Canva for episodes that include a lead magnet (like the one we had last week). I create both the download image and the graphic for the pop-up window (the opt-in window) within minutes with this tool.

List Building Through Podcasting

I often have downloadable PDFs as part of my episodes, and they double as lead magnets for my list.

I create these lead magnets the same way I’d create the show notes; I outline in Evernote, go for a walk , record it, get it transcribed and edited, and then create a PDF out of it.

iBooks Author

iBooks Author

To create the PDF, I will either throw copy the text into Google Drive and export as PDF, or if I’m feeling artistic, I’ll use iBooks Author (Mac only, sorry Windows people!), which creates a drop-dead-gorgeous-looking PDF document for me to give away.

MailChimp and LeadPages

I use MailChimp as our mailing list provider.

MailChimp

The good thing about MailChimp is that you can start for 100% free. We used to use AWeber and I don’t have enough words how much a despise it. I strongly recommend that you start with MailChimp.

To deliver the lead magnet itself, as well as the opt-in form that works from within the show notes, I use LeadPages, and more specifically, a feature called LeadBoxes.

LeadPages logo

LeadBoxes are that pop-up box that pops up and asks for your email address when you click on a link to download one of our PDF resources.

When you fill-in the email and click “Download now”, LeadBoxes will add your email to the Inspiring Innovation mailing list on MailChimp, and then deliver the PDF you requested right away to your inbox.

Nifty 🙂

Spreading The Word

dlvr.it

After all this, Rose goes through all the information we have (keywords, final show notes, etc.) and creates a suggested social media swipe file — basically create a list of suggested tweets and Facebook status messages.

I will go over them (again, there’s a task in Asana reminding me to do that!), tweak them, and approve for scheduling.

Once I do that, she will take that swipe file and schedule it via dlvr.it – our social media scheduling tool.

dlvr.it

The good thing about dlvr.it (and what made me pick it in the first place), besides allowing us to schedule all of our outgoing tweets, is that it also allows us to automatically tweet about new blog posts and new podcast episodes of anybody we want.

Automatically tweeting about new episodes of market leaders and friends is a great way to keep yourself on the top of their mind as someone who’s always looking to support their brand.

(To be honest, usually dlvr.it will pick up on their new episodes and tweet about it from my account even before they have a chance to tweet about it from theirs! So my tweet is almost always the first one they see. You could imagine the impact it has!)

Gmail Canned Responses and Boomerang

With all the social media scheduled on dlvr.it, we are almost done with an episode. The only thing left is to let my interviewee know that the episode is live.

While I want them to get an email from me once the episodes is live, I actually write the email to the interviewee ahead of time.

Boomerang

I have a template that I wrote and use through Gmail Canned Response and then I use another add-on called Boomerang, which allows me to schedule an email to be sent from Gmail on a later date. I simply set it and forget it!

Podcast Social Bookmarking

Finally, Rose will do social bookmarking on sites like Bibsonomy, Bitly, Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Folkd, Jumptags, Newsvine and Technorati.

And that’s how we make an Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode!

Your Thoughts?

I would truly appreciate if you could leave me a comment, letting me know if this was helpful or if you’d like me to review in the future some of other tools that I use on a day-to-day basis.

Just leave your comment below.

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IIP074: How To Manage Your Time Like An Entrepreneur Super Hero!

Episode Highlights: Time Management And Becoming An Effective Entrepreneur

  • Why time management won’t solve your time management problems
  • Why being productive or efficient doesn’t necessarily make you effective
  • Why the biggest difference between you and the most successful entrepreneurs is effectiveness — and how can you become an effective entrepreneur by spending 10 minutes a day (the right way)
  • The 10-Minute Get Clarity And Take Control Over Your Time Exercise — the only time management system you’ll ever need
  • Why doesn’t time management work and how time hacking solves it

Why Time Management Is An Entrepreneur’s Biggest Problem

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur, a side hustler, or even only an aspiring entrepreneur, there are two resources that determine your chances of success. Running out of any of the two would mean the failure of your entrepreneurial business.

Can you guess the resources I’m talking about?

If you guessed time and money, you are correct.

Since money is what puts food on the table, it’s kind of obvious why running out of it would spell “game over” to your business. Time, on the other hand — is a pretty interesting resource.

The thing about time, especially for entrepreneurs, is that we always seem to be running out of it. No matter how much time we have it never seems to be enough to fit all the projects, tasks, errands, and obligations that we have.

Running out of time means we don’t get our projects done when they should be done, we don’t get them done to the quality want, we miss out on business opportunities, and then — when we finally have time for them — it’s too late.

Running out of time means we don’t sleep enough, we don’t function as well as we could, we can’t afford spending time with our loved ones and doing the things that actually matter to us the most.

While business acumen, marketing strategies, sales page theory, and social media marketing are indeed important for a business to succeed, when a business is run as successfully as possible in all of the above except time, the owner has no way to actually enjoy it.

This is why today, we tackle the biggest question entrepreneurs have been struggling throughout entire history: How do I make it happen with the time that I have?

From Time Management To Time Hacking

Time management is generally the title of all the systems, processes, and methods that aim at shaping the way you run your business, your calendar, your projects, and your tasks into a rigid structure that will supposedly would fix all of your problems, reduce stress, eliminate confusion, give you focus, and make you a master of your own time.

The only problem with that concept is that we are all adults. Whether you are 25, 35 or 55, it’s probably too late for you to change your habits and their triggers to fall into place with someone else’s system.

Let’s face it — most time management strategies were born because someone was doing something that worked for him, and when asked how they do that, they try to teach others to replicate the same.

Srini Rao and I discussed this on IIP023: Confessions Of A Corporate Misfit — the problem with spreading best practices starts when people follow them blindly instead of learning from them and customizing.

This is where time management comes into play. Instead of reshaping the way you manage everything in your life, time hacking is all about getting clarity, about what needs to be done, and then reshaping time to fit your goals, aspirations, and lifestyle.

At its very core, time hacking is inherently customizable. In fact, time hacking is more of an ideology or a framework rather than a method. And from New York Times bestseller to some of the internet leading entrepreneurs, it’s making huge waves right now.

Today’s Guest

Julie Sheranosher of The Time Hackers Podcast
Julie Sheranosher of The Time Hackers Podcast

Today we are joined by Julie Sheranosher; entrepreneur, author, ex-captain in the Israeli Defense Forces, and the creator of time hacking.

For full disclosure and in order to make sure I don’t annoy my friends in the Federal Trading Committee, I will also mention that she’s my personal time coach as well as my girlfriend for the last five years.

When Julie and I started dating, she was a captain in the Israeli Defense Forces, in-charge of systems that are crucial to the nation’s safety. She had a good dozen of subordinates that sought her guidance not only in their professional lives in the army, but also in everything else. As you could guess, she was quite busy.

The “I’m Busy” Syndrome

work desk

In fact, she was suffering from a severe case of the “I’m Busy” Syndrome.

We’ve all been there; we have so much work to do, whether it’s for our full-time business, our side hustle, or our corporate job — that we run around like headless chickens.

We don’t have time to answer e-mails, we don’t have time to spend with our families and friends, we don’t have time to take care of ourselves, to do sports, to eat right or to unwind. But the worse part of it is that we take great pride at being so busy (at least I did).

Being busy makes us feel important. In the western world, being busy makes us feel fulfilled. It’s not surprising that the being busy syndrome is the number one enemy of time hacking. As I mentioned above, in time hacking, there’s an emphasis between productivity, being efficient and being effective:

  • Productivity: The art of scratching things off of your to-do list, with no specific regard to their importance or urgency. Often the most practised skill of time management/time hacking as it simply makes us feel great.
  • Being efficient: Being efficient takes productivity to the next level, and basically means that not only we are crossing things off our to-do list, but we are actually doing it as quickly as possible while completing each task within the best context to get it done (for instance, using our commute time to answer e-mails, make calls, etc.).
  • Being effective: Being effective is the holy grail of time hacking and the one thing truly missing out of most “time management” systems.
    Being effective means you’re not only crossing stuff out of your to-do list, and doing that in the best context possible and in the shortest amount of time, but you are also doing only the right things (something James Schramko mentioned as one of the three key things to becoming a successful entrepreneur and running a successful business).

Mission Impossible

So as I mentioned, when Julie and I started dating she was a very very busy person. Working for 16, sometimes 18, hours a day, she couldn’t imagine herself leading her life differently. For her, she was doing everything right. Being honest, I wasn’t much different: I was running my software development business and probably working the same hours as her if not more.

Until one Friday, the accumulated stress of being over-worked for so many years in the army, being in a sedentary job with no time to take care of herself, broke Julie. Literally.

She herniated a disc, and instead of going to her soldiers on Sunday, she had to go and see an orthopedic. Taking a look at her x-rays and CAT-scan, the doctor had a simple piece of advice for her: “You need to start working four hours a day.”

For Julie, and probably for you too, switching from a full-time job (or an over-time job like Julie had) to four hours per day is simply impossible. She thought the doctor used four hours as a figure of speech. “I thought he meant I need to work like all the normal people, like nine hours per day.”

And so Julie started working only nine hours a day and trying all the time management techniques she could find to try and fit her 18-hour workday into 9. It didn’t quite work.

Time Management Not Working

clock

Trying as hard as she could, it didn’t work. Julie started failing on deadlines, on projects, feeling she’s failing her subordinates and her commanders. For almost any workaholic that I know this is a terrible hit to the ego and to the self-confidence. Unfortunately, she would have to fall even lower before she’d find a solution.

Mission Impossible II

Three months after her first injury, Julie herniated two more discs. By then she needed help to get off the sofa and into the shower. She was in constant pain, unable to enjoy neither time at home and especially not at work.

Back at the doctor’s office, he told her: “You might have misunderstood me. When I told you you need to work four hours a day I meant no more than four hours a day. That is, unless you want to reach the age of thirty in a wheelchair.”

Working 4- hour shifts are completely unheard of in the Israeli Army, and probably in any major corporate around the world. Suddenly Julie became the ugly duckling, the one that people talk about behind their back, whispering and pitying. And she felt that she was failing more than ever. If she couldn’t get eighteen hours of work done in nine, how can she ever get them done in four?

Giving Up

Frustrated with failing and facing the impossible, Julie just gave up.

She gave up on her dream of becoming a great, acknowledged and respected commander. She gave up her dreams of promotion and prizes. She gave up everything she thought she had to offer.

Out of complete frustration, and trying not to lose herself, she decided to toss aside everything she knew about managing her time, her job, and her life, and focus on one simple thing:

Choose the one thing that has the biggest impact every day and do only that.

Understanding she’ll never get the job done, Julie put aside the to-do list and started living by this new mantra. She would get to the office, do the one thing that was most important for her that day, the one thing that she felt would put a dent in the universe, and only after that try to do anything else.

Suddenly things were changing: A few weeks later, she was sitting in front of a computer on a Tuesday morning, realizing that she completed all of the tasks that she planned for that week. For her that was the beginning of time hacking. For us this is the beginning of becoming an effective entrepreneur.

Finding Success Through Failure

Following the surprising finding, Julie started documenting everything she was doing: What kind of tasks was she completing, at what times were those tasks, working the best for her, what was her attention span, what stuff was she getting far time quicker in the morning rather than in the afternoon. Slowly but surely she figured out her personal time hacking framework.

This is why time hacking is nothing like any time management framework you’ve seen. It’s 100% customized to the time you actually have to the way you work and with what’s available to you. It builds upon your strengths rather than having you fighting yourself around your weaknesses.

In today’s episode Julie shared the first step you need to take to become a time hacker and your own master of time. It’s a 10-minute exercise that will help you get clarity and learn how to prioritize your goals, project, and obligations and make time work around them instead of you chasing after time.

Listen to today’s episode for the full story of how to make it happen, or simply check out Julie’s Daily Planning Toolkit on her website.

Mentioned Resources

I Need Your Help!

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IIP072: How To Make Great Business Decisions As An Entrepreneur

What Is Business Acumen?

Business acumen is incredibly important to entrepreneurs, but why?

From a detailed survey that I conducted this morning, by asking the first 3 people I saw online (okay, maybe it’s not that detailed…). It turns out that many aren’t sure what exactly the word means. To be honest, I wasn’t so sure myself. I knew it’s important — I just didn’t know how important it is.

Acumen: the ability to make good judgements and quick decisions in a particular domain.

When presented this way, I don’t need a survey to know that every entrepreneur would understand the importance of having the ability to make good judgement and make quick decisions in business.

While business acumen is traditionally something spoke of in large corporate and MBA programs, I believe it’s time for entrepreneurs to catch up. And this is what today’s episode is all about.

Business Concepts In Today’s Episode

In today’s episode we will cover:

  • The 5 performance metrics that drive all Fortune 500 companies, and how they apply to every entrepreneur.
  • How to build your business acumen without getting an MBA and without spending tons of time on it.
  • How to become the CEO your entrepreneurial business needs.
  • Why growth can sometimes be the worst thing for business.
  • A free giveaway of my guest’s book.

Today’s Guest

Kevin Cope of Acumen Learning
Kevin Cope of Acumen Learning

Over the last 12 years, Kevin and his company had helped 18 of Fortune50 companies train and educate their employees on business acumen — on understanding what makes a business succeed, on what makes a business work, what makes a business money.

I don’t even remember how Kevin and I got talking, but I have seen Kevin’s latest book titled “Seeing The Bigger Picture”, and I have seen some reviews about it, saying that it’s a 180-page MBA. And I thought, “Maybe that’s a great idea for the Inspiring Innovation Podcast.”

If you’re anything like me and you never had an official business school education, I thought you could benefit as much as I could from having Kevin on the show doing Business Acumen 101 and just walking us through the basic and different things that we should be monitoring and paying attention to just like major companies do.

While we might not be a CEO of a corporate, we are the CEO of our own entrepreneurial business.

Unlike corporates that have their investors’ money, the money that we have is our own — it’s our own savings, our own family’s support or whatever it is — and we need to make it work. We need to be good CEOs to our entrepreneurial businesses.

So this is what today’s episode is all about.

Free Giveaway!

If you’re interested in developing your business acumen, Kevin has generously contributed 5 copies of his latest book to be given away to listeners of Inspiring Innovation.

How can I win a copy?

All you have to do in order to receive one of the free copies, is leave Inspiring Innovation Podcast a 5-star review on iTunes (you can do that at iipodcast.com/itunes) and then e-mail me at [email protected] to let me know you’ve done so. The first 5 listeners/readers to complete these steps will receive a copy free of charge.

For those interested in a more detailed approach, Kevin has also made his online course available to listeners of Inspiring Innovation at a 50% discount that you can claim here: http://seeingthebigpicture.com/innovation/.

But I’m An Entrepreneur! Do I Still Need To Develop Business Acumen?

I would argue that in most cases, being an entrepreneur means that business acumen is actually more crucial to you than it is for a corporate employee. While lacking business acumen will slow you down in climbing the corporate ladder and would limit how high can you climb, lacking business acumen as an entrepreneur increases the risk you take and hinders your chances of success.

I’m not saying you need to get an MBA in order to become a successful entrepreneur, but it does make sense to know the 5 key metrics every business, whether it’s your corporate job or your entrepreneurial business, should be paying attention to.

After all, while your corporate employer has the backing of banks and investors, your backing is your savings, your checking account, and perhaps some help from family and friends. For me that makes the best case why every entrepreneur needs to spend the time understanding how companies make money.

The 5 Performance Metrics You’ll Need

In today’s interview, Kevin shared the 5 performance metrics that you’ll need in order to get the full picture of how your entrepreneurial business is performing financial-wise. While many experts would recommend 5, 10, 15 more metrics to monitor, the following 5 are the most crucial and simple of them all, according to Kevin.

  1. Cash
  2. Profit
  3. Assets
  4. Growth
  5. People

As you’ll soon see, these 5 metrics are all interconnected. Affecting one of them always affects the others, but often in unexpected ways (at least until you think about it).

For instance, many entrepreneurs believe that more growth equals more cash and bigger profit. Not necessarily so: Depending on the engine of growth, growth may actually be achieved by spending more money on marketing, which immediately cut cash and profit.

If the growth is too fast, quality of service might decrease, causing a further loss of sales and existing customers and making the business take a hit in cash, profit and people (in this case customer).

If I mentioned people already, rapid growth might also take a hit on your employees, who might become too overloaded with work and provide a work service or simply leave. Employees are another aspect of the people metric. And in fact, rapid growth is what caused the people of my first software business, in that case me and my 2 employees to burn out and leave.

Cash

Cash

When it comes to cash there are two measures you’ll want to pay attention to.

  1. Cash-on-hand
  2. Cash flow

Cash-on-hand, basically means the amount of money you currently have on your savings or checking account. That’s the amount of money your business have in order to run. I don’t believe I need to explain in detail why this is a key metric since it’s pretty obvious that when cash-on-hand goes negative, the game is over.

Cash flow basically stands for how much cash is coming in minus how much cash is being spent. Most businesses end up launching with a negative cash flow. This means that every month, the amount of cash-on-hand decreases steadily.

One of the key things every business strives to achieve is a positive cash flow. In the startup world as well as in entrepreneurship, we need to achieve positive cash flow as fast as possible before you ran out of cash-on-hand.

But even if your cash flow is positive, you’ll still want to be monitoring it to see how you can make the cash flow bigger, which means you’re making more money compared to what you are expending.

Kevin outlined 5 quick ways to increase positive cash flow.

  1. Sell more
  2. Reduce expenses
  3. Better manage your inventory (if that applies to your kind of business)
  4. Pay slower — negotiate your payment terms to allow you to pay slower and reduce the negative cash flow.
  5. Get paid faster — if your business is going under, and you have customers owing you over $10,000 (as I had), it’s not hard to understand that paying more attention to your account receivables and being more proactive in collecting the money you’re owed, can make a huge impact on the success of your business

Profit

Profit

Not too different from looking at cash flow, profit is how much money being made on sales minus how much money is spent on expenses. An interesting metric to look up when it comes to profit is your profit margin. This is basically a percentage of how much more money you’ve made out of each sale compared to the business cost of making that sale.

According the Kevin, a typical profit margin across major companies is around 9% and he has found that to be the case in many other industries as well.

A benefit of monitoring your profit margin is that it’s an indicator of the financial risk you’re taking in your sales. Often, growing companies take a hit at their profit margin and sometimes they go too far.

Your profit margin metric will make sure you’re not only making enough money to float, but actually make enough money to grow. In fact, you’ll find many entrepreneurs you’ll read and hear recommends a profit margin of at least 8% to 12% for an entrepreneurial business.

Assets

Assets

Your house, your cash savings and your investments are all assets that you own. While none of them necessarily is used to produce revenue, they do support a certain standard of living and allow you to pursue your lifestyle and personal growth.

Likewise, your entrepreneurial company has assets that should be used in its growth by producing revenue and profit. Without the right assets, no business can grow; it simply cannot be profitable.

Your assets might be an inventorial product, your laptop/desktop that you bought, or the workroom at your home where you’re building your business from. Assets might be transportation you use, etc. Your account receivables (the money people owe you) are also an example of an asset. Intellectual property and your knowledge can be an asset.

When it comes to assets, there are two metrics you’re looking at:

  • Asset strength
  • Asset utilization

Asset Strength

When it comes to asset strength, you’re looking at 2 factors: Liquidity and the nature of the asset (particularly, can these assets be used to generate revenue versus those that can’t).

Liquidity means how easy it is to quickly generate more cash in order to solve unexpected problems or writing out down market using the assets you have.

The second factor, the nature of the asset themselves, is pretty self-explanatory. You want to have as little amount as possible of assets that aren’t used to generate revenue.

Asset Utilization

Asset utilization. Accumulating assets, even if they are liquid aren’t necessarily very helpful. At the end of the day, explains Kevin, if your accumulation of assets, whatever those assets are, does not directly contribute to making a bigger revenue is probably assets you don’t need.

Growth

Growth

Second to cash flow, growth might be the most discussed metric. I’m assuming that I don’t need to explain in too many details what growth is. At the end of the day, it boils down to are you more sales and getting more customers.

But one caveat that Kevin mentioned in today’s interview is this: A few years ago, Toyota was hard on focused on growth while losing sight of their quality control. When the quality suffered and they have to issue recalls, their bottom line suffered heavily.

Another example is the dot-com era: So many companies were solemnly focusing on the growth metric alone that completely lost sight of their profit margin, of their cash flow, and worse of all, on their cash-on-hand.

Rapid growth can be expensive and focusing solemnly on growth while ignoring its effect on the other metrics, can mean a deadly blow to your business.

People

Rose, Julie, Meron in Manila
Team Inspiring Innovation

The last but not least metric is people. These include both your customers and your employees. It’s pretty obvious the importance of the customers metric: Are they happy? Are they satisfied? Is your customer service quick and efficient?

Are your employees satisfied? Are you helping them grow? Are you treating your employees as well as you’d like them to treat your best customer? Neglecting either your customer’s happiness or your employees’ happiness can bring down the most financially stable company.

So these are the 5 metrics Kevin recommends you to pay attention to. I’d love to hear in the comments section what’s your take on each, and if there’s any metric you really think you should start paying attention to

Podcast Starter Kit

As mentioned in today’s episode, I’m really excited to announce my new free course: The Podcast Starter Kit.

The Podcast Starter Kit is a 7-day video course that will take you from knowing nothing about podcasts, to planning, recording and launching your successful podcast show, ranking in the top of Apple New & Noteworthy ranking, building your list, your brand, and your authority in whatever niche you’re in.

Click here to get immediate access to the Podcast Starter Kit.

Resource That Will Help You See The Bigger Picture

I Need Your Help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Affiliate Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

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IIP067: Jared Easley Starves The Doubts

Quote of Jared Easley, host of Starve the doubts and co-founder of Podcast Movement

In this episode we cover:

  • How Jared Easley went from conference attendee to co-founder of the Podcast Movement.
  • Why podcasting can help you build your brand, authority, and network.
  • How starving the doubts and taking action changed Jared’s life, and how it will change yours!
  • How to help market leaders in a surprising way and build great relationships with them.
  • How being a team player allows you to build your entrepreneurial career faster and easier!
  • What you can do today to replicate the same results!

Today’s guest

Jared Easley, co-founder of the Podcast Movement, is a full time entrepreneur, speaker, trainer, consultant and the creator and host of the Starve The Doubts podcast. He interviews successful entrepreneurs about overcoming self-doubt and fear management. His guests include Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Pat Flynn, and many others.

Jared Easley Starve The Doubts

Today Jared joins us to share his story — from attending the New Media Expo 2013, through launching a successful podcast with guests that are at the absolute top of their market, to building relationships with his market’s leaders and celebrities, to finally following a gap he saw in the market, and co-founding his own event.

Podcast Movement

Here’s more information about the Podcast Movement, as appears on their website:

” In August 2014, hundreds of past, present, and future podcasters will converge on the Westin Galleria Dallas for two packed days and nights at the first ever Podcast Movement.
Podcast Movement 2014 will be THE gathering for anyone interested in podcasting. You can expect to find a place where not only will you leave motivated and inspired, you’ll leave a BETTER PODCASTER.”

If you’re going to be in the US in August, go ahead and check the different ticket options. Over 500 people already have their tickets!

Podcast Incubator

One of the things that Jared and I mentioned today is just how powerful podcasting is. It’s an amazing strategy that helps you:

  • Build up your name, brand and authority in your niche
  • Interview, network, and connect with your niche’s market leaders and celebrities
  • Grow an engaged audience of thousands within weeks
  • Build your mailing list rapidly and easily
  • Become a sought-after speaker, mentor, consultant and author

If you’re interested in becoming a successful podcaster, I’ve created the perfect resource for you. The Podcast Incubator is the #1 step-by-step, over the shoulder training course and community for podcasters, and it’s now open to the public.

My students already see amazing results, where not only all of them get into the top of the Apple New & Noteworthy rankings of their category, many of them outrank huge names in the main rankings including one show outranking Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Amy Porterfield, Seth Godin, Michael Hyatt, Chris Ducker, Tim Ferriss and others!

Check out http://podcastincubator.com/ for more information. I hope to see you there!

Mentioned resources & links

I Need Your Help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Affiliate Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

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IIP066: How To Make Money Self Publishing On Amazon Kindle

Note: click here to download the latest PDF of our passive income ideas series: Jonny Andrews Kindle publishing success checklist

The passive income ideas we cover in today’s episode include:

  • My guest’s Kindle publishing system that’s behind his 15 best-selling titles.
  • How to validate your idea and market on Amazon before writing a single word.
  • The 4 most important things you need to get right when publishing on Kindle in order to succeed (none of them is content, by the way!).
  • Why producing tens of shitty books is a bad business plan that won’t bring you success.
  • How to price your book.
  • How to get traditional publishers to drool from the idea of signing you.
  • A step-by-step tried and tested writing process for writing non-fiction books with super high value that people want to pay for!

More ideas for building your passive income streams:

This episode is part of the Inspiring Innovation Passive Income From Scratch series.

If you’re interested for more ideas on how to create passive income streams, check out our previous episodes from the series:

  1. Passive Income Idea I: SaaS & creating a business without an idea (my interview with Dane Maxwell).
  2. Passive Income Idea II: Making Money on Udemy & Skillfeed (my interview with Rob Cubbon).
  3. Passive Income Idea III: Making Money with Affiliate Marketing (my interview with Jill Stanton).

Today’s guest

Jonny Andrews joins us today. Andrews, previously featured on Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn and other radio and news shows throughout the US, is an entrepreneur, marketing specialist, publishing expert, international speaker, business strategies consultant, multi-time best-selling author and podcaster (host of Audience Hacker Show).

Jonny Andrews shares ideas about making passive income with Kindle publishing

From having his identity stolen and being left with nothing and with no ability to get a job, to rebuilding himself from rock-bottom into a 7-figure income business owner, Jonny has been through a lot — and he shares what he learned from his journey with us today.

But Jonny is first and foremost with us today to share how he published over fifteen #1 best-selling titles on the Amazon Kindle platform. His books continue to rank well in their niches, generating him passive income day after day. In fact, Andrews also shared with the Inspiring Innovation audience a free webinar that he’s running titled: “How To Sell 10,000 Books In 7 Days… (Even If You Haven’t Written Yours Yet!)”.

Free gift

If you’re short on time, download our free PDF: “Jonny’s Kindle publishing success checklist now!“, covering:

  • How to validate your idea
  • How to outline your book
  • How to write your book
  • The 4 key things to pay attention to (that are more important to your sales than your content)
  • How to grow your audience (and sales)

Want it? It’s yours for free! Download the Kindle publishing success checklist now!

Other resources mentioned today:

I Need Your Help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Affiliate Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

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