IIP078: Chris Brogan On How To Become The Owner Of Your Life

Episode Highlights:

  • Why you cannot (ever) be the owner of your business – before you are the owner of your life
  • How to get over your fears, doubts and excuses, and why failures are so crucial for our success
  • The one and only thing you need to focus on if you want to create a freedom in life through building a business around what you’re passionate about

Today’s Guest

Chris Brogan

Bravery had rewarded me a lot better than operating from fear.Chris Brogan

Do you have a driving passion, whether it’s podcasting, writing, blogging, teaching, Photoshop, graphics, miniature trains, or anything else – but can’t seem to turn that into a thriving business?

Is your 9-5 job putting food on the table, but you’re not enjoying it (to say the least…)? Are your friends telling you that, “that’s just the way things are”?

If you struggle with finding work-life balance that will allow you to become the owner of the business that you want, and you find yourself running from the 9-5 to your errands and obligations, feeling that you don’t even have full control over your own world…

…The implications are that you’re always working in the business and not on your business. That you’re not doing the work that you want to be doing.

What you need is a solid plan to drive growth, become the owner of your life, and to get to the next level…

And to create this plan,we are joined today by no other than Chris Brogan!

Chris runs a professional development company called Owner Media Group.

Through the past several years, he run a marketing consulting group and worked with a lot of really big companies (like Google, Microsoft and Coca-Cola). At the same time, he experienced working with people at different parts of their journey of choosing to own their life and put together a business that they wanted to run as a part of that.

And so, what he enjoyed most along the way was the opportunity to speak to people about what does or what doesn’t work in making business.

“So along the way, I’ve just been working on unearthing the right mix of principles and guidance to help people really own the game that they most want to win, which of course would be their own.”, he explains.

Here’s our interview. By the way, you can listen to it in audio format by scrolling to the top and clicking ‘Play’ 🙂

Owning Your Life VS. Owning Your Business

MB: Chris, on your website, you say you can’t own your business until you own your life. What does it mean to become the owner of your life, and how is it different from being the owner of your business?

own your life

CB: Well, let’s think about it for just a minute. I’ll back it up to why that could be a challenge. So imagine…

CB: I had a really interesting conversation with a woman who wanted some help with her fitness and health. She said, “Here I am, I’ve gone from a very large company to a very small company and I’ve gone from everyone taking my call to me really having to work to get a meeting with someone as head of sales of this very small company.”

CB: She said, “When they see me, they see an overweight woman; they see a very heavy woman.”

CB: She says, “I think that they are wondering how could I possibly keep my commitments to them if I can’t even keep my commitments to myself. So if I can’t honor myself, how could I possibly honor what I say I’m going to do for them and their business?”

CB: I never heard anything like this, but it makes great sense. So the idea of owning your life is really making and keeping commitments to yourself, staying disciplined.

CB: The word ‘discipline’ essentially means a daily honoring of those things you’re committed to and say that you value and that you wanna do. For instance, people would tell me, “Yeah, I’m trying to get healthy,” and then they’ll skip going to the gym for a week.

CB: Well, those two things can’t be true. One of those things is inaccurate. You either aren’t trying to get healthy or you would’ve found some way to get to the gym.

CB: So one part of owning your life is removing excuses from your life. That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to fail, but you’re never going to allow an excuse to be a reason for failure.

MB: So, for instance, if I decide to lose weight and I don’t go outside running because there is a terrible heatwave and it’s too hot to run … if I was being the owner of my own life I would be fixing it by finding something to do inside, instead of just saying, “Well, it was a super hot day. Gonna try again tomorrow”?

CB: Exactly. You would do something in your flat; you would adjust your calories for the day so that at least you weren’t eating as much as you normally would, so that you can have some deficit of calories there.

CB: And I would like to say that I think it does relate to entrepreneurship because all the tools and drills and skills that we learn in balancing our lives out — in a making our lives work — is what we need as an entrepreneur.

CB: Entrepreneurs make and fill the gap between needs and what we are capable of doing. So, if you can increase your capabilities and you become able to fulfill the gaps in your own life, that’s gonna translate into confidence in your capability to fulfill gaps for other people as well.

CB: I’ve been able to bring many of the lessons that I’ve learned in reclaiming my health to bear on what’s going on in business experiences as well. I learned how to sell better by learning how to work better at the gym.

CB: Things even as simple as getting enough rest; a lot of entrepreneurs think that it’s very cool or it’s part of the lifestyle to not sleep. But I find that well-rested makes me smarter than most of the other people at the table, who find themselves clever.

The War For Ownership – Overcoming Fear

struggles and fears

MB: What are some of the battles you feel you lost in this war to claim ownership?

CB: That’s a very good question. First off, I think that entrepreneurs (or people who aspire to be entrepreneurs) have this belief, that once you attain some level of success, then you never ever get below that level again — and it’s just not true.

CB: All life is in flux all the time. Your financial wealth and your health can go up and down quite a lot; the market that you’re working in maybe can change dramatically, especially when I’m involved in (sort of) technology and business-type markets where fluctuations are part of the game.

CB: Some of the battles I’ve lost are…

CB: I’m not a big fan of doing research. I’m a big fan of trusting that the community that I’ve surrounded myself with and that I have the honor to serve is indicating what they say they need.

CB: Sometimes, I followed the lead into something where I’ve made the offering that I felt that they asked for and they didn’t want it. And so, I spent a lot of money chasing a lot of mistakes early on.

CB: I think the other thing I did wrong is following one of my legend/hero-types, Sir Richard Branson. He has four hundred companies, and in my mind, I thought I can run more than a few companies. But what he also has is thousands and thousands of staff, so that he can really lay out a vision and then know that everyone else will run with it.

CB: I have a very small staff, and my hands are on most everything that I do. So I found that like a lot of people, I felt like I could multitask even in the kinds of businesses I ran, which caused a lot of failure as well.

CB: So I would say that if there’s any kind of big theme to all the different things that I’ve tried, any time that I worked out of fear — let’s say fear of losing money or fear of not making enough revenue for instance — everything collapsed in a bad way.

CB: Every time I operate out of courage, even if I’m still afraid, but I just put more of my energy towards courage, then everything kind of works a lot better. Bravery has rewarded me a lot better than operating from fear.

Creating A New Plan

MB: One of the first books that people go to, to learn how to create not only a great business, but the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the 4-Hour Workweek.

MB: On your interview with my good friend, Jared Easley on Starve The Doubts, you mentioned that the 4-Hour Workweek is a bigger fairytale than Cinderella. What do you think was left out?

work system

CB: I would say that what Tim Ferris wrote is accurate and appropriate. I would say that what we pick up from that book becomes the base-line of the fairytale; People read the wrong lessons and run with the wrong parts of the book, and don’t really sink all the way through the ideas that are required to understand how to make the system happen.

CB: What we most need to do is: when we think we’re going to run our own business, we misunderstand and think that busy equals good. We think that hustle, just random hustle, equals good. We somehow think that throwing away all our systems is a good plan.

CB: Maybe we need to remove some systems, but we need some basic systems in place; Let’s say I’m in Boston and I wanna visit, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Well, I have to figure out a few things:

CB: I would have to figure out an airplane ride or two, or where I’m going to stay. Do I need some money? What’s the currency there? I probably need to know some customs. So, there’s a lot of things that have to go in place.

CB: A lot of times, for some reason, when people get entrepreneurial, they go no further than buying the website, setting up WordPress, and saying “I’m a business!” I find that’s exactly backwards.

CB: Entrepreneurs don’t build something and try to drag people over to it. Entrepreneurs fill a need that already exists, and make sure that the people that have that need can find this solution.

CB: So I think that probably the biggest first step is: knowing where you want to go, and starting immediately on what systems am I going to need to make that work.

The Only 1st Step An Entrepreneur Needs

MB: So what’s the first destination aspiring entrepreneurs need to figure how to get to, and how will they get started with creating a plan to get there?

highway

CB: They need to answer a very, very simple question: How does my passion serve somebody else?

CB: So what separates the artist who lives in his parents’ basement and maybe has to work a grocery store job to make any cash, from the artist who thrives and serves the community is that one of them thinks with the community in mind. This goes opposite of how many creative people think.

CB: They think, “I shall be creative and everyone will love my work.” And to an extent, that’s true. You do have to bring something to it.

CB: People have to see themselves or see something that resonates with themselves in your work or the work is of no value to them. That’s where a lot of creative and entrepreneurial people get something wrong.

CB: So the very first question after one decides that they’re going to go their own way, is how does this serve somebody else?

CB: For instance, when Jared Easley does Starve The Doubts, he says, “I think that there are other ways to make a job and make a business.” So one of the things he did was launch with some friends the Podcast Movement.

CB: He figured, “If I make up a gathering, which would get other like-minded people who want to understand how podcasting can improve their business together, then that’s a good way to make it work.”

CB: I find that there are other ways to make money. But one of the ways that we can make money in a way that keeps our passion alive is to find the people that we can serve with this passion.

CB: For instance, if someone wants to be a professional sports-player, it’s a little difficult because, you have to find a team. There’s a set of rules. It’s a job not unlike any other job to do that kind of work.

CB: It’s just the same as working at Best Buy, only you wear different clothes or something. But, when we truly want to get out of basic system jobs, then we have to actually redefine a marketplace first and foremost.

CB: If there’s no marketplace, there’s no market. If there’s no community around that marketplace, then there’s no way to get the word out.

CB: So we really need to understand that. Then, perhaps from there, we can create content that drives some awareness into the community and invite some small amount of them to participate in that marketplace.

Kicking Fear In The Face

MB: If someone is thinking, “I previously attempted with entrepreneurship and I failed. I’m not sure I can do this.” What do you say to them?

facing failure

CB: Ah, my goodness. I mean, you failed at other things in your life. Why did you not stop then? You are walking, and you probably failed many times as a baby, and yet I see people walking everywhere. I don’t see everyone laying on the ground –– so we must have succeeded after many attempts.

CB: Lots of people fail, and I think that you have to fall in love with failure. You have to embrace failure because on the other side of every failure is the right way to do it and you’ll succeed.

Putting A Plan Into Action With Help From Chris Brogan

MB: If people want to learn more about it, and get more step-by-step guidance and support from you, Chris, where can they find it?

CB: Probably the easiest is to go to chrisbrogan.com and maybe start with my newsletter, which is different than most people’s. It comes out every Sunday. Not only do you get some kind of advice or idea that’s fresh and not only exist on the newsletter — I don’t re-purpose my blog or anything, but you can hit reply and talk directly to me.

CB: You have direct access to me, which gives me the opportunity to serve people better.

Action Steps

If you could tweet Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and just thank him for spending twenty minutes with us today, that will be absolutely superb. You can do that real quick by clicking here

After that, go ahead to chrisbrogan.com, check out his blog and newsletter.

You are amazing, and I will see you next Thursday.
Meron

Mentioned Resources

I Need Your Help!

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Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

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IIP076: These 3 Steps Created A 6 Figure Business In 9 Months!

Note: click here to download “3 Foundational Steps For Creating A 6 Figure Business” PDF Now

Episode Highlights: Creating A 6 Figures Business

  • The three most important steps in breaking free from corporate and the 9-5 and creating your freedom business
  • The number one thing to remember when starting to monetize your business
  • Networking events that don’t suck
  • Why you’ll never be an overnight success (just like nobody else ever was!)
  • The most important trait you could develop to become a successful entrepreneur
  • The 3 foundational steps every successful entrepreneur takes, and every failing entrepreneurs misses

Today’s Guest

Erin Smith

Erin Smith, founder of ‘The Starters Club’, knows a thing or two about starting successful businesses from scratch; In her early twenties, just getting started in corporate America, she realized that the only way to create true wealth and freedom is through being the owner – and not the employee.

She didn’t feel she was ready to own a business yet, so she decided to focus on becoming an owner in the realm of real estate. She did quite well, and bought her first home when she was only 22. After a few years, she decided to give business a shot – and started a pet-sitting company.

With no background (besides the background that Google could offer her), she got started. Within just a few years it grew to a 6-figure income, 12 employees business. BOOM!

A bit later, after burning out, she sold that business.

Her next business reached 6 figures within its first 9 months, and right there Erin found her passion and talent for starting successful businesses.

When people kept telling Erin how amazing her success is, she replied, “You can do it too,”. When enough people answered, “I wouldn’t know where to start.” – she saw the need, and decided to provide the one thing she never had when she got started in business — mentorship, directions, and guidance.

‘The Starters Club’ was born, and today it offers various resources that teach the steps, tools and strategies entrepreneurs need to follow in order to create a successful business – quicker and easier, and without figuring things out alone.

In today’s show, she lays out the 3 pillars, or foundational steps, that have been the secret sauce behind her meteoric success.

3 Steps For Creating A 6 Figure Business

Before I give you the 3 major steps that Erin outlined in the interview, I have a few caveats:

It Isn’t Going To Be Easy

While there has never been a time in history where it was easier and cheaper to start a business, it doesn’t make it easy. You need to put in the hours and you need to do the work. No one, and no system, will ever replace doing the right things, and doing them NOW.

Erin worked incredibly hard to create her businesses. Whether it was working into the night, early in the mornings, or during what her friends and family might have considered “free time,” – she did it all, and her dedication and determination is behind her success.

No One Is An Over Night Success

success arrow up

No success story has ever been a true overnight success. The greatest entrepreneurs that we are inspired by, and sometimes awed by, didn’t just “come out of nowhere” and start making 5 and 6-figure incomes a month.

Think about it. Nobody has heard about Pat Flynn, Chris Ducker or Rand Fishkin when they just got started and were side-hustling and making ends meet. They became famous when their beard fruit.

Any exponential growth success story has a background of slow, step-by-step and frustrating linear growth, which brings me to the next point…

You Got To Start Somewhere

You got to start somewhere, and there will never be a better place to start than where you are right now.

Sir Richard Branson started somewhere. Bill Gates started somewhere. Steve Jobs started somewhere. They were all nobodies when they got started.

If you have no aspirations to create the greatest tech company in the world, become the richest man on the planet, or launch the biggest software company — you’re in luck! Your job will be much easier than theirs! 🙂

“Every master was once a disaster” says my good friend John Dumas in every chance he has. Dumas has a very good reason; Only 2 years ago, nobody knew who he was. Today he’s the face of podcasting, and runs a $2M business.

Bottom line, wherever you are right now in life — you are perfectly positioned to start. Stop waiting for the perfect moment and make it happen!

With this out of the way, let’s get started with Erin’s steps.

To make it super easy for you to consume today’s episode, I created a free PDF that summarizes everything we talked about. You can download it by clicking on the icon right here:

Click here to download the “3 Foundational Steps For Creating A 6 Figure Business” PDF

Once you download the PDF, scroll to the top of the post and listen to today’s episode. You won’t regret it – Erin has an amazing story and many,many fantastic lessons, tips and tactics to share.

Once you’re done – please consider leaving a comment below and let us know how we did 🙂

Other Mentioned Resources:

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!

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IIP075: Austrian Conversion Optimization Prodigy Shares His Secrets

Note: Click here to download your free copy of The Human Conversions Guide

Episode Highlights: Conversion Optimization, List Building, and Audience Engagement

  • The difference between making money and being successful
  • Why focusing on your conversion rate is often the wrong decision
  • Good conversions vs. bad conversions
  • How building a small list that is worth more than gold is much more valuable than building a huge list that doesn’t care about you
  • Design 101: Design DO’s and DON’Ts that apply to any website and will help you make sure your readers will be more engaged and take more favorable actions rather than stare at their screen confused!
  • How your homepage would look like
  • The 3 most important pages that you need to patch up on your website — today!

Today’s Guest

Jakob Schweighofer

Jakob Schweighofer is an Austrian entrepreneur. In just a couple of years, he went from installing WordPress themes to becoming a sought-after expert in optimization of websites and conversions. He’s been involved in several projects that made incredible amounts of money in a very short period of time.

As it often happens in business, early stage partnerships don’t hold forever. Not long ago Jakob’s partnerships disassembled and now he’s turning the page and starting afresh.

“I heavily changed my definition [of success] in the last few months, from I-get-a-lot-of-money-out-of-it [to] success is doing the things I like with people I enjoy doing it and be able to live from it.”

I met Jakob at Tropical Think Tank 2014 in the Philippines and was blown away by his knowledge. Since then, I’ve been talking to him at least twice a month about my business and branding and I’m excited to starting to apply all of his ideas.

When it came to conversions, following his ideas has often tripled conversion rates for both Julie and me in our businesses. But more than that, I look forward to follow his advice on creating a strong online personal brand — something he was incredibly successful in creating for himself in the German and Austrian market.

Today’s talk about website optimization is unique, because unlike other experts – Jakob isn’t as excited as about finding that one little tweak, changing the color of a button in just one shade, moving a button by 10 pixels, or making a title a lot more shocking.

Jakob has grown tired of such internet marketing manipulations, and now he focuses on converting the right people the right way in order to build true and lasting brands and businesses for ourselves.

Is It Truly A Good Idea To Improve Your Website Conversions?

This might seem like a funny question. I mean — how could improving your website conversion be a bad idea?

All things being equal, of course you want the highest conversion rate possible.

But things are not equal, and here are some questions to consider:

  • How are you going to improve your conversion rate?
  • What kind of audience will you be attracting due to that change?
  • How engaged is that audience going to be, compared to your existing one?

All these questions affect the effectiveness of the work you’re about to put in improving your conversions.

Conversion Optimization VS Your Core Values

If improving your conversions means installing pop-ups that your audience will not like, e-mail gates that they will not appreciate, or changing the way you write in a way that doesn’t represent you and your core values — Jakob’s verdict is: It’s not worth it.

Think about it: If you could have a list of a hundred people that are absolutely rabid about what you do and buy every product you put out there, compared to a list of 10,000 people that opted-in for all sorts of lead magnets that don’t really represent what you are about and don’t give a rat’s ass about your e-mails and offerings after they got their opt-in magnet. Which one would you take?

Suddenly, the obviousness (let’s pretend that’s a word) of the equation “more conversions = GOOD” is put to doubt.

So what should you be doing to get more bang for your buck? How can you get more engagement and build your e-mail list without filling it with the wrong people? Read below to find out.

Website Design: Do’s & Don’ts

In today’s episode, Jakob covered his Human Conversions Guide Manifesto – how websites should be built in this day and age to create effective and engaging personal brands.

The information below is a quick summary of everything we discussed, but for more information, make sure you listen to the interview as well as download Jakob’s free PDF: The Human Conversions Guide.

Do: Stop Worrying About Conversions

If you read through this post up to this point, you must have seen this first commandment coming.

In order to create a personal brand that’s human, relatable and engage-able you need to put aside the internet-marketing-conversion-optimizing mindset, and think of your website as your meeting place with other human beings that might be interested in you and your services.

The less internet marketing tricks that you play on your audience, hell — the better!

Don’t: Write To An Audience

Following up on the previous commandment, this one distills the way of communication even further: Don’t write to an audience; write to a single person.

The way I achieve that, by the way, is by not writing at all:
I only outline the text I want to write, and then I go on a walk and record it, pretending I’m speaking to one of my readers. Then, my VA transcribes it and turns it into text format, but in case you don’t have your own VA — you can have someone from Elance do that for you for pennies. Or you can even transcribe it yourself!

The point here is not the process as much as the hack that I found to work for me to get out of the “I need to write a post for my site” state of mind and into a “Hey man, here’s some cool stuff I learned from my latest episode”.

See the difference? Your audience (sorry, people) will see it too.

Do: Avoid Complexity

The next thing Jakob tackles is complexity. As you might recall from my interview with Kary Oberbrunner “clarity attracts, complexity detracts”.

Here are just a few ways people are getting clarity wrong:

  1. Every single page on your site needs to have one single job.
    People (myself included) almost always get this one wrong.
    Whenever you write a blog post, ask yourself: what’s the one thing I want this page to do? Build my list? Educate? Entertain? Inspire? Encourage to join my list? Sell my product? Sell my event? It can only be one.

  2. Your homepage is one of the first pages people see.
    Traditionally, it was THE FIRST page that everybody saw, but with today’s social media, many people reach a specific post in your site. Guess what they do then? They go and check out your homepage.
    Here’s the job your homepage was hired to do: Quickly, effectively and clearly communicate who are you, what’s this website about, and what will I (the reader) find here (what’s in it for me?).
    Do that and you help every single visitor who gets to your site understand if you are a good match, and what’s the next action they should take.

  3. Stop giving people so many options.
    I get it, you want people to opt-in to your list. Who wouldn’t?
    So like many others, you think to yourself, “let’s put 5 lead magnets on the sidebar and then at least one of them would apply to every visitor.”
    While that might sound like a good idea, research shows that having too many options actually leads to anxiety, paralysis, confusion, and worst of all, to postponing the moment of decision. Unfortunately for you, that is postponing the moment of deciding to join your e-mail list… until they leave your site and forget about you altogether.

Bottom line:

  • Keep it clear
  • Remove as many elements as possible
  • Don’t bombard people with too many options
  • Make a clear path for visitors to walk through your site

(I really need to apply these for me site, too!)

Don’t: Ask For Stuff You Wouldn’t Do Yourself

Last but not least is the real deal breaker: Whenever you consider putting a new pop-up lead magnet ad, a new welcome gate, or replace your homepage with the only option to get past is for me to give you my e-mail address, ask yourself this:

“How would I feel about this? Would I be willing to take the action I’m being asked to take? How will taking that action make me feel? Do I trust this guy with my email at this stage?”

It’s easy to develop a blind spot and rationalize to yourself stuff people are willing to do – when in fact it might make them uncomfortable.

I’ve done that mistake with my Sign-up process to my membership site back in March 2014.

The solution to this blind spot was incredibly easy: Send it to someone else and ask them: What do they think? Would they opt-in? Would they take the action that is requested on that page?

Final Words

As I said, in the interview Jakob went into much more detail than this summary. For the full story and more information listen to today’s interview (there’s a player at top of the page) and download Jakob’s free PDF: The Human Conversions Guide.

I hope this has been useful for you. If you have any questions to Jakob or me, or if you think we got it wrong, leave your comments and thoughts below.

Mentioned Resources:

Click here to download your free copy of The Human Conversions Guide

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.

Don’t Miss an Episode! Subscribe Below:

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IIP073: How To Build Your Business With Speaking Engagements

Everybody knows that “build it and they will come” doesn’t really work. And thus, for the last few years, every entrepreneurship podcast worth its salt has discussed ways to get “them” to come.

On today’s episode we discussed an exciting way to quickly build your credibility, reach, and most important — bottom line: speaking engagements.

As you’ll see today, speaking engagements create the perfect opportunity for you to be seen as the expert, deliver value, solve problems — and get paid for it.

Business Building Strategies We Discuss In Today’s Episode Include:

  • How to use speaking engagements to deliver value, help your audience, AND make sales
  • How to create your speaking engagement opportunities
  • How to become a speaker at the conferences that matter the most to your audience
  • How to pitch yourself as a speaker, and more important — how to follow up!
  • How to steer clear of the “friend zone” when speaking, and maintaining a professional presentation… without boring people out their minds!
  • How to sell from stage without being a douchebag

Today’s Guest

Joleene Moody
Joleene Moody of JoleeneSpeaks

Today’s guest is Joleene Moody, an expert in breaking into the world of paid speaking and entrepreneurship. For a former TV reporter and anchor, she turned into a transformational speaker, a business coach and an author.

Her expertise are: how to convert the room to high-paying clients, how to generate sales and profits through speaking engagements, how to create your own speaking engagement opportunities, and how to become a better closer.

In today’s episode Joleene shares her journey from TV anchor — bored out of her mind and feeling she’s not serving her purpose — to a purpose-driven entrepreneur bringing change to the world and helping others create the freedom they always crave for.

From Sedentary To Extraordinary

Joleene’s journey from sedentary to extraordinary wasn’t easy (and in today’s episode she shares many of the struggles that she faced, as long as documented them in her book, Memoirs of Normalcy: Journey from Sedentary to Extraordinary).

While many people think that being a TV anchor is an incredibly exciting job, in reality, according to Joleene, things could not be more different. Worst of all, Joleene felt she’s not living up to her calling and potential. She didn’t have the fulfilling life she wanted, nor the freedom she craved for.

First Time On Stage

While Joleene had many opportunities to be on stage in her previous career, in all sorts of professional conferences and gatherings, the first time she was on stage as an entrepreneur was truly memorable. Unfortunately, it was memorable due to how bad it went.

A few hours before her first-ever speaking gig as an inspirational coach, Joleene pass a kidney stone. “I couldn’t even make it to my first speaking gig. I thought I blew up my speaking career even before it started!”

Today, Joleene has been a speaker for over five years, and the first three of those were not easy. The only way she made it work was to carry on, show up and do the work.

I felt the same about my first business engagements (whether it was speaking gigs, webinars, or creating my own video course): things don’t go that well the first time (and thank God I didn’t pass any kidney stones!).

Reflecting on all guests on the show so far, it truly happens to everyone. The one thing separating the successful from the unsuccessful is showing up again the next day.

Creating Your Own Speaking Opportunities (And Making Money On Stage)

Creating your own opportunities

In today’s episode, Joleene outlines several ways you could create your own speaking opportunities right now. These include:

  • Retreats
  • Speaking at conferences
  • Speaking at networking group/events
  • Hosting a live webinar
  • Hosting a live teleseminar
  • Etc.

For one of her first retreats, she simply picked a date and contacted personally the people she thought would make a good target audience. She charged a few tens of dollars just to cover Facebook ads, renting the place for the day and food/beverages.

She kept the event at 15 people, and most of her expenses were covered by the Signup fees. She ended up selling in services and products throughout her retreat and making 5-figure profit from sales of products and services throughout and as a result of that day.

That’s why Joleene challenges every listener of the show to open the calendar, pick a date three weeks from now and just invite a couple of people that would be interested to learn about your services.

If people show up to the event, she explains, they have a problem that they think you can solve. It’s your responsibility to show them how you can solve their problems. Sure, you might feel awkward about taking their money, so focus on the serving instead of on the selling.

Would you accept the challenge? Comment below and let me know!

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.

Mentioned Resources

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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IIP071: Buying Businesses & Life In The Entrepreneurship Fastlane

IIP071 quote

“Emotion doesn’t make money; Logic does.” Click to Tweet

Episode Highlights:

  • How to join the entrepreneur fastlane by buying successful businesses and making them better rather than building from scratch
  • How my guest, Jock, turned a $10,000 investment into a multi-million dollar business
  • The behind the scenes of online business brokerage
  • How to valuate the worth of your online business, and how to quadruple it
  • The most important entrepreneurship lesson you can teach your children or yourself
  • Creative ways to finance online businesses that you might have never considered

Today’s Guest: Internet Entrepreneur & Online Business Broker

Jock Purtle
Jock Purtle, CEO and President of Digital Exits

We are joined today by Jock Purtle, founder and CEO of Digital Exits — a business brokerage firm focusing on buying and selling online businesses.

Jock, 24 years old, grew up in Sydney, Australia in an entrepreneurial family. His family has a brokerage business and they made him a part of it by the time he was 8 years old. The foundation that he got from being in the family business, learning how to evaluate the worth of goods and how to resell them for profit, has proved to be extremely helpful for the rest of his career.

At 2009, he bought his first online business for $10,000. That website made most of its money with ads. A few months later, he made his money back and resold the business (website) for just shy of $18,000. From that point on, Jock repeated the process each time with a bigger deal, leading him to 2014 where he expects to complete between 20 to 30 deals, each one with a transaction value between $100,000 to $4.5M.

The Beginning

In the interview, Jock shared how grateful he is for his mom and dad taking him when he was young to every business meeting, sharing the profit and loss sheets, and teaching him how the business works.

He remembers at one time when he was young, he wanted to buy something that cost about a thousand dollars. When he asked his father to buy it for him, his father refused. A few days later, he came back and gave him five hundred dollars: “If you can take these five hundred dollars and turn them into a thousand, you can buy whatever you want with them.”

That exercise taught Jock about the power of putting money to work for you and reshaped his mindset for the rest of his life. In fact, he believed it’s a truly crucial exercise for anyone to do, whether for themselves or giving it to their children. “It doesn’t need to be five hundred dollars or a thousand, it can be as little as twenty. It’s the idea of putting the money to work for you, by investing in something that will yield more than the investment in return — that is the key.”

Today

Today, besides running Digital Exits, Jock also hosts a podcast covering the subject of buying and selling online businesses — whether as a buyer or as a seller or as a broker, frequently writes content for his blog about the same subject and has also released several free e-book guides on the subjects that you can find in the mentioned resources section.

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.

Mentioned Resources

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.

Don’t Miss an Episode! Subscribe Below:

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes
Click Here to Subscribe via Stitcher Radio
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  • Subscribe with Feedly
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  • addtomyyahoo4
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Using something else? Copy this address:
––– http://www.meronbareket.com/feed/podcast/ –––